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April 24, 2011

The air strike philosophy of Banksy, Col. Kurtz, and Obama

Filed under: Guest Comment — Tags: , , , — Bob Patterson @ 4:30 pm

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Banksy’s harsh philosophy about perseverance is contained in a mural, located at Columbus and Broadway in San Francisco, that isn’t very noticeable at street level and so there is a high degree of probability that President Obama did not see the art work that advises “If at first you don’t succeed – call in an airstrike,” which might become a philosophical conundrum if the endeavor in question happens to be ineffective airstrikes such as the ones NATO is conducting against Libya. The fact that the NATO airstikes are now being supplemented by unmanned drone attacks might mean that Obama did see Banksy’s mural during a recent Presidential visit to Frisco and realized that Col. Kurtz (Marlon Brando) in “Apocalypse Now,” was right when he wrote: “We must exterminate them!” The Libyans will learn to love America for its efforts to protect them from Gaddafi or die in the process.

The newest American quagmire seems to be causing an identity crisis for Obama supporters. If America’s first President of Panafrican heritage is doing what George W. Bush did how can they explain their extensive criticism of the Republican and simultaneously defend their enthusiasm for the Democratic Party President who is committing the Bush initiated war crimes and atrocities at an even greater pace?

Progressive talk radio shows now feature hosts who promote Obama’s agenda with the same degree of incomprehensible propaganda babble as Uncle Rushbo provided for Dubya when he first started the American commitment to invasions, slaughter, and torture.

The President seems to assume that the writers for liberal web sites owe him the same level of unquestioning fanatical support as he gets from the paid hacks on the airwaves.

The World’s Laziest Journalist has consistently ridiculed the logic contained in George W. Bush’s line of completely absurd reasoning used to rationalize his foreign policy that grew out of the barrel of a gun. We have asked, long before the dedication of the Bush Presidential Library, if there would be a display featuring an example of the aluminum tubes that provided a ludicrous rational for going to war because we believe that the columnist’s role in society is to criticize all politicians. We stand prepared to question and criticize the winner of the 2012 Presidential Election regardless of who wins.

If the winner happens to be a Republican, that will make what we write a very welcome contribution to various liberal websites. If the winner is the Democratic Party candidate that means that our efforts will be a bit uncomfortable for readers who want partisan enthusiasm rather than sarcastic criticism.

Does that mean that the World’s Laziest Journalist will never offer punditry for pay services? If we wanted to provide hired gun wordsmithing, we’d just run an ad saying something like this: “Have laptop; will gush (pro-Democratic Party gibberish) Wire Palindrome San Francisco.” For the time being, that ain’t gonna happen.

For reason which only a conspiracy theory lunatic would appreciate, we think that it behooves the (Karl Rove) Republican game plan to promote the misperception that President Obama has a commanding lead over the assortment of ragtag Republicans vying for their party’s Presidential Nomination.

After reading some of Ian Kershaw’s book “The Hitler Myth, Image and Reality in the Third Reich” this columnist envisions a scenario whereby one Republican who has been on a “listening tour” of America for the past two years, suddenly (after a spectacularly strong showing in the Iowa caucuses) becomes a media darling with a tsunami of adoring news stories about a massive and spontaneous “firestorm” of public approval.

That bit of conspiracy theory lunacy would be possible only if one had the übercynical perception that America’s free press could be manipulated into compliance with this scenario and somehow provide the aforementioned avalanche of propaganda for (JEB?) the phenomenon candidate that this hypothetical conjecture about a political blitzkrieg requires.

The fact that the World’s Laziest Journalist was kicked off a popular blog site for conjecture about the possibility that the unverifiable results from the electronic voting machines would be the basis for a return of the Bush Dynasty to the contemporary American Political scene is what we use as the basis for assuming that paid political pundits could be subjected to subtle stealth bits of message shaping in the free market arena of journalism.

Recently the World’s Laziest Journalist has produced the keystrokes necessary for several columns, but then when it came time to pack up the memory stick and trudge off to a Public Library computer to post the column, the enthusiasm and momentum evaporated completely. Why bother?

A current of disapproval of Obama by people who voted for him in 2008 is being ignored by the well paid punditry experts. Is this part of the set up for a “nobody saw that coming” Republican upset in 2012? If the seeds of dissention are blooming within the ranks of Obama’s supporters and if Regan Democrats defect from Obama in 2012, is the stage being set for the arrival on the Republican side of a charismatic candidate who can unite the various factions of his party and country via a magnetic personality?

Anyone who has read the aforementioned Kershaw book would be sure to expect Republicans to use the adoring fans shtick such as described on page 30: A lucky fellow “who received a small bunch of three carnations . . . had to be satisfied with a few small remains . . . after his friends had ravaged the bunch and grabbed bits of the flowers for themselves.”

What TV news producer could miss the chance to run footage of such a tableau, even if it had been carefully choreographed beforehand? “It must be true; I seen it on TV!”

Recently we wrote several columns disparaging Obama but failed to summon the motivation for doing the additional work involved in going online and posting them.
The inertia and failure to go out and post columns disparaging Obama’s new variation of the Bush war crimes and torture, reminds us of the former boss who used to dismiss all irrelevant ephemera by sounding like an indulgent rich dad by saying: “Yes, yes, yes! Of course! Now run along and play.”

After reading Jeremy Mercer’s book about living in a famous Paris bookstore, “time was soft there,” this columnist is considering the merits of dropping by the editorial offices of Kilometer Zero magazine and chatting up the publisher in hopes of getting something published in that literary publication. Should the World’s Laziest Journalist do that and write columns about the effort? “Yes, yes, yes! Of course! Now run along and play.”

Should this columnist make an effort to fact check and write a column about experiencing the 24 Hour race at Le Mans first hand? “Yes, yes, yes! Of course! Now run along and play.”

Would it be worth the effort to write a column calling the attention of fans of the film “Apocalypse Now” to the fact that in Robert L. Carringer’s book, “The Making of Citizen Kane,” we learned that before making that movie, Orson Wells spent time working on a possible modernized film version of Joseph Conrad’s novel “Heart of Darkness”?

Our boss, whom we have just quoted, also used to give some colorful advice about what to do in case Los Angeles became the target for a Russian nuclear attack: “Run towards the flash!”

Now, the disk jockey will play Orson Wells version of the song “I know what it is to be young; you don’t know what it means to be old,” the Doors’ “The End,” and the soundtrack album for “Good morning Vietnam!” We have to go buy a pair of track shoes. Have a “terminate Col. Gaddafi’s command” type week.

April 14, 2011

National Columnists’ Day for Gonzo Journalists

Filed under: Guest Comment — Tags: , , , — Bob Patterson @ 12:22 pm

National Columnists’ Day occurs annually on April 18 because it was on that date in 1945 that war correspondent/columnist Ernie Pyle was killed in action on the island of Ie Shima. In past years, our annual National Columnists’ Day column has detailed Pyle’s life and career and in other years it was devoted to other memorable columnists such as Herb Caen and Walter Winchell. About two weeks ago, we took a break from the task of selecting a subject for this year’s installment and went down to the local Half Price Bookstore in downtown Berkeley to score a bargain bin copy of Ammo Books’ “Hunter S. Thompson,” which is subtitled “Gonzo.”

Recently, we had caught a screening of the film “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” and followed it up with an immediate repeat viewing via a VHS tape, on the following day. The “Gonzo” book, edited by Steve Crist and Laila Nabulsi, includes photos and reproductions of memorabilia from Thompson’s life. While perusing the new addition to the collection, because a friend is preparing to celebrate her fortieth birthday, we noticed one particular illustration in the Ammo book; it was a certificate of achievement, from the National District Attorneys Association noting the fact that the Thompson had covered the Third National Institute Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs convention which was held, in Las Vegas, on April 25 to 29 in 1971. We realized that the events described in Thompson’s “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” book were also celebrating their 40th birthday.

After starting to reread the book, we recalled reading columns by Hunter S. Thompson in the (now defunct) Los Angeles Herald Examiner and then later, in the computer age, online. Thompson has always been hard to categorize and so it seemed that selecting him to be the peg for this year’s installment of our annual National Columnists’ Day column made the choice a “slam-dunk” because forty years after Thompson blurred the lines between fiction and journalism all of American Journalism has become a credibility challenge for those who want to know if what the government is telling the people is fact or fable.

“Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” is subtitled: “A Savage Journey into the Heart of the American Dream” and that may be a play on title of Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness.” Forty years ago, the concept of the “American Dream” evoked clichéd references to a home surrounded by a white picket fence. Today, the thought of a “home” conjures up images of thousands of families being thrown out of their homes by wealthy businessmen (who contribute generously to various political reelection funds?) who are just as savage and ruthless as any native warrior encountered by Marlow in the journey described in the Conrad novel.

Forty years after Thompson lampooned the American Dream, circa 1971, the USA is full of disillusioned families with broken dreams trying desperately to cope with homelessness and the darkness in their new depression era hearts. The country is going broke fighting three separate perpetual military adventures which are either just for the pure fun of it or are wars of imperialistic aggression. The American Dream has morphed into a nightmare while American Journalism stands by obsessing over the latest celebrity gossip about Charlie Sheen and ignoring the Republican Party’s coordinated efforts to vandalize and sabotage the Democratic process of holding honest elections.

Thompson helped popularize the term “Gonzo Journalism” which became a handy label for a Sixties journalism trend marked by the writer including himself in the events being described while simultaneously exaggerating some factual aspects of the story. (For a more scholarly approach to the wide open and vague bit of fact checking about the origin of the word “gonzo,” refer to page 128 of Jann S. Wenner and Corey Seymour’s oral biography of Thompson, titled “Gonzo,” published in 2007 by Little Brown and Co.)

In the early stages of Internets development, we belonged to an e-mail group of people (mostly scholars) who were focused on all things concerning Ernst Hemingway and they accepted without challenge the idea that the degree of involvement of the writer in his own story, as far as both Hemingway and Thompson were concerned, was about equal. The term “gonzo” had not come into contemporary American Literary culture when Hemingway was writing (and producing columns) about WWII and the Spanish Civil War. Is it possible to make the case for asserting that Hemingway was the spiritual godfather of gonzo journalism?

While George W. Bush was President, columnists who furnished vitriolic criticism of the fellow, who Thomas called “the child-President,” became wildly popular on liberal web sites and attracted an eager audience whose appetite for disparaging remarks about the occupant in the White House couldn’t be satisfied by a relentless torrent of criticism.

In “Kingdom of Fear,” the last of Thompson’s books published while he was still alive, the pessimistic attitude regarding the future of America is epitomized by the phrase “Big Darkness Soon Come” and it doesn’t take a scholar with impeccable academic credentials to say that if Thompson had lived, he would be very acerbic in his assessments of George W. Bush’s successor who has rubber stamped his approval (“imitation is the sincerest form of flattery”) of almost every one of Bush’s outrages against the Geneva Accords and the rules of engagement.

Thompson was relentless in applying his philosophy regarding politicians (“Don’t take any guff from these swine”) to the Bush Administration and anyone who wants to assume that Thompson would give President Obama a pass and, instead, provide partisan platitudes just because he wasn’t a Republican is asking for a stretch in logic that betrays the foundations of rational thinking.

