Glenn Beck ‘Misinformer of the Year’

http://rawstory.com/2009/12/watchdog-group-awards-glenn-beck-misinformer-year/

Watchdog group awards Glenn Beck ‘Misinformer of the Year’
By Stephen C. Webster
Monday, December 21st, 2009

After a long year hallmarked by bare-knuckle politics and a bevy of experimental attacks against a freshman president, a lone voice has resonated more than others in the war against reality.

Glenn Beck, the Fox News personality notorious for wandering, vague allegations of communism, racism and all-around quasi-evildoings within the Obama administration, has been named "Misinformer of the Year" by watchdog group Media Matters.

"When he wasn't calling the president a racist, portraying progressive leaders as vampires who can only be stopped by 'driv[ing] a stake through the heart of the bloodsuckers,' or pushing the legitimacy of seceding from the country, Beck obsessively compared Democrats in Washington to Nazis and fascists and 'the early days of Adolf Hitler,'" the group opined. "He wondered, 'Is this where we're headed,' while showing images of Hitler, Stalin, and Lenin; decoded the secret language of Marxists; and compared the government to 'heroin pushers' who were 'using smiley-faced fascism to grow the nanny state.'"

Among Beck's 2009 highlights, he most memorably:

*Was revealed for using Vicks to cry on cue

*Tried to usurp a satirist's Web domain for making fun of him on the Internet, then lost (and was publicly shamed for it)

*Lost dozens of advertisers (reportedly a total of 80) after activists launched a campaign over Beck's claim that Obama "has a deep-seated hatred for white people"

*Got caught by Jon Stewart advertising gold, then using his platform on Fox News to scare viewers away from the dollar

*Was named "fearmonger-in-chief" by the Anti-Defamation League for his racially-motivated attacks on President Obama

*Tried to blame the disastrous aftermath of Hurricane Katrina on ACORN and former White House adviser Van Jones

*And became the trigger that prompted a former Fox News pundit to turn against her former employer, telling CNN that Beck is "way over the top" and even "scary"

And that's just the beginning.

"After claiming, 'I think it would be just faster if they just shot me in the head,' Beck created a classic cable news moment when, in criticizing the president's policies, he pretended to pour gasoline on an average American, stating, 'President Obama, why don't you just set us on fire? For the love of Pete, what are you doing?'" Media Matters continued. "Beck would go on to use violent imagery throughout the year, distorting the face and voice of a 'concerned parent' who attacked Dunn for her Mao reference as if he were a mafia informant, purporting to boil a frog to illustrate that 'we've been tossed quickly into boiling water,' and invoking civil rights marchers having fire hoses turned on them to spur opposition to health care reform."

Rich and poor countries blame each other for failure

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/dec/19/copenhagen-blame-game

Rich and poor countries blame each other for failure of Copenhagen deal
Wealthy nations accused of bullying tactics to get developing countries to sign 'death warrant'
John Vidal in Copenhagen
guardian.co.uk, Saturday 19 December 2009
Bolivian President Evo Morales said the Copenhagen deal was a failure because of the 'lack of political will by a small group of countries led by the US'

The blame game over the failure of the Copenhagen climate talks started last night with countries accusing each other of a complete lack of willingness to compromise.

The G77 group of 130 developing nations blamed Obama for "locking the poor into permanent poverty by refusing to reduce US emissions further."

"Today's events are the worst development for climate change in history," said a spokesperson.

Pablo Solon, Bolivian ambassador to the UN, blamed the Danish hosts for convening only a small group of countries to prepare a text to put before world leaders. "This is completely unacceptable. How can it be that 25 to 30 nations cook up an agreement that excludes the majority of the 190 nations."

But rich countries said that developing countries had wasted too much time on "process" rather than the substance of the talks. An epic stand-off over whether to ditch the Kyoto protocol's legal distinctions between developed and developing countries and their obligations to cut their emissions caused a huge delay to the negotiations.

But Martin Khor, director of the South Centre, an intergovernmental think tank for developing countries said, "Developing countries are very disappointed because they've invested a lot of time in the documents they're negotiating here."

Politicians from all corners of the world were blamed widely for not setting ambitious enough targets to counter climate change. "They refused to lead and instead sought to bribe and bully developing nations to sign up to the equivalent of a death warrant. The best outcome now is no deal," said Tim Jones, climate policy officer from the World Development Movement.

China's prime minister, Wen Jiabao, blamed a lack of trust between countries: "To meet the climate change challenge, the international community must strengthen confidence, build consensus, make vigorous efforts and enhance co-operation."

But indigenous Bolivian president Evo Morales blamed capitalism and the US. "The meeting has failed. It's unfortunate for the planet. The fault is with the lack of political will by a small group of countries led by the US," he said.

Even veterans of previous environmental negotiations were disappointed. "Given where we started and the expectations for this conference, anything less than a legally binding and agreed outcome falls far short of the mark," said John Ashe, chair of the Kyoto protocol talks.

Pelosi, Rahm do not scare Rep. DeFazio

http://thehill.com/homenews/house/72889-pelosi-rahm-do-not-scare-rep-defazio

Pelosi, Rahm do not scare Rep. DeFazio
By Walter Alarkon
12/18/09

Rep. Peter DeFazio’s phone rang. On the other end was Rahm Emanuel.

The White House chief of staff last month expressed frustration with DeFazio’s resignation calls for President Barack Obama’s top two economic aides — Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and White House chief economist Larry Summers — and appealed for cooperation, according to DeFazio.

But Emanuel, known for his blunt manner and ability to bend members of his party to his will, did not raise his voice with the Oregon Democrat.

“Rahm does not yell at me,” DeFazio said, “because he knows that I yell back.”

Others are learning that DeFazio, who has served in the House since 1987 and describes himself as a “progressive populist,” is not easily intimidated. He has emerged in recent months as one of the most vocal liberal critics of the Obama administration, blasting the president’s team for not getting tough enough with Wall Street. He’s also taken on his own party for failing to move left-leaning legislation through the Congress.

Personal calls from Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and former Vice President Al Gore couldn’t persuade him to vote for the Speaker’s climate change bill. He also opposed the $787 billion stimulus, citing concerns that only 7 percent was devoted to infrastructure spending.

DeFazio was one of only two Democrats to vote against those measures and the $700 billion bank bailout. (The other was Rep. Gene Taylor (D-Miss.) a Blue Dog conservative.)

Yet he’s also a pro-gun Democrat who has a B rating from the National Rifle Association.

“I would have less of a voice and I would have less respect if I voted for things I didn’t believe in because of pressure from the leadership,” DeFazio told The Hill in an interview.

Obama himself has taken notice.

“Don’t think we’re not keeping score, brother,” Obama told DeFazio during a closed-door meeting of the House Democratic Caucus, according to members afterward.

But poking a stick at those in power is what DeFazio does.

He gives partial credit for his special brand of liberalism to having worked at a country club as a teenager. Each summer, his father ran a camp for troubled inner-city kids on Cape Cod, where they caddied for golfers at a country club. DeFazio would work alongside the kids.

“They were servants for the rich, as was I,” he said. “I shagged golf balls for rich people. I carried golf clubs for rich people, and I learned very early on, when I was pretty young, that this was a group of people that had nothing special to offer to me or to society.”

His populism has played well back home. DeFazio won his 2008 election with 82 percent of the vote, even though his district isn’t overwhelmingly Democratic. Obama won it by 11 percentage points, but President George W. Bush won nearly as many votes as Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) in 2004.

“He is incredibly popular in a district that is actually somewhat difficult for a Democrat,” said Rep. David Wu (D-Ore.), who says DeFazio does it by standing up for his beliefs.

DeFazio has been a leading liberal voice complaining that the Democratic Congress and White House have failed to capitalize on significant victories in last year’s elections. His latest target is the Senate, where he says Democrats’ struggle to move healthcare legislation is preventing the Congress from sending a job-creation bill to the president’s desk. With the unemployment rate at 10 percent, House Democrats see jobs as the No. 1 campaign issue heading into the midterm election year.

“It’s just incredible frustration,” DeFazio said. “The killing ground of the Senate is ultimately, potentially, the killing ground of the Democratic Party.”

DeFazio and other House Democrats led what he called a “revolt” at a caucus meeting several weeks ago. Though Democratic leaders called the meeting to discuss the president’s decision to send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan, rank-and-file members began talking instead about jobs.

DeFazio stood up and called for attaching a new job-creation bill to the annual defense-spending measure, which typically gets bipartisan support and is considered must-pass legislation. His speech and others in favor of a new jobs bill drew cheers from colleagues, said House Democratic Caucus Chairman John Larson (Conn.).

DeFazio has spent most of his time over the past year pushing for the $500 billion, six-year transportation reauthorization bill. DeFazio, the chairman of the House Highways and Transit subcommittee, has argued infrastructure could lead to far more jobs and have a much more lasting impact than tax cuts or other stimulus spending. While Pelosi has thrown her support behind the bill, sponsored by House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman Jim Oberstar (D-Minn.), the Senate and the White House, reluctant to raise the gas tax or other levies to pay for the bill, have said that it should be taken up next year.

DeFazio wants to tax Wall Street to help pay for the programs. Specifically, he wants a tax on financial transactions, which economists have said could generate $150 billion. Though Geithner has opposed it, DeFazio is holding out hope that Obama will find ways to get tougher on Wall Street.

He praised the president this week for dialing up his criticism of Wall Street bankers and the bonuses they’re expected to receive, just months after receiving billions in federal bailout dollars.

