WWH~~ Wake'N'Bake 101: Resistance

Early Signs

Of Nuns, Guns, and Freedom Runs:
Along with the wanton, impudent betrayal of my 'great potential,' I was always regarded by the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary as a 'deportment' problem in grammar school. To shreve me of my sins, and to motivate me to work harder in school, the nuns of St. Mark's school kept me after school religiously--that is, virtually every day--during the course of my Sixth-Grade year. By my birthday, near the end of April, I was already in possession of the Diocessan Detention Award, having been made to "stay after school," for affronts to good school order--real and imagined--every day since the beginning of the second semester, in January.

So it was that, on my birthday that year (1957, iirc), Sister Mary Hand-Grenade was dragging me by the ear (I kid NOT) across the school parking lot from the school to the convent where a special room was set up with portable greenboards, on which it was my perpetual penance to inscribe countless repetitions of the times tables (to 25), squares (to 50), and for variation, endless, meaningless repetitions of the 10 Commandments. Twice an hour, or so, a Sister would check on me, and measure my progress. Usually, they released me about 4:30 pm.

(Higher maths were never my strong suit. I became accustomed to flunking shit like "Algebra II," "Calculus," and "Solid Geometry." I got by on GPA, cuz I aced Soc.Studies and Humanities. Solid "C" student. Who, btw --and everytime I say it, I visualize the earth in various Catholic cemeteries across the country churning uncomfortably, as a generation of long-deceased nuns and brothers spin in their graves at the mere possibility--eventually accomplished both a Master's and Ph.D., and TAUGHT! But I digress...)

I had been making that wretched trip, on and off, since September, but on this bright Spring day, MY BIRTHDAY, I rebelled: With a quick jerk of my head, I shook my ear free the hag's gnarled grip and pinching claw, and made a break for it!

It took Sister a second to recover her wits; the nuns never contemplated resistance. By the time reality had sunk in, I had a pretty goood start. I was quite quick of foot in my youth, and with the start I had, both she and I knew she was NEVER gonna catch me. (That she need only telephone my parents would have occurred to her, as it had to me; but my father was at work in the City, and my mother was, I was quite certain, away from the house playing bridge, sipping sherry, and planning good, philanthropic deeds with her sorority sisters. I was free, at least til dinner.)

It was exhilarating!I was almost skylarking. I heard her harpy's caw: "Boy! BOY! YOU COME BACK HERE, BOY!!!" I looked back and saw her coming at her best pace, striding and stamping across the parking lot, her black habit flapping, the crucifix on the rosary around her waste glinting in the sun like the hilt of a weapon. I felt like dancing a jig out of utter, insolent, impudent disrespect.

But then her voice changed. She was hollering out to the 'big' kids--the Eighth Graders--playing basketball in back of the school. Shouting commands at them like a drill sergeant, she sicced them on me with orders to return me to her, and not to return without me. They sprang to their assignment with what was, in my eyes, unseemly alacrity. Still, I also had a couple of jumps on them, and so I kicked it into lower gear and jetted homeward.

I wasn't going back.

It was a race in which I was pretty confident I had the advantage, since 1) I was quick and fast and knew where I was going, and 2) they pretty much had to follow me and overtake me when and if they could. I guessed they probably didn't know where I lived. Why would they. I was jsut a 6thie. So I led 'em astray a little, down an alley and over a fence and through a couple of yards: Cushioning my lead. I was about 50-60 yards ahead of 'em when I got to my block. They were just cutting the corner, across ol' Mr. Schneider's lot, grimly determined to return me to school, when I hit the front porch and bolted into the house.

Nobody home. Good!

Being a 'latch-key kid', I knew all the secrets of the place, and in particular I knew where my Dad kept a loaded .45 cal revolver. Of course, I knew I was already in BIG trouble, but I was utterly and irremediably determined that I was not going to go back to that school that day--it was my fucking BIRTHDAY!