Thompson’s righteous indignation, directed against George W. Bush, was a matter of principle not subject to change when a new President from the other major political party took the oath of office, rather than being an example of partisanship (of the German salute level of commitment kind) which would defy credibility when it broke the WTF barrier of logic and did a complete 180 degree about-face to mollify the new war monger (not that the new guy gives a farthing about what columnists or bloggers think of his ERA [or era?]) Thompson would have continued his acerbic snarky attitude with only the name of the President being criticized changed.

Philip K. Dick, in “Man in the High Tower,” envisioned a cult hero writer adored by his fans who lived in isolation in Colorado. The World’s Laziest Journalist is alone in his conviction that Dick had accurately forecast the cult of Thompson fans, in his alternative history novel which was written and published when Thompson was graduating from high school and serving a hitch in the Air Force. If this columnist was younger and more ambitious, he might consider doing a doctoral thesis as the basis for a comparison of the real life writer to Dick’s fictional character.

Thompson’s biographers report that he was obsessive in his slavish attention to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel, “The Great Gatsby” and that Hunter may have either consciously or unconsciously patterned “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” on Fitzgerald’s work of fiction. Ironically, the Fitzgerald novel has become an icon of life in the Twenties during prohibition and “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” has become a symbol of the hippie life style. Each novel has come to epitomize an American generation. Perhaps some diligent liberal arts graduate student will do a doctoral thesis comparing and contrasting the two (related?) examples of classic contemporary American Literature?

While gathering information for this column we were informed that Cliff Notes does not have a detailed critical analysis of “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” available. Perhaps some industrious literary critic will now send a query letter to the Cliff Notes commandant and perhaps that gap will be remedied?

The fact that the Beat Museum (in San Francisco) has become the host site for two courses (for college credit?) in creative writing brought to mind the academic consternation caused when a pioneering effort to teach a course in Beat Literature was a controversial innovation and that, in turn, caused us to wonder if any college or university anywhere offers a course of study (Gonzo 101?) devoted to the works of Hunter S. Thompson or an overview of Gonzo journalism per se.

Ernie Pyle went to England to cover the Battle of Britain. Hunter S. Thompson covered the Viet Cong’s arrival in Saigon after American troops were evacuated. Would it be too Philip K. Dick-ish to try to envision how an imaginary encounter between Pyle, if he had lived longer, and Thompson, during the evacuation of Saigon, would have played out?

Looking through the index for Karl E. Meyer’s book “Pundits, Poets, & Wits (An Omnibus of American Newspaper Columns)” it is obvious that we could have made a different less controversial selection for this year’s installment of our National Columnists’ Day column, but the fact that Thompson could be a contentious choice made it all the more imperative to do so.

About his friend Oscar Zeta Acosta, Thompson wrote: “Oscar was one of God’s own prototypes – a high powered mutant of some kind who was never even considered for mass production. He was too weird to live, and too rare to die.” The same might be said of Thompson himself.

Now the disk jockey will play the “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” soundtrack album. We have to go to a wifi hot spot and post this column early as a way to stir up a “my National Columnists’ Day column is better than yours” competition to increase public awareness of the annual event. Have a “Gonzo” type week.

March 31, 2011

The Democrats’ Dilemma

Filed under: Guest Comment — Tags: , , , — Bob Patterson @ 12:38 pm

worlds-fair-building“Swing,” Rupert Holmes mystery novel about the adventures of a musician in a swing band who is also an amateur detective investigating a death at the 1940 Worlds Fair held on Treasure Island in the San Francisco Bay, left the World’s Laziest Journalist with an extreme case of regret about missing out on visiting that year’s West Coast alternative World’s Fair, which had to strive mightily to be noticed in the media shadow of the other one in the New York area. The chance to rectify that gap in the columnist’s cultural resume had been relegated to a place in the “things to do when time travel becomes a reality” file, but then we recalled reading somewhere that the final vestiges of the Fair was available in the form of the Treasure Island Museum which was supposed to still be operating on the site.

On the morning of Wednesday, March 30, 2011, there was a plethora of column topics demanding immediate attention. Listening to the Stephanie Miller radio show, it seemed like using the day to write a column in support of the Mooks’ right to castigate the President for giving his approval to the continuation of the Bush Crime Family agenda was a top priority.

A column making comparisons between the new adventures of the Legion of Libya Liberators and the Bay of Pigs fiasco would need some fact finding. There would be an ironical difference: the Bay of Pigs was lost because the United States failed to provide the rebels with air cover and the setbacks being suffered by the rebels in Libya, are happening despite the fact that the new rebels are being provided with their own Air Force, courtesy of the current Regan Democrat in the White House. Such a column could be produced if a fact finding trip to the Berkeley Public Library’s Main Branch was conducted followed by an afternoon of intense keystroking.

If the columnist spent the sunny spring morning (March had produced 21 rainy days in the Berkeley area) rereading and jotting down pertinent information from Ian Patterson’s book, “Guernica and Total War,” the afternoon could be devoted to producing a brilliant and perceptive column comparing the Spanish Civil War with the efforts of the American led Libyan Liberation Falangists. Can Gaddafi be compared to Franco? Do civilians in Libya refer to the American air cover as something involving “the Condor Legion”? Would that sobriquet sting the German contingent participating in the war for humanitarian reasons?

Should we write a column noting that Australia, which has provided troops every time they were asked to do so by America, was given a pass this time because they were not invited to participate in this new American military adventure?

Should the day be spent pounding out a column urging popular support for Monday’s Day of Action in support of the unions in Wisconsin?

Would it be spurious to inject a plug for the efforts of a fellow Berkeley based photo blogger at the What I saw in Berkeley today website, into a three dot journalism style column?

Our desire to explore the last traces of the Golden Gate International Exposition of 1939 – 1940 overwhelmed our dedication to duty and so we yielded to temptation and called in sick for the day so that we could travel there and gather information for a column on that non-political topic.

Treasure Island was built by the Army Corps of Engineers specifically to serve as the site for the Exposition and was expected to serve as the location where Pan Am Airline’s China Clipper would be housed after the Fair closed. When the United States was pulled into World War II, the island provided a convenient location for a large new navy base.

Some conspiracy theory nuts are very skeptical of the fact that Treasure Island just happened to become available at the very same time when America needed to build a big naval base on the West Coast to conduct the Pacific faze of WWII. Apparently they just don’t appreciate the fact that some coincidences come along at a very appropriate time.

The fairgrounds, on Wednesday, March 30, 2011, were deserted and void of tourists and walking down the empty streets was reminiscent of the opening sequence in the movie “Twelve O’clock High.”

Late fair visitors can find a coffee shop and a pizza (was that invented by 1939?) place called the Oasis Café and two small convenience stores.

We did wind up in the Naval base brig, which now is the site for The Fat Grape Winery, where the congenial staff (owner Patrick Bowen) welcomed this Fair visitor and gave us a brief tour of the facility even though the writer hasn’t had an alcoholic drink for a good number of years.

We were disappointed to learn that Sally Rand’s Dude/Nude Ranch didn’t deliver and hedged by featuring a cast of ladies who were “almost” naked.

The Fair headquarters building is the location of a leasing office, today, and the surrounding area features a variety of sports fields which have had the same effect on real estate developers as a waving a red flag has on high strung bulls. We were told that next month residents will learn what the next step toward in a redevelopment movement, with promises of high rise apartments with spectacular views of either San Francisco or the East Bay, will be.

Like most tourists, we took a good number of snapshots with our trusty Coolpix before hopping on the two busses which would return us to the World’s Laziest Journalist’s home office.

When we got back there we began to have some feelings of guilt about (figuratively speaking) calling in sick for the day and felt inclined to bang out a column on a topic that would be more appropriate for use as content that would be posted on sites that feature political punditry.

However, President Obama has effectively put professional liberals (such as Stephanie Miller and Randy Rhodes) into a bind or what chess players would call a fork dilemma because they can no longer criticize George W. Bush and ignore Obama’s duplication of Bush’s war and torture policies. Does that mean that Democrats can accurately say that they are being forked by Obama? Liberals must either condemn both Presidents or drop the topics of torture and wars initiated by a President without Congressional approval.

Republicans see no contradiction if they condemn Obama for doing the exact same things that their hero, George W. Bush, did. Liberals are hesitant about praising the one and condemning the other for identical conduct. If they do, they will appear to be hypocrites susceptible to the charge of being racists unfairly disparaging the President from Texas while condoning the conduct of another President from Illinois.

Drat! War and torture would have made such nifty campaign issues in 2012, but, thanks to Obama’s precious stunt regarding the Libyan Civil War, the topic is now moot. Will the El Segundo Blue Butterfly become the hot debate topic in 2012?

We will have to stick with our decision to go with a column about a rather tardy visit to the 1940 event.

Dang! If we actually had been able to do a real time travel visit to that event, we would very much have also wanted to stop at a Ford Dealer on the way home to buy a 1940 DeLuxe Ford convertible coupe.

We did the best we could under the circumstances and enjoyed our “sick day” anemic attempt at time travel immensely. The man made island was named “Treasure Island” because the author of that adventure classic, Robert Louis Stevenson, had been an area resident in the past for a portion of his life. Perhaps, some other day, we will write a column about the long list of authors who have spent some time in or around the San Francisco area.

Pierre Jean Francois Joseph Bosquet, who died in 1861, may have made the best prediction of President Obama’s philosophy regarding the humanitarian effort involving helping the Libyan Rebels, when he said (he was referring to the Charge of the Light Brigade): “It is magnificent, but it is not war.”

Now the disk jockey will play “In the mood,” “A nightingale sang on Berkeley Square,” and “Age of Aquarius” (Just to see if you are paying attention). We have to go send a “Mook Power!” e-mail to Jim Ward. Have a “strange days, indeed, mama” type week.

March 28, 2011

Fear and Loathing in the Democratic Party

Filed under: Guest Comment — Tags: , , , , — Bob Patterson @ 8:25 pm

In response to requests to explain why the USA has intervened in a civil war in Libya, the President asserted that the reason was to protect American interests. He followed that up with a smorgasbord of campaign style patriotic platitudes. He did not present any evidence to prove his contention that American interests “were at stake.”

His speech brought to mind Lord Byron’s snarky assessment of a Wordsworth poem: “I wish he would explain his explanation.”

The progressive radio station in the San Francisco Bay area cut away from the speech before the “God Bless America” ending.

In California, the speech was heard live at the end of the work day right before the start of the evening commute hour.

It seems to this columnist that the President’s “whole lotta nada” speech will not assuage his Republican critics nor will it satisfy the skeptics in his own party.

In the morning preceding the speech, this columnist wrote up some additional material in anticipation of the speech. Here are our expectations for the speech:

There is a very vulgar colloquialism which accurately describes the challenge facing the President in his speech delivered on the night of Monday, March 28, 2011, but we won’t quote it verbatim. Bush’s successor has “soiled the nest” and will attempt to use his (alleged) eloquence and charm to convince the Democrats who voted for him to forgive and forget his war crimes record, just as he has done with and for George W. Bush.

The best indicator of the most likely result of President Jackass’ attempt at a Myth of Sisyphus task was contained in an article for Esquire magazine written by Norman Mailer in response to an appearance by Madonna on a late night TV show. In it, Mailer made the assertion that Americans will forgive a celebrity any transgression so long as it doesn’t involve a “going against type” aspect regarding the celebrity’s public image.

