blight vs social darwinism...the bush legacy lives on

"i don't know what the big deal about trailers is. it's not like a hundred trailers is going to make the city any worse than it is. it's not like the city has been fixed up and repaired and these are the remaining eyesores."
edwin webb. new orleans fema trailer resident

"these trailers were meant to be temporary and not a permanent fixture. people have to assume some responsibility for their decisions."
ann duplessis. new orleams deputy chief administrative officer.

" the blight eradication program, if not done correctly, can become a poor person eradication program."
lance hill tulane university.

new orleans mayor mitch landrieu ( wasn't landrew a character in a star trek episode?) has declared war on fema trailers and delapidated houses belonging to those without means to repair them vowing to eliminate 10,000 "blighted" properties in the next three years...working from a base of five hundred dollar a day fines for non-compliance he hopes to terrorize the remaining tenants of fema trailers who haven't succumbed to any number of nasty maladies born by the shoddily built death traps out of their homes...the full weight of the law on the backs of the poor...a position with a storied history in the empire...a useful tactic when dealing with the multitudes from the lower classes..."slum clearance" they used to call it when i was younger...shuffle the poor to outlying districts...out of sight..it is a program that bears a striking rsemblance to the one guo linlong used to bludgeon entire districts of beijing out of exisitance to make way for the "development" promised by the 2008 olympics...if mitch does it right he can eliminate the poorest sectors of new orleans' population and free up large areas of real estate for "development" turning the rundown slum into a showplace of "growth and recovery"...at least until the levees fail again and the new development becomes a toxic sump... then what?...no need for a diverse mixture of people in new orleans...nothing organic or with any local color...we need a new destination like las vegas...a plastic resort that's all veneer and facade held together by greed...10,000 lots is too huge a chunk of real estate for the poor to be squattting on...open it up to investment capital... anyone bilding there will have to pretend to be dutch and ignore the fact that it's below sea level...nothing like standing on beal street and watching the barges on the mississippi go by over your head to destroy an illusion of safety.

i have and probably will not monetize my blogs...but google has adds all over the pages leading into it after i sign in...especially the page that pops up after i post one ( the one that says "your post was successfully published"...after i posted this blog the ads were themed by its content..."be prepared for disasters. get a satellite communications system" or "get an emergency response degree" (spea?) or my favorite since it combines this post with the thrust of an entirely different blog "survival seed vault $99. 50,000 + seeds"...do you supose they're gathering information about me? what have they told local 20 that they don't already know?

the mail is endlessly entertaining

computer generated mailings are just great...can't think of anything i like better than the cold antiseptic feel of an ersatz personal message from a manipulative whore that turns up in my mailbox disguised as a friendly invitation to a chat...pete doesn't respond to my email queries anymore...surely red flags wave in abundance when the robots pick up anything i send...and he certainly wouldn't include me on any list of people he'd personally invite (at least i hope not...it would force a painful reappraisal of my political worldview)...but his computer will crank out an anonymous invitation...i got the "union worker" version with some blather about job creation and economy rebuilding...complete with a union bug to show it was printed by union labor even if it was addressed by as scab ( okay...that's a bit harsh...but i bet his staff isn't unionized)...will i be going? well...he'll be in my hometown on the 13th of next month...although why you'd have a town hall meeting while city court is in session is beyond me ( after a few hours of rumination on the vagaries of life and the low-life ethics of politicians the idea of a captive audience presents itself with startling clarity...no-one leaves without the judges say so and the judge is a whore too)...perhaps traffic violators are an untapped demographic...the coming "swing" voters...there's a picture of old pete on the mailing as he "...reviews construction of the 109th avenue I-65 interchange in crown point...i suppose to highlight the dynamism of his earmarked projects ( note the proletarian hardhat...i haven't seen this bozo in a baseball cap yet, but it must have happened at one point or another...frightening thought...like dick nixon in bermuda shorts and a floral print shirt)...so i thought i'd throw in a photo of the reality of his rust belt district...much of what made it is deeply unattractive

when the going gets tough rat bastards gouge deeper

just about the time i think i'm done with all the blogging form this long weekend the united states mail arrives and sets off a whole new round of bullshit...the organization i belong to which alleges to represent me in contractual matters but is instead mired in late 19th century thinking on the condition of workers and their needs ( and so fucking politically naive that they think they have friends in politicians...con artists that they are you'd think they'd recognize the hamiltonian system for the ponzi scheme it is...but there it is) has communicated with me at a distance ( perhaps my attitude precedes me) about their need to raise my monthly dues by eleven bucks because of "...a constitutional change in the formula going from 2 times the average wage to 2 1/2 times the average wage..." i'm sure the bastards meant hourly wage but you never know when you're dealing with grifters ( and when, exactly, was this change in the formula made? was it presented to the membership as anything except a surprise? i didn't vote on it so did they do this in the politburo...or a plennum of the politburo? it would never have passed a general vote)...perhaps a freudian slip giving away their terminal ineptitude, mendacity, and avarice...eleven bucks a month...one hundred and thirty-two dollars a year...the cost of the yearly baseball cap and the monthly neweletter just went up approximately 23%... i will have paid the union a shade over $4600 this year for dues and insurance ( i am not complaining about the insurance costs...i use it and i am certain i am not paying the brunt of the cost through my contributions and co-pays...but whose fault is it that health care is such a racket? mine? hardly...and its not my fault that obamaland is such a political insider that he lied through his teeth about health care reform...or hope for that matter...another whore on the make) and now they want more...we didn't get a contract raise this year...and i understand that too...times are tough and we're all hunkered down and getting along as best we can ( except the top 1%...time to expropriate)...we also all know my views on the long term viability of the system as it was in 2007...no need to beat a dead empire(for now)...but these shits want a 23 +% raise for their peculiar brand of non-advocacy...at some point it is time to say enough you degenerate scum...this isn't what the wagner act was supposed to be like...but then these clowns are a craft union burdened by the insane "business unionism" that that cretin john r. commons systematized and made union leadership businessmen not advocates...syndicalism anyone?

"2010, the year the shoppers came back"

according to the site i found the "not hiring" photo at the sign is wired to a fence at a construction project in whoretown and there's a lot of hype about "strong retail sales this shopping season" out there and a stock market that is inching its way back to a bubble...some question as to which to believe...right now crude oil is $91.41 a barrel ( a price reflected at the gas pump) which is about six dollars a barrel above the point at which energy costs begin to have a negative impact on economic growth (ha!) and yet the "energy sector" of the stock market will react favorably to higher prices and may drag the rest of the market up with it...a testament to the speculative nature of the market and its profound disconnect with the economy that the rest of us live in...the housing market is till dead as a coffin nail...although commercial building goes on...why i cannot say...what percentage of commercial real estate is empty these days? a quick jaunt up old ridge road and through the "old" business section of hobart ( not the wholly artificial monstrosity of "greater hobart"...a concept that is as frighteneing as it is preposterous...pretentious fools) finds no fewer than eleven empty buildings from the old corey brother's bakery to what used to be epperson's furniture...extrapolate that out across the country and it could represent many millions of square feet standing empty...so have things gotten better for the bottom 99% of the econmic hierarchy ( where i live and work) or have we just adapted to reduced circumatances and is this holiday shopping season anomolous? or are we just hearing a rush of positive wishful thinking from the economic elite, its clients, advisors , and the stenographers that print what they say because their world view insists that things will get "better"...that "growth" will return because their thinking is informed by their desires? i don't know ( which is a phrase that should be in the vocabulary of the yahoo punditry but isn't because then their usefulness as propagandists for wealth would be over...tom friedman is such a transparent ass)...but the bright, shiny, happy cant that is spewing out of yellow rags like the wsj and the kipplinger letter does not square up with the reality facing the people i work and live with...someone is deeply mistaken.

there's hope for the bushes...

