One of the areas I have the most trouble with when I construct a project for my radio interests is the physical layout of the larger components. The big variable capacitors and switches and coils and the like. I usually look at how others have done this and sometimes use this as a guide. But I usually go with some current traditional method and am not always happy with the way it turns out. Oh it works OK but quite often it is larger than I want or not as elegant as I would like. This last time was no different.
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
Sunday, February 6, 2011
Communication is the problem to the answer
I was discussing in chat the other night with a friend about congress and the Wall Street and how we could get real financial reform, among other things. One of the problems that I see with our current political mess is that the people on the left have a major communication problem. Not only do most not know how to communicate their ideas to the general populace, but far too often their message is hollow and hypocritical.
How can one preach about financial reform and how the uber rich do not pay enough tax or get obscene compensation or play fast and loose with the money they have when you yourself engage in or those activities or secretly (and sometimes not so secretly) wish you could do so yourself ?
Those that are struggling to make it are not going to listen to some ones ideas if these ideas come from people who drive over priced BMW or Mercedes Benz SUVs, live in expensive gated communities and pull in 6 figure salaries and justify to the nines their right to do so. And when they do speak, they talk at people rather than with them and come of as preachy, arrogant and self righteous. Instead of honest gut level expression.
How can anyone talk about having a fair and just economy and society when they are not willing to make the sacrifices necessary themselves to bring it about. You have to be willing to walk the walk before you earn the right to talk the talk.
The big news now of course is Egypt and the Middle East. I wonder how many on the left would be willing to take the risks and put out the effort and make the sacrifices the Egyptians have these last 12 or so days for what they say they want ? How many would be able to communicate their desires in an honest, gut level way instead of some intellectual BS that sounds good on the surface but says essentially nothing.
The left and the Democratic party was strong up through the 1960s because it consisted of working people, blue collar and white collar, that were able to express what they wanted and were willing to make the kind of commitments necessary to bring it about. And tried to the best of their ability to live what they believed. Most had some humility and lived modestly. Not like Wall Street Wannabees or republicans in waiting.
How can one preach about financial reform and how the uber rich do not pay enough tax or get obscene compensation or play fast and loose with the money they have when you yourself engage in or those activities or secretly (and sometimes not so secretly) wish you could do so yourself ?
Those that are struggling to make it are not going to listen to some ones ideas if these ideas come from people who drive over priced BMW or Mercedes Benz SUVs, live in expensive gated communities and pull in 6 figure salaries and justify to the nines their right to do so. And when they do speak, they talk at people rather than with them and come of as preachy, arrogant and self righteous. Instead of honest gut level expression.
How can anyone talk about having a fair and just economy and society when they are not willing to make the sacrifices necessary themselves to bring it about. You have to be willing to walk the walk before you earn the right to talk the talk.
The big news now of course is Egypt and the Middle East. I wonder how many on the left would be willing to take the risks and put out the effort and make the sacrifices the Egyptians have these last 12 or so days for what they say they want ? How many would be able to communicate their desires in an honest, gut level way instead of some intellectual BS that sounds good on the surface but says essentially nothing.
The left and the Democratic party was strong up through the 1960s because it consisted of working people, blue collar and white collar, that were able to express what they wanted and were willing to make the kind of commitments necessary to bring it about. And tried to the best of their ability to live what they believed. Most had some humility and lived modestly. Not like Wall Street Wannabees or republicans in waiting.
Saturday, February 5, 2011
Presidents
We watch with rapt attention as a "President" never elected in a remotely legitimate way see his "regime" crumble before the primogeniture he thought to be his due could be put in place. The Glenn Becks of the world notwithstanding, this is a purely middle eastern event, well described during the week by the remarkable journalists working under the most difficult circumstances imaginable. Richard Engel, on scene, and Rachel Maddow providing context and asking the right questions, stand out, but there are many who have done great work this week and this, for instance, must be read by everyone interested in the subject.
There is little to add to what the great Sleepin' Jeezus posted yesterday. In the meantime, we, back here, will have to endure yet another attempt to sell President Reagan as some who was great, instead of vacant at best, and the front man of the meanest group of people to form a U.S> government in my lifetime
It is unlikely that Meet the Press originated from Hyde Park, New York on the 100th anniversary of the birth of our greatest president in 1982 but, of course, the Sunday talk shows did not stray from Washington in those days. Some say it was not widely celebrated except in New York, but speaking from New York, mu recollection is somewhat different.
The New York Times archives (which are slightly out of whack right now), tells us that New York Governor Hugh Carey, noticing the zeal in which the Reagan administration, then beginning its second year was dismantling the New Deal, told a gathering at Hyde Park that President Roosevelt was "need now more than ever" but, of course, he had no idea what things would be like when President Reagan's centennial came around.
