lena dunham

Lena Dunham needs to write the screenplay for the Prankster ladies. 

We now have films out about Cassidy and Kerouac, Kesey and Leary, etc.  What we truly need is a film about the lives of MG, Niki Scully, Nancy, and the others who lived out their lives by changing the world around them rather than the world changing them.  And Lena Dunham has the chops, the smarts, and the proper (psychedelizied) sensitivity to write the best possible screen play.

rambling rand....

I doth think that Rand Paul's soliliquy as a rebellious filibusterer was a bit short on fact.  Not specifically counting any of the history before i was born, Presidents have indeed ordered the death of Americans in America whilst they were not engaged in a clear and obvious terrorist act. 

I could mention Wilhelm Reich for instance, or maybe those poor sad folks who were given massive doses of radiation just to see what would happen.  We have a history of releasing dangerous diseases on unsuspecting ferry boat passengers.  We had Kent State and Jackson State shootings by military personnel. 

Hell, we are actually very good at killing our fellow citizens without cause or provocation.  Paul's lack of factual knowledge worked for his ilk, but it doesn't change the facts or the reality.  What a large stinking pile of Randshit.

one way to think about it

Twenty years ago, i argued that the US had created a horrible nightmare for the children of Iraq.  Through the use of harsh sanctions, imposed under the UN 661 Committee, following Gulf Storm, more than 1,000,000 children were denied access to vaccines and medical supplies.  We ended up killing 500,000 of them.  A half a million of them in ten years.  In other words, over the entire ten year period, we killed the equivalent of a Sandy Hook incident every two days for the full ten years.  We killed another 30,000 during the Iraq war, most of which died during the seige at Fallujah.  And yet, we petition the world to hear our laments for Sandy Hook, whilst continuing to maim and kill children around the world.  Maybe, just maybe, we might think about that.

. 

far left of obama

It is really quite simple in some ways i suppose. I am, for lack of any better description a: tribally and socially cooperativist; pragmatically, psychedelically, and hermeneutically conscious cognitive libertarian; economically and geo-politically anarchist; and a deep ecological radical. In all practicality, i think that it is extraordinarily difficult to classify most citizens of the US under the simple polarizing taxonomy of liberal/conservative. Even the sub-labels such as socially conservative liberal or socially liberal conservative speak little of the vast diversity of the self aware citizen. But to reflect upon the 2008 election and the necessary work that must be done i openly state my conception of my position along the spectrum from which i advocate the change i seek.


pragmatically, psychedelically, and hermeneutically conscious cognitive libertarian

I have publicly stated on several occasions that i insist that my president would be one who has admitted to taking a relatively large dose (250 to 500 mcgs) of LSD. There are many many reasons for this but first and foremost is that the first time i voted for a presidential candidate, my candidate said the following about LSD:

Senator Robert Kennedy, in 1966 said: "Perhaps to some extent we have lost sight of the fact that LSD can be very, very helpful in our society if used properly"

Jonathan Ott wrote:

I firmly believe that contemporary spiritual use of entheogenic drugs is one of humankind's brightest hopes for overcoming the ecological crisis from which we threaten the biosphere and jeopardize our own survival, for Homo sapiens is close to the head of the list of endangered species.

We are indeed at the apex of a series of events that require the best and brightest minds, the most creative thinkers and artists to provide divergent and vastly numerous solutions to the catastrophic problems we face living on the planet today. It is beyond hope and reason to tacitly concur with this thought, yet do absolutely nothing to contribute to being part of the solutions. We need to agree that reason and rationality be paramount to the din of verbose, useless, religiospeak during this period. Idiotic acceptance of prophesies spoken by priests, pastors, imans, avatars, etc. concerning the whims of invisible, masculine, anthropomorphic, omniscient energy entities (illusions of deities), only further the planetary degradation and the loss of sustainable habitats for all living (actual real living) entities and species. Pragmatic reason must ascend to levels hierarchically paramount to rhetoric of faith, party, and money. Greed is no different a religion than its servant Mormonism or Scientology. As Terrence McKenna said:

Consciousness is what we're in need of to avoid running off the cliff into armageddon

tribally and socially cooperativist

Charles Sullivan wrote in his work for Planetization:

The age of exuberance—like the age of cheap oil—is mercifully drawing to a close. So I will say what was never meant to spoken aloud in the land of excess; and I will say it loud and clear so that it cannot be mistaken: Americans must dramatically simplify their lives to want less and learn more. We constitute less than five percent of the of the world’s population while usurping more than a quarter of her bounty. This is not acceptable—nor is it ethical.


No one has a moral right to take more than their fair share when that taking jeopardizes the chances of others of living a decent life, or makes nil their chances for survival—including other species.


Contrary to what one might think, we do not have to live like third world nations or like the hunters and gatherers of the past. But we must dramatically reduce our consumption and shrink our carbon footprint. Not only must we live within our own means but within the means of the planet to support us.


The majority of our food should be locally grown and mass transit must supplant the gluttonous and polluting automobile that proliferates on our nation’s highways. Moratoriums on development and urban sprawl must be enacted in order to protect critical habitat and rainwater recharge areas. Cities and towns must be redesigned and revitalized with sustainable industry. Goods and services, including work and jobs must again, as they were in the past, be rooted in vibrant, small scale local economies; and free trade agreements revoked.


Technological advances—no matter how boldly they are touted as saviors of humankind cannot increase the world’s carrying capacity and they cannot invoke justice. The latter is entirely up to us as sentient beings endowed with conscience. And this brings me to a second point: we must reduce the human population through adoption and cease to procreate for at least one generation—so that the earth can recover her carrying capacity. What better way to save the world, literally.


Simultaneously simplifying our lives by wanting less and reducing the human population will allow room for other people and other beings to share the bounty of the earth. And it will almost certainly have a beneficent rather than pathological social and psychological consequence: it will end our isolation and reconnect us to the rest of the world. We could finally realize our enormous potential to become world citizens and good neighbors worthy of respect and love.


Rather than an economy based upon savage greed and exploitation, let us create an economy based upon justice and equality, need rather than excess; a society that does not leave people behind but invites the full participation of everyone and recognizes that, “An injury to one is an injury to all.” Let it be all inclusive and worthy of respect: where every woman, man, and child, every being of this earth is the same under the law and equally respected and valued—a great global community seeking harmony rather than competitive advantage.


In the end, equality is beholden to the system we choose. Did we ask that the world be run on the profits of greed, or the prophets of wisdom? Where was that democratic choice? The profits of greed have given us voracious greed, consuming everything in sight; but they didn’t give us a choice; they took away our freedom and made us into lesser beings. But, if we are to muster ourselves to call ourselves Human one last time, where the prophets of wisdom really did have something to say, where people and the planet are put before profits in the Golden Rule, and where we have one large collective foot standing on the profit of greed then maybe, maybe YES we will turn this thing around: http://www.planetization.org.

economically and geo-politically anarchist


"I feel sure," William Morris told his fellow socialists gathered at Kelmscott House in 1884, "that the time will come when people will find it difficult to believe that a rich community such as ours, having such command over external Nature, could have submitted to live with a mean, shabby, dirty life as we do." One hundred eighteen years ago Morris was imagining a time "when no one was allowed to injure the public by defiling the natural beauty of the earth."

