A Tale of a Scarlet Letter...

[Dear hearts, be thankful that you don't live in the Third Galaxy -- a tale like I am about to tell could never happen in our saner and happier world:]

The Quadrennial Horse Race was taking the final turn and the contestants were getting ready for the home stretch.

A sweet young thing she was -- a twenty year old coed working as a volunteer for the Mad Cain campaign. On her way out to her car in the dark she was accosted by a black man who took offense at the "Mad Cain for Prez" bumper sticker and brutalized her!

The dark monster beat her up, forced her to the ground and, although he didn't rape her like one would normally expect a black man to do to a young white woman he had in his power, this beast did something really nasty, saying that he was "Gonna teach ya a lesson, bitch!" He carved the letter "B" on her face with a sharp instrument.

"That 'B' stands for 'Bulimo', bitch!" was his parting comment to the poor girl. That wasn't quite what she told the police, but it was pretty much what the local Mad Cain campaign manager told the newspaper and media reporters who gobbled the story up.

Unfortunately, the police noticed that the Scarlet Letter was carved in mirror image. Since they figured that a black man wouldn't be able to figure out how to carve a letter while looking in a mirror, they politely asked the young lady if she had not done it herself. She quickly admitted that indeed she had made the story up from out of thin air.

This was the comment of an anonymous blogger in the Third Galaxy:

This incident ought to go into the you-can't-make-shit-like-this up category. And yet, something here disturbs my paranoia...

First of all, I assume the thought has crossed minds that Joe the Plumber and the lady who said Bulimo Charisma was a Masher terraist at Mad Cain campaign event were some kind of plants.

Joe the Plumber was a media flash in the pan who complained that Bulimo's tax plan would mean that he wouldn't be to buy a plumbing business and make a quarter million dollars. Unfortunately, it turned out that Joe was not a plumber, had never been licensed as a plumber and, in fact, had never been apprenticed to learning the trade. Furthermore he was in little danger of ever making a quarter million since the company he couldn't legally buy and run anyway only had receipts of a quarter million, that is before, expenses and wages to workers.

I find myself momentarily thinking that there is something more fishy here then the Tale of the Scarlet Letter being false.

I remember the three who were busted for plotting to whack Bulimo at the convention and then were released. I am aware of several other stories and can only assume there are others who have managed to stay below the radar.

Actually, it were better if these were plots and conspiracies -- what is far more likely is that these "loose cannons", are only acting out what racist campaign memes inspire them to do.

I must have eaten too much pumpkin pie yesterday, but I can't shake the feeling that something really ugly is going to happen somewhere down the line.

Gender of Inanimate Objects

Although, unlike many other languages, English does not have gender specific definite and indefinite articles, we give many inanimate objects a gendered pronoun when they are referred to in the third person.

For example, a ship is referred to as "she" or with the possessive pronoun "her". Why we do this sort of thing I suppose is because hhumans have an innate tendency to anthropomorphise every thing from our God(s) to the kitchen sink.

Anyway, a wag once quipped that ships are "she" because, when one comes to a harbor, she goes after the buoys -- this inspired someone with much too much time on their hands to figure out through logical induction, the gender of many other inanimate objects.

FREEZER BAGS: male, because they hold everything in, but you can see right through them...

PHOTOCOPIERS: female, because once turned off, it takes a while to warm them up again. They are an effective reproductive device if the right buttons are pushed, but can also wreak havoc if you push the wrong buttons...

TIRES: male, because they go bald easily and are often over inflated...

HOT AIR BALLOONS: male, because to get them to go anywhere, you have to light a fire under their ass...

SPONGES: female, because they are soft, squeezable and retain water...

WEB PAGES: female, because they're constantly being looked at and frequently getting hit on...

TRAINS: male, because they always use the same old lines for picking up people...

EGG TIMERS: female because, over time, all the weight shifts to the bottom..

HAMMERS: male, because in the last 5000 years, they've hardly changed at all, and are occasionally handy to have around...

REMOTE CONTROL: female, they easily gives a man pleasure, he'd be lost without it, and while he doesn't always know which buttons to push, he just keeps trying...