I dashed through the house, up to my parents' bedroom, and yanked open the bureau drawer where, among his socks, I knew my Dad kept the gun. Seizing it, I ran down stairs and got to the door, pistol in hand--but hand out of sight, below the glass--as the Eighth Graders stormed noisily up the steps and onto the porch. Thumping, loud, rude, and noisy, they clamored and demanded I come out.

"Sister wants you back at school!" the biggest of them declared, menacingly. "If you don't come out, we'll come in after you!" When I refused, they started to reach for the door...

Which was when I raised that pistol and cocked that big ol' trigger.

Instantly, everything stopped, arrested in time.

It was a big gun.
It was in plain sight.
I had it in my hand and I was pointing it skyward...
And there was a movement and ...
I flinched, or something,
And the gun kinda ...

WENT OFF!!!

GAWDAM!

The roar of that old hogleg in the tiny vestibule of the house was tremendous, an ear-splitting, stupendous, enormous, incredible, thunderous, deafening BOOOOM. This was an OLD gun, and it was not a smokeless powder round. Acrid smoke filled the space. The heavy bullet had splintered the door jamb overhead...and when I looked again out the door, the Eighth Grade had vanished, scattered like a covey of quail. I took the gun back where I had found it, then went outside with my basketball and shot hoops til the first parent returned.

When the Mother Superior of the parish convent called that night to apprise my parents of the dreadful details surrounding the incident, everyone (I gather) was 1) shocked and 2) outraged, both at 1) my departure from detention, but moreso at 2) the means of my defense of that decision. There was (I gather) talk of 1) police, and of 2) sending me to the juvenile delinquency home to "teach him a lesson he'll never forget."

I received a serious 'whuppin' for that stunt. And I went back to school a few days later. But I never spent another day's detention in that school that year, or ever. And the Eighth Grade avoided me as though I were contagious. I don't know how MUCH it was related, but we moved into a new parish before school started the following year.

Oh, and Pop made me clean the pistol; showed me how...

WWH ~~ Wake'N'Bake 101: (Animals, formerly "Triumphs")

DOGS: You don't bad-mouth Pit Bull dogs around Dr. Woody. I have had one as a canine companion for 6 years. Budreaux (behaving sillily, in the foto at the top) is the Best Damn Dog I ever had.

Besides the fact that there is NO SUCH THING as a "bad dog" or a "dangerous breed" (dogs are totally the products of their environments, so if they're "bad," look to the people!) you don't bad-mouth 'em, you don't ban 'em, you don't fight 'em, you don't abuse 'em and you don't encourage crap about 'em where I am likely to be found.

The Pit Bull/Am Staff, whatever you want to call 'em, is THE "All-American dog." Remember Petey, of the Li'l Rascals, Buster Browne's dog Tighe, probably Sandy, Little Orphan Annie's dog, were all pit bulls or pit-mixed dogs. More than 40% of all mixed-breed dogs in the US are Pit-mixes somewhere along the line. They were revered as combat dogs, companion dogs and were the "nanny" dog to countless generations of folks, prior to the mid-1980s.

I have long believed that "breed-specific legislation," such that bans certain breeds (pit bulls and Rottweilers, these days), and/or permits their confiscation and destruction, are actually surrogates devised by nervous White folks in suburbs who are anxious to exclude "undesirable (brown) folks" so, being forbidden zoning and other tricks by affirmative action and other social remedies, they have hit upon the expedient of legally banning the DOGS associated with the dangerous, "urban" brigands. This sorta crap justs frosts my ass.

