frankilin roosevelt

It's not about being liberal or conservative anymore y'all. That is a hype offered by the fascist whores who want to confuse the people with lies while they turn this country into an aristocratic police state. Some people will say anything to attain power and money. There is no such thing as the Liberal Media, but the Corporate media is very real.


Check out my old  Voice of the People page.


Gino Napoli
San Francisco, California
High School Math Teacher

jonsdarc@mindspring.com




Loyalty without truth
is a trail to tyranny.

a middle-aged
George Washington



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Saturday, 9 December 2006 at 3h 40m 14s

Elaborating on the point

Yesterday, I made this statement, without further explanation :

The point being that one course of action is no different morally than any other course of action.

People don't choose to do things from moral reasons. We do them because they make sense. If some things that make sense are also considered moral acts, then people who act "morally" have a better understanding of what makes sense. Some persons are confused and act "immorally." Sometimes, in the immediate moment, there are things that seem to make a lot of sense, but later after the deed is done, we have second thoughts about whether what happened makes sense.

Nevertheless attaching life to a scale of extremes (between good and bad) is a misperception that becomes a blind spot. since the world and all the people inevitably become categorized (judged) before they are perceived. This paradigm through which to view the cosmos is not standardized however, because where someone or something gets placed on the scale is completely dependent upon the individual's perception. Hence, we have selective morality.

Some examples :

    it's okay to send some hapless D.W.I. punk to the prison system, but not your daughter or your friend's son, that's family

    it's okay to kill arabs and contaminate their land, but don't you even think about touching the unborn fetus, and don't you dare blow up our spy ships that are half-way around the world but within 1 mile of your coastline

    it's okay to go to church on Sunday, and then act like a jerk all week -- and sometimes even on Sunday too

    it's okay to get mad at someone else when they do something thing that is disrespecful, but if you do the same thing, the other person most certainly deserved it

    you want everyone else to experience what you would never want for yourself, but oh well, get to the top of the food chain, ya whining baby.

    It's okay to bitch about paying taxes, and then complain about the schools or the police or government incompetence. Man, it's not like we have to pay for these things.

All of the above are the penultimate results of attaching life to a scale of extremes. Afterwards comes the blindness.

We all have our scales of perception, however things are really neither good nor bad. They just are. Things either make sense, or they don't. They are either beneficial, or they are foolish. In this way, that which becomes considered beneficial or foolish is determined from a rational process. Granted it is true that people can confuse themselves about what is beneficial and what is foolish -- haven't we all -- but these are still fairly objective matters that permit the possibility of negotiation. There is, however, no compromise with those attached to their mental calibration of good and bad. Compromise is only possible when all persons put aside their scales and try to look with fresh eyes.


Friday, 8 December 2006 at 1h 15m 14s

The big if

If we lived in a moral version of Capitalism ...

If .. the key word.

I recall Voltaire's Candide, which is a yarn about the idea that thinks we live in the "best of all possible world's."

Here's the cliff notes. If you base your entire philosophy on the assumption that letting whatever happens is the best thing to do, then your philosophy really only excuses everything that happens. (Just like slaveowners professed that slavery was better for the slave, or that keeping the blacks down was better for the Southern way of life.) Yet things happen because of power relations in society, equating these happenings with some benign natural force merely ignores that power relations exist.

Just because people make business decisions does not mean those decisions are the best thing for society even if some can make a buck. They may be in the best interest of the corporations profits, but this is akin to saying it's okay for little Johnny to beat up Joe because Sammy paid Johnny $20 to watch. We exist as a society to keep everyone alive and leave the Earth for future generations. Buisness decisions that destroy the viability of society are really self-destructive, on top of selfish, and need to be dismantled for the good of all.

Or as Voltarie said in the mid 1700's :

"I would be glad to know which is worst, to be ravished a hundred times by Negro pirates, to have one buttock cut off, to run the gauntlet among the Bulgarians, to be whipped and hanged at an auto-da-fe, to be dissected, to be chained to an oar in a galley; and, in short, to experience all the miseries through which every one of us hath passed, or to remain here doing nothing?"

