The Chrysalis Motel

First eclosion of the year 2009. Kept this one captive until the tornadoes passed. Hopefully some of its larva will show up for a stay at the Chrysalis Motel later this summer.

WPONDYU?!#?

Coastal Tour of Florida 2009

My recent trip to Florida which was intended to be a break from the horrors of living in nasty, corrupt Georgia was instead more reminiscent of a gauntlet from hell. First, I found that it was Bike Week, then Spring Break, and then Gator Nationals. I also learned a little something about South Florida politics; a bit more than I cared to know - even after living there for 10 years and covering every city, park, and beach in the state.

But in the midst of all this the credit card company decided, in all of its Citi wisdom, that gasoline, a motel room, an airboat ride in the headwaters of the St. John's River, and dinner at a Melbourne restaurant was indicative of card theft and left me standing on the dark streets of southern Miami, 900 miles from home, surrounded by crack heads and murderers, with only toll and tip cash to spend for emergency travel home. A trip to a local Kinko's revealed that you now need a charge card to access the Internet, and I ended up in front of a 7-11 on a pay phone at 1:00 in the morning trying to straighten out their errant decision in order to buy gasoline. I bought gas with cash and drove instead to Naples, where imminent death was less probable. This persisted until 5:00AM. I wasn't about to drive back to Skanklanta after having just arrived in South Florida. This from a company who cannot manage their own affairs without holding out their avaricious money-changing hands for taxpayer cash. I don't feel the need to call them before I go on a trip, and they are not my mother or guardian. This was a dangerous occurrence that could have cost someone their life.

So began the long drive from Homestead to Key West. The water was extraordinarily turquoise blue, more so than the other times I visited the keys, and upon arrival I found that Spring Breakers were pouring in. I barely managed to find a motel room, and was exhausted after the ordeal. Nevertheless I showered and drove to Duval Street about 7:00pm and discovered the streets packed with boisterous revelers. Too tired to fight that particular battle, I opted for the Holiday Inn lounge for a bit of conversation. The Mayor of Key West has relatives who apparently like to visit this bar and rudely critique the dental work of its customers; as if it was any of their stinking business unless they were offering to pay for improvements - which of course they were not. After meeting a dozen or so people, I trundled off to the motel room to find that the promised Wi-Fi was dysfunctional, so picked up some food at the Awful House and went to bed.

The next day began with walking the streets to see what had changed since 1998 - not much, overall. Lunch was at Sloppy Joe's for a basket of Conch Fritters, a few beers, and conversation with a myriad of visitors from around the US, including several retired teachers. A sunset cruise on a sailing catamaran into a near storm finished off the daylight hours and a stop for food resulted in plentiful leftovers I decided to give to one of the equally plentiful homeless people. Re-energized after the meal, I headed towards Duval Street, hoping for a more mellow crowd. After listening to a variety of bands from in front of various clubs, I ended up at Durty Harry's, not realizing that this was a spring break hangout. The crowds had apparently not yet arrived, and I found a seat handily. The doormen and bartenders were courteous, even to me, and I listened to the band for a while, intermixed with conversations with a variety of pretty young ladies from around the country who appeared beside me wanting to place their drink orders - Oh, to be 25 again! The band, apparently named Category 5, played a variety of alternative/modern/grunge rock songs - the typical college fare I often listen to. They were an excellent, precise live cover band sporting a singer who hails from NYC. They also went off on a curious rant about the Bush brothers and their likelihood of being re-elected to public office. Then the announcement came that the wet T-Shirt contest was about to begin and I started to leave as the crowd suddenly swelled, but the bartender bought me a drink and not being one to offend a young lady ended up there until 4:00AM. I was a bit surprised at what little I saw of the whole affair, but let's just say that full nudity was involved. Thus the seeds of the misogynists of tomorrow have been planted. And I guess I've attended my very first spring break. The only trouble I saw were fights started by drunk old men gawking at the young girls and picking on the bike-cab drivers. The students were loud but mostly well behaved.








