One of the swells at the New York Times tells us what we already know — European countries endure higher taxation than the US, have better standards of living, better health, a bigger social safety net, and aren’t all psychotically resentful over a paranoid belief brown people are coming for their money.
There is something to be said for universal health care systems. (Ain’t that just the best lede, ever?)
When my son developed a rash on an Italian vacation in Liguria (beach resort area for the toffs and their shoeshiners) last month, the pharmacist showed me to the doctor downstairs, who diagnosed the problem at no charge and sent me off with a handshake and a joke about a daughter in med school at the University of California, San Diego …
Every developed country aspires to provide a better life for its people. The United States, among the richest of all, fails in important ways. It has the highest poverty and the highest infant mortality among developed nations. We provide among the least generous unemployment benefits in the industrial world …
Citizens of most industrial countries have demanded more public services as they have become richer. And they have been by and large willing to pay more taxes to finance them … The big exception has been the United States.
No wonder we can’t afford to keep more children alive …
Alberto Alesina, an Italian-born economist at Harvard, contrasts American individualism rooted in the belief that effort brings success with Europeans’ belief in state redistribution — born of Europe’s long history of inherited wealth. Americans who think they have a fair shot at striking it rich vote against high taxes on their expected future wealth. (When can we drive a stake through this one? The inner delusion that progressive taxation of the wealthy is bad because I, too, might someday be part of the club and don’t want to piss the noblemen off.) Europeans who believe wealth is mostly a matter of luck and connections are less resistant to paying taxes for collective welfare.
Ten years ago, the sociologist William Julius Wilson wrote that American whites rebelled against welfare because they saw it as using their hard-earned taxes to give blacks “medical and legal services that many of them could not afford for their own families.???
Of course, only the swell knows this because the rest of us don’t have the telling anecdote about the poxy kid who was treated gratis on the Mediterranean coast, saving the vacation.
From old DD blog, pre-Tea Party during the Bush years, in a post appropriately entitled “The Dickhead”:
Dick Destiny was mulling over whether the next short entry should be saved for its regular series, The Daily Fallout.
But it’s so exaggerated, even by the gold standard of Congressional war-on-terror utterances, it deserves its own place in the diseased sun.
Chris Shays (Rep. R, Conn.): “I believe there will be a biological attack against this country. I believe there will be a radioactive attack against the country. I even believe there will be a nuclear attack. I have been to Los Alamos and I have seen a weapon made with material you could get from Home Depot. The only thing you need is enriched uranium,” Shays said [in a press conference.]
Two years after Shays uttered the nonsense printed above, he was run out of Congress, beaten by a Democrat.
Chris Shays got beat Tuesday. Crushed, in fact. Vying with Linda McMahon for the right to run on the Republican ticket in Connecticut’s Senate election this fall, he managed only twenty-seven per cent of the vote, to McMahon’s seventy-three per cent.
Normally, someone who’d lost that badly in an under-the-radar primary wouldn’t be worth covering. But Shays isn’t your typical cannon fodder; he’s a former congressman. He represented Connecticut in the House of Representatives for a little over two decades. And he’s one of the last of a dying breed.
Being permanently rid of someone who was no great shakes, because they’ve been done in by someone more to the extreme right, passed off as something unfortunate.
Linda McMahon, Chris Shays — makes no difference, really, just different flavors of horrid.
Posted in Bioterrorism at 10:16 am by George Smith
It’s the time of year when the microbe at the heart of my old doctoral thesis is in highest concentration in Gulf Stream waters. And while most people suffer no consequences, a small number have very bad luck.
If you live near or on the east and gulf coasts and spend summers at the beach or in brackish water in the estuaries you’ve probably come in contact with Vibrio vulnificus. Fortunately, it takes big numbers of it in a wound or ingested and a few other factors to get infections started.
From the wires:
According to the Hillsborough County Health Department, two Hillsborough residents have died this year from Vibrio vulnificus infections and five other cases of Vibrio have been reported in the county.
The microscopic bacterial organism Vibrio vulnificus occurs naturally in coastal areas of the Gulf of Mexico, Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. It is especially common during the summer months when water temperatures are warmer.
Infections are most often due to consumption of raw oysters and other undercooked raw shellfish. They can also result from exposure of open wounds or sores to seawater.
WILMINGTON, NC (WWAY) — A Robeson County man is dead after being exposed to a flesh eating bacteria while fishing near the state line.