Mailer pointed out that Andrew Dice Clay, who was known for making caustic remarks, fell from grace when he apologized for one of his quotes. Conversely, since Americans expected scandalous behavior from Madonna, Mailer (accurately) predicted she would quickly be forgiven the appearance on the Letterman show which was marked by repeated use of the “f-word.”

If Mailer’s theorem is correct, the President’s attempt to convince his supporters that he is still the same old hero worth of their love and campaign donations will fall on deaf ears. Rather than preaching to the choir, it will be as warmly received by the rank and file Democrats as would be accorded to a missionary’s attempt to proselytize to a gang of inebriated members of a famous motorcycle club. The challenge facing Scheherazade pales in comparison to the task that the Democratic Party’s choice has chosen for himself (and his legacy).

The President, very early in his term, suggested that he would be comfortable with being a one term entry in the history books. It’s a very good thing that he feels that way because his supporters might soon have to interpret his previous remark as a self fulfilling prophesy with a dash of the “be careful what you wish for” aspect to it.

George W. Bush often used America’s Free Press to help substantiate his newest “Black is White” lie. The press would dutifully relay an endorsement of the fallacy and the public would be left scratching their heads. Is the media doing a good job of spreading the “war for humanitarian reasons” oxymoron or are they being skeptical?

There is an old journalism tradition for writing two diametrically opposed stories in anticipation of a binary choice event. The most egregious example of the danger of such a practice came in the news photo image of a triumphant Harry S. Truman holding up a copy of the Chicago Tribune that featured a headline proclaiming: “Dewey Defeats Truman.”

With that in mind, this columnist wrote a preliminary draft of this version of this column on the morning of Monday, March 28, 2011. It is possible that, like the forgiving wife of an abusive husband, Democrats could respond to the Monday night speech with the political version of “make-up sex” and welcome the President back into their good graces with open arms. We won’t waste the time and energy needed to do the keystrokes for a column comparing the President’s speech to the first appearance of the Beatles on live TV in the USA.

The Democrats may be dumb, but this columnist’s pre-speech opinion is that the Democrats can’t be that stupid.

The Democrats who voted for the incumbent wanted a viable alternative to the Bush Dynasty and not a carbon copy of Dubya.

There was one popular speaker who could literally turn water into wine, but for a guy to expect to use one speech to sell a capricious and very expensive new war to supporters, who projected a “peace maker” image onto a fellow who subsequently gave his imprimatur to his predecessor’s war crimes and then decided to go him one better, isn’t just a difficult challenge it (IMHO is now officially, according to the Oxford Dictionary, a real word) is a stellar example of insanity in action.

The advantage of the situation is that it makes the task of being prepared to analyze speeches where the incumbent says whatever will rationalize the Bush-Obama War Crimes Agenda so much easier because all that’s needed is some old anti-Bush invective with the names changed to update the diatribe.

The current President once made a casual remark about expecting liberal bloggers to provide approval on demand because that was what they were paid to do. Since this columnist has no fiduciary relationship with the current occupant of the White House, we feel free to blurt out our opinions much as if it were part of a Rorschach test and not a opportunity to display unquestioning party loyalty. Has America become the land of: “One Country, one Party, one Dynasty!”?

[Wouldn’t it be überironic if both Uncle Rushbo and Mike Malloy peruse these columns looking for relevant insights and clever metaphors? Shall we test our theory? If he is reading this; here’s a bone for Uncle Rushbo: Have American troops ever before in their history been under the command of any leadership that was not that of the American President?]

To cynics, it might seem as if the current Commander-in-chief has not only taken over where George W. Bush left off, but he has also taken over a military effort that will begin almost exactly where General Erwin Rommel’s career reached the turning point in a military career that had, up to that point, been described as “brilliant.”

Most Americans are familiar with Abraham Lincoln’s words of wisdom about fooling the people. The current resident in the White House should refresh his memory and become aware of the sentence preceding the famous often quoted one. It says: “If you once forfeit the confidence of your fellow citizens, you can never regain their respect and esteem.” Lincoln did not elaborate about how that advice might apply to an effort to be reelected.

Now the disk jockey will play several of Madonna’s albums. We have to get up early and scramble out to a place with a wifi connection to post this column. Have a “What’s so civil about civil war?” type week.

Afterword: We were able to post this column on Monday night.

March 27, 2011

The penny wise pound foolish budget

Filed under: Guest Comment — Tags: , , , — Bob Patterson @ 3:43 pm

One of the guys who does volunteer work for the Marina (del Rey) Tenants Association (MTA) asked this columnist if we could help him in his private cause of trying to restore the level of karate instructions his daughter was receiving at the Sun Valley Park Recreation Center in Los Angeles County. There had been three classes a week and it had been reduced down to two a week and he wanted to see if he could get it back to three. (Cue the “putting toothpaste back into the tube” analogy?)

The Marina Tenants Association has, since its inception in the Seventies, been battling the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors over rent rates because the history of the world famous boating marina has lead the local voters and several newspaper reporters to ask for various investigations over the years because the fact that the developers who build in the county run area make profits that are deemed “excessive” while being regular campaign donors to the very politicians who are assigned the task of overseeing the possibility that the people who provide their own financial political support are too enthusiastic in setting new rent rates in that area. To some, it would seem that the voters think that the politicians, who assure their constituents that they will be impartial, are being disingenuous.

The fact that many voters are confused by the elimination of many budget items at a time when the question of financing new military operations in support of a civil war in Libya is being glossed over in a perfunctory manner is causing them to question the disparity of a “penny wise and pound foolish” agenda.

The President is scheduled to address the nation on Monday evening and explain his reasoning.

To cynics, it seems like the President is assisting the Republicans in their new “Take-away” strategy. The Republicans take away citizens rights and benefits while simultaneously taking away the tax burden for the corporations and rich individuals.

To some, it looks like the Republican agenda in Michigan amounts to taking away (AKA disenfranchising) the voters right to representation via mayoral and city council elections by installing “viceroys.”

The challenge, for the President in Monday night’s speech, will be to explain the apparent fiscal policy contradictions in terms that the average voter can understand. If President Obama can do that without sounding like a parody of the standard Bush war speech full of assurances that the task is hard work and that progress is being made; then he will (in effect) have kicked off his re-election campaign with another example of his famous speech-giving style (as St. Ronald Reagan often went to the people to use his charm to win the voters’ hearts). If, however, he fumbles and comes off sounding like a college professor explaining calculus to a grade school mathematics class, he could face a more formidable reelection challenge than most of his cheerleader-pundits currently expect.

The degree of difficulty for the President’s task has been further increased by a recent New York Time article that asserted that the new American military activities directed against Libya was based on some resentment for what American business men perceived as “extortion” on the part of the Libyan leader in return for commercial opportunities inside that country on the African continent. That would leave the war open to some snide commentary using the old mafia concept of “this is nothing personal, just business” regarding the new hostilities. Even just the idea of such a possibility contradicts the President’s assertion that the new “war” is being waged for strictly humanitarian reasons.
(Doesn’t the concept of “war for humanitarian reasons” sound rather Bush-esque?) [Note: efforts to find the article online were unsuccessful. Readers are invited to do their own fact checking on this possible news story explantation.]

If this new “conspiracy theory,” from the New York Times, is ever proven to be a valid explanation, that could further complicate the President’s attempt to win the hearts and minds of American voters for a second time.

Unfortunately for voters, each and every cause (such as the level of karate class instructions in Sunland Park) needs an individual restoration effort, while the Republican program can be as cold and unemotional as the stroke of a pen crossing the item off a local budget.

Somewhere in Berkeley, we noticed a bumper sticker that drolly noted that you will never see an Air Force Base holding a bake sale so that they can buy a new fighter jet.

Conspiracy theory nuts will have their usual song and dance ready if the Republican Supreme Court Justice in Wisconsin wins reelection on Tuesday. The Democrats have been trained to respond to any new allegations that the Republicans have stolen (i.e. take it away from the Democrats) an election by saying in unison: “We just didn’t get enough voter turn out. We’ll have to try harder next time.”

It is not clear if the President will use the Monday night speech to assuage the voters fears about some tangential subjects such as assurances that there is no need for concern on America’s West Coast over malfunctions at some electrical generating plants thousands and thousands of miles away in Japan. Only disloyal subjects – make that word “citizens” – would be suspicious enough of such reassurances to go to the Internets site that reports radiation levels in the USA to fact check their own President.

https://cdxnode64.epa.gov/radnet-public/query.do

Do Republicans want to take away from the country’s support of the Commander-in-chief?

Another part of the Republican “Take-away” agenda is to reduce the excessive amount of disposable income in the voters’ pockets (via lowering wages) so that the rich can have their fears about lower profits during hard times taken away from their list of worries.

One intrepid conservative has incurred the wrath of her lackeys by pioneering the “you should donate your labor to my business” trend and is ignoring the workers’ “strike.” Why strive to get them to work for “less” if you can get them to work for free?

In the old days, rich business moguls used to hire thugs to come in and use baseball bats to knock some sense into the hard hearts of the financially motivated “firebrands,” who often were outside agitators and not actual workers. Actually, the instigators usually did the “observe and report” routine from the sidelines while the workers themselves took the actual physical punishment.

Voluntary work opportunities abound for liberals. Hired gun writers, by definition, tend to only join the causes (such as lowering the tax burden of the rich) that will provide them with a paycheck.

When the tax rate for corporations and rich individuals is reduced to absolute zero, will they stop their lobbying efforts or will they then proceed onward to an effort to provide “tax reparations” for (what they perceive as) past taxation injustices? Would people actually think that capitalists could be that greedy?

The fact that the (so-called) Liberal Media has become more and more subdued in their attempts to foster the various causes embraced by Democrats tends to indicate that the Republican efforts to dismantle FDR’s “New Deal,” can now proceed unhindered, especially since most of the issues will be sent to conservative dominated appeals courts.

If Conservative Christian Republicans gain control of the Legislative, Executive, and Judicial branches of American government, what will Rush Limbaugh have to use as the basis for a (rather one-sided) debate on the public air waves? We may soon find out.

Quote wranglers debate about the legitimacy of a quote often attributed to Collis Huntington: “Whatever is not nailed down is mine. What I can pry loose is not nailed down.”

Now the disk jockey will play the song “Money (That’s what I want)” done by both the Beatles and the Stones (the only song recorded by both groups), the Flying Lizzards, and ? We have to go find a copy of the Jefferson Airplane song “Volunteers.” Have a “just say ‘Thank you, masked man’” type week.

March 20, 2011

American Journalism MIA

Filed under: Guest Comment — Tags: , , , — Bob Patterson @ 3:33 pm

Americans who read their daily papers very assiduously during the week of March 13 – 19, 2011, were informed that something bad happened in Japan and that a “no fly zone” had been authorized to be implemented over Libya, but there were some aspects of the news that were (like the rest of the Cheshire cat in back of the smile) missing.

This week, a Democrat President did what George W. Bush tried and failed miserably to accomplish; Obama got America into a new military venture without a word of dissent from any Democrat politician.

There was (ironically) a series of demonstrations marking the anniversary of the shock and awe TV special that marked the beginning of America’s continuing invasion of Iraq. Since the paucity (paw city = cat pun?) of news coverage of the war’s various birthday parties left news junkies to wonder did those “protests” really happen?

