Back to the Future

Let's wander into the darkness for a while, meandering through the canyons of both the past and the future. Movie goers were introduced to the lovely Natasha Henstridge back in 1995 with the release of her first film, Species. She played the part of a hideous, murderous alien who shapeshifted into a beautiful wench lustfully seeking a mate. Much like John Carpenter's 1982 movie, The Thing, Natasha's movie debut foreshadowed the coming of a monster deeply concealed within the imaginations of modern Americans. The real monster was born simultaneously with the founding of our once great nation, the same nation that now only casts a shadow of its former greatness.

The monster is not racism, although that concept is its close first cousin. Democrats see money as the root of all evil and Republicans see sex as the root instead, and this difference has divided us all at a level that is probably beyond repair. The only hope we have is for the Democrats to cease playing the race card. Calling the other side names will never bring any converts to our side. The Democratic platform should be based on the 99% vs. the 1% above all else, but I have long ago given up on that happening. The race card is too benign to their controllers, the power brokers of The Left, the same people who put a little known and little experienced Barack Obama on that DNC stage in 2004. Soon after 9 a.m. on Monday, October 22, you will find me pushing the electronic voting button for all Democrats, including President Chickennuts, but I refuse to watch the debate tonight, or the upcoming other three debates. The debates are simply the media's great financial reward. Any citizen who does not know who he or she is voting for by now is truly a moron, politely known as a low-information voter. The monster is the civil war in the minds of Americans that never seems to end. We shall meet our demise like two tomcats fighting in a street full of traffic while our economic power and our earthly environment crumble into oblivion.

Fox News did not birth The Tea Party. Sarah Palin and CNN did. There is a photo in my files of President Obama stepping out of an airplane with his pal Steve Case. I have often considered writing a political post about that photo, but at this late date I am certain that I would only be crucified as the messenger if I did. Steve Case is surely one of the most despicable Wall Street-type characters that has ever been born. He is a multimillionaire from Obama's home state of Hawaii. He is the a-hole who our President put in charge of his jobs program. He is the same a-hole who conspired with Jerry Levin in 2000 to merge his AOL with Levin's Time Warner and oust Ted Turner from power in the process. If you have ever wondered why CNN has become such an immoral, trashy news network, you should look no further than the actions of Levin and Case back in 2000-2001. Everything they did they did solely for power and money. Morality had absolutely nothing to do with it. Ted Turner is one of the very few morally compassionate billionaires left in this wretchedly corrupt nation. He may have been a fool for letting Little Ted lead him outside Jane Fonda's marriage bed, but his views and actions toward overpopulation and the environment have been quietly commendable. Aside from the very few with minimal power to make changes, such as Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Alan Grayson, our entire political field represent little more than shills for the corporate 1%.

Sarah Palin herself is not the monster. The real monster is concealed within the minds of the people she represents. Much of America knows why we cannot seem to remove Bristol Palin from our faces on television, printed news, or the Internet. Her celebrity was bought in exchange for her cooperation in the biggest political scam of our lifetimes. Many individuals who have held the power in their typing fingers to rid us of this arrogant monster have deliberately failed to do so. They have fumbled the ball at every obvious opportunity. I have tried numerous times using every approach I can muster to enlighten my readers of this truth, but few seem willing to listen. Too many are listening to the devious whisperings in their ears from the enablers of the monster. Just as those who envisioned what sex would be like with Natasha's character Sil in Species until they were consumed by the monster concealed within lovely skin, hair, and T &A, the Babygators of today have become nothing more than the sycophants of the secret monster within. They heed no warnings because the warnings do not emanate from their masters. Joining the Tea Party morons on the other side, it takes two parties to make a civil war.

"Are you going to the game, huh, huh, are you going to the big game?" I remember being asked this question repeatedly in college at a time when the Bulldogs were at the bottom of their historical record. It was a repeatedly losing team and I rarely answered the question in the affirmative. I feel the same way about the upcoming debates. I already know the expected outcome, so why should I waste my time? Life is too short. Four debates will soon be history and nothing will have changed. Although Chickennuts will most likely get a second term, the direction of the nation will continue to head down the drain. No one has the guts to do the right thing anymore. The Ted Turners have all been deposed from their positions of power. The moral compass of America has been lost in space.

What does the future hold? We may never be rid of Sarah or Bristol Palin in our current lifetimes. In this cultural sewer we have created for ourselves, the gradoo is rarely flushed down the drainpipe. It just floats endlessly on our television screens until it dissolves into something even stinkier. The Tea Party asylum residents and their Wall Street enablers are completely beyond hope for a realm of sanity. They will take not only the country, but eventually the entire planet, down with them, while screaming obscenities at The Left and mumbling platitudes to themselves. Unfortunately for us all, The Left lacks the guts to do the right thing. Like most of the Babygate bloggers, they will never pull the trigger. The monster that appears to be a beautiful woman on the outside will eventually devour us all.

Double Upchuck

I have been following the release of the newest book by the highly acclaimed authors, Chuck Heath Sr. & Jr., for several weeks. You can apply the title of this story however you wish. Here are a few examples to get you started: (a) the two clowns pictured at left, (b) what the person who made this deal at the publisher has been doing with his time since the book's release, (c) what anyone who has scheduled a book signing for this bomb is doing about now, or (d) what you will feel like if you read even the Look Inside parts of Our Sarah at Amazon.

Our Sarah was first offered at Amazon in a pre-release mode several months ago. From April until yesterday, the official release date, the sales of Our Sarah dribbled. Twenty-five copies of the book were sold at Amazon on the 25th, its opening day. It is now the 26th and the last copy was sold from Amazon sixteen hours ago (and counting). The lowest Amazon ranking I have seen is 505. It might have been 585; I did not look closely enough to verify it. Currently the ranking is 1108. The total Amazon sales according to NovelRank is 104, including one at Amazon UK, the only copy sold outside the U.S. so far.

For contrast, let's look at another book released on the same day, September 25, and marketed to almost the exactly the same right-wing delusional readership. Ann Coulter's Mugged has sold 53 since late yesterday. I was not aware of the book until then so I do not have any tracking numbers throughout its pre-release period, however long that might have been. From watching the figures since yesterday evening, I can ascertain that the sales of Mugged were far beyond those of Our Sarah, as in out in the stratosfear! The NovelRank charts clearly show, for instance, that Ann's book has sold 28 copies since midnight while Chuckie & Chuckie's has bombed with a goose egg over the same time period. Mugged is currently ranked at #39, and I saw it as low as #25 yesterday.

As Bob Dylan once said, "Everybody must get mugged!" Whoever set up the publishing deal for Our Sarah must not have looked too closely at the sales charts of the many pro-Palin books as they have slid slowly down the drain. From the explosive boom of Going Rogue to the stumbling mumbles of Bristlebutt's pack of lies to Levi's ghostwritten nonsense, the downhill slide of the sales figures of each release has been inevitable. If I remember correctly, Going Rogue sold 2.3 million and Sarah's book signing at the Mall of America was a stupendous success. Two years later the signing of Not Afraid of Life and America by Heart by both Palin celebrities at the same venue was a bust with a couple hundred diehard fans showing up for signatures. Maybe someone should have kept her mouth shut after the Gabby Giffords shooting, you think?

Watching this dud slowly grind to a screeching halt has been a lot of fun. The dud is Our Sarah, the whole Palin phenomenon, and of course Sarah herself. I did read most of the Look Inside portions of Our Sarah, and it really is a dud. The font is large and the margins wide, so it is not a book with a high word count. Most of the words that are present are just one big baloney sandwich, anyway. A good example is Chuck Jr. complaining about the media questioning Sarah's college career. He spins the question off into something that it never was, as if we care that Sarah did not attend a fancy Ivy League school. Pass the baloney sandwich, please. Why did she return to the dipshit MatSu Valley college between two semesters at the University of Idaho? Just before that bit of horse puckey, he stated that she left the first Hawaii location because it rained too much. He claimed that she wanted to enjoy the sun and surf of Hawaii, and that's why she and her friends went there in the first place. But then he does a one-eighty and claims that she left the fun and sun for the snow of Idaho after only one semester. Does this make any sense to anyone?

