I'm Not Dead

But will be going off the grid for a while, for any one that happens to stumble onto this little blog, and cares. Happy Holidays to all, and don't take no wooden nickells

Annie Lennox - Why

Petruta Küpper - Once upon a time in the west (Romanian Girl)

TO SIA

I read your comment and messed up my reply, and had to delete the post. I always enjoy hearing from you SIA, and so does Charlie, just waved a paw.

What Do Most Voters Want?

 They want what they have wanted for
the past 70 years, a solid middle class life with some financial and job
security. They don’t care that corps make a killing, long as they get
that white picket fence largely without the worry of job loss.

Politics to them is a necessary evil, and right now they are paying
attention more than usual because they are fiscally afraid. The problem
with your fantasies is that you don’t focus on the core problem, and
that is money in politics. In large amounts. Any third party is going to
have to navigate that course, and even more so with CU.

Most of The dems in office realize the problem and would be willing
to fix it, if they had the numbers of progressive types to vote for the
radical change that is needed. There is no one in the GOP
that wants anything to change, lest it be for mo money for them and
their friends. So, until money is out of politics, or by deprivations,
the large majority of voters put the progressives in charge, these folks
have to play that game to get elected in the first place. That is why
something like OWS has so much potential, not
as a entity for an alternative to politics, but as a source of
information coming from ordinary people, bypassing the filters and
special interests the system is riddled with. Democrats of good intent
will respond as such, but they follow the people, because there are no
heroes in politics. Only people who want something, and people who want
something else. Idealism is a good thing when married to practical
reality. Otherwise, it is just fancy navel gazing.

Wichita Lineman (Live Goodtime Hour) - Glen Campbell

Glen Campbell - By The Time I Get To Phoenix

Adele - Someone Like You Album Version

The Doobie Brothers 1996 #6-South City Midnight Lady

Desert Sunset SW New Mexico

The Last Waltz - Van Morrison - Caravan

Steely Dan - DOCTOR WU

Things As They Are

We been outsourcing our jobs in the flat earth eyes of dreamers, and maybe they just ain’t here anymore. Especially the manufacturing jobs our current middle class is built on.

I suspect it means we are in for some required contraction of both our productivity overall, and the middle class lifestyle we have been used to.
For decades we have done nothing but increase the bottom line of corps, under the Reagan trickle down bullshit, and that has been firmly woven into our big money politics, (and about to go completely insane under the new world of CU.
This was the case when Barack Obama took office, and it will continue to remain until politicians reinstate a balance of supply and demand that works for everyone. We can toss some more cash on the dwindling fires of greed, for a short burst of economic life, but it will just burn for a while. And not correct the underlying fucked up mentality and corrupted matrix of our econ engine.

When the people are standing in line for a bus ride to standing in line at the soup line, then maybe, big maybe, something might change. Or if the country becomes infected with some kind of alien life form, a virus of unknown origins that makes us smarterer.
The people have to realize what is wrong, and who is willing to fix it for the greater good,and give them the power to make the needed changes within the confines of our separations of power. Too many can’t see past their bigoted nose to accomplish that, others are just plain fucking stooped. But there is always hope, until there isn’t any, and we are way on down the primrose path to ruin.

People forget. When Obama arrived, we were on the doorstep of dystopian bliss that was three decades in the making. We didn’t go inside, but we have one foot in, and the other slipping.

I have a good idea in the meantime. Why don’t we bash Barack Obama to a political pulp, so maybe he will toughen up and use his omnipotence to save us from ourselves. Or, we can try to win the next election. And build the kind of support needed to make that happen. And take it from there.
I’m walking the dog. I have no illusions. Just a blue sky.

Leon Russell Me And Baby Jane

This Is How It's Done

Just wanted to link to a couple of blog post gems at a little blog called The People's View. This blog is one of several up and coming unapologetic Obama supporting blogs. Pretty much the way this blog and it's bloggers are. All two of us. Though Annie has been away for some time, she is right now in the process of moving to Khazakstan, like on the other side of the planet. But emailed me before she left stating she plans to start posting again when she settles in.

