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."