Showing posts with label Michigan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Michigan. Show all posts

Monday, March 29, 2010

U.S. Government Boldly Decides to Tax Jobs White People Don't Do Anymore

This just in:
In the scramble to find something, anything, to generate more revenue, states are considering new taxes on virtually everything: garbage pickup, dating services, bowling night, haircuts, even clowns.

“It’s hard enough doing what we do,” grumbled John Luke, a plumber in the Philadelphia suburbs. His services would, for the first time, come with an added tax if the governor has his way.

“Look, I’m not a crazy tax guy,” Mr. Rendell said, reflecting on recent trims to the budget. “I know what we’ve cut the last two years, and I know how deep and painful the cuts have been. So I know that in the future there’s going to have to be a revenue increase, and this is the best of the alternatives, obviously none of which we’re happy about.”

Michigan’s revenues, adjusted for inflation, have sunk to a level last seen in the 1960s. And that may be exactly what at long last pushes through wide acceptance for taxes on more services, according to supporters of the idea, who say it makes sense in an economy that has long been service-based. In the past, such taxes have never quite been able to survive the political tussle.

(courtesy NYTimes.com)
To what is the world coming?

Of course politicians would rather tax the working stiffs than the corporate stiffs. I didn't hear any suggestion that Michigan should repeal the excessively generous entertainment-industry tax credit, for example, because it creates jobs! But they will tax the people who take those jobs, as well as the barbers and line cooks that service those workers.

Ah, trickle right down my ass, I say.

Working stiffs may seem to have strength in numbers, but too many of us would switch allegiance for a few shekels--hence the imbalanced power of the uber-rich.


We all know The Rich are little more than the pride-and-joy descendants of Roman Senator types--rich enough to have private armies, smart enough to cloak them in corporate legitimacy, inbred enough to be ugly.

They are constantly pacing their sun-drenched downtown offices, plotting the future, playing puppeteer in Warshington, London, Tokyo, Beijing--when they aren't snorting coke off the ass of a $5000/hr call girl in a suite they keep at the St. Regis to help alleviate such cravings.

But what are we doing about it?

We are presenting the rump and pretending we're okay with it.

Are we?

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Saturday, February 20, 2010

Well, SOMEbody Was Afraid of His Own Dick...


Ever wonder why after you eat a bowl of Corn Flakes it feels like you just got a yogurt enema?

Well, it's no accident--buckle in, hang on tight, and enjoy the ride:

"John Harvey Kellogg (February 26, 1852 – December 14, 1943) was an American medical doctor in Battle Creek, Michigan, who ran a sanitarium using holistic methods, with a particular focus on nutrition, enemas, and exercise. Kellogg was an advocate of vegetarianism and is best known for the invention of the corn flakes breakfast cereal with his brother, Will Keith Kellogg.

"Kellogg attended...New York University Medical College at Bellevue Hospital. He graduated in 1875 with a medical degree. He married Ella Ervilla Eaton (1853–1920) of Alfred Center, New York, on February 22, 1879. They did not have any children of their own, but raised over 40 children, legally adopting seven of them, before Ella died in 1920.

"Kellogg was a Seventh-day Adventist until mid-life and gained fame while being the chief medical officer of the Battle Creek Sanitarium, which was owned and operated by the Seventh-day Adventist Church. The San was run based on the church's health principles. Adventists believe in a vegetarian diet, abstinence from alcohol and tobacco and a regimen of exercise, which Kellogg followed, among other things. He is remembered as an advocate of vegetarianism and wrote in favor of it, even after leaving the Adventist Church. His dietary advice in the late 19th century, which was in part concerned with reducing sexual stimulation, discouraged meat-eating, but not emphatically so.

"Kellogg was an especially strong proponent of nuts, which he believed would save mankind in the face of decreasing food supply. Though mainly renowned nowadays for his development of corn flakes, Kellogg also patented a process for making peanut butter and invented healthful, "granose biscuits."

"Kellogg made sure that the bowel of each and every patient [in his sanitarium -Ed] was plied with water, from above and below. His favorite device was an enema machine that could rapidly instill several gallons of water in a series of enemas. Every water enema was followed by a pint of yogurt -- half was eaten, the other half was administered by enema, “thus planting the protective germs where they are most needed and may render most effective service." The yogurt served to replace the intestinal flora of the bowel, creating what Kellogg claimed was a squeaky-clean intestine.

