KANSAS, SPYING, AND A DEPRESSING NIGHT OF TELEVISION

I have been listening to a lot of Kansas this weekend; totally out of the blue, I suddenly went Kansas freak.  I wonder what that means? Kansas was the backup group to Bad Company at Chicago Stadium, the first concert I ever saw, in 1976.  And their three big albums were the two years I lived in the dorms at Western Mich and I don't look back real fondly on those two years of my life.  Well, except the night I got some mushrooms from the guy down the hall and put them on my english muffin pizzas I made in the toaster oven and then watched what I believe is the only 12 hour episode of Starsky and Hutch that was ever made.


Glenn Beck, your table is still waiting…..

Dad's counting is really starting to bug the crap out of me.  I'm wearing shooter's ear protection right now but that is dangerous because I might decide I like it so much I'll just poke out my eardrums with Q-Tips like they do in those commercials for ear wax vacuums.  100 years of Q-Tips working just fine and now they are a national health threat.  I'm surprised Bloomberg hasn't banned them in NYC.

And that flows very poorly right into why all this NSA crap is so damn important.  If the NSA is capturing every email, text, and phone call made, while the focus as been on Joe Blow having his constitutional rights violated, think about members of congress, the media, and judges on the high courts.  Just this morning, the SC voted 7-2 that the AZ law requiring people show proof they are US citizens before they register to vote is unconstitutional.  Huh?  Roberts and Scallia both voted in the majority.  Why not just send our federal election ballots to Mexico now and let every Mexican vote for the US president?  Do you know, in the last election, how many states Obama won that required voter ID?  None.

And there was a rumor this past weekend that the reason Roberts voted ObamaCare constitutional was because of information learned by the NSA, passed to the WH, about something to do with the adoption of the two kids by the Roberts' and if he didn't vote the way the WH wanted, that information would be made public.

This is where the spying gets serious folks.  It's bad enough that they read, listen or tap everything you or I do but they got absolutely nothing on me I could be blackmailed or threatened.  Of course, they are perfectly able to fake anything they want, don't you know.  But a SC judge or a member of the House or Senate?  Every time I see a weird vote now, some arch conservative voting for gay marriage or an immigration bill they promised they would not vote for, I'm going to wonder what the NSA found them up to and bribed them for their vote.

And I would bet there is a whole lot of crap members of congress can be bribed over.  Makes me wonder about Bachmann announcing she would not run for reelection in 2014.   So now this is where we have arrived as a nation.  A people that not only doesn't trust their government spying on them but can no longer trust our elected representatives and judges that they are not being bought off or threatened with exposure if they don't vote the way they are told.  And every election will be corrupted by the voting of illegal aliens while votes are counted in about 20 states by a company in Spain owned by George Soros, the megalomaniac Nazi sympathizer who made his billions crashing countries currencies.

Now we have a new immigration bill that is over 1,000 pages long, again, and you know something; it's not really about illegal immigration.  It's about ID's, rules for employment, and a whole lot of other stuff that every citizen is going to have to endure.  Remember how I've begged all of you to watch The Last Enemy?  It's about all that.  Everything in that show is in the immigration bill folks.  No work, no buying, no benefits, no medical, no travel without this new ID outlined in the immigration bill.

I scream from the mountain top and no one hears.

So don't ask me why I'm not going to vote again, it will probably be illegal for someone born in this country who goes to church to be able to vote in a few more years anyways.

Then you have members of the media who probably aren't the most moral people on earth.  What have they done that they can be blackmailed with in regards to a story?  Have you read the articles on Sheryl Attkisson of CBS and the hacking done to her over Benghazi?  You remember Benghazi, don't you?  The story that is the real story that is being covered up with all these other scandals because the WH doesn't want you to ever find out the kidnapping of the ambassador was a plan between Obama and Morsi that went bad?

Last night, I watched Irene Huss on PBS.  We have a PBS station out here in Denver that plays European mysteries every evening, most are subtitled and Irene Huss is the best of them.  Swedish detective inspector, husband is a chef, two teenage daughters and last night's episode was about a bunch of very rich and powerful men who use this bar to pick their victims.  The DJ spikes the drinks of the young man or woman being ordered and then they are picked up, taken to a place, tied up, raped, and the whole thing is videotaped, (bad guys were masks) and then threatened with the tapes exposure if they talk.  Well, it ends with Huss's youngest daughter trying to help her friend and getting napped and they end up busting a couple of the bad guys, the girls are released before her daughter is raped but some of the bad guys are still out there and ended with the mom and daughter crying in the bathroom.  Crap.  And one of the bad guys is the partner with her husband in the new restaurant.

Then I watched the final two episodes of the Danish version of The Killing III and the ending they find the kidnapped girl but the corporation, the government employees and PM all sell out and get away with everything, well, except the executive that is raping and killing the children and Lund recognizes he is going to get away with it so she shoots him dead in cold blood and then gets on a plane to leave the country a fugitive from justice.  That's the end of the series?

It's just a depressing day all around.  My two favorite shows depressed the crap out of me last night, my dad won't stop counting, and it's cloudy and overcast in a country that is lost.  I don't think if every Christian in America dropped to their knees and spent a day praying and fasting God would spare the US from the coming Sodom and Gomorrahizing we are about to endure.

Have a nice day.

I came to learn perhaps to teach but I can tell somehow
The world that I was sent to reach has got no future now
Across the galaxy to spread the word and no one heard
I came for nothing I'm alone and Nobody's Home no one's home

A requiem was never sung
No elegy was read
No monument was carved in stone in memory of the dead
For those who made this place do not remain they feel no pain
A stranger fate was never known

Kansas

DON'T DRIP AND DRIVE

"You're travelling through another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind; a journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination. That's the signpost up ahead - your next stop, the Twilight Zone!"

And I thought the Digital Removal of Impacted Poop was the worst it could get….

In spite of my best efforts to keep my dad's waste system flowing, the body took care of the problem last night without my help.  I'd put pop to bed around 7 and around 9pm took the dog for his walk, picked up his poop, and when we got back I took my daily shower.  I use to shower every morning but now a days that is not possible to I wait until night when my dad is asleep to shower away the day's troubles.

