simply stated

Common People Just Don't Understand

In my last post, we talked about how Mittens and his friends believe that the common folks just don't understand and can't understand how their scam works. We just can't afford the education that would enable us to understand that dishonesty, cheating, and out and out criminal economic gangsterism is how their world works. We are just so naive. We don't even know what a LIBOR is...so how can we be outraged about it?
Here's what a LIBOR is and this is why you should care enough about it to want to roll out the guillotine! This is what Mittens and his buds think you aren't able to understand so why should you care? Just shut the fuck up and bend over.....I really have to thank Mike Taibbi for his excellent investigative and intelligent analytical articles written over the last few years. His contribution to our common understanding of depth of the depravity and dishonesty that has created out financial nightmare will go a long way to helping us solve it!

■ What is it? LIBOR is the London InterBank Offered Rate — it's the rate at which banks loan each other money. (More on why that matters below.)
■ Why should you care? The LIBOR scandal is the biggest financial and political threat since the Masters of the Universe almost took down the world in 2007–2008.
Most U.S. mortgages were hooked to the 2008 fraud crisis. At least$800 trillion in loans and contracts are hooked to LIBOR.
When you see what the LIBOR rate actually is, you'll see why this is cheating on a monstrous scale, with monstrous consequences for the Littles as the Bigs play their money-sucking games. (Money-sucking:Sucking money out of a financial system the way you divest an orange of its juice.)
Let's take this one piece at a time.
What is LIBOR?

LIBOR is the London InterBank Offered Rate. Its two aspects (it's a rate and a benchmark) are expressed well here (some reparagraphing):
The London Interbank Offered Rate is the average interest rate estimated by leading banks in London that they would be charged if borrowing from other banks. ...
It is a benchmark ... for interest rates all around the world.
Libor rates are calculated for different lending periods - overnight, one week, one month, two months, six months, etc. - and published daily at 11am by the British Bankers' Association.
Many financial institutions, mortgage lenders and credit card agencies set their own rates relative to (and typically higher than) Libor.What to notice:
■ LIBOR is simply an interest rate on bank-to-bank loans. That's really all you need to know.
Banks need to borrow; they frequently go to other banks for loans (after all, that's where the money is).
If I'm Barclays Bank (say) and want a loan from the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), they charge me interest. Just like a car loan.
■ Like every other borrower, banks have borrowing costs based on their credit-worthiness. The less credit-worthy, the higher the interest rate they have to pay. Just like a car loan.
If I'm Barclays (say) and I'm suddenly not doing so well, that RBS loan comes with a higher interest rate than before. It's pretty clear, therefore, that the rate I'm being charged is a public — at least to other banks — measure of my financial condition.

Can you see where this is headed?

■ LIBOR is an average of self-reported rates.
Barklays is responsible for reporting just its own borrowing costs (the interest rates it would have to pay as a borrower), not anyone else's; Royal Bank of Scotland reports its borrowing costs; and so on with other banks. LIBOR is the average of those self-reported costs.
■ But LIBOR's not the average of real costs. It's the average of estimated, hypothetical costs.
Look at the conditionals in the definition quoted earlier (highlighted below):
The London Interbank Offered Rate is the average interest rate estimated by leading banks in London that they wouldbe charged if borrowing from other banks.So what is LIBOR? LIBOR is the calculated average of self-reported, unverified, estimated borrowing costs if banks were to borrow from each other at some theoretical time loosely associated with Now.

Are you noticing the incentives? Banking is all about incentives. So let's try again.

What is LIBOR? LIBOR is the sum of Lies. LIBOR is the average of all lies told by all member banks to (a) make each other think they're in better shape than they are, and (b) to sweeten the price of deals they're also on the other side of.
What's the likelihood that they're all lying? What's the likelihood that they all know they're all lying?
I'd put those odds at, carry the two ... Why, you'd have to be nuts to be on the wrong side of that bet.
Barklays has already confessed. So has RBS. There will be others, folks; this is just the start. They're all in on it.

