Grunion Run

Well, knock me out with a smelly sock....this might be the coolest thing I've heard all day.

1963 Frank Zappa composition with a studio band called The Hollywood Persuaders.
Amazingly, the guitar phrasing even at this early point in time is unmistakably FZ!

Mind Control For The Masses

Here we have Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association, yesterday on his program, using the most blatantly ridiculous reasoning to justify the unbridled use of fossil fuel. This is beyond evil and the use of religion to manipulate the masses in a case like this is beyond simply criminal, it is a true planetary atrocity.

He again proves that he truly is one of the most evil and dangerous men in America.

Just The Straight Truth

In a courtroom sketch, Bradley Manning explains his Qauntico marine brig cell, represented by white tape laid out on the floor. 

I am reprinting the entire article in today's Guardian of the pretrial testimony by Bradley Manning. How trying to keep himself sane was used by his jailers to treat him as if he was crazy. What country is this?

What is really going on here? Who will be regarded in our future history as the real hero? BRADLEY MANNING!

Shortly before Bradley Manning was arrested in Iraq under suspicion of being the source of the vast transfer of US state secrets to WikiLeaks, he is alleged to have entered into a web chat with the hacker Adrian Lamo using the handle bradass87. "I'm honestly scared," the anonymous individual wrote. "I have no one I trust, I need a lot of help."
That cry for assistance was a gross under-estimation of the trouble that was about to befall Manning, judging from his testimony on Thursday. In his first publicly spoken words since his arrest in May 2010, delivered at a pre-trial hearing at Fort Meade in Maryland, the soldier painted a picture of a Kafkaesque world into which he was sucked and in which he would languish for almost one excruciating year.
Over more than six hours of intense questioning by his defence lawyer, David Coombs, Manning, 24, set out for the court what he described as the darkness and absurdity of his first year in captivity. The more he protested the harsh conditions under which he was being held, the more that was taken as evidence that he was a suicide risk, leading to yet more tightening of the restrictions imposed upon him.
He related how he turned for help to one particular member of staff at the brig at Quantico marine base in Virginia where he was taken in July 2010. He assumed that Staff Sergeant Pataki was on his side, so opened up to him.
"I wanted to convey the fact that I'd been on the [restrictive regime] for a long time. I'm not doing anything to harm myself. I'm not throwing myself against walls, or jumping up or down, or putting my head in the toilet."
Manning told Pataki that "if I was a danger to myself I would act out more". He used his underwear and flip-flops as an example, insisting that "if I really wanted to hurt myself I could use things now: underwear, flip-flops, they could potentially be used as something to harm oneself".
The conversation took place in March 2011, eight months into his stay at Quantico where he had been held in the most extreme conditions. He was under constant observation, made to go to the toilet in full view of the guards, had all possessions removed from his cell, spent at times only 20 minutes outside his cell and even then was always chained in hand and leg irons.
Manning felt good about his interaction with Pataki. "I felt like he was listening and understanding, and he smiled a little. I thought I'd actually started to get through to him."
That night guards arrived at his cell and ordered him to strip naked. He was left without any clothes overnight, and the following morning made to stand outside his cell and stand to attention at the brig count, still nude, as officers inspected him.
The humiliating ritual continued for several days, and right until the day he was transferred from Quantico on 20 April 2011 he had his underwear removed every night. The brig authorities later stated that in their view the exceptional depriving of an inmate's underpants was a necessary precaution, in the light of his ominous comments about using his underwear and flip-flops to harm himself.
If the marine commanders were guided in their treatment of Manning, as they said they were, by fears that he was suicidal, that assessment would certainly have been merited at the beginning of his captivity. Manning began his epic testimony by describing how he had a virtual mental breakdown soon after he was taken to Camp Arifjan in Kuwait following his initial arrest.
He was clearly terrified by the uncertainty in which he suddenly found himself. He had, by his own admission, recently committed a massive dump of government information from secure military computers to the website WikiLeaks, and now he was in the hands of army jailers with no knowledge about what was going to happen to him.
"I didn't know what was going on, I didn't have formal charges or anything, my interactions were very limited with anybody else, so it was very draining."
He was put on a schedule whereby he would be woken up at 10 o'clock at night and given lights out at 2 o'clock in the afternoon. "My nights blended into my days and my days into nights," he told the court.
The isolation also got to him. "I'm generally a pretty socially extrovert person, but being for long periods of time by myself I was in a pretty stressed situation. I began to really deteriorate. I was anxious all the time, everything became more insular."
The guards stopped taking him out of his cell so that he became entirely cut off from human company. "Someone tried to explain to me why, but I was a mess, I was starting to fall apart."
Military police began coming into his cell in a tent in the Kuwaiti desert two or three times a day doing what they called a "shakedown": searching the cell and tearing it apart in the process.
Then the breakdown happened. He was found to have made a noose out of bedsheets, though he told the court he doesn't recall that now. He was found one day screaming, babbling and banging his head against his tent cell.
"My world just shrank to Camp Arifjan and then my cage. I remember thinking: I'm going to die. I'm stuck here and I'm going to die in animal cage."
He remembers telling the camp psychiatrist in Kuwait that he had contemplated suicide. "I didn't want to die but I wanted to get out of the cage. I conveyed to him that if I could be successful in committing suicide, I would."
When he was asked to fill out a form by the camp guards, he answered a question on whether he had any suicidal thoughts with the comment: "Forever planning, never acting."
Amid such alarming signals of potential self-harm, he was put on anti-depression and anti-anxiety drugs and put on suicide watch. By the time he was moved from Kuwait to Quantico on 29 July, he told the court, he was already feeling substantially better and well on the way to recovery.
