Irregular Times Diaries: Unfit Discussion

A startling development in the coastal waters of the Southeastern United States calls into question the amnesty for illegal immigrants that is being planned under the secretive North American Union. The big-government Center for Coastal Fisheries and Habitat Research warns us that lionfish, a large predatory animal with strongly poisonous spines, has invaded our territorial waters, and is waiting, hidden underwater, sometimes within clear sight of land.

They refer to the Indo-Pacific lionfish as “a non–native predatory fish first reported off the North Carolina coast in 2000. Since then, the number and geographic distribution of lionfish within the northwestern Atlantic has increased dramatically. Lionfish now inhabit coral reef, hardbottom, and artificial structures.”

Hold on a second, there! What are these lionfish doing inhabiting artificial structures? Did the lionfish make these structures, or did someone make the structures for the lionfish?

If someone made these artificial structures for the lionfish, which I believe to be the obvious logical answer, then we need to ask ourselves the following: Who would profit from providing subsidized housing for illegal immigrants?

It all reminds me a little bit too much of factory farming - only worse. In the case of the Indo-Pacific lionfish invading the coastal waters of the Southeastern United States, what’s being farmed is not fish for food, but fish for poison!

Someone call Lou Dobbs - but don’t think for a second that this is just about the lionfish stealing American jobs. It goes much further than that.

Take a look at the map. These are Indo-Pacific lionfish, so they can reasonably be expected to have moved up the Pacific coast of the United States by now. Perhaps there have been sleeper cells there for generations. That’s on one side of us. Now they’re up and down the East Coast of the United States. It’s almost as if they’re fixated on the USA in particular. They’ve got us in their sights, so to speak.

Communities of illegal immigrants hiding underwater in artificial structures set up by nobody knows who, right up and down our nation’s borders, armed with neurotoxins. In biological evolution, nobody develops a weapon like that unless they intend to use it. When will they attack us with these biological weapons?

I can’t tell you for sure, but I’ve seen these lionfish up close, and I can tell you one thing - they don’t want to talk.

Hidden in the murky estuaries of the River Thames, the central corridor of power in the British Empire, a secret has been kept for years - a secret that now has been revealed: Seahorses.

New Scientist tells us: “About five short-snouted seahorses (Hippocampus hippocampus) have been spotted during routine conservation surveys over the last year or so, leading scientists to think they have probably established a resident population. The news has been kept secret until now.”

Why were the seahorses kept a secret, and why are we hearing about this now?

People like to think of seahorses as a friendly sort of creature, what with its slow swimming habits, its big round tummy, and its gently grasping tail. Friendly? Have you ever talked to a seahorse? No. Seahorses don’t talk to people. You know why? They don’t know English.

There has never been a seahorse that has lived in an English-speaking country that has bothered to learn to speak English. Does that remind you of anyone? It should: Illegal immigrants.

So, now we learn that these seahorses (unnaturally mixing land animals and ocean animals) have “established a resident population”. Residents, but not citizens. It kind of reminds me of George W. Bush’s idea of “guest workers” - except the stinking little seahorses aren’t doing any work. They’re just swimming around slowly in the River Thames, not contributing to society, but having babies (that the fathers are expected to take care of while the mother goes out and has a good time) and then expecting the government to take care of it all.

“Conserve my habitat!” they would say, if they could speak English. Well, what have the seahorses done to conserve their own habitat?

They think that they can come in and just set up their little river camps, driving down property values, without going through Customs? Where is their respect for the law?

Of course, some people would say that the seahorses don’t know about the law. Well, ignorance of the law is no excuse.

I think it’s worse than that. Just consider what Al Quaida could do with a group like this. They don’t have anything to do but seethe with resentment against the success of the English people. They’ve managed to learn how to cross borders without being protected, and they’ve been kept secret by the government.

These malcontents on the River Thames look like a classic terrorist sleeper cell to me, and given the government’s involvement, it looks like an inside job to me.

But now the secrecy has been lifted. Do you know why? Parliament has just passed a law that gives special protections to the seahorses, so that they can go about with their little nefarious schemes without bothering to hide anymore. They’ve been made untouchable.

Why is that law coming into effect now, in 2008? Is this some kind of October surprise, in April, designed to tip the American presidential election toward a certain candidate? The coincidence in timing is difficult to ignore.

