Tucker Carlson: Michael Vick 'Should Have Been Executed' (VIDEO)

Tucker Carlson: Michael Vick 'Should Have Been Executed' (VIDEO)


Michael Vick paid the price and he's still paying it. He's ultimately responsibl­e for the cruel deaths of a number of dogs. We love dogs I understand­. And dogs raise good emotions in us and it's horrible that their lives should have ended so cruelly. But did you ever see how chickens, pigs and cattle are slaughtere­d "humanely?­" Should all those meat packers be executed? Are those of us who eat meat partly culpable? Vick paid the price. Further retributio­n makes no sense in a nation that is supposed to be Christian and forgiving. Move on. And yes Tucker Carlson is a complete mind numbing fool and we should ignore him.

Bundle Up, It’s Global Warming - NYTimes.com

Bundle Up, It’s Global Warming - NYTimes.com

NYT editorial on Wikileaks and the Banks

Banks and WikiLeaks

The whistle-blowing Web site WikiLeaks has not been convicted of a crime. The Justice Department has not even pressed charges over its disclosure of confidential State Department communications. Nonetheless, the financial industry is trying to shut it down.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/26/opinion/26sun3.html?_r=2

Merry Fucking Christmas

“Just a lot of sentimental­ hogwash where you live in some pathetic fantasy world. I'm glad it's over and we have ten months of rest from this endless commercial prattle.”

``Are there no prisons?'' asked Scrooge.
``Plenty of prisons,'' said the gentleman, laying down the pen again.
``And the Union workhouses?'' demanded Scrooge. ``Are they still in operation?''
``They are. Still,'' returned the gentleman, `` I wish I could say they were not.''
``The Treadmill and the Poor Law are in full vigour, then?'' said Scrooge.
``Both very busy, sir.''
``Oh! I was afraid, from what you said at first, that something had occurred to stop them in their useful course,'' said Scrooge. ``I'm very glad to hear it.''
``Under the impression that they scarcely furnish Christian cheer of mind or body to the multitude,'' returned the gentleman, ``a few of us are endeavouring to raise a fund to buy the Poor some meat and drink, and means of warmth. We choose this time, because it is a time, of all others, when Want is keenly felt, and Abundance rejoices. What shall I put you down for?''
``Nothing!'' Scrooge replied.
``You wish to be anonymous?''
``I wish to be left alone,'' said Scrooge. ``Since you ask me what I wish, gentlemen, that is my answer. I don't make merry myself at Christmas and I can't afford to make idle people merry. I help to support the establishments I have mentioned: they cost enough: and those who are badly off must go there.''
``Many can't go there; and many would rather die.''
``If they would rather die,'' said Scrooge, ``they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population. Besides -- excuse me -- I don't know that.''
``But you might know it,'' observed the gentleman.
``It's not my business,'' Scrooge returned. ``It's enough for a man to understand his own business, and not to interfere with other people's. Mine occupies me constantly. Good afternoon, gentlemen!''
Seeing clearly that it would be useless to pursue their point, the gentlemen withdrew. Scrooge resumed his labours with an improved opinion of himself, and in a more facetious temper than was usual with him.

The Great Gatsby--The Great American Novel

http://books.google.com/books?id=FV5R6_FgLUAC&lpg=PP1&ots=kHULUsdocc&dq=the%20great%20gatsby&pg=PA7#v=onepage&q&f=false

According to Legal Experts we may be commiting a crime reading the cables passed on by Wikileaks: Bullshit I say

The U.S. has no case and people who because they are lawyers and think they know should keep their unasked for opinions to themselves and stop doing the dirty work of the misinformation/disinformation experts. We have first amendment rights and whether or not they can be limited in regards to what we say or write in public, it doesn't prevent us from reading what is already published by a "free" press. What insanity! Otherwise roll up the streets and just lock us in our houses. It is not a crime to read even the most incendiary and flagrant treatises written in history much less what transpires for news. The less than a thousand cables published in the Times, the Guardian etc. are already published.

What are we looking at here, the novel "1984" come true?

Why do the rich want tax cuts

We haven't really heard from the top .5% of the wealthy who will be getting these gigantic tax cuts, perhaps permanently one day if the Republicans have their way. I fear they might. But we hear from their slavish protectors endlessly how this economy will improve once they have their money.

I see how it will improve the economy. On a drive one morning to the northernmost part of the island I'm staying on here on the Palm Coast of Florida, I saw the convoy of gardener trucks, pool cleaning trucks, sewer cleaning trucks, house cleaning trucks, delivery trucks, catering trucks etc.  making their way slowly up the A1A and turning into gated driveways that lead to the villas surrounded by perfectly manicured 15 foot hedges. In some cases I could see past through openings in the hedges to the lawns that looked as though they were putting greens, the mansions that looked like smaller versions of the Pierpont Morgan Library, their polished Mercedes, Bentleys & Bugattis all lined up in the driveways. Meanwhile an army of sweating men bare chested and wearing bandannas were already engaged in trimming, edging, mowing, clearing, sweeping, digging and delivering the services and goods necessary for the day.

