Atrophy and Entropy, October 15, 2015

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."

                                                            - John F. Kennedy

WC Turck

Proposed: The Ninja Amendment
Revolution and Beer, Oct. 15, 2015

   "Be it soon resolved that We the People of these United States of America hereby propose that all schools in this great nation will henceforth be guarded by “good” Ninjas through a Constitutional convention of the States and ratified by the Congress. We further contend that this is as valid and an equally responsible response to initiatives to militarize schools with guns, forcibly arm teachers and increase the proliferation of guns by creating a virtual army to patrol the 130,000 schools in the nation. A single well-hidden Ninja would be far more effective and a greater deterrent than a dozen roaming part-time security guards."

WC Turck is an author, artist, playwright and talk radio host in Chicago. He has been called the most dangerous voice on the Left. 

National

The Final Unraveling of Nixon's "Southern Strategy" -
The Nation, Oct.12, 2015

   " The GOP finds itself trapped in a marriage that has not only gone bad but is coming apart in full public view. After five decades of shrewd strategy, the Republican coalition Richard Nixon put together in 1968—welcoming the segregationist white South into the Party of Lincoln—is now devouring itself in ugly, spiteful recriminations."


The Republicans Incompetence Caucus -
NY Times, Oct. 13, 2015

   "By traditional definitions, conservatism stands for intellectual humility, a belief in steady, incremental change, a preference for reform rather than revolution, a respect for hierarchy, precedence, balance and order, and a tone of voice that is prudent, measured and responsible. Conservatives of this disposition can be dull, but they know how to nurture and run institutions. They also see the nation as one organic whole. Citizens may fall into different classes and political factions, but they are still joined by chains of affection that command ultimate loyalty and love.
   All of this has been overturned in dangerous parts of the Republican Party. Over the past 30 years, or at least since Rush Limbaugh came on the scene, the Republican rhetorical tone has grown ever more bombastic, hyperbolic and imbalanced. Public figures are prisoners of their own prose styles, and Republicans from Newt Gingrich through Ben Carson have become addicted to a crisis mentality. Civilization was always on the brink of collapse. Every setback, like the passage of Obamacare, became the ruination of the republic. Comparisons to Nazi Germany became a staple."

Conservatives Drawn to a Socialist Senator -
Washington Spectator, Oct.8, 2015

   "The theory suggests that when upwards of 60 percent of voters consistently agree that rich people should have their taxes raised, a candidate who promises to do so might be identified as what he actually is: middle of the road. That if Democrats give Democratic speeches on economic issues, voters suckered into Republicanism by refrains like Jihad! Jihad! Jihad! just might try something else. And that new voters might be attracted into politics if they could just hear a candidate cut to the radical quick of the actual problems that are ruining their lives. My new Republican friends didn’t know they were not “supposed” to like a “liberal” like Bernie Sanders. Then they heard what he was saying, and liked what they heard."

Wall Street Banks Panic as Congress Prepares to Fund Infrastructure Spending by Cutting Their Subsidies -
Addicting Info, Oct.10, 2015

   "Even though House Republicans remain in complete disarray over who will lead them as the next House Speaker, it appears that both sides could very well unite by the end of this month to take care of a very critical issue that has plagued the United States for years now.
Across the nation, highways and bridges are in desperate need of repair and innovation to keep the country moving. But Republicans have repeatedly blocked efforts to put American workers and money into such a massive project, citing the cost.
   But the Congressional Progressive Caucus has led the way in pushing to cut a government subsidy for the biggest banks from 6 percent to 1.5 percent, which would free up 17 billion over the next ten years that can be used to fund the infrastructure bill.
And Senate Republicans are on board with this idea and they already passed it despite a large scale effort by banking lobbyists to convince lawmakers to reject it."

Sanders Wins Every Focus Group, Poll and Survey: So Why Does the Media Claim That Hillary Won?
Alternet, Oct. 14, 2015

  "Who “won” a debate is inherently subjective. The idea of winning a debate necessarily entails a goal to be achieved. What this goal is, therefore, says as much about the person judging its achievement as the goal itself. Pundits are ostensibly supposed to judge whether or not a candidate said what "the voters” want to hear. But what ends up happening, invariably, is they end up judging whether or not the candidate said what they think voters wanted to hear. This, after all, is why pundits exist, to act as a clergy class charged with interpreting people’s own inscrutable opinions for them. The chasm between what the pundits saw and what the public saw was even bigger than usual last night."

America Must Bring Back Glass-Steagle
Alternet, Oct. 10, 2015

   "Back in 2000, before they almost ruined the economy and had to be bailed out, the five biggest banks on Wall Street held 25%  of the nation’s banking assets. Now they hold more than 45%. Their huge size fuels further growth because they’ll be bailed out if they get into trouble again. This hidden federal guarantee against failure is estimated be worth over $80 billion a year to the big banks. In effect, it’s a subsidy from the rest of us to the bankers.
And they’ll almost certainly get into trouble again if nothing dramatic is done to stop them."

