Conan & the Emmys - Just for fun

Hey Folks,

I don't watch much TV, but there was a lot of talk about Conan's schtick at the Emmys; so I sought it out.

If you missed it (as I did), or if you want to see it again , here you go (there are two parts, a video and a stage bit):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwCOUgjECtI&NR

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmUVKjbCcVM&NR

- Uke Man

Just say "No"

 

Did the Jews Do It????

Hey Folks,

Greg Palast is an American who couldn't get the truth he found here published here. Now he works out of the UK and reports on the USA. He's the one who uncovered the Florida "name dropping" (from the voter lists) during W's coup in 2000.

He's always interesting and instructive!!

- Uke Man

Greg Palast

There are kooks and cranks and conspiracy nuts out there who think George Bush, from the moment he took office, had some kind of secret plan to invade Iraq and grab control of its oil. They’re wrong. There were two plans. I’ve got them both. One is 323 pages long, the other 101 pages. How I got them, I’ll explain later.

But first, let’s try to answer a more pressing question. Did the Jews do it? I mean, after killing Jesus, did the Elders of Zion manipulate the government of the United States into invading Babylon as part of a scheme to abet the expansion of Greater Israel?

The question was first posed to me in 2004 when I was speaking at a meeting of Mobilization for Peace in San Jose. A member of the audience asked, "Put it together—Who’s behind this war? Paul Wolfowitz and Elliott Abrams and the Project for a "Jew" American Century and, and, why don’t you talk about that, huh? And …."

But the questioner never had the full opportunity to complete his query because, flushed and red, he began to charge the stage. The peace activists attempted to detain the gentleman—whose confederates then grabbed some chairs to swing. As the Peace Center was taking on a somewhat warlike character, I chose to call in the authorities and slip out the back.

Still, his question intrigued me. As an investigative reporter, "Who’s behind this war?" seemed like a reasonable challenge—and if it were a plot of Christ-killers and Illuminati, so be it. I just report the facts, ma’am.

And frankly, at first, it seemed like the gent had a point, twisted though his spin might be. There was Paul Wolfowitz, before Congress, offering Americans the bargain of the century: a free Iraq—not "free" as in "freedom and democracy" but free in the sense of this won’t cost us a penny. Wolfowitz testified in March 2003: "There’s a lot of money to pay for this that doesn’t have to be U.S. taxpayer money."

And where would these billions come from? Wolfowitz tells us:

"It starts with the assets of the Iraqi people....The oil revenues of that country could bring between $50 and $100 billion over the next two or three years."

This was no small matter. The vulpine Deputy Defense Secretary knew that the number one question on the minds of Americans was not, "Does Saddam really have the bomb?" but "What’s this little war going to cost us?"

However, Wolfowitz left something out of his testimony: the truth. I hunted for weeks for the source of the Pentagon’s oil revenue projections—and found them. They were wildly different from the Wolfowitz testimony. But this was not perjury. Ever since the conviction of Elliott Abrams for perjury before Congress, neither Wolfowitz nor the other Bush factotums swear an oath before testifying. If you don’t raise your hand and promise to tell the truth, "so help me, God," you’re off the hook with federal prosecutors. How the Lord will judge that little ploy, we cannot say.

But Wolfowitz’s little numbers game can hardly count as a Great Zionist conspiracy.

That seemed to come, at first glance, in the form of the secret 101-page document, the plan for the occupation of Iraq, devised, I later learned, in late 2001. Notably, it wasn’t written by Iraqis; rather, it was promoted by the neoconservatives of the Defense Department, home of Abrams, Wolfowitz, Harold Rhode and other desktop Napoleons unafraid of moving toy tanks around the Pentagon war room. And the godfather of the plan? Ariel Cohen of the Heritage Foundation.

Nose-Twist’s Hidden Hand

The neocons’ 101-page confidential document, which came to me in February 2001, just before the tanks rolled, goes boldly where no U.S. invasion plan had gone before: the complete rewrite of the conquered state’s "policies, law and regulations." A flat-tax cap on the incomes of Iraq’s wealthiest was included as a matter of course. And this was undoubtedly history’s first military assault plan appended to a program for toughening the target nation’s copyright laws. Once the 82nd Airborne liberated Iraq, never again would the Ba’athist dictatorship threaten America with bootleg dubs of Britney Spears’s "...Baby One More Time."

It was more like a corporate takeover, except with Abrams tanks instead of junk bonds. It didn’t strike me as the work of a Kosher Cabal for an Imperial Israel. In fact, it smelled of pork—Pig Heaven for corporate America looking for a slice of Iraq, and I suspected its porcine source. I gave it a big sniff and, sure enough, I smelled Grover Norquist.

Norquist is the capo di capi of right-wing, big-money influence peddlers in Washington. The devout Christian Norquist channeled a million dollars to the Christian Coalition to fight the devil’s tool, legalized gambling. He didn’t tell the Coalition that the loot came from an Indian tribe represented by Norquist’s associate, Jack Abramoff. The tribe didn’t want competition for its own casino operations.

I took a chance and dropped in on Norquist’s L Street office, and under a poster of his idol ["Nixon—now more than ever"], Norquist took a look at the confidential 101-page plan for Iraq and practically jumped over my desk to sign it, filled with pride at seeing his baby. Yes, he promoted the privatizations, the flat tax, and the change in "intellectual" property rights law, all concerns close to the hearts and wallets of his clients.

"The Oil" on Page 73

But there was, without doubt, one notable item in the 101-page plan for Iraq which clearly had the mark of Zion on it. On page seventy-three the plan called for the "privatization....[of] the oil and supporting industries," the sell-off of every ounce of Iraq’s oil fields and reserves. Its mastermind, I learned, was Ariel Cohen of the Heritage Foundation.

For the neocons, this was The Big One. Behind it, no less a goal than to bring down the lynchpin of Arab power, Saudi Arabia.

It would work like this: the Saudi’s power rests on control of OPEC, the oil cartel which, as any good cartel, withholds oil from the market, kicking up prices. Sell-off Iraq’s oil fields and private companies will pump oil in their little Iraqi patches to the max. Iraq will crank out six million barrels of oil a day, bust its OPEC quota, flood the world market, demolish OPEC and, as the price of oil fell off a cliff, Saudi Arabia would fall to its knees.

"It’s a no-brainer," Cohen told me, at his office at Heritage. It was a dim little cubby, in which, in our hour or two together, the phone rang only once. For a guy who was supposed to be the mastermind of a globe-spanning Zionist scheme to destroy the Arab oil monopoly, he seemed kind of, well...pathetic.

And he failed. While the Norquist-promoted sell-offs, flat taxes, and copyright laws were dictated into Iraqi law by occupation chief Paul Bremer, the Cohen neo-con oil privatization died an unhappy death. What happened, Ari?

"Arab economists," he hissed, "hired by the State Department...the witches brew of the Saudi Royal family and Soviet Ostblock."

Well, the Soviet Ostblock does not exist, but the Arab economists do. I spoke with them in Riyadh, in London, in California, in confident, wry accents mixing desert and Oxford. But their authority only reflects the royal families of Houston petroleum.

Wolfowitz Dammerung: Twilight of the Neocon Gods

After two mad years of hunting, I discovered the real plan for Iraq, the one that keeps our troops in Fallujah. Some 323 pages long and deeply

Confidential, it was drafted at the James A. Baker III Institute under the strict guidance of Big Oil’s minions, the culmination of a committee including Ken Lay, key players from the Council on Foreign Relations (who began their work in December 2000), a State Department invasion-planning session in Walnut Creek, California, in February 2001, and the gathering of oil chiefs with Dick Cheney in March 2003, where the map of the oil fields of Iraq was carefully reviewed.

Once discovered, several of the players agreed to speak with me (not, to the chagrin of a couple, realizing that I rarely hold such conversions without a wire). Most forthright was Philip Carroll, former CEO of Shell Oil USA, who was flown into Baghdad on a C-17 to make sure there would be no neocon monkey business in our newest oil fields. It had been a very good war for Big Oil, with tripled oil prices meaning tripled profits. In Houston, I asked Carroll, a commanding, steel-straight chief executive, about Cohen’s oil privatization plan, the anti-Saudi "no-brainer."

"I would agree with that statement" Caroll told me, " privatization is a no-brainer. It would only be thought about by someone with no brains."

Bush world is divided in two: neocons on one side, and the Establishment (which includes the oil companies and the Saudis) on the other. The plan the Establishment created, crafted by Houston oil men, called for locking up Iraq’s oil with agreements between a new state oil company under "profit-sharing agreements" with "IOCs" (International Oil Companies). The combine could "enhance [Iraq’s] government’s relationship with OPEC," it read, by holding the line on quotas and thereby upholding high prices.

So there you have it. Wolfowitz and his neocon clique—bookish, foolish, vainglorious—had their asses kicked utterly, finally, and convincingly by the powers of petroleum, the Houston-Riyadh Big Oil axis.

Between the neocons and Big Oil, it wasn’t much of a contest. The end-game was crushing, final. The Israelites had lost again in the land of Babylon.

And to make certain the arriviste neocons got the point, public punishment was exacted, from exile to demotion to banishment. In January 2005, neocon pointman Douglas Feith resigned from the Defense Department; his assistant Larry Franklin later was busted for passing documents to pro-Israel lobbyists. The State Department’s knuckle-dragging enforcer of neocon orthodoxies, John Bolton, was booted from Washington to New York to the powerless post of U.N. Ambassador.

Finally, on March 16, 2005, second anniversary of the invasion, neocon leader of the pack Wolfowitz was cast out of the Pentagon war room and tossed into the World Bank, moving from the testosterone-powered, war-making decision center to the lending office for Bangladeshi chicken farmers.

"The realists," crowed the triumphant editor of the journal of the Council on Foreign Relations, "have defeated the fantasists!"

So much for the Big Zionist Conspiracy that supposedly directed this war. A half- dozen confused Jews, wandering in the policy desert a long distance from mainstream Jewish views, armed only with Leo Strauss’ silly aphorisms, were no match for Texas oil majors and OPEC potentates with a throw weight of half a trillion barrels of oil.

Investigative Reporter Greg Palast is the author of the bestseller, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy. This essay is adapted from his new book, Armed Madhouse: Who’s Afraid of Osama Wolf?, China Floats, Bush Sinks, the Scheme to Steal ’08, No Child’s Behind Left and other Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Class War (Dutton, 2006).

A Respectable Man on TV

At last!!! 

Olbermann Right on!!!

Hey Folks,

If you missed Countdown with Keith Olberman last night, you MUST see this:

http://video.msn.com/v/us/msnbc.htm?f=00&g=75f357f0-029f-4699-9171-d4431f8386f9&p=News_Comment%20-%20Analysis&t=c1149&rf=http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036677/&fg=

Check it out now. I don't know how long the video will be "up."

In case it "dies," I've posted a transcript below.

- Uke Man


Feeling morally, intellectually confused?

The man who sees absolutes, where all other men see nuances and shades of meaning, is either a prophet, or a quack.

Donald H. Rumsfeld is not a prophet.

Mr. Rumsfeld’s remarkable speech to the American Legion yesterday demands the deep analysis—and the sober contemplation—of every American.

For it did not merely serve to impugn the morality or intelligence -- indeed, the loyalty -- of the majority of Americans who oppose the transient occupants of the highest offices in the land. Worse, still, it credits those same transient occupants -- our employees -- with a total omniscience; a total omniscience which neither common sense, nor this administration’s track record at home or abroad, suggests they deserve.

Dissent and disagreement with government is the life’s blood of human freedom; and not merely because it is the first roadblock against the kind of tyranny the men Mr. Rumsfeld likes to think of as “his” troops still fight, this very evening, in Iraq.

It is also essential. Because just every once in awhile it is right and the power to which it speaks, is wrong.

In a small irony, however, Mr. Rumsfeld’s speechwriter was adroit in invoking the memory of the appeasement of the Nazis. For in their time, there was another government faced with true peril—with a growing evil—powerful and remorseless.

That government, like Mr. Rumsfeld’s, had a monopoly on all the facts. It, too, had the “secret information.” It alone had the true picture of the threat. It too dismissed and insulted its critics in terms like Mr. Rumsfeld’s -- questioning their intellect and their morality.

That government was England’s, in the 1930’s.

It knew Hitler posed no true threat to Europe, let alone England.

It knew Germany was not re-arming, in violation of all treaties and accords.

It knew that the hard evidence it received, which contradicted its own policies, its own conclusions — its own omniscience -- needed to be dismissed.

The English government of Neville Chamberlain already knew the truth.

Most relevant of all — it “knew” that its staunchest critics needed to be marginalized and isolated. In fact, it portrayed the foremost of them as a blood-thirsty war-monger who was, if not truly senile, at best morally or intellectually confused.

That critic’s name was Winston Churchill.

Sadly, we have no Winston Churchills evident among us this evening. We have only Donald Rumsfelds, demonizing disagreement, the way Neville Chamberlain demonized Winston Churchill.

History — and 163 million pounds of Luftwaffe bombs over England — have taught us that all Mr. Chamberlain had was his certainty — and his own confusion. A confusion that suggested that the office can not only make the man, but that the office can also make the facts.

Thus, did Mr. Rumsfeld make an apt historical analogy.

Excepting the fact, that he has the battery plugged in backwards.

His government, absolute -- and exclusive -- in its knowledge, is not the modern version of the one which stood up to the Nazis.

It is the modern version of the government of Neville Chamberlain.

But back to today’s Omniscient ones.

That, about which Mr. Rumsfeld is confused is simply this: This is a Democracy. Still. Sometimes just barely.

And, as such, all voices count -- not just his.

Had he or his president perhaps proven any of their prior claims of omniscience — about Osama Bin Laden’s plans five years ago, about Saddam Hussein’s weapons four years ago, about Hurricane Katrina’s impact one year ago — we all might be able to swallow hard, and accept their “omniscience” as a bearable, even useful recipe, of fact, plus ego.

But, to date, this government has proved little besides its own arrogance, and its own hubris.

Mr. Rumsfeld is also personally confused, morally or intellectually, about his own standing in this matter. From Iraq to Katrina, to the entire “Fog of Fear” which continues to envelop this nation, he, Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney, and their cronies have — inadvertently or intentionally — profited and benefited, both personally, and politically.

And yet he can stand up, in public, and question the morality and the intellect of those of us who dare ask just for the receipt for the Emporer’s New Clothes?

In what country was Mr. Rumsfeld raised? As a child, of whose heroism did he read? On what side of the battle for freedom did he dream one day to fight? With what country has he confused the United States of America?

The confusion we -- as its citizens— must now address, is stark and forbidding.

But variations of it have faced our forefathers, when men like Nixon and McCarthy and Curtis LeMay have darkened our skies and obscured our flag. Note -- with hope in your heart — that those earlier Americans always found their way to the light, and we can, too.

The confusion is about whether this Secretary of Defense, and this administration, are in fact now accomplishing what they claim the terrorists seek: The destruction of our freedoms, the very ones for which the same veterans Mr. Rumsfeld addressed yesterday in Salt Lake City, so valiantly fought.

And about Mr. Rumsfeld’s other main assertion, that this country faces a “new type of fascism.”

As he was correct to remind us how a government that knew everything could get everything wrong, so too was he right when he said that -- though probably not in the way he thought he meant it.

This country faces a new type of fascism - indeed.

Although I presumptuously use his sign-off each night, in feeble tribute, I have utterly no claim to the words of the exemplary journalist Edward R. Murrow.

But never in the trial of a thousand years of writing could I come close to matching how he phrased a warning to an earlier generation of us, at a time when other politicians thought they (and they alone) knew everything, and branded those who disagreed: “confused” or “immoral.”

Thus, forgive me, for reading Murrow, in full:

“We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty,” he said, in 1954. “We must remember always that accusation is not proof, and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law.

“We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men, not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate, and to defend causes that were for the moment unpopular.”

And so good night, and good luck.

Education!!

Just like down on the farm. 

Oh yeah, can't besmirch the privileged !!

Hey Folks,

It's the same old shit!!! The old double standard!!!

Ever since the Republicans started their insane Proficiency Testing scheme and right through Dubya's nutcase Child Behind testing, the Media Masters (such as the Columbus Dispatch) have NEVER said an unkind word about the boondoggle - because it did what it was supposed to do:

1. Make Republican state officials (and now federal ones) look like they were doing something, but without increasing taxes (that was handed to the local districts - who often had to cut program to make ends meet).

2. Disparaged big city teacher unions since it was clear from the start that these economically/racially segregated schools would do "poorly," and that could be blamed on the union as well as be used to generally disparage public education.

3. Give impetus to privatizing schools (i.e. de-public-izing education) so that entremanures could rake off the goodies in their new and "better" schools.

Everything was fine - UNTIL an upscale suburb got caught in the intracacies of the shenanigans!! Oh, my god!!!! No!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Well, the Dispatch saddled up and charged into editorial battle (below).

They made it clear that the testing was just A-number 1, hunky-dory, fine - EXCEPT - if a suburban district gets screwed. Then it needs some "tweaking."

Damned hypocrites. At long last, have they no shame?

- Uke Man


Not there yet
State report-card system for schools is working but should be tweaked
Friday, August 18, 2006

Rising rankings for Ohio schools and districts on the state’s educational report cards show that this program can improve performance.

Ohio’s system of holding schools accountable and giving them data to track their success needs some tinkering to more fairly represent the performance of some districts. Nevertheless, the experience of the past six years shows that the program has been effective.

Statewide, 200 districts moved up at least one mark on the five-step rating scale, roughly equivalent to grades of A through F. None of the state’s 610 districts remains at the F level of academic emergency, and only seven remain at the D level of academic watch. Regrettably, Columbus Public Schools is one of those seven, but the district improved over the previous year and missed the continuous improvement, or C level, by only a hair.

Schools and districts can point to a variety of new approaches they’ve employed to help students master the material covered in standardized tests. Most have adapted their curricula to ensure that the most important material is covered, and many have offered study sessions and extra preparation for the tests.

A key point: Armed with the information contained in previous years’ test results, districts know what areas need work and can target their efforts for better results.

Penalties embedded in the accountability program motivate districts to improve, and data from the program help them figure out how to do it.

One element of Ohio’s program should be revisited.

Under Ohio rules, districts must break out and report the performance of several subgroups of students, including those who are disabled, speak limited English or belong to certain racial and ethnic groups.

Any district in which two or more subgroups fail to improve enough from the year before is barred from any rating higher than continuous improvement, regardless of how well it performed on every other measure. Conversely, if a district’s subgroups show a strong enough performance, it will receive an overall ranking of at least continuous improvement, regardless of overall performance.

This rule has the laudable purpose of forcing districts to pay attention to students with special needs, but it results in inaccurate ratings.

Hilliard City Schools languishes at the C level for the second year in a row, despite having met 21 of 23 standards in 2004-05 and every one of the 25 standards considered in 2005-06. The indignity has prompted the district to launch an ambitious program this year to raise the English proficiency of its growing immigrant population.

That’s a happy result, but the C rating in no way reflects the higher quality of education most families can expect from the Hilliard district.

Consideration of subgroups shouldn’t be dropped, because working toward all students’ success is the very essence of the No Child Left Behind law.

Districts with struggling subgroups should be required to help them and not be able to hide deficiencies under an overall good rating.

But the state Department of Education should find some way to do this without slapping the whole district with a label that understates overall quality.

Cute,huh!!!! 

Up-coming Uke Man Gigs

Hey Folks,

In case you are beginning to think that I’m all politics, I thought I should post my up-coming gigs.

This Thursday (Aug. 31st) and next Thursday (Sept. 7) I’ll be doing a few songs with a bunch of other good folks at the Stagecoach BBQ & Blues open stage – 6:00 to 9:00 (http://www.stagecoachbbq.com/ ) run by my good friend John Locke. The 7th will be an anniversary celebration of the weekly event.

Friday, Sept. 8 I’ll be playing the Hot Times Festival (http://www.hottimesfestival.com/program2006.pdf ) – 6:30 p.m. on the Parsons Avenue Stage. This festival is very soulful, jazzy, blue, and hip. I might have to do some spoken word to keep up.

Monday, Sept. 11 it's solo at Andyman’s Treehouse (http://www.andymanstreehouse.com/) and Sept.23 at Tommy Keegan’s ( http://www.tommykeegans.com/ ).

Saturday, Sept. 30 I’ll open for my friends the Moops at Larry’s (http://www.larrysbar.com/ ).

Tuesday, Oct. 10 I’ll be in McKinleyville, California playing the Six Rivers Brewery (http://www.sixriversbrewery.com/).

Thursday, Oct. 12 I’ts off to Santa Cruz playing for the Santa Cruz Ukulele Club, one of the largest such organizations in the world (http://www.ukuleleclub.com/) . You can hear an NPR story on the club at:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5584525

Back in Ohio, the Prodigal Sons and I will Play the Pumpkin Show (in its 100th Celebration Year) on Friday, Oct. 20, at 1:30 p.m. on the Main Street Stage (http://www.pumpkinshow.com/).

That's it for now - that's plenty for an old guy; we'll cross the next bridge when we come to it. Hope to see you somewhere along the way.

- Uke Man

The Wisdom of Solomon

(He should work on his voice, though - tone & pacing, mainly) 

The World's Greatest Card Trick Revealed!!! *

Well Folks,

Guess what I found!!

Check it out:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKXL9PtSHZ0&NR

- Uke Man

* Explains the card trick posted earlier at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KrdBUFeFtY

Charter Schools - Pimpin' the Kids

 

How "Democracy" works

Hey Folks,

Democracy is supposed to serve the people, ALL the people, the voters. With that in mind you'd think that what our elected officials do would be intended to serve the people, all the people.

Well, think again.

The Charter School scheme was sold as a way to "improve education" especially for minorities being "left behind" by the "soft racism of low expectations."

Yeah, Republicans really care about minorities - that should have been the insurmountable tip-off that the scheme was crap. Actually it was hatched up to reduce spending on schools, produce profits for entremanures, weaken teachers unions, and con minorities into good thoughts about the kindly, white Republicans. There was nothing educational about it.