The Enemy of Nature is the capitalistic system itself, and if readers of such a statement should be tempted to dismiss the claim as mere Marxian doomsday-saying and thus forego a reading of it on the basis of our current celebrations that capitalism is the sole surviving economic system and therefore MUST be the best, such potential readers will be ignoring not only essential information, but be contributing to the continuation of processes which must surely end in chaos and anarchy.P. Webster "Salience" (Alpes-Maritimes, FRANCE)

Emily Hodges argues that most anarchic behaviors are tautologically flawed. From her essay titled "Perhaps Anarchy:"

Anarchism is an idea, a general concept, used to help us orient ourselves in a sea of ideas. But when does something that was meant to help us orient ourselves become a tool of oversimplification? The difference between a group and a community, in my mind, is that a community would act more like an ecosystem. It is more a utilitarian and social network than an identity. I think of artisans, farmers, producers, and notice that there is an independence and a interdependence. But the label of farmer, of cobbler, of blacksmith – these are identities, labels, useful in defining, explaining. Is anarchist, then, as useful? Is it something that you do? That you are? Does it express your daily activities as well as farmer expresses daily activities? To decide this we must first decide what an “anarchist” is or does, and then if “you” can cross-reference what you do and are, and see if there is a fit.


The problem with anarchists is that it is a largely theoretical idea. Very few self-proclaimed anarchists on this planet right now can claim that they BE anarchy. Perhaps they are proponents of change, of a different way of being to be implemented in the future. However, they are not doing it right now, not necessarily by any fault of them. It is simply very difficult to do. Very few people live without a government or authority over them, for the simple reason that there is nowhere to get away to. It is not allowed within the system, and it s impossible to “get out” of the system. – for the simple reason that we are all connected, as a huge industrialized nation under a massive government, as ecosystems and societies. We can even claim that those of us who do “get away” can do so only because of their positioning within the system that they are leaving, a position that happens to make their leaving possible only by the even greater bondage of others.


Even those “anarchists” who claim to reject government, work, and “taking part in the system” still physically live in the system, in the ecosystem of this system, and thus are a part of it. Additionally, they attempt to “remove” themselves from the system simply by taking part in the system from another angle that they do not realize is still participation. Some anarchists use food stamps or other forms of welfare. They steal, scavenge, squat all actions that may be a practical usage of available resources without consuming new ones – but that is an issue of resources, not anarchist ideology. It is simply not being wasteful. It is not being free. My question is this: those who are as practically anarchist as possible, those who have removed themselves from the system as completely as possible, not taking part in the “official” anything --- workforce, taxes, government – thus, living in a rural community or homestead, or living off of the excess of the urban areas, these people, they are removing their “power” from the system, not giving it any power, not feeding it their life force. But they are not rejecting the system. They have no power great enough to be free of the power that they are rejecting paying homage to. They may not be feeding in to it, they may not be responsible for its continuation, but they are not free from it. They are still citizens at the whim of the authority. They can still be drafted, they can still receive welfare, they can still vote – even if they chose not to. They can still choose not to vote, which is a freedom of this country. They can still reap the benefits of an extremely affluent society – living off of the leftovers of the consumers still affords them more luxury than many other countries. They are still in the location, still within the system, still reaping the benefits. Additionally, they still retain the rights of an American citizen, allowing them a lifestyle very different from those in Burma or Iraq. Additionally, the system still demands that you abide their rules. As soon as you break a rule and they catch you, you will realize how fully you are still part of the system. And the fact that you didn’t realize it before you were caught attests to the amount of freedom you had as compared to certain other places, nations, contexts, cities, identities. (You cannot give up your identity. But you can create it. You can use the power you have, you can give it up, but the only reason you have the ability to give it up is because you have it. It is still a choice that others do not have. ) We must have some citizenship. We must belong somewhere – and good thing, for to be citizen-less is to be power-less. To be undocumented is to have no rights, and I have seen both in Thailand, and the United States. So the question is not how can I remove myself from the system, but how can I create better system? That is question anarchy attempts to answer. But what is the realistic application of anarchy? How does one implement anarchy, so that it can gain power and recognition as a legitimate legal system? Could a country become anarchic, and be respected and powerful in line with other countries?

deep ecological radical

John Seed describes his vision of the role of the deep ecologist as:

Deep ecology is the name of a philosophy of nature which I believe best helps us understand why we behave so foolishly, and perhaps gives us some clues as to where we may best seek change.


The fundamental problem is anthropocentrism or human centredness. We are obsessed with our self-importance. Not long ago, astronomers were burned at the stake for daring to suggest that the Earth is not the centre of the universe and now we blindly destroy the future for 10 million species so as to fill the world with humanity for a few generations more.


To deep ecology, the world is seen not as a pyramid with humans on top, but as a web. We humans are but one strand in that web and as we destroy other strands, we destroy ourselves.


We might no longer believe that the world was made by an old man with a white beard 6000 years ago as a stage for the human drama to unfold with all the other species merely "scenery", bit players to be "subdued and dominated". Yet our institutions and personalities were forged in this mold and we seem hypnotised, incapable of giving substance to our new, ecological, vision.


Through thousands of years of anthropocentric conditioning, absorbed by osmosis since the day we were born, we have inherited shallow, fictitious selves, and have created an incredibly pervasive illusion of separation from nature.


A century ago Freud discovered that many of the symptoms of his patients could be traced to repressed sexual material. However, our sexuality is only the tip of the mighty repression of our very organic nature.


The reason why psychology is sterile and most therapy doesn't work is that the "self" that mainstream psychologies describe and purport to heal doesn't exist. It is a social fiction. In reality the human personality exists at the intersection of the ancient cycles of air and water and soil. Without these there is no self and any attempt to heal the personality that doesn't acknowledge this fundamental fact is doomed to failure. There is no "self" without air and water and soil. Incredible amounts of energy go into futile attempts to heal what is really a fictitious self while our actual, ecological self suffocates.


Some of the best thinking on Ecopsychology comes from the neo-Jungian James Hillman. In his "100 Years of Psychotherapy and the World's Getting Worse", Hillman blames a lot of the social and environmental problems that we face on the fact that the people who should be out there changing the world are in therapy instead. They treat their pain as a symptom of a personal pathology rather than as a goad to political action to bring about social change. Therapists create patients instead of citizens.


People are willing to die by the millions in defense of one social fiction after another - a religion or political system or ideology. Yet attacks on the Earth which gave rise to all of these and without which none could exist, leave us numb.


Because we haven't learned to identify with the living Earth, She fails to ignite in us anything near the passion and commitment that some of her lesser works manage to do. Though we are born, live and die in her, we have made ourselves unconscious of this. As Woody Allen said: "The Earth and I are two."