Why does it matter if LIBOR is Lies?

The consequence of the LIBOR Lie is huge. Because this piece is already long, let's just list a few and expand later:
■ LIBOR is a benchmark — now known to be a false one. Taibbi says:
The furor is over revelations that Barclays, the Royal Bank of Scotland, and other banks were monkeying with at least $10 trillion in loans (The Wall Street Journal is calculating that that LIBOR affects $800 trillion worth of contracts).Here's what that "monkeying with" means in the real world:
This is unbelievable, shocking stuff. A sizable chunk of the world’s adjustable-rate investment vehicles are pegged to Libor, and here we have evidence that banks were tweaking the rate downward to massage their own derivatives positions.
The consequences for this boggle the mind. For instance, almost every city and town in America has investment holdings tied to Libor. If banks were artificially lowering the rates to beef up their trading profiles, that meanscommunities all over the world were cheated out of ungodly amounts of money.That's fraud.
Remember, LIBOR rates are calculated for a number of lending periods — "overnight, one week, one month, two months, six months, etc." An awful lot of loans are hooked to LIBOR.
■ LIBOR presents a false financial picture of the state of its member banks. See above for that one.
This means that the banks are manipulating rates affecting hundred of trillions worth of loans and contracts for the benefit of their stock price (which is where much executive compensation is parked).
■ LIBOR is a corruptly manipulated rate. That means I can be on both sides of a deal — as the recipient of loans or contracts pegged to the LIBOR rate, and as the guy who controls the rate itself.
Or I can do LIBOR-rate favors for friends on the other side of their own deals. Fix a rate, help a friend. Presumably that "friend" will do me one back some day, and in kind.
Taibbi again from a different article (he's all over this) quoting Allison Frankel at Reuters (my paragraphing):
Barclays employees agreed to manipulate the rates they submitted to the banking authority that oversees the daily Libor report for seemingly anyone who asked them to monkey with it:
Senior Barclays officials concerned that the bank would look weak if it reported too high a borrowing rate;
interest rate swap traders trying to improve Barclays' derivatives trading position;
even former Barclays traders begging for favors.We're talking naked, blatant manipulation. Here's one exchange cited in the DOJ filing:
Trader: "Can you pls continue to go in for 3m Libor at 5.365 or lower, we are all very long cash here in NY."
Libor rate submitter: "How long?"
Trader: "Until the effective date goes over year end (i.e. turn drops out) if possible."
Submitter: "Will do my best sir."
■ LIBOR is the next test of Rule of Law in the U.S.
If LIBOR manipulators aren't hauled into a U.S. court by the U.S. government and made to pay significantly; if there are no criminal prosecutions — just patty-cake wrist-slaps; if guilty LIBOR banks are given the Jon Corzine treatment, what does that say about Rule of Law in the U.S.?

It will say it's in shreds.

And more — it will hasten the day when the U.S. government has not just the reality of corrupt capture, but the appearance as well.
And that leads to no good place.

What's the bottom line?

Your bottom line is right here. (1) As stated above:
LIBOR is the sum of Lies. LIBOR is the average of all lies told by all member banks to (a) make each other think they're in better shape than they are, and (b) to sweeten the price of deals they're also on the other side of.
And (2) protecting these criminals puts the credibility of the entire U.S. government at risk ... again. Soon we won't just be a banana; we'll look like one too.
Complex as this is, it's not beyond comprehension. And this really is the next big thing in Banksters versus The World. Stay tuned.
UPDATE
Below the break, I have posted a list of The British as well as the American Banks now implicated in this international criminal organized crime cartel:

Common People

Every day in every way, I feel America is beginning to resemble pre WW2 France, when for a brief time the Popular Front Socialist government of Leon Blum championed the rights of the working class and tried to bring reform the out of control exploitative capitalist 1% upper class. What happened? The bankers and the wealthy relentlessly sabotaged the Blum government. They took the capital and the manufacturing base out of France to destabilize the economy and invested it in Germany. By the beginning of the War, the common French man actually believed that they would be better off under with Adolph Hitler's "National Socialism" and under the boot heel of Nazi Occupation than suffering under the "degenerate" Socialism of the Jewish Leon Blum. Just change the adjectives and the names...the location, inject racism and you really don't have to change very much else to update this scenario to Republican obstructionism sabotaging economic recovery. How else could a gold leafed fascist Republican mormon melon like Mittens buy his way into the White House?  Nobody likes him, but then again, he's so...uhhh...well...the problem is, we don't hate him because he won't let us know how evil he really is...That's the problem with trying to be reasonable, Progressives just don't know how to hate! Not like you common Conservative. Your common Conservatives seem to inherently, instinctively know how to hate...and they hate that Obama. They hate him so much that they would even vote for Mittens.

I Don't Think The Common Person Is Getting It!

Says an anonymous donor of Mitt Romney's at a Koch brother's $75,000 a plate fundraiser at the Hampton's(generally regarded as one of the most wealthy and exclusive places in the country) in New York!
A New York City donor a few cars back, who also would not give her name, said Romney needed to do a better job connecting. "I don't think the common person is getting it," she said from the passenger seat of a Range Rover stamped with East Hampton beach permits. "Nobody understands why Obama is hurting them. "We've got the message," she added. "But my college kid, the baby sitters, the nails ladies -- everybody who's got the right to vote -- they don't understand what's going on. I just think if you're lower income -- one, you're not as educated, two, they don't understand how it works, they don't understand how the systems work, they don't understand the impact."
Let's take a look at exactly WHAT the "common person" is NOT getting. They are not getting that if you are cramped for space in your garage you should just have a car elevator installed.



311 Dunemere Drive, La Jolla, CA: Mitt Romney, GOP presidential candidate and former Massachusetts governor, Bought in 2008 for $12 million, Romney announced plans to tear down his current 3,000-square foot California beach house and rebuild an 11,000-square manse in its place -- but not until after the election season.
Of course things are getting a little tough in this economy for Romney, he had to sell his ski lodge!
3853 Rising Star Lane, Park City, UT: In addition to his beach house, Romney owns a Boston, MA-area townhouse and a $10 million Wolfeboro, NH summer home. In 2009 he sold two others: a Belmont, MA house for $3.5 million and this Deer Valley ski lodge for $5.25 million.



What else does the "common person" not understand? Why Horses of course!
Hey I get it you have to keep the wife happy, even if it ends up costing you a loss of $77000 in a year(way more than the average family makes in a year). When the stakes are so high in the dressage horse arena, you can see why Ann and Mitt Romney would sell a horse so heavily medicated that it was unable to perform. When your trying to support 5 million dollars plus houses and a dressage horse hobby, you can not afford to have horses dieing on you! But then again, if you can get it as a tax write off, who the fuck catres?
Ann Romney found herself briefly the subject of a lawsuit at whose core, according to court documents, was a heavily-medicated horse. Romney and her trainers sold the horse, Super Hit, in 2008 for $125,000. And Super Hit had what a prominent veterinarian described as a staggering quantity of drugs in its system at the time of its examination before being sold, according to a toxicology report that's part of the lawsuit over the horse's condition.
The lawsuit, which was mentioned in a New York Times story last month, was filed in 2010 by a woman in San Diego who had bought Super Hit from Romney and her trainers, Jan and Amy Ebeling. The woman, Catherine Norris, sued Romney for fraud after the horse allegedly proved physically incapable of performing as a dressage horse.
The case with Romney was settled last September and she is no longer involved in the lawsuit. According to a toxicology report provided to the horse's vet and testimony from a veterinarian, Dr. Steven Soule, included in the lawsuit, Super Hit had three sedative pain killers and one narcotic pain killer in her system when the horse was examined to check her condition pre-sale. The drugs were Butorphanol, Delomidine, Romifidine, and Xylatine. Soule, who has been the United States Equestrian Team veterinarian since 1978, writes, “In my 38 years of practice, I have never come across a drug screen such as this where the horse has been administered so many different medications at the same time.” The horse had a defect in its foot, and Norris's lawyers alleged that the Ebelings had drugged the horse in order to hide its condition.
Another thing the "common person" does not get is how to travel with your pet!
Back in 1983, Romney was struggling to cram the kids and their luggage into the family station wagon for the drive to the Lake Huron shores, where his family still owns a cottage at Beach O’ Pines, a mostly American enclave. “Before beginning the drive, Mitt Romney put Seamus, the family’s hulking Irish setter, in a dog carrier and attached it to the station wagon’s roof rack,” the Globe wrote of Romney, then a 36-year-old management consultant with Boston-based Bain and Company.
Romney constructed a special windshield for the carrier, “to make the ride more comfortable for the dog.” The contraption apparently wasn’t much of a success, however, as Seamus soon began to suffer gastric issues from his windy perch atop the car.
Romney’s oldest boy, Tagg, noticed the first sign of trouble, according to the Globe piece. “Dad!” he yelled. “Gross!” A brown liquid was dripping down the back window of the station wagon. Romney calmly dealt with the problem amid his boys’ howls of disgust, pulling into a service station to hose down Seamus and the car.
He put the dog back in the crate and continued the drive to Ontario
Another thing the "common person" has a problem getting how to spontaneously rap!
The "common person" also needs to know how to drive a jet ski!

