#236 SCOTUS Upholds Obamacare [update 6/30]

The Blogman got misty. But Frogman  the Gremlinesque appeared PLUNK and began  borboryglating about no Public Option ...  Big Med/Pharma  still in control ... millions UNcovered till 2014 ... Medicaid sorely wounded ... ending gravellyly with:"Still ain't no Universal froggin' HealthCare!"

Another PLUNK of his TWANGER  and it was good riddance to Froggy on this joyous day--Caloo! Calay! to beamish people everywhere today! The Jabberwock is dead. Who didst wield the Vorpal Sword of Justice? ... 'T'was Sir John of Roberts at the Court of Supreme.
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Though spectacularly ignored by Republicans time and time again, let's all be aware of an obvious Truth--

Progress => Future => History and conservative/reactionary creatures are always on the wrong side of history. Sentient human being Chief Justice John Roberts was aware, despite his public persona, and that's  why he swooshed the Court into the future ... and made history for himself.

Fuggedabout  the casuistry of his "majority" opinion--he's got his ass covered there--John Roberts was thinking history. And of the legacy of a Court forever named after him.
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#235 The Libertarian-Socialist Party [in progress]

Speaking of the Fifth Dimension, TMZ reports that a new political party is being formed by exasperated Dems and GOPers, and joined by disaffected defectors from both the Green Party and the old Greenback Party (here).

Its proud Mascot is none other than Froggy the Gremlin, for obvious reasons. He has a green back. And even better, he's green just about all over, as the Green Party hopes to be These latter folk are environmentalists too, and he would represent not only the order Anura.that is most notoriously disappearing rapidly in the wild, but stand for all endangered species.

As a quasi-life form, Froggy;s soft-plastic head and mouth can be manipulated to utter in a gravelly voice the Party's official rallying cry "Hiya, kids, Hiya!" and the Party's slogan "I will, I will, I will!"-- ventriloquisticly. (Just as it was done in low-tech close-up on the Smilin' Ed's Gang TV show.) As a bonus, the word frog descends from the Proto-Indo-European root *Vro-, meaning to "jump" or "hop"--just as these ideologue defectors to a new party are doing.. Moreover, the Anurae are amphibious--able to live (-bious) in two (amphi-) worlds at once. Like maybe Libertarianism and Socialism.

The ensign or banner for the party is, no surprise, the good ol' Greenback ... blown up to appropriate size. But here the founding fathers of the new party, in their contrarian and alethristic wisdom, chose a legal-tender THREE DOLLAR BILL in black on brown ... a Brownback, if you will (despite it's cringe-worthy association with a certain deranged state Governor) ... dating from, apropos of the movement, Revolutionary times--

A pretty thing. It's a 1776 "Continental" from back in the day and following when paper currency was au courant, so to speak, printed by whatever Government and any old bank or corporate entity that wanted to--you had to trust 'em it was good. Monetary policy, paper-wise,  was not monopolistic, nor boullion-based (my frenchy-frog favorite), though silver and gold WERE minted and always of course face-value trustworthy. No stinkin' gold or silver STANDARD yet (or Federal Reserve) behind what was later called "specie." This suited the original Greenback Party just fine through its beginnings during the Civil War and after ... up to its official founding in and around the economic recessional periods of the 1870s and 1880s. Keep the money flowing, the Greenbackers said ... keep it "current"--as "currency" logically entails. They were proleptic Keynesians without knowing it ... and as I see it.

Their party platform ******

{to be revisited}

#234 Blog Hard or Die II--Back from the Fifth Dimension

"The more things change,, the more they stay the same."--translated from the old French adage leading off my #232 on "collateral damage"--i.e. slaughter of the innocents-- from the skies. When will we learn? When will we stop?  Scroll down to my last post of 2010 and you see there's hardly a gap. The "meme chose" of civilian casualties in the Middle-East murder zones goes on ,,, and on. Did I hear in a daze someone say something about ... ten more years?