Tomorrow, David Gregory and others who want to ignore the cruel way President Reagan and his acolytes attacked those who most need the help of the federal government, will celebrate the 100th anniversary of his birth. They will not discuss that he began his successful campaign for the presidency in Philadelphia, Mississippi, an unmistakable signal that the murders of Cheney, Goodman and Schwerner were now relics of a past his presidency would remove from our history, much as Congr Bachmann would purge the sin of slavery from it today.
President Reagan was an amiable fellow and, of course, well able to play the part of President, even if the responsibilites of the office did not interest him. He was happy to be the front man for the greedy among us who see no reason why the problems of others are their concern. Forgive me for republishing the following, from February 4, 2008, but time is precious this weekend, and the following, in italics to identify it as recycled stuff, roughly makes the point about the supposed Great Reagan the right wing, and David Gregory are saluting:
This is not literally about The Election, though really it is. It is not actually meant to be yet another one of those what was so great about President Reagan pieces which show up every now and then, such as during the orgy of memoriam when he finally passed away after a long and, for his family, very painful illness. It probably will resemble one anyhow.
It was hard, though, to watch Anderson Cooper swoon about the great Reagan, and see that Air Force One behind the Republicans debating the other night without wondering again about when this actor pretending he was the President of the United States became a great president. He was never the real president, of course; that was, briefly General Haig (who slipped on the day that President Reagan was shot and told the nation not to worry since he was in charge), then Don Regan, then sort of Nancy Reagan, or Don Regan or whichever got to the microphone first and then, when the complete play acting fell apart with the "President" telling the country, in character, that he would never approve of selling arms to Iran, only to find out that "he" had done just that, Howard Baker.
Just as Katrina somehow "proved" to people holding on to a reed of fiction that President Bush was not actually running a government as providing a face to cover all sorts of corrupt misuse of the powers and financial resources of the government, something that any fool with a hint of objectivity could have seen as early as the summer of his first year in office when he told Secretary Powell to stop talking to North Korea, and anybody still open minded about the subject had ample basis to reconsider when they saw the guy reading to school children as the country was under attack, the unmasking of President Reagan by "Iran-Contra" could only shock the utterly unshockable. Here was a supposed President who had to be reminded that Samuel Pierce was a member of his cabinet, whose every speech was filled with stories that were verifiably false and who appeared to have neither a thought or care.
He looked like a president, though, and, in that B actor sort of way, sounded like one. Tom Hanks, a much better actor, has never pretended that he actually flew Apollo 13, but Ronald Wilson Reagan not only got to pretend he was president he was, under the law anyway, actually the office holder.
It was a great idea to prop this guy up so that his henchmen and such could do their dirty work behind this amiable actor. After all, his immediate predecessor was a very intelligent man, who hadn’t a clue as to what being president meant and was elected only because in his humble, goofy way he appeared to be the antithesis of the Crook named Nixon who we had dumped only at great cost, and the nice enough guy who finished his term but did not seem even close to being prepared to do what a president was supposed to do (to the point that he forgot that Poland was a communist country at the time while in a political debate.)
So by 1980, what the country wanted was someone who did not seem to be a crook, but looked and sounded more like what we hand in mind: you know, like Franklin Roosevelt, or, Dwight Eisenhower. (There is a big difference there, but the point was that we have someone who could, uh, play the part.)
From the minute he was elected, until his vice-president, running to succeed him tried to distance himself a bit from the clueless guy who beat him in the 1980 primaries by making him look like a fool, by saying that his administration would be "kinder and gentler" it seemed that the country had lost its collective mind. The Vietnam War was finally over, and the Iraqi hostages released, and the whole thing, from the day President Kennedy was killed until then seemed so difficult that maybe we would be better off without a real president for a few years and just have an actor there. So when AIDS started to infect gay men, he could console us by pointing out that we weren’t gay men so there was nothing to worry about.
And so, here we are in 2008, seven years after our country was attacked on its own soil for the first time since 1941 by people we have chased into a volatile part of the world in which a least one country apparently has a nuclear bomb, and who are undoubtedly plotting to attack us again and one of the major political parties in this country, the one whose latest pretend president was unwilling to cut short a photo op while the country was under attack, fields a slate of candidates who fall over each other to proclaim themselves the next Reagan. And television news commentators act as if this makes sense.
And one final point in this world of movie acting that we care about so much more than the actual world. The Associated Press reported last week about huge build ups of something, unlikely to be Santa’s elves, in the border areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan, but some movie actor died of something in Soho and that relegated these stories to the dustbin. And Senator McCain: before you or the other dwarfs tell us about how this phony president you gave us (and remember: had Senator McCain run with Senator Kerry in 2004, they would be trying to get re-elected right now) has kept us from further attacks since 2001, keep in mind that the people who are out to get us, got us in 1993, at the World Trade Center and didn’t come back to do it again until 2001. They wanted to get it right and time was on their side, because we do everything we can to help them.
This is not pretend or play acting. This is why we have a president; not to read to children (we call those people "teachers" and we pay them ridiculously low salaries to do this and then whine that they aren’t doing a good job). The idea is to have a president to lead a government that at minimum will protect us from those who want to hurt us. Not to smile while they do and tell us stories about what might have been.
