Happy Halloween

I only discovered this guy last night and he blew me away. His style of music is a dying dinosaur from an era when folk actually put feeling into music instead of samples, sound effects & babbling bullshit. I hope y'all find it worthwhile too.

Thursday Funnies

Wandering around the zerohedge website, I found a link to the blog of William Goss.

Mr. Goss has some forthright things to say about America.

They say a country gets the politicians it deserves or perhaps it deserves the politicians it gets. Whatever the order, America is next in line, and as we go to the polls in a few short days it’s incumbent upon a sleepy and befuddled electorate to at least ask ourselves, “What’s going on here?” Democrat or Republican, Elephant or Donkey, nothing much ever seems to change. Each party has shown it can add hundreds of billions of dollars to the national debt with little to show for it or move our military from one country to the next chasing phantoms instead of focusing on more serious problems back home. This isn’t a choice between chocolate and vanilla folks, it’s all rocky road: a few marshmallows to get you excited before the election, but with a lot of nuts to ruin the aftermath.

Each party’s campaign tactics remind me of airport terminals pre-9/11 when solicitors only yards apart would compete for the attention and dollars of travelers. “Save the Whales,” one would demand, while the other would pose as its evil twin – “Eat Whale Blubber,” the makeshift sign would read. It didn’t matter which slogan grabbed you, the end of the day’s results always produced a pot of money for them and the whales were neither saved nor eaten. American politics resemble an airline terminal with a huckster’s bowl waiting to be filled every two years.

And the paramount problem is not that we contribute so willingly or even so cluelessly, but that there are only two bowls to choose from. Thomas Friedman, the respected author of The World Is Flat, and a weekly New York Times Op-Ed author, recently suggested “ripping open this two-party duopoly and having it challenged by a serious third party” unencumbered by special interest megabucks. “We basically have two bankrupt parties, bankrupting the country,” was the explicit sentiment of his article, and I couldn’t agree more – whales or no whales. Was it relevant in 2004 that John Kerry was or was not an admirable “swift boat” commander? Will the absence of a mosque within several hundred yards of Ground Zero solve our deficit crisis? Is Christine O’Donnell really a witch? Did Meg Whitman employ an illegal maid? Who cares! We are being conned, folks; Democrats and Republicans alike. What have you really heard from either party that addresses America’s future instead of its prurient overnight fascination with scandal? Shame on them and of course, shame on us. We’re getting what we deserve. Vote NO in November – no to both parties. Vote NO to a two-party system that trades promises for dollars and hope for power, and leaves the American people high and dry.

Y'see, I always knew I was a rich guy stuck in a poor guy's life.
Mr. Goss has obviously been struck with the lightning of righteousness and the thunderbolt of honesty.

Mr. Goss goes on to detail many truths obvious to those paying attention, but truths that are all but ignored by our current media ho-bags. Rather than just steal it all, I advise you to visit & read it for yourself.

The first 10 paragraphs will rouse your self righteous fury and urge you to "VOTE THE BUMS OUT" in our upcoming election.

Yeehah!

If you seek to keep the indignation alive though, I'd recommend you skip the last two paragraphs, otherwise your patriotic parade of empowerment will wither like a bouffant hairdo in a pummeling rainstorm.

We will tell them this. Certain Turkeys receive a Thanksgiving pardon or they just run faster than others! We intend PIMCO to be one of the chosen gobblers. We haven’t been around for 35+ years and not figured out a way to avoid the November axe. We are a survivor and our clients are not going to be Turkeys on a platter. You may not be strutting around the barnyard as briskly as you used to – those near 10% annualized yields in stocks and bonds are a thing of the past – but you’re gonna be around next year, and then the next, and the next. Interest rates may be rock bottom, but there are other ways – what we call “safe spread” ways –to beat the axe without taking a lot of risk: developing/emerging market debt with higher yields and non-dollar denominations is one way; high quality global corporate bonds are another. Even U.S. Agency mortgages yielding 200 basis points more than those 1% Treasuries, qualify as “safe spreads.” While our “safe spread” terminology offers no guarantees, it is designed to let you sleep at night with less interest rate volatility. The Fed wants to buy, so come on, Ben Bernanke, show us your best and perhaps last moves on Wednesday next. You are doing what you have to do, and it may or may not work. But either way it will likely signify the end of a great 30-year bull market in bonds and the necessity for bond managers and, yes, equity managers to adjust to a new environment.

