Fangness

LA Times/wolf in CA

"""A GPS collar plots the journey of the lone gray wolf — loping over mountains, through forests and across highways.

The young male left his pack in northeastern Oregon in early September, setting out to find a mate and territory of his own. By the end of November, he had meandered 761 miles. Lately he has been lingering a day or two's trot from California.

If OR7, as he is known, crosses the border, he will be the first wild wolf recorded in the Golden State since 1924.

Even if he doesn't, the trek has made it evident that the return of the mythic native predator is imminent."""

holidaze

""This art is music. It stands quite apart from all the others. In it we do not recognize the copy, the repetition, of any Idea of the inner nature of the world. Yet it is such a great and exceedingly fine art, its effect on man's innermost nature is so powerful, and it is so completely and profoundly understood by him in his innermost being as an entirely universal language, whose distinctness surpasses even that of the world of perception itself, that in it we certainly have to look for more than that exercitium arithmeticae occultum nescientis se numerare animi [exercise in arithmetic in which the mind does not know it is counting] which Leibniz took it to be."" Schopenhauer

mo': The Billy Wankford holiday medley

PKDick-Co

LA Times

"""Hollywood buys film rights to obscure short story by famous author. Makes movie. Movie makes money. Producers then claim they never needed to buy rights in the first place. Demand their money back.
Emblematic Philip K. Dick story elements: Attempt to turn back time and murkiness of reality. Extra mind-bending plot twist: Author of original story is named Philip K. Dick.


As Laura Dick Coelho, one of the late author's daughters, told me: "Everything in the Philip K. Dick world is complicated." She was talking specifically about the personal life of her father — she's the offspring of the third of his five marriages. But her observation applies well to the dispute over the 2011 Matt Damon film "The Adjustment Bureau which was based on "Adjustment Team," a short story Dick wrote in the 1950s.
If you haven't heard of Philip K. Dick, you're at least familiar with his work. He produced a huge corpus of visionary fiction before his death in 1982, including stories that became the basis for the films "Blade Runner," "Minority Report" and "Total Recall."The Dick estate, which is managed by Coelho, 51, and her half-sister Isa Dick Hackett, 44, optioned the film rights to "Adjustment Team" to writer/director George Nolfi in 2001 for $25,000. Nolfi, who subsequently wrote the screenplay and directed the retitled film version, had transferred the rights to Media Rights Capital, an independent studio. The producers exercised the option by paying the estate $1.4 million, with at least $500,000 more due once the film achieved its break-even point.

unReality for sale

unrelated: Dennis Dunderson in... Zero 6-hundred hour, soldier

sabadoGigante

"The skeptic does not mean him who doubts, but him who investigates or researches, as opposed to him who asserts and thinks that he has found."

Miguel de Unamuno

comrade Benedict

Pope/contra-capitalism

""Benedict notes that economic "inequalities are on the increase" across the globe. He does not accept the trickle-down theory, which says that all boats will rise with the economic tide. Benedict condemns the "scandal of glaring inequalities" and sees a role for government in the redistribution of wealth.


Yes, you heard that right. The pope favors the redistribution of wealth. When was the last time you heard a liberal Democrat use those words?


The pope also disagrees with those who believe that the economy should be free of government regulation. An unregulated economy "shielded from 'influences' of a moral character has led man to abuse the economic process in a thoroughly destructive way," he writes. This has "led to economic, social and political systems that trample upon personal and social freedom, and are therefore unable to deliver the justice that they promise."


Critics have complained that the Occupy Wall Street movement has no program. The people in the movement could do a lot worse than to study what the pope has said about the economy. Sadly, few Catholics know of the church's teaching on economic justice, which has been called the church's best-kept secret.


The pope does not have a magic plan to restore economic prosperity, but he does focus on the values that a political and economic system must support. The priority, he says, must be "access to steady employment for everyone." And that means not just here in the United States, but also in the developing world, where we must rescue "peoples, first and foremost, from hunger, deprivation, endemic diseases and illiteracy."""

job killah, cont.

Romney/YahooNews:

""... A venture capital firm run by Mitt Romney created nearly 150 jobs in Gaffney, S.C., in the late 1980s only to eliminate them four years later and earn millions of dollars in profits.

The Associated Press reviewed Bain Capital's little-known investments at The Holson Burnes Group. Bain doubled its $10 million investment into the clock and photo supply company. But workers in South Carolina and New Hampshire lost their jobs as the company consolidated and expanded its operations overseas.

By sheer coincidence, the economic fallout from Bain's decisions struck hardest in South Carolina and New Hampshire. They are among the first states with early primary elections that could affect Romney's run for the White House..""

sabadoGigante

Hitchens-Eulogies, Inc:  (Cockburn/Counterpunch):

"""Since then it was all pretty predictable, down to his role as flagwagger for Bush. I guess the lowest of a number of low points was when he went to the White House to give a cheerleading speech on the eve of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. I think he knew long, long before that this is where he would end up, as a right-wing codger. He used to go on, back in the Eighties, about sodden old wrecks like John Braine, who’d ended up more or less where Hitchens got to, trumpeting away  about “Islamo-fascism” like a Cheltenham colonel in some ancient  Punch cartoon. I used to warn my friends at New Left Review and Verso in the early 90s who were happy to make money off Hitchens’  books on Mother Teresa and the like that they should watch out, but they didn’t and then kept asking ten years later, What happened?
Anyway, between the two of them, my sympathies were always with Mother Teresa. If you were sitting in rags in a gutter in Bombay, who would be more likely to give you a bowl of soup? You’d get one from Mother Teresa.  Hitchens was always tight with beggars, just like the snotty Fabians who used to deprecate charity."""

Hitchens' vituperative essay on Mother Theresa was beyond what any of the decent Fabians would have scrawled. And while he was an amusing sort of Hume-lite at times, he ...rode with the pigs, from 2002 on.    Bienvenidos a Perdido, CH

bellum letale

"Humanity should question itself, once more, about the absurd and always unfair phenomenon of war, on whose stage of death and pain only remain standing the negotiating table that could and should have prevented it."

Pope John Paul II

IraqNumbers/HuffPo

......""The American withdrawal was part of a 2008 deal negotiated between the Bush administration and the Iraqi government, and an important campaign pledge for Obama. Yet the administration has long engaged in negotiations to keep a larger number of troops, despite the 2008 deal. Those negotiations failed as Iraqi lawmakers refused to grant the troops immunity.

What do 9 years of war in Iraq look like in figures? According to Associated Press numbers, 4,485 Americans have died as of November 30. 40,350 Americans were wounded, and at least 103,775 Iraqis have lost their lives. ""

Many would object to that estimated  body count of Iraqi civilians and military.

city of angels

 Ry Cooder/LA Stories

""I work for the Los Angeles City Directory, a book of names, addresses, and job descriptions. I am one of many. Our job is to go out and collect the facts and bring them back. Other people take our work and put it in the Book, but we do the important part. Los Angeles is a big city, and the City Directory is a big book.

"How would you like to be listed in the Directory?" I show people what it is. They're afraid you'll ask embarrassing questions like "Do you have a toilet?" and "Can I see it?" I tell them they can list whatever they want — the job, the husband's name, the wife's name — simple things that most people don't mind. Most people like to be noticed, they like being asked......"""

young old Ry and his pal Don VV.

