Rick Perry: ready or not

this is what you're getting from the mainstream media now:

Rick Perry: He's closer than you think - Maggie Haberman - POLITICO.com: "It's becoming harder for Rick Perry critics to argue against this point, from John Ellis, at least as a benchmark heading into the fall debates and the in-earnest primary season:

The Republican "establishment," such as it is, is quickly coming to the realization that the 2012 GOP presidential nomination is Texas Governor Rick Perry's to lose."

US politics being as corrupt and bankrupt as it is, why should it be any surprise that rick perry is all but assured the GOP nod -- and up against the hapless barack obama will have no problem dispatching the latter.

i wonder how much politico is paying these clowns for this "insight"?

the sliming of wikileaks, assange complete

after being betrayed by his #2, who destroyed a raft of secrets to allegedly protect sources, now this latest blockbuster taking another whack at assange:

Wikileaks suffers a major leak- The Inquirer: "WHISTLEBLOWING WEB SITE Wikileaks has suffered a major setback with a leak of fully unredacted US State Department cables including sources' details surfacing online, thanks to a blunder by its founder, Julian Assange.
The leak occurred sometime after Assange shared the password of an encrypted 'insurance' file stored online with a contact believed to have been trustworthy. This individual then used the password to decrypt the collection of 250,000 US diplomatic cables, which include details that could identify US State Department sources, according to the German newspaper Der Spiegel."

how probable is it that assange would give the encryption key to a trusted person, who then betrayed him? or is it more likely a deliberate act of sabotage against wikileaks by government, who may already have sanitized the docs and now releases what was never secret information to begin with.

just the final nail in the coffin. time for a more kinetic response against the ruling powers to commence.

who needs polls when we have rick perry?

it's not a suprise, guys:

Rick Perry broadens national lead over Romney, Bachmann, Palin - latimes.com: "Fourteen days after announcing his Republican presidential candidacy, Texas Gov. Rick Perry has expanded his lead in a new national poll, while both Mitt Romney and Sarah Palin slide slightly and Michele Bachmann is in single digits.

A new CNN/ORC International Poll of Republicans out today shows Perry now holds the support of more than one-in-four (27%), up significantly from the 15% he had before his Aug. 13 announcement at the Redstate Gathering of conservative writers in South Carolina.

Romney, who had 17% then, now has 14%. Sarah Palin, who's expected to make her candidacy plans or lack thereof known at an Iowa tea party rally Saturday, has slipped from 12% to 10%."

rick perry is god's punishment of the USA for decades of not taking this politics stuff seriously. we've reached the point where any guy with the "right stuff" in the image department can be turned into president.

it happened last time with obama, and it'll happen this time with perry. it happens every times, frankly. why should it be different this go around?

making decisions regarding complex issues is challenging and requires a lot of work. why spend one's spare time working the old noodle when you could be watching the latest celebrity bloodbath or love-fest?

guys like rick perry stride onto the scene and through the sheer fiction of looking like a slick, used-car salesman, he closes the deal with a backslap and a firm handshake that says, "i'm like you, and i know what you want."

snake oil is easy to go for if you're a consumer fed up with choices (same shit, different packages). you want someone to tell you which product is best so you can lay your money down and go back into a persistent vegetative state.

now that obama has setup the dismantling of the new deal, it will be given to rick perry to finish the work that the democrat started. meanwhile, the size of government and the size of the debt will continue its merciless rise, under the false premise that the politicians are getting the fiscal house in order.

watch the drama play out; pretend you don't notice that the ending never changes...

look who's been fooling around

now we can see why the crackers of the southern US were so afraid of their women hooking up with the nigras. it turns out the great-great-great-great grandmama have been fooling around for EVER:

DailyTech - Neanderthal Sex Gave Europeans and Asians Stronger Immune Systems: "It turns out that European DNA, like that of Asians and Africans, has traces of archaic hominids mixed in with the familiar Homo sapien-specific stretches.

The sequencing of the Neanderthal genome has led to some incredible discoveries -- among them, that humans were having sex with Neanderthals. A pair of new studies has shown that Neanderthal genes aren't evenly distributed throughout the entire human population -- rather some populations have more or less of them.
"

while i can't say i'm terribly surprised that the broads back them went for the big, strong and stupid types, this is the first time i ever heard of the denisovans -- who are indigenous to PNG and indonesia. and who knew that the native americans were probably the purest genetic homo sapiens, and that this lack of genetic diversity was what made them so vulnerable to the diseases brought by those filthy europeans.

bastards.

U.S. teens: let's get drunk and f...acebook...

you gotta love it. teens who use facebook are more likely than their abstinent peers to smoke and use drugs...

U.S. teens on Facebook more likely to use drugs - Health - CBC News: "American teens who spend time on Facebook and other social media sites are at increased risk of smoking, drinking and drug use, a survey suggests.

The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University conducted the back-to-school survey of 1,006 teens who answered questions about their use of social media, TV viewing habits and substance abuse.

The findings suggested that compared those aged 12 to 17 who spend no time on social networking sites in a typical day, teens who do were:

Five times more likely to use tobacco.
Three times more likely to use alcohol.
Twice as more likely to use marijuana."

i suppose they'd be fucking, too, except that facebooking is more onanistic.

well, rather than spread the genetic material of facebook users, this is a perfectly acceptable alternative.

more apple/jobs sycophancy

it's pure agony to read the flapdoodle that the wimpering press hounds are pounding out in tribute to steve jobs and apple. this guy, for example, promotes the apple uber alles narrative thusly:

Jobs's Legacy: 8 Reasons Apple Will Dominate The Decade - Hardware - Macintosh - Informationweek: Steve Jobs may have resigned his position as CEO of Apple, but the company that he built and later revived will remain a driving force in the technology industry for at least the next decade.
Jobs leaves Apple with a foundation, vision, and culture that competitors have yet to match. His legacy is both intangible--as a figure who inspires and commands respect, he is without peer--and material--he leaves behind real corporate assets that will continue to drive Apple's success.

how can anyone propose to divine the shape of things 6 weeks from now, much less in a decade. past is not prologue, except in the most general sense. or as your stock prospectus warns, past success is not guarantee of future results.

on the other hand, with the wet-hankie crew in full lachrymose mode, i suppose such paeans are about par for the course. with no hot new gadgets with zero survival value coursing through the corporate corpus, what else are these guys gonna write about?

save it for later. the next big thing will be bigger and more brilliant than anyone had any right to expect -- and everyone else will be relegated to footnote status.

who gave the UN control of libya's money?

there has been so much that has been so wrong with the entire scam of deposing khadafi from the leadership of libya, one scarcely knows where to start. so let's jump right in with the question about the money:

Security Council Vote Looms on Unfreezing Libya Assets for Rebels - NYTimes.com: "UNITED NATIONS — The Security Council was planning to meet later Thursday for a vote on a resolution to unfreeze $1.5 billion in Libyan assets, which Western diplomats say will help avert a humanitarian crisis in Libya and strengthen the financial position of the provisional rebel government that has ousted Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi."

the UN has through some apparent mystical means divined that the so-called provisional rebel government is the sole, legitimate owner of the nation of libya's financial assets.

we don't know rightly who these guys are, what level of support they enjoy amongst the libyan people, or scarcely anything else that would seem to legitimize this handover of national wealth to such a mysterious crew.

what does this say of the assets of other countries? hell, what does it say about the assets of our country -- in this case the US? it certainly seems to create a precedent that certain well-connected entities in international affairs hold the ultimate power over sovereign assets of other governments and countries -- of which they are neither citizens nor duly-appointed/elected representatives. in short, under the auspices of the UN, it's most powerful string-pullers in north america and europe have authorized larceny on a global scale -- in the interests of serving... themselves.

this should be revealed more fully as the situation in libya "stabilizes," and as the smoke clears we learn who pulled which strings on behalf of the eventual winners in the international free-for-all known as international law.

it must be reassuring to know -- if you are the one calling the shots -- that however belated the victory you can shape the geopolitical landscape to your satisfaction, and do it with impunity, all the while using international institutions like the UN to legitimize your rapacity.

sublime...

re facebook: what is value?

this breathless sounding headline story from CNNmoney shows just how out-of-joint the US culture is with reality:

Is Facebook losing its value? - The Term Sheet: Fortune's deals blog Term Sheet: "For the past several years, there have been three things you could count on: Death, taxes and Facebook gaining in value. Now we might have to return to the old standbys.
Facebook recently suffered its first-ever consecutive decline in valuation on the private secondary markets, according to a report being released later today by research firm PrivCo."

somewhat ludicrously, the notion of 'value' rests in financial terms, without reference to utility or usefulness. when we place a value on a thing or a service, it's always with a dollar sign attached. in real life -- in our relationships and the things that give meaning to life -- it's rarely that simple.

but facebook is an extreme example, to be sure. we could, without a doubt, life a perfectly full and satisfying life without this cybernetic juggernaut, but the purveyors of our shared cultural values tirelessly promote the centrality of facebook to our collective identity. it has in and of itself become a cultural value, and those who choose to abstain are viewed as hopeless luddites or antisocial deviants.

personally, i don't value the kind of friendship that facebook promulgates, nor does it impart and improvement to my quality of life to be tracked and traded like a commodity by the marketplace inherent in the facebook model. if this is the future, you'll find me hanging back in the past, where monetary value was tangible and values were not traded in the markets.

jobs or no jobs? addicted to drama

you would think that some significant milestone in the history of civilization had been reached, with the word that steve jobs is stepping down as CEO of apple. this towering figure in modern commerce, goes the litany, is the colossus across whose shoulders modernity lies athwart.

