Garrison Keillor reflecting on the decline of the GOP:
"You might not have always liked Republicans, but you could count on them to manage the bank. They might be lousy tippers, act snooty, talk through their noses, wear spats and splash mud on you as they race their Pierce-Arrows through the village, but you knew they could do the math."
Douglas Herman offers some remarkable scenarios on Rense.com.
“A trio of nuns broke into a North Dakota missile site and removed the nuclear warhead using a crescent wrench, car jack and plastic crucifix...Six autistic kids broke into Fort Knox and looted billions in gold.... two teenage lovers who called themselves Romeo and Juliet, stole a Trident submarine...Saudi high school seniors commandeered the aircraft carrier USS Eisenhower...
“Nineteen flight school dropouts, in a complex and well-coordinated heist combining speed and stealth with an uncanny knowledge of our nation's security systems, commandeered four jumbo jets and flew hundreds of miles before returning to crash the planes into pre-selected targets. A flight school instructor said the men performed badly in the simplest of flight maneuvers in small Cessna airplanes. But local law enforcement officials quickly claimed the 19 hijackers could easily have performed complex maneuvers in much larger and more complex Boeing jumbo jets. Video cameras captured the ringleaders laughing and joking and a charred passport, found at the scene of the crash indicated, beyond any reasonable doubt, the guilt of the men.”
Oh wait, that last one isn’t exactly a Douglas Herman satirical scenario – it’s the official 911 story.
His satire goes on far too long, but if you want to see the whole thing, go to:
http://www.rense.com/general74/aabs.htm
The US invasion of Iraq was illegal, unconstitutional, and evil, although that last is almost completely ignored, even now that the country is finally turning against the war.
But, hey, it was great for Halliburton! What's 600,000 dead Iraqi men women and children when Dick Cheney's old firm's is getting enormously rich. "Iraq was better than expected," a spokesman said.
You can't put a few Raghead babies against that -- ok, several thousand Raghead babies. But even so....
Modern man is terrified of the dark.
At dusk, porch yard lights, yard lights and 'security lights' immediately flash on all over suburbia, trying to make night look like noon.
Perhaps suburbanites are afraid lions, tigers and bears might be ready to pounce on them -- or perhaps it's the vampires, ghouls and werewolves.
Whatever, they've managed to hide the stars.
In the past six years, Rolling Stone says, the U.S. Congress became: “...a political obscenity on par with the court of Nero or Caligula -- a stable of thieves and perverts who committed crimes rolling out of bed in the morning and did their very best to turn the mighty American empire into a debt-laden, despotic backwater...”
I think they are being too kind.
But if you want to read the whole article by Matt Taibbi, go to:
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/12055360/cover_story_time_to_go_inside_the_worst_congress_ever.
I got a fascinating letter of support from Brother about my new printer today. I had a problem that involving communications between my word processing program and their printer. I outlined the problem and asked Brother if they knew how to solve it.
They did, sort of, and explained it to me:
---
Brother Customer:
Thank you for taking the time to write to us.
There is a setting in Wordperfect that will allow you to print to your
manual paper tray, however we do not know where this setting is, please
contact wordperfect for the location of this setting.
—--
Unh, yeah, well ....thanks...
Probably by Harry Potter.
It’s like this: I began a publicity campaign for Alma’s new Young Adult book. Some bookmarks I made, and some flyers for different conventions, featured the headline: “Move Over, Harry Potter.”
That is the only mention of the young wizard, but I think he may have taken exception.
First, there was the case of the owl hunting our resident squirrels on our deck. When I told the owl to “hunt elsewhere,” he flew straight at me, then landed a few feet away and glowered at me. Harry’s owl?
Then there is a matter of the mice. My wife has a phobia about mice, so we have an exterminator pretty much on call. When he last came, he discovered two mice. They were in traps, and dead of course, but my wife freaked out anyhow, particulary when a workman subsequently discovered mice tunnels under the patio.
Today, my computer stopped talking to the printer. Cost me $80 to sort that out.
Hey, Harry, knock it off.
A U.S. diplomat has apologized for stating the obvious.
Alberto Fernandez says he didn't really mean it when he said that U.S. policy in Iraq displayed arrogance and stupidity. "I seriously misspoke," he says now.
Telling the truth to power is always a no-no.
Probably the world's foremost expert on scary, Stephen King, just said to me [well, actually it was an e-mail to me and several hundred other MoveOn.org members]:
"Giving this president and this out-of-control Congress two more years to screw up our future is downright terrifying. Thankfully, this national nightmare is one we can end with—literally—a wake up call."
He is promoting MoveOn.org's get out the vote campaign, which you can learn more about at:
http://pol.moveon.org/event/events/index.html?action_id=61&id=9234-3523058-1BD7PeNOHnpQ_PYcnIPTpw&t=5
Kevin Tillman joined the Army with his brother Pat and they served together in Iraq and Afghanistan before Pat was killed. Kevin has written a powerful document that says, in part:
It is Pat’s birthday on November 6, and elections are the day after. It gets me thinking about a conversation I had with Pat before we joined the military ... How fighting as a soldier would leave us without a voice… until we get out.
