Mary Pitt: "The one truth that must be faced"

READ IT AND SHUTUP!

Well she did it again, spread out the Truth before us like a table cloth on the grass during a Fourth of July picnic BBQ. My good friend and fellow co-conspirator, the Right Honorable Scribbler, Mary Pitt has socked us upside the head with a real solution to our problems. Gawd Damn I love her fer givin' me this stuff (and you will too when you read this piece): [Excerpt] "In the midst of all the partisan politicking that is going on, it is very easy to lose sight of unpleasant truths. ..." Read more.

Dave Lindorff: "A Manchurian Candidate in the White House?"

My "impeach the bastards" friend and comrade has written one of the best news pieces on the internet this week with: [Excerpt] "With a viral campaign underway via email, right-wing radio, and on the street suggesting that Barack Obama is a black “Manchurian Candidate,” secretly trained as a Muslim fanatic who will insinuate himself into the White House, thence to undermine all that we hold dear, perhaps it is time to look at the Manchurian Candidate we already have in the White House, who, together with his handler over in Blair House, has pretty much done all the damage already. ..." Read more, please.

Mohammed Omer: "Mideast: No lovers got these flowers"

A LATE VALENTINE'S DAY WELCOME & POST!
Now appearing at Discomfit magazine a real friend of mine who is also struggling for recognition and work. He is now working hard to give us these stories "from the ground" in Rafah, Palestine. A young photojournalist and writer he has sent me this post. Someday we will meet and drink tea. Mohammed, sorry about the delay in the post, keep'em coming! Read his latest from Valentine's Day here.

Poll: Bullshit Is Most Important Issue For 2008 Voters | The Onion

Poll: Bullshit Is Most Important Issue For 2008 Voters

Still no justice for October 2000 killings, Electronic Intifada, 26 February 2008

Jonathan Cook writes me from Nazareth, Palestine: [Excerpt] "On 2 October 2000, as the Israeli army was beginning its ruthless crackdown on the second intifada in the occupied territories, 17-year-old Aseel Asleh joined tens of thousands of other Palestinian citizens across Israel in taking to the streets in protest and in a show of solidarity with their kin across the Green Line. A firm believer in nonviolence, Asleh wore a T-shirt emblazoned with the logo of a prominent Jewish and Arab coexistence group, Seeds of Peace, as he marched alongside family, friends and neighbors through his town of Arrabeh in northern Israel. Within hours Asleh was dead, face down in an olive grove. ..." Read more

Coming soon to a place near you in America!

SEVEN DAYS WITHOUT ELECTRICITY

$5.00/GALLON GASOLINE

WE'RE SCREWED!

Oh you laugh and carry on, thinking we'll just keep buying and buying ... making more technological wonders to play our lives away in this consumer's paradise. Everything's all normal, just fine, don't worry - be happy! Citizens, time to start making some other arrangements. Would you, dear Reader, care to take a look at what America will look like if we don't wise up? A good writer named Dahr Jamail and his buddy have written a cold blooded piece describing in real - time what the future of the not-so-United States could look like. Hell some say it's already looking that way, right now! Read more.

ENERGY: Investors Warned Against Coal-Fired Power Plants

The ass backward legislators in the once Great State of Kansas are going to ram through construction of not one, but two gawd damn coal fired power plants out in western Kansas. Local media pundits, always quick to kiss advertisers' butts, think the governor's veto will fail. Ass backwards because while they put on sick displays of protest over a statewide smoking ban on tobacco products, under the guise of protecting individual liberty - they would just as soon have Big Energy kill us all off fer a profit in their pockets. What a sanctimonious bunch of hypocrites! How stupid do they think we are? Pretty gawd damn stupid, fellow citizens. Read on because even some of the big shots think so, too!

ENERGY: Investors Warned Against Coal-Fired Power Plants

David Kirby: "The Other Secret Bush Court?"

CORPORATE SECRETS & YOUR KIDS

Not only does the current administration and a significant number of corrupted congressional people want to see the spying telecommunication companies protected from civil liability trials, but this new article by David Kirby at Huffington Post details how they'd like to escape punishment for poisoning your kids. Read of the "Other Secret Bush Court?"

