The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight...And The New Dolchstoss

The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight is a title that pretty well describes the Bush administration. They had the arrogance of historical inevitability, but they were running a dog and pony show...the kids from "Our Gang" could have put on a better response to 9/11.
They could not shoot straight, figuratively and literally, but they certainly could torture people. They could actually set up a taxi system around the globe, abetted by various unsavory characters, and move the inmates of their mobile paranoid Star Chamber dungeon around the world for a little torture.
They could also subvert the Constitution of the USA. This will be their legacy. And even though future historians may condemn with praise faint and evanescent, we who suffered these fools most, we feel most keenly the sting of the unjust sitting in the place of power.

Now Scott McClellan has written his memoirs. Some condemn him for being a snitch; stabbing his former friends and workers in the back. The word is dolchstoss...stab in the back. It was a favorite among right-wing Germans back after World War I.

It is also being used in the present Krieg:

and is now being used to speak about Scott McClellan.

Some people say Mr. McClellan's credibility is zero. I ask what is the credibility of the Gang that couldn't shoot straight? If Mr. McClellan cannot be believed and the administration cannot be believed, exactly where have we landed ourselves? We have gone to our favorite place: the outer courtyard where we wail and gnash our teeth.
The quaint morality of not being a snitch, or not being a tattle-tale is not a fitting frame of mind to take before the acts of the people who have run this country over the past eight years. If ever the notion of a higher morality or a higher power meant anything, it means to stand up to the crimes we have allowed to be committed and repudiate them and their perpetrators. If we do not, the criminals will continue to spread their lies...and the future shall resemble the past...only more so...from this:

to this:

What I Like...

...about this presidential campaign will be the posturing and contorting to cover up the racial divide

Yassir...A Cup Of The Black, Please.

Dunking Doughnuts [ better known as "Dunkin' (sic) Donuts (sic) ] has pulled an advertisement of Rachel Ray hawking java. Apparently eagle-eyed Michelle Malkin spotted the scarf as being a kaffiya, it reminded her of Yassir Arafat, and she went ballistic. Something about terrorist chic. It was all too funny. I grabbed my cell phone to call a friend and let them know the news from the Advertising Front of the War on Terror...but only got as far as punching in the exchange when it dawned on me that I was using "Arabic" numerals!! I stopped. This was nonsense. Surely it was not terrorist chic to use Arabic numerals...or was it? Would I be giving aid and comfort to the enemy? I tried again. No luck. I tried imagining the numbers as Roman numerals... I-( II IV VIII) VIII V III- but I knew it was a sham. I spent the evening burning every copy of the works of Aristotle which had not been preserved in the Greek, but which we only have through the intermediary of Arabic translation. A bright fire it made.

Book Burning

Some time ago, we were vacationing in Fort Meyers Beach and there was a news report that there had occurred some rioting outside a film theater in Boca Raton. Within the previous year, I seem to remember there had been similar rioting outside a theater showing "New Jack City". We supposed it was black youths in the crowd in Florida. It wasn't. The film playing was "Schindler's List" and the people "rioting" were elderly Jews who arrived at the theater to find that it was sold out and no more seats were available for the early discount showings. This was a good story, and there was good comic effect in the sudden overturning of one's expectations, not to mention one's ingrained racial stereotypes. The Jews were introduced into a new situation in my Reality with good comic effect. Not so comic is today's book burning story, which appears in Haaretz: http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/985362.html Orthodox Jewish youths burn New Testaments in Or Yehuda By The Associated Press "Orthodox Jews set fire to hundreds of copies of the New Testament in the latest act of violence against Christian missionaries in the Holy Land. "The books were dumped into a pile and set afire in a lot near a synagogue," he said. "The newspaper Maariv reported Tuesday that hundreds of yeshiva students took part in the book-burning. But Aharon told The Associated Press that only a few students were present, and that he was not there when the books were torched. "Not all of the New Testaments that were collected were burned, but hundreds were," he said. He said he regretted the burning of the books, but called it a commandment to burn materials that urge Jews to convert..." Not good.

The Present Crisis And The Future Catastrophe

An article from The Mogambo Guru: http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/JE28Dj01.html "...Quickly summarizing, in just a few weeks, a third of the Fed's entire stash of government debt, accumulated bit by bit since the Fed was first authorized by a few Congressional conspirators on Christmas Eve, 1913, has been used up by the Fed trying to paper over its own horrific mistakes! Yikes! Ron Paul was right; we have to abolish the Federal Reserve! Apparently, everybody is cheered that the new official, government-determined and government-sanctioned inflation is 3.9%, which makes me laugh to think that anybody in their right mind would believe that, and then which makes me howl in anger because the damned Federal Reserve and a willing co-conspirator Congress (except Ron Paul) allowed this to happen by allowing the banks to create so much excess money and credit, so astonishingly much excess money and credit, so stupidly and criminally irresponsibly much excess money and credit, for so many months, so many years and so many decades, which doesn't even mention the fact that throughout all the rest of human history, 3% inflation was considered to be the cut-off between "High" and "Emergency! Emergency!", but which is actually ignored today! ..." ---------- We also have: http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/JE24Dj02.html Oil price mocks fuel realities By F William Engdahl You may have anticipated that, if "Speculators" are responsible for the increase in the price of oil, then how has our "hands off " government assisted them? 1) The Federal Reserve has provide massive liquidity, 2) "US margin rules of the government's Commodity Futures Trading Commission allow speculators to buy a crude oil futures contract on the Nymex by paying only 6% of the value of the contract. At the present price of around $130 per barrel, that means a futures trader only has to put up about $8 for every barrel. He borrows the other $120. " 3) The hedge funds involved are not regulated, nor does it seem that they will be...until the present crisis evolves into the future catastrophe. Resignation Now!

