ONE VIEW - "1984" by Gene Bocknek

[Our thanks to Gene Bocknek for this very fine essay]


Thirty years ago 1984 was already just another number for so many young people, not the sensational novel George Orwell wrote in 1949.  Orwell, an Englishman, was describing a future society, a nation ruled by an anonymous Big Brother.  The nightmarish content of his novel captured the imagination of future generations, portraying a place where the very meaning of words was altered, where history was redesigned and always where "Big Brother is watching".  A process which later was named "brain washing" was the norm.  People everywhere were instructed in a new revision of language and events, "Doublethink" and "Newspeak".  You heard "war" and it was explained that the correct meaning was "peace".  Battles fought years earlier which resulted in defeat were to be remembered as "glorious victories."

Every home was equipped with microphones, listening devices, and a large screen, from which Big Brother constantly reassured all listeners that a brilliant new age was dawning.  The social class hierarchy consists of three levels:  The Inner Party elite represented 2% of the population.  The middle class Outer Party was 13% of the population and the lower class Proles constituted 85% - the uneducated working class.  The Party controls the populace with 4 ministries:

     Ministry of Peace (Minipax) deals with war
     Ministry of Plenty (Miniplenty) deals with economic affairs (rationing and starvation)
     Ministry of Love (Miniluv) deals with law and order (torture and brainwashing)
     Ministry of Truth (Minitru) deals with propaganda (news, entertainment, education
       and art)

Thought police spy on everyone and people are indoctrinated to spy and inform on suspected thought-criminals - those who question the new language and belief systems.


Here we are in a new century, a different country, and it's 65 years after "1984"'s publication.  Are you getting an eerie feeling in your gut?  Have you read "1984"?  Do we have any thought-criminals today in our democracy?  In "1984" such people were tortured until they could speak Newspeak and Doublethink with sincerity and conviction.  America has a sad history with citizens whom we call whistle-blowers.  Too often their courage makes them victims rather than heroes.  Our laws technically protect such individuals but in practice they lose their jobs, risk arrest, and endure rejection and isolation.  But we do seem to have learned some things from "1984."  We have names like "Operation Freedom" to describe our invasion of other countries.  We deny the devastation wreaked on agrarian peasants using terms like defoliation (blanket napalm killing anything and everything in its path), Agent Orange-poison gas that affects our soldiers while the government denies its use; collateral damage for civilian injuries and deaths.  The list is too long for one article.

But we do surpass "1984" in a tremendously important way.  Whatever its limitations, we are a government of laws, and we have groups who use those laws to challenge those who would allow us to slide into a 1984 world.  In particular, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has a long history of taking to court those who would abuse and persecute citizens unable to defend themselves. Unfortunately, in return, the ACLU has been vilified for defending abusive arrests of public protestors, those denied their constitutional rights, and providing protective cover for whistle-blowers in government and large corporations.  Their work in courageous because it is financially unrewarding, but more so because by challenging abuse of the law in many eyes they are challenging the existing order.  In an uncertain world uninformed individuals will cling to authority whatever its faults, rather than trust their common sense and fight for a more just "justice."

Our "free press" includes newspapers and newscasters from world class to guttersnipes.  I personally wear the scars of naiveté for years of believing I was getting the whole truth and all the news that's fit to print.  These sources, however good their intentions, are too often overruled by publishers and advertisers whose financial interests take priority over journalistic ethics.  Some of our most important stories are filed by serious investigative reporters working for magazines and newspapers that accept no political ads or even no ads at all.  "Mother Jones" broke the comment by Mitt Romney about 47% of people who shirk work.  But almost nobody among the newspaper giants broke the story of Romney's 200 IRAs that enabled him to avoid taxes for 25 years.  Recently, the ACLU magazine, "Stand", sent a lawyer to Russia to interview Snowden about revealing the Big Brother tendencies in our own government.

The similarities between "1984" and our political leadership since the Nixon administration, one which now threatens to immobilize our electoral process, reaching into the U.S Supreme Court, is absolutely chilling.  Without a determined electorate we will continue to slip into government plutocracy run by money and power for the very few rather than one built on those democratic values which insist on true representative government and fair sharing among all of our working citizens.

Jesus: the cover-up

How the Internet is Destroying Mormonism

(Really) Bad News For Religious Conservatives

Crime Scene - New Orleans by Greg Palast

Crime Scene – New Orleans 

By Greg Palast
Tuesday, 26 August 2014

[Lower Ninth Ward, New Orleans] Nine years ago this week, New Orleans drowned. Don’t you dare blame Mother Nature. Miss Katrina killed no one in this town. But it was a homicide, with nearly 2,000 dead victims. If not Katrina, who done it? Read on.

The Palast Investigative Fund is making our half-hour investigative report available as a free download – Big Easy to Big Empty: The Untold Story of the Drowning of New Orleans, produced for Democracy Now.  In the course of the filming, Palast was charged with violation of anti-terror laws on a complaint from Exxon Corporation. Charges were dropped, and our digging continued.

Who is to blame for the crushing avalanche of water that buried this city?

It wasn’t an Act of God. It was an Act of Chevron. An Act of Exxon. An Act of Big Oil.

Take a look at these numbers dug out of Louisiana state records:

     Conoco 3.3 million acres
     Exxon Mobil 2.1 million acres
     Chevron 2.7 million acres
     Shell 1.3 million acres

These are the total acres of wetlands removed by just four oil companies over the past couple decades. If you’re not a farmer, I’ll translate this into urban-speak: that’s 14,688 square miles drowned into the Gulf of Mexico.

Here’s what happened. New Orleans used be to a long, swampy way from the Gulf of Mexico. Hurricanes and storm surges had to to cross a protective mangrove forest nearly a hundred miles thick.

But then, a century ago, Standard Oil, Exxon’s prior alias, began dragging drilling rigs, channeling pipelines, barge paths and tanker routes through what was once soft delta prairie grass. Most of those beautiful bayous you see on postcards are just scars, the cuts and wounds of drilling the prairie, once America’s cattle-raising center. The bayous, filling with ‘gators and shrimp, widened out and sank the coastline. Each year, oil operations drag the Gulf four miles closer to New Orleans.

