Chamblee54

This is a repost from two years ago. Not much has changed since then. BHO won the election, and the level of political discourse went even lower. The name calling goes on, and may be a deciding force on election day. The right wing likes to call others communist, even those who were not born when the Berlin Wall came down.
As for the other sign…PG has not been by the yard lately, or is even sure which one it is. Atlanta is in a mild drought, but seems to have forgotten the water crisis. People are using water on landscaping, even in October. The idea that water is a precious resource, that could become very scarce, just does not occur to people.
People still say “have a blessed day”. If you are not impressed, it is your problem. There is currently a billboard sign up, telling you to be like him. There is a picture of a hideous man attached. Why anyone would want to be like this person is a mystery.
PG went for a bike ride, and saw two signs of note. The first was the basic McCain/Palin sign, with a message at the bottom. The addendum was “Obama=Socialism…Just ask a Russian”.This line of reasoning is bizarre. This election will include voters who were born after the fall of the Berlin Wall. The idea that voters can still be swayed by implying that a candidate is a communist is amazing. The truth is, some voters do think that way.
As for the ask a Russian part…Russia is an energy rich country now. Moscow is one of the most expensive cities on earth. It is doubtful that anyone there is concerned about socialism. Maybe, seeing as how much better their economy is than ours, we should look to Russia for guidance.
The other sign involved another form of economics. In Georgia, the precious commodity is water. There was a two part sign involving an economic dispute over water. The first part was an anonymous note criticizing a man for watering his lawn. The reply to that was equally abrasive.
PG would not want to be a judge in this case. The first note was snide, and made a threat to “stop the flow coming out of the sprinkler head ourselves”. The second note was just as uppity.
It is true that the lawn owner followed the letter of the law in getting a permit. It is also true that we are in a severe drought. Having an emerald green lawn in October is the sort of luxury we have become addicted to. It would not hurt this man to put straw on his yard until more water is available to grow grass. There may come a time when we have to choose between water to wash food, and water to put on sod. There is a question of values. Maybe we should ask a Russian.
One thing that got PG’s attention was the way the notes were signed. The first Dear Neighbor was signed Thank You!, followed by a smiley face. The second Dear Neighbor was signed THANK YOU AND HAVE A BLESSED DAY! There is a commentary on our culture in those signoffs. The smiley face is secular, and punctuates a most unfriendly message. The Blessed Day nonsense…in all caps… is the Jesus Worship answer. Neither one speaks well for the messenger.

Once again, someone with too much free time has compiled the list of America’s 25 worst neighborhoods . This study was done in 2009 , and reported at chamblee54. More than one person has too much free time.
The only thing this study really indicates is that you can use statistics to say anything you want. There is very little consistency between 2009 and 2010. Did the bad hoods of 2009 clean up, or did other gamy ghettoes get worse?
It is tough to tell whether there are any repeaters, because of the way the hoods are named.
Here is the honor roll for 2010:1. Chicago, Ill.– W. Lake St.//2. Cleveland, Ohio–Scovill Ave.//3. Las Vegas, Nev.– Balzar Ave.//4. Las Vegas, Nev.– N. 28th St.//5. Atlanta, Ga.– Carter St.//6. Philadelphia, Pa– N. 13th St.//7. Atlanta, GA– Marietta St.//8. Las Vegas, Nev.– D St.//9. Washington, D.C.– L St. SE//10. Chattanooga, Tenn.–King St.//11. Charlotte, N.C.– N. Tryon St.//12. Memphis, Tenn.– Florida St.//13. North Charleston, S.C.–: Echo Ave.//14. Louisville, Ky.– E. Breckinridge St.//15. Fort Worth, Texas– E. Lancaster Ave.//16. Winston-Salem, N.C.– E. 21st St.//17. Atlanta, Ga.– Richardson St.//18. Chicago, Ill.– 4000 S. Federal St.//19. Memphis, Tenn.– N. Danny Thomas Blvd.//20. Cleveland, Ohio– Chestnut Pl.//21. Galveston, Texas– Church St.//22. Atlanta, Ga.– Humphries St. SW//23. Kansas City, Mo.–Independence Ave.//24. Cincinnati, Ohio– Moore St.//25. Orlando, Fla.– W. Central Blvd.
Atlanta was overlooked in 2009, but scored four hoods in 2010. In fact, Atlanta had the most players of any city in America. Las Vegas copped three, with Chicago and Cleveland placing two. Chicago does get the prize for having the worst neighborhood in America.
As in 2009, the list leaves a few things out. New York, California, New Jersey, and Louisiana are left out of the action. There is always next year. Pictures today are from The Library of Congress.

