Ugly Girl

It was all real swell until western news media pounced and made it all ugly.

Watch "The King and I" - a known classic of American cinema, and revel in female star Deborah Kerr singing some of the most beautiful songs ever written. NOT. It was somebody else singing - Marni Nixon, whose beauty was not required, and whose accomplishments as an actress perhaps not yet revealed. So?

We're such slobs it's hard to believe we used to be decent Americans - before the various Contessa Brewers and the packs of Obermanns were let loose to drum up audiences whenever and however possible. You know and I know that to keep seeing those 6 zeros in their paychecks they'd drop their pants in a second. So torturing a little chinese girl with false shame is a cakewalk for these low feeders.

Ask Chuck

Prince Charles warns that Genetically Modified Food crops risk causing the biggest-ever environmental disaster: "Millions of small farmers all over the world being driven off their land into unsustainable, unmanageable, degraded and dysfunctional conurbations of unmentionable awfulness.'"

He's way into this issue...

"Look at India's Green Revolution. It worked for a short time but now the price is being paid.

"I have been to the Punjab where you have seen the disasters that have taken place as result of the over demand on irrigation because of the hybrid seeds and grains that have been produced which demand huge amounts of water.

"The water table has disappeared. They have huge problems with water level, with pesticide problems, and complications which are now coming home to roost.

"Look at western Australia. Huge salinisation problems. I have been there. Seen it."

I mean WAY into it...

On the Ground, In Country, Like a Rock Star !

...our sainted on-air bloviators, soaring high above reality, deliver the cliches we all need to get through the day.

The Righteous Trinity: Bill O'Reilly, Michael Savage, Sean Hannity

The Shooter's Reading list: "Inside the house, officers found 'Liberalism is a Mental Health Disorder' by radio talk show host Michael Savage, 'Let Freedom Ring' by talk show host Sean Hannity, and 'The O'Reilly Factor,' by television talk show host Bill O'Reilly.

The shotgun-wielding suspect in Sunday's mass shooting at the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church was motivated by a hatred of 'the liberal movement,' and he planned to shoot until police shot him, Knoxville Police Chief Sterling P. Owen IV said this morning."

And there he is again, Michael Savage, the real deal in human tripe.

Rollin' Fat

Ornish Sees Fat On Hearts - Percival Lowell Saw Canals On Mars:

"I don't know about you, but it seems amiss to me for the media to portray this as a pro-Atkins study, really, since most of us consider Atkins to be meat-based, and shouldn't the media help us to better understand the science?"

There's a large pile of mis-directed glee in this article.

If this is what Kathy Freston knows - if this is what she thinks is true, then she knows nothing.

The edge is so far beyond the faded Dean Ornish model that it is spectacular to read this organized rant pretending otherwise.

Fear of meat is not an uplifted or valuable reason for anything; it's merely fear of meat.

Follow the actual facts and you will get to the actual edge.

He Had A Hunch

The Beautiful George Carlin: "George grew tougher and sharper over the years, putting more of himself, and his intellect, at the service of his always nimble, always adventurous comedy mind. And, while his comedy was dark, his spirit with his peers was generous."

I saw him once on a TV talk show where former Hollywood bombshell Lana Turner was one of the guests. It became immediately clear that, for some reason, she had a big dislike for him and at one point said to the other host that George actually was scaring her - his look included long-hair and roughly mantained, hippie-like clothing. George seemed to be taken aback by her obvious revulsion, and so was I - bigtime. But it was suddenly and unmistakably very clear to me that she was a monster and that he was my brilliant, powerful and beautiful knight in the blessed New Order.

Life jumped out of him like radiation, and sometimes when I saw him in the later years - older than I thought many of us would ever become, I would be reminded of these lines from a Russian poet:

Into the distance disappear
the mounds of human heads

I dwindle, go unnoticed now

But in affectionate books,
in children's games

I will rise from the dead
to say, "the sun!"

Ultimately, for me, his beauty was his hunch about life - that it was never too hot to touch, and that everything mattered.

How To Look Sick

John McCain is Ann Coulter's Dick: "Time Magazine columnist Joe Klein said that John McCain's comments Tuesday that Barack Obama is willing to lose a war to win an election were the most scurrilous he had ever heard by a major party candidate."

At first I thought it was just me; maybe I was twisting what I'd heard, but then I heard it again and realized how absolutely outrageous it is for this little boy-toy runt to think he can get away with saying crap like that.