PPACA: Stimulus, Jobs, and Cost Control

So That Ignorance Won't Be The Reason Why "Progressives" Are Throwing The President Under The Bus

Led Zeppelin - Going To California

Dirty Work - Steely Dan

Charlie the Wonder Dog

1970 Allman brothers Duane on guitar

A thought for those lost who cannot be replaced - RIP Duane Allman

Republicans, Democrats, and Messaging

Wingnuts build impressive lies and equally impressive is their mind
numbing and relentless repetition of those lies. Don’t confuse that with
“messaging”. It is not that. It is simply being an organized and
energetic liar, which the teevee cameras love, cause it usually creates
drama. When a hapless liberal shows up to counter the fascinating lie
with the drab dreary facts and truth which actually is “messaging”, the
difference in reactions to the creative lie as compared with the fixed
nature of truth, can be to misidentify what dems are doing and should
do.

It is simply an act of faith, that the consumers of political speech
will somehow someday put more value on dull facts, than on the sensation
that crafted lies can bring. I don’t want dems and liberals to parrot
the wingnut style of campaigning, which all of it is these days,
campaigning. Dems aren’t perfect, and it wouldn’t be a bad idea that
they streamline the facts into snappy soundbites, but I don’t profess to
have a clue what that would be.

Once again. The problem is not primarily dem messaging, nor even the dubious media. IMO. The problem lies within the voting citizenry in this country, and a high level of shallow complacency to selfish mendacity to outright racial tribalism. The only antidote for this condition is experiencing pain and with it the gain of useful knowledge. This is only my opinion, and subject to being completely wrong.

Thoughts On Libya, the U.S. and Military Intervention

It is true that we don't understand many areas of the world, that is why we support a United Nations Charter that was created in part to filter out the bullshit, hopefully, to answer those questions, and if need be, act as a unit to prevent imminent humanitarian disasters, when all the stars line up, and most  the parties agree with the Casus Belli and if it is logistically possible.

For one of the few times in recent, or even distant memory, it looks like UN lived up to it's full purpose, and we took part to a large degree as just one more country contributing to that mission.

I do get the aversion to warfare, what I don't get is the lack of perspective employed by many liberals, to a particular and unique situation, such as Libya. It feels like a time trap for some, always boomeranging back to 2003, Bush, and Iraq. 

Short of doing nothing, Libya was the anti Iraq. As I see it.

As far as the money goes, it was and is a pittance that we have spent, as compared to about any military action I can think of. We can afford it, in lieu of watching a massacre in Benghazi on CNN, that didn't have to be.

As for the future, it is never set, for anything or anybody. Sometimes, You just do what needs doing today and let the future be where it is.

The GOP Big Idea For Helping America

I think the wingnuts are pathologially fixated on one single thing
right now, and that is to get rid of Obama. Everything they do, is not
weighed for it’s sanity, or it’s effect of doing good for the country.
It is all about getting Obama out of the WH, and Obama knows it. He says
left, they say right. He says up, they say down, and so on. It is why
he can offer them about anything, up to and including, actually all they
want, and they cannot help themselves but to refuse it.

The are completely bumfucked how he got HCR past them and their loose
affiliates on the left, ditto for The Stimulus, DADT, and the rest.
Obama has them so psyched out right now, he could probably announce a
new national project, like bringing Reagan back from the dead, and the
senate wingnuts would filibuster it. And the moron pro left bounces off
the same wall taking every bit of stimuli for nothing more than at face
value.

Boehner hollers “98%” and the firebaggers holler back, hell yea.

I need Quaaludes, lots of Quaaludes

How To Move An Overton Window

I have some good news. An example of the only way dems will ever
move the Overton Window in their direction again, after 3 decades of it
moving right, because that is what the public wanted. Rhetoric by
liberals to convince the voters does not work well because it is about
doing something, or government doing something via works, on the ground,
in their community. That they can see, feel, and touch. Something that
improves their lives.

They listen to republicans, because republicans want to do nothing,
and doing nothing can be expressed in only a few soundbites at a time,
with messages directed to the primal fear center of the human mind, and
come as nothing but lies. Because it is uncomplicated, doing nothing.

Things like this, in my little burg in bumfuck, NM, are happening
all around the country, unseen, except locally, or maybe statewide, but
not part of the national political conversation. or, has ObamaCare
reached out and touched you? If not, no worry, it will, eventually? And
no rhetoric required, other than to say this was done by democrats.