I should have waited.

After getting out of the shower, and I mean what is left of the hair on my head wasn't dry, and I heard my dad counting out loud and went in to see if he was okay and the wall of smell hit me.  So I got him out of bed and using the wheel chair got him to the bathroom and with some effort got him to stand drop his pants and on the toilet.  And boy did he let go a ton in those Depends.

"There is a fifth dimension beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man's fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area we call the Twilight Zone."

I don't understand why cleaning up my dad is so much more difficult than cleaning up my mom was when she had accidents.  I also don't understand when he crapped in his Depends how he ends up with crap above the pecker area.  And he's got that catheter tube which is covered and so the ONLY way to get him cleaned is in the shower.

I can't even begin to describe the events and contortions we went through getting him into the shower.  Since he couldn't stand on his own, I have to often get behind him and use one of my legs to brace his butt; the second to last thing you want to do after someone has had the shits, I suppose using my head would be worse but I'm just guessing here.  So while holding him up, bracing him with one leg against a crap smeared butt, and I'm bending to help him lift his leg, one at a time, over the side of the tub and I'm wondering what other people are doing on a Friday night in America.

Did I mention he was yelling numbers the entire time?

"You unlock this door with the key of imagination. Beyond it is another dimension - a dimension of sound, a dimension of sight, a dimension of mind. You're moving into a land of both shadow and substance, of things and ideas. You've just crossed over into the Twilight Zone!"

So I finally get him in the shower without either of us killing each other or falling, though my back is certainly screaming at me today, and shower all the crap off of him, wash his catheter and area real well so he doesn't get an infection, and then try to shower myself free of all the crap but that, in my mind, will never come off.  So now I get him out of the shower, sit him down on the toilet and remember his other 3 pairs of hospital pants are in the washer.

Bad planning or a small ray of good fortune shining on me in the darkness of the abyss in which I exist?

Because now I take a break to put a pair in the drier and make him sit on the toilet after I get him dried off and sure enough, about 4 minutes after he is on the toilet he releases all the food he ate from June 10th thru the 14th.  If I hadn't had to dry those pants he'd of been all cleaned, new Depends, and new pants on when that happened and we'd have been in a Twilight Zone Episode of  Shit Rinse Repeat.

"This highway leads to the shadowy tip of reality: you're on a through route to the land of the different, the bizarre, the unexplainable...Go as far as you like on this road. Its limits are only those of mind itself. Ladies and Gentlemen, you're entering the wondrous dimension of imagination. Next stop....The Twilight Zone."

But I finally get him dressed, back into bed, and went back to my bathroom and took another shower, scrubbing my face and body with a Scotch Brite Pad.  After putting on clean gym shorts and a t-shirt, I lay down on the couch, in a fetal position, and ponder the insanity of it all.

"Maple Street, U.S.A. Early summer. A tree-lined little world of front porch gliders, barbecues, the laughter of children, and the bell of an ice-cream vendor. At the sound of the roar and the flash of light, it will be precisely 10:43pm on Maple Street. This is Maple Street on a late Friday night. Maple Street, in the last calm and reflective moment before the monsters came." 

HOCKEY WORKOUTS, THE PRESIDENT, AND THE COMING WARS

Is Glenn Beck still alive?  Still waiting for that information that would bring down the government, it's now overdue by about 12 hours…..

Did you enjoy Game One of the Stanley Cup?  Hawks came back with two goals to tie and then played into a third overtime and won on a flipped puck that got deflected twice. I thought I was going to be rooting for Boston because of my old college buddy having his kid on the Bruins, but once the game started I kept rooting for the Hawks.

Those overtime periods can get ugly, you could tell the players were exhausted.  The game slows, players trip and fall, passes are missed, and it's just a game of endurance and luck at some point.

But here is what you can do for a workout while watching a hockey game, or other sporting events for that matter.  When your team scores, you do 20 pushups.  When the other team scores, you do 20 squats.  Now I must tell you do not try this with basketball, you will die before the first period is over.  But for hockey, football, and baseball it's a great way to get off your butt once in a while and get some exercise.

It's totally ineffective for soccer since they play for hours without anyone scoring, kind of like those years when I went bar hopping.  But then if you watch soccer, you probably can't read, so you won't be reading this blog.  I still say you can correlate the downhill slide of this country to when soccer started getting popular and parents started making their kids play soccer and the next thing you know those kids, who spent their childhood hitting a ball with their head, started shaving all their body hair and getting tattoos all over themselves and it all traces back to the brain damage they suffered repeatedly hitting a soccer ball with their head.

Good article today about how our WH uses a failed novelist to write propaganda to support their positions.

http://www.infowars.com/man-behind-syrian-chemical-weapons-claim-is-fiction-writer-who-covered-up-benghazi/

The guy writes the story the WH wants most americans to believe and since so many are brain damaged from soccer headers or from having to stand around on Saturday's for decades watching kids play soccer, the majority of the country now just buys these stories and the latest in Syria using chemical weapons against their own people so we should arm and fund Al Quacko in Syria to overthrow Assaad.  Not to be confused with Asswad, the musical group that sang Set Me Free about South Africa.

Speaking of which, Mandela is very ill and that doesn't bode well for South Africa.  Had a friend years ago from SA and he said that he was told by black friends in SA that he should leave now because the blacks are holding off until Mandela dies and then they plan to riot and kill all the whites.  So he sold his business and moved his family to the United States.  So if Nelson Mandela dies, watch SA blow sky high.  Or not, maybe the guy didn't know what he was talking about…. I think he blogs now.

But back to the prez; so they are writing up fictional accounts to justify our war machine going into Syria, probably supporting the uprising in Turkey.  You know, if you are the president of Jordan, you might want to make sure your money is safe in Switzerland and plan a trip because you've got to be next on Obama's hit list.  The guy is just lining up all the countries that surround Israel with Muslim extremists so they can all be on the same page for a big attack on Israel.  You would almost think Obama has a swastika tattoo and speaks daily with Satan.

