Saintperle

7/31/09

I was watching the noon news on MSNBC, two freaks talking smack

And there was a male and a female anchor (being what the English call -- accurately -- "News Readers.")

And the male was saying crap about how: "If a doctor depends on you for his entire income, well he's going to tell you what's best for him... and if a lawyer only has one client, or one that's mostly all of his income, he'll give you advice that benefits HIM."

And I thought: "What an asshole. The only reason he says that is PROJECTION .. because HE'S taking network money with a more or less unspoken directive that he's only going to tell US what his masters will find profitable..." Hell -- even Fox News had to disavow Glenn Beck when he went so far over the line that his show started seeing sponsors pulling back.

And perhaps that's why TV News has mostly devolved into a freak show --- it's safest to limit reports that don't involve the always popular death and carnage to freaks and mutants -- Sarah Palin, Michael Jackson, The Octomom, The Birthers, Joe ("I never done nothin bad to my boy") Jackson, Rush Limbaugh, Glen Beck, Rev Wildmon, et al... and, including some of the aforementioned but definitely not limited to them, even better if you can have this so-called news DELIVERED by freaks

Because the bottom line bean counters of the networks KNOW that in a carnival (where acts are ALL made up) the Freak Show draws a lot more customers than those old-fashioned -- they don't even do these anymore -- local history exhibits.

Read a book.

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7/30/09

I am listening to a debate asking why a bunch of congressmen and women are virulently opposed to ANY reform of health insurance and medical delivery... is it principle? Is it lobbyists' money?

(Really -- members of congress who act on principle? Imagine what Samuel Beckett could have done with such an idea.. Harold Pinter .. Zero Mostel.)

How about this? A quote from Upton Sinclair pointing to the overwhelmingly likely reason (I LIKE quoting observations from people who are or were smarter than me ... or you, probably):


"It is difficult to get a man to understand something

when his salary depends on not understanding it."


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Regarding the extended coverage of some recent news events

Regarding the press' obsession with The Cambridge Clash, the drug O.D. of pathetically abused child grown into freak self-mutilating singer/dancer Michael Jackson, whither goest the dog torturer Michael Vick, the whiney complaining inanities of Sarah Palin, and the various toxic insanities of such craven racist assassins as Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh (at least Beck doesn't whine endlessly abouthow he has to bend over and grab his ankles for black men)

Back in the days before the press started taking itself waay too seriously, this is what used to be called "The Silly Season."

Then the press seemed to decide this sort of horse-shit was actually news.

No, it wasn't.

Fuck.

The closest they've come to actual news in recent years -- the word news meaning objective factual reporting -- is eulogizing the death of an actual reporter at age 92.

And they debate why such shit stories carry such continuing presence -- BECAUSE YOU ASSHOLES KEEP TALKING AND TALKING AND TALKING ABOUT THEM.

It has become apparent that most of you have no concept of any difference between shit and Shinola.

Here's a tip from the grave of the late philosopher Leonard Alfred Schneider on the difference:

"There's a big difference between

a big piece of art with a little shit in the middle,

and a big piece of shit with a little art in the middle.

One's a piece of art and the other's a piece of shit."


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Ah, those Immodium mornings...

Makes me remember something from many years ago, taking the love of my life to a month-long party in Mexico ... we were young and I was head-over-heels, and ... well, ok, it was Mexico and I wrote poetry ---


"When it's lomotil and neomycin time in Manzanillo,

I'll be lying in my bed and puking in my pillow*

I'll be sick as hell and want to die ...

but thinking dear of you."


*Yeah, I know it doesn't rhyme unless one is Spanish and the other English or vice versa -- but ahh, love is blind (and deaf and stupid).

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7/29/09

Oh one more thing (see below) about who pays for advertising

We do -- every goddamn cent that is spent to tell us to eat more pork and drink more beer and watch more froth-at-the-mouth sociopaths whether Glenn Beck or a character as portrayed by Dylan McDermott ---

EVERY GODDAMN CENT THEY SPEND?

Tax deductible -- meaning WE pay to make up the difference.

Just the same way that the anti-choice Christers get tax deductions because -- even though they exhort to violence while terrorizing teenage girls -- they're every bit as tax deductible as REAL Christians or Buddhists -- meaning WE PAY for their sermons, cuz SOMEONE has to make up the difference.