If a country gets the politicians it deserves, then the same can be said of an investor – you’re gonna get what you deserve. Vote No to Republican and Democratic turkeys on Tuesday and Yes to PIMCO on Wednesday. We hope to be your global investment authority for a new era of “SAFE spread” with lower interest rate duration and price risk, and still reasonably high potential returns. For us, and hopefully you, Turkey Day may have to be postponed indefinitely.

In other words, when "Disneyland" shuts down, and the "American Ponzi Scheme" unravels, those who invest with him will be safe as babes in their mother's arms.

Gee, I really really love when everything, even "da truth," turns out to be nothing more than a big angst ridden commercial.

Don't you?

To Pole Shift Or Not To Pole Shift

"Archeo-astromer" Patrick Geryl predicts that there's trouble a-brewin' on Homestead Earth.

From his website:

Author Patrick Geryl came to the staggering conclusion that the Earth will soon be subjected to an immense disaster. The cause: upheavals in the sun's magnetic fields will generate gigantic solar flares that will affect the polarity of the entire Earth. The result: our magnetic field will reverse all at once, with catastrophic consequences for humanity.

Massive earthquakes will demolish all buildings on the planet, and instigate colossal tsunamis and intense volcanic activity. In fact, the Earth's crust will shift, sweeping continents thousands of miles away from their present positions.

There is ample evidence in the literature of ancient civilizations that such disasters have occured in the past and also clues that they knew when another such calamity would occur. The Dresden Codex of the Maya for instance, contains the secrets of the sunspot cycle, about which our modern astronomers know almost nothing!

In his books, Patrick Geryl continues his scientific analysis of the millennia-old codes of the Maya and Egyptians that refer to the coming super-disaster. He determines that both cultures arose from an antediluvian civilization which was able to calculate the previous polar shifts and that we should take very seriously their calculations that place the next reversal in 2012!

After much deep & penetrating research, I've come to the conclusion that Geryl is full of shit.
While there is a major Earth change on the horizon, I doubt that it will only involve the Earth's magnetic field.

I believe that once the denizens of the American continent manage to attain their goal of mass super-sizing, the resulting weight imbalance brought about by having 300 million pudgy Michelin Men & Women on one side of the world will cause the entire planet to just shift on its axis.

The resulting carnage will force the closure of many necessary services such as McDonald's drive thrus & local beer merchants, thereby confusing & discombobulating
an already confused & discombobulated populace of halfwit illiterate Americans. These Americans, long accustomed to easy access to cyborg meat & liquid sedation, will suddenly find themselves in the unenviable, and heretofore unknown, position others in the world describe as "being hungry."

As this knowledge sinks in, panic will quickly ensue as all attempts at restoring order are drowned out by the collective rumble of 300 million empty American tummies growling in unison.

Some will turn to Jesus but these poor unfortunates will quickly discover that, even with huge amounts ketchup dolloped on like whipped topping, the Book of Ecclesiastes will never taste like a Big Mac.

At this point, Martial Law will be imposed. This feeble last attempt will be thwarted as huge crowds of ravenous fatties descend on anyone within chewing distance.
Eventually this cannibal orgy will distill the American population down to one giant fat guy, allowing the French to capture it in a super-sized cage baited with 10,000 lbs. of FREEDOM FRIES. The cage, rigged with the hypnotic mind control device we know as ESPN, will allow the French to lull the big dumb yank into a stupor, thereby giving them the opportunity to load the American wide behind into a really fucking big rocket & blast it into outer space.

At this point, the Earth will teeter totter back into position like a see saw after the fat kid falls off.

Of course, then the whole sordidly gluttonous cycle inevitably begins anew as we uncontrollably hurtle towards the next pole shift.

As you know, it's common knowledge amongst the world's elite that the recent upswing in UFO sightings are the result of the alien's attempts to construct a giant slingshot in our upper atmosphere so that the fat dumb planet destroying American blob can be caught and then jettisoned back towards its home world.

Currently, the UN is clandestinely addressing this problem by appointing an alien ambassador who will attempt to negotiate dumping rights for such a large quantity of meat product.

Stay tuned for more updates...

A Moldy Hunk Of Clarified Butter

Upon rereading my previous post, I realized that I completely overlooked what really bothers me about Abel Danger's anti-Greenpeace rant; namely, Abel Danger's pseudo-moralistic outrage at Greenpeace's use of "propaganda."
Abel Danger isn't unique in this regard. Every group on the receiving end of spin seems to conveniently forget that their side is also a judicious user of the curve ball.

