Monday, February 23, 2015

‘Pologize now. You hear me? I demand you ‘pologize.

I suspect it was down in Texas, where according to sardonic lore, “He needed killin’” can be raised as a valid defense against murder charges, that a new life form was born. 

Moreover, this oozing, disgusting, abrasive, rapidly multiplying new thing has spread nationwide (and now across the seas)  with the rapidity and strength of an ebola pandemic on steroids.

I’m talking about apologizing and the demand for it, or as they call it somewhere, ‘poligizin'.” The apology is now so overused it appears to be a meaningless act, as in, “Everybody’s all over me for shooting that guy in the head. What are they getting so riled up for? Heck, I already ‘pologized for it.”

More disconcerting are the myriad of demands for apologies  and occasional deliveries thereof from the left.  from the right, from the sports world, from military leaders, from small New England town zoning commissions, from riled up nuns, and now even from the Philippines. Did I mention Newt Gingrich?

What got me set off was a report that the people running Mother Jones magazine and its website are all over Bill O’Reilly, the impossibly biased broadcast gas bag, for lying about his so called combat correspondent experience in the Falklands War of 1982. Moreover, he seemed to recommend that somebody kill the reporter who broke the story.

Heck, all my strings vibrate in sympathy with Mother Jones. Except for one thing. Let’s cut out the demands for an apology crap. O’Reilly shouldn’t apologize. An apology does nothing except add more putrid gas to the already fetid air. Besides, the din of meaningless apologies and demands for apologies is so thick, you can’t tell them apart.

Instead, O’Reilly should have his ass fired off the air, and that’s what the editors of Mother Jones should be demanding. They should be demanding it of O’Reilly’s miserable employers. They should also be demanding it of the FCC.  That's also what the rest of us should be demanding, for acts O'Reilly committed ranging lying to soliciting murder when he suggested that the reporter whose reporting O’Reilly doesn’t like should be “in the kill zone, where he deserves to be.”

And no, I ain’t gonna ‘pologize for harping on the subject.

Thursday, February 19, 2015

Jim Wright versus the mighty ayatollahs of Texas

Jim Wright, the best damn writer in 
the blogosphere. Go now and read 
Sorry folks, but I’m currently wrestling with the angst of Blogger Burnout. That, I insist, is an authentic medical condition. Sooner or later it will surface in DSM, the Diagnostic and Statistical manual of Mental Disorders, published by the American Psychiatric Association. 

But while my writing muscle has gone more or less catatonic, I can still read. And never have I read a better, more fanatic-busting blog post than the current one by Jim Wright on Stonekettle Station, called the Camel’s Nose.

So head straight over to his post, sit down, and prepare to feel the outrage that will begin boiling up in your chest and eventually sizzle up through your brain, and make steam jet out of your ears.

Yes, it’s about Republicans. And about the religious right. And about what “freedom” means and doesn’t mean in the hands of power-hungry religious fanatics – to children, babies, the unborn, their mothers, and society. In the end, you'll want to toss the Texas ayatollahs in the same stinking sewage pit with the executioners from ISIS and the bombers from Al Qaeda.

Just go here now, and read the damn piece.

Tuesday, February 17, 2015

There's money to be made selling dunce caps in Vermont

From The Paris Review's website:

The English language has been in decline for a long time—a very, very long time, in fact, and along the way plenty of people have seen fit to remind us that we’re swirling in the toilet bowl. “It was William Langland, author of Piers Plowman, who wrote that ‘There is not a single modern schoolboy who can compose verses or write a decent letter.’ He died in 1386.
But then there's this from the Vermont Political Observer (Tipoff courtesy of Underbelly-Buce, who I wish would start posting again.)

Monday, February 09, 2015

No no, you people who don’t trust government. You’re only half right. You can’t trust anybody.

Listen, you can’t really hate people for not trusting government. Just look at Congress. 

The most useless people in that useless body are the ones who got into office by running on an anti-government platform. And since Congress is part of government, and the people who ran against useless government are equally useless, you can assume that Congressmen don’t even trust each other. Or themselves.

 So I wasn’t exactly flabbergasted when a publication called Target Marketing reported this morning that people trust business more than government. 

Target Marketing’s report was based on a survey released by a PR firm called Edelman. But in attempting to dig deeper into the report, which wasn’t easy on Edelman’s hard-to-navigate web page, I learned  that just because a lot of people hate Congress more than business, it doesn't mean any love is lost on business, either.

In fact,  “government is still distrusted in 19 of the 27 markets surveyed,” and also, “trust in business is below 50 percent in half those markets.” So people don’t see business as all that trustworthy, either. 

And since business now exerts undue influence on government, by lobbying their bought Congressman – Washington’s favorite indoor sport  – we now have Congress and business slithering  around, building distrust on top of distrust, and chasing chasing their own tails. 

