I Knew It!

Ann Coulter at a Press Conference on "Saruman: Friend or Crank" ?

Ann Coulter is a proponent of Intelligent Design! I knew it. 

Everyone I disdain is a proponent of Intelligent Design (ID), are they not? I am sure that Corso Pagliacci-type guy who writes character assassination books for the discredited Republican Party and Mary "Hexenhut" Matalin supports ID. 

Almost by definition these creatures crawl to the fluid altar of ID. "Monsters from the ID", remember that line from Forbidden Planet? 

In a review in Committee For Skeptical Inquiry:  

http://www.csicop.org/si/2008-03/gardner.html  

Ann Coulter Takes on Darwin Godless: The Church of Liberalism. 

By Ann Coulter. Three Rivers Press, 2007. 336 pp. 

MARTIN GARDNER  

Ann Coulter is an attractive writer with green eyes and lopsided, long, blonde hair, whose trademark is insulting liberals with remarks so outrageous that they make Rush Limbaugh sound like a Sunday school teacher. This is one reason why all six of her books have made The New York Times best seller list and earned her fame and fortune. 

Coulter’s fifth book, Godless: The Church of Liberalism, has just been issued in paperback to provide an excuse for this review. Here are some of the book’s mean, below-the-belt punches: Monica Lewinski is a “fat Jewish girl” (Coulter 4). Julia Roberts and George Clooney are “airheads” (8). Ted Kennedy is “Senator Drunkennedy” (90). The four Jersey “weeping widows” (289) of men who died in the September 11 attacks are “rabid” (103), “self-obsessed” (103), and “harpies” (112). “I’ve never seen people enjoying their husbands’ deaths so much” (103). Diplomat Joseph Wilson, whose wife was outed from the CIA, is a “nut and liar” (119) and a “pompous jerk” (121). He is likened to a “crazy aunt up in the attic” (295). Cindy Sheehan, the vocal war widow, is a “poor imbecile” (102) with an “itsy-bitsy, squeeky voice” (103). Katie Couric is a “shopworn sweetheart” (295). Liberals are repeatedly called pathetic nuts and crackpots. “[They] are more upset when a tree is chopped down than when a child is aborted” (5). 

Apparently Coulter expects God to send most liberals to hell, because she writes, “I would be crestfallen to discover any liberals in heaven” (22).  

Coulter has nothing good to say about any Democrat. They are all crazy liberals who are socialists in disguise. Her latest book is titled If Democrats Had Any Brains They’d Be Republicans. Here are a few other folks who get pummeled in Godless: All defenders of abortions. All defenders of gay marriages and those who think homosexuality is genetic. “Hysterical” and “ugly” feminists. Scientists who deny there could be subtle differences between the mental abilities of men and women and between different races... 

 I had forgotten just how deep the Coulter thing is. She is a profound one. The fact that her books were on the NY Times bestseller list is one of the reasons why, when confronted by the angry peasantry yelling "If you don't like it here, go somewhere's (sic) else!", I have begun to considered this sage advice, indeed. I have actually begun investigating Ireland. Of course, there's always Canada. Staid and stolid. The Coulter thing continues:  

In the last four chapters of Godless, Coulter suddenly morphs into a science writer. The chapters are blistering attacks on Darwinian evolution—the notion that life evolved gradually from simple, one-celled forms to humans by a process that consisted of random mutations combined with the survival of the fittest. 

Darwin of course knew nothing about mutations, but Coulter is concerned with modern Darwinism, which she is convinced requires some sort of superior intelligence to guide evolution. In brief, Coulter is a dedicated believer in intelligent design, or ID for short. Among promoters of ID, mathematician and Baptist William Dembski and Catholic Michael Behe are Coulter’s main heroes. Dembski, who has a degree in divinity from The Princeton Theological Seminary, was Coulter’s principal adviser on the last four chapters.  

Like all IDers, nowhere does Coulter hint at how God, or a pantheistic sort of intelligence, guided evolution. There are two leading possibilities: God manipulated mutations so that new species arose, culminating finally in humans. God may have allowed mutations and survival of the fittest to produce different breeds of a species, such as dogs and cats, but new species were created out of whole cloth, just as it says in the Book of Genesis. 

Like Behe and other IDers, Coulter is silent on how God directed evolution and what sort of evidence would confirm or disconfirm the role of an intelligent designer. This is not the place to defend in detail what Coulter likes to call the “Darwinocranks.” It has been admirably done in scores of books by top scientists, all of whom Coulter considers cranks. 

Peter Olofson, writing tongue in cheek on “The Coulter Hoax,” in the SKEPTICAL INQUIRER (March/April 2007), accuses Coulter of perpetrating a brilliant satire on ID rhetoric. 

I have many times expressed my opinion that ID is idolatrous polytheism. I have not changed my view one iota. ...We know from a footnote on page 3 of Godless that Coulter considers herself a Christian. But what sort of Christian?... Apparently the Coulter is the type of Christian mentioned in the Sermon on the Mount: blessed are they whose pens drip venom; those who having discord with their brothers and sisters, leave their sacrifice at the altar and go first to their brothers and sisters and throw stones at them! Beware of the wolves who go to the same tailor as the sheep

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Mythic Stories: Clark Rockefeller

The NY TIMES has a story of Mr. Rockefeller on page 1 of its Sunday Styles section: Ready-Made Rockefeller. Mr. Rockefeller was actually Christian Gerhartsreiter and his tale is that of duplicity, impersonation, and catch him if you can. If you read it, the story shows how the angel of Power and the angel of Wealth create their own world of belief and knowledge, independent of the real world, based upon the passions of those who are duped. All of Celebrity Biz is Mythic: that is why there is nothing there, but it seems so very full! Take the story of Leda and the swan: Zeus wants Leda, gets the crazy notion to meet with her at Cliveden for a masked ball, has his valet assist him in suiting up as a pantomime swan, meets the lady in question, and more or less has his way with her. Not much there. So it is with Celebrities. Heath Ledger had a life ahead of him filled with potential: great things, great sufferings, achievements and disappointments; just like the rest of us. Cut it short, though. Not much there when you look behind the facade. Madonna...not much to the Gematria and the Kabbala when you really look at it. When everyone dips their toe into the river of Zen, it gets a bit dirty...unless there really wasn't any water there to begin with. (I sense I have lost you......)

Mythic Stories: Mahmoud Darwish

Mahmoud Darwish

The Mythic stories often seem of another place, another time, seeming to be omni-temporal and omnipresent in the consciousness of mankind. That is indeed their nature. Observe criticism of Mahmoud Darwish, recently deceased, and a poet from Palestine, from a town destroyed in 1948...destroyed in 1948 and buried, while he yet lived until death sought him out, too.  

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7559565.stm  
Fitting farewell to Palestinian poet 
 By Heather Sharp BBC News, Ramallah

  ... But in Israel there has been mixed feeling. Many respected his abilities as a writer, but others saw some of his writing as anti-Semitic and even racist - in one poem he urged Israelis to "leave our land / Our shore, our sea / Our wheat, our salt, our wound" and "take with you your dead". However, acclaimed Israeli writer Avraham B Yehoshua said he was deeply saddened by Darwish's death. "Of course there were poems that were very much aggressive," he said, "but it's important that we know what they are thinking - you have to know your enemy because your enemy is your neighbour and future friend." 

