Archive for December, 2005

On Transportation and Crazies

Sunday, December 25th, 2005

It probably is a relatively common occurrence on long-range travel services (in this case Greyhound Bus) that a mentally handicapped person disrupts the travel.

I say this because I travelled by Greyhound, and an elderly Mrs. Robinson kept walking up the aisle from her seat because “she had things to do” in “her home” — from what anyone can gather the most specific chore she had in mind was “making the bed”, which consisted of trying to drag the legs of a teenage girl who was lying across two seats, largely sleeping.

She had to be carted back to her seat several times. Eventually, a plan was devised to stop her at the outset, and all hubdrub was cornered off to the back of the bus. She should have been riding with somebody, but she wasn’t. Failing that, someone should have been there at her destination, someone making it a point to get there early for their mentally handicapped friend, but, alas, nobody was.

I am reminded of the shooting of the mentally handicapped man who was shot by air-marshals recently. A sad case, and my first thought was “Well, you probably can’t blame the air marshals.” My opinion has shifted a bit based on new and troubling information. (Apparently, he was running away from the marshals, for one, and for another he never uttered that he had a “bomb”.) Nonetheless, assume the best of the air marshals. I still found a few troubling aspects about the reaction of various pundits and opinion-meisters. There was some reportings on the incident as though nothing bad happened — nothing terribly off about a mental handicapped shot down. Anyone who half-joked “Well, that thins out the herd” (as I heard on one radio station) — Phooey on You.

On the Greyhound Bus trip, the man next to me joked that perhaps she was just shipped out to a random location by her caretakers that were sick of her. He immediately made a caveat apologia, “That would be mean.” My father, an ex-social worker, relayed an actual incident where something like this happened, a Mexican woman wanting to go to “Washington” to meet the Government because she was being chased by the Mexican government. She wound up in Central Washington, the only logic being that this has a heavy Mexican population and thus some Spanish speaking caretakers would more likely be available than somewhere else.

I assume the disruptive mentally infeebled elderly woman made it fine. Social workers were called in to the Tacoma Greyhound station. At least she wasn’t shot to death, although in the darkest recesses of many on the bus as she tested everybody’s patience, she was surely mentally killed.

a message from the aliens

Sunday, December 25th, 2005

Graffiti found on the floor of the “Police Monument” at Waterfront Park in Portland, Oregon:

(a little doodle of an alien in its flying saucer)

I am out of plutonium on
my way to Mars. That’s the
only reason I had to stop
on Earth. So now I must plan
the liberation of such
radioactivity. Then I’ll
finally deliver Jewsus to his
planet of
DE FEC TION So
Do rev- olu- tionizing
the con-cept of being
So TIL then START
SOME MOTHERFUCKIN CHANGE

Who and why, I do not know. The handwriting of the final few lines were / are pretty well rushed, suggesting the perpetrator was getting a bit paranoid at being caught.

Rememberances of Christmas Past

Friday, December 23rd, 2005

My earliest memory of Christmas-time is of eating mud pie after doing some sleigh-thing or other in Bickleton, Washington. I remember the mud pie at the end of the day because I was horrified by the prospect of mud pie. My mom had to tell me that it is not actually a pie made of mud.

I remember my kidnergarten class did a rendition of “Little Drummer Boy” for the Christmas Pageant Assembly. My first grade class attended the thing, but did not perform. Whoever was sitting next to me asked the teacher, also sitting next to me, if we were going to perform. She said “No.” Such is the case with us special-ed students, I suppose. (As if the rest of the student body were dazzling and impressing.) By the time I was in the fifth grade, my class did a stupid “rap” for “‘Twas the Night before Christmas”. The first performance we were ahead of the taped background; but by the second performance (for the parents) we had the timing correct.

Actually the horror of the pre-Christmas Break day of school was the entire school body being herded into the assembly room and watching old films on the reels. Disney predominated. Bad Disney. We cheered on Donald Duck cartoons because the alternative was something like “The Apple Dumpling Gang.” The atmosphere stunk of wet boots and bad air circulation. These are not pleasant memories. The weird thing is that they continued right on through middle school. There was a Simpsons episode that correctly captured the general mood of this peculiar Christmastime tedium, wherein Skinner shows a horrid Christmas-themed low-grade production, and the dvd starts burning as though it were an overheated old film reel.

Why Does this war (these wars) have no Heroes?

Friday, December 23rd, 2005

Fred Barnes asks the question: Why aren’t there any heroes being pumped up out of our current wars?