With any luck Congress and business will catch and eat themselves like this snake, that evidently doing a pretty fair job of digesting its own body in its own stomach. (WARNING: Some people may find this video disturbing. Some snakes, Congressmen, lobbyists and business moguls may, as well.)
But Congress and business aren’t the only ones oh the public’s poo list. In addition, “sixty percent of countries now distrust media.” Thanks to all of you who are the ilk of Fox News, Brian Williams, Breitbart and its wannabe pimp and news fake James O’Keefe, and all others who play fast and loose with the facts.

And speaking of mistrust in business, there was yet another story that caught my attention in Target Marketing this morning, and that one was a hair-raiser. It had to do with Dish Network, which evidently has about as much respect for consumers or the regulations of the U.S. Government’s Federal Trade Commission as ISIS does for Charlie Hebdo.

Seems that people have been, and may still be hounded beyond all understanding, even after they put themselves on the Federal Trade Commissions’s Do Not Call List and informed Dish Network of the facts

Target Marketing’s Jeremy Zimmerman reveals:
One FTC report details one woman's struggle:
"One consumer works the night shift at a North Carolina hotel. Turning the phone off when she tries to sleep during the day isn't an option. Her husband has a serious medical condition and she needs to be available in case of emergency. After getting repeated calls about Dish service, she took steps to put an end to the annoyance. She listened to the whole recorded sale pitch, hoping a live person would pick up so she could beg them to stop calling. When she finally got somebody on the line, she told them to put her on their Do Not Call list. She started sleeping on the couch with pencil and paper in hand so she could document the calls when they woke her up. Ultimately, she filed two complaints with her State AG. Dish responded that she probably already was on the company's entity-specific Do Not Call list, but she would be added "in an abundance of caution." But despite all that, the calls kept coming—and according to the government's motion, she was never put on the entity-specific list.
Zimmerman speculates that since Federal Trade Commission rules call for fines of up to $16,000 per violation “Dish will most likely be learning a very pricey lesson on how to treat its customers.”

If I were you, I most likely wouldn't count on that. Maybe some lobbyist will lean on somebody in Congress, to lean on the FTC,  to reduce those fines down to a piffle, and those annoying S.O.B.s at Dish TV will just chuckle. 

Or maybe Zimmerman is merely speculating just as the qualifier he used “most likely” might indicate. (Could Zimmerman's choice of  the phrase “most likely” actually indicate “sorta likely?” Or could Zimmerman be whispering, sotto voce,   “maybe, I hope, I hope.” Or even, “I can’t predict what the FTC will do , but let me throw out a big number and see if it shakes anybody up.”

Meanwhile, I counsel you to trust but verify. And that includes verifying my own stuff, which you can do by following the links in this story.

Monday, February 02, 2015

Satan has a secret plot to enlist Henry Kissinger to poison your child with vaccine. Yeah, I know it’s crazy. That’s my point.

Dr. Len Horowitz promotes the notion that 
vaccination causes autism, and that Henry 
Kissinger  is in a secret cabal with Satan.
Warning: stare too long at Len's T-shirt and you

may become hypnotized, hypnotized, hypnotized.
Look, the whole measles vaccine controversy is getting out of hand. I don’t mean a little bit out of hand. I mean it’s so out of hand that it’s time to call in the people with the white coats and the butterfly nets.

Yeah, children who are immunologically compromised should not be vaccinated. But there’s no good reason for healthy kids not to get the shots, and lots of good reasons relating to public health and pandemic control to make sure kids do get immunized.

But then, we get Jim Wilson of the New York Times reporting on numerous parents like Crystal McDonald:
…here in California, anti-vaccine parents whose children have endured bouts of whooping cough and chickenpox largely defended their choice to raise their children on natural foods, essential oils and no vaccinations.
     “There is absolutely no reason to get the shot,” said Crystal McDonald, whose 16-year-old daughter was one of 66 students sent home from Palm Desert High School for the next two weeks because they did not have full measles immunizations.
     After researching the issue and reading information from a national anti-vaccine group, Ms. McDonald said she and her husband, a chiropractor, decided to raise their four children without vaccines. She said they ate well and had never been to the doctor, and she insisted that her daughter was healthier than many classmates. But when the school sent her home with a letter, Ms. McDonald’s daughter was so concerned about missing two weeks of Advanced Placement classes that she suggested simply getting a measles inoculation
     “I said, ‘No, absolutely not,’ “ Ms. McDonald said. “I said, ‘I’d rather you miss an entire semester than you get the shot.’ “
Right, keep the kids out of school. Better they grow up ignorant than that they have boogeyman toxins in their blood.

Who are these people? Crazy, Tea Party wingnut no-nothings, right?

Wrong!

I am sad and embarrassed to say that these are the people who are usually in synch with the kinds of common sense thinking that this cranky blog supports. They are  well-educated, comfortably well-off – but when it comes to matters of vaccination, they are as whacky as a wing nut on a whipping post.