 ++++++++++

Tangentially related:  high desert hipster Brian Goldie's gal:Dottie the hottie

Kirby/Zappa

critical Z-dan update/LA Times:

"...Yes it turns out that late Frank Zappa, the restless musical genius who may have been the most committed inconoclast in the history of rock, was a pal to the late Jack Kirby, the cosmic dreamer who is arguably the second most essential figure in the history of the American comic book. (You have to put Superman at first.)

I remember seeing a vintage 1968 issue of “Fantastic Four” that had an ad for “We’re Only in It for the Money,” the new album from the Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, and it surprised me because it seemed like an unexpected crossover moment between counter-culture music and the Marvel universe. Both were popular on college campuses, of course, but seeing the gaudy little blurb (“Thrilling clean fun!” it promised) still made me smile and think about the sweet confusion of a young first-time Zappa listener trying to get his head around the album. If you don’t know it, it’s a masterpiece of cultural satire and heady music with Zappa’s smirking wit at every corner — the titles include, “What’s the Ugliest Part of Your Body,” “Hot Poop,” “Who Needs the Peace Corps?” and the mad-laughter finale “The Chrome Plated Megaphone of Destiny.” ..."

Relatedly:  Moebius!

warning...may be offensive to any/all descendants of the ancient psychotic Ibrahim )

Grosz-day

“To preach more than half an hour, a man should be an angel himself or have angels for hearers” (Whitefield)


Halle-f-in' loo-jah

party of the 1%

Dickinson/RollingStone:

""The Republican Party may revere Reagan as the patron saint of low taxation. But the party of Reagan – which understood that higher taxes on the rich are sometimes required to cure ruinous deficits – is dead and gone. Instead, the modern GOP has undergone a radical transformation, reorganizing itself around a grotesque proposition: that the wealthy should grow wealthier still, whatever the consequences for the rest of us.

Modern-day Republicans have become, quite simply, the Party of the One Percent – the Party of the Rich.

"The Republican Party has totally abdicated its job in our democracy, which is to act as the guardian of fiscal discipline and responsibility," says David Stockman, who served as budget director under Reagan. "They're on an anti-tax jihad – one that benefits the prosperous classes."

The staggering economic inequality that has led Americans across the country to take to the streets in protest is no accident. It has been fueled to a large extent by the GOP's all-out war on behalf of the rich. Since Republicans rededicated themselves to slashing taxes for the wealthy in 1997, the average annual income of the 400 richest Americans has more than tripled, to $345 million – while their share of the tax burden has plunged by 40 percent. Today, a billionaire in the top 400 pays less than 17 percent of his income in taxes – five percentage points less than a bus driver earning $26,000 a year. "Most Americans got none of the growth of the preceding dozen years," says Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel Prize-winning economist. "All the gains went to the top percentage points......""

As Dickinson suggests, historical fact rarely if ever interferes with teabug hype:  e.g,: Bush &  Co slashed the capital gains rate to 15%, significantly lower  than Reagan's  lowest cap. gains  rate of 20% (until '87 when it was increased to 28% or so), a point routinely overlooked by white-trash conservatives Ma and Pa Methcook when they got their anti-tax  hysteria and pro-NRA binge on..

Relatedly:  the Gerald Vick  Memorial Blog Link.

Net freedom

RebeccaMackinnon/HuffPo

"""In the past five months since I called on the world's Internet users to "take back the Net" at TedGlobal in Edinburgh, the issues I highlighted have grown more obvious and urgent. In October, the world mourned the death of Steve Jobs. Netizens in China, Cuba, and Iran made comments to the effect that they respected Jobs more than they respected their own leaders. This speaks to a phenomenon I highlighted in my talk: that global information technology companies have become what I call the new "sovereigns of cyberspace." New kinds of global constituencies are forming around certain brands of hardware, software, and virtual platforms created by multinational companies like Apple, Facebook, Google, Twitter. Members of these global constituencies can hold strong and even emotionally-charged loyalties towards technologies that they have integrated into their lives and even identities. These overlapping loyalties and constituencies will increasingly compete and clash with loyalties and identities tied to the physical nation-state.
No government -- not even Western ones claiming to champion Internet freedom -- is equipped to deal with the long-term consequences of this trend. But that doesn't mean that we should leave it to the world's multi-national technology companies to program and engineer the Internet in ways that best suit their commercial interests, or refashion global geopolitics to their own liking, just because so many governments are not getting it right. We the world's netizens must work to make sure that the Internet, the geopolitical system, and the international economy evolve in a way that serves everybody's rights and interests, not just those of the most powerful one percent.
The trends over the past five months have not been good. The sale and use of Western surveillance technology is rampant around the Middle East and North Africa and is aiding repressive governments. The social networking and mobile tools that helped fuel the Arab Spring have not enabled activists to stop a new round of state violence and repression in Egypt. Chinese Internet companies are bowing to government demands to ramp up censorship and surveillance of users. In Russia, digital repression is on the rise in the run-up to parliamentary and presidential elections.

the Moustach'd one (cont.)

 the  Nation--

"American Nietzsche, Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen’s lively history of the reception of Nietzsche’s ideas in the United States, from which I have drawn the preceding quotation about the moral life, wisely devotes its prologue to Emerson’s impact on the philosopher: “Nietzsche used Emerson not to get closer to him but to get closer to himself. For Nietzsche, Emerson provided an image of the philosopher willing to go it alone without inherited faith, without institutional affiliation, without rock or refuge for his truth claims.” These themes, encompassing Nietzsche’s persona and ideas, figure prominently in American Nietzsche. The facts of the philosopher’s lonely nomadic life—his books largely ignored upon publication, his genius burdened by ceaseless physical pain and eventually insanity—were, for most readers, inseparable from the scandalous self-described “immoralist” with his emphatically modern “philosophy of the future,” as he called his thinking. And this fusion of life and work made him, especially in the eyes of Greenwich Village radicals in the twentieth century’s opening decades, a prophet and martyr embodying what Ratner-Rosenhagen calls a “cautionary tale about the perilous course of the intellectual in the democratic era.”

FZ

Frank Zappa, December 21, 1940 – December 4, 1993.

Trey A. of Phish on FZ:

""...I'm making a new album, and the producer I'm working with told me that there is a whole generation of musicians coming up who can't play their instruments. Because of stuff like Pro Tools, they figure they can fix it all in the studio. Whereas with Frank, his musicians were pushed to the absolute brink of possibility on their instruments, at all times. Phish tried hard to do that too: to take our four little instruments and do as much as we could with them. I would not have envisioned those possibilities without him....
Zappa gave me the faith that anything in music was possible. He demystified the whole thing for musicians in my generation: "Look, these are just instruments. Find out what the range is, and start writing."""

Got that disco-emo boyz

mo' Zappa product:
I


II


III

sabadoGigante

Diwali-mas



gimme dat ol' time religion

"The word 'chance' then expresses only our ignorance of the causes of the phenomena that we observe to occur and to succeed one another in no apparent order. Probability is relative in part to this ignorance, and in part to our knowledge." — Laplace

Mormon frauds, cont.

Daily Herald (Provo, UT):

""An 80-year-old man thought his life savings was being invested by his one-time LDS bishop, Kevin Palmer Thomas. But by the time the elderly man stopped turning over his money he had lost more than $300,000, a police affidavit states.