Just one channel dug for Exxon’s pleasure, the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet ("MR-GO") was dubbed the Hurricane Highway by experts—long before Katrina—that invited the storm right up to—and over—the city’s gates, the levees.

Without Big Oil's tree and prairie holocaust, "Katrina would have been a storm of no note," Professor Ivor van Heerden told me. Van Heerden, once Deputy Director of the Hurricane Center at Louisiana State University, is one of the planet’s the leading experts on storm dynamics.

If they’d only left just 10% of the protective collar. They didn’t.

Van Heerden was giving me a tour of the battle zone in the oil war. It was New Orleans’ Lower Ninth Ward, which once held the largest concentration of African-American owned homes in America. Now it holds the largest contrition of African-American owned rubble.

We stood in front of a house, now years after Katrina, with an "X" spray-painted on the outside and "1 DEAD DOG," "1 CAT," the number 2 and "9/6" partly covered by a foreclosure notice.

The professor translated: "9/6" meant rescuers couldn’t get to the house for eight days, so the "2"—the couple that lived there––must have paddled around with their pets until the rising waters pushed them against the ceiling and they suffocated, their gas-bloated corpses floating for a week.

In July 2005, Van Heerden told Channel 4 television of Britain that, "In a month, this city could be underwater." In one month, it was. Van Heerden had sounded the alarm for at least two years, even speaking to George Bush’s White House about an emergency condition: with the Gulf closing in, the levees were 18 inches short. But the Army Corps of Engineers was busy with other rivers, the Tigris and Euphrates.

So, when those levees began to fail, the White House, hoping to avoid Federal responsibility, did not tell Louisiana's Governor Kathleen Blanco that the levees were breaking up. That Monday night, August 29, with the storm by-passing New Orleans, the Governor had stopped the city’s evacuation. Van Heerden was with the governor at the State Emergency Center. He said, "By midnight on Monday the White House knew. But none of us knew."

So, the drownings began in earnest.

Van Heerden was supposed to keep that secret. He didn't. He told me, on camera––knowing the floodwater of official slime would break over him. He was told to stay silent, to bury the truth. But he told me more. A lot more.

      "I wasn't going to listen to those sort of threats, to let them shut me down."

Well, they did shut him down. After he went public about the unending life-and-death threat of continued oil drilling and channelling, LSU closed down its entire Hurricane Center (can you imagine?) and fired Professor van Heerden and fellow experts. This was just after the University received a $300,000 check from Chevron. The check was passed by a front group called "America’s Wetlands"—which lobbies for more drilling in the wetlands.

In place of Van Heerden and independent experts, LSU’s new "Wetlands Center" has professors picked by a board of petroleum industry hacks.

In 2003, Americans protested, "No Blood for Oil" in Iraq. It’s about time we said, "No Blood for Oil"—in Louisiana.


For more revelations from Professor van Heerden, the true untold story of Katrina, get a signed copy of Palast’s bestseller, Vultures’ Picnic, a BBC Television Book of the Year.

Greg Palast is also the author of the New York Times bestsellers, Billionaires & Ballot Bandits, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy and Armed Madhouse.

Get Palast’s latest film Vultures and Vote Rustlers. HELP US FOLLOW THE MONEY. Visit the Palast Investigative Fund's store or simply make a tax-deductible contribution to keep our work alive!

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[Note:  This essay reprinted with permission.  Please check out Greg Palast's website here.]

The Supremes - in their go-to robes

Coat hangers for sale at Hobby Lobby

Hobby Lobby, as you know, won the lawsuit because the Supremes, guided no longer by the U.S Constitution, but by conservative Christian ideology, decided the chain could forgo providing for women's needs by its insurance company. All of which is more than a little hypocritical in light of the fact that Hobby Lobby buys junk made in China by Chinese women, many of which are subjected to forced abortions.

Rickie Perry the guv of Texas indicted!

Rick Perry, the accidental governor of the State of Confusion, aka Texas - in spite of his close connection to Jesus Christ and God the Father and the Holy Spirit - as well as being a Repugnican nogoodnik, has been indicted by a grand jury in Austin, Texas, for abuse of power.

I've always thought he abused his power just by getting up in the morning.

Every time he opens his mouth he abuses his power.

He could get 99 years in prison.

Makes one think there might be a god.

You can read all about it here.

Voting Rights in the US of A

Dear World by Blake Ezra

[The essay below was written by Blake Ezra, who blogs at The Times of Israel.]

My friend, Bob Poris, wrote a comment which I thought was an excellent introduction to Mr. Ezra's article:

"I wonder why people all over the world accept the current anti-Semitism being acted out on the streets of so many nations that sat by until too late to stop Hitler, who used hatred of Jews to create WW2 and many millions of deaths.  Now, with less than a million or so Jews in all of Europe, we see it starting again, as Jews leave Europe in fear for their lives.

"Do we need another Holocaust to awaken us?  Some other race, religion, class, political party, etc., always becomes a victim after the Jews leave.  Always!  You can see it happening now throughout the Arab world.  It is spreading as the rockets fall again into Israel as has been the custom for years!"

* * * *

Dear World, I'm writing to you from a place of despair and confusion.  When I say 'world', I don't simply mean the planet upon which we all live but I address personally whoever is reading this.  As a Jewish person, I have a question for you.  It's a genuine question to which I can't find a suitable answer through my own thoughts... What do you want from us?

I'm writing from London, where only yesterday a black Islamic flag was flown from an estate in Tower Hamlets, and a passer-by was shouted at by a group of Muslim youths, "Fuck off Jew, you're not welcome here."  In the past month, in the supposedly liberated and forward thinking capital of England, a Swastika has been daubed onto a Jewish home, protestors have carried placards with slogans such as 'Hitler Was Right', and an independent arts venue has imposed sanctions upon an apolitical Jewish Film Festival.