Aside from this bit of balogna sandwich making, much of the book seems to suddenly and repeatedly veer off into an oblivion of anecdotes about various friends and family of the Palins. If you are a Palin fan at the depth of lunacy you might enjoy these little side trips, but I seriously doubt the mass appeal of such a book. Chuckie & Chuckie appeared on Fox & Friends early yesterday morning to promote this tale of nonsense, but it seems to have had minimal effect on the buying audience. I am waiting with bated breath to see what happens with the book tour planned for the next few weeks. My best guess is that the most likely sound we will hear from it is SPLAT!!   

Digital Aquarium

Long-range plans are one of my specialties. Sometimes I wait years for the technology to catch up to my ideas at an affordable cost. A few examples of these have been the audio and video collages I created from 1972 through about 1998. The book projects I began to publish in late 2000 began more examples. My Tiddlerosis website is yet another one. Now there is finally a new kid on the block in the form of computer aquarium programs now on the market at affordable prices.

These latest programs are actually quite stupendous in their capabilities. A few very primitive such programs were first marketed more than a decade ago. These were quite disappointing to me from many angles, from the limitations of the fish to the simplicity of the tank layouts. In the early 2000's, Encore Software first released its Marine Aquarium. The program was developed through several versions and the latest one is called Serene Screen Marine Aquarium Version 3. This latest version of a saltwater tank is three years old, but its visual impact is stunning! Soon after the saltwater program hit the marketplace, a competing firm developed a freshwater system called Dream Aquarium. Both of these magnificent programs offer many ways and styles to develop a beautiful aquarium. You can buy the CD-ROM of Marine Aquarium from Office Depot or other sources, but the Dream Aquarium is available only via direct download. You will need a decently modern computer to power either of these programs more than adequately. At least two GB of RAM with XP, as well as a significant level of Video RAM, would be a good start. I am running 8 GB of RAM and 1 GB of VRAM on a 64-bit Windows 7 and the fifty tanks I have set up run flawlessly.

Yes, I said fifty tanks! There is no official limit on the number of tanks you can develop in Dream Aquarium. You can choose 23 fish species and several backgrounds and other details. An additional ten fish have just recently been added as an upgrade for about $10. The most interesting choice to me is the camera angle. You can view a tank in a standard widescreen format or one that slowly pans through the tank as if you were following fish with your eyes with your nose pressed against the glass! You can add a free downloadable Size Editor that allows you to create baby fish or large examples of the species. Another free download allows you to add more backgrounds than the basic four that come in the original program. Here is yet another group of backgrounds. This second batch of twenty-one backgrounds is composed of zipped files of approximately 1.5 MB each. You save each file to your computer, unzip it to its full size, and add it to your Dream Aquarium program files. Right now I am still running the free demo version of Marine Aquarium. It is considerably more usable as a basic tank than is the free version of Dream Aquarium. I intend to buy the full version of Marine Aquarium after I get bored with playing with all the freshwater tanks.

A neighbor gave me three Guppies in a fish bowl back about 1961 and that began my aquarium hobby. Over the years I progressed up through a 2.5-gallon tank, a three-gallon, and then wowie zowie a ten-gallon! Since moving into my present location, I have never set up any of my multiple aquariums, a twenty-wide, a thirteen-tall, and various smaller tanks. Now that my computer is doing the job, I have already put the whole array of tanks and equipment for sale on Craigs List.

No matter how many years and tank setups I stumbled my way through, I never was very good at keeping fish healthy and happy. The well-read books are still on my library shelf. I read and I practiced, but I still sucked at it! I have never had a green thumb and I suppose I do not have a wet, soggy one either, except out on a boat. The disgusting, disappointing fact is that any aquarium in my care, much less that of the average kid in Walmart begging his mom for fish, is nothing much above fish torture! I have wanted for years to finally get out of the fish torturing hobby and now I am completely cured of my addiction. No tropical fish will ever suffer under my care again. I am going Cold Turkey Digital!

When I mentioned audio and video collages, these included many hours of experimenting with videography of my various fish tank setups. I have hours of tape edited and set to music. The problem is that you cannot videotape tropical fish in a tank in any manner that exudes a quality product. The fish are too small, they swim wherever they damn well please when you are trying to photograph them, and the lighting available leaves a lot to be desired. None of my camcorder tapes look even remotely as beautiful as these computer-generated fish!

There is a bit of bad news with these programs. My favorite species are totally unavailable in the freshwater Dream Aquarium. There are no Guppies, Bettas, or catfish species! The photo above is of real Guppies, although this is about how good the computer-generated fish look. I would also like to have even more variety in the backgrounds available. As for the saltwater program, I have no complaints yet. Since all my familiarity lies with freshwater species, I am more easily amused by the beauty of most saltwater species, even while understanding very little of their real-life characteristics.

Both programs are set up from quickly downloadable free samples of each. The free version of Marine Aquarium is quite usable as it arrives, but you will want to graduate to the full $20 version of Dream Aquarium soon after viewing the free sample version. The free Dream Aquarium goes to a blank background and only two fish after a few minutes, but the Marine Aquarium continues indefinitely until you stop it. Click the Dream Aquarium link and download the free version. When you are ready, purchase the full version and DA will send you a long code that you can copy and paste into the appropriate box on the free version to fully expand it. The Marine Aquarium can currently be downloaded like the free version or purchased on a disc from Amazon or Office Depot. Notice that the downloadable MA is Version 3.2, but the most recent CD version seems to be Version 3.0. Both the free and full version of the freshwater tanks can be downloaded at Dream Aquarium. No CD-ROM version of DA is available.

Please stop the tropical fish torture and set up these programs on your computers. They are everything you would like fish tanks to be except heavy, messy, noisy, stinky, deadly (for the plants and fish) and generally troublesome. Let's free the enslaved and tortured tropical fish forever!

The Progressive Middle

Always Looking Forward... 
                         ...Never Backward

The Platform:

1. Support all forms of birth control as a right of all Americans and provide the necessary funding.
2. Legalize marijuana and begin a downsizing of the effects and funding of the War on Drugs.
3. Downsize the overseas military empire in peaceful locations.
4. Begin a retraction of troops involved in all current wars and don't start any more.
5. Put a cap on ethanol production for fuel.
6. Decrease agricultural subsidies.
7. No increases in drilling for oil or gas will be allowed in national parks, offshore, or other sensitive areas.
8. Overturn Citizens United.
9. Close Guantanamo Bay and cease all uses of torture of prisoners anywhere.
10. Delete the death penalty for any and all prisoners.
11. Remove all tax breaks from corporations who shelter income offshore.
12. Give tax credits to employers who hire Americans and retract any applicable tax credits from those who seek labor from outside the U.S.
13. Encourage all forms of green building and infrastructure replenishment with proper funding and tax breaks wherever appropriate.
14. Raise the national minimum wage and enforce it vigorously, and this includes all agricultural, seasonal, and undocumented workers.
15. Levy a small federal tax on all securities transactions.
16. Allow an unlimited Mortgage Interest Deduction on any single main residence of any taxpayer with no income level restrictions outside the already established Schedule A limitations.
17. Remove the cap on Social Security and Medicare Tax calculations.
18. Remove the distinction of Earned and Unearned Income from the IRS rules in all applications, including changing the Earned  Income Credit to a simple Income Child Care Credit based on all income of all types.
19. Repeal the special capital gains rate and tax all income at the same level.
20. Increase the income tax rate on all income from the $250,000 to $1,000,000 Taxable Income Level to 40%.
21. Increase the income tax rate on all income above the $1,000,000 Taxable Income Level to 50%.

An Interpretation of Reality

Sarah Palin is not a stupid person. She may be angrier than a swarm of killer bees and mad as a hatter, yet she remains about as smart as the average bear. Within the depth of her innermost thoughts, if not outright verbally with whatever management team she still employs, she must currently be facing a political and economic reality that haunts her dreams. She must hope like hell that President Obama remains in The White House until 2016! Any alternative future leads inevitably to a painfully slow demise of her special gift for either making large sums of money or influencing a significant number of voters.

Let's review how her particular dilemma reached this impasse. I covered most of the wide-reaching details and motivations concerning her rise to power in The Palin Matrix. Dr. Brad Scharlott has presented a particularly concise, and most likely accurate, description of exactly how she orchestrated the beginning of Babygate. As anyone who reads my work knows, I have been influenced in my opinion of the origins of Babygate particularly by Mrs, Palin's unprecedented athleticism as a considerably pregnant woman. Few people in the general public may have recognized John Heilemann's cameo in Game Change, but my perception is that this was another dog whistle message to the viewers that the insiders, such as the authors of the book, do indeed know. No telling how many others know, too. The truth is out there and too many influential Republicans know it for Sarah to ever sleep truly soundly again.