Poll: Will Steve Jobs Exit Hurt Apple? | News & Opinion | PCMag.com: "In his 14 years at the helm of Apple, Steve Jobs introduced the world to iconic, groundbreaking technology like iTunes, the iPod, the iPhone, the iPad, and more. On Wednesday he announced he would step down from his post as CEO.
Jobs has had an invaluable influence on Apple, as well as the tech industry as a whole. PCMag’s West Coast News Editor Mark Hachman called him the “Walt Disney of the tech space.” Lead laptop analyst Cisco Cheng described the man that brought Apple back from the verge of failure as the “sultan of everything that’s been great about the hardware business.”"

i read with interest the many retrospectives on the life and times of steve jobs. some of the most interesting involved his interest in new age mumbo-jumbo, as well as health and wholesome eating habits. this, while presiding over a corporate empire that is based on exploitation of labor in the creation of throwaway products that are loved not for their utility but their coolness quotient.

while i don't begrudge jobs his success, and understand that economics and finance are what makes the world go 'round, i find some of the business practices of the apple machine to be appalling -- greedy, grasping, hostile to innovators and crassly unconcerned with the lives of millions who are crushed under the apple corporate hegemony.

if this is "magic," then we need to try reason as the glue that holds civilization together instead.

Republican says Obama's health care law will survive

this is the first assessment of the healthcare reform bill (obamacare) by a republican that's level headed and rational. since the GOP is so invested in obama's failure, they can't look at anything that bears the obama stamp with anything less than 100 percent scorn:

Republican says Obama's health care law will survive: "Former Senate Republican leader Bill Frist, a heart surgeon, says the health care overhaul signed by President Obama last year won't be repealed.

That's not what Republicans in Congress want to hear."

it's not a long article, and well worth reading. frist thinks the individual mandate to purchase insurance is unconstitutional, but that the reforms can survive without it.

his assessment is that the changes it brings are 70 percent good and 30 percent bad -- which is heresy for the GOP and it's rabid, race-hating followers.

this is not to say that the "reforms" that the bill brings are a step forward for the country. it's another corporate bonanza, where healthcare quality crumbles while profits rise like a pyramid in a sprawling wasteland.

why not single payer? why not medicare for all? why not something -- anything -- that puts people ahead of profits? healthcare could be a win-win, but instead our system(s) are biased towards an outcome where there must be more losers than winners.

told ya!

rick perry is a phenomenon, i tell you. a phenomenon!

Rick Perry leads GOP field in new Gallup poll - latimes.com: "Buoyed by his recent entry into the 2012 presidential contest, Texas Gov. Rick Perry has jumped past former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and leads the GOP field for the first time, according to a new Gallup poll of Republican voters.

The national survey showed Perry leading Romney by a double-digit margin—29% to 17%. It also found that Michele Bachmann got no significant bounce from her victory in an Iowa straw poll, which was overshadowed by Perry’s announcement speech the same day. "

the only pole that matters is the one that's going up your butt when this garbanzo is elected.

virginia's faultline nuke plants are outstanding

the fact that i found this on FOX news' site made the findings all the more dependable -- in a foregone conclusions sort of way.

Dominion Analyzing Quake Readiness Of North Anna Nuclear Plant | FoxBusiness.com:
WASHINGTON -(Dow Jones)- U.S. nuclear officials and Dominion Resources Inc. (D) are working to determine whether Dominion's North Anna nuclear-power plant in central Virginia was built to withstand the ground motion it sustained Tuesday after a magnitude-5.8 earthquake struck nearby Mineral, Va.

The analysis will shed light on the ability of the plant to cope with future tremors and help Dominion determine whether upgrades need to be made to the plant."

situation normal, folks. nothing to see here, just move along. if there's anything you need to know, we'll be the first ones to let you know!

isn't it great to know corporations are on our side, and are doing everything in their power to make sure we're "happy and having fun all the time!"?

and if, in the extremely off chance -- just ever so slightly beyond the planned design tolerances of the plant -- that there's a major failure or malfunction, dominon power would only withhold information to spare its customers from anxiety -- just like an Rx for happy pills! you don't notice anyone in japan all worked up over fuckushima, do you?

today's fun-loving teens

the world changes so fast these days, people have made a career out of charting the cultural evolution of the nation's teenagers:

Beloit College Mindset List: For the College Class of 2015, Dial-Up Is So Last Century - TIME NewsFeed: "For teenagers entering college for the first time this fall, there has never been an official Communist Party in Russia, Amazon is more than just a South American river, and “LBJ” is more likely to mean LeBron James than the man who succeeded Kennedy.

These factoids and more are included in Beloit College's “Mindset List,” an annual document that helps faculty understand the culture and psyche of the incoming class. This year's list is catered to the class of 2015, a group that was born in 1993 (give or take a year)."

the first generation to drink, smoke or fuck. man, we're livin' good in the 21st century!

so kids, hurry up and start racking up debt. your corporate masters need your support!

Has Ron Paul become electable?

it's gotten so serious out there in never-never land that even ron paul seems to be getting the treatment:

Has Ron Paul become electable? - CSMonitor.com: The GOP establishment’s view of Representative Paul, an anti-foreign-intervention pro-gold-standard libertarian, is that he’s a sideshow, and not an amusing one. He is dismissed as someone with a committed core of supporters but little appeal to Republican voters as a whole or the country at large.

Yet in the Gallup survey, among registered voters Paul trails Mr. Obama by only two points – 45 percent to 47 percent. That’s within the poll’s margin of error.

of course it's only click-trolling on the part of the commercial corporate media. at this point, there isn't any point in not running this kind of hooey so as to make even the most long of long-shots appear to be credible contenders.

we're a long way from the actual slugfest to determine nominees, and if the wrong sort were to get to the finish line, then the line would become a rope, and they'd string up the impostor. there's no way ron paul is getting the nomination, but if he ever did you'd see the GOP fall apart like gingerbread.

besides, who is ron paul. he's not who you think, if you're only judging by his more anti-establishment positions on war and civil liberties. in fact, i'd say his attachment to most of these stances is only skin deep. it's most interesting to see how he comes down on reproductive health issues -- where there's apparently a "higher law" than the US constitution. so let us know just where this higher law trumps US law, before we go falling all over ourselves trying to elevate this guy to higher office. it could be he's reached the level of maximum effectiveness already.

first they bomb you and kill you....

and then they say "security is fundamental"...

BBC News - Libya: 'Security fundamental to future': The European Union's Foreign Policy Chief, Baroness Catherine Ashton has said security in Libya is fundamental to the future.

Ms Ashton went on to say that the EU will be providing support to the National Transition Council by helping to provide medical supplies and fuel.

Journalists in Tripoli say rebels have been firing into the air inside the Gaddafi compound in celebration.

The Libyan leader's whereabouts remains unclear, however his son, Saif al-Islam, appeared in Tripoli after rebel claims he had been arrested.

after the blowing the fuck out of tripoli and other choice locations in libya, NATO and it's handmaidens are now so concerned about "security" now that it appears that khadafi and his cohort are on the run.

shades of post-saddam iraq, i suppose, where the US stood by nonchalantly while order broke down completely into an orgy of lootings and generalized chaos. the great powers, with their aerial bombardments using high explosives, are aces and destroying and killing, but not so swift when it comes to the survivors of their onslaught...

the greatest irony of all, however, is that this began as a "humanitarian" mission. if this is humanitarianism, then my ass is a chocolate fountain.

5.9 magnitude quake a motherfucker!

in print it looks like this:

5.9 magnitude quake rocks East Coast: A 5.9 magnitude quake center in Virginia rocks the East Coast, with tremors felt as far south as North Carolina, as far north as Buffalo and Boston, and as far west as Detroit.

