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OUR FOOLISH FRENZY OVER NORTH KOREA by Victoria Samson

Fri, 20 Mar 2009 00:58:00 GMT

Rumors have been swirling for weeks now that North Korea has been preparing for another ballistic missile launch. This panic has been matched by a stratospheric level of rhetoric on both sides. But before angry words turn into hostile actions, it would help to take a step back and objectively look at what is at stake.

After reports from intelligence agencies about activities at a potential North Korean missile launch site sparked the flames, North Korean officials were eager to fan them to their advantage. Stating that what could be coming was a satellite launch, Pyongyang insisted that it had the right to be a space-faring nation. Meanwhile, officials from South Korea, Japan, and the United States were worried that North Korea was actually preparing for a test of one of its Taepo Dong ballistic missiles.

North Korea has conducted two flight tests of the Taepo Dong. The first was in August 1998, when Taepo Dong-1 was supposed to place a satellite in orbit. The satellite payload failed to separate from the missile, but this test did demonstrate the existence of a rocket’s third stage in North Korea’s missile arsenal, which potentially could give it a longer range. The Taepo Dong-1 reportedly has a reach of 2000 kilometers.

The second test launch occurred during the 2006 Fourth of July weekend, when North Korea held a series of ballistic missile tests over the course of several days. A Taepo Dong-2 failed 42 seconds into its flight. The Taepo Dong-2 is speculated to have a range of anywhere between 3,500 to 7,000 kilometers, depending on the size of the warhead it would be carrying.

So what we have is a long-range ballistic missile arsenal which North Korea has flown exactly twice in the past eleven years and which has undergone flight failures each time.

North Korea’s testing of a small nuclear weapon in October 2006 (which also fizzled) prompted the United Nations Security Council to pass Resolution 1718, which forbade North Korea from continuing its work on ballistic missile technology. This may be why Pyongyang is insisting that the impending test is only a satellite launch. In any case, its leaders have alerted several international organizations (aviation and maritime authorities) that its launch will be occurring somewhere between April 4 and April 8.

Meanwhile, Japanese officials have sent missile defense-equipped Aegis ships to within range, as have U.S. officials. Throughout all this, South Korean officials have been vociferously warning North Korea to cease its ballistic missile activities.

This vehemence is perhaps being provoked by North Korea’s actions. But it overlooks one key fact: South Korea and Japan are already within reach of other North Korean missiles. The South Korean capital of Seoul is even within range of North Korea’s artillery. This step by North Korea poses no new threat to the countries of northeast Asia. Prior to news of this latest launch, South Korea and Japan had already been fielding missile defenses. However, this deployment works only as a symbolic gesture, as those countries’ missile defense systems would very easily be overwhelmed by the massive numbers of missiles North Korea could lob at them. The missile defense solution will provide them with little to no defense, so the two countries will have to seek out a diplomatic response.

So what about the United States: Will we have to worry about losing a city to a North Korean missile? Given the breakneck pace of Pyonyang’s long-range ballistic missile development, we have time to resolve this issue before it gets out of control. But in order to do that, we too must be willing to negotiate with the North Koreans. The George W. Bush administration spent eight years trying to dictate terms to Pyongyang; by the end, even the Bush White House had realized the futility of doing so. Under the Barack Obama administration, we have the opportunity to start afresh and find a workable solution that we can live with. Otherwise, we end up playing right into North Korea’s hands and flying into a tizzy every time a Taepo Dong is test-launched.

On Signing Statements

Tue, 17 Mar 2009 14:11:00 GMT

As a candidate, Barack Obama offered withering criticism of President Bush’s signing statements — declarations that he would not enforce parts of the bills he signed. So it was encouraging when President Obama invalidated the Bush signing statements last week and explained when he would issue statements of his own.

If Mr. Obama lives up to the principles he outlined last week, he could roll back the excessive powers that Mr. Bush claimed for his presidency, but the new president quickly issued a signing statement of his own that made us wonder just how clean a break he intended to make.

Presidents have long issued signing statements, but Mr. Bush used them with unprecedented frequency and brazenness. When he signed a torture ban in 2005, he made a groundless assertion that he could override Congress and the courts on a major part. In 2006, the American Bar Association called on presidents not to issue statements that claimed the right not to enforce the law.

In principle, a president should veto a bill if he believes part of it is unconstitutional. But Mr. Obama’s memo raised a legitimate concern: that Congress these days often passes omnibus bills. If a big bill has only a few problematic parts, a president has to choose between vetoing the whole bill, or agreeing to enforce provisions he believes to be unconstitutional.

Mr. Obama said he would try to work with Congress to address constitutional concerns in advance. Once a bill passes, he said, he would object only over “interpretations of the Constitution that are well founded.”

These are good policies, but the real test will be in how they are applied. Mr. Obama should not use signing statements, as Mr. Bush did, to assert that his own interpretation of the Constitution trumps those of Congress and the courts. If he wants to claim that his objection is “well founded,” then he should be able to point to court decisions or he should find a way to get the issue into court so the judiciary can make a call.

Mr. Obama’s first signing statement objected to parts of a recent spending bill that he signed. Most of his points were not particularly troubling. Mainly, they focused on provisions that attempt to micromanage decisions that legitimately belong to the president. None comes close to Mr. Bush’s sweeping assertions of power.

