Open Sesame 10/10/15

"You can only be in a bubble for fifteen minutes at a time. Then you run out of oxygen."

—Imogen Heap

So does it seem like pretty much all the world is just Bad and Wrong? Here, there, all and everywhere?

Well, maybe, in truth, it's not so bad.

Like, can you still breathe? Still? Try it. Still. Breathe. Just breathe.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VyXSEs8jFAk]

Better? Better. ; )

Great story out of 4000 years ago, arrived this week.

Seems smugglers some time back approached an Iraqi museum, and there haggled a while, before exchanging for $800 in monies, a clay tablet, caked in mud.

The tablet was etched with cuneiform writing. Which, in the fullness of time, revealed itself to be a 4000-year-old fragment of The Epic Of Gilgamesh.

Not only that, but a "new" chapter, one heretofore unknown to modern humans.

What [Farouk] Al-Rawi and [Andrew] George translated is a formerly unknown portion of the fifth tablet, which tells the story of Gilgamesh, king of Uruk, and Enkidu (the wild man created by the gods to keep Gilgamesh in line) as they travel to the Cedar Forest (home of the gods) to defeat the ogre Humbaba.

The new tablet adds 20 previously unknown lines to the epic story, filling in some of the details about how the forest looked and sounded.

"The new tablet continues where other sources break off, and we learn that the Cedar Forest is no place of serene and quiet glades. It is full of noisy birds and cicadas, and monkeys scream and yell in the trees," George told Live Science.

In a parody of courtly life, the monstrous Humbaba treats the cacophony of jungle noises as a kind of entertainment, "like King Louie in The Jungle Book," George said. Such a vivid description of the natural landscapes is "very rare" in Babylonian narrative poetry, he added

Other newfound lines of the poem confirm details that are alluded to in other parts of the work. For example, it shows that Enkidu and Humbaba were childhood buddies and that, after killing the ogre, the story's heroes feel a bit remorseful, at least for destroying the lovely forest.

"Gilgamesh and Enkidu cut down the cedar to take home to Babylonia, and the new text carries a line that seems to express Enkidu's recognition that reducing the forest to a wasteland is a bad thing to have done, and will upset the gods," George said. Like the description of the forest, this kind of ecological awareness is very rare in ancient poetry, he added.

So some of what people previously thought they knew about The Epic Of Gilgamesh, is now known to be wrong. Because of this clay lotus, covered in mud.

Who knows what else, not at present known, will be known, once some more smugglers come in, from out of the wind and the rain?

Like, maybe, Jesus In India: The Tantric Years.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-nZYejNVZn0]

Among the innumerable things that are not at present known, is if and when Joe B. Hamlet will ever decide that he wants to try to be the president, or not try to be the president.

There exists a Reality in which the belated but howlingly obvious interest of Biden in the 2016 presidential running of the bulls is nothing but an obvious Plot by some contingent of the Overlords to try to get some Democratic anybody in there to Stop the Sanders. And this could very well be true. But there also exists an alternative, or complementary, Reality. Which recognizes the Demonstrable Fact that Joe Biden has publicly and repeatedly expressed an overweening lust for the presidency since at least 1963. When he was 19 years old. Long before any machiavellian overlordian DNC hack or hamster might have ever possibly even known his name.

And, also, the additional Demonstrable Fact, that a person who so early yearns to be in the presidency, and does not conquer such a disease by his or her late 20s, or early 30s, when the human brain becomes fully formed, suffers from a malady that cannot be fully apprehended, or understood, by the usual, well-adjusted, mentally-secure human.

Let us take, as example, Ashley Wilkes. More commonly known as Lindsey Graham. This is a man who for the past 12 years has served as senator from the state of South Carolina. He is now seeking the presidency. But in an August PPP poll surveying respondents in the state of North Carolina, a state veritably sexually joined to Graham's own South Carolina, it was determined that Graham had "literally no supporters" in that state.

Why would a person continue to pursue the presidency—or even manage in the morning to get out of bed—in the face of such complete and total embarrassment?

Brain damage.

The Doctor Hunter S. Thompson fully understood this grave affliction. And described it, in a Professional Paper, in which the good doctor did diagnose:

A man on the scent of the White House is rarely rational. He is more like a beast in heat: a bull elk in the rut, crashing blindly through the timber in a fever for something to fuck. Anything! A cow, a calf, a mare—any flesh and blood beast with a hole in it. The bull elk is a very crafty animal for about fifty weeks of the year; his senses are so sharp that only an artful stalker can get within a thousand yards of him . . . but when the rut comes on, in the autumn, any geek with the sense to blow an elk-whistle can lure a bull elk right up to his car in ten minutes if he can drive within hearing range.

