December 15, 2011
December 14, 2011
Addicted again: Going cold-turkey from dairy, sugar, wheat & Wall Street
I used to be addicted to love. But now I’m just addicted to food. How pathetic is that.
But actually, it really does turn out that wheat and dairy really can cause actual addictive symptoms — plus we already know that sugar and sugar substitutes are addictive. If you have any doubts about that one, just try convincing your kids to give up their daily sugar fix. You might have to put them on methadone first!
The other evening I went to hear a prominent nutritionist give a lecture on how to eat healthy and she told us, “Gluten-containing foods such as wheat, barley, rye, spelt and most forms of oats can actually produce an addictive reaction. And dairy products can trigger an addictive response too.” That certainly explains why I’m addicted to pumpkin pie smothered with whipped cream on top.
“Gluten-containing foods are not only addictive but they can also destroy the delicate villi that line our small intestines. The negative effect caused by depleted villi is that nutrients in your food can no longer be absorbed, resulting in dizziness, asthma, depression, fatigue, foggy brain syndrome and even cancer.” Yikes! I gots foggy brain syndrome! I’m doomed.
So yesterday morning I decided to go cold-turkey and stop eating wheat and sugar and dairy. “And how’s that been going for you?” you might ask. Not so good. Aside from suffering from intense withdrawal symptoms such as headaches and hunger DTs, I also soon discovered that, aside from sugar, dairy and gluten, there’s pretty much nothing else that’s exciting to eat. But I’m hanging in there — and desperately trying to convince MediCare to send me to some posh sugar-dairy-gluten re-hab clinic in SoCal. Yeah right.
PS: There has been one small benefit from going cold turkey from SDG — I’ve lost five whole pounds in just the last week.
PPS: Americans such as myself also seem to be addicted to television too. Well, here’s a word of advice for those of us with a channel-surfing addiction: Don’t believe everything you see on TV.
For instance, don’t ever believe that war is a good thing.
And also stop believing that Occupy Wall Street is just a passing phase filled with crazies, or that anything that’s good for the rich who now own our country is also good for the rest of us too — because America’s current addiction to the One Percent’s attitude of “Let them eat cake” is clearly one hecka dangerous gluten addiction.
December 12, 2011
December 11, 2011
Will Dems be “sucker-punched”?
In his column in the Los Angeles Times for Sunday December 11, 2011, (on page A34) Doyle McManus said that President Obama’s speech in Osawatomie Kansas indicates that the President wants “to frame the 2012 election as a clear choice between two philosophies.” In this corner we have the group of one percenters and in the other the massive number of the ninetyniners. It will be a bout to the finish. Both sides will bet everything. Will it be a fair fight?
The Bolsheviks were a minority group that caught the majority Mensheviks off guard and took control of Russia via a clever trick. The word Bolshevik means a member of a minority group.
The Nazis were a minority party that gained control of Germany in the early Thirties. Think that the majority voted to give the minority party control of that country or did that party’s leaders use some kind of slight of hand (Burn the Reichstag building and initiate Gleichschaltung?) to gain control?
In many Muslim countries a minority of Shiites have control over their bitter religious rivals the Sunnis. Did they win the advantage fairly or use some kind of subterfuge to get the upper hand?
If Obama frames the 2012 election as a death match between the rich and the rest of Americans, will the wealthy hesitate to use trickery to rake in the pot with all the chips?
If you think that (somehow) the results of the 2000 and the 2004 Presidential elections were rigged, what makes you think that with everything they want riding on the next election; they wouldn’t want to cheat again to win it all?
If gangsters run a gambling casino, the law of averages says they will make enormous profits. Why would they want to cheat and get more money?
If you have been reading Brad Friedman’s reporting on the unreliability of the unverifiable results from the electronic voting machines, you might want to try to make a side-bet on (dishonest?) results that will favor the one percenters.
Imagine that the election is about (as Doyle McManus put it) enlarging (Obama’s campaign focus) “to everyone who agrees with the Occupy Wall Street movement that the current economy is inequitable.”
See how that will frame it so that if the Republicans win, the One Percent will say “you knew this was a “for keepsies” bet. Then they can be completely ruthless in insuring that the paid minions of the mass media interpret a Republican win as a “mandate” to eliminate as many taxes for the rich as is possible and to balance the budget with even more sever cuts to government spending.
When the 2004 election results were posted, winner George W. Bush then announced that in retrospect it was a referendum on the Afghanistan and Iraq wars.