In Scotland, a property sales consultant called Richard Ladd, a professional suit-wearing gentleman who deals with the public each day, tweeted "Shut up you ugly Jewish c***.  If only Hitler was still around to sort you out" to a Jewish footballer.  In France, rioters have looted and burned Jewish shops, and attacked synagogues.  In Germany, two Jewish people were attacked only for being Jewish, and an Imam in Berlin told his congregants, "Count the Jews and kill them to the very last one."  In Belgium, a cafe has displayed a sign banning Jews from entering, and four people were indiscriminately murdered on the street outside the Jewish Museum in Brussels.  Flags of Hamas and Hezbollah, both of whom call for death to Jews, have been flown in cities including Sydney and Vancouver.  The cover of Newsweek Magazine recently featured the headline, 'Why Europe's Jews Are Fleeing Once Again'.  World, shockingly I really could go on for much longer, but hopefully you get the picture...

I don't feel safe as a Jewish person in my own city as this moment in time, and this is a sentiment shared by many of my co-religionists, regardless of their level of religious observance or political affiliations -- it is solely due to the religion into which they were born.  It is truly difficult to believe I'm writing such a post, condemning the most vicious forms of racism with masses of people in numerous countries genuinely calling for death to Jews, whilst using a military situation in the Middle East as their excuse to make these ferocious desires appear somewhat justifiable.  Perhaps Lord Rabbi Sacks, a respected thinker and former Chief Rabbi of the UK, summed it up better than I could in the British House of Lords last week:  "My Lords forgive me, if I say that I did not expect 120 years after the Dreyfus Case and 70 years after the Holocaust, that the cry of 'Death to the Jews' would be heard again in the streets of France and Germany."

Please continue reading here.

Waiting for Robin

h/t to my friend William, who blogs here.

Shalom, mother****r.

(This article was written by Eitan Chitayat, "founder of natie.com, a boutique global agency that specializes in branding, animation, storytelling, and design. [...]  He's lived in Hong-Kong, London, Tel Aviv, New York and Boston."  The article appears in his blog at The Times Of Israel.)


I don't know how to write this without sounding like the kind of person I'm about to sound like, but sometimes you've just go to write it like you feel it.  And I feel this.  I un-friended a 'friend' from Facebook the other day.

To be honest, he wasn't really a friend.  He was a professional acquaintance and one whose talent I respect.  But that's it.

I un-friended him because he crossed a line.

I don't mind that he didn't write to ask how we're doing here in Israel.  People have their lives and we're not the center of the world.

No.  He started posting videos and images that reek of anti-semitism and an anti-Israel bias the likes of which are posted by people who clearly hate my country.

And I saw these posts.


[Please continue reading here.]

Feeding the rich, screwing the taxpayers!

h/t to my friend, Lou Cardamone

John Boehner's Monster: How Irrational Racist Hatred for Obama Will Destroy the GOP

Musings on the state of the world

Freddie Prinze, who is an actor, has been dissing Keifer Sutherland, who is also an actor. Who cares, I wonder? Why does he feel the need to do that? Whatever happened to the notion that if you can’t say something good about someone, say nothing at all? That almost always makes life more pleasant for all involved.


Sarah Palin has concocted a new TV channel. She’s gonna tell us the truth about Obama and other not real Americans. She’s gonna do an end-run around those lib’rul media folks! And you can participate for only $9.95 a month or about $100 per year.


I went poking through a bin of cheapo DVD movies at Walmart. Unscientific guess: 90% are steeped in violence…murder, mayhem, war, terror, ghoulish crap, etc. Argh!


What has happened in our country that we have so many absolutely stupid people? The political right, including teapot crackpots, are smothering our ability to govern effectively. Now they’re talking impeachment although they have no clue what Obama might have done to suffer such a thing. These stupid people deny climate change and global warming; they reject the “theory” of evolution even though they cannot define the word, “theory,” in its scientific sense. There is no question about either of these things; they are not debatable.

It’s like the idiot teacher who made her 8th-graders write an essay as to whether the Holocaust really happened!

 And how did we get so screwed up about guns? How did carrying loaded guns around in public get to be a symbol of freedom? Guns have only one purpose - to kill. I know they can be used in the sport of target shooting but one can do that with non-lethal weapons or ammo just as well. We kill almost 40,000 people a year in this country with guns! And the NRA, which has bought and paid for most of our politicians, insists we need more guns. Their latest crazy proposal argues that gun safety should be taught in elementary school.


It’s hard to believe that we are again fighting about the right to contraception. Contraception! As if there are not enough people in the world. And the doofuses who most oppose abortion are also most involved in the attempt to disallow the use of contraceptives, which, if they had their way, would mean more abortions! It’s a religious issue, nothing more. And this is supposed to be a secular country which means our laws are not based on religious beliefs!

The real nut cases have gone so far as to say that personhood begins at conception. Please. A fertilized egg is not a human being. A fetus is not a human being. One does not become a living, real human being until one is born and it doesn’t matter what the religious right or the Roman Church thinks about that because what they believe is based on religious precepts, which are fantasy and not reality!


In Pakistan a bunch of Muslim “true” believers attacked and killed a grandmother and her two daughters because they belong to an unacceptable sect of Islam and posted “objectionable material” online and that was blasphemous! Blasphemy has no meaning outside of religion. There is no such thing in real life.

This is religion at its worst. It is also the religion of much of the world, a religion that has no regard for human life or human freedom. Religion always, and I mean always, limits one’s freedom. If you belong to a religious sect, you have given up your autonomy and become a pissant who must believe what that sect preaches no matter how goddamn crazy it is!


A federal judge has ruled against Washington, D.C.’s ban on handguns in public. This seems to be how the 2nd amendment is now being interpreted: “The Second Amendment secures an individual right … to carry a common weapon outside the home for self-defense.” What? As an historian I would insist that the 2nd Amendment secures no such thing! The 2nd Amendment was to provide weapons for state militias in times of crisis - “well-regulated” state militias, not for every Dick who has a small penis and needs a gun to be a “man.”  The NRA has done its work of confusion and rewriting history very well!


Have you noticed that these days just about every commercial on TV has people jumping up and down or dancing on tables or generally making fools of themselves? Where did that crap come from? Kids can’t even sit down and eat a bowl of cereal without jumping up and dancing around the kitchen. People can’t take their RAV4 Toyota camping without jumping and screeching and hollering around a campfire. Craziness!


Lana Del Rey (whoever that is) says she has “Slept with a lot of guys in the industry.” I’m assuming she means the entertainment industry. Don’t know why she thinks it’s important to tell us that, though. It’s probably what everyone assumed anyway.  And why would you announce to the world that you are a slut?