International

Major Oil Deposit Discovered in Israel -

Daily Mail, Oct. 8, 2015

   "Vast oil reserves have been discovered in Israel that could transform the country into world energy power and change the face of the Middle East for years to come.Afek Oil and Gas, an Israeli subsidiary of the U.S. company Genie Energy, said the breakthrough came in the Golan Heights, near the border with Syria.Yuval Bartov, the firm's chief geologist, said there was 'enormous excitement' about the immense wealth it could bring to the Jewish state, which has long yearned for its own resource of 'black gold'.Speaking to Paul Alster, an Israel-based journalist for Fox News he said: 'It's a fantastic feeling.   'We are talking about a strata which is 350 metres thick and what is important is the thickness and the porosity.On average in the world, strata are 20-30 metres thick, so this is ten times as large as that, so we are talking about significant quantities.'   The main site lies close to the town of Katzrin, northeast of the Sea of Galilee.
   Genie Energy, which is backed by former U.S. vice president Dick Cheney and media mogul Rupert Murdoch, previously said it wanted to secure energy independence for Israel, a country that has never had a serious oil find despite years of exploration."

Video - Russian Colonel: ISIS is a Division of the CIA
Sottnet, Oct.5, 2015

   "Alexander Zhilin, Colonel in the army and military expert of the Russian Federation, explains in layman's terms Russia's national interests in supporting Assad."

Local

                       

Byrd-Bennet to Plead Guilty in Kickback Scheme -

CatalystChicago.org, Oct.8, 2015

    "Former Chicago Public Schools CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett was charged criminally today with funneling $23 million in contracts to her former employers, including the now-infamous no-bid professional development contract that went to SUPES Academy. In exchange, prosecutors say, she was promised hundreds of thousands of dollars in future kickbacks. Byrd-Bennett, 66, is cooperating with authorities and will plead guilty, her attorney says."

The Mayor Who Failed Chicago's Children-

Chicago Tribune, Oct.15, 2015

    "The mayor of Chicago may have no more important task than making sure the city's children get a quality education that at minimum gives them a shot at a decent paying job after graduation and at best qualifies them for college if that's their goal. Mayor Richard M. Daley demanded that responsibility when he asked the state Legislature for authority to control the public schools. He got it. But with that authority comes a responsibility to making public education a top priority of City Hall."

Mayor's Office Withholds Records in School Kickbacks Scandal -

Chicago Tribune, Oct. 13, 2015

    "Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s office was more involved in a $20.5 million school contract with a now-indicted consultant than previously disclosed, public records indicate, but his administration has refused to release hundreds of emails that could provide a deeper understanding of how the deal came to be.   Emanuel and his aides have maintained that the mayor’s office had nothing to do with the contract to provide leadership training for principals that is at the center of a federal bribery indictment against ex-schools CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett and the consulting firm where she once worked."

Hastert Pleads Guilty to Payoffs of Child Molestation Victims - 
Occupy Democrats, Oct. 15, 2015
   "Hastert also has the unenviable distinction of creating the unofficial rule which has contributed heavily to the gridlock in the modern Republican Congress. The “Hastert Rule” is a show of collective obstinacy where the House Speaker, who decides what bills will be considered, will only bring to the table bills that have support from the majority of the majority – in this case, Republicans- effectively locking bipartisan efforts out of the process entirely."

Inside the Private Group That Guides Chicago's Public Development -
Crain's Chicago Business, Oct. 10, 2015
    "About three dozen companies have moved to Chicago during Mayor Rahm Emanuel's time in office—including, most recently, packaged-foods giant Con-Agra—a testament both to the mayor's zealous pursuit of economic development and the money and connections of World Business Chicago, a group run by the city's corporate chiefs.   But the organization's close identification with the city's political power structure has opened it to criticism that it hasn't done enough to create jobs outside of downtown and that most of its deliberations happen behind closed doors.   Since Emanuel was elected in 2011, the nonprofit's board, which he chairs, has swelled to 81 members from 24, and its annual budget tripled to $8.1 million last year."

Thought

Thresholds of Violence -
New Yorker, Oct. 19, 2015

   "School shootings are a modern phenomenon. There were scattered instances of gunmen or bombers attacking schools in the years before Barry Loukaitis, but they were lower profile. School shootings mostly involve young white men. And, not surprisingly, given the ready availability of firearms in the United States, the phenomenon is overwhelmingly American. But, beyond those facts, the great puzzle is how little school shooters fit any kind of pattern."

Chomski: There is an Overt Corporate Attempt to Indoctrinate America's Children -

Alternet, Oct. 13, 2015

   "There's interestingly one group that they never discussed as a special interest, corporate power, which makes sense. That's the national interest, so we don't talk about that. But, of course, they have overwhelming control over policy and they particularly singled out the universities. Schools, churches, universities - they describe them as institutions responsible for "the indoctrination of the young" - their phrase, indoctrination of the young. And they said they're failing. You can see it because all these young kids are out in the street, opposing the war, calling for women's rights and so on.
   So the young are not being indoctrinated properly and they therefore called for more efforts to - the state, they said, should intervene to ensure that indoctrination takes place properly. They also criticized the media. Anyone who looked at the media could see that it's overwhelmingly conformist. But there was some criticism. I mean, there were people in the media who were saying, "The war's too costly. Maybe we shouldn't continue with it" and so on. And they said even that's too much. You can't have the media being this oppositional and critical of power. So maybe the state should step in with some form of censorship and control over the media."