It is one of the great ironies of his story that when he arrived at Quantico he was at first delighted. "It wasn't the ideal environment in Quantico," Manning said to chuckles around the court. "But it had air conditioning, solid floors, hot and cold running water. It was great to be on continental United States soil again."
His buoyant spirits soon received a knock, he went on. He was submitted to what he called a "shark attack" by the reception officers at Quantico. Though he was an army soldier, he had been transferred to a marine base, part of the navy, and he didn't understand any of their routines or vocabulary.
"They were trying to show you they were in charge. 'Face the bulkhead!' they ordered, but I didn't know what a bulkhead was. Everything I did was wrong because I didn't know."
Given his behaviour in Kuwait, Manning was put on suicide watch when he arrived at Quantico. He was under permanent observation from guards who sat in a booth right outside his cell, most of his possessions were removed, he was made to sleep on a pillowless suicide mattress with only a suicide blanket – one that could not be used to cause self-harm – to lie under at night.
In a theatrical move, Coombs had placed white tape on the floor of the court room in exactly the dimensions of Manning's cell throughout the nine months he stayed in Quantico – 6ft by 8ft (180cm by 240cm). The cell contained a toilet that was in the line of vision of the observation booth, and he was not allowed toilet paper. When he needed it, he told the court, he would stand to attention by the front bars of the cell and shout out to the observation guards: "Lance Corporal Detainee Manning requests toilet paper!"
As Manning walked around the diminutive virtual space of the cell, the thought occurred that in this regard at least he was lucky to be so small. At 5ft 2in (157cm) he was towered over by Coombs as they circled each other in the courtroom.
Manning related how he tried to keep healthy and sane within the tiny confines. For the first few weeks of his confinement in Quantico he was allowed only 20 minutes outside the cell, known as a "sunshine call". Even then whenever he left his cell – and this remained the case throughout his nine months at the marine brig – he was put into full restraint: his hands were handcuffed to a leather belt around his waist and his legs put in irons, which meant that he could not walk without a staff member holding him.
"I'm not a great fan of winter, it's the solstice and it's dark," Manning said at one point. "I'm a fan of sunshine." So it was particularly hard for him that there was no natural light in his cell.
"If you took your head and put it on the cell door and looked through the crack, you could see down the hall the reflection of the window," Manning told the court, adding that "there was a skylight. You could see the reflection of the reflection of it if you angled your face on the door of the cell."
At night the light situation was even worse. Because he was considered a possible risk of self-harm throughout his time at Quantico, he was under observation throughout the night, with a fluorescent light located right outside the cell blazing into his eyes. While asleep he would frequently cover his eyes with his suicide blanket, or turn on to his side away from the light, and on those occasions, sometimes three times a night, the guards would bang on his cell bars to wake him up so they could see his face.
He sought solace wherever he could find it. Occasionally he was allowed to read a book his family had sent him. "I read a lot of philosophy, a lot of history. I'm more of a non-fiction reader though I like realistic fiction like John Grisham. Richard Dawkins would be an interesting author."
He was forbidden from taking exercise in his cell, and given that he was allowed out of the cell for at most one hour a day for the entire nine months at Quantico, he started to be creative about finding a way around the prohibition. "I would practise various dance moves. Dancing wasn't unauthorised as exercise."
He would also practise what he called resistance training – pretending to be lifting weights in his cell when he had no weights. "I would pace around, walk around, shuffling, any type of movement. I was trying to move around as much as I could."
As a man who from a young age has been noted for his bright intelligence, and who until his arrest was passionate about interactive computer technology and computer games, Manning also found an unconventional way to keep his mind sharp in the cell. He would make faces at himself in the mirror, the one bit of furniture in the cell other than his bed, sink and toilet.
"The most entertaining thing in there was the mirror. You can interact with yourself. I spent a lot of time with that mirror," he told the court, provoking laughter.
Why did he do all those things, Coombs asked him.
"Boredom. Just sheer out-of-my-mind boredom."
But that is where the problems for Manning started. He was trying to keep himself sane in unthinkably isolated and segregated conditions. But his military captors chose to interpret such behaviour as quite the opposite, a sign that he was still suicidal.
The truth was very much otherwise. Three Quantico forensic psychiatrists who gave evidence to the court this week agreed that within days of arriving at the marine base Manning had recovered his mental health and was no longer a risk to himself. They consistently recommended that the soldier be put on a much looser regime.
But the authorities would not listen. All they would do was to lower his status from "suicide risk" to "prevention of injury order" or PoI, a theoretically more relaxed set of rules that in practice was in almost all regards just as restrictive as its predecessor.
Other military expert witnesses this week compared the PoI regime unfavourably with Guantánamo and death row, saying that it was more stressful on the inmate than either. Yet the Quantico authorities cited precisely those activities that Manning had used to keep his hopes alive to argue for him remaining on the PoI order. They referred to the fact that he danced in his cell, did fantasy weightlifting and made strange faces in the mirror. They even referred to the fact that he played peek-a-boo with the guards as a sign that he was at serious risk of suicide.
They also continuously referred back to that comment he'd made in Kuwait – "Always planning, never acting" – even though that had been almost a year earlier.
Before he left Quantico Manning made one final attempt to persuade the brig commander, Chief Warrant Officer Barnes, that he was perfectly well and was no danger to himself. "I told her that the conditions I was under struck me as absurd. I tried to tell her that's how I saw it – the absurdity of it."
Once more his attempt to act reasonably and rationally was interpreted as the opposite. Barnes grew angry, Manning testified, and said he was being disrespectful of a superior rank.
She warned Manning to be careful in future about what he said, as it might hurt him. "I took that as a threat," he told the court. "I realised at that point that to say any more would be a dangerous mistake."