Geraldo gave out some marriage advice the other day. For instance, he said men are the breadwinners, although he also admitted more women are working these days. Oh, and he claims that what women bring to a marriage is their youth! That’s it? Did I mention this bozo has been divorced four times?


You knew it would come to this!  The Church of Satan, referencing the recent Hobby Lobby decision by the Supremes, argues their female members have the right to refuse anti-choice materials when seeking an abortion. Thirty-five states require women to get “counseling” from a doctor before they can get an abortion (said “counseling,” of course, consists mainly of warning them about “non-existent health risks”). The Satanists say such laws “violate their members’ belief in scientific accuracy and the right to determine what to do with their own bodies.” Yes! Chew on that one, you Supreme Court christianists!


Speaking of really stupid, ignorant fools, I bring you Michele Bachmann (who, by the way, just might run for prez in 2016 - doesn’t that whet your whistle?). Ms. Bachmann has the solution for all those kids from down south trying to get into this country: Put ‘em in labor camps; make ‘em work; teach ‘em what they should know (like god and that this is and always has been a fundy Christianist country), the goal of which is to have “them pay off their past, present, and future care expenses, while assimilating them into American culture.”

Yes, this idiot says she follows the guy who some call the Prince of Peace.


“Political language … is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.” —George Orwell


The White House (i.e. the Obama administration) put out another Global Warming warning today. According to Jason Furman, who chairs the Council of Economic Advisers, the cost of dealing with climate change rises by 40% each decade.

Some actions being taken include reducing methane emissions from the natural gas and distribution system; the establishment of new rules to cut methane emissions from oil and gas wells on public lands; and the Obama administration is partnering with IBM, Amazon, Microsoft, Coca Cola and other business entities to use available data to “help make agriculture and food production more resilient to climate change.”

Yeah, but does the average Joe on the street or the average crook on Wall Street really care?


Talk about being removed from reality:  As noted above, Sarah Palin and other of her ignorant compadres have been yammering about impeaching the president for months now. In fact, the newly-elected Majority Whip has said he would not take impeachment off the table. Other Repugs have been talking the talk, too.

But weepy John Boehner claims that this impeachment talk is a White House “scam.” The Obama folks dreamed it up in order to motivate their supporters to give more money and time to the Democratic Party. I’m always amazed at the ability of Republicans to make up things out of thin air and then insist that what they just created is reality.


Speaking of guns: Crooks and Liars reports that Peter Nathan Steinmetz, a brain scientist, was arrested at Phoenix Airport for waving an AR-15 around and actually pointing it at a couple of folks. He has the “right” to carry such a weapon in an airport, so his arrest was due to “inappropriately carrying” the weapon. What person in his right mind would do such a thing or condone such nonsense?

People with a very small brain!


Pam Bondi used to be a Hillsborough County (Florida) prosecutor. Then in 2010 she got elected to be Florida’s Attorney General. She has been a vocal mouthpiece for the criminal governor, Rick Scott. She’s also gotten rich. Before her election in 2010, her net worth was reported at $472,260. In 2012, it was $780,871. As 2013 drew to a close, it had jumped to $1.24 mil. Amazing, isn’t it? Poor girl makes good in Florida politics.

Thanks to our friends at Yborcitystogie for this bit of news.


It’s only Tuesday, but I don’t think things will improve much by Saturday.

World Beyond War

Sarah Palin in Denver at Conservative Summit

Listen to this rambling mess and note the slurring of words, the awkward silences, the weird sounds she makes. It makes one wonder if she was lifting a few glasses of Alaskan hooch before her speech.

If you have a strong stomach and can get all the way to the end you'll hear her start talking about how God does not drive parked cars.

She would sure make a great president, dontcha know.


[Thanks to Crooks and Liars where this video was posted yesterday by David Neiwert.]

Rick Scott - Florida Nightmare

Rick Scott is Florida's Nightmare

Be sure to vote for Charlie Crist on Nov. 4!


[Our thanks to Ybor City Stogie for this poster]

Hamas vs. Israel - a Guest Post by John Poris

Gaza City - "Concentration Camp?"

So, You're Against Israel's "War of Aggression" Against Hamas

SInce 2007, Hamas and its proxies have fired over 12,000 (now more than 13,000) rockets and mortars into Israel.  Israel carried out precision bombing and shelling of command centers, weapons caches, weapons manufacturing sites, and other targets, and now, has inserted ground troops into Gaza to root out tunnels used for smuggling and terror attacks on Israeli civilians.

There is a lot of attention in the media and around the world to the lopsided "body count", although that is easily understood, considering Israel's investment in civilian defenses, including shelters, warning systems, Iron Dome, etc.

I'm frequently astounded at the number of people who protest, holding signs saying things like "We are Hamas", "Zionism is Nazism", etc.

So, let's recap a little, shall we? If you're rooting for Hamas, here's what you're rooting for

1. Israel does selective targeting, warns inhabitants by phone, leaflet, and roof knockin:g. Hamas fires rockets and mortars indiscriminately at civilians, aiming for the most populated civilian areas in Israel. They do this from among the civilian population of Gaza, including in and by schools, mosques, homes, hospitals, etc., thereby committing a double war crime (which even the EU, miraculously, has commented on).

2. Israel, while having the capability to flatten Gaza, has chosen to go house to house, street by street, incurring many more dead and wounded than "carpet bombing" would cause them, in order to avoid civilian casualties. You can argue that it's because they're going after the tunnels, but realistically, Israel has the capability to bomb large areas with delayed fuses and crush tunnels all day long. Hamas, on the other hand, puts its civilians on the roofs to try to avoid airstrikes, and forces their civilians NOT to evacuate when Israel warns them ahead of time. War crime, again - Hamas.

3. Hamas has dug a multitude of tunnels, first for smuggling, later for terror attacks against, you guessed it, Israeli civilians. Tunnels that go under dining halls, peoples' homes, etc. so they can pop out, kill and kidnap people, and run home. They also popped out of a tunnel, dressed as Israeli soldiers (also illegal, no?), to attack Israeli soldiers. Another war crime? Yup. Maybe more than one.