"This," said Candide, "is a grand question."


The point being that one course of action is no different morally than any other course of action.

Morality and capitalism (ie, money) are mutually exclusive. We can't all sit around hoping for the moral universe to gradually evolve or suddenly appear. Look 4,000 years in the past at human history. When has there ever been this moral universe of benevolent wealth?

The only reason the post-war boom occurred was because millions of hard-working Americans fought for their Unions and insisted that America live up to its ideals. The mega-wealthy who control the corporate boardrooms would have gladly shredded the constitution for power and more millions of dollars.

Quite frankly, the corporations are trying to destroy the government (like the oil companies who aren't paying their royalies on federal lands, and the companies who use Bermuda post offices to avoid paying millions of dollars in taxes) -- along with their willing accomplices in the Bush administration. Businesses are moving out of the country because the financiers and CEO's can suck up extra profit for themselves. You think the extra money goes for the workers raises. Nope.

Oh now they scream something about "needing to be competitive." However, the federal government is supposed to be that guardian of the economy that creates a level playing field. If companies have to compete against 25 cents and hour labor in Vietnam, then the government is supposed to get involved. Historically this used to occur through Tariffs, but subsidies and government regulations are equally effective. Government can confiscate the property of the corporation that leaves, and sell it to someone else at a lower price who can take it over. Then a tariff can set on the company that decided to leave. If this is coordinated with Europe and Latin America, we can effectively stop businesses from wanting to leave.

But alas all this is called "big government extremism", because corporations have hyjacked the agenda of the political parties (especially the Republican party, but the Democrats have been infiltrated too) and also the news media outlets.

Corporations go abroad because our government is not enforcing the law and is (stupidly) permitting corporations to do whatever the hell they want. This isn't about losing money. The companies that leave are not losing money. This is about increasing the profits so the value of stocks can rise higher. If the profits remain constant for 5 years, Wall Street will not be able to fuel a bull market.

They also need the stock to rise because a whole lot of corporations have leveraged themselves on the back of their stocks and their stock portfolios, all assuming endless rises of stock value ... remember Dow 36,000. They can't afford to have 5 years of constant profits. Thus they come to see transferring their businesses to foreign contractors as an actual choice.

It is for all these reasons that we hear the fraudulent banter called "free market." Free for whom?

And the idea that cheaper prices negate the loss of good paying jobs has been completely refuted. Cheaper prices for commodities don't aid the competitiveness of the upper end job markets that result, nor are all prices in society becoming cheaper. The 30% loss of average wages is not offset by a 30% decrease in expenses. Maybe 40% off for 10% of what we spend are money ne ( which is 4% ) but what signifigance is 4% when 60% of our expenses increase 30% (which 18%) ? A net increase of 14% after a 30% loss of pay doesn't seem like a deal to the people who actully experience this phenomenom.

Walmart workers can't even afford to shop at Walmart, and guess what? Walmart employs 10% of the labor force.


Tuesday, 5 December 2006 at 2h 55m 2s

It's what you don't hear that matters the most

You can tell a lot about the way news is filtered out of the media is by looking at the big stories that do not get pursued beyond the first week ( or day ) of coverage. Here is a brief list of the most recent :

  1. The Foley page sex scandal, and the Hastert involvement : hush, hush, especially about Denny Hastert's odd living arrangement with his two gay top staff aides -- oh, what were those whispers about Hastert fondling boys when he was a high school wrestling coach in the latter 1970's


  2. Why did the CIA first and second in command (Porter Goss and Dusty Foggo) suddenly resign when it was discovered that Shirlington Limosine Inc. was a front company that was driving Congressman to hotels where there were poker games and prostitutes? ... and then Shirlington Limousine gets contracts from Homeland Security? Holy $*#@% !!!! -- shhhhh, its ah state secret.Click here


  3. The President has authorized the tapping of all phones without Judicial oversight. Despite the evidence that this will be used politically, all is hush, hush.


