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.

More:Quackbusters

Perry prays

Hitchens/Slate:

""I happened to spend several weeks in Texas earlier this year, while the Lone Star State lay under the pitiless glare of an unremitting drought. After a protracted arid interval, the state's immodest governor, Rick Perry, announced that he was using the authority vested in him to call for prayers for rain. These incantations and beseechments, carrying the imprimatur of government, were duly offered to the heavens. The heavens responded by remaining, along with the parched lands below, obstinately dry.

Perry did not, of course, suffer politically for making an idiot of himself in this way. Not even the true believers really expect that prayers for precipitation will be answered, or believe that a failed rainmaker is a false prophet. And, had Perry's entreaties actually been followed by a moistening of the clouds and the coming of the healing showers, it is unlikely that anybody would really have claimed a connection between post hoc and propter hoc. No, religion in politics is more like an insurance policy than a true act of faith. Professing allegiance to it seldom does you any harm, at least in Republican primary season, and can do you some good. It's a question of prudence."""

Bachmannism

hurricane-god/LA Times

"At a campaign rally on Sunday in Sarasota, Fla., Bachmann took note of last week’s magnitude 5.8 quake that rocked the Washington area and whose effects were felt beyond New York City. She also cited Irene, which hit the United States as a Category 1 hurricane before traveling up the East Coast to Canada, leaving an estimated billions of dollars in damages and almost two dozen reported deaths.


“I don't know how much God has to do to get the attention of the politicians,” Bachmann said to supporters. “We've had an earthquake; we’ve had a hurricane. He said, 'Are you going to start listening to me here? Listen to the American people because the American people are roaring right now. They know government is on a morbid obesity diet and we've got to rein in the spending.' ”

Ridiculous, the average secularist exclaims. Yet per the logic of monotheism, Bachmann, like a Pat Robertson, would seem obligated to view God as the Controller of hurricanes and earthquakes (and floods, tidal waves, volcanoes, as well as diseases, plagues, etc). Now, had she read and understood Voltaire's Candide,--Voltaire being one of Thomas Jefferson's favorite scribes, as well--her indoctrination in fundamentalism might have been thwarted, however slightly. 

Beef, Inc

meat-industry-recruits/HuffPo:

""COLUMBIA, Mo. — The national beef industry has enlisted college students across the country in its public relations fight for America's hearts, minds and stomachs.


The Masters of Beef Advocacy program also recruits farmers, ranchers, high-end chefs and school dietitians to spread the gospel of red meat consumption. But the National Cattlemen's Beef Association, which started the outreach effort two years ago, has placed a strong emphasis on the Twitter generation. At least 20 percent of the nearly 2,200 program graduates are age 21 or younger.

The online program – called MBA in a nod to the more commonly known graduate business degree – is available in 47 states and particularly popular at public land-grant universities with strong agricultural schools, such as the University of Missouri, Iowa State, Kansas State and Western Kentucky.

"We know what the science is," said Dennis Fennewald, a fifth-generation farmer, former bull semen salesman and beef production instructor at Missouri. "The emotional part, that really is being controlled by people who don't know or understand our science."

Fennewald and professors at other schools typically offer the six-hour course as extra credit rather than a required assignment. Students who finish it are expected to speak to school groups and civic clubs or build online buzz through social media."""

Peter Singer & Co we don't exactly approve of yet there's something to the idea of having Biff and Bunny, steak-lovers, work in a slaughterhouse for a few weeks.

Journalism, continued

"If I had my choice I would kill every reporter in the world, but I am sure we would be getting reports from Hell before breakfast." ~William Tecumseh Sherman

You got that raht Uncle Billy

sabadoGigante

Jobs resigns ....

from Crapple--

"""I have always said if ever the day came when I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple's CEO, I would be among the first to let you know," Mr. Jobs said in his resignation letter. "Unfortunately, that day has come. I am as of this date now officially finished. There are various reasons for my decision, my friends. One, I've come to realize I am a fairly useless yet exceedingly wealthy pseudo-executive, with little or no software knowledge or technical ability or management skills. A team of high-powered investment people makes most of the my financial decisions. A guru makes my personal ones. An anachronism, if you will--though no one in the Apple community can ever doubt my contributions to certain graphical elements of the Apple line--such as the user friendly shapes and colors of Apple and Mac computers-- or the names. I named the "i-Mac", and all the i-products which followed--well, not the hardware or software, but the name itself: i. That's due to me. Wozniak and his propeller-heads built the other stuff, the techie gear. I've never been involved in that. Honestly I don't even know how to find the browser on the new SnowTiger OS-X-VIII or whatever the R & D people decided to call it.


The other reason I'm leaving --I've been diagnosed with medical and mental problems, and I can no longer keep this fact disclosed from the Apple community, or public at large. I am taking large daily doses of xanax, and an outpatient in a San Mateo mental health facility. My wife and friends had me institutionalized, actually, for which I am grateful. I have a nice, well-lighted room at the hospital, and an i-phone, music, and some pens and ink for my calligraphy work, and I plan to relax and meditate for a few years and finish my AA in Calligraphy, maybe take a BASIC class, and leave the details to others. " """

Feliz cumpleaños, J.L. Borges

The-man-behind-the-Google-Doodle

Borges +

--- +++++ ----- +++++

Tony, 1. Jerry, 0

LA Times:

"Villaraigosa proposed raising taxes on commercial property and lowering them for homeowners. "Prop. 13 was never intended to be a corporate tax giveaway, but that is what it has become," he asserted.


The mayor also would eliminate the corporate tax because "it has become a Swiss cheese of loopholes." He'd trim the personal income tax by 11%. And he'd extend the sales tax to services. "It's crazy that we are taxing doughnuts and not lawyers."


All told, he would raise billions, largely for schools and universities, the primary focus of his speech. "We are in the process of dismantling the greatest public university system in the world."


He'd allow taxes — state and local — to be increased by simple majority votes, repealing the two-thirds requirement of Prop. 13.


"This is about beginning a conversation," he says.


Done. A politician tacking Prop. 13 on his forehead will draw comment."

Vill. shows more spine in one rant than Jerry Moonbeam has in years.

Zizek....Gaga

NY Post:

""Lady Gaga has struck up a strong friendship with mysterious Marxist Slavoj Zizek, dubbed "the world's hippest philosopher."

In the midst of her rift with long-term boyfriend Luc Carl, eyebrows were raised over Gaga's decision to spend a lot of time with the 62-year-old, bearded, postmodern theorist and pal of Julian Assange while she was touring the UK and US this spring.

Sources say Gaga and Slovenian-born Zizek -- who like Salman Rushdie seems to be intellectual catnip to beautiful women and who was once married to Argentine model Analia Hounie -- spent time together discussing feminism and collective human creativity. The pop star also agreed to support Zizek at a March rally in London when the lecturers' union UCU was on strike.""

Paraphrasing GWF Hegel, History is the rational, progressive development of truth in time--occasionally.

++++++++++

related: Palmdale newspaper editor Dennis Dunderson a suspect in necrophilia case

West Memphis 3 phree

The law does not pretend to punish everything that is dishonest. That would seriously interfere with business.
Clarence Darrow

LA TIMES:

"When the "West Memphis 3" were freed from 18 years of imprisonment, emissaries of the entertainment world were there -- as they have been for years.

Arrested as teenagers, Damien Echols and Jessie Misskelley, both now 36, and Jason Baldwin, now 34, had long garnered support among musicians and Hollywood types because their black clothing and fondness for heavy metal music were used against them in trial. Prosecutors had suggested that the teenagers were Satanists who'd committed an "occult murder."

On Friday, when the men were released, Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks and Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam were in the courtroom. James Hetfield of Metallica offered this commentary in an interview with a Times reporter: "The way you dress, the things you listen to... I can basically speak for myself, growing up, that that was just a sign of wanting to be creative and be different."

