"We must know what we are, before we can know and use what we inherently possess."
~~ C. Larson
"Every artist was first an amateur."
~~ Ralph Waldo Emerson [1803-1882]
"I like myself better when I'm writing regularly."
~~ Willie Nelson
“It isn't what they say about you, it's what they whisper.”
~~ Errol Flynn [1909-59]
"Courage is grace under pressure."
~~ Ernest Hemingway [1899-1961]
"Amateurs hope. Professionals work."
~~ Garson Kanin [1912-99]
"A firm grip on reality is not a critical component of happiness."
~~ David Hempy
"Count [the minutes] by sensation, and not by calendars, and each moment is a day and the race a life."
~~ Benjamin Disraeli [1804-81]
"Reach high, think big, work hard, and have fun!"
~~ motto of Disney Channel's "Imagination Movers" children's TV program
"The future is already here, it is just unevenly distyributed."
~~ William Gibson
"A kiss without a moustache is like an egg without salt."
~~ old saying
"The trouble with the motion-picture art was (and is) that it is too much an industry; and the trouble with the motion picture industry is that it is too much an art. It is out of this basic contradiction that most of the ills of the form arise."
~~ Garson Kanin [1912-99]
"You can fool too many of the people too much of the time."
~~ James Thurber [1894-1961]
"It's no fun being a century ahead of the times."
~~ L. Frank Baum [1856-1919]
"There is a constant struggle between the spirit of free inquiry and the spirit of fundamentalist dogma."
~~ Adam Gopnick
"The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them."
~~ Ernest Hemingway [1899-1961]
"I have been up against tough competition all my life. I wouldn't know how to get along without it."
~~ Walt Disney [1901-66]
"All you need for a movie is a gun and a girl."
~~ Jean-Luc Godard
"Cinema is the most beautiful fraud in the world."
~~ Jean-Luc Godard
"I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it through not dying."
~~ Woody Allen
"If a person is to get the meaning of life he must learn to like the facts about himself – ugly as they may seem to his sentimental vanity – before he can learn the truth behind the facts. And the truth is never ugly."
~~ Eugene O'Neill [1888-1953]
"If my films make one more person miserable, I'll feel I have done my job."
~~ Woody Allen
"Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime."
~~ Ernest Hemingway [1899-1961]
"Once we have a war there is only one thing to do. It must be won. For defeat brings worse things than any that can ever happen in war."
~~ Ernest Hemingway [1899-1961]
“Curiosity killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back.”
~~ Eugene O'Neill [1888-1953]
"Ain't no man can avoid being born average, but there ain't no man got to be common."
~~ Satchel Paige [1906-82]
"I would rather entertain and hope that people learned something than educate people and hope they were entertained."
~~ Walt Disney [1901-66]
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Monday, June 22, 2009
Essay #90: "The Festival of Stupid"
Stupid, as a commodity, is not in short supply.
Stupid is quite plentiful, much like the kudzu vine of the American South, as both are ever attempting to take over Civilization.
* * * * * * * *
While a significant portion of the U.S. population were infected by the sleep-inducing propaganda of the Culture-Structure, the sheeple let the Party of Stupidity run the country using obvious strategies of stealth, plunder, Mafia-style ethics, talk-show alarmists, and an insane disregard for the consequences that always arise from such actions.
(And the Tea-Bagger sheeple even mindlessly protested President Obama’s tax CUTS for the Middle Class!)
The Corporatists and Fascists and Oligarchs and Conservatives and Religionists and bigots and Federalists have continued to work in concert, with the full intention of producing a mess just like the one that we are in. The anti-Reason gangsters always move in the same direction – to benefit from the exploitation and degradation of We The People.
And the sheeple let them.
And it never works. The mess gets dire and the People rise up and re-establish Progressive programs, and clean up the mess from the new Festival of Stupid.
And the Master Class sits back and complains about taxes – taxes that had to be raised to pay down their recent fiscal crimes – and the Master Class bides their time. And when the economy and civil rights are restored, or at least repaired, then the Master Class invents some new imaginary monster to make afraid those infected with Stupid, and here we go again.
* * * * * * * *
To be truly free from something is to not need it. I cared that the First Amendment was torn to shreds by the Bush Administration, but those freedoms still were alive where I was anyway because I do not need a piece of paper behind glass in Washington, DC to give me those freedoms. I am free to exercise my rights at all times because living from those Unalienable Rights ensures their existence. I am free, the Constitution says so, and that is a matter that is worth risking one’s life for.