The next day began with a trip to the Key West Tropical Forest and Botanical Garden, climbing the 88 stairs of the Key West Lighthouse, the Butterfly and Nature Conservancy - which was pointed out to me by blogger and entomologist Doug Taron of Gossamer Tapestry, a walk through the City Graveyard, and a trip down Duval Street to Mallory Square to visit the Key West Aquarium. Along the way, a disconcerting discovery was made - there had been a raging fire at an art gallery the night before. The noise and crowds of Durty Harry's had drowned out the sounds of at least four fire engine companies from the Key West Fire Department, Naval Air Station Key West, Monroe County and Key West International Airport who responded to a fire that destroyed the $4 million building at 512 Duval St., according to the newspaper report I later read. Then someone stole a pack of smokes and lighter from the bench beside me and a bottle of mouthwash from my travel bag. WTF! Needless to say, considering the noises I've made over the years concerning the GOP and various arsons, cover-ups, and insurance fraud they were involved in, this all creeped me out and I left Key West that evening. I had planned stops along the way at other "Key" islands, but at this point thought better of remaining in the area, just to err on the side of prudence. I would have thought Key West was a liberal stronghold, but a little of teh Google upon my arrival home revealed the mayor Morgan McPherson, a Jeb Bush acquaintance, is a member of the Keys GOP, a group consisting of numerous notable GOP members - Creepier still, especially considering the band's rant the night before. Surely not...









So after a trip through the Everglades, stopping at the Fakahatchee Strand Nature Preserve State Park, Big Cypress Bend Boardwalk and Turner River Canoe Launch, I stopped in Naples and took a tour of the Rookery Bay Estuarine Research Reserve land with a volunteer guide named George, and visited The Naples Preserve where I saw a wild honeybee hive and several gopher tortoises. The motel was across from the Cocohatchee Estuary and I took a pontoon boat trip through the estuaries into the Gulf and later ate dinner at an excellent, albeit pricey, Chinese restaurant next door. The next day began with a quick read of the paper and taking a Kayak onto the Cocohatchee River. I then visited the excellent Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary where I saw a myriad of interesting wildlife and conversed with a number of people, including an interesting young lady and her family I later regretted not knowing better. Alas, Ohio is too far to maintain a relationship, as I've been down that road before. Soon it was time to move on the Bradenton/St. Pete/Tampa area.

The rest of the trip was not worth the trouble. After a long and dusty trip far around Port Charlotte and Fort Myers, I was met with lousy motels filled to capacity, rude people, crazy drivers, and areas that I had lived in 10 years previous which had severely declined, the economy collapsing, and everyone worth knowing from my past in the area of Pinellas and Hillsborough county had since died. The sole redeeming factor of this leg of the journey was Lettuce Lake Park on E. Fletcher in Tampa and an adorable nubile waif spotted at a gas station.

The next stop was to be Gainesville to visit the Museums of Art and Natural History. I was late getting there due to fatigue from leaf blowers in the last motel in Indian Rocks waking me at 5:30AM even thought I went to bed utterly exhausted at 2:30AM, and a police tourist trap run by Sumpter County. I had to leave the balcony door open, which amplified the wretched leaf blowers, and because the idiot who runs the motel had set the thermostat to "morgue" and shutting the vents wouldn't curtail the freezing cold. The deteriorating room had no phone, garbage can, or thermostat, and the elevator sounded like it was possessed. The locals were rude and incapable of maintaining a conversation - a big change from the last time I spent time there. Couldn't get a motel in Gainesville due to something called Gator Nationals, so I gave up and came home. Ugh!