Cool News

Nicolas Sarkozy has been reported by Le Nouvel Observateur (as reported itself in Le Monde) to have had quite an interview. Of course, now everyone is saying it is false, but it is a great French lesson. http://www.lemonde.fr/actualite-medias/article/2008/05/23/le-nouvel-observateur-reconnait-avoir-prete-de-faux-propos-a-nicolas-sarkozy_1048888_3236.html#ens_id=1048688 We start out about a visit to Tunisia and goes on from there. It is very short, yet very blue. ------------ In case you have forgotten Iraq (" na'am, nasaitu al Iraq !"), we have a cool scene as recounted in TomDispatch, May 22, 2008: http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/174935/tomdispatch_michael_schwartz_the_loss_of_an_imperial_dream "... Just this week, Iraqi troops moved into the vast, battered Shiite suburb of Sadr City in east Baghdad after weeks of fierce fighting. The first descriptions of the damage -- U.S. air power was regularly called in over the last months in this heavily populated slum area -- are devastating: "As I moved into the neighborhood," writes Raheem Salman of the Los Angeles Times online, "the destruction from weeks of fighting was horrible. Most of the shops and kiosks have been damaged. Doors are knocked off their hinges. Windows are shattered. The walls are riddled with bullet holes. Some buildings are blown apart by missile fire..."

Cartoons

From Brazil:

http://dropsazulaniss.blogspot.com/

Boss Haggee And Uncle Joe

Uncle Joe Liebermann had the excellent luck of going on Fox and defending Boss Haggee just before the blow-up of the "Hitler is the best thing to ever happen to Jews" tape. However, it is commonplace to get foolishness from politicians.

I think somehow the desire to get rich off charading as a public servant and buffoonery are genetically interlinked. When Jesus said to go forth and teach the nations, He did not give any details about how to go about doing it. The first Christians went about humbly and visited Christian enclaves across the Roman Empire, depending on the good will of the local Christians for support and sustenance. John Haggee decided to become a Televangelist and make a great deal of money, more money than James, the brother of Jesus, ever saw as the head of the Christians in Jerusalem; more than Paul ever saw in all his travels.

John Haggee and his ilk are the Mighty whom Mary says will be cast down from their thrones. They are monsters of spiritual abuse... And they are liars worse than Simon Magus. All these who crave for and worship Armageddon will get what they wish...they will swim in their own river of blood they see flowing in the Promised Land.
--

Let's Drill In Alaska!

Jay Bookman writes in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. http://www.ajc.com/blogs/content/shared-blogs/ajc/bookman/ ANWR and $4 gasoline By Jay Bookman Friday, May 23, 2008, 11:03 AM The Atlanta Journal-Constitution The prospect of $4 gasoline has no doubt convinced folks to stay a little closer to home over the holiday weekend, and it has also gotten people more than a little angry at politicians who let us get into this situation. So here’s a little data to help clarify things: For decades, the Republicans have rebuffed calls for greater energy conservation and fuel efficiency with one line of attack that they have repeated over and over in various forms: We don’t need to conserve, we need to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge… If only those silly environmentalists would let us drill in ANWR…. Why do those liberals love caribou more than humans…. Why do those greenies want us to stay dependent on foreign oil…. Yadayadayada. Well, now we know the truth. The federal Energy Information Agency, a branch of the Energy Department and part of the Bush administration, has released a study of the impact of opening ANWR on oil prices. The study can be found at the EIA’s website. Here’s what the EIA found: At peak production somewhere around 2030, oil from ANWR would reduce the price of oil — now about $135 a barrel — by a whoppingly huge 75 cents. That’s a decline of 0.55 percent, or barely two cents on a gallon of gasoline. And we’d probably never see even that tiny reduction, the EIA warned. “Assuming that world oil markets continue to work as they do today, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) could neutralize any potential price impact of ANWR oil production by reducing its oil exports by an equal amount,” it concluded. Just thought you’d want to know….

Whoopie For Europe!

I was watching "The View" yesterday... (an enforced watching...females of the abode had "dibs" on the tv and I was forced to watch it.) and Whoopie Goldberg said that Europeans have been paying $5 or $6 per gallon for gasoline for years. Actually the Euro equivalent of $5 to $6, I suppose. Haven't you heard this a lot over the past, oh, quarter century or so? Of course, as it stands, it means nothing. It's like saying that the Tutsi in Rwanda were used to being slaughtered by Hutu, so we should not take it amiss if we are approached by strange fellows with scowls on their faces and bearing machetes. What are the taxes on petrol? What is funded by them? How are the oil companies run? What is the overall economics? Don't have a clue. I should not mind $6 per Imperial Gallon for petrol if (1) we had universal and affordable health care, (2) a public transport system that was rationally designed and implemented, (3) a lot of other idle notions.......

Yayhoo! Go Bo!

"Bo" McCain, that is. Short for "Beauregard" McCain. One of the Duke boys from Hazzard county...you know. Well, seems like the Dukes have gone and whomped ole Boss Haggee once again. John McCain has denounced the pseudo-pastor who believes more in his own scenario for the second coming than he does in the New Testament.

Way to go, John! George Bush would never have had the guts to do it! Nor would he ever had the brains to see where the heresy is in Boss Haggee's theology. That leaves the moron Rod Parsley of Ohio, who in his own inspired way preaches that Islam is the tool of the Anti-Christ or some such nonsense, and thinks in terms of holy wars against Muslims. Sounds like a Jihad to me. Seems like the good ole boy Parsley (or Monsieur Persil as the French perceptively call him) figgers that what's good fer the goose is good fer tha gander! A little Jihad never hurt anyone, exspeshially when white folks is a-doin' it! John McCain, honorary member of the Duke clan,

has already sent old Parsley to the woodshed. I mean: WHAT THE HECK???!!!... We have John McCain and Barack Obama in the same election! That rocks! It's too bad we can only choose one. I am today exceptionally proud to be an American. I shall dig out that flag lapel pin and wear it with honor once again.