At this point Republicans are the people who concern Sarah the most. Democrats like me are cheering her on! Go, Sarah, go! The only thing you can do to me is make a few more people interested in my book about you. All you can do to the Democrats in general is to make them all look more sane and rational than the Republicans. You want to start a third party and lead it to victory in either 2012 or 2016? Go ahead, be my guest. There is no prayer strong enough to get you or anyone else in a third party elected. So what else might you do? You can throw tacky bombshells full of fighting words and salad dressing at the politicians who are winning and you are not. Let's see, who could that be? You better hope in the deepest depth of your black heart that our President stays in his chair! I am sure that Fox News will renew your contract and continue to pay you next year to continue bashing President Romney. Yeah, that's the ticket! Everybody knows that Fox News was created to bash Republican politicians.

Your daddy's biography of you isn't selling too well so far, is it?  The figures I have been tracking at Novel Rank show 36 sales so far at Amazon. Yes, I know that the book will not be released for another ten days, but how many copies of Going Rogue had sold by the same equivalent time? By my calculation, the only book on a similar subject that possibly sold less was Levi's Deer in the Headlights. Bristol's book stomped the sales record so far of Our Sarah, even with that disastrous book signing event at the Mall of America where only a few hundred fans showed up to meet both you and Bristol. I guess you might expect at least 20,000 copies to be printed and shipped to Wal-Mart, Target, and B&N stores at the wholesale level, but how many million did your first book sell? Methinks somebody's popularity is swirling the drain!

Sarah can run for President in 2016. She can try to talk Ryan or whatever other candidate the Republican establishment actually likes to add her to the VP slot one more time... or she can crown herself Queen of the Tea Party and run against the massive Republican machine. There is little stopping her from running anything she chooses to run. The dilemma is that she knows she cannot win at any of it. She can only try to stay relevant enough to continue expanding her bank balance. She can risk Fox News not renewing her lucrative contract and continue to toss her verbal brickbats from whatever backwater network or AM radio host will have her. She could even swallow her relentless pride with a big gulp of ego drain and appear on channels that are at least pretending to be something other than Republican propaganda outlets.

If President Obama wins, I am afraid that we shall not have the screechy one out of our ears or faces for at least four more years. If Romney wins, Sarah may face the biggest decision of her career, or at least what's left of it.

Psychotic Nation

Call it America's Hitler, call it The American Taliban. It really doesn't matter much. We're all trapped on the same Titanic. America is just stupid enough, America is just mean enough, and America is just selfish and greedy enough to put this abomination in the White House in 2016... and I think that is exactly what they will do.

I used the third person pronoun above because I am certainly not going to help this horror happen! President Chickennuts may clearly be no better than the lesser of two evils, but pushing the voting button for All Democrats is the only viable alternative we have left to us at this point. There is no hope for any third party until hell freezes over, and global warming will see that that never happens.

The problem with the Democratic Party is that it refuses to give up the identity politics it adopted so fully back in the Sixties. The Southern Strategy from the other side was nothing more than a backlash against the identity politics so totally embraced by the Left. You know something is happening here, but you don't know what it is, do you, Mr. Jones? What is happening is that all the right wing media is lying to you because of The Southern Strategy and all of the left wing media is lying to you because of identity politics. Neither side has any intention of telling the truth because the greater truth is that all of them are paid too damn much! The psychotic culture we live in cares about only three things: money, sex, and celebrity, in that order. The Democrats are lying because it pays too well to throw the game! All the issues of identity politics are just noise and nothing more. What Mr. Jones cannot seem to figure out is that we as a nation have desperately needed class warfare, and not identity politics, for forty years now!

There are two ways to (possibly) fix the economy and banish the national madness from our psyches. The Republicans would not be able to win a national election for some time to come if either tactic was utilized. The first is to simply make voting mandatory. Since no one seems to like that idea, that leaves only one other alternative. The Democratic power brokers and their media sycophants must quietly phase out their relentless support and usage of identity politics. They must slowly but firmly convince the more sane members of the voting bloc on the right that we are no longer the party of minorities. We are the Party of the People, the party of the 99%, the party of all average and low-income Americans. The Left does not have to change any of its policies, but we MUST stop engaging in the endless slap-fight that continually pushes members of a huge voting bloc to the political dark side. We must leave some of our fantasies of idealism outside the political realm and begin to vote and act in a more tactical, successful manner. The peak of liberalism in America occurred way back in 1969. We have been sliding ever so slowly into a right-wing oblivion of selfishness and greed ever since. It is way past time for the Left to realize that it has become the Mr. Jones. It was a far different nation and world back when Bob Dylan wrote the refrain to "Ballad of a Thin Man" back in 1965!

I am going to switch gears for just a moment. You will see that at the top of the left column, I have added a link to my fourth book, Timeline of America: Sound Bytes from the Consumer Culture. Recent thoughts about this book inspired this article. Timeline has always been my weakest selling book, even though it should be the one with far the most widespread appeal! Of course I realize the high price of the print version is one of the problems, but I had no control over that issue. The Kindle and Nook versions are well under $5, so what are you waiting for? I have often considered releasing an updated print version, now that I have control of the cover price, but there has always been a great big monster that has stifled that idea whenever it pops up for consideration. The timelines of wonderful, nostalgic memories of American culture stop at 2006 because that is where they stopped in real life! Timeline was an enormous project to create. The parade of delightful memories identified and elevated in the book were clearly running out of steam by the middle of the last decade. Even as I approached that final year six years ago, positive creations and events in America were quickly losing momentum. To be honest, it was something of a struggle to take the book even as far as I did.

Then came Paradigm Shift, which for decades was referred to as The Hyde Papers, as in the Jekyll and Hyde of American culture. Timeline was the Jekyll and Paradigm was the Hyde. I have seen or experienced nothing since to give me hope that this is not the whole, final, complete truth. America is clearly on a suicide mission. Obviously, far too few Americans are able to see the Mr. Jones reflecting back at them in the mirrors of their insanity.

Ambient Politics

I have not posted here at NIAFS in just over a month. This has been for two reasons: one, I am working on another book project, and two, I have completely had it with American politics and with American voters in particular. This post is about Reason #2.

My wife is one of those people who was prescribed Ambien as a sleeping aid many years ago. I discovered about a decade back that she was occasionally exhibiting strange, semi-conscious behaviors after taking this drug. My conclusion after observing several such instances of sleepwalking-like behavior was that Ambien was truly one of the most dangerous drugs I had ever encountered. Although my wife never tried to drive a car under the mysterious influence of this drug, she did try cooking and other household tasks numerous times. Being the psychologically oriented person that I am, I tried several tactics to show my wife the dangerous behavior of which she was completely oblivious at the time, but none actually worked, at least not in the real time in which the strange behaviors were occurring. Gentle persuasion never registered in her conscious brain. I tried getting in her face with strong words and emphatic language. I tried taking her by the hand or arms and physically guiding her back to bed. I ordered her to cease what she was doing and return to bed in the most insistent manner I could muster. Nothing worked, at least not to her conscious mind at the time. Of course I was able to shut off the range or whatever other hazardous equipment she was operating and guide her belligerent body back to bed, but not once did she ever recall a conscious memory of the event the next morning. She continued to think that I was just exaggerating or overreacting to her use of the drug. I repeated the stories every time there was an incident, but her conscious memory remained blank.

Ambien works beautifully as a sleep-enhancing drug. There are two common over the counter drugs that are marketed as Ambien competitors. Simply Sleep seems to have little effect on some people, such as myself, and Sominex can have a full twenty-four-hour hangover effect on some people, also such as myself. Ambien seems to work without either negative. After several years of forbidding my wife to use Ambien for obvious risk to her health, I discovered the simple truth. Ambien affects people who feel driven to accomplish a certain task, whether that is cooking breakfast or driving to the supermarket. Obsessive-compulsive personalities should stay far away! If you are not one of these people, or if you are, but you are certain at the specific time you wish to take the drug that you are completely relaxed and not subconsciously compelled to complete a certain task within a given timeline, Ambien will help you sleep without its dangerous side effect.