Visitors to the state of Florida should avoid stopping anywhere near Sumpter County, and especially the Wendy's off I-75 and CR-48 at the Bushnell Exit. It is a nasty little engineered traffic trap used by the county to rob unwary tourists of their money in violation of the Federal Highway Administration's Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices - 2003 Edition - Revision 2 - Chapter 2B - Section 2B.19. First ticket in 18 years, and a million miles of driving. Watch for it, as they have their own crazed version of Barney Fife who sits all day and issues dozens of tickets for the same infraction to everyone unwary enough to venture into this area. Additionally, this clown peels out after violators like he is pursuing a murdering bank robber, thereby endangering the lives and property of those around with his reckless driving. This place, this trap, and this dangerous cop should be eliminated from public influence. They've even jacked the rates of the tickets for this particular violation WAAY over the top, and would apparently prefer that you run over their kids while boarding the school bus than make a U-turn around a barricade intentionally and unnecessarily placed in front of a Wendy's exit, yet improperly marked with a non-visible and improperly placed no-U-turn sign. FYI, I will never pay the fine, and will opt to take this trap, this county, and this yahoo cop to the State Supreme Court if necessary. Otherwise I'll opt for the jail time. In this economy, 3 hots and a cot paid for by public funding is starting to sound pretty good. Sumpter County and Officer Barney Fife #409 may Bite My Ass! (Obviously, that's not his name but I can't read the chicken scratchings on the ticket - it looks like Howie.)

In conclusion, Georgia sucks, and much of Florida now sucks nearly as much. Not one of the bloggers I know from online, some for years, would reply to a request to meet at a neutral place for a drink or quick howdy while passing through their various towns, but it turns out several had pressing personal issues to contend with and later responded, albeit too late. But if you can avoid the morass of tourists, the horrible traffic, the tailgating, speeding, weaving idiot drivers on cell-phones (all in violation of state traffic laws), the jerk yahoo cops and illegal tourist traffic traps, rip-off run-down motels, gross overdevelopment, the Bush brothers' operatives, and the exceedingly rude yet impeccably dressed pool-gate and room-door slamming right-wingers at the DoubleTree Motel who believe Bernard Madoff is a poor fellow who's getting a bum rap, the scenery and wildlife are well worth seeing.

US Attorneys, GOP Style

US Attorney's Gone Wild!

Many of those in the general population still believe that there is justice to be had in the Courts of this country. Even those that have accepted that their local courts are often corrupt tend to believe that Federal level courts adhere to a higher standard of ethics. Unfortunately, they would be very, very wrong.

Years ago, I sued a Nixon era assistant US district attorney and his serial arsonist son. The obstruction and corruption I faced while pursuing this Emory Law school pettifogger bordered on the unbelievable, and crossed into the realm of criminal. Here is short list of some of the events that transpired during this time in their attempts to nip the case in the bud:

A supposed friend pointed me towards a local attorney who said he would file suit for false imprisonment, interference with employment, slander, libel, and malicious prosecution against a serial arsonist and his ex assistant US district attorney turned 1.9 million in 5 years school board attorney father. (As an aside, your school boards are not populated by people whose interests lie in the education of your children, but rather those who are preparing to climb the ladder of local politics and profit from cronyism.) This tool waited until 5 days before the statute of limitations expired before lazily notifying me, by mail, that he wouldn't pursue the case. This left me with little recourse but to file a complaint myself, pro se. As I left his office a fire had been set in front of my car, but the fire department was already on hand extinguishing it.

Someone, ostensibly another local attorney who turned out to have an old sign in the defendants outbuilding which was burned, sent a woman to spy on me, proclaiming that "We're gonna be friends for a long time." I ended up living in her "abandoned" apartment and she showed up once a month to collect the rent. She was supposedly a high priced call-girl - a Jewish call-girl, no less. She loved to show me her list of expenditures exclaiming that "This is what it takes to keep me in the style in which I am accustomed." Ha! If I wanted a whore, I would find one that I could pay to go away, not marry. I've never hired a hooker, and I certainly wouldn't marry one. I've had a hell of a lot prettier, saner, and more humane girlfriends than her skanky ass, and I wouldn't waste my time with the gold-digging likes of that. I have many hours of hidden camera surveillance of this lawyer-tool.

