Fooled Again- Go Find That Dunce Cap.

In case you've consumed the Kool Aid, purchased the hype or just felt the need to stroke yourself a bunch to keep your bubble soaring; here's a popper for that old balloon.  The Land of The Free, Home of The Brave, you know, the country, that wondrous land that sounds like one giant Lake Woebegone, The USA.  Home of the smartest, the bravest, the best, best, best and the most, most, most.

Well your very own CIA disagrees with you and President Obummer.  It Ain't, we ain't and most likely you ain't either.  Have a gander at the chart provided to you from your very own spookville.  Top ten, twenty, thirty, forty.... nations in the world for life expectancy.   Where do you think your wonder nation lies..Number one, nope, Number ten-nope, twenty, thirty, forty...nope, nope, nope.  Sorry folks but you and yours don't make the cut... The USA ranks 50th in the world.

And as for your IQ you rank a bit higher, you come in at number 19.

Getting Around New York Times new internet Subscription Policy

Read For Free

As much as a paywall might get your hackles up, the folks running the Times understand that no amount of digital subscription revenue would make up for the sting of a page view exodus. That’s why – in addition to 20 free articles a month, which is pretty generous for your average casual reader – they built in this little clause:

• Readers who come to Times articles through links from search, blogs and social media like Facebook and Twitter will be able to read those articles, even if they have reached their monthly reading limit. For some search engines, users will have a daily limit of free links to Times articles.

That’s similar to the model that’s been employed by the Wall Street Journal and Financial Times, and means that if there’s ever an NYT article you’re blocked from? You can just copy and paste the headline into Google for free and easy access. Even if you hit your unspecified daily limit on Google, you can head on over to Bing or, if you’re feeling 2002 about it, Alta Vista.
If that’s too labour intensive (all that clicking!), then it’s time to make Twitter your new best friend. Between individual journos, print sections and blogs, there are a whopping 252 Twitter accounts associated with the NYT – none of them shy about pushing out their content. Pick and choose your favourites, or for the full firehose of every single NYT article just follow @freenyt.

Say Yes To Drugs say Psychiatry

Psychiatry follows the path of the dodo bird.  Once upon a time psychiatrists were intimate with their patients lives.  Why because the neurotics wanted to talk, to lead more meaningful lives..Today the psychiatrists tries not to know much about his patients, drugs form function,  Who needs it.   And then there is the DEA.

President Obama getting in Deeper with the Saudis

Read Fisk and weep at this man we elected President.  Your government is negotiating with the Saudi King to arm the Lybyan Rebels in order to keep the United States "out of the conflict"  If the king agrees to this it will mean that when the Saudis slaughter their own people ( just like Saddam did) the United States will need to remain quiet.  Dump Obummer Now Read Article

"If the Saudi government accedes to America's request to send guns and missiles to Libyan rebels, however, it would be almost impossible for President Barack Obama to condemn the kingdom for any violence against the Shias of the north-east provinces."

And this is not the first time Obummer has negotiated secret deals with the Saudis.  

Read Fisk On the Coming Fight in Saudi Arabia

Robert Fisk is often prescient, and most of the attackers in 9-11 were  Saudi's   Dicey times ahead for Obummer, and not a good time for our nation when we have a president with no principles, no platform.  What will Obummer do, support the people or support the fat Sheiks of Arabia?  Remember Bush kissed these people, they own the Bushes.  Do they own America?  Do they own Obama? Do these  fat autocrats own you?

Read Fisk.

Armies of Lawyers replaced by software.

Housing, the trades, these may be one of the few places where you are not replaced, plumbers, carpenters etc. skilled with your hands on site.  If anyone ever needs a house again perhaps there may be a future.. someday, but who will afford that fancy custom home you might be building because   Watch out Lawyers, watch out accountants, watch out anyone who thought brain power and processing skills would make you rich.  More computers like Watson are on the way.  So if you languish happy and fat in conservative bastions of prestige, perhaps not for long.

David H. Autor, an economics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, says the United States economy is being “hollowed out.” New jobs, he says, are coming at the bottom of the economic pyramid, jobs in the middle are being lost to automation and outsourcing, and now job growth at the top is slowing because of automation". nytimes.

And what he means is automation due to computers, you know, ones like that talk it types software you may have but more sophisticated,  And perhaps we will no longer need Chris Mathews, surely a computer could think faster and have a larger less stuck up personality, or Wolf Blitzer, good by big news sitting at that desk.  Hello blue screen animation and computer that talks and reasons..  Time for Bob Chip and the big news.