Reason gives Progress. Action creates opportunity. Persistence delivers results.
Meanwhile, Stupid just creates more Stupid: messes to clean up, lives ruined, a planet despoiled, mindless waste, perpetual violence, and pain for everyone involved.
* * * * * * * *
The very fact that a cleanup is required means that a crime or assault on Liberty, or a crime of simple greed or survival has been committed.
The evidence of that dis-empowering act is whatever needs to be cleaned up.
Copyright 2009 by G.E. Nordell, all rights reserved
Stupid is quite plentiful, much like the kudzu vine of the American South, as both are ever attempting to take over Civilization.
George W. Bush is not as stupid as he appears. It isn’t so much that he IS stupid, but that he does stupid. The entire premise of the Bush 43 Administration was to wreck the economy, to really screw it up worse than Reagan-Bush did, so that the political takeover of America by the Robber Barons and the Fascists would be easier (for them).
But Dubya screwed that up! The economic crisis was scheduled to happen after the Democrats got control of the Executive and Legislative branches, so that the Oligarchs could then blame the Democrats – those terrifying Liberals – for the mess.
But Dubya screwed up the intentional screw-up, and the People woke up and Barack Obama won by a landslide in many precincts and states, and Dubya gets the blame by present and future historians for the Recession, Depression, Meltdown that is the current and future economic plight of America and the world.
While a significant portion of the U.S. population were infected by the sleep-inducing propaganda of the Culture-Structure, the sheeple let the Party of Stupidity run the country using obvious strategies of stealth, plunder, Mafia-style ethics, talk-show alarmists, and an insane disregard for the consequences that always arise from such actions.
(And the Tea-Bagger sheeple even mindlessly protested President Obama’s tax CUTS for the Middle Class!)
The Corporatists and Fascists and Oligarchs and Conservatives and Religionists and bigots and Federalists have continued to work in concert, with the full intention of producing a mess just like the one that we are in. The anti-Reason gangsters always move in the same direction – to benefit from the exploitation and degradation of We The People.
And the sheeple let them.
And it never works. The mess gets dire and the People rise up and re-establish Progressive programs, and clean up the mess from the new Festival of Stupid.
And the Master Class sits back and complains about taxes – taxes that had to be raised to pay down their recent fiscal crimes – and the Master Class bides their time. And when the economy and civil rights are restored, or at least repaired, then the Master Class invents some new imaginary monster to make afraid those infected with Stupid, and here we go again.
Freedom is the result of Reason. Locke and Hume and Tom Paine and Tom Jefferson and the American Revolution set in motion a Progressive ideology that will eventually prevail.
But it is tough work keeping Freedom alive. There are indeed those who oppose Freedom, who cannot tolerate rule by The People. They seek a return to feudalism, where in their view the Master Class (aristocracy) owns the peasants and is entitled to anything that it wants.
So Stupid exists in two places: the Master Class thrives on doing harm, and the sheeple suffer the consequences of their obliviousness.
To be truly free from something is to not need it. I cared that the First Amendment was torn to shreds by the Bush Administration, but those freedoms still were alive where I was anyway because I do not need a piece of paper behind glass in Washington, DC to give me those freedoms. I am free to exercise my rights at all times because living from those Unalienable Rights ensures their existence. I am free, the Constitution says so, and that is a matter that is worth risking one’s life for.
Reason gives Progress. Action creates opportunity. Persistence delivers results.
Meanwhile, Stupid just creates more Stupid: messes to clean up, lives ruined, a planet despoiled, mindless waste, perpetual violence, and pain for everyone involved.
Reason is the antidote for Stupid. The Objectivist philosophy of Ayn Rand [1905-82], the Existentialist philosophies of Albert Camus [1913-60] and Jean-Paul Sartre [1905-80], transformative education – all are based on Reason and lead to solutions that benefit Mankind as a whole.
We are all in this together. (Except for the Stupid, who are not IN anything, except failure.)
Reason has a person seek Progress; Stupidity can be defined as the lack of seeking or striving or thinking.
Reason is an act of Free Will; Stupid is based on a want or a wish, often for some fantasy, such as An End To Fear.
