A Saucerful of Secrets

Pink Floyd's second album, entitled A Saucerful of Secrets and released in 1968, the year I gave up on the bigoted Baptist church, was a step in the right direction for the band, featuring the cut with the wondrous title of "Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun". After a ho-hum first release, this band was beginning to show some real promise. It would be five more years before everybody and his hound dog were listening to the cautionary lament of Syd Barrett, I'm mad, I've always been mad, that opened the Dark Side to the mass audience.

It's The Southern Strategy, it's always been The Southern Strategy, and until the masses of left wing Americans figure this out once and for all, there will be nothing but hell to pay to the dark side for all of us. Let's just slap reality in the face, shall we? It is a sociological fact of life that the lower the social class of an American, the less likely he is to vote. The left wing is never going to attain political superiority over the right until it faces the music and begins to offer something to those who are not people of color, another sexual persuasion, or of a downtrodden social class. Face the music, y'all: the fatal boo-boo was letting the other side use organized religion to dodge conformity to civil rights way back in The Sixties. You people that keep saying we shall overcome as soon as the minorities outnumber the white majority have a long damn wait, and I do not expect to live that long. My granddaughter will have a granddaughter before that paradigm shift happens. Wake up and smell the Christians fuming from their bigoted pews! This is why you cannot whip even the stupid Tea Party's butt. How are you going to out-organize them? You don't go to church in enough numbers to vote them out of office. The minorities you support at all cost may go to church, but their voting numbers are pathetic. Just how exactly do you think you are going to defeat that massive magnitude of hypocrisy on the other side that totally owns most of the corporate money and practically all the mainstream media? Do you really think this silly blogging nonsense is going to do it?

If you get rid of Sarah Palin, they will just drag in Bachmann Turnip Overripe! (Yes, I stole that from some witty blogger.) If we rid ourselves of her brand of hypocritic oath, they will bring Liz Cheney in to swing the bat. We must stop the germ that is causing the madness. Palin is nothing more than a symptom, a bad smell wafting over Tucson. There are more of these selfish, racist crazies out there than you could ever imagine. Get rid of one and another one just pops up in her place.

You would think that Baptists who look like Brit Hume and keep it in their pants would be everywhere a Wall Streeter would look, but since the summer of '08, that does not seem to be the case. We are living in this nightmare simply because those idiots on the right have never been able to find such a handsome bigoted beast to lead them where they wish to go. It seems incredibly stupid, but I am sure this simple fact is the truth. Smart guys like Karl Rove and Bill O'Reilly don't really want a loose cannon like the Wasilla Twitter Foister on the loose in their territory. They just want us to think they do. The war will not be won by ridding America of this high-heeled monster. It will be won only by changing the way America thinks, by turning The Palin Matrix back upon itself.

As I have said many times before, no blog is going to discover that one final bit of evidence that is going to finish off the witch. The evidence is already astounding, more than that for any other politician in our lifetimes. Like Gryphen has said numerous times, I know about things behind the scenes that make this phenomenon like none in our history. There is no precedent to define it. The paradigm shift was set in motion back in The Sixties. Until America is ready to face the new realities with an open mind, we shall remain a pack of belligerent idiots worshiping demagogues.

We cannot move the country in the right direction until we wrest control from the right wing crazies, and we cannot do that until we accept the fact that we need more than a few white, middle class voters on our team. We could begin by standing our ground firmly against any changes to Social Security. Every time one of those demagogues uses the word entitlements, we should slap them silly. What they really mean is that no funds will go to domestic programs for the poor, but we can bomb the hell out of any country we don't like. Just give us more money for defense. We don't have enough weapons or soldiers yet. The leading politician who wants to do something about this is Ron Paul, father of Mr. Nutsville himself. Of course all Mr. Paul the elder will ever get is lip service because the last thing the right wing wants to do is to cut out some of the bazillion dollars annually we waste defending many countries that have never needed defending since World War II. The next thing we have to do is turn off the stinking cable news and start fighting for a revival of The Fairness Doctrine. The next thing we need to do is to start paying teachers more and CEO's less. When companies are in the news for obviously unnecessary outsourcing and downsizing, we need to cease supporting them by purchasing their goods or services. We need to push our politicians to stand firm on moving single-payer healthcare forward, downsizing the War on Drugs, and increasing the infrastructure programs. Do I really need to continue this list? It really is all too obvious. We already have a helluva speech giver in President Obama. Now if we could just get Wall Street's hands out of his pockets, we could be getting somewhere.

