Dr. Omed: La LANTERNE : Makeweight of the Left

Thu, 05 May 2005 23:57:52 GMT

BO'S BACK!

Dr. Omed has recieved a communique from his AWOL correspondent Mr. Strofeda via U.S. Mail, and Bo kindly granted his permision to share some excerpts thereof:

After her recent public stands Senator Barbara Boxer moves right up the list of those scheduled for NSA interdiction by aircraft "accident".

The Mad Scientists are at work again on the H2N2 flu vrus. They just passed out free samples of an incredibly deadly and easy to disseminate biological warfare agent to thousands of labs worldwide, including some near the Mideast. They then notified the whole world of their error, in time for those samples to be "disappeared" into the hands of terrorists fed fat with $60/bbl oil receipts, and last but not least they and the vaunted crack [ers]Homeland Security Forces are taking the word of those labs that they have destroyed the Samples [ i.e. the megadeath everlasting doom in a small mailed tube ] upon request.

Science and technology have unleashed demons upon the world, and it is only a matter of time until numerous cataclysmic events unroll themselves. If as likely there is a fortuitous concatenation of those events, "doom" will be too frivolous a word for the results. I would like to survive for a while just to see if the remnants of mankind take vengeance on those supremely arrogant technologists, or , as much more likely, say "May I have some more, sir?" Vonnegut got this wrong most likely, and Farenheit 451 too.

4-26-04 Re the front page photo of Dubby Dubois [ does 'do boys', get Tennessee Williams' original and still workable joke ? Well blanche my ass in a butchy buggery Bilbaotic excess, Dubdub DuBwaaahz haha ] locked in palm-to-sweaty-palm cum pinky-to-mons-veneris inside the arc of thumb clutch with the G-own Prince: Even a "faded, jaded mandarin" such as the Good Dr. O can appreciate the depth of my despair.

My sweet baboo hast thrown me over , fired me, in favor of Big Daddy 'Dullah [ hey i could have countered with a large softish dildo, circumscribed of course ]. My widdl' heart is bwoken. Whatever shall a boy do to replace such a moon-tweaked nelly belle of the ball? I should have known Rove and Gannon [sic] would lead a poor li'l cuntry boy astray in the big city. A fascination for Saudi crude overcame my darlin' Dub, no kyjelly fa" him no more, dadda ain't got no new lube fa" dat boy , nawwww. .

p.s. One suspects Karlovingian expects that Bushbase will perceive Bush here at least as tops, or Daddy, to the effeminately dressed aaaarub. How wrong they would be about Missy Kneepads. And about that other guy, the second most powerful man in the world after Dickiepoo?

p.p.s. Mike Malloy of nighttime Air America comes right out and says repeatedly that just as CIinton was the first "black" President, Dubafoos is the first homosexual President. [ Tho’ pan-sexual would appear to be more accurate. ] "How many hints does he have to drop?" says Malloy, looking at the above mentioned pics. What settles the issue for me is how defensive the White House denizens became last year when it looked like the whole story of Dub's long out and avowed homosexual college cheerleader squad roommate, the ex mayor of Nashville who was pensioned off as ambassador to someplace in Europe. Net says Dub used to take Air Force One to Tennessee to visit him.

But the biggest issue is the overwhelming evidence in the 200 some visits of the so-called Gannon male prostitute to the White House, some forty of them "overnighters", that Dubya and crew are libertines. The world has seen this before. The German generals of the 1890's loved to party up in their tutus, and send the millions of young boys off to die in revenge for their own getting old, i.e. WW I. Then there is that club nor1h of San Francisco. 0r the big names in the Mattachine Society. Many powerfu1 men in the U.S., and perhaps throughout history, are bisexual "family" men, ala Mr. Capitalist Toolhead, Fortunato Zine hisself. The basic drift of their sexuality is merely the same mantra as the rest of their putrid existence, i.e.“I got the power and don't have to play by any rules, and I'll prove it to you by fooling you, killing you, taking your money and buggering your sons and daughters in every way possible". The pure dross of sewage plant skimming ponds that such "leaders" represent is enough to make any self-respecting bisexual artist, like a Bernstein, or populist like [ insert name here ] hie himself to a nunnery. The problem isn't that W is gay, but that he is an infantile, necrophiliac thief, i.e. the usual pk.Jtocrat of inherited wealth. Animal House gets shown a lot on tv of late, the tiniest little poke of conscience from the entertainment executives, and much too kind at that to the wastrel debauchee that he is.

p.p.p.s. When oh when is some abused wife or some lefty Kenneth Star going to get out the truth of these buggering thieves ?? Why doesn't Dan Rather call in a few i.o.u.'s and get even for his pillorying ? It is becoming evident that Bill Clinton failed to become a part of this essential core of the old boys club, despite his stellar service to them in selling out the entire populist and Democrat base, because he just wasn't libertine enough, esp. in those critical college years at Yale. “You do lotsa fat girls, huh Flinton? Well that doesn't even get you up to the plate, oink oink. Guy like you who’s never stood naked in a coffin sucking off the line of his fraternity sponsors and getting Daddy's money to cover up his vehicular homicides hasn't got a well, prayer, of getting in. Sorry. Oink oink."

4-27-05 Just heard Josy Cardinal Ratzapper, alias Pape Interdictus XVI, has lit into J.K. Rowling for her part in the "plot to destroy Christianity" via her “children's" books. Any switcheroo to take the heat off the renewed press reminders of his old, recent, and continuing role in squashing the investigations of pederast priests around the globe, esp. in the nations of those chief financers of the Vatican deficit, i.e. the U.K., the U.S., and Australia. A kindlier gentler Pape, no doubt about it, with a thousand points of medieval blight emitting from his Inquisitorial talons. But hey, no problemo, when you already have [ one half of] the stupidest fifth of the planet locked up in your magical cult, it’s easy to threaten the rest of mankind and make it stick. The Eurotrash Sledge, the Jonestown Hole Card, the Dictatorship of the Entitled Christers, the Children of Crusade, Our Soldiers of Infantile Magick, for sale to the highest bidder under the aegis of our ever doctrinaire Christian nationalism. Play it our way or the Roman Corporation that served as the model for Charlemagne, all the Phillips, Elizabeth I, the Hudson's corporate Modernization of Empire, the Cosa Nostra and V.I. Lenin will fuck you too.

Wed, 29 Sep 2004 06:00:33 GMT

MANUMISSION NOT

Originally published as a response to a column by Rob Salkowitz entitled

Living in Bush's World, which appeared 9-27-04 on his blog, Emphasis Added.

Yes and Yes and Yes. One cannot but commend you for your focus on the "larger agenda" of the Bonobo-Agogo and Crew, which intents Kerry has ignored with a blind will to date. If you haven't heard the words "sell out" chained to the name Kerry yet, you will be, for years to come. Think of the alliteration possible with "Quisling".

You suggest however that the world you describe is in the future:

"This agenda represents the fever-dreams of ideologues" or " election being fought putatively on the grounds of anti-terrorism and Iraq is actually about the future of" or "what this will mean for the country" etc.

I suggest that we already live in that brave "new" world, because it is the brave old world of feudalism which you describe so well. Feudalism has been the fallback, retrograde, or default government of western societies since the fall of the Roman Empire. It is not something alien to modern government, but the sketchy foundation on which later forms of governance bear. It has however been resilient and easily deposed any of the sweeping utopian models proposed to displace it, such as Marxism.

It has always used your noted "siege mentality" to control the masses and deprive them of civil rights. It persists because it is based on the most profound me-first instincts of the human animal. It favors psychopaths as rulers, because it favors rash action over any other means of governance.

It means endless warfare and weak central government because it is based on the identity and ownership of individual nobles with plots of territory. Or in today's parlance, commercial hegemonies. Hello Bill Gates et alii.

This is the world we already live in. Democratic institutions have proved inept of late at controlling or moderating these always extant, titanic forces. The veneer of democracy is but a hyaline membrane, and we are beginning to see the viscera exposed which it had been sealing off.

Why do i insist on making a connection from your 2005-focused awareness to the historical situation, as i have before? Because despite the cornucopia of novelties in our age, the patterns of governance depend ultimately on the same old same old, human psychology, Man Against Himself as K. Menninger noted. And because the historical remedies to the feudal sociopathy are known as well.

Feudal strife increases in direct proportion to the sudden increase of wealth in controlling individuals. A wise society, one which values peace, makes it extremely difficult then for huge fortunes and monopoly positions to be acquired not merely in one lifetime, but in the time of a decade or two, as is the case now. In other words, that deity which this America worships, instant grandiose wealth, is at the very heart of our feudal outbreak. Cut the mega-rich down to size and the feudal infection recedes of its own accord. The sooner the better, regardless of who becomes Prez.

And if that is not done? Well, it appears to me that the economic lords of the Orient have stolen a huge march on the wealth and hegemony of N. America as it sleep walked under the cockatrice of Bushbreath. Nor, it is clear, do they intend to be minor liege lords to 'massa whitey'. The American plutopaths, in their attempt to carve up and control the world markets, have sold us all downriver already. The rafts await. Gimme dat ol' time religion.

Mon, 27 Sep 2004 01:36:10 GMT

04W Looks for the "Daddy" in BaghDad's i Ad

Bo does not watch much television. But Bo did happen to see on CSpan overnight the incomparable comedy routine of the duplex appointed rulers, from Thursday, Sept. 23, about 25 minutes on the White House lawn. Two identical podia. Two guys of similar height, or "lowth" if you prefer; edge to Allawi. Iyad Allawi from the bleeding sands of Iraq and Buster Bob Bonobo from the bronc-less, steer-less sod of Crawford. In similar dark blue suits and bright ties; Allawi adding charcoal banker stripes, plus ca change, but mustn't upstage the Belle. Allawi had by rote the Repug electioneering script prepared for him. He was so "on message", so likeable, that Kingmaker Karl is probably thinking about running Iyad for Prez in Ought Eight if the Gropenator or Brudder Jeb fail to make the grade. He even auditioned a charming little proto-smirk. And touched the side of his nose a few times in good grifter acknowledgement, also to see if it had grown any in the process of telling one lie after another. His was otherwise a seamless, shameless performance.

The Bonobo on the other hand had but 30 good seconds, which brief interjection just happened to be the "coverage" which appeared over and over on Fox. CNN had to live with the seconds, the leftovers, the shakier rants, and those pretty much exhausted the pitch potential of the supposedly scripted performance du Dub. For the remainder of his time outdoors with the big kids, Dubbunkport was in a panic. He got four hard questions from the exact newsmen he wished to call on. Who in hell took the cuffs off of these castrati anyway? he seemed to wonder. Each question demanded that our boykin tell the people why the rosy scenarios spouted by the twa Allawi, on the spot and earlier before the Congress, seemed to be just opposite to the nasty case of reality diagnosed elsewhere in re Iraq, or throughout the livelong week from a number of Agogo's own insubordinates. And even from goose-steppingly loyal Repug Senators and Reps. Rather than answer those questions, Darth Invader repeated his campaign spiels over and over. And turned repeatedly towards Allawi's lectern for surcease, as if towards Mecca , begging for a Daddy to save him from his public disgrace.

One wonders why a man so supposedly triumphant in recent polls, so practiced at hiding his poltroonery, should appear so flubberly. Did he perhaps want the whole stage unto himself, as usual ? Was he confused by the precisely parallel setup, into thinking that his fellow appointee/sycophant must likewise be honored as a Comandeer in Chief ? When the debacle became unbearable, Dub abruptly cut and ran. Ah, a true if unscripted theme in his life. He tried to exit stage left, directly behind the lecterns, before someone signaled him that per the choreographing, he and Allawi must to walk in right profile the long veranda back to an actual unlocked White House door. But prior to that time, the Hatriot provided even the casual interpreter of body language with an encyclopedia of signs, each untoward move telegraphing his true distress.

One routine, which The Great Simian Hope practiced without making it perfect, was switching his formulaic demeanors multiple times while trying to spit out just one canned phrase. Bo was almost tempted to sympathy, just as Bo wept for the merciless Son of Terminator, while that worthy bot lathered up a manly sweat in the vat of molten steel, surfacing again and again in contorted capitulation to each of the faces his liquid metal self had killed and appropriated during his chase to waste the damsel. The ever "decisive" Frutex squirmed and twisted and stepped backwards many a time. He put first one arm then the other in front of him in a primal defensive posture. If only the S.S. would just arrest one of those newsy guys, then wouldn't they all back off? He touched his face like an ingénue in her litany of moves, his repertoire that of the needy infant barely cloaked under mantle of tough guy. These caricatures of the moves that Puddin & Pie always uses to beg for our approval, for the Prodigal Son vote. Except that these moves also lasted too long, and were not sandwiched in as usual, so as to be ignored. Meanwhile Allawi was calm and nearly immobile.

What we may have seen here, oh sanctified brethren, was an imminent psychotic break. If only the "familial" intervention had been allowed to proceed another five minutes, HumptyDumpt would have broken down on camera, and the citizenry would not have to worry about his state of mind over the next four months.

Bo confesses he was so intrigued with the signifying that he subjected himself to the trauma of watching the spectacle at the White House four or five times, as the compliant CSPAN repeated through the night. What mastermind ginned up this public debacle ? If Japetto's Blunder can so compromise himself in the midst of the triumphal parading of his murderous toady, why cannot the feckless Dems manage to get the message out that the Unelect is a basket case ?

At any rate, one of his oft-repeated tics, a shirking move, particularly intrigued Bo because Bo has seen it before. In another little man. I mean the move of stretching his neck out of his typically tight fitting collar. It is sort of like shooting one's cuffs, except that the neck seems to shoot up out of the cuff of white collar that normally restrains it. The face goes a bit red; some high blood pressure perhaps. This is a boy baby, about to fight off his clothes. This is the head disjoint from the body, despite using the apotropaic of the two torques ( torc ), the buttoned collar with the looped and knotted tie doubling the safeguard. This is the basic paranoia of the unlizard part of mind, the forebrain, the superego if you will, the fear that manifold entities of the body are uniting in revolt against particular dominance, against its resident complex, against hominoidal inflation. The symptoms bare a resemblance to those of formication.

So what we see is what we get, what the electorate have got and what the electorate will get, the very picture of a man coming apart at the seams. The impact wrenches have found the bolts, and the psyche of this Frankenstein's monster is being unbolted. But Bo is thinking about that other little man who used to, when stressed or caught in a lie or a con, shoot his red neck repeatedly out of the comforting chokehold of his white collar. That little man was a drinker, folks. A nighttime tippler and a daytime tranquilizer.

A functional alcoholic. Bo has seen this act before.

Haven't the rest of you also seen it also, my Brethren of the Mississippi Valley ???

P.S. Bo also viewed Allawi's 40 minute speech to the combined venue of House and Senate. Iyad, the "go to" man, projected that quintessential Repugnican craft of video-sincerity while laying down a steaming pile. More interesting though was the audience. CSPAN did not pan, but returned ever to the small clique of generals in their palest masques holding down the floor level center of the apparent 150-200 members ( out of a potential 535 plus ) who bothered to show up for the farce. Most were Repugs, though a smattering of top Dems and a number of Dumbocrats showed their faces. Holy Joe Lieberman and Allawi demonstrated the 'shuffling of the deck of two faces' complete with Joe's air kiss at his left ear, on the Baghdadian's way to the rostrum. One guesses [ or what is that proper word for "guess" ?? ] he with the stoutest stubble wins these face offs.

