Earworm

Hey baby they're playin' our song
The one we used to hear when we used to get along ~ The Buckinghams

I'm operating with only about 20% of my brain. All of my higher functions and much of my lower functions are handicapped by the same 40 year old lyrics swimming in my head in a continuous loop. Why couldn't it at least by a good song?

Banks Killing Their Golden Goose

Back when I was in college banks hired beautiful girls to hawk credit cards to every passing student. The goal was to get all Americans so deeply in debt that by graduation they would have to work the next thirty years just to dig themselves out (Assuming they never got sick and/or fired). For bankers the ideal situation was some poor slob who used one credit card to pay off the other and did the reverse the next month. The banks found a way to sidestep state usury laws and make Americans credit card slaves.

In 2005, anticipating that Bush's policies and their own greed would inevitably lead to a depression, the banks pushed through new laws restricting bankruptcy. Their plan was to keep people in permanent debt even after going bankrupt. It backfired. The depression has been so severe that people are eschewing the ridiculous hurdles to bankruptcy and simply chucking it all, walking away from their debts and leaving the banks holding great big bags of nothing.

Banks are now scared of debt while at the same time they need debt to make profits. Their solution is to avoid the marginal debtor and really stick it to their better customers. Credit card rates have skyrocketed to the point that only a real idiot would use a credit card nowadays. Rates that used to be 8% are doubling. Interest rates for many have passed 20% and zipped beyond 30%. Hell, you can even find a credit card with an APR of 79.9% and with a $75 annual fee to boot.

My point is that I know people that used to live from credit card payment to credit card payment who are cutting up their cards and giving up credit cards entirely. Banks are killing the credit card goose trying to get at the last few flecks of gold.

Blame It On Texas

Everyone has their own theory about the Fort Hood attack - some focus on religion, some politics, some on the torment of army life after so many years of wars. I thought I'd add my own theory - It's a Texas Thing.

Just a cursory Google search found twenty mass murder/serial killers in Texas. With just a little effort I'm sure I'd find many scores more. California might have more showy killers (Zodiac) but that's just a Hollywood thing. When it comes to pure blood and guts multiple homicides, nobody beats Texas. A few examples:

Charles Whitman
Charles Whitman was a picture perfect Texas college boy in the 1960's. Clean cut, former Marine, married to a pretty little wife. One day, in 1966 in Austin, Charles killed his mother, killed his wife, wrote a note to insure his dog went to a good home, assembled an arsenal, went to the 28th floor observation deck of the University of Texas Tower, and started shooting. With Marine training Whitman killed 14 people and injured 32 others before police were finally able to storm his sniper nest and shoot Whitman.

George Jo Hennard
In 1991 35-year old George Jo Hennard, ex-Navy, drove his pickup truck through the front window of the Luby's Restaurant in Killeen (just a few miles from Fort Hood). With a couple of pistols Hennard got out of his truck and started shooting people, killing 23 in all. He was stone cold sober during the shootings and left no notes behind. The only reason he gave was that he repeatedly shouted, "This is what Bell County did to me!" during his killing spree.

Dean Corll
Working out of Houston, Corll paid his accomplices $200 each for delivering teenage boys to his rape and torture chamber. Corll killed at least 27 people, probably many more.

Henry Lee Lucas
Killed his mother in Michigan and, after his release, went traveling finally settling down in a Stoneburg, Texas Pentecostal commune called the House of Prayer. While living there Lucas took his teenage girlfriend on a trip during which he killed her. He found another girl, killed her, and disposed of the remains in the House of Prayer stove. After being arrested Lucas confessed to over 600 murders. Texas investigators only believed he killed some 350.

One of the most accomplished serial killers in United States history was the only person whose death sentence was commuted by Governor George W. Bush. Envious, perhaps? This leads us to two additional Texas serial killers.

George Bush and Rick Perry
George Bush set a record for executions (154) that was broken by his successor Rick Perry whose total now exceeds 200. The definition of a serial killer is someone who murders three or more people over a span exceeding 30 days for reasons of personal gratification not profit. Even if we only count the innocent people put to death by Bush and Perry both qualify, by definition, as serial killers.

Conclusion
When I heard about the Fort Hood killings my first reactions was, "of course, it's Texas." Having had several days to think about it I have adjusted my opinion. Now I believe, "What else can you expect from Texas?"

Jon Stewart Does Glenn Beck

I can't embed these Comedy Central clips so just go to Talking Points Memo and watch one of the funniest bits Jon Stewart has done in his brilliant career.

Nothing more need be said.

Adventures In Fratricide

One thing I love about conservatives is that when the going gets tough nobody is better at whining like a six-month old.

Take the case of Doug Hoffman in New York's 23rd congressional district. Just last week conservatives like Sarah Palin and Dick Armey were fratriciding the Republican candidate in the district and promoting Conservative Party Hoffman as the best thing for the Republic since Aaron Burr. Conservatives did national fund-raising and phone banking for Hoffman.

The Democrat won and Armey is blaming Hoffman, describing him as incompetent. Hoffman was incompetent but those national conservatives knew that going in, all except Palin who thought Hoffman her equal. They didn't care because it was all about killing an impure Republican.

The next adventures in fratricide will be in Florida where the impure, and possibly gay, Republican Governor Charlie Crist is being crucified by conservatives in favor of an impossibly handsome, and possibly gay, empty shirt puppet of Jim DeMint named Marco Rubio.

In the California Senate race, millionaire Carly Fiorina (famous for destroying Hewlett-Packard while its CEO) is being targeted by conservatives who have noticed she is not a religious fanatic and are terrified by her post-chemo hair. The DeMint puppet in this race is totally unknown assemblyman Chuck DeVore. DeVore is a full on godly-to-the-max traditional family values guy who claimed Fiorina was faking her breast cancer. Stay classy, Chuck.

Reading Too Much Into an Election

All politics is local. ~ Tip O'Neill

Everyone is all atwitter (you know, new technology has really changed this word) over the macro-implications of yesterday's election. The funny thing is there is really nothing to see.