The affidavit alleges that Thomas, 51, used his leadership position in and knowledge of the LDS Church to earn the man's friendship. The man reportedly had saved more than $400,000 throughout the course of his life, and when he turned it over to Thomas, he believed it was secured with property and promissory notes. Thomas made token payments to the man in order to convince him that he was making a great return on his investment, the affidavit reveals. But then the payments reportedly stopped, and the man learned of his losses.


The affidavit also states that Thomas bilked the man out of an additional $15,000 when he convinced him to invest in a "hard money loan." Thomas reportedly spent the money on himself. In addition, Thomas is accused of forging checks worth more than $40,000.


As a result of the allegations, Thomas was arrested earlier this month on charges of communication fraud and exploitation of a vulnerable adult, both second-degree felonies, as well as forgery, a third-degree felony. The affidavit also describes him as a convicted felon who is currently awaiting sentencing on a different case. Court records reveal that in March Thomas pleaded guilty to theft and burglary of a vehicle. His sentencing had been scheduled for Nov. 9.


The affidavit states that Thomas could face more charges when prosecutors formally file the case and that he is a suspect in at least two other felony crimes.


The affidavit also notes that Thomas had been a successful mortgage broker for many years and that his criminal activity happened after the economic downturn in 2007 and 2008. Thomas's position in the LDS church is mentioned several times in the affidavit as well.""

Romneyocracy = one big Provo-ville.


More on LDS bunko:
I


II


III

Energy-ball

LA Times:

""When the oil price shocks hit the United States in the 1970s, many Democratic stalwarts supported the Nixon and Ford administrations in their attempts to enact comprehensive energy policies. They understood that energy is not a partisan issue but rather one that draws people together to ensure the future health and security of the nation. Democratic senators, congressmen, governors and President Carter supported myriad energy technologies, policies and projects, including nuclear power, conservation, renewable energy development, the Trans-Alaska pipeline and the lifting of oil and natural gas price controls.


While other Democratic voices sometimes argued that energy policy leaned too heavily toward conventional fuels and not enough toward conservation, fuel economy or efficiency standards, few party leaders opposed specific forms of energy or played to the galleries of anti-industry activists....""

....
To Frack or not to Frack.

~(foo-ball)

“The founders of a new colony, whatever Utopia of human virtue and happiness they might originally project, have invariably recognized it among their earliest practical necessities to allot a portion of the virgin soil as a cemetery, and another portion as the site of a prison.”
Hawthorne.

++++++++
(relatedly: Super-scribe Brian Goldie and his favorite Tommy Trojan)

"the roads to war..."

PC Roberts/Counterpunch

""In the November 22 presidential “debate,” the candidates, with the exception of Ron Paul, revealed themselves as a collection of ignorant warmongers who support the police state. Gingrich and Cain said that Muslims “want to kill us all” and that “all of us will be in danger for the rest of out lives.”

Bachmann said that the American puppet state, Pakistan, is “more than an existential threat.” The moron Bachmann has no idea what is “more than an existential threat.”


However, it sounded heavy, like an intellectual thing to say for the candidate who previously declared the long-defunct Soviet Union to be today’s threat to the US.


Any sentient American who watched or read about the Republican presidential debate must wonder what there is to be thankful for as the national holiday approaches."""

  Miss Krenwinkle Miss Bachmann called Pakistan "more than an existential threat". The dizziness of freedom, man.

+++++++++++++++++

T-day

"Thanksgiving Day, a function which originated in New England two or three centuries ago when those people recognized that they really had something to be thankful for -- annually, not oftener -- if they had succeeded in exterminating their neighbors, the Indians, during the previous twelve months instead of getting exterminated by their neighbors, the Indians. Thanksgiving Day became a habit, for the reason that in the course of time, as the years drifted on, it was perceived that the exterminating had ceased to be mutual and was all on the white man's side, consequently on the Lord's side; hence it was proper to thank the Lord for it and extend the usual annual compliments."


- Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 1 (U of C Press, 2010).
 

Mewt vs Nitt

Gingrich vs Romney

""NASHUA, N.H.—If Mitt Romney is weak broth, Newt Gingrich is a bouillon cube. Watching the two Republican presidential front-runners in New Hampshire over two days has been a study in contrasts. Romney is a known conservative ingredient suitable in a main dish. Gingrich is a powerful dose of partisan flavor to be used sparingly.


Gingrich is having his moment now because he offers punchy answers and ready solutions to seemingly insoluble problems. If he endures an examination of his personal baggage, his record on the issues, and his private-sector career, it will be in part because he is the “Republican Ideas Man.” But when you listen to those ideas—the scope of the change he is proposing, and the punch with which he delivers his pitch—you get the sense that that voters may not be interested in the Gingrich past because they’re too scared of the Gingrich future.


As Romney finished a four-day campaign swing through the state where he has dominated the polls, he touted his recent spending reduction plan and offered his carefully honed lines. President Obama “said if he was unable to get this economy turned around, he would be looking at a one-term proposition,” Romney said. “Well, I’m here to collect.”""

Many Mericans might consider a papist (Gingrich converted to the church of Aphrodite catholic church a few years ago) and a Mormonic to be completely at odds yet MR and NG have one thing in common: they're both members of  the Chickenhawk Hall of Shame.

+++++++++++

Speaking of Mormonics:  it's Dennis Dunderson, LDS-Log Cabin guy and the P-dale press club

OWS, etc.

Counterpunch/AC

""So chapter one of the Occupy movement draws to a close, and maybe the concerted onslaught by uniformed goons actually did the movement a favor – scant comfort to those battered to the ground – by leaving the Occupiers with a positive bank balance in ·terms of imagery at the moment of their enforced departures. Besides, this will allow trained teams of OWSers to hunt down all members of those drumming circles and dispose of them by any means necessary. This is not protected speech.""

sabadoGigante

Bride: A woman with a fine prospect of happiness behind her.


Ambrose Bierce

Freddie Newt

LA Times/Gingrich:

""Newt Gingrich, who has built his now resurgent presidential candidacy in part around virulent criticism of mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, found himself Wednesday defending the at least $1.6 million he reportedly earned while under contract to Freddie.

While campaigning in Iowa, Gingrich was besieged by reporters asking him about a Bloomberg News report that his consulting firm took in much more from Freddie Mac than previously reported.

The former House speaker said he didn’t know how much he had received from the federally backed mortgage company, but that he welcomed the inquiry into his private-sector work.

“Everybody will dig up everything they can dig up,” said Gingrich, according to the New York Times. “That’s fine, they should.”""

sabadoGigante

“The state of man's mind, or the elementary phase of mind which he so far possesses, conforms precisely to the state of the world as he so far views it.” Hegel

the Fraudulent

Dante's Inferno

Nix DoD cuts

say John Howard Johnsons Boehner and the Demopublicans: 

"Top congressional  Republicans, Democrats and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta are united in a single message to the special bipartisan committee looking for ways to cut the deficit: Leave military spending alone.


House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, told reporters Thursday that the Pentagon budget was cut more than enough in the debt accord this past summer by President Obama and Republicans.


That deal calls for cuts of $350 billion in projected spending over 10 years. The Pentagon is planning on reductions of about $450 billion.