And former Black Flag singer Henry Rollins, who had released an album to benefit the defense team, said in an email with a Times reporter that he was happy for the men -- but he's upset that "so much has been lost.""

sabado Gigante

........

Huntsman, cont.

LA TIMES:

"Addressing Perry’s stated skepticism of theories of evolution and climate change, Huntsman tweeted, “To be clear. I believe in evolution and trust scientists on global warming. Call me crazy.”

Almost immediately after that, he trained his fire on the president, saying “With the jobs crisis this country faces, President Obama should be calling Congress back to DC, not going on a 10-day vacation.”

Obviously feeling liberated, Huntsman then started to riff: “Wonder if a tweet where I admit how much I like Captain Beefheart will make the followers skyrocket even more!” he questioned. (Huntsman used to play keyboards in a rock band, not that that explains his fondness for the esoteric Beefheart.)"

Quite focking copacetic Jonny yet I doubt Don VV were he still present in this dimension would reciprocate the sentiment.

Pena

Droneocracy

Kucinich/HuffPo

"The Obama Administration continues to use unmanned drones as a tool of war - a tool that according The New York Times, the Administration claims has killed 600 militants in Pakistan and no civilians since May 2010. But the math doesn't add up. Nor does the policy.

Think of the use of drone air strikes as summary executions, extra-judicial killings justified by faceless bureaucrats using who-knows-what "intelligence," with no oversight whatsoever and you get the idea that we have slipped into spooky new world where joystick gods manipulating robots deal death from the skies and then go home and hug their children. Everything America was once said to stand for: the rule of law, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights is in danger of becoming collateral damage as our fearful leaders continue to kill suspects and innocent alike, mindlessly unaware that the hellfire we are sowing will surely be reaped by Americans in the future. The proliferation of drone technology and its inevitable extension to civilian law enforcement is a leap into the arms of Big Brother..."

Yep. Though....with a perfected drone-police force, why the need for human cops at all? Imagine a kinder-gentler techno-snitch, Kuc.--and that would save the State a bundle by cutting over-inflated public employee salaries.

Public education for sale

Chomsky:

"A couple of months ago, I went to Mexico to give talks at the National University in Mexico, UNAM. It's quite an impressive university — hundreds of thousands of students, high-quality and engaged students, excellent faculty. It's free. And the city — Mexico City — actually, the government ten years ago did try to add a little tuition, but there was a national student strike, and the government backed off. And, in fact, there's still an administrative building on campus that is still occupied by students and used as a center for activism throughout the city. There's also, in the city itself, another university, which is not only free but has open admissions. It has compensatory options for those who need them. I was there, too; it's also quite an impressive level, students, faculty, and so on. That's Mexico, a poor country.

Right after that I happened to go to California, maybe the richest place in the world. I was giving talks at the universities there. In California, the main universities — Berkeley and UCLA — they're essentially Ivy League private universities — colossal tuition, tens of thousands of dollars, huge endowment. General assumption is they are pretty soon going to be privatized, and the rest of the system will be, which was a very good system — best public system in the world — that's probably going to be reduced to technical training or something like that. The privatization, of course, means privatization for the rich [and a] lower level of mostly technical training for the rest. And that is happening across the country. Next year, for the first time ever, the California system, which was a really great system, best anywhere, is getting more funding from tuition than from the state of California. And that is happening across the country. In most states, tuition covers more than half of the college budget. It's also most of the public research universities. Pretty soon only the community colleges — you know, the lowest level of the system — will be state-financed in any serious sense. And even they're under attack. And analysts generally agree, I'm quoting, "The era of affordable four-year public universities heavily subsidized by the state may be over.""

"Privatization"--another word for the economics of gated communities, aka UC neighborhood watch.

"Stop coddling the super rich"

Buffett/NY Times

"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. Some of us are investment managers who earn billions from our daily labors but are allowed to classify our income as “carried interest,” thereby getting a bargain 15 percent tax rate. Others own stock index futures for 10 minutes and have 60 percent of their gain taxed at 15 percent, as if they’d been long-term investors.

These and other blessings are showered upon us by legislators in Washington who feel compelled to protect us, much as if we were spotted owls or some other endangered species. It’s nice to have friends in high places."

This essay has apparentlly really pissed off the dirt-bag libertarians teabuggers, especially those who consider taxation to be the work of The DEVVILL. Of course, the usual TPster doesn't let US economic history stand in the way of his/her hustle and hype: Nixon-era tax rates were significantly greater than current rates--approx. 70% across the board, compared to today's 40%.

To Frack or not to Frack

LA Times-- (with update*)

"A federally-appointed panel recommended greater disclosure and monitoring of the environmental effects of extracting natural gas from shale formations, marking the Obama administration's first broad assessment of the controversial practice known as fracking.

A coast-to-coast shale gas boom has raised concerns about the risks to underground water supplies from hydraulic fracturing, which involves mixing sand, water and chemicals and injecting them into shale formations at high pressure to unlock the gas. Environmental groups, local residents and politicians in areas rich with shale gas have said that hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking," could lead to contamination of the water table. The energy industry insists that fracking is safe.

It remains unclear whether the report, issued by an expert panel appointed by Energy Secretary Steven Chu, will calm the debate. It's also uncertain if and how its recommendations would be implemented. The administration has not seen it yet."

Trust us: Fracking's Big Oil hype. Shale gas exists, but in addition to the contamination issues, the processing of the gas entails significantly higher costs than ordinary oil-gas refining technologies.

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

*updated! for...sabado Gigante-- FZ IPNTCIYM aka, in Cont.Speak "Me n Missus Lackey"

Kant 2011

Was the philosopher Immanuel Kant a pro-entitlement liberal?

(from the Metaphysics of Morals)

1. "The people have in fact united themselves by their common will into a society, which has to be perpetually maintained; and for this purpose they have subjected themselves to the internal power of the state, in order to preserve the members of this society even when they are not able to support themselves. By the fundamental principle of the state, the government is justified and entitled to compel those who are able, to furnish the means necessary to preserve those who are not themselves capable of providing for the most necessary wants of nature. For the existence of persons with property in the state implies their submission under it for protection and the provision by the state of what is necessary for their existence; and accordingly the state founds a right upon an obligation on their part to contribute of their means for the preservation of their fellow citizens. This may be carried out by taxing the property or the commercial industry of the citizens, or by establishing funds and drawing interest from them, not for the wants of the state as such, which is rich, but for those of the people. And this is not to be done merely by voluntary contributions, but by compulsory exactions as state–burdens, for we are here considering only the right of the state in relation to the people. Among the voluntary modes of raising such contributions, lotteries ought not to be allowed, because they increase the number of those who are poor, and involve danger to the public property. It may be asked whether the relief of the poor ought to be administered out of current contributions, so that every age should maintain its own poor; or whether this were better done by means of permanent funds and charitable institutions, such as widows’ homes, hospitals, etc.? And if the former method is the better, it may also be considered whether the means necessary are to be raised by a legal assessment rather than by begging, which is generally nigh akin to robbing. The former method must in reality be regarded as the only one that is conformable to the right of the state, which cannot withdraw its connection from any one who has to live. For a legal current provision does not make the profession of poverty a means of gain for the indolent, as is to be feared is the case with pious foundations when they grow with the number of the poor; nor can it be charged with being an unjust or unrighteous burden imposed by the government on the people.""

To reiterate: "the right of the state, which cannot withdraw its connection from any one who has to live."--That's like....Koombayah bullsh*t. Small wonder that Nietzsche and Ayn the Man Rand --and fratboys and hipsters the world over-- detested IK's ethical doctrines (and transcendental metaphysics). Nor should the somewhat rational citizen find it surprising that some of the nazis' first targets were the Kantian progressives of the SPD.