In my opinion, all this does is deflect any serious discussion away from the glaring "elephant-in-the-room" factoid that most of the information we ingest in a day is little more than someone's propaganda.

I'm sure that's exactly how the people running our dysfunctional consensus reality want things to run.

The uber-rich give amply to both parties. They are beyond the dipshit partisan ideology that obsesses we proles. I doubt that they give a tinker's tit about which wing does the leadership pantomime as long as they own the wing.

I hope this hunk of bread spread clarifies things. If not, just put me down as another annoying peasant.



It really isn't that I'm against propaganda. Face facts, without the fairy tales, the herd would panic. A nation of adult adolescents who seem to have stopped maturing at around their 15th birthday are not prepared for adult discussions. They need fun.
And giggles. Lots & lots of giggles. They'll accept the serial rapist as long as a cute puppy story follows on its heels.

I recently watched an episode of Jesse Ventura's Conspiracy Theory.
On it, Jesse intrepidly braved the wrath of the elite by attempting to expose "the elite's" massive tunneling effort, their minions toiling to build them bunkers against the coming 2012 catastrophe.

To be succinct, it sucked. Jesse's Posse had research skills that would embarrass David Icke. Evidently, if it's on the web it's the GODDAMN TRUTH! And if someone JUST LOOKS JESSE IN THE EYE & APPEARS TO BELIEVE THEIR OWN BULLSHIT, that is good enough for the Jester.

But that's why shows like that exist, isn't it? To make any thought of "conspiracy" look completely & utterly foolish. Shoddy research, dubious sources, huge leaps of proof challenged imagination make it easy to laugh at. And those not laughing are kept busy chasing phantoms & ghosts.

All my criticisms aside, what I found utterly, gut bustingly hilarious, was this section:



It starts out with Jesse's British hottie googley-eyed & amazed that the U.S. Government has "bases" in the middle of fucking nowhere. And...and...(gosh, I'm amazed too)...and they have airstrips there too.

Wow!

Then Jesse talks to some fellows who are turning old abandoned missile silos into upscale underground condos.

Really.

This ties in with another Posse member's intrepid expose of the Cheyenne Mountain underground bunker.

Now here's where my gut busted & all my bile leaked out.

Cheyenne Mountain was developed to counter the dreaded demon known as

NUCLEAR ANNIHILATION.

The U.S. Government & their elite compadres dreamed up a strategy known as M.A.D., or Mutually Assured Destruction, which posited that any nuclear war with the Soviets would result in the complete destruction of both sides.

It seems to be a system of deterrence based on the idea that's it's better to be dead than Red.

Did you catch that motherfucker? I said

BETTER DEAD THAN RED

Except, that really isn't true.

Oh, our fearless leaders wouldn't have the tiniest qualm about watching us turn into irradiated mutants or shadows stuck to walls, but they've always envisioned another fate for themselves. They named that stillborn little nightmare of an idea

CONTINUITY OF GOVERNMENT.

And thankfully, by the grace of the dumbfuck masses, they were able (abel?) to nursemaid their dreams into fruition.

In other words, yoohoo America funded the mass construction of instruments of their own annihilation while they simultaneously funded the construction of an escape capsule for the people who sold them on the weapons in the first place.

The only thing ingenuous about this plan is the blatant way it never, not once, "misunderestimated" the stupidity of the average American pud yanker.

Let's put our time traveling earphone thing-a-ma-bobs on and have a listen to that twirling and spinning turd of a conversation:

"Look, we've got an idea. Since the Commies suck big stinky donkey dick, we've developed this strategy that could, quite possibly, lead to you, the American people, being magically transformed into a really humongous pile of charcoal briquettes. Ummmm...would that be a problem?"

"No...good. Actually that would be more than good, that would be utterly splendid."

"What's that? Where will we, your leaders be when everyone plops on to the nuclear Coleman?

Ah, yes...well that brings me to my second proposal...

We, your leaders, also understand the necessity of ensuring that our way of life carries on. We need to have someone who will pick up the shattered pieces afterwards. And, quite frankly, who better than the folks who did the shattering? So...ummmm...we're going to be hunkered down inside a mountain with about a million cases of Ensure. Y'see, we need to maintain a...ummmm...a con...a continuity of...of...government...yeah, that's it...a motherhumpin' con-ta-new-a-tea of guv'ment.

You buy that, don't you pal?

Look, the quicker you say "yes," the quicker you can go home & click on ESPN."