Check out the article below and see what the story is turning out to be - eight years down the road from the date of purchase.

- Uke Man



Ohio’s charter schools are failing to perform as well as its public schools
Monday, August 28, 2006
RICHARD GUNTHER

How well are charter schools meeting the needs of Ohio’s children and taxpayers?

When charter schools were first established eight years ago, state legislators argued that by allowing the private sector to compete with public schools, free of regulation by local school boards and the state board of education, charter schools would provide higher quality education more efficiently than traditional public schools. These privately owned and managed schools enrolled more than 70,000 students and received nearly a half-billion tax dollars last year, and it is high time that we look at the evidence to see if this policy has been successful.

Data released by the Ohio Department of Education on Aug. 14 demonstrated that most public schools are performing very well. Seventy percent of public schools statewide were categorized as excellent or effective, up from the 58 percent in those two top categories last year. These same data make clear that most charter schools have failed to achieve the quality promised by proponents. Only 17 percent were rated excellent or effective.

The most shocking finding is that 49 percent of charter schools statewide were given failing grades: 18 percent were placed on academic watch, while 31 percent were declared to be under academic emergency. This compares with just 6 percent in each category for public schools.

In central Ohio, the situation is even worse: Two-thirds of charter schools in Franklin County received failing grades, with an astonishing 52 percent of them placed on academic emergency, the lowest ranking. All 10 of the highestrated schools in central Ohio were traditional public schools. Conversely, seven of the 10 lowest-rated schools in central Ohio were charter schools.

Proponents of charter schools often claim that their performance suffers from the disproportionate enrollment of at-risk pupils in urban areas. In fact, data for public and charter schools in Ohio’s eight largest cities do not reveal a consistent difference with regard to composition of student populations. There are somewhat more blacks in charter schools (73 percent vs. 61 percent), but public schools in these urban areas have higher percentages of special-education and disabled students, members of other minority ethnic groups, percentages of pupils for whom English is a second language and children from economically disadvantaged families.

A study by the Ohio Education Association, the state’s largest teachers’ union, took these factors into account by comparing public schools with charter schools within the same neighborhood in Ohio’s eight largest cities. It found that, by a wide margin, public schools perform much better on state-mandated standardized tests than charter schools in the same neighborhood.

In a world of unlimited money, the charter-school experiment might be justifiable. But the diversion of state funding has deprived public schools of badly needed money. In the Columbus school district, the fiscal crisis has led to the elimination of more than 900 teaching positions over the past four years, with several hundred more slated for elimination. In short, the costs of this failed experiment have undermined public education’s ability to place enough teachers in the classroom.

The basic design of the charter system is flawed and unfair to public education. Public schools are held accountable to the Ohio Department of Education. Why did charter schools receive $487 million in taxpayer dollars last year, but with no ODE oversight? Why should charter-school students be exempt from the testing requirements established by the No Child Left Behind law? Why should business executives, some of whom have made millions dollars in campaign contributions to politicians, be allowed to make enormous profits from managing charter schools at the taxpayers’ expense? And when will our elected officials demand that private institutions deliver a high-quality education in exchange for receiving hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars a year?

Competition among schools might be a good thing over the long term. But that competition must be conducted with the same standards of performance and accountability imposed on all.

Richard Gunther is a professor of political science at Ohio State University and is the 2006 recipient of the university’s Distinguished Scholar Award.
Richardgunther1 @netscape.net

 

Bush 10 Years Ago and Now

Hey Folks,

Judge for yourself:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NvVilAlCBYc

- Uke Man

"Wonderous!!!!"

 

Kathleen Parker is at it again!! (she Loves Zombies)

Hey Folks,

There are always two sides to every story, and Kathleen Parker will give you both of them. It just depends on whose ox is getting gored.

Invariably if someone to the left is in question, she trots out the authoritarian, hard-line, fire-and-brimstone, accountability, crime and punishment rhetoric. If the focus is on a Righty – as with the George Allen’s “macaca” incident – she breaks out the violins and plays the give-him-a-break, oh-come-on, that’s-not-what-he-said/meant, it’s-no-big-deal, do-you-want-to-hurt-America medley.

Having perceived – after much study – that Allen had a long history as a Righty (as well as a racist), she rosined up her bow.

Her discord is reproduced below – with my comments in red.

- Uke Man



Society makes great sacrifices in this age of unending, often raw information (Yeah, we have to think for ourselves, what a pain!! What a "sacrifice"!!!)
Monday, August 28, 2006
KATHLEEN PARKER

The age of YouTube, iPod, blogs, Technorati and Digg — combined with 24-7 insta-everything — has created both a wondrous and horrifying (she's not talking about interminable Mentos & Diet Pop videos) world.

Wondrous belongs to the spectators, who are free to google, oogle and giggle (passive oogling giggling SPECTATORS - entertainment - is "wonderous" [check John Lennon's line in "Working Class Hero"] ) . Horrifying is the realm of actors (not "passive-ors"- not SPECTATORS like us). Not actors of the Tom Cruise variety, though Maverick’s meltdown surely is as much a function of the relentless Eye as of his odd behavior.

I’m talking more about real people (people not like us who "google, oogle, and giggle" - "real" people) who mount life’s stage in good faith to do things that matter (unlike googling, oogling, and giggling - which IS "wonderful" and quite suitable for regular folks - just not "real people" ). To shape events, to mold policy, to advance civilization (on what basis? according to whom? certainly not according to us; we just need to keep busy googling, oogling, and giggling while REAL people act). Not everyone is qualified for the job, clearly, but neither is every critic a worthy adversary (especially not those severely affected by the "actors").

What passes for acceptable criticism today was unimaginable a generation ago (she must be unaware of Nixon's campaign tactics in his 1950 Senate campaign against Helen Gahagan Douglas). So, too, are the mechanisms for capturing and distributing our every public — or private — moment.

Where once you made a gaffe in front of 100 people, today you do it in front of millions. Not once, but forevermore. YouTube, the Web site where anyone can post a video, has become a favorite hitching post for riders of the blogosphere. And what about tapping any citizens' phones "whenever" and without oversight and without notice? No tears there?

Count me in. I love it. I watch TV segments I missed. Today, I watched a wrenching homage to the Lebanese people. Yesterday it was the amazing wardrobe-changing act from an episode of America’s Got Talent. Not long ago, I watched a tape of Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead singing the national anthem in 1993 at San Francisco’s Candlestick Park. Spectacular.

And then there was Sen. George Allen, R-Va. Will he ever survive the macaca tape (should he?)? Probably not, because no one will ever forget (should they?). It’s there, captured for all time, rewound and replayed a thousand times, archived in the ethers of the World Wide Web, forever and beyond.

Likewise, if you give a speech to, say, 500 people in Ohio, you’re talking to them, those people, those faces, those eyes. You direct your remarks, your jokes, your expressions, to them (and if they are racists or homophobes or sexists - damn it! - real people who want to shape events, mold policy, and advance civilization ought to be able to play to their prejudices without worrying about some macaca with a video cam putting it up for happy, oogling-giggling Americans to get upset over).

But then you’re on the Web, podcasted, excerpted, spliced, inserted, critiqued by strangers (googlers and gigglers) and reviled by . . . whom? Anonymous. They — the googlers, ooglers and gigglers — are Everyone and No One In Particular. Which is it, Kathleen? Is everyone reviling Allen or is it no one?

I’ve been on the receiving end of Anonymous enough times to glimpse what higher-profile actors (oh, she considers herself someone who shapes events, molds policy, and advances civilization - an actor, although at a lower level than Allen) get to enjoy (she deserves it - that's why it hurts so much). Imagine being president of the United States. No thanks.

It’s not about having thick-enough skin to withstand the pressure and constant scrutiny. You can grow it over time. It’s whether you want to. Is anything worth that kind of self-sacrifice? Who will run for public office in such an environment? (this old bullshit!! Who runs for office now? Who always has? Only hacks that follow the party line which is determined by the big boys who as John Jay used to say "own this country") Only the exhibitionist? Only the hardest-nosed, thickest-skinned among us? What kind of people will they be? What kind of nation will we become? Not to worry - Bush & Co. will have it already totally fucked by 2008. And there's always Katherine Harris and Coach Dave to step into the void.

Something about our new anonymous world (as to that, who IS "Foxxx News"? everyone and no one?) has brought out the worst in all of us. We neither impose nor honor limits (e.g. Dubya, the Commander in Chief, contends he is not limited by either law or the Constitution - [you won't hear Kathleen complaining about that] ). The raunchy fare of late-night TV is now commonplace at prime time. The scatological has become pathological.

Wednesday night, I caught Keith Olbermann on MSNBC talking about President Bush’s reported fondness for bathroom jokes. I’m no prude when it comes to jokes (I bet she'd love the "Aristocrats"!!), but I’m way past potty humor. Olbermann apologized to viewers who might be offended (can you spell: I-R-O-N-Y ??), saying that he was merely repeating what already had been reported by U.S. News & World Report. (Ok, Kathleen, you want to beat up on Olbermann for reporting farts; where's your censure of the Farter in Chief? or is that flatulence of a different odor?)

Two thoughts: He didn’t have to relay it; he didn’t have to then expand the report to show Bush wearing expressions in photographs that could be suggestive of a potty joke’s punch line. Olbermann and a comedic sidekick provided captions and commentary. Oh, I see. It was a schtick of choice, a preemptive strike. He didn't have to do it, but our safety came first.

It’s hard to describe how bad it was. There’s a time and place for irreverent humor, but coming up with clever new ways to describe flatulence and relating it to the president (the president is the one who related fart jokes and even farted in front of new hires for "comic" effect, and YOU're going after the reporter?) isn’t, as my mother used to say, cute or funny.

It’s dumb. "Dumb" and "Dubya" - isn't that the title of an old fart-joke movie?

I don’t mean that fools shouldn’t be exposed, or that corrupt politicians or racists or what have you should be protected (just HER fools, corrupt politicians, racists, and what-have-you's). The vast array of media options also allows citizens greater access to useful information (to paraphrase Dylan: you can look up anything you want as long as it doesn't change anything). That goes in the "wondrous" column. But somewhere in this increasingly unprivate world, we (she means the Little People) have to develop a personal ethics that respects the privacy of others and, above all, their humanity. She means the privacy and humanity of the "real" people like her and Allen and the Pres - the ones who shape events, mold policy, and advance civilization - not us googlers, ooglers, and gigglers.

If not, our choices for future leaders will be either Mr. Narcissist or Ms. Perfect. One knows only what he wants; the other knows nothing at all. Well, we already have both, don't we? And all in one swaggering package. Our beloved President, No. 43, certainly knows what he wants, and - as he's left no doubt - he knows nothing at all.

Wee didn't need to Google to see that! And we're not giggling!

Kathleen Parker writes for The Orlando (Fla.) Sentinel.
kparker@kparker.com

"Problem!!???"

"No problem." 

Help the world; Wake up a Zombie Today!!!

Hey Folks!!!

Are we as fucking stupid as we seem? Are we so comfortable in the vat - "eating" our virtual steak, "drinking" our virtual wine, ogling the virtual girl in the hot, red virtual dress - that we are happy with the "Blue Pill"?

It's not that we don't know the truth!!! It's that we CHOOSE to deny the truth!!!

As Leonard Pitts says below, "Apparently, some of us don’t understand the stakes here."

Help the world, Folks. Wake up at least one Zombie every day.

- Uke Man



Bush administration’s penchant for secrecy goes beyond reason
Sunday, August 27, 2006
LEONARD PITTS JR .

The conventional wisdom has it that John F. Kennedy was the first television president.

Meaning not that he was president when the medium began to impact the nation — that distinction goes to Dwight D. Eisenhower — but that he was the first to understand its potential and exploit its power. The signature illustration is the famous debate with Richard M. Nixon. People who watched it on television felt the handsome, vigorous Democrat trounced the ailing, haggard Republican. Curiously enough, many of those who heard the debate only on radio gave the edge to Nixon.

Forty-six years later, I submit to you that we are undergoing a similarly seismic moment in presidential communication: George W. Bush is the first Information Age president.

Like Kennedy, he arrived a little late; he was not in office when information access became the currency of daily life. Yet, he was the first president to understand the potential and exploit the power of that development. Unfortunately, he does so to our detriment. While Kennedy used television to expand presidential influence, Bush has controlled information toward a more dubious end: the curtailment of that great threat to imperial power, the informed electorate.

Last week, The Washington Post ran a fascinating story based on a report from the National Security Archive, a research library at George Washington University. According to the report, the Bush administration has been blacking out of previously public documents information on the nation’s strategic military capabilities. They are doing this, they say, in the name of national security. Got a question on the Minuteman missile? Tough. Curious about the Titan II? Too bad.

Now maybe you wonder what the problem is. This is sensitive information we’re talking about, right? Can’t have that falling into just anybody’s hands, right?

The thing is, it’s already in "anybody’s" hands: It dates back half a century to the Cold War. We’re talking about memos, charts and papers that have over the years been cited in open congressional hearings, reported in newspapers, used in history books. We’re talking about information our government long ago deemed innocuous enough to provide even to its former enemy, the Soviet Union.

And now — now! — we’re supposed to believe it’s suddenly so sensitive it has to be classified top-secret? Please.

This is a classic case of locking the barn after the horse has escaped — and died of old age. More to the point, it is a classic and absurd example of the present regime’s mania for secrecy, its obsessive need to control what, when, how and why you and I learn about its activities.

Anyone who doesn’t see a pattern here has not been paying attention. From its 18-hour blackout of news that the vice president had shot a man, to its paying a newspaper columnist to write favorable pieces, to its habit of putting out video press releases disguised as TV news, to its penchant for stamping Top Secret on anything that doesn’t move fast enough, this administration has repeatedly shown contempt for the right of the people to know what’s going on. At a time when information is more readily available than ever, this government is working like 1952 to enforce ignorance.

And the people, too many of them, shrug. As if we learned nothing from Abscam, Iran-contra, Vietnam, Watergate. As if it’s OK for an arrogant and paternalistic government to decide for us what we get to know.

Well, it’s not. An informed electorate is the lifeblood of democracy, the ultimate check on despotic ambitions.

One wonders if most people get this. One suspects that most people do not. How can you get it and not be outraged? How can you get it and not feel fear? Apparently, some of us don’t understand the stakes here.

It’s not just information they’re trying to control.

Leonard Pitts Jr. is a columnist for the Miami Herald. lpitts@herald.com

World's Worst Card Trick 

"The World's Greatest Card Trick"

Hey Folks,

How does he do it?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KrdBUFeFtY

- Uke Man

"Then, throw the bum out!!"

 

Some News Blurbs from CLG News

Hey Folks,

As Yogi Berra is said to have said, "You can see a lot by just looking."

**

Take a look.

**

- Uke Man

*

**

***

****

*****

Breaking News and Commentary from Citizens for Legitimate Government

28 August 2006http://www.legitgov.org/
All links to articles as summarized below are available here:
http://www.legitgov.org/index.html#breaking_news

US set to bypass UN over Iran 28 Aug 2006 The British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, faces the embarrassing prospect of once again being asked to back the US over the United Nations as Washington prepares to forge a diplomatic "coalition of the willing" [US, Israel] to pursue economic sanctions against Iran.

Israel air force chief to plan war on Iran 27 Aug 2006 Israel has appointed a top general to oversee a war against Iran, prompting speculation that it is preparing for possible military action against Teheran's nuclear programme. Maj Gen Elyezer Shkedy, Israel's air force chief, will be overall commander for the "Iran front", according to military sources spoken to by The Sunday Telegraph.

Russia blocks sanctions against Iran 26 Aug 2006 Russia ruled out imposing economic sanctions on Iran yesterday, delivering a blow to America's efforts to isolate Teheran's regime in protest over its nuclear programme.

Ahmadinejad launches new nuclear project 26 Aug 2006 Iran's president launched a new phase in the Arak heavy-water reactor project on Saturday, saying Tehran would not give up its right to nuclear technology despite Western fears it is aimed at producing a bomb. [See: U.S. Cold War gift: Iran nuclear plant --Now cited as evidence of weapons activity, facility was provided to shah's government 24 Aug 2006]

Leading Iraq archaeologist flees --Archaeologist is well known internationally for his efforts to recover Iraq's looted antiquities [by Bush's barbarians]. 26 Aug 2006 Iraq's most prominent archaeologist, Donny George, has fled the country and is reported to have said poor security and political pressures forced him out.

Bush's corpora-terrorists continue to rape Iraq: Weary Iraqis Face New Foe: Rising Prices 26 Aug 2006 For Mehdi Dawood, Iraq’s failures have leached into the cucumbers, a staple of every meal that now devours a fifth of his monthly pension. Fuel and electricity prices are up more than 270 percent from last year’s, according to Iraqi government figures. Tea in some markets has quadrupled, egg prices have doubled...

Pay no attention to the Jerk behind the curtain !! 

What else is new????

Hey Folks,

This story is by a local Columbus man with a long history of establishment, right-of-center, knee-jerk support of authority in matters related to public education. That makes his Bush-damning story all the more credible.

It seems to me particularly indicative of the reality underlying our "democracy" in this "Christian" nation, this "shining city on the hill," this beacon of morality and altruism." Politicians can argue - and they always do - that war profiteering (they don't call it that) is necessary to protect us. They have a hard time, though, claiming that they have to shaft school kids to keep us safe.

Their hope is that no one will notice. This time it didn't work out, but then - as I said - this was a local story by an occasional writer. How many people saw it?

The juggernaut rolls on!!

- Uke Man



Book publisher’s ties to Bush a bit too cozy
Saturday, August 19, 2006
WILLIAM BAINBRIDGE

Critics of the Bush administration have been vocal about the Bush family ties to defense contractors at a time of war and, more recently, to their ties to the price of gasoline. Few, however, have noted the close and profitable relationship with the leadership of publishing giant McGraw-Hill, which, with sales of $6 billion in 2005, produced an annualized return of 19 percent last year.

President Bush has managed to keep his family’s relationship with the company alive and well — a relationship that, according to The Nation, began in the 1930s between the president’s grandfather, Prescott Bush, and James McGraw Jr., greatuncle of current McGraw-Hill Chairman Harold McGraw, III.

While it is generally accepted that exchanging favors among business friends in the private sector is common, the ethics of such practices between government officials and private business interests is another matter.

Consider:

• State governments will have spent as much as $5 billion with private companies in the next two years in direct costs to develop, score and report the Bush administration’s No Child Left Behind tests, which are designed to record student performance. This is the estimate from the federal Government Accountability Office. Only four companies tend to control test development: CTB, a testing division of McGraw-Hill, Texas-based Harcourt, Illinois-based-Riverside and London-based Pearson. McGraw-Hill’s CTB division appears to be dominating this lucrative new industry with contracts in nearly half the states. The test publishers have spent millions with government officials and at some foundations on reforms that produce more corporate profits rather than substantive benefits for students.

• The National Reading Panel adopted standards for a heavily scripted phonics program, favoring the Open Court series by the nation’s largest phonics publisher, McGraw-Hill. The company’s representatives dominated the panel and the same pubic-relations company worked on the federal plan that promoted Open Court in Texas, under then-Gov. George W. Bush. The findings were billed as "scientifically based" built on its "success" in the Houston Independent School District. This "success" has since been found to be predicated on an educationalstatistics scandal.

• U.S. government speakers at conferences have been accused by education leaders of crossing an ethical line by endorsing McGraw-Hill products, including Open Court and the SRA/McGraw Hill Direct Instruction program.

• The Association of American Publishers saw the need to send a letter to the secretary of education indicating concern that some programs were receiving explicit preference. "We request that you again clarify that there is no federally approved list, in this case for assessments, for which Reading First funds can be used," the letter said in part.

• It was announced that Standard & Poor’s, a McGraw-Hill company known for business credit ratings and risk analysis, would receive U.S. Department of Education and "nonprofit" foundation funding to build a "public-private collaboration" to report No Child Left Behind data.

• Harold McGraw III, whose companies are major beneficiaries of federal education funds to school systems, was appointed a member of the president’s transition advisory team. He also was appointed to the board of directors of ConocoPhillips, the chairmanship of the National Council on Economic Education and the Education Task Force of the Business Roundtable.

Meanwhile, two former secretaries of education received the Harold W. McGraw Prize in Education. When one considers the influence the Department of Education has over spending by school systems with educational publishers, accepting this award from a publisher raises certain ethical questions.

Some would consider these matters as examples of the help-myfriends and pay-to-play culture that has been widely reported as permeating the White House. It is difficult to see how such attitudes and practices benefit children and contribute to taxpayers’ efforts to support improved student performance.

William L. Bainbridge is distinguished research professor at the University of Dayton and president and chief executive officer of SchoolMatch, a Columbus-based educational auditing, research and data company.

bainbridge@schoolmatch.com

Steve Forbes says Fidel is worth $550,000,000 - Fidel says Forbes is a deranged pantywaist.

Who do You believe? 

What Mistake ??

Hey Folks,

I must say, Eugene Robinson comes at Fidel Castro with a lot fairer, less negative perspective than one usually sees in the "liberal press."

For example, unlike most of the capitalist scavengers circling Havana, he suggests: "All the hopes and fears invested in the advent of a post-Fidel era may have to be deferred." My thoughts exactly.

He says, "I’ve been to Cuba nine times, and not even the dissidents believe that Castro has done a Baby Doc or a Mobutu and stashed millions abroad in numbered bank accounts." Yep!!

He admits: "Castro reportedly was appalled by what he saw in modern [capitalist] China: a growing gap between rich and poor." Surprise, surprise.

He says: "I came to believe that Castro probably smiles when he sees the fortunate few who do have cars stopping to pick up the hitchhikers who gather at almost every major intersection. The scene brings the communist ideal to life: "From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs."

But then he says Castro made a mistake: "The mistake, of course, would be communism."