A Two Forked Creature...

Since it is so dirty, it is difficult to make it clear what the nature of  the Mad Cain and Repugnant campaign has become.  

The campaign has shed its skin and turned into a two forked creature of lies, slime and deception -- that it occurs now, two weeks before the final lap of the Quadrennial Horse Races is no accident.  The media and its bobble heads will not call foul until after November, if ever.

The first fork is, with ads and robo-calls, to call forth and nuture the meme that Bulimo is a terraist, an arab, a muslim Masher, a baby killer -- even a socialist.  These are dog whistles to remind the right kind of people that he is one of them -- a dark one, a black, a nigra.

The second fork is, through intimidation, caging and purging of voter registrations, challenges at polling places and obstacles at pricincts where many of the wrong kind of people can be expected to vote.  

Part of the second fork is the campaign against ACORN -- which in itself is also two pronged.  ACORN is smeared with charges of vast amounts of voter fraud (actually, vote registration fraud -- but vote fraud stinks better).   These charges have little basis in fact. No more factual basis than four and two years ago when the same tactics were used in a more diffuse manner against the Dumbrat party and US Attorneys fired for not engaging in what they saw as politically motivated charges of vote fraud. 

At the same time, ACORN in particular and poor urban (read: black, hispanic, lazy, shiftless) people are being made responsible for the collapse of the housing bubble(s) and the Great Collapse -- i.e. the suffering and losses of hard working real citizens is because of them.  

To tie it all together, ACORN is made out to be somehow a tool of the fiendish Bulimo Charisma.

I kid you not, if he survives to the inaguration, a meme that he is the One, the Beast of the Apocolypse and every failure (and success!) of the Bulimo administration will be proof of the truth of the lie.

Ain't Nothing So Bad...

It's said that there ain't nothing so bad that it ain't good for something.

This may very well be true, or true enough that you won't choke on it.

An example.  During the 40+ years of the split between the East and West, the Cold War and the Iron Curtain, there was a zone along the borders between the free countries in the west and the countries enslaved in (evil) commie dictatorships. Barbed wire, mines and watch towers ensured that no one crossed or even entered this death zone.

Although death for people, it meant life for plants, animals, birds.  Thousands of miles long, reaching across climate zones, undisturbed, it became a haven for species no longer found in Europe or extremely rare. One example is a fresh water oyster which happens to be one of the oldest animals, if not the oldest.

The sunshine to the story is that after the collapse of the Soviet empire, people with foresight made sure that this nature treasure box was kept for the future.  

Sooo, maybe, just maybe something good will come out of the debacle of US foreign policy and the ongoing financial Great Collapse of 2008-9 -- and perhaps even the multitude of crisis which will befall this poor world in the wake of the global climate changes.

On the other hand, whatever good may come of these messes in our nest could probably have been brought forth with a lot less expense in both money and, more important, human suffering.

The Smell of a Rip-off in the Morning...

Well, well, well -- the news this morning is all a gush as to how the stocks are rising like a 14 year old boy's dick who just got to see his first picture of a nekked lady...

Great!  I mean the feel of a boner coming on -- the stock market, I'm not so sure about.  

I'm still suspecting that the bail out is mainly designed to keep an otherwise sinking ship afloat until the end of January when the Bulimo administration is inaugurated.  Anything bad that happens after that will be the fault of Bulimo Charisma and anything good (if any) to the wisdom and foresight of Paulson.

In fact, there seems to be an immense rip-off by banks going on at the expense of the taxpayers.  The trick has to do with index regulated loans, all $300 trillion of them... 

You see, the rate of index regulated loans is determined by the LIBOR*.  

LIBOR is determined by the loan rates on loans between banks -- these rates are determined by what the banks themselves report...

The present situation is that the banks are not lending to each other -- they are lending from Federal Reserves around the world at very favorable rates.  

The result is that the banks are reporting rates that are not only fictitious -- they are outrageous!   The normal spread in what the banks report is around .2% -- today, the spread is 1.75%!!!   

