Here it comes again -- another oo-ee-oo oooga-booga from the White House

How blatant are they Johnny?

Well, when they whip up a great big "let's hate the ______________ "(fill in the blank) they really whip it good ...

Getting it lately?

"The attack in Kamala MAY HAVE BEEN planned by Iran."

It's only the real military talking heads who say -- just the first day anyway -- "we don't have any actual evidence Iran was involved but..."

But you can trust the rabid slaveys on Fox News and CNN to ignore that and go on to hour after hour of "IF Iran is involved..." and do a poll with their viewers asking "What should we do if Iran planned the attack on the 4 American soldiers?" because people don't tune in to hear someone say "Nothing really there."


Hey -- sorry that 4 soldiers got killed, but weren't they trying to do the same thing to those other guys? Win some lose some.


If only they could connect Scott Peterson to the Iranians, and convince the public that Charlie Manson's mom was a Persian woman named Bundabundajhade before she changed it... and Charlie is an Iranian and is communicating with Tehran...

oh shit -- have I just given Karl Rove an idea?

George W Bush's Legacy

It's looking a lot like his legacy will be the destruction of the Republican Party, since people all over are coming to ASSUME (because the words have been twisted so) that CONSERVATIVES (i.e., people who have a valid, if disputable, belief in minimal presence of government) actually means RIGHT-WING GREED-CRAZED TREASURY-PLUNDERING MURDER-FOR-HIRE
SOCIOPATHS --- like him and his pals.


There is also a valid political philosophy that holds that government should ALSO protect the citizens. But without actual Conservatives, the Rob Reiner "let's make a law" assholes of the Democratic Party will be unchecked.

THE AWARD FOR AMERICA'S UNDISPUTED POST-WWII SURRENDER-MONKEY CHAMPION...

...And the Maginot Line Award goes to:

RONALD REAGAN -- the bobble-headed president who put unarmed Marines in harm's way in Beirut, and when they were blown to hell by a truck bomb on October 23, 1983 -- 241 American servicemen dead: 220 Marines, 18 Navy personnel and 3 Army soldiers -- what did Mr. I'm Strong, I'm a Hero, I'm God's Chosen Tough Guy do?

RONNIE just turned us around and ran for the hills ...

Maybe he was right to leave, but -- in current terms, about iraq -- maybe pointing bribe-stained fingers at people who think getting out of a trap might not be the best idea.

It's an old cliche -- but then cliches are such because people recognize some truth in them** --

"When you point a finger at me -- there are three fingers pointing back at you."

**********************

** Except for "The exception that proves the rule." Huh? Makes no sense at all. And it shouldn't. When you have a theory and you think there might be an actual rule involved, the scientific method was to test it... AND, SO, the actual original uncorrupted cliche was:

"The exception that PROOFS the rule."

In other words, you TEST the rule by seeing if there is any exception to it and if there is an exception, it means the rule is crap, invalid, doesn't work.

It's a sign of social brain damage that people actually insist on the nonsense statement being proof that an exception tells us the rule is valid.

************************************************

Something to do

It is crucial that each and every one of us -- not just vicious offensive overbearing assholes like George Bush and Dick Cheney and Donald Trump and the Limey prick on American Idol or Bill O'Reilly or Nancy Grace or Glen Beck or Iranian Prez Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or Valerie Putin or the local Trotskyite or -- actually -- anyone in a national or state legislature --- not just those ones we can all single out as assholes, but you and me and ALL AND EACH OF US.

Whenever we may notice that there are some or a lot of people who mildly dislike us, or seriously despise us, or hate us with blood in their eyes and murder in their hearts --- take a long look in the mirror and ask:

"Is it me? Is it what I'm doing? Did I make this happen?

Am I hurting people? Am I treating people like homemade crap?

Am I ripping people off? What?

What do those people see when they look at me?"


And -- just between you and yourself and no one else -- answer the questions honestly.


It can be interesting.

Drug - Herb Interactions: Aloe & Bilberry

Our society has gradually and more or less recently learned that the herbal medications used for thousands of years may actually work. In fact, many do, but if herbal remedies are effective, they must contain biologically active chemicals, and that increases the possible risk of side effects and interaction with other drugs.

