A Very Sad Loss

From LisB:

Hello, Paradigm family. It’s with much sadness that I must inform you of a huge loss. Our beloved friend “othepeoplechoose” has passed away.

The People Choose, as you know, migrated here after Josh Marshall closed the reader’s cafe at Talking Points Memo, and through the years he has become a very close friend to several of us here. Most especially Dick Day. TPC, as we affectionately called him, shared emails and phone calls with Dick and I on a regular basis, and earlier this year he came up with the idea of flying Dick out from Minnesota so that the two of them could finally meet. TPC also invited me, and was ecstatic when Dick and I both agreed to make the trip up to Syracuse for this Labor Day weekend. TPC made all sorts of plans for us (we were to visit the State Fair, attend a concert, and have a beautiful dinner together this past Friday night). I can’t tell you how much the three of us were looking forward to this trip.

Although I did not hear from TPC after Wednesday of last week, I went ahead on Friday and made the three hour drive up to the hotel in Syracuse that he had booked for us, and once I got there I tried him on the phone several times, only to keep getting his voicemail. It wasn’t until I called Dick Day’s cell phone and found that Dick was stranded at the airport in Syracuse, waiting for TPC to meet him, that I realized something was very wrong.

Dick told me to drive over to TPC’s house, while Dick took a taxi from the airport to the hotel. I had TPC’s address and a map from Google, so I had no problem making the short drive over to his place. But when I got there, there was no one home, although the front door was open. This made me very wary, so I called Dick back, and he told me to hang up and contact the police right away. Two officers arrived shortly thereafter, and they were able to get into the house. Unfortunately, they discovered that our dear friend had passed away at home. I can’t tell you how shocked and saddened Dick and I were by this discovery. I can’t tell you how much we will miss our friend John (his real name) and how sad we feel for his family.

I was able to leave information with the authorities, and John’s sister called Dick and I on Saturday to thank us for contacting the police. What a very sweet lady she is. She was able to answer some of our questions, and we were very pleased to let her know about her brother’s writing and our friendship with him. Those phone calls with her really helped Dick and I, and we are so grateful to her for getting in touch with us.

John, TPC, thank you for planning this wonderful weekend for us, and thank you for being such a good friend. You will be missed.

Rest in peace, friend. 

A Fable

John Haddock had been with the company for almost 25 years and at 58 very close to retirement now. He was one of the most successful design engineers they had. Graduated from Columbia Engineering School with his Masters degree and went to work for a communications firm. When the opening in his current company for an assistant design position opened up, he jumped at it. Marshal Control Systems was just the place he wanted to be. Helping to design the necessary power and charge control systems needed for photovoltaic and wind turbine systems. This was the future.

True Believers

"I saw someone peeing in Jermyn Street the other day. I thought, is this the end of civilization as we know it? Or is it simply someone peeing in Jermyn Street?" Alan Bennett
Well the date of the rapture, apocalypse etc. has come and gone. Many people apparently believed that it was going to come and even though it did not - and likely will not for some time to come, say a couple thousand years or so, give or take a few thousand - most of these same people will continue to believe and believe in the person who made this prediction.  With Camping not even opening the door.

What's the difference....two recessions.

Dick Oberholtzer and his wife listening to radio signals from Sputnik I.

I remember when Sputnik went up. It was so exiting listening to for the Beep Beep signals on an old crummy shortwave receiver.  It was like having a new toy to play with.  And getting that first one transistor radio kit for my birthday. 

History doesn't repeat itself, but sometimes it rhymes.

Mark Twain.

Birther conspiracies are at the heart of Trump's recent rise to the top of Republican presidential polling and it's largely the reason Trump is grabbing political media coverage nearly everywhere he goes these days.

At the center of his birther chatter is Trump's claim that he's got "people working on" the issue in Hawaii and that they're about to expose something -- Trump won't say what -- about Obama's true past.

When asked to expand on the investigation before he addressed the Palm Beach County Tax Day Tea Party rally today, however, Trump declined.

"I've looked very closely and have continued to look," he said. "I'm not going to say anything further than that, but we've looked all around and we are continuing to look and it's very interesting and that's all I can say."

So are you paying investigators to look around in Hawaii? TPM asked.

"I don't want to comment on it," Trump said.

At with that, he cut off the interview.

http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/04/trump-stays-mum-on-details-of-hawaii-birther-investigation-video.php#more

So Trump is leading in all the polls for the repubs. The guy who was telling us ten years ago that w bush was the single worst President of all time, the guy who told us that a 14.5% one time tax on the properties of the richest among us would solve any debt problem, the guy who was for universal health care and the guy who claimed that Iraq was a miserable lie and mistake. http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/04/trump-loses-conservatives-thanks-to-his-strange-political-past.php

What the hell is going on here?

