Some Images

 

Dissecting Antisemitism?

 

A long, long time ago I saw an Israeli woman interviewed by some significant American Media Source.

She was in her home.

That home, before 1948 had been the home of a Palestinian family.

There came a point where the interviewer asked the woman if she ever thought about something that would appear, on its face, to be a gross and unacceptable inequity: she was living in a beautiful Mediterranean home and the Palestinians to whom it had belonged pre-1948, were most likely in some refugee camp somewhere.

Or dead.

I have never forgotten her reply.

"Macht nichts; I've got mine".

A curtain to a slightly different view of the aftermath of the holocaust flashed open for me in that moment: the fact that much of the world, after Hitler shot himself in his bunker, had coalesced behind the Jewish people, enthusiastically and unconditionally, had, perhaps, unleashed a newer, slightly softer, form of genocide.

Leverage is everything, that new form believed.

And use it while you've got it.

Smart move.

Six million innocent human beings industrially exterminated is a horror that even today looms as number one in horror, human race to date.

There's a lot of leverage pent up in that horror.

But to see the survivors of that horror leveraging it into a shoulder-shrugged right to exterminate the Palestinians is a new form of that same old horror.

And I can't understand how the Jews can tolerate it.

Such as is my minimal influence, I won't tolerate it.

Moving beyond all of the rhetoric about how bad Hamas is - and I argue that not - one issue remains.

Starting in 1948 the Israelis have been pursuing a policy of the gradual elimination of the Palestinians.

And the policy is succeeding.

In the years since 1948, Israeli policy has inexorably reduced Palestinian living space.

The Israelis finally have most of the Palestinians crammed into a chunk of land bordered by the Mediterranean Sea, Egypt and Israel; the land measures twenty-five miles long by five miles wide; there are two million Palestinians in there; recently Israel ordered the half of that two million who live in the north to move to the south; then Israel started bombing the south.

But that's not all.

The Israelis have nudged a lot of Palestinians, over the years onto the left bank of the river Jordan.

That was ostensibly to give them some lebensraum; but really it was just a fish trap trick to get them concentrated somewhere so that the Israelis could move in violent thugs that they call "settlers" to illegally homestead, and in their spare time do raids to kill Palestinians.

The lady of the interview got her house because the Jews told the Palestinians who owned it to get out.

One wonders where those Palestinians went.

"Macht nichts". 

Since 2000, or so, the Israelis have had another policy, parallel to the policy of Palestinian removal and relocation: allow a terrorist group (Hamas) to be an offset to the PLA.

Why would they do that?

Of course, I don't know, but I could argue that that policy is to permanently stymie a two-state solution, which, being the only solution, is a policy that totally precludes any solution; so removal and relocation, and now, elimination reign supreme in the chambers of Israeli policy.

Having a weak de jura government and a strong de facto alternate government - in opposition - makes serious discussion about creating a viable Palestine a nonstarter.

And not starting is and has seemed to have been a primary objective of Israeli policy.

For 75 years.

But allowing Hamas to exist has finally yielded catastrophic results for the Israeli government.

So, in reaction to the catastrophe, that government is reducing the Gaza Strip to rubble in pursuit of the goal of eliminating the terrorists.

But to do that they need to eliminate huge swathes (perhaps all) of Palestinians.

"Macht nichts" says BiBi.

And if the world objects, BiBi shrieks "the world is antisemitic" (theme from Shindler's List commences).

Leverage is everything.

Very Pretty Birds

 

Boeing: What I Said In 2019

 

They keep not doing it: they just put an MBA in charge of Boeing Commercial Airplanes.

By the time I was born in early World War Two Boeing had become a great company.

That greatness was the result of a fortuitous confluence of factors.

A high level distillation of those factors can be described: great organized labor, great entrepreneurial management and great get-your-hands-on-the-products-and-processes executives, all three of whom were imbued with deep scientific curiosity, engineering ability and fanatic commitment to quality.

And those managers, engineers and other skilled workers and executives lived – together daily – on the shop floor.

And – I think this is probably true; it’s hard to imagine otherwise given the culture of those long ago times – they all ended up after hours in the same Renton, bars, grills and taverns; they probably kept talking – in the egalitarian environment that bars, grills and taverns can foster – shop: what was ahead of schedule; what was behind schedule; what was going well; what was screwed up; how to keep getting better and how to fix the problems.

