.

Pig's Nosed American Dream still alive and well in South Carolina!

2012-01-18T05:39:00.006-07:00

....It has to be the reason so many conservatives there have no problem
with Millionaire Mitt paying only 15% in income taxes -- the dream/myth
of one day wearing their own hog snout still exists for the poor bastards!

Unique urinals.

2012-01-12T12:53:00.017-07:00

WARNING! One or more photos in today's
blog may be offensive to mature adults.
~~~~~~~~~~~~

Sometimes, while surfing the Web, I stumble across an interesting photo. If I like it, I might save a copy for a possible future blog. Such is an example in the photo below.

Urinals in the men's room at the
SOFITEL in Queenstown, New Zealand.

I didn't know exactly how I would use it in a blog. But then some months later I came across another nice urinal photo (below). Entitled, George W. Flush, it provided a pleasant diversion, the thought of actually using it. So I saved it. (Using a similar Barack Obama model -- nonexistent, damn! -- was an equally pleasant thought as well.)

"George W. Flush"—a design by famed
urinal sculptor Clark Sorensen. Sadly,
being more of a one-of-kind art piece,
it's unavailable for actual use.

Then a week or so ago, I encountered the following urinal photo and I felt the blog on the subject finally beginning to materialize. Of those pictured herein, this one is my very favorite.

The Camaleon, a bar in Ajijic, Mexico. Featured in Fred
Reed's blog, Fred on Everything, where he adds: "A
nation's character is embodied in its whizzenzimmers,
loos, and johns. From this example, at the Camaleon,
one sees that Mexicans are stark mad. It is a pleasant
condition, and I hope that it spreads northward."

Yet, I didn't quite feel I had the material to make my urinals blog complete. But I didn't have to wait long. Thanks to our Semper Fi guys, the good ol' U.S. Marines. While the news story didn't immediately hit me, it was while washing my breakfast dishes I realized, after checking online and discovering the following image, it was news of the ultimate urinal -- just the thing to complete this blog!

From Afghanistan, a video clip frame from a New York Times website
showing four U.S. Marines urinating on the bodies of three dead Taliban.

I knew I now had the material to finish my urinals blog. (Please note the "Live Leak" tag in upper left corner of this photo most likely refers to the unauthorized release of this video to the public, not the act portrayed therein.)

I suspect these four Marines are going to take some serious heat for this. After all, it's the State Department's job to conduct foreign policy and the public relations that go with it, i.e., rather than pissing on them, it is the State Department's policy to just piss 'em all off. (Although, from the coverage this story is getting, these marines have done a pretty good job of that themselves.)

Of the four urinal photos posted here, this is the one I imagine leaves the most people "pissed."

Or at least it ought to.

Obama's costly wild horse meat mistake.

2012-01-09T10:52:00.004-07:00

The following broadcast video on this website does not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of Dada's Dally. (Except for the dog and ponies part, maybe.)

Season's best to all!

2011-12-25T08:49:00.002-07:00

Best wishes to all from Mrs. Dada

Originally published 20 years ago on December 22, 1991 --
(a Sunday), I rediscovered this Doonesbury cartoon between
the pages of my father's professional library mega-sized table
top dictionary. (Which proved a tad unwieldy in his latter
years for solving crossword puzzles.)

But I have resurrected that Doonesbury strip here at it's
creator's invitation to personalize and reprint it. So, for
Mary, a little something from Dada and Garry!

p.s. I don't even know if "Kim" was in Mike Doonesbury's
life 20 years ago.

Tis the season again! (sigh)

2011-12-17T15:46:00.006-07:00

Over on Facebook, from a friend of a friend, the following:

"As the dickering over the supposed conflict between 'Merry Christmas' and 'Happy Holidays' is amped by the media and our individual sensitivities, my tolerance for the bickering is on a downslide this year. If you have the time to complain about another person's desire to extend good wishes to you in any form, during what I was raised to believe was the Season of Peace and of Giving then you have time to do some homework on what other holidays are celebrated by groups around the world, get a grip, and adjust your attitude. Think of the children around you, behave like an adult and go and do something nice for your fellow human beings, like you're supposed to." (Bequi Medina)

That said, Dada would like to wish Happy Holidays to all friend followers of Christianity, Judaism, Kwanzaa, Paganism, Atheism, -- whatever your particular belief (or not). Can we lay down our differences for the next couple weeks of this season of celebration(s)? (Then we can resume our bickering and animosity for one another in the "New Year.")

Happy Holidays to all!

"Whom should we blow the shit out of next?"

2011-12-15T18:15:00.008-07:00

I think an exciting new competition open to all Americans of voting age could stimulate new interest in U.S. foreign policy among the populace by entering a national contest. Entitled something like "Whom Should We Bomb Next?", it might offer our secretary of state Clinton some fresh insights into the direction to take the country in the post Iraq -- Iran era.

With oversight provided by the Pentagon and posh defense contractor profiteers like Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Boeing, G.E., Dell Computer, etc., sponsoring it, just imagine the fabulous prizes that could be awarded!

Some preliminary personal thoughts on contest guidelines.

For nation state ideas, DO NOT:

- suggest Iran, Russia, China (who may be exempted, being an extremely cheap labor market for American manufacturers), all Middle East nations (to include Turkey), or Venezuela. These are already on the State Department's/Pentagon's "to do" list.

For your reasons to decimate a country's infrastructure and annihilate 10s --100s of thousands of its citizens, DO NOT use any of the following as your justification(s):

- Liberating the poor suppressed bastards / spreading democracy. (That is so Bush/Obama passé.)

- They contain people of color (this has been used since Americans first stepped ashore North America several hundred years ago).

- They live above billions of barrels of oil or are strategically important as a potential pipeline route or drone launching base. (been there, done that too!)

BE CREATIVE!

For those we should attack next after eliminating the Russians, Chinese (maybe), Turks, etc., entrants are encouraged to "think outside the box" for examples of countries or territories to exterminate: such as Finland, Israel, Bermuda, etc.

EXAMPLES:

Who: Sweden.
Reason: for awarding a Nobel Peace Prize to the world's most aggressive war monger. (It's been a constant point of contention for Obama's antagonists.)

Who: Tokelau - that tiny Pacific island nation between Hawaii and New Zealand.
Reason: They keep embarrassing the U.S. at every climate change summit by suggesting they'll be first to sink into oblivion if the U.S. keeps obstructing progress toward possible climate change solutions. It just makes us, as Americans, look so insensitive to the concerns of others! (One small minimally controversial and contaminating strategic nuke should be sufficient.)

Whoops!

2011-12-08T15:59:00.004-07:00

Dada has a suggestion for the Defense Department:

If you don't want to share your technological stealth advantages of one of this country's most sophisticated intelligence tools such as the "Beast of Kandahar" drone taken down (by overriding its controls?) over Iran this past weekend, why not stop flying it over the airways of other sovereign nations you are belligerent toward?

(Sorry. Too late for your "Beast of Kandahar")

Life isn't fair

2011-11-25T15:32:00.003-07:00

Dada suggests he might want

to give it just a little more time!

The end of backyard naked sunbathing?

2011-11-21T11:10:00.012-07:00

(click to enlarge)

Happening now:

"New Police Drone Near Houston Could Carry Weapons"

"A Houston area law enforcement agency is prepared to launch an unmanned drone that could someday carry weapons.

"To be in on the ground floor of this is pretty exciting for us here in Montgomery County," Sheriff Tommy Gage said..."He said they are designed to carry weapons for local law enforcement.

"The aircraft has the capability to have a number of different systems on board. Mostly, for law enforcement, we focus on what we call less lethal systems," he said, "including Tazers that can send a jolt to a criminal on the ground or a gun that fires bean bags known as a "stun baton."

Dada believes Americans need not concern themselves with domestic drones patrolling their skies (nor their vanishing liberties). Besides, such drones will serve as a nice compliment to a hypersonic weapon prototype belonging to the US Army which will strike targets anywhere on Earth within an hour.

Hence, local sheriff's drones will be able to handle/diffuse most situations, insuring greater security for their local communities, but, should things get out of hand, they can call for Army hypersonic weapon back-up that can obliterate the situation from the fringes of outer space within the hour.

Reaping the benefits of the latest technology! (Even if it IS all over our heads!)

It has been commanded...

2011-11-19T12:26:00.005-07:00

During her Occupy Wall Street arrest a young girl, named
Joan, of Arco, VA, suddenly receives a vision, with the voice

of God, commanding her to renew the American nation.

The Wall Street gangsters are getting even bolder. They see no harm in stealing from you in broad daylight!

2011-11-17T15:34:00.016-07:00

I hate to sound like Debbie Downer (which I am), but when the thieves protected by the government, ignored by the media, and shielded by the forces they pay to control the increasingly cantankerous public rabble now awakening, gain the boldness to openly make their end run on the remaining wealth of those who still have something to "give" them, it's time to stop debating whether to vote for Obama or Gingrich and pull our heads out of our collective ass and get angry. Like Gerald Celente....

Gerald Celente, business consultant, author, successful predictor of global economic trends, and publisher of the Trends Journal is pissed. Very pissed. And why shouldn't he be? His investments in gold futures in excess of $100,000 via MF Global were totally looted by that company's Chapter 11 trustees shortly before declaring bankruptcy.

Gerald Celente contends the correct spelling of Justice in America = "Just Us", i.e., while OWSers get their heads busted, are arrested and thrown in jail, the clowns, the mega thieves they are protesting against, walk away -- untouched -- with our money!

Celente warns all Americans to withdraw their funds from the banks because “they are going to steal all our money”.

Dada doesn't doubt this is where we're headed.

AMENDING THE AMENDMENTS:

2011-11-16T16:16:00.005-07:00

The Bill of Rights continues to be a living, evolving document as evidenced by the First Amendment as interpreted by El Paso City Council yesterday.

Example: "abridging the freedom of speech...interfering with the right to peaceably assemble..."is still prohibited except as determined by your mayor, city council or the "Downtown Management District" (a quasi-governmental/private business & development entity).

But take solace Americans. Despite your shrinking rights, as formerly guaranteed under the Constitution, it is still legal for you to yell "theater" in a crowded fire (in El Paso, at least).

Hypocrisy as a point of pride...

2011-11-11T07:20:00.018-07:00

The above video further highlights the grand display of hypocrisy that flows unabated from US leaders in the 21st Century. Following the example of its predecessor, the Bush administration, the Obama regime takes it to new heights. Apparently, hypocrisy is no longer something to be concealed. Instead, it is to be flaunted and displayed proudly before the world, as a medal around one's neck. (Instead of a noose.)

*****************

(In the spirit of Hillary Clinton's elegant display of dripping hypocrisy during her "Freedom Speech"
delivered at George Washington University this past February 16th, as captured in the video below.)

*****************

*Dada addendum, not necessarily pertinent: After posting this blog, I entered into conversation with Mrs. Dada about flowers as symbols to hint at an emotion toward, or characteristic of, someone. Wondering if there might not be a flower to represent today's topic, hypocrisy, I decided to check. Sure enough, it's Datura stramonium, or in its most common form here in the US, jimson (or James-Town) weed.

Imagining for a moment how it might be nice to present your favorite Obama administration official with a bouquet of jimson weed as a subtle way of expressing your feelings for them, I suggest you banish any thought of doing so after reading of the plant's toxicity and what could result as described in the following Wikipedia incident as experienced by British soldiers in Jamestown, VA, in 1676:

The James-Town Weed (which resembles the Thorny Apple of Peru, and I take to be the plant so call'd) is supposed to be one of the greatest coolers in the world. This being an early plant, was gather'd very young for a boil'd salad, by some of the soldiers sent thither to quell the rebellion of Bacon (1676); and some of them ate plentifully of it, the effect of which was a very pleasant comedy, for they turned natural fools upon it for several days: one would blow up a feather in the air; another would dart straws at it with much fury; and another, stark naked, was sitting up in a corner like a monkey, grinning and making mows [grimaces] at them; a fourth would fondly kiss and paw his companions, and sneer in their faces with a countenance more antic than any in a Dutch droll.

In this frantic condition they were confined, lest they should, in their folly, destroy themselves — though it was observed that all their actions were full of innocence and good nature. Indeed, they were not very cleanly; for they would have wallowed in their own excrements, if they had not been prevented. A thousand such simple tricks they played, and after eleven days returned themselves again, not remembering anything that had passed.

(Hmm, remind you of anyone's recent behavior? Rick Perry, maybe?)

Olé! Olé! Enough of the BULLshit!

2011-11-10T16:25:00.009-07:00

There's an inverse relationship between yesterday's faith in the irrational exuberance of endless market growth in value and its partner -- faith in a prosperous future for all who trust to invest in it vis a vis the unfolding reality of a collapsing economy seeped in a sea of crumbling and increasingly toxic assets of derivatives, credit default swaps and subprime mortgages.

It will make a beautiful chart for adherents of the dismal science, economists, to reference in the future. I would love to graph it out, but at this point it would be speculative at best. Hence, I shall allow time to chart the unfolding collapse more accurately for the economists. That is, of course, if any economists are left alive out of the compassion of their victims.

In the meantime, enjoy the video images of the absurd: Police officers defending Wall Street's fenced off symbol of prosperity, a raging over-sized polymer bull sculpture, against a couple of clowns and a bold matador in defense of his fallen brothers who have for years been gored by the horns of The Bull.

Solving those pesky soaring police department overtime costs

2011-11-04T08:05:00.001-06:00

Dada would like to suggest three possible solutions for the tremendous overtime costs being incurred by many police departments across the nation busy containing the Occupy movement:

1.) Increase taxes upon the lower and vanishing middle classes -- those primarily responsible for supporting Occupiers:
2.) End our foreign wars, return and deploy our military soldiers in the city streets across America, or:
3.) Simply eliminate the First Amendment guaranteeing their right of free speech and assembly.

2011-11-03T05:33:00.001-06:00

....across the street from the boarded up Wells
Fargo and burned out Bank of America.

Imagine returning home from the Middle East to discover you have to fight to save your country.

2011-11-02T06:33:00.014-06:00

"Nonviolence is fine as long as it works." ~Malcolm X

("Remember, Malcolm X was talking about the Earth's most violent species here." ~Dada)

Scene from Call of Duty, Modern Warfare 3

Sometime in the middle of last Sunday's Eagle's rout of the Dallas Cowboys (at 21-0, I wasn't paying much attention), the last part of a commercial during a time out caught my attention.