Mo' Kant

Unamuno on IK

F-35 follies cont.

HuffPo:

..."As of December 31, 2010, the total estimated acquisition cost (the sum of development cost, procurement cost, and military construction [MilCon] cost) of the F-35 program in constant (i.e., inflation-adjusted) FY2002 dollars was about $270.6 billion.

[But] in then-year dollars (meaning dollars from various years that are not adjusted for inflation), the figures are about $379.4 billion, which would yield a program acquisition unit cost (or PAUC, meaning total acquisition cost divided by the 2,456 research and development and procurement aircraft) of about $154.4 million in constant FY2010 dollars, and an average procurement unit cost (or APUC, meaning total procurement cost divided by the 2,443 production aircraft) of $132.8 million in constant FY2010 dollars...."

For God is not a God of confusion but of peace. As in all the churches of the saints. 1Cor.14.33 (Perdition--granting the possibility thereof for a few nanoseconds--must feature a lot of new tract housing for US defense contractors, assuming like the New Testament means anything)

S & P's real agenda

naked capitalism--

""Standard & Poor’s was the most aggressive of the three agencies, however. And on January 16, 2003, four days after the Georgia General Assembly convened, it dropped a bombshell. Because of the state’s new Fair Lending Act, S & P said that it would no longer allow mortgage loans originated in Georgia to be placed in mortgage securities that it rated. Moody’s and Fitch soon followed with similar warnings.

It was a critical blow. S& P’s move meant Georgia lenders would have no access to the securitization money machine; they would either have to keep the loans they made on their own books, or sell them one by one to other institutions. In turn, they made it clear to the public that there would be fewer mortgages funded, dashing “the dream” of homeownership.

It was an untenable situation for the lenders who had grown addicted to the securitization money spigot. With S& P shutting it off to abusive lenders, it was only a matter of time before the Fair Lending Act was dead. """

Ye

Mitt's fave books

Romneytoid, continued.

""Perennial GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney caused a stir in 2007 when he said he really loved L. Ron Hubbard's notoriously awful Battlefield Earth. (The book, not the movie.) So this time around, he came up with a better choice.

Talking to NBC News, Romney explained he really liked the Twilight series."""

From L-Ron to...vampires? (plus memoirs of BushCo). Holy Angel of Moroni, ratman.

sabado Gigante

the legendary Jimmy Smith...


(and ROMNEY IN PARIS?Zut!)

Lessons from the debt crisis

http://www.ianwelsh.net/what-the-debt-limit-crisis-should-have-taught-you/

This is not primarily about the Tea Party


It is about what rich donors want. The Tea Party does not even have the amount of muscle progressives do. Progressives can bring tens of thousands of people out, the Tea Party can rarely even get above 1,000. They are a convenient excuse to do what the Beltway and the oligarchs already want to do.

Where are you going to go?

Both Dems and Republicans are onside with cutting Social Security and Medicare. They are only third rails if there is someone else to vote for.

The deals being offered will cause a second downleg of the Depression and a worse one

We’re in a Depression. This is fact. Anyone who doesn’t call it that is gutless, stupid or uninformed. This will make it worse, not just for the US, but for the entire developed world.

Representatives work for the people who pay them


That isn’t really you. They don’t become multi-millionaires on their salaries, you know. It’s their donors, the people who hire their wives and children, the people who fund their campaigns, the people who give them good jobs when they leave government. If you want Reps and Senators to work for you, you must pay them better, you must fund their campaigns (and sharply limit outside funding) and you must make it illegal for them to EVER make more money in a year than their government salary (index it to an average of the median wage, the minimum wage, and CPI). You should do what Canada used to do and give them a good pension after 6 years. You DON’T want them worrying about their next job, or what they’ll do if they’ll lose."""""

Eagles killed by Wind farms

LA Times--

""An investigation has been launched into the deaths of migratory birds including several federally protected golden eagles at the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power’s Pine Tree Wind Project in the Tehachapi Mountains, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said Tuesday.

Should the inquiry result in a prosecution, the 120-megawatt facility on 8,000 acres of rugged terrain would be the first wind farm to face charges under the Endangered Species Act, which could cause some rethinking and redesign of this booming alternative energy source.

Wildlife service spokeswoman Lois Grunwald declined to comment on what she called “an ongoing investigation regarding Pine Tree.” But Joe Ramallo, spokesman for the DWP, said, “We are very concerned about golden eagle mortalities that have occurred at Pine Tree. We have been working cooperatively and collaboratively with the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service and the California Department of Fish and Game to investigate these incidents.

“We have also actively and promptly self-reported raptor mortalities to both authorities,” he added. “Moving forward, we will be ramping up further our extensive field monitoring and will work with the agencies to develop an eagle conservation plan as part of more proactive efforts to monitor avian activities in the Pine Tree area.”"

The DWP bureaucrats should have made plans to prevent raptor deaths from the onset.

++++++++++++   +++++++++

Related: "Lawn-Cop: The Life and Times of Billy Snitchford". Snitchford, Poet Laureate of Palmdale, CA, has written an riveting account of his years as a reporter in SoCal, covering lawn and garden issues. Foreword by semi-famed sportswriter Brian "The Hog" Goldie, who once was invited to a party thrown by Tom Lasordid.

B L T season

Sabroso.

Relatedly: green carnivores

"theJacobin spirit"

Zizek--

""In the history of radical politics, violence is usually associated with the so-called Jacobin legacy, and, for that reason, dismissed as something that should be abandoned if we are truly to begin again. Even many contemporary (post-)Marxists are embarrassed by the so-called Jacobin legacy of centralized state terror, from which they want to distance Marx himself, proposing an authentic “liberal” Marx whose thought was later obfuscated by Lenin. It was Lenin, so the story goes, who (re)introduced the Jacobin legacy, thus falsifying Marx’s libertarian spirit. But is this really the case? Let us take a closer look at how the Jacobins rejected the recourse to a majority vote, on behalf of those who speak for an eternal Truth. How could the Jacobins, the partisans of unity and of the struggle against factions, justify this rejection? “The entire difficulty resides in how to distinguish between the voice of truth, even if it is minoritarian, and the factional voice which seeks only to divide artificially to conceal the truth.”""

sunday morning with HL Mencken

"The truth is that Christian theology, like every other theology, is not only opposed to the scientific spirit; it is also opposed to all other attempts at rational thinking. Not by accident does Genesis 3 make the father of knowledge a serpent -- slimy, sneaking and abominable. Since the earliest days the church, as an organization, has thrown itself violently against every effort to liberate the body and mind of man. It has been, at all times and everywhere, the habitual and incorrigible defender of bad governments, bad laws, bad social theories, bad institutions. It was, for centuries, an apologist for slavery, as it was the apologist for the divine right of kings."

-- H L Mencken

sabado Gigante

Borges:...

. . .

ALHAMBRA


Grata la voz del agua

a quien abrumaron negras arenas,

grato a la mano cóncava

el mármol circular de la columna,

gratos los finos laberintos del agua

entre los limoneros,

grata la música del zéjel,

grato el amor y grata la plegaria

dirigida a un Dios que está solo,

grato el jazmín.



Vano el alfanje

ante las largas lanzas de los muchos,

vano ser el mejor.

Grato sentir o presentir, rey doliente,

que tus dulzuras son adioses,

que te será negada la llave,

que la cruz del infiel borrará la luna,

que la tarde que miras es la última.


--J.L. Borges--

On the Road with..... Banksy

Jack was here

"""""If he were around today, it's pretty certain that Neal Cassady, immortalized as Dean Moriarty in Jack Kerouac's On the Road, would appreciate what the street artist Theo has been up to lately. Cassady was a born rabble-rouser, after all, and in more ways than one Theo and a small crew of fellow miscreants have been shaking it up: Dismayed by Francis Ford Coppola's decision to film the Denver parts of On the Road in Canada for his upcoming film adaptation of the novel, the artist took to the streets late this winter with a few cans of paint, a copy of the book and a stencil of Kerouac's likeness and started tagging it on Kerouac either mentioned in On the Road or was known to frequent. "It's just a simple reminder that Kerouac was here in Denver," he told us earlier this week."""""

