Deck: Cyber Curmudgeon

Jaime O'Neill on The Smirking Chimp discussing TV coverage of the death of Michael Jackson:

"..."The coverage was not excessive; it was insane."

Amen.

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The Politico reported that Washington Post publisher Katharine Weymouth is canceling plans for a get-together at her home where for a mere $250,000, lobbyists and captains of industry would have had access to "those powerful few" — White House officials, members of Congress, and the paper's own reporters and editors.

The cancellation came after the paper's newsroom went into an uproar about the offer.

A newsman friend asked sardonically: "What's up next? Maybe a yard sale for Old, Used and Like-New reporters?"

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U.S. troop levels in Iraq should drop to 120,000 by the end of the year, said Gen. Ray Odierno, commander of U.S. forces in Iraq.

Let's see...10% fewer troops each year...the war will be over by mid-century?

I love fairy tales.

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Someone on Facebook responded to one of my comments by suggesting that "people who object to some foreign war...on the grounds that it is immoral, have not always examined the end results of their own moral philosophy."

We invaded a country that had never attacked us, had never hurt us, and posed no threat to us.

In doing so we started a war that killed more than a million of the men, women and children who had never threatened us, left millions more refugees in their own country.

Our invasion and years-long occupation destroyed their culture and their infrastructure, leaving scars that will last generations, and subjected their people to both horrors -- think torture and home invasions -- and indignities -- think roadblocks -- that we would never tolerate for ourselves.

The Iraq war is immoral by my well-examined philosophy.

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I've gotten several anti-immigration e-mails lately from friends, both right and left -- excuse me, anti-'illegal' immigration. Sometimes I sigh and let them go unanswered; sometimes I tell them:

We are a nation of immigrants. We first stole the country from the Native Americans who were here before us. Now we want to shut the door and tell no one else they can come in, not even the Mexicans that we stole Texas from.

Doesn't seem fair, does it?

But as long as the powers that be can keep us worrying about immigration, we won't pay any attention to the trillions, that is TRILLIONS, of dollars that we are giving to the greedy bankers who destroyed our economy in the first place -- or the hundreds of billions of dollars we are giving to the Defense Department to murder Afghanistanis and Iraqs, or the billions we are giving to the insurance companies so they can deny us healthcare.

Works like a charm, doesn't it?

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I recently got a cartoon making fun of 9/11 "conspiracy nuts."

You know, those people who don't believe that a bunch of 'terrorists' in a cave in Afghanistan recruited nine guys with box cutters to hijack some airliners, ground the U.S. fighter jets who guard our air space, and bring down three steel high rises, one of them apparently by just huffing & puffing.

Boy, that's a real mother of conspiracy theories.

But I believe, I believe, because Bush and Cheeny never told a lie.

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Why didn't the American people take to the streets when our presidential election was stolen, twice?

Do you suppose that the Iranians love democracy more?

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I composed this prayer a bit back and I'm sure that I blogged it at the time, whenever that was.

Our Father, Who art in blogdom, hallowed be thy Name.
Thy kingdome come. Thy will be done
In the Real World, as it is on the Web.
Give us this day our daily blog
And forgive us our babble,
As we forgive those who babble with us.
And lead us not into the illusion that our words are wisdom;
But deliver us from the evil of certitude.
For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory,
Forever --- or until Web 3.0. Amen

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Alma discovered the other day that our little book, Letters from the Fire, is on sale for rather wildly differing prices: if we could get that last price for the 100 or we have on hand... [g]

A friend recently cited that hoary adage that I'm free to complain about our country, our government because our brave soldiers over the decades fought and died to protect that freedom.

That, of course, is utter bilge.

I've seen a lot of wars in my lifetime, starting with World War II, the only one that there is even a smidgen of justification for. All the others have been fought for the benefit of corporations or for ideology -- which is a tautology.

Soldiers fought and died to protect corporate profits, not to save my ass or protect my rights. In fact, wars are used to justify stealing my rights and trashing the Constitution as George W did so well.

