Iraq, Obama, Old Folks Homes and Health Insurance -- another hidden horror knocking at your door.

Capitalists beware, Iraq is about to fund socialist countries all over the world, from Angola to China, you read over who is winning the contracts for the oil fields and so far they are mostly State Run Companies...  sure, private companies like Exxon and Sun are in there too, but mostly, one could say, Iraq's oil is going to enrich what many view as our idealogical enemies.

Not me, of course, since I have a bit more faith in the state than most people, and whenever I read about the Changes Obama Has Made, I am more hopeful.    I think the state should run a lot of shit, personally, and the rich should be more heavily taxed.  Why not?  Someone has to do it, so we should throw our money into a pool where we have the buying power to make demands of distrubutors, etc.. to bring things like drug care costs down, like a nationalistic, public option would have done.

One thing that is not even talked about in this is Insurance to pay for old folks homes.   That used to be a nice aspect of health care.   Now, the contract has been broken, in a way.  The elderly are told there just is not enough money for society to provide them with a plentiful life.  It is just a fucking shame that the elderly and the mentally are housed in shitty little old folks homes all over this city, and indeed, the country.  Is this new plan going to force the insurance companies to pony up and pay for those last few years with a place of luxury?   Most people hit retirement age and they have actually spent most of their money just living all those years.  Some have no property, or savings.  MaryAnn's mother, a widow who raised two young children on her own, lived in working poverty after her husband passed away at 40, leaving a 12 year old boy and an 11 year old girl, is on the edge of either living with us, or going into one of these places.  She has no idea what they are really like, or she would not even consider the option.  Our door is open to her.  I use her as the but of mother in law jokes but that is really, really, just joking.  She is a sweet lady to me.

I fear the places myself.  It could easily happen to me if MaryAnn passed away.  I would avoid it at all costs, probably get out of it, but most people are not as smart and resourceful as I am -- they fall into the traps.  The same thing happens with out of work people disabled for mental illness, they house them in hotels that give them their meals and small room, in exchange for all but 30.00 of their social security checks.

Right across from our apartment is a shitty home for the elderly and disabled.  I see them every time I take the dog out for a walk.  This is their fucking story, you asshole world...  this is the injustice of the capitalist system, where the concerns of the many are not the concern of most politicians.  (Saw a Bono article he wrote that praised capitalism as the great savior;  odd to hear that from the man who sang in Rattle and Hum about the excesses of the usa).  This country needs to turn more toward social concerns.  We need to say that we have grown beyond the idea that there are ANY  throw away people.  We need to make the prisons places of healing and growth.  Everyone knows this is the way to give people a different way to live, a means to fish, as they say.

It is a shame that our elderly are thrown into hell-holes like the one across the street from me.  They are treated like throw away people, given tiny rooms and very crappy food -- and so little that the more crafty and mobile among them are out on the street corners begging for enough money to get some more.  Right across the street from them, beside me, are six bedroom houses occupied by couples.  One has a kid.  What is fair in this?  Do my wealthy neighbors chalk it up  God's will, or their parents, luck, or just a plain lack of true tragedy?  Why are they treated so much better by our society than the people across the street?  Can we truly blame these people for losing both their legs and being unable to work, or going mad, or just getting too old to care for themselves, and not having enough family around that can help?  

This is the systemic problem with wanton capitalism.  This country has plenty enough of the free market, we now need to start forcing some changes toward socializing some aspects of our society.  This would help in so many ways.  For one, the city of Chicago once promised to give free wi-fi to everyone in the city, which would have been a real boon for everyone, especially all the children who are being raised in poverty... but no, the cable companies or whoever got control of wi-fi and their prices exclude this very important segment of our society.  These kids need every break we can give them if they are to overcome their  circumstances and become law abiding citizens.     This is socialization.  On a limited scale.  Like we have always had, though that safety net has been torn, seriously marred, by the destruction of the union, as well as the faults of the unions (I am not going to defend working with the Mob in any way...  that was a mistake, and I was glad to hear the FBI busted a bunch of goons in a union in New Jersey and New York  --  in my opinion, the unions that exist now need to push for more leadership roles in the over--all society.  They need to make their views on issues known beyond just their union.  If people could seriously be stirred up to unionize again, we could collectively bargain).  Bono also said something about how consensus thinking did not lead to innovation, because everyone needs a leader.  Or most do.   That is more bullshit, to me.  Maybe I am taking him wrong, but consensus thinking is almost always the way to go.  That is why we have the political system that we do, instead of out right fascists.  In America, we believe that everyone's view is important, and indeed, that unless you take into account the views from all sides of the round table, your view has blind spots.  Of course being artists, Bono and I both have found a place where we work ultimately alone, and now art by consensus could end up sucking because it would diminish individual twists and shit...  but that is not politics.  Art can comment on politics, but it is still art  -- it is not going to pass a bill that harms the elderly, or create a war (most of the time...  I seemed to have triggered at least a battle there for awhile when my total war for total peace was more allowed and above ground).  My point is that consensus is the way to go.  Even if it is messy, and some people are sell outs working against the common good, it is better than allowing the government to be run by one person.  That kind of power leads to excess.  Bush with no restraints could have easily started a nuclear war.    There is something appealing about China's ability to immediately adapt to change, on orders from the government.  It is good for them, for sure.  But, what do they trade for that?  The population is abused, civil rights are shitty, and corruption is rampant... just fucking everywhere.  They charged thousands this years and people say it has not even dented the culture of corruption.  Without the people being able to force changes, say by voting them out of their position, they become trolls under the fucking bridge.

This is why I really want a socialistic democracy.  So many fucking freaks use these words though, skin heads and nazi's and god knows who else, that I need to come up with some other way of saying it...  Limited socialism, and limited capitalism.   The Free Market has proven to be easily abused, and not at all free to the the people who lost all their money in the recent crash.  Now, the Obama folk are responding by creating new Financial Regulations that will finally stop some of their excesses.  This is the Government intervening to do something good.   Our Goodly President sure is fighting on a lot of fronts.  He is like Bruce Lee in a movie, fucking fighting enemies flying at him from all sides.  He handles it all like a gentleman and a scholar, a professor in the White House...  let alone that he is black, he is a professor.   A smart, emotive man who has tried to live a life of service.  He can't fix everything at once.

Here in Chicago the problem that has been tearing me up for awhile is how exploited, used, and abused the elderly are in these fucking shit hole homes.

Some want you to believe that there are winners and losers, and since the winners are in control, they take care of their own interests and throw their scraps to the poor, and expect to be given dinners and plaques and kudos on their tombstones for being philanthropists.   Now, I do not blame these people for having wealth and nice houses.  I am sure they work hard, are industrious and all that.  Seemingly they earned what they have.  But have the disabled and elderly across the street somehow earned what they have to experience?  No.  They have been sentenced.  Sentenced by the break down of family in this country, by as simple a thing as how easy it is to fly to another city and make a new life.  People do it for work, without even considering what they lose.  Some people fail in this world, to the degree that the safety net is all that stops them from starvation.  I hit this point with my back, after twenty years of working my ass off.  I paid a hell of a lot of taxes, here in the Windy City where the sales tax is like 30 cents on the dollar (with some items much higher, like smokes, which go for nine bucks a pack here due to the city and state taxes -- the poor pay these taxes).

We as humans should be able to look at wealth as a resource for the entire world, not just our own portfolio.  Should societies winners consider their position like the great landowners in England, like my family, who at least aspired to and were known for taking care of the people in the cities and towns they owned.?  Noblesse Oblige was how they stopped revolutions, and raised armies.  Keep the people happy.  The are of course other options that governments use, from keeping the people beaten down to drowning their minds in slap-happy personality cults.

The population is on the rise, but the baby boomers, that huge splotch of humanity, has changed society with every milestone they have reached.  The USA would not have a black president if not for the champions like Malcolm X and Dr. King shaping the minds of youths in the sixties and seventies.  I hope that they will change the way we house the elderly and the ill, as well.   Health Care needs to provide us enough that we can live out our last years in dignity.  I never see this entering the health care debate, and of course the right wing would call it another entitlement (I personally believe everyone is entitled by just being a child of God, regardless of how they have reacted to being a human being in this weird, weird world).

My father smoked his way onto a breathing machine, which landed him in assisted care for the last six years of his life.  He was in a great facility, with a caring staff that was charmed by his easy going ways and the high spirits he tried to have when he was talking to people.  I don't know what I would have done if he ended up across the street at that hell hole.  I would have probably went over there and kicked someone's ass over the supposed lasagna they serve, which is just noodles splashed with tomato sauce -- no cheese, not meat, not enough sauce to even taste.  This is no way to treat anyone.  Prisoners get better food than these people.  And this is systemic in this city.  We should be collectively very ashamed about this...  but no one seems stirred up.  Why the fuck is that?  Because it will cost money.  Taxes.  We are a very rich country.  Look at what we spend on a war!!!   We  neglect the children and the elderly and the sick.  We punish them for being 'useless' to the Pharaohs.   A family structure would stop this from happening.  We have tried, as a society, to promote the family in about every way possible, from tax breaks to tv shows, but our loyalty has shifted to our employers, and even our friends.

Abandoned to the care of the state, these folk are place in homes that take all of their social security and food stamps, and  in exchange give them a room and a bed and three meals.  They get 30 bucks a month cash, which is three packs of cigarettes around here.