4. Israel has basic laws protecting ALL citizens (including the Arab minority that is now violently supporting Hamas), protecting those of different religions, ethnicities, colors, sexual orientation, etc. Hamas, on the other hand, kills Gays, kills anyone remotely suspected of being an "informer" for Israel (and sometimes drags their bodies around the streets behind motorbikes), suppresses public displays of song and dance, forces women to wear the Hijab (and beats those who don't), and generally has removed all vestiges of human and civil rights in Gaza.

5. Israel has a robust, albeit fractured political system, with open and honest elections (that happen all too often due to coalition failures). It includes political parties representing both Jews and non-Jews (witness the Balad party of Zahalka and Zoabi - rabid supporters of Hamas). There is an orderly transition of government when it changes over. Hamas, on the other side, won an election in 2006, then, in 2007, proceeded to throw their Fatah rivals off roofs, "kneecap" them, kill them, imprison and torture them, and expel those lucky enough to be expelled. There have been no more elections since then, and there will not be in the foreseeable future.

The bottom line is that Hamas is a criminal, terrorist organization, dedicated to the spread of virulent Islamism and the destruction of Israel. They do not want, nor are they willing to accept a Palestinian state next to an Israeli state, no matter what the borders are.

When you attack Israel one-sidedly, and in a vacuum, you ARE supporting Hamas. When you support Hamas, think about what you are supporting. Is that what you want to be associated with?

* * * *

Please check out John's blog here for more informative articles.

 

Religion and Ignorance

A recent survey has determined which states of the United States are the most "religious."  I'm not sure exactly how those involved came to such a conclusion, but they would appear, at first glance, to be correct.

Here are the ten most religious states.

1.  Mississippi
2.  Utah
3.  Alabama
4.  Louisiana
5.  Arkansas
6.  South Carolina
7.  Tennessee
8.  North Carolina
9.  Georgia
10.  Oklahoma

All of the above are from the deep South with the exception of Utah and Oklahoma.  Utah, of course, is dominated by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, aka Mormonism, so that explains their 2nd place ranking. 

Oklahoma, if you've ever been there, is, except for the eastern part of the state, pretty much a wasteland.  It consists of miles and miles of sand all of which is hotter than hell (in the summertime), and lately I've been reading it is a place most likely to experience earthquakes!  There isn't a lot to do in Oklahoma other than raise cattle and chase chickens.  And go to church.

Now consider the eight left - all from the south:  These are old Confederate states, many of which contain large pluralities who remain unhappy to this day that they lost the Civil War or, as they prefer to call it, the War Between the States." 

I've known folks from these states who in the 21st century still argue that the Civil War had little to do with slavery but was all about "states' rights."   They believe that their state's rights trump the rights of the Federal Government even though the Constitution and history proves they're wrong.

Not only so, but these states, collectively, have the worst educational systems in the nation.  They rank on or near the bottom in almost every scale of educational excellence.

Which may be one reason they publicly defy the "church/state separation" clause in our Constitution.  These are the states where, in defiance of the Constitution, they fight to offer Christian prayer as part of the school day; where they believe that their god will love them more if they post copies of the Decalogue on courthouse walls; where LBGT folks remain pretty much unwelcome; where a genteel southern drawl can mask an inordinate hatred for anyone different than a white person, born and bred in the South. 

These born and bred southerners may be religious and while most of them may lay claim to Christianity, their religion is a far cry from the teachings and beliefs of the man from Galilee as presented in the Gospel stories - the man who sought out the outcasts, the sick, the poor, those marginalized by society; the man who had absolutely nothing good to say about rich folks or wealth; who saw money not as something to be sought but as something dangerous and to be avoided for it could easily destroy the soul.  The Jesus of the Gospels is on record as saying clearly that if a you did not care for the poor, the sick and those in prison the deity would cast you into an eternal hellfire.  (It's easy to see why that passage is not a desirable topic for a Sunday sermon!)

Nor did this Jesus call on his followers to upset the political applecart.  He did not counsel making the government religious.  Rather he said those who would follow him should pay their taxes and concern themselves primarily about caring for their fellow human beings.


In summary, the most religious states in our country provide the worst educational opportunities for their citizens and religion is used to justify their ignorance and their hatred for people who are different than they are. 

Now, obviously not everyone in these states is ignorant nor hateful.  Millions are good people; law-abiding citizens who believe in and fight to maintain our Constitution.  Unfortunately, there are not enough such people which means the bad guys continue to win and rule.

If you don't believe this, take a look at the governors of these states, their legislatures and the people they elect to serve in the United States Congress.  Most of them would be much more at home in the 19th century and some, such as the clown Jindal in Louisiana, would probably find the days of the Inquisition to be the cat's meow.


* Pat Robertson (pictured above) does not live in one of the aforementioned states, but he's a born and bred southerner who would be comfy in any one of the ten.

Dan Courtney, atheist, delivers invocation at town board meeting

The following was derived from an article by Antonia Blumberg in the Huffington Post.

At a July 15 meeting of the town board of Greece, New York, the "invocation" was given by Dan Courtney, an atheist.

There was no reference to a deity to which we must offer supplication or a god from whom we derive our rights and our freedoms.  Courtney turned that old wisdom on its head which must have been jarring to those more familiar with the pious verbiage posited by the usual clerical suspects which usually concludes with the horrid phrase, "God Bless America."

"We can say with confidence," said Courtney, "that it is in seeking the counsel of our conscience that we find the beginning of wisdom.  It is in the exercise of our duty as citizens that we find the beginning of knowledge."

Here is the full text of his remarks:

Thank you, Supervisor Rielich, for allowing me to offer the invocation.

Freethinkers, atheists, non-believers, whatever label you wish, this group comprises a significant part of our population. I am honored to be providing an invocation on their behalf, and on behalf of all the citizens of the town of Greece.

On July 4th, 1776, the 56 men who pledged their lives to the document that changed the course of history, agreed to the central tenet that, “Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” More than 238 years later this central premise still echoes, however faintly, from the town hall to the white columned halls of Washington.

Yet this premise, this foundation necessary for a free and flourishing society, is today, more than ever, under assault. This central pillar of a free society - this notion that is deeply heretical to authoritarian culture, proclaims that it is from the people that moral authority is derived. It is that within us, the citizens, that knowledge and wisdom must emerge.