“That was one good speech by the president, but he’s got to mean it, he’s got to live it, he’s got to do it every day,” DeFazio said. “And these are tough people; these are the most powerful people in the world. They seem to control a majority of his economic team.”

Passing health reform could be a nightmare

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/20/AR2009122002127.html

Passing health reform could be a nightmare for Obama
By Robert Samuelson
Monday, December 21, 2009; A19

Barack Obama's quest for historic health-care legislation has turned into a parody of leadership. We usually associate presidential leadership with the pursuit of goals that, though initially unpopular, serve America's long-term interests. Obama has reversed this. He's championing increasingly unpopular legislation that threatens the country's long-term interests. "This isn't about me," he likes to say, "I have great health insurance." But of course, it is about him: about the legacy he covets as the president who achieved "universal" health insurance. He'll be disappointed.

Even if Congress passes legislation -- a good bet -- the finished product will fall far short of Obama's extravagant promises. It will not cover everyone. It will not control costs. It will worsen the budget outlook. It will lead to higher taxes. It will disrupt how, or whether, companies provide insurance for their workers. As the real-life (as opposed to rhetorical) consequences unfold, they will rebut Obama's claim that he has "solved" the health-care problem. His reputation will suffer.

It already has. Despite Obama's eloquence and command of the airwaves, public suspicions are rising. In April, 57 percent of Americans approved of his "handling of health care" and 29 percent disapproved, reports the Post-ABC News poll; in the latest survey, 44 percent approved and 53 percent disapproved. About half worried that their care would deteriorate and that health costs would rise.

These fears are well-grounded. The various health-care proposals represent atrocious legislation. To be sure, they would provide insurance to 30 million or more Americans by 2019. People would enjoy more security. But even these gains must be qualified. Some of the newly insured will get healthier, but how many and by how much is unclear. The uninsured now receive 50 to 70 percent as much care as the insured. The administration argues that today's system has massive waste. If so, greater participation in the waste by the newly insured may not make them much better off.

The remaining uninsured may also exceed estimates. Under the Senate bill, they would total 24 million in 2019, reckons Richard Foster, chief actuary of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. But a wild card is immigration. From 1999 to 2008, about 60 percent of the increase in the uninsured occurred among Hispanics. That was related to immigrants and their children (many American-born). Most illegal immigrants aren't covered by Obama's proposal. If we don't curb immigration of the poor and unskilled -- people who can't afford insurance -- Obama's program will be less effective and more expensive than estimated. Hardly anyone mentions immigrants' impact, because it seems insensitive.

Meanwhile, the health-care proposals would impose substantial costs. Remember: The country already faces huge increases in federal spending and taxes or deficits because an aging population will receive more Social Security and Medicare. Projections the Congressional Budget Office made in 2007 suggested that federal spending might rise almost 50 percent by 2030 as a share of the economy (gross domestic product). Since that estimate, the recession and massive deficits have further bloated the national debt.

Obama's plan might add almost an additional $1 trillion in spending over a decade -- and more later. Even if this is fully covered, as Obama contends, by higher taxes and cuts in Medicare reimbursements, this revenue could have been used to cut the existing deficits. But the odds are that the new spending isn't fully covered, because Congress might reverse some Medicare reductions before they take effect. Projected savings seem "unrealistic," says Foster. Similarly, the legislation creates a voluntary long-term care insurance program that's supposedly paid by private premiums. Foster suspects it's "unsustainable," suggesting a need for big federal subsidies.

Obama's overhaul would also change how private firms insure workers. Perhaps 18 million workers could lose coverage and 16 million gain it, as companies adapt to new regulations and subsidies, estimates the Lewin Group, a consulting firm. Private insurers argue that premiums in the individual and small-group markets, where many workers would end up, might rise an extra 25 to 50 percent over a decade. The administration and the CBO disagree. The dispute underlines the bills' immense uncertainties. As for cost control, even generous estimates have health spending growing faster than the economy. Changing that is the first imperative of sensible policy.

So Obama's plan amounts to this: partial coverage of the uninsured; modest improvements (possibly) in their health; sizable budgetary costs worsening a bleak outlook; significant, unpredictable changes in insurance markets; weak spending control. This is a bad bargain. Health benefits are overstated, long-term economic costs understated. The country would be the worse for this legislation's passage. What it's become is an exercise in political symbolism: Obama's self-indulgent crusade to seize the liberal holy grail of "universal coverage." What it's not is leadership.

Dean urges defeat of emerging health care bill

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5irPOJsLck6oxp2-eAE8h9-xaJcZQD9CKEC3O0

Dean urges defeat of emerging health care bill
(AP) – 12-16-9

WASHINGTON — Former Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean argued Wednesday that the health care overhaul bill taking shape in the Senate further empowers private insurers at the expense of consumer choice.

"You will be forced to buy insurance. If you don't, you'll pay a fine," said Dean, a physician. "It's an insurance company bailout." Interviewed on ABC's "Good Morning America," he said the bill has some good provisions, "but there has to be a line beyond which you think the bill is bad for the country."

"This is an insurance company's dream," the former Democratic presidential candidate said. "This is the Washington scramble, and it's a shame."

Dean asserted that the Senate's health care bill would not prohibit insurance companies from denying coverage for preexisting conditions and he also said it would allow the industry to charge older people far more than others for premiums.

Rep. Anthony Weiner, D-N.Y., a prominent House liberal, protested the absence of any government-run insurance option in the Senate bill.

"We can't let the perfect be enemy of the good," Weiner said on CBS' "Early Show," "but we are reaching a tipping point."

When House and Senate negotiators go to conference to work out a compromise bill, Weiner said, "We should move away from some of the things the Senate has done and move back to where the House is. You need to contain cost. You do that with a public option."

Bernanke Named Time's Person of the Year

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB126096701015693553.html

Wednesday, December 16, 2009
Bernanke Named Time's Person of the Year
DAVID WESSEL

Time magazine named Ben Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve, as its person of the year.

"The main reason … is that he is the most important player guiding the world's most important economy. His creative leadership helped ensure that 2009 was a period of weak recovery rather than catastrophic depression, and he still wields unrivaled power over our money, our jobs, our savings and our national future. The decisions he has made, and those he has yet to make, will shape the path of our prosperity, the direction of our politics and our relationship to the world," the weekly said in a story posted on its Web site.

Mr. Bernanke was chosen over runners-up Gen. Stanley McChrystal, "the Chinese worker," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and runner Usain Bolt.

Write to David Wessel at capital@wsj.com

Stare at boobs for longer life: Study

Robalini's Note: I'm going to fucking live until I am 200...

http://www.themedguru.com/20091206/newsfeature/stare-boobs-longer-life-study-86131320.html

Stare at boobs for longer life: Study
Neharika Sabharwal
December 6, 2009

Frankfurt, Germany -- A rather bizarre study carried out by German researchers suggests that staring at women's breasts is good for men's health and increases their life expectancy.

According to Dr. Karen Weatherby, a gerontologist and author of the study, gawking at women’s breasts is a healthy practice, almost at par with an intense exercise regime, that prolongs the lifespan of a man by five years.

She added, "Just 10 minutes of staring at the charms of a well-endowed female, is roughly equivalent to a 30-minute aerobics work-out."

A five-year research on 500 men

Researchers at three hospitals in Frankfurt, Germany did an in-depth analysis of 200 healthy males over a period of five years. Half the volunteers were instructed to ogle at the breasts of women daily, while the rest were told to refrain from doing so.

At the close of the study, the researchers noted that the men who stared at the breasts of females on a regular basis exhibited lower blood pressure, slower resting pulse rates and lesser episodes of coronary artery disease.

Sexual desire linked to better blood circulation

The researchers declared that sexual desire gives rise to better blood circulation that signifies an overall improved health.

Weatherby explained the concept stating, "Sexual excitement gets the heart pumping and improves blood circulation. There's no question: Gazing at breasts makes men healthy.

"Our study indicates that engaging in this activity a few minutes daily cuts the risk of stroke and heart attack in half. We believe that by doing so consistently, the average man can extend his life four to five years."

In addition, she also recommended that men over 40 should gaze at larger breasts daily for 10 minutes.

The German research is believed to be published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

The Devil and Mr. Obama

http://www.joebageant.com/joe/2009/12/the-devil.html

December 08, 2009
The Devil and Mr. Obama
Barack promised change -- and sure enough, things changed for the worse
(Note: Patrick Ward, associate editor of the UK's Socialist Review asked Joe to write a piece for the party publication. This is the unabridged text of Joe's submission.)
By Joe Bageant

Well lookee here! An invite from my limey comrades to recap Barack Obama's first year in office. Well comrades, I can do this thing two ways. I can simply state that the great mocha hope turned out to be a Trojan horse for Wall Street and the Pentagon. Or I can lay in an all-night stock of tequila, limes and reefer and puke up the entire miserable tale like some 5,000 word tequila purged Congolese stomach worm. I have chosen to do the latter.

As you may know, Obama's public approval ratings are taking a beating. Millions of his former cult members have awakened with a splitting hangover to find their pockets turned inside out and eviction notices on the doors of their 4,000 square foot subprime mortgaged cardboard fuck boxes. Many who voted for Obama out of disgust for the Bush regime are now listening to the Republicans again on their car radios as they drive around looking for a suitable place to hide their vehicles from the repo man. Don't construe this as support for the GOP. It's just the standard ping ponging of disappointment and disgust that comes after the honeymoon is over with any administration. Most Americans' party affiliations are the same as they were when Bush was elected. After all, Obama did not get elected on a landslide by any means; he got 51% of the vote.