Update at 2:30 p.m. ET: The Washington Post quotes a a USGS official as saying, "We would certainly expect aftershocks."

Update at 2:29 p.m. ET: The USGS suggests that the quake is the largest to originate in Virginia since May 31, 1897.

we were sitting at work, i was typing some typical bullshit when the floor started shaking. we have warehouse operations upstairs and outside the room where i sit, so my first reaction is they're moving something upstairs.

but as the shaking got stronger and the walls appeared to be moving, i realized it was a quake -- and not a weak one, either. it kept up for about 10 seconds before subsiding, by which time i was headed outside.

i realized at that point that by the time you knew something was up, if it was really serious you'd probably be dead already. so i knew it wasn't going to be deadly or anything.

on the other hand, the epicenter is about 10 miles from here, so we caught the brunt of it -- those down the road in richmond, not so much. the USGS originally estimated a 5.8 magnitude, but that was later revised to 5.9 -- close enough. i knew it was a lot worse than the ticklers we've had around here in the past.

still can't get a phone call completed down to the home front, but at least at this point it's clear that there isn't widespread destruction or anything. still, this is the worst tremblor to hit virginia since 1897! i'm not a pessimist but you can't say that the big one probably won't hit around here eventually -- fault or no fault!

today's favorite story: following systemic collapse...

you sometimes find the good grubs under the most inconspicuous rock. so it is with this piece from marketwatch, on the coming disintegration of life as we know it:

A ‘no-growth’ boom will follow 2012 global crash - Paul B. Farrell - MarketWatch: SAN LUIS OBISPO, Calif. (MarketWatch) — There is a global economic boom coming, but unfortunately, that boom comes only after a systemic collapse of the global economy, markets and capitalism — a collapse that may well eliminate billions of people from the planet. Shocking? Cruel? Brutal? Yes.

But folks, that is the coded message in many recent warnings from environmental economists who finally realize that nothing will wake up the public. Nothing but a catastrophic system failure. Only then, a path to reform, recovery, a new boom.

while it's not a thigh-slappin' good-time tale, it does have the ring of truth. we've been conditioned, as the piece says, to keep our noses in the air as we go about in our arrogant, self-assured manner towards virtually certain destruction. don't tell anyone to worry about whether the path we're on is sustainable or even desirable. just keep on keepin' on, until we run outta road and the next step is over a cliff...

this subject is one that fascinates me, and i think it's what drives me to old cemeteries, in an indirect way. i walk around and think about a time when nature was in control, and no one had the chutzpah to think that man's ingenuity would allow us to overcome limits to our "growth" as a society or a species. earlier times, when people lived closer to the earth, let them keep their feet on the ground in a way we can't imagine now, when we think a new gadget or gizmo can keep us around forever.

it can't.

china loves it when separatists die

it's always reassuring to see the chinese communist party, inc. hew to its narrow ideological agenda in its xinhua news syndicate reports. this is how we know that in this topsy-turvy world, there are still some things you can count on:

Nearly 100 PKK members killed in Turkish air raids in north Iraq: ANKARA, Aug. 23 (Xinhua) -- Some 90 to 100 members of the outlawed Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK) were killed during the Turkish air raids in northern Iraq, Turkish military said Tuesday.

Jets of the Turkish Air Force conducted several air raids in the past few days on the PKK camps in northern Iraq and the region around Qandil Mountain, Turkish military said in a statement posted on its website.

"The Turkish jets hit 13 targets in Metina, Zap, Avashin- Bashyan and Kharkurk on Aug. 20, four targets in Qandil, Gara, Zap and Metina on Aug. 21, and seven targets in Zap, Kharkurk, Avashin- Bashyan and Qandil on Aug. 22," it said.

"During the air offensive with the high-tech target acquisition and shooting control systems, the jets hit 132 targets while artillery units shelled 349 targets. Seventy-three hiding places, six shelters, 18 caves, eight depots, 14 buildings, one arsenal, nine anti-aircraft positions and three control points were destroyed," it said.

the kurds' and their national aspirations are, of course, of long standing. the US has been both friend and just as often betrayer, which establishes a kurdish zone in iraq on the one hand, but countenances turkey's continuing campaign against its kurdish minority on the other. we here in the US watch in amazement.

china, on the other hand, has separatist movements in a number of areas, from tibet to mongolia. the han chinese are about as expansionist a nation as you can find these days, so it's instructive from a purely spectator perspective to see their propaganda arm finding common cause with other oppressor, expansionist regimes wherever it can find them.

someday the chinese will give us all what for, but for now they have to watch in dismay as their commercial contracts with ghadafi or whatever other resource-rich regimes it supports regardless of human rights concerns get run down by the insatiable US imperial machine.

S&P shakeup is penance for audacity

when S&P downgraded the US' AAA credit rating after the debt ceiling fiasco, there was much consternation and muffled incredulity. most agreed that the US political system was an obstacle to adult resolution of the nation's many challenges, but no one wants to make reference to our failings in mixed company. hence, someone at S&P had to fall on his sword:

S&P President to Step Down; McGraw-Hill Shows its Regret Over Downgrade - International Business Times: Certainly, we all know we have a political quagmire in Washington that has deepened in recent months. But that happens in political season, with a presidential election cranking up. It's not good, but the system is still working, albeit at an annoying crawl that is at times quite dysfunctional.

But S&P, in citing America's risky political system, put the nation's free-voice system on parole. So it wasn't just a downgrade, which would have been problematic in one way, in light of the $2 trillion calculation error. It was the reckless way the downgrade was dished out, bashing the nation before the world.

Most of us couldn't understand why S&P went so far in making a bold political statement with its action. Initially, the agency and its parent company, McGraw-Hill, stood by the move. At that point, with a global financial storm swirling, there was no other option.

Two weeks later, however, we now know.

this IBtimes seems to think that the system is working properly, albeit in a way that's painful to watch. it appears that corporate culture in this regard is more honest and accountable than government, however. sharma took the fall at S&P in a way that no government official ever takes a fall for catastrophes in our national life. or for that matter, among the corporate insiders who precipitated the 2008 collapse.

the guys who take the fall are the ones who speak the truth a little too plainly for general consumption. you can't come out and say the US is on shaky financial ground. you must only acknowledge "challenges" without attributing to them the prospect of eventual collapse due to profligacy and the inability of elites to deal honestly with the house of cards, financial ponzi of debt that the US dollar system is based upon.

i guess we'll just have to patiently wait until the coming collapse is manifest before we actually have to call the sting-pullers to account.

wikileaks: all the pussy we want

all of us losers who thought barack obama was the real thing back in 2008 took another swift jackboot in the nuts when the following shenanigans at wikileaks came to light:

Wiki war: 3500 unpublished leaks destroyed forever as Assange hits out: WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange's former right-hand man has irrevocably destroyed 3500 unpublished files leaked to the whistleblower site including the complete US no-fly list, five gigabytes of Bank of America documents and detailed information about 20 neo-Nazi groups.

Daniel Domscheit-Berg, who left WikiLeaks last year after a falling out with Assange, revealed the document destruction in an interview with Der Spiegel.

WikiLeaks has hit back, accusing Domscheit-Berg of being in bed with US intelligence agencies and of jeopardising the leaking of “many issues of public importance, human rights abuses, mass telecommunications interception, banking and the planning of dozens of neo-nazi groups”.

those of us on the left just can't hardly win. every time we root for somebody fighting the corporate oligarchy they turn out to be either sellouts or assholes that weren't worthy of the high expectations we invested in them.

the right wingers are constantly being betrayed by their leaders, as they're caught in hotel rooms with drugs and male prostitutes, but their followers love of jesus and hatred of negroes sustains them.

we get guys like assange, who let hoes go to his head (you know which one) and let his over-inflated ego get the best of him. as if that wasn't bad enough, he gets sold out by his best bud, who probably just resented his more suave compadre and decided to sell the organization and all its supporters out for the sake of his own thwarted delusions of grandeur.

it's almost too comical to be taken seriously that domscheit-berg aspired to establish his own muckraking wikileaks-type organization. this same retarded fuck that destroyed 3500 unpublished leaked files -- sent to wikileaks and entrusted to his care -- out of his supposed concern for the identities of the leakers... even though the leakers have alread,y to a great extent, accepted the risks involved in making the materials available.

in any case, the wikileaks phenomenon was interesting and exciting while it lasted. if this guy's mission is to create a better, more credible wikileaks, it's kind of ironic, since his singular actions will most effectively serve the purposes of the enemies of openness, while driving a stake through the heart of the movement to expose government wrongdoing and corruption through publication of secret documents.

when you remove the one viable avenue for exposing government secrets, that only makes it that much harder for opponents of secrecy and behind-the-scenes control of the levers of power to employ peaceful means to change governments and make them accountable.

because of this bitches' spat between assange and domschiet-berg, we're assured that instead of this fight being waged online and in the minds of the public, the fight will move to the streets.

thanks, guys.

clueless asshole in Post-Gaddafi Libya

it might as well be time asking the question:

Does Post-Gaddafi Libya Face the Fate of Post-Saddam Iraq? - TIME: Away from the dizzying euphoria on Tripoli's streets, where Libyans have held wild celebrations of the end of Muammar Gaddafi's 42-year rule, there is a specter that hovers over the scene in the minds of many Libyan officials and Western governments — that of another Arab capital: Baghdad.