Of course, if we get into a big war in Syria with Russia, that will weed out most of the Gen X, Gen Y, and Gen Zero population leaving millions of job opportunities for all the illegal aliens that will flood america and given instant citizenship because of the national emergency to fill all those jobs vacant because the kids were killed in a war.  What, you thought baby boomers were going to get a shot at those jobs? Please.  They will be wiped out by some bug or virus that activates the SV40 virus to cause massive tumor growth and not be able to get treatment from the Obamacare death panels.

And very soon afterwards, Obama, now in his fifth term as president, will achieve his goal of a country of socialistic non whites.  Nirvana achieved.  A country of Chinese Mexican Americans.  And the ultimate in chic will be having a white gardener.

I wonder how much of this is sarcasm versus prophecy?

I close my eyes
Only for a moment and the moment's gone
All my dreams
Pass before my eyes with curiosity

Dust in the wind
All they are is dust in the wind

Same old song
Just a drop of water in an endless sea
All we do
Crumbles to the ground, though we refuse to see

Dust in the wind
All we are is dust in the wind

Now don't hang on
Nothin' last forever but the earth and sky
It slips away
And all your money won't another minute buy

Dust in the wind
All we are is dust in the wind

Dust in the wind
Everything is dust in the wind

Kansas

SLIPPERY SLOPING PLATEAUS

Most people think of Alzheimer's as a downward spiral but that is not really accurate; it's more of a series of ever decreasing plateaus.  And while arriving and living on a plateau can allow a caretaker to relax a little bit, there is always the knowledge in the back of our heads that the plateau won't last forever and soon a new drop in living is coming our way.

My dad, of course, is totally unaware of all of this thinking and analysis, his day is eating, sleeping, and counting numbers with the bi weekly showers, DRIPs, and car rides.

Right now we are living on a plateau.  After his return from the hospital, we've had to deal with the pooping change in his body but after doing DRIPS a dozen or so times, I can't say I've gotten use to it, but it's now part of life and you just do it.  He is requiring more Seroquel than originally planned.  Fifty in the morning, but sometimes it's 100; afternoons are 100 then when he wakes up and hits the 'sundowner' hours another 50 helps a little.  Then bed at 7 with 100mg and I then give him another 100 around midnight to keep him asleep until 7 or 8am.  So that is 400 a day; still well below the "some patients take 800 a day" comment I was provided as a maximum.  The key is keeping him calm and not playing with the catheter.

But, we are experiencing one strange event, a term that takes on meaning in comparisons to DRIPs.  Sometimes, when I lift him off the couch and put him in the wheelchair, he starts having some sort of physical convulsion where his body shakes uncontrollably for several seconds then his head droops down and he becomes unresponsive for 5 to 10 seconds and then comes back slowly to whatever we define as normal.  He does occasionally have this reaction occur at other times, I think I told the story a few weeks ago when he suddenly did it in the car, and I've never seen the event occur taking him out of the chair and putting him back on the couch or into bed.

Hmmm, I wonder if I should take the whoopee cushion out of the wheelchair?

On Monday I picked him off the couch in front of the nurse and nurses aid to make sure she could check to make sure I was doing things correctly and, of course, he didn't do it when he got into the chair.  The nurse said I was doing it correctly and nothing I was doing should be hurting him.  Well today, when the nurses aid was here to give him a shower, I picked him up and put him in the chair and this time it happened.  Totally freaked her out.  When he came back she waved her hand in front of his eye and he didn't react at all, but then I told him to look at my finger and follow the finger and he did that, probably fearing I was going to try to remove poop out of his ass.

She didn't know what it was, she'd never seen it before, and she promised to call the nurse and describe it to her.  I made an appointment with the doctor, but now we come to another problem:  so what?  Do we really need to run a bunch of medical tests to determine something is wrong with an 87 year old man with severe dementia, a bladder that doesn't work and requires a catheter, a rectum that doesn't work and requires manual removal of waste, and his muscles are so weak he can hardly walk any longer?  It's not like there are any surgeries they will perform, does he need more drugs?  Dare not take him off the Seroquel!  It's just a new chapter at the end of his life, I guess.

So that is what a caretaker faces; not a constant downward spiral, but a series of downward movements, followed by plateaus where you adjust to the new situation and about the time you get into a groove, comes a new more difficult problem to deal with to upend your life and sanity for awhile until you become use to the new station in life. And now that I can do DRIPs without afterwards crawling into a fetal position on the couch or floor and having the shakes, I'm sure there is a new adventure barreling down our way.

On the other hand, my dad hasn't exactly gotten use to DRIPs, which is a good sign, nobody should get use to those.  Tuesday, I pulled out eight pieces that looked like golf balls, round and about the circumference of a golf ball; it was like The Far Side meet Penn and Teller.  And he is not sleeping today and is kind of ornery so I do believe we will be visiting the DRIP station in about an hour.  I always find it easier to do before making dinner than trying to do it with a stomach full of food, if you know what I mean.

Meanwhile, I breathlessly await Glenn Beck's major announcement that is suppose to bring down the entire power structure of the United States.  Poor Beck, he just does not realize how totally apathetic the majority of the American people are.  The majority don't give a crap if the government is listening to every phone call, internet post, web site visited being monitored, everything they purchase, and everything they tweet.  But they will be pissed if the news is so big it interrupts tonights Dancing with the Survivors of American Idol Ninjas or whatever stupid show stupid people watch.

Once I rose above the noise and confusion
Just to get a glimpse beyond this illusion
I was soaring ever higher
But I flew too high

Though my eyes could see, I still was a blind man
Though my mind could think, I still was a mad man
I hear the voices when I'm dreaming
I can hear them say

Carry on, my wayward son
There'll be peace when you are done
Lay your weary head to rest
Don't you cry no more

Kansas

THE PEOPLE LAUGHED TILL SHE SAID BURN

Well, once again we come to that time of year where thousands of acres of land are on fire in the US and before we can put them out, 10's of thousands of more acres will burn, homes will burn, lives will be nearly ruined and thousands of brave beyond belief firefighters will risk their lives to put out these fires.