This means two things:

1. Banks somewhere are sucking up taxpayer money for nothing and private lenders -- businesses and homeowners are getting whacked with higher rates for which they are financing at the other end

2. The real economy -- that is, businesses and people actually doing real things to produce things and services of real value -- the real economy is being suffocated.  

*LIBOR is explained here by Bernhard

From a Small Acorn...

One of the reasons Bulimo Charisma is going to win the final lap of the Quadrennial Horse Races is because of an excellent and well coordinated campaign -- which, by the way, is an indication that, assuming a Bulimo administration is allowed to assume power, it will also be an excellent and well run administration.

This contrasts strongly with the Mad Cain campaign which, although in many ways well coordinated, instead of "excellent", deserves  the adjectives "dirty", "smear", "untruthful" and even "dangerous"

One the reasons that the Bulimo campaign gives us a glimmer of hope is that it has energized the young people and people who haven't been voting.  The reason that people haven't been voting is a political apathy in the USA which is startling in a western democracy -- a democracy which fancies itself as being an example and light to the world.

There are a number of reasons for this apathy which might be better termed political paralysis.  One of the main ones has always been difficulty, in fact obstacles in getting registered to vote and then actually casting a ballot.  Now there is nothing wrong in itself that citizens need to actually need to make an effort to vote.  However, there is a long tradition of keeping people from voting or having their votes counted when those people are of an ethnic, income or racial group likely to vote for the "wrong" party.

The classic example is of course the Dumbrats in the southern USA where poll taxes, literacy tests, registration fees and "good old boys" hanging around the courthouse were all intended and did keep those we now call black but then were known as "nigras". 

However, in today's USA it is the Repugnant party which has updated, modernized voter suppression and out right fraud in order to put a heavy thumb on the scales which they could not otherwise win.  Some of these methods are high tech things such as programmed computer "glitches" in electronic voting machines transferring votes to the "correct" party's candidate.  "Caging" of voters can also be high-tech in that computer models are used to select people to be struck from the voting rolls who are of the wrong income, ethnic or racial group.

Other methods can be much more crude but none the less effective for that.  The most effective is probably the smear campaign based on half truths.

An example, is ACORN (Association of Community Organization for Reform Now).   This is an umbrella organization with many activities among the poor and economically oppressed and, as to be expected, has received a lot of flack from Repugnant organizations and media pundits.  The focus this year has been upon their efforts to register voters who have difficulty it getting to register -- the poor and the elderly.  Why do the poor and elderly have difficulty?  The poor and elderly are more dependent on public transportation then others.  Public transportation the USA generally sucks.  

Another group that has difficulty are invalids, such as those in the Veteran hospitals and people from ACORN seeking to register invalid war veterans have been refused entry to the hospitals.  

But that is a small thing.  The law says that private organizations collecting registration forms must deliver all forms to the registration committees.  This is of course a great idea -- otherwise, they could throw out all forms that registered for the "wrong" party.  

What ACORN does do is triage the forms -- they divide then into three piles.  One pile is labeled as being okay as far as they know.  A second pile is labeled as doubtful. The third pile is labeled as being suspicious, that is probably incorrect or even specious.

However, what Repugnant organizations are doing is taking the third pile (which ACORN must, by law deliver) finding a lot of incorrect application forms and calling "voter fraud" -- and their media pundits scream it from radio and television.

This is a most effective smear campaign and has the effect (intended) to bring the results of the (s)elections in November in doubt.  They figure they are going to lose are already gearing up to attack a coming Bulimo administration.

Into this mixture is an element of hate which already exceeds the vitriol poured on the two Flintstone administrations.  

The bottom line is that Bulimo, whatever else I might think of his politics is a very brave man to wade into this maelstrom

The Deep White Pit Revisited

Somewhere during the last few laps of the Quadrennial Horse Races the show has turned into a farce.

If it wasn't for the fact that it is taking place during what more and more is obviously undfolding as the most critical if not final phase of human history it would be hysterically funny. As a matter of fact, maybe it is hysterically funny -- if you happen to be a cockroach or a shape-shifting lizard...

