Saturday, September 30, 2006

Potassium Iodide

Astrosmith, the creator of "True Anomaly", asked recently if we should be taking potassium iodide tablets.

Says Astrosmith:
Potassium Iodide (KI) protects your thyroid from absorbing radioactive iodine that will be in the atmosphere after a nuclear explosion. This would lead to you getting thyroid cancer a few years later.
I read this bit--along with the rest of his comments--to my wife, and it sparked a rather long-winded discussion (over a week now) about our own survival options in case of "a nuclear detonation or nuclear "dirty bomb" attack", particularly one against the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex.

We live less than twenty-five miles from downtown Dallas. Our home is on a narrow one acre lot, roughly in the middle of a long row of houses up and down the row, all facing a relatively quiet county road.(paved... with easy access from the Interstate)

According to survival stuff I've read, this is nearly as bad as it can get, since hordes of unprepared starving and desperate city dwellers would flood the area, bringing with them all manner of mayhem, stealing and looting any food and water supplies we may have stored up, doing much raping and killing in the process.

We are in an indefensible area, a basically flat, empty space with lots of low foliage for ground cover in all directions, so the advice to us is to prepare our "bug out bags" and such other stuff we would need for survival and head for the hills at the first sign of the inevitable collapse of law and order.

Problem is that we are 600 miles from those hills--where family members are already living--would have to refuel in the Amarillo area while trying to get there, and drive through numerous small towns. In other words... no freaking chance.

Amarillo would be a Mad Max style nuthouse by the time we got there, and all those little towns would have blockaded all the highways through their area to protect them from the hordes of unprepared starving and desperate city dwellers, and would certainly not let us pass through with a vehicle full of priceless survival supplies.

A house without electricity would not have refrigeration or air-conditioning. Dry, canned and bottled foodstuffs don't need refrigeration and are not a problem, but hiding in a sealed-up house (to reduce the infiltration of radioactively contaminated particles into the structure) without air-conditioning would most likely cause our deaths in short order by heat prostration.

I have started buying small quantities of survival equipment each payday in a no doubt pointless attempt to prepare. Both of us--being in our sixties--have little or no physical assets to offer a survival group, and if ever caught with our guard down, would most probably be killed for our supplies, or killed so we wouldn't waste any.

Since ammunition is universally considered as one of the most valuable commodities in a post-apoplectic world, I am also buying more 12 gauge ammo, double-ought and slug, not to shoot potential invaders with (that would be a pretty short gun battle), but to offer as trade items for other necessary survival items like food, water, gasoline... and a chance in the lottery to stay alive.

But--to be truthful--we don't think our chances of survival are good, actually very close to zero, so we hope that nothing like this happens until after we're gone.

The Potassium Iodide tablets?

We would not survive long enough for thyroid cancer to become a problem.

Potassium Cyanide would be a better choice of pill... at least in our case.

Friday, September 29, 2006

Sexually Assaulted

The police are telling us repeatedly that the lunatic who attacked that Colorado school "sexually assaulted" the hostages. Now I'm in no way trying to defend this nut case, but I have such a deep distrust of SWAT team tactics and police in general that I am always suspicious of any reason they give for the death of a suspect in a shooting incident.

Particularily in this case. This guy died in a confrontation with SWAT members from the Columbine area, who without a doubt, had a score to settle and a point to prove after their disasterous failure in Columbine, where they had wandered around outside for hours as the two shooters inside continued their killing rampage unchallanged.

The guy had let four of the hostages go. Do you believe he would have done that after he had sexually, really sexually assaulted them? Keep in mind that in today's feminized world, many women consider a man eyeballing her as "sexual assault", the "he raped me with his eyes" sort of nonsense.

The guy had fired a shot in the school, no doubt to get some out-of-touch teacher into contact with the reality of the situation, but he had not shot or harmed anyone according to the initial reports, supposedly made from statements by the four released hostages.

One or more of the four released girls may have stated she had been "touched inappropriately" during the incident, particularily afterwards, during the intense and focused questioning by those looking for justification in what could really be another police killing. Such touching is "sexual assault" to many women, most assuredly to female police interrogators and the women in our news media.

We will never know, because the guy is conveniently dead, and we'll not get any details of this supposed "sexual assault" because the police and the news media will want to protect the feelings of those highly "tramatized" girls and their families.

The man-- scumbag cretin that he was--deserved a trial by jury, something supposedly guaranteed by our Constitution. Instead, he died in a confrontation with a SWAT team whose motives are--without doubt--suspect. They claim the guy had made some sort of extremely vague four o'clock deadline, afterwhich the SWAT boys charged right in. We citizens need absolute proof that this killing did not occur just to massage the damaged egos of a police department with a serious black eye.

Let's hope the police have evidence proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that this guy had actual sexual intercourse with these girls, not some flimsy "he looked at us with lust in his eyes" sort of justifiction. Let's hope this is not another case in which citizens allow a potential police murder to go unchallanged, because it will only embolden those black clad storm troopers nationwide to kick in more doors, using the "shoot first, ask questions later" approach to law enforcement, while at the same time getting their adrenalin hits with more murder by cop.

I had a career cop brother-in-law, and believe me, cops have a "us or them" attitude about everything. The "them" in that is all us citizens, who my brother-in-law contended have all broken the law, but just haven't been caught and brought to justice yet. That's the unvarnished truth, people... he and his fellow officers actually believed they could pull you over at any time, toss you into jail and find a reason later to keep you there.