  There is nothing particularly mythic about a cry of pain directed against an inimical force. There is, however, in the attitude that even the slightest criticism somehow infects and must be painted as "Anti-Semitism". This is the same process we have described earlier (below) by which certain forces or "deities of power" - good and evil- are set up and let free to rule consciousness; the same process we employ by calling people "nazis" or "Hitler".
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View From Iraq

McClatchy Blog Inside Iraq The master statement August 08, 2008 Today 8th August, many Iraqis congratulated each other on the anniversary of "the master statements" in which Saddam announced the end of Iraqi-Iranian war and they wished each other the close day when they will congratulate each other on the end of American occupation. A good view from Iraq. Read it if you dare/care: http://washingtonbureau.typepad.com/iraq/

Humanae Vitae

A great article on Paul VI's encyclical Humanae Vitae dealing with sexual mores and contraception. The gist is: look at the wasteland we created with freedom without morality! First Things The Vindication of Humanae Vitae by Mary EberstadtAugust September 2008 Copyright (c) 2008 First Things (August/September 2008) http://www.firstthings.com/article.php3?id_article=6262

Mes Amis: Les Freres A

Why I Cannot Stand Professional Sports

Yahoo ! Olympic glory too high a cost for NBA By Adrian Wojnarowski Yahoo! Sports Aug 22, 6:45 pm EDT http://sports.yahoo.com/olympics/beijing/basketball/news?slug=aw-olympicrisk082208&prov=yhoo&type=lgns ...Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban had two 30-something maximum-salary players – Dirk Nowitzki and Kidd – in these Olympics and had long been leery of exposing his franchise stars to so much risk. He watched an archrival, Ginobili, go down on Friday and understands that whatever gloss that comes with Team USA’s golden glory, the dirty little secret of Olympic basketball doesn’t go away. “I absolutely continue to worry about it,” Cuban said Friday in an email. “Maybe we should do something similar to the soccer approach and limit it to players 23 and under. The real question is whether or not the NBA, with our increasing global strength can create our own global tournament to replace the Olympics and make money doing it.” Sooner or later, the NBA has to take a look at the good of these Olympics beyond the needs of Nike and the commissioner’s global imperialism. Maybe the Americans are protected with the waves of talent that they can turn to, but that gap will just drive the rest of the world harder and harder to catch them. More risks with multi-million dollar investments, more Ginobilis crumbling to floors around the world. These are the NBA’s casualties, too. “It is a tough decision to make,” Delfino said. “We come here with pride. We play because we want to represent our country.”... This is why I go to cricket matches to watch the young gentlemen from India and Pakistan and Jamaica and Bermuda and the Bahamas play: it is free to watch, the parking is free, bring your own food... ...and you get to have a sport experience, not a staged entertainment.

Escape From The Empire Of Carbon

Friends With Friends

Mush Head Republicans and their Familiars

My friends, all 1 or two of them, have friends. They have more friends than I do. I know why. I was with a friend. His friend spoke against Obama. After his opinion, he looked about for fat, sassy white-guy approbation: a high-five, a fist-jab of the clueless... I asked him whom he voted for in 2004. He answered "Bush". I looked at him silently for a bit. Then I said that since he voted for Bush...and Cheney...I did not think he had enough experience in using his head clearly. I also said he and his ilk were also to blame for Bush and company's disasters; they were enablers of lies, wars, torture...you get the idea. I never did believe in that ditty: make new friends and keep the old....one is silver and the other's gold! It did not help that my nephews were hanging about in the shadows, vampirish and sucking tea (compliments of the Grace Tea Co, NY, NY.) and eating whatever came to hand. If they truly loved their ancestor, they would have intervened, right? No, no. They let me go on. I mean, after all, I had started this blog with the express purpose of leaving a record of my thoughts for my daughter, and the proximate cause of this was the outstanding immorality of the American government. My nephews knew this, and they pretty much agreed that Bush & Co. had that tyrannical way of walking and talking down pat, and were the illustration for "Bad News" in the dictionary of idiomatic expressions. Later, I asked them what they do when they talk to the benighted ones, Bush voters in the past, now reformed and pretending to have "thought things through" in the present. "We don't." they said. "Don't what?" I rejoindered. "Don't talk to them?" "No", they said. "We run..." I looked queries and quizzes at them. "...the other way. Your problem is not speaking your mind; it's speaking to the mush heads in the first place." Mush Heads. Hmmm. I thought about it. These people did enable Bush. I could care less what they think of Obama. I can barely hear their screams from that circle in Hell where Dante rightly puts them; seducers and panderers, flatterers, simoniacs, nepotists, false diviners, false counselors, thieves, hypocrites, grafters and carny grifters: the Republican Party!

It Sums It Up

http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3866/jumping_ship/ Jumping Ship Citing social issues, local GOP officials are abandoning their party in droves By Hans Johnson ...“I don’t think Ronald Reagan would recognize the party anymore,” Wisconsin state Rep. Jeff Wood told the Chippewa Herald on July 8... ...“The party continues to try to prove Ben Franklin wrong, trying to buy security by sacrificing liberty,” Wood said...

College Days

A view of the Quad at Saint Juwahn Community College.

Barbarians Within The Gates

Recording the fall of the Empire, we journeyed to Gaul and on past into Germania, where we made records for posterity:

Forest Primeval

City Primeval

Special Thanks to Brothers Paulo, Peter, and Odd for their help in the scriptorium.

Bocklin The Painter

The New Hilton Resort On Bocklin's Isle Of The Dead

Bocklin's Isle

Main Entry, view down the stairs.

And Now For Something Completely Different...

Eurozine: http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2008-08-07-seymour-en.html  
Blurred boundaries
Sport, art and activity

 ...I want to take up a series of propositions from Loren Goldner's remarkable book Herman Melville, identifying sport as one site of the emergence of an epochally new form of human activity. Goldner develops C.L.R. James' observations regarding Melville's famous novel Moby Dick and James's provocative reflections on the place of sport in the life of the working class... ...James, who grew up in Trinidad, was well placed to register this transfusion between art and sport, raised as he was on a steady stream of English novels and constant games of cricket. James became fascinated by what he called the "social aesthetic" of cricket: "men from the neighbourhood described by his aunts as 'ne'er-do-wells' were transformed into aristocrats of self-mastery and brilliance at bat in cricket matches."...

Something new and fascinating, perfectly timed for August and the Olympics. Read it and sit through the outrageously philosophical Marxian blah-blah and you will see that Sports is an important area of human behaviour worthy of serious consideration... ...particularly the price of hot dogs at the ball park... ...or the cost of tiffin boxes at Eden Gardens...

