Monday, January 31, 2022

the needle and the damage done


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Sunday, January 30, 2022

Neil Young should remember


  

Lynyrd Skynyrd probably had the best response to carpetbagging Neil Young years ago when they said Southern Man doesn't need him around

The reactions by Spotify to Young's ultimatum last week shows what was true years ago is still true today.

Neil Young's call for censorship comes at a time when the political left, of which he is a part, is also screaming about censorship but bias Tennessee School Board of a holocaust book

The problem is that many of the same people who are promoting censorship on Spotify are speaking against the Tennessee School Board but have stayed silent when it came to censorship of Dr Seuss and even George Orwell in Mark Twain in the last few years

Neil Young has always been something of a political wannabe, someone who is late for the bandwagon, but he jumps out and anyway. This is true of his early work such as Southern Man and Alabama where he is trying to be Bob Dylan only 10 years too late.

His classic Four dead in Ohio showed that he knew nothing of the dynamics of Kent State but needed to make his voice heard to the anti-war movement after he had been silent for almost a decade on that issue as well

The fact that Joni Mitchell came out on Neil Young side and calling for censorship is no such a big surprise since she and Neil Young have been bed bugs in the same Laurel Canyon jet set that included Tommy Smothers, Peter Fonda and a host of Hollywood snobs back in the 60s

It's Hanoi Jane all over again only Neil Young comes from Canada, making social judgments about stuff he is inadequate to fully understand and just seems to want to be the hip kid on the block.

Maybe Neil Young's simply jealous of Bruce Springsteen who seems to have been able to sell his soul to the capitalistic devil and still maintain his cache as a working-class, blue-collar rebel

Neil Young has never been working class and as a carpetbagger from Canada has injected his pop philosophy on a situation far more complex than he understands, a kind of musical version of the 1619 Project based on cliches, stereotypes and a kind of reverse racism in order to be part of the cool crowd

The worst part of those who defend his call for action on Spotify is their selective use of censorship demanding that another person be censored while objecting to the censorship of a book in a school.

While Neil Young and his bed mate Joni Mitchell are not calling for censorship of others, many of their supporters are and so we have this hypocritical double standard movement that has the Neil Young into some kind of folk hero instead of a political opportunist.

The ultimate question, of course, is how valuable Neil Young is to contemporary society that he could throw down the gauntlet or even the more talented Joni Mitchell. Do these people really matter? Do we really need them around, pontificating about the world, when in fact they spent most of their lives living as part of the Laurel Canyon social elite, snorting coke and playing the role of gods of the music industry while elsewhere real protest went on, some – like Neil Young – coming out with a song now and then to validate their sense of self-importance. Even Joni Mitchell’s Woodstock (performed by Young and his equally deluded pals) was an illusive tribute to a life style none of them every experience, except at a distance.

Most of the reaction by young people is laced ageism not racism, suggesting that old fogies like these or to be content with having had their day in the sun and should shut up about it and let other people make decisions about what order appear on Spotify.

Since Neil Young's stand, several other people I have also decided they were going to jump on this bandwagon, mostly non-notable musicians, looking for free publicity, doing their bit for this moral crusade, that includes self-righteous indignant self-centered people like Neil Young



The needle and the damage done

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Thursday, January 27, 2022

Supreme Court madness again

 

 


 

Considering how corrupt Merrick Garland turned out as the U.S. Attorney General, we clearly dodged a bullet when Republicans blocked his nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court in 2016.

If Garland and his back room deals to promote his son’s Critical Race Theory business at gun point using the FBI, Garland would have been worse had he been granted a life-time appointment instead of the four-year appointment he has now.

With the forced resignation liberal Justice Breyer, the challenge for the GOP won’t be to avoid his being replaced by another liberal judge (that’s inevitable) but to keep the new justice from being as corrupt as Garland or as extreme as any of the candidates the radical left would like to replace him with.

Democrats have a problem in that they have recently savaged two of their own who opposed the radical agenda that would have destroyed the Senate filibuster, they must rely on those two votes in the Senate to appoint a replacement.

If those Democrats opposed gutting the constitution in a radical left power grab, many people are wondering will they go along with appointing a far left radical to the Supreme Court.

The radical left progressives are pushing to ger a black woman nominated – one particular choice is a black woman with an anti-cop and extreme left agenda which may not settle well in the stomachs of moderate Democrats beyond the two who voted against ending the filibuster.

This is the first chance Democrats have had to nominate anyone since their failed attempt to get their stealth radical Garland prior to the 2016 presidential election. The GOP managed to stall Garland’s appointment until after the elections, one which everybody assumed Hillary Clinton would win and the political punt would be mute.

Trump’s victory stalled the radical take over of the high court as well as delayed the radical left’s political coup for four long years, partly explaining why Democrats and media went into a tantrum. Most assumed a Biden victory (if it really was that) in 2020 would put the radical power grab train back on the track, only to have it partly derailed by two Democratic senators who opposed the corrupt takeover of American government.