The question now is, like the new electric car plants going up from
the Stimulus money, and a bunch of other long term progressive
initiatives will carry on, even past Obama’s term, even if it turns out
to be one. it will be a legacy to be proud of, for an ungrateful nation.

Were it to be, those taking the time on blogs, and elsewhere in the
pol speech arena, that those concerned liberals would spend their days
touting successes like where I live, rather than spank the pol monkey
with myopic eyes of simple minds addicted to defeat.

Obama - Liberal or Not?

Any fair reading of what Obama has accomplished with actual
legislation, he is one of the most liberal pols in our history. The so
called left of a few bloggers, are confusing pragmatism in governance,
and the certainty of compromise in a democracy, with some kind of
ideological failure by Obama. And hanging on every utterance for any
sign of betrayal, without any regard to the art of politics as a debate
with the other half of the country that votes republican. And nary a
second of focus on the greatest reality of all. What ends up getting
passed, compromised for sure, but also most certainly liberal progress
as the real meaning of ‘progressive’
There is a reason why Obama imposed concentrated federal regulation
for the first time on the health insurance agency. That reason is
success, albeit short of the ideal, but success just the same for moving
the country leftward. Why do you thing that zero republicans voted for
the ACA, and have nearly lost their minds trying to destroy it, even if it means destroying the world economy. Hint, because the ACA was nothing republican, and everything democrat and pragmatic liberal.

Obama To Give Major Speeche On Jobs Program

AP)  WASHINGTON — Seeking a jolt for the economy, President Barack Obama
will lay out new ideas for speeding up job growth and helping the
struggling poor and middle class in a major speech in early September, a
senior administration official told The Associated Press.

The
president's plan is likely to contain tax cuts, jobs-boosting
infrastructure ideas and steps that would specifically help the
long-term unemployed. The official emphasized that all of Obama's
proposals would be fresh ones, not a rehash of plans he has pitched for
many weeks and still supports, including his "infrastructure bank" idea
to finance construction jobs.

Democratic Base Solidly Behind Obama

A new CNN/Opinion Research poll
finds President Obama's base is behind him with 70% of Democrats saying
they'd like to see Obama as their party's presidential nominee next
year.



Notes pollster Keating Holland: "In 1994, only 57% of Democrats wanted
the party to renominate Bill Clinton, and he went on to win the
nomination and a second term two years later."

Obama's Supposed Failed Stimulus Bill

About that disappointing stimulus bill and the long term financing of progressive causes, I keep preaching about. And Obama’s doing shit for the environment.

I know President Obama is supposed to be an awful disappointment to environmentalists because he doesn’t talk enough about climate change, just like he’s an awful disappointment to progressives because he doesn’t say enough nasty things about bankers. But people who actually care about what Presidents do, as opposed to how they talk, might be interested in Obama’s trip to Michigan on Thursday. He’s visiting a factory that builds batteries for electric vehicles, a factory that exists for three reasons: 1. Because Obama saved the U.S. auto industry. 2. Because Obama has ratcheted up fuel-efficiency standards, boosting demand for green vehicles. 3. Because Obama created a U.S. advanced battery industry from scratch.

Anyway, the pathetically tiny stimulus included an unprecedented $90 billion for clean-energy investments, including unprecedented investments in wind, solar and geothermal energy, biorefineries, the smart grid, electric vehicles, and factories to manufacture all that green stuff in the U.S. The most radical investment was probably a $2.4 billion grant program that helped finance 30 factories building advanced batteries and components, including $300 million for Johnson Controls, which had to match the government dollars with private dollars.

Pink - Babe I'm Gonna Leave You - Live in Australia 2009 DVD - Funhouse ...

Child In Time - Deep Purple

Neil Young - Cortez The Killer

Barenaked Ladies - Brian Wilson (Video)

The Band Perry - If I Die Young

"Pachelbel´s Canon in D" for Classical Guitar

Johann Pachelbel Canon in D Best Version

Dave Matthews Band - Folsom Field - All Along the Watchtower

NEIL YOUNG : BIRMINGHAM 1987 : CORTEZ THE KILLER .

Thoughts On Class Warfare

It is more than just a class war, it is also regional and deeply
philosophical pertaining to basic world views that has it’s roots in
white supremacy. This is why the concepts of class struggles and
fighting for financial class self interest is trumped by deeply formed
and held beliefs of race entitlement and rejection of equal protection
under the law, along a whole host of other problems the south and others
hold for the basic tenets written into our founding document.

