I Swallowed A Fist

I swallowed a fist

‘O

I took it down

My throat

And it acted a

Severed pugilist

All the way into my gullet

Wherefore art thou

Geraldo?

I need a vault looked at

I’ve seen things

I never thought I’d see

And guess what

I have seen them

In stunning HD

Pleased to meet you

Said the rake

Who pulled his collar up

The effect was like the Dilophosaurus

In Jurassic Park

He did not spit poison at me

But he did blind me with

Gobs and gobs

Of prepackaged “corn sugar”

Philosophy

Guess what?

He choked on my disinterest

And died

Mouth foaming on

The floor

But I am distracted by

Five fingers

Tapping on my chest from the

Inside striving to claw out

Inside of my ribcage

In itching agony

A Scale

You can feel the moment when you leave

The scale and

you jumped for joy and you denied the gods their

Toll

You can fool them once

Perhaps even twice

But you must decide

If you are a man or if want to

Fraternize with mice

You refuse to notice the bloody

sound that issues forth from

Deep under ground

And you know

Oh you know

The blessed grass will

break your fall

Before the earth can consume you

Through and through

Echo the pall that you can smell at dawn

Taste the sunrise and demand another

Bite

Spiritual men will always take your coin

But the only holy beggar you can trust

is the boatman

Water still until

The currency of mortality is spent

Taetricus!

Feel the lowly stain of your birth

And wash yourself with a moon baked jug

Of Iberian wine

You are clean

You are clean

But now you smell of grapes

 

Michelle Malkin Is At It Again

I am sure that by now most of you are aware of the whole Jason Richwine/Heritage Foundation kerfuffle. If not here is the Cliff’s Notes version:

Academic Jason Richwine helped author an anti-immigration reform study for the Heritage Foundation but it was found out that Richwine had somehow earned his PhD with a dissertation that called for the exclusion from the US of Latino immigrants based on the erroneous notion that they have inherently lower IQ’s. If you want a more thorough account of this academic travesty, and who was involved, please see this wonderful post on Daily Kos http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/05/08/1207817/-How-did-Jason-Richwine-Get-a-PhD-from-Harvard

But back to the point: Michelle Malkin’s racist attitude. She penned a hilariously hypocritical and bigoted DEFENSE of Mr. Richwine on her wonderfully asinine blog. This piece of right-wing agitprop is entitled The Crucifixion of Jason Richwine. No, I am not making that up. I will be posting the link below for your perusal. Be sure to have a barf-bag ready.

Malkin whines that the evil media and liberal establishment are “smearing” this author of a thesis even the HERITAGE FOUNDATION is distancing itself from. This after Mr. Richwine’s most recent Heritage funded screed against immigration reform was criticized almost universally from all political corners and torn apart factually by people with a slightly better grasp of public policy i.e. pretty much anyone else you could think to name. Malkin goes on to pout about how the evil liberals (who are the REAL racists for dismissing the racists arguments of a racist because…well because SCIENCE that’s why!) are starting a pogrom to destroy Mr. Richwine’s career. I think the man has done enough in that department by himself. Malkin, who like many conservative “thinkers” (I do hate having to use an oxymoron) shows an active disdain for academia on even her best days (here is a link to one of her articles for an example of her bile on the issue http://michellemalkin.com/2013/04/02/academia-hearts-the-weather-underground-kathy-boudin-at-columbia-and-nyu/ ) now suddenly seems to be uber-respectful of the particular group of Harvard luminaries who approved Mr. Richwine’s dissertation. It is rather rich to see Malkin suddenly show so much love an respect for a liberal bastion of academia like Harvard just because they approved of an academic who savaged the intelligence and ability of millions of Latino immigrants.