If the media (and a compliant Obama) make the 2012 all about Occupy the voting booths and if the electronic voting machines deliver a mandate to coddle the rich even more, then the winners will be able to be very blunt in assessing the results.
“In all the election results tumult, we have lost track of just how big the new Republican majority in both branches of the legislature are. Now, as we start voting on new Constitutional Amendments, you Democratic losers have to ask yourself a question: “Do I feel lucky? . . . Well do ya punk?” Or words to that effect.
The media will start a massive counter-spin pre-emptive strike (on orders from Murdoch or Charles Foster Kane?) labeling any objections to a Mandate to Coddle the Billionaires as being delusional babbling from conspiracy theory crazies, at that point the only pundit able to respond by saying: “I tried to warn ya” will be the World’s Laziest Journalist and a lot of good that’s gonna do.
This columnist got kicked off a leading liberal blogging aggregate website quite awhile ago for predicting that the 2012 election results would be questionable (especially if the winner is JEB Bush) and so if the Press starts framing the 2012 as a referendum on the Occupy Wall Street agenda, then don’t send me any e-mails with conspiracy theory lamentations if the one percenters hijack the election agenda and the results.
What odds are the British bookies giving on a JEB win? If Mitt Romney doesn’t get the nomination will he be a high roller and make a $10,000 bet on a Republican upset no matter who the nominee is? Would the British bookies permit him to make such a bet on himself if he does get the nomination?
Think about it. If the stakes are going to be that high, wouldn’t the one percenters be nuts not to cheat if they could?
Damon Runyon has said: “The race is not always to the swift nor the battle to the strong, buat that’s the way to bet.”
Now, the disk jockey will play “Stagger Lee,” “The Gambler,” and (it is sortta appropriate if you think about it) Waylon Jennings song about “If I’dda killed her when we first met, I’d be outta jail by now.” We have to go check and see when the racing season will start at Santa Anita. Have a “winner take all” type week.
“Wallace, you never can jail us all”: But Wells Fargo can
I am still totally pissed off at Wells Fargo after they callously and mercilessly ruined a friend of mine’s credit by charging her outrageous fees for an “overdraft protection” service that she never signed up for http://jpstillwater.blogspot.com/2011/03/wells-fargos-illegal-overdraft.html. And now I’m all pissed off at Wells Fargo for about 16 trillion other reasons as well — none of them cool.
According to Rep. Alan Grayson’s revealing synopsis of the GAO’s recent Federal Reserve audit, “The main, if not the sole, qualification for getting help from the Fed was to have lost huge amounts of money. The [16-trillion-dollar] Fed bailouts rewarded failure, and penalized success.” http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rep-alan-grayson/the-fed-bailouts-money-fo_b_1129988.html
Hey, if my friend’s credit is so bad, then why didn’t the Feds bail her out too — like they did Wells Fargo?
But Wells Fargo isn’t the only target for my wrath. I’m also pissed off at General Electric and will never ever ever buy another appliance or light bulb or drone from them ever again. And you shouldn’t either. Those guys are evil zombie war profiteers, sucking America’s very life-blood away — at our own expense. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNkX6LJSaWE&feature=relmfu
In fact, I am totally pissed off at just about everyone who is stealing from America’s treasury — K Street lobbyists, Supreme Court justices, war-profiteers, Wall Street insiders, the Federal Reserve, White House staffers, congressional puppets of the corporatocracy, off-shore out-sourcers, mountain-top removers, ALL of those corporate-welfare-receiving pirates who are happily busy raping and pillaging America.
And now all these evil corporatist bad guys are threatening to throw us in jail? To throw anyone who objects to being robbed by America’s new robber barons in jail? That’s what I’m hearing from internet chatter — that corporatists are now building concentration camps especially designed to hold all us average salt-of-the-earth Main Street schmucks who are finally getting pissed off.
Back in the 1960s, when thousands of us marched on Montgomery with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., we all sang a song that went something like this: “Oh, Wallace, you never can jail us all!” Well, those days are gone and now Congress and Obama and Cheney and General Electric and Wells Fargo are also threatening to jail us all — but, unlike Wallace, they CAN. http://www.bagnewsnotes.com/2011/12/occupy-forcing-militarized-pds-to-show-their-colors/.
According to the ACLU, “The Senate voted last Thursday [December 1, 20011] to pass S. 1867, the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which would authorize the president to send the military literally anywhere in the world to imprison civilians without charge or trial. Prison based on suspicion alone. The power is so sweeping that the president would be able to direct the military to use its powers within the United States itself, and even lock up American citizens without charge or trial. No corner of the world, not even your own home, would be off-limits to the military.” http://www.aclu.org/blog/tag/NDAA
And why shouldn’t corporatists want to jail us all? Just think of all that access to free labor they’ll get!