If you follow the squawking heads, you hear about things. The current buzz might be the Sanchez-Stewart bitchfight (spell check suggestion:birthright), or the boyfriends of a loudmouth for Jesus. The various troubles in Babylon don’t get as much attention.
One of the recent sensations was a poorly groomed preacher in Florida who wanted to burn the Koran. He got as much attention as anyone could imagine, and decided not to do it. Juan Cole has the story today of some settlers in Palestine who vandalized a mosque, and burned the Koran in the process. The word is that this sort of thing goes on all the time in Palestine.
Another place where victory has been declared is Iraq. A blogger called Iraqimojo had a feature recently about the inability of the people to form a government. The comment thread says volumes about the way things are in Babylon today. There is a wikipedia link to a word, which evidently is important to some Iraqis, but is almost never used in corporate media in America. When the population of a country is compared to prisoners at Auschwitz…
Blogger C.H. said… Or maybe the resilience of the Iraqi people WILL hold up against attempts by their enemies and incompetent politicians to bring them down. Iraq surived its darkest days in 2006-and 2007, when all the major media outlets had written it off as a lost cause. At the same time, the Washington Post may prove unable to “weather the storm” as bias print media becomes more irrlevant than ever and its readership continues to vanish. We will have to wait and see…hopefully both of these potential outcomes will come true. 10/1/10 1:36 PM
Blogger Maury said…Wasn’t Maliki nominated by Parliament today? The news has Sadr throwing his support that way. I blame the delays on Muqwaq himself. The government would have been formed long ago had he supported either Maliki or Allawi to begin with. The Kurds will go with whoever has the votes. 10/1/10 6:21 PM
Anonymous David All said… Yes, it is true that Iraq has survived worse than the last six months since the election and will hopefully soon have a new government. At least in Iraq, a person can criticize the people in power without risk of being thrown in prison or disappearing altogether as happen to a female blogger in Syria some 10 months ago. One story says that she has died in prison, another that she is still alive, though still in prison. Read “Tal El-Melouhy, a Syrian blogger, dies in jail” at http://simplyjews.blogspot.com/2010/09/syrian-blogger-dies-in-jail.html 10/1/10 7:35 PM
Blogger Dolly said…2006 was not a golden era at all, the reason for high body counts at that time was Shia animals executing random Sunnis. Those are C.H.’s friends — “human rights activists” from Shia death squads 10/2/10 9:02 AM
Blogger Dolly said… Isn’t it time you stopped falsely portraying Iraqi collaborators as victims, if they are holding tens of thousands of people in torture gulags? I mean, isn’t that a telltale sign that they are not victims? Like, if someone told you: “Can you assist a young girl I know? She is a victim.” – Oh. Sure, gladly. What are the specifics? “Well, she keeps 30,000 people in secret torture prisons.” 10/2/10 9:17 AM
Blogger Maury said… Takfiri’s belong in tortur prisons Dolly. Better yet, let the general public line up to take a piss on them. Even better, set them on fire and see if anyone will piss on them to put it out. 10/2/10 11:50 AM
Blogger Don Cox said… Nobody, however evil they may be, should be tortured. If the current Iraqi government is complicit in torture, they are wrong and should be called on it. 10/3/10 3:50 AM
Blogger Maury said… I agree Don. We shouldn’t torture humans, animals, or insects. I wouldn’t pull the wings off a fly. But, takfiri’s don’t fall into those categories. Takfiri’s are pus-filled demons. It’s our duty to torture them.10/3/10 6:39 AM
Blogger Bruno said… [david] “At least in Iraq, a person can criticize the people in power without risk of being thrown in prison or disappearing altogether” LOOOOOL! 10/4/10 4:52 AM
Blogger Bruno said… At least in Auschwitz, people were free to express themselves without being thrown in jail or disappearing forever. 10/4/10 4:53 AM
Anonymous Aton said…Prisoners at Auschwitz were free to express themselves? Wow, that must be the dumbest thing I’ve ever read. 10/4/10 8:31 PM
Anonymous Aton said… LOL, Bruno so lost he thinks his moronic sense of irony is brilliant while neglecting to even see the utter stupidly of his own words. It is amazing that this douche bag can actually teach himself to be an idiot. What a world. 10/4/10 8:40 PM
Pictures today are from The Library of Congress.

This message came to chamblee54 through the grace of the comment section at obsidianwings. The original was printed in a San Francisco newspaper in 2005, when few had heard of Barack Obama. The author may claim that it is satire, but chamblee54 suspects a hidden message. The pictures are from The Library of Congress.
