Maher and Limbaugh are Kissin Cousins

Ol' Rush Limbaugh and Bill Maher both use the same gimmick, they both earn big bucks by the berating and name calling of individuals instead of making light or criticizing their public statements or policy perspectives. They both try to make themselves look bigger by attempting to make others look smaller. It's a very old gimmick and it's bullshit.

The gimmick is equally lame whether you happen to agree with the lame-o's overall perspective or not. In fact it's not only lame logically but actually does far more harm than good to one's argument.

As anyone who ever reads a post at The Mud Report knows the writer of these lines wouldn't be on Rush Limbaugh's X-mas card list and that on occasion Maher's musings have probably been a far fairer fit. But when Bill Maher calls Sarah Palin [or anybody else] disgusting names or belittles her children he's not only wrongheaded, he's wrong. There's plenty of room for argument, comedic or not, with Sarah Palin's politics, there's zero for the rest. Maher's salacious name calling gives him a bad name not Palin, it effectively dismisses any further comments he has about any legitimate policy topic and it gives the object of his personal attacks the perfect platform to sidestep any of Maher's more valid critiques.

Same goes in spades for Rush Limbaugh. Certainly his arguments about publicly funded birth control have been discounted to zero by his personal insults toward an individual rather than toward her perspective. There are huge differences all around the political spectrum, plenty of real differences to debate or make jokes about for Bill, Rush and anyone else without demeaning themselves and their arguments by name calling.

Manditory Minimum Marijuana Sentences in Bill C-10 is Reefer Madness Solution for Harper's Neo-Con Base

Despite the fact that every other country in the Western Hemisphere is moving away from mandatory minimum sentences for growing and possessing small amounts of marijuana, despite the undisputed fact that this idiotic policy of Harpo's will cost Canadian taxpayers billions of dollars to build prisons, will clog up the courts, will imprison non-violent productive members of society and will only increase the leverage organized crime has on the marijuana industry, undeterred, onward the Conservatives march. Why?

Because its an obvious wedge issue. Because Harpo's goal is to remain in power. Because the 40%, or slightly less, that voted for him are the only Canadians he cares to keep happy and many/most of them are convinced that smoking marijuana is a sin. Harpo's base of support is riddled with folks who are totally confused about the difference between a sin and a crime. It's not totally their fault individually, so many have been taught since the cradle to obey authority, to respect authority and that the minister-priest-bishop speaks for God-the big kahuna of authority.

A crime has a victim. A criminal believes he/she can get more out of a system than they put in-a free lunch. Criminals are dangerous to those around them and to society in general because they are immoral, because they have no empathy for others, because they reject the 'golden rule'-do unto others as you'd have them do unto you. A sin is a totally different thing. A sin is an internal conflict between the teachings of a religion [often totally moral and 'golden rule' appropriate] and the action an adherent is doing or the thoughts they are thinking. Marijuana growing for ones own consumption may be against the law of the land and the various churches may see it as a sin, but it is not immoral.

Anyway, as the John Howard Society of Manitoba points out: Bill C-10 will have a direct impact on rates of incarceration.  The Correctional Service of Canada is predicting an 8 per cent increase in inmates per year.  At the provincial level, the increase will likely be three or four times higher (putting it in the range of 24 to 32 per cent) given that the vast majority of minimum sentences will be served as ‘provincial time’. Added to that, the provinces will see an increase in remand wait times, as mandatory minimums make plea bargains less attractive, causing more cases to proceed to trial. All these changes will further burden our already financially strapped courts and prisons, but will not reduce instances of crime.

FAST FACTS: Bill C-10: The Truth About Consequences

How Would You Feel if a Massacre Like the One Yesterday in Afghanistan Happened in Your Home?

Didn't sleep to well last night, kept waking up from the same terrible dream over and over. Kept seeing storm troopers like the kind in 'Star Wars' busting down the door and shooting...and shooting...and shooting. Kept changing tee-shirts 'cause of the cold sweat. Always knowing within seconds it was a dream, always knowing how i'd feel if a massacre like the one yesterday in Afghanistan happened to my family.

There isn't a doubt in my mind, i'd do anything to get even. The Afghans don't feel the way they feel today because they are living in a medieval culture or because they are jihadists, or terrorists or any other bullshit characterization you choose. They feel and act as they must because they are you. If you want to understand how the Afghan people feel? Think of your kids.