That all produced airplanes like the 70 year old B52 which is still a central part of America’s air war capability.

Or the, until Max 8, flawless (yeah I haven’t forgotten the batteries, but that got fixed quickly and transparently and permanently) string of 7XX airliners.

Have you ever seen the 707 doing barrel rolls over Lake Washington?

So how could that company get to the Max 8?

Of course I don’t know.

But I think it has to do with the fact that a few years back a cadre of executives having no cultural or hereditary relationship to the Renton Culture decided that they needed to remove themselves from the sweaty stench of the managers and workers.

They moved off to Chicago and began thinking great thoughts in tall buildings.

In that environment, far from “the egalitarian environment that bars, grills and taverns can foster” it is easy to imagine how executives could have spun – to each other – a plane whose design point: quick production, cheap cost and no pilot training, but which was really a lumbering disaster needing sensors and software to keep it from crashing, as a no sweat slam dunk.

And then they spun it, slam dunked it and lied, misrepresented and obfuscated its problems, not the least of which is that the spinners are all off in Chicago.

And two planeloads of human beings have died because of the ivory tower spinners.

I think the Chicago tribe should all be fired and replaced post haste, with promoted-from-within managers and workers from Renton.

And their prime directive should be get back to the bars after work and hammer out – once more and again – what it means to be a great company: what it means to be Boeing, a Seattle company.

Joe The Spider Guy?

From Newsweek: 

"Donald Trump has said that President Joe Biden had crossed a "sacred threshold" of illegality over his alleged backing legal action against him.

"The former president lashed out at the incumbent in a blistering post on his social media platform, Truth Social, as he faces multiple federal indictments.

"He wrote: 'At what point are the actions of a sitting president, using LAWFARE against his opponent for purposes of election Interference, considered ILLEGAL? I believe, as do various highly respected legal scholars, that Crooked Joe Biden has long since crossed over that very sacred threshold!!!'"

Newsweek followed:

"While Trump has sought to blame the president for the indictments, the charges against him have been brought by grand juries in Georgia, Washington D.C., Florida and Manhattan."

So, according to donnie, Joe Biden is either a senescent, doddering incompetent, OR the mastermind, spider-like presence sitting at the center of a vast international, family run (sound like donnie?) crime web, OR the mastermind of a generation spanning software conspiracy that, with the help of Hugo Chavez, rigged the results of every precinct in America during the 2020 general election, OR a brilliant barrister who has rigged all the courts in the land to attack poor little donnie with outrageous lawsuits.

Or maybe all of the above?

Why don't we give the country a break and tell donnie that if he drops out of running for president he can have a lifetime contract, funded by the American people, (you know, give him a big advance, maybe $453 million) to work in tandem with Ken Burns on a documentary covering all aspects of these various tales, and titled Joe the Spider Guy?

The Grift Is On

 

Just heard that donnie is taking truth social public.

If having a pre-existing shell company buy the thing is actually "going public".

Heard that donnie could get three billion dollars.

Also heard that significant, but un-named shareholders of the shell company are somewhat restive over what they assert is significant dilution of the value of their shares of the shell.

No indication what that means or what might be the source of that dilution, however.

Could it be donnie the diluter?

When I heard that donnie was getting three billion dollars from the old shell game, my math muscles began to twitch.

I've heard that Tic Tok United States - if that entity ever comes into being - might go for sixty-five billion dollars.

Tik Toc US has 150,000,000 users and growing.

That's $433.33 per user.

As near as I can discover, truth social has five million users, if you count everything, on a good day, including accidental casual encounters with its web site.

If you just accept those two facts, truth social is worth $2.2 billion (which brings into question the validity of the very concept of the word "worth".)

That's $833,350,000 less than what donnie thinks is his share of the shell company acquisition.

Could that be the source of the restiveness of those un-named shareholders?

Are the shell company shellers being shellacked by donnie the shellacker? 

The Cinnamon Bear

 The Tarantula Ghoul search worked so well that I decided to ask another Portland question of Bing/Co-Pilot.

Here is my question.