What’s really going on at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City?

The cover stories for the repeated failures of the opera Tristan und Isolde are appearing increasingly thin. Five different actors have had to be used in the title roles of Tristan and Isolde:

Gary Lehman
Ben Heppner
Mac Master
Deborah Voigt
Janice Baird

Now, there is to be a sixth: Roger Dean Smith… or so he says.

What’s going on? Performances of Tristan und Isolde have had to be cancelled more than once, due to “mishaps”.

The tenor has fallen off the stage. Scenery has nearly killed the singers. There have been mysterious plagues that the publicists are dismissing as “stomach ailments” and “viruses”.

Nobody believes it, of course, and Manhattan’s elite opera scene is abuzz with rumor of what is really happening behind the curtain of the newest production of Tristan und Isolde.

To understand today’s dramatic events, one needs to go back to the time of the composition of Tristan und Isolde. It was in 1849, and Richard Wagner had to flee the city of Dresden because of what the establishment describes, euphemistically, as The May Uprising. Conventional history says that the May Uprising was a political battle between a repressive government and a mob seeking democratic rule. Conventional history is wrong.

The truth is that Richard Wagner had been dabbling in ancient folklore a little bit too deeply, and he came across some folkways that should have been forgotten: The dark arts of necromancy. Richard Wagner thought that he was writing a new opera to celebrate the culture of teutonic peoples, but really, he was casting a black spell to raise the dead. The May Uprising was not about politics. The truth is that the battle was an attempt to defend the living residents of Dresden from a zombie seige.

Just look at the history books. After the zombies started rising out of Dresden’s cemeteries, Richard Wagner ran away, because he didn’t know how to control his creations. The government soldiers in Dresden are then recorded as making a last stand in the Zeughaus.

Do you know what Zeughaus means, when translated into English? It means “House of the Undead”. The government soldiers went to the heart of the problem, to find the answer for the dreadful question: How do you kill somebody when they’re already dead?

The answer to that question was lost to history, but obviously they found some kind of way to control the zombies.

Richard Wagner, in the meantime, set up his operations again in Zurich, and this time he finished what he had started. He finished a final, revised draft of Tristan und Isolde, which still included some elements of necromancy, but not as much as in his first draft.

So, that’s what the people at the Met are facing right now: Black magic. It’s not as strong as when Richard Wagner first tried it in Dresden, but it is potentially deadly nonetheless.

I can’t tell you what’s going to happen for certain, but I can tell you this: There are just a few more performances of Tristan und Isolde at the Met, and I won’t be setting foot in Manhattan until after they are done.

I’ve got a theory about Bill Clinton’s obnoxious behavior, coming up with inaccurate and crude slurs against Barack Obama. I think he knows that he looks like a jerk, and I think he knows that it disgusts voters, and I think that’s exactly what he wants.

The Hillary Clinton for President campaign has never sought to build a real network of grassroots support - not of the kind we saw developing in 2004. They know too that Barack Obama is attracting new voters to the presidential primaries, and that new voters are those who are the most likely to lose their resolve and not show up to vote when they become discouraged.

Hillary Clinton’s support, on the other hand, tends to come from the institutional Democratic Party and its extensions at the state and local level. Longtime Democrats who have been regular voters are more likely to support a candidate who reminds them of Democrats in the past, rather than someone who challenges Democrats to break with the past.

If voters are getting turned off by Bill Clinton’s smarmy attacks against Barack Obama, and want to stop participating in the 2008 presidential primary elections, it’s more likely that those who walk away in disgust will be Barack Obama’s supporters. I think that Bill Clinton knows that, and is purposefully trying to create low voter turnout in the Super Tuesday primaries, so that Hillary Clinton can win.

Consider how, every time that one of Bill Clinton’s stupid comments gets publicity in the news, he doesn’t apologize and back off. He comes out the next day and says something even more outrageous. Bill Clinton knows exactly what he’s doing. He’s trying to drive everyone out of the Democratic primaries except for the people who are supporters of the establishment Clinton machine, and will put up with anything that Bill Clinton does.