I am certain that the monstrous machine that tried to destroy Bradley Manning is chagrined, to say the least. He seems to have survived his insane ordeal with his wits and humor intact. I am very greatful to the Guardian for printing this very complete essay on his testimony. I wonder if you will ever read it in any major American Press venue?

He Who Smelt It, Dealt It.....

I was going to ignore this, but on the other hand...Sheesh.....Somebody grab a Swiffer....

The Flamboyantly Asnine right-wing talk show host Glenn Beck tried to emulate Andres Serrano's "Piss Christ" yesterday by doing the same thing with an Obama bobblehead. "Piss Christ", as you know, has been the target of right-wing outrage for years because it was created with $15,000 grant, partly from the NEA.

Note to Glenn Beck: Your fellow wingnut Bill Donohue at the Catholic League tried this stunt two months ago with a different Obama doll, a jar, and some poop. He wants his act back.

Beck is selling his work for $25,000. He says it's not in reaction to "Piss Christ" however, but to a painting of Obama crucified, at the Bunker Hill Community College Art Gallery Now, the creator of “Truth,” Michael D’Antuono, said that his “First Amendment rights should override someone’s hurt feelings” and that “we should celebrate the fact that we live in a country where we are given the freedom to express ourselves.”

After receiving roughly 4,000 angry emails over the painting, D’Antuono also said he respects “their right to express themselves” and hopes they will afford him the same.

Bidding for what Beck, 48, titled 'Obama in Pee Pee' had reached $11,000 before the online auction site sent him an email explaining that 'You listed an item that contains urine. We do not allow the sale of bodily waste. Please do not relist.'

get a whiff of this!

Having stated that he expected the piece to sell for $25,000, which he would have donated to charity, Beck labeled the move an 'injustice' and 'censorship' as the Tea Party hero continued his oft-repeated theme that the United States is losing its core values.

Appearing on Blaze TV dressed as an art-critic and affecting a faux-French accent, the self promoting pseudo intellectual polemicist questioned whether liberal art critics would show the same level of tolerance for art regarding their own political 'savior of mankind' and then proceeded to submerge the Obama figurine into the jar of 'pee-pee'.

Beck, who has even lost his position at Fox News, claimed to be presenting an 11 minute plus semi coherent rant on the concept of obscene art and its protection under the 1st Amendment.
Repeatedly expressing his dislike for artist Michael D'Antuono's painting of Barack Obama crucified with a crown of thorns on his head, Beck surprisingly said that he had no right to demand the art not be displayed. Beck screwed on the top of the jar and gleefully presented to his audience the artwork 'Obama in Pee Pee'
'Art is in the eye of the beholder and this guy has a right to do this. I think its offensive. I don’t think its close to reality but whatever floats your boat. I support his right to do exactly that,' said Beck.
'I agree with him that people who are upset should not trump his right to be able to do it and be able to hang it wherever he wants – as long as its wanted there.'
Pointing to a copy of the Constitution, Beck said, 'That document means I can't stop the artist and the spirit of that document is that I shouldn't try.'
As he placed the bobble-head of the president of the United States into the jar of 'pee-pee' Beck exclaimed, 'So whether you're offended by this one or by this one,' he said pointing to the Obama jar and then the Obama crucifixtion painting, 'Sucks to be you, doesn't it? Welcome to America.'

In case you were wondering what "inspired"
Beck, this is Serrano's piece, Piss Christ

In fact the urine was only beer but that did not stop eBay terminating the online auction of the artwork
Ebay prohibits the sale of certain items, including 'offensive material,' on its website.
Its policy reads: 'We don't allow items that promote or glorify hatred, violence, racial, sexual, or religious intolerance, or promote organizations with such views. We’ll also remove listings that graphically portray graphic violence or victims of violence, unless they have substantial social, artistic, or political value.'
The inspiration for Beck's stunt was photographer Andres Serrano, who in 1987 placed an image of a plastic crucified Jesus into a jar filled with his own urine.
Even Serrano has commented, 'I don’t see anything wrong with provocative art and… I look forward to the day when I can make work that will even disturb me.'
Making the same point in his video yesterday, Beck stated that his point was to create a riposte to the Obama crucifiction and cause liberals to react.
However, as a reminder that even Glenn Beck has respect for the institution of the presidency, he admitted that the urine was in fact Dos Equis beer. Hell, I loves me some Dos Equis!

I Loves Me Some Dos Equis, And From What I Gather, Barack Does Too!

Spain Rodriguez

SPAIN RODRIGUEZ: A Legendary Underground Cartoonist from Revel In on Vimeo.

I was always such a fan of Spain Rodriguez who was one of the greatest independent "underground" comic illustrators of the classic age. He was always more hard edge, realistically urban and downright  gritty political than any of his contemporaries. I still have a dog eared decaying collection of his work packed in boxes in my attic. Frankly, I don't like even opening the boxes because of the fragile nature of newsprint. I suppose it reminds me of my own fragility and the passing of Spain yesterday at age 72 after a 6 year fight with cancer brought it closer to home. You can read a profile with comments by one of his admirers, Robert Crumb, here. If you have never heard of him or seen his work, take this opportunity to check it out. Here is a cover of one of his classic series, Trashman!

Viva Rodriguez !

I spent almost 2 hours trying to get this gif from bladerunner to run nice 'n' easy, 
trying to rewrite the html code and I don't really know what I am doing here, 
then I repost my original image and it works, hah hah, it was just silly old blogger
acting up again....
am i crazy, or what?