As opposition officials began to plot the details of a post-Gaddafi Libya during the past few months, there was an overriding sensitivity to the mistakes made in Iraq eight years ago, when the collapse of a dictator paved the way for years of insurgent war far bloodier and costlier than the fight for freedom itself.

if the people in libya think that by deposing khadafi they are somehow bringing themselves freedom, then they deserve what's coming next.

like iraq, they are set to become a vassal state to the western powers that made the removal of their erstwhile leader possible. rather than doing it themselves, they allowed the global banking elites and resource monopolies take over the country by proxy.

the fight to be rid of the old regime will be looked back at as the beginning of libya's long, ugly decline as the manifestos of the IMF are brought to bear on the economy and people of the country.

hey, hey CIA, whose regime did you topple today?

Jon Huntsman: a nixon type of guy

joh huntsman sounds like a republican from the 1970s instead of the 2010s:

Jon Huntsman: Does a "center right" presidential candidate have a prayer? - Political Hotsheet - CBS News: After sputtering out of the gate, Republican presidential candidate Jon Huntsman has found his voice as an unapologetic advocate for moderation in the crowded GOP field.
But the question remains: Do Republican voters really want moderation in 2012?

Huntsman made waves last week with a Tweet that read: "To be clear. I believe in evolution and trust scientists on global warming. Call me crazy." The Tweet was a response to comments by one of his rivals, Texas Governor Rick Perry, who has cast evolution as "just a theory" with "gaps" and suggested that global warming is a hoax perpetrated by scientists seeking financial backing.

it isn't that the country isn't ready for this kind of candidate -- after all, the voters already elected barack obama -- who's as center-right a republican as you could find. he's a nixon type guy, too -- like jon huntsman.

the problem is, the GOP isn't buying it. look at the tea party cadres that inhabit the house majority, and whose uncompromising stances doom any measure of commonsense sanity. if the GOP wasn't so fixated on blaming the negroes and the mexicans for all this country's woes, there would be a huge common ground and some rather huge legislative accomplishments would be possible.

obama was brought it to deliver his constituency to the right-wing, business elites' agenda. thankfully for the recalcitrance of the rabid right, there's been a bit of a brake applied to a mad rush to the capitalist wet dream that is the american polity.

corporate welfare dwarfs any social program

when the tea party right wing establishment cries about big government and deficit spending, you know it's just code for giving money to negroes while hard-working white people can never catch a break. that's what makes their plaints so pathetic. when it comes to the real giveaways, get this:

Wall Street Aristocracy Got $1.2 Trillion in Loans from Fed - Bloomberg: Citigroup Inc. (C) and Bank of America Corp. (BAC) were the reigning champions of finance in 2006 as home prices peaked, leading the 10 biggest U.S. banks and brokerage firms to their best year ever with $104 billion of profits.
By 2008, the housing market’s collapse forced those companies to take more than six times as much, $669 billion, in emergency loans from the U.S. Federal Reserve. The loans dwarfed the $160 billion in public bailouts the top 10 got from the U.S. Treasury, yet until now the full amounts have remained secret.
Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke’s unprecedented effort to keep the economy from plunging into depression included lending banks and other companies as much as $1.2 trillion of public money, about the same amount U.S. homeowners currently owe on 6.5 million delinquent and foreclosed mortgages.

of course, the GOP -- of which the tea party is a wholly-owned subsidiary -- is pleased as punch to be able to offer this kind of largess to its most prolific benefactors, the multi-national corporate powers. their program of zero regulation coupled with infinite corporate welfare is part of the greatest transfer of wealth in history, which is taking place before our very eyes.

the public might be aghast, if they were to arouse from their media-induced stupor long enough to comprehend what's happening. unfortunately, the art of misdirection is a specialty of the elite media that shapes public opinion, so as soon as someone starts to pay attention, some new distraction erupts to change the subject.

Japan faces perils of wishful thinking

not to rub it in or anything, but this could be seen coming from miles off:

Japan warns on radiation-hit land - FT.com: Some areas near Japan’s crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant could be uninhabitable for many years, due to remaining high levels of radioactive contamination, the Japanese government has warned.
The admission that work to stabilise the plant and decontaminate surrounding areas will not be sufficient to make local communities safe to live in, will come as a blow to residents who have been expecting to return to their communities as early as next year.

just what was in that kool-aid that the japanese government was serving its people? how could the biggest nuclear catastrophe (yet) have failed to register in the minds of affected residents?

this isn't just a temporary condition. measured in terms of human civilization to date, the situation in fuckushima is beyond the scale human civilization can comprehend. those who lost their homes as a result of the catastrophe will never return. their descendants will never return, either.

that's the problem with nuclear disasters: they never end, as far as humanity is concerned.

stocks set for a bounce...

we're at the edge of our seats on this one:

Pre-Market Report - Aug. 22, 2011 - CNNMoney: NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- U.S. stocks were poised for an early bounce Monday, following the biggest four-week loss since March 2009.
Dow Jones industrial average (INDU), S&P 500 (SPX) and Nasdaq (COMP) futures were up about 1% ahead of the opening bell. Stock futures indicate the possible direction of the markets when they open at 9:30 a.m. ET.

ever heard of the dead cat bounce? this is liable to be another exercise in futility, as markets will invariably wend their way lower in anticipation of another big bail-out by ben bernanke. rick perry take note.

Libyans Celebrate Takeover of Capital, End of Despicable Al Qathafi Regime

ever hear the saying, be careful what you wish for?

Libyans Celebrate Takeover of Capital, End of Despicable Al Qathafi Regime: Until very recently Libyans were not sure that they they would really live the moment many of them have longed for over more than forty years under the ruthless dictator Muammar Al Qathafi, whose sheer oppression in close to 42 years made it almost impossible that a new dawn would break over Libya, living live out of Al Qatahfi's iron grip.

if libyans were so down on this dude, you have to wonder what took 'em so long to get rid of him.

more to the point, however, is how swell is life going to be now that they've traded khadafi for a CIA-backed dictatorship. hope you guys enjoy that red-white-and-blue shaft up your asses.

Rick Perry bandwagon picks up new followers

if you needed any confirmation of rick perry's gathering momentum for his white house bid, this is it:

Rick Perry picks up big endorsement in South Carolina - BostonHerald.com: COLUMBIA, S.C. — Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry stayed on script during two appearances in Florence Friday morning, attacking President Barack Obama on job creation while touting his own record for job creation as governor of Texas.

In doing so, Perry, governor of Texas, picked up a key endorsement from Florence physician Eddie Floyd, one of the state’s most influential Republican fundraisers. Floyd introduced Perry at Carolinas Hospital Systems as "the next president of the United States."

Floyd’s endorsement is evidence that South Carolina Republican establishment is lining up behind Perry.

it's all a matter of style over substance. this guys has got all the stylistic bases covered, which is why he's so fricking formidable.

Perry is a moronic lout -- just what we need

if it weren't for the media treating this dingfuck as if he was the 2nd coming of george dubya bush, we wouldn't be reading this kind of fawning mush:

Perry Makes Texas-Size Waves In Presidential Race : NPR: Gov. Rick Perry made a splash the size of Texas into the Republican presidential field this week. He plunged in with events in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, demonstrating each step of the way that he's not shying away from controversy, or attention.

i've already expressed my opinion that perry will be the next president, but it won't be on account of any attribute that might qualify him for the office.

instead, we'll get the president we deserve: a fake, a fraud, a sellout, a tool of the corporate powers -- dolled up like another rockhead on mount rushmore through the limitless power of propaganda in a plugged-in culture.

McDonnell is another fake-ass foe of "government"

among the hypocrisies of the political right, and especially here in virginia, is the constant railing against the federal government, federal spending, big government. meanwhile, who are usually the fattest hogs at the federal trough? it just so happens that the good 'ol solid south, that bastion of racist pigs, are the most supine when it comes to accepting federal largesse. now, when the tap is about to be turned back a notch, who's running around in abject terror?

