Holy Stoners

A holy man of the Temple of Pashupatinath, Kathmandu

Those who are looking for an Intro to the 60s, might like to take a look at my earlier Post,
1967 - A Snapshot.

In that Post I mentioned that "In the 60s, the vast new consumerism produced some good stuff, including the Weekly Color Magazine.  All the major newspapers had them, and they actually included some fine journalism - as well as fascinating portraits of the times.

"... one example - "The Daily Telegraph" - had sent a reporter and photographer out on the Hippie Trail to Kathmandu, or at least India. (Yes, Virginia, in those days people could travel on a shoestring, with a pretty good chance of being attacked by nothing worse than gippy tummy.)

"They had dozens of photographs of individual travellers, with amazing tales of how they travelled, smoked dope, lived rough, communicated with the locals - in a word, lived!"

The reason why the Hippies travelled East, to Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan (at that time a peaceful agrarian society whose Muslim tradition of hospitality meant that Western travellers were welcomed and invited into people's homes) and India (apart from fun and frolics), was to look for something more meaningful in life than "a steady job with a pension".

In India in particular, with Hinduism, more than twice as old as Christianity, and Tibet, with Buddhism, they often found what they sought - and lots of thoughtful people are still finding it.

Along the way they found many ancient and exotic traditions - 

Saddhus, holy men who take a vow of poverty...

... and commune deeply with the natural world

As I report in my Book Proposal, "The War On The 60s", somewhere in the mid-60s, "one of my teenage-philosopher friends crossed paths with an old soldier who had served in Egypt before World War 2. `You young lads, you think you’re on to something new,' he chortled. He had discovered the joys of hashish while serving in the British Army on scorching desert patrols and backstreet shakedowns, and had received regular supplies through the mail ever since. His Majesty never had a more devoted servant."

Images I Like, Updated 11/9/13

John Boehner's face is such a gift...

... to his opponents!

And we thought senior politicians were chosen for their smooth, reassuring looks?

The Only Way Republicans Can Stay In Congress...

... is by blanketing the airwaves with their paranoid, militarist, racist - quoting Winston Churchill's immortal phrase - "terminological inexactitudes".

To do that they need huge amounts of cash.  And they would dearly love to have all limits taken off their ability to receive these bribes - which is what they are.

Why are they bribes?  Because the rich - should we call them people; are they actual humans like the rest of us? - persons who pay these dues to "conservative" politicians, know full well that what they are buying is the right to have the laws passed that suit them - see my earlier posts about A.L.E.C., the American Legislative Exchange Council.

Now the Supreme Court is going to rule on a case called McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission.  (I mentioned this case a month ago, in Goddammit, What Did I Just Say?, and pointed out that "Judging by the Supremes' unconscionable decision in Citizens United, we may have a problem, Houston.") The hearing on McCutcheon was this past Tuesday.

A group called SierraRise is calling on us to raise our voices against this travesty of a case that should never have been filed, let alone taken seriously by the Supreme Court.

They say, "This is pretty crazy: There's a Big Coal CEO demanding the right to donate as much as he wants in an election cycle."

The message continues, ending in a Petition for your signature - 

"The CEO's name is Shaun McCutcheon. His case would end campaign finance law as we know it -- and the top Senate Republican, Mitch McConnell, is on board, eager for all that coal cash. ^[3] If they get their way, corporate polluters will be able to buy more politicians and elections than ever before, launching a brutal assault on all the environmental progress we've made together.

But there is good news: Several leaders in Congress are standing up and fighting back. These lawmakers are pushing for major reforms that would reduce the amount of dirty money in politics -- and with the Supreme Court considering the McCutcheon case, that work has never been more important.

Will you take 30 seconds right now to push back against billionaire polluters? Let campaign finance reform champions know that we're 100% behind fair elections!

McCutcheon's Supreme Court case, which the justices are considering right now, is just the beginning -- imagine a system where billionaires could just keep giving and giving. As the U.S. solicitor general told the Court, take away those limits and "Less than 500 people can fund the whole shooting match. The government will be run of, by, and for those 500 people." ^[4] These are the people trying to replace our democracy with their dollars, and our health and climate with their profit. We must stop them in their tracks.

