The Mongoose Trick - speaking truth to tyranny (& the stupidity it preys upon) - Spock's Blog - Victoria Advocate http://community.victoriaadvocate.com/home/Blog/Spock Current events having to do with the decline of the United States and its corporate plutocracy. Current events having to do with the decline of the United States and its corporate plutocracy. en-us 2,008, As Stupid & Ignorant As We Are, A Year We Won't Soon Forget. http://community.victoriaadvocate.com/home/Blog/Spock/9882 http://community.victoriaadvocate.com/home/Blog/Spock/9882 <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">The year 2,008 is history, and all of the great minds of journalism and the media are writing to tell us what happened (some, like Ruben Navarette and Walter Williams, never seem to know what&rsquo;s happening, so they just continue telling us about what <em>isn&rsquo;t</em> happening &ndash; strange, that).&nbsp;It&rsquo;s like we can&rsquo;t be expected to remember.&nbsp;None of the great minds will tell us, as they never do, what is <em>going</em> to happen &ndash; things like the crash impending as the &ldquo;bailout&rdquo; credit bubble went on growing &ndash; a symptom of the &ldquo;d-u-u-u-h&rdquo; society and nation we&rsquo;ve become.&nbsp;That, of course, will continue apace in 2009.&nbsp;Count on it.</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">&nbsp;</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">Anyway, with everyone reporting what happened, I thought it might be a good idea to note what <em>didn&rsquo;t</em> happen - hopefully, an interesting, even informative, antithesis.</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">&nbsp;</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">George W. Bush, ostensibly President of the United States but really Vice-President (frequently, he said openly that he didn&rsquo;t know what was going on) wasn&rsquo;t impeached.&nbsp;Remarkable solely on its merits otherwise and while people not addled by political or religious ideology watched fearfully, the U.S. Congress&rsquo; failure was stupefyingly frightening in the fact that the President repeatedly convicted himself in the media, publicly repudiating his oath of office (&ldquo;protect and defend the Constitution of the United States&rdquo;) and confessing to one crime after another again and again.</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">&nbsp;</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">Neither was acting president Vice-President Dick Cheney impeached; being already nonplussed for words by that last piece of history, one hardly knows what to say about a man who has also admitted publicly having condoned (under legal doctrine since that of Ancient Rome meaning complicit) and/or ordered heinous crime after crime.&nbsp;Operating on the nefarious precedent set by another of our presidential Machiavellis, one Richard M. Nixon, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney made it clear that henceforward &ldquo;when the President does it, that means it&rsquo;s legal.&rdquo;</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">&nbsp;</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">And the nation, most, if not all, of its magnificent political pundits included, did nothing (i.e. when along in lockstep, apparently happy with the new, &quot;neo-con&quot;&nbsp;totalitatianism).</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">&nbsp;</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">While the President and his <em>eminence gr&iacute;s</em> Cheney savaged the U.S. Constitution, frequently avoiding prosecution by the mere device that is coinage of euphemistic terms - &nbsp;like &ldquo;waterboarding&rdquo; (why bother with the disguise, if you don&rsquo;t mean &ldquo;repetitive drowning and reviving&rdquo;?) - the President and Vice-President &ndash; you guess who was who &ndash; committed the nation to torture; torture while those of us still able to pay attention and reason from what we observe wondered how rape, murder, and even worse could be far behind.&nbsp;While the nation and world reeled at the temerity and chutzpah of it all, the nation&rsquo;s chief executive and defender of the law, used something called a &ldquo;signing statement&rdquo; to turn the public nature of his criminality into jurisprudentially bizarre fiat legality.&nbsp;</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">&nbsp;</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">Meanwhile, the Congress - the nation&rsquo;s national version of the old ladies&rsquo; knitting circle gossip gathering, a bubbling cauldron of bloviating babble unequalled anywhere else on the planet - descended precipitously further into the liberal-feminist rhetoric reality now cancerously destroying the nation.&nbsp;Lest anyone watching have any doubt about their bewilderment, and with the mindlessly unconscious, sleep-walking resolution of the ideologue, the sappy solons chose Nancy Pelosi, a caricature female, for their &ldquo;leader,&rdquo; and there followed a globally thunderous demonstration of the Congress&rsquo; castrated impotence.&nbsp;The erstwhile nation of lions became, once and for all it seems, an army led by a lamb.&nbsp;And a ewe, at that. &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">&nbsp;</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">And, of course, nothing &ndash; nothing having to do with the nation&rsquo;s health or general good &ndash; happened. &nbsp;Vasectomized, the nation&rsquo;s legislature and (once) most democratic house of government became sterile, incapable of producing anything viable; and the fact that the nation could expect anything different was both a further example of its impotence and a yet a further commentary on its now famous stupidity.&nbsp;&nbsp; </div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">&nbsp;</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">What was that quote again (John Stuart Mill, from &ldquo;On Liberty&rdquo; (1859)?&nbsp;&ldquo;A State which dwarfs its men, in order that they may be more docile instruments in its hands even for beneficial purposes -- will find that with small men no great thing can really be accomplished; and that the perfection of machinery to which it has sacrificed everything, will in the end avail it nothing, for want of the vital power which, in order that the machine might work more smoothly, it has preferred to banish.&rdquo;</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">&nbsp;</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">Two thousand and eight did not see us get out of Iraq, either (speaking of crimes by the nation&rsquo;s co-dictators and the Congress&rsquo; fecklessness in the face thereof); more, it&rsquo;s not even certain that we will <em>survive</em> Iraq.&nbsp;All those so functionally comatose as to be unaware of the factor the cost of destroying, then rebuilding Iraq is in the financial mess in which we&rsquo;re found will soon have occasion to remember Santayana (and Churchill&rsquo;s) comment about those who will not learn their history.&nbsp;&nbsp; <em>They</em>&rsquo;ll be &ldquo;history,&rdquo; too. </div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">&nbsp;</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">And, of course, the country did nothing to abate its self-indulgence and profligate addiction to fat and fatness, either (an article in today&rsquo;s paper lamented the fact that we may well suffocate in the trash and garbage we self-indulgently discard everywhere).&nbsp;The nation&rsquo;s mythic economy (we keep chanting our &ldquo;free market&rdquo; mantra as we demand economic assistance for everyone and every reason) &ndash; long having forced astute observers&rsquo; astonished wonderment at how long it was taking &ndash; went into the infamous (with aviators) &ldquo;death spiral.