--- You ever get the feeling that if you held up a cross to people like Tony Perkins or Irreverent Wildmon (he who shouts venom at mourners who are burying their dead family members, screaming "God hates fags! Your son will burn in Hell forever!) That if you held up a cross or sprayed one of them with Holy Water, they'd burst into flames, revealed as unwholesome creatures of mold and slime? I do.

But WE'RE paying for them to do that -- think about that when they scream how they don't want THEIR taxes going to abortions because it's against their beliefs -- I can tell you this (although I'm sure you already know) I Goddamn well do NOT want my tax money to go to raving hatemongers -- it's against MY beliefs.

It's time to do some serious mocking of these people.

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This refers to the blog post below it:

Wednesday July 29, 2009 12:30 EDT

Right-wing racism on the rise

Joan Walsh -- Salon.com

First, credit where it's due: A few lonely Republican leaders are belatedly trying to clean up the party's mess of crazy, from the racially tinged character attacks on Sonia Sotomayor to the unhinged rhetoric of the Birthers to the overall vicious and fact-free spew of Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck. It's not working yet -- Beck's claiming Obama "has a deep-seated hatred for white people" on Tuesday might be a new low -- but at least someone's trying.

Sen. Lindsey Graham tried to kick off a new GOP flirtation with decency when he announced his vote to confirm Sotomayor last week. (Yet Graham wound up the only Republican on the Judiciary Committee to support her, with even supposed judicial moderates like Chuck Grassley and Orrin Hatch voting against her.) Then, after Birther madness reached a new high, a few mid-level GOP names -- Mike Huckabee, Michael Steele and even fact-averse propagandists Ann Coulter and Bill O'Reilly -- began distancing themselves from their party's anti-Obama fringe. "Chairman Steele believes that this is an unnecessary distraction and believes that the president is a U.S. citizen," a spokeswoman for Steele told the Plum Line's Greg Sargent. Better late than never.

Still, Limbaugh and Beck continue to ratchet up their alarming and increasingly racist hatred for the president. Both of them have taken to insisting that the first president with a black father and white mother, mostly raised by his white grandparents, is a racist who hates white people. And look for this kind of crazy to escalate with the party base.

Limbaugh's been on this beat for a long time, but the complicated Gates case inspired him to a whole new level of fiction. "Here you have a black president trying to destroy a white policeman," the radio bully told his audience last Friday, the day Obama expressed regret over his quick judgment in the matter and invited Skip Gates and Officer James Crowley to the White House for a beer. On Monday he insisted, "I do believe [Obama is] an angry black guy!"

Weepy Glenn Beck has been even more hysterical, flatly declaring Obama a "racist" on Fox News and elaborating: "This president, I think, has exposed himself as a guy, over and over and over again, who has a deep-seated hatred for white people, or the white culture."

There's a psychological term for this kind of unhinged behavior, and it's called "projection." These two racists are projecting their own racial feelings onto Obama. Increasingly, the ranks of the racially blinkered (and I include MSNBC's Pat Buchanan here) are playing victim, insisting Obama's modest moves -- appointing a Latina justice, using the Gates case to speak out against racial profiling -- are reversing the racial order wholesale, and putting white men on the bottom of the pile.

One look at Congress, the Supreme Court, Fortune 500 CEOs -- or conversely, at prison cells across America -- tells you how delusional the Beck-Limbaugh-Buchanan view is, but that doesn't make it irrelevant. It's likely to get worse, as persistent economic hardship plus a spike in right-wing racist rhetoric increases the appeal of scapegoat strategies.

It's time for more decent Republicans to take a stand against the vicious anti-Obama racism of the party fringe and their broadcast fuhrers. On Monday Ohio Sen. George Voinovich blasted the dominance of his party's Southern fringe, and its outdated Southern Strategy with its emphasis on racial division. Like Voinovich, I think GOP racism and race-baiting will consign the party to a long time in the political minority. But it could claim a lot of other victims along the way.

If you can stand to watch more right-wing crazy, this Media Matters video sums it all up


-- Joan Walsh

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OK -- Glenn Beck DESERVES to disappear

NO -- I'm not advocating the use of his sort of insane hate --- just explaining to the people who sponsor his show that we will refuse to buy any of their products until they:

1) Withdraw financial participation
and
2) Make public acknowledgment that you denounce his hate-filled insanity ---

In the words of the late Hanley Norins -- one of the most insightful people to ever piss away his life doing advertising:

"Advertising is FEAR in a dark suit."