“I would argue that they’ve taken more than their fair share of the hits,” Boehner said.""

"Experience hath shewn...."

"Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms (of government) those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.”


Th. Jefferson

YU55

Asteroid/LA Times:

""Asteroid YU55 is about to swing by Earth, coming closer to our planet than the moon. It will make its closest approach at exactly 6:28 p.m. Eastern on Tuesday.

The event marks the first time that something this big has come this close to Earth since 1976, and the scientists who have been tracking it on a daily basis since Friday are giddy with anticipation.

"It is just a great scientific opportunity. It is really, really exciting," Marina Brozovic, a scientist and member of the JPL Goldstone radar team, told The Times."""...

An asteroid closer than the Moon might be said to define a "truthmaker".

PIGBALL, Inc

bad news for Joe Chestero in Happy Valley
sports-hysteria-redux

sabadoGigante

mazzy star update



Like opium day at the convent

Salud

New tax revenues

LawrenceWelk Boehner/HuffPo:

""House Speaker John Boehner said Thursday that any bipartisan agreement reached by the congressional deficit-reduction supercommittee will need to include some new tax revenue.


Most Congressional Republicans have signed a "taxpayer protection pledge" -- devised by the Grover Norquist-led group Americans for Tax Reform -- vowing not to raise taxes. When asked about Norquist on Thursday, Boehner dismissed him as "some random person in America" but later revised his comments to say that "Norquist, like millions of Americans, believes that raising taxes is not good for our economy."


According to CBS News, Boehner insisted that Republicans would only compromise on tax revenue if Democrats were willing to take significant steps to shore up entitlement programs."

and the winner is...Mitt Androidly

Douthat/NYT:

"....Ignore the Politico daily briefings, the Rasmussen tracking polls, the angst from conservative activists over Romney’s past deviations and present-day dishonesties. Please ignore me as well, should campaign fever inspire a column about the Santorum surge or the Huntsman scenario. Because barring an unprecedented suspension of the laws of American politics, Mitt Romney has this thing wrapped up.


Note that I am not saying that he will win every primary or caucus. He could easily lose Iowa to somebody, and if he loses Iowa, he will probably lose some Southern primaries as well, giving political reporters grist for the horse race narrative they crave."""

Thus speaketh Douthat.

Helloween...

NATO style
--



++++++++++++++++++++++
The Conqueror Worm.  EA Poe

"a by-product of the activities of a casino"

""When the capital development of a country becomes a by-product of the activities of a casino, the job is likely to be ill-done. The measure of success attained by Wall Street, regarded as an institution of which the proper social purpose is to direct new investment into the most profitable channels in terms of future yield, cannot be claimed as one of the outstanding triumphs of laissez-faire capitalism – which is not surprising, if I am right in thinking that the best brains of Wall Street have been in fact directed towards a different object. These tendencies are a scarcely avoidable outcome of our having successfully organized “liquid” investment markets. It is usually agreed that casinos should, in the public interest, be inaccessible and expensive...The introduction of a substantial Government transfer tax on all [stock market] transactions might prove the most serviceable reform available, with a view to mitigating the predominance of speculation over enterprise in the United States.""

JM Keynes.  OWS homie? Probably not but opposed to the casinos of finance capitalism.  

Tax speculators

The Nation:

""On the eve of the G-20 gathering, the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace has endorsed a series of reforms to the global economic financial and monetary systems that features as its centerpiece the development of a financial transactions tax.


From the note on financial reform from the Pontifical Council:

Specific attention should be paid to the reform of the international monetary system and, in particular, the commitment to create some form of global monetary management, something that is already implicit in the Statutes of the International Monetary Fund. It is obvious that to some extent this is equivalent to putting the existing exchange systems up for discussion in order to find effective means of coordination and supervision. This process must also involve the emerging and developing countries in defining the stages of a gradual adaptation of the existing instruments.In fact, one can see an emerging requirement for a body that will carry out the functions of a kind of “central world bank” that regulates the flow and system of monetary exchanges similar to the national central banks. The underlying logic of peace, coordination and common vision which led to the Bretton Woods Agreements needs to be dusted off in order to provide adequate answers to the current questions. On the regional level, this process could begin by strengthening the existing institutions, such as the European Central Bank. However, this would require not only a reflection on the economic and financial level, but also and first of all on the political level, so as to create the set of public institutions that will guarantee the unity and consistency of the common decisions.


These measures ought to be conceived of as some of the first steps in view of a public Authority with universal jurisdiction; as a first stage in a longer effort by the global community to steer its institutions towards achieving the common good. Other stages will have to follow in which the dynamics familiar to us may become more marked, but they may also be accompanied by changes which would be useless to try to predict today. In this process, the primacy of the spiritual and of ethics needs to be restored and, with them, the primacy of politics—which is responsible for the common good—over the economy and finance. These latter need to be brought back within the boundaries of their real vocation and function, including their social function, in consideration of their obvious responsibilities to society, in order to nourish markets and financial institutions which are really at the service of the person, which are capable of responding to the needs of the common good and universal brotherhood, and which transcend all forms of economist stagnation and performative mercantilism.""

Common ground

LATimes

"""The possibility of defense cuts — what budget insiders call a trigger mechanism — was intended to spur Republicans and Democrats to agree on a plan to reduce the deficit by $1.5 trillion over the next decade. Instead, Congress increasingly seems likely to scuttle the cuts even without a deficit deal.


"It feeds into the notion that everyone is having, but not saying, which is that the trigger is a complete phony thing," said Jim Kessler, a vice president at Third Way, the moderate Democratic think tank. "Congress has built up a reputation for avoiding any real decision."


To be sure, the Joint Committee on Deficit Reduction, otherwise known as the "super committee," has been working behind closed doors for two months trying to find common ground.


And the effort to undo the automatic cuts is at odds with the public stance of congressional leaders, including House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio). The speaker orchestrated the summer debt accord with President Obama, and has pressed the committee to reach as big a deficit deal as possible.


The 12-member super committee — six Republicans and six Democrats — will hold a public hearing Wednesday as it works toward its Nov. 23 deadline to produce a bipartisan package. Indications are the committee has tentatively identified cuts but is short of the $1.5-trillion goal."""

Demopublicans agree at least on one thing: drones are good for bidness.

sabadoGigante

"At the blast of the trumpet he says, ‘Aha!’
He smells the battle from afar, the thunder of captains and shouting." Job 39:25

The M-word

Hitchens on the LDS/Slate:

".... The founder of the church, one Joseph Smith, was a fraud and conjurer well known to the authorities of upstate New York. He claimed to have been shown some gold plates on which a new revelation was inscribed in no known language. He then qualified as the sole translator of this language. (The entire story is related in Fawn Brodie’s biography, No Man Knows My History.* It seems that we can add, to sausages and laws, churches as a phenomenon that is not pleasant to watch at the manufacturing stage. Edmund Wilson wrote that it was powerfully shocking to see Brodie as she exposed a religion that was a whole-cloth fabrication.) On his later forays into the chartless wilderness, there to play the role of Moses to his followers (who were permitted and even encouraged in plural marriage, so as to go forth and mass-produce little Mormons), Smith also announced that he wanted to be known as the Prophet Muhammad of North America, with the fearsome slogan: “Either al-Koran or the Sword.” He levied war against his fellow citizens, and against the federal government. One might have thought that this alone would raise some eyebrows down at the local Baptist Church. …


Saddling itself with some pro-slavery views at the time of the Civil War, and also with a “bible” of its own that referred to black people as a special but inferior creation, the Mormon Church did not admit black Americans to the priesthood until 1978, which is late enough—in point of the sincerity of the “revelation” they had to undergo—to cast serious doubt on the sincerity of their change of heart.