And every year they blame droughts for the problem.  And the real problem is our government.

I remember years ago in some California wildfires some guy in a canyon ignored the orders of the EPA and took a tractor and turned over his several acres, burying all the dry grass.  When the fire swept through the canyon, only his house stood; all the other homes burned to the ground.  And, of course, the EPA sued him for turning over the grass because the grassland is home to some endangered species of a rodent; the speckled peckered field mouse or something like that, and by turning over the grassland he may have killed a mouse.

As if the fire ravaging the mountainside didn't kill the mice.

And that is part of the problem we have with fires, we no longer are a allowed to go into areas and clear out dry brush and dead trees.  Colorado has a lot of dead trees in the mountains because of some beetle and they just dry up and wait for that spark of lighting.  So the dry grasses, dead trees, and some pine tree that excretes a sap that is flammable makes for a very quickly spreading fire that are almost impossible to control.

Yesterday, we saw million dollar homes going up in fires, hopefully people were able to get their horses and dogs out of the area but some probably did not, and you would see this helicopter flying towards the fire with the little bucket hanging off the bottom which looked like trying to put out a home fire with a glass of water.  Then smaller planes come in and drop red retardant which looks like putting out a house fire with a fire extinguisher.  Most of those planes carry up to 3000 gallons of water mixed with the favored retardant which by the way is now in the drinking water in most of Colorado and the treatment plants don't really get it out before you drink it.  Which is why I put all the drinking, ice cubes, and cooking water through a Berkey Water Filter system with both the black and white filters on them.

Every year I watch these fires and I remember a big argument back in the 1990's about some wanting to bring in a Russian plane that can carry over 10,000 gallons of water.  It's big, it's expensive, but if ready when one of these fire starts it could fly over and put the damn fires out before they ever got big.  And 20 years later, it's still debated because the fire service doesn't want to use it.

These planes have been fighting fires in Europe for 40 years.   A few years ago Greece was having a couple of very bad fires in the mountains and this plane flew over each of them in two separate runs and put out fires that had been burning for several weeks.  They can fly in high wind conditions, a normal condition in these mountain fires, where our fleet is grounded.

But our Forest Service keeps saying NO.  It's too expensive.  It is not as maneuverable as smaller planes.  Needs a longer runway.  The latter two are certainly true, but even if it costs 3x as much to operate per hour, if it can put out the fires before they wipe out dozens of homes, the cost is worth the expense.  Some of the other excuses are downright idiotic: that much water could cause flooding, it might kill a firefighter standing underneath the water, etc.  What is really interesting is senators and governors have tried to override the Forest Service but apparently get phone calls from someone and reverse their position time after time.  Do a search for the Russian firefighting plane and read up on this thing.  Don't wait, you might want to read about it before your home burns.

Now, truth be told, there might be some fires that using this plane wouldn't be effective, I understand that case.  But just because it won't work in some fires doesn't mean it won't prevent many other fires from getting out of control is like saying firemen shouldn't have ladders because they are useless in some fires so let's not have them at all.

There is a great Harvard Case Study about a Gulch fire that happened in the late 1940's that is a great read.  It's about leadership but there is a good lesson for survival in a fire like these.  The leader of the team dug a hole, then burned all the grass around the hole, got into the hole and covered himself and when the fire came up the side of the gulch, it went right around him.  Unfortunately, the rest of the team thought he didn't know what he as doing, most of them were vets from WWII, and climbed to the top where the rocks were and tried to hide there but it didn't work out well for them.  I've always remembered that: dig hole, get rid of the fuel around you, get in hole, cover up and let the fire go right around you.

Then you will be alive to be sued by the EPA for killing a worm or something.

The sky is red, I don't understand
Past midnight I still see the land
People are sayin' the woman is damned
She makes you burn with a wave of her hand
Warning came, no one cared
Earth was shakin, we stood and stared
When it came no one was spared
Still I hear 
Burn


Deep Purple

WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO BENGHAZI?

When the IRS and Justice Department scandals broke, I was very suspicious both of them were simply misdirections to take Benghazi out of the news.  And, let's face it, Benghazi is out of the news.

But now the scandals are breaking so fast and furiously, oh yea, there is that scandal too, that it's really getting hard to keep track of what is going on, though I'm sure the NSA could probably data mine a list for us if we asked.

Is anyone curious why, after the election and swearing in of the president to a second term, all of these scandals are suddenly hitting the news faster than the Cubs can be eliminated from the playoffs?  I mean, let's face it, all of these things were occurring prior to the election but the media squelched the Fast and Furious story and the Benghazi questions until after the election; now, as the slow summer season starts, if you don't have a news website on your screen or an RSS feed, you could miss the latest scandal.

So what the hell is going on?  There is so much happening so quickly a paranoid mind can't connect all the dots fast enough.

Fast and Furious, which I combine with the US policy to send weapons to Al Quacko terrorists in several foreign countries in which we apparently want leaders overthrown, were being sold or given the very same weapons the US government is trying to prevent the US citizen from owning.  The Al Quacko terrorist who wishes death to the US is allowed an automatic weapon with 50 round magazines but the american guy with no criminal record is not allowed to own a gun with magazines greater than 10 rounds because there is no reason for the average citizen to own those big bad military style guns; unless of course, the average citizen has to defend himself against the drug lords or Al Quacko terrorist who has such a gun, compliments of the average citizen paying his taxes to provide them such weapons.

Benghazi, who knows?  But it has disappeared from the news.  My theory, which I'm sure the NSA is well aware of by now, is that the ambassador was to be kidnapped so we could rescue him right before the election assuring the president a big win and Egypt's new dictator billions of dollars in aid.  Others suspect it was a kidnap attempt to trade the ambassador for the blind sheik.  The more creative conspiracy nuts have Obama missing for 18 hours involved in some in-depth cocaine usage while sharing body fluids with some other male lover not yet found dead.  Either way, it worked out for the new Egypt dictator because Sec of State Kerry just okay'd a couple of billion of what is left of US taxpayer's dollars to Egypt so the dictator can fund his retirement account in Switzerland.

