.... Dear Pedinska, you know the difference between poison oak, and a Lilac Bush? Yes. However, I'll warn you, in the blueberry bushes, I've experienced a creeping vine sneak upward from the ground..... The curling vine pruned, can sure cause the groin, fingers, ears, and lips to itch a bit.

Perhaps give a high five instead? Blow a kiss in the air. If they catch a kiss, then shout!

` Good kiss!

` Yogi Bear, the famous Magistrate outfielder said, "I deny everything people may have thought I may have thought I may have said." Yogi said, "I deny I said It."

Or, something similar to like notion idea. Delete all my gibber.

Thanks for taking-up for John, Glenn.

I figure Mr/Mrs. John Q. Public will know the truth when (IF) they see it. It's difficult to have any confidence in your Gov. when most of what you hear from them is lies, damned lies and vectored psy-ops (ie. pentagon statistics).

(*The Mostly Major Media, not to put to fine a point on it, don't know their a** from a hole in the ground. More like Comedy, to put it nicely.)

While it's true there's not much the Bush Adm. could do, anymore, would surprize me, Glenn, I am utterly dismayed by the loyal opposition: the dang Democrats. Whoever is running that circus show are rats... but that would impune(sp?) upon the rats. They are worse than the Bush Adm. because they say so convincingly they are voices for reason, fairness and Honesty in gov., but Do nothing to stop (& they are the only ones who Can) the propaganda and Dishonesty in plain view to all.

I like to know who I'm punching at.

john q,

bah.

ps. Happy Mothers Day.

+bop. I don't know any Soothsayers. I do know Yeller Hammer Hobbs?

Please tell Pedinska I saw a hummingbird. It visits the holly bush outside my window. I'd forget my head if it were not pasted -glued on with Silly Putty.

Bah. If I didn't have poison ivy on my fingers, I'd extend,

a bird's right wing to shake as a gesture of old Kentucky?

I love the Kentucky blue grass state. I once saw Wendell Berry's home place. The farmer raises sheep, and has beautiful llamas to keep the sheep company. Wendell does Not read blogs. He's too busy being at peace with Nature. Wendell Berry reminds me of an attorney, W.B's brother practices rural (country pumpkin) law in Kentucky. I visited the Berry graveyard. I was amazed. There are dead graves there that have inscribed on the stone markers, some of the same-same names that are in my James/Evans Family Tree. Pedinska. I walked through the Wendell Berry graveyard on a rainy day. Yes. bah. Thanks. Blessed rain.

Morels do taste best if wet from natures blessed rain drops.

Rowan claimed:

Now as to the goody goody libertarians, I agree completely with Mike Sulzer, who said while I was either asleep or hiding my shame and not visiting the thread, "If libertarianism says that everything would be great if everyone would leave everyone else alone except for voluntary interactions, then the realist would say: but everyone won't. And because of that, and in reaction to that, we have governments," except that I would go further, and say that anyone who claims to believe that in the absence of "government" (and at this point one begins to wonder how they define "government") people would spontaneously revert to being nice to each other, is not just being naive, they are being disingenuous, by which I mean, they are sinister, cynical liars.

Even Noam Chomsky? Major statement there fellow; major accusation.

Now for a few favorites quotes be the people Rowan says are cynical liars:

"Anarchism is a tendency in the history of human thought & action which seeks to identify coercive, authoritarian, & hierarchic structures of all kinds & to challenge their legitimacy — & if they cannot justify their legitimacy, which is quite commonly the case, to work to undermine them & expand the scope of freedom." — Noam Chomsky

"So I said good-bye to government, & I gave my reason; That a really good religion, is a form of treason." — Kurt Vonnegut, anarchist, Cat's Cradle

"Many people say that government is necessary because some men cannot be trusted to look after themselves, but anarchists say that government is harmful because no men can be trusted to look after anyone else." -- Nicolas Walter (1924-2000) British journalist, philosopher, atheist, anarchist.

"If I had understood the situation a bit better I should probably have joined the anarchists." (Extract letter, October 1937 written by George Orwell to his friend Jack Common).

"Anarchism has but one infallible, unchangeable motto, 'Freedom.' Freedom to discover any truth, freedom to develop, to live naturally and fully." -Lucy Parsons (for the ladies, of cource)

"There is no horror, no cruelty, sacrilege, or perjury, no imposture, no infamous transaction, no cynical robbery, no bold plunder or shabby betrayal that has not been or is not daily being perpetrated by the representatives of the states, under no other pretext than those elastic words, so convenient & yet so terrible, for reasons of state." — Michael Bakunin

Liars all, Rowan?

We need scholars with 6-to-ten majors.

Someone who blogs with six-comments.

Who is a good gerontologist? Fear death?

No human, dull or brilliant, can escape it.

Maybe Salon or UT needs a paid therapist.

We need wise counsel from gerontologist.

The Salon already has a resident shrink. Mr. Tennis tells you what to do if the paranoid, or sociopath son/daughter does,'t TRust eating the Mother Day cupcakes that She sent for good behavior snacks today.

Oh, Poor mom.

She plagiarized!

Mom stole a cupcake recipe.

Remember, I said previously, I always start by assuming that everyone is a rational actor, even though I know that this is not true. I do this because it's a good rhetorical strategy, in that the next approximation is always even more interesting. In this case, the next approximation is that they are either brainwashed by others, or self-brainwashed - a difficult concept to ground objectively, in that, how does the observer decide which is the self-brainwashed, himself or the observed? Anyway, to your examples.

(1) Orwell : absolutely cynical and sinister, and self-brainwashed, and brainwashed by others, and, to make it worse, he knew it. This is as good a description of living in hell as any, psychologically speaking, but then again, some of us choose this life. I mean, you are aware, aren't you, that he worked for british wartime broadcasting, and I shall leave that phrase a little vague.

(2) Chomsky, absolutely definitely, the man is a fraud. That isn't to say that anything in his political books is untrue, rather, that the US system protects him because of his selectivity, which is only in recent years starting to show visible cracks, which attract the attention of different observers according to their own interests, but currently include such diverse topics as Israel and 9-11. Also, in my humble opinion, his 'language organ' theory is rubbish, but I am not expert enough to be able to say either why it is rubbish, or why it is never exposed as such.

(3) Bakunin was an out and out gangster. I don't think this is even in dispute.

(4) Vonnegut, well, look, the man is a comic novelist, a buffoon. His highly public spasms of disgust at mansinhumanitytoman are just spasms. US novelists nowadays do not inspire respect, generally, for intellectual rigor, integrity, or anything else - at last not the ones who get lionised. What that says about US pop lit is obvious, and it is not intended to imply anything about novelists outside th epop lionised circuits, since I don't claim to know about them, or to have much time to find out.

(5) Lucy Parsons, sorry, I have no idea about, or interest in.

(6) Nor do I know who Nicholas Walter was, or care much.