Not Housing Bubble, But Junk Housing Bubble

I am reproducing this article in its entirety in case the Detroit Free Press chooses to dump it. This is some background on the future ramifications of the housing bubble: construction that is and has been crap. --------------------- http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2008805160393 Pulte critics, unions rally at meeting Protest doesn't interfere with event BY GRETA GUEST • FREE PRESS BUSINESS WRITER • May 16, 2008 A group of protesters pierced the usually peaceful Birmingham morning air with chants attacking Pulte Homes on Thursday. The rally, staged by the AFL-CIO group and unions including sheet metal workers and painters, was timed to greet Pulte Homes Inc.'s board of directors as they assembled at the Community House for their annual shareholders meeting. Chants of "Pulte Homes is falling down," got curious looks from passing motorists, but the protest did not interfere with the meeting. Pulte shareholders elected five directors, approved a senior management incentive plan and a shareholder proposal to elect board members annually. Shareholders returned current directors William Smith, Brian Anderson and Patrick O'Leary to 3-year terms and added Cheryl Grise for a 3-year term and Richard G. Wolford for a 1-year term. Richard J. Dugas Jr., Pulte president and CEO, gave shareholders a recap of the previously reported 2007 performance. The year marked the first annual loss in the homebuilder's 58-year history. Pulte lost $2.25 billion and watched revenue fall 35% to $9.3 billion in 2007. Its shares rose to $14.45 Thursday, up 4.9% from Wednesday's close of $13.77 on the New York Stock Exchange. The combination of record foreclosures, falling home prices, weakening consumer confidence, tightening credit and large numbers of unsold homes on the market have hurt sales of new homes. Firm defends quality Despite complaints from homeowners who traveled from Arizona and Kansas, the Bloomfield Hills-based company defended its record of quality and said it was doing all it could to address complaints. "Pulte quality speaks for itself," said Dugas. "There is no such thing as a perfect house. In some cases, the homeowner will not let us in to do repairs. It is unfortunate that because of Pulte's size, we are a target." Pulte and its Del Webb brand ranked highest in 11 out of 34 markets in the 2007 J.D. Power and Associates New Home Builder Customer Satisfaction Study. It took first place in Phoenix, Tucson and Las Vegas. Paula Sonkin, vice president of the real estate industries practice for J.D. Power, said Pulte scores high in customer service and satisfaction by reacting quickly to problems. "All builders have construction problems. Pulte tends to do a really good job addressing those problems," Sonkin said. Pulte spokesman Mark Marymee said the goal of the unions is to organize the company's workforce in Arizona. The AFL-CIO said Thursday that workers in Nevada and Arizona already have begun organizing to raise labor standards and working conditions. One homeowner, Terry Templeton of Tucson, Ariz., who wore a lemon suit, said she had a host of problems ranging from plumbing to mold in her Pulte home. "I came to ask them if this is what they call quality," Templeton said before the meeting. Marymee said repairs were made to her home and that a judge dismissed other complaints by Templeton in May 2007. Another homeowner, Susan Sabin from Lenexa, Kan., said the problems in her home are so severe that she has lost her homeowner's insurance. She wants Pulte to buy back her house, because shifting soil beneath her home has caused structural damage all the way to the attic trusses. Marymee said the company has made a standing offer to spend $100,000 to repair her home, but she will not let company contractors in to make repairs. Pulte also faces a lawsuit in Arizona by homeowners in one of its retirement communities alleging defective construction. Pulte is a new home builder and land developer with operations in 26 states, and is the nation's largest builder of communities for people age 55 and older under its Del Webb brand. It is the nation's fourth-largest homebuilder in unit sales with 27,540 sold in 2007. Contact GRETA GUEST at 313-223-4192 or gguest@freepress.com. ------------------------------ As time goes on and as housing prices start to stabilize, people will still have junk houses. How about a massive class action suit? I predict: at least 1/3 of construction that was done between 2000 and 2008 will have to be bulldozed into the dust as part of long term recovery, not only to get rid of the surplus, but also because these buildings are not fit for man nor beast by that future time.

George Bush Waits Tables In Saudi Arabia

Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney have both gone to Saudi Arabia this year, begging for more oil. This is primarily due to the fact that our ace-in-the-hole, Iraq, did not turn out like Bush and Cheney thought it would. Both Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney have been publicly and embarrasingly turned down. Now Mr. Bush has offered enriched uranium to Saudi Arabia in return for pumping more oil. In a time when there is talk about going to war with Iran over enriched uranium, the same material is being offered to Saudi Arabia. I suppose it means that Saudi Arabia will not continue their hitherto unnoticed efforts to enrich uranium on their own. I suppose there will be adequate safeguards all around when we give enriched uranium to the Oily Kingdom, from which most of the 9/11 perverts came from. Back in the old days, we conserved. Now we beg like paupers, reducing the entire USA to the level we usually reserve for those at and below the poverty level. Picture it: the entire country has to hustle its cute backside to wait on tables all day long for tips of oil. Then the Saudis slap us on the backside and say to us, "Sweetheart, could ya get us a refill here?...then maybe we'll see about your refill (wink, nudge)!"

Filler

Sometime in the future, I shall be/have already done a post for my 1,000th post, afterwards deleting some choice posts for a high degree of witless stupidity, thus rendering my celebratory post for old number 1,000 to be incorrect. This will amend that.

What if...?

