My youngest daughter came down out of the mountains a week or so ago just finishing up a bad cold, and promptly gave it to me, thank-you very much!
Now after plying myself with homeopathic medicines – Oscillococcinum from France and Airborne from the US — and healthy doses of BC powders (845 mg of aspirin), I don’t feel quite like dog-shit anymore.
Maybe more like cat/chicken/ or some smaller-animal shit.

My illness, though, don’t come close to this planet’s health — a sickness on the level of bloated elephant shit.

(Illustration found here).

Despite being sick, the news keep churning forward and a lot of it is nutcase, bat-shit crazy.
Wonder the difference between, say, chickenshit, dogshit, batshit, and the human condition — all animals them.
We never say: ‘I feel like human shit,’ when we don’t feel good or we get mad, i.e., ‘You chickenshit asshole!,’ however, ‘You’re nothing more than human shit,” does have a certain ring to it.
Just wondering.

The big news this Sunday morning — beyond the bizarre double-earthquake yesterday in Oklahoma, the first a 4.7 early Saturday, then last night, 5.6-magnitude quake, the biggest in OK history — is still coming from Europe and the Greek financial tragedy.
Reportedly, blustering, nit-twit Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou expected to resign after putting together some form of coalition government to keep that Euro-bailout of $178 billion on collision course with destiny.
From CNN:

Taxi driver Irene Tsikimi, who has been driving a cab for five years, says business has shrunk, but the conversations she has with her clients all follow similar lines.
“They say there are no politicians they can believe in,” she explains.
“They don’t know who to vote for.
It feels like it’s a dead end.
I wouldn’t mind going into bankruptcy; the country’s lost anyway.”
She says that austerity has impacted her, and her customers, a lot.
“Now, not even rich people use taxis,” she says, “or just very few.
The middle class just don’t take taxis anymore.
It’s a job that doesn’t have a future here. “
…
The real Greek tragedy plays out behind closed doors, in the home of the pensioners who can’t afford to fill their fridge, the public sector parents struggling to pay the bills, or the 820,000 unemployed — from a nation of around eight million — scouring the Internet for jobs.
Most people have enough to survive but not to live the life they’d hoped for.
This is not yet about a nation of people on the bread line, but about a people whose dreams and future have been taken away from them.

All that does have an American echo, huh?
And this on Friday on the eve of Bank Transfer Day: U.S. regulators closed two more banks on Friday — one in Utah and another in Nebraska — bringing the total number this year to 87…Most of the banks that have failed so far this year had less than $1 billion in assets, illustrating the problems facing small banks. Many of community banks continue to be hit hard by the sluggish economy and their exposure to the troubled commercial real estate market.
From a frying pan into a fire — a no-winning environment.

Meanwhile, Herm ‘The No-Sperm’ Cain, is battling reality’s syrup by not fighting.
Cain got his panties in a bind last night during a dumb-ass Lincoln-Douglas style debate with Newt Gingrich (why would one even consider watching these two ‘debate’?), which within itself was clueless, but only when the narrative got jagged did the proceedings show a much-clearer, and enlightened perspective.
From ABC News:

“Don’t even go there,” Cain interrupted when a Washington Post reporter began asking a question about the sexual harassment allegations at a press conference following the two-man debate.
“Where’s my chief of staff?
Please send him the Journalistic Code of Ethics.”
Reporters pressed Cain as he tried to leave the room, asking him why he was avoiding answering questions about the accusations, but aides shouted over reporters, yelling “No gossip.”
“Are you not going to answer any questions ever again, Mr. Cain, this sexual harassment stuff, is that what you’re saying,” one reporter asked.
“You got it,” Cain said with a smile.
“How can you run a presidential campaign and be a frontrunner when you won’t answer questions about this?” another reporter asked.
“If you all just listen for 30 seconds, I will explain this one time,” Cain said to reporters before leaving the room.
“We are getting back on message, end of story.
Back on message, read all of the other accounts, read all of the other accounts, where everything has been answered.
End of story.
We’re getting back on message, OK?”