Next: Innovation Tools & Trends - BusinessWeek

I'll bet you missed the Richard Dawkins segment during last week's Blue Barn Radio. It was from the TED conference recently opened up for public use.

The 2008 TED conference began a couple days ago and here is a blog by Helen Walters about this elite of the "intelligensia" who are looking at the world of "technology, entertainment and design" from "40,000 feet" and a $6,000 entry membership fee. The corporate sponsors alone make me question the whole affair, but nevertheless - I am fascinated at the herd mentality. Read more at BusinessWeek

Consortiumnews.com

Robert Parry describes how opposition to Obama's presidential campaign is being joined by neocons, McCain's allies and the Clintons operatives: "While some cynics still view Barack Obama’s appeal for “change” as empty rhetoric, it’s starting to dawn on Washington insiders that his ability to raise vast sums of money from nearly one million mostly small donors could shake the grip that special-interest money has long held over the U.S. government. ..." Read more

Award winning: "Food Chain Radio!!"

MUST LISTENING!

A regular source of valuable information for all small farmers and thinking consumers of food. I discovered this website several months ago and hope many of you will bookmark it. Enjoy this particular episode. A question for the day to the Kansas farmers, "Why aren't we getting more involved, and is corn that important?" Title link above will take you to their web's front page, below a download from a recent show on Country of Origin Labeling (COOL) now traveling, again, through congress this year. COOL has been around for over four years, but never enforced. Listen in and find out why.

Show #576: COOL is Coming! - 09-02-2008 (8.48 MB) Listen Now
Guests: Tom Buis, President, National Farmers Union
Subject: Imagine the surprise when it was revealed that a Taster’s Choice selection for best frozen spinach came from China! And so we ask, “Should manufacturers be forced to reveal a food’s source?”
Topics include a look at who is responsible for the safety of food; why Congress passed the Mandatory Country of Origin Labeling law in 2002; and how industry has prevented the enactment of COOL for the past six years.

Howard Zinn: "Election Madness" | The Progressive Magazine since 1909

FIGHTIN' IMPERIALISM IS NOT TERRORISM

[Excerpt] "There’s a man in Florida who has been writing to me for years (ten pages, handwritten) though I’ve never met him. He tells me the kinds of jobs he has held—security guard, repairman, etc. He has worked all kinds of shifts, night and day, to barely keep his family going. His letters to me have always been angry, railing against our capitalist system for its failure to assure “life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness” for working people. ..." Read more

Paul Craig Roberts: Lies and Spies

Paul Craig Roberts: Lies and Spies: "Bush pressured telecom companies to break the law in order to enable his illegal spying. In court documents, Joseph P. Nacchio, former CEO of Qwest Communications International, states that his firm was approached more than six months before the September 11, 2001, attacks and asked to participate in a spying operation that Qwest believed to be illegal. When Qwest refused, the Bush administration withdrew opportunities for contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Nacchio himself was subsequently indicted for insider trading, sending the message to all telecom companies to cooperate with the Bush regime or else." [Excerpt]

Jeremy Scahill | The Real Story Behind Kosovo's Independence

CIA Newest Campus Goes Green Birdseye

"We in the Rebel Alliances must continue to agitate and educate those among us about the inherent barbarity of the Galactic Empire."

So says my ten-year old son today as we discussed the principle of universiality and the ancient history of the Golden Rule. He in many respects is coming of intellectual age, as so many older Americans are, that the torture and extrajudicial imprisonment of prisoners leads to what so many before us have called the 'heart of darkness'. Behold the "greening" of the palaces, while the masses are left to our own primitive devices.

CIA Newest Campus Goes Green Birdseye

Busting little rich Billy Kristol's crystal balls

Smart readers send along posts like this ... yeah we got big brass balls, too! Click here. Ps. Strongly suggest you take the time this weekend to watch the idiot and his supporters at the C-span archived Washington Journal segment for a good laugh. It's linked within the article, look for it, you're a big person now, so act like it.