What If ...?:

...there was a society, or a nation, if you will, that having undergone a horrendous nightmare of a World War, never really woke up from it? They continued wars against lesser countries, but at a cost surpassing that of fighting greater foes?

...the people continued to rail at each other, calling each other the ancient names of the hated and defeated enemy as if in some magical dance? But the ancient names had no power anymore...except in the minds of the deluded.

...we could never stop calling each other "Hitler"?

What If ...?:

Politics, Racism, And That Anti-Woman Thingie ( It's Name Escapes Me)

There is a good great of friction among Democrats. Some are dismayed about having to vote for a Black or a Woman. Interesting. I would vote for any entity who could deliver us from the idiocy of the present administration, and showed a glimmer of intelligence to restore American pride. I do not have pride in present day America. Past America, the America of history, in that I have lots of pride. Today's America? Heck, no! Wearing a flag lapel pin is no substitute for honesty, sobriety, hard work, truth, loyalty, pride in one's work, help for one's community, and the long term well being of the nation and the world. And nothing is substitute for the Sermon on the Mount Values...not "Christian values" nor "family values" , for those labels have been besmirched by too many unethical Christians. Sermon on the Mount, pal! ////////////// George Bush has compared someone to Hitler and someone to Ramsay MacDonald...or was it Chamberlain? Was it Mr. Austen Chamberlain? I saw Chris Matthews talking to an apparent gibbering idiot who is a Conservative talk show host, and the talk show host could not explain the analogy between Chamberlain and Obama in terms of what Chamberlain actually did, and the poor sot was reduced to blabbering "appeasement, appeasement" over and over as if it were some sort of magical incantation. Conservatives need a new label if such are called "conservative" these days. Anyhow, I thought if anyone looked like the H-man ( or "Hitler" to you. Some heavyweights read certain quatrains of Nostradamus which contain the word "Hister" as meaning "Hitler", even though Hister is the Latin for "Danube" river...this whole business of Hitler is quite bizarre. Perhaps we should call people "Hister" or the River Danube. It would make as much sense.), then that man was George Bush himself as he dressed himself up for "Mission Accomplished". The good man was positively beaming. Am I mistaken, or did he not walk with so sprightly a step that it looked like he was tripping the light fantastic? A bit of a victory jig? Just like the H-man did in Compiegne after the fall of France? Just like the victory dance outside the railroad car in Compiegne forest?

Dancing Dictators. Dancing on prone countries...dead countries...birds of a feather and roosting chickens.

Belief

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/05/14/einstein-letter-belief-in_n_101626.html Einstein Letter: Belief In God "Childish," Jews Not Chosen People AFP May 14, 2008 01:23 AM Albert Einstein described belief in God as "childish superstition" and said Jews were not the chosen people, in a letter to be sold in London this week, an auctioneer said Tuesday... I am not so sure but that I agree with Mr. Einstein. I have previously written that I myself do not believe in God. I "expect" God. If I enter the room and God is not there, I wonder where He has gone. I do NOT say, "Oh. God must not exist, after all. I believed He was in the library, but He isn't. He must have been a fiction, a figment of th'imagination!" Saying that I believe in God is as odd sounding as saying that I believe in the existence of the Earth. There are no philosophical paradoxes here, no Zeno of the divinities... all this nonsense is based on some sort of trumped up scenario for "Belief" where everything that is to be believed has to be resting on some sort of basis of truth...as we define truth...and there is a whole logical rigamarole leading to belief and real knowledge and income for philosophers.

Israel's 60th

I am taking a step off the ledge here... Beyond wishing Israel a happy birthday, someone asked whether I considered the establishment of Israel to be a "good thing". Great. Not just a greeting, but now some sort of moral statement, as if I were a Daniel come to judgement. I must point out that since there is a substantial presence of Jews whose opinion of Israel may be summed up as follows: "Geholfen di Tziyonistishe medinah! Fun a shaykhes tzu reshoim kumt keyn guts nisht aroys! You helped the Zionist country! No good can come out of an association with evil people, only bad! " how could I judge when the Jews themselves are doing so. The fact that they do not agree is of no concern, for that fact does not imply that a rank outsider should be judge. That would be a change of venue of the most inappropriate kind: a change from those who live and know the reality to the ignorant outsider. It also does not matter that ignorant outsiders have been commenting of this matter for 60 years. Just because the writing heads and talking heads jump into the lake, does that mean I should? (As my mom would say!)

Market Failure

There were about 42 million Americans without Health insurance whne George Bush took office. At present, there are about 49 million. From this I conclude that the so-called "free market" ( since Bear Stearns we call them the "free BS markets") for health provision has failed, and cannot provide health care to the Americans who require it. If so-called free markets fail, then they must be replaced. Some may say that the markets did not fail, rather they find no profit in delivering health care to those who cannot afford it at present. Free markets are supposed to fill those needs, to supply the demand, not to carve the nations up into the haves and the have-nots. A free market does not ignore, it finds ways through the genius of the interplay of market forces. Right now, American free markets for health care are BS. What about commodities markets? What about the prices of staple commodities being driven up by speculation in commodities markets? The hedge funds and the speculators making a good deal of money warn against any kind of intervention. The commissioners of the Commodities Futures Trading Commission do so also. (http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,549187,00.html) Do not get me wrong. I am not necessarily in favor of government intervention, but I know a bubble - or a quasi-bubble - when I see one. If government had done some well-timed and fairly intelligent ( ha! ) intervention on past bubbles...who knows? When people riot for food that is so scarce, markets have failed. Period. There is no hedge fund operator, no speculator, no grand panjandrum of the Commission On Bunkum that can change that reality. When Bear Stearns suffers, we are moved to pity. When the people of America suffer, we muse about future palliatives. When the peoples of the entire world starve, we urge restraint on our pity and caution against an over-the-week-end bail-out of hungry stomachs! What absolute trash!