• Virginia's Creigh Deeds ran a piss poor election. He came off as significantly incompetent. Here is a tip - people will always vote for the guy who knows how to tie his shoes even if they disagree with his politics. (George W. Bush is an exception to this rule; the only things that explain his elections is vote fraud or mass insanity.)
• John Corzine was too corrupt even by New Jersey's lax standards. It would have taken a Republican version of Creigh Deeds to lose there although I grant that Chris Christie's own brand of stupid came close to losing a winning hand.
• The NY-23 victory for a Democrat was actually a defeat for national Democrats. Had Hoffman won the conservative mob would have set off purging the Republican Party down to single digits. Now, maybe they won't, but I hold out hope they will try kicking Olympia Snowe out of the party. That would be fun.
  

Liars and Thieves

The drug lords had successfully stolen the Afghan government for their stooge, Hamid Karzai. That the United States government is totally behind Karzai in this theft is the work of CIA drug traffickers.

The US military commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, is, straight up, a liar.

Any military adventure with this pedigree is doomed to fail. Victory will be sold for profit; defeat will be covered up so lessons are never learned.

Obama, Afghanistan and the CIA

There is a theory that JFK was assassinated because he intended to wind down the American presence in Vietnam. This endangered the CIA's lucrative Southeast Asian heroin trade. Add in JFK's refusal to back CIA plots to restore Cuba to their Mafia friends and Kennedy's murder looks a lot like a CIA black op.

I mention this because of the rumor that President Obama may be considering winding down the American involvement in Afghanistan. The CIA is up to its dirty little snout in the Afghan drug trade. The CIA needs the current chaos to continue unchanged to keep the drug cash flowing. A stable Afghanistan, either pro-American or Taliban, would be a financial disaster to the CIA. Would the CIA perform another coup to protect their drug trade?

Note: Where God Went Wrong has a new Halloween entry.

Cure Worse Than the Disease

Blue skies
Smiling at me
Nothing but blue skies
Do I see ~ Irving Berlin

Leave it to scientists to come up with the only way to make a bad situation worse. Some scientists have decided that to cure global warming they need only only cover the Earth with an aerosol shroud. Their plan is to geoengineer the globe by pumping tons of sulfur into the atmosphere, covering the Earth with a dull haze that will reflect sunlight and, thereby, cool the globe.

Beyond the utter insanity of trying to cure a problem caused by pollution by adding more pollution, in essence making the whole world Los Angeles during a Stage 2 smog alert, there are a plethora of possible nasty side-effects.

• Beautiful days will be a thing of the past as scientists will turn the world's skies into an endless depressing gray.
• Put sulfur with air, add sunlight, and you make sulfuric acid. Acid rain, remember?
• Reducing the amount of sunlight reaching the Earth will lower temperatures at the cost of reducing the viability of plant life. The result will be shorter and less productive growing seasons. This will likely increase world famine worse than global warming will.
• It will accelerate ozone layer depletion. Expect increases in blindness, cancer, and additional negative effects on crops.
  
• The problem is Global Climate Change. Their solution is to replace one set of global climate problems with another, equal if not worse, set of problems.
• The whole concept is fucking unpredictable.
  

Global Climate Change is a real problem with a real, simple solution - reduce the infusion of carbon into the atmosphere. This scientific solution reminds me of an old children's song.

There was an old woman who swallowed a cow,
I don't know how she swallowed a cow!
She swallowed the cow to catch the goat,
She swallowed the goat to catch the dog,
She swallowed the dog to catch the cat,
She swallowed the cat to catch the bird,
She swallowed the bird to catch the spider,
That wriggled and jiggled and tickled inside her,
She swallowed the spider to catch the fly,
I don't know why she swallowed the fly,
Perhaps she'll die.

There was an old woman who swallowed a horse,
She's dead—of course!

CIA Pays Top Afghan Drug Smuggler

Ahmed Wali Karzai, brother of the Afghan president and and a one of that country's opium lords, is a highly prized CIA operative. Color me not surprised. One of the worst kept secrets in the history of clandestine operations has been the CIA's decades long leading role in international drug trafficking.

• France - It was after World War II that the CIA discovered the kind of money that could be made from drugs.The CIA worked with organized crime to take control of the French ports from Communists and as a sideline began profiting from the heroin trade. The CIA build the French Connection.
  
• Vietnam - It was during this war that illegal drugs began to plague the streets of the United States. One theory on why the Vietnam War lasted so long is that the government had become dependent on the drug trade to finance the CIA's black ops against the Soviet Union. Peace was not an option.
  
• Colombia - Following the fall of Vietnam it was the responsibility of then CIA director George H. W. Bush to open up new trade routes for the CIA to move illegal drugs. The CIA facilitated the development of the Medellin Colombian drug cartel. No coincidentally, cocaine use did not became significant in the United States until the 1980's when the CIA had a new war.
• The Contras - With the election of Ronald Reagan the CIA was tasked with supporting civil wars in Central America as well as funding arms shipments to the Iran. The grease applied was the cocaine trade. Now Vice-President George Bush was certainly up to his eyebrows in it. With the evidence widespread, the CIA is admitting to "tolerating" the trade when the truth is they were active conspirators.
• Afghanistan - The Reagan Administration tasked the CIA support revolt against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. The CIA set about supporting the creation of what became the Taliban and al Qaeda and funded these organization with a massive growth in the heroin trade from both Afghanistan and Pakistan.
• Afghanistan Reformed - After the fall of the Soviet puppets in Afghanistan the Taliban virtually wiped out the production of opium. Hence, the CIA saw a sharp decline in income for their criminal enterprises during the Clinton years.
• Afghanistan Back in Business - It is no coincidence that as soon as the Taliban fell the Afghanistan drug trade returned with a vengeance. The CIA was quick to restore business relations with top drug lords like Karzai's brother and running mate. Again, as in Vietnam, why does the war continue endlessly? Again, in part, it is because the CIA is making too much money to ever allow peace.
  

See also the Real Drug Lords and the Politics of Heroin.

The Lieberman Effect

Somewhere, probably in a comment to someone else's blog, I once wrote that the Democratic Party would regret welcoming Joe Lieberman's return into the fold. Sixtieth vote or not, Lieberman would someday gleefully, as gleefully as a man so permanently doleful as he can, stab the Democratic Party in the back. He would choose a time designed to maximize the party's distress and to hurt as many people as possible.