The preservation of this premise does not come from accepting the status quo, but by asserting our rights and exercising our duties. That this premise still endures testifies to its truth, and we can say with confidence that it is in seeking the counsel of our conscience that we find the beginning of wisdom. It is in the exercise of our duty as citizens that we find the beginning of knowledge.

We, as citizens, the beginning and the end, the alpha and the omega of our destiny are not, as the great philosopher Immanuel Kant warned, mere means to the ends of another, but we are ends in ourselves. This basic premise, this profound idea, guides us such that we need not kneel to any king, and we need not bow to any tyrant.

So I ask all officials present here, as guarantors of our founder’s revolutionary proclamation, to heed the counsel of the governed; to seek the wisdom of all citizens, and to honor the enlightened wisdom and the profound courage of those 56 brave men. Thank you.

 * * * *

Note especially the phrase, "...it is from the people that moral authority is derived."  This is crucial to a democratic system and its importance is set in stark relief against the renewed attacks in these woebegone days by theocrats who have vowed not to rest until the United States has knelt in surrender to their god and their laws.  These people call themselves "Christians" although their Christ would neither recognize them nor approve of their goals or their methods.  

Unfortunately, they have been given new life by the recent Supreme Court decision to allow corporations such as Hobby Lobby to force its employees to kneel to its religious beliefs - although in what alternate universe a corporation can have religious beliefs is beyond me. 

John Legend - You & I (Nobody In The World)

A beautiful paean to women!

Hamas Versus Israel: The Case for Moral Clarity

The Face of War
Khalil al-Hayya
Hamas Leader

By David Harris

July 13, 2014

Two centuries ago, the great German poet Goethe said: "The hardest thing to see is what is in front of your eyes."

It's as true today as it was then.

The difference between Hamas and Israel couldn't be greater, yet you wouldn't know it when listening to some observers.

For the Non-Aligned Movement, it's all about Gaza's innocence and Israel's guilt. One fine day, with nothing else to do but consider how to provoke peaceful, serene Hamas-ruled Gaza, the big, bad Israelis decided to attack.

For a fair share of the media, it's above all a story of Palestinian suffering at the hands of Israel's military machine.

For the protesters in Frankfurt, Germany, on Saturday, it was about equating Israel to Nazi Germany.

It's a perfect illustration of reverse causality. Hamas triggered a war, but that's long since forgotten, if ever it was remembered. The focus now is only on the suffering of those who are responsible for the conflict in the first place.

Indeed, Goethe was right. There are those who can't, or won't, see what's right in front of them.

Ideological blinders get in the way. Or a failure of imagination about the true nature of Hamas. Or a gullibility that allows people to believe whatever the Hamas propaganda machine churns out. Or, in some cases, downright hostility to anything that Israel, the Jewish state, does.

It's high time for moral clarity, not moral fog.

Hamas is a terrorist organization. That's its official designation by the United States, European Union, Australia, Canada, and others.

Israel is a democratic country with an independent judiciary, the rule of law, free and fair elections, and a robust civil society.

Hamas is anti-Western, anti-Christian (and, not surprisingly, anti-Semitic), anti-gay, misogynist, and anti-intellectual.

Israel is the exact opposite.

Hamas has territorial ambitions on Israel. In fact, that's putting it too mildly: it would like to replace Israel in its entirety with a Muslim Brotherhood-ruled state.

Israel has no territorial ambitions on Hamas-ruled Gaza. To the contrary, Israel left it totally nine years ago, with the hope of never having to return.

Hamas has a vested interest in using its Gaza base for permanent confrontation with Israel.

Israel, which, alas, can't change its geography, has a vested interest in a peaceful, moderate, and developing state on its border.

Hamas, the sole ruler of Gaza since 2007, has used the last seven years to smuggle in weaponry and develop military punch, rather than building the foundation of a responsible state.

Knowing this arsenal has been stockpiled for the sole purpose of being used against it, Israel seeks, as any nation would, to prevent Hamas from attaining its lethal goal.

Hamas has no compunction about deploying terrorist cells and weapons in civilian population centers in Gaza, fully aware that Israel would have no choice but to appear to be targeting "innocent" people.

Israel goes to unprecedented lengths to avoid falling into the Hamas trap, even phoning and dropping leaflets in advance to warn civilians to leave target areas.

Hamas cynically tells the civilian population to stay put, not to react to Israeli warnings about imminent strikes. The more Palestinian casualties, the better, as far as Hamas is concerned.

Israel makes every effort to alert its entire population, Jewish, Christian, and Muslim, to Hamas missile strikes and move people into shelters as quickly as possible

Hamas uses mosques for storing arms.

Israel uses houses of worship, including mosques, solely for prayer.

Hamas uses schools for weapons depots.

Israel uses schools solely to educate its children, Jewish, Christian, and Muslim.

Hamas uses hospitals as terrorist redoubts.

Israel uses its hospitals solely to cure the ill and injured, including residents of Gaza who can't find adequate care there.

Hamas aspires to kill as many Israelis as possible, with rockets fired indiscriminately in all directions.

Israel seeks out only the Hamas terrorist infrastructure, and has aborted many operations when the risks of civilian casualties were too great.

Hamas, as the record amply shows, has no compunction about falsifying information, doctoring photos, staging scenes, and inflating numbers to make its case to the outside world.

Israel, by contrast, goes to great lengths, even to the point of sometimes losing the edge in the "media race," to verify information that it presents about its operations.

Hamas supporters explode in paroxysms of glee when Israeli targets are hit.

Israelis don't honk horns, shoot in the air, and pass out candy for doing what they wished they didn't have to do in the first place, and voice regret when the inevitable mistakes in warfare occur.

Hamas wouldn't know how to spell the words "international humanitarian law," much less adhere to it.

Israel's defense forces have specialists in international humanitarian law assigned to every unit in an effort to ensure maximum compliance.                

Hamas shouts from the rooftops that Israel is a brutal enemy.

Israel, unlike any other targeted nation in history, is actually providing – right now – up to 70 percent of Gaza's electricity and much of its fuel and foodstuffs, even as hundreds of rockets are fired from Gaza into Israel.

Hamas celebrates death, something few Westerners can understand.