There really is a saucerful of secrets hidden away in the minds of some of the anti-Palin bloggers, and that may be an apt description because the depth of the importance of the secrets is probably quite shallow within the larger scheme of things. I started this blog nearly a year ago with my naive hope that I could bring the bloggers together into a more organized fashion. We need to be much better organized if we are ever to defeat the Evangelical juggernaut that is holding our once democratic nation by the throat. I know where I stand in all of this. I write under my real name and I have published a book about this mess, and I mean the whole mess, from 1492 to 2011. There are many Kool-Aid drinkers out there in bloggerland, and quite unfortunately, you don't know who you are, but I do. I'm keeping my little saucerful of secrets to myself. Read the book and get a grip on the big picture. Please. You will make our nice President so happy if you do. He cannot tell you the whole truth because he is a national politician, but I can. The progressive left strikes back!

Republican Dogs Eviscerate Paradigm Shift!

I knew long before it was published that conservatives, Evangelicals, Republicans, and yes, even Republican dogs would want to rip my left wing manifesto to shreds after reading even a single random paragraph of it, but I never expected it to happen so soon!

(Photo courtesy Dr. Al Past, whose dogs were guarding his abode when the mailman arrived with a package from Amazon containing Paradigm Shift: The Palin Matrix.)

Patrick at Palingates wrote one of his most pertinent posts yesterday about America being at a crossroads, a central point in what I often call The Second Civil War. My reply to his post can be summarized by saying that of course I would like every intelligent American to read my book covering the subject in detail, from the birth of our nation to the death of Elizabeth Edwards, but there is an even deeper motive. America needs to extricate itself from the clutches of the many Republican dogs from Sarah Palin to Newt Gingrich to Rush Limbaugh, and to effect a divorce between Wall Street and the Evangelicals. In my mind there is absolutely no question that this marriage is the source of the madness that has infected our once compassionate, democratic nation. Christians have become an evil force in American society. I know that sounds crass and ridiculous, but over the past decades of our lives, this backwards concept has become increasingly true. How much selfish greed and lack of compassion for those less fortunate than themselves is too much? Modern Evangelicals do not seem to be able to answer this question without some sort of violently verbal attack on the person asking.

For the first time in nearly three years, the official skeptical curmudgeon here is about ready to breathe a sigh of relief. What SP has done to herself in the past week has been satisfyingly laughable. She has brought out the intelligence of even Joe Scarborough and Jack Cafferty. She has made previous supporters question whatever they might have once thought was between her ears other than air. What I want to know is exactly how much Rupert and Roger knew about that video tape prior to airing it at Fox! The scariest thing about Sarah to me has always been that her handlers could at any time choose to soften her image and make her appear to be more moderate and intelligent. This is precisely what has not happened these last few days. I am not sure I am ready yet to state the case as emphatically as Scarborough or Cafferty, or even Gryphen, but the ladies and gentlemen of voting age who I call the Lou Dobbs Independents are never going to be able to forget the face of nine-year-old Christina Taylor Green.

The Republican dogs have shredded their own manifesto this time. They should have quit while they were ahead. As the pundits have always said, the rabid bases may win primaries, but the massive horde of Independents selects the winner in most general elections. I don't think Palin could be elected Wasilla Muttcatcher at this point, at least not in Alaska. One of the basic tenets of all con artists is to keep moving before the marks catch on, and I think Alaskans have had quite enough of Caribou Barbie. The next questions will concern Arizona. Will Bristle run for Mayor of Maricopa to match the bragging rights of future Mayor Levi Johnston? Will Sarah Palin crawl into a desert hole somewhere and gnaw on a bone and growl to herself until her personal Dr. Frankenstein answers to His Satanic Majesty's Request?

Blows Against the Empire

I do not think it has ever been a coincidence that the state maddest about illegal immigration has been Arizona. I also think the Republicans probably did it to themselves with the explosive level of suburban sprawl during the housing bubble, much of it probably built by underpaid immigrant labor. Of course, like Sarah Palin, they will never admit to any culpability whatsoever. They whine and scream how they have been victimized by the newly arrived Hispanic population that they were all too happy to employ during the blowing of the bubble, as long as the wages were low enough.