The act would be wanton and malicious. It wouldn't make sense but it wouldn't have to. His goal wouldn't be add to the political discourse but to destroy it. His goal would be to cause pain, extreme pain, surgically applied pain. Joe Lieberman is to politics what Herman Mudgett was to medicine.
PS: I know I'm not the first to notice that Joe Lieberman is the spitting image of Droopy Dog.

Republican Health Plan

Republicans in Congress are frustrated that their leadership hasn't come up with a "Republican Alternative" for health care reform. Allow me to help.

• Health Rationing - Health care is to be based entirely on the ability to pay. CEOs get gold-plated faucets in their hospital toilets. The poor get sanitary handiwipes to use while picking through garbage for food (assuming they are willing to pay for them).
• Health Rationing II - Doctor's are ignorant about medicine. All decision making on specifics of health treatment are to be made by insurance industry clerks whose judgment is not clouded by compassion, medical training, or that pesky Hippocratic Oath.
  
• Insurance Reform - Rewrite the laws to allow insurance companies to cancel coverage for any pre- (or post-) existing condition that might cause an insurance company to spend, you know, actual money.
• Drugs - Drug companies are allowed to set prices based on demand. For example, a pill vital for cancer treatment that costs five cents to make may cost $100 per dose because those dying will pay anything for it. The Federal Government will continue to require that Viagra be covered because keeping rich old farts horny is a vital component of the economy.
  
• Pandemics - Vaccinations should cost dearly. The productive members of society will pay, be protected, and allowed to party away. The young will die thereby reducing the burden of educating them. The poor will die thereby reducing welfare rolls, saving the government money. Consider it a cleansing, vaccinating the poor thwarts the Will of God.

Pictured is the Republican vision for health care, The Masque of the Red Death by Shakmet.

Yankee Stadium Is a Pile of Junk

The City and State of New York paid half the cost of building a new stadium for billionaire George Steinbrenner. The total price tag to various government entities is over $1 billion.

This is funny because the new Yankee Stadium now in its seventh month of operation is falling apart. Given the alleged ties to organized crime connections of contractors used to build the stadium, the fact the construction was shoddy should not be a surprise.

Random Thought

I am confident that I made decisions based on principle, that I made calls as best I could, and I did not sell my soul. ~ George W. Bush

You can't sell what you gave away for free years ago.

Operation Northwoods

Before the Birthers there were the Truthers, the people who believed that 9-11 was a plot by the Bush Administration to justify the conquest of Iraq. Truthers believe that the damage to the Pentagon was not caused by an airplane and the the Twin Towers were felled by explosive charges set by United States government agents.

It is an insane conspiracy theory and while I love a good conspiracy even I could not buy into this one. Still, Truthers could point for support to an actual government conspiracy that was eerily similar, Operation Northwoods.

Operation Northwoods
Devised in 1962 following the debacle of the Bay of Pigs, it was to provide the justification for an American invasion and conquest of Cuba. The plan proposed a series of phony provocations that would be the pretext for war. The author of the plan was the then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Army General L. L. Lemnitzer. The plan's basics were:

• Initiate a series of fake attacks on the US military base at Guantanamo. The culmination would be a "Remember the Maine" incident where a US warship would be blown up in Guantanamo Bay.
• Terrorist attacks would be staged against Cuban refugees. American agents would sink a boatload of Cuban refugees and blame Castro. Attempts would be made on the lives of Cubans living in Florida. To be believable, these attempts would have to frequently succeed.
  
• Americans, using Cuban-type bombers, would use Soviet incendiaries to burn the crops of other Caribbean nations. The Dominican Republic was specifically mentioned as a possible target. Firebombing farms would kill civilians.
  
• American pilots flying Soviet MIGs would shoot down a passenger airliner. The suggested target would be a chartered flight of American students on holiday. Gen. Lemnitzer was sensitive enough to suggest substituting an unoccupied drone although his plan does not say how the government would explain the sudden reappearance of all those presumably dead students.

The plan received unanimous support by the Joint Chiefs of Staff and was forwarded to Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and President Kennedy. Kennedy rejected the plan. Gen. Lemnitzer was quietly removed as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and was moved over to NATO where calmer heads could keep him under control.

Operation Northwoods was kept secret until it was published in 1997 as part of the Kennedy Assassination Records Review Board.

Secret but not forgotten. A year after it was rejected part of the plan was initiated. John F. Kennedy was murdered and the man framed for the murder was tied to Cuba.

PS About 9-11 Truthers: The reason I haven't believed them is that the Bush Administration just wasn't competent enough to have pulled it off. Although I am willing to reconsider if the Truthers can provide better evidence.

Rape Called 'Pre-Existing Condition'

Sometimes I wonder where health insurance companies find there executives, the people who make their rules for coverage. They can't possibly be human in that they lack even the faintest hint of human compassion. I've come to suspect that Blue Cross, for example, has a recruitment office in the eighth level of Hell.

• Your baby larger than average - insurance denied.
• Your toddler smaller than average - insurance denied.
• Use a pharmacy - insurance denied.
• Acne - insurance denied.
  
• Pregnant - insurance denied.
  
• Victim of rape - insurance denied.
• Beaten by your spouse - insurance denied.
  
• Have an irregular period (as do a quarter of all women) - insurance denied.

Hell, pretty much being a woman is considered a pre-existing condition and justification for denying coverage.

In California, PacifiCare denied coverage for almost 40% of applicants. Cigna denies nearly a third of applicants, Kaiser and Blue Cross denial rate is over a quarter of applicants. Source.

Maybe Bankers Deserve It

Consider, bank CEOs conned the federal government out of billions of dollars of free money. Bank CEOs made the term "too big to fail" a mantra that allows big banks to take outrageous risks - if they succeed the bank benefits, if they fail the government covers the loses. Bank CEOs have created an environment where the only people deserving of government largess are the richest of the rich.

After doing all that, don't you think bank CEO's deserve a few six-figure perks?

Republicans for Rape

It is rare I support a Republican site but this one deserves notice. Republicans for Rape defends patriotic American companies that practice the recreational rape of their employees. The issue is the Franken Amendment that would prevent private contractors from requiring arbitration in the event an employee was raped by her colleagues.