The "common person" could also use a lesson in pay to play politics!
Oklahoma oil billionaire Harold Hamm didn't wait long to make a nearly $1 million donation to a group supporting Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney after he became one of Romney's top energy advisers in March. Just weeks after Hamm joined the Romney campaign, he gave $985,000 to a pro-Romney super PAC, according to campaign reports.
The "common person" also needs to learn that teachers, fire fighters and police officers are a drag on society!
Romney made the comments in response to Obama’s presser today, at which the president claimed the “private sector is doing fine.” Per CNN: Romney said of Obama, “he wants another stimulus, he wants to hire more government workers. He says we need more fireman, more policeman, more teachers. Did he not get the message of Wisconsin? The American people did. It’s time for us to cut back on government and help the American people.”
Finally, the last and most important thing that the "common people" need to get. Forget the US bank and taxes...move your money offshore and never tell the truth about what your doing!
More than three dec­ades later, as he tried to nail down the Republican nomination for president of the United States, Romney’s gray areas were again an issue when he repeatedly resisted calls to release more details of his net worth, his tax returns, and the large investments and assets held by him and his wife, Ann. Finally the other Republican candidates forced him to do so, but only highly selective disclosures were forthcoming.
Even so, these provided a lavish smorgasbord for Romney’s critics. Particularly jarring were the Romneys’ many offshore accounts. As Newt Gingrich put it during the primary season, “I don’t know of any American president who has had a Swiss bank account.” But Romney has, as well as other interests in such tax havens as Bermuda and the Cayman Islands.
To give but one example, there is a Bermuda-based entity called Sankaty High Yield Asset Investors Ltd., which has been described in securities filings as “a Bermuda corporation wholly owned by W. Mitt Romney.” It could be that Sankaty is an old vehicle with little importance, but Romney appears to have treated it rather carefully. He set it up in 1997, then transferred it to his wife’s newly created blind trust on January 1, 2003, the day before he was inaugurated as Massachusetts’s governor. The director and president of this entity is R. Bradford Malt, the trustee of the blind trust and Romney’s personal lawyer. Romney failed to list this entity on several financial disclosures, even though such a closely held entity would not qualify as an “excepted investment fund” that would not need to be on his disclosure forms. He finally included it on his 2010 tax return. Even after examining that return, we have no idea what is in this company, but it could be valuable, meaning that it is possible Romney’s wealth is even greater than previous estimates. While the Romneys’ spokespeople insist that the couple has paid all the taxes required by law, investments in tax havens such as Bermuda raise many questions, because they are in “jurisdictions where there is virtually no tax and virtually no compliance,” as one Miami-based offshore lawyer put it.
Yes the "common person" needs to understand that there is no one more common than Mitt Romney!