                                 

Winner of Nobel Prize in Economics Has Deep Concerns About Income Equality -

Moneybox, Oct. 12, 2015

   "In politics too, income inequality had little traction. Americans, unlike the British, are not interested in or disturbed by stories of ‘fat cats’, indeed they rather approve of them. Attempts by Democratic politicians to talk about inequality or redistribution were effectively met by cries of ‘class warfare’ from the Republicans. Americans, we were told, believed in the American Dream, that everyone could get rich if they tried hard enough. It was equality of opportunity that was important, not inequality of outcomes, and America, so the story went, was the land of opportunity."

Is Stephan Hawking Right About Hostile Aliens?
Space.com, Oct. 9, 2015

   "E.T. was the perfect extraterrestrial: Cute, smart and — best of all — a perfect pacifist.
   Unfortunately, scientists aren't so sure that an actual intelligent alien would be so benign. In a recent interview with El Pais famed physicist  Stephan Hawking posited that an alien visitation would put Earthlings in the same position as Native Americans when Columbus landed on their shores.
   "Such advanced aliens would perhaps become nomads, looking to conquer and colonize whatever planets they can reach," Hawking speculated."

Atrophy and Entropy, October 8, 2015

"The revolution is not an apple that falls when it is ripe. You have to make it fall."

                                   -Che Guevara

WC Turck

The Ballad of Don and Dean

   "The late afternoon air smells of yellow hay, the warm musk of manure, peppery fresh-cut grass, and chicken frying up nicely somewhere. A breeze is moving laundry hung from a tired line across the yard, and washing in waves over feathery tassels on tall August corn. Corn surrounds the shady yard on three sides, obscuring fields running endless beneath the perfect Iowa sky. The corn wraps around the farm like loving arms, like a lover’s intimate embrace. Fat red apples are ripe in the tree beside the house. They are falling to the soft, grassy earth in ever increasing numbers, as if understanding that only a select few will be chosen to fatten a pie, or a fresh-baked strudel."

21 Days in May: An Occupy Novella
Revolution and Beer, May 19, 2012

   "The NATO summits had only revealed fully what many feared was emerging in America. No longer was this the stuff of fiction, or the Hollywood fantasy of Gestapo agents and Nazi stormtroopers exacting justice on a whim, as if judges and courts and laws were their individual domain, and a sacred language only they understood."WC Turck is an author, artist, playwright and talk radio host in Chicago. He has been called the most dangerous voice on the Left.

National

People Die Because of This Man- Wayne LaPierre and the NRA-
Salon, Oct. 6th, 2015

   "LaPierre, who has worked for the NRA since 1978 and served as its top official since 1991, is the organization’s hit man when it comes to intimidating elected officials to oppose any kind of sensible gun control laws, including a federal law requiring background checks on would-be gun buyers and a national registry of guns. LaPierre likes to fulminate about gun owners’ rights. But he’s been silent on the Oregon killings, just as he’s been silent after the murders of other innocent victims of America’s epidemic of gun violence."


The NRA Once Supported Gun Control: So How Did We Get Here?

Al Jazeera Plus, July, 29, 2015

   "Gun-related tragedies continue to dominate the headlines, accompanied by age-old debates about gun control versus the Second Amendment. But this is not how it’s always been. And it is not how it has to be.For most of our nation’s history an individual’s right to bear arms was not protected by the Constitution. The Second Amendment was about the right to have militias that could bear arms. And guess what — the National Rifle Association (NRA) used to support gun control.So how’d we get here? Let’s take a look at the NRA and how it helped shape the U.S. into the country with the most gun-related violence worldwide."


Everybody Blames mental Illness for Mass Shootings. But What If That's Wrong?
Vox, Oct. 2, 2015

   "Jonathan Metzl a professor of psychiatry, sociology, and medicine, health, and society at Vanderbilt University, argues that mental illness is often a scapegoat that lets policymakers and the public ignore bigger, more complicated contributors to gun violence. Metzl, who reviewed the research on mass shootings and mental illness in a paper for the American Journal of Public Health, points to studies that show people with mental illness are more likely to be victims — not perpetrators — of violence, and that very few violent acts — about 3% - 5%— are carried out by the mentally ill. And while mental illness can be a contributor to some violent behaviors, other factors— such as substance abuse, poverty, history of violence, and access to guns— are much stronger predictors of violence and shootings."