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Mythic Stories

There are stories, myths, and narratives. The list could be augmented, but I am not interested in doing so. I was asked what I meant when I said 2 societies were mythically different. I meant that they have different stories in that literature of narratives that touches the life of emotion and religion and morality. A myth is a story which compels one to feels good and evil; fear of evil Darth Vader and rejoicing when the good Skywalker triumphs. I consider true Religion to be wordless; a behavior which is not dependent on words in any way, although it may be modified by words and language, being similar in thios respect to Music. Music is music, and has no need of Language, although we may talk about music and sing along with music as much as we wish. So when I say that Myth depends mightily upon Religion, I am talking about the external carapace of Religion: the words, the buildings, the paintings, the icons, the relics, and everything which stands materially bewteen God and Man. I do not mean all religion is myth. So MYTH is the fund of stories which touch on morals and faith and good and evil. An important characteristic of mythic thought is that it is not self-reflective; it does not subject its own concepts to analysis or valuation. Its library of critical concepts is usually closed to any inputs, although there may be a good deal of innovation of lower levels which do not impinge on the critical concepts; for example, consider Francis Fukuyama's notion of "the end of history" where the USSR fell and History itself was delivered into the hands of the USA. There is the critical concept of the almost divine mission of the USA, itself a very primtive religious notion, and the new twist of "end of history". But Fukuyama's new way of saying things is nothing but cosmetology for the old "chosen people" of God which imbued the American continent since the white man first set foot here. During the Cold War, it was frequently pointed out by conservative thinkers that Marxism was but another form of religion, an ideology of irrational beliefs. Of course, so was the ideology of the West an irrational, yet fervent faith in its own rectitude. Now consider: The American Conservative http://amconmag.com/article/2008/aug/25/00015/ Czechoslovakia on Their Minds Neocon news flash: Hitler invades Georgia. By Leon Hadar Neoconservatives and their useful idiots in the American media have been on overdrive this August, rewinding to their World War II analogies and applying them to the fast-forwarding world of global politics... ...no neocon narrative is complete without Czechoslovakia. Imagine your average Weekly Standard subscriber taking a free-association test and being asked to state the first words that come to his mind when he hears “Czechoslovakia.” Rest assured, he would respond with “Munich,” “appeasement,” “Chamberlain,” or “umbrella.” And let’s not forget “Hitler.” Thus can anyone clamoring for U.S. military intervention in, say, the former Yugoslavia or the Persian Gulf, mount a successful media and public-relations campaign by identifying his chosen victim (the Muslims of Bosnia and Kosovo, or Kuwait, or the Kurds) with Czechoslovakia and associating his preferred “aggressor” (Slobodan Milosevic or Saddam Hussein) with Hitler... This is History or Current Events as distorted through the lenses of Ideology. It is Myth; originally a news story refined by opinion to a mythical story of good and evil. Of course, Hitler is still the devil. That's why people keep calling each other "Hitler!" The Bush Idiocracy, by its profound emphasis on Ideology, came early on the view the world as Myth. At that point, good and evil became distinct, and there was no living together; war must ensue. We are lucky George W. Bush was not president during the Cold War, for his mythic ability, which in his case expressed itself as a perversely innocent childishness, was far greater than any leader on either side during the Cold War. But we are not safe even when Bush departs, for as we read further on in The American Conservative: “The details of who did what to precipitate Russia’s war against Georgia are not very important,” explained leading neocon foreign-policy ideologue Robert Kagan—who insists that he isn’t a neocon at all—in a column in the Washington Post three days after the eruption of hostilities between Russia and Georgia over the breakaway province of South Ossetia. “Do you recall the precise details of the Sudeten Crisis that led to Nazi Germany’s invasion of Czechoslovakia?” he asked. Kagan, one of the chief advisers to Republican presidential candidate John McCain, wants to kick “revisionist” Russia out of the G-8 and establish a League of Democracies as part of a strategy to contain the growing threat from Moscow. Kagan’s answer to his rhetorical question in his column titled “Putin Makes his Move” (wink, wink—like you-know-who made his move 70 years ago): “Of course not, because that morally ambiguous dispute is rightly remembered as a minor part of a much bigger drama.” Mr. Kagan seems to mix up Knowledge of the Facts with Recall of the Facts. His position is Mythic. History does offer us valuable lessons. However, intelligent human beings are guided, not compelled by History. They are compelled by Myth mixed with Power. (note: this points to the difference between Myth and Religion: when the Prophet said that there is no compulsion in Religion, he spoke of what actually is Religion, not the facade of Religion which uses the force of the State to compel obedience.) A habitat:

House of Nations

further information:

and myth:

Jesse Owens Room in the House of Nations

This takes us to the Myth ( myth does not mean "untrue"!) of America and its race relations. Now you pick up the thread.

Mythic Stories 2

Let us recall that when we speak of a mythic system of thought, we are speaking of structural characteristics of a thought system, never about truth or falsehood conditions for statements made in that system. An example of mythic thinking: When I write on Religion, I will refer to the founder of Buddhism as the Lord Buddha, the first of Islam as the Prophet, and Jesus Christ as Jesus Christ. These are acceptable to most folks of those faiths. Some people, however, have their noses slightly out of joint with this, particularly that "Lord Buddha" business. The word "lord" surely must be reserved for their own notion of God or their notion of first in religion. Some think that this also means that all religions are the same. 1) I submit to you that that type of thinking is Mythic Thinking: it demonstrates the exclusivity of religion primitively experienced in community defined by similarity in a small neighborhood, but by difference within a larger neighborhood.................. The community of believers is small and restricted to the small neighborhood where I can see people frequently and let my mirror neurons establish a reciprocal bond between us.... ...and in the larger neighborhood, we are an island in the midst of a vast ocean. 2) Inputs of critical concepts come only from the pre-established pool of concepts. 3) Conceptual structures based on the Primary or Axiomatic or Basic Concepts are not open to criticism, being effectively closed. 4) There is no self-criticism, no self-referential statements. One may easily loose control of self-referential statments. 5) If we consider a conceptual system to be similar to a Wolfram Process ( i.e., a cellular automaton), the mythic system for all its potential richness does not exhibit randomness over time.

Mythic Stories 3: The Nature Of Ideological Thinking

In Eurozine: http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2008-08-21-abraham-en.html Samuel Abrahám The end of illusions? Czechoslovakia 1968 and after ...In the West, a whole generation of admirers of the post-Khrushchev thaw were forced to commit intellectual suicide after the invasion of Czechoslovakia. Some retreated into seclusion, others transformed themselves into Euro-communists, environmentalists or feminists. Some even jumped all the way to the far-right or neo-fascism. They made a virtue out of necessity, and one can add that many became more useful than they had been during their communist past... Is this not a sight filled with the most abject pathos? Yet, this is the nature of mythic thinking, to be continually brought up short by Reality. ( A good parallel would be the Lisbon earthquake and its effect on Voltaire and his contemporaries.) An note the variety of Ideological camps mentioned here, and how easily a mythic thinker may jump from one to the next. Indeed, a socialist may become a neo-fascist, given enough jolting. Why? Because the content of the belief system does not matter as greatly as the structural nature of the belief system; i.e., it is more important that there be order and compulsion rather than freaky freedom.

What Right With John McCain?

He's a war hero, I think, and he's somewhat honest. However, he seems to think that having a bunch of Republican retreads hanging around his auditory canals, whispering more of the discredited nonsense into his head is just perfect. It is not. Case in point: he has an economic advisor named Donald Luskin. We may see the depth of Mr. Luskin by the following in which he banishes the fear of recession by observing that Disneyland was packed while he was there. He seems to forget how well fantasy and entertainment do in bad times. They certainly did relatively well in the Depression and WW II.

http://www.smartmoney.com/ahead-of-the-curve/index.cfm?story=20080808-disneyland But his record speaks for itself. At Cunning Realist:

http://cunningrealist.blogspot.com/2008/05/yeah-that-worked-out-well.html

Wednesday, May 14, 2008 Yeah, That Worked Out Well ...January 18, 2008: I admit that I've been very wrong. I've been saying to buy stocks all the way down since the October highs. I was wrong. I repeat: I was wrong... The stuff before this high point is more of the same nonsense. Furthermore, during that goofy discussion with Pastor So-and-so where McCain was supposed to have been secluded and not aware of Obama's responses...only McCain was not secluded...whatever that means...McCain said that one of the 3 people he would take advice from was some lady who founded eBay.

