“Freedom” is one of those things that people talk about but do not understand. In fact, when faced with it, most find that they to not want it much less cherish it. People do not want to think for themselves, and will easily trade what little freedom they are given in life for a little security. This is the human condition.

That’s about the only thought going through my pretty little head on the morning after an election. I have not looked at the results, don’t care about them. This is what we have left of the tattered constitution … well, this and a gun if you want it.

My reading these days, like my thinking in general, is unfocused. I find it hard to care too much about anything.

But a common theme is emerging, so there is benefit to my lack of focus. Here are some of the things I’ve been dabbling in:

• The Moses Myth, or the book Did Moses Exist?, by Dorothy M. Murdock. Why even ask the question? Of course he did not exist. But it is by asking the right questions that we stumble on to other knowledge.
• Barry Soetero: I don’t know who Obama is and I don’t care. The idea that Ronald Reagan, an actor, and George W. Bush, a shallow frat boy (not to mention George H.W. Bush, an uncommon criminal) can hold the office of president only means that the office of president itself is a fraud. That the current occupant is a fraud as well … duh.
• Benghazi: Something happened there. As with Barry Soetero, there are some very strident voices in the background intent on getting our attention. Again, I don’t care. It is obviously a covert op of some kind and timed to affect the election outcome, and it did not work.
• Laurel Canyon: Musicians are no more or less likely to die premature deaths than any of us, but Dave McGowan’s wanderings in the canyon (Weird Scenes Inside the Canyon) point at something sinister. I have long known that John Lennon was murdered by our lurking dark forces, but add to that list Cass Elliot, Dennis Wilson, Gram Parsons, Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Gary Hinman, Duane Allman, Janis Joplin and on and on … these are not accidental deaths. McGowan has stumbled into something freakishly big.

What is the common thread in all of this? Public mythology.
Continue reading “Our prison of lies” →

One of my links on the right is called “Steve Keen’s Debt Watch.” Keen, an Aussie, is one of the few economists that I listen to. He’s watching the pea, and not the shells.

His May 12th article talks about how the overall effect of Quantitative Easement has been to inflate share prices. Wall Street is doing so much better than the rest of the economy because we are in yet another bubble. The last one used the housing market, and hammered a whole generation of folks whose savings were in their homes. This one is in share prices. We can avoid this one by avoiding the market.
Continue reading “Yet another bubble …” →

I suffer from many illusions. I think of the dark waxy substance that coats those little donuts that the they sell in little packs of six at gas stations as “chocolate frosting.” I imagine that when I cross a political boundary, say from Colorado into Utah, that the atmosphere has changed and that I am in a different place. When a carton of eggs says “cage free” I imagine chickens in a meadow rather than a heavily crowded building. When I see “organic” I think “better for you” rather than “more expensive.”

Some illusions do not affect me. I never imagine that when I am buying groceries that I have “saved” money, since I am spending money. When I see Starbucks coffee in a 12 oz bag for $11.99, I know that means $16 per pound. I know that a $15 pair of sneakers is priced at $119.99 because of advertising-created illusions of glamor and athletic prowess. When I pay for two items, I know that one of them was not “free.” I know that a “D” or “R” next to a politician’s name is also an advertising-created illusion of difference.

But I ran across one this morning that shocked me. This one has affected me my whole life. I grew up staying each night in a small building with other family members, eating and reading, watching TV and sleeping. Later, like most baby boomers, I got married and had children and we all stayed in a bigger building with more than one bathroom and color TV’s instead of black and white. Now that the kids are grown and gone I am staying in building with more rooms and bathrooms and TV’s than I need.

I always thought of these buildings as my “homes.” As it turns out, I simply don’t know the language we use. CIA uses a different word for these buildings when they attack them with drones.They are not family homes. They are “compounds”.

More importantly, the victims are not brothers and sisters, moms and dads. They are “militants.” And even though my country is attacking their country, my country is “defending” itself. That’s why we have a Department of “Defense” and not departments of “War” and “Aggression.”

It’s just language. Proper use of words makes all the difference.

I bought an iMac a couple of years back. I bought into the Apple aura, that the products were superior and so worth extra money. They are not. My iMac performed just like a PC. It required some different muscle memories to control it. These differences were not improvements.

Apple is the product of a fabulous advertising campaign that reaches us on a deep psychological level. All of the supposed advantages of Apple products over PC’s are merely the result of psychological suggestion. We pay hundreds more for a Mac that performs exactly as a PC. Then we convince themselves that it was worth it because none of us is susceptible to advertising. Right?

