Abraham Lincoln, 1848

http://greaterancestors.com/abraham-lincoln-1848/

“The eyes of that species of extinct giant, whose bones fill the mounds of America, have gazed on Niagara as our eyes do now.” Abraham Lincoln, 1848

It is no conspiracy when your ideas, differ from someone else worldview.
There is abundant evidence of greater ancestors, proof that earlier people were bigger, better, stronger, and faster than today’s people. A

NEOCON = LIBERAL HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION

“Devil’s Game” by Robert Dreyfuss, which agrees 100% with the neocons on the ‘Nazi’ nature of ‘Islamism’, differing with them only on whether the solution is to

• carpet-bomb the whole of south Asia, or to

• subvert it with liberal ‘progress’ instead.

A simple indicator of this is the routine identification of Hezbollah and Hamas as ‘terrorists’

CLASS CONSCIOUSNESS/CLASS ANALYSIS

"Class consciousness is knowing which side of the fence you're on; class analysis is knowing who is there with you."

MENSA INTERNATIONAL

The Washington Post's Mensa Invitational once again invited readers to take any word from the dictionary, alter it by adding, subtracting, or changing one letter, and supply a new definition.
Here are the winners:
1. Cashtration (n.): The act of buying a house, which renders the subject financially impotent for an indefinite period of time.
2. Ignoranus : A person who's both stupid and an asshole.
3. Intaxicaton : Euphoria at getting a tax refund, which lasts until you realize it was your money to start with.
4. Reintarnation : Coming back to life as a hillbilly.
5. Bozone ( n.): The substance surrounding stupid people that stops bright ideas from penetrating. The bozone layer, unfortunately, shows little sign of breaking down in the near future.
6. Foreploy : Any misrepresentation about yourself for the purpose of getting laid.
7. Giraffiti : Vandalism spray-painted very, very high
8. Sarchasm : The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn't get it.
9. Inoculatte : To take coffee intravenously when you are running late.

10. Osteopornosis : A degenerate disease. (This one got extra credit.)
11. Karmageddon : It's like, when everybody is sending off all these really bad vibes, right? And then, like, the Earth explodes and it's like, a serious bummer.
12. Decafalon (n.): The grueling event of getting through the day consuming only things that are good for you.
13. Glibido : All talk and no action.
14. Dopeler Effect: The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly.
15. Arachnoleptic Fit (n.): The frantic dance performed just after you've accidentally walked through a spider web.
16. Beelzebug (n.): Satan in the form of a mosquito, that gets into your bedroom at three in the morning and cannot be cast out.
17. Caterpallor ( n.): The color you turn after finding half a worm in the fruit you're eating.
The Washington Post has also published the winning submissions to its yearly contest, in which readers are asked to supply alternate meanings for common words.
And the winners are:
1. Coffee, n.. The person upon whom one coughs.
2. Flabbergasted, adj. Appalled by discovering how much weight one has gained.
3. Abdicate, v. To give up all hope of ever having a flat stomach.
4. esplanade, v. To attempt an explan- ation while drunk.
5. Willy-nilly, adj. Impotent.
6. Negligent, adj. Absentmindedly answering the door when wearing only a nightgown.
7. Lymph, v.. To walk with a lisp.
8. Gargoyle, n. Olive-flavored mouthwash.
9. Flatulence, n. Emergency vehicle that picks up someone who has been run over by a steamroller.
10. Balderdash, n. A rapidly receding hairline.
11. Testicle, n. A humorous question on an exam.
12. Rectitude, n. The formal, dignified bearing adopted by proctologists.
13. Pokemon, n. A Rastafarian proctologist.
14. Oyster, n. A person who sprinkles his conversation with Yiddishisms.
15.& nbsp; Frisbeetarianism, n. The belief that, after death, the soul flies up onto the roof and gets stuck there.

Radical: A Portrait of Saul Alinsky, Nicholas von Hoffman, Nation Books, 256 pages.

Alinsky wanted little platoons like the Back of the Yards Council to form “countervailing power” against “the gigantism of government, corporation and even labor union.” In Reveille for Radicals, Alinsky attacked union leaders for trying to block new technologies, for accommodating themselves to corrupt political machines, for restrictionist rules that make it harder for outsiders to get jobs, for racial discrimination, and, in general, for being “the bride of big monopoly business.”

If the Tea Partiers are serious about building a real alternative to the Bush/Obama megastate, as opposed to merely being used by the Republicans and discarded as soon as the GOP is in a position to relaunch the K Street Project, the activists need to build countervailing power of their own, rooted not merely in talk radio and the Internet but in the indigenous institutions that shape people’s everyday lives.

In some areas

• bank bailouts,
• eminent domain,
• the crackdown on civil liberties,
• America’s imperial foreign policy —

they might even reach across the invisible lines that separate their favorite segments of civil society from the churches and councils that mobilize people on the grassroots left, to work together on issues of shared concern even when they aren’t about to back the same candidates.

The error here is that Alinsky and decentralized progressives were challenging BOTH the nature of statist power AND the power of massive corporations.

I can handle government small enough to drown in the bath tub if corporations are prohibited from growing big enough to drown average folks in the bath tub.

Otherwise, this entire project is little more than one of corporate dominance over government with average folks being ground beneath the dancing elephants.