Unable to get Garland appointed to the court, the radicals have another chance to restart their take over of government. While hardly a deciding vote on the high court, this appointment could be the first step in an ultimate takeover of the court if Democrats manage to hold onto power in the 2024 election.

While it is unlikely the Democrats will find someone so ethically conflicted as Garland is, they are looking for someone so far to the left that no moderate could vote for her with a good conscience.

Unable to stop the appointment of a liberal judge (nor should they try), the GOP needs to appeal to moderate Democrats to support the appointment of a moderate liberal justice rather than one that is too extreme (provided the moderate is not a stealth candidate who will bring those radical values to the high court anyway).

The lack of ethics but people like Garland and their potential to do serious damage when they reach Pinnacles of power scares the crap out of me.

What we hope for in judges are people who can be more or less impartial, who get nominated for their perceived positions but rise above their own prejudices to be fair and to create a more perfect nation through their decision making.

What we get, however or people who are bound to some preconceived agenda and who violated every rule of ethics in order to live up to the expectations of the people who put them there.

Media talks about the massive dark money that has been used to get Garland on the Supreme Court in 2016. That same dark money is now pushing for a radical black woman to be on the court the first step towards a radicalization of the court in the future if the Democrats can retain power in the Senate and the White House.

Since the same dark money that backed him is now backing the new extremists judge being proposed we can expect no better ethics nor moderation in this campaign of hatred and certainly nothing moderate in the future court.

In this I am hoping I am wrong but it's not likely we are going to see a reasonable person nominated and a reasonable person installed; we are going to see an attempt to stack the court from within and this new nominee will be the first brick in a very, very dangerous road to a Marxist state in the future.

 


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Tuesday, January 25, 2022

Welcome to the new Democratic plantation


  

Nothing much as changed in America when it comes to enslaving black people.

I’m not talking about the distorted history espoused by the 1619 Project, Howard Zinn and other fringe groups.

The fact is Democrats still think black people incapable of making their own choices or living their own lives without special assistance.

What's amazing is how little the Democrats have changed since the days of the Old South
Although we get all of the propaganda about how badly slaves were treated prior to the Civil War, what people really don't understand about the Deep South was that Democrats painted themselves as the lords of the manor whom black serfs serve, surfs that must be taken care of, guided and sometimes punished.

Despite the abolitionist propaganda then and now, treatment of slaves prior to the Civil War varies from Plantation to Plantation.

For the most part, slaves were treated reasonably well – if only in some cases because of the significant investment masters made in acquiring slaves. Most masters would no more beat or humiliate or starve their slaves than they would a horse.

Many – especially the large plantation owners – literally modeled themselves after British royalty, and believed they owed a certain allegiance to their slave-like surfs – provided these slaves were loyal to their masters. These slave owners were often baffled by slaves who resented being “taken care of” and hated the abolitionists who deliberately sought to get slaves to rise up and revolt (a rare and mostly unsuccessful event since many slaves feared the unknown concept of freedom when they were clothed, fed and housed by southern masters)

Most of the plantation owners saw blacks as incapable of taking care of themselves and needed these lords of the manor to see for their welfare.

Some masters – as accurately portrayed by some of the current propaganda – were egomaniac and cruel; Most were not; most honestly believe that they were operating in the welfare of their Serfs, failing to appreciate the fact that black, red, brown or yellow, these people could take care of themselves if provided with the necessary education and resources.

A hundred and fifty years later, Democrats still play the role of Lords of the Manor, only today, they use government funding to act out their role as benefactor.

Instead of having individual Plantation scattered through the South we have a federal government that has become the central Plantation and the Democratic Lords of the manor distribute wealth in order to take care of the hapless and the helpless which happen to be people of color
This is what's so insulting about most of the arguments they make including all of the propaganda coming out of the New York Times and critical race Theory – which along with Howard Zinn – as being injected into the educational curriculum to further implant the idea that black people are victims of social injustice and only Democrats can help them.

Understand, Democrats make a lot of money out of providing these – such as the current U.S. Attorney Garland, whose son sells Critical Race Theory packages to school districts. Many prominent Democrats serve as landlords, stock holders or chief executive officers to programs funded by government in order to provide for needy people of color.

To keep people in color in place, Democrats reinforce the idea that such surfs are victims, and that white conservatives are clearly trying to disenfranchise them – such as requiring proof of identity to vote (when many people of color already had to provide such ID to get access to the programs Democrats oversee.)

The never-ending barrage of propaganda pushed through liberal media paints these Democratic overseers as benevolent redistributors of wealth (missing that like any good mafia operation, the overseers get their cut.)