Everything I have read about the infamous new Tucson assassin indicates that he has been a follower of Glenn Beck, aka Chipmunk. I do not think he is a specific fan of Palin, although he probably does not hate her guts, either. Chipmunk obviously had the boy all riled up about the price of gold in the New World Order, any Democratic support of immigrants whatsoever probably pushed him over the edge, and he just had to shoot somebody over it. Of course he was aiming deliberately at a Democrat. Why he had to take out a harmless little girl, I shall never know. Yes, he is a nut; yes, he is an a-hole; no, I would not execute him. Throw him in the clink for life without parole, fine, but I have always been against the death penalty.

Sarah Palin has bought it this time. I was still quite concerned for our nation, even after the tragedy of last Saturday, but the latest video presentation from the Wicked Witch of Wasilla has left me breathing a sigh of relief. Remember Rick Sanchez? He used to work for CNN. Sarah' s going to make a lot of powerful people with big money mad with her latest anti-Semitic comment. Up to some relative point, you can get away with bad-mouthing liberals, hippies, Communists, atheists, African-Americans, and Hispanics in this country, but don't mess around with that concept called anti-Semitism. If you dare to do that publicly, Ruh-roh! Somebody with a very big stick is going to whup up on yo ass!

The Palin Matrix is actually something a lot bigger than Sarah Palin. The phrase represents the selling out of America by its own media. Our citizens need to find an effective way to combat the Paradigm Shift and put our nation back on the right track. The hate-mongering must stop. The lying must stop. We must realize how fully the right wing owns all the major media and the degree to which they are utilizing this media to brainwash the many low-information voters. We have to face the simple human condition that the right wing have been using bully tactics to bluff everybody who opposes them into a wimpy level of submission. Before we can ever progress beyond this partisan madness, we must step up and punch the bully in the nose. Bullies have no interest in intellectual discussion or debate. Why do we keep acting as if they do? We must step up to the plate and swing that big bat! Every intelligent American should read The Progressive Left Strikes Back! It's our turn at bat.

Wasilla Duck Goes Splat!

One of my best buddies in college graduated in the ROTC program and was stationed in California as a pilot for several years. When he decided it was time to do something else, he moved his family to Mesa, AZ, and became a real estate agent selling houses in the new boom suburb of Phoenix. A few years later, he decided he wanted another change and he moved to Arkansas, where he and his family have lived ever since. I went to visit them in Mesa a few times and I always considered the area to be a fun place where everything was new and nearby Superstition Mountain added lovely beauty to the landscape. It would be many years before I would come to understand why my friends left Mesa, but one of those reasons could have had something to do with the surrounding Republican mindset. You see, my friend came from the town where Mississippi Burning was set, where Ronald Reagan announced his Presidential run, a town mentioned numerous times in Paradigm Shift. I think my friends had long ago had quite enough of the hatred borne of racial prejudice.

Long before it was The Palin Matrix, my latest book was going to be about the housing bubble and its devastating effect on the U.S. economy. In case you did not know, Mesa, Arizona, was at the very core of the booming housing market from about 1980 to 2006, alongside a few boomtowns such as Las Vegas. I have never read this anywhere, but I have always held the supposition that the Republican stronghold in Arizona probably long ago broke the backs of the many unions in the state, including those young men, and occasionally women, who build new housing developments. It used to be that the roofers were the bottom-feeding slaves in the hot sun of home building, and there was a hierarchy going up to the general contractors who seemed to spend an enormous amount of time driving around in their pickup trucks and yapping on their cell phones. Once upon a time in America, all those skilled professions between these two extremes were members of unions that kept their members' wages at respectable levels. I bet that over the past couple of decades, first the roofers lost control of their union wages, the hammer, nail, and concrete workers followed suit, and it wasn't long before the whole damn house was built by non-union labor. I can just hear the Republican minds clicking, how can we push wages even lower so the Masters of Cell Phones and Pickup Trucks can make even more profit, and the big-shot builder corporations can roll in massive amounts of dough without even picking up a hammer? I know! I know! We'll look the other way when our subcontractors begin hiring illegal immigrants! Cue Jon Lovitz: Yeah, that's the ticket!