NSA spying on all of our emails, phone calls, and text messages and I just yawn; I've figured this has been going on for years so what's the big deal?  Oh, it seems they are also spying on the media and congressional blackberry's so now it's a big deal.  Poor media, they thought they were special and just found out they've been played for court jesters.  On the other hand, Nixon faced a charge of wire tapping one office, and now Obama could face charges of wire tapping 310 million people.

In our current world of equal rights for all people of all races regardless of nationality, sexual preferences, religious beliefs, and whatever else; I wonder why there are no French Mimes working as reporters?  Discrimination?  You betcha.  Frankly, almost any news report or shows on TV would be much more entertaining with mimes.  Or the Weather Channel using nobody but mimes to give the weather!

Hey CNN, two words:  Topless Mimes - your ticket back to the top of the ratings.

And let's not forget the IRS's political witch hunts on conservative groups, people, and non profits.  I'm sure this won't be a problem letting the IRS monitor the health care system.  If you thought it was difficult for a conservative christian person to start a 501c3,  just wait until a conservative christian needs a bypass or some other life saving surgical procedure and is awaiting IRS approval.

Hillary's security detail apparently were some serious party animals, which goes along with the other Secret Service scandals of agents with hookers which really makes one wonder exactly what the Secret and Service stand for but apparently if you have a hard time adjusting to life after graduating from a fraternity associated with a college, the Secret Service sounds like the place you want to continue your lifestyle of drinking and whoring around.

But the news isn't always bad; last night the president signed some executive order that allows the over the counter sale of the morning after abortion pill to girls under 17, pedophiles across the country are happy today.  Nice to see the president is on top of things: the economy is in the tank, the debt is racing higher and higher, just about every department in the Executive Branch is roiled in controversy, but 15 year old girls can now take a pill so their 40 year old man won't get caught screwing an underage girl.  Whew!

Through all the fog, I can't kick the feeling all of these scandals are designed to cover up something far more nefarious.  Plus the knowledge of a person of Obama's personality and how they will react to all this pressure makes for some scary dot connecting.

Yesterday, the nurse stopped by for her weekly visit and we were chatting and the DRIP thing came up and she mentioned that doing DRIPs is something all nurses are trained to do.  Of course, my brain immediately imagined nursing students having to practice on each other doing DRIPs and when I said it out loud the nurse, after she got through laughing, explained they have 'dummies' than nursing students practice on.

Somewhere out there, a company is making dummy asses with lifelike rectums for students to practice pulling crap out of with their fingers.  I wonder how that reads on a business card or resume.  I'd hate to be the quality control engineer at that plant.  I could just see the resume now:

"Re-engineered the rectum on dummies to decrease costs by 15% while increasing the efficiency of waste removal by nursing students up to 25%"

Well, all this talk about butts, underage girls and anuses is probably getting the NSA employees excited, so I better stop now before we have to spend 6.4 billion dollars cleaning the screens and keyboards of government employees.

And the sign said
"Everybody welcome come in, kneel down and pray"
But when they passed around the plate at the end of it all
I didn't have a penny to pay
So I got me a pen and a paper
And I made up my own little sign
I said, "Thank you, Lord, for thinkin' 'bout me, I'm alive and doin' fine"

Signs, signs
Everywhere a sign
Blockin' out the scenery
Breakin' my mind
Do this, don't do that
Can't you read the sign?

Five Man Electrical Band

HARD TO BE MORAL IN AN IMMORAL WORLD

Got to admit, I was fascinated to read the stories in the Guardian about the NSA whistleblower, who he is, what he did, and why he did it.

Think about this for a moment: a high school dropout, GED, went into the military and was working towards Special Forces when he broke both legs in a training accident; out of the military, starts as a security guard for the NSA, then CIA, then works himself into the computer department and ends up at 29 years old, making 200K a year, living in Hawaii.  Not a bad life he's created for himself, a high school dropout making 200k a year at 29 years old and living in Hawaii.

And he tosses it all away?  Why?

Guy has a set of balls on him, you got to give him that much.  I read the articles on his motivation, his disgust with what our government was up to, how he doesn't want to live in a world where governments are monitoring our every move, and how he realizes his life expectancy is just about zero, figuring if the US government doesn't get him, the Russians or Chinese are going to grab him.

I've seen rumors he is going to voluntarily defect to the Chinese, but I don't buy that story for a moment.  First, it sounds like disinformation to discredit him by either our government or the Chinese government.  Secondly, when you read this thinking process on why he chose Hong Kong, I guess it makes sense, and he claims he'd like to get to Iceland which he thinks would be a safe haven.  Why he didn't just go to Iceland to start with I don't know, but then Hong Kong is a lot closer to Hawaii than Iceland.

I don't think there is a safe haven on Earth for this guy.

Our enemies would love to grab him to get the information he knows on our computer security.  The US wants to get him before our enemies get their hands on him and I'm sure our government wants to get him and make an example of him which is what the Obama administration loves to do to whistleblowers as a lesson to others who might think of coming forward.

Is the guy a hero or a villain?  Yes.  He is both.  Same as Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers.  What Snowden did was wrong but what he did was also right; the ambiguity of life, an act is both morally right and morally wrong at the same time.  However, if any information that he exposed causes any US assets to be killed, THEN this takes on a whole different meaning and I say fry him.

Hard to be moral in an immoral world.

Our enemies are not theoretical constructs.  They are real, they want to end the reign of the US, and they will kill anyone and everyone to reach that goal.  Snowden just helped them in their cause.  But our government is not a benevolent organization towards the American people.  There are evil men and women in our government who would also kill millions of their fellow citizens if they thought it would benefit whatever warped cause that motivates them.  And what Snowden did exposed them and that is a good thing.

Once the corporate government can monitor everyone's phone, email, texts, and conversations, there is no more free speech, there is no more free press, there are no more freedoms.  When the government monitors all your credit card purchases, all your contributions, where you go, and to whom you speak, there is no freedom.  One good crackdown of 10% of those the government deems to be 'enemies of the state' and the rest of the population will quickly come in line.

