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Bachelor Nutrition, part 1. Breakfast
Want the quickest, healthiest breakfast? Try this: half a container of cottage cheese, half the blueberries, and a sprinkle of slivered almonds. These should be, respectively, without rBGH, organic, and raw* when possible. The second day this meal will be even more convenient, since the berries are already rinsed and you can combine everything in the dairy container without needing to dirty a bowl. Use a plastic spoon and you can take breakfast for the drive.
*The Bachelor Nutrition series is meant to provide simple authoritative culinary guidance without exhaustive explanation. Suffice to say, your food should avoid additives, pesticides, and processing, and should be fresh, not frozen. Which means not just organic, but local. Check eatwild.com for a clean source for meat and dairy. Check localharvest.com for local organic produce.
Poetry Slams slam poetry
Poetry Slams have reduced our most elevated literary genre to the arena of Hallmark Cards. Can you imagine compelling Longfellow to extemporize on the spot, faced with one-upping a fast-rapping carnival barker? Perhaps Oscar Wilde could have risen to the challenge against a ghetto phoenix such as Eminem, but Eminem is not representative of the norm. We have to acknowledge the aberration of genius.
These days we are prepared to recognize the profound in autism. Improvised mental acuity may be the specialty of some few, but it will remain a statistical improbability that such genius resides in your neighborhood. I’d say poetry voice-offs in malls or coffee shops, with contests open to all comers, are most likely efforts in philistinism. Like all things pop, crap for crap tastes.
Poetry appreciation in common circles is for reading not writing. Poetry writing is therapy fodder, meant for no further than the support group circle.
I say more art appreciation, less gluing of noodles to paper plates painted gold. Otherwise to a passerby, unschooled like the majority have become, poetry is an abysmal cacophony of disjointed near-sighted observations, shall I compare thee to a navel on the half-gazed?
Will the Obama speech trump tribalism?
The press misleads us about the war, the economy, the environment, our health, even our food. Would you care to proffer one topic for which they do not present a perspective skewed by corporate interest? I can’t. Our national media cannot still broach the suggestion that our president is an imbecilic jackass. And now they’re fawning over Obama.
Oh the usual Fox buffoons are raising their objections, but I suspect it’s their turn as good cop bad cop, further building this perfect storm of electoral excitement. Everywhere I go, I hear friends talking about Obama’s speech. Oh it was some speech. Historic? Momentous? But are those their words? To compare it to JFK means to eclipse MLK like he was unsliced bread. Have you heard the speech? Is this buzz generating from you?
As a theatrical chorus setting the tone, the media is showing a wildly selective memory in rationalizing their adulation. Did we/they mean to skip over Reagan? He gave good speech. Many actors have made memorable speeches. And politicians. I favor James Galloway’s speech before the Senate, before that, I remember Oliver North’s.
Men of substance can make great speeches. Literary heros come to mind. What would happen if Americans held the presidential candidates to those standards? Czechoslovakia did. Couldn’t the most powerful elected office in the world command a higher wisdom quotient?
Barack Obama is certainly quick witted and persuasive. Has he persuaded you with the intelligence he’s displayed as a legislator? Going to war, the Patriot Act, Torture, Impeachment? Has he voiced concerns for health care reform, for example? You think Obama isn’t at liberty to be candid about those problems NOW?
Back to the media: who do you suppose our corporations, Wall Street, the World Bank, and the Military Industrial Complex want to see in our highest office? Bush is term limited, so who’s the next “best man for the job?”
I can see Americans voting for a woman, half the population are women, one hundred percent of everybody’s mothers are women. We’ve always entrusted teaching and nursing to women. More and more of our professors, judges, mayors, and governors are women. Hillary Clinton not only has political experience, she’s had a close personal brush with the top job. And to assuage any chauvinists, Hillary will have a male presidential chaperone, the traditional spouse and mentor, himself a role model to chauvinists. Is this woman electable? You have only to look beyond the media defamation to see a fully competent “bitch”.
Barack Obama’s speech may have addressed the issue of race in America with a finesse to make you swoon. So did he resolve it, put it to bed, as the media would like our own excited buzzings to conclude? Racism is in our hands, isn’t it?
I’d like to ask you, if you’ll turn off the telly for a mo, in your heart of hearts, will American voters, 90% of them who are white and can get into the polls unobstructed, will they vote for a black man? Visualize the red state voters who returned Bush to office for a second term. Visualize the ugly operatives, Christians and Blacks among them, who conspire to uphold Neo-conservative power, will they acquiesce to a black challenger?
I too would like to hope, but I’d like to hope Americans wake up to the difficult, self-critical rhetoric it’s going to take to reclaim our democracy. God Damn the anti-democratic corporate mouthpieces for offering us a calculated false hope. When Obama looses, they’ll shame us for not showing faith enough in hope.
Lynndie England…
Remember her? Starlet of RightWing Torture Porn?
Now she’s saying that the torture and degradation she put on the prisoners at Abu Ghraib didn’t cause all the outrage about their treatment,
It Was Our REPORTING The Incident that caused the trouble.
Ummmm… Private England, your Reality Check seems to have bounced.
I’m pretty sure while you were in Federal prison for the past year and a half that the special treatment you received wasn’t anything like the “special treatment” you and your coward pig buddies gave the helpless MEN under your power. The REAL men, not your coward pig comrades.
You said “hey, things like that happen in War”
Only, you weren’t fighting in the war. Beating up on people while they’re helpless isn’t fighting…
I realize that your punk-ass penitentiary guards who had you in custody treated YOU like some kind of hero. You were only doing what they do to prisoners every day.
Pigs never do seem to get the idea that torture isn’t a good thing. The penitentiary guards and police here in America treat prisoners basically the same way. Because the prisoners are helpless and the pigs get off to treating people like that.
Must really suck to be one of Your kids, or Your pets, or Your aged mother… Abusive people are like that. They treat anybody or any animal that’s helpless the same way.
Bitch, YOU were never a hero of any kind. You’re a sick sadistic asshole. You’re a sex offender, of the worst kind. You get aroused by torture and you, like your slimy slithering Comrades you work your evil way into a system which permits you to do it, enables you to do it, and rewards you for doing it.