Today's lead article at Common Dreams 'I Don’t Want To See Their Faces; I Don’t Want To Hear Them Scream', by Christopher Cooper, was some comfort to me. It may well be to you also, please read it, it says what we all must be feeling today.

Afghanistan is well-known as the 'graveyard of empires'. It cast off the imperialist likes of Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan and the Mongol empire, the British Victorian colonial empire and most recently, the Soviet communist empire. After 11 years of pain, death and destruction we should concede that the stories of a this soldier's massacre of innocent women and children and Quran burnings could be the lasting legacies of the longest war in the American empire's history. The US and its vassal states in NATO must get out now even though now is already far to late.

I Don’t Want To See Their Faces; I Don’t Want To Hear Them Scream - Does it feel different to be dead by drone than dead by M-1? Does Obama have nightmares? Did Bush? Do they wash their hands, trying to scrub off the blood?

Why NDP Leadership Candidate Nathan Cullen is the Best Choice for Progressive Canadian Voters

Today in Vancouver the NDP is holding its final debate before the leadership vote to pick Jack Layton's successor on March 24th in Toronto. After listening, watching and studying the websites of the various candidates Nathan Cullen appears to be only one offering any real chance of a big change in Canadian politics.

As Nathan's website says, "After just eight months of a Harper majority, we’ve seen Canada withdrawn from Kyoto; the Canadian Wheat Board gutted; expensive, radical crime bills ushered in; and attack after attack on the values most Canadians cherish. Stephen Harper's majority government is attacking Canadian values with less than 40 per cent support. The NDP is in an ideal position to lead the conversation about how the other 60% can work together to replace Harper’s majority with a progressive majority."

Canada is in a small minority of countries that do not use proportional representation already. More than 75 democracies do in some form, including Australia, New Zealand and Scotland, all of which use Parliamentary systems like Canada's. Done right, proportional representation produces stable, productive governments -- which, crucially, reflect, not fight, their citizens' beliefs.

Cullen has gained support with controversial positions such as advocating for strategic alliances with the Greens and Liberals, and a populist-environmentalist stand against the Enbridge pipeline. Check out Project Democracy where you'll learn how Nathan's proposal for joint nominations and electoral reform can and will defend Canadian values.  Nathan Cullen attracted more people to his events in February than any other candidate. Unless the NDP, Liberals and Greens find some way to unite the 60% who vote against Harper and his Conservative Party agenda we will continue to be ruled by a Republican style right-wing minority. The right united, now the left must do the same.

The Mud Report enthusiastically endorses Nathan Cullen for the leadership of the Canadian NDP. Go Nathan GO!



Nathan Cullen 2012


Project Democracy

Is Dutch Disease Why Only McDonalds and Starbucks are Hiring?

There used to be good jobs here in BC and across Canada when my oldest daughter graduated from high school back in '78. Back then a kid could find a job in the forest industry, manufacturing or fishing industries. A good job, a job that in time would feed a family, buy a home, maybe a vacation in the camper up at the lake and probably a pension someday. Some kids also went off to university, sooner or later they too found a job in their field [though they mighta had to move somewhere inconvenient to get a start].

But by the time my youngest daughter graduated from high school things were far different. Some still went on to university and a few still got decent jobs if they were uniquely talented or well connected. Many though hoped for a job at Starbucks but ended up at Tim Hortons. A few years later, by 2010, those who had 'secured' their position at Starbucks were happy because by then mosta the heavily indebted university grads were filling out applications there too.

What happened is called Dutch Disease. every major oil exporter from Venezuela to Louisiana has suffered some form of the ailment. 'The Economist named the economic malaise "the Dutch Disease," from which the astute Dutch eventually recovered but from which every major oil exporter from Venezuela to Louisiana has suffered at some point. Phillippe Bergevin first diagnosed Canada's growing infection in a paper titled "Energy Resources: Boon or Curse for the Canadian Economy?" Bergevin detected a number of critical and telltale symptoms including "a rising resource-led export sector coupled with a struggling manufacturing sector and a rising currency."

Jock Finlayson of the Business Council of British Columbia noted that every one cent rise in the Canada's petro dollar subtracted $150-$160-million from the forestry sector; and another $50-million from the mining sector. The Tar Sands carnival and the resulting Dutch Disease is responsible for 54 percent of the manufacturing employment loss across Canada due to exchange rate developments between 2002 and 2007 alone. By exporting vast volumes of oil instead of refining and consuming it here in Canada Alberta and successive federal flunkies have chosen to export thousands of high value jobs to U.S. refineries.

