Carl Sandburg...Wow!

I bow to you, sir:

A REVOLVER

Here is a revolver.
It has an amazing language all its own.
It delivers unmistakable ultimatums.
It is the last word.
A simple, little human forefinger can tell a terrible story with it.
Hunger, fear, revenge, robbery, hide behind it.
It is the claw of the jungle made quick and powerful.
It is the club of the savage turned to magnificent precision.
It is more rapid than any judge or court of law.
It is less subtle and treacherous than any one lawyer or ten.
When it has spoken, the case can not be appealed to the supreme
court, nor any mandamus nor any injunction nor any stay of ex-
ecution come in and interfere with the original purpose.
And nothing in human philosophy persists more strangely than the
old belief that God is always on the side of those who have the
most revolvers.

From: Addicting Info

Quvenzhané

© 3 March 2013, the Griot Poet

If I had a daughter, she’d look like Quvenzhané Wallis.
And her name would be the combination of my wife’s, Qulyndreia, a teacher, and my own, Venjie Wallis, Sr., a truck driver.
And we’d anoint the creation of the third syllable of her name with the Swahili word for “fairy.”
Flitting like one, eyes beaming, pearly-white teeth, dress of royal hue; rocking the toy "pooch pouch."

And we,
The descendants of diaspora
Ripped from the shores of Eden
Through Gorée Island gates
To Atlantic Oceans vast
Sleeping in bile and filth
Separated from families, children, tribes, language
Piled up end-to-end like logs and shipping crates
Endure captivity, Civil War, lynching and Jim Crow
Repeated in Louisiana
Near the French Quarter where slave Sundays birthed Jazz, Gospel, Blues, Ragtime
During Hurricane’s Katrina and Rita
Tossed over like so much trash
And fish food to “Jaws”...

And we,
Creators of algebra, astronomy,
Architects of pyramids,
Taken to Rome to engineer the aqueducts, buildings, obelisks and modern plumbing
The descendants of 3/5th humanity
Teeth examined like livestock,
Skin lightened by forced miscegenation,
The first thing post emancipation…we went looking for wives, husbands…children.
So, we weren’t looking for disrespect
To our young queen on her night,
From Seth “American Dad,” “Family Guy” McFarlane
Insulting her and George Clooney
Or, the self-important Onion

Of which,

You don’t have to peel too many layers

To see three important things:
1. You entered this life from a woman’s womb!
2. Nine-year-old children are not “small adults” you can insult.
3. It’s never a joke in this American rape-celebrating culture…to insult a woman!

Fear and Consumption...

The video (w/Spanish subtitles):

Marilyn Manson: The two by-products of that whole tragedy (Columbine) were, violence in entertainment, and gun control. And how perfect that...that was the two things that we were going to talk about with the upcoming election. And also, then we forgot about Monica Lewinsky and we forgot about, uh, the President was shooting bombs overseas, yet I'm a bad guy because I, well I sing some rock-and-roll songs, and who's a bigger influence, the President or Marilyn Manson? I'd like to think me, but I'm going to go with the President.

Michael Moore: Do you know that on the day of the Columbine massacre, the US dropped more bombs on Kosovo than any other day?

Marilyn Manson: I do know that, and I think that's really ironic, that nobody said 'well maybe the President had an influence on this violent behavior' Because that's not the way the media wants to take it and spin it, and turn it into fear, because then you're watching television, you're watching the news, you're being pumped full of fear, there's floods, there's AIDS, there's murder, cut to commercial, buy the Acura, buy the Colgate, if you have bad breath they're not going to talk to you, if you have pimples, the girl's not going to fuck you, and it's just this campaign of fear, and consumption, and that's what I think it's all based on, the whole idea of 'keep everyone afraid, and they'll consume.'

And, now...

Very familiar with Alex Jones. Went to his web sites from time to time. Bought his DVD "Endgame" I'm sad to say. He was ranting against Rick Perry back then (rants are what Alex calls "moderated debates"). Perry did attend a Bilderberg meeting before he went all religious on us, and I frankly don't know which is worse. The only pol he seems to have some affection for is Ron Paul.

With very nebulous evidence, he so-called "connects the dots" and rants about a world government takeover - mind you, he's been ranting about that for 15 years, and "white" apparently is the new brown/black.

Like Rush Limbaugh, like Howard Stern, like most shock jocks, Alex follows the Marilyn Manson formula - fear and consumption - you only have to look at any of his web sites. He's either selling books, DVDs, e-diets or survival kits. EVERYTHING is a conspiracy theory, no entity or governing body based on the Constitution is to be trusted because the neat and wonderful thing about conspiracy theories is: you really, really don't have to be an expert at what you're saying (just an associates level of education will do) and you don't have to PROVE anything. We no longer have a standard for decency, veracity: truth. We've reaped the whirlwind of "creating our own realities," "magical thinking," and a slick presentation that anyone with software and a web cam can produce to "prove" from the moon launch was faked to 9/11 was an inside job. We're at a point where we can no longer respect any authority: clergy, congress, each other, parents, the president nor the very mechanisms like reference and veracity that make us a civilized society. I'm afraid with this delusional bent, we won't be civilized for too much longer.

Sometimes, it depends on how loud you rant, rave and as Piers Morgan stated: "sound terrifying." He should remember the Bard: "Life is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury: signifying nothing!"