Cain ain’t got a lick of sense — he’s even dumber then Newt, but don’t believe he’s yet showed to be as dumb as Perry.
What a nasty crowd clawing for the White House.

Cain should be made to man up.
The best reason — power.
Todd Kelly at The League of Ordinary Gentlemen (h/t The Dish):

But sexual harassment isn’t the same as infidelity.
Sexual harassment, at the end of the day, is about the abuse of power.
What’s more, it’s about a particularly denigrating and malicious abuse of power.
I would go so far as to say that if someone has a pattern of perpetrating sexual harassment, he is the last person you want in power over others — and you should vote accordingly.

And with apparently the GOP base not giving a shit, and Cain still high in polls and cash-raising, the whole notion will most likely just blow away — the MSM sucks!

And people in the UK are having a time keeping vehicles apart.
For the second time in three days: Police said the crash involved seven cars and four lorries and happened close to junction 29, near Leyland, south of Preston, at about 01:40 GMT. One person was trapped in a lorry and had to be released by firefighters. Police said none of the injuries was life-threatening.
On Friday, 34 vehicles piled up in one giant crash, killing seven and injuring 51.

In the speed zone of a different whack and news item of the weekend — from Russia’s rt.com:

Dozens of cars wrecked, an army of traffic cops called to the scene — a taxi driver’s erratic odyssey brought chaos to Moscow’s roads at the weekend.
The cabbie, who was stark naked, told police, “I was flying on the wings of love.”
Moscow traffic police had to mobilize all its forces in a bid to capture the street racer in a taxi cab who managed to evade capture for some time. In the course of the chase, the suspect narrowly missed a bus packed with children.
…
Only after police opened fire on the car did the driver stop.
But this was only the prelude to the show proper.
As the man emerged from his vehicle, it became apparent that he was stark naked.
When pushed to the ground, he began chanting Save and Protect, passing on to the Russian national anthem, LifeNews.ru reported on Monday.
Not a drop of alcohol had passed his lips, as blood tests later proved.
So what lay behind the driver’s risky race?
A bleeding heart, the driver stated. “I was flying on the wings of love”, he said.
“My lover said she was not ready for a serious relationship, and I went to talk to her,” he explained.
…
Vitaly Grodic, a Moldavian national, insists he never drinks nor even smokes.
He proclaimed himself a Messiah, and promised to change the world for the better.
“When I was in the dark,” Grodic said, “Evil came and took my lover.
I wanted nothing but good.
But he took my lover.
Now I want to give birth to new life on this planet.
There will be no wars anymore because I’ve come.”
Mr. Grodic said there was no other God than him, and that he would fight against evil.
Those dozens cars that he ploughed into during the pursuit were all evil, naturally, the driver explained, and he could not but hit them.
The detained taxi driver has now been sent for psychiatric tests.
If proven to be of sound mind — which seems more than improbable — he may face charges of causing 17 traffic accidents and resisting arrest.
The policemen who prevented Grodic from crashing into children’s bus will receive state awards for their braveness.

Just can’t be my sickness — ain’t the world seemingly gone whale-shit crazy?

A new study has revealed that the holidays, especially Christmas and New Year’s days, creates a strange, but opportune time to die.
The report in the journal Social Science & Medicine details how for some reason people have a much-higher tendency to suffer fatal attacks on those two holidays than any other time period of the year — maybe just plain sick of Santa’s ass.

There’s a known correlation between the holidays and death via vehicles and alcohol — two to three times more people die on the nation’s roads than any other time of the year — 40 percent of traffic fatalities during that time involve a driver who is alcohol-impaired, compared to 28 percent for the rest of the month.

(Illustration found here).