It came to me that the ultra rich only want the tax cuts though they haven't said anything one way or the other (or at least I haven't heard) is because they can get them.  It's an expression of power, a reminder to us who they are, who they control and how much above us they really are. That they are powerful, that they own everything and that they can get whatever they want and take whatever they want without so much as raising themselves from their breakfast tables seems also to be the dream that their slavish protectors aspire to.



      

Daniel Ellsberg weighs in on Julian Assange

http://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2010/12/07-13

I read the news today, oh boy. John Lennon died and I was asleep

I missed the news that night as I fell asleep early. At five o'clock the following morning, a friend called and woke me up. She thought I'd be up anyway since I had an early class to teach. The combination of the news and my state of being barely awake threw me into an alternative, hypnotic state of reality.  I made it to class, I don't remember getting on the subway, don't recall going to the classroom, nodded to my students as they came in and asked them to just be quiet. Normally they were anyway.  It was a writing class so I told them to write for the next fifty minutes anything that they wanted and I sat there at the head of the class, containing my tears and wrote a long sappy, rambling encomium, one that I have read every anniversary.  

Jets lose the game of the Decade 45 -3

My Jets made a 32 ranked defense look like a champion. Hang your heads in shame. The problems with the game started in the first qtr with Ryan's bonehead challenge. From that point on everything went downhill. You give the best coach of the NFL in this decade (Belichek) along with an arguably best Qback of the decade (Brady) going up against "the better football team" (Ryan's words not mine) and you give them 11 days to plan and you see the result. Sanchez was the least of the problems. The offense sputtered everywhere else. The defense is lost without Jim Leonard. The Jets look like an 8 & 8 team though they'll end up 9&7. I want to burn all my Jet parapherna­lia. Patriots, I tip my hat.

Asange arrested

But Assange is only one person. There are more where he came from. The information is out of the box and will spill all over. It can't be put back. It can't be "walked" back. The outrage as a result only indicates how much it hurts and will continue to hurt. The empire seeks revenge, but it will be fruitless. They can chop heads. They can wound bodies. They can halt electronic transmissions. They can do whatever they like. But it's all over now Baby Blue.   

The Shameful Attacks on Julian Assange

From the Atlantic

by  David Samuels - David Samuels is a regular contributor to The Atlantic.

Julian Assange and Pfc Bradley Manning have done a huge public service by making hundreds of thousands of classified U.S. government documents available on Wikileaks -- and, predictably, no one is grateful. Manning, a former army intelligence analyst in Iraq, faces up to 52 years in prison. He is currently being held in solitary confinement at a military base in Quantico, Virginia, where he is not allowed to see his parents or other outside visitors.

Assange, the organizing brain of Wikileaks, enjoys a higher degree of freedom living as a hunted man in England under the close surveillance of domestic and foreign intelligence agencies -- but probably not for long. Not since President Richard Nixon directed his minions to go after Pentagon Papers leaker Daniel Ellsberg and New York Times reporter Neil Sheehan - "a vicious antiwar type," an enraged Nixon called him on the Watergate tapes -- has a working journalist and his source been subjected to the kind of official intimidation and threats that have been directed at Assange and Manning by high-ranking members of the Obama Administration.

 

 http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2010/12/the-shameful-attacks-on-julian-assange/67440/

Students being warned about WikiLeaks

University students are being warned about WikiLeaks.

An email from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, that we read in headlines, reads—I want to do it again—quote,

"Hi students,

"We received a call today from a SIPA alumnus who is working at the State Department. He asked us to pass along the following information to anyone who will be applying for jobs in the federal government, since all would require a background investigation and in some instances a security clearance.

"The documents released during the past few months through Wikileaks are still considered classified documents. He recommends that you DO NOT post links to these documents nor make comments on social media sites such as Facebook or through Twitter. Engaging in these activities would call into question your ability to deal with confidential information, which is part of most positions with the federal government.

"Regards, Office of Career Services."

Read entire interview including this e-mail @

http://www.democracynow.org/2010/12/3/is_wikileaks_julian_assange_a_hero

On WikiLeaks

If anything the cables show several things: 1. That American government actually does go to work   2. That the Obama Administration is a bit more responsible and uses less arm twisting than the Bush administration. 3. That U.S. diplomats can write complete sentences and have good perceptive powers not to mention are skilled at diplomacy. 4. That those of us who do follow world events are not surprised by any of the conclusions drawn. Who among us didn't think Berlusconi was a jerk or that the Mexicans can't get a handle on dealing with the drug cartels or that the Arabs are just as worried about Iran's nuclear track and above all that as of now, no one has been arrested for releasing these documents and that we do have a fairly democratic government? Unless of course secretly people are being taken out . . . but if WL survives we'll find that out eventually too. On the whole WL is important to a "free" and open society and will push journalism.