Retirement plans are imploding.  A more socialistic way of running this country would say that the government has to do more for these people.  No one votes against their own interests, and everyone is going to grow old.  This is a working class fear, of course.  The wealthy can afford to live in great style for those last few years.  The well-insured.  Well, is this health care plan even addressing this?  Is that the legislation where it should be?  Where are the newspaper articles about this?  Let alone the outrage...

We have not lost something that used to take care of the elderly in some mythic period of fairness that some people think is in the history of this country, we are actually going to have to create something new.  A mentality that no one is worth more than anyone else.  That everyone has intrinsic worth.  That no one should be punished for having been born into a crippled, capitalist system.

On another note....  I read in the NYT an article I hardly believe, actually, but surely there is some truth here... saying that the country is moving to the right.  This is very odd.  I think that people are missing out on what Obama has actually done.  He has made significant progress in a lot of respects, and is just getting started.  I know that politics is ugly no matter how much we want to like the participants.  I also know that we are a hell of a lot better off than we would be with more Republican shenanigans.  I am not too worried about the polls and Obama.  It was bound to happen.  He raised expectations very high, and even though he has achieved a lot of milestones, people have tended to focus on his faults, and what he has not achieved.

i think the relentless propaganda from the right is starting to bear fruit, sadly enough.   That along with the disappointment of the left has left Obama where he is in the polls.  I think when the left begins to balance what Obama has done, as opposed to his predecessors, that we will see he has been a significant force for Good.  And by good, I mean very left.  Look into how he shut down the arctic oil mining Bush pushed through in his last days, stopped the fed's  from messing with medicinal pot, stopped saying we had a right to torture and all the shit that Cheney spews to this day.   He has had to make some tough decisions in his first year.  He has a job that requires an almost messianic view of the world.  He is literally responsible for the future of the planet. He is our president, and I am proud to have voted for him.

I am going to do a show segment on the radio about these folk.  I'll interview them and play it.  Do some serious research before the report.    Well, the next entry is about the radio show, so I will stop here.  Sorry to ramble so... this is more a journal than anything else.  You never know what the hell I am going to write.

This from the NYT

 The public is not only shifting from left to right. Every single idea associated with the educated class has grown more unpopular over the past year.

The educated class believes in global warming, so public skepticism about global warming is on the rise. The educated class supports abortion rights, so public opinion is shifting against them. The educated class supports gun control, so opposition to gun control is mounting.

The story is the same in foreign affairs. The educated class is internationalist, so isolationist sentiment is now at an all-time high, according to a Pew Research Center survey. The educated class believes in multilateral action, so the number of Americans who believe we should “go our own way” has risen sharply.

A year ago, the Obama supporters were the passionate ones. Now the tea party brigades have all the intensity.

EX VICE PRESIDENT OF THE USA CRITICIZES PRES. OBAMA FOR CONSIDERING HUMAN RIGHTS!!!

Cheney.  What more can I say about this dude?  If you are in here reading me, it is either because you agree with what I say or you are planning on kicking my ass, consider me a dangerous radical (or at least a dog that barks when you come to the door, and at least looks like it might have some bite) who has to be monitored, we are related...  or you are just a psych. student using me as an example of the various mental defects that appear in your texts books (you people have to quit writing me;   and while I am at it let me add that I do not need ANYONE  to send me pamphlets about therapy, let alone you , mom).  I write for the audience of folk who are either like minded or open minded enough to consider others opinions in the mix of their cosmologies --  though occasionally I like to make sure the FBI is on their toes and write something bloody enough that I can be sure that in twenty years, when I get around to using the freedom of information act to see what they were thinking when they intruded into my life (not only them, but they are convenient), that I will be in for a few laughs between my bouts of righteous indignation and murderous rage.   Yes, but... enough of that.  I am here to write about Cheney.

He is in a party that is desperate for leadership.  They need an attack dog.  Cheney is most comfortable when he is attacking someone else, because that is about the only way he can avoid being attacked himself.  This guy is simply off his fucking rocker.  America at it's brain-washed, populist worst.  He crept into power through the back door because he gave most people the creeps.  The kind of egotistical, ideological nut that is so feared will rise on the left, when in fact working 'for the people' instead of the elite -- say the difference between Cesar Chavez and Little Bush  -- leads to the humility that a real leader needs.

Cheney is not a leader.  He is a bully and a criminal, who will do anything to get his way.  Even 9-11.  I tried to ignore this.  But whenever I look into the bombings of the Twin Towers,  it seems like we were manipulated by another false flag operation.  Of course I Said it could not happen in my country.  That the world is full of people who believe things that are not true.  I knew about the Gulf of Tonkin, which was used as an excuse to attack Vietnam,  but a False Flag Mission in downtown New York?   You can't say they don't know what will work.   Do you honestly think these people are beyond doing this?  Collateral Damage is how they refer to deaths like these.  Like the tens of thousands of civilians killed in the middle east.  They barely register on their warrior mentalities.  They want the Objective to be reached, and the end justifies the means -- as we see in how they stripped those who fight us of all the rights that this country was built to preserve (not to mention the invasion of privacy of the new Total Awareness technology that literally monitors every word spoken on the phone, every word typed into the net).

Speculating on this is like the Kennedy Murders.  I think most people feel that his desire to, as he said, "Spread the CIA to the wind," got him shot.  His brother was too close, too... probably figured out who really killed Jack.  Who knows?    What can I do with such knowledge, other than assure myself that I am awake enough not to buy every lie my government tells me?    I don't dwell on this.  It was horrible.  Two good men with visions of a better future who had enough money, charisma, and power to drive a popular movement that was going to seriously challenge the status quo.  Like 9-11, there is nothing I can do about what they did.  I do not expect the government to suddenly start going after presidents.  Bush and Cheney are probably going to live out their lives just fine...  they are saying now that Cheney was much more evil than Bush, and the W regrets going along with some of his schemes.  Basically, he was the cheerleader, and Cheney was the quarterback on the field.  Who knows if that is true, or just a spin on his legacy.

Cheney's psychotic.  He loves the idea of death.  Hates his enemies true and deep.  Surrounds himself with people who think he is just the shits.   So now he thinks that he can come out and dis Obama for something they did much worse on;  it took their regime, that stolen presidency, six days to respond to the shoe bomber.  Obama came out in 72 hours.  His criticism is just stupid, and plays into the hands of our enemies.  He needs to get much less press than he has, or more... if it is reaming him.

 The  Citizens of the United States generally hate the idea of War.  The isolationist and the pacifists and the general feeling of living in a land that hasn't seen a war on our soil in over a 100 years or so combine to make us skeptical  of war, and especially in the Middle East, where we had already fucked up so bad by creating the Shah, the Taliban, etc...  all the armies that came back to bite us in the ass.  We bred them mean ass fighting dogs, plugged them into radical religions that gave them the idea to use suicide bombings.  We,  USA, our CIA, ran the war where these suicide bombers started.  You can bet we encouraged this development.  Drove out the Soviets,  and became the Gold Standard of bombing attacks.

Speaking of terrorists, and that is what this essay is about --  I wrote last week about the Ball Burner, who tried to blow up a plane on Christmas 09...  and ended up charring his crotch.  I concluded that if they were strapping bombs to their crotches, that the asshole was sure to come next.  No sooner did I write this than I began to come across articles talking about how the but was the next logical step.  Showing, once again, that when it comes to Anal Related Issues, I do my best to keep my dear readers informed.   Assholes are the great misunderstood organ.  I mean, no one is ashamed of their hands, but you try to show strangers your asshole and they will more than likely have you arrested.  Where is the sense in that?  Assholes should be made public and shown with grace and sexiness.  I have believed this for years, and have on many occasions encouraged women to show me the little rose bud in their backside, making for some tense  subway trips after they freaked out...  don't bring this up with strangers.  It does not work.  Or family.   Mostly it is a question best reserved for very flat women, on computer screens, in porno flicks and mags.



Cheney is not afraid to show his face, which is just one big rancid asshole spewing grotesquely shiny, sickeningly stenched, brown and yellow blasts of shit. He popped up this week to come down on Obama for not responding immediately to the terrorist attack.  Even though, anyone who is sane would say,  "Well, he is in meetings with people about this terrorist attack, hearing all about the files on the guy, and trying to trace back where he came from and bust those people.  This is Obama's priority, not coming on Meet The Press for a meaningless smooze job to reassure the citizens and our enemies that we are going to get justice on this one, trace his origins back and destroy the forces that armed this young man and filled the gentle head of a young scholar with hatred and dreams of joining the Martyrs that hang on their walls and are eulogized in speeches, spoken of with reverence and joy, as it is assumed that in conversation, at least, everyone agrees to pretend they are in Heaven.