&rdquo;&nbsp;Decades of politically correct credit and lending, coupled with the &ldquo;pork barrel&rdquo; acquisitiveness &ndash; each and every enactment of the government an opportunity to steal - of the &ldquo;American&rdquo; businessman, finally burst the nation&rsquo;s installment plan prosperity bubble.&nbsp;Culminating the country&rsquo;s lemming migration into pantyhose politics and Gracie Allen finance (&ldquo;George,&rdquo; the Vaudeville comedienne would wail, &ldquo;the bank keeps telling me I&rsquo;m overdrawn &ndash; and I still have checks left in my checkbook&rdquo;), the government answered the supposed crisis with more of the same.&nbsp;It wrote more bad checks to cover its bad checks.</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">&nbsp;</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">And the nation&rsquo;s wisemen, those political pundit geniuses included, said just about nothing.&nbsp;The nation&rsquo;s leaders, the CEO form, lined up like the human hogs they are, struggling to be first at the new swill feeding trough (some, if you can believe it &ndash; did I say &ldquo;chutzpah?&rdquo; - flying to the feeding station in their corporate jets!). </div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">&nbsp;</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">And, further of course, our &ldquo;leaders&rdquo; who are the plutocrats in Washington, said it was all in order to ease the suffering of the <em>poor</em> (the poor, further of course, that those same rich <em>made</em> poor, and had been insisting were poor of their own volition because they wanted it).&nbsp;Behind Snidely Whiplash grins and anticipatory hand-rubbing, the nation&rsquo;s law-makers fought with the nation&rsquo;s CEOs to be first at the taxpayer-fed trough &ndash; raking in for themselves millions of the new &ldquo;bailout&rdquo; money.</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">&nbsp;</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">While the nations&rsquo; public . . .&nbsp;oh, never mind!</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">&nbsp;</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">Nothing, - all the political punditry (from &ldquo;experts&rdquo; who said absolutely nothing to give even the faintest suggestion that they were conscious, much less saw it all coming) notwithstanding, and despite those polls that showed the Congress and government&rsquo;s approval rating to be in the teens - happened.&nbsp;While the figurative patient&rsquo;s disease raced through his body, the doctor went on pontificating perfunctorily concerning the cure, plotting how to make himself rich while doing nothing actually curative.&nbsp;The much-vaunted U.S. democracy, in other words, did nothing</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">&nbsp;</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">Meanwhile, middle-of-the-roaders, the people somehow still unaffected by Operation MOCKINGBIRD imposed ideological insanity, nodded their heads knowingly and made hurried plans to complete long since begun plans for surviving it all.&nbsp;Folks like my wife and I inventoried our food stores, purchased water distillation equipment, outfitted cars with fuel economy devices, and purchased equipment with which to make the home place energy-independent.&nbsp;Homeowners prepared their houses for the fury of theft, burglary, and property crime generally that must inevitably follow economic trouble nationally, whether that induced by government or the vicissitudes otherwise. &nbsp;</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">&nbsp;</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">As far as we were concerned and having to do with anything government might have done &ndash; even get out of the damned way to &ldquo;life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness&rdquo; - in 2008, nothing happened</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">&nbsp;</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">The &ldquo;downside&rdquo; of democracy is that once it begins its inevitable lemming rush, one may get caught in the stampede.</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">&nbsp;</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">Guys like me continued our daily physical training and shooting practice, too.&nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;I say &ldquo;continued&rdquo; because with the nation&rsquo;s Congress so characteristically spastic or paralyzed where the matter is concerned &ndash; on what issue is it not so? -&nbsp;the government did nothing meaningful about the border between us here in Texas and one of the most criminally-riddled societies in human history (oh, there is always &ndash; ad nauseam &ndash; political posturing and politician rest).&nbsp;The southern gateway to our houses remained terrifyingly wide open, those sworn to &ldquo;provide for the common defense&rdquo; inviting vicious Mexican violence in the form of rape, murder, kidnapping, and white slavery.&nbsp;Washington, D.C., of course, and their high-priced security protected homes, are far from the border.&nbsp;Unlike every other assurance from the army of wannabe lions led by a ewe lamb, the assurance provided by certain knowledge of one&rsquo;s ability to unerringly put a forty-five caliber bullet where it will do the most good or kill an assailant with a swiftly executed judo technique is <em>re</em>-assuring.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">&nbsp;</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">The federal and state governments, in short, once more did nothing, and their general response concerning illegal immigration &ndash; that there could be an issue concerning such a thing serves eminently to demonstrate even further the nation&rsquo;s incoherent mental state &ndash; paralleled that of its continued response to hurricanes Katrina and Rita, together with dozens more of the pratfalling, opportunistic greed like.&nbsp;Virtually nothing happened.</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">&nbsp;</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">To change the odious subject, there were other &ldquo;nothing happened-s.&rdquo;&nbsp;Crystal Mangum, her of the mendacious rape charge against the Duke University Lacrosse Team, was not charged with her crime.&nbsp;Television pundits and &ldquo;personalities&rdquo; like Kimberley Guilfoyle, Nancy Graves, Greta Van Susteren, and several more who convicted the players from the nationwide lawyers table of nationwide television seemingly (settlements of all the lawsuits resulted from the press and media feeding frenzy at the players&rsquo; expense were, of course, not publicized) went Scot free.&nbsp;</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">&nbsp;</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">Where their outrageous misconduct was involved, nothing happened.&nbsp;Anyone else for &ldquo;women&rsquo;s liberation?&rdquo;&nbsp;<em>How &ldquo;liberated&rdquo; can you get?</em></div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">&nbsp;</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">In &ndash; decidedly &ndash; another vein, Ehren Watada (remember him?) was not prosecuted for his supposed &ldquo;desertion.&rdquo;&nbsp;Neither, incidentally, did slavering jackal pundits like Michelle Malkin apologize for her &ldquo;traitor&rdquo; asseverations.&nbsp;&nbsp; Unlike all those mental giant pundits of television and newspaper column-ny, sages like Harvard lawyer Jeffrey Toobin, I predicted that.&nbsp;Even in the Queen of Hearts&rsquo; court that is jurisprudence during the reign of King George the Seventh, the prospect of having the legality of our invasion of Iraq examined by Watada&rsquo;s defense &ndash; recall that the military court attempted (so ludicrously that it was incredible, and a sure sign of what was to come) to prevent any such defense of the desertion charge &ndash; in court proved to be too much. </div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">&nbsp;</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">Where the courageous Lieutenant Ehren Watada and his coward, do-nothing-to- rock-the-federal-boat country was concerned, nothing &ndash; surprise (well, at least where pundit journalism was concerned) happened.