The "crowd" tried to make up with scripted enthusiasm and timing for its lack of size, giving Iyad's absurd one liners long loud claps. No finer example to be seen of what one can get for cheap in the way of a Senator or Houseboy these days -- a trained seal with a musical ear, en masse comprising a pack of pinnipeds putting their flippers together on command from the plutopaths and fishmongers. The casual viewer would ascertain from this simpering chorus that the Congress of the U.S. of A. had not the slightest doubt of the correctness of its approval and financing of an imperialistic invasion, nor is that frying-pan-into-fire support likely to diminish regardless of who occupies the Blanc de Blanc House. Lookout boys 'n girls, its draft time.

And can't ya just cry a little tear for the KarlieMan, with the wheels falling off his life's project ? But hey, there is no man like Karlieman for loving a challenge.

And where are you, shrinks of 'Murka ? Now's the time to vault onto the bandwagon. Not that it takes a shrink to grok the disintegration of our Fearless FickleDick.

And might it just be that one immediate cause of Pinnochio's stagefright is the similarity of Thursday's White House mise en scene to that which he will face in one week, no Dadda-Wee there to lean on, only the Yankee Avenger, an Alphamale Not Al with perhaps some beta- release teeth to use on Zero for Four, a Mr. MonkeyMaster himself, the opposing debater Senator Kerry ?

Does anyone doubt that Rove's Fool Tool could cite the Precedent LBJ and renounce his candidacy tomorrow, while the psychosis this nation has chosen for itself goes on and on ?

Fri, 24 Sep 2004 04:17:38 GMT

From a speech delivered 8-20-04 by Bo in one of his alternate personas.

Growing Older

I am growing older. Not necessarily wiser. Nathan asked me to channel Walt Whitman for this videotaping of poets who are expressing their hopes for the future of the U.S. I did that. Like this:

You are drunk with unearned privilege, country, and i am not evacuating your inebriate form to the recovery room, the......... my words swarm you, every one an ant, a tardive ant on your every cell, on each platted mite of your skin organ. Formication. This poem your formicary. Do they itch ? You have not enough nails to scratch them all. You are subverted. There is no anti-pruretic for you. No papal blessing. No apostolic creed, no calamine of lies, no religion, no nationalism, no armoire of ideologies, nor no apathy yet invented can save you from my words. Itch you shall. Itch you Are.

And so on. Then i set this effort at poetry aside.

I am a lifetime resident of this country. And a poet. But i do not come today to speak as a poet; i do not come to wax wroth, to skewer the manifold errors of our society or to raise you up by the engine of hopeful words. I come rather to address the future, to speak of the practical and the possible, and that is a task for prose. Dry prose. Dry words. The sane man maintains a healthy disbelief in the power of, the efficacy of, the spirituality of, the primacy of words.

I do not have children; that does Not mean that i do not have an intense need to pass on something from my success and my failure, something for the future generations. I have not now given myself over to belief in any ideology, any party, any method, any great individual, any overweening pattern of history, any force or any act of Nature – outside of that which lies within myself. Having so given myself over to such beliefs in past, i have learned that the process of belief is faulty in and of itself. I have learned that one's belief should not exceed the force of action to be found within oneself. May that force within me be sufficient; and if it is not, may the best force within yourself be sufficient. What i say here is the fruit of one man's experience, and no more defensible as "truth" or as "justice" than a will o' the wisp. I ask you, do not subject yourselves to the error of "believing" or "disbelieving" what i am about to say.

Nor to the error of believing what you yourself say. Simply act in the best interest of others, of all the other life that you can possibly comprehend, and then the future of this country, the positive change of this country, will be assured, regardless of method, regardless of who is in charge, regardless of intervening failures.

May we insist that every person have access to a small, adequate, healthy family group, recognizing that such families cannot be based alone on the accident of inheritance, of genetic similarity, of common household. Every person must have a place to belong.

May we share fairly the wealth of our continent and of the globe, accepting full well that this means we must share out the poverty as well. Let no one live in luxury until the least are safely fed, housed, educated.

May we disassemble the corporate media monopolies, and restrict the size of all organizations of communication to the least size of their survival.

May we teach ourselves to forego the false luxury of Deity. History has shown that all deities are man-made, in that every one of them has proved to embody and project the worst of man as well as his occasional better aspects.

It is a terrible thing to go through life without the consolation of an all-powerful religion under the aegis of an omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent and personally-related rewarding/punishing Deity. Perhaps the only thing more terrible is for an intelligent uncoerced person to believe in such nonsense, and act upon those beliefs.

Why do we need a god anyway? to reward us ? to punish us?

Surely the lassitude of the American public will be punished by ordinary results of reality, no penalizing God needed.

May we teach all persons the history of mind, the archetypes within themselves, so that we are not forever surprised at the external outbreaks as leaders and citizens revisit our cataclysmic past, and project old disaster into the present.

May every person obtain mental health through some physical work, through the hand crafting of personal tools from simple materials, and through constant access to physical touch. May we eliminate our American unspoken class of untouchables upon whose suffering depend the fondest excesses of pride and privilege.

May we root up like shoots of sumac the inevitable failure of heroism; may we start by accepting first and always not the possible herohood of persons, but the assured failure of each of us, and thereby have rock under our feet, and not quicksand. Let us pretend no heros and study no lineages of supposed nobility.

May we entomb any and all religions within the encasement of a Chernobyl, so that their ongoing pathologies do not corrupt any further the practice of our practical politics.

It is not by bombardment, but under guise of business and by breeding,

bolstered by the bonafide bombast of religions, that most warfare is carried on in this world. The outbreaks of armed hostilities are but the visible buboes of the underlying infection.

May we give up our foolish belief in the goodness of organizations. No corporation, society, bund, church, state, or Boy Scout troop for that matter has any hope of acting ethically. Only individuals can act ethically.

May we starve out our Dept. of War until it is forced to give up the vile imperialism it enforces around the globe.

May we have the strength and steady purpose to reform that antiquarian document of legal fictions known as the Constitution. And to keep rewriting it as required by exigencies of our own days. Do we want to continue to run 21st Century law as if on the engine of a James Watt, as if on the curiosity of an Alexander Bell?

May we punish greed and thievery wherever found, starting with perpetrators of the biggest crimes first, since theft is the one motivation common to every criminal and psychotic enterprise bedeviling the country. Theft is an ebola virus, there is no such thing as a small taking, the error of it blooms and floresces through every person. "Pass it on" the most common mantra we have, if unspoken.

May we agree to reduce our population numbers until such time as science demonstrates the true and limited capacity of the planet to carry the burden of the one animal species which destroys all its natural predators.

The act of breeding into a finite world will eventually be recognized for what it is, a primary act of competition, of aggression, guaranteeing in utero that eventually sides will be chosen up, enemies created and demonized, weapons secured, etc.

May we return to all places in Nature the natural vigor which our ancestors found there, using whatever science and resources are required. At the very least, may this country return to exacting no more than its ordinary share of resources from the common resources of the world.

May we base our political assumptions firstly not on the rights of individuals, but on their duties; may we insist that all men share an overriding social compact.

May we deconstruct the error of nationalism in all countries.

May we estop the gross crimes and excesses of corporations, hammer to pieces the corporate shield laws, and develop means to insure that sociopaths can no longer find their sure means to vicious power by means of corporate executive suite. May we no longer allow these insane persons to play their zero sum games with our economy.

Do you want to bite that bullet, the recognition that there is but one battle worldwide, not at base between religions, not between nations, nor between classes, but only between the self-appointed porcine masters of each territorial, resource, and technologic demesne and the entire population of those with whom they refuse to share the fruits?

Who then appointed you satrap, America? Who gave you sway, American ? Who made you liege lord of the globe ? By what grace and purpled mountain do you claim yourself master of mankind ? By dint of consuming what porkrind have you ascended to dominance ? Give it up. You did not inherit, America, you are not appointed. You are not even the first violin, giving out 440 cycles on the A note. You are flotsam in the Johnstown flood; stop making religion of your temporary float, of your beatified survival of the moment; you can and will submerge if you do not change.

Americans, when you view the outline of this country, when you imagine the fictive boundary of your own state, do Not think of that circumference as the lip of a funnel, do not think of yourself as mere gasoline poured through that funnel. This country is not a place to be trod, a thing to be owned in parts, it is not a collection of owners lassoed en masse by the line of their border. Not a place. Not a thing. Not a group nor even just the useful fiction of a group-think. No. This country is but one of many funnels floating freely through the void; and you, citizen, if you are but cosmic debris, orts of fuel sucked by accident, not by your own forethought, past the lip, through the venturi of this funnel. You are not here of your own accord. God did not favor you, crumb. You did not favor yourself. Accept your passage; do some work along the way. You favor with a will the crumb next to you, for it is not the nature of funnels to segregate, remove, exalt one over the other. You are just passing through; how you entered the tubular agitation, exactly that is how you will leave it, a slippery molecule in a fume. To imagine yourself otherwise is the great American fantasy.

End.

Sun, 12 Sep 2004 20:24:11 GMT

The Tyranny of the High Born

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&;cid=574&e=3&u=/nm/campaign_world_opinion_dc

"Only one in five want to see Bush re-elected. Though he is not as well known, Kerry would win handily if the people of the world were to elect the U.S. president," Steven Kull, director of the university's program on international policy attitudes, said.

The only countries where Bush was preferred in the poll of 34,330 people that was conducted mainly in July and August were the Philippines, Nigeria and Poland. India and Thailand were divided.

Extrapolating from this survey, about 4 to 5 billion persons, humans, sentient beings on this holy rollin' planetoid of sorrow and delight want the Orbicide and his Repugniscum jacked out of the Elllipsoidal Office and out of their lives. ASAP. And yet on November 2, some 50 million right-thinking clerisy of the Most Favored Nation, some 50 million Aesir mostly of the Red States, some pluperfect if miniscule moiety, some Homeland Braintrust of the Hinterlands, some sagamores of the Monoglot Horde of the Mississippi Basin, will queque up to their parochial polls to exercise their video-coopted right to negate in one fell swoop that geocommunal will, to inflict another quadrennium of calamity upon the 5 billions. A singleton cream of the Murkan crop, one Son or daughter of the Middle Border, shall blithely smirk at the aspiration of one hundred mere hominoidal imposters, one hundred mere cyphers of alien persuasion, shall throw off that ingermane zoonosis, and trumpet again the manifest destiny of the american aethling. An act of faith, whirra. And then, God willing, "All, all are punish-ed" that one Thief in Chief may continue to steal and suck the fig of plutocracy.

Sat, 11 Sep 2004 21:24:38 GMT

On First Looking Into Blogdom's Gomer's

Why do the good guys, the concerned intelligentsia, waste so much time attempting to instruct the latest nitpicking tortfessers of Commentary who hang the bar sinister of their agitator's Shields in illegal surveillance over the last estate of proletarian free press ? These jivejohns and their tiresome doppelganger(s) who infest the circuit of liberal blogs appear to be working for a living. Shilling for the Man. Les enfants in potty training by Big Brother and the Holding Company. Abecedarian apparatchiks of the Feudalists. Dull es wannabes. Prime examples of why the annual billions of "black budget, black hole" dollars in military intelligence spending need to be tugged toward light of day. The FBI at least sends some of its suckling babes and journeymen inepts out to the local coffee houses in the flesh.

And to you "patriots" of the intel brotherhood, here's a request from John Q. Citizen -- get off your duffs, go learn Farsi, Telugu,or Bhojpuri, etc. Spend more time reading foreign connivance and less time interjecting your puerile contrivance into the ordinary English exercises of freedom guaranteed to your countrymen by that Constitutional document you agreed to uphold when you first signed up. Stop trolling for the ineffectual intellectual. Get a job.

Sat, 11 Sep 2004 15:08:02 GMT

Zell Miller, Home Fries, and Georgia Apartheid, Shrink-Wrapped

Who heard Zel give 'em Hell at the RNC?   Bo did. And unlike those pundits of Progressive Radio [ Air America ] who condemn the zealotry of Zell, unlike those who excuse Zell for possibly being in the throes of familial Alzheimer's, unlike those who stand in loco Johannis K. to decry Soilin' Senator Zell's lack of Senatorial comity—his failure to adhere to the unspoken decorum of the Old Boyz Club, unlike those, Bo wishes to congratulate Zell on a stunning performance.

For not in Bo's lifetime has he heard an orator bring a large crowd not just to its feet but to such a solid undulant roar of insanity, to such a well tuned borborygmus of hatred , to such self pitying and yet threatening grumble from their low dark chakras, to such a horrific augury of true mass destruction staggering up from the timpanic bowels of "the least erected Spirit that fell", to such a pack-ugly snarl of hyenas over the warm and twitching carcass of a baby wildebeeste, to such a blessed moment of Repugnican mumbo jumbo, their Pandemonium in eldritch timbre of death lust, to such a tipping point of mobocracy—viicide their fondest object, to such a jack-yammering after the gotterdamerung which Zell roused out of his RNC crowd.

Congratulations, Zell. Give 'em Hell, Zell. Give 'em hell's bells, Zell. If your bestest good ol' Baal can't evoke some Hell, what good has come of your 72 years' pursuit of the arts of deception? No, congratulations. For never has any changeling son of the antebellum South ever so succinctly put proof to Bo's belief that people do not change.   Apartheid it was, apartheid it shall be under the Spell du Zell. Bo would hardly have batted an eye if the ghost of a young and unrepentant Leni Riefenstahl had executed a glissade across that stage in Wagnerian breastplate and flaming battledress to award the Senator manque his bouquet of black roses. Well done, Zell.

For not in Bo's lifetime, not since the last incarnation of Moloch in Nuremburg, 1936, has the world witnessed such a spectacle—a master devil intussicating the bunched souls of former humans well on their way to wreaking the next Shoah. Nor could any better proof be demonstrated of numerous conclusions heretofore evinced in La Lanterne :

-        Is not the so-called Democratic Party packed with the Irredenta composed not just of Repugnican fifth columnists, but with the evilest denigrators of the progressive spirit, emerging at last from their spider holes to rally their Cadmean army of spooks in the rear of the populist advance. Turn vanguard, turn and face your whilom "allies", the Dumbocrats and vampire Dixiecrats, the Pachydonks and slimy Nawops masquerading as support troops within your tracks.  The time has come for a litmus test of native spirit, a "scrapegoat's gate" that sifts out the frauds.

The time has come moreover to deconstruct in a flash the blasted hulk of Roosevelt's Party. Don't even bother to extirpate the legion of Millerites.   Form up under a new name as the actual party of the Center. When? No time like the present! But certainly come the second week of November. And this time, set some standards of membership, work up some shibboleth that serves to sunder the unworthy, the Millermen and Liebermen, the servants of racism and all fundamentalisms, the silent auctioneers of militarism, feudalism and plutocracy uber alles, the walkin' talkin' WMD who have so long insinuated their hissing tongues and longish cranks into the vulnerable seams of the "Democrat" Party.