Destruction may be a creative  process. 

Debt-primer

LA Times--

""Question: The federal government has run through its ability to borrow money and soon will run out of cash to pay its bills. How did the government get into this problem?

Answer: As recently as the final years of the Clinton administration, the federal government was running a sizable budget surplus, and the national debt was declining relative to the size of the U.S. economy. Then several things happened: Under President George W. Bush, Congress enacted two big tax cuts, in 2001 and 2003, which cut federal revenues. Under Bush, the country also adopted an expensive new prescription drug plan for senior citizens and pursued wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, all of which raised the government’s expenses. The combination led to increasing deficits and, as the government borrowed money to cover those deficits, a rapid increase in the national debt. Then came the recession, which cut tax revenues further and pushed up expenses even more for things like unemployment insurance and President Obama’s economic stimulus plan. Now, the debt has hit the statutory limit of $14.3 trillion.""

Ending churchly tax exemptions, continued

El Paso Times:

Religion and churches will play a big role in the coming city election. But church leaders must take care to avoid saying things to their congregations that could endanger their tax-exempt status, an expert said Friday.

"Ministers are not allowed to endorse candidates from the pulpit," said Bee Moorhead, executive director of Texas Impact.

Her Austin-based group is governed by church officials and its mission is to encourage people of faith to be politically active within legal guidelines.

"One of the jobs of people of faith is to vote," Moorhead said. "That is the core civic responsibility."

Church leaders should encourage congregants to vote -- but not whom to vote for, Moorhead said.

As the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life put it, "Religious organizations, as well as all other organizations exempt from federal income tax under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code, are prohibited from participating or intervening, directly or indirectly, in a political campaign on behalf of or in opposition to any candidate for elective public office."

Many churches also conduct businesses of various sorts--pancake breakfasts, bingo, tax-prep, cheeseburr-ger bar-be-ques, Confederacy celebration days, shofar and/or Donny Osmond-impression nite, etc-- on church property. That would seem to violate the exemption status as well. CHEESE UH BURRGER?One-uh CHEESE UH BURRGER and uh PEPSI.

Mo'

Rev. Sherman's sermon

“I hate newspapermen. They come into camp and pick up their camp rumors and print them as facts. I regard them as spies, which, in truth, they are. If I killed them all there would be news from Hell before breakfast.”  

William Tecumseh Sherman

sabado Gigante

EL ORO!

"Employees of Goldman Sachs Group gave Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney $238,250 in the last three months, more than workers at any other company, according to a computer-assisted analysis of Federal Election Commission data. Obama took in $10,113."

Romney/G-sachs

Cuts and Guts

Mascaro/LA Times

""President Obama and House Speaker John Boehner are continuing to work on a deal that would allow a debt-ceiling increase, even as both sides denied reports Thursday that an agreement was imminent.


According to a Democratic congressional aide, discussions have centered on a version of the so-called grand bargain the two leaders have sought -- minus a key element, new tax revenues, that has been rejected by Republicans. The White House told congressional Democrats about this proposal during the last 24 hours.


The deal would amount to as much as $3 trillion in spending cuts, and would likely be deeply opposed by rank-and-file Democrats who have insisted that any package that includes cutbacks in Medicare and Social Security must also include new tax revenue.


For both sides, a deal of that sort would also amount to a bet on the next election, because the tax cuts enacted under George W. Bush expire at the end of 2012.


Republicans want to renew those tax cuts, while Obama has promised to allow taxes to go up on higher-income Americans when the current rates expire.""

Many of the dipshit nanny-staters with emotional disorders Dinkocrats still don't understand the COLA mechanism. The Labor-stats boys (and politicians favoring the chained CPI) want to alter the stats used to calculate inflation, slightly, over the next few years . It's not a large amount of money-- the elderly poor might lose 40-50 bucks per quarter (not monthly IIRC). This will increase projected tax revenues, supposedly (then ..how accurate are prognostications of future inflation rates?) . The regular SS payouts per FDR's original program are still in place, but there could be possible lower COLA checks WHEN THEY GO OUT, WHICH IS RARELY (under Barrytown, none have gone out AFAIK). Got it? Read the Labor stats page for starters.

Overprescribed

Aljazeera

""Has America become a nation of psychotics? You would certainly think so, based on the explosion in the use of antipsychotic medications. In 2008, with over $14 billion in sales, antipsychotics became the single top-selling therapeutic class of prescription drugs in the United States, surpassing drugs used to treat high cholesterol and acid reflux.

Once upon a time, antipsychotics were reserved for a relatively small number of patients with hard-core psychiatric diagnoses - primarily schizophrenia and bipolar disorder - to treat such symptoms as delusions, hallucinations, or formal thought disorder. Today, it seems, everyone is taking antipsychotics. Parents are told that their unruly kids are in fact bipolar, and in need of anti-psychotics, while old people with dementia are dosed, in large numbers, with drugs once reserved largely for schizophrenics. Americans with symptoms ranging from chronic depression to anxiety to insomnia are now being prescribed anti-psychotics at rates that seem to indicate a national mass psychosis.


It is anything but a coincidence that the explosion in antipsychotic use coincides with the pharmaceutical industry's development of a new class of medications known as "atypical antipsychotics." Beginning with Zyprexa, Risperdal, and Seroquel in the 1990s, followed by Abilify in the early 2000s, these drugs were touted as being more effective than older antipsychotics like Haldol and Thorazine. More importantly, they lacked the most noxious side effects of the older drugs - in particular, the tremors and other motor control problems.


The atypical anti-psychotics were the bright new stars in the pharmaceutical industry's roster of psychotropic drugs - costly, patented medications that made people feel and behave better without any shaking or drooling. Sales grew steadily, until by 2009 Seroquel and Abilify numbered fifth and sixth in annual drug sales, and prescriptions written for the top three atypical antipsychotics totaled more than 20 million. Suddenly, antipsychotics weren't just for psychotics any more.""

That very well may be, Ahki--the psycho-bureaucrats may be overprescribing many--but they are under-prescribing as well. Consider a large warehouse of baptist-masons: how they/it would be improved with large helpings of  Haldol or 'Zine.

Tangentially related

Rev. Jay's Sermon

“As to the position that "the people always mean well," that they always mean to say and do what they believe to be right and just - it may be popular, but it can not be true. The word people applies to all the individual inhabitants of a country. . . . That portion of them who individually mean well never was, nor until the millennium will be, considerable. Pure democracy, like pure rum, easily produces intoxication and with it a thousand pranks and fooleries. I do not expect mankind will, before the millennium, be what they ought to be and therefore, in my opinion, every political theory which does not regard them as being what they are, will prove abortive. Yet I wish to see all unjust and unnecessary discriminations everywhere abolished, and that the time may come when all our inhabitants of every color and discrimination shall be free and equal partakers of our political liberties.”


John Jay

sabado Gigante

el funeral de Ezra Pound.

Voo dooo

K-man/NYT:

"""Supply-side voodoo — which claims that tax cuts pay for themselves and/or that any rise in taxes would lead to economic collapse — has been a powerful force within the G.O.P. ever since Ronald Reagan embraced the concept of the Laffer curve. But the voodoo used to be contained. Reagan himself enacted significant tax increases, offsetting to a considerable extent his initial cuts.

And even the administration of former President George W. Bush refrained from making extravagant claims about tax-cut magic, at least in part for fear that making such claims would raise questions about the administration’s seriousness.