The writers’ strike against the Huffington Post was mentioned by Romenesko’s Media News, the Columbia Journalism Review’s website, and in a column by the World’s Laziest Journalist, but since Rupert Murdock has nothing but distain for the journalist’s mission, he used “interline courtesy” rules and his band of clowns will stay mum and not embarrass fellow mogul Arianna Huffington.

Other than feature stories about some radiation in food which is at “no cause for alarm” level (why bother mentioning it then?), has anyone reported any other facts about the nuclear disaster in Japan? There was an erroneous report that the frantic workers had been given the “abandon ship” order, but that was later denied. They are trying to cool the reactors down.

If the workers were trying to exacerbate the situation, that would be news, but spending all that money to send reporters into the danger zone just to come up with “trying to cool the reactors down” stories seems a bit too obvious to warrant network evening news round-up time.

Has any major media reporter done a sidebar story about the possibility that the surrounding area might (like happened in the Chernobyl region?) become a radio active leper colony?

The academics who teach atomic science at the University of California at Berkeley have been reported to be measuring the fallout in that city of the radiation coming from Japan. There are no specific details about the readings, only the “second the motion” platitudes about Obama’s announcement that there is nothing happening that merits alarm. They can’t or won’t say what the readings are, but no worries, mate, don’t sweat that bit of unnecessary news.

A judge in Wisconsin ordered a stay on that state’s law to strip public employees of their collective bargaining rights. Uncle Rushbo was urging the governor of Wisconsin to choose to ignore the stay, just as (he asserted) President Obama had ignored a ruling on the Health Care Package that was passed last year. Why upset union workers with breaking details on that story when it was clearly important to run stories telling them that there were no worries about the situation in Japan?

It’s not like the news media failed completely during the week of March 13 – 19; on page E-1 of the San Francisco Chronicle, for Friday, March 18, 2011, David Wiegand reported that Charlie Sheen’s “My Violent Torpedo of Truth/Defeat Is Not an Option” tour will feature an appearance in San Francisco (on April 30). Perhaps Charlie will reveal details about the cooling efforts in Japan?

Adolph Hitler used the threat of physical torture to keep journalists in line during the Third Reich era. He had an official state run newspaper (just like Uncle Rushbo would like to see in the USA?) and journalists who wished to stray outside the prescribed boundaries did so at their own peril. His torture specialists had a high “complete recant and sincere apology” level rating.

In the USA, Freedom of the Press is guaranteed by the First Amendment to the Constitution, but the journalists seem to be very willing to accept an unwritten “ya gotta go along to get along” codicil to that scrap of paper.

Perhaps, if America’s journalists offered to voluntarily subscribe to the Volkischer Beobachter standards of reporting, a nasty round of lay-offs could be avoided? If the reporters want a Dan Rather-Keith Olbermann ticket to oblivion, that can be arranged. Is any news story worth the loss of facetime on the networks?

Apparently there will be no effort on the part of the news media to relay to the public assurances from a reputable politician that: “It isn’t about oil.”

Speaking of scraps of paper, have you read about the 29th Annual Napkin Art Contest being held by Mama’s Royal Café, in Oakland CA?
MamasRoyalCafeOakland.com

On page 539 of “Murrow: His Life and Times,” (Freundlich Books hardback ©1986) A. M. Sperber quotes Edward R. Murrow: “Surely we shall pay for using the most powerful instrument of communication to insulate the citizenry from the hard and demanding realities which are to be faced if we are to survive. I mean the word ‘survive’ literally . . . .” Has anyone thought that Murrow might have been a very early example of the conspiracy theory nut?

[Can anyone explain why the annual list of the names of the individuals being inducted, this year, into the Conspiracy Nuts’ Hall of Fame are being kept secret?]

Now the disk jockey will play “Zippidy Do Dah,” “I’m the Pied Pipper,” and “The Warsaw Concerto.” We have to go check and see how the Fremantle **ckers (An American pants company won’t let us use their team name) are doing. Have a “what you don’t know can’t hurt you” type week.

[Afterword] After writing this column, we bought the New York Times Sunday edition for March 20, 2011, and learned, in the lead story on the front page, that in order to protect the citizens of Libya from their leader, a series of air strikes had begun. How many citizens of Libya will be inadvertently killed in the effort to protect them was undetermined.

We learned on page 12 of the front news section that questions were being asked about the possibility that the Tokyoy Electric Power Company executives may have wasted time in their response to the emergency.

On page 23, in a photo caption, the Sunday Times informed readers that “protesters were arrested in Washington on Saturday.”

March 18, 2011

Yay for the new war?

Filed under: Guest Comment — Tags: , , , — Bob Patterson @ 12:23 pm

A friend in Concordia Kansas sent an e-mail to this columnist that we interpreted to mean that she was training her Chihuahua dog to participate in a Kansas based Iditarod style race for the breed of dog that we thought would be considered “illegal alien” status in her area. Do dogs need green cards?

It might seem irresponsible and frivolous for a columnist to consider writing a column on the dig topic at a time when the tree huggers are concerned about “an atomic plume” arriving on America’s West Coast and a new “It’s not about the oil” war being added to the gripes of the unpatriots who are celebrating the start of the Afghanistan phase of the perpetual war on terrorism.

We noted a story on the Romensko Media News page at the Poynter website that stated that the Wire Service Guild has asked writers to withhold content and honor the strike against the Huffington Post website. Obviously, the Huffing and Puffing Aggregator website isn’t going to cross post that story and so if we mention it in this column, there is a slight chance that some of our readers (the ones who don’t check Romenesko daily) might not be aware of that development in the strike. [This just in: On Friday, March 18, 2011, Uncle Rushbo reported that the use of by-lines on AP stories is now a labor issue.]

The ego boost allure of crossing the picket line and giving Arianna permission to cross post something isn’t the only dilemma facing bloggers today. Many bloggers will have to wrestle with their conscience and decide if they will recycle an old “It isn’t about the oil” conservative augment from the Bush era and update it to sound relevant to the “no fly” zone military adventure in Libya or will they merely declare President Obama to be the black sheep of the Bush family and consider any effort to protect British Petroleum’s interests in Libya to be a new item for the list of Bush family outrages? If Britain helped the US invade Iraq, doesn’t the USA owe reciprocal military support for BP? Aren’t they a major part of the petroleum industry in Libya?

The prudent thing to do would probably be to hold off on this column and listen to some liberal talk radio shows and take a measure of the depth of their commitment to everything President Obama does or says. Then, if they concur with the effort to send more troops to install democracy in Libya, add our voice to the choir of admiring sheep or should we just dummy up and join in the silence of the lambs?

If Randy Rhodes and the Daily Kos are very adamant in their support of a new Obama military venture, shouldn’t this column disregard the old question about “if all your friends were jumping off the Brooklyn Bridge” and bang out a “one state, one people, one leader” column offering unquestioning commitment to a new war? If they balk at the opportunity to rubber stamp approval of all things Obama, won’t they appear to be subscribing to some weird conspiracy theory cult belief if they don’t “go along to get along”?

It certainly seems that a stance, that would condemn aggression and torture by Hitler and George W. Bush, but not if Obama does it, is a bit of a stellar example of using convoluted logic to rationalize your political views.

For those who are partisan critics of the George W. Bush wars of aggression, it would seem that they are now (metaphorically speaking) caught taking a long lead off first and will fall victim to a pick off throw. If you condemn Hitler and Bush, but make allowances for Obama to do the same thing, you are inconsistent and sound like a conspiracy theory nut.

If, however, you subscribe to the Henry Louis Mencken philosophy that the only way for a columnist to look at a politician is downwards, then it will be perfectly acceptable to ridicule Obama just as enthusiastically as one did George W. Bush during his stint as commander-in-chief.

The squad of Obama cheerleaders will be a bit uncomfortable this weekend, equivocating about how the Libya situation differs greatly from the attacks on Iraq and Afghanistan. If they look to Bush fans for a show of sympathy, they might get a bit of the old “you’re on your own, pal” cold shoulder from the likes of Uncle Rushbo et al because no matter how much Obama tries to imitate George W. Bush, they will always hate Obama and never give him any credit or praise for his efforts to retroactively get the Democratic voters to approve of and support the Bush agenda.

Before this columnist plunges brashly ahead with a sarcastic column that asks what social services programs will have to be scrapped to pay for a new bit of jingoistic colonial empire deployment in the dark continent, we might postpone our efforts and go see the new movie, “Paul,” and see if there might be a few laughs and a way to mix a movie review with some political commentary on it.

Maybe we should send an e-mail to our friend in Kansas and ask for more details about this intriguing but Google search illusive topic of an Iditarod style competition for Chihuahuas?

Maybe we should go buy a Geiger counter and walk around Berkeley CA and see just how accurate the “nothing to worry about” assessments really are? Nah! That makes us sound like a conspiracy theory nut.

If some Americans are going to stage anti-war rallies on Saturday, perhaps we could make an appeal for funds to hold a pro-Obama rally? Aren’t their several really good automobile museums rather close to Nuremburg? If we could get some patriotic well funded organization to subsidize it, we could go over there and (perhaps) do the work necessary to have a picturesque pro-Obama rally of expats?

Hunter S. Thompson coined the folk advice: “When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.”

Now the disk jockey will play “Over there,” “Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition,” and “Just before the battle, mother.” We have to go check out the rumor that the teachers unions, which want smaller classes, are funding the drive to give children the freedom to choose factory work (and $ $ $) over school. Have a “Cathedral of Light” type week.

March 14, 2011

Celebrity Gossip Pulitzer Prize?

Filed under: Guest Comment — Tags: , , , — Bob Patterson @ 12:33 pm

In all the times that this columnist traded words with Andy Warhol, the celebrity artist never managed to work his prediction that everyone will be world famous for 15 minutes into the conversation. After reading the New York Times Sunday edition for March, 13, 2011, we were appalled to realize that an irrelevant tidbit of information about conversations with Warhol might be a better way to start a column than mentioning the work done by the support group which helps the parents of murdered children cope, which we learned about while chatting with a fellow passenger on the Amtrak taking us back to Berkeley from Los Angeles.

In that day’s edition of the paper, the magazine section contained an article by Bill Keller that attempted to answer the question: “How much more of itself can the media consume?” He reports a relevant encounter with Arianna Huffinton and then succinctly encapsulates the challenge facing news aggregator sites: “They seem to have realized that if everybody is an aggregator nobody will be left to make real stuff to aggregate.” Do you think that the fact that writers are on strike against Huffington might be a “checkmate” bit of relevant evidence for his contention?

No use stepping on her toes if their paths will (inevitably) cross again at another future of journalism seminar.

That epitomizes the Catch-22 limitations of Celebrity Gossip Journalism. If you piss-off the celebrities you will be ostracized and be cut off from all possible content without access to the views, quips, and insider information that comes with belonging to the In crowd. If you go along to get along, your supply of material will be unlimited.

The In Crowd isolates itself from the real world and hence looses touch with the reality of the working class world.

