Specializing in palatable solutions….

Ffolkes,

As I entered the room where my computer resides, I heard a low moaning sound coming from just outside the back door…. I went to see what was there, and, lo! Lying on my back porch, bleeding copiously from a number of ugly looking wounds, was the most disreputable looking person I’d ever seen….

Since I didn’t want them bleeding all over the house, I grabbed some towels and bandaging materials, and went to work, attempting to stem the flow of blood as best I could, right where he lay on the wooden floor by the steps…. I could see immediately it was a futile task, as at least two of the wounds were pumping blood out, indicating an arterial cut, and I had no way to shut them off…

However, since he was merely a figment of my imagination, it was acceptable for me to just let him die where he lay…. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out any way to gracefully carry that paragraph’s story on any further, without getting into a lot more detail…. Since there are no details to be had, it being the off-the-cuff, improvisational piece it is, I thought it would be best to just abandon it after the first few lines, mainly because it wasn’t going anywhere interesting, but, partly because it was starting to become too real…. My imagination can be pretty scary at times, especially when I let if off leash like that….

Actually, it’s kind of hard to say WHAT might have come out of that one…. I don’t often lead with blood, but, when I do, it can turn in a lot of directions, that potentially can lead to fairly exotic results….. but, I digress…. From what, you ask? Well, hell, you had to ask, didn’t you? I have no clue…. You see, I’ve finally done it, and done it about as well as it could be done….

Again with the questions! Sheesh! Okay, I’ll spill…. Listen, when this gets out, you won’t tell anyone where it came from, will you? If the authorities ever find out for sure, I’ll be in deep do-do, and might even have to move to another country, where they don’t know me so well…. Okay, here’s the deal… I’m lost…. completely lost, with no clue at all as to how to find my way back anywhere near the realm of intelligent discourse….

Fortunately for all of us, our driver knows the way home, and will bring us there in due course… Meanwhile, I guess we’ll all have to just “go with the flow”, and try to enjoy the scenery that we pass through…. Hey, it could be worse…. I could be driving today, which would mean we would NEVER have gotten home, not today, anyway….. Since we WILL be getting home, I think I’ll go hide my face for a while, at least until called upon to pull the next section’s material out of my proverbial hat…..

Shall we Pearl?…..

“The old proverb was now made good, “the mountain had brought forth a mouse.”” — Plutarch (46-120 AD) — Life of Agesilaus II
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The following is a public service announcement, with which gigoid fully agrees…. I would liked to have put the banner up on my site, but, I couldn’t figure out how to do it using the WordPress widget they provided…. I’m a geek, but apparently not up to date on the way to do this task… But, this definitely needs to be spread around, and shared…. So, please do so…. I HAVE included a link to the main site for the protest, where you can go to sign the petition…. Please do that as well…. Let’s all join together to give the Asininnies the finger, and let them know we won’t stand for any fucking around with our Internet, or in our private lives….

“On Tuesday, February 11th, EFF (the Electronic Frontier Foundation) will join thousands of other websites in demanding an end to mass surveillance through an Internet-wide digital protest.

Visitors will be prompted to contact members of Congress or sign a global petition opposing mass surveillance with a banner that can be inserted into any site This is a critical moment in the NSA surveillance fight.

Worldwide outrage at NSA spying helped pressure the Obama administration into making a few key concessions toward reform. But Obama’s reform plan falls woefully short.

That’s why we’re turning the heat up on Congress to finish the job. Help us end NSA mass spying. Use your website to join the protest, and help us spread the word on February 11th through social media with the hashtag #StoptheNSA.”

https://thedaywefightback.org/?r=eff

This is an extra pearl today….. The obligatory three standard entries follow below….
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The article below was found yesterday, on 2/10/2014, on the SFGATE news site. I also saw other versions of the same story on Yahoo, NY Times, and just about every other major and minor news site I perused in my morning searches…. probably since it was an Associated Press article to begin with, I suppose. I’m including it today because carries some implications for all of us that, to me, are VERY, VERY disturbing…. I’ll let you read the article first, after which, I’ve put some short excerpts from the content of the article, to act as markers of what I wish to point out to you…. Take your time, but, please, come back for the discussion, which will follow the quoted text….

http://www.sfgate.com/news/politics/article/US-suspect-possibly-targeted-for-drone-attack-5220092.php

“An American citizen who is a member of al-Qaida is actively planning attacks against Americans overseas, U.S. officials say, and the Obama administration is wrestling with whether to kill him with a drone strike and how to do so legally under its new stricter targeting policy issued last year. ”

“….confirmed that the Justice Department was working to build a case for the president to review and decide the man’s fate. ”

“The Justice Department, the Pentagon and the CIA declined to comment. ”

… a professor of international law at the University of Notre Dame, said there is a school of thought that the Obama administration’s drone policy is “lawless.” “Why should the Justice Department issue the execution warrant for anyone abroad? The fact that they give extra scrutiny only because he’s an American exacerbates this negative impression,”