Those were the days when admen actually WORE dark suits.

If they know you don't like them, they will tremble -- and it doesn't take all that many people to send letters asking "What the hell are YOU doing paying for this insanity?"

Maybe it's not all that bad to manipulate people into buying their product rather than someone else's version of it -- but when THE GUY WHOSE SALARY THEY'RE PAYING manipulates people into attacking others (and it's already happened) we're not giving them any of our money

And who are they who have helped hold up Beck's throne of crap? (Some personnel may be outdated -- layoffs, yuu know)

Walgreens Media Relations
Mary Shultz, Walgreens Manager, Broadcast Media: 847-914-2961
200 Wilmot Road
Deerfield, IL 60015
(847) 914-2500
—————————————————————-
Lexmark x2 859-232-2221
Director of Corporate Communications – Lexmark
Tim Fitzpatrick
tfitzpat@lexmark.com
—————————————————————-
Liberty Mutual 617-357-9500
John Cusolito, Vice President, Corporate Communications – Liberty Mutual
Phone: 617-574-5512
Email: john.cusolito@libertymutual.com
—————————————————————-
Yellowbook 1-800-YB-YELLOW
http://www.yellowbook.com/contactus…
—————————————————————-
Lazyboy
http://www.la-z-boy.com/contactus/
—————————————————————-
Lending Tree 800-555-8733
Allison Vail - Manager of Corporate Communications – Lending Tree
704-943-8339
allison.vail@lendingtree.com
—————————————————————-
Edward Jones 314-515-3269
John Boul, Manager of Global Media Relations of Edward Jones
(314) 515-3265
E-mail: john.boul@edwardjones.com
—————————————————————-
Hyundai 800-633-5151
—————————————————————-
Direct Buy 800-988-6049
—————————————————————-
AARP 800-852-0879
—————————————————————-
Schwab Bank 866-855-9102
415-636-5454 Speak to Glen Mathison or Greg Gable
—————————————————————-
Legalzoom 323-962-8600 or 800-773-0888
—————————————————————-
Joesph A Bank Clothiers (JoB Clothiers) x2 1-800-999-7472
—————————————————————-
American Express x3 877-890-2639
212-640-5951 Speak to Mike O’Neal
—————————————————————-
Cialis (Lilly Corp) x2 1-877-242-5471
317-276-2000
—————————————————————-
Honda 800-999-1009, 310-783-2000
Ann Hartl, person in charge of advertising
“she wants to hear from us”
E-mail: ann_hartl@ahm.honda.com
—————————————————————-
AND ---

Volvo
Marriot
U.S. Trust (part of Bank of America)
Verizon
Geico
Lunesta
Garmin
Bayer
LL Bean
TD Ameritrade
Progressive
Americaspower.org (Coal lobbyist group)
Lincoln
Farmer’s
Glass Doctor

THERE ISN'T ONE COMPANY IN THIS LIST THAT MAKES OR DOES ANYTHING THAT SOMEONE ELSE -- SOMEONE WHO DOESN'T PROMOTE VIOLENT INSANITY -- DOESN'T DO OR MAKE JUST AS WELL.

Historically, some programs have been dropped from ONE angry letter.

Let's Make Glenn Beck Disappear

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OH shit -- just call it what it really is

No Public Option
Compromise with the Insurance Companies and do a "co-op"

CALL IT WHAT IT IS

It's not "campaign contributions."

It's not "Free speech."

It's not "lobbying."

It good old-fashioned BRIBERY

Doesn't even have a fig leaf to cover up its noxious rotting organs.

("Congressman -- Here's the money -- you say it's ok to let people die.

Oh, bullshit -- How is that the same thing as murder for hire?

Don't be crazy!

You don't want to cost our companies their profit, do you?

You don't want to have to get an actual job, do you?

Because we can give this money to the person who runs against you next time around."

BRIBERY -- pure and simple, with a little bit of extortion thrown in.

"I don't care what you have to say -- tell 'em this spade wants to kill off your granny because he hates white people. If they're dumb enough to elect YOU, they're dumb enough to believe it for long enough."

OK?

BRIBERY

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7/17/09

The success of the G W Bush administration

That's right -- it all depends on knowing his Prime Directive -- well ever since Ronald Reagan, the marching orders of the Republican party have been written and signed by Grover Norquist:---

SPEND!!!