Maybe a condition of your parole should have been that you go back to Iraq, and walk the streets there, every day visit every single one of the Men and Women you and your Coward Bitch Comrades tortured… alone and unarmed.
Miniature chartreuse green peace flags
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Reprinted from PPJPC.ORG: These little peace flags were such a hit at the parade. And they came together without too much fuss. This being an election year, perhaps others will be seeking to make these affordable 6 x 7 inch flags on 12 inch dowels. You’ll need one yard of fabric for every 36 flags. Dowels of 3/16 inch diameter come 20 to a bag. You’ll expend one glue stick for every 10 flags. |
For equipment, you need an inexpensive glue gun and a quilter’s fabric cutting ensemble which includes the standard 18in x 24in cutting mat, 6in x 24in acrylic ruler, and 45mm rotary cutter. This method of cutting the material will prove indispensable. I’m not kidding. At every cut, you’ll be unable to contain yourself from audibly expressing how easy it is.
If you plan to print an image on your flags, the silk screen process will be far and away the cheapest. In such case, a common screen used for t-shirts will accommodate 4-up, aligned horizontally. This means you’ll get four flags per screen pull. Take note that the heat-drying process used in silk screening will require that you choose a predominantly COTTON fabric.
For the silk-screening, you’ll need first to cut your fabric into 12in x 14.6in panels. This can be done in TWO CUTS. Take the material you’ve purchased, leave it folded as it came off the bolt. For the uninitiated, a fabric yard represents 36in by 44in which folded in half means a 22in length. Using the cutting mat to measure the fabric, cut a 12 inch strip. This will produce a 12in x 44in piece. Leaving it doubled over, make the second cut at 14.6in which effectively divides it into 3 equal pieces.
Repeat until you’ve got a tidy pile of near-squares ready for printing. You may find it much easier to cut all the strips first, then make the dividing cuts.
You’ll note that as a result, 2/3 of your panels will have a factory hem on one side. Since you’ve no intention of hemming these flags, it will be of interest to exploit that single protected edge to forestall fraying. Sort your panels so that the factory edge is on the same side in the pile. Again you can keep this in mind right after you’ve cut the panels. This is explained out of order in the interest of clarity. You’re doing this to be helpful for when the printer handles the panels.
The printer will want to set the screen to offset the image to the right of the center, to allow for the fabric needed to wrap around the stick. This calculation will have to be made when you create your printed image. Since the stick will be glued to one side of the flag, it will be best to position the factory hem on the opposite side to achieve the maximum benefit, thus, the right side.
Once the panels are printed, you can cut them into individual flags. This will require another TWO CUTS, and this time you can cut them four panels at a time, depending on the sharpness of your blade. Just make sure your panels are all oriented the same direction, then cut them into equal quarters.
Next, with the printed image facing down, apply a bead of hot glue in a strip 1.5 inches inside the post edge, you can do this with two squeezes of the gun, then apply a third squeeze in a squiggly line between your first bead and the edge.
Quickly place the wood dowel against the middle of the squiggly glue and rotate it such that it draws the edge of the material up and around the dowel to meet the thick line of glue. Press the fabric together for a couple seconds to feel the glue making contact. You’re done.
Cost per flag: At $2.99/yard, fabric for each flag costs 8¢. Dowels were 5¢ each. Figure the glue at 2¢ per flag. Depending on your printing costs, probably you can calculate each impression to cost 25¢. Which means, not counting your labor, the flags cost $0.40 a piece. If you are thinking to make several thousand, perhaps this cost still appears prohibitive. But imagine you’ll end up with a very finished looking product which your recipients will take home as keepsakes.
The Democratic Party’s war on the Iraqi people
The War’s over, the Democratic Party is back in power! Are you waiting to hear this big celebration come November? Then you are politically delusional, if not even politically lobotomized, too. These wars without end are from the Democratic Party, by the Democratic Party, and are caused by too many idiot, liberal minded people supporting the Democratic Party throughout their entire lives. Let’s review some…
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… I am willing to make a bet to anyone here that we care more about the Iraqi people than Saddam Hussein does. — U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, CNN Town Hall Meeting, Columbus, Ohio, February 18, 1998
We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that’s more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it? — Lesley Stahl on UN sanctions against Iraq, 60 Minutes, May 12, 1996
I think this is a very hard choice, but the price — we think the price is worth it. — U.S. Ambassador to the UN Madeleine Albright replying
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So begins Rahul Mahajan’s commentary in the journal, Freedom Daily. He rehashes the history of the Clinton/ Gore war on Iraq previous to Bush’s occupation of that country, seemingly for all the people with the memory scan length of mice.
Yes, the Iraq War is a product of the United Nations, the Democratic Party, the Republican Party, and the previous leadership of most of the European countries. It is greatly frustrating to me, and many others, to have to work to end this war with Democratic Party supporters monopolizing control of all the so-called ‘peace organizations’. If you guys are so much for Peace, then stop voting for a party that isn’t!
That’s right. The Democratic Party continues to exercise control over the minds of most of the Antiwar Movement’s supporters, and it keeps this war from being ended now. We need organizations for Peace to be run without these brakes on it from liberal Democrats pretending to be saintly people, as they do all the time. They are not saints, but obstacles to getting it done. Stop the Democratic Party’s war on the Iraqi people, and get control back from the local ‘peace’ organizations run by paid office staff, and controlled by Democratic Party manipulated folk and clergy.
Bruce Vincent loves George is so 2004
The Vincent email has come around again, like flu season, hoping to cast Stutterin’ George Dubya in a pious light. Though it reads like Reader’s Digest bad fiction, even urban myth, the author is authentic, the event is factual, but of course a private moment with George cannot be corroborated. Who knows, the devotional lingo may be the story Vincent had to tell his wife, to cover for a Jeff Guckert/Gannon blue dress affair, if we’ve learned anything about Republicans.
What utter tripe. We’ve all of us looked into Dubya’s eyes enough to know there’s no there there, nothing but air. What reason is there these days to be circulating such a fawning pre-election 2004 profile of Bush? I think folk are trying to rationalize their support of their previous election year candidate. History has already sized up George Bush. I doubt even Bush’s biographer will argue that this president is not the alcoholic, half-wit tool of thieving, war profiteering, war criminals.