So when I heard, on "the Book," (Zuckerberg's Folly) that a school teacher at Osborne Park High School, in Manassas, VA, had assigned a student paper on the topic "People Should NOT Own Pit Bulls,” it set me off a little and I composed the following mild message to the school, the Asst. Principal, and all the rest of the people whose eddresses I have from the story:

To Whom It May Concern Among the Faculty and Administration:
Sir/Madame:
As an educator, I understand your dilemma, and I have to hand it to you folks for creativity. Ingenious!
You couldn’t get away with assigning a paper about why students wouldn’t want a dad-gum, uppity, mebbe dangerous “NEE-grow” to move into your neighborhood, I guess, so you assign a paper demanding students supply reasons why it’s okay to exclude the dogs that are associated with the undesirable people.
Brilliant! You could give lessons…Oh, wait, you do!
Signed:
Dr. Woody

If crap like this frosts your cupcakes the way it does mine, feel free to follow the links and drop the good burghers of Manassas a line.

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CHICKENS: Amid the jingoistic clamor and seemingly irresistible triumphalism of the "Victory" by Barack Obama and Team Six," over Usama bin Laden, and Team Jihad-with-kids-around, there is one important detail to remember, which might be overlooked in the blood-heat of revenge:

The immutable globalist-corpoRatist-monopolist 'foreign policies' of the USofA are recognized around the world as impediments to 'progress' against the indisputable, evident and growing dangers of climate change. "We"--well, what "we" elect, anyway, and the policies "we"/they (don't) enact represent REAL dangers to the health, even, ultimately the survival, of just about everybody ELSE on the planet. That's one dilemma about claiming the moral high ground of "democracy": You then necessarily ARE responsible for the actions of those you entrust with your power (such as it is).

This was no LESS obvious to critical observers in 2000 than it is now; it is only MORE obvious now to the LESS critically inclined. So, it is possible, plausible, even, to observe the attacks on in NYC, & DC on 9/11/01 as interpret them as a reminder from one node of the rest of the world to US of what it feels like when inexplicable, uninvited, chaotic, bloody death rains from the sky?

I mean: "We've" done it all over the world, you know, since... really since we could, what, probably since 1895? The First American Imperial War against Spain? More or less. "We" flew bi-wing fighter planes against "insurgents" all over Central America. Take a look, sometime at the list of US "military" exercises and adventures carried out between 1895 and 1940 in the WESTERN hemisphere. They're collectively known as the "Banana Wars."

A hundred and sixteen years later, a couple of highly explosive chickens come home to roost, and the country goes fucking ape-shit ballistic?

What drives the Owners crazy is that "9/11" vividly showed the rest of the world that they (and, of course, "we") were NOT impregnable. That's bad form for an Empire, especially one just beginning to decline...Future historians may, in fact, decide that 9/11 actually marked the appearance of the first fatal symptom of Imperial collapse.

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CAUTION? Dr. Woody must be gettin' old, cuz he wonders what all y'all who wanna "abolish" gummint think is gonna happen when you do.

How ya gonna flush the toilet? Water's a public utility--gummint; etc. And that's the easy part!

We are 350 MILLION fiercesomely well-armed, intellectually stunted, emotionally retarded, socially incompetent, spiritually delusional, murderously xenophobic, terrifyingly insular, paranoid, apocalyptic sadists. Without gummint, who'd bury ALL the bodies?

And around us in the world, there are nearly enough to 6.5 billion others of us, equally ferocious, much less well-armed, but hungrier and therefore more likely to figure THEY, and not you, have nothing to lose.

Are you UP for that? Really?

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ZOMBIES! Another right-wing economic Klan has emerged to join the Kochs in the limelight of revealed public manioyuklation for private advantage. The name's De Vos, and they, like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and a fair number of incredibly wealthy ignorami, want to direct national educational policy away from the public school and locate education decisively in the private (and also the paradoxically religious) sector. So-called "charter schools" are and always have been an instrument, a lever, by which private interests wedged public money out of public schools and into private pockets.

Of course, if you view schools as instruments of indoctrination, it terribly important that you control what's being indoctrinated, too.

The REALLY wealthy people do NOTHING that does not increase either their power or their stash/horde. So do NOT be misled by rich folks' "philanthropies." Mostly it amounts to the endless endeavors by the richest folks to keep control of their wealth from beyond the grave.

