Tag Archives: culture

Sandy Hook Madness – Identifying the lunatic[s]

http://youtu.be/Tf4DVaWE2eU%5D

Hi readers.  Luckily I just don’t give a damn.  But this Sandy Hook thing’s all out of hand.

Snopes put it all aside, laid it firmly to rest January, 2013.  Addressed it all calmly in that irritatingly smug Snopes fashion and has never again let the subject darken their door.  http://www.snopes.com/politics/guns/newtown.asp

Shortly later in February, 2013, Huffington Post put the whole thing to sleep offering up all manner of point-by-point reasoned arguements and explanations:  Sandy Hook Hoax Theories Explained: Why Newtown ‘Truther’ Arguments Don’t Hold Up, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/11/sandy-hook-hoax-theories-explained-debunking-newtown-truther_n_2627233.html

But as Walter Brennon used to say about them Shoshones, they just “kep a’ comin’!”  Every day some new doppelganger shows up, some missing birth or death certificate, some piece of vital-but-never-the-less photoshopped evidence.

A person could walk away from it all as legitimately believing the Lanza shooter never existed, or didn’t exist on the day of the shooting, as believing t’other extreme.  Every shred of evidence in the one direction appears to be offset by equally [pick one: (a-valid)(b-absurd)] and damning proof for the other side.

In a sane world the default position would be that officialdom and their statements were a reflection of reality.  And the burden of proof would be on anyone wishing to put forward another viewpoint.

Unfortunately, the Internet and a decade of this new century have proved officialdom is composed of liars as sneaky and Byzantine in their motives as the rest of us, perhaps more so.  No doubt they’re completely capable of doing what the Sandy Hook “Truthers” accuse them of.  Provided they were sufficiently motivated to do so.

So draw straws, or follow your gut feel if you want to believe one side or the other.  And be comforted knowing you’re as likely to be on the side of the angels as anyone holding any other view.

Old Jules

 

Take Out – A Chinese Illegal American movie on Netflix

http://youtu.be/8Al2nWb8iiM%5D

Hi readers.  Who’d think a movie about a Chinese food joint in a US big city would be worth watching?  Well friends, it’s streaming on Netflix.

Take Out 2004 NR 88 minutes  An illegal immigrant gets behind on his debt to the crooks who smuggled him into the country, and has one day to find the money to make a payment. More Info  Starring: Charles Jang, Jeng-Hua Yu Directors: Sean Baker, Shih-Ching Tsou

The Chinese gangsters who fronted him the money to get here use a ball-peen hammer on his ribs when he sends some bucks back to his family in China and gets behind on payments at 30% interest.  So he delivers Chinese food all over trying to bicycle into enough tip money to keep them from coming back tonight.

Then he gets himself mugged out of it by some black guys in an elevator.  Late in the day.  He’s looking at a bad evening and he doesn’t even have to worry about multi-national banks, US Immigration Service, whatever.  All he’s got to worry about is which gangsters will rob him next.

But if he lives he dreams of bringing over his wife and son he’s never seen once his debt to the loan sharks is paid off in four, five years.

Different enough and interesting enough to cause me to give it a five star rating.

Old Jules

Dual citizenship: American, or Israeli masquerading as an American – Is there a difference?

Hi readers.  This dual citizenchip thing probably wouldn’t make any difference in a world populated by and governed by sanity, Christian ideals, and people who practiced one, or the other.  But there’s a growing body of evidence that’s not the case.

But here’s a disproportionate number of people in positions of power in the US are actually Israeli citizens presumably with [hopefully] divided loyalties.  As opposed to singular loyalty to Israel.  And when the media reports an ‘American’ journalist, tourist, contractor, whatever, in trouble somewhere in the Middle East, the person stands a good chance of being Israeli.  Moving around under a US citizenship disguise.

The reality is that the behavior of Israel probably makes life dangerous for any Israeli wanting to travel outside Israel, Europe and the US.  Maybe East Asia.  Anywhere else they’ll have ample reason to mistrust, to treat with extreme prejudice anyone identified as an Israeli.