The bought and paid for politicians are right when they say the tar sands is all about jobs and revenue. They just refuse to add two important qualifiers: lost jobs and squandered revenue. Please do your own research on Canadian Dutch Disease. When you do you'll see why Caterpillar shutdown its plant in Ontario and opened a new one Georgia recently and why there's a lineup to get jobs at Mickey D's nowadays.

How the Tar Sands Threaten Canada's Economic Fate - A short course in Dutch Disease, deindustrialization and the Bitumen Curse.

Does the Canadian economy suffer from Dutch Disease?

What NATO's Kids are Fighting and Dying for in Afghanistan

Yesterday was International Women's Day around the globe but instead of focusing on the achievments of Women's Rights groups the international press concentrated on Hamid Karzai's endorsement of the Afghan Council edict a few days ago which clearly said that 'women are secondary'. On last friday the Council, Afghanistan's highest Islamic authority, issued an edict saying that women were worth less than men, then on tuesday a statement released by Karzai's office endorsed it.

"Men are fundamental and women are secondary," the edict said, adding women should avoid "mingling with strange men in various social activities such as education, in bazaars, in offices and other aspects of life". The guidelines would prohibit women to be in public places unaccompanied by a male. a condition that could dissolve the Afghan legislature. Further it said women should wear "full Islamic hijab", should respect polygamy — Islam allows a man to take up to four wives — and comply with Shariah law on divorce, which severely restricts women's rights.

In a largly symbolic move Canada last year joined other nations that have withdrawn from a combat role in Afghanistan. But along with these NATO nations Canada continues training police and armed forces plus has investments funding for education and justice projects and aid programs. Other NATO countries, notably Great Britian and the US-which has over 100,000 regular military personal on the ground there as well as untold numbers of mercenaries-continue to send their young people into battle where thousands have already died or come home severly injured.

11 years later, US troops are still burning Korans out of either insensitivity or ignorance. Thousands are dead on all sides.
thousands more are maimed in body and soul and FOR WHAT? So that Hamid Karzai's government can uphold the edicts of medieval clerics. The illegal, undeclared 'war', in Afghanistan was crap to begin with and now after 11 long years the outcome is the same as was predicted at its begining. The Afghans aren't buying the supposed benefits of western occupation, instead they wait, they wait for the inevitable day when, like that last ignoble day in Saigon, the US and its vassels leave.

There are methods like the power of example that triumph over the example of power. One day perhaps the US and its allies will understand that the force of their ideas not the force of their armies can change minds. The only avenue to change in the long run is mutual respect and honest interaction. Our history of human rights in the west has slowly evolved through common cause, through mutual understanding and acceptance of the inalienable fact that we are all in this together, that, being one life-one interconnected life-any harm done to another is actually harm done to oneself because there is no 'other'. So too for the Afghans.


Hamid Karzai endorses Afghan edict that 'women are secondary' - Hamid Karzai's US-backed government is under fire this International Women's Day, accused of selling out on Afghan women's rights as it tries to woo the Taliban into peace talks.


Hamid Karzai backs restrictive code for women - Afghanistan's president endorses 'code of conduct' which activists say is a giant step backward for women's rights.

The Woody Guthrie Centennial Celebration - This Land is Your Land

The movie version of 'Bound for Glory' was on TCM recently as a follow up to 'The Grapes of Wrath'. Watched them both back to back that night and was left with a feeling of awe and a greater understanding of how, as the saying goes, 'those who fail to learn the lessons of history are bound to repeat them'. The uplifting part being that perhaps we all are, as Woody Guthrie was, bound for the glory of what can be if/when we do finally learn those lessons.

Woody Guthrie was born on July 14th 1912. This coming July would have been his 100th birthday. A centennial celebration of Woody's life and music, headlined by Arlo-his son, and many others will seek to convey some of the emotion that Woody's artistry added to the hopes of so many depression era folks and have continued to inspire us, his fellow travelers, since.

Personally, i met Arlo a few times many years ago [the early 60's] in Stockbridge Mass. where the few young aspiring hippies of Birkshire County traveled in order to feel and touch the movement that was then just begining to change the world. Arlo was part of that early movement and his song/alblum/movie 'Alice's Restaurant' was an early anthem for many of us. Later we all learned that Woody had been a mentor to Bob Dylan and Ramblin Jack Elliot two of the great troubadors of my generation. We all owe Woody Guthrie a great debt for his contribution to the ever evolving Revolution. Thanks Woody!

