But Kristof never did although years later he lamely conceded that he had managed to “afflict the afflicted.”
Kristof kept his place at the toniest estate in journalism, polishing his reputation as a hand-ringingly sincere butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-the-mouth wise man who wants nothing but the best for everyone.
Today Kristof gets around to doing something that must have caused that person a bit of pain — naming the Republican Party as an obvious security threat, one greater than the foreign bogeyman we’ve grown accustomed to hearing of on a daily basis.
IF China or Iran threatened our national credit rating and tried to drive up our interest rates, or if they sought to damage our education system, we would erupt in outrage.
Well, wake up to the national security threat. Only it’s not coming from abroad, but from our own domestic extremists.
We tend to think of national security narrowly as the risk of a military or terrorist attack. But national security is about protecting our people and our national strength — and the blunt truth is that the biggest threat to America’s national security this summer doesn’t come from China, Iran or any other foreign power. It comes from budget machinations, and budget maniacs, at home …
So let’s remember not only the national security risks posed by Iran and Al Qaeda. Let’s also focus on the risks, however unintentional, from domestic zealots.
The rest of the column devotes itself to budget-cutting on education because — in addition to despising science — Republicans don’t like any money for things the wealthy have no use for. Which includes reading programs for children.
Ralph Nader stating the baldly obvious (although it’s nice he said it):
Corporations say they love their country, especially when it comes to manufacturing modern weapons systems for the Pentagon.So let’s extend this love and see how they measure up patriotically.
Is it patriotic for drug companies to leave our country without any production facilities for ingredients used in penicillin and other key drugs because they have shipped production rapidly in the past decade to China and India which lack the inspection standards we have here? Leaving America defenseless and so dependent in this critical area is especially galling. Remember Big Pharma accepts billions in tax credits and valuable free research, development and clinical testing by the National Institutes of Health for many important pharmaceuticals.
Is it patriotic for CEOs to demand and use taxpayer dollars to facilitate moving abroad with their industries? The latest version of this lack of fealty is taking large federal subsidies for solar energy research and development and then moving the production facilities to China.
It’s good to keep in mind that the big filch Nader mentions re Big Pharm also applies to our arms manufacturers. They get all their R&D money from Uncle Sam for making our marvelous killing technologies, stuff the Lockheed Martins and Raytheons then peddle to various pantywaist militaries around the world.
An idle mind is the devil’s playground. That’s a flip way to describe the recent intersection of stupid Dept. of Justice lawyers and the continuing mainstream media interest in anthrax mailer Bruce Ivins. Throw in the mythology surrounding the dead man’s case. It will never die. Stir vigorously.
So the latest new skin mole with hair growing out of it comes courtesy of civil case lawyers at the Dept. of Justice, legal men apparently not really up on the fine details of what the FBI’s arguments were against the man. But dead set on trying to find a reason to explain why the US government not be found liable in the death of Robert Stevens, the first anthrax victim.
Once they had botched their case by filing materials in it incongruent with the FBI’s findings, they “rushed to correct [these things],” reported Scott Shane of the New York Times.
Lawyers for the department’s civil division wrote in the July 15 filing that the Army’s biodefense center at Fort Detrick, Md., “did not have the specialized equipment in a containment laboratory that would be required to prepare the dried spore preparations that were used in the letters.???
But on Tuesday, the department sent the court a list of corrections to its documents in the Florida lawsuit, filed by the family of Robert Stevens, a tabloid photo editor and one of five people killed in the anthrax attacks. What the filing should have said, the department wrote, was that while the Army lab did not have a lyophilizer, a freeze-drying machine, in the space where Dr. Ivins usually worked, there was a lyophilizer and other equipment in the building that he could have used to dry the anthrax into powder.
This news set off the cult of anthrax denial, a small but rather loud and partially effective group of conspiracy theorists working continuously to exonerate Ivins.
A month ago, it was weaponization and the alleged use of silicon in mailed anthrax preparations. This, it was said, proved Ivins could not have done it. All picked up by the McClatchy new service.