More recently, and very weirdly, the Mormons have been caught amassing great archives of the dead, and regularly “praying them in” as adherents of the LDS, so as to retrospectively “baptize” everybody as a convert. (Here the relevant book is Alex Shoumatoff’s The Mountain of Names.) In a hollowed-out mountain in the Mormons’ stronghold state of Utah is a colossal database assembled for this purpose. Now I have no objection if Mormons desire to put their own ancestors down for posthumous salvation. But they also got hold of a list of those put to death by the Nazis’ Final Solution and fairly recently began making these massacred Jews into honorary LDS members as well. Indeed, when the practice was discovered, the church at first resisted efforts to make them stop. Whether this was cultish or sectarian it was certainly extremely tactless: a crass attempt at mass identity theft from the deceased."""

Actually,  you and  your loved ones are most likely notated in the local LDS database--with a gold star,  or "suspected LAMANITE", or perhaps black mark-- depending on the Elders' view of your family history, pardner.

9-9-9 hype,cont.

LA Times--

..."If Herman Cain’s 9-9-9 tax plan were in effect today, the poorest 60% of taxpayers would pay an extra $2,000 while the richest 1% would get a $210,000 break, according to an analysis by Citizens for Tax Justice, a left-leaning think tank.


Cain’s plan would replace much of the existing tax code with a 9% individual income tax, a 9% business tax and a 9% national sales tax.


According to the analysis, all three of the tax types included in Cain’s plan would disproportionately impact lower-income Americans.


The 9% individual income tax would give the richest Americans -- who currently pay a tax rate of about 35% -- a break of almost $210,000 a year. But for the poorest 20% of taxpayers, Cain's proposed income tax change would mean an increase of $418 a year, the analysis found.""""

Smaller piece of the big pizza pie for the lower-middleclass, y'all-- yet some delusionalcrats seem to think Caint's a democrat (when it's as much a quack as Ron Paul)

sabadoGigante

counterpunch/the-Romney-doctrine

"Romney began his speech with a heavy dose of fear. Iran, he warned, could well become “a fully activated nuclear weapons state, threatening its neighbors, [and] dominating the world’s oil supply.” Indeed, “Iran’s suicidal fanatics could blackmail the world.” In Afghanistan, the Taliban might well “find a path back to power,” with the country sinking “back into the medieval terrors of fundamentalist rule.” Pakistan’s instability could end up placing nuclear weapons “in the hands of Islamic jihadists,” while “the malign socialism” of Venezuela and Cuba could “undermine the prospects of democracy” in Latin America. Then, of course, there are the heavy dancers. China’s leaders could well take that nation down “a darker path, intimidating their neighbors, brushing aside an inferior American Navy in the Pacific, and building a global alliance of authoritarian states.” And Russia might well “bludgeon the countries of the former Soviet Union into submission, and intimidate Europe with the levers of its energy resources.” Nor should people forget “Islamic fundamentalism, with which we have been at war since Sept. 11, 2001.”"


And some delusional demos still consider MR a "progressive."

Zizek at OWS

Huff.Po:

"""Occupy Wall Street got some Slovenian philosopher star power on Sunday, as Marxist academic Slavoj Zizek joined the movement.


"We are not destroying anything," he said. "We are only witnessing how the system is destroying itself."


Using the "Human Microphone" system, where protestors repeat back the words of the speaker so that others can hear, Zizek spoke for over an hour to the enthusiastic crowd, who whooped and cheered as he went on.


While in China, entertainment programming that depicts alternate reality and time travel has been banned, in the U.S., we have a different problem, according to Zizek.


"Here we don't think of prohibition, because the ruling system has even oppressed our capacity to dream, " he said. "Look at the movies that we see all the time -- It's easy to imagine the end of the world, an asteroid destroying a whole life, but you cannot imagine the end of capitalism. So what are we doing here?"""

.

A bit more intellectual firepower than the likes of Sarandon & Co

Randians oppose OWS

RandCo

The cult of Ayn--lest we forget, Ayn Rand is a hero to the likes of Paul Ryan, Greenspan, the Kochs, Limbaugh,etc.-- objects to the OWS protests:

""“But the Wall Street protests aren’t calling for an end to government intervention in markets–they want to increase it. Most of them, for example, want to increase wealth redistribution in the name of fighting income inequality.


“Contrary to their rhetoric, they do not oppose the banks on the grounds that Wall Street is in bed with Washington. Notice, for instance, the plans to protest outside the home of investor John Paulson, who cannot be accused of getting government favors, and the lack of complaints about taxpayer money being poured into GM, Chrysler, and Solyndra. They chose to protest Wall Street because, whatever its flaws, it symbolizes genuine capitalism...yada yada..."

Indeed, the OWS protests might be considered...fundamentally anti-Randian. Down with Ayn, the Oppressor! For too many years y'all been living under the boots of that skanky russian-jewesss pseudo-philosopher and ueber-capitalist (tho' most don't realize it).

                                 J'accuse!

JMaynard Cain

LA Times

"""Herman Cain’s 9-9-9 tax plan sounds simple enough: Eliminate the existing tax code and replace it with a 9% tax on personal income, a 9% business tax and a 9% national sales tax.


But could it work?


That question has been posed to a number of tax policy experts since Cain unveiled the plan last month. And it was a topic that dominated Tuesday’s Washington Post-Bloomberg debate.


Cain insists that the plan would immediately jump-start the economy by putting more money into people’s pockets.


But Bruce Bartlett, a former Treasury official under President George H.W. Bush who studied Cain’s plan and wrote an analysis Tuesday for the New York Times, said Cain “offers no evidence for this assertion; it is simply put forward as self-evident.”


Bartlett called the plan “a distributional monstrosity.”

Al Davis dies

Onionsportsnetwork

Bienvenidos a Perdido, cerdo

'tis the season

EA Poe/Ledger-Enquirer

""What is the biggest misconception people have about famous American author Edgar Allan Poe?

       People think he was a dope-crazed madman,” said Harry Lee  Poe,         whose  great, great grandfather was the writer’s cousin.

The Charles Colson Professor of Faith and Culture at Union University in Jackson, Tenn,, said Wednesday his ancestor did have a problem with alcohol but that most of the unpleasant incidents that occurred because of that problem happened when the writer’s wife was dying.

“He was a mild mannered fellow, very popular at parties,” said the professor."

       Make it the usual, Jake--  courvosier and laudanum  .

sabadoGigante.....

Mateo 27 "“¡Ay de ustedes, escribas y Fariseos, hipócritas que son semejantes a sepulcros blanqueados! Por fuera lucen hermosos, pero por dentro están llenos de huesos de muertos y de toda inmundicia. 28 Así también ustedes, por fuera parecen justos a los hombres, pero por dentro están llenos de hipocresía y de iniquidad. ""

para los cerdos baptistas

Romney, Inc

"Capitalism has destroyed our belief in any effective power but that of self interest backed by force.” GB Shaw

HuffPo:

""Romney is still trying to have it both ways -- to retain what little is left of his "moderate" persona while cheerfully appeasing the most extreme elements of the corporate and religious Right. He is banking on being able to get through the primary with both of his personas intact. Unfortunately for him, it's not working.




