Saturday, August 15, 2015

Abigail's 101st birthday party

Here at the warehouse for the aged, infirm, and disabled.

She might not be as spry as once was, but darn sure happy, alive, and metaphorically kicking.

You go, girl!  Next year strippers!

Thursday, August 13, 2015

Larry Wilmore on Super Stores

Big Box Store- Neil Young



Uncle Neil, still angry after all these years, plays with Willie Nelson's boys and their band, Promise of the Real, on the album The Monsanto Years.

By overwhelming margins. polls show Americans want food containing Genetically Modified Organisms labeled as such.  our legislators, ever mindful of raising cash rather than public opinion, have passed laws so GMO's do not need labeling as such.

Why, I feel better already!

Tuesday, August 11, 2015

Face the Facts of US War Crimes

After a plane from the United States Army Air Force dropped without warning a second atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Nagasaki on 9 August 1045 at 11:02 am, the weapon vaporized a third of a mile above the Urakami valley, reaching a temperature of 5,400 degrees Fahrenheit, greater than the heat at the centre of our very own sun.

Three seconds later, the temperature at the ground level beneath the expanding may have reached 7.200 degrees Fahrenheit, instantly burning to cinders, every human, animal, tree, and shrub.

The blazing heat melted iron and other metals, scorched bricks and concrete buildings, ignited clothing, disintegrated vegetation, and caused severe and fatal flash burns on people’s exposed faces and bodies. A mile from the detonation, the blast force caused nine-inch brick walls to crack, and glass fragments bulleted into people’s arms, legs, backs, and faces, often puncturing their muscles and organs. Two miles away, thousands of people suffering flesh burns from the extreme heat lay trapped beneath partially demolished buildings.
At distances up to five miles, wood and glass splinters pierced through people’s clothing and ripped into their flesh. Windows shattered as far as eleven miles away. Larger doses of radiation than any human had ever received penetrated deeply into the bodies of people and animals. The ascending fireball suctioned massive amounts of thick dust and debris into its churning stem. A deafening roar erupted as buildings throughout the city shuddered and crashed to the ground.
“The Light Was Indescribable”
“It all happened in an instant,” Yoshida remembered. He had barely seen the blinding light half a mile away before a powerful force hit him on his right side and hurled him into the air. “The heat was so intense that I curled up like surume [dried grilled squid]."http://www.salon.com/2015/08/06/most_of_nagasakis_residents_had_no_warning_the_day_we_dropped_the_bomb_partner
Like a grilled squid.  Underneath the bomb, the tremendous heat and shock wave from the blast burned the skin right off humans' bodies, leaving burnt heaps behind.

Buildings exploded, and more radiation than ever unleashed on earth before, fell upon the inhabitants of Nagasaki--normal people like you and me despite the racism published in the US warning of the yellow menace of the Japanese which promoted fear based on skin pigmentation.  It becomes psychologically easier to slaughter great numbers of people if you define them as subhuman and barbaric--people who had received no warnings, no dropped leaflets, no radio broadcasts warning them to flee the city before nearly utter destruction.

The use of  the second atomic bomb on people came after a campaign of firebombing of German and Japanese cities, cities unimportant as military targets.  Firebombing them mostly killed civilians under the new theory of war as utter destruction of an enemy populace, bringing Old Testament biblical destruction upon other human beings, in violation of all the rules of civilized war.

World War II was a landmark in the development and deployment of technologies of mass destruction associated with air power, notably the B-29 bomber, napalm and the atomic bomb. An estimated 50 to 70 million people lay dead in its wake. In a sharp reversal of the pattern of World War I and of most earlier wars, a substantial majority of the dead were noncombatants. [1] The air war, which reached peak intensity with the area bombing, including atomic bombing, of major European and Japanese cities in its final year, had a devastating impact on noncombatant populations.
What is the logic and what have been the consequences—for its victims, for subsequent global patterns of warfare and for international law—of new technologies of mass destruction and their application associated with the rise of air power and bombing technology in World War II and after? Above all, how have these experiences shaped the American way of war over six decades in which the United States has been a major actor in important wars? The issues have particular salience in an epoch whose central international discourse centers on terror and the War on Terror, one in which the terror inflicted on noncombatants by the major powers is frequently neglected.  (emphasis added)  From A Forgotten Holocaust: http://japanfocus.org/site/view/2414
So failing to face facts of "moral atrocitie"s committed in the name of the American people in service of the Global War on Terror (sic) today causes misuse of US military power, which engenders and foments the terror we seek to stop.