"In the 1950s there was an afternoon radio show in Portland during the Christmas season that was sponsored by Lippman Wolfe a Portland Oregon department store. What can you tell me about it.  I think it was called The Cinnamon Bear."

Here is what it found.

"Certainly! The Cinnamon Bear is a delightful old-time radio program that holds a special place in the hearts of Portlanders. Let me share some fascinating details about this beloved holiday show:

"Origins and Air Dates:

"The Cinnamon Bear was produced by Transco (Transcription Company of America), based in Hollywood, California.

"The show was specifically designed to be listened to six days a week between Thanksgiving and Christmas.

"Its inaugural broadcast took place between Friday, November 26 and Saturday, December 25, 1937.

"Interestingly, some markets, including Portland, Oregon, couldn’t wait and debuted the program on November 25, which was Thanksgiving Day.

"In the first season, Portland aired the program on two stations: KALE at 6:00 pm and KXL at 7:00 pm.

"Syndication issues temporarily halted the program in 1940, although some stations may have aired previous transcriptions. No program aired in Portland that year.

"In 1941, Transco programming was sold to Broadcasters Program Syndicate, and The Cinnamon Bear returned to the airwaves nationally.

"During the 1950s, syndication was taken over by Lou R. Winston, also based in Hollywood.

"Plot and Characters:

"The heartwarming story revolves around Judy and Jimmy Barton, who venture into the enchanted world of Maybeland to retrieve their missing Silver Star, which belongs on their Christmas tree.

"Assisting them in their quest is the endearing Cinnamon Bear, a stuffed bear with shoe-button eyes and a green ribbon around his neck.

"Along the way, they encounter other memorable characters, including:

"The Crazy Quilt Dragon, who repeatedly tries to snatch the star for himself.

"The Wintergreen Witch.

"Fe Fo the Giant.

"Of course, Santa Claus himself!

"Episodes began at Thanksgiving and concluded at Christmas, with one episode airing each night.

"The show was created by a group of merchants as an advertising promotion and was recorded in just a few weeks.

"Lindsay MacHarrie produced the show and also lent his voice to characters like Westley the Whale.

"Cast and Crew:

"The voice of The Cinnamon Bear was provided by Buddy Duncan, a little person and vaudeville comedian.

"Other notable radio voices included:

"Barbara Jean Wong as Judy Barton.

"Bobby La Manche as Jimmy Barton.

"Joseph Kearns as The Crazy-Quilt Dragon.

"Verna Felton as Judy & Jimmy’s mother.

"Lou Merrill as Santa Claus.

"Martha Wentworth as The Wintergreen Witch.

"Portland’s Enduring Love:

"The Cinnamon Bear remains one of the longest continuously running radio shows in American history.

"Even today, Benson High School’s KBPS-AM (1450 kHz) in Portland continues to play it during the holiday season, making Portland’s airwaves one of the show’s longest-running homes.

Tarantula Ghoul

 I was curious if Bing/Co-pilot could find anything.

They could.

"Tarantula Ghoul, whose real name was Suzanne Waldron, was an American actress, television hostess, and musician. She gained fame as the enigmatic host of the cult favorite program House of Horror on the Portland-based television station KPTV between 1957 and 1959. Let me share some intriguing details about her:

"House of Horror: Tarantula Ghoul hosted the late-night program House of Horror, which aired at 10:30 pm on Wednesdays. The show featured campy B-rated horror films, satirical comedic segments, and other spooky elements. Tarantula Ghoul introduced the films, adding her unique flair to the horror genre. The show also included other memorable characters like the grave robber-turned-gardener Milton, a boa constrictor named Baby, and her pet tarantula, Sir Galahad.

"Musical Ventures: Alongside her hosting duties, Tarantula Ghoul recorded music. She collaborated with her backing band, the Gravediggers, and released the single “King Kong” in 1958. Another track, “Graveyard Rock”, became associated with Halloween-themed music and remains popular to this day.

"Inspirations and Legacy: The concept of Tarantula Ghoul’s character drew inspiration from Vampira, portrayed by actress Maila Nurmi. Vampira’s show, The Vampira Show, had been successful in Los Angeles before its cancellation, inspiring stations across the United States to create similar ghoulish-themed programs. Tarantula Ghoul’s persona, with her striking resemblance to the fictional matriarch Morticia Addams, captured the imagination of viewers.