Last night I kept thinking about how the hatred that the countries where we have troops must be misplaced.  I know that war is horrible, and no one wants one in their backyard and things are worse there than they were under Saddam.   We did not invent war for the Iraqi's.  First Iran and then Kuwait fought Saddam.  I am not going to say that I think we should have invaded Iraq, but there is a part of me that thinks that Saddam was our creation to a huge degree.  We stood by him until the Kuwait war.   Our ambassador to Iraq at the time told Saddam that the USA was basically okay with his plans for an invasion.  So, they either tricked him into a war or this woman, whatever her name is (again, if that fact is important to you, use google you anal assholes), had no idea what was happening in the chain of command, and when the president and the intelligence community and our friends in the middle east found out they objected to the move.  At the time I think I wrote I THINK WE SHOULD STAY IN IRAQ AND AFGANISTAN UNTIL WE HAVE KICKED 'PRE-SCIENTIFICA-HEADINTHEASSICA'S ASS.  I made a cartoon guy standing on a pier saying this, then put it on a flyer for a weekly reading and open mic that I was running at the Big Star Cafe.  They were right next door to a resale shop, where a Vietnam Vet Peace Protester ran the place.  He was always really cool to me, until he saw that flyer.  Really, really hated me afterwards.  Like I was a war monger.  My thinking at the time was that we need to move beyond religion, become more humanistic and atheistic (oh the irony of this sort of man suddenly waking up from a coma believing Jesus has manifested in his flesh and hijacked his poetry)

A pair of christians, ex-missionaries came to hate me for my jokes about their religion.  I was pretty harsh and unrelenting.  While I was nice to everyone, no matter what they believed, and basically put what they believed behind how they behaved on my priority list,  I thought all religion was a sort of mental disease, that one had to avoid like the flu, pretty much.  Brain washed or sloppy thinking folk who just accepted what they were told.  I used to envy them their belief, the peace I thought must come with a relationship with God... a real one, not like mine, where most of the time I went with Buddha, who said not to speculate on questions about after lives and gods, to just focus on being better in the day to day.  AA encouraged me to have a vague higher power, who I could pray to for strength, and have with me every second of the day, in my head, encouraging me to live right, straight, to leave the drink alone . . .   the bibles can all be dissected and found wanting.  Let's face it, this was the best writing the ycould do at the time with the knowledge they had.  This is why the King James Bible was a compiled bit of ancient writing, the words that fit with the prophet story that the originators of the book wished to teach.  These were writers who wrote for their time, not for posterity.  All you need to do is find all those  silly commandments in the bible that no one talks about that include all the absurd rules about how to treat your mules, slaves, women, etc...  really stupid shit that no one follows, let alone preach about.

How can humyns' describe their spiritual life?  In the language of his times.  What will they write -- laws that make sense in his or her time, but which society has basically  moved beyond now,  destroying a bit of the credibility of the document along the way.  Again, this is why I like the Mormons.  Well, that and they predicted the coming of Christ in the States. And when I was in the first hospital,  suffering from amnesia, I asked for a bible, and they brought me a catholic one with a green cover, and something in me was reppelled, and I asked for the Mormon Bible.  When I read it, I seemed to feel the spirit of Nephi.  The words made a sense that I never expected from a bible, but that did not mean that I really knew much about their religion, let alone would I follow it for any reason that I can think of.   But I am not going to dismiss everything about the religion, because there are prophets all over the place, and surely some of them are mormons... problem is, as they learned in the 1800's when they slaughtered a wagon train of people trying to get to California, because their elders had a vision that they wanted to kill their leader.    Truth is, there are ten false prophets for every true one, at least.  My vague fondness for Mormonism is basically based on really not knowing shit about their religion.   I have studied their beginnings in Anthropology, but not their creeds and beliefs.    I was surprised the other day to hear that they think they become Gods after death, and get their own universe.  Nice dream for a religion where all the men are called Saints and are considered Missionaries and possible conduits for the word of God;   they take a lot of their clues from leaders having 'spiritual contact with a higher power and being commanded.'   Not surprisingly, these leaders once banned blacks from entering their religion, considering them evil, and marked by God for some sin... they then reacted to the Civil Rights movement ,and the basic destruction of the idea, among most, that a person's race is a way to judge an individual, by welcoming blacks.  The missionaries have now made such huge inroads in the black population that they have contributed to unprecedented growth in the their religion.   I mean, it sounds good, right?   Everyone healthy, smoke and drug free, living in harmony with one another.   So why do they take more anti-depressents in Salt Lake City than anywhere else in the states?  There are cracks in every theology.  That is where the new ones grow, like weeds popping out of a chip in a sidewalk.  In essence, the religion is allowed to react to radical shifts in the mental paradigm of the world around them by having a 'vision' that makes their religion reactive to modern realities, thus preserving it in a way. Catholics have the same out with the Pope. New radical preachers come out of all religions when society feels that religion is behind the times, and they will declare a new vision, that people can obviously see is better than the old, making them seemingly trust worthy.   From Self-Help groups to the Trooper of The Decade, Oprah Winfrey...

Say what you want about the queen of talk shows, she uses her shows in ways that improve society, and the lives of a lot of individuals.   I did not watch the show much, just when a guest really interested me, but when I drove cab they were one of our accounts, Harpo studio, and everyday women downtown in hotels were taking cabs to to the shows, so I was there a lot, and just being in Chicago meant I was going to read about her a lot in the newspapers.    I could have gotten free tickets, but after going and seeing Jerry Springer and Jenny Jones splattering lust and violence and sickeningly private seeming secrets all over my eyes, I was gun shy.

I started watching her more during my campaigns early convulsions, after finding out Oprah was one of the early readers of my blog.  I was very proud to find that out.  Honored.  She has to be fairly open minded I guess to do the show she does.

Cheney and Oprah.  Look at the difference in how they use the media.  Oprah is using a talk show to build a better world, get people reading good shit, showing a wide range of spiritual avenues people can follow.  Sure, you may be like me and think a lot of it is all bullshitty in a way -- especially if you are a man, since the show caters to women  --  all of the new age stuff that tries to make people into warrior--salesmen, but we are not the ones who need it right now.  There is no denying that a  lot of times her topics are simply edifying.  She tries to be.  That is rare.  Cheney on the other hand, uses the media to tear at President Obams's popularity polls, to destroy our confidence in the president, how he is  fighting the war, and stopping terrorist attacks.   The creator and the destroyer.  The good woman offers healing,  while the old troll lives to strike wounds.   He creeps up to microphones and says shit like yesterday, Where CHENEY SNEERED AT OBAMA BECAUSE HE MIGHT OFFER HUMAN RIGHTS TO TERROR SUSPECTS,  Cheney basically said that there are no human rights.  Scary stuff.  He is untouchable now... basically given amnesty for his sins.  Sad.

I think I speak for most of the world when I say that I would trust Oprah to run this country a hell of a lot more than Cheney.  In fact, I would love to see Oprah take over the Mayorship of Chicago.  That would be so cool.

 First our enemy loses the basic rights of prisoners in most wars by being declared enemy combatants, and now Cheney thinks they all should still be tortured.  Even though all the studies show and most experts agree that there are much better ways to get the information.   Cheney implied that if we were still torturing people, this guy might not have gotten on the plane.   Of course, I do not believe for a second really that all torture has stopped in our so called War On Terror, because they have all those secret prisons, and there is a reason they do not want the public eye to see in those little chambers of horror (one guy had six people hanging from chains in his back room, who he was interrogating as a contract laborer for the CIA). . .   still, I am glad it is not systematic anymore.

Is it any wonder they hate us?  We are losing the ability to wear that white hat, day after day.  Black water, now called, interestingly enough Xe (I made a big deal about X during my campaign, to the point a lot of people got this tattooed on their bodies, a film the spies showed me when they decided, at my urging, that they should let me know what was happening with the people inspired by my writing, because I wanted to help calm people down and give them a peaceful direction.


My war views ended up being enough like Bushes that I confused readers as to what my politics, including Bush, who thought I backed him.  I wanted to see the women free to go to school, dress how they wanted, not be stoned to death for getting raped, and crazy shit like that.  I also thought we owed these two countries our help, because we have been involved in making them fight for decades.  We sold a shit load of arms to him during their Iran War, which was a brutal, bloody war that showed us children being sent out into mine fields to clear a path for the older soldiers by dying as martyrs.  They would send packs of them out to fucking blow up because they did not have the sophisticated bomb detection equipment.    Anyways, considering how my politics usually are, backing a a revolt among the people for better human rights or going into a lawless region, like the Congo,  does not seem crazy to me, but almost a God given directive.  Total Fucking War For Total Peace.   We could stop anarchy in a country like that.  Free slaves,  save people from starving, free child soldiers.   But, no, we are little too selfish for that.  And why should we be the world's cops?  Well, someone has to face the idea that we live on a very small planet, that the airplanes make smaller every day.


 I am not against the one world government, but I do not think most countries want to give up what little bit of sovereignty that they have to join, and I understand their fears of a dictator enough to think they may be right.  I do not want to live by some world vote that makes Sharia the Law here in the states. Can you imagine a law that says 12 year old boys too must be covered all the time because they are so sexually attractive?   There is a realization there that the lusts of some could despoil their child.  This is where this came from.  Most societies however have simply created mindsets where children are not sexualized.  I could not finish Lolita because he sexualized young women so effectively that it made me uncomfortable;  that book was banned in various countries because of this effect.

I make the usual imperialistic assumption that we are the world's savior... that we can spread human rights, environmentalism, etc.  Sometimes we do just the opposite, though, if it is going to keep something we consider vital to our countries well-being, like Oil, flowing from a country, our intelligence agencies and Exxon have eagerly worked with dictators and murderers, to the extent that Exxon hired a private army to kill the environmentalists protesting the open pits of oil waste that Exxon was basically  destroying land with - something long banned here in the states, that they do in a lawless country where they can get away with it... the same cut throat mentality that buys clothes or shoes or whatever from factories that employ children, or keep the women in camps away from their family working as barely paid slave labor.   I know these things exist, but I see something beyond them.