Obviously I do not think it has ever been a coincidence that the state maddest about illegal immigration has been Arizona. I also think, as described above, that the Republicans probably did it to themselves. Of course, like Sarah Palin, they will never admit to any culpability whatsoever. They whine and scream how they have been victimized by the newly arrived Hispanic population, but I can assure you that they are as anti-union as ever. Show me a place where they are hollering the loudest about illegal immigration and I'll show you where the dirt-poor immigrants have a shot at a job with at least halfway decent wages and working conditions.

Everything I have read about the infamous new Tucson assassin indicates that he has been a follower of Glenn Beck, aka Chipmunk. I do not think he is a specific fan of Palin, although he probably does not hate her guts, either. Chipmunk obviously had the boy all riled up about the price of gold in the New World Order, any Democratic support of immigrants whatsoever probably pushed him over the edge, and he just had to shoot somebody over it. Of course he was aiming deliberately at a Democrat. Why he had to take out a harmless little girl, I shall never know. Yes, he is a nut; yes, he is an a-hole; no, I would not execute him. Throw him in the clink for life without parole, fine, but I have always been against the death penalty.

Sarah Palin has bought it this time. I was still quite concerned for our nation, even after the tragedy of last Saturday, but the latest video presentation from the Wicked Witch of Wasilla has left me breathing a sigh of relief. Remember Rick Sanchez? He used to work for CNN. Sarah' s going to make a lot of powerful people with big money mad with her latest anti-Semitic comment. Up to some relative point, you can get away with bad-mouthing liberals, hippies, Communists, atheists, African-Americans, and Hispanics in this country, but don't mess around with that concept called anti-Semitism. If you dare to do that publicly, Ruh-roh! Somebody with a very big stick is going to whup up on yo ass!

The Palin Matrix is actually something a lot bigger than Sarah Palin. The phrase represents the selling out of America by its own media. Our citizens need to find an effective way to combat the Paradigm Shift and put our nation back on the right track. The hate-mongering must stop. The lying must stop. We must realize how fully the right wing owns all the major media and the degree to which they are utilizing this media to brainwash the many low-information voters. We have to face the simple human condition that the right wing have been using bully tactics to bluff everybody who opposes them into a wimpy level of submission. Before we can ever progress beyond this partisan madness, we must step up and punch the bully in the nose. Bullies have no interest in intellectual discussion or debate. Why do we keep acting as if they do? We must step up to the plate and swing that big bat! Every intelligent American should read The Progressive Left Strikes Back! It's our turn at bat.

Newborn Cub Hits Amazon

PARADIGM SHIFT: The Palin Matrix just arrived at Amazon this morning!

Let the excitement begin. The Right has Glenn Beck (and countless others) to stir up trouble with rants of emotional hyperbole. Now the Left has its counterattack. Meeeeooowwww!

Update: E-book versions are now available at Amazon and Smashwords. The e-book variants marketed by Smashwords are available now, but it will probably be several weeks before B&N and other retailers have their e-book variants available. (Smashwords is the direct distributor of several e-book formats to a number of retail outlets other than Amazon.)

Who, Me?

Why would I want to read Paradigm Shift: The Palin Matrix? Maybe I like being naive about the world around me. Maybe I don't want to be the wise owl. Some cat just told me that I need to read Floyd M. Orr's controversial new magnum opus about the fall of the American Empire and how Sarah Palin was the bendy straw that finally broke the democratic process. Paradigm Shift is now available to order directly from the publisher at get Paradigm Shift, Amazon, Kindle, and other e-book formats from Smashwords. Hoot! Hoot!

The e-book variants marketed by Smashwords are available now, but it will probably be several weeks before B&N and other retailers have their e-book variants available. (Smashwords is the direct distributor of several e-book formats to a number of retail outlets other than Amazon.)

Hear Me Roar!

Ladies and gentlemen! Paradigm Shift: The Palin Matrix has been released! Until approximately January 10, 2011, print copies will be available only directly from the publisher. The Kindle version will be released at Amazon in the very near future, and the Nook version will follow several weeks later. At this time, the book can only be ordered from the link below. Be the first to read what will surely be a very controversial new book!

Order Paradigm Shift here.