Doctors say Charles Curtis Hardin, 56, of Fairmont, died last week after they amputated his leg in an attempt to save his life.
TAMPA (FOX 13) –
Authorities are investigating the death of a 43-year-old Hillsborough County man whose family says a flesh-eating bacteria is to blame.
Tim Ingram, of Gibsonton, passed away last Sunday. His family says it was because of a bacterial infection called vibrio vulnificus.
The source of the infection is not known. Ingram’s wife Ava tells FOX 13’s Doctor Joette Giovinco that Tim had been in the Gulf of Mexico waters off Redington Shores. They then learned of a beach bacteria advisory through a relative. He also ate raw oysters before getting sick.
There are two types of infection, one that sets in after consumption of raw filter-feeder shellfish carrying the organism. Underlying conditions such as liver disease and depressed immunity contribute.
The other stems from wound infection occurred during fishing and boating.
Unfortunately, you can’t tell who among the general population might be most at risk just by looking. Summer recreation and vacation doesn’t work that way.
Both infections are disastrous although the former is generally much more lethal than the latter. In any case, they’re both quite worrisome when diagnosed.
Although the bacterium is susceptible to antibiotics, when the patient presents infections are frequently too fulminating and advanced for best outcomes. It is an example of extreme bioterrorism from nature, so to speak.
Vibrio vulnificus produces a protein digesting enzyme known as a collagenase. And this gives it its “flesh-eating” invasive characteristic.
People will always eat raw shellfish in the summer. And more and more, with global warming, will be spending time in warm salty water in the late summer. Which regrettably guarantees we will always have cases at this time of year.
“Uncle Sam & the JDAMs … responsible for such patriotic anthems as ‘Red Zone Bar-B-Q [Flat Foot Fallouja]’ and ‘Posing for Pix in Abu Ghraib,’ not to mention the Angry Samoans update ‘The Shrub Killings’)… a day will come when we look back and laugh. History works like that.??? — The Village Voice, November 2004
Eight years later and still no one’s laughing. One of the final nails in the coffin of the national reputation.
Often just instrumental punctuated by familiar lines, it was purposely brief, like the two weeks of humiliating national euphoria leading up to “Mission Accomplished!”
It was composed to be one piece, heard linearly from start to finish. You can’t cherry pick it or ignore the words and roll your own play list. The segues from song to song have purpose and the story falls apart if you apply the technology of iPod and shuffle play. (And, yep, I was Uncle Sam & the JDAMs, playing all the instruments except for drums, furnished either by a now old Adrenalinn I or programmable loops and acoustic single shots from Cool Edit Pro/Adobe Audition.)
In 2004 no one wanted satire. No Frank Zappa. They still don’t. There was just the slight beginnings of a surly national hangover that only became more fulminating over the years.
“Oh, yeah?” comes the belligerence. Yes it sucked but we suck less than the rest of the world, or something like that.
Make up an excuse, there are hundreds.
The war was and is a source of national shame. No movies that did great box office were made of it. (Remember Generation Kill? Didn’t think so.) Very few of our celebrity artists had the nerve to sneer at it. The most famous who did, the Dixie Chicks, paid for it with their career.
More records were made with the opposite sentiment, all of them certified dog crap.
I made about eighty Iraq n Rolls. Some were peddled on line, some given away to acquaintances. But most sold in LA County, in Poo-bah’s in Pasadena and Amoeba Records in Hollywood.
No one would review it. I got the feeling the few I sent copies to
didn’t even take it out of the shrink wrap. As today, no one can be bothered.
The tune that earned the most mileage was “I Think We Should Make a Carla Sandwich,” a bonus cut which had nothing to do with the war. It was a joke about Arnold Schwarzenegger and his unquenchable urge to paw women. It was referred on a comedy site and as a result, when I visited Pine Grove the same year, even there a couple people had heard it on the Internet.
Very much a hard rock/classic rock record, Iraq n Roll only departs from the style in its use of drop-in guest vocals by assorted characters.
Can you name them?
Spoiler: The Vice President, Don Rumsfeld, Comical Ali (stupidly called Baghdad Bob by GWB who could never get anything right) and Lyndon LaRouche.
There were even T-shirts made. This was through CafePress at a time when people, including myself, had the stupid idea that you could make anything reasonably priced through publish-on-demand services.