Still, Mr. Obama’s statement may not be entirely innocuous. One somewhat unclear objection could be read as bumping up against the rights of executive branch whistle-blowers. In any case, the speed with which he issued the statement, and the number of provisions he objected to, raise concerns that he may use these statements too aggressively. It will bear watching.

For eight years, the Bush team did its best to disrupt the founders’ careful allocation of power among the president, Congress and the courts. President Obama’s goal should be to restore that delicate balance.

HYPOCRIT - YOU'RE SUCH A DICK

Mon, 16 Mar 2009 21:38:00 GMT

I'm assuming you saw Cheney's remark that Obama's policies make this a more dangerous country. The very fact that Cheney is no longer in the Whitehouse makes us much safer. Also his talk of democracy in the middle east just confirms the terrible lies from the Bush/Cheney regime that got us into this war of choice in the first place. Practically noody would have ’signed on’ for a pre-emptive invasion for the sole purpose of ’seeding’ democracy.
But I digress, Obama’s policies are only a return to the values the rest of the world admired us for at one time, and will again. With the return of respect for our ideals will also come a safer America.

Tracy

GOP LEADERS MOVE FROM OPPOSITION TO OBSTINACY TO HYPOCRISY

Sun, 15 Mar 2009 23:27:00 GMT

Monday, March 9, 2009
by Jim Hightower

“No” can be a very good word. Whether dealing with children or with Congress, a firm “uh-uh” can set the boundaries of acceptable behavior.

But the negative can pretty quickly turn you from a positive force into an obstinate grump – and no one likes those. Yet, this is the persona adopted by Republican Party leaders who're throwing up a “Stone Wall of No” to President Barack Obama’s economic recovery efforts. Not a single GOP house member, for example, voted for Obama’s $790 billion stimulus package, petulantly dismissing it as “larded with wasteful spending.”

Like what, you might ask? Well, the Republicans issued a list of what irked them in the bill. It included improved sewer systems, flood reduction projects, retrofitting federal buildings for energy conservation, and – gosh their hit list was filled with exactly the kind of job-creating, infrastructure-building, energy-saving work that America needs.

But, wait, once the bill passed anyway, hoards of the GOP’s congress critters suddenly turned from grumps to cheerleaders for such projects, claiming credit back in their districts for bringing home the bacon. Only hours after voting against the bill, for example, Rep. John Mica was bragging to his home folks in Florida that – hallelujah – they’d now be getting stimulus money for a local commuter train.

Even Gov. Bobby Jindal, The Louisiana Republican who had denounced Obama’s plan as an “eruption of spending,” was grasping for $6 billion in federal recovery money as he spoke. On national TV, Jindal praised himself for cutting taxes in Louisiana, rather than increasing spending. He didn’t mention that he now hopes to grab $2 billion from Obama’s fund to cover a state budget shortfall that his tax cuts helped create.

“No” is not an economic plan. Neither is hypocrisy.

MILITARY WISDOM

Sat, 14 Mar 2009 18:29:00 GMT

'If the enemy is in range, so are you.' - Infantry Journal
------------ --------- --------- ---------
'It is generally inadvisable to eject directly over the area you just bombed.' - U.S. Air Force Manual
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'Whoever said the pen is mightier than the sword obviously never encountered automatic weapons.'
- General MacArthur
------------ --------- --------- ---------
'You, you, and you ... Panic.

The rest of you, come with me.' - U.S. Marine Corps Gunnery Sergeant
------ ------ --------- --------- ---------
'Tracers work both ways.' - U.S. Army Ordnance
------------ --------- --------- ---------
'Five second fuses only last three seconds.' - Infantry Journal
----------- - --- ------ --------- ---------
'Any ship can be a minesweeper. Once.'
------------ --------- --------- ---------
'Never tell the Platoon Sergeant you have nothing to do.' - Unknown Marine Corps Recruit
- ----------- --------- --------- --------- ---------
'If you see a bomb technician running, keep up with him!' - USAF Ammo Troop
------------ --------- --------- ---------
'Though I Fly Through the Valley of Death , I Shall Fear No Evil For I am at 80,000 Feet and Climbing.' -SR-71 pilot
------------ --------- --------- --------- ------------ ------------ -------------- -------------- -------------
'You've never been lost until you've been lost at Mach 3.' - Paul F. Crickmore (test pilot)
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'The only time you have too much fuel is when you're on fire.'
------------ --------- --------- ---------
'If the wings are traveling faster than the fuselage, it's probably a helicopter -- and therefore, unsafe.'
------------ --------- --------- ---------
'When one engine fails on a twin-engine airplane you always have enough power left to get you to the scene of the crash.'
------------ --------- ------- -- ---------
'Even with ammunition, the Air Force is just another expensive flying club.'
----------- --------- --------- ---------
'What is the similarity between Air Traffic Controllers (ATC) and pilots? If a pilot screws up, the pilot dies; If ATC screws up, .... The pilot dies.'
------------ --------- --------- --------- ---------
'Never trade luck for skill.'
------------ --------- --------- ---------
The three most common expressions (or famous last words), in aviation are:
'Why is it doing that? 'Where are we?' And; 'Oh S !'
----------- --------- --------- ---------
'Airspeed, altitude and brains. Two are always needed to successfully complete the flight.'
------------ --------- --------- --------- -
'Mankind has a perfect record in aviation; we never left one up there!'
----------- --------- --------- ---------
'Flying the airplane is more important than radioing your plight to a person on the ground incapable of understanding or doing anything about it.'
------------ --------- --------- ---------
'The Piper Cub is the safest airplane in the world; it can just barely kill you'
- Attributed to Max Stanley (Northrop test pilot)
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'If something hasn't broken on your helicopter, it's about to.'
------------ --------- --------- ---------
As the test pilot climbs out of the experimental aircraft , having torn off the wings and tail in the crash landing, the crash truck arrives; the rescuer sees a bloodied pilot and asks, 'What happened?'
The pilot's reply: 'I don't know, I just got here myself!'
- Attributed to Ray Crandell (test pilot)