About any notion of Bush’s depth or spirituality, I have to point to the interview he gave his friend and fellow reprobate Tucker Carlson for Talk Magazine in 1999 (now reprinted in the National Review) where he made fun of condemned killer Karla Faye Tucker. Declining to offer clemency to the reformed Tucker, Bush mocked her supposed plea by mimicking her voice and pursing his lips: “Please don’t kill me!”
Parking spaces disguised as empty shops
You know your downtown is prospering when it cannot find the real estate space for parking structures. It’s not that we don’t have them, Colorado Springs likes to disguise them as real buildings.
The pitch is that these parking structures with the faux facades of plate-glass shop windows along the sidewalk, and reflective office windows above, can be readily converted to real shops and offices as the city requires. However do they propose to deal with the half of each parking deck floor which is angled as a ramp?
For the time being however the city has added three of these structures, to further encourage commuters to eschew mass transportation. Walking past on the sidewalk you get the impression of having chanced upon a car dealer showroom. But soon the oil stains and lack of doorways reminds you that the tenancy is metered. At night the un-upholstered concrete innards look even more deserted.
Is it a good idea, not having to look at our cars? And to further expand our false-urban neighborhood with unpopulated shops and public spaces?
April 15 tax protest
Many people will be protesting April 15th. Will you? Non-compliance is key.
Why are we paying income taxes to a thoroughly corrupt and malfeasant federal government? Why are we timid and compliant in the face of, and with the daily evidence of, a well funded predatory fascist military state, protecting the profits and property of the wealthy corporate class, closing in all around us and robbing us of our children’s futures?
Should you stop paying income tax? You decide.
The income tax “law” was based on a fraud of a kind of taxation called un-apportioned direct tax that supposedly became legal through the 16th Amendment to the Constitution. But………the Supreme court ruled since 1914, 3 times no less, that the 16th Amendment conferred no new tax of personal income on the individual and changed no existing taxing power or category, nor added a new category (called un-apportioned direct tax) that didn’t exist before the 16th Amendment. That’s the truth of it. Though tax lawyers and CPAs wail and moan that the 16th amendment is what makes us pay taxes. They are ignorant. They are complicit. They do not know the Supreme court rulings. The extent of the governments taxing powers do not include the un-incorporated individual earner. Your earnings are fruits of your labor, not taxable profits or capital gains.
Don’t believe me?
Here I’ve attached, a brief from a man who has put 9 years of his life into researching the lie and is calling the DOJ, certain Congress members and the IRS out on the rug for this deception. You can use the exact same information of the Supreme Court cases to fight this. And when enough of us do, the IRS and the income tax will go away. On personal income anyway………not corporate earnings.
But don’t fall for a “Fair Tax” (30% sales tax) proposal to replace the lost IRS revenue that some in the tax protest movement are pushing. Very regressive tax as the wealthy will avoid it and buy goods offshore or through tax trusts, shelters etc… and the working and middle classes will foot the bill. (The poor would be exempt from it.) But……. point is, we wouldn’t need to replace the revenue if the Feds collected the money transferred away to shelters and off shore accounts by the wealthy elites/corporations, and cut the Pentagons budget by 75%. Including closing most of the bases around the world. Or nationalized our coal, gas, oil and mineral reserves to become the property of all Americans. Citizens in Alaska receive a monthly dividend from their oil! All gold mined in this country becomes the property of 2 giant corporations when it should be all of ours.
Think the rich corporations are paying more in income tax? Of the income tax money collected, the corporations pay approx. 270 bil. Individuals pay approx. 700 bil. Sure there are a lot more individuals than corporations. But the mass of the individuals are working and middle class paying an illegal tax on their labor. And with inflation (crashing dollar value due to lower Fed interest rate and mass infusion of more worthless money into the economy) you’re losing the battle to hold on to any gains.
Are you a W4 refund taxpayer? That is, do you get a refund at the end of the year by claiming withholding? Wouldn’t it make more sense to get your entire paycheck without withholding, thereby your full worth? Lets make the Federal govt. figure out another way. Read the W4 withholding fraud below.
Still feel like paying your personal income taxes? If so, is it because you’re afraid of the IRS? Sure it is. They don’t want you to discover the Supreme court rulings that make the 16th amendment irrelevant. But they know the deception is soon coming to an end.
Check these videos. Tom Cryer, a lawyer in Shreveport, found not guilty of tax evasion recently. Hasn’t filed for 10 years.
http://www.truthattack.org/page4.php
Information from lawmens listserve:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/national_lawman/join
“The Michigan legislature is now in the process of repealing the state income tax, as they have been informed that the state income tax relies on the federal income tax being properly applied.”
A recent email:
Dear Lawmen and Others: The government has a headache and still it is trying to fool all the people all the time. Read the following:
The Justice Department, on the heels of a split verdict in its tax evasion prosecution of actor Wesley Snipes, is planning a crackdown on the so-called tax protester movement.
The protesters, or tax deniers, assert a constitutional right to avoid federal taxes, relying in part on century-old Supreme Court decisions. Their ranks are growing to include white-collar professionals, and they are costing the government millions in revenue, officials say.
“Too many people succumb to the fallacy, the illusion, that you don’t have to pay any tax under any set of conditions,” said Assistant Attorney General Nathan Hochman, the new head of the Justice Department’s tax division. “That is a growing problem.”
Notice how Mr. Hochman words his statement in an attempt to deceive the public. No one claims that we don’t have to pay any tax under any set of conditions! That is simply deception, lies and deceit. What Mr. Hochman is avoiding saying is that the income tax laws and the constitutional federal taxing powers are entwined into a massive scheme to deceive the American people. Mr. Hochman, we don’t pay you to lie to the American people and subvert our Constitution! The Constitutional taxing power of the federal government is limited to 1) Direct Apportioned taxes, 2) Excises, 3) Duties, and 4) Imposts. There are no other authorized taxing powers of the federal government, as has been stated in numerous Supreme Court rulings.