You can’t. All the publish-it-yourself and make-it-on-demand Internet fulfillment houses furnish terrible products which are almost always, by default, overpriced. To keep the prices down you had to select for the cheapest quality materials.
Did you get a T-shirt? I gave some away as promotions.
It will also occur to readers that the war was so long, people born during it, and the many children who grew up in the time frame, have no idea who these characters were or what was actually going on.
Except for GWB and Dick Cheney it’s as if the entire history of the war, its frauds and minor characters have been expunged.
Where and what was Fallouja? What’s a JDAM? (A computer-guided bomb that elicited magical thinking.)
What was the Thunder Run? (It was the armored ride up Baghdad’s main thoroughfare.)
Song title and libretto page from album art.
Few probably remember that while almost none would criticize the war openly in 2004, practically speaking, everyone else of suitable fighting age was privately running as fast as they could the other way.
Originally, the US Army could not meet its recruit/enlistment quotas. Nobody wanted to go to Iraq to get blowed up by IEDs fighting the insurgency and it wasn’t until the economy started to turn sour but good in 2007 that, by necessity, things turned around.
When options ran out there was the military, suddenly looking like the French Foreign Legion for anyone of the right age. (Except France has managed to keep itself out of war for a good long time, now.)
I’ve reissued Iraq n Roll for readers and the curious as an MP3 collection and an archive of .flac files, the latter of which reconstitutes the full audio content of the original CD.
I prefer the original sound — it was well before the Cult of iKit — but you will need a .flac to .wav converter to remake it.
Here is one. Once you have the .wavs, you want to burn it to a compact disc.
For that, I’ve also included the original printable album art for the finished disc and its original prototyping as a black and white mock-up in both archives.
Obscurity! Collector’s items. Have something nobody else wanted or knew about.
Iraq n Roll by Uncle Sam & the JDAMS (aka Dick Destiny) as MP3’s — here
Iraq n Roll by Uncle Sam & the JDAMS — complete album audio in .flac format — is here.
And —
Yes
— you can throw me a tip/pay a slight amount for them, if you like.
Recommended pricing:
Three dollars and fifty cents for the mp3 collection.
Four dollars and fifty cents for the .flac full audio collection.
Or five dollars even for both. What a steal!
Map of Iraq and secret plan of bad guy and gal strategy compiled by the ULTOR (Ultimate Victor) and MULTOR (Monster Ultimate Victor) combat artificial intelligence machine theologians in the Pentagon’s Special Office of Strategies for Reduction of Adversaries.
Uncle Sam is a trademark of the United States. Uncle Sam wants you, you may fire when you are ready, Gridley; we begin bombing in five minutes, shock and awe, remember the Maine, “We are Coming!”, Massive Ordnance Air Blast (MOAB), beware of careless talk, loose lips sink ships, Orange Alert, first pull up then pull down, potrzebie and “Mission Accomplished!” are also slogans & symbols which may add to the enjoyment of “Iraq ‘N’ Roll!”
We have more in common with Greece than most of us believe. In fact, our situation may be worse than Greece, which is the quintessential definition of modern economic doom …
Few of our politicians are willing to even discuss the drastic cuts in spending that would be required just to begin to put America back on the right path. Our politicians would rather ignore the problem and be re-elected by an ever-increasing population of America- hating bloodsuckers …
Voters, at least half and especially those without white skin, now deemed “bloodsuckers.”
Number of times Ted Nugent has called groups or individuals “bloodsuckers” — cited on blog — and universally.
Framing.
The result was anything but righteous and just — as employees tried to hide their ability and exhibit their need — as competition turned from one of achievements to one of sores — and the best men took the role of suckers, and the worst of bloodsuckers. — Essays on Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged
It didn’t take us long to see how it all worked out. Any man who tried to play straight, had to refuse himself everything. He lost his taste for any pleasure, he hated to smoke a nickel’s worth of tobacco or chew a stick of gum, worrying if someone had more need for that nickel. He felt ashamed of every mouthful of food he swallowed, wondering whose weary night of overtime had paid for it, knowing that his food was not his by right, miserably wishing to be cheated rather than to cheat, to be a sucker but not a bloodsucker. He wouldn’t marry, he wouldn’t help his folks back home, he wouldn’t put an extra burden on the family … But the shiftless and irresponsible had a field day of it. They bred babies, they got girls into trouble, and dragged in every worthless relative they had from all over the country, every unmarried pregnant sister, for an extra disability allowance, they got more sicknesses than any doctor could disprove, they ruined their clothing, their furniture, their homes — what the hell, ‘the family’ was paying for it. They found more ways of getting in need than any of us could imagine — they developed a special skill for it, which was the only ability they showed. — Atlas Shrugged
In part, you can blame the economy. In the most competitive job market in memory, the lesson is clear: You must demonstrate—on multiple platforms—that you excel above all others …
We’ve become so accustomed to boasting that we don’t even realize what we’re doing. And it’s harmful to our relationships because it turns people off …
So how should you deal with a braggart?