Scary.

An afterthought:

It's not all the cops fault that they have such a crummy attitude about us ordinary citizens wandering the streets. Our system of "justice" puts all manner of criminals back on the streets over nothing more than a "technicality" after what could have been months, or even years, of police work.

That's often enough to make any dedicated officer turn to the dark side*.

*Darth Vader had turned to the "dark side", but he was still an enforcement officer of the empire.

Thursday, September 28, 2006

Laura And Barney

According to Bob Woodward, when Mr. Bush had key Republicans to the White House to discuss Iraq, he told them,
"I will not withdraw, even if Laura and Barney are the only ones supporting me."
Perhaps we could all understand the importance of this statement by Bush much better if we changed two names, so it would read:
I will not withdraw, even if Eva and Rommel are the only ones supporting me."
Wow. Shows that Bush really is insane.

The "War" On Drugs

The more I think about it, the angrier I get over this House Bill proposing strip searches of children in our schools as another "tool" in the federal government's war on drugs.

Just think for a moment. If there is anything that demonstrates the total failure of this so-called war, strip searching our children has got to be it. They now want to interdict drugs at the very end of the line--after all the profits have been make, after all the bribes have been paid, after no is left to punish--but our children.

The federal government refuses to defend our borders. This should be apparent even to the most simple-minded amongst us. Our borders are wide open, and the federal government obviously intends to keep them that way because of agreements made with Mexico, agreements such as NAFTA, GAT and others intended to promote a "borderless" North American "Union".

Even though the president talks of how much is being done to intercept drugs coming into America--and how our borders are being protected--the fact remains that less than one twentieth of the drug flow is being stopped. We are told that drug mules are tipped off as to where crossing will be safe at any particular time. They are told where our border patrols are, where the routes across are being watched and what routes are safe.

This--or course--allows for the delivery of countless tons of drugs into and across America without fear. Now, in yet another attempt to make it look like they are actually doing something, the House presents this idea that strip-searching our children at school is going to be helpful.We all are aware of the immense profits in drugs. We all need to be aware that this money can buy all manner of support from all manner of people... border patrol informants, Americans who profit in the sale of drugs, even some sheriffs, police chiefs, Mayors, business men and congressmen--both state and federal-- anyone who gets a piece of the drug money pie.

Oh yes... we are "winning" the war on drugs, but consider where we are supposedly winning... in other countries, and with the small-time, two-bit street dealers. The feds take down foreign drug czars and cartels with great fanfare, but not one single American drug lord has ever been arrested or taken down, the influential and powerful men who are safe and secure because of the money that buys them protection. We are shown videos of the DEA and SWAT teams kicking in the doors of some burnt-out sixties hippie happily smoking a joint, or the door of some two-bit ghetto dealer who has a few ounces of crack in his pocket. Literally thousands of these small-time losers are now in prison, thanks to these pointless raids that do absolutely nothing to stem the flow.

Now... Congress wants to make us think they are doing even more in this "war" by proposing that our children be strip-searched at school, making our kids both the victims and the criminals.What they are saying in so many words is that the federal government has failed so totally and completely that the only thing they can think of now is to blame the kids.

That’s the bottom of the barrel people. That should be the last hurrah of the despicable bastards who prey on us and our children.

If Americans won't rise to protect their children, then they fully deserve to be dumped into some obscure corner of history's dustbin.

Tuesday, September 26, 2006

Cat Fight

Bill is slammed on TV for obsessing over stained blue dresses instead of concentrating on terrorism and thus preventing 9/11. Bill gets angry and lashes out on TV at everybody, including George. Condi goes on TV defending George for not preventing 9/11, attacking Bill in the process, and in comes Hillary--riding to the rescue-- but in reality mostly concerned over the possible damge to her political career.

So now we have two presidents, one past, one present, being defended by power-hungry women in what is becoming--or is--a national cat fight over who didn't do what in failing to prevent 9/11.

All this belongs on the Soap channels.

As I listen to these two women snarl at each other, I am somewhat surprised to note that they are both defending the inactions of the two men who utterly failed to do their jobs.

In the midst of all this flying fur, let's not forget that little detail.

Sunday, September 24, 2006

Start The Countdown

Here we go:
WASHINGTON – Even though student molestations seem to be reaching epidemic proportions in schools across America, the House of Representatives has approved a tough new anti-drug and anti-weapon law that would require local districts to develop search policies – including strip searches – with immunity against prosecution for teachers and staff.
I can see the upcoming news story now... Some father has just gone down to the local school house and shot half the staff dead.

Why?

Because they stripped searched his ten-year-old daughter in what they claimed was a search for drugs, including an orifice search. The family doctor, after examing the tramatized child, stated that the girl's hymen was ruptured, her vagina bruised and abrased, and her colon torn internally.

The father, shot dead by over fifty SWAT team officers in the process of protecting and serving the community, had told his wife before heading for the school that even if those S.O.B.'s were immune to legal retaliation, they weren't immune to bullets.

Hasn't happened yet, but just wait...

More proof that the federal governments's incredibly expensive war on drugs has been lost, and is now nothing more than an excuse to help deprive legal citizens of their rights.

Good grief, you bunch of morons who think that keeping drugs illegal is good, where do you put yours heads at night? Strip search your children to help in the "war on drugs"?