The Ambien example is a state of mind, a psychological determination appropriate for each individual. The drug company controlling and distributing the drug will never tell you the truth about it because the truth is inconvenient for them, specifically for their financial income. The company cannot control lawsuits effectively if the truth is stated on the bottle, that the danger applies to certain personality types or to particular mood swings of any potential user. The whole concept is entirely too messy for an entity who cares only about the money. My wife and I no longer have any trepidations concerning her use of Ambien. The answer is simply to always have a person present who is aware of the potential side effect, a person who has the wherewithal to stop the ingestion of Ambien by a user who is wired up at the time of potential usage. If sleep is desperately sought during such a state of mind, take Sominex or Simply Sleep instead.

Our political leaders and their media henchmen have become like the producers of Ambien. They have no intention whatsoever of telling us the truth or acting in our best interests. The key to this nightmare does not lie with the politicians or the media personalities. The real culprit is the American voter. The politicians, no matter how despicably you may see the issues of  individual ones, are doing nothing more than chasing the big numbers in the voting booths of America. If anything, the media personalities are probably even more guilty than the politicians themselves. It is the media who benefits the most financially from close races and endless slap-fights between political correctness and racial religion. The last thing they are interested in telling the voters is how patently absurd these issues are, particularly in the relentless faces of global warming, exploding population, demographic nightmares, and most of all, extreme income inequality.

The Republicans took over America with a long-range plan that began in the '70's. Their plan centered around the population sectors that were growing, the Southern states. They took voters from the Democratic side and moved them to their side. Here we are nearly forty years later and the Democrats are still acting as if elections are won in America by simple vote count. They are acting as if population shifts to the Southern and Western sections of the country mean nothing. Ditto for the many Republican redistricting plans. I have a news flash for the Democratic leadership. You are either idiots or assholes; which is it? It will be a cold day in a global warming hell before you overpower the Republican juggernaut with minorities of race, religion, or sexual orientation! You must at least begin a long-range plan to take our country back from the nuts. You must make the pendulum swing back to sanity, and there is only one way you are going to do it. You must start a long-range plan to recover the Southern and Western voters you began to lose with your support of the civil rights legislation of the '60's. I am not saying that you must change any of your essential policies, but I am saying that you must change the perceptual attitude toward those issues. You must build a coalition of the 99% around the central cause of all our misery, poverty and income inequality, and you must begin by publicly telling the truth concerning the driving force behind this cause, population.

Class warfare is precisely what America needs most. Class has been hammering us all into the ground since The Reagan Revolution and it is far past time to start doing something about it. Elizabeth Warren has been awarded the warmup speech for Bill Clinton at the upcoming convention. That's not good enough. She should have the same keynote speech opportunity that Barry got in 2004. Yes, of course I know they are giving this opportunity to an Hispanic mayor. We already got America's first African-American President. How's that working out for you? Of course he's a hell of a speech maker, and obviously an intelligent, compassionate man, but his relentless sellout to Wall Street should have already shown you that he is not exactly what America needs to overpower the Republican madness and at least begin to address global warming and income inequality in a meaningful manner. As always, my wife and I shall be the first in line to cast our votes for Barry's second term, as well as punching the button for all Democrats. The problem is that this is simply not good enough.

The whole circus is depressingly predictable. Just because I live in Texas, I nearly always vote for the eventual loser. President Obama may well secure a second term of do-nothing actions against the Republican juggernaut, but every other Democrat I shall vote for in 2012 will be the usual lost cause. I used to live in Mississippi, where the result was the same. I lived briefly in Tennessee as a young adult, and you can guess the result in that state, too. The same can be said of most states in which the voters from large expanses of small and medium-sized towns outnumber those in central cities. Outsiders may think of Austin as being solidly blue, but that is not the whole story. Only the central city in Travis County is blue. The highly populous suburbs and exurbs located in several surrounding counties are as red as Mitt's face whenever his tax returns are mentioned. The two monstrous populations of Texas, the DFW Metroplex and the Houston metro area are much the same way. What is Sarah Palin's favorite place in Texas? The Woodlands, a very rich suburb of Houston, is where she has made several key speeches to her faithful power brokers.

Democrats, I have a little advice for you. Shut up about Chick-fil-A! Shut up about gay marriage. Stop the bashing of churchgoers in particular and religion in general. Stop calling everyone from the South racists. Cease the relentless promotion of diversity at all political cost. Stop calling all Republican voters idiots. As I stated previously, I am not asking that you change any of your policies on the issues. I am simply asking that you cease participating in the endless slap-fight! It takes two to fight a relentless war. You cannot continue to call yourselves the rational, intelligent ones as you continually trade epithets with the really crazy ones! You cannot take our country back from the crazies without swinging a substantial number of white, rural and Southern voters back to our side. You must take voters from your opponent. They have the organization. They have the media. They are the juggernaut. To move this nation forward, we must disable the effectiveness of The Southern Strategy. We must convince a substantial portion of their voters to switch sides. They did it to us and we can do it back to them, but not by antagonizing their voting bloc.

The media is making far too much money off the slap-fight of relentlessly close elections. As with the Big Pharma that distributes Ambien, Big Media will never tell us the truth. What people think is true is often a more powerful persuader than the truth itself. Millions of Republican voters of various flavors observe the actions of the Democratic media, politicians, and voters. They do not see the similarities of the 99%. They see the Democrats as the party of minorities of many sorts, while they are the majority. The key is that although we may be the majority of potential voters, they are the majority of actual voters. These are the people we need on our side. We can explain the intricacies of political issues to them after we have secured their votes on a consistent basis. The real truths about Ambien and most political issues cannot be explained in a sound bite. We all need a dose of responsibility for our own actions, both private and political.

Room Full of Mirrors

I had been planning to use this title from the classic Jimi Hendrix tune to describe the current state of television news media, but due to the recent posts and comments at Brad Scharlott's blog, I think it is time to explain a few issues. Many of the readers of other blogs have repeatedly attacked the messenger (me) every time I have tried to clarify the situation, so here I am sticking my neck out once again. Unlike most of my anonymous and pseudo-named accusers, I am who I am, as always. I never post or comment on other blogs anonymously. I am always either Floyd M. Orr or 77TA66 on any Disqus-equipped blogs. Anyone who has claimed that any comment by Anonymous on other blogs is me is mistaken. Let's get down to business.

The obvious big secret is that some bloggers, and you know who they are, have been surreptitiously trying to control the message, the issues, and whatever possible fame and fortune they can ensnare in their traps. This has been going on since 2008, and it was time years ago to stop this behavior that restrains the truth! Many of the commenters on the various blogs know a lot more than they indicate in their comments. Amy1 is one of these. She knows much more because I told her. She is absolutely right in her most recent comment on Brad's blog that we must stop this keeping of secrets! What do you think I have been screaming for years? As I have told you all repeatedly, I am not the one keeping secrets from you. Yes, there is a boatload of information that I know that I shall not publish because in order to present the documented evidence that Amy1 and others so dearly want, I would have to include a lot of personal information about some people who are particularly innocent of the entire affair. Why would I have to include this information? Some of the people who have been hiding secrets have been doing it professionally for many years and they have become very good at it. The only way to present the facts as many of you want to read is to include the personal information of people who have nothing to do with Babygate or its investigation. These ancillary people are necessary to paint the complete picture, filling in all the blanks of the story. I have tried several times to bluff some of the perpetrators into doing the right thing and make the necessary adjustments so that the Babygate investigation can proceed in a broader public forum. My conscience is clear. I have done everything I can ethically do to expose Babygate.

The problem with the publishing of any Babygate book is not the writing and publishing; it is the marketing of the book to a large audience. I figured out a long time ago that (a) any major publisher would stumble and falter in telling the whole truth, (b) the pressure from the CNP above and the Palinbots below was way too strong back when the subject was hot in 2008-09, and (c) there had to be some hidden reason why none of the obvious bloggers did not self-publish the story a long time ago. If you put these three together, you will see that you cannot add two and two and get five, which is precisely what certain unnamed bloggers have been trying to pull off. Let's say that each one wants a big payoff to publish the book. That would be fine except that the time to secure such success was two years ago or more. Very few people care now what the 2008 VP loser did or did not do to get that nomination. They care even less that the loser's husband did a little political pimping on the side. Aside from SP suddenly running for President, the only thing that would make anyone give a rat's ass right now is if she or one of her minions said something incriminating on TV that could not be ignored. I tried to help that concept along, but I have seemingly failed. Palin supposedly hates my book, but there have yet to be enough sales to make her mad and say something stupid.