There are references to UFOs in the WikiLeaks recent published documents

Julian Assange:
Many weirdos email us about UFOs or how they discovered that they were the anti-christ whilst talking with their ex-wife at a garden party over a pot-plant. However, as yet they have not satisfied two of our publishing rules.
1) that the documents not be self-authored;
2) that they be original.
However, it is worth noting that in yet-to-be-published parts of the cablegate archive there are indeed references to UFOs

Julian Assange "terrorist"? That's what some people say

In order to be a "terrorist" don't you have to commit some kind of act of violence or have the intention of promoting violence? WikiLeaks doesn't do that. Everyone talks about "speaking truth to power" but when someone does it everyone goes bonkers. In defense of WikiLeaks and it's stance vis a vis releasing "classified" information. (3 million people had access BTW).read the following:

In 1971 Justice Potter Stewart wrote in the Pentagon Papers trial (NY Times, WaPo etc. )

Mr. Stewart argued that a free press was the only effective check on the power of American presidents to fight foreign wars, writing:

In the governmental structure created by our Constitution, the Executive is endowed with enormous power in the two related areas of national defense and international relations. This power, largely unchecked by the Legislative and Judicial branches, has been pressed to the very hilt since the advent of the nuclear missile age. For better or for worse, the simple fact is that a President of the United States possesses vastly greater constitutional independence in these two vital areas of power than does, say, a prime minister of a country with a parliamentary form of government.

In the absence of the governmental checks and balances present in other areas of our national life, the only effective restraint upon executive policy and power in the areas of national defense and international affairs may lie in an enlightened citizenry – in an informed and critical public opinion which alone can here protect the values of democratic government. For this reason, it is perhaps here that a press that is alert, aware, and free most vitally serves the basic purpose of the First Amendment. For, without an informed and free press, there cannot be an enlightened people.

"Black Friday"

Over the years I've had fewer and fewer people to buy gifts for. I've never done the "black Friday" thing. Now this year I'm not even participating in these holidays. I don't care. I've got a bottle of good scotch. And:

I have my books
And my poetry to protect me;
I am shielded in my armor,
Hiding in my room, safe within my womb.
I touch no one and no one touches me.
I am a rock,
I am an island.

Bloomberg you lose--Cathie Black dismissed

Blow to Bloomberg: Panel votes down mayor's pick for schools chancellor Cathie Black

BY Kerry Burke AND Rachel
MONAHAN DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS

Tuesday, November 23rd 2010, 5:47 PM

In a stunning blow to Mayor Bloomberg, his controversial pick for schools chancellor got a thumbs-down Tuesday from a state advisory panel.

A panel of eight education experts voted against granting a state waiver to media exec Cathie Black, Bloomberg's choice to replace outgoing Chancellor Joel Klein.

"It came after a lengthy discussion. It was a confidential ballot," said panel member Susan Fuhrman.
State Commissioner David Steiner will consider the panel's input when deciding on whether to grant the waiver to Black, who needs the exemption because she has no educational background.

After the panel met for more than two hours, four members voted against Black, two voted for her and two voted that they wouldn't approve her at this time.

A spokeswoman for the city education department and a spokesman for Bloomberg declined to comment.


Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/education/2010/11/23/2010-11-23_blow_to_bloomberg_panel_votes_down_mayors_pick_for_schools_chancellor_cathie_bla.html#ixzz169UfHV2A

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/education/2010/11/23/2010-11-23_blow_to_bloomberg_panel_votes_down_mayors_pick_for_schools_chancellor_cathie_bla.html#ixzz169USq65h

http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/education/2010/11/23/2010-11-23_blow_to_bloomberg_panel_votes_down_mayors_pick_for_schools_chancellor_cathie_bla.html

The Real Threats to the U.S.

http://stpeteforpeace.org/real.threat.html

Mayor Mike Bloomberg

Cosimo Medici was one of the most powerful men in Renaissance Italy. I believe that Bloomberg models himself after him. Medici thought of himself as a man who worked for the common good like Bloomberg believes he does except "Cosimo's career reflects this aristocratic, elitist tendency. His pose as a simple merchant, his pretense of being no greater than any other citizen, deluded no one. He crushed his enemies and exalted his friends and supporters." (http://employees.oneonta.edu/farberas/arth/arth213/Medici_patronage.html) This is Michael Bloomberg who thinks he owns NYC and in this vein crushes his enemies and exalts his rich friends.

The History of my Naval Service

I went on board the U.S.S Fort Snelling (LSD-30)  from Great Lakes Engineman's school on my 19th birthday Sept  8,1963. I was in A Division and worked on the four boats, the emergency diesels, the anchor, the steering gear and the two hydraulic cranes as well as the stern gate. In addition I moved on to work in the A/C and refrigeration gang. We took care of the galley refrigerators, the ward room refrigerator, the Captain's A/C and so on. As a fireman I sometimes stood watches in the engine room when underway.

One of my more enduring memories happened the day President Kennedy was assassinated. I was messenger of the watch and had to lower the flag to half mast and walk through the ship's quarters announcing what had happened. In lowering the flag it almost ripped out of my hands it was so windy that day. The OOD that watch was a crusty lieutenant that had served in WWII and had come up through the ranks. We used to call him "tight jaws" because he didn't say much, never showed emotion and was all spit and shine. He stood inside the watch cabin, smoking cigarette after cigarette, staring out at the jetty and crying. (I wrote a short story about it later on.)

In 1964 we barely outran a hurricane in the Caribbean, but the weather was so bad no one was permitted on deck. My partner in crime tied a rope to me and I got out an after hatch and took some photos which I can't find.

In 1965, our ship was the first to arrive at the Dominican Republic during that crisis in our continuing role as imperialist. The job I had required round the clock engine repair work. And I think it was the best time of my entire service working the midnight shift for weeks.  Got stories about that time too, but too long to put here. Maybe some day. 