The following is the first communique from a group calling itself Unitarian Jihad. It was sent to me at The Chronicle via an anonymous spam remailer. I have no idea whether other news organizations have received this communique, and, if so, why they have not chosen to print it. Perhaps they fear starting a panic. I feel strongly that the truth, no matter how alarming, trivial or disgusting, must always be told. I am pleased to report that the words below are at least not disgusting:
Greetings to the Imprisoned Citizens of the United States. We are Unitarian Jihad. There is only God, unless there is more than one God. The vote of our God subcommittee is 10-8 in favor of one God, with two abstentions. Brother Flaming Sword of Moderation noted the possibility of there being no God at all, and his objection was noted with love by the secretary.
Greetings to the Imprisoned Citizens of the United States! Too long has your attention been waylaid by the bright baubles of extremist thought. Too long have fundamentalist yahoos of all religions (except Buddhism — 14-5 vote, no abstentions, fundamentalism subcommittee) made your head hurt. Too long have you been buffeted by angry people who think that God talks to them. You have a right to your moderation! You have the power to be calm! We will use the IED of truth to explode the SUV of dogmatic expression!
People of the United States, why is everyone yelling at you??? Whatever happened to … you know, everything? Why is the news dominated by nutballs saying that the Ten Commandments have to be tattooed inside the eyelids of every American, or that Allah has told them to kill Americans in order to rid the world of Satan, or that Yahweh has instructed them to go live wherever they feel like, or that Shiva thinks bombing mosques is a great idea?
Sister Immaculate Dagger of Peace notes for the record that we mean no disrespect to Jews, Muslims, Christians or Hindus. Referred back to the committee of the whole for further discussion.
We are Unitarian Jihad. We are everywhere. We have not been born again, nor have we sworn a blood oath. We do not think that God cares what we read, what we eat or whom we sleep with. Brother Neutron Bomb of Serenity notes for the record that he does not have a moral code but is nevertheless a good person, and Unexalted Leader Garrote of Forgiveness stipulates that Brother Neutron Bomb of Serenity is a good person, and this is to be reflected in the minutes.
Beware! Unless you people shut up and begin acting like grown-ups with brains enough to understand the difference between political belief and personal faith, the Unitarian Jihad will begin a series of terrorist-like actions. We will take over television studios, kidnap so-called commentators and broadcast calm, well-reasoned discussions of the issues of the day. We will not try for “balance” by hiring fruitcakes; we will try for balance by hiring non-ideologues who think through the issues.
We are Unitarian Jihad. We will appear in public places and require people to shake hands with each other. (Sister Hand Grenade of Love suggested that we institute a terror regime of mandatory hugging, but her motion was not formally introduced because of lack of a quorum.) We will require all lobbyists, spokesmen and campaign managers to dress like trout in public. Televangelists will be forced to take jobs as Xerox repair specialists. Demagogues of all stripes will be required to read Proust out loud in prisons.
We are Unitarian Jihad, and our motto is: “Sincerity is not enough.” We have heard from enough sincere people to last a lifetime already. Just because you believe it’s true doesn’t make it true. Just because your motives are pure doesn’t mean you are not doing harm. Get a dog, or comfort someone in a nursing home, or just feed the birds in the park. Play basketball. Lighten up. The world is not out to get you, except in the sense that the world is out to get everyone.
Brother Gatling Gun of Patience notes that he’s pretty sure the world is out to get him because everyone laughs when he says he is a Unitarian. There were murmurs of assent around the room, and someone suggested that we buy some Congress members and really stick it to the Baptists. But this was deemed against Revolutionary Principles, and Brother Gatling Gun of Patience was remanded to the Sunday Flowers and Banners committee.
People of the United States! We are Unitarian Jihad! We can strike without warning. Pockets of reasonableness and harmony will appear as if from nowhere! Nice people will run the government again! There will be coffee and cookies in the Gandhi Room after the revolution.

These days, everyone is on the internet. Some sites are more entertaining than others. With the diversity of this big country, it should surprise no one that some of the best sites are out it the big country. PG stumbled onto a site from KRMG , a talk radio station in Tulsa, OK. If you click in the right place, you can have the Rush Limbaugh show streamed to your computer.
The big ad at the top is from Danny Myers, who fixes wrecked vehicles. Another ad shows a pretty girl, in red high heels, on a rope ladder. If you click there, and enter your age in the box, you can find out how to refinance your home.
The story that got PG onto the KRMG site involves a house fire in Obion County, TN. It seems as though the fire department there has a policy that you pay a $75 a year fee, or you are not protected from fires. The firefighters were called to a house, but the owner had not paid the annual fee. The firefighters watched the house burn to the ground. “It wasn’t until that fire spread to a neighbor’s property, that anyone would respond. Turns out, the neighbor had paid the fee.” That is the thing about community…fires do spread.