The fact that our sense of alienation from Nature is entirely an illusion can be demonstrated very simply by holding your breath for a few minutes. We can speak of "the atmosphere" as if it were somehow "out there". But it is not "out there". None of it is "out there". The air, the water, the soil, it is all constantly migrating and cycling through us. There is no "out there", it is all "in here", but most modern people, even those who agree theoretically, don't experience the world in this way.


As long as the environment is "out there", we may leave it to some special interest group like environmentalists to protect while we look after our "selves". The matter changes when we deeply realise that the nature "out there" and the nature "in here" are one and the same, that the sense of separation no matter how pervasive, is nonetheless totally illusory. I would call the need for such realisation the central psychological or spiritual challenge of our age.


In 1986, I co-authored a book: Thinking Like a Mountain - Towards a Council of All Beings. One of the other authors, Arne Naess, was Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at Oslo University and it was he who coined the term "deep ecology". In this book he concludes that "it is not enough to have ecological ideas, we have to have ecological identity, or ecological self". How are we to expand our identities in this way? Naess believes we need "community therapies" such as the Council of All Beings.


In the Council of All Beings we remember our rootedness in Nature. Using experiential processes, we recapitulate our evolutionary journey. We remember that every cell in our body is descended in an unbroken chain of life 4 billion years old, through fish that learned to walk the land, reptiles whose scales turned to fur and became mammals, evolving through to the present.

PONDERING AT THE EDGE OF THE OASIS

Wondering and wandering, as i move across space throughout the nights, i find that i am feeling more relaxed in this body than i would have thought possible, given the circumstances of the days. I am not sure why that is, or if it is just my elder years playing havoc with my sense of cynicism and snark. Perhaps i am just worn through, tried of the same old same old repeated again and again for no reasons whatsoever.

Have i given up? Am i too willing to rest on my laurels, or my own lack of concern for the "real" world versus the infotainment? Non lo so...  I am feeling old in my body.  It is all "meh."

Washington State candidates...

Alas, we are into the final swing of madcap electioneering here in Spokane, and the rest of the state.  And if you believe the television advertising, you would come to the conclusion that each candidate only has one significant pro/con position (most of which are really factless opinions).

So herewith, are a few of these opinion positions:

US Senate
    Baumgartner (a former CIA operative) will do good things and Cantwell can't do much.

    Cantwell worked to keep Boeing in the state, and Baumgartner doesn't know much at all.

US Congressional District office
    Cathy McMorris-Rodgers is a trophy for our DoD, and Cowen just makes movies.

    Cowen will strive to serve all the people, and CMR serves only her party.

Governor

    McKenna will protect women and children from abuse, and Inslee is responsible for massive tax increases.
    Inslee will work together with both sides to do some things, and Mckenna isn't who he says he is.

State Attorney General
    Dunn is the savior of all possible victims, and Ferguson liked it when he worked for a cop killer.
    Ferguson is a tough litigator and really cares, and Dunn has been a very bad and corrupt boy.

Indeed, all of the races are being presented in this format.  The lazy language of our process bleeds discontent.  Secretary of State, State Treasurer, Superintendent of Public Instruction (who is running unopposed) all share in this same manner. Nearly like "Me Tarzan, You Jane." 

Sadly, the truth has absolutely zero chance of breaking through.  The voters will be forced to guess which one they care about, based solely on the political party and/or affiliation.  It reminds me of middle school, where everyone is trying to find a position that they can hold onto and failing miserably.

How i became known as the "Medicine Man" (abridged version)

Asked by a number of friends to tell more stories about the days gone by, i am particularly drawn to telling the saga of the Medicine Man. And yes, it is true that Steve Fisher attached that appellation to me, both as a joke, and to some degree in bestowing an honorific of sorts. But the story started long before that time.

Wayback in the wayback machine of Peabody and Sherman, i had the good fortune of going to UCLA for my higher education. The good fortune came not so much from the fine education itself, as for all of the great interesting people that i met and befriended. This included the Merry Pranksters, my first ex-wife, Terry "Flanafish" Flanagan, some notable members of celebrated sports teams, my mentor professors, illustrious and infamous graduates, and so forth. I also met people outside UCLA that greatly influenced twists and turns in my life. Lifeguards at Zuma in the mid-60s (the eccentric renaissance man Norton Wisdom), lifeguards at WR in the early 70s, graduate students in diverse fields across the country including Harvard and Yale, a handful of 60s bands most of whom disappeared over time, with one profound exception, etc.

In the abridged version, it was this glorious melting pot of a fine entheogenic stew in my brain that led to Fisher calling me Medicine Man. I was at UCLA in grad school, studying shamanism and the history of American Indian religions for a doctorate. I had good friends traveling around the world, conducting anthropological fieldwork, especially focussed on Shamanism. And i had two friends graduating from Harvard Divinity School (RF and Ev), one of whom (RF) contributing greatly to my path development. It should also be noted that i was in the middle of divorcing my first ex (El), and meeting my second (JH). So the stage was prepared (there were also lots of other things happening to and for me as well: teaching, working in the music business, loving the ladies, and so forth).

During the Summer of 1970, El and i took off from UCLA right after the Kent State protests, and dove into the back country of the Yosemite (we got an unlimited backcountry campfire all access pass from the supervising ranger who was the father of a good friend). Over the long five months of summer, various friends would meet up with us at different access points and hangout for a few days, bringing news of the world (riots, Nixon, protests, sports, life). On one of these adventures RF and Ev arrived with some of our supply of pure entheogens, wanting to go for all the gusto. It was during this "massive trip" that RF and i discovered that we were both really interested in the Lakota rites and rituals of South Dakota. His family was from the eastern side of the state, and my dad was from the west. We made some silly commitment to longterm plans to get together at some point in SD.

Time progressed, my doctoral research moved forward, i left El, found JH, worked at WR in the summers, and went about life. In the early fall of '72, i spent a day eating peyote and reading the whole of the newly released book Seven Arrows. I remembered things that i had overlooked from previous experiences, and began to connect the dots. I set about doing small rituals for myself, particularly at the beach, as a means of just connecting with the natural world. I became very good friends with Chuck King at Tower 18, talking about his days in WW2 and studying at Brown University, his writing poetry about connecting with nature. In December, my phone rang. It was RF, who had moved to South Dakota to work on the US Senate campaign of a family friend, James Abourezk. He said that Jim had won, and that he (RF) would be working as the Field Rep in the West River office (the western half of the state where the vast majority of the Lakota lived). He invited me (and JH) to come back for a visit, and suggested i could conduct fieldwork on shamanism among the Lakota.

I was already well versed in Lakota studies; i had become something of an expert in the Ghost Dance among them, knew the religious transformations that took place between the forest village dwellers of the 1600s to the Plains warriors of the 1800s, and was starting to train myself to speak the language. I couldn't go the first year (my music biz boss was rapidly expanding his enterprises), i still had classes to finish, and another summer of the beach. But i did go in January of '74 (and each year after that) and found an amazing and inspiring place. The politics were blown up with Wounded Knee, the FBI, the tribal goons, and a host of other ongoing sagas, but the true nature of the Lakota and the Black Hills was easily accessible. I met a number of spiritual leaders who became friends. I ended up working in the Senate office with RF. I could go to rituals that few other people could attend.