STYLO

And, just because Damon Albarn is so cool and is involved with Malian refugee aid, I am posting this piece by his current band, GORILLAZ...yes there is a cameo by Bruce Willis here, but the real star is the living legend, Bobby Womack who shows us all that he can still do it better and deeper than any of us could ever dream of.....

Rub A Little Salt In It! Oh Yah!!!

Yeah I know, but it's still brilliant!

To all of my faithful followers, take heart...I am slowly overcoming my latest bout of creative lethargy. 

Hard to explain, it involves my new doctor, the thoroughness of the French medical system and multiple blood tests...I'm not dying, but all these long years I was under the impression that I was nigh invincible...It was disheartening to say the least to discover that I was not in fact, Superhuman....but why do I still have this uncontrollable urge to do the KRYPTON CRAWL?

I feel good, I feel very very good!
I feel better than James Brown!

Epizootics

Scott Walker, Actually Noel Scott Egel was born in Ohio in 1943. If you are of a certain age, you might have heard of his early incarnation as a member of the classic mid 60's English Pop Group, The Walker Brothers. They were a very interesting group, perfect pop harmonies, Scott was the classic balladeer baritone. Nobody did aching love like Scott. But even then, they had hints of a very different sensibility.  Since his early fame, Scott disappeared and reappeared a number of times, and in the 1990's, reinvented himself as an avant garde composer acclaimed by the more renowned artists like Bowie and Brian Eno, Julian Cope and Jarvis Cocker. But Walker was always a man apart. His work demands your emotional involvement. On December 3, he will release his 14th solo recording since the break up of the Walker Brothers in the mid 60's titled Bish Bosch. This is the first release, Epizootics.

Would I sit down and listen to Bish Bosch for hours on end? Even Mr. Walker would be the first to tell you that if you tried, you would probably end up dead. 

TGI Black F!

The combined worth of the 6 Walmart heirs and heiresses is greater than that of the bottom 41% of American families (48.8 million households). How do thegrinning kids of Sam Walton stay so rich? By paying their employees slave wages and not providing benefits, forcing them to use food stamps and medicaid. Above, a poster by Miel Macassey that shows how Walmart siphons money from taxpayers so it can pay its workers (which represent 1% of the American workforce) an average of $8.81 an hour without having them and their kids drop dead of starvation.

Onion Soup

D'yae nae spake Scottish? prolly knot...so most of this is total flat gibberish tae yae.

Limmy, one of the most brilliant comic minds on the planet....git ye a glossary now.... 

S.O.S.

Yesterday was also the anniversary of JFK's assassination in Dallas, TX.
49 years later we are still dealing with the Same Old Shit.
Hysterical Conservative Wing Nut Theories are still polluting the minds
of the American public. The only thing this flyer left out was perhaps
that JFK was actually born in Uzbekistan.

No Thanks For American Workers

The classic Turkey drop from WKRP In Cincinatti

Today, many workers at the America’s largest retail stores, including Walmart and Target, will have to go to work instead of spending the entirety of the Thanksgiving holiday with their families. Many retailers have decided that Black Friday, the biggest retail day of the year, now needs to start on Thursday, despite workers complaints.
Having to miss special occasions and holidays is an all-too-real phenomenon for many of America’s workers, as the U.S. is the only industrialized nation that does not mandate vacation time. As the Center for Economic and Policy Research found:

I don't want to gloat, but not only does France have the highest number of
paid annual leave days, buy we still have a 35 hr. work week.

No, Thank You Mr. Burroughs....

"To John Dillinger and hope he is still alive.

Thanksgiving Day November 28 1986"

Thanks for the wild turkey and

the passenger pigeons, destined

to be shat out through wholesome

American guts. 

Thanks for a continent to despoil

and poison. 

Thanks for Indians to provide a

modicum of challenge and

danger. 

Thanks for vast herds of bison to

kill and skin leaving the

carcasses to rot.

Thanks for bounties on wolves

and coyotes. 

Thanks for the American dream,

To vulgarize and to falsify until

the bare lies shine through. 

Thanks for the KKK. 

For nigger-killin' lawmen,

feelin' their notches. 

For decent church-goin' women,

with their mean, pinched, bitter,

evil faces. 

Thanks for "Kill a Queer for

Christ" stickers. 

Thanks for laboratory AIDS. 

Thanks for Prohibition and the

war against drugs. 

Thanks for a country where

nobody's allowed to mind the

own business. 

Thanks for a nation of finks. 

Yes, thanks for all the

memories-- all right let's see

your arms! 

You always were a headache and

you always were a bore. 

Thanks for the last and greatest

betrayal of the last and greatest

of human dreams.

Mr. Burroughs posing in front of 2 of his later works 
with his preferred expressive device

Smells Like Freedom

Last nights traditional balloon inflation for todays
 Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade at The Museum of Natural History
 on Central Park West and W.79th Street.

excuse me, i just needed to hear the sound

 of my own true voice

Karl's Hindenburg

This is the message posted by Anonymous to Karl Rove on Oct. 22, 2012

The buzz about Karl Rove and his ORCA Project being crashed by Anonymous on the day of the election is getting louder and louder.  If you google ORCA and lok at some of the comments on conservative blogs by people recruited by Rove to be a part of the monitor team observing polling sites and trying to work with the ORCA Internet site, you begin to get a feel of what the disaster was like as their passwords failed and the site definitively crashed only to be replaced by the Anonymous Hackers launching their ORCA KILLER Fire Wall, The Great OZ...The Conservative bloggers are the ones who are referring to it as Rove's Hindenburg. Anonymous claims it is going to post the computer programming, the hacked passwords and the evidence of what Rove was actually trying to accomplish with ORCA and how it might explain his panic live on FOX NEWS on Election Night as the unexpected results of Ohio were announced. If you believe Anonymous, Rove has been actively involved in manipulating election results since the Bush/Gore Election. They claim he could flip 10% of the votes, which would work in a close election.
They claim that he used the ORCA System to manipulate the outcome of the Republican primaries for Mitt Romney. Stay tuned, Anonymous claims the evidence will be released on Wikileaks next week.