Much has happened since we handed over our voice: .....
Somehow subversion of the Bill of Rights and The Constitution is tolerated....
Somehow torture is tolerated.
Somehow lying is tolerated.....
Somehow the same incompetent, narcissistic, virtueless, vacuous, malicious criminals are still in charge of this country.
Luckily this country is still a democracy. People still have a voice. People still can take action. It can start after Pat’s birthday.
Read the whole thing:
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/200601019_after_pats_birthday/
Republican Sen. Conrad Burns of Montana says he believes President Bush has a plan to win the war in Iraq but is keeping it quiet.
Don't laugh. His secret plan is he'll just get the U.S. Supreme Court to declare him president of Iraq, too, and then he'll suspend their Constitution, declare himself the Great Decider, and declare victory. Hell, it's worked in America
I mentioned the probability that the Republicans will steal the elections yet again. Ernest Partridge explains why they have to:
Because if they lose control, it would mean: “the reestablishment of Congressional oversight ... into vast array of crimes committed by the Bush administration...bribery, the disappearance of billions of dollars in Iraq, war crimes ... lying to Congress, and fraudulent elections. ...Accordingly, Bush and his partners in crime face ... possible indictment, prosecution, and prison sentences...”
Read Partridge’s whole report at:
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/1934
And check out his links to info about the earlier stolen elections:
http://www.crisispapers.org/topics/election-fraud.htm
There is an elephant in the American living room that the media and those in power pretend is invisible: 911 was an inside job.
There is an active 911 movement trying to uncover the truth, but you'll find it only on a few websites. The rare times that 911 activists are covered in the mainstream corporate news, they are held up to ridicule.
Even progressive websites and print and Internet magazines scoff at the evidence. A Web magazine that I have written for, ran a piece I wrote about it for them, then scornfully repudiated me in an editor's note.
But the public is a different story. A new New York Times/CBS News poll says that 84 pct of the people reject the official 9/11 fable.
That leaves only 16 pct who believe that the government is telling the truth about 9/11 and the intelligence prior to the attacks -- mostly Congress and the mainstream media presumably.
The 84 pct figure mirrors other recent polls on the same issue. A Canadian poll put the figure at 85%. A CNN poll had the figure at 89 pct, and 80 pct supported Charlie Sheen when he said 9/11 was an inside job.
So what do we do now? In the real world, absolutely nothing.
With the meltdown of the incredibly corrupt Republican party, the Democrats are sure they're going to win big.
Unh huh. Forget the fact that they're nearly as corrupt as the Republicans and the voters are fed up with both of them, it is indeed probable that they will be voted back in power...
...and it's just as probable that the election will be stolen from them -- again.
The Republicans stole the election in Florida in 2000 and in Ohio in 2004. Actually, there was election fraud in other states as well, but those were two of the most blantant thefts. It was done in a variety of ways -- blocking black voters, not putting enough voting machines in heavily democratic areas, etc. ...
...and by using easily hacked electronic voting machines built by Bush supporters.
Princeton researchers made a demonstration video of how it's possible to steal an election with a Diebold voting machine in under a minute.
Take a look at the chilling demonstation:
http://www.gizmodo.com/gadgets/gadgets/how-to-steal-an-election-with-a-diebold-machine-200693.php
AP reported today that “President Bush keeps revising his explanation for why the U.S. is in Iraq, moving from narrow military objectives at first to history-of-civilization stakes now.”
AP reported this?
AP went on: “Initially, the rationale was specific: to stop Saddam Hussein from using what Bush claimed were the Iraqi leader's weapons of mass destruction...”
Bush “claimed?” This from a supine news services which has unquestioning and slavishly reported every ludicrous statement of the Exalted Supreme Emperor in the past?
AP goes on:
“But 3 1/2 years later, with no weapons found, still no end in sight and the war a liability for nearly all Republicans on the ballot Nov. 7, the justification has become far broader and now includes the expansive ‘struggle between good and evil.’"
My God! What is going on? Did AP finally discover the emperor is naked?
They may revert to form tomorrow, but break out the champagne today!
“...on five hundred channels, the opinion range is about as wide as from A to B.”
Stephen Fleischman
i.e. From crackpot right to fanatical right.
Pros and cons
"The [publishing] business is a cruel and shallow money trench. A long
plastic hallway where pimps and thieves run free and good men die like
dogs. There is also a negative side."
-- Hunter S. Thompson
Inspiration
"I write when I'm inspired, and I see to it that I'm inspired at nine
o'clock every morning."