There's Scientific Consensus On Guns: And the NRA Won't Like It.-

LA Times, Oct. 7, 2015

   "Most of the scientists who were publishing relevant articles were from the fields of criminology, economics, public policy, political science and public health. Since there are typically many more authors on public health articles than on criminology articles, to have a balanced list I decided to include only the first author on the byline. Graduate students working for me identified more than 300 distinct first authors, and found more than 280 email addresses.
   Last May we began sending out short, monthly surveys. The first question on each survey asks how much the respondent agrees with a particular claim related to firearms, and the second and third questions ask the respondent to rate the quality of the scientific literature, as well as their own level of familiarity with the scientific literature on that particular topic. "


How to Slow Firearm Deaths Without Banning All Guns-
Scientific American, Feb. 19, 2013

   "Like the firearms industry today, the automobile industry at midcentury was central to American culture and identity. Cars were big and beautiful, throbbing with power. Yet with that power came danger. By the 1960s motor vehicle accidents killed more than 50,000 people a year. The common wisdom, promulgated by carmakers since the 1920s, held that traffic fatalities were exclusively the fault of individual drivers (or, to put it another way: cars don't kill people; drivers kill people). This assertion, of course, was false, but at the time we had no way of knowing for certain, because we lacked data on the proximate causes of accident deaths.
We now find ourselves in a similar state of ignorance regarding gun fatalities. What factors shape the risk that a gun will be used for violence? What technologies (such as trigger locks) and policies (such as waiting periods) work best to reduce injuries and deaths? What is the relation—if any—between violent entertainment and actual violence? Guns, unlike cars, of course, are meant to kill, but why do they kill so many?"


Gun Free State
WC Turck, Revolution and Beer, Oct. 5, 2015

The Populist Prophet-

NewYorker, Oct. 12, 2015

   "A 2011 Pew Research Center survey found that, among voters under the age of thirty, forty-nine per cent had a positive view of socialism. (Only forty-six per cent had a positive view of capitalism.) Peter Dreier, a professor of politics at Occidental College, who has written about Sanders, says that younger voters “may not be willing to entertain a whole new system, but they are open to a pretty profound critique of the current one. They’re not as naïve as Americans used to be during the Cold War—they know that there are varieties of capitalism, that there is social democracy in Scandinavia and Canada, where the government plays a bigger role in regulating corporations and in expanding the safety net.”

The Reign of Recycling-
New York Times, Oct. 3, 2015

   "I you live in the United States, you probably do some form of recycling. It’s likely that you separate paper from plastic and glass and metal. You rinse the bottles and cans, and you might put food scraps in a container destined for a composting facility. As you sort everything into the right bins, you probably assume that recycling is helping your community and protecting the environment. But is it? Are you in fact wasting your time?"

Alabama, Birthplace of the Voting Rights Act, is Once Again Gutting Voting Rights-
The Nation, Oct. 1, 2015

   "It was Alabama that brought the country the Voting Rights Act (VRA) because of its brutality against black citizens in places like Selma. “The Voting Rights Act is Alabama’s gift to our country,” the civil-rights lawyer Debo Adegbile once said.

NY Times Calls for an End to the Benghazi Hearings
New York Times, Oct. 7, 2015

   "On September 29, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), who is running to replace Rep. John Boehner (R-OH) as the Speaker of the House, told Sean Hannity that one of the biggest accomplishments of the Republican House majority was creating the Benghazi Committee, which he credited with hurting Clinton's poll numbers. Hannity initially praised McCarthy and the committee for its "political" strategy, but has since walked back the complements amid backlash. Fox News largely ignored McCarthy's damning comments, falling in line with the network's years-long campaign to create and promote now-pervasive lies, smears, and conspiracy theories about Benghazi."

International

Doctors Without Borders Takes Unprecedented Action Against US Military.

Mint Press News, Oct.8, 2015

   “Even war has rules,” declared Dr. Joanne Liu, international president of Doctor’s Without Borders (MSF), who announced Wednesday that the aid organization will take unprecedented action against the U.S. military by formally launching an international fact-finding inquiry into the bombing of its hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan."

Airstrike Kills 13 At Doctors Without Borders Site in Afghanistan
Wall Street Journal, Oct. 6, 2015

   "A U.S. airstrike in the Afghan city of Kunduz killed at least 19 people at a hospital run by international medical-aid organization Doctors Without Borders early Saturday, prompting condemnation from humanitarian groups and the United Nations.
   The organization said 12 Afghan staff members and at least seven patients, among them three children, were killed when its trauma center was hit several times during what it described as a sustained bombing that began shortly after 2 a.m. An additional 37 people, including patients and medical staff, were wounded. All international staff members are alive and uninjured, it said."

Trouble in Kingdom: Saudis Face Problems as Oil Wealth Shrinks-

Sputnik, March 10, 2015

   "In the past, the Kingdom was filthy rich, making a killing from high oil prices and the abundance of oil the Mother Earth gifted the Saudi princes. But now the oil-producing giant is getting squeezed by the slump in crude oil prices, Oleg Obukhov wrote for RIA Novosti. The low oil prices forced the Saudi Kingdom to burn through their foreign reserves at an unprecedented pace. In addition to a Saudi-led airstrike campaign in Yemen, Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud was pretty generous toward government workers, putting a further strain on public finances that were already damaged by the slump in oil prices."

Local

Group of Aldermen Call for McCarthy to Step Down-
WGN, Oct.5, 2015

   "A group of alderman, led by the aldemanic Black Caucus are asking police superintendent Garry McCarthy to step down.
The group is calling on McCarthy to step down or the mayor to outright fire the superintendent after five years on the job. They say a lack of respect for them combined with the continued gun violence in their communities are the reasons."