The dumb bastards lose all control of themselves when the rut comes on. Their eyes glaze over, their ears pack up with hot wax, and their loins get heavy with blood. Anything that sounds like a cow elk in heat will fuse the central nervous systems of every bull on the mountain. They will race through the timbers like huge cannonballs, trampling small trees and scraping off bloody chunks of their own hair on the unyielding bark of the big ones. They behave like sharks in a feeding frenzy, attacking each other with all the demented violence of human drug dealers gone mad on their own wares.

A career politician finally smelling the White House is not much different from a bull elk in the rut. He will stop at nothing, trashing anything that gets in his way; and anything he can't handle personally, he will hire out—or, failing that, make a deal. It is a difficult syndrome for most people to understand, because so few of us ever come close to the kind of Ultimate Power and Achievement that the White House represents to a career politician.

The presidency is as far as he can go. There is no more. The currency of politics is power, and once you've been the Most Powerful Man in the World for four years, everything else is downhill—except four more years on the same trip.

This, I believe, is the affliction currently crippling Joe Biden. His ears are packed with hot wax, his loins are swollen with blood, and he can smell only the White House. Lusting to plunge his pecker into the Big Chair.

There is a very interesting book that, among its many charms, provides good insight into Uncle Joe Biden. I intended to here quote liberally from it, but then I became busy and tired and weak. The short version is that before Uncle Joe embarks on any endeavor, whether it is buying a car, or pursuing the presidency, there must exist two things. First, support from the family. In his life, there are very real and Irish reasons for this. Second, he must "see a path" to success. More or less actually see it. Like some sort of hallucinator. Like a handegg player, bearing the ball, who sees a path to the goal-line through the thundering onrushing phalanx of huge bruising helmeted padded steroidal mutants. They may, in the end, crush him, the mutants, bring him down, break his femur. But he has to see the possibility, of making it through. Otherwise, Biden will not commit to making a move.

I imagine this is the process he is dithering in now. He is trying to convince himself that the live wife, is really in accord with the dead son, in wanting him to run with the other bull elks. And he's also frantically trying—through the hot wax and the glazed eyes and the loin-blood and whatnot—to hallucinate a path by which he can be The Winner.

Or maybe he's just waiting for the call from The Overlord, saying "Go, Joe," or "No, Joe." Who knows? Certainly not me. I'm just a fool on a hill. Who tries to get out of whatever bubble I may find myself in, every fifteen minutes or so, so as not to cut off the oxygen to my brain.

Meanwhile, it seems that Informed Sources indicate that Joe has already picked hisself a campaign song. It will go like this:

i know
he's only uncle joe
but i like him

i know
he's only uncle joe
but i like him
like him
yes i doe

well i like him
yes i like him

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bl9lfnNS4zU]

Something that is known, is that this week the Really Mean people from the National Enquirer printed a story in which they documented the fact that when Uncle Ben Carson was a doctor, he was a butcher, who "brandished a scalpel like a meat cleaver."

He paralyzed people, sewed up sponges in their brainpans, put in shunts upside down, caused patients to go deaf and slur their speech, introduced humans to seizures.

"To strangers," said one survivor of Uncle Ben's sawboning, "he appears to be drunk."

Uncle Ben, he is now Over. The Hairball, he is going to go out and find these people, and he is going to bring them on stage at his rallies, and then he is going to point to them, as they shiver, shake, and seize, and he is going to say: "This is what Uncle Ben did to his patients! And this is what he will do to this country!"

No one will want to be for Uncle Ben anymore, and his share of the GOoPer pie will decline to, like, 4%, right down there with Heb, the last exhausted weak sperm of the Bush family.

In the meantime, Uncle Ben is out there destroying whatever brains come within range of his insane-ray. He is like those mean and nasty alien craft in War of the Worlds, with their heat-rays. This week Uncle Ben said people confronted with school-shooters should rush them, like something out of Red Dawn. Even as it was revealed that when once a bad person stuck a gun in Uncle Ben's ribs, as he was standing in line at a Popeye's, he told the miscreant to go shoot the cashier. Uncle Ben also said that if there had been no gun laws in Nazi Germany then every Jew down in Jewville would have started firing off bazookas and mortars and Hitler would have wet his pants and reported voluntarily to a Dungeon. When a person from the ADL said Uncle Ben, in his understanding of Historical Reality, was mad as a man daily drinking mercury, Uncle Ben said he was a "foolish" Jew who should just shut up and go wrap himself in some guns.

I can actually feel my mind melting, when I am brushed by Uncle Ben's insane-ray.

I refuse to believe that he is, in truth, Real.

When the GOoPers in 2012 offered the pizza topping, Herman Cain, as a potential president, a wise wit noted that "it's like Cain isn't really from this planet. Knows nothing about international anything, quotes Pokemon, makes up names for these sentient biological units with questions he must access from memory implants. Creepy." This was among the reasons I then concluded that the 2012 Republican presidential running of the bulls was actually being Directed and Controlled by extraterrestrials, who were having a laugh on the humans.

