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