Category Archives: Government

Men Who Stare at U.S. Senators

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CC: Senior Airman Brian Ybarbo/U.S. Air Force (Homepage image: AP)

Recent talk of the alleged use of psy-ops on many politically influential figures, such as John McCain, Joe Lieberman, Jack Reed, Al Franken and Carl Levin, comes at an already charged time for the military, specifically with it’s enormous budget.

We’ve been in Afghanistan and Iraq for too long, everyone in the world wants us out, but for some reason we just don’t seem able to leave. Maybe we just like the view from the top of the Pamir Mountains, maybe we need to be patient with our government, or maybe the wigs in office have been brainwashed to stay there.

Rolling Stone magazine covered the meltdown between the opposing views of Lt. Colonel Michael Holmes and Lt. Gen. William Caldwell on the application of psy-ops on the previously mentioned visiting guests in Afghanistan.  The dramatic battle between lieutenants concluded with Holmes having to resign.  Holmes defended his actions by saying:

“My job in psy-ops is to play with people’s heads, to get the enemy to behave the way we want them to behave. I’m prohibited from doing that to our own people. When you ask me to try to use these skills on senators and congressman, you’re crossing a line.”

With the score 1-0 in favor of the psy-ops division of the U.S. military, one must acknowledge their ability to fight off these accusations. And not only to defend themselves but manage to get  $553 billion for the Defense Department’s baseline budget.

So who knows? Maybe the military has an EC-130J flying around the capital, “brain-washing” politicians to support spending millions on obsolete aircraft parts when the majority of the human race wishes the U.S. could leave the middle east peacefully.



Aliens Want Us To Go Green

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Photo: Gabriele/Flickr CC

How many more Al Gore documentaries and hollow political promises must we endure before we actually establish a viable energy source? When aliens from another universe tell you to change your oil or your engine will blow up, its  time to act.

As far as suits being vocal and passionate about extra-terrestrial life and interaction, Paul Hellyer, might as well have had a megaphone late this February, 2011.

Hellyer (Former Canadian Defensive Minister) claims that aliens have warned us of our energy sources’ gradual waning:

Decades ago, visitors from other planets warned us about where we were headed and offered to help. But instead we, or at least some of us, interpreted their visits as a threat.

Hellyer continued to assert that a secret branch of the United States’ government is already harnessing energy through ways taught to them by the aliens.

They [A secret branch of government] have developed energy sources, and publicly I’m saying that if they do not exist in commercial form, that extraterrestrials would certainly give us that information if we would ask them for it

If extra-terrestrial warnings are not enough to convert us to a reliable energy source, then hopefully man’s natural desire to drive a hovercraft and make it with a space chick will be enough.

Hellyer Stresses An Honest Government, at least with Obama

Will marijuana bong and vaporizer sellers welcome government oversight?

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Should these consumers (present and future) be protected from false advertising claims? Photo: nimbin mardi grass 2009/Flickr CC

With cannabis legalization looking like a real possibility in California this fall, growers are understandably worried that they’ll soon be out of business.

But there’s another group of entrepreneurs — the makers of pot smoking and vaporizing paraphernalia — who might also be in for a rude awakening.

Post-legalization, I expect government regulators to be snuffing out bogus product claims, such as those made by the makers of the Gravity Vortex (excerpt from the product website, below).

The company’s website copy strongly suggests that its bong removes as many harmful particulates as vaporizers (emphases are mine):

The Gravity VORTEX is the world’s first portable gravity smoking device that hits like a gravity bong and is smooth like a vaporizer. Winner of the gold medal at the 2006 High Times Cannabis Cup, the VORTEX is quickly taking the smoking world by storm. Clean, cool and smooth hits that wont hurt your lungs. It is made of high quality polycarbonate, so its virtually indestructible and safe to smoke from (sic).

These are exactly the kinds of claims for legal products that the FDA and other agencies already look for…

In fact, since the maker of the Gravity Vortex, Long Beach, Calif.-based Nine Point Eight Entertainment, claims its product is for “tobacco use only,” it may already be in the sites of someone at FDA, and we just have not heard about it yet.

I plan on tracking this story for a while, so stay tuned.

via Gravity VORTEX: Waterfall smoking experience. Powerful as a gravity bong, smooth as a vaporizer.

Deathwatch 2012: $27 million to keep elders "in place"

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Little help? Big gov spending aims to keep old folks afloat. Photo: Steve Evans/Flickr CC

The US federal government recently announced plans to help the elderly age “in place,” rather than at some godforsaken nursing home.  (I spent enough time around these dumps, particularly on the south shore of Long Island, New York, to know.)

The government is also spending millions in a new effort to help GLBT folks get the support they will need to avoid being warehoused in old age. More about that effort, later this week.

This is all  not to say that the government isn’t going to try to do it all on the cheap. The feds (see announcement, excerpted below, with a link) seems to require that non-medical folks take up some health care responsibilities.

The take-away, incredibly enough, is that we will need even more underpaid, poorly-trained,  elder care providers, than anyone imagined, to care for a generation of half-dead Americans (thanks to medications that prolong life, even as they enfeeble the body).

The intervention has been tested through randomized controlled trials and has been shown to be: i. effective at improving and/or maintaining the health status of older people; and, ii. suitable for deployment through community-based human services organizations and involve non-clinical workers and/or volunteers in the delivery of the intervention; 2) The research results have been published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal; and 3) The intervention has been translated into practice and is ready for broad national distribution through community-based human services organizations.

via Grants.gov – Find Grant Opportunities – Opportunity Synopsis.