I did everything but that last part. I am back on a PC now, and happy to be there.
Continue reading “Hypnotic states” →

Saudi Arabia is moving its “rebels” from Syria to Ukraine.

What it all boils down to is this: Some large energy concerns, Chevron among them, want to develop the natural gas of Ukraine, and so had to dispose of the old government, which was too close to Russia.

Everything else is cover. No one ever cared about democracy, of course. That’s a given. But the other concerns – Russia’s need for a buffer against repeated western invasions, Russia’s need for a warm weather port, the fascist and neo-Nazi elements that now occupy the Vichy government in Kiev … real enough, I suppose.

But not the driver.

Former Secretary of State Madelyn Albright has been selected to head a team that will observe the coming elections in Ukraine on May 25th.

Yeah, that makes sense.

In other news, officials in Boston announced that they had exhumed the body of serial killer Ted Bundy to sit and act as an impartial observer in the trial of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. Since airlines refused to fly a rotting corpse across the country, the judge ordered that the body be transported by rail.

Oh yeah, Barack Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. With that in mind, anything is possible.

We are supposed to look away from Ukraine right now, what with the horrid murders of people in the trade Union fire and evidence that the new US-backed junta did it quite deliberately, and that there are American terrorists running around the place, so Nigeria popped up on our screens, but then some Pakistani malcontent wants to focus our attention on US behavior in Pakistan …

Focus, people, focus! We are talking about Nigerian girls right now. OK? Nothing else should trouble our pretty little heads.

Note: Please be sure to read JC’s comments under this post, as he is all over this matter.

I learned from Huffington Post that Vice President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, has an impressive résumé, as follows:

Hunter Biden currently serves as Chairman of the Board of World Food Program USA and as a Director on the not-for-profit boards of the Truman National Security Project, The Center for National Policy and the US Global Leadership Coalition. Mr. Biden serves as managing partner at Rosemont Seneca Partners, Chairman at Rosemont Seneca Advisors, is Counsel to Boies, Schiller, Flexner, LLP, a national law firm based in New York, and is a Director of CAYOVA a next generation social networking site.

Mr. Biden is also an Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University’s Masters Program in the school of foreign service. Mr. Biden is a member of the CSIS Executive Council on Development and the President’s Advisory Board for Catholic Charities in Washington D.C. From 2006-2009, Mr. Biden served on the Board of Directors of Amtrak, serving as Vice Chairman from 2007-2009. Mr. Biden was honored to serve as an Honorary Co-Chair of the 2009 Presidential Inaugural Committee and to have served in the Jesuit Volunteer Corps. Previously, Mr. Biden was a founding member of the law firm, Oldaker, Biden and Belair, LLP, was appointed by President Clinton to serve as Executive Director of E-Commerce Policy Coordination under Secretary of Commerce William Daley and was Senior Vice President at MBNA America Bank. He is also a member of the bar in the State of Connecticut, the District of Columbia, the U.S. Supreme Court and the U.S. Court of Federal Claims. Mr. Biden received a bachelor’s degree from Georgetown University and a J.D. from Yale Law School.

Add to that his recent appointment to Burisma Holdings, the largest private natural gas producer in Ukraine.

The guy is juiced. He’s connected to the Vice President of the United States, and has been appointed to the board of a company in an area of immediate interest in US foreign policy, a place where there has been insurgencies, riots, a violent coup d’état, massacres, where NATO wants to expand, where Russia’s security interests are threatened and a potential confrontation between two very powerful countries is an ongoing backdrop. It is not unlike George W. Bush shilling for Enron when his Daddy was president. It is not kid-juice, but rather daddy-juice, that secures these appointments.

Newsworthy? Nah. I got hold of this tidbit via Olga75 on Twitter. Otherwise, [crickets] all the way up and down the Google.
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Update: One almost gets the feeling that, outside the United States and in the inner tubes exists a real news media. This is from a Buzzfeed story:

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told BuzzFeed that Russia saw no conflict of interest in Joe Biden working to wean Ukraine off Russian gas – which makes up about 60 percent of the country’s energy supply – while his son worked in the Ukrainian gas industry.
“Anyway, as everyone knows, there’s no gas in Ukraine,” he added. “The gas in Ukraine is Russian.”

Factor that into JC’s comments below in which Burisma appears to be nothing more than a shell – no gas fields, no real company, Cypriot ties and a connection to the former Polish president and the current US Vice President. Burisma and I have one thing in common: Both of us got our domain names from GoDaddy.