</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">&nbsp;</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">And so it went.&nbsp;The nation once urged by another courageous lieutenant to &ldquo;ask not what your country can do for you, but ask what you can do for your country&rdquo; did nothing for anyone, individually or collectively, but themselves.&nbsp;It did nothing to stop growing fatter, stupider, and more decadent.&nbsp;&ldquo;Democracy never lasts long,&rdquo; second President (you have to say that, &ldquo;Americans&rdquo; having become too ignorant of their own country&rsquo;s history to know) John Adams said.&nbsp;&ldquo;It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself.&nbsp;There never was a democracy that wasn&rsquo;t a suicide.&rdquo;</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">&nbsp;</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">Where &ldquo;preserve and defend&rdquo; the greatest experiment in government every attempted, the Land of the Free, and the Home of the Brave was concerned, in 2008, nothing happened.</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">&nbsp;</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">&nbsp;</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">&nbsp;</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">&nbsp;</div>


Title: 1,000 yard stare.jpg
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Credit: Spock


Title: 1,000 yard stare.jpg
Caption:
Credit: Spock

 1,000 yard stare.jpg Spock "Politically correct," Grackle Doo-Doo, and Things the Like. http://community.victoriaadvocate.com/home/Blog/Spock/9764 http://community.victoriaadvocate.com/home/Blog/Spock/9764 <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">Racist. Sexist. Bigot. Prejudiced. Arrogant. Conflicted by low self-esteem (one reader here wrote, &ldquo;The realism is that Spock has very low self esteem, and because of such must try to impress with his vocabulary, the number of pull ups he can do, the number of languages he speaks, the number of places he has been, and his put down of anyone who challenges him&rdquo;).</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">&nbsp;</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">And for the reader who wrote, &ldquo;You really are off your rocker and I would hazard to say a dangerously and delusionally paranoid psychotic. Seek help before you pull some sort of school or workplace mass shooting&rdquo;, never fear, madam &ndash; your government once trusted me to jump from an airplane with a nuclear bomb slung between my legs. A military psychologist once wrote of me in an official report, &ldquo;Probably the sanest man I have ever interviewed.&rdquo; </div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">&nbsp;</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">I&rsquo;ll be all right, no matter how hard anyone like the folks to whom I refer here might try to make it otherwise. </div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">&nbsp;</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">There &ndash; have we got all the stuff usually associated with trees full of boat-tailed grackles out of the way? Have I satisfied the neurotic need of some Advocate readers to hurl insult at anyone with whom they somehow manage to disagree (how does one with apparently so little access to facts have an opinion?)? Can we now have a sober discussion of serious difficulties and issues (they&rsquo;re not the same thing, by the way)?</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">&nbsp;</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">Probably not. Never underestimate the ability of something empty to produce noise, especially when it&rsquo;s a human cranium. But there&rsquo;s an old saying: &ldquo;If you can&rsquo;t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.&rdquo; That translates here in South Texas to &ldquo;if you don&rsquo;t want doo-doo on you car, don&rsquo;t park under trees during grackle migration season;&rdquo; and, akin to the same, of course, don&rsquo;t express an opinion on the Victoria Advocate &ndash; but you get the point (unless, of course, you&rsquo;re someone like &ldquo;rollinstone,&rdquo; &ldquo;YumeNoArashi,&rdquo; or &ldquo;southtexas,&rdquo; who don&rsquo;t seem interested in the point of anything &ndash; just the opportunity to vent their spleens on someone).</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">&nbsp;</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">So we &ldquo;soldier on.&rdquo; This morning&rsquo;s television news (the only television I watch, the better to assure that it&rsquo;s probably safe to go outside) offers another example of matters about which I like to write. A guest on one of our vapid television networks &ndash; one of those &ldquo;experts&rdquo; who are so resolutely paraded before (foisted upon, i.e.) the nation&rsquo;s viewing audiences &ndash; looked us right in the eye and criticized moguls of lending institutions, automobile manufacturers, Wall Street and the like for &ldquo;not having seen all this coming&rdquo;!</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">&nbsp;</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">The emphasis, including exclamation point, is mine. The <em>chutzpah</em> is the expert&rsquo;s &ndash; and the TV station&rsquo;s.</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">&nbsp;</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">Tell us about who didn&rsquo;t see this &ldquo;bailout&rdquo; mess coming? If there exists anything in the world today as conspicuous by its absence &ndash; that&rsquo;s conspicuous on the order of the Rocky Mountains &ndash; from television, it has been any warning from all these &ldquo;Harvard graduate&rdquo; television pundits concerning the economic avalanche that was coming down upon us. </div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">&nbsp;</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">As I listen to NPR as I write this, another &quot;expert&quot; demonstrates that among the nation&rsquo;s pontificating popinjay pundits hindsight is far, far, better than foresight. &ldquo;Elizabeth Warrant is a Harvard professor . . .&rdquo; the announcer says. Thanks, National Public Radio, I will carefully ignore everything dummy says; in fact, I&rsquo;ll just as carefully do the diametrical opposite of everything she suggests. It is, after all, on the same order as the &ldquo;racist, sexist, bigot,&rdquo; etc puerility and gossip-grist to which I had reference at the outset here.&nbsp;&nbsp; </div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">&nbsp;</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">&ldquo;Elizabeth the Harvard professor&rdquo; has in fact nothing but criticism in the hindsight form, criticism that while it might have been of some value before what it criticizes happened, is worthless now. She might just as well have stooped to the washer-woman, fish-wife invective persons who express opinion here on the Advocate get. Of course, among the most critical and cancerous things we have done to ourselves &ndash; most of it done during those years of drug-induced, &ldquo;Age of Aquarius,&rdquo; feminism and liberalism delirium of the sixties &ndash; is paralyze the nation's discourse. Faced with circumstances as potentially lethal as that nuclear bomb I once rode from an airplane to the ground, we are crippled by the fact that we may not use certain words &ndash; much less discuss certain issues. Anyone who so transgresses will not only be subjected to blizzards of hateful language like that which goes before here , he may very well lose his source of livelihood, be physically attacked - murdered, even.