The Hedonistic Pleasureseeker

Read one of my previous Synthetic Armageddon posts, The Big Lie. Then write your own post, applying Hegelian Theory to the Killer Tomato Panic of Summer 2008. Come on, it’s fun!  And it’s so easy!

(Image from Chris Garret’s photostream)

Is the Fourth Estate a Fifth Column?

Friday 11 July 2008

by: Bill Moyers, In These Times

Corporate media colludes with democracy’s demise.

I heard this story a long time ago, growing up in Choctaw County in Oklahoma before my family moved to Texas. A tribal elder was telling his grandson about the battle the old man was waging within himself. He said, “It is between two wolves, my son. One is an evil wolf: anger, envy, sorrow, greed, self-pity, guilt, resentment, lies, false pride, superiority and ego. The other is the good wolf: joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith.”

The boy took this in for a few minutes and then asked his grandfather, “Which wolf won?”

The old Cherokee replied simply, “The one I feed.”

(This one is from Abo’s photostream)

I went to Wegmans today and bought all their loss leaders and nothing else, including 20 bottles of lemonade and Italian mineral water averaging about 99 cents apiece, four pounds of strawberries ($8), and fifteen pounds of ground beef ($1.89/lb) which I promptly froze. I used one pound of strawberries in my home-made ice cream, then sliced and froze the rest.

Last week I bought five cases of soda for just $11. If I keep this up they’re not going to let me shop there anymore.

Few in the financial reporting business are willing to turn over the rocks that are Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, but they’re more than willing to whisper about them:

“Nothing in the insanity of the US mortgage morass epitomizes better the recklessness, risk acceptance, and criminality than Fannie Mae. It is also the object of intense, pervasive, systematic, and very deep crime syndicate activity, some linked to US Govt agencies. In my opinion, few have given serious consideration that Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac (F&F) must be bailed out, or else a large cast of ugly dangerous people will be exposed for two decades and hundreds of billion$ of fraud, theft, corruption, and crime syndicate activity. More can be said on this point, perhaps even touching past presidents. F&F cannot be liquidated with full disclosure and resolution of colossal criminal fraud.”

- Freebuck, via The Hat Trick Newsletter, via Gold Eagle Magazine

How interesting. World Reports says the exact same thing and worse, but I fear that if I even so much as link to the website that lays it all out I’ll put my blog in danger. Shortly after Buzzflash linked to the news of the bribes and death threats and the EMPTY retirement accounts at Freddy Mac, the site crashed. When Buzzflash was restored the link had disappeared, and I couldn’t even find it in the archives! All over the financial sectors of the internet there is buzz about fraud, but without much offered in the way of specifics. NOBODY IS TOUCHING THE STORY OF THE CENTURY.

Not that it matters: The blogosphere will ensure that matters take their due course. You can dig up the sordid details yourselves using some clever Boolean logic: Start with the author of this book. Add shadow banking terminology such s offshore, off balance sheet, ENRON, Freddie and Fannie, pension funds. Then, throw in a few terms typically associated with the Mafia (death threats, extortion, fraud), terms associated with espionage (global, intelligence, analysis) and the name of a certain media mogul.

OR, you can just assume that the F&F situation is ENRON Redux, only worse because the criminal betrayals are at INTERNATIONAL level this time. If you have friends or relatives who work at Freddie Mac you might want to clean out your guest rooms. Their retirement funds have all been stolen, and there is no point in trying to chase down the thieves: They are probably already drinking Mai Tais with Karl Rove and Ken Lay.

OKAY! The ROUNDUP!

The Bad News: We’re fucked.

The Good News: All this talk of bailing out Fannie and Freddie is probably all just empty rhetoric designed to prop up the markets.

The Bad News: Fannie and Freddie WILL fail, taking hundreds of failing banks with it.

The Good News: They were going to fail anyway, and at least our tax dollars weren’t wasted to buy time for a bunch of criminals.

The Bad News: We’re all fucked anyway.

hi, cum to Florida?… everyone else from Jersey is here?

- Some Guy

Never answer an online dating message in which your potential suitor spells come as “cum.”

(Bohemian Grove rule: No journalists, no shop talk)

Vanity Fair Editor Arrested for Infiltrating Elite Private Club

Vanity Fair writer Alex Shoumatoff got himself arrested for crashing Bohemian Grove, a private men’s club in northern California for the upper echelon of the rich and powerful. He was there to spy on the three-week camp they hold every July, where said rich and powerful relax while living in tents in their private woods.