Flawless Precision Bombing in Gaza

The New York Times, November 19, 2012

Prisecolinensinenciousol

This is a 40 year old clip from an Italian TV Program called Mileluci by Adriano Celentano.

You might think you understand it...in fact you might get more from it than any number of contemporary American pop songs, but, Clentano was a pretty funny comedic performer and this is kind of what Americans sound like to the rest of the non english speaking world...Adriano actually is much more coherent than say...Nik Minaj....

SLY

When he was doin' it he was cooler than dry ice...Sly Stone transcended any label...and I have to say it, Larry Graham was my first Bass Guru! This was the man who invented spankin' thumpin' and slappin' your baby bass....

Surrender Dorothy

So after a few weeks of post electoral trauma,  complete with Floridian Tea Brains screaming about voter fraud, Allen West, after the latest recount he demanded is losing ny more votes than he was in the first count. I'd say that that this is more about the issues I have been raising about the vote tabulation system and the perhaps the next wave of where the controversy of vote manipulation is probably going to go....Project ORCA, Anyone?

Via The Politico:

"Florida Rep. Allen West’s reelection prospects grew dimmer Sunday, as a recount of early ballots showed him falling further behind his Democratic opponent.
Democrat Patrick Murphy, a 29-year-old construction company executive, gained 242 votes after the St. Lucie County Supervisor of Elections completed its re-tabulation, increasing his lead to more than 2,100 votes over West, a tea party hero. Murphy’s lead is just outside the 0.5 percent margin that would trigger an automatic district-wide recount under Florida law." 

Tim Edson, West’s campaign manager, said the advisers would be spending the coming hours assessing the vote totals. He did not specify whether the congressman had any plans to concede. Advisers said it was unlikely any decision would come Sunday.
“We’re going to take a look at where things stand,” Edson said. “If we believe the results are fair and accurate, we’re going to decide how to move forward. That decision has not been made.”
Let me help you all. When you were losing by 1,900 votes and now you're losing by 2,100 votes, give or take a few, you have nowhere to go but concession.
Maybe Fox News will hire former Rep. West as a commentator, but first he has to accept reality. You lost, dude. Step down and let the Democrat take his seat now. Surrender Dorothy......

Ice From Space

This is an episode from the Science Fiction Anthology Television series, Tales Of Tomorrow which ran from 1951 to 1953. I just discovered these and they are classic! The series was put together by Theodore Sturgeon and when you start to look at the players, you find a lot of first appearances by many actors and actresses who went on to become major stars. This particular episode is the first recorded on screen appearance by Paul Newman from 1951. I find the writing particularly good and this was the forerunner of Twilight Zone. In some cases, Rod Sterling adapted some of the plots from Tales Of Tomorrow for the Twilight Zone. I feel like I stumbled into a gold mine.

screw loose

The Present Separatist Movements In North America

A Map Of Separatist Movements Presently In The Western Hemisphere

To Further Complicate The Matter:
A Map Of Linguistic Origins Of Place Names

So yeah, haha, let’s lookit the craaaAAaazy conservatives who are making the comparisons between Russia and the US because they got arrested for running a topless car wash. (That’s exactly what Derrick Belcher, who started the Alabama secession petition, has said.) But crypto-racist motivations aside, what’s so wrong with letting some states go?
There have been plenty of secession movements in the past that weren’t based on the hatred of a single president. Texas has had a long-running independent streak, of course, and there have been Alaskan and Hawaiian independence movements as well. The Second Vermont Republic is a kind of left-wing counterpart to the Republic of Texas. And my personal favorite secession movement, Cascadia (now apparently defunct*), wanted to separate the western bits of British Columbia, Washington, and Oregon from both the US and Canada. None of those causes has been nearly popular enough to actually succeed in seceding—plus, of course, the federal government’s massive military wouldn't let any state leave—but making the states a little less united isn’t a terrible idea. Think about the problems it would solve:
1. If the red states left, liberals could finally have the country of their dreams. Imagine that Alabama, Texas, Louisiana, Florida, Kansas, Missouri, Mississippi, and Nebraska all followed the wishes of their wingnuts and left the US. All of a sudden, the House of Representatives would be controlled by Democrats, who would also get a further eight-seat edge in the Senate. As an added bonus, Ben Nelson of Nebraska, one of the most conservative Democrats and a guy who caused all kinds of trouble during the fight over the health care bill, would be Duke of Lincoln or whatever and couldn’t infuriate the left anymore. All of the politically impossible policies that liberals from California to New Hampshire have discussed for years would suddenly become feasible, from single-payer healthcare to stricter handgun laws. And those rural red-state ingrates who denounce the federal government even while suckling on its money teat would be gone. Let’s see how those conservatives like it when they don’t get subsidized by the Northeast and California.
2. No more fighting over state laws that conflict with the federal government. Even though Washington and Colorado have legalized weed, it remains to be seen whether the feds will let them smoke up in peace. Looking at recent history, it's hard to be optimistic, given that the Justice Department has viciously cracked down on medical marijuana regardless of the wishes of individual states and their voters. And it’s not just pot that has inspired legal complications between local and national government—Arizona’s notoriously harsh anti-immigration measure led to a lawsuit from the feds, and gay married couples have to deal with a lot of bureaucratic bullshit when filing their taxes thanks to a snarl of conflicting laws. You know what would solve all of these problems? If the states didn’t have to deal with the federal government at all. Why not just grant everyone the right to secede and split up the nation into 50 pieces?
3. States want radically different policies anyway. If Arizona voters got their way, their state would have an enormously costly electric fence at the border, everyone would be armed with automatic weapons at all times, and Sheriff Joe Arpaio would be a warlord roaming around the desert shooting civilians while filming a reality TV show. Why not let them have their independence so they could do that? Why not let Utah become a Mormon theocracy and allow Alabama to teach the Bible instead of science? A lot of that sounds terrifying to me, but if some states—excuse me, countries—are overwhelmingly in favor of policies like those, why stand in their way? Meanwhile, the other states could legalize marijuana, improve the social safety net, and provide free contraception to everyone without interference from their former countrymen. And while we're at it, why stop at the state level? Isn’t it a little silly that Austin is governed by the rest of Texas? It could become its own city-state, while New York City could break off from the nation of New York, with Mike Bloomberg as its president-for-life. Remember that the US government was created in order to run a handful of former coastal colonies with a population of only a few million. Today, as the gridlock in Congress shows, this system is totally unworkable. It’s more of an accident of history than anything else that people in North Dakota can vote on policies affecting Los Angeles. Break it up!