Saying something like, "Imagine returning home from the Middle East to discover you have to fight to save your country."

It was an ad for Modern Warfare 3's "Call of Duty" video game being released later this month.

While *the enemy* was left up to us, in light of recent events, it's not too difficult to imagine circumstances that might give rise to just such a scenario on American soil.

Yes, as Malcolm X said, "Nonviolence is nice as long as it works."

I would love to know Scott Olsen's opinion on that but, as I understand it, he's lost his ability to speak.

In the west Texas town of El Paso....

2011-10-27T17:26:00.004-06:00

Photo by Mrs. Dada

For those unfamiliar with El Paso:

In this city's heart, there is a plaza surrounded by megalithic structures of our nation's banking industry. And in their shadows that creep daily across the dwarfed plaza surrounded by these Goliaths, there has arisen a village of tents with residents who in an earlier historic time would have been called "Davids". They come to this plaza, against all odds, in hopes of repeating history.

Dada wishes them well.

Sunday El Paso Times UNEXPURGATED Doonesbury they didn't post

2011-10-23T08:56:00.017-06:00

Taking it to the banks!

2011-10-22T09:18:00.007-06:00

Well, what an exciting day yesterday turned out to be. Starting off as just another day, I decided to spend part of the morning opening an account at a second local credit union in which to transfer our closed accounts at two of the nation's thirty largest banks.

Nothing particularly *big* about that, other than the good feeling I was enjoying until suddenly dwarfed by what followed: the hugest damn withdrawal made in recent history!

Yes, after 2 years, 9 months, and 2 days, president Obama finally fulfilled the very first thing he said he would do if elected our president: withdraw all US troops from Iraq! (Never mind Obama's promise fulfillment comes in response to Iraq's, not America's, demand we get the hell out.)

Was it coincidental my puny bank withdrawals, were trumped (embarrassingly so) by Obama's withdrawal which he promised, "we could take to the bank"? Probably.

But finally, being the first thing done that he promised, let us celebrate the fact and ponder: What's next? Letting Bush-Era Tax Cuts Expire? Immigration Reform? Closing down Guantanamo Bay? I wouldn't bank on it.

Occupy El Paso pics from Friday

2011-10-22T07:40:00.008-06:00

The staff of Dada's Dally strolled through the Occupy El Paso
neighborhood on Friday afternoon, visiting with its residents.

Washington's plan to salvage the economy

2011-10-20T11:46:00.001-06:00

Dada corrects the Coen Brothers on a casting error in their movie, "No Country For Old Men"

2011-10-19T10:15:00.018-06:00

Occupy El Paso reveals "No Country For Old Men" miscasting.
(Just a minor criticism of an otherwise excellent movie!)

In the movie, Albuquerque was cast in the role of El Paso, and El Paso's sheriff (and former El Paso Chief of Police) was stereotyped as a typical Southern, rotund, out-of-shape older sheriff with a heavy southern drawl. Recent El Paso sheriffs show this casting could not have been more wrong!

As an example, a story in this morning's El Paso Times covering the Occupy El Paso action taking place on San Jacinto Plaza in the heart of downtown quoted an occupier regarding a visit they received from our sheriff yesterday afternoon: "We just got a real generous donation from Sheriff Wiles. He brought us eight boxes of pizza for all the protestors out here."

Kudos to our sheriff!

El Paso's loss = Austin's gain

Below is a video of former El Pasoan Dave Cortez, now of Austin, explaining the best way for depositors to withdraw their (own damn) money from big banks without upsetting those banks , thus avoiding the recent messy, much publicized, attempt of same by La Guardia Place Citibank customers last week.

Nice going, Dave!

Military wives spoke up

Tuesday afternoon - Occupy El Paso Mrs. Dada (right) getting into the spirit

Mrs. Dada and I visited Occupy El Paso for a couple of hours yesterday. It was great meeting and visiting with new people with whom we share much in common.

As we were talking with others, I noticed two women approaching with a young girl of three or four. I got the impression they wanted to join the conversation. They did. We learned they were the wives of Ft. Bliss soldiers. One's husband (the one with the young daughter) is currently in Afghanistan. And neither of these young wives were buying the Army's "lies" fed their husbands; "lies" of the soldiers being "heroes" for serving their country; of protecting our freedoms from Iraqis, and Afghanis.

And aside from their reservations about their husband's employer, I found them to be very, very well informed about other policies in which our government engages. You might say they are Kool-Aid intolerant, i.e., unable to swallow what so many Americans willing swill to wash down the endless fears they are continuously fed in the media via their government.

Yes, great meeting and visiting with new people we share much in common. Indeed!

Maybe we're not dreaming. Maybe it really IS an efe-ing nightmare!

2011-10-17T16:07:00.012-06:00

Ever get the feeling you're on the wrong bus, headed in the wrong direction, you can't get off and whoever is in control of all that is putting the squeeze on you?

*****************

Well, today -- Monday, October 17th -- began a huge US "exercise" consisting of 41 massive C-5 transports testing their delivery capability "to provide a rapid strategic airlift response to major crises and contingencies ... the giant US transports will drill for landings in Israel and Saudi Arabia. The aircraft will be packed with command and control elements and fighting units with full equipment." (Gee, why didn't I hear anything about this on the evening network news?)

The timing of the US unveiling of the alleged Iranian plot last week to kill the Saudi Arabian ambassador to this country in this country was, I'm sure, coincidental to this week's Middle East massive airlift operation, but I had to admire the striking resemblance of Hillary Clinton's warning to Iran afterward to that of *Colon* Powell's February 5, 2003 revelation before the UN Security Council of WMDs in Iraq (which, of course, turned out to be fiction much as I suspect the Iranian plot is). It left me pondering who does have the bigger "juevos."

Good fiction! Like Obama sending 100 combat equipped US troops into Uganda to advise opponents of the Lord’s Resistance Army rebels who have been accused of grievous human rights abuses there. Sounds humanitarian enough, despite a recent discovery of a rich new Ugandan oil field expected to yield 2.5 - 6 billion barrels of oil which, as I'm sure, has no connection to our "good intentions."

But hey, it's good fiction that ends up costing us tens of thousands of innocent lives and tens or hundreds of billions of dollars, right?

Locally, I was surprised during last Thursday's visit to my dentist. As always, the conversation opener was what I was doing in the stock market. Doc knows what to expect. "Nothing," or "watching my penny stocks go to zero." What surprised me was his answer to the same question: "I'm basically out of the market," he said, leaving me surprised, pleased, and curious to where he's fleeing with his treasures; to what he considered a safe place for his money. "Property, I'm thinking of buying property -- in Dallas," he said.

This was great news to me, a constant contributor to his retirement security, I heartily endorsed his decision. Of course, when economic collapse comes, it's impossible to foresee all possible ramifications, but owning something tangible, like property, sounds like a good idea, so long as hyperinflation doesn't over-run his ability to pay the taxes on it.

And then there's the story on tonight's local news out of New Mexico, about the spaceport there financed to the tune of 209 million taxpayer's dollars, much to the pleasure of billionaire Sir Richard Branson and his Virgin Galactic Gateway to Space at America's Spaceport. At this afternoon's christening, Branson swilled champagne while danging from its rafters during the dedication for his facility that will provide 450 people (150 of whom were present at today's ceremony) who have purchased$150,000 -- $250,000 tickets (I guess the difference being whether you purchased a first class ticket for $250K or $150K for mere "coach") for a 2 1/2 hour flight, the high point of which will include five minutes of weightlessness with Earth views only seen by astronauts til now.

As New Mexico governor Susanna Martinez assures increasingly economically edgy state taxpayers, once operational, Branson's Spaceport will provide a couple hundred New Mexicans with jobs. After all, there's always a need for janitors, trash collectors, and toilet cleaners.

When you hear of the 99% Occupy Wall Streeters, there are probably no Virgin Galactic passengers among them. If you can't relate to those risking arrest of their asses on Wall Street as well as streets across America for a better America, perhaps you are one of the more fortunate 1%ers with a ticket to outer space or dreamer who thinks they may one day be able to fly high with those who already can.

Current Melt Value of Coins

For those of us without such worries, it may be time to start looking for those old silver coins stored away in the back of closet shelves, filing cabinets, or bank safety deposit boxes, etc. (For heaven's sake, get 'em out of this later storage space if you ever hope to see 'em again!) If things get really bad, a couple of pre-1965 Kennedy half dollars for a 12 oz. bottle of water might buy you another day or so.

Why am I gagging?

2011-10-16T15:58:00.005-06:00

So inspired (!), I wrote the following vignette after reading something said by the late George Carlin.*

***************

A Vignette
by Dada

Child: "Mom, what's The American Dream?"

Mother: "It's an ideal, a kind of fantasy where it's every American's right at birth to become a billionaire if they just work hard, or they have a daddy like Sam Walton, Warren Buffet, or Bill Gates."

Child: "So, The American Dream's not real? It doesn't really exist?"

Mother: "Oh no, it exists alright -- in your dreams. You just have to be asleep to believe it!"

* "It's called The American Dream because you have to be asleep to believe it" by George Carlin; a modern myth still promoted by the likes of Sean Hannity, Glen Beck, Herman Cain, etc. amid an American economy in the final stages of putrefaction and still being chewed, swallowed and digested by millions in their "oddiences."

Honking at Hookers

2011-10-12T15:28:00.002-06:00

With the world seeming to fall apart all around us, Dada
presents the following 100 seconds of distraction. Enjoy!

Are we being played? Nobody could make this up, right?

2011-10-12T14:51:00.007-06:00

Calling the alleged Iranian terrorist plot unveiled yesterday a "violation of US and international law" (note, something the US does globally, continuously, with impunity), secretary of state Clinton went on to tell the Associated Press, "the idea that they would attempt to go to a Mexican drug cartel to solicit murder-for-hire to kill the Saudi ambassador, nobody could make that up, right?" (my emphasis, her words)

The beginning is near! (Ya think?)

2011-10-09T11:56:00.002-06:00

In the 16th century, melancholia was the elective illness

of the exceptional man, of he who had nothing above him.
During the Romantic period, it stood at the crossroads of
creative genius and madness. Today, it is the situation of
every individual in Western society. ~ Alain Ehrenberg

Occupy El Paso

2011-10-09T10:11:00.003-06:00

Clip of Dada (arrow) Friday evening
(from El Diario video below)

Quote of the Day

2011-10-08T18:33:00.004-06:00

America bumbles about the world like a blind man, and doesn't know it. Its contempt for everywhere else, its inability to conceive that maybe other peoples and places don't want to be like America, leads to disaster after disaster. Washington was going to invade Iraq, which with gratitude would go all democratic and be like Massachusetts, and the other Arab nations would follow suit, and so we would remake the Arab world according to Fox News.

Americans believe this stuff. There is probably no one in France, and here I include asylums, drains, and morgues, who could be so narcissistically stupid. ~ Fred Reed

Occupy El Paso, Friday evening, 10/7/11

2011-10-08T11:47:00.005-06:00

During Occupy El Paso's meeting in San Jacinto Plaza last evening,
El Lagarto unexpectedly lunged skyward. What suddenly then fell to
the ground at our feet? Was it a piece of the Moon? A broken tooth?

In time all walls fail.

2011-09-27T09:52:00.008-06:00

In 2006 I wrote a blog about walls. From walls of flowers and love, walls built out of fear, walls with peep holes and the strongest walls of all -- the invisible walls.

Seeing a new wall this past week made from two of the materials mentioned therein -- men and plastic -- in, of all places, New York's Wall Street section, I have reposted that blog below.

It was interesting to see a plastic wall being held by police officers surrounding Wall Street protestors. The nice thing about that kind of wall I suppose is, with their hands busy holding up a plastic wall, police officers are not able to use their clubs or pepper spray. Not to worry, however, their supervisors took care of that part.

***********************

(revised from original August, 2006 edition)

I'd like to devote today's blog to walls. Walls are everywhere, but I seldom think about them. So let's start with one of my favorite walls. This one is one of many great walls in Taos, New Mexico, that are made of adobe. It's simple, yet elegant. I took this picture a couple of years ago when I thought it was in danger of being torn down. But thankfully it wasn't. It was just repaired and remains intact. I like it. (A 2010 visit revealed this wall has been torn down; a new faux adobe wall stands in its place.)
The job of this particular wall is to delineate private property from public property. As you walk along outside, it tells you, "Stay the hell out!" yet allows you to peek inside. That's nice.

Speaking of peeking through walls, there are new dressing room walls springing up at one of the stores of the English boutiques chain by Ann Summers. They sell lingerie among other items. This newly updated store will intentionally have walls with holes in them.
According to an "Evening News" article, "cubicles in the new-look store will have small spy hole windows at eye-level. The idea is that women can throw open the peep hole, allowing their partners a peek at what they have to look forward to, without having to step out in front of other shoppers."

That's a nicely conceived wall. If they succeed in attracting more men into their stores as hoped, you can probably expect walls with holes to begin popping up eventually in American stores like Victoria's Secret.

There are walls designed to keep you out for your own protection. They keep you from getting too close to dangerous animals or falling into deep, sometimes sharp or hard places and killing yourself. As unbelievable as it may seem, there exist some people who still insist on feeding the bears by hand through such walls or leaning in just a little closer over them for a better shot of the canyon.

Walls can be made from many different things. Like the adobe, metal and sheet rock ones above, but here's an example of a wall made of much, much weaker and cheaper material which has proven to be far, far tougher than most walls. It'll remain that way so long as people have faith that yellow plastic ribbon with the word "Police" inscribed somewhere on it is very tough material. Thus far it has been.
Another material often used in walls is people. These can be very strong also and usually prevail in protecting things like democrats and republicans while holding conventions behind walled gathering centers.

On an even larger scale, human walls can be used to save the nation from undocumented immigrants coming through Mexico across our southern border. These have been far less successful. Maybe that's because immigrants are more passionate about their needs and less caring for their safety should they get caught in pursuit of those needs than their more comfortable and passive American counterparts.

Oh sure, there were a few times when the human walls came close to failing here in the U.S. One such harrowing moment that immediately comes to mind is the 1968 democratic national convention in Chicago. There, unruly mobs gave police all they could handle. In 2004, a couple hundred thousand demonstrators outside the republican national convention, while unnerving in number, were basically peaceful, thus allowing those inside the convention to continue their agenda of ignoring popular demands.

Recently our southern border has been strengthened by employing a human wall. In scenes not unlike these, thousands of our national guardsmen are sent marching off towards Mexico. The human border wall's been a wall with lots and lots of holes. Bush is trying to patch them with more people mortar.