Mr. Hochman, are you trying to say that precedence law no longer applies if it is good case law and has never been overturned? Are you crazy? Mr. Hochman, where did you get your law degree? From Disney World? Are you trying to say that the Supreme Court of the U.S. did not have the authority to rule on these matters? Are you crazy?
Mr. Hochman, do you know that the Constitution is over 200 years old? Does that mean it is out of date in your eyes? Are you crazy? Are you saying that subject matter jurisdiction does not apply to the cases on income tax?
Mr. Hochman, do you know that the corporate income tax is a tax on the privilege of incorporation, and not a direct tax on the income of the corporation? Do you know that the corporate income tax is an excise tax? Do you know that a direct tax is a tax on the person, property or rights of an individual? Do you know that all direct taxes must be apportioned? Do you know that there has been no direct apportioned tax imposed on the general population since 1861? Do you know that Title 26 does not impose any direct apportioned tax on the general population?
Can you rebut any of these propositions, Mr. Hochman?
And if you find all this hard to believe, then why does 26 USC 7608 limit all enforcement authority of all domestic agents to ATF taxes? Why did the IRS have to stoop to out and out lies and claim that all persons, even private employees of private employers, must have deductions taken from their paychecks under the authority of 26 USC 3401-05? You are a lawyer, Mr. Hochman, and you can perfectly well read the regulations that explain who is an employee and who is not an employee, for the purposes of withholding.
Who are YOU, Mr. Hochman, to presume that your government position entitles you to deceive and defraud the American people? Are you crazy?
Have you ever heard of precedence decisions? Have you read the Anastasoff case of 2000, in which the 8th Circuit stated that the American Courts get their power from precedence? Do you know that? Do you believe that? If you don’t, then you should talk to a psychiatric counselor, not a legal counselor!
Let’s put our slogan out in front of the public so the government cannot suppress the information on direct un-apportioned taxes anymore. The government’s fraudulent claim that the prohibition was overturned by the 16th Amendment, is rebutted by the STEWARD case, 24 years after the 16th Amendment was passed. Nothing has changed that since 1937.The last direct apportioned tax was in 1861.
Everyone should put the slogan on direct taxes on their signature lines. That is the issue.
No direct un-apportioned tax confirmed by the US Supreme Court rulings in CHAS. C. STEWARD MACH. CO. v. DAVIS, 301 U.S. 548, 581-582(1937)
A recent email:
To make a provable case, just look at the STEWARD case (1937), 24 years after the passage of the 16th Amendment.
“Steward” ruled that the sovereign has the authority to impose 1) Direct Taxes with “apportionment”, 2) Excises, 3) Duties, and 4) Imposts. Then Stewart goes further to state that there are NO other taxing powers, even though there have been many attempts to claim there was another taxing power given to the sovereign. The Court stated that not in a hundred years has there been such a taxing power discovered. All federal taxes must fall into one of the four classes.
The Appeals Judge in my case made a false statement in his ruling. He said that Conces claims that the government cannot levy a tax on individuals and non-incorporated businesses. He is DEAD wrong! I didn’t say that. The Supreme Court said first, that individuals could always be taxed from the very beginning, but if it was a direct tax, it must be apportioned. The last apportioned tax was in 1861.
Running with the pedigreed dogs of war
Prince Harry was ordered home to England after his cover was blown playing soldier in Afghanistan. Unmasked, it was decided the prince would be a bullet magnet for enemy fire. Here he is returning to a hero’s welcome, wearing a flak-jacket he might have done better to leave with the compatriots he left behind. Although -wot’s this- Harry Homebound appears to be accompanied by his compatriots! Were they all recalled too? Special forces assigned to bodyguard the prince would have been redeployed elsewhere. Was Heroic Harry soldiering with a royal retinue of school chums? Other spoiled upper-crust kids spoiling for hands-on Half Life blood?
Harry did serve his country’s propaganda machine by perpetuating the normalcy of Britain’s traditional militaristic adventurer. Said the prince of his soldiering:
“At the end of the day I like to sort of be a normal person, and for once I think this is about as normal as I’m ever going to get.”
Too pretty to blog?
An oft-heard conversation in my house goes something like this:
“Mom, why did I only get one Thin Mint and Lara got two?”
“Because I like her better.”
Fortunately, my kids are wise enough to know that to accept this un-motherly, and of course untrue, explanation is to be spared an hour-long lecture on The Inherent Unfairness of Life or Life Is Not a Zero-Sum Game or, my favorite, From Each According to Ability To Each According to Need.
Too bad that I am not the parent of the 18-year-old girls escorted off a Southwest Airlines flight who claim that they were just too pretty to fly. Had I been on the receiving end of such a lame defense I would’ve gleefully launched into my Pretty Is As Pretty Does speech, which would be great fun since it’s not one I get to use very often.
When I was in college at CU-Boulder, I thought I was rather attractive. Unfortunately for me, most of the girls there were more than rather attractive. I would occasionally go to a college bar hoping to catch the eye of a handsome fraternity boy. I would stand with good posture, trying to project an enigmatic alluring presence, hoping that someone would sense my intelligence, robust wit, and deep compassion for humanity. Well, it never happened. Not once. Finally tiring of plodding along a dead-end road, I decided to change my tack and give it one more try. I positioned myself near a table of 8 Sig Eps, reached into the depths of my being, and let rip an ear-shattering near-heroic burp. Eight heads turned my way. Chairs were pulled out, beers were purchased, and fraternity men jockeyed to be the one who’d take me home to meet the folks. Cosmic confirmation of Pretty is as Pretty Does had been attained.
What, say you, does this have to do with the poorly-mothered girls on the plane? In the twenty years since my stint in Boulder, my understanding of human nature has expanded beyond the Panhellenic membership base. Growing up I remember being unsettled by the apostle Paul’s words To the weak I became weak, that I might win the weak; I have become all things to all men, so that I may by all means save some. This seemed disingenuous to me, an outright manipulation to attain a specific goal. But I think I’ve figured out what Paul meant, and modern-day evangelists would do well to take note.