Is it any wonder that the Party of Veepster Henry A. Wallace has fallen into decline after nurturing at its breast such vicious turncoats as Miller, and worse, those who have not yet turned themselves out?   J. Edgar Hoover had the right concept in his paranoia about Chinese Communist infiltrators, The Masters of Deceit, but he got the species of parasite wrong. Think instead, oh fairest of Repug Girlie Men, of cadres of fascist Repugs colonizing the tenderloin of the DLC.   Think of Red inserted into Blue, as once you imagined yellow into the green—

THE YELLOW PERIL

A poem written while experiencing a migraine attack at Echo Lake, Colorado on 9-13-86, and viewing the aspen turn.

Driving up Squaw Pass Road from Bergen Park

On spackle and the gloss of fresh tarmac

That feints and feels its way through ranks of pine,

We crest near Eagle’s Aerie and go giddy

With looking down. We become tubular bells

Stunned by the hammering strokes of deceit,

Our very voices wrung from our throats

By the caffeine of color, of copper.

Slopes full of sleepers expose themselves

As deep plants, while those upright guardians

Of the green way, those patriotic firs,

Point long fingers as if at chimeras

Of their xanthic phobia, come to flesh.

Nor do they fail to gape tartars, aspens

Not yet yellowed, fifth columnists of lime

Whispering treason in pale litotes,

Slipping quick hints to we the polarized,

Chords of spring rubato to our eyes.

Copyright 2003



-        Are not the Repugnicans, and indeed the body politic experiencing a mass psychosis?   Where are those legions of pampered shrinks quivering within their bankamerica-pyramid schemes of unearned preferment, the lot of them whose secular duties ought cause them to identify and raise larums against Miller's Complex, against the Fundy high tide of insanity drowning this nation, no matter the kidney of their practice?   Where are the priests unhived from their sacristies and fornicatoria to condemn the pure mortal sin of disciplined block voting by Repugnicans who have leant thereby their honor [ and soon their precious fortunes as well, Bo predicts ] to the current Black Sabbath of the GOP? Where are the so-called journalists whose job it once was to segregate fact and sense from error and deadly nonsense?   Where are the teachers at every level, whose chosen profession of missionary to the unschooled heathens demands of them the sacrifice of public truthing? Where are the executives of business who feel some reality with the exquisite sensitivity learned by capturing wee increment of markets? Who feel their leashchains of excessive privilege to act under aegis of corporate shield law now beginning to garrote themselves under the yank of Millerism?

-        Have not Repugnicans become the destroyer of worlds? In Millermania, one sees their complete trashing of the Constitution. And from that victory, Bo suggests, they will rise up shining to inflict their necrophilia upon the entire planet. Lookout Alderaanians, here comes Darth Miller and his RNC Death Star. Some kind of mean old man.

-        Where are youth?   Why should a society tolerate its teens at all if they cannot even perform their singular traditional function of mocking the Zell out of ancient and evil fools? You have a job to do, guys and girls. Get cracking.

Sat, 11 Sep 2004 15:00:49 GMT

Hear this NPR replay of Representative Henry Hyde defending the war on Iraq as if it were a direct military response to the events of 9-11:

http://www.npr.org/features/feature.php?wfId=3908764

http://www.npr.org/features/feature.php?wfId=3908764 - email http://www.npr.org/features/feature.php?wfId=3908764 - email

House Bill Connects Sept. 11, Iraq

javascript:getMedia('ATC', '09-Sep-2004', '5', 'RM,WM');

javascript:getMedia('ATC', '09-Sep-2004', '5', 'RM,WM');All Things Considered audio

Sept. 9, 2004

The House of Representatives passes a resolution commemorating the victims of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. But before the overwhelming vote in favor, there was lively debate over a portion of the resolution linking the current war in Iraq to the terrorist attacks. Many members objected to that statement of cause and effect, arguing that the attacks were a pretext for an invasion that had other motivations. NPR's David Welna reports.

Bo finally gets it. Veepheart Cheneypants and numerous other Repug officeholders continue to insist that the war on Iraq was a direct and necessary result of the 9-11 terror. Hyde has however ceased trying to describe the WHY of that illinkage, his omission a mere sophistry Bo had supposed, a natural retreat, since all the pre-war rationales have utterly collapsed and been shown conclusively to be deliberate lies.   But no, listen to Hyde, and hear the truth.

That truth is Hyde's insistence on the invasion of Iraq as the necessity of response to 9-11. The U.S.A demonized and attacked Iraq not because it had actual evidence of Sadaam's support of al Qaeda, the contrary in fact, and not to steal the Iraqi oil, though boys will be Texas boys, but out of necessity. Not a necessity to deny the "enemy" land resources, for the money and terror troops came from Arabia. Not a necessity to defeat a foreign military. Not a necessity to interdict known plotters nor incipient plans of terror. But a necessity nonetheless. For the U.S. had an overwhelming need to reach out and punish some Ay-rabs beyond all measure, a need to make sure that rulers of all Islamic peoples, some billion of them, would have no doubt that affronting the U.S. in future ensures logarithmic payback and the destruction of their whole civilization. Long suffering Iraq had the misfortune to become, once again, the scapegoat du jour, the proof of concept.

At first this sounds farfetched, too stupid for words, too evil even for neocon practitioners of Realpolitik, and almost but not quite beyond the puerile venom of the current Capo da tuti capi Bush. Then Bo looks at what the DOD, Paul Bremer and crew have done in Iraq in the last 18 months. They committed every "error" possible, suffered every omission of duty necessary to destabilize, outrage, impoverish, and dehumanize much of the country's population. Sure those worthies stole some 20 to 60 billions in passing. But as far as is known at present, 19 billions appropriated by Congress for the reconstruction of Iraq remain uncontracted out, never mind completely unspent. No Iraqis hired at any price to reconstruct, from among a country full of competent civil engineers, architects and contractors. At some point, historians must begin to ask, Was not this rampage, this razing, this misery compounded their full intent from the beginning? And did they need any other rationalization than making Iraq into the utmost exemplar and whipping boy of American power? And was there ever any real disagreement between Pentagon, Department of State, and Executive Branch over the rape of Iraq? "Can't use the nukes, eh Rummy? Well, no biggie, take a little longer, but good ol' Paul 'll put the kibosh on them sandniggers." "If the right fist don't get ya then the left one will" as the song says.    We get it now, Mr. Hyde. The genteel Dr. Jekyll has left the room. Mr. Hyde has spoken. We get it. Doh.

At first this sounds farfetched. And then Bo realizes that the message which Mr. Hyde sends is the very same message which Muslims everywhere have got by heart: Affront us not. If you provoke the U.S., then the U.S. Southern Command, the U.S. Congress, the U.S. Executive Administrator will give you a larruping dose of the everlasting-never-getover.   The Iraqi population is sore beleaguered one and nearly all not merely because Sadaam crossed his CIA handlers, not merely because Iraq has oil, not merely because Iraq lies in physical proximity to Afghanistan and the terrorist states of the Arabian Peninsula, and not only due to the sheer incompetence of the Dubbicator and Crue, but because the U.S. needed a caboodle of handy victims to bully up, needed a Carthage on which to salt the soil, needed a prayer-rugging Braggadocio to be flayed alive and hung in chains before the gates of the Muslim world. Ah, the cooing of immemorial vengeance in the branches of fig and olive.

And that is why one of the first things the "coalition" troops did was to guarantee the looting of the irreplaceable libraries and museums of the oldest recorded civilization. Point made. Point taken. Not just your miserable lives and fortunes are in our sling, but your very name and history are forfeit.

Hyde of course can't put it in so many words, but his intent was clear. This is the Repugnican story, and he is and they are, sticking to it. "Listen up here, you raghead 'Ranians, you're next." Everyone in the world understands what Hyde meant, what Japetto Dick and his Pinocchio Nosed Dub mean. "Der Gotterdammerung of Der Dubyer upon ye, ye subhumans."

What everyone in the world except for the bamboozled stateside Repug ragabush also know of course is that the Muslim world, no stranger itself to mythologies of Armageddon, has responded to Mr. Hyde: "See you and raise ten, pass the tea please."

Thu, 09 Sep 2004 22:38:35 GMT

When I was a boy I was told that anybody could become President; I'm beginning to believe it. ~Clarence Darrow

In response to Rob Salkowitz, posted on his blog, Emphasis Added, 9-08-04,

Bush Then and Now:

Rob,

The most important thing you say here is : "Where are Kerry's “bring it on” commercials...? " The Bonobo-Agogo has an unparalleled fondness for his own shoe leather.
Why are there not coast to coast replays of his "OB-GYN's aren't able to practice their love for the women of this country" already running ? With proper digitalized stroking of his already harshly enunciated word "love", such as was done to falsify the listener's understanding of Howard Dean's "yahoo" outburst, here serving only the rockbottom truth of Zero's unconscious lechery ? The DNC has mostly failed to do its job of defending and promoting their candidate, and Kerry's campaign is only marginally better.

Other than that, i suspect you just do not appreciate how the name-calling game is played. Or the big lie game. Or the game of personality, the apotheosis of the god-king Bush in this case, in which the Self of the voter is stolen and replaced with the pharaonic personna of El Supremo. Rove is a card carrying priest of theocracy, aware or not, and his gods are evil gods. But perhaps your upbringing was too genteel. You have got strategy and tactics confused with the philosophy and logic of your Humanism. And seem to me to be as blind as Spinoza was to the danger one invites from the intolerant society in which one lives.

To put it another way, Rovian Agitprop is a game built on manipulating patterns of magical thinking which are deeply imbedded in a logically incapacitated electorate. Such antics may run counter to your natural preference for iconoclasm, alphanumeric characters as the doors of perception, and understanding the world by analyzing a logical facsimile of it constructed out of broad sampling of the splatters and irrhythms of the real thing. Such Karlovian antics certainly share no ground with your desire for utmost intellectual and spiritual autonomy for each person, since they are designed ab initio to enforce conformity.

I too tingle with schadenfreud over the minimalist Dem effort to return Rove's fusillade of buffalo chips. But that joy is much tempered by observation of the Dem incompetence in this game. A few points:

-Once engaged in the otherwise irrelevant battle of Bush V. Kerry circa 1968-73, the Dems must continue to hit that coWardice key every day until the election. Because Rove will continue to deny, and he will win votes and the election by default otherwise, by technique of having the last lie standing. The Kerry campaign/527's counter to date on this tactic of Rove's is correct, merely insufficient.

-Rove's primary strategy, a winning one, has always been to attack the other candidate's greatest strength. On that score, the Dems ought to have been attacking the Bonobo's greatest strength, his staff, since 2000. Where is the daily anti-Rove barrage? Where is the personal lawsuit against Scooter Libby and/or Rove in the Valerie Plame outing ? Where is the "your son died for Halliburton; with Dick Cheney shown cashing his yearly paycheck from Halliburton" ad ? Where are the actors from The West Wing drama, seen chastizing the current staff of the White House, "have you no shame", etc. ?

-The Bonobo's greatest personal asset is his likeability. The way to attack that strength, and bring out his nasty side in the bargain, is with farce scripted in real presidential locales, to push his bonhomie in the direction it is already going, i.e. into buffoonery. The Boykin has a thick hide, but if the barrage is unrelenting then eventually his tipping point arrives, he lashes out and maybe picks up that "first" drink he wants so badly. A Rove would certainly have in that likely event a killer riff already on disc, stored under embargo at every major news outlet. Watch and learn, Dems. After which, the comics have even more fodder with which to embrace his weakness. This strategy cannot be half-hearted; if it is discontinued after the first time precious little Agogo takes a punishing hit, people will have sympathy for him. The sympathy vote must be busted down by constant attack, so that the masses of moronic voters whose only purpose is to be on the "winning" side of a sportslike contest realize that they will themselves be perpetually stuck to a TarBaby if that TarBaby is not dispatched at the polls.

-Perhaps the heart of Baby's winsome ways is his voice quality. It projects absolute sincerity, which many people mistake for absolute integrity, of which he has none. It is pleasant in and of itself. People who rightly despise the man make a mistake in seeing an identity between the man and the voice. The great value of Fool's voice is that, unlike most people's voices, it bears no relation to his true feelings or intents, because he is a sociopath, who only apes feeling. Nonetheless, that voice and diction, not least his errors of speech, are a political gift.

A substantial strength. How then, in the best tradition of a Rove, to attack that strength ? It is after all difficult to parody a man who is a constant study in self parody. But here is an idea.

Get persons of similar voice, not impersonators, to quote his own words without ironic inflection, then laugh out loud at themselves, and deny the words, over and over. Confuse the imago, the fantasy which Fool projects, with a personal reality, over and over, until the listener is forced to engage his brain or at least some contrary emotions.

-The greatest failure of the Dems is not energizing their base. Where are the coast to coast ads threatening No Jobs, No Freedom of Speech, No Social Security --for christsakes, Greenspan has been the perfect straight man ? Putting much of their national advertising budget into wooing Ohio, West Virginia and Pennsylvania undecideds is sure fire losership. And yet that appears to be the Dem strategy. [ Wisconsin will return to Kerry when the weather gets cold; no huge effort required there. The campaign in Florida is a world unto itself. ]

-There can be little doubt that Repugs will steal popular votes to swing the winner-take-all electoral votes in critical states through their control of new unregulated electronic and optical voting systems. Hence it is of surpassing importance for enabling future resistance to get a large popular vote margin for Kerry, from wherever it can be got. Once again, the telling ads on issues to energize the base should be nationwide and hammered daily in all media for seven weeks. If the Dems would just start on that, the money would arrive to continue the plan, just as it did for Dean. But no, the DNC/DLC is taking its [ abandoned ] constituency for granted.

-The media are clearly owned by and entirely disposed to the Thief in Chief and his corporate backers. They have not and will not play fair, nor give Kerry anything approaching equal time or fair and balanced coverage. The Dems appear to have no plan to oppose this obvious media factor, which is the greatest advantage Bonobo Boy has. The Dems appear unwilling to admit that media favors their own, theirThief, and that even if the Dems outspent the Repugnicans three or four to one instead of just matching him in media dollars, oh unexpected joy, the Dems would still lose the big media battle.

What is more, should Dems attempt to engage greater media coverage by whatever technique, it is a given that some October Surprise will arise such that, while it may not be the predicted dawn of dictatorship, it will most definitely constitute a sufficient excuse for the media to ignore the best laid plans for getting Kerry equal media coverage, such as via the Presidential Debates. The general answer is probably that the media monopoly cannot soon be broken, and that nationwide use of local neighbor to neighbor networks, phone and door to door leafletting, say, are the weaker but only possibility of neutralizing that media advantage. Such networks cannot likely be brought into being quickly; we need to learn the techniques to counter media propaganda. Such networks should have been started last year. Which is not to say that they shouldn't be started now.