But that’s okay because they can be US citizens and when they get shot or abducted the US President will make a fiery statement and threaten to bomb the bejesus out of anyone guilty of mistreating those Israeli, almost certainly Mossad agents, masquerading as Americans.  And the US news services will somehow fail to notice the person wasn’t an American, at all.

And Americans do get indignant when that sort of thing happens to ‘Americans’ even it it’s people who only think of the citizenship issues as another tool to further the interests of their real country.

It’s fresh on my mind because of this Steven Sotloff Israeli someone’s supposed to have beheaded.  But it probably shouldn’t be.  That’s peanuts.  Hell we’ve got at least one Israeli in the US Supreme Court, several in Congress, no telling how many in the Pentagon and one heading Homeland Security.  Or was, if not currently.

All masquerading as Americans.

So let’s not think about that.  We’ve got important aliens coming across from Mexico wanting to mow the lawn.

Old Jules

A matter of perspective – Photoshopped beheading isn’t necessarily permanent

Hi readers.  Thanks for coming by for a read.

People tell one another, or are told, and naturally come to believe there’s something barbaric about beheading as a form of execution.  Which is merely an example of cultural brainwashing, as opposed to the reality of barbarism.  I’m trying to recall how many British nobility I could actually name who exited the vehicle by that method.  A fair lot.

And as long as the French used the death penalty, up well into the 20th Century, the guillotine was the tool of choice because headsman skills with an axe were iffy, at best.  But the while French have never been precisely non-barbaric, barbarism isn’t one of the traits everyone else likes least about them.

Anyway, so these folks in the Middle East who aren’t Israeli citizens are possibly beheading some people they want to kill instead of shooting them or blowing their arms and legs off with artillery.  That probably isn’t a defining behavior separating barbarians from non-barbarians.  As nearly as I can tell everyone in the Middle East, including Americans visiting there, US military, Israeli, Muslim, you name it, is either barbaric, or is closely related to barbarians by blood.

So, Steven Sotloff.  Maybe the what?  Islamists?  Killed this Israeli with a dual-citizenship that included the United States and stood a middling good chance of also being a Mossad agent.  Sotloff.  Maybe.

If Sotloff’s dead, and if he’s dead from being beheaded, and if it was Islamists who beheaded him, well, heck.  They thought he was an Israeli!  A Mossad agent!  What would any non-Israeli in that part of the world do if they caught a Mossad agent?  They’d be crazy not to.

But you can’t trust anything that comes out of that part of the world.  A growing body of opinion among conspiracy theorists has both of those recent orange jumpsuited beheadings as photoshopped phonies.  Among those believing that, a lot also believe the studio where the beheading video drama was created is in Israel.  And that if anyone is dead as a result, the cadavers are in Israel.

 If, in fact, these individuals are dead, then it is up to the Israeli government to return their bodies. If, as is much more likely the case, at least one or these videos is a hoax, a hoax with dead victims, a hoax with live victims, but certainly a hoax, no doubt about that, some authority inside Israel, preferably one not directly involved in the hoax itself, should investigate, should such an authority exist at some point in the future, which we find unlikely.

We have had so many hoaxes all out of Israel, all from the same people, all sent through the same scammers in the US, that getting to the bottom of this one took less than five minutes. Think “Rita Katz.”

This is the third outing for the designer orange silk “jump suits” thus far. Last year they were the rage in Tel Aviv shops, today they are all about beheadings. There is one problem, not that Alex Jones and InfoWars reporting the Foley beheading was a phony, a position the US State Department is now reconsidering as well, warned us off the story.

The problem is “Site Intelligence,” better known to insiders as “bin Laden Studios,” the Israeli video fakery group that kept turning out bin Laden videos, short fat bin Ladens, old ones, young ones, then, eventually, only audio tapes, as though bin Laden, confirmed to have died in 2001 after denying, according to the CIA, all involvement in 9/11, had magically come back to life.

http://www.veteranstoday.com/2014/09/02/make-israel-stop-beheading-journalists/

So, the burning question is, is a fake beheading still barbaric?  Is it only barbaric if Muslims fake the video, or is it also barbaric if Israeli photoshoppers trump it up for reasons almost certainly manipulative at a level nearing barbarianhood?

