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LINES INSPIRED BY OBAMA NOT KNOWING, OR POSSIBLY KNOWING, WHO SNOOKI FROM “JERSEY SHORE” IS
The best minds of my generation
Murmur what "Mad Men" might mean;
Keep staring at "The Situation"
While disasters are rising unseen.
We're a nation that's pleased to be viewers.
The programming mushrooms nonstop.
The rats have crawled out of the sewers
But the warnings are drowned in the Pop.
The rope that we'll hang from, we'd sell us
Goes the old-time Leninist fable.
What the Commies couldn't then tell us
Was that it wouldn't be rope. It'd be cable.
Matt King is playing Gruene Hall tonight and I hope to go, so I’m writing a bit early. Matt’s doing a solo gig, opening for the Gourds. I’ve never seen the Gourds live, but the word is they put on a good show. I know damn well Matt is worth your time. Seems a good thing to support live music, otherwise there won’t be any. Musicians eat too.
We had scattered showers most of last week but the forecast calls for sun and heat for all of next week so we’re back to cutting down grass for hay, the third cutting this season. We’re not selling much hay, but we are selling a little. Hay in the barn is like money in the bank. Better, in a way, because it’s real. Money in the bank isn’t real, but a lie works as good as the truth if you can get enough people to believe it. We have some pretty good liars running the show nowadays, so people keep on believing until the day arrives when they don’t. That day will come, the only question is when.
Reuel Marc Gerecht’s screed justifying an Israeli bombing attack on Iran coincides with the opening the new Israel lobby campaign marked by the introduction ofHouse resolution 1553expressing full support for such an Israeli attack.
What is important to understand about this campaign is that the aim of Gerecht and of the right-wing government of Benjamin Netanyahu is to support an attack by Israel so that the United States can be drawn into direct, full-scale war with Iran.
That has long been the Israeli strategy for Iran, because Israel cannot fight a war with Iran without full U.S. involvement. Israel needs to know that the United States will finish the war that Israel wants to start.
We regard freedom of religion as a cornerstone of the American democracy, and that freedom must include the right of all Americans – Christian, Jewish, Muslim, and other faiths – to build community centers and houses of worship.
We categorically reject appeals to bigotry on the basis of religion, and condemn those whose opposition to this proposed Islamic Center is a manifestation of such bigotry.
The controversy which has emerged regarding the building of an Islamic Center at this location is counterproductive to the healing process. Therefore, under these unique circumstances, we believe the City of New York would be better served if an alternative location could be found.
The SEC has charged billionaire Texas investors Charles and Sam Wyly with securities fraud that netted them $550 million in illicit profits through insider trading. The two brothers are among the most important donors to Republican conservative causes, and first came to public attention with their funding of the Swift Boat ads that upended John Kerry's campaign for the presidency before it even began.
Also indicted were Michael C. French, the brothers' investment advisor, and their stockbroker Louis J. Schaufele III, both from Dallas, who were accused of abetting the scheme by giving it a veneer of legality and hiding the control the Wyly's exercised over offshore funds used in the fraud.
First, the state has never had an exclusive monopoly on violence. It's an assumption, kind of like the rational economic man, political scientists make to carry their analysis forward.
Second, each example provided by John is an example of NSAs (non-state actors) filling a vacuum the state won't fill. I'd submit the people affected by each example would prefer the state fill the vacuum, except the state won't. Circular, I know, but there is such a thing as a vicious cycle.
Third, the primary cause of each state failing to fill the vacuum is elite corruption. In each case, and as is emerging in America, elite corruption (and government capture) is driving such developments.
You don't see anything like this in the EU states, or Japan or Korea where the states are no where near as corrupt.
As I see it, the real hurdle the nation state faces in the near future is corruption and capture.
If the governments of Mexico, El Salvador and Lebanon weren't as corrupted as they are by their native elites, things would be very, very different. Mexico, also, would not be riven by drug-war if America had a rational drug policy, as well. So, in Mexico's case there is an externality.
And yet, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland, Sweden, Hungary, Poland, and many other Euro nations have zero issues along these lines. France has issues, bu they are, while not unique to France, and not due to corruption per se, are due to the state no creating the foundations necessary for its full population to participate in the French ideal.