Instead of heroes, there are victims. The two most famous soldiers in the war are Jessica Lynch and Pat Tillman (in Afghanistan). Lynch was captured by Saddam’s troops after her truck crashed. Stories of her heroism in a gun battle with Iraqis turned out to be false. She was rescued later from an Iraqi hospital. Tillman, who gave up a pro football career to join the Army, was killed by friendly fire. “The press made that a negative story, a scandal almost,” says a Pentagon official.

But Fred Barnes. Don’t you see? As you state yourself, it’s not like the United States have “heroes” for lack of trying. The Pentagon pumped up the two famous heroes, and their stories of valor deflated before our very eyes. The only reason they are victims is because the Pentagon, attempting to create myths, crushed out their very human stories. Jessica Lynch’s “victimhood” came up when she had to tell the cameras that the story of her rescue was cockamine, in a supposed dark moment in the initial “March Toward Saddam Hussein’s Statue”, a story designed to uplift America– a tale of valor and then “rescued” from the arms of well-meaning Iraqi doctors confused by the proceedings of American troops running in guns in tow. The scandal of the Pat Tillman story happened when it turned out that the Pentagon was making stuff up about him over whole cloth, to plaster on about during the NFL draft.

And, yes, Pat Tillman is a hero. Who ever said he wasn’t? Case in point:

“We were outside of (a city in southern Iraq) watching as bombs were dropping on the town. We were at an old air base, me, Kevin and Pat, we weren’t in the fight right then. We were talking. And Pat said, ‘You know, this war is so f— illegal.’ And we all said, ‘Yeah.’ That’s who he was. He totally was against Bush.”

By the way, Mr. Fred Barnes… in regards to There are no household names like Audie Murphy or Sgt. York or Arthur MacArthur or even Don Holleder, the West Point football star killed in Vietnam (what is it about football that its stars become those selected to be our heroes of our war? Never mind…): you forgot to mention that other household name of the Vietnam War. He commanded a swiftboat. He won a Bronze Star, a Silver Star and three Purple Hearts. The initials are JK. Remember him?

Sigh. To be honest, in the service of wars (just and unjust ones alike) — medals and accolades are meaningless to me. I can’t really rate. Because, if we’re not careful, we’ll end up creating half-men half-apes to fill that niche for heroes.

2005 Year In Review: LaRouche Related Congressional Story of the Year

Thursday, December 22nd, 2005

Okay, as we slowly wind up the 2005 and look back, here is the Lyndon LaRouche-related Congressional Story of the year… from “Roll Call”, here is new of an actual email that was sent by a staff member of Representative Jane Harman (D California) to everyone:

sent out an e-mail one day claiming that a Lyndon LaRouche follower walked into Harman’s office and caused a big stink. The e-mail, which was forwarded to HOH, said: “One of these stinkers just took a dump in our office. Midway through his propaganda, Stephen McLaughlin (I found out his name because he was taken away by Capitol Police) decided to drop his pants and plopped a Hot Cleveland Steamer on our carpet. House Janitorial Services is currently cleaning up this wretched filth.” (Needless to say, the e-mail was a hoax, and the young lad was reprimanded.)

Okay, just to be clear: so a Lyndon LaRouche follower did not take a dump on the floor of Jane Harman’s office.

Who the heck is Stephen McLaughlin? A friend of the staffer?

Stats Phrases

Thursday, December 22nd, 2005

lyndon johnson masturbate over body of jfk

… A scatological literary hoax in which Paul Krasner published in his magazine, The Realist, what were purported to be censored chapters of William Manchester’s book, “The Death of a President.” In those supposedly suppressed pages, Krasner had LBJ masturbate on the body of JFK in the cargo bay of Air Force One as the dead president and the new president flew from Dallas to Washington.

thesis statement for the cask of amontillado

The Cask of Amontillado was written by a drunkard.

mark dayton skull and bones 1969

Mark Dayton graduated in 1969 from Yale. Was he Skull and Bones? I can’t seem to dredge that one up. (But how does a fairly unsuccessful one-term Senator fit into the Grand Conspiracy?)

if hitler asked you to execute a stranger would you

You never know for sure unless you’re in that situation, but I would hope not.

coca cola versus sams choice

Coca Cola is the largest cola brand in the future, although Coca Cola itself has an identity crisis that keeps it second to Pepsi in this nation. (Gotta be “hip for the Kids” at the same time as “Traditional with rich history.”) Sam’s Choice is the generic store brand of Corporate Behemoth and Destroyer of the American Economic System Wal-Mart. They both “taste like Malted Battery Acid”.

anti-masonic campaign slogan

“Fine. Don’t Show Us Your Handshake! See if I care!”