Life isn’t always about me. In fact, life is rarely about me. Or you. It is about figuring out who everyone else is, and what matters to them. It’s about showing empathy and understanding, not forcing one’s opinion or will on someone else. My parents laugh when they meet someone who knows me, because the descriptions of what I am are so varied. Sophisticated and polite. Boisterous and raunchy. Well-read and articulate. Creative and unpredictable. Conservative. Liberal. Jock. Freak. Certainly all elements of my personality. But if I’ve properly assessed who these people –or even organizations — are, then also a reflection of them. Persuasion, cooperation, effectiveness, even friendship, require common ground. Emotional intelligence is necessary to figure out where that common ground lies.
The pretty girls, if they were thirsty and in need of a bathroom, should have better assessed the situation, the timing of their requests, and the duties of the flight attendants. If they had, their tray tables would likely have been overflowing with water and snack pretzels, and a flight attendant would have extracted the bathroom dweller on their behalf. Too pretty to fly? No, too self-absorbed and emotionally-retarded to fly.
Fortunately for my kids, this entire speech has been reduced to meaningful eye contact, one arched eyebrow, and a quiet snap behind my back. This isn’t about you. Reassess. Adjust to the situation. Or you’ll be getting no Thin Mints at all.
Ralph Nader white knight on dark horse
If a picture is worth a thousand words, there are no end of terrible words which corrupt opinion shapers want to throw at Ralph.
A consumer/citizen advocate would indeed look sinister in the eyes of corporate malfeasance and to those interests who have pirated our democracy. The media portraits are consistent with dark shadows and a scowl, even though Nader’s only special interests have been ours.
If Citizen Nader wants to run for president and dedicate more of his life to public service, we should be so lucky. The only party he’s pooping by stepping into the ring, is the two-party fraud perpetrated by the beltway television lying bastards. The charlatans so smugly think the American political spirit should be satiated by the choice between their stooge on the right and their stooge on the left.
Asked if his candidacy would serve as a spoiler, Nader replied:
“If the Democrats can’t landslide the Republicans this year, they ought to just wrap up, close down, emerge in a different form.”
Nobel Prize impostor to speak at CC
Colorado College, our evolving Neo-Liberal Arts school, has been inviting a slew of globalization advocates to intone on patriarchal economics. The latest, game theory “Cold Warrior” Thomas Schelling, will speak on Thursday, Feb. 21st. Schelling is being lauded as a “Nobel Laureate of Economics.” Except there is no such thing as a Nobel prize for economics.
The “Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in memory of Alfred Nobel” is to the Nobel prize, what air hockey is to hockey. If air hockey was played by chiseling cardsharps.
The would-be Nobel ruse is exposed with regularity, but without traction in the mainstream press. Every year the impostor recipients steadfastly don the stripes and hit the lecture circuit as “laureates.”
The current issue of Adbusters revisits the scheme, and this time even recommends rescinding a number of the fraudulent awards. The most egregious it suggests, which have harmed mankind by encouraging wrong-headed laissez-fair policy, went to Milton Friedman in 1976, Robert Solow in 1987, and Gary Becker in 1992. “Further recalls may be necessary.”
We can only hope Thomas Schelling and his “junk economics,” lobbying as he has against the Kyoto Treaty and for the Copenhagen Consensus, will be next.
Presumably to make amends for inventing dynamite, Alfred Nobel endowed a peace prize in 1907 to be awarded each year in the areas of physics, chemistry, medicine, literature, and peace, where such work contributed to the well being of mankind. Nobel made zero provisions for offering an award to economists.
In the late sixties, a cabal of economists contrived to make their own prize, through the Bank of Sweden, “in honor of Alfred Nobel,” presuming to correct Nobel’s shortsightedness, in defiance of his apparent farsightedness. And indeed the only economists which they have honored have been the malevolent World Bank booster variety.
Change Barack Obama can believe in
He didn’t bring change as a Senator, nor has he offered change as a political voice. But Barack Obama is campaigning on a platform of change. Is campaigning all he can do?
That’s what we have already with the Bush presidency, making paid appearances to groomed audiences, selling the Neocon agenda. Obama’s agenda is the same “change” which George W. offered. Same financiers, same agents of change. Obama supporters are displaying the same aw shucks gleeful optimism as the Bush supporters did. Obama may be smarter, so maybe America will just be more smartly screwed.
I have to say I do think Barack Obama, or a Barack Obama, could not fail to do a novel job of campaigning for a new image of America. If the task at hand is not about curbing American imperialist ambitions, at least we could do a better job convincing the rest of the world that our expansive authority is in their interest. Obama may be a better pitchman considering he’s not directly one of the profiteers. But as a candidate, not being a shyster may be something else to stand in Obama’s way of not getting to be president.
I’m thinking of course of other obstructions, such as the corporate media and the corporate parties. By corporate I mean corrupted, the corrupt spokesmen, experts, soothsayers, pollsters, social engineers, spin doctors, psychological manipulators and enterprising hacks.
Asked in 2004 about Bush’s aptitude for the presidency, the talking point seemed to be: “he’s the best man for the job.” Cynically they didn’t have to address whether he was bright or competent or knowledgeable, only that he’d perform the job as intended. And they were right. Bush gave it up to the munitions industry. He delivered the Middle East to big oil. He transferred the wealth of the people of the United States into private hands, all the while looking fully incompetent and not the least suspiciously larcenous. The American public has yet to grow wise.
So who’s the best man for the job in 2008? We’re going to let them tell us again. A short fat white dude, last seen hugging George W. and kissing his ring. He’ll be the last white hope against the menacing half-black dude with no track record, indoctrinated in a madrasse, but strangely the best the Dems could come up with as an alternative.
Malthus, Sisyphus and the truth of 911
A friend of mine, Dave, is a 911 nut. I don’t mean he’s a nutcase, I simply mean he plays into the unfortunate stereotype painted by those trying to discredit conspiracy theorists.
I don’t know how to help him.
Dave’s life priority is to expose the truth about 9/11. He maintains the websites 911blimp and 911university. I saw Dave tonight at our precinct caucus. He rose to every opportunity to speak for or against candidates, always on the theme of questioning what really happened when September 11, 2001 was used to transform our nation into a “homeland” preoccupied with its security. Each time, Dave’s presentation was tempered by the precinct chairman’s reminder of a two minute time limit. Dave spoke with clarity and passion, although often part of his audience would deliberately ignore him. Between pitches Dave circulated around the room to hand out business cards and CDs. It was a tough sell but he kept at it.