In the interim, however, I was suddenly offered a job at IBM, a job I had never solicited, nor had any desire for. The pay was insulting, and the people were tantamount to crowds of curiosity seekers and prodding asswipes. I knew what they were doing, as it was pretty hard to miss. As the expiration of the statue of limitations tolled closer, I used the lobby phone at IBM to call another attorney and was talked over by a guy on another phone loudly depicting my background and familiarity with technology to whomever was on the other end. I ignored him. Yet the day after I filed the civil complaint in the local Superior Court, they took my things from my office and dumped them in the security office and told me to "Eat shit and bark at the moon."

I went to the offices of Edwin Marger, who is now law partners with Bob Barr (Yes, THAT Bob Barr), and told him the story. He claimed to be retiring but gave me a copy of a civil complaint he had filed in another matter. I used this to model my original complaint against the defendants, as I had one day remaining. Marger, among a number of other slimy GA pettifoggers, never bothered to warn me who it was I was suing. I can only assume he thought it would be amusing to observe events unfold and confirm the utter corruption of the legal system he is part of. Also, he never retired and still practices law in Jasper, GA. Freaking asshole.

So I filed my Civil Complaint. The mailbox at the apartment I was living in (the Darlington Arms in Atlanta) was torn down and I was evicted by the alleged hooker a few days later. I got this clown's Motion for Dismissal out of the mailbox as it lay on the ground before being loaded into the back of a pickup and hauled away.

So I rented a mailbox right next to the defendant's at the Marietta post office. His wife showed up repeatedly as I retrieved my mail from this box, ostensibly in some flaccid attempt to talk me out of pursuing the suit. I didn't bother to speak as I passed within 6 inches of this breeder of heathens. They had ample opportunity to "talk" before the suit was filed, while I was in jail for an arson his son had committed, and even before their retarded kid set fire to his home and truck and then signed a perjured complaint accusing me of being on his property before the fires occurred. He lied, as did his attorney father in his twisted, bizarre attempts to accuse me of placing bombs in his cars and terrorism that never occurred. In fact, I had "relations" with his uncouth alcoholic daughter a number of times, and had numerous hour long conversations with his wife. His daughter had previously pleaded with me to "Marry me, you're a fool if you don't.", and "Kill my father and we'll run away with his money." - which I assumed would have been his life insurance proceeds. They acted and appeared to be typical middle-class GA cracker trash, and little did I realize who or what they were, or how much money this clown was bleeding from the county's coffers.

The judge that was assigned this case was also the defendant's fellow mid-60's Emory University graduate, along with a local hand surgeon, Newt Gingrich, and Tillie Fowler, Jacksonville's 4th district US representative. Motions for discovery and subpoenas were filed demanding the taking of depositions of the wife and daughter of the attorney. They never bothered to appear, and the judge refused to rule on any motions, or force their compliance. In fact, this arrogant little pussbag defendant refused to even appear at the first hearing, claiming that he had nothing further to say in the matter. I assume the previous bribes to drop the criminal indictments for 11 counts of arson were supposed to cover the civil case as well. Apparently he got his ass chewed out, as he damned sure showed up the next time, red faced and stammering.

A subpoenae ducas tecum was issued to the fire department, and after their deposition and submission of libelous letters and photos of the fires, the law firm representing the fire department was canned. Apparently they had mistakenly assumed that they were supposed to represent the law, not just connected GOP cronies.

I used the law library at Emory University to prepare my briefs and do legal research, not realizing that this was the right-wing breeding tank that all of these cretins had attended. I was threatened repeatedly by people at the school, one warning that "You had better leave this man alone or he will burn you a new asshole." My place of employment was burned to the ground days after the crony judge dismissed my civil case.

But about a week preceeding this a break in occurred at the same business and when I showed up to work one evening I was met by a shattered plate glass window and a bunch of Smyrna inbreds standing around. One of them says "Look what we found" and displays a glass cutter - a standard hardware store issue glass cutter. Like a fool, I touched the damned thing, and it is probably now enshrined in some evidence locker with my fingerprints on it. Notwithstanding the fact that only an idiot would try to cut a tempered plate glass window with a carbide wheel glass cutter. But it gets far worse.