Panic Engulfs Lybia

Read Robert Fisk

And "The Destiny of this  pageant ends in the kingdom of oil. "

Notes For Your Spirit.

While glancing at the sunset shinning translucent through an early yellow blossom on the Rose Bush in Deeply's living room it crossed his mind.  Sieze The Day, Carpe Diem, and life should be adventure not a conlfict.  To often humans, Americans anyway,  seak the conflict... beauty exists in the adventure.

Workers Unite

In the dark ages of inequality, the past that is once again the present, Mark Twain's Gilded Age, the anarchists were on the prowl, and the supper rich had their fetes behind closed doors, windows blackened, fearful that the people might know how much they really had. 

Workers of American Unite, Middle Class Unite, the rich are the bad guys, time for some good old lynching of those clowns on Wall Street, and the heads of our nation's oligopolies... And perhaps these need to be real, and not metaphoric, to the make the point.  Where does  Loyd Blanfein live?  Find out and someone help.  

Because as along as we have the fraud of the democrat Barack Obummer in the white house the people will never win... he is the newest version of the Uncle Tom, and people like the Kochs are doing this all for show... they have the nation where they want it.

Never the less the uprising in Wisconsin seems like a good thing.

Most Americans favor Public Unions Right to Collective Bargaining, CBS/NewYorkTimes Poll

Fire The General

For the People of Wisconsin

As the Middle East finds Democracy, as Obummer sells out to big business and the banks and the moneyed interests  while ignoring the middle class, it is worth remembering where the middle class came from.  Whether you like unions or not, unless you are of the top five percent in America ( in terms of income) you are better off because of the union movement.  Sure, all movements have abuses, everyone has stories.  But remember the Wobblies, remember the Pinkertons and remember what our nation was like for the average man before there were strong robust unions... now long gone and going thanks to assholes like Governor Scot Walker of Wisconsin with his addiction to Koch.... going.

So for the youth of Wisconsin protesting in the capital.  Remember Joe Hill, and Remember Paul Robeson and Phil Oaks

HIstory and The Power of the Internet and Social Media

Much has been made of the Internet lately.  Some have proclaimed the revolutions and the current toppling of Despots in Egypt, Tunisia, Bahrain, and Libya,  impossible at such speed without Twitter, Facebook, Google, and  You Tube.  Others, older, like Frank Rich, have said this is not the case.  Rich, often right on, missed the point in his column of a couple weeks ago.  There is no question the speed of events in the Middle East is a direct result of the speed of news and the freedom of awareness. 

It took a century or more for the European monarchies to yield up absolute power.  Today it seems possible that realignment in the Middle East may occur in a month.  Centuries to a month.  Time marches on, as John Cameron Swaze said, and today it marches with incredible speed.

What can one observe but wow, oh my god, yikes?  We must marvel at the speed of these revolutions and this rapid unfolding of history, the force of this new youthful renaissance of a people.  And, could Ghaddifi get away with greater destruction if the world was not aware of the  mercenary slaughtering of his people.  The answer is certain, he could.   Without the constant pictures and information the pundits would not be analyzing, the newspapers would not be writing.   News from Libya would be a trickle.  Obummer might not care, or he might care less without pressure from the people because his major concern seems, his reelection.     (Not that he seems to care that much now other than another speech without action).

It makes one wonder what a force this information age is going to be for history, for the future?  At times in America the overwhelming volume of gibberish from the Internet appears to dull the mind with so much constant news of  nothing.  This  is apparently not the case when it comes to significant events.  

 Imagine the history, the circumstances and evolution of  World War 2 if the Internet had existed in the 1930's or 1940's.  There might have been no war at all.  And certainly Roosevelt would have needed to be more transparent, his motives of greater purity, as he lead our nation to war with lend-lease and his trade blockages of the Japanese.  And what of the Nazi’s?  Could they possibly have slaughtered so many millions in their death camps had the world known? 

Today, people forget.  We are tempted to say that  World War Two was a war against the ultimate evil, the death camps, and the genocide of a people.  It was not.  Because until the US army marched into Buchenwald at the end of the war people were not aware of the Nazi slaughter.  There were rumors.  Roosevelt knew, and certainly many of the world’s leaders knew.   However for Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin, the slaughter of the Jews was secondary to victory over the Germans, and the realignment of power.   Had the average soldier been aware?  Had the citizens of the United States been aware?  If Rosy the riveter had known?  The conflict might have  ended quickly or perhaps never started- a result of  shear moral force  and the horror at the genocide of a people.