She goes on to scold no one/anyone in particular about silencing the academic freedom of a man who wants us to believe that people from south of the border are inherently more stupid than the pretty white conservative people she so desperately wants to pretend to look/act like. Combined with her earlier screed about kicking undocumented immigrants and their American born children out of the country (even though her own parents have a dubious immigration record and she was born while they were in the US) this goes to show that Malkin is indeed a racist and perhaps even a self-loathing person. How else can you explain such vitriol and hate for a group of people that mirror her own situation and background? Michelle Malkin is the Vidkun Quisling of the conservative blogosphere and she continues to plumb the depths of knee-jerk racism and anti-immigrant paranoia. Don’t take my word for it…read her own words for yourself http://michellemalkin.com/2013/05/09/the-crucifixion-of-jason-richwine/

Four Sparrows

There are four

sparrows on

the road leading to my

home

Two are spooked when I cough

One leaves of its own accord

The fourth stood his ground

And puffed his tiny chest

and sung a song I shall never

Live long enough to forget

The tune spoke of longing

and worms

and flight and clouds

And 20 thousand thousand thousand years of dust and light

bundled

screaming

On bone hard lips

I am brought to my knees

and closer to the primordial

cradle

too close

and the distance between us

collapses

without either of us having

moved an inch

It was then I

realized was I had trespassed

And my home was gone

Because it had never really been there

And he was master

And I was nothing in less than a moment

And he and continued to sing

An aria of eons

And I felt the sting of reality

and had a glimpse of perception and

time for what it was

Nothing but two accidents of empty everything

locked in bloodless battle

with the overwhelming weight

of the exhausting sabhāva-dhamma of life

and the inexorable flow of event consuming event consuming event

And the sparrow

his voice explored me

and brought me to a clear wall

over which I climbed without climbing

and I forgot the ascent without forgetting

and beheld without beholding

the summit

And it was a valley

And it was a song from a sparrow’s beak

no more or less anything

a star

a crumb of earth

a fistful of sweat

a corpse

a staff of wood

and a song

more or less than anything else

I wept and dreamt of

annihilation

of suns battling each other for

sovereignty of the sky

of elemental clouds

fading and pulsing and turning and screaming

and it was a song

from a sparrow’s beak

and it never sang

and it sang

and I traced a line from the corner of my eye

wet with tears

to the edges of conception and phenomenon

and I was inverted and the

sparrow sang of nothing

rivers

belching brocades from the silt

and wrapping themselves around the bosoms of

inherently impossible gods

before I realized

I had slept for 300 billion years

and had awoken in a dream of myself

dreaming of dreams

and sparrows

and rivers of golden cloth

and blazing steam

and I screamed

and realized my scream was a song

and that I was a bird

a sparrow

and I took flight

and ended my song

and erased with the beat of my wings

that thing that I never was

always

from the earth

 

May Day in Bangladesh

Almost 400 people, three of whom were pregnant women, were killed and 2500 hundred horrible injured and maimed when a sweatshop used to produce the material effluvia required to keep the  “1st World” from falling behind in the great and frenzied arms race known as capitalism. 1000 people are still missing in the rubble of an illegally built and badly maintained structure that existed, along with thousands of others just like it across the “3rd World”, to cater to the criminally the low prices expected by wealthy Western consumers for their useless plastic possessions and digital time-wasters. Thousands of children, at least those not working in the factory themselves and therefore buried in the rubble or dead, will now have to live, or more likely starve, without mothers, fathers, sisters, aunts, brothers and grandmothers. And why is this? So that you, and I, can be overcharged for an iPhone. In this aspect we as guilty, morally if not legally, as the those responsible for the tragedy. Maybe we can all ask Siri how many Bangladeshi lives a phone is worth? Maybe there is an app for that as well. The “miracle” of Steve Jobs lives on.

According to most sources the owners of the building willfully and deliberately cut corners and ignored even the bare-bones laws and regulations governing the operation of factories and workplaces. They were presumably richly rewarded for his perverse business practices with high profits and praise from the multinational corporations who they serve so faithfully. The workers are locked into their factories, forced to work two or three shifts, denied healthcare and water and food and even beaten. For this they are paid as little as 20 cents (US) a day, a dollar if they are lucky. This is often docked and withheld from them for no reason and workers are often forced to sleep in the factory. This is slavery. There is no other word for it. To impose a mode of making a “living” that in fact degrades and consumes human life as though it were fossil fuel is slavery, made even more insidious for the fact that those involved are paid a pittance and told they are improving their station. The largesse of the first world, the very reason you, I and almost everyone we know is as comfortable as we are is because 3 billion people are used as fuel. A quote from socialist activist Rose Schneiderman, said in response to the Triangle Shirtwaist fire in the New York Garment district, comes to mind

The life of men and women is so cheap and property is so sacred! There are so many of us for one job, it matters little if 140-odd are burned to death.