SPEND!!!

SPEND!!!


and then tell the Progressives (liberals, whatever) that "We wish we COULD do something for the poor but we just don't have any more money"

Doesn't matter if you need to piss it down a rathole like the Star Wars Missile Defense toys (or should that be UP rather than down) ---

Doesn't matter is you just let Dick Cheney steal it outright to pay back his 23 Million-dollar buddies at Halliburton...

Doesn't matter.

JUST MAKE SURE IT'S ALL GONE BEFORE THE SOCIALLY CONSCIOUS PEOPLE GET IN OFFICE!

(Right now it's "Just because the Bush Administration pissed it all away doesn't mean we should let YOU do it too, boy."

-- Oh you can not tell me their white-boy face isn't showing. Just because they learned to not use the N-word in public, doesn't mean they're going to just accept anyone who is and/or is sympathetic (or empathetic) to people of non-white color.

Took 'em a while to summon up the cojones to have former Klansman Sessions throw down -- face to face -- on Sonia Sotomayor for being a racist, but they got to it fast in the first days when they only had to answer to each other.

Does this mean they actually have a sense of humor? I mean, they're funny -- at least in that marvelously cruel vicious gay and ghastly way exemplified by the late William Burroughs - but I don't think they realize it. Wouldn't work if they weren't so dead serious "the universe will end if we let other people who think differently from us play with OUR country."

But that gets into the rank hypocrisy of the imitation-Christians in government, the C-Street adulterers, for example. And that's another posting. (Although you should go ahead and get yourself a copy of the The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power by Jeff Sharlett. Lots of familiar names of "Christians" in it -- Gov Sanford, Senator Ensign, Senator Tom "You got a lot of 'splainin to do" Coburn... et al

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7/15/09

So I stayed up late last night and re-watched Animal House on cable...

Always liked the very funny post-movie labels of who did what later (something none of the imitation movies ever did nearly as well) and the lovely tag of John Belushi's non-verbal thug Bluto driving off in a stolen convertible with the hot sorority girl as becoming a US Senator... indicating that a complete idiot could become a US Senator ... but Bluto, despite being a thug and an idiot, was a sweetie-pie

Not so the equally stupid Repugnican senators I was watching in the Sotomayor hearings --

MOST of them were doing truly great mean-spirited, petty, ignorant impressions of asshole Theta frat boys like ROTC fanatic Neidermeyer or the chicken-shit nasty Dean Wormer.

But above them all was the incredible Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn who -- either intentionally or not -- decided to drive the final nail in the coffin of the GOP (Get Out of Town Party) by doing a Ricky Ricardo impression at the Puerto Rican candidate, when they were talking about under what conditions the legality of shooting someone would be acceptable, for example, if she went out during the break and came back with a gun and shot Senator Coburn, that would be illegal...

and Coburn -- who immediately blew away the entire competition for biggest political asshole of the 21st century by saying the old Ricky line:

"You'd have a lot of 'splainin to do..."

Perhaps they are really that stupid, drilling over and over into out of context quotes she'd answered 10 ways already...?

But Tom Coburn?

Jeezus.

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7/14/09

So Dick Cheney may have run Death Squads?

How handy to have John Negroponte as a major player in Monkey Boy's sock puppet administration:

Check it out:

Ambassador to Honduras (1981 - 1985) under Saint Ronald of Reagan (appointed after Jimmy Carter's ambassador protested long and loud about death squads running amok.) The joke at the time was that "Negroponte was the only man in Central America who DIDN'T know there were death squads" -- a major accomplishment since he was the man who signed their checks... that appointment was followed by posts as Ambassador to Mexico and then the Phillipines...

And then in Monkey Boy's Sock Puppet Administration, he was:

Ambassador to the UN (2001 - 2004)

Ambassador to Iraq (2004 - 2005)

Director of national Intelligence (2005 - 2007)

So maybe Cheney's "undisclosed location" was up Negroponte's ass, at least metaphorically.

BUT WAIT! As they say on TV

-- there's a path of migration from the NIXON administration -- Project Phoenix -- a program dedicated to assassination of local chieftains in Vietnam who wouldn't become our guys -- between 1968 and 1972, the Phoenix Program "neutralized" more than 80,000 NLF people, of which more than 25,000 were killed... VERY successful Death Squads -- back in those innocents days where "If it's dead, it's VC."