There are some more stories that are not as hot. Pictures for today’s entertainment are from ” The Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library”.
“DAD STASHES POT IN SON’S ELMO BACKPACK: A Pennsylvania man is in jail after pleading guilty to hiding his pot stash in his kid’s backpack. Ronald Washington, 33, called his son’s school when he realized the child took the drug-filled Elmo backpack to school. When he told school officials that he needed to get something from the bag, the officials searched it and found more than three ounces of pot. Washington plead guilty to marijuana possession charges and endangering the welfare of children. He’ll be sentenced next week.”
“RACINE, Wis. (Oct. 3) – Emergency crews in Wisconsin used a ladder truck to rescue 17 people trapped on a Ferris wheel. The ride was one of the attractions at Party on the Pavement in Racine, about 30 miles south of Milwaukee. Officials say emergency crews were called about 1 p.m. Saturday after it appeared the ride fell out of alignment and got stuck. No one was hurt, but it took about two hours to stabilize the wheel before the rescues began.”
“The parents of a New York teen killed in a car crash five years ago are suing the city’s medical examiner for keeping their dead son’s brain floating in a jar at the morgue for months without telling them. But what’s worse is how they found out: The boy’s classmates, including his girlfriend, spotted it labeled with his name while they were on a school field trip to the mortuary. “A couple of the kids noticed it immediately, and the kids who knew him became really distraught,” Andre and Korisha Shipley’s lawyer, Marvin Ben-Aron, told The New York Post. Some of the students even took cell phone photos of the brain floating in a jar, before they were confiscated by their teacher, he said. Jesse Jerome Shipley, a 17-year-old student at Staten Island’s Port Richmond High School, died from skull fractures suffered during a car accident on Jan. 9, 2005. “
“Forget drafty windows and aging cars — a new study says one of the biggest wastes of energy in America could be the food in your garbage can. Every rotten tomato or unwanted chicken wing represents wasted energy, since the calories in the food are never consumed. And the energy that went into growing the food, processing it, packaging it and transporting it to the consumer is also wasted. Each year, American food waste represents the energy equivalent of 350 million barrels of oil, according to new research from the University of Texas. That’s enough to power the whole country for a week — just sitting in the trash can rotting.”
“MANATEE, Fla., Oct. 1 (UPI) — Police in Florida said a suspect arrested for drug possession denied ownership of the cocaine he was found to be concealing in his buttocks. The Manatee County Sheriff’s Office said Raymond Stanley Roberts, 25, was pulled over at 8:40 a.m. Wednesday in Manatee and the deputy writing the speeding ticket detected the odor of marijuana in the car, The Bradenton Herald reported Friday. Roberts admitted to smoking marijuana the previous evening and invited deputies to search his car, the sheriff’s office report said. Deputies searching Roberts’ person discovered a soft object in his buttocks that Roberts then took out and gave to the deputies, who identified it as a baggie of marijuana. Deputies said they found a second soft object in Roberts’ buttocks that was removed and identified as cocaine. “The white stuff is not mine, but the weed is,” the report quotes Roberts as saying to deputies.”

There was “A Victorian Festival” in Oakland Cemetery Sunday. The parking was crowded, but a space turned up in the MARTA lot near the entrance.
The ads said a five dollar suggested donation, which gave cheapskate PG ideas about getting in free. A friendly man at the entrance said, ” I am here to take your money”.
The ads promised people in Victorian costume, live music, free tours, and open mausoleums. PG and Uzi heard a performance while walking up the hill from the Confederate section, but made it to the venue in time to hear the applause. A barbershop quartet gave a strolling show, and a lady by an open grave was telling stories.
The part PG enjoyed the most was the open mausoleums. The ornate doors are made of cast iron, and very heavy.  PG pushed a door aside to take a picture, and a lady asked if she could hold it. The door was not going anywhere.
The unquestioned star of Oakland Cemetery is Margaret Mitchell. Her spot is unpretentious, with no gargoyles or angels. It has been 61 years since Mrs. Marsh left a cocktail hour,at the Atlanta Women’s Club, and stepped in front of a taxi.

We had a post here a few days ago inspired by a list of dumb liberal quotes. In the spirit of fairness, it is time to take a look at the Top 50 Dumbest Conservative Quotes. The credit/blame for introducing chamblee54 to these pages goes to Morgan K Freeberg.
We are going to look at three quotes today. Many of the top 50 are from the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Jerry Falwell, and should not be taken seriously. The three today are from actors in leading roles.
Number 1 on the list is from Richard Nixon. “When the President does it, that means that it’s not illegal.” This was said during a TV interview with David Frost, after he was out of office. A bit of digging found a bit of back story.