WWH ~~ Wake'N'Bake 101: Pragmatic

PWNED: In 2007, St Barry began his campaign by saying he was a "pragmatist."

In "killing Osama," ThePrez has demonstrated that quality again, in spades. What he has accomplished is pragmatic to the 'nth' degree. Because what he has done--just prior to the tenth anniversary; a totemic date of 9/11--is he has effectively bought--well, to be completely honest, he WON--the political bragging rights to "America's Greatest Tragedy"

He now "owns" the franchise. He CAN use killing Osama in his campaign; he CAN show the tower images and the Pentagon pictures; he CAN proclaim "Mission: Accomplished." And nobody --by which I mean the GOPhux--can say shit about it. That the killing goes on in the AF-Pak and Iraq is just a niggling detail, about which the Right has ZERO standing to complain, given their recorded sympathies (though, when has that proven any kind of bar?). Anyway, if he or his people so decide to do so, they're 'allowed.' They "won" the pot; they get the chips.

The totemic Tenth anniversary of 9/11 is a'comin, and 'killing Osama" will play like a champ in the heartlands. Then a year later, a re-election! Makes sense to me. No point in letting the GOPhux have it all their own for ANOTHER election cycle. Hell, the bloody-minded xenophobes and islamophobe wackloons are so stoked up, if the election were held this week, he'd carry Oklahoma, I bet...

Erm....well, mebbe not Oklahoma...(I STILL think there could be a plan in the works to change "Labor Day" to "First Response Day" or some such pseudo-patriotic codswallop; it may have been brought closer, since Obama "killed" Osama. Especially since the full-scale war by the CorpoRatistas against the rest of us had recently so greatly increased in vitriol.)

In some circles, your gentle Professor is thought to have a particularly darkly ugly and suspicious mind. Probably because things like this occur to me.

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RHETORIC: Thom Hartmann, about whom I frequently fuss, was rhapsodic about the Presidential rhetoric again this (Thursday) morning, approving the sentiment:
‎

"That's not who we are" says President Obama, explaing why the White House will not release Osama bin Laden pictures.

Me: Saith I, "Codswalliop

"Who we are? WTF: Take a look around you!@

"We" are a nation of thoughtless, murderous imperialists who drop high explosive munitions from unmanned drone aircraft on helpless, unarmed civilian--including women and children--in the boondocks of Central Asia for no GREATER purpose than to keep our economy afloat.

"We" are a nation of mindless, even conspicuously wasteful resource-gluttons: 5% of the world's people consuming 25% of the world's resources. "We" are to the world what OUR .01% are to you and me.

"We" are a nation of narcotized, infantilized, propagandized, sanitized, amusementized, mediatized, consumerized, android/ipodized, automatized, atomized fucking niche-markets. We're not A "people" anymore. We are the (temporary) culmination of that ancient, authoritarian requirement for a voluntarily enslaved population of attendants. And that was/is the whole point.

What really annoys me about Hartmann and his like is this:

What Hartmann, et al, seem blissfully ignorant of--or, if they are not ignorant of it, they studiously avoid acknowledging it--is that it took the Birchers and their ideological/political progeny almost 50 years from the "first shot" in the plutocratic coup d'etat against popular sovereignty--first shots: Nov. 22, 1963--and countless BILLIONS of dollars, millions of hours of organization and leg-work, and the beneficences of no fewer than 30, mostly anonymous billionaire donors, to so COMPLETELY, Utterly, and IRREVERSIBLY take over the Country.

Even if "we" had the resources, the man-power, and the donors (1 puny billionairre, George Soros, aint gonna get it) we don't have the TIME.

The criminal futhermockers are now totally embedded. Nothing short of mortar fire is gonna dislodge 'em...No, really.

And they did all this in just under 75 years--just under a Century, if you date it from Bernays' first successful 'campaign.' It really is remarkable.