The events in Bangladesh (I refuse to call them a tragedy because a tragedy is an isolated devastating event…what happened in Bangladesh is business as usual for most of the world’s companies) have pushed the beleaguered and often ignored poor and working classes of Bangladesh into open revolt against the abuse of their comrades and family members. Hundreds of thousands if not millions have taken to the street to demand the arrest and imprisonment of the factory owners and managers. Many are calling for the death penalty. It is rare that this sort of mass civic reaction against capitalist factory abuses in a “3rd World” nation have garnered this much international and even media attention. Perhaps this is why the government has taken steps to imprison the owners and bring them up on charges. They may even allow for the confiscation of the assets of those involved in the incident. Presumably the powers that be hope that this pittance will satisfy the people’s need for justice and radical reform to the economic foundations of most of the “3rd World”.

We live in a world where a corporate enterprise is considered a failure if it it makes $3 billion a fiscal year instead of the expected $3.3 billion. To shave off just enough cost to calm the unyielding greed of the shareholders the lives and fortunes of millions of people in dozens of nations. This May Day there is a real fight brewing in Bangladesh that is spreading throughout the world; fast food workers in Chicago walked out of work and tens of thousands are striking against government austerity in Europe. This mood of frustration is germinating into  revolutionary action, it can be felt, smelled, in the spring air. Bangladesh is not a beginning or an end it a point on a cycle that continues on and on without abatement and without any regard for the lives and desires of the human beings turned into chattel. It is not a force of nature so much as the disgusting potential of human imperfection made real. Capitalism is the universal id of the collective human experience; it justifies exploitation, imperialism, murder and ravenous greed by making these sins into virtues and these virtues into the basis of contemporary human societies, governments and laws. The world is enslaved and told that by working harder and harder they will be made free, but this freedom is only the ability to exploit and consume. The dead of Bangladesh wanted only one form of freedom: the freedom to live as human beings. Even this was denied them in the name of profit.

The first May Day heralded the anniversary of the slaughter and judicial murder of workers and activists in Chicago during and after the Haymarket protests. This proved to be the birth of the modern labor movement and led to many of the reforms and right the “1st World” now takes for granted and denies their comrades in the “3rd World”. Anarchist and labor activist Voltairine de Cleyre refused to stand by and watch the exploitation of her fellow human beings. Her words on the anniversary of the Haymarket episode haunt me and should haunt the rest of the world

The paramount question of the day is not political, is not religious, but is economic. The crying-out demand of today is for a circle of principles that shall forever make it impossible for one man to control another by controlling the means of his existence.

I salute the people and the workers of Bangladesh and their fight for dignity and freedom. Workers of the world must unite behind their cause. They are us. We are them. There is no difference. Their dead are our dead. Their pain is our pain. Their rights are our rights. We are one. I hold this truth to be self-evident and so should you.

5 Best and 5 Worst U.S. Presidents

On this night of the White House Correspondents Dinner here is my list of the top 5 best and worst US Presidents.