And, again via McClatchy, the current news of stumblebum DoJ lawyers who readers can presume were quite loudly read the riot act behind closed doors over their initial filing in the Stevens imbroglio. In addition to having thrown away the case through professional incompetence, they may have also quietly flushed their jobs down the toilet once this particular moment is over.
In the mainstream press, the news post-Ivins suicide now revolves around publicizing what are minor mistakes and inconsistencies in the FBI case. They rely on a well-earned suspicion of the government and the simple fact that editors and lay readers now simply can’t remember all the fine details of the FBI’s lay out against Ivins.
The arguments spring from the fertile earth of paranoid assumption that everyone at the FBI was incompetent. And that various small holes and misinterpretations of difficult to understand science found because the case was not 100 percent air tight forensically exonerate the man.
Except it never quite happens. Is there some blockbuster item as yet unpublished that will destroy the FBI’s case? Perhaps, but I doubt it.
Anyway, it has not yet been unearthed. In science, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
The FBI largely appeared to fill that requirement. The critics of it, as of yet, haven’t really.
And no amount of publishing in the mainstream press, essentially just nibbling around the edges, will re-open the case barring that.
The mythology will continue. And the next item bubbling under is that some consultant who furnished psychological testimony on Ivins to the FBI relied on a person now being painted as a crackpot.
My feelings for this man are based on true facts. Here is a man raised by avowed communist/socialist, America-hating parents; surrounded by avowed socialist/communist America-hating terrorists like Bill Ayers; attending an America-hating church; being preached to and married by a vicious, America-hating maniac; implementing proven economy- and America-destroying fundamental transformation policies; promising to cause our energy costs to skyrocket; and following the (Richard) Cloward/(Frances) Piven playbook on how to take down America. I’ll tell you what I think of people like the president. I am convinced he is the enemy of America, the enemy of freedom and the enemy of our Constitution. He is a bad, evil, rotten human being.
Your take on the tea party?
The tea party is pure America good. It is blatantly obvious that the tea party movement is a long-overdue return to We the People taking back our country from power-abusing, corrupt, unaccountable bureaucrats that have clearly lost their way. The tea party may be America’s only hope.
Companies are laying off employees at a level not seen in nearly a year, hobbling the job market and intensifying fears about the pace of the economic recovery.
Cisco Systems Inc., Lockheed Martin Corp. and troubled bookstore chain Borders Group Inc. are among those that have recently announced hefty cuts, while recent government numbers underscore how companies have shifted toward cutting jobs.
Cisco and Lockheed Martin are way too much in the news now. And not for good things.
I’d have a song for this but if I wrote a song for every bit about economic fail and decline in the once great nation I’d have to do three to five a day, easy.
So listen to Jonnie Pantywaist Blooz again. Which I tried to make light and topically funny but could just as well have turned into something from the business pages.
Months ago I named the GOP as a threat to security, primarily for its religious non-belief in science.
That was before it became recently clear that most of them would do anything — even bring about an even deeper depression recession — just for the sake of:
“Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering whale; to the last I grapple with thee; from hell’s heart I stab at thee; for hate’s sake I spit my last breath at thee. Sink all coffins and all hearses to one common pool! And since neither can be mine, let me then tow to pieces, while still chasing thee, though tied to thee, thou damned whale!”
Cigar box guitars and foot stompers were invented by folks in the poor south. Like the harmonica, they were musical instruments for anyone to play — even without formal musical education of any kind. Keep in mind that, strictly speaking, modern cigar box guitars aren’t the standard old instrument. Addition of electronics, piezo or humbucking pick-ups, makes them acoustic/electric.
Cigar box guitars are tuned to open chords and the folk blues made by them works off of drones and slides. It’s an easy genre of music to fall into and very addicting. The instruments go from quiet to swampy to intense racket very simply.