Well, I guess so. If he'd only chosen capitalism, he could have had "a growing gap between rich and poor," he could have "stashed millions abroad in numbered bank accounts," and the wealthy could just run over the stinking unemployed scum on the corners instead of giving their fellow Cubans a lift.

- Uke Man

Castro will go to his grave never knowing how wrong he was
Wednesday, August 16, 2006
EUGENE ROBINSON

Dressed not in his green fatigues but in a white Adidas track suit with red and blue stripes, Fidel Castro posed for photographs — apparently over the weekend, though it’s hard to be sure — holding up a copy of the official newspaper Granma to prove he had survived to his 80 th birthday. "Absolved by history," said the front-page headline, and it was hard to read the phrase as anything but the perfect, almost inevitable, exit line.

Castro’s first attempt at revolution was a raid on Santiago’s Moncada barracks on July 26, 1953. Bad planning and amateurish execution led to failure, and Castro was captured and put on trial. Before going to prison, he gave a famous courtroom speech in which he made what seemed a hopelessly quixotic prediction: "History will absolve me."

So now, half a century later, an old man claims his absolution. The invocation of that historical touchstone would be enough by itself to suggest that Castro believes his era is at an end, but his birthday message to the Cuban people left even less room for doubt. He confronts a long and risky recovery, he wrote, and Cubans should be "optimistic, and at the same time always ready to face any adverse news."

Hours after the photographs and message were published, Castro’s brother and designated successor, Raul, made his first public appearance as acting head of state, meeting Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez at Havana’s airport. Castro had been ailing for two weeks, but Sunday felt like transition day.

Even if Castro survives this crisis, it is hard to imagine he could ever reclaim the unquestioned dominion he has exercised over Cuba for the past 47 years as leader, micromanager, theorist of revolution and ultimate authority on everything. As long as he remains alive, though, it is hard to imagine anyone, even his brother, taking Cuba in a new direction. All the hopes and fears invested in the advent of a post-Fidel era may have to be deferred.

For now, we can examine the claim Castro made from his hospital room. Should that headline have read, "Absolved by himself"?

One theory is that he’s simply an old man who made a mistake a long time ago and is too stubborn to admit it. The mistake, of course, would be communism. My problem with this analysis is that it requires the old man to have at least the shadow of a doubt, and I don’t think Castro does. I think he may be the last of the true believers.

I’ve been to Cuba nine times, and not even the dissidents believe that Castro has done a Baby Doc or a Mobutu and stashed millions abroad in numbered bank accounts. People who see him socially have told me he lives far better than most Cubans (which isn’t saying much), but not at all lavishly. Forbes magazine claimed last year that Castro is worth $550 million, but based that on the value of "state-owned assets Castro is assumed to control." I thought that was tendentious. Controlling stateowned companies isn’t the same as robbing them.

I used to wonder why Castro, assuming he was never going to allow multiparty elections, didn’t at least follow the Chinese leadership’s example and open up the economy while retaining absolute political control. Despite the U.S. trade embargo, Cuba’s moribund economy could have blossomed. But Castro reportedly was appalled by what he saw in modern China: a growing gap between rich and poor. When the Cuban economy collapsed in the 1990s, Castro allowed just enough private enterprise so that people could survive. Once things got better, he took it all back.

It finally dawned on me that Castro likes Cuba the way it is, a glorious shambles with myriad inefficiencies and problems.

Reform-minded Cuban officials used to whisper to me that soon there would be a private market in real estate. But Castro would never allow it. I think he likes a system in which everyone has a roof, though it’s leaky, and surgeons live next to bricklayers in crumbling tenements.

Most Cubans aren’t allowed to buy new cars, even if they have the money. I used to think this was just a method of control, but I came to believe that Castro probably smiles when he sees the fortunate few who do have cars stopping to pick up the hitchhikers who gather at almost every major intersection. The scene brings the communist ideal to life: "From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs."

But the old man in the tracksuit made a mistake. I think he’ll die without ever believing that, let alone admitting it.

Eugene Robinson writes for the Washington Post Writers Group.
eugenerobinson@washpost.com

"An' then I said, 'Jesus, you go long, an' I'll drop the bomb on Iran!' "

"On four !!" 

Katherin Harris's Dream Candidate

Hey Folks,

I take no satisfaction from Zachary Daubenmire’s present jeopardy. It’s sad really.

But as “Coach Dave” might say, quoting the Holy Book, “"And the LORD passed by before him, and proclaimed, The LORD, The LORD God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, Keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children's children, unto the third and to the fourth generation." Exodus 34:6-7

Yep, ol’ Coach Dave is a Looney Tune on a good’ol’boy jihad (er . . . he calls it a Crusade), and he's nuttier than a fruitcake. He got canned from his coaching (preaching??) job at London High School because he wouldn’t stop leading prayers. Now he runs “all over creation” spouting his retro, Christian-fascist line.

He ran for Ohio’s State School Board (God didn’t help him “win this one for the Dauber”) as the Constitution Party candidate. Check out their zany platform at: http://ohiocp.org/platform.php .

It says, among other things:

“We reject the notion that sexual offenders are deserving of legal favor or special protection, and affirm the rights of states and localities to proscribe offensive sexual behavior [they clearly aim this at gays whom they find "offensive"– I bet it doesn’t apply to coaches’ kids].”

and

“We recognize that parents have the fundamental right and responsibility to nurture, educate, and discipline their children”

Sounds good on paper, but do you think Coach Dave WILL be held responsible? Or was it secular humanism and the lure of eventually collecting Socialistic Security that turned the boy to sin??

Dave taught him to love Football and Jesus!! What more could he have done?

Anyway, here’s the story.

- Uke Man





Crusader’s son faces child-porn charge
By Randy Ludlow
The Columbus Dispatch
Friday, August 25, 2006 12:08 AM

The son of conservative religious activist Dave Daubenmire has been charged with downloading child pornography onto a computer at the family's Licking County home.

Zachary Daubenmire, 24, was arrested Tuesday by sheriff's detectives and charged with pandering obscenity involving a minor, a felony punishable by two to eight years in prison.

A repair technician working on the Daubenmires' computer on Monday called authorities after finding digital videos showing girls having sex with men, said Capt. Chad Dennis.

The video files, marked "illegal," were found under Zachary Daubenmire's user profile on the computer and apparently were not viewed by anyone else, Dennis said.

The younger Daubenmire, who lives with his parents at their Thornville-area home, confessed during questioning that he downloaded the videos, according to a court affidavit. He was freed on bond after spending a night in jail.

After his arrest, Zachary Daubenmire was dismissed as a volunteer assistant football coach at Heath High School, said Ellis Booth, assistant principal and athletics director.

WBNS-10TV's Laura Cole reported that the younger Daubenmire was to start this fall as a special-education teacher at Licking Heights High School.

Zachary Daubenmire was a star quarterback at London High School, where he played for his father, and went on to play football at Kenyon College and Denison University.

His father, who founded Pass the Salt Ministries and Minutemen United, has fought pornography as part of his religious crusade.

In a statement, Dave and Michele Daubenmire wrote that they were thankful their son's "sin" was discovered and that "he no longer had to hide the rot in his soul."

"The wound has been exposed; he has come clean; we can finally help him get well."

The elder Daubenmire gained national attention in 1999 when the American Civil Liberties Union sued the London school district to halt the coach's tradition of leading his team in prayer.

rludlow@dispatch.com

12 fervent coocoo's for Katherine!!!

It's the witching hour in Jebville 

Coocoo!! coocoo!! coocoo!! coocoo!! coocoo!! coocoo!! coocoo!! coocoo!! coocoo!! coocoo!! coocoo!! coocoo!!

Rep. Harris' religious remarks draw ire

MIAMI - U.S. Rep. Katherine Harris told a religious journal that separation of church and state is "a lie" and God and the nation's founding fathers did not intend the country be "a nation of secular laws."

The Republican candidate for U.S. Senate also said that if Christians are not elected, politicians will "legislate sin," including abortion and gay marriage.

Harris made the comments in the Florida Baptist Witness, the weekly journal of the Florida Baptist State Convention, which interviewed political candidates and asked them about religion and their positions on issues.

Separation of church and state is "a lie we have been told," Harris said in the interview, published Thursday, saying separating religion and politics is "wrong because God is the one who chooses our rulers."

"If you're not electing Christians, then in essence you are going to legislate sin," Harris said.

Her comments drew criticism, including some from fellow Republicans who called them offensive and not representative of the party.

Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., who is Jewish, told the Orlando Sentinel that she was "disgusted" by the comments.

"Congresswoman Harris encourages Americans from all walks of life and faith to participate in our government," said a brief statement from the Harris campaign. "She continues to be an unwavering advocate of religious rights and freedoms."

Harris' opponents in the GOP primary also gave interviews to the Florida Baptist Witness but made more general statements on their faith.

Harris, 49, faced widespread criticism for her role overseeing the 2000 presidential recount as Florida's secretary of state.

State GOP leaders — including Gov. Jeb Bush — don't think she can win against Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson in November. Fundraising has lagged, frustrated campaign workers have defected in droves and the issues have been overshadowed by news of her dealings with a corrupt defense contractor who gave her $32,000 in illegal campaign contributions.

And a Video too!! from 2 Live Crew

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vX6uuN1Ff-A

"Kiss me, you fool!! She already knows what we're thinking!!!"

 

But can she testify in court?

Hey Folks,

It's no wonder some people believe anything Bush & Co. tell them!!!

If they buy this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7vD3c0xzwI

They'll buy anything !!!

- Uke Man

The "Domesday" (doomsday) Book & 16th Century Taxmen

The Domesday Book was a census done by William the Conqueror (Worm - see E.A. Poe) to find out what everybody had so he could take what he wanted. 

Krugman Festival - Part 3 - King Louis-Louis!! He gotta go NOW!!

August 21, 2006

Tax Farmers, Mercenaries and Viceroys
By PAUL KRUGMAN

Yesterday The New York Times reported that the Internal Revenue Service would outsource collection of unpaid back taxes to private debt collectors, who would receive a share of the proceeds.

It’s an awful idea. Privatizing tax collection will cost far more than hiring additional I.R.S. agents, raise less revenue and pose obvious risks of abuse. But what’s really amazing is the extent to which this plan is a retreat from modern principles of government. I used to say that conservatives want to take us back to the 1920’s, but the Bush administration seemingly wants to go back to the 16th century.

And privatized tax collection is only part of the great march backward.

In the bad old days, government was a haphazard affair. There was no bureaucracy to collect taxes, so the king subcontracted the job to private “tax farmers,” who often engaged in extortion. There was no regular army, so the king hired mercenaries, who tended to wander off and pillage the nearest village. There was no regular system of administration, so the king assigned the task to favored courtiers, who tended to be corrupt, incompetent or both.

Modern governments solved these problems by creating a professional revenue department to collect taxes, a professional officer corps to enforce military discipline, and a professional civil service. But President Bush apparently doesn’t like these innovations, preferring to govern as if he were King Louis XII.

So the tax farmers are coming back, and the mercenaries already have. There are about 20,000 armed “security contractors” in Iraq, and they have been assigned critical tasks, from guarding top officials to training the Iraqi Army.

Like the mercenaries of old, today’s corporate mercenaries have discipline problems. “They shoot people, and someone else has to deal with the aftermath,” declared a U.S. officer last year.

And armed men operating outside the military chain of command have caused at least one catastrophe. Remember the four Americans hung from a bridge? They were security contractors from Blackwater USA who blundered into Falluja — bypassing a Marine checkpoint — while the Marines were trying to pursue a methodical strategy of pacifying the city. The killing of the four, and the knee-jerk reaction of the White House — which ordered an all-out assault, then called it off as casualties mounted — may have ended the last chance of containing the insurgency.

Yet Blackwater, whose chief executive is a major contributor to the Republican Party, continues to thrive. The Department of Homeland Security sent heavily armed Blackwater employees into New Orleans immediately after Katrina.

To whom are such contractors accountable? Last week a judge threw out a jury’s $10 million verdict against Custer Battles, a private contractor that was hired, among other things, to provide security at Baghdad’s airport. Custer Battles has become a symbol of the mix of cronyism, corruption and sheer amateurishness that doomed the Iraq adventure — and the judge didn’t challenge the jury’s finding that the company engaged in blatant fraud.

But he ruled that the civil fraud suit against the company lacked a legal basis, because as far as he could tell, the Coalition Provisional Authority, which ran Iraq’s government from April 2003 to June 2004, wasn’t “an instrumentality of the U.S. government.” It wasn’t created by an act of Congress; it wasn’t a branch of the State Department or any other established agency.

So what was it? Any premodern monarch would have recognized the arrangement: in effect, the authority was a personal fief run by a viceroy answering only to the ruler. And since the fief operated outside all the usual rules of government, the viceroy was free to hire a staff of political loyalists lacking any relevant qualifications for their jobs, and to hand out duffel bags filled with $100 bills to contractors with the right connections.

Tax farmers, mercenaries and viceroys: why does the Bush administration want to run a modern superpower as if it were a 16th-century monarchy? Maybe people who’ve spent their political careers denouncing government as the root of all evil can’t grasp the idea of governing well. Or maybe it’s cynical politics: privatization provides both an opportunity to evade accountability and a vast source of patronage.

But the price is enormous. This administration has thrown away centuries of lessons about how to make government work. No wonder it has failed at everything except fearmongering.

Cartoon comparing aristocratic consumption with workers' poverty - 1909

 

Krugman Festival - Part 2 - Some reason to hope? Maybe, but don't hold your breath

August 18, 2006

Wages, Wealth and Politics
By PAUL KRUGMAN
(a ukethanks to Phyll)

Recently, Henry Paulson, the Treasury secretary, acknowledged that economic inequality is rising in America. In a break with previous administration pronouncements, he also conceded that this might be cause for concern.

But he quickly reverted to form, falsely implying that rising inequality is mainly a story about rising wages for the highly educated. And he argued that nothing can be done about this trend, that “it is simply an economic reality, and it is neither fair nor useful to blame any political party.”

History suggests otherwise.

I’ve been studying the long-term history of inequality in the United States. And it’s hard to avoid the sense that it matters a lot which political party, or more accurately, which political ideology rules Washington.

Since the 1920’s there have been four eras of American inequality:

• The Great Compression, 1929-1947: The birth of middle-class America. The real wages of production workers in manufacturing rose 67 percent, while the real income of the richest 1 percent of Americans actually fell 17 percent.

• The Postwar Boom, 1947-1973: An era of widely shared growth. Real wages rose 81 percent, and the income of the richest 1 percent rose 38 percent.

• Stagflation, 1973-1980: Everyone lost ground. Real wages fell 3 percent, and the income of the richest 1 percent fell 4 percent.

• The New Gilded Age, 1980-?: Big gains at the very top, stagnation below. Between 1980 and 2004, real wages in manufacturing fell 1 percent, while the real income of the richest 1 percent — people with incomes of more than $277,000 in 2004 — rose 135 percent.

What’s noticeable is that except during stagflation, when virtually all Americans were hurt by a tenfold increase in oil prices, what happened in each era was what the dominant political tendency of that era wanted to happen.

Franklin Roosevelt favored the interests of workers while declaring of plutocrats who considered him a class traitor, “I welcome their hatred.” Sure enough, under the New Deal wages surged while the rich lost ground.

What followed was an era of bipartisanship and political moderation; Dwight Eisenhower said of those who wanted to roll back the New Deal, “Their number is negligible, and they are stupid.” Sure enough, it was also an era of equable growth.

Finally, since 1980 the U.S. political scene has been dominated by a conservative movement firmly committed to the view that what’s good for the rich is good for America. Sure enough, the rich have seen their incomes soar, while working Americans have seen few if any gains.

By the way: Yes, Bill Clinton was president for eight years. But for six of those years Congress was controlled by hard-line right-wingers. Moreover, in practice Mr. Clinton governed well to the right of both Eisenhower and Nixon.

Now, this chronology doesn’t prove that politics drives changes in inequality. There were certainly other factors at work, including technological change, globalization and immigration, an issue that cuts across party lines.

But it seems likely that government policies have played a big role in America’s growing economic polarization — not just easily measured policies like tax rates for the rich and the level of the minimum wage, but things like the shift in Labor Department policy from protection of worker rights to tacit support for union-busting.

And if that’s true, it matters a lot which party is in power — and more important, which ideology. For the last few decades, even Democrats have been afraid to make an issue out of inequality, fearing that they would be accused of practicing class warfare and lose the support of wealthy campaign contributors.

That may be changing. Inequality seems to be an issue whose time has finally come, and if the growing movement to pressure Wal-Mart to treat its workers better is any indication, economic populism is making a comeback. It’s still unclear when the Democrats might regain power, or what economic policies they’ll pursue when they do. But if and when we get a government that tries to do something about rising inequality, rather than responding with a mixture of denial and fatalism, we may find that Mr. Paulson’s “economic reality” is a lot easier to change than he supposes.

 

Krugman Festival - Part 1 - The Boogey Man'll Getcha if ya don't watch out!!

August 14, 2006
Hoping for Fear
By PAUL KRUGMAN

Just two days after 9/11, I learned from Congressional staffers that Republicans on Capitol Hill were already exploiting the atrocity, trying to use it to push through tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy. I wrote about the subject the next day, warning that “politicians who wrap themselves in the flag while relentlessly pursuing their usual partisan agenda are not true patriots.”

The response from readers was furious — fury not at the politicians but at me, for suggesting that such an outrage was even possible. “How can I say that to my young son?” demanded one angry correspondent.

I wonder what he says to his son these days.

We now know that from the very beginning, the Bush administration and its allies in Congress saw the terrorist threat not as a problem to be solved, but as a political opportunity to be exploited. The story of the latest terror plot makes the administration’s fecklessness and cynicism on terrorism clearer than ever.

Fecklessness: the administration has always pinched pennies when it comes to actually defending America against terrorist attacks. Now we learn that terrorism experts have known about the threat of liquid explosives for years, but that the Bush administration did nothing about that threat until now, and tried to divert funds from programs that might have helped protect us. “As the British terror plot was unfolding,” reports The Associated Press, “the Bush administration quietly tried to take away $6 million that was supposed to be spent this year developing new explosives detection technology.”

Cynicism: Republicans have consistently portrayed their opponents as weak on terrorism, if not actually in sympathy with the terrorists. Remember the 2002 TV ad in which Senator Max Cleland of Georgia was pictured with Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein? Now we have Dick Cheney suggesting that voters in the Democratic primary in Connecticut were lending aid and comfort to “Al Qaeda types.” There they go again.

More fecklessness, and maybe more cynicism, too: NBC reports that there was a dispute between the British and the Americans over when to make arrests in the latest plot. Since the alleged plotters weren’t ready to go — they hadn’t purchased airline tickets, and some didn’t even have passports yet — British officials wanted to watch and wait, hoping to gather more evidence. But according to NBC, the Americans insisted on early arrests.

Suspicions that the Bush administration might have had political motives in wanting the arrests made prematurely are fed by memories of events two years ago: the Department of Homeland Security declared a terror alert just after the Democratic National Convention, shifting the spotlight away from John Kerry — and, according to Pakistani intelligence officials, blowing the cover of a mole inside Al Qaeda.

But whether or not there was something fishy about the timing of the latest terror announcement, there’s the question of whether the administration’s scare tactics will work. If current polls are any indication, Republicans are on the verge of losing control of at least one house of Congress. And “on every issue other than terrorism and homeland security,” says Newsweek about its latest poll, “the Dems win.” Can a last-minute effort to make a big splash on terror stave off electoral disaster?

Many political analysts think it will. But even on terrorism, and even after the latest news, polls give Republicans at best a slight advantage. And Democrats are finally doing what they should have done long ago: calling foul on the administration’s attempt to take partisan advantage of the terrorist threat.

It was significant both that President Bush felt obliged to defend himself against that accusation in his Saturday radio address, and that his standard defense — attacking a straw man by declaring that “there should be no disagreement about the dangers we face” — came off sounding so weak.

Above all, many Americans now understand the extent to which Mr. Bush abused the trust the nation placed in him after 9/11. Americans no longer believe that he is someone who will keep them safe, as many did even in 2004; the pathetic response to Hurricane Katrina and the disaster in Iraq have seen to that.

All Mr. Bush and his party can do at this point is demonize their opposition. And my guess is that the public won’t go for it, that Americans are fed up with leadership that has nothing to hope for but fear itself.

"What's good for me is good enough for everyone else!!!"

 

A Man Who Can See - Bob Herbert

Hey Folks,

Herbert has a brain. The dips running things don't!! It's: "run the country/world like a business" that the morons-in-charge believe.

All their lives they've been on top of the corporate framework: whatever they say goes! If the company goes under, they parachute with the gold! If anybody speaks up, they are fired. If anyone resists, they are inexorably ground down. If they go to court, the ginks own the judge. If an honest judge happens to be filling in, the legislature "adjusts" the law to legalize the illegal. Everything always works for these fucks - no matter what happens to everyone else.

Hence, their present attitude.

Unfortunately for them, reality will eventually catch up with any con man who persists long enough in his caper. Unfortunately for us, by that time things are usually in pretty bad shape.

- Uke Man


August 14, 2006
Op-Ed Columnist
Aiding Our Enemies
By BOB HERBERT
(a ukethanks to Phyll)

“Fanaticism consists in redoubling your effort when you have forgotten your aim.”
— George Santayana

Here we go again.

I wonder if Americans will continue to fall for the political exploitation of their fears of terrorism, or if voters will begin to show some awareness of the fact that they have been cynically manipulated, and that our current policies have been disastrously counterproductive.

The disrupted plot to blow up as many as 10 passenger jets bound for the United States was a reminder, as if we needed a reminder, that the threat of terror remains both real and imminent. And it was a reminder that the greatest danger to Americans here at home continues to be an attack by a group affiliated with, or inspired by, Al Qaeda.

That being the case, what in the world are we doing in Iraq?

