No News is...No News

Voodoo sex in New York
triggers five alarm fire,
kills elderly woman.

No news is said to be good news, but that would seem to be relative, as for most of us no news is just no news. It’s good news for our corporate masters because they don’t want us to have any news. There was supposed to be demonstrations in every State capitol today in support of the Madison demonstrations. Did you see anything much in the news about it? I certainly didn’t. But, then, it is Saturday and we don’t ever get much news on Saturday, or Sunday either for that matter. I guess that is because the entire world shuts down on Saturday and Sunday just like we here in the U.S. do. Of course we don’t get Al Jazeera news in English either. Now that I think about it, we just don’t get much news at all, other than the latest Charlie Sheen nonsense, or the doings of Lindsay Lohan, or predictions about the Academy Awards, you know, really important stuff.

It does appear, as near as I can piece things together, the Arab world may still be in an uproar. And it seems the people in Wisconsin are still protesting Governor Walker’s fascist moment while doing the will of the Koch brothers. I think there actually were some demonstrations in other State Capitols and perhaps a few other cities as well. I guess we’ll just have to wait at least until Monday to learn anything at all, and you can be sure that won’t be much. I mean, we can’t interrupt the basketball and golf on the week-end, or the church services on Sunday to bother about what’s happening in the world (is there a world outside the confines of the U.S.?). News 24/7 is the most amazing scam yet perpetrated on an unsuspecting public. As near as I can tell the only real reason for it to exist at all is that it allows companies to advertise over a much larger percentage of time, and you may have noticed, advertising also seems to take up more and more of the programming time. Many of the ads are now so atrociously stupid and embarrassing, I find myself averting my eyes. There should be laws about how long any given ad can be continued, and how many times it can be shown in a single day. This is another case where business is basically becoming so greedy and excessive they are eventually going to lose their audience. Maybe not, but in my case I have drastically cut down the time I watch television and, in fact, have moments when I swear I will stop watching it altogether. It appears that greed, once it becomes a motive, grows exponentially until it threatens to consume itself. This is not only happening with television but is characteristic of American culture in general.

We are, I believe, reaching the tipping point, where either we give up our “empire” or we collapse like the Roman Empire or the Soviet Union. Realistically, we cannot afford further “adventures” in empire building or even empire maintenance. We have already slipped so far down in most measures as to be perilously close to third world status. We are now, I think, when measured on some scale of quality of life and solvency, somewhere around 33rd. And we are far behind in math and science, superstructure, life span, medical care, and on and on. We are, in short, a failing nation, no longer the “shining beacon on the hill,” the envy of the world, the superpower that can simply impose its will on the rest of the world. More and more we are being ignored, left behind, decrepit and old-fashioned.

In my opinion this is in important part due to the fact that too many are under the influence of the “Churches of the Absolutely Bonkers,” and others are too eager to swallow the kool-aid of free market capitalism. The former are so totally divorced from reality as to be unable to act rationally, the latter are so greedy and self-centered as to be oblivious to the requirements of social, or even sustainable life.

Interesting, that while life-threatening global warming is creeping up on us, and the world around us is erupting in an unprecedented and increasingly violent manner, our life here at Sandhill goes on pretty much as usual. The weather is cold, record-breaking cold, there is snow two feet deep on the ground, a cold wind blows virtually every day, it is hard to get around or even comfortably go outside, but yesterday we started corned beef and tongue, today we ordered seeds for the garden, our Son is about to marry, we continue.

LKBIQ:
It is thrifty to prepare today for the wants of tomorrow.
Aesop

TILT:
A Judas goat is trained to lead sheep to the slaughterhouse or into certain pens, and for finding feral goats to be killed.