Each summer i came back to the beach i was changed. At first it was little stuff, performing rituals around my towers, spending time in the late afternoons meditating on the water and waves, delighting in creative pursuits, really enjoying life. I started doing little sweat lodges and feasts in the evenings for lifeguard friends, bringing back rocks from South Dakota and across the country from tribal lands.

I'm not sure when Fisher first called me Medicine Man, it was sometime during this period. It really hit home one winter when Fisher, Morales and myself spent three weeks crossing the High Sierra through Yosemite. Prior to that trip, i had performed a couple of vision quests with the help of John Thomas and Flanagan, including a modified sun dance at the beach. When Fisher, Morales and myself went on our trek, i did take some entheogens for various purposes, and we had amazing experiences including skiing down waterfalls, crossing large avalanche chutes, climbing and skiing peaks. We talked about that stuff, and i think Fisher came up with the name to give me the proper amount of grief.

things for which i have terrible distaste in media

Online advertising with all of those scripts and popups that make it nearly impossible to completely load a page. I cannot even begin to tell you what any of them are about, because i tune them out.

All of the people who comment on GoComics Doonesbury daily cartoon page, who seem to think that the cartoon is magically real and about real things that happen.

Corona Beer commercials that promote the lethal use of alcohol on beaches (74% of all drownings are alcohol related).

The Fashion Police and host Joan Rivers, both of which are disgusting and horrendous examples of psychologically abusive bullying and abject terrorizing imagery.

A Direct TV advertisement that clearly shows a waitress toxically poison a group of customers for their football preference

The funding of the "grassroots" tea partiers by large corporate interests hiding behind non-profits, PACs and 527s after the Citizens United decision.

The funding of intentionally deceptive campaign commercials filled with lies and egregious comments without any "official" connection to a candidate.

The complete and utter disregard of truth in campaign statements and commercials, so blatant, for example, that even conservative bloggers are criticizing the GOP Promise to America for its mindlessness.

Everything having to do with the fashion industry, the Kardashian industry, the drug use of celebrities, and the paparazzi.

Those of my friends who still think they can make a difference by "educating the public" with studies and earnestness, in the face of the daily decisions by the policy makers and governments to ignore all of the studies and educational insights. Think GMO salmon for example.

Auto insurance commercials and advertising (good hands around the neck of a General lizard while that lady says idiotic things?)

The endless promotion of great wealth, and the wonders of the wealthy, arguing for more tax cuts, in the face of mounting poverty and unemployment. Who are the media talking to, other than each other.

Jon Stewart's closing comments...

‘ And now I thought we might have a moment, however brief, for some sincerity. If that’s okay – I know that there are boundaries for a comedian / pundit / talker guy, and I’m sure that I’ll find out tomorrow how I have violated them.
So, uh, what exactly was this? I can’t control what people think this was: I can only tell you my intentions.
This was not a rally to ridicule people of faith, or people of activism, or look down our noses at the heartland, or passionate argument, or to suggest that times are not difficult and that we have nothing to fear–they are, and we do.
But we live now in hard times, not end times. And we can have animus, and not be enemies. But unfortunately, one of our main tools in delineating the two broke.
The country’s 24-hour, political pundit perpetual panic conflictinator did not cause our problems, but its existence makes solving them that much harder. The press can hold its magnifying glass up to our problems, bringing them into focus, illuminating issues heretofore unseen. Or they can use that magnifying glass to light ants on fire, and then perhaps host a week of shows on the dangerous, unexpected flaming ants epidemic. If we amplify everything, we hear nothing.
There are terrorists, and racists, and Stalinists, and theocrats, but those are titles that must be earned! You must have the resume! Not being able to distinguish between real racists and Tea Party-ers, or real bigots and Juan Williams or Rick Sanchez is an insult–not only to those people, but to the racists themselves, who have put in the exhausting effort it takes to hate. Just as the inability to distinguish terrorists from Muslims makes us less safe, not more.
The press is our immune system. If it overreacts to everything, we actually get sicker–and, perhaps, eczema. And yet… I feel good. Strangely, calmly, good. Because the image of Americans that is reflected back to us by our political and media process is false. It is us, through a funhouse mirror–and not the good kind that makes you look slim in the waist, and maybe taller, but the kind where you have a giant forehead, and an ass shaped like a month-old pumpkin, and one eyeball.
So why would we work together? Why would you reach across the aisle, to a pumpkin-assed forehead eyeball monster? If the picture of us were true, of course our inability to solve problems would actually be quite sane and reasonable–why would you work with Marxists actively subverting our Constitution, and homophobes who see no one’s humanity but their own?
We hear every damned day about how fragile our country is, on the brink of catastrophe, torn by polarizing hate, and how it’s a shame that we can’t work together to get things done. The truth is, we do! We work together to get things done every damned day! The only place we don’t is here (in Washington) or on cable TV!
But Americans don’t live here, or on cable TV. Where we live, our values and principles form the foundation that sustains us while we get things done–not the barriers that prevent us from getting things done.
Most Americans don’t live their lives solely as Democrats, Republicans, liberals or conservatives. Americans live their lives more as people that are just a little bit late for something they have to do. Often something they do not want to do! But they do it. Impossible things, every day, that are only made possible through the little, reasonable compromises we all make.
Look on the screen. This is where we are, this is who we are. These cars. That’s a schoolteacher who probably think his taxes are too high, he’s going to work. There’s another car, a woman with two small kids, can’t really think about anything else right now… A lady’s in the NRA, loves Oprah. There’s another car, an investment banker, gay, also likes Oprah. Another car’s a Latino carpenter; another car, a fundamentalist vacuum salesman. Atheist obstetrician. Mormon Jay-Z fan.
But this is us. Every one of the cars that you see is filled with individuals of strong belief, and principles they hold dear–often principles and beliefs in direct opposition to their fellow travelers’. And yet, these millions of cars must somehow find a way to squeeze, one by one, into a mile-long, 30-foot-wide tunnel, carved underneath a mighty river.
And they do it, concession by concession: you go, then I’ll go. You go, then I’ll go. You go, then I’ll go. ‘Oh my God–is that an NRA sticker on your car?’ ‘Is that an Obama sticker on your car?’ It’s okay–you go, then I go.
And sure, at some point, there will be a selfish jerk who zips up the shoulder, and cuts in at the last minute. But that individual is rare, and he is scorned, and he is not hired as an analyst!
Because we know, instinctively, as a people, that if we are to get through the darkness and back into the light, we have to work together. And the truth is there will always be darkness, and sometimes the light at the end of the tunnel isn’t the promised land.
Sometimes, it’s just New Jersey.’

Zombies?

I am very confused with the way Zombies are presented in the media these days. They don't make any sense, on any level. With new films and a television series coming out this time of year, i think it is time to question our Zombie representations.

