February 12, 2011
February 10, 2011
Don’t mess with the Teamsters!
On Tuesday, after posting a column which ruminated about the possibility that a group of exploited writers might want to consider using the labor negotiating tactic known as a “strike,” we tuned in to hear one of the episodes of the Mike Malloy radio program which featured Brad Friedman (of the Brad Blog) as the substitute host. One of his callers, that night, was a trucker who lamented the fact that since the deregulation spawned by St. Ronald Reagan (the patron saint of the Reagan-Democrats) independent truck operators have been exploited by management by a lack of increases in the per-mile rate and a 10% reduction of their mileage figures. Brad mused aloud about a need for a work action in the Washington D. C. area.
On Wednesday night, Brad’s main hope was that maybe sympathetic truckers could help him publicize his effort to focus attention on the financial shenanigans of the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas because of the fact that, according to Brad, crimes were committed when Thomas submitted some required paper work that mistakenly indicated his wife didn’t earn any money for the work she provided for a partisan political organization. Brad’s main concern seemed to have morphed from “what can we do to help the drivers” to “they have a chance to focus America’s attention on a potential crime.”
Quite recently politicians in Europe have seen the extensive effect a truckers’ work action can have on a country’s day-to-day existence. The truckers crippled France for a short duration.
If Brad focuses America’s attention on the exploitation of the group that was once represented by one of the most powerful unions (arguably the most powerful union) in the United States, then, since the teamsters were not politically naïve, they would return the favor and make the Thomas affair something that even the hens in the Fox house could not ignore.
Truckers seem to be rather conservative patriotic individuals who might not care to be involved in spreading an allegation about an American icon. Didn’t the Teamsters Union once trade a crucial endorsement for Richard Nixon for a legislative political favor in return?
The story that Jimmy Hoffa is buried in the end zone of Giants Stadium is an urban legend. His body was, a little birdie told us, disposed of via an industrial strength garbage disposal grinder at a (union of course) meat butchering plant. As far as the question of who ordered the hit, don’t look at this columnist. We ain’t gonna go there. If your curiosity about that question is insatiable, we recommend that you read pages 61 to 71 of Steven Brill’s 1978 book “The Teamsters” (Simon and Schuster hardback).
When this columnist was a member of the Teamsters’ local 229 (Scranton Pa.), there was a young lady, of the ordinary size and weight variety, in the office (no – the one where we worked not the TV series) who could beat all the guys at arm wrestling. At that time, this writer was working out regularly with weights and we never could figure out how the heck that happened.
The firm had previously provided office space in the Secaucus (gees, I can still spell it right on the first try) terminal for the two union guys known as “the two Tonys.” (One was the Tony Pro and we can’t remember the other’s name.)
Since the company had been owned by the man who founded the American Trucking Association and since his grandson was one of the fellows who became a member of the Humphrey for President posse in 1968 (has anything ever happened in any other year?), the level of political sophistication in the Scranton office was notably high.
[Did Humphrey really trade a promise that one particular airline would get the rights to fly to and from Hawaii in return for a $300,000 campaign contribution? How the heck is this columnist supposed to fact check a rumor that is more than forty years old? Everybody we could ask is dead.]
Wasn’t there one particular group of steel hauling teamsters who cause considerable distress if people tried to foil their strikes?
Columnist Victor Reisel found out the hard way that labor issues were a very vitriolic topic.
Back in the day, the teamsters were not a group that permitted their members to be exploited. If the caller on Tuesday reported his plight accurately, it would seem that the times they have changed considerably. Much to the delight of the trucking industry management team.
It seems quite reasonable to expect that if liberals help the truck drivers with a problem that has existed for almost thirty years, then those folks will owe some favor in return. If not, the Republican philosophy of “divide and conquer” has worked again.
In the last decade, this columnist stumbled across information online that indicated that the Trucking Music Hall of Fame is contained inside a trailer that moves about the country.
Brad’s engineer, Tony, has used C. W. McCall’s hit song “Convoy” to conjure up the trucking image.