Just as information, the founders are dumping their own eBay stock as fast as possible:

Insiders Bailing As Fast As Possible

Margaret Whitman is bailing as fast as humanly possible.

See: http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2008/08/ebay-cuts-fixed-price-fees-by-70.html

in Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis.

I am not saying that one should not jump off a sinking ship. However, I am saying that there is a big difference between the long-term economic wisdom for running a country - for the present day citizens, for their children, and for the future grandchildren - and a business like eBay which can hardly be considered a paradigm anymore.

It was only a paradigm while the Bubble still had not burst...back in 1999 or thereabouts. Premillenial stuff.

I am looking forward to more Republican economics.

A New Chechnya?

Reports in the Eurasia.Net indicate possible contacts between remnants of the Chechen Islamic insurgents and the Orthodox Georgian insurgents-to-be. Intention: have a good time at Russia's expense.

The American Establishment: Predator Or Alien?

21st Century Dollar ($) Sign

pix: cheryllll

Which iconic Sci-Fi monster does the Establishment which runs the USA most closely resemble? Alien or Predator? In reality, the Predator species has some good points: honor, loyalty, and the bon hommerie and comeraderie of the hunting lodge type. Alien, on the other hand, is purely and repulsively exploitative and parasitical. Of course, there is the species of Species, which itself is quite without redeeming virtues...at least, as far as we are shown. What brings this up - this bashing of the Idiocracy- is a proper look at how close the international financial system came to collapse: Der Spiegel http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,553484,00.html May 15, 2008 THE WORLD FROM BERLIN Former IMF Head Says Global Financial System 'Came Close to Collapse' Germany's President Horst Köhler has entered the fray in a hard-hitting interview with the weekly magazine Stern. Coining a term which is likely to become as popular as the infamous locusts, Köhler, who belongs to Angela Merkel's conservative Christian Democratic Union, said that the search for profits has turned the markets into a "monster." The president had a stark assessment of the severity of the crisis. "I want to hope that the worst is past," Köhler said. "Nevertheless, we came close to a collapse of the global financial markets." The criticism is given added weight by the fact that Köhler is the former head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). at the time: Commentators writing in Germany's more business-friendly newspapers Thursday are skeptical of the usefulness of Köhler's analysis -- and of his motives. However, the sceptics seem to question Mr. Kohler's motives, not his facts. I say you should read present day Nouriel Roubini in RGE Monitor for the down-side view. If you want the up-side - the side of the Idiocracy - that Larry Kudlow creature will do quite well. He is on cable TV...as if we didn't know!

Did I Just See Jesse Owens?

Mr. Ji of Beijing, a Free Man until Recently

No. It was Usain Bolt.

However, I did have that 1936 deja vu feeling.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,572984,00.html  
The Phantoms of the Beijing Opera 
 By Ullrich Fichtner in Beijing
  ...On Opening Day Ji went to the Deshengmenwai police station in Beijing's Xicheng district to file an application for a permit to stage a public protest. Ji's petition, written in the elaborate Chinese style, contains sentences like: "The party and the government are dependent upon the assistance and wisdom of the Chinese people. We are capable of successfully holding the Olympic Games, and we will be just as successful at bringing about reforms, so that the international community will congratulate us on our democratic culture." In short, Ji wanted to demonstrate. He wanted to appear in one of the three "protest parks" the government has specifically designated in Beijing for the duration of the Games. As his petition states, he wanted to: 1. Hang up colorful posters, 2. Give speeches, 3. Distribute material, 4. Sell books, 5. Promote judicial reform. Essentially, what Ji wanted was what Jacque Rogge (the President of the IOC) wants, and what was promised to the rest of the world before these games. Repeatedly in his speeches, the last one two weeks ago, Rogge had insisted that China is willing to change. China, he said, wants to open up and will open up, and the country will change after the Olympics. Rogge raised the hope that the athletes arriving in China would be allowed to bring the Olympic ideals with them...  

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Pride Takes Temporal Priority To A Gravitational Event

Clueless in Gaza

Or, it goeth before a fall. The American Empire as devotedly mythed out by the minor intellects of Neoconservatism has come to an end, lasting about 20 years. A nine day wonder. Of course, nothing is absolutely cast in incorruptible adamantine, so we could see a change, but the only way America could recapture empire is to turn to the dark side. First, read Nouriel Roubini's article: http://www.rgemonitor.com/roubini-monitor/253323/the_decline_of_the_american_empire  
The Decline of the American Empire  
Nouriel Roubini Aug 13, 2008 

  ...First, the US squandered its power by relying excessively on its hard military power in the wars of Iraq and Afghanistan and in its unilateralist foreign policy – including economic issues such as global warming - rather than relying more on its soft power of diplomacy and multilateralist approaches to global policy issues. Second, regardless of mistaken US policies the rise of other economic and financial powers – the rise of China, the recent resurgence of Russia, the process of economic and political integration in the European Union, the emergence of India, and the rise of other regional powers such as Brazil, South Africa and Iran – implies that the relative economic, financial and geopolitical power of the US will be reduced over time...

Then consider the fact that the USA cannot actually do anything militarily to assist Georgia. It is too deeply committed in Iraq and Afghanistan. There are no troops. There are too many fires and not enough firemen. Similarly Poland: if Russia were to put pressure on Poland...or the Ukraine...what could the USA do? Very little, indeed. It could replace its defensive missiles with offensive missiles, but it was probably already working out those details. It would have to reinstitute the Universal Draft. Then it could raise another 1 to 2 million troops as needed. These troops combined with technology and you have the Empire striking back. The next election may lead us down this path. Thanks again to George W. Bush and Richard Cheney for getting us tickets between the Rock and a Hard Place.

The Future is History!

(The symbols from 12 Monkeys I deem appropriate for George W. Bush and the Republican Party.)

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Insurgency And Counter-Insurgency

On an Afghan Street

Counter-Insurgency resembles a ghost of Franz Fanon's nightmares. It is the sixth stage of Imperialism. Imperialism consisted of the first stage of unorganized efforts spreading into foreign lands, then a second stage of more and more organized efforts, then a third stage being a period of domination and exploitation, followed by a fourth stage of anti-imperial insurgency. The fifth stage is a period of fluctuating dysfunctonality/functionality of the new states founded on the locales of the imperialist domains. The sixth is the re-insertion of outside powers, such as the USSR and now NATO into a long term presence in Afghanistan. The West and the world built on the Western model will not allow any part of the globe to reside outside its power. Globalization, for all the print expended to limn it as purely economic and beneficial, is also an intolerant ideology, as intolerant as any Wahhabi Saudi Islam. Both Ideologies have Mythic narratives of exclusivity, which renders them unable to co-exist alongside cultures that are Mythically different. Thus, we are now watching the battle of ideologues. Ideologues, by definition, see the world through the Mythic (quasi-religious) narratives of Ideology. Each stage of Imperialism is marked by its own stories, narratives, and myths. Some remain the same, some are redacted forms of older versions, some are new. We are not freeing ourselves from the past.