McCutcheon is the CEO of Coalmont Electrical Development in Alabama. He filed his lawsuit with the Republican National Committee, and Senator McConnell jumped at the chance to join them. McConnell, who's up for re-election, is one of the biggest coal champions in the country, and he couldn't be more excited to take all that dirty money -- even sending his lawyers to join McCutcheon at the Supreme Court.

Environmental champion Senator Bernie Sanders took a different approach outside the Court that day, and told it like it is: "Freedom of speech, in my view, does not mean the freedom to buy the United States government." ^[5]

We can turn the tide. Our allies on this in Congress, known as the DARE task force, want to "disclose, amend, reform and elect." ^[6] They're fighting for several critical changes: overturn Citizens United, provide more public campaign financing by matching small donors, block efforts to stop Americans from voting, and require donor disclosure for political front groups like those run by Karl Rove and the Koch Brothers.

Tell the DARE task force to keep at it -- let's send them a petition with 60,000 names so they'll know we've got their backs!

In it together,

Nathan Empsall
SierraRise Senior Campaigner

P.S. Five signatures are even more powerful than one -- after you take action, be sure to forward this alert to your friends, family, and colleagues!
"

You probably never watch Network Television....

... for the very good reason that it's 99% garbage.

Believe it or not, I am at this moment writing a serious Post about McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission.  But I got sidetracked, your Honor.

By this....

One of the things about Network TV is that they love to make fun of dumb people.

BUT they are themselves one of the strongest influences in the dumbing-down of America.  They have to do this, first, to be able to keep Americans satisfied with a diet of Pablum (meaning baby-food) and second, to keep them in a state of mind to buy whatever crap the networks' corporate masters want them to buy this month, and necessarily not pay attention to what's being done to them by the 1%.

Therefore, in order to titillate their audience by mocking dumb people, they are forced to find people who are even dumber than the viewers.

I'm about to show you a video. Sadly, you will first have to sit through a pack of lies from Chevron, about how much money they are "putting back" (their words) into the economy. No mention of where they got that money from in the first place. Then you will have to tolerate a set-up from a dead-eyed used-car salesman (Jimmy Kimmel), who is paid millions of dollars to do this shit.

THEN you get to watch the video. It is funny. But it only works because they picked on drunks, stoners, and people whose minds were... elsewhere, then insulted them before making fools of them.

Go for it -

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2013/10/08/jimmy-kimmels-government-shutdown-demographic-study-video/?tid=up_next

Sign Against California Fracking

An LA Times Editorial in September said

"SB 4 is the state's first attempt to exert oversight over fracking, a controversial process that involves the high-pressure injection of water, sand and chemicals to fracture rock and release the oil or gas locked within. Fracking has taken place in California for years, but it has been limited in scope, with most wells located in a remote area of Kern County. Now, with the revelation that the Monterey Shale in the Central Valley might contain 15 billion barrels of frackable oil, the practice is expected to boom.
"There are reasons to be concerned about possible effects on groundwater and air quality. Even more worrisome for California is the danger of setting off seismic activity; studies in other states where fracking is more established have linked earthquakes to the injection of wastewater into wells, even in areas that are not quake-prone.
"The Legislature should be embarrassed by its reckless attitude on this issue."

To read more, go here.

Today there's a Petition to sign, from CREDO, who say:

"On Monday, CREDO activists and our allies had a chance to directly confront Governor Brown and demand a ban on fracking at an event in San Francisco. And he may have signaled an opening for a reversal on his position in support of fracking and SB 4, the dangerous fracking bill he recently signed.¹

Ironically, Brown was in San Francisco to ink a climate agreement with Oregon, Washington and British Columbia. We know Governor Brown is committed to action on climate change, which he described on Monday as "the world's greatest existential challenge."²

But from his statements on Monday, it seems like Governor Brown, who greased the wheels for expanded fracking in California by pushing for and signing SB 4, may not realize some of the basic facts about how bad fracking is for the climate. If he stands by what he said on Monday, he should put a moratorium on fracking.

Tell Governor Brown: Impose a temporary moratorium on fracking while you fully investigate the science behind fracking for oil production. Click here to sign automatically."

[The above link will take you to the Petiton, and to a clear description of the situation in California.]

Propaganda

This made me laugh....

(although the "Gander" looks more like a duck)

and this is a bit weird....