Let's continue onward with the 2+2=5 scenario. I know that most of you really want to see certain photos released in a book, either Fred's or otherwise. As I have explained to you before, it ain't gonna happen. The law is very clear about the ownership and publishing of photos. Two of my books have featured photos and my next project includes many more. I know what I am talking about here. All Palin has to do is state that she does not approve of the use of any of those key photos. Maybe a license can be secured from the actual photographer for one or more of them, as was done with a particular cluster of pictures published on the blogs. If that happens, great! You have my blessing. The problem is that I am not holding my breath. How much are you going to pay for the photos and how many books are you going to sell? Do you see the dilemma?

The next issue deals with the Fred book specifically. The problem here is that Fred is a published author, but he did not write The Wild Ride. Since when has an actual author ever used a ghostwriter to write one of his or her own books? Both the ghostwriter and the named author need to step away from The Wild Ride. From the information I have, I doubt that Fred has any intention of going through with such a devious plan, anyway. When I have been speaking of behind the scenes deceptions in the past, this is a prime example of what I mean. I do not know why Gryphen has simply not written The Wild Ride and boldly put the name Jesse Griffin on the cover in the first place. You tell me the answer to that and then we'll both know, as we used to say as kids. There has been a related con going on about Levi publishing the story, too, but that is not the subject of this post. I have never expected Levi to tell any significant truth until his mom is free of her persecutors, and of course I knew that when I published my most recent post prior to this one. That whole idea was a bit tongue-in-cheek.

Recently an Anonymous that was either Morgan Rouch or the other Morgan or Audrey (and yes, I know her real name and tons of other personal information) posted an interesting comment or two at The Immoral Minority and Gryphen shut her up as promptly as he could. In so many words, he said that if anyone got too close to the truth, he would not release the comments. Remember Media Insider? Remember Me Again? What part don't you understand? Have I not tried numerous times to tell you that he censors the comments so that certain information is never shown to the readers? For the record one more time, I support most of Gryphen's Babygate theories, including the two babies, but I do feel that he harbors a personal agenda. For that matter, so do his competitors on the other side, and I think their theories are way too limiting to actually be the whole truth of Babygate.

Maybe now that Amy1 has said it, you will listen to me. The secrets need to stop!! We are all going to pass into oblivion before the hoax is revealed to the general public, and the keeping of these secrets and the stifling of information and the refusal of cooperation among the Power Bloggers is a key to this sad, sad failure. Now I return you to your regularly scheduled discussion of which e-mail or which photograph is the ultimate key to Babygate. I am going back to my newest book project, in which the readers outnumber the messenger annihilators. My conscience is clear because I have told the world practically everything I know about Babygate in The Palin Matrix. I cannot help it if few care to read it.

No Horse Hockey, No Bull Puckey, No Games

... Dear Levi, as I am sure you have learned by now, I have followed your public career since August 2008. I realize that you have been absorbed into a world that you did not create. You accidentally stumbled onto a public stage that has increased your public visibility a hundredfold, yet all you ever wanted from life is to be a quiet young man in the northern wilderness.

Unlike most of the millions who are fascinated by your life story and what you might reveal to the world, I am not that far from your viewpoint on life. My dad taught me his favorite skills of hunting and fishing when I was not yet in high school. I sent my lure off the small fishing skiff from my green casting reel with my dad thousands of times when I was a kid. I got my first .22 rifle for Christmas when I was ten, a bolt action from the Sears catalog. My mom used it to keep the squirrels out of her pecan trees decades after I was grown and out of the house. My more modern .22 semi-automatic Remington with a ten-shot clip and scope waits silently in my bedroom closet. I don't get to use it nearly as much as I would like now that I live in the city. You probably even know a few displaced Southerners personally. We may live in the city as adults, but we have always relished the simple joys of country life.

Come home to me, Levi. Tell me your story in confidence. I am not in the game for money. I never have been. I could have written a book about your nemesis for a fraction of the cost in time and effort, and sold a lot more copies for profit. But you know I didn't do that. I told the story of America's sad downfall, its weakness of heart and soul. You know I have little trust of the same people that have repeatedly deceived you. I am an outsider just like you. I want you to tell your story, not for the satisfaction of all the I-told-you-sos that you are so weary of meeting. I want you to tell your story for the deep truth that it holds, for the release of the burden on your soul and your future. You are probably too young to realize it now, but you still have your whole life in front of you.

Your mom was framed, set up, sent to a life of public disgrace solely for the purpose of protecting some very bad people. Her crime was pathetically minimal, but we both know the punishment was meted out to the fullest extent of a very misguided law. There is nothing we can do about that situation now except to move you and your family to another state far away. From my perspective, you should have done that even before your mom was entrapped, but we cannot alter a fate that has already been sealed. We can only do the right thing now. Pick a town and a state far from Alaska and move there, and take Sherry and Mercede with you. Begin a new life for the sake of all of you. No other choice will offer you such hope.

Tell me your story, Levi. Tell me the truth, the whole truth without any games of deception or even accidentally-on-purpose deceit. By all means read Paradigm Shift first. If you do not have a copy, just tell me an address where to send one. Most of what I know about your story is contained in the book, however I know a lot that is not in the book, particularly about the people who have tried to lead you down their many misleading pathways. I can tell you all of it. All you have to do is to trust me and tell me the whole truth as you know it to be. I seriously doubt that we both know the same details. In fact I expect that our knowledge of the subject spans a wide chasm between us. After all, I am about three times your age, so I do not expect you to have an understanding of The Southern Strategy or the Council for National Policy or the severe divisiveness your nemesis has brought to our once great nation. I understand that your viewpoint is much more up close and personal, that you have  a child caught in the crossfire.

Bring your conscience home to me, Levi. I can tell your story without the conflicting motives of your fellow Alaskans. I can publish it in book form so that it remains alive forever. You tell me the truth and I can make it real for your children. They will always have the truth in print, regardless of all the hurtful, shallow dreck published by the blogs and tabloids that have haunted your story since the beginning. Come home to the truth, Levi. We both have been blackballed by those who seek only to control us for the acquisition of personal fame and fortune. Please come home, Levi. Let me tell your story. Let's tell the truth as only we can.

Fifty Faces

Hunter S. Thompson Cat has his eyes wide open watching out for the fifty faces I never want to see on TV again. No celebrity should be allowed to deface my television set as much or as often as the members of this rogues' gallery have done over the past few years. Some of these are on the screen multiple times a day, 365 days a year. Some have just been on the public stage too damn long, and some have been nauseating from their very first appearance. It's way past time to save my sanity and bring the hook. You may say that I can always turn off the TV or change the channel. That's why I watch with my finger on the channel or mute buttons. Hold your nose. Here comes the parade of stinkers.

50. Anderson Cooper - Of course I know you are not as bad as many on this list, but how many hours a day do we have to get our supposed news from only one person?

49. Larry King - Finally, one of these clowns has already left the stage. He was becoming quite the parody of himself.

48. Ray Barone & the Rest of His Family - Of course you created a decent sitcom, but enough is enough! You are on multiple channels umpteen times a day! I've seen 'em all already!

47. Kevin James - Some of your movies are quite good, but your sitcom earns a C+ on its best day. If it was on only once a week, that would be tolerable. As it is, I am sick of it!

46. Steven Tyler - I have always liked your outfits and persona as America's answer to Mick Jagger, but dude, you are embarrassing yourself!

45. Paul Teutul, Sr. - Does everybody on reality TV have to be covered in tattoos and build ridiculously expensive, but practically useless, products?

44. Will Ferrell - Some of your movies are good, but too many of them are silly trash that are rerun endlessly on numerous cable channels.

43. Dr. Drew - An occasional appearance on MTV was interesting. Now you are just in our faces way too many times a week on way too many channels.

42. Jabbering Sluts on MTV & VH-1 - What happened to the music videos, or at least stories about musicians?

41. Toothless, Tattooed Hicks - Why does every outdoor reality show have to showcase the morons of America?

40. Geraldo Rivera - You were more mentally stable before you joined Fox News.

39. Dennis Miller - You can speak quite intelligently, but how can you stand Bill O'Reilly?

38. Erin Burnett - You are just too damn cute to be taken seriously. Of course I have never taken you seriously in the first place because you came to CNN from The Wall Street Channel.