Macs' "Custer" brought low by Capitol Hill foes

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Ngozi Pole told me in 2002 (less than a year before he started pilfering from Kennedy’s office, the government alleges) that he had enemies — “trying to ruin (his) reputation” on the Hill.

As the sole Apple fan in the Senate, he seemed all cool-like to me, ’cause he was, like, “thinking different.” And everyone in at the Sergeant at Arms Office hated him.

I even called Ngozi a rebel (from a piece I wrote for Wired earlier this century):

The rebel’s name is Ngozi Pole. He is the office and systems administer at Kennedy’s Boston and Washington offices. He got Dungan and the other staffers their iBooks during the anthrax scare. And for years, Pole has been locking horns with anti-Mac administrators at the Senate Office of the Sergeant at Arms.

“Instead of seriously considering my suggestions, (the SAA has) tried to ruin my reputation,” Pole complained.

via Macs’ Last Stand on Capitol Hill.

GSN loved him, too.

He may have merely been a charmer. But I look forward to hearing his defense.

Interior Secretary: US needs more trees, fewer people

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Carbon footprint. Photo: Samantha Jade Royds/Flickr CC

Carbon footprint. Photo: Samantha Jade Royds/Flickr CC

In Copenhagen, where world leaders are slapping the “pollutant” label on any carbon-based life-form with a nervous system, the US signals its cooperation:

“Carbon pollution is putting our world—and our way of life—in peril,” said Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar in a keynote speech at the global conference on climate change in Copenhagen, Denmark. “By restoring ecosystems and protecting certain areas from development, the U.S. can store more carbon in ways that enhance our stewardship of land and natural resources while reducing our contribution to global warming.”

via New science estimates carbon storage potential of US lands.

Truth is, the federal government is no good steward of the environment. (In fact, it is the nation’s #1 polluter.)

And the mineral exploitation of federally-managed lands, particularly split estates, threaten to spoil water supplies for cattle ranchers, farmers and homeowners who depend on well water for their very survival.

Parents "not buying" H1N1 panic message

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Stay tuned for a more potent public warning from the government.

Stay tuned for a more potent public warning from your government.

This is huge and historic: the first attempted mass vaccination to be rejected by the masses.

Even parents planning to get their kids the seasonal flu vaccine will say no to the swine flu jab.

Germ-spreading schoolchildren are expected to be the focus of a massive U.S. vaccination campaign against the novel H1N1 flu.

But if their parents are hearing the rallying cry to have their kids vaccinated, they’re not buying it, says a new national survey.
In a poll of 1,678 U.S. parents conducted by the University of Michigan’s C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital, 40% said they would get their children immunized against the H1N1 virus — even as 54% indicated they would get their kids vaccinated against regular seasonal flu.

Among those who said they do not intend to have their kids vaccinated against H1N1, almost half — 46% — indicated they’re not worried about their children becoming ill with the pandemic virus. Twenty percent said they do not believe the H1N1 flu is a serious disease.

via Most parents won’t have kids get H1N1 flu shots, study finds — latimes.com.

"Magic" protected by Irish Law

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Photo: John Wigham. Flickr/CC

Atheist-activist Michael Nugent wants the Irish government to undo its protections for the Roman Catholic Church’s renewed practice of offering indulgences. He’s also concerned that non-Catholics might soon enjoy the same ability to sell supernatural fixes.

From Nugent’s letter to the Irish Times:

Madam, – From September 1st, the Charities Act 2009 has been offering State protection to the Roman Catholic Church, and only this one church, to sell Mass cards (Home News, September 1st). The legality of this Act is being challenged in the High Court, but for a reason that turns ethics upside down.

It is not being challenged to prevent people from selling claims of intercession with the creator of the universe to bereaved and vulnerable people. Instead, it is being challenged to allow a wider number of people to sell such unverifiable claims.

via Michael Nugent.

40 percent of Californians "jobless"

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Photo: Brett L. Flickr/CC

Excuse me, is this not 40 percent unemployment we’re really talking about?

A report to be released publicly today found that two of five working-age Californians do not have a job, underscoring the challenges in one of the toughest job markets in decades. The last time employment levels among this group were this low was February 1977, according to a study by the California Budget Project, a Sacramento-based nonprofit research group that advocates for lower- and middle-income families.

via Two out of five working-age Californians jobless, study says | rgj.com | Reno Gazette-Journal.

The reason this is not 40 percent unemployment, according to the same article:

…the government’s official jobless rate does not factor in working-age Californians who stay out of the work force by choice, such as stay-at-home parents, or those who have simply given up searching for work.Taking those people into account, she said, translates to a 57.5 percent employment rate for the state, which is slightly less than the 57.6 percent recorded in 1977. The California Budget Project used figures from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

I’ll betcha those stay-at-home parents also gave up, trying to find a job that would get them ahead, after paying for daycare.

H1N1 pandemic scare may be unraveling

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Photo: Luis Markovic. Flickr/CC

Photo: Luis Markovic. Flickr/CC

The president of the American College Health Association told NPR today that cases of the H1N1 virus have been “mild.”

With students back on college campuses, schools are planning for swine flu outbreaks. James Turner, president of the American College Health Association, describes some of the steps educational institutions are taking, from bolstering student health clinics to preparing large-scale vaccination campaigns.

via College Campuses Prepare For Swine Flu : NPR.

Regardless, Dr. Turner is getting the H1N1 shot himself (I should say, “shots,” as a followup booster is required for H1N1).

So now, and so far, we’ve been told: the swine flu is deadly to the already sick … the young and healthy … practically no one.

I believe health officials might be engaging in a dry run for future (potentially more dangerous) pandemics. And they have a lot of momentum going already for this particular mass vaccination effort.