There is no such thing as “government small enough to drown in the bath tub.” Any government worthy of being called a government is able to “drown average folks” and any internal rivals “in the bath tub.” Government is, after all, merely the best organized criminal gang in any particular locale. If it can be drowned in the bath tub, it’s really not a government — and, whatever it is, it’s likely to be pushed aside by a better organized criminal gang as history seems to show. (Of course, there are cases of stable statelessness and those afraid of rampant governments would do well, in my opinion, to study them.)

Corporations, when there are oppressors, usually either act as governments — in other words, become best organized criminal gang in a particular locale — or partner with governments to “drown average folks” and work against their rivals.

ARE YOU SMARTER THAN A FISH

Are You Smarter Than a Fish?

Fish don’t see the water that they swim in. It is an invisible part of their world. Likewise, we do not see our see-ing, the lenses or meaning-making systems through which we perceive, interpret and act on the world around us. Unlike fish, however, occasionally we have an opportunity to see and change our lens.

THE MOST REVOLUTIONARY ACT

“The most revolutionary act is a clear view of the world as it really is.”

—Rosa Luxemburg (1871-1919)

WORDS DOCUMENTS AND TRUTH

Documents are misleading. If Talleyrand (or whoever it was) was right in saying that words were invented in order to hide thoughts, this is even more true for documents. Documents falsify facts, hide facts, invent facts – all according to the interests of the writer. They disclose a little to hide the rest. Anyone who has been involved in public affairs knows this.

ALEXANDER COCKBURN QUOTE

The corporations run the show and the only vivid opposition comes from Christian populists, who’ve bought several million copies of Sara Palin’s memoir.

Hazlitt got gloomily drunk for a fortnight after the battle of Waterloo, accurately anticipating that decades of reaction lay ahead, now that Boney had been definitely put away, with the Holy Alliance in the saddle and the French contagion safely bottled up. Smart fellow, that Hazlitt. He should have stayed drunk for a month.

The teens? Raise your glass along with Mr William Hazlitt.

GAZA STRANGULATION

The current squeeze on Gaza began in 1991.

• It was tightened with the institutionalization of the Israeli occupation enabled by the Oslo Accords of 1993.

• It was tightened further with the intensification of the occupation in response to the second intifada in 2000.

• It was tightened further still when Israel redeployed its settlers and troops from inside Gaza in 2005 and

• transformed the territory into what John Dugard, the UN's special rapporteur on human rights in the occupied territories, referred to as a prison, the key to which, Dugard said, Israel had "thrown away."

• It was tightened to the point of strangulation following the Hamas electoral victory in 2006, when Israel began restricting supplies of food and other resources into Gaza.

• It was tightened beyond the point of strangulation following the deposition of the Hamas-led government in June 2007. And now this.

When Israel limited commercial shipments of food--but not humanitarian relief--into Gaza in 2006, a senior government adviser, *Dov Weisglass, explained that "the idea is to put the Palestinians on a diet but not to make them die of hunger."

Israel's "diet" was taking its toll even before last week. The World Food Program warned last November that less than half of Gaza's food-import needs were being met. Basics including wheat grain, vegetable oil, dairy products and baby milk were in short supply. Few families can afford meat. Anemia rates rocketed to almost 80 percent. UNRWA noted at about the same time that "we are seeing evidence of the stunting of children, their growth is slowing, because our ration is only 61 percent of what people should have and that has to be supplemented."

By further restricting the supply of food to an already malnourished population, Israel has clearly decided to take its "diet" a step further. If the people of Gaza remain cut off from the food aid on which their survival now depends, they will face starvation.

They are now

• essentially out of food;

• the water system is faltering (almost half the population now lacks access to safe water supplies);

• the sewage system has broken down and is discharging raw waste into streets and the sea;

• the power supply is intermittent at best; hospitals lack heat and spare parts for diagnostic machines, ventilators, incubators; dozens of lifesaving medicines are no longer available.

*WASHINGTON - JULY 29: U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell (R) laughs as he jokes around with (L-R) Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Danny Ayalon, U.S. National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice and Bureau Chief to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, Dov Weisglass, prior to attending a media conference with U.S. President George W. Bush and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon at the Rose Garden of the White House July 29, 2003 in Washington, DC. Prime Minister Sharon is on an official visit to Washington to discuss the Middle East peace process with President Bush.

Finklestein Weisglass debate

ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER

“All great truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer
German Philosopher

CORPORATE PLUTOCRACY

We have institutionalized bribery in the form of lobbyists. Liberal politicians and media outlets are just as beholden to corporate interests. All American politicians are elected by donors, not voters. The Obama response to the financial crisis was identical in every way to the response begun under the Bush administration. Democratic opposition to health reform was even cheaper and more effective for insurance companies to buy than Republican opposition.

Conservatism is a means of marketing our oligarchic system to the masses by using fear, xenophobia and religion. Liberalism is a means of marketing the exact same oligarchic system to the masses using the promise of peace, equality and multiculturalism.

I think there are a few things we could try:

1. Publicly funded elections. Sure they aren't perfect but at least it's a step to getting the oligarchical influence out of the election process.

2. Disqualification of voting rights if a congress person has taken money from a group that directly benefits from legislation. If Sen. McCain took 200k from Genentech- he gets no vote on any legislation that would directly effect them- healthcare bill, stem cell research, etc.

THUS SPAKE TWAIN

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To create man was a quaint and original idea, but to add the sheep was tautology.

- Mark Twain's Notebook, 1902-1903