THE RETURN OF MEDIOCRITY

Sat, 14 Mar 2009 04:35:00 GMT

Alrighty now....test, test.....is this thingy on?

Where in the hell have I been?

In a nutshell, working seven days a week, that is until the great crash of '09! Yep, man things were booming. Made more money than I ever had. Where did that get me? Well, I'm back blogging so obviously I did not graduate to independently wealthy.

Actually, I'm sure my story is typical of millions of others all around the world. A perfect reflection of the boom/bust cycle we call CAPITALISM. I worked for a wealthy man who owns several businesses, and was treated quite well, right up until the bust. After Christmas 2008, when the giant crap shoot we call Wall Street fell like a house of cards, so did the incoming work. I mean it just fell, day by day while I watched and waited....for the inevitable. Termination. I knew all along that this hyper-consumerism, over-valued stocks, easy credit, etc....

All of this had to come to an end. It just had to. A system where the rich get richer while the poor spiral into even deeper poverty, well, it's just not sustainable. I don't want it sustained, it's nonsense, there's no real wealth at all. Okay, it's late and I've rambled on long enough. All I really need to say is I'm back, for any and all who care to meet here for conversation. I'll leave you with some words from a man I always admired.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

If there is a 50-50 chance that something can go wrong, then 9 times out of ten it will.

When your outgo exceeds your income, the upshot may be your downfall.

~PAUL HARVEY

Now you know the rest of the story.

MORE THOUGHTS ON GOD......

Thu, 15 May 2008 12:11:00 GMT

Dont go to church on sunday
Dont get on my knees to pray
Dont memorize the books of the bible
I got my own special way
Bit I know jesus loves me
Maybe just a little bit more

I fall on my knees every sunday
At zerelda lees candy store

Well its got to be a chocolate jesus
Make me feel good inside
Got to be a chocolate jesus
Keep me satisfied

Well I dont want no anna zabba
Dont want no almond joy
There aint nothing better
Suitable for this boy
Well its the only thing
That can pick me up
Better than a cup of gold
See only a chocolate jesus
Can satisfy my soul

(solo)
When the weather gets rough
And its whiskey in the shade
Its best to wrap your savior
Up in cellophane
He flows like the big muddy
But thats ok
Pour him over ice cream
For a nice parfait

Well its got to be a chocolate jesus
Good enough for me
Got to be a chocolate jesus
Good enough for me

Well its got to be a chocolate jesus
Make me feel good inside
Got to be a chocolate jesus
Keep me satisfied

~TOM WAITS

IS THE UNIVERSE INTELLIGENT?

Wed, 09 Apr 2008 11:57:00 GMT

GOD IS HIDING FROM US....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DfPeprQ7oGc

Learning To Be Silent

Thu, 03 Apr 2008 12:23:00 GMT

The pupils of the Tendai school used to study meditation before Zen entered Japan. Four of them who were intimate friends promised one another to observe seven days of silence.

On the first day all were silent. Their meditation had begun auspiciously, but when night came and the oil lamps were growing dim one of the pupils could not help exclaiming to a servant: "Fix those lamps."

The second pupil was surprised to hear th first one talk. "We are not supposed to say a word," he remarked.

"You two are stupid. Why did you talk?" asked the third.

"I am the only one who has not talked," concluded the fourth pupil.

Nothing Exists

Thu, 27 Mar 2008 20:20:00 GMT

Yamaoka Tesshu, as a young student of Zen, visited one master after another. He called upon Dokuon of Shokoku.

Desiring to show his attainment, he said: "The mind, Buddha, and sentient beings, after all, do not exist. The true nature of phenomena is emptiness. There is no relaization, no delusion, no sage, no mediocrity. There is no giving and nothing to be received."

Dokuon, who was smoking quietly, said nothing. Suddenly he whacked Yamaoka with his bamboo pipe. This made the youth quite angry.

"If nothing exists," inquired Dokuon, "where did this anger come from?"