At the American Museum of Natural History, a group of people calling itself Virgin Galactic has revealed its development of a spaceship that will take people off the Earth and into outer space for “Galactic” travel. There’s a catch, though. You have to be rich in order to get on board. Reservations for tickets begin at $200,000 each.

The question that discerning minds now must ask is this: Why are rich people willing to pay $200,000 to get into outer space away from the Earth’s surface? Rich people have the money to get information about things that the rest of us will never know about… until it’s too late.

Here’s what’s telling to me: These rich refugees from planet Earth are not content to merely get off the ground, even miles high up in an airplane. A standard airplane can get miles and miles above the surface of the Earth, but that’s enough for these skittish fat cats. Why?

It seems that it’s not so much the ground that the refugees desperate to board the Virgin Galactic spaceship are eager to escape. It’s the Earth’s atmosphere. It seems that our own planet’s atmosphere is on the verge of becoming deadly to human life. But how?

A “man” living in the United Kingdom who enigmatically calls himself “Bob the Alien” offers a possible explanation as he reflects on his oddly personal eyewitness experience on the planet Venus: “The cloud that covers Venus is not like the cloud that we have in our skies. It is full of deadly sulphuric acids droplets, not water droplets as on Earth. Nearly all of Venus’ atmosphere is made up of carbon dioxide, a poisonous, suffocating gas which would kill any living creature if it was breathed in.”

It seems that “Bob the Alien” believes that Earth’s atmosphere will soon change to become more like the atmosphere of Venus. That’s why he is offering to take some Earthlings with him on his space ship the next time he lifts off. “Join me and my dog, Bobsdog,” he says urgently, “for an exciting journey around your Solar System and beyond. We will visit peculiar planets, mysterious moons, amazing asteroids, crazy comets and, if we have time, we can look at some stars too!”

I don’t know this “Bob the Alien” character, but he seems quite a bit more compassionate than Virgin Galactic.

Earlier today on the Irregular Times front page, Jim issued a request for any actual evidence of vote suppression against Ron Paul in the New Hampshire primary election this week.

I didn’t think that I’d see any concrete evidence, so I was surprised when I came across this bit of news from the Ron Paul Forums. Someone only identified as mlingley made the following specific claim:

“My mom, aunt, and dad all voted for RP today in my hometown, My mom and aunt both work passing out ballots, and checking them off. I just looked at the politico map and it says their town has ZERO votes for Ron. Now i know that there isn’t corruption on voting in that little town, so where they reported it must be. What do I do, anyone know???

Originally Posted by sstjean View Post
This was posted to ronpaul-801 tonight: “This town numbers are wrong wrong wrong on this map. I am from Sutton originally and my parents and one aunt all voted for Ron Paul today and Sutton says 0. So this is wrong. This is a town that had 20 people counting the ballots and I have no reason to believe that they cheated. Small town and I was born and raised there. The real numbers will come in by morning. The electronic machines in the big towns are the ones we have to worry about.”

So, here’s one specific piece of evidence: Someone in Sutton, New Hampshire alleges that their mother, father and aunt all voted for Ron Paul, but no votes for Ron Paul were shown for Sutton.

A reader of the Ron Paul Forums reacts, “This is fabulous We’re gonna have to check every county in every state”. How would this be fabulous for a Ron Paul supporter? Do they want there to be voter suppression? Of course, there is a definition of the word “fabulous” that does not mean something good.

There are a couple of obvious problems with this supposed evidence, however. First, mlingley is anonymous. Second, mlingley cannot know who his or her relatives really voted for. They could have just told mlingley that they voted for Ron Paul, and actually voted for someone else.

As it is, the Ron Paul Forums now claims, without any more citation than mlingley’s original claim, that “apperantly this issue was adressed and the vote totals where changed, someone sent me a pm saying this I didnt confirm it, so check for yourselves, lol”.

Check it for yourselves indeed. So far, the evidence for anti-Paul skullduggery isn’t even skin deep.

Want proof that global warming is real? Even the government is preparing for it. That’s really interesting too, given that the government has spent so much time telling you that global warming does not exist.

