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.