Woody wrote many excellant verses that will always underlie the spirit of The Mud Report. Below are a couple great ones.

Yes, as through this world I've wandered,
I've seen lots of funny men.
Some will rob you with a six-gun,
And some with a fountain pen.

And as through your life your travel,
Yes, as through your life your roam,
You won't never see an outlaw
Drive a family from their home.

Guthrie traveled with migrant workers from Oklahoma to California and learned traditional folk and blues songs. Many of his songs are about his experiences in the Dust Bowl era during the Great Depression, earning him the nickname the 'Dust Bowl Troubadour' His most famous song was titled 'This Land Is Your Land'. The two verses below from the original song were often omitted in subsequent recordings by some singers.

As I went walking, I saw a sign there,
And on the sign there, It said "no trespassing."
But on the other side, it didn't say nothing!
That side was made for you and me.

In the squares of the city, In the shadow of a steeple;
By the relief office, I'd seen my people.
As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking,
Is this land made for you and me?

Even Stupor Pacs and Billionaires' Bucks Can't Buy Mudslinger Mitt any Love on Stupor Tuesday

Poor Moneybags Mitt, seems no matter how much mud he slings at his rightwing rivals a large majority of the Republican base just aren't sufficiently hypnotized by what he's selling. For instance, Moneybags Mitt and his Stuopr Pac, Restore Our Future [yuck], spent over $12million slinging mud in Ohio alone compared to Righteous Rick's measley $1million. Yet Mitt won by less than 1% of the vote. Poor Mitt, even the reddest of rednecks, the bluest of bluecollars, bornest of born agains or the whitest of whites just aren't buying what he's got for sale.

Robert Reich said of the Republicans the other day, " A party of birthers, creationists, theocrats, climate-change deniers, nativists, gay-bashers, anti-abortionists, media paranoids, anti-intellectuals, and out-of-touch country clubbers cannot govern America." Maybe, maybe not, in this writers opinion. They certainly can't win in an old fashion head to head gunfight at the OK corral kinda showdown, at least not yet. But they have been pulling the strings that make the puppets dance for years now through the dark force of fear.

What America needs, and by extension the whole world needs, is a 'High Noon' kinda showdown. We need a clear choice, we need Gary Cooper to stand up intellectually in the dusty street and call bullshit on these ultra rightwing fear mongerers. We don't need 500 national ho-hum non-choices between RINOs and DINOs, between various flip-floppers where everybody chooses the candidate that makes them puke the least.

If this electoral silly season doesn't produce a clear cut defeat of the religious rightwing robots there might not be another chance. The best case scenerio, IMO, would be if Newt got the boot letting Rick do the trick of cutting Mitt to shit. Then maybe the fork-tongued Obama might end up with a real Democratic majority in both houses of Congress, not a DINO filled mock majority like the one he and 'Rahm thre Fixer' built 4 years ago. If all this were to come true, as my inner soothsayer assures me, if the religio-fascists were slain in the political dust of Main Street, if then Obama was forced by a progressive majority to actually fulfill his promises of 4 years ago we might still see America rise to its potential as that golden city on the hill.

Is The Mighty Unity Scared of the Occupy Movement? You Betcha!

Fearing a replay of the 1968 major riot in Chicago the 'Chickenhawk in Chief' quietly announced Monday evening the move of the G8 summit in May from 'Sweet Home Chicago' to the remote fortress at Camp David. This is a major victory for the Occupy Wall Street movement and Adbusters.

Obama's decision is a humiliation for 'The Mighty Unity' and is making huge headlines all over the world. "It's hard not to see at least some of the Ghost of '68 in President Barack Obama's decision to slap his hometown and abruptly pull the G8 summit out to the Maryland woods." - Chicago Business

Those were heady days back in August of '68. Revolution was in the air. The assassinations of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy, the escalating doom of the Viet Nam War, the nationwide race riots and the rapid rise of the counterculture created an atmosphere where real change seemed possible. i was 20 that summer, a college kid who's world was forever changed by the terrible glorious events of that year. By year's end i had dropped out of college determined to be a part of the solution not part of the problem.

The problem, the problems, have only gotten worser and huger since my epiphany in '68. The ghost of '68 still haunts the halls of power in America. Hopefully this victory for the Occupy Movement will be a cataylst that continues the spread of the revolutionary reaction to the forces of corporate greed gaining momentum around the world.