Why didn’t they tell you? The reason is that, if you knew how bad global warming is going to get, you would freak out. Just think about the parameters that the Ames Laboratory, operated by the Department of Energy, is preparing for. This is from a press release that leaked out from the Ames Laboratory today:

“Ames Lab colleagues Bill McCallum and Matthew Kramer, have designed a high-performance permanent magnet alloy that operates with good magnetic strength at 200 degrees Celsius, or 392 degrees Fahrenheit, to help make electric drive motors more efficient and cost-effective. The work is part of the DOE’s Vehicle Technologies Program.”

Why is the Ames Laboratory working on magnets that will work at 392 degrees Fahrenheit? Why would they do such a thing?

Think, now. The answer is disturbingly direct. They must have information indicating that the earth’s climate is going to heat up until the air is 392 degrees!

“Vehicle Technologies Program,” they call it, an obvious false acronym for Very Thermal Planet.

392 degrees, and are they designing heat shields for your home? No. They’re designing magnets to do the work that humans currently do.

They don’t need you, except to work right now, and pay your taxes so that they can fund their programs in the Ames Laboratory to develop your magnetic replacements.

How very “efficient”. How very “cost-effective”.

Never forget that there is no U or I in the “Department of Energy”.

The recently budding elitist echo story about how great it would be if a billionaire could run for President on the basis of his having a lot of money and the support of a group of powerful Washington D.C. insiders is based upon the assumption that the American people have very short memories. Given my experience in discussing political issues with other Americans, that’s a pretty safe assumption. It’s a sadly calculating foundation for a presidential campaign, though.

The billionaire is, of course, Michael Bloomberg. Think about it now… as you’ve gone about your daily business, have you ever heard anybody say, “Oh, if only Michael Bloomberg would run for President!” Of course you haven’t. That’s why Bloomberg will need his billions of dollars to spend on television advertisements, to try to convince you that you’ve just been dying to hand over power to him.

The thing about Michael Bloomberg, is that for all his talk about “unity”, he complains a lot about problems made by bad people. Which bad people? Well, Mikey never says, exactly… because… he’s one of them.

Today, at Politico, Bloomberg was quoted as whining, “People have stopped working together, government is dysfunctional. … There’s no accountability today,!”

The government is dysfunctional? Michael Bloomberg helped to put the government into place, remember? He sent out his New York City police to infiltrate groups of anti-Bush protesters, to spy on them and bring the information back to New York City Republican headquarters. He did it for George W. Bush, his big buddy in the White House.

Remember 2004. George W. Bush and Michael Bloomberg were the best of friends. It’s only since the Republican Party became unpopular that Bloomberg has tried to re-cast himself as an independent.

Independent. Oh, sure. A big city mayor with immense personal riches and Wall Street connections who first was a Democrat, and then a Republican, and then neither. When Mike Bloomberg says “independent”, what he means is “opportunistic”.

Opportunistic, like a rat jumping from a sinking ship, now telling us that he’s been with us all on dry land all along.

Beware of billionaires who complain that the system isn’t working. Their idea of a solution will be worse than the problem.

Scientists have discovered a clam that is over 400 years old, pulled it up from the depths of the cold ocean near Iceland, and killed it. Why?

It turns out that the ancient clam, enigmatically described as a “quahog”, had a lot of information. That information, it seems, could threaten to reveal a centuries old conspiracy.

Just consider what professor Chris Richardson, of the School of Ocean Sciences at “Bangor University” has to say about clams like the one that was dredged up: “They are like tiny tape-recorders, in effect, sitting on the sea-bed and integrating signals.”

Stop and consider that for just a moment. Clams, operating as tiny tape recorders, spread across the Atlantic Ocean, listening for centuries, and integrating their signals into a gigantic intelligence network.

It’s clear to me that these clams are spying on us. But for who?

The answer comes again from the experts at the so-called “Bangor University”. They’ve determined that the clam they discovered, the oldest of them all, was planted in the ocean when Elizabeth I was Queen of the British Empire. The British, as is well known, had just conquered the Spanish, and had recovered from the economic drain of the Crusades.

The Crusades had brought many interesting… artifacts, let us say… to the European continent from the Middle East, where Islamic scholars had been holding the secrets of the five thousand year-old Egyptian empire. Some of those artifacts have been described as “lost at sea”?

What if they were not lost? What if they were left in the sea on purpose?