It Probably Always Will

Fri, 21 Mar 2008 14:07:00 GMT

I've got a mountain of dreams to climb
'fore I get to that house on the hill
that keeps the lady of my morning
in a brown earthen pot on the sill
of the window that looks out
across the valley, probably always will

I'll make sure no one is watching me
like ev'ry good and successful thief
and maybe tomorrow when the sun goes down
I'll have put an end to this grief
by giving myself a potted plant
and a rainbow, calling it a wreath

she's the energy that runs my day
and the first star out at night
by God, I'm gonna climb that hill
if it takes, ev'ry bit of my my might

in the morning the early summer breezes call
me away from my warm sleeping bed
and fill me up with expectations
of filling this hole in my head
that was left long ago
somewhere in my lifetime, left me feeling dead

she's the energy that runs my day
and the first star out at night
by God, I'm gonna climb that hill
if it takes, ev'ry bit of my might

I've got a mountain of dreams to climb
'fore I get to that house on the hill
that keeps the lady of my morning
in a brown earthen pot on the sill
of the window that looks out
across the valley, probably always will

OMD

Socialized Risk And Privatized Profit

Fri, 21 Mar 2008 10:55:00 GMT

The feudal system is alive and well here in the U.S. of A. Our Lords have managed to privatize all the profits from our hard earned investments, while socializing any associated risk. ~Tracy

March 21, 2008

Editorial

Socialized Compensation

How can one feel sorry for James Cayne? The potential losses of the chairman and former chief executive of Bear Stearns must rank up there with the biggest in modern history. The value of his stake in Bear Stearns collapsed from about $1 billion a year ago to as little as $14 million at the price JPMorgan Chase offered for the teetering bank on Sunday.

Still, Mr. Cayne was paid some $40 million in cash between 2004 and 2006, the last year on record, as well as stocks and options. In the past few years, he has sold shares worth millions more. There should be financial accountability for the man who led Bear Stearns as it gorged on dubious subprime securities to boost its profits and share price, helping to set up one of the biggest financial collapses since the savings-and-loan crisis in the 1980s. Some might argue that he should have lost it all.

But that’s not how it works. The ongoing bailout of the financial system by the Federal Reserve underscores the extent to which financial barons socialize the costs of private bets gone bad. Not a week goes by that the Fed doesn’t inaugurate a new way to provide liquidity — meaning money — to the financial system. Bear Stearns isn’t enormous. It doesn’t take deposits from the public. Yet the Fed believed that letting it implode could unleash a domino effect among other banks, and the Fed provided a $30 billion guarantee for JPMorgan to snap it up.

Compared to the cold shoulder given to struggling homeowners, the cash and attention lavished by the government on the nation’s financial titans provides telling insight into the priorities of the Bush administration. It’s not simply a matter of fairness, though. The Fed is probably right to be doing all it can think of to avoid worse damage than the economy is already suffering. But if the objective is to encourage prudent banking and keep Wall Street’s wizards from periodically driving financial markets over the cliff, it is imperative to devise a remuneration system for bankers that puts more of their skin in the game.

Financiers, of course, dispute that they are being insufficiently penalized. “I received no bonus for 2007, no severance pay, no golden parachute,” E. Stanley O’Neal, the former chief executive of Merrill Lynch, told a House committee recently. That doesn’t seem like much of a blow to Mr. O’Neal, who was removed earlier this year following gargantuan subprime-related losses.

Indeed, the pain that is being inflicted on financial-industry executives as a result of their own actions and decisions is not proving much of an encouragement. Rather, the knuckle-rapping seems only to encourage bankers to make up for any losses they may suffer by finding another way to navigate their companies, the financial system and the economy into the next maelstrom — from Internet stocks to what the industry calls zero-down, negative amortization, no-doc, adjustable-rate mortgages.

(Translation: derivatives based on incomprehensible mortgages with unpredictable interest rates given to people who have no reasonable chance of understanding them, let alone paying them back. )

Bankers operate under a system that provides stellar rewards when the investment strategies do well yet puts a floor on their losses when they go bad. They might have to forgo a bonus if investments turn sour. They might even be fired. Their equity might become worthless — or not, if the Fed feels it must step in. But as a rule, they won’t have to return the money they made in the good days when they were making all the crazy bets that eventually took their banks down.

The costs of such a lopsided system of incentives are by now clear. Better regulation of mortgage markets would help avoid repeating current excesses. But more fundamental correctives are needed to curb financiers’ appetite for walking a tightrope. Some economists have suggested making their remuneration contingent on the performance of their investments over several years — releasing their compensation gradually.

That’s an idea worth studying. Certainly, trying to put specific limits on bankers’ salaries is a nonstarter. But until bankers face a real risk of losing their shirts, they will continue blithely ratcheting up the risks to collect the rewards while letting the rest of us carry the bag when their punts go bad.

Doesn't anything socialistic make you want to throw up?

Thu, 20 Mar 2008 05:05:00 GMT

Doesn't anything socialistic make you want to throw up? (Like great public schools or health insurance for all?)

How about Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes?

Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the Earth.

Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God. ...

And so on.

Not exactly planks in a Republican platform. Not exactly Donald Rumsfeld or Dick Cheney stuff.

For some reason, the most vocal Christians among us never mention the Beatitudes. But, often with tears in their eyes, they demand that the Ten Commandments be posted in public buildings. And of course that's Moses, not Jesus. I haven't heard one of them demand that the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes, be posted anywhere.

"Blessed are the merciful" in a courtroom? "Blessed are the peacemakers" in the Pentagon? Give me a break!

~Kurt Vonnegut

Okay Doc?.....So What's The Good News?