Dave may as well have been Malthus warning the end is nigh, but he cheerfully explained to me that he would regret later if he didn’t speak out as much as humanly possible. Our government’s duplicity about 9/11 is ground zero for reassessing the dysfunction of our political system. I told him I thought he was absolutely dead on, but that people were still not ready to hear it. In fact I was certain they were growing more and more blind. This crowd in particular, buzzing about Obama, was hanging on desperately to a hope it was not about to be told was false.
Perhaps another round of non-representative leadership will bring Americans around to the stench of deceit that flew into high gear on 911. It doesn’t matter what theory you favor, the official theory stinks.
Dave doesn’t want us to get bogged down with weighing the conspiracies and pseudo-conspiracies. And here I think he’s on the right track. Dave told me tonight: “You don’t have to know how the magician sawed the lady in half, to know it was a trick.”
Stupor Tuesday
It’s Stupor Tuesday! Across this Great Nation of ours we’re all pretending to have a democracy tomorrow! Voters will have chance to vote for a future female imperialist, a future Black imperialist, or several assorted knuckle-headed imperialists ala Dick Cheney, Rush Limbaugh, and Pat Robertson breeds. Isn’t it great to have such a choice?
I’m betting on the mare personally so meet you at the race track! Just don’t lose your shirt nor your common sense when it all happens. Just have fun and maybe this country will have an actual democracy instead of Stupor Tuesday some day? You bet on it!
BTW, I hope you bet right on the Stupor Bowl yesterday? Hey, and wasn’t that half-time something else? I missed Janet Jackson though, because it just seemed so drab and phoney without her on board.
Cell phones for home front profiteers
Okay, if you’ve ordered anything from Amazon lately, you’ll have received something feel-goody non-profitish in the packaging, an empty doggy bag labeled CELL PHONE FOR SOLDIERS. You’re meant to read the patriotic blurb and send them your used cell phone to “Help Our Troops Call Home.” The unpadded baggy is pre-addressed to the Cell Phone Recycling Center, post paid, but you can “Help our troops even more by applying postage to this envelope.”
Wait, can our troops really use any old cell phone, refurbished, to call their loved ones back home? No.
Credit will be given for your returned phone and the credit will go toward paying for our soldiers’ phone calls. The CPFS website explains that soldiers receive prepaid calling cards with which to phone home. Looking further the site details that for every used cell phone it receives, a Michigan outfit called ReCellular disburses a payment to Cell Phones for Soldiers, enough to pay for one hour of international calling.
A survey of prepaid calling card rates for international calls yields rates ranging from 0.6¢ to 6¢ with a mean of 1.5¢. Rounding up, multiplied by 60 minutes, that’s a $1 value! The soldiers are getting ONE DOLLAR for your used phone.
Allowing for a discounted rate which CPFS can no doubt get, considering they’ve spent a million on this scheme already, probably that value is more like 50¢ per phone. From their own figures last year, CPFS distributed calling cards to 140,000 US soldiers, their share of the million being $2.50 each. In minutes, who knows how many or few. But wait, AT&T is credited with having contributed half that million in long distance minutes!
Whether we’re talking about administration expenses being gleaned from the cost differences, or tax deductions taken in excess of the contribution value, this is a windfall profit center for somebody. Not the soldiers.
Polly put the kettle on
There is nothing more thrilling than being the wild one on the outer edge of the pack, seeing the horizon more clearly than those safely ensconced in the middle of the herd. It isn’t easy being a lonely maverick, relying on animal instinct to find hidden dangers, while other more domesticated souls happily munch nuggets of truth dispensed by politicians and mainstream media. But someone has to lead the way.
I thought I’d found an opportunity to indulge my inner maverick. I had high hopes that the Three Cups of Tea avalanche was hiding lots of neocon propaganda, a pitiful campaign to convince those of us with bleeding hearts that, indeed, our government is engaged in noble warfare against terrorism in Pakistan and Afghanistan, the training ground for Islamic fundamentalists determined to wipe out Western culture. After all, who would know the terrorist’s heart better than Greg Mortenson who has spent much of the past fifteen years in remote Himalayan villages developing relationships with local leaders and gaining an understanding of these tribal cultures?
Well, I’m disappointed to admit that, after finishing the book, I am smack in the middle of the Mortenson love fest. Other than forgetfulness, disorganization and a chronic lack of punctuality, I can find no fault with this man (I feel like Pontius Pilate). After the 9/11 attacks, the book gets a whole lot better. The writing, literally painful to read in the first half, begins to flow in such a way that you are not constantly mindful of the fact that you are reading.
Political intrigue, physical danger, unflinching bravery, and an uncanny ability to discern the good guys from the bad guys–always in pursuit of his mission of educating the rural poor–does make Mortenson seem larger than life. So much so that co-author David Oliver Relin stops mentioning his physical stature in every paragraph.
The complexity of tribal societies makes for interesting reading. Puppet governments in big cities have no standing in remote mountain villages. Tribal councils and religious leaders in Iran interpret and enforce the law. Mortenson makes an interesting distinction between warlords who take tariffs from opium smugglers to create private militias and commandhan who plow the profits into the people’s welfare. One bad, the other good. He makes few moral judgments of the mountain people and their ways, poppy production included. He saves his scathing indictments for the US government and its minions, and seemingly refuses to cooperate or be used by them in any way.
I hope I can find a front row seat tonight and catch Mortenson’s eye. I want to give him the oft-sought-but-ever-elusive Mango wink of approval. Some maverick, she.
Not my three cups of tea
I remember a time, not so long ago really, perhaps last month, when I was blissfully unaware of a wayward mountaineer named Greg Mortenson. After nearly reaching the summit of K2, and having lost his porter and his way on the descent, he limped, hungry and cold, into a tiny town in northeast Pakistan called Korphe. After several days spent recovering from his misadventure, Greg Mortenson stumbled from the village leader’s hut into the rarefied Himalayan air.