They all adhere, whether they realize it or not, to the teachings of Dr. Len Horowitz, who is sometimes reported to have a degree in Public Health from Harvard, and sometimes reported to be a dentist. If that latter is true, he has progressed remarkably, and I suspect quite profitably, from filling teeth to filling gullible minds with claptrap.

Let me offer you just one exhibit, a quote from an article Horowitz is promoting about himself in which he reports (and hang to your shorts for this one)…
     …Dr. Leonard Horowitz, a Harvard-trained researcher, discovered a foreboding fact while analyzing the code-the words "Kissinger" and "Vaccination" both decipher to "666," the infamous "mark of the beast.”
     In a prophetically titled book, released three months before 9-11, Death in the Air: Globalism, Terrorism and Toxic Warfare (Tetrahedron Publishing Group; 1-888-508-4787), Dr. Horowitz explained that several of the largest multi-national corporations, and Anglo-American intelligence agencies (i.e., MI6 and U.S. Special Services) often use letters such as "S," as Hitler did with his "SS," to signify the number "6." The researcher determined this designation reflects an alphanumeric code where multiples of six are assigned to each letter in the English alphabet from A to Z (e.g., A=6, B=12, C=18, . . . S=114, . . .Z=156). When these numbers are added, the words "Kissinger" and            "Vaccination" both decipher to "666"-the biblical "mark of the beast."
     Many argue this association reflects mere chance, but Dr. Horowitz, who has been studying these codes and associations since 1998, and Kissinger's links to the vaccine industry since 1993, says serendipity cannot logically account for this shared infamous identity.
So there you go. If you have any doubt whatsoever that measles vaccine is not really there to fight a measles epidemic but instead to wipe the world clean of tiny toddlers so that Beelzebub can reign triumphant, all you have to do is attach various multiples of 6 to each letter of the alphabet. Go ahead and take the trouble to do it, then add them up and see for yourself that they all add up to 666, which is clear and incontrovertible proof that vaccines cause autism and that Satan entertains himself by dressing up like Henry Kissinger.

But let's be fair to the gullible dunderheads who insist on turning their own kids into a generation of ignoramuses by keeping their kids out of school if Devil Vaccine is raising its autistic horns. There was, once, an article in the respected British medical magazine, The Lancet, suggesting that MMR vaccine (a measles, mumps and rubella triple header) might be unsafe. Trouble is, that article was later retracted after  the author’s work was shown to be fraudulent. 

What about that retraction, and oodles of other studies that have concluded there just ain’t no connection between MMR vaccine and autism? Well, all you have to do is consult Dr. Horowitz, who will tell you that it's all part of a cabal among Satan, globalists, Big Pharma, and Big Chemistry.  Listen, I dislike Big Pharma and some aspects of Big Chemistry myself. But that that doesn't mean I'll suck up and swallow the crazy concoction of idiot pills dissolved in pseudo scientific treacle that Dr. Horowitz is cooking up in the lab of his distorted mind.

Did I mention that Doc Horowitz also  has a plan “to prompt world peace” by, uh….Well, there’s no way I can paraphrase this, so let me give it to you in the words of  part of a press release distributed on behalf of one of his books: 
The book, by award-winning humanitarian author, Dr. Leonard Horowitz, addresses Lennon’s persecution by American intelligence agencies opposed to world peace to sustain war commerce. The text proposes a plan to prompt peace on earth by retuning music to play in the frequency used by military technicians to tune sophisticated instruments, that is, 528Hz, used by Lennon to record the peace protest classic Imagine, among the most popular recordings of all time. Horowitz’s peace plan is simple–tune Western music to the “frequency of LOVE/528Hz, used by an increasing number of recording artists, including famous ones like Paul McCartney, that resonates “the energy of love, peace, and health” versus the current imposed “standard tuning” that research indicates generates “fear, stress, and disease.” The “sound of the sun,” for example, and the color of chlorophyll–528Hz and 528nm, respectively–  fills the air with electron-rich energized oxygen. The O2 vibrates at the rate measured at the heart of rainbows, fundamental to organic chemistry and restoring balance, health, and harmony to dissonant systems lacking electron energy, according to Horowitz’s hypothesis being acclaimed as valid by international reviewers. “The Western medical paradigm is terminally ill,” says author Horowitz, “and it’s time for a ‘miracle’ to takes its place.” That miracle happens to be the “MI” frequency of the ancient Solfeggio musical scale–528Hz frequency, he argues.
“The planet has been poisoned by spiritually-deprived psychopaths lusting for power, profits, and the most effective methods to covertly control populations through petrochemical-pharmaceutical intoxications, and distressing musical vibrations, endangering everything,” he asserts.
Right, ya gotta love that pseudo-science. Hey, if the whacko right can believe that Moses drank out of the same well as his pet brontosaurus, why can’t I believe that kids are dying around the world because your guitar is out of tune, which gives Satan the opportunity to instruct Henry Kissinger on how to give your kids a vaccination.