  4. The FBI and various State officials organized a mass arrest of 11,000 known "criminals" nationwide in mid-October. How many of the 11,000 arrests were mistakes? What was the result of those arrests? Not one word.


  5. Did you know that they are building detention centers across the United States? Yep. Various private prison corporations are building more prisons via Homeland Security contracts. Hmm, why do we need more prisons all of a sudden? How come this priority is far above so many other -- it would seem -- more pressing priorities?


Wednesday, 29 November 2006 at 2h 2m 54s

Micro-environmentalism

Many people don't realize the vast impact that small acts by multiple numbers of people can have on the environment. Each of us minimalizes the actions we make because we do not consider what our action does in concert with millions of other similar actions.

Take for instance the paper cup that millions of morning coffee drinkers throw away every day. That cup is really unnecessary, but yet so seemingly insignifigant to each individual.

Let's do the math. say 10 million people purchase a 12 ounce paper/plastic cup that gets thrown away every day. This cup is about 2.5 inches in diameter at the bottom tapered to 3 inches at the top, and is roughly about 6 inches tall. Assuming the cup can be flatten to a 6 inch radius circle (the height of the cup, and then include the bottom piece), the area of the paper used to make each 12 ounce cup is the area of a circle with radius 6, or 36π -- which is about 112 square inches.

However, the actual area is 88 square inches, using a composite of an annular ring sector and a circle piece for the bottom of the cup. (When laid flat the outer section of the cup resembles a fat C.)

So 10,000,000 people times 88 square inches is 880,000,000 square inches or 6,111,111 square feet or 0.2192 square miles PER DAY, which is 2.93 square inches per person in the United States per day (assuming 300,000,000 million people.)

Newsflash. There are 365 days per year so this translates to 80 square miles per year. In 20 years (the time between age 14 and age 34) -- which is minimum life cycle of harvested trees -- this translates to a phenomenal 1600 square miles, which is equivalent to a square piece of land, 40 miles on each side.

Now all of the fore-mentions assertions assume the per diem paper cup purchase is 10 million, when in fact it is probably much more. For example if the per day figure is really 50 million, five times more, then the end numbers after 20 years are 8000 square miles per year, and a square piece of land that is 89.4 miles on each side.

And all of this due to our modern cultural inability to bring a fucking cup to the coffee shop.

* * *

Here's another way of looking at this.

Say at least one person throws a bottle out into the wilderness once a week for 20 years. Since there are 52 weeks in a year, then 52 times 20 is 1040 bottles. Each bottle approximates a cylinder 10 inches tall and a circular diameter of 3 inches. Since the bottle actually tapers 60% up from the bottom, we'll assume the bottle's volume is 80% of a cylinder : V = πR^2 * height * 0.8, which equals 3.1459*2.25*10*0.8 = 56.5486 cubic inches.

Now unless the bottle breaks, this volume will be lying on, or very near the ground in 20 years. 1,040 times 56.5486 is 58,810.61448 cubic inches, or 408.407 cubic feet -- which is a cube 7.419 feet on each side.



However, bottles don't stack into cubes. They lay flat on the ground. Let's assume these 1,040 bottles all lay flay, 3 inches high of the ground. Thus, we form a rectangular solid, 3 by 3 by 10 for each bottle, 90 cubic inch space. If we arrange the bottles 32 rows by 32 columns, the array will hold 1024 bottles. Depending on how you arrange the bottles, this is a 96 inch by 320 inch square, or 8 feet by 26.66 feet.

If the bottle toss rate per week increases to 3, then the rectangle becomes 8 by 80. When it becomes one per day (or 7 per week) then the rectangle becomes 8 by 186.66. So in twenty years, at the rate of one bottle per day, a path of bottles that is 8 feet wide exists for 62 yards of length.

Now imagine a landscape in which 1/100 th of the square acreage is a bottle -- one bottle per 10 ft. by 10 ft. square. So multiplying the above dimensions by 10 ( since 10 x 10 = 100), we get the equivalent dimensions of this perspective. ( Note: 1/10 th of the square acreage would multiply the dimensions by the square root of 10, or 3.16.)

the dimensions based upon percent of area     1/100 th 1/10 th
1 per week 27 yds x 86 yds. 8 yds x 27 yds.
3 per week 27 yds x 267 yds. 8 yds x 80 yds.
7 per week 27 yds x 620 yds. 8 yds x 198 yds.