Israel celebrates life, something all Westerners should understand.

The Dumbest of the Dumb

Louis Gohmert, Repugnican congressman from Texas (where else?), has got this immigration stuff down pat.  All these kids trying to cross into the U.S. are part of a unique plot by President Obama to "bankrupt the country and turn Texas blue."

These kids are sure to vote for Democrats, dontcha know?

Gohmert also offered a generous dollop of his wisdom by suggesting that these kids crossing the border are like those soldiers who invaded France on D-Day.  What we need is to begin a military operation against them; perhaps even using U.S. warships.

What?  So are we the Nazis now?  

The warships I'd like to see.  Send a couple carriers up the Rio Grande.


Hatred seems to be the policy du jour so far as the Repugnicans are concerned.  In the great state of Tennessee, noted for its backwardness, law enforcement officials have arrested a woman who gave birth earlier this month because she used drugs while pregnant.

There's some discussion as to whether Meth is one of the forbidden substances; it appears not.  So there is probably no case.

But consider:  A mother gives birth.  She's arrested and thrown in jail.  The baby goes where?  There's no plan to help the mother overcome her addiction, if she has one.  No sensitivity to who this woman is and what her life is like.  Just yank the baby out of the mother's arms and put the woman behind bars.   

The policy of Tennessee derives from pure hatred.  If you're poor, a woman, use drugs, etc., you are on the list to be dealt with severely by the godly puritans who run this dimwit state.  I'd guess not a few of the morons who voted for this law consider themselves followers of the legendary Jesus and more than a few take a few nips from the bottle on occasion.  Perhaps on special occasions, like when they throw a new mother in prison!


Bob Frey is a wannabe Minnesota legislator.  He's a Repugnican, naturally, and dumber than dumb.  Here's his explanation of where AIDs comes from:

“When you have egg and sperm that meet in conception, there’s an enzyme in the front that burns through the egg. The enzyme burns through so the DNA can enter the egg. If the sperm is deposited anally, it's the enzyme that causes the immune system to fail. That’s why the term is AIDS – acquired immunodeficiency syndrome.”

(Thanks to Daily Kos)


Speaking of dumb, there's another Repugnican politician who insists we don't have to worry about global warming because the temperature on Mars is the same as ours.

I wonder if there has ever been people this stupid in the history of the world.


Conservative equals stupid?  How can one get any more stupid than to destroy the environment in which one lives?  How stupid do you have to be to despoil the air you breathe by chemicals which are hostile to the environment and deadly to humans, including yourself?

There are severely demented people in this nation.  Some of them have modified their diesel trucks so that they spew carcognic black smoke into the atmosphere.  They do this because they hate the president and they don't want to conform to any EPA clean-air rules and regulations.

These trucks are known as "coal rollers".  You get an idea of the intelligence of the people who do this sort of thing from the comments of one clown in Wisconsin who said:

“To get a single stack on my truck—that’s my way of giving them [Obama & the EPA] the finger,” he added. “You want clean air and a tiny carbon footprint? Well, screw you.”


Maybe we could put all Republican members of Congress in a big school bus and tell them they're going on a field trip to the Grand Canyon.  Tell them also the bus is a "magic" bus designed by God to fly across the Grand Canyon.

Let Ted Cruz drive the bus.  Tell Ted that the other side is a conservative paradise ruled by rich, white men, and that Jesus is waiting for him on the other side.  He just needs faith to make the bus fly.

The bus might turn out not to be magic after all and there is no Jesus.  But we'd sure have an easier time governing the country.

  

Truth and Executive Orders

Bachmann, Palin, Boehner and other dimwits are walking around with their panties tied in knots because Mr. Obama, our black, Muslim, nogood President has signed off on so many Executive Orders, among other things.  And he's done these horrible deeds merely to spite the Republicans in Congress who have tried so hard to deal with him in a truly bipartisan way.

Because the Repubicans in Congress wouldn't agree with Mr. Obama's crazy schemes to make our country a better place to live, such as the Affordable Care Act, and because he then chose to move ahead without the recalcitrants in Congress by issuing Executive Orders to achieve his goals, Bachman and Palin and other white trash want to impeach the president.  Palin also believes that Obama's "failure" to secure our southern border is part of a bigger plot to do something which she is not sure about but must be also worthy of impeachment. 

Boehner just wants to sue him and he plans to do so just as soon as he finishes his golf game at Congressional.

One thing we have learned about Republicans in recent years is that they operate with the understanding that what you believe and what you say need not be related to truth or reality in any way.  That's why Republicans can claim global warming is nothing more than a liberal plot to deny corporations their rightful profits by forcing them to enact unnecessary environmental safeguards.

And that's why Republicans can say that Obama was responsible for the fiscal mess left by former president Bush.  That's why the current mashup in Iraq is also Obama's fault.  Facts don't matter. 

So far as Executive Orders go, the truth is that Mr. Obama has issued fewer executive orders than either Mr. Georgi W. Bushki or the Gipper.  Consider:  Reagan issued 381 executive orders.  Bushki issued 291.  In Mr. Obama's first 5 1/2 years he issued 168 Exective Orders.

Good luck with the impeachment and the lawsuit you dumber than dumb goofballs!

Pres Obama Tells It Like It Is, 'Maybe It's Just Me They Don't Like'

Raphael and Ted Cruz aka Ra Fi El and Tabi.

Arthur Woodstone was well-known as a wise man, a moral man, a writer--a raconteur, if you will.  His work, published in The New Yorker and other magazines reflected a witty, wise and somewhat cynical soul whose heart might be bleeding but was always in the right place.  

Art died not long ago, but shortly before he passed he sent me the following essay.  It is quintessential Art and the humor is mixed with the bitter pathos derived from the knowledge that Ted Cruz and other Tea Party nogoodniks really don't care about this country and its people.  They live and die by an ideological soup which blends their fundamentalist religion with a political posture in such a way as to effectively exclude the great majority of our citizens even as it wages war on our Constitution!

 

DID YOU KNOW TED CRUZ'S FATHER WAS NAMED RAPHAEL, WHICH SOUNDS   SUSPICIOUSLY LIKE THE  ALIEN NAME, Ra Fi El.  
   