One of the reasons I liked the movie Serenity so much, it was the closing of the short lived but highly loved TV series Firefly, was the depiction of a government that chemically altered a planet and used some chemical that made the inhabitants so passive that 90% of them died because they just quit working, eating, etc.  The other 10% became reavers, cannibalistic madmen.  We have no idea how many days from a large part of this population becoming reavers we live.  When there is no food, no deliveries, no supplies, no money, no government checks, a large part of our population will become reavers, rampaging across the countryside, killing and eating everything in sight: dogs, cats, and people.

And it will be governments, bureaucracies of faceless megalomaniacs, who think they can play God, who will bring about these events.  And once you stifle dissent, once you stifle and eliminate those who will speak out, speak up, fight back against such governments, there will be nothing to stop them from the inevitable conclusion.

So kudos to Snowden for throwing away the good life, for tossing away a 200k job in Hawaii and doing, what he thought, was the right thing.  Hope you don't get anyone killed with what you exposed though.  And maybe someone will erect a nice memorial to you, once you have been eliminated, by those who think they can play God.

I've watched you watchin' me
But I can't see what you see
You ask me how I feel
But you don't believe me still
No
Cause what I say
Is here today
And gone tomorrow

You treat me like a spy
When I come around
Just like a private eye
Roamin' through your town
You treat me like a spy
And I can't see why
If only looks could kill


Tait

WE VOLUNTEERED FOR IT, WE ASKED FOR IT, AND WE BEGGED FOR IT.

The stories just keep getting better and better.  The government working with over 50 corporations to collect data on everything you do, buy, and say.  What did Mussolini once say "Fascism should really be called corporatism"?  Well, it appears Mussolini was just slightly ahead of his time; what he forced on the Italian people in the 1920's and 1930's; the people begged for it by the end of the century.

Today, the average american gets up and puts on clothing with RFID chips, goes out with a wallet full of cash with magnetic strips that can be scanned, credit cards, debit cards, and identification with RFID chips; we swipe the card at the coffee or donut shop, we go into work where we wear some ID card that can track everywhere you go in the building while we sit in a cubicle where the company can monitor all our computer activity.  At lunch we swipe a card again and at the end of the day we are monitored as we drive home by the chips in our license plate, the chips in our cell phones, and at this point I'm fully willing to accept the good chance there are chips in our cars that we don't know about.  Then we get home and the cable company tracks everything you do on the internet, watch on television, and know what time you go to bed.  Soon most home appliances will have the ability to listen to everything said in your home.

And we couldn't wait to buy all this stuff.

We gave up our freedom, not for security, but for cool.  The outrage people have today over finding out the government and corporations have teamed together to gather every tidbit of information about you when you freely provided more information than anyone would ever want to know about you on Facebook.  We Twitter our deepest, cough, thoughts, we blog our lives, and now we are upset that someone is paying attention?

We begged to be noticed.

This was not forced upon us, we gladly bought our way to this point in time.  We jumped online with AOL and CompuServe.  We used dial up internet and demanded more data, faster data.  We built our web sites, we wanted online shopping and put all those ma and pop stores out of business.  We wanted faster, easier, cheaper, and quicker.  Waiting two days for a book to show up we ordered sitting on our butts and that was too long.  So we got digital books.  Faster, easier, cheaper, quicker: now we miss browsing through Borders because Borders doesn't exist anymore.  We miss browsing through Blockbuster looking for a movie, chatting with pretty women, because the local video store is gone.

Some of you liked the idea of cookies on your computer so companies could target market their advertising to make offers of what you want to buy.  Who cares if they traced every web site you ever visited?  Your employer knows, it will be known by any future employer, any time you try to buy insurance.

And now we blindly barrel down the highway towards "the cloud".  This one just boggles my mind.  The WHOLE purpose of Apple and the PC were to make the individual independent, to put the computer on the desktop and no longer be tied to some massive IT department.  The power to write, publish, crunch numbers at your fingertips on your desktop.  Go back and look up TV commercials and advertising by Apple, IBM, and others from the 1980's; that was the whole marketing campaign.  And now, 30 years later, let's forget all that and go back and let Google or Apple store all your documents, movies, music, books, and everything else in your life on their servers.  Why?

Control and power.  It's not for your convenience, it's to control us. They will own everything you store on their servers, folks.   Heck, you can get a 1TB card smaller than a matchbook now, it's not a space issue in building devices.  It is to control you, to own you, to own us.  And we just jump on the train without so much as a thought.  We buy the sizzle and don't think about the cost down the road.

Stop with me for a moment and consider something.  Think of the tens of millions of jobs we have lost over the last 30 years when we moved all the manufacturing jobs overseas; when we stopped building computers, chips, washing machines, televisions, etc in this country all so the price of the item would be cut in half.  Faxing and email killed the post office.  We have eliminated jobs for 50 million Americans and for what?

Is life really better today?  Ask most people above 50 and after thinking of all the cool stuff we have today, they start thinking a little deeper, a frown overcomes their face, and they eventually will admit no, it's not better.  It looks cheaper but you have to earn 5x what you did back in the 1980's to afford it; it's faster but we have less time than we ever did; cooler toys but everything is so complicated now, but not better, no.

My dad was an executive with a railroad and I remember taking two week vacations in the 1960's and maybe, maybe, once a week, he'd call the office.  Can you imagine doing that today?  Even the peons in the company check their email daily.

And we have no one to blame but ourselves.  We asked for it, we demanded it, we voted with our pocketbooks.  And now it's too late to stop what is coming.

In 10 years, almost all devices will have little storage, you will pay to store everything you own electronically at some large corporation that will allow our government and other corporations to data mine your stuff.  You will have no secrets.  They will know what you eat, when you sleep, what you watch, what you read, what you listen to, everything about you.  You will be an open book for the corporations and government to manipulate because they will know what motivates you and what you care about.

And as political correctness tightens the noose around our necks, they will know if you watch a politically incorrect movie, read a politically incorrect book, know if you voted for the other party.  Your career, your IRS relationship which will now make health care decisions will all be decided.  Vote for the right party or you might not get that surgery when you need it.  Watch the right shows, read the right books and you will be okay.