-In general, any Populist movement must be prepared to denigrate video and radio media from the first, and to build a face to face, person to person movement. There is no other way to counter the overwhelming power of the Big Lie as disseminated through the big media. Way too late for the Dems to do that of course. Which means that whatever they are doing, it is farce. They might get lucky and win anyway, but not through design.

-Polls have shown for the last month that the supposedly Dem-secure state of California is in play. The candidates and the DNC appear not to believe this, and they may be right, it may be just the usual Repugnican manipulation, an attempt to draw Kerry into wasting time there when he is needed elsewhere, or, play it as it lays, to hold down the liberal vote in California. This state cannot be lost, even if the election is stolen. Hence, ANY day now, the Dems had better spark some exceedingly controversial incidents and statements in California with the immediate purpose of checking the pulse of the liberal vote there. Get the bad news, if such it be, now. Settle the issue of California in September, or ride a banana peel into a late October loss.

A really creative strategy implemented by a fearless operative is needed. Eventually Ahhnold needs to be lumped with/ confined to his Repugnican base in the state and lampooned as the buffoon he is, but now is probably not the time for that strategy.

Readers should not conclude from this posting that I believe that propaganda supercedes issues. I would merely like Democrats to awake from their thirty years in Sleepy Hollow, and accept the current truth, that obtaining and holding the levers of power for the sake of the commonweal is an art well divorced from writing correct social policy or from practicing good manners in campaigning.

Thu, 02 Sep 2004 21:39:33 GMT

_________________________________________________________

Here is a posting to La Lanterne that is not exactly makeweight of the Left. It is commentary on one of the more curious offerings of Bo's host, Dr. Omed, on his Tent Show. Bo cannot but note however, that most art is subversive, and this art more so than most, and hence it is fit fodder for the actionaries of the Left, if they would but clutch it to their malleable bosoms. One might say, -- at the mind's meat goes this same crooked worm; forgive us our sins D.T.

____________ _______________ ________________

I have known the polymath and contrary noetic aesthete who blogs as Dr. Omed for twenty years, and even so, the point of view of one of his categories, Nun of the Week, sometimes escapes me. However for the sake of easing new viewers into an appreciation of that insidious subversion and ongoing rumination, here are a few guidepoints:

The Dr. is an artist in many media, including poetry, photography, pictorial construction, caricature, cartoons, and other draughtsmanship. In all forms of expression he operates as an Imagist. He chooses, he throws up, or he creates out of whole cloth a series of apparently isolated images, i.e. images in which the artist eschews the usual layers of the bassinet, those of explanatory rhetoric or spin, except for the choice of sequence/location and the image itself.

These unconventual images operate directly, with a minimum of spin from the artist, on the personal and collective unconscious of the viewer. The Dr. is more concerned with maximizing the individual's freedom from all forms of mental coercion than he is with insisting on clarity or auto-exegesis of message. [ He explicates elements of his frequent prose, and might be drawn into expanding his written viewpoint on brief samples of the art of others, but can seldom anymore be drawn into explaining or comparing his own work. ]

Hence, the viewer should accept the whole oeuvre of the NotW [ or NoW ] without overcommitting to extracting the molars of meaningfulness in any particular day's effort, as we often must do with, say, a four panel cartoon such as OPUS.

NotW is then a series of choices, and a successive meditation on a rather delimited complex which migrates as an autochthonous beast through the bestiary of complexes in the Dr.'s psyche. The antihegira carries forward without words, [ yes, i suggest you at first ignore the texts subimposed, going back much later to enjoy them also ] in a transcendental negation of the overweening intrusion of alphabetical consciousness, to an audience composed mostly of committed abecedarians. At times the quixotic complex finds its casus belli in the Dr.'s otherwise subservience to the determinism of The Word, while the Nuns perhaps serve variously as windmill, steed, lance, valet and transient imago of the Don.

The images in NotW are not posed images, but found images scavenged from many a googling trudge down that littoral of consciousness which is approximated, concretized or reproduced by the entirety of the searchable WWW. So the images of the nuns are first of all those that can be found, images then dragooned into expressing the quotidian limit of the Dr.'s anabasis inexplicans.

Well, if art is where you find it, Pilgrim, then the interloper, the witness catches the desperation of choice as the Dr. is forced to throw off the mantle of caution and procrastination and post the temporary object, not of his desires, but of his forced march. Once again the meddling viewer ought not obtrude his own lubricious projections.

These "nuns in wet vinyl, seldom stopping to feel" may be found down in the pornographic verge, but their usage by the Dr. is hardly for the purpose of arousal. If anything may be said of the essence of nun-ness or cloistered life in general, that thing is the persistance of denial. For instance, the costumes of orders are haute couture but gone centuries out of date, and hence formerly a fierce denial of the transience of style, an homage to character when found devoid of style. But today's world so accepts transience as a commercial fait accompli, a rationale unto itself, that the basic metaphysical message is lost. The caricatures chosen by the Dr. then function in part so as to re-attach the meaning of undatable clothing to the need for permanence of character. [[ One wants to ask if some of those Italian artists posing these models are not lampooning their own artistic culture's emphasis on the dernier cri. ]]

Huh? one might ask. Why then the nudity ? The obsessions ? The sadism and masochism? The pedophilia ? The echoes of Inquisition ? The objectification of body parts? The sacrilege? The unhallowed joy ??

That joy, yes. Hmmm. Yes. Preteen. Just. The age of the meander, of the Walkabout. Our Dr.'s complex of Aboriginal curiosity. Exercised in an adolescent figment of Decameron, its deserts crammed with incubi of eremites clustered en cartel; its swamps no simple bogs, no mere lagoons quartering but a solitary creature each , but pousse cafes of primeval decadence, the illiquid eristic ejections from which, the bestial segregations of which, are defended against by regimented ranks of creatures in black and white, armed with cruxes.

One doesn't want to spend too much energy trying to comprehend or corral such a state of mind in the artist. The perspective is fluid, chaotic, full of progress and dissolve, a psychoid state of the high junior codified, that most of us demonize and deify and package in hoops of imbricated iron stippled with rivets, but which the artist just accepts, if with terror. And in this case, a sense of humor.

There is then no one point of view in NotW. The naughty world, the knotty problem cannot be fletcherized, adjudicated, nested, partited, dismissed or resolved. At best one has symbols nun, and carries on in the habitual fashion.

One other thing about the Dr. He worships the Goddess, not least as Crone. Such a burden on the male psyche demands an outlet [ and i assure you, the Dr. is absurdly hetero, and overly male, and thus as Auden suggested, brutalized by kisses of the notional Goddess ] . So instead of the Crone "creeping like a nun", or Mother superior in awe, he substitutes the youthful demiurges, but ones not ready to jump the gun, just to tease.

Wed, 25 Aug 2004 22:04:44 GMT

NOMINATION

This being the week for Nomination, Bo throws into the ring of M.S.G. his 128 nominations to date, with variants, for 'he who would be President', most of which inspirations arose in Bo after the reading of some reported malfeasance over the last four years. Readers of La Lanterne will no doubt recognize several many, but Bo deems this the proper time and place for an omnium gatherum.

Your humble servant, nomenclator Strofeda.

Aethling, the

Animal House Dub

Ariel's Lickspittle

Ass d'Ovale

Ayatollah DupedYa [ "DupedYa" by others ]

Bagelbrain

BCCI Bush

Beltway Bugger

BinLaden's Prodigal Son

Blinky

Bonerboy

Bonobo-agogo, The

Bonobo Master of Pucker Himself, Abu Bush Ghraib [ for formal occasions only ]

Boozerbush

The Boykin

Bushbutt the Oneth

Bushco

Bushes Indesiderati [ familial appelation ]

bushlick

Bush-wa Not

Cacocracant, The

Chancre du L'phant

Chicken Little

Comforter [ i.e. baby blanket for the infantile voter ]

Cowpaddy

Crackpotus I

Daddysboy

Darth Invader

Der Dubyer

Doodoobreath

Doofusdub

Double Dealin' Dub [ variant, Dubble Dealin Dub ]

Dry Drunk, the

Dubbacross, the

Dubbicator, the

Dubaflidget

Dubbunkport

Dubistic [ adj. , suitable for describing his imitators, though he is at present sui generis ]

Dubyadubya II

DuhduhDub

Dumbodub

Dumponya

El Subpresidente

Evil is as Evil Does

Factless

Fickledickle

Firstbornfool

Fluctuant, The

Forktongue

Fractious Phunck

Friendly Fascist, Your

Frutex

Garblesprach, der

Gasolineonafire

George theTwoth

Georgie Pork

Georgio Furioso

GOPglopper

Great Nawop Hope

Gumpworthy

HalliBushton

Handmaiden sans Panties

Hedgefundbreath

Hooverdeuce

Horhay Haesus the Prodigal Son

HorHay Oilocratus Despicus

Humptydump

Ignotocrat, The

Ill-Begotten, the

Jackal

Jeep, the

King Rat

Lickerish Lip

Likkkudista, The

Little Bog Man

Madfruit

Mahout of his Party

Malaglot, The

Mars Boy

Midland's Revenge

Monkeyboy

Monkeygob

Monkeylips

Monkeypoid Boy

Monkeypout

Monkeypuss

Monkeysquint

Mr. Repugnican

Neocon Breath

NAWOPer, The [ from NAtional White Oligarch's Party, often called the GOP. ]

NAWOPist, The

Neocon Breath

Nighty Blairsucker

Orang, The

Orbicide, the

Pied Piper

Plantagenet, The

Plutoputz

Porkestrator, The

Preachertongue

Puckersmoot of the Potomac

Puckersmoot, -snoot

Puddin and Pie

Repugniscum, The

Roid of the Right, The

Rove's Fool Tool

Sandra's Secret Love

Schicklegruber, Der

ScourMouth

Skullboner

Skullboneer [ in Chief ]

Smirkworthy

Snorkypork

Sonny Boy

St. George

Sumacmouth

Texasdaymare, The

Texistani

TexAss, the

Thief in Chief

Thief in the Day

Toot'nComment

Trashtalk

Twogun Dub

Twooth Faery, the

Unelect, the

Sat, 10 Jul 2004 14:26:17 GMT

BO IS BACK!

Melynda Jill

://www.google.com/search?hl=en&;edition=us&ie=UTF-8&q=outsourcing+jobs+Melynda+Jill&btnmeta%3Dsearch%3Dsearch=Search+the+Web

Bo finds his juices warmed by the Good Doctor's posting of the Bush outplacement "article". Thank you, Melynda Jill. Bo forwarded it, and responds to the following reaction:

Very Funny. I still haven't stop laughing. I hope you don't mind, I have to share this around. ... Isn't it amazing how, with all the damning and pressing evidence against this administrations lies deciet and ineptitude, republicans still want to stand at this man's side. What are they thinking? D.

Hi, D,

i had better accept your query as a rhetorical, or else the answer runs to gigabytes.

However, i know, and my liberal friends say they also know otherwise sane and logical, if greedy, Repugnicans who stand by their HumptyDump no matter what, and their Congressional men as well, despite about a dozen impeachable high crimes and misdemeanors, nevermind their deliberate destruction of the republic by unethical if legal acts and novations.

So your question is "the 64,000 dollar question", as in a fitting phrase from the payolagate quiz show scandals of the late Fifties .

Answer your riddle and we may find out how to break the stupefaction this country has labored under for three decades.

However society dresses convicts, police, generals, priests, three piece bankers, jocks and other bad actors in comic opera getups, otherwise known as "uniforms", so that those most likely to offend the norms of society can be identified at a glance by the tiniest tot, idiot savant, or other reality-challenged person. Hence one cannot object over strenuously when the Repugnicans uniformly "hang together" and silhouette themselves by their continuing foul embrace of the GeorgiePork. In other words, the Repug Party exists for a transcendant purpose, to hilight the sociopath wannabes, such as those in the mold of that late,great Washington State Repug Party campaigner, employee, and imago, Ted Bundy; and no great good is to be served by disestablishment of such GOP.

Let the fools have their errand, les enfants of nationalism their Comforter, the jingoist rabble their besotted Savior, the misbegotten of Middl'murika their psychic shield of a surpassing Teratogenesis, the precious Elephantiases of Global Capitalism their Mad Mahout, the Lincolnistas their Lickerish Lip, the Rapturists their Orbicide, the Bonobos and Troglodytes of the sNewty Right their Monkeypoid Boy, the Inept of Tongue their Malaglot, the birding NewAnglicans their Nighty Blairsucker, the Necrophiles of screeds outworn their Skullboneer, the Rapacious their Thief in Chief, the Bedlamites their Plantagenet, the Perpetual Minority their Unelect Uber Alles. Yes, let all subspecies of a GOP persuasion, and their Clusterbucks in Toto, stand by their man. For the good of the nation. The harder they come, the harder they fall.

The Democratic Party however is another matter entirely. It needs to be torn down, destroyed, buried, its memory forsworn, its current national leaders abjured, its coffers emptied, its lifeline truncated into an endless loop of FDR era self congratulation. [ Eleanor and MLK of course stand on their own as great leaders for all time, and escape the Dyson's Sphere i would create to seal off the rest of the failed enterprise of social justice. ] A new Party, a new name, new leaders, and an abject admission that we must needs start again ab ovo in the attempt to segregate the forces of greed, caste, and militarism from the levers of government in a civil society.

If the body of Repugnicans were a single person, a shrink would note that this irrational person shows extreme narcississtic personality disorder compounded by inflation of ego, grandiosity, religious megalomania, necrophilia, and Forest Gump Syndrome -- "Stupid is as stupid does".

My putative rational explanation of your conundrum starts with individuals having spent entire lifetimes absorbing propaganda of the far right, starting with the lies of their grade school history books, the Pledge of Allegiance to a piece of cloth, etc. Ironies abound. For instance all the Bushie Belters, so bound to their Bronze Age, patriarchal, war-based dogma of Biblical literalism, fail to note that a cause celebre of Pledge to the flag runs literally afoul of Old Testament injunctions against " worshipping idols". In the halls of literature, such nescience is called "the willing suspension of disbelief". Then what else need be said ?

The problem with my projected scholarly tome is that, like all shrinks, i am much better at hanging a moniker on the disease than at curing it. But since society appears determined to exercise some feudal atavism, to "go medieval on us" as the teens say, then best suck it up, peine forte et dure. Vote Democrat into November, then deconstruct the sorry remnants of the New Deal and build a new populist based majority party.

Sat, 28 Feb 2004 14:28:13 GMT

Vintage Strofeda, Part Two Selections from October, 2001

It is not impossible to achieve idealistic goals of world justice. With serious commitment the nations of some 2 billion well-off people could raise the security and standard of living of the remaining two thirds of humanity to good levels in short order. But such would be possible if and only if there is a concomitant social contract among all peoples, one inescapable provision of which would be to control the growth of their population numbers, starting now. Otherwise the idealist presumes to bucket the multitudinous seas into the moat of his sand castle. This truth isn't news. One wonders if Albert Schweitzer were alive today what opinion he might have of the efficacy of his life's work. One look at Ruwanda/Burundi should shiver the souls of the helping class. Those worthies may not have wielded the machetes, nor created the local tribal animosities, but they surely bear some share of long term responsibility for the carnage.