Nevermind all those 40,000 people with destroyed homes in Gaza, the be-leggings and be-armings of children, women, old folks, even [gasp] regular non-Hamas men killed and maimed of late.

I’m only interested in barbarism of a particular nature.  I want it clean and well lighted, performed by Arab-looking people.

Old Jules

Masa harina as a no sodium pizza crust

Hi readers.  Thanks for coming by for a read.

I probably mentioned sometime that I’ve been having dreams about pizza.  The odor and the taste creep into my brain unexpectedly and sometimes I have to threaten myself with a pistol to keep from picking up the phone and ordering a large pepperoni or anchovies delivered.  Aside from me being dead when Jeanne arrived home from work after I sneaked around and did it, she’d never know.

One slice of pizza of any sort anywhere exceeds my 2-gram limit for each day.

Well, I’m wanting to avoid having to shoot myself in the hand or ear to keep from phoning in for a combination pizza.  So I’ve been working on developing a non-sodium, or low sodium substitute.

The filling, I’ve got whipped.  I told you before about my onion ice cubes and my tomato ice cubes.  I used two of each, and might have added one more.  When they were melted I used a lot of minced garlic, turmeric, oregano, cilantro, and ancho pepper.  Mixed them all together and poured them over a couple of slices of zero-sodium bread that’s awful, otherwise unfit for human consumption.

Okay, that stuff is the filling, and it is damned tasty.Roll out a quarter pound of ground beef into silver-dollar sized pieces and season the hell out of them to simulate pepperoni.  Space them around on the surface of the rest of the filling.

Now roll out the real crust using half-cup of masa harina pressed out thicker than tortillas, but not much thicker.  About a quarter-cup plus a tablespoon of water mixed with the masa.

Position that filling onto the crust and shove the entire shebang into the oven at 450 F for as long as it takes for the odor to remind you something’s in the oven.  Probably 20-30 minutes.

This is just the beginning, and you might need to make modifications based on personal tastes and the way your oven behaves itself.  But there’s no need to kill yourself out of desperation for a damned pizza just because it would kill you to eat one.

Make the damned thing from scratch and cheat the undertaker.

Old Jules

 

Veterans Administration: How many guns do you own?

All over the US VA Hospitals/Medical Centers are under investigation for incompetence, waste, negligence, malfeasance and misfeasance, brutality and being a cruel farce.  Turns out the San Antonio VA Medical Center is under investigation for precisely the same [failure to treat patients in a timely manner] reasons I entered a private hospital in Kerrville, Texas in January after several weeks of non-treatment and non-diagnosis at the VA Odessa and Big Spring VA Medical facilities during November and December, 2013

All over the US VA Hospitals/Medical Centers are under investigation for incompetence, waste, negligence, malfeasance and misfeasance, brutality and being a cruel farce. Turns out the San Antonio VA Medical Center is under investigation for precisely the same [failure to treat patients in a timely manner] reasons I entered a private hospital in Kerrville, Texas in January after several weeks of non-treatment and non-diagnosis at the VA Odessa and Big Spring VA Medical facilities during November and December, 2013

Hi readers.  I’d made mental notes to mention this, either on the blog, or to some other veterans, anyway.  Ask them whether they’d encountered the same phenomenon.

I first encountered it at the Odessa, Texas, VA medical facility when I was parking my RV at Eddie Brewer’s in Andrews while trying to get the VA to check out my medical problems.  Which they never did while I visiting them at that facility, but they did take a urine sample, did some blood work.  And asked one hell of a lot of questions.

Those people spent at least an hour asking me whether I’d done any recreational drugs, which I admitted I had.  Whether I’d had much recreational sex, which I again admitted I had.  Whether I’d ever considered suicide, which I’m not certain how I answered.  And the entire pantheon of other questions I didn’t consider any of their business.

Including, “How many guns do you own?”