His wife can build him another little fake lake to fish in, and ply him with more free booze and scoot him around Red America on her jet, but she doesn't have enough alchohol profits in her bag to buy the humanity and common sense this guy sorely needs.

Barbara Bush might say, "I am done with him." I say fire him from everything and get him a job "selling fish to tourists in tee-shirts" and let's get back to the future.

Something Happened To Liberty

One of the Greatest Stories Seldom Told: "Tobey Maguire is attached to Universal's 'The Crusaders,' a drama about the landmark 1954 Brown v. Board of Education case."

The story of the long, plotted, pathway to the Brown case is one of the most fantastic and glorious stories you will ever hear.

If they do it right, we will all be introduced to the amazing group of people - spread out over a century, whose cleverness, brilliance, and motivation saved all of us - whites from an eternity of raw blame and guilt, and blacks from the bleak future of secondness.

I can't wait.

If You Get Screwed - You Stay Screwed

Republicans Plan On Attacking Your Daughter. Going To Stand For It ???: "...this provision would threaten the funding of organizations and health facilities if they do not hire people who would refuse to provide birth control and defines abortion so broadly that it would include many types of birth control, including oral contraception."

I hope they don't come to my door and try to talk their nonsense to my kid. My reaction would be very ugly indeed.

And a glass of Chard for my cat

Pill-Popping Pets: "'He's agile,' Allan says. 'He's healthy. He's a good-looking animal.' Michelle adds, 'We love him to death.' That is why they had no choice, she says. The dog simply had to go on psychoactive drugs."

This is a great article and a fascinating topic.

Over the past five thousand and more years almost every civilization at some point experienced animals as volitional players on the human stage - and often as dear and feared gods, before whom we cowered.

I still feel the power of that past. I look to my cats in awe, treasuring them as god-like sublime perfections, and I have never doubted the reality of their passions and their sorrows and their sacred “umwelt”.

Show me the bush that they can eat when they are particularly troubled, and I will get it for them. Show me the medication that can help them deal with situations beyond their control, and I will get it for them. But I always know that their senses should not be unduly disturbed or their faculties diminished. We are interfering and, even though our motives are clean, we must do no harm.

Oops, gotta go - time to feed the Sphinx.

Google: We Can't Figure Out How To Make Money On Web Video, Either

Pock-marked Greed-monkees Are Selling Pictures of Your Girlfriend's Ass and You Don't Even Know It!: "How much longer are we going to have to hear the words 'genius', 'rocket scientist', and so on used to describe a bunch of spam-monetizing, content-stealing ad peddlers?", asks commenter clickbot.

Here, you eat Bernini; I'll eat Rafael

The Golden Gate Bridge Is A Sacred Piece of America: I would rather give up my right to walk across the bridge than sacrifice any more of the sublime beauty of its original form.

To put it fucking mildly, erecting a suicide barrier on the Golden Gate Bridge "would alter the look of the historic span, bridge officials said Monday."

"The main visual difference in the railing proposals are whether the designs call for vertical or horizontal stripes. The study did not determine which design would be most effective in preventing suicides, Currie said."

We are different than those human beings who built such a treasure, but we know the beauty that is right before our eyes, and the higher voice within us knows that our part of the story is to pass it forward without harm and intact.

"Leave the bridge alone !!!"

"Barack, you'll love this plane."

"I fixed it up real good for 'ya": "This was not Obama's regular campaign plane, which is being overhauled. It was a loaner, having previously been used by Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-NY."

Well, that was right nice, don't you think?

..."As the pilot struggled to re-gain control of the pitch of the plane - the angle of the nose of the plane - Obama was told that he and the other 44 passengers on board might have to assume the brace position upon landing, bending forward with their heads between their knees.

That ultimately did not happen, but..."

"...National Transportation Safety Board chairman Mark Rosenker told ABC News' Dennis Powell yesterday that the incident 'is extremely serious in this particular case.'

An inflatable slide in the tail cone of the plane had deployed, making control of the plane tough. "There are hydraulic lines back there," Rosenker says. 'There are control cables that deal with the elevators and other area's of control surfaces for the aircraft, and could potentially make it extremely difficult if not impossible to fly the aircraft."

! Gulp !

Webb's "Thrilling, Frightening Masculinity"

The Love Vote: "There's nothing like the love nerds have for the one a-hole jock that's nice to them."