On the Med cruise from 65-66 we anchored outside Genoa and for New Years Eve those of us on liberty got stuck on shore due to a bad storm. I spent the night on the floor of a whore house since I didn't have anymore money.   That was of course the time one of the sailors who was with me looked at a statue of a man named Cristoforo Colombo outside the RR station in Genoa. When I said that his name in English was Christopher Columbus, he said:  "They had one too?"  American education hasn't improved much since then.

In 1966 we were (I think) the command ship for a couple of months in the hunt for the lost 4 atomic bombs off the coast of Spain. I spent a lot of time in the water as boat engineer shuttling back and forth between the beach and other ships. The worst time we had was when we had an NBC camera crew with us and got hit with a freak storm. The boat almost capsized but only the ability of our hotshot coxswain got us to safety. He was only a kid but he could pilot a boat. BTW one of the camera crew was loudly saying prayers and you could hear him above the wind and the crashing waves. BTW they spent 3 months looking for one of the bombs that fell in the water about five miles off the coast.  A fisherman directed them to it when all their technological equipment couldn't.

The best time I had was my final cruise when I became a shellback and on the way back from the equator stayed in Trinidad. We got overnight liberty there and need I say more about that.

Wall Street quietly seeks to undo new financial rules

By Kevin G. Hall | McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — The heavy hitters of finance lost big battles earlier this year during the overhaul of financial regulation, but they're working hard to win the war. They're quietly trying to soften, if not kill, some of the more controversial provisions.

Lobbyists for Big Finance are working hardest to neutralize the so-called Volcker Rule, which would force big banks to spin off their lucrative proprietary trading operations, in which they invest their own capital in speculative deals.

The measure_ named after its proponent, former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker — seeks to prevent big banks from betting against trades they made on behalf of their customers, a popular practice until the financial crisis exploded in 2008. For example, big investment banks such as Goldman Sachs sold customers overvalued mortgage bonds even as they bet secretly that those bonds would default.

Financial lobbyists also are working to soften requirements that Wall Street firms put more "skin in the game" by retaining more mortgage bonds on their books to guard against shoddy lending. They're also trying to undercut the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Read more: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/11/16/103833/wall-street-quietly-seeks-to-undo.html

La Bitch (Sarah Palin) may be running for President

“I am,” Sarah Palin told me the next day when I asked her if she was already weighing a run for president. “I’m engaged in the internal deliberations candidly, and having that discussion with my family, because my family is the most important consideration here.” Palin went on to say that there weren’t meaningful differences in policy among the field of G.O.P. hopefuls “but that in fact there’s more to the presidency than that” and that her decision would involve evaluating whether she could bring unique qualities to the table.
 
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/21/magazine/21palin-t.html

You didn't get mad when . . .

After The 8 Years Of The Bush/Cheney Disaster, Now You Get Mad?

You didn't get mad when the Supreme Court stopped a legal recount and appointed a President.

You didn't get mad when Cheney allowed Energy company officials to dictate Energy policy and push us to invade Iraq.

You didn't get mad when a covert CIA operative got outed.

You didn't get mad when the Patriot Act got passed.

You didn't get mad when we illegally invaded a country that posed no threat to us.

You didn't get mad when we spent over 800 billion (and counting) on said illegal war.

You didn't get mad when Bush borrowed more money from foreign sources than the previous 42 Presidents combined.

You didn't get mad when over 10 billion dollars in cash just disappeared in Iraq.

You didn't get mad when you found out we were torturing people.

You didn't get mad when Bush embraced trade and outsourcing policies that shipped 6 million American jobs out of the country.

You didn't get mad when the government was illegally wiretapping Americans.

You didn't get mad when we didn't catch Bin Laden.

You didn't get mad when Bush rang up 10 trillion dollars in combined budget and current account deficits.

You didn't get mad when you saw the horrible conditions at Walter Reed.

You didn't get mad when we let a major US city, New Orleans, drown.

You didn't get mad when we gave people who had more money than they could spend, the filthy rich, over a trillion dollars in tax breaks.

You didn't get mad with the worst 8 years of job creations in several decades.

You didn't get mad when over 200,000 US Citizens lost their lives because they had no health insurance.

You didn't get mad when lack of oversight and regulations from the Bush Administration caused US Citizens to lose 12 trillion dollars in investments, retirement, and home values.

You finally got mad when a black man was elected President and decided that people in America deserved the right to see a doctor if they are sick. Yes, illegal wars, lies, corruption, torture, job losses by the millions, stealing your tax dollars to make the rich richer, and the worst economic disaster since 1929 are all okay with you, but helping fellow Americans who are sick along with many other things... Oh, Hell No!!

Boehner the Douchebag

With Many mea culpas and apologies to the Beatles:

He's a real nowhere man,
Sitting in his Nowhere Land,
Making all his nowhere plans
for the TEA Party loo loos

Thinks he has a point of view,
Knows not where he's going to,
He's a bit like the TEA party poo ooo

Nowhere Man please listen,
You don't know what you're missing,
Nowhere Man,the world will never be at your command!

ETC.