Legalize the junk, just as we have done with alcohol. Regulate and tax the living hell out of it. Regulate and standardize the dosage, no more deaths from an unexpected overdose or contaminated drugs. Sell the stuff only in licensed and authorized "drug" stores to adults with proof of age. Keep the prices reasonable. That will eliminate the criminal element from the drug trade, the very people who are getting it into our schools and to our children. There will then be no need for some child-molesting pedophile hiding behind the title of "teacher" to strip search your ten-year-old daughter.

A reality check is in order ... people who want to use drugs, will. Most people won't, and don't. There will not be a drug usage "epidemic" in America.

As an example. at the turn of the last century, both cocaine and marijuana were legal in America. Cocaine was even in Coca-Cola. There was no drug problem. We had no drug epidemic then... users used, non-users didn't, Nobody was trying to get drugs into the schools, and not one single child had ever been strip searched for drug contraband.

As a bonus, we can eliminate the DEA.

Saturday, September 23, 2006

The New Reality Approaches...Fast

The original post here just vanished....

Only the title and the comments remain. The "recover post" feature recoved nothing. I have no clue whatever how this happened.

Friday, September 22, 2006

The Federal Reserve

What is the Federal Reserve? It is the United States central bank and consists of twelve banks, created by a 1913 Act of Congress and signed into law by President Woodrow Wilson. They were intended to “furnish an elastic currency, to afford means of rediscounting commercial paper, to establish a more effective supervision of banking in the United States, and for other purposes”.

Fine and dandy, one must suppose. So, how were these twelve corporations created? Who actually owns them?

Each of the twelve banks were organized into a corporation whose shares were to be sold to the commercial banks and thrifts operating within any particular bank’s district.

The law stipulated that a small portion of the Federal Reserve stock could be made available for sale to the public, in amounts not to exceed $25,000 per investor, but only in the event that the sale of stock to member banks did not raise the minimum of $4 million of initial stock for each Federal Reserve Bank when they were organized in 1913. (12 USCA 281).

Each Bank was able to raise the necessary amount through member stock sales, and no public stock has ever been sold to private investors or foreigners (Woodard, 1996)

The most influential of the Fed Banks is no doubt the one in New York, and controlling it is tantamount to controlling the entire system. So who owns it?

The reported top eight stockholders of the New York Fed are, from the largest to smallest as of 1983, are Citibank, Chase Manhattan, Morgan Guaranty Trust, Chemical Bank, Manufacturers Hanover Trust, Bankers Trust Company, National Bank of North America, and the Bank of New York. These banks own 63% of the New York Feds outstanding stock. (Mullins)

Many of these banks are in fact owned by about a dozen European banking organizations, mostly British, and most notably the Rothschild banking dynasty. Who owns these British banking organizations? Who or what is the Rothschild banking dynasty?

By changing the supply of money in circulation and by controlling the prime interest rate, the Fed determines the interest rates we all pay from mortgage payments to credit cards, can cause financial markets to boom or collapse, prompting our economy to expand or stumble into recession. Such awesome power would presumably be in the hands of those whose primary concerns are the health of the US economy.

Apparently, it is not. It is in the hands of foreigners who own our banks. Exactly who these people are and where their sovereignty lies is a question we all could use an answer to.

That’s going to take a bit more digging.

Tuesday, September 19, 2006

700 More Miles Of Fence

"It's time to secure the border with Mexico," Majority Leader Bill Frist said last night, a complete flip-flop of his postion on the issue two nights ago.

The Senate will now take up a bill this week that calls for constructing 700 more miles of fencing along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Well, of course. But, Mr. Frist said he still supports comprehensive immigration reform legislation, the Bush plan that wants to give ten million alliegal aliens citizenship.
"... because no consensus can now be reached on other issues, Congress should move ahead with border security. It's not enforcement only, but "enforcement first."
Elections must be getting very close. A whole lot of his elephant buddies in the House must be headed for election day disasters. Let's just see how many miles of fence get approved-- and funded-- after the elections.

Remember the radical socialist Huey Long? One-time governer of Louisiana? Back in the days of early automobiles and impassable muddy, rut-filled roads, he made an election promise to pave a major highway route if elected. They elected him. He kept his promise, but he paved every other mile. Come next election, he promised to pave the parts he "missed". True story.

They elected him again, but this time to the U.S. Senate, demonstrating the fact that Louisiana has never been known for it's overly large voter base of intellectuals.

One other thing... 700 miles of fence is only one-third of the borders length. The remaining two-thirds would still be wide open.

These Senators must think we'll all from Louisiana.

Addendum:

Another thing... the Congressional trick of approving something we all want--and then not funding it--is a normal, everyday sleezeball stunt those beltliners do. They approve a popular bill, making the voters back home happy, and then--after elections--let the whole thing die by not funding it.

Sunday, September 17, 2006

Spinach As A Terrorist Weapon?

This spinach contamination problem hitting us is a uniquely unusual event, particularly in it's scope and depth. Something like this happening naturally is usually limited to a small localized area, in which containment and the source discovery is relatively easy and quick.

This event is different. It spread to twenty states in lightning fashion and the spinach ban is now national.

What better way to attack us than through our food supply? Massive worry, concern, fear and even hysteria on a national scale, just by having a terroist dump some E coli on a product in a factory, perhaps in concert with a few others attacking the same type food source.

No guards to worry about, easy getaway, massive result.

Color me paranoid, but it would not surprise me to learn this is just another front opening in the war against us.

Saturday, September 16, 2006

A Question Of Science

I have been asked by Starbuck what happened to the SuperConducting SuperCollider (SSC).