I promised a return at summer solstice. Well, the sun "stood still" this last Wednesday ... and POOF the Daily Mosteller (perforce with Weekly added) is back, along with its evil culture-grubbing twin, Mosteller Musings. Only a year late--a year pretty much wasted on health issues that I'm still getting over ... and as a result: medical-bill-issues that I may NEVER get over (see "headline"  #2 below).

Would that the big lacuna in my bloggery were a kind of  Rip Van Winkle experience for me ... and life on this planet as we know it.. After a couple of years of  peaceful sleep, hey, we wake up--or "plunked" back to reality with Froggy the Gremlin's magic twanger if you will--to a world  where the current-event headlines we read are less like the gruesome realities of my re-inaugural DMW #232 ... and more like the following:

US Involvement in Middle-Eastern Wars Over Troops and treasure home after 5000 deaths and thousands more injured and maimed for life ... trillions of dollars wasted ... leaving behind insurgent and civilian deaths in the hundreds of thousands ... OR

Health Care Reform Affirmed  Full coverage now for 30 million uninsured ,,, children with pre-existing conditions, college-age young people, the elderly, and all other Americans now covered only at the whim of  their employers ...OR

Economy Back On Track Under President's Jobs Bill millions of workers building,/repairing roads and bridges and schools (oh my) ...  workers getting fair minimum wage ,,, women's paychecks equal to men's for equal work  ... police, firefighters, teachers back on the job with federal subsidies ... unemployment down ... OR

Civil Liberties Assured Congress and the Courts end discrimination against all ethnic groups, esp "illegals" ,,,  other marginalized citizens including gays and WOMEN, esp the latter's reproductive rights ... OR

Social Justice For All "Safety-net" intact for the unemployed, elderly, poor, infirm, disabled ... Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security secure and strengthened ... OR

US  Congress Non-Partisan Accord Law-making bodies across the country ... federal and state legislatures ... passing non-partisan laws in cooperation with their Chief Executive ... White House, Capital Hill, Supreme Court put aside party politics and agree to  legislation promoting General Welfare of country as mandated by Constitution  .. OR.

Obama Overwhelming Choice for Re-Election A polling majority of Americans cite the President's  outstanding record (see "Long List ... with Citations" here)  ... taking into account the fact that he inherited a nation laid waste by over a decade of Republican malfeasance at home and abroad  ... electorate prefers current occupant of WH to what some refer to as an "empty vessel" and a "gaseous state" ... OR

Republicans Revealed: Sane, Smart, Caring Human Beings  ... BUT

Nooooo: None of  the Above ... quite. Lots to talk about, In fact, it's almost like I never left. If anything, 2012 seems eerily deja vu 2008, when this blog was launched, and when you interpret the underlying issues in the quasi-fake headlines above. Anyway, POOF the DMW magically returns to do its take on current affairs with an edge, a twist, a smile--like the one on the face of the deceptively benign "Silver Age" middle-incarnation of Mr Myxyzptlk pictured above. No cigar yet. He's back in 4D space-time here, but sitting in mid-air, defying natural laws as usual and ready to confound, confuse, confront, with his other-dimensional skills.

So too, this blog (whatever that means)--one among many in the vast punditsphere of  amateur internet journalism. Humbling, but expect no deference here. I'll attack anything that moves ... the wrong way, that is, as I see it..  But always I hope putting on a measure of Hamlet's "antic disposition." Playing the Trickster--irony, paradox, satire, ridicule, and so on ... good fun.  After all, you're invited to sit down, as the masthead motto says, to a mess/meal of memes AND mummery.. It's a daily served up weekly. Makes perfect sense in the fifth dimension. (Full disclosure: at this stage of life, I couldn't possibly keep it up every day, anyhow, Oops.)
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#233 Blog Hard or Die--Return of the Blogman Avenger

Mr Myxyzptlk will always be my favorite supervillain. Against Superman, he don't need no stinkin' Kryptonite, because he could simply disappear at will--POOF--back to his alternate existence in ...  the FIFTH DIMENSION! ... well beyond Superman's space-time universe. Yet he could "virtually" cause all sorts of mischief, and, worse, he couldn't be stopped!