There is little to add to what the great Sleepin' Jeezus posted yesterday. In the meantime, we, back here, will have to endure yet another attempt to sell President Reagan as some who was great, instead of vacant at best, and the front man of the meanest group of people to form a U.S> government in my lifetime
It is unlikely that Meet the Press originated from Hyde Park, New York on the 100th anniversary of the birth of our greatest president in 1982 but, of course, the Sunday talk shows did not stray from Washington in those days. Some say it was not widely celebrated except in New York, but speaking from New York, mu recollection is somewhat different.
The New York Times archives (which are slightly out of whack right now), tells us that New York Governor Hugh Carey, noticing the zeal in which the Reagan administration, then beginning its second year was dismantling the New Deal, told a gathering at Hyde Park that President Roosevelt was "need now more than ever" but, of course, he had no idea what things would be like when President Reagan's centennial came around.
Tomorrow, David Gregory and others who want to ignore the cruel way President Reagan and his acolytes attacked those who most need the help of the federal government, will celebrate the 100th anniversary of his birth. They will not discuss that he began his successful campaign for the presidency in Philadelphia, Mississippi, an unmistakable signal that the murders of Cheney, Goodman and Schwerner were now relics of a past his presidency would remove from our history, much as Congr Bachmann would purge the sin of slavery from it today.
President Reagan was an amiable fellow and, of course, well able to play the part of President, even if the responsibilites of the office did not interest him. He was happy to be the front man for the greedy among us who see no reason why the problems of others are their concern. Forgive me for republishing the following, from February 4, 2008, but time is precious this weekend, and the following, in italics to identify it as recycled stuff, roughly makes the point about the supposed Great Reagan the right wing, and David Gregory are saluting:
This is not literally about The Election, though really it is. It is not actually meant to be yet another one of those what was so great about President Reagan pieces which show up every now and then, such as during the orgy of memoriam when he finally passed away after a long and, for his family, very painful illness. It probably will resemble one anyhow.
It was hard, though, to watch Anderson Cooper swoon about the great Reagan, and see that Air Force One behind the Republicans debating the other night without wondering again about when this actor pretending he was the President of the United States became a great president. He was never the real president, of course; that was, briefly General Haig (who slipped on the day that President Reagan was shot and told the nation not to worry since he was in charge), then Don Regan, then sort of Nancy Reagan, or Don Regan or whichever got to the microphone first and then, when the complete play acting fell apart with the "President" telling the country, in character, that he would never approve of selling arms to Iran, only to find out that "he" had done just that, Howard Baker.
Just as Katrina somehow "proved" to people holding on to a reed of fiction that President Bush was not actually running a government as providing a face to cover all sorts of corrupt misuse of the powers and financial resources of the government, something that any fool with a hint of objectivity could have seen as early as the summer of his first year in office when he told Secretary Powell to stop talking to North Korea, and anybody still open minded about the subject had ample basis to reconsider when they saw the guy reading to school children as the country was under attack, the unmasking of President Reagan by "Iran-Contra" could only shock the utterly unshockable. Here was a supposed President who had to be reminded that Samuel Pierce was a member of his cabinet, whose every speech was filled with stories that were verifiably false and who appeared to have neither a thought or care.
He looked like a president, though, and, in that B actor sort of way, sounded like one. Tom Hanks, a much better actor, has never pretended that he actually flew Apollo 13, but Ronald Wilson Reagan not only got to pretend he was president he was, under the law anyway, actually the office holder.
It was a great idea to prop this guy up so that his henchmen and such could do their dirty work behind this amiable actor. After all, his immediate predecessor was a very intelligent man, who hadn’t a clue as to what being president meant and was elected only because in his humble, goofy way he appeared to be the antithesis of the Crook named Nixon who we had dumped only at great cost, and the nice enough guy who finished his term but did not seem even close to being prepared to do what a president was supposed to do (to the point that he forgot that Poland was a communist country at the time while in a political debate.)
So by 1980, what the country wanted was someone who did not seem to be a crook, but looked and sounded more like what we hand in mind: you know, like Franklin Roosevelt, or, Dwight Eisenhower. (There is a big difference there, but the point was that we have someone who could, uh, play the part.)
From the minute he was elected, until his vice-president, running to succeed him tried to distance himself a bit from the clueless guy who beat him in the 1980 primaries by making him look like a fool, by saying that his administration would be "kinder and gentler" it seemed that the country had lost its collective mind. The Vietnam War was finally over, and the Iraqi hostages released, and the whole thing, from the day President Kennedy was killed until then seemed so difficult that maybe we would be better off without a real president for a few years and just have an actor there. So when AIDS started to infect gay men, he could console us by pointing out that we weren’t gay men so there was nothing to worry about.