Fear. Consumption. Moolah. Home boy doesn't look like he's missed any meals. Just saying...

The Interrupters...

Watch The Interrupters (Graphic Language) on PBS. See more from FRONTLINE.

These Little Ones...

What Threat Are Children?

It's Time To Call It What It Is...

My previous posting on "Cognitive Dissonance" was rather wonkish to say the least; clever if I do say so myself, but this is raw hatred bred deeply in our classmates, coworkers, church members, bowling partners, fantasy league members and in general cousins in the human species bones. It's beyond class warfare or a war on women's rights. It's deeper; darker: uglier and more dangerous.

Never mind that human life originated in Africa; that the oldest known footprints of Homo Erectus happens to have been found in Kenya. It makes us all African, this expressed malady over class, place and pigmentation a form of melanin-envy and self-loathing.

Never mind that hate is not an election-winning strategy and that Karl Rove waisted a lot of billionaire's money trying to throw the election from "We the People" to the oligarchs.

We worship money. The free market is god (small g), and like the law of gravity and the ten commandments cannot be altered in anyway that might be beneficial to the rest of us. We apotheosized it in prosperity gospel ministry, which is expressed in the Bible, but wrongly applied by certain operatives, thereby leaving the faith community impotent to critique greed and avarice when they see it: since many of the wrong applicants practice it.

We're supposedly divided between "makers and takers" and the self-labled makers seem to have no problem taking another tax cut. Their recipe for job creation has so far equaled Marie Antoinette's famously attributed comment (actually by Maria Theresa 100 years before in Spain): "let them eat cake." There is no room at the oligarch's Inns, mansions or dinner tables.

We're headed for the so-called (and poorly named by Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke) fiscal cliff with the same recalcitrant players in the House of Representative that really represent the 1% aforementioned that wasted their investment on "Turd Blossom's" political acumen and math skills.

Joel Osteen believed Mitt Romney to be a Christian despite decades of demonization from evangelical groups that suddenly out of political expediency decided they were not.

THIS IS A MENTAL DISORDER: on the day Jared Lee Loughner was sentenced to 7 consecutive life sentences plus 140 years (geez), we'd be mindful that this information age may be overloading weaker minds. Thus, birth certificates in short or long form; Harvard transcripts and passports demanded by bloviating reality-show hosts that could spend $50 on a good toupee versus 5 million on an empty stunt are irrelevant when you've already a made-up mind that what facts don't agree with your skewed worldview will be judged false.

I'm not saying the shootings in Arizona were racially motivated, but the so-called "End of Days" comes once again 21 December 2012 -- which is correctly the winter solstice. I for one, am not going to be in public places nor am I going to Times Square in NYC to ring in 2013.

And don't worry: once this one dawns, sunsets and 22 December happens: they'll find another thing to fear and dread. Which only makes me fear and dread their reactions to an ever-changing demographic.

Cognitive Dissonance...

Cognitive Dissonance

From Hey to Rant!...

This is the most partisan posting I've done on this blog. However, this is far too important, for the country possibly being led by an extreme fringe that put on a show Wednesday trying to go "relentlessly to center" to paraphrase Nixon. It started with a lackluster solicitation email I received Thursday morning titled: "Hey."

Dear Mr. President,

I was at work Wednesday night, but I have heard the coverage regarding the debates. They said Governor Romney won. It was like getting punched in the gut.

No mention of the 47%. Or the fact that he was 47^th in job creation while governor. Someone with your rhetorical skills should have made poetry with those two items; mincemeat out of Mr. Romney.

Wednesday was you and First Lady Michelle's anniversary. Do me a favor: FIRE the lawyers that deliberated and put the first debate on what should have been YOUR and the First Lady's private day.

Also sir: Mr. Romney obviously suffers from Pseudologia Fantasticia, AKA pathological lying. His running mate is a "chip-off-the-old-block" with admiring Ayn Rand in one video-taped breath, then repudiating her as if he never knew the author of "Atlas Shrugged" was a militant atheist (her words: I know some atheists, and they're quite pleasant).

What's at stake: we're in the "Twilight Zone" with a dominionist-dominated Republican Party hijacking privately-practiced religion for one public end: power. Former GOP operative Mike Lofgren says it's become "an apocalyptic cult." You won only on facts, not style, and the crowd that's adamant about voting for Willard ain't thinking about the "facts": they once labeled his faith as a cult until left with no other alternative. In the words of a political operative to Run Suskind, they "create their own realities."

It's a shame we're discussing the "controversy" about evolution, question whether the earth is over four billion years old or six thousand years old. Meanwhile, "back at the ranch" of global competition, countries we helped build up with the Marshall Plan post WWII have no such delusional machinations. They march forward in STEM careers, creating more scientists and engineers than our own universities as we put our heads in ostrich sands; our minds in reverse back to God-knows-where, but I bet where we land won't have a middle class or America as fabled "shining city on a hill." I'm a year younger than you, and I can recall getting more on evolution and sex education during the late seventies than my twenty and thirty year old sons. Science is no threat to religious faith, and any reality created, virtual or imagined, cannot govern.

Let me end with Kevin Costner and Sean Connery in The Untouchables: "Don't bring a knife to a gun fight," and by the way: you're FROM Chicago!

Related link: William Rivers Pitt - A Nationally-Televised Presidential Fail