While conventional walls of steel and concrete are strong, they are rigid and inflexible. Human walls are more fluid and unlike their non-human counterparts, can shoot guns. And when necessary, they can even "fall back" rather than be over-run.

However, it may help to remember in time all walls fail. It's just a question of when.

The biggest wall failure in recent history was the Berlin Wall which collapsed in 1989.
While it was originally designed and erected to keep people in, it also made a nice canvass for budding artists in need of self expression who were left "outside."

Most walls are built to keep people out. The most spectacular example of that, of course, would be the Great Wall of China. Built in the Third Century, B.C., it stretched across 1,500 miles of China's northern border to discourage invaders from entering. But it failed in that purpose.
Today, however, the wall succeeds when used to draw people in--as a big old tourist attraction. It also continues in another unintended purpose, that of a source for construction workers to raid for building materials for other smaller walls and use in roadway paving.

Here's a couple examples of walls on far smaller scales. These that follow are similar to the Berlin Wall, i.e., designed to keep people in, not keep them out.
Here's a common, everyday prison. Prisons continue to propagate across the American landscape likes hordes of rabbits. As they expand in number, so does the percentage of Americans who have taken up residence behind their walls.

While our current government often hides behind White House, Pentagon and congressional walls and halls to keep people away, more and more of the public is hoping to one day see these same government servants behind prison walls. To keep them away from us!

On an even smaller scale, there are the following little walls:Scattered throughout America in corporate offices that have yet to move worker's jobs offshore are the walls of the fabled cubicles. (Sadly, this photo is from an office that has gone to India.)

I was fortunate to escape my job in corporate America before cubicles invaded our office. So I'm not sure what their exact purpose is. I really have no idea. Unless it's to dehumanize the workers behind them.

In my brief look at walls, these are probably the most touching ones. They are the walls erected to honor those who are no longer with us. Some represent policies of folly that took loved ones from us because of our national hubris.Other, less permanent walls, spring up immediately after a tragedy. Often made of flowers, notes to and photos of lost loved ones. The wall born of grief after 9/11 being the prime example.

But I want to make a brief mention of probably the most prevalent walls of all. They are the strongest but often the most subtle of all walls. And they are very difficult for most to see. Not so much because they can't be seen, but because those living behind them are often very blind. Sorry, I don't have any pictures of them. They are the walls of dogma.

Established dogmas exist as unassailable beliefs. They are walls erected specifically for defense against anyone skeptical enough to question or doubt the belief systems (BS) they protect. I recently heard Naomi Klein refer to such walls as "intellectual police lines."

Perhaps the heartiest (and most significant) of these dogmatic walls are maintained by religions and their churches. I'll not focus on those here because of the heated passions they can provoke. If your passions are aroused by the mere mention of these institutions and my refusal to devote time to them, whether believer or cynic, you illustrate -- and should appreciate -- my point.

Religious dogma is closely followed by governments and their political party subsets, increasingly, multinational businesses and, not least of all, educational institutions and the academic experts who populate their hallways.

Governments give us pretty flags of colorful cloth to swear our allegiance to. Symbolizing our particular BS, if challenged to the extreme, one is obligated to kill or die for it in its defense.

Business provides us logos to wear on clothing or sport on the ass ends of our vehicles to proclaim our allegiances to them. Sometimes, as an arm of their government, they help write the national BS. Taken to the extreme like here in the U.S., business determines our BS by promoting fear and our reaction to it--wars -- but, hey, it's good for business.

Political parties give us symbols, like elephants and asses, and formidably exclude serious challenges from third parties and extremist views of members within their own. Mainstream media protect the BS of all of these.

And finally, educational institutions write our histories for us. Histories constructed under the prevailing paradigms of the day which in time congeal and harden into BS's of unassailable dogma such institutions purport to exist to refute.

While there are all kinds of walls, these are a few that come to my mind. From the most obvious to the most subtle and hardest to see. While serving many different purposes, in time they all will perish. Perhaps we should give thanks.

"Thoughts on Fathers, on Integrity and on a Failed Presidency"

2011-09-24T09:11:00.017-06:00

(Dada note: After reading the following blog, I was so impressed I asked its author if I might reprint it here on Dada's. My thanks to Thomas Wark, aka A Bordello Pianist.)

*****

As the days grow shorter and cooler and the angle of the sun bathes desert and mountain with the year's most special kind of light, Brandi and I spend more and more time out there, listening to the silence. I can't tell what my uncharacteristically pensive boxer-shepherd is thinking, but I'm thinking about fathers and about integrity.

I think of my father and his father and their passion for the works of Shakespeare. I remember an autumn Saturday in the woods with my Dad. We were "hunting" with our .22s but the squirrels in that Ohio woodland were quite safe; the walk, the companionship, the mutual appreciation of the silence, the sunlight, the falling leaves and the acorns and the scents of deepening fall -- these were more important than shooting at squirrels.

Something I had said the night before troubled Homer Arthur Frederick Wark, the autocrat of Herbert Avenue. Quoting an English teacher, I said that Polonius in Hamlet was an unmitigated hypocrite and so his famous advice to his son Laertes, one of my father's favorite passages, was but so much eloquent bullshit.

When we paused to rest on the trunk of a fallen tree, he turned to me and said softly, "It's about integrity." Shakespeare, he said, used the playwright's tools, from irony ('. . .clothes make the man. . .') to moral imperative ('This above all, to thine own self be true. . .') to place eternal verities in the mouth of a minor and not entirely admirable character. He handed down to me his own moral imperative: "If only men of perfect character can be held to speak truth, scant truth would ever reach human ears. After all, the world could give us only one Lincoln; it can never give us another."

It was Chris Hedges, one of today's most important American writers, who set me to ruminating about fathers and integrity, when I read his recent article based on a long conversatisn with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

Hedges:

"Wright, who perhaps knows Obama better than nearly any other person in the country, sees a man who sold his principles for the chimera and illusion of power. But once Obama achieved power he became its tool, its vassal, its public face, its brand."

To Hedges, Obama is Wright's personal Judas: "Obama's politically expedient decision to betray and abandon his pastor (Wright) exposed his cowardice and moral bankruptcy. In that moment, he surrendered the last shreds of his integrity." Now merely a "black Mascot for Wall Street," Obama, Hedges writes, must "grapple with the fact that he was a traitor not only to his pastor, the man who married him and Michelle, who baptized his children and who kept him spiritually and morally grounded, but to himself. Wright retains what is most precious in life and what Obama has squandered -- his soul.

"I grew up as a Christian," Hedges writes. "My father was a pastor. I graduated from a seminary. I can distinguish a Christian pastor from the slick imposters and charlatans. Wright preaches the radical and unsettling message of the Christian Gospel. He calls us to live the moral life. He knows that the measure of our lives as individuals and as a nation is reflected in how we treat our most vulnerable. And he knows on whose side he stands. Obama, who like Judas took his 30 pieces of silver and betrayed someone who loved him, withers into moral insignificance in Wright's presence."
Wright, also the son of a pastor, thunders his own and his father's moral imperative, again and again, in his conversation with Hedges. The uncompromising eternal verities drive themselves home in his voice, like Polonius.

"President Obama was selected before he was elected," Wright said, "and he is accountable to those who selected him. Why do you think Wall Street got the break? Why do you think the big three [financial institutions] were bailed out? Those were the ones who selected him. We didn't select him. We don't have enough money to select anybody. You're accountable to those who select you. All politicians are. (Obama) is accountable to the ones that put him where he is. Preachers, pastors, ministers, we are not accountable to these people."

Selected before he was elected. Think back, America. Think back to the Democratic National Convention of 2004. Somewhere, probably in Boston, very powerful and no doubt very rich people reached down into the murk of Illinois state politics and selected an obscure black politician to speak to Democrats and to the world in prime time amid expertly orchestreated media hype, both before and after. With his acceptance of their pieces of silver, Barrack Obama had the presidency conferred upon him, and lost his soul. His betrayal of Wright was inevitable from that moment on.

Hedges (quoting Wright):

"In February 2007 on [a broadcast of 'Religion and Ethics' I said there will come a time when Obama will have to distance himself from me," Wright said. "Now that's February 2007. So the fact that he had to distance himself from me does not come as a surprise."

Nor is what follows a surprise, coming as it does from this stern demander of Christian principles, this apostle of truth, this custodian of the eternal verities:

"I was walking through the airport a few weeks ago," Wright said. "I saw on the cover, I think, of Time Magazine, Osama bin Laden's picture. The caption on the cover said 'Justice.' I said, 'How about murder? It was an assassin's hit.' What really bothered me as I read more about it was that Barack and Hillary [Clinton] and the war folk were sitting in the war room watching the hit. There were cameras in the field. It was a hit, two right above the eyebrow. Why, why, why did you murder that man? We have international courts. We have trials like the Nuremberg trials. Why did you murder him? Why not put him on trial?

"And I sat up in the middle of the night, about 10 days later, with the answer. I said, because you didn't want him to talk. If he starts talking on the stand everything comes unraveled. We will have to look at the Cheney war machine. A trial would rip to shreds the lies we have been telling ourselves and our American public. We can't afford that, so we murder him. We murder him and call it justice. That one really hurt. I said to myself, this is the Barack you once knew who cared enough about humankind to work in Altgeld Gardens with the poor, to not run against an African-American female, who now calls for a professional Navy SEAL assassination, a hit, and watches it. It's like that story you heard your dad preach and you know from seminary in Acts, where the demons said to the seven sons of Sceva, Jesus I know and Paul I know, but who are you? Who have you become?"

* * *

"One of you shall betray me." (Matthew, 26:21)

"Is it I, Lord?"

"He it is, for whom I shall dip the sop, and give it him." (John 23:26).

Art as metaphor?

2011-09-15T11:36:00.010-06:00

Maybe it's time I broke out the old oils and brushes. Seems artist Alex Schaefer has found his paintings with the following theme sell better than his others. This colorful and pleasant one of a Bank of America brought him $3,601 on eBay.

Bank of America, 6" X 8" by Alex Schaefer

But it was this one below, likely purchased by a fan of Chase Bank, that enriched Schaefer by $25,000! It was this one that also drew the attention of a couple of police officers as he was painting it, followed up by another visit or two by police wanting to know if maybe he wasn't a terrorist?

Schaefer describes his impressionistic bank paintings as "visual metaphor for the havoc that banking practices have caused to the economy." Dada calls 'em, "Nice!"

Chase Burning, 22" X 28" oil on canvas, by Alex Schaefer.

Saturday was Medea Benjamin's birthday, so I sent her a birthday wish on Facebook...

2011-09-12T16:39:00.005-06:00

Dada posted to Medea Benjamin

Medea: I dearly love you. My wife knows this, and she approves! That's because she loves you too! We both love you for your wonderful bravado to stand up to The Powers That Be for all us. Thanks for being an extension or our feelings. Hope you're having a wonderful day today. Happy Birthday and many, many more! You ARE a national treasure!

Medea Benjamin lol. much love back at ya! both of you!!!

Day II wrap-up report of Parks and Rec's annual end of the year dog's swim party

2011-09-12T16:10:00.003-06:00

Adorned in swim trunks, prepared to get very wet, I was determined to coax my blog editor Sam into the pool during the second and final day of the annual dog swim party hosted by El Paso's by Parks and Rec. This is Mrs. Dada's video frame capturing Sam at the point of his deepest venture into the dog-infested waters.

This is back-sliding from last year's progress when Sam slipped, not once but twice, off the pool's edge into the over-his-head waters (three feet in depth)!

I would have considered this year a disappointment, but realized Sam is a hopeless desert land-lubber. That and the fact, he had loads of fun sating his love for the hundreds of dogs and people present.

Parks and Rec's annual end of the year dog's swim party and...

2011-09-10T12:03:00.004-06:00

...our blog Editor, Sam, takes *FIRST PLACE* in
the Three Meter German Sheppard Low Hurdle!!

Congratulations, Sam, from the staff of Dada's Dally!

END OF THE TIMES SIGN #37

2011-09-10T06:23:00.004-06:00

For visitors on limited time schedules to its historic city, Rome
has prioritized ancient "must see" sites for their convenience.

9/10/2011 El Paso Times photo by Amy Sancetta/Associated Press

How much you say they were into you for?

2011-09-09T09:48:00.002-06:00

From this morning's El Paso Times Editorial Board:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"When we first heard the story, we assumed it must have happened in some Third World police state, not here.

"A woman who has no criminal history gets picked up by the authorities based on a tip that she may be concealing illegal narcotics on her person. She is detained for several hours, during which time she was taken to a Las Cruces hospital, where she was subjected to a forcible body cavity search.

"The good news: No illegal narcotics were discovered, and the woman was free to leave.

"The bad news: She was later billed $1,122 by the hospital for the search. To the surprise of nobody, she hired an attorney and refused to pay the bill. Wednesday, we learned that Metro Narcotics did the right thing and agreed to pay her bill.

"This story raised so many questions.

"Perhaps most amazing is the amount of the bill. More than $1,100 for a cavity search? Did they send in a whole search party?"..............

And the American economic future bleakens!

2011-09-07T12:35:00.013-06:00

A comment made to Dada's blog of last Friday entitled Another Labor Day holiday and I ask myself, "Why?" deserves to be posted here on my front page. Why? Because it may portend the future for many of America's"disorganized laborers."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"The husband & I both got the day off as a paid holiday. But he's already been given notice 450 workers will lose their jobs sometime in the near future.

"My workplace announced they will soon be outsourcing to a company (redacted) to take lengthy web help calls.

"'Nobody is losing their job' we were told , still i wondered if they simply omitted the word 'yet', from that declaration.

"It turns out (redacted) company has people join their ranks by paying to become independent contractors, and a corporation (of one).

"The potential employee pays for their own background screening, testing, class fees, provides their own computer, a twice monthly $20 fee for the pleasure of working, you pay for your own computer, internet & phone connections. You pay to become a corporation & and best of all, getting liability insurance is optional! You are also responsible for doing your own taxes."

As has been pointed out to me, "self employed people pay a higher tax fee, and that not having liability insurance means the employer/vendor can sue you, as well as the Arise company itself."

"Plus they could at any time bump up their monthly fee from $40 to ???? (sky's the limit??)

"In turn they promise you a minimum 15 hours of work per week. (emphasis Dada's)

"By being a corporation, all of the things that are basic workers rights now-- sick leave FMLA family extended sick leave, paid vacation, health care benefits, retirement savings plan... are all off the table."