While on the aforementioned train ride we chatted with a student at Fresno who was going home for a weekend of mom’s good home cooking. Since it was a chance to get a random sample of what the college students are thinking these days, we asked him if he thought George W. Bush was a war criminal. He couldn’t say one way or the other. He wanted a career in criminology and he had no opinion on the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan or the use of torture. We know we have the raw material starting point for a good trend-spotting column, which we may have to talk to some more college students to get a better basis regarding the trend or statistical aberration aspect of the conversation with the Fresno student. (Name dropping tidbit. This columnist saw the Jefferson Airplane perform in Fresno . . . a while ago.)

In the New York Times’ Op Ed area for March 13, 2011, we enjoyed Frank Rich’s piece titled “Confessions of a Recovering Op-Ed Columnist.” His anecdote about how, as a teenager, he had his first encounter with Walter Lippmann might be a useful tidbit to have ready to use when we do our annual National Columnist Day installment, honoring the memory of Ernie Pyle, when April xx approaches.

The folks at the NSNC organization might want to use the Book Section’s essay by Anthony Gottlieb, essentially inferring that Michel de Montaigne should be considered the patron saint of bloggers as a basis for voting Montaingne as the inspiration for nominating him to be the patron saint of columnists.

In the Gottlieb piece, he explained that Montaigne used an early version of the stream of consciousness style writing to great advantage. Perhaps we should relay the link for that to the editors at a web site where some of our attempts to contribute cross posting efforts are rejected for not having one dominant connecting theme. Then again, when older Americans have to explain who the Jefferson Airplane was, maybe an effort to imitate Montaigne is asking for too much digital leeway.

Columnists (such as Ernie Pyle during the Thirties) used to go out into the hinterland to ascertain what the Average American was thinking. Now the Fox College of Cable Knowledge is readily available to tell Americans what they should (if they want to be “hip”) be thinking and it saves Rupert Murdock a bunch of silly irrelevant expense checks and it saves the audience brain cells they would need to use up to think. In America, it has become easier to tell folks what to think and not ask them what they are thinking.

When we spent a recent evening chatting at the Cow’s End Café in Venice CA, we spoke with a hypnotist and amateur magician, who had worked in the psy-ops section of the military, and were surprised to learn that his pick for the next fellow to be dealt the “stolen election” card will be JEB Bush.

If the Celebrity Gossip In Crowd gets a tip that JEB is trending “hot” on the political radar, then all the bloggers will (as they sometimes do in Congress) confirm that bit of news by a voice vote (that is as accurate a measure as is the throwing of spaghetti against a wall) and tossing in the word “acclamation.” Until then, rogue columnists have to do the salmon going upstream imitation act and have faith that the old “nose for news” style of intuition is still a valid (albeit nostalgia laden) method for journalistic trend spotting.

Here’s a question for those who think that the assertion that today’s celebrity journalists are trapped inside a bubble: “What are the chances that this columnist can send the link to this column to Bill Keller or Arianna Huffington and get either one of them to read it?”
Not bloody well likely?

In a true capitalist country it is easier to manufacture propaganda than to encourage intellectual curiosity, which hold the danger that it could wind up biting a mogul on the ass. (Solidarity means everyone shouts “yes, sir!” in unison. [Remember the old axiom: “When I say ‘jump,’ you jump and ask ‘How high?’ on the way up!”]

Who is America’s leading “counter culture” journalist these days? Is there no market for a modern “underground” voice of dissent? When Hunter S. Thompson was leading the charge against the establishment press, he got his efforts mentioned in Time, Newsweek, and the New York Times. When was the last time any of those publications made reference to a blog that was not written by a member of their own staff or by a celebrity?

BTW the three times that this columnist spoke with Andy Warhol, it was rather brief encounter but the one time we did ask if Warhol’s visit to L. A. and a recent Truman Capote sighting in the Venice CA area, was sufficient evidence to do a trend-spotting article. Warhol quizzed us about the Capote sighting and left the trending possibilities un assessed.

Bill Keller has written (The New York Times Magazine Sunday, March 13, 2011, page 11): “The other, more insidious reason that I have been deemed more important than the founder of Amazon or Hosni Mubarak is that our fascination with capital-M Media is so disengaged from what really matters.” To which, we can only add: “Amen, brother!”

Now the disk jockey will mark the 35th anniversary of the release of the movie “Taxi Driver” by playing the soundtrack album and Frank Ocean’s “Bitches Talkin’” and Sky Ferreira’s “Haters Anonymous.” We have to go do some preliminary fact finding about the Yosemite Conservancy and their fund raising efforts. Have an “all the news that’s fit to print” type week.

March 12, 2011

Multiplying Meltdowns

Filed under: Guest Comment — Tags: , , , — Bob Patterson @ 8:14 pm

At first the concept that the homeless have been evicted from the Venice Beach area might sound like a bit of absurdisms that could be an excuse for making some glib comments about an inconsistency in the assertion that America is being run by compassionate conservative Christians and that we had mentioned that this columnist would collect material on that subject while visiting the Los Angeles area recently. The March 2011 issue of the Free Venice Beachhead has a lead story that tells about “Blue Bus Patty,” who came to the Venice area when she was 19, and thirty five years later returned to her native state of New Jersey, when a local L. A. politician used his influence to get the homeless out of the Venice Beach area. Who among us can not see that the principles of Christ clearly are in peril when xenophobia can motivate a return to the level of charity in America that was the backdrop for John Steinbeck’s “Grapes of Wrath” achievement in literature? Change? Only the bumper sticker slogans have been changed to protect the self-esteem of the politicians’ heartless efforts to use the situation for their own political advantage. It seems like the concept of Christian Charity has done a meltdown in America (again).

Newt Gingrich has taken the Republican concept of screwing the citizens for ostensibly patriotic reasons to a new level of absurdity. Patriotic adultery? Contemporary American Culture seems unquestioningly willing to embrace that illogical example of rationalization from a Republican who is offering himself as a contender for his party’s next nominee for President. The compassionate conservative Christians were ready to impeach Clinton, but now seem willing to embrace Newt. Isn’t that very convenient for the Newtster? Will Newt spark a revival of the swing parties as a way of manifesting a surplus of Patriotic national pride? (If he does; will super patriotic hot babes be desperate enough to e-mail their kink needs to an understanding columnist from “across the aisle”?) Did Newt ask ladies to wear only a flag while the sound system played Randy (nudge nudge wink wink) Newman’s “You Can Leave Your Hat On”?

Who is the greater patriot: Newt Gingrich, Larry Flynt, or Hugh Hefner?

Has any well known member of the Clergy called out Newt for this ridiculous blatant example of rationalization or do they just go into meltdown when a Republican gives American youth the green light to go to the red light district style of behavior? Did Oral Roberts condemn Newt? (How did he get that odd first name?)

Speaking of meltdowns, aren’t the folks, who are speculating about the disaster potential of the nuclear facilities in Japan, scientists? Why is the Fox Comedy Cable Network (How does one pronounce: FCCN?) willing to give the scientists airtime when it comes to an atomic meltdown but not the melting of the polar ice caps?

Why did America ignore the charity needs of Australia after recent floods and fires in that country and then immediately rush ships to help Japan? Which one of those two countries was fighting along side America during WWII and which wasn’t? Why wasn’t help offered to America’s strongest ally country? Can anyone explain why a former enemy deserves more assistance than a country that has always answered America’s call for wartime assistance?

Did the union movement experience a meltdown in Wisconsin?

Did the hopes of Democrats for leadership from Barry meltdown this week? Is Barry’s legacy melting down at a geometric progression way?

Isn’t what happened in Wisconsin the political equivalent of the commission of war crimes by a certain military group that invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, because of the evidence that Poland had military weapons and needed to be invaded to be disarmed?

Is it a war crime for a military to destroy lives but OK for politicians to ruin the lives of their working constituents? How is it different?

Isn’t it a pretty picture to see Barry sitting on the sidelines and shrugging his shoulders at the (registered Democratic Party) union members’ anguish and nonchalantly accepting the prospect of being a one-term wonder in the history books? This columnist wonders if there was a quid pro quo agreement between Barry and Karl Rove of the “we’ll make you the first (and last?) American President of Pan-African heritage in return for folding on certain issues when we give you the signal!”?

America’s Party of Warmongers will never see a potential quagmire they don’t love, so we can expect Barry’s handlers to have him greenlight a temporary intervention in Libya.

Which brings us to yet another meltdown: Why does some happy-go-lucky Irish heritage blogger have to be the one to point out (in relative obscurity) things that a genuine free press should be blaring in big headlines? Where is the Media Outrage? Where are the Media’s brutally honest assessments of all these disgraceful hypocrisies?

Speaking of keeping a muzzle on things, how is the writers’ strike going at one well known aggregate online site? We have refused to “cross the picket line” and click on that site until we get news of a strike settlement. If it is ever over, would someone please post a comment about that? It is our assessment that the strike (like the one at the Los Angeles Herald Examiner) will never be settled by negotiations or mediation. [Didn’t Ralph Kramden tell his wife: “Don’t aggregate me, Alice; or POW! right to the moon.”?]

If someone mouths liberal platitudes and then treats the workers like indentured slaves, what political philosophy would you ascribe to that kind of management?

In the Book of Proverbs it is written: “To the hungry soul every bitter thing is sweet.” (27:7) Does anyone deny that the Republicans are hungry for sex, money, and power? That might explain why they think invading Iraq, torture, and evicting homeless from Venice CA is sweet.

Now the disk jockey will play Barry Manilow’s “Mandy,” Len Barry’s “1-2-3,” and Barry McGuire’s “Eve of Destruction.” We have to go buy some more Girl Scout cookies on our way to a St. Patrick’s Day celebration. Have a “Patriotism makes me want to f*** people” type week.

March 9, 2011

Total access: Using the other 90% of our brains

Filed under: Guest Comment,Uncategorized — Tags: , , — Jane Stillwater @ 5:47 pm

For years, scientists such as Albert Einstein and William James have been telling us that we human beings only use 10% of our brain capacity.  Wouldn’t it be marvelous if we could use the other 90%?  Can you imagine all the great ideas that we might be able to come up with?

Great literature — we’d all become Shakespeares!

Great art — I wanna be Michelangelo!

Great science — Einsteins on every corner, they’d run out of Nobel Prizes!

Great music — your child would truly be baby Mozart.

Great humanitarians — would you rather be Buddha or Jesus?

Or perhaps the opposite might happen and we’d end up with more Hitlers, Stalins, Atilla the Huns and Dick Cheneys. Oh crap.

But how do you go about accessing the other 90% of your brain? Meditation? Dreaming? Hitting the books? LSD? Peyote?

At one point in time way back in the 1960s, I ate some mescaline down at Big Sur — and it was immediately revealed to me that NATURE is the most important thing in the world. According to Mescalito, living within the context of trees and grass and mountain vistas and fresh air offers the most meaning to the human brain that there is. As the day wore on, however, both Mescalito and I began to think that perhaps pancakes were the most important thing.

But taking mescaline didn’t make me a genius either. Don’t try it at home.

“Go to college! That will make you smarter!” my mother always told me — back during a time when women were just supposed to stay home and play-act at being June Cleaver. So I went off to college. Got a masters degree too. But did that make me a genius? I wish. And it didn’t make any of those Yale and Harvard graduates who run the Federal Reserve into geniuses either. It just made them better crooks and liars and helped them to figure out new and better ways to keep their butts out of jail.