Using his superior abilities. the Man of Steel would reliably prevail over brainy supervillain Lex Luthor and others of his 3D ilk, hauling them off to some good ol' 4D jail-time. But his powers, we might say, are merely super-- i.e.extraordinary human attributes of strength, speed, and flight. That's right: Superman's ability to fly was on occasion "explained" in the early Action Comics as a super-benign "side-effect" of  certain differences in gravity, atmosphere, blah, blah, between his home planet and Earth (no indication e.g. that Kryptonians had such powers). Normal, terrestrial humans of Olympic ability can "fly" for instance at a little over seven feet; Superperson Clark Kent, however,  simply raises the bar quite a bit. X-ray vision aside, he is after all a completely humanoid.ET or ALF,  subject like us all to forth-dimensional  natural law and its vicissitudes, plot-wise, including the ultimates: love and death. Not so for Mr. Myxyzptlk..

In the late 40s and early 50s when I bought Superman comics at the Corner Store--an urban forerunner of today's convenience store, whose merchandise included those pre-pubescent-male essentials of comic books, candy bars, and squirt-guns---thirty-two pages of fun cost a dime. And Mr. M at the time was equally modest in appearance.  I was never acquainted with his futuristic avatar pictured above--love the in-your-face cigar-puffing though.. Here's the Myxyzptlk I grew up with in what is called "officially" the Golden Age of comics:

                                   
Supernerd! A daunting uber-villain, indeed. But that was the genius-part of Mr. M's first incarnation, now sadly gone. His Disneyesque appearance belied his almost unlimited powers and sometimes malicious nature, making him all the more sinister ,,, and most interesting. Some nice comic irony for a kid back then. And this super-imp could daunt. Through pure mischief and mostly harmless mayhem, he would annoy, confuse, and confound our superhero with some sort of incomprehensible interference that defied physical  laws. ... before HE was "tricked" into returning to his 5D .world.

Not to get all mythic on you, but  Mr. Myxyzptlk epitomizes the Trickster archetype ... as in Norse Loki, Anglo-Saxon Unferth (in Beowulf, and btw in my doctoral dissertation), Prometheus, Br'er Rabbit, a bunch of others that you can think of, and my nostalgic favorite: Froggy the Gremlin, from the radio and then TV program, Smilin' Ed's Gang. When it was time for hijinks on that kiddie show, after a story or a clip from an "old" western, old Ed would summon up Froggy with this stentorian call: "Plunk your magic twanger, Froggy!" And somehow POOF the squat little grotesquely bug-eyed gravely-voiced frog-puppet (no Kermit he) would appear (imagination-wise on radio) ...  in a self-made cloud of smoke as he puffed away on a giant CIGAR stitched to his puppet-lips! See first picture above. Coincidence? I think not.  Anyway, hilarity would ensue as Froggy did his magic mischief--I remember the late, late can't-hold-a-sneeze comic Billy Gilbert as a frequent guest bearing Froggy's brunt of practical jokes. Another plunk of his magic twanger, however (you are free to utilize this expression in other, creative ways, as us kids were wont to do) ... and POOF he was gone. As if to another dimension.***

Speaking of creativity, you've got to give credit the Action Comics guys for anticipating some of the current quantum-physical fooferah about extra dimensions (It's now up to eleven!) and multiverses of one kind or another. Of course they used this bit of science esoterica for good fun, but what fascinated me as a kid was that it severely challenged not just our hero's superpowers but his common-sense, intellect, and even identity, much like the crazy world of quantum theory does for us today. This antagonist was not only invincible, but in ways that the super-guy couldn't understand. (Okay ... he's non-common-sensically super, but his powers are enhanced anthropic attributes [again, aside from Xray vision], otherwise we would have a had time identifying with him as an archetypal hero ,,, as potentially one  of us. Remember, his flying ability is sort of explained as extra-good high-jumping.)