McDonnell reports surplus, braces for federal cuts | HamptonRoads.com | PilotOnline.com: Virginia ended this budget year with a $545 million surplus, but rough times are ahead as the federal government looks to cut spending. To cope with those cuts and reassure credit rating agencies of the state's stability, Gov. Bob McDonnell wants to invest a portion of the surplus into a new fund.

take away all the federal goodies that washington pours into the old dominion, and we wouldn't be so full of shit. but with our mega military and security apparatus infrastructure, we really do have it made in virginia. so when it comes to any serious cuts to that gravy train, don't be looking for eric cantor to be out front of the parade with this budgetary ax. it's just ain't happening.

how we're "winning" in afghanistan

the politicians keep us tied down in the graveyard of empires through constant assurances that we're "winning" -- or at the very least we're achieving "success". here a compendium of the opposite viewpoint:

Kabul: a city of suicide bombs and terrorist spectaculars - Telegraph: Kabul, the Afghan capital and home to thousands of expatriates, is often the target of high-profile terrorist attacks

now that markets are tanking, is there any chance that we'll bring our troopers home, and put the money we waste in far-off lands to better use? or will foreign adventures been seen as a politically palatable form of economic stimulus?

stocks tank, so what?

well, here's the latest on the market from our buddies at reuters:

S&P 500 falls 5 percent, Nasdaq at session lows | Reuters: (Reuters) - The S&P 500 hit session lows and the Nasdaq fell to session lows on Thursday, as selling intensified in the last hour of trading.

The Dow Jones industrial average tumbled 469.05 points, or 4.11 percent, to 10,941.16. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index slid 57.15 points, or 4.79 percent, to 1,136.74. The Nasdaq Composite Index lost 136.40 points, or 5.43 percent, to 2,375.08.

those of us who participate in a company 401(k) plan are taking a beating, i guess. but looking at the big picture, that's just the price of admission to the casino capitalism here in the USA. it's a loser's bet anyway.

the big money always gets the big money, and since companies did away with pensions in favor of these market-based plans, it's been a bonanza for them and not so hot for us. it was always thus.

hence, i'm not feeling a lot of sorrow over the market's sorrows. this craphole of a system isn't going to get fixed until the big money boys totally bollix it up and the honest-to-gosh reformers get in there and cleanse the shit out of the stables of insatiable greed.

that is, if there's someone who's tuff enuf and smart enuf to save capitalism from itself again. this is anybody's guess -- what happened in the 1930s is far from a given now.

this entire financial system is built on a foundation of matchsticks, and it's coming down. the big money boys have been gaming the system since forever, but they really got full control of the throttle back in the 1980s, and they've been driving like hell in order to get there ever since.

here's hoping they make their destination, and the sooner the better...

we have it made in virginia

we in virginia pride ourselves on our fiscal rectitude, being a low-tax, right-to-work state with a AAA bond rating that's one of the most hospitable destinations for business. so it's no surprise that our governor, the next vice president of the US, bob mcdonnell, is trumpeting how much cash we've got:

Gov. Bob McDonnell announces $544.8 million budget surplus for FY11 - dailypress.com: RICHMOND – Gov. Bob McDonnell announced today that the commonwealth has a $544.8 million dollar budget surplus for the past fiscal year due to a combination of better than expected revenue and savings and savings from state agencies.

Speaking to the General Assemblies joint money committees, McDonnell said the state added $244.1 million in savings from state agencies to the $310.7 million revenue surplus he announced last month to come up with the more than half billion dollar figure.

now, last time our esteemed general assembly met, the legislators came to loggerheads -- as they always do -- over the question of how to pay for transportation improvements. the word that caused so much consternation and gnashing to teeth was -- wait for it -- taxes. as all good republicans everywhere know, you don't raise taxes, regardless of the purpose or necessity.

so governor bob and his cohort took a page straight out of the reagan playbook: they decided to borrow a half-billion dollars to get the job done! that's the borrow-and-spend GOP way!

now that they've come up with this $500 million windfall, are they going to use the money for some productive purpose? how about for starters they pay back the $610 mil they owe the state employees' pension fund? that is, before they decide to give it to their political cronies who like the "business climate" here in the old dominion...

Attacks in southern Israel payback for aggression

we hate to read about violent attacks against civilians, but it happens regularly eenough if you get into the way of israeli expansionism. hence, you have this:

Attacks in southern Israel leave at least 5 dead - latimes.com: Reporting from Jerusalem— Gunmen near the southern Israeli resort town of Eilat launched a coordinated attack Thursday against three civilian and military targets, killing at least five people and wounding 20 more, Israeli military officials said.

The attacks shattered a period of relative calm along Israel's border with Egypt and heightened concerns about growing instability and lawlessness in the Sinai desert region.

it would be nice if we could all just get along, but obviously we can't. i read snippets here and there about the IDF killing and wounding -- but it's so routine it hardly merits a second glance.

this, however, is different. when oppressed people strike back against a much more powerful oppressor, it makes for screaming headlines -- the enormity!

a bit like 9-11: how many millions of muslims do we kill before someone works up the nerve to strike back?

oh, well, common people don't matter. this is a game between elites, and we're just collateral damage.

watch out for those miracle makers

The Truth About Rick Perry's 'Texas Miracle' - ABC News: Rick Perry is a miracle-maker, but only if you ask Rick Perry. The Texas governor has traversed three early-primary states in the week since he announced his candidacy for president, touting Texas's job growth as the "Texas miracle."

anybody remember the guy peddling the Massachusetts miracle back in '88?

of course, people are a lot more gullible these days -- either that, or a lot more desperate...

Tampa Bomb Plot -- a plot against freedom

society is full of malcontents, kids that just don't fit in and can't figure out how to deal with their problems. after watching an excessive amount of tube, you end up with a guy like this:

Tampa Bomb Plot Teen's Friend: He Was 'Just Venting' - ABC News: A Florida 17-year-old charged with plotting to kill school officials and students with bombs was "just venting anger" and would never have gone through with the attack, a friend of his claims.

Jared Cano wrote a manifesto that detailed his plans for an attack starting at 5 a.m. next Tuesday, the first day of classes at Freedom High School in Tampa, Fla., the school Cano was expelled from in March 2010. The unnamed friend was at the home of Cano when he was arrested on Tuesday.

"He wouldn't go and do something like that. He'd say he's going to in the heat of the moment but that's his way of venting, I guess," Cano's friend told ABC Action News in Tampa. "I think he was just venting anger on a piece of paper."

i think so, too. i think he would've woken up on tuesday morning, smoked a blunt and then gone to play some more video games. commit mass murder against his alma mater, FREEDOM high school? nah, i just don't think guys like him are that motivated.

but the cops, on the other hand, sure are. it's a government program they can believe in. homeland security, which is just job security for the internal security services. take a look at 'em next time there's a standoff in your neighborhood. you'll see them in their full military gear, riding in armored personnel carriers, and for all the world looking like the jackbooted thugs in brazil...

a job program for america -- fighting americans!

hugo chavez wants venezuela's gold back

this headline story from zero hedge follows reports that hugo chavez has asked the bank of england to return the gold it holds for venezuela.

ZeroHedge | On a long enough timeline the survival rate for everyone drops to zero: "In addition to the nationalization of his gold insutry, Chavez earlier also announced that he would recover virtually all gold that Venezuela hold abroad, starting with 99 tons of gold at the Bank of England. As the WSJ reported earlier, 'The Bank of England recently received a request from the Venezuelan government about transferring the 99 tons of gold Venezuela holds in the bank back to Venezuela, said a person familiar with the matter."

probably not a bad idea, considering that countries like UK and USA will declare war (or not, just initiate "hostilities") as a pretext to seize said assets.

ZH goes on to speculate about what happens if venezuela wants to get back the gold held by our own JP Morgan -- which of course does not possess the physical metal to satisfy all its obligations.

this, as the story goes on to propose, could get very interesting...

Report: Child poverty rate hits 20 percent in US as families struggle - CSMonitor.com

when you read a story like this, what do you think of?

Report: Child poverty rate hits 20 percent in US as families struggle - CSMonitor.com: "There has been a 'significant decline' in economic well-being for low-income children and families over the past decade as the official child poverty rate grew by 18 percent and poverty levels for families with children increased in 38 states, according to a new study."

yet when the underclass revolts and goes on the rampage, we forget about the miserable existence we've consigned the millions of out-of-sight, out-of-mind impoverished people, whose plight never seems to warrant any particular response.

then, of course, the economic powers whose decisions dictate who will prosper and who will suffer instruct those who aren't yet suffering to fear the poor, adopt a stance of intolerance against their "lawlessness" and give up yet more of their freedoms to safeguard the corrupt status quo.

welcome to the advanced societies of the west.