For example, how do Zombies become cannibals? Neither of the two base root representations of Zombies offers answers to this question. First, we have the cultural root of Zombie from the voodoo and santeria. The Zombie is a human being who has been given certain drugs to cause a near death trance. Then it is ordered to obey the wishes of its maker/master that may include the murder of other humans, but more likely simply carrying out the activities of a slave (growing out of the history of West Africans in the slave trade). After some time the Zombie is either released from the spell (the drugs have run their course), or is killed outright. Wade Davis, a Harvard ethnobotanist and researcher in entheogens, wrote one of the treatises on zombies in "The Serpent and the Rainbow."

Secondly, we have the cultural root of Zombie from cognitive science studies, and the study of consciousness. This root is predicated on the establishment of a base value level of a human being free of any conscious thought, whose sole relationship with the surrounding world is reaction to various stimuli through the sensory organs. The highly theoretical representation is offered as prima facia evidence for a base value that progresses from a null or zero state to one that reacts to stimuli to form conscious choice ("It is argued that the concept of a philosophical zombie, as it figures in arguments designed to refute functionalism or physicalism, contains inherent contradictions"). At no time, in any of the cognitive science literature, has this Zombie committed murder of any beings. One caveat may be that the implied killing of other species exists is predicated on studies surrounding eating and taste.

Thus, in neither the original religious representation nor the scientific-based one, does the Zombie attack, kill, eat, and regenerate new zombies. Zombies are neither cannibals, nor viral agents of marauding attacks and reproduction. So how did zombies become so commonly represented in the media as cannibal viral agents? Why don't zombies eat whatever they ate when they were alive? How many different ways do we have to invent to kill zombies?

The simplest answer would be that we needed an agent that would terrorize human consciousness. Humans preying on humans is a classic archetype born out by millenia of humans killing other humans. The oldest recorded human war was around 2700BC, and certainly long before that (several thousands of years) small groups of humans were killing other groups. So i suppose having a cannibal virus that makes those that are bitten replicate into a cannibal virus, suffering from a leprosy-like deterioration of the flesh, is just another vision of war. But do they have to stagger around until you hit them with something?

In the year 1965....

Perhaps the best thing i can say about MadMen this season is that it has reminded me of a time in my life that i hadn't thought about for a long time. 1965 was an amazing year for me in so many different ways. When you are eighteen, graduating high school and then going to UCLA with a scholarship, not much could bother you. Getting to see the Rolling Stones and the Beatles were icing on the cheesecake of a dozen magic moments.

The year didn't start all that well considering how it ended. On December 6, 1964, i was in my usual inebriated and high condition at a high school dance. That i was a student body officer didn't mean all that much to me either, but evidently it, and my condition, mattered to other officers and school authorities. Apparently reds and malt liquor were not compatible with a positive and contributing attitude for school support. It didn't matter that in the weeks before, i had stood in front of the assembled masses presenting awards to our school's Olympians; now i was the pariah to be punished. Friday night bled into Saturday morning, and i didn't really come to think much (i really couldn't very well actually) about the whole thing because i had to take the SAT. I don't remember the test at all; i do remember waking up enough to realize that it was afternoon, and i was taking the English subtest with an incredibly debilitating hangover. I think i scored an 1196 or so; not bad for seriously impaired.

So January started off with me having to go to another high school--Reseda was hand-picked by one of the Vice Principals--who thought that he could really punish me by withholding my athletic eligibility for 20 weeks. Reseda was the 1964 City football champions, but had not, up to that point in time, fielded a successful swim team. As i couldn't enroll in all of my classes at the new school, so close to the end of the first semester, i had the option of taking only four periods, one of which was weightlifting with the football team. That proved fortuitous, in that i got to know some of the players and the coach quite well, leading to recruiting for the swim team. It also led to wonderful mornings of drunken revelry under the guidance of the coach, who seemed not at all interested in keeping his "boys" from imbibing their pleasures. I did have another unfortunate run-in with the law right after my birthday in January. Three of us (from my old school) were out and about, cruising, because in 1965 that is what you did late on Saturday nights. We chose to follow a couple of guys to a "witches" house in north Van Nuys (near the Granada Hills border). Apparently, the people across the street from the house were fed up with the constant ruckus and had a standing call to the cops whenever anyone paid a visit. Needless to say my parents weren't thrilled with that either.

One of the deals, i had made with my dad, was that, if i could somehow keep my swimming going, still receive my Navy scholarship, and get accepted at the university of my choosing, then he would purchase tickets for me to see the Rolling Stones at the LA Sports Arena. These goals afforded me some options about how to proceed with my social agendas and still keep up appearances. I had left girlfriends back at my other school (Taft), and i needed to do my best to keep up with them. And i also had new ones at Reseda, one of whom followed me over there due to her lack of conforming to the norms of behavior. I also knew i needed to keep up academically in order to win my bets, which were important to me though not to others in my life. At the end of January, the semester ended, the new one began; and there was a winter prom at Taft, to which i had been previously invited (and allowed to attend).

I got a 4.0 in four classes at the end of the semester (i left Taft with a 3.2 in 6). The new semester required that i take Calc II and Calc I at the same time, a Senior English class, International Relations, Physics 2, and PE conditioning and swimming. The Calc classes posed a problem because i needed Calc II which was offered in the morning, but Calc I was only available after lunch before swimming. As the semester wore on i realized: i could do no work in Calc I, cover Calc II through a homework journal that could be copied from old ones in available files, IR would be easy working with a team of good students, essays were all i needed in Eng, Physics 2 would be tough, but it was first period after pre-school swim workouts.

I went to the Taft dance with Robin Miller, a cheerleader sweetheart, but ended up spending much of it with my neighbor Jerri Adair, a diver friend of my lust idol Sue Gossick. From that one winter prom night, i ended up taking Jerri to allnight grad night six months later, went out with Robin for the end of my freshman and beginning of my sophomore years, and proved that i could act appropriately and respectfully of my old high school. This latter turned out important, because at the end of the year i would be allowed to attend Taft senior activities on campus, without much supervision or taking any classes. And then there were the girls at Reseda, a few of whom were "excused" from their previous high schools for various issues, mostly drugs and behavior. All in all, my life, though shattered by the suspension and arrest, was pretty grand.

I swam before school, went to class, went to the high school swim workouts where i helped coach, and then swam at my swim club in the later afternoon with my brother. Weekends were spent swimming and the usual fake studying. As the school year went on, i got more freedom and latitude to go out again, and enjoy the last few months of that carefree life. My swim coach bribed me with beer, so i had a constant supply as long as i swam well. Reseda was a diverse population of a few surfers, lots of greasers (cars were a huge deal in the Valley in the 1960s), small pods of geeks and socias (socially motivated types), and the usual admixture of new hippies and the weird. Taft was mostly geeks and socias because of the professions of the parents who had moved into that end of the Valley in the 50s (Taft opened in 1960 --you can see a quite impactful list of Taft graduates who went on to fame at the bottom).