It’s not a big leap at all to go from a six string electric to one of these old three or four-string old time devices (particularly if you’re at all familiar with taking a string off a standard guitar to do the Keith Richards 5-string open G chord thing).
As is fairly obvious in the video, they reward simplicity and music-making for the sake of emotional expression and sincerity.
On the web a number of people have enthusiastically turned to cigar box guitar making. They’re fanatical about it and you can spend a couple hours wading through photos of great-looking wood box instruments for show or sale on these websites. Here’s one fabulous example.
They’re definitely not for the plutocracy. Yet. Mostly. That’s a pretty good thing and it would be a shame for shoeshine boys in the lower reaches of the upper class to stink it up. Symbolically they fit with most of the rest of the nation being sent to the poor house for the sake of the ruling class.
The signs look real, the products look real and the staff all think they work for Steve Jobs – but this Apple store in China is a complete fake.
It was spotted in Kunming in the south-west of the country by U.S blogger … who was convinced at first that it was a real store.
But then she noticed that the signage said ‘Apple Store’ – and Steve Jobs’ electronics giant never writes that on its signs.
Since Apple makes all its iKit in China it only stands to reason, that like many many US companies, it has trained a legion of laborers to make its stuff very well. And it will have occurred to some of them that perhaps they don’t really need Apple and iSteve’s leash to make it.
This is a problem that has affected US guitar manufacturers. Having offshored most of their production to China, and supervised the upgrade of manufacturing there, they have seen counterfeiting operations. And it is difficult to know how widespread it is since Americans generally do not report on what they find in Chinese music stores — which could easily imitate Guitar Center.
At this point, about all I have to say is “they had it coming.”
What’s iSteve gonna do? Complain to the WTO? The US government?
It doesn’t matter, anyway. Apple’s quarterly statements show it’s the premier company in the US, one perfectly positioned to dominate the future of trivial gadget and status symbol manufacturing for the plutocracy.
Now if only penguins had hands. American multi-nationals could move production to Antarctica, maybe.
Which also gets me wondering, how good are mountain gorillas at shop labor?
I am surrounded by the nicest, hardest-working, most intensely dedicated, productive human beings on earth. These Americans will simply not let the Mao Tse Tung fan club complete its disastrous fundamental transformation of the greatest quality-of-life country in the history of mankind. I still believe that the good people of America still outnumber the slovenly, gluttonous crybabies that support another shot at communism by Obama and his gang of America haters.
With little variation in tempo or style, a few artistic lulls were inevitable. The worst moments came during “I Still Believe.??? It sounded like an intentional parody of an ill-conceived patriotic song.
Unfortunately, Nugent wasn’t joking. A couple of dodgy songs weren’t enough to sink the set. Sung by original vocalist Derek St. Holmes, “Hey Baby,??? the evening’s sole nod to pop music, was the night’s most rewarding song.
When St. Holmes wasn’t acting as the lead vocalist, Nugent peppered most songs with interjections and asides. While initially amusing, Nugent’s constant chatter had lost much of its appeal by the end of the show.
He resembled a profane preacher … And when he repeatedly referred to himself as “Uncle Ted,??? Nugent’s tone suggested a deranged host of a children’s TV program.
Nugent’s political commentary was limited but venomous.
Hunters across the country routinely dump their woes on him regarding overregulation and wildlife officer harassment, he said.
Maybe that’s a product of the hunters he attracts with his love for baiting and whacking and stacking large numbers of critters and slinging lead with semiauto and even automatic weapons.
In my hunting camp, we hoist a toast at the end of the rare day when we get checked by a wildlife enforcement officer. We play by the rules and we wish more officers were in the field making sure other hunters are doing the same.
During the Fred Bear song in his concert, The Nuge is featured in a video skewering about a dozen whitetail bucks with arrows, pumping his arms in victory and screaming with joy after each one.
“I’m an entertainer,” he said, explaining why he should be excused for his hyperbole …
“I rock and roll all summer long,” he screams to his concert crowds.
“The rest of the year I just kill (rhymes with fit).”