In these crucial times, it is so very important for the human race to use more of its brain capacity and to evolve. We have been basically thinking like cavemen for all too long. For instance, take the situation in Libya. When confronted with a desire on the part of his people to obtain more democratic institutions, Muammar Gaddafi responded exactly like the most primitive caveman might have. He started killing people, his people.

And what has been America’s answer to problems in Afghanistan, Tripoli. Washington, Wall Street and Wisconsin? Pissing contests that involve violence and threats. That’s not evolution or wisdom. That’s Neanderthal.

But perhaps the next generation will do better than our generation has done. To paraphrase one of my favorite bumper stickers which now reads, “Imagine a world where EVERY child is wanted, nurtured, protected and loved: World Peace in one generation!” — maybe if we want and nurture and protect and love the next generation instead of just stealing its future, perhaps we can also get more geniuses as well as just more whirled peas.

Jill Bolte Taylor is a brain scientist who was given a rather strange research opportunity: She had a massive stroke, and watched as her brain functions — motion, speech, self-awareness — all shut down one by one. Then she worked really hard to get all of her brain functions back. Maybe we can learn something from what happened to her and build on her experiences as well. http://www.ted.com/talks/jill_bolte_taylor_s_powerful_stroke_of_insight.html

I’ve also heard that art, music and other forms of creativity can also expand our brains — and make us better at math too. According to an article in the Harvard Educational Review by Eric Jensen, “Research from the studies discussed in [Arts With the Brain in Mind] and the experience of countless classroom educators support the view that visual arts have strong positive cognitive, emotional, social, collaborative, and neurological effects.”

And, given all this well-researched information, what are the powers-that-be in America doing with it right now? They’re making major cuts to funding for our art museums, school music programs and literature grants in order to have more Moolah to invest in their bloody, useless, uncivilized and paleolithic wars. Good thinking? Hardly.

Eating healthy stuff is supposed to be good for your brain too. Nothing processed. No sugar. No artificial sweeteners. Breast-feed your kids. That kind of stuff. http://jpstillwater.blogspot.com/2011/02/birthday-cake-blues-back-before-there.html

And while looking for ways to get a spacecraft to the moon, one NASA scientist used to deliberately work himself to exhaustion, fall asleep, dream about the answers to his problems, wake up suddenly, and have his wife hurriedly write down what he had learned from his dream before the solutions were forgotten.

But I don’t have a wife — so no deep thinking or going to the moon for me. I’m screwed.

PS: Speaking of music, I just starred — well, sort of — in a new punk-rock music video! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mF2be3NBB2I

img_3163

Non as blind as those . . .

Filed under: Guest Comment — Tags: , , , — Bob Patterson @ 12:42 pm

A forty year old movie that told the story of a group of criminals tried to cheat the operators of an illegal bookie operation out of some money may be a very appropriate piece of evidence for pundits who wish to evaluate the next American Presidential Election in the fall of 2112.

Movies about elaborate frauds are a popular theme for Hollywood and it was only after seeing the Robert Redford and Paul Newman movie that this columnist was advised to keep in mind, while seeing a film about con artists, that it will be the perpetrators who will get fooled. How many times have you seen a character get “killed” only to later learn that he was wearing a bullet-proof vest and wasn’t really killed?

What brought all this movie reviewing information to mind was that earlier this week; we saw two trend spotting stories about the competition for the Republican nomination for the Presidential Election in 2012. One was printed in the Los Angeles Times and the other was found online. (a href =http://articles.latimes.com/2011/mar/07/nation/la-na-gop-candidates-20110307>Paul West story on page AA) The story, by Paul Drake, on the Internets asserted that there was no clear front running Republican. The Times story tried to be a laundry list of potential winners.

Neither story mentioned JEB Bush and we thought that was very odd. Right after the 2008 Election it was reported that JEB was on a listening tour of the USA. JEB does not have an official website just yet but he is a member of a family that has been very prominent in American Politics. Why wasn’t JEB mentioned? There could be two possible explanations to the glaring omission: either the writers were dumb or they were part of an orchestrated effort to keep JEB’s name out of the limelight, for the time being.

Journalists don’t get assigned to be part of the political assessment team on a large daily newspaper by being dummies, so that leaves the other possibility as the most likely explanation.

Supposing that media could somehow be manipulated for an ulterior motive is absurd in a nation that has a free press as the life’s blood of a Democratic system, but we ask the reader’s permission to permit us that absurd assumption just for the sake of this column.

So what ulterior motive could there possibly be for “keeping JEB in the wings” as a stage director might put it?

If (subjunctive mood for the sake of an entertaining bit of columnistic reading matter) there was some imaginary Karl Rove type Svengali trying to orchestrate the Election Procedure, how would it play out with JEB being a stealth candidate at the one year away from the New Hampshire primary part of the count-down?

This is a hypothetical suggestion for such an imaginary scenario.

The master manipulator engineers a decisive victory in the Iowa caucuses and arranges for a subservient free press to greet such an “upset” with both amazement and extreme (but reluctant?) admiration. The most unexpected political comeback of all times!

This columnist can not imagine how such a mythical king-maker would arrange for the entire news media industry to “play along,” but in this fictionalized account (a stealth Hollywood “pitch” effort?) let’s just say that it happens.

Would America be gullible enough to read such Republican propaganda tripe and take it seriously?

Well, if Sarah Palin can be considered a serious contender for the Republican Presidential nomination, we will have to reluctantly concede the remote possibility that JEB could score a decisive win in Iowa and then further be ready to unquestioningly receive a torrent of “unexplained ground swell of approval” trend spotting stories in the ever cynical American free press.

If there is a massive display of “ground swell” spin in play after Iowa, would some subsequent early primary election wins be closely questioned? Not bloody well likely, mate.

If JEB gains traction and manages to somehow land the Republican Party’s nomination, wouldn’t America’s free press be on “condition red” alert regarding the possibility that just like in 2000 and 2004, the Republicans (and by an amazine co-inky-dink) and a member of the Bush family could again score a “stolen” victory? Wouldn’t the Conservative majority U. S. Supreme Court be over zealous in their efforts to prevent a sham election?

At this point would some hyper sensitive political critics might say that a minor clerical error on the part of one of the Supreme Court Justices would cause him to recluse himself from such a political death-match? Of course, but when the winds of paranoia are loosed in the realm of political speculation, all things are possible (especially if you believe in the power of prayer as most compassionate conservative Christians do).

At a moment in history when Libya seems to be participating in a reenactment of the Spanish Civil War and when Americans are blasé about torture, and when the unions are facing a political massacre in Wisconsin, one might have to concede that one more stolen (just to keep the conspiracy theory nuts happy) election might be a possible scenario.

Americans seem rather subdued when establishing a “no fly zone” in Libya is discussed. Why wasn’t a “no fly zone” established in the Guernica area during the Spanish Civil War? Why was the rest of the world so complacent back then, but not now? Can’t we all just ignore localized manifestations of civil unrest? Did the rebels make the same mistake that Erwin “The Desert Fox” Rommel made and overextend their supply lines?

If Obama fails to solve the Riddle-in-Libyan-politics correctly, will JEB get to say: “My brother predicted this would happen and Obama fumbled the ball.”? Why is the national political media ignoring the link between what is happening in the Middle East now and the George W. Bush prediction that a wave of pro-democracy sentiment would be unleashed by the American attempt to establish democracy in Iraq? Is the American media not free to say that? If so, who is muzzling them and why are they doing that?

Wash your hands and start rereading this column again.

Che Guevera said: “The laws of capitalism, blind and invisible to the majority, act upon the individual without his thinking about it. He sees only the vastness of a seemingly infinite horizon before him. That is how it is painted by capitalist propagandists, who purport to draw a lesson from the example of Rockefeller—whether or not it is true—about the possibilities of success. The amount of poverty and suffering required for the emergence of a Rockefeller, and the amount of depravity that the accumulation of a fortune of such magnitude entails, are left out of the picture, and it is not always possible to make the people in general see this.”

Now the disk jockey will play “Red Rubber Ball,” “Ain’t we crazy,” and Wagner’s Gotterdammerung. We have to go hunt up enough information about the rumor that Che was seen in Tubruk recently (yeah, yeah, yeah we know about the photo on Felix Rodriguez’s desk. We refer the reader back to the “bullet proof vest” trick earlier in this column.) Have an “I was sure he was dead” type week.

March 8, 2011

Naming calling battle nears end?

Filed under: Guest Comment — Tags: , , , — Bob Patterson @ 6:27 pm

America’s two major political parties have been having scads of sophomoric fun accusing the opposition of being carbon copies of the Nazis who ran Germany in the Thirties. The childish fun of trying to out shout the opposition with cries of “You are Nazis!” seems to be approaching a final decision in Wisconsin. An integral part of the Nazi strategy was to arrest the opposition and eliminate them from the contemporary political arena.

If the Democratic Party in Wisconsin can mount several successful recall drives in blitzkrieg time, then they can have a temporary majority with the possibility that if they can then win the available seats they will have a longer time period to be in the majority position.

If the Republicans manage to pull some legal maneuvers and actually arrest the elusive Democratic politicians, and also reconfigure the numbers necessary for having a quorum to be able to pass their massive cuts budget, then it will be obvious to future historians that they had no qualms about using Nazi political tactics and therefore they will win the honor of being labeled the stealth modern American version of the “my way or the highway” German Political party.

If the Democratic State Senators cave-in and return to legitimize the Republican union busting power grab, it will be comparable to the fall of Poland in 1939.

The Republicans may have to use some slick judicial movements with some legal cases. It may look like they rigged the deal by (hypothetically) having a referee in center field make the call for a tag at home plate, but as Vince Lombardi reportedly said: “Winning isn’t everything; it’s the only thing.”

If the anti-union advocates hold on and destroy folks’ right to collective bargaining, then precedence will have been set and the other freshman governors around the USA will be comparable to sharks that smell blood in the water and their eagerness to duplicate a union busting move in their state will increase at the “cubed” level.

The Germans sanctioned invasions and torture and at this stage in the War on Terror both a Republican and a Democratic President have approved those measures so the game is tied up. If the Republicans can start the resurrection of the Gleichschaltung strategy and begin to arrest inconvenient Democratic members of the Wisconsin legislature, then they will score (metaphorically speaking) a walk-off grand slam home run and be the obvious team that deserves to wear the neo-Nazi title in contemporary American society.

If the Democrats can recall enough Republicans in Wisconsin, rapidly enough, then they can be portrayed as poor sports who are unfairly wiping the opponents chess pieces off the playing board, like a petulant child and they may be vulnerable to the charge of being the Nazi clones.

It’s rather curious to note that President Obama seems to be a spectator with no interest or enthusiasm about the final result of the Wisconsin political battle. Perhaps, his place is secure as the First American President of Pan-African heritage and the need for a second term is not essential to his self image.

Is it possible that the President could use the Justice Department and some RICO (Racketter Influenced and Corrupt Organizations) investigations to shut down the Republican shenanigans? If it looks like gangster politics, doesn’t it deserve a RICO investigation? Do the Republicans in Wisconsin look like they belong to a corrupt organization? Just ask a union member.

If the Obama Administration is impotent to prevent major efforts to dismantle the New Deal achievements, then future Democrats will be rather severe in their assessments of his legacy.

If the union movement is permanently crippled or completely destroyed on Obama’s watch, then it will be ironic that the Republicans will not give him any praise or credit for the accomplishment.