“Feel sorry for them, because they’re doing this impulsive, destructive thing that won’t help them in the long run,” says Simine Vazire, a research psychologist and associate professor at Washington University in St. Louis. Research on self-enhancement shows that people who brag make a good first impression, but that it diminishes over time.
When Ian McKenzie, 30, a schoolteacher in Lincoln, U.K., goes out to dinner with his wife and their friends, he says, everyone soon gets around to bragging—about the gadgets and cars they own, their kids, their vacations …
Hey DD, what can be done about foul-mouthed losers who stink up our public spaces?
You must mean Ted Nugent. He curses a lot. In fact, Ted can barely get through any conversation with anyone without dropping multiple profanities. He does it on television and on stage at county fairs through megawatt amplification. Sometimes the locals, having thought they booked family entertainment, object.
Abuse of profanity in everyday conversation shows many things, none of them good: Poor self-control, a weak mind, lack of public speaking skills, lack of consideration for others, and a poor vocabulary. There are many better ways to be emphatic and insulting than crutch-like reliance on simple-minded cursing. — from a new syndicated column, the gaily titled, “Ask DD.”
The Tea Party unleashed the full measure of its venom on Small Wars Journal today, after discovering Colonel Kevn Benson’s think piece on the US military fighting a future insurrection in Darlington, SC.
The article, a short one, is eclipsed by its effect.
And so the fumes and spittle-flecked rage coming from the Tea Party deserves mention twice today. They detest being painted as bigots and then do everything they must to convince that the assessment is accurate. You see, it’s always the liberty-loving white guys who are the truly persecuted.
Just plain garbage. Nothing but a bunch of bigoted and sterotypical LIES told by a person with no credibility and all in attempt to get others to believe his cons. Typical power-hungry thug who just so happened to join the military all so they could kill. You f’in meet the definition of LIBERAL to the T.
If this scenero were to ever come true, rest assured, people like you will be strung up and hanged on the court house lawn for all to see.
Those who would actually need to invoke the Insurrecton Act would already have conducted the affairs of their offices in such a patently un-American, unethical, illegal, unconstitutional and treasonous manner (anybody we know?) that the elected official should uave already been arrested and put on trial. Only if for a protracted period the citizenry feels patriotically obligated to follow the constitution (the part about abolishing a corrupted government) to the point where knowing the US military will become involved, do it anyway.
Well, here’s your sign: NorthCom, “Homeland” security (wtf???), TSA, FEMA, the 1033 program, Katrina response, drones overflying sovereign borders, car license plates being replace with RFID chips, UN treaties even discussed as possibly being ratified impacting Americans on U.S. soil, unhooking the dollar from oil (look it up; Nixon did us a favor back then), dogs and cats living together, real wrath of God type stuff. And oh, yeah, absence of God.
It is pretty clear where the Author’s politics lie. This whole scenario starts off with the defeat of Obama and an end to his policies.
The intensity of the comments to this article is an interesting clinical study in perceptions and generic response, similar to prodding a tightly coiled and very venomous snake that lies hidden in the shadows.We know the ‘snake’ is there but we do not like to think about its presence.
I am extremely offended by this article. Col. Benson is clearly writing to incite an insurrection here in South Carolina.