And so, here we are in 2008, seven years after our country was attacked on its own soil for the first time since 1941 by people we have chased into a volatile part of the world in which a least one country apparently has a nuclear bomb, and who are undoubtedly plotting to attack us again and one of the major political parties in this country, the one whose latest pretend president was unwilling to cut short a photo op while the country was under attack, fields a slate of candidates who fall over each other to proclaim themselves the next Reagan. And television news commentators act as if this makes sense.
And one final point in this world of movie acting that we care about so much more than the actual world. The Associated Press reported last week about huge build ups of something, unlikely to be Santa’s elves, in the border areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan, but some movie actor died of something in Soho and that relegated these stories to the dustbin. And Senator McCain: before you or the other dwarfs tell us about how this phony president you gave us (and remember: had Senator McCain run with Senator Kerry in 2004, they would be trying to get re-elected right now) has kept us from further attacks since 2001, keep in mind that the people who are out to get us, got us in 1993, at the World Trade Center and didn’t come back to do it again until 2001. They wanted to get it right and time was on their side, because we do everything we can to help them.
This is not pretend or play acting. This is why we have a president; not to read to children (we call those people "teachers" and we pay them ridiculously low salaries to do this and then whine that they aren’t doing a good job). The idea is to have a president to lead a government that at minimum will protect us from those who want to hurt us. Not to smile while they do and tell us stories about what might have been.
Friday, February 4, 2011
GLENN BECK ON BLACK HISTORY MONTH
THE PEANUT GUY'S WORK STATION
I discovered this 5 year old radio tape of Glenn Beck’s show by accident:
I come to you this fine February morning to discuss the media-made fiasco called Black History Month.
Our country got along just fine for two hundred years without any Affirmative Action History.
Now I am sure that you all had plenty of American History discussing that great American Uncle Tom as well as that guy who gave us peanut butter.
But now we are to believe that Black men and Black women have been short changed as far as our history texts.
Garbage; this is all nothing but garbage.
Nonetheless, my staff and I have looked into this matter of history—you know of course that I run my own university and you can become part of it for only $10.95 a month. Oh and you can get a discount on even from this small amount if you act now and purchase ten gold coins.
Getting back to our most recent research into this area I found some troubling data I would like to share with you all today.
Going back to the forties and fifties in this country you would find thousands upon thousands of African Americans—we called them Negroes back then—with names taken from our Founding Fathers. There were Adams and Washingtons and Jeffersons and even a Lewis or Clark—do you remember The Jeffersons? One of my favorite shows as a kid, really.
Anyway, somewhere along the line beginning in the 1960’s a conspiracy was developing.
A Jihadist conspiracy that nobody was really aware of came to the fore.
All of a sudden, little Tommy Jefferson changed his name to Allah or Mohammed or Ali or El-Weigh.
I recall this great fighter by the name of Cassius Clay receiving that name from a Transylvanian scholar. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassius_Clay_%281810%E2%80%931903%29
Don’t misunderstand me, I am not saying that the original Cassius Clay was Dracularian or anything, but he certainly was what we might call a ‘Freethinker’.
Anyhow that was all fine and good but after the Jihadist Communist got ahold of this great fighter, we lost Cassius Clay and ended up with Mohammed Ali.
There I said it.
Here was a man who proved that it did not matter what the color of your skin was, you could still be world champion.
And after receiving all this acclaim and all that money, this ingrate refused to enlist in the military and protect us from the Communists overseas.
And do you know why that is?
We are told by Dick Cheney that he refused to enlist because he had another agenda ahead of him which was to save us from communism in other ways. Besides we all knew he had this cardiac condition since his first heart attack on his high school football field.
Well Cassius Clay was hijacked by those commie Jihadists and taken to Babylon for some period of time.
Now few people know this. And do you know why this prize fighter was taken to Babylon?
So here it is. The Tower of Babel as most people know it is these people got together and the king said let’s build a tower and it will reach the sky and it will reach heaven and then God got pissed off and came down and destroyed them, confused their language and they all scattered. That’s really not the way the story goes, and it’s important that you understand the story. It has affected us do you know that Bugs Bunny actually used to call Elmer Fudd Nimrod? And do you know why? He used to call Bugs Bunny was the one that really made Nimrod really popular because Bugs Bunny was the one that called Elmer Fudd Nimrod, Nimrod, Elmer Fudd was the hunter. He wasn’t a king at first. He’s first described in the in Genesis as a hunter, but not a hunter of animals. A hunter of men. A hunter of people. And the people, after Noah, they all, they get off the boat and they do what two and two do and they make four and six and et cetera, et cetera. And so then they repopulated the Earth. And they’re all focused on God. And that’s when the first time an oppressive government, the idea of a totalitarian leader comes to the forefront, and it’s done by a hunter of men, Nimrod. And what he says is he gets together and he says to everybody, "Hey, let’s build bricks." Why would you say let’s build bricks? Does that sound like anything anybody would want to do? Let’s build bricks? Oh, and then we’re going to build a big tower and it will reach heaven.
That’s right. These Nimrodders got ahold of one of our greatest athletes and turned him into a raving lunatic; a raving communist; a raving Jihadist. A shame, a damn shame and something that should be remembered for all time. And look at Cassius Clay today. Do you know why he looks like that?