Right now his approval ratings are in the 40th percentile and would be headed for the basement of the league were it not for the residual effect of the Kool-Aid love fest a year ago. However, millions of American liberals remain faithful, and believe Obama will arise from the dead in the third year and ascend to glory. You will find them at Huffington Post.

This frustrating ping pong game in which the margin of first time, disenchanted and undecided voters are batted back and forth has become the whole of American elections. That makes both the Republican and Democratic parties very happy, since it keeps the game down to fighting the enemy they know, each other, as opposed to being forced to deal with the real issues, or worse yet, an independent or third party candidate who might have a solution or two.

Thus, the game is limited to two players between two corporate parties. One is the Republican Party, which believes we should hand over our lives and resources directly to the local Chamber of Commerce, so the chamber can deliver them to the big corporations. The other, the Democratic Party, believes we should hand our lives and resources to a Democratic administration -- so it alone can deliver our asses to the big dogs who own the country. In the big picture it's always about who gets to deliver the money to the Wall Street hyena pack.

Americans may be starting to get the big picture about politics, money and corporate power. But I doubt it. Given that most still believe the war on terrorism is real, and that terrorists always just happen to be found near gas and oil deposits, there is plenty of room left to blow more smoke up their asses. Especially considering how we are conditioned to go into blind fits of patriotism at the sight of the flag, an eagle, or the mention of "our heroes," even if the heroes happen to be killing and maiming Muslim babies at the moment. Patriotism is a cataract that blinds us to all national discrepancies.

Much of the rest of the world seems plagued with similar cataracts that keep it from noticing the chasm of discrepancy between what Obama says and what he actually does. The Nobel Committee awarded the 2009 Peace Prize to the very person who dropped the most bombs and killed the most poor people on the planet during that year. The same guy who started a new war in Pakistan, beefed up the ongoing war in Afghanistan, and continues to threaten Iran with attack unless Iran cops to phony US-Israeli charges of secret nuclear weapons facilities. It's weapons of mass destruction all over again. Somewhere in the whole fracas has been forgotten that Iran has been calling for a nuclear free zone in the Middle East since 1974. Iran has also been consistent in its position that "petroleum is a noble material, much too valuable to burn for electricity," and that nuclear energy makes much more sense, given that our food supply, whether we like it or not, is fundamentally dependent upon petrochemicals and will remain so until the earth's population is reduced to at least half of what it is now. The Iranian attitude has been to use the shrinking petroleum deposits as judiciously as possible.

To which oilman George Bush replied that "There will be consequences for Iran's attitude." Obama has reinforced Bush's sentiment, stating that not only will there be consequences, but that a military strike on Iran "is not out of the question." Although nuclear weapons are in direct opposition to the Muslim faith, 71 million Iranians must have shuddered and paused to think: "Maybe an Iranian bomb isn't such a bad idea after all."

Under cover of being the first "black" president, Obama is looking to best one of the Bush administration's records. And that is causing unshirted hell for anybody two shades darker than a paper bag, particularly if they are wearing sandals (Obama himself being only one shade darker than the bag and given to size eleven black Cole Haans). So far, two million Pakistanis have been, in official US State Department jargon, "displaced" by U.S. backed bombing and gunfire -- which will surely displace a fellow if anything will. A significant portion of them are "living with host families." Translation: packed into crowded houses ten to a room, wiping out food and water supplies, crashing already fragile sanitation infrastructure, and serving as a giant human Petrie dish for intestinal and respiratory diseases. Many more are still living in the "conflict area." Makes it sound like living next door to a neighborhood domestic squabble, doesn't it? God only knows how many more innocent people will yet be killed in the conflict area of Obama's "war of necessity." You know, the "good war." The war that is supposed to offset the interminable bad one in Iraq, where we continue to occupy and build more bases.

Afghanistan: Grab the opium and run

Then there are Obama's noble efforts to fight terrorism by beefing up troop "deployment" in Afghanistan. Deployment may be construed to mean an American style armed gangbang, in which everybody piles on some wretched flea bitten hamlets for all they are worth, with periodic breaks for pizza and video games.

Now if you look at the deployment of US forces in Afghanistan, compared to NATO country forces there, you'll find them in a nice even line along what could easily be mistaken for an oil pipeline route. One that taps into the natural gas deposits in Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan and, by the purest coincidence, just happens to bypass nearby Russia and Iran. But we all know that "It's about fighting terrorism over there so we won't have to fight it here!" That still plays in Peoria, so we're sticking with it.

At the moment, out-of-pocket cost of America's wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is $900 billion. Interest on the debt incurred, plus the waste of productive resources on the war, pushes the cost to three thousand billion dollars (Nobel economist Joseph Stiglitz). By comparison, the entire 2009 government budget for elementary and secondary education is slightly above $800 billion. Or to look at it another way, how far would three thousand billion dollars go toward establishing energy independence? As Harvard monetary expert Linda Bilmes points out that there is "no benefit whatsoever for any American whose income does not derive from the military/security complex." I sent an email to Obama pointing this out, suggesting that we pull out of Afghanistan, grab the opium and run. I got a nice reply saying that my president is grateful for the input. So there ya go.

Lately there has been a ruckus about our little "slap shop" in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Despite Obama's promises to close down, "Cigarland," it is still open for business. Word has it that Cigarland may be moved to an "underused" maximum security prison (one would think a scarcity of criminals for a maximum security prison would be good news, but what do I know?) in the desperately broke community of Thompson, Illinois. Locals there tell the national press, "Sure, put it in our backyard. No problem." Or, "This town is in the prison business. Prisons R Us." Or more bluntly, "We know how to handle these creeps and we need the jobs."

It's the kind of job creation Stalin would have understood.

Happiness is a warm tent

But at least the recession is over. This, according to Obama's monetary point man, Ben Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank. For British readers unfamiliar with the US system, the Federal Reserve is not a government agency, despite its agency like name. "The Fed" is an offshore private banking cartel that decides just how much bogus currency can be printed and circulated profitably for bankers without wrecking their Ponzi schemes. And the chairman of that august body has announced that the recession is over. Well halleluja! We can quit rolling our own cigs and buy ready mades, and run recklessly through the Dollar Store scooping up dented canned goods and cheap Chinese tube socks.

That makes us luckier than the three and a half million Americans, most of whom led normal lives a few of years ago, who are now homeless. That includes one million school children sleeping in tents, shelters and other makeshift arrangements, and trying to look presentable each morning at schools that have not even the mercy to let them use the school showers. By the administration's own calculation, the number of homeless and people out of work will continue to escalate at least into the next year. Home foreclosures, and therefore homelessness, "has not topped out yet," says Obama.

But Bernanke has announced that the recession is over. So there you have it. A grateful nation breathes a sigh of relief. And besides, he is right about it being over. The recession is over for the most important members of a capitalist society, the oligarchs and banksters, who have made fortunes off this recession, thanks to our unique economic system, and may now return to their standard garden variety usury.

Economic systems are merely belief systems. I didn't say that. Keynes said that. For instance, if the early Assyrians believed a shekel was worth a jar of wheat, then it was worth a jar of wheat. American style capitalism eventually stretched belief to the absolute limits of fantasy to the snapping point, as regards general credulity. Nobody abroad still believes the dollar is worth folding up and sticking in a wallet, certainly not worth exchanging for a good old fashioned shekel. However, be it shekels or dollars or euros, there is no economic system at all if there is no production. And there is no production if there are no jobs. Hence the obsession with unemployment rates.

The U.S. Ministry of Truth has announced that our unemployment rate is at 10%. I've yet to meet an American who does not know the official unemployment rate is a complete fiction. One half of the unemployed -- the half that has been unemployed for more than one year -- are simply erased from the official count. Poof! The real rate is somewhere around 20%. But if we acknowledged that, we'd have to admit to being on par with Europe's unemployment rate. And by diddle damned we can never do that. Every American fully understands that the purpose of life is to hang onto one meaningless job or another, two of them if possible. And by the state's official numbers more Americans have a white knuckled grip on life's purpose than any of those pussy socialist European nations with their free healthcare, low infant mortality rates and ridiculously long vacations.

But the bad news, which the Obama administration openly acknowledges, is this: Unemployment will in all likelihood go higher. And nobody on earth knows how to reduce it (although no one in the administration is about to acknowledge that). The factories are all but gone and they are not coming back. Not unless American workers are willing to work 13 hours a day for two Chinese yuan an hour, which is about 31 cents. What US factories remain are laying workers off due to high interest rates, and waiting for a lower interest rate policy before deciding if it is feasible to call any workers back into production.

During their wait they can watch hell freeze over. Banks know a fatter hog when they see it. And that hog is the consumer credit business (nobody has figured out yet that consumers need paychecks before they can consume anything, on credit or otherwise ). To that end the Federal Reserve has logically set a low interest rate policy. And in true accordance with banking logic, the banks took the Fed's money, then raised the annual percentage rate (APR) on credit card purchases and cash advances and on balances that have a penalty rate because of late payment. Next they raised the late fee. What the hell? If Americans are on the ropes, struggling to make their payments on time, then the logical thing to do is to stick it to them. Bleed 'em for all they're worth. It's an American free market tradition. We the people do not complain. We expect no mercy. America is a business and the American concept of business is pure ruthlessness.