I suppose even the Bible thumpers would accept a guy with four wives although Newt appears to be having one hell of a time with only three.

I think this prick simply watched the rise of rush, savage, hannity and others on fascist radio and tv and then watched the rise of idiots like palin and bachmann and found his mojo. He just feels that there is a constituency out there who do not care about facts or history or anything documentary in nature.

Newt tried this but is getting nowhere. On the other hand Newt has not had a TV show for years during prime time.

Facts mean nothing. After all how do we know what we know? How many facts do you have to research to properly judge some pundit's conclusions. Why would somebody working fifty hours a week and attempting to help her kids with homework and keep porn off of the pc's in the home going to find the time to check out what our national debt is and how it affects the average American's life?

If the shale oil mining companies are poisoning your land and your rivers and your lakes and your groundwater you would be up in arms. But if you are an American paying four bucks for a gallon of gasoline (with dick cheney out of the WH) why would this be of concern to you?

While the GOP's blowout win in the midterm elections sent shock waves through the political world, the general public is apparently having a difficult time remembering that it even happened.
According to a new Pew poll, less than half the nation is aware that Republicans won back control of the House of Representatives, although 75 percent correctly identified the GOP as outperforming the Democrats in the midterms.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/11/20/less-than-half-the-nation_n_786354.html

Now to be fair, maybe it was difficult understanding the questions—at least ¾ of those taking the survey knew the dems suffered big losses in 2010.

But results of polls like this send me into a deep despair over any chances of defeating the GOP next year!

NCD noted recently that most Americans know nothing and believe in anything.

http://dagblog.com/reader-blogs/easter-meditation-9858

Don't know much about history! My friend Jon Wisby recently sent me this wonderful melody:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tN-drEG7wms&feature=youtu.be

The Science of Why We Don't Believe in Science is a good read at Mother Jones.

http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/03/denial-science-chris-mooney

I mean it is not on a par with Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica but the author at least touches upon reasons for the ignorance of the masses.

The essay discusses the problem in debating subjects with certain people.

Trump claims that the President is hiding something. At one time he claimed that the 'real' certificate would tell us that Barack was somehow 'born' a Muslim. So you might do what Lawrence O'Donnell did and demonstrate that birth records in Hawaii never have noted the religion of a baby.

Arizona passes a silly law that compels those running for President to present more evidence of birth than just a Hawaiian Birth Certificate. Oh says Arizona, we do not like Hawaiian Birth Certificates. Well the Full Faith & Credit Clause of the US Constitution means that Arizona cannot tell Hawaii how to issue Birth Certificates.

You might tell Trump that he could read the Birth Notices in two different Hawaiian newspapers but he will tell you that those notices were published 8 days following the birth. Except that the publications were less than 8 days, more like four days and that all birth notices are published only on certain days of the week.

This is already too much information. And Birthers and most Teabaggers are going to tell you after a two hour presentation of facts with graphs and pictures and notices and....that President Obama was not born in this country, that he is a Muslim and that he hates Jews or is a socialist or …..

The essay underlines the fact that human beings are reasoning individuals but also emotional individuals and that you cannot easily separate the cognitive component of a belief from the emotional component of the belief.

A MAN WITH A CONVICTION is a hard man to change. Tell him you disagree and he turns away. Show him facts or figures and he questions your sources. Appeal to logic and he fails to see your point." So wrote the celebrated Stanford University psychologist Leon Festinger (PDF), in a passage that might have been referring to climate change denial—the persistent rejection, on the part of so many Americans today, of what we know about global warming and its human causes. But it was too early for that—this was the 1950s—and Festinger was actually describing a famous case study in psychology...
Festinger and several of his colleagues had infiltrated the Seekers, a small Chicago-area cult whose members thought they were communicating with aliens—including one, "Sananda," who they believed was the astral incarnation of Jesus Christ. The group was led by Dorothy Martin, a Dianetics devotee who transcribed the interstellar messages through automatic writing Through her, the aliens had given the precise date of an Earth-rending cataclysm: December 21, 1954
http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/03/denial-science-chris-mooney

See, history doesn't repeat itself, but sometimes it rhymes! Ha

How many cults have arisen telling us all that the world is about to end. 

Maybe the end comes in 2012 because it's etched in Mayan stone.

Beck has been telling us all of the coming caliphate and how this somehow fits into the Book of Revelations for years.

Mass suicides have always plagued man and in most cases the cult congregation could not be debriefed even if you tried. 

Does a Muslim male really believe that he will get access to 72 virgins? 

Well a lot of Christians think the universe is 6,000 years old.