The only potential problem I can see with all of this is deciding who gets the nuclear weapons, but I’m sure we’ll be able to figure that out.

Yeah, That's The Ticket! Unloosen All The Screws!
Set 'em Free!

De Nile...The River...Was Mitt Romney Really Campaigning To Be The Queen?

 Here is one more ridiculously ironic detail to conclude the insane spectre of race baiting that haunted the 2012 GOP Presidential and Congressional campaigns. How many times, and I can count them using all of my fingers and toes twice, have you heard GOP apologists deny that race baiting played any part in the strategy of their politics? "How dare you, sir, accuse me of racism? Why you have soiled the hallowed  lily white eschutcheon of my grand daddy who played basket ball with nigras on weekends and he didn't have a racist bone in his body...why sir, some of my best friends....?".  I have brought up the tactics of Lee Atwater on many occasions and the origins of his "Southern Strategy" only to have it shouted down vociferously by conservatives who claim he never said "that". And of course, Bill O'Reilly never said that, but he sure is fanning the flames trying to create a post election marshmallow roast bonfire by claiming that now poor old white guys like him are the new "underclass minority" which is facing discrimination.

On many occasions, I have cited an infamous interview with Atwater (which Conservatives have been claiming for years never existed, because they have done everything in their power to make it disappear) in which he explained how the Southern Strategy worked:

You start out in 1954 by saying, “Nigger, nigger, nigger.” By 1968 you can’t say “nigger”—that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.… “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “Nigger, nigger.”

However, a number of conservatives have over the years disputed the veracity of that interview and that quote, or have claimed it wasn't really Atwater. You know, the denial thing.

Now James Carter IV -- the same researcher who dug up Mitt Romney's "47 percent" remarks on video has unearthed the entire 42-minute interview. Rick Perlstein has the entire thing over at The Nation:

In the lead-up to the infamous remarks, it is fascinating to witness the confidence with which Atwater believes himself to be establishing the racial innocence of latter-day Republican campaigning: “My generation,” he insists, “will be the first generation of Southerners that won’t be prejudiced.” He proceeds to develop the argument that by dropping talk about civil rights gains like the Voting Rights Act and sticking to the now-mainstream tropes of fiscal conservatism and national defense, consultants like him were proving “people in the South are just like any people in the history of the world.”

It is only upon Professor Lamis’s gently Socratic follow-ups, and those of a co-interviewer named “Saul” (Carter hasn't been able to confirm his identity, but suspects it was the late White House correspondent Saul Friedman), that Atwater begins to loosen up—prefacing his reflections, with a plainly guilty conscience, “Now, y’all aren't quoting me on this?” (Apparently , this is the reason why Atwater’s name wasn’t published in 1984 but was in 1999, after his death).

He then utters his infamous words. The interlocutors go on to kibitz about Huey Long and barbecue. Then Atwater, apparently satisfied that he'd absolved the Southern Republican Party of racism once and for all, follows up with a prediction based on a study he claims demonstrates that Strom Thurmond won 38 percent of South Carolina’s middle-class black vote in his 1978 Senate campaign (run by Atwater).

“That voter, in my judgment,” he claims, “will be more likely to vote his economic interests than he will anything else. And that is the voter that I think through a fairly slow but very steady process, will go Republican.” Because race no longer matters: “In my judgment Karl Marx [is right]... the real issues ultimately will be the economic issues.” He continues, in words that uncannily echo the “47 percent tape” (nothing new under the wingnut sun), that “statistically, as the number of non-producers in the system moves toward fifty percent,” the conservative coalition cannot but expand. Voila: a new Republican majority. Racism won't have anything to do with it.

So they claim, to this very day.

The Playhouse

1921, The Playhouse written by Buster Keaton and Eddie Kline.

Keaton is the director and is experimenting with the newly invented technique of multiple exposure. editing. He gets to perform a cinematic miracle and create a totally unique masterpiece. He plays virtually every character on screen until he is rudely awakened from his dream. Another reason why I idolize Keaton and consider him one of the greatest pioneers of cinema.

The Exorcist 2012

Again, I humbly request you play the theme music to this post...it might help....