The exemplar case was when a KBR employee was gang raped in Iraq and the company imprisoned her in a shipping container, stole the rape evidence kit, and demanded her complaint go to arbitration. To date, no criminal charges have been, nor likely ever will, be filed. As Jon Swift points out, by complaining the woman was undermining the war effort.

The Defense Department, following that long held belief by militaries across time and continents that gang rape is one of the only perks of war, opposes the Franken Amendment. Also opposing are thirty Republican Senators. Each and every one, from John McCain to David Vitter, have long supported the rights of women to be raped without trial lawyers interfering.

Republicans realize the Franken Amendment is unfair to companies like Halliburton and KBR and interferes with corporations ability to impose repressive contracts on their employees.

The Franken Amendment is just another example of liberal treason. One final link, the Jamie Leigh Foundation was created to further the victim's subversive activities.

End Health Monopolies

Republicans claim to support free enterprise, competition in the marketplace. In reality, Republicans are the enemies of free enterprise with their steadfast support of monopolistic practices that stifle competition.

The only reason health insurance companies have sustained double-digit annual rate increases for so many years, as well as the cruel treatment of its subscribers, is the absence of competition. In most places in this country there is no viable alternative. The only way they could make the threat to increase rates in response to government action is if there are tacit, or formal, agreements between the companies to fix prices.

The reason the insurance companies are so terrified of the "public option" is that it offers real competition, health insurance that is not part of their cartel. Key to maintaining their monopolies is the anti-trust exemption insurance companies have. Breaking the insurance cartel must be a vital part of health care reform.

Texas Executions

The biggest problem with executions is killing innocent people. The biggest problem with politicians is an inability for self-reflection, the ability to admit error. In Texas that creates a perfect storm.

Texas governors love executing prisoners. It's a machismo thing. George Bush Jr. killed 154 prisoners in his six years; Rick Perry has killed 202 in eight years, with six more scheduled before the end of the year. That is a record. No governor in American history has ever killed more prisoners than Rick Perry.

Texas also leads the nation is the number of innocent people executed. Bush was notorious for his disinterest in reading clemency reports. Perry, on the other hand, is an ambitious man determined to build a political empire with the bones of the dead. Perry, like Bush before him, has a simple philosophy - kill 'em all and let God sort the innocent from the guilty.

The stories of the innocents killed by Texas governors could fill a book. There is Ruben Cantu, killed in 1993, the victim of sloppy police work. Frances Newton died in 2005 because the court appointed an amateur attorney to defend her - Ron Mock allegedly had a habit of showing up in court drunk, 16 of his 19 clients ended up on death row.

Then there is the now famous case of Cameron Todd Willingham, killed in 2004. He was convicted using clearly fabricated evidence. He died because a district attorney wanted to pad his stats. With the facts showing Willingham innocent Perry has become dedicated to covering up the case. Perry intends to be proud of every prisoner he has killed and won't allow facts to interfere.

There are more innocents lined up to be killed by Texas like Jeff Wood who was convicted of murder because he was standing outside a store when someone else inside the store killed a clerk.

See also the Texas Moratorium Network.

The Spawn of Satan?

Rush Limbaugh claims to have spawned Glenn Beck. I always knew it.

If Rush Limbaugh had sex with a succubus from the eighth level of Hell, afterwards the succubus would feel despoiled.

NOTE: Where God Went Wrong is no longer moribund. I had to resurrect it for the story of Texas school children using Gideon Bibles to smoke pot.

American Police State: A Little Paranoia Before Breakfast

Cracked.com is supposed to be a comedy site, which it mostly is. They also have a facility of finding those times when truth is not so much stranger than fiction than infinitely more frightening.

Today's contribution to daylight nightmares is Five Ways You're Secretly Being Monitored.

1. Public Surveillance. Count the number of cameras in your bank and you'll be arrested for plotting a robbery. Trust me, there are a lot of them. But they are just the tip of the iceberg. There are cameras on just about every urban street corner in America and Europe now. Stare at that sexy girl in front of the federal building too long and your face will be tagged as a potential terrorist. Audio surveillance is the new growth industry. Facial recognition software (grow a mustache, go to jail) that can pick out a face in the crowd for arrest is still mostly a sales pitch to gullible police departments. It's all an amusement park for government watchers. Just like in 1984, there are very few places you can go where you are not being watched. Gotta love these Chicago artists, though, who are turning public surveillance into performance art.
   
2. Cell Phone Bugs. Software to spy on cell phones is everywhere. It's so easy to track every message and GPS location. You can even turn on the iPhone microphone to listen in on your target.
   
3. Printer Tracking. This is not a problem for me because I only use words cut out of newspapers and pasted onto parchment to create my hard copies. Still, it must be unsettling to know that everything you print or copy is watermarked.
4. RFID Tags. You go to the Barnes and Noble and buy a subversive book. You pay cash, don't use your membership card, and make sure the surveillance cameras can't see the title so you figure you are free and clear. Wrong! The RFID chip is still active and wherever you go the chip is sending out it's signal leading the Feds right to your underground book club meeting. Then there is the alleged plan to use RFID chip to track the homeless or the equally believable Oklahoma plot to use RFID bracelets and police roadblocks to enforce universal Swine Flu vaccination.
5. Total Information Awareness Program.
   There's nothing you can know that isn't known.
   Nothing you can see that isn't shown. ~ All You Need Is Love
   The key is putting it all together. TIA does that. If you thought that this program died when Dick Cheney left office, think again. That data is all there, being mined to form an image of that complex tapestry that is you. Step out of line, the man comes and takes you away. Even your Amazon Wishlist is tattling on you.
   

White House Gets Honest About FOX

It's not exactly new news to anyone whose been paying attention but you have to applause the honesty from the Obama Administration stating outright that FOX News is just the propaganda arm of the Republican Party. So much of politics is playing Let's Pretend that hearing a simple truth is damn refreshing.

It's Good Enough He's Not Bush

President Barack Obama has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Conservatives are spluttering their morning Mueslix out their noses at the news.