Dems lose big, Repubs gain and President Obama can start all over

Fuck the Tea Party they suck. Sarah Palin lost more than gained too. The Republicans captured the house and now has almost evened the Senate.  But this could turn out to be a good thing for the Prez. He'll have to rise above, become a statesman instead of a cheerleader and campaigner. He still has the press coverage, the bully pulpit and there are many things he can do by executive power. Sometimes getting flattened is good for the soul. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger. . .

Jean Luc Godard's purported anti-semitism

Brody’s most incriminating charge is that of anti-Semitism, not only in connection with Godard’s longtime support of the Palestinian cause but as a matter of generalized prejudice rooted in everything from his childhood absorption of ambient French bigotry to his feud with Claude Lanzmann over the latter’s refusal to use archival footage in the Holocaust documentary Shoah. Brody musters a fair amount of evidence, such as a 1985 remark that invokes the stereotyped slur of Jewish usury: in the history of cinema, Godard said, the ”real producer” is “the image of the Central European Jew” because “[m]aking a film [involves] visibly producing debts.” Brody locates the heart of Godard’s anti-Jewish bias in his conviction—aired most expansively in Histoire(s) du cinéma, his 1998 video series—that true cinema died in the middle Forties as a result of its failure to document the Holocaust, a failure that Godard attributes to money-minded Jewish studio heads. More broadly, Brody paints Godard as an obsessive artist who regards “all of human history as a precursor to or tributary of the history of cinema,” and who blames the Jewish people—starting with Moses, who returned from the Burning Bush with tablets of law rather than icons of revelation—for “the fundamental cultural flaw of society, its preference for text over images, its anti-cinematic prejudice.” Brody finds the apex of Godard’s bigotry in the 2004 collage-drama Notre Musique, which Brody calls “a film of prewar prejudices adorned with postwar resentments—and, like much else in the history of anti-Semitism, with personal frustrations.” As powerful as much of Brody’s argument is, he weakens it by overinterpreting the evidence and (as with the women-and-films motif) pushing it too far—writing about Notre Musique, for example, as if anti-Semitism overwhelmed every other element in its intricate network of images and ideas. But dubious devices mar only a few portions of Everything Is Cinema, and my other complaints are relatively minor, relating to interpretations more than methodologies.

http://www.cineaste.com/articles/everything-is-cinema-the-working-life-of-jeanluc-godard

This election is pretty much the same as all the others

"Midterms Don't Matter"

Do the midterm elections actually matter? The Economist's Will Wilkinson doesn't think so. In spite of all the hysteria and "hyperventilating" commercials, Wilkinson argues that policy tends to stay the same regardless of who's in power. While the ruling party will naturally favor their supporters—that's public-employees unions for Democrats and "rich people and Raytheon" for Republicans—Wilkinson maintains that it's unreasonable to expect any big changes from Congress, or even that special interest groups will give up much power. "Military suppliers, big Wall Street interests, and the economic middle-class may do better or worse, but they always do pretty well," Wilkinson writes. In fact, he says, "this is the great unspeakable fact of American politics: it doesn't matter all that much who wins." At the New York Times, Ross Douthat refuses to say that November won't make a difference at all, but he does concede that Wilkinson offers a "useful corrective to the vast effort currently underway to persuade you that this election … is a world-historical hinge moment."

Read original story in The Economist | Monday, Nov. 1, 2010

What raised suspicions?

What raised the suspicion of the two packages sent from Yemen to Chicago area synagogues? The fact that they were "packages" being sent from an Arab country with known terrorists to an American Jewish house of worship? Or did anyone know what was in each package? Why would such a thing be sent from there to there? It might raise less suspicions if it were the other way the other way around. No?  Unless we had inside information there's no way of knowing or finding out. All I have is logic, my logic, western logic.


It seems like an enormous effort to do what the bomb planners proposed to do even if it meant the target was air cargo shipping. Not a lot of bang for the buck if one or two planes explode. Still the possibility that it would expose known holes in security of cargo transport is an area to be investigated. Shipping would have been disrupted but not entirely damaged. Intelligence services since 9/11/2001 have been focused on passenger planes since that time and the cargo shipments have largely been ignored. So it would mean doubling up now on air cargo. What about ships? Trains? Was it only because air shipments are more convenient for this kind of plan? 

There is much that doesn't seem to add up. None of us should be satisfied that the reasoning behind this hasn't been fully understood. The front pages of newspapers should be demanding answers.  Or maybe we shouldn't and intelligence forces are figuring it out now. My initital thoughts were that this was an operation designed to examine how the machinery of response operated once the packages were discovered and if a bomb went off in the process so much the better. I have yet to be disabused of that.

Terror on the planes

I may watch too many spy shows, read too many spy books, but how would we not know that this wasn't some kind of a test run? Or that it is not a a feint or misdirection to make us take the eye off the ball somewhere else? Think about it this way. They send out a piece of "converted" equipment with a couple of wires and then throw in some white powder. Might as well throw in the "kitchen sink" of terrorist tools too as an inside joke on their part. That should get us going in circles. And then they watch what we do and look for the weak spots. The information came from an ally. How did that information get passed on? Is there a mole? Did the plans include a snitch? Is someone looking out for us? Still the last few "terrorist" boobs failed. So has this. But is this just another failure or is this a test and we can expect something elsewhere? Are we giving them too much credit or not enough? Of course with the elections a few days off that is an advantage for causing fear to expand.