Our favorite German musical group is named “Truck Stop” and we do know a thing or two about songs that truckers play. Our list of items, which we hope are featured in the Trucking Music Hall of Fame (hope Tony reads this), would (in alphabetical order) include:
Convoy but not Convoy goes to Europe
Eastbound and Down (from Smokey and the Bandit)
Forty Days on the Road
Forty Thousand lbs. of bananas (which is based on a true incident in Scranton)
Giddyup Go
Gimme Forty Acres (and I’ll turn this rig around)
I’ve been everywhere (by Johnny Cash)
Phantom 309 (We’d call that the Best trucking song of all time)
Teddybear and Teddybear with German lyrics version
White line fever
Wolf Creek Pass.
And the bonus track of John Wayne’s “Pledge of Allegiance”?
Teamster strikes are powerful medicine. Steven Brill (Ibid page 380) wrote: “His (Einar Mohn) problem with Nixon, according to Gibbons and another (union) vice-president who was there, was that the White House’s proposed legislation to prevent strikes in the transportation industry would, he thought, severely threaten the union.” In a footnote (Ibid page 381), Brill drolly notes: “The Nixon bill was suddenly withdrawn, much to the embarrassment of the Republicans in Congress who had sponsored it for the President and were not informed beforehand of the sudden policy reversal.”
Now our disk jockey will play a Truck Stop album. We gotta go check out the rumor that Che Guevarra was put in the witness protection program and was seen recently in Cairo.” Have a “you wanna screw that knob back on there, Earl” type week.
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February 9, 2011
The Tattlesnake – Political Short Cuts Edition
Brief sour snipes at some prominent political and media figures of our bloated Blutocracy, in no particular order.
Michele Bachmann – When scary met rally.
Arianna Huffington – A mythological Greek goddess who prospers greatly on the free labor of others.
Tim Pawlenty – A polite little Minnesota fart desperately trying to become a big Republican shit.
Sarah Palin – America’s trademarked Tweetheart, soon to be our ‘Dear Tweeter’ right after the Republicans in Congress succeed in outlawing rational thought entirely.
Jon Stewart - If Jon noticed two brown-shirted men wearing swastika armbands beating up another man laying on the ground, he would immediately condemn onlookers who pointed out any similarities to the Nazis, and go on to make the case that the actions of the attackers and the man trying to defend himself are equally deplorable. Then he’d giggle and cut to a commercial for Verizon Wireless.
The Tea Partiers – Their hearts are in the Right place — next to a pile of cash in a bank vault owned by the Koch brothers.
Comcast/MSNBC - ‘Lean Forward’ so it’ll be easier to kick your ass out the door if you displease the parent company.
Bill O’Reilly – Joe McCarthy after the first bottle, combined with all the charm of a proctologist with a fire hose.
Glenn Beck – Joe McCarthy after the second bottle, combined with Howard Stern following a full lobotomy.
Rush Limbaugh — An ounce of syphilitic brain tissue trampled in the stands of the football stadium at Ole Miss, circa 1964.
Megyn Kelly – 1. Find valve in back of skull. 2. Insert hose and inflate with helium until head is filled. 3. Check hair and makeup. 4. Insert ‘GOP Talking Points’ memory card. 5. Turn crank in back until words come out.
Michael Savage – When being a self-hating Weiner just isn’t enough.
Mitt Romney – Elmer Corpo-Fudd goes hunting for small vermin, only to keep finding himself.
Jeb Bush – A Republican presidential prospect who wishes he had been born with a different last name, maybe something like ‘Nixon.’
Mitch McConnell – Where wealthy wrinkles go to retire and old lies to revive themselves.
Roger Ailes – When he dines on his daily cherub, he wipes his mouth on the closest thing available, which happens to be the seat of his pants.
Antonin Scalia - Judge Dreadful.
Clarence Thomas – “Just because I have a big bet on the team doesn’t mean I would necessarily rule in its favor.”
© 2011 RS Janes. LTSaloon.org.
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Religion and war crimes go together like . . .