Peter de Vries
The U.S. corporate media still does their best to hide the extent of the carnage from our war against Iraq, but now and then some of the horror slips through:
"Day-to-day life here for Iraqis is so far removed from the comfortable existence we live in the United States that it is almost literally unimaginable....I've interviewed parents who buried their dead child in the yard because it was too dangerous to go to the morgue."
Correspondent Jane Arraf writing on 'Blogging Baghdad' at msnbc.com
Only one of 50 American newspapers thought the story that 600,000 men, women and children in Iraq are dead because of our ugly outrageous war was worthy of the front page.
However, most of them thought that the death of one baseball player was.
But then, he was a Yankee after all.
The media and the administration have this spin cycle down to an absolute science now.
However devastating the story, they can spin it so that you will think it is the greatest news since sliced bread -- or at the very least, is so confusing that you'll stop trying to figure it out.
Take a story that Johns Hopkins researchers now estimate that more than 600,000 Iraqis have died as a result of the U.S.-led invasion and its bloody aftermath.
Immediately after the first reports, the follow-up stories all stressed the fact that the figure was "controversial." That doesn't mean it was wrong of course, and the science the researchers used to arrive at that figure is impeccable. But President Bush says he does not believe the figures, and if you can't believe him....
If you stress the controversy, you can take attention away from the horror of the figures.
That is 600,000 men, women and children who have died because of our war. But hey, they're only Ragheads. Who cares?
"If you are writing without zest, without gusto, without love,
without fun, you are only half a writer." Ray Bradbury
"A writer can make a fortune, but he can't make a living." James Michener
"The dubious privilege of a freelance writer is he's given the
freedom to starve anywhere." S. J. Perelman
"All my rejections are informative and truthful. I haven't
listened to any of them -- I'm still writing." W. Lively (Lobo)
"Nature, not content with denying him the ability to think, has
endowed him with the ability to write. Housman
"The difference between journalism and literature is that
journalism is unreadable and literature is unread." Oscar Wilde
"It took me 15 years to discover I had no talent for writing, but
I couldn't give it up because by that time I was too famous."Robert Benchley
"You must not suppose, because I am a man of letters, that
I have never tried to earn an honest living." G.B. Shaw
"There are two motives for reading a book; one, that you can
enjoy it; the other, that you can boast about it." B. Russell
"A book is a mirror; if an ass peers into it, you can't expect
an apostle to peer out." Lichtenberg
"Freedom of the press belongs to those who own one." A. J. Liebling
"The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in shock-
proof shit detector." Ernest Hemingway
"It's a damn good story. If you have any comments, write them
on the back of a check." Earle Stanley Gardner note to fussy editor
"The thing to remember is that publishers are ... exploitative, ethnically bankrupt, intellectually dishonest, and creatively impaired." Daniel Pinkwater
"Editors have to be able to spell; publishers can be illiterate." Anthony Blond
"A writer does well to listen to (editors), but not too often,
and not for too long." Jerome Weidman
"Authors are easy to get on with -- if you are fond of children." Michael Joseph
"The trouble with the publishing business is that too many people
who have half a mind to write a book do so." William Targ
"Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers." T.S. Eliot
"An editor is one who separates the wheat from the chaff
and prints the chaff." Adlai Stevenson
"After being turned down by numerous publishers,
he decided to write for posterity." George Ade
"Poetry begins in delight and ends in wisdom." Robert Frost
"All poets are mad." Robert Burton
Poet Judson Jerome once wrote that all his life he had just tried
to "say things so that they stayed said."
"A good many young writers make the mistake of enclosing a
stamped self-addressed envelop big enough for the manuscript
to come back in. This too much of a temptation for the editor." Ring Lardner
"Your manuscript is both good and original, but the part that is
good is not original and the part that is original is not good." Samuel Johnson
"The covers of this book are too far apart." Abrose Bierce
"Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think the university stifles
writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them.
There's many a bestseller that could have been prevented by
a good teacher." Flannery O'Connor
"There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one
knows what they are." W. Somerset Maugham
"I can write better than anyone who can write faster, and I can
write faster than anyone who can write better." A.J. Liebling
"I have made this letter rather long only because I have not
had time to make it shorter." Pascal
The free-lance writer is a man who is paid per piece or per word or perhaps.
Robert Benchley
American military presence is forever.
The Korean War ended 53 years ago and American troops were withdrawn. Well, some of them.
A half century after the civil war in the artificial nation (like Vietnam it was arbitrarily divided by the winners in WW2, with the same disastrous consequences) there are still 30,000 U.S. troops stationed in South Korea.
Just one more hair trigger excuse for another war whenever the ruling elite decides one is needed.
A new pledge of allegiance is needed for America after the torture law approved by Congress, so I wrote one:
I pledge allegiance to the flag
of the corporate state of America,
and to the Supreme Leader under God:
with liberty and justice for the loyal,
and swift and terrible punishment
for all who oppose Him.