“Interviewer David Frost has a difficult time with his subject, former President Richard Nixon, in the day’s early questioning (see April 6, 1977). Frost attempts to recoup with a line of questioning suggested by his adviser James Reston, Jr., one used in the trial of former Nixon aide John Ehrlichman (see January 1, 1975). Were there no limits to what a president can do, even if the president wants to do something plainly illegal? he asks. Could he do anything despite the law? Burglary? Forgery? Even murder? “If the president does it, that means it’s not illegal,” Nixon retorts. … Frost asks if the dividing line between, for example, a police burglary and the murder of an antiwar protester is only the president’s judgment? Nixon agrees, and adds: “There’s nothing specific that the Constitution contemplates in that respect. I haven’t read every word, every jot and every tittle, but I do know this: That it has been, however, argued that as far as a president is concerned, that in war time, a president does have certain extraordinary powers which would make acts that would otherwise be unlawful, lawful if undertaken for the purpose of preserving the nation and the Constitution, which is essential for the rights we’re all talking about.”
The current POTUS is involved in a controversy about whether or not to kill Americans abroad. Perhaps BHO could study the thoughts of his predecessor…If he is the President, then it is legal.
The next quote is from the fun loving Supreme Court Justice, Antonin Scalia. “I even accept for the sake of argument that sexual orgies eliminate social tensions and ought to be encouraged.” In contrast to the other two quotes, the backup on this came up quickly on Google.
In 2004, Mr. Scalia gave a speech at Harvard University . If you get a chance to read the article, you will see that he made a few other choice comments that night.
Mr. Scalia has shown himself to be quotable before. In an opinion in the Troy Davis case, he said “This Court has never held that the Constitution forbids the execution of a convicted defendant who has had a full and fair trial but is later able to convince a habeas court that he is “actually” innocent.”
The last quote is from another POTUS who is no longer with us, Ronald Reagan. “I am not worried about the deficit. It is big enough to take care of itself.” Mr. Reagan was a professional actor, and he knew the value of a good script.
This slogan is another one that Mr. Obama may find handy. It should be noted that it was a big deal when the national debt (the grand total of the deficits) went over a trillion dollars. This was during the first term of Mr. Reagan. Today, under Mr. Obama, the annual deficit is over a trillion dollars. Sooner or later, you are talking about real money.
PG suffered brain damage trying to find out more about the quote from Mr. Reagan. He went through six pages of google. There must be 25 sites which have lists of quotes from Mr. Reagan, and all of them feature this quote about the deficit.
What was the context? When did he first say it? One site says it was “(during the latter years of his administration)”. Another site says it was “Said often during his presidency, 1981-1989”. Maybe this is an urban legend.

There is a survey by the oddly named Pew Forum about how much people know about religion. ( BTW, a pew is something you sit on in church. If you say PU after the preaching, you are paying attention.) The study shows that this group knows more about religion than that group. PG decided to take the test, and see what the fuss was about.
The quiz is 15 multiple choice questions, about a variety of religions. The multiple choice format makes grading easy, but allows for guesswork. Students learn how to narrow the possible choices, and make the guess more likely.
PG got an 80 the first time he took the test. Trying to recreate this today for purposes of this post, he got an 87. The 87 is better that 97% of the sample group that took the test.
The test is skewed to the Judeo-Christian experience. 9 of the 15 questions are about the Bible religions. 2 are about eastern religions, 2 are about Islam, and 2 are about Supreme Court rulings. The legal questions were prompted by Christian practices and The Bible, so the first category might be 11 of the 15. This includes a question about Mormonism, which some do not consider to be Christian. Whatever. (For purposes of this report, Catholics are considered Christians. )
What astonished PG was how easy the test was, and how many people missed obvious questions. 18% did not know Mother Teresa was Catholic. 49% did not know Joseph Smith was a Mormon , even with multiple choice. 54% did not know that Martin Luther inspired the Protestant Reformation.
It should be noted that the online quiz is different from the telephone survey. Many demographic questions are asked. If you are interested in the methodology, there seems to be plenty to look at. There are lots of statistics,  some of which are true. If you care what internet typists think, take a look around you. As Bessie Smith might say, “You’re in the right church brother, but the wrong pew.”
Pictures are from The Library of Congress.

There is a discussion going on at obsidianwings about the future of energy in America. It involves crafty politicians and the oil companies who fight them. The dialog says a few things about the future of energy policy, and the difficulties in enacting effective legislation to shape them.
The lame duck Governator of California gave a speech yesterday about something called Proposition 23. Yes, this is another zany ballot measure on the fun loving left coast. Prop 23 is about a law, AB32, which does something to reduce carbon emissions ( more about the “does something” part later. The ” ballot measure … calls for suspending the climate law until the jobless rate hits 5.5 percent for a year, a level achieved only three times in 40 years.”