I was living with a US Navy recruiter at the time, a friend of Cobb Chief Superior Court judge Robert Flournoy, and a girl from England. The girl had never expressed any interest in my close company until the Friday I received the unwarranted dismissal of my case. After asking what I planned to do, this person, who should have had no idea what I was even talking about, implored that "You'd better not do that, you foolish boy." She kept me away from work over the weekend (I usually went to work because of the abundance of military computers that I repaired) - the same weekend that the shop was burned to the ground, along with everything I owned. She then moved out and disappeared. Turns out that the building was owned by another local attorney and he had moved a bankrupt ex-doctor client (another Emory University graduate) into the building and was apparently intending to pull an insurance fraud scam. It all fell apart, and the doctor, the lawyer, and the school board attorney all vanished. Along with the school board superintendent. The entire school board was then dismantled.

I was left standing on the street with no income, no money, no personal possessions, no electronic test equipment, and just the clothes on my back - with the Smyrna police harassing me every time I went to work as we tried to rebuild the businesses that were destroyed.

But I filed my appeal in Appellate Court, against howling objections, and when doing so the clerk insisted that I not pay the filing fee. Right, like I'm fool enough to believe that wouldn't have rendered it null and void. And all the while, I had court deputies following me around with a hand on their service revolvers. Apparently my fabricated reputation of terrorism and mental derangement had preceded my visit. This went on all the way to the state Supreme Court.

Crooks and more crooks. Republican and Democrats. All operating in unison to destroy one man's life. Worse yet, this is just a small sampling of the shenanigans I had to put up during the fiasco.

Yet after all is said and done, after all the obfuscation, the threats, the treachery, what did they gain? The idiot serial arsonist kid is dead, the attorney's alcoholic daughter destroyed her own life, her children's and several of her subsequent male victims', the defendant attorney was left alone and jobless having moved to another city, the attorney owner of the building that burned dropped out of the practice of law, claiming that "He doesn't remember anything" while simultaneously screwing my friend out of $177,000, and his ex-doctor/arsonist client fled the country - all over pocket change. According to the wife of the SE Regional State Farm Insurance manager I talked with in South Florida, State Farm was apparently not amused. The crony Judge was promoted to the State Supreme court, along with the crony Appellate Court judge who supposedly review the case and denied the appeal - both at the same time by Zell Miller - after I moved to Florida. Makes one wonder why he acted the way he did during the Bush elections - skeletons, perhaps?

So I moved to Florida, riding around the state looking for a place to live that wasn't Jacksonville, South Georgia - rescuing stranded and broken down motorists and church buses from Minnesota while visiting zoos, wildlife parks, and beaches around the state. This effort was rewarded by wildly determined attempts to run me down on an isolated strip of I-95 in the middle of the night by a semi in Duval County, a load of concrete dumped on my windshield at 65MPH on J. Turner Butler Blvd, and some of the strangest running commentary known to man every time I went out for a beer. And even though I gave the tag number of the semi to the police and FBI, nothing was ever followed up. So I moved again, and again, and again - every time someone made a strange comment about an event they should have had no knowledge of, and not discovering until 2006 who any of these people were. And no, I'm not a "Good Republican" - there is no such animal.

The final straw in this parade of lunacy was when I returned from a trip to Atlanta to find the place I had worked at had been broken into, and the woods behind set on fire. The response from the players involved, which the fire department tried to keep me away from, was, "That's what you get for picking up a girl without a helmet." Aside from the fact that I had never done such a thing, that's a pretty stupid damned excuse for arson, fraud, etc. Even the local newspaper delivery woman had to offer her two cents when she commented that "You pissed off a bunch of crooked southern politicians." No shit! After a perilous trail of subsequent events too numerous to describe here, I moved to New Jersey.

This is your taxpayer funded court, legal, and political systems at work. There is an old bromide, "Old age and treachery beats youth and skill" - believe it! Another would be "Republicans are sub-human scum, and so are Dixiecrats."