A Deutsche Bank analyst tells me a near term worst is yet to come. Bank failures and home foreclosures have not peaked. A commercial real estate bust is coming down the pike. He says that, while there will be some minor periodic upswings, the fraudulent value of the dollar is now evident as it falls against every other currency, even the Russian ruble (13%), except those unlucky enough to be pegged to the US dollar. As former Assistant Secretary of Treasury Paul Craig Roberts says: "What sort of recovery is it when the safest investment an American can make is to bet against the US dollar?" My Deutsche Bank friend, who is younger and has a family to think about, has taken what he considers more appropriate action. He's buying gold and moving to an undeveloped Central American country.

But Mr. Bernanke assures us that the worst is indeed over. Despite the outside world's serious doubts, but Bernanke's announcement just might fly in the U.S. We believe whatever our Ministry of Truth tells us. We believed that debt was wealth, didn't we? And we believed in WMDs, and have come to believe warfare is a prerequisite to peace.

The saddest thing is that Americans are cultivated like mushrooms from birth to death, kept in the dark and fed horseshit. Consequently, they haven't the slightest idea that there is an alternative to the system in which they labor at the pleasure of corporate and financial elites who own both their government and their every waking hour. That alternative is democratic Socialism. Self governance for the broadest common good. Which the Ministry of Truth has defined for them as fascism.

Healthcare and environment? Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha

I would guess that you have heard about the "debate" over "healthcare reform in America." There really wasn't much debate, just a lot of thuggish behavior and wild tales of geriatric death panels by the right, and groveling capitulation on the left. The "reform" turned out to be a $70 billion a year giveaway to the insurance companies, by forcing those 45 million folks who cannot afford insurance at all to buy it anyway. Taxpayer dollars will make up the difference between what can be wrung out of the working poor, and what insurance corporations can demand and get because they have a throat lock on both of the other parties involved -- the doctors and the patients. As for the doctors, they have played it so cool butter wouldn't melt in theor mouths, and successfully avoided the question of whether their quarter million dollar and up incomes just might be contributing to the exorbitant cost of healthcare. Even with a majority in Congress, the best Obama and the Democratic Party's corporate lapdogs could come up with was total handover to the insurance industry. If this smells a bit suspicious, it is the sweat of cold fear you are smelling. The insurance companies have always made it clear they have billions to spend in defeating and destroying any elected official not on their side.

As for environmental legislation, under the Obama administration environmentalism is pretty much reduced to "cap and trade." In the truest spirit of capitalism, corporations will be able to sell their pollution for a profit, instead of ending it. And even this legislation barely made it through the House of Representatives. Moreover, environmental legislation has had the snot knocked out of it by the economic crash, and opinion polls now show the American public believes the price is too dear. It should be interesting to see what price their children will be willing to pay for oxygen and water.

Goldstone who?

Just when you think your country has reached the limits of raw shame and the outer banks of rogue internationalism occupied by Korea's Kim Jong-Il and Sudan's Omar al-Bashir, it surprises you with some new and worse outrage. America's latest is right up there with holocaust denial in sheer unmitigated abrasive gall -- putting the kibosh on the UN's Goldstone Report. The report documents Israeli war crimes in the Gaza Ghetto, where 1.5 million Palestinians have been held miserable hostages by Israel. Admittedly, leadership both in Gaza and Israel is nothing short of a pack of criminals. But the Israeli attack on civilians and civilian infrastructure such as hospitals and schools, using illegal munitions such as skin melting white phosphorus, was a war crime by every definition. The UN and the world agree that it meets and exceeds the Nuremberg standard that the US established in order to execute Nazis. But as any American will tell you, the United States has never considered itself part of the rest of the world or in any way obliged to join. So the rest of the world was not surprised when the US House of Representatives voted 344 to 36 to condemn the Goldstone Report. The Obama administration has promised Zionist groups that it will never let the report get to the criminal court. The perps are safe. Zionists everywhere threw their hats in the air and cheered. The AIPAC boys at the back of the room nodded in approval: "Now tell us Congressmen, who's yer daddy?"

I might add at this point that I am not one of those conspiracy freaks who see Zionist plots behind everything. The Zionists are but one of many backstage operators with a death grip on some aspect of U.S. policy. Frankly, of all the greaseballs and thugs muscling US domestic and international policy, I fear the Wall Street and the bankers far more than I fear any Zionist (except maybe that spooky shapeshifting motherfucker, Rahm Emanuel. Brrrr!).

In any case, most Americans have never heard of the attack on Gaza or the Goldstone Report. They were prevented from hearing the outside world's news coverage of the grisly two week long specter. Residing in a free Central American country at the time, I was fortunate (or unfortunate) enough to hear the daily dispatches from inside Gaza, despite Israeli efforts to suppress them. About the only place the Zionist misinformation machinery really worked was in the United States, where it successfully repressed media coverage of Israeli atrocities and genocide. Not that it required great effort. American politicians and media long ago learned, as a client state of Zion, to look the other way. Or if that is not possible, to support one of the prepackaged lies conveniently provided the U.S. media by the Likudnik media management apparatus. "And besides, weren't the Palestinians the fuckers who danced in the streets after 9/11? Screw 'em! We now return to Cable News coverage of last night's America's Got Talent winners, the ZOOperstars!"

The man with the plan

The same day the assault on Gaza began, January 4, 2009, president elect Obama announced he would create or save three or four million jobs during his first two years in office. Ninety percent of them were to be in the private sector, of which about 400,000 would be in building roads, bridges, schools and broadband lines. Another 400,000 were predicted in solar panels, wind turbines, fuel-efficient cars; and one million in healthcare and education. The key term here was "jobs saved." Any job not lost apparently goes in the jobs created column. I'm rather math impaired, but it seems to me that with real unemployment at about twenty percent and rising, and job losses predicted by the administration to continue for at least another year, it's hard to see how the claim can be made. I suppose that as long as three million jobs remain in the US economy, Obama can claim to have saved them. I'd be the first to admit it's all over my head, and a damned good example of why I am not suited for public office. Then too, I never did understand Bill Clinton's surplus either. Political math is done in some fourth dimension anti-space where terrestrial rules do not apply.

One thing I do know is that for every dollar a worker would earn under Obama's plan, a capitalist corporation employing the worker would earn almost two dollars. That Mexican guy balling sod along the new highway's median strip for the contractor may be making eight bucks an hour he wouldn't have otherwise earned. But he is making his employer about $15.50 on the same hour. As a younger man in Colorado I balled sod, hired the Mexicans and passed out the paychecks, so I know. First rule about capitalist math is: The capitalist owner gets to do the math.

So Obama's plan lines more corporate pockets than those of the working man. This being America however, Obama was charged by conservatives with having an anti-capitalist socialist agenda. These businessmen conservatives are more than happy to take the money. But the rule of thumb in America is "Show No Gratitude! Bite the living hell out of any hand that feeds you, on the chance that it may give up more. Maybe even drop everything it is holding so you can grab it up and run while a crowd gathers to stone the alleged socialist."

But the truth is that Obama's jobs would have done nothing to help the economy "recover" anyway. There is no economy left to recover. It moved to China and India. Things such as road projects do not generate capital. Under capitalism roads are worthless unless they make money, and they can do no economic good if there is nothing being manufactured to haul on them.

Likewise education that does not contribute the gross national product (otherwise known as corporate interests) by producing higher wages to exponentially pump up American consumer fetishism is considered worthless. And let's face it, higher education has become, for the most part, another racket. The student is saddled with massive loan debt (again, there is the odor of hyena banker spoor in the air) on the promise of eventual higher wages. Or at least that the graduate will work in a nice warm dry video store and never have to ball sod. Unfortunately, the number of jobs that require "college educated" Americans -- quite an oxymoron, given the caliber of U.S. colleges these days -- is shrinking right along with the Empire. All those jobs middle managing the Republic, such as helping us cheat on our taxes, brainwashing the school kids, and devising sales strategies for beer, grow scarcer by the day. Even book editing and reading medical scans are being outsourced to Asia. There's a nasty rumor that American medical scans are being read in India by trained Buddhist temple monkeys to save rupees. The US healthcare industry has been mum on the subject.

Obama's recovery plan depends on going deeper in hock to the Chinese. For Christ sake, aren't there any of our tax dollars lying around anyplace other than in Wall Street vaults? Apparently not. So the Treasury Department keeps cranking out more funny money to make payments on the pawn ticket for the Empire. Rather like those doddering old Englishmen one meets on estates in rural Kent sporting "The Queen's Own" military ties, we still prefer to think of ourselves as an Empire.

But the Chinese are looking askance, questioning the wisdom of pouring more money down a rat hole, based upon the US Treasury's allegation that the other end of the rat hole comes out somewhere in China and not on Wall Street. Chinese talk shows publicly question American loans, when upcoming powerhouses such as Brazil are so ripe for investment. You can bet that if it's on television in China, the public is being issued an official state sanctioned opinion they may feel free hold as their own.

The big heist

In the end the campaign rattle and prattle about Obama's recovery plan turned out to be moot anyway. Wall Street moved in and heavied up on the whole damned country, in one of the ballsiest heists in American history. It was a stroke of pure genius as theft goes. Following a meeting of the Five Families, Citicorp, Bank of America, Morgan Chase, Wachovia, Taunus Corp., the financial cartels said, "The rip-off is in. We got it all. Now if you don't hand over all the people's savings and assets so we can loan it back to them, the whole flaming ball of shit you call the services and information economy is gonna come down on everybody's asses like a giant meteor. So you can load three trillion bucks for now into the armored cars lined up out front and nobody will get hurt. Or you can watch the national economy shrivel up until the schmucks out there in the cul de sacs and cardboard condos can't even put together cab fare for their ride to the poor house. It's your call Barack."