Getting back to MJ, the cult group in question waite and waited and no aliens appeared. So that was the end of the cult, right?

At first, the group struggled for an explanation. But then rationalization set in. A new message arrived, announcing that they'd all been spared at the last minute. Festinger summarized the extraterrestrials' new pronouncement: "The little group, sitting all night long, had spread so much light that God had saved the world from destruction." Their willingness to believe in the prophecy had saved Earth from the prophecy! http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/03/denial-science-chris-mooney

Why do we act and think like this for heaven's sake?

The theory of motivated reasoning builds on a key insight of modern neuroscience (PDF): Reasoning is actually suffused with emotion (or what researchers often call "affect"). Not only are the two inseparable, but our positive or negative feelings about people, things, and ideas arise much more rapidly than our conscious thoughts, in a matter of milliseconds—fast enough to detect with an EEG device, but long before we're aware of it. That shouldn't be surprising: Evolution required us to react very quickly to stimuli in our environment. It's a "basic human survival skill," explains political scientist Arthur Lupia of the University of Michigan. We push threatening information away; we pull friendly information close. We apply fight-or-flight reflexes not only to predators, but to data itself. (ibid)

...We may think we're being scientists, but we're actually being lawyers (PDF).

So we have deregulation and tax rebates to the rich for eight years, and our economy collapses. People lose their pensions, people lose their jobs and people lose their homes.

Within a year of the actual 2008 collapse, the repubs demand deregulation and tax rebates for the rich.

Why not?

I mean that message sure worked for the 2010 elections.

MJ cites a study using 50 people who were convinced that Sadaam worked with al Qaida. 

The 'scientists' presented evidence against such nonsense including w bush's own lie that he never linked the two.

Only one fellow out of those 50 changed his mind.

Now the MJ article does not change my world view either.

You cannot just listen to Kyl and then come to the conclusion that 90% of the business of Planned Parenthood involves abortion.

And Breitbart can cite all sorts of documentation to prove that all dems are totalitarian socialists; but I need to take some time and check on his purported facts.

Now just because a guy has lied before does not mean he is lying now.

The bullshit cross of a defendant in court inquiring:

Were you lying then or are you lying now

proves nothing to me.

As House says:

Everybody lies!

But there are certain individuals and organizations that have lied on such a consistent basis that I refuse to believe anything that comes out of their fascist mouths, like Breitbart.

And I have sat and watched some fascist panel sponsored by Heritage or AEI 'prove' that lowering tax rates automatically creates jobs and increases tax revenue for the government. 

And I have to really challenge every 'fact' presented. 

So I would say, yeah but Clinton raised taxes for the rich, balanced the budget and over 20 million jobs were created. Under w bush, there was little if no job creation....blah blah blah.

Now the new Governor of Hawaii throughout his campaign told us that he was going to publish all documents in Hawaii relating to President Obama's birth.

I have seen no action by this governor to produce anything on this subject since he took office and he was one of my favorite Congressmen. And if the Governor of Hawaii had issued any info on this subject, believe me every goddamn member of MSM would be writing about it.

And this causes me some concern. Who knows, the President might be attempting to preserve the memory of his mother. Perhaps some obscure medical record demonstrates she had VD at one time.

So I guess I have some capability of looking at 'both sides' of an issue.­

Well, check out MJ at the link provided. I will get back to this subject another time.

This is all I got right now!

Give me that old time politician

Lindsey Graham is causing trouble again. He wants money for a study on dredging of  the Port of Charleston.  This would be called Pork, I would guess. Pork Barrel spending has gotten a bad rap and not for good reason.

MY BACK PAGES

I recall certain things about child hood.

I recall just getting up on a Saturday and running out of the house to play with my friends. I had no wallet, no money, no identification, no debts, no guilt, and really no worries whatsoever—that is until I got home again.

We would play baseball without umpires.

We would hang around the mall with no purpose.

And like the 70's Show, we would end up in somebody's basement even though it was the 50's and 60's.

Hell I had a bed and a card table and a four drawer clothes chest and a lamp in my basement office as a child. But I had it made cause out of my three other brothers, I had my own goddamn room.

I had no idea. I mean I had no ideas about anything.

Nobody ever read to me unless I was in school. No parent had anything to do with me when I was at home. Except for telling me to wash up and go to bed and to quit asking so many goddamn questions.

But I came to certain conclusions.

When I was a kid I thought Paladin's first name was 'Wire'. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgvxu8QY01s

I thought that Socrates was pronounced So-crates like orange crates.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2KzymrmNa0

I thought Hercules was pronounced like Poirot pronounces it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSSVvEz-hAI http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3qwLjN7Vcg&feature=fvst

I thought Washington was pronounced Warshington. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5SzPLe7wGc

I thought Arkansas was pronounced Ark-kansas. (Turns out there is a river pronounced Ark-kansas.) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1tzznnkHaNA&feature=fvst

I thought Puerto Rico was a foreign country.