I am only halfway through the book Three Cups of Tea, One Man’s Mission to Promote Peace…One School at a Time which attempts to tell of Mortenson’s journey through Pakistan and Afghanistan, and his quest to build schools for impoverished children. A brave and noble mission no doubt.
I must say, however, that the book is the most poorly written of any I’ve read since my Fabio days. I imagine Mortenson’s adventure was dangerous and thrilling, likely rivaling fellow climber Jon Krakauer’s Everest adventure. Krakauer’s tale was a positively riveting account of the experience, and Into Thin Air remains one of my all-time favorite adventure stories. Three Cups of Tea, on the other hand, well, sucks. I say this not to be unkind, but because I am wondering how on earth it ended up on the New York Times bestseller list.
Here is but a small sample of the creamy pablum co-author David Oliver Relin dishes out:
…Why couldn’t the flag of crescent and star lead these children such a small distance toward “progress and perfection”?
After the last note of the anthem had faded, the children sat in a neat circle and began copying their multiplication tables. Most scratched in the dirt with sticks they’d brought for that purpose. The more fortunate…had slate boards they wrote on with sticks dipped in a mixture of mud and water. “Can you imagine a fourth-grade class in America, alone, without a teacher, sitting there quietly and working on their lessons?” Mortenson asks. “I felt like my heart was being torn out. There was a fierceness in their desire to learn, despite how mightily everything was stacked against them….I knew I had to do something.”
That something became a big something, and Greg Mortenson will share his story at Shove Chapel on January 15.
In Three Cups of Tea, Greg Mortenson, besides being of impressive stature, a point made on every page of the book, is portrayed as little more than a socially stunted somewhat incompetent drifter. So how did this guy, who couldn’t find a decent ghost writer, suddenly become a master of self-promotion? A book tour, magazine covers, even promotional materials sent home in my child’s school backpack. It’s pretty amazing.
I am, as I said, only halfway through the book but I’ve not read anything about Mortenson’s mission of peace. Korphe’s village leader confided to him that, although he ran his fingers reverently over its pages, he couldn’t actually read his treasured Koran, and did not wish the same terrible fate on his children. Mortenson’s mission appears one of education and literacy. I found a copy of the book with a previous title, Three Cups of Tea: One Man’s Mission to Fight Terrorism and Build Nations…One School at a Time. Vanquishing terrorism and nation building are the pet projects of neocons, aren’t they? I guess peace promotion is easier to market.
A final note. Greg Mortenson’s lecture at Shove Chapel is sponsored by the UCCS Center for Homeland Security. I really don’t get the connection. I feel like this guy is an unwitting pawn in some greater game. What that game is I don’t know. So I’ll finish the book, go to the lecture, and see if I can connect the dots.
Electing the lesser of real evil
While it might appear to make no difference if a candidate is Republican or Democrat, I’d say a freshly galvanized non-voter would be hard pressed to suggest that any of the Y2K presidential hopefuls could have performed with more mischievous malevolence than George W. Bush. Disengaged citizens used to be ambivalent about their lack of options. Now we have precedent for thinking very hard about the lesser of evils. 
We don’t want just the better of the worst, we have to be sure to pick the lesser EVIL.
Will 2008 be a veritable toss-up between shills? We need to know for Decision 2008 if there lurks another Alfred E. Neuman Nero in the bunch.
Remember this little boy? His occult powers and prepubescent morality made him the demonic despot of a little American farming town in an early Twilight Zone episode. He could read people’s minds and had the power to punish them at will. Though he might easily have been deposed by a collective effort, no one dared lay a finger. Frustrated individual insurgents were summarily disappeared to the corn fields.
With FISA surveillance and the Patriot Act, could this be George W.?
But even if we could discern the truly evil, the amorality which comes with profound lack of profundity, do we really have the power to make our choice heard?
We’re told the primaries determine the presidential winner. I heard an NPR reporter covering the circus interject with “here’s a fact:” and proceed to declare that no one below the second place in such and such caucus has ever gone on to win the nomination etc, etc. As if a statistical likelihood could yield an absolute. Then there’s the Iowa Caucus Curse or some such, to throw witchcraft into the pot for those blasphemers who think statistics can lie. I hear what they media pundits are really saying, when they “predict” with the caucus results, and it is true. The media have always determined who is going to win. Whether it’s in the primaries or in the final election. Whoever they choose wins. The distance between is a horse race.
The Lysol toilet bowl game
You probably know that I’m a big sports fan. I grew up watching football with my dad and cut my teeth on the traditions, the rivalries, the pageantry of college football. 
Some of my fondest memories are of college bowl games that were played during the holiday season. Bowl games presented matchups that were not seen in the regular season. From the weary television console came team histories, funny mascots, famous coaches, bright college colors, and excited pennant-waving crowds. It seemed to me that life came to a halt while the entire world focused on football for a few days.
The Tournament of Roses game, now known as the Rose Bowl, started in 1902. It was a classic East-West battle, and was the only bowl game held outside of the South until 1971. Paired with the beautiful early morning parade, it has been part of every New Year’s Day that I can remember.
In 1933, the first Orange Bowl game was played. Its purpose was to draw attention to the unknown city of Miami and help build a tourism
industry. Next came the Sugar Bowl (1935, New Orleans), the Sun Bowl (1936, El Paso), the Cotton Bowl (1937, Dallas), and the Gator Bowl (1946, Jacksonville).
The associations behind these bowl games had altruistic beginnings. Most benefited charities, many which were recently formed to help people in the wake of the Great Depression. Today they still have 501(c)(3) status but their exempt purpose is fuzzier, bringing economic impact to a particular area. Most current bowls still contribute a large portion of revenue to worthy causes. For example, the Gator Bowl gives 75% of game revenue to support educational pursuits in Jacksonville. Of course they do, and I’m sure the money is put to good use. But if hard truth be told, I’ll bet that much of the money given to charity is a payout to preserve their nonprofit status, to keep the IRS at bay.
The late 1950s saw a proliferation of new bowl games hoping to make money from television coverage. The first bowl game to sell corporate naming rights was the US F&G Sugar Bowl in 1988. The move generated an adverse reaction from the public. No matter, it has now become commonplace. I personally loathe each and every corporation that co-opts tradition in the name of profit. Naming rights are even sold for half-time reports. The most memorable was an attempt to reach out to female viewers, the Stayfree Maxi-pad Half-time Report. At least that one made me laugh. I can’t say the same for my dad who quickly left to stir the chili.