Recently, however, all restraint has vanished — indeed, it has been driven out of the party. Last year Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, asserted that the Bush tax cuts actually increased revenue — a claim completely at odds with the evidence — and also declared that this was “the view of virtually every Republican on that subject.” And it’s true: even Mr. Romney, widely regarded as the most sensible of the contenders for the 2012 presidential nomination, has endorsed the view that tax cuts can actually reduce the deficit.

Which brings me to the culpability of those who are only now facing up to the G.O.P.’s craziness.

Here’s the point: those within the G.O.P. who had misgivings about the embrace of tax-cut fanaticism might have made a stronger stand if there had been any indication that such fanaticism came with a price, if outsiders had been willing to condemn those who took irresponsible positions." """

Krugonomics is not really Contingencies' cup of tea but PK does point out one fairly obvious fact: the Republicans will make shit up when necessary, and the Herd will generally buy it (as with the Laffer curve BS, one of the greatest prevarications of the last few decades)

how to get around the War Powers Act

Appleby/LA Times

""""Madison would have smiled had he heard about President Obama's maneuver, seemingly in defiance of the War Powers Act, to avoid asking Congress to authorize military action in Libya.


The act, passed in 1973, came at a time when the Vietnam War had been underway for years without any president asking for congressional approval. Members of Congress wanted future presidents to be obliged to come to them early on in a military action.

The Constitution, after all, had invested in Congress the sole power to declare war. And it rankled legislators that no president had sought congressional approval of a war since 1941, when Franklin D. Roosevelt appeared before a joint session of Congress the day after Pearl Harbor. The War Powers Act was expected to put a stop to presidential impunity in entering armed conflicts by requiring presidents to notify Congress within 48 hours of sending troops into action, and to begin withdrawing them after 60 days unless Congress voted to authorize the action.


Since the act's passage, the country has gone to war many times under various guises, but presidents have blithely continued to act without congressional approval. The Libyan engagement has presented an ideal occasion for Congress to press the issue.


The 60-day deadline on Libya passed May 20. And then began the war of experts.

After Caroline Krass, acting head of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, advised Obama that he should comply with the law, the president sought legal advice elsewhere, in an attempt to find some that was more to his liking. White House counsel Robert Bauer came through, issuing an opinion that the missiles we had been raining on Libya did not constitute "hostilities" as envisioned under the act. The president chose Bauer's opinion over Krass'.


And why would Madison have smiled? Because this type of presidential reaction was exactly what he predicted would happen as chief executives confronted the limitations contained in the separation of powers established in the Constitution.""""

speaking of the Bear

NASDAQ

- """Crude futures were lower Tuesday as the debt crisis in Europe fed into ongoing concerns over the state of the global economic recovery and left investors wary of risky assets.


"Today is mostly about concerns over further contagion of the debt troubles in Europe," said Eugen Weinberg, head of commodities research at Commerzbank. This is dragging on the overall equity market and the euro and weighing on oil prices, he added.


At 1000 GMT, the front-month August Brent contract on London's ICE futures exchange was $1.67, or 1.4%, lower at $115.57 a barrel.


The front-month August contract on the New York Mercantile Exchange was trading down 95 cents or 1%, at $94.20 per barrel.


Earlier in the day, Brent fell more than $2.00 as the euro slumped to a five- month low amid worries that the problems in Greece could spread to Italy and uncertainty over the status of the Greek bailout.


A weaker euro is negative for oil as the dollar-denominated commodity then becomes more expensive for holders of other currencies.


At 1000 GMT, the euro was at $1.39311, down from $1.4032 in late New York Monday trade.


The problems in the euro-zone contributed to concerns that the global economy is not experiencing the recovery many had hoped for, suggesting oil demand might not grow as much as many expected.


Signs emerged over the weekend that China has not yet tamed its inflation, fuelling worries that additional monetary tightening is on the horizon, and this could dampen oil demand in the world's second-largest consumer.


Meanwhile, dismal unemployment data from the U.S. Friday fuelled concerns in markets and among households alike that the country may be in for a much longer slump than originally expected.


Investors may now turn their attention to the weekly U.S. inventory data from industry group, the American Petroleum Institute, later Tuesday and the U.S. Department of Energy on Wednesday, for fresh indicators on the health of demand. However, analysts said the data could have less of an impact than usual as traders remained concerned with macro-economic drivers.


"It will depend whether [the data] feeds into the market sentiment that day," said Commerzbank's Weinberg. If it does, it could accelerate moves in one direction or the other, but if it's no surprise the market might ignore it, he added.


At 1000 GMT, the ICE's gasoil contract for August delivery was down $2.75, or 0.3%, at $956.00 per metric ton, while Nymex gasoline for August delivery was 291 points, or 1%, lower at $3.0414 per gallon."""

Ho -hum, you say--yet a five dollar decrease in crude futures to some Deep Pockets (in for at least two hundred grand or so), means....he just lost his S series benz (or mo')

Mittens watch

Romney's jobs record lacking/LATimes

During the years he was governor, [Massachusetts] ranked among the last in the nation in job creation. The percentage increase in jobs — about 1% — was lower than in all but three states, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. In worse straits were Ohio, suffering the ongoing deterioration of its manufacturing infrastructure; Michigan, beset then by the decline of the auto industry; and Louisiana, devastated by Hurricane Katrina.


Many factors contribute to the economics of any given state, and a governor can sometimes have only limited influence. But Romney's performance in the job represents his argument for election. He and his backers say he is responsible for demonstrable progress for the state, which faced a series of economic challenges, including a fiscal crisis that mushroomed shortly after Romney's election.


"I'm very pleased that Massachusetts had a lower unemployment rate than the nation for three of the four years I was governor," he told reporters last week, citing another way to measure a state's employment record. "The governor before me lost jobs; the governor after me has lost jobs; we actually created jobs."


Leading economists and business advocates in Massachusetts say Romney is correct — but only to a point.


"Romney's record of economic stewardship fell short of expectations," said Michael Widmer, president of the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation, a business-backed group that provides research on fiscal and economic matters. In remarks echoed by others, Widmer said Romney fell particularly short in his promise to recruit employers to the state....."

One big beehive with barley and oats, and fountains of de-caf Pepsi, my brothers and sisters

sabado Gigante

Social security cuts

""Although specifics have yet to officially emerge, there is little doubt that among the Social Security benefit cuts the President is proposing will be a reduction in Social Security's annual cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) through an obscure change in the COLA formula known as the chained CPI (Consumer Price Index).

Update for those who haven't seen it: The Washington Post reported last night that President Obama is "proposing significant reductions in Medicare spending and for the first time is offering to tackle the rising cost of Social Security," in a meeting with top House and Senate leaders this morning. Apparently those cuts to Social Security and Medicare would be part of a $4 trillion debt reduction package--a larger deal than the $2 trillion one that had been talked about until this point.""

Note that COLAs are not part of the normal SS payments, a point the demopublicans continue to overlook. And the proposed modification will raise tax revenues, supposedly (tho' perhaps some will get smaller cola checks--none of which have gone out in... Barrytown).

only time will tell, if you got the Bear--or the Bear got you/S-Dan

WL Craig vs Sam Harris

WL Craig/Harris/Notre Dame

WL Craig: ""First, natural science tells us only what is, not what ought to be, the case. As the philosopher Jerry Fodor has written, “Science is about facts, not norms; it might tell us how we are, but it wouldn’t tell us what is wrong with how we are.”[12] In particular it cannot tell us that we have a moral obligation to take actions which are conducive to human flourishing.


So, if there is no God, what foundation remains for objective moral duties? On the naturalistic view, human beings are just animals, and animals have no moral obligation to one another. When a lion kills a zebra, it kills the zebra, but it doesn’t murder the zebra. When a great white shark forcibly copulates with a female, it forcibly copulates with her but it doesn’t rape her–for none of these actions is forbidden or obligatory. There is no moral dimension to these actions.