It’s been a long time since a mainstream journalist successfully infiltrated the notorious Bohemian Grove: About twenty years in fact. We do have a non-mainstream celebrity with Bohemian boasting rights: Shrieky controlled opposition shill Alex Jones got into the Grove a few years ago, but I’m pretty certain they let him in on purpose because he came home with some miraculously unconfiscated video footage. Jones turned that footage into a dark movie in which he made Bohemian Grove out to be much more creepy and dangerous than it probably is in real life, and by that I mean BOOGA BOOGA BOOGA! Child Sacrifices to SEMITIC gods!!! Oh NOES!!! kind of creepy.

Whatever. Tinfoil hattery is an exhausting business and it takes a near psychic to be able to separate the wheat from the chaff. Alex Jones’ job is to freak out and inflame the already suspicious anti-New World Order Christian patriots into blaming and fearing “da Jooz,” the Neocons and the Zionists while distracting them from the REAL Powers: Certain Euro-royals and Jesuits who pay the Armageddon Bringers to be their front men. These hyper-billionaires are so rich that you’ve never heard of them, and apparently some of them have strange ideas about what makes for a good party.

In short: The Bohemian Grove Conspiracy is one of hundreds of sensationalized diversions meant to bleed people’s energies vampire-style, so that truthseekers have neither the time nor the inclination to see the membership for what it is: A bunch of rich sociopaths doing whatever it takes to control the world, period. Greed is banal: It knows no religion, no spirituality, no magic, but the Power Elite will cynically use them all as means to an end. It knows no limits, fiscal, sexual or otherwise. Rules are for the little people.

Anyway, here’s a good offering for the next Trivial Pursuit game: Harry Shearer’s 2002 movie “The Teddybears’ Picnic” is a parody of the Bohemian Grove conspiracies.

So what is Bohemian Grove, anyway? The truth is more ridiculous than the fiction: It is summer camp for rich and powerful men indulging their suppressed homoerotic urges. Think Burning Man or Robert Bly’s “man camp,” only with spandex, glitter and show tunes, and “gin fizzies” served as early as 7 a.m. These captains of industry spend the whole weekend drunk off their asses, singing and dancing and doing skits, often in drag. One of their hallowed traditions is walking around with their weenies hanging out, peeing on anything and everything they feel like peeing on, and passing out drunk in the bushes. Sounds like fun, huh? Richard Nixon called Bohemian Grove “the most faggy goddamn thing you could ever imagine.” Not that there’s anything wrong with that. For what it’s worth, during my time in Hollyweird I learned that porn stars, both male and female, moonlighted as “valets” at Bohemian Grove. Make of that what you will.

One of many pagan-styled events being a big bonfire “Cremation of Care” ritual in front of huge stone owl. Supposedly this means the Grove members are Satan worshippers, at least to members of the pearl-clutching Churchianity sects. Being an armchair occultist and occasional pagan reveler myself I know Cremation of Care is likely a dramatic (and harmless , unless one of them accidentally sets his robe on fire) opening event during which the members symbolically unburden themselves of the cares of the world so that they may better enjoy the rest of their vacations.

This latest infiltration was by another Alex, one Mr. Shoumatoff from Vanity Fair. Unfortunately he did such a crappy job of it he didn’t make it past the first checkpoint. Maybe the next guy will be more successful, but honestly: We have La Cage aux Folles. We don’t need to see film footage of our past presidents peeing on trees while in drag. Or . . . do we?

(Worth 1000 Political Drag Series)

(Yup, that’s me and my bags about two years ago!)

It’s so funny, because it’s so true . . .

Remember that when the government comes calling. If they say they want to help and they only offer you $290 billion or some bullcrap number like that, you stand proud and tell the government, “I didn’t work my ass off behaving so irresponsibly as to bring our nation’s economy to the brink of disaster just so you could call me a slut!” The government will apologize and it will let you know how much you mean to it by offering you another $10 billion. “You’re worth it,” the government will say, brushing a tear from your cheek. “You’ve always been worth that much to me.”

These Coach peep toe pumps, perfectly tailored and comfortable (for heels), retailed at $250.

At DSW they were $170, STILL too much for this fashionista to pay. Unless they’re couture I won’t pay over $100 for any pair of shoes, ever. But DSW put this pair in the back room at 70% off so I grabbed them, put them on my feet and danced around screaming MINE MINE MINE! OK I didn’t really scream, but I did dance a little. Plus I had a $10 gift certificate, bringing the total price down to

$24 !!!

