October MADness

It’s been 54 years since we experienced the fun, fun, pants pissing and pooping, paranoid times of October MADness, AKA Cuban Missile Crisis.

The strategic plan of the US at the time the time (and still is today) was called MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction). It was a brilliant[sic] plan that in case of nuclear war both the US and USSR would make sure to wipe each other out totally and destroy the rest of the world as collateral damage.

I was born into a MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD world that was in an arms race to make sure we could destroy the world more times than the evil commies.

Beginning on this day 54 years ago, the situation became really insane for 13 days and things came close to degenerating to MAD. That’s right, the Cuban Missile Crisis.

I was eight at the time and I didn’t realize the intensity of the situation. But, I knew grown ups were tense. I also knew we were having many more nuke drills at school. A nuke drill is a lot like a tornado drill. Everybody kneels in the hallway facing the wall. You take sharp objects out of your pockets and take off glasses and cover your head with your arms. But the Nuke drill has an additional step, bending over to put your head between your legs to kiss your ass goodbye.

Since we lived between a B-52 base and the PanTex nuclear weapons plant, it was obvious the odds of survival was pretty low if the shit hits fan. Amarillo would get plastered. Kneeling in the hallway wasn’t helping anyone. But, everyone had to follow the official procedures no matter how useless.

So, what everyone was told was them evil Rooskies put nuclear missiles into Cuba, threatening the good guys, the USA. Well it’s true but not the whole story.

Cuba asked for missiles in reaction to the CIA’s Bay of Pigs invasion debacle. The USSR agreed because they they were a bit peeved about the nukes we moved into Italy and Turkey first. It seems they weren’t thrilled about our nukes pointed at them.

The US acted all upset that weapons were pointed at us, but kept quiet about the reason. We threatened them first. It’s hard to be noble and offended about a neighbor pointing a gun at you when you pointed guns at them first. But the US is the king of gall.

Now, the saber rattling Generals in the Pentagon wanted to invade Cuba to teach them a lesson. Hell, we did it before with Teddy and the Roughriders. But sanity prevailed. Good thing because we didn’t know the Cubans had tactical nukes to use if we invaded.

Once one nuke goes off it triggers a MAD response. If we nuked Cuba, the USSR responds with MAD. Just like War Games, any nuclear scenario ends up MAD with both sides nuking the other side into oblivion.

We were told we faced down the Rooskies and they took the nukes away from Cuba. It was never reported that the USSR backed down after we took our nukes out of Turkey and Italy.

MAD was narrowly avoided during those 13 days in October. But, there were many more that didn’t make it into the press. In one case the USSR came within 20 seconds of launching when they mistook a research rocket launch in Scandinavia for a first strike over the pole by the US. Fortunately a Soviet general called off their launches at the last second.

The moral of the story is: people we are dumb all over both then and now.

Dumb All Over

Rescue of the Danish Jews

World War II was a horrible time for any group Hitler didn’t like. Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, Jehovah Witnesses, Catholics, artists, musicians, the disabled, any groups Hitler considered sub-human were shipped off to be exterminated or worked as slave laborers until they died.

That’s a tragedy but worse was the way the people in occupied countries almost gleefully collaborated to assist the Nazis in rounding up and assisting in the extermination these sub-humans for the Master Race. French Gendarmes rounded up people for the Gestapo, Slavs and Poles stoked the ovens of the crematoria. Despicable and deplorable actions, but, what the hell, they were only Jews, Gypsies, … so who cares. It’s the kind of thinking demonizing a group of people leads to. That kind of thinking is still going on today. Just ask Drumpf or his supporters. They’re ready to start a new Holocaust.

But one country bucked the Nazi thinking, little Denmark. 99% of the Jewish citizens avoided being shipped to their deaths. 73 years ago today, Hans Hedtoft, chairman of the Danish Social Democrat party, found out the Nazis intended to round up the Jews in Denmark. all 7,800 of them on October 1, 1943. It was not to be. So sorry Hitler.

On September 28, Hedtoft put the word out and the Danes went to work warning and hiding every Jew they could find. Rabbis warned their congregations. Civil servants, taxi drivers, Boy Scouts, and others took to the streets with phone books to warn their Jewish countrymen to go into hiding.