In Europe and Asia, herbal remedies have long been used and accepted as an adjunct to Western pharmaceutical (allopathic) medications, but the absolutism of allopathic medicine in America leaves us with competent qualified highly trained medical professions (i.e., doctors) who have no knowledge of or training the effects of herbal medicine.

For most Americans, "Natural" means "Safe."
But again, any herb that works is making changes in your body.

In Traditional Chinese Medicine, the use of the needles can be learned in a relatively short time. Despite cheap adventure movies, it's damn near impossible to cause much harm with incompetent needling. But herbs are a different matter, and serious colleges teaching the profession require years of training and practice before they will daclare a student qualified. BECAUSE -- incompetence in herbal prescribing can kill and/or seriously harm people, aside from not doing anything for their disease or disorder.

So, realizing that politics is the Tar Baby, I thought perhaps I might be of some small service to my fellow humans and present actual information (rather than the blue sky, beliefs, and bullshit that make up the thing we call politics). Besides, Monkey Boy and his hench-creatures are circling the toilet bowl of history, having actually flushed it themselves, so they certainly doesn't need my help getting to their new adventure in Sewer Surfing.

So -- actual information in this post, for a change. Alphabetical is the best way to go, I think and I'll begin with the first two in the list:

Herb Name

Aloe vera, Aloe gel, Aloe barbadensis

Drug Name or type

Diuretics

Type of Interaction

Potentiation due to Potassium-depleting effects effects

Signs and Symptoms

Confusion, weakness, irregular heartbeat

**************

Drug Name or type

Hypoglycemic agents

Type of Interaction

Potentiation

***************

Drug Name or type

All Drugs

Type of Interaction

Reduced effectiveness due to binding with drug

*************************************************

**************************************************

**************************************************

Herb Name

Bilberry: Vaccinium myrtillus

Drug Name or type

Anticoagulants

Type of Interaction

Potentiation at high doses

Signs and Symptoms

Increased bleeding time

****************************

*****************************

Potentiation means increasing the effect of the drug beyond what was intended in prescribing.

Drugs means Rx or Over-the-counter Western Pharma allopathic medicines.

Herbs means things are natural and aren't manufactured, things like Mint or Arsenic.

******************

******************

Some Useful Links:

http://www.webmd.com/medical_information/drug_and_herb/default.htm

http://www.anesthesia.wisc.edu/Clinic/providerinfo/herbals.html

http://seniorhealth.about.com/b/a/162320.htm

http://www.cancersupportivecare.com/herbal.html

http://www.abc.net.au/health/cguides/alternative.htm

Why in Hell does anyone pay any attention to anything said by the right-wing club they call the Hoover Institution?

How the Left Caused 9-11 by Dinesh D'Souza

An interview with the conservative polemicist, who accuses the cultural left of provoking al-Qaida's attack in his new book, "The Enemy at Home."

Jan. 20, 2007 | For almost 20 years, Dinesh D'Souza has been a prominent force in the conservative intelligentsia, writing such provocative books as "Illiberal Education," an attack on multiculturalism, and "The End of Racism," which blasts affirmative action. Today, the former senior policy analyst for the Reagan administration is the Robert and Karen Rishwain Fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, a conservative think tank.

************************************


Why in hell does anyone still pay attention to ANYTHING
said by the right-wing club at Stanford called the Hoover Institution?

Just list ANY topic and you can write their headlines from a multiple-choice list:

ANYTHING GOOD:

a. Result of Reagan's policies
b. Product of Capitalism
c. Result of the Emergence of the Right-Wing (conservative) Majority
etc...


ANYTHING BAD:

a. Caused by Liberals (Jimmy Carter)
b. Caused by Liberals (Ted Kennedy)
c. Caused by Liberals (Bill Clinton)
d. Caused by Liberal Press


I guess it's good they all have a gig -- keeps them from forming street gangs, but is there any reason we have to read them? Give them tax-exempt status? Allow them to eat in the same restaurants we frequent?