A New Foreign Policy

In the Asia Times: DISPATCHES FROM AMERICA Is perpetual war our future? By Andrew Bacevich ...Since the end of the Cold War, the tendency among civilians - with Bush a prime example - has been to confuse strategy with ideology. The president's freedom agenda, which supposedly provided a blueprint for how to prosecute the "war on terror", expressed grandiose aspirations without serious effort to assess the means required to achieve them. Meanwhile, ever since the Vietnam War ended, the tendency among military officers has been to confuse strategy with operations. The problems in Georgia and the ensuing developments in Poland, combining with the implications for the Ukraine and others, emphasizes the importance of a rational Foreign Policy that has real national interests in mind. Right now, we have the corrupt ideology of intellectually lazy right-wing types. This is best symbolized by the Secretary of State who is an expert on the Soviet Union, but has little to offer when dealing with Russia, other than references to 1968 Czechoslovakia.

Auntie Anti-Christ

I was going to write about my Aunt Chresto, whom is considered to be the anti-Christ by more than one person, but have decided against it. For one, it is her 100th birthday, or some such centennial figure, so why not just celebrate? I know she would like that more than writing about her. She considers my writing to be amateurish, the work of a literary and philosophical dilletante. I do not very much improve the situation by saying, " Dilletante! Mais, non, ma tante!" and working around this basic template a number of present participles of the feminine gender: savante, amante, suivante, frappante... So, instead I shall talk about how some Republicans have issued a fatwa that perhaps Obama is the anti-Christ. John McCain thinks this is a good joke. However, this is impossible. John Haggee is the anti-Christ, as we all know. For one thing, John McCain has denied John Haggee three times! Once in his human incarnation, once as his angelic presence, and once as his master and mentor. I am sure that had there been an officer of the law attempting to arrest Johnny H., and had there been a suitable sword nearby, and had Johnny McC. been at hand, John McCain would have lopped off the ear of said officer of the law in no time. Therefore, let this put to rest the analogies to Judas, for truly it is more like Simon Peter. And I hurry to offer apologies to Simon Peter for involving him in this tawdry affair.

Georgia On My Mind

Marx & Lennon

Abkhazian Stamp

A good list of the events is in the BBC: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7551576.stm Day-by-day: Georgia-Russia crisis wherein we glimpse: THURSDAY 7 AUGUST Georgian forces and separatists in South Ossetia agree to observe a ceasefire and hold Russian-mediated talks to end their long-simmering conflict. Hours later, Georgian forces launch a surprise attack, sending a large force against the breakaway province and reaching the capital Tskhinvali. South Ossetian rebel leader Eduard Kokoity accuses Georgia of a "perfidious and base step". I recall distinctly hearing on that day that Georgia had been the instigator. Since this was before any political spin had touched the situation with its touch of icy death of reason, I cherish the memory. I was actually familiar, though not expert, on the South Ossetia situation, and familiar with Abkhazia's history, and the history of Georgia. Not an expert. If you had asked me where South Ossetia was, I would have said "South of North Ossetia.", but I had studied some of the peoples in the area. So when I heard of the Georgia fighting, I was a bit up to speed. I did not need a boob-tube talking head to alert me to the situation, nor to explicate the thorny thing in words a second grader would have scorned to employ. I recall thinking what an idiot the president of Georgia was. That was before the advocates of constant war turned him into a hero. McCain says we are all Georgians. I say NONSENSE. I have made it clear that I consider the European Union and its members participation in NATO to be tantamount to the Delian League of Athens. The Delian League of allies was formed to fight Persia. When Persia was defeated, the Delian League was not allowed to pass away, an old and honored soldier, but was transformed into the instrument of Athens hegemony. When the Soviet Union fell apart, the Warsaw Pact disappeared and NATO should have been changed radically, for its reason for existence was gone. However, instead of a radical nuclear disarmament and a radical reduction of conventional forces in Europe, we saw a desultory effort which did not last long. NATO became the instrument for American hegemony. Do not get me wrong. I am not opposed to American hegemony per se. I just do not want to pay for it with my dollar. How about some affordable health care for everyone before you go around establishing bases on Russia's perimeter? AND I do not want any hegemony lead by the poltroons as presently make up the the American government. Georgia's desire to join NATO was seen by Russia as a threat. It was seen as establishing an American base in the Caucasus. What is important to remember is that it was seen the exactly same way by the American government. The next president will be committed to the same insane plan of putting missiles - of dubious efficacy - into countries surrounding Russia, all on the laughable pretext of defense against the missiles of Iran...when and if these missiles come to exist in some future time.

John McCain! We are not Georgians! We are Americans, and America firsters! Once you solve some problems here at home, we may let you go sniffing around the fire hydrants of the world, looking for a spot to relieve yourself! In this matter, take a page out of George W. Bush's playbook. He has said how we are all behind Georgia in their struggle, then took off on a 10 day vacation at his ranch. The Georgians are learning how the residents of New Orleans felt after Katrina. George W. is giving them a dose of Katrina-ization. Very similar to what his father gave the Shi'ites of Iraq after the Gulf War: he led them on with pictures of democratic joy, then abandoned them to slaughter by Saddam Hussein. Summary: It is not in our interest to establish this ill-thought out hegemony whose only effect will be to renew and exacerbate tensions among the nuclear powers. The great leaders who did the most supremely moral act of our lifetime: the refusal to commit suicide by nuclear armageddon, are gone; what is left is the children dressed up as grown-ups, acting out myths.

Awestruck

Again from The Cunning Realist: We'll see where this goes. So far the reaction has been underwhelming. I'm beginning to think if we learned tomorrow that an asteroid was about to destroy the planet, the story would come in a sleepy third to Paris Hilton and breaking news on Beijing's air quality. If Suskind's revelation elicits little more than a national and congressional yawn, Thomas Mann probably explained it best: The market woman who demanded in a dry tone "one hundred billion" mark for a single egg had lost during inflation her ability to be amazed at anything. Since that time nothing was so mad or so atrocious that it could have caused any awe in people anymore. Again, inflation is simply a symbol for any period of profound institutional failure to which the public becomes inured. We all know what national, socialistic, workers' Party Mann was talking about, right? And how the German Nation did not respond to the horrors of it all. Well,...I am not sure how to say this. The threads of my thoughts seem to float like shining webs in the morning dew. Here goes: Never, never, never in my life did I ever expect to see an American Veteran who had bravely served his country to be as thoroughly disrespected as was John Kerry in the presidential election of 2004. And by the Republican Party, of all people! Never! If power tends to corrupt, observe the absolute corruption of the Republican Party. I always thought we were sort of entering an era when one had to be a veteran to even be able to run for preseident; a veteran and rich. Then I saw even serving one's country can be turned to compost. Brave soldiers, men and women, would never treat each other in that manner. They may disagree greatly, but they would never stoop to doing what that miserable group of carpetbaggers and scallywags, under the direction of Rove, the "lardass" leader, did to a fellow soldier or sailor.

KristolNacht

From The Cunning Realist: The discovery in a Florida office building of anthrax--the Iraq-favored biological agent--may be all the explanation we need for why the administration is beginning to warn that actions could be required against "other states." -William Kristol 10/9/01 And Iraq is the only nation in the world, other than the United States and Russia, to have developed the kind of sophisticated anthrax that appeared in the letter sent to Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle. What will it take for the FBI and the CIA to start connecting the dots here? A signed confession from Saddam?-Robert Kagan and William Kristol 11/19/01

Bases In The Caucasus

Actually, it should be something like Mohammed Ali would have sung: the BASES in the CAUCASUS! In response to the Georgia situation, Poland and the USA have come to terms on basing missiles in Poland, ostensibly to deter an attack from Iran. The agreement also contains a mention of a US base in Poland.This must obviously be there to deter a land-based attack from Iran, also. I sense there were to be bases in Georgia. The USA was already training Georgian troops. Georgia, however, seems to have jumped the gun and ruined the entire scenario for Bases in the Caucasus. Orwell is catching up to the present, having missed the 1984 subway. Recall that Eurasia was Russian, East Asia was Chinese, and now it is obvious that Oceania is NATO and the EU. (Sorry abo0ut the redundancy of this post and the previous one on Oceania. However, I liked the ditty about "bases in the Caucasus", and I could not resist.)