I thought that the Revolutionary War was the only way to establish a free country on this continent!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oc1_vfBfLxI

I thought the Mayans (whoever they were) invented Mayo. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gz0fLT_k3_U

Communists were all bald and wished to destroy my country. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Led_Three_Lives http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0DW_qpilRQ

Arabs wrote neat stories. (I mean they really did write neat stories) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=md-KdO2mYL4

War is hell but it's a good way to reach some sort of recognition from others. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Olyf5v_TYUE

People on TV cared about me. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3w7w58CREY

Hitler was a bad guy and Stalin was a bad guy; so I guessed you had to pick your poisons in this world.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CXlZs3WzYGU

You cannot do anything in this universe without money. (See, my deductions were not all wrong!)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6xkT7FMyTc

We would all die once nuclear war began; and it would begin any minute and hiding under your desk would do you no good; and it would all be the commies' fault. And death was a very bad condition to find oneself in. And you should never end a sentence with a preposition, unless it is absolutely necessary. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqagmRy9ukQ

We Americans have freedom of speech and commies wish to take away our freedom of speech so we cannot permit commies to speak freely. http://www.mediaite.com/tv/sen-lindsey-graham-freedom-of-speech-is-a-great-idea-but-were-in-a-war/

Thou shalt not kill unless you come upon a commie or a NAZI; and you are properly armed. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPT13fsyQLw

You should never use atomic bombs unless you are dealing with the Japs. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rHrV2QhArA

We have free elections in this country. I mean we had two choices and the commies only had one. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rkgx1C_S6ls

Education is the only way out of this mess; otherwise you will spend your worthless life making a buck an hour. http://www.allfreeessays.com/topics/education-is-a-key-to-success/0

Roman Catholicism is the only true religion and everyone else is going to hell. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxr-fbtV1-8

These types of misconceptions came to me on my own.

My parents helped me to acquire even worse misconceptions.

If someone fell out of an airplane or jumped from a tall building..well..

He was dead before he hit the ground! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1K5Ufc4gFpU

Mexicans always have head lice. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBEaUZiBMWA

Paul Harvey knew what he was talking about. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKDb4hN0JoA

Huntley was bluntly and Brinkley was twinkly but Cronkite told the truth. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYf3eyRjfYA

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Cronkite

Divorce was a mortal sin. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_VIII_of_England

Sex was a mortal sin.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pj3vXkhqszE

The Chinese could not go to church and children would report their parents to the authorities. http://scottthong.wordpress.com/2011/01/19/strict-chinese-parents-vs-gentle-western-parents/

We had Miracle Whip because Mayo was for rich folks.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mayonnaise

I thought that Vericose veins were very close veins and had nothing to do with the fact that mums never exercised. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vericose_veins

Lee J. Cobb sold out his friends at the McCarthy Hearings. http://southwerk.wordpress.com/2010/12/23/lee-j-cobb-blacklists-in-american/

Pope Pius XII was God. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_pius_xii

It was normal for men to wear dresses as long as they were priests. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Benedict_XVI

Women should wear hats in church.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_headcovering

White girls should never, never, never have sex with Negroes. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-miscegenation_laws

The best people in the world drink a fifth a day. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winston_Churchill

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RS6OhC-4Zyw

They keep going and going and going ..........

I really like the idea of a one world government and maybe in about 400 years humanity will have matured enough to actually get one. Donal did an excellent series on why complex societies collapse with talks by Dr. Tainter.

WHAT THE FUCK DO THE TEABAGGERS WANT ANYWAY?

Drummer boy John Clem during the American Civil War.

What in the fuck do the teabaggers want?

I came across this rather fine description of their wants and desires.

Besides smaller government and more freedom—which are trite and meaningless aims, I think the article I found puts this all into context.

Before I get to that, I suppose I should clarify my last claim.

There are 310 million people in this country. Now I suppose that  that number was down from the last census, there might be an argument for a smaller government. Say if we had lost fifty million people or something. It might be argued that a smaller government is in order due to the decrease in population.

My second point would be that 300 million people are not governed by one government; any more than China is governed by one governmental entity.

We have 50 state governments as well as some territoriality governments. We have urban governments. We have thousands of county governments.

Third, we have this technological explosion whereby someone in NYC procures some doodad from a business concern in China and sells it to someone in Cleveland.

NYC must look out for its citizens but it does not have the means to begin to worry about the citizens in Cleveland. So that if the doodad sent to Cleveland kills somebody, it has nothing to do with NYC and its interests.