Nixon Administration -- Dick Cheney, Donny Rumsfeld, and the rest of the hench-creatures.

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7/13/09

WTF? That magic land called Michigan?

In the running for the worst, most annoying TV commercials ever

--- right up there with "They say when a Red Hawk flies up your nose, a new opening is beginning ..." Red Nose Casino

--- or that annoying asshole who says "I never thought it could happen to me -- a heart attack at age 53 ..." for some sort of anti-cholesterol drug that, if you survive its side effects, might lower your risk of heart attack ... so smarmy you almost wish his imaginary heart attack was fatal, so WE could be spared the pain of it...

And even more stupid than:

" If your legs feel tired then you MIGHT have Peripheral Artery disease and IF you have PAD, then you MIGHT have an increased risk for blood clots and then YOU MIGHT have a stroke or heart attack... (or maybe you just can run as afar as you could 30 years ago) .. so take this vile expensive medication we're flogging because , even though socially responsible Euro countries have outlawed advertising prescription drugs on TV, we haven't...

But MICHIGAN?

Sure, you can buy a house in Detroit for Eleven dollars and...it may be the most wonderful beautiful state in America ... in the world! But all we know is that the state of Michigan has hired an ad agency run by people so unbelievably in love with themselves all they can do is metaphorically roll on the floor and pee all over themselves in ecstacy...

"For some reason when we're somewhere no one knows us we're free to be ourselves..."

Take that Las Vegas?

Welcome to Michigan, Serial rapists and killers?

A wonderful place for witness protection people?

Stupid, self-absorbed horse-exhaust...

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Here you go -- Amazing But True GoesTwittering

Amazing But True is Twittering with such amazing but worthless facts as:

* In weightless space, a frozen pea will explode
if it comes in contact with Pepsi.

* The Internal Revenue Service audits 87 percent of women who
claim breast implants as tax deductions.

* Moths are unable to fly during an earthquake.

* Shortly before his execution, Timothy McVeigh constructed
a scale model of the Lincoln Memorial with soda crackers


Oboy, huh?

Here are a few more samples, courtesy of Top Five



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Facts, you say? real TRUE Facts? Why not?

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Liz Cheney might run for office? Nothing like an occasional joke to help endure politics



I'm NOT calling her father a Nazi -- altho he'd cast perfectly as a high command monster -- but given what's coming out about about Dick Cheney -- she'd have as good a chance of getting elected in the USA as someone named Milton Hitler might in Austria ...

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It's not that I want the Repugnants to be destroyed as a political party...

I'm just delighted that the fanatical crowd of assholes who have hijacked the party ever since Nixon started throwing crap at everyone is finally being recognized as such ---

An old friend (who I haven't seen in a while) used to say "they never learn" -- he was referring to the entire US government, and while he was right, it comes and goes in waves of who in particular has his or her head farther up his or her own asshole....

but in this case it's the white-boys-only club of the Republican party sniffing their own colons --

They're still putting out their code -- the one they seem to think no one can crack -- for "crazy angry spic bitch"*

--- it's still all about how "she might use emotion or racial bias" to make decisions ...

the hardest thing for some people to ever learn, I recall, seeing it all through the civil rights era, is that "WHITE CHRISTIANS" are ALSO A RACIAL GROUP and endowed with both benefits and biases inherent in that... that only people of different color or religion or national derivation have a race while the White Boys are the Aristotelian Ideal of humans

I do not believe that ANY legal body that REFUSED TO STAY AN EXECUTION merely because THE PERSON WAS PROVEN INNOCENT has ANYTHING to say about the criteria anyone else uses to make decisions.

So while Grassley and the rest prance and posture and pretend that their own adulterous members are men of high moral character while the fact of being a woman of Latina extraction is enough to disqualify an experienced judge, I can only shake my head and defend -- against my better judgment -- their right to continue their lives in terms of social, legal, and economic freedom, even if I will NOT defend their right to spew filth throughout the media and pretend they're scattering rosebuds...

What a bunch of total obnoxious, repugnant, vicious, petty, small-minded, assholes...