We are about to become slaves.  Once the baby boomer generation is wiped out, it's all over; the BB's are the last generation that have that independent thinking streak,  the critical thinking skills in them.  Wipe them out and you not only save SS/MED, but you end the last voices of dissent against the machine.  Our children and our children's children will become slaves to corporatism.  What we learn in school, what we do for a living, what we read, what we think will all be controlled and it is exactly what we asked for.

Welcome my son
Welcome to the machine
Where have you been?
It's alright we know where you've been

You've been in the pipeline
Filling in time
Provided with toys and scouting for boys
You brought a guitar to punish your ma

And you didn't like school
And you know you're nobody's fool
So welcome to the machine

Welcome my son
Welcome to the machine
What did you dream?
It's alright we told you what to dream


Pink Floyd

RULES OF ENGAGEMENT

I think I finally came to the end of the internet this morning when I started to read an article on the penis shrinking gene that is why birds don't have peni and I realized there was nothing left on the internet to learn.

Can you imagine spending a couple of million bucks to be on one of those first space flights Virgin is planning and you find yourself sitting next to some 19 year old twerp with a Bobby Sherman haircut and none of Bobby Sherman's talent and then he wants to sing?  For a couple of million dollars, shouldn't you be able to NOT hear Bieber in space?  Probably spend the whole trip listening to him whine no one takes him seriously.

I have a confession, I really got hooked on the TV show Rules of Engagement.  I watch the reruns every night on WGN America.  I have no idea why I like the show other than it makes me laugh.

I think the last sitcom I watched during prime time was Dave's World, which for my younger imaginary readers was around 20 years ago.  I did watch, for a time, Malcom in the Middle on reruns and loved that little kid Dewey.  And I would catch a Seinfeld or Friends if I had nothing better to do.  But as you can tell, not really big on the whole sitcom thing; I'll stop and watch WKRP or TAXI in a heartbeat, heck, if I were dying and an episode of Taxi came on I'd delay my death by 30 minutes just to watch the show.

So what the hell is it about RoE that makes me watch?  I can't stand Spade, I pray the rapture doesn't occur during the show because I'd hate to tell God the last thing I did on earth was watch a sitcom about a serial middle aged fornicator, a couple living in sin, and a DINK couple.  And I could argue that RoE is nothing more than Seinfeld, Friends, and Mad about You all rolled into one show.  But the damn show just makes me laugh.

I tried to analyze it via archetypes and all the psychobabble crap I once learned but realized I was making this way to complicated.  What makes me laugh are the people sitting around the table cutting the crap out of each other. Short jokes, boob jokes, Indian jokes, gay jokes, and it's like the censors took a vacation when they wrote the show.  All the politically incorrect crap Spade says to his 'assistant' from Indian via South Africa.  And I suppose to be honest I look at the married couple and relate to his fighting the aging thing and kind of jealous of the relationship between the two.  I'd love to have a best friend again with knockers.

Sometimes in the deep end of the ocean of our mind, we need some shallow waters.

Have you ever heard of the news organization called National Report?  Me either, until today.  Seems the National Report ran a damning story about that faked long form birth certificate Obama tried to pass off on the nation awhile back and yesterday the FBI and DOJ raided the news agencies office; hitting it with armed guys in SWAT gear and carting off boxes and boxes of folders, files, and computers.  Welcome to the New World Order folks.  I have no idea who runs National Report or who funds them but the government raiding a news organization after them writing a report damning the president is not a good sign for our future.  Guess I should bury a backup disk along with a gun, ammo, clothing, food, and Bibles.

Let's face it bloggers; no one ever heard of National Report and I don't see a major outcry this morning on the Post, Times, or Tribune about the incident.  The government will crack down on the little guys and gals first.  Weed out the small individual plants before going after the field of poppies, if you know what I mean.  If the media lets the administration get away with the raid on National Report, then they will have no right to complain when the government raids Fox, The Times, or any other media outlet.

Several counties in Colorado are looking to split the state and form their own.  Apparently some countries in Nebraska may join them.  Unfortunately, Larimer County isn't one of them which I think is short sighted on their part because if Larimer went with the new state, Fort Collins would probably become the state capital.  Colobraska would be a cool name, don't you think?  Plus they need to pull in a couple of counties up in the rockies for water rights.

But why stop at just forming a new state, why don't states start talking about forming a new country?  Get about 20 to 25 states to seriously look into the opportunity, state houses vote to do so, get a constitution written and agreed upon and then see what happens.  Maybe it would force Washington to wake up and change it's ways, maybe it would be the best for everyone if we did split up.  Part of the old USA could be the high taxes socialist utopia the president and others have dreamed of and the other country could be the low tax capitalistic utopia Rush Limbaugh dreams of where everything is made in China and MBA's ask him if he wants fries with those three burgers.  Three commandments: not steal, not murder, not bear false witness.  If it doesn't fit under those three, it's not a crime in the new country.

Go Hawks.  This is going to be a dilemma.  Bruins and Hawks were my two favorite hockey teams as a kid.  I'm from Chicago, but one of my college buddies' son now plays for the Bruins, Krug, so I'd kind of like them to win cause I know Kyle and Cheryl would absolutely go nuts if one of their kids had his name on the Cup.

Hockey, sitcoms, and the government raiding a news company because of their reporting.  All written with my dad counting over and over in the next room.  Strange planet we exist on.

Maybe it would be better if we never said goodbye
Maybe I'd grow much older with you in my life
Maybe we'd come out winners putting the world to right
Maybe I should be sorry for wasting your time

So who's right will take my side
And call it spite or call it pride
Call it love that never died
Call it anything but wasted time?

After the party's over, after the dream has died
Some people keep returning to the scene of the crime
Try to rewrite the story, tell you you never tried
Tell you you should be sorry for wasting their time


Joe Jackson

IMAGINARY READERS

I truly do not understand all the outrage in the media today over finding out the government is spying on everyone.  Where the hell you been?