There are still a few delusional souls out there who believe Obama is trying to do his honest best to fulfill campaign promises, but just cannot get past the pack of vampire financial corporations and cold blooded Republican lizards. Which is true in a sense. He cannot get past the Wall Street pack because he is running in the middle of it. Obama's nefarious relationship with Wall Street's power players has been ongoing for years. It is no accident that Wall Street got to select the members of the president's financial cabinet. My mutton eating friends, it's a sad and sordid tale, one I have neither the space nor the stomach to cover here. Especially since better journalists such as Matt Taibbi and others have written extensively about it in detail.

Last I heard, the banks never un-assed the dough. Never let it circulate in the people's hands or even through business loans. Instead, they declared a profit, divvied it up in bonuses, and congratulated themselves. Indeed, this was the sort of sheer brilliance we have come to expect from the Yale/Harvard MBA crowd. Getting rich by going broke. Then getting even richer by sticking up the US government and the entire American public, and eventually the entire world, leaving 1.5 quadrillion dollar cloud of toxic derivatives girding the world, to hoover up more money for them before imploding like a dark star. And indeed, the derivatives are even astronomical in nature. They represent $180,000 in debt load for every man woman and child on earth (although I cannot understand why, if the money isn't real, why we should consider the debt real). It is impossible to produce our way out of this calamity. There aren't even enough resources left on earth to sustain that scale of production.

For now the financial mobsters have retired to Tuscan villas to savor their haul. The poor schmucks out there in the US heartland are left to devise new ways of hiding the family ride from the repo man. Never once, though, do they doubt capitalism. They figure it is all just a big financial accident. Fate. And that will somehow "work our way out of it," like we always have. These things happen in a dynamic free market economy.

A new mob moves in

To backtrack, that was when the smell of long green flying out of the public -- the insurance industry. Insurance racketeers moved in with their own muscle to fill the void left by the Wall Street gang. The insurance syndicate dispatched its made men and soldiers throughout the halls of Congress, and, voila! They were able to pass the aforementioned $70 billion a year political blackmail job off as "reform legislation." Say what you want to about my country, but pillage and looting have never been so elegantly ritualized, institutionalized and executed.

Realistic people on the left have long known that the last act of American strong-arm capitalism would be a massive gunpoint redistribution of wealth from the public to the owning class through the private financial sector -- which the owning class happens to own. But few would have expected it to be executed under a Democratic majority in both the House and the Senate. Or under a Democratic administration honchoed by the first black president. One liberal blogger wondered aloud, "Imagine what the Republicans would have done had John McCain been elected?"

The same thing, brother. The same thing. Only with a different cover story. Both parties exist at the pleasure of the same crime syndicates.

How to join the rackets

As I remember, it was a Mexican diplomat who once told me that graft, theft and bribery are socialized in his and other Latin American countries -- democratically distributed throughout much of society. But in America, he said, this sort of criminal activity is legislatively institutionalized. Only the elites are allowed to practice usury, theft, insurance blackmail and other forms of non-violent looting (violent looting being reserved for oil bearing Middle Eastern countries). The first step in building one of these rackets is to become a legally recognized interest group, in order to access the key Congressional players you wish to bribe or strong-arm into acquiescence or complicity.

The banking mob, the insurance mob, and other criminally organized legislative muscle men, cartels and commodity syndicates, are all officially sanctioned as "interest groups" operating alongside hundreds of others in that whorehouse by the Potomac River.

To list just a few, there are environmental interest groups such as the Sierra Club, which exists so its officers can draw fat salaries and meet movie star environmentalists. There is an interest group for education, which exists to assure the mediocrity of our public schools. Munitions manufacturers are an interest group. Gambling casinos and tobacco corporations are interest groups. There is an interest group to force feed us corn sugar, in order to sustain Midwestern Republican farmers and ensure the future of the ever expanding weight loss and diabetes industries. There are even lobby groups to protect the interests of syndicates in other countries, such as Israel. There is an interest group for everything except we ordinary American pudwhackers. The folks who just want to raise families in peace, and maybe have modest financial security in old age. And there are thousands of interest groups whose purpose is to make damned sure we never get either one.

We ain't mean, just thrifty

Yesterday I watched a CNN host ask two experts: "Is stepping up the war in Afghanistan really the best use of our tax dollars?" The killing, maiming and displacement of untold thousands is discussed in terms of the best use of capital. A dehumanized and monetized capitalist society sees everything in dollars and cents and return on investment. Even infant mortality is rated that way, though seldom does anyone admit it. Saving a black ghetto baby has a low return on investment, according to some human services analysts, as regards their lifetime contribution to the gross national product. I actually heard an expert on a television panel show say this.

Yet Americans sitting in front of their TV sets do not find this one bit odd. Or even mean spirited, much less an indication of a cruel society. No American thinks of himself or herself as cruel, or connected in any way with the world's largest human and environmental killing machine. No American doubts his inalienable right to drive around or run air conditioning or drink wine from grapes grown in Chile at the expense of a national war on the environment and those of the world's people who have been born amid energy resources. If there are things such as cruelty and injustice, we the people aren't the ones doing it. We the voters and taxpayers are not the CIA snatching people off to Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan to be raped with broken bottles and boiled alive to extract those "terrorist confessions" that keep the war on terror alive. We simply finance such operations.

And accountability? Well, on the very slight chance that someday the world will hold America accountable (which will never happen so long as we possess more armaments that the rest of the world combined and are quite clearly willing to use them toward our own ends) we the people can express our shock and disgust as citizens. We good people would never, never, never have approved of all those awful acts. And besides, there is not much the ordinary person can do about such things anyway. Right?

Maybe not. But it was Americans who so loudly proclaimed that complicity through silence is no defense, when we rubbed the German people's noses in the grisly filth of the concentration camps and hung their national leadership.

The revenge of Smirking George

We haven't heard much from George W. Bush since he packed up his comics and moved to Dallas. But his policies remain like dog piss stains to stink up the Obama White House. Rendition and assassinations continue, as does warrantless spying on the citizenry, along with other civil liberties violations in the name of the "war on terror."

All of these are terrible things for a president who ran on reform and change to continue to do. But it is the thing Barack Obama and his party did not do, the thing they did not insist upon, that will have the greatest ongoing effect on this country. Obama and the Democrats refused to prosecute Bush and Cheney, ensuring that:

1 -- No quail hunter is Georgia will ever be safe as long as Cheney's pacemaker still functions;

2 -- The precedents set by the most criminal administration in US history remain. Until they are confronted and rectified, America will not to have the opportunity to heal and recover. Honestly speaking though, the patient has been dead since the 2000 election fraud went unchallenged.

Obama's election was the only chance America had to hold the Bush Republicans accountable for their crimes. Now it's gone.

Opportunities to exercise moral principles as a nation and a people are rare to begin with, and fast vanishing. At some point they will be extinguished by the exigencies of human species survival. It doesn't take a prophet to know this. Anyone paying attention to planetary population, resource depletion and the eco-collapse understands it in the gut. The mounting worldwide competition for human survival will not allow for much high mindedness. So we should exercise principle and administration of justice while principle and justice are still possible.

There are endless rationalizations proffered as to why Obama has not come within a mile of fulfilling the promise and potential of his presidency, and the Democratic Party is writing more of them every day. Disappointed Democratic voters grab at them, and desperately defend each one on internet forums and in letters to the editor. But we must use our own personal capabilities as free rational human beings to assess Obama, and decide why he is failing. Or not failing. To hell with highly crafted official explanations about "wars of necessity" and trillion dollar blackmail payments.

George W. Bush left office wearing the same smirk he came in with. Perhaps it's congenital. But if Bush was smirking when he left office, he must now be convulsed in crazed hysterical laughter. His gang not only got away clean, but Obama carries on the dark Bush-Cheney legacy. And, almost as if to top the whole black escapade with a cherry of irony, the most inarticulate president in American history is now on the motivational speaking circuit at $200,000 a pop. Never let it be said that the Devil does not care for his own.

Will Americans ever rise up in defense of their own common well being through such things as education, health and a productive peace caring society? Nope. Because it has been seen to that socialism -- the administration of the nation solely for the common good and benefit of all the people without preference or privilege -- doesn't stand a chance in America. For over a century those who have attempted to further socialism have been shot, hanged, burned alive in their beds on Christmas Eve, imprisoned, falsely accused of crimes and falsely convicted, and demonized by the capitalist elites of the corporate state. The cause of socialism has effectively been wiped out in the US. Few Americans can even define the word. Most think it is a political system when it is a social philosophy. Hell, half the socialists these days think it is entirely a political system.

But even if Americans understood socialism, they are too terrified to ever admit to its virtues, much less publicly support the cause. And without free and open public participation in some democratic form of socialism, regardless of the name or label given it, there can be no recognition of the people's common welfare and good. And so the most egalitarian social philosophy ever conceived dies within a nation, with very little chance of being reborn because such an ideal, by its definition, cannot exist within the narrow mindset of bankers and oligarchs.

Bush smirks, Obama breakdances in and around the minefield of his false promises, and Wall Street CEO bonuses are higher than ever.

Like I said, the Devil does take care of his own.