Be VERY PROUD! I know I am...


(Edited: 5/13/11 @ 1137 hrs, mdt.)
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The word "medicine" is rooted in the same etymology as the word "mede" which, I presume you know, is fermented honey, the drinking of which has been known since pre-civilization to ease one's ills.

Hence, medicine is defined as that which soothes the afflicted. Weed does that better than ANY other substance known to man. Ergo, cannabis = medicine.

(Humans consume the exudates of a very limited number of species, honey and milk being the two most prominent in our culture. Interestingly (or not), honey makes good wine; milk doesn't.)

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WWH~~ Wake'N'Bake 101: TRACKS

GERONIMO! The US military/intelligence/assassination-complex, in the inimitable way of their tribe, had to assign a "code-name" by which to keep track and talk obscurely about Osama bin Laden. They chose "Geronimo-2." Some Native Americans are outraged, especially some members of his family in southern New Mexico. They take offense. But it seems misplaced. Geronimo was NOT a "loyal," American, ever, to my knowledge. He was ALWAYS an "enemy," always a threat.

So, in its way, it strikes Dr. Woody as a back-handed compliment. Remember, the original Geronimo, the mystic and medicine man, was the most feared enemy/opponent the white invaders faced in that place and time. ALL the Europeans were flat fucking terrified of him, both in northern Mexico and in the border areas of the USer southwest (not unlike bin Laden). They hunted him with THOUSANDS of troops, horses, artillery, scouts, white hunters, everything (not unlike bin Laden). Eventually, they wore him down.

Geronimo they didn't kill on the spot. They humiliated him first and sent him far away (to Florida), and then let captivity take its toll. He had a Cadillac. He was buried in Fort Sill, OK, I recall--that's where one of the Bush's stole his skull--but his remains may have been moved.

He wasn't from around there, anyway.

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KISMET: What led to Osama's death? In a word: Politics!

St. Barry's fucktard/wackloon/teabaggin' critics are claiming that the killing of Usama bin Laden was, primarily, a "political" move.

Duh! Of course, it was. It was political all the WAY!

"ThePrez" knows that he ABSOLUTELY, VITALLY needed to silence 'left' critics (who were mostly upset by the wars and Gitmo), and start to draw the anti-war (the "professional") "Left" back into the fold for the forthcoming re-election campaign. The only (easy) way to accomplish that is to make it look like St. Barry is keeping promises he made to them TWO years ago to start troops reductions from AF-PAK this summer, 2011. That process has to start soon.

But if he did that, without some definitive change in the situation on the ground, the chicken-shit chickenhawks of the wacktard/teabagger "Right" would have castigated him for 'cutting-and-running' (wasn't that the term of art of yore, which the Busheviks threw at Kerry, in '04?).

So, he had to 'pre-emptively' silence wacktard/fuckloon critics who'd claim he was "leaving the job unfinished," or "chickening out," or "losing Afghanistan." He couldn't get a battlefield victory, so what was left? Killing Bin Laden. Simple!

It's called "real politik." It's how "states-qua-states" act. Some will still whine that it was a "Political" decision, a political act designed to curry favor from a constituency. My reply: Well, yeah...

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TARGETS: Dr. Woody imagines that at this rather late date, already three or four days later, we have all heard about Team SIX, the super-spiffy, hyper-secret, ultra-deadly force of killers the USofA threw against that house in Abbottabad to finally--apparently--kill the infamous, notorious, evasive, evil, dangerous Usama bin Laden (for whom, or in whose memory, on Tuesday, the NYTimes, no less, for once refused to use the honorific "Mr.."--the ultimate posthumous indignity! Imagine!)

The thing for which I commend your attention to these murderous notables is that, under the regime recently authorized by Congress for pursuing deadly foes of the State, St. Barry--or any subsequent occupant of that Office--would be permitted to sicc'em, secretly on YOU (or more likely, me) should we provoke the Presidential temper sufficiently and/or be perceived as a sufficient threat to the interests of the State.