Our stated reasons for being in Afghanistan and Iraq and Pakistan is chasing terrorists.  I wanted something more, nations left cleaned up and made into Democracies, or Socialists, or what the people want, instead of the tribes with the most soldiers.  The problem with this is that Democracies without stringent laws become corrupt almost immediately.  Too many people with competing needs, instead of one apparatus with the goal of making a better government.  We throw money at these countries and billions are lost to simple fucking employee theft.  Without cops there to bust them, they get away with it.   It is just the way things are with their peers, as well.   It is war, so if they can profit enough to get the hell out, or live in an wealthy suburb with closed gates and armed guards, they feel compelled to take care of their own.   Who can blame them?

We cannot even get supplies to the troops without hiring contractors who pay the Taliban to use the roads.  That is some fucked up shit.  A country that we are not in control of.  How do we change all that?  Send in more troops and take over the roads.  Either the present governments or the Taliban is going to offer the justice they obviously crave.  Like before, when Afghanistan chose the Taliban over the patchwork of warlords presiding over the heroin trade and extorting at check points.


We are fighting an enemy that wants us to leave, among a population where a good many want us gone too, in a region that outright considers us to be Christian Crusaders defiling fellow Muslims, Occupiers.  Can we get control of Iraq and Afghanistan enough that we can hand over the reigns to a democratically elected leader, and a police and military structure that can defeat what is left of the Taliban?  Will the 30k troops be enough?   A lot of people do not think so.  Everyone worries about the soldiers, seeing them deployed again and again and coming home bearing the subsequent scars.  The sacrifices we offer the gods of justice . . .  the blood we pay to keep our ideals alive, and almost as importantly, to stop terrorist attacks here, and retribution against those who have helped us there, when we do leave.   Are the people who work with us, the interpreters and young soldiers, going to be left at the mercy of an enemy that would like to behead them?  We left the Kurds in Iraq before, and the Taliban, after we infused religious fervor in them so they would fight the Russians and won their war, we did not come in and help them rebuild.   Over there in the war zone, the population knows all of this well, and it effects how much they hate us.

Some know that most of our intentions are good here in the states, but if someone blows up buildings in downtown New York, we are going after your ass.  Whether 9-11 was a false flag or not, it was effective at galvanizing the USA's hatred for repressive regimes that create what are basically government cults.  North Korea is flooded by the cult of personality around Kim Little Dong or whatever his name is.   Mao.  Reagen. Symbols that want us to forget all of their sins and pretend we are a race of heroes.   The Taliban, and I would say any government that mixes too much Church in The State, inevitably goes the fascist route.  No one, priest or whore or prophet, deserves to make everyone.s decisions in life for them -- there is no accounting for taste, and that is the spice of life that I would sure as hell miss if I had to live under such a government.

So... in conclusion, all praise to Obama, who realizes that whatever was the reality ten years ago, we are now fighting a war to leave the country better off than when we landed.   He also has limited the time our blood will be expended trying to save someone else.  He is saying, though, we are going to stop the military operation, then help them set back up their infrastructure, provide experts and advisors, etc...   UNLIKE CHENEY, OBAMA HATES WAR.

In him we do not see the arrogant cowboy or the swaggering cop, we see a man who has been forced by fate and his brethren to take over a horrible conflict, that if he does not fight right, will leave his domestic policies aborted in four years.   No one except the soldiers on the front have more to lose than Obama in these wars. The sadness of a man who is facing the realities of this brutal world was in his voice as he told the stoic soldiers at West Point that he was sending them back into the horror of the wars.

Cheney is setting up his defense, for posterity and possibly the courts, and certainly public opinion, by saying that they were right to torture, use extraordinary rendition, and yes, even the death squad that Cheney was running, which was reported by the press for awhile, though they later changed the story to say that the squad never became operational, even though I had read that it was stopped because a Major in the Army was concerned about all the civilian casualties.

Funny, I read conspiracy sites which are sadly enough either right or left wing nuts, and some just see Obama as the new face of the elite, or the Bilderbergs (that Obama and H. Clinton both went to their secret meeting of the financial elite is not discussed in the press, of course--  more fodder for those who make up the world from scrapes of disturbing facts like this), or...  what is it the Nazi's think they are fighting, some international Jewish Conspiracy?  And Obama is supposed to now work for them.  Others say the Military Industrial Complex is winning the war.  That people who profit from war promote it, lobby for conflicts, etc.  What the hell is the big picture?

I am as afraid to say I know what is going on with politics as I am with Religion.   I have my ideas about how both should manifest, but I am not locked into the idea that I right.  I want to learn as much as I can, be a student of what is happening in the world, instead of someone who uses the news merely to prop up an idealized version of my philosophy.  These wars keep testing me.  I want to see all the different perspectives. I started out wanting everyone to just forgive each other and go home.  Try to be people who have to find a way to put these conflicts in our past.  I appealed to Obama, long before he ran, by putting posters in my windows on Lake Shore Drive reading Obama Forgive Osama.  Send All The Warriors Home.   I really had these powerful spiritual feelings when I did this, and it came after being so out of politics that I did not even realize I was supporting a Republican when I backed a neighbor who found Ruby one night when she ran off.  I had searched frantically for her for hours, bemoaning her fate almost as much as my own....   the Obama posters after the seizures and amnesia and waking up feeling like Scott Ridgway was gone, and I was about to discover what I really am.


I felt this mad power around me, and everywhere I was seeing signs of God, and others belief in me, as a leader and to some, a God.  I fought this.   I was more about showing people that Christ was human, because it seemed to me that by taking on demonized persona's , I was showing them that they need to forgive themselves and others for stupid, god given shit like sexuality.  I cannot explain this very well, and it boring to people who know the story and follow this blog.  Suffice to say, the spirits that be seemed to tell me that Bush would not end the war, the senate and congress could not--- they tried damn hard, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi....  I have a great respect for their impassioned fights for peace.  They laid a foundation for Obama to be elected, because with his no vote on the Iraqi invasion, he had set himself apart from every other fucking politician in the Senate.  A peacemaker.  Exactly what this world needs after Bush.  I mean, he was about to put a bunch of Nukes around the Soviet Union and start a new arms race, while Obama says let's stop this shit right now and reduce our bombs.  Say what you will about him, he is getting a lot of shit done.  He has said that we pull out such and such a day.  He has also said that he is taking the fight to al queda, giving them no peace anywhere on the planet.

Cheney wants Obama to be like him, a vampiric figure lurking the history books of other nations under the title of murderous thug.  I think he is something altogether different.  I project myself onto him.  I could send soldiers to their death if there was no other choice than leaving a couple countries in the hands of armies that are intent on bombing our country, and another that could be taken over and give the terrorists nuclear bombs.  They would use them.   Retaliatory attacks just send them to Heaven after all.

These wars are important.  We have to fight fire with fire, and if there wasn't one before Bush invaded, there sure as hell is now.  Obama has to decide what kind of shape he is going to leave these countries in when he pulls out the security of the troops.  Has to think about the civilians who worked with us, and what the future will bring as a result of what is happening.  I understand.  For awhile, I just hoped they would win the war and come home, period.  I felt the soldiers needed to be brutal, too, because war is a law unto itself, no matter how many low level grunts we punish for manifesting the culture of the actual culprits in positions of power.  Like Henry Rollins said about his tours for the troops,  something to the effect  of You do not want to destroy their ability to motivate themselves.

What is my conclusion?  Cheney should shut the fuck up.  We as a country have turned our back on you.  We have seen you as you are and we are sickened...  you are a criminal.  Period.  If justice ever comes to this countries shores for real, for real... you will end up in Jail.  We know you lied us into a war that has inflamed the middle east,  threw gasoline right on that fire.  Your tactics of torture insured that it would be easy to recruit people to fight you.  And we know about your death Squads and we are not going to shut up.

can anyone explain to me why they are mandating that people buy HEALTH insurance?

I hear different answers and have not settled on one myself.  I hear the Democrat's saying that the Insurance Companies are so powerful, that this is the best that they can do in the face of such overwhelming wealth, and then I hear the Republican's saying that they do not want mandated insurance because ... well, it is wrong.  Since I know the slash and burn policy that they have on this issue, trying every tactic in the book to derail and delay anything which might effect the drug and health industries profits, I know that they do not actually think it is a bad idea to give this BOON over to the insurance companies.  So, I guess the Elephants are more than likely full of shit.



It breaks my heart that Democrat's are going to be the ones who pass a bill with this in it, but if the rest of the bill would not exist at all without this provision, what hope do the Dem's have?  Doing something, or nothing?  Something is what anyone would choose.  So, I understand this.

Problem is, we need another election, and a larger leftest block, to actually pass the kind of health care package that most non-partisans agree upon.  If this is the case, and the best we can get is what we got, well than that is a problem of the system itself, not any individual politician.  Unless this system becomes so Democrat that sweeping reforms can be passed, we are simply doomed to stay in this netherworld where honest to God health care reform remains just out of our reach, because that is more profitable to the vested interests involved, who give a lot of money to politicians.

Like I said at the beginning of this pile of words, I honestly do not know.  I get more disgusted with politics because I am more focused on it than ever before.  My buddy Chris, one of the funniest writers I know, and a person of true depth in most respects, stays out of politics, creates his little garden, and thanks God for the time he gets to spend surfing.  One of the smartest roommates I have had, and I had some smart ones, was a classical guitarist who turned me on to the Nation, though he pretty much had quit reading any newspapers or watching tv news years before.  He finally even gave up the Nation, after declaring that it seemed like all of his years he was reading the same news day after day and all of it was depressing.