It was canceled by Congress in 1994 at the 83% completion point. All it's assets were given away, or tossed. At least the additional Comanche Peak nuke unit brought online to power the SSC now benefits the Dallas/Fort Worth megaplex with its additional power, eliminating many of the electrical brownouts that so often hit the area in summer.

We actually had Hazel O'Leary--who became Secretary of Energy under President Clinton--come to the SSC and tell the staff that the government had better things to do with the money than toss it into a hole in the ground in Texas.

That was the Clinton Administration's typical attitude towards all things scientific. Say what you might about Bush Sr., but he understood the necessity of taxpayer supported research to support our nation's technological edge, once our greatest asset worldwide.

National labs--both private and public-- everywhere, suffered disasterous setbacks in financing and personnel during the Clinton years and have never recovered.

There is a long list of research projects that produced marvelous things that are now wasted and tossed away. I list a few below:

The YF-12.

Later known as the SR-70 Blackbird, the YF-12 was originally designed to be a high altitude intercepor fighter to counteract a perceived Soviet threat that never materialized and was converted into a spy plane. That's a mostly unknown fact. We have nothing to replace it.

The XB-70

Yes, we had a supersonic bomber that actually flew and performed beyond expectations. The Valkyrie, a stunningly beautiful aircraft, had two prototypes built and flying, but was cancelled by Congress because it was "upsetting the Russians". The Russians built their "foxbat" intercptor-- a pirated U.S. design-- to meet the threat of this new and deadly U.S. bomber. We have nothing to replace it.

The Original Space Shuttle

The originally designed space shuttle never had that huge fuel tank with those giant strapped on solid fuel boosters to get it into orbit. The tanks and solids were a supposedly temporary solution, until the manned first stage could be funded. This manned first stage was to be used to boost the shuttle into orbit, then return to earth much in the same way as the shuttle itself, and completely reusable. Congress refused to fund it, and we have nothing to replace it.

The Safeguard Missile Intercetor System

The Safeguard system was the forerunner of the Patriot. It was fully operational, using two interceptor missiles, the long-range Spartan and the short-range Sprint. The highly advanced radar system (for it's day) was a marvel of science. It was canceled by Congress because it upset the balance of power concept championed by the MAD (Mutuially Assured Destruction) theory, and was upsettting the Russians. The Patriot system-- a more recent effort-- is only marginally effective, has no long-range component and is--in my view--inferior.

Boeing's SST

Boeing had designed a beautiful SuperSonicTransport, a passenger aircraft that would be a technological generation ahead of the Concord. Boeing had built a full-sized prototype, but the project was abandoned because the boys with the money could see no financial return on the investment.

The Space Shuttle

We are abandoning the Space Shuttles and we have nothing to replace them with, except with the older technology of using rockets to launch manned capsules. Even Bush's amusing call to return to the moon uses no new technology--since we have none--it is intended to build a slightly larger version of the old Apollo.

Sad. We should have a manned presence on Mars by now.

So, Starbuck, the SSC suffered the same fate as all of America's research efforts... either cancelled so the money could be used in better places than holes in the ground in Texas, or abandoned becuase the Russians were unhappy.

There are other examples, many still considered classified. Amusing, since the rest of the first-world nations are passing--or have passed--us by.

What little effort being done here in the United States today is too little, too late, and the engineers doing it are only amusing themselves by re-designing the wheel, and making new trinkets using twenty-year-old technology.

Does that answer your question?

Friday, September 15, 2006

The Pope And The Muslims

What a screwball world we live in.

I see pictures all over the place of wild-eyed, screaming Muslims going ballistic over something the Pope said, or rather read and said. A historical comment-- nothing more-- but enough to light countless short fuses in all corners of the Muslim world.

Then I read that the French have actually found something in this world they claim cannot be regulated, the "skinniness of a model", along with accompanying pictures of Miss Anorexia, 2006. This is--of course--in reponse to Spains decision to ban models that are "too skinny" from their fashion show, or about a third of the models who were going to try to cast a shadow somewhere on the Spanish runway.

And here I thought governments could regulate anything.

And now, a church somewhere puts the face of Jesus--or a reasonable facsimile--on the side of a beer glass, and Christians join the Muslims with the "we are outraged" routine.

Try as I might, I find it almost impossible to get "outraged" over anything. Angry? Yes, but it goes quickly, which means when somebody flips me the bird out on the freeway I don't try to respond by using my car as a battle ram. I find that smiling back broadly will tick them off more than actually smashing into their car.

Seems that a whole lot of people worldwide need to mellow out a bit, or just go ahead and have their heart attacks and be done with it.

We'd all be better off.

Thursday, September 14, 2006

The Upcoming "War"

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger warned that Europe and the United States must unite to head off a "war of civilizations" arising from a nuclear-armed Middle East.
Don't believe it for a second.

This will not be a "War of civilizations", this is a war of religions. It will be a war between the Jewish religion and the Muslim religion, with the Christians trapped in the middle.

Civilization has never been defined by any particluar religion. Civilization is properly defined as a relatively high level of curltural and technological develpoment, a stage of development where writing and the keeping of written records is attained, a time of urban comfort.

What Kissinger--in his best "Dr. Strangelove" manner--is warning us of, is a nuclear war between Arab and Jew, one that the Christains ought to be avoiding like the plague.