"this is a family that once had the presidncy and two senate seats, and now they're down to the mayor of santa monica."
darrell west of the brookings institution on the lack of kennedys in federal office.

one less plutocratic family taking part in the hamiltonian ponzi scheme those fools call government...i am disconsolate...don't know how i will sleep tonight...one can only hope that any other pompous shits with pretentions to dynasty enjoy the same sort of political longevity with the same results...giddy with arrogance the kennedys self-destructed in a blaze of drunken hubris and crimial behavior that was swept under the rug because they were wealthy...there is always a segment of the population suffering from stockholm syndrome that will identify with and love their oppressors....worshiping their incredible self-absorbtion...richard nixon did a fair job of erasing any traces of the low-life adulterer jkf from the white house...all that's left to do is hose down teddy's senate seat, fumigate his old office and hope the whole rotten edifice of the late empire collapses from the weight of its own corruption before another goddamned bush gets into any sort of office higher than dog catcher or water commissioner

we the jury...

part IV

the bailiffs leaned the flow charts, graphs, poster boards, and blown-up aerial views of the crime scene from google earth against a wall of the jury room, then dumped a surprising ammount of evidence on the table...including a .380 semi-automatic pistol (unloaded) and a $1200 receipt for a golden retriever puppy and a puppy starter kit form pet smart ( while the defendant was on the stand i submitted a written question asking that a dollar ammount be placed on the defendant's dog so i could compare costs under item 4 of the defense of necessity...the defense counsel objected and my question was never asked...so much for the attorney as a disinterested conduit of information)...the bailiffs shut the door and we were on our own...left to contemplate the pile of fact buried in distortions on the table...guilt or innocence would have to wait though...a much more contentious issue lay between the jury and a verdict...someone had to be the jury foreman and read out the verdicts in open court...the two women catagorically refused to even consider it and whatever their reasons no-one argued...another juror took the same route refusing to be nominated or elected...another lived in the city where the crime had taken place "i drive those streets every day, i'm out."...another copped the plea that he had been the foreman of the jury he had served on five years ago...sensing a consensus building i obviated the debate by saying i would do it and we turned our attention to the evidence and the proceedings...it had been a tedious day and we all had noticed the judge zoning out...it had been a non-linear affair...my notes show that in one hour during the friday session of the trial there were thirty objections and counsel was asked to approach the bench twenty-six times...hideously disjointed..no continuity...but that was what we had to work with...we were hesitant to convict on cruelty to animal charges...the events took place on the defendant's property, his dog was tethered and could not escape, the witnesses agreed that the dogs were interacting even if they disagreed about how the dogs were behaving...no-one showed me that the defendant didn't believe his dog was being harmed and property rights seem sacrosanct under our legal system...the prosecution had not shown beyond reasonable doubt that the defendant had not fulfilled the requirements of a defense of necessity on this charge and we voted to aquit...criminal mischief was another matter...while we wouldn't convict someone for defending his property we disagreed strongly with how he defended it...part of criminal mischief is behaving recklessly and either way you cut it this was reckless...one side of this argument mainatined that the defendant had pulled his dog back by its tether at which point the golden retriever sat down and the defendant shot it in the head while it looked up at him with its puppydog eyes...the defendant said he shot the dog while it was biting his left arm...if that was the case he was fortunate that the dog's motion didn't spoil his aim causing him to shoot himself in the arm or worse...or knocking him off balance causing him to shoot a by stander...discharging a firearm in a residential area is serious stuff and if he did it while being attacked it was perhaps understandable but still reckless...on the otherhand if he pulled his dog back and shot the retriever while it was sitting there looking at him that struck me as deeply sociopathic...either way it seemed some sort of supervision was in order so we voted to convict...we knocked on the door and told the bailiff we had reached our verdicts...the newspaper said we deliberated for two hours which seemed too long to me...but when i sat down and worked it out it was the case...we talked longer than i thought...we were led back into the courtroom and the judge asked who the foreman was...i waived the verdict sheets in response...not too respectful but i got away with it..the judge told me to stand and directed the defendant and his counsel to stand as well and then i read out the verdicts...the judge subverted the other juror's efforts to avoid a public statement by asking each one in turn ( including me...the verdicts had to be unanimous) if they agreed with what i had read out...they did...the judge then told the defendant to make an appointment with the probation department before sentencing the next month neatly telegraphing judicial intent...the judge, prosecutors, and defense counsel then thanked us for our service and we were dismissed...i got a check a few weeks later for $104.80 for time and mileage...i assume the other juror's received close to the same...that would be about $733.50 for all of us...i spent mine on the garden at iun...no idea what the other's went for...it didn't cost much psychologically...all it did was validate my viewpoint about a number of issues...but i can't help wonder what it cost me as a taxpayer and a citizen.

before the law

franz kafka spent his adult life writing nightmares about authority and its impenetrable nature...no-one was guilty in his stories so no-one was safe...inexplicably i found myself on the side of authority and empowered by a benevolent but periodically insane government to determine guilt or innocence...i was deeply uncomfortable...the truth may have been lurking in the courtroom somewhere but nobody was making much of an effort to find it...instead they were spending their time trying to influence me and my fellows on the panel by twisting events into wry shapes...human memory is a faulty sort of thing...when you remember something do you remember the event or the last time you remembered it? certainly the first prosecution witness friday morning had a horrible time with it...utterly contradicting a deposition he had given a few months before and insisting that the defendant's porch light had been on...gleefully the defense lawyer pointed out that there was a power outage at the time and with equal joy he asked every prosecution witness thereafter if the power had been out at the time of the incident...every one of them said yes...everyone that was called to the stand had an opinion of the defendant...the old people called as character witnesses by the defense ( they could hardly have been anything else since they were all asleep or "on the other side of the house" when the events unfolded ) all found him to be a good neighbor and a loving son...which for them he may have been...but the younger folks ( especially the women) loathed him and found him a bit creepy...clearly his next door neighbor hated him and she didn't hold back...and oddly enough she owned a golden retriever too...sparking a good ammount of suppostion amongst the jurors that the defandant didn't shoot the dog he thought he was shooting...equally unsettling were the photos of the festering wounds the defendant's dog erupted in three weeks after the events forcing him to seek treatment for his dog from another vet...she said that she couldn't estimate when the wounds were inflicted since they were well along in healing by the time she saw the dog...inflicted...when the defense, either as a pre-planned tactic or a sudden flash of desperation put the defendant on the stand he said that his dog had changed since the attack...he was listless...didn't obey commands and was avoiding his master...could those festering wounds erupting so long after the alleged attack be why the dog was reluctant to get too close? i had visions of lancets and vials of bacillus...in this twisted and distorted behavioral sump i was supposed to discern truth ( certainly not beauty ) from its competing versions...i have been called a cynic and this certainly called for a healthy dose of both it and skepticism just to survive the relentless bullshit...from seven in the morning until five thirty in the evening with an hour for lunch it droned on until the multiplicity of truth had exhausted itself and the rest was left to the seven of us dazed and abused peers...everyone was bludgeoned by the monotony of the proceedings as the judge launched into the lengthy final instruction to the jury before we retired to deliberate...in all the jumbled leagalese i distinctly remember the judge looking up from the bench to admonish us to make our decision based only on the witnesses' testimony and that we should be careful to remember that anything the defense attorney or the prosecutors had said did not constitute evidence..so the guys who asked the questions that set the tone of the testimony that framed the debate that the jurors were about to have were irrelevant...without agenda...and with no real interest in this case other than to act as conduits for the information we were to use in our decision...i found myself ransacking my psyche for untapped reserves of cynicism.