Reason seeks Progress; Stupid makes a mess. The act of cleaning something up is always a result of a cause that was sourced by Stupid.
- Federal cleanup sites are the result of Stupid behavior: atomic radiation, mining poisons, industrial pollution, the Texas-sized (literally) mega-pile of trash in the Pacific Ocean.
- Economic rescues (bailouts) are the result of Stupid behavior, and the bailouts themselves are Stupid behavior.
- The conflation of gambling and finance is the result of Stupid behavior: commodities futures, money market funds, indexes on indexes, convoluted ‘instruments’ – none truly exist (have equity) and are therefore sold only to suckers (stupid people with money).
- Economic failure or meltdown is the result of Stupid behavior: when hardworking regular folk find themselves homeless from tidal changes in The Market which they do not understand and had no hand in, and when their 401K or pension is now worthless after being touted as foolproof.
- Corporatism, which is based on the Stupid value of Growth For Growth’s Sake, which like pond scum will eventually suck all the oxygen out of the system.
- Ill health is the result of Stupid behavior: Reason-based healthcare prevents breakdown, as a boon to all, for a smoothly-running society and economy; single-payer healthcare makes prevention affordable. The economics of Stupid makes healthcare hard to get, with their proffered ‘solutions’ overpriced and with unwanted side-effects.
- Crime is Stupid, and not in any way Progressive. Crime is quite costly: lost equity, lost time, and waste of resources – the chase, the meting out of justice, the incarceration, the restoration of plundered goods, the parole system. Crime is an industry in America, and that fact is the result of Stupid behavior.
The very fact that a cleanup is required means that a crime or assault on Liberty, or a crime of simple greed or survival has been committed.
The evidence of that dis-empowering act is whatever needs to be cleaned up.
- Poisoned eco-systems
- Poisoned social systems, like healthcare and the military and police and justice systems, and the election system
- New Orleans
- The Rust Belt
- Chernobyl
- North Korea and Darfur and Somalia
- Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac and the rest of the $25 trillion Republican National Debt
- America’s labor unions
- America’s automobile industry
- America’s housing industry
- America’s healthcare industry
Politics is revitalized by Barack Obama’s campaign and his landslide victory. We the People did some cleaning up, got the election system working again, and President Obama has eight years to implement his planned repairs and improvements, his Vision For America.
What the Obama Administration will leave behind is a better world, even for the sheeple contaminated with Stupid. That Progressive agenda (hated by the pro-feudalism talk-show gasbag pundits) includes better healthcare for Americans, better education, more jobs and more union activity (better jobs), Reason-based taxation, and a reduction in death by warfare on the planet.
War is stupid. Feudalism is stupid. Hunger and starvation are stupid. Pollution is stupid. A frenzied life is stupid.
But the pathogen of Stupid bides its time and looks for chinks in the armor of the Progressive Life Force. No matter that Obama won in 2008, the Bad Guys are still loose and making their Stupid-based plans.
Stupid causes pain and death and suffering.
Empower whoever you can, wherever and whenever you can.
Monday, June 01, 2009
Essay #89: “The Evil of Dick Cheney”
The most evil person in America today is Dick Cheney. So that there is no mistake, I mean Richard Bruce Cheney, the former Vice President.
He is more evil than the idiot George Dubya Bush, cowardly slime-bucket Karl Rove, and p*ssant Alberto Gonzales combined.
(Limp Rushbaugh & Sean Vannity and their pack don’t count because they are the political equivalent of the old Chatty Cathy doll – push the button and hear pre-recorded clichés.)
* * * * * * * *
As preface to Dubya’s first speech as a former President, at a private event in Calgary (Alberta, Canada), he stated that he would not criticize President Obama, and that “President Obama deserves my silence.”
There is room for conjecture here.
President-elect Obama met privately several times with then-President Bush as part of the transition, and it looks like Obama offered Bush a ‘cease-fire’ treaty: that if Dubya kept his mouth shut and did not attack the Obama administration in the press, then the Obama administration would not attack Bush in the press.
You will notice that statements from the Obama administration might talk of mismanagement and failures of the ‘previous administration’, but Bush has not been blamed by name during these several months by any major figure of the White House or of the Cabinet. (Congress can say what they want; the accusations need to get stronger, such as with subpoenas to testify and with criminal indictments.)