Outrageous And Dishonest

More ripples in the pond:
VIENNA (Reuters) - U.N. inspectors have protested to the U.S. government and a Congressional committee about a report on Iran's nuclear work, calling parts of it "outrageous and dishonest," according to a letter obtained by Reuters.
Imagine that. The inspectors themselves are complaining that the Bush administration "distorted" their findings in it's quest to justify a war with Iraq.
"This (committee report) is deja vu of the pre-Iraq war period where the facts are being maligned and attempts are being made to ruin the integrity of IAEA inspectors," said a Western diplomat familiar with the agency and IAEA-U.S. relations.
Those IAEA inspectors have no idea what they're taking about. The Bush administration knew far better than they about what Iraq was up too, and absolutely more than they know about the Iranian program. After all, they are only on-site inspectors, while Bush gets his marching orders "from God".

How do I know that? Because Bush says so, and just like the prophets of old, he has a pipeline directly to God. Besides, those horrid Iraqis and Iranians are nothing more than today's Caananites, and God didn't like them either.

And just like Pharoah said in the movie "Moses": "So let it be written, so let it be done".

... And let it be believed ...

Tuesday, September 12, 2006

The Meat Grinder

TV news reports today talk of how the war in Iraq is lost. They are telling us that the key city of Ramadi and the entire western side of Iraq has been lost to insurgents. They tell us that American military commanders are begging for thousands more men just to try to make an effective presence in Ramadi. They tell us that American soldiers are calling Ramadi the "Meat Grinder".

The "Meat Grinder". I can remember "Hamburger Hill" in Korea. Thats what American soldiers called a hill in Korea where so many died for so little.

Remember Korea? It used to be one country like Iraq. Now, over a half-century later, we have tens of thousands of American troops still there, protecting "South" Korea, while our laughable polititians are negotiating with "North" Korea, tryng to broker an unattainable peace in a war we lost sixty years ago. Amazingly, we are technically still at war with "North" Korea, so Bush could launch an offensive against "North" Korea at any time, without anybody's say so but his, Mr. Commander-in-Chief.

Then there's Viet Nam. We lost so badly there, we couldn't even swing the North and South parody.

The Meat Ginder makes me want to compare Iraq to Korea. If we have really lost the entire wesdern portion of Iraq, we may end up with "West Iraq" and an "East Iraq", with tens of thousands of American soldiers posted there for perhaps a half-century--perhaps forever--while the polititians try to negotiate another unattainable peace in yet another lost war.

In the meantime, go ask any Israeli(the people we eliminated Saddam for, the "why" we are in Iraq) if they really give a damn what happens to us now. Will they send troops? Will they give us financial aid?

Yeah... right.

Sunday, September 10, 2006

More Currents

I just sat down to watch C-span and the events happening inside Washington today, and there was Senator Carl Levin tossing out the exact same accuations just recently made by Senator John Rockefeller.

Hmmm... who's next?

Don't get me wrong here, I'm not going to start defending Bush just because he's going to get drawn and quartered for his stupidity--I agree with Fred Reed's assesment of the man--"God almighty, what a fool".

I'm just getting interested in what's going down.

Deeper Currents

Moves Against President Bush, like the one in my previous post by Rockefeller, hint of a very disturbing possibility: That Bush was completely suckered into starting the Iraqi war, and now that Iraq has been eliminated as a threat, is being setup to take the fall for the horrid consequences we are seeing... at least in the eyes of the American people.

The high degree of congressional support originally given Bush for the Iraqi war is evaporating. In other words, the very same congressional members who gave him the OK to eliminate Saddam, are now pointing fingers in ever larger numbers.

An argument between Ariel Sharon and Shimon Peres should be considered at this point.
On October 3, 2001, I.A.P. News reported that according to Israel Radio (in Hebrew) Kol Yisrael an acrimonious argument erupted during the Israeli cabinet weekly session last week between Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and his foreign Minister Shimon Peres. Peres warned Sharon that refusing to heed incessant American requests for a cease-fire with the Palestinians would endanger Israeli interests and "turn the US against us. "Sharon reportedly yelled at Peres, saying "don't worry about American pressure, we control America."
I am not surprised at this. The unqualified support given Israel by the American federal government over the years clearly suggests that what Sharon supposedly said may indeed be true.

Way back in 1973, Senator Fullbright, Chair of Senate Foreign Relations Committee said on CBS' "Face the Nation":
"I am aware how almost impossible it is in this country to carry out a foreign policy [in the Middle East] not approved by the Jews..... terrific control the Jews have over the news media and the barrage the Jews have built up on congressmen .... I am very much concerned over the fact that the Jewish influence here is completely dominating the scene and making it almost impossible to get congress to do anything they don't approve of. The Israeli embassy is practically dictating to the congress through influential Jewish people in the country"
Consider for a moment that this is actually true. Have the Jews have been using America and her resources for their own selfish benefit, and are now ready to serve up another American president as yet another scapegoat in their quest for Middle East dominance?

This long history of bipartisan Congressional support for Israel led former Secretary of State James Baker to call the Congress "The Little Knesset" after Israel's Knesset (parliament) in Jerusalem.

The American media's strong, biased and sympathetic portrayal of Israel while simultaneously denying any opposing view of Israel or human pictures and stories of the endless suffering of Palestinians may be the major reason why so many Americans are totally ignorant of the true situation in the Middle East, where over fifty years of war have settled nothing, except to make America the perceived mortal enemy of billions, due to our federal government's unrelenting and unquestioned support of an occupying force on foreign soil.