We fought a civil war over race and slavery, but the civil war goes
on still in spirit with race, the place of religion in our governance,
and a laundry list of other grievances held for generations. The high
functioning class war doesn’t rate at the top of that pile of dubious
intent currently, but as bank accounts dwindle and the shit sandwiches
get bigger from the plutocrats to their nativistic foot soldiers, it
will rise up toward the top of the white man’s to do list, and they turn
their rage back on the money grubbers. it is hard to hold onto notions
of birthright, when the stomach is empty.

The ruling rich class has mostly kept their greed in check to not go
past such a fail safe point with the middle class, at least since TGD,
that is only a creation of numbers, and is by itself colorblind. It
seems by the day, that whatever such inhibitions the plutocrats have had
on the matter, are being discarded in favor of all out class warfare,
that will show not much mercy to white conservatives, any more than
anyone else.

The Uninhibited Wingnuts

They will for that reason, and just as much, because it is exciting
and new, different, bold, with the kind of charisma possible when not
constrained from telling lies . Which it is, a lie, Ryan’s claim this
will rescue America and create prosperity for anyone but a few, and
freedom to have that lie tool in your pol box opens up all sorts of
opportunity to enthrall with fiction, full of imagined colorful dots
that do not and never will connect.

All dems got is the drab confines of telling the truth and talking
about what the real Jesus would do hanging out with lepers and tending
their troubles, that most always involves being paid for with higher
taxes, that even the most self described good moral American with any
affluence will recoil from, even if they tell pollsters the opposite.

Dems win by persistently telling the truth, in all it’s icky
drabness, and maintaining the faith that sooner or later, justice gets
served in this democracy, in spite of all the obstacles and their boring
blather about responsibility and paying for shit. And that justice is
almost always late, but it usually arrives here battered and bruised, in
the land of the free.

I support dems, warts and all, even if the Les Nessman in our national political sitcom

The Role of Government For the Pragmatic Liberal

I am for government doing for people what they cannot do for themselves/ to include policies that promote the general welfare of the nation. There are many examples of this, and some are debatable for sure
But as a democracy pragmatist, antidotes for those things that have historically bedeviled democracies. And foremost. creating and maintaining a favorable political climate conducive to a thriving and potent middle class.
This is the chief antidote against autocracy, and is really not ideological, or shouldn’t be. It is recognizing structural dangers to longevity for any democracy, and can take many forms, some of which are found in the above list, or that could be achieved in a more efficient and equitable way for all concerned. The details of which are worked out through our legislative and political processes. A commission is just a blueprint, and suggestion, and that is all it is for any consequence. Though I acknowledge it can sometimes be a political cover to do some really bad stuff. I do not see that in this case, for a report that doesn’t become viable unless 14 of 18 commission votes in the affirmative makes it so.
And I am for creating a healthy business sector as well, so long as it exists for the betterment of the greater good, ie middle class, but also balanced with conditions made viable for competition and growth, and profit on a reasonable basis.
It should be obvious that the past 30 years have left the republic in a state of unbalance favoring the wealthy class at the detriment of the middle and lower ones, where the lower ones should always have a net to catch them from falling through the cracks of a compassionate society, that I will not take no for an answer to, at the very least.
The details of this arrangement, or balance of parts is always up for debate, and usually arrived at by people much smarter than me

Every politician in our society is “corporate” to one degree or another, even Bernie Sanders. We live in a hyper capitalist society pretty much top to bottom. It is a question of how we treat those among us with the least, and those who can’t otherwise help themselves. A liberal is simply someone who values this as a worthy and righteous goal of government to do these things folks can’t do for themselves, and to try and defuse the natural tendency of wealth to beget more wealth at he hands of the wealthy. And to use that financial wealth to wield political power for that singular purpose . But being a corporatist in a capitalist society is no sin in and of itself, as most of our jobs and means to create lives is corporate based.

Dems have let us down only to the extent the voting public has made their choices to side up with right wing greed delivered from the greedy politicians they put into power. And most of that has come from addiction to unlimited credit, at the expense of real capital based economy.