There was something pathetic about the delight with which Republicans seized upon the terror plot last week and began trying to wield it like a whip against their Democratic foes. The G.O.P. message seemed to be that the plot foiled in Britain was somehow proof that the U.S. needed to continue full speed ahead with the Bush administration’s disastrous war in Iraq, and that any Democrat who demurred was somehow soft on terrorism.

The truth, of course, is that the demolition derby policies of the Bush administration are creating enemies of the United States, not defeating them. It cannot be said often enough, for example, that the catastrophic war in Iraq, which has caused the deaths of tens of thousands, was a strategic mistake of the highest magnitude. It diverted our focus, energy and resources from the real enemy, Al Qaeda and its offshoots, and turned Iraq, a country critically important to the Muslim imagination, into a spawning ground for terrorists.

Almost three years ago, in the immediate aftermath of the bombing of the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad, Jessica Stern, who lectures on terrorism at Harvard, wrote in The New York Times that the U.S. had created in Iraq “precisely the situation the Bush administration has described as a breeding ground for terrorists: a state unable to control its borders or provide for its citizens’ rudimentary needs.”

Ms. Stern went on to say, “As bad as the situation inside Iraq may be, the effect that the war has had on terrorist recruitment around the globe may be even more worrisome.”

The situation has grown only worse since then. While Republicans are savoring the political possibilities of a foiled terror plot, the spiraling chaos in Iraq and other Bush administration policies are contributing mightily to the anger and radicalism in the Muslim world.

Ms. Stern, the author of “Terror in the Name of God: Why Religious Militants Kill,” said in an interview last week:

“We’re in a world where Islamist terrorist leaders are teaching their followers that they have been humiliated. Well, first of all, it’s true that Islamic civilization has fallen behind economically, intellectually, politically. It was once the greatest civilization. That’s true. But the terrorist leaders teach their followers that not only is this humiliating, but somebody else is to blame — and that’s us. They say that we have deliberately set out to destroy the Islamic world and humiliate Muslims.”

While it’s not true that the United States is trying to humiliate the Muslim world, said Ms. Stern, “I think that as we contemplate our policy remedies today, we also need to think about how they may ultimately be used by our terrorist enemies to recruit.”

The debacle in Iraq, and inhumane policies like torture, rendition and the incarceration of Muslims without trial at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, serve only to strengthen the appeal of militants who are single-mindedly dedicated to the destruction of American lives.

The U.S. needs to be much, much smarter in its efforts to counter this mortal threat. We should be focused like a laser on the fight against Al Qaeda-type terrorism. We need to ramp up our security efforts here at home. (Even as the terror plot in Britain was emerging, the Bush administration was trying to eliminate millions of dollars in funding for explosives-detection technology. Congress blocked that effort.) We need a new approach to foreign policy that draws on the wisest heads both here and abroad. And we need a strategy for withdrawal from Iraq.

In a world that is growing more dangerous by the hour, it’s time to try something new.

Sad Sack

And his Cousin 

Google "failure"

Hey Folks,

Someone's having fun!

Google: failure

and you can have fun too!!!
(a ukethanks to Dan)

- Uke Man

 

Pee Wee & Tom

Hey Folks,

If you check in here regularly, you know I’ve been disgusted with Thomas Friedman’s obtuseness (or “obtusity” in W-Speak) for a long time.

He won’t give me any rest. Usually it’s naïve “Pollyanna-ism” or Little Boy “why-won’t-they-listen-to-me-ism” that gets my goat. Now it turns out that he is irony-challenged as well (is that a politically incorrect topic?)

How did this guy get where he is? He IS good-looking, and his WIFE is intelligent. Is that all it takes?

Anyway, below is EXACTLY what he wrote at the start of a recent column.

For fun try this: As you read the short passage, if/when you come across an incredibly ironic statement, scream real loud (like when you hear the secret word). Then say (real loud (like when you hear the secret word) what you think is ironic about it.

Depending on a number of factors, you may be screaming real loud multiple times. That is allowed!!!

After I sign off at the bottom, I’ll print what I yelled real loud!!

Have fun!!!

Thomas L. Friedman:

“I’m not sure yet who’s the winner in the war between Hezbollah and Israel, but I know who the big loser is: Iran’s taxpayers. What a bunch of suckers.

Isn’t it obvious? As soon as the reckless war he started was over, Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, declared that Hezbollah would begin paying out cash to the thousands of Lebanese families whose homes were destroyed.”

- Uke Man



I said (real loud):

“ ‘IRAN’s taxpayers!!!!! Suckers!!!!!!’ YOU are the one who helped sucker the American taxpayers into throwing a lot more money than that (and our rights too) down a rat hole!!!”

“ ‘Obvious’??!! You idiot!!! ‘Reckless war he started’??!! You idiot!! YOU are the one who supported Bush in waging his reckless, unnecessary war of choice!! Why wasn’t that obvious to YOU, you moron!!!”

“How does your wife put up with you?”

 

See Kyle !!!

Hey Folks,

It probably won't be printed, but here's what I sent the Dispatch letter editor - and eleven other people at Ohio's Greatest Home Newspaper - in response to fascist mouthpiece Michael Barone.

- Uke Man


To the Editor,

I was totally taken by surprise as I began Michael Barone’s column in the Tuesday Dispatch. The next emotion was rage.

How dare Barone declare that in “our war” we “face enemies,” “covert” enemies” “in large numbers in our midst”! This is blatant McCarthyism!!

He clearly compares anyone who is critical of any American mistake, misdeed, or crime to the “overt”terrorists; and just as clearly claims they are against America; warning that they are “harder to identify” – implying that they are harder to “fight.”

He describes a conspiracy of devious anti-Americanism spawned and nurtured by “ideas that have been transmitted over a long generation by the elites who run our universities and our schools, and who dominate our mainstream media.” This is blatant McCarthyism!!

At the same time, his argument is filled with nonsense. Is it “our” war, when the majority of people oppose it? Are school teachers “elite”? The entire piece is rampant with distortions, stereotypes,falsehoods, subtle fear mongering, half-truths, and scapegoating.

This is the very kind of propaganda McCarthy spewed at his critics! It is a shade of the libel Hitler spread against the Jews!

Is no one awake at the Dispatch editor’s desk? Or does the paper endorse Barone’s style of “journalism”? In any case, the Dispatch bears some responsibility for any ugly consequences growing out of Barone’s sick thesis.

Yours - Tom Harker

Suffer the little Dollars to come unto me

 

Jesus Saves - his followers invest

Hey Folks,

Here's a wake-up call for those who confuse faith with gullibility and disparage "the reality-based community." If these schemes had worked, Jesus would have gotten the credit. They didn't; does Jesus get the blame?

It might even turn out that Jesus DOESN'T support the war to see which god is bigger - contrary to what a lot of the duped church-goers of this story probably believe.

- Uke Man


Religion-related fraud getting worse
By RACHEL ZOLL, AP Religion Writer Sun Aug 13, 3:53 PM ET

Randall W. Harding sang in the choir at Crossroads Christian Church in Corona, Calif., and donated part of his conspicuous wealth to its ministries. In his business dealings, he underscored his faith by naming his investment firm JTL, or "Just the Lord." Pastors and churchgoers alike entrusted their money to him

By the time Harding was unmasked as a fraud, he and his partners had stolen more than $50 million from their clients, and Crossroads became yet another cautionary tale in what investigators say is a worsening problem plaguing the nation's churches.

Billions of dollars has been stolen in religion-related fraud in recent years, according to the North American Securities Administrators Association, a group of state officials who work to protect investors.

Between 1984 and 1989, about $450 million was stolen in religion-related scams, the association says. In its latest count — from 1998 to 2001 — the toll had risen to $2 billion. Rip-offs have only become more common since.

"The size and the scope of the fraud is getting larger," said Patricia Struck, president of the securities association and administrator of the Wisconsin Department of Financial Institutions, Division of Securities. "The scammers are getting smarter and the investors don't ask enough questions because of the feeling that they can be safe in church."

Cases in recent years show just how vulnerable religious communities are.

Lambert Vander Tuig, a member of Saddleback Church in Lake Forest Calif., ran a real estate scam that bilked investors out of $50 million, the Securities and Exchange Commission says. His salesmen presented themselves as faithful Christians and distributed copies of "The Purpose Driven Life," by Saddleback pastor Rick Warren, according to the SEC. Warren and his church had no knowledge of Vander Tuig's activities, says the SEC.

At Daystar Assembly of God Church in Prattville, Ala., a congregant persuaded church leaders and others to invest about $3 million in real estate a few years ago, promising some profits would go toward building a megachurch. The Daystar Assembly was swindled and lost its building.

And in a dramatically broader scam, leaders of Greater Ministries International, based in Tampa, Fla., defrauded thousands of people of half a billion dollars by promising to double money on investments that ministry officials said were blessed by God. Several of the con men were sentenced in 2001 to more than a decade each in prison.

"Many of these frauds are, on their face, very credible and legitimate appearing," said Randall Lee, director of the Pacific regional office of the SEC. "You really have to dig below the surface to understand what's going on."

Typically, a con artist will target the pastor first, by making a generous donation and appealing to the minister's desire to expand the church or its programs, according to Joseph Borg, director of the Alabama Securities Commission, who played a key role in breaking up the Greater Ministries scam.

If the pastor invests, churchgoers view it as a tacit endorsement. The con man, often promising double digit returns, will chip away at resistance among church members by suggesting they can donate part of their earnings to the congregation, Borg says.

"Most folks think `I'm going to invest in some overseas deal or real estate deal and part of that money is going to the church and I get part. I don't feel like I'm guilty of greed,'" Borg says.

If a skeptical church member openly questions a deal, that person is often castigated for speaking against a fellow Christian.

Ole Anthony of the Trinity Foundation Inc. in Dallas, which investigates fraud and televangelism, partly blames the churches themselves for the problem. Anthony contends that the "prosperity gospel" — which teaches that the truly faithful are rewarded with wealth in this life — is creeping into mainstream churches.

Chuck Crites, a former member of Crossroads Church, learned firsthand how effective con artists can be.

The businessman was swindled out of $500,000 by Harding in a Ponzi scheme, which uses money from newer investors to pay off older ones.

Crites said Harding, who pleaded guilty last year to wire fraud and money laundering, boasted about helping fund a new Christian high school for Crossroads and hired a music pastor from the megachurch as a sales agent. "At one point he even told me how much money he had given to the church that year," Crites said.

Harding was nabbed with the help of Barry Minkow, who was himself convicted of fraud years ago. Minkow eventually became a pastor in San Diego and started the Fraud Discovery Institute, which is dedicated to investigating scams.

Crites is putting his money toward a new fraud-awareness kit for churches and other groups that Minkow is developing.

"It made me angry at how people are abusing the trust that exists in church communities," Crites said.

Investigators say all denominations are at risk, but the most susceptible communities are ones where members are deeply engaged in church activities, such as service programs and small group prayer, giving con artists plenty of chance to ingratiate themselves with congregants.

Often, perpetrators are so successful building an image as good Christians that churchgoers won't cooperate with law enforcement authorities even after the crime is revealed.

"Money has a way of blinding objectivity, even for we who are believers," Minkow says.

Look! Behind the lecturn!! It's a bird, it's a plane ...

It's Stupor Man !!! 

Hey Folks,

Remember the "Bizarro" comparison I used a few postings below?

I'm proud to say that John Stewart - just a few hours after the Uke Man - used it AGAIN !!! (a ukethanks to Bob)

Enjoy:

http://www.comedycentral.com/motherload/player.jhtml?ml_video=73350&ml_collection=&ml_gateway=&ml_gateway_id=&ml_comedian=&ml_runtime=&ml_context=show&ml_origin_url=%2Fshows%2Fthe_daily_show%2Fvideos%2Fheadlines%2Findex.jhtml&ml_playlist=&lnk=&is_large=true

- Uke Man

"Secert enemies !! Their amongus !! Ah got a list !!"

"Sense o' decency? What's that ??" 

Goodnight and Goodluck !!

Hey Folks,

Have you read this crap????

It appeared Tuesday in Ohio's "Greatest Home Newspaper" (the Columbus Dispatch ).

Am I over-reacting? I DID view "Goodnight and Good Luck" just last week and WAS reminded of the insanity of that period of witch-hunting, but I don't think I'm taking this too seriously.

I CAN'T believe this SOB Barone had the audacity to spit out this libel about covert enemies in our midst. I can't believe he's dared hang a target on school teachers, college professors, the media, 60's activists, multiculturists, and pacifists - calling them secret "enemies" and comparing them to "the terrorists."

Is he insane, desperate, or does he know something about Bush & Co.'s plans that we don't know?

In any case, I'm writing to the newspaper - everyone there will get a copy. And I'm calling too!!! This is disgustingly unacceptable!! We are NOT going to have another McCarthy - not without one hell of a fight!!!

- Uke Man


Covert enemies are among us
Tuesday, August 22, 2006
MICHAEL BARONE

In our war against Islamo-fascist terrorism, we face enemies both overt and covert. The overt enemies are, of course, the terrorists themselves. Their motives are clear: They hate our society because of its freedoms and liberties, and want to make us all submit to their totalitarian form of Islam. They are busy trying to wreak harm on us in any way they can. Against them we can fight back, as we did when British authorities arrested the men and women who were plotting to blow up a dozen airliners over the Atlantic.

Our covert enemies are harder to identify, for they live in large numbers within our midst. And in terms of intentions, they are not enemies in the sense that they consciously wish to destroy our society. On the contrary, they enjoy our freedoms and often call for their expansion. But they have also been working, over many years, to undermine faith in our society and confidence in its goodness. These covert enemies are those among our elites who have promoted the ideas labeled as multiculturalism, moral relativism and (the term is Samuel Huntington’s) transnationalism.

At the center of their thinking is a notion of moral relativism. No idea is morally superior to another. Adolf Hitler had his way, we have ours; who’s to say who is right? No ideas should be "privileged," especially those that have been the guiding forces in the development and improvement of Western civilization. Rich white men have imposed their ideas because of their wealth and through the use of force. Rich white nations imposed their rule on benighted people of color around the world. For this sin of imperialism they must forever be regarded as morally stained and presumptively wrong. Our covert enemies go quickly from the notion that all societies are morally equal to the notion that all societies are morally equal except ours, which is worse.

These are the ideas that have been transmitted over a long generation by the elites who run our universities and our schools, and who dominate our mainstream media. They teach an American history with the good parts left out and the bad parts emphasized. We are taught that some of the Founding Fathers were slaveholders —and are left ignorant of their proclamations of universal liberties and human rights. We are taught that Japanese-Americans were interned in World War II — and not that American military forces liberated millions from tyranny. To be sure, the great mass of Americans tend to resist these teachings. By the millions they buy and read serious biographies of the Founders and accounts of the Greatest Generation. But the teachings of our covert enemies have their effect.

Of course, this distorts history. We are taught that American slavery was the most evil institution in human history. But every society in history has had slavery. Only one society set out to and did abolish it. The movement to abolish first the slave trade and then slavery was not started by the reasonguided philosophies of 18 th century France. It was started, as Adam Hochschild documents in his admirable book Bury the Chains, by Quakers and Evangelical Christians in Britain, followed in time by similar men and women in America. The slave trade was ended not by Africans, but by the Royal Navy, with aid from the U.S. Navy even before the Civil War.

Nevertheless, the default assumption of our covert enemies is that in any conflict between the West and the Rest, the West is wrong. That assumption can be rebutted by overwhelming fact: Few argued for the Taliban after 9/11. But in our continuing struggles, our covert enemies portray our work in Iraq through the lens of Abu Ghraib and consider Israel’s self-defense against Hezbollah as the oppression of virtuous victims by evil men. In World War II, our elites understood that we were the forces of good and that victory was essential. Today, many of our elites subject our military and intelligence actions to fine-tooth-comb analysis and find that they are morally repugnant.

We have always had our covert enemies, but their numbers were few until the 1960s. But then the elite young men who declined to serve in the military during the Vietnam War set out to write a narrative in which they, rather than those who obeyed the call to duty, were the heroes. They have propagated their ideas through the universities, the schools and mainstream media to the point that they are the default assumptions of millions. Our covert enemies don’t want the Islamo-fascists to win. But in some corner of their hearts, they would like us to lose.

Michael Barone is a senior writer for U.S. News & World Report. Distributed by Creators Syndicate.

"You dumb!! World not work YOUR Way!! Work MY Way"

In Bizarro Land there is no 4th Amendment 

Quote with Comment - Parts 1 & 2

Quote with Comment Part 1

Bush: I Strongly Disagree With Judge's Ruling Against NSA Wiretap Program
FOXXX "NEWS"


CAMP DAVID, Md. — A federal judge's decision to declare the administration's warrantless wiretapping program unconstitutional is wrong, President Bush said Friday.

"Those who herald this decision simply do not understand the nature of the world in which we live," Bush told reporters at his presidential retreat in Camp David, Md.

Bush ordered the Justice Department to appeal the Thursday ruling by U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor in Detroit. Taylor ruled that the National Security Agency's program that monitors some electronic communication inside the United States without a warrant should be halted.

The program allows the NSA to intercept telephone calls and e-mails without court approval in cases in which the government suspects a party of having links to terrorism.

*** *** ***

Well, Folks !!

As usual, the mutants in the Bizzarro Bush Dimension have it backwards.

The statement, translated to the language of the Reality-Based Dimension, reads:

"Those who herald this decision do understand the nature of the world in which we live. That’s why we can’t let Bush/Cheney/Rove tap, arrest, and imprison anybody they want WITHOUT oversight. Beyond THAT, we also understand the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution (in fact WE can even read it!!). Furthermore, no matter how strenuously Bush, Cheney, and Foxxx News hold their breath and turn blue over HOW DANGEROUS things are and how much they NEED this; it’s STILL both unconstitutional and illegal as well!!!”


Quote with Comment Part 2

In the process of searching the web for this posting, I came across the Fuxxx News report used above. A video was also offered on the site. I don’t watch the Fuxxx “News” Nuthouse on the tube, but I checked out the video.

Jesus H. Christ and John R. Mullins!!! Whoever the zombie anchoring “The Big Story” is, he's a disgrace to the name “journalist” and a transparently fraudulent and shameless purveyor of crap (“news”).

My god!! After introducing the story from the premise of fighting the court ruling in order to “help President Bush fight terrorism,” he even badgers his own Foxxx-Flunky Expert who claims the decision is a sensible interpretation of the law.

Apparently the expert doesn’t "understand the nature of the world in which we live" either (slyly, though, he omits any mention of the Constitution and the 4th Amendment since one Bush “remedy” is to get the puppy-dog Congress to change the law and pretend that the law gets around the Constitution).

Check out this moron (you have to suffer through an ad first):

http://www.foxnews.com/video2/player06.html?081706/081706_bs_bench&Big_Story&Before%20the%20Bench&Before%20the%20Bench&Law%20Center&-1&News&259&&&exp

- Uke Man

"Can't pull out now!!"

"Gotta complete the mission" 

Bush Picks his brain for new talking points

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKBN7gYuWHM&NR

Are there Pomegranates in Valhalla and Heaven, too?

 

From another angle - Walter Lippmann's

Hey Folks,

In a recent column David Brooks who is ALWAYS a limp conservative wiener quoted something I found striking (although HE drew a stupid conclusion from it - which is his habit):

"Walter Lippmann got to the crux of the matter in a speech 65 years ago. People don't become happy by satisfying their desires, he said. They become happy by living within a belief system that restrains and gives coherence to their desires: 'Above all the other necessities of human nature, above the satisfaction of any other need, above hunger, love, pleasure, fame - even life itself - what a man most needs is the conviction that he is contained within the discipline of an ordered existence.' "

I've long noticed the zealous effort evident in many people to protect whatever personal structure they have imposed on reality and adopted as an absolute (see recent posting "Rocket surgery" http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=9617686&postID=115596112795786235).

Examples of this "putting on of blinders" abound:

my country/class/religion/"race"/heritage/gender/tribe/group/party/etc. over everything else - REGARDLESS of ANY challenges from facts in the real world.

Even when the challenges are overwhelmingly convincing, these folks won't budge. Only when enough of them die can younger people discard the long-discredited illusion and replace it with an updated illusion of their own.

I had never thought of this as a "need" - especially a need "above all other" needs - certainly not a need "above hunger, love, pleasure, fame - even life itself."

As striking as I found Lippmann's comment to be, I still don't. The "need" Lippman describes is a shadow of a need, not the thing itself.

A hamburger satisfies a need; it is not the need. Likewise, zealously defending the notion that we are "contained within the discipline of an ordered existence" is not a need but rather an attempt to satisfy some actual need.

This is an important point to consider. If Lippmann is right and I am wrong (which might be the case), then humanity has no hope of ever being more than the self-defeating, self-deluding, willfully hallucinating creatures we have been throughout history.

For as long as humanity survives, one arbitrary, essentially ridiculous (in retrospect) array of "disciplined and ordered existences" will follow another - satisfying, yes, but irrelevant to reality - psychologically practical but objectively destructive and delusional - consecutive Lala Lands seen as ultimate reality and accepted as such only because the majority feels much better "thinking" that way.

I would argue that the drive to be "contained within the discipline of an ordered existence" is an attempt to satisfy a deeper aspect of humanity: Fear.

One could argue that all fear emanates - in the end - from Death, from our knowledge that inevitably we will die. If we ache, or bleed, or break something, these are shadows of death. If we are cold or hot or hungry, these are shadows of death. If we are shunned by our peers or ostracized or demonized or imprisoned, these are shadows of death. And Death and its children are to be feared (at least according to our culture and most others as well).

It is the fear of Death itself that gave rise to religion in the first place - "creating"order that, if blindly accepted, assuages the fear of ultimate annihilation. "You won't die; you'll go to Pluto's Underworld or Valhalla or Heaven and eat pomegranates or engage in mock combat on the plains of Asgard or hang out with Angels."