37. Lou Dobbs - Just go home to your Hispanic wife and shut up. You're a hypocrite!

36. Bill O'Reilly - If you had only stayed with the gossip reporting of your early career, you might still be tolerable. You are lower on the list than you deserve because your trivia quizzes are at least entertaining.

35. Ben Stiller - I am SO sick of your one-trick-pony act in movies endlessly rerun on TV. You may think you are the next generation's Woody Allen, but trust me, one movie released every five years would be plenty.

34. The cast of Hot in Cleveland - Yes, you have assembled a competent cast of famous comediennes, but the canned laughter and endless promotion are overbearing, and most of all, the show is STUPID!

33. Ted Nugent - You once were a rock star and decent guitar player. Get your ass out of politics and go back to screwing as many groupies as possible.

32. Janine Turner - Just because you once played an Alaskan does not make you a political expert.

31. Victoria Jackson - You are a stupid traitor to the sensibilities of Saturday Night Live!

30. Gene Simmons - Just because you washed off your makeup doesn't make you a TV star.

29. Sharon Osbourne - You married a rocker, but that doesn't make you worth watching on TV.

28. Piers Morgan - Take your Bristish snotass back to England, you turd. There are plenty of real Americans who could do a more honest job of interviewing politicians and celebrities.

27. Gloria Borger - You are one of the biggest sellout traitors to the Republican media. You once represented the voice of reason on PBS. Now you are just another CNN right-wing shill.

26. Bay Buchanan - You have always been a nut. Now you are just an old nut.

25. Mary Matalin - Thank your lucky stars that you live in New Orleans and are married to a sane person.

24. Dana Bash - You are married to another Republican on the same damn network. Could you be any less impartial in your reporting?

23. Elisabeth Hasselbeck - You may be easy on the eyes, but your mouth is hard on the ears.

22. Mika Brzezinski - See Hasselbeck above.

21. Mitt Romney - You were boring the first ten minutes you were on. Isn't paint drying somewhere?

20. Ari Fleischer - Can you add anything to the conversation other than Republican talking points?

19. Dana Perino - See Hasselbeck and Brzezinski above. Just because Ari Fleischer is on CNN does not mean that Fox News needs yet another blonde bimbo.

18. Neil Cavuto - You are a Republican supposedly reporting the financial news on Fox. Could you be any more biased, predictable or boring?

17. Joan Rivers - I used to like your humor, but you are on television way too much these days, and like Larry King, your expiration date was up long ago.

16. Mitch McConnell - You may not be on TV that much, but every time you are, you are a certified horse's ass.

15. John Boehner - You are just as big a jerk as McConnell; however, your orange pallor and boo-hooing add an element of entertainment.

14. Greta van Susteren - Get off my TV and take the Church of Scientology with you.

13. Laura Ingraham - You are a bad enough hate monger on AM radio. Do you have to disgrace television, too?

12. Dana Loesch - Who taught you manners, Adolf Hitler?

11. Michelle Malkin - Are you sure you are not a white KKK Southern Baptist in disguise?

10. Grover Norquist - You are doing so much political damage to America that no further explanation is necessary!

9. Wolfe Blitzer - Retire already, you old jackass Republican shill!

8. Barbara Walters - You used to be an intelligent interviewer. Now you are just a hackweasel for Sarah Palin and her family of grifters.

7. Stephanie Courtney (The Progressive Insurance lady) - You may be a talented comedian, but get off every channel of my TV! I am so sick of your stupid face, I could barf!

6. Jerry Stiller - Ditto Stephanie Courtney above!!!

5. Nancy Grace - Isn't there a pretty little white girl missing somewhere? Maybe you could find her sooner if you joined the search and got your snarling mug off the TV!

4. Herman Cain - Only Fox News would have the unmitigated gall to still give a has-been clown like you a microphone.

3. Sean Hannity - You are probably the biggest right-wing blowhard of them all.

2. Bristol Palin - Has there ever been a more worthless, talentless celebrity undeserving of fame in all of American history?

1. Sarah Palin, -  Of course you are #1. Your first screech of code words and sneering expressions back in 2008 was enough for anyone with a brain.

Karma Denial

A story on one of my local news channels a few days ago reminded me of an issue I consider quite relevant as an example of precisely why America is stuck in a morass of indecisive and illogical behavior patterns. The car pictured here is the Fisker Karma, a long, heavy, expensive model built in Finland and first sold in the U.S. last November. The Karma is powered by a pair of 161-hp electric motors that can be supplemented by a 260-hp, turbocharged, 2-liter, gasoline engine. The Karma sits on a 124-inch wheelbase, weighs 5300 pounds, and costs $102,000 for the base model or $116,000 for the deluxe version. The EPA rates the total range available at 230 miles if the battery system is fully charged and the gas tank is full. Due to the car's small interior volume, the EPA rates it as a subcompact. If you want more information on the Karma, Wikipedia describes many facets of the car's development history, specifications, and technical capabilities such as range and miles-per-gallon under various conditions and power modes.

The news story concerned the fact that the Delaware facility that was supposed to produce the Fisker Atlantic, a slightly smaller, cheaper, plug-in electric sedan, is apparently at a stalemate. VP Joe Biden had facilitated a plan that would offer a heavy influx of cash from a government loan to bring the project to Wilmington. Now there seems little hope that the plant will be finished and the car produced there. The Atlantic was slated to begin production next year, but at this point the car's future is open to interpretation.

I find this whole idea not only ludicrous, but a glaring symbol of Americans' deep denial of reality! America doesn't need another silly toy for the one-percenters. It needs a hybrid car for the masses, built in the U.S. and providing jobs with decent wages to Americans! Like the ridiculous Chevrolet Volt, the Fisker models are nothing more than a sham to disguise the fact that Americans have totally lost their minds in a sea of denial! America does not need another overpriced car, no matter how it is powered. America needs its own new Volkswagen Beetle. We need another Mustang, Eurosport, Caravan, Taurus, or whatever. We need a car that requires a lot of expensive pre-production tooling for a line that utilizes established mechanical components, but with a new concept in marketing. We need a new model line of hybrids that will sell hundreds of thousands of units. We need hybrid vehicles the middle class can afford and wants to buy.

President Carter changed our political nation for the worse when he made his legendary "tighten our belts" speech. It was not his fault at all. He absolutely did the brave and right thing. What hurt us was that this speech provided the launching pad for the Reagan Revolution of "greed is good" that has brought our once great nation to its financial knees. Our current Commander in Chief is too paranoid for his own political future to tell us the truth we so desperately need to hear.

Rover invented the SUV is England, but the first U.S. model was the Jeep Wagoneer launched in the 1963 model year. Back in the '60's, International Harvester (yes, Maybelle, the tractor company) was building its Scout. Ford introduced its small Jeep (as in CJ) competitor in 1966. The original Bronco was a more modern and comfortable type of off-road recreational vehicle, with a sleek body offering many options and colors. Chevrolet has been producing its Suburban model for decades. All of these vehicles were purchased by buyers with a specific off-road activity in mind, whether it was slinging mud through the boondocks from the exposed tires of a CJ or Scout, or pulling a boat or camper behind a large Suburban loaded with passengers and cargo.

This all changed when Ford introduced its Explorer in 1990. The Explorer unleashed a monster in America that has been almost as devastating to our national sanity as The War on Drugs. The modern SUV Revolution is nothing less than the automotive symbol of Reagan's greed is good concept. The Explorer was specifically designed to appeal to women, not to drive to the boonies, but to city jobs via long daily commutes on the freeway. The higher seating position allowed women to better see above the many overly aggressive pickup truck drivers who constantly cut in front of them. When these arrogant buttheads are not blocking the ladies' view, they are tailgating. Ask many women what they wanted to drive on their everyday suburban trek and they would say a tank! The new type of SUV was designed to give these ladies all the amenities of a comfortable car enclosed in a big, heavy truck-like package with a high level of outward visibility in traffic. The problem is that these tanks get less mileage than a comparable conventional sedan. Yes, of course with advances in technology they get considerably better mileage than the Wagoneers and Suburbans of old. The problem is that those SUV's were used mostly for their intended recreational purposes, and that meant by a very small percentage of the overall car buying public. The modern monsters of our freeways are mostly carrying no passengers and towing no boats. The accessory most often observed being used inside the cabin is a cell phone! Like The War on Drugs, a little of it is not so bad, but a massive explosion of it is very harmful to the future of our culture.