Corporatists in Germany back in the 1940s profited a lot from prison-camp labor. So why shouldn’t corporatists today also give it a whirl? Why indeed.
See ya in the hoosegow, folks.
And I’m calling “dibs” on the first bottom bunk to the left of the tent flap.
(That’s me, marching in Montgomery while seven months pregnant with baby Lorraine. Love the glasses, made the dress myself.)
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December 10, 2011
December 9, 2011
December 8, 2011
Was Mitt Romney Arrested for Gambling on Cock Fighting in 1967?
This is a satire, folks, although entirely believable.
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December 6, 2011
December 5, 2011
December 4, 2011
Sunday Sermon: Christopublican Exceptionalism, AKA ‘Hypocrisy’
“So the Pharisees, Jesus said, were the rich and the powerful and righteous who ignored the most important moral values that should guide everyone: the values of justice and mercy and faith. They were fools and foolers, and those who followed them were blinded by their own piety.
“This sounds achingly familiar today. The complaints that the religious right has lost all sense of moral values — that it has a blind and foolish piety in its endorsement of torture, killing of innocent civilians in the name of finding a new proselyte, and ravaging of the Earth even as it is the great giver of life — are not new charges. And they are also true. Yet the real message of Christ was that hypocrisy will be condemned, and that those who practice it will face the perils of Hell.”
– Guy Reel, “Woe to the Hypocrites,” Common Dreams, Sept. 22, 2005.
December 3, 2011
Madam Jane predicts: American wars will cause deadly climate change
I just had a dream that it was the end of the world. So should I still go Christmas shopping or not? Why bother, I thought. But just to be on the safe side, I also asked the mysterious psychic Madam Jane for some input. “Are my dreams and the Mayan calendars and all those Rapture freaks right? Is the end of the world actually on its way? Are we really all gonna die soon?”
“Yes of course,” replied Madam Jane.
Oh dear.
“The amount of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere is mounting at a catastrophic rate and will cause irreversibly-disastrous climate change in the next five years — and by far the biggest cause of this problem is the U.S. military and its allies. Every time NATO bombs Libya and Americans bomb Pakistan and Israel bombs Gaza or a helicopter takes off in Afghanistan or a U.S. carrier fleet steams toward Syria and the Persian Gulf, we move one step closer to irreversible climate change,” stated Madam Jane, swaying back and forth with her eyes closed.
“Would it help at all if I had my car smog-checked today?” I then asked her hopefully. Madame Jane just rolled her eyes. “We’re doomed,” she replied.
So. How do I want to spend my last days here on Earth? Not a clue. If you knew that seven billion people had approximately five years to live before climate-change-caused floods started pouring in from our rivers, and deserts started taking over our farmlands and oceans started drowning our coastal cities and a dreadful ice age started to set in, what would you do?
“I’d move to Hawaii,” replied Madam Jane. Not me. I’d buy hip-waders, ear muffs and really warm coats.
PS: According to a recent AlterNet article entitled “Game Over for Planet Earth,” we’re all gonna be fried like fish in a skillet first before we even get a chance to freeze to death or drown.
AlterNet says, “[Here's a] prediction offered by Fatih Birol, chief economist at the International Energy Agency: Without an effective international agreement to staunch greenhouse gases within five years, the door will close on preventing a potentially disastrous rise in the planet’s temperature.” http://www.alternet.org/economy/153092/game_over_for_planet_earth%3A_the_month%E2%80%99s_biggest_story_you_never_read
PPS: Madam Jane’s ominous-sounding and doom-like claim that irreversible climate change is only five years away is actually erroneous. And AlterNet’s five-year claim is wrong too. According to the Christian Science Monitor, irreversible climate change is already here.
“Even if all the world’s smokestacks and tailpipes were to suddenly stop spewing CO2, if all the trees everywhere were to be left standing, and if all the remaining coal, oil, and gas were to stay in the ground [and the American war-machine would suddenly stop spewing CO2 like there's no tomorrow as well], the planet would still be feeling the effects of global warming a millennium from now.” http://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/Bright-Green/2009/0127/report-calls-climate-change-irreversible
PPPS: How can we keep cheering on American wars abroad — without bringing those wars back home to us too, like the recent violent shootings in Oakland and the recent pepper-spraying at U.C. Davis?