In fact, Romney's eagerness to appease has placed him solidly in the far-right -- and increasingly unpopular --Tea Party camp of the GOP.




Romney wears his pro-corporate politics with the pride of a Koch brother. He told an audience in Iowa recently that "corporations are people" -- a bold statement, even for a multi-millionaire who made his fortune partly on the profits from outsourcing American jobs. And he hasn't backed down from his claim -- in fact, he keeps repeating it. "

Lunes

Ezranomics, cont.

Romney's birth certificate?

Donde esta La Carta, Willard?

""Long story short: Mitt Romney still has not produced a "certificate of live birth." And we know for a fact that as a young man he spent years living in a foreign country that looks down on America. A country that is intimately familiar with colonial thinking. I trust that the more than 1,000 people who posted comments on my story about Donald Trump and his "birther investigators,' and the 100 or so who sent urgent emails, are vigilantly working to bring this Romney conspiracy to light, and I just haven't realized it."

Hah.
_______________________________

Relatedly: the lovely and talented Ms Tammany Yields

sabadoGigante.....

Drones,continued.

And.....the amazing Billy Wartford!

McKeonBucks

corporate whore

""Buck McKeon-- soon to be drowning in a family bribery scandal-- has been one of the biggest corporate whores in Congress for years, taking massive bribes from shady for-profit college lenders and from shady war contractors, while he oversaw legislation in areas those special interested were especially interested in. Like his cronies Issa and Upton, McKeon has been a big proponent of wasting taxpayer dollars on dangerous nuclear facilities-- while taking gigantic bribes from the nuclear industry and while his Southern California constituents have very different ideas....""

Firm handshake, phony smile, Glenn Beck glasses--McKeon's ...Mormonic!

+++++++++

Relatedly: from P-dale, CA the talented Johnny Small

Uncle Abe

on the divine right of Kings:

"That is the real issue. That is the issue that will continue in this country when these poor tongues of Judge Douglas and myself shall be silent. It is the eternal struggle between these two principles -- right and wrong -- throughout the world. They are the two principles that have stood face to face from the beginning of time, and will ever continue to struggle. The one is the common right of humanity and the other the divine right of kings. It is the same principle in whatever shape it develops itself. It is the same spirit that says, 'You work and toil and earn bread, and I'll eat it.' No matter in what shape it comes, whether from the mouth of a king who seeks to bestride the people of his own nation and live by the fruit of their labor, or from one race of men as an apology for enslaving another race, it is the same tyrannical principle."

--Lincoln, 1858. (Debate with Douglas)

+++++++


Relatedly: go-karts for Jeebuss! Sponsored by T-Rex-Co and Honda-Co

last of the mohicans monday

Referencing and comparing Native Americans to classical cultures was a theme which runs throughout Jefferson's musings on Indians. "Aboriginal Homeric concepts of human behavior had early become real and concrete to him in the simple dignity of American Indians." (Lehmann, 1994).







Perhaps this comparison with Europe's heroic era was to buttress his defense of all things American. For, it was then contended, by France's Count Buffon, that all flora, fauna, and men of the New World were degenerate. Jefferson contested Buffon's statement about the notion that the Native American "savage" was "feeble," "timid and cowardly," with "no vivacity, no activity of mind." On the contrary, stated Jefferson, the Indian "meets death with more deliberation" than any other race on earth; "his friendships are strong and faithful to the uttermost extremity." (Burnstein, 1997).






"As for happiness, he thought it probably greater among the American Indians than among the great body of people in Europe."(Malone, 1951).

Perry vs Romney

or, who sucks less

"ROMNEY: "I don't support any particular program that he's describing," he said, disputing Perry's claim that Romney favors some of President Barack Obama's education initiatives, specifically the Race to the Top program.

THE FACTS: Romney was reluctant to tell Republican primary voters he doesn't hate every Obama policy. Romney does indeed support some of the specific policy changes encouraged by the Race to the Top program and said as much earlier in the week. Speaking in Miami on Wednesday, he praised the president's education secretary, Arne Duncan, for the program. And during the debate, Romney acknowledged supporting elements of the initiative, including teacher evaluations and charter schools.
_

ROMNEY: "I believe government is too big. It's gone from 27 percent of our economy in the years of JFK to 37 percent of our economy."

THE FACTS: Romney is including state and local government spending along with federal spending. His numbers are not far off, but most of the big increases came from Social Security and Medicare payments. Medicare started after Kennedy's presidency. Now it is one of the biggest government spending programs, and one of the most popular. Federal spending alone accounted for 23.8 percent of the gross domestic product last year and is expected to reach 25.3 percent this year."

Some teabugs seem to consider Mittens to be a beady-eyed pagan lib-rall but what they mean is he's not quite a Tex Perry or Bushco sort of texass republican. Make no mistake --Romney is conservative and capitalist--the finance mavens such as G-man Sachs execs love him. He's just a kinder-gentler klansman rather than  the old-timey Perry sort.

sabadoGigante

Nevermind at 20


the murder of Kurt Cobain

=============
Extra! The lovely and talented Miss Brian Goldie rocks out

torahs 4 sale

jewish-indiana-jones/HuffPo

""According to a criminal complaint prepared by U.S. Postal Inspector Greg Ghiozzi, an application by "Save a Torah" to become a charity listed on the federal government's campaign to encourage donations by federal employees boasted that Youlus had "been beaten up, thrown in jail, and gone $175,000 into debt, to bring these holy scrolls out of less-than-friendly places, back to safety and a new life."

At a 2004 Torah dedication, Youlus wrote: "I guess you could call me the Jewish Indiana Jones," the complaint said, referencing the action-adventure hero played by Harrison Ford in the 1981 Stephen Spielberg classic "Raiders of the Lost Ark."

But Ghiozzi wrote that his investigation of Youlus' globe-trotting found no facts to support claims that Youlus rescued the "Auschwitz Torah" in Poland from inside a metal box that he located and unearthed in 2004 using a metal detector. There was also no evidence that he discovered a Torah in 2002 that had been hidden during World War II under the floor of a barracks at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany, Ghiozzi wrote.

A review of travel records showed that Youlus never traveled to Poland in 2004, making only a two-week trip to Israel, and that he didn't travel internationally from early 2001 to August 2004, when he claimed to have made the trip to Germany, Ghiozzi said. He said a historian at the Bergen-Belsen Memorial Museum told him Youlus' claims were impossible because the barracks was completely destroyed by the British Army several weeks after the camp was liberated at the end of World War II."""

You lookin' for a holy scroll? Well you come to right place, kiddo. Now ,100 grand for this one--a beauty ,right here. Or you jus get the f*ck outta here, meshugginah

Death valley daze

                 looking east from Panamint valley toward Telescope  Peak
deserthikes

OC cops killl a man

LA Times:

""Orange County prosecutors charged two veteran Fullerton police officers in the death of a mentally ill homeless man, accusing them of a callous cascade of violence against Kelly Thomas as he begged for his life.