It worked. The Nazis had cattle cars staged and ready. The arrests were scheduled for the eve of the Jewish New Year, assuming Jews would be home with their Families. Squads of SS hit the streets, and came back mostly empty handed.  Only 464 Danish Jews were arrested and sent to a concentration camp.

Even those avoided the death camps. The Danish government put pressure on the Nazis. The Danes were housed in a transit camp, not sent to death camps. They even managed to send food and medical packages to the Danish prisoners. Only 51 Danish Jews died, of disease, while in Nazi captivity.

What of the rest of the Danish Jews? Hiding wouldn’t work for long. They needed to escape to another country. The problem is others countries, including the US, didn’t want to accept Jewish refugees. (Sounds like the situation today, doesn’t it. ‘We don’t want no damn refugees.’)

That’s where a nuclear physicist, and a Hollyweird starlet enter our story. Neutral Sweden was the logical place to send all the Jews in hiding. But Sweden wasn’t accepting Jews either. Greta Garbo managed to get Nils Bohr an audience with the Swedish king. Bohr managed to get the king to accept the Danish Jews on October 3rd.

That started a massive smuggling operation of boats of all kinds transporting 7,900 Jews and non-Jewish spouses to safety in Sweden.

99% of Danish Jews survived the Holocaust. This happened because Danes didn’t think of Danish Jews as just those damn Jews. They considered them fellow Danish citizens deserving of protection from the Nazis.

We need to learn from the example of the Danes and consider refugees as fellow Humans and quit pigeonholing them into demonized categories.

Rescue of the Danish Jews

Citizens United and the Price of Personhood

The US Supreme Court decision on Citizens  United (AKA Corporations Unlimited) declares that corporations are persons with the same constitutional rights as human persons.

That’s a pile of shit, but it will take a Constitutional Amendment to reverse the ruling. That’s extremely unlikely to happen. If an Amendment makes it through the corrupt, DO Nothing, Corporate Owned, Congress, it will take years to ratify.

Is there nothing human people can do? Do we all just bend over, grease it up, and let these corporate ‘persons’ plook us? Fucque that, we’re Americans, not slaves to corporate ‘persons’. We fight back against tyranny!

I know all y’all are asking how can we fight the all powerful corporations? Torches and pitchforks won’t do it. As the Occupy movement has shown us, corporations own the police through their ownership of our government, from Federal down to village boards.

The answer is to use the US Constitution to ensure ‘corporate persons’ receive all the benefits and obligations as ‘human persons’. Nail them with the fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection clause. Not through a new Constitutional Amendment. We don’t need a new Amendment. The Fourteenth  has been around  over 148 years.

No more corporate/human discrimination! Full equality  for corporate persons!

It won’t keep corporate bribes out of our political system, but it will make corporations rue the day that SCOTUS ruled in their favor on Citizens United. And, cry over the bribes to Supreme Court justices. They’ll beg for a repeal of Citizens United, claiming they’re only the legal fictions they are, not persons.

Applying the amendment will force corporations to begin paying their fair share of taxes, limit political contributions. eliminate the offshore shell games they use to hide income from taxation, and make the inversion game, where they pretend to move to another country, extremely costly and unattractive. They’ll even have to contribute to Social Security.

Sound good so far? Let’s get on to the how.  Simple, apply the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.  Corporations have foolishly set a precedent by claiming the 14th Amendment applies to them, when they were fighting the minimum wage hike in Seattle. The fools set themselves up. Let’s give them equal protection until they scream.

The civil rights of human persons are being grossly violated by applying separate laws to corporate ‘persons’. Would it be right to apply different tax laws to Blacks, Latinos, Native Americans, LGBTs. … , while Heterosexual Whites get preferential treatment? Hell freakin NO! There would be riots, along with civil rights lawsuits, if that happened. So what’s different about corporate ‘persons’ getting preferential treatment over human persons?

Why are the civil rights of human persons are being violated by giving preferential treatment to corporate ‘persons’?

  • Corporate ‘persons’ income is taxed at a different rate than human person  income. Not that corporations actually pay that tax rate. Many corporate ‘persons’ make billions and pay nothing, even receiving tax refunds. Other corporate ‘persons’ pay far below the statutory rate.
  • Corporate ‘persons’ are not taxed on foreign income, human persons are.
  • Corporate ‘persons’ can openly hide money in offshore tax havens, human persons go to jail for hiding money offshore.
  • Corporate ‘persons’ can magically invert themselves and become foreign corporations without penalty,  a human person has to pay a tax penalty when they renounce US citizenship to become a citizen  of another country.
  • Human foreign persons need a work permit to work in the USA, but not corporate foreign ‘persons’.