Online: Policy and procedures for the use of force in counterterrorism operations outside the U.S.:  http://1.usa.gov/1dy7de4

So…. My first question is, when did it become our national policy to kill individual citizens, including citizens of this country, anywhere in the world, if we decided they were guilty of a crime?…. Who decided, and when, that said decisions were to be left to a small set, of just a few individuals, all of  whom have a heavy investment in guilty verdicts, and no investment in verdicts of innocence. No courts, no legislative bodies are involved; now, if a person is labeled as a terrorist, they can be “terminated with prejudice” at the hands of the CIA, an agency that, I had thought, was still SUPPOSEDLY constrained from the long-used, never-acknowledged employment of “wet work”, aka, assassination,  as a means of protecting our national interests….

However, according to the information contained in this article, all that is now required, is for the president to define a person as a terrorist, whereupon Congress obligingly goes along with the charade, by docilely setting the legal classification of such terrorists as “enemy combatants”, which allows the president to act unilaterally, to wit: to kill them, using whatever tools are at hand in our clandestine arsenal of weaponry and/or technology, including the use of drones on American citizens, ostensibly overseas, not on US soil….. No, they wouldn’t do that, now, would they? Trust me, they say…. Now, where have we heard that phrase before?….

(Come to think of it, couldn’t that restriction be gotten around, by simply defining the soil on which an “enemy combatant” is standing as “enemy territory”, no matter where it is, in the US, or out?….. Thus, it would be legal to use drones to kill them, even in downtown Atlanta…. A bit paranoid, perhaps, but, how many legal arguments have you seen that are just as specious?….. Add to that, the obvious fact that the logic, pitiful as it may be, used in the administration’s current policy, is logic that matches this line of reasoning exactly…. Hence, it becomes clear, it is not a long stretch at all to imagine a time when we will be seeing drones pick off some poor sap in the bleachers at Fulton County Stadium….)

The point here, of course, that I’m dancing around so well with my sardonicism, is that we, as a nation, are now using the fine, ancient art of assassination, right out in the open, admitting to it publicly, with only the caveat that we should try to make it “legal” according to “US law and policies”, which, as might be guessed, are written by the very people who are using them as their legal defense…. That’s right, they’re not even hiding it anymore, so, let’s not miss the key operative word, and concept, here…. ASSASSINATION.

For this nation’s entire history, up to 9/11/01, when the American people were frightened to death because they got attacked on their own ground, we have never been considered a people that would use that particular political tool, (i.e., the deliberate murder of an individual, disguised as a political necessity), to pursue our national interests, either out in the open, or with discretion. It just doesn’t fit in with our self-proclaimed image as honest, fair-dealing, morally upright people, an image which, in a way, has always been the lynch pin of virtue that fit in the best with what my father taught me about honor, that which gave me a feeling of pride in this nation, as far as my meager nationalism allowed…. I liked the idea of this being an honorable country, that had no NEED to sink to that level of decadence, in order to feel safe in my own home….

“A power has risen up in the government greater than the people themselves, consisting of many and various and powerful interests, combined into one mass, and held together by the cohesive power of the vast surplus in the banks.” — Johann L. Uhland (1787-1862) — Speech, May 27, 1836

Then, along came (name withheld due to the probability of NSA surveillance…. There’s no need for them know ALL that I know, or think, now, is there?….), a former CIA wizard, to magically put together a spell to turn the minds of the average American into a quivering mass of fear, perfectly primed for manipulation, thus, easily fooled into accepting just about ANY sort of Bulls___t, if it made them feel safer….. All this, at the mere cost of about 3500 American lives on our own soil, a few buildings, and three airplanes….

That’s all it took for the shadowy masters of reality to be in position to destroy the US Bill of Rights completely, within 10 short years….. Plus, they got the bonus of using the incident to justify pursuing two wars in other countries, to the tune of another 20,000 lives on our part, along with a several hundred TRILLION dollar bill, all to be paid over time to the gun and war machine vendors, with whom we joined to fight those wars, at public expense…. What a bargain for them, eh?

They’ve done such a stellar job of this, they now are able to have their most clandestine crimes discussed in full public view (such as the assassination of a US citizen, by the government, without any oversight…. According to this article, that is an event which, please note, first took place over five years ago…. It is only now being discussed because they want to do it again…..

Since they, too, are human, and subject to the Theory of Bozoid Tendencies, they screwed their own pooch… To appease the public, trying to spin the image machine one more time, they changed one of the rules they made up, which apparently messed up one of their blankets, the one that allowed them to cover up the obvious use of the drones…. But, nobody is making a lot of noise about any of this, are they?

“The Justice Department, the Pentagon and the CIA declined to comment. ”

Well, of course they did!…. Was the reporter who wrote this story really expecting them to comment on this? This is, so far, the only article I’ve seen on this subject, (or, for that matter, on ANY subject near to this issue, ever since Obama announced his ghostly {ghastly?} reforms…. ghostly because they’re not really there, are they?), even though it was covered on several networks….