Wed, 19 Mar 2008 05:08:00 GMT

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,339270,00.html

A German retiree is taking a hospital to court after she went in for a leg operation and got a new anus instead, the Daily Telegraph is reporting.

The woman woke up to find she had been mixed up with another patient suffering from incontinence who was to have surgery on her sphincter.

The clinic in Hochfranken, Bavaria, has since suspended the surgical team.

Now the woman is planning to sue the hospital. She still needs the leg operation and is searching for another hospital to do it.

Vonnegut's Blues For America

Tue, 18 Mar 2008 12:32:00 GMT

By Kurt Vonnegut
07 January, 2006
No matter how corrupt, greedy, and heartless our government, our corporations, our media, and our religious and charitable institutions may become, the music will still be wonderful.

If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph:

THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED
FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
WAS MUSIC
Now, during our catastrophically idiotic war in Vietnam, the music kept getting better and better and better. We lost that war, by the way. Order couldn’t be restored in Indochina until the people kicked us out.

That war only made billionaires out of millionaires. Today’s war is making trillionaires out of billionaires. Now I call that progress.

And how come the people in countries we invade can’t fight like ladies and gentlemen, in uniform and with tanks and helicopter gunships?

Back to music. It makes practically everybody fonder of life than he or she would be without it. Even military bands, although I am a pacifist, always cheer me up. And I really like Strauss and Mozart and all that, but the priceless gift that African Americans gave the whole world when they were still in slavery was a gift so great that it is now almost the only reason many foreigners still like us at least a little bit. That specific remedy for the worldwide epidemic of depression is a gift called the blues. All pop music today – jazz, swing, be-bop, Elvis Presley, the Beatles, the Stones, rock-and-roll, hip-hop, and on and on – is derived from the blues.

A gift to the world? One of the best rhythm-and-blues combos I ever heard was three guys and a girl from Finland playing in a club in Krakow, Poland.

The wonderful writer Albert Murray, who is a jazz historian and a friend of mine among other things, told me that during the era of slavery in this country – an atrocity from which we can never fully recover – the suicide rate per capita among slave owners was much higher than the suicide rate among slaves.

Murray says he thinks this was because slaves had a way of dealing with depression, which their white owners did not: They could shoo away Old Man Suicide by playing and singing the Blues. He says something else which also sounds right to me. He says the blues can’t drive depression clear out of a house, but can drive it into the corners of any room where it’s being played. So please remember that.

Foreigners love us for our jazz. And they don’t hate us for our purported liberty and justice for all. They hate us now for our arrogance.

When I went to grade school in Indian apolis, the James Whitcomb Riley School #43, we used to draw pictures of houses of tomorrow, boats of tomorrow, airplanes of tomorrow, and there were all these dreams for the future. Of course at that time everything had come to a stop. The factories had stopped, the Great Depression was on, and the magic word was Prosperity. Sometime Prosperity will come. We were preparing for it. We were dreaming of the sorts of houses human beings should inhabit – ideal dwellings, ideal forms of transportation.

What is radically new today is that my daughter, Lily, who has just turned 21, finds herself, as do your children, as does George W Bush, himself a kid, and Saddam Hussein and on and on, heir to a shockingly recent history of human slavery, to an Aids epidemic, and to nuclear submarines slumbering on the floors of fjords in Iceland and elsewhere, crews prepared at a moment’s notice to turn industrial quantities of men, women, and children into radioactive soot and bone meal by means of rockets and H-bomb warheads. Our children have inherited technologies whose by-products, whether in war or peace, are rapidly destroying the whole planet as a breathable, drinkable system for supporting life of any kind.

Anyone who has studied science and talks to scientists notices that we are in terrible danger now. Human beings, past and present, have trashed the joint.

The biggest truth to face now – what is probably making me unfunny now for the remainder of my life – is that I don’t think people give a damn whether the planet goes on or not. It seems to me as if everyone is living as members of Alcoholics Anonymous do, day by day. And a few more days will be enough. I know of very few people who are dreaming of a world for their grandchildren.

Many years ago I was so innocent I still considered it possible that we could become the humane and reasonable America so many members of my generation used to dream of. We dreamed of such an America during the Great Depression, when there were no jobs. And then we fought and often died for that dream during the second world war, when there was no peace.

But I know now that there is not a chance in hell of America becoming humane and reasonable. Because power corrupts us, and absolute power corrupts us absolutely. Human beings are chimpanzees who get crazy drunk on power. By saying that our leaders are power-drunk chimpanzees, am I in danger of wrecking the morale of our soldiers fighting and dying in the Middle East? Their morale, like so many lifeless bodies, is already shot to pieces. They are being treated, as I never was, like toys a rich kid got for Christmas.

Human beings have had to guess about almost everything for the past million years or so. The leading characters in our history books have been our most enthralling, and sometimes our most terrifying, guessers.

May I name two of them? Aristotle and Hitler.

One good guesser and one bad one.

And the masses of humanity through the ages, feeling inadequately educated just like we do now, and rightly so, have had little choice but to believe this guesser or that one.

Russians who didn’t think much of the guesses of Ivan the Terrible, for example, were likely to have their hats nailed to their heads.