A British royal family that keeps its secrets. The mysterious death of Diana, Princess of Wales. The unexpected defeat of the Spanish Armada. The Bermuda Triangle - a British holding. Posh Spice’s arrival in Los Angeles. And now, a four hundred year-old clam threatens to reveal the string connecting them all.

The British Superpower is not dead after all. It has merely been sleeping, in the form of a secret society ringing the Atlantic Ocean, waiting, and listening to us… with its tape recorder clams.

Last week, Irregular Times writer Peregrin Wood wrote about a super-secure space mission dedicated to releasing microscopic animals called tardigrades into the deep, cold, empty, irradiated vacuum of outer space. Peregrin Wood promised that “Any time now, scientists will examine the water bears that were retrieved from the vacuum of outer space, and look to see if they are still alive.”

Oh, how naive.

Four days later now, and the report on the tardigrades from outer space is, dare I say, a little bit tardy.

What are they trying to hide? More importantly, what are they really trying to do, exposing the tardigrades to the cosmic radiation of outer space? Anyone who has read a Fantastic 4 comic book can imagine the implications of super-powered little microscopic animals unleashed on the world.

A dictator with that kind of power could rule the world. No one would have the power to resist. Is that what this space mission was really all about? Designing a new tardigrade biological weapon to enable the wicked people behind the scenes to make us all slaves?

The lead researcher on the Tardigrades In Space project, K. Ingemar Jönsson, has not answered these questions. How convenient. I wonder why? Could it be that no one has bothered to translate the phrase, “None dare call it a tardigrade conspiracy” into Swedish?

Every time I think of AT&T, I think of that jingle they had back in the 1980s: “It’s the right choice - AT&T!” After today, however, I’m putting new words to that music.

“The Big Brother Choice - AT&T”

This statement comes from an attorney for AT&T, testifying in the US 9th Circuit Court, which was hearing lawsuits by people who have evidence that the government and AT&T have been collaborating to establish a massive electronic surveillance program to spy against peaceful, law-abiding Americans: “The government has said that whatever AT&T is doing with the government is a state secret. As a consequence, no evidence can come in whether the individuals’ communications were ever intercepted or whether we played any role in it.”

Oh, how convenient that AT&T does not have to officially acknowledge its involvement in the electronic spy program. Of course, if there were no such program, AT&T’s attorney could simply say so, right? That wouldn’t be a state secret.

AT&T has, for all intents and purposes, admitted that there is a massive program to spy on Americans as they use the Internet and make telephone calls, and that AT&T is helping the government to make the spy program work. Only, AT&T thumbed its nose at the judge and said that the judge didn’t have the right to know about it, and the American people didn’t have a right to know about the AT&T program to spy on Americans either.

So, AT&T is helping the government spy against their customers - even when those customers haven’t broken any law. That’s not just low down. That’s bad for business, AT&T.

Thanks to John Stracke for bringing to my attention today’s news that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has gained new powers to rush through death penalty cases to quick execution even when the quality of justice is sacrificed in the practice.

It’s a bald-faced grab for power. Executing terrorists fast has no benefit to domestic security (or Homeland Security, as the new politics of fear tells me I’m supposed to say). In fact, quickly executing people who may be able to give valuable information hurts security, as the too-quick execution of Timothy McVeigh showed. Too many secrets about the people behind the Oklahoma City bombings died with McVeigh.

The new death penalty powers come right on the heels of Alberto Gonzales getting powers to force Americans to participate in huge electronic spying programs against their fellow citizens, in what looks more and more like the old Total Information Awareness project.

Those who have read the new law that gives those powers, the Protect America Act, know that there is only one other person in the federal government who shares the power with Alberto Gonzales to run its Internet and telephone spying programs: The Director of National Intelligence, Mike McConnell.

Michael McConnell also was caught in a grab for power today. It seems that Director McConnell has pushed through yet another dramatic new program to spy against Americans. Domestic law enforcement agencies now have the power to use military spy satellites that were designed to spy against the Soviet Union to peer down at the United States, and see what people are are doing here - no terrorist threat required for the spying.

This is a dramatic consolidation of power in the hands of just two men in the federal government - Gonzales and McConnell. Why the power grab now? What do they plan to do with that power that they weren’t doing before?

I’m speaking to the small segment of Americans who is paying attention and cares about preserving the liberty that is the foundation of American government. Something very big is going on, right before your eyes.