Similarly, someone in Miami can sneeze on some oranges and all of a sudden there is an influenza epidemic in Minneapolis.

Miami does not have the means to do anything about a flu epidemic in Minneapolis.

We do live on a flat world and on a flatter country.

There are no means to even begin to take care of a myriad of issues in a flat country without a Federal Government. And as the world becomes more inter-connected, more Federal type issues come to the fore.

Enough of that for now.

Here is the core cause of the teaparty as I see it!

What does this kaleidoscope of kookiness add up to? According to a recent New York Times/CBS News poll, tea partyers are richer, whiter, better educated, older, more male and more likely to be employed than the rest of America. In other words, they largely come from society's "haves," who now worry, as Thomas Edsall argues in The Atlantic Monthly, that "the competition for resources cannot be resolved by...economic growth," and so are rallying to hold on to their wealth, status, authority and autonomy. Or as one tea party sign put it, Your Fair Share Is Not in My Pocket.
.

http://www.thenation.com/article/loose-tea

Now the pollsters and surveyors of public opinion deal with a finite number of themes and opinions or they could never publish anything of any monetary value to anyone.

And these pollsters must use averages and do very little investigation as to the veracity of the information given them.

How much do you make?

Do you hate Negroes?

Verifying such data would be an impossible task and as Dr. House puts it:

EVERYBODY LIES!

So the surveys may demonstrate that most Tea Baggers are white and after taking a brief look at videos of the tea bagging congregations, there might be some veracity to a finding that most Tea Baggers are white.

But surveys telling us how much money these morons have and how much they earn are not verifiable.

So the best one could conclude from these studies would be that Tea Baggers think they make more money than most other Americans; think they have more material wealth than others and fear that 'the masses' are going to take their Hummel figurines and other important artifacts and give them away to drug addicts who live on the streets.

I would probably conclude that not many folks who have had their homes taken from them through illegal foreclosure actions would join the Tea Party Movement as such.

I would assume that those who have lost their jobs over the last four years or so would refrain from wearing American Flags on their heads and vote republican.

If you debated a teabagger concerning our economy; if you produced verifiable evidence that the republican party exists by and for the international corporations and multi millionaires; he would only think that you are attempting to trick him because you wish to steal his Hummel figurines and give them to Negroes.

Religious issues enter into all of this; that is for sure. We hear about these Muslims attempting to install Sharia Laws and such....

But the issue concerning immigrants demonstrates that religion does not have a lot to do with the Tea Bagging movement. Otherwise these supposedly staunch Christians would embrace all of these Christians coming here from south of our borders.

If Christianity were a real issue here, Tea Baggers would be holding up Hispanics as a demonstration of what God's Plan really means for all of us.

Thank God Almighty that the Spanish invasion of the New World did not take place when the followers of Mohammed controlled 2/3 of Spain a few centuries before that invasion.

Can you imagine the immigrant problem this country would be facing if the illegals were congregating inside Mosques instead of Cathedrals?

The only other countervailing consideration when examining this Teabagger Movement, is gunownership.

We already have enough guns in this country—documented and undocumented—to give just about every man, woman and child a gun. Every single one.

There is obviously a demographic line relevant to this issue of arming our citizens; it is a fight between urban people and rural people; between the population centers of our East & West Coasts and those who reside in between our coasts.

Recent legislative developments in a number of states underline this facet of the movement.

If the measure is enacted, Arizona would join Utah as the only states to specifically allow such gun rights. Utah goes one step further, allowing firearms inside campus buildings.
The move comes as opponents and supporters face off across the country over gun laws, with nine states this year seeking to broaden citizens' rights to tote firearms on campuses.
Supporters of Arizona's bill argue that a person's constitutional right to bear arms should not be taken away just because he or she is on a campus. They claim that allowing guns there could save lives in the event of a campus shooting.
But the bill faced widespread opposition from college and university administrators, faculty and law enforcement officials.
Opponents claimed it would put campus police at a dangerous disadvantage in trying to prevent campus shootings.
Copyright 2011 Thomson Reuters.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/08/arizona-gun-laws-house-campuses_n_846479.html

and:

Schools have traditionally been gun-free zones, but some states are considering loosening or changing laws when it comes to firearms on campus.
While some say that allowing guns on campus would increase violent incidents, others say that armed students would be better able to protect themselves in crisis situations.
(Seven states considering granting professors and students the right to carry arms on campus.)

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/06/guns-on-campus_n_839203.html#s255307&title=Arizona_

Now here is a link to a list of 40 shootings in our schools and on our campuses from 1997-2007:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,266371,00.html


And you will notice the words Fox News in the link.


