"News that's not known, or not known enough."
Helen & Harry Highwater's cranky weblog of news and opinion.
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"News that's not known, or not known enough." Helen & Harry Highwater's cranky weblog of news and opinion. |
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Bloodthirsty morons by Madeline Zane Tuesday, July 22, 2008 PERMANENT LINK Bush says economy wouldn't be a mess if we'd been drilling offshore this whole time
Later in the same speech, Bush revealed that no one would be facing foreclosure if we had allowed the government to herd Arab Americans into concentration camps, because we could just give struggling families those houses instead. Plus, the Bill of Rights causes cancer.
I'm not sure I'm buying it. Could it be we're just sending Americans to Iran so that we can pretend they were blown up by Iranians in a few months as an excuse to start the war? Or, at the very least, that they've decided it would be good to look like reasonable international actors instead of bloodthirsty morons until after November?
"Not slowing the Taliban," my ass. If there is a more effective technique to STRENGTHEN the Taliban than to indiscriminately kill hundreds of innocent civilians with our stepped-up air attacks, I can't think of it. This is just the ten millionth way that the war in Iraq is helping, not hurting, the people who attacked us on 9/11.
Of course this debacle won't be delayed. An actual trial can proceed at its own natural pace. But the these fake, illegal, War-on-Terror PR spectaculars won't do anyone any good after the first Tuesday in November. Madeline Zane  In the ghetto by Wig Tuesday, July 22, 2008 PERMANENT LINK Israel plans to build new city for Arab citizens
Israeli version of the Warsaw ghetto? Another Israeli adaptation of Nazi practices? Wig Reminds me of Maurin by JS Magruder Tuesday, July 22, 2008 PERMANENT LINK Re Rich and poor by Herb Ruhs, MD Peter Maurin! I say that as a compliment. Someone should be collecting these, maybe offer them in cheaply bound editions along with the bumper stickers. Instead of Maurin's "Easy Essays" you could sell them as "Slightly More Complicated Essays." I know I'd buy it. JS Magruder (whynotresist.blogsome.com) We are all hostages by Herb Ruhs, MD Tuesday, July 22, 2008 PERMANENT LINK Totalitarianism, be it under Fascism, Communism or a "Two Party System," can only produce oppression, dispossession and violence. I am a little concerned that Dennis may have misinterpreted my position as encouraging a "head in the sand" approach to politics. If so I take full responsibility. Truth is exactly the opposite. Never has it been as important for people to take a good look around and get active in whatever way their perceptions lead them. My point about the "election fever" roused by this election cycle is that its major purpose is to distract folks with false impressions and false promises. Just recall the 2006 outpouring of anti-Republican and anti-war sentiment and the results it achieved. Personally, I do vote, when I can, and am wondering if I will have a chance to vote for one of my two favorite candidates, Ralph Nader and Cynthia McKinney, here in Montana. Another function of our phony "two party" system is to draw off energy and money that would otherwise likely be marshaled to support a resistance to this criminal regime we are suffering under and which threatens the entire world's population. My feeling is that it would be better to invest one's energy and money in trying to revive democratic processes locally. Elements of this criminal syndicate exist in nearly every local in the US. They control city and county governments, school boards and special districts. They live off war profiteering and financial crime. The big symbols of tyranny, the Bushes and Cheneys and their associates, are dependent on this network of support. Or, as Bush put it in a speech, his constituency is "the haves and the have mores." But he was not talking about all the haves, there are some people who have accumulated wealth honesty and ethically. He was talking about the rent seekers, the criminal drug merchants (marketers of both legal and illegal drugs), the war profiteers, financial manipulators and the bankers who deal with them. But if you feel compelled to participate in the national political scene, why not put your energy behind a third party (which logically should be referred to as second parties contesting the power of the Republicrats)? Another useful approach to electoral politics is to become involved in Clean Money activities in your state. Considering that the US gets more of its oil from Canada than anywhere else, can Canada feel safe from attack? In the child abuse arena this property of victims defending abusers is called Abuse Accommodation Syndrome, but is probably best understood as related to the earlier described phenomenon of the Stockholm Syndrome. Under coercive political systems such as ours we are all essentially hostages. When denial intervenes, when the hostages are provoked to rationalize their situations to seem less threatening, these dysfunctional syndromes arise. I am not happy about being treated as a hostage by the rulers, but I am not feeling like I need to deny the fact. That makes me, and others who retain their reality based perceptions, dangerous to the status quo. Not that we are so many, nor that we are in any way a potent force, it is just that with us around the rest of the hostages might be inclined to snap out of their trance and become angry enough to do something about their hostage status. If I had waited a day to write this piece I would have used the incident that occurred yesterday at the carousel. I watched in dismay as an white haired eightyish woman ran my five year old grandson off from the carousel pony he wanted to ride so her eightyish consort could ride that particular pony as she sat on the adjacent pony. Watching the wheels coming off our society day by day. Herb Ruhs, MD Ain't much that makes me itch for violence, but people who are cruel to children do indeed make me that furious. Did you give that old dame a quiet lesson in good manners? Helen & Harry No, I didn't see the point. Also the standard response is adult centric and I doubt there would have been any sympathy for the child. Each day presents with something more bizarre of the same genre. Today I took him to the library to borrow some kids movies. Three