"Looks like they have GM's Onstar & even a contract with MAC/Apple computers!

"Wow!

"If this is a new trend, it strips workers of any of the most basic rights, including unpaid time off for medical leave w/job protection.

"Maybe even a double edged sword-- they offer this position, which then negates your ability to collect unemployment because when unemployed you are not allowed to refuse work?

"Hey! I did not just fall off the turnip truck... it is not far fetched to wonder if these tactics may arrive @ my workplace....

"Prety bleak, Eh?"

*Thanks Fran (of Ramblings blog)

Is Texas burning?

2011-09-06T12:02:00.001-06:00

Photo of Bastrop wildfire, 9-5-2011
500 homes and structures consumed so far

JUST BEFORE GOD DECIDES HE NEEDS TO VACUUM THE FURNITURE

2011-09-04T12:05:00.008-06:00

*with a little tweaking by Dada

Another Labor Day holiday and I ask myself, "Why?"

2011-09-02T09:45:00.009-06:00

The three men I most admired, my father and two older brothers, all deceased, were likened to monkeys this past week by a friend. That was real difficult to read. But after the initial shock, I realized it was nothing personal. That's because he had included millions and millions of other Americans with them in his comparison.

Quoting my friend, "A monkey can turn a nut," was his comment comparing the skills of millions of current and past American workers to those of monkeys. Main difference being, the monkeys are non-union, work-for-peanuts monkeys versus the former and few organized American laborers remaining who are getting paid (in his example) $45-$50/hr. on assembly lines to turn nuts.

Last September I advocated revoking Labor Day* as a national holiday. With US manufacturers capable of chasing down the cheapest available labor anywhere on Earth, wages will tend lower and lower globally toward minimum subsistence levels. (Monkeys will always be paid something; to keep them from getting too rowdy and unruly.)

Meanwhile, the dwindling ranks of organized American Labor are increasingly disdained by more and more Americans who, despite those feelings, love their Labor Day holidays.

Hey, Labor Day's another chance for a long weekend with family and friends; to swill beer and grill burgers.

If you're fortunate enough that it's a paid holiday, give thanks to unions.

********************

September, 2010
Let's quit pretending. Just abolish Labor Day!

*Of all U.S. holidays celebrated, Labor Day is the one I find most offensive. Not because it celebrates the hard fought for (and many won) concessions by America's organized labor forces, sometimes at extreme sacrifices to include lives, but precisely because of the exact opposite -- the total vilification and decimation of the American labor movement that fought for such benefits as higher wages, employer-provided health insurance, pensions, holidays and paid sick leave. In its heyday, the gains made by unionized labor pressured non-union shops to increase same for their workers, resulting in a strong, secure middle class. A middle class now in a state of putrefaction.

Deliciously ironic is many, many of those Americans celebrating Labor Day with friends and family in backyard gatherings or at parks, waterfronts and mountains around barbeques and mini beer kegs this weekend are folks who agree with such polls as a 2007 one conducted by Gallup that ranked Ronald Reagan as the 2nd greatest president in U.S. History -- just behind Abraham Lincoln! Ironic because Reagan himself, twice president of the Screen Actor's Guild union and supporter of Poland's Solidarity union led by Lech Wałęsa, was big Kahuna as buster of the U.S. Air Traffic Controller's union, firing 13,000 of its members in 1981 and giving encouragement to all industries struggling under the yoke of American middle class enhancing unions to follow his example.

From the heyday of organized labor that once represented 1/3 of all private workers in the U.S. in the mid-20th Century, unions today represent less than 8% of those workers. Unions are dead and the middle class is following them in growing numbers in a grand march to graveyards across America.

So as we celebrate another holiday this coming Monday, let's cancel once and for all the hypocrisy of hoisting a tall cool one before that second game of family beach volleyball played amidst wafting aromas of burgers and ribs in some phony pretense of honoring labor. The Labor movement is dead!

Call it by its rightful name, whatever you decide, be it a tribute to deregulation, free markets, free trade, "Wall Street Day," or a recognition of tax cuts to the rich that supposedly benefit their less fortunate underlings with the trickle down jobs that still remain after those that have fled offshore; jobs for lower pay and less benefits. But please, please (!), don't call it Labor Day.

Oh, and by the way, it'll be a holiday without pay! It's what we've earned. It's what we deserve.

A Tale of Two School Districts (or, "Teach your children well....")

2011-08-30T07:01:00.005-06:00

IN FRESNO:

Fresno School Superintendent Larry Powell "agreed to give up $800,000 in salary that he would have earned over three years until his term expires in 2015. Powell will run 325 schools and 35 school districts with 195,000 students, all for less than what a starting California teacher earns.

Meanwhile....

IN EL PASO:

El Paso Independent School District Superintendent, Lorenzo Garcia, was arrested by the FBI and jailed earlier this month for allegedly defrauding his school district of $450,000 by setting up a sole source vendor "company" through a personal lady "friend" for educational math materials. Garcia's mail fraud and theft charges could result in 20 and 10 years imprisonment respectively and a $250,000 fine.

While Fresno Superintendent Powell asks "How much do we need to keep accumulating? There's no reason for me to keep stockpiling money," El Paso's Superindent Garcia seems to be saying, "You can never have enough!" (even if he has to steal it from taxpayers and their children's futures).

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Dada would like to editorialize about the two stories above, but I won't. (Oh hell, why not?)

One seems to illustrate the growing philosophy in America of "grab all you can, while you can" (the ship's going down?).

Personal wealth and the method by which it is gained matters less and less. It's the madness for such wealth that becomes the be all, end all, goal. Juxtaposed against the rarer question of just how much does one need, how much is enough, begs at least a moment's reflection.

Ironically, the new American (im-)morality in this unusual example gets taken to the woodshed for the alleged theft of a few hundred thousand dollars, while banks, speculators, market manipulators, tax evaders and war profiteers responsible for the loss of billions (trillions) of dollars from the taxpayers treasury are held in high respect and walk free among us.

Perhaps this story illustrates the government still prosecutes "petty thievery" to encourage we, the wee folk, to remain honest as we're being robbed blind by the pillars of American society?

"My Drunk Kitchen" as metaphor for ???

2011-08-22T14:30:00.004-06:00

I like metaphors. That's probably because I'm not very good at them. I admitted that here, at Dada's Dally, early on to readers back in 2005. And because those times I suspect what I'm reading -- or watching -- may be a metaphor for something else, I like to try to solve for what! Most times I'm wrong (as has been pointed out to me here by readers before).

So here's a delightful and entertaining little episode of My Drunk Kitchen where our chef prepares that All-American symbol, the apple pie, for that most All-American of holidays, the Fourth of July.

It just begs for a deeper meaning: the recipe's directions are ignored as our "chef" appears distracted with an abundance of other pleasures.

The resulting All-American icon, the pie, comes out unrecognizable as "American as apple pie" which, in itself, presents us with perhaps a deeper layered metaphor? Or wait, is that a simile?

One year later, in Parallel Universe #37, Putin says 'rule is over' for U.S.'s Obama

2011-08-22T14:05:00.002-06:00

Aug 22, 2012 2:47 PM (ET)

By DADA (with thanks to Darlene Superville's Associated Press
written a year ago yesterday re the collapse or a similar tyrant)

Moscow, Russia. (AP) - Russia's Prime Minister, Vladamir Putin, said Tuesday that the United States' President and strongman Barack Obama's "rule is over" although elements of his regime continue to resist rebels who have taken control of much of that nation's capital.

Putin appealed to Obama to prevent further bloodshed, and urged opposition forces to build a democratic government through "peaceful, inclusive and just" measures.

In his first appearance since a weekend push by the rebels into Washington, Putin said there is still fierce fighting in some areas of the city.

"But this much is clear. The Obama regime is coming to an end, and the future of America is in the hands of its people."

Putin made his comments on the grounds of a vacation resort where he is staying in Sochi, Russia's largest vacation resort city.

Tsk, tsk.

2011-08-07T16:00:00.010-06:00

“Secretary Geithner assured everyone that raising the debt ceiling without a plan to balance the budget would not result in a downgrade to our debt,” Sen. Rand Paul, a Tea Party leader said.

“He was clearly wrong. Our debt has been downgraded for the first time in history, and now American taxpayers will have to suffer the consequences!,” added Paul.

(Dada note: I'm very surprised and puzzled at Paul's reaction calling for Geithner's head. I thought anything that expedites the total collapse of the American economy would draw praise from him and Tea Baggers everywhere. But his carbon copied talking point is being echoed by Pawlenty, Santorum, Gringrich, Bachmann, and others. Dada suspects when the curtains are drawn and the lights go down, these *saviors of America* giggle themselves silly into rapturous sleep each night, at the expense "American taxpayers who will have to suffer the consequences!"

Sad news on the doorstep!

2011-08-06T09:51:00.003-06:00

Today dawns with more tragic news, i.e., 7 Afghan commandos were martyred and 31 NATO soldiers were *heroed* when their NATO helicopter was shot down outside of Kabul.

That's how it's being reported by the press. The NATO helicopter was an American CH-47 Chinook; the NATO soldiers were 31 American special operations troops; the NATO spokesman is an American Air Force captain.

How very fortunate the US is to have our NATO partners with us in Afghanistan. Thankfully, none of our 27 other NATO nation's allied members were killed in this joint operation. No Bulgarian, Estonian, French, Icelandic, Slovakian, etc. NATO members were harmed or killed in this tragic loss of the the ill-fated NATO chopper. Sadly unfortunate, however, that all the NATO fatalities from this shoot down were other NATO troops (read "Americans.")

Lame Deer visions of the lamest nation.

2011-07-26T19:45:00.011-06:00

Lame Deer, born at the turn of the 20th century, was a Lakota holy man. He grew up at a time when his people's conquerors, who had stolen the Native Americans' history, heritage, and futures, were *assimilating* those people's youth in boarding schools run by the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

Apparently, the BIA failed dramatically with Lame Deer. What follows is his prophetic vision of the America we now inhabit, the world we have inherited:

"Only human beings have come to a point where they no longer know why they exist. They don't use their brains and they have forgotten the secret knowledge of their bodies, their senses, or their dreams. They don't use the knowledge the spirit has put in every one of them; they are not even aware of this, and so they stumble along blindly on the road to nowhere -- a paved highway which they themselves bulldoze and make smooth so that they can get faster to the big empty hole which they'll find at the end*, waiting to swallow them up ... I have seen it. I've been there in my vision and it makes me shudder to think about it." ~ Lame Deer

*As Dada imagines, Lame Deer's, "empty hole we find at the end of our road to nowhere" is Washington, D.C., where the posturing of our governmental representatives, way over their heads in full-blown dysfunction, is about to throw the entire nation into total chaos by playing "Chicken" amongst themselves in some playground bully's game of, "I win, I win," while the rest of us all lose.

Le quatorze juillet (July 14th), the Fête de la Fédération, or "Bastille Day" (and heads will roll)!

2011-07-14T16:28:00.003-06:00

Before their Revolution of 1789, there existed different punishments for the different classes of the French citizenry, much as there exists here in the United States today.

The extreme penalty for common criminals in France was a public hanging while the upper (or more "nobler") class, received theirs in the form of decapitation at the sharpened end of a broadax. But as noted here at Word News, "decapitation too often took place as a messy affair because nervous hands and sloppy techniques too often required more than one blow, thereby extending the procedure and the agony of the victim."

Similarly, there today exists a two-tiered system of punishment between the different classes of American society. For the common riffraff, penalties can be as extreme as death by electrocution, lethal injection, firing squad, etc. depending on the state in which one chooses to commit his act against society. Meanwhile, for the privileged class, as most often symbolized by CEOs, bankers, and politicians, penalties can range from probation, house arrest, or so many hours of public service.

But on this day in 1789, the event that most symbolizes the beginning of the French Revolution, the storming of the Bastille, took place. And the most widely recognized symbol coming out of that revolution to represent it was, without question, the guillotine.

The guillotine was invented to bridge the gap between the classes with a more egalitarian way of extracting punishment from all (as well as to eliminate those messy decapitations requiring two or more chops with the broadax).

While not an advocate of capital punishment, as long as we have it, and as long as the general population of the U.S. becomes more and more revolting (er, rebellious, sorry), I think the widening gap in penalties extracted from the social classes should be eliminated and a more consistent, egalitarian form of punishment be instituted. And, of course, for that I am advocating return of the most celebrated symbol of revolution, one of consistency and civility, the guillotine.

I imagine that may upset some such as anti-capital punishment advocates or others who might think it extreme punishment for those whose only crime was the bilking of billions from individuals or the national treasury. But when we realize the consequences of such and the number of lives ruined (or lost) because of that, a fine and 80 hours community service in a food bank or soup kitchen just doesn't restore the sense of equal penalties for all in a nation that prides itself on its equality under the law. And really, if you think about it, it's nothing to lose your head over.

So, "Happy Bastille Day all!"

CLIMATE CHANGE POSTER # 37-2

2011-06-23T10:43:00.000-06:00

CLIMATE CHANGE POSTER # 37

2011-06-23T07:19:00.001-06:00

Another reason not to linger when leaving a

bad situation: It ruins a perfectly good idiom!

Don't tell Mrs. Dada, but I have fallen hopelessly in love with another woman!

2011-06-16T12:53:00.011-06:00


Celia Rivenbark

It was October 5, 1963. Football season. Fresno State's home opener against Adams State. I was on my first date with this charming southern blonde, a belle from South Carolina. But the date was over shortly before the game was decided. By halftime.

The highlight of the evening occurred when we returned to her dorm for the quickest, "Good night, goodbye (forever)" parting I've ever had the pleasure of experiencing. With nothing in common, it was the worst date of my life.

To say I didn't stereotype all southern women thereafter as prissy or haughty would be a lie. But I wasn't tainted for long, meeting, dating and marrying a Texas girl less than three years later. In fact, such a good experience, I took a second. From Louisana this time. Of course, that was after my first and I divorced.

Today I find myself hopelessly falling -- again! -- under the spell of another southern belle. This time from North Carolina. Her name's Celia. Celia Rivenbark. Besides being a very successful author, she has a weekly syndicated column in our local newspaper. She's attractively reminiscent of my very first "southern exposure" over 47 years ago. But Celia has a fantastic, charming sense of humor and is someone whom I agree with so very much on just about everything. And she makes me laugh. A lot!