McCarthy Promotes Cop Under Investigation in Daley Nephew Case-
Chicago Sun-Times, Oct. 5, 2015

   "Chicago Police Supt. Garry McCarthy has a new chief of detectives — a veteran cop under investigation for his role in creating a fictitious witness statement that helped prevent former Mayor Richard M. Daley’s nephew from being charged with killing David Koschman."




Thought

This week: Chris Hedges

   "Chris Hedges, whose column is published Mondays on Truthdig, spent nearly two decades as a foreign correspondent in Central America, the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans. He has reported from more than 50 countries and has worked for The Christian Science Monitor, National Public Radio, The Dallas Morning News and The New York Times, for which he was a foreign correspondent for 15 years. He has written nine books, including "Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle" (2009), "I Don't Believe in Atheists" (2008) and the best-selling "American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America" (2008). His book "War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning" (2003) was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction."

Interview- Local Resistance Can Overthrow Our Political Masters-
Interview with Chris Hedges and Jill Stein

"All resistance will be local. We will have to dismantle the corporate state, piece by piece, from the ground up. No leader or politician is going to do it for us. Every community that bans fracking, every university and institution that embraces the boycott, divest and sanctions (BDS) movement, every individual who becomes vegan to thwart the animal agriculture industry’s devastation of the planet and holocaust of animals, every effort to build self-sustaining food supplies, every protest to halt the use of lethal force by police against our citizens, especially poor people of color, every act of civil disobedience against corporate power and imperialism will slowly transform our society."

Film-  War, Propaganda, and the Enemy Within-
Interview with Abbey Martin and Chris Hedges

Activists Launch Campaign for Resistance Mobil Response Unit-
Freeanons, Oct. 6, 2015

   "In order to promote sustainable agriculture, energy and community building, activists, including Fifth Column journalist Alex Freeman, are initializing a campaign to raise $7,500 to go towards the purchase of a mobile command center dubbed the Resistance Mobile Response Unit."

Shroud of Turin Still a Fake-
Center for Inquiry, Oct. 2, 2015

   "In 2005, Turin Shroud proponent Ray Rogers claimed that earlier carbon-14 tests of the shroud linen—showing it to date from between 1260 and 1390 and to thus be a fake—were invalid because, he hypothesized, the samples must have been taken from a “medieval patch.” Rogers and I had an exchange of arguments in the Skeptical Inquirer. But a new paper by three Italian chemists, in the same journal in which Rogers published, shows who was right."

Correspondence

Coffee for Consciousness   

   Held Anger is caused by dissatisfaction, unmet expectations, and trauma. That goes into repression, waiting to be expressed, as all energy does.   There are many reasons to have anger. If we do not process it, the well of Held Anger gets larger. Anger Transference is when that anger needs to be expressed and we find a way to relieve ourselves of the burden. This can be totally inappropriate with friends and family for no reason, or it can just be an overreaction of pent up frustration, either way, it is inappropriate "response" for the reaction.In cases of large scale sweeping violence, we are dealing with Anger Transference onto people, for whatever reason, because they are simply the targets the mind found to express that dissatisfaction onto.   A righteous foe. An enemy that we may defend ourselves against ... it is a lie told by the ego and our inability to process that allows us to do unspeakable things. If there is a moment of doubt, remember that Hitler got rejected for Art school. If he had gotten in, how would the world be different?

Dr. Conrad Chao

    One of the things I keep seeing in the apologies for the paranoid delusional positions of some people regarding gun control, among other things, is that some people have a genuine fear that the government is going to rise up and suspend civil rights and take away their guns. It's a variation on the Jade Helm exercises being a ruse for Obama to take away their guns and their civil liberties, and "mess with Texas". We're beyond the point of rational fact-based discussion. We are no longer using the same deck of cards. There is a constituency that believes that the America they know and love and want to maintain is being taken away by brown people who speak with funny accents when they even bother to speak English and black people who do not know their place. Oathkeeper Jon Ritzheimer has vowed to travel to Michigan to take the law in his own vigilante hands and arrest Congresswoman Debbie Stabenow for supporting the Iran nuclear treaty. (I'm still trying to figure out what multistate sheriff deputized this wingnut.) What is most disturbing is that mainstream participants in the political process actively pander to their paranoia and delusions. We are beyond reason. We are beyond any interest in an objective fact-based reality. We are beyond any interest in the process or principles of government itself. These factions reject the notion of a Federal Government and its pandering to that cursed and hated species, liberals.


Screen Shot

Atrophy and Entropy, October 1, 2015

“You never change things by fighting the existing reality.
To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” 

                                   -R. Buckminster Fuller

WC Turck

A Deadly Gamble-

Revolution and Beer, Sept. 30, 2015

"The Syrian crisis illustrates Putin’s precarious position precisely. First, the historic correction of oil prices, affected by a sluggish global economy, de-escalation between Iran and the West, the end of supply-chain disrupting wars, Fracking and OPEC’s assault on Fracking’s profitability, carbon emission initiatives and green technology threatens Putin’s economy and security. More than 2/3 of the Russian economy is based on oil revenues. Low prices are devastating to Russia, exactly the opposite of America’s consumer-based economy. Tensions in Syria with the insertion of Russia’s military appear to have driven a spike in oil prices, opening October 1st at nearly $47."