But I think this gun thing that is so important to the Teabaggers has to do with their fears that the government is going to take away their Hummel figurines and hand them over to drug addicted Negroes. But if they are properly armed, they will not have to worry about this.

I will wrap this up with a contradiction relating to these teabagging morons who wish to arm our children:

That’s the message of the New Hampshire GOP, who is pushing a pair of bills that would prevent students from voting in their college town.
“Voting as a liberal. That’s what kids do,” said state Speaker William O’Brien. Students lack “life experience,” and “they just vote their feelings.”
Sound familiar?  Humboldt County conservatives issue the same complaint when they lose county-wide elections, blaming students at Humboldt State University.

http://humboldtherald.wordpress.com/2011/03/08/foolish-college-students-shouldnt-vote/

Obviously college students are so damned dumb and ill educated that we cannot give them the vote.

So we will just go ahead an arm them instead!

They Say We'll Have a Revolution......

The Rise and Fall of the American Empire seems to be the topic du jour these days and at least one anthropologist has done a significant research on the subject of collapse of complex societies. Donal has given links to a recent talk by one of them.  But imagine my surprise at a link that was given to me in chat the other night. Not to some site by a member of the aluminum foil corset crowd, mind you but Market Watch by the Wall Street Journal no less. Here is some of what this commenter has to say on the subject.

BON COP, BAD COP

Bon Cop, Bad Cop

William of Normandy (that bastard French-Viking) conquered the Island.

So it should come as no surprise that French was the language spoken for quite a long time in the British Courts; even as William attempted to keep English for the English.

As decades and indeed centuries passed, the English Courts combined French and English with a lot of Lingua Latina thrown in; since that was the universal language of the era. http://homes.chass.utoronto.ca/~cpercy/courses/6361Heys.htm

Hence our English is less ‘gutteral’ than Beowulf and it has a great facility to incorporate phrases taken from other languages.  The new English spread across the globe like a virus replacing Latin as the Universal Language. 

Now we have many multi-linguists in the blog sites I visit; but we commoners forget that things were not always as they are now.

I have ‘basic’ computer capabilities, but my goodness, you can find a program to ‘translate’ with a couple keystrokes. 

A cable provider usually includes a language function so that you may view your program with a language best suited to your tastes or education.

PBS has delayed any Masterpiece Theatre—for a while I guess as they replay that wonderful Civil War series from the 90’s.  I just saw this series a short time ago so I turned to something else, checking in during commercials.

I viewed a wonderful Canadian Flick entitled: Bon Cop, Bad Cop. (2006) It is a Canadian production which explains why it cost 8 million to make instead of 80 million.

Now CBC has the same number of commercial breaks theoretically, but the breaks are shorter—I swear even though the Canuck’s best news program is entitled 22 Minutes.

Anyway this film is wonderful.

First, Bon Cop, Bad Cop threads English and French so well, that I can only think that the folks in Quebec would bitch that there is too much English, and the folks in Ontario would bitch that there is too much French.

Second, the plot has two cops, one from Ontario and one from Quebec, stuck with working as a team because a body is found wrapped around a sign separating Montreal from Quebec.

The two naturally hold each other in contempt but as the film progresses; both heroes meet each other’s families and learn to work together for a common cause which is the theme of the picture. 

The one thing they hold in common is detestation for Americans who wish to steal their hockey players. Hahaahah. But they both hold this interest with the villain; who is killing individuals responsible for selling Canada’s greatest players and one of their NHL teams to American corporations. 

What a great team of writers for this! 

Comedy is spread throughout the film. At one point the bad guy dresses up as a hockey team mascot and actually performs his own rendition of De Niro’s Mirror Scene in Taxi.

Are you talkin to me? Are you…..

The Montreal actor is familiar to Americans (Patrick Huard),  the French/Quebec actor (Colm Feore) not so much. But I tell you it would be difficult to pan either performance in this film.

Both cops are bilingual. Montreal’s cop is straight laced; to Americans he appears a Brit through and through.

The Quebec cop is an emotional Frank.

But they do not overdo this; I mean the device of contrast. It appears in the beginning but fades a little later in the film although the Brit is a fine dresser and the Frank not so much (although his fashionable leather jacket might be more costly than the Brit’s suits)!

Wiki tells me that Bon Cop, Bad Cop was the highest grossing Canadian film of all time. And I can understand why.

There is a little too much Bruce Willis here, but the heroes prevail and all is well. 

Cars are exploded, people are thrown into car trunks, heroes are shot, heroes fight the good fight, children of heroes are put in danger, and many victims lose their lives.

But there are great discussions held between the two Canadians; good good dialogue and a lot of fun.

And the bad guy gets blown up in the end. 