Captain Renault Is Shocked To Discover ...

...that the newsletter from Rupert Murdoch's NewsMax is delivered straight away to my junk e-mail bin. Now that is some pretty impressive anti-spamming and anti-junk software! The only printed matter more distasteful than Rupert Murdoch's is the e-mail for Viagra! The only thing worse to look at than Rupert Murdoch's cable stew is the letters from Nigeria who want me to hold some $20 million for a widow from Kuwait for 2 months and receive some long, large cash for doing nothing.

A Part Of This Country Stinks

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/JE14Dj03.html Sears majesty to hedge-fund dust By Julian Delasantellis Pared to the bone, what happened is Eddie Lampert's hedge fund bought Sears and K-Mart, but not to operate them, rather to bleed them dry for the profit of the partners in the hedge fund. ...To this observer, the sorry saga of Sears illustrates just how far distorted American ethics and values have become from exposure to the great credit and money carnival of the past few years. "All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned," Karl Marx wrote in 1848. In this case, nobody thought twice, nobody blinked an eye, when Wall Street took a truly unique American institution, Sears, and turned it from a fine, respected American society matron into a common streetwalker reduced to pimping through the night for Eddie Lampert. Last year, the New York Times' Gretchen Morgenson noted that more American national income was produced by financial engineers, people like Lampert who manipulate the amorphous abstraction called money, than by the mechanical engineers who manipulate actual physical realities such as steel, concrete, mortar and oil. In his new book Bad Money (reviewed May 10 by Joe Costello), Kevin Phillips notes that "By 2004-6, financial services represented 20 to 21 percent of gross domestic product, manufacturing just 12 to 13 percent." Somewhere along the line, America got the idea that the buck generated from financial services, from manipulating money, from passing it from hand to hand, was equivalent, or even superior to (after all, you come home with a lot better smelling clothes after a day on the trading floor compared to a day at the steel mill) the same buck made actually making and sustaining something - such as the great brand Sears once was. Here is the actual core of the current crisis of American overconsumption. The music has stopped, the dance is over, the great credit and money creation machine of the past few years has shut down. As the dust settles, we see that, for all the money, and supposed wealth, created over the past few years, very little of actual value, of real worth remains. As does now Lampert's, as does now America's, and its dream of endless wealth created through little or no actual work, phantasms still dance into and out of our world with the pages of a calendar, and only the very foolish mistake their ever-vertiginous presence with reality. This is a thorough damnation of that part of this country that has held power for the past 50 years or so. What do you do when the people running the show seem hell-bent on your destruction?

The High Price Of Oil

Guess who is in charge:

zooming in of the ledger books atop the safe at the left of the frame:

and rotating we see:

where we see "oil wells drilling", "oil wells flowing", and "oil wells kaput", the latter volume bound with a black ribbon.

Pix: http://cabinet-of-wonders.blogspot.com/

Uncle Sam Scrooge

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/columnists/article3908044.ece America must learn to love dearer petrol American Account Irwin Stelzer ...By constricting food supplies, ethanol madness has contributed to the rise in food prices that is afflicting mostly poor people around the world. In essence, rich countries are trying to find a way to fill their petrol tanks at the expense of empty stomachs in Africa, Mexico, and parts of Asia. Are not the Poor Laws in force? And the workhouses, surely they are still in full vigor? We do not intend to harm other people. The distinction is keenly appreciated by us. The people who are trodden under our feet have a slightly different and jaundiced view of the matter.

Embedded Masterpieces: The Village

There is a scene (unfortunately, not the scene above) in Shyamalan's The Village where William Hurt is with his daughter, played by Bryce Dallas Howard, behind the school (I think). It is an outdoor sequence, and it is windy. The wind actually seems to become one of the actors for a brief moment. I can imagine the wind speed dropping to nothing as soon as the director yells, "Cut!".

Wal-Mart Country / Citi Bank Nation / GOP Legacy / Neo-Liberal Pipedream

A Vote For Billary?

I shall not vote for Billary Clinton. I shall not vote for John McCain . One is a neo-Liberal, the other a modern day Republican, neither is worth a half filled spittoon. I do not like Bill Clinton, either. Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. criticised Mr. Clinton back in the 1990's for leaving the Democratic tradition of Andrew Jackson and Franklin D. Roosevelt and John Kenndy, turning instead to the Republican ideal of small, non-interventionist government. This small government lets enormous companies pretty much have their way. The Democratic tradition is summed up in the words of Andrew Jackson: “Government should be administered for the planter, the farmer, the mechanic and the laborer who form the great body of the people of the United States. These classes all know that their success depends upon their own industry and economy, and that they must not expect to become suddenly rich by the fruits of their toils. Yet they are in constant danger of losing their fair influence as a result of the power which the moneyed interest derived from a paper currency which they are able to control and from the multitude of corporations with exclusive privileges which they have succeeded in obtaining in the different states.” It is Time For Change.