Some speechwriter did an outstanding job. The Governor had some great lines, and he read them with conviction. “Does anyone really believe that these companies that out of the goodness of their black oil hearts are spending millions and millions of dollars to protect jobs? This is like Eva Braun writing a kosher cookbook — it’s not about jobs at all, ladies and gentlemen, it’s about their ability to pollute and thus protect their profits.”
As could be expected, the supporters of Prop. 23 are well funded, no doubt by the carbon industry. The oil companies like their profits, and don’t want the public to know the total cost of their energy addiction. The only problem is, AB32 is just a bit shifty.
A commenter at obsidianwings named “TheRadicalModerate” raises some issues. “But of course, your argument is pretty much in keeping with the spirit of AB32, which does everything it can to hide the financial burden of its implementation from the voters. Rather than simply implementing a straightforward excise tax on petroleum products, the bill hands off near-plenary regulatory power to the California Air Resources Board and authorizes them to implement a vaguely-defined cap-and-trade system, plus whatever other regulations pop into their heads. The whole scheme is designed to ensure that the voters never find out what the emissions reductions are actually costing them.”
America is addicted to oil. The addiction gets us into wars, keeps us from exploring other sources of energy, and does grave damage to the environment. One way to fight this is through tax based government intervention.
However, an upfront tax on petroleum products will NEVER be passed by our governing bodies. So, they get sneaky and pass something like AB32, which tries to do the same thing by creating an “Air Resources Board”. ( To be honest, this is the first PG has heard of AB 32, and is depending on TheRadicalModerate (spell check suggestions:Therapeutically, Thermodynamical, Thermostatically, Moderateness) for his information.) When the people find out what is going on, they trust the government even less. The damage to the planet by oil addiction continues, with the people helpless to do anything to stop it.

There is much hand wringing about Israel, Palestine, and the Peace Process. ( That is an opening sentence you can use at any time. It is almost like “these things too shall pass away”.)
A lot of this chatter misses the point. They talk about a threat to Israel if this or that happens, or does not happen. There are several things wrong here. To begin with, Israel has the unquestioning support of the United States. The PR battle in the USA is the most important fight Israel has.
A “freeze” in building settlements ended recently. The word settlement is so antiseptic and painless. Settlements are not built on empty land. The people living on the land were evicted, and their homes destroyed. As Juan Cole tells the story: “The poor Palestinians of East Jerusalem have few assured human or civil rights. Anyone may do anything to them at any time, and they have little recourse. They can be thrown out of property they legally purchased after 1948, and made to live in tents in front of their former residences; and then the tents can be demolished by Israeli police. Aggressive, larcenous Jewish squatters continually attempt to effect a slow-motion ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians, using fraud and sometimes force.
The 55,000 Palestinians of the Silwan area (formerly a village but now annexed to Jerusalem) are mad as hell and not going to take it any more. Three hundred militant settlers have been inserted in their midst on the basis of some fable that a legendary King David dwelled there in the 10th century BC (archeology has found Jerusalem largely uninhabited in that period and has never found firm evidence of a Jewish kingdom during that era or even that a David or Solomon existed; they are not mentioned in contemporary Assyrian sources).
It is as though hundreds of armed men showed up in front of your house and demanded you take your family and leave and give it to them because their ancestor was a king and he is buried deep under its foundations. But you have the same ancestors that they do! (Jerusalem was founded some 5000 years ago by the common ancestors of most Jews and Palestinians).”
Apparently, this has gone on since 1948. An article about Israeli Author Gideon Levy tells the story of his father, who left Germany in 1939, and wound up in British Mandate Palestine. His father was traumatized by the experience of being a refugee. “Levy’s father never saw any parallels between the fact he was turned into a refugee, and the 800,000 Palestinians who were turned into refugees by the creation of the state of Israel. “Never! People didn’t think like that. We never discussed it, ever.” Yet in the territories, Levy began to see flickers of his father everywhere – in the broken men and women never able to settle, dreaming forever of going home.
Then, slowly, Levy began to realise their tragedy seeped deeper still into his own life – into the ground beneath his feet and the very bricks of the Israeli town where he lives, Sheikh Munis. It is built on the wreckage of “one of the 416 Palestinian villages Israel wiped off the face of the earth in 1948,” he says. “The swimming pool where I swim every morning was the irrigation grove they used to water the village’s groves. My house stands on one of the groves. The land was ‘redeemed’ by force, its 2,230 inhabitants were surrounded and threatened. They fled, never to return. Somewhere, perhaps in a refugee camp in terrible poverty, lives the family of the farmer who plowed the land where my house now stands.”