</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">&nbsp;</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">For an instance of the &quot;wrong thing said,&quot; while it is a fact that the scoreboard of history has been posted in proportions the size of those mountains to which I just had reference, no one dares say so. While there is no doubt whatever concerning the geo-political and socio-political efficacy of the cultures, no one may discuss it. Figuratively drowning in the evidence of what it has meant to change the U.S. from a nation ninety percent comprised of Northern Europeans to one sixty percent so, we must go on stumbling obliviously toward national death. Neither will any U.S. teacher with a scintilla, an atom, of honesty or integrity deny the effect of culture on their classrooms. Our schools have paralleled major sports, where the calm dignity of athletes like Joe DiMaggio, Stan Musial, Ted Williams, Johnny Unitas, Frank Gifford, Alan Ameche, and others have been replaced by swarms of outright criminals, and nitwits whose often lewd celebration of success not only disgraces sports, but corrupts our youth. </div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">&nbsp;</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">But we can't talk about it. </div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">&nbsp;</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">And the result of our degradation of our sports and education (they were once related, you know) again resembles in proportions related to significance of those mountains I keep mentioning. We have gone from having been the world&rsquo;s scientific and technological genius, a leader all on our own merits &ndash; the nation of &ldquo;Yankee know-how&rdquo; &ndash; to a pitiful boob scholastically, dependent upon intellect imported from just about every other nation and culture on the planet.</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">&nbsp;</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">But no one dares say so. </div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">&nbsp;</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">The &ldquo;politically correct&rdquo; rules have supplanted those of Roberts&rsquo; Rule of Order, scientific method, forensics, and &ldquo;good, old common sense.&rdquo; As famed physicist and cosmologist - one of the world's most intelligent men - Dr. Frank J. Tipler observed in his book &ldquo;The Physics of Immortality,&rdquo; &ldquo;the world is changing color.&rdquo; So is the U.S., and the physicist&rsquo;s reason for concern about the world is the same as that having to do with the nation. Intelligence is an evolutionary force, in other words. We&rsquo;re here because we were smart enough to survive. Like so many other things, we&rsquo;d better start talking about it. </div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">&nbsp;</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">And that will be even more difficult if we decide to have the discussion under one of those &ldquo;grackle trees.&rdquo;</div>


Title: Queenofheartsdisney2.jpg
Caption:
Credit: Spock


Title: Queenofheartsdisney2.jpg
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Credit: Spock

 Queenofheartsdisney2.jpg Spock "Hey, Hal - What's Gonna Happen?" http://community.victoriaadvocate.com/home/Blog/Spock/9727 http://community.victoriaadvocate.com/home/Blog/Spock/9727 <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">Last night, another of the &ldquo;urgent, I&rsquo;ve-just-gotta-talk-to-Hal&rdquo; phone calls that are becoming routine around here.&nbsp;People who know that I predicted years ago what is happening today &ndash; specifically, the economy &ndash; and they want counsel and advice.&nbsp;Logical, I guess.&nbsp;More, I may overcome my neurotic fear (the government listens, and with malicious intent, you know) of talking on the telephone, it seems &ndash; the old, face your fear, &ldquo;cold turkey&rdquo; approach.&nbsp;</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">&nbsp;</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">As usual, Rita holds her hand over the receiver mouthpiece, and says, &ldquo;He really sounds serious&rdquo; (only a little while ago, I would think the caller was pulling my leg).&nbsp;The friend &ndash; everybody who wants counsel about their money these days is your friend &ndash; wonders what will happen with the economy; and, of course, how he can evade what&rsquo;s now obviously coming, save his house, his bank account, money, and all that.&nbsp;I&rsquo;m tempted to tell him he should listen to all those experts being paraded across the nation&rsquo;s television screens morning and night.&nbsp;</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">&nbsp;</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">Tempted, by I don&rsquo;t.&nbsp;After all, why in hell would anyone with a brain better than that of a grape listen to &ldquo;experts&rdquo; who before the &ldquo;bailout&rdquo; noise of the nation&rsquo;s economic collapse obviously didn&rsquo;t have a clue to what was then coming?</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">&nbsp;</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">So I tell this guy that, first, he shouldn&rsquo;t listen to any of television&rsquo;s pontificating pundits. </div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">&nbsp;</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">Then I tell him what I know he won&rsquo;t do anyway.&nbsp;Afterwards, as usual, I wonder why I should bother to tell the economic and fiscal equivalent to a drug addict or alcoholic that he needs to first admit that he&rsquo;s an addict, a moral coward, and a weakling.&nbsp;Of course, I don&rsquo;t say it that way, but that&rsquo;s how anyone with an intellect better than that grape I mentioned a minute ago would interpret it.&nbsp;</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">&nbsp;</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">So, I say what I&rsquo;ve been telling my friends and publishing on my website for years &ndash; in the case of the former (&ldquo;telling&rdquo;), decades.&nbsp;Which brings up what really nags me, the way a nation addicted to credit, borrowing, and &ldquo;earning&rdquo; income by way of interest, dividends, and the like with money borrowed in the first place thinks it can untangle the fiscal mess its made of its life by doing more of the same.&nbsp;The government should print more money &ndash; that means borrowing it, you know &ndash; and &ldquo;bail out&rdquo; . . . ITSELF!</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">&nbsp;</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">Wasn&rsquo;t that Albert Einstein&rsquo;s definition of insanity &ndash; &ldquo;Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results&rdquo;? &nbsp;</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">&nbsp;</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">Watching television&rsquo;s pompous pundits reminds me of still another quotation, this one from the Bible: &quot;Beware of false prophets who come to you in sheep's clothing but inwardly are savage wolves . . . for false Christs and false prophets will arise and will show great signs and wonders, so as to mislead, if possible, even the elect.&rdquo;</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">&nbsp;</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">Oh, when &ldquo;friends&rdquo; call wanting advice related to the &ldquo;bailout&rdquo; preachments of TV&rsquo;s bloviating BSers, sure, I talk about survival methods; but the <em>really</em> good advice I offer is in the form of those quotations.