More details with links to legal documentation here. Read it and weep for your validity as a citizen of this plutocratic country - for in their eyes, you are less than dirt. Citizen overview and judicial accountability laws should be amended to every state's constitution. The judiciary as it stands is the little noticed avenue for pay-offs for those power-mongers who want to rule the world at your expense.

GOP Mascots Run Wild

(Click image for larger version in new window.)

Actually, these unfortunate mascots for the GOP are not to blame. The GOP would have destroyed the hotel and horded all the mangoes for themselves, even if half of them rotted and went to waste, at least it would keep those pesky natives from getting any for themselves.

Builders constructed a lodge in the feeding path of a small group of elephants who now travel to their favorite mango patch through the lobby of the lodge which was built in 1998. Cool!

Wild elephants stroll through hotel reception

Fucking Newt

Fucking shit, it never ends. I sit in this stinking hovel in this white trash neighborhood in this nasty ass flyover state packed with ignorant human debris until I can't stand the sight of it. And when I can take no more of the total isolation and have to get out, it's bad enough I have to drive 30 miles across town to escape the ignorant inbred worshipers of Newt, but now I can't even do that - they've found out where I go to have a beer in my vain attempts to meet a sane woman. Any stupid fuck that sits down next to me and tells me that Obama is the anti-Christ when compared to Darth Cheney and his merry band of war-mongering, war-profiteering thieves deserves to be knocked off their stool.

Christ almighty, you ignorant fucks, what part of this sentence do you not understand? I do not like Newt, I do not think he is a genius, I do not care how many damned pictures you have of you two shaking hands, and I do not for a minute think he deserves or ever stands a chance of becoming elected President. I hope he dies in a gunfight with a well armed Mexican crack dealer who speaks the language of the ghetto. I think he is a pompous demagogue media whore with an unjustly inflated ego imbued by the equally ignorant legions of crap that worship him. I think he is human garbage that crawled out of the swamps of the inbred 80 IQ state he was educated in, and his Emory University school chums are even bigger piles of steaming crap than he. In all the years of his "public service" he never came up with one original thought in service of the American public. The bulk of the Republican party should be hung along with the few remaining retards that belong to the party. And then hung again, just to make sure.

Leave it these morons to ruin a dozen or more lives over some stupid, inbred illiterate serial arsonist kid and his freakish redneck family. A fucking retard that, no matter how much they catered to his mental illness, ended up doing himself in anyway. There is a trail of broken lives littered after this little SOB and the GOP trash, all friends and fellow Emory University schoolmates of Newt, that attempted to cover for his ass. The state of Georgia retains a minimum of two criminally complicit judges from Newt's launch pad in Marietta that should be in jail, not sitting on a bench having been promoted to the State Supreme Court for their complicity with multiple counts of Arson, Perjury, Insurance Fraud, a bucketful of Canon Ethics violations, witness tampering and quite probably, attempted homicide.

So do us both a favor and keep your damned sycophants the hell away from me, you fat, slimy little whoremonger. You're behaviours will be thoroughly depicted in the book and I'm not interested in a damned thing you have to say or your whining objections.

Go Fuck Yourself.

Buy American

60 Minutes 02/15/09: Lesley Stahl examines the "Buy American" clause in the stimulus package.

I felt the confrontational attitude towards the steel company CEO was inappropriate - reflecting the views of the "World Trade Order" brokers more than the suffering public who watch this program. To me, it sounded like thinly veiled agitprop being force-fed to the weary viewing audience.

If the US economy, and not just a thimbleful of companies like CAT (who vehemently oppose the Buy American clause), are so dependant on foreign trade that we cannot even consider "Buying American", why do we sport such monstrous trade deficits? Sure doesn’t look like China's buying much of anything from us, yet we are by far their largest consumer. Worse, according to the stats I've read, American owned factories account for 70% of the manufacturing base in China. American CEOs, en masse, have uprooted entire industries and barged them overseas where workers will work for a fraction of what US workers are paid. In return, our shores are saturated with imported products which are sold at the same price as previously US made goods, yet are of substantially poorer quality and represent nothing to the US economy save an ever increasing drain on jobs, erosion of the working class, and landfills full of broken crap. Then of course there are the higher, yet unsustainable, profit margins for the idiot Barons of Industry and their slobbering stockholders.