perry mason was never like this...

justice? part II

1:30 and the show began...the seven of us were sworn in as a jury and the defendant was introduced as a professional ( i was concerned that he might not accept me as a peer with abbie leering crazily from my tee shirt)...and the scales fell form my eyes...we were a jury in a misdemeanor court because the defendant had the means to hire counsel and counsel felt that the defendant would get a better break with a jury than with the judge...much easier to fool the laity with with a bunch of trite emotionalism and the proper ammount of legalese...it seems that in august of 2007 ( the wheels of justice grind slowly...a bailiff who was entering law school in the fall told me this was purposeful...things were done slowly and deliberately to minimize rash and hasty decisions...i didn't believe it then and i don't now...dockets full of specious lawsuits in a post-modern age of defered responsibility is more like it...but the bailiff was part of the system and like most of us probably not too objetive about things we are close to)the defendant shot and killed a neighbor's dog, alleging that the dead dog was mauling his...the owner of the dead dog and handful of eye witnesses took exception with that and the defendant was charged with cruelty to animals ( much was made of the word "beat" in this trial) and criminal mischief...both class a misdemeanors carrying fines and the possibility of up to a year in jail for each count...opening statments were rhetorical masterpieces...prosecutors set out to prove the defendant was stark raving mad with fear on the night of the shooting while the defense portrayed him as a loving son ( middle-aged and still living with mom? all sorts of bells whistles and red flags) and doting dog owner who had been victimized by a raging lone wolf of a golden retriever who was wandering the post-storm ( there had been a doozie and the power was out...a significant factor in all the ensuing confusion and disjointed testimony) chaos in a snarling neutered frenzy of blood-lust...i surmised the truth ( if, indeed, you can find that in a courtroom) lay somewhere between the two extremes..after the opening statments there was a recess so the parties could set up their displays, flow charts, graphs, aerial photographs, and dog obediance awards ( don't laugh...they used all that stuff and more) and figure out how they were going to pitch somethign so idiotic as a jury trial in misdemeanor court to some plebes off the street.

the defendant was charged with cruelty to animals and criminal mischief stemming from the shooting death of a golden retriever and was holding to a defense of necessity...the judge explained that the defense of necessity was comprised of a number of specific conditions:
1.) there was an emergency situation that required action.
2.) there was no reasonable alternative to the action taken.
3.) that the actor acted in good faith and belief that the action taken was the only thing to do.
4.) that the damge done by the act was equal to or less than the damage that the emergency would have done.
5.) that the actor believed their actions to be objectively reasonable.

the judge went on to explain that the burden of proof rested entirely on the prosecution...all the defense need do was show the existence of reasonable doubt (that phrase will be forever tainted for me...doubt...reasonable or otherwise...was what this whole clusterfuck was about in the end) of the prosecution's evidence to avoid conviction...conversely all the prosecution need do was to show that the defense did not adhere to ANY ONE of the five facets of the defense of necessity to disprove the defense and convict the defendant...the prosecution led off the opening arguments...without the rhetorical frills it boiled down to the fact, uncontested by the defense, that the defendant had shot the dog one time with a .380 semi-automatic pistol, killing it instantly...that the defendant made inconsistent statements to the police...and that the defendant's dog was uninjured by the attack all rendering the claim of defense of necssity unreasonable.

the defense opened by calling the police investigation incomplete...secondly they noted that the events in question occured at around 11:30 pm during a neighborhood wide power outage following a storm which made the testimony of the prosecution's eye witnesses suspect...they pointed out that the defendant's dog was restrained on his property with an approximately twenty-five foot long tether...the defense contended that the golden retriever was roaming the neighborhood freely in a aggressive state due to the sever weather and that the defendant shot the interloper to save his own dog's life.

with opening arguments out of the way thew prosecution began calling witnesses...they started with what i found to be the most damaging testimony against the defense...they called the defendant's one time friend and long time veterinarian to his dog to the stand..he stated that the defendant brought his dog to his office in august 2007 stating that his dog had been attacked the night before and that he wanted a careful examination for wounds conducted...the defendant's dog was taken to an examination room by the vet's assitant for a thorough check...the defendant had also brought the golden retriever's body along...the authorities would not dispose of it and the health department was demanding that it be tested for rabies (dispite the presence of a rabies vaccination tag on the dead dog's collar)..the vet removed the dead dog's head and prepared it for shipment to indianapolis...meanwhile the vet's assitant came back with the defendant's dog and said she had found no wounds anywhere on the dog...the defendant balked at this and insisted the vet himself examine the dog...the vet said he put the dog on an examining table and conducted a minute search for wounds discovering none...the defendant then angrily demanded that his dog be put on a broad spectrum anti-biotic as a prophylactic measure.

next the prosecution called the vet's assitant...she stated that the defendant reacted angrily to her assertion that his dog had no wounds and that when he and the vet did a second exam he was, "frantic to find some wounds."she was then asked about the status of the dead dog and she replied that he was killed by a gunshot to the head...at that point one of the prosecutors asked if,"...a gunshot wound was consistent with the sort of wound you would expect to see as a result of a dogfight?" no doubt he meant to bring out the point that there was no way the dog could have received a gunshot wound form anything other than a human...but no-one on the jury perceived it that way...the answer was so self-evident that the question came off as jaw-droppingly surreal...of course it wasn't consistent with wounds you'd expect from a dog fight...overcoming, but not masking her incedulity, the assitant answered with a simple "no"

that took us to 5:30 and the judge called an adjournment until 7:00 the next morning...our instructions were fairly lengthy..we were admonished not to talk to anyone about the case ( right) including fellow jurors...we were chosen because we were thought to be unbiased and unfamiliar with the case ( well...i was unbiased about the case but not he process...justice may not be a commodity for sale but wealth certainly changes the mechanisms by which it is dispensed...this was proof of that)we were not to watch any television reports on the case ( this made even the judge smile breifly) listen to radio reports, read newspapers, do research on the case on the internet or in library files...if anyone attempted to talk to us about the case we were to report it to a bailiff on our return the next day..we were admonished not to have any contact with the defendant, his counsel, or the prosecutors and report any attempt by them to speak to us...with that the bailiffs hustled us out of the courtroom, took our JUROR buttons and showed us the door before the judge recessed the rest of the room...friday would be a much longer day.

justice?