Meanwhile, Jesse & his crew are chasing twee tales of underground bunkers & sunspot doomsday, seemingly unaware that we, the ever watchful & competent masses, already assented to the insertion of that big stubbly hunk of "elite" peckerwood long ago.

But that's okay. I'm a goddamn patriot. And if my metamorphosis into a blackened cinder ensures the survival of one rich guy, it was worth it.

Really.

Man, I hope there's a game on....

A Cursory Look At "AbelDanger.net"

At Eric's insistence, I paid a quick visit to the Abel Danger website. The first post there derailed me a bit since I expected something else entirely.

They offer up this video



and then ask me to "spot the fallacies" used by Greenpeace in their ad.

First off, asking me to "spot the fallacies" in a video that offers "pop-up fallacies" is as manipulative as Greenpeace's use of a little Eminem wanna-be to dispense their views.

2nd, the anti-human argument is not a modern phenomena invented by "a coalition of Maoists, Trotskyists, and Canadian members of the Sierra Club."
Its pedigree is fairly ancient, existing at the heart of most religious traditions.

For example, the Bible says this:

Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity.
What profit hath a man of all his labor which he taketh under the sun?
For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.

While the Buddhist Dhammapada says this:

Look at your body-
A painted puppet, a poor toy
Of jointed parts ready to collapse,
A diseased and suffering thing
With a head full of false imaginings.

There is also a modern strain of philosophical pessimism that has been exiled to the fringe by the "Gee, ain't it great to be alive" crowd.

The German philosopher Julius Bahnsen wrote this back in 1847:

Man is a self-conscious Nothing.

Bahnsen believed that reality is "the expression of a unified, unchanging force" whose very nature is monstrous, "resulting in a universe of indiscriminate butchery and mutual slaughter amongst its individuated parts."
In Bahnsen's view, "everything is engaged in a disordered fantasia of carnage."

Norwegian, Peter Wessel Zapffe, saw it as a problem of self-consciousness. Zapffe posited that the rise in consciousness made humans the only species aware of "the tragedy of existence," and thereby cursed because of this knowledge.

In a piece entitled Fragments of an Interview,
Zapffe says this:

The sooner humanity dares to harmonize itself with its biological predicament, the better. And this means to willingly withdraw in contempt for its wordly terms, just as the heat-craving species went extinct when temperatures dropped. To us, it is the moral climate of the cosmos that is intolerable, and a two-child policy could make our discontinuance a pain-free one. Yet instead we are expanding and succeeding everywhere, as necessity has taught us to mutilate the formula in our hearts. Perhaps the most unreasonable effect of such invigorating vulgarization is the doctrine that the individual "has a duty" to suffer nameless agony and a terrible death if this saves or benefits the rest of the group. Anyone who declines is subjected to doom and death, instead of revulsion being directed at the world-order engendering of the situation. To any independent observer, this plainly is to juxtapose incommensurable things; no future metamorphosis can justify the pitiful blighting of a human being against his will. It is upon a pavement of battered destinies that the survivors storm ahead toward new bland sensations and mass death.

While this was published in 1959, the ideas expressed are no different from those put forth in his 1933 book, The Last Messiah.

Abel Danger, by grafting a modern political interpretation on something as old as pessimism, do the philosophical truisms at the heart of pessimism a grave disservice.
They offer no evidence to refute Greenpeace's claims, choosing instead the illusory moral high road that finds fault with using children to proselytize views they don't understand.

To be fair, they should at least point out that the human system these alleged "Maoists, Trotskyists, and Canadian members of the Sierra Club" are attempting to overthrow have refined the exploitation of children, whether as under-age Free Zone sweatshop workers or as targets of million dollar ad campaigns designed to open their parents wallets, to a fine and quite nefarious art form.

"Blessed Are The Cheesemakers."

Maybe it's just me. Maybe my perceptions have become so askew as I approach 50 that I've come to see reality as one long Monty Python skit. Albeit, a bloody one. Maybe a better analogy would be Monty Python as created by the purveyors of the Saw franchise.

While I've always had problems taking reality seriously, I think that the election of George Bush shoved us all squarely into the realm of the surreal world of Pythonesque sadism .

For example, let's look at GW:



The only thing differentiating him from these fellows:



is that GW, instead of shooting himself, kills everybody else instead.
Among his wacky antics, the manipulation of terror alerts:



demonstrate GW's mastery of this Pythonesque principle:



It would be nice to say this ended with George Bush, but, alas, it hasn't.
Two extraordinarily popular political commentators





seem to model their on air histrionics after this shopkeeper:



making themselves appear to be nothing more than Python ejaculate.