I’ll have to confess I don’t always tell the truth when I’m asked such questions as those, but particularly when questions are asked about my ownership of firearms.  I’ve indulged in falsehoods.  And I’d done so on so many different occasions and in so many different ways I honestly can’t recall whether I own any guns, or don’t.

Anyway, when Odessa and Big Spring Veterans Administration Medical Facilities convinced me around Christmas of 2013 they had no intention of trying to know more than I told them about my physical problems, I went back to Kerrville, Texas.  Checked into the local hospital emeergency room, which most of you readers will recall from this blog.

And when a week inside that one didn’t clear up my confusion about what was wrong with me, I got into the RV and drove far enough north for Jeanne’s sons to bring me to KC.  Where I spent another week or so in the hospital and actually learned a lot about my condition.

Enough, I hoped, to give the VA another try insofar as treatment.  VA Kansas City, it was.

And here’s the untanglement of the entire reason for this post, other than taking another opportunity to whine about what a weakling unhealthy specimen I’ve become.

Damned KC VA Medical people sat my ass down early in the process and asked me all those same questions I’d been asked in Odessa.  And again wanted to know how many guns I own.  And again I can’t recall how I answered them, except I’m fairly certain I denied owning any.

And maybe I was telling the truth, maybe not.  I honestly don’t know and don’t plan on finding out anytime soon.  What the hell do I care whether I own any guns?  It ain’t as though I’m going on any shooting rampage or need to stick up a convenience store.  If I ever discover I need to own a gun I’ll try to muster the energy to dig around in my belongings somewhere.

But hells bells, with bullets so expensive I couldn’t afford to buy a magazine-full so’s to be able to stick up a liquer store anyway.  I might as well point my finger from inside my jacket pocket at them and swear in a loud voice, “This is a screwup!  Don’t be a hero!”

The VA didn’t ask me whether I had any ammo for the hypothetical firearms I don’t have any of.

Old Jules

Russian One-Upsmanship on Good American Ingenuity

Hi readers.  If you’re like me you’ve been admiring Rokon motorcycles from the 1970s onward, but never got around to purchasing one.  Damn it all.  Made more sense than any trail bike ever manufactured.  Good old American ingenuity.

So what happened?  The Rooskies did Rokon one better.  Built it out of ceramic frame members instead of steel, made it so light Barbie can lift it over her head and trek up a mountain with it.

Tarus 2M (Military Russian Motorcycle)-floats, packs, portable and gets you wherever you need to go

Meanwhile Rokon’s just kept glitzing it up, driving the cost up and not really adding anything essential.  $795 would buy the first Rokon I ever saw for sale.  Today they probably might as well only be sold to the defense industry and celebrities.

Tim Ralston’s Rokon Field Test

The Fantastic Foreign Flip-Flop Flim-Flam

My stock of foreign flipflops was left in Texas, readers. I’ve been reduced to buying and wearing cloth tennis shoes for $7.95 from Walmart. And it turns out they hold up better than a pair of $20 flipflops and don’t stink any worse any sooner. Worth knowing. Jack

So Far From Heaven

There’s a grave crisis looming, readers.  Time was when good American foots were protected by good American-made flip-flops.  They never failed.  Those old timey flip-flops lasted until they’d absorbed so much foot odor a hog would turn up its nose at them.  Normal landfills rejected them, demanded they be treated as hazardous waste.

But that’s all changed.  You see how those straps come out?  See how the layers of soles separate, sneakily intended to render the entire thing useless?  That’s the Asian plan for taking over the flip-flop world.

They think there’s nothing a good American can do about it, but they’re wrong.   If you can remember to pick up some Gorilla Glue you can make those babies run until they stink, just like the good American ones did.  In the top pic you can see those had been glued, but not sufficiently and the soles peeled open elsewhere.

I…

View original post 70 more words

The Logical Ultimate Extreme – Those damned plastic dunes on Titan

Thanks to the orbital eccentricities of Saturn and its moon Titan, the equatorial dunes – made of sandlike plastic – appear to be going the wrong way. NASA Cassini radar

Hi readers.  Thanks for coming by for a read.