part I of a true story about being on a jury late last winter

i got to the courthouse a little after 7 am on thursday morning and the sheriff's deputy at the security desk questioned my being there for jury duty. "that's on monday morning." well...no...they split the jury pool and told us to report on thursday. so she went and asked her supervisor who told her to let me go in so she ran me through the metal detector and gave me directions. of course no-one else was there yet so i plopped down on one of those damned hard wooden benches that institutions provide so you'll know your are in the presence of power and don't get too fucking comfortable or it'll be too bad for you... i slouched down and glared at passers-by to pass the time...other moaning prospective jurors began to trickle in and by about ten to eight there were quite a few...something over thirty...i never got an accurate count...at eight they took us into the courtroom to begin filling out paperwork in triplicate one for the judge one for the defense and one for the prosecution...a bit of overheard conversation between the harshly blond bailiff and a civillian trying not to be a juror established that the jury pool had been split because a jury trial in this court was a rarity...in fact this was the first one this year..."after all you don't usualy have a jury trial in a misdemenaor court"...that got my attention...a jury trial in a misdemeanor dcourt? why?...after the paperwork was done we saw a piece of propaganda about the inalienable right to a jury trial...high school civics in action...that killed another twenty minutes...then we waited..a bit after nine the prosecutors the defendant and the defense lawyer strolled in...once they were seated the judge came in and began the process of empanelment...it was to be a six person jury with an alternate so they called the first seven victims up and started asking questions like "do you own a pet or any handguns?" and "are you a member of an animal rights organization?" and "are you a vegetarian?"...there must have been a purpose for that juxtaposition of questions...people did their damndest to get out of that jury...radical peta members were crawling out of the cheap woodwork along with die-hard hunters and voracious meat eaters...the prosecution dismissed a doctor with two goldfish and the defense got rid of four animal rights extremists...two of the first seven remained in the box and five more went in...all sorts of questions..."have you or a member of your family or a close personal friend ever been the victim of a crime?" "have you or a family member or a close personal friend ever been charged with and convicted of a crime including driving under the influence?" four of those five were dismissed...i was in the next four to go up and try as i might to rant about the bias towards wealth of the system i somehow remained in the box when only one of my group were dismissed...stupidly i had given one of the prosecutors an acceptably cogent definition of reasonable doubt...my theatrics ripped jeans and abbie hoffman tee shirt were useless after that...the next woman up was chosen as an alternante and at ten forty-five the judge announced "we have a panel" and we adjourned for lunch until one thirty...this set the pattern for the entire trial which experienced more down time than court time...lunch was free but the catch ( aside form the jury business) was we had to eat at the courthouse cafeteria...i always feel threatened by institutional food and for good reason...the antibiotics i was taking for my mangled hand ( industrial accident removed a portion of my left index finger) were already causing some gastric discomfiture...the courthouse food rendered it into full blown distress...we were pinned with huge orange buttons that said JUROR in large black block letters and they turned us into instant pariahs...people fell over themselves avoiding us as we walked down the hallways...quickly cutting corners...hugging the walls...ducking into restrooms...no-one wanted to be accused of jury tampering...which in itself is odd...it's lake county indiana after all and jury rigging is a hallowed tradition amongst the legal fratenity dating back to the time when the governor of indiana offered the county to illinois at a fire sale price (which was refused at which the governor simply wished the damned palce would slide off into the lake)...after we filled our trays the bailiff led us down to an empty table near the back of the cafeteria...as we were about to sit down he pointed to the enclosed smoking area and asked "do any of you smoke?" before we could answer he looked directly at me and said "i mean cigarettes...you guys with your marijuana charges...if they ever legalize it or if i retire i'm gonna try it just to see what it's all about." i was stunned into silence...it was turning weird...and it was only a foretaste

echo

"we're in a better position to give our forces in afghanistan the support and resources they need to complete their mission. we are making considerable gains toward our military objectives."
obamaland 12-16-2010

"the summary...acknowledged that the gains are fragile and could easily be undone unless more progress is made in hunting down insurgents operating from havens in pakistan."
n y times article on a review of u s strategy for the war in afghanistan. 12-16-2010

"for five years neither the united states or south vietnam has moved against these enemy sanctuaries because we did not wish to violate the territory of a neutral nation. these communist occupied territiories contain major base camps, training sites, logisitic facilities, weapons and ammunition factories, air strips, and prisoner of war compounds. tonight american and south vietnamese units will attack the headquarters for the entire communist military operation. this is not an invasion of cambodia. the areas in which these attacks will be launched are completely occupied and controlled by north vietnamese forces. our purppose is not to occupy these areas. once enemy forces are driven out of these sanctuaries and their military supplies are destroyed we will withdraw."
richard m nixon on the invasion of cambodia. 30 april 1970

" the british first marched up the khyber pass in 1839, on their way to the first afghan war, which was to end in disaster three years later with the massacre of every soldier save one, a dr. william brydon who lived to tell the story. the british came back up the pass in 1878 and again were forced by the afghans to withdraw. the graves of british soldiers killed in the second afghan war lie near the masjid mosque by the top of the pass. each time the british lost hundreds of men just fighting their way through khyber territory, controlled by the afridis, a tribal branch of the of the pathans who since antiquity have served the function of 'guardians of the pass.' in 1897 the british had to dispatch forty thousand troops to this area just to quell and afridi uprising and regain control of the pass."
from "soldiers of god" by robert d kaplan p. 82

"...the makers of this empire saw themselves not only as top dogs but also the best of all breeds."
from "the dust of empires"by karl e mayer. p xv

i often wonder what mechanism it is that clouds the minds of the elite in control of the government/economy ( they are both the same thing...hamilton saw to that...they may deny there is any statist planning...and that may be true...except the defense budget...when the head of the n y fed is a former partner in goldman-sachs you don't need a cabal of secret planners...common interest will see to a common theme) and makes them think i am stupid...i am not a youngster anymore and i have heard all this "for public consumption" media propagandizing before..."the light at the end of the tunnel" is always just in reach if we have a bit more faith in the wisdom of our leaders and trust that they have more information than we do and are more qualified to digest and act on it...life is emperical and richard m nixon taught me alot about the difference between what politicians say and what they actually do and where they rank in the comparative intelligence department... i am weary of being fed blatant untruths by arrogant politicians who seem to think i am incapable of discernment so let me indulge in some rebuttal.
1. the empire is broke and getting broker by the day. soon it may not be able to bring its forces home much less provide them with "the support and resouces they need to complete their mission."
2. someone needs to take a critical look at exactly what that "mission" is.
3. "violating the territory of a neutral nation" seldom ends well a. kent state b. pol pot. c. the brits were in afghanistan mostly because they did not want the tsar there. the soviets ended ten years of imperial hijinks there in 1989 and in three years they had epically collapsed into yeltsin and then further into the "managed democracy" of putinism...so much for empire...this one is next.
4. believing your own propaganda about your alleged exceptionalism seldom ends well either...the list is far to long to go into...just think of the arrogant, hubris laden freaks you know in your own life and imagine them with nuclear weapons.
i will say once again...if those young people are fighting and dying to protect me from ossama and his ilk, bring them home and i will take my chances...they have a right to life that isn't brutalized because you fooled them into believing you represent good, truth, and beauty.

the next time i go off on a rant and start caling them scumsucking whores and degenerate bastards bear in mind there are real reasons to do so..i am dead serious about the lake of fire.