No oversight, no warrant, nothing so much as a fucking "by your leave!"

Just: "Blam." Finis.

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DEBT: I often, anymore, find the professional punditry to be, shall we say, disingenuous?

EJ Dionne's Truthdig (and elsewhere) column the other day is a prime example: He makes it sound as if the debate is WHETHER we raise the ceiling, when there is nowhere on any part of planet Earth ANY doubt that the debt ceiling will be raised.

The real question is --should be, even from so besotted a tool as EJ Dionne: "How many concessions can the GOPhux chisel out of our living hides, through compromises and sacrifices "thePrez" will be "forced" for the very SAKE OF THE FUCKING NATION ITSELF to make, to "save" the national credit for another year.

A fool can see where this leads, when in just three months, "negotiations" over the NEXT budget are supposed to begin: More concessions, more compromises, more "sacrifices." And there's an election coming up.

So let this be a lesson to ya!

WWH~~ Wake'N'Bake 101: The Cure

May, if you haven't heard is National Masturbation Month. No, really, said Tom dryly. It is my firm conviction that, if it were possible to train ALL male children to auto-fellate, from birth, there would be world peace in a generation, as men would no longer have any reason to leave the house.

In reply to an un-linked 'quote' in a post by a 'friend' today about male circumcision (and which evidently was part of another, on-going conversation to which I did not link:

‎"00.03% of adult men willfully choose to be circumcised; no WONDER we do it to babies! Because we know they would NEVER choose that for themselves." Thank you for pointing this out, Bryan Rice. This is an income stream that would virtually dry up if neonatal genital alterations were NOT performed. 3 in 1000 men is not enough to financially support the circumcision doctors.

The number of uncircumcised (white) men in my demographic is miniscule. Cutting is so common that seeing an "undocked" penis, for guys my age, is likely to evoke the recollection of the first one you EVER noticed (swimming pool dressing-room at the Lakewood, Oh, YMCA, in mebbe 1956, iirc).

The history of the conquest of American manhood by surgical disfigurement is of course but one chapter in a long and painful struggle. The first records of the practice are from the Pharaonic era, 4500 years ago in Egypt, with a frieze depicting the (forcible) circumcision of a (physically restrained) young Ruler. I DON'T think this chould be taken to mean the practice was wide-spread; instead it argues, to me, that it was an identifying/distinguishing mark of the royal caste.

Christian cults make an incredibly big deal about masturbation, or as they sometimes call it, "the Sin of Onan" (no, not the tractor/generator company; they merged with ... wait for it ... No, really: Cummins Diesel; you CANNOT make this shit up!). Circumcision has for a long time been regarded as a cure for it, on the theory that it desensitizes the glans.

As early a 1842, a French surgeon named Claude-François Lallemand completed Les Pertes seminales involontaires (Involuntary seminal losses), promoting a theory of "spermatorrhoea" - the view that almost any discharge from the penis caused disease. Lallemand, one of those piously sadistic reformers one finds so frequently among the 'righteous,' promoted acupuncture (with large needles pushed into the prostate), catheters, cauterisation and circumcision as "cures" - all done as painfully as possible. His views are apparently still very influential in some circles.

Circumcision became wide-spread among Gentiles in the USofA in the mid-late 19th Century when religious fucknozzles insisted on it, because they said it would impede young men's interest in masturbation. (Speaking only for myself: it didn't work...) The whole idea of male circumcision in America is another of the indubitable, but unheralded impositions of religious orthodoxy on the (often willfully) ignorant; it's the result of religious quackery which sought to make a man's first experience with his genitalia as painful as possible.