Dist. Atty. Tony Rackauckas on Wednesday said what began as routine questioning by police devolved into a "beating at the hands of an angry police officer," with other officers eventually joining in. He stressed that Thomas did not provoke the attack and that all of his movements were purely defensive.

"This never had to happen," Rackauckas said. "And it never should have happened.""

This happens more often than many in Consumerland realize.

Arctic ice

LA Times:

"A blistering summer melted Arctic sea ice to near-record lows, and scientists say two more weeks of high temperatures could bring ice coverage in the polar region to the lowest since satellite measurements were first taken in 1979.

That's the grim assessment released Thursday by the National Climatic Data Center, which also calculated that last month's global temperatures amounted to the eighth-warmest August on record. Federal forecasters predicted a return to La Nina conditions, bringing slightly drier and warmer weather to much of the country..."

Malibu...covered by waves soon.

sabadoGigante

By a lie, a man... annihilates his dignity as a man.
Kant

Boehnernomics

http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-pn-boehner-speech-20110915,0,1821312.story

""Boehner's speech highlighted the broad approach long advocated by the Republicans and offered no new specific proposals. He made a direct pitch for tax slashes -- expressing hope that a joint committee would start the process this fall -- and repeated calls to cut all business regulations.


Those efforts, along with deficit reduction, would address the "triple threat" of bad policies keeping businesses on the sidelines, he said.

"The wealthy , which is to say the job creators in America, basically are on strike," he said. "My message to Washington today on their behalf: this isn't that hard. We need to liberate our economy from the shackles of Washington. Let our economy grow.  Help the rich to help the poor, or at least the poor who deserve it."

Boehner spent little time directly addressing the details of the Obama bill, striking the somewhat conciliatory tone House GOPs have aimed for in recent weeks.

"The House will consider them, as the American people expect. Some of the president's proposals offer an opportunity for common ground," he said. "But let's be honest with ourselves. The president's proposals are a poor substitute for the pro-growth, pro-wealth policies that are needed to generate profits, and thus to job creation in America."

Boehner said any proposals should be tied to increased development of domestic energy resources.

"There's a natural link between the two: as we develop new sources of American energy, we're going to need modern infrastructure--and  brokers, investors, speculators-- to bring that energy to the market, and to make it profitable" he said.

Boehner also offered some proposals  for a republican jobs  bill.  "America needs workers who  understand the entrepreneurial mindstate,"  said Boehner. "For instance , we  need new caddies, and  we are  developing caddie-apprenticeship programs to put  new  caddies to work at corporate golf courses.   The gaming industry also offers many  opportunities--dealers, pit-bosses, croupiers, slot-machine  technicians.   Slot-machine techs are  an important part of the Las Vegas  economy," continued Boehner.

Boehner, a heavy smoker,  suggested another jobs program on the table is tobacco picking.  "We could have many  welfare recipients earn an  honest wage by  putting them out in the fields picking tobacco," said Boehner. """

+++++   +++++   +++++

"Advocates of capitalism are very apt to appeal to the sacred principles of liberty, which are embodied in one maxim: The fortunate must not be restrained in the exercise of tyranny over the unfortunate."  Bertrand Russell

+++  ++++++

Relatedly:  One of Dennis Dunderson's best palsies: Yappi, the baptist wonderdog

Romney the Weirdo

http://douthat.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/08/09/mormonism-and-mitt-romneys-weirdness/

"""Who are these non-conservative Mormon skeptics? Well, their ranks probably include a lot of theologically conservative/politically liberal Christians (mainly African American and Hispanic ) who regard Mormonism as a dangerous heresy, and a lot of secular liberals who dislike the L.D.S.’s positions (and politicking) on issues like gay marriage. But most likely some of them are people who don’t have a particular theological or political ax to grind, who know Mormonism primarily through pop culture (from “Big Love” and “Sister Wives” to “South Park” and “The Book of Mormon”) and the occasional encounter with bicycling missionaries, and who have a vague sense of the L.D.S. church as little bit cultish, a little bit outside-the-mainstream, and a little bit, well, weird. Presumably the Obama campaign sees this half-formed attitude as the fertile ground in which its “Romney the weirdo” seeds will take root and grow.

The trouble is that winking at Romney’s faith doesn’t fit into any of the broader issues that will be front-and-center in the 2012 campaign. The Bush campaign’s attempt to paint John Kerry as an effete, quasi-French flip-flopper who couldn’t be trusted with the nation’s defense made sense because 2004 was a wartime election, and the character issues went directly to questions about what Americans wanted in their commander-in-chief. I have a much harder time seeing how insinuations about the peculiarity of Romney’s theological commitments fits into a narrative about why Americans shouldn’t trust him with a lousy economy. His Mormonism, in this sense, may turn out to be a lot like Barack Obama’s connections to Bill Ayers and the Chicago left, which conservatives tried to make hay from in the waning days of the ‘08 election: In a different kind of race, it might be a serious liability, but in a campaign focused on jobs, debt and growth, trying to sow doubts about Romney’s faith will just make the Democrats look out of touch. They’d be much better off just accusing him of being a soulless corporate layoff artist and leaving it at that..""

We don't generally approve of Douthat-Speak but he's a few clicks higher than the usual Fox-pundit. Even when wrong--like suggesting people should not make an issue out of Romney's membership in the cult of flaming salamanders L.D.S--Douthat hints at the Truth: ie, American citizens should be concerned about MR's mormonism and the growth of mormon fundamentalism (and evangelicalism of all types).

Heat

2nd hottest summer/LA Times:

"The National Climatic Data Center announced Thursday what most Americans had been feeling all summer: It's been a scorcher across the country, the second-hottest since 1895.

But not by much. The warmest national average for June, July and August was 74.6 in 1936. This summer's average was 74.5.

The temperature average has to be considered in context. Some regions experienced unseasonably cool weather, and California and New Jersey had their wettest summers ever.

As has been previously reported, Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Louisiana had their warmest summers on record. Average summer temperatures in Texas and Oklahoma exceeded the previous seasonal statewide average temperature record for any state during any season...."

Res Ipsa Loquitur.

the P-word

"Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism - how passionately I hate them! "

Albert Einstein

++++++++++++++++

Dennis "Sarge" Dunderson: a Yankee Doodle Dandy!

...

""When the Christian crusaders in the Orient came across that invincible order of Assassins – that order of free spirits par excellence whose lowest order received, through some channel or other, a hint about that symbol and spell reserved for the uppermost echelons alone, as their secret: "nothing is true, everything is permitted". Now that was freedom of the spirit, with that, belief in truth itself was renounced." (Nietzsche,Genealogy of Morals---(and that's not to approve of the typical frat boys who use Nietzsche's writing as justification for their light-weight nihilism)

LA Times/911

GOP on AGW

NY Times:

"The Republican presidential contenders regard global warming as a hoax or, at best, underplay its importance. The most vocal denier is Rick Perry, the Texas governor and longtime friend of the oil industry, who insists that climate change is an unproven theory created by “a substantial number of scientists who have manipulated data so that they will have dollars rolling into their projects.”


Never mind that nearly all the world’s scientists regard global warming as a serious threat to the planet, with human activities like the burning of fossil fuels a major cause. Never mind that multiple investigations have found no evidence of scientific manipulation. Never mind that America needs a national policy. Mr. Perry has a big soapbox, and what he says, however fallacious, reaches a bigger audience than any scientist can command.