Keep an eye to the skies… and wave hello to McConnell and Gonzales.

As I look at the issue of the possible relationship between a new Total Information Awareness program in the National Security Agency and the sudden urgency with which the Protect America Act was passed, the thing that piques my interest is the timeline of events.

I searched Google News for information related to FISA. Before July 25, I find nothing much. There’s nothing from the Bush Administration about an urgent need to “reform” FISA in order to expand the authority of Alberto Gonzales to spy against Americans. Zilch. When FISA is mentioned, it’s in articles that slam Bush and Cheney, or call for the impeachment of Alberto Gonzales.

On July 22 and 23, the only articles you’ll read about FISA have to do with the FISA World Rowing Championship for people under the age of 23 in Scotland. There’s no push at all from the White House to reform FISA. No urgency. No special terrorist threat. No need for new legislation.

Then, all of a sudden, on July 25, that changes. On July 25, United Press International publishes an article saying that Congressman John Boehner, out of the blue, is supporting a bill introduced on July 24 by Republican Heather Wilson that was like the first draft of the Protect America Act. It’s H.R.3138, given the cumbersome title: To amend the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 to update the definition of electronic surveillance.

Electronic surveillance, huh? What else happened on July 24 to do with electronic surveillance? Oh, yes - U.S. District Court Judge Vaughn Walker issued a ruling saying that the government’s effort to stop a lawsuit by the state governments of Connecticut, Maine, Missouri, New Jersey and Vermont, demanding had no merit… except for possibly the claim that state secrets were at stake, and that claim would be judged in the August 15 hearing. Those 5 states were seeking information about how the privacy of their citizens had been violated by telephone companies like AT&T, in collaboration with the NSA.

Judge Vaughn Walker refuses to kowtow to the Bush White House, the case is going forward, and Judge Walker announces that he will make a decision about whether what the Bush team calls “state secrets” can be revealed on August 15.

Boom! All of a sudden, it’s a full court press by the Bush White House saying that Alberto Gonzales must be given new spy powers… exactly the kind of spy powers it is alleged in the states’ lawsuit that he is already using. Furthermore, George W. Bush insists, mysteriously, that Alberto Gonzales must be given the new spy powers, which include the power to keep all information related to the spying sealed and secret, before Congress goes into its August recess. September will be too late, Bush says.

George W. Bush, who never met an August vacation during the War On Terror that he didn’t like, all of a sudden insists that if Congress doesn’t give Alberto Gonzales exactly the spy powers that Bush says Gonzales needs, he will call a special session of Congress to force them to pass the Protect America Act, not in September, but in early August.

I don’t see a smoking gun. There is no memo I have seen that says “We need to get the Protect America Act passed, because Judge Walker’s decision will force us at that hearing on August 15th to reveal our giant computer database spying program gathering the personal details of Americans’ habits on the Internet.” However, I see a gun, and not too far away from it, I see a wisp of smoke rising into the air. Maybe someone was smoking, or burning incense, but it looks mighty funny to me.

It’s a fascinating theory, this idea that the Protect America Act was rushed through to protect a Total Information Awareness program. It provokes questions, and reconsiderations of some moments in Bush Administration history.

The question that comes into my mind is this: Given what we know about the tenacity with which the Bush White House has held onto its powers, no matter now outrageous the claims to power are, how likely is it that George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and Alberto Gonzales just relinquished the Total Information Awareness program, as they appeared to do at the time, back in 2002? Not likely at all. It’s just not in the character of the Bush White House.

In fact, as was pointed out a while ago here, the Total Information Awareness program never died. It just went underground in the National Security Agency.

Oh, connection! The National Security Agency is where the alleged warrantless wiretapping that the Protect America Act is supposed to legalize was taking place.

The question that now rests most heavily upon my mind is this: How do we test the hypothesis? What are some of the pieces of information that would prove or disprove it?

Barring that, what are some of the pieces of information that would strengthen the Hepting v. AT&T hypothesis, without going so far as to prove it?

Have you ever wondered why the population of so many small towns in America is getting smaller, even as the population of the United States grows larger? Oh sure, the “population experts” say that young people are leaving small towns to go to the cities, but think about it: Have you ever actually seen most of the people who have left your home town after high school in order to go to the city? Maybe you’ve seen one or two of them, but what ever happened to the rest?