Sweet Home Chicago: G8 Summit Moved but Protests Will Continue - Years ago, when I was at The London School of Economics, I received a letter inviting me to Chicago for the 1968 Democratic convention. No it wasn’t from then Mayor Daley but from my Yippie friend Abbie Hoffman who predicted a hot time in the old town that was burned down by Mrs. O’Leary’s famous cow. To this day, I regret not going. I am hoping to be there this time because it promises to showcase the revival of the Occupy Movement that so many are hoping for. - Danny Schechter

Rapidly Rising Atmospheric CO2' Causing the Worst Ocean Acidification in 300 Million Years

The recent study titled The Geological Record of Ocean Acidification and published in the journal Science, details the work of 21 scientists from the U.S. and Europe. In it the authors conclude, “The current rate of (mainly fossil fuel) CO2 release stands out as capable of driving a combination and magnitude of ocean geochemical changes potentially unparalleled in at least the last ~300 [million years] of Earth history, raising the possibility that we are entering an unknown territory of marine ecosystem change.”

Who's responsible for this? Is it some big cultural mindset? Or is it the individual choices each of us makes everyday? The answer is both i guess. But they aren't seperate, the culture of consumption is simply the total of our individual choices. Each of us cooperates differently and in different amounts, from the hermit-desert rat type who lives off grid and walks to the nearest trading post once a month to the suit wearing freeway commuters waiting out another traffic jam in their air-conditioned cocoon.

Each of us performs a conscious or sub-conscious cost/benefit analysis whose output we use to maximize the mojo of our moments. Defining costs and benefits then is central to maximizing our individual mojos. Each of us solves the problem slightly different because of how our unique pasts have shaped our present worldview, that worldview is what we use to assign weights to different costs and benefits. The one thing we all share is the difficulty of our time frame.

We rogue primates seldom have any connection to deep timeframes, we have affinity or real empathy for about the 5 generations we meet in our lives, our grandparent's-our parent's-our's-our children's-our grandchildren's. These temporal blinders we all have that focus us so narrowly in time allow us to externalize the full costs of our actions somewhere into the future beyond our circle of empathy while apparently gaining the full benefits of those actions in the here and now. The Geological Record study, at least for a moment, has re-opened my focus to a grander time scale and re-validated my evolving inner desert rat.


'Unprecedented Rapidity of CO2' Causing Worst Ocean Acidification in 300 Million Years - The Earth's oceans are becoming more acidic at a faster rate than at any time in the past 300 million years due to increased levels of CO2 in the atmosphere, a new study shows.

An Inspiring Note from Karen Willis and Clear Answers at the Dogwood Initiative

The title, Med Student Donates Scholarship Money, and link in an email this morning brought me to this inspiring note:
"Apparently, I am a radical. I am a Canadian, a proud B.C. resident and a medical student. I am currently thousands of dollars in debt so that I can achieve my dream of being a rural family doctor and bring medical care to the underserved areas of our province."
"However, something worries me more than the pressing need for rural doctors in Canada or my ability to pay my bills — it is the Northern Gateway pipeline and the proposal to put supertankers on our coast. That is why I would like to donate the scholarship money I received this year to your initiative. I know it’s not much, and I would give more if I could. I love what you are doing for our province".

Karen is donating her scholarship to the Dogwood Initiative, a non-profit, volunteer group that brings together everyday British Columbians to reclaim decision-making power over their air, land and water. Even more important perhaps than Karen's inspiring note are the clear responses given on the blog to a series of excellant questions about the Northern Gateway Project pipieline project. The answers there are great talking for us all when encountering these same basic questions in conversations with our friends, be they supporters or objectors to the pipeline.

Please check out the Dogwood Initiative website and, if you feel so moved, sign the petitions and/or join the cause, mr. mud did.

Alberta's Wiebo Ludwig is Fighting His Last Battle

The Dutch-born eco-warrior and enemy of the oil industry is a yoeman, a hero, a warrior, a free man and at peace with his god at the end, what could be better. But still it's a sad day for those many of us who've cheered Weibo on from afar, those many of us Weibo wannabes who've never been able to take the heat as he has.