I used to avoid any writing that had current, cultural trends.  I wanted my work to be like Shirley Jackson's The Lottery, utterly timeless.   I had been advised at the time that all the great writer's considered this matter, and I was a fairly earnest student and I bought it hook line and sinker.  I used my political opinions in advanced classes in school, exposing my far-left bent where it was nurtured, rather than ridiculed or misunderstood or both, of course.  Everywhere else, they seemed fairly worthless.  The country was run by the right wing and god knows who in the shadows?  What would that ever have to do with me?  My dreams were of art, not politics.  I wanted, like all artists want, to please people with my work, in the same way my mother once was when I took her my first drawings as a toddler.  From something that simple all else seems to come to pass.

I have been well insured, un-insured, and insured by a government program, medicaid.  I can tell you for sure that the first was best, the second sucked, and the latter is just fine.  I can also tell you that if the government tried to get me to buy health insurance at different points in my life, I would have said Fuck You, I need that money to pay my bills and make some fun out of this life.  I did the same thing with car insurance.  I got rid of my car over this, actually.  I am too old not to know that shit like car accidents are going to happen, and I do not want any trouble with the law.  I always felt better, too, when I was fully insured... but there were times.
And I am a fairly  responsible human being in most respects.  Other people run from the cops over not having insurance, or cripple someone drunk and have no insurance, etc... the horror stories are too obvious for anyone except me to even repeat.

Looking at the world is like seeing a fractal constantly showing another pattern the closer you look. I suppose we will all have to wait and see.  At least they are addressing this issue, which Bush did not even have on his
radar.


I love this picture.  Something about having the red elves attic over it looked Christmas like for a blog opening. The day after I put this up, I happened across that she had just been interviewed and said that monogamy was not essential to a relationship, raising the collective hopes of males the planet over who never even would have bothered trying to compete with a millionaire movie star stud-winkle like Brad Pitt.

FREELANCE PERSONAL INCONTINENT ADVISER

Young and old, man and woman, dog and cat....  we got this gaping hole in our bodies where we get rid of our food and the dark, horrible reality that all must face is that  sometimes it leaks.  This is nothing I ever wanted to know about life....  We go through toilet training for this shit, the first brutality becomes the sudden disapproval of something one has come to take for granted  those first few months of life   After that, I thought this was a defeated enemy, but no... on tv and everywhere I am reading about adult diapers and Personal Incontinent Adviser's  -- and of course, having heard that this position exists, I felt it my responsibility to apply.

I had this vision of myself being endlessly amused by announcing what I did for a living at dinner parties (while I am trying to avoid calling this a shitty topic, I cannot stop myself from repeatedly using the word shit  -- something about the visceral nature of this topic, which evokes in us as much sensory memory as the scent of something more pleasant, like lilacs...  for those of you who can smell them both now as you read this, I do apologize).

Okay.. so, I  applied to be a Personal Incontinent Advisor, even changing my resume around to read that my primary interest in life was 'shit.'  The guy in HR who read my resume found it funny and wanted to hire me.  Turns out, he makes shit jokes all day long.  They all do in that office.  He liked my attitude and recommended me for hire.

I had written on the resume, as a joke, that I would work so diligently that I would need their esteemed adult diapers myself, because I would be way too focused on my work to be bothered with animal necessities like bathroom breaks.  I made it out like adult diapers made for super employees, and excellent student tools after too much coffee.  I wrote about a future where we would no longer be 'slaves to plumbing,'  and could freely, with no social stigma, no matter if at the desk or the dinner table, poop and/or pee ourselves.  I became convinced by my own rhetoric.  Even after the company let me go, for wearing a shirt into work the first day reading, "I just shit myself.  Feel it while it's still warm!!!"  I guess jokes only  go so far with these people.  All white shirts and ties in front of the bosses.  Works against me.  I have lost many positions because of my provocative t-shirts, what can you do?    I mean, I wear that shirt everywhere and this was the first time that I had ever thought it was actually appropriate.  They want you to dress a certain way, they should provide the clothes.  Like the army.  And I told those security guards as much while they were escorting me out.

So now I am working as a  freelance Incontinent Advisor, pretty much cruising the Incontinent Forums and leaving small turds of wisdom.  So far no one has paid me, though I always tell them how much to pay me for my pearls of wisdom.  Old people and cripples are thieves, pretty much.  At least the incontinent ones on these forums.  People who poop themselves a lot get crafty, you know...because they  don't want other people to know.  They are always sneaking off somewhere where their grunts won't be noticed, let alone the beatific smile afterwards (allow me my delusions, please, this is how I keep from slitting my throat).

Anyways, any of you who read this on an Incontinent Forum, get out your credit cards and call me NOW to pay for this.   I may even throw in a ten minute chat about the consistency of your bowel, for a nominal extra fee   --   if you do not have a whiny voice.  For a complete list of the topics we can discuss for what price per minute, all you people have to do is call.  I am sure that will happen.  Until then, you had better watch out...  seriously, I can see you thru the computer... didn't know they did that, did ya gramma?*



*you would be surprised by how many people will believe this, especially with webcams. Or you will be, if anyone ever does.  This footnote is not helping... oh, well.

the political issues of the internet generation are getting slammed by the conservative idiots

First comes the cliche' that people who write for the net live in their parent's basement, then that they are single, porn addicted, pimply, pale and fat ( I did it too when I first wrote on the net, about blog-flamers, those people who think being mean on the nett is going to help the world... folks like me, occasionally, though you have to be just as generous with your praise, or your opinion is nulled).  Now a recent study showed that the internet writers primary political interests are getting Scientology's tax exempt status repealed and getting pot legalized.  The guy I saw point this out, a be-suited Republican Knighted by the Corporate Kings pretending to represent the people for the press, sneered the big sneer.  I saw him as one of the dinosaurs who just do not even try to get it.  Like the print journalists who pretend the only way to transfer information is through dead trees;  they seem to think any citizen journalism is tainted, though any fool can see a lot of what goes on the internet is trying to fill in gaps that they themselves have left --  we have had news outlets controlled by corporate interests that first and foremost protected the status quo, and now they do not even pretend to be unbiased...  they had to come out of the closet because the 'citizen' journalists pointed out their bias.

One of the greatest examples of citizen journalists are the staff of John Stewart and Steven Colbert's shows;  Stewart is now polled to be the most trusted journalist in America...  see why I asked him to help with my campaign before anyone else?  This was back in 2007, when he was still considered more a comedian than a social phenomena awakening a generation to the leftest opinion so long ignored by the traditional press.  He can make and break people NOW.  The 'Colbert' bump' gives writers and songsters, etc... who go on his show huge sales in the weeks following, and some get instantly famous.  They are both part of a media shift toward Total War For Total Peace -- the attempt of EVERYONE to begin to make demands on our political  system, no matter who they are, or how powerless they have been convinced that they are.

I was convinced I would never have any influence on Politics, grew cynical, until the Obama campaign and i found myself watching a video message barack obama had sent to me, directly, saying he wanted to meet me.  Same with Hillary.  Didn't happen due to my conviction, at the time, that I was going to limit anyone's ability to think for themselves... I was freaked out by all the people who were taking my words as gospel at the time...  I mean, by then, guns had went off around the country because of my call to prepare for a revolt...  I was writing about IF the republicans tried to steal another election.  I meant it.  I was like, get yourselves fucking ready.  Then they came after me, baited me, kept me in terrible pain, awake for days, etc...  and I told those who were following my words to just fucking go ahead and attack.  By then I wanted out of their world altogether.  Anyone who wonders what I mean by getting attacked by the government, refer to other entries because I am sick of writing about it after two years of putting together a book about it together, which they sent someone to tell me not to write, which of course firmed up my resolve to tell fucking everything.  This is fucking war and they drew first blood.  Left me here bleeding in my cell.  I try to forget the pain of this shit and forgive, but my thirst for justice wants that Nietzscheian need for vengeance!!  Maybe when I see  they have paid their penance?  I doubt it.

Now, back to those internet interests.  They took this information from what people were writing politicians about.  Now, what does this mean?   Does it mean this is peoples only concern, like the conservative politician pointed out?   Hell no.  These are just two topics where popular opinion and voting can make a difference.  We know that people want the environment kept clean and the concerns of animals taken into serious consideration, we have passed thousands of laws tinkering with this stuff, right?  What can the average Joe do?  Pot and Scientology, citizens are making significant progress in both of these areas, because we on the internet have demanded as much, especially as we learned the amount of people who smoke...  and societies old hippies, who know the mild nature of the weed and how much  better it is on the body and life over drinking, are taking control of the world.

I know the other issues are all out there.  I see them all over the web.  God bless the day that environmental alerts cause everyone across the land to take action in unison and force political reactions.   It is here now, but not enough people are using the net this way yet... they will.   Country wide revolts could be called almost instantly.  Sit downs.  Work stoppages.  Etc.   There are enough leftists in this country to stop it from moving...   And I am talking about Gandhi tactics here.  So peaceful that the cops are bored or interested in your issues.  My dream is that the local authorities morph into armed guards for the revolt.  Revolt.  What a loaded word.  I mean more a tinkering, forcing the wheel of justice to move a little bit at a time, incrementally enough to keep the peace, but quick enough to put out the fires.  Like when Unions band together to make their point.