The "Historical" Buddha?

http://stellarhousepublishing.com/historical-buddha.html

The "Historical" Buddha?
Adapted from Suns of God: Krishna, Buddha and Christ Unveiled
by Acharya S/D.M. Murdock

"The Buddhists of different parts of the East differ widely in their chronology. The Northern Division of the faith place the birth of Buddha in 1030 B.C., the Southern fix his death in 543 B.C., a discrepancy of five centuries. Other accounts reveal disagreements of still further magnitude. Upon this absence of even an approach to chronological accuracy, Professor Wilson has broached the idea that probably the existence of Buddha is a myth. 'There are various considerations which throw suspicion upon the narrative and render it very problematical whether any such person as Sakiya Sinha, or Sakiya Muni, or Sramana Gautama ever actually existed.'"

Rev. Simpson, Moor's Hindu Pantheon

There is much confusion as to the identity of "the Buddha," the main figure of the Eastern religion of Buddhism. First of all, there are different forms of Buddhism, including the two main branches of Theravada and Mahayana, in the latter of which we find the familiar Zen and Tibetan traditions, among others. Secondly, as we shall see in this excerpt from my book Suns of God: Krishna, Buddha and Christ Unveiled, there have also been many different Buddhas, including the figure also known as Siddhartha Gautama and Sakyamuni, who is frequently considered a "historical" personage. In this excerpt I provide many reasons to doubt the tradition of historicity for "the Buddha." Indeed, all factors combined, the evidence points to Buddha as a mythical, not historical, figure.

(In Suns of God and this adaptation, I relate the fascinating debate among scholars over the past several centuries concerning the nature and dating of "the Buddha." For a more updated discussion, please refer to my forthcoming work The Christ Myth Anthology.)

Who is "the Buddha?"

As the Hindu god Krishna was said to be an avatar of the solar deity Vishnu, so too was Buddha, who, according to common belief, was the founder of Buddhism in the 6th century BCE. However, the tradition represented by "Buddhism" is in fact much older than the period attributed to "the Buddha," or Gautama, as there have been several sects of Buddhism, some dating back hundreds if not thousands of years before the "historical" Buddha. A number of researchers and scholars have evinced that what is termed "Buddhism," i.e., asceticism, is found around the globe, thousands of years prior to the common era. Some Buddhists themselves have maintained that their religion goes back 15,000 or more years, and the Buddhistic Jains of India claim to possess the oldest religion in the world. As Sir William Jones says, "The Buddhists insist that the religion of Buddha existed from the beginning."

In actuality, Buddha's "name" is a title that does not represent a single individual, and there were, according to Buddhist tradition, countless Buddhas prior to the purported advent of Gautama, he himself having myriad previous incarnations. Because of this fact of plurality, it is impossible and virtually pointless to attempt to create a "biography" of a "real person" named Buddha. Even the godman's title itself changes from country to country, era to era and writer to writer. As Doane observes:

"It is said that there have been several Buddhas… We speak of Gautama. Buddha is variously pronounced and expressed Boudh, Bod, Bot, But, Bud, Badd, Buddou, Bouttu, Bota, Budso, Pot, Pout, Pots, Poti and Pouti. The Siamese make the final t or d quiescent, and sound the word Po; whence the Chinese still further vary it to Pho or Fo. Buddha - which means awakened or enlightened…is the proper way in which to spell the name."

In discussing "the same god, who reigns under different names in the nations of the East," Count Volney remarks:

"The Chinese adore him in Fot, the Japanese in Budso, the Ceylonese in Bedhou, the people of Laos in Chekia, of Pegu in Phta, of Siam in Sommona-Kodom, of Thibet in Budd and in La."

In his studies of Buddhism, published in the 1850's in a number of books, including A Manual of Budhism, the pious Christian R. Spence Hardy used some 465 texts from Ceylon/Sri Lanka, in the original Sanskrit, Pali, et al. These texts were collected during Hardy's many years as a missionary in Sri Lanka, much of which time was spent with "Sramana priests," Sramana being a title for Buddha that means "tamer of the senses." Sramana also refers to priests who perform "hard penances" and are not allowed to speak falsehoods. In any event, as concerns "Buddha," Hardy, a respected authority on the subject, relates:

"The name of the founder of Budhism has been spelled by European authors in the following modes, and probably in many others that have not come under my notice: Fo, Fod, Foe, Fohe, Fohi, Fho, Fuh, Futh, Pot, Pott, Poot, Poota, Pootah, Poth, Poti, Pout, Phuta, Wud, Bod, Bot, Bud, But, Buth, Budh, Buddh, Bood, Boodh, Boudh, Bhood, Baoth, Bauth, Budo, Buto, Budud, Booda, Bodda, Budda, Butta, Budha, Buddha, Budhu, Buddhu, Budho, Buddho, Buddow, Bodhow, Budhoo, Budso, Budha, Boudha, Boudhu, Boudhoo, Bouddha, Bouddhu, Boutta, and Bouddho."

These copious variants are not only transliterations limited to Western writers; indeed, not a few of them are the result of the culture in which the ideology was developed. Moreover, as we shall see, this "founder" of which Hardy speaks is not a person at all but a mishmash of myths and sayings that go back centuries and millennia prior to the alleged advent of "the Buddha," i.e., Siddhartha, Gautama, Sakyamuni or other name.

Hardy's Manual is a comprehensive look at the profuse Buddha legends, which include stories of many "Buddhas" and "Bodhisattvas." As stated, some of these Buddhas represent previous lives of "the Buddha" as well. The many stories related by Hardy are abundant in fantasy and magic, and, although there may be the sayings and exploits of "real people" intertwined in them, they cannot serve as "biographies" of "historical" individuals. Concerning these various tales, Hardy states:

"The attentive reader will observe numerous discrepancies. These occur, in some instances, between one author and another; and in others between one statement and another of the same author."

In his exhaustive research, Hardy says he was unable to find "any eastern work that is exclusively confined to the biography of Gotama [Gautama], or that professes to present it in its completeness."

In his chapter attempting to trace the ancestry of "the Buddha," regarding the numerous legends he encountered Hardy remarks:

"Several of the names, and some of the events, are met with in the Puranas of the Brahmans, but it is not possible to reconcile one order of statement with the other; and it would appear that the Budhist historians have introduced races, and invented names, that they may invest their venerated sage with all the honors of heraldry, in addition to the attributes of divinity."

Hardy also states that his sources are Tibetan, Nepalese, Chinese, Indian, Burmese, Siamese and Sri Lankan (Ceylonese), of which the sacred books of Burma, Siam and Ceylon are "identically the same." Nevertheless, he continues:

"The ancient literature of the Budhists, in all the regions where this system is professed, appears to have had its origin in one common source; but in the observances of the present day there is less uniformity; and many of the customs now followed, and of the doctrines now taught, would be regarded by the earlier professors as perilous innovations."

In reality, there have been identified at least 60 "translations, versions, or paraphrases" of Buddha's life. Hence, his "life" has changed from era to era and place to place.

The Dating of Buddha

As was the case with Krishna, the era in which "the Buddha" was supposedly born has been variously placed. While it is currently held that "the Buddha" or Gautama lived in the 6th century BCE, other writers, including eastern ones, have placed it in a number of different eras: "Professor Wilson…quotes no less than eleven authorities, every one of which establishes the era of Budha more than 1000 years B.C., and five other authorities make it above 800 years B.C."

Moreover, in Asiatic Researches Jones relates that the Arab traveler Abul Fazel placed Buddha "in the 1366th year before that of our Saviour," while the Chinese put the birth of Buddha, or Fo, the "son of Maya," in 1036 or 1027 BCE. The Catholic missionary Georgius/Giorgi reported that the Tibetans claimed Buddha's birth occurred in the year 959 BCE. Basing his estimations on the Chronology of the Hindus, Jones himself set the birth of Buddha, "or the ninth great avatar of Vishnu," in 1014 BCE, while Krishna, the "Indian Apollo," he established more than 1200 years before the common era.

As concerns Buddha's death, the Ceylonese/Singhalese or Sri Lankan account puts it at 543 BCE, while the chronology of the Greeks, based on the king "Sandracyptus," "Sandracottos" or "Chandragupta," places it at 477 BCE. According to Inman, the date of Buddha's death or nirvana in Chinese accounts is circa 770 BCE.

As Prof. Wilson discerned, the lack of consensus bespeaks the mythical and unhistorical nature of "the Buddha." Recounting Wilson's arguments, Rev. Simpson gives other reasons to suspect that Buddha is mythical:

"The tribe of Sakiya, from which the sage sprung is not mentioned in Hindu writings as a distinct people. The names introduced into the narrative are all symbolical. Buddha's father was Suddhodana; 'he whose food is pure.' His mother's name is Maya or Mayadevi, 'illusion, divine delusion;' as a prince, he was called Siddhartha, 'he, by whom the end is accomplished' and 'Buddha' signifies 'he, by whom all is known.'"

Simpson also explains at least some of these dating discrepancies as a "back-reckoning" from a particular historical event of the various nations into which Buddhism spread.

As demonstrated, neither the story itself nor the sixth century date for the life of Buddha is conclusive, and we are left with a lack of historicity in the tale. It must be emphasized that, when discussing the legends of ancient gods, godmen and heroes, we are generally dealing with myths that change constantly in order to incorporate new information, adapt to a specific era, or reflect a particular culture. It should also be kept in mind that information is suppressed and expunged, for a variety of reasons and agendas.

It is obvious that the "biography" of Buddhism's alleged founder is not set in stone, and that following the ancient path of the religion's development is difficult. In light of such information, one can readily understand how Western scholars would "identify Buddha with a variety of personages, imaginary or real."