Um… In lieu of actual campaign slogans, here’s some history:

The party had its rise after the mysterious disappearance, in 1826, of William Morgan (c. 1776-c. 1826), a Freemason of Batavia, New York, who had become dissatisfied with his Order and had planned to publish its secrets. When his purpose became known to the Masons, Morgan was subjected to frequent annoyances, and finally in September 1826 he was seized and surreptitiously conveyed to Fort Niagara, from whence he disappeared. Though his ultimate fate was never known, it was generally believed at the time that he had been foully dealt with.

The event created great excitement, and led many to believe that Masonry and good citizenship were incompatible. Opposition to Masonry was taken up by the churches as a sort of religious crusade, and it also became a local political issue in western New York, where early in 1827 the citizens in many mass meetings resolved to support no Mason for public office. In New York at this time the National Republicans, or “Adams men,” were a very feeble organization, and shrewd political leaders at once determined to utilize the strong anti-Masonic feeling in creating a new and vigorous party to oppose the rising Jacksonian Democracy. In this effort they were aided by the fact that Jackson was a high-ranking Mason and frequently spoke in praise of the Order.

In the elections of 1828 the new party proved unexpectedly strong, and after this year it practically superseded the National Republican party in New York. In 1829 the hand of its leaders was shown, when, in addition to its antagonism to the Masons, it became a champion of internal improvements and of the protective tariff. From New York the movement spread into other middle states and into New England, becoming especially strong in Pennsylvania and Vermont. A national organization was planned as early as 1827, when the New York leaders attempted, unsuccessfully, to persuade Henry Clay, though a Mason, to renounce the Order and head the movement. In 1831, William A. Palmer was elected governor of Vermont on an Anti-Masonic ticket, an office he held until 1835.

The party conducted the first U.S. presidential nominating convention in the U.S. at Baltimore, in the 1832 elections, nominating William Wirt (a former Mason) for President and Amos Ellmaker for Vice President. Wirt won 7.78 percent of the popular vote, and the seven electoral votes from Vermont. The highest elected office ever held by a member of the party was that of Pennsylvania governor, held from 1835 to 1838 by Joseph Ritner.

This was the high tide of its prosperity; in New York in 1833 the organization was moribund, and its members gradually united with the National Republican Party and other opponents of Jacksonian Democracy in forming the Whig Party. In other states, the party survived somewhat longer, but by 1836 most of its members had united with the Whigs. Its last act in national politics was to nominate William Henry Harrison for president and John Tyler for vice-president at a convention in Philadelphia in November 1838.

The growth of the anti-Masonic movement was due more to the political and social conditions of the time than to the Morgan episode, which was merely the catalyst. Under the name of “Anti-Masons” able leaders united those who were discontented with existing political conditions, and the fact that William Wirt, their choice for the presidency in 1832, was not only a Mason but even defended the Order in a speech before the convention that nominated him, indicates that simple opposition to Masonry soon became a minor factor in holding together the various elements of which the party was composed.

Wow. The candidate for the “Anti-Mason Party” was a Mason. Talk about playing both sides to the middle.

which united states president have red hair

Sometime before becoming president, Andrew Jackson had red hair, Thomas Jefferson had reddish hair, Dwight Eisenhower not only once had hair but it was red when he did have it, Martin Van Buren had red hair, and Calvin Coolidge and Ulysses S. Grant actually had red hair while in office.

former joint chiefs of staff general details nwo taking over of america

If you say so.

june 24 1988/what happened

Leonard Cohen played a concert in Reykjavik.

I don’t know if Mitt Romney is in Skull and Bones. And I assume that Kurt Cobain was for gay rmarriage, though I don’t know when he might have been asked.

Harry Potter

Wednesday, December 21st, 2005

There’s a KATU camera out by a shopping center — complete with the requisite Salvation Army bell rigner in front of the store– that I’m walking by — nevermind which one. I shuffle about, trying to avoid being shot by the camera. Paranoid? You bet! I can’t really figure out why KATU is shooting here, but figure they’re just trying to get some stock footage of the “Wacky Holiday Scene.”

Then I hear the words “Hello, Mr. Mayor.” Yep. There he is — Mr. Tom “Don’t call me Harry” Potter, our Communist Overlord of the city of Portland (replacement of our Fascist Overlord in Vera Katz.).

I toss my hand out, and shake his hand. For whatever reason, I say “I voted for the other guy,” then wonder why the hell I said that.

Harry Potter smiles and says, “Nobody’s perfect.”

I didn’t tell him that by “other guy” I meant Extremo the Clown, but never mind.