Many of those 800,000 wound up in the Gaza Strip. Their ancestors make up a large part of the population of Gaza. Mr. Levy tells another story, about Operation Cast Lead. “He gives an example. During Operation Cast Lead, the Israel bombing of blockaded Gaza in 2008-9, “a dog – an Israeli dog – was killed by a Qassam rocket and it on the front page of the most popular newspaper in Israel. On the very same day, there were tens of Palestinians killed, they were on page 16, in two lines.”
But, morality aside, is this cruelty hurting Israel? Not on some esoteric level of the soul of the country, but on a practical level of survival. A blog called Unqualified Offerings makes a case that Israel has a long term plan to control the territories west of the Jordan River, and that they are winning. Israel is in a military position of strength, and might makes right.
“Viewed institutionally and leaving moral questions aside, it counts as a triumph of grand strategy. Israel bought off Egypt with Egypt’s own territory. It convinced Jordan to bow out, and plain beat Syria like a rodeo clown. Lebanon could be broken any time and was, and the Lebanese were always falling all over themselves to help. At this point, Israel has also destroyed the ability of the Palestinians to mount any consequential resistance of their own. Just as Hezbollah couldn’t occupy a single Israeli exurb in a trial of a thousand years, no Palestinian organization can stop Israel from planting its flag on any particular spot of the West Bank for so much as a week… Any large, political-military enterprise is going to have its ebb and flow. The Israeli conquest and consolidation of what we still quaintly call “the Occupied Territories” has involved tactical setbacks, occasional overreach and strategic withdrawals. The trick is not to get caught up in that. The long view is, Israel wanted control of all the territory west of the Jordan, Israel got control of all the territory west of the Jordan, Israel continues to cement its control over all the territory west of the Jordan. Everything else is details.
Turkey is not going to war for the Freedom Flotilla. It took all of a day for the United States to conclude a deal whereby Israel gets to investigate itself. The Iranians are either not trying to get nukes, or if they do get nukes will be very careful with them. The Iranians will fuck you up, but never at any substantial cost to themselves. Israel can levy a substantial cost on Iran any time it wants. The Palestinians can’t do more than annoy and neither can Hezbollah.
On the other side, frequently foreigners make sad faces. I am thinking that Israel counts this among the acceptable costs.”
Pictures are from ” The Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library”.

This is a repost. Somehow, I never did do any more posts about that “been there done that” list. Mingaling, who started this episode, had a baby, which I am not capable of. I saw Crazy Owl last fall, and he is doing well. Picture for this drama are from The Library of Congress.
There is something called the “meme” in the blogosphere. As best I understand the concept, it is a question about yourself that you send out chain letter style into the void. Like paradigm, a word that people toss about freely ,and I never have quite understood.
At any rate, mingaling has a list of 150 things that you can do. The idea is to read the list, and indicate which of these things you have done.
My life has been my life. (Like Popeye and the sweet potato, I yam what I yam). There are things I have done, things I have not done, and there are regrets and gratitudes on both sides. Anyone who gets to be 53 years old and says they have no regrets is a liar. I have told lies.
I had a friend once named Crazy Owl. (He is still my friend, even if I haven’t seen him in twelve years). He lived in a tract of land on Flat Shoals road near the new Wal Mart. There are lots of houses there now, but twelve years ago he had his “monastery” there.
On certain Friday nights, he would have a sweat lodge. Like a crude outdoor sauna, you would build a fire, heat the rocks, and put them in the lodge, go inside and perspire. It is a Native American thing, and I have heard that they still have them in Candler Park.
So one friday, the people in the lodge made comments about what they were grateful for. The previous friday, I had been in a bar in Tucker, GA. The hostess of the happy hour party had made xerox copies of a coupon for cheap food. The room next to the dining room had a band, and a room full of drunks. Each and every one of those drunks was chain smoking. The band played ” Is that all there is?” I ordered a cup of coffee, and was charged $2.75 for something I would not wash a dog in.
So, when we shared our gratitudes at the sweat lodge, I said ” Last friday night I was in an unbelievably cheesy bar in Tucker Georgia. Tonight I am here. I am grateful for variety in my life.”
The song “Is that all there is” is about life experiences, and the disappointment they sometimes bring. If I ever send this meme out, item 151 will be hearing “Is that all there is” as performed by Sandra Bernhardt. The video at the end is credited to “JEM”, but sounds a lot like Ms. Bernhardt.