Implants. They chloroformed Cassius and too him to Babylon and implanted Manchurian doodads into his brain.
Those implants were what made Cassius a communistic Jihadist and when that machinery wore out, it left the poor man a mere shadow of himself.
A similar thing happened to Malcolm Little. Here was a kid born in Omaha with a bright and happy future and ended up a ruthless felon, sentenced to prison for sins committed against his fellow man and his personal God.
Well, the communist Jihadists got ahold of him while he was in prison and turned him into that hateful Malcom X. Actually it was worse than that. I mean at first they turned him into El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz.
Now I think he took his first jihadist name to fool people into thinking he was not that Malcolm Little guy anymore. I mean it would make it easier for him to get a job.
A lot of violent felons change their names you know.
Frankly, Malcolm Little spit on Jesus and took a new road straight to hell thinking he might end up in heaven with all those virgins.
A shame. Just a damnable shame.
And of course, as soon as Malcolm figured all this out, the Jihadists shot him dead.
Ferdinand Lewis "Lew" Alcindor, Jr. is another sad case of a good man, a great athlete who turned to the devil at the behest of communist jihadists.
Here was a kid who was born with everything. I mean he had all this talent, he was so very tall and muscular, he folks were hard working middle class people, he had a good Catholic School education—you know without that pope fellow, a Catholic School education aint half bad.
And what happened to this kid who had everything?
Well the commie Jihadists got ahold of him and turned him into a devil worshipper.
Now I found this statement on the net that gives one pause:
Abdul-Jabbar was well known for his trademark "sky hook", a hook shot in which he bent his entire body (rather than just the arm) like a straw in one fluid motion to raise the ball and then release it at the highest point of his arm's arching motion. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kareem_Abdul-Jabbar
This strange development in Alcindor’s basketball play was code ladies and gentlemen.
Bending his body into a straw was a way of telling Sunni’s to kill Christians all over the world.
Since he began bending like this with mass media televising this code all over the world, over 5 million Christians have been killed by Jihadists.
And it’s a damn shame I tell you.
Well that is enough Black History for today.
Stick with the original Cassius Clay and that guy who knew how to make good peanut butter.
The rest of it is all communist jihadist code.
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
Why Egypt Matters - An Historical perspective.
We - and by we I mean the Western world and most especially the USA - have a nasty habit of forgetting some of the past history that makes us uncomfortable. This is especially true when it comes to the Middle East. The current situation in Egypt can trace its roots back to just after WWII. When Egypt became a state separate from Sudan and the monarchy was overthrown.
The second president of Egypt was Gamal Abdel Nasser Hussein. This Wikipedia entry on him is well worth reading as he was the head of Egypt up until his death in 1970. This is what makes Egypt so important because he was not only the head of Egypt for so long, but was also the main mover and shaker in the Arab world for this time - from 1956 - 1970. His Vice President was Anwar Sadat who became president after Nasser's death. But Sadat was not wholly loved by the Egyptian people due to his friendliness with the west, the elimination of a lot of Nasser's social policies and most of all the peace treaty with Israel.
The current political party in Egypt, the NDP, is simply the continuation of the original party established by Nasser but under a different name. Basically made up of military and ex-military men. Nasser himself was very anti-imperialistic and fought hard against western hegemony. Not only in Egypt but throughout the Arab world forming the United Arab Republic (UAR) and seeing the formation of Israel as another attempt at this hegemony. He was also instrumental in nationalizing the Suez Canal as well as a number of Egyptian industries. He was friendly with and accepted help from the Soviet Union though also suspicious of their intentions as well.
Our rewriting of history include the 6 day war with Israel which Israel began.
The protests in Egypt are in my opinion long overdue. The subtle and not-so-subtle imperialist actions of the US are now being challenged from the ground up. This has got to be causing some people to piss in the pants big time.
The second president of Egypt was Gamal Abdel Nasser Hussein. This Wikipedia entry on him is well worth reading as he was the head of Egypt up until his death in 1970. This is what makes Egypt so important because he was not only the head of Egypt for so long, but was also the main mover and shaker in the Arab world for this time - from 1956 - 1970. His Vice President was Anwar Sadat who became president after Nasser's death. But Sadat was not wholly loved by the Egyptian people due to his friendliness with the west, the elimination of a lot of Nasser's social policies and most of all the peace treaty with Israel.
The current political party in Egypt, the NDP, is simply the continuation of the original party established by Nasser but under a different name. Basically made up of military and ex-military men. Nasser himself was very anti-imperialistic and fought hard against western hegemony. Not only in Egypt but throughout the Arab world forming the United Arab Republic (UAR) and seeing the formation of Israel as another attempt at this hegemony. He was also instrumental in nationalizing the Suez Canal as well as a number of Egyptian industries. He was friendly with and accepted help from the Soviet Union though also suspicious of their intentions as well.