The Politics Of Fear And Hate

The present holder of the presidency has made himself odious by his manipulation of hate and fear. He thinks that he is the master of the chaotic regime of evil that his two evil genies, Hate and Fear, will bring about. Of course, he is deluding himself, as have so many others done in the past. But....the dark side does have its attractions: power and wealth, the idols of our inverted worship. Today http://cunningrealist.blogspot.com/ History's Rhyme During the past few days, one of this country's most popular leaders has emphasized her willingness to use nuclear weapons to "totally obliterate" another nation, ominously promised to "go right at OPEC", and -- yes -- railed against "Wall Street money brokers." In my world, this links up closely with yesterday's post on stupid writers (I refuse to use the hideous word "commentator" ever again!) in The American Spectator. We perceive the evil genius that caused "God Damn America!", the vile devil that engenders hate for the USA, the imp that gives us sleepless nights: OUR OWN impulse to immediately jump at the chance to use force and destruction, our own desire to obliterate those who differ from us, our own love of using fear and hate to political advantage. When we look at our enormous system of war making and destruction, we sense we are dangerously close to the Krel (of Forbidden Planet), and yet we will not change our path. We all are small town folks; we all are cut off from any dream community of shared enrichment; we inhabit desperate hovels with windows of greasy parchment. We congregate in furtive glee with our guns and our faith. We kill for sport and we sport to kill. Our faith contains the god of revenge and narcisscism. Don't get the idea I'm standing up for Wall Street money brokers. BUT... There is a very short distance from "Wall Street money broker" to "money grubbing Shylock"; there is a skip and a jump from the threat of total obliteration to Dr. Strangelove. This election will be a contest between Light and Dark. Literally, it will be the forces of future potential progress in the Good versus the forces of retrograde desuetude and the Dark. Disclaimer (When I started to write this, I can assure you I had absolutely no intention of writing ANYTHING remotely like what I wrote in the last two paragraphs. When I had written the first paragraph, I stopped and asked myself whence came this bit of writing? I did not quite know. I know that I am given to a bit of high-flown hyberbole and such, and I know the mythic outlines of epic stories of Good against Evil, but I did not mean to stray from the so-called real world into the realm of archetypes. I had to let it remain, for something told me the avatars of the world of archetypes are the guys who have been paying my daily bread ever since my birth.)

The Seldon Vault Opens On Terminus: Peak Oil...

Hari Seldon

note: I used a photo of Asa Kasher to represent Hari Seldon.

"...after the Americans finally came to realize that oil had indeed peaked, they accepted their new and less flamboyant way of life. They no longer foolishly fought against energy conservation and morosely accepted the wisdom of those they had previously termed "tree huggers". Then suddenly it was the turn of Climate Change to hold class for them, and it promised to be another hard lesson......"

Salvor Hardin pulled a cigar out of his pocket and lit it...with a wry smile...and a match.

The American Spectator

Whenever I read an American Political magazine, whether left or right, I invariably come of the effort thanking God that I am not like those lesser benighted breeds. I actually fancy myself superior-it is the only situation where I may. I am Pierce Brosnan to Maynard Eziashi's Mister Johnson, and if I look down on these squabblers patronizingly, well, what of it? It is the odder publications, left and right, of which I speak, and you know them by their spotty thinking. Seriously, reading such stuff constricts the thorax. Consider The American Spectator: http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=13161 The Candidates and Oil By Roger Kaplan Published 5/6/2008 12:08:00 AM blah, blah, blah... WHAT IS TO PREVENT US from seizing the oil fields? The U.S. Army can solemnly announce that it will not take a dime from their exploitation beyond operating costs, and surely there are economists who can figure out how to set up a distribution system that will not wreck the world's oil markets, with all the ramifications that would bring about. I am in particular thinking of what a provisional neo-colonial administration of the Gulf's oil resources might do to Africa's booming oil industries. For what it is worth, the European dependence of Russian oil will be lessened by our seizure of the Middle East's reserves. Price controls fail. However, this is not a matter of price controls but of replacing a cartel run by tyrants with a commission that, notwithstanding your private thoughts about the U.S. government, will still be overseen by the U.S. government. Which has got to be better than a committee of Caribbean caudillos and Saudi princes....blah, blah, blah. You cannot but admire this. First, one must ask oneself if the writer is speaking of the future or the past. If the future, then why is the writer seemingly ignorant of Iraq? Secondly, the faith that there are economists that can set up a distribution system that will not affect world markets is touching in its innocence. Just as pre-Iraq, General Sherman is held to be foolish old Aunt Pittypat when he said "War is Hell!" War is just a little remedial discipline. Thirdly, Darkies of all shades, Caribbean and Saudi, come in for their dressing down. Darkies trying to act like white folks! Just like poor Mister Johnson. There is no need to go on. The picture of the paradise of War on a global scale ( surely an army larger than present will be necessary) has to be seen to be believed, sort of like "The Mystery Spot" we used to stop at while vacation driving, where the force of gravity was mysteriously reversed in a crude hut built on the side of a mountain....or Ruby Falls, if the above reference is too arcane. Even Reverend Wright will say "God Bless America!" And we shall pray to the God of war, a God who will be very different from the God of those fellows stuck below decks...in "tight pack"...who inhabit the countries where once stood those oil wells.

The Burn...48326

In the "Burn", the price of gasoline today jumped 20 cents to $ 3.85 per gallon, according to word of mouth.

Welcome To The Third World, Suckers

...as Texas Guinan would have said as she smiled into our alcohol starved faces. From Jim Kunstler's Archives http://www.kunstler.com/Grunt%20Archive.html March 17, 2008 A correspondent working for the US Dept of Agriculture brings strange tidings about government solvency. "I'm writing you this email to tell you something which I find pretty disturbing. USDA is the second largest federal office building in D.C. It is massive, with hallways that stretch for three city blocks on seven floors, and one block the other way on each floor. For the last few months, every other overhead light in the halls has had their bulbs removed. Sometimes, two lights in a row are dark. It's bright enough to walk down, no doubt, but still noticeably darker. Moreoever, each floor has two banks of elevators at each end, with three elevators per bank. For the last few months, one elevator at each bank has been put out of commission. Further, employees are now forbidden from putting space heaters in their offices, which many have done because the heating in the building has been turned down to a level where even I, a descendant of hardy Russian peasants, feel cold. "What does this tell me? It tells me that the government of the United States of America is having difficulty paying its utility bills. Think about that. Federal offices cannot keep all the lights on, or keep the heat sufficiently high. (We'll see what the air conditioning is like in a few months, when D.C. turns into a humid swamp). This is what one expects of Third World governments, not the USA."