The First BIG Salvo

Senator John Rockeleller fired off what I consider as the first big salvo against Bush and his compliant herd of lemmings in the now developing "take no prisoners" Republician/Democratic conflict we are watching over who wins in our upcoming elections.

Says Rockefeller (D-W, Va.):
"The absolute cynical manipulation, deliberately cynical manipulation, to shape American public opinion and 69 percent of the people, at that time, it worked, they said 'we want to go to war, including me. The difference is after I began to learn about some of that intelligence I went down to the Senate floor and I said 'my vote was wrong'".
Rockefeller went a step further. He says the world would be better off today if the United States had never invaded Iraq — even if it means Saddam Hussein would still be running Iraq.
"[Saddam] wasn't going to attack us. He would've been isolated there. He would have been in control of that country but we wouldn't have depleted our resources preventing us from prosecuting a war on terror which is what this is all about."
Imagine that. A Washington beltline insider actually trying to seperate Bush's "warn tear" and the war in Iraq. What can possibily happen next?

Spain Stirs The Fashion Pot

MADRID (AFP) - Excessively skinny fashion models will be barred from a major Madrid fashion show later this month for fear they could send the wrong message to young Spanish girls, local media reported.
Madrid's regional government, which is co-financing the Pasarela Cibeles, has vetoed around a third of the models who took part in last year's show because they weigh too little.
Hot diggity dang. Imagine that. The Spaniards having gall to suggest that a six-foor woman that weighs 90 pounds is too thin for her own good.
Organisers said they wanted to "help ensure public opinion does not associate fashion, and fashion shows in particular, with an increase in anorexia, a disease which, along with bulimia, is considered ... as a mental and behavioural problem".
Personally, I prefer a bit more weight on the average model for her to look attractive, and don't particularily think that the Deathcamp look--where you can count all her bones without an X-ray--is very sexy or healthy. But that's just me.

I'll wager that America's legions of floor-shaking porkers, wandering around in our malls buying ever larger and larger clothes, will be most pleased over this bit of news, and celebrate the event with another two-quart dose of diet cola.

Saturday, September 09, 2006

Yet Another Federal Disaster Plan

The Feds are cooking up a Wall Street disaster plan, should some cataclysm hit the stock market, like if the rich fat cats start getting less than a 10% return on their investments.

This has got to be a joke. A bunch of Washington-type think-tankers sitting around planning for a 9/11 style disaster that specifically hits the Street.

I would bet all of your money that the plan that gets adopted will be one that uses all of your money, my money and every little guys money(tax dollars) to bail out the rich.

Just like the saving and loan bailout so generously provided by Uncle Sam a few years ago, under the caring and guiding hands of the benevolent Bush Sr.

Friday, September 08, 2006

The President On 9-11

We have just been told that President Bush will address the nation at 9PM this coming 9/11, the fifth anniversery of the WTC attack.

We will no doubt hear about how much safer we are, how much progress has been made in Iraq, how great and necessary the Patriot Act is, and he may even mention a thing or two about the federal government's plans on the upcoming confrontation with Iran.

He will most likely mention that our borders are much safer now that those few thousand clerks, bookkeepers and hash slingers in National Guard uniforms are somewhere in the southwest, maybe within a day's drive of the actual border, and how those twenty million illegals presently in America are really, really nice family folks who are honestly and gladly paying their fair share of the taxes.

If he ganders downs his usual path, he will discuss the sacrifices being make by Americans in this "warn tear" of his, and talk about some minority family who has lost a son to the fighting, and how they bravely, but tearfully, continue to wave the American flag. They may even be in the audience and get a few seconds face time, brought to Washington at taxpayer expence for this Bush speech.

He will tell us that the ecomony is great, unemployment is low, and all those nay-sayers are just a bunch of ... well, democrats.

He will tell us how critical it is for republicians to win in this coming election--but not the real why--which is so he can continue the dis-assembly and sale of America without congressional interference.

Here are a few things I would like him to address:

-1) Why the planners of the 9/11 attack--after five years--are still free. Five years.

-2) How our military is stretched near to the breaking point, and that the draft may need to be re-instituted so he can continue--and advance-- his warn tear by attacking Iran.

-3) How much his two wars have cost us in real dollars, how much they will continue to cost, and how many other federal programs have been placed in mortal financial jeopardy because of them.

-4) How the Patriot Act and other laws created and pushed through congress by his administration has destroyed more American freedoms than any administration in history.

-5) I would like him to tell us why he attacked two soverign nations that had not done a thing to us, not the WMD fairy tale, not the "Iraq is a better place now without Saddam" babble--which it most certainly isn't--the real reasons.

-6) I would like George Bush explain to me why he thinks America has the "right" to pre-emptively attack any nation, anywhere, on the premise of what might possibly happen, somewhere, someday, based on unverified and flawed intel, or even worse... the personal opinions and/or the animosities of those in positions of power and influence.

-7) I would like him to explain how twenty million illegals are not really swamping our hospitals, overcrowding our prisons, not really taking away jobs from Americans, not really bankrupting many of our social safety nets and not really bringing back diseases we had eliminated in America years ago.

-8) Most of all, I would like him to explain exactly how the hunt for a few hundred terrorists, scattered and hiding in the remotest places around the world, justifies these two wars in Afganistan and Iraq, particularily since the majority of the 9/11 perpetators were--and are-- Saudi Arabian.

One other thing... I would like him to tell us his honest assesment on how long this American federal government supported Iraqi government will last, if and when we finally pull out.

