Fundamental lack of a human skill

Dick Cheney’s comment that the Iraq war has been hardest on Prez Bush, and Bush’s lack of empathy for the people whose deaths he caused, get to the heart of the sociopathic nature of fundamentalists and fundamentalism.

They insist that their fundamental belief is the only correct belief, because they lack the ability to put themselves in other people’s moccasins. They cannot follow a metaphor, the way lizards don’t switch attention from a hand to what the hand’s pointing at. Even chimps, bonobos and dogs can follow a pointing finger.

Fundamentalists lack the ability to imagine feeling as another person might; when as children they played “make believe,” they probably pretended to be Daddy, not a Native American or an astronaut or a homeless person. They thought of themselves as being exactly like the people who reared them, and nothing else.

Why are the worlds of music, fine art and performing art filled by a majority of politically liberal or leftist people? Empathy for the "other."

W. considers war “exciting” because he can’t imagine any alternative, buying into Hollywood propaganda begun in WWII, where the movies make a lie of war. And he thinks that his prayers can cure the grief of military families.

W. and the Dick: one-dimensional mental midgets.

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Silver Screen lies

Joe Pesci and Helen Mirren are in Reno this week, filming "Love Ranch," which the moviemakers say is loosely based on the lives of former Mustang Ranch brothel owners Joe and Sally Conforte.

Sally's gone to that great brothel in the sky, but Joe's living rich, fat and happy in Brazil, where the U.S. government can't touch him on tax evasion and other charges.

I really hope the movie is "loosely" based, because Joe and Sally are not nice people. I had the unpleasant experience in the late 1960s of watching to them claim in a UNR class (invited by the instructor) that they would soon start charities and help poor folks in Northern Nevada. Never happened, but they were great at P.R. bull.

However, Sally's nephew does continue her tradition of giving out turkeys at Thanksgiving and Christmas to people living in Mustang and Lockwood in Storey County.

During Mustang Ranch's last years, politicians and lawyers and other people served prison time because of Conforte crimes. Careers, reputations and families were ruined, while Joe and Sally got richer.

It is all about the money, and only about the money, with Joe and Sally ... money that came from uneducated and or desperate women who spread their legs for strangers. Oscar Bonavena died because he got between Joe and Joe's money.

There's no love in a whorehouse, just sex ... and money.

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Lousy timing

An AP story today about middle-age children forced to move back home to take care of aging parents brings this inappropriate thought:

Thanks to global warming, you can never find an ice flow when you need one.

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Shades of JFK

So the scared-of-angry-black-men Pink Faces on cable news believe that Sen. Obama thinks in lock-step with his preacher/spiritual adviser?

The Catholic-haters of the 1960s said JFK would follow the Pope's orders in running the U.S. Didn't happen.

It's evident that the PF cable-blabbers don't have religious convictions, or they'd put themselves out of business to honor the seven deadly sins, plus the 10 Commandments, some of which they violate daily.

The Rev. Wright seems to speak Truth to Power, at least in the UTube clip.

Truth scares the BeJeezus out of cable-blabbers.

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Puritans strike again

Buh bye, Gov. Spitzer.

Why do men do business with prostitutes? A friend who once worked in a diner near a legal Nevada brothel asked a young man who'd just left the bordello. Because, he said, when you want something special, your wife or girlfriend will say 'no!' and be offended. A whore can't say no.

ooo ooo ooo

The newest replacement for marijuana is salvia divinorum, an hallucinogenic drug sold at novelty stores, smoke shops and adult video stores. Native to Mexico, it has been used for centuries for healing rituals. Eight states now have laws restricting it and Florida might make it illegal, according to The Associated Press.

It's a pity. As long as lawmakers get free whiskey and Cubans, they'll support only the booze-tobacco industrial complex.

Anybody want to create the Salvia Divinorum Lobby?

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Through California’s looking glass

California needs to have its right hand and its left hand text-message each other.

In Santa Clara County, the state recently ordered a couple to cut down decade-old redwood trees, citing the Solar Shade Control Act of 1978, because their neighbor put in solar panels that are gradually being blocked as the trees grow. There’s a similar case pending in Sonoma County.

On the other hand, California cities and the bi-state Tahoe Regional Planning Agency are fining people who cut down trees to improve the view or to increase the sale value of a house. TRPA’s fines surpass $1 million in California and Nevada.

I will admit that the bozo in Henderson, Nev., who downed 546 trees (at night, over a year) so he would have better views of the Las Vegas Strip and the mountains, went way too far.

If I lived on the California side of Lake Tahoe, I’d be putting in solar panels, and happily cutting trees to open them to the sun. If my view improved as a side-effect … surprise, surprise!

Take a hike, TRPA. Watch out for bears.

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Drink deep

"Two veteran U.S. senators said they plan to hold hearings in response to an Associated Press investigation into the presence of trace amounts of pharmaceuticals in the drinking water supplies of at least 41 million Americans," an AP report says.

Time to dump my stocks in homeopathic medicine makers. A side effect of the hearings will be proof that homeopathy is quackery.

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Where's Rummy?

It's probably just me, but TV clips of John McCain's philosophy of 'where we are is where we are' sound like a riff in the style of Donald Rumsfeld. Logic ... they'll bomb the O out of it.

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