Seeing that they are now almost certain not to win the (s)election, Mad Cain campaiagn is opting to sow seeds of hate which will make the hunting of Prez "Big Dog" Flintstone look like a sunday school picnic compared to what will be thrown at Bulimo Charisma. 

At best, it will end with The Man Called Betrayus being (s)elected in 2012, or, far worse, Sarah Cuda.   At worst, well, I hope you don't have the sort of imagination I am cursed with -- like the unknown poet of the Third Galaxy spoke three decades before the opening phases of the Terrible Times:

When you've got a crystal ball,
you sometimes wish you didn't have a ball at all!

The nitty gritty dear hearts is that human history is seemingly headed towards either a deep white pit of sand or a pile of excrement.

Speaking of Arrogance...

Arrogance goes well, in fact magnifies incompetence. Avarice also gives good growing conditions for the first two.

The United State of Arrogance has demonstrated this in a rather pernicious manner, becoming more arrogant even as her incompetence has grown along with avarice by leaps and bounds.

Because Sarah Cuda was able stay on script when she shared the stage for ninety minutes "debate" with Jo Bitem and delivered a couple of zinger sound-bites the Bankers of Illusion could repeat in endless sound loops -- she has suddenly become more suited to assume the duties of Prez should Mad Cain decide to start pushing daisies after a (hopefully) hypothetical inauguration of the two.

Pray tell, is this not a celebration of incompetence? I know people who would vote for Mad Cain and Sarah Cuda simply because they are not "pro-choice".

Doesn't anyone remember how the Codpiece was (s)elected because he was "pro-life" and then proceeded to murder his millions? If Mad Cain is (s)elected, we will be singing like they sang about David and Saul, "Where Saul killed his thousands, David kills his tens of thousands..."  [1 Samuall 18,7]

Geeze, is this "Idiocracy" or what?

Meanwhile, hundreds of billions of dollars are forked over in what can only be called "Welfare for the (super)Rich" as a reward for the incompetent arrogance of their avarice.

None of the leading economists who have been consulted for their opinion in this manner have protested -- of course, that is probably because none of them were consulted, most pointedly the economists who warned about the Great Collapse.

On the off chance that this plan wasn't bad enough, 25 billion dollars was forked over to the Arrogant automobile makers -- and they didn't ask for some money back should the automobile makers ever start making profits again! This is an outright subsidy and subsidies and tariffs are exactly what excaberated the Great Depression.

On top all this, a stale cigarette butt put out in a plate of fish and chips, more home owners then ever are going to be foreclosed and evicted from their homes -- there was an alternative!

My Unrequited Love

is beans -- baked beans, bean soup -- whatever.  

I love beans and they repay me with flatulance of an order that might make a lighter person wieghtless if not actually airborne.  In the case of beans, it is supposedly compounds known as oligosacchirides (whatever they are) which bring about the windiness.  The problem with them is that we can't digest them, but bacteria we carry in our lower intestines find them quite yummy.  However, these bacteria have as excrement -- gas...

In any case, if you are going to take beans to task, you must soak them for at least 10-12 hours, preferably changing the water a time or two and rinsing them most carefully before preparing them, for example, in bean soup.

Here is how to make a real mean bean soup:

Take a cup of dry white beans soaked 10-12 hours and well rinsed in clear water, put them in a pot well covered with water and heat to a boil and let them simmer for at least two hours -- frankly though, despite what the cookbooks say, I don't see how you can over cook beans, unless you burn them, of course...

In the beans you should also be cooking an onion, finely chopped, like wise a stalk of celery and a carrot.  A peeled potato or two should also find their way to the pot -- but don't chop either them or the slice or two of bacon you throw in the pot. 

For spices, there should be sprigs of rosemary, thyme and a bay leaf or two.  A clove of garlic is also recomended as well as a cube of chicken boulion.  A teaspoon or two of muscovado sugar will help to harmonize the seasonings.

After simmering for at least two hours - three might be better - let the soup cool a bit and trasfer about half of the beans, all the potatoes  and most of the liquid to a bowl and puree them.   Return the mush to the reast of the beans, heat and serve in bowls, garnished with parsley and a good bread.

Eat your fill and fart with gusto the next day!