In Which We Speak Of Creepy and Greeee-zzy

My three nephews stopped by for tea the other day. They refer to it not as "tea and crumpets" or "tea and cookies" or "tea and treacle" nor any other of an infinity of combinations beginning with the words "tea and...".
They call it "tea and a touch" blatantly and angelically open-faced and brazen, meaning they will hit me up for funds.

If I have been given a heads-up about their impending arrival, I am usually able to slip into my stage trousers of the deep pockets I keep empty for times like these. When the time comes for a "touch", I am able to pull out my pockets and show them the long linen, saying things in my stumbling Arabic such as "I have gambled all my coins or lucre on the sporting clubs!"
Once we have gotten past this pantomime, we are able to interact without our masks on: their pantomime mask of nepotial piety (nepotial from the same root that gives us "nepotism"; i.e., nepos="nephew") and I my pantomime mask of avuncular sympathy, and it is all gung-ho for the Earl Grey and chocolates.

On this particular day, we decided to speak as if we were newspapermen in Chicago in the 1920's transported to present-day America and writing about the economy. Thus, we spoke of Angelo "Greasy Finger" Mozillo and Countrywide Bank. The "greasy" part, pronounced "greeee-zzy", refers to tanning butter. There was Allen "Creepy" Greenspan, Stanley "Schemer" O'Neal of Merril Lynch, James "Jimmie Hat" Cayne of Bear Stearns, and Ben "Choirboy" Bernanke.
We swerved into other areas of public fame. There was George "Po' Boy" Bush (I am informed it is a type of sandwich), Richard "Dirty Dog" Cheney, Donald "Lemons" Rumsfeld ( he looks as if he sucks lemons...all the time), Paul "Bet a Billion" Wolfowitz, and William "B-S" Kristol.
Scarface would feel at home.
--

The Gas Tax Scheme

I was at my parents yesterday. They also find the idea of suspending the gas tax for the summer to be a nonsensical plan. Furthermore, it is an insult. It does not reqire an elitist economist to realize now, after a number of years of rising gas prices here, that the dropping of the tax will lead to increased use which will lead to increased demand which will lead to...pretty much the same bleeding price!

It is just more of the Bush "Don't bother your pretty little heads about it. Just go to the mall and shop." It is more smoke and mirrors. The true elitists are those in office. They make every effort to distract the public's gaze from real issues and focus it on trivia, whether it be nonsense gas tax holidays, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright as Obama's eminence grise, McCain's...well, I don't seem to be aware of anything about McCain, substantive or vacuous. I'm voting New Dem!

Reprise With Musical Score And Foley Effects

On April 30, I wrote in response to something the President said: The President has stated that there is no magic wand which he might wave to force back the price of fuel. Unfortunately, he is mistaken. He seems to have forgotten that he himself established the existence of such a magic wand. When did this President abandon the ways of magical thinking? He used to think magically. What else could you call his actions: talking to some sort of deity about launching a war, looking into the souls of Russians? Pure magic. The old magical wand he used to believe in was: Invade a Middle Eastern country and oil will be cheap! The War will pay for itself and supply will be assured for the future. Now we must add Perry Como's take on invading foreign countries: (To the tune of Catch A Falling Star)

Invade a foreign country, put it in your pocket, Never let it get away! Invade a foreign country, put it in your pocket, Save it for a rainy day! For times may change and gas become expensive, it can come and go; And if you try to make it more regressive, you'll have a pocket full of petro!

Narcissistic Satisfaction

As I wrote to Anna and her sisters, we here are truly alive and fancy ourselves to be the star spawn of the greater galaxies. we are legendary. we are God's beloved. we are never bored with ourselves. our souls squeak like new shoes with our sense of self satisfaction. we crackle and pop with the fire of invert adoration.

How Long Will The Violence Last? (The Walls Of Belfast And Doors Of Dublin)

If you have been keeping abreast of developments in Iraq, it means that you should be aware of the fact that peace has been brought to many neighborhoods by the construction of walls which serve to keep the factions apart. Walls are in fashion. I have devised a Wall Lapel Pin to wear to show my support of Wall politics:

This depicts the part of the Berlin Wall where someone has inscribed "Who Stop The War?", painted a Mogen David, and printed "Die Flagge Bassiert auf dem humanistischen Grundgedanken von Frieden und Einheit aller Volker..." und so wieder. Nifty or what? Speaking of Mogen David, we have the Wall of Israel...

and the Wall of Texas...

and the only Wall that is endangered is the Berlin Wall...

See Berlin O Philia for The Berlin Wall is Dying .  
(and I wonder whether another Communist fault was their inability to build walls like Capitalism can...)

Which all brings us to the point where we ask whether, when Robert Frost said there there is something which does not like a wall, he pondered on that corner of the soul that is all gung-ho for a wall or two.

There is an article on the walls of Belfast, Ireland which had been erected 30 years ago to keep the fighting factions apart. These walls are doing well. In fact, they are thriving. No signs of any abnormally early desuetude. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080503/ap_on_re_eu/the_walls_of_belfast  
Despite peace, Belfast walls are growing in size and number
 

The site for the Walls of Belfast ( or was it the Doors of Dublin?) is http://www.belfastinterfaceproject.org/interfacemap.asp So perhaps it takes the minimum of 1 generation, or 30 or so years. The wall in Israel comes about after the end of 2 generations, or 60 or so years. Therefore, Mr. McCain might be a bit high in his guesstimate of 100 years, but he is a damned sight closer than my paltry 10 years: the USA will be involved in the fighting in Iraq until at least 2063, plus or minus a quartacentennial part thereof. (The Pentagon, in order to be able to properly speak of the new phenomenon of Unending War has set up a committee of a number of brainy types, me included, to devise a lexicography. Thus, a quartacentennial is a 25 year period or a quarter of a century. Why not say "quarter of a century"? Would you actually expect that from someone who spends $500 on a toilet seat?)