The truth is that Obama hasn't done anything yet to deserve the prize except that he is NOT George W. Bush. But, that is quite enough. Obama is truly a champion of peace just for kicking Bushism out of power. Pissing off Dick Cheney is a bonus.

American Police State Update

An innocent person, especially male and of color, ought to schedule an extra twenty minutes when traveling from point A to point B. The additional time is to allow for the every more frequent random police full body searches that are being conducted.

The grounds for a "stop-and-frisk" are loose, someone just has to look hinky to a cop. Hinky meaning, in most cases, the cop sees someone who is both male and of color.

You will want to be patient. Police take their time on such random stops, they'll want to talk and ask a lot of questions. They may want to pat you down. Try not to enjoy this because they may then arrested you for lewd conduct. Remember that they have an itchy trigger finger on that Taser gun of theirs so don't become frustrated or display any annoyance whatsoever. Whatever you do, don't get angry because right next to that Taser is a 38-cal. police special.

Useful Tip: White police officers in the Deep South respond well to the phrase, "Yes, massa."

We Are All Christians (Whether We Like It Or Not)

"It's erected as a war memorial. I assume it is erected in honor of all of the war dead," Scalia said of the cross that the Veterans of Foreign Wars built 75 years ago atop an outcropping in the Mojave National Preserve. ~ Huff Post

I have encountered this argument so often I have ceased to be amused by its naivety. It is always brought out by Christians to defend a government sponsored cross somewhere or other. It is silly, childish thinking - disingenuous at best and most often an outright lie. The cross is an exclusively Christian religious symbol; when it is erected to "honor" war dead it is intended to honor only the Christian war dead. Only an idiot would believe otherwise.

Antonin Scalia is no fool. He is a shyster who perverts the US Constitution to meet his personal political and religious prejudices, but he is not stupid. He is a man without scruples who would use his power on the Supreme Court to recast the United States as a Christian Theocracy, but he is not an idiot. When Scalia says the Christian cross honors "all" he truly means "all who matter." Non-Christians, in Scalia's United States, are worthless dregs.

What Matters; What Doesn't(Presidential Division)

What Matters
The Economy. The official unemployment rate is nearing 10%. The Real Unemployment Rate is a staggering 17%. And the depression has continued long enough that families are using up their unemployment benefits with no relief in sight. This issue rates 100 on a scale of one to ten. It's The Economy, Stupid!

Afghanistan. The same people that ended Alexander The Great's quest for world domination, the people that chased the great British Empire back through the Hindu Kush, the ragtag rebels who destroyed the Soviet Union are now the problem of the United States. We have the power to destroy their country. We can kill every man, woman, and child in Afghanistan without breaking a sweat. We can never rule them and we might as well give up trying.

Health Care. One of the first lessons I learn is that real power politics is the art of the possible. There are very few issues that are so important one should waste political capital on a losing effort. If you can't win, let things slide and live to fight another day. The second lesson is to know what you want before committing to a fight. While health care costs and availability are a vital American concern, the insurance companies own a sufficient number of Congressmen and Senators to make real reform impossible. President Obama, while strongly supporting reform, does not seem to have a clear idea what that reform should look like. I'd like real reform but I don't see it happening and insofar as the health care debate is distracting from the economy it is a net loss.

What Doesn't Matter
The Olympics. No one, except venue builders and Chicago construction workers, cares where the Olympics are held. If Republicans try to make an issue out of the Olympics going to Rio it will be the GOP that looks petty and disconnected.

Iran Nukes. Sorry neo-cons, Iran is a regional issue. The Saudis and Israelis are scared but they are no threat to the United States. A little saber rattling for domestic consumption is all that is needed.

The Devil's Dues Are High

While the world suffers Goldman Sachs continues to have win-win deals so sweet they resemble Satanic orgies. If CIT Group goes bankrupt Goldman is guaranteed $1 billion while everyone else gets the shaft. The US taxpayer, for example, stands to lose $2.3 billion in a CIT Group bankruptcy. CIT Group is neck deep in shit, their operating margin, for example is -427%.

Pictured is either a Goldman Sachs board of directors meeting or a black mass, it's hard to tell them apart. More on Goldman's Devil deals here and here.

Standard Disclaimer to Goldman Sachs lawyers: I love Goldman Sachs and continue worship nightly to its Splendiferousness. Please don't sue me.

Hockey Night in Canada

Nothing will get the memories of the Black Dahlia murder out of my mind better than an excessive amount of ice hockey.

The Black Dahlia

There are certain mysteries that fascinate me, mysteries that, once I start thinking about them, I can't let go. The Kennedy assassination conspiracies (both of them), the Jack the Ripper case, the Lost Dutchman Mine are three. Another is the case of the Black Dahlia.

Elizabeth Short was beautiful, with raven hair that contrasted her alabaster skin and powder blue eyes. She always dressed in black and wore a flower in her hair. To see her, even in a black and white picture, is to become instantly captivated by her. She wanted to be famous, a movie star. She ended up famous, the victim of the most horrid murder in the history of Los Angeles.

Who Was Beth Short?
After her fiance has died at the end of World War II, Beth became something of a vagabond. She traveled from Florida to Chicago and finally arrived in Hollywood in the summer of 1946.

Beth visited the nightclubs where the glitterati would go, hoping to catch the eye of someone who would start her in films. The 22 year-old never worked a day in Hollywood. She lived sometimes in flophouses and other times in fine homes or hotels, depending on how successful she was convincing some man to put her up. She ate, when she ate at all, when men bought her dinner.

While Beth traded on her beauty she never sold her body. There is no evidence she was a prostitute and much evidence she always refused sex with her male companions. It seems she could manipulate men without ever giving up the prize.

The Black Dahlia Murder
I won't go much into detail because the details are repulsive. I won't show her autopsy photos although the pictures are easily found because seeing both the beautiful face above and the Glasgow Smile carved in that face by the murderer is the stuff of nightmares. Believe me. I won't go much into details but some facts are necessary.

Beth Short disappeared five days before her body was found in a vacant lot in January 1947. She had been neatly dissected in half at the waist and the two parts carefully posed. She had been tortured for days prior to her death.