Thursday, September 07, 2006

Neighbors. They Come, They Go...Under

We lost a neighbor three houses down last month. They just packed up and vanished with whatever they could carry, abandoning their new home of less than six months. No foul play, they just bailed. They had both lost their jobs and couldn't find new employment.

We have a little retirement place (3br, 2bath) about twenty-five miles southeast of Dallas. Our "subdivision" consists of a long single row of new to recently built little brick houses along a county road, each on a long, narrow acre in a rural setting that has--on it's list of attractions-- a large dose of peace and quiet. Every house is different, since the contractor allowed everyone to chose a floorplan and exterior from any source, the only limiter being how many square feet you could get for your money.

Our neighbors are a pretty representative slice of Americana. We have young, middle-aged, retired, white, brown, black and yellow families scattered up and down the line of houses, and except for the retirees (us), they all have a job somewhere in the area with which they keep afloat and raise their familes.

The train whistles and the occasional yapping dog are small prices added to the cost of living, and generally ignored.

Along the same lines, we lost another neighbor two months ago just four houses up the line. Same sort of thing, lost their jobs, couldn't find any work, so they just left.

Keep in mind these are all new pretty little brick houses, with A/C, modern kitchens, finished garages, underground utilities, etc. These people had all qualified for their mortgages, so their financial situation --until recently--must certainly have been good.

Our next door neighbor, who has been here a bit over a year, just came over and asked if she could use our dryer. Well, of course, but what happened to hers?

It's not her dryer. The electic company turned off their lights at noon today, and she had just hand washed some clothes for tomorrow and needed to get them dried. In a normal neighborly response, I ran an extension cord from our garage to their house so they can have a couple lights and a fan tonight, and keep the frige running. The loss of one's refrigerator can cost hundreds in spoiled food.

Turns out her husband lost his job. He's an auto mechanic, but the shop where he worked found another person to do his job for less. The town(two miles away), being a small rural community, has no jobs available, except for a few national chain fast food joints... so he's off tomorrow to Arkansas to look for work. Don't ask me why. I don't know, he probably doesn't either, but he knows people there, and right now that's about his only hope.

Our neighbor told us that to have the light s turned back on will cost $747.01, not including the past due bill. They can no longer be "trusted" by the local electric company to pay their bill on time, so this "deposit" is now a ironclad requirment. That's a back breaker for them... a job at McDonald's will never provide enough for anything close to that. This is more than their monthly mortgage. This they just cannot pay.

So, they're probably going to bail also... three neighbors, three familes, in three months who have lost the American dream.

And all because of lost jobs.

Monica Revisited

ABC is planning to release a mini-series tiltled "The path to 9/11", and Bill Clinton is up in arms over what he considers the "bias" and "fictitious rewriting" of the film.

It reportedly portrays Clinton as too preoccupied with the Monica Lewinsky sex scandal to worry about Bin Laden, how a top CIA official canceled an operation to capture Osama when the chance to grab him was only moments away, how then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright had tipped off Packistani officals about a raid giving Osama the chance to get away, and how the mini-series would slam his administration in general.

Mr. "I-did-not-have-sex-with-that-woman" Clinton reportedly wrote a four page letter to ABC demanding that the drama be pulled if not edited to his liking, or words to that effect.

Even former National Security Adviser Sandy Berger is said to be yelling loudly. What did he do that he is afraid to let out into the daylight?

What a shame... all the years of hard work that the Clintons have put into burying the national embarrassment and grief caused by this burger-munching Bubba and his pals... only to have it re-surface just before election time.

Mini-series or no mini-series, the lid is off the can of worms once again.

Just goes to show that even on a slow-news day or no-news day something fun can always pop up.

Heh.

Wednesday, September 06, 2006

K-Day Has Come... And Gone

The big day finally arrived. The most intensely hyped event in TV news history... is history.

Perky Katie Couric presented herself in her "first ever" major TV news anchor seat. A few comments are in order--not from me--but from some of her no doubt former friends in the industry.

"Katie couric underwent last night her second on-air colonoscopy."

"...Katie spent a half-hour desperately looking as if she had to go potty".

"... crossing her bare legs like some ridiculous tramp."

"What was conspicuously lacking were any flourishes that could be seen as brazen attempts to render the news' appeal younger, hipper and, dare we say it, more feminine."

Sorta expected all this. For a reported salary of 15 million a year, I was expecting a bit more, actually a lot more.

Tuesday, September 05, 2006

Hi-Ho Silver, Away!

The things that go on under your nose.

Not twelve miles from where I live, a Belgium Company has been slaughtering horses for human consumption, not for folks here in the United States, but for picky eaters in Europe and Japan, who consider horse meat as a delicacy.

The plant slaughters hundreds of horses a week and has been cited 29 times for wastewater violations by the city of Kaufman, Texas. But the company, Crown Dallas, has successfully appealed to the courts to treat each violation as a single jury trial issue.

The AVMA, The American Veterinary Medical Assocation, has rushed to the defense of the Crown Dallas operation, claiming that rescue shelters will be overburdened with unwanted animals, who would then have to be sold to Mexican slaughter houses, where they would be slaughtered in a much less "humane" manner.

Come again?

AVMA and/or local versions of "Pet Patrol" go out and "rescue" hundreds of horses weekly and then sells them off to Crown Dallas, who slaughters them for overseas human consumption?

What hypocrites!