"Kellogg believed that most disease is alleviated by a change in intestinal flora; that bacteria in the intestines can either help or hinder the body; that pathogenic bacteria produce toxins during the digestion of protein that poison the blood; that a poor diet favors harmful bacteria that can then infect other tissues in the body; that the intestinal flora is changed by diet and is generally changed for the better by a well-balanced vegetarian diet favoring low-protein, laxative, and high-fiber foods; and that this natural change in flora could be sped by enemas seeded with favorable bacteria, or by various regimens of specific foods designed to heal specific ailments.

"Kellogg was a skilled surgeon, who often donated his services to indigent patients at his clinic. Although generally against unnecessary surgery to treat diseases, he did advocate circumcision, allegedly to prevent masturbation.

"He had many notable patients, such as former president William Howard Taft...arctic explorers Vilhjalmur Stefansson and Roald Amundsen, world travellers Richard Halliburton and Lowell Thomas, aviator Amelia Earhart, economist Irving Fisher, Nobel prize winning playwright George Bernard Shaw, actor and athlete Johnny Weissmuller, founder of the Ford Motor Company Henry Ford, inventor Thomas Edison, and famous actress Sarah Bernhardt.

"As an advocate of sexual abstinence, Kellogg devoted large amounts of his educational and medical work to discouraging sexual activity, on the basis of dangers both scientifically based at the time - as in sexually transmissable diseases - and those taught by the Seventh-day Adventist Church. He set out his views on such matters in one of his larger books, published in various editions around the turn of the 20th century under the title Plain Facts about Sexual Life and later Plain Facts for Old and Young. Some of his work on diet was influenced by his belief that a plain and healthy diet, with only two meals a day, among other things, would reduce sexual feelings. Those experiencing temptation were to avoid stimulating food and drinks, and eat very little meat, if any. Kellogg also advocated hydrotherapy and stressed the importance of keeping the colon clean through yogurt enemas.

"He was an especially zealous campaigner against masturbation; this was an orthodox view during his lifetime, especially the earlier part. Kellogg was able to draw upon many medical sources' claims such as "neither the plague, nor war, nor small-pox, nor similar diseases, have produced results so disastrous to humanity as the pernicious habit of onanism," credited to one Dr. Adam Clarke. Kellogg strongly warned against the habit in his own words, claiming of masturbation-related deaths "such a victim literally dies by his own hand," among other condemnations. He felt that masturbation destroyed not only physical and mental health, but the moral health of individuals as well. Kellogg also believed the practice of "solitary-vice" caused cancer of the womb, urinary diseases, nocturnal emissions, impotence, epilepsy, insanity, and mental and physical debility – "dimness of vision" was only briefly mentioned.

"Kellogg worked on the rehabilitation of masturbators, often employing extreme measures, even mutilation, on both sexes. He was an advocate of circumcising young boys to curb masturbation and applying phenol (carbolic acid) to a young woman's clitoris. In his Plain Facts for Old and Young, he wrote

A remedy which is almost always successful in small boys is circumcision, especially when there is any degree of phimosis. The operation should be performed by a surgeon without administering an anesthetic, as the brief pain attending the operation will have a salutary effect upon the mind, especially if it be connected with the idea of punishment, as it may well be in some cases. The soreness which continues for several weeks interrupts the practice, and if it had not previously become too firmly fixed, it may be forgotten and not resumed.

and

In females, the author has found the application of pure carbolic acid [phenol] to the clitoris an excellent means of allaying the abnormal excitement.
"He also recommended, to prevent children from this "solitary vice", bandaging or tying their hands, covering their genitals with patented cages, sewing the foreskin shut and electrical shock."
(courtesy wikipedia)



Huh.

So...he invented Corn Flakes, gave everybody under his command yogurt enemas, routinely used acid to burn the clits off teenage girls, and patented a genital cage?

It's like this guy was trying to keep himself busy so he his idle hands didn't...STOP MASTURBATING, JOHNNY, OR I'LL GIVE YOU ANOTHER UNNECESSARY CIRCUMCISION, FOLLOWED BY ANOTHER YOGURT ENEMA, FOLLOWED BY ANOTHER BOWL OF NUTRITIOUS CORN FLAKES, AS PART OF A BALANCED MEAL!

I'd love to see what that cage looks like...



Dessert:

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Monday, October 19, 2009

There Truly IS a Museum for Everything!


Behold--The Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia.

If it isn't worth the drive to Big Rapids, Michigan, perhaps an audience with the Ferris State University Homecoming King and Queen is more your speed?

Too much

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