With this Carson creature, though, I don't know. Every time he shows his face, he is like a glowing neon sign, blinking to the racists that black people are, in fact, dumber than dirt. I think now that, rather than ETs, it may actually be the GOoPer Overlords, who are running black people like Cain and Carson out there. And that, four years on, in 2020, in order to top first Cain, and then Uncle Ben, they will actually run Stepin Fetchit. For they are just that shameless. Scared. Dead-enders. In their last throes. They know this is coming on to a brown world. And there is nothing, in the end, they can do to stop it. But they're going to keep on firing the insane-rays. Long as they can.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C45g3YP7JOk]

Just so everyone knows the Americans have transcended into a "post-racial" world, there is, most recently, the Study that says that white people presented with "black" sounding names envision huge man-mountain mikes armed to the teeth and bent on murder and rapine, and the Study that shows that black children reporting to emergency rooms do not get painkillers at the rate as do white children, because it is assumed they are Big Black Bucks impervious to pain.

Yeehaw.

Orange Boner had to resign as Speaker of the House because he needed "to spend more time with my whiskey." He planned to then hand the gavel over to a being monikered Kevin McCarthy. But that creature went onto the television show of Sean Klannity—the friendliest possible venue—and there revealed that all of the brains had long ago been sucked right out of his head. He made Michele Bachmann—who cannot even spell her own name—look like a Nobel Prize winner. He was then quickly compelled to decline the speakership, "so," as he put it, "I can spend more time with my penis."

A very strange thing was then Reported—that Republicans were wandering the halls of Congress, openly weeping. Not about the people they daily cause to suffer and die, foreign and domestically. But because they cannot get it together to name a new nimrod. I suppose it could be argued that it is Good that they can weep about something. ; /

One of the new possible nimrods is a thing known as Jason Chaffetz. He represents magic-underpants people out of Utah. As this story sets forth, Chaffetz used to be a Jewish Democrat, who worked in the presidential campaign of Michael Dukakis. But now he is a Republican Mormon, a full-on freakazoid, fully prepared to permanently shut down the federal government, on any pretext, because there is a black man in the White House.

I'm sorry, but I don't buy it.

I understand that it is exceedingly common for people with Bull Elk Fever to wantonly change their political "principles": to wit, the barking-mad simulacrum Clinton II, who first crafts the TPP, then denounces it; Ronald "Where Is The Mind Of Me?" Reagan, first showering in California abortions upon the land, and then, in the White House, hugging to his bosom every shred and piece of fetus; Captain Underpants, first sho nuff loving him some health-insurance mandate, then in a fever agin it, since some Big Buck Negro has gone and mimicked his very plan, there in the Oval Office.

But this Chaffetz transformation: it is just too extreme.

I believe that this current Chaffetz, the one in the news, he was born as one of two twins. And that these twins were born conjoined. And that they were separated, surgically, by Uncle Ben Carson.

The Jewish Democratic twin, he is these days off in the weeds somewhere, quietly serving people and the planet. While the Mormon Republican one, he is running around loose, unhinged, hampered by a sponge, that Uncle Ben left in his brain.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZZwGvcIiKo]

The other night I was leafing through the Orwell, and I came upon a sentence the likes of which is never seen these days.

He wrote:

Jugoslav politics are very complicated and I make no pretence of being an expert on them.

No one ever inscribes that sort of modest, correct, admission anymore. Because, these days, everybody is an expert. Or thinks they are. Because they have the tubes. And the tubes, think thee, and wee, make everyone an expert. Instantly. On everything.

As what Ken Kesey called "the spotlight" directed its gaze on, say, to just run through a recent reel, first Egypt, and then Libya, and then Ukraine, and then Syria, thousands and thousands, and hundreds of thousands, of people, who previously had only the vaguest understanding of such places, become instant experts about them.

Because they went into tubes. Riding confirmation bias. Reading in selected tubes what other people had found in selected tubes who had found in selected tubes what other people had put into selected tubes. Some 99% of these tubian people never actually setting foot in any of these places. Much less possessing any historical cultural spiritual Real understanding of them.

But people know what they know because it's what they want to know.

Ukraine, a place I do know a modest amount about (though, like Orwell, "I make no pretence of being an expert"): it was both amusing, and depressing, to watch people who, in the beginning, were so ignorant that they were speaking of "the Ukraine," come diving in a week or two later, jihading behind a fully-formed Reality, shrieked at full-volume, chanting either the core words "coup, Nazi, NED," or the core words "Maidan, Russian bear, land-grab." They had tubed into bubbles, all these people, regardless of "side," behind something they didn't even really know. And they stayed there. In the bubble. As Imogen Heap do say, "you can only be in a bubble for fifteen minutes at a time. Then you run out of oxygen." All these people, they remained in the bubble, much longer, than 15 minutes. Beyond which the oxygen became exahusted. And they thus became so very, very boring. Which still they are. Beyond what words can express.

i've been running from side to side
now i know for sure
that both sides lie

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGURVK9bMbw]

On a different-one recent night I was rolling through the AM dial and realized that, at least at that hour, there are really only three types of programming available anymore.