   WC Turck is an author, artist, playwright and talk radio host in Chicago. He has been called the most dangerous voice on the Left. 

National

The Pointless Cowardice of John Boehner-

The New Yorker, Sept. 28, 2015

"The mainstream reaction to the forced resignation of John Boehner as the Speaker of the House has been a kind of weary admiration. He fought the good fight against the extremists in his Republican caucus, the narrative goes, but his solid Midwestern virtues (he’s from Ohio) were ultimately no contest for the extremism of the Tea Party. This interpretation is far too generous to Boehner, whose failures, political and substantive, were due mostly to cowardice. The tragedy of Boehner is that he could have been a great Speaker, even on his own terms, but instead his legacy is one of almost complete failure."

The Man Who Would Not Sit Down-

The New Yorker, Oct. 15, 2015

   "Ramos occupies a peculiar place in the American news media. He has won eight Emmys and an armload of journalism awards, covered every major story since the fall of the Berlin Wall, and interviewed every American President since George H. W. Bush. (He’s interviewed Barack Obama half a dozen times.) But his affiliation work against him. In June, when he sent a handwritten letter to Donald Trump, who had just launched his Presidential campaign, requesting an interview, it was no dice. Univision had cut its business ties with Trump, including its telecasts of the Miss U.S.A. and Miss Universe beauty pageants, after Trump accused Mexico of sending “rapists” to the United States. Trump posted Ramos’s letter on Instagram, crowing that Univision was “begging” him for interviews. The letter included Ramos’s personal cell-phone number, which Ramos was then obliged to change. In the weeks that followed, Trump produced a stream of provocative remarks and proposals about Mexicans and immigration, giving the national immigration-policy debate the hardest edge it has had in generations. Now Ramos really wanted to interview him."

Ben Carson's Scientific Ignorance-
The New Yorker, Sept. 28, 2015

   "It is one thing to simply assert that you don’t choose to believe the science, in spite of a mountain of data supporting it. It’s another to mask your ignorance in such a disingenuous way, by using pseudo-scientific, emotion-laden arguments and trading on your professional credentials. Surely this quality, which reflects either self-delusion or, worse still, a willingness to intentionally deceive others, is of great concern when someone is vying for control of the nuclear red button."

Stop Calling Ted Cruz a Conservative-
Salon, Sept. 29, 2015

   "The people of Texas owe America an apology. They elected Ted Cruz to the United States Senate, and now the country is forced to endure his presence throughout the interminable election season. Cruz has worked diligently (and successfully) to become the least liked human being in Congress. Judging by last night, he’s hated most by his Republican colleagues, who, once again, blocked his inane efforts to shut down the government unless it defunded Planned Parenthood."

Elizabeth Warren's Speech on Civil Rights-
Boston Globe, Sept. 27, 2015

   "US Senator Elizabeth Warren said Sunday that 50 years after the Civil Rights Act opened many opportunities and protections to black Americans, not enough progress has been made in voting rights, economic justice and anti-violence efforts.
In prepared remarks for an appearance Sunday at the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the US Senate, Warren, the senior senator from Massachusetts, said violence against blacks has drawn new national attention with the deaths of people at the hands of police, and other incidents such as the Charleston church shootings."



WC TURCK
Sell It Somewhere Else, Trump-
Revolution and Beer, Sept. 30, 2015

   "The Heritage Foundation’s Stephen Moore, who pretends to be an economist rather than a propagandist for corporate greed, loves the tiered delusion of Trump’s so-called plan. Moore feels that it is even an improvement to Rand Paul’s 10% flat tax giveaway to the rich. EARTH TO TRUMP AND MOORE: We already have both a tiered income tax and a flat tax. The current system looks like a bump, with the poor rightly paying little income tax, just fees and consumption taxes, with hits on soda, cigarettes, another one on soda, a county sales tax, a local sales tax…With monumental burdens on the middle. As for a flat tax; the wealthy and corporations after subsidies, LLC dodges and deductions pay a flat tax of ZERO!"

International

Film-  How US Companies Profit from War-

Al Jazeera, Sept., 2015

When it comes to other countries' wars, the U.S. is by no means an innocent bystander.

Interview- Former CIA Agent Takes Us Inside the Saudi Terror Factory-

Mint Press News, Sept. 23, 2015

   "CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou returns to join Mnar Muhawesh on “Behind the Headline” to go into greater depth on Saudi Arabia’s role in manufacturing terrorism by re-writing the entire religious history of Islam and engineering hadeeth to serve its own political & oil interests.

   The effects of these efforts to re-write the history of a faith of over 1.5 billion people to suit the Saudi political agenda that limit women’s rights, promote radicalism and tyrannical leadership –are rippling across the region and the world, through radical groups like ISIS and the Nusra Front."