&nbsp;And there&rsquo;s one more, from J.S. Mill, its subject at the bottom of everything that&rsquo;s happening &ndash; it&rsquo;s been on my website and in my books for years:</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">&nbsp;</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">&ldquo;A State which dwarfs its men, in order that they may be more docile instruments in its hands even for beneficial purposes -- will find that with small men no great thing can really be accomplished; and that the perfection of machinery to which it has sacrificed everything, will in the end avail it nothing, for want of the vital power which, in order that the machine might work more smoothly, it has preferred to banish.&rdquo;</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">&nbsp;</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">A Harvard (or Yale) degree does NOT make &ldquo;great men,&rdquo; by the way &ndash; something I generally mention when I give political or fiscal advice.</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">&nbsp;</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">And, no, I don&rsquo;t tell someone who calls asking for help that he should trust his government, and hope.</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">&nbsp;</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">&nbsp;</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">&nbsp;</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">&nbsp;</div> Thanks, AlterNet . . . http://community.victoriaadvocate.com/home/Blog/Spock/9708 http://community.victoriaadvocate.com/home/Blog/Spock/9708 Thanks to the reader who was so kind as to give me the five star rating.&nbsp; I'm grateful, and glad you like what I write. Maybe you'd better sit down for this . . . http://community.victoriaadvocate.com/home/Blog/Spock/9698 http://community.victoriaadvocate.com/home/Blog/Spock/9698 <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">One of my readers who read my last couple of essays sends me this.&nbsp;The Russians (&quot;Igor Panarin, Doctor of Political Sciences and professor of the Russian Diplomat Academy of Foreign Affairs&quot; - remember?) aren't the only ones who know the truth about the trouble we're in, it seems. </div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">&nbsp;</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">Check this link and ruin your day (wake up, that is) - it's among the things I overheard during my covert ops against &quot;corporate America&quot; and its coup d'etat government.</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">&nbsp;</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify"><a href="http://video.google.com/vid">http://video.google.com/vid</a>... </div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">&nbsp;</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">Chris,</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">&nbsp;</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">Hey before everything else - how's our friend Moe?&nbsp;I've e-mailed them a couple of times, wondering about his knees.&nbsp;Any news?</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">&nbsp;</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">As to the link (and Hal Turner), one would like to have somebody inside at the Denver Mint.&nbsp;Still, what Turner says is happening has to happen.&nbsp;You will recall my telling you about my &quot;crashing&quot; of the supposed (it was advertised that way) ecological conference held at the Colorado U in 1988.&nbsp;The &quot;Amero&quot; dollar was discussed, and all the financiers spoke of backing the new &quot;signat&quot; money with land and other property in the so-called debtor nations. You (and all my best friends) also know that I've predicted this for more than twenty years, I've bought as much silver as I can afford, and tried to get Rita ready for what I know is inevitable, so I can't very well express surprise.&nbsp;</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">&nbsp;</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">Also, of course, people like my airline pilot friend who first called immediately after the first credit &quot;bailout&quot; announcements started are calling and writing to me, asking if this &quot;recession&quot; is the collapse I've been predicting.&nbsp;I'm telling them &quot;yes.&quot;</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">&nbsp;</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">I hope you're ready, 'cause this will be a pluperfect b****.</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">&nbsp;</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">Hal</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">&nbsp;</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">When Chris responded, I sent this:</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">&nbsp;</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">Obama has seen a ghost, all right.&nbsp;He realizes that he's the latest example of what's happened to blacks since before the Civil War - History repeats itself: the southern white boys Clinton and Bush handing the black guy the dirty work and the blame for everything they did.&nbsp;</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">&nbsp;</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">Just great to hear about Moe (tell that scoundrel we've been worrying about him, and thanks for no news).</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">&nbsp;</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">Also good to hear that business is good.&nbsp;Watch yourself, though - everybody powerful and going down the tube will be looking for sucker victims.</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">&nbsp;</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">Hal</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">&nbsp;</div> Response to my Advocate Detractors. http://community.victoriaadvocate.com/home/Blog/Spock/9687 http://community.victoriaadvocate.com/home/Blog/Spock/9687 <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">Let&rsquo;s deal here with those who believe me (seemingly, their only alternative would be objective criticism) to be bitter, and resort therefore (I suppose) to&nbsp;gratuitous personal attack. &nbsp;It is simply a fact, one even made record in U.S. District Court transcripts, that I for almost a decade infiltrated offices of the federal government at all levels (they felt free, and feel free, to invade my privacy, why should I not feel likewise free?).&nbsp;My covert operations, whose results were reported again and again to U.S. senators, congressmen, the major news networks &ndash; even Soldier of Fortune Magazine &ndash; made me &ldquo;bitter.&rdquo;</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">&nbsp;</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">I learned, you see, the truth about the federal government,</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">&nbsp;</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">Now, I report what I learned to anyone interested enough to listen.&nbsp;More, my investigations have resulted in my ability to both understand what is in reality happening and to forecast what will happen.&nbsp;For instance, a friend sends me today information that a Russian professor, world-renowned political analyst, and intelligence strategist is predicting the rapid break-up of the United States. My friend Bill is among several persons who recall that I first said the same thing as long as ten years ago.&nbsp;I have published my prediction several times on this website, moreover.</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">&nbsp;</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">In 1974, during an impromptu speech (I was asked to speak when the scheduled speaker was prevented from arrival by weather), I predicted many of the events now unfolding nationally.