"As I have observed, those who plow evil
    and those who sow trouble reap it."
Job 4:8


                                           

Monday, August 10, 2015

Pete Townshend - Empty Glass

"Why was I born today?
Life is useless like Ecclesiastes say"

Many times have I stared int the depths of my empty glass, wondering where or how to make my useless life worth something--any damn thing positive.  For some, it seems so easy to obtain cheap grace from Jesus.  Could they do so while suffering like Job?

Sunday, August 9, 2015

The Genius and Despair of the Human Race

First, let's consider the better nature of ourselves, that human desire to take what we see and transmit it to posterity in the form of paintings, dating all the way back to prehistory in the form of cave paintings, with perhaps finest examples found near Lescaux, France.
Just when one gets tempted to give up on the Internets as font of racism and home of trolls, troglodytes, and deviant porn, you accidentally find a Google Earth Tour of Florence, Italy, and just today found the Web Gallery of Art, the last web based collection of "European fine Art from the eleventh to nineteenth centuries, with artists from A to Z: Aachen, Hans von to Zurn, Michael.

Love me some Vermeer, Johannes in this case with the Geographer:
Right at your fingertips you can find the masters, indeed the Titans of European art; damn, that's some good stuff.

Now for the opposite side of the coin, today we find the 70th anniversary of the dropping of the second atom bomb, by the United States of Self Righteous America, the two unnecessary bombings comprising some of the worst crimes in the history of the world, akin to the angry as Hell old, white, bearded old Testament God instructing the Israelites to slaughter the Amalekites; men, women children and even the animals: God HISownSelf ordering a junior Holocaust.


 
Yup, here you see it, American exceptionalism at the best.

[Seventy years ago this week we vaporized 250,000 civilians, and yet still view the bombings as an act of mercy....   (Emphasis added)
(S)ome of America’s best-known World War II military commanders opposed using atomic weaponry. In fact, six of the seven five-star generals and admirals of that time believed that there was no reason to use them, that the Japanese were already defeated, knew it, and were likely to surrender before any American invasion could be launched. Several, like Admiral William Leahy and General Dwight Eisenhower, also had moral objections to the weapon. Leahy considered the atomic bombing of Japan “barbarous” and a violation of “every Christian ethic I have ever heard of and all of the known laws of war.” (Emphasis added again because Americans refuse to face facts.) http://www.salon.com/2015/08/05/americas_overdue_hiroshima_reckoning_the_revisionist_history_that_haunts_the_good_war_partner/

Most of us live in a fantasy world where force can solve everything, refusing to face even the basic fact use of nuclear weapons creates clouds of radioactive fallout which circle the globe.

"Nuke 'em until they glow," will kill us too, making it far preferable to seek peace through diplomacy and avoid becoming complicit in war crimes, except of course the odd drone strike which kills innocent civilians.  www.theguardian.com/us-news/2014/nov/24/-sp-us-drone-strikes-kill-1147

Gosh those make me feel safer; guess i can go back to the bread and circuses offered up by American telly.  Praise Allah the NFL started the preseason tonight.

Amen!

[The second atomic bomb attack of Japan took place on August 9, 1945 in the city of Nagasaki. The northern portion of the city was destroyed almost instantaneously, and an estimated 70,000 people were killed as a result. According to the statistics found within Nagasaki Peach Park, the death toll from the atomic totaled exactly 73,884, including 2,000 Korean forced workers and eight POWs, as well as another 74,909 injured. This does not include another several hundred thousand diseased and dying from fallout and other illness caused by nuclear radiation.]