Pot and a cult.  The first achievement of the left in years.  Well, this dude who sneered at these issues obviously has never had to live in fear of a narc showing up at his door the one time in his life he bought a quarter pound/me -- some alarm went off in my head, though I had hung with this guy many times...  a burst of psychic knowledge, though looking back I can see the signs of a narc all over him  -- he told us he was going to some trucker school, lived in this little hotel, and showed me some bogus identification card with his name saying who he was, which was something put out by a radio station showing he was a fan...  all ridiculous...  but he did bust a friend of mine I introduced him to, who he bought a joint from... he did smoke up with us, though..  just never those joints he bought, which he kept back and we thought he was bogging, but no... gathering evidence to fuck up the lives of people over next to nothing.

Anyone who thinks Scientology is a non-concern is dense to say the least.  Politicians who support and help cults are everywhere  -- the esteemed Harvey Milk is even slammed by the Jonestown critics, who talk about his support for the Kool Aide Killer himself, Jim Jones.  Our freedom of religion laws are abused all the time by these cults, used to brain wash people into cheap labor for predatory sales organizations.  There should be a law -- read the survivor stories, or the article I just posted, and weep that the politicians have failed us.


So there, to the Headintheassica suffering bitch who came out against the internet generation as frivolous.   What is really frivolous is this fuck, who allows these travesties to go on without a fight.

Writing about the internet mindsets I see out there reminds me of how weird the comments sections are just about everywhere on the web.  You see people trying to verbally joust, make clever quips, threaten, bully and cajole.  The darkest myths of ourselves as superheroes and shit come out on the web.  We can use words to basically PICK A FIGHT, as we set on our ass far from ever having to face the subject of our criticism.  Writing on the web is a little better than muttering back at the politics you happen to despise or love on the tv, but the content is NO better, most of the time.   Still...  I am amazed by the depth of even that emotion.  People are charged up.  And though these things are easier and more legal to write about than do, I read calls for blood and some right wing revolution that these crazies think is coming.  I personally, as I have written before, my hope that these racist rednecks come to the Southside and all get gunned down by the gangs and anyone else with a gun.  I would love it.  We way out number them.  They talk a big story because of their love of war, then underestimate the fury that they have stirred up...  is the same one in their chest.  Humans are humans.  For some things they will kill and imprison people.  Get the FBI to stop the right by just rounding them up and figuring out who is involved with a little waterboarding -- they could use those secret prisons that ICE sets up for the immigrants.

Oh, well... I love writing this kind of shit to stir up the right wing fucks who monitor my work for trends among those who are 'too left.'

Speaking of left...  I have reading more Ayn Rand crap lately.  I particularly hate this shit since I am disabled. This would leave me starving by the side of the road in an Ayn Rand novel.  Useless.  Yet most people would say that with the books, paintings, blog and radio show, that I was indeed living a productive life.  Ayn Rand tells a myth about how most people are lazy fucks who need to be enslaved, or they will de-evolve.  She believed that only a few good men, the work-a-holics, had any worth in the world.  The Producers she called them.  I read all the time from right wingers about how they want to get rid of the Non Producers.  With unemployment at all time highs, this would be a lot of folk right now.  I actually read a comment from one guy saying they should kill all the Non Producers and the liberals (yes, he actually used the Rand Reference).

An easy solution to pretend is real for simple, selfish minds that have no idea about how to actually relate to other peoples lives.  Everyones lives are important to them, even if they are not to Rand, or the Right Wing who advocate stupid shit like killing the non-producers.  Little different than Hitler's Jewish Problem.  Except this time the elite who get to live are the ones who have the best jobs.   Everyone else, including those stupid artists and the elderly, disabled, out of work, would be gassed or whatever -- knowing these guys burying us alive is an option.


THE MEEK SHALL INHERIT THE EARTH.  This means that they are the ones who are left alive after the warriors have battled things out -- the peace makers come along afterwards, take over in the end of every war ever fought.  Also means that by keeping our protests non-violent, we gain the respect of the system, and the media, rather than being able to be easily demonized by everyone from the cops accompanying the march to the folks at home who know nothing is achieved by bashing the windows out of cars --  the old tactics of getting press coverage could easily be replaced by citizen journalists covering peaceful marches for the web;  we can stream this shit live, talk to people, get a lot more in depth than the 30 seconds they show on the nightly news, or the eight paragraphs in an article.

The 2010 elections would be a good place to show the internet/media influence.  If the Democrats could get more of a majority, these evil little politicians would be less able to play cut--throat with the bill to get the best deal, like they do with health care.  Leaving Lieberman as the swing vote is the worst position we could be in.  Dude is evil.

THIS ARTICLE SHOULD BE PRINTED OUT AND AIR DROPPED OVER SCIENTOLOGY SLAVE COMPOUNDS

Scientology's Paramilitary "Sea Org" is Looking for Suckers

by Lilly von Marcab
Wednesday Dec 30th, 2009 11:26 AM

The Scientology cult's "Sea Organization" is spreading the word through glossy ads that they need more gullible people to sign billion-year contracts and live like slaves. However, they will sometimes be allowed to wear a fancy uniform.

640_sea-org-ad.jpg
original image ( 800x800)

A recently-leaked 2009 issue of "International Scientology News" features a large advertisement recruiting for Scientology's paramilitary organization and pretend-Navy, the Sea Organization. To anyone who didn't know better (which apparently includes the 50,000 remaining Scientologists worldwide), to join the "Sea Org" is as honorable an endeavor as such legitimate public service as joining the military forces of one's own country. Those fancy uniforms must mean that the Sea Org is very important, right? Unfortunately for Scientology, being in the Sea Org is about as useless a thing as anyone can do. Moreover, it is really an intensification of Scientology brainwashing and in many ways is even a kind of slavery.

Would you be interested in working for an organization for which the following statements are true?

• Employees are housed in compounds, behind fences with locked gates and mounted security cameras.
• Employees are bused between the workplace and their locked housing compound, which is too far away to walk or bike (and which isn’t allowed anyway).
• Employees may not leave the housing compound without permission.
• Employees are forbidden to own or use cell phones and have no access to public telephones. If they make a call on company phones, they must first obtain permission, schedule it, and the call is always monitored.
• Foreign employees have their passports confiscated and locked in a company safe. US citizens who have passports also have their passports confiscated and locked in the safe.
• Most employees routinely have expired drivers licenses as their only form of identification (if they have even that).
• Employees are often transferred from business entity to business entity within the organization, and very seldom with any traditional administrative/personnel paperwork being done with the new entity (I-9, W-4, applications, transfer papers, etc.).
• There is a whole department dedicated to the obtaining of visas for foreign nationals, and a basic procedure to lie about the reason for a visa, which is contrary to the actual use of the visa.
• Foreign personnel who are “out of status” (visa expired) are sometimes transferred to other locations and their names changed
• Employees’ normal work hours are from 8 am to 11 pm daily, seven days a week, and they are routinely kept working until 2 am or 3 am. Many times they are kept working throughout the night with no chance of being bused back to their housing compound.
• Employees are not fed sufficiently, either because they are forbidden a meal break, given only a few minutes to eat, or the food provided is inadequate. Long term employees are often underweight.
• The employees are paid less than minimum wage. (At most, $50/week. Some employees are not paid at all.)
• The employees are given little to no medical or dental care — and only in emergency situations, if then. Many employees have rotting teeth and haven’t seen a dentist in years. Medical problems are often neglected or the person forbidden from seeking medical help outside the employer (who does not provide a doctor or nurse on site).
• The employees are not covered by any form of social welfare or retirement benefits and often the employer has not registered the person’s meager wages with social security.
• The employer threatens the employee with enormous debts should they consider leaving; and has routinely billed and collected from those who have left.
• The employer threatens the employee with throwing out the person who will then be indigent. Most employees have no money, no assets and long since lost contact with their families. They fear being indigent.
• The employees routinely do not have any form of bank account for their assets, and most have no assets because they are paid insufficiently to require a bank account. The employees are usually paid in cash.
• The employer opens all employee personal mail and reads it and censors it — passing on only those bits the employer deems okay.
• The employees are not free to roam independently around the local area unsupervised and unaccompanied. When allowed to roam accompanied and supervised, they are told where they can and cannot go. The local area they are allowed to roam in is covered by employer’s security cameras.
• The employees are forbidden to tell others about their living and working conditions. The employees are taught to be fearful of those outside this employment and have been taught that law enforcement and social services are enemies. They are taught and practiced in how to lie about their conditions.
• At employer’s work location, there are none of the usual Labor Law posters available for viewing of the employees. Employees are unable to learn of their worker rights by normal means.
• Employees are forbidden to watch, and are denied access to, televisions and newspapers. They have little to no access to information about the world outside their work and living compounds.
• Employees are forbidden access to the Internet and email, and are prevented from accessing the Internet.
• All sex between workers (including those married to each other) is discouraged, and female workers who become pregnant undergo extreme pressure and duress to get them to abort the pregnancy — including denying them access to their husbands to discuss the matter.
• Employees who “run” are sought out and returned with physical force and psychological coercion. Other employees practice procedures to hunt down people who “run”. Employees deemed “flight risks” due to something they have said to another, are kept under surveillance and guarded and restrained by security personnel.
• The employer maintains another compound, somewhere else, where employees work and live on the premises, without busing. This compound is fenced with security fencing (including razor-sharp inward-facing spikes, vibration detectors, flood lights, cameras, and electronic notification systems), security personnel at all gates (with guns), and it’s rare that any employees are allowed out. Some of the employees haven’t been out of that compound in years.
• The employer maintains a punishment work detail for those whom it deems troublemakers. This work detail is not allowed to speak with anyone, works a minimum of 10 hours of hard manual labor a day, gets substandard nutrition provided for meals, and gets a maximum of 7 hours of sleep per night. The employer also maintains an extra-punishment work detail for those who do not cooperate with the regular punishment work detail. Those poor souls work continuously, and get a maximum of 6 hours of sleep per night.
• Employees wear fancy pseudo-Naval uniforms for photo-ops and special events, and follow a pretend-Naval hierarchy of "rank."
• Employer employs several thousand personnel throughout the USA.