Mary Pitt: "Sounds of a lifetime"

Now appearing "at the top of the scroll" one of our favorite local Kansas writers! Mary, Mary quite the contrarian .... Read her latest NOW!

Kale Baldock: "Book Review - Imperial life in the Emerald City"

[Excerpt] " Journalist Rajiv Chandrasekaran, a former Baghdad bureau chief who is currently an assistant managing editor for The Washington Post, spent many months in Iraq, inside and outside America’s base of operations known as the Green Zone. He not only got acquainted with ordinary Iraqis up-close, but Chandrasekaran had unprecedented access to the American decision makers and power brokers responsible for carrying out Iraq’s reconstruction. ..." Read more at KC's Present on-line magazine.

Dave Lindorff: "McCain and the lobbyist - Missing the Miss"

[Excerpt] "All the attention in the breaking story about John McCain's 2000 relationship with a blonde young telecom lobbyist has been focussed on the question of whether or not they were "doing it."

As George Stephanopoulos claimed on ABC, the importance of the story depends upon whether McCain is shown to have had a "relationship" with the lobbyist, Vicki Iseman.

But really, who cares whether they were shacking up on the campaign trail? ..." Read more.

Smart readers send us news, too!

A forward from one of my favorite writers sister-woman, Jennifer Lowenstein, some news you won't get on the boob tube:

For the first time since 1967 ambulances could not travel on the road but this time it was due to drastic shortage in fuel supplies. In Rafah, the day before yesterday when some Israeli army units filtered into border areas of Rafah, clashes took place between them and Palestinian militants in the area, ambulances did not work and dead Palestinians and other injured one were moved from the scene on donkey cars and bicycles! Director of Abu Yousul al-Najjar hospital in Rafah said that the quantities of fuel that the government allocates for the hospital are small and barely sufficient to sustain the needs of the hospital building and other necessary needs!

Prof.Abdelwahed
Department of English
Faculty of Arts & Humanities
Al-Azhar University of Gaza

Jason Miller: "Meat's meat ,so let's eat"

“What this means is that corporations and those who run them cannot stop exploiting resources and amassing wealth until they have….I cannot finish this sentence, because the truth is that can never stop; like cancer, they can only continue to expand until they kill the host.”

--Derrick Jensen

[Excerpt]

"Canine. It’s what’s for dinner.

We pride ourselves on our devotion to the principle of equality here in the United States, so it’s time to put our values where our mouths are, so to speak. Pigs, chickens, cows, and the like already endure abject suffering so we can consume their flesh, so it is only fair that we include “man’s best friend.” How could they better prove their deep loyalty to us than by sacrificing their lives to feed us? .." [Excerpt ends] Read more from this fine Kansas writer, editor and publisher.

Consortiumnews.com

Yet another example of a gonzo US foreign policy gone berserk, as detailed in this dispatch from the important Robert Parry at Consortiumnews.com

The REAL News: Turkey invades Iraq

IRAQ: In Tatters Beneath a Surge of Claims

IPS delivers regular in-depth news from around the world, often against imperialist powers encroachments around the world, and regularly features the independent journalist Dahr Jamail. Bookmark material for your favorites list.

Survivors Come Face-to Face with Massacre Leader from Peru in US courts

At last the tidal wave of blood is washing up on the shores of the US. A fascist military regime largely sponsored by the United States government is being dismantled. This is a very important article to read since the atrocities and the criminals are being tried in US courts. Another lesson for Americans who conveniently choose igonorance over knowledge about our corrupt foreign policy. Here is why we are losing another counterinsurgency campaign in Iraq. Read more

Torture Inc. Americas Brutal Prisons

Most Americans won't watch it, because it's "unpatriotic."

Truthdig - Amy Goodman: "Lessons of the Chesapeake Sweep"

Military Religious Freedom Foundation February Newsletter, Out Now!