"Life Beyond Tarantula Ghoul: After the cancellation of House of Horror, Suzanne Waldron continued her acting career in the 1960s and 1970s. She occasionally revived her Tarantula Ghoul persona but chose to focus on stage acting and voiceover work. Tragically, she passed away in June 1982 from colon cancer at the age of 50.

"Although no known footage of House of Horror exists today, Tarantula Ghoul’s legacy lives on as a memorable figure in the world of horror television and music."

Ripples In The Mirror

 On 12 October 2010 I awoke and saw this out my window.

Four floors up allows one liberties with one's windows that are not practical at ground level.

Four up one leaves the windows open.

A relationship with the river results.

Latest About The Pig In The Poke

 

From Salon:

"Donald Trump posted a $91.6 million bond to cover the $83.3 million a Manhattan jury awarded to writer E. Jean Carroll in January as he appeals the defamation lawsuit's verdict, lawyers for Trump told a court Friday. Attorney Alina Habba filed the papers with a New York judge alongside a notice showing that Trump, the likely GOP presidential nominee, is appealing the verdict.

"The bond would cover the full judgment plus interest and was necessary to delay payment of the sum until the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, can bring down a decision on the former president's appeal, the Associated Press reports.

"Trump secured the bond from "Federal Insurance Company, which is a principal of The Chubb Corporation," MSNBC legal correspondent Katie Phang reports. The Chubb Corporation is a global insurer headquartered in New Jersey.

"'It will be interesting to see if the judge requires clarification be provided (likely solely to the court) regarding what kind of collateral Trump provided to Chubb to get the bond,' national security lawyer Bradley Moss wrote on X. 'But either way, Chubb is on the hook now.'" 

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If donnie loses the appeal, Chubb will have the unenviable task of collecting from donnie the dildo.

If donnie wins the appeal, and then wins in November, Chubb will have bought a president for a bargain price.

Of course there is still that half billion dollar thing.

Not A Bad Speech ...

 ... a bad performance.

Last night a silly, apparently deranged, sorority girl got promoted to represent donnie the dildo in a speech in rejoinder to a great and historic State of the Union speech just delivered by the President of the United States of America.

It was weird.

In all the ways that, if you participate in any of our current civilization's postmortem media devices, you already know.

So I'm not going to dredge us all through all of that again.

It was designedly disrespectful, drippingly christian and just plain out of control from the point of view of any normally perceived definition of truth, justice and the 'merican way.

In all the ways that, if you have a shred of basic intelligence, you already know.

But her outburst was the republican rebuttal to what our President had just told us he thinks is important to us and for our chance for a better future.

Not a Tic Tok from influencer-land.

Being the official republican rebuttal, one would have thought that it would have had some sort of policy content.

Y'know - ideas and stuff.

Instead, all it had was disrespect, ridicule (poorly, poorly executed ridicule) and thinly veiled good solid christianity - white, of course.

And all of that amounted to a performance, not a speech.

And it was the worst performance any of us have ever seen.

Sorority Girl from Alabama will do well to get crackin' about what she must be good at: kids and cookin'.

Or maybe she can be the centerfold image for The Christian American Weekly.

She sure can't perform - at least not politically, or intelligently, and, for sure, not on the national stage.

Biden's Speech And That Republican Thing

On balance, he got it done.

And done well and with grace.

Lotta angry republican white people video clips for the Democrats to use for the campaign.

The official republican rebuttal requires so much ignorance to accept, it has to be acknowledged as brilliant; and it was weird enough to be mistaken for a trailer for a new Netflix series: Shrieks from the Kitchen Table.  

The only flaw may be that there might not be enough idiots who buy into the hysterical ranting of an Alabama prom queen, except maybe as a Netflix series.

Probably are, though.

I hadn't realized until last night that Alabama has a complete set in the senate: a football coach and a cheerleader.

That's gravitas - American Gravitas.

Damn!! That may be a better name for the series.

A Gutless Court For Today's Pro-trump Promulgation

 SCOTUS today said that states can't keep federal candidates off the ballot.

I guess they said that the Fourteenth Amendment can't be enforced by individual states.