I remember quite well, one time, being invited out by one of the girls who had been suspended from Taft and was sent to Reseda. It turned out to be an odd sort of set up, involving a Taft girl who wanted to make her bad boyfriend jealous by going out with me, a bad boy. Her name was Karen Tremaine, and i had actually known her since the 8th grade, when she was "going out" with one of my better friends, Robin Ramondi (8th grade was another bad period of my life, a year i failed school, spent most of my time working in theater and music production running lights and sound, and bootlegging cigs for the juvenile home boys). It finally became apparent what was happening when we were making out at the Zuma beach bonfire, and Karen's boyfriend came up and caught us. All i got was a shoulder shrug from Karen as she went off with him. In some ways i think things never change. It made a lasting impression though, in the sense that the whole green monster of jealousy that i had watched in the Twilight Zone episode, could be manipulated with such precision for an outcome. I vowed then and there to not be jealous, nor envious, of and for others and myself.

During that academic year, i cut school a few times to go to the beach to surf, mostly with the Pierce brothers, whose extended family owned a large mortuary and cemetery business in the Valley. Otherwise i kept to myself most of the time, doing all the usual things a high school kid in the mid-60s would do. None of that looks like anything on MadMen.

to be continued:

the MADMEN: From Dean Moriarty to Cowboy Neal

Over the last several months i've been trying to figure out what it is i personally don't like about the rave-reviewed TV drama Mad Men. In one comment i wrote:

I am sensing that my disconnect from the show is ingrained in the notion that this “artistic work” plays much more to those who grew up 20 years after this period, than it does for those of us for whom it was our daily lives (certainly the ratings demographics show this to be true--but that is more an anomaly of the basic cable programming schedule i think). I knew a number of young women who were forced (by law and circumstance) to “go off” to those special schools where they would proceed with their pregnancies and give up the babies, to return to “normal” lives. It would be fair to say that a more than a small minority of them were forced to do so because of coerced sex and date rape; though in the early 60s neither was considered outside the norm (sadly and grievously so), nor called anything other than “sex.”

Many of those, that are part of the discipline of cultural studies (across the departments) in the academe and the professoriate in the US, seem to have begun examining the TV series as a powerful and evocative work of fiction. They (collectively) regularly discourse on various underlying plot elements as providing some degree of representational critiques of the core moral dilemmas of both the 20th and 21st centuries (sexism, cognitive and physical disability bias, genderism, victimless and victim perpetuated crimes, ethics, etc.). There appears a fascination with the particulars of these issues (even proposing a hermeneutical scaffold upon which to align plot elements as coherent and consistent within some sort of consensual critical base), and deeper analysis of character than with other such television series. It seems that the they, to which i refer (an interesting amalgam of well-learned, knowledgeable, intellectual curious folk), fit within a demographic construct that is both well known and respected, the 25-50 population of graduate students and professors. Thus it is not easy to ignore, nor disrespect, their humbly given opinions and insights into Mad Men.

Be that as it may, my spider senses have been jangling and tingling for a couple of years now about this popular and honored tv series. It doesn't feel right, it smells bad, it seems to only present a tiny glimpse of the national picture of the period. The producers, either by conscious choice or by staggering ignorance, choose to present only a very tiny and select view of what was happening in the US in 1963. If, as it seems, that some in the academe are promoting the program as a form of cultural apologetic that is representative of the mainstream of the US in that period (as evidenced that the cast of advertising executives and clerks, are part and parcel that is the relationship between corporations and the population), then i think they are sadly mistaken (or at least on par with the critiques presented by Thomas Frank in the issues of the Baffler and his first opus THE CONQUEST OF COOL). As an older adolescent/young adult during this period, living in the Los Angeles region, i can attest that much of what i see on Mad Men is not at all what i was observing in the world around me.

One might ask why my observations might have any relevance to the discourse, given that nearly 9 million US teenagers were experiencing the world in relatively the same way as me (the 1946-1947 baby boomers). I was inordinately blessed with being born into a well-established and well-connected social and cultural network that included the glitterati, literatti, and all other 'rattis' one can imagine. For example, from birth to well into high school i attended weekly services at All Saints Episcopal Church in Beverly Hills, CA (being an altar boy in love or lust with the granddaughter of Gloria Swanson, and her many girlfriends, whose names i remember to this day--Brooke, Torrey, Roxanne, Sandra) on Sundays sitting next to actors and actresses, CEOs and Executive Directors of the most powerful LA corporations and foundations, politicians, and so forth. I started school at the age of three, attending a private academy for gifted and wealthy kids, later to be thrust into a public school filled, for the most part, with the scion of parents (nation's best and brightest) brought together by NASA and the Department of Defense (with elements of Hollywood, the auto industry, and professionals included). I was forced (really coerced) to attend cotillion with many of the same folks as well as others from the gated burbclaves of the economic aristocracy (again, i still remember those beautiful young women especially Alice and Noreen), being an escort for a big time Beverly Hilton Hotel debutante ball evening.

I also grew up at the beach, was a swimmer which led to surfing and to surf culture. I knew that surfers were cool but that greasers' ruled; especially when i was thrown out of my old high school (as a student body officer for being too high on drugs and alcohol during a special student function on December 7, 1964), and had to attend the mid-west valley high school where all the real greasers ruled. Immersion in car culture, at the very peak of the emerging muscle car era, coupled with being a nationally acknowledged athlete (swimming), afforded me the access to fully observing two of the dominant early 60s cultures of US history. The fact that neither is recognized, nor acknowledged, in Mad Men speaks volumes about the disconnect i feel from the show.

~time out~
here are some of my most favorite of my top 50 songs in 1963 in the US markets (including Billboard, American Bandstand, and Wallach's Music City):

Surfin' U.S.A., Beach Boys; Sugar Shack, Jimmy Gilmer and The Fireballs; Rhythm Of The Rain, Cascades ; Hey Paula, Paul and Paula; Blue Velvet, Bobby Vinton; He's So Fine, Chiffons; So Much In Love, Tymes; Can't Get Used To Losing You, Andy Williams; My Boyfriend's Back, Angels; Sukiyaki, Kyu Sakamoto; Puff (The Magic Dragon), Peter, Paul and Mary; Blowin' In The Wind, Peter, Paul and Mary; Wipe Out, The Surfaris; I'm Leaving It Up To You, Dale and Grace; Walk Like A Man, Four Seasons; Mockingbird, Inez Foxx; I Will Follow Him, Little Peggy March; Pipeline, Chantays; Surf City, Jan and Dean; Heat Wave, Martha and The Vandellas; Walk Right In, Rooftop Singers; Surfer Girl, Beach Boys

Really! All those surf and drug songs, that were being constantly played across the US. Where are they in the soundtrack of Mad Men? Where is Dylan, Baez, New Christy Minstrels, Everly Bros, early Motown, et al? You must remember that this was the last great American music gasp before the English invasion; and the list also doesn't include the flood of movie and musical soundtracks (OLIVER!) of the period. Will the next season (post JFK country-wide wake) bring a full Beatles, Kinks, Stones, and Dave Clark Five soundtrack?
Here is a short list of movies with soundtracks that ruled the airwaves:

Cleopatra; The Longest Day; Irma La Douce; Lawrence of Arabia; How the West Was Won; Mutiny on the Bounty; Son of Flubber; To Kill a Mockingbird; Bye Bye Birdie; Come Blow Your Horn; 8 1/2; Contempt; Tom Jones; The Birds; Hud; The Great Escape; Shock Corridor; The Servant; This Sporting Life; Billy Liar; The Haunting; From Russia with Love; The Pink Panther; America, America; The Nutty Professor; Dr. No; Charade; Jason and the Argonauts

~time in~

As i was walking home the other night, under the first early morning rise of the Pleiades, i was pondering all that made Mad Men so discomforting to me, why i just feel that i don't like it when i watch it. Certainly the acting, directing and writing are superb; the show is a major artistic success, and has garnered a weekly dose of academic blogging following each episode. Yet the show just feels like sandpaper on my conscious mind, like my brain being shaken almost stirred, as if my bowels were force-fed wood chips instead of rice. What is it that so bothers me??? Then it hit me; wham bam oh gawd man. The characters and the entire construct are part and parcel of all the things i truly hate about America. They are all that is, at their core, bad, for the planet and the human consciousness. We had words for them in the 60s: square, establishment, bummers, head trippers, the man, authority figures, the generation gap, the credibility gap, screwheads, numbnuts, et al, and so far forth. These people, the characters and the corporations that are presented, were, and still very much are, the enemy of the Earth, the planet, the species, the well being.

Wow, i didn't think i felt that strongly at first, but as it sank in i realized it was true. I abhor all that is being presented by Mad Men. It seems to me more of an apologetic and hope-filled rant about how we, as a nation, can do better, than for what it really is; an indictment of a time in this nation when assholes once again stuck it to the people. i don't need that. I know that. And those watching it aren't getting that in a lot of ways. Even after Kennedy died we had some hope; LSD was still available, new frontiers in space and in consciousness, led by scientists, yogis and pranksters, we still felt optimistic. What happened in 1963 pales in comparison with what happened in 1968. Those people on Madison Avenue were evil and still are. I would rather ride the bus and stay on the street (and tracks) than donate $$ to Hilton and Mad Ave.

The Mad Men represented all that we hippies knew was categorically malevolent and evil in our culture. We hated the establishment, and cursed them for laying heavy head trips on us with their manipulation of public perception and their propaganda for the "man" (the government including the administrations of Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon). While it took years (apparently) for the "mainstream" to figure out, we knew that the Kennedy's were crooks, liars, and philanderers of the highest order. After Rachel Carson came forward in 1962, we became aware of the disaster that modern consumer culture had perpetrated on the earth. We knew the Doublemint Twins and Breck girls were icons of all that was crappy about America. The response of the media to the Civil Rights demonstrations of the early 60s bespoke volumes for the inherent racism of the establishment mainstream. Where were the blacks in the minds of these advertising ministers, other than being wage slaves to the man???

update (11/01/2009): After watching tonight's penultimate episode of the season, featuring the Kennedy assassination and the struggle to comprehend how "it all changed," i was reminded by a couple of other things from that fateful day. The announcement came to my high school during my class of concert and marching band. We were rehearsing for our upcoming studio album recording; we were one of the top music programs in the State of California, and widely honored. At the moment of the first click of the activation of the school sound system, we were playing a dirge by Holst; i was, at that very moment, playing the Concert Bb-flat double bass clarinet for that piece--the lowest hertz woodwind instrument{good thing i was a swimmer} and was also played the bass clarinet, baritone sax, and bassoon.

We sat quietly, listened intently, and then did the only reasonable thing; we played the entire dirge straight through. Since lunch break was the next period, the administration closed school and we all went home. I ended up at the beach in Malibu, sitting on the sand watching the pelicans do their spacial dances less than six inches above the crests of waves. I think everybody on the beach that afternoon was staggered by the reality. People driving up PCH, heading home from offices or such from LA and Santa Monica, would pull over and get out to walk on the beach. No radios, no sounds other than muffled cries and sound of all the sea birds. The waves and the birds didn't change, they remained immutable in their ongoing lives, teaching us that (as the Jefferson Airplane sang a few years later) the human name doesn't mean shit to a tree. That incredible historical moment really didn't mean anything at all to the Earth and the universe; it was a blip on the shoulder shrug of planetary spin. As we have seen in the last 46 years, in the long run none of those politics seemed to really matter near as much as the Earth.

Glenn Beck on Rush Limbaugh: dog pile of insanity

Will President Obama "seize power overnight" in a move to consolidate White House control of the U.S. government? That's the fear of Fox News anchor Glenn Beck who discussed the issue at length today with another broadcasting powerhouse, radio's Rush Limbaugh:

If you watch what could only be called the administration's organ - anything involved with GE or NBC - you've got [GE CEO] Jeffrey Immelt on the board of the Federal Reserve, you have him in the Oval Office consulting not only on health care, but the financial situation, and they are an organ.

If you watch MSNBC, I contend that you will see the future because they are laying the ground for a horrible event ... anything from the right, there's some awful event and I fear this government, this administration has so much framework already prepared, that they will seize power overnight before anybody even gives it a second thought.

Limbaugh responded, "I don't think they're going to be able to seize it overnight without anybody knowing about it."

h/t to Ed Brayton

With apologies and gratitude to William H. Gass a contributing editor of Harper’s Magazine, and author of a book review in the August Harper’s:

In order to prepare private citizens for supporting a militarized police state, a humiliating and painful bullying is generally prescribed. Its aim is to inculcate obedience and create callousness. Leaders must be resolute and heartless, prepared to send any enemy “to their deaths, pitilessly and remorselessly,” as Fox has demanded. Next a campaign of denigration of the chosen opponent is undertaken. This is designed to reduce the humanity of the enemy and to prepare a social web of support for behavior that is basically cruel, immoral, and normally disapproved. It strengthens every aspect of your plans if the society that you represent brings to the project a tradition of paternal domination and abuse, reaching from the family to the office of Rupert Murdoch and to its final station, God. Deep feelings of injury, inferiority, and large reserves of resentment—the fresher the better—are nearly essential. Any widespread unhappiness within your country can then be directed at the selected scapegoat by every available instrument of indoctrination and propaganda. If the enemy can be enticed to return fire, that will help solidify the nation’s resolve. Since a saw’s cut is painful either way it moves, the soldier knows that it is safer to risk death at the front rather than execution in the rear. A general sense of uneasiness helps, as if you knew someone were watching where you walked, reading your mail, and overhearing you talk. This atmosphere of anxiety can be sustained when the agents of power are ruthless and pitiless.

musings on torture...