* * * * * * * *
Whether any such offer was made to Cheney is more than conjecture. In any case, evil Dick Cheney has no intention of halting his assault on the U.S. Constitution, now that being out of office hampers his ability to give direct orders to frightened underlings. Dick Cheney has not gotten that the People voted his gang out of office, because the People have never mattered to Dick Cheney. That a former U.S. Vice President is pumping the airwaves to attack the new administration has never occurred before; most VPs have just faded away to write their memoirs.
But evil Dick Cheney has an agenda to fulfill, so what if the damage already done to the country will take years, even decades to correct, that damage is not enough for him. There are so many evil tenets of the Federalist Society and of P.N.A.C. {Project For The New American Century} that need to be implemented and re-implemented so that the fascist Oligarchy can reign over a feudal America. It is as if every progressive movement and law since the Magna Carta just has to be repealed, so that the Oligarchs can restore their tradition of taxing the poor, making wars for easy profit, and torturing anyone that gets in their way.
Dick Cheney is a traitor to the U.S. Constitution. There are many incidents where he did so, but the key one is the Valerie Plame affair. For those with lousy memories, the Scooter Libby defense team put into evidence a memo in Dick Cheney’s handwriting telling Libby that ‘The Pres’ approved the public disclosure of C.I.A. agent Plame’s covert identity. (Brilliant move: Libby’s prison sentence was commuted by Dubya.)
Even if the content of that memo was untrue, that still leaves Dick Cheney as the person who authorized the undoing of twenty years of C.I.A. intelligence work, an event which got several foreign agents killed and ruined America’s future chances of recruiting new ‘intell’ sources in foreign lands.
That single matter requires that Dick Cheney be called to testify under oath before Congress and put on trial in Federal court and sentenced to hard time in prison.
* * * * * * * *
But Dick Cheney's evil nature includes the fact that he has no shame. So he breaks precedent and tirelessly appears on the TV faux news shows and hate-talk radio programs upbraiding President Obama for making decisions that endanger America’s military security.
Oh, sure. The same guys who let the bin Laden family fly away on September 11, who let Osama bin Laden escape from Tora Bora, who dismantled the Osama bin Laden unit of the C.I.A. (until an outcry made them rebuild it), the same guys who started an unnecessary war in Iraq and lost it (i.e. did NOT win it, after more time than it took to defeat Imperialist Japan and Nazi Germany) – these guys, in the person of Cheney, are going to give President Obama advice!
* * * * * * * *
Cheney is guilty of treason and murder, he is guilty of arrogance and self-importance, and then there is a whole list of personal failings. But what keeps him on the airwaves is that none of the so-called journalists that grovel at his feet will call him on his hypocrisy.
The first major action by George Dubya Bush when he took office was to begin illegal wiretaps of American citizens – that was in January of 2001. The first major action by Dick Cheney after he took office was to call meetings with the oil companies to plan the invasion of Iraq – that was in February of 2001.
One of Dick Cheney’s assignments as the new Vice President was as the head of the Counter-Terrorism Task Force. Though he found time to meet and conspire with oil company executives, he held no meeting of the C.T.T.F., ignored hundreds of written warnings about potential attacks by bin Laden and others, and finally called the first meeting of America’s Counter-Terrorism Task Force on 12 September 2001!
Whatta guy!
He is actually getting no pushback for blaming President Obama for the failures of the Bush gang in the specious War on Terror. That the evil Dick Cheney has any traction at all on TV news and radio talk just goes to show whose side the fascist-Federalist propaganda machinery is on.
Congress unfortunately failed its Constitutional responsibility to impeach the traitors of the Bush administration. Congress needs to investigate the long list of obvious crimes against the U.S. Constitution, and then to follow all the evidence as revealed and indict and prosecute any and all who conspired to subvert our precious Constitution.
And Dick Cheney belongs at the top of the list of suspects.
Copyright 2009 by G.E. Nordell, all rights reserved
He is more evil than the idiot George Dubya Bush, cowardly slime-bucket Karl Rove, and p*ssant Alberto Gonzales combined.
(Limp Rushbaugh & Sean Vannity and their pack don’t count because they are the political equivalent of the old Chatty Cathy doll – push the button and hear pre-recorded clichés.)
As preface to Dubya’s first speech as a former President, at a private event in Calgary (Alberta, Canada), he stated that he would not criticize President Obama, and that “President Obama deserves my silence.”
There is room for conjecture here.