Our rewriting of history include the 6 day war with Israel which Israel began.
In early 1967, Soviet premier Alexei Kosygin sent Nasser a warning through Sadat, who was visiting Moscow, that Israel was about to carry out a large-scale assault against Syria. More warnings followed in the next few months, and King Hussein, aware of the intelligence situation, cautioned Nasser in April not to be dragged into a war. That same month, pressure on him to act by Syria, Saudi Arabia, and the PLO, as well as the general Arab populace, mounted after an aerial battle between Syria and Israel resulted in the downing of six Syrian planes. Convinced that Israel was determined to attack Syria, he asked UN Secretary-General U Thant to withdraw UNEF forces from Sinai. On 23 May, Egyptian troops moved into Sharm el-Sheikh and Nasser ordered the Straits of Tiran closed to Israeli shipping. After the blockade, he gave a speech to the United Nations General Assembly on 29 May saying, "the issue was not UNEF or closing the Strait of Tiran; the issue is the rights of the Palestinian people."[108] This was the same message delivered a week earlier during a visit to an air base in the Sinai. The speeches signaled that Nasser believed war was inevitable.[108]
So when I hear how Egypt has been our friend and ally for so long, I am aghast. Since this is at best an exaggeration. The one thing that I can see being a big concern for the US is not some Islamic government in Egypt, but the rise of a person of Nasser's power and influence with the rest of the Arab world. The protests in Egypt are in my opinion long overdue. The subtle and not-so-subtle imperialist actions of the US are now being challenged from the ground up. This has got to be causing some people to piss in the pants big time.
Monday, January 31, 2011
Communication
This was going to be a blog about communication styles between the left and right and the common folk. But that will have to wait, I am afraid. With the protests in Tunisia and now Egypt it has become obvious to this blogger that our current methods of personal communication with cell phones and the Internet and social media will simply not cut the mustard when we need to get the messages out and among ourselves about what is happening in the streets, what we want and plan to do about it and what the world needs to know. When it is obvious that a government can shut down the internet and cell phone access when ever it wants. Prevent news agencies from covering a situation and hassles and/or detains those who are reporting, it is imperative that a method of communication that is not dependent on the private sector or governments is necessary. At least temporarily.
The technology exists now like it never has before. What is necessary is to learn and create alternatives. To use our natural inventiveness to make a system that can be put into place so that our story gets out regardless of the circumstances. It would not need to be pretty or even perfect. It just has to work.
The technology exists now like it never has before. What is necessary is to learn and create alternatives. To use our natural inventiveness to make a system that can be put into place so that our story gets out regardless of the circumstances. It would not need to be pretty or even perfect. It just has to work.
Saturday, January 29, 2011
The Big Lie
It was just so over the top, and so wrongheaded that our usually fractious populace, and the politicians and hangers on who cater to them were, for once, united in their condemnation. After all what the congressman said was just, simply, out of bounds.
What the congressman said was this:
You can see just how outrageous it was just by reading it. It is easy to imagine the many people who needed "the vapors" to revive them, after hearing such words. Some congresswoman says
while another political figure who was once nominated to serve as Vice President of the United States explains that "the Sputnik moment" that many of us remember as the catalyst for the development of a apace program that led to our landing men on the moon slightly more than a decade later and increased spending to educate more scientists and the research that led to the technological breakthroughs which have marked our time, in facts stands for a race to space that the Russians
but really it is Steve Cohen, the man with a political opponent who suggested he not be elected since Jews hate Christians who has poisoned our political discourse.
And, of course, he and Politifact are wrong. The lies about a government "takeover" of health care, while as asinine a claim there is, and one which was repeated in Republican campaign commercials every hour on the hour during October last, were not, and cannot be the lie of the year.
It is this one: constantly repeated every single day, by sages on televisions throughout the land:
The budget deficit must be cut and cut now. We will rue the day, if we do not reduce the deficit immediately.
Here, for instance, are the famed Nobel Laureates in Economics: Dr. Joe Scarborough of the University of Talk Louder than Anyone Else on Set, and Professor Michael Barnicle of The Institution of Higher Cowering to Conservatives so Maybe They Will Like Me:
So, aside from these two laureates, there appear to be no other economists who find this analogy to be apt. The idea that, for instance, your family should not radically cut back its expenditures at a local restaurant since to do so might put the restaurant out of business or at least cost some of its employees their income is, of course, ludicrous. The government has a different role and obligation.
Try this from people who have greater expertise in this, than the consistently broke blogger, if you continue to believe that Professors Scarborough and Barnacle were doing anything but wasting the morning away.
More importantly, away from the bloviation machinery (including the one we are both using right now), this is well understood. After Vice President Cheney famously explained that deficits don't matter, an article in the Weekly Standard (not to be confused with the Daily Worker) explained, with unusual cogency why he was probably right at least when the government is "teetering on the verge of a major recession."