It will be quite ironic if historians declare Obama the winner of the Nazi look-a-like contest because that German Political Party espoused the supremacy of the Nordic race and so it would be very, very ironic for Obama to be labeled as one of their modern reincarnations.

The rookie Wisconsin governor, Scott Walker, can firmly establish himself in the Republican Party if he succeeds in destroying unions and so he is quite likely to fight ferociously to achieve that goal.

On the other hand, he is playing with the budgets and therefore the lives of the union members, so they won’t give up easily and resign the game early. They will perceive the struggle as fighting for their lives and (presumably) push their effort to the limit. If the Democrats cave-in to the Republicans; it may seem like the surrender of Paris in 1940.

If neither side can or will quit, then it is a death match in the cage called Wisconsin and if the battle is for live or die stakes, then it won’t stop until one side is completely crushed by defeat.

If President Obama doesn’t give the Wisconsin unions ever bit of help he can muster, then he will be perceived as a weakling (a return of the “whimp” label?) and the far left Democrats disappointment in his response will be vitriolic in intensity.

If he throws all the help their way he can find, and the Republican Governor still manages to humiliate the sitting President, then the Republican strategy for the 2012 Presidential Campaign will be to offer voters the choice of more of the same “change” or a “change” that they can actually see? There should be no doubt that things will change if the unions are killed off like an extinct animal.

If President Obama sends all the help he can find, and manages to turn the tide, it will seem to both Parties that he met the challenge and came away with a win and therefore will be a formidable 2012 Candidate for reelection.

So far, he has seemed to be using the old Muhammad Ali “rope-a-dope” tactic and he better get into the fight fast or he will be presiding over the next Democratic Party election effort and it will resemble the evacuation at Dunkirk. If he waits too long it will be a Democratic Party disaster and not about winning. It will be a struggle for the Democrats to manage to be alive enough to regroup in 2013 after the humiliating defeat. Much like it was after the 2010 Elections.

One of boxing’s most famous quotes is: “I forgot to duck!” Obama might be saying that in February of 2013. It’s time for Obama to float like a butterfly and sting like a bee.

Now, the disk jockey will play “The Boxer,” “Stayin’ Alive,” and the William Tell overture. We have to go check on the progress (if any) being made by the football players union. Have a “finest hour” type week.

March 3, 2011

Inverse Logic takes over in America

Filed under: Guest Comment — Tags: , , , — Bob Patterson @ 6:59 pm

Since we had always meant to see “The Magnificent Seven,” but have failed to catch it for fifty years, when the recent chance to see it in downtown Berkeley popped up on our amusement radar screen a little while back, it only took a New York minute for us to jump at the chance to fill that gap in our cultural accomplishments list.

It tells the story of how a bunch of loners band together to respond to an appeal by a group of Mexican peasants whose village is being periodically pillaged and robbed by some nasty bandits who act as if they have a divine right to the fruit of the poor people’s labors. The story is based on an earlier Japanese film about how some freelance samurai warriors helped out some poor farmers in their country.

“The Magnificent Seven” featured a young Steve McQueen and some ideals that have disappeared from the contemporary American culture.

We tried to imagine how a realistic new remake of that old film would look.

A collection of beleaguered American home owners reach the breaking point via a budget that is stretched to the limits by employers who exploit the workers by refusing to increase wages for years and years yet add unreasonable increases in production goal figures and by local merchants who have to boost prices just because they can. The victims see a bunch of banksters ride into town and offer to protect the worn out workers and their little remaining cash . . . by taking it all and keeping it for themselves.

In the new version, the Seven Cardinal Virtues would be lying, cheating, stealing, etc., etc. Hypocrisy would be something a Boy Scout honors and practices so that he can become a successful politician or bankster himself.

Honesty and Diligence would be a sucker’s idea of attractive qualities.

Bushwhacking and ambushes would be clever winning moves. Robert E. Howard, creator of “Conan the Barbarian” wrote a few obscure western novels in which the bad guy might mysteriously wind up dead when the lights were suddenly doused and no one could see what happened or who did the shooting. It wasn’t Garry Cooper waking down the middle of the street to confront hired thugs, it was very different in Howard’s books and the color of a hat didn’t tip off the audience to who was good and who was “one of the bad guys.”

The Zen of a continual war would produce a peaceful addictive complacency that would be expressed by hipsters via the slogan “War is Peace.”

At the end of a remake, the banksters would take everything they could get from the villagers, kill them all – maybe take scalps to use for boasting in the next boardroom meeting – and then so that there could be no final trace of the wasted lives, burn the foreclosed homes to the ground.

The cavalry would be assigned to protect the raiders from the workers and assert that they were there to uphold law and order.

Isn’t pulling the covered wagons into a circle to hold off an Indian attack comparable to forming a union to help maintain possession of worldly goods that the attacking capitalists want to strip away from the pioneers in this new inverted logic world?

Are the teabaggers the backbone of the new Republican Party? Does that mean that “Ignorance is Strength”?

Freedom is Slavery! If you let people have freedom of speech they will abuse it and you will have to listen to their hate-speech just as if they were the plantation master and you were their eager and enthusiastic slaves.

In the antique film, when the villagers don’t have much money to offer the renegade knights and they react to the attempt to short change them for their labor by saying: “We fight for the principles not the coins.” (or words to that effect.) These days the prevalent good guy philosophy is: “Show me the money!”

Don’t some conspiracy theory crazies suggest that the guy who pulled off the Enron scam, faked his death and after the best witness protection program style disappearance, went to Tahiti to live out his life in decadent splendor? Would the President of the USA authorize such a travesty of justice for an old friend? If you think that, then you might want to consider enrolling in a rehab for cynics program.

Is it truth or an urban legend that Owen Wister offered to pay good money for a newspaper article reporting a “High Noon” style draw-down in the middle of the street encounter. The shoot-out at the O. K. Corral was a brief intense close quarters fire-fight and not a variation of the slap leather and shoot-in-self-defense reaction of an attacked victim. No one ever collected the money from Wister.

(Note: according to one historian the contemporary newspapers which carried the account of that skirmish contained ads indicating that there were four telephones in the town at that time.)

The Western movies painted a distorted view of history. When the Sioux nation was restricted to South Dakota, it was assumed that it was OK to let them have that bit of geography because the American settlers couldn’t imagine any use for that land . . . until they discovered gold in the Black Hills. Then, it was time to rip up the peace treaties and take away the gold!

Reportedly only one tribe did not get a peace treaty which was broken by the Great White Father in Washington, all the Nez Pierce Indians were killed before they could sign a treaty.

Don’t forget the disease ridden blanket chapter of American charity for the Native Americans.

American strategy has remained consistent from the massacre at Wounded Knee to Mi Lai, so tell the Libyans: “The Marines are coming!” and they better get while the gettin’ is good. Don’t Republicans believe that American can never have enough wars?

Some folks will tell you that things have changed around completely since “The Magnificent Seven” was filmed and released in theaters and others will say that things were never like that at all. It’s just putting spin on history to catch a new generation of victims off-guard.

The American business man adheres strictly to the W. C. Fields’ famous business maxim: “If a things worth having; it’s worth cheating for.” In the Magnificent Seven one finds this line: “If God didn’t want them sheared, he would not have made them sheep.”

Now the disk jockey will play “Do Not Forsake Me” (the Oscar winning song from High Noon), the theme from “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly,” and Cher’s “Half-breed.” We have to go count coup. Have a “smoke the peace pipe” type week.

March 2, 2011

Return of the “Chicken Little” Syndrome?

Filed under: Guest Comment — Tags: , , , — Bob Patterson @ 12:43 pm

If an online columnist can not convince one of his friends that there is a credible possibility that JEB Bush not only can be, but will be elected President in the November 2012 Election, should he persist in expending time and energy writing material to post online that continues his attempt to call attention to what the blogger thinks deserves serious consideration from Democrats?

The thought that he will be the only blogger to have exclusive rights to the “I tried to warn you” assessments on the day after that election is held, can have a certain seductive appeal to a fellow who has always enjoyed the role of the rogue in nature and society.

If people are reminded of the fable of the duck who thought the sky was falling, they should also remember that just about everyone thought the Jets couldn’t win Super Bowl III.

It’s one thing to have a crazy idea that comes from left field, such as “this lottery ticket I’m buying today is going to be the winning ticket,” but when a columnist adds up the factors that lead him to make an unpopular political prediction and the only conclusion that he can see after making a new attempt, is the one that others don’t see as even a very remote possibility, then . . . the worst that can happen if he says “I’m going to explain my thinking one more time” is that he gets fired by the blog-plantation owners who don’t pay for content.

Is there any liberal pundit who thinks that both the 2000 and 2004 elections were won fair and square by George W. Bush?

Is there any one of those who do who can give a rational, logical reason why the Republicans wouldn’t do it again in 2012.

In the past we have written a column or two explaining that in the hustler’s world (pool shark, poker player, or what have you) you can’t win all the time or the intended victim will suspect cheating.

Recently the governor of Wisconsin indicated that there were other newly elected Republican governors around the USA who were set to put a similar attack into play if he managed to bust the unions in his state. Did it seem to imply that all the Republicans might be participating in a coordinated effort? If so, who could possibly be the figurative quarterback calling the plays or should the question be: “Who is the coach calling the plays from the sideline?”

Next question: “Weren’t there some stories online recently claiming that Karl Rove is orchestrating the attempt to bring Julian Assange to the USA to face criminal charges for his online journalism accomplishments?”

Does anyone think that Rove is working to bring about a victory in 2012 for a generic Republican ticket such as Sarah Palin and the Wisconsin Governor? If Karl Rove is working behind the scenes isn’t it logical for a rogue columnist to suggest that he might be still working for the Bush family (as he did from 1973 until . . . either now or 2008?) and if so who does that leave as the most likely person to rekindle the Bush Dynasty stories?

Back in the late thirties almost any American journalist who reported from Europe was sending frantic dispatches warning that Hitler should be taken seriously?

Granted that one lone rogue blogger, who is desperate to advance the idea that the next person to be elected President of the USA will be JEB, might not deserve to be compared to Murrow’s Boys, but back then journalists were free to issue dire warnings.

In today’s media world, do you see big media stars being as aggressive with the Republican politicians on talk shows as they are with the Democrats?

Does Bob Schieffer’s brother’s past business relationship with George W. Bush explain an appearance of Republican favoritism in Bob’s questions and coverage?

Could Chris Matthews employer want to rein in any aggressive criticism of the Bush military adventures?

Could one blog manager have toned down her posse in an attempt to push up the sale price that would eventually be paid by a conservative buyer?

Look in the political section of a Borders Bookstore (while you still can) and see if there isn’t an impressive array of anti-Bush items available. Could it be that liberals are more likely to buy pessimistic progressive books than teabaggers?

If conservative corporate moguls are trying to suffocate the progressive point of view would they be in favor of a meltdown of the bookstore fad?

A shrill blogger’s warnings about JEB may seem more like the efforts of Hans Brinker than of any of Murrow’s Boys, but for a fellow who enjoys playing the part of a blogger who is trying to (to use the phrase that an old coworker admitted he “borrowed”) “column as I see ‘em,” it beats going to the closest Senior Center and playing cards.

Obviously the biggest and best known Blog Plantation owner won’t send such a rogue an invitation to “join her team.”