Daliy Duchamp

Truly great interview.

bring out yer daid.....

Is this the official alternative republican health care plan?

If it is, we wouldn't know until we elected them, because they're not divulging any details, Mittens needs some space to, uhhh....creatively deal with his ever changing concept of reality.

Today, I read that Governor Rick Perry of Texas...yeah...."Proudly refused health care for 1.2 million low income Texan residents. He is the 6th Republican Governor to protest the Affordable Care Act Ruling by the Supreme Court.  Republican governors in Florida, South Carolina, Mississippi, Louisiana and Wisconsin have made similar decisions, but Texas is by far the biggest.
In a letter to Health and Human Services Director Kathleen Sebelius (PDF), Perry opined that giving poor people health care and setting up exchanges that make health insurance cheaper are both “brazen intrusions into the sovereignty of our state.”

“I stand proudly with the growing chorus of governors who reject the [Affordable Care Act] power grab,” Perry wrote. “Neither a ‘state’ exchange nor the expansion of Medicaid under the Orwellian-named PPACA would result in better ‘patient protection’ or in more ‘affordable care.’ What they would do is make Texas a mere appendage of the federal government when it comes to health care.” He added that Medicaid is “broken” and “already financially unsustainable,” and that in his view an expansion “would threaten even Texas with financial ruin.”

“Rick Perry’s announcement is both cruel and negligent,” the Texas Democratic Party retorted in a media advisory. “No person with a speck of intelligence would turn down billions in federal dollars that would be a boon to our economy and help Texans. But then again this is Rick Perry. Rick Perry could’ve brought billions in federal dollars to Texas, reduced the rate of the uninsured and improved the quality of life for Texans. Rick Perry’s Texas solution is to let Texans stay ill and uninsured. That is not a health care plan.”

The state of Texas has the most restrictive Medicaid program in the country, requiring that a family of three make no more than $188 per month to qualify. Under federal rules administered by the Affordable Care Act, Medicaid would be expanded to 133 percent of the poverty level, covering an additional 1.2 million Texans under the program. That would cause a 46 percent increase in Medicaide enrollment — which the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation (PDF) estimated would cost the state 3 percent more in 2019 than it currently pays – and the federal government would have picked up the rest.

Meanwhile in His Excellency Chief Zombie Governor Rick Perry's Magic Kingdom of Florida, it was revealed that they have been struggling for months with what the Centers for Disease Control describe as the worst tuberculosis outbreak in the United States in twenty years.
Although a CDC report went out to state health officials in April encouraging them to take concerted action, the warning went largely unnoticed and nothing has been done. The public did not even learn of the outbreak until June, after a man with an active case of TB was spotted in a Jacksonville soup kitchen.
The Palm Beach Post has managed to obtain records on the outbreak and the CDC report, though only after weeks of repeated requests. These documents should have been freely available under Florida’s Sunshine Law.
According to the Post, the coverup began as early as last February, “when Duval County Health Department officials felt so overwhelmed by the sudden spike in tuberculosis that they asked the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to become involved. Believing the outbreak affected only their underclass, the health officials made a conscious decision not to not tell the public, repeating a decision they had made in 2008, when the same strain had appeared in an assisted living home for people with schizophrenia.”
That decision now appears to have gone terribly awry, partly because the disease appears 0 but also because just nine days before the CDC warning was issued, Florida Governor Rick Scott had signed a bill downsizing the state’s Department of Health and closing the A.G. Holley State Hospital that had treated the most difficult tuberculosis cases for over 60 years.
With health officials preoccupied by the challenge of restructuring, the CDC report went unseen, and an order even went out for the hospital to be closed immediately, six months ahead of schedule.
According to the Post, by April the outbreak had been linked to thirteen deaths, with 99 individuals infected, including six children. Most of those affected were poor black men, ten of whom simply wasted away from the disease before getting treatment or were not treated in time to stop its progression.
Now it is estimated that as many as 3000 people may have been exposed to the strain over the past two years, mainly in Jacksonville’s homeless shelters, jails, and a mental health clinic. Only 253 of those have been found, of whom one-third have tested positive for TB exposure.