GOP attacks on Obama hypocritical? you're kidding...

i suppose it's, in the immortal words of joe biden, "a big fuckin' deal," but you'd be forgiven for overlooking it, as it's pretty small potatoes in the grand scheme:

GOP attacks Obama bus, but Bush did same - chicagotribune.com: "As President Barack Obama traveled to the first of two “town hall” stops in western Illinois today, top national and state Republicans criticized his campaign-style visit and criticized his use of a taxpayer-funded Canadian-manufactured bus as part of a jobs tour.

But no mention was made by Republican National Chairman Reince Priebus or Illinois GOP Chairman Pat Brady that a re-election seeking President George W. Bush used a bus from the same manufacturer, Quebec-based Prevost, for a spring 2004 “Yes, America Can” campaign tour through the Midwest."

the notable thing is, of course, that the press actually called it this time. ever since ronald reagan's heyday, the media has been a supine booster of whatever the prevailing myth is, according to whomever is "winning" at the time. for the past 30 years or so, that's been the GOP...

maybe it's a chicago thing, you think? defending one of it's own. the trib might be thrown this shit back at the republicans and seeing if it'll stick.

still, this is not SOP for our journalistic community. they generally let this kind of attack stand, without comment, relying on the other side to buy some media time to counter the attack.

still, we most certainly have NOT turned a corner here. the GOP message machine will still hammer its point home until the message goes from your cranium to your rectum.

State of the Union: Looting Frenzies

you should check out the latest entry on linh dinh's blog, state of the union:

State of the Union: Looting Frenzies: "Our banking system makes money out of nothing, lends us cash that it doesn’t even have, and with Washington as its protector and enforcer, ensures that what we own is worth less and less, while we must work more and more to make payment after unending payment, with compounding interest, penalties, fees and whatever else it feels like tagging on at the end. The Federal Reserve, then, is not an institution with “public purposes and private aspects,” but exactly the opposite. Like our federal government itself, it is a cartel with ruthless, private objectives hidden behind a public façade."

linh dinh is always an entertaining writer, but he's been doing his homework and this time he hits one out of the park! the US way of life is enabled by this wretched creation of the banks called the FED. with it we're profligate, arrogant wastrels. without it, the US might have been a nation that could live up to its ideals. just don't look for it to happen at this late date, and forget rick perry's lame protestations. all these politicians are creatures of the system.

new 27-story hotel slated for demolition?

we're heard of ghost cities in china, but never anything like this:

MGM wants to implode 27-story hotel that never opened: "MGM Resorts International wants to implode a new 26-story hotel in downtown Las Vegas that has been plagued by construction and structural problems before it has even opened, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reports.

Unlike the Sands hotel, which was a Las Vegas landmark for decades before it was torn down, the Harmon Tower has never had a single guest."

this is the state of corporate america today: if you build it, it might be so shoddy that not only will they not come, but you will demolish it before it ever opens.

it's a sorry monument to the country this used to be. at least in china, the ghost cities are good experience for a country on the move...

teen must have had a bad day at school

if you're like me, you often wanted to do something like this:

Teen charged with planning to blow up Tampa school: "Tampa police arrested an expelled high school student and charged him with planning to blow up Freedom High School on the first day of class next Tuesday.

At a news conference today, Tampa Police Chief Janet Castor described the alleged plot as 'a potential catastrophic event the likes of which this city has never seen.'"

of course, in this day and age, we take all incidents of this nature extremely seriously -- so seriously, in fact, that possession of a firecracker is tantamount to a weapon of mass destruction in the hands of osama obama...

the fact is, the potential for hysteria is far greater than the potential for actual violence in our present society. all it takes is a single hair out of place to ruin someone's entire day.

on the other hand, when you have individuals who are so alienated from their social situation in which they find themselves, the society is long overdue for some serious introspection. instead, it is never even mentioned....

god, guts and glory: tea party america

the typical libertarian rube describes the tea party as non-partisan, and concerned exclusively with excessive government spending, and not at all about social issues. not that it's any great surprise, but seeing this mischaracterization debunked by researchers reveals true believers in the hype out for the fools they are:

Tea Partiers Care More About Godlier Government Than Smaller Government -- Daily Intel: "Next to being a Republican, the strongest predictor of being a Tea Party supporter today was a desire, back in 2006, to see religion play a prominent role in politics. And Tea Partiers continue to hold these views: they seek “deeply religious” elected officials, approve of religious leaders’ engaging in politics and want religion brought into political debates. The Tea Party’s generals may say their overriding concern is a smaller government, but not their rank and file, who are more concerned about putting God in government."

when i went to the virginia tea party convention last fall, the first thing that struck me was that it looked like every republican convention i'd ever been to -- which was mostly back in the late 1970s, but in spite of the time warp the scenery was the same.

it's not paranoia or any kind of irrational fear that makes us wary of the tea party. it's the documented fact that they are by and large a bunch of christian dominionists, and true believers in a theocracy ruled by protestant, fundamentalist christians.

guys and gals on the right that pander to these people -- and that includes just about any of the serious contenders for the GOP presidential nomination -- are actually courting the most anti-american segment of the voting population. don't fear the muslims, because the real danger to our values comes from the mainstream GOP.

dunno about you, but i think that between the government we have and the government these people want us to have, we're pretty much fucked from every angle.

it's simply a matter of which way you want to be sexually assaulted by the red-white-and-blue telephone pole...

Rick Perry tells the FED, bend over...

after getting some traction with his threats to ben bernanke, rick perry continues to lean on the FED in campaign appearances:

Rick Perry says Fed should “open its books” - The Washington Post: "Bedford Village, NEW HAMPSHIRE -- In one of his first visits to the first-in-the-nation primary state as a presidential candidate, Texas Gov. Rick Perry on Wednesday morning stuck to his controversial comments that it would be “treasonous” for the Federal Reserve to “print more money” in order to boost the economy.

He also called for the Fed to “open its books” and be completely transparent in its activities."

it's interesting how politicians on both sides of the aisle, up until now, have been as deferential towards the banks, and coughed up TARP and other life-saving expenditures to reanimate the financial sector when it suffered a near-fatal catastrophe in 2008.

now, we're supposed to believe that rick perry is going for the jugular with these rhetorical attacks on the FED -- which is, put quite frankly, not truly a government entity at all, but a stock corporation wholly owned by the banks.

tough talk, maybe, but nobody out here in lala land -- the fantasy world of voters -- really cares about the FED. face it, those are just three letters that have something to do with interest rates, but where it fits into our collective misery is a black hole to the average person.

perry is simply derailing ron paul's campaign, which has gained so much traction that it's made the very powers he threatens nervous. perry is not actually a kindred spirit in attacking the FED, ironically -- he's actually doing battle on its behalf, by neutralizing its greatest threat.

come next october, we won't be hearing a peep about the FED or any other of this nonsense. when it's head-to-head perry versus obama, we'll have another "are you better off than you were 4 years ago," debate performance which will seal the deal with the american people.

there you'll find the FED and their bankster allies shit-faced with joy over how superbly they played the public for suckers yet again...

heads i win, tails you lose!

photographers are the enemy!

seems like in long beach, ca., if your photography doesn't pass the tourist test, you are judged a threat:

Long Beach Post: Police Chief Confirms Detaining Photographers Within Departmental Policy: "9:45am | Police Chief Jim McDonnell has confirmed that detaining photographers for taking pictures 'with no apparent esthetic value' is within Long Beach Police Department policy.

McDonnell spoke for a follow-up story on a June 30 incident in which Sander Roscoe Wolff, a Long Beach resident and regular contributor to Long Beach Post, was detained by Officer Asif Kahn for taking pictures of a North Long Beach refinery.

'If an officer sees someone taking pictures of something like a refinery,' says McDonnell, 'it is incumbent upon the officer to make contact with the individual.' McDonnell went on to say that whether said contact becomes detainment depends on the circumstances the officer encounters.

McDonnell says that while there is no police training specific to determining whether a photographer's subject has 'apparent esthetic value,' officers make such judgments 'based on their overall training and experience' and will generally approach photographers not engaging in 'regular tourist behavior.'"

since when have police officers been trained and certified to make aesthetic judgments? and while a refinery may make an attractive target for some kind of attack, it's probably only going to happen in your dreams -- which is where every so-called attack besides one has taken place.

we busy ourselves with countermeasures to a threat that honestly doesn't exist. there must be a strong, compelling argument for expecting such a threat to materialize in the future, however.

and this is the crux of the matter: we're arming ourselves to the teeth, militarizing the civilian police and subjecting ourselves to a surveillance society mentality in defense against an uprising -- an insurrection -- which has yet to manifest. it must be a future of revolution that the powers that be fear, and make ready for.

perry's swagger the perfect antidote to obama's effete snobbery

what do you think? will american voters go for a guy like this?