Here's a couple of excerps from an interview published today, March 03, 2012, titled: Wiebo Ludwig dying of cancer:

"For those who espouse green living and turning our collective backs on uncontrolled oil and gas drilling and development, Ludwig is something of a messianic folk hero. For decades he has stood as an outspoken, implacable, media-savvy foe of the oil and gas industry, as evidenced by Toronto filmmaker David York's 2011 National Film Board-backed documentary, Wiebo's War."

"Ludwig, a carpenter, has completed his final construction project: a wooden casket. Last month his daughters finished the lining — a cream-coloured satin that covers a layer of soft foam and straw. The simple casket rests on two metal stands in one of the compound's main houses."

Not a believer myself, but if Weibo's right about crossing over the river maybe i'll be lucky enough to meet him one day on the other side.

Wiebo Ludwig dying of cancer: An interview - March 03, 2012

The Psychedelic Toad of the Sonoran Desert

The Sonoran Desert is a vast irregular-shaped area of some 120,000 square miles. It stretches from southeastern California across the southern half of Arizona and extends south into Sonora, Mexico. More than one thousand years ago, the Hohokam Indians began diverting water from the Gila River in order to irrigate the arid soil. Working with sticks and stones these primal people pioneered an extensive system of desert agriculture and produced art like the clay toad pictured above.

One of the most unique inhabitants of the Sonoran Desert is the native toad, Bufo alvarius. The metabolic pathway of the venom of B. alvarius is unique within the Animal Kingdom in that it produces large amounts of 5-methoxy indole derivatives. The predominant alkaloid among these, as much as fifteen per cent of the venom by dry weight, is 5- methoxy- N,N- dimethyltryptamine (5-MEO-DMT). 5-MEO-DMT is a potent hallucinogen, psychoactive in man at doses of three to five milligrams.

When vaporized by heat and taken into the lungs in the form of smoke, this indole-based alkaloid produces an incredibly intense psychedelic experience of incredibly short duration. There is no hangover or harmful effect. On the contrary, a pleasant psychedelic afterglow appears quite regularly after smoking the venom of B. alvarius, the Psychedelic Toad of the Sonoran Desert.

In 1983 Albert Most of Gila, Arizona formed The Church of the Toad of Light. His writings, especially Bufo alvarius: The Psychedelic Toad of the Sonoran Desert which is The Bible, draw thousands of young searchers to the Sonora Desert around Gila every year. Here is a link to the best general information about Bufo alvarius. Here is another to information on the church itself. Most interestingly Bufo alvarius is a mudite in that it lives underground in the mud under year around water sources, like the Gila River and the extensive modern irrigation systems that draw on the Colorado River, during the hot daylight hours found in this harsh zone where temperatures can reach 140 F. in the shade and rainfall amounts at as little as five inches per year.

The Quality of One's Life Has Zero Correlation to the Quantity of One's Money

Today's inbox contained a this beautiful picture above and various well meant comments on compassion, love and the politics of homelessness. All the folks commenting made good points, but it's the picture itself that touches me.

In anything there's the container and its contents to consider, including this picture. The container here seems to evoke a response of-maybe pity or compassion, the contents another-maybe universal love. But those are only my opinions. My opinions are, as are all our various opinions, a projection of my worldview.

So then this photo is real art. It follows the defination, my opinion again, that art is symbolic and that all real art, like all good symbols, are windows in that it doesn't matter how they are built-rather it's what you see through them that counts.

Through this window, this symbol, this art i bask in the warm glow of appreciating that the quality of one's moments-one's life-has nothing to do with one's material circumstances-at least once that person has acheived a level of comfort above starvation.

Growing Up in the 50's or the 60's

If you grew up in the 50's or the 60's it's hard to believe that we lived this long. As kids, we would ride in cars with no seat belts or air bags. Riding in the back of a pickup truck on a warm day was always a special treat. Our baby cribs were covered with bright colored lead-based paint. We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors, or cabinets, and when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets. (Not to mention hitchhiking everywhere as a young kid.)

We drank water from the garden hose and not from a bottle. We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the streetlights came on. No one was able to reach us all day. We played dodgeball and sometimes the ball would really hurt. We had fights and punched each other and got black and blue and learned to get over it. We ate cupcakes, bread and butter, and drank sugar soda but we were never overweight, we were always outside playing. We shared one grape soda with four friends, from one bottle and no one died.