Although sometimes referred to as “nanny” leadership, Democrats are hardly the equitable people they claim, being overly generous with taxpayer money they themselves share to run all these programs.

It is hugely important for Democrats to maintain the fiction that only they can help people of color and to paint conservatives as evil people who would strip people of color of their rights.

Through curriculum pushed through schools, kids are taught they are victims and that they must rely on liberal programs – must the way old south masters kept slaves in the dark about what freedom was. The south prohibited blacks from getting and education to avoid abolitionist propaganda. Today’s Democrats have taken this a step further, giving kids miseducation that will guarantee their loyalty to the new planation masters.

People of color are taught from kindergarten that they are helpless and victims, and only the Democrats can make them free, when it appears, such dependence only further enslaves them.




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Monday, January 24, 2022

Old fallout shelters wanted


 

Living up to the concept that everything old is new again, the broaching of the peace with Russia may well provide a good reuse of old property throughout the United States.

Apparently, the hottest commodity in the real estate market these days are old bomb shelters from the 1950s.

These are bunkers that paranoid people in hysterical fit built back in the good old days of the Cold War when they were convinced the Russian missiles were going to rain down on big cities like Philadelphia New York and LA.

This is a perfect get away when public concerns shift from global climate change to global nuclear war, and people become desperate to find a place other than Whole Foods to protect them.

Public shelters used to exist – and can still be found in the basements of old schools and official buildings – as indicated by the rusting black and yellow signs still hanging outside.

But in the aftermath of the cold war, many of these older buildings have been demolished in favor of luxury rentals who glass, and plastic might not prove as a reliable a deterrent to the nuclear holocaust as the old steel and stone might have.

There is still hope that a determined buy might find one of the many private bunkers people built before the fall of the Berlin Wall – if not yet converted by Millennials making them utterly useless when radiation sweeps through the atmosphere instead of global warming.

Yet some may well be found born out of a hysteria that was more concerned with Russian missiles targeting our big cities than with the threat we might get a cold from people standing closer than six feet from us.

Acquiring an old bomb shelter, however, might not be quite enough to sustain the average family during the aftermath of such as attack. With all the Whole Food markets obliterated, people will be desperate for food and water – even if they are lucky enough to find a hole to hide in.

Wisely, the so-called insurrectionists have for years been building up their supply of food in anticipation of such an event -- since they predicted that the Democratic and liberal agenda would eventually lead us back to the brink of global extinction no bicycle or scooter riding can undo.

Just how we can expect people to fix these old shelters up in time is still a problem and perhaps there are old time contractors who still have the talent to make these place is secure again and allow people to run into them when the bombs fall, the way people in the Midwest head for hurricane shelters to protect them against tornados.

The big problem of course comes after the blast since it is unlikely anybody is going to want to emerge into this radioactive landscape once the bombing has stopped it will be hard to find an Uber or to Pedal your scooter among the rubble and you're certainly not going to find any convenient Farmers Market to buy your groceries in even if the shelves of normal Supermarket weren't already bear before the bombing started.

So ultimately the only survivors of the Holocaust will be those who have stocked up their reserves and are already accepting the fact that the world will once more return to the concept of the survival of the fittest.

And it is unlikely that any strangers will be allowed into any private shelter when the bombing starts so they will largely turn to dust relieving the world of a plague of liberals.

 

 

 


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Thursday, January 20, 2022

Voting rights bill for dead people


 

It is clear that the recent defeat of the Democratic voting rights bill has really discriminated against some potential voters.

In particular, some voters who have in the past voted Democratic in almost every election

Obviously, the GOP frowns upon dead people voting

Yet this is clearly an infringement on the rights of all those people who are in graveyards who have loyally voted Democrat – some even prior to their internment.

Some individual states have demanded that people show identification in order to vote – even possibly prove they are citizens.

This poses serious obstacles these long-time dead voters, who have voted unimpeded in the past and clearly discriminates against whole graveyards full of good citizens who can't possibly meet the identification qualifications that some states are demanding.

Photo ID is unrealistic since -- well, frankly -- the dead no longer look like they did when they were living.

Even signature check would be somewhat problematic since fleshless fingers can be a little shaky and the signatures would most likely not resemble the one, they might have had before they started to decay.

Republicans obviously have a prejudice against the Dead that makes them bigots for demanding that people be alive to be able to vote.

Many of these dead people were formally citizens and could possibly vote for the GOP if the GOP was so inclined to dig up their remains as well.

Some ungrateful and undemocratic GOP members have referred to this bill as the Zombie bill which is totally unfair.

Nobody is suggesting zombies should have the right to vote -- at least not yet.

But there is a fringe group of animal rights Democrats who believe that animals should also have the right to vote -- cats and dogs after all or basically slaves to their masters and it is clearly biased to deny them.

The problem with this is some people would like to see they're goldfish also vote and subject to GOP mandate that there be an intelligence test.