The act of breeding into a finite world will eventually be recognized for what it is, the primary act of aggression, guaranteeing in utero that eventually sides will be chosen up, enemies created and named, weapons secured, death dealt, etc.

How quickly immigrants go from being deprived third worlders to adopting the Usan standard—every one of us a usufructuary of global airs, waters, minerals under the absurd rubric that paying cash for the resultant products somehow relieves Usans of any responsibilities for preserving them for the use of all.

There is a strong suggestion in the WTC collapse that technological solutions to overpopulation, such as cramming 250,000 persons into a space of 16 acres via vertical expansion, are dangerous, foolhardy, inadequate, vainglorious, egotistical answers; but most of all they are mere experiments, probably failed experiments. Technology is playing catch-up, and losing. Why expect better results from other novel technologies mandated by overpopulation, such as genetic manipulation of crops??

The worst Usan and also Euro error in re farmers and farming is the abject failure to store up a ten year supply of food for the entire world population. The apparent food glut and food price wars belie inevitable scarcity. Just as there were early warnings of the terrorist events, one needn't be a geomancer to divine that dramatic interruptions in the food supply are near. See the rise of chronic wasting diseases in cattle and wild animals. The single genome of the maize plant worldwide. Massive and repeated destruction of commercial herds in Europe for many reasons. The probable end of a relatively wet 2 centuries over the Usan and Canadian corn [ wheat ] fields. The accelerating die-off of wild species, a process that will funnel "domestic" plant and animal production to the same denouement. Then there is the near destruction of many pelagic commercial species, due to over- fishing, destruction of habitat, etc. Or see the continued inability of a fertile Africa to feed itself.

To name a smattering. Nor has there been consideration of the terrorist angle, where, for instance, the insidious concentration of US agribusiness makes it ever easier to destroy or contaminate large amounts of stored seeds. The amounts of food already in the international storage, preparation and sales pipeline were estimated during the Y2K planning as two years to five years total, depending on the product. While this amount hardly ensures five years of sustenance for all humans, there are very few long term stores of food other than these commercially controlled sources. [ A principal reason for this situation is no doubt familiar to you- the purchase of the U.S. Congress by two or three agribusiness interests, spouting their childish belief in free market economics in all spheres, fearing the price-repression effect of large government stores, and probably fearing their inability to gouge away in the case of severe shortages. ]

If serious extended problems occur in N. American, Chinese, or European food production, the first people to starve and descend into chaos by the hundreds of millions will be third worlders. The forced departure of small local farmers from their native acres over the globe will no doubt increase the magnitude of a food supply disaster and make these poorest of third worlders the first of the victims. However eventually 5/6 of the world's population will feel the starvation while the remainder forget their liberal principles in a hurry. Long term emergency food supply is a primary world security issue if any such there be.

Do you want to bite that bullet, the recognition that there is but one battle worldwide, not at base between religions, not between nations, nor between classes, but only between the self-appointed porcine masters of each territorial, resource and technologic demesne and the entire populations of those with whom they do not share the fruits?

Which, if any, of the various antecedents to a democratic representative form of government exist in Afghanistan? Any ? There is no widespread literacy. No special valuing of women as occurs say in a frontier situation. No common transportation or communications systems. No single common language. No stepwise removal from pure autocracies of the past and present. Only a minimal history of toleration of dissent or otherness in general. No history of indigenous contrarians opposing the local mindset of monism, in whatever form, but especially the religious. No common ownership of some public resources, of land and water - all the land is fragmented. No recognition that the rest of the world has a right Not to be inundated with their locally grown drugs. The latest three "governments" of Afghanistan were totally similar to warring gangs, with no concern for individual rights. Where is there in the region any group that has demonstrated its legitimacy by its restraint? None, not one is approved.

One can only conclude that Afghanistan is one of the least fertile regions in the world in which to sow democracy. That doesn't mean democracy should not be introduced, nor that the many undoubted victims in Afghanistan do not need to be protected and raised up until their voices can be heard. But it would be unfair to put that load of developmental issues onto any one other country, friend or foe, merely because of the accidental [ though oft repeated, as in the case of Prester John in the Iranian mountains ] basing of international criminals within the borders of the country.

Wed, 25 Feb 2004 12:10:27 GMT

Dear Fiona,

and other readers of Strofeda:

- I do read and enjoy your Comments several times a week.

-Your readership is appreciated.

-Likewise, I read some in your blogs linked on Dr. Omed's current or home pages, though not daily.

Dr. O. often brings some relevant response to my attention, thank you Dr. O.

-When the good Dr. Omed first suggested that I write a Category, as he calls it, or a column, I did not guess what numbers of issues I would wish to respond to, nor remember how many piles of jumbled notes sat waiting their chance to be immortalized in articles. While working my way through those piles an incipient case of hypergraphia has been exacerbated, and I am not getting much else done, blogwise or dinnerwise, of late than La Lanterne.

- I am also a victim of creeping, sometimes galloping, senility and a rank inNeterate to boot. The long suffering Vicar attempts to instruct me in the niceties of blogs and categories for which I often fail to plan.

Various things don't get done. The Statement of Purpose and headstock collection of quotes which form a brief summary of the column's intents slide backwards into the prior days. The reader is encouraged to scroll down to same, or drop back to early January on the calendars at left a time or two to pick those up.

At some point I will catch up with the "old" material and get my Net addresses in order, and then begin to converse with you a bit in Comments.

Thank you for your readership.

Bo S.

I append some of the quotes, and a link to the Statement of Purpose to which Bo refers. ox Dr. O

It is high time that the ideal of success should be Albert Einstein

replaced by the ideal of service.

Intellectuals solve problems; geniuses prevent them. Albert Einstein

I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy

of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to

challenge our government to a trial of strength and

bid defiance to the laws of our country. 1812 Thomas Jefferson

..corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption

in high places will follow, and the money power of the

country will endeavour to prolong its reign by working

upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated

in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed. 1865 Abraham Lincoln

The real truth of the matter is, as you and I know, that

a financial element in the large centers has owned the President Franklin

government of the U.S. since the days of Andrew Jackson. D. Roosevelt 1933

statement of purpose

Tue, 24 Feb 2004 10:51:35 GMT

Vintage Strofeda, Part One Selections from October, 2001

Dr. Omed notes: Bo has invented the neologism "Usan" which he uses in place of "American." He refuses to be persuaded that it isn't an improvement. Earlier versions of some the sentiments Bo expresses here were previously published under a different pseudonym (Ant Crabby) on the home page of the Tent Show.

While no more elegant and hopeful a declaration of human liberty may exist than the Preamble to the U.S. Constitution, followed by practical protection of same in the Bill of Rights, said documents will not completely serve current needs. Rather all possible peoples need to struggle together towards a new common statement of democratic purpose if all are intended to abide by it. [ The current situation, in which a few USAns export their highest ideals of equality and representative government for all, while the remainder export creeds outworn, especially that gomboid hodgepodge of undead feudalism, that unvetted dollarist aliquot of the Dark Ages with makeshift controls on panaggression, now called "global capitalism", does not seem to be a situation capable of permitting, much less effecting, rapid universal justice and liberty. ]

One holds little hope that declarations of the United Nations can adequately express the yearnings of the non-elect of the world, beholden as that organisation is to the financial and military status quo.

Just as no individual has any hope of restructuring the behavior of others, but can in end only change self, so I would suggest that no nation so obviously defective in international and, not less in its intramural affairs, as our own should undertake to offer reforms to other nations, except by providing a successful example.

So called "capitalism" and its "globalization" appear not as a single, directed force but rather as a holy frenzy, a juggernaut of convulsive greed amid chaos, whelping off demons and a few darlings. I eschew the defective elements embedded in current Usan and international business practices, especially those of big businesses. "Use them all up, let God sort out the paupers" appears to be the feudal mantra. It may be that the majority of businessmen do not accept such unethical SOP, nor lightly abide the evil effects which accompany otherwise beneficial commerce, but the fact remains that commerce worldwide repeatedly rewards sociopaths with great power and wealth. I conclude that there is something fundamentally wrong with business theory and practice, wrong all over the globe, becoming more wrong as the size of businesses increase. These errors concentrate wealth and power in persons most inimical to representative democracy.

Nonetheless, even the businessman manqué defends his "system", and all the wannabe wealthys stand on their rights to use hard or defraud other persons, providing only that they obeyed whatever insufficient laws applied meanwhile. I will likely remain in the minority on the subject of business ethics, an oxymoron if ever there was one. A plurality of the world's people need to create an economic system which makes it much harder than the current system does for one percent of the people to own 90 per cent of the wealth and control every representative, executive and judicial body. That plurality must recognize that profit and power should not be, as they now are, the primary raison d'etre behind all political, social, military and religious decisions.

One would hope that even a racist, chauvinist, oligarchal, militarist Usan might perceive the gross inadequacy, the internal contradictions of his pre-WTC formulas and slogans.

Mon, 23 Feb 2004 12:16:28 GMT

Spit It Out

To Terry Gross, NPR: Re your interview on Fresh Air, broadcast 2-19-2004 with director Errol Morris on his documentary on Robert McNamara's Viet Nam debacle, The Fog of War :

You missed the obvious thing: McNamara is not repentant; he is bragging about having committed some of the greatest war crimes ever, as you report, in his capacity at age 25 as aide to the insane general, Curtis E. Lemay, who firebombed Japanese civilians by the hundreds of thousands, and again at age 45, directing the decimation of Viet Nam with more tonnage of bombs than was dropped in all of WWII, with Agent Orange and its still-lethal remnants, with you name it, the early usage of every modern element of criminal war.

Bragging at length, Terry. Bragging about how he got away with killing millions and is still walking and talking at 85. The man is a sociopath, and you gave him one more geriatric, leastest generation stage on which to strut. Shame.

Mon, 23 Feb 2004 12:06:21 GMT

The Ice Man Cometh

http://www.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,12374,1153530,00.html

"The document predicts that abrupt climate change could bring the planet to the edge of anarchy as countries develop a nuclear threat to defend and secure dwindling food, water and energy supplies. The threat to global stability vastly eclipses that of terrorism, say the few experts privy to its contents"

Two points herein for the working man: the primary "security" danger to all peoples in the next few decades may well be starvation. [ Thanks, Raygun, for dismantling the Federal food storage programs. ] It is well past time to begin stockpiling all the food that we can grow. And it is really going to hurt during a prolonged global crisis to have all N. American manufacturing facilities relocated in East Asia. One cannot imagine two more primary concerns of national security. Unless maybe one considers the need to develop total on-continent non-polluting sources of all kinds of energy. Excessive supplies even.

Its not hard for Bo to see that in any global crisis, socialist objectives are far and away more conservative and sane than those of the feudalists.

This Pentagon report demonstrates a pressing need: the time has come to extirpate the U.S. feudal elite and start making sensible social policy. If N. America is kept strong and self-sufficient in all ways, it will be able to reach out and help others. If not, all bets are off.

The U.S. global hegemony is over. A rapid descent into an Ice Age will but prove the point more quickly.

Sun, 22 Feb 2004 12:23:19 GMT

Herr Gropenator Opines

"Arnold Schwarzenegger, California's Governor, has stepped into the national furore over gay marriage, ordering the state's top legal official to take action to stop the issuance of same-sex marriage licences in San Francisco, on the grounds it represented 'an imminent threat to civil order'."

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=493883

Please explain yourself, Herr Gropenator.

What "threat" ?

Which "civil order" ?

Are the thousands of happy couples blocking traffic ?

Causing a cake shortage?

Spending in California moneys earned elsewhere,

causing thereby a state to state imbalance?

Adding to local warming in the Bay Area ?

Smiling too much for a serious Gubernator to withstand ?

Could it be that you are just practicing up for the October 2004 Surprise

that William Safire predicts ?

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/jan2004/saf-j03.shtml

Well then, gut!

Wouldn't want to muff those lines.

Lets see, Der Dubyer got his little "Inauguration wish" just about nine months after taking office. You may have to wait a little bit longer.

Still, its never too soon to start practicing.

Every good boy does fine.

Play us a tune, Herr GubGub.

Sat, 21 Feb 2004 08:21:29 GMT

Wither Goest Thou, Brother ?

What, Socialists are running for the Oval Office too? Do tell. Mirabile visu et auditu.

Who wudda thunk it ? Gimme some skin, brother. Uh. Um. Not yet. I mean, Bo has a few reservations.

I have stated before that I am a Socialist; never have I stated allegiance to any socialist party, nor person, nor especially to any ideologue of historical Socialism. The objective of this column is operational -- to help create a constant and critical mass or balance on the left side of the political scale in the U.S., by stating sound opinion based on 6 decades experience, rather than by insisting on the defense of screeds outworn, or by climbing onto the studebakering bandwagons of other socialists.

These reservations do not prevent Bo from giving a cheer to those strong, brave and selfless people who continue to work for socialism and justice in the U.S. and elsewhere.

Here is link to a Socialist site with fine writing and reporting.

http://www.wsws.org/index.shtml

Bo reads from the World Socialist Website almost daily, but is not now nor likely will ever be a member of the Fourth International.

Recently the following announcement has appeared at the head of the WSWS site:

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/jan2004/stat-j27.shtml


	Socialist Equality Party announces US presidential campaign

I recommend that all working people read and study this campaign announcement, long though it be. I am going to use it below as if it is a definitive statement of the current status and intent of Socialist party(s) within the U.S. Makeweight of the Left realizes that this site is not the only source of leftist activity or opinion. About two thirds of this document by word count is chapter and verse, as if out of the quill of Bo. The most telling statements [ all long quotes in this Feb 12, 2004 column are from the above linked site ] :

"There is no shortcut in the struggle against imperialist war and social reaction. It is necessary to undertake now the construction of an independent, mass socialist party."

I have previously noted that one man cannot build a leftist movement from the top down.

We are encouraged to "take part in the effort to build a new political party of the working class".

Workers, educated and active workers, and hopefully loyal retired workers, are the heart of any struggle for democratic government.

"The Bush administration represents, in the fullest sense of the word, the coming to power of a criminal element within the American ruling elite"

"a guaranteed right of workers to join a union and control the union democratically; the outlawing of union-busting tactics and wage-cutting; full democratic rights, including citizenship, for immigrant workers, whether legal or “illegal” "

"Bush’s “No Child Left Behind” program, adopted by Congress with bipartisan support in 2001, is a deliberate attempt to undermine public education "

"The highest echelons of corporate America are rife with criminality and fraud. Hundreds of CEOs have looted their own companies"

"In the Republican Party one finds a pure expression of the most unrestrained and rapacious sections of the corporate elite."