Suppose I taught the same course at Leavenworth, and created a scenario where the popular Governor of South Carolina, the Hon. Nikki Haley, was elected president of the United States and Rev. Jessie Jackson (born in Greenville, South Carolina)invaded the state with an army of NAACP types, took over our capitol at Columbia and held president-elect Nikki Haley hostage. Then my old unit from Vietnam, the 101st Airborne Division (Airmobile) had to be recalled from the Middle East to put down the NAACP insurrection, rescue the president elect, and hang the Rev. Jessie Jackson for treason? …
Col. Benson, next time you teach your insane course at Leavenworth, I suggest you start off by showing your officers the movie THE PATRIOT starring Mel Gibson. That will give them a good idea of what would be waiting for them here if they decided to invade South Carolina and treat us like we were Bosnia. Have you ever heard of the Swamp Fox, Francis Marion? He operated not too far from Darlington. Do you know what we did to British Major Tarleton at Cowpens? Do you know that Lt. Col. William Barrett Travis was born down the road from here at Abbyville, South Carolina? Have you ever read his last letter from the Alamo?
Have you considered how you are going to get your federal troops from where they are now, to Darlington, SC? How do you plan to secure your supply lines? Do you really think you will have an easy time in North Carolina or Georgia?
Because our legislative, judicial and executive branches of government hold the 10th Amendment in contempt, I’m beginning to wonder if it would have been best had the South won the Civil War. — Ted Nugent, earlier this year
There is nothing for it now but than to say, flat-out, that Willard Romney has decided that the only way he can become president is to become a racist and to appeal to the racist base of his party. This is the second ad in as many weeks centered on the general theme of The Negro President Wants To Give Your Money To The Black People Like Him…
The Great Recession of the early twenty-first century lasts far longer than anyone anticipated. After a change in control of the White House and Congress in 2012, the governing party cuts off all funding that had been dedicated to boosting the economy or toward relief. The United States economy has flatlined, much like Japan’s in the 1990s, for the better part of a decade. By 2016, the economy shows signs of reawakening, but the middle and lower-middle classes have yet to experience much in the way of job growth or pay raises. Unemployment continues to hover perilously close to double digits, small businesses cannot meet bankers’ terms to borrow money, and taxes on the middle class remain relatively high. A high-profile and vocal minority has directed the public’s fear and frustration at nonwhites and immigrants. After almost ten years of race-baiting and immigrant-bashing by right-wing demagogues, nearly one in five Americans reports being vehemently opposed to immigration, legal or illegal, and even U.S.-born nonwhites have become occasional targets for mobs of angry whites.
In May 2016 an extremist militia motivated by the goals of the “tea party??? movement takes over the government of Darlington, South Carolina, occupying City Hall, disbanding the city council, and placing the mayor under house arrest …
When the leaders of the group hold a press conference to announce their goals, they invoke the Declaration of Independence and argue that the current form of the federal government is not deriving its “just powers from the consent of the governed??? but is actually “destructive to these ends.??? Therefore, they say, the people can alter or abolish the existing government and replace it with another that, in the words of the Declaration, “shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.??? While mainstream politicians and citizens react with alarm, the “tea party??? insurrectionists in South Carolina enjoy a groundswell of support from other tea party groups, militias, racist organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan, anti-immigrant associations such as the Minutemen, and other right-wing groups. At the press conference the masked militia members’ uniforms sport a unit seal with a man wearing a tricorn hat and carrying a musket over the motto “Today’s Minutemen.???
While the rest doesn’t quite live up to the intro, it’s worth a full read. Don’t skip the comments, where the rage of the Tea Party is on full display:
I gave it a rating of one star. This is because there is no way to rate zero stars.
I am asking Congressman Darrell Issa, Chairman of the US House Committe on Oversight and Government Operations to start a congressional investigation into Col. Kevin Benson and to the sort of unAmerican garbage being taught at the Command & Staff College at Ft. Leavenworth. KS.
Dean Allen
www.RattlesnakeRevolution.com
Janet napolitano would be so proud. col Bensn is a traitor in waiting. Your oath is to the Constitution, Col. – not to your masters in the white house. it’s easy enough to see where your coauthor got her bile – Princeton is a well known home for all who hate our great nation – but to get such trash from the highest levels, of our military – even from one who is retired, is shocking indeed. You must be made of the same soft metal as those who serve under this traitorous regime without complaint. You watch as our sons are told not to defend themselves, not to kill those who seek their blood – the same regime that strips them of their right to vote, guts their pay, and sends them to battle without equipment or ammunition. The others who have posted here have covered your ill informed attack on today’s true patriots, the tea party. The one Thing we can all be thankful for is that traitors like yourself feel so free to expose yourselves, now that your fellow travelers have come to power.