Ron Susskind

...has written a book detailing how evidence was made up and invented to support the rush to war in Iraq. Everybody was there: CIA, FBI, NSA, the entire cast of the misty Acronymous Party of the USA. I wonder if George Tenet was awarded the Medal of Freedom by President Bush in order to keep him quiet?

Oceania Forever

Poland has agreed to host some rockets as part of a missile shield. The rationale repeatedly put forward is the possibility of a missile launch from Iran, a claim that is preposterous and always has been. http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSLE807520080814?pageNumber=1&virtualBrandChannel=0  
U.S. and Poland sign missile shield deal  
Thu Aug 14, 2008 4:10pm EDT  

Officials said the deal included a U.S. declaration that it will aid Poland militarily in case of a threat from a third country and that it would establish a permanent U.S. base on Polish soil in a symbolic gesture underlining the alliance.

Again with the US bases. Surely this cannot be a defense against a land based attack from Iran, also. Once again, the Establishment-Military-Industrial complex is promoting a state of once and future war, instead of promoting peace. Is there a symmetry? A metaphor? NATO and European Union: Oceania as Russia: Eurasia as China: East Asia. Orwell apparently was 100% on...or Stapledon...or Wells...or all the dystopians. We are now creating the dark doom which our grandkids will inherit.

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Georgia On My Mind

In the early hours of the day when it happened, I distinctly heard or read that the forces of Georgia had begun hostilities in South Ossetia. The status of South Ossetia was unclear to me. It had been part of Soviet Georgia and had recently demanded autonomy from Georgia, preferring the good old boys of Moscow. Regardless of the unclear status, I distinctly heard Georgia started this. Russia seems to have finished it. If you go signing up Russia's neighbors into NATO, the USA's equivalent of Athens' Delian League and at present hardly a defensive force such as when it was the bulwark against the Warsaw Pact nations... If you go around putting missiles into the backyards of Russia's neighbors on the transparently flimsy pretext that Iran is fixing to bomb Europe (!!??!!)... If you have a numnuts for President who says he and the real Russki leader are bosom buddies 'cause he looked inta that Russki's soul while he was asittin' beside him... You are gonna have some problems.

Darkling Knights

I have not seen the film "Batman: The Dark Knight" yet, but I assume that I shall. From what I have heard it is the perfect film for the present. I hear that Batman has an enormous bunker underground where his enormous computer is situated, the computer which allows him to "control" Gotham City. Perfect control, perfect information on the lives of the citizenry, law-abiding and law-scoffing. Bunkers hidden, secret tribunals, all for the good of mankind. Bruce Wayne's apartment is in a large, glass-walled building, such as those being built in Abu Dhabai or Dubai: soulless and hard edges, glowing like platinum dreams, a millions windows gleaming like a million empty eyes. However, what I shall enjoy the most is how this film has seamlessly integrated itself into the Real World as well as the world of filmic literature. For the nasty iconography of the Joker and his desperate tortured soul have been mirrored brilliantly - no dark glass here! - in the real death of the actor who portrayed the Joker; a death assisted on by drugs, by celebrity, by too much for too little. Yet, the actor portraying Batman has been accused- in the real world- of beating ( Zap!) his mother (POW! **!**) The Dark Knight is our Cabinet of Doctor Caligari. Here we see the dark doom of happy wealth without soul which awaits. Batman and the Joker await the sleepwalkers. The sleepwalkers are us, and we have been appearing as such in uncounted numbers of trashy zombie flicks over the past few years. Ask yourself: am I LEGEND......or am I LEGION ?

What About Nuclear Weapons?

No one is talking about it.

The two bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki killed about 200,000 people, of which the vast majority were civilians. World War II was the war defining future wars as operations to destroy civilians...no, civilizations! We yet argue about the decision to drop the bombs. Yea or nay, we argue, as if there were an answer.
On such topics, if we argue, there is no answer.
If there were an answer, then there is no argument, merely regret. In the face of true morality, we can only stand mute and accept judgement. We cannot argue anymore. But we cannot feel regret, only our need for self-justification.

When we learn to feel regret, we shall no longer argue and shall have learned a great lesson. Then, we went from the war into the Cold War and Mutually Assured Destruction. When the USSR fell, there was an opportunity to significantly assist Russia and achieve nuclear disarmament in the process. We failed to do this.
Now we have war in Georgia, in Iraq, in Afghanistan. We have a potential nuclear problem with Iran and we have a nuclear armed Israel whose status is very problematic. We are going back into War Games with nuclear arms. Even now we have the nuclear potential to destroy the world many times over.

When God granted us peace and an opportunity for a long lasting peace based on mutual help and understanding, we threw it away. After that, we descended into the confrontation with Al Qaida. That duel led us to throw away the Geneva Conventions, and become scofflaws in the comity of nations. Where do we, the people of the USA, intend to end up in this process? So far, we have created a nasty and brutish world.

The Joker: The Early Years

A Future Like NASCAR

It reminds me what the dark temptress at Daytona said after she had done the "Girls Gone Wild" greeting to me. When asked what that eye shadow was she wore, she answered "Nascara". And she did it with a tongue of velvet corduroy which rasped and soothed; the first to sensitize, and the second to excite. Whew. The point of all this is that the future is fast, much faster than it used to be. After the oil embargoes, it took a while for oil to decrease in price. Now the price of oil is plummeting and the commodities are seeking the floor, swooning like a heroine in a gothic novel. The future is that of bubbles: we can not go back to the old way of doing things once we've tasted the Ecstasy of Crack Bubble Economics!!!!!!!!!! We shall find a new bubble, be it housing or war, something to draw money, to create massive consumption....the trek to Mars, perhaps? I am NOT mad!!! I am....YOU!