The Many Buddhas

To reiterate, despite the hundreds of Buddhist texts he studied, Hardy himself admits the difficulty in discovering reliable information and sorting it all out:

"We have little information of the innumerable Budhas who have appeared in the past ages, until we come to the twenty-four who immediately preceded Gotama; and even their history consists of little more than names and correlative incidents….

"'…There is a verse in the Aparanita Dharani…purporting that 'the Budhas who have been, are, and will be, more numerous than the grains of sand on the banks of the Ganges.'… These are evident nonentities, in regard to chronology and history, yet it is often difficult to distinguish them from their more substantial compeers.'"

The 24 Buddhas are the same as the "Teerthankaras" of Jainism, another Indian faith that is essentially the same as Buddhism but is considered by its adherents to be the oldest religion in the world.

In addition to these 24, in long ages outlined in Buddhists texts are said to have appeared some 387,000 Buddhas. Several of these Buddhas are depicted as living tens to hundreds of thousands of years. We are also told that during the long epochs after the pre-existent Gautama "wished to become a Buddha, 125,000 Buddhas appeared; and during this period he was born many hundreds of times, either as a dewa [deva] or as a man." (A deva is "a divinity," i.e., a divine being or an "angel.") Concerning these many lives of "the Buddha," Hardy says:

"A great part of the respect paid to Gotama Budha arises from the supposition that he voluntarily endured, throughout myriad of ages, and in numberless births, the most severe deprivations and afflictions, that he might thereby gain the power to free sentient beings from the misery to which they are exposed under every possible form of existence."

Simpson puts a number to these "numberless births":

"Sakiya [Buddha] is supposed to have had a prior existence of indefinite length, during which he assumed five hundred and fifty births."

Concerning the Chinese version of Buddha, Fo, Bell enumerates his lives at 8,000:

"FO, or FOE, an idol of the Chinese: he was originally worshipped in the Indies… His disciples after his death published a great number of fables concerning him, and easily persuaded the people that Fo had been born eight thousand times; that his soul had successively passed through several different animals…"

Some of these numerous lives of Buddha are as follows:

"An ascetic 83 times; a monarch 58; the deva of a tree 43; a religious teacher 26; a courtier 24; a prohita brahman 24; a prince 24; a nobleman 23; a learned man 22; the deva Sekra 20; an ape 18; a merchant 13; a man of wealth 12; a deer 10; a lion 10; the bird hansa 8; a snipe 6; an elephant 6; a fowl 5; a slave 5; a golden eagle 5; a horse 4; a bull 4; the brahma Maha Brahma 4; a peacock 4; a serpent 4; a potter 3; an outcaste 3; a guana 3; twice each a fish, an elephant driver, a rat, a jackal, a crow, a woodpecker, a thief, and a pig; and once each a dog, a curer of snake-bites, a gambler, a mason, a smith, a devil dancer, a scholar, a silversmith, a carpenter, a water-fowl, a frog, a hare, a cock, a kite, a jungle-fowl, and a kindura."

Considering this overwhelming and bizarre list, it cannot be possible to write a "biography" of a "real person." As stated by Buddhist and Sanskrit scholar Dr. Christian Lindtner:

"In my paper on Buddhist Bhagavatism I show that even in early Pâli sources there is a clear concept of the double nature of a Bhagavat (nominative: Bhagavân). Already in the earliest sources the same person is man and god (descending from Brahmaloka) at the same time. He has conversations with Indra, Brahma etc. He can fly, make himself invisible etc. He can also descend to Naraka ("Hell"), just as he can go to heaven. This is clearly a mythical figure. And the Pâli texts also list our Buddha (Siddhârtha) as # 7 in a row.

"So, how can [anyone] deny that the Buddha is a mythical being?'

The Mythical Buddha

In studying the various texts, the divine, supernatural nature of Buddhism and the Buddhas becomes evident. Nevertheless, amid all the wild and miraculous tales concerning the countless Buddhas and assorted incarnations, an "orthodox" life of "the Buddha" has been created.

To begin with, Buddha's conception is portrayed as coming to his mother, Maya, in a dream, like the conflicting gospel tales of Joseph's dream or the angel appearing to Mary. Maya is represented as telling her husband, the king, about the dream "in the morning"; yet, the conception was said to have been accompanied by "32 great wonders," including the trembling of "100,000 sakwalas" ("solar systems") and the roaring of bulls and buffaloes, which surely would have woken up not only the king but also the entire town! In addition, Maya's pregnancy was attended by 40,000 devas keeping guard. She was "transparent," and the child could be seen in her womb. Certainly, these events - which historicizers would place only six centuries before the common era, when historians and travelers were abundant enough to have noticed - are not "historical" but mythical.

Buddha's birth is further depicted thus:

"During the period of pregnancy Maya was carefully guarded by 40,000 deities, while numberless divine personages stood watch over the royal palace and the royal city. As her time drew near its close, she wished to visit her parents in the city of Koli. The road was levelled; trees were planted; all the luxuries required for an eastern journey were provided, a cushioned litter of gold was her conveyance, and a thousand nobles were her bearers. Attended by a host of followers, she came to a garden of sal trees in bloom. She rested awhile to enjoy the fragrance of the flowers and the songs of the birds, she raised her hand to catch a bough of a tree; it bent of its own will; and without pain, or pollution, Buddha was born. Maha Brahma received the child in a golden net; from him, the guardian deities and nobles who wrapped it in folds of the finest and softest cloth. But Buddha was independent of their aid and leapt on the ground and where he touched it, a lotus bloomed. He looked to the four points and the four half points, above and below, and saw all deities and men acknowledge his supremacy. He stepped seven steps northward and a lotus marked each foot fall. He exclaimed, 'I am the most exalted in the world; I am chief in the world; I am the most excellent in the world, hereafter there is to me no other birth.'"

This story is beautiful and magical, but it cannot be considered as biography. If it were "history," and if Buddha were a "real person," the author of such miracles and divine wonders, we would be compelled to pronounce him "God of gods," because his bio is much more impressive than that of Christ. However, it is obvious we are not dealing with the biography of any historical human being. And these fabulous tales are just a few of the many regarding "the Buddha," Bodhisat, etc., in his numerous incarnations.

As another example, in one story Buddha is depicted as pre-existing in the mystical land of Tusita, where he "had a crown four miles high." In this fable, he also possessed "sixty wagon-loads of gems and jewels, all other kinds of treasures and a kela of [numberless] beautiful attendants."

Once he finally took incarnation, as an infant Buddha was brought by wise men to the temple, amid a tremendous precession graced by music, showered by flowers and attended by 100,000 deities who pulled the Divine Child's cart. The arrival at the temple was announced by an earthquake, as well as the flower-shower, and the temple idols representing gods came alive and welcomed the latest avatar.

As he grew older, Prince Siddhartha, who would become Buddha, had 40,000 queens, princesses, "dancing women" or "inferior wives" with him in his palace. This motif could hardly be an historical fact, and the number is identical to the amount of deities attending his birth. Moreover, when Siddhartha, rejecting the temptation of the Prince of Darkness, left his native city, he was preceded by 60,000 devas holding "torches of jewels."

In testing whether or not he would become Buddha, the prince threw his hair into the air, saying, "If I am to become Buddha, my hair will remain in the sky…" The hair not only stayed airborne but also attained a height of 16 miles!

During a reception of Buddha by his royal father in his hometown, the other Sakya princes were instructed to worship him, which they were reluctant to do. Having read their thoughts, Buddha contrived to convince them:

"Accordingly, he rose up from the throne, ascended into the air, and in their presence sent forth the six-coloured rays, and caused a stream of fire to proceed from his shoulders, ears, nostrils, eyes, hands, and feet, from the 99 joints and the 99,000 pores of his body; and this was followed by the issuing forth of a stream of water from the same places."

In addition, while visiting the island of Ceylon, Gautama fought in the air with demons, appearing to them as the moon, and creating pillars of fire, after which an island approached the demons, who took refuge upon it.

In another example of the fabulous "life of Buddha," one of the sage's followers, a woman named Yasodhara-devi, who had attained to the status of rahat ("one entirely free from evil desire"), was depicted as follows:

"She…related the history of her former births, then rose into the air and worshipped Budha; in this manner she rose and descended many times; and performed many other wonders, in the presence of men, devas and brahmas."

Again, if these fantastic events are to be considered the biography of a real person, we can only conclude that Buddha is a much more powerful figure than Christ! Furthermore, anyone trying to make a modern biography from this impossible mishmash, which includes talking animals and copious other miracles, would be spinning (dharma) wheels endlessly.

Buddha's Body

The physical description of Buddha is no less fantastic and likewise impossible as "biography." He is depicted as having feet like golden sandals, with chakras (wheels) in the center of the soles. His palms and soles were as soft as "cotton dipped in oil" and "appeared like richly ornamented windows." He possessed antelope-like legs and long, straight arms that reached to his knees. "His secret parts were concealed, as the pedicle of the flower is hid by the pollen," and his body was impervious to dirt and dust. Buddha also had magical hair and nerves, as well as perfectly sized and white-colored teeth, which looked like a "row of diamonds" and which "shone like the stars of a constellation." He had a neck "like a golden drum" and the strength of a lion, etc. Obviously, this description reflects a very strange-looking "person."