What more can a man in his pj’s expect from cable let alone Canadian cable?

TELEVISION

My first memory of television was this big box with a small picture that sat up on a big table. I would watch Ding Dong School with Miss Frances (Dr. Frances Horwich) and The Little Rascals on it. May parents would sometimes watch in the evenings but generally listen to the radio instead. Shows like Gun Smoke and Ozzie and Harriet were still on the radio. This was in the 1950s. For a while we could only get two stations as there was not CBS affiliate in Cleveland until 1956.

The Company We Keep

None of this should have surprised anyone, particularly those who could not bring themselves to vote, or otherwise support candidates whose election would have gotten in their way. The handwriting was on the wall, plain for everyone to see or, perhaps, to read. But either the President disappointed, or did something with which the voter disagreed and they got elected.

So now, in those offices about which nobody seems to care until its too late, Governors are moving against labor unions, and public employees, tearing down murals which celebrate labor in a Department of Labor. They are providing tax benefits for the wealthy, then complaining of a budget crisis that has to be resolved by cutting aid to those who need it the most.

What, may a screaming lunatic ask, did anyone expect?

We no longer have politics in this country, let alone government. We have replaced all of that with screaming. If you say red, I say blue. If you then say, well, maybe blue, now I am for red.

The silly back flips from by Former Speaker Newt Gingrich were much ballyhooed this week, but they were not an outlier: some notably absurd refusal to take any position that mirrors the President's. His comments were the most broadcast, but hardly the only instance of a Republican simply refusing to agree with anything that comes from the mouth or pen of President Obama.

Here is what the President said on Monday about why the United States, when asked to do so, had to be part of whatever international response there would be to what was happening in Libya:

In this particular country -– Libya -- at this particular moment, we were faced with the prospect of violence on a horrific scale. We had a unique ability to stop that violence: an international mandate for action, a broad coalition prepared to join us, the support of Arab countries, and a plea for help from the Libyan people themselves. We also had the ability to stop Qaddafi’s forces in their tracks without putting American troops on the ground.

To brush aside America’s responsibility as a leader and -– more profoundly -– our responsibilities to our fellow human beings under such circumstances would have been a betrayal of who we are. Some nations may be able to turn a blind eye to atrocities in other countries. The United States of America is different. And as President, I refused to wait for the images of slaughter and mass graves before taking action.

Who, particularly those who, wrongly and grossly so, saw a war in Iraq as being a justifiable response to the the attacks of September 11, or those who believe, incorrectly but plausibly, that the United States could have done more to prevent the wanton murders in Germany during World War II, cannot see the force of those words?

Had either President Bush or the fabled President Reagan said any of this, as well they might have, though only one of them had the ability to do so, there would have been suggestions that these words should be engraved into the facing of every federal building in the land. But it was President Obama who explained who we are, and why we are obligated to assist in these efforts, even if the outcome (or "the endgame" as they call it) is uncertain.

Hence, Mayor Giuliani, Sort of Governor Palin Sen McConnell and Other Similar Deep Thinkers have to explain how wrong he is, wildly misrepresenting what the President said while doing so. (Senator: the President made clear that the policy of the United States is to support "regime change" in Libya, but not by military force---or military force alone. Which part of this do you truly not understand, and which are you pretending not to follow?).

The topper, to date, was this beauty from the always pitch perfect Louie Goemert of Texas:



The other day, Bill Maher made the point that others have cautiously put forward before, such as here. There are other factors at work, of course. President Clinton was not black, even half black, and They hated him enough to impeach him. President Roosevelt was as blue blood as possible and, as he revelled in it, they hated him, too. President Kennedy was Catholic and they hated him as well, some because he was Catholic, to be sure.

This is of another type, though. Without taking Donald Trump more seriously than is reasonable, acknowledging that even Bill O'Reilly finds this nonsense to be unworthy of discussion, but noting that Lou Dobbs could not let it go a year or so ago, the suggestion that the President is from Somewhere Else (and Trump's beyond the beyond claim that nobody in Hawaii has any recollection of him, meaning that David Remnick must be in an the scam, can only be seen through the prism of our centuries long struggle with race.

Just listen to this, from someone who claims to be a religiously pious man:

"I do think he [Obama] has a different world view and I think it is, in part, molded out of a very different experience...Most of us grew up going to Boy Scout meetings and, you know, our communities were filled with Rotary Clubs, not madrassas."