Some recent additions to the "Python skit as reality" canon include Christine O'Donnell, who appears, in many ways, to be the quintessential Python skit come to life. With her pentagram picnics



& her "I am not a witch" denials



it appears she could be wandering around clutching this bit of Holy Grail ephemera:



While her MTV ad for "sexual purity"



makes me think that her SALT crew spontaneously breaks into rousing renditions of this song at the least provocation.



It all would be quite amusing if she wasn't running for office. Although, her recent political debate:



makes her a perfect candidate for this game show:



My second example was called to my attention by my friend Eric. His name is Col. Russell Williams & he is responsible for tipping me over "the edge" into full blown Python paranoia. Having read Eric's news byte pastie, I did a web search on Mr. Williams & found these lovely images:





As my eye twitched & my sphincter puckered, my carefully constructed charade began to crumble and the truth slapped me in the mouth like a dead carp.



Do you see? Do you understand? We're all living in a "reality" that appears to be the bastard child of Monty Python & torture porn.
Colonel Williams, ruthless degenerate politically connected panty wearing wanker that is, proves this point quite succinctly I think.

Quite frankly, Colonel Williams contribution to our sleazy human soiree of satire & screaming has made me want to change my name to Mr. Creosote.

"Better."

"Better get a bucket..."

O.K.

After a meticulously long investigation, and after Dick Corp. stocks took an invigorating dip in the crapper, we here at Dick Central have decided that we have a legal right to blog, irregardless of content or author. We've also decided that the whole "integrity" issue is "overblown." So, NYAH, NYAH, NYAH to any naysayers out there.

WASHINGTON – The pace of U.S. home foreclosures may not slow much after all.

Bank of America said Monday that it plans to resume seizing more than 100,000 homes in 23 states next week. It said it has a legal right to foreclose despite accusations that documents used in the process were flawed.

Other major lenders have yet to say whether they will follow suit and resume foreclosures in the 23 states that require a judge's approval. But analysts said they expect the move by the nation's biggest bank will mean other lenders will proceed with a wave of foreclosures that have depressed the housing market.

Banking analyst Nancy Bush of NAB Research said other lenders are likely to follow because foreclosure practices were similar from bank to bank.

"We'll be back to square one by the end of the year," she said.

Oh Shit!!!!!

All right, it has come to my attention that there have been some improprieties here at Dick Central. Temporary employees have been signing my name to posts that I haven't written. In some cases these "Robo-Bloggers" have been churning out 2 or 3 posts a week, a pace that flies in the face of the meticulous attention to detail that you've come to expect from Dick Corp. Therefore, I'm calling a halt to all blogging until a thorough investigation can be undertaken.
We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

“Our national drug is alcohol. We tend to regard the use any other drug with special horror.”

(Originally this was going to be a short comment reply, but it took on a life of its own & led me in a completely different direction. I should state that I found no answers just more questions.)

During the past weekend, a young black temp was working with us. We started talking about the war in Afghanistan & Irag & he mentioned two of his friends who had recently returned from combat duty in the Middle East. They told him that "the terrorists shoot up pure adrenaline before every battle." This adrenaline fix turns them into super fighters who can, amongst other amazing talents, "leap over a two story building with ease."


At first, I thought the guy was either incredibly credulous & they were pulling his chain or his friends were the credulous ones & the US government was yanking their chain. Where could they possibly get all that adrenaline? Didn't seem even remotely feasible.

But a quick web search demonstrated that the story definitely had legs, albeit of the mutant variety.

First, I found this quote form Staff Sergeant David Bellavia's book about the Battle of Fallujah, House to House: An Epic Memoir of War.

In Muqdadiyah, my squad watched a drug-crazed Mahdi militiaman charge Cory Brown's Bradley. The gunner blasted him with coax machine-gun fire, shredding his legs. He tumbled off the Bradley and flopped face up onto the street. As we approached him, he started to laugh. The laughter grew into a hysteria-tinged cackle, then ended with a bone-chilling keen. That froze us cold. Watching us with wild eyes, he then pulled a bottle of pills out of a blood-soaked pocket and drained its contents into his mouth. Then he went for something under his jacket. Thinking he was about to detonate a bomb vest, three of us opened fire and riddled him with bullets. We shot and shot until he finally stopped moving.