Beijing Olympics 1

Sports Booster Nature Of The Buddha

My three nephews converged on the old homestead like three tropical storms. Instinctively I let the weeding hoe go slack among the ornamental grasses, prairie cordgrass to be exact, and looked up into the sky to search for altocumulus clouds and anvil headed harbingers of tempest. Xyloft and Cymbalta roused themselves from their pantomime of rural blood hounds, and with a wig-waggery of tails approximated a very good look of alertness and positive energy. There were no clouds. The day had just begun. They came for the morning tea, compliments of The Grace Tea Company, New York, New York- a Winey Keemun with a dash of the Black Jasmine. It sounds like a fabled diamond: the Black Jasmine, and so it is in that ineffable, fleeting yet passionate intercourse of tongue and tea. Settling ourselves before the Canadian Broadcasting Company feed of Olympic never-ending buffet, all you can eat until you burst!, we tuned into the live coverage. Most people in the States would have to wait for 12 hours or 12 days or 12 years, or whatever the time delay was that NBC was imposing upon the pix until sufficient numbers of gawkers had assembled south of the Canadian border to satisfy the advertisers. State media, like CBC, do not have to toady to advertisers, only to Parliament, so our Canadian friends get the goods right off. Surely one is totally familiar by now. It is the same way in the States, where we have been learning recently how much better the new State Banking system is, propping up old doddering dinosaurs who can no longer compete in a free market. More anon. I may say that, although I am usually not much for gaudy-night spectacles, never willingly having viewed Olympic bombastia in the past, nor, had I happened to have seen a glimpse, have I ever long-term memorized it, I was appreciative of the effort the new Chinese Empire put on. Oddly enough, within the first day, an American tourist was killed, and a war broke out in Ossetia. Within the first week before the opening, Uighurs killed policemen in Hsinjiang. Within the first year, Tibetans died. I liked the stadium. My nephews said it was called "The Birds' Nest", and I thought this a fitting name for an ungainly object that resembled a recumbent red blood cell, or-worse-a bed pan that had been be-pastaed ("covered with pasta") with the lightly falling spaghetti of the Beijing morn. I liked a good deal of the display. Not the fireworks, however. Never really liked les feu d'artifice since the war, ya know. The theme was the 4 great inventions, and I recall gunpowder was one of them. Hmmm. I thought about that one, but the ironies were all apparent and superficial, and I began to wonder if India were to take a run at the brass ring Olympics thing, what possible inventions would the bureaucrats in New Delhi think up to plan an opening ceremony around? The Buddha? The Mahabharata? Upanishads? All very material, being persons or writings confined to bound volumes, yet not quite material enough, if you catch my drift. Truly, having a song and dance routine around the Lord Buddha is not quite what the Big Business Advertisers have in mind. For one thing, there are a great many companies today- literally a bunker-buster block of companies-that still make and sell gunpowder and its devilish progeny, and they make good money at it. They are still around, thank God, because when Isaiah said to beat their swords into ploughshares and pruning hooks, he wasn't thinking about gunpowder. If he had been, he would not have advised "beating" it into anything. He would have said to tip-toe around it, then scoot. However, how many companies are there today whose names you may use in a sentence conjoined with the Lord Buddha? Not bloody many. I mused on the possibilities that extra-terrestrials have their equivalent to the Olympics. Perhaps a 2001 type baton thrown into the air, reaching zenith, then returning, and bonking a bunch of endangered species-types on the noggins! More later.

Mad Men

I had to tell someone the story of episode 2, second season of "Mad Men". They had missed it and mistakenly asked me for the details, not knowing how I remember names. So I tell the story. There are frequent questions from the baffled about the exact identity of the characters. For example, Don Draper's wife, Betty is portrayed by an actress named January Jones. This will never do, and I recast everything so that I may refer to the actress/character by the name January Johnson. This is all due to the fact that the only TV personnage I have hitherto known with a mensural (month-ish) name was July Johnson from "Lonesome Dove". Chris Cooper portrayed Sheriff Johnson and Barry Corbin was Roscoe Brown, the deputy. Thus, I do not merely say January Johnson, but I must say "Jan-youuu-wary Johnson" in much the same way poor ol' Roscoe Brown referred to Jooooo-ly Johnson. This is not at all bad, for the name "January" does indeed give it all away to my auditor. For Peter Campbell, however, I say "That guy that used to sorta hang around Angel...sometimes".

Law Of Gravity Repealed!!

The state of Alaska is seeking to force the US government to withdraw a Department of the Interior decision of May 14, 2008, which listed polar bears as an endangered species, this being due to the disappearance of the ice in the Arctic. The bears use sea ice as a platform for seal hunts. This is all to the good. Questions of science should be left to those most knowledgeable: the politicians; and questions of politics should be left to the most knowledgeable: the politicians, and politicians should be supported by business money. It's the American way. Similarly, I have often found the so-called "Law" of Gravity to get in way and to be obstreperous and generally a nusiance. I am beginning a petition to have the US Department of the Interior annul it. For, indeed, I have heard it said that the Bush Administration will be regarded by historians as a successful administration-much to the surprise of those whom it killed or tortured. I have heard that it will attain this eminence "when pigs fly!" What quicker way to speed things along than doing away with that old gravity thing. Surely a people that did away with the Geneva Conventions should not have any problem with the Law of Gravity.

Pimp My Intel

Indeed, a intricate knot to unravel. In the preface to a damning report on the treatment of Guantanamo detainees by a group called Physicians for Human Rights — which had examined and interviewed 11 former Guantanamo detainees freed without charges — [General Anthony] Taguba declared that there was no longer any doubt whatsoever that President George W. Bush and others in the White House had committed war crimes. "The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account," Taguba wrote. "The commander in chief and those under him authorized a systematic regime of torture." I would take the best, the very best brains in the USA to try to answer this poser. Even then, they would be baffled. I prefer to think that the Right Honorable George W. Bush was not fully informed by the evil Cheney. Mr. Bush thought of torture in terms of "Pimping my Intel."

What I Want In A President

I do not wish a good old boy. Nor do I wish they guy or gal that I'd like to have a beer with. (~shudder~) I do not wish someone who looks like Stringbean, nor one who resembles Junior Samples. This is being discussed on globalized and trivialized TV: whether a country where 66% are overweight and a staggering 33% are obese may vote for a fellow as thin as a railsplitter, preferring someone with hands the size of ham hocks, or, lacking that, someone not too in your face with the lack of avoirdupois. I want someone with good judgment. Smarts aren't enough. Education is not enough. Powerful friends are not enough. The CEO at Freddie Mac, Richard Syron, is said to have received numerous warnings about the types of dangerous loans Freddie Mac was buying, http://www.reuters.com/article/ousiv/idUSBNG17231320080805 and he ignored them. Business background and knowing how to run a company do not make for good judgement in changing times. When someone says the government should be run like a business, or a businessman would make a good president- like my mother who adoooores Mitt Romney-they miss the point about "good judgement". One may be successful for a good while without good judgement. When things are just bubbling along, everybody wins and everybody looks like a bloody genius. When the proverbial waste hits the proverbial breeze maker, that's when you find out who's got good judgement. President Bush allowed the horrendous Richard Cheney to tarnish his memory by backing the torture regime, letting the USA be the first G8 country to trample the Geneva Conventions. Republicans...among their crimes you see a lack of scale; whereas President Clinton was impeached for relatively minor infractions, President Bush et alii suffer no rebuke for a long list of serious malfeasance, topped by the above mentioned disregard for the Geneva Conventions. When we purchased an automobile 6 weeks before Hurricane Katrina hit, we ask a Ford salesman what the fuel economy of the particular Ford we were looking at was. He replied, amazed and humorous, that we were the first people in 5 years to ask about fuel economy. The whole country is in the grips of a "poor judgement" crisis. Whether it was 9/11, or a sort of a terminal tarantella-like giddiness inspired by the fall of the USSR, or just bad karma, bad mojo, bad hoodoo, the USA just does not seem able to exercise good judgement. I shall vote for the Democrat. The Libertarian is too tainted by the Clinton Impeachment for me to think he has any modicum of good judgement. I like John McCain, but I vowed to never vote Republican again. Nader is nadir. Obama will make a good president. He had better. The need for good judgement is going to be greater than any time in the past 50 years.