But don't take my word for, listen to the words of Gen. Smedley Butler who warned of our march towards fascism back in the 1930s.

In 1935 he wrote a book book, "War Is a Racket" in which he said:
"I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.

"I helped make Mexico ... safe for American oil interests ... I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank ... I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers ... I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies ... Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents."

The names of the corporations have changed but not much else. Wars are fought by the poor and powerless for the benefit of the rich and powerful. They are not fought for "freedom."

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While Alma and I were courting in e-mail and ICQ chat, people in the newsgroup in which we had met, misc.writing, became aware that we were becoming a couple, and later that we were intending to get married.

For various reasons, we had a lot of detractors in misc.writing, one of whom made a remark about us that was clearly intended to be nasty and pejorative. There is a rather formidable age gap between Alma and I, so the poster referred to us as "Grandpa and Heidi."

Next month we celebrate our ninth wedding anniversary, and Grandpa and Heidi are doing quite well.

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The New York Times reports that Congressional negotiators will give more money for the eternal wars in Iraq and Afghanistan but would drop a ban on the release of photographs showing abuse of foreign prisoners. The deal was concluded after the White House assured Senate Democrats that President Obama would use all administrative and legal means to prevent the photos release.

Let me get this straight.

Congress will give another $105,000,000,000 for the occupations and slaughter of Afghanistanis and Iragis as long as Americans never get to see the pictures of the war crimes of torture?

Is this a great country or what!

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Norman Solomon noted on CommonDreams.org that "lofty words about war hopes are boilerplate efforts to make us feel better about an endless warfare state.

Solomon is always worth reading, but a comment by one of his readers on modern nu-speak was deckishly brilliant.

Glenn Ford said:

Soldiers = Mercenaries

War on Terror = War of Terror

Peace = War

Democracy = Corporate Dictatorship

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The Story of Stuff is a mind-blowing look at our culture of consumerism -- and its ugliness and increasing danger to the whole planet.

The 20 minute animated video examines how all the "stuff" in our lives affects the biosphere and exposes the connections between a huge number of environmental and social issues.

Warning: you may never look at your "stuff" the same way again.

http://www.storyofstuff.com/

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The Warren Times Observer in Pennsylvania ran a classified ad expressing a wish -- "May Obama follow in the steps of Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley and Kennedy!"

The publisher said that the advertising staff didn't make the historical connection.

Well, who could blame them after all: they aren't historians. How were they to know that the those four presidents were all assassinated?
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Sen. Pat Murray of Washington bragged in an email newsletter that "This week I helped pass legislation in the Senate that provides tough new regulations on deceptive credit card practices that have hurt Washington families."

I replied that:

You did us no favor; that bill is a sham.

The one thing that actually mattered, an amendment to limit interest rates to 15 percent, was killed. With the government bailing out some of these same companies, and giving them money for zero interest, how greedy can they possibly get?

What we are left with is a cosmetic makeover which will continue to bless outrageous interest rates with no real protection for the American people at all, another charade of reform which actually changes nothing of substance.

Of course, when I tried to email this to her in response to her newsletter, it bounced because "The recipient's mailbox is full and can't accept messages now."

Communication with our public servants is purely a one-way street; they talk, we listen.
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Probably the hardest thing to accept after my stroke six years ago was the loss of my ability to touch type. I had thought with my fingers for more than 50 years, and when I couldn't do it any longer, I felt like I was living in a fog.

I tried a device that my son gave me which allows typing with one hand. It was clever but I never could get the hang of it. Typing one-handed on a keyboard was an exercise in frustration. So I tried a new approach. I have been using Dragon voice recognition for a few years now, but it lacks a certain amount of finesse.

For example, I dictated the following sentence:
I have been using Dragon for several years now and it is a royal pain in the ass.

But that isn't exactly what Dragon gave me. What it thought I said was:
"I've been using Dragon for some viewers now and it is a world payment yes."