The week following Super Bowl LXV is providing numerous examples of the new American morality that teaches that hypocrisy is one of the seven capital virtues. The string of new evidence started with the images of George W. Bush at the game. See, boys and girls, if he had done a bad thing (as the Reagan Democrats assert) he would be in jail, but he ain’t so he di-ent. (That’s hip speak for did not.) All week long Donald Rumsfeld was given plenty of TV time to spread the message that stupidity and incompetence are OK because, at the very worst, you’ll get a lucrative book contract and your peeps will see you on TV and not in a war crime trial court room. Comes next Sunday morning, America’s priests, ministers, and rabies will get a few minutes to deliver a sermon during Mass to convince the gullible Reagan-Democrat party’s kids that they should “Obey!” Meanwhile, the Republican kids will get an autographed copy of both the Bush and Rumsfeld books and can snicker while watching the Sunday morning talk show/spin rebuttal programs that send the subliminal “wink, wink, nudge, nudge” message that real men have big bank accounts.
Hitler wasn’t even tried in absentia for war crimes, but his posse was. Bush & Co. will never be taken into custody. (If Radovan Karadzic was scheduled to appear at a speaking engagement in Switzerland, do you think he would have gone and been arrested or do you think he would have gotten the traditional con men’s secret signal [watch “The Sting”] to cancel the trip?)
You don’t see Rev. Billy Graham denouncing George W. Bush do ya? Rev. Graham has never spoken harshly about America’s military adventures and thereby he became the White House clergy/mascot for nearly a half century. While many of America’s young Democrats were off to WWII, Graham was in Divinity School and starting his ministry. Gee, with all those young widows to console he must have been very busy. (Did someone just ask: “Did he get laid a lot?”? If so; you’re catching on to how this Republican Morality scam works.)
Getting back to Rumsfeld and the profitability of stupidity and ineptness, we know of one guy, who is both an ordained minister and a blogger, who was aghast at the stupidity of the Gaffer’s Tape and Plastic Sheeting suggestions made right before the Invasion of Iraq. He wrote columns about the hilarious aluminum tube “evidence” and even wrote a letter to the Editor of the New York Times about the possibility that the tape and plastic sheeting suggestion would lead to asphyxiations. He added that the dumb “be prepared for gas attacks” suggestion indicated that fools were at the nation’s helm and did not bode well for the long haul.
The day the letter was published [Feb. 14, 2003 (we can’t find it online)] Rumsfeld said at a Pentagon press conference that the tape and plastic sheeting idea was an instance of metaphorical speaking to convey the seriousness of the terrorism threat.
Doesn’t the suggestion itself indicate a binary choice: they were either being diabolically devious or they were stupid and inept from the git-go?
Doesn’t the fact that they used a glib “let’s move on” line at a press conference and then continued their efforts to marshal public opinion to favor the impending war indicate that they weren’t stupid? If so, then the binary choice in the previous paragraph means they were being devious then and are continuing the coy act today while promoting their disingenuous invasion and books?
Here’s an item for your consideration directed to the fans of the obtuse and esoteric references department: Rumsfeld’s adorable “didn’t know” shenanigans reminded this columnist of the opening of “The Big Sleep,” when Carmen Sternwood falls backwards. Philip Marlowe says: “I had to catch her or let her crack her head on the tessellated floor.” The mainstream media does for Rumsfeld what Marlowe did for Carmen by unquestioningly accepting his disingenuous explanations. “Good boy, Rover!”
The previously mentioned letter sent to the New York Times was published on the letters to the editor page (wasn’t that on Valentine’s Day in 2003?). The war? It’s going on to this very day and you can look that up on the Internets if you don’t believe us. Certain logistical support companies have enthusiastic annual reports that also substantiate that fact.
Rumsfeld got a lucrative book deal and the blogger? . . . He’ll have to apply for a writing grant from the Nihilism Foundation, if he wants to fulfill his dream of touring the famous auto museums of Germany this summer.
[Note: This columnist used to use the concept of the “Gonzo Journalism Foundation” as the imaginary source for money, but we have to drop that shtick because we have learned that Mrs. Hunter S. Thompson has started the real Gonzo Foundation. Now our new imaginary source for money will be called “The Nihilism Foundation” and let’s hope that’s not a real institution. Is there such a thing as “the Tree-hugger Foundation”?]
The journalists who heartily endorsed the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan are still churning out “atta-boy” stories in support of the Bush/Obama war efforts, while liberal bloggers scramble for invitations to the Huffington Post weekly soirees at the publishers house (in O. J.’s old L. A. neighborhood, n’est ce pas?).