First, there is Weird Jesus. He is constantly peering into women's lady parts, to see if something might be aborting in there. He has a machine-gun, which he will, with a vengeance, use on women with aborting lady-parts; otherwise, he mostly guns down Negroes. But his primary purpose in life, as in death, is to get you to send money to whoever it is who is blatting in his name.

Second, there are the Spanish-language stations. These of course are not long for this world, because as soon as Herr Hairball is elected president, all such people will be put in boxcars and deported, as they are all Rapists and Trojan Ponys. The licenses for these stations will be immediately transferred to Trump International (formerly known as the federal government), which shall ceaselessly broadcast News of Herr's Goodness, all day, every day, and into all of the night.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YtepuyvsGbg]

Third, George Noory, and his space aliens. This night, as on many nights, Noory was hosting a gabbling nutball, rambling on, for four hours or so, about utter towering nonsense.

And I remembered that, if we were in China, all of us—host, guest, audience—would be rounded up, and put in the pokey. Because the Chinese government has no sense of humor about space aliens. If you are in China, and you have a space alien in your bathtub, and you take a picture of it, and you put it into the tubes, you will go to the hoosegow.

I myself don't have a problem with promoting fictional creatures. I worked once with a fellow who had an interest in Bigfoot (we live in Bigfoot territory here). I hooked him up with my friend the legal-aid lawyer. Who lived way up in the mountains, and claimed occasionally to commune with Bigfoot, even when he was not on hallucinogens. The fellow came back down to pitch to me a series of stories on Bigfoot. I was the editor of the paper, and basically remained open to anything that had spark. Which this did. And so, as it developed, we had much fun, over many issues, with Bigfoot stories. Totally made up. That eventually included renting some sort of hairy ape costumes, and posing and posting our own photo shoots. The local beer czar became a fan, and was compelled to name a line of his bubbly after our nonsense. (One should drink this brew sitting down; otherwise, it will knock you on your ass.) I really wish our Bigfoot had been real. And that all these "real" political people, that I've written about in this piece, were entirely fictional. For Bigfoot has never done anybody any harm. While anybody, by definition, in any politics, is, by definition, all about harm.

A new Study confirms that one-third of British vegetarians run utterly amok when drunk, at which time they devour as much meat as they can get their hands on.

The various Reports on this Study do not mention that an additional third also gobble down vast quantities of meat when drunk, but refuse to admit it, while the final third, when intoxicated, likewise wallows in meat, but does not remember it.

Pluto continues quite cool.

There are, for instance, blue skies there.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0KPgKJpizg]

Also, water.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qRpcoZVsk8]

What there are not, are borders and barriers and buildings. All that humanoid ratshit. And there ain't going to be any. These sorts of people, they will see to that.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uuMvkNDuOuQ]

Shaharazade wrote Thursday about loving/hating her local world, and I was too pokey then to respond, but I want to try to do that now. About an interesting, to me, man, who endeavored to serve his community.

When he was a child, this guy, Jeff Hull, he used to go to Children's Fairyland, in Oakland, California, and he loved how magic it was, that they had true-life scenes there, out of fairy tales, and little keys, that children could insert into bold bright yellow boxes, that would cause voices to ring out, to tell magic stories.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwOvU8Y2T3I]

When he grew up, this man, he was disappointed, that "real life," in the San Francisco Bay Area, it was nothing like that. But was instead stupid and wrong and boring. Like any city. Dead and deadening.

So, being an artist, and a child, he concocted an incredibly elaborate true-life alternate reality, that brought magic and mystery into the city. Hidden in plain sight, amid all the concrete and noise. Participants self-selected, into this world. It thrived for some three years. More than 7000 people willingly fell down their own rabbit holes. "His idea was to get people to stop looking at their phones, to explore the world they live in, not be afraid to go down an alley because they think it might be owned by someone." They all lived in another world. In another place. Another time. There is a documentary that tells some of what it was about, called The Institute. Hull's is the sort of thing that anybody could, should, do for their community. Not in exactly the same way, of course, as Hull's was designed for the peculiarities of the people of San Francisco. When a local crew did, here, something similar, some years ago, and on a much more modest scale—the Batwingers, they called themselves—it was more of a gold hills thing. But the key to it, wherever or whatever it is, is the magic. That anything, and everything, can be made to, really, fairy-glow.

Just like this little bird. With a magic paper towel.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_-4KArFR08]

Could you ever be as open and high and simple and careless and free? Of course you can. Of course you are. Just: breathe. ; )

Then: be a propellor seed. Who need never run out of oxygen. Because you are of no bubble. But whirl free.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvolAU_o9wI]

Imogen Heap asked people who liked her music to send her natural sounds. Around which she would make music. Some people sent her sounds of trees. Around which she created the song "Propellor Trees." To which the dancers above, were moved, to dance. And now I, having experienced all of this, am moved to plant, in my yard and in my life, a propellor tree.

i'm growing roots
through my toes
and leaves
from my fingertips

where does this story go
what does this story know
what does this story hold
for us

That's how, in community, it works.