Once cultures have addressed Death itself, they take on Death's children, creating magical and absolute structures to "protect" themselves from death-in-life. Scapegoating and pecking orders are established, myth and dogma are promulgated, taboos are declared, "wise laws" and practices are devised (i.e. all things are "ordered") in ways that make humanity (at least those of us in control) feel secure, satisfied that we are "contained within the discipline of an ordered existence").

Hence the wisdom of human sacrifice, witch-burning, the Crusades, decimation of indigenous peoples, slavery, the holocaust, and all wars - blessedly in the name of maintaining the satisfaction of an "ordered existence."

It's all so much crap, but unexamined crap is the only crap worth spreading. It doesn't exist because IT is good. It exists because it makes us FEEL good.

This is easily observed in older, defunct cultures. Often we laugh at the "childish" or "transparently self-serving" or "superstitious" nature of these "failed" predecessors. We just won't look at our own because it's perfect; that's official; everyone knows it.

If Lippmann is correct, humanity will always be buried in shit up to its ears, and no amount of self examination will serve to change things. In fact, self examination is impossible in the face of Lippmann's prime directive - essentially, we create what we pretend exists for fear of discovering what actually exists; and we don't dare question our invention!!

Check mate. Game over - now and forever. Praise _________ (choose your favorite imaginary friend).

If I am correct - hope I am - we have nothing to fear but fear itself.

It seems to me that we CAN develop the courage to withdraw ever-increasingly from the soothing embrace of magic, superstition, and arbitrary authority to face real problems with intelligence and rationality.

What Lippmann describes is not a "need" but a drug to salve our need to escape fear. Like a drug, it makes us oblivious of our difficulties, but it does nothing to solve them, and more often than not - as with drugs - it makes matters worse.

I think we can do better than that.

- Uke Man

Did somebody in Iuka Park say "Wish"????

 

I Uked in Iuka !!!!

Hey Folks,

The Picnic Partry in the Park was great fun!!! And it proved the efficacy of Anarchism!! “Chaos” and “Anarchy” are NOT synonymous, as our keepers would have us believe.

Put on by Chris the Anarchist (in the orange shirt) and the musically ubiquitous Myke Rock, a great time was had by all – not to mention that anti-war sentiments were well-expressed.

Power to the people!!

- Uke Man

Chris the Anarchist (organizer) and Myke Rock (music coordinator)

 

My pal John Locke of World Fame and the Stagecoach BBQ & Blues Stage stopped by 

There was a friendly, appreciative crowd (you know those lefties!!) 

Sarah Asher & her Band started off the musical evening 

Next was the soulful Rea Soul 

Then the Uke Man did his thing !!! 

The Fabulous Willie Phoenix finished off the evening 

A Great Time was had by all !!! 

Sanity or Adjustment ???

"Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar" 

Rocket surgery

Hey Folks,

They say “You don’t have to be a rocket scientist or a brain surgeon” to do such and so. Well, it turns out that Uke Man didn’t have to be a Brain Scientist to notice long ago something Robert Sapolsky, a distinguished neuroscientist just discovered and spoke about on NPR (link below - give a listen).

I’ve been speaking to kids at a local high school for a number of years, urging them to trust in themselves to figure things out, to suspect the motives of “experts,” to seek after and discover truth for themselves.

As part of that, I’ve related that most people start out as these young people still are: wondering about the world and seeking to learn and understand, but that at some point, for some reason, they stop looking, latch on to something as if it were the ultimate revelation; and the rest of their lives blindly defend against any perceived “threat” to the “truth” they have personally settled for.

Not only do these folks refuse any new possibilities in their philosophies or politics, but even refuse to enjoy and appreciate music created after their high school or college days.

These people, I tell them, are petrified, ossified; in a way, dead.

Robert Sapolsky noticed this phenomenon as the result of a musically adventuresome young employ's taste. The variety of the kid’s music (which he overheard) pissed him off; so, as a scientist he did a little study.

He thinks his reaction is, down-deep, a genetically or biologically determined trait. I think he’s wrong (and his “study” didn’t seem – based on what I heard – very thorough).

I think people stop growing because in many ways it’s a lot easier, a lot less demanding, a lot less stressful, less tiring, less confusing, less fearful. Here’s a bit of what I present to the kids regarding this:

Here is a list of options. If forced to decide, which one of each pair would YOU choose?

Science or Faith
Learning or Accepting
Education or Indoctrination
Thought or emotion
Knowing or Guessing
Self or Authority
Evidence or Dogma
Activity or Passivity
The Present or the Past
Sanity or Adjustment
Doubt or Certainty
Discovery or Testimonials
Reality or Virtual Reality
Objectivity or Spin
Truth or Fiction
Freedom or Security
Independence or Dependence
Intelligence or Emotion
Courage or Cowardice

The inherent difficulty of the first options – along with the ease of the alternatives - explains the attractiveness of the second options.

Most of us would claim to prefer the first option if confronted by a reporter, but in our daily existence overwhelmingly behave in accordance with the second option.

To listen to what the Brain Scientist said on NPR,
Click here:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5652676

- Uke Man

 

The Truth about the Lebanon Fiasco

Hey Folks,

Isn’t it funny how our “leaders” tell us why they do something and it always turns out that they are lying to us?

What does that say about them?

What does our hesitancy to spit on our leaders say about us?

- Uke Man


Israel is facing a major shake-up
Tuesday, August 15, 2006
GWYNNE DYER

The cease-fire in southern Lebanon will not hold. Israel will probably lose more soldiers killed in combat in the next month than in the past month. Ehud Olmert probably won’t be prime minister of Israel by the end of this year. The U.N.- sponsored ceasefire will not hold because Hezbollah has not been defeated. Despite a month of pounding by Israeli bombs and artillery, it still holds at least 80 percent of the territory south of the Litani River: In most places, Israeli forces have advanced no more than a few miles from the frontier. In the past few days before the cease-fire, Hezbollah was launching twice as many rockets into northern Israel as its daily average in the first week of the war.

So why would it now agree to be disarmed and removed from all of southern Lebanon, the home of its own Shiite supporters? Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s leader, was quite frank: "As long as there is Israeli military movement, Israeli field aggression and Israeli soldiers occupying our land . . . it is our natural right to confront them, fight them, and defend our land, our homes and ourselves." Besides, the Israelis have now offered him an irresistibly tempting target.

Israel’s assault on Hezbollah was as much a "war of choice" as the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Seymour Hersh claims in this week’s New Yorker that the Bush administration approved it in order to deprive Iran (Hezbollah’s ally) of a means of retaliation after U.S. airstrikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities, and the San Francisco Chronicle reports that a senior Israeli army officer made PowerPoint presentations on the planned operation to selected Western audiences more than a year ago.

"By 2004, the military campaign scheduled to last about three weeks that we’re seeing now had already been blocked out," Professor Gerald Steinberg of Bar Ilan University told the Chronicle, "and in the last year or two it’s been simulated and rehearsed across the board."

Olmert was seduced by the plan because, lacking military experience himself, he needed the credibility that comes in Israel only from having led a successful military operation. Otherwise, he would lack support for his plan to impose unilateral borders in the occupied West Bank that would keep the major settlement blocks within Israel, while handing the rest to the Palestinians. So he seized on the kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers and the killing of three others by Hezbollah on July 12, the latest in an endless string of back-and-forth attacks along the northern border, as the pretext for an all-out onslaught on the organization.

Olmert’s lack of military experience also led him to trust the promises of Lt. Gen. Dan Halutz, Israel’s chief of staff, that Hezbollah’s destruction could be accomplished mainly from the air, with Israeli ground troops only going in at the end to mop up. But Rule No. 1 for aspiring national leaders is: never believe air force promises.

Olmert launched his war, bombed lavishly all across Lebanon, pounded the south — and a month later Hezbollah still controlled almost all the territory and was launching several hundred missiles a day at Israel. Time for a cease-fire, but if he had no more than that to show for his war, he would be out of power very fast. So after the U.N. resolution was passed on Friday, but before the cease-fire that formally took effect on Monday morning, he launched an airborne invasion that scattered packets of Israeli troops all over southern Lebanon right up to the Litani.

Israel has not smashed the Hezbollah’s strong-points in southern Lebanon and driven its fighters out. It has deposited its own troops among them checkerboard-fashion, in some cases without any ground line of supply, in order to claim that it now controls the region. And it is counting on the U.N. resolution decreeing the disarming and withdrawal of Hezbollah, and an eventual hand-over by Israel to the Lebanese army and foreign peacekeepers, to protect its soldiers from severe embarrassment. This is probably Olmert’s last mistake.

It is hard to imagine that Hezbollah will resist the temptation to attack all the easy targets that Olmert has now given it in southern Lebanon. It is inconceivable that either the Lebanese army (itself mostly Shiites) or the French and Italians (the core of the proposed peacekeeping force) will try to fight their way into southern Lebanon on Israel’s behalf. There is the potential here for Israel’s first serious operational defeat.

That might be a blessing in disguise for Israel, if it persuaded enough Israeli voters that exclusive reliance on military force to smash and subdue their Arab neighbors is a political dead-end. There is little chance of that. The likeliest beneficiary of this mess is Israel’s archetypal hard-liner, Benjamin Netanyahu, who flamboyantly quit the Likud Party last year in protest at former prime minister Ariel Sharon’s policy of pulling out of the occupied Gaza Strip.

That split Likud and forced Sharon to launch a new party, Kadima, which now dominates the center-right of Israeli politics and is the nucleus of Olmert’s coalition government. But Kadima may not survive this disastrous war, and the heir apparent, at the head of a resurgent Likud, is Netanyahu. The most recent opinion poll in Israel gave him an approval rating of 58 percent.

Gwynne Dyer is a London-based independent journalist whose articles are published in 45 countries.
76312.1476 @compuserve.com

Go Navy!!!

 

New Navy Recruiting Video ???

Click here, and get ready to dance!!!
http://youtube.com/watch?v=jShIeyur1G0

Sunday!! The Uke Man will be There!!

The Park is on the WEST (left) side of N. 4th Street, at Northwood - There's a sign!!! Click on the picture to enlarge it. 

I Uke a Uke at Iuka Park - Sunday !!!

Hey Folks !!

The Uke Man is playing out

this coming Sunday, Aug. 20

“IUKA PARK FOLKS ARTS JAMBOREE”
a Picnic and Art/Music Show

4:00 P.M. until Dark
Local Art on Display

Live Acoustical Music

Ukulele Man - 7:15

Willie “the living legend” Phoenix - 8:15

Sarah “Ukulele Girl” Asher - 5:15
&
Ria Soul - 6:15

Pack a picnic snack and come by
(no open containers)

UPDATE: the park is on the WEST side of 4th Street, just BEFORE Northwood. The map star is for the Iuka Park APARTMENTS on the EAST side of 4th !!

map: http://maps.yahoo.com/maps_result?addr=442+E.+Northwood&csz=Columbus%2C+Ohio&country=us&new=1&name=&qty=

The park is just off North 4th (a north-bound one way street) at Northwood, half way between 17th and Hudson.

- Uke Man

Hey Folks, come on out to the picnic !! 

"Ah speak Mexican"

"an' Ahm workin' on speakin' Germany - hard work!!" 

Look What Appeared in the Newspaper the same Day I wrote about "Islamofascists" !!

Bush’s misuse of ‘fascism’ is indicative of dangerous path U.S. policy is taking
Wednesday, August 16, 2006
GEORGIE ANNE GEYER

In some of history’s super-secret governments, those who would seek knowledge are generally relegated to reading tea leaves or discovering secret messages written in lemon juice on parchment. How lucky we are! All we need to do to figure out what in God’s name our government is going to do next is listen to how President Bush’s words have changed.

If you haven’t noticed, the newest catch phrase is Islamic fascism. The president has repeated it innumerable times; it’s a mantra meant to explain everything, as a third of Lebanon is bashed to bits in our name. He seems to savor the very taste of it on his tongue: Islaaamic fassschism. Sure scares me!

And why not? It is his way of signaling that any young Muslim who doesn’t like him (or freedom, for goodness’ sake) is almost certainly a fascist: a political untouchable after World War II, a pestilence upon the land that can be eliminated only by U.S. and Israeli air forces wiping out the soil upon which he feeds.

But Bush has used the word with the kind of casualness about meaning that only he can conjure up. Fascism came out of Benito Mussolini’s Italy and Adolf Hitler’s Germany. Fascism meant a centralized autocracy, a nationalist regime with severely nationalist policies and regimentation of industry, commerce and finance, rigid censorship and the brutal suppression of the opposition. Fascism in Europe was also tied, by blood and not religion, to one people or one nationality.

Sorry, W, the Muslim radicals you are talking about are about as far from fascism as they are from communism, Christianity, Zoroastrianism or Hinduism. Al-Qaida, Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad or the Taliban: Virtually all are, at least in origin, stateless groups. Nationality means nothing to them. They are scattered like choking bits of dust across the globe, in tiny secret cells, each operating on its own, each with its own interpretation of jihad. Commerce and finance exist only insofar as they serve their militant needs.

So why would the president, no master of words even when playing his hand well, employ such an easily knockeddown concept to characterize what he obviously means to be the next target of his imperial wars in the Middle East after Afghanistan, Iraq and now Lebanon? Simple. Because he thinks it links him to his father’s great cause, World War II; it makes any destructive thing he does acceptable, and at a time when most Americans want to lower the stakes, it gives him reason to up them.

But Islamic fascism is not the only dangerous misuse of language since the Lebanon war began. The Israelis have kept saying — and Washington backed them up in their lethal foolishness — that this time they are going to deal with the "root causes" of Hezbollah in this "different kind of war."

Instead, they have again dealt with the symptoms of the Middle East crisis, the offshoots of Israel’s 1982 invasion and consequent occupation of Lebanon. It’s the same manner they use to deal with the symptoms of the Palestinians’ anti-Israelism — by killing and dehumanizing more Palestinians. Addressing the root causes would mean returning to negotiating the Israeli-Palestinian peace treaty that one could almost touch in the mid-’90s; but we are dealing now with people who like war.

At the same time, the United States and Israel, linked in the mind of the world like twins born with one body, keep insisting that Hezbollah and Hamas — and perhaps soon, the Shiite Sadr Army in Baghdad — can and must never become the state. Yet, history is filled with transitory guerrilla forces that became the political parties and armies of independent states. Examples include North Vietnam, Algeria, East Pakistan, South Africa, Oman and even in Israel itself (the Irgun terrorists became the Likud Party).

From the very beginning of its state, Israel has despised the Arabs so frightfully that it could never call them, or their actions, by the right name; Israel is still "amazed" and "surprised" at having run up against a counterinsurgency capability in southern Lebanon, yet it has fought one counterinsurgency after another since its formation in 1947.

So the United States, with all of its God-given blessings, finds itself in an extraordinary position: square in the middle of a war that will go on in the Middle East forever. That means we have given up our real position of power, which allows us to come in from outside and negotiate and decide.

And if the New Yorker’s Seymour Hersh is right (he usually is), the United States collaborated with Israel to start the Lebanon war to get Hezbollah rockets out of the way before we invade Iran.

Meanwhile, the false words that our leaders employ to distract and mislead us go on and on. (Six months in Iraq . . . no insurgency . . . no civil war . . . roots of the problem . . . Islamic fascism) Using the right words to define an action is a hard thing to do, particularly when essentially you’re lying.

Georgie Anne Geyer writes for Universal Press Syndicate.

Look!! Up in the sky!!!! 

Ukulele Ultra Man

Hey!!

Uke Man as Super Hero!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Px8Rdb3LSGk

The Legal System

As we're told it is / As King George would have it 

A Nation of Laws my Ass

Hey Folks,

Below is the whole thing thus far on the recent decision on King George’s wiretapping adventure.

Please read, skim, or ignore it – depending on how much you already know; but I DID want to comment some on the matter.

The Jimmy Carter haters have another reason: a judge he appointed had the intelligence, integrity, courage, and character to actually do what she swore to do: defend the Constitution.

It’s extremely clear that she’d read the constitution and knew what the words meant. Furthermore she could see that Bush & Co. WANTED the words to mean whatever THEY wanted them to mean.

The judge took prince George to the woodshed.

He, of course, just laughed it off, and his flunkies took to the ramparts hurling hot oil at the evil “activist,” “politically motivated” judge and the plaintiffs, which include the ACLU.

It’s claimed that tapping American phone calls without a warrant is Constitutional and will be ruled as such on appeal.

Well, that’s half true. It is NOT constitutional, but it might be declared so.

Here is the Fourth Amendment:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

That’s pretty damned clear!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The people ARE to be secure, and that SHALL NOT be violated, unless by WARRANT, and then ONLY under certain circumstances!!!

Even a dumb-fuck like Bush can see and understand that!!! BUT, he wants what HE wants; so the Ministry of Truth keeps churning out Declarations that White is Black and Three is Four.

The other major approach of the would-be Emperor-et-entourage is to whine “But we NEEEEED this to PROTECT you!! The stupid judge and the evil ACLU wants YOU dead!!! That means we CAN do it!!! RIGHT??? Do you want to DIE for the Constitution?? DIE for a damned piece of paper??”

That argument is not pertinent. Under our form of government, the Constitution rules. It can be amended, but it can’t be legally ignored – even if ignoring it WOULD make it easier to protect a few people.

The argument really is: I should be able to do whatever I want (i.e. be above the law, essentially act as a king or emperor does) in order to better keep you safe.

On those terms, it is clear that Americans would face a MUCH larger threat from the self-anointed Emperor-monkey than from terrorists, and would surely suffer more as a result of the abrogation of the Bill of Rights.

How this situation plays out, as B.F. Skinner used to say, is an experimental question; time will tell. We have a wonderful ruling NOW, but I am not optimistic.

I’ve been ranting for some time now that the people need to stand up. If this new imperial attempt to further close an iron grip on the people’s throat, an attempt so blatant and transparent, is ultimately blessed by the Supreme Sycophants, we had better hit the streets or start developing enough flexibility to kiss our asses goodbye!!

- Uke Man



Bush Vows to Fight Wiretapping Ruling
By ADAM LIPTAK and ERIC LICHTBLAU
Published: August 18, 2006

WASHINGTON, Aug. 18 — President Bush said today that he is confident that a federal court ruling against his administration’s electronic surveillance program will be overturned, and he described those who hailed the ruling as naïve.

“I would say that those who herald this decision simply do not understand the nature of the world in which we live,” Mr. Bush said in a question-answer session at Camp David, Md. “I strongly disagree with that decision, strongly disagree. That’s why I instructed the Justice Department to appeal immediately. And I believe our appeals will be upheld.”

“We believe, strongly believe, it’s constitutional,” the president added. “And if Al Qaeda is calling into the United States, we want to know why they’re calling.”

A federal judge in Detroit ruled on Thursday that a National Security Agency program to tap the international communications of some Americans without a court warrant violated the Constitution, and she ordered it shut down.

The ruling was the first judicial assessment of the Bush administration’s arguments in defense of the surveillance program, which has provoked fierce legal and political debate since it was disclosed last December. But the issue is far from settled, and the ruling will not take effect at least until after a hearing scheduled for Sept. 7.

In a sweeping decision that drew on history, the constitutional separation of powers and the Bill of Rights, Judge Anna Diggs Taylor of the United States District Court in Detroit rejected almost every administration argument in the case.

Judge Taylor ruled that the program violated both the Fourth Amendment and a 1978 law that requires warrants from a secret court for intelligence wiretaps involving people in the United States. She rejected the administration’s repeated assertions that a 2001 Congressional authorization and the president’s constitutional authority allowed the program.

“It was never the intent of the framers to give the president such unfettered control, particularly when his actions blatantly disregard the parameters clearly enumerated in the Bill of Rights,” she wrote. “The three separate branches of government were developed as a check and balance for one another.”

Republicans said the decision was the work of a liberal judge advancing a partisan agenda. Judge Taylor, 73, worked in the civil rights movement, supported Jimmy Carter’s presidential campaign and was appointed to the bench by him in 1979. She has ruled for the A.C.L.U. in a lawsuit challenging religious displays on municipal property. But she has also struck down a Detroit ordinance favoring minority contractors. “Her reputation is for being a real by-the-books judge,” said Evan H. Caminker, the dean of the University of Michigan Law School.

The government said it would ask Judge Taylor to stay her order at the hearing on Sept. 7.

The Justice Department and the American Civil Liberties Union — which brought the case in Detroit on behalf of a group of lawyers, scholars, journalists and others — agreed that her order would not be enforced until then, but lawyers for the A.C.L.U. said they would oppose any stay after that.

Administration officials made it clear that they would fight to have the ruling overturned because, they said, it would weaken the country’s defenses if allowed to stand.

Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, at a hastily called news conference after the decision, said he was both surprised and disappointed by the ruling on the operation, which focuses on communications of people suspected of ties to Al Qaeda.

Administration officials “believe very strongly that the program is lawful,” said Mr. Gonzales, a main architect of the program as White House counsel and the biggest defender of its legality in a series of public pronouncements that began after the program was disclosed by The New York Times last December.

“We’re going to do everything we can do in the courts to allow this program to continue,” he said, because it “has been effective in protecting America.”

Tony Snow, the White House spokesman, also described the surveillance program as a vital and lawful tool. “The whole point is to detect and prevent terrorist attacks before they can be carried out,” Mr. Snow said. “The terrorist surveillance program is firmly grounded in law and regularly reviewed to make sure steps are taken to protect civil liberties.”

Democrats applauded the ruling as an important affirmation of the rule of law, while lawyers for the A.C.L.U. said Judge Taylor’s decision was a sequel to the Supreme Court’s decision in June in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld that struck down the administration’s plans to try detainees held in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, for war crimes.

“It’s another nail in the coffin of executive unilateralism,” said Jameel Jaffer, an A.C.L.U. lawyer.

But allies of the administration called the decision legally questionable and politically motivated.

“It is an appallingly bad opinion, bad from both a philosophical and technical perspective, manifesting strong bias,” said David B. Rivkin, an official in the administrations of President Ronald Reagan and the first President Bush. “It is guaranteed to be overturned.”