(Jag-U-Are, Rich Bitch Collection)

Hey Guys! I need you to do a little creative visualization for a moment!

Imagine you have a wife who cheats on you constantly, steals all your stuff, won’t let you touch her, and then has the gall to demand maintenance pay. Wait! There’s more! You don’t even get to divorce the bitch. You have to stay married to her and continue to give her money while she continues to shag the pool boy, rob you blind and fuck you over. WHY? Because she’s become “accustomed to the lifestyle,” and the government treats your money as if a significant portion of it were hers.

How would that make you feel? Kinda bad, yes?

Ladies, you do the same, plugging in whatever gender works for you. I actually know a woman whose unemployed husband demanded a huge chunk of her 401K when they divorced. They got married, he quit his job, and then left the marriage a year and a half later with a significant portion of her stuff, because she made more money than he did, because the whole time he was watching soap operas at home. She’s a little bitter about that.

The present plan to bail out Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac? Yeah, it’s like THAT.

“A capitalist in need is a socialist indeed.”

Most of us are under the mistaken assumption that the United States of America is a capitalist democracy. Well, it’s not. It’s a corporate oligarchy, with capitalism for the poor and socialism for the rich. How does it work? Oh that’s easy:

When we - you and I - fuck up our business and our finances, the bankers and the corporations take our stuff.

BUT . . .

When BANKERS and CORPORATIONS fuck up THEIR businesses and THEIR finances, the bankers and the corporations still take our stuff!

It’s a great system, if you’re a central banker or a corporatist multi-billionaire. Remember the S&L Crisis? The Bush family made a whole pile of money with that scam. This is how the wealth transfer (from us to them) is to work, AGAIN, with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac: The U.S. Government plans to buy a huge interest in these failing banks using OUR MONEY. Our parents’ money. Our children’s money. Our grandchildren’s money.

Imagine that they raided your bank accounts and used it to buy stock in ENRON a month before the company’s systemic collapse. Then Talking Heads on the boob tube said “ENRON is critical to the stability of our energy supply. It’s too big to fail.” You would have stormed the ENRON corporate offices to kick some corporatist ass. Am I right, or am I right?

Today we get some anti-bailout fussing from the smart people who know they’re about to get fleeced, AGAIN. Then George Bush insults us further by saying “This is not a bailout.”

[squinting] “You see, [muffled snicker] it’s not a bail-out, [inappropriate smirk] because although the public will assume their debt, [momentary confusion] they’ll remain private corporations. It’s a sell-out! [giddy pride] [poked in back] I mean, it’s definitely not a bail-out. [satisfied nod] Now watch this drive.”

I say let them ALL fail. These are privately owned banks. They made bad business decisions, so they deserve to fail. Their stock prices NEED to go down. The banks NEED to restructure, and the banking executives NEED to be punished for being a bunch of greedy criminals. THAT’s capitalism. THAT’S the “free market economy.” Perhaps the U.S. ought to try it sometime.

In the mean time, we get to support their lifestyles, and we don’t even get to divorce the bitches.

The notorious asshole Karl Rove, also known as “Bush’s Brain,” has been under pressure to testify in front of the House Judiciary Committee. Not surprisingly, he disappeared on the 10th for an unannounced “vacation.” He’s been located in Crimea, which has no extradition treaty with the U.S.

It figures. This is how they’ll all get away with it: Unannounced “vacations” to countries that don’t extradite. The Bush/Cheney henchmen were counting on pardons, but if Bush is impeached he won’t be able to issue any. The only way the U.S. will be able to keep the NeoCONS on campus, so to speak, is to ground all outgoing international flights until every last suspected war criminal is rounded up and “detained” in an “undisclosed location.” And we know THAT won’t happen.

I suppose the Bush/Cheney juntas have made SO many enemies that it’s only a matter of time before a family member of a tortured Abu Grahib “detainee” hunts ‘em down and shoots ‘em. I won’t cry.

H/T: The Zoo

UPDATE: The Lang Report has set up a “Karl Watch” vigil.

Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear.

-Harry S. Truman

This week the traitors in Washington, also known as the U.S. Senate, sold out the Constitution again. Cowed by NeoCon scare tactics, with their pockets stuffed with wads of cash bribes campaign contributions from SPRINT, VERIZON and AT&T, the Senate passed FISA legislation undermining your Fourth Amendment right not to be subject to unwarranted search and/or seizure.