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Comments

[video:

]

I cannot get this YouTube video to load. Used the tool, didn't. Used the s, didn't. Made it smaller, didn't. I give up.

Here is the link to YouTube https://youtu.be/7e6mzH0Y4G8

It was pulled because it was "tacky". Ya think!

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"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon

hecate's picture

comes from the Theory that Uncle Joe can run aboard a raft of dead Biden people. Whereas there have not been any Clinton II dead.

They both have a problem though. Dead people. That are not of them.

Both voting to send fucks off. To shit this sort of shit:

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=inFifHetke4]

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a raft of dead Biden people.... You are so lucky to have your brain.

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"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon

lotlizard's picture

The Dead Kennedys, fronted by Jello Biafra, marked the beginning of the Reagan era with an album called Bedtime for Democracy (a take-off on the movie starring Reagan and a chimpanzee, Bedtime for Bonzo).

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MarilynW's picture

broadsided?

Wiki: Neilia Biden's station wagon was hit by a tractor-trailer as she pulled out from an intersection; the truck driver was cleared of any wrongdoing.

It is sad too that Biden continues to use the tragedy politically. I can see that it would define one's life and the grief would never go away, but politically?

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To thine own self be true.

NCTim's picture

Air is good.

It makes breathing worthwhile.

Our sky is gray today, but it is still a good day.

Have a great Saturday. I am off to make French toast, change the car's oil and till the garden.

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The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself. - Friedrich Nietzsche -

gulfgal98's picture

It's raining here and the Peace vigil has been cancelled once again. This is getting old, both the rain and not doing the Peace vigil. Sad

I am having major problems with my computer this morning. I have tried re-booting and all but I have a gremlin which does not allow me to go into a comment I am writing to correct or add anything to it. Instead, wherever i click with my mouse, everything afterwards automatically deletes. Same with my email, if I go to open an email, when I click on it, it automatically sends it to trash. I am so frustrated right now because I am so technically not proficient.

Nice Open Sesame today, hecate. I really enjoy your writing. Smile

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Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy

Sounds like replace or repair.

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"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon

gulfgal98's picture

Last Sunday morning, I spilled a cup of tea on my laptop. Every since then, the keyboard has not worked, so I bought an external keyboard and was able to do some work arounds using it. There were other issues too. This morning when I turned it on, it made some death like sounds and it would not allow me to open email, copy or insert anything into text, block quote, or edit a comment without deleting whatever I was trying work with. If I tried to open an email, it would automatically send it to trash and when I tried to save it from trash, it tried to permanently delete it.

This afternoon, I tried to comment here and when I composed my comment and tried to scroll down to send, it would not allow me to do so. As a result, we dug out one of my husband's old laptops that I am now using. It is so worn that some of the keys do not work on the keyboard and the screen is the small screen, but with my $10 keyboard, I seem to be doing okay now.

To say that the last week has been frustrating technology wise is an understatement. But if this works, then I am okay for the moment. I think I would like need a new lap top, at least in the near future. Dirol

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Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy

shaharazade's picture

We found a great geek computer shop down the street. They don't make house calls but fix problems pretty fast or declare the computer dead. They are affordable and it always surprises me that what seems like a total breakdown or a berserk mess is usually cheaply fixable when you know how to unravel the damage. Couple of times we took our computer in they fixed it right at the counter and hardly charged anything.

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either mouse settings/drivers or you should change your web browser.

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gulfgal98's picture

Cleared all my cache, re-booted, checked mouse setting, etc. Sad

I have had numerous issues in the week since I spilled a cup of tea on my keyboard. My keyboard quit working and I have been doing work arounds for nearly a week including using an external keyboard. Everything was workable last night (with the work arounds) and then this morning all these other issues popped up. I have given up on my damaged laptop and I am now on a very old laptop that my husband once used. Everything seems to be okay with this one.

Thank you for the suggestions and I will let my husband look at it with a fresh eye since mine seems to be very jaded right at the moment. Wink

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Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy

link

The AP published this week (10/5/15) a thrilling account of how the FBI, in concert with Moldovan authorities, “disrupted” a smuggling ring that was supposedly trying to sell “nuclear material” to ISIS and other terror organizations over a five-year span. The primary developments in the story are almost a year old, but the resurfaced tale made news across the English-speaking world:
‘Annihilate America’: Inside a Secret, Frightening Scheme to Sell Nuclear Material to ISIS
—Salon (10/7/15)
AP: Smugglers Busted Trying to Sell Nuclear Material to ISIS
—CBS News (10/7/15)
FBI Foils Smugglers’ Plot to Sell Nuclear Material to ISIS
—The Independent (10/7/15)

Pretty scary, huh? I know I'm scared. There's just one thing...