macro-parasitism

ah mailcall! it's usually really mundane junk mail and the inescapable bills...no damn body writes letters anymore....there are bright spots occasionally...but mostly it's crap...anyway...last friday one of my myriad daughters was involved in an auto accident...rear-ended near to home...a trip to the er for mom and i, but fortunately nothing serious ( one of my several sons-in-law was rear-ended friday as well...nothing serious there either...we were fortunate ) this accident was clearly not my daughter's responsiblity....she was stopped at a light, the car behind here was slammed into and pushed into her car so she's off the hook fiscally...so where's this leading? i came home to a mail box overflowing with mail and when i got into the house what did i find? harper and rogers attorneys at law, blackburn and green attorneys for injured people, craig, kelly, and ( oh i love this) faultless injury attorneys, bratcher and vanderground,pc. attorneys at law, justice on wheels education and saftey division of sevenish law, , and ken nunn law office...lawyers from merrilville to bloomington all looking to represent my daughter in an injury lawsuit...appalling...horrible...utterly dysfunctional...symptomatic of a sclerotic legal system that manufactures business for lawyers and simply must be replete with "something for nothing" fraud...how many lawyers were there in imperial rome? not as many as in indiana i imagine...a bleak prospect presents itself when pecuniary considerations are elevated to the highest good...avarice as a first principle is bound to complicate relationships and when everything you do can potentially lead to a lawsuit there's not going to be a free exchange of much of anything...bolt the doors and tune in the new season of reality shows...if you want something order it online and let the delivery people take the risks...it's not safe out there anymore

n y times style magazine

fontainbleau-miami beach red door spas
waldorf astoria nordstom
chanel the gap (old logo)
banana republic bloomingdale's
tommy hilfiger gucci
target hermes
j crew victorinox
ll bean yves saint laurent
eileen fisher cartier
louis vutton perry ellis
a wide variety of alcoholic beverages and more

i get the n y times sub-premiun content by email every day but i usually buy the sunday edition just to have the artifact in my hands and to get a fuller feel for what the paper of record thinks is important in the late empire beyond providing a pulpit for that fool friedman...besides the normal abundance of advertizing this week's edition has the "style" magazine with the aged mick jagger leering form the cover...190 glossy pages of advertizing and idolatry for the likes of old mick, the kardshians, the jenners, corice arman, maggie gyllenhaal, and an article about julian assagne by mafia maven misha glenny whose ponderous "the balkans" set the craft of southeastern european history back a generation...and the whole thing positively reeks of an yves saint laurent scent sample called, unless someone is kidding, " la nuit de l'homme"...i am weary of the consumerist utopia passing itself off as news/entertainment/culture...there has to be a way to transcend this that does not involve a retreat to a hermitage or into the arms of the clergy...some shred of a culture out there that does not judge people with a grossly materialist or pietistic yardstick...going by the times you'd have to think that this is a pipe dream but i haven't done any of that in years...i refuse to stop looking...fuck these people.

halliburton = corporate innocence

"nigeria's anti-corruption police said they plan to file charges against former vice president dick cheney in a $180 million bribery case involving a former unit (kbr) of the oil services firm halliburton. ' we are filing charges against cheney,' said femi babfemi a commission spokesman.
n y times 12-2-2010

"an affront to justice."
halliburton

a pale and unsteady dick cheney, squinting in the feeble late autumn sunshine as he emerged from the shadow government's bunker nestled in the pines of east texas, was hustled aboard an armored humvee for the first leg of a trip that will end in the squalid prison complex located in central lagos after the obama administration caved in to repeated demands from nigeria for the former vice president's extradition. "i have no time for this," said the current shadow comptroller and keeper of the lehman brothers corporate gold card. "we are struggling to create and maintain a shadow deficit comperable to that of the federal government so there can be a seamless exchange of toxic assets when the transition to an appointed government comes, and these yahoos are beefing about a measly $180 million. let them try to get inside bernake's head to divine the feds next bonehead move...i've had to change the batteries in my defribulator six times in the last three days...it's killing me!" an unnamed nigerian source said, " the whole thing could be cleared up with a large bag of uncut, hundred carat diamonds and a few polo ponies but the bastards are too damn cheap. we would have some economic freedom and they could write it all off in that damn deficit project they keep bitching about...wim/win...but they sem to think it's too small time." before boarding the shadow government's stealth lear jet at dallas/fort worth international the former vp was upbeat. "don't worry...once we get them into court we will flog them like mules..i have six high-powered attorneys, g. gordon liddy, and a flight bag full of bolivian blue flake cocaine...we're unbeatable!" looking out across the wellwishers who had gathered to chant obscenities and throw stones cheney said, "and when i get back i'm going to pound down a doezen cold ones and go quayle hunting."

pragmatic naturalism

"this disclosure is not just an attack on america's foreign policy interests. it is an attack on the international community."
hillary clinton on wikileaks 11-29-2010

a couple of things leap to mind here...what are "america's foreign policy interests"? saddam and manuel noriega both played their parts in those "interests" at one time...but were jettisoned when the priorities of the "interests" changed and their usefulness was done...so america obviously has no permanent friends...only permanent interests...a series of "goals in view" to borrow a phrase from john dewey's ethical system ( the blog title...just so you know)...no objective good or bad...just relativist goals and situational ethics that shift from good to bad to good...whatever works for empire...if you can help you're our friend...get in the way and some sort of invasion, arrest, coup, execution is what's next...whatever is necessary to clear a path to the current goals...this has been america's foreign policy for at least a century and it still is the foundation of how "diplomacy" works...i have been perusing some of those cables and they shine a light on this philosphical viewpoint...the government talks alot about freedom and transparency when they are pointing fingers...no stomach for the truth about their own behaviors...history is rank with hired bullshit...never trust anything but primary sources....that's what these cables are...have a look before the goons shut them down...this is what freedom looks like...the real stuff...not the distortions the media feed you...we live in interesting times.


tuesday morning 5:45 am

i've just been reading a cable about the honduran coup last june...the u s has recognized the govrernment of porfiro lobo as legitimate ( not the original usurper
roberto micheletti ) yet the cable at the time clearly labels manuel zelaya's removal as "illegal and unconstitutional"...just one more central american military junta disguised as civillian...nothing new about the u s having a military client in central america...and no sense rocking the boat by pointing out that the honduran constitution says removal of the president is a judicial matter, not a legislative or military one...we've caused enough grief there, right? political pragmatism trumps freedom and legality in "diplomacy" again...hillary toes the monroe doctrine line.

it's the reason for the season...

"it remains to be seen for the consumer just how much spend they have left in them."
chris donnelly from accenture consulting.