We must acknowledge that persuasive guessers, even Ivan the Terrible, now a hero in the Soviet Union, have sometimes given us the courage to endure extraordinary ordeals which we had no way of understanding. Crop failures, plagues, eruptions of volcanoes, babies being born dead – the guessers often gave us the illusion that bad luck and good luck were understandable and could somehow be dealt with intelligently and effectively. Without that illusion, we all might have surrendered long ago.

But the guessers, in fact, knew no more than the common people and sometimes less, even when, or especially when, they gave us the illusion that we were in control of our destinies.

Persuasive guessing has been at the core of leadership far so long, for all of human experience so far, that it is wholly unsurprising that most of the leaders of this planet, in spite of all the information that is suddenly ours, want the guessing to go on. It is now their turn to guess and guess and be listened to. Some of the loudest, most proudly ignorant guessing in the world is going on in Washington today. Our leaders are sick of all the solid information that has been dumped on humanity by research and scholarship and investigative reporting. They think that the whole country is sick of it, and they could be right. It isn’t the gold standard that they want to put us back on. They want something even more basic. They want to put us back on the snake-oil standard.

Loaded pistols are good for everyone except inmates in prisons or lunatic asylums.

That’s correct.

Millions spent on public health are inflationary.

That’s correct.

Billions spent on weapons will bring inflation down.

That’s correct.

Dictatorships to the right are much closer to American ideals than dictatorships to the left.

That’s correct.

The more hydrogen bomb warheads we have, all set to go off at a moment’s notice, the safer humanity is and the better off the world will be that our grandchildren will inherit.

That’s correct.

Industrial wastes, and especially those that are radioactive, hardly ever hurt anybody, so everybody should shut up about them.

That’s correct.

Industries should be allowed to do whatever they want to do: bribe, wreck the environment just a little, fix prices, screw dumb customers, put a stop to competition, and raid the Treasury when they go broke.

That’s correct.

That’s free enterprise.

And that’s correct.

The poor have done something very wrong or they wouldn’t be poor, so their children should pay the consequences.

That’s correct.

The United States of America cannot be expected to look after its own people.

That’s correct.

The free market will do that.

That’s correct.

The free market is an automatic system of justice.

That’s correct.

I’m kidding.

And if you actually are an educated, thinking person, you will not be welcome in Washington, DC. I know a couple of bright seventh graders who would not be welcome in Washington, DC. Do you remember those doctors a few months back who got together and announced that it was a simple, clear medical fact that we could not survive even a moderate attack by hydrogen bombs? They were not welcome in Washington, DC.

Even if we fired the first salvo of hydrogen weapons and the enemy never fired back, the poisons released would probably kill the whole planet by and by.

What is the response in Washington? They guess otherwise. What good is an education? The boisterous guessers are still in charge – the haters of information. And the guessers are almost all highly educated people. Think of that. They have had to throw away their educations, even Harvard or Yale educations.

If they didn’t do that, there is no way their uninhibited guessing could go on and on and on. Please, don’t you do that. But if you make use of the vast fund of knowledge now available to educated persons, you are going to be lonesome as hell. The guessers outnumber you – and now I have to guess – about 10 to one.

I’m going to tell you some news.

No, I am not running for President, although I do know that a sentence, if it is to be complete, must have both a subject and a verb.

Nor will I confess that I sleep with children. I will say this, though: My wife is by far the oldest person I ever slept with.

Here’s the news: I am going to sue the Brown & Williamson Tobacco Company, manufacturers of Pall Mall cigarettes, for a billion bucks! Starting when I was only 12 years old, I have never chain-smoked anything but unfiltered Pall Malls. And for many years now, right on the package, Brown and Williamson have promised to kill me.

But I am now 82. Thanks a lot, you dirty rats. The last thing I ever wanted was to be alive when the three most powerful people on the whole planet would be named Bush, Dick and Colon.

Our government’s got a war on drugs. That’s certainly a lot better than no drugs at all. That’s what was said about prohibition. Do you realise that from 1919 to 1933 it was absolutely against the law to manufacture, transport, or sell alcoholic beverages, and the Indiana newspaper humourist Ken Hubbard said: “Prohibition is better than no liquor at all.”

But get this: The two most widely abused and addictive and destructive of all substances are both perfectly legal.

One, of course, is ethyl alcohol. And President George W Bush, no less, and by his own admission, was smashed, or tiddley-poo, or four sheets to the wind a good deal of the time from when he was 16 until he was 40. When he was 41, he says, Jesus appeared to him and made him knock off the sauce, stop gargling nose paint.

Other drunks have seen pink elephants.

About my own history of foreign substance abuse, I’ve been a coward about heroin and cocaine, LSD and so on, afraid they might put me over the edge. I did smoke a joint of marijuana one time with Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead, just to be sociable. It didn’t seem to do anything to me one way or the other, so I never did it again. And by the grace of God, or whatever, I am not an alcoholic, largely a matter of genes. I take a couple of drinks now and then and will do it again tonight. But two is my limit. No problem.

I am, of course, notoriously hooked on cigarettes. I keep hoping the things will kill me. A fire at one end and a fool at the other.

But I’ll tell you one thing: I once had a high that not even crack cocaine could match. That was when I got my first driver’s licence – look out, world, here comes Kurt Vonnegut!