Truthdig - Reports - Aboard the Condoleezza Rice

Robert Scheer writes: "Whadda you mean “we,” Mr. TV Pundit? When you say “we” are doing better in Iraq or, even more absurd, that “we” were right to invade that country in the first place, are you putting Joe Blow American in the same bag as the top officers of Exxon, which made $40.6 billion in profit last year thanks to the turmoil in the energy markets? That royal “we” is good for the royals who control our government, but its persistent use embodies a pernicious lie that betrays the core ideal of representative democracy. ..." Read more at Truthdig's Reports

$20 billion arms sales to Mid East: Who benefits?

Everybody knows ... but the Busheviks.

If the Busheviks won't honor subpoenas from Congress, then why do we have to honor subpoenas from the county courthouses? Maybe the whole nation should just stop going to court - start up dueling and joisting as a way to settle disputes. To hell with habeus corpus! You don't say .... why next thing we'll hear about is "controlled drowning" down at the county cop shop. The police were questioning little Johnny so-and-so for stealing a Hershey chocolate bar from the grocery store the other day and... why I didn't know little Johnny was an islamofascist? Did you? Gee, ain't wez gettin' civilized here in the good old U.S. of A.?

This is What A Police State Looks Like

A six year old video compilation surfaces and the folks in Mayberry USA shuffle along Main Street telling their neighbors to "shutup about that waterboarding thingee - it ain't torture if it's done on brown people, over there." The little newspaper editors hum the tune "We are the World" and changed the lyrics to "We own the World." Click the title line above, warning some graphic language and images, you're used to it.

Huckabee to speak in Cayman Islands - Yahoo! News

Isn't that where tax dodging corporations go to launder their dirty money? Under every politician's sqawking stump are some pretty grubby little critters.

War criminal's dominatrix bloviates more lies about past lies.

She takes criticism of her "integrity" seriously ... well so do citizens that are fed up with and insulted by the nation's elite and their psychotic spending of taxes toward endless wars ...

Eric Margolis: Europeans see what America cannot

Joe Bageant: Nine Billion Little Feet

From his island hut at Hopkins Village, Belize: [Excerpt] "The din of squealing, laughing children is the background white noise of the Third World. In Belize, as in most of the Third World, 45% of all people are under the age of 16. About a dozen of that 45% swarm around me as I cut my toenails under the mango tree. A few are picking on the mangy, quarreling dogs but the majority are drawn in close, giving advice about how to cut gnarly, old man type toenails: "Saw dem off wid a file" seems to be the consensus. ..." continue with: "Nine Billion Little Feet"

Venezuela Threatens to Cut US Oil - CommonDreams.org

Antiwar.com

One of the most influential non-doctrinaire, consistent and vital web sites against the wars of the U. S. empire has a fund raiser, consider giving ...

Leaving Iraq Will Help Economy

Obama and a Chance for Progressive Change | This Can't Be Happening!

Truthdig - Reports - Kucinich Under Fire

Truthdig: Chris Hedges Reports on "The War Against Tolerance"

There is still time to listen to Chris Hedges at Blue Barn Radio which aired a special two part segment courtesy TUC Radio, San Francisco, Ca., last weekend. Both segments are archived just click the play button in the blue blox along the left hand margin under "Blogtalkradio." Read his article now.

The battle for America has begun.

Hat tip to Tom at Information Clearinghouse for the reminder.

Salina Artwork

Unfinished
Portraits

Beginning February 29, 2008

Priti Cox, artist
Acrylic Gouache, medium

McCune Paper Company Bldg.
254 N. Santa Fe
Salina, Kansas

see also on the web

Unfinished Portraits

Media contact

&

Exhibit Schedule

at

Discomfit magazine.

Dr. Bill Roy: "The Religionists' Party of the United States"

He begins: [Excerpt] "Random House Dictionary, Second Edition: "Shari’ah, law seen as deriving from the Koran. ..." Read more at Discomfit magazine.

Mary Pitt: "Debunking the health care bugaboo"

Ms. Pitt writes: "Right up there with the economy as an issue for the election is the problem of health care for Americans. We know that some forty million Americans have no health insurance and those who do are faced with ever-rising deductibles, co-payments, and premium increases. The Presidential candidates all believe they have the answers that the voters will approve but most really are aware that their proposals simply will not work. In the meantime, people are dying from neglect. ..." continued at Discomfit magazine.