Both Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney have spoken in the last few days about what happened in the election. How they could have so lost when they knew that they were so right and they were definitely positively more than probably gonna win! Ryan blames it on the fact that educated Americans and People who live in cities are actually allowed to vote. Romney seems to take the Bill O'Reilly line and blame it on the fact that the Democrats just promised to give stuff to the masses...you know, "Stuff" like health care for women, justice for immigrants and to not make it harder for Americans to go to college. I guess that somehow, this was just about the same as what Ryan said, but Romney tried to sound as if he was more intelligent. FAIL....I mean the jerk is coming out of a cult that doesn't allow their members to even watch TV, so what the fuck does he know about anything, anyway?

You can analyze all you want, but the man with the plan is Louisiana Governor, Bobby Jindal. It's not about ideas, Bobby knows that...he's the governor of Louisiana...It's all about Hoo Doo! And what better expert to speak about Hoo Doo than Jindal, the official exorcist of the Republican Party? 

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal thinks he knows what’s wrong with the Republicans:

“We’ve got to make sure that we are not the party of big business, big banks, big Wall Street bailouts, big corporate loopholes, big anything,” Jindal told POLITICO in a 45-minute telephone interview. “We cannot be, we must not be, the party that simply protects the rich so they get to keep their toys.”

Um, we already have a party that isn’t like that. Perhaps you’ve heard of them; they’re called the Democrats.
“It is no secret we had a number of Republicans damage our brand this year with offensive, bizarre comments — enough of that,” Jindal said. “It’s not going to be the last time anyone says something stupid within our party, but it can’t be tolerated within our party. We’ve also had enough of this dumbed-down conservatism. We need to stop being simplistic, we need to trust the intelligence of the American people and we need to stop insulting the intelligence of the voters.”
I’m willing to bet that there are a number of folks in the Republican Party who are proud of the reputation their party has created and would take great pride in being the dumb-down party. After all, no one ever lost an election by underestimating the greed, fear, and loathing of the American electorate.Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal thinks it's time Republicans stopped saying dumb things, especially on economic matters:
If Mr. Jindal really wants the GOP to stop being “the stupid party,” he can start with himself.

Please, Mr. Governor/Chief Exorcist, would you just Google your own ass?
Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal on Monday called on Republicans to "stop being the stupid party" and make a concerted effort to reach a broader swath of voters with an inclusive economic message that pre-empts efforts to caricature the GOP as the party of the rich....

"We've got to make sure that we are not the party of big business, big banks, big Wall Street bailouts, big corporate loopholes, big anything," Jindal told POLITICO in a 45-minute telephone interview. "We cannot be, we must not be, the party that simply protects the rich so they get to keep their toys."That would be the same Bobby Jindal who wrote this in June in response to a speech by President Obama:

Thursday's speech was also a speech of class warfare.... President Obama announced ... a class warfare campaign of division. He plans to divide America along class lines, gender lines, party lines, age lines and any other lines he can find....

The president is completely correct when he says this election is a crucial choice between two paths. We must choose between the government path and the private sector Path. We must choose between the European path and the American path.And who said this a month later:

Louisiana Gov. Bob Jindal, who has vowed to reject the expansion of Medicaid under President Barack Obama’s health care law, charged Tuesday that the president "measures success by how many people are on food stamp rolls and government-run health care."And who said this last month:
"I truly believe that President Obama's got -- almost what I believe -- it's almost like an Occupy Wall Street perspective, where he demonizes those that’ve been successful, tries to divide us by class, by region, by whatever will help him win his reelection," Jindal said.In the new Politico interview, Jindal went on to say:
"It is no secret we had a number of Republicans damage our brand this year with offensive, bizarre comments -- enough of that," Jindal said. "It's not going to be the last time anyone says something stupid within our party, but it can't be tolerated within our party. We've also had enough of this dumbed-down conservatism. We need to stop being simplistic, we need to trust the intelligence of the American people and we need to stop insulting the intelligence of the voters."The opponent of "dumbed-down conservatism"? That would be this guy:
Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal will sign a "birther bill" if one comes to his desk, though his fellow Republican Gov. Jan Brewer just vetoed such a bill in Arizona....

Two Republicans in Louisiana's House introduced a bill last week that would require presidential candidates to file a sworn affidavit that they were born in the United States, and submit it along with an original or copy of their birth certificate.And this guy:

On Face the Nation, Jindal tells guest host Chip Reid that even though we should teach our kids at the highest levels of science, it's wrong to "withhold" from them the concept of Intelligent Design.

As a parent, when my kids go to schools, when they go to public schools, I want them to be presented with the best thinking. I want them to be able to make decisions for themselves. I want them to see the best data. I personally think that the life, human life and the world we live in wasn't created accidentally. I do think that there's a creator. I'm a Christian. I do think that God played a role in creating not only earth, but mankind. Now, the way that he did it, I'd certainly want my kids to be exposed to the very best science. I don't want them to be--I don't want any facts or theories or explanations to be withheld from them because of political correctness....And the guy who gave us this:
This 2012-2013 school year, thanks to a bill pushed through by governor Bobby Jindal, thousands of students in Louisiana will receive state voucher money, transferred from public school funding, to attend private religious schools, some of which teach from a Christian curriculum that suggests the Loch Ness Monster disproves evolution.... The curriculum also claims that a Japanese fishing boat caught a dinosaur.
...among the dubious, factually incorrect, politically tendentious, and racially and culturally insensitive claims in [voucher school] textbooks are the following:
- Only ten percent of Africans can read or write, because Christian mission schools have been shut down by communists.
- "the [Ku Klux] Klan in some areas of the country tried to be a means of reform, fighting the decline in morality and using the symbol of the cross... In some communities it achieved a certain respectability as it worked with politicians."
- "God used the 'Trail of Tears' to bring many Indians to Christ." ...Yeah, Jindal's the guy you want telling Republicans not to be so extreme, isn't he?