Algerian Arabs in France don't want Islamism. They want the good life. The French life. Italy has an OG, as John calls them: the mafia. Why? Because the elites are corrupt. They fill a real vacuum. Russia? Same. See my point?
I could go on and on about this.
Bottom line: if states aren't responsive, 'OGs' will move in. States can be responsive, but they have to rid themselves of corruption and capture first.
Well, SPK, you asked for something with a nicer touch. I give you the review I just wrote of a great children's book below.
Oh, and as for me, the younger boy just started pulling himself up by the furniture, and if I listen from a middling distance with extremely loud background music while mouthing Gregorian Chants, I am just positive I hear him saying "daddy" :)
Checking Up On Daddy
During these times of economic anxiety, foreign wars that have seen our sons and daughters confront danger abroad, and a culture that often seems to tear at the fabric of a healthy and happy family, Adam J. Roth provides us with a respite from the madness. It comes in the form of a children's book that should be read and enjoyed by families everywhere.
At this point I am sorely tempted to just vote for the Republicans. One, as a way of punishing the Democrats. Two: well, ain't it obvious? At least I know I'm voting to screw myself when I vote Republican.
Wikileaks head honcho Julian Assange may be annoyed with the 911 Truth movement and all those conspiracy theories. But he may be appalled when he reads that one of the leading authors and researchers on imperialism and the Iraq war, Chris Floyd, has taken him to task for making much ado about nothing.
Floyd makes his case early on in the article, with maximum effect:
. . . have any good news? Weddings? Fun stories? Grandchildren born? Falling in love? New job? Won the lottery? I'm quite tired of complaining all the time!
In the interest of fairness, I'm posting a link to a video documenting the interrogation and execution of an alleged policeman from Lerdo, Durango at the hands of alleged Zetas.
The man in question describes how prisoners were released from a prison in nearby Gomez Palacio, then were given arms which they used to kill 17 people in Torreon, Coahuila.
He lists names of those involved, including the woman director of the prison in question.
Previous videos I have seen and posted showed alleged Zetas confessing to killing innocents before being dispatched. Now we have Zetas torturing their opposition, who also confess to killing innocents before being dispatched.
Bloody hell . . . Blud-dee hell! Those impertinent colonials have gotten their way and forced me to step down. But if they expect me to hand over my sword, like that nit Cornwallis at Yorktown, to some southern governor from another part of our Empire, well then, they’ve another thing coming, don’t they. Too bloody right they do!
I’ve already had to abase myself before the very politicians who cashed BP checks in their hundreds and will again soon unless I miss my guess. Where's Guy Fawkes when America needs him? In better times we’d send our fleet up the Potomac and do to that insufferable town of Washington just what Fighting George Cockburn did in 1814 when the colonials were supporting Bonaparte and the Frenchies. The freedom fries and sherry would be on me, I can tell you that.
Some interesting stories come out of the controversial Wikileaks documents. Apparently, Osama bin Laden has been dead for nearly six years now, which is in keeping with some of the videotapes that have been released since that time, in which bin Laden "appears" but does not say anything truly contemporary to the time of those tapes (there are audio tapes that suggest he may still be alive, of course, but faking a voice is not that hard).
Apparently, we had multiple opportunities to capture him, knowing ahead of time on at least three occasions where he would be and with whom, yet we either failed to act or decided to let events play out. Apparently, Iran and North Korea have allied themselves with Al Qaeda, which explains much of the aggression of both the Bush and Obama administrations.
The Economist - THREE pickup trucks pulled up outside George Norris’s home in Spring, Texas. Six armed police in flak jackets jumped out. Thinking they must have come to the wrong place, Mr Norris opened his front door, and was startled to be shoved against a wall and frisked for weapons. He was forced into a chair for four hours while officers ransacked his house. They pulled out drawers, rifled through papers, dumped things on the floor and eventually loaded 37 boxes of Mr Norris’s possessions onto their pickups. They refused to tell him what he had done wrong. “It wasn’t fun, I can tell you that,” he recalls.
A little Friday doggerel. 
Wiki The Witch