&nbsp;Many people who heard the speech (one, a few minutes ago as I typed this) are still writing, e-mailing, and calling to discuss my remarks as events I foretold in them occur. &nbsp;It was during my speech that I first wondered aloud it the U.S. could survive the results of things then happening.</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">&nbsp;</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">It is interesting, parenthetically, that Igor Panarin, Doctor of Political Sciences and professor of the Russian Diplomat Academy of Foreign Affairs, predicts the U.S. will break up in almost exactly the same manner as I have been saying, the difference being that I have seen the state of Texas breaking away (being abandoned by the Midwest, that is) in union with the southern states.</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">&nbsp;</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">Of course, when I first voiced my opinion, it was greeted in much the same manner as my last essay here.&nbsp;Part of the reasons the U.S. will probably shatter is the fact that &ldquo;Americans&rdquo; &ndash; there are thirty-five other nations in the Americas, you know &ndash; have become so self-indulgently ignorant that confronted with a proposition they somehow dislike (how does anyone rational who knows little or nothing of a matter manage to have strong opinions concerning it?), their reaction is nothing more than ridicule, invective, and sanctimonious or otherwise specious scorn.&nbsp;</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">&nbsp;</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">Even more interesting is the fact that a large (very, statistically), segment of detractors invariably complain bitterly about my use of &ldquo;big&rdquo; words and what they recognize &ndash; for what must be obvious reasons - as complex sentence structure. &ldquo;Americans&rdquo; who presume to weigh in rhetorically on rocket science are then furious when the writer or speaker uses mathematics in his argument, in other words.&nbsp;</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">&nbsp;</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">Recently, one reader pontificated lugubriously that logic has no place in political debate (I have published pages of criticism based on logic concerning national news and debate on television and the newspapers).&nbsp;While it is not difficult to see where he might have derived such an opinion &ndash; today&rsquo;s politics are certainly wastelands where the&nbsp;flora&nbsp;of logic is concerned - it is likewise highly unlikely that any discussion or debate deprived of logic will ever produce more light than heat.&nbsp;Unwittingly &ndash; and both singularly and signally - typical of the type, this particular&nbsp;citizen&nbsp;personifies a symptom of our national malady. </div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">&nbsp;</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">&nbsp;</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">But I perhaps digress.&nbsp;During my Internet study of the national discourse, I engaged on various website frequented by contributors representing the spectrum of political and religious viewpoint, the better to obtain data for a then proposed doctoral thesis.&nbsp;During the course of one year, moreover and as a result, I received one thousand, ninety one e-mail letters.&nbsp;The news delivered by the letters and my discussions wasn&rsquo;t good, paralleling as it did in its implication studies like the one to which I had earlier reference, the one in which people couldn&rsquo;t so much as identify the three houses of their government.&nbsp;</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">&nbsp;</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">In my discussions, persons vehemently assured in their own minds that the Murrah Building could not have been destroyed as it was by a fertilizer bomb had no idea of how to compute overpressure from explosives, or how to calculate blast effect over distance.&nbsp;World Trade Center theorists (how do you have a theory when you have no information or idea concerning the matter being discussed?) knew not the first thing about controlled demolition, nothing about other controlled demolitions, nothing about the resistance of structural steel to heat, or anything else relevant to the topic.&nbsp;None could say, either, how such an operation might have been accomplished without any of literally scores of thousands of people in and around the buildings for the weeks it would require having become aware.&nbsp;</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">&nbsp;</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">In a scientific argument concerning the existence of god, none of the sixteen people involved could recognize or give an example of what is called &ldquo;circular reasoning (begging the question, that is).</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">&nbsp;</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">And so on (we wouldn&rsquo;t like to over-burden the &ldquo;one-liner&rdquo; people, but in the words of H.L. Mencken, &ldquo;Things than can be put in a nutshell generally <em>belong</em> in a nutshell;&rdquo; and I might add that things one can put in a nutshell are generally offered only to people who are nuts &ndash; but I won&rsquo;t). &nbsp;Like any reporter or essayist, I write about what I have learned, and know. I am also by now very, very inured to the reactions of people like &ldquo;rollinstone&rdquo; and others the like here.&nbsp;The reasons for their remarks are all but invariably obvious to the astute reviewer: devoid of anything else to say &ndash; empty of information with which to refute or confute, that is &ndash; they resort to personal attack, the kind of strident and nasty argument now thunderously characteristic of discourse here in the Land of Free Speech.&nbsp;They, and the depth of their intellect, are in short recognizable for what they say, and how they say it.&nbsp;</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">&nbsp;</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">&ldquo;What you are,&rdquo; wrote Emerson, &ldquo;thunders so loudly that I cannot hear what you say to the contrary.&rdquo;&nbsp;&nbsp;</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">&nbsp;</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">&nbsp;</div>


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Title: jbtfsplk-27.6kb(253p).jpg
Caption:
Credit: Spock

 jbtfsplk-27.6kb(253p).jpg Spock And P.S. my last . . . http://community.victoriaadvocate.com/home/Blog/Spock/9664 http://community.victoriaadvocate.com/home/Blog/Spock/9664 <p>When the terrorists the government says will surely strike in in the next few years do finally strike, is it not reasonable to expect that our &quot;homeland security&quot; will perform then the same way they performed before or after 9-11, or before and after Hurricane Katrina - et cetera?&nbsp; </p> <p>Does anyone doubt that the Lone Ranger will find spitting on the sidewalk more deserving of his interest?</p> Sometimes, I'm my own worst enemy . . . http://community.victoriaadvocate.com/home/Blog/Spock/9660 http://community.victoriaadvocate.com/home/Blog/Spock/9660 <p align="justify">Sometimes, like when I write something like I wrote yesterday, I'm my own worst enemy.&nbsp; I can never get over the thought that when someone writes to me I am obliged to acknowledge his missive.&nbsp; Sixty-three people (as of the time I went for my morning walk and trash collection today, that is) have written to respond to the article I posted here and on my own website.&nbsp; Sheesh!</p> <p align="justify">Look, folks - there are some things that are obvious, as - in the words of Henry David Thoreau - when you find a trout swimming in your soup.