President-elect Obama met privately several times with then-President Bush as part of the transition, and it looks like Obama offered Bush a ‘cease-fire’ treaty: that if Dubya kept his mouth shut and did not attack the Obama administration in the press, then the Obama administration would not attack Bush in the press.
You will notice that statements from the Obama administration might talk of mismanagement and failures of the ‘previous administration’, but Bush has not been blamed by name during these several months by any major figure of the White House or of the Cabinet. (Congress can say what they want; the accusations need to get stronger, such as with subpoenas to testify and with criminal indictments.)
Whether any such offer was made to Cheney is more than conjecture. In any case, evil Dick Cheney has no intention of halting his assault on the U.S. Constitution, now that being out of office hampers his ability to give direct orders to frightened underlings. Dick Cheney has not gotten that the People voted his gang out of office, because the People have never mattered to Dick Cheney. That a former U.S. Vice President is pumping the airwaves to attack the new administration has never occurred before; most VPs have just faded away to write their memoirs.
But evil Dick Cheney has an agenda to fulfill, so what if the damage already done to the country will take years, even decades to correct, that damage is not enough for him. There are so many evil tenets of the Federalist Society and of P.N.A.C. {Project For The New American Century} that need to be implemented and re-implemented so that the fascist Oligarchy can reign over a feudal America. It is as if every progressive movement and law since the Magna Carta just has to be repealed, so that the Oligarchs can restore their tradition of taxing the poor, making wars for easy profit, and torturing anyone that gets in their way.
Dick Cheney is a traitor to the U.S. Constitution. There are many incidents where he did so, but the key one is the Valerie Plame affair. For those with lousy memories, the Scooter Libby defense team put into evidence a memo in Dick Cheney’s handwriting telling Libby that ‘The Pres’ approved the public disclosure of C.I.A. agent Plame’s covert identity. (Brilliant move: Libby’s prison sentence was commuted by Dubya.)
Even if the content of that memo was untrue, that still leaves Dick Cheney as the person who authorized the undoing of twenty years of C.I.A. intelligence work, an event which got several foreign agents killed and ruined America’s future chances of recruiting new ‘intell’ sources in foreign lands.
That single matter requires that Dick Cheney be called to testify under oath before Congress and put on trial in Federal court and sentenced to hard time in prison.
But Dick Cheney's evil nature includes the fact that he has no shame. So he breaks precedent and tirelessly appears on the TV faux news shows and hate-talk radio programs upbraiding President Obama for making decisions that endanger America’s military security.
Oh, sure. The same guys who let the bin Laden family fly away on September 11, who let Osama bin Laden escape from Tora Bora, who dismantled the Osama bin Laden unit of the C.I.A. (until an outcry made them rebuild it), the same guys who started an unnecessary war in Iraq and lost it (i.e. did NOT win it, after more time than it took to defeat Imperialist Japan and Nazi Germany) – these guys, in the person of Cheney, are going to give President Obama advice!
Cheney is guilty of treason and murder, he is guilty of arrogance and self-importance, and then there is a whole list of personal failings. But what keeps him on the airwaves is that none of the so-called journalists that grovel at his feet will call him on his hypocrisy.
The first major action by George Dubya Bush when he took office was to begin illegal wiretaps of American citizens – that was in January of 2001. The first major action by Dick Cheney after he took office was to call meetings with the oil companies to plan the invasion of Iraq – that was in February of 2001.
One of Dick Cheney’s assignments as the new Vice President was as the head of the Counter-Terrorism Task Force. Though he found time to meet and conspire with oil company executives, he held no meeting of the C.T.T.F., ignored hundreds of written warnings about potential attacks by bin Laden and others, and finally called the first meeting of America’s Counter-Terrorism Task Force on 12 September 2001!
Whatta guy!
He is actually getting no pushback for blaming President Obama for the failures of the Bush gang in the specious War on Terror. That the evil Dick Cheney has any traction at all on TV news and radio talk just goes to show whose side the fascist-Federalist propaganda machinery is on.
Congress unfortunately failed its Constitutional responsibility to impeach the traitors of the Bush administration. Congress needs to investigate the long list of obvious crimes against the U.S. Constitution, and then to follow all the evidence as revealed and indict and prosecute any and all who conspired to subvert our precious Constitution.
And Dick Cheney belongs at the top of the list of suspects.
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