What are we saying here?  Had the Internet existed; World War Two might have never happened, and if it had, genocide of the Jews, slaughter the Chinese, the deaths of so many Russians would have been known everywhere.  The world would have been aware and the five year slaughter might have lasted only months.   Just imagine

We live in amazing times.

For the true picture and news with a different filter

For a different and superior perspective on the news Deeply recommends you watch English Aljazeera     ( also available on your Roku)    , Democracy Now, and Links television, channel 375 on his Direct TV dish.  

We have watched these channels, and visited these sites over the years.  Recently we  are watching them more than main stream media.  The coverage of world events is superior and the commentators are brighter and less packaged.  To  paraphrase Amy Goodman of Democracy Now.  "Not like our version of state media, the media of the conglomerate- where few pundits say so little about so much".

So, if you want to be where the action is in  the middle east-  where the youthful energy of change is spreading, access information from these sources.   Look for Democracy Now, English Algazeera on the Links network   or on the internets. Then watch Chris Mathews-MSNBC or Wolf Blitzer-CNN or Moron Joe again on MSNBC.   You will be shocked at the comparison. 

And a sad comment on the media of our nation.  
 The President told the nation Feb 15th that, Raymond Davis, the American held in Pakistan on double murder charges for a shooting last month was a US diplomat and had immunity from prosecution.  Since then we have learned he was a past private contractor working for Blackwater, and was a CIA spy, and not a diplomat.   It took the English newspaper The Guardian to break this story.    Sunday February 20th.

And guess what?  Even as  Obummer was lying to the American people Feb 15th the New York Times already knew the truth of his lies.  They knew Obummer was full of it and failed to inform the American people.  So much for our nations "greatest newspaper"
And another reason to never vote for Obummer Again!!

So don't pretend that what you see  on TV or read in American newspapers in the land of  the free and home of the brave is anyway near true.  It is spun and spawned, and as packaged, processed, and pressed as luncheon meat.

China Will Soon Be selling Hybrids in America.

If you follow this stuff you probably know about BYD (click for their web site) the Chinese company that is about to take on the Chevy Volt sometime in the new yearly future.  Deeply did and does not but  From this New York Times Article it appears the nondescript automobile works swell when in the all electric mode, but "howls like a Banshee" when the three cylinder gas engine begins to assist and charge the batteries.

We imagine this manufacturer of batteries and autos imagines will figure this out.  Now how do we buy a little of this companies stock like Warren Buffett bought a lot of in  2008?   Meanwhile the stock seems down considerably in the last year.  This is apparently the result of failures to meet timelines... Never the less one wonder why not for the long term? 

 Or you could always invest in Tesla... you think... probably not.  

To Understand Russia Watch Boris Godonov

Deeply watched the Met's marvelous, detailed, fantastic production of Boris Godunov on Great Performances last evening. Surely it will be on again if you missed it.

Utterly fantastic, tragic and profound as the rolling years and seasons.  The opera is one of the longest and it contains few lyrical areas, rather it marches through Russian history with chaos and revolt and the constancy of mankind.

Great Performances

Boris Godunov - Preview
Adapted from a play by Alexander Pushkin about the extraordinary reign of the 16th-century tsar, Boris Godunov is regarded as one of the masterpieces of the Russian operatic repertoire. The Metropolitan Opera's new production of Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov starring Rene Pape' as Boris and conducted by Valery Gergiev (check local listings).

Free
PBS

Watch the full episode. See more Great Performances.

Read Mat Taibbi

Over drinks at a bar on a dreary, snowy night in Washington this past month, a former Senate investigator laughed as he polished off his beer.


"Everything's fucked up, and nobody goes to jail," he said. "That's your whole story right there. Hell, you don't even have to write the rest of it. Just write that."

I put down my notebook. "Just that?"
"That's right," he said, signaling to the waitress for the check. "Everything's fucked up, and nobody goes to jail. You can end the piece right there."

Nobody goes to jail. This is the mantra of the financial-crisis era, one that saw virtually every major bank and financial company on Wall Street embroiled in obscene criminal scandals that impoverished millions and collectively destroyed hundreds of billions, in fact, trillions of dollars of the world's wealth — and nobody went to jail. Nobody, that is, except Bernie Madoff, a flamboyant and pathological celebrity con artist, whose victims happened to be other rich and famous people.