Punk-ass revisited

It's as if the past 5 years never happened -- Bush, shoulders slumping forward, halting, no longer the confident leader -- the pose that took him SO LONG to get right instead of the smug smirking punk-ass little rich kid, Cheney's prancey bitch, the nothing nobody "fence-post turtle" that he was when his daddy's pal, Jim Baker, went to Florida (taking John Bolton and the rest of the mob with him to steal the 2000 election for the kid.

It's as if he knew THEN he was a poseur, an imposter, undeserving and full of crap.

Everyone talks about his posture and demeanor, without getting to the real "tell:"

He's got his eyebrows back into the "don't hit me -- it's not my fault" position.

Greyed out, brow furrowed, but once again, the Hell of being George W Bush is to be 6 years old again with the Grendel's-Mother Terror called Mommy towering over him and yelling.


And if we could NOW take back our country from him and his hench-vermin, it would be satisfying to see him dumped unceremoniously into the hell of his own making. But, he's back to stasis, paralysis (remember the 7 minutes? No not the sleaz-o pop novel and Russ Meyer Movie -- the "My Little Goat" reading on 9-11?) which means the dark ones' hands up his ass, George W Lambchop being sock puppet to an evil version of Shari Lewis.

Pathetic AND scary.


************************

*Fence-post Turtle: "When you're driving down a country road and you come across a fence post with a turtle balanced on top, you know he didn't get there by himself, he doesn't belong there, he can't get anything done while he's up there, and you just want to help the poor dumb bastard get down."

I don't get it

These guys (State Department, NSA, etc) are supposed to be smart, and God knows they sure know how to remember their lines, so --

Do they think it's clever to circumvent, obfuscate, dance and change the topic, i.e., say anything except actually answer a question?

(Saw James Hadley pretending to answer questions Tim Russert didn't ask this morning. Actually there were NO possible questions his statements could have answered other than what did the president say, and possibly not even that.)

More to the point, do they think we don't notice that they avoided answering a question?

"What if this fails?"
"The president said we're staying as long as it takes. Now he says it's NOT open-ended. Which is it?"

etc.

And do they not understand that, aside from the "hard-core" and the "loyal" (i.e., people suffering from echolalia who will tell you "This -- is -- a- battle -- between -- the -- forces -- of -- freedomandemocracy -- and -- hatredandterror,") the rest of us, at home, listening, just say "Well, obviously the sonofabitch is covering something up so fuck him."

(Or more politely, "Gee, their diffusive answers cause us to lose confidence in their wisdom and candor.")


Personally, given that so much of OUR lives (not just the tarnished reputations of some high-horse assholes like Rice and Hadley and Bush and Cheney, et al) are at stake, I prefer "Fuck 'em -- they're lying sonsofbitches -- can't believe a word they say."

When I was a kid, people used to joke about the radicals of the 30's, and jokingly throw around lines like "Let's hang 'em all from the lampposts." (Usually referred to as "plutocrats." As kids we thought it was funny since we thought it maybe referred to people who really liked Mickey's dog.)

Unfortunately, since the 2001 Revocation of Free Speech Act, we can't make that sort of joke anymore. Too bad. That sort of thing used to make us feel better and was better for the muckety-mucks, too, since it relieved our tension and lessened our anger.

Robert Anton Wilson had his last, most permanent out-of-body experience yesterday morning -- January 11, 2007, 4:50 AM PST.

He was one of the most benign, positive, loving people I'd ever known, and in fact he wrote and performed a Gnostic mass to marry me and my wife.

It was an extraordinary thing, invoking everyone from Hermes Trismigestus to Mozart and Vivaldi and everyone in between to smile on our union and actually felt as if the heavens opened and all of them looked down and so, "If Bob sez yer ok, then yer ok with us."

Of course we DID preface the ceremony by piling everyone in attendance into cars to follow us intoTilden Park where we all rode the Merry-go-Round there before the ceremony. Maybe that was what did it. Who knows?

He left an amazing body of work behind*, one a mutual friend described as so:


"Coming across one of his books unexpectedly could be the philosophical and spiritual equivalent of getting kidnapped by pirates, or running off to join the circus -- you might get home again eventually, but you won't be the same person who left.