This is not a “compromise,” as some in Congress would have us believe. The only things they compromised are your personal privacy and your freedom.

(Check out the Billboard Liberation Front!)

The FISA Amendments Act allows for mass, untargeted and warrantless surveillance of all communications coming into and out of the United States. As an extra-special kick in the shorts, it hands immunity to telecommunication companies for their role in domestic spying. This means YOUR phone calls can be tapped and emails read for practically no reason at all, and there’s no chance to learn how the telecoms invaded your privacy after the fact.

Mark my words: Warrantless wiretapping is ALREADY being used to stifle dissent, blackmail politicians and destroy careers for partisan political purposes. And if you don’t think they’re reading your emails, and creating a comprehensive profile on you based upon what you write about yourself on your MySpace and Facebook pages, and especially your Plaxo profile, you have another thing coming. Are you a “Peace Mom?” Ever been to an anti-war or anti-globalization rally? There is an FBI case file on you.

In the days leading up to the House and Senate votes on the FISA bill the howling from American patriots and civil rights activists was louder than it had been in years. The Senators’ phones were ringing off the hook. Unfortunately, it was too late: The American public, Boobus Americanus, has remained parked on it’s sofa, remote in one hand and a soda in the other, for SO LONG, that once it occurred to the public that they were being spied upon Soviet-style it was too late to do anything about it. Congress had already been bought off by a bunch of paranoid, control freak plutocrats OVER A PERIOD OF DECADES, chipping away at the Constitution bit by little bit with laws and Executive Orders. Regardless, Boobus Americanus either stayed home on voting day or kept on electing it’s congresscritters over and over and over again.

Conservatives especially HATE the ACLU, turning the acronym into a synonym for traitor. What an asinine reversal. Sure the ACLU chooses some weird cases to fight, but they’re fighting on Constitutional principle, and they are doing it for YOUR SAKE. You snooze, you lose, folks. So NOW you care?

If this bugs you the way it bugs me, consider becoming an ACLU monthly donor, and stand up for your rights.This is why the ACLU challenged this unconstitutional law the moment President Bush signed it. If you’re a so-called “conservative” who EVER dissed the ACLU without understanding what it was all about, consider DOUBLING your donation as penance for being an IDIOT.

Boobus Americanus

(by Ed Griffin)

It’s more than mortal man can bear.

Those terrorists are everywhere:

on land and sea and in the air.

Network TV bill of fare

daily warns us to prepare

for bugs and bombs and poison air

and other things enough to scare

the bravest man to deep despair.

They hate our liberty, or so we’re told,

our way of life so uncontrolled,

our rich, our poor, our young, our old.

I guess their hatred just takes hold

and burrows in and makes them bold

enough to kill and die and spend their gold

and set in motion plans untold

to get us ALL . . . or so we’re told.

Seems strange to me they don’t resent

the other guys who represent

a way of life with free consent

or those who are benevolent.

The only ones they seem intent

to devastate to great extent

are those who’s aero-planes were sent

to bomb their homes with such torment.

Never mind, the war will stay.

We’re going to fight this all the way.

But there’s a price we have to pay

to keep the enemy at bay.

Let our leaders take away

our lives and liberty TODAY,

and then our fears will go away

that they’ll be lost some future day.

My phone is tapped. My mail is read.

They know the thoughts inside my head.

The money I deposited

is now reported to the Fed.

They chip my hand, dispense my bread.

I think they watch me go to bed.

I don’t object. I’m glad instead

to be controlled until I’m dead.

CHORUS

And so I very happily

let them take my liberty.

No matter what they do to me,

it’s all for my security.

You see, you see, you see?

I’m just as glad as I can be

to let them take my liberty.

No matter what they do to me,

it’s all for my security.

(Source: I thought this last image was from an article in Rolling Stone called “Fear Factor”), but I went back and it’s not there)

Moi, the Hedonistic Pleasureseeker, is fussy about my water.

I usually drink distilled water or spring/mineral water as I refuse to suffer the proven adverse mental health effects of fluoridated tap water. Yesterday I was overjoyed to discover that the township that I live in does not fluoridate it’s water supply. WOOT!!!

Unfortunately, between 60 and 70 percent of the country is not so fortunate. Americans are more likely to encounter fluoridated water in large towns and cities than in smaller, outlying townships. Since most of humanity clusters in urban areas guess what? Unless you take special efforts to remove the additives from your water you’re probably drinking crap, and a Brita filter won’t cut it, either. No matter what the ads tell you, the filters you buy at the store WILL NOT remove fluoride from your tap water.