Also, whereas Buddha is said to have had red hair, in ancient statuary Buddhas are depicted as negroid in feature. As Jones says:

"…the ancient Hindus, according to Strabo, differed in nothing from the Africans, but in the straitness and smoothness of their hair, while that of the others was crisp and wooly; a difference proceeding chiefly, if not entirely, from their respective humidity or dryness of their atmospheres; hence the people who received the first light of the rising sun, according to the limited knowledge of the ancients, are said by Apuleius to be the Arü and Ethiopians, by which he clearly meant certain nations of India; where we frequently see figures of Buddha with curled hair apparently designed for a representation of it in its natural state."

Moor also relates that certain statues of Buddha "exhibit thick Ethiopian lips" and "wooly hair."

In reality, Buddha's bizarre, amorphous appearance further demonstrates that his story is myth. Again, the understanding of myth is both important and entertaining, not to be dismissed as mere, worthless fabrication. Without creative and imaginative myth, human beings would be far less colorful and rich. It is only when the esoteric meaning of the myth is lost, and the myth becomes misapprehended as "historical fact," that it becomes insidious and harmful.

For more information, including relevant citations, see my book Suns of God: Krishna, Buddha and Christ Unveiled, as well as my forthcoming work The Christ Myth Anthology.

Tyler Durden Goes to China...

Thanks to Richard Metzger and DangerousMinds.net for the following...

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/2760619/Mouse-toy-recalled-over-claims-it-sings-paedophile.html

Mouse toy in ‘paedo’ song ban
07 Dec 2009

A TOY mouse supposed to sing "Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells" has been recalled amid claims it warbles "paedophile, paedophile".

The 4ins festive novelty, with Santa hat and a cheesy grin, has left parents stunned.

One mum said: "When I squeezed its tummy I couldn't believe my ears. I recognised the tune, but the words were certainly not traditional. Luckily my children are too young to understand."

The £2.99 Chinese-made novelty is sold in smaller shops and on market stalls. Distributors Humatt, of Ferndown, Dorset, said the man providing the voice could not pronounce certain sounds. His singing was then speeded up to make it higher-pitched - distorting the result further.

A spokesman insisted: "We've slowed the song down and it definitely says Jingle Bells. But we have recalled them now just in case anybody might take offence."

To hear it sing:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixABzUY9WUc

A Nation of Gamers Feels Your Pain, Andy Murray

Robalini's Note: While it's tragic that Andy Murray lost his girlfriend over his videogame addiction, you at least have to admire a guy with his priorities. After all, even Jessica Alba would get boring after a couple hours. But Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 never gets dull...

http://www.sportingnews.com/blog/firstcuts/entry/view/45900/a_nation_of_gamers_feels_your_pain,_andy_murray

A Nation of Gamers Feels Your Pain, Andy Murray
Tuesday, December 01, 2009
Chris Littmann

Speaking as a man about town who spent probably six-to-eight hours on Sunday playing Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2's campaign mode, the following story comes as no surprise. Tennis star Andy Murray has split with girlfriend Kim Sears. No, there is no traffic accident, golf club or mistress involved here. He was spending too much time on his PlayStation 3 playing Modern Warfare 2.

Brad Gilbert, Murray’s former coach, has said in the past that Murray spends “seven hours a day” playing video games.

The source told The Sun: “He would spend all his time glued to them. In the end she just got fed up with it. She wanted more out of the relationship.”

However, the player’s agent told the paper that Murray “doesn’t play computer games any more than any other 22 year-old”.

Don't be so judgmental, Kim Sears. COD: MW2 is an immersive game and it's easy to lose track of time. Plus, if you don't stay sharp, that 14-year-old across the street will just keep picking you off with his sniper rifle AND I WILL NOT LOSE TO HIM AGAIN!

Dave Eggers, newspaper publisher?

http://www.latimes.com/features/books/la-et-panorama8-2009dec08,0,3360848.story

Dave Eggers, newspaper publisher?
The novelist's grand print experiment -- $16 a copy -- hits S.F. streets and beyond this week. It's a one-shot deal, but he hopes it will remind people of the form's potential and viability.
By David Ulin
December 8, 2009

Reporting from San Francisco - Dave Eggers doesn't look like a newspaper baron. At 39, wearing a baseball cap and hiking boots, the author -- whose most recent project is the screenplay for "Where the Wild Things Are" -- appears more an older brother to the interns who work feverishly in the Mission District offices of McSweeney's, the independent publisher Eggers founded with the proceeds from his bestselling 2000 memoir, "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius."

In addition to books and a monthly magazine, McSweeney's publishes a literary journal, McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, the new issue of which is set to appear here today in a form that confounds every trend in publishing: a 300-plus-page Sunday-style broadsheet newspaper called the San Francisco Panorama, with which Eggers and company mean to celebrate the glory of the form. Featuring news and sports as well as stand-alone food and arts sections, a magazine and a 96-page pullout Book Review, the Panorama is both homage and conversation starter.

"We don't pretend to have the solutions," Eggers says. "We're just asking a few questions. We admit how little we know, but we're trying to luxuriate in print and maybe remind people of everything it can do."

McSweeney's' projects are marked by an intention to break boundaries, and nowhere is this more true than with the quarterly. A 2005 issue was published as a bundle of mail, and other issues have come in a variety of shapes and styles.

The Panorama will be big, its pages 15 by 22 inches, and lavishly laid out, with attention to color and graphics. A two-page spread in the food section illustrates how to make bruschetta, beginning with the butchering of a lamb. The sports section features a gallery of drawings from the World Series, laid out to resemble something from a newspaper of 80 years ago.

The writing represents contemporary literary journalism at its best. Stephen King -- a Red Sox fan who views the New York Yankees with what he describes as "fear and loathing" -- reports from Baseball City, where the World Series takes place in Bloat Stadium, at the intersection of Greed Avenue and Stupid Street. Novelist Andrew Sean Greer goes to Michigan to experience NASCAR firsthand.

"Our hope," Eggers notes, "is that readers will say, 'I forgot all these things that newsprint can do.' I think it's life-affirming when you say, 'Let's just write it at the length it needs to be and not keep shrinking everything.' "

Of course, it's easy to make such an argument when you're not dealing with the issues facing the commercial press. "In 2005," says Alan D. Mutter, who writes the blog Reflections of Newsosaur, "newspapers racked up a record $49 billion in ad sales. This year, they'll be lucky if they can get $28 billion."

Eggers understands these challenges. "All our friends at dailies," he says, "can't experiment the way we can because we don't have anyone to answer to." The Panorama will come out once, with a cover price of $16 in an edition of about 25,000. Although there is a plan to sell the paper on the streets in San Francisco today, national distribution will take place Wednesday via the Internet and bookstores (including Book Soup and Skylight Books in Los Angeles).

Of course, there's more to the project than simply a demonstration of what newspapers once could do. This too is typical McSweeney's. Indeed, the imprint has become a brand, the apotheosis of writerly hip in a world where cachet for literature is sorely lacking. In addition to its publishing efforts, the press works closely with 826 National, a nonprofit literacy organization for kids 6 to 18 that Eggers established in 2002. What connects these endeavors is a sense that writing and publishing should be ambitious.

Among the centerpieces of the Panorama is an investigative piece by two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Bob Porterfield, looking into cost overruns in the renovation of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge. It's an effort undertaken in conjunction with SF Public Press, a nonprofit Web-based start-up that is looking to fill gaps in local news coverage that have arisen with the contraction of the mainstream press.

Although the San Francisco Chronicle bills itself as "Northern California's largest newspaper," circulation is in decline and staff has been cut; the San Francisco Examiner, meanwhile, is now a free tabloid, distributed six days a week.

"The Panorama is a perfect partner," says Michael Stoll, a former reporter and editor at the Examiner and Philadelphia Inquirer who is now the Public Press' project director and has been a key liaison on the Bay Bridge piece. "They share the same love of the medium but haven't joined the stampede that has given up print for dead."

The Porterfield investigation will encompass more than 10,000 words and half a dozen graphic elements, split between a main piece and several sidebars. It's the kind of thing, Eggers notes, that is hard to do online. This, in turn, suggests a multi-platform approach, in which Twitter or Web updates are used for breaking news and print becomes an outlet for analysis and commentary. "The only thing that doesn't work," Stoll says, "is a single-media strategy."

The McSweeney's effort taps into a larger conversation about the future of long-form journalism in a world where traditional venues are in flux. Last month, the Virginia Quarterly Review, another literary journal, used its website to post an 18,000-word piece in four installments about last year's terrorist attacks in Mumbai. "That's one way of experimenting," says Robert Boynton, director of literary reporting at NYU's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute.

"People constantly underestimate the reading appetite of the American public," Boynton adds, "But there's as big an interest in long-form journalism today as there has ever been, and as we experiment with different delivery systems it will only grow."

That's an optimistic assessment, but it's one Eggers shares. "All of the interns pay for magazines," he says. "They'll read the New Yorker, or they'll read Mother Jones. They'll pay for that, but a lot of them weren't paying for the newspaper anymore. So we started thinking, what if you offered the same sort of depth, analysis, literary value that you get in a magazine? When people sit down, they want to have an experience, and if you surprise them on every page, curate it in such a way that it's constantly surprising and constantly delighting, I think you could keep them."

david.ulin@latimes.com

The Winter 2009 Issue of h+ Magazine

http://www.hplusmagazine.com/magazine

The Winter 2009 Issue of h+ Magazine features The Ray Kurzweil Interview, CAPRICA: Birth of the Cylons, DIY Transhumanism, The Chinese Singularity, and more.

Fall 2009 print edition available on sale!