Look at that last row. That's either 6 football fields (1/100 th) if there is one bottle for every 10 yard by 10 yard area, or two football fields (1/10 th) which is about one bottle for every 10 feet by 10 feet area.

I can't tell you how much it pains me to see the litter in the national parks. It makes no sense to me, but there it is. Today I stood looking out at a green lawn beside a children's playground (Lincoln Park, San Francisco) and every 10 square feet had at least 2 items of trash -- in part because a bum raided the trash can and the infamous San Francisco wind blew the trash he threw on the ground all over the place.

And that's how Americans treat nature, like drunken desperate bums completely ignorant of the results of their actions.


Thursday, 23 November 2006 at 1h 25m 53s

Oh. My. God.

Police: Daly City man held 16-year-old girl captive for more than a year

GIRL'S PARENTS THOUGHT SHE WAS A RUNAWAY

By Kelly Pakula

Published in the San Jose Mercury News


A Daly City man pleaded not guilty Tuesday after he was arrested on suspicion of keeping a 16-year-old girl captive for more than a year in his parents' house.

John France Gonzales, 22, is charged with multiple felonies including 68 counts of lewd and lascivious acts on a child, 39 counts of lewd acts on a child who is 14 or 15 years old, forcible penetration and domestic violence.

Gonzales was arrested Saturday after the girl was returned home and told her parents about the ordeal, according to the San Mateo County District Attorney's Office. The girl's parents' reportedly thought their daughter had run away.

Gonzales allegedly began molesting the girl in October 2002, however, it was in 2005 that he forced her to live in the basement of his parents' home, making her have sexual relations with him and beating her, the district attorney's office reported.

Gonzales' parents' were reportedly unaware that the girl was living in their home.

Gonzales remains in custody in lieu of $1 million bail. He will return to court on Dec. 29 for his preliminary hearing.


Come on y'all, get a grip.


Thursday, 23 November 2006 at 0h 22m 40s

The Florida Congressional election in district 13

Click here for the story in the Orlando Sentinel.

The Republican Vern Buchanan beats the Democratic candidate Christine Jennings by 369 votes in the Florida Congression election for district 13, despite the strange occurrence of 17,846 voters who voted but didn't cast a vote in the Congressional election.

From the Orlando Sentinel article source:


The Sentinel reviewed records of 17,846 touch-screen ballots that included no vote in the tightly contested 13th District congressional race to determine whom voters selected in other major races.

The analysis of the so-called "undervotes" examined the races for U.S. Senate, governor, attorney general, chief financial officer and agriculture commissioner.

The results showed that the undervoted ballots skewed Democratic in all of those races, even in the three races in which the county as a whole went Republican. In the governor's race, for example, Republican Charlie Crist won handily in Sarasota, easily beating Democrat Jim Davis. But on the undervoted ballots, Davis finished ahead by almost 7 percentage points.

In the agriculture commissioner's race, Republican Charles Bronson beat Copeland by a double-digit margin among all voters. But on the undervoted ballots, Copeland won by about 3 percentage points.

Some questions remain

The analysis does not -- and cannot -- reveal why no congressional choice was recorded on the ballots. It also cannot determine which candidate any single voter might have selected had he or she made a choice.

But the strong performance of other Democrats indicates Jennings would have found a sizable number of supporters within the group.


My question is this: how many other races were "undervoted" ? These are voters who bothered to show up and vote, but neglected to cast a vote in the Congressional election. Eighteen thousand ? Does that make sense to you? It makes no sense to me, unless something funny is going on.


Wednesday, 22 November 2006 at 23h 41m 37s

Bush twin Barbara robbed in Argentina

Click here for the story. You'll have to read Spanish.