One could easily assume that the AVMA and/or their private property-seizing cohorts (using their legally granted powers) takes supposedly mis-treated horses away from supposedly evil owners--strictly as a cash flow solution--in cahoots with Crown Dallas and it's Belgium owners.

Wow. I need to get out more.

Rants About Lieberman

The ADL has fired off a salvo at MoveOn.org, claiming that MoveOn.org is full of anti-Semetic rants about Joe Lieberman.

Be careful here...

Lieberman lost his bid for his Senate seat this upcoming election in the usual two-party system to the "upstart" Ned Lamont, so he has now decided to run as an independent in a dismal attempt to hang on to his Connecticut Senate seat.

Lamont won--fair and square--using the issue of Lieberman's support of the Iraqi war as the pivot issue. To a lot of people, Lieberman's move is just sour grapes from a man who can't stand the thought of losing the power and prestige that a Senator wields.

But along comes the ADL, mixing the issue of anti-Semitism into the fray. This is nothing more than a move to mask the "sour grapes" appearance of Lieberman's independent run and replace it with sympathy support supposedly to be generated by tossing in this anti-semitism charge.

A few points:

First, the anti-semitism charge is a big yawner nowadays. Anybody and everybody who disagrees with the littlest Isreali thing is anti-Semite.

Secondly, the fact that the ADL has jumped in supports the notion that Lieberman really is in the Senate to promote the Israeli agenda, and that we really did go into Iraq to remove a real and viable threat to the existance of Israel.

At lastly, don't forget the fact that Old Joe is exacly that, old. Time to retire.

This Will Certainly Change My Mind

Janet Jackson has said she backs Hillary for President.

Miss "wardrobe malfunction" says "Hillary Clinton as President, that would be great. Then she could show all those people who wouldn't trust a woman for such a job".

Well now, that just settles the whole upcoming President thing, doesn't it?

Miss "see my pretty nipple pasty" went on to say that " I am not satisfied with the situation in this world. I hate war".

Hot diggity-dang. Such depth of insight, and her solution to it all is a President Hillary. All I need do to agree with Miz Janet is go flush about 90% of my brain down the toilet.

How does background noise like this even get into the news?

Well, she was being interviewed by the German press agency DPA. That says a lot all by itself.

Monday, September 04, 2006

"We Want A Better Deal"

An illegal alien protest march in Phoenix brought out Mexican Nationals into the streets today.

One of them, a Mexican construction worker name Jose Avardo, said "We love this country and we want a better deal".

Here's the deal, Jose... Get your illegal butt back into Mexico and stay there... before it gets kicked back.

Koppel Makes A Discovery

Ted Koppel, who gained his place in the sun by reporting every single night--for over a year--on the embassy hostages in Iran, is announcing his arrival at the Discovery Channel for a program in which he says they will take a giant step backward and look at older headlines that seemed so important at the time, re-evaluate them, and establish their real worth in the "larger scheme of things".

This is fascinating because of it's baseline concept, the re-evaluating of old news and reaching possibly opposing conclusions.

It could just be a matter of discussing what the opposition was saying at the time of any event, throwing it up against the wall to see if anything sticks, or just another jaded attempt to re-enforce the claims of the powerful and to help shore up the structure of the status-quo.

Or it could actually be a show in which old headlines are actually dissected and truly evaluated on their merits.

However,, I don't really trust Koppel, the people behind him, or the networks that give him facetime. That's just me--of course--so I'm really curious what news stories are going to be revisited and analyzed.

I'll watch his new show--at least for a time--until the true purpose of it becomes obvious. If it really is an in depth and realistic re-evaluation for what was the "news of the day", great, I'll keep watching and probably make a few posts on the shows.

But if it's just another propangistic pile of drivel designed to support the "big lie", or whatever you want to label it, I won't be surprised, and I'll for certain damn sure make posts.

Friday, September 01, 2006

So What?

Bush just said that an American pullout from Iraq would result in it being conquered by our worst enemies.

So we end up with our "worst enemies" in Iraq. Good grief, they're already there, and in pretty much every country around it, killing plenty of Americans on an almost daily basis. Odds are that we'll have to stay there forever just to keep the dismal status quo, since the American installed puppet government cannot possibly survive on it's own.

The second we leave it all goes back to square one, no matter what we do, or how long we stay.

"There" is a nice place for our worst enemies to be, where they can slaughter each other in the name of Allah until the end of days. If those lunatics want to kill for Allah, who are we to interfere? They already have provided themselves with easy-to-reach local enemies to kill--the Shiite/Sunni thing--to satisfy their daily dose of bloodlust, so let's get the hell out of the way.

If they ever make peace with each other(doubtful), there's always the Jews to keep mad at for grabbing off a small chuck of the sandpile, but the Jews can pretty much take care of themselves and will eventually settle the issue, so let's just leave it alone.

Why lose any more Americans in that sandlot of insanity? Or spend any more money? We can spend that money beefing up our borders so none of them can sneak in to do us grief. Protecting our borders sounds a whole lot better than trying to protect theirs.

If and when the saner Arabs/ Muslims finally get enough, I'm sure they'll put an end to it. But meanwhile, let's quit making ourselves targets.

My vote is we get out and stay out. That's not folding our tents and running-- that's seeing the writing on the wall-- that's smart.

Do your part this coming election by voting Bush's Republician buddies and pals out of office. But try not to vote for one of those Democrat things if you can avoid it, write in Mickey Mouse if necessary.