retarded adults, about a thousand pounds or so, were standing in front of the kids section and wouldn't move to allow us to get to the shelves. I just shouldered one aside finally and got access to a few movies. Bizarre really doesn't cover it. I am flummoxed and at an unusual loss for words. You would have a hard time dealing with the Child Protective Service and the Family Court here. Seems they routinely place kids with sexually abusive dads and in one case at least sent the complaining mom to jail for six months so she couldn't make any more trouble. This state, by the way, is a real haven for rapist, of either adult or child victim preference. The laws are incredibly lax and the enforcement even laxer. Another good reason to move away. Herb Ruhs, MD How low can they go? by JR Mooneyham Tuesday, July 22, 2008 PERMANENT LINK Obama's trip: Substance or drive-by? The article's title shows how low US mainstream media have sunk. JR Mooneyham (www.jrmooneyham.com/) I don't think I've ever heard "drive-by" used to mean anything but random street violence, or as a Republican assessment of alleged liberal shallowness. Sort of shows where the reporter (or headline writer) is coming from. Helen & Harry
The unfolding by The Canadian Tuesday, July 22, 2008 PERMANENT LINK The dance begins. The sabers rattle, but they are still sheathed. It's all so damned predictable. Rice: Iran not serious at Geneva nuclear talks PM Brown says UK will lead fight against nuclear Iran http://www.crossfirewar.com/freeContent.php US, UK, France launch sea exercise for naval blockade on Iran Top US military chief is convinced Iranians seek atom bomb The Canadian If the Pope was a Christian, he'd temporarily relocate his office to Tehran. Religious mythmaking trumps nationalistic lies, and I don't think even Cheney would be willing to stand up to the Church. Of course, there hasn't been a Christian Pope since St. Peter, so I'm just daydreaming, and there's nothing to stop Cheney from killing whenever he has that urge. Helen & Harry
Without prior consent by SirJ Tuesday, July 22, 2008 PERMANENT LINK For tasering kid for 37 seconds, triggering fatal heart attack, cop gets five-day suspension For justice to be served, the officer should be hit with a taser for 37 seconds. Not with the newer models, which won't discharge for that many seconds. With the same model used on the victim. I hope I remember not to call the police... ever and certainly not in a hostile situation. Bank of China owns up to $20B of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac debt ...This isn't even close to what we owe them. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac debt isn't part of the federal debt owed to China. According to Wikipedia, the federal debt owed to China as of April, 2008 was $502 billion. The federal debt is currently around 9 trillion and growing at a rate of about a half trillion every year. The Bush administration in 8 years will have managed to approximately double the federal debt. Either they don't care that they've done this or they did it deliberately or both. I'll go with both. If, or should I say when, the U.S. goes bust, the World Bank and other banks will have to step in and bail us out. Then they will effectively become the U.S. government and Congress will no longer have the power of the purse. I know from experience. My card was hit by fraud a couple of years back. $1,500 taken out by e-mail. When that didn't trip the overdraft, they took out another $1,500 the same day. Of course when I went to use the card, no money was there and the card was denied. The customer service rep looked over my account and didn't understand why the $1,500 withdrawals were approved. I'd never charged over $750, never did an e-mail transfer and never with that vendor who was located in another state about a thousand miles away. I expected all sorts of hassle about getting the fraud, but the rep was back in about 90 seconds and reversed the charges, no questions asked. Personally, I think it was an inside job, i.e. somebody in the credit card bank allowed the transaction to be accepted. IMO, no way should an e-mail withdrawal be allowed with prior consent from the cardholder. SirJ I'm frowning, plumbing the depths of my memory, trying to remember some instance where a financial institution protected my interests, resolved a problem, or helped me in any way... and I'm coming up blank. But that's probably just me. Glad they were on your side that day... Helen & Harry
Denial land by Sherri B. Tuesday, July 22, 2008 PERMANENT LINK Re Customer service, please by SirJ Thank you for the info. I did call customer service on the day it happened and my balance was zero. There had been no activity. The same was true when I called this morning. They said there should have been no problems with me making a 700 dollar purchase and they "weren't sure" what happened that it was perhaps a glitch on the retailers end. My credit limit hasn't been lowered. Thank you for the input but my gut tells me something fishy is going on at AmEx.
Someone sounds cranky after having got caught. Brooke Hogan: Voting's not for her
I'm going straight into denial land and pretending the majority of this age group has some sense. Even a little bit. Bush: US Olympians will be 'ambassadors of liberty'
Alrighty then. No psychosis here. Waterboard anyone? Salmonella found on pepper; FDA strengthens warning
Notice they slide in avocados as well... Sherri B. I have increasing doubts that the people running the FDA know anything more about food contamination than I do, and I don't know anything at all. I look forward with hope to a near future, under President Obama, when government will be only mostly but not entirely criminal and cronyism, and I won't have to wonder if people running life-or-death government functions have any qualifications beyond having been beer buddies of the President. Helen & Harry I'm going to cross my fingers, knock on wood, and everything else to hope that Obama does indeed become President. If McCain becomes President we might as start going out and eating dirt. My inner pessimist is kicking the crap out of my inner optimist lately. Sherri B. Gazillionaires by Rebecca Tuesday, July 22, 2008 PERMANENT LINK UBS closes Swiss accounts of US clients
If true, and I strongly doubt it's true, this would lead to a lot of embarrassed American gazillionaires. Rebecca |
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