....and don't let those religious fanatics tell you differently...their minds are clouded by superstition...out of curiosity i counted the advertizments in this week's sunday new york times newspaper and it is as crammed with ads for cyber monday as the spam folders in my email boxes...three hundred and seven with sixty seven full page adds ( mostly in lurid color) including a six page extravaganza from the new york times store with models of whaling ships, baseballs autographed by n y yankees past and present and all sorts of self-promoting publications and front pags of newspapers of yore ( you might want one from the day of your birth...then again perhaps not)...the only section that had any real dearth of ads was the op-ed section...but that's an advertizement for a particular world view in and of itself shot through with a condescending elitist slant that includes the ravings of the ever confused thomas l. friedman and which can largely be discounted as bullshit...then again, anything that includes the ravings of that fool can be discounted as bullshit...try to read a book of his without lofting across the room every few pages sometime...unless you are dimwitted as he is you can't do it...anyway...it is the holiday season so get out there and do your part for retail sales...those poor fucking sods have had it bad the past few years so throw them a bone...you need a plasma tv anyway and the recovery is pretty much a fiction concocted by wealth and politicians to reinforce the world view they perceive with their heads up their asses unless you jokers start spending...so take that orchard bank credit card you got to "rebuild" your credit and max it out for god and country...you owe it to yourself.

i see the likes of kim kardashian, khloe kardashian, lady gag-a, david lachapelle, justin timberlake, serena williams, elijah wood, and host of other second tier and even unranked celebrities and dregs from rality tv are going to stop twittering and posting on facebooks until thier fans donate $1 million for aids research in honor of world aids day...well...researching a cure for disease and helping people hold on to those they love is fine with me and i will fin a suitable way to participate...as far as these parasites being "dead" in cyberland until they are redeemed by their idolaters i'm inclined to think it would be better to donate $2 million to keep them "dead"...they are as nothing to me beyond a tiresome annoyance...it is why this blog is no longer on myspace and why i catagorically refuse to use yahoo! as a home page...i wonder if we could interest the whores in boycotting whoretown until all the greasy paper bags we can find are full of hundred dollar bills...that would be a worthy cause.

late empire follies
11-29-2010

as "tail gunner" joe lieberman takes the lead in the congress's sclerotic attack on wiki leaks for proving what anyone with a brain knows about the theory and practice of "diplomacy" in the late empire i can already hear the voices of armed reaction behind him howling...this sort of knee-jerk reactionary crap will make life unhealthy for many as the empire declines further and tries to maintain a public posture laughably out of balance with its actual influence...the third world is learning mandarin chinese, that collapse isn't nearly as visible as the end of the "american" century...but they should spend their time working on re-establishing a local agricultural base to feed themselves with rather than pandering to an empire that cannot sustain itself even before it gets started...none of this will matter in a hundred years..or, at least, a century will give it some perspective...right now every yahoo dingbat with a political axe to grind is going to sieze on this horrible act of some misguided liberalr do-gooders and beat their real or perceived enemies with it...we live in interesting times.

history with a purpose

"efforts to reduce insurgent capacities such as safe havens and logistic support originating in pakistan and iran have not produced measurable siccess."
bi-annual miltary report on the conflict in afghanistan 11-23-2010

obviously no one in the officer class reads history with any effective understanding...all those lunkheads can read into it is how their exceptionalism will control the situation this time...the british or soviet experiences in afghanistan do not merit study because we are differnt...no wonder we can't establish mutual trust and understanding with anyone but washed up empires...we are kindred in our stupidity and in our eventual end...the pakistani intelligence sector sees the taliban as an asset to use against the indians when the time comes and the iranians will goad the great satan any way they can...a broke and busted empire cannot fight unlimited wars...that's why obamaland is planning to bail in four years touting the fiction that the afghans will actually toe the imperial line after the guns are gone...the stupid imperial chestnut of "grab them by the balls and their hearts and minds will follow" only works as long as you have a good grip...the empire is becoming feeble and the world knows it...obviously no one in control (ha!) pays attention to robert d. kaplan even when he's delivering lectures to green berets at the military's behest...i suugest reading his books "soldiers of god" and " a journey to the edge of ancarchy" and if those don't do the job try "the dust of empires"...time to start thinking of how to make a more equitable world we all can live in instead of feeding your fucking greed...where oh where is the lake of fire?

it's not the lake of fire...but it's a step in the right direction.
5:50 pm 11-24-2010

retired whore tom delay has been convicted of money laundering and conspiracy to launder money deep in the heart of texas...old tom says that "the criminalization of politics threatens our very system and i am very disappointed in the outcome"....when politics is criminalized only criminals will be politicians, eh tom?....yes...even all these decades after richard nixon's pioneering work in the divine right of politicians to be above the laws they create the judiciary still thinks it has a right to review political behavior...especially when politicians back the losing side...lombardi read the ethos of power correctly when he said winning is everything....fuck-ups just get run over in the real world tom...and of course your're disappointed...the ethics of a lifetime called into question by a texas jury? the temerity of it all...no good can come of this...enough questions and the whole imperial ponzi scheme will be exposed...can't have the hoi polloi asking questions about "the people's business"...before you know it they'll be taxing campaign donations...which would be okay as long as it's the donor that has to pay for the privilege...twice...but what if they start coming after your pie? socialism!!...seemingly money lauundering is frowned on in texas...tom is facing the possibility of a life sentence over all this...right...i see some short -term probation and a judicial admonition insisting he not be caught next time...apparently tom chose to funnel money to the losers...either that or loyalty cannot even be bought anymore...a frightening prospect in the hamiltonian scheme...if a greasy paper bag full of unmarked and well thumbed hundred dollar bills can't buy off some local ward hacks in dallas the whole system might come unglued...imagine the bloodletting that could go on in congress if even payoffs can't keep the big whores quiet...what kind of example would that be for all those shiny, idealistic freshmen? it frightens me to think of it...then again tom may be cleared in his appeal...all he has to do is make sure the lucre finds its way into the proper hands...and if that fails? famous political testaments have been written in the slammer...maybe tom can pen a homegrown mein kampf.

palin presidency = last act of empire
11-26-2010
"i choose them bcause they'r convenient for me especially from wasilla. that's th way i roll."
sarah palin on wht she prefers to use twitter and facebook to get her views out to the public. n y times magazine 11-21 2010

that and she exhausts anything she might have to say in the limited number of characters available on either media...i really don't like facebook much at all exactly because there is so little depth available...of course i have been accused of being a bit wordy more than once but fuck my detractors...as though they aren't covering their inadequacies by loudly proclaiming the faults of others...at least i skewer figures who court public attention and not individuals i may or may not want to subject to a vendetta...but i digress...she would be another in a series of weak and pointless presidents much like the emporors of the latter roman empire...a clear signal that the late empire is waning in vitality...an indication to all the external and internal nationalities that the time is ripe for rebellion...terminal in its decadence and depravity...ready for the abyss

international conspiracy theory day 2010

i do not care who skagged jfk...lee harvey oswald or some detroit mechanic the mob hired...or fidel...or che...or lbj...i do not care how many "magic bullets were found on which stretchers...i do not care if elvis is selling used cars in peoria or if nicholas sarkozy is really jim morrison...i do not care if nascar is fixed or if the moon landings were staged by disney...i do not care if hitler is in agrentina or if central banks around the world are syphoning money to the new world order...i do not care if the government has been hiding alien remains in area 51 for decades or if abbie hoffman conspired to put lsd in chicago's water system or if he was related to judge julius hoffman for that matter...i do not care if queen elizabeth offed diana in a turf war over the north american herion concession or if catholocism is a thinly disguised continuation of babaylonian paganaism...none of it is worth a rusty goddamn...we have real issues of some moment to try to work out and they are not going to wait around for you conspiracy clowns to figure out how to get your fucking heads out of your asses...so while you watch kennedy's head fly apart in your slow motion copy of the zapruder film and listen for multiple gunshots on the open mike tape bear in mind that you are seriously demented and wasting your fucking time on convoluted bullshit when you could be addressing something that really matters...get a grip.