Citizens United guarantees this will become much worse, before it has any chance of getting better. imo

Race and the Professional Left

If you'd asked me when GWB was president, I likely would have said it may be some about race. If you'd asked me a year into Obama's presidency, I might have said it was maybe more than some about race,. Now, the more I delve into politics and each new day of Obama's presidency, I am getting to the point, if not already there, that it is damn near ALL about race, in one way or another. With class warfare as the wrapping for it all. At least with electoral and governing politics.

The only folks it may not be in that order are the unlikely plutocrats, who only see green, though they surely do send out their culture warriors fixated on black and white and brown etc....

I can't help but think the pro lefters are growing more anti Obama, with more unhinged perceptions of what he has accomplished by comparison to other dem presidents, because each day they see his black face in the WH, is another day of growing discomfort confronting their own prejudice in conflict with their high notions of liberal existence. Whilst not as virulent as the right wing racism, is still racism..

It is the biggest threat to his reelection, I suspect. Not only from firebaggers, but a lot of other Americans uncomfortable having race placed so prominently in their lives with a black president. It will be a contest, whether that discomfort turns to acceptance and some measured enlightenment for potential Obama voters, or too many of them just say fuck it, I want a white face looking at me from the WH. No matter what other factors exist that are rational and beg to differ

Your Easter Weekend Moment of Wingnut Zen

Arthur C Brooks, (I can always spot a wingnut knob slob for the rich, when they use a middle initial) whinges over Obama's rhetoric and proposal to tax rich people. Otherwise known as people with extra cash to tax/ He states the yadda yadda yadda, we got one of the highest corporate tax rates in the world, but neglects to tell us we also have the  biggest and most  tax loopholes in the world favoring the wealthy, who often as not, end up paying exactly zero in income tax, even with ginormous profits.

He goes on from there about all the fairness crying foul, and the death of jobs, yadda yadda yadda, from actually making rich people pay more taxes, trickle down blowharding. But someone forgot to edit the Freudian slips of truthiness, that sometimes leak out onto the pages of national publications like the Washington Post Opinion Pages.


blah blah blah. The leadup as the regular class warfare canard leveled at liberals and a dem president. The high brow intellectual pooh poohing emo libtards in favor of the cold steel trap mind fu logic of the adults in the room. Wingnuts of course. Then we finally get to the truth, to be handled or not.

While conservatives have criticized the economic principles and class-baiting cadences of Obama’s budget rhetoric, no one has answered his fundamental charge that the Ryan plan is unfair. Conservatives have long stayed away from fairness debates, preferring to build unemotional arguments on the right angles of economic efficiency. This is a lost opportunity. Advocates for limited government can win the fairness argument in a walk.

Badda bing. The fairness phobia. It's all republican, pure and simple. Or, as my grandpappy used to say. "grab hold yer wallet when a wingnut starts talking about fairness"

Your Moment In Wingnut Zen

On his radio program yesterday, Bryan Fischer explained that the only real difference between liberals and Islamic radicals was that "so far [liberals] haven't taken to killing people."  But other than that, they are pretty much the same because both groups hate America, freedom, and God:

And the only difference between a lump of shit and a republican is that one has taken to killing people.

Smells like teen spirit - Scala & Kolacny Brothers

Barber, Samuel - Agnus Dei (Adagio for Strings), Choir of Tr

White Liberal Racism

General Stuck

It really isn’t surprising to me that so many republicans
choose to believe Obama wasn’t born here. It is a proxy for the
perpetual horror that for the first time, a US president doesn’t look
like them. For the nativist level of these folks mindset and existence,
it is only a short distance to believe any kind of nonsense for
affirmation of deeper beliefs and fears.

It is also an article of mistrust of the most basic kind of Obama not
being one of them. I really don’t get so angry at that as I do the more
subtle racism and racial anxiety coming from my fellow white liberals.
It is again, I think, a basic trust issue, but is more related to
finding a scapegoat for their childlike expectations for more pure
liberal results from Obama’s governance and it’s legislative products.

The thing that really pisses me off about white liberal racism, is
the apparent license they feel to get personal with their criticism of
Obama. The “pussy” thing/ Or “capitulator” and general emasculation
rhetoric coming from some corners. Stuff you did not hear with their
criticism of Bill Clinton.