Mr. Gonzales would not say whether the program played any role in foiling a plot last week to set off bombs in airliners bound for the United States from Britain. But Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, Republican of Illinois, suggested that it did play a role in the investigation.


In a written statement criticizing Judge Taylor’s ruling, Mr.Hastert
defended the wiretapping operation and said that “our terrorist surveillance programs are critical to fighting the war on terror and saved the day by foiling the London terror plot.”

His office declined to elaborate.

Mr. Bush alluded to the London plot today as an example of danger in an era of terrorism, but without asserting that the surveillance program had had a role in its detection. “You might remember last week, working with people in Great Britain, we disrupted a plot,” the president said.

Mr. Gonzales said on Thursday that he expected the ruling to figure in the debate in Congress over how and whether to change federal eavesdropping laws. But he said the exact impact was “hard to predict.”

Among competing proposals, Republican leaders have proposed legislation that would specifically permit the wiretapping program.
Some Democrats, however, have introduced legislation that would restrict, or in some cases ban altogether, the government from conducting wiretaps on Americans without a warrant.

The White House is backing a plan, drafted by Senator Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania, with the blessing of President Bush, that would allow a secret court to review the legality of the operation.

But in the view of critics, it could also broaden the president’s authority to conduct such operations. Mr. Gonzales said it appeared to administration lawyers that the Specter legislation, if passed by Congress, “would address some of the concerns raised by the judge in her opinion.”

Another element of the Specter legislation would force other lawsuits over the program — like the one brought by the A.C.L.U. in Detroit — to be consolidated into a single action to be heard by the secret court.

Judge Taylor rejected the government’s threshold argument that she should not hear the case at all because it concerned state secrets. Dismissal on those grounds was not required, she wrote, because the central facts in the case — the existence of the program, the lack of warrants and the focus on communications in which one party is in the United States — have been acknowledged by the government.

The government also argued that the plaintiffs lacked standing to sue because they had not suffered concrete harm from the program. Judge Taylor ruled that the plaintiffs “are stifled in their ability to vigorously conduct research, interact with sources, talk with clients and, in the case of the attorney plaintiffs, uphold their oath of providing effective and ethical representation of their clients.”

Some plaintiffs, the judge wrote, have had to incur travel expenses to visit clients and others to avoid possible monitoring of their communications.

Going beyond the arguments offered against the wiretapping program by many legal scholars, Judge Taylor ruled that it violated not only the 1978 law, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, but also the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures.

The Supreme Court has never addressed the question of whether electronic surveillance of partly domestic communication violates the Fourth Amendment. Judge Taylor concluded that the wiretapping program is “obviously in violation of the Fourth Amendment.”

The president also violated the Constitution’s separation of powers doctrines, Judge Taylor ruled. Neither a September 2001 Congressional authorization to use military force against Al Qaeda nor the president’s inherent constitutional powers allow him to violate the 1978 law or the Fourth Amendment, she said.

“There are no hereditary kings in America and no powers not created by the Constitution,” she wrote, rejecting what she called the administration’s assertion that the president “has been granted the inherent power to violate not only the laws of the Congress but the First and Fourth Amendments of the Constitution itself.”

Republicans attacked the decision. “It is disappointing that a judge would take it upon herself to disarm America during a time of war,” said Representative Peter Hoekstra, Republican of Michigan, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.

Judge Taylor did give the government a minor victory, rejecting on national security grounds a challenge to a separate surveillance program involving data mining. That ruling is consistent with recent decisions of federal courts in San Francisco and Chicago.

Judges in those cases drew a distinction between the wiretapping program, which the administration has acknowledged and defended, and the data mining program, which has not been officially confirmed.
David Stout contributed reporting for this article.

Clinton got a BJ

 

Presidential Morality Wars -Clinton v Bush

Hey Folks,

If you missed Paul's recent comment. he provided a link for a most interesting and uplifting debate on the relative morality of our two most recent Presidents.

It's even in song form!!!

Enjoy:
http://warehouse.nimbit.com/ericschwartz/ClintonBJ.mp3

- Uke Man

"God sent me on a mission!!"

"But the Devil made me do it." 

Nagasaki & Hiroshima

No terrorism there - and no innocent civilians killed - just good ol' shock and awe and a little collateral damage 

Defining Terms #3

Hey Folks,

With what’s been going on, we hear fairly regularly the term “innocent civilians.”

I heard that term when I was a kid. I wondered about it then.

Now, no one thinks dropping the A-Bombs on Japan was a bigger atrocity than I do, but NOT because – as is often argued – it killed “innocent civilians.”

That term, like “terrorist” and “Islamo-fascist,” is meant to mislead rather than inform. Excepting children, when it comes to war (and most other problems), it is not much of a stretch to say, “There are no innocent civilians.”

Of course there ARE civilians – those not in the “armed services” - and apparently, while killing soldiers is acceptable, it is unacceptable – by definition – to kill civilians (because, I guess, they are “innocent”). That always sounded strange and arbitrary to me.

Why was it OK to kill soldiers? Self defense? Most soldiers killed in “modern” warfare are killed from a great distance – not in hand to hand or even door to door combat. More likely than not, the military killer or killee had to travel great distances – sometimes thousands of miles – to kill or be killed.

It seems like most of the time it would be untrue that the dead soldier was a direct threat to the life of his killer; so, self-defense in that sense is out. Even in cases of what the Pope and others characterize as “just” wars (e.g.WWII ) where it is supposed that one or more countries are fighting one or more other countries in self-defense, a large part of the killing that goes on can be shown to be unnecessary simply for defense. It might be necessary to achieve some political end (see my earlier posting on “terrorism,” below), but not for self-defense.Be that as it may, we don’t hear that it’s wrong to kill soldiers.

But what about not killing civilians because they are innocent? For some reason, at a gut level, that always seemed akin to the story we have all heard about the British whining “No fair” when colonial soldiers shot from behind rocks and trees instead of standing up in the middle of the road to make a better target. It's like: “No fair killing civilians!!”

Well, I must admit that I’m not big on killing civilians OR soldiers, and my perspective on the issue at hand owes nothing to blood-lust. It has more to do with hypocrisy.

IF those who whine REALLY opposed killing civilians, I’d be with them, but they don’t. What these clods object to is the “enemy” killing “innocent civilians” (just like we want everyone to follow the Geneva Conventions with OUR soldiers, but we don’t have to with THEIRS).

A big deal is made out of Arab suicide bombers killing “innocent civilians,” but when we or our ally Israel kill “innocent civilians” it’s OK because we “didn’t mean to,” “it was an accident,” just “collateral damage.” No matter that WE have killed multiple times the number of civilians killed by all suicide bombers added together.

I’m sure that “accidentally-killed” civilians (and their survivors) are much happier than civilians killed by indiscriminate "terrorists."

No, the main reason and use of the term – as with “terrorist” and “Islamo-fascist” is to demonize one’s enemy. By definition WE Americans don’t use “terror”; by definition we Americans are not “fascists”; and by definition we Americans don’t kill innocent civilians. Only our enemies ever do THOSE things.

Finally, to the question of whether there actually IS such a thing as an “innocent civilian.”

I’ve heard all sorts of justifications for dropping the Atom Bomb twice on Japan (we might have dropped more, but we only had two), killing mainly civilians. I guess they weren’t considered INNOCENT civilians, but they certainly weren’t “collateral damage” either. Some say they were fair game because they worked to provide war materials for the Japanese war effort.

Well, before my father joined the Navy and became a "legitimate" target, he worked in an aircraft war-factory. I’m sure that if he and his fellow workers had been killed by German or Japanese commandos, we’d have screamed bloody murder about “innocent civilians”!!

Of course, for my part, I would not have wanted either the civilian Japanese workers or my civilian Dad killed, but it is NOT because they were innocent. They were guilty as hell!!

Think about the notion of “innocent civilians.” How are they innocent and of what?

Well, it’s supposedly OK to kill soldiers because they’re guilty of waging war. Civilians are not soldiers; so they’re not guilty; they’re “innocent.”

That’s idiotic. It makes no more sense than saying an army cook and meteorologist - since they don't wage war - are “innocent combatants” or - if those two jobs were contracted out to Halliburton - they THEN are "innocent civilians."

No, every adult in every country that goes to war bears responsibility to varying degrees. Whether we work in munitions factories, work for war-profiteering corporations; scream from the tube, the pulpit, or the street corner for the war; demonize the enemy in our daily activities, support our leaders, fail to stop our leaders from going to war, or actually fight the war; in all these ways and more we all are guilty. We are NOT innocent. We bear responsibility. We know what is going on. We are part of it. There's no magical "King's X"!!

All this we hear from our leaders and their toadies in the media about the evil enemy killing civilians is crap. Many, many civilians ARE being killed, and neither they nor the soldiers SHOULD be killed, but they are NOT innocent – on either side – and, in reality, the monsters who rattle on about this “horrible” killing of civilians don’t give a damn about civilian casualties – on EITHER side - except as they can be used to demonize their competitor!!!

- Uke Man

Frodo failed 

The Onion Reports

Bush Grants Self Permission To Grant More Power To Self
August 1, 2006 Issue 42•31

WASHINGTON, DC—In a decisive 1–0 decision Monday, President Bush voted to grant the president the constitutional power to grant himself additional powers.

"As president, I strongly believe that my first duty as president is to support and serve the president," Bush said during a televised address from the East Room of the White House shortly after signing his executive order. "I promise the American people that I will not abuse this new power, unless it becomes necessary to grant myself the power to do so at a later time."

The Presidential Empowerment Act, which the president hand-drafted on his own Oval Office stationery and promptly signed into law, provides Bush with full authority to permit himself to authorize increased jurisdiction over the three branches of the federal government, provided that the president considers it in his best interest to do so.

"In a time of war, the president must have the power he needs to make the tough decisions, including, if need be, the decision to grant himself even more power," Bush said. "To do otherwise would be playing into the hands of our enemies."

Added Bush: "And it's all under due process of the law as I see it."


Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez:

"The president can grant himself the power to interpret new laws however he sees fit, then use that power to interpret a law in such a manner that in turn grants him increased power."


In addition, the president reserves the right to overturn any decision to allow himself to increase his power by using a line-item veto, which in turn may only be overruled by the president.

Senior administration officials lauded Bush's decision, saying that current presidential powers over presidential power were "far too limited."

"Previously, the president only had the power to petition Congress to allow him to grant himself the power to grant more power to himself," Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez said shortly after the ceremony. "Now, the president can grant himself the power to interpret new laws however he sees fit, then use that power to interpret a law in such a manner that in turn grants him increased power."

In addition, a proviso in the 12th provision of the new law permits Bush the authority to waive the need for any presidential authorization of power in a case concerning national security, although legal experts suggest it would be little exercised.

Despite the president's new powers, the role of Congress and the Supreme Court has not been overlooked. Under the new law, both enjoy the newly broadened ability to grant the president the authority to increase his presidential powers.


Sen. Harry Reid (D–NV

"The only thing we can do now is withhold our ability to grant him more authority to grant himself more power—unless he authorizes himself to strip us of that power."


This gives the president the tools he needs to ensure that the president has all the necessary tools to expedite what needs to be done, unfettered by presidential restrictions on himself," said Rep. John Cornyn (R-TX). "It's long overdue."

Though public response to the new law has been limited, there has been an unfavorable reaction among Democrats, who are calling for restrictions on Bush's power to allow himself to grant the president more powers that would restrict the powers of Congress.

"This is a clear case of President Bush having carte blanche to grant himself complete discretion to enact laws to increase his power," Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) said. "The only thing we can do now is withhold our ability to grant him more authority to grant himself more power."
"Unless he authorizes himself to strip us of that power," Reid added.

Despite criticism, Bush took his first official action under the new law Tuesday, signing an executive order ordering that the chief executive be able to order more executive orders.

In addition, Republicans fearful that the president's new power undermines their ability to grant him power have proposed a new law that would allow senators to permit him to grant himself power, with or without presidential approval.

The Vultures are Coming Home to Roost 

Enough Blame to Go Around

Hey Folks,

I'd add the American public to the list of enablers. Sure, we were lied to, but we went along with our "leaders." We had plenty of reason to oppose the war - and I don't mean just the peace activists!!

Almost everyone, down deep, knew it was wrong. But it was easier for most of us to ignore the whole thing, putting our trust in the strong leader - with the secure knowledge that we could always blame him (instead of ourselves) if it all went to hell. Some knew it was wrong, but lacked the courage to say so in the face of "Why do you hate America?!!!"

Some knew they would benefit financially and didn't care. Some are racists. Some are convinced it will help bring Jesus back sooner. Some are crazy (but I repeat myself).

I didn't do enough either, but it's not over yet.

There is still time to do more!!

- Uke Man


August 7, 2006
The Iraq War Enablers
By BOB HERBERT
(a ukethanks to Phyll)

So there was Hillary Rodham Clinton grandstanding for the television cameras last week, giving Donald Rumsfeld a carefully scripted chewing out for his role in the Bush administration’s lunatic war in Iraq.

Casual viewers could have been forgiven for not realizing that Senator Clinton has long been a supporter of this war, and that even now, with the number of pointless American deaths moving toward 2,600, her primary goal apparently is not to find an end game, but to figure out the most expedient political position to adopt — the one that will do the least damage to her presidential ambitions.

Mrs. Clinton is trying to have it both ways. A couple of months ago, she told a gathering in Washington: “I do not think it is a smart strategy either for the president to continue with his open-ended commitment, which I think does not put enough pressure on the new Iraqi government.” She then added, “Nor do I think it is smart strategy to set a date certain.”

Slick Willie has morphed into Slick Hilly, as the carnival of death in Iraq goes on.

Mrs. Clinton is just one of the many supporters of the war who should have known better from the beginning, and who are now (with the wheels falling off the Iraqi cart and public support for the war plummeting) engaged in the tricky ritual of rationalization.

The favored “it’s not my fault” explanation is that the war was always a grand idea, but the Bush gang was so dopey it fouled up a good thing. If only they’d sent in more troops. If only they hadn’t disbanded Saddam’s army. If only they’d turned right instead of left, or left instead of right, Iraq would be an oil-rich, free-market, democratic paradise, even as we speak.

I’m not trying to give a pass to Mr. Rumsfeld, President Bush, Dick Cheney or any of the rest of the war-loving, high-strutting, muscle-flexing men and women in this most dreadful of administrations. These are the individuals who drove us into the flames of Iraq that so far have consumed scores of thousands of lives. But they could have — and should have — been stopped by wiser heads.

This was a war that never should have happened. There was a legitimate war for the United States to fight in Afghanistan, but that was not enough for the administration. The Bush gang wanted a war with Iraq, and less-than-courageous politicians like Mrs. Clinton and many others lined up as enablers to help make that war happen.

Many of the Democrats in Congress supported the war only because they remembered the price paid by party members who stood against the first gulf war, a stand that became an embarrassment when the war was easily won and was therefore popular.

Despite the rationalizations now suddenly on the lips of so many, the problem with the current war in Iraq is not the way it was conducted, but the fact of the war itself. It was launched amid blinding, billowing clouds of deceit. There was never any legitimate reason for the war. Iraq had not attacked the U.S. and there was no imminent threat of attack.

The U.S. went in with guns blazing (“shock and awe”) like Matt Dillon shooting up the dusty streets of Dodge City. Only this was the real world, and the result has been unending tragedy.

The American occupation of Iraq was guaranteed, sooner or later, to provoke a sustained and bloody resistance, and it was inevitable that terror would be the resistance’s most effective tool. It was also certain that if the Shiites were empowered, there would be widespread retaliation for their many years of suffering under Saddam, and then the inevitable counterreaction of the suddenly disempowered Sunnis, and so on.

None of this was a secret. The warnings came from around the world before the first shot was ever fired.

Mrs. Clinton, other Democrats and whatever sensible Republicans may still be out there should be getting together to work out a plan for an orderly withdrawal of American forces from Iraq. This was not a war we were ever going to win. It’s time we brought our involvement to an end.

Americans no longer support this war, and there are few things more empty of meaning than dying in a war that one’s fellow citizens — safe at home — have already given up on.

We went into Iraq with bombs falling and guns blazing, insisting all the while that we were bringing the Iraqis the gifts of freedom and democracy. Instead, we gave them terror, chaos and civil war — in other words, a whole new generation of misery and mass death.

Shock and awe, indeed.

 

Talk about Fascists & Theocrats, all on the same team

Hey Folks,
(especially choir members and Howard Stern fans)

Check out "FCCFU" !!!!

click here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzaqXFcsH2U

- Uke Man

 

Fascists

 

Defining Terms #2

Hey Folks,

The Bushies have taken to calling the “evil-doers” in the Middle East “Islamofascists.”

Hmmmmm . . .

Well, just exactly what is meant by “Islamofascists”?

As I understand it, a defining characteristic of fascism is its marriage to business and industry. The people are held subservient to the demands of business and the government; one might have once heard, regarding fascist Italy, something like “What’s good for "il Duce" and Gucci is good for Italy.”

Al Kaida and any other “Islamofascist” group Bush & Co. may identify are definitely “Islamo” but they are NOT “fascists.” They are not motivated – like Dick Cheney – to serve the interests of big business. They want to serve their religion. These zealots aren’t interested in creating fascist states!! They are determined to establish THEOCRATIC states!!

So, why not label them “Islamo-theocracists”?

I think the answer goes beyond the likelihood of George butchering the term at press conferences. No, Bush & Co. don’t dare denigrate theocracies because a large part of their constituency and their regime’s cohorts want exactly that – i.e. a theocracy – for THIS country (never mind the constitutional questions therein; Dubya has already called the Constitution “just a goddamned piece of paper”).

More importantly, mis-defining the religious-motivated “evil”-ones as “fascists,” helps divert some Americans from noticing the ACTUAL fascist nature of the entire Bush regime and its big-business/big-money agenda.

Whatever you may think of Osama, he’s not a fascist. He’s a theocrat.

Whatever you may think of Bush, he’s not a democrat. He’s a fascist

- Uke Man

Theocrats

 

 

Nexus of Politics and Terror

Hey Folks,

Is Bushie wagging the dog???

Keith Olberman presents the facts:

http://video.msn.com/v/us/msnbc.htm?f=00&g=3b35792a-ca91-4efb-a461-1d0be4e4368a&p=News_Comment%20-%20Analysis&t=c1149&rf=http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036677/&fg=

You decide. (You know what I think!!)
(you'll have to wait through a short commercial and then click on the specific "Nexus of Politics and Terror" video - otherwise it will play a different clip.)

- Uke Man
(a ukethanks to Sondra)

Uke Man - This Sunday !!!

click the pic to enlarge it 

 

Fascism Anyone?

Hey Folks,

Do you, can you, doubt that Bush & Co. are hell-bent on establishing a fascist state here in “the land of the free and the home of the brave”??

Think the Uke Man has been hyperventilating over phantasms??

Well, check out the check list below; then check back and report.

- Uke Man


FOURTEEN CHARACTERISTICS OF FASCISM

Dr. Lawrence Britt, a political scientist, wrote an article about fascism which appeared in Free Inquiry magazine, a journal of humanist thought. Dr. Britt studied the fascist regimes of Hitler (Germany), Mussolini (Italy), Franco (Spain), Suharto (Indonesia), and Pinochet (Chile). He found the regimes all had 14 things in common, and he calls these the identifying characteristics of fascism. The article is titled "Fascism Anyone?," and appears in Free Inquiry’s Spring 2003 issue on page 20.

The 14 characteristics are:

1.. Powerful and Continuing Nationalism – Fascist regimes tend to make constant use of patriotic mottos, slogans, symbols, songs, and other paraphernalia. Flags are seen everywhere, as are flag symbols on clothing and in public displays.

2.. Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights – Because of fear of enemies and the need for security, the people in fascist regimes are persuaded that human rights can be ignored in certain cases because of "need." The people tend to ‘look the other way’ of even approve of torture, summary executions, assassinations, long incarcerations of prisoners, etc.

3.. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause – The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe; racial, ethnic or religious minorities; liberals; communists; socialists; terrorists, etc.

4.. Supremacy of the Military – Even when there are widespread domestic problems, the military is given a disproportionate amount of government funding, and the domestic agenda is neglected. Soldiers and military service are glamorized.

5.. Rampant Sexism – The government if fascist nations tend to be almost exclusively male-dominated. Under fascist regimes, traditional gender roles are made more rigid. Opposition to abortion is high, as is homophobia and anti-gay legislation and national policy.

6.. Controlled Mass Media – Sometimes the media is directly controlled by the government, but in other cases, the media is indirectly controlled by government regulation, or through sympathetic media spokespeople and executives. Censorship, especially in wartime, is very common.

7.. Obsession with National Security – Fear is used as a motivation tool by the government over the masses.

8.. Religion and Government are Intertwined – Governments in fascist nations tend to use the most common religion in the nation as a tool to manipulate public opinion. Religious rhetoric and terminology is common from government leaders, even when the major tenets of the religion are diametrically opposed to the government’s policies or actions.

9.. Corporate Power is Protected – The industrial and business aristocracy of a fascist nation often are the ones who put the government leaders in power, creating a mutually beneficial business/government relationship and power elite.

10.. Labor Power is Suppressed – Because the organizing power of labor is the only real threat to a fascist government, labor unions are either eliminated entirely or are severely suppressed.

11.. Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts – Fascist nations tend to promote and tolerate open hostility to higher education, and academia. It is not uncommon for professors and other academics to be censored or even arrested. Free expression in the arts is openly attacked, and governments often refuse to fund the arts.

12.. Obsession with Crime and Punishment – Under fascist regimes, the police are given almost limitless power to enforce laws. The people are often willing to overlook police abuses, and even forego civil liberties, in the name of patriotism. There is often a national police force with virtually unlimited power in fascist nations.

13.. Rampant Cronyism and Corruption – Fascist regimes almost always are governed by groups of friends and associates who appoint each other to government positions, and who use governmental power and authority to protect their friends from accountability.