Will Rick Perry's Texas swagger help or hurt? - Political Hotsheet - CBS News: "The first time you see Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry, it hits you immediately: The Texas governor has the swagger of a movie star. It's there in his alpha-male confidence, his Marlboro Man drawl, his propensity for cowboy boots. This is a guy who used one shot with his laser-sighted pistol to take out a coyote that was menacing his dog during a jog last year; at the Iowa state fair Monday, as he 'chomped on meat and a hard-boiled egg and struck rugged poses,' the strong gun rights advocate notably declined to tell Politico's Ben Smith whether he was packing. "

damn skippy, they will. you can ream 'em with a 10-foot red-white-and-blue telephone pole, and they'll eat it up as long as the pitchman seems confident and self-assured -- your traditional cocky asshole american.

it's no wonder the guy just strutted onto the stage on saturday and he's already getting more press than all the other candidates put together.

one thing's certain: you can say goodbye to ron paul. this guy is the establishment's ron-paul killer, a bilderberger with pretensions of being a shit-kicking texas cowboy....

small towns leading economic comeback?

obama is on a bus tour to reconnect with small-town america -- or at least be seen on the nightly news talking about things that people are worried about. it's not deficits, of course, but jobs. so with this in mind, he spouts a most improbable scenario:

Obama: Look for economic comeback in small-town America - Political Hotsheet - CBS News: "Telling residents of Peosta, Iowa that small towns hold the key to economic recovery, President Obama today announced a series of initiatives aimed at increasing the number of jobs in rural America. The president said the new initiatives are steps the administration can take without consulting Congress -- but he pressed citizens to call on Congress to accomplish more."

and after that, of course, we'll be delivering sno-cones to the inhabitants of hell...

okay, seriously now, what on earth is ever going to lead to a resurgence in rural, small-town life in the USA?

economic collapse -- total economic disintegration wrought by a breakdown in the modern, global supply chain that makes the contemporary world go 'round.

when there's no fuel to run our SUVs to the corner store, much less bring cheap goods from china, where do we suppose we'll find the stuff to feed ourselves? answer: it won't be mickey D's. maybe then, for those of us lucky enough to still be around and part of a functioning community, the small-town model might not seem such a stretch to imagine.

first it was teachers and firefighters...

with all the tea party hoopla about cutting government spending, along with the all-out assault on federal workers, i guess this was inevitable:

Panetta suggests current service members may spared from proposed pension cuts - Political Hotsheet - CBS News: "Defense Secretary Leon Panetta on Tuesday suggested that current service members might be spared some proposed deep cuts to the military's generous retirement plan .

CBS News reported Monday that the current military retirement system is a potential target for budget cutters and the Pentagon may begin offering a 401(k) style savings plan instead of the defined benefit plan now in place."

actually, it's just panetta's continuing snow job to preserve pentagon budgets against the meat cleaver that's in store for the feds...

still, with the poverty draft swelling the ranks of enlistees, just like the general economy is oversupplied with labor the military has ample cannon fodder to run a race to the bottom in military pay and benefits.

with all the gee-whiz military hardware coming out, warm bodies are the cheapest, most expendable part of the machine, after all.

our politicians like to talk big about how grateful we are for the sacrifices of our fighting men and women. they make for some great, melodramatic moments at baseball games and such, when the troop gets whisked away from the front lines to be reunited with family, but it's all a con job. military is a business just like the rest, and if they could outsource the fighting to the chinese the masters of war probably would.

for obvious reasons, that's not happening (yet). so watch the amazing, shrinking benefits for military personnel fizzle away before your eyes... suckers!

OH MY GOD, SAVE MY NUTS!

i knew fuckushima was bad news, but never like this:

Where's That Radioactive Sulfur Now? Possibly In Your Pants - Forbes: "When the news broke yesterday that a previously unreported type of fallout from Fukushima—radioactive sulfur—had reached the United States in late March, nearly all mainstream media reports made the claim that it poses no threat to the health of Americans. But none of them explained where the radioactive sulfur went.

And if you’re a man, you may be interested to know that some miniscule portion of it could be in your testicles."

now that the truth is out there, what're we gonna do about it, guys? it's your nuts on the line here! are you going to take a knee to the crotch like this?

i guess so... nobody really wants to blow their cool any more, to appear helpless and ineffectual. and that's what we all are, of course. protozoa with flapping flagella.

hell, maybe you jizz will now glow in the dark! how cool is that?

Perry: all hat and no brain

the LA Times says rick perry lacks subtlety, a trait is says is highlighted in yesterday's remarks about the FED and ben bernanke:

Rick Perry takes early shot at Federal Reserve chairman [Video] - latimes.com: "But Perry has never been known for his campaign subtlety and said more such easing would be a form of politics designed to help President Obama in 2012. He then donned his rhetorical 10-gallon hat and political spurs to lash into Bernanke.

“If this guy prints more money between now and the election, I don’t know what you all would do to him in Iowa, but we would treat him pretty ugly down in Texas,” Perry said, presenting the kind of tough guy image that goes with being a straight shooter the Lone Star state."

i see the second coming of dubya, with the same type of knee-slapping, good-old-boyism that resonates with our not very bright, typical wide-screen watching, beer-swilling republican voter.

what's notable here is not so much the charge of "treason" against bernanke, if he should so much as think about printing more money, is the way perry is horning in on good ol' irreproachable ron paul, the patron saint of honest-money libertarianism with a dash of social conservatism.

of course, perry isn't bashing the FED per se. he just doesn't want bernanke -- a registered republican -- to do anything that might benefit obama's reelection. the GOP has been steadfast in one thing, and one thing only: denying obama anything that might resemble a positive accomplishment.

so while he's stealing some of paul's rhetoric, he's not above the use of the FED if it serves GOP purposes generally -- for example, the collusion of dubya and allen greenspan to keep interest rates historically low after 9/11. this not only provided stimulus for dubya's otherwise flailing reelection campaign, but fueled the housing bubble which ultimately crashed the banking sector in 2008.

so when it comes to gaming the FED for political advantage, the charges of treason ought to be subject to a bit of introspection on perry's part -- and yet, as the mindless partisan tool he is, such intellectual or ethical exercises are beyond the ken for midgets like the current crop of US politicians -- incumbent and aspiring both.

what's a bit of secret-sharing among friends?

the media is all a-twitter over the story about our allies the pakistanis allowing china to inspect the wreckage of our chopper which was downed in operation kill osama:

U.S. suspects Pakistan let China visit stealth chopper - CNN.com: "Washington (CNN) -- The United States is concerned that Pakistan may have given China access to the helicopter that crashed in the U.S. raid on Osama bin Laden's compound, a U.S. official said Monday.
'We have reason to suspect China was given access but we cannot confirm it definitively,' said a U.S. official who is not authorized to discuss intelligence matters publicly. 'We have strong suspicions.'"

the US, on the other hand, is not stranger to having allies share its secrets with those sneaky red chinese... after all, it's pretty well known -- not talked about, but known -- that our israeli allies shared top-secret missile-guidance system technology with the chinks back as far as the 1990s, and you don't see us holding it against those krazy likudniks, do you?

same here: it's an entertaining sideshow when all else is going down the crapper. we can always use some duplicitous but useful friends to stir the pot of international relations.

Billionaire Warren Buffett gets the brush-off

when a guy like buffett makes an outrageous request like this, you can't expect the media to run away from it:

Billionaire Warren Buffett Tells Congress To Raise Taxes On Wealthy - ABC News: "Warren Buffett, one of the richest men in the country, wants to pay more taxes and thinks his super-rich friends should too.

Buffett, who is estimated to be worth more than $47 billion, called on Congress to commit to 'shared sacrifice' and raise taxes on people earning more than $1 million. Buffett said the rich are 'coddled' by Congress 'as if we were spotted owls or some other endangered species.'