Now that we are way past "verge" and perhaps major recession doesn't really say it, the preferred economist to make the same point, Paul Krugman, has pointed out often, that with a
So, as oddly dissonant it may seem when people tell us about the evils of our deficit while giving tax breaks to the wealthy, it is not. The Republican Party which nominated and elected President Reagan has had one over-riding goal: to undo the New Deal and return the United States to the eat what you can kill economy that President Roosevelt inherited as it lay in the ditch, careening toward the anarchy and dictatorships already in sight in the rest of the civilized world.
But it was a world which, as President Roosevelt described it while seeking his first re-election, where
The New Deal was intended to enlist the government against these forces instead of supporting them but in a curious way would end up making business even better, since it helped create a middle class with buying power far beyond what anyone could have imagined as President Roosevelt took office in March, 1933.
Still, a segment of the world ended by the New Deal always pined for its return. They took over the Republican Party dismembered by Watergate and set on their course to put us back to the good old days before that patrician from Hyde Park took their measure.
Hence, their chosen Representative to "respond" to the President's State of the Union address---a speech pointing a way forward (please watch Rachel Maddow's summary of what it meant), went right after the whole structure erected by the New Deal to forever protect our citizens from the predations that nearly destroyed the nation but which they derisively refer to as "entitlement programs."
Programs to invest in what we need to do to move successfully into the new century, Congressman Paul Ryan said, will
So, there it is. In black and white. At least we are going to be candid about what the plan is; a significant achievement. Congressman Ryan's speech just confirmed how right Dr. Krugman was when he explained a year ago, that the deficit is killing us meme---which the beltway press have adopted as their own mantra as well--- results in
The almost unreadable but spot on book What's the Matter with Kansas explained how all the culture war stuff fooled the easily misled into supporting politicians out to hurt them for the benefit of the fat cats who supported them, but the repetition of their nonsense by supposed news dispensaries helps more than the abortion is evil rant (which has, you will notice, returned). The point is that no matter how ridiculous something is, if you repeat it often enough, it becomes accepted as true. The most famous and effective use of this technique was...
oh, yeh. Never mind. Not allowed to say that.
What the congressman said was this:
And the myopia of the other side, let alone the hypocrisy of some of its members, is hard to fathom.
...
They say it's a government takeover of health care, a big lie. Just like Goebbels ; you say it enough, you repeat the lie, you repeat the lie, you repeat the lie, and eventually people believe it. Like blood libel. That's the same kind of thing. The Germans said enough about the Jews and the people believed it and you had the Holocaust. You tell a lie over and over again. And we've heard it on this floor; government takeover of health care.
PolitiFact, nonpartisan, Pulitzer prize-winning, 2009, St. Petersburg Times, said the biggest lie of 2010 was government takeover of health care, because there is no government takeover. It's insurance.
You can see just how outrageous it was just by reading it. It is easy to imagine the many people who needed "the vapors" to revive them, after hearing such words. Some congresswoman says
we also know that the very founders that wrote those documents worked tirelessly until slavery was no more in the United States....
And I think it is high time that we recognize the contribution of our forbearers [sic] who worked tirelessly -- men like John Quincy Adams, who would not rest until slavery was extinguished in the country
while another political figure who was once nominated to serve as Vice President of the United States explains that "the Sputnik moment" that many of us remember as the catalyst for the development of a apace program that led to our landing men on the moon slightly more than a decade later and increased spending to educate more scientists and the research that led to the technological breakthroughs which have marked our time, in facts stands for a race to space that the Russians
won, but also incurred so much debt at the time that it resulted in the inevitable collapse of the Soviet Union.
but really it is Steve Cohen, the man with a political opponent who suggested he not be elected since Jews hate Christians who has poisoned our political discourse.
And, of course, he and Politifact are wrong. The lies about a government "takeover" of health care, while as asinine a claim there is, and one which was repeated in Republican campaign commercials every hour on the hour during October last, were not, and cannot be the lie of the year.
It is this one: constantly repeated every single day, by sages on televisions throughout the land:
The budget deficit must be cut and cut now. We will rue the day, if we do not reduce the deficit immediately.
Here, for instance, are the famed Nobel Laureates in Economics: Dr. Joe Scarborough of the University of Talk Louder than Anyone Else on Set, and Professor Michael Barnicle of The Institution of Higher Cowering to Conservatives so Maybe They Will Like Me:
SCARBOROUGH:
I'm very disturbed by the president actually bragging about increasing spending while Greece and Portugal and Spain and Ireland go up in flames and moody's saying we could be next.... if you look it at the front page of the New York Times" yesterday talking about the states going up in flames in debt, if you see what's happening in spain, is spain going to collapse?
What happened in Portugal, what happened in Ireland, what happened in Greece, what's happening in America where you have Moody's saying they're going to downgrade our AAA rating, which is going to mean 5 trillion, instead of being historically low rates will be at high rates.
5 trillion debt becomes a $20 trillion debt just like that and it cripples the united states.
Mike, this is basic math.
This is basic banking.