ECHELON was news in the mid 1990's.  We knew back then that it was capable of reading every fax, email, and telephone call in the world.  Now, they were sneaky with the program; the US wouldn't monitor US traffic and Britain would not monitor it's citizens but the US would monitor Britain and Britain would monitor the US and they would share information.

I remember debating ECHELON back on the old MSN forums; which I bet are still available for viewing and data mining by someone.  I also remember someone losing a bet and having to post at the bottom of everything they posted or emailed the list of words ECHELON was designed to hunt for.  It was funny as hell.

Katharine Albrecht has been speaking for years about RFID chips in all of your clothing, your passport, your drivers license, your credit cards, your license plates on your car, and your pets.  You can't walk through most major stores today without them knowing who you are, what you are looking at, what you are buying, where you bought your clothes.  Your local community tracks you going through intersections with the plate RFID chips.

Did you ever read her paper on RFID and cancer in your dogs and cats?  You should, especially if your school district is trying to get your little darlings to wear one all the time on their wrist or hanging on a necklace around those developing breasts of your teenage daughter.  I remember her on  C2C telling about giving a presentation on the paper at a huge conference and sitting at the tables were three men who each had a company designed to put RFID chips in people and each of the men had been implanted with the chips to show how great they work.  She said when she was done, each of those guys were as white as a ghost when they saw the data.

Many American cities are riddled with security cameras, both government and private.  I remember about 8 years ago there was a commuter train accident in Chicago where some cars were stuck on the crossing because of a stop light and the train came through and we were all fortunate to be able to see exactly what happened because the whole thing was captured by Homeland Security cameras; and I thought, "WTF"?  Why did HSA have cameras setup on Irving Park Blvd?  Nobody else seemed bothered by the question.

So I'm confused at what is going on today.  I'm not surprised, just confused why so many are shocked and outraged that there is gambling going on in this establishment; here are your winnings, Captain Renault.  Is the media suddenly all over this story just because the media found out they were the subject of such spying?  Was this a non story at the Times and the Post as long as no one at the Times and the Post were being monitored?  But now, hey, you can monitor joe average but now you are wanting to monitor us too?

Journalists are not the brightest bulbs on the tree, don't you know.

I've assumed for nearly 20 years that anything you write: every email, every message, every comment on a newspaper column, every blog, and every website comment is being saved, stored, and studied.  Every web site you visit, every search you do on Google, every phone call you make, every TV show you watch on cable, is all being recorded in a database and that database is available to corporations and governments for whatever use they desire.

It's not paranoia to think that your television or cable box is recording your conversations.  It's not paranoid to put little stickers or stamps over the camera lens on your computer or cell phone because they can be operated remotely.

I assume wherever I go now I am being recorded.  I use passwords on my computer and to any accounts that are over 20 characters long, have caps and small letters, a symbol or two, and alpha numeric.  Those are hard to hack.  I also use more than a 4 character password on my iPhone, encrypt the phone, and encrypt the backups.  Intego has file guard which allows me to encrypt, though since the upgrade doesn't seem to stop porn pictures only words I'm not real comfortable about their encryption.  And I block all incoming things from the net, only allow outgoing, and regularly either work with no cookies allowed or do a clean with two different programs.

And the punch line is: I'm not doing anything wrong or anything I'd be ashamed of if it became known.  If some security expert analyzed my computer and surfing he or she would announce that I was the most boring person they'd ever come across.  My surfing is boring, my reading is boring.  So why do I do it?

Because, what the government and corporations are doing is wrong.  Even if you are doing nothing wrong, you are morally responsible to stand up against others doing wrong.

The other punch line to the story is there are apps and things you can use to encrypt your cell calls and emails.  So the drug lords and terrorists can encrypt everything and block the government from hearing/reading what they are saying to each other which means we are spending billions of dollars so the government can learn nothing from nobodies.  Your tax dollars at work.

The point of all of this is my constant reference to imaginary readers.  I know some real people read the blog and I'm grateful for your spending your time reading my writings.  But we've also discovered that there are computer sites with algorithms that hit your site just to build up hits so you might visit their site, who knows how many branches of our secret government groups have computers monitoring the blogs we write or how many people read the blogs or foreign governments who read the blogs looking for people to turn into spies.

I wonder if the government ever figured out I send secret messages in the musical lyrics I post at the end of each blog?  There are just a lot of imaginary readers, I suspect a few imaginary bloggers, and I suspect some of those are computer generated blogs to attract a certain type of reader.

Oh mine eyes have seen the glory of the theories of Freud,
He has taught me all the evils that my ego must avoid.
Repression of the impulses resulting paranoid
As the id goes marching on.
Glory glory psychotherapy, glory glory sexuality,
Glory glory now we can be free as the id goes marching on

There was a man who thought his friends to him were all superior
And this complex he imagined made life drearier and drearier
Till his analyst assured him that he really was inferior
As the id goes marching on.
Glory glory psychotherapy, glory glory sexuality,
Glory glory now we can be free as the id goes marching on

Do you drown your superego in a flood of alcohol - or something else -
And go running after women till you're just about to fall.
You may think you're having fun but you're not having fun at all
As the id goes marching on.
Glory glory psychotherapy, glory glory sexuality,
Glory glory now we can be free as the id goes marching on

Oh sad is the masochism, the vagaries of sex
Have turned half the population into total nervous wrecks.
But your analyst will cure you, long as you can pay the cheques
As the id goes marching on.
Glory glory psychotherapy, glory glory sexuality,
Glory glory now we can be free as the id goes marching on

Is your body plagued by aches and pains that you can't understand
Compound fractures ingrown toenails, floating kidneys, trembling hands,
There's a secret to your trouble: you're in love with your old man
As the id goes marching on.
Glory glory psychotherapy, glory glory sexuality,
Glory glory now we can be free as the id goes marching on

Freud's mystic world of meaning needn't have us mystified
It's really very simple what the psyche tries to hide:
A thing is a phallic symbol if it's longer than it's wide
As the id goes marching on.
Glory glory psychotherapy, glory glory sexuality,
Glory glory now we can be free as the id goes marching on.

Melanie