The conservative talking points folks at Fox News have marvelous opportunity the past few weeks to crow about how George W. Bush may have a right to claim that his prediction that the invasions of both Iraq and Afghanistan would unleash a tsunami of change in the Muslim world and yet there doesn’t seem to be one of them seizing a golden opportunity to do some Republican bragging. The liberals were so vehement while disparaging George W. Bush when he issued that forecast, why aren’t the Fox Folks playing the “paybacks are hell” card?

Could those “told-ya” opportunities be a symbolic ace of trump card that Karl Rove is holding until it is time for JEB to become the new smirker-in-chief?

In the opening of John Steinbeck’s “Travels with Charlie,” he reported on a chance meeting with John Gunther that he had on an airplane trip. Gunther specialized in doing books by talking to the leaders of countries in various parts of the world. Steinbeck preferred to use the Ernie Pyle approach to journalism and talk to the locals about politics and the foot soldiers about the war effort. Steinbeck based the “Travels with Charlie” book on material he gather in a vagabonding trip he had always wanted to make.

It’s probably nice to chat with folks who are frontrunners in the next election and the journalists who have that kind of access should always be aware that they can become pawns to be played by their sources.

Writers who gather their material without access to the in crowd can only make their best guess as to what is happening and how things will occur. It’s as if they were their own version of a low level CIA analyst.

The World’s Laziest Journalist will (most likely) not talk to one serious contender for the Republican Party’s next nomination to run for President. Piecing together our impressions from the scant information we have available is the best we can do.

If we divert our efforts to completely extraneous and irrelevant topics, such as a critical evaluation of an automobile museum in Oxnard, we’ll try to portray it as a change-up column done so as not to sound as if we are obsessed by the JEB prediction. We may even do some “in the field” reports from Europe. It’s just one fellow’s attempt to amuse, entertain, and (when possible) inform the readers.

Speaking of being obsessed, is any other political pundit going to do a column on the disappearance from Venice CA of the hippie/homeless crowd as a possible new facet in the Republican war on the poor and middle class?

Being the World’s Laziest Journalist doesn’t mean that we don’t do any work (that’s why the rules committee has decreed that the Fox Follies are ineligible for consideration for the claim), it just means doing as little as possible . . . but we do have to do some.

If we ever get the chance to submit a quote to Jon Winokur for one of his books of quotes, we’d submit this sentence (a repudiation of a Charles Buskowski book title) from an unpublished item written by this columnist: “The days crawled by like wounded worms on their way to the elephants’ graveyard.”

Now the disk jockey will play the best of Duane Eddy album, Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries,” and the Best of Roy Orbison album. We have to go check out Eurail Pass prices. Have a “This is London Calling” type week.

March 1, 2011

Prisoners for fun and profit

Filed under: Guest Comment — Tags: , , , — Bob Patterson @ 12:59 pm

Is there a problem if a business, which intended as a detention facility for young criminals, pays a judge a “finder’s fee” for sending them new “customers”? Judge Mark Ciavarella was found guilty of charges relating to $997,600 that was paid to him by Robert Powell (according to information found online via a Google News Search), who built the PA Child Care center. The judge asserted that he never accepted money for sending juveniles to detention centers. The enraged mother of a kid who committed suicide after a term in a detention center, held the judge responsible for the death.

Americans have accepted the facts of life and the necessity of prison facilities, but what the teabag generation does not like is the Prisons existing as a government function without turning a profit. Putting private firms in charge of prisons will reduce government, but figuring out how adding a profit making middle man can be portrayed as an efficient step toward economic efficiency was more of a challenge.

Isn’t one way to do that, to bust the prison guards union and pay the private security employees less, make some profit, and do some cost reduction?

That brings up a disturbing aspect of the new philosophy of prisons. If you were a cut-rate guard, which group would you rather supervise: a bunch of inept grass-smoking slackers or juvenile delinquents who don’t hesitate to commit burglaries or steal cars?

So, if you prefer low maintenance stoners, how are you going to get enough to fill your facility?

Can you think of a better source for new “customers” than a tough as nails judge?

There were stories about the furor over illegal aliens in Arizona that asserted that the underlying motivation for the fuss was to get more illegal aliens and use them as inmates in a prison-for-pay facility because a poor day laborer would be a much more preferred detainee than a bank robber, or someone who was found guilty of aggravated assault.

We found out about the trial, which took place in our old home town of Scranton Pa., while listening to one of the few Mike Malloy radio shows that had not been preempted by Lady Bear or Dons Basketball. In L. A. the Kings Hockey matches are the culprits who preempt the prolific progressive pundit. Malloy ran the intriguing prison for profit item in the profusion of information designed to fuel outrage. Is it any wonder that the conservative capitalists prefer to preempt the guy who provides a tsunami of information that might undercut the conservative trend towards a thousand year Republican Reich?

Do some Google News searches for Judge Ciavarella, Robert Powell, Robert Mericle, and Judge Michael Conahan. Maybe you will find enough to do a book on the scandal from the anthracite area. Maybe there’s enough on the down side of the perplexing prisons for pay problem for a book length project?

When an online columnist finds enough information for just one short column that means he has done a good job. After this column is posted, we gotta find some new underreported topic and gather enough for an interesting installment. We can’t put all the relevant material in a column that gets scanned at top speed so why try. Perhaps we can find out where all the homeless hippies in Venice CA have gone? We have already posted a column that looks at the trend of sports programs replacing partisan progressive political punditry, so scratch that idea.

Will there be a Kings game on tonight or will we be able to hear the Mike Malloy Program?

Albert Einstein has been quoted as saying: “A human being is part of a whole, called by us the Universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.” Isn’t compassion one of the Capitalists’ Seven Deadly Sins?

Now the disk jockey will play Johnny Cash’s “Live at Folsom Prison” album, his “At Osteraker Prison” album, and his “Live at San Quentin” album. We gotta go for a walk on the Venice Beach. Have a “ramblin’ man” type week.

February 28, 2011

Some of the best actors . . .

Filed under: Guest Comment — Tags: , , , — Bob Patterson @ 6:11 pm

Once again, Hollywood has managed to survive the ordeal of voting awards to themselves, but if they really wanted to hand out awards for outstanding acting, why didn’t they honor some of the world class performances in Washington D. C., which they overlooked?

In Hollywood it’s easy to please your friends and upset your enemies, but there is one fellow in political arena who played the part of a liberal change of pace Presidential Candidate and managed to earn the undying hate of the Republicans and simultaneously displease the true lefties base. Barry Obama’s role as the personification of change was a very convincing performance by a Reagan Democrat who let war criminals (who are wanted men in other countries) walk and then continued their illegal methods that earned them the distain of many citizens in ally countries.

The Australians are very well informed about celebrity news from Hollywood, perhaps because the Australian film industry seems to be functioning as a “farm club” for the American film industry. The Australians were disappointed (to put it mildly) with the “who knew?” acting job turned in by George W. Bush and Company. (Explaining the intricacies of American Politics brought a “Who is Rush?” response all over Oz.)

Would folks outside “the Industry” (AKA Hollyweird) appreciated the sarcasm if this columnist wrote a column asking: Is the Bush family the Charlie Sheen of American Politics?

The level of excitement over the Oscar™ telecast in the Los Angeles area is quite a bit more intense than it was during the preceding week in Berkeley CA. In the San Francisco Bay area, the attitude was “Who’s nominated this year?” In Los Angeles, it’s “where are you going to watch the show?” and “What parties will you attend?” In Hollywood, it’s like the home team is playing in the World Series every year. It is a news event reported around the world.

While taking a Saturday stroll on Ocean Front Walk, we encountered a film crew talking to a young man. We asked what was going on and learned that the Danish news crew was interviewing William Jøhnk Nielsen who was in the Danish film competing for the Best Foreign Film Oscar™.

A woman (his mother?) suggested that we ask the young man for his autograph, so in the spirit of interline courtesy, we did and the Danish film crew had some additional footage for their story.

We snapped a few paparazzi shots for our photo blog and continued on our way. It then occurred to us that young Mr. Nielsen had something in common with John Wayne: they are the only two actors whom this columnist has ever asked for an autograph. (John Wayne handed out business cards with a copy of his signature on it.)

John Wayne won his Oscar on the same day that California Governor Ronald Reagan held a small impromptu news conference. The Los Angeles Times buried the governor’s news conference on page 3 and splashed “the Duke’s” Oscar™ all over the front page. The world will little note nor long remember what was said by the Governor that day. What’s not to love about a governor who says: “If it takes a bloodbath, let’s get it over with.” Would he give the same words of wisdom to the governor of Wisconsin tomorrow, if he could?

On our walk, we discovered that the topic of the homeless in Venice these days has the potential to be very disturbing to a cynical IrishCatholicDemocrat who hears one philosophy from the mouths of Conservative Christian Capitalists and then sees that sweeping the homeless under the rug and out of Venice, contradicts what they say. We will have to do some additional fact checking so that we can write a column about the relevant facts for yet another column that asserts that hypocrisy is one of the Seven Cardinal Virtues for Republicans.

American politicians can give glib explanations for wars of aggression and then turn around and blithely dismiss any concerns about the “what ever you do to the least of my brethren” who lack a sleeping bag to cope with a cold night on the beach.

Shame, it seems, is a quant facet of nostalgia just like silent movies. Do TV addicts know what “slapstick comedy” is?

Speaking of nostalgia when was the last “anti-war in Vietnam” rally held? We see that some old hippies will be gathering next month in Washington D. C., for a rally against the Iraq-Afghanistan military adventures. Maybe by the time it occurs they can toss in their objections to a new adventure in Libya?

We have been advised that if we wish to understand the apparent disparity between millionaire actors giving awards and “air kisses” to each other one day and engaging in cut-throat business deals the next (which may necessitate the actors doing research on the homeless so that their next film [a musical comedy look at life on the ragged edge?] will have a veneer of authenticity to it); we should read Ayn Rand’s “the Fountainhead.”

What ruthless corporate mogul wouldn’t appreciate seeing his merciless conduct portrayed in film that rationalizes his ruthlessness and portrays his immoral conduct as the work of a benevolent crazy uncle who is loved by all his devoted employees?

Isn’t Ayn Rand’s philosophical take on morals similar to Andy Warhol’s definition of art? He said “Art is whatever you can get away with.” If you don’t get arrested; apparently, it wasn’t a crime. Sin no longer exists.

Unless a film competes in the Documentary categories, isn’t it considered a work of fiction?

If the Republicans are looking for a theme song for their next convention to select a Presidential Candidate, perhaps they should consider using Don Henley’s song “Kick ‘em when their down.” Ya think?

It’s “buy Girl Scout cookies” season again. How many boxes will the Koch brothers buy?

The Razzie Awards honoring the lousiest films of 2010 was held on Saturday.

Marshall McLuhan said: “Affluence creates poverty.” Could the Republicans believe that it’s the other way around? “Poverty creates affluence.” For them, it does. More foreclosures means more profits for the banks. Hence the banks have an obligation to continue the trend.

Now the disk jockey will play some of the Oscar™ winning songs from years past, such as “When you wish upon a star,” “Whatever will be will be,” and “High hopes.” We have to go try to find out what has happened to the hippies who have been kicked out of Venice. Have a “we may look ragged and funny” type week.

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