Even some of the most ardent Democrats, however, clearly opposed giving the vote to slugs -- nobody likes slugs,

To get this Democratic dead people bill passed that would allow the dead to vote, the Democrats must do away with the filibuster because there are even people in their own party who are a little skeptical over this Prospect of dead voting.

They are probably more concerned by lack of loyalty among the Dead after all for years Democrats have managed to keep their living voters in line by giving them patronage -- which is largely what the recent reparations movement for slavery was all about.

But how do you keep dead voters from switching parties when they do not need or want jobs or any reparations for having died?

Perhaps, the dead would have more sway if they like Native Americans owned and operated large casinos where they could guarantee under the table donations to the Democratic Party

Some Democrats have proposed a Party tax on the plots in which the dead are buried.

This would pose a challenge however for those who were cremated. Do you actually expect to tax and urn or find the dead person after the ashes have been scattered?

Of course, Senator Schumer has told us he will reintroduce the Dead Voting Rights Act as soon as he can twist enough arms to do away with the filibuster. The GOP, however, along with some Democrats said they will continue to oppose this bill even if it kills them.

 

 


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Tuesday, January 18, 2022

Making progress I’m still alive 1985

 


 

Dec. 19, 1985

 

Ill again – although rare these days, lucky for me, when the world appears primed for international disaster, diseases rampant, partly due to poor nutrition.

Much of this has to do with the way food is marketed full of sugar and stuff.

Too many people are starving even though they eat too much, while others starve for lack of having enough.

Mine condition is just a simple head cold; though fear grows with each degree drop in the temperature.

The cold snap arrives at noon and at my worst physical condition and is expected to drop to zero by tomorrow.

Makes me wonder how humanity survived the ice age, living in caves, huddled around fire, struggling to find food in the midst of storms and over frozen landscape – in an environment clearly far worse than what we suffer through today.

History books rarely go into enough detail about that aspect of evolution, individual survival over the prospect of mass extinction – bodies buried hours apart after each new apocalypse, disease rising out of the stench, killing as many as the disaster did.

How did it feel to grow up in a cave, one child in a litter of 20, sometimes the lone survivor?

To see bodies frozen in winter, buried later when the thaw comes by mid-summer, old and decrepit by the age of 27, part of swiftly moving generations that do not have time to contemplate history or even remember anything more than yesterday, this generation dying in order to make room for the next and the generation after that.

To think that here in the United States the quality and length of life has massively improved from those days of mere survival, even back to those days when we founded this nation, each generation stretching out its fingers to cling to a few more years of life.

My grandmother just turned 86, one of a handful of souls that has lived long enough to have seen one century turn into the next, as I hope and expect to do when I get to her age, though as much out of luck than out of intention.

Three weeks ago, my uncle Frank contracted pneumonia, still fatal sometimes today, though a death sentence 50 years ago (Frank would pass away after a series of lung, heart and other ailments in the year 2000 at the age of 62).

We are making progress partly because we have become so wealthy as a society, from the richest to the poorest – though in truth, in our world, the richest and the poorest are the most often saved, wealth guaranteeing those on top the best of care, the welfare state helping those most needy get what they need – while in between, the bent backs of working people like my uncle are left to fend for themselves.

Reagan tells us wealth trickles down – and it does -- we have the wealthiest poor in the world – yet not fast enough for those who want to see the rich foot the bill for the poor when for now working people pay the tab at the end of the day, and still struggle to pay their own way, while paying for poor they’ve never met.

We have tamed nature to a great extent, gas and oil to heat our homes, expensive electric to give us light by night, with electric companies like wolves waiting outside our doors to shut us off when we cease paying – even though law gives us reprieve until spring so that nobody finds our frozen bodies cave-man like. I often have to choose between heat/light or nourishment. But it’s better than being dead.

I get annoyed hearing the radicals on the left telling me how bad people have it, hating the progress that allowed us to drag ourselves out of our caves, radicals who insist we save the planet at the expense of saving ourselves, radicals who insist we need to “equalize” wealth in order to make life fair for everybody, when we are far better off now than my family was during the Great Depression when they had to live in the houses they built but could not sell, forced to move when banks foreclosed.

Radicals would have us trade the gas and oil that heats our homes for electricity few but the wealthiest can afford, even if we get the pay raise, they insist the richest in our society owes us.

Yes, black kids still die at an unacceptable rate as do people in other countries, some still a few steps behind the rest of us on our evolutionary journey out of the caves. Yet, despite what the radicals say, we do not abandon them, we carry them on our backs along with the rest of our labors, knowing that life may be better for the next generation or the generation after that, provided we are not forced to surrender the progress we’ve already made.

Fortunately, this is still only December and I do not have to pay the over-priced electric bill PSE&G sends me. Maybe I can wipe my nose with it.

 

 

 


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