There was only one problem: At no point do the multiple iterations of the AP‘s reporting show that anyone involved in the FBI sting were members of or have any connection to the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (aka ISIL or Daesh). While one of several smuggling attempts discussed in AP‘s reporting involved an actual potential buyer–an otherwise unknown Sudanese doctor who four years ago “suggested that he was interested” in obtaining uranium–the “terrorists” otherwise involved in the cases were FBI and other law enforcement agents posing as such. According to the AP and NBC’s Pete Williams:
However, the official emphasized that there was no known ISIS connection. An undercover informant, working with Moldovan police, claimed that he was an ISIS representative.
“But that was totally made up,” the official said.
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lotlizard's picture

In ninth grade they told us that journalists' job is to tell us who, what, when, where, why, and how ("the 5 W's and H").

Nowadays, though, all too often, stories are a blend of boilerplate, fluff, and drivel, where
the why is "because national security,"
the where, when, and how lack factual detail (because national security),
the who-says is never named (anonymous official) or is a known propaganda shill, and
the what is meant to scare the reader but, alas, is totally made up.

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link

The Obama administration has launched its first-ever crowdfunding campaign this week to raise money for Syria’s growing refugee crisis, in a bid to draw the American public into supplementing the U.N. refugee agency’s strained budget.

The initiative, requested by the White House Office of Digital Strategy, is also a first of its kind for Silicon Valley crowdfunding platform Kickstarter, which typically hosts “creative” projects, not charities. As of Wednesday, the second full day of the campaign, donors had raised over $800,000 for the U.N. refugee agency (UNHCR) — enough to cover “immediate necessities and a place to sleep for 3,000 people in need,” the campaign page says.

That sum, of course, is a drop in the bucket for the Syrian crisis, which has displaced 12 million people both inside and outside the country. To date, the UNHCR has only received $1.8 billion of the $4.5 billion it has requested from foreign governments for Syrian refugees in 2015. Meanwhile, "the need is growing every minute, as more desperate people flee for their lives,” said Brian Hansford, the UNHCR spokesman in Washington, D.C.

How about we buy one less fighter-bomber instead?

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Detroit is taking up a collection to test rape kits. Donations - hell of a way to run a government. I think there is a message here.

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"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon

gulfgal98's picture

our government's priorities are. Pathetic. Dash 1

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Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy

shaharazade's picture

but you need to feed those fairy folk a treat every night or they will take you and yours away in the night. Thanks for the reply. I have come to the conclusion that the world is a beautiful place and I should do some art create some fairy glow instead of feeding the fear and loathing that emanates from the computer screen. This too used to be Big Foot, Sasquatch country. I think they all got blown up when Mt. Saint Helen blew it's top. My ex father in law the police chief in a upscale Portland suburban town used to go out to woods in search of Big Foot. He and his cronies always came back with tales of sightings and encounters and large footprints. They left food and goodies out as like fairies Sasquatch's need to be fed if you want them to deal with you. They used a cast iron frying pan to cook up the treats and left the cabin window open at night. I inherited the well seasoned frying pan but I use it for mere mortal cooking. Fairies being little people like their treats in a small bowl. Yes the love does outweigh the loathing if you get rid of your tainted perception and remember how magical it all is.

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All charts arr from this source. I'm just posting the most dramatic.
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I don't know if anyone has already seen this

Joshua Goldberg posed as an Islamic radical and allegedly encouraged a terrorist to attack on September 11. That’s just one of his online personas though.

When Joshua Goldberg wasn’t posing as an Islamic radical, he was pretending to be a white supremacist—and is accused of impersonating a Jewish lawyer.

Goldberg had several online personas: an Islamic radical who was popular in ISIS social media; a white supremacist on hate site Daily Stormer; a feminist on Daily Kos; a radical free-speech advocate on Q&A site Ask.fm, and a sympathizer with GamerGate. Goldberg is also accused of being behind a Times of Israel blog post that called Palestinians “subhuman.”

Goldberg’s trolling turned serious when he was arrested Thursday by the FBI on the grounds that he told a would-be terrorist how to build a bomb meant for a 9/11 attacks anniversary event in Kansas City, Missouri.

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mimi's picture

This article was posted on 9/11. A bit odd, no?

Sigh. Too many people gone nuts out there in the real world, apparently.

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lotlizard's picture

http://www.dailykos.com/user/TanyaCohen1

"TanyaCohen" (without the "1") also joined on Jan 2, 2015, but never filled out "her" profile or posted anything.

Article in the September 12 Sydney Morning Herald:
FBI says 'Australian IS jihadist' is actually a Jewish American troll named Joshua Ryne Goldberg

Australian media and authorities are involved because the ISIS-follower persona that Goldberg was pretending to be supposedly lived in Perth.

You might say Goldberg was caught imPerthonating a terrorist.