Film-  Putin Explains The Rise of Isis-

LiveLeak, Sept. 26, 2015

Putin Orders Massive Strikes Against Saudi Arabia if the West Attacks Syria-

Whatdoesitmean.com, Aug. 27, 2013

Israel Must Become a World Power-

Israeli World News, Sept 24, 2015

Local

Watchdogs: How Chicago Police Routinely Spied on Protesters-

Chicago Sun-Times, Sept. 26, 2015

   "The Chicago Police Department has routinely spied on activist groups during the past six years police records obtained by the Chicago Sun-Times show — including union members, anti-Olympics protesters, anarchists, the Occupy movement, NATO demonstrators and critics of the Chinese government."

Thought

Kissinger Poisoned the Middle East: America is Living in a Quagmire of His Making
Salon, Sept. 30, 2015


   "The 92-year-old Kissinger has a long history of involvement in Iran and his recent opposition to Barack Obama’s Iran nuclear deal, while relatively subdued by present Washington standards, matters. In it lies a certain irony, given his own largely unexamined record in the region. Kissinger’s criticism has focused mostly on warning that the deal might provoke a regional nuclear arms race as Sunni states led by Saudi Arabia line up against Shia Iran. “We will live in a proliferated world,” he said in testimony before the Senate. In aWall Street Journal op-ed co-authored with another former secretary of state, George Shultz, Kissinger worried that, as the region “trends toward sectarian upheaval” and “state collapse,” the “disequilibrium of power” might likely tilt toward Tehran."

Green Fracking? Five Technologies for Cleaner Shale-

National Geographic, May 21, 2015

   "GasFrac is one of a growing number of companies, including giant GE and the oil services firm Halliburton that are pioneering technological improvements to mitigate some of the environmental downsides to the process that has spurred a North American energy boom. Besides GasFrac's water-free method, other companies are working on ways to use recycled frack water or non-potable brine in fracking. Some are working on replacing harsh chemicals used in the process with more benign mixtures, or to cleanse water that's been used in fracking. Other innovators are looking to replace diesel-powered drilling equipment with engines or motors powered by natural gas or solar energy, and to find ways to find and seal leaks that allow methane, a potent greenhouse gas, to escape."

Professional Hoax-busters on Planned Parenthood, Anti-vaxers and the Dis-information Age-
Hopes and Fears, Sept., 2015

   "In today’s fast-paced news culture, misinformation and disinformation are spread with a click, often before authenticity and credibility are verified. Sometimes it's harmless and funny, like The Onion fooling Fox News. But in other cases, this type of behavior is not only irresponsible but also incredibly dangerous. To understand this culture of deception, Hopes&Fears gathered four experts on hoaxes, falsehoods, rumors and pseudoscience."

Is Capitalism Rigged?
Excerpt from Robert Reich's upcoming book.

   "Few ideas have more profoundly poisoned the minds of more people than the notion of a “free market” existing somewhere in the universe, into which government “intrudes.” In this view, whatever inequality or insecurity the market generates is assumed to be the natural and inevitable consequence of impersonal “market forces.” What you’re paid is simply a measure of what you’re worth in the market. If you aren’t paid enough to live on, so be it. If others rake in billions, they must be worth it. If millions of people are unemployed or their paychecks are shrinking or they have to work two or three jobs and have no idea what they’ll be earning next month or even next week, that’s unfortunate but it’s the outcome of “market forces.”

Interview with PJ O'Rourke-
Salon, Sept.24, 2015

    On Trump, Coulter, The National Lampoon, and The Self-Destruction of the GOP
    "Since at least the mid-‘80s, O’Rourke has tried to stake out a zone on the libertarian-conservative wing of the Republican Party. It might once have been accurate to describe that position as “embattled,” but now, in a party eviscerated by antiabortion fanatics and gun nuts and thinly veiled racists – a party in danger of being devoured whole by Donald Trump – it barely exists at all. So maybe I wanted to gloat, or just to find out whether O’Rourke has any better idea about what’s going on than I do."



Film- Hitlers' Unholy Alliance with American Business-

   This documentary uncovers the unholy alliance between Nazi Germany and some of the biggest corporations in the US — companies which were indispensable for Hitler to wage war. Henry Ford, the automobile manufacturer; James D Mooney, the General Motors manager; and Thomas Watson, the IBM boss were all awarded the Grand Cross of the German Eagle — the Nazi's highest distinction for foreigners for their services to the Third Reich.

Film- The Oligarchical Bush Family-

   The Oligarchical Bush Family of Generational Treason from the Nazi SS and Adolf Hitler to Osama bin Laden. The journalist in this video is providing factually true evidence. The oligarchical Bush family of generational treason reaching back to the namesake of the two Bush presidents, George Herbert Walker. The way we do anything is the way we do everything. In the same manner that Prescott Bush traded with the Nazi industrial complex against the United States during WWII, so too did both Bush presidents with the Carlyle Trading Group and Bin Laden family. Unbeknownst to the Saudi Arabian 911 hijackers, was that a number of those same enemy combatants were also psychologically conditioned CIA jackal assets