Maybe the prudent course of action, for the rest of America would be to be ready to impose an Emergency medical health quarantine on Republican Governed Potential Plague States, like Florida and Texas...because they sure can't deal with their own reality and you might have to have your vaccinations updated if you are planning a little vacation to Miami.....

You walked into the wrong kingdom motherfucker

"the arrival of chaos should be regarded as extremely good news"

Chogyam  Trunga Rinpoche

Disaster At Rock River Bridge

“On July 23, 1926, the most expensive single shot in silent-film history was filmed for The General. This was the shot in which a bridge previously sabotaged by Johnnie collapses under the weight of the Northern soldiers’ train. Three or four thousand local people had gathered on that hot summer day to witness what would be the single-most expensive shot of the silent era. $42,000 (over a half-million dollars in by 2010 standards) had been spent for the scene’s exhaustive preparation. At three o’clock in the afternoon, Keaton gave the signal to the six cameramen to begin cranking. The unmanned engine made its way across the tracks. The timbers of the bridge had been partly sawed, and when a dynamite charge went off, the bridge snapped in half. The engine dropped with a huge splash of scalding steam into the river below. The train’s whistle was said to have emitted a long, mournful scream, signaling to the spectators that something catastrophic had occurred. A dummy had been left at the throttle to give the impression that a live engineer had perished in the crash. When the dummy’s severed head floated by in the adjoining stream, more than one woman in the crowd fainted. And the looks of shock you see on the faces of the Union officers in the movie were real, because the actors who played them were not told what was going to happen to the train.
The Texas would languish for fifteen years in the Row River. It was not disposed of until World War II when it was sold for scrap.” And, yes after 50 years since the first time I saw this film, it remains, in my mind, the greatest achievement of American cinematic art...Keaton will always be my hero!

 actual discovery of the higgs bosun particle

MARAT/SADE

The Marquis de Sade is locked in the Charenton mental hospital and decides to put on a play. His overseers agree as long as he follows certain conditions. He writes and directs the other mental patients in a play based on the life of Jean-Paul Marat. As the play progresses, the inmates become more and more possessed by the violence of the play and become extremely difficult to control. Finally, all chaos breaks loose. 

Marat/Sade (1967)The Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat As Performed by The Inmates of The Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction The Marquis de Sade by Peter Weiss
I was very happy to find this piece. I played in a version in Detroit in the late 60's as an extra. I still have the script.

Fireworks by Terry Gilliam
Soundtrack, Xavier Cugat
Brazil

Barefoot Gen...episode 1

In the last post, Risky, Ryuichi Sakamoto mentions the comic series, Barefoot Gen.

I commented that Barefoot Gen was one of the most powerful pieces of comic literature I have ever seen as well as being an incredible first hand survivors tale of the nuclear devastation of of Hiroshima. It is an autobiographical document by the artist/author, Keiji Nakazawa describing his experiences as a 6 year old child. I have the entire Gen series of original manga, but I was amazed to learn that it had been adapted with Nakazawa's art work into an anime film series released between 1976 and 1980. This is part one of 9 now available on YouTube.

I plan on posting all 9 episodes in the next week as I watch them!

Risky

This is a piece from 1987 titled Risky by the great Japanese artist, Riyuichi Sakamoto with of course, Iggy Pop singing....  

Ryuichi Sakamoto was born in 1952 and formed Yellow Magic Orchestra in 1978. Also active as a writer actor, producer and arranger, Sakamoto has been active in providing support to victims of the Great East Japan Earthquake as well as continuing to speak up about social issues such as nuclear energy and eliminating nuclear weapons.

I am taking this opportunity to publish this very recent article by Riyuichi, Mankind Cannot Live With Nuclear Energy.