"In the final analysis, the choice of president will reflect a consensus within the ruling elite, rather than the democratic will of the people"

"In the final analysis, the attack on democratic rights represents the defense mechanism of a financial elite seeking to protect its vast wealth against the social strivings of the overwhelming majority of the people"

" Government subsidies to museums, orchestras, theaters and public television and radio have been gutted. Art and music education has been drastically curtailed or eliminated outright from most public schools. Library hours and services have been scaled back"

The total of dollars in subsidies to the arts was trivial compared to those subsidy sums passed out to favored industries, such as coal. The lost economic benefits alone were considerable, for all those moron Repugnicans who think they did a gutting good thing. Idiots. The multiplier effect of arts support dollars in Bo's town used to be something to behold. Or maybe not idiots, just criminals. The catabolism of the arts budget serves a greater repug purpose, the destruction of free speech and independent thought. The resultant economic dislocation must just be borne for the sake of the plutocracy, uber alles.

"We advocate the breakup of the media monopolies"

+++++++++++++++++++

Having passed the ammunition and praised aloud, Bo now unpacks his magic marker and grades the overall effort of the announcement:

A for clear view of current deficiencies and failures by the U.S. in domestic and international society and

A for excellent writing.

sample: "There was no significant resistance to the destabilization of the Clinton administration through a series of bogus investigations, culminating in impeachment. The theft of the 2000 election, with the collaboration of the mass media and the capitulation of the Democratic Party establishment, demonstrated that no section of the ruling elite has a serious commitment to the defense of democratic rights."

B for understanding of the defects of previous American populist movements and the past and ongoing deceits and desertions of working people by the Democratic Party.

samples: "The conflicts within the Democratic leadership, however intense and bitter, are fundamentally over tactics: how best to position the Democratic Party to preempt, if possible, and eviscerate, if necessary, an upsurge of social protest, containing and diverting it..."

"The central weakness of previous mass social movements in the United States—the populist revolt of the 1890s, the militant union struggles of the IWW before World War I, the massive labor upsurge of the 1930s, the civil rights and antiwar movements of the 1960s—is that they never succeeded in freeing working people from the political domination of the Democratic Party.."

"In the US, the struggles of the working class were betrayed by the bureaucracy that arose within the trade unions .."

C for sum of remedies proposed for the ills we suffer.

"first task of socialism is the elimination of poverty—a goal that is eminently realizable"

Sorry SEP, reducing the harsh effects of poverty is an ongoing Process, inevitably as variable in its success as the weathers allow, not a goal of finite accomplishment that can be "reached" and then borne out unto the edge of doom. Killing off poverty once and for all has about as much reality factor as did the "irrational exuberance" of the dot.com boom. Bo suspects that no nation state, nor no benighted Potlatch society, has ever "eliminated poverty". Bo suggests that the SEP take on something doable, something actually possible, as its "first task". Bo suggests that socialists should never ever say they are going to "eliminate poverty", never even claim they are going to "reduce poverty". And never start a "war on poverty".

Bo suggests Socialists stick to advocating simple programs, i.e. a fair Minimum Wage, adjustable for inflation and local conditions, which can be sold on their own expedient merits and which need have no ideological basis. Just bear down and hammer on this one plank, and you have cobbled already half of a Presidential platform for the electorate you need to convert. Don't even use the term "livable" minimum wage, because some times, some places, conditions will not allow that theoretical largesse regardless of the political sway Socialism might then hold; stop promising a return to the Moon with a soupcon of eventual Marsdom. Fairness is the key word, i.e. sharing the pain, sharing the gain. [ And even though this fair wage clearly has to be conceived in an ongoing, variable global strategy, the purpose of a N. American Socialist party is to sell the program here first. ]

D for political intelligence.

" On the Democrats’ left flank is a quasi-populist faction, some working within the Democratic Party (the campaigns of Dennis Kucinich and Al Sharpton), others supporting the Green Party or a possible independent candidacy by Ralph Nader, the Green candidate in 2000. These elements serve as a “left” prop for the Democratic Party and for bourgeois politics as a whole promoting illusions that the Democratic Party can be pushed to the left or even transformed into an instrument of radical political and social reform.."

One doesn't start building a party by destroying and denigrating one's nearest natural allies, like the Greens and Naderites. One does not judge them on ideological purity, but on the commonality of desire. Kucinich is as fine an example of a Socialist as this country has to offer.

" The goal of our campaign is to organize, educate and transform the American working class into a class conscious and politically independent force"

Bo agrees, its a reasonable and necessary goal. But aren't the SEP overlooking one slight little problem ?? – the total of possible socialist, i.e. downtrodden, members of the workforce do not at present form a majority of the USan population, and probably not a sure majority of the electorate, and certainly not a majority of those who can be dragged kicking and screaming into a voting booth. Demographics. Hard to believe. I will go into this issue at length in future. My point here is to at least ask the question, if SEP had not rather define their potential base in a more deliberate, ad hoc fashion, in order to win elections if for no other reasons ??

The SEP does also say: " only by developing a grassroots political movement that will broadly mobilize workers, professionals, young people and students and extend beyond the election itself, laying the foundations for the building of a mass socialist party of the working class"

Lay aside for a moment the apparent diversion of this quote from the one immediately above. And ask, What is the miracle glue that is going to bind these frequently opposed categories of people ? Might it be wiser to approach potential electorate and families by some other process than by trumpeting these divisive categorizations ?? See remarks on Imagination, below. A strong party, a lasting party, is built on personal relationships and loyalties, one person at a time.

In general, a political movement does not start nor succeed by generating an omnium gatherum of every possible historical and related idea. Especially a movement such as Socialism. The question needs to be asked of the people, not sold by argument nor ad to the people: what is your main ongoing problem ? Can Socialism develop an organization to remedy that problem ? Yes ? There you have the first plank and the last plank – minimum wage and universal single pool medical insurance system. All boiled down. Stripped for action. Stop.

E for goals of Presidential politics.

" Our campaign is not about votes. It is about ideas and policies.

The Socialist Equality Party will use the elections as an opportunity to develop a serious discussion on the social and political crisis, and lay down the programmatic foundations for the building of a mass movement for a revolutionary transformation of American society"

An election campaign is about votes, and only and ever about votes, where the rubber meets the road. "Ideas and policies" are the ephemera of the moment or the era. Policy, i.e. theory oversewn with velcro hooks of emotions, drummed by endless ads, is just what the Repugs use to brainwash much of a nation into voting against their own best interests. And eras come thick and fast these days. Plus "programmatic foundations" and " revolutionary transformation" are purest bullshit, some sop to an obscure intellectual wing ?, language that roars out a hardly inchoate message to voters at all intellectual levels : RUN ! RUN FOR YOUR LIVES.

F for lack of focus.

"The SEP intends to conduct this campaign not simply on a national, but on an international level.."

This is not to say the socialist movement should not be transnational. It merely notes that one cannot hang every last objective and strategy upon a purpose-specific process, in this case, the U.S. presidential election. That is the wrong venue for most of the socialist goals anyway !! If Socialism doesn't work at the city level, it has no chance at the Federal level. [ Bo knows he is going to hear the seemingly sound argument that no city can stand against the rightwing fiscal juggernaut of the Federal budget; Bo will continue to insist, one cannot build a reliable party or a movement from the top down. ] If socialism doesn't work within historic city, county, state, national boundaries, it probably fails internationally as well. Set a limited and achievable goal, rather than proposing the world and disposing nada. Geesh.

++++++++++++++++++++

It is also necessary to take exception to other unserviceable ideas and pronouncements in the S.E.P. document. In general this manifesto promotes rights due to individuals, while barely mentioning duties of the individual to society, other than for workers to organize and act as a party. Where is the balance ? Political action, even the best intentioned, cannot in the end resolve those problems that must be adjudicated within each cranium, and within each family. To put it bluntly, a contrary socialist call to action, one that spoke only of duties, if they were the right duties and well observed, would stand far better chance of successful implementation than one which speaks mostly of rights and oughtabes; and such a focus on duties would achieve many of the human-given rights in passing. A manifesto built on 'us socialists agin them capitalists' ignores the main problem of a socialist milieu, the paucity of its monism, a problem which would become self evident if there were no more capitalist Nixons "to kick around anymore". Such rationale of party proceeding from antagonism is as faulty a plan for action as is the Anybody But Bush [ ABBB ] movement. A slogan does not an organization make. [ Does no one read Orwell's Animal Farm anymore ?? ]

A second notable problem is the absolute rejection of longstanding functional routines, i.e. the tossing out of the baby with the bath water. The SEP agenda wants so many personal needs to be satisfied by government, often only by government, even needs that have historically been served adequately to well inpast by private means, see the endless lists on their site, or perhaps more accurately well served by a judicious mixture of complementary government and private efforts. The mixed public/private systems that we have inherited are not so very different from the relatively egalitarian systems of satisfaction which obtained from, say, the middle of WWII and functioned from 1965 through about 1974. They did work ; they can work again.

No need to start over from scratch. And repairing their faults is a more certain path to achieving the laundry list of goodies to be supplied by a putative socialist government than is demanding that government do them directly. [ Individual iniative is inversely proportional to the amount of effort expended by others for the individual. Socialism that forgets this truth has no chance at achieving its goals. The failures of our recent two hundred years of industry cannot be said to disprove the wisdom of all recorded history. Bo believes that society needs to do more for many individuals, and a lot less for some; American progressives have held this view since before the founding of the Republic. What Bo wants is a Party dedicated in name as well as purpose to those now traditional and conservative values, a party that cannot then be so easily diverted, confused, distorted, and sold out as the Democratic Party has become. ] What is not wanted is a party that dominates every path and agency.

Wisdom in process of government is so lacking, probably because experience in government is so lacking, in the SEP. But could they not at least look at the failures of socialist Russia, socialist China, and socialist Saudi Arabia to meet by fiat and government planning the most minimal goals, goals identical at some stage of their "revolutions" to the ones the SEP proposes ? Could the SEP not at least notice in passing that the more socialist societies of France and Germany have done less than the business-accommodating society of the US in creating the capacity to achieve socialist aims for large numbers of people? One doesn't get from point F. to point S. by falsifying history and ignoring numerous if limited periods of great success in a mixed-pattern US economy.

Third, Bo notes a failure to address the overriding need to rewrite the US Constitution. Hard to do you say ? Almost impossible, but necessary. The inequalities of representation necessarily enshrined in a constitution of the late 1700's bid fair to savage the remnants of representative democracy in the 2000's. Neither Socialists nor the electorate in general can tiptoe past this dangerous lair. Examples of needed reforms: dump the Senate in favor of a unicameral legislature, with actual proportional, one man-one vote elections. Discourage the concentration of Federal offices in the D.C. clustermuck it now occupies. Demand that Federal representatives be located at a physical location within their district ¾ of the time.

Here is another topic for future columns of La Lanterne.

Fourth failing is the lack of an imaginative organizing principle and structure for a Socialist Party. Bo is fairly sure something new is required. A Hull House for the 2000's ?? The Net is fine for communication on the cheap; it is no substitute for one to one relationship building; the medium is NOT the message. Bo solicits ideas in Comments for the central organizing principle. His own suggestions will arrive in later columns, but tend to teaching rather than preaching, block meetings rather than synods, friendships rather than rules of organization.

Fifth, lack of imagination in policy. The world is changing very rapidly. Great acts of political imagination are required to bridge the gap between the desiderata of economic justice and liberty for everyman and the rapid evolution of control technologies in the hands of the feudal overlords. Instead, the SEP gives us some very trite ideas and "solutions" which have been tried unto bust in past. Even if these concepts were fresh, the people do so distrust them that the mere inclusion of them in a platform guarantees the failure of the SEP to gain adherents. One could ask if the SEP is that paltry shy of awareness and imagination ? Or is it one more plant of the feudal bosses, a fifth column operating to oversell the worst tenets, rather like a Repugnican fifth column or irredenta of the DLC, unsubtly usurping the Democratic Party with "centrist" members.

Socialists can weep at the wailing wall of Trotskytism over the American child's being inundated with anti-Socialist propaganda; but if we ourselves continue to plug outright nonsense, what Luciferian need spend a dime on propaganda to marginalize us ? What nonsense am i refering to ? See quotes below.

Bo suggests that essential Socialism be built around these truths: as the size and importance of the typical family household has retreated towards the solitary unit of one individual, all individuals experience the lack of a zone of safety, a social integument, a zone of controlled friction where the person interfaces an often larger, colder, harsher group of people. This lack of shelter and support within subordinate organizations causes a need for the services of impersonal Socialism in modern societies. At the same time, people balk at giving or receiving impersonal services. Imagination then ought to consider constructing a Socialist organization that is at block level a substitute family. Not a new idea, and Bo takes no credit for it.

Sixth, as manifesto or agenda, the SEP announcement is far too complex. A few slogans and a whole lot of practice jumpstart an organization.

Seventh, it fails to understand that small businessmen have to be attracted to Socialist programs, not to policy, even more than labor. Perhaps one should state that thus: small business people must not be alienated. These people generally do not have the time nor inclination for politics nor ideas; they are doers, and they do whatever works for the next guy over. In them resides society's resevoir of faith. They are the ones who create new jobs, and they also vote mostly repugnican because they believe from real past experience that they will end up paying unfair share of taxes for a socialist agenda. Their resentment is palpable; their sound instincts negative to all politicians, but especially to socialists. They become easy meat for the feudal lords, far more often victims of the right than of the left. [ It is quite true that the near-poor have always been forced to pay the bills for progressive programs. ] As it happens, the current mess and outrageous expense of medical insurance provides an excellent wedge issue to reach out to these indispensable people. If progressives cannot now, in the midst of this opportunity, focus on and take over the medical insurance issue, we might as well give up the general striving, and join the pack soloing on 'meemeeememeeee'. Skip the ideology; sell single payer, single group.

Eighth, the SEP announcement routinely scolds capitalism as the bete noire of socialism. Bo notes the constant, millenia-old, opponent ab initio of socialism is not capitalism, but feudalism. Feudalism is the historical system of oligarchy with constant strife under which European and other peoples have suffered for at least 1400 years. When crushed or decayed, it morphs like a mothering prion and has become of late a peculiarly american ignotocracy. And these feudal lords, these stygiotropes, these termitary gematriacs, most certainly do not practice nor believe in democracy, capitalism, free markets, competitive markets, equal opportunity, its what you know- -not who you know, fair practice, nor any of those untested virtues clapped up by their omniducent propaganda machines. They believe in the top dog, highest risk, scads of ploy, fuck you all, power play.

Ninth, no Socialist agenda will get implemented, no matter what elections might be "won", until the criminal lords are taken down. This then must be the primary executive action of a socialist movement, limiting the power and wealth and inheritance of the existing and wannabe feudal lords. Can't get around it. Face up to it or forget the whole effort. Such an agenda immediately forces two other realities upon a Socialist movement: each socialist must confront his closeted ignotocrat, his inner pig; the elemental greed in all persons at all times, but especially after a Socialist evolution, must be recognized and exposed, because it cannot be squashed, tutored, legislated or idealized out of existence. A movement can remodel Last Emperors into gardeners, but new emperors arise out of the cadmean sands.

Bo believes that if Socialism managed to do no more than to prosecute and punish every feudal lord worth more than say, twenty million dollars for his actual current crimes, and in tort for historical crimes his ancestors committed under extant laws, then Socialism would have nearly accomplished its ends of justice and liberty and care for all, because the delimiting contraries would be removed for the time being.