South Carolina Idgits to invade Berkeley, Ca.?

GUNS, BULLETS AND GASOLINE!

A reader forwards the uttterances of the dumbed down followers of South Carolina's US Senator Jim Demint as they organize another American fascist fundraising blitz for "Christian" preacher Don Wildmon's cult. Since Berkeley, Ca. city government declared Marine recruiters out of the city limits a howling tongue talking bunch of redneck nutcases have been beating the bars at the local beer holes and sliding off their stools, pissing their pants to stumble into the streets blathering in protest. I know many of them in nearby Potterville, Ks. The oil companies and advertising firms in New York just love it when the Podunks git tah killin' each other. It's the perfect "economic stimulus package" for the country as it sinks into Depression - "bribe one half of the poor to kill off the other half." Jesus said so, they believe it, amen - now let's go kill our neighbors and steal their land.

Mike Whitney: "The Bush Bust of '08: “It's all downhill from here, folks” "

Rethinking The World - The Sixth Extinction: And Then There Were None

Must reading for the lurking fundamentalist Christians and hard headed conservatives trolling this site.

Nikolas Kozloff: Hugo Chávez's Coca

Recent M$M articles (possible intelligence agencies disinformation campaigns) have started to demonize Hugo with allegations of Venezuala and Columbian drug activities, rebel military bases within Venezeula, etc. This article clarifies a great deal and prompts me thinking about the industrial and medicinal uses of marijuana here in the U.S. Read: Nikolas Kozloff: Hugo Chávez's Coca

The Archdruid Report: Blame it on Gilgamesh

Big Oil's Victory in Venezuela

10 Myths About Canadian Health Care, Busted

To Hell With the Chief! | This Can't Be Happening!

Memories ... t r u t h o u t - Economic 'Armageddon' Predicted

Read how far long ago they were thinking of this and consider the prospect of serial bubble bursts, each diminishing the ability of the economy to "make gains." The head of Morgan Stanley has been yakking to his buddies about this for years. Now it starts and won't stop ... ever. Bubble after bubble pops .... each rippling across the pond to you and yours .... Economic 'Armageddon'

Pressing Issues: Peggy's turn to cry

I never thought to see this day, from such a sick crooner and drippy speechwriter for the phony "Reagan Revolution", as Peggy Noonan! I weep from laughter at the thought of her in tears, her life-long stream of gravy train jobs including payment in undisclosed hundreds of thousands of dollars for PR work uplifting Enron, she's fawning for those good old days. Ha, ha, ha ..... Read her tearful words about what "W" did to the GOP as excerpted from the Wall Street Journal. Eat shit, Peggy, keep eating more and more buckets of it - for all that Tory ink spilled with your words in their names. It's Peggy's turn to cry

NBC concurs after complex Dem delegate formula - Mike Allen - Politico.com

Obama claims delegate lead - Mike Allen - Politico.com: "In a surprise twist after a chaotic Super Tuesday, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) passed Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) in network tallies of the number of delegates the candidates racked up last night.
The Obama camp now projects topping Clinton by 13 delegates, 847 to 834."

Kansas Rural Center - Newsletter

Scroll down to story #3 about the Ice Storm to get an idea of the calamity and a few of the lessons.

The Hindu Business Line : Cable cut: Bloggers smell conspiracy

Your guess is as good as mine ...

Ecoshock News: Capitalist Despair & the Climate Crisis

Perhaps one of the absolute best of ecology radio and information web sites around. Alex Smith hosts and trolls the world wide internet for the best speakers and clips from around the world for his weekly radio show from Canada. He works at creating an interesting show and it shows. Here is one of his recent blog posts with links and a script to a very pertinent subject broadcast on the 25/Jan/08. Read and maybe listen, the link is buried in there, to: Capitalist Despair and the Climate Crisis

Last week's show of EcoShock had great ear candy. All you James Howard Kunstler fans out there, listen up, he's talking as broadcast 02/Feb/08. A full one hour lecture by the rascal and it is hilarious and thought provoking. Part two with the Q -n- A is scheduled for next week. Jimbo is coming along in his analysis since his book "The Long Emergency" and has recently landed a resident scholar job at a Canadian college. You'll have to listen to the show to know, but suffice it to say that it's a safe bet he'll soon have another email address to swamp since he dumped the last one. Did I tell you that Kunstler's new fiction novel "World Made by Hand" will be out in a month or so?