We do not actually need hybrid or electric cars to lessen our fuel consumption. The same advances that have allowed the Explorer to get much better mileage than you might expect have also been applied to small sedans. Most of the virtual swarm of econoboxes manufactured today get twice the mileage of their ancestors of only thirty years ago. These modern marvels of economy produce far higher levels of performance, comfort, style, and overall driving quality than their ancestors did. The problem is simply that far too few Americans are choosing to drive these fuel-efficient vehicles.

What can we as a culture do to improve our plight? The first step is ridiculously simple. We can demand that our political and media leaders tell us the truth. We can face the obvious fact that population is our problem. The population is causing the fuel supplies to dwindle faster than necessary. The population is bringing global warming sooner than expected. Other nations of the world have a different set of problems caused by overpopulation, but that is no excuse for us not to be the leader in addressing the problem in our own backyard. The second problem is The War on Drugs. What a despicably wasteful use of resources and destruction of an otherwise productive citizenry! This nonsense needed to stop long before the Ford Explorer was even launched to clog our freeways. The third problem is The SUV Revolution and the despicable little man who spawned it, Ronald Reagan. All President Obama has to do is tell us the truth, to tighten our belts.

Tiny Furniture

...And now for something completely different: the preview of Lena Dunham's second movie, Tiny Furniture, that premiered here in Austin at SXSW in 2010. (Obviously I am a fan of Lena's new series, Girls. After writing The Last Horizon, how could I not be?)

See Also: A Short Interview with Lena Dunham about Creative Nonfiction, her first feature-length film premiering at SXSW 2009.
Watch the Creative Nonfiction trailer on YouTube. 

Read an in-depth interview with Lena Dunham from June 2009. 

The Diabolical Plan

Listen up, ladies and gentlemen. Here is the straight story as I believe it to be. This article is about Babygate, Babygate, and nothing but the Babygate. The photo at right is of President George Bush, Sarah Palin, Tim Pawlenty and three other guys in Washington DC on 2/25/08. Notice that seating cards are placed in front of them, so this seating arrangement was no accident. The event is one of several meetings of the Republican Governors held during the week of 2/22/08 through 2/28/08. These dates and events are covered in The Babygate Timeline in Paradigm Shift, as well as many key issues that occurred in the week prior and after this February week in Washington.This story is so convoluted and detailed, and there were so many individual details and decisions made in this crucial time of which we may never be fully aware, that I feel that I once again must state a review before proceeding further.

1. Anyone outside the creators of the plan who claim to KNOW are only kidding themselves.

2. I have lived in The South all my life and I am no spring chicken. I have had decades to observe exactly how the CINO's (Christians In Name Only) think and operate.

3. I simply do not buy the concept that the big Palin secret is that her teenage daughter had a baby out of wedlock. This is not The Fifties and these are not real Christians we are talking about. Even if the bad joke is that she lied to her supporters, she could have still fallen back on the supporting her daughter and sympathy meme no matter how it all went down.

4. This is why I have been sure from the beginning that the conceptualization of the Trig is Bristol's meme has been a scam or con utilized to baffle us all into accepting the bullshit.

5. Babygate nor The Palin Phenomenon nor The Palin Matrix could have happened at an earlier time. America had to dig itself deeply into this delusional economic hole before such a fraud could be successfully carried out. This is why, in order to explain the story in a truly complete manner, Paradigm Shift had to be so detailed and convoluted.

6. We know that Bristol began disappearing in late 2007. Although we know some of the details of these various no-shows, we do not know the complete origin or intent of this part of the story. We were never privy to the personal conversations that occurred within The Palin Family.

7. We know there were many machinations behind the scenes to prep Sarah for the VP slot. These have of course been detailed in the book. Some of the material I am including here was not included.

8. I have always felt that the Walk Around Juneau video shot on 2/13/08 has been disregarded by too many Babygators in deference to certain key still photos taken a little later in March. I think the way Sarah moves, as opposed to looks, is more important. I also think it is a truer psychological blind test for this video to have been shot before the Babygate plot had been officially unleashed.

9. Has it occurred to any of you how little has been done to stop the still photos from March 2008 from spreading all over the Internet? If the other side did not want these photos to be available, why was Palin's Deceptions left in place? This thought has haunted me for years.

10. Why was The Palinbrat Circus unleashed on us? I have always thought the concept of red herrings and deliberate cons and distractions was the answer.

There was an e-mail exchange on 2/20/08 that many of you have probably seen, but I did not discuss it in my book. (I would post the original document here now, but I do not have time to learn how to embed a PDF in a blog post.) The important point is that Governor Rick Perry, representing the RGA, extends a personal invitation to the governors to attend an affair presented by John McCain immediately prior to the RGA meeting and the Gala event with President Bush on 2/25/08, as shown above. Another photo taken that same day is shown below. As stated in the email message, John McCain was the special guest of the governors at the Statesman dinner on Saturday 2/23/08 and President Bush was the guest of honor at his final RGA dinner two days later. Keep in mind that Tim Pawlenty, and many political power brokers among the Republican establishment, thought at this time that Pawlenty was at the top of the list for the upcoming VP nomination. Note that Pawlenty is right next to Bush in the outside photo and Palin is on the front row (while at least one other pretty lady is not, in case you were thinking that was the reason). Note that Rick Perry is in the back.

In case some of you would like to see it, here is a cropped and blown up shot of SP from this lineup:

You can match the outfits worn by both Bush and Palin and see that these shots were obviously taken the same day. You can also see that the large posed photo included Democratic governors, while the affair pictured at the top included Republicans only. You can't miss Eliot Spitzer two shoulders left of Pawlenty. Sarah is wearing her usual uniform of all-black with a bright blue scarf. Make of that whatever you will, ladies.

The point I am trying to make, as I have presented from several other angles in my book and blog, is that the Repubs were undoubtedly grooming Sarah for the VP slot by the time of these photos and events, at the very latest! When exactly did the process begin? I do not know. When exactly was the plot hatched to involve Bristol? I do not know. Some of you might surmise that she was not yet aware of the Babygate plan when she walked around Juneau on 2/13/08, but here she is wearing her scarf on 2/25/08, so she must have begun the plot by the time of these photos. To make a long story short, I am a man and fashion bores me silly, so I don't care. That is a job I shall leave up to you ladies. Was the plan hatched by 2/25/08? I would say a definite maybe. Was John McCain her already established doorman to national politics? Absolutely. Was Rick Perry privy to some of this stuff? I would say that is a strong probability. Tim Pawlenty was simply clueless. As Geoffrey Dunn explains on Page 190 of The Lies of Sarah Palin, six months after the events detailed in this post, Tim Pawlenty would learn that he was not McCain's running mate from a Fox newscast. They didn't even have the decency to tell him in person! I have never felt more sympathy for Tim Pawlenty than I did when I read that passage. It would now be quite fitting if he becomes Mitt's choice.

As detailed as Paradigm Shift is, a number of issues were omitted just because I could never quite find enough verification. Some of these include the Bud Paxson and Vicki Iseman story and Sarah's attendance at a CNP meeting, most likely in 2007. The problem with the former is that although we know a lot of the public story, we have little verification that Paxson actually blackmailed McCain into selecting Palin. The problem with the CNP is of course the organization's relentless control and secrecy. We know that McCain addressed the Council for National Policy soon after his winning the nomination and we know that most of the CNP members were not happy with McCain's policies, even after he tried to sweet talk them with his speech. After McCain selected Palin, the CNP called a special meeting to discuss her future as the VP candidate and they were thrilled. One of the secrets is that this was far from the first time they had heard of Sarah Palin. As I have stated earlier, the presentation of McCain operatives searching the Internet in August 2008 in the movie Game Change may not have been a lie, but it certainly was not the whole truth and nothing but the truth! At some point after a guest list for a CNP meeting escaped its control, the CNP clamped down much tighter on its secretive, controlling behavior. Like the possibility that Rick Perry offered Sarah Palin the free use of his private jet at the RGA meeting in Grapevine TX on 4/17/08, the attendance of Sarah at a CNP meeting a year or more before most of us heard of her is also a strong, but undocumented possibility.