Leaving my men behind, I went to investigate the corpse. His right arm was torn off. His legs were nothing but punctured meat. Most of his face was gone, and only a bloody lump remained of his nose. Both eyes had been shot out. I put a boot on his chest. The Mahdi militiaman didn't move. I kicked him. No movement. Given how many times he had been shot, I didn't expect anything else, but just to be sure, I shot him twice in the stomach. Then I marked him with a chem light so the body disposal teams could find him later that night.

A few minutes later, a Blackhawk landed and we started loading wounded insurgents into it. While we worked, two men carried the shattered husk of that Mahdi militiaman to the helicopter. To our astonishment, he was still alive. Blood bubbles burbled up through his mangled nose and mouth. Blind, in agony, he still managed to scream through broken teeth and punctured lungs. We loaded him on the helicopter and never saw him again.
We later discovered the Mahdi militia had gained access to American epinephrine -- pure adrenaline that will keep a heart pumping even after its owner has been exposed to nerve gas or chemical weapons. A dude with that in his system is almost superhuman. Short of being blown to pieces with our biggest guns, he'll keep fighting until his limbs are severed or he bleeds out.

Is it me, or does this sound like bullshit? We're expected to believe that a mouthful of epinephrine metabolizes fast enough to keep a shot up lump of ground meat alive long enough "to scream through broken teeth and punctured lungs?" Wow, it all seems so Hollywood, doesn't it?

And what about "American epinephrine? Is this a special brand.

I attempted to find the amount of "American epinephrine" America sold to Saddam Hussein back when we were pals, but I came up empty.
One interesting fact I discovered about epinephrine is that its efficacy is of a short duration. While your fire may burn intensely, its very intensity depletes your fuel quicker. In other words, ya run out of fucking gas. And, like all stimulants, constant usage causes more problems than it solves.

Anyway, it wouldn't be surprising that soldiers enhance their survival with stimulants. I would. I believe that dextro-amphetamine has been doled out to soldiers for a good 1/2 century or so.

The military is also looking at "the stimulant ephedrine, non-stimulant "wakefulness promoting agents" like modafinil (aka Provigil) and erythropoietin, used to improve endurance by boosting the production of red blood cells."

Why bother when a little adrenaline turns you into Superman?

There's also something about devout Muslims & rabid drug use that just doesn't add up. Y'know, like Mohammed Atta's cocaine habit?



From PATHWAY TO PARADISE: A Guidebook to Islam:

The Islamic injunction concerning intoxicants, that is the complete forbidding of drugs and alcohol, seems idealistic for American society. Yet it is the only solution. Allah commands Muslims in the Holy Qur'an:

"O ye who believe! wine and the game of chance... are only an abomination of Satan's handiwork. So shun each one of them that you may prosper. Satan seeks only to create enmity and hatred among you by means of wine and games of chance, and to keep you back from the remembrance of Allah and from Prayer..." (5:91-92)

The Arabic word "al-khamr" is used in this verse which means anything that intoxicates or alters the mind. Thus, all forms of intoxicants are forbidden. The verse clearly explains the problems created by the use of intoxicants; first, they lead to hatred and enmity amongst people, causing murder, violence, immoral behavior etc.; and secondly they lead people away from Allah and His religion. Allah wants the believers to keep their minds pure and clean, so that they worship Him fully. A Muslim may not offer prayers (salaat) when he is not in full possession of his senses, even if that is caused by excessive emotion or a state of sleep. Certainly, a mind that is intoxicated is not able to focus on Allah.

Finally, it is important to note that drugs and alcohol are used as a means of escape from overwhelming difficulties and responsibilities. The attitude of one who has truly embraced the teachings of Islam cannot be compatible with this state of despair. A true Muslim places his reliance on Allah for the relief of hardship. When the Holy Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be on him) proclaimed Allah's commandment concerning intoxicants, his followers broke their pots and jugs of wine until the streets flowed with it. This is the example for the new convert to Islam. Some hadith of the Holy Prophet about intoxicants are:

1. If a large amount of anything causes intoxication, (even) a small amount of it is forbidden.
2. An undutiful son, a gambler, one who casts up what he is given, and one who is addicted to wine will not enter paradise.
3. Tariq bin Suwaid asked the Holy Prophet about wine and he forbade him. When he told him that he used it only as medicine, the Holy Prophet replied, "It is not a medicine, but is a disease."

Interestingly enough, Mr. Balavia's book kept turning up as the only link between terrorists & their epinephrine monkey.
So, reaching the proverbial dead end, I looked at Staff Sergeant David Bellavia.
His book, House To House, is evidently quite popular at Amazon:

#24 in Books > History > Military > Iraq War
#26 in Books > History > Middle East > Iraq
#77 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > Leaders & Notable People > Military

receiving nothing but rave reviews.