This week's Rivenbark column entitled The Otter Vote, wherein she describes why, in the 2012 presidential election, she will vote for an otter ("any otter!"), permanently sealed my love for her.

If you want a laugh or you need a laugh, check her out! Oh, and to bring this full circle, when choosing which paper to link a copy of her Otter column to, I chose The Fresno Bee (sorry, redirect to Seattle Times) where sometimes Fresno State football dates (and games sometimes as well) are over before halftime!

"The Earth is Full"

2011-06-12T08:58:00.003-06:00

I hope that anyone repulsed as I am at the image of Thomas Friedman will not put off reading his June 7th New York Times piece, "The Earth is Full," about where we appear to be headed according to Paul Gilding in his latest book, “The Great Disruption: Why the Climate Crisis Will Bring On the End of Shopping and the Birth of a New World.”

This link posted by a friend on Facebook went ignored until my curiosity finally mustered the courage to go beyond Friedman's mugshot. I'm glad I did.

“When you are surrounded by something so big that requires you to change everything about the way you think and see the world, then denial is the natural response. But the longer we wait, the bigger the response required.” So says Gilding. While I don't make reading assignments, I do recommend this short read if you ever think about our future on this planet.

This is what I wrote on my Facebook friend's wall after reading it:

I was put off to read this article because of Thomas Friedman's photo fronting it. I hate Friedman for "rah-rahing" the nation into war on Iraq via his (mostly?, formerly?) respected venue, the NYTimes. But I liked this article because it really resonates with me. (Although I do NOT share it's optimistic vision for mankind's future.)

Let me just say, with a degree in economics, I became disillusioned with "The Dismal Science" shortly before graduating. Fortunately, much like this year's exciting Indy 500 finish, I had sufficient momentum after slamming into what, for me, was the illusion shattering wall of that discipline's underpinnings to coast -- and cross -- the finish line with my undergrad degree.

Obviously, I am no economist, unlike the critic of Friedman's article, Paul Gregory, a research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution and expert on the history of economics. But I would urge anyone who enjoyed Friedman's article (as I and you obviously did) to take a moment to read Gregory's brief "expert" rebuttal titled "The Earth is Full of Thomas Friedman's Hot Air."

As a result of Gregory's critique, I can say I have lost a lot of respect for Stanford, just across the Bay from my old alma mater, if he is representative of the expertise roaming those ivied archways today.

So thanks for this link -- excellent read. Oh, and hold on tight, I think we're about to slam into another wall! (but like I said, I ain't no Stanford "expert" economist....[nor rookie Indy 500 driver either!])

Should Weiner resign? (The U.S.'s Most Important Question of the Day.)

2011-06-07T17:52:00.000-06:00

America: It's all a big joke.

Dada says, of course he shouldn't resign. The entire US gov't is a joke. US economy, a joke; our endless wars, a joke; a look at next year's presidential hopefuls to run against Obama (himself a joke), are all jokes.

Meanwhile, which will destroy the planet first, the increasing violence of Nature against man (which our leaders are prone to do nothing about) or our self-absorbed, squabbling do-nothing leader's violence against Nature (which Nature IS determined to do something about)?

So, full 'pedal to the metal' I say, as we speed ever faster in our folly toward a head-on collision with Mass Extinction VI! Just hoping humanity's fools can laugh all the way to the end.

Weiner's wiener? Wiener's weiner? Hahahaaah! (If only it was funny!)

Blogger note....

2011-05-21T09:52:00.002-06:00

http://dadadada2u.blogspot.com/view/mosaic#!/

I don't get to the blogger's site where they reveal new developments very often, but my Editor, Sam, brought to my attention a capability available through their service to bloggers. One of the examples is demonstrated at the above link. I like it. There are other display options available by pressing the blue "Mosaic" button in the upper right hand corner once there. If you have a moment and haven't seen this (it may have been around for some time, I don't know), check it out!

Neither a Republican nor Democrat be...

2011-05-21T09:46:00.002-06:00

... a NEW party's our destiny!!

So, "How goes it?"

2011-04-03T17:17:00.020-06:00

Well, I suppose it was inevitable. Obama, the "president," who was so very successful in raising campaign funds from the wee folk to get North American Van Lines to move his household goods into the white house after the '08 election with promises of Hope, Change and "Yes we can!" has obviously soured among many of those little folk supporters. Hence, he has just appointed a new campaign manager. His name is Jim Messina. And just who is Jim Messina? Well, remember this whore, finely attired as a pig? (With apologies to all prostitutes everywhere.)

Why, it's one of the senate's most conservative republicans masquerading as a democrat (trust me, there's no difference) who led Obama's campaign for health care reform in the senate. Remember? It's Max Baucus the cheesy, smug gal who, during his leadership of a senate hearing on health care reform rolled over for his Johns by ordering the chamber cleared and in recess until demonstrators in favor of a "single payer" option could be removed; who was overheard to say, "We need more cops!" then snickered aloud over an open microphone.

So what does Max Baucus have to do with Obama's choice of a new campaign manager? Well, Messina formerly worked for this pig! (With my apologies to pigs everywhere.)

But why Messina? Well, his specialty is raising huge sums of money from big contributors and corporate America and Dada suspects Obama, who increasingly alienates his base of small supporters from 2008 and whose hopes are repeatedly dashed upon the rocks of despair by "their president," must next time rely more upon his true base in 2012 -- the big boys with special interests!

And why am I bristling so over this and the wailing Obama supporters throwing themselves in the path of the onrushing bulldozer burying their dreams in a rubble heap of dashed Obama promises? Because recently, while in search of another blog here on Debbie D's, I stumbled across one from the spring of '08 wherein I questioned Obama's candidacy and was summarily trashed for doing so.

To those who took grave issue with my charge, I have but one question: "So how's that guy Obama working out for you as your president?" (I don't really expect any responses, although I'd love to hear some), instead of just more moaning and groaning about betrayal by "their president."

Sadly, some of those who took residence down my throat for questioning Obama were "liberals," or "progressives" -- good people -- with whom I thought I shared many of the same values and hopes. And sadly, again, my questioning of their candidate for president only demonstrated to me how extremely divided (and perhaps hopeless) any future for this nation is.

Is there any hope for humanity?

2011-03-26T11:08:00.041-06:00

Is there no transcending the labels we choose to attach to ourselves during our incarnation here on Earth?

This 2 minute, 12 second video explores this difficult question: If a Nazi during one's lifetime, for example, is killed by zombies, does he forever become a Nazi zombie? If so, what happens when Jewish zombies encounter Nazi zombies? Is it the obligation of mortal humans to intercede on behalf of one particular zombie subgroup against another zombie group?

Result of this philosophical quandary seems to raise more questions than it answers and may leave you pondering, "Is there any hope for humanity?"

More proof we live in Whacko World

2011-03-24T22:05:00.009-06:00

Americans had become the Frightened People, afraid of terror, of Moslems, of an outside world they couldn’t find or, in many cases, spell. The government used this bounty from heaven to justify rapid elimination of civil liberties, telling the public that it was to protect them. They still prided themselves on their democracy, without any longer having one, and on being a light to the world, which hated them. “The whole world hates us. What is wrong with the whole world?” they asked, deeply puzzled.
~ Fred Reed from his blog Fred on Everything entitled "A Brief History of the United States, From Beginning to End"

Liberté!

Liberté!

Okay, I don't have cable TV. And this month I'm celebrating my second anniversary of being liberated from Satellite TV. But that leaves me with plebian TV, or as I like to think of it, television for those who may be living under a freeway overpass this time next year.

If there is any more potent reminder of that -- allowing me to digress for the moment -- it's the fact that March Madness, formerly the exclusive property of CBS, is now being shared between CBS and three cable networks. Hence, tonight with two minutes left in the BYU game, which in previous years we would have been switched over to after San Diego State's loss to UConn, we were instead thrown that game's score as teaser to join CBS's cable partner for that game's end. Sucks, but --"Hey~!" -- that's creeping crapitalism.

Still dead!

Note: While I dislike NBC News, I viewed my last ABC News Wednesday evening. That's because their lead story was Liz Taylor had died instead of the US -- NATO, pre-planned and salivated over attack on Libya to save lives, or irradiated Japan trying to save Tokyo baby's lives. (I have a news flash for those more concerned for the former: "Liz Taylor is STILL dead." But ABC News watchers already knew that, huh?)

Whacko World...

OK, back to "Just another day in Whacko-World." To the many of you who suspect humankind is totally nuts, but are still in denial, allow me to offer up a couple stories from this evening's NBC Nightly News to confirm your suspicions, to wit:

Of the lone air traffic controller in DC who fell asleep as two incoming flights were trying to land, NBC said of the incident something like, the tower's in sight of the Lincoln Memorial and the nation's Capitol (OMG, for Christ's sake!). Insinuating, I guess, -- "Oh shit!" imagine how embarrassing (and more difficult) it could have been if one or both of those planes had crashed as congress is trying to slash air traffic controller's funds in order to buy more Tomahawk missiles needed to blow the shit out of Libya [and, of course, Bahrain, Syria, Yemen, Lebanon, Saudia Arabia, Somalia and Iran in the next few months]!

Then there was the story of that 'underwear bomber' terrorist whose skivies failed to explode as his flight approached Detroit's Wayne County Metropolitan Airport a year ago December. He admitted his preferred target(s) were Chicago or Houston but, sadly, he didn't have sufficient airfare for a ticket to those destinations. (Advice to Saturday Night Live: Fire your writers. You want comedy? Just watch the daily news!)

And then this one, the one that gave me the most consternation:

In Syria today, citizens (as likely prompted by the CIA or some other covert Western intel agency), protesting against President Al-Asad's ruling regime, were offered the following concessions: 1.) greater freedom of the press; 2.) the end of one party rule; 3.) more help for the unemployed; 4.) a promise of political and judicial reform, and, most interestingly; 5.) health care for all!

On this last concession, I found great irony. While Syrians stood up to their government and gained a promise of health care for everybody, Americans stood down for Obama's reforms and were denied any consideration of same, i.e., universal health care . Hence, while Americans were steam rolled into accepting Obama's health industry's plan, Syrians stood up and gained health care for all. Yet they rejected it!

Apparently, Syrians know you can't trust anything their government promises them. Americans, on the other hand? (Who do you think I consider the wiser?)

Whacko World indeed!

Dada's Dally Redux #37

2011-03-21T17:16:00.000-06:00

Riding with Huey Newton

(Saturday, June 18, 2005 ~ this was Debbie D's Diner's very first blog post on what was then called Dada's Daily Dally. I believe its premise, based on Huey Newton's message to me then, is even more evident today than it was nearly six years ago.)

************

With the advent of Juneteenth, I was reminded of the first time I wore my Black Panther Party, "The struggle continues," tee-shirt out in public a couple of months ago.

While adorning it, stopped at a red light, Huey Newton scared the shit outta me when he suddenly appeared in the passenger's seat beside me. He wasn't wearing his seat belt. In place of it was a broad leather belt across his chest holding shot gun shells. He reminded me of Pancho Villa, sans sombrero.

Smiling, he turned to me and spoke. "There's a huge majority of you rapidly becoming the new minority of this country," Huey said, extending a pack of Marlboros in my direction.

That sounded a little strange to me, but I thought about it til the car behind me honked, signaling the light had changed.

"For Christ's sake, hide that shotgun! You wanna get us both busted?!" I pleaded.

Emptiness once more overtook me as I glanced over at his fading smile--and shotgun. I'd have to do my shopping alone, without armed escort.

It was somewhere in front of the butcherless Wal-Mart meat counter before I got to the beef of what Huey had said. No longer just a racial struggle of thug booted cops intimidating black and brown neighborhoods, it's now blacks, browns, Muslims, uninsured, under-insured, poor whites, the middle class, teachers, the sick, atheists, unions, soldiers, retirees, veterans, young folk, immigrants and aliens, librarians, soldier's families, United Airline employees, Wal-Mart butchers (whoops, forgot, they're "extinct" for organizing) etc., all under assault. (My apologies to anyone left out--it wasn't an all inclusive list).

So I guess I'll pause a moment tomorrow to remember the significance of June 19th; and be reminded "The Struggle Continues" as Huey so nicely put it. Maybe I'll wander down to Wal-Mart; ask to speak to their butcher.

Let us give thanks!

2011-03-14T07:56:00.004-06:00

The tragic loss of thousands of innocent lives aside, present estimates of $180 billion in infrastructure losses to Japan from earthquakes, tsunamis and radiation contamination (still unfolding) is sending that nation's fragile economy into a tailspin. But $180 billion is nothing to the US.

That should give pause to reflect how fortunate we, as Americans, are -- living in the wealthiest nation on planet Earth -- able to spend $180 billion -- what (?)* -- every 5-6 days in the Middle East, destroying infrastructure and contaminating the landscape. (Tragic loss of thousands of innocent lives aside, of course.)

God, we are so blessed!

* Note: $ estimate here includes Dada $nark.

Sunrise in the hood, 3/7/2011

2011-03-08T10:14:00.000-07:00

It's just another day!

2011-02-17T19:51:00.002-07:00

Thursday, February 17, 2011

Having my mid-afternoon lunch, which most recently consists of smoothies whipped up in our Dodge Veg-O-Matic that, in the last few years, has been lying on a shelf dying of loneliness. But a week or so ago, I decided to start a new diet regimen.

Getting my seven daily servings of fruits and vegetables is such a bitch. I never make it. But now all that's changed. With my morning glass or two of OJ along with some raspberry jelly on my toast (made of some kind of wheat), I've added an afternoon smoothie (today's consisting of a banana, apple, carrot sticks, raspberries, spinach leaves, a few broccoli florets and strawberries, plus a 1/4 tsp of cinnamon and ginger) and --*presto! - bingo!* -- I'm esconced in the FDA's food pyramid deeper than Thutmose III. Hence, I can now spend the rest of the day eating potato chips and cookie dough ice cream -- all with clear conscience!

My semi-annual appointment with my hygienist and dentist this morning went great. My dentist lit up at the sight of me. He loves to talk stock market and investments with me. I like to think of his investments as part mine, just like his second home in the mountains his other patients and I have helped him buy. And to hear him talk, I was pleased at how well our investments are doing.

While examining my mouth, my teeth never came up. Instead we spoke of oil and precious metals and the sinking dollar (which he knows firsthand from shopping for a [retirement?] home in Europe).

"A three hundred year old five hundred square foot house in the French countryside with no plumbing for a thousand dollars + per square foot! Who'd buy that?" he mused. "Of course, Americans are," he answered. And so that will probably be the next investment we'll help him out with.