In 1870, a Dr. Lewis A. Sayre announced to the AMA that circumcision cures paralysis, epilepsy and masturbation, setting off the medical craze for "therapeutic" circumcision. His "circumcision" is, however, conservative, preserving as much tissue as possible. "Mutilation" was to be avoided. Then in 1877, John Harvey Kellogg MD (1852-1943) published the first edition of "Plain facts for old and young: embracing the natural history and hygiene of organic life", in which child (but not infant) circumcision is promoted to "cure" masturbation. This "cure" was given extra emphasis when, in 1881, Charles Guiteau shoots and kills President James A. Garfield, and phimosis and smegma buildup under his foreskin were blamed for his homicidal mental state.

But phimosis and excessive smegma build-up were only tow of the things that were associated with the curative powers of male circumcision. Others included:

"To prevent or cure alcoholism, arthritic hips, asthma, balanitis, blindness, boils, cervical cancer, chicken pox, epididymitis, epilepsy, gallstones, gout, headaches, hernia, HIV, hydrocephaly, hydrocoele, hypertension, insanity, kidney disease, kleptomaina, leprosy, moral depravity, paraphimosis, penile cancer, plague, phimosis, posthitis, prostate cancer, rectal prolapse, rheumatism, schistosoma, spinal curvature, stomach infection, tuberculosis, urinary tract infections and/or yeast infections."

Funny, innit that it turns out, after all this time, regular/frequent masturbation is a mild prophyllactic against prostate cancer: An ejaculation a day keeps the cancer at bay!

SO wack-'em if ya gott'em...

WWH~~ Wake'N'Bake 101: Oz

Ding-Dong, The Witch Is Dead!

Zuckerberg's Folly could talk of nothing else this morning than the reported (reporters who hadn't seen the corpse might have said "alleged") death of Osama bin Laden, alleged mastermind of the vivid and memorable events that culminated in the deaths of some 3000 people on Sept. 11, 2001, in NYC, DC, and Shanksville, PA.

It is Dr. Woody's highly trained and sharply honed instinct to be skeptical. I try NEVER to take anything like this at face value: The ONLY sources are 'official' ones. I smell politics, of course: Remember, please, that this is the same outfit which 1) told us how a heroic Jessica Lynch was captured killing her attackers (while NOT saying anything about the Native woman soldier killed beside her) and then made a reality show about her subsequent (farcical) rescue; 2) told us Abu Ghraib was just a few "bad apples," 3) invented a fairy-tale about how Pat Tilman died heroically under enemy fire.

Why is not some skepticism warranted now?

Don't forget, either: There's a campaign starting about now, and "ThePrez" 'promised' to start withdrawing troops from AfPakistan this summer, in 2011. He's going to have to redeem some part of that promise to round up enough of the disaffected Left for his re-election. Unfortunately, he can't claim "victory" and just leave; Nixon already pulled that one. Also, unfortunately, he cannot claim any battlefield victories sufficient to assert that an enemy has been vanquished, peace restored, and ponies; so we can withdraw.

But killing Osama gives "ThePrez" cover. By claiming to have dispatched the great, fearsome, elusive, seemingly immortal Arab Satan--a veritable Abdul A Bulbul Emir (not particularly tough act to stage, ceteris paribus)--Obama again looks like a "winner," and he's defused the most immediate reason for accusing him of 'leaving the job undone' when he starts the show of pulling troops out (how many? when" to where?) this summer. Top THAT, Chump!

Killing Osama does NOTHING to affect the war on the ground for us in a good way. But it completely changes the politics of the war at home. Without Osama "dead," if O'Bama had stuck to promises to draw down the force levels, he would have caught flack for "leaving without having finished the job" from the chickenhawks and war-mongering Xians. The deadline to start promised summer withdrawals (howsoever meaningful/less they are in the long run) is fast approaching. Announcing the death of the "Saudi Satan" opens the door for the politically necessary simulacrum of ending the wars.

And the solution for the disposition of the body is/was nothing short of brilliant: dump it in the fuukin ocean. Wanna bet they make the "long form" DEATH Certificate available, right smart, on line, by tonight?