So true and so amazing. Webb hates - really hates, the elites. He has detailed thoughts on this issue and they all quicken to a fine-edged Scot-Irish rage where we're all back at Hadrian's wall - we Celts on the ground and us Romans on the bullwarks, trading insults, itching for blood.

I don't really see Webb eager to join the nerds, but nerds for Obama rings true.

Screw This Pooch

How did this country become so colossally retarded?: James Dobson and the other anti-Christs of the right "should be strapped to a gurney in a sanitarium with a Lithium I.V."

..."Nor is it the place of a news organization to stick him on TV as an authority, simply because morons listen to what he says."

"This intellectual shitkicker may have puffed himself up enough to think he's got enough moral highground to evaluate the authenticity of the candidates..."

"In the best of all possible worlds, candidates and news organizations wouldn't pander to the dumb vote. The moron vote. The ignorant vote. Instead they would say: screw 'em."

Obama On The Mount

He takes the breath away: "'If we scrub language of all religious content, we forfeit the imagery and terminology through which millions of Americans understand both their personal morality and social justice. Imagine Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address without reference to 'the judgments of the Lord.' Or King's I Have a Dream speech without references to 'all of God's children.' Their summoning of a higher truth helped inspire what had seemed impossible, and move the nation to embrace a common destiny'"...

..."Indeed, the majority of great reformers in American history were not only motivated by faith, but repeatedly used religious language to argue for their cause. So to say that men and women should not inject their "personal morality" into public policy debates is a practical absurdity. Our law is by definition a codification of morality, much of it grounded in the Judeo-Christian tradition"

We're back !!!!

In Praise of the Cat

The Most Beautiful Creatures In The World: "Cats are known to have traveled hundreds of miles to find their owners in new homes to which they themselves have never been. Scientists have not been able to find a physiological or psychological explanation for this ability."

Poor People Turn Off Advertisers

"Our culture is directed towards making things worse" - from Ben Cohen's interview with Matt Taibbi.

"Poverty certainly is something you don't get a whole lot of information about, for the simple reason that poor people turn off advertisers."

"I knew one guy who was doing a story and it involved a murder in a small town in Georgia, and there were a lot of poor people involved who were characters in this story, and they were talking a lot on camera in his version of the story. When he took it to his editors they told him to re-cut the story, and take the poor people out and have him do stand ups instead so that he would be on camera more and the poor inarticulate people would be on camera less. This is something that goes on all the time in the media, and it's not because they have a political bias against the idea that there are lots of poor people in this country, it is just that it is a fact of economic life that when people see wealth on TV, they are inclined to buy more and when they see depressing images, they are inclined to buy less. That's why golf, for instance, is such a popular sport on television because it is a sport where you tend to see lots of upper class people in upper class settings in country clubs, and you'll notice that corresponding advertisements for golf are always luxury cars and luxury perfumes and colognes and those sorts of things. And you can't sell those things when you have a lot of people without teeth on TV, it's just a fact of life. That's why you have that, it's strictly an economic thing."...

The Coast of the Auburn Mane

"This guy's not a documentary, he's an opera. Somebody should write it." - Peggy Noonan speaking of Bill Clinton:
Peggy Noonan can hear the native tongues of home, and sing to us a glimpse of its "far-flinging Gods."

There's another kingdom out among the 3 visible, acknowledged worlds of America; beyond the East Coast of the famous families, the Left Coast of brazen and wanton tugging at the leash, and the venerated blessedness of the Heartland. Less visible, harder to reach, but more real by a long stroke, is that home within us where life flows as a song - pouring forth with words thrilled to be spoken, describing gloriful affirmation and protective confirmation.

It's another Coast altogether, and from it's edge - as with all coasts, the past and the future go both ways.

It's All In The Game

What If Obama Isn't A Game Changer?: "University of Virginia political scientist Larry Sabato. There are four elements needed for a major political shift, Sabato argues:
'(1) A crisis of confidence that causes Americans to reconsider their voting patterns; (2) new voters brought into the electorate that change the composition of the voting public; (3) a successful Presidency that confirms the gamble voters take in the first election breaking with past practice; and (4) successor Presidencies from the new coalition that continue and build upon the successes of the breakthrough President.'"

A tall order; very sobering. A lot has to happen, and a lot of that has to happen in sync with a whole lot of other things.