Motels With Paradoxical Names

Reverend Jeremiah Wright

Jeremiah in the Sistine Chapel

Jeremiah is the name.

I am sure most of you are certain that Jeremiah was a bull frog. If you have forgotten, Jeremiah was also a prophet. Do you know the expression "jeremiad", meaning an oration or tirade against the misguided mores of the established order, derived from the name "Jeremiah"? Perhaps in the phoney world where cable TV speaks of the Reverend Wright they do not remember. "Jeremiah was hated, jeered at, ostracized, continually harassed, and more than once almost killed." Notes on Jeremiah 2 0 0 7 E d i t i o n Dr. Thomas L. Constable from the Temple Sermon: 9 Would you steal, murder, commit adultery, swear falsely, burn incense to Baal, go after other gods you do not know 10 and then come and stand before me in this temple, the one called by my name, and say 'We are safe'--only to keep on doing these travesties?! 11 Has this house, the one called by my name, become a den of thieves in your opinion? The language of God, and especially the prophetic language, is not the language of everyday life, of cable TV, of babbling commentators; nor is it the language of patriotism: it is the language of religion! And just as I cannot speak of war using the words and concepts of the language of playing a musical instrument, so also I may not speak of religious expression as if it were as simple as chatting about the weather. When Bill O'Reilly asks Hilary Clinton whether she would have stayed at a church wherein the pastor spoke as did Reverend Wright, both should have worn "Buffoon" pins on their lapels, for neither could imagine a religious discourse where the topics were anything but "please" and "thank you". At this point, I pray that "Jeremiah" is not a prophetic symbol, for Jeremiah spoke to the Jews about the Babylonian Exile they were to undergo.

One's Parents

A religious figure once said that if one wanted to follow Him, one should deny one's parents and drop everything of the past life and go follow Him. Now what does that mean? I was reading a sort of new age theist treatise mumbo-gumbo type thingie and there was a daily prayer, which suspisciously sounded a lot like some other daily prayers I had furtively heard elsewhere. I immediately suspected plagiarism, but I guess the end - spiritual improvement- justifies the means. Anyway, it started out " Our Father-Mother, who is in Heaven..." That's about as far as I got. If "father" is not adequate to mark the Divine, and we require "father-mother" to fully delineate it, then I submit that we actually need a room infinitely full of monkeys sitting at an infinite number of typewriters and typing out items about the nature of God. If God the Father is missing something, God the Father-Mother is missing something also, and has the added distinction of being verbose. To me, God the Father is one of those playthings of childhood that Paul tells us to put away, along with the teddy bears and Cracker Jack toys and water guns. We know no infinite "father" and the metaphor obscures rather than illuminates. If one leaves one's parents to follow Jesus, the point of His injunction was: in the eye of the Holy, there is no distinction between "father" nor "mother"; neither between "parent" nor "child". The concept of this lineage has no meaning before the face of God; the concepts of the world stand mute before God. Note well that this does not mean that one may live without morals, may live without filial piety, may lie, cheat,and steal, for at that point when one says that the human understanding of morality means nothing before the face of God, and therefore one is free to do whatever one desires and to engage and satisy one's lusts without compunction, then that individual has committed a logical error...if nothing else. No. At the time the small soul makes this rationalisation and turns to evil, then that soul has used the paltry words and concepts of an insipid moral discourse to justify its actions. However, if you cannot use words to touch God, then you also may not use words to turn from God. If your mind cannot accept God, then it is invalid to use your mind to reject God. You may continue on in your spiritual funk, your mind roasting on its material spit, over and over, but you can neither approach to nor recede from the Divine. You must live in complete faith. Complete faith is consciousness which frees itself from the wordy structures of everyday life, and it accepts the path of God wherein the precedence of parent to child means nothing, wherein the temporal sequence of filial piety is but a charming and quaint characteristic of the human species. Piety is living, breathing; it does not require 10 commandments; it does not require a genealogy; it does not need vicar nor presbyter nor pontiff. If you wish me to make this clearer, I suppose I could: If you live in complete faith, then the saying of Jesus that one need not give thought about what to eat or what to wear is simple; God provides for your needs. As impossible as that sounds, Jesus did say it. When we understand what it means, we shall understand freeedom in God. This is the mystery of the age: the irreconciliable difference between the Word of God and the word of economics. A stumbling block. Choose! Choose, and make your choice based on which is the structure that will free you: the laws of economy, the laws of science, the laws of logic...or the way of God? The way of God is the most difficult way, and it takes all your life to follow it. Then when you've arrived, you have to leave again on a far longer journey.

Get Out The Vote!

There are at least two excellent reasons for the citizens of a democratic country to get out on voting day and exercise their right to elect the leaders of their country. We may not yet be clear on whom to vote for, but we should be bloody well clear on our intention to vote. If only 50% of the population has the gumption to get off their backsides and vote, then the country gets a 50% solution, a watered-down leadership. The two reasons I mentioned? Here:

Do not ever let this happen again!

Hello, Lenin ! ( encore )

I thought I was speaking tongue in cheek when I spoke of the transformation of the USA into a quasi-central planning type system, at least in respect of the financial markets when the Fed resuscitated Bear Stearns. However, we see locally:

!!