Let's visit Dave's website.

Cool. Dave has some videos. Let's see, under the heading "A man I want to Choke," Dave offers up this video:



And under the heading, "The Sin isn't falling... it's not filming it," Dave offers this knee slapper:



Hmmmm...I'm going to go out on a limb & say that Dave falls to the right of the political divide.

Let's watch Dave talk.



"Fallujah is now being run by Iraqis?" Yeah, and the Vichy government was comprised of Frenchmen. So what?

The Vichy Regime maintained some legal authority in the northern zone of France, which was occupied by the German Wehrmacht. However, its laws only applied where they did not contradict German ones. This meant that where the regime was most powerful was the unoccupied southern "free zone", where its administrative centre of Vichy was located.

Pétain and the Vichy regime willfully collaborated with the German occupation to a high degree. The French police and the state Milice (militia) organised raids to capture Jews and others considered "undesirables" by the Germans in both the northern and southern zones.

Dave is conveniently forgetting that Iraq didn't attack us. Iraq also had no WMDs to attack us with. It was all a fantasy, packaged up like Oreos & then sold to credulous America.

Dave is also conveniently forgetting that we left other things lying around Fallujah.



Someone should point out to Dave that the "lifestyle" he so gallantly protected by invading Iraq is the same lifestyle that produces folk he either wants to laugh at or kill.

And do my ears deceive me or is Dave advocating the deployment of US Marines to Chicago.

Alrighty then. Time to move on.

Curious, I expanded my search to any report of hopped up terrorists and, wonder of wonders, the only other references I could find were at a couple of right wing websites. Pamela Geller's Atlas Shrugs, where we're given this picture of the Mumbai terrorists:



along with Geller's Declaration Of Independence From Muslims:

WE, THE PEOPLE, MUST FIGHT THIS WAR. Our elected officials are on the Saudi payroll, emasculated by petrodollars. Obama declared on page 261 of his book, should the political winds shift ......he would side with the Muslims.

The left will not fight this war. Historically, leftists have always slept with totalitarian regimes. We are witnessing it here in the US yet again. What is discouraging are those on the right that have turned tail on the war and moved left.

They have become part of the problem.

We must stop the State department from importing whole Muslim communities - they come and seek to impose sharia and Islamic supremacism. We must pass Tancredo's jihad legislation. We must get on a war footing.

The world has 1.2 billions Muslims. They must take sides. They must take to the streets shouting not in our name. They must take action to fight this pox on humanity.

These attacks on the West will not only continue, they will get worse. The enemy is empowered and they are winning. I have been documenting this holy war for years, what they are planning for the US is difficult to imagine. They were planning Mumbai for over a year.

Then, at the American Power Blog, we're given a link to this news story:

The Mumbai terrorists may have pumped themselves full of drugs to keep going during their murderous three-day rampage.

Indian police sources say tests on the bodies of dead Islamic fanatics revealed traces of stimulant drugs.

One said: “We found injections containing traces of cocaine and LSD left behind by the terrorists and later found drugs in their blood.

“There was also evidence of steroids, which isn’t uncommon in terrorists. These men were all toned, suggesting they had been doing some heavy training for the attacks.

“This explains why they managed to battle the commandos for over 50 hours with no food or sleep.”

The source said one gunman is thought to have injected himself with large doses of stimulant so he could keep on fighting after he was seriously wounded.

Okay. I can buy the coke & steroid angle, but LSD?
That didn't work too well for the British, did it?



So, is the drug angle just a ham-fisted attempt at scaring an already terrified Joe Blow America by saying, "Hell, they're not just terrorists, they're junkie terrorists?"

I don't really know. Like I said at the outset, more questions than answers.

But really, if the US needs to see some hop head commandos, I don't think they need to look anywhere but in their red, white & blue mirror.

The U.S. could face a wave of addiction and mental-health problems among returning veterans of the Iraq and Afghan wars greater than that resulting from the Vietnam War, according to experts at the recent Wounds of War conference sponsored by the National Center for Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA*) at Columbia University (Join Together is a project of CASA).

Rather than the heroin addictions many Vietnam veterans brought back with them from Southeast Asia, however, today's returning soldiers are more likely to be addicted to prescription medications -- the very opiates prescribed to them by the military to ease stress or pain -- or stimulants used by soldiers to remain alert in combat situations.