I have learned a few things about working with voice recognition -- primarily that I have to talk in short bursts of a few words at a time. If I speak at normal speed in full sentences, I get garbage like the above.

Unfortunately, of course, I don't normally think in short bursts, so I have had to learn a new way of thinking/communicating. It works, after a fashion. I get by.

But even in short bursts, Dragon screws up often enough that I spend an inordinate amount of time making corrections.

I want the system they use on the Starship Enterprise: 'Computer....'
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A friend of a different philosophical/political predilection was opining about the orientation of the mainstream media, which he thinks is a bit too 'liberal.'

"Tell me again," he asked, "what 87 stories not to report?"

I suggested some of the stories that the corporate media doesn't seem to want to examine very closely.

1. How many civilians we have killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

2. How many mercenaries we are employing in Iraq and Afghanistan, and around the world.

3. How many civilians we have killed in Pakistan by our robot planes.

4. What percentages of civilian deaths are caused by our using aerial firepower in crowded cities.

5. How many military bases we have around the world.

6. How many people we've tortured to death.

7. How the costs of our eternal wars and empire have contributed to the destruction of our economy.

8. Corporate control of our government and electoral process through legalized bribery called 'campaign contributions.'.

9. How government policies have aided shipping US jobs overseas, helping to destroy the middle class.

10. The true cost in trillions of our bailout of Wall Street and the banks.

11. How the bankers and other crooks who stole us into this mess are not only not being forced to account for what they've done, but are firmly in charge so they can steal more.

12. How our 'socialized' programs like Medicare and Social Security run circles around 'for profit' companies.

13. How effective 'socialized' medicine is in keeping populations healthy, even though they may -- or may not -- be somewhat less effective at treating high-cost diseases like cancer.

14. The dangerous domination of our food supply by corporate farms.

16. The theft of our last few national elections.

17. The insanity of the official story of what happened 9/11.

18. The use of the 'war on drugs'to control the nonwhite population by selective prosecution and imprisonment.

19. The true ravages that global Warming will bring.

20. The dangerous concentration of the media into the hands of a half-dozen gigantic corporations who control news for their own benefit.

21. How Obama is covering up war crimes by Cheney and Bush.

22. The extent of the Holocaust that Israel has enforced against Palestinians; and the extent of Israeli influence on the US government.

23. Mountaintop removal and other ecological disasters.

24. Federal government role in the destruction of unions.

25. ...................

87. How Washington is a walled city with no contact with the real America.

Broken promise number 12 or 27 or 42, or whatever.

Obama is fighting to prevent the release of photographs of Americans torturing people in Iraq and Afghanistan after he had earlier promised to release them. But, gosh, people might get angry. Why, American commanders warned "that the images could set off a deadly backlash against American troops."

Yeah, we have to prevent that. The easy way to do it would be not to torture, but the better way is not to get caught. If you do get caught, make sure to hide the evidence and lie convincingly.

The American people don't care that Obama keeps lying to them -- after all, that's what presidents do.
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The 100-day marker is a bit silly, but as as good place as any to grade Obama.

I give him a D+. The D is for his timid performance so far, the + is just hope.

On Iraq he's a failure in all respects. He's someday going to pull some troops out, while leaving scores of thousands behind. And those that come out will be sent to Afghanistan, our other murderous, illegal, unjustified, and immoral war.

On health care, he's firmly in the pocket of the insurance companies and doing his best to sabotage any hint of single-payer.

He refuses to investigate Bush crimes, and if it is up to him, Bush, Cheney and all the other criminals who tortured in our name, spied on us, and colluded to destroy our economy will be treated as honored citizens.

And, of course, he has put the Wall Street wolf pack in charge of the barnyard. Rather then sending the crooks to jail, he's put them in charge of funneling trillions of mostly fake dollars into the pockets of their good friends, leaving the poor and rapidly dwindling middle class to fend for themselves.

It's early and maybe he'll get religion and begin working for the people instead of the money men.

And maybe pigs will fly. Hey, anything is theoretically possible.
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