I Plan To Spend Gas Tax Holiday Monday At Blackpool (or Disney World)

John McCain's Gas Tax Holiday is/was such a good idea, that the LA Times has a story on it. Well, not on it directly, sort of round about: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-bridge1-2008aug01,0,4924543.story Urgency has buckled since Minneapolis bridge collapse The sagging economy has weakened national resolve for repairs -- and has depleted the gas-tax fund that would pay for them. By P.J. Huffstutter and DeeDee Correll, Los Angeles Times Staff Writers August 1, 2008 ..."The push to repair bridges and our country's infrastructure has become a victim of the bad economy," said Pennsylvania Gov. Edward G. Rendell, a Democrat who, along with California GOP Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and others, is calling for more federal aid to repair deteriorating highways and bridges. "If we don't put money into our roads and bridges and infrastructure, our economy will get even worse. We won't be able to transport anything across this country."... ..Much of the money for bridge repairs on public roads comes from the federal Highway Trust Fund, primarily financed by a federal gasoline tax. But as soaring fuel costs have prompted Americans to drive fewer miles, the fund is dwindling... ...To help shore up the Highway Trust Fund, some observers propose increasing the gas tax, which has remained relatively steady at 18.4 cents per gallon since 1993. I think a National Infrastructure Czar should be appointed and a new Leviathan Department of Infrastructure and What-Not be created, costing millions and millions, most of which could have been spent of building infrastructure itself. Remember how I have said that this Administration has not properly administered anything on its watch? How there has been no savings for investment in infrastructure? Chickens...home...roost. Roost, baby! Terminatorlike: I'll be back...to roost!

"Lardass" Republicans

I think I compared the Republican Party to Dave Hogan or the character "Lardass" in the film "Stand By Me". In fact, I am quite sure I did. Yesterday, it was. As time goes by and cooler minds prevail, I am more and more convinced of the equivalence: Republican=Lardass.
The point of the similarity is that Lardass got his revenge at the end of the county fair pie eating contest by a castor-oil induced vomitous hurling catastrophe...as if castor oil induced vomiting. Castor oil is a laxative and a purgative. So the finale of "Lardass's Revenge" was a bit more rabelesian than was shown in the film: it was a general, bowel-emptying rampage.

Anyhow, that is why Republican=Lardass, because in the 25 years since Reagan the present day Republican Party has brought this country to the brink of ruin: Lardass Republican revenge.

It is also summed up in the story of Karl Rove remarking that Barack Obama was a fellow who stood in the Country Club and sniggered and made fun of the other people, thinking himself to be superior to them. Of course, this was all due to Rove's own days as a callow youth, when his generally goofy demeanor surely brought many sniggers upon his homely head. That is when Rove swore to revenge himself against a world of beauty and light.

Anyway, the Republicans have tried to kill the USA of welfare checks and Middle Class niceties, and have thrown the baby out with the bath water and Perrier. They have globalized the world in order that they may have places of refuge overseas. This shows good forethought on their part. Yes, indeed. Many of the earnings reports show multinationals doing well precisely due to their foreign income, not their US income. Thus, the USA can be written off as a derelict neighborhood, and its people can be pushed into the ash can of recession...or worse...and the Republicans will read about on the sea front in Abu Dhabai and shake their heads, glad they do not have to live in the USA- or the "projects" as they will call it.

Sweet revenge for Lardass.

Cowboys

The Existentialist Cowboy has quite an article on Mr. Bush and the crimes he has committed, at least according to Mr. Cowboy. http://existentialistcowboy.blogspot.com/2008/07/treason-and-conspiracy-how-bush-and-his.html Whatever the verdict, I finally have gain an intimate understanding of how the Oligarchies worked in Ancient Greece to undermine the Democracies. This usurpation of the Government, the theft of the Financial System, the undermining of the Judiciary, I could never quite get a handle on how it must have felt...not until now. An excellent learning experience.

Conspiracy?

As outlandish as it sounds, the theory that a coterie of Republicans and Powerful figures have conspired to destroy the USA by enormous deficits is becoming more and more plausible as the only means to make sense out of what we see. Can educated men and women be as stupid as those in the Bush Administration appear to be? When William Clinton arrived, he was compelled to try to restore fiscal responsibility, putting health care and other items on hold....forever. He inherited it from Bush Sr. Now we have this Bush Jr. thing. Perhaps the Republicans see themselves as the character called "Lardass" in the movie "Stand By Me." They intend to leave everything a whirlpool of vomit and refuse. They are waiting until we yell "uncle!". Then they will march in with their New World Order.

Morality For The Masses

Referring to the preceeding post: http://fatherdaughtertalk.blogspot.com/2008/07/wherein-i-miss-point.html

This is a picture of a Private Language of Moral Discourse: a duplex domicile, yet half abandoned; a sign of stress and distress: making do in bad times and uncertainty. It shows that everything is not as it should be. Instead of the many living together, the Du as well as the Ich, we have the unitary duplex; an irony, a paradox, yet that is morality of the one. This unique focus on the individual is typical of our culture, and it essentially deals with me getting mine; when I have got it, I may or may not become charitable and gather tax benefits thereby. An enigma of man in the world.

Wherein I Miss The Point

Wittgenstein

It has just dawned on me that I actually said - in essence - present day political discourse precludes moral discourse, http://fatherdaughtertalk.blogspot.com/2008/07/energys-cauldron-bubble-bubble-toil-and.html the "bubble universe" being an emblem of obsessive self-interest. This is startling. I mean, I suppose it is the type of thing we nay-sayers are always blathering about, but I can assure you that political discourse of Washington's times did not preclude moral discourse; politics did not preclude morality. I may notice, then, that neither did business. There are goal statements rendered forth by every corporation, telling the readers what social benefits each corporation will emit. Present day readings will give only a sense of hypocrisy. There is something about the Moral which a lot of people forget: there can be no private moral discourse. (Any so-called private moral discourse can be nothing except what we refer to as between God and myself, and this is so privileged as to be outside the area of which we speak, for we cannot speak of it.) All morality is forensic, meaning it's out in the forum, the agora, the marketplace, at least the space created by the Ich and Du. Morality at its minimum is a duality. Beyond that, is is a plurality. A philosophy of Man and Economy which is based solely upon the interests, values, and goods of a single, solitary individual by its very nature excludes Morality. I should add that it is this very aspect of modern life - the fact that the Moral is pushed into the closet - that makes it appear to be insane. I mean, when I say everyone is insane, obviously I can't mean it. Right ? However, if I were to say we are all amoral bastards, I would get quite a few smirks and heads nodding in agreement, thinking what rogues and money-making movers and shakers we all are. Odd. In case you are wondering, "Why Wittgenstein?", or "Warum Wittgenstein?" or whatever, Ludwig is famously connected with the notion of a private language, yeasay or naysay.

A Work by Tyree Guyton I call it: The Closet Doors Of Morality

A Russell Paradox

The Russel in question is Betrand, not Jack. To wit: Literary Criticism, although it pretends to a higher plane than Literature itself, is actually a subset of Literature. Literary Criticism is Literature writing about Literature. It is an outlet for a certain type that feels the compulsion to write, yet lacks....what? Vision? An outward, futuristic vision? A leap into uncertainty and chaos, wherefrom it reels in - like a celestial fisherman- a new creation, a Genesis renewed? No, literary critics- and cinematic critics, too-merely like to deal with something hard and fast, not as elusive as the slipstreams of unfinished creativity. Literary Criticism is like the organized church and televangelists, the reiteration of the catechism and the repetition of weary icons, whereas Literature is seeing God... and artists are fishermen of heaven! and we are all artists when we see!

The Off Button

Enough for one day.

Please, someone hit the off button.