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

* Oh I don't think they really have much of a problem about her Latina descent** -- just adding that in there to emphasize the pettiness of their bias -- what TERRIFIES them is the idea of "AN ANGRY WOMAN" -- they threw it at Michelle Obama, at Nancy Pelosi, and others --- and they may well have good reason to BE terrified by the idea of THE ANGRY WOMAN, given the way they behave...

all I can say is whenever one of those "I fucked some other woman and betrayed my wife and family and religious vows, but it's ok because it was just a mistake" is around, we have sound trucks circling their homes and offices playing Alanis Morrisette' You Oughta Know or Marianne Faithfull singing Why D'ya Do it? (Might even throw in Broken English while you're at it -- a little perspective on their fears and terrors -- Patty Griffin singing Cold As It Gets

I look at those poseurs and hypocrites and I see them, when they look at her, seeing an Avenging Angel come to make them answer for what they, in their own minds, know they've done, while all she's doing is waiting for an actual question to answer instead of listening to endlessly self-serving diatribe.

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** Oh of course they do -- have an immense problem with the fact that she's not white, but of Latin American heritage -- the only person of color currently on the Supreme is an African-American man who rose up the hard way -- overcoming poverty with focus, hard work, determination ... and, oh yeah -- kissing the ass of the White Guys in the Reagan administration to gain appointments -- to become the first Supreme Court justice as a man who seems to exercise less intellectual independence than most janitorial staff workers, just having the big boys tell him what needs cleaning and how to vote and when to speak... a total disgrace given that he was a viciously cynical replacement for Thurgood Marshall, the only other African-American justice, a man with one of the most brilliant original minds to ever hold that position -- but in Thomas' case, it was the Bush cynicism that said "Well what's your problem -- he's one of THEM, isn't he?"

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7/10/09

Who woulda thunk it about the Vatican Mob's "Eggs" Benedict XVI?

Amazing, the Hitler Youth Pope, he who made it clear by Day 2 of changing his name from Ratzinger to his stage name of Benedict XVI (or were his parents Mr & Mrs XVI?) that even if a country passes laws legalizing gay marriage and adoption, it is the DUTY of Catholics to disobey.

I'm reprinting the Salon.com article by Andrew Leonard completely here, in case any part of it is restricted to Premium Accounts (small annual fee, lots of extras and well worth it)

Anyway, it's a surprise, him going up against the ruling class, altho, his first love WAS National SOCIALISM...


Who knew Pope Benedictine XVI was a crusading social activist? In his newly released encyclical letter, Caritas in Veritate, His Holiness is a blunt critic of modern capitalism.

  • Information wants to be free! The Pope attacks "excessive zeal for protecting knowledge through an unduly rigid assertion of the right to intellectual property, especially in the field of health care."
  • Workers of the world, unite! He comes out strongly in favor of labor unions, "for the promotion of workers' associations that can defend their rights."
  • From the rich, to the poor. He lambastes income inequality both within and between nations, and criticizes a profit-seeking mentality devoid of concern for social welfare, "The dignity of the individual and the demands of justice require, particularly today, that economic choices do not cause disparities in wealth to increase in an excessive and morally unacceptable manner, and that we continue to prioritize the goal of access to steady employment for everyone."

And perhaps most strikingly, he situates his entire social critique in a framework that would not be out of place in the latest essay on globalization from Joseph Stiglitz.

The global market has stimulated first and foremost, on the part of rich countries, a search for areas in which to outsource production at low cost with a view to reducing the prices of many goods, increasing purchasing power and thus accelerating the rate of development in terms of greater availability of consumer goods for the domestic market. Consequently, the market has prompted new forms of competition between States as they seek to attract foreign businesses to set up production centers, by means of a variety of instruments, including favorable fiscal regimes and deregulation of the lab our market. These processes have led to a downsizing of social security systems as the price to be paid for seeking greater competitive advantage in the global market, with consequent grave danger for the rights of workers, for fundamental human rights and for the solidarity associated with the traditional forms of the social State.

Caritas in Veritate or "charity in truth," is an extraordinary document, 30,000 closely reasoned words that, while widely ranging, contain within them a profound critique of unregulated capitalism. This being the Pope, the critique is rooted in a "truth" derived from the Gospel, from Christian moral values to "which Jesus Christ bore witness by his earthly life and especially by his death and resurrection." That framing provides certain challenges to nonbelievers, particularly those who believe not only in social justice and the common good but also in such things as reproductive choice.