My dentist is excellent. He rebuilt a broken front tooth years ago that's good as new. (I know, saying that, it will probably break within the next month). And then there was my back upper molar that split in two a couple of years ago. I suspect it was a busy day for him, he was tired, when he worked me in for an emergency appointment. That's because the tooth was a prime candidate for a crown, but instead -- on the spur of the moment -- and at the risk he would reveal a heavily guarded dentist's secret, he opted for a "quick fix:" He put some *temporary magic enamel paste* on it.

He sometimes reminds me I should get that crowned, but he knows from the sly smile I return that I know about his magic paste. Hence, we have an unspoken agreement: he won't press me too hard about the $750 crown it should have, and I won't tell any of his other patient's about the amazing magic crown substitute which, by the way, he charged me $0.00 for!

Anyway, from the stock market our conversation turned to the Middle East; of revolution and the unfolding turmoil there. I expressed my view that the Egyptians -- if they are to change anything -- have only fired the opening salvos of revolution; that, as Paul Craig Roberts suggested, if it's to be truly revolutionary -- as history suggests -- you've got to absolutely kill all the powers that be. That's to make sure they can't come back, and to serve as warning to those who replace them. Whoopee! Break out the guillotines!

Oh, and speaking of the gold market, I asked doc if he'd heard about the newest gold? It's called "food"! Seems from Sinaloa, Mexico where the recent freeze cost that state over $1 billion in crop damages, there comes the story of a corn seed laden truck with 20 tons of the germs that were heisted by bandits. Leave it to bandidos to recognize the next emerging market, which will be emerging in our markets with increasing prices later this spring.

But I've concluded it's not wise to have a dentist, or a doctor, around your own age. That's because they'll likely retire before you expire.

Finally, for my laugh of the day. It occurred when I reviewed the video of "your" sec of state Clinton delivering her "*universal rights* of individuals to express their views freely" lecture on the Middle East as Ray McGovern was being forceably extricated from her audience for standing with his back to her in silent protest of her hypocrisy. Clinton didn't bat an eyelash as McGovern was removed shouting (while bleeding), "So this is America!"

Apparently Clinton's freedom of speech encouragement applies only to places outside the United States. Not in America.

Viva the world's greatest hypocracy!

BLINDSIDED!

2011-02-16T18:10:00.007-07:00

Whenever among friends and asked, "And so, how are you doing," (with unsaid implication, "in this economy?"), I always answer, "Okay," but add, "Of course, we could at any moment be blindsided!" I'm thinking of the wish among many of those Americans who have been, the newly (and growing number of) socially and economically dispossessed who pray:

"My only hope is that I run out of life before I run out of money."

At least the growing millions of Americans who have -- to this point -- lost their jobs, or their health insurance, or their homes, or their retirement dreams, or all of those, have remained submissive.

The term for this that is currently enjoying popularity is called the "Muasher principle." Perhaps you've encountered it as I have in recent days. It's named after the Jordanian official, Marwan Muasher, who coined it. Simply stated it is: "There is nothing wrong. Everything is under control." With added condition, "as long as the population is quiet, acquiescent (maybe fuming with rage but doing nothing about it)."

"Okay, so I've lost my job or may lose my home, no one's out in the streets demonstrating or rioting and the media assure us daily the economy's improving, maybe I'm just having an 'American's Dream' run of bad luck?"

That is the unspoken prayer of the godless money worshipers and spiritualless looters, plunderers and rapists of the nation's wealth being gutted and extracted daily from our hands to theirs across the land as we continue to accept being screwed by them, so they may return for more while we accept it with agonizing acquiescence.

"If I can only have another go at her without objection," they pray. Thankfully, up to now,we -- as victims -- go subserviently into the night, into submission, eventually landing in the gutters of an uncaring, crumbling, America of, as president George W. Bush so delicately described them, "my haves and have mores!"

And confused and frazzled we their victims wonder, "How could this have happened to us if there is nothing wrong? If everything's under control?"

So I close with an entry on Senator Bernie Sanders Facebook page I read this morning. It was the result of his query from Americans who have been blindsided with gut slams deep to the midsections of their very existence by the New America stealing them blind in its waning days of empire.

Believe me, the feedback Sanders received was numerous and lengthy. And it wasn't just from his Vermont constituents. It was from people from Minnesota, and Washington, and Louisana, and Texas whose representatives don't give enough of a shit to ask this of the citizens they supposedly "represent."

The following response to Sander's request for feedback was by a responder who linked to a written testament last fall by a man who had fallen into homelessness, to uselessness, who supposedly had chosen to leave this Earth as he was writing it; of one who had, sadly, run out of money before he had run out of life. It is but a brief excerpt of a far lengthier farewell.

"Two hundred and eleven and social services cannot help single men. Food banks and other charities are unable to help any more folks -- they are overwhelmed with the poor in this nation. So I have the "freedom" to be homeless and destitute and "pursue happiness" in garbage cans and then die -- yay for America huh? It's the end of November and cold. A diabetic homeless older person will experience amputations in the winter months. So I will be raiding garbage cans for food, as my body literally falls apart, a foot here, a finger there. I have experienced and even worked with pain from my diseases -- hardship I can face. I just cannot muster the courage to slowly die in agony and humiliation in the gutter. ...

"Isn't it amazing that we Americans who suffer so much, have not taken to the streets in violence, riots or gotten out the guillotines and marched on tycoons and Washington in revolt as would happen in most other nations? But rather we plead with deaf politicians to please help us. We don't demand huge sums -- just 300 bucks a week, barely enough to cover housing for most. Most of all we say, please help us get a job, please allow us dignity." (by anonymous, now deceased?)

Wake the fuck up America. It's time to get angry. Everything is NOT under control.

The Good, Bad and the Ugly...

2011-02-14T16:05:00.000-07:00

... in an excellent rendition using Ukuleles (as performed by The Ukulele Orchestra of Britain).

It was those spaghetti westerns of the late 60's with their enthralling soundtracks that stirred the romantic in me to give up the SF Bay Area for El Paso, NM, which in one of Sergio Leone's movies was a federal reserve bank at the intersection of two dirt roads and a lot of dust.

Cosmology of the Universe (or, can making sense of chaos hint at some higher intelligence? Maybe!)

2011-02-05T08:02:00.004-07:00

Is it chaos, not order, that rules the universe? And where do nature's complex patterns come from, if not from simple laws of Nature -- or the Green Bay Packers?

Following Sir Isaac Newton's law of gravitation, scientists subsequently assumed the universe to be a predictable, clockwork system. But doubters of an orderly universe who were privileged to watch the Packer's practice this week had their suspicions of a chaotic universe reinforced.

Packer's Super Bowl practice. Note the chaotic sideline helmet

arrangement. A total absence of intent or meaning? Perhaps not.

If capable of discerning complex order, might we conclude there

is purpose to this seeming chaotic arrangement hinting at a higher

intelligence or Universal Mind?

Perhaps we will know around 8:15 (MST), Sunday, February 6, 2011.

Sleep warm America!

2011-02-01T20:17:00.006-07:00

Tuesday, 7:00 p.m. and it's cold -- really cold! (Mrs. Dada just heard "25 degrees.") OK, not upper midwest cold. Not New England cold. Just very, very cold for the local environment (7 degrees tonight, 9 tomorrow night, with the high for the next two days forecast for 25 degrees -- that's cold and, yes, we've seen the images of ice and snow up north!)

Wednesday is my weekly "billiards" day with my originally-from-Wisconsin neighbor. My turn to drive. After a bone chilling roll of our trash bin to its weekly place on the curb about two hours ago, I e-mailed him and canceled tomorrow. In his eyes I'm sure I'm a wuss. I know.

In the interim, our flannel sheets have replaced the normal cotton ones on our bed. Why the hell even consider getting out of bed early in the morning to see if it has snowed or the roads are icy when you can sleep in between a pair of flannel sheets cuddled next to Mrs. Dada with Sam snuggled in his bed on my other side?

Meanwhile, I watched the news from Egypt unfold today. Early reports that Mubarak wouldn't seek "re-election" had me wondering, "Yeh, but when's his term end? 2014? Beyond?" This evening I learned it ends this fall. September. But Mubarak is missing the point. Just as Bush did. Or Obama is.

And I can't help drawing a comparison between Mubarak and the former Green Bay Packers' quarterback Brett Favre and it leaves me wondering, "Why can't they quit before it comes to this?" I guess I'll never understand because I've never been in those shoes of not understanding why it can't last forever.

That aside, I enjoyed watching the evening news ponder what future is best for Egypt. Filtered, of course, through the media's lens of what's best for America. But is that what's really best for Egyptians?

p.s. It's now 8:20 p.m. and snowing. Stay warm everyone!

Seeing the positive side of the Tunisian and Egyptian revolts

2011-01-31T12:49:00.007-07:00

Obama pushes the little red button to effectively shut down the entire internet, leaving us with our last glimpse of Dada, publisher of Debbie D's Diner?

How eye opening those revolutions in Tunisa and Egypt have been, to learn the United States -- contrary to many doomsayer's claims we don't make anything in this country anymore -- does in fact still have a strong manufacturing base. Just to name two examples seen on nightly news in recent days:

tear gas grenades used for crowd control with the words that should make every American swell with pride, "Made in the U.S.A.," and

public intimidation from those beautifully wicked looking American made F-16s flying low overhead Cairo crowds.

But perhaps the best thing to come out of this will be better security for the homeland with the renewed effort to make the nation safer when our congress gives president Obama authority to use an internet kill switch -- with no judicial review -- to shut down possible threats on the web from terrorists using blogs, Twitter, Facebook, etc. (and it's "Made in the U.S.A.")

Is El Paso suffering from a shortage of guns?

2011-01-29T09:49:00.001-07:00

Yesterday I blogged about Utah's newest state symbol -- a semi-automatic Browning M1911 .45 caliber hand gun. Ironically, this morning's El Paso Times revealed three people in two separate incidents were murdered yesterday in the city.

That brings the total number of homicides in El Paso the first four weeks of this year to five, which was the total number for the entire year, 2010. But here's the interesting part:

All three of yesterday's murders were by knives (!), which leads me to wonder if El Paso may be suffering from a shortage of guns? If so, where the hell are they disappearing to? Juarez? Utah? (Or maybe it's just the endless recession we're in. More and more people can't afford guns?)

But in case anyone from Utah happens to read this, I'm just curious: Does Utah have a State Knife Symbol? If so, please advise what kind. I'm thinking of procuring my own (for self protection, you know -- when not using it to cut steak, of course.)

Updating Utah school children's state symbols coloring book

2011-01-28T12:09:00.001-07:00

For years 2nd grader's assignments to color Utah's state symbols have been far more fascinating for the girls than boys. Objects such as the Sego Lily, Utah's State Flower, Spanish Onion and Sugar Beets -- State veggies, and State Cooking Pot, the Dutch Oven, held girl's attentions far more rapt than their seven year old male counterparts.

But now Utah is working to correct that slight with the state's House approval of a new symbol, the Utah State Gun. Dada gets excited just thinking how far more relevant coloring state symbols for seven year old boys will be when they discover a semi-automatic Browning M1911 .45 caliber hand gun among them. And who knows how many of those young boys may one day grow up to become Utah state government leaders! All from inspiration provided from a little power wielding symbol, the Utah State Gun?

The bill must be passed by the Senate and approved by the governor, but with the House's impeccable timing of its introduction, this being Utah, and the celebratory picture below of its governor with a Browning descendant of the gun's inventor, how hard could that possibly be?

Utah Gov. Gary Herbert shows a Browning automatic pistol, that was presented to him

by Chris Browning , right, as Scott Grange, left, looks on during a celebration of John

M. Browning Day in front of the Utah Capitol in Salt Lake City, Utah on Jan. 24, 2011.

(AP Photo/Deseret News, Ravell Call)

Laugh now, cry later.

2011-01-26T07:49:00.001-07:00

In Debbie D's ongoing effort to bring readers the

best in American humor and sadism, we are pleased

today to present but one item that embraces both.

2011-01-20T18:24:00.005-07:00


Dada and Editor Sam in their weekly Debbie D's Diner blog staff meeting.

*****************************************

Seems to Sam and I anyone with an ounce of lucidity remaining pretty well knows by now that humanity, the species, is crazier than bat shit. Any number of causes in and of themselves, or in combination with others, may be the reason. From basic undetectable genetic flaws and extra doses of cosmic rays in our cranial cages from Earth's tattering magnetosphere security blanket, to measurable over doses of mercury consumed in our tuna fish. Whatever the reason(s), it doesn't bode well for the species.

"Observations from the middle of the largest mass extinction since the dinosaurs" was the underlying premise of this blog when it first went online back in June '05. Along with the idea that "what passes for sanity here on this planet is sending chills down the spine of the remainder of the universe" seemed pretty obvious back then. But nearly six years later, things seem magnitudes wackier than the "good ol' days of 2005." In fact, the entire planet now appears to be teetering on the brink of total collapse.

Yesterday eve, Sam and I were watching a presentation by Harvard professor of history, Niall Ferguson, in a thought provoking lecture entitled "Empires on the Edge of Chaos." Ferguson reviewed, as history has shown, the rise and fall of empires is a natural and inevitable phenomenon occurring over time. Often the process is a gradual one. But Ferguson reminds us that the process can sometimes be far more sudden (and violent), suggesting this is precisely the type of collapse the U.S. potentially faces.

I liken his economic/political/social and historical idea to the opposing thoughts in geology of change as gradual and predictable -- uniformitarianism, the concept currently accepted -- versus catastrophism, a currently out-of-vogue idea where change may come in sudden and unexpected bursts. (A seductive concept I find equally applicable to the theory of evolution.)

Ferguson's point being the collapse of the American Empire could occur far quicker than anyone is expecting. I find this most appealing, particularly in light of the total absence of a government that can make the far reaching decisions needing to be made to assure the survival of the nation (beyond current deconstructive legislator's platform plotting as strategy for winning next year's elections). Actually, I give our government far more credit than it deserves, i.e., it can't seem to make a fucking decision other than to extend funding for our endless wars that we shall inevitably lose. (Yes, LOSE!)

What makes our collapse even more exciting is the impending end of the Mayan calendar next year on the winter's solstice. The significance of such is debated among those not totally pooh-poohhing it. Is it some portent of ominous things to come? I don't know. But having never been one to throw out the babysitter with the bath water, I think before discarding the law of the Aztec jungle by us of the asphalt jungles, we owe it to ourselves to give ancient knowledge the chance to prove or discredit itself.