Thoughts On the Recent Obama Signing Statement Concerning His "Csars"

Of course, Congress cannot use it’s power of the purse to prevent the
president from carrying out his constitutional duties. The problem is
at this level we are dealing with foundational concepts of separations
of powers between the branches. And it has long been the case, that the
only way to get a clear ruling in a murky case like this, between
congress express plenary, or total power of the purse to run the
government, is through judicial branch, And they long loathed to
intervene and define these foundational powers of the other branches.
Especially on something this minor.

Bush, like everything else he did, took this sometimes low level
butting heads of congress and the executive branches way past any thing
that has occurred before, or at least recently, to violating every law
he didn’t like with signing statements, and also those in effect when he
took office.

The question of whether candidate Obama flip flopped from his promise
to not make SS’s like Bush. Well, yes, he did in this case. But context
and perspective relevant to the period before Bush when such matters
were fairly minor tiffs with congress, does matter. Candidate Obama, as
all candidates makes promises in the pol heat of the moment on the
campaign trail. Flip flopping on this one doesn’t bother me much, and is
not a need for a huge constitutional crisis, or a condemnation of Obama
for something that has happened for a long time before Bush on such a
minor political point made by the wingnuts passing this silly provision.

Looking For Volunteer Readers and Posters

If anyone is interested in reading regular posts from myself from a perspective of basic Obotism, though with reasoned and factual dissent, please leave a message. I have trouble writing stuff just as a diary that no one will read. But if there are at least 8 or 10 regular readers I will start posting regularly. Similarly, if anyone is interested in being a thread poster here, let me know and we can talk about it;


Troll free with a ban button for malignant asshole posters.

Florence And The Machine - Dog Days Are Over

The Reagan tax cuts let them keep more of their money, so they stopped withholding their productivity.

Nope, like the old saying Chuck Colson had hanging on his office wall. Grab Them By the Balls and Their Hearts and Minds Will Follow

Of course he was referring to Vietnam pacification strategies, but tack on 30 years of supply side Reaganesque wingnut economic philosophy mainlined into the American bloodstream, and you can tack onto Colson’s missive, American worker productivity.

There is little remnant left of the balancing equation of Supply and Demand in our so called free market system. The game is rigged to uber collusion and price fixing from unbound monopoly into one big corporate control hub at Plutocrat Central Command.

Or, why? was it coincidence that after a GOP victory and capture of the House of Reps, shortly thereafter Oil prices shoot up as speculators can relax again, after 2 years of the fidgets and self control from the uncertainty of an all Dem run government.

Now the GOP protectors own a piece of government control and can stop any dem tampering with the gawds of profit powers that be. So all of a sudden, any excuse is good enough to ramp up the speculation of boogymen threatening oil supplies, though the same boogymen have always been there. Just the same since Obama’s election and control of both chambers of congress.

The game is rigged from the top, and now the SCOTUS has driven the final nail into the coffin of promoting the general welfare with it’s Citizens United abomination, and all the other abominations to follow for creation of the new order our Corporatocracy, sweeping away all the commietard blather and promises of reform and their blasphemous “demand side” heresy for a share of the pie from anxious peasants in waiting.

There will be three classes in the new pair-a-dime. The Rich, the Poor, and the Security Class confiscating all the stray pitchforks and lanterns.

Poll on GOP Threat To Cut Off Funding For Health Care Reform Law

Typical intellectual lazy American voter, and imo, the prime root of most of our problems. Not only about issues, but about a healthy functioning democracy, that too many think is guaranteed to run smooth for eternity.

Nearly every results of polls is fully dependent on how the question is asked about issues. If the asker does not include potential consequences of a particular issue action, the default position is to reward GOP talking points, that voters also by default prefer. Mostly because wingnuts are white like them, and know the magic words to please these rubes.

In this particular poll on health care, even the dimmest voter can sense disaster of not funding the law, but really not to the fullest extent of that disaster, or the results would have been 100 percent opposed. But you can never expect the 28 percenters to answer in any other way than death to liberals, whatever the issue, and whatever the consequences of smiting the policies of their eternal enemy.