Still, even as the Pope reaffirms traditional Catholic dogma, he also evokes a fascinating tension between Christian values and a free market that holds profit-making as the highest goal. In so doing, he presents American politics, as they are currently constituted, with a paradox. The contemporary Republican party constructs its ideology around two foundation stones -- free markets and Christianity. But the Pope places those two building blocks in contradiction to each other. "Every economic decision has a moral consequence," writes the Pope.

Economic activity cannot solve all social problems through the simple application of commercial logic. This needs to be directed towards the pursuit of the common good, for which the political community in particular must also take responsibility. Therefore, it must be borne in mind that grave imbalances are produced when economic action, conceived merely as an engine for wealth creation, is detached from political action, conceived as a means for pursuing justice through redistribution....

...[T]here is nevertheless a growing conviction that business management cannot concern itself only with the interests of the proprietors, but must also assume responsibility for all the other stakeholders who contribute to the life of the business: the workers, the clients, the suppliers of various elements of production, the community of reference. In recent years a new cosmopolitan class of managers has emerged, who are often answerable only to the shareholders generally consisting of anonymous funds which de facto determine their remuneration.

That sounds to me a lot like a liberal critique of Wall Street as currently organized. The timing, needless to say, couldn't be better. Rhetorically speaking, the Pope is sounding a lot like Obama. Wanna be a true Christian? Share the wealth.

Amen.

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7/8/09

Let's step back and look at the president...

and remember -- at this point in his administration, George W "Monkey Boy" Bush was whining publicly about how "it's hard" to be president.

Poor little spoiled brat drug addict rich kid -- "it's so hard" -- what a shock to realize that some things just can't get done by bullying people with your family's money

At the same point in his dad's presidency, HE was addressing what he considered the most critical need for America -- a constitutional amendment to ban flag-burning.

And now Jeb, who we thought for a while was the one Bush in the bushes who was actually sane, is blathering about how if we'd only known Obama's secret plan, then the Repugnicans would be in the White House...

His SECRET PLAN?

It was to get more votes and more electoral college votes.

And to do that by listening to people, thinking about what THEY might want...

I don't care if the assholes keep flinging shit at our president like insane monkeys, screaming how Obama is betraying the voters ... THEY (the assholes) couldn't even figure out that what the voters wanted to know was that the candidate at least KNEW what they wanted.

Perhaps someday the psychotic theocrats who have hijacked the process will suddenly all self-destruct -- disappearing in a cloud of purple smoke, or, more likely, tearing themselves in half in their Rumplestiltskin rage -- and the people who -- pre-Nixon -- used to be Republicans, i.e., moderately conservative people, the ones the farmers and such voted for because they allowed them to live their own lives -- those people will be able to re-join the party that has pissed on them continually for the past 50 years.

That would be a party that would allow enough sanity to survive that they might, someday, nominate a candidate, who -- depending on that person -- is actually sane enough that even a liberal sort might find himself the better choice.

(I always get the feeling the Olympia Snowe -- who IS that sort of political person -- is up there in Maine where, if the Repub Party gets totally insane, she can slip across the border to Canada one step ahead of the Dick Armey lynch mob before they burn their crosses on her lawn.)

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7/7/09

That wonderful song in the Kaiser Permanente Cardio Commercial...

It's by Australian pop-folkie Melanie Hornsnell, called "APPLE" and was written and recorded specifically for the Kaiser commercial

Ring a bell? It's the one that sounds like it's being sung by the fairies in the bottom of the garden doing a quiet frolic when they think they're alone and unseen by human ears." Otherwordly and innocent and sexy at the same time. Something like Howard David Johnson's version of Tinkerbell*.

The lyrics:

My heart beats only for you
All day and all night it's true
I swear it beats only for you
My heart beats loud like a drum
There's no choice I just want love
My heart it beats only for you
Birds in paradise they sing
About this love that brings
My heart beating all for you
My heart beats happy and near
My dear, my love is sincere
My heart it beats only for you
Birds in paradise they sing
About this love that brings
My heart beating all for you



As of now, one full-length CD:

CD -- The Adventures of...
(c) 2007 Melanie Horsnell

Available in the USA from the people at CD Baby*

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*CD BABY -- these are the people I go to when normal conduits don't have the musicians or recordings I want -- I first found them after looking everywhere for Gary Jules' cover of Tears for Fears' Mad World (two versions used in the movie Donnie Darko Found it on Trading Snake Oil for Wolftickets, a tour de force about a day out on the street in Los Angeles, concluding with his cover of MAD WORLD, and, as sometimes happens, better than the original version.