All these things are true of the Scientology cult's "Sea Organization" (Sea Org)!

http://www.xenu-directory.net/scnorgs/seao...


fOUND THIS AT http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2009/12/30/18633857.php        thank you....

Streams Of Words

flow  through us
warriors and cowards in there
heroes and villains
kings and slaves
everyone got 'em
lurking their past

whores and priests running madly convinced through our minds
living on the prayers of gods and groins
hell and brimstone preachers
and cool hipsters who just walk by it all
like nothing mattered and what the fuck if it did?

some will speak to our warriors
others the cowards
we decide
whether we will allow ourselves
 to travel on the stream of their words
or insert our own

walk up that fucking stream defying the currents created before we had a say
the only way to avoid waterfalls and rapids
built into every river
the pits where our beliefs shine no light
the prisons
when we are kneel chained and beaten
suffering the endless imprisonment in the flesh like stoic cons
living for an extra biscuit from our jailers

As I walked the husky through the swirling Chicago snow
a day before News Years Eve
I could see the streams of words flowing through the air
radio waves and wireless internet and phones
philosophies and quips and racist rants
republican and democrat all rambling around in my mind

They tell me they will baptise me in their streams
take me up the mythic mississipi journey of huck finn
to enlightenment
meditate my way into a whole 'nother dream of this life
save me some money with their sales
find our my credit rating

most of the streams
end up being
a tangled landscape of meaninglessly babbling, thoughtless brooks

the poet stretches the metaphor like a rubber band that is going to hurt like hell when it breaks
pulls his body through the rush of water
fighting the draw of just laying on his back basking in the sun
floating along wherever dreaming all is right with the universe
listening intently to cable tv commentators who stitch together stories
under banners that draw the worst out of us
ask for the hateful voices
the xenophobic monkey trying to live like a goddamn human being


oh what child would I tell you to do as you totterr out into the universal confusion
with this band of mental toddlers who have no idea how to cure the worlds problems...
nothing that will work without changes that will have to be fought for
harder than they are fought against

word for word
blood for blood
fire for fire
man who has always in the end befriended his enemies
sooner or later
historically speaking
for a few hundred years here and there

We know the path
We just don't know always who blocks us
who is beckoning us for their own purposes
who is just some Joe who knows the way and tells it like he lived it?

You got them in there
Jung's archtype/the marvel universe/Star Wars
the characters we will play by our own device and others

How you gonna live boy?
Will you be blindered young?
Taught to keep your nose to the grindstone
life focused?

i worry about the young girls chasing beauty even as I marvel at their ways
as stunned as an adolescent boy
and aware as a man that history bred younger than we do here
that the rise of tv and fashion warps
insert pornography in our every moment

i hear a young comic talking about how he doesn't want to scream issues at people
just wants to make them laugh
wonder how he missed any connection
to the frantic part of me that worries incessently about my planet
how he deluded himself into an island?
wealth does that/part of the appeal is the purchase of privacy
the distance of exclusivity
from the ever present mucky-muck
the stone cold downers everywhere
that seem to suck the juice out of life
leave only a vague endlessness
the wondering if any of this is really worth the arrows at all?

we can't take the humane society ads showing abondened animals in this house
have to change the channel
we do all we can already and don't want to go there if we don't have to
want to surf out our own way
find our own paradise for awhile
beat off or buy something or run off into a bottle/snort up a night
be mentally elsewhere

say what you will
I'll listen when I can
I tell the world
unless you are just plain full of shit
your agenda transparent
to my prying eye

I toss another pebble in the stream
watch the ripples disrupt the flow of the current for a few seconds and disappear

I AM INCREASING THE SECURITY CHECKS THAT PEOPLE WHO STOP BY HAVE TO GO THROUGH

With the recently aborted Christmas day bombing...  The Ball Burner...  I have no choice.

  Every man in the world collectively winched when we heard about the bomb being in the front of his underwear.  Generations of young men and women will most likely be saved from the brain washing of radical Islamics simply by the idea that they may, at some point, be asked to attach a bomb to their genitals.  Can you imagine the day they told him about where the bomb would be?  There are strong, biological imperatives that drive men to refuse to do ANYTHING that might harm their nuts, let alone their penises.

Regardless of how I feel about this matter, I know that there is the thought that if you are going to be blown to bits, what does it matter where the bomb is?  Others will buy this argument...  though I swear, myself, to the Powers That Be, that while I may at some point turn to terroristic tactics if a fascist regime started deciding to set up death camps for the latest, greatest demonized demographic, I swear that I will not join, or found, any guerrilla units for anyone who uses genitalia related bombing techniques.   Again, Regardless....  I cannot stop others from hiding explosives in their nethers.  I mean, let's face it, now that the Terrorists have reached the strapping bombs to penises stage, the asshole cannot be far behind.

The Asshole Bomber will scream the headlines across the country.... well, that is not going to happen here at the Elves Attic... NOT UNDER MY WATCH.  From now on, all people who come into my apartment are going to have to have their assholes checked.  Basically, I hired this guy who lives downstairs to shove his arm, up to the elbow, into the rectum of all visitors to my apartment, to check for explosives ....  weird guy...  guess I should admit that he is actually paying me for the right to do what he refers to as 'fisting' all my visitors (some kind of slang these terrorism experts use, obviously...).   Yes, I know this is going to be controversial when M's mother comes over on New Years Day, but we have no way of knowing if she is a sleeper agent or not?  M. is launching her usual protests about my security measures (yes, people have died because of the booby traps that I set up on the doors, but they were mostly Jehovah Witnesses and Mormon missionaries..  though I do regret that the US Mail will no longer service us, and surely there is no arguing that the postal carrier is better off without his hands, as I tried to do in court, because people will simply not listen to logic).  This time I will not bend, however.  The pets and M. are ultimately my responsibility, as the military intelligence expert here (M. does note even like war movies, for God's sake, so how would she even know what to do?).

In these highly dangerous times, everyone has to make certain sacrifices to insure our safety.  Having your bum 'fisted' is just one of them.  I hopefully will be able to relax these security measures in the future, perhaps even the day after M's mom tries to get in the apartment to spend the day whining about growing old (was this some surprise to her, that she was going to grow old? Come on... but M just caters to her...  I swear if I could smack her around a little, she would work her way past this, gain some 'closure,' as the idiots say).  Some may even refuse to subject themselves to this security.  Like her mom, perhaps... though this is not my reason for doing this, no matter how much M. acts like I am either 1)  'joking,' or 2) 'just fucking nuts,'  or 3) 'trying to get her mom to turn around and go home.'

I know that she will thank me in the end.  I mean, we have gone eight years without a terrorist attack on the apartment, and M acts like this was by accident!!!!!   Without my efforts, I can assure you, we would be confetti on some dudes parade into heaven to claim his damn virgins.

slumber

This poem ends up qualifying more for Waking Up Jesus than this poem, incorporates the myths of that tale...  ignore them for secular consumptions, please...  



winters  heavy slumber
the solemn silence of snow
christmas lights strung with the dim hopes
of a credit card Santa

science has proven that looking at bright lights can lift our moods
the research that got me started painting
selfishly enough
to sooth some wound

tattered traveler between times and places
a visitor to others stories
tells his own alone in mystery
free for all to see


i think again and again of the death of the revolutionaries
the protester's jailed and beaten
all over the planet
for all kinds of reasons
in the war against the progressive

THOSE WHO MADE IT
IN THE OLD WORLD
FEAR THE NEW
THEY PREFER TO HAVE
RATHER THAN HAVE NOT
HUMAN.... ALL TOO HUMAN

we will have less and less as the population blossoms
learn to live with it
less garbage and packaging and pompous sales packages
stream line what you need
hoard only words

the changes we see make the future understandable at least
tactical problems that can be approached without controversy
the war for justice will not be raged by armies
the war will be fought between those who make great wealth
exploiting the environment
and the rest of us
for 20 years we have ignored the scientists
I mean, what the hell.... no one died in a nuclear war
the clicking clock they move ominously toward midnight every year
saying the scientists believed we were this close to that big war
end of life
and doesn't every generation think the world is going to end?
all the ad hoc arguments that grow with our beer bellies

we barely take into account the nukes anymore
they are still nightmares out there
suicide bombers will get them if we don't play world cops
nuclear phallic symbols rising into the sky all over the world

left over bombs
from our years of fears
our propoganda spewed hatred
our idealogical wars
fought with very real blood
spies
lies
greed and bigots and dreamers and writers

we have the big bombs and can't use them to win a war
afganistan, iraq, pakistan, iran and whoever the hell else we are fighting here and there
can't use em

wouldn't do no good
just turn the entire world into our enemy
give Israel an excuse to pop off a couple nukes of their own
blow up a few Arabs and grab the god bestowed land --ho, ho, ho says their Santa...