The suspect list was pretty nearly the entire male population of Los Angeles. The murderer had mailed Beth's belongings to the police (via a newspaper). Included was Beth's address book, with a couple of pages torn out. While the police interrogated everyone in that address book it is obvious that the murderer was identified on the missing pages.

The police tried to pin the murder on a traveling salesman, one Robert Manley, who was the last person known to have seen her alive. The police were disappointed their investigation cleared him of the crime. Still the publicity managed to destroy his life, he ended up in a psychiatric hospital. After that the case devolved into the incompetent chaos for which the Los Angeles Police Department is still renown. No one was every arrested.

Who Did It?
Exactly who killed Beth Short is meaningless now as all the possible suspects are now dead. Still, there is quite the cottage industry of people trying to prove this or that person was the killer. I can understand why there is a need for some sort of closure. Some things can be deduced.

• The murderer knew Beth. There is a reason the address book pages were torn out. He was there, in the book.
• The murderer was skilled, probably a doctor with surgical training. Even more than the Jack the Ripper case, the Black Dahlia case shows precision with a knife. This was not some crude hacking, not the work of a traveling salesman, but the signature of a professional.
• The murderer took care to pose the body. He was making a statement.
  
• The murderer may have had important connections. The Los Angeles Police file on the Black Dahlia murder disappeared and even to this day some 60 years later, the LA Police Department is extremely defensive about the case. Far beyond being embarrassed by failure, they still seem to be trying to hide something.
  

NOT Recommended Reading
I do not recommend reading about the Black Dahlia case. It can lead to a very unhealthy obsession. If you are determined to confront these nightmares:

• Who Killed the Black Dahlia is a good overview of the case devoid of any disturbing photos.
• The Black Dahlia Solution has a lot of interesting observations if you can get beyond the bizarre symbolism the writer sees. It has the advantage of being really, really detailed. The disadvantage is more close-ups of autopsy photos than any sane person can stomach.
• TruTV did a good study of the Black Dahlia case but also of the woman Beth Short.
• Steve Hodel wrote a best selling book accusing his father of the murder. He is a former LA police officer with some serious daddy issues but he makes a strong case. He is critical of police conduct on the case.
  
• Heaven Is Here! is LA Times reporter Larry Harnish's study on the case. I like his process but his conclusion is lame. Harnish is too trusting of the LA police.
  
• The Black Dahlia Website is another very through study of the crime. Its message boards are for the totally obsessed.
• Then there is the Biltmore Hotel Ghost Story.
  

Final Thoughts
I think a major reason I am touched by Beth Short is that I see some of her in many of the women I have loved. When I look at her pictures while alive I can see women in my life and when I seen the crime photos it hits me as if a dear friend has been killed. I can walk away from the Black Dahlia story and I have to. But every so often I bump into the Dahlia and I feel her suffering again.

By the by, stay away from the Black Dahlia movies. They are all trash.

Seven Days in May Revisited

Radical Republicans are again suggesting a military coup to unseat the elected government of the United States. This time it is a little piece of fluff called John Perry in this article in NewsMax. (Note: NewsMax has taken down Perry's article without comment but it can still be found mirrored on several conservative sites.) Perry sugarcoats his coup, saying it will be "civilized."

Perry suggests the casus belli will be the Middle East, with generals deciding they can do a better job than civilians. Perry suggests that President Obama will be kept as a compliant figurehead, although that could only be accomplished by holding him and his family prisoner and threatening their lives. Adding to what I said six months ago,

• Republicans are bragging about efforts to promote mutiny in the military.
• Republicans see in the Honduran military coup a blueprint for the United States. (The coup in Honduras is usually described as "exactly how a functioning government should work.") Note that, Republicans believe that the military removing an elected president is not only acceptable but government at its finest.
• The military has been wargaming a US military coup since 1992.
  
• We should remember that radical Christians have infiltrated the US military.
• As have neo-Nazis.
  

A military coup need not have tanks patrolling the streets of Los Angeles. In fact, if it comes to that the coup would fail, there are not enough US soldiers to control the country if the people actively oppose the coup. A successful coup would be a decapitation. The President, most congressional Democrats, and the civilian leadership would have to be imprisoned (or murdered). The broadcast media would have to be controlled and the Internet shut down to control the message that we were all in grave danger and the military heroically, and "reluctantly" stepped in to "save the country." There are certainly many Republicans willing to be the "civilian face" to a military dictatorship.

I'm not saying it will happen. I am saying that anyone who believes a US military coup is impossible is a fool.

Word of the Day: Rogue

As in "going rogue."

Rogue (n) - A vagrant; an idle, sturdy beggar; a vagabond; a tramp. A deliberately dishonest person; a knave; a cheat. From 16th Century thieves slang for a vagabond who begs by pretending to be a scholar. In horticulture, a worthless plant occurring among seedlings of some choice variety.

Which leads me to remember that old Dorothy Parker story. In a parlor game, Miss Parker was asked to use the word "horticulture" in a sentence. Her reply was, "You can lead a horticulture (whore to culture) but you can't make her think.

Which is my way of saying that Sarah Palin choose an absolutely perfect, totally appropriate title for her book. Yeah, this is also posted at Word of the Day. Hey, it's too good not to share.

Why I've Learned to Hate Radical Republicans

Oh, and I'm beginning to believe all Republicans are Radicals. (Source)

Fools and Their Money (X2)

Why Vote When You Can Buy Politicians
Two Republicans running California, one for Senate (Carly Fiorina) one for Governor (Meg Whitman), have a lot in common. Both are women. Both made a shitload of money, one for mismanaging her company into the ground and one by sitting back and profiting from people selling silly crap to each other. And both never really got the hang of voting. It's understandable, really, why waste valuable time voting when it is far cheaper just to bribe politicians.

Legal Thievery
Bill Keller used to make money through insider trading but that just ended him up in prison. He found it just as profitable, and totally legal, selling prayers to rubes. Now Keller and attorney Gary Kreep (such a wonderfully appropriate name) have come up with a new way to soak the stupid. They've got a Birther infomercial running where they are selling $5 bumper stickers for 30 bucks. Using that old P.T. Barnum truism that a sucker is born every minute (and most of them reach puberty south of the Mason-Dixon Line) they are counting on the fact that sleep deprivation makes even the brainless more gullible by buying cheap, after midnight, TV time. There are so many perfectly legal ways to con money from dopes its a wonder anyone turns to crime.