This new death research, however, concerns dying by natural causes in hospital ERs — people  just dropping dead.
From Canada’s National Post:

A new U.S. analysis of mortality rates during different times of year found that people are more likely to die during the holidays — notably on Christmas and New Year’s Day — and researchers cannot explain the yearly spike.
After analyzing all official United States death certificates over the 25-year period between 1979 and 2004, a trio of sociologists identified an excess of 42,325 natural deaths — that is, above and beyond the normal seasonal winter increase — in the two weeks starting with Christmas.
…
More people die in hospital emergency wards, or arrive dead on arrival, on Christmas, Boxing Day and New Year’s Day than on any other days of the year.
“It’s not trivial,” said Mr. Phillips, a professor of sociology at the University of California at San Diego.
“We looked at all cause categories and, for nearly every one, we found an excess of deaths — particularly for people who are dying rapidly, like dead-on-arrival or dying in the emergency department.”

The big question is why.

“It’s speculated that psychological stress can make a difference,” Mr. Phillips said.
“But to make a difference so quickly and so precisely bang-on Christmas and [New Year’s Day], for a huge range of diseases, makes it seem unlikely as a broad-scale explanation.”

However…

The reseachers noted two other, smaller single-day jumps in crib deaths in U.S. data: a 14% spike on July 5, the day after Independence Day, and an 18% boost on April 20, which the authors noted is a “counterculture holiday devoted to the celebration of cannabis consumption.”

A bowl and booze don’t mix — one of the reasons I quit drinking.

And as in: Cracks in an entire barrier holding an Hungarian toxic-sludge reservoir “…makes it very likely that the whole wall will collapse.”

(Illustration found here).

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, without any historical irony, I’m sure, or even any thought about wider implications, voiced the problem now facing a planet that’s been consumed with technology the last 200 years with any regard to consequences: “We have no exact information about the nature of the material because a catastrophe like this has never happened before anywhere in the world,” Orban said. “We have only assumptions about how far and with how much force the material can come out of the storage container.”

All the world’s a stage when it comes to events similar to what’s occurring now in Hungary.
Instances abound, from Katrina to the BP oil spill (in the US), Chernobyl in Russia, or even the waste of entire regions like an incomprehensible ecological disaster in Nigeria and all due to a zealous desire for consumption.
Fear should be super-great for all those man-made catastrophes awaiting right now in the wings.
Alas, however, there’s not much of a fear factor for most US peoples.
Despite the near-identical Hungarian problem in the US — 101 mega-toxic coal-ash disposal sites (lakes) scattered across the country, with many containment structures holding all that shit back considered piss-poor — and despite a commission report that President Obama’s people initially kept the rest of US peoples in the dark about the real magnitude of the BP oil spill.
What keeps the government from doing shit like that on anything?
There ought to be some fear, but there’s really not.

Fear is where fear shouldn’t be.
And maybe hope is replaced by fear.
In the UK’s Financial Times on Friday:

Having been elected partly on the basis of hope, Mr Obama may have to put the accent on fear in 2012 if he wants to be re-elected – fear, that is, of what the other guy might do.
As Bill Galston, the respected US political observer, points out: “Hope is a souffle that never rises twice.”
…
Mr Obama may largely be blameless in failing to fulfil some of these hopes after he was elected — particularly the bit about uniting with Republicans.
But the promises he made to help get him there are his alone.
Hope, therefore, will not do the trick a second time.
Nor, unless there is a much stronger rebound than most forecasters expect, can he bank on a strong economy carrying him over the threshold in 2012.
Which leaves fear.
Franklin Roosevelt famously said “the only thing to fear is fear itself.”
Fear usually gets a bad press.
But FDR may have undersold its electoral benefits.
Fear of terrorism and surrender, for example, worked pretty well to assist George W. Bush’s re-election in 2004.