They have the music, their prices are reasonable, and they make you feel as if you're their only customer and that they really appreciate you buying music from them -- makes you one of their family -- a delight to deal with -- very pleasant experience.

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7/4/09

Sarah Palin -- a descriptive:

There is a phrase said by the late Howard Luck Gossage, originally said about a man, but redacted here to refer to a woman, specifically Sarah palin:


"That woman is trying to work her way up to being a horse's ass ... but she hasn't got what it takes.

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If you're burned out and screaming ENOUGH!!! about all the news channels having changed their formats to "All Michael Jackson All the Time..."

here's the cure:


Hitler's Reaction to Michael Jackson's Death



Funniest, best done send-up I've seen in years

(and my thanks to Steve Bennett in London for sending it across the pond)

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7/2/09

Meet the new boss, same as the *%$##**@ Old boss...

Regarding H.R> 2998 -- the Waxman-MarkeyAmerican Clean Energy And Security Act of 2009 that features the quickly-becoming-infamous "cap-and-trade" option in which death-toxin-spouting big polluters can buy brownie points from green companies and still be allowed to dress in Environmentalist Non-Polluter Drag, despite continuing to rain death on current and future generations.

Democratic Rep. Lloyd Doggett, standing up for the environmentalist side of the debate, gave a speech on the floor in which he argued that the bill was so industry-friendly that it would do more harm than good.

(Of course, other opinion-manufacturers are predicting that, even in its gelded version, the bill will paralyze and destroy American business for decades to come.)

But it seems as if -- on this and other issues -- the Ovule Orifice infects anyone who sits behind the desk, even our pretty new and beloved Resident.

From Politico

June 26, 2009


The White House is smoking mad at Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas), who says he's voting against the climate bill — despite the lobbying of the entire First Family in the Oval Office last night.

If the bill goes down, Obama won't forget Doggett's role, Democrats say.

It's "stunning that he would ignore the wishes not just of his president, but of his constituents and the country,” said an administration official.

UPDATE: I'm now hearing from Democratic sources that Doggett's opposition is wavering.

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No wonder Monkey Boy Bush hasn't been criticizing the man in whom we've put all our hopes for slowing and reversing the stampede into destruction left by his adminsitration.


--- Meet the new boss, he caught the same disease as the old boss ---
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AFTERTHOUGHT:

I have read A LOT of the points of view on this bill -- people screaming that it's a whitewash of pollutors, that it'll destroy industry, that it's socialism, it's communism, it's fascism... so ok, it's fun to fling a bit of stuff at the president because he's using his power, but with attacks on him from all sides (for EVERYTHING, not just THIS BILL), if he weren't so flexible and intelligent -- he -- and we -- what be what, for a lesser man and lesser politician, would be whaat we would call "royally fucked."

We are goddamn well fucking fortunate to FINALLY have a MAN like that in the White House -- a MAN -- not a god, not a superhero, but a good man who is actually doing the best he can and doing it IN THE NATIONAL INTEREST.

Attack him all we want, no one can actually accuse him of being bought and paid for and plundering the country for the wealth of his pals. There have been, I think, others in the Prez and Vice Prez positions, who -- as difficult as it is to imagine -- have.

Power tends to corrupt and absolute power tends to corrupt absolutely, but losing his way like that is more likely in a man who isn't married to a woman like Michelle Obama.

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7/1/09

CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTIONS? WHAT A EUPHEMISM!

I've always been fond of this observation made by John Wilmot, the 2d Earl of Rochester (April 1, 1647 - July 26, 1680)

"Any man who calls things by their rightful name will surely be hanged."

Wilmot was an incredibly vile human, writer of pornographic plays (which today reads like the sort of thing an extraordinarily literate but dirty-minded middle-school boy might write), destroyer of men or women for his own amusement, and such. But he called things by their rightful name and it was only his close friendship with Charles II that kept him from the having the experience of what Francois Villon described as "my neck will know the weight of my ass."

So -- risking the fate so ominously promised by Rochester, I'll get right to the point, one rather important in this time of debate over health care when it is estimated there are Four Healthcare lobbyists right now for each member of the house and senate, and the issue of hundreds of thousands of dollars of campaign contributions made to those members of the house and senate, especially those in key committees:

CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTIONS?!?

BRIBES!




"Mundus vult decipi."
James Branch Cabell

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