Do the children of Reagan Democrats want to become union members who buy a house that goes into foreclosure or do they secretly want to become bankers who own private jets, vacation homes in Tahiti, and have trophy wives while his peeps do the foreclosing paperwork?
Speaking of high rollers, we have learned that one bookie operation in Ireland can not accept bets originating from America on the possibility that the 40-1 long-shot candidate, JEB, will win the next Presidential election. Drat! Are we going to have to schmooze with a certain British Film Critic to get a three day crash pad stay in London, invitation, while on our way to Germany, to make the bet? Stay tuned to this columnist for further developments.
Speaking of Germany is there a bit of archeological irony in the WWII photos of the chaplain holding a “blessing of the bombs” ceremony?
Most Americans know who Hitler and Mussolini were. Can they name the guy who was Pope during WWII? Who was America’s leading clergyman during WWII?
O’Reilly wanted nothing but the highest respect for the war criminal George W. Bush, but he didn’t think all his interruptions of the President of the United States was anything other than a respectful interview in the Edward R.
One final irrelevant interjection: San Francisco columnist Herb Caen often used to point out people who had inappropriate names didn’t fit their jobs, such as a used car salesman named Bob Chetham. As we were completing this column, liberal talk show hostess Stephanie Miller and the mooks were obsessing about names with risqué double meanings. We should direct her attention to a plumber in Santa Monica who was named Dick Shaver.
Our last column probably shot to hell our chances of ever being added to the Huffington Post roster of regular contributors. It’s OK, though. This columnist wouldn’t have cut the mustard. The hypothetical job offer would probably have turned out to be like some of the snappy dialogue Raymond Chandler wrote: “I was fired. For insubordination. I test very high on insubordination, General.”
Now the disk jockey will play both the Beatles and Stones version (the only song recorded by both bands) of “Money (That’s What I Want),” plus “Fools Rush In” and Johnny Cash’s “I’m just an old chunk of coal.” It’s time for us to make like a shepherd and get the flock outta here. Have a “get on board” type week.
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February 8, 2011
An Eddie Haskell style joke on bloggers?
Larry Flynt pays his writers well and delivers the checks promptly. He is one boss who doesn’t have disgruntled employees bad mouthing him behind his back. Current and former employees of Larry Flynt Publications always speak well of him. Hugh Hefner made Playboy magazine the highest ranked potential market for freelance writers and also made some remarkable profits with his philosophy about paying generously. Unfortunately, Hefner was so successful at making his magazine an attractive prospect for freelancer writers he had to close down the golden opportunity. Playboy articles are now all done on assignment (according to a reliable source who is a former boss) only basis. Neither freelance query letters nor submissions are accepted.
William Randolph Hearst assembled a remarkably talented posse of writers by offering them more money to work for him than other newspaper publishers could. Hearst was the source of the term “lobster shift” (AKA “lob-shift”) and caused his biographer W. A. Swanberg (Citizen Hearst Bantam Books paperback p-83) to write: “The Examiner office was a madhouse inhabited by talented and erratic young, men drunk with life in a city that never existed before or since. They had a mad boss, one who flung away money, lived like the ruler of a late Empire . . . and cheered them on as they made newspaper history.” Hearst was not a sexist. He did hire a red haired chorus girl, Winifred Sweet, who became a successful reporter.
Republicans, perhaps thanks to the book “Rich Dad, Poor Dad,” believe that they should pay their workers as little as possible for the most amount of work they can ring out of their workers.
Wouldn’t it be funny if a famous conservative made a bet with a wealthy Republican owner of a word plantation that she would do better than get the prols to work cheap? What if she made a bet that she could get writers to clamor for the chance to work for free? She could pose as a liberal, start up something cheap, and then get talented tree-huggers to embrace her “you don’t need a paycheck” response to the idea of paying writers generously by giving them a big audience as an “ego-stroke.” Then to prove that she deserved to win the bet she could sell her publication for a shipload of money and “cry all the way to the bank” with her profit. She could collect on such a hpothetical bet she had just won.