BARNACLE:
You know what, maybe members of Congress, individual members of Congress, and maybe even the President of the United states, should take one month off from listening to focus groups and reading polls and spend more time with an averageAamerican family to see how they balance their checkbook month to month and what they do is what this Congress and past Congresses have been unable to do.
Figure out what they can afford and what they can't afford.
Because average American families can't put bills off into the distance for too long.
We all have to make those decisions.
You had to choose am I going to buy a mink lined sink or aim am I going to get the leather jacket.
So, aside from these two laureates, there appear to be no other economists who find this analogy to be apt. The idea that, for instance, your family should not radically cut back its expenditures at a local restaurant since to do so might put the restaurant out of business or at least cost some of its employees their income is, of course, ludicrous. The government has a different role and obligation.
Try this from people who have greater expertise in this, than the consistently broke blogger, if you continue to believe that Professors Scarborough and Barnacle were doing anything but wasting the morning away.
More importantly, away from the bloviation machinery (including the one we are both using right now), this is well understood. After Vice President Cheney famously explained that deficits don't matter, an article in the Weekly Standard (not to be confused with the Daily Worker) explained, with unusual cogency why he was probably right at least when the government is "teetering on the verge of a major recession."
Now that we are way past "verge" and perhaps major recession doesn't really say it, the preferred economist to make the same point, Paul Krugman, has pointed out often, that with a
a depressed economy and high unemployment...[w]hat the government should be doing ... is spending more while the private sector is spending less, supporting employment while those debts are paid down. And this government spending needs to be sustained: we’re not talking about a brief burst of aid; we’re talking about spending that lasts long enough for households to get their debts back under control. The original Obama stimulus wasn’t just too small; it was also much too short-lived, with much of the positive effect already gone.
So, as oddly dissonant it may seem when people tell us about the evils of our deficit while giving tax breaks to the wealthy, it is not. The Republican Party which nominated and elected President Reagan has had one over-riding goal: to undo the New Deal and return the United States to the eat what you can kill economy that President Roosevelt inherited as it lay in the ditch, careening toward the anarchy and dictatorships already in sight in the rest of the civilized world.
But it was a world which, as President Roosevelt described it while seeking his first re-election, where
[t]hrough new uses of corporations, banks and securities, new machinery of industry and agriculture, of labor and capital - all undreamed of by the Fathers - the whole structure of modern life was impressed into this royal service.
There was no place among this royalty for our many thousands of small-businessmen and merchants who sought to make a worthy use of the American system of initiative and profit. They were no more free than the worker or the farmer. Even honest and progressive-minded men of wealth, aware of their obligation to their generation, could never know just where they fitted into this dynastic scheme of things.
It was natural and perhaps human that the privileged princes of these new economic dynasties, thirsting for power, reached out for control over government itself. They created a new despotism and wrapped it in the robes of legal sanction. In its service new mercenaries sought to regiment the people, their labor, and their property. And as a result the average man once more confronts the problem that faced the Minute Man.
The hours men and women worked, the wages they received, the conditions of their labor - these had passed beyond the control of the people, and were imposed by this new industrial dictatorship. The savings of the average family, the capital of the small-businessmen, the investments set aside for old age - other people's money - these were tools which the new economic royalty used to dig itself in.
The New Deal was intended to enlist the government against these forces instead of supporting them but in a curious way would end up making business even better, since it helped create a middle class with buying power far beyond what anyone could have imagined as President Roosevelt took office in March, 1933.
Still, a segment of the world ended by the New Deal always pined for its return. They took over the Republican Party dismembered by Watergate and set on their course to put us back to the good old days before that patrician from Hyde Park took their measure.
Hence, their chosen Representative to "respond" to the President's State of the Union address---a speech pointing a way forward (please watch Rachel Maddow's summary of what it meant), went right after the whole structure erected by the New Deal to forever protect our citizens from the predations that nearly destroyed the nation but which they derisively refer to as "entitlement programs."
Programs to invest in what we need to do to move successfully into the new century, Congressman Paul Ryan said, will
transform our social safety net into a hammock, which lulls able-bodied people into lives of complacency and dependency.
So, there it is. In black and white. At least we are going to be candid about what the plan is; a significant achievement. Congressman Ryan's speech just confirmed how right Dr. Krugman was when he explained a year ago, that the deficit is killing us meme---which the beltway press have adopted as their own mantra as well--- results in
all the talk ... about how to shave a few billion dollars off government spending, while there’s hardly any willingness to tackle mass unemployment. Policy is headed in the wrong direction — and millions of Americans will pay the price.
The almost unreadable but spot on book What's the Matter with Kansas explained how all the culture war stuff fooled the easily misled into supporting politicians out to hurt them for the benefit of the fat cats who supported them, but the repetition of their nonsense by supposed news dispensaries helps more than the abortion is evil rant (which has, you will notice, returned). The point is that no matter how ridiculous something is, if you repeat it often enough, it becomes accepted as true. The most famous and effective use of this technique was...
oh, yeh. Never mind. Not allowed to say that.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)