...and while we're talking conspiracy...
23 november 2010

i see the drive by freshman congresspersons to utterly destroy any credibillity the 112th congress could have kicked off ( fittingly) on international conspiracy theorist's day as fredrica wilson assailed the ban on wearing hats on the house floor as "sexist"...describing her hats as a sort of "fetish" the "parallels with the imperial roman senate" group will have a field day with this one...sequined parodies of actual hats these monstrosities may prove some diversion from the coming bloodletting and obstructionist rioting that promises to make next year's congress the most intransigent since 1859...in response john bohner has formed a committee to study the legality of a waiver of the rule by the speaker and has left on a fund-raising tour of the rust belt with stops in allentown, pittsburg, cleveland, detroit, gary, and milwakee to get a "feel' for the resilliancy of the nation's industrial base.

alexander's bagman whores

"despite a long and deep recession, the collective personal wealth of congressional members increased by more than 16% between 2008 and 2009. the study ( by the center for responsive politics) also indicates that a significant number of members own shares of major players in the health care and financial services sectors, which were the subject of major reform legislation during the period. the finding, based on financial diclosure data released earlier this year, paint a wealthy bunch in congress with more than half of all memebers-261-millionaires."
cnbc 11-18-2010

"the most popular investments among congressional members reads like a who's who of the most poweful corporate political forces in washington d.c. companies that spend milllions, if not tens of millions of dollars each year lobbying federal officials."
center for responsive politics

what a stunner!!! the whores are bailing out corporate entities they hold stock in with public funds to save their own assets...who would have thought such a thing possible when we have such a fundamentally sound constitution? wherever that rat bastard hamilton is he is giddy with the success of his little project launched in deceit, misrepresentation, and bald-faced venality in 1787...it has evolved into a finely honed and well oiled ponzi scheme that even alex wouldn't have dared to dream of...$90,000 stuffed into a freezer is chump change when you're dealing with quantative easing and toxic assets...congress is a cesspit of lawyers and defrocked clerics with the authority to write legislation...of course they have to be bought...they are the one weak link in the dreams of corporate avarice so they have to be brought on board...whiskey...strumpets...greasy bags of cash exchanged for votes during trysts in the swamps around whoretown on moonless nights...whatever it takes...this is what molds the highest political offices and informs our view of government..no wonder people are pissed...the whole diseased sump reeks to high heaven and the low rent scumbags want us to belive thay are "for main street"? deep in denial and terminally out of touch with the national reality they are far more concerned about how to co-opt and corupt the freshmen coming into their midst on the crest of a new wave of "voter anger" than with the fact that most voters would rather set them on fire than hear one more bullshit excuse...it's a hard dollar selling your constituents as well as your soul...life's tough enough when the only shadow you cast looks like a corporate logo and the word "whore" keeps bleeding though the make-up on your forehead no matter how thickly you cake it on...but when people form your district start showing up armed to the teeth and raving wildly about immigrants and the tyranny of taxation it takes the joy right out of political life...nothing is simple anymore...or straightforward or honest either...fuck these people.

greek tragedy, roman farce, or just post-modern ethics?

"skokie fire fighters resopnded to a report of a "down golfer" about 4 pm when a fellow golfer spotted him trapped under a cart and called for help...his daughter refered all calls to a personal injury lawyer who did not return a message seeking comment."
chicago tribune 11-12-2010


another golfer learns that renting a cart negates the healthful effects of a walking round...a tragic accident involving a member of the legal fratenity out to unburden some of the pressures that being a lawyer in the late empire can generate...lining up an approach shot one instant...in the hands of lucifer the next...that his daughter should refer the matter to "a personal injury lawyer" comes as no surprise...well schooled in the underlying philosophy "it's not my fault" and "take what you can" that drives the legal system, she did what her upbringing rendered natural...declined comment...wouldn't want to queer the pitch that dad's lawyer is going to use in court as the grieving family sues the golf course, the makers of the obviously faulty golf cart, and possibly the manufacturers of dad's golf shoes since the poorly designed cleats did not provide him with nearly enough traction to escape being wedged between the cart and the wall of that bunker he landed in...the message is clear...we don't have to be responsible anymore...just call a lawyer and prove in court that what hapened had nothing to do with a personal lapse or a terminal lack of common sense...dad was not remiss when he didn't set the hand brake on that cart...it was already 4 and would be getting dark soon...had to finish the round and grab a club sandwich and a couple of scotch on the rocks nerve tonics at the nineteeth hole...he wasn't worried...he knew what he was doing...it was the other guys who were the fuck-ups here...his lawyer will prove that in court...no-one lies there.

http://narodnaya.blogspot.com/2010/03/post-modern-jurisprudence.html

hour

"since 1966 every twenty years congress has given us another month of daylight savings. we're up to eight months now, and there's every reason to believe that the chamber of commerce, the national lobby of convenience stores-which account for eighty percent of all gsoline sales in the country- and congress will continue to press for extentions until we adopt a year-round daylight savings."
michael dowling. tufts university.

"indeed, so great an epicure am i in this matter that i cannot relish a winter night fully if it be much past st. thomas's day and have degenerated into disgusting tendencies towards vernal appearances: it must be divided by a thick wall of dark nights from all return of light and sunshine..."
thomas de quincey from confessions of an english opium eater.

so...the swine at the chamber of commerce and the whores in congress have given me back the hour the rat bastards stole last march ( and will steal again in a few months)...they always take it on a weekend...on my time...souless freaks who want me to drive that extra mile to the mall after work because it is still light out...one stinking hour isn't going to save this economy...i'm with de qunicey on this one ( and quite a few others as well ) it's dark outside as i type this into the infernal machine and i see the attraction...de quincey was an addict who couldn't stand people in groups larger than three ( a devoted father and husband though...that can happen in spite of the drug...don't let the feds, or worse, the mental health professionals, fool you) and wanted to be alone with the drug as much as he could...call it a recidivist behavior, but i understand that aversion...it is deep seated and probably precedes the addiction...addiction as a symptom of a deeper discontent....sometimes it is all there is...that or disintegration...a twisted sort of survival mode...substance abuse counseling is a hard dollar because most of those poor sods have no idea what they are up against...it may seem like we've digressed a long way from daylight savings, but the addictions it feeds are just as symptomatic of a deeper discontent...the consumerist utopia is as much a drug as de quincey's laudnum...bring on the dark.

i am remiss
today marks the nintey-third anneversary of the great bolshevik revolution....some have called it a palace coup led by lenin and trotsky ( stalin was somewhere in a bit role that ate at him until he was in a position to do something about history )...but it seems more like a voteless election to me...the tsar was deposed and the only ones happy about kerinsky's continued pursuit of the first world war were the brits and the french...after all the bolsheviks were offering bread, peace, and land...that they did not come through on those promises should come as no surprise...they were politicians after all...and politicians burdened with a teleology that told them they were correct and everyone else was wrong so they could do what ever they wanted tot get to where the ideology said they were going...too bad isaiah berlin wasn't around then...if they'd been able to read him they could have saved themselves and every damned body else a lot of trouble...i reccomend his book "the twisted timber of humanity"...read it and get a grip.

"surely every body is aware of the divine pleasures which attend a winter fire-side: candles at four o'clock. warm hearth rugs, tea, a fair tea maker, shutters closed, curtains flowing in ample draperies on the floor whilst the wind and rain are raging audibly without."
thomas de quincey


ten minutes past five in the evening and the sun is nearly set...home at last.

perhaps he should have been water commissoner instead

"is the dog there?"
richard nixon's first query to h r haldeman after his inauguration.