I would say Franklin Pierce, G.W. Bush and then Buchanan are the three worst in that order. The first was a horrible racist; Pierce implemented and supported the Fugitive Slave Act, the most odious and evil law in American history and he had sympathies with the racist Southern states and their preservation of slavery. G.W. Bush is an obvious pick for one of the worst because he destroyed the economy, allowed almost 10,000 Americans to die under his watch in wars and terror attacks, instituted torture and killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and Afghans. Buchanan was totally ineffectual in dealing with the South and secession and was corrupt to boot. The top five is rounded out by Woodrow Wilson for his lies about entering WWI and his support for prohibition along with his part in starting the Red Scare persecutions and the imprisonment of political protesters, socialists and anarchists. The fifth is a tie: Richard Nixon for nearly destroying the office of the Presidency and somehow managing to make the Vietnam War even worse than it already was by sending more troops and invading and bombing Laos and Cambodia. The other is Ronald Reagan for his attempt at dismantling the middle class and the public sector labor unions, his dangerous and foolish brinkmanship with a Democratizing and reform minded USSR, and for his illegal and treasonous part in the Iran-Contra affair.

The five BEST presidents on the other hand are Franklin D. Roosevelt for the creation of Social Security, his handling of the Great Depression, his friendliness to labor and to working people, his handling of World War II (with a few exceptions including internment and fire-bombing campaigns in Japan and Germany) and his pragmatism in dealing with the USSR and the defeated Axis Powers after the war. Lincoln is a very close second with his brave and unyielding prosecution of the Civil War against the Confederacy, his (albeit realpolitik driven) signing of the the Emancipation Proclamation, the passing of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution and his general genius with language and communication. I don’t count him as number one because of his attacks on civil rights during the war and his less than stolid support for full equality for African-Americans early on in his presidency. Number three is difficult…I am going to cheat a little and make number three a tie between Theodore Roosevelt and Lyndon B. Johnson’s domestic Presidencies; Roosevelt for his trust busting and attack against the robber barons and the laws that allowed them to run rampant over workers rights and for his creation of the National Park System. LBJ gets his place for his War on Poverty which finally brought the idea of social justice into the mainstream of American politics and policy, and for his creation of the Voting Rights Act, Civil Rights Act, and for the creation of Medicare and Medicaid. If their foreign policy adventures are counted both Teddy and LBJ suffer a bit but that is why I said I am cheating a bit! Number four would have to be George Washington for his level headed handling of the early days of the Republic and its political institutions. Number five is a controversial one but I will stand by it: James E. Carter. Carter was a truly moral and ethical man who attempted to make the idea of social justice and social responsibility essential to the American political psyche, for his remarkable Malaise Speech, his facilitation of peace talks between Egypt and Israel (which I believed may have prevented a third world war in the middle east) and finally for the fact that his presidency was the most peaceful since the early 19th century.

Excerpt From my New Book “Libertarianism and Democracy”

Below is a excerpt from my new book Libertaranism and Democracy, an exploration of how libertarian politics and philosophy fit within the context of American society and government. The book is available through CreateSpace here https://www.createspace.com/4227121 and the price is $5.29. I put a lot of work and research into this project and I am more proud of it then I am any of my other recent works. I hope you buy a copy and join the discussion on my blog about these important issues! Thank you.

***

Libertarianism and Democracy

Humanity may endure the loss of everything; all its possessions may be turned away without infringing its true dignity – all but the possibility of improvement.
–Johann Gottlieb Fichte

I.

There are many who praise Liberty as the last best hope of humanity against tyranny, and I believe the come to this conclusion for the most part from a good faith point of view. They want to see justice done, and many genuinely believe that liberty is the way to achieve it for the greater human family. But the philosophy that sprang up around the concept of Liberty has lost touch with the original intent and meaning of the concept, and has joined the fetid ranks of self-justifying and essentially moronic political ideologies. To embrace absolute liberty is to embrace the animal fear that motivates the most disgusting and reprehensible pain we often inflict upon our fellow human beings. To believe in the truth, let alone the viability or possibility, of complete subjective liberty is a sign that one has lost their trust in and respect for the Social Contract. This fear leads to a sort of reaction in personal politics that amounts to an assault on the idea that there is anyone who can be trusted to keep the fear and the fearsome things in the world at bay. That is except for oneself. The abomination of fear based personal politics, as expressed through current libertarian thought, can be understood as a misunderstanding of the meaning of liberty as it relates to the Social Contract governing society and the betterment and general welfare of the same and the mechanisms and laws that allow for this…