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gulfgal98's picture

Lot lizard! Good

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Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy

lotlizard's picture

Nobody can remember absolutely everything they've seen or read. But people with Asperger's syndrome tend to come closer than most people.

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mimi's picture

What drives these people?
Wacko

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lotlizard's picture

They very likely believe that…
– They belong to a select few whose destiny and birthright it is to lord it over others
– This entitles them to ignore the rules the "lesser folk" must obey
– Deception is smart and mastering it is a natural path to advantage
– They are above moral strictures, which exist only to corral the dumb
– It's perfectly legitimate to exploit the weaknesses of others
– Manipulating the behavior and emotions of others is an art and a game
– Each deception they pull off is a win, and racking up wins proves they are the master
– etc.

That would be my guess.

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mimi's picture

Deception is smart and mastering it is a natural path to advantage.
Manipulating the behavior and emotions of others is an art and a game.
Each deception they pull off is a win, and racking up wins proves they are the master.

And I would say all of it is very addictive.

Time to forget it. Thanks, lotlizard. What's your time over there? You should be sleeping the sleep of the just. (Is this "the sleep of the just" or "the sleep of the righteous"? I would have translated "Der Schlaf der Gerechten" with the latter words, but them dictionaries on the intertubes say it's the "sleep of the just")

Good Night.

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lotlizard's picture

This old lady's internet addiction keeps her awake, inexorably drawing her to pick up the laptop.

You're right, it's now 5:45 and I should go back to sleep if I want to make the Keizersgrachtkerk's morning service.

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shaharazade's picture

He has no mojo but no bones. lol. He got 126 rec's for his first dairy. I one time in 2010 got a month long NR for posting comments on a troll dairy that was written by some RW loonie who pretended he was a guard at Gitmo and talked about how great the prisoners we're treated and bewailed the propaganda of the 'left' for wanting to close it down. The usual suspects, the authoritarian crowd that witch hunts the 'white privileged' racists all were eating it up as Obama was obviously not going to do a damn thing about Gitmo. I did go Godwin as this dairy called for it. Even MB who was then the moderator said you we're right there in the thread, this poster is a troll. Yet still I lost my so called privileges. It was about the time ek got told he had to promise to stop being trouble or leave. He left rather then acknowledge his spot on no holds barred righteous pov. When I joined dkos, ek had a meta dairy that told how to get your mojo back if you lost it so I used his formula and had my mojo back in about 2weeks. I sure had a time there back in the day but now some nut cake troll form hell still has no bones. What a cesspool. Yet still like Sisyphus I keep rolling that stone up a totally bogus useless hill. Nowadays i just don't care. It's an entertaining sick diversion to tread the threads of zombies.

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I don't like it, or its moderation or lack thereof. Many of the people who hang there are really awful. Yet I go there every day. There are a million gazillion places on the Internet, why there?

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"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon

lotlizard's picture

We get pellets (recs) and the occasional electric shock (HR) until without realizing it, we have modified our behavior to please an unseen horde.

In that research vein, there's a famous result that says intermittent reward works even better than unvarying reward.

In any case, even though it smells strongly of feces, urine and dead rodents, my inner rat keeps visiting that part of the maze and pressing that bar.

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mimi's picture

I became aware of it. A very kind kossack told me in person how he/she works daily like four hours (volunteering) in the background as a member of the dailykos rescue crew, reading every diary and all the comments to it during her "shift" to make a judgement if it's a story worth to be rescued. It certainly was a great effort, which you have to respect and admire, and I am sure it was meant well to give "the better writers" a better chance to be read. So, I applauded that part of her "job". But at the same time I was wondering how it's possible to spend every day four hours reading every little itsy bit of diary and comment and making judgments about them. That's a bit like the Stasi worked too. Of course, it would be mean to compare that on a personal level and so far I dared to express those thoughts I had about it. But in the end that's what it is. So, there it is, I have done it. Ban me. Goodwyn. People at the gos are very proud of the hard work that is going on there "behind the curtain". A lot of good work. It would be good if the work were in front of the curtain though, I think.

I was a well adjusted rat, I have to say. Carrots and sticks, haphazardly applied, threat of isolation from the communal, tribal opinion makers and shakers and other little tricks ... and there you go with humane torture of your readers' minds. You get your potion of forced feed language control and it's all for your own good.

Of course. No doubt about it. Any non-conforming thoughts on that are "verboten". Smile

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MarilynW's picture

and that was reflected in their choices. Too bad about those of us who were disillusioned by his right-wing decisions.
I mean, like Open Season on wolves? wtf?

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To thine own self be true.

lotlizard's picture

Some are like the subjects of the Milgram experiment. Assured that an authority figure is urging them on, they await their chance to pile the next HR on some hapless soul as he or she shrieks in protest (equivalent to increasing the voltage of each administered shock).