'While the poor and middle class fight for us in Afghanistan, and while most Americans struggle to make ends meet, we mega-rich continue to get our extraordinary tax breaks,' Buffett wrote in a Sunday New York Times Op-ed."

but the bottom line is that the mega-rich might be coddled like an endangered species, but certain common-sense alternatives to the inane, self-destructive policy nostrums pushed by the political establishment in DC are going to be treated as the bleatings of an unhinged narcissist, a rich guy so out of touch with reality that he just says the craziest things!

this'll be forgotten soon enough, or rolled out periodically to make light of the old man in his dotage.

if it were anything remotely threatening to the status quo, it'd be squashed in an instant... notice how ron paul's razor-thin 2nd place finish in the iowa straw poll got his exactly zero traction as a serious candidate in the serious media.

i thought so...

sex and reproduction -- and politics

talk about a jelly-like spine, here's the latest from the next president of the united states, rick perry:

Under Scrutiny, Perry Walks Back HPV Decision — Rick Perry | The Texas Tribune: "For years, Gov. Rick Perry has taken flak for his 2007 attempt to require girls to be vaccinated against the human papillomavirus, the most commonly sexually transmitted disease and the principal cause of cervical cancer. At the risk of angering fellow conservatives, Perry has always insisted he did the right thing."

when it comes to matters of sex and reproduction, we simply can't have an adult conversation in this great, great country. we turn into a bunch of blithering idiots, unable to utter a single rational syllable.

it ranks up there with the plentitude of wardrobe "malfuntions" that expose a nymphet's nipple to a national TV audience -- the republic, sitting enraptured, drool running down it's collective chin, as the purveyors of this mindless blather blush apologetically...

Obama bus tour goes nowhere

the NYT can characterize this as a political event:

Obama Tries to Reclaim Momentum With Midwest Bus Tour - NYTimes.com: "CANNON FALLS, Minn. — President Obama, beset by convulsing financial markets, a relapsing economy and corrosive political discord in Washington, left town on Monday for a three-day bus tour of the Midwest designed to underscore his resolve to lift the nation out of its morass."

but it would be better for us all if the buses just kept on going, far, far away, with obama riding into the sunset.

there's nothing left for him to do at this point. every day that passes will take us to an ever more abysmal place...

so ghadafi is close to done... so what?

the media now sets the stage for the coming end to ghadafi's regime:

Libyan rebels enter oil town where decisive battle may yet be fought | World news | The Guardian: "Thirty-miles west of Tripoli, the one major asset that Muammar Gaddafi cannot afford to lose is starting to slip from his grasp for the second time.

The oil refinery in the town of Zawiya has been a holy grail for Libya's rebels since the start of the civil war. They took control of the town once in March, but were violently driven out by Gaddafi's army, which knew that losing it meant probably defeat in the long run. Now, with what seems to be a sizable rebel force again inside Zawiya, a decisive battle in the western-backed Libyan campaign looms."

it's hard to feel much sympathy for a guy who's been so vilified in the western press for so long. yet who among us, who've been fed this steady diet of anti-regime propaganda, can call ourselves uninterested observers of the events there?

we do know that the "rebels" have been vetted by the west's intelligence services, and declared to be worthy of our unreserved support. they have even established a central bank to talk with our central banks -- something the gaddafi regime would not do.

when it comes down to it, when the west has succeeded in removing the current libyan regime, we'll have merely replaced one thug with other, more compliant ones. the aspirations of the libyan people, meanwhile, have not and will not be addressed in the midst of the brouhaha -- and it was ever thus!

bring on the stooges!

are the norwegians really this clueless

what did they expect breivik to do? point his finger as at a victim, and say, "bang, your're dead!" to demonstrate how he carried out his killing spree?

Norwegian killer simulates massacre: "WEARING a bulletproof vest and a leash held by a guard, Anders Breivik returned to the scenic Norwegian island where he slaughtered 69 people last month, leading police through a simulation of his actions.

For eight hours at the weekend, Breivik showed police how he stalked his victims, at times holding up his arms as if pretending to take aim at fleeing members of a political youth camp who were his targets on the island of Utoeya."

the part about the leash was at least a bit of comic relief, otherwise i can't say i have much in defense of the authorities to say here.

what can they have hoped to learn from this exercise that couldn't be gleaned from physical evidence, and the account of survivors?

that the police were woefully unprepared and caught off-guard is painfully obvious, but will this exercise do anything to remedy the failings in the response?

to come right to the point: what can be done in an event such as this, with a determined, prepared perpetrator determined to cause as much loss of life as possible? can we really prepare against every potential threat? isn't it obvious, if the lethal hardware required to commit such acts is readily available, that we will see the same scenario as va. tech and norway repeated at periodic intervals -- as the price we pay for the various "freedoms" we insist upon?

this breivik dude is bad, bad news. so long as they aren't going to execute him, the most expedient solution to the problem of having him around is to maintain him in a sort of cocoon of isolation where neither he nor his ideology can see the light of day.

they hate us for our freedom, part 2,764

with the deadline for US troops to leave iraq rapidly approaching, the sudden surge in violence brings talks to extend washington's mandate to the fore:

More than 70 killed in attacks across Iraq - The Washington Post: "BAGHDAD - More than 70 people were killed and dozens more were wounded Monday in a string of violent attacks around Iraq, one of the deadliest days in the country so far this year, police and government officials said.

In the worst incident, two bombs exploded in a busy market in the city center of Kut, killing at least 37 and injuring more than 50."

the argument will no doubt be made the iraqi security forces are not up to the job of holding off the violence -- which requires our battle-hardened troops.

not hard to see what's afoot with the violence... it wouldn't be the least surprising if one were to learn that the CIA (under general petreus, after all) has a hand in fomenting the chaos.

after all, why give up that piece of prime real estate now, when it might be leveraged to solve so many of the US government's many challenges?

Obama's Gallup numbers point to 2012 blowout

here's a train wreck in the making:

Obama's Gallup numbers show 12 states in play in 2012 - latimes.com: "Twelve states constitute the likely battlegrounds for the 2012 election, based on Gallup’s state-by-state ratings of President Obama’s approval level.

The ratings, which aggregate Gallup polling done from January through June, came out just as Gallup was releasing its latest tracking poll showing Obama’s approval nationwide at 39%, the lowest in his presidency."

obama, the empty shell who became what everyone imagined him to be in order to win 2008, has become the pinata that is going to get bashed to bits in 2012.

so much for sucking the big ding-dong of your wall street masters, chump! they'll abandon him in droves, and leave him twisting in the wind.

they used him to setup the next phase in their campaign to impose their plutocratic, market-subservient, corporate state on the vestiges of the republic. perry will be the guy who finishes what they started with dubya.

Pakistan's new best friend

hey, what are friends for?

China accused on copter: "WASHINGTON. Pakistan's intelligence service probably allowed Chinese military engineers to examine the wreckage of the American Black Hawk helicopter that crashed during the raid in which Osama bin Laden was killed."

no big surprise here: we use 'em like toilet paper and toss 'em when we've gotten our use out of 'em. the pakis were probably feeling pretty violated when our SEALS carried out that daring mission on pakistani territory, but then we hadda add insult to injury and cut off their $$$.

the USA, a great power that couldn't see past the end of its own nose... done in by bin laden even as it congratulated itself on its ability to act with impunity wherever it so chooses...

governor good hair: our next president

all one has to do is digest the tone of the coverage of this newcomer to the GOP presidential race to conclude that he's already being groomed by the media as our next president:

Texas Gov. Rick Perry gets more scrutiny as GOP hopeful: "'Governor Good Hair' has turned out to be one of Texas' most successful politicians. Just ask Democrat John Sharp, a friend of Perry's since their days at Texas A&M, who lost to Perry in the 1998 lieutenant governor's race.

'Running against Perry is like running against God. Everything breaks his way! Either he's the luckiest guy in the world or the Lord is taking care of him,' Sharp told Texas Monthly."

this is how it starts, and when it starts this way it ends as it did with dubya in the WH. the national love affair with obama has run its course, and he's about to be consigned to the dustbin of political one-hit wonders. he can retire to the links, corporate boards and rich speaking engagements.

perry, on the other hand, is the one the autocrats who pay for the charade has chosen to carry the US to the next stop in its winning race to the bottom among 1st world countries. it's an shell of seething racial and class resentments herded into a factory farm existence of poverty and ignorance, all the while lorded over by inhabitants of a plutopia of opulence and abundance.

perry is the good-looking used-car salesman, TV preacher, pitchman of the snake oil solutions that salve the wounded feelings of the oppressed while leaving them ravished and sucked dry at the end of the trail of tears.

The moral decay of our society is as bad at the top as the bottom – Telegraph Blogs

some guy in the telegraph wrote about how to top is just as rotten as the looters, but this guy in the comments section seemed to absolutely nail it:

The moral decay of our society is as bad at the top as the bottom – Telegraph Blogs: "Once the privilege of stealing from working families through share dividends brought with it certain demands to 'be a good sort' and 'do the decent thing.' Of course they never were 'good sorts' and they never 'did the decent thing' back then either but newspapers never reported it and so the idleness malaise never spilt down into the rest of society.

Wealth may not trickle down but idleness and fecklessness fairly floods down and the simplest way to cure it is to kill capitalism ...... stone dead."

it's just a matter of time, my friends. just a matter of time...