So what’s wrong with fluoride? I’m glad that you asked.

Calcium fluoride is naturally present in some mineral waters and even some foods, but that’s not the chemical you should be worried about, because what’s being put in America’s water supplies is not calcium fluoride. Do a little digging and you’ll discover that it’s something much, much worse. In fact, the so-called “fluoride” being dumped in 60-70% of our drinking water is so poisonous that only a few parts per billion are apparently enough to lower our children’s IQs. Influential operatives sliming the corridors of power have known this all along, which TOTALLY pisses me off, SO . . . Full report after the jump, and it’s NOT a Hedonistic Pleasure.

(more…)

Stewart: Do you watch the news that we’re watching?

Logan: No

Stewart: In the United States? Do you see what we’re hearing about the war? So, we might actually know everything?

Logan: If I were to watch the news that you hear in the United States I’d just blow my brains out because it would drive me nuts.

(WILD APPLAUSE)

This is the interview that earned Lara Logan the relentless mainstream media smearfest taking place right now. “What? She’s not a virgin?” The douchebag media moguls are punishing her for telling the truth of how morally bankrupt we’ve ALL become, thanks to THEM. That’s right: Our shitty, treasonous, useless mainstream media. Logan called them out, and now she’s getting “the business.” Like we care about the sex lives of war correspondents; It was a freaking war zone for chrissakes.

Tonight on the way home from work I was listening to NPR (XM Radio) and they were gassing about how “awful” it was that the world of print media was disappearing. Here the MSM thought they had us all under control! Yet we just bypassed them by going to the internet. WAH. Well boo fucking hoo! The MSM assclowns have no one to blame but themselves. There will be a PARTY AT MY PLACE! if corporatist ass kissing newspapers begin to fall like dominoes and the “news” programs on television fade into irrelevance.

Now, pay attention: The Fourth Estate failed us by failing to hold our government accountable, so why are we giving them our money? When we all “switch to digital” next year, consider just letting your television go blank! Use it to watch DVDs instead, and get your news and entertainment from outlets that deserve your business. I’ll be canceling my cable this weekend, and I’ve already canceled the newspaper I’d only just begun to receive. Die, mainstream media motherfuckers, just DIE already. We won’t miss you.

(Yeah, I have PMS. Two senators got email from me today, but just wait until I get these media people on the phone! Some words just need to be spoken.)

Vagina Spa Opens in New York

Now comes the first medi spa in Manhattan wholly dedicated to strengthening and grooming a woman’s genital area. Phit — short for pelvic health integrated techniques — is to open this month on East 58th Street.

Dr. Lauri Romanzi, a gynecologist who performs pelvic reconstruction surgery, said she came up with the idea for the spa one day while walking by an outlet of BriteSmile, the tooth-whitening chain. She liked that the stores cater to people with healthy teeth.

The spa is essentially a gussied-up examination room down the hall from Dr. Romanzi’s medical practice. At the spa, the signature treatment will be a $150 gynecological exam — in which a client contracts her pelvic muscles around Dr. Romanzi’s fingers — to determine by feel whether muscle tone is weak, moderate or strong.

And here I thought Americans had already achieved the pinnacle of narcissism. Is it really possible that women have gotten so LAZY that they’re outsourcing their Kegel exercises? Is the Apocalypse at hand? Honestly, I don’t believe it necessary that we ape Rome during it’s epic fall.

Besides, this is what intimate friends are for: To be personal trainers for our privates. Frankly, I think this kind and level of personal service requires a house call. Failing that a resourceful woman can just pull up her Puss-n-Bootstraps and use her own fingers. The DIY approach is easy and free.

I wonder: Will the good Doctor be holding Kegel aerobics classes? (I can see it now: “Come on, girls, squeeze! Squeeze! One two three four!”). She might as well go all the way and hold pong ball distance competitions and “throat pilates” while she’s at it. Any doctor specializing in something so asinine as “vaginal rejuvenation” is likely to be of the “alter your pussy to fascinate your man” mindset. If she’s going to devote her career to insulting women’s vaginas she might as well go all the way.

What’s she gonna call the place, Spagina? She should pipe Barry White muzak throughout the spa: “It feels so good . . . Oh, what a groove You have no idea how it feels, My hands just won’t keep still . . . Oh baby oh baby . . .”

Men, inquire within as to the availability of towel boy and technician internships.