So if God does not exist, why think that we have any moral obligations to do anything? Who or what imposes these obligations upon us? Where do they come from? It’s very hard to see why they would be anything more than a subjective impression ingrained into us by societal and parental conditioning.

On the atheistic view, certain actions such as rape and incest may not be biologically and socially advantageous, and so in the course of human development have become taboo, that is, socially unacceptable behavior. But, that does absolutely nothing to prove that such acts are really wrong. Such behavior goes on all the time in the animal kingdom. On the atheistic view the rapist who chooses to flout the “herd morality” is doing nothing more serious than acting unfashionably, the moral equivalent, if you will, of Lady Gaga. If there is no moral lawgiver, then there is no objective moral law, and if there is no objective moral law, then we have no objective moral duties.

Thus, Dr. Harris’s view lacks any source for objective moral duty.

Second problem: “ought” implies “can.” A person is not morally responsible for an action which he is unable to avoid. For example, if somebody shoves you into another person, you’re not responsible for bumping into him. You had no choice. But Sam Harris believes that all of our actions are causally determined and that there is no free will.[13] Dr. Harris rejects not only libertarian accounts of free will but also compatibilistic accounts of freedom. But, if there is no free will, then no one is morally responsible for anything! In the end, Dr. Harris admits this, though it’s tucked away in the endnotes of his volume. Moral responsibility, he says, and I quote, “is a social construct,” not an objective reality: I quote: “in neuroscientific terms no person is more or less responsible than any other” for the actions they perform.[14] His thoroughgoing determinism spells the end of any hope or possibility of objective moral duties because on his worldview we have no control over what we do."

"Princes, the dregs of their dull race...."

royal-couple-takes-golden-state


Why for a mere $4,000 a campesino one might approach the royal couple, watch Prince William lead his fellow polo players, and then see Kate present her most bodacious tits the trophy to the winning team.

Article I, Section 9, Clause 8, US Con.:

“ No title of nobility shall be granted by the United States: and no person holding any office of profit or trust under them, shall, without the consent of the Congress, accept of any present, emolument, office, or title, of any kind whatever, from any king, prince, or foreign state."

Los ricos son cada vez más ricos en EEUU

La Opinión

""La propuesta de la Casa Blanca de subir los impuestos a los millonarios como parte de las negociaciones para reducir el déficit que siguen hoy ha puesto la lupa en ese segmento de la población, que acapara un porcentaje creciente de la riqueza estadounidense.


“Cualquier acuerdo para reducir el déficit exigirá decisiones difíciles (...) y creo justo el pedir a las petroleras o a los ejecutivos que viajan en aviones privados, a quienes les ha ido tan bien, que renuncien a sus ventajas fiscales”, dijo el presidente de Barack Obama la semana pasada en una rueda de prensa.


Todo hace prever que Obama vuelva a la carga contra las que ha bautizado como “vacas sagradas” del Partido Republicano mañana miércoles durante su primera tertulia en Twitter con los votantes, con quienes hablará sobre la economía y el empleo.


Las cifras demuestran que a los millonarios y multimillonarios de Estados Unidos les va cada vez mejor.


Un artículo publicado el 18 de junio en el diario The Washington Post mencionaba, en ese sentido, que el 10% más rico de la población tenía en 2008, el último año para el que hay datos disponibles, casi los mismos ingresos que todo el resto del país junto.""

No me gustan las vacas sagradas  del Partido Republicano.      Contingencies, ahora en Español!

4th

“What experience and history teaches us is that people and governments have never learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it” Hegel

Yankee Doodle Dandy,y'all

King Brigham on...blacks, jews and native Americans

Brethrrrennn!
So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.
James 2:17

"Here are the Lamanites [native Americans].... Their wickedness was not so great as those [Jews] who slew the Son of God. ...Is their curse as great as that of those in Palestine? No, it is light, in comparison. They began to thirst for each other's blood, and massacred each other, from generation to generation, until they SUNK INTO WICKEDNESS, and EVIL principles the most DEGRADING, and have become LOATHSOME and VILE. Still THE CURSE WILL BE REMOVED from them before it will be removed from the children of Judah; and THEY WILL BECOME A "WHITE AND DELIGHTSOME PEOPLE." LDS "Prophet" Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses,1854."

So assuming Romney or Huntsman uphold the tradition of the LDS established by Dung Young, they should not expect the support of jews, blacks or natives, or somethin' like that. 

sabado Gigante

"IMPARTIAL, adj. Unable to perceive any promise of personal advantage from espousing either side of a controversy or adopting either of two conflicting opinions." (Bierce)

Feliz cumpleaños, Ambrose Bierce

“Insurance: An ingenious modern game of chance in which the player is permitted to enjoy the comfortable conviction that he is beating the man who keeps the table.”

Bierce/Spartacus

"On the outbreak of the Civil War Lucius Bierce organized and equipped two companies of marines. [Ambrose Bierce] joined one of these on 19th April, 1861, and two months later became part of the invasion force led by George McClellan in West Virginia.

On 6th April, 1862, Albert S. Johnson and Pierre T. Beauregard and 55,000 members of the Confederate Army attacked Grant's army near Shiloh Church, in Hardin, Tennessee. Taken by surprise, Grant's army suffered heavy losses. Bierce was a member of the force led by General Don Carlos Buell that forced the Confederate to retreat. Bierce was deeply shocked by what he saw at Shiloh and after the war wrote several short stories based on this experience."

Bubba, RIP

R.E. Lee   (no, not that one)

"Bubba was a rodeo producer by trade and also worked for Frank Gardner Construction. He was passionate about rodeos', bull riding and great bulls. He was a born again Christian man and strong in his faith and a member of the Romance Full Gospel Church. In his last days Bubba enjoyed all the visitors, phone calls and texts he received."

Jus ain't right-- the Almighty takin' a bull rider in the prime of his life. Buh bye Bubba, and may the good Lawd bless n keep ya.

Mo'

Bobby Kennedy, konservative

http://www.counterpunch.org/macaray06272011.html

""It’s a mystery why John F. Kennedy is still regarded as the family moderate—cautious, pragmatic, shrewd and calculating—while brother Bobby gets to be portrayed as the impetuous, left-leaning, idealistic humanitarian. It’s a mystery because even a cursory examination of history reveals that that wasn’t Bobby.



For openers, Bobby Kennedy was about as “leftist” as Douglas MacArthur. In truth, he, like his brother John, was a shrieking anti-Communist. The Kennedys were not only Cold Warriors, they were fairly paranoid about it—confusing progressivism with Bolshevism—which is why they believed, ludicrously, that Martin Luther King, Jr. was a Communist, and is why they (John as president and Bobby as Attorney General) had King’s telephone tapped.


How much of an anti-Communist was Bobby Kennedy? Consider: During the early 1950s Bobby served as an aide to Senator Joseph McCarthy. Yes, that Joseph McCarthy. His witch-hunting senate committee ruined the careers of scores of Americans through the use of smears and innuendo. It’s a fact. Bobby (“Don’t get mad….get even”) Kennedy was Joe McCarthy’s boy.

It was only after family patriarch, Joe Kennedy, advised his son to jump off the McCarthy bandwagon (alas, “Tail-Gunner Joe” had become an embarrassment, having degenerated into a clownish, alcoholic demagogue) that Bobby sought a new vocation. It was only after Papa Joe urged him to abandon Commie-hunting and focus on another bogy man that Bobby Kennedy decided to make America’s labor unions his next victim. ""

That's a bit too f-ing historical and real for the liberal sentimentalists, Davey

BachmannSpeak

Michele Bachmann quotes

"Minnesota Republican Michele Bachmann made the acquaintance of some hula dancing Teabaggers from Hawaii, and they brought her a lei, which Bachmann herself could obtain at the airport in Hawaii, were it not for the fact that she believes planes cannot fly over water without the use of witchcraft. Anyway, she told Congress, "I'm reminded that the one who created this lei also created our freedom. Are we so insensible to the high cost our forebearers paid to purchase our freedom?" So, the Hawaiian Bureau of Tourism created our freedom? I guess this is not supposed to make much sense."