WWH~~ Wake'N'Bake 101: Feelings

Dr. Woody's old blogging buddy (more than 5 years, now) and former compAtriot, Prof. Wombat took up an important question in his usual, restrained fashion, the other week: When, if ever, is revolutionary social change acceptable. Thoughtful, compassionate, wise, Wombat ends up arguing for patience, and working within the system to effect what changes we can.

Another long-time and formidable blogging associate, Steve S. replied, and not in the spirit of contradiction:

"We can't win in rigged elections. We can't win in partisan courts. What is left?

I keep saying it -- progressives have to take over the Democratic Party as ruthlessly and completely as the conservatives took over the Repugs in the wake of the Goldwater fiasco.
That took twenty years, of course, and I don't know if we have the luxury of that kind of time.."

Y'r Ob'd't S'v't responded:

I think it took MUCH longer than 20 years; it took closer to 50 years, and STARTED with the assassination of JFK, in '63. That was the first public act in the silent, surreptitious, but now --since 2000-- complete coup de etat by the Commercial/Militarist/National Security//Intelligence cabal against popular sovereignty. And Kennedy's was not the only life sacrificed for its success.

Since then, the back-street coup has occupied the talents of probably scores of thousands of people: organizers, propagandists, proselytizers, academics, pundits, the whole array of the CorpoRat/Gummint "ideological state propaganda apparati," including the schools.

And it cost BILLIONS and BILLIONS (think Carl Sagan-sized numbers) of dollars.

And it was unstintingly and enthusiastically bankrolled by a cabal of about 20, more-or-less interchangeable billionaires; descendants, either literal or epistemic, of the treasonous bunch of CorpoRat Fascisti who wanted--and half-assedly tried-- to overthrow FDR in '33.

So yeah, I think Steve's right, we don't have "time." Or ANY of the other "peaceful" contributing factors either: money and man-power. For billionaires, we've got Soros, who isn't even a really reliable "insurgent" funding source, like the Coors were/are, or the Kochs, or the Lilys, et al. were for the Rightist revolution.

By the way: The Opus Dei SCROTUS just ruled this week (5-4) that consumers no longer may make common cause and, as a class, sue the Owners for their commercial frauds, injuries and misdeeds.

And they're gonna reverse all the rest of class-action jurisprudence in the Wal-mart case.

One stick at a time, they're pulling the structure of our liberty down around our goddAm ears. But, if it just too messy to change it, it ain't gonna change.
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Dr. Woody doesn't understand the apparent concern some folks (CBS, the "Villager" punditry) manifest for the 'delicate' feelings of the troglodytic, moronic, knuckle-dragging, ignorant, racist Phux who, from an income bracket about one fiftieth or one one-hundredth of their Bosses', can steadfastly parrot their Owners' moronic platitudes, lies, and misrepresentations.

Folks say we on the left gotta swallow our vomit and make common cause with these folks, to present a united front. But I CANNOT imagine the "Baggers" possess ANY civic values or virtues with which I could agree or upon which I could build any sort of coalition.
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If you EVER doubted that the Fed was an enemy to the People, here's some pretty good evidence of where it's true loyalties lie:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/26/fed-lending-helped-wall-street_n_853884.html
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/04/26-4

Clever, clever banksters at places like Goldman-Sucks 'borrowed' bailout-level, almost interest-free money from the Federal Reserve, and then loaned that money to the Treasury--'buying' bonds, would be the usual way--at much, much higher interest rates than that they paid to borrow it from the Fed in the first place. Also, they speculated--successfully--in energy and food commodities (n.b., rising prices in both the food and energy sectors).

This is one of those cases when the claims of the "anti-Fed ocd" crowd (Paul, Rockwell, Alex Jones, etc) that the Fed is not your friend, is indeed inimical to our best interest--as a people, if not as a business-- finds new meaning, innit?