With one exception — make that one-and-one-half — the rest of the Republican presidential field also rejects the scientific consensus. The exception is Jon Huntsman Jr., a former ambassador to China and former governor of Utah, who recently wrote on Twitter: “I believe in evolution and trust scientists on global warming. Call me crazy.” The one-half exception is Mitt Romney, who accepted the science when he was governor of Massachusetts and argued for reducing emissions. Lately, he’s retreated into mush: “Do I think the world’s getting hotter? Yeah, I don’t know that, but I think that it is.” As for the human contribution: “It could be a little. It could be a lot.”


The others flatly repudiate the science. Ron Paul of Texas calls global warming “the greatest hoax I think that has been around for many, many years.” Michele Bachmann of Minnesota once said that carbon dioxide was nothing to fear because it is a “natural byproduct of nature” and has complained of “manufactured science.” Rick Santorum, a former senator from Pennsylvania, has called climate change “a beautifully concocted scheme” that is “just an excuse for more government control of your life.”"

+++++ +++++

~(Relatedly): AV Press editor Dennis "Sarge" Dunderson wins another prize

teach Darwin--go to jail

HuffPo/Newton

Should a teacher be sued for describing creationism as "superstitious nonsense"?

This question involves a lawsuit against California history teacher James Corbett. In 2007, a former student sued Corbett for a pattern of hostility "toward religion and favoring irreligion over religion." The student produced secret recordings of Corbett as evidence.

In 2009, a judge considered Corbett's statements and found only one -- that creationism is "superstitious nonsense" -- to be an "improper disapproval of religion in violation of the Establishment Clause," and therefore an infringement of the student's rights. To the amazement of educators and scientists across the country, the court ruled against Corbett and found this one statement in class to have been unconstitutional.

One issue raised by this case is how far educators should modify class content to anticipate potential offense to the faith of their students. In a public school classroom filled with students from a variety of religions and backgrounds, there is a good chance of offending someone in some way. If teachers are at risk of being sued every time they make a factual statement, it may have a chilling effect: "Teachers can avoid [risk] by not talking about these issues at all," according to UC Irvine law professor Rachel Moran.

Is this the kind of education we want?......

Alright lil Sarah, put down the cell phone..Moises did walk, hand in hand, with Pterosaurs. Now, back to Osmosis

the long War

Beattie/Counterpunch:

""This is the war on terror and the war of terror, the Project for the New American Century, or the New World Order, crafted before the events of September 11, 2001 and trafficked to a frightened-beyond-reason public unwilling to examine why we’re hated, receptive only to “they’re jealous of our freedoms.” Frenzied by nationalism, our young rushed to recruitment centers and on to boot camp, trained as matriculants of imperial US murder. It is the long war, perhaps permanent, a consequence of evil intersections, machinations to bomb a country or two, three, four, five, six, seven, whatever, back to the Stone Age.

“USA! USA! USA!”

The Cheney/Bush Administration had what it required, as articulated by Dick, “a Pearl Harbor-like event. Finally, a president and his vice’s grasp held America’s palpable fear. Cheney must have said, “Be still my heart.” With the collapse of towers, a ruptured Pentagon, and a cratered field in Pennsylvania, Dick Cheney, malevolence personified and an admitted torturer, entered the shelter of his nurtured delusions where he paved a corridor of death not only for “coalition forces” but, also, for civilians and those angry “insurgents”, whose lands his greed-twisted project encompassed.

The fourth estate became corporate media. Quivering masses tuned to episodes of reality anything, shunning critical thought.

Allowing the Patriot Act to subvert the Constitution, we ceded both to foreign terrorists and to terrorists within the highest echelons of our government.

The 9/11 Commission convened only after family members pressed for an investigation. The long-awaited verdict placed blame for the attack on a “failure of imagination”.

There has been little consideration by our “leadership” that the footprint of US foreign policy in the Middle East has created enemies, that our allegiance to Israel is a denial of human rights to Palestinians, and that our sanctions and occupations have killed millions. For maintenance and expansion of US geopolitical power/hegemony. And for oil.

“USA! USA! USA!”

“OIL! OIL! OIL!”"""

Quivering masses tuned to that bimbo on Foxnews with the lovely botoxed lips, waving a flag for the War Pigs.

sabadoGigante

homie Bluebeard

Memoirs-Co

Cheney/HuffPo

""On Tuesday, Aug. 30 former Vice President Richard "Dick" Cheney published his memoirs, "In My Time," and, as widely expected, he has used this new platform to restate his wholehearted support for some of the most egregious human rights abuses committed by the Bush administration.

We thought it might be instructive to examine some of the claims he makes in his memoirs and see how well they stack up against the established facts.

In an interview with CNN in June 2005 Dick Cheney spun a rosy picture of conditions in Guantanamo: "We spent a lot of money to build it. They're very well treated down there. They're living in the tropics. They're well fed. They've got everything they could possibly want."

The one thing you can't fault the former Vice President on is his consistency. He continues to view Guantanamo as a model prison, describing it in his memoirs as a "humane" facility that "likely provides a standard of care higher than many prisons in European countries where criticism of Guantanamo has been louder."""

Maybe the BushCo patriots-- Cheney, Dubya, Rumsfeld, et al-- might donate some of the profits from their potboilers to pay off the military spending incurred by the invasion of Iraq.


..

Mormons and Chiropractic

diverse-mormons:

"If you don’t think Mormons are a diverse bunch, then chances are good that you aren’t Mormon.  We do share beliefs, but then there are individual beliefs that the church doesn’t comment on.  For example, I know Mormons who swear by chiropractic and naturopathic care.  Other Mormons think they’re complete quacks.  I knew a couple who believed there was no ailment that chiropractic adjustments couldn’t cure, from back pain to ear infections."

Holy Newts of Fire, Captain Moroni! The association of chiropractic and ..the LDS goes back quite some time.   Palmer the quack who founded the quack science chiropractic belonged to the LDS.  Many mormons were anti-vaccination and believed Chiropractic could heal and/or prevent diseases (or as Palmer's jingle went, the Power that made the body, heals the body, pilgrim!). HL Mencken was on to the "preposterous quackery" of chiropractic (and osteopathy), and did not fail to note that ..many Mormons were involved in the scheme:

" In Los Angeles the Damned, there are probably more chiropractors than actual physicians, and they are far more generally esteemed. Proceeding from the Ambassador Hotel to the heart of the town, along Wilshire boulevard, one passes scores of their gaudy signs; there are even chiropractic "hospitals." The Mormons who pour in from the prairies and deserts, most of them ailing, patronize these "hospitals" copiously, and give to the chiropractic pathology the same high respect that they accord to the theology of the town sorcerers. That pathology is grounded upon the doctrine that all human ills are caused by pressure of misplaced vertebrae upon the nerves which come out of the spinal cord -- in other words, that every disease is the result of a pinch. This, plainly enough, is buncombe. The chiropractic therapeutics rest upon the doctrine that the way to get rid of such pinches is to climb upon a table and submit to a heroic pummeling by a retired piano-mover. This, obviously, is buncombe doubly damned."

Mencken, that beer-swilling, piano-pounding, ill-bred German talked the talk. Buncombe--that's chiropractic.

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