And, the "correction" to the effect that the President "grew up" in Indonesia not Kenya (he grew up, for the most part, in Hawaii), did not touch his essential point. It made me recall the several dozen times when, as a child and young man, a Jewish boy, introduced to gentile adults (usually the parents of some schoolmate or other acquaintance) would quickly come to discuss Israel assuming that we Jews think of nothing else. Since these conversations generally took place in the New York metropolitan area, the instinct to talk baseball would not improve the situation since the Jew was from New England and his team was not all that interesting to the Mets, Yankees, Dodger and Giant fans who would keep talking about Israel.

The point, understood then and now is that Some People are Different Than We Are and, y'know, should be watched carefully.

So you wonder about the company we keep. They include some hate filled so-called pastor whose "trial" of Islam ended with burning of a book treasured by millions, who retaliated by murdering people who work for the United Nations and threatens others. This piece of garbage, using the First Amendment to jeopardize others in the name of hate, believes he has been wronged and is entitled to call on the government to serve his disgusting ends.

So, yes, we are different.

GANDHI, THE PIANO MAN

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi

The very pillars supporting our society’s magnificent economic, cultural and political structures are being assaulted on the state and Federal levels. Employment opportunities, educational opportunities, advancement opportunities in our markets, medical care opportunities, and even our basic infrastructures are being assaulted by this newest of neo-conservative movements.

Foreign wars are strangling us as a nation.

Fear of ‘terrorist activities’ originating both outside and inside our country are strangling us as a nation.

Religious factionalism and religious fanaticism are strangling us as a nation.

Corporate propaganda as well as corporate entitlements is strangling us as a nation.

Of course, I am not claiming that the end of days is upon us. I have been warned of the coming Armageddon for six decades.

But I have seen the creation of a caste system that is becoming more and more rigid as time goes on and I become despondent.

It is this last avatar that interests Joseph Lelyveld most. “Great Soul” concentrates on what he calls Gandhi’s “evolving sense of his constituency and social vision,” and his subsequent struggle to impose that vision on an India at once “worshipful and obdurate.” Lelyveld is especially qualified to write about Gandhi’s career on both sides of the Indian Ocean: he covered South Africa for The New York Times (winning a Pulitzer Prize in 1986 for his book about apartheid, “Move Your Shadow”), and spent several years in the late 1960s reporting from India. He brings to his subject a reporter’s healthy skepticism and an old India hand’s stubborn fascination with the subcontinent and its people.
Sometimes, Gandhi said Indian freedom would never come until untouchability was expunged; sometimes he argued that untouchability could be eliminated only after independence was won. He was unapologetic about that kind of inconsistency. “I can’t devote myself entirely to untouchability and say, ‘Neglect Hindu-Muslim unity or swaraj,’ ” he told a friend. “All these things run into one another and are interdependent. You will find at one time in my life an emphasis on one thing, at another time on [an]other. But that is just like a pianist, now emphasizing one note and now [an]other.” It was also like the politician he said he was, always careful to balance the demands of one group of constituents against those of another. ..http://www.nytimes.com

So Gandhi had three major goals and hundreds of minor goals.

He wished to end British occupation of his country.

He wished peace among the several religious factions in his country.

He wished to end the caste system.

The Brits might have represented a few hundred years of rule. 

But religion and caste represented issues present in India for thousands of years.

The Mahatma believed that he had left India in the 1890’s as a member of a higher Indian Caste; as an attorney; and as a full citizen of the British Empire at the age of 23.

Twenty years later he arrived at his home with an entirely different ethos. 

Twenty years of schoolin and they put you on the day shift. Another twenty years of real world study and you might become a giant.

Gandhi learned realities with which he had not been aware; he learned how to organize a community; he learned the sins of the individual factions within his Indian Community. It was as if he had been studying to be the greatest living Indian.

I was just struck by the amount of time involved in his schooling as well as the time involved in his struggle for his nation when I first studied about this man.

I am writing this piece because I was struck by the piano metaphor.

All things cannot be accomplished at once!

More than 70 years following the Mahatma’s death, the Brits do not control India.

But Gandhi could not stop the creation of Pakistan.

And religious tension and caste consciousness still rules the day on the subcontinent as the article points out.

India has a strong middle class though and the ‘flat world’ has been the source of many economic developments in that land.

I wonder also if the international corporation has taken the place of the Brits after all of these decades in ruling India, just as that model has done here.

The only point to be made here concerns leadership.

All things cannot be accomplished at once.

I lose confidence in our Democratic system, let alone my Democratic Party.  How our bicameral Congress ever accomplishes anything is beyond me!

I also lose confidence in my President from time to time.

But I think Barack Obama is doing the best anyone could under the circumstances.

He may even be seen as a great leader a decade from now.

I mean George W. Bush sure made Bill Clinton look a lot better!

A true leader must work on a number of issues; a number of projects. But that is just like a pianist, now emphasizing one note and now [an]other.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxEPV4kolz0