So unfair — but yet…George Jr. and The Dick spewed fear, were intoxicated by unleashing fear, and fed fear whenever and wherever fear feared to tread.
And this fear continues.
In the Guardian last Thursday:

A US terror alert issued this week about al-Qaida plots to attack targets in western Europe was politically motivated and not based on credible new information, senior Pakistani diplomats and European intelligence officials have told the Guardian.
…
Dismissing claims of a developed, co-ordinated plot aimed at Britain, France and Germany, European intelligence officials also pointed the finger at the US, and specifically at the White House.
“To stitch together [the terror plot claims] in a seamless narrative is nonsensical,” said one well-placed official.

And this from Glenn Greenwald on Friday:

What’s most striking is how we collectively never learn lessons.
These are the same people who ran around screaming for two years that we had to attack Iraq or else Saddam would get us all with his mad chemical scientists (Dr. Anthrax and Mrs. Germ) and nuclear clouds, yet they are still listened to whenever they unleash their newest Scary Villains.
Fear is a potent weapon.

Unfortunately, an only-option weapon of those with nothing else in their arsenals.
And this fear-mongering weapon is most-apparently most potent.
Case in point: Sharron Angle, the nutcase Republican running against the spineless, dipwad Democrat Harry Reid (the lessor of two evils, I suppose) in Nevada.
Angle created a bald-faced fear lie last week in proclaiming two US towns, Dearborn, Michigan and Frankford, Texas — are under Sharia law, the sacred law of Islam.
And this despite the fact Frankford, Tex., no longer exists, and Dearborn Mayor Jack O’Reilly claimed Angle was full of dog shit — well, actually O’Reilly said Angle’s comments were “shameful” and “totally irresponsible.”
Who seems to give a dog shit?
No one with any moral compass in Nevada — Angle is reportedly in a popularity surge, according to the latest polls, and could possibly beat Reid next month.

According to Wikipedia: Fear mongering (or scaremongering) is the use of fear to influence the opinions and actions of others towards some specific end. The feared object or subject is sometimes exaggerated, and the pattern of fear mongering is usually one of repetition, in order to continuously reinforce the intended effects of this tactic, sometimes in the form of a vicious circle.
End-use of this tactic can sound obvious.
Even to making an unwise war wise:

An al-Qaida-linked plot that triggered this week’s U.S. terror alert for Europe underlines the need for the war in Afghanistan, a top NATO commander argued Friday.
U.S. Adm. James Stavridis, NATO’s top commander in Europe, said terrorists using Afghanistan as a base are still trying to target Europe and that this threat justifies a war that has grown unpopular in many places.
…
“So I think prima facie — obviously — there is purpose in what we are doing,” Stavridis said.
He spoke at a conference in the Polish city of Wroclaw devoted to trans-Atlantic issues, and his defense of the war was made in response to an audience member who sharply criticized the war, calling it absurd.

Fear is freakish with a mean streak.

In the front-page explosion off the San Francisco Examiner, pictured to the left there, are the impressions slapped on the tragedy by all the subsequent death, dying and bullshit, which in the long, perilous run, most-likely worst than the actual horror of 9/11/01 — the word ‘Bastards‘ in a huge headline, and way down below, the real page turner, ‘A Changed America.’

On Monday morning, the day before that Tuesday, I was driving my then-21-year-old daughter to work.
She was living at home during a transition: Her fiance was in the US Navy, stationed at Norfolk, Virginia, and she was concerned about how life would be in the military.
And in a moment of true wisdom, I replied (and in paraphrase), the military is cool right now, not much going on, there’s a lot of benefits, and it’s pretty-much like any other job, then smiling at her with some sarcasm (as I recall), and said, “unless there’s a war.”

(Illustration found here).

Although the memory on the rest of that early-morning conversation is cloudy, those last few words are remembered fairly distinctly — words played and re-played over a near-decade, starting the very-next day.
Damn, didn’t I just open mouth, insert feet, and ass.
What has come to pass since, was-then beyond my imagination.