Throw into the mix dramatic and disastrous climate change now killing people globally in unprecedented numbers in modern times and we have an incredible mix of factors colliding head-on with implications just now unfolding.

It is with this in mind, Dada's Dally -- or Debbie's D's Diner as it has now evolved into being -- is broadening its focus. Away from the narrow inept, pinheadedness of our "leaders" in DC, to a wider scope of events, both natural and otherwise that may engulf us all within the next 23 months.

That is why I've decided to update my sidebars with widgets monitoring global activities that may hold untold consequences for us all. If so inclined, feel free -- or not -- to vote in the 2012 poll widget I've added in the left sidebar today. If you have no opinion at present, you're welcome to return and vote as the upcoming future *embraces* you.

Sammy sees dead people!

2011-01-17T17:46:00.002-07:00

Sam, my blog editor, came to us at the age of one. That was four years ago. Of the six dogs we've had, Sam is the only one who has visual access to a broader portion of the light spectrum than us, another dimension, or even stranger, dead people?

This is an example of when he's observing whatever he sees. Often the things, objects or whatever, interact, judging from his eyes which switch back and forth between the drama unfolding just beyond our vision.

Anyone else out there that has (or had) a dog that "sees dead people"?

Everything is okay, now get back to shopping (but stay afraid)!

2011-01-13T21:06:00.004-07:00

Sixteen to go?

2011-01-09T09:00:00.001-07:00

"My sincere condolences are offered to the family of Rep. Gabrielle

Giffords and the other victims of today's tragic shooting in Arizona.

On behalf of Todd and my family, we all pray for the victims and

their families, and for peace and justice." ~ Sarah Palin

Sunrise in the 'hood, 1/7/2011

2011-01-07T08:10:00.000-07:00

Waiting for "The rockets red glare, the bombs bursting in air!"?

2011-01-07T07:27:00.003-07:00

Almost two months after a mysterious sea launched missile off the coast of Southern California, a second mysterious missile appears, this time off the Gulf coast of Texas this past Sunday. Just another trial run by: the Chinese, Russians, Iranians, Venezuela, Cuba, Somalia, Yemen, Iraq, Afghanistan, North Korea, Argentina or those damned Canadians?

Dada proposes a minor change in the Seal of the United States

2011-01-06T10:08:00.001-07:00

Dada proposes revising the dictum on the Seal of the United States from E pluribus unum, Latin for "Out of many, one", to a more meaningful dictum reflecting the current state of the nation, i.e., E pluribus Unisom*, Latin for "Out of many, sleep".

*Unisom - the "leading single ingredient brand of non-prescription sleep-aids" recognizes the negative impact of going through one's days awake.)

Brett Favre retires! Again!!!

2011-01-03T15:21:00.002-07:00

Brett Favre - v., -vred, -vr·ing, -vres. To swing indecisively from one course of action or opinion to another, often causing consternation in others; to waver endlessly; to outright lie. "I know I've quit smoking before, but tomorrow I'm stopping for good -- I'm not Favring you!

As a lifelong Green Packer follower, I've been a huge fan of Brett Favre for the past 40, 50 years. However long he's been playing. I was especially pleased yesterday after Favre announced his third, fourth, or whatever retirement. That's because watching this year's Favre incarnation as the season unfolded (unraveled?) was especially painful. Probably more so for him than those of us who witnessed it from the sidelines.

What follows is a blog I posted back on August 19, 2009. I thought, in light of Favre's yesterday retirement, I'd repost it. Hopefully, I won't have to ever post it again.

**********************

Reposted from August 19, 2009

Assuring one's immortality, not by one's talent, but by becoming a part of speech.

Today Dada indulges his secret sportswriter ambitions.

Brett Favre was a talented quarterback willing to take chances, often with spectacular game altering results more often positive than not. As the record books attest, he's one of the greatest to play the game. But even off the field, Favre is setting records. As sports writer Jim Litke notes in today's paper, who else in one year's time has retired twice from football, come out of retirement twice, all without missing a game?! This may be where Favre's real talent lies.

Today there are fewer than two dozen people alive who remember "Slingin' Sammy" Baugh. He, too, was a great quarterback. But memories are fleeting. Just ask Baugh. Oh, you can't, he's dead. But that's okay, because most folks who knew of him are dead with him.

In time, Favre's fame as one of the greatest QB's to play the game will fade just as memories of other greats have. Just like Baugh's. But I'm beginning to suspect Brett Favre's inability to retire from football may ultimately assure his immortality. Not because of his skills on the football field.

So what's better than being a gridiron legend? Becoming a part of speech! Parts of speech embed in the language, lasting decades, even centuries beyond one's lifetime. Just ask Jules Léotard, Rev. William Archibald Spooner, or Gaius Julius Caesar. The language is full of dead people who became nouns and adjectives.

Favre's inability to quit the game presents him with a really unique opportunity -- to become a verb! (And I'm not favring you either.)

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

2010-12-31T07:06:00.001-07:00

photo by Mrs. Dada

Staring out from Debbie D's front porch on New Year's eve

morning, anticipating a chilly El Paso Sun Bowl game, Notre

Dame versus Miami, 12:00 Mountain Standard Time on CBS.

Wishing all a very safe and Happy New Year's Eve and 2011!

WAL*MART - Always low prices - ALWAYS - (well, ALMOST always)

2010-12-17T12:55:00.001-07:00

"We're common-law partners!"

2010-12-15T08:11:00.004-07:00

Tonto: "We're common-law

partners now, Ke-mo sah-bee!"

Lone Ranger: "Yes, Tonto, but you still won't
have equality if I work for the city of El Paso!"

Strange days have found us!

2010-12-13T19:59:00.000-07:00

Whoa! Livin' cosmically?

Jim Morrison of The Doors


Dada, no relation to Jim Morrison as rumored

Last week, it was like so *cosmic* here, man! On May 12, 2010, "When You're Strange," a film about The Doors, premiered nationwide on PBS. I missed it.

Last Thursday I watched it on Netflix instant movies. But I was left wondering how Morrison's indecent exposure and obscenity conviction by Florida was ever resolved (Morrison having died while challenging its verdict.)

Well, I didn't have to wait long to find out. That's because, unbeknown to me, the very day I decided to watch "When You're Strange," the Florida Clemency Board was meeting. The next morning I read in the paper Morrison had been pardoned of the crime for which he was convicted during a concert in Miami over 41 years ago. Strange Days indeed!

The Doors (L to R) Jim Morrison, Dada (standing in for

Robby Krieger, Ray Manzarek and John Densmore

Why the only Nixon airports in the US are named for Howard (in Chesaning, MI) and Dean (in Medora, IL) Nixon?

2010-12-12T17:19:00.001-07:00

Nice to gain deeper insights into another of our past ruling elite.

This comes from today's local Sunday Times.

It's from the latest batch of tapes released (instead of erased) by the Nixon Presidential Library and Museum.

'Going long' on our shortening futures.

2010-12-10T07:49:00.000-07:00

(My apologies for the "Debbie Downer" in this, the most joyous time of year!)

Just a couple of items from the past day or two that caused me to combine them with, "The Madness of a Lost Society" below which uses video highlights from this year's post-Thanksgiving Black Friday.

While not necessarily endorsing the video's underlying agenda, the two links preceding it had me watching it again with one near-term future possibility in mind and what it might look like. That's the context of a breakdown in the paradigm we all take for granted -- the life line supply chain we assume will always be there.

But what if the groceries suddenly disappeared from our store shelves and gas pumps were to run dry (or worse, our water faucets)? That's what was happening earlier this week with stories like, Weather impacting water supplies in Ireland and Big freeze: food and fuel run out.

Spared from the Michelle Antoinette edict, "Let them eat gingerbread!"

2010-12-08T16:37:00.003-07:00

"Someone at whose table I do not dine,

Lucius Istacidius, is a barbarian to me."
Roman graffiti uncovered on a wall in the death city of Pompeii.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

[In better times, the White House's garish annual public display of Christmas opulence would be less embarrassing. Americans would think nothing of it. But this year it seemed especially outrageous to me. That's probably okay, because Americans, judging from their yawning acceptance last week, apparently still thought nothing of it.]

******

Over the weekend I watched the first lady describe this year's palatial surroundings with its "nineteen Christmas trees in every corner of the White House" (confirming the idiom of one's inability to see the forest for the trees?) adorned with ornaments made by 100 volunteers from all over the country which "have converted the rooms into breathtaking works of art."

Assuring us as she continued, "In many ways, this is what the White House is all about. And I say this all the time, 'It's the people's house!' " That was generous, but many of us more fortunate still have our own homeless shelters or houses teetering on foreclosures to go home to. They're in a rotting America of boarded up storefronts and abandoned homes displaying their own breathtaking works of art in the form of graffiti.

And I was nonplussed by the "giant Bo" (White House dog) "made out of pipe cleaners" or the first lady's announcement this year's "theme is 'Simple gifts,' because in the end, the greatest blessings of all are the ones that don't cost a thing." (As it turns out, a fortunate synchronicity seeing as how that's about all many Americans can afford -- nothing.)

But mostly I want to assure all: Just as Marie Antoinette did not actually say, "Let them eat cake," neither did Michelle Antoinette, by telling us excitedly, "We have 350 pounds of ginger bread house that took our wonderful pastry chef, Bill Yosses, and his team an entire month to create!" really say, "Let them eat gingerbread!" While that may have been the interpretation of a few by Marie and Michelle's extravagances, relax.

President Obama and his republican allies are working hard to see our diet has not yet come to depend upon a subsistence of gingerbread. Nay, they'll be throwing us some more of what we've all become accustomed to -- CRUMBS!

Time to take our guns to Washington?

2010-12-03T08:22:00.006-07:00

It's difficult to imagine BBQ Lighters this time of year as gift ideas being hawked by a major retailer like they were in Wednesday's local newspaper. That is, until you see they are authentic replicas of Bolt Action Rifles and M-16s so attractive to a nation of gun lovers .

Suddenly the thought of revving up the BBQ outside in a foot and a half of snow seems feasible. Add the fact these little flame throwing beauties are likely non-biodegradable plastic landfill crap made in China like so much of the goods now popular among American consumers and it's enough to send images of spicy, saucy, smoky drumsticks dancing 'cross one's brain.

"Honey, where's the charcoal lighter fluid?"

Well, after feasting on sub-zero roasted ribs, chicks and chops but before putting your fancy little Christmas M-16 lighters away til next June, Dada has another suggestion for them. Why not take those symbolic little guns to Washington for when congress returns to DC in January?!

With extended unemployment running out for two million Americans while tax cuts for the suffering rich are being extended, it's pretty plain to see who my and your congress people represent.

Why not have a big "Welcome Back!" ceremony for the 112th U.S. congress* when it convenes next month by lighting up the steps of the capitol* with a bonfire ignited by those little BBQ lighter guns?

As possible things to contribute to the roaring blaze, Dada suggests Americans bring their shredded and shrinking social safety nets and effigy dolls of their favorite politicians which can be thrown atop the tattered nets once woven together and ignited.

Dada's curious to see if any of the little political dolls fall through the safety net once incinerated.

(* For new readers here, please note Dada does not capitalize words like capitol or other things he has no respect for.)

2010-12-01T07:28:00.000-07:00

Dada's slip into paranoia

2010-11-30T18:27:00.001-07:00

I'm so thankful Oregonians -- more specifically, Portlanders -- are safe from the latest attempted terrorist attack upon the United States.

The fact that the FBI was able to successfully thwart a potential terrorist they had invested time and money in for the last year and three months by recruiting, encouraging, training and helping to carry out "his planned attack," was made even more remarkable by the fact that, despite knowing who the potential terrorist was, they were still able to prevent him from actually killing innocent Oregonians at a Christmas tree lighting ceremony in downtown Portland. This should greatly bolster our faith in our domestic anti-terrorism efforts.

Below is a quote from today's Urban Survival website. It's just the kind of cynicism Americans do NOT need in the face of growing threats from people determined (or encouraged) to commit acts of terrorism against innocent Americans:

Strong-Arming Oregon

A couple of follow-on notes about the [purported] would-be Portland Oregon bomber. Besides reports that the would-be bomber had been under surveillance for 15-months, bringing up serious questions about entrapment, it now turns out this that may have been part of a plan to 'strong-arm' the city of Portland, Oregon back into the fed's Joint Terrorism Task Force.

In what might be held to be a coincidence, or gen4 politics, Portland opted out of the fed's JTTF program in 2005. Now, by 'catching a would-be bomber' and leaving Portland's finest flat-footed ...in the dark, the bum's rush is on to reel Portland back into lockstep. Hell of it is, so far, it's working.

Across space and time

2010-11-22T11:58:00.005-07:00

Below is a blog from 3 years ago today, a year when the anniversary of JFK's assassination fell on Thanksgiving. I repeat it here, on this day, because every year I have some of the exact thoughts triggered by exactly the very same memories I had a year ago today, two years ago this day, ad infinitum or 1964 -- which ever comes first:

November 22nd

There was a time I call my "quantum physics period" when I enjoyed contemplating observations made of the micro world of particles and waves, and wondering what if things seen there might apply to our macro world. The idea of nonlocality being my favorite idea to ponder; the thought that particles which once shared a common experience or connection somehow were forever thereafter connected, no matter how widely they may have become separated over space and time.

That's where it gets tricky for the old school of science, because particles sharing such a relationship in the world of quantum physics--even if on opposite ends of the universe--can react to one another instantaneously, violating the established speed limit of traditional physics. (Ok, ok, that's a layman's take on it, or "the quantum world according to Dada.")

But what if the micro world of the quanta has implications for the larger macro world we all inhabit? For example, when thinking of someone you haven't seen in years and years, someone of whom you may have totally lost track, do you ever wonder if at that very same time you're thinking about them, they may be thinking of you?

That's what I'll be doing more of than usual this Thanksgiving day, thinking of people I haven't seen or heard from in almost half a century and wondering if they're thinking of me at the same time.

It'll start by a memory of standing in a hallway outside my girlfriend's 11 o'clock class. Of a stranger who approached us with a fantastic question we did not know the answer to. Of leaving my girlfriend there and going off to lunch in the university cafeteria, of the announcement in the middle of that lunch that resulted in the sudden dropping of forks and knives on plates as gasps and sobs resounded throughout the dining hall immediately after the words came over the speakers: "President John F. Kennedy died at approximately 1 p.m. Central Standard Time today here in Dallas. He died of a gunshot wound in the brain."