That’s just the short list. There are many more civil rights violations.

Applying the Equal Protection Clause to corporations will result in a collective corporate scream, so make sure you have ear protection.

So let’s do it. No legislation needed, only a directive or executive order directing the IRS and other government agencies to apply the laws fairly and equally to all persons, human or corporate. At worst it will take a civil rights lawyer, or many, filing civil rights law suit(s).

Some may argue the Equal Protection Clause as written applies to the state governments, not the Federal government. However, the Supreme Court held in Bolling v. Sharpe (1954) that equal protection requirements applies to the federal government through the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment.

UC Davis wasting money to try and making pepper spray incident go away

lieutenant-john-pike-walks-up-and-down-the-line-spraying-students-in-the-face

UC Davis thinks images of campus storm trooper Leutnant John Pike pepper spraying students is bad PR. No shit!

They are stupid enough to think they can pay a consultant $175K and make it go away from the Internet. How fucking stupid can they be. Once it’s on the Internet, it’s there forever.

PS: I’m open to an offer to take it down. It’s going to cost the idiots.

MDA Muscle Walk 2016

April 3, 2016 at 12:05pm marked the start of #MusclewalkSTL 2016. Team Steve met its donation goal this year. We even got a MDA Bringing Strength To Life T-shirt.

The turnout was impressive. It took over 5 minutes for all the walkers to cross the starting line.

It was a lovely day to get out for sun, fresh air and a walk. Team Steve finished the course in 22 minutes. I led the cheer squad. I didn’t walk. Hey, it took me almost 22 minutes to make it to the toilet and back ;-)>>>

I watched the walkers. I like people watching but all the women in Spandex pants made it very enjoyable. I know I’m a Dirty Ol Man. I wear the badge proudly.

There were also lots of friendly dogs around, including a peanut eating bulldog.

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Team Steve

  • Back Row: Allie; Mike; Ed; JD
  • Front Row: MB; Steve; Jude; Colleen

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Wenches

Delusional Saving Time

One of the wenches sent me a text asking when to we put our clocks forward.
 
WE? There ain’t no freaking we, silly wench! I live in the real world. I don’t believe in the delusion that believe you can cut one end off a blanket and sew it onto the other end and get a longer blanket. I’m crazy but I ain’t delusional.
 
My clocks don’t fall forward or spring back. They always say it’s Noon when Grandfather Sun is at his highest. I don’t do Delusional Saving Time.
 
When I’m forced to leave the real world and enter the delusional world, I humour the crazies and show up an hour early.

Spring Harvest

Looks like the spring cat hair harvest is going to be a bumper crop this year. I fired up the harvester yesterday. I barely made it down the hall before the collection bin full light came on.
 
I need to have a talk with the Eureka Vacuum Harvester folks about make the collection bin bigger. Or, maybe they have a baling attachment.
 
Anyone know the price cat hair is bringing in this year?
pixel and nibble 011

Sounds of Silence

I’ve never, ever Twitted. My Nook ereader came with a Twit app. Some night when I must have been extremely freakin bored, I registered a Twit account. But I came to my senses later and never used it.

Today I opened the app and discovered I have a follower on Twit. I guess someone likes the sounds of silence.

Now I’m worried if I Twit, I’ll drive away my sole follower.  Even more worrying is that I’m following someone. I do know of that person but I never followed her.

Crunchy Dinner Dance

Nibble has always performed her Breakfast Song and Dance every morning.

I guess she enjoys her terpsichorean muse because for the last week, I’ve been treated to an evening song and dance performance when she thinks it’s time to top off the dry food bowl.

There will be a short intermission while I join in this evening’s Crunchy Dinner dance.

FB Timeout

My little bro got himself sentenced to a 3 day FB timeout for posting this Dr Zukerfurter meme.

I’ve inferred, implied and insinuated what got him banned but a picture is worth a thousand words.

Dr Zukerfurter

The Zuck is a little touchy isn’t he.