Whoa. Oral Roberts U in the House

no divine right of Kings (Ayn Rand)

The Divine Ayn in the House:

"Since there is no such entity as “society,” since society is only a number of individual men, this meant, in practice, that the rulers of society were exempt from moral law; subject only to traditional rituals, they held total power and exacted blind obedience—on the implicit principle of: “The good is that which is good for society (or for the tribe, the race, the nation), and the ruler’s edicts are its voice on earth.”

This was true of all statist systems, under all variants of the altruist-collectivist ethics, mystical or social. “The Divine Right of Kings” summarizes the political theory of the first—”Vox populi, vox dei” of the second. As witness: the theocracy of Egypt, with the Pharaoh as an embodied god—the unlimited majority rule or democracy of Athens—the welfare state run by the Emperors of Rome—the Inquisition of the late Middle Ages—the absolute monarchy of France—the welfare state of Bismarck’s Prussia—the gas chambers of Nazi Germany—the slaughterhouse of the Soviet Union.

All these political systems were expressions of the altruist-collectivist ethics-and their common characteristic is the fact that society stood above the moral law, as an omnipotent, sovereign whim worshiper. Thus, politically, all these systems were variants of an amoral society.

The most profoundly revolutionary achievement of the United States of America was the subordination of society to moral law......"

just Tom

Pynchon collection/LA Times

"In the early 1960s, Phyllis was a Spanish teacher in Seattle, married to Fred Gebauer, a mechanical engineer doing work at Boeing he couldn't discuss. At a party celebrating a mutual friend's new piano, the two met Pynchon, a technical writer working for another part of Boeing. Pynchon and Fred clowned around by reaching into the piano and plucking out the Yogi Bear theme song on its strings -- "which did not delight the host," Phyllis Gebauer said Wednesday night.

Fred couldn't talk about his work, and Pynchon never mentioned he was writing a novel -- instead, they talked and joked and Phyllis made lasagna and they played charades. "He's a great charades player," Phyllis said. "He's great at puns. They're awful."


Fred and Phyllis only learned that Pynchon had been working on a novel when he sent them a copy of his first book, "V," published in 1963.


The Gebauers' lives separated from Pynchon's. Phyllis, in a "mini-memoir" distributed at the event, wrote that aerospace workers of the era were called " 'aero-braceros,' because they changed jobs and locales as frequently as Mexican field hands."


The couple had moved several times in just a few years when Fred took a job at NASA -- another one he couldn't discuss -- and, after being in Houston just a week, they bumped into Pynchon after a concert. "Phyl, Fred, what are you guys doing here?" she remembers Pynchon calling to them. The coincidence was the kind of thing that might happen in one of Pynchon's books - but in Pynchon's world it would have been the result of a deep and complex conspiracy.""

So Capn TP was palsies with Phyllis Gebauer, one of those hip U-claw Extension babes. Coolnicity--and probably sufficent for removing him from the list of Zodiac killah suspects.

"Whitey" Bulger busted

LA Times--

"Legendary Boston crime boss James "Whitey" Bulger, who has been on the run for more than 15 years, was arrested Wednesday in Santa Monica, multiple law enforcement sources told The Times.


Bulger, 81, fled Boston in late 1994 as federal agents were about to arrest him in connection with at least 19 killings, racketeering and other crimes that spanned the early 1970s to the mid-1980s. He headed an organized crime group that allegedly controlled extortion, drug deals and other illegal activities in the Boston area.
...
Authorities said Bulger initially fled after being tipped by John Connolly Jr., an FBI agent who used Bulger as an informant. Connolly was convicted of racketeering in May 2002 for protecting Bulger and another reputed crime boss and FBI informant, Stephen "The Rifleman" Flemmi.


Bulger was the subject of several books and helped inspire "The Departed," the 2006 Martin Scorsese film starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon and Jack Nicholson, who played a Bulger-like character.""

boston-mob-boss-hiding-plain-sight-


 That old g. could be seen at times kickin' it around 3rd street in St. Mon. --of that we're pretty sure-- with his blond mollie.

Meet the Huntsmans

Typos corrected!
Pah-raise Moroni, and kick us down some of that copacetic de-caf Pepsi, my Nauvoo brutthrrr

http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-pn-huntsman-videos-20110621,0,149621.story

Prejudice against Moronic candidates persists, poll shows

http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-pn-gallup-poll-mormons-20110620,0,7160786.story

""With one Moron leading the pack for the Republican presidential nomination and another scheduled to announce his candidacy on Tuesday, a significant bloc of American voters continues to oppose followers of that religion, according to a Gallup poll released Monday.


About one in five Republicans, or 22%, said they would not vote for a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the official name of the Moron church. About the same proportion of independents said they would oppose a Moron while a larger number of Democrats, about 27%, said they were opposed, according to the poll.

Prejudice against Morons has been a measurable political factor in American politics since at least the late 1960s, with a solid group opposing members of that church. That number has varied, ranging from about 20% to as much as 30%, depending on how the polls were worded and carried out.

The finding is especially worrisome to the campaign of former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, considered to be the leader in the GOP race with about 20% to 25% support. Romney in 2008 gave a speech defending his faith in the hope of deflecting fears about Moronism.

Recently Romney stopped by a cafe in New Hampshire to chat with some locals, and took some time to explain his faith. "I'm a Moron, folks. My family were Morons.  I have been a Moron since birth, and will always be one,"  Romney told a small crowd of enthusiastic republicans.  Romney then stated, "the Book of Moron is my  guide on political and spiritual matters. I favor conservative principles, and I'm a Nephite, headed to the celestial kingdom.  That's the way it is. The Book of Moron says so."  Shaking hands as he exited, he then joined his staffers in the Romney for President Hummer, and they slowly headed back to the highway."

sabado Gigante

Bloomsday 2011

Joyce

"The tag-team reading was one of hundreds held around the world in celebration of Joyce's acclaimed work that chronicles the wanderings and rendezvous of Dublin characters in one single day: June 16, 1904.

Though Joyce's characters are common folk, he parallels their lives to classical characters of ancient Greek literature. For example, Joyce's main character, Leopold Bloom, a newspaper ad salesman, is Homer's hero Odysseus, wondering the world (Dublin). Hence, Bloom's episodic day, June 16, is called "Bloomsday."

+++++ +++++


http://contingenciesblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/bloomsday.html

what NASA needs

Tom Wolfe/NYT

"Why, putting a man on the Moon was just the beginning, the prelude, the prologue! The Moon was nothing but a little satellite of Earth. The great adventure was going to be the exploration of the planets ... Mars first, then Venus, then Pluto. Jupiter, Mercury, Saturn, Neptune and Uranus? NASA would figure out their slots in the schedule in due course. In any case, we Americans wouldn’t stop until we had explored the entire solar system. And after that ... the galaxies beyond.


NASA had long since been all set to send men to Mars, starting with manned fly-bys of the planet in 1975. Wernher von Braun, the German rocket scientist who had come over to our side in 1945, had been designing a manned Mars project from the moment he arrived. In 1952 he published his Mars Project as a series of graphic articles called “Man Will Conquer Space Soon” in Collier’s magazine. It created a sensation. He was front and center in 1961 when NASA undertook Project Empire, which resulted in working plans for a manned Mars mission. Given the epic, the saga, the triumph of Project Apollo, Mars would naturally come next. All NASA and von Braun needed was the president’s and Congress’s blessings and the great adventure was a Go. Why would they so much as blink before saying the word?