Little Feat - Long Distance Love (rare 1970's footage)

Little Feat - Feats Don't Fail Me Now (Live In Holland 1976)

Orlando Gunfight: WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?



It gets tiresome writing about idiots who injure or kill others or themselves with unsafe and STUPID handling of firearms.  EVERY DAY, somewhere in America, someone gets killled by improper handlng of weapons.

For God's sake, a nine year old girl at a firing range killed an instructor who tried to help her shoot a fully automatic Uzi machine gun.  Shot him dead with a round to the head.
(Actual image of poor little girl, now scarred for life, before she killed a gun instructor.)

In my 57 years on this pear shaped planet, it feels like i've fallen into a Bizarro universe, one unmoored from any former notions of logic and sanity.  How can fully automatic firearms and alcohol consumption mix without tragedy

Tuesday, August 4, 2015

Florida, where we love the criminally insane, especially when they build firing ranges in their front yard

Oh Florida, where we can't wait to pave over paradise and the right for every idiot to own a shooting iron Trumps every other right like not getting killed by psychopaths using their Second Amendment rights.

So this absolutely batshit crazy gun nut--Joseph "Compensating for Small Cock" Carannate--after hammering a couple of bottles of cheap booze thought it a fine idea to build small gun target backed up by sand in his front yard, next to houses where other children play.

Obviously, the right of neighboring kids to live pales next to the right of an asshole to avoid driving drunk to a local firing range and instead just to bust off caps on his own property.

So, the ass wipe neighbor built the target to the most exacting standards by getting a case of Pabst Blue Ribbon By God Beer and get some gap toothed Confederate flag flying friends to help him slap it up.  That way he could just step outside and blast off a few rounds, practicing for fighting off the Islamic fascist hordes 'cause real Americans don't take no shit from no hordes.
Also, who wants the hassle of driving to a gun range?  With a home range you can just roll out of bed bleary eyed, pop a beer, and walk outside, and blast away.  And Florida law, handcrafted by the National Rifle Association, makes it all legal.

Yay, smell the gunpowder and freedom!

Beause you know, what could possibly go wrong?

http://freakoutnation.com/2015/02/neighbors-upset-about-florida-gun-nuts-front-yard-shooting-range/

Sunday, August 2, 2015

Governor Dick Scott; Just like Mother Teresa, only betterer

Who knew famed Wonkette blog of renown has a section on Florida follies?  Why didn't anyone tell me?

Because it came as quite a surprise to me Mr. so-called Guv Scott received an award for his stewardship of the environment in Florida--an award given by a board filled with appointees of Dick Scott.
Oh yes, Rick Scott, who has opened state parks to cattle ranchers, slashed the state’s environmental enforcement to the bone, and forbid state officials from even mouthing the words “climate change,” an utterance which angers the Good Lord (by which we mean the Kochs). Could you think of any better candidate for a Friend of the Environment award?
Read more at http://wonkette.com/592470/rick-scott-is-just-like-mother-teresa-your-florida-roundup#yZKWCS5YyA4vDWqM.99
Just like Mother Teresa, only more betterer.


http://wonkette.com/592470/rick-scott-is-just-like-mother-teresa-your-florida-roundup

Saturday, August 1, 2015

TRUMP: WHAT'S THE DEAL? THE TRAILER

Pro Life vs. Merely Pro Birth

Sister Joan Chittister, Order of St. Benedictine, quoted by Daily Kos on difference between merely pro birth and truly prolife, caring for kids health, hunger, and education:
"I do not believe that just because you're opposed to abortion, that that makes you pro-life. In fact, I think in many cases, your morality is deeply lacking if all you want is a child born but not a child fed, not a child educated, not a child housed. And why would I think that you don't? Because you don't want any tax money to go there. That's not pro-life. That's pro-birth. We need a much broader conversation on what the morality of pro-life is."  (emphasis added)   http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/07/30/1407166/-Catholic-Nun-Explains-Pro-Life-In-A-Way-That-May-Stun-The-Masses