Not only did the US get attacked that day nine years ago, the entire planet shifted somehow, causing a kind of horrific clock to begin ticking, gearing for a wind-down in the now-an-extreme-near-future.
Back then, I didn’t even know of the term, “blowback,” or of Osama bin Laden/al-Qaeda, and for damn-sight sure, didn’t even consider how dangerous and crazy was George Jr.’s operation.
In the process of history, who’s been more-worse for the US, Osama and his boys, or the Decider and his Dick?

Ted Koppel, a fairly-decent MSMer, in an eloquent piece for the Washington Post this morning, seemed to sum up the vast, overwhelming problem the past near-decade.
Koppel says Bin Laden baited a nasty rat trap, George Jr tried to snatch the cheese, and presto, bad shit hit the fan.
Some good bits:

And over the past nine years, the United States has blundered into the 9/11 snare with one overreaction after another.
Bin Laden deserves to be the object of our hostility, national anguish and contempt, and he deserves to be taken seriously as a canny tactician. But much of what he has achieved we have done, and continue to do, to ourselves.
Bin Laden does not deserve that we, even inadvertently, fulfill so many of his unimagined dreams.
…
Perhaps bin Laden foresaw some of these outcomes when he launched his 9/11 operation from Taliban-secured bases in Afghanistan.
Since nations targeted by terrorist groups routinely abandon some of their cherished principles, he may also have foreseen something along the lines of Abu Ghraib, “black sites,” extraordinary rendition and even the prison at Guantanamo Bay.
But in these and many other developments, bin Laden needed our unwitting collaboration, and we have provided it — more than $1 trillion spent on two wars, more than 5,000 of our troops killed, tens of thousands of Iraqis and Afghans dead.
Our military is so overstretched that defense contracting — for everything from interrogation to security to the gathering of intelligence — is one of our few growth industries.
…
Through the initial spending of a few hundred thousand dollars, training and then sacrificing 19 of his foot soldiers, bin Laden has watched his relatively tiny and all but anonymous organization of a few hundred zealots turn into the most recognized international franchise since McDonald’s.
Could any enemy of the United States have achieved more with less?

Read the whole piece — worth it.

Of course, Koppel is concerned with national security and US foreign policy, but George Jr. did so, so much more to create, indeed, a changed America.
And of whom did they (at the Examiner) write in such bold lettering, which bastards?
The US has become a divided, nasty, mean-spirited place, and with the ugly rise of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., this twisted narrative is without-shame spattered across the airwaves, especially with the non-event, so-called ‘ground-zero mosque’ non-controversy.
Via RawStory:

“Here’s the chilling proof that Ground Zero stretches well beyond the boundaries of the World Trade Center site,” Murdoch’s New York Post boasted.
“The map was obtained by The Post from sources after the Fire Department did not respond to requests to review it. It shows that remains were found just 348 feet to the south of the mosque site at 45 Park Place.”
Although the Post article does not make it clear how the map was obtained, it appears that the Fire Department was opposed to its release.
An even more ominous version of the same map, with lurid red dots glowing like puddles of freshly-spilled blood against a dark background, was deployed by the hosts of Fox News’ Fox & Friends on Friday morning.

There’s a video at the RawStory link of Fox and Friends — bastards.

This morning from the UK’s timesonline:

Methane’s impact on global temperatures is about a third higher than generally thought because previous estimates have not accounted for its interaction with airborne particles called aerosols, NASA scientists found.
When this indirect effect of the potent greenhouse gas is included one tonne of methane has about 33 times as much effect on the climate over 100 years as a tonne of carbon dioxide, rather than 25 times as in standard estimates.
…
As methane breaks down much more quickly than carbon dioxide, the impact of cuts on climate would also be faster.
“For long-term climate change there’s no way around dealing with CO2 — it’s the biggest thing and it lasts hundreds of years,” Dr Shindell told The Times.
“But if we were to have a concerted effort to deal with non-CO2 we could have a very large impact on the near term.
“Substantial reductions in methane, carbon monoxide and black carbon: that’s the way to make a big difference. I think it should be more of a priority [for Copenhagen].”