And I'll remember some of the faces and places that ensued in the days that followed. Most of those people not seen in almost half a century, nor thought of in a year. And I'll wonder if the laws of the quantum apply to the world of the macro on this Thanksgiving day, the 44th anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

Monday Mourning

2010-11-22T08:58:00.008-07:00


Sam, 11/22/10, Sleeping in as I write this.

After yesterday's blog, unbeknown to Sam my blog editor, I wrote "Ask Aunt Agonie," a dog advice columnist with a serious question. Not out of concern for Sam's personal sexual preferences, but about his future health care.

Here is that letter, followed by its response: (which Sam doesn't know I'm publishing):

"Dear Aunt Agonie: Friday I took my 5 year old dalmation blog editor, Sammy, to a new doggy park in town. While there, something occurred that I'd never witnessed before: Sammy mounted another dog! It was an 80 lb. male Irish Setter named Mat. Sam showed no similar interest in Mat's daughter, Sue, who was also present. My question is: Was Sammy's action just a male over male dominance thing? Or, could Sam possibly be gay? (I'm deeply concerned over this latter possibility in case I take employment with the City of El Paso, knowing he may be ineligible for coverage under the dependent's health care plan provided city employees in an environment of growing local anti-gay sentiments.) Thanks ~ Da"

************

"Dear Da: NOT to worry, dear readers, but Sir Sam's mounting of another dog is very likely just play rather than an attempt at dominance--kind of their idea of "king of the hill" wrestling!! And ixnay on the suspected sexual orientation--I don't think there's anything to worry about, unless he starts insisting you play lots of showtunes and Streisand and gravitates towards rainbow-patterned collars......Agonie"

...Okay! This is great news. Sam was likely only playing "King of the Mountin':" It means I could work for the city of El Paso. But besides being too old, would I really want to while gay partners of city employees are being treated less than equal?

See, "in 1962, President Kennedy lauded El Paso for being the first city in the South to desegregate public accommodations. In 1966, Don Haskins' Texas Western Miners, using only black players against an all-white Kentucky team, won the NCAA basketball championship." (EPTimes, 11/07/2010) But as city councilman Beto O'Rourke recently pointed out, revocation of health care coverage for gay partners of El Paso city employees is a huge step backward, especially for a city that prides itself in its rich cultural diversity.

But El Paso's news is not all bad as the morning El Paso Times tells us: "El Paso named safest US city." That's among cities with 500,000 or greater population according statistics compiled on murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary and auto theft.

I think on a subconscious level -- likely from El Paso's similar stats in recent years -- I feel comfortably safe in my hometown. This is especially brought home to me when I venture out of town, for example, 40 miles north to Las Cruces, NM to enjoy an afternoon with friends at the rowdy High Desert Brewing Company (saloon). The increased crime rate dangers while in Las Cruces always add an extra dimension of daring and excitement for me.

However, the security of El Paso is more than offset by another statistic, of course. That's the violence of our sister city, Juarez, only separated from us by an imaginary line drawn upon a map by politicians and their armies.

One of the most dangerous cities on Earth, I know of people who live in Juarez. Juarez students cross the border daily to attend classes in El Paso. Of El Pasoans who go into Juarez 5 days a week to work. Of people here with family there and vice versa. And people from the safest US city have died in this most violent city just across that imaginary line in the sand.

I fear El Paso's safety is a relative notion when 2/3's of its brothers and sisters live under an oppression that has seen more than 2,700 of them murdered this year and while our rich cultural diversity is under seige from a regressive, shrinking of civil rights for some here in our home town.

It's all part of the milieu that makes for a colorful El Paso that -- at the moment -- is the least of sleeping Sam's concerns.

The bittersweet of missing a beet?

2010-11-21T09:09:00.000-07:00

In my most recent phone conversation with a Taos friend on her birthday earlier this month, our conversation somehow turned to things we've never ingested, or even tasted. Things we hoped to escape this life without ever experiencing.

"Oysters!" was one of my proclamations. I was reminded of another by a poem written by my friend which arrived in yesterday's mail. It goes like this:

Peter L. thought
naught so sweet
as to consume
all of a beet
The tops, the roots
in borscht or salad
no better way to
please his palate

While Dada G.
swore up & down
with face affixed
in scornful frown
"In all my life,
I did not eat
one gold or ruby
stinkin' beet"

(Thank you, Cynthia)

"...one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."

2010-11-21T07:55:00.001-07:00

Perhaps it's time to reassess the wording of the Pledge of Allegiance; to either remove the words "under God" or "with liberty and justice for all." No finer example of the uncomfortable contradiction created by the juxtaposition of these two phrases occurs than when the pledge is taken by a pastor and spokesman for God who oversaw the revocation of health care coverage for partners of gay El Paso city employees by a ballot ordinance passed earlier this month.

Cloaked behind the nicely coded phrase "family values," the proposal was approved by 55% of El Paso voters. In what was a sad return toward darkness for citizens of the Sun City, I think by revising the contradiction illustrated by Pastor Tom Brown's Pledge of Allegiance, we might spare such individuals future embarrassments of having to publicly
expose their hypocrisies.

Remember:

Relax, just bend over!

2010-11-18T18:33:00.003-07:00

To the traveling American public, Dada says, "Chill!"

With holidays just around the corner and many American families journeying long distances in short times to watch the revived Dallas Cowboys trounce the world champion New Orleans Saints with loved ones over turkey and the inebriating liquors of their choice next Thursday, I've noticed a growing sense of unease and discontent over the new increased, tighter security measures now in force by the TSA.

My best advice (in lieu of the revocation of these most authoritative measures before then -- yeh, right!) is to "Relax!" if you're to have any hopes of arriving at your intended destination on time (along with the other passengers sharing your plane ride).

Reviewing the increasingly stringent TSA measures over the past few years, I have only to conclude with a warning: If you don't calm down over new TSA rules -- even if your three year old daughter gets terrifying groped by a total stranger in a airport because of her comforting, yet suspicious, Teddy Bear she was taking with her to Grandma's house for the weekend (despite its capability of bringing down an airliner and totally ruining the Thanksgiving fest [and *America's Team* football game] for hundreds, if not thousands of family members, then be prepared for the government's next TSA phase -- the total strip search (see above) -- which left Dada with horrendous flashbacks to his U.S. Army induction physical!)

I promise everyone, if they don't submit to their government's mildly invasive actions now on behalf of their own personal safety, next month you will be late for Christmas celebrations with family and loved ones.

NPR rap video tribute

2010-11-18T06:57:00.000-07:00

So what do a couple of unemployed, unable-to-find work college grads do in the New America with all their free time? They make a tribute rap video to NPR. (I call it a *tribute video* because when our new congress convenes in two months, they'll have to expropriate NPR's funding to help support tax cuts for the rich and bombs for the poor in the Middle East.)

2010-11-16T16:51:00.000-07:00

A Tale of Two Cities

2010-11-15T17:30:00.006-07:00

EL PASO: One night of violence outside a bar in the early morning hours a week ago this past Saturday resulted in the deaths of two persons when a man died from knife wounds to the neck and another succumbed several days later from being hit by a truck around the same time as the fatal stabbing. As a result, El Paso's murder rate for 2010 increased a whopping one hundred percent from one night's violence!

JUAREZ: Meanwhile, just across the border in El Paso's sister city, Juarez, the murders of two men shot to death yesterday in a Juarez airport taxicab increased the murder rate in that city seventy-seven one thousandths of one percent for the year! (Their deaths were followed by 6 more later that day, proving that the next murder in Juarez will affect that city's statistical murder rate far less than in most other cities.)

Day nine without heat...

2010-11-13T11:01:00.002-07:00

It's doubtful whether Editor Sam's innovative weight loss program he's calling "The Shaker's Diet" is working or not, i.e., any extra caloric burn-off from excessive shivering may be offset by his appetite which has notably increased in the last week plus.

Meanwhile we await the arrival of the special order furnace inducer part which I'm beginning to suspect is being manufactured in and shipped from somewhere in China.

On the bright side, this acclimating to less heat, no heat, is probably good conditioning for Sam, Mrs. Dada and I for when we begin our lives in the *New America,* under a freeway overpass just a few blocks from here.

Honoring vets.

2010-11-11T12:27:00.001-07:00

Happy Veteran's Day to all veterans out there. It is in memory of my two older brothers, both of whom served in the U.S. Army during World War II, that I hold some appreciation for those honored this day, unlike my three years spent in service to same some 20 years later during a war against Vietnam.

The year was 1964 and, having too much fun, I flunked out of college in the middle of my junior year. I was suddenly faced with an important decision on my military obligation and future: be drafted or enlist.

Even in 1964, I was vehemently against the Vietnam war. In an effort to affect my military decision as positively as possible, I opted to join the army by choosing -- pre-enlistment -- what my own military occupational speciality was to be.

My first army *career* choice was cartographer. Little did I know that could possibly involve flying in a chopper low over southeast Asian jungle terrain launching angry munitions toward us. But there were no vacancies. So, mulling over my multitude of possible second choices, I finally settled on Military Pay Specialist. I would finally get a chance to apply talent gained in my high school typing classes.

I should mention, the major tipping point toward my selecting the army over the navy or air force, besides an enlistment obligation of 3 years instead of 4, was the block style military combat hats, ala those worn by Fidel Castro, that the army wore. No, I wasn't a communist. I just thought they looked cool. Fact is, I think our leaders in Washington would look even more authoritarian if they were all to wear those today.

But joining the army in May of 1964, I was terribly dismayed when issued my army uniforms only to learn those block style combat hats were being phased out. For the next three years, whenever donning combat fatigues, I would appear in the more playful, innocuous appearing, army baseball caps.

The rest of my military service was pretty uneventful. I spent my entire enlistment stationed at a relatively isolated post that included MP's adorned in levis who rode horses and camped out in the desert for days, to intelligence specialists who never ever wore uniforms but whose duties included hanging out, drinking and eavesdropping on GI's in Juarez bars and brothels. White Sands Missile Range had the air of a quasi-country club environment compared to what many of my military brothers and sisters were experiencing in southeast Asia.

I eventually rose to become the sole officer's pay clerk for the entire post. It was a job I thoroughly enjoyed; one that helped me greatly hone my interpersonal relationship skills I enjoy using to this day.

The service to my country is nothing I take particular pride in, hence, when honoring those men and women currently serving, or who have served, I never include myself among them. My service was three years of safe seclusion in an environment that offered a chance to enjoy life, perhaps a bit too much at times, without fear of flunking out, getting wounded or killed. It was nothing like what was really going on elsewhere with bullets, explosions and blood.

Happy Veteran's Day to my two older, now departed, WWII veteran brothers; to all who serve(d), particularly those who know the reality I never experienced.

.

Pig's Nosed American Dream still alive and well in South Carolina!

Unique urinals.

Obama's costly wild horse meat mistake.

Season's best to all!

Tis the season again! (sigh)

"Whom should we blow the shit out of next?"

Whoops!

Dada has a suggestion for the Defense Department:

(Sorry. Too late for your "Beast of Kandahar")

Life isn't fair

The end of backyard naked sunbathing?

It has been commanded...

The Wall Street gangsters are getting even bolder. They see no harm in stealing from you in broad daylight!

AMENDING THE AMENDMENTS:

Hypocrisy as a point of pride...

Olé! Olé! Enough of the BULLshit!

Solving those pesky soaring police department overtime costs

Imagine returning home from the Middle East to discover you have to fight to save your country.

In the west Texas town of El Paso....

Sunday El Paso Times UNEXPURGATED Doonesbury they didn't post

Taking it to the banks!

Occupy El Paso pics from Friday

Washington's plan to salvage the economy

Dada corrects the Coen Brothers on a casting error in their movie, "No Country For Old Men"

Maybe we're not dreaming. Maybe it really IS an efe-ing nightmare!

Why am I gagging?

Honking at Hookers

Are we being played? Nobody could make this up, right?

The beginning is near! (Ya think?)

Occupy El Paso

Quote of the Day

Occupy El Paso, Friday evening, 10/7/11

In time all walls fail.

"Thoughts on Fathers, on Integrity and on a Failed Presidency"

Art as metaphor?

Saturday was Medea Benjamin's birthday, so I sent her a birthday wish on Facebook...

Day II wrap-up report of Parks and Rec's annual end of the year dog's swim party

Parks and Rec's annual end of the year dog's swim party and...

END OF THE TIMES SIGN #37

How much you say they were into you for?

And the American economic future bleakens!

Is Texas burning?

JUST BEFORE GOD DECIDES HE NEEDS TO VACUUM THE FURNITURE

Another Labor Day holiday and I ask myself, "Why?"

A Tale of Two School Districts (or, "Teach your children well....")

"My Drunk Kitchen" as metaphor for ???

One year later, in Parallel Universe #37, Putin says 'rule is over' for U.S.'s Obama

Tsk, tsk.

Sad news on the doorstep!

Lame Deer visions of the lamest nation.

Le quatorze juillet (July 14th), the Fête de la Fédération, or "Bastille Day" (and heads will roll)!

CLIMATE CHANGE POSTER # 37-2

CLIMATE CHANGE POSTER # 37

Don't tell Mrs. Dada, but I have fallen hopelessly in love with another woman!

"The Earth is Full"

Should Weiner resign? (The U.S.'s *Most Important Question of the Day.*)

Blogger note....

Neither a Republican nor Democrat be...

So, "How goes it?"

Is there any hope for humanity?

More proof we live in Whacko World

Dada's Dally Redux #37

Let us give thanks!

Sunrise in the hood, 3/7/2011

It's just another day!

BLINDSIDED!

The Good, Bad and the Ugly...

Cosmology of the Universe (or, can making sense of chaos hint at some higher intelligence? Maybe!)

Sleep warm America!

Seeing the positive side of the Tunisian and Egyptian revolts

Is El Paso suffering from a shortage of guns?

Updating Utah school children's state symbols coloring book

Laugh now, cry later.

Sammy sees dead people!

Everything is okay, now get back to shopping (but stay afraid)!

Sixteen to go?

Sunrise in the 'hood, 1/7/2011

Waiting for "The rockets red glare, the bombs bursting in air!"?

Dada proposes a minor change in the Seal of the United States

Should Weiner resign? (The U.S.'s Most Important Question of the Day.)

NPR rap video tribute