SEP socialism ignores a reality, that the most profound inequalities of life arise by spontaneous 'combestion', they are built into human nature by eons of competition in evolution as well as by present demographics, especially those related to age: the gross differences in desire, energy and intelligence to accomplish those desires.

+++++++++++++++++

-- "We call for the dismantling of the Pentagon war machine"

And then what ? Does the SEP imagine that even if the civilian component of the feudal cabal ceased to send the Pentagon on private errands, that somehow the need of this continent for self-defense is going to disappear ? A "war machine" looks quite similar to a "defense machine", minus the rhetoric; the key question is always, who is to be in charge of that machine. Demonizing the service personnel is also counterproductive.

Enlisted and officers are motivated for the most part by sincere desires of service and patriotism; they have often demonstrated a self-abnegation in favor of the larger group exceeding that shown by Socialist workers. Moreover the military expect at least a promise of a cradle to grave package of social services unknown to the general public. In other words, SEP, if you want to see socialism in action, if you want to meet your closest socialist brothers, look to the current U.S. military. Not happy with their actions ? Disturbed about the gross failure of promised medical care for injured? failure to provide decent housing ? Does the spectacle of this socialist success and socialist failure on a scale much larger than a "trial project" not at least shake your overweening faith in your demanded solutions ? It is after all this same U.S. Federal government, full of good intents moreover, and replete with failures as well, that you insist to deliver to us a basket of socialist services.

Bo has no doubt that a powerful, flexible military, respected by citizens and foes, is needed by any democracy.

Bo has no doubt that the world is currently a parlous place, and that this danger cannot be managed nor avoided by "dismantling the Pentagon".

Perhaps the most serious mistake of the SEP is to conceive that militaries in general can cease to exist. In any society, but particularly in ours, a certain number of men and women will be born in every generation who are predisposed to a military state of mind, to working out of their psychic complexes of service, spit shine, duty, loyalty, adventure, courting of danger, etc. in a very hard, very material environment. Bo would rather have these easily abused, easily misused, occasionally violent persons right where we can see them – in uniforms.

Bo would rather get along with them under formal rules than pretend that they should not exist. Bo would rather have them in service when real disasters and real threats appear.

Do some military so love war that they are constantly lobbying for war? Yes, but vigilance and wisdom of leaders is the only known control over such necrophiliacs. A medical model of treatment might be worth considering. But what about a medical model for treating the megalomania of socialists who believe that a political movement intent on improving quality of life somehow also divines a solution for every sort of intractable problem known to man ?

"Socialism will proceed to raise the living standards of the broad mass of humanity"

"Every major advance of American workers was associated with socialism and spearheaded by socialist-minded militants—from the eight-hour day, to child labor laws, to universal public education, to the formation of mass industrial unions, to the end of Jim Crow segregation in the South"

Hmmm. Start with some honesty on the first statement above. The firstmost "raisers" were private individuals striving for the betterment of themselves and their immediate heirs. The second most important force of betterment in the last two hundred years is a rising tide of expectation or hope, a spiritual force that is nonetheless linked to scientific industrialism, a spiritual force that is not the property of any movement, though many have tried to attach themselves to it; the third, and ever important force in improvements is probably populist political movements. The fourth, still indispensable, and lately threatened in all its advances by erors of the feudal lords themselves, is not social engineering, but physical engineering, most especially modern sanitation sewer systems; clean water supply systems; concrete paving; steel structures. These mechanical bases of improvement belong to no class nor system nor ideology, but depend on inventions made by individuals, as used and promoted by both egalitarian and feudal forces. Socialism is important; it deserves the credits requested in the second statement above, but lets keep some perspective on its place in the scheme of improving things.

"With the advent of Karl Marx, socialism became a science"

Far from making Socialism a science, this kind of pedagogical statement segues into the atavism of a magical religion. Bless you Karl Marx; now go retire to your rest and leave the party to face the exigencies of the 21st century. Let us recall what C.G. Jung said about the excesses of his followers, "Thank God I am Jung, and not a Jungian". Thank you Nkrumah, Bo is not a Marxist. Gag.

"Placing SEP candidates on the ballot for the US Senate and the House of Representatives is another major task"

Some theorists never dream that for the average person, the desire to elect a Congressperson Fades Out between elections, and rightfully so. What is needed is a skein of purpose and entertainment that gets people to weekly meetings, every year.

And that purpose would not be the occasionally fulfilled fantasy of elevating some one of us to Federal rank and privilege.

"Our party opposes the various strains of identity politics and stands firmly in support of integration and the unity of all working people"

This item justifies a book's worth of discussion. Bo will merely note here that Socialists should be very proactive in getting women into elective and appointive office. This "identity" strain results from nature, not some temporary fad. The issue is fairness of representation.

"The goal of this movement must be to end the political domination of the capitalist class and establish a workers government"

This statement is too simplistic. Bo's objective, as expressed in Makeweight of the Left, is to help create such a constancy of political force on the left that "political domination" will flow back and forth, and through new persons and institutions. Surely the left deserves a long strong run to make up for the gross domination via criminal means of the far right over the last five decades. But in the far run, good government is obtained only by constant fair struggle, which means in effect that one should not wish to "end" the representation of any legitimate force within a society. And the relevance of capital per se is such a legitimacy. Feudal barons of course are not.

This idea that capitalism is the enemy of socialism runs throughout the SEP announcement, and it is simply error. A far better description of the actual counterforce or natural enemy or contrary ethic of Socialism would be monied elitism, or the criminal plutocracy, or crime lords, or more abstractly, the instinct of selfishness that inhabits each and every skull of humankind to some degree.

That instinct, a remnant of human preterit and of all evolution, has its natural contrary eleemosynary instincts and complexes. Those antagonists however seem no longer up to the task of balancing the natural selfishness in modern society and its leaders. Perhaps it is this realization that leads to the often shrill tone of the left, as if mere pitch could block out an unwelcome truth.

Hence Socialism, as a rational movement, must seek to provide the balance, the counterforce, the makeweight, through such things as legislation regulating the usages of capital. The Socialist properly focuses on crime, criminals, enforcement; and also on enlightened education of individuals of talent. A focus on capital as some sort of intrinsic evil is absurd. Evil lies within, and arises out of individuals, not out of some abstract or collective force. We persons must take responsibility.

"To defend their jobs, wages and working conditions, American workers must reject all forms of economic nationalism and protectionism—which subordinate them to their corporate bosses while dividing them from their class brothers and sisters in other countries"

This sure sounds right. But is it, today ? Bo would like to suggest that the first proper remedy for the profound bundling of evils usually known as "global capitalism" may be to posit that given large areas, say the subcontinent of Europe, or China/East Asia, or Russia/Central Asia, or the N. American continent, or, stretching it just a bit, a Japan, Philippines, Australia nexus, should remain largely self sufficient in almost every area of economic life, with international trade subservient to such independencies. That is, let us have a practical, not an ideological solution. Do what works. That is, there are enough people in each one of those areas to provide a strong market with diverse forces in food, manufactures of all kinds, culture, etc. The concomitant thought is that the economic powerhouses of each of the strong areas must reject the notion of colonizing some other part of the globe. [ This is exactly contrary to past history, wherein such aggregations seem always to precede imperialism. ] In other words, practical observation suggests that unfettered global "free" markets are a disaster for most working people, though clearly more so for those in less developed states. One thing is for sure – the efforts of large poor countries to improve themselves are overly focused on cracking the markets of wealthy countries. The patterns of such narrow focuses lead to the same kind of irrational enthusiasm in labor markets that regularly damages the financial markets.

Bo guesses that one major impediment to a fair consideration of these concepts is the unequal distribution of mineral resources. This fact should not deter the argument, because in percentages of cash flow, even almighty oil is not that dominant. The oil of course must flow, freely around the world, at reasonable prices. But that fact should not dictate the structure of the whole rest of the economic milieu to the grand degree it now does. Moreover we socialists must insist on technological solutions to

energy and mineral problems that are deliberately less dependent on regionalized resources. This can now be done; it has not been done.

If then "American workers" insisted on "continental economic nationalism" meaning the right to a significant percentage of all electronic and steel and auto manufacturing jobs, for instance, which sold into the N. American market, being retained ON the N.A. continent, those workers might still be good socialists and helping, rather than hurting, workers in say China, who will at some point in time desire the same order of business.

One overwhelming fact that socialists in the U.S. seem blind to is that the economic and technical fire is well lit in Asia. If the European and American business and technology interests theoretically disappeared from the earth, the economy and technical base [ and militarism ] of Asia would still go up like a house afire, or like the U.S. did from the Civil War through the Sixties. No, faster and stronger. They have the brains and the desire.

What Bo is proposing here is a different and possibly much more effective way of being fair to workers and farmers and indigenous peoples around the world. The intent of Socialism must be Fairness above all, globally, but in the fluid dynamics of global money, invention, labor, environmental destruction, etc. Socialism needs to be flexible, and not dogmatic at all in pursuing that goal. The greatest good for the greatest number is the heuristic to follow, with of course the caveat being to protect any and all third worlders from the criminal poundings currently being administered by the corporate likes of Nestle, for instance.

"In today’s mass, globalized society the working class embraces far broader social layers than the most impoverished workers, or just those employed in industry. White-collar employees, college-educated professionals, people employed in the fields of art and culture—all those who depend for their survival on a paycheck are part of the working class"

This is wishful thinking. If it were so, then Socialism might already be the dominant form of government on the planet. Persons removed from dire need tend to join some elite or rather, seek to gain some kind of a leg up on fellow humans. The intent is not evil, it is productive at base. But Socialism is going to have to invent a commonality of culture that can be expressed in effective political action; Socialism cannot just posit that all these disparate people are "part of the working class" and hope thereby to secure their allegiance. Experience says it isn't so. Even after allowing that the Feudal Lords do play one class off against another by skillful propaganda.

"and create, for the first time in world history, conditions of genuine worldwide social equality"

Sorry, it can't be done, not by fiat nor by preachment anyway. In the meantime, looking for "worldwide equality" is about as useful as pouring the ocean into a hole on the beach. Try to create a modicum of fairness everywhere, which often will be a unique solution, and not "equal" at all. Do, Socialism, what you can with what you have today. That ain't much at the moment to judge by our total lack of effect in the U.S.

"We advocate the creation of an economic system whose organizing principle is satisfying human needs, not the creation of profit and the accumulation of vast personal wealth"

Good enough, but what I see in this statement of ideals, and in the actual system of rampant exploitation we experience, is the same error, namely that no one wants to stand up and put must some LIMIT to "human needs" if any kind of system of government is to succeed.

Population limits, rationally planned. Limited rights to the dwindling global supply of oil. Limits on the type and power of personal vehicles. Etc Etc Etc. Whether Socialism or Economic Anarchy rules [ the present system ], limits will be imposed by nature in a most unsatisfactory way if humans do not take conscious responsibility to set limits in the closed set of resources we now inhabit. See the history of Easter Island for a clue as to what disasters are about to come down on the globe. Once again socialism ought to show some humility and sense of priorities.

"we advocate the transformation of all privately owned industrial and manufacturing corporations valued at $10 billion or more into publicly owned enterprises"

This kind of simplicity has been tried under a variety of styles of government and failed, failed, failed. A well-meaning or lazy Federal bureaucrat can create every bit as much havoc as an insane plutocrat. Bo invites readers to Comment on new solutions to the dilemma of concentrated ownership of productive resources, but more so on rogue management, since that criminal problem is near the center of every current malfunction. In general, trying new ideas of regulation and management are the key, and simply doing the one thing we have not done in forty years, keeping the regulatory agencies strong and independent. Maybe if all the academics who blather on about what Socialism ought to be put their time and efforts into the hard work of learning how to wisely regulate industries, and then did the thing they never have, NOT selling out to the corporations for their thirty pieces of silver......................................?

"The SEP also proposes the nationalization of all large banking and insurance institutions. In addition, the SEP advocates the nationalization of the power industry and the placement of all critical natural resources under public ownership and control."

No wonder the Raygun got such mileage out of his "There you go again" rejoinder. All these sweeping generalizations. Much of banking can be broken down into smaller institutions without any need for draconian solutions like nationalization. Just change the laws. If you can; giant banks being at the heart of the plutocracy. In general the above SEP desiderata would seem to perpetuate the current disasters, such as the lack of a firewall between investment banks and retail banks. Bring back Glass Steagall firewall. Insurance isn't one industry, but a whole flock of birds that just look similar to the ground bound observer. One thing is for sure, there should be a single insurance pool or population, comprising the whole N. A. continent, eligible for a broad range of basic health services. Whatever system produces the least number of clerks and the most medical personnel, and the best diagnosis, that is the system to test drive and buy.

In general, the reason there are so many kinds of financial and insurance companies is because each represents very specific skills and mindsets. The objective of reducing the swings of chaos in these industries suggests more, rather than fewer or singleton owners. Can not the SEP see that "nationalization" means management by the worst concentration of autocracy? The purpose of Socialism in regard to fiscal institutions must indeed be to reduce the inevitable pendulums of chaotic behavior via scientific research and tough integrated regulation. And the broadest possible ownership and variety of companies.

This is and will always be a black art though because human irrationality is built into these businesses.

The power industry needs to undergo a vast broadening of ownership with new production technologies, not nationalization, which would institutionalize the monster dinosaurs we have now.

"critical natural resources under public ownership" – this sounds so good. But as it happens, where Bo lives, there are endless, or so it seems, different public owners fighting tooth and nail in a caged death match over the exact same sources of the most precious resource of all, water. The above statement then is simplistic. Socialists seem to lack a basic appreciation of the intelligence, higher education and hard work brought to table by the persons who run these institutions and resources now. Stalin had that problem too. Lack of respect for the brightest workers, so to speak.

Bo suggests in general that Socialists, in their drive to improve the lives of everyone, should put 2/3 's of their resources and energy into increasing the supplies of basic resources and money, including broadening opportunities of research and education, and 1/3 into better regulation and rules of ownership. What, you say that first 2/3's is already well provided in most cases ? By private industry types ? Gee, maybe Socialists better take note of their respective limited effect and importance. Bo you see does not believe in killing the geese that laid the golden eggs just because he has a large beef with the various gangs who keep trying to steal the geese.

By the way, the populace of countries wherein a paternalist state has a hammerlock on massive oil and gas resources have suffered greatly, except for Saudi Arabia, and even they are well on their way to joining the club of the Inept Oilocracies. { See USSR, Iran, Iraq, Columbia, Venezuela and now, any of the "Stans". } A case has been made by others that the least damage from the inherently destabilizing misfortune of having substantial black gold within the national boundaries has occured when those fields have just been handed over to theoretically undeserving private owners. One might paraphrase this by saying that private ownership of mineral sources is the worst system ever devised, except for all the others. [[ This is possibly what Churchill had in mind when he paraphrased the idea for his famous defense of democracy, since he was no democrat, but a feudal lord of the ancient regime, and England had then and now precious small representative democracy. ]] At any rate, some serious argument and research and especially imagination needs to be applied to the extraordinary problem of how best to own and use mineral resources for the public good.