CHENEY: Chris, my sort of overwhelming view is that the enhanced interrogation techniques were absolutely essential in saving thousands of American lives, in preventing further attacks against the United States, in giving us the intelligence we needed to go find al Qaeda, to find their camps, to find out how they were being financed. … It was good policy. It was properly carried out. it worked very, very well.

WALLACE: So even these cases where they went beyond the specific legal authorization, you’re okay with it.

CHENEY: I am.

Perhaps we might want to follow Dick's logic out through its natural process. Chris Wallace followed up his interview with the erroneous statement facetiously suggesting that it was not coincidental that the US had not been attacked since 9/11. Of course this is a bold and bald lie, as there have been numerous terror-driven attacks in the US since that time, including, among others, a young man entering a high school in CA last week with several pipe bombs (two of which were detonated) and guns w/ ammo. The list of such attacks includes shooters and bombers across the country, albeit, mostly carried out by those on the extremist far right.

So, if we accept Dick's ideas, then we need to begin to pick up all of the far-right wingnuts, starting with high school students, detaining them in special environments and removing any semblance of their rights and protections of the US Constitution. Then we need to torture them (okay let's even call it enhanced interrogation) into revealing the names of all of those who may have talked about, or been supportive of, various terror activities. Imagine we take our 13-17 years old students and waterboard them to tell on their friends so that we can continue this effort until we rid the nation of any possible terror attack. Wow, what an effective and productive strategy. We could save millions of lives long before any of the threatened even knew that they were in any possible danger (probably even before the perpetrators would know they could become perps.

Hell, we could start with the gubernatorial candidate from Idaho, Rex Rammel (or is that Rommel??--hehee), who thought that killing the President of the US would be a good idea. Since that is an act, by definition, one that is most heinous, then with Dick's logic, torturing Rex is an absolute necessity. He might know others who feel the same, who own the weapons and have the knowledge to carry it out, who might direct their efforts towards similar acts of treason and threat to the US. Indeed, we should demand that Dick offer his (and Addington's) services to this effort.

And should our local law enforcement personnel, in their zeal to facilitate the extraction of the most information, torture and harm (even kill {the count is well over 100 now by CIA count}) innocent teens and citizens, we would, again following the rule of Dick, not ever want to prosecute them. They must be free to do as they please in hopes that all possible future threats are eradicated.

Seems to me a poem by a certain Pastor Niemoller would be relevant.

a complete idiot:

But she is our fucking idiot.

I heard you loud and clear! Thank you to the thousands of people who called and e-mailed me letting me know what you thought about the Majority’s cap and trade legislation. Today, I voted against that tax hike and job killer.

Oh, that amazing mind that is composed of numerous sleazy greedy staff calling themselves Congresswoman McMorris-Rogers (R-WA). She (the summa of too many parts) is known for her inability to actually create anything of substance, relying, in toto, on such entities as the WSJ, FoxNews, AEI, Heritage Foundation, Cato Institute, et al, to produce her public statements and views on all issues. Today she uncorked the trifecta in talking points of the GOP/FOX alternate reality in claiming her important vote on the American Clean Energy and Security Act: it will cost each family thousands (nope); it will make jobs disappear (approx direct increase in employment = 1.7 mil); and it is a tax (energy producers would pay to capture carbon, and will choose to pass costs directly onto customers as they continue to do today anyway to guarantee their continued profitability).

She of course mentions the erroneous data on cost per household, the complete abject lie about taxes, the AEI and API claims to job loss (imagine the petroleum industry losing jobs in a local semi-rural economy with minimal public transportation?), and the rest. Lie lie lie lie and more so, hoping that her Fox breathing minions, only listen to Rush and Bill on the radio, will continue to support her. She refuses to debate anyone on any subject--albeit, debating fifteen staffers (her composite being) at one time might be a bit complicated--because she is essentially clueless and dependent upon the chosen talking points and choice of information (constructed and framed from the "alternative reality") that is at best untrue and without factual substance. At her worst, she spews only lies and misinformation to promote the agendas of big energy, big agra, big pharma, and lots of fascism.


I am sure "she" would completely agree with Glenn Beck when he said:

And these people know it. They are either the dumbest people to ever walk the face of the Earth, which I think some of them are. They are just greedy and just want their own power and their own control, which I think some of them are. Or, they believe in a different system other than the Republic, which I think some of them do. They are, they have exposed themselves as incompetent. They have exposed themselves as wicked. They have exposed themselves, quite honestly I think, as treasonous. I think some of them are treasonous. They have exposed themselves. Now the question is are there enough people in America still that believes in liberty and freedom and the Constitution?

I've been waiting for a long time for the Death of the Amurkin Dream

At this time of year i hear a great deal from the students i tutor and mentor (across the spectrum of matriculations) about the struggles they are having with balancing reality (Earth) with earning money to acquire even the most basic needs (Amurka). Early this morning, toodling along the highways of Eastern Washington i was shuffling the music deck and up popped a 35 year old Jackson Browne song. Backed by CSN and the Session, along with the maestro of lap steel Mr. Lindley, this song was the statement of that same set of feelings i am currently hearing expressed. Sadly, too many of us are still trying to be happy idiots and asking ourselves to pray for one another.


I'm going to rent myself a house
In the shade of the freeway
I'm going to pack my lunch in the morning
And go to work each day
And when the evening rolls around
I'll go on home and lay my body down
And when the morning light comes streaming in
I'll get up and do it again
Amen
Say it again
Amen

I want to know what became of the changes
We waited for love to bring
Were they only the fitful dreams
Of some greater awakening
I've been aware of the time going by
They say in the end it's the wink of an eye
And when the morning light comes streaming in
You'll get up and do it again
Amen

Caught between the longing for love
And the struggle for the legal tender
Where the sirens sing and the church bells ring
And the junk man pounds his fender
Where the veterans dream of the fight
Fast asleep at the traffic light
And the children solemnly wait
For the ice cream vendor
Out into the cool of the evening
Strolls the Pretender
He knows that all his hopes and dreams
Begin and end there

Ah the laughter of the lovers
As they run through the night
Leaving nothing for the others
But to choose off and fight
And tear at the world with all their might
While the ships bearing their dreams
Sail out of sight

I'm going to find myself a girl
Who can show me what laughter means
And we'll fill in the missing colors
In each other's paint-by-number dreams
And then we'll put out dark glasses on
And we'll make love until our strength is gone
And when the morning light comes streaming in
We'll get up and do it again
Get it up again

I'm going to be a happy idiot
And struggle for the legal tender
Where the ads take aim and lay their claim
To the heart and the soul of the spender
And believe in whatever may lie
In those things that money can buy
Thought true love could have been a contender
Are you there?
Say a prayer for the Pretender
Who started out so young and strong
Only to surrender
Say a prayer for the Pretender

FUCKin' damn it! When Kesey reported that the Dream was Over back in the Last Supplement to the Whole Earth Catalog, i promised myself i would live long enough to see the death of the other dream that has destroyed the planet for generations to come. I am just getting old i guess, but that damn dream is doing its damndest to out survive us all. American exceptionalism indeed, fuck you bastards.