This is a center left country on issues, and a center right country on electoral politics. The tribal instinct is that strong in a society that has not experienced serious enough pain, yet, from GOP governance. Obama kept us out of the abyss for economics, and generally, the public thinks it was republicans pointing out his death panels that is responsible and spending from a bill that was actually pre paid for. So we go merrily on, clueless and lazy, and believing crazy people still have the remedy to it all.

More Thoughts On the Conservative Movement

I think it’s a sign of desperation plugged into the eternal stupidity and butthurt of conservatives. What do they have to show for the rise and fall of the vaunted conservative movement? The brain dead tea party reactionaries? flying about the room like punctured balloons, and making no sense to the right wing intelligentsia other than affording temporary political survival . They had their day in the sun and playtime for their ideas in real time governating. And it all flopped like it was destined to, from shoving conservative square pegs into a round liberal democracy. Just won’t work.

So wizards like Mecmegan et al sit around all day with a ton of resentment and not much else between their ears for a revival alternative to the rage virus tea tards, who likely scare them as much as us, with their matches and cans of gasoline, and shaky current allegiance to the GOP.

They couldn’t cut the mustard straight up in power, so now they pine to rig the game another way, by forcing themselves and their bullshit into academia, to change the game itself visa vi indoctrination of young minds in their formative state. Not unlike the creationists and homeschoolers circumventing science and all that un godly anti(white) American propaganda. It is all about power, and how to get it and hold it. It is what they must have. The rest is negotiable for that singular purpose.

Navel Gaze on Political Movements

It is why I distrust all political “movements” in this country. At some point, almost always, it becomes about the movers themselves, and not about a better country and world. And has a way of alienating dissent and moderation in service to pragmatic results of adjusted viewpoints.

When that happens, it always fails to produce a usable product for the people it was originally meant for, in this case, the average American.

And when there is failure of this movement, almost always, pathological self parody ensues and loads of butthurt resentment fill that void of governing failure of vaunted movement philosophy. We are seeing it in real time in the conservative world with tea baggers and increasing demands for purity of thought. opponent demonization and hyperfearmongering from the disappointed. The wingnut version of this is far more dangerous than the liberal version, imho. Though the liberal version is bad enough.

Time to Start Blogging Again

Lot's of stuff going on, and we are getting ready to enter the wingnut jihad on killing HCR, and some epic stupidity as a result. Stay tuned.

Dion - "Abraham, Martin & John" (1968)

The Birth of Skynet?

A fascinating turn of events in the efforts to stop or slow down Iran's efforts to create a nuclear bomb. Without firing a single shot.

Over the past two years, according to intelligence and military experts familiar with its operations, Dimona has taken on a new, equally secret role — as a critical testing ground in a joint American and Israeli effort to undermine Iran’s efforts to make a bomb of its own.

Behind Dimona’s barbed wire, the experts say, Israel has spun nuclear centrifuges virtually identical to Iran’s at Natanz, where Iranian scientists are struggling to enrich uranium. They say Dimona tested the effectiveness of the Stuxnet computer worm, a destructive program that appears to have wiped out roughly a fifth of Iran’s nuclear centrifuges and helped delay, though not destroy, Tehran’s ability to make its first nuclear arms.

So it appears the worm was partially successful, in at least delaying Iran enriching enough uranium to have the ingredients to make a bomb.

In recent days, the retiring chief of Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency, Meir Dagan, and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton separately announced that they believed Iran’s efforts had been set back by several years. Mrs. Clinton cited American-led sanctions, which have hurt Iran’s ability to buy components and do business around the world.

While I am glad it worked to delay Iran's nuclear capability, it doesn't take a computer genius to wonder about the long term effects on global computer networks as we march wildly into the digital age. This was the first such weapon, and it is a weapon, albeit with ones and zeroes in a virtual world. But that virtual world is more and more running the real world, and such things could, and likely will be used for more evil design.

The attacks were not fully successful: Some parts of Iran’s operations ground to a halt, while others survived, according to the reports of international nuclear inspectors. Nor is it clear the attacks are over: Some experts who have examined the code believe it contains the seeds for yet more versions and assaults.

“It’s like a playbook,” said Ralph Langner, an independent computer security expert in Hamburg, Germany, who was among the first to decode Stuxnet. “Anyone who looks at it carefully can build something like it.” Mr. Langner is among the experts who expressed fear that the attack had legitimized a new form of industrial warfare, one to which the United States is also highly vulnerable.