Oklahoma May Ban Islamic Law

Oklahoma voters may be out of work. They may even be losing their homes. But at least they won't have to worry about being tried in Islamic court if a ballot measure to outlaw Sharia law passes next week, reports the Los Angeles Times. There's no recorded case of Islamic Sharia law ever appearing in Oklahoma, but backers of the measure urge vigilance. "Oklahoma does not have that problem yet," said Republican state Rep. Rex Duncan, who wrote the measure placed on the ballot by the state Legislature. "But why wait until it's in the courts?" In Europe, Muslims can choose to hash out divorce and custody cases in Sharia courts. Other cases remain the province of secular jurisprudence, but advocates of the amendment say the European situation is a cautionary tale. The measure, known as state Question 755, had the support of 49 percent of Oklahoma voters back in July. No recent polling data is available, but last week the group Act for America—which trumpets its crusade against radical Islam—launched an advertising campaign to support the amendment. Representatives from the Muslim community in Oklahoma say the state is doing O.K. "There's no threat of Sharia law coming to Oklahoma and America, period," said a spokesperson from the Islamic Society of Greater Oklahoma City. "It's just a scare tactic."

http://slatest.slate.com/id/2272841/?wpisrc=newsletter

Marshall McCluhan

IF IT WORKS,
IT’S
OBSOLETE

Marshall McLuhanisms

The story of modern America begins With the discovery of the white man by
The Indians.
Only puny secrets need protection. Big discoveries are protected by public
incredulity.
Whereas convictions depend on speed-ups, justice requires delay.
The nature of people demands that most of them be engaged in the most
frivolous possible activities—like making money.
With telephone and TV it is not so much the message as the sender that is
“sent.”
Money is the poor man’s credit card.
We look at the present through a rear-view mirror. We march backwards into
the future.
Spaceship earth is still operated by railway conductors, just as NASA is
managed by men with Newtonian goals.
Invention is the mother of necessities.
You mean my whole fallacy’s wrong?
Mud sometimes gives the illusion of depth.
The car has become the carapace, the protective and aggressive shell, of urban and suburban man.
Why is it so easy to acquire the solutions of past problems and so difficult to solve current ones?
The trouble with a cheap, specialized education is that you never stop paying for it.
People don’t actually read newspapers. They step into them every morning like a hot bath.
The road is our major architectural form.
Today each of us lives several hundred years in a decade.
Today the business of business is becoming the constant invention of new business.
The price of eternal vigilance is indifference.
News, far more than art, is artifact.
When you are on the phone or on the air, you have no body.
Tomorrow is our permanent address.
All advertising advertises advertising.
The answers are always inside the problem, not outside.
“Camp” is popular because it gives people a sense of reality to see a replay of their lives.
This information is top security. When you have read it, destroy yourself.
The specialist is one who never makes small mistakes while moving toward the grand fallacy.
One of the nicest things about being big is the luxury of thinking little.
Politics offers yesterday’s answers to today’s questions.
The missing link created far more interest than all the chains and explanations of being.
In big industry new ideas are invited to rear their heads so they can be clobbered at once. The idea department of a big firm is a sort of lab for isolating dangerous viruses.
When a thing is current, it creates currency.
Food for the mind is like food for the body: the inputs are never the same as the outputs.
Men on frontiers, whether of time or space, abandon their previous identities. Neighborhood gives identity. Frontiers snatch it away.
The future of the book is the blurb.
The ignorance of how to use new knowledge stockpiles exponentially.
A road is a flattened-out wheel, rolled up in the belly of an airplane.
At the speed of light, policies and political parties yield place to charismatic images.
“I may be wrong, but I’m never in doubt.”
—Copyright © 1986, McLuhan Associates, Ltd.

Alexis de Tocqueville on religion in America

There is no country in the whole world in which the Christian religion retains a greater influence over the souls of men than in America, and there can be no greater proof of its utility, and of its conformity to human nature, than that its influence is most powerfully felt over the most enlightened and free nation of the earth.

The Americans combine the notions of Christianity and of liberty so intimately in their minds, that it is impossible to make them conceive the one without the other; and with them this conviction does not spring from that barren traditionary faith which seems to vegetate in the soul rather than to live.

There are certain populations in Europe whose unbelief is only equaled by their ignorance and their debasement, while in America one of the freest and most enlightened nations in the world fulfills all the outward duties of religion with fervor.

Upon my arrival in the United States, the religious aspect of the country was the first thing that struck my attention; and the longer I stayed there, the more did I perceive the great political consequences resulting from this state of things, to which I was unaccustomed. In France I had almost always seen the spirit of religion and the spirit of freedom pursuing courses diametrically opposed to each other; but in America I found that they were intimately united, and that they reigned in common over the same country.”