the theory of nothing
rattles around the sleepless night
awake with a glowing christmas tree
hazlenut coffee
a sleeping Husky
a nice scene
comforting
M. laying on the couch snoring a little now and then

cnn discussing the greenhouse effect
hearing about the rising anger of the poorer countries
that are going to suffer for our largesse

hard to argue with the idea that america russia china and canada
have set into motion a geographical catastrophe
that we will pay for
when the storms and floods come
we will send in our soldiers and relief
do what we can
send out our prayers
emote
tell ourselves our healing energies will help the starving

the actual fact that the people who are responsible
for pushing oil on people
are going to make us pay for their sins'
with our entire planet
chokes me with the old fucking injustice....
injustice.
the vile face of the demonic
when the CIA got in bed with Exxon the gates of hell opened a bit
I can  feel the heat


we are not going to get a solution
 out of the ruling powers
 in any of the large countires
the movement could use interlocking green political parties that agree to press certain issues
a movement that creates Justice
to fight the packs of corporate lawyers who fight it tooth and nail
reactionaries to the reactionaries


we were lured out of the jungle
into the fields
to hunt
where there were no trees
no where to climb
away from the charging jaguars
who would bat our spears and clubs aside
show us just who was the top predator on the plane
we forgot us much in our cities
see the big cats only in zoos
slaves to our curiousity
we won the war


the face of the world
is pathetic
apathy
apathy
no money to attend no protestors
give to a cause
can't risk the job asking for a union

I can't see through the snow storm outside
seems the entire world is gone
the tv just a cheap lie about some other place that I do not inhabit
with news I don't  need to know
opinions that offend me
I can't listen to the right wing pundits
actors pretending they have ethical positions
instead of just propaganda agendas
gotta please that right wing boss at fox
by slamming those liberals
gotta shape the usa mind
gotta pretend
they have the proper spin
they offer a mythic 'other' for the real news i suppose
people prefer as much
like the Limbaugh people who are just happy to have
someone to think for them
to give them a way to live
that frees them to hate
be selfish
racist
sneaky
to take their orders from republican politicians
reading those talking points like they were the news

the prophets are cloaked
by their mundane appearance
obscurity
the terrific loneliness of thinking out alone
where no one else has quite been before
speculating on every religion
in my mad run for glory
for forgiveness
for a way of living that was better than the one I had

when my spaceship crashed
I was surprised just to be alive
my memories muddled
when I split my head open
on the side of a mountain
i try to remember who I was out there?
the images offer me no narrative
... just the same old chaos
all I seem to be able to make sense of is a future self
far from now
who will still wonder
who were we these humans
that tore so boldly across this planet
these warrior poets
who prided themselves on being a bit more than they really were?
Did they remember to live hard enough to make this journey worth it?
Have enough fun to suffer the scars?
Keep their youth until the end of our years
a secret between ourselves and a few friends?


grace the revered Jackson says
Grace Before Thanks
I don't get Christmas Cards from people who I got out of prison

Grace
in a world loaded for fucking bear
an inner strength that says you can take anything
have to
that's your job
to live
just to live


that fire of faith burns in every christmas light we pass on the highway
spews through bad seasonal movies
tonight was Santa Verses The Martians
watching the low to no budget movie is
my response to the chaos on tv
the health care debacles
our poor president doing his damnedest
to do more than any other president ever has

problem comes when we find out we can no longer rely
on consumer spending to run the engine of this economy
more people/less resources/
simple bad old math of the population explosion
we hear less and less about this since AIDS came around
changes that dire prediction
the mystery disease that solved what was then thought to be the coming end of life'
as  we know it... a soyent green world
a disease that killed junkies and gays
sexual radicals and huge swaths of the African population

hear a lot of rumbles about the disease being created
hard to believe
like 9-11
the false flag mission that started the war with the middle east
on a day that all the military pilots were on a massive training mission
no one shot down the terrorist planes
there was explosives involved in bringing down the towers
bam
bam
bam


they did it.
got their war.
hard core folk.
they thought nothing of torture, extraordinary rendition, horror prisons
murder
They plan on burying their sins in hidden in the spies files
they'll admit as much in a hundred years
preserve the republic and all that

the lesson still has to be learned
taught
so the children know how governments gear up populations to want a war
how they lie to get their way
how they cannot be trusted
how the media will go along with them for the most part

we will get beyond war
it will end
we have abandoned too many people in the past
the Afgani's once already
Iraq, too

Both places we've been playing war games with
we loved Saddam for awhile there
boy they killed him fast
I wish he could have lived on to write his story
what tales such a man could tell
he might have become a pillar for peace
or he might have been a lightening rod for revolution?


I want to forgive everyone and pray for as much at night
In the mornings sometimes as i wake up
my pleas as frantic as those for my own forgiveness

my sins are vague
at the moment
unrelated to my day to day
fought by simple crusades of trying just not to hate anyone
even the Taliban
then they do something that makes me feel the same old fires

I do not want to sentence women to live in such near slavery
they should fight for their rights
no religion that matters would keep women out of school
true Muslims know as much
there are too many paths up the mountain
people take the ones that are easiest to follow
they fear going off on their own'\
out into the forests
where they might just run into a mystical beast
playing a beat
all
their own


polemics of comedy and strife and poetry
the blogging of a life

the exacting of an audience
without having to live by the publishers
tastes
the market's chant of
'write a spy book, romance, something about vampires....
sell sell sell what the hell'

don dellilo's writer wrote porn for children to read about each other
had the market covered for awhile
now we have the twilight series


there is enough room in the universe for all the words we will ever tell
I suppose
if they are worth something to someone ....
even if it is just igniting a few crotch fires in fourteen year old girls

I fear they will burn up
die out with us
we'll send something out into space about ourselves
maybe even a few fragile survivors
aliens could show up and help us out

mystic me
I think that the body
is a very boring way to travel
who needs it?
Give me a spirit to fly around space with,
please,
because it is quite large....

buddha I will have to come back I suppose
unless the dreams of fire and lightening call me to act in the name of God
create an apocalypse on the shores of Lake Michigan
the final burning off of the chaf
an ark of souls
embarking for the face of God
prodigal children returning from the big bang

act dammit man act
rage into their lying faces
sue the news for lying to you
for false advertising about fairness....

in the paranoid world of the right wing
they see my drifts toward socialism
as the beginning of lining up the greenhouse deniers and getting rid of their gene pools first

more taxes they advertise as they talk about defeating health care
oh, don't make us pay more taxes they say.
Everyone wants universal healthcare except the healthcare companies who will be reigned in for once
The reality of politics

i wrote the other day that Obama is Cheney in black face.
I didn't really mean it... just thought it was kind of funny
he inherited a war and an economy that is fighting his every reform
I still wear my elect Obama hat
though with my long hair flying everywhere
 I can tell some look at me as slightly mad
long hair does that to some people
oh well
no false advertising there

more than you can ever appear
oh man
take comfort
where you can

THEY ARE USING THE FINANCIAL CRISES TO KILL THE UNIONS.

The very unions that created the middle class, are being ignored in the favor of financiers who are getting a 140 billion in bonuses.    If I was truly a conspiracy theorist, I would wonder if the elitists created a crises for which they have no worries about actually having to pay for, to destroy their enemies in organized labor.. 


Today it's the teachers, firemen and cops who are paying for the housing bubble... instead of the folk who created it.  These are the people who could save this planet, but instead...  oh, well.  


I see the Immigration rights workers, black activists, liberals, unions,  and people of all stripes who believe in preserving the idea of a Democracy, as the natural recruiting grounds for a peaceful movement that can be utilized to force worldwide reactions in places like Copenhagen.   Political parties do this by staying on message.  In formation information. 


What happens in the streets though, can be easily undone in the back-rooms.   How do we get into the back rooms?  In some countries they just shoot their way in.  That is not going to work in a country like ours, thank god, because I do not want to live in the midst of a civil war. .. for one, and the other is that if it is that easy to take over our government, than some other asshole is going to do the same....  As intolerable as this country can seem at times, there is a fluidity to the laws that we live by which offers actual hope for change.  The only real hope in my opinion is in convincing enough people that they have a right to a say in how their world is ran.  It happens sometimes.  Right now, the idea of FINANCIAL REFORM is just too boring for most people to think about, or too infuriating, or beside the point with the wars and unemployment and prisons...  yet I read how Goldman and Sachs has stacked the cards in their favor, and no one is doing anything about it?


The money that we are using to prop up the banks may be what saves the system, for all I know...  still, justice is justice, and they should be paying up for their capitalist ideas by being able to fail.  Barring that, we have to put into place regulations that stop speculators from unrealistically building housing bubbles... as well as the speed trading that is just basically playing the stock market like a broken slot machine that just pays and pays.... you, while sucking up that change out of everyone's pockets around you.  


Sad that there has to be a connection between the greed on wall street and the need for better schools, college tuition, and the vast teeming masses of unemployed people.   This whole thing happened before with the collapse of the savings and loans, and is set to happen again....Goldman Sachs profits off of such bubbles, so they have no incentive to stop them, indeed... they have every reason to encourage them.   These are men with such vast wealth that they need not work another day in their lives, so that old fear of going under is not going to stop them from making short term profits that eventually fuck their companies.


I feel so out of my element on some of the things I write about.   End up trusting my gut more than I should.
















  Does it always come down  to who can afford the best lobbyists?   If that is so, than liberal consortium's should hire their own guns.  I mean, it is not like lobbying for your rights has to be a dishonorable profession, obviously.