"I think there's a lot more [soldiers addicted to] pharmacological opiates than the data show," said John A. Renner Jr., M.D., associate professor of psychiatry at the Boston University School of Medicine and associate chief of psychiatry at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Boston Healthcare System. "A lot of them were using opiates before they went, and a lot are reporting that opiates are freely available in combat areas."

Nora Volkow, M.D., director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), noted that while many soldiers receive prescription opiates for traumatic injuries and pain, the drugs also are effective in relieving stress. "So, even if you don't take it for that, it will work," she said.

Prescription drug abuse may be a top concern among conference participants, but experts noted that excessive drinking remains a huge problem among soldiers, sailors and airmen despite being banned from combat zones in Muslim countries.

Historically, substance abuse has "not only been present but fostered by the military," said keynote speaker Jim McDonough, a retired U.S. Army officer and former strategy director at the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy. "At Agincourt, the Somme and Waterloo, soldiers got liquored up before combat ... There's been almost no break in that [tradition] today."

US Government Ordered To Say 7 Million "Hail Marys", 8 Million "Our Fathers" As Act Of Contrition. Opts Out, Muttering, "Oops My Bad" Instead

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States apologized on Friday for an experiment conducted in the 1940s in which U.S. government researchers deliberately infected Guatemalan prison inmates, women and mental patients with syphilis.

In the experiment, aimed at testing the then-new drug penicillin, inmates were infected by prostitutes and later treated with the antibiotic.

"The sexually transmitted disease inoculation study conducted from 1946-1948 in Guatemala was clearly unethical," Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said in a statement.

"Although these events occurred more than 64 years ago, we are outraged that such reprehensible research could have occurred under the guise of public health. We deeply regret that it happened, and we apologize to all the individuals who were affected by such abhorrent research practices," the statement said.

The experiment, which echoed the infamous 1960s Tuskegee study in which black American men were deliberately left untreated for syphilis, was revealed by Susan Reverby, professor of women's studies at Wellesley College in Massachusetts.

She found out about it this year while following up on a book about Tuskegee and, unusually for a researcher, informed the U.S. government before she published her findings.

"In addition to the penitentiary, the studies took place in an insane asylum and an army barracks," Reverby said in a statement.

"In total, 696 men and women were exposed to the disease and then offered penicillin. The studies went on until 1948 and the records suggest that despite intentions not everyone was probably cured," she said.

TUSKEGEE LINK

Her findings, to be published in January in the Journal of Policy History, link the Tuskegee and Guatemala studies.

"In 1946-48, Dr. John C. Cutler, a Public Health Service physician who would later be part of the Syphilis Study in Alabama in the 1960s and continue to defend it two decades after it ended in the 1990s, was running a syphilis inoculation project in Guatemala, co-sponsored by the PHS, the National Institutes of Health, the Pan American Health Sanitary Bureau (now the Pan American Health Organization), and the Guatemalan government," she wrote.

"It was the early days of penicillin and the PHS was deeply interested in whether penicillin could be used to prevent, not just cure, early syphilis infection, whether better blood tests for the disease could be established, what dosages of penicillin actually cured infection, and to understand the process of reinfection after cures."

The full paper is available at http://www.wellesley.edu/WomenSt/Synopsis%20Reverby%20'Normal%20Exposure'.pdf.

Dr. Francis Collins, director of the U.S. National Institutes of Health, said regulation prohibited such "risky and unethical" research today. He said the revelations could damage efforts to encourage people to take part in medical research today.

"I think the track record in past 20-30 years has been quite remarkable," Collins told reporters in a telephone briefing.

"But we all recognize that the Tuskegee study which involved this same Dr. Cutler did great damage to the trust ... particularly from the African-American community and for medical research."

Arturo Valenzuela, Assistant U.S. Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs, said it was not yet clear whether any compensation would be offered. It was also not clear whether any of the people who were experimented upon could be traced, but said an investigation had been launched.

Collins said there were no records of the study at NIH other than the title of the original grant.

Cutler retired as a professor at the University of Pittsburgh in 1985 and died in 2003.

By the way, the fishing was incredible. I caught 4 used condoms, a mutated catfish with vestigial legs who appeared to be muttering something in Arabic, & a white Nike tennis shoe with a foot still in it.
I washed out the condoms for re-use, gutted the catfish (strangely its internal organs radiated with a weird green glow) for dinner, and, luckily, the shoe was my size. I'll be going back tomorrow to see if I can find the other shoe. The foot makes an incredibly handy paperweight.