Most of you have probably spent a lot of time pondering those drifting dunes of plastic the NASA Cassini craft discovered on Saturn’s moon, Titan.  http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/2014/05/plastic-wrong-way-dunes-arise-saturn-moon-titan.  And most of you have probably concluded, rightly, that it’s spillover from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch finally having reached Saturn.

Great Pacific Garbage Patch Continues to Grow http://www.weather.com/news/science/environment/giant-garbage-patch-pacific-20140817

It’s obvious that all those plastics partially digested by Mother Earth in the stomach of her ocean have been belched into outer space moving hastily enough to reach Titan and create drifting dunes.  Before Cassini arrived.

Which means NASA will be spending a lot of time in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch placing hopeful spacecraft in the way of earth belches.  The NASA budget cuts and ending most government funded space ventures makes earth belches the only practical means of sending anything of US origins into outer space.

But of course there’s another alternative explanation for those dunes of drifting plastic on Titan.  It’s the one the government doesn’t want you to know about because it confirms the existence of the Dreaded Green Men.  A whole civilization of them beginning, climbing to the top of their food chain, inventing plastics, and creating ocean garbage patches of their own.

Yeah, you read that right.  The reason those damned Titanians came to earth and crashed at Corona, New Mexico in 1947 was that they were looking for some empty space in the solar system where they could dump their damned plastics.

Hell, who do you think came up with the idea of selling water in bottles for a dollar each?  That idea didn’t originate on a planet 2/3 covered with water.  The entrepreneurs and engineers on earth reverse-engineered the whole concept from the Roswell UFO crash.  Along with memory metal frames for eyeglasses.

 

Old Jules

 

Veterans Today: A War for Nothing by Uri Avnery, … Gush Shalom, Tel Aviv

Picasso 1937 Guernica

The Zios usual PR defense tactic of one dead Jew is a larger crime than a 1000 Palestinians did not get swallowed like in the past. People spit it out, as they should have. And despite all the killing we ended up with the Likud cabinet wanting more because neither their lives or pocketbooks were on the line. When much of your power emanates from being a dealer of death and destruction with the US as your protector, one can see how the Likud hardliners would feel it was a waste not to use it to the fullest.

– First published … August 30, 2014 – After 50 days, the war is over. Hallelujah. On the Israeli side: 71 dead, among them 66 soldiers, 1 child. On the Palestinian side: 2,143 dead, 577 of them children, 263 women, 102 elderly, 11,230 injured, 10,800 buildings destroyed, 8,000 partially destroyed. About 40,000 damaged homes. Among the damaged buildings: 277 schools, 10 hospitals, 70 mosques, 2 churches. Also, 12 West Bank demonstrators, mostly children, who were shot.

http://www.veteranstoday.com/2014/08/30/avnery-the-war-for-nothing/

So what was it all about? The honest answer is: About nothing.Neither side wanted it. Neither side started it. It just so happened. Let us recapitulate the events, before they are forgotten.

Two young Arab men kidnapped three young Israeli religious students near the West Bank town of Hebron. The kidnappers belonged to the Hamas movement, but acted on their own. Their purpose was to exchange their captives for Palestinian prisoners. Liberating prisoners is now the highest ambition of every Palestinian militant.

The kidnappers were amateurs, and their plan miscarried from the beginning. They panicked when one student used his mobile phone and then they shot the hostages. All of Israel was in an uproar. The kidnappers have not yet been found.

The Israeli security forces used the opportunity to implement a prepared plan. All known Hamas activists in the West Bank were arrested, as well as all the former prisoners who were released as part of the deal to free the Israeli hostage Gilad Shalit. For Hamas this was the violation of an agreement.

The Hamas leadership in the Gaza Strip could not keep quiet while their comrades in the West Bank were being imprisoned. It reacted by launching rockets at Israeli towns and villages. The Israeli government could not keep quiet while its towns and villages were bombarded. It responded with a heavy bombardment of the Gaza strip from the air.

From there on, it was just an endless festival of death and destruction. The war was crying out for a purpose.

Short URL: http://www.veteranstoday.com/?p=318669