Life in Afghanistan: War by the Numbers

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/10/25/life-in-afghanistan-war-b_n_773235.html
When I returned from the service in the sixties after 4 years, I had seen very limited battle action. Most of my activity had been routine but I'll spare you the details of the other things. All I can say is I was lucky. Still I had a hard time adjusting to civilian life. How incredibly hard it must be then for these soldiers when they return, if they return and in one piece. As a nation we should be disturbed by what these men and women have to go through and we should be demanding a withdrawal now. Personally I feel ashamed that I can do very little except complain or just protest. Why are we continuing to be engaged in Afghanistan? It is nine years. Let's cut our losses and leave and let's fix this country!

NY's Retiree Issues

N.Y. Faces $200 Billion in Retiree Health Costs

By MARY WILLIAMS WALSH

Published: October 12, 2010

The cities, counties and authorities of New York have promised more than $200 billion worth of health benefits to their retirees while setting aside almost nothing, putting the public work force on a collision course with the taxpayers who are expected to foot the bill.

The total cost appears in a report to be issued on Wednesday by the Empire Center for New York State Policy, a research organization that studies fiscal policy.
It does not suggest that New York must somehow come up with $200 billion right away.

Overcoming Procrastination

Twenty-one years ago, psychologist Neil Fiore release his book The Now Habit. Here's a look at his revolutionary book on overcoming procrastination at work and enjoying our free time guilt-free.
Image a composite of a photo by Chris Willis and The Now Habit cover.
Note: All parenthetical citations in this article refer to the page numbers in the 2007 edition of The Now Habit.
If you've climbed out from under a soul-crushing project list, cleaned out and redefined your to-do list, and set firm boundaries between work and play, but you still feel like you aren't handling the weight of broken commitments and unaccomplished work, plain and simple procrastination may be the root of your stress.

http://lifehacker.com/5658620/the-now-habit-overcoming-procrastination-and-enjoying-guilt+free-play

So this is how it will become with Public Libraries

NY Times

Anger as a Private Company Takes Over Libraries

By DAVID STREITFELD

SANTA CLARITA, Calif. — A private company in Maryland has taken over public libraries in ailing cities in California, Oregon, Tennessee and Texas, growing into the country’s fifth-largest library system.
Now the company, Library Systems & Services, has been hired for the first time to run a system in a relatively healthy city, setting off an intense and often acrimonious debate about the role of outsourcing in a ravaged economy.
A $4 million deal to run the three libraries here is a chance for the company to demonstrate that a dose of private management can be good for communities, whatever their financial situation. But in an era when outsourcing is most often an act of budget desperation — with janitors, police forces and even entire city halls farmed out in one town or another — the contract in Santa Clarita has touched a deep nerve and begun a round of second-guessing.
Can a municipal service like a library hold so central a place that it should be entrusted to a profit-driven contractor only as a last resort — and maybe not even then?
“There’s this American flag, apple pie thing about libraries,” said Frank A. Pezzanite, the outsourcing company’s chief executive. He has pledged to save $1 million a year in Santa Clarita, mainly by cutting overhead and replacing unionized employees. “Somehow they have been put in the category of a sacred organization.”
The company, known as L.S.S.I., runs 14 library systems operating 63 locations. Its basic pitch to cities is that it fixes broken libraries — more often than not by cleaning house.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/27/business/27libraries.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&adxnnl=1&ref=general&src=me&adxnnlx=1285761833-pyW2s/nDJjwdhw21upcikQ

Simplifying the Decision for a Prostate Screening

September 27, 2010, 5:13 pm

By TARA PARKER-POPE

Stuart Bradford

One of the most difficult decisions a man makes about prostate cancer happens long before the diagnosis. Should he get a regular blood test to screen for the disease?
Screening for early detection of cancer sounds like a no-brainer, but it’s not an easy choice for men considering regular P.S.A. tests, which measure blood levels of prostate-specific antigen and are used to detect prostate cancer. Though use of the test is widespread, studies show that the screening saves few, if any, lives.
While the test helps find cellular changes in the prostate that meet the technical definition of cancer, they often are so slow-growing that if left alone they will never cause harm. But once cancer is detected, many men, frightened by the diagnosis, opt for aggressive surgical and radiation treatments that do far more damage than their cancers would have, leaving many impotent and incontinent.

Just a treasure trove of rights abuse today

F.B.I. Searches Antiwar Activists’ Homes

by Colin Moynihan

F.B.I. agents executed search warrants Friday in Minneapolis and Chicago in connection to an investigation of support of terror organizations.


The searches in Minneapolis took place early in the morning at the homes of people who have helped organize demonstrations against the war in Iraq and protests held two years ago during the Republican National Convention in St. Paul.

The Republicans think they have the answer. Why?

Saturday's NY Times Editorial page has an examination of the "Pledge to America," a document that is worth mocking. And the Times does its best.

The GOP's Pledge
Extravagant promises and bluster are the stuff of campaign rhetoric, but the House Republicans’ “Pledge to America” goes far beyond the norm.


Its breathless mimicry of the Declaration of Independence — the “governed do not consent,” it declares, while vowing to rein in “an arrogant and out-of-touch government of self-appointed elites” — would be ludicrous, if these were not destructively polarized times.

Dancing on the graves

As a society dies, the laughter rings out. Each death calls for more unimpeded guffaws and for frolicking on graves.  The living could do nothing better than laugh since their impending fate will emerge soon enough and the peels of laughter will be heard as the gasping breaths expire. Reported as such in the book "The Mountain People" were The Ik who were starving to death. And those who watched them starve laughed only to be starving later themselves.