The Disappeared

This video is not from Chile in the 1970's or Iran last week. It is from Pittsburgh, USA yesterday. It looks for all the world like that one, poor individual has just been "disappeared" by the military.

Census Lynching - Round 2

Why do I get the feeling that a cover up is beginning? I don't know if the FBI is afraid of copycats or whether the Feds have been so infiltrated with Bushites that their professionalism and honesty is hopelessly compromised. I do know that, as of now, I don't believe a single word about this Kentucky murder the FBI is saying.

Census Worker Lynched

It doesn't take an FBI profiler to know that when a US census worker was hanged in rural Kentucky with the word "fed" written on his chest it was right out of the KKK handbook. That the victim was white does not change this.

It it probable that the murderer was encouraged by the paranoid rantings of Michelle Bachmann. It is certain this will not be the last murder of census takers by Republican extremists.

Origin of Stupidity

Cristina offers a brilliant and straightforward response to the latest creationism bullshit. Watch it then go to YouTube and vote it up. She deserves the props.

Word of the Day Is Back

After a month off due to heat, a busy schedule, and general summer boredom with blogging, Word of the Day is back on a mostly daily routine.

Stop Picking On Poor Insurance Companies!!!

Protect Insurance Companies PSA from Will Ferrell

The American Police State: I Shot a Man In Reno Just to Watch Him Die

Arm the police with portable torture devices and some will use them to torture people. The latest incident was in Merced, CA where a cop twice used a Taser on a wheelchair-bound double amputee.

• In June police in Texas tasered a 72 year-old woman accused of speeding.
• In Phoenix police tasered and beat a pastor for resisting arrest for the crime of ... well he actually didn't do anything illegal except ask what he was being arrested for.
• In Seattle, back in 2005, a woman eight-months pregnant was tasered for not signing a ticket after a traffic stop.
• Certainly the worse case I could find was out of Boise, ID where police jammed a Taser up a man's rectum and fired.

Police have grown to love the Taser. It looks and feels like a gun but it doesn't kill (often, in the United States police using Tasers kill citizens on an average of once a week), instead it causes agony with the victim writhing in pain. Police have discovered torturing with a Taser is a lot more fun than killing with a gun. A Taser also doesn't leave bruises and wounds like beating a prisoner with a nightstick so there is less embarrassing television video.

Police seldom get in serious trouble for using a Taser. In Edmonton, Alberta a policeman used a Taser on two sleeping men and all he got was a 90-hour suspension. But, I'm certain they were sleeping in a threatening manner.

I'm always a little worried when I write about the American Police State. I fear a policeman may decide to electrocute me. The Taser has become a toy used by police for recreational torture. I even wonder if police consider it a sex toy. Here is another Texas story about an on-duty officer getting shot with his own Taser that sounds more like sex play gone wrong than an accident.

See also:
Torture by Taser
A report from Der Spiegel on American police Taser practices
Pam's House Blend's take

Oklahoma High School Students Couldn't Pass Citizenship Test

Seventy-five percent of Oklahoma high school students don't know that George Washington was the first president of the United States. A whopping 97% would fail the basics civics exam required of people to become naturalized American citizens.

I'll wager, however, that a big majority know that Adam and Eve were the first Americans, that the Earth is 6,000 years old, and that God wrote the Bible in English. So, it's not all bad.

Oklahoma Education News

• Proposal to force Tulsa Zoo to teach creationism
• Republican state party platform requires schools to teach creationism
• Students cannot be flunked if their ignorance of science is religion-based (state law)
• Hate in the Bible Belt
• Leading Science Foundation
• Board of Education Chairman Christian fundamentalist activist (okay, technically this is Baja Oklahoma, aka Texas)
  

Murder By Insurance Company

Anyone with an ounce of common sense knows that that whole "death panels" meme was nonsense wrapped in a crock. It doesn't take any more common sense to realize that the current health care system is designed to kill off high risk patients.

The system is simple. You can't get treatment unless you are insured. You can't get insurance unless you are already healthy. If you were once healthy but later become sick the insurance companies will move mountains to prove you were always sick so they can drop your coverage, thereby not spending money treating you, while at the same time keeping all of the premiums you paid while you were healthy and didn't need the insurance. Insurance companies call this "win-win."

Because doctors tend to be compassionate all the really important decisions about medical treatment (i.e. anything that costs money) are made by insurance company clerks none of whom ever spent an hour in medical school and all of whom went to work at insurance companies because the only thing they every enjoyed in life was torturing people in pain and there were no job openings at Gitmo.

The end result is something called Murder By Insurance Company and every year this system needlessly kills more people than would fit in Petco Park.

Hate Like It's 1935 Again

I sometimes wonder where this nation will end up if the current class of Republicans regain power.

Segregation Now, Segregation Forever
That darling of the Right, Rush Limbaugh, yesterday openly called for racial segregation.

Only For Lack of a Rope
A white Georgian viciously beat and kicked an Army reservist in public in front of her daughter because the black woman had been uppity. A white judge was quick to drop the felony charges. We will see if any new felony charges survive Georgia's elected judiciary. The story would certainly have been different if that Cracker had had a good lynching rope in his pickup truck.

Stasi-lite

I don't know if I whether or not I should feel safe because there are a couple hundred thousand spies in the CIA/FBI stable (The Stasi, in 1989, had 91,000 employees and an additional 173,000 informants). I understand why President Obama wants to keep the Patriot Act spying powers Dick Cheney championed. It's the same reason why the son of a counterfeiter would want to keep his papa's phony engraving plates. I understand, but I don't approve.

Should I be afraid that the government is peeking into every aspect of my life to "protect" me? Or, should I stop worrying and start inviting my personal watcher to parties because he knows more about me than most of my friends?

Marines Playing Russian Roulette

Marines in Iraq have this game they like to play where they point their weapons at other Marines saying, "Do you trust me?" Sometimes they pull the trigger. Because Marines aren't nearly as competent with firearms as they'd like people to believe, sometimes they don't know if the gun is loaded so sometimes they shoot their best friends in the face.
While, officially, the Marine Corps outlaws this "Trust Game," the fact is that officers and noncoms will order soldiers under their command to play the game. When something goes wrong and a Marine dies the commanders never face charges for tolerating, let alone ordering the game. It is always the lowest soldier in the chain who pays the price; always with prison, never with treatment.