What if her writers were true ballsy Democrats who believed in workers’ rights and they all went on strike during the same week she collected her sales windfall?
What if on the same day they all tuned in something that was in the public domain? Is the “Modest Proposal” essay in the public domain? Come to think of it, a strike did fatally cripple Hearst’s L. A. newspaper.
On the same day the sale was announced, a friend suggested that this columnist could improve the quality of his words if he would spend more time fact-checking and double checking for spelling errors. A good city editor can turn one spelling mistake into a mortifying city room ordeal, but if it takes a goodly amount of time to turn out a contribution to the Internets done in a slap dash fashion, why should any extra time and effort be made? Fox News’ personnel (Is Fox a farm club for the stand up comedian circuit?) are backed by a court decision that says they don’t have to report news that is “true.” If they don’t waste time and money on fact checking, then why should a rogue columnist do it?
It is one thing for a Hunter S. Thompson wannabe to spend some personal funds to go to Fremantle in the W. A. (Western Australia) and spread the Gospel of online Gonzo Journalism, but it is a different thing entirely to see a Berkeley CA based web site owner and operator urge his work for free keystorkers: “We have to go out and work harder for Democrats in the next election cycle.” As Tonto once said; “What do you mean ‘we’ . . . ?” Couldn’t an imaginative writer cook up a wild conspiracy theory about such an order?
We seem to recall an issue of Paul Krassner’s “The Realist” which proclaimed that the Republican and Democratic parties were twins separated at birth. At the time, it sounded absurd to us. It seems we may have had the opportunity to naively question Krassner about that belief in a composing room encounter in the early Seventies, but deadlines are relentless and we didn’t have time to seize that chance. We now believe that Krassner was “spot-on” with that Sixties assertion.
If the next election is a choice between a Reagan Democrat incumbent and JEB, then maybe it’s time to double check and see if we can still cross post our material on Digihitch because the extent of our efforts over the next two years will be along the lines of doing a random bit of voter trend spotting in the automobile museums of Germany. If that doesn’t help Obama very much . . . oh well . . . at least there will be photos in the e-scrapbook to remind the writer when he gets old of just how much fun it was to do the “Europe on 5$ a day” routine in the second half of Obama’s first (and only?) term in office.
This year Germany is celebrating the 125th year of automotive history. Sounds like a fun thing for this columnist to cover. Once, long before we sent our first news tip to Ray Wert, we talked our way into a top rate automobile museum on a day when it was closed. We’d like to think Mr. Hearst would give us a “well done” on that stunt.
W. A. Swanberg (Ibid page 57) wrote that Hearst regarded journalism as: “an enchanted playground in which giants and dragons were to be slain simply for the fun of the thing.” Wouldn’t it be funny if Hunter S. Thompson read that book before choosing journalism for his career?
Yeah, it was great fun the one time we saw our efforts mentioned on Mike’s Blog Report. It made us feel like we might some day get a membership card and bragging rights that we were “in with the ‘in’ crowd,” but it was more fun when Time magazine’s Reagan era White House correspondent entered our apartment in Marina del Rey (many years ago) and exclaimed: “My God, Bob, it is a hovel!” We’ll have to work that moment into our memoirs . . . if we ever get around to finishing that project.
Would it be funny if a TSA employee said “turn your head and cough” during a pat-down?
The Daily Curser used to plug good blog postings. They are long gone, but still listed on a list of other blogs at a certain high profile liberal pundit aggregator site. Did the Cursor ever mention our efforts? What blogger holds the record for “talking shop” with the most winners of a Pulitzer Prize? Is four a good number?
Swanberg succinctly captured the hippie commune non-judgmental democratic atmosphere of a newsroom (Ibid page 70) in one sentence: “The Examiner had drinkers of all categories, moderate, steady, intermittent and inert, and the staff was so flexibly arranged that when a member fell from grace another would take his place without comment.”
[Note: One night in late 1996 we saw Hunter S. Thompson appear at Johnny Depp’s night club on the Sunset Strip. He drank an amber liquid from a whisky bottle for three hours and at the end of the evening he wasn’t showing any of the three symptoms of intoxication, which are: impaired physical dexterity, slurred speech, or incoherent thinking. What up wid dat? Was it a hoax or a miracle?]