My Christmas shopping may just have to wait.
EXTRA! EXTRA! Madam Jane also predicts that the “American war” on Iran is about to happen too!
Remember back when, long before the war on Iraq was declared, millions of tons of war material was being amassed at various East Coast military bases here in the U.S.? Well, Madam Jane states that they are at it again. “Long endless lines of container trucks are currently pouring into supply depots all over the East Coast.” Oops.
Plus America’s bottom-kissing “yellow journalism” media is already geared up to make Iran look like the ultimate bad guy — just as it did right before Bush’s illegal invasion of Iraq.
And not only that but, according to Middle East specialist David Pratt, the video game Battlefield 3 has just come out with a brand new version — starring good old Iran as the penultimate evil villain. It just doesn’t get any more “War Profiteers Gone Crazy” than that! http://www.heraldscotland.com/comment/david-pratt/demonisation-of-iran-carries-a-whiff-of-war-1.1137797?18451
And when Iran does get attacked, just THINK of all the air pollution that will be released! Good grief. Then Battlefield 3 will have to put out an even newer version — featuring deadly hand-to-hand combat with radioactive smog.
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December 2, 2011
Santa’s Claws: How OWS is being drowned in a bathtub
My friend Michael’s nephew Jake has been camping at Liberty Park since Occupy Wall Street’s inception — and now Jake has pneumonia.
American heroes like Jake should be appearing on Letterman and leading the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade and throwing out the first ball at Yankee Stadium and guest-starring on CSI New York and feted everywhere as the American heroes that they are.
Jake should be invited to dinner at the White House!
For standing up for the American people against the evil empire of corporatocracy that now runs our country, Jake has become another Paul Revere, another Nathan Hale, another Patrick Henry, another Benjamin Franklin. But instead the media is treating him like he was another Aaron Burr.
Jake — and other valiant young people like him who are still holding out at Zucotti Park — are the absolute cream of America’s next generation and are endangering their very lives in order to save America from the corporatist Grinches who now own us lock, stock and Black Friday — but instead of becoming national heroes, the rest of America merely stands by while Wall Street shows its horrible red claws and tries to drown these young heroes of the OWS movement in a bathtub — just like it has tried to drown our economy, our liberty, our morals and our democracy as well.
There will be no presents under Jake’s tree in Liberty Park this year, only pneumonia, danger and scorn — unless all the rest of us Americans finally wake up, begin to actually fight for our country despite what the mainstream media is telling us, become more like Santa and start bearing gifts down to Jake and the rest of our new young national heroes bravely holding out at Zucotti Park — starting with bringing long underwear, chicken soup and penicillin!
Give us Liberty — or give us Wall Street — for Christmas. We can’t have both.
PS: Within the week, I expect to see Jake on TV reading Letterman’s top-ten list of things that Americans must do in order rescue democracy back from the evil bloody claws of Wall Street.
PPS: Occupy Oakland is setting up occupations in front of various foreclosed homes there — bringing the spirit of Christmas back to families victimized by Wall Street loan sharks. http://berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2011-11-20/article/38886?headline=Occupy-Oakland-Protesters-Set-Up-Camp-on-Lawn-of-Foreclosed-Home–By-Bay-City-News
I think that both Santa Claus and the sacred Baby whose birthday Christmas honors would approve.
PPPS: The other day, knitters in Berkeley held a “knit-in” at Occupy Cal, knitting scarves and mittens that would help keep brave protesting students warm. So let’s have a knit-in at Liberty Park as well! http://berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2011-11-26/article/38911?headline=-Knit-In-at-Occupy-Berkeley-Site-to-Make-Warm-Clothing-for-Protesters–By-Erika-Heidecker-BCN-
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December 12th: Mourning Yet Another End Our Representative Republic Day
Least we forget.
Today was THAT day: eleven years ago the Fascistic Supreme 5 decided to end our representative form of government and crown Junior for 8 years. Wearing black is very appropriate. Free speech bought and therefore owned by corporatists; letting the Reich Wing and their Goebbels propaganda machine-media hold us hostage is not.
And inside the Bush aides, after crossing state lines to intimidate those involved in counting the votes, were rioting, pounding on the walls, assaulting people: kicking, punching and otherwise harassing them verbally. They were rewarded for this riot by the Fascistic Supreme 5 and those who agreed to stop the count.
PROMISE US, MR.O. NO MORE COMPROMISING WITH TRAITORS AND THEIR PROGENY, OR ENABLING THEIR RETURN TO POWER.