I will point out to you at this point, none of them, media, supporters, or opponents of the idea of us using this ancient political tool, are making any outcry, or expressing anything other than straight news reporting, just as if the issue. as to whether or not to use assassination as part of our national bag of tricks. had already been settled…. Well, it has, hasn’t it?   Yep, and they did it while you were watching, in plain sight, which patently indicates, to them, they do so with your tacit approval…..

I don’t know about y’all, but, the draconian nature of this pOTUS’s administration, with its smiling assurances of innocence on one hand, and obvious proof of evil intent on the other, is VERY disturbing to me…. and, I cannot but feel that my own reputation has been sullied by my government’s actions, both out in the world at large, and at home, in its manipulation of, and LYING to, its own citizenry…..

If you need proof, (my kind of person!) from another direction, if not a different news source, no worries…. there’s plenty of it….. Here is yet another article that addresses evidence of more obvious prevarication on the part of this president…. Read the article at this link, to see how another issue has received the old left hand/right hand treatment from Barry….  http://www.sfgate.com/politics/article/Obama-resists-using-his-power-to-ease-marijuana-5219705.php

Again, I don’t know about y’all, but, it kinda makes me feel….. I don’t know…. patriotically seditious? Yeah, that one….. and pissed off, too, that the assholes would think they can get away with trying to feed me this bullshite…. (Patriotic sedition is that condition that can best be stated as, “Let’s throw the lying bastards out!”….)

“They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” — Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) — Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759
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Once again, today’s effort is all fresh material, so, rather than spend time trying to find someone else’s work that fits in with my theme today, here is one of my own poems, which I KNOW will fall seamlessly in with the parade of nonsense that is today’s Pearl….

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Although I wrote the rant in section one yesterday, I went over it, editing and altering style points, so, it’s all quite fresh…. Originally, I’d planned to include here an older politirant, on gun control, from an archived Pearl…. but, then, the rant above grabbed me by the throat, made me sit down at the computer, and wouldn’t let me up until I had vented…..

So, rather than subject y’all to another 1500 words of my outrage, no matter how appropriately timed or well-written, we’ll go old-school, with parameters designed to help all of us find a bit of fun…. Hitting the funny bone… you know, that little spot on your elbow… hitting it in reality, hurts like hell….. but, when we strike it sharply on a corner of our imagination, the sharp pain could be considered as equivalent to electric joy….

Hmm…. I suppose, as a metaphor, or a euphemism, or even as a graphic example, that image leaves a bit to be desired…. Oh well, I’m sure Smart Bee can come up with enough distracting pieces of virtual wisdom to satisfy the most stringent appetite for coherency and grace…. or, not…. We’ll see, won’t we?….

“If only there were some indication the universe was doing it on purpose” — Smart Bee

“…[T]he lesson [comic books] taught children- or this child, at any rate- was perhaps the unintentionally radical truth that exceptionality was the greatest and most heroic of values; that those who were unlike the crowd were to be treasured the most lovingly; and that this exceptionality was a treasure so great that it had to be concealed, in ordinary life, beneath what the comic books called a ‘secret identity’.” — Salman Rushdie

“Gird your grid for a big one!” — random Bozo on the Bus

“Live in such a way that you would not be ashamed to sell your parrot to the town gossip.” — Will Rogers

I’m sorry…. Smart Bee has done it at last….. This group of pearls is SO esoteric, I can see no possible way to make it comprehensible in the time allowed… Oh, the pearls are hefty enough, but, they’re all so damn unconnected on the surface… Oh well, we’ll go with my instincts, which leads me to these final three pieces of wisdom that complement each other in a pretty obvious fashion…. I’m pretty sure that after reading all three, and assimilating the implications, you’ll agree with the thought that went through my head, to wit: “Hmm… I’m sensing a theme here….”

“God has no religion.” — Mahatma Gandhi

“Thou art God.” — Michael Valentine Smith – from Stranger In A Strange Land, by Robert A. Heinlein

“Thou art God, you know. Let’s do Lunch.” — gigoid, Peruaosophy, Axiom # 3

Well, there you have it, ffolkes…. I suppose I should apologize for this one, but, I just can’t….  It’s too damn cute….
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Oops, poem…. be right back…..  Well…. It’s done, and I’m glad, even though it makes me a bit sad…. You see, this one is special…. It’s…. it’s…. well, it’s actually PRETTY DECENT!!

Now, I know, you’ll think me egotistical, and, you may be right, but, you know what… I had fun, and, if you’ve got a few functioning grey cells operating in there, you will, too…. See ya tomorrow….

Y’all take care out there,
and May the Metaphorse be with you;
Blessed Be, dearest  Carole, Mark, and Theresa…
and everyone else, too…

When I works, I works hard.
When I sits, I sits loose.
When I thinks, I falls asleep.

Which is Why….