The Raw Story | Teen charged with possessing weapon of mass destruction: Easter egg

Energy Policy: "Ice Melt Acceleration"

3rd FLAG Undersea Cable Cut, Now Between UAE and Oman

Spencer Museum of Art | Current Exhibitions | Reframing Society: Russian Constructivist Photography

Reframing Society: Russian Constructivist Photography
February 2 – May 18, 2008

Following the aftermath of the October Revolution of 1917, Constructivism emerged from within the Russian avant-garde both as an artistic practice and as a term expressing a belief in the birth of a new relationship between the artist and society. In their formally innovative photographs incorporating high or low vantage points, oblique angles, and dramatic diagonal compositions Alexander Rodchenko, Boris Ignatovich, and Georgy Zelma strove to revolutionize their countryman’s visual thinking. These photographers managed to capture through their lenses a changing way of life in the post-revolutionary era. This exhibition of photographs, selected from the Spencer’s permanent collection, seeks to explore how the Constructivist movement—armed with the mission of reinventing Russian society—successfully created images that were strongly rooted in design while reflecting the distinctive characteristics of Soviet life.

This exhibition is organized by Spencer Museum of Art Photography Intern Ellen Raimond in conjunction with the exhibition El Lissitzky: Futurist Portfolios.

Image Courtesy:

Spencer Museum Image

Boris Ignatovich, Dynamo 1930

Greenback's days in Iran numbered

Note the opening of the Bourse has been delayed due to the cables cut.

Middle East Internet Blackouts Spur Geopolitical Suspicions

Three Internet Cables Slashed in a Week: Has Iran lost all Internet Connectivity?

Uh, oh.

George Bush delivers the Horse's Head by Mike Whitney

Will Bush defend the dollar? Who cut the ocean floor internet cables to the Middle East and Europe?
Click the title line above and read.

Letter from a Farmer to Kunstler.com

Did you hear that wake-up call in Oklahoma and Kansas during the mighty Ice Storm? No, you did not. Is the writer below describing it? No ... but read how familiar it seems:

[Excerpt] "... The first reaction to the power emergency took the form of a rush for candles, refilling of gas bottles and the purchasing of generators (if you could get them). Then the complacency set it, business learnt to sit through power outages, retail shops were forced to close their doors for a few hours a day. There was and is a shortage of food supplies, food went bad in the fridges and had to been thrown away. It was kind of charming in a strange kind of way, to eat dinner by candle light and forgo the ‘soapies’ on TV. Traffic lights were out over a large number of suburbs and delays in getting to business meetings became the norm. The schools are unable to teach a full day’s lesson. The internet service providers and the mobile phone companies’ frequently have service delays or are just plain ‘off line’. The battery runs out on your laptop and that’s the days productive work is over until the power is back on…Patients in ICU or undergoing operations, as the power grid went down, were at risk of and did, die. ..."

Get used to it and count those potholes. Read about how South Africa has already entered a "premature Long Emergency" Letter from a Farmer to Kunstler.com

George Monbiot: "The tipping point of global warming"

Now showing a Discomfit Magazine ....

Bemidji Pioneer | Letter: Religious fanatics abound in Kansas, attack doctor

A Republican, busts the Big Repubs and Pelosi ... a must watch, for all Americans!

How much information do you need to support busting these people? This guy worked for the Department of Justice under Reagan - he's a strict conservative constitutional lawyer, had a first hand drafting into the Clinton impeachment articles. How much information do you need before you support immediate impeachment hearings? He is the first guy to lay this out so clearly and plainly about the Big Dems, by name - Pelosi and why she and other Big Dems are actually complicit in this Big Lie to Americans. It's less than ten minutes fer Chrissakes, you endure more commercials to watch crapola cable television, please watch it and psssssst .... do something!