Does that mean that the Constitution in general is in abeyance?

But no; they have a Fourteenth Amendment solution.

They said, I guess, that Congress needs to write a new law every time a federal candidate might be guilty of being covered by the Fourteenth Amendment.

They were really careful not to indicate what the violation of the Fourteenth Amendment might have been asserted to have been in the case of donnie the dildo.

That gave them license not to address the screaming requirement for any SCOTUS ruling on the Colorado Supreme Court's unanimous decision to deny the dildo the Colorado ballot: did the dildo or did he not foment an insurrection?

Does the fact that one of the participating justices is married to an active unindicted participant in the insurrection have something to do with the frigid silence surrounding the nature of the actual asserted violation of the Constitution?

The Fourteenth Amendment says that if the dildo fomented an insurrection he can't run for president.

Or at least that's what the English of it seems to say.

However, to the originalist majority of SCOTUS, I'm sure there is some sort of secret code denied to most of us (like the cannons-tanks-machine-guns-and-unlimited-carry-in-the-town-square provision of the Second Amendment that is so obvious to so few of us).

Colorado says that the dildo fomented an insurrection, the Fourteenth Amendment says insurrectionists who have previously taken an oath to defend the Constitution can't hold office, and therefore the dildo can't run for president in the state of Colorado.

SCOTUS says that states can't say that.

SCOTUS also says that only Congress can enforce the Fourteenth Amendment via custom legislation.

I ask again, does that mean that the Constitution in general is in abeyance?

Until or unless Congress can arise from its multi-decade malaise and pass specialized Fourteenth Amendment laws?

Has SCOTUS today abrogated to Congress the power of policing and implementing the Constitution?

And where in the Constitution is that abrogation indicated?

Or is the current decision merely a one-off, US history to date?

Pretty well tailored for donnie the dildo.

Though.

Be afraid; be very afraid.

Leaving Facebook

I left this post on Facebook overnight recently.

And then I deleted it in the morning.

Trying to mount that sort of discourse on FB just makes one look ridiculous.

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For a long time now - since sometime in 2017 - I have not been a very frequent user of FB.

There is a reason for that: somewhere in early 2Q 2017 I realized that I was becoming unhinged about donnie the dildo.

No matter how appropriate my revulsion for that monumental manifestation of slime might have been, and remains to be, becoming an irrational poster of five or six fiery FB posts decrying donnie's most recent (then) transgressions - DURING THE DINNER PREPARATION HOUR - was obviously, to me, the first slippery step on the road to oblivion.

So, I moved FB to the last screen on my iPhone, quit posting, and doubled down on my blog.

The advantage of the blog was that I had to think a little bit about what I was trying to say, and, more important, I had to try to craft what I was trying to say in decent English.  

That meant that time became the saucer in which my fiery prose could cool.  

A blog post takes longer than a burst of fiery FB emotion. 

I am posting this to call your attention to something important to me: if I post to FB at all, it is most often my blog, and I have cooled that blog post in the saucer of time, thought and revision, and have deemed it nevertheless of sufficient consequence and quality to be something that my FB friends, who as far as I have been able to divine, all have superior intellects, might find to be of use in their pursuit of some overall worldview. 

I have sensed that my image posts to FB have a far wider acceptance than my views as posted from my blog.  

And that is understandable. 

A picture of a cathedral, or a flower, or a Gibson martini is a lot easier to digest and a lot more fun than some saucer cooled discussion of Israel's most recent massacre of Palestinians, but, for god's sake, we are in trouble here. 

And maybe reading one person's saucer-cooled thoughts, added to the thoughts of actual, responsible journalists and thinkers, and actual responsible publications, all of which I hope you access, and video clips from real responsible news sources will save us.  

I don't know.  

I just hope.

Most Recent Israeli Massacre

 Lotta Israelis with lips moving on this one.

Contrary to those lies, initial hospital reports of the condition of the "survivors" say that most of them have bullet wounds.

That letter to the world from 50 top journalists petitioning for journalistic access to and presence in Gaza seems even more urgent in the face of the limited facts and the copious Israeli lies related to this episode.

Heavily armed military personnel backed up with multiple tanks feeling threatened by starving people is one of the most ridiculous verbal contrivances that I have ever heard.