Peggy Lee, who passed away a few years ago, made the song famous. Ms. Lee had a stroke and years of bad health, and was by all accounts a vegetable when she moved on. It is highly unlikely that she said “Is that all there is?” on her deathbed
Item 152 on this annotated meme would be staying at the Hostel in Brunswick. I stayed in a treehouse there, on the night before a trip to Cumberland Island. They had a circle before dinner, where all the visitors hold hands and say what they were grateful for. My comment was “ I am grateful for all the people at this meeting who keep there comments down to a short sentence or two.” The inability to shut up before dinner is a serious character flaw.
This meme is good, and may supply fodder for more than one post. Since lunch hour is almost over I will settle for number 23 (23 skidoo), Gotten Drunk on Champagne. One night in Seattle, I went to a bar called WREX. They were giving away bottles of Andre’ Champagne, and I tried to insure that none were left over.
The next day I felt worse than horrible. A champagne hangover is used by the Southern Baptist Convention to convince folks not to ever drink again. Ever. After a while, I pushed the cotton candy in my head to one side, and started to walk down Pike Street to the market. I crossed a street, oblivious to the red light in the yellow box. I also didn’t notice the two policemen waiting for me, one of whom wrote a citation for Jaywalking. A couple of weeks later I went to Pedestrian Safety School. That could be item 153.

When PG was a kid, his grandmother lived in a side apartment, in a house on Virginia Avenue. The owner of the house was Mrs. Stuckey. ( PG never learned her “real” name, and assumed that checks were made out to Mrs.) There was a framed piece of paper in Mrs. Stuckey’s hall. The top said “The Four-Way Test of the things we think, say or do” , and featured the logo of the Rotary Club. The four rules were simple, on the surface.
Is it the TRUTH?//Is it FAIR to all Concerned?//Will it build GOODWILL and BETTER FRIENDSHIPS?//Will it be BENEFICIAL to all concerned?
The four way test was written by Herbert J. Taylor. In 1932, Mr.Taylor took over the bankrupt Club Aluminum Company of Chicago. Trying to revive the company during the depression, Mr. Taylor wrote a code of ethics, that would be the basis for the company’s actions.
Many said that the four way test was not practical for the business world. The balancing of integrity and ambition can be daunting. It was said that “This emphasis on truth, fairness and consideration provide a moral diet so rich that it gives some people “ethical indigestion.”
PG maintains that fair is a baseball hit between first and third base. Sometimes, the umpire makes the wrong call. In the “real world”, the different points of view in a dispute make rendering a fair judgment a difficult task, if not an impossible one.
There is a story about the revival of Club Aluminum. ” One day, the sales manager announced a possible order for 50,000 utensils. Sales were low and the company was still struggling at the bankruptcy level. The senior managers certainly needed and wanted that sale, but there was a hitch. The sales manager learned that the potential customer intended to sell the products at cut-rate prices. “That wouldn’t be fair to our regular dealers who have been advertising and promoting our product consistently,” he said. In one of the toughest decisions the company made that year, the order was turned down. There was no question this transaction would have made a mockery out of The Four-Way Test the company professed to live by.”
How did the sales manager learn of the intentions of this buyer? Was he tipped off by one of the “regular customers” who feared competition? Was this “regular customer” lying? Many inspirational stories leave out crucial details.
As it turns out, Club Aluminum did sell enough product to emerge from bankruptcy. “By 1937, Club Aluminum’s indebtedness was paid off and during the next 15 years, the firm distributed more than $1 million in dividends to its stockholders. Its net worth climbed to more than $2 million.”
Club Aluminum cookware was cast, not spun. It is heavy, and is a prized collectors item today. As for the Club Aluminum company ” Standard International Corporation bought it in 1968. Regalware made and marketed Club Aluminum for a while, but went out of business in the mid-1980s. The brand name was eventually obtained by the Mirro Company.”
This is a repost. Philosophy and rules for living is always a crowd pleaser. Whether or not you  practice what you preach is beside the point. Pictures today are from The Library of Congress.
There is a story above. A company, facing bankruptcy, turned down a huge order because of concerns about how the product would be resold. Today, this seems quaint. Today, the moral thing to do would be to take the order, keep your factory busy, and not worry how it was going to be resold. While some pretend that moral rules are unchanging, the truth is that they do change with the times.
This reminds PG of a story from his days as a blueprinter. With ammonia developed prints, every print is fed by hand, and you have the option to adjust the speed of the machine. Slower prints mean less background, which to some is a higher quality print. ( This is not an issue with digital printing. Some change is indeed progress.)
The company PG worked for was affiliated with a small, family run company in a neighboring city. This company was run by an old fashioned lady, who insisted on adjusting every print to get the perfect background. This was different from the company PG worked for, which ran large jobs for the big city market. To his customers, quality meant getting an acceptable print, DELIVERED ON TIME. Who had the higher standards? Maybe that is a question for the customer to judge.