We didn't have Playstations, Nintendos, X Boxes, cell phones, computers, Facebook, or Twitter...we had friends. We rode bikes or walked to a friend's home and knocked on the door, or rung the bell or just walked in and talked to them. Imagine such a thing. Without asking a parent! By ourselves! Out there in the cold cruel world! Without a guardian. How did we do it? Little League had tryouts and not everyone made the team. Those who didn't had to learn to deal with it. Some students weren't as smart as others so they failed a grade and were held back to repeat the same grade.

Our actions were our own. Consequences were expected. No one to hide behind. We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility. If you were a kid in the 50's or 60's congratulations! We had the luck to grow up as kids, before lawyers and government regulated our lives, for our own good.

Why Progressives Should Vote for Rick Insantoium in Today's Michigan and Arizona Primaries

About the only hope that progressive voters in the US have of seeing any of their agenda being adopted in the next few years is if there's such a huge Democratic landslide in November that the DINOs-Blue Dog Democrats-will lose their power. There's nobody more likely to cause such a lanslide than Rick Insantorium.

Rick made a statement yesterday slamming JFK's speech about how religion and politics should be kept separate. Righteous Rick went on to say, "I don't believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute." Now there's a statement that will warm the hearts of many ultra-religious Republicans and Tea Partiers but will, in the longer run, scare the beejesus out of any rational independent US voter.

Moneybags Mitt has his moments of insanity too, but his track record of changing positions on any issue to suit the demographic audience he's addressing means he'll just disavow any rhetoric that he finds doesn't play well with independents if he were to win the nomination. Rick, on the other hand, has made so many heartfelt speeches embracing the religiously hypnotized mindset that he undoubtedly is a true believer.

So, seeing as Obama has broken every progressive promise he made 4 years ago, it seems to me the only way he'll ever to forced to actually fulfill any of his promises is if/when a truely progressive majority in both houses of Congress force him to, and as he'll be a lame duck unable to run again and not needing to play kiss-ass with his corporate benefactors after November it could happen-right after pigs learn to fly. Meanwhile, mr. mud will keep rooting for Roseanne Barr and Ron Paul to somehow be able to force the lamestream media, also totally in the death grip of the their corporate owners and advertisers, to start asking real questions about the big issues of our times.

In Vegas the morning line had the odds at 99 to 1 against the media ever asking any controversial questions and the same against Roseanne Barr for POTUS, so my next best hope today is a big victory for Rick Insantorium tonight in Michigan and Arizona. Go Rick Go!

Rick Santorum slams JFK - Kennedy said religion and politics should be kept separate, which Santorum called an "absolutist doctrine" that he rejected. "I don't believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute," he said on ABC.

Harper's Phoney Elections Canada Calls a Hallmark of Rove's Tactics

Did Harpo's Conservative Party steal the last Canadian General Election? As Queen Sarah of the North would say, 'You Betcha!'. Over the last number of years it's been reported many times that different members of the Canadian Conservative Party have met with Karl Rove, the grandaddy of Republican electoral dirty tricks. Guess these last few days we're starting to learn what they discussed eh.

Last night CBC's The National had an interview with the NDP's Pat Martin [pat.martin@parl.gc.ca] where he called the phoney Elections Canada calls directing Liberal and NDP supporters to incorrect voting stations a heinous crime against democracy. Martin also denounced the dirty tricks calls as a tactic borrowed from U.S. Republicans.

Today Liberal MP John McCallum said fraudulent calls directing voters to the wrong polling stations benefited Conservatives in the last election. Elections Canada has traced the calls to numbers in Montana and Colorado.

As of now complaints have come in from 37 ridings about false fraudulent calls from people-not robo calls-claiming to be from Elections Canada. This tactic is used by the Republcan Party in the US, especially in the deep south, as a vote suppression weapon. One of the main proponents of this and other dirty tricks, so broadly used in the US that Democrats now have attorney and 1-800 numbers setup in every state to combat them, is Karl Rove-Harpo's buddy. Week after week Canadians are learning just where and how the facist Harpo's Government is going. Soon the Conservative's will be announcing their ETA in Hades-All Aboard Eh!

Class War and 'The Grapes of Wrath'

Last night was John Steinbeck night on the Turner Classic Movie channel. 'The Grapes of Wrath' is one of the best movies ever made and even though i've seen it many times it still held the same magic. It should be mandatory viewing for graduation from school [at any level] especially now, when history is repeating itself again.