Run of the mill grammar-nazi shock troops. Smile

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link

Five large purchasers of US Treasuries – China, Russia, Norway, Brazil, and Taiwan – have changed their minds. They’re dumping Treasuries, each for their own reasons that are now coinciding. And at the fastest rate on record.

For the 12-month period ended July, sales of Treasuries by central banks around the world reached a net of $123 billion, “the biggest decline since data started to be collected in 1978,” the Wall Street Journal reported.

China is selling to prop up their currency, and those sales are accelerating.
Russia and Norway are selling to cover the gap from low oil prices.
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However, that isn't all the selling. There are also soveriegn wealth funds.

Norway, which actually runs the largest sovereign wealth fund in the world, plans to draw approximately $450 million from the fund in 2016 to replace oil revenues diminished by low energy prices. Since the fund has $820 billion under management, that’s not much of a drawdown. The fixed income portion of the fund generates more than that in interest over the next 12 months, so the fund doesn’t actually have to sell assets to meet the government’s financial needs.

Saudi Arabia, where the central bank also doubles as the country’s SWF, is drawing on its foreign currency reserves to make up for declining oil revenues. Now, the country still has over $600 billion in reserves, but that is down 10% from last year.

Russia has tapped its SWF for $14.3 billion over the course of 2015 according to press accounts

SWF's aren't necessarily Treasuries, but they are often U.S. assets.

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mimi's picture

fool ?
Fool

Who knows? Certainly not me. I'm just a fool on a hill. Who tries to get out of whatever bubble I may find myself in, every fifteen minutes or so, so as not to cut off the oxygen to my brain.

Do you work for The Hill?
(Oops, I thought Obama were thinking of this "Cain"

Never mind. Oxygen deficiency...

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mimi's picture

It's really funny what the Washington Post seems to think is important to report.
Exhausted by Ukraine talks, German TV reporter smokes on camera and becomes Internet star.

The word "Brennpunkt," which is the name of a special newscast watched by millions in Germany, can either be translated into English as focal or burning point.

On Thursday evening, the show unintentionally lived up to its name as it has never done before, with one reporter appearing in a live shot with a lit cigarette
...
After having been on air day and night from Minsk, Belarus, where world leaders tried to negotiate a cease-fire agreement for Ukraine, German reporter Udo Lielischkies decided to smoke a cigarette. Unfortunately, he did so while being watched by 4.73 million viewers on Germany's most watched TV station, Das Erste.

Unaware of the fact that he was already on the air, Lielischkies inhaled the smoke, but he quickly breathed it out when he realized that his assumed moment of relaxation was being broadcast on millions of TV screens.

Oh lordy, the poor guy became an internet star on twitter and elsewhere, just because he happened to "inhale" while the camera started to roll? He is a "Clint Eastwood" guy now ?
[video:https://youtu.be/cR0Cg9vFcIk]
Riiight.

The world is going to end. A correspondent smokes for a second in front of the camera? How dare he does that? Das ist doch verboten in good 'ol Germany.

This was so important that the Washington Post had to report it?

In a tweet, Berlin-based writer Ligia D. Tudorica urged her followers to be more cautious, though. "How nice that we're talking about smoking journalists today. That's definitely more important than the suffering in Ukraine," she sarcastically remarked.

Would be nice if the Washington Post would "get that" too. Geez.

BTW I worked for this guy for over four years or more. He was correspondent of the ARD in the Washington Studio and is now studio boss in Moscow and covers Ukraine therefore, as well.

He smokes a lot and I remember well the "smoking breaks" in the back alley of our Washington studio.

"Udo, you are a star now. I know you ain't no Clint Eastwood. Much better than that 'ol Republican, who is so desperate he has to speak to a chair. I guess on that night you had wished you had a chair to sit on for reporting. I am sure."

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lotlizard's picture

As owner, Jeff Bezos is to the Washington Post what Markos Moulitsas is to Daily Kos.

The Washington Post has been in the bag for the neocons for a long time. Under Bezos, that won't change. What will change is an increasing trend toward twitterization, trivialization, and clickbait.

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mimi's picture

I happen to witness how he bought the licenses for the right to publish the book information for his first 3 million bookstore online from Bowker's Books in Print and from Baker and Taylor, with the request that he would be the only one who ever could get that license. He got it. That killed all other early online booksellers wannabees way back when we all had dreams about the intertubes. (It killed my job too, btw). Later I found a lot of long interviews with him by ARD correspondents in the ARD studio basement archives.They never saw the light of the day and nothing of substance was produced with the material. But it was "very telling" to me. The guy couldn't use Unix or Linux based computers. Very funny seeing him clicking on his own website and not quite knowing how to get where he wanted to go. No producer was so mean to show that. But that's a long time ago. History.

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lotlizard's picture

Clever mediocrities make millions using OPM and OPB (other people's money and other people's brains).

If America ends up with Donald Trump, perhaps — as a society that makes living gods of dealmakers but treats schoolteachers with contempt — we don't deserve any better.

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