June 2010 archive

Forecasters at the National Hurricane Center say there is an 80 percent chance that an area of disturbed weather between Honduras and Grand Cayman that developed into a tropical depression today will become the first named storm of the season. Then if it forms, it could wobble into the Gulf.

“That could be a real problem if a hurricane goes to the west of where most of the oil is,” U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida said. “All of the siphoning operation that is going on now … would have to stop for five days before the hurricane and five days after the hurricane.

“At 60,000 barrels a day, that’s a whole lot of additional oil in the Gulf.”

Nelson said he is worried about the effects any tropical system could have on oil already blackening some Panhandle beaches.

“If a hurricane takes it across the beach and into the wetlands and inlands, that’s going to be adding all the more insult to injury that we have already,” the senator said.

http://www2.tbo.com/content/20…

And here we go.   From now to October.

Hopefully this first one will lose strength at the Yucatan Peninsula.

I hope Democrats enjoyed their brief ascendance, and that the Muslim-Socialist-Usurper has a few more pretty words left in his bag of tricks for his defense at impeachment, because I have a feeling we are going full-metal-jacket wingnut come November, regardless of whether the Gulf is still spewing oil or not.

Heckuva job.

Of all of the “progressive” bands, Emerson, Lake, and Palmer (henceforth referred to as ELP) from the late 1960s and early 1970s, ELP was probably the most successful.  Only The Yes, in my opinion, had as much commercial success.  It is funny that The Yes are the backdrop sound for a popular credit card today, and ELP is only heard as bumper music on the horrific Sean Hannity Show on the radio.

Of all of the relatively obscure bands about which I have written, I actually saw ELP live at the Barton Coliseum in Little Rock, Arkansas either in 1978 or 1979.  Mrs. Translator and I, along with my childhood friend Harold went to see them.  They put on a good show.

This week’s selection was written and recorded as a blues tune by a well-known and successful male Motown performer in 1965, reached the Top 5 on Billboard’s Black Singles Chart, and crossed over to a wider audience, peaking at #35 on the Billboard Hot 100 charts. This song’s success did not end here, however.

A rising female Motown star recorded her version on February 14, 1967, along with two sisters who provided backing vocals. King Curtis’ tenor saxophone was added to this recording, and became part of her debut album, entitled, “I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You”, the title track becoming a hit in its own right.  This week’s selection was later released as a single, attaining far greater success than the original.  The song remained at the #1 slot on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and retained the same position for eight weeks on the Billboard Black Singles chart. This song also went to #10 on the charts in the U.K., propelling the performer to international stardom.  

In its pure, unregulated sense and form, capitalism is the creed and practice of psychopaths, nothing more than a vehicle for the uninhibited expression of psychopathological freedom.  Capitalists, once called “captains of industry,” and more recently known as “masters of the universe” due to malignant effects of their outsized egos on the global population at large, often pretend to adhere to some marginally plausible ethos purely for public relations value, e.g., “bringing cheap energy to market,” or “creating market efficiencies,” to mask and continue their depredations unmolested by the indignant outcries of normal people, in the end, the psychopath simply takes what he wants without any standard feeling of remorse for horrific outcomes.

Sociopaths are “outstanding” members of society in two senses: politically, they command attention because of the inordinate amount of crime they commit, and psychologically, they elicit fascination because most of us cannot fathom the cold, detached way they repeatedly harm and manipulate others.

http://www.bbsonline.org/Prepr… (1 of 63) [04/01/2008 16:28:32]

THE SOCIOBIOLOGY OF SOCIOPATHY: AN INTEGRATED…

Whether criminal or not, sociopaths typically exhibit what is generally considered to be irresponsible and unreliable behavior; their attributes include egocentrism, an inability to form lasting personal commitments and a marked degree of impulsivity. Underlying a superficial veneer of sociability and charm, sociopaths are characterized by a deficit of the social emotions (love, shame, guilt, empathy, and remorse). On the other hand, they are not intellectually handicapped, and are often able to deceive and manipulate others through elaborate scams and ruses including fraud, bigamy, embezzlement, and other crimes which rely on the trust and cooperation of others.  The sociopath is “aware of the discrepancy between his behavior and societal expectations, but he seems to be neither guided by the possibility of such a discrepancy, nor disturbed by its occurrence” (Widom 1976a, p 614). This cold- hearted and selfish approach to human interaction at one time garnered for sociopathy the moniker “moral insanity” (McCord 1983, Davison & Neale

1990).

What makes capitalism an ideal vehicle for the expression of psychopathology is its inclination toward pure profit regardless of external costs, hence its hypertrophic emphasis on unregulated, laissez faire, “let do” behavior.

Insofar as psychopaths and their creed of unfettered capitalism have infested and subverted the very government both regulating them and giving them license to operate, the United States has turned into what some have called a “pathocracy,” the rule of, by, and for the morally insane.

After a video was released on June 13th recorded from BP’s underwater Viking Poseidon ROV 1 operating in the Gulf of Mexico near the blown out Macondo Well site showing what appeared to be oil leaks from gulf seabed cracks around BP’s well site, it seemed that it would be only a question of time before an oil saturated gulf seabed turning to wet slippery jello would no longer have the structural strength to support the weight of BP’s large steel 450 ton Blow Out Preventer (BOP) apparatus sitting on top of the well pipe projecting from that seabed.

“http://www.antemedius.com/files/images/BOP.jpg

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Jeff will be analyzing the dismissal of General McChrystal and the replacement with General Petraeus and its possible portends for our theater in Afghanistan. He will also try and shed light on the Naval escalation in the Red Sea, as we join Israel in threatening Iran.

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It is painfully obvious to any educated observer that the proper role of the US Government in the current economic crisis is to act as the employer of last resort. The Obama administration should act immediately and vigorously to create government-funded jobs for the millions of unemployed engineers, administrators, technicians, and clerks whose jobs have been outsourced by predatory corporations, and whose dwindling incomes are the root cause of the deflationary spiral afflicting our economy. Unfortunately, the potent ideological legacy of Ronald Reagan is proving to be an enormous obstacle to the restoration of common sense and economic equilibrium.

Thus, before sanity and prosperity can return to America, we must De-Reaganize our political culture. Just as the Soviet Union went through the painful process of De-Stalinization by revealing the horrors committed by that miserable dictator, America needs to cure itself of the delusions of Reaganomics. Americans need to learn how Reagan taught our people to hate and distrust our own government. This hatred has spread and flourished to the degree that malevolent corporations are literally destroying our nation – through ecocide, endless war, and relentless exporting of jobs and industries.