Tuesday, 21 November 2006 at 3h 8m 13s

The food you eat

Nowadays, none of us have any clue what it is we are actually eating. Tandem with a lack of knowledge about nutrition, science, and biology, most people do not understand the basics of physiological processes, and are easily enticed by something that tastes good.

For instance, a lot of people don't understand that white flour and white sugar are both washed over with ammonia -- to separate the molasses in the latter case, and to make the flour look white or "bleached." Tomatoes -- assuming they are not genetically modified (or organic) are sprayed with pesticides, picked while they are green, and then blasted with Xenon gas just before they are shipped. Most of the corn used as filler -- or from which corn syrup is made -- is genetically modified with a gene from an E-Coli bacterum, so that the corn can either secrete its own pesticide, or so the corn can take twice the rate of pesticide treatment. Milk is ladden with all sorts of residues, gbH hormones, anti-biotics, and pus from the industrialized udders of the cows that get infections from the hyperstress the drugs cause. Since the cows also eat genetically modified food, the diet of the cow is not natural at all. This applies to all products derived from the milk -- like cheese and butter. Margarine is not butter, and is actally one hydrogen-carbon molecule different from plastic.

All of these products -- and don't get me started on fast food -- enter into the body, and have to be dealt with by the body. Our body is filled with chemicals : enzymes and Hydro-chloric acid to break down food, hormones secreted by glands to regulate body processes, vitamins, proteins and fatty acids that are just prototypes of the molecules that help form body cells and make energy to fuel cell activity. Anything that is "foreign" to the body is either toxic, virulent, or benign to the body, but the body treats everything as a threat -- which puts the bodies immune system on hyper-drive. The pancreas also has to deal with added pressures of digesting food that has no enzymes to aide in the digestion, and also has regulate insulin production more often because of the increase sugar load from the foods we eat. In most fast food meat products, phosphates are added to the meat to keep the product together. Phosphates in the blood-stream have the same effect on roaming cholesterol, sticking to them and forming platelets.

The long-term problem of 30 plus years of this type of food could very well explain why Americans have twice the rate of Heart-Attacks and Diabetes cases then anywhere else in the world.

You really are what you eat.


Tuesday, 21 November 2006 at 0h 18m 4s

Kissinger, to the rescue

Those who willfully act without sufficient preliminary investigation are like proud savages jumping out of airplanes without first checking to see if the plane is on the ground.

Or, when all else fails, send corporate petro-chemical-defense industry lackey Henry Kissenger to Britain on Sunday to say Victory in Iraq is impossible. Yep, after 40 years of being corrupted by the millions of retainer fees he gets for "consulting" with corporate elites, it is Kissenger who is sent to cozy up with the international press, which is kind of like sending Al Capone to speak with the London Press about Tax Evasion.


Here ... I have come ... To ... Save ... The ... Day.

Nowadays I have to squelch my desire to scream at the flag-waivers who jumped on this ship of patriotism, and are so quick to jump off. Most of us never got on that ship, because we did our homework and saw the lies. We tried to tell you, but all we got was your irate insistence and blithe righteousness.

And now thanks to you, we have not only lost control of the region, but also respect. We have pissed away money that got stolen by friends of elites, and will get nothing for the billions of tax payer dollars. Reconstruction never happen, and was half-assed whereever it was even attempted. We have forsaken all future contracts, which are now going to Europe, Russia, and China. Our selective intransigence about regime change brands us as selfish hypocrites,because we support nearby dictatorships in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, Equitorial Guinea, Uzbekistan, and Malaysia when they suit our interest.

If you want to drown in the frozen hell of stupidity, go for it. But don't expect me or anyone else that thinks to join you.


Saturday, 18 November 2006 at 1h 28m 53s

Keith Olbermann on the mark, again

Olbermann: "Funny, how when Trent Lott defeated Lamar Alexander by one vote for the Senate minority leadership yesterday, it was characterized in the media as a remarkable comeback story, with the random kidding reference to that ironical word “minority.” But when Steny Hoyer and Jack Murtha both stood for the House majority leadership today, that was characterized in the media as Democratic infighting, with frequent implications that the Dems were already coming apart at the seams."




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