Melody Nelson 2012

After posting the latest release of Matthieu Chedid, back in his guise of M, I had to post a video Mathieu collaborating with one of the greatest little combos on the planet today, General Electriks...What's even better, they start out with a 21st Century funkified version of Melody Nelson, by Serge Gainsbourg. This was recorded live earlier this year.

For your reference and possible enjoyment, here is Serge Gainsbourg's original version for Melody Nelson from 1970,  a duet with Jane Birkin.

MOJO

The official clip of the piece, MOJO by the artist known as M....It was only a matter of time before Matthieu Chedid let his inner M resurface. This was officially released on November 12 and I saw him perform it last night on Le Grand Journal. Chedid is a very unique, eccentric French rock artist who seems to be able to cross over from genre to genre with unforced brilliance. Lately he has collaborated with artists as diverse as Sean Lennon and Johnny Halliday. 2 years ago, he was performing Algerian influenced Rai Rock Funk. His background is Algerian and his family has been very prominent in the arts and literature. He is one of the best rock guitarists playing in France today....If you haven't heard of him before, check him out and you might discover his former life as M or Mr. Mystere.....

Now that Puerto Rico has officially voted their desire to become the 51st State,
we will have to redesign the flag! I could like this one.

My Inner Right Wing Nut

General Buck Turgidson Reacts To The Petraeus Scandal 

If you sanely try to analyze the Petraeus affair, you might consider that, once upon a time, a long time ago, generals who won wars were celebrated and those who lost them were relegated. Not so much anymore. American-style war has become so commercialized that winning or losing is secondary to operating the military as a corporate profit center. Thus, an officer who maneuvers smartly through the executive suites can now make a mark as a leader without much in the way of martial triumphs.
That’s the case with Gen. David Petraeus, freshly resigned from running the CIA over a sexual peccadillo. No general since World War II had a more spectacular career or was more praised by one and all. Even his demit by scandal was used by the media to heap further laurels on him. But unlike Eisenhower of D-Day fame or Montgomery of El Alemein, there’s no great battle associated with Petraeus. At most, he’s noted for the “surge” in Iraq, which in the end amounted to bribing the Sunnis not to attack U.S.forces. Nothing our military has tried in that part of the world has worked out, so Obama tells us we're shifting our sights to targets in Asia. Meanwhile, in all of the encomiums to Petraeus, one word is missing: victory.
By the by, the Patraeus imbroglio reminded me of Tim Weiner’s informative, “Enemies: A History of the FBI.” Weiner, a former national security correspondent for the NY Times, tells us that J. Edgar Hoover vociferously opposed the creation of the CIA because it would cut into the turf of his FBI. In the decades since, according to Weiner, it’s been all but bloody war between the two agencies. I can’t help wondering whether the downfall of Petraeus by way of an FBI investigation is yet another skirmish in the battle of the bureaucracies? Reasonable, perhaps, but BORING!

Perhaps, but maybe I feel the need to pour a little petrol on the over the active fervid nonstop wingnut conspiracy mill and light a match...Now, let's all sing along...it's a catchy little ditty:

David Petraeus' wife, a minion of Obama in the CFPB, was sent by Obama (in 1974) to sabotage Petraeus by marrying him, then withholding sex and also placing one of those mind-controlling bugs from The Wrath of Khan into his ear, forcing him to seek out strange pussy.
For years, Petraeus manfully suppressed his urges, stoically enduring his sexless lot, until finally came the cauldron of Afghanistan. There, in the Swat valley, dodging gunfire, playing polo with tribal lords, he found a woman who truly understood him: a West Pointer, lithe, young, auburn-haired, caring in a way his frigid Obamanoid wife never was. Christ himself would have been unable to resist...
And so Petraeus, unable simultaneously to endure the machinations of the Global Left, the biological imperative from his loins and the parasite shrieking PUSSY PUSSY PUSSY in his ear, finally gave in, and you'd better believe he was the most sensitive and giving lover in the history of adultery.
Now the Global Left/Soros/Cloward-Piven/Eric Holder/Mau Mau endgame approaches. Get ready for CIA Director Dennis Kucinich.

Certifiably 100% Wingnut Seal of Approval!

All Righty Now.....

I Gotta Get Drunk

One day in 1976, Moraitis felt short of breath. Climbing stairs was a chore; he had to quit working midday. After X-rays, his doctor concluded that Moraitis had lung cancer. As he recalls, nine other doctors confirmed the diagnosis. They gave him nine months to live. He was in his mid-60s.
So he moved back to The Island Where People Forget to Die. And his cancer went away. Today, he’s 97 years old.
How does he think he recovered from lung cancer?
“It just went away,” he said. “I actually went back to America about 25 years after moving here to see if the doctors could explain it to me.”
I asked him, “What happened?”

“My doctors were all dead.”

Reminds me a bit of the good ole' Willie Nelson song, I Gotta Get Drunk:

There’s a lot of doctors that tell me 

That I’d better start slowin’ it down

But there’s more old drunks 

Than there are old doctors

So I guess we’d better have another round

Hey folks, it's intermission and time to go out to the refreshment counter in our
modern lobby and get some more of your favorite snack food treats!

The Horse In Motion
Truly the first motion picture. It was assembled by Edward Muybridge
from his still photographs in 1876