Amazing analysis of Bush's SOTU ...

An Intelligent and candid talk from "Hanoi Jane's" first ex-husband.

Most everybody out here in NE Kansas love to hate this guy, but he is talking very clearly about the future war policy of the US elites. I encourage you to watch this; Democrat, Republican or Independent - it's that important. A replay of the murderous death-squad solution of "Central America" in the 80s, or Operation Phoenix and the self -annihilation of the "native" populations - it's ugly and very truthful.

Super Bowl, Super Tuesday ... What's the difference?

Commenting on:
Michael T. Klare's
"How Oil Burst the American Bubble"

CRY, PRAY, WAIL TO YOUR HEART'S CONTENT ... THE EMPIRE IS OVER, THE COUNTRY'S CITIZENS NEED TO GROW UP AND ACT LIKE ADULTS.

While the nation's Attention Deficit population is hypnotized on such amusements like the War Parties' presidential political horse races, or most recently The Super Bowl, the most effective attention getter for our imperialist nation of advertisement saturated amnesiacs will be the crushing and grinding down of their economy.

I will tell you what Klare is too professional to write, that a silent and inevitable downward spiral from recession and energy fuel price disparities to further and more prolonged financial crisis is already taking place.

The country is already in "recession" no matter how guarded the media pundits and "experts" avoid use of such a fearsome word. This too, like peak oil, will be more accurately viewed "in the rear view mirror." Barring another national emergency, the much fear-filled audiences to our paranoic leaders complete with their penchant for martial law, hidden prison camps and secret government it's now a safe bet that by next year this time we'll all look back and wonder how we could have been so stupid and so selfish?

Can dumb get dumbed down any more? You betcha! Anything's possible in the Good Old much a feared U. S. A.! All those hope-filled Democrats for a long anticipated "Change" might get surprised with Bush addressing Congress the day after he bombs Iran, or say Syria, or Pakistan and declares a fear-filled national emergency to a country full of terrorized citizens, scared standing in their shit filled boots and piss stained pants, hoarding every gas tank and can available as he suspends the 2008 elections unless and until the Busheviks decide it's safe!

The next ninety or so days will either be marked by yet another military catastrophe in Iran or say, Pakistan which will push the economy over the brink and into free fall, or continued energy price increases which will assuredly pull us arrogantly, fitfully into realizing that a hybrid of the last Great Depression is around us.

The current administration and congress are already honing a record busting deficit budget, allowing over $400 bln (that's excluding the costs of the continued occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan) in the red. Read Klare's latest and be sure to follow his embedded links contained within the article, it might help the hyperindividualized American readers to "grow up."

It's over, get over it - do not hesitate to agitate your neighbors, your civic leaders, your local business people, in short every home, neighborhood, village to get as energy autonomous as possible - including local food production. Learn from your ancestors that survived the Great Depression of the last century, their food storage techniques, their food growing techniques using little if any petroleum energy ... the world we live in, is going to get very small, very quickly.

At the very least, for the cheapest of home budgets - start finding, purchasing a small solar panel system that will charge a few car batteries to charge still more small rechargeable battery powered home appliances, laptop computers, lamps and a small refrigerator. Make it a home project to start on - right now, before Spring comes and the energy independent food garden takes up you and yours precious time.

Oh did I forget to mention that a socialistic economic and political revolution would help the country? Of course that is distant remote possibility, alright it's impossible. How about an honest bunch of national leaders ready to initiate a huge national industrialized energy independence movement? How about a massive diversion of spending from military expenditures toward national energy autonomy? Is it too much to hope for Boeing in Wichita, Ks., or GM in Detroit to crank out home energy autonomy survival kits, or thousands of electric vehicles and railroad engines, instead of jet bombers and tanks? Think WWII, then hopefully, think again.

Would that soften the landing? Maybe, but that would be way too much to hope for from the country's people - too rational of a life-style change for the everyday "normal" hyperindividualized American citizen.