"unfortunately...(he) had a dog that did not like him. that day, like the days before, king timahoe refused to come near the president's desk, even when assistants laid a trail of dog biscuits leading to nixon."
president nixon: alone in the white house p.35

"cool-strong-organized-temperate-exciting...excitement-joy in life-sharing, lift spirtis of people-pithy memorable phrases."
from one of nixon's innumerable notes to himself

pithy phrases like what? " i am not a crook"? forty-two years ago today the great satan narrowly defeated that old ward hack hubert hunphrey, and while he did not change the arrogant and quasi-legal substance of the presidential office, he went quite a way towards changing public perception of it...his loathing of the media and his "enemies list" changed the way the press addressed the presidency and the poster boy for political criminality gave them lots of ammunition... an inherently unlikeable combination of giddy hubris and insecurity his contradictions made his public life a muddle of highs and lows...with a mouth like the sailor he once was and a deep hatred of intellectuals the only joy in life he seemed to take was revenging himself on those he felt had slighted him in some way...unfortunately for old dick he didn't have an efficient organization like stalin's nkvd to wreak his vengance with...he had howard hunt and g. gordon liddy...a washed out cia agent and a political operator whose ineptitude was so blatantly obvious that the republican national committee fobbed him off on the only place they could find that was more gullible than they were...the white house..this left his organization open to excitment that heartened his "enemies"...as far as temperance goes old dick really didn't seem to have much...prone to swilling straight gin from the largest tumblers the white house kitchen could provide and having long converstions with the portraits of past presidents he admired, he routinely collapsed in a welter of tears and vomit and had to be scraped up off the floor of the lincoln bedrooom and poured into bed by his cuban valet manolo...the carpeting was changed many times and mary lincoln's demask beadspread was ripped up into dustrasgs...so as the democrats mourn their loss of the house and the fickle nature of the great unwashed american voter let them remember that the republicans are as big a bunch of fuck-ups as they are...mostly because they are opposing wings of the same big political fraternity more than opposing parties...they agree on where we're going...it is the route to take that divides them...not ideology...leave that to the tea party...they will learn the liabilities of idealism soon enough as they bash their heads against the granire facade of the hamiltonian second republic...they are doomed...fey as nixon ever was...rand paul will be the new everett dirksen.

has a water commissioner ever gone on to the presidency?

seems unlikely...unless it was some non-entity vice-president chosen for their colorful personality or nondescript compliance who came unexpectedly to the office...think teddy roosevelt or cal coolidge...but the presidency was not being contested today...not directly anyway...this was just a stop on the way to that unholy swamp...and obviously one day off from the endless campaign was too much to ask...i was delusional to think it was possible...my mailbox and newspaper were crammed full of last-minute appeals from earnest candidiates falling over themeslves in their eagerness to serve my interests...i clearly got the "union" mailing from pete visclosky showing him surrounded by smiling steelworks happy to know that pete "stands up for steel" and that he "listens to us and works hard for us"...i wonder what kind of mailing his donors at bp/amoco got...then there's hank adams, who i believe is a republican, although his flyer says simply that he is a "conservative" so who knows what his political affiliation is...he's running for lake county assessor and he is bemoaning "50 years of machine politics and corruption" in lake county...fifty years? that's all? fifty measly years? anyone that naive about the history of local politics is either a fool or he's lying..not going to get my vote...and i did vote ( despite my refusal to click the counter on facebook)...i have discharged the "civic duty" those poor misled sods in the hobart school system carped at me about all those years...and i voted for all the cheap-jack, whiskey swilling, low-rent, scumsucking perverts i could find ( and mother of amun-ra the ballot was alive with the swine)...the best way to torpedo the hamiltonian oligarchy is to overload it with incompetent fools who owe their success to smear campaigns and hysteria rather than abillity or a willingness to resolve issues...a cadre of hideously corrupt degenerates leavened with a generous helping of unreconstructed libertarian idealists...a late empire recipie for complete collapse in the coming economic and environmental emergencies...when leadership fails you have to lead yourself...as whoretown seizes up in the coming partisan bickering, finger pointing, and brutal senate floor assaults with kendo sticks and nail guns we will be left to our own devices...plant a garden and buy a shotgun, the second republic is about to go bankrupt in every possible sense.


new brooms or business as usual? 11-3-2010
it's the morning after the night before and the whores are singing their own praises as "america has put washington on notice" and "things will be done differently"...pardon my skepticism ( or don't...who cares what you think of my skepticism? read some history before you start sniping)...i cannot helpbut reflect back on 1992 and the "contract with america" that ended in a crippled congress battered by the fallout from an imploded impeachment vendetta...congress has been a seething manure pit of partisan bickering for the last two years..all a republican house majority can mean is more effective obstructionism...i am curious to see exactly what they are obstructionist about...the pork grinding that benefits their handlers and true constituents or those proposals that might go some way in bettering the lives of the restof us "voters" and helping ease the ongoing transition to a smaller less energy intensive economic and social engagement.

who is dressed up as what?

it's halloween, and since death is the only sure thing that will put an end to this eternal electioneering ( and how i long for election day to fall on the day of the dead...how unfortunate that is not a possibility) it seems an apropriate time to take a look at the posturing and lame ham acting that the "people's business" generates when the political professionals are forced to press the flesh in order to carry on with their trysting in the swamps...lots of outsider anger this year...especially from the insiders posing as populists...nothing new in that...reagan was posing as an outsider and look what happened during that "revolution"...no reason for such a useful tactic to have been forgotten in the thirty years since bonzo's handler rode tall and flogged gorby for wearing the mark of the beast...the n y times to day says the one accusation that obamaland cannot shake is elitism...what the fuck? they are virtually all representatives of some sort of elite constituency so it's all a matter of perception... i set out to do a bit of research about the roots and particualrly the educational background of our hired guns in whoretown...not alot of surprises in this...a list of law schools as long as your arm and then some and a lot of people in congress who are posing as regular joes and concerned citizens have some interesting pedigrees...let's start with the ivy leaugers and let me say that democratic elis far outnumber republicans in both the house and senate which puts paid to pelosi's "main street" bullshit ( she is not an eli ) there are twenty democratic senators that hail from elitist universities as opposed to five republicans...the house is a bit more lopsided with thiry-five democratic ivy leaugers out-numbering the seven republican five to one...all but two members of congress are university educated to some degree...two members of the house, phil hare of illinois and harry teauge of new mexico have suceeded in being elected on the strength of high school diplomas and they should be returned to their seats as often as they run because they must be the only real outsiders involved in national politics...token plebians or not they offer a much needed balance to the congress...on the whole i would say that the real halloween costumes have been on display since the beginning of the year and i would long for wednesday the third if the image generating machinery of late imperial politics ever took a day off...but it doesn't...the long relentless slide into the presidential race of 2012 and all the real reasons for "why not" sarah palin will begin the day after this noh play grinds to its anticlimax...i have almost given up hope of being delivered from this by the lake of fire or the plauge of politician specific ebola virus carrying scorpions backed up by venom spitting cobras...but it is halloween...and tomorrow is all saints day as well as the day of the dead...surely the whores will go to ground until that blows over...is one day off to much to ask? fuck these people.