THE REAL NAME OF Ra Fi El's SON ALSO SMACKS OF THE ALIEN, BUT WE WILL TOUCH ON THAT LATER.

THERE IS A MORE PRESSING ISSUE TO BE RESOLVED FIRST:

Is the son really an American?  He was the birth child of Ra Fi El and his wife, Eleanor [which was rendered in her husband's secret diaries as El N a Nor].  Ted was born in Calgary, in Canada, a province you will immediately recognize as  a largely unexplored  wilderness in the darkest north, with long, icy winters and nothing to occupy a bitter man's hours except twiddling frost-bitten fingers and dreaming of perpetrating vast mischief, guided by malevolent "handlers" who put him in place until the time comes  to initiate chaos and destruction.

All that remained for the plotters  to complete the dream of spreading wide the disaster was to identify and occupy an ideal location from which to start--say for instance, fertile Texas. 

I am ahead of myself, for which I apologize.  So, for a few moments more, let's dwell on names found in Ra Fi El's diaries. They reveal that the original Cruz family name was Khroos.  Although I have not been able to pin it down conclusively as Arabic in origin, it does, you will agree, sound suspiciously Arabic.
 
Moreover, the diaries reveal Ted's birth name was not Ted, according those patriotic American researchers who first exposed Ra Fi El's secret scribblings.  Khroos senior always referred in writing to his son-in-training as Tabi.  One may presume that Tabi is the diminutive for Tabid, the name originating in Baghdad for an eighth century Arab philosopher, later anglicized as Theodore Abu Quarra.

Virtually every proper name in Ra Fi El's diaries smacks of Islam.  For instance, Khroos Sr. favored spelling Calgary as Kal Ga Ri and Cuba as Khuba and Iran [as rendered in the diaries] as .إيران
 

It doesn't take a great forensic leap to  recognize the implications.

 

Then there is the matter of Ra Fi El's departure from Khuba.  Was it voluntary--did Khroos, the father, really decide on his own to leave that island country so antagonistic to democracy--or was he pushed out, a possible criminal buried by Khastro [yes, another spelling found in the diaries] among the Khuban refugees exported to America those many years ago via the Mariel boat lift? 

Actually, that question ultimately proves irrelevant in light of what the experts [and I modestly add,  they include myself] think most likely: his handlers planted him in Khanada where he could inflict   hurt on Kal Ga Ri's culture and economy.  What neither the handlers nor Ra Fi El anticipated was the stultifying ennui and the indifference of those hardy, winterized Khanadanians that made sabotage not just difficult but meaningless.
 

But before Ra Fi El could manage to migrate to more fertile territory and create great mischief, Tabi was born [considered the accidental result of lust and circumstance to alleviate the boredom of the Kal Ga Ri winter], making the unwelcome child a citizen of Khanada,

We experts haven't yet ruled out Khuba  as the origin of the plan to destroy the Americas,  but the more promising country of origin is .إيران. 

But what we do know conclusively is that whatever the country, that country chose carefully. When Khanada proved a bust, the handlers moved Ra Fi El, his wife and three-year old son south to Texas, a land known to be ideal for inflicting chaos, separatism and hate on western civilization.

Once in Texas, the scheme began paying dividends almost immediately. Tabi quickly proved adaptable to the onery, Texas-style attitude.  He mastered the role of Difficult Child, showing:  smug, bullying, dictatorial, a know-it-all attitude, character traits which repelled young Tabi's pre-school peers, but appealed strongly to their adoring parents.

A grown-up Tabi has proved no less annoying, no less dictatorial, no less dangerous to everyone in America, if you omit Texas voters and a scattering of non-tea-drinking Tea Partiers who worship at the feet of the junior Senator, especially after he opens his mouth to brag openly of his capacity to inflict hurt on every part of country--that is, if the United States really is his country. 

I think it deliberate that Tabi has even done deep harm to his own, putative party, the GOP. Even columnist Kathleen Parker, no friend of Democrats, has declared that, thanks to the damage inflicted by Khroos, it's unlikely "that Republicans could convince anyone that they should be allowed to deliver milk, much less hold the nation’s purse strings..." 

Though the junior Senator claims Hispanic origins, it has also been said, more than once by more than one observer, that "the loudmouth from Texas...has wrecked the  'Latino brand.'"  Which raised the question: what if the Latino brand isn't truly the Khroos brand?

Then, of course, the economic damage caused by the shutdown Tabi demanded, in the name of frugality, may well be incalculable. The latest, incomplete, count, set the losses to the United States  treasury at $24 billion.  [Even at this distance, I can hear the guffaws all the way from Baghdad.]

The Washington Post said "the amount of wreckage Cruz [sic] caused in such a short time is truly awe-inspiring."

There is no doubt that Tabi Khroos is a sleeper, designed after the Mancurian Candidate. He was created by his father Ra Fi El who, in turn, was the creation of America's enemies to bring down our government and terrorize and enslave its citizens.

So, let's hereafter think warily of Senator Tabi as the dark messenger, the new Manchurian [or whatever] Candidate.   Although we experts obviously lean toward .إيران., until we can pin it down to a single trouble-maker, you get your own  choice:  Tabi Khroos, the Khuban Candidate, the Iranian Insult, or the Texan Candidate from Hell.
In the final analysis, it doesn't matter  which country originated the scheme to use one Khroos or another to sabotage civilization..Cuba, Iran and Texas are all foreign countries.

It is, however, imperative you understand Tabi  is focused on and dedicated to the  destruction of western civilization...and, so far. he is succeeding.

Arthur W.

Reagan "catering to the enemy"

New robes for the Supreme Court

Bill Maher and Ralph Reed on a literal interpretation of the Bible

Thanks to Heather at Crooks and Liars.

The Daily Show - Keep Gun and Carry On

The Daily Show
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Bonobo's quality of life

Thanks to Atheistic Cartoons.

McCain knows not whether he's coming or going

Less than four months ago, McCain said he'd negotiate with terrorists to get POW released.  Perhaps he doesn't remember?

The picture above from Americablog.

When the polar ice caps are gone...

The polar ice caps are going.  It's no longer a matter of "if" but a matter of "when."  And still the climate change deniers keep singing their deadly song.

Raw Video: The President Takes a Surprise Walk