This issue cannot be left to cant and prejudice, nor to the thieving plutocrats; world wars revolve around it.

" We call for a massive program of public works to guarantee employment ... guaranteed annual income"

There comes a point where even Socialist Bo wonders if the hidden purpose of the SEP might not be to so put off the inquisitive reader as to assure that Socialism continues to have zero chance of implementation in the U.S. Bo is fond of visiting the various remaining projects of the WPA and its sister programs. Sometimes striking engineering feats, or works of art, or records of intense suffering. But Bo would never mistake these remnants for signs of a history of normal economic progress. FDR was trying one thing after another of necessity, a first time for everything; one would think that seventy years later we could come up with more effective multipliers of employment. And in fact, we can. How do these "massive public works" anachronisms manage to propagate themselves through current Socialist thought or rhetoric ?? I say it again, Socialists should pledge themselves to enabling the greatest good for the greatest number, by whatever means available, a principle long forgotten hereabouts, and most of our agenda will be achieved in passing. Is ideology to be catherine wheel upon which the best intents of Socialism are broken ??

"state-subsidized housing construction to build comfortable and affordable homes"

If there is one business that Bo can be said to know long and well, it is housing construction. This industry needs little assistance from the state, being full of driven people. Two things are notable: many codes are already used as makework schemes, esp. in electrical wiring. Codes need to be updated with good private research and absolute disregard for interest groups; but even so that will not result in huge cost savings. Also the costs of transferring property need to be reduced, which again is a matter of stepping on the toes of entrenched special interests. The current spike of home prices has much to do with speculation and the absolute self-immolation of the stock market as a place for people to park their cash. Of all the businesses that the state and city should stay out of, because there is no need of the "help", housing construction would be at or near the top of the list.

Give people education and job opportunities; let the housing industry do its thing. At times the stock of reasonably priced starter homes is inadequate, and now may be one of those times. The state has some need to provide special financing to young workers at these times. Is there any problem with housing production in the U.S. ? Yes, and that is that most of the space is being built in far suburbs on divided lots, severely limiting the future flexible re-dedication/redesign of those spaces, during our inevitable cultural changes, such rehabbing as has marked the revivification of old town centers. The solutions to this big problem do not lie in "state subsidized .. construction".

What is this endless laundry list of ill-conceived projects ? Must Socialists make themselves look like pluperfect morons ? Do none of us work for a living ourselves ? That would be ironic to be sure. Bo works for a living. Bo knows Socialism, and the lack of it, from several sides.

"abolishing the loopholes and accounting gimmicks that allow most large corporations to pay only a tiny fraction of tax on their profits"

The biggest issue with corps is preventing them from defering true current costs, like pensions and enviro cleanup. Then there is the issue of recovering costs for major enviro and health disasters associated with specific industries like asbestos mining and mfrg, and gold mining and smelting. Bite the bullet - extract those funds from the persons who took them out of the corporations even a hundred years ago, and their heirs and assigns.

"Establishing a planned economy......."

Tra la de la de la. Legions of "capitalist" University of Chicago and Harvard MBA's have tried and failed to plan the economies of sovereign states with full blessing of those governments. Then there are the hypercapitalist shrinks of stock analysis who literally tell businesses what their next quarterly profits are going to be, never of course having run such a business themselves. Central Planning always turns into a fiasco, whether committed by a government or an unfirewalled investment corporation. No state is going to do any better, regardless of ideology.

"corporate leadership must be ratified by a democratic vote of all employees"

Bo was, decades ago, a member of such an employee owned corporation and saw firsthand how poorly this concept works. Check out United Airlines/ Animal Farm for an example of what not to do in an employee owned firm. Bo suggests that a democracy of current corporate owners be created and shocked into life, Frankenstein's monster though it be in many cases, before any worry is given to employees voting in the CEO.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

At this point, Bo would not be surprised if some SEP members wanted to ride him out of town on a rail.

They would be forgetting of course the thousands of words in their announcement to which Bo took no exception. After rooting back and forth through it, Bo is left with a feeling that is verging on an idea:

If a Socialist Party wants to establish itself in these disUnited States, the best thing it could do is to start a free educational institution in which people of all ages, incomes, and interests interact, one on one. The primary battle for socialism exists as 100 million separate struggles within the psyches and skulls of individuals. The only approach to take to such a battle is individual education through effective voluntary schooling organizations for adults.

Nothing like that exists now. At least none that do not also involve acts of blind faith in churches. Such education must be non-religious, persistently secular and prepartisan. The Socialist party will arise as if a preternatural exhalation whenever there is a critical mass of educated individuals, meaning people who can read and think on matters at some abstract distance from those of making a living.

Fri, 20 Feb 2004 22:52:30 GMT

Spit It Out

For most of the last year, the rupertia has given a bye to the Roman Catholic Church. Coverage of all Church matters, not just Church paedophilia, seems to have been suppressed in major press. By no means is that hiatus deserved. Lets get the abuses of these anti-democratic, anti-Republic treasonous revanchists back in the light of day. The Catholics continue to believe that they have an absolute right to interfere in making civil law, as well as breaking civil law without penalty, as they demonstrated again this last week in the Massachusetts State Legislature. Let not voters forget that these same Catholics have NOT yet been prosecuted and punished for thousands of incidents of child sexual and physical and mental abuse. Do those gay-squashing Bay State legislators understand that the most basic plaint of the RCC against gay marriage is not that it somehow interferes with sanctity of "straight marriage", but that it further erodes the Church's primary source of cheap priestly labor ??

The majority of Catholic priests were legally married men until almost 1200 A.D. [ Orthodox Catholic priests have always enjoyed the "right" to matrimony and fatherhood. ] At that point, Rome chose to insist on an unmarried, and often gay, priesthood not because of some spiritual dictum of the Fathers of the Church or the big Kahuna himself, a thousand plus years prior to this revision of Canon Law, but because it was so much CHEAPER to employ priests who did not have wives and children to support. Gay priests = more money in the coffers of Rome. This essential axiom of Church finance continues to dictate Church policy on priest marriage and gay marriage and the empowerment of gays, if ONLY within the confines of priesthood, to this day !

Empowerment ? Yes. Is it too much to ask why it is that RCC Bishops all over the globe have for centuries resolutely refused to deal with the issue of child abuse by their priests, until brought to heel by very expensive civil settlements ? Could it be because the victims are in considerable majority male ? Could it be because the paedophile priests entangle by their crimes of violence the majority of non-criminal priests, not merely through association of ordination, but because society so regularly offers to confuse the mass of law abiding homosexual priests, and the bishops risen out of their ranks, with the lesser, if large, set of pedophiles?

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2001858707_briscoe16m0.html

"It was a place you could make a movie from — a horrifying movie," said Eugene Davison, 50, a Seattle day-care provider who lived at Briscoe from about 1964 to 1967. "If I hadn't lived it, I would never have believed that children could be treated like that."

http://www.centredaily.com/mld/centredaily/news/7920218.htm

"The AP contacted dioceses across the country and found that 1,341 clergy members have been accused of molesting minors, with more than half the dioceses yet to report."

"What it's really doing is showing us in black and white that the problem is much worse than any of us thought," said Sue Archibald, president of The Linkup, a Kentucky-based victim advocacy group"

http://www.cnn.com/2004/US/02/16/church.abuse/index.html

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/news/archive/2004/02/16/national1403EST0565.DTL

Thu, 19 Feb 2004 13:15:44 GMT

Spit It Out

http://www.usatoday.com/life/movies/news/2004-02-16-passion-rating-kids_x.htm

"The R-rated movie portrays the final 12 hours of Jesus' life in graphic detail, including the crucifixion and a beating that lasts 45 minutes. But many parents and church leaders plan to have kids as young as 10 see the film, which opens Feb. 25, Ash Wednesday."

" First Family pastor Jerry Johnston. His Baptist church has rented out a half-dozen theaters in Kansas City, Kan., and has reserved auditoriums the night of Feb. 27 for children 11 and older."

"Scripture tells us that he was beaten to a pulp. I think seeing that on screen will be more powerful for kids than any sermon."

So much of adult art consists of an attempt to recapture the primal impact of experience on the tabula rasa of the innocent child. And here is a successful example of adult art speaking to the inner child in most persons. It reproduces, in the graphic medium of today, the full intent of christ-insanity pushed by the cult for some 2000 years. The central mystery of all christendom is indeed an engaging spectacle of sadomasochism. Come suffer/exult with role model Jesus as he is bondaged, humiliated, tortured through the Stations unto his erection of the Cross. And oh, by the way, kiddies, you are now enmeshed in the participation mystique of our pastoral hegemony.

It is time for Christians to admit that they are, and their religion is, INSANE. The sooner they renounce in toto this primitive, childish, magic-based religion and seek actual psychiatric growth, the sooner they can start attending to the reality of evil in the world, which is always more about real unwanted children starving to death than about some near-naked child-Surrogate being bound, flogged, pressed, nailed, slow suffocated and pierced to death within the sweet attendant gaze of his mother, on orders from his implacable father. What is an entertaining psychic melodrama for adults ought to be a felony to impress on vulnerable children, in any rational society, with additional penalties levied for lying to youngsters that this merry-go-round of sadism is the core of some purported ethical reality to which they are subservient.

Thanks, Mel, your rendition spiffies up the cult mythology to its intended psychic intensity, those original dayglo images as inculcated daily in "good christian children" from age four to age 18. Evil is as evil does, eh Mr. Everymel ?

And, Belter morons, when you are punished as you no doubt will be for your criminal votes en masse for your Prince of Darkness, your Prodigal Son, your Horhay Haesus himself, take a lesson: it won't be a sentence on you from God Almighty, but only the Fruit of your own most deliberate and culpable ignorance of mind, as you have acted it out like fools on the stage of real daily life.

And Pastor J. Johns ton, will you also be serving purple coolaid to the kiddies at your showings ?

Thu, 12 Feb 2004 01:03:58 GMT

Spit It Out

Note to General Clark: Now that you are out of the race to Potusville, you have an excellent opportunity to prove beyond all doubt to Democrats that you are indeed one of them, and to perform a few decidedly patriotic acts into the bargain. [ Bo believes that you also have no chance at the consolation prize, the Veepery, but that fact will be established long before the meaty part of this sweepstakes campaign. ] Given your undoubted specialist knowledge of the U.S. military, and as former head of NATO forces, of the actual threats to world peace and U.S. security, and given your excellent connections to former President Clinton and to military intelligence, why don't you spill the beans on the total screw-up and complicity of the Bush Administration in 9-11 ? And numerous other dark secrets past of which the citizen electorate has a right to know ?

I mean, campaign for real for the eventual nominee, not just with hug shots and platitudes? Now that you are no longer in the running, you have no need to keep your cards of future leadership up your sleeve, your " I have a secret plan to end the war" trickydickyness of executive reserve. You can be a telling surrogate for the reserved and Presidential nominee. Tell us for instance why no military fighter jets intercepted the hijacked planes even an hour after they went off course or off transponder. Tell us which "non-military" Agency actually shot down the Pennsylvania Flight.

Who knows what a loyal, lifelong Democrat such as yourself might be able to tell us, now that he is retired from the fray ? Hell, you might even have some goods on DaddyDearest, such as his arrangement of the October Surprise on Jimmy Carter's watch, 1980. Who knows ? The General knows ! A lot.

Prove to the average snookered citizen that you care about "your" country and "your" Party ! Or just, at a minimum, that you actually have any respect whatsoever for the concept of an "informed electorate".

No doubt you will do none of this. You will go back to your business scams and your luxurious pension, and your "respected analyst" conjobs on the rupertia, and your career-guaranteed, triple dipping widow's mite of the military-industrial complex's screw job upon the Republic. Having failed at your belated attempt to jump on the bandwagon of that boggling mooch patch, that extraordinary window of opportunity – the Repugnican irredenta of the Democratic Party-- you will recede quickly into your "shine it on, reveal nothing" military persona. Bo hasn't made a wrong prediction in several years now, you figures of national prominence being so easy to scope, but he sure would love to eat some crow on this prediction, unlikely as that appears. How about it, Wesley? Who do you serve? Are you an American and a patriot, General, or are you just one more fat mouse ascurry to his nest?

Wed, 11 Feb 2004 12:49:03 GMT

YAHN 8 :

Of the many reasons why the U.S. attempt at democracy is profoundly UNrepresentative, the most obvious is that women do not occupy the 52% of all elective and appointive posts that their numbers project they should. Bo suggests that a Socialist Party run only female candidates for all posts until such time as the offices in question show a regular pattern of occupation by at least 42% females. That should be enough of a base to approach fairness; ultimately the pattern must be over 50% female.

Achieving those percentages in no way guarantees better ethics by legislators nor appointees. [ That is a different problem. ] It may well improve the performance of government across the board however, as Bo has long observed that the average female works harder and longer and has better legislative skills than the average male, and has a longer career path. Institutional memory improves with the number of females in the institution. Unfortunately women have not demonstrated, on average, equal campaigning skills [ never mind the lack of equal funds to run ] and it becomes absolutely necessary for society and Socialists to address that problem, and balance the scales by changing the rules of campaigning or otherwise, if a democracy is to be truly representative. Yes, Bo believes that essential differences between men and women, and then between old and young, easily exceed racial, class, and income disparities.

And that only by proportional representation in bodies of power of most categories of candidates are the differences to be fairly worked out.

In short, Run Only Women for governmental positions.

Tue, 10 Feb 2004 23:39:04 GMT

Spit It Out 2-10-04

On sidewalks around the country there have appeared small stencils with a picture of a President and the adage, "One Term". Bo wishes to note that Der Dubyer currently stands at zero-terms elected. So he hopes there is no First-Term elected, which would of necessity be a November 2004 disaster. If however Snorkypork manages to finagle an election "victory" in November, by January, 2005,

Bo guesses that the Bonesman will have conjured up the ghost of grandpa Prescott to steal forth with the bones of not just Geronimo and Pancho Villa, but verily, even those of Vercingetorix to be restrangled in his triumphal parade.

Tue, 10 Feb 2004 23:37:24 GMT

SPIT IT OUT 2-10-2004

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2001854367_bushecon10.html

"The movement of American factory jobs and white-collar work to other countries is part of a positive transformation that will enrich the U.S. economy over time, even if it causes short-term pain and dislocation, the Bush administration said yesterday. "

By all means. Bo could not agree more. Bo is all for "positive transformation".

Move all U.S. jobs to India. The sooner the better.

But first, U.S. shareholders, why don't you demand that those huge American executive salaries be outplaced as well ? Bo is sure that among the 500 some million English speaking persons in East Asia, there are many qualified and underpaid execs who will work for pennies on the dollar vs. American compensation levels. And do a more honest job of caretaking your investments. Bo guesses that just as with labor, there is in fact an endless supply of competent, bargain CEO's in East Asia.

Come on, shareholders, its your money!

The sooner you start, the sooner you can "enrich your economy".

And, hey, Supremes, when next you seek to fill a vacancy in the Oval Office.................