I suppose I should be more understanding. With competition from the new bandwagon bowl games, which offer team payouts in the millions, the old timers have to play by the same rules. After all, bowls can’t make money if the teams don’t show up. And the impoverished state-sponsored universities aren’t willing to be pawns in someone else’s money-maker.
As with so many of our cherished cultural traditions, all has been reduced to greed. Corporate greed, state-supported university greed, individual greed.
It’s said that money is the root of all evil. I don’t think so. Money can do much good as the original intent of college bowl series illustrates. The Lockheed Martin Holy Bible actually says that the love of money is the root of all evil. The perversion of college bowls is but a small and insignificant example of what’s become a global truth.
The names have been changed to expose the guilty:
Rose Bowl presented by Citi
FedEx Orange Bowl
Allstate Sugar Bowl
Brut Sun Bowl
AT & T Cotton Bowl
Konica Minolta Gator Bowl
Capital One Bowl (formerly the Citrus Bowl)
Benazir’s murder, a matter of when
It’s tragic that Benazir Bhutto was assassinated today. There is rampant speculation about who did it and why. But largely missing from the analyses I’ve read is the possibility that the nation of Pakistan, the Islamic nation of Pakistan, a nation that recently gave Osama bin Laden a 46% approval rating, simply didn’t want a high-born, Western-educated, secularist woman in a position of power in their country. A woman who has twice been removed from office on corruption charges and whose father was branded an enemy of Islam and executed in 1979.
We can pretend that it’s an oppressive regime we oppose and that the Pakistani people are longing for freedom and equality as we’ve defined it. In actuality, our quarrel is with the Pakistanis themselves, at least half of whom would institutionalize Islamic fundamentalism and call it freedom. Pakistanis who would love to be free of Western influence, be it cultural or political. Pakistanis who want to practice their religion and define their values without interference from outsiders.
The world does not want our electronics, nor our cars, nor much of anything we have to offer. Why do we insist that the world want our democracy? Clearly it doesn’t.
Young people don’t bother going through the motions
The Gazette Christmas edition had a breakdown chart of El Paso County voting last election. It showed that more people vote from the morgue in this county than vote if they are aged 40 and under. Well almost!
Half the voters were 58 or older! Only slightly more than 10% of voters under 40 years old bother with it. Why do voting patterns run in such a pattern?
It would be wrong to say that young people are irresponsible and the older folk are not. Besides, people in their 30s are hardly young but still they are not voting in any numbers. There is another much simpler and real reason for people not voting in these election farces other than to point the finger at individual ‘responsibility’ or lack of it. Younger people do not vote because the political system in place simply seems like a charade to them. And you know what? They are right.
So Old Folk, why do you keep participating in this nonsense? Until we do get some semblance of a real democracy in place, just stop participating altogether in the sham. Do the responsible thing, and do not vote! Stop just passively going along and try to at least publicize some the need for a real democracy, instead of pretending that we already have one. Unfortunately, that’s what your voting now does, it just pretends to be meaningful when that is not the case.
Do like the young people do and don’t bother going through the motions. You need more than one corporate party (DemonRepublican Party) to have a democracy. We just don’t have that yet.
I filled out that ballot that was measured, let it sit in the house for several weeks, and then just said to myself ‘What the Hell?’ It still sat on the table the day after the election and I don’t really care. I’d rather vote for college cheerleaders than what I had before me then. It was that bad.
Ugly Dolls more than skin deep
Do you remember several years ago, when Ugly Dolls crawled out of the Cabbage Patch like that season’s Troll Doll? We have an obsession with fugly. Except they were trendy, hand sewn in someone’s attic and sold at exclusive boutiques, but had the aesthetic sophistication of sock monkeys, sharing 98% of their DNA.
Uglydolls were the must-have gift for those whose taste was thread-bare chic. These eclectic one-of-a-kind one-offs were, it appeared, sewn by a single hand, or at most by several one-handed cottage industrialists. The design called for single flat panels stitched together without too much care, with scraps fastened cockeye to form the features. Of course the price you paid for such deliberate off-the-wall on-the-mark anti-production-value plush toys reflected where you could get them. Melrose Avenue haute-suture or Ebay.
I found an Uglydoll display at a local boutique and saw the burgeoning cast of character-actors and side-kicks the collection has become. Plus now, to spare the mythical not-so-nimble seamstresses behind the first batch, these new generation Uglies herald from China. There is no good reason I suppose to deny the mass market access to the fruit of playful creative ninnies. But lo, the price tags are still show-off high! Is there no consumer benefit to derive from 55¢/hr wages?
Running shoes which are priced $150 at retail cost less than $2 to make. But we know Nike has to recoup an incredible amount for R&D. They’ve got us running on air for goodness sake, that technological leap had to be expensive. Plus someone’s got to pony up for the clever ads. Nike CEO Phil Knight doesn’t advertise just for the sake of his vanity.
The only engineering required with ugly plush toys is how to inject into the factory process the “slight variations which enhances [sic] their appearance of uniqueness.” Can you picture Chinese overseers enforcing deliberately sloppy -but fastidious- handiwork?
So why would the prices be kept so high? Even if sold only through specialty stores which require a 100% Keystone markup, there would still be leeway.
Can you do the math? Probably the labor expended to make one plush toy would remain constant over the varying production scenarios. Let’s compare the options: Manufacturing wages in the US have declined sharply, but at $12/hour, for how much did they have to sell the original Ugly? If we were considering a sweatshop in Los Angeles, the wage would be $4-$6/hour. So now we’ve half-ed it. Contracting a factory in Saipan or Guam, among the US possessions, would mean half again as much, $2-$3/hour and we’d still get to say MADE IN AMERICA. Moving the production to Mainland China means a prison wage of $0.55/hour. That’s less than 1/20th of the original cost.
Unless we hear news reports of Chinese laborers landing dream jobs sewing Ugly Dolls from straw to gold, somebody is making quite a grotesque, not even fugly, mark-up.