Henry Fonda's performance as Tom Joad is, perhaps, the greatest role ever in movie history. Tom Joad's legend will always live on in the music and stories of the working class as long as the class war exists. As Tom Joad says in his famous last lines while saying goodbye to his other near the end of the film, "I'll be all around in the dark - I'll be everywhere. Wherever you can look - wherever there's a fight, so hungry people can eat, I'll be there. Wherever there's a cop beatin' up a guy, I'll be there. I'll be in the way guys yell when they're mad. I'll be in the way kids laugh when they're hungry and they know supper's ready, and when the people are eatin' the stuff they raise and livin' in the houses they build - I'll be there, too."

Please take a few minutes to watch the video below titled 'Let Your Life Be A Friction To Stop the Machine'. It's a powerful, look at the history of the American empire from Class War Films.



Sunshine Came Softly Into My Dumpster Today

Sunshine came softly into my dumpster today, coulda tripped out easier but i've changed my way. [Sorry Donovan].

One California artist is taking the idea dumpster living to a whole new luxury level with his art project. Gregory Kloehn of Berkeley, Calif., is transforming a garbage dumpster into a deluxe home for one, complete with kitchen, washroom and sleeping area for his project, “Elite Waste.” He installed granite countertops, stainless steel appliances, hardwood floors, a gas tank, power bars, lights, a six-gallon water tank, a retractable roof with windows, and TV.

Then there's dumpster diving beyond the Freegan model as a sustainable life style where the concept is to undo your entire carbon footprint through the recycling of other people's former stuff. Treehugger recently ran an article explaining that there are many things in the dumpster that do not deserve to be buried yet. The article said, "You will see some things that do, and some that do not, belong in the dumpster. You can recycle them, repurpose them, make them into art. You can clean them up and use them, donate them or just set them next to the dumpster hoping they are adopted (Catch and Release)."

mr. mud's idea though is not the so much one of the moneyed artistic persuastion or even the moral carbon footprint version, though a bitta comfort both moral and material might tag along from time to time. No, my concept is born outta the mud, outta poverty, pride and homelessness [coming sooner or later to this mudatarian].

Right now my concept includes a bike with a heavy duty rack that could be packed up quickly each morning [after the sunlight came softly into that night's dumpster]. A person, and maybe a small best friend would need a sleeping bag, a blowup mattress, a one burner gas campstove, some candles, a library membership, maybe a pre-paid cell phone to talk to the grandkids and access to a university campus where it's usually fairly easy to use the bathrooms and showers in the gym or pool area. Granted this is an urban-ish concept and mr. mud has been living a rural life for many decades now so the plan might take a bitta tweeking. But there are good people everywhere including near urban dumpsters. Just imagine, every morning new take out pizza and sushi leftovers would be delivered airmail and as Donovan said, 'Superman or Green Latern wouldn't have nothin on me cause during the night i would use a little bucket to pee.'

Anarchy was the Answer in Argentina as it is in Greece and Beyond

Today's research led to a great, mind opening, article at Jay Walljasper's On The Commons.org titled ''Where Is Kropotkin When We Really Need Him?'. In it the reader is reminded of how our 'modern' definition of anarchism has been re-framed into a dark chaotic hell on earth from its actual historic reality. It's a short and impressive piece for its content. For today, though it also can serve an instructional container.

Perhaps the biggest story in the world right now, on so many levels, is the potential Greek default. Like everything, it's a Rorschach test in that what we see through it totally depends on the view of the viewer. Through one worldview Greece's default would be a travesty because it could very well participate a severe recession or even the big D-depression. Either of which would mean austerity for all folks everywhere, but perhaps especially for the consumptive class. Guess like Richard Fariña said in his classic1966 novel 'Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me' the perspective of a person living and dining in a dumpster is far different from that of the person throwing stuff in.

Two other bits on the pending Lazarus like rise of the Greeks, 'Economists Predict 'No Gain, More Pain' for Greece' and the little video: 'The Greek debt crisis: it's, like, totally over' are instructive on the logical level regardless of where you are on the dumpster scale. The fact is, and this portion is trying to appeal to logic, that cooperatives employ more people than multinational companies in the world's economy. The sooner the Greeks return to their roots, our roots, the better.

The ability of a Greek default to send shockwaves of contagion through the gelatinous mass of credit default swapping criminals is in itself enough to bring hope to this ol' bottom feeder. Then add to that its potential to stimulate a new/old re-localized economc solution that will be the model for other countries under the yoke of the banksters and hope rises to jejoicing. That new/old model is very well outlined by the Kropotkin article above, so too are the bright days of anarchy our ancestors enjoyed.