I believe that Babygate was a very complex scam. I believe that multiple babies were involved, although the precise number of individuals who know the details might be very small. I think there was so much sloppiness involved in the early stages, just because the procedure began in far-away, isolated Alaska, that Babygate began with a stumble and wound up being the biggest forced march in American political history. I think that at a key point in late August 2008, a very powerful Republican operative declared, "Fine... let 'em think that." Because Babygate had begun at least six months prior, they knew they would never be successful in silencing the story completely, so they decided to contain it. What better way to pull off this trick of the mind than to let the media think they had discovered a political secret, one that was too personal to be exploited? The media in this case refers to CNN down to the blogs. The big shots were easily controlled with promises of big salaries in the future, as detailed in "The Blockade" in Paradigm Shift. The little guys were more of a challenge, but what the hell, they were the little guys! And so the circus came to town, bringing Levi and Piper instead of elephants and clowns.

No one cares if you call Sarah Palin a stupid idiot or a compulsive liar. Just don't call her a cunning politician who wormed her way into The Southern Strategy and Tim LaHaye's monster profit machine called Left Behind. Let me close with a direct quote from Wikipedia on its CNP page: "(The CNP) was founded in 1981 by Tim LaHaye as a forum for conservative Christians seeking to strengthen the political right in the United States." Sarah was never protecting Bristol, who is most likely not the mother of Trig, and Levi is probably not his dad, either. Neither the Republican nor the mainstream media have been protecting Sarah Palin. They have been protecting the CNP and their ultimate political takeover of the U.S. by the Christian Dominionists. The babies have been holding their little fingers in the dike, plugging the leak that could expose the biggest, darkest fraud ever perpetrated on the American citizenry purely for political gain.

The Flakiest Crust in the West

After experiencing the reflective retrospectives of Civil Rights, The Youth Movement, and Vietnam in the '60's, America stepped off the bus in Hollywood from Hayseed KS in 1970 and immediately walked off into the darkness with Mr. Sugar Daddy Pimp.

I have known a lot of flaky people throughout my life, but the so-called left-wing progressives of modern America have taken the pie crust to an all-new level! Just a few short years ago, I continually felt that this preconception must have just been the result of my misguided imagination, but early last year I learned that the pie in the sky was most definitely real. The Babygate phenomenon had taught me this cruel lesson. The right wing press didn't teach me this lesson; the flakes, con artists, and marks populating my own side of the political spectrum did.

Recent events made me laugh so hard that I nearly fell out of my chair! First Shailey Tripp says she is going to answer questions on her blog for the last time. Then she proceeds to not answer any questions of any significance. Then she removes all the comments from the post. Then she reinstates them. Her particular blogger pals claim to still vigorously support Shailey because only they are fully aware that she is doing the right thing by removing her blog. A few questions arise, but for the most part, only the crickets are chirping. Then the editor of Shailey's book posts in extravagant detail how she had personally given a copy of Boys Will Be Boys to a well-known, award-winning journalist with The New York Times. This blog post was celebrated with great delight by both the blogger and her readers. (Oh, Todd Palin will get his comeuppance now! Break out the orange jumpsuit in his size because this story is about to go viral!) The celebration lasted about three hours, until the word got out from Kathleen Baker precisely why Shailey Tripp had closed her blog. For the ridiculously low, low price of $14 a minute ($30 minimum per call) you, too, can converse directly with the ex-prostitute/masseuse who self-published two small books and now works for an ex-porn star! (Good job, Kathleen. The truth needed to be reported.) The celebratory blog post and its comments mysteriously disappeared! Within an hour, a short post was put in its place. Of course Kathleen's report, and the obvious truth of the whole mess, was not mentioned.

Let's review, shall we? According to the text of Boys Will Be Boys, Shailey Tripp was offered at least $100,000 for her story by The National Enquirer. The editors of the paper later rescinded this lucrative offer and reduced their proposition to an undisclosed amount, most likely a few thousand dollars. Months later Shailey Tripp attempted to auction off her e-mail collection one at a time in what turned out to be an uproarious late-night extravaganza of bidding that shocked even me! I cannot recall exactly what the final high bids were, but they were in the thousands for single messages of very short duration. The portions of the messages publicized for the bidders were of laughable insignificance. One can only hope that the actual full messages offered for sale in this overnight fiasco offered genuine material of value, but who knows at this point? The particularly flaky part is that not only did the bidding go into the stratosphere, but none of the bidders produced the cash after the auction was completed. Maybe one or more of the bidders made an after-hours deal on the side, but if so, I am not aware of it. So ends another flaky fiasco spawned by Babygate.

The next big money-making scheme hatched by Shailey Tripp was to self-publish her material. There is nothing at all wrong with that idea. She should have done that in the first place instead of slapping her credibility upside the head by initially involving herself with The Enquirer. Did her lawyer give her bad advice? I definitely think so. I personally provided Ms. Tripp with extensive advice about self-publishing. Did she heed this advice? Yes, except in issues in which my advice conflicted with Ms. Tripp's inflated view of herself and her desire to make as much money as easily as possible. She priced her CreateSpace book at the absolute maximum she thought she could get away with. $21.50 for 280 spacious pages of a self-published book on any subject except how to pick up girls (for boys) or how to have sex with vampires (for girls) is ludicrous. Anyone who has been around the block a few times in the current publishing climate knows this. It is also quite obvious that any book by an unknown author needs a Kindle version priced very low for that special Amazon market that absolutely dominates the sales of most any self-published book of recent years. Selling your Kindle, and other e-book formats for $18.95 only from the author's website utilizing PayPal is a patently absurd marketing strategy. Any book can be priced at $3-10 in the Kindle format and Amazon pays the author a 70% royalty, which is more than fair. Can you spell g-r-i-f-t-e-r?

Not only has Shailey Tripp obviously chosen a path not designed to bring the most readers to her book, therefore expanding the knowledge of her subject matter to large numbers of American voters, she has shut off the most cost-effective marketing tool available to any self-published author, a blog. Does anyone remember the temper tantrum she threw when she absurdly surmised that the Lifetime network had stolen her story when it produced a movie about a prostitute masseuse on the loose in Odessa TX in 2004? That was almost as absurd a rant as Dr. Brad Scharlott claiming that Trig Palin must be related to Trooper Wooten because a detailed photo analysis of their ears looked alike! Shailey Tripp is far from the only flake on this pie. She is just the most recent to expose her flaky crust in such sordid detail.

NIAFS is an equal-opportunity public service site. No punches are pulled and no one is immune to investigation just because he or she is apparently speaking from the left side of the political spectrum. Nothing has changed concerning my opinion of Shailey Tripp or her book, Boys Will Be Boys. I still think she is basically telling the truth about the most significant parts of her story. However, I have viewed her as one of the flakiest people I have ever encountered since I first learned of her story. What is shocking to me is not that she is a flake, but that she is far from alone among the Babygate bloggers in this respect. What is even more shocking is the degree to which most of the blog cult members continue to put up with this level of extreme flakiness.

Let me reiterate. There will be no Wild Ride published by Fred, at least not as a book successfully marketed nationally the way most of us would so desperately like to see. One of the following issues would promptly halt its commercial success dead in its tracks. First of all, Fred does not own the photos and e-mails you want to see published. Secondly, no one is going to believe that the real Fred is a person who has been consumed by the subject matter of Babygate or is qualified to discuss the topic. The third reason is that real authors do not publish ghostwritten books, and that is precisely the scam certain individuals are trying to pull. Lastly, even if the scam could be successfully launched, the media would uncover the obvious weaknesses in Fred's past in about five minutes with Google. Sean Hannity would personally go apeshit on the air as soon as he learned the identity of Fred's ghostwriter! If you think the right wing media trashed Joe McGinniss in a hurry, wait until they get a whiff of Fred and his pals!

Why is Paradigm Shift the only book that discusses Babygate in detail? I truly do not know. All I do know is that there are no flakes on Floyd. I arrived in California the first time crossing the border into Lake Tahoe on a motorcycle in 1971, and my progressive thought processes were in place long before that. America will never turn itself around in any significant, lasting manner until the left wing stops following flaky leaders. Until that point, we are all trapped being just Bozos on This Bus.