&nbsp; </p> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">More - and when I think of it, I might also have included this on the &quot;Mongoose Trick&quot; survivalist page of my <a href="http://www.judoknighterrant.com/">www.judoknighterrant.com</a> website - this is about surviving what now in the days of corporate loyalty to nothing but self and the corporation amounts to an attack by a&nbsp;foreign power and surviving a traditional mafia-like co-opting of the authorities charged with protecting us from them.&nbsp; </div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify"></div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify"></div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify"></div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">(Did anybody catch the stupendously inane news item yesterday, the one that said we can expect a major terrorist attack in the next five years? With the doors and windows wide open, the government in its benevolence wants to warn that the householder should expect an invasion and&nbsp;major theft?&nbsp;WOW - now THAT's a revelation!), </div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">&nbsp;</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">All tacticians of any effectiveness recognize that the stupendous stupidity of the nation's citizenry is one of the major elements in what he will have to combat in surviving.&nbsp; In fact, the wide world is shuddering at the realization that people who can't name the three houses of their government, much less the legal powers of the president, have just <em>elected</em> (supposedly; if you believe that you're among the stupendously stupid) a president. </div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify"></div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify"></div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify"></div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">And they're glad, patting themselves on the back,&nbsp;because he is a black American.</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">&nbsp;</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">But the public here in the Land of the Free turned Land of the Fee have been Operation MOCKINGBIRD propagandized to the point of near coma.&nbsp;You, for instance, have been conditioned, decade after decade, to believe that traffic law and its enforcement is in the public interest (just like these wondrous new - and &quot;clean;&quot; don't forget clean - relax, breath deeply, watch the pocket watch, and don't forget &quot;CLEAN!&quot; - nuclear plants, in situ mining, and this stuff in the green bottle?).&nbsp;</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">&nbsp;</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">And I'm &quot;bitter?!&quot; You don't know about firearms so much as which end of the thing a bullet comes out, but you've bought one and taken it home, anyway - along with some stuff they called &quot;nitro glycerine&quot; (which you know nothing of, either).&nbsp; If I don't want to be your neighbor, I'm &quot;bitter?&quot;</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">&nbsp;</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">But I had the temerity to complain - as I note here, bitterly, some said -&nbsp;about &quot;law enforcement&quot; - here in Texas,&nbsp;&quot;law enforcement&quot; is&nbsp;something like the Easter Bunny, Spiderman, maybe.&nbsp;Actually, now that I think about THAT, it's more like the Keystone Kops (you probably won't remember), the Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight (remember Don Knotts and Tim Conway?), or Mickey Mouse.&nbsp; </div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">&nbsp;</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">And if you're dumb enough to think the Texas Department of Public Safety is about public safety, you believe the Department of Homeland Security is about homeland security.&nbsp; The former protects the public the same way the latter guards the border, for instance.&nbsp; And FEMA&nbsp;is about managing emergencies.&nbsp; I did mention Mickey Mouse, didn't I?</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">&nbsp;</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">&quot;Department of Public Safety.&quot;&nbsp; Really?&nbsp; Let's have a tactical look at that.&nbsp;How much have traffic fines and supposed enforcement of traffic-related law slowed traffic in Texas?&nbsp;How much has&nbsp;the hideous death toll been affected?&nbsp;Then &quot;'Splain dat to me Lucy;&quot; 'splain why every, single time I use a highway in south Texas, I see at least one vehicle per thirty miles exceeding ninety miles per hour.&nbsp;In fact, I have repeatedly clocked cars at speeds in excess of one hundred miles an hour.&nbsp;During a recent trip to Ohio, I saw not one instance of that (OR ninety mph).&nbsp;Why, for instance, is highway 87 between Cuero and LaVernia a raceway, with cars routinely passing in no passing zones before hill crests and curves (that while Texas State Troopers stop old couples for driving on the &quot;improved shoulder [how does one know it's &quot;improved?&quot;] in Cuero?</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">&nbsp;</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">Why should&nbsp;people who make $200,000 a year (or a pro athlete who makes millions), give a damn about a hundred dollar fine? Why should even someone who makes minimum wage give a damn about the silly amount of fines for speeding (and that's risking the lives of other people) here in Texas?</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify"></div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify"></div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify"></div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">I have in just the last six years personally observed four fatal crashes. On a single ten mile stretch of Texas highway, I recently counted thirteen &quot;descansos,&quot; those memorials Hispanic people leave to their dead-by-motor-vehicle.&nbsp; Any time I want to see a thunderous and maiming smash-up, I have only to walk to the corner near Wal-Mart here in Port Lavaca and wait a while.&nbsp; Cars and trucks rocketing down the highway there blast unwary (usually oblivious, talking on the damned cell phone, or arguing with someone in the back seat and looking that way while driving onto the highway) drivers - ones who wouldn't be able to&nbsp;judge the screaming speed of the&nbsp;approaching vehicles, anyway - on&nbsp;just about a weekly basis (last week, two).&nbsp;&nbsp;</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify"></div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify"></div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">In Corpus Christi a few years ago, I saw a women fixing her face in the rear-view mirror - while driving eighty miles per hour in morning traffic down South Padre Island Drive. Another time, I watched a woman race at a speed in excess of forty mph through a school zxone posted twenty mph. When I happened by her court house destination later, I learned that the woman was a judge. </div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">&nbsp;</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">For one like me, driving a car in Texas is much like flying a fighter in military combat.</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">&nbsp;</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">But&nbsp;let's suppose the fine for exceeding the speed limit by twenty miles per hour were ten thousand dollars (or a year in jail).&nbsp;Let's suppose ten over would get you a five thousand dollar fine.&nbsp;Would YOU speed?&nbsp;Yeah, sure you would.&nbsp; Would the outrageous highway behavior of certain of us change?&nbsp;I tend to think so, and at very least, the drivers in question wouldn't have much money with which to buy more gasoline.&nbsp; Those who went to jail wouldn't be on the highways, either.