He asked questions that no one else ever thought to ask, and suggested answers that no one had ever thought of to questions that everyone has asked.

But he always preferred the questions to the answers."

***************

But despite the books, he will be missed, a gnomic looking fellow with that Bugs Bunny Brooklyn accent that made the most arcane comments or answers to things that had been baffling as open and unpretentious and understandable as anything your neighbor might say to you while you're both taking out the trash.

"Why the bunny, Bob? The Easter Bunny? I mean, ok, eggs in springtime. But why the bunny?"

"Ehhh, Osiris. Osiris was the rabbit. Resurrected, remember? Osiris was the rabbit."

"Oh, ok."


We'll miss you, Bob, even the people who didn't know you.





*The Illuminatus! trilogy (with Robert Shea), of course, and the Schrodinger's Cat Trilogy, The Cosmic Trigger series, Prometheus Rising, Right Where You Are Sitting Now, Wilhelm Reich in Hell, and a lot of others...

The lights come on and the roaches scurry back to their dark corners

January 09,2007 | WASHINGTON --

In a concession to the Senate's new Democratic majority, four of President Bush's appeals court appointees have asked to have their nominations withdrawn, Republican officials said Tuesday.

These officials said that William Haynes, William Myers and Terrence Boyle had all decided to abandon their quest for confirmation. Another nominee, Mike Wallace, let it be known last month that he, too, had asked Bush to withdraw his nomination.

WHY?

... because Bush is too fucking

(a) stupid

(b) arrogant

(c) ignorant

(d) mean and vicious

(e) all of the above

to give a flying fuck about the constitution, the people of the United States or anyone but his various Mommy surrogates.

For example:

1)

WASHINGTON - President Bush has quietly claimed sweeping new powers to open Americans' mail without a judge's warrant, the Daily News has learned.

("See Mommy, see how tough and grown-up I am?")

2)

January 04, 2007 | WASHINGTON -- National Intelligence Director John Negroponte, who has been closely involved with U.S. policy on Iraq, will trade in his job as top spy to become No. 2 to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.


("See Mommy -- I'm putting the man who ran the Latin American Death Squads for Poppy to run Iraq. See how clever are I?")



Just because I find this Weenie in the White House to be a despicable half-man, doesn't mean I love Nancy Pelosi or the Democrats...

She and they seem to have missed the fact that Shithead Jr has authorized and condoned the murder of 3000 US Troops and nearly 750,000 Iraqi bystanders, with another 20-30,000 troops who will spend their lives adjusting to the maiming they underwent because they thought they were defening America instead of subverting it for the Bush-Walker-Brown-Halliburton et al putsch.

They want to start with ETHICS? Hey, the fox wants to start with redecorating the chicken coop, but it's not such a great idea.

It would be simple -- FLAT OUT -- no money, gifts, meals, privileges, etc from ANYONE.

But then that wouldn't leave payoff loopholes.

So I think perhaps I'll move on to doing some actual public service and begin posting verifiable information about herb-drug interactions -- what you can or shouldn't take along with what else.

Remember -- in Chinese Medicine, you can learn the needling part in 6 weeks, but learning to do the herbal prescribing without killing your patients? That takes 3, 4, 5, 10 years.

And oh -- one more political thing -- when the Republicans talk about "SURRENDER MONKEYS" -- not that packing it in and leaving is necessarily such a terrible thing, but bear this in mind --

THE NUMBER ONE KING OF THE SURRENDER MONKEYS IN POST-WWII AMERICA?

Your saint -- the bobble-headed president -- RONALD REAGAN -- who put unarmed Marines in harm's way in Beirut, and when they were blown to hell by a truck bomb on October 23, 1983 -- 241 American servicemen dead: 220 Marines, 18 Navy personnel and 3 Army soldiers -- RONNIE just turned us around and ran for the hills ...

Maybe he was right to leave, but stop pointing your fucking bribe-stained fingers at people who think getting out of a trap might not be a bad idea.

You guys like being so let's-pretend tough (i.e., OTHER people die for your masturbatory greed fantasies) go buy the DVD's and jerk off at home to the Rambo movies.