Well, I tried, once again. Gotta quit all that "hope" and "change" talk so well advertised nowadays. Super Bowl, Super Tuesday ... what's the difference?

While you are silently cussing me for writing the above, please read: Michael T. Klare | How Oil Burst the American Bubble

Alexander Cockburn: Hot Democratic Properties

He is at it again and it will be as stinky for Obama as "freshly turned manure." Read it Obama fans and hope the trash won't spill all over the place and ruin the Democrat's victorious presidential election next year. Read Hot Democratic Properties

Wars Dwarf Warming in US Budget

I receive many forwarded posts from conservatives and have grown exasperated at their appeals for prayer to the supernatural. Appeals to pray are not enough - it is an absolute waste of very valuable time on this planet at this point in history. People need to get off their asses, write, demonstrate, use every valuable moment today to avert these looming catastrophes; everything from stopping more senseless coal powered plants in Kansas, to fighting for universal health care, yes as socialistic as it must be for the people in this country. It is time to fight these corporate monsters profiteering off the people. Readers who send along more appeals for prayer should take their mental efforts and go out into the streets, to their courthouses, to their government's offices and appeal to the honorable ones, beseech them to stop funding this avalanche toward catastrophe. So readers who want more prayer, read this while uttering meditative mantras to the sky-gods. Read it: Wars Dwarf Warming in US Budget Then do something in your churches, if need be, in your American Legions, the VFW bars, the City Halls - do something!

Chomsky Finds Pakistan in a State of Grave Crisis Claims alliance with US has been harmful to the country

The Raw Story | Sy Hersh confirms: Syrian facility bombed by Israel was not nuclear

We picked up on this story as soon as it appeared on Raw Story as it happened. Now in follow-up readers can learn more about what investigative journalist Sy Hersh said: "... Hersh's best guess as to the motivation of the bombing is that it was partly Israeli politics and partly 'a message for the Iranians that we're coming.'" Read The Raw Story

Naomi Klein: "Disowned by the Ownership Society"

The Real McCain

Yes Siree, we're gonna need Grandpa ... be jiggety, by Gawd!

Mary Pitt: "Sitting Out the Election"

Ms. Pitt writes from Kansas and appears at many internet sites in the "cyber-cloud" and I am very honored to publish her work. If you live near her, get over to her place and help plant the garden beds early this Spring! She writes [Excerpt] "It looks as if the 2008 Presidential campaign may be over at my house. I am considering what other things I can find to do in order to be busy on election day. The choices have been winnowed down until I can find no reason for hope with any of the remaining candidates. I realize that there is much fodder for the talking heads on television as the pseudo rivalry continues but I have now lost interest. ..." Continue on, to Discomfit Magazine!

Dr. Bill Roy: "Federally funded 'faith-based initiatives' not helping the old fashioned American way."

Now appearing at Discomfit Magazine: [Excerpt] "... Dick Runge has spells of loneliness. His wife Barb takes off a week or two every once in a while to do good things for good people. This month she was in Beaumont, Texas in an all-women church project to build a Habitat for Humanity home for a mother and two daughters who have lived in sub-standard housing since Hurricane Rita hit the Texan Gulf Coast over two years ago. ..." Continued, amen.

Democracy Now! | The Democrats & Suharto: Bill Clinton & Richard Holbrooke Questioned on Their Support for Brutal Indonesian Dictatorship

Never mind the big litter of sick puppies gathering around McCain's "100 year War" pack ... check in on what massacres the Clinton dynasty inherited and then sponsored with massive military aid to commit genocide in East Timor. Kudos to Amy Goodman who gathered the people and the clips for us to consider before "Super Tuesday."

Dave Lindorff: "Capitol Crime of the Century: Time for Congress to Stand Up | This Can't Be Happening!"

"Who’s minding the store in Washington?
While President George W. Bush was standing before the members of Congress on January 28 laying out his plans, such as they are, for the final year of his second term in the White House, he was also seriously and perhaps fatally undermining the authority of Congress with a new signing statement, attached to the latest National Defense Authorization Act, in which he declared that he would simply violate or fail to comply with four provisions. ..." Read, This Can't Be Happening!