And my car back then, a Studebaker as I recall, was powered, as are almost all means of transportation and other machinery today, and electric power plants and furnaces, by the most abused, addictive, and destructive drugs of all: fossil fuels.

When you got here, even when I got here, the industrialised world was already hopelessly hooked on fossil fuels, and very soon now there won’t be any left. Cold turkey.

Can I tell you the truth? I mean this isn’t the TV news is it? Here’s what I think the truth is: We are all addicts of fossil fuels in a state of denial. And like so many addicts about to face cold turkey, our leaders are now committing violent crimes to get what little is left of what we’re hooked on.

I turned 82 on November 11, 2004. What’s it like to be this old? I can’t parallel park worth a damn any more, so please don’t watch while I try to do it. And gravity has become a lot less friendly and manageable than it used to be.

When you get to my age, if you get to my age, and if you have reproduced, you will find yourself asking your own children, who are themselves middle-aged: “What is life all about?’” I have seven kids, three of them orphaned nephews.

I put my big question about life to my son the pediatrician. Dr Vonnegut said this to his doddering old dad: “Father, we are here to help each other get through this thing, whatever it is.”

ANOTHER POINTLESS POST

Mon, 17 Mar 2008 11:45:00 GMT

Paddy was driving down the street in a sweat because he had an important meeting and couldn’t find a parking place. Looking up to heaven he said, “Lord, please take pity on me. If you find me a parking place I will go to Mass every Sunday for the rest of me life and give up me Irish whiskey!”

Miraculously, a parking place appeared.

Paddy looked up again and said, “Never mind, I found one.”

Father Murphy walks into a pub in Donegal, and says to the first man he meets, “Do you want to go to heaven?” The man said, “I do, Father.” The priest said, “Then stand over there against the wall.” Then the priest asked the second man, “Do you want to go to heaven?” “Certainly, Father,” was the man’s reply.

“Then stand over there against the wall,” said the priest. Then Father Murphy walked up to O’Toole and said, “Do you want to go to heaven?” O’Toole said, “No, I don’t Father.”

The priest said, “I don’t believe this. You mean to tell me that when you die you don’t want to go to heaven?” O’Toole said, “Oh, when I die, yes; I thought you were getting a group together to go right now.”

Paddy was in New York. He was patiently waiting and watching the traffic cop on a busy street crossing. The cop stopped the flow of traffic and shouted, “Okay, pedestrians.” Then he’d allow the traffic to pass. He’d done this several times, and Paddy still stood on the sidewalk. After the cop had shouted, “Pedestrians!” for the tenth time, Paddy went over to him and said, “Is it not about time ye let the Catholics across?”

Gallagher opened the morning newspaper and was dumbfounded to read in the obituary column that he had died. He quickly phoned his best friend, Finney. “Did you see the paper?” asked Gallagher. “They say I died!!” “Yes, I saw it!” replied Finney. “Where are ye callin’ from?”

An Irish priest is driving down to New York and gets stopped for speeding in Connecticut. The state trooper smells alcohol on the priest’s breath and then sees an empty wine bottle on the floor of the car. He says, “Sir, have you been drinking?”

“Just water,” says the priest.

The trooper says, “Then why do I smell wine?”

The priest looks at the bottle and says, “Good Lord! He’s done it again!”

Walking into the bar, Mike said to Charlie the bartender, “Pour me a stiff one - just had another fight with the little woman.” “Oh yeah?” said Charlie, “And how did this one end?”

“When it was over,” Mike replied, “She came to me on her hands and knees.

“Really,” said Charles, “Now that’s a switch! What did she say?”

She said, “Come out from under the bed, you little chicken.”

TIME WARP

Fri, 14 Mar 2008 11:01:00 GMT

like Houdini in the river with a lock he couldn't see
when you think you hit the bottom then you better find the key
like Custer at the Horn when he turned around and said
"when you think you fin'lly got 'em, you're just as good as dead"

(refrain)
it's a time warp puttin' wrinkles in your skin
it's a rockabilly music make you silly in the end
it's a time warp puttin' circles on your eyes
it's a rockabilly music that's a blessing in disguise

like Ponce de Leon speakin' Spanish in the swamp
"I was lookin' for a fountain, but it's water that I want"
like Pike at the top and ev'ry other freak
"I was lookin' for a mountain, I took a little peak"

(refrain)

like Buddah at the sermon when he didn't say a word
if you think you hear a flower, it's a flower that you heard
like da Vinci on the roof with his arm in a sling,
"A man's got the power, but a bird's got the wing"

(refrain)

like Vincent Van Gogh when he chopped off his ear,
"I'd like to give her twenty, but I still gotta hear"
like Crockett at the wall lookin' back to Tennessee,
"the livin' costs you plenty, but the dyin's still for free"

EAR-WITNESS NEWS !

Thu, 13 Mar 2008 12:00:00 GMT

Now, this is the right way to start the day!

Turn up your sound and click on the website below.

This accident happened in the Dallas-Ft. Worth area and you must listen to it.

It is a phone call from a man who witnesses a car accident involving four elderly women. It was so popular when they played it on CHUM FM that they had to put it on their website.