Correspondence

The Bitchy Pundit

   So a “good guy with a gun” decides to save the day when he witnesses a car jacking. He fired several shots, managing to land only one shot at the victim’s head and missing the carjackers completely. Our hero then proceeded to collect his shell casings and fled the scene. Police are still looking for our ammosexual hero.
   So my question now would be, is he still a “good guy”? How do you tell the difference?
Followers of this blog and of my facebook page know that I’m not a fan of anecdotal evidence because it’s meaningless. So why am I posting this story? Because this anecdotal story lines up perfectly with the data, as well as a couple of experiments done to see how effective armed citizens are at saving the day with their binkies.
   Remember when a pro-gun group repeatedly reenacted Charlie Hebdo shootings with all of the victims armed? SPOILER ALERT: they all died in every reenactment they did. Well, except for the one time one of the armed victims chose to flee instead. That guy survived the reenactment. All of the Rambos died over and over again, but their ammosexual fantasies of being heroes were impervious to the evidence and survived.
Another simulation done by researchers at Mount St Mary’s University produced the same results.
   Study after study after study (I can do this all day, but you get the point) show that owning a gun makes you much more likely to be a shooting victim. Or a perpetrator, since you’re more likely to shoot yourself or someone you know with your gun, than you are to stop crime.
   The FBI reports an average of about 25o “justifiable homicides” each year. Remember, George Zimmerman was recorded as a “justifiable homicide”, but I’m willing to go with the 250 number. So for 250 instances of people defending themselves, we have the highest homicide rate in the developed world. For 250 instances of people defending themselves,we have about 1,000 children shot every year.
   In order to entertain the ammosexual hero fantasies of about 35 million American households, we have a situation where those nutters are feeding the “illegal” gun market. We know that the size of the “legal” gun market and the “illegal” gun market are inextricably intertwined since all guns start out “legal”.
   We accept the unacceptable because a minority of us are literally deluding ourselves. I’m sorry to break it to you ammosexual, but you’re not Rambo and you never will be. You’re much more likely to be the sad sack who shoots their toddler in the face. The studies are very clear on this.
   Here’s the funny thing. When I was fact checking the story I started this post with, my search came up with another story of another carjacking, also in Houston. This one was only a little over a month before the first story. In this story, the ammosexual was the guy whose car was being jacked. He decided that it would be a good idea to open fire on the carjacker. Wanna know how it ended? With both the carjacker and the ammosexual receiving freedom bullets, and the car wrapped around a cement post. Awesome. Thankfully, no one else was caught in the crossfire.
   Does pulling out your binkie and firing off rounds to save your fucking car make you a good guy? It’s a car. You’re shooting at a person, and risking the accidental shooting of other people. For a car.
   We don’t have “good guys” with guns. We have delusional “dumb guys” with guns. If they were smart, they would have done unbiased research on whether owning a gun was a good idea before making that choice. The evidence is clear, and you can’t possibly hang your hat on a handful of debunked NRA “studies” because you like what they’re telling you. The ratio of studies telling you that guns are awesome are roughly in the same proportion to legitimate studies, as the “cigarettes are awesome” studies were to those legitimate studies. When the ratio is 10 or 20 studies to 1, telling you that gun ownership is a bad idea, you’re not “responsible” by definition.
That’s how you present an anecdotal story. It has to be accompanied by data, otherwise you’re doing it wrong and you’re deliberately disinformning yourself.



John San Juan
...on George Zimmerman


    He really is the poster child for a society in which increasingly conspicuous, flagrant and matter of fact displays of personal and institutionalized racism, the prominence of "gun assholes" as a powerful and vocal archetype, the proliferation and increased immunity of killer cops, and a deeply broken justice system are seemingly our most protected features. That some low IQ prick is gloating over getting away with murder says far less about him than it does about a country in which this s*** is now rewarded. In a day and age in which only the very biggest bigots are martyred and courted by a new breed of politician hell bent on pandering to the most explicitly ugly sector of our populace, I can't see any scenario in which this guy WOULDN'T be publicly smug. He is 100% symptom and 0% cause, and if he is kicking himself it is only because he was apparently a year or so ahead of his time and has consequently missed out on being explicitly fawned over by the likes of Huckabee and Cruz.

Dr. Conrad Chao
   Regardless of where one stands on the political spectrum, we all expect physicians to speak in a truthful and informed manner with regard to their area of expertise, health and health-related interventions. This is an ethical imperative if one is to claim the title of physician. It is therefore reprehensible for so-called doctors Carson and Paul to shirk their responsibility to acknowledge and endorse the incontrovertible evidence in the medical literature regarding the efficacy, safety, and appropriate timing of vaccines in an informed and professional manner. While it might be marginally acceptable for a lay person such as Trump to be ignorant or confused about the facts regarding these issues, for a person who claims title as a physician to either attempt to speak authoritatively while ignorant of the facts, or worse, to deliberately mislead the public for personal gain, is an unacceptable lapse of professional ethics. People expect physicians to render expert opinion without regard to personal gain and we trust that physicians will be both knowledgeable and honest with regard to delivering advice in their area of expertise. Or could it be that brain surgeons and ophthalmologists actually are ignorant of the basic facts regarding vaccines? If that is the case they should either learn the truth and promulgate the truth or else shut up. Primum non nocere.