It's not as if potential buyers of heavy equipment will suddenly abandoned CAT in lieu of, oh say, Malaysian bulldozers. It's a fairly unique market with a handful of potential players. The world buys CAT equipment because of its reputation of serviceability - no country or world business leader is going to embrace an inferior product as retaliation - it's not good for the bottom line. And if "Free Trade" is all important, why did the departing Bush administration impart a 300% tariff increase on French Roquefort Cheese - other than as a petulant middle-digit extended towards the French over Iraq and their wholly justified desire to eat hormone free beef.

This exchange instilled a curiosity as to the attitude. A quick scan of the InterTubes with teh Googles revealed what I expected. My questions were: During CATs foreign trade "boom years", how much of its overseas sales were associated with "rebuilding Iraq" and other war efforts, and what is the political affiliation of CATs CEO. Inquiring minds and all…

FWIW, Here are two old D7s in Ramadi, Iraq.

The D9 is apparently more highly revered, at a cool million each - before battle upgrades.

Military D9 Applications

I'd be interested in seeing a breakdown of Chinese purchases vs. Iraq/Israel/et al. as well as how much CAT equipment ended up in burn pits along side SUVs and computer/office equipment due to fraudulent cost-plus contracts with GOP aligned firms such as Halliburton/KBR and Caterpillar.

CAT’s CEO James W. Owens, as I suspected:

Member of the Board of IBM (2006-)
Manufacturing Council
Bush-Cheney ‘04
George W. Bush for President
The Business Council
Business Roundtable
Council on Foreign Relations
Institute for International Economics
The Conference Board Global Advisory Council
John McCain 2008
National Republican Senatorial Committee
World Resources Institute

Not exactly antithetical to the drooling sycophants of the Rush Limbaugh party.

I could be wrong, but I believe I've just expended more effort into investigating the backgrounds of these media players than the administration did in vetting potential appointees.

But now you know the rest of the story…



Funny, yet depressingly accurate: Big Box Mart - JibJab
Listen carefully to the lyrics - if you dare.

You Will Atone

You have meddled with the primal forces of nature, Mr. Beale, and I won't have it!! Is that clear?! You think you've merely stopped a business deal. That is not the case. The Arabs have taken billions of dollars out of this country, and now they must put it back! It is ebb and flow, tidal gravity! It is ecological balance! You are an old man who thinks in terms of nations and peoples. There are no nations. There are no peoples. There are no Russians. There are no Arabs. There are no third worlds. There is no West. There is only one holistic system of systems, one vast and immane, interwoven, interacting, multivariate, multi-national dominion of dollars. Petro-dollars, electro-dollars, multi-dollars, Reichmarks, rins, rubles, pounds, and shekels. It is the international system of currency which determines the totality of life on this planet. That is the natural order of things today. That is the atomic and subatomic and galactic structure of things today! And YOU have meddled with the primal forces of nature, and YOU WILL ATONE! Am I getting through to you, Mr. Beale? You get up on your little twenty-one inch screen and howl about America and democracy. There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and ITT and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today. What do you think the Russians talk about in their councils of state -- Karl Marx? They get out their linear programming charts, statistical decision theories, minimax solutions, and compute the price-cost probabilities of their transactions and investments, just like we do. We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies, Mr. Beale. The world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable bylaws of business. The world is a business, Mr. Beale. It has been since man crawled out of the slime. And our children will live, Mr. Beale, to see that perfect world in which there's no war or famine, oppression or brutality -- one vast and ecumenical holding company, for whom all men will work to serve a common profit, in which all men will hold a share of stock, all necessities provided, all anxieties tranquilized, all boredom amused.

Of course, some men will share more equally than others.

Network

Biting satire in 1976 - wholly prescient in 2009.