We have a picture of our own society which is dying, but it is dying from an excess of stupidity and blindness not from want of food. That we have a bloated class of wealth and a fattened herd of poor only makes the failure of our society that more pronounced in its failure. All around us we have entertainment and all around us the individuals who have emerged who claim leadership are "entertainers" looking to be popular, to be exciting to want to bask and wallow in the adoration. Yet no one wants to say the truth which is that we are a society lying fallow and fallen to earth that we no longer stand with angels, that we no longer care even about ourselves. Those who follow which are almost all of us, follow the leaders into the morass.

These failures are highlighted in a political system that has become increasingly shallow and is soon to be hollowed.  Those emerging in the new paradigm whatever it might be will be the wealthy, the organized and whoever the anointed royalty is. These were the ones who didn't laugh out loud. These were the ones who only smirked to themselves.

A reign of terror will be the only answer in the end as it was in France in 18th Century and then this will be followed by many decades of upheaval.  Call it revolution, call it whatever. It will happen regardless of the current terrorists, the nuclear weapons, the religious fervor, the political tomfoolery and the madness that infects us all.  

Bill Maher's New Rule

New Rule: The next rich person who publicly complains about being vilified by the Obama administration must be publicly vilified by the Obama administration. It's so hard for one person to tell another person what constitutes being "rich", or what tax rate is "too much." But I've done some math that indicates that, considering the hole this country is in, if you are earning more than a million dollars a year and are complaining about a 3.6% tax increase, then you are by definition a greedy asshole.

Don't Blame Me

Obama To Liberals: Don't Blame Me, Blame Yourself

Obama said this last night at a $30,000 a plate fundraiser:

Democrats, just congenitally, tend to get -- to see the glass as half empty. (Laughter.) If we get an historic health care bill passed -- oh, well, the public option wasn't there. If you get the financial reform bill passed -- then, well, I don't know about this particularly derivatives rule, I'm not sure that I'm satisfied with that. And gosh, we haven't yet brought about world peace and -- (laughter.) I thought that was going to happen quicker. (Laughter.) You know who you are. (Laughter.) We have had the most productive, progressive legislative session in at least a generation.

So, let's review the record one more time:

http://agonist.org/sean_paul_kelley/20100917/obama_to_liberals_dont_blame_me_blame_yourself

Jimmy Carter's Quotes

JIMMY CARTER QUOTES

Our American values are not luxuries, but necessities -- not the salt in our bread, but the bread itself. JIMMY CARTER, Farewell Address, Jan. 14, 1981 War may sometimes be a necessary evil. But no matter how necessary, it is always an evil, never a good. We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other's children. JIMMY CARTER, Nobel Lecture, Dec. 10, 2002 To be true to ourselves, we must be true to others. JIMMY CARTER, Inaugural Address, Jan. 20, 1977

One of the tenets of the Declaration of Independence

We know that life is cheap nowadays. No one cries over the collateral damage any more.  Liberty is also at a premium given the continuing loss of our rights. Those rights we don't understand that they are gone until we are involved in some legal wrangle.  But what about the pursuit of happiness? Where has that gone?

What's in a name?

High fructose corn syrup, by any other name

Corn syrup producers want sweeter name, corn sugar, to help boost sales 

By EMILY FREDRIX

updated 9/14/2010 11:04:56 AM ET

 

NEW YORK — The makers of high fructose corn syrup want to sweeten up its image with a new name: corn sugar.

The bid to rename the sweetener by the Corn Refiners Association comes as Americans' concerns about health and obesity have sent consumption of high fructose corn syrup, used in soft drinks but also in bread, cereal and other foods, to a 20-year low.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39169416/ns/business-consumer_news/


 

 

And he was allowed to return to school--only after passing a drug test

School Suspends Boy for Bloodshot Eyes

Published : Thursday, 09 Sep 2010, 9:32 PM CDT

• 
  Sophia Reza
  FOX 4 News

Adapted for Web by Tracy DeLatte, myFOXdfw.com

TROPHY CLUB, Texas - Administrators at Byron Nelson High School in Trophy Club suspended a 16-year-old boy on Tuesday because his eyes were bloodshot and they thought he might have been smoking marijuana.
The teen said he was not high. Instead his eyes were red because he had been grieving the loss of his murdered father.

http://www.myfoxdfw.com/dpp/news/090910-school-suspends-boy-for-bloodshot-eyes

I'm welcoming myself

Welcome!

Bloglines has announced that they will be closing down on Oct1, 2010. Most of my blog is lost. I managed to save a year's worth but it can't be exported to this blog. So. I'll be starting from scratch.  Mainly I use this blog for musings and nonsense.

Where did the name the Blinking Head come from?  Explanations below:

Some News items. But mainly personal opinions that may be unreasonable, without warrant, meaningless and shameless but relentless and consistent as a blinking light. Of course there is that story about Antoine-Laurent de Lavoisier, the guy who discovered and named oxygen & hydrogen and executed during the reign of terror. He purportedly asked a servant to see if his eyes blinked after he was beheaded. No one could prove the story. But maybe we can see after death.