14.. Fraudulent Elections – Sometimes elections in fascist nations are a complete sham. Other times elections are manipulated by smear campaigns against (or even the assassination of) the opposition candidates, the use of legislation to control voting numbers or political district boundaries, and the manipulation of the media. Fascist nations also typically use their judiciaries to manipulate or control elections.

 

"The Notorious V.P."

Here's the rap sheet on Dickie:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yeojIOqVl1Q

The American Dream

 

The American Nightmare

Hey Folks,

A while back I commented on the "Whacko from Waco" who didn't seem to give a damn about screwing the people of America; he figured we'd be getting just what we deserved (since we are "personally irresponsible," picky, lazy, and hesitant to work-until-we-drop-over-dead): http://www.ukuleleman.net/2006/08/whacko-from-waco.html

Below, there's a look at the same problems but with a different, humane, and caring tone.

I do have a problem, though, with some of what he says.

He blames "rogue nations" for challenging us and ignoring us (as if we don't challenge and ignore anyone we choose - and we seem to feel just fine about it. I guess he [like Bush] believes everyone should look out for OUR interests above all else).

He blames foreign competition for loss of jobs and oil prices; but "competition" is the hallmark of market capitalism - the capitalism that incessantly is held up as a God (which explains why "Whacko from Waco" saw no problem with the vast majority of us becoming third-worlders - It's the invisible hand of the sacred market - that's all - get used to it, you lazy whiners! ).

His best hope for the future is: "Will we conduct a search for strong, visionary leaders within the democratic process who will refashion the Dream in line with reduced expectations?"

Well, Pal, good luck!! It's very clear what staying within the present "system" will lead to.

First of all, the "strong leaders" will show up, and they WILL have a vision, and there WILL be "reduced expectations," but only for the people - not the ruling class. The prime directive is: maintain and improve the status of the elite on the top of the heap.

It's always been that way - that's what the system DOES! That's what it's designed to do. Under the system the "American Dream" will be adjusted to whatever level is required: "The British Dream," "The Saudi Arabian Dream," "The Romanian Dream," "The Mexican Dream," or "The Haitian Dream."

But be assured, the elite will continue to be maintained and served by the rest of us. It's true everywhere - even in Haiti. All must sacrifice, even starve to maintain the elevated few! And it will be forced upon the unwilling among the unwashed by "the strong leader," and it will be justified by a repressive theocracy.

You can see it happening here under the Bush Regime already; looking for "strong leaders" within the system is not the answer - that's the problem: the leaders and the system.

The only solution is for the people to stand up.

- Uke Man


Death of the American Dream
August 4, 2006
By JERRY LANDAY - The Providence Journal
(a ukethanks to Phyll)

It slowly dawns on Americans that their lives are changing. For more and more of us, "the American Dream," which we assumed as our birthright -- founded on infinite plenty, a bottomless cup of creature comforts, and fair rewards for hard work -- is fading.

The material components of the Dream were steady jobs, inexpensive mortgages and other credit, cheap gasoline, secure pensions, and flag-waving confidence in imperial America -- an invulnerable power, which could do no wrong.

But the deadly albatross of Iraq, gasoline at over $3 a gallon, weak growth in jobs and pay, by companies that won't share productivity gains with workers and do export their work to Asia, have produced the sharpest drop in consumer confidence since the recession of the early 1980s.

The Dream -- powerful, pervasive, energizing, defining -- has been the holy writ of the middle class. But today, ask the 20,000 union workers about the American Dream at bankrupt Delphi who face permanent layoffs, while thousands of others confront the prospect of pay cut in half. Or ask the thousands more union and salaried workers with jobs at risk at General Motors and Ford -- once the world's auto-and-truck leaders, now with 40 percent of their home market taken by Toyota and Honda. Or ask the retired guys who've been told by the company they served for decades that they're being stripped of their "assured" pensions and health benefits.

Those young home owners lured by cash-free adjustable-rate mortgages to buy homes beyond their means confront rising interest rates, corrosive debt, and possible foreclosure. With the real-estate market sagging, their home equity shrinks.

Adding insult to injury, the redistribution of our dwindling wealth under Bush widens the gap between the "wealth aristocracy" and the rest of us.

The American consumer economy is operating on two tiers. On top are the relative handful of CEOs and investment people, immune from assault. The Republicans' gratuitous tax cuts on investment income have significantly lowered the tax burden on the richest Americans - earning more than $10 million - by an average of about $500,000. Mr. Bush continues to press Congress to make permanent cuts for the privileged while the national deficit goes through the roof.

The rest of us are in a squeeze as inflation is driven by energy costs, medical care, and prescription drugs. Home-foreclosure rates are growing; they jumped an average 13 percent a month nationally at the end of 2005, with highs of 30 percent in Massachusetts, 61 percent in Texas, 70 percent in Arkansas, 145 percent in New Mexico, and 210 percent in West Virginia.

As for America's standing in the world, the fog of the endless Iraq war has cost us friends that it took two world wars to win. Americans who felt pride in our triumphs see the leverage and reputation of this nation squandered.

We are reduced from a beacon of hope to a saber-rattling thug. The Bush foreign policy is nonexistent. The radical right exploits the formless "war on terror" - which can't be won - to retain power by keeping us afraid.

Our ebbing strength inspires reckless challenges from rogue national leaders. In the power vacuum, Iran and Syria unleash their puppets in Lebanon. Kim Jong Il, of nuclear North Korea, blithely ignores Washington and launches his rockets. Iran's Mahmoud Ahmedinejad cold-shoulders blustering Washington and continues to enrich uranium. He and Venezuela's Hugo Chavez make threats against our petroleum supplies.

Competition by Asian industrial powers for shrinking oil reserves further threatens the assumed right of this NASCAR nation to cruise free and easy.

Then there is climate change, which Bush and the carbon-based energy giants want us to shrug off.

All this converges in a "perfect storm."

We high-consumption Americans, who haven't been asked to sacrifice much of anything since World War II, are unused to belt-tightening and uncertainty. The ultimate question - mostly unaddressed by politicians, pundits, sociologists, and psychologists - is how will we behave when it dawns on us that the glory of the American Dream hath departed? Will we conduct a search for strong, visionary leaders within the democratic process who will refashion the Dream in line with reduced expectations?

When dreams fall apart, humans often respond with rage, hysteria, hopelessness and fear. How many more will find false comfort in the preachments of dangerous demagogues, who offer certitude by finding scapegoats? How many will seek solace in radical religious frenzy, pronouncing wrathful judgment on America while routing out "the godless"?

Will the great ideas that have animated America vanish with the retreat of the good life that came to define the American Dream? With what shall we replace them?

(Jerry Landay, a retired CBS News correspondent living in Bristol, R.I., writes on current issues.)

Who's the terrorist???

All these guys - except Bill O'Reilly - he's just an ass. 

Defining Terms #1

Hey Folks,

The Bushies, the press, and just about everybody has taken to calling the evil-doers “terrorists.”

Hmmmmm . . .

Well, just exactly what is meant by “terrorism”?

According to the encyclopedia it is:

“Systematic use of violence to create a general climate of fear in a population and thereby to bring about a particular political objective.”

And a “terrorist,” then, is anyone responsible for doing that (“terrorism”).

It should be clear, once we recognize what “terrorism” is, that everybody involved with war is a “terrorist.” War is waged by one entity to impose its political will on another entity. Since war cannot be waged without the support of the people, destroying the “enemy” population’s support for the war has ALWAYS been integral to “victory.”

Hence the irresistible “need” to burn Atlanta, massacre Indians, bomb Dresden and Hiroshima, to “shock & awe” Iraq. These and innumerable other actions by every entity to ever wage war constitute terrorism just as much as do witch-burning, lynching, suicide bombing, and the attack upon the World Trade and Pentagon buildings.

That is not to make a judgment, but simply to state a clarifying fact. No matter how one may feel about the situation in which we presently find ourselves, it is not only incorrect but harmful to perceive it in terms of “terrorism.” Essentially, the bludgeoning of the “enemy” with the term “terrorist” is meaningless name-calling.

We might as well justify our actions by calling Arabs “rag-headed sub-humans” or some other dehumanizing characterization – just as our ancestors justified black slavery by dehumanizing Africans (see “the White Man’s Burden”).

In both cases the invented “reality” serves only to justify one side’s self-interested position – not to actually deal with the situation.

If we truly want to deal with the situation in the Middle East or anywhere else, those who present us with the terms “terror” and “terrorist” in hopes of “explaining” the situation are either ignorant, blind, or – more likely – bent on propaganda and manipulation.

- Uke Man

Get the picture? 

The Picture of Dorian Lee - Girl takes 1 picture of herself every day for 3 years

Hey Folks,

This young woman was persistent. I hope she keeps it up. I'll watch for updates.

Click here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55YYaJIrmzo&NR

You might be able to get a slightly longer version at: http://www.atomfilms.com/contentPlay/videoAutoPlay.jsp?id=me#


- Uke Man

48% thumb up - 52% thumb down 

Another take on Lie-berman

August 11, 2006
Nonsense and Sensibility
By PAUL KRUGMAN
(a ukethanks to Phyll)

After Ned Lamont’s victory in Connecticut, I saw a number of commentaries describing Joe Lieberman not just as a “centrist” — a word that has come to mean “someone who makes excuses for the Bush administration” — but as “sensible.” But on what planet would Mr. Lieberman be considered sensible?

Take a look at Thomas Ricks’s “Fiasco,” the best account yet of how the U.S. occupation of Iraq was mismanaged. The prime villain in that book is Donald Rumsfeld, whose delusional thinking and penchant for power games undermined whatever chances for success the United States might have had. Then read Mr. Lieberman’s May 2004 op-ed article in The Wall Street Journal, “Let Us Have Faith,” in which he urged Mr. Rumsfeld not to resign over the Abu Ghraib scandal, because his removal “would delight foreign and domestic opponents of America’s presence in Iraq.”

And that’s just one example of Mr. Lieberman’s bad judgment. He has been wrong at every step of the march into the Iraq quagmire — all the while accusing anyone who disagreed with him of endangering national security. Again, on what planet would Mr. Lieberman be considered “sensible”? But I know the answer: on Planet Beltway.

Many of those lamenting Mr. Lieberman’s defeat claim that they fear a takeover of our political parties by extremists. But if political polarization were really their main concern, they’d be as exercised about the primary challenge from the right facing Lincoln Chafee as they are about Mr. Lieberman’s woes. In fact, however, the sound of national commentary on the Rhode Island race is that of crickets chirping.

So what’s really behind claims that Mr. Lieberman is sensible — and that those who voted against him aren’t? It’s the fact that many Washington insiders suffer from the same character flaw that caused Mr. Lieberman to lose Tuesday’s primary: an inability to admit mistakes.

Imagine yourself as a politician or pundit who was gung-ho about invading Iraq, and who ridiculed those who warned that the case for war was weak and that the invasion’s aftermath could easily turn ugly. Worse yet, imagine yourself as someone who remained in denial long after it all went wrong, disparaging critics as defeatists. Now denial is no longer an option; the neocon fantasy has turned into a nightmare of fire and blood. What do you do?

You could admit your error and move on — and some have. But all too many Iraq hawks have chosen, instead, to cover their tracks by trashing the war’s critics.

They say: Pay no attention to the fact that I was wrong and the critics have been completely vindicated by events — I’m “sensible,” while those people are crazy extremists. And besides, criticizing any aspect of the war encourages the terrorists.

That’s what Joe Lieberman said, and it’s what his defenders are saying now.

Now, it takes a really vivid imagination to see Mr. Lieberman’s rejection as the work of extremists. I know that some commentators believe that anyone who thinks the Iraq war was a mistake is a flag-burning hippie who hates America. But if that’s true, about 60 percent of Americans hate America. The reality is that Ned Lamont and those who voted for him are, as The New York Times editorial page put it, “irate moderates,” whose views are in accord with those of most Americans and the vast majority of Democrats.

But in his non-concession speech, Mr. Lieberman described Mr. Lamont as representative of a political tendency in which “every disagreement is considered disloyal” — a statement of remarkable chutzpah from someone who famously warned Democrats that “we undermine the president’s credibility at our nation’s peril.”

The question now is how deep into the gutter Mr. Lieberman’s ego will drag him.

There’s an overwhelming consensus among national security experts that the war in Iraq has undermined, not strengthened, the fight against terrorism. Yet yesterday Mr. Lieberman, sounding just like Dick Cheney — and acting as a propaganda tool for Republicans trying to Swift-boat the party of which he still claims to be a member — suggested that the changes in Iraq policy that Mr. Lamont wants would be “taken as a tremendous victory by the same people who wanted to blow up these planes in this plot hatched in England.”

In other words, not only isn’t Mr. Lieberman sensible, he may be beyond redemption.

Wendy, NOT Collette !!!

Wendy showed up while I searched for Collette - probably her Yankee Cousin !! 

Barbie Gone Bad!!!

Hey Folks,

This was all over the web today (when I first learned of it - a ukethanks to Linda ) - but narry a picture to be found on the genteel news outlets. I finally found a purported picture in World News Today (where else), and you know they can be trusted!!

Enjoy!!!

- Uke Man

Meet Collette . . . ACTION HOOKER
By PAUL KUPPS

PARIS, France -- The latest toy craze to hit France is an action figure that gives a new meaning to the word "action."

"She is beautiful, no?" asked Jacques de John, CEO of Le Joi Du Toys, France's largest toy manufacturer. He was referring to its Collette line of dolls introduced three months ago. "But then," he added with a uniquely Gallic wink and laugh, "she would have to be, given her toy line of work, eh?"

Collette stands 12 inches tall and resembles America's classic Barbie doll. But the similarities end there. While Barbie can be a princess, a nurse, a pilot or any one of a hundred professions that promotes self-esteem, Collette has lots of wardrobe but just one career.

"She is a Woman of the Night," said Monsieur de John.

Dressed in a tight black miniskirt, fishnet stockings, stiletto heels and a belly shirt, Collette also features excessive make-up and a comehither smile familiar -- we are told -- to those who frequent the sleazier sections of Paris.

"And," added Marie Latrampe, Le Joi's director of marketing, "Collette and her friends in the Action Hookers line are all anatomically correct."

Joining Collette on her Street Corner Playset are Suzette la Dominatrix, who comes with miniature whip, dog collar, ball-gag and leather bustier; Claudette, Collette's halfsister who has also run away from their broken home and also comes in a dual-pack with Collette; Jean, le Crossdresser who comes with changeable wigs and a choker to hide his Adam's apple; Raoul, the eye-patch wearing pimp who is sold with wide-brimmed feathered hat, leather overcoat and a copy of Paris Match for those times when he must loiter watchfully; and Pierre, the middle-aged john doll, sold with a wallet suitable for stealing.

"Batteries are not included except for certain of Collette's accessories," said Mlle. Latrampe.

When asked who was buying the Action Hookers, Mlle. Latrampe said, "Everyone. Men, women, working people, white-collar professionals, although our research indicates that they seem to sell in tandem with Star Wars action figures. We aren't sure what that is all about, though we suspect it has to do with the light sabers and where they can be applied."

In the wake of the success of the Action Hookers, Le Joi plans an immediate expansion of the toy line. Toy designer Claude Aviarad has been kept busy day and night coming up with new figures and accessories.

"We will soon introduce Raoul's -- how do you say it? -- 'tricked out' Pimpmobile, which can be parked in the Action Alley playset, located right beside Le Hotel DeHeure, where rooms are available by the hour."

A cut-rate line of plus-sized figures is also in the discussion stage.

Published on: 05/05/2006

Collett - Action Hooker

according to "World News Today" 

 

Crouching Ping - Hidden Pong

Hey Folks,

You've NEVER seen ping-pong like this!!

http://videobomb.com/posts/show/3533

- Uke Man

Money talks !!

"Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah . . ." 

Someone send this to Crazy Cal

From "A Tiny Revolution"
http://www.tinyrevolution.com/mt/archives/001037.html
August 10, 2006
(a ukethanks to Mimi)

While I Realize It's Extremely Boring, Let's Take A Brief Look At Reality

Apparently there's some kind of batsignal for the U.S. punditocracy that tells them all what to write each week. This week their orders are to inform us that the Democrats had better watch out for those far-left elitists like Ned Lamont, who will with their extreme anti-war positions lead them to defeat just like George McGovern did.

I don't have it in me to track down links to the 10,000 versions of this. But here's a representative sample from David Broder:

"The people backing Lamont are nothing if not sincere. But their breed of Democrats -- many of them wealthy, educated, extremely liberal -- often pick candidates who are rejected by the broader public. Many of the older Lamont supporters went straight from Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern in the 1960s and '70s to Howard Dean in 2004. They helped Joe Duffey challenge Sen. Tom Dodd in Connecticut for the 1970 Democratic nomination on the Vietnam War issue, only to lose to Republican Lowell Weicker in November."

This might make you wonder certain things—like, was opposition to Vietnam the "wealthy, educated" position? I know it's fun to listen to stories from Uncle Dave B., and extremely boring to look at reality. But let's give reality a shot just this once. Here's a Gallup poll from January, 1971:

Chart 1 

Wha--? This must be some crazy anomaly, right? Everybody knows the far-left, highly-educated elitists hated Vietnam, while the bedrock real Americans hung in there to the end!

Actually, no. Here's James Loewen writing in his book Lies My Teacher Told Me (from which the 1971 Gallup poll is scanned):

These results surprise even some professional social scientists, [but] [s]imilar results were registered again and again, in surveys by Harris, NORC, and others... Throughout our long involvement in Southeast Asia, on issues related to Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia, or Laos, the grade school-educated were always the most dovish, the college-educated the most hawkish.

Huh. That makes you wonder what equivalent polls are saying about Iraq today. Here's Gallup about six weeks ago:

Chart 2 

Weirdly, as you see, more education doesn't necessarily push you either way on Iraq. It seems to make you more ambivalent—while those with less education are both the most dovish and the most hawkish, with little ambivalence.

We're almost done with reality here, because I realize it's irritating and makes things less fun at the cocktail party at David Brooks' house in Chevy Chase. But here's a Gallup poll from April of this year on the general foreign policy views of Americans:

chart 3 

Here the results are absolutely clear: internationalism is the elitist position, while people become more isolationist the less money and education they have. Shockingly enough, whenever Bush inveigles against "isolationism" he doesn't mention that.

Whew! Well, that's enough reality for today. Thank goodness our opinion leaders don't have to trouble themselves with such things, because then they might have to spend more than thirty seconds writing each column.

(I snipped some of the isolationism poll to save space. You can see the entire results here.)

Posted by Jonathan Schwarz at August 10, 2006 06:43 PM TrackBack

a Marriage made in Heaven 

Crazy Cal

Hey Folks,

I just HAD to share this with you!! I laughed out loud at this idiot, Cal Thomas. What a fool he is.

My comments are in red.

- Uke Man



Lieberman loss is a Democratic debacle
Then why isn't right-wing Republican Cal celebrating?
Friday, August 11, 2006
CAL THOMAS

The narrow primary defeat (bigger than Bush's "victory" margin) of Sen. Joe Lieberman in Connecticut’s Democratic primary is more than a loss for one man; it is a loss for his party and for the country. It completes the capture of the Democratic Party by its Taliban wing. The Taliban are religious-based fanatics - Cal used to work for Pat Robertson and he comments regularly on Foxxx "News." Cal's pal Ann Coulter has already certified in her latest "book" that Democrats are Godless.

Taliban Democrats are willing to "kill" one of their own, if he does not conform to the narrow and rigid agenda of the party’s kook fringe. A majority of Democrats "killed" Lieberman. Cal shows he is totally nuts by equating a 52% majority of Connecticut Democrats with a "narrow ...kook FRINGE."

Lieberman’s sin, in the eyes of the Taliban Democrats, was that he supported the effort to defeat the insurgent terrorists in Iraq. As a Jew, Lieberman is particularly sensitive to those who have targeted the Jewish people for extinction. But even if he weren’t Jewish, he would still "get it," because he has correctly concluded that failure in Iraq would be catastrophic ("failure" defined as Bush would like it defined and "catastrophic" for Bush, Cal, & Co.).

His detractors, who brought him down in the primary with a one-issue, inexperienced (Bush was experienced?) and unqualified (Bush is qualified? for what?) candidate, Ned Lamont, hate President Bush so much that their judgment has been distorted. Former Bill Clinton aide Lanny Davis, in a recent column for The Wall Street Journal titled "Liberal McCarthyism," printed a sample of the incendiary rhetoric directed toward Lieberman. There is thinly-veiled anti-Semitism (‘‘As everybody knows, Jews only care about the welfare of other Jews" posted on Daily Kos); irrationality (‘‘Joe Lieberman is a racist and a religious bigot," Daily Kos). These are distortions, but even so, I don't think Cal would like to be held responsible for the shit clods post on fascist - or even Republican - blogs.

It didn’t matter that Lieberman ran as the vice presidential candidate with Al Gore in 2000, or that he has voted against most of the president’s domestic agenda (another distortion). The Taliban wing of the party cannot countenance any "heretics" who do not toe their line. Again, heretics are a minority; Lieberman was put out by a MAJORITY.

Though Lieberman will now run as an independent, the damage has been done. It will be difficult for any Democrat to seek consensus with any Republican (how can it be any MORE difficult than it's been for the last six years - since day one it's been the R-way or the highway) without being targeted as an infidel worthy of electoral death. Our already-poisoned political dialogue (this ass works for Foxxx and has the nerve to complain about a "poisoned political dialogue?) has not only been made more toxic, but contagious. Taliban Democrats have effectively issued a political fatwa that warns all Democrats not to deviate from their narrow line, or else face the end of their careers through a political jihad (put another way, if Democrats don't act like democrats - instead of Republicans, we don't need them). Perhaps the few remaining rational Democrats should put on their burqas now and submit to the will of the party mullahs.