The guy's laugh is contagious. Just close your eyes and picture what he sees.

http://www.chumfm.com/MorningShow/bits/march24.swf

Thanks Jim

A Day Without Mediocrity.....

Thu, 13 Mar 2008 11:18:00 GMT

....No, No, it's not like a day without sunshine.

It just means that Mr. Mediocrity had a quite undignified 24 hour bug.

"We are here to help each other get through this thing, whatever it is." ~Kurt Vonnegut

Sharing the Pain

Tue, 11 Mar 2008 11:47:00 GMT

By BOB HERBERT

Now that the economic crunch is reaching those near the top of the pyramid, there is finally a sense that the U.S. is facing a real crisis.

Forget about a soft landing. The stock markets continue to tumble. The dollar has weakened. The subprime mortgage debacle has morphed into a full-fledged panic. And Joe Stiglitz is telling us the war in Iraq will cost $3 trillion.

Maybe now we can stop listening to the geniuses who insisted that the way to nirvana was to ignore the broad national interest while catering to the desires of those who were already the wealthiest among us.

We have always gotten a distorted picture of how well Americans were doing from politicians and the media. The U.S. has a population of 300 million. Thirty-seven million, many of them children, live in poverty. Close to 60 million are just one notch above the official poverty line. These near-poor Americans live in households with annual incomes that range from $20,000 to $40,000 for a family of four.

It is disgraceful that in a nation as wealthy as the United States, nearly a third of the people are poor or near-poor.

Former Senator John Edwards touched on the quality of the lives of those perched precariously above the abyss of poverty in his foreword to the book, “The Missing Class: Portraits of the Near-Poor in America,” by Katherine S. Newman and Victor Tan Chen. Mr. Edwards wrote:

“When we set about fixing welfare in the 1990s, we said we were going to encourage work. Near-poor Americans do work, usually in jobs that the rest of us do not want — jobs with stagnant wages, no retirement funds, and inadequate health insurance, if they have it at all. While their wages stay the same, the cost of everything else — energy, housing, transportation, tuition — goes up.”

The economic pain and anxiety felt for so long by the poor and the near-poor has been spreading like a stain in the middle class as well. It’s hardly been a secret. But neither the Democrats nor the Republicans have stepped up to this fundamental long-term challenge, and that includes the three remaining candidates for president.

No one will tackle the crucial issue of employment in a serious way. The cornerstone of a middle-class life in America (and that means the cornerstone of the American dream) is a good job. The American dream is on life support because men and women by the millions who want very much to work — who still have in their heads the ideal of a thriving family in a nice home with maybe a picket fence — are unable to find a decent job.

For years, families have been fighting weakness on the employment front with every other option imaginable. Wives and mothers have gone to work. People have been putting in more hours and working additional jobs.

And Americans have plunged like Olympic diving champions into every form of debt they could find.

As Andrew Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union, told me some months ago: “Workers are incredibly, legitimately scared that the American dream, particularly the belief that their kids will do better, is ending.”

It is. The dream is in grave danger because the ruling elite stopped looking out for the collective interests of the society and all but stopped investing in the future. We are swimming in a vast sea of indebtedness, most of it bringing no worthwhile return.

Former Senator Bill Bradley, in a conversation the other day, described the amount of public and private indebtedness in the U.S. as “ominous.” In his book, “The New American Story,” Mr. Bradley said:

“For almost a generation, America has cheated our future and lived only in the here and now. Economic growth depends on the level of investment in both physical capital — machines, infrastructure, technology — and human capital, which consists of the combined skills and health of our work force.”

Instead of making those investments, we’ve neglected our physical and human infrastructure, squeezed the daylights out of the work force (now a fearful and demoralized lot) and tried to hide the resulting debacle behind the fool’s gold of debt and denial.

Americans save virtually nothing. They have looted the equity in their homes and driven their credit card balances to staggering heights. Meanwhile, the Bush administration has claimed colossal new standards of fiscal irresponsibility. At some point, to take just one example, someone will have to pay the $3 trillion for the war.

This craziness is not sustainable.

Without an educated and empowered work force, without sustained investment in the infrastructure and technologies that foster long-term employment, and without a system of taxation that can actually pay for the services provided by government, the American dream as we know it will expire.

RSS feed for InstantSpot site Kansas Mediocrity

OUR FOOLISH FRENZY OVER NORTH KOREA  by Victoria Samson

On Signing Statements

HYPOCRIT - YOU'RE SUCH A DICK

GOP LEADERS MOVE FROM OPPOSITION TO OBSTINACY TO HYPOCRISY

Monday, March 9, 2009 by Jim Hightower

MILITARY WISDOM

THE RETURN OF MEDIOCRITY

MORE THOUGHTS ON GOD......

IS THE UNIVERSE INTELLIGENT?

Learning To Be Silent

Nothing Exists

It Probably Always Will

Socialized Risk And Privatized Profit

Socialized Compensation

Doesn't anything socialistic make you want to throw up?

Okay Doc?.....So What's The Good News?

Vonnegut's Blues For America

ANOTHER POINTLESS POST

TIME WARP

EAR-WITNESS NEWS !

A Day Without Mediocrity.....

Sharing the Pain

OUR FOOLISH FRENZY OVER NORTH KOREA by Victoria Samson

Monday, March 9, 2009
by Jim Hightower