There is no getting around the fact that all these tours in Iraq, with the occasional sojourn to Afghanistan, with all the drugs they take to stay alert on long missions or deal with combat stress, American Marines are slowly being driven insane.

Art is "Solider in an Insane Asylum" by Conrad Felixmueller.

American Police State Update

El Cajon is a bedroom community for the city of San Diego. It is pretty much a nothing of a town and I should know because I live there. Their police headquarters are in a 40 year-old building which makes it "way old" in surfer jargon. For comparison, the Castleford Police Station has been in continuous operation since 1898.

Because their building is older than many of their officers the El Cajon Police Department has been lobbying for a new, bigger facility for the past 20 years. They are finally getting it.

The brand spanking new El Cajon Police Headquarters is going to be a cozy 119,000 square-foot facility on 5.7 acres. It is going to be bigger, fancier, and better landscaped than any any hotel in the town.

About that bigger part. El Cajon only has 119 sworn officers which means there will be 1000 square feet of office space for every single officer in the force. At $65 million (Any bets the final cost will be twice that?), it will cost more than a half-million dollars per policeman. It would be cheaper to build a brand new home for every officer on the force.

They are not wasting a lot of space on criminals, there will only be 12 holding cells. For comparison, Mayberry had two. This is not a place to coddle prisoners. Oh, no. Almost all of the space will be dedicated to the comfort of the working police officers. Why it is going to be so plush they will never want to leave to actually, you know, patrol.

Life's Little Lessons

I just learned something I should have already known. When the truck comes to empty the porta-potty that has been part of my neighbor's endless remodel, close your windows. Emptying a porta-potty smells exactly like you'd expect it to.

Afghanistan Failure

Doonesbury on Afghanstan

Afghanistan was Russia's Vietnam. Of all of the Bush Wars the Afghan conflict was the only one I felt was justified. Yet now, eight years in, we are stuck in the same hopeless quicksand that sunk the Soviet Union. It's time now to cut our loses and bug out.

Criminal Activity
The recent Afghan election is setting records for blatant fraud. America's man in Kabul, Hamid Karzai, isn't even trying to hide the ballot box stuffing. The American options are either to continue to back a petty criminal and drug dealer as Afghan president or organize a coup, knowing how badly that worked out in Vietnam.

Corruption
The orgies being held in the US embassy in Kabul are just the tip of the iceberg. United States military drug use is rampant as well. The Afghans used drugs to destroy the Soviet occupation army thirty years ago just like the Vietnamese used drugs to hobble the US Army in the 1960's.

We Are Losing
The Afghan War started to punish the Taliban and al-Qaeda. It has devolved into a colonial struggle where we are trying to "win the hearts and minds" of a nation we occupy. It didn't work in Vietnam and it isn't working here.

There are many Afghans, perhaps even a majority, who want to like the United States. But we keep killing innocents, stupidly killing innocents, because our soldiers are too over-stressed, over-worked, and over-medicated to bother trying to tell the difference between the good guys and the bad guys.

What To Do
We could stay in Afghanistan for decades and even, perhaps, over time compel a certain compliance but it would not the worth the cost in either men or money. Or, we could pack up, cut our loses, and get out.

On going we should leave behind a few blunt warnings - 1) Any al-Qaeda camps erected in Afghanistan will be obliterated as soon as we find it; 2) If the Afghan government supports al-Qaeda or other terrorists in any way then those government officials should expect short lives with messy deaths; 3) in short, stay out of our way and you will be left in peace.

I would prefer that the United States be liked but sometimes all you can hope for is to be feared.

California Heat - Twilight Zone(ish)

The Southern California heatwave has entered its second week of 100 degree F plus temperatures. The fires north of Los Angeles continue to burn. There is little work being done during the day if it requires stepping away from an air conditioner. There is little sleep at night if you are not sleeping next to an air conditioner. We have no hope for relief until sometime next week.
Today I was talking with a friend and mentioned I had been thinking about an old Twilight Zone episode. She quickly replied, "The one where the Earth is getting closer to the sun." She was right. The episode was "The Midnight Sun" with Lois Nettleton (above) and written by Rod Serling.

If you are interested, veoh.com has the full episode available. It will give you a hint what we are going through.

Joe Klein's Hissy Fit

I admit I don't read Time Magazine's Joe Klein. He represents the worst of modern journalism. He is a cocktail party journalist who is "too important" to do mundane tasks like research, too Daiquiri-addled to understand the issues he covers, and too attached to his C-List Beltway status to ask tough or even any questions at all so he simply parrots back whatever he is told by his betters. Klein is the kind of journalist that H. L. Mencken would spit in the face of.

Still, I had to stop and read all of the links from this Rising Hegemon post.

Klein got his diapers twisted because Salon's Glenn Greenwald caught wind of Klein's behind the back email attacks on Greenwald and posted them on a tidbit blog Greenwald keeps. How dare he, screeched Klein, repeat "private communications."

Anyone over the age of three knows never to write in an email anything you wouldn't want to see published on the front page of the New York Times (advise I was giving 20 years ago). Email is not a quiet whisper between the stacks of the Political Science section of the library, it is shouting to a friend on the street from a third story window. In this instance one of the many people Klein sent his attack to passed a copy along to Greenwald. That's exactly what I would hope any friend of mine would have done.

The most interesting part of Klein's whiny-assed posting is the comments. Out of scores of comments Klein found only one defender -

Joe Klein is a great asset to the media ~ #49 awb75 (probably his girlfriend)

and one guy who hates them both equally -

Klein and Greenwald are both secular Bolsheviks not real Jews. ~ #40 dencal26

• Klein's email attack (via Greenwald)
• aimai's (the "pathetic woman acolyte") posting, she happens to be the granddaughter of I. F. Stone.
  
• Greenwald's twit on the subject
• Klein's hissy fit
• Greenwald's response to the hissy fit
• the "pathetic woman acolyte" response
• John Cole chips in