What is wrong with Democrats? Can’t they see that when the face of their party belongs to ultra-leftists such as George McGovern (he's 84 years old), Michael Dukakis (has anyone seen Michael lately?) and Sen. John Kerry, they lose? If these guys are "ultra-leftists" there are at least 80,000,000 Americans to the left of these guys. What are they, anarchists? communists? For those who still believe not only in a strong two-party system, but also in compromise in order to promote the general welfare and seek the common good, the Lieberman defeat strikes an especially harmful blow. Who's general welfare and common good?

At the height of social-conservative power in the Republican Party, pro choicers and pro gay-rights officials such as Rudolph Giuliani of New York City and California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger were featured speakers at GOP conventions. Republican officials described their party as a big tent with room for everybody. Room for "everybody"? Yeah, they need alot of cooks, servers, and jaitors under that tent taking care of their betters.

Lieberman’s loss reduces the size of the Democrats’ tent to that of a pup tent. The message it sends is that only those who conform to the left-wing fundamentalist worldview will be allowed in. Is that a message Democrats want to take into future campaigns? Do they wish to pervert President Kennedy’s vision and say that the United States will pay no price, bear no burden and go nowhere in the defense of liberty? The right wing is big on paying a price and bearing burdens - as long as it's us paying their price and bearing their burden.

If that is the message the Taliban Democrats want to send to the nation, they have all but guaranteed a Republican presidential victory in 2008 and GOP losses, if any, might not be as bad as predicted this November. Karl Rove could not have devised a more brilliant plan. But Lieberman deserves better.

Oh, NOW I see why Cal isn't jumping up and down with glee over the Democrats' "Big Mistake"!! As happy as he is that the Democrats have screwed themselves better than even Kkkarl could have done, he's just containing his glee out of respect for Joe Lieberman!!

Yeah, uh huh.

Cal Thomas writes for Tribune Media Services.
cal@calthomas.com

Walter Conkrite 

"End the War" - Walter & Tom,not in the same league

Hey Folks,

For some time I've felt that Thomas Friedman was a twit - well-meaning, but a twit.

He's been a utopian/Free-Trade/democracy-in-the-Middle East Pollyanna since before the war began. To me, he's come across as a precocious little boy who has looked up a lot of facts in the encyclopedia and "discovered" a simple solution to an impossibly complex problem.

He has consistently written that the war is good - as long as "X" is done (which even his own wife found to be unlikely). When it doesn't get done, all is still well as long as "Y" gets done - which doesn't happen either.

Along the way, Friedman had enough "as long as's" to nearly exhaust the alphabet. At last he has thrown in the towel. Harvey Wasserman of Columbus Free Press fame comments.

- Uke Man


Harvey Wasserman
Tom Friedman's Walter Cronkite momentAugust 6, 2006

The reality that the Vietnam War was a hopeless catastrophe definitively penetrated the mass American psyche when CBS Nightly News Anchor Walter Cronkite---the "most trusted man in America"---faced the facts.

That was in 1968, shortly after the Tet Offensive shredded any pretence that an American victory (whatever that would mean) was possible in Southeast Asia. When Lyndon Johnson heard Cronkite had turned on the war, he knew it was over, and soon thereafter declined to run again.

Now Tom Friedman has done the same thing about Iraq and Southwest Asia. Has anybody noticed?

Friedman has long been the lead neo-liberal cheerleader for the American attack on Iraq. From his perch on the New York Times op ed page, Friedman has pontificated long and in earnest about the need for the US military to establish "democracy" in the land once run by Saddam Hussein, that horrific dictator installed by the US military, then fired in the wake of 9/11 attacks conducted by his bitter rival, Osama bin Laden.

Somehow the Iraq war's supporters want us to believe that an administration that holds power by denying democracy in Florida and Ohio sincerely wants to bring it to Iraq.

But like Walter Cronkite on Vietnam, Tom Friedman has finally thrown in the towel. The prime reason, of course, is the staggering incompetence of the Bush/Rumsfield Keystone Kop campaign. As martial strategists, these guys make architects of the Vietnam catastrophe seem positively brilliant.

We can here spare ourselves a tour of this lethal Bush idiocy. That private funds are now being raised to pay for helmets and body armor to be worn by US troops is about all that need be said.

Since Vietnam, pro-peace bumper stickers have proclaimed the hope that the Pentagon would someday have to be funded with a bake sale. Under Bush/Halliburton, that day has finally come, tragically, for those abused and exploited troops the GOP has thrown so cynically into the abyss.

Now Friedman has reluctantly recognized that the US Commander-In-Chief's prime idea of a foreign policy initiative is to foist a ghastly backrub on a horrified German Prime Minister. George W. Bush is clearly incapable of the complex thought needed to win a war anywhere at any time, let alone in the infinitely complex Middle East.

Thus, says Friedman, "it is now obvious that we are not midwifing democracy in Iraq. We are baby-sitting a civil war."

Staying the course, Friedman says, "is pointless." We can't, he says, "throw more good lives after good lives."

Friedman proceeds to argue as if there is intelligent, honorable life in the White House. Having failed to make clear what it was doing in Iraq, the administration "at least owes us a Plan B."

But Bush/Cheney/Rove don't believe they owe anybody anything, least of all the American people. Friedman still hasn't faced the fact that Plan A through Plan Z has always been to establish permanent military bases in Iraq and control that oil, and that little else ever really mattered, except for maybe George 2 trying to show George 1 he's the better man.

Friedman predicts that the Bush-inspired chaos will send oil over $100/barrel. Unfortunately, he is still hung up on the catastrophic delusion that there is a place for nuclear power in our future other than as the ultimate terror target. But Friedman does have the sense to understand that higher oil prices will at least "spur more investment in alternative fuels that could one day make us independent of this volatile region."

That Team Bush may well fail even in establishing viable military bases in the Middle East remains undiscussed. Democratic neo-liberals haven't faced that reality any more than the fact that they have wimped away from two consecutive stolen presidential elections.

So Friedman proceeds as if Team Bush actually cares about negotiations and diplomacy, neither of which it can manage on any level.
When Walter Cronkite used his bully pulpit on America's most-watched evening news show to say it was time to leave Vietnam, mainstream America listened, having come largely to the same conclusion.

Lyndon Johnson may have been obsessed with "not losing" in Vietnam. But Walter Cronkite mattered. His willingness to say the war couldn't be won meant the American mood had changed. It never changed back.

Tom Friedman's capitulation is a parallel event. In a sane nation, it should have serious consequences. It certainly reflects a broad national consensus that Southwest Asia has matched Southeast Asia as a hopeless quagmire, a quicksand sinkhole from which even a well-run US military could never extract victory, let alone one being run into the ground by hopeless incompetents.

The tragedy now is that George W. Bush has neither the intelligence nor the integrity nor the heart to call a halt to the slaughter. And if the GOP stranglehold on the machinery of the American vote count is left unchallenged, the next occupant of the White House will certainly be no better.

--Harvey Wasserman is co-editor of WHAT HAPPENED IN OHIO?, to be published by The New Press on September 15.
His HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES and SOLARTOPIA! are at www.harveywasserman.com.

This article from the Columbus Free Press: http://www.freepress.org/columns/display/7/2006/1415In

Plain, White Wrapper

 

Beat-Boxin' Bush

Another of the amazing skills that Duh-bya learned at Yale (frat parties)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-KnFadDGgo

 

Hillary Dillary Dock cleaned Ol' Rummy's Clock (but why?)

Hey Folks,

The column below was written BEFORE Lieberman got bounced. What will Hillary do now?

- Uke Man


August 5, 2006
Henny Penny Harridan
By MAUREEN DOWD
(a ukethanks to Phyll)

Washington:

The enunciation of a clear sentence about the war in Iraq by Hillary Clinton
means that there must be an election coming up.

Until now, she has been unsubtly subtle about the most urgent issue facing the
country, sending signals rightward, sending signals leftward, tacking here,
tacking there. Some days she seemed to be signaling whether she intended to
signal.

But now, suddenly, she’s a woman of passion, a model of concerned clarity. After an eon of calculated silence on most of the big moral questions of the day,
there is a calculated breaking of the silence. The enigma won’t play anymore.
It’s time for the drama.

But the drama played like “The Taming of the Shrew,” with the only question
being, who was the shrew?

Hillary was trying to bring Rummy to heel, and Rummy was trying to exert manly control over Hillary.

The junior senator from New York staged a drama in three acts, first sending a
letter summoning the reluctant Rummy to appear before the Armed Services
Committee; then hectoring him with a litany of his “numerous errors in
judgment”; and finally at the end of the day, like the Queen of Hearts,delivering her climactic demand for his head.

“I just don’t understand why we can’t get new leadership that would give us a
fighting chance to turn the situation around,” Senator Clinton said after the
hearing, summing up a truth acknowledged by everyone except W. and Dick Cheney, and particularly felt at the Pentagon, where the deeply unpopular defense chief has gone from self-styled matinee idol to self-destructing idle martinet.

During the hearing, Hillary unmanned Rummy, as Shakespeare would say, accusing him of incompetence, impotence and improbity.

“You did not go into Iraq with enough troops to establish law and order,’’ she
said. “You disbanded the entire Iraqi Army. Now we’re trying to recreate it. You
did not do enough planning for what is called phase four and rejected all the
planning that had been done previously to maintain stability after the regime
was overthrown. You underestimated the nature and strength of the insurgency, the sectarian violence and the spread of Iranian influence.”

She pointed out that the administration succeeds only in achieving the opposite of its aims — with the number of American troops in Iraq scheduled to increase, not decrease, and the violence and instability spreading.

She cited the administration’s reality disconnect on the Taliban in Afghanistan, where every new claim of success has been followed by new evidence of failure.
The Taliban have been written out of the war by administration flackery, but
they keep coming back like Mel Gibson’s hangovers and apologies.

She tartly summed up: “Because of the administration’s strategic blunders and, frankly, the record of incompetence in executing, you are presiding over a
failed policy. Given your track record, Secretary Rumsfeld, why should we
believe your assurances now?”

There was a pause while Rummy summoned all the condescension he usually reserves for doltish reporters.

“My goodness,’’ he exhaled finally, firing off a defense that could have been
translated as: “Where do I start educating you on your utterly superficial
understanding of the enemy, you harridan hippy-dippy Henny Penny?”

The Pentagon rank and file have tuned out Rummy, whose only transformation sofar has been to transform himself into a dangerous, deluded codger. But when the respected General Abizaid admitted that “it is possible that Iraq could move towards civil war,” it was clear Iraq was already in one. It opened up a river of talk across the river about what people there had long been afraid to say: that Rummy’s jutting jaw is not going to cut it. There needs to be an alternative strategy to keep our kids from having to fight their way out of a
sectarian conflagration.

When Hillary and Rummy square off, it is a gladiatorial contest of two masters
at hauteur, self-righteousness, scriptedness, infighting and belief in their own
manifest destiny.

Hillary wants to avoid Joe Lieberman’s fate by arguing that how the
administration went about this war has caused all the problems, not that it went to a needless war she supported. Her stratagem avoids the lie that set off all the other lies, and leaves Hillary risking a John Kerry problem, being both for the war and against it.

It’s going to be a tough triangulation. Even Bill never had to squirm his way
out of something as hard as this.

 

This kid's economy should work out in a few years

Pool Shark

Click here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hn6U2tikzQ

Everything's Fine!!!

 

Another misleading report on the Economy

Hey Folks,

Here we go again. The information is all there, but as usual, it comes at the end (how many readers never get that far), and until the end, the apparent tone and implications seem quite positive.

I've gone through the article and highlighted the positive-sounding stuff in blue and then the counter-positive stuff in red. My comments are in green.

Basically, the article - for most of its length - implies that things are improving, but in the end subtly slips in evidence that the "improvement" is positive ONLY in relation to the terrible place it was before (i.e. even with the "improvement" it's still the 6th worst deficit in history).

Neither is it clearly stated that the un-wealthy are being left behind (i.e. it is not stated straightforwardly. You must recognize the need to stop and consider the implications of the disparate tax returns - wealthy v. payroll deductions - and the implication of a "clampdown on domestic agencies" to realize we're being screwed).

It's time to go to the window, folks, and then to the streets to scream, "I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it any more!!"

- Uke Man


Deficit estimated lowest in 4 years
By ANDREW TAYLOR, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - The federal deficit will register $260 billion this year, the lowest in four years, reflecting a strong economy and resulting growth in tax revenue, congressional analysts said Friday

The estimate by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office is well below its earlier predictions and also below the $296 billion White House estimate less than a month ago.

Better-than-expected revenues are driving the deficit down from last year's $318 billion figure and far below the record $413 billion posted in 2004.

At $260 billion, it would be the lowest since the $158 billion figure in 2002, the first deficit following four years of surpluses.

The deficit picture is even better when measured against the size of the economy, which is the comparison economists think is most important.

"At 2 percent of gross domestic product, the 2006 deficit would be smaller than the deficit recorded in the past three years — 3.5 percent in 2003, 3.6 percent in 2004 and 2.6 percent in 2005," said the CBO report.

So far this year, taxes on corporate profits are 27 percent or $56 billion higher compared to the first 10 months of last year. That reflects the strong economy. All told, receipts from corporate profits are estimated to tally two and a half times those collected in 2003, CBO said.

The budget year ends Sept. 30.

Receipts are also 20 percent higher on income and payroll taxes paid quarterly by wealthier people and small businessmen but taxes withheld in paychecks are only 8 percent higher. Tax receipts are estimated to run $223 billion higher than 2005, CBO said.

The CBO estimate continues a positive trend on the deficit after a grim deficit performance during President Bush's first term.

Republicans credited GOP fiscal policies centered on tax cuts [for the rich]passed in 2001 and 2003 and a clampdown on domestic agencies [hurting regular people] funded by Congress each year. Were it not for the war in Iraq and ongoing hurricane relief costs, the deficit would be far lower.

"Even with the extraordinary circumstances of the past year — including Hurricane Katrina and the ongoing War on Terror — we're seeing the deficit fall," said House Budget Committee Chairman Jim Nussle, R-Iowa. "Thanks to pro-growth policies and a responsible budget blueprint, we're on the right track, but we've got to remain diligent."

Democrats said a $260 billion deficit is nothing to crow about.

"The deficit for this year will be the sixth largest in history, and will stand a long way from the $236 billion surplus recorded in 2000, the last year of the Clinton Administration," said top House Budget Committee Democrat John Spratt Jr. of South Carolina.

The Bush White House has gained a reputation for overstating deficit figures early in the year in order to report better news later. In February, the White House predicted a $423 billion deficit for the current year.

Jason in front of his NYC apt - Murray Space Shoe

As mentioned on 60 Minutes by Andy Rooney
(that's my hat & uke on the stoop) 

Hey Folks,

Mentioning Jason Tagg's Midnight Ukulele Disco TV show (M.U.D. for short) Tuesday evening made me think of sharing some of my "exploits" there with you.

This one was phoned/e-mailed in on the occasion of the one year anniversary of the show. I got a cake, hats, whistles, presents, and ukuleles together - and invited all the friends of 1 year olds I knew - wrote a song for the party - sent Jason the song and some still pictures - then Jason put it all together.

Click here:
http://www.ukuleledisco.com/birthday

- Uke Man

"Order in the Court !!!!!"

"I hold you in contempt !!" 

Spreading Democracy at home

Hey Folks,

Below is a report on the latest plan to eliminate our rights.

The fucking-fascist Bush Regime now wants to be able to strip anyone of their most important, revered rights within the "Justice" System for any reason they choose (it's all there, below in the Washington Post report).

I'm telling you; these people are totally nuts. But, even worse, the apparent indifference/obliviousness of the American public is tragic. All that is good about this country is being flushed down the toilet by a half-witted President taking orders from a half-witted god, and cheered on by Neo-Coneheads playing at Dungeons & Dragons.

- Uke Man


MILITARY COURTS

Bush seeks expanded military tribunal role

The White House is seeking legislation that would allow people not affiliated with terrorism to be prosecuted in military commissions -- with far fewer rights than afforded civilians.

Washington Post Service
WASHINGTON - A draft Bush administration plan for special military courts seeks to expand the reach and authority of such ''commissions'' to include trials, for the first time, of people who are not al Qaeda members or the Taliban and are not directly involved in acts of international terrorism, according to officials familiar with the proposal plan.

The plan, which would replace a military trial system ruled illegal by the Supreme Court in June, also allows the secretary of defense to add crimes at will to those under the military court's jurisdiction. The two provisions would be likely to put more individuals than previously expected before military juries, officials and independent experts said.

The draft proposed legislation, set to be discussed at two Senate hearings today, is controversial inside and outside the administration because defendants would be denied many protections guaranteed by the civilian and traditional military criminal justice systems.

Under the proposed procedures, defendants would lack rights to confront accusers, exclude hearsay accusations, or bar evidence obtained through rough or coercive interrogations. They would not be guaranteed a public or speedy trial and would lack the right to choose their military counsel, who in turn would not be guaranteed equal access to evidence held by prosecutors.

Detainees also would not be guaranteed the right to be present at their own trials, if their absence is deemed necessary to protect national security or individuals.

An early draft of the new law prepared by civilian political appointees and leaked to the media last week has been modified in response to criticism from uniformed military lawyers. But the provisions allowing a future expansion of the courts to cover new crimes and more prisoners were retained, according to government officials who are familiar with the deliberations.

Jason Tagg in the old Midnight Ukulele Disco studio

 

Hey Folks,

Midnight Ukulele Disco is on tonight (Tuesday) at 9:00 (via the net).

Click here: http://www.mnn.org/ and then click on "Ch. 57"

-Uke Man

p.s. it's pre-recorded tonight - Jason is busy preparing the move into the biggest studio at the center - Ukulele Playhouse here we come!!!

makin' maggots 

it's TIME FLIES were HAVING FUN

Hey Folks,

You GOTTA see this !!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mLG7NKBK98M&NR

- Uke Man

"You slothful slackers!!"

"You should have inherited a newspaper, as I did!!!"  

The Whacko from Waco

Hey Folks,

How many times have I said that everything is described and evaluated from the perspective of the few most powerful and wealthy at the very top of the social food chain (e.g. Wall street celebrating massive lay-offs and pension slashing)?

As far as I know, until now this practice has proceeded blandly, seemingly secure in the belief that the people were too stupid to notice what was really going on. The “facts” were just presented – without argument or support – since “everyone knows” that hurting the people helps the people and the country.

Well, things are changing. Apparently, so much of what Americans have come to see as integral to life in America is being clawed away, that gink-headquarters has put out the word to start JUSTIFYING the degradation of the people.

The column below made me crazy. It is so cavalier, so condescending, so priggish, so unconcerned about the destruction it praises as to put in doubt either the soundness of the pundit’s mind or the quality of his humanity.

I have highlighted/commented-upon those parts of his column which, at least for me, can be explained only as utter stupidity or as a new, more heartless and conniving attempt to sell the people on their own degradation.

Time will tell whether the vampires can pull it off or whether the people will stand up.

- Uke Man


American middle class is losing its work ethic
Friday, August 04, 2006
ROWLAND NETHAWAY

The United States does not suffer from a lack of jobs. Quite the opposite. It suffers from the lack of willing workers. Yep, WAL-MART is building new stores every day; and the tightening borders have opened up a lot of itinerant picking opportunities.

Sure, jobs have been lost to foreign competition and globalization. Better get used to it. As if there were no way around it - as if anything else is impossible.
At the same time, however, the powerful U.S. economy keeps generating new jobs. Some are better. Some are worse. Most are worse if measured by what they pay.

High-paying (Compared to what? CEO's? or nursing home workers?)manufacturing jobs in union shops that offer blue-collar workers fat ("fat" compared to whose pensions? CEO's? or nursing home workers?) benefit pensions with full family medical coverage are rapidly disappearing. They likely will never return. But not because workers don't deserve them or because the country can't afford them.

Today’s workers are much more likely to jump from job to job throughout their working years (Don't you think the way he puts this implies workers WANT to "jump" from job to job, when actually they are forced to?) , unlike their parents and grandparents who often worked for a single company until they retired.

The concept of retirement is rapidly changing (or is it being attacked?). It (retirement) may disappear entirely (think about that statement!!!) except for the fortunate few with the personal initiative to save and invest wisely over a decades long working career. Two things here: notice that the "fortunate few" are the ones with "personal initiative." It obviously follows that everyone other than the few will suffer through their own fault - i.e. their lack of personal initiative - simple as that.

Also, I guess low paid workers MIGHT have a little more trouble than middle managers saving money, no matter how much personal initiative they exercise.

Unfortunately, modern Americans are terrible when it comes to saving for the future. Can you believe that shit!!! Wages are - and have been - stagnant compared to inflation! Gasoline is through the roof! The economic system pushes credit and rampant consuming on the nation, and then claims the people are terrible when it comes to saving. The national savings rate is at an all-time low.

Actually, I’ve read that the national savings rate is now a negative number. Our federal government isn’t doing any better. It makes you wonder if someday the whole thing will come crashing down. It's already crashed on millions. He means is: will it someday crash down on HIM.

This should motivate workers to better prepare to take care of themselves, since they may not be able to count on their employers or their government to do it for them. Yeah, how are they going to save when they don't have enough to live? Maybe they ought to rob a bank or start selling oxicontin to rich fucks like Rush.

Instead, Americans in general are spending and charging themselves deeper into debt. Perhaps they realize that life is uncertain and they had better grab all the gusto they can now and worry about the consequences later.

History may record the half century period following World War II as an anomaly. Yeah, third world, here we come! Just like that - no outrage, no intensity, no BFD !!!

Not only did the Greatest Generation fight and win World War II, it returned to go to college in record numbers and then produced an unparalleled economy that buried its Cold War enemies and caused defined-benefit pension plans and comfortable retirements to flourish.

Members of the Greatest Generation also had a powerful work ethic. Ah, so. It's not only a lack of personal initiative, but also a lack of a strong work ethic that's causing the problem!! They were born in the Great Depression and grew up watching their parents and grandparents take any job that came along just to put bread on the table. There he goes again: not a shortage of jobs, just a shortage of Americans willing to work demanding jobs for un