"I thought I was the only one who could fly?" says the Man of Steel questioning his very identity in his first encounter with Mr. Myxyzptlk--in his oriiginal supernerd guise--when he apparently jumps to his death out of a window.. (I had to "wiki" this to get an example--plaudits to those rich folk who saved their old comic books--because it's been a long time.) Using his 5D powers, the little guy wreaks other mischief on Metropolis and its citizens including getting fatally hit by a truck and then shockingly coming back to life ... giving the Mayor a donkey's voice ... scattering important documents all over town, Pranks. Great kid-stuff,  In fact, he lets slip to superman at one point that he is a court-jester by trade, back on his 5D home planet--explaining everything.

Of course Mr. Myxyxptlk has to be "vincible" in some way for Superman ultimately to prevail. Well, here it is (or was)  ,, he's stupid. Or at base terminally childish .. and why our super-smarter hero can always plunk the little guy's twanger and outwit him back to his fifth dimension world for--get this--a minimum of 90 days. Time to prepare the next issue, presumably..Here's the trick: Mr. M inadvertently reveals to Superman that if Mr.M hisownself pronounces or spells or writes his name backwards ...to wit: Kltpyyxym--then POOF he;s gone. And Superman in extremis is able to get him every time with some ludicrously simple stratagem. "How do you spell that name backwards again?"--I'm making that up, but the ploys were on that level, as I remember. And POOF once again  The play of wit and language and magic ... great fun. (I'll get more  to the point of my return in next post, but this is just such fun.)

***More on Chicago's radio & TV personality Sm+ilin' Ed McConnell and the the death of a childhood hero in Mosteller Musings, as soon as I get the little-sister blog cranked up again..
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#232 "La Plus Ca Change ... [UPDATE 6/13]

...
 la plus c'est la fucking meme chose."   Some headlines--

Afghanistan: NATO Airstrikes Killed 18 Civilians [half of them children--denied at first for "lack of evidence" but see the next one] (AP 5/27)

Afghanistan War: NATO Apologizes For Civilian Deaths In Airstrike [US Maj General John Allen meets with families and promises cash money] (6/8

Abu Yahia al-Libi Top Al Qaeda Strategist [and undetermined others] Killed In Pakistan Drone Strike (6/5)

U.S. Drone Policy: Standing Near Terrorists Makes You A Terrorist (5/29)  


Yea and verily. It's good that America is still doing the Lord's work as best we can, (and as Yahweh bespoke directly unto Dubya) to wipe out as many of these little brown heathens before the Pashtunese killing fields are are in danger of being closed for good, and we have to look elsewhere ... Iran maybe?  Good prospect.

For. lo. the Deity shall be behind us, aided by our courageous  Chaplain-Corps-crusaders (almost 100% Judeo-Christian, amen), who can use the literal and fundamental Word of God to justify the killing--surely their favorite verse would be Jeremiah's ever-timely, cheer-leading, "Cursed be he who neglects the Lord's work; cursed be he who holds back his sword from blood" (Jer. 48:10). Happily, the Chaplains are able to chose from any number of other fine kill-the-infidel references in the Good Book. Beats the Koran all to Hell.

And back to the newsphoto--just look at how those devilish Talibs cum Qaeda disguise themselves..They look like little children, I know, but that can be soooo deceiving, considering the average height of these non-flesh-color people (to use the traditional Crayola distinction) that we kill around the world are well below the average height of the brave American soldier or airman (the latter too far away to distinguish clearly anyway). And they've all got those baby-faces. Remember the commie Vietnamese with their little-boy looks. And from the air ...? Well you just gotta shoot your rockets and "light 'em up." (more)
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