</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">&nbsp;</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">By the way, have you ever wondered how the same fines for everyone - the social security dependent, the minimum wage worker, and the like; and the multimillionaire - can be called fair?&nbsp;Constitutional?&nbsp;'Splain DAT one to me Lucy (and, Lucy,&nbsp;while you're 'splaining, remind yourself of the recent $1.74 paid by Formosa Plastics for violating all those laws supposedly protecting us from corporate polluters and atmosphere poisoners)!</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">&nbsp;</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">Come on, folks - wake the hell up!&nbsp;If you think &quot;the War on Drugs&quot; is about protecting you from drugs, you just aren't paying attention (or, perhaps, you're in on it). If you think all the uproar about illegal immigration from Mexico is about stopping illegal immigration from Mexico, you didn't get the message the other day. The message, translated by a tactician was: &quot;A bunch of you are going to die because it is politically expedient - that means profitable as hell - to let anybody willing to take a long hike cross our borders.&nbsp; We will continue to posture and pose (stuff like stopping old people to write them warning tickets for driving on the extreme right of the roadway and as far out of the way from the hundred mph traffic there as possible), and appropriate (notice that I didn't say &quot;spend&quot;) billions of your money in order that you can someone (stupid is good) <em>believe</em> you're being protected.&nbsp; And forget about FEMA and the hurricanes - that was just a minor slip-up, that guy &quot;Brownie's&quot; fault.&quot;</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">&nbsp;</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">Come, on people - THINK! Fines here in Texas are where they are and in the amount they are because they are a marvelous - marvelously sanctimonious, that is - source of revenue.&nbsp;If everyone were to obey the traffic laws, if fines would force them to obey, that is, it would be a disaster for the State of Texas and its municipalities.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; This is in point of easily recognizable fact about another form of corporate greed (you don't realize that your governments are corporations being run like corporations?).&nbsp;Taxes would immediately soar (taxes the corporations and rich don't pay, either) - like prices are going to soar once the corporations get their big &quot;bailout&quot; and have to pay it back.</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">&nbsp;</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">Did somebody once say that the most fearsome words in the language are &quot;I'm from the government, and I'm here to help&quot;?&nbsp;Substitute &quot;Uranium Resources,&quot; or &quot;Exelon&quot; for &quot;government&quot; - you'll be closer to the truth. While you can be fined up to a&nbsp;$1,000 for throwing a banana peel out the window, an Exelon or Uranium Resources, Inc (emphasis on the &quot;Inc&quot; - it means &quot;above the law&quot;) will pay $1.75 for doing what the Department of Homeland Security expects a terrorist organization to do in the next few years.</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">&nbsp;</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">Did I say the public is stupid? Yeah, I guess I did.&nbsp; I could be wrong.&nbsp; But one thing is incontrovertibly clear: the government <em>believes</em> the public is stupid, acts as thought the public is stupid, and has a vested, corporation-like &nbsp;interest in the public being stupid.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Just outside town, in other words,&nbsp;the Comancheros are massacring settlers, but the Lone Ranger is&nbsp;busy with&nbsp;a guy who spit on the sidewalk.&nbsp;</div>


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 Lone Ranger-2.jpg Spock Lone Ranger-2.jpg Spock Just like old times . . . http://community.victoriaadvocate.com/home/Blog/Spock/9643 http://community.victoriaadvocate.com/home/Blog/Spock/9643 <p>For anyone interested, I have just posted an article here and on my <a href="http://www.judoknighterrant">www.judoknighterrant.com</a> &nbsp;website.&nbsp; The battle for clean water, unpolluted environment,&nbsp;and control of our prerogatives concerning our personal health has taken an ominous turn and heated up.</p> <p>This may not be pretty, but it will be very much in character for the Land of the Free become Land of the Fee.</p> <p>&quot;Lock and load,&quot; indeed, Bullet Bob.</p> To my most recent comment, also published on my website, I added this: http://community.victoriaadvocate.com/home/Blog/Spock/9607 http://community.victoriaadvocate.com/home/Blog/Spock/9607 <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">The situation militarily or otherwise - survival, to be even more specific - has become next to desperate. If these were conventional terrorists, &quot;Homeland Security Presidential Directive 3&quot; (it creates an Homeland Security supposed advisory system - it was a joke, actually - to supposedly &quot;inform all levels of government and local authority, as well as the public, to the current risk of terrorist acts&quot;).The system supposedly involved a five-level, color-coded &quot;Threat Condition indicator&quot; corresponding to what the government believed (if that's not a joke, you tell me) was the current security situation. You should have masking tape ready in order to survive a bio-chemical attack, or that sort of thing, in other words . . .</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">&nbsp;</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">Of&nbsp;course, there was also &quot;DEFCON&quot; (during the Bush &quot;administration,&quot; we've become pretty spooked). The DEFense readiness CONdition (DEFCON) was (is?) a measuring scale for the activation and readiness level of the United States Armed Forces. It, too, (supposedly - its bean-counter creators being nine to five, then television reality folks who are notoriously detached from the real world) describes &quot;progressive postures for use between the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the commanders of unified (another inside joke, incidentally - if you think your government is capable of anything reasonably unified or otherwise co-ordinated, you're not in the real world, either) commands. Like Homeland Security Directive 3, DEFCONs are matched to the situations of military severity. Standard peacetime protocol is DEFCON 5, descending in increasingly severe situations. DEFCON 1 represents expectation of actual imminent attack, and is not known to have ever been declared.</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">&nbsp;</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">It should be declared here in South Texas, now. We're in Homeland Security Directive 3 condition red. The enemy is here, he has begun his attack, and his objectives are categorically very clear.&nbsp;As the Victoria Advocate published recently, corporate terrorists have established beachheads both north and south of where I live in Port Lavaca.&nbsp;Soon, we will have nuclear &quot;facility&quot; - the medical profession would call them &quot;tumors&quot; - just a few miles on either side of us.&nbsp;Radiation detection equipment in the form of dosimeters have already recorded levels of water contamination far in excess of what would trigger a national red, DEFCON 1, alert, were this a conventional terror attack. </div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">&nbsp;</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">In the words of the old movie wise-crack, &quot;NOW it's time to panic . . .&quot;&nbsp;Or as one Advocate reader recently wrote, &quot;Lock and Load.&quot;</div> <div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align="justify">&nbsp;</div>


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