I believe the first catalysts that made me aware about pacifism and the anti-nuclear movement were Nobel Prize-winning writer Kenzaburo Oe's "Hiroshima Notes" and Keiji Nakazawa's manga "Barefoot Gen." (my note, Barefoot Gen is probably one of the greatest first person documents of surviving the nuclear devastation of Hiroshima ever written...one of the most brilliant pieces of Comic Art I have ever seen!)
I might also have been influenced by the Cuban missile crisis of 1962. With tensions heightening in the world, even as a child I felt the fear of a possible nuclear war.
Having been born and raised amid the Cold War, I may have subliminally had anchored into my subconscious a fear of the destruction of the world through a World War III that was fought with nuclear weapons.
I also felt a vague hatred toward power generation that used the same nuclear fission principle.
As a teenager, the Vietnam War intensified and calls arose around the world for peace. I also participated in student movements.
Based on the horrors of war I heard from my parents' generation, such as fleeing from bombs and incendiary bombs, as well as imagining what the Vietnamese were experiencing, such as fighting pangs of hunger, I began to hold stronger feelings of wanting the killing to end, and those thoughts became deeply embedded within me.
When the Chernobyl nuclear accident occurred in 1986, I only held interest like any other ordinary citizen. Looking back on that now, I regret not having taken any action to stop nuclear plants in Japan decades before the major accident occurred at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant.
On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, the terrorist attacks occurred in New York where I lived. I experienced firsthand what it means to live closely with fear from fighting and civil war.
I became convinced that under a condition of tension of either kill or be killed it was impossible to create and enjoy music. However, if I say peace is necessary for humans to enjoy music, some people may become angry at my naivete. Information that I gathered with my friends and colleagues on a daily basis have been compiled in a book titled "Hisen" (No War).
Another thing I became convinced of after experiencing 9/11 is that in order to live there is a need to know. If one understands what the objective was behind an act by someone and what lies in the background to such acts, one can surmise what might happen next. If one does not understand, it might be possible for that person to run in the direction from which bullets are being fired.
I am embarrassed to admit that it was only after 9/11 that I first began studying the history behind why the United States became a target of terrorists. That also immediately led to my asking myself about the contradiction in living in the United States as a citizen of the nation on which it had dropped atomic bombs. I have still not come up with an answer to that question.
With the Great East Japan Earthquake of March 11, 2011, and the accident at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, I feel it is now the responsibility of Japan as the only nation to suffer major radiation exposure on three separate occasions as well as a contribution to the international community to say to the entire world that mankind cannot live in this world with nuclear energy, be it in the form of weapons or as a form of power generation.

Ryuichi Sakamoto, July 4, 2012

FLUSH WALSH

Joe Walsh claims he is a victim of this heroic woman,
Tammy Duckworth,
because she is going to win in her Congressional race
against him

Despite earning widespread condemnation for dismissing the military service of a double amputee woman, Rep. Joe Walsh (R-IL) has decided his original comments didn’t go far enough.
In a statement released yesterday evening on his campaign website, Walsh again refused to apologize, instead attacking Tammy Duckworth — his Democratic opponent who lost both her legs in an insurgent attack in Iraq — for allegedly using “her service and the service of others as a political ploy.”
Pathetically presenting himself as the real victim in this ordeal, Walsh claimed he was being accused “of something that is not true.” (Watch his original comments here and judge for yourself.) “Shame on her for using veterans,” he declared, despite having never served in the military himself.

From Walsh’s virtual toilet bowl of a campaign website regarding the “Duckworth Attack”:

Friends, My opponents are once again trying to accuse me of something that is not true. It has become their agenda this Fourth of July week to twist my words and claim I said my opponent is not a hero and have insulted all veterans as a consequence. Folks, if you’re familiar with me and my campaign, you know this is utterly false. Shame on her for saying this and shame on her for using veterans in this fashion. In fact, recently on the Big John and Amy Show I stated, “Tammy Duckworth’s service demands our respect and that is something I will do and say for her throughout this campaign.” I open all my town halls byrecognizing our veterans who served to protect our great nation.