Yes, everyone says that those people are happy off living somewhere else, having successful careers. Think about it, though. How do you know it’s true? Don’t those stories just seem a little bit too convenient, all wrapped up so neat and tidy?

It’s been keeping me up nights, just thinking about it, and thinking about it, until the wee hours of the morning. Think about it long enough, and it starts to become clear that these stories are all just efforts to explain away a deeper, more terrifying truth: The American Army is invading small towns with helicopters mounted with ray guns that turn people into wooden statues.

It’s the only explanation.

You may not believe me, but I have proof. I have this photograph. Seeing is believing.

They turned the kid around the corner into a wooden statue, and I said nothing, because I was not a wooden statue. They turned my mailman into a wooden statue, and I said nothing, because I was not a wooden statue. They turned my neighbor into a wooden statue, and I said nothing, because I was not a wooden statue. Then, when they turned me into a wooden statue, there was no one left to speak for me, because everyone was a wooden statue.

Before I go to sleep I like to read a few pages of something, anything, to take my mind away from the days events. This summer I have been reading Miles Copeland’s 1969 The Game of Nations: the Amorality of Power Politics, about Egypt’s leader Gamal Abdel Nasser and the events between his rise to power in 1952 and the 1967 Six Day War between the Arabs and Israel. Last night’s page was particularly effective. I fell asleep on page 206 (literally “on” the page) with all the lights on. I offer here a selection from p. 204:

A player of limited popular resources such as Nasser is understandably tempted to use fanatics, whereby, as has been proved time and again in history, small minorities can cause majorities to make concessions to them out of all proportion to their numbers or the strength of their arguments–if, indeed, they have any clear arguments at all. When entirely on their own (and this is rare), fanatics sooner or later make such nuisances of themselves that the majority clamps down on them, paying whatever price it takes. In the hands of nonfanatical leadership, however, they can become a weapon of flexibility and finesse. They can be brought to a halt just short of suicide, while their willingness to go to suicidal lengths is so manifestly genuine that the opponent cannot know where they will halt–or even be sure that they will halt. The nonsense they talk can be polished up so that it not only makes a modicum of sense, but seems to be on a high moral plane. So long as the more vocal members keep their mouths shut (or can be kept away from direct contact with journalists) a fanatical movement can be excellent public relations material. They are “a valiant body of men fighting for their beliefs against overwhelming odds.” They are sometimes as valuable dead as they are alive. They are beautifully expendable.

One hundred and two more pages left. It’s going to be a restful summer.

Note: for biographical information on Miles Copeland see here and here.

Okay, so it’s not Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, but here’s another fantastic title I’m thinking of tonight: George W. Bush and the Cut and Pasted Soldiers.
I’m thinking of this title after seeing a really scary little page of a graphic used by the George W. Bush for President campaign, which shows how the Bush campaign cut and pasted pictures of soldiers in an audience before Bush so as to make it appear that there were more soldiers than appeared in reality.

http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/farid/maat/images/georgewbush.jpg 
It seems that soldiers aren’t individuals, as far as George W. Bush is concerned, just props, one the same as the next, all just tools to further his own ambition.

What a sicko.

Help save Salvia in Illinois, Time is running out fast!!! Email our Governor or better yet fax, if you have a fax machine 

If Fax:  Address Fax to Governor Rod Blagojevich, subject line: Citizens request that you line item veto:  HB0457: page 7 LRB095 04451 RLC 26428 b and remove Salvia from the bill.  Governor at the following fax numbers:  217-524-6262 or 312-814-4862

This is what to fax or email the Governor: (COPY AND PASTE THE BELOW)

Governor Rod Blagojevich:  Citizens request that you line item veto:  HB0457: page 7 LRB095 04451 RLC 26428 b  and remove Salvia from the bill.  

Citizens request that you line item veto:  HB0457: page 7 LRB095 04451 RLC 26428 b and remove Salvia from the bill.  Salvia is not a plant that should be considered for this bill.  If you make this plant illegal not only will you be eliminating 100,000 of dollars a year in tax revenue to the state of Illinois, you will be shutting down businesses and putting people out of work.  Salvia is currently us