In a few weeks — Dec. 7-18 to be exact — will be the UN’s Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark, in which the world will attempt once again to reach some kind of consensus on one of the most-crucial events facing mankind most-likely in all of history.
Previews of the gathering ain’t too optimistic.
Even from Connie Hedegaard, Danish Minister for Climate and Energy and president of this year’s conference, the Copenhagen meeting is the last stand for climate change reversal.
She says, in part:

“If the whole world comes to Copenhagen and leaves without making the needed political agreement, then I think it’s a failure that is not just about climate.
Then it’s the whole global democratic system not being able to deliver results in one of the defining challenges of our century. And that is and should not be a possibility.
It’s not an option.”

The US, however, might be right now too preoccupied with the ‘public option’ of the health-care debate.

Economic considerations are also front and center in hampering the US from passing a decent climate-change bill along with millions and millions of lobbying dollars spent by coal pushers and others in attempt to hijack any kind of decent work on global warming.
The noxious smoke screen appears to be working.
A shitload of US peoples — 35 percent vs 44 percent just 18 months ago — believe global warming is not as serious as been shown, and humans are responsible — 36 percent, down from 47 percent last year.

According to McClatchy:

The legislation before the Senate, like a bill that passed the House of Representatives in June, would cap emissions and provide funding for climate assistance.
It would set a limit on emissions that ratchets down each year until it reaches an 83 percent reduction from 2005 levels by 2050.
It also would require power plants and other large sources of emissions to buy pollution permits. Most of the money would go to subsidize consumers and industries for increased fuel costs, and to encourage the development of clean energy. Some also would go to help poor nations adapt to climate change.
…
U.S. negotiator Todd Stern, speaking to members of Congress in September, urged the Senate to act, saying, “Nothing the United States can do is more important for the international negotiation process than passing robust, comprehensive clean-energy legislation as soon as possible.”
However, it appears unlikely that the full Senate will vote on the measure this year because lawmakers want to finish overhauling health care first.
The Bush administration opposed mandatory cuts in emissions.
Joseph Romm, who was an acting assistant energy secretary in the Clinton administration, said the Obama administration couldn’t turn everything around in less than a year.
“Given the last eight years, anybody thinking there was going to be a deal in Copenhagen wasn’t paying attention,” Romm said.

Romm runs the most-excellent site, Climate Progress, and he should know.

Even with all his funny shenanigans, Soupy Sales appeared as a really nice guy.
His show was one of my favorites as a kid and I loved all the characters he created, including the never-seen ‘naked girl,’ and he seemed to have great fun doing all those crazy things.
See a video of one of his sketches here.

Despite all the clowning around, Soupy worked hard to get the right knack and the right posture as he received his grandstand ploy — a pie in the kisser.
Laugh and laugh again, but now sad.

(Illustration found here).

From the LA Times:

As the star of “The Soupy Sales Show,” he performed live on television for 13 years in Detroit, Los Angeles and New York before the program went into syndication in the United States and abroad.
Ostensibly for children, the show had broad appeal among adults who found Sales’ puns, gags and pratfalls deliciously corny and camp.
His cast consisted of goofy puppets with names like White Fang, Black Tooth and Pookie, and a host of off-camera characters, including the infamous naked girl.
The high point of every show came when a sidekick launched a pie into Sales’ face.
Sales once estimated that he was hit by more than 25,000 pies in his lifetime.
The gag became more than hilarious; it evolved into a hip badge of honor.
Frank Sinatra was first in a long line of celebrities who clamored for the privilege to be cream-faced, including Tony Curtis, Mickey Rooney, Sammy Davis Jr., Dick Martin and Burt Lancaster.

Soupy was the man.