Three months after the landing, however, in October 1969, I began to wonder ... I was in Florida, at Cape Kennedy, the space program’s launching facility, aboard a NASA tour bus. The bus’s Spielmeister was a tall-fair-and-handsome man in his late 30s ... and a real piece of lumber when it came to telling tourists on a tour bus what they were looking at. He was so bad, I couldn’t resist striking up a conversation at the end of the tour.


Sure enough, it turned out he had not been put on Earth for this job. He was an engineer who until recently had been a NASA heat-shield specialist. A baffling wave of layoffs had begun, and his job was eliminated. It was so bad he was lucky to have gotten this stand-up Spielmeister gig on a tour bus. Neil Armstrong and his two crew mates, Buzz Aldrin and Mike Collins, were still on their triumphal world tour ... while back home, NASA’s irreplaceable team of highly motivated space scientists — irreplaceable! — there were no others! ...anywhere! ... You couldn’t just run an ad saying, “Help Wanted: Experienced heat-shield expert” ... the irreplaceable team was breaking up, scattering in nobody knows how many hopeless directions.
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How could such a thing happen? In hindsight, the answer is obvious. NASA had neglected to recruit a corps of philosophers..."

Gunnar Fischer RIP

do the phunky Totentanz! yah

Cinematographer for Bergman dies

"Gunnar Fischer, a cinematographer whose use of stark lighting and sharp focus lent mood and psychological depth to a dozen of Ingmar Bergman’s early films, including “The Seventh Seal” and “Wild Strawberries,” died on Saturday in Stockholm. He was 100. "

sabado Gigante

?

church of the Harleyites

from Pynchon's V:

....."Around three Profane woke up on the kitchen floor with a headache. Night air, bitter cold, seeped under the door and from somewhere outside he could hear a low, persistent growl. "Pig," Profane croaked. "Where you keep the aspirin." No answer. Profane stumbled into the other room. Pig wasn't there. The growl outside turned more ominous. Profane went to the window and saw Pig down in the alley, sitting on his motorcycle and racing the engine. Snow fell in tiny glittering pinpoints, the alley held its own curious snowlight: turning Pig to black-and-white clown's motley and ancient brick walls, dusted with snow, to neutral gray. Pig had on a knitted watch cap, pulled down over his face to the neck so that his head showed up as a sphere of dead black. Engine exhaust roiled in clouds around him. Profane shivered. "What are you doing, Pig," he called. Pig didn't answer. The enigma or sinister vision of Pig and that Harley-Davidson alone in an alley at three in the morning reminded Profane too suddenly of Rachel, whom he didn't want to think about, not tonight in the bitter cold, with a headache, with snow slipping into the room.


Rachel Owlglass had owned, back in '54, this MG. Her Daddy's gift. After giving it its shakedown cruise in the region around Grand Central (where Daddy's office was), familiarizing it with telephone poles, fire hydrants and occasional pedestrians, she brought the car up to the Catskills for the summer. Here, little, sulky and voluptuous, Rachel would gee and haw this MG around Route 17's bloodthirsty curves and cutbacks, sashaying its arrogant butt past hay wagons, growling semis, old Ford roadsters filled to capacity with crewcut, undergraduate gnomes.""

Original literary rock n roll.  Pynchon has made a few references to the  Harleyite brotherhood, IIRC.--in Vineland as well. His viewpoint is  nuanced, of course--but like HS Thompson, Pynchon was never one to mistake the meth-tweeking, beer guzzling thugs of the Hells Angels & CO for the  authentic counterculture.

the idea of free will

"It is ... the faculty of remembrance which may be said to place us in the class of moral agents. If we were to act only in consequence of some immediate impulse, and receive no direction from internal motives of choice, we should be pushed forward by an invincible fatality, without power or reason for the most part to prefer one thing to another, because we could make no comparison but of objects which might both happen to be present."
Dr. Johnson.

Sam Harris/HuffPo

Sarah "Wadsworth" Palin

PaulRevere/Tom the Dancing Bug

net access--your right

""""The United Nations counts internet access as a basic human right in a report that bears implications both to on-going events in the Arab Spring and to the Obama administration's war on whistleblowers. Acting as special rapporteur, a human rights watchdog role appointed by the UN Secretary General, Frank La Rue takes a hard line on the importance of the internet as "an indispensable tool for realizing a range of human rights, combating inequality, and accelerating development and human progress." Presented to the General Assembly on Friday, La Rue's report comes as the capstone of a year's worth of meetings held between La Rue and local human rights organizations around the world, from Cairo to Bangkok. The report's introduction points to the impact of online collaboration in the Arab Spring and says that "facilitating access to the Internet for all individuals, with as little restriction to online content as possible, should be a priority for all States.""""

wikileaks-internet-human-rights

related--smackdown-rawls-vs zizek

A start: next, establish a basic right to blog/comment without being required to use the "captchas" verification crap.

The cult of the LDS, continued

"To me, the possibility that the Mormon church might control America is a frightening prospect."
"Why I left the Mormon church"/Packham

sabado Gigante

¡Paris...fue mostrada en una tina!

The People vs G-man Sachs

Matt Taibbi/RollingStone:

""They weren't murderers or anything; they had merely stolen more money than most people can rationally conceive of, from their own customers, in a few blinks of an eye. But then they went one step further. They came to Washington, took an oath before Congress, and lied about it.




Thanks to an extraordinary investigative effort by a Senate subcommittee that unilaterally decided to take up the burden the criminal justice system has repeatedly refused to shoulder, we now know exactly what Goldman Sachs executives like Lloyd Blankfein and Daniel Sparks lied about. We know exactly how they and other top Goldman executives, including David Viniar and Thomas Montag, defrauded their clients. America has been waiting for a case to bring against Wall Street. Here it is, and the evidence has been gift-wrapped and left at the doorstep of federal prosecutors, evidence that doesn't leave much doubt: Goldman Sachs should stand trial.


The great and powerful Oz of Wall Street was not the only target of Wall Street and the Financial Crisis: Anatomy of a Financial Collapse, the 650-page report just released by the Senate Subcommittee on Investigations, chaired by Democrat Carl Levin of Michigan, alongside Republican Tom Coburn of Oklahoma. Their unusually scathing bipartisan report also includes case studies of Washington Mutual and Deutsche Bank, providing a panoramic portrait of a bubble era that produced the most destructive crime spree in our history — "a million fraud cases a year" is how one former regulator puts it. But the mountain of evidence collected against Goldman by Levin's small, 15-desk office of investigators — details of gross, baldfaced fraud delivered up in such quantities as to almost serve as a kind of sarcastic challenge to the curiously impassive Justice Department — stands as the most important symbol of Wall Street's aristocratic impunity and prosecutorial immunity produced since the crash of 2008..."

BLANKFEIN! Taibbi's one of a very few authentic gonzo-scribes remaining (among hundreds of dyslexic HS Thompson wannabes)

Snitch Act extension

"A popular Government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy; or, perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance: And a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives."
James Madison


PatAct/LA Times

...""Sens. Ron Wyden of Oregon and Mark Udall of Colorado, both Democrats, proclaimed that the Patriot Act's surveillance powers are being used far more expansively than most Americans realize. But they can't disclose what they know, they said, because the documents that detail how the Obama administration implements the act are classified. As members of the Intelligence Committee, Wyden and Udall are privy to secret briefings.


"Today the American people do not know how their government interprets the language of the Patriot Act," Wyden said. "Someday they are going to find out, and a lot of them are going to be stunned. Some of them will undoubtedly ask their senators: 'Did you know what this law actually did? Why didn't you know? Wasn't it your job to know, before you voted on it?'"..."

Another victory for J-Edgarville, with barely a squeak from the demopublican blog-gangsters. Why trouble yourself with "transparency"--or Due Process-- when the partay's rollin'--ahhyeahh.