The poor pathetic victim of double amputee veteran

Tammy Duckworth knows this and should know better than to use her service and the service of others as a political ploy to distort my words and distract voters. We as a people are facing great problems in our country, and it is time for us to get serious and address them.
Read the rest of his pathetic statement at the bottom here.
Many pundits are referring to Walsh’s comments as a major gaffe, but that’s incorrect. It’s not a gaffe if you mean it.
I really am horrified that this amoral political whore, Joe Walsh could ever expect to be re elected and I seriously question the character of anyone who would vote for this opportunistic, manipulative living turd. This ex-venture capitalist failure who got evicted after the bank foreclosed on his condo in 2009 when he was facing a lawsuit for cheating his campaign manager out of $2000.00 but was always broke because of the federal and state liens against him in the 80s and 90s for being a lying tax cheat whose wife sued him last year for $117,437 for being a dead-beat dad to his three children when he lied to her about not having the money but then somehow got awarded for his "unwavering support of the family" by some HackPAC before he lost his driving privileges for not having insurance and was one of 19 congress-people criticized for ethics violations by the Citizens for Responsible Ethics in Washington before he was videotaped verbally attacking a constituent who asked him a question and then went on to say that the Occupiers were spoiled, pampered, unfocused, clueless, un-American socialists who don't understand this country before attacking Tammy Duckworth's credibility and advocating for ethnic cleansing in the middle east, wouldn't know a fooking hero if one came and pulled him out of a fire. If his constituents were anything but a pack of senile fascist teabrained zombies, they would do the patriotic thing on this July Fourth and demand that Joe, the poor pathetic victim, Walsh resign immediately!

FLUSH WALSH!

Salvage...

So. like where has my brain been? Instead of an intelligent post, I'm offering this full epic episode of Salvage from 1979. A pretty trashy low budget series, the last real thing that Andy Griffiths ever did. Andy, of course passed away today...but this was pretty cool trash. Andy played a salvage junk business entrepreneur and in this episode, he builds a space ship out of junk to go to the moon and salvage the remains of the Apollo Moon Mission. No one seems to remember this series...why do I?

I thought it was pretty cool. As the Prime Minister of Israel says after the launch, "What Chutzpah!"
It's not on tape or on DVD, but this episode is posted in it's entirety on YouTube, forgive me for mindlessly watching the entire idiotic thing, because it's like Gilligans Island...a mind numbing place where we can all go when ever we want to just go away...and I'm going there now! dammit...

It's been a wild week for me....See I have this barn and it's haying season here. I have very good insane friends who have this strange hobby rescuing horses and we keep the hay in my barn. We have been cutting hay, drying it and baling it and getting big rolls from another farmer and filling up my barn with it from daybreak to sunset since Friday. Meanwhile, I am building a very interesting structure in my garden which I will photograph when it is finished....The structure uses huge iron barrel hoops as arches...when it is finished it will be covered in these mermaid variety climbing roses my wife is obsessed with. Then, I was on the verge of buying a ticket to come to Ohio because my grandniece was as far as I can tell, kidnapped in Toledo with her friend....I will know the details soon, she was missing for 3 days and we had a lot of very strange leads...and I was ready to fly to Toledo and perform a personal "visitation" and a vigorous laying on of the hands ceremony on someones ass....there was a ransom demand!  A few hours ago, the Toledo police assisted in finding them. I want more details!

Meanwhile, this morning, I spent 2 hours at the Prefecture in Perigueux dealing with my ongoing French residency. No problem, I am well on my way to dual nationality, but it's the slow drip chinese water torture of bureaucracy  So maybe tomorrow, I will be able to think again....

Pissing At The Moon
Pieter Bruegel the Younger. Flemish Northern Renaissance Painter (ca 1564 - 1638)

truly profound advice

Sure the remake by the Cohen Brothers was pretty good,
 but I liked the original much better...