Nietzsche wrote: “Nothing succeeds if prankishness plays no part in it.” We have always wondered how that applied to the stodgy Huffington Post or if it was the exception to the rule. Now we know.
Now the disk jockey will play the Doors’ “Show me the way,” “See what the boys in the back room are having,” and “Pour me another tequila, Sheila.” We have to go and try to decipher the inside joke behind the word “Rosebud.” May you have a “Let’s celebrate the $315 million sale with a big party!” type week. This columnist is going to have a glass of A & W. diet root beer and then browse through the travel guide books to Paris (France not Texas) which are available at the Berkeley Public Library – after we check out the latest pro Egyptian student demonstration at Sproul Plaza.
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100th Birthday Quote-to-Quote: The Real Ronald Reagan
Ever wonder where current Republican twits like Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann get some of their goofiest, dumbest twists on history, society and government? Seems they are simply borrowing from the ‘Master,’ the same mental colossus many members of the GOP want engraved on the dime and enshrined on Mount Rushmore:
“Why should we subsidize intellectual curiosity?”
– Ronald Reagan, campaign speech, 1980.“Fascism was really the basis for the New Deal.”
– Ronald Reagan, quoted in Time, May 17, 1976“I favor the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and it must be enforced at the point of a bayonet, if necessary.”
– Ronald Reagan, Los Angeles Times, October 20, 1965“I would have voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964.”
– Ronald Reagan, Los Angeles Times, June 17, 1966“Today a newcomer to the state is automatically eligible for our many aid programs the moment he crosses the border.”
– Ronald Reagan, in a speech announcing his candidacy for Governor, January 3, 1966. (In fact, immigrants to California had to wait five years before becoming eligible for benefits. Reagan acknowledged his error, but nine months later said exactly the same thing.)“…a faceless mass, waiting for handouts.”
– Ronald Reagan, 1965. (Description of Medicaid recipients.)“Unemployment insurance is a pre-paid vacation for freeloaders.”
– California Governor Ronald Reagan, in the Sacramento Bee, April 28, 1966“We were told four years ago that 17 million people went to bed hungry every night. Well, that was probably true. They were all on a diet.”
– Ronald Reagan, TV speech, October 27, 1964“History shows that when the taxes of a nation approach about 20 percent of the people’s income, there begins to be a lack of respect for government…. When it reaches 25 percent, there comes an increase in lawlessness.”
– Ronald Reagan, in Time, April 14, 1980. (History shows no such thing. Income tax rates in Europe have traditionally been far higher than U.S. rates, while European crime rates have been much lower.)“Because Vietnam was not a declared war, the veterans are not even eligible for the G. I. Bill of Rights with respect to education or anything.”
– Ronald Reagan, in Newsweek, April 21, 1980. (Wrong again.)“What we have found in this country, and maybe we’re more aware of it now, is one problem that we’ve had, even in the best of times, and that is the people who are sleeping on the grates, the homeless who are homeless, you might say, by choice.”
– Ronald Reagan, defending himself against charges of callousness on Good Morning America, January 31, 1984“All the waste in a year from a nuclear power plant can be stored under a desk.”
– Ronald Reagan (Republican candidate for president), quoted in the Burlington (Vermont) Free Press, February 15, 1980. (In reality, the average nuclear reactor generates 30 tons of radioactive waste per year.)“Trains are not any more energy efficient than the average automobile, with both getting about 48 passenger miles to the gallon.”
– Ronald Reagan, quoted in the Chicago Tribune, May 10, 1980. (The U.S. Department of Transportation calculates that a 14-car train traveling at 80 miles per hour gets 400 passenger miles to the gallon. A 1980 auto carrying an average of 2.2 people gets 42.6 passenger miles to the gallon.)“I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. The U.S. Geological Survey has told me that the proven potential for oil in Alaska alone is greater than the proven reserves in Saudi Arabia.”
– Ronald Reagan, quoted in the Detroit Free Press, March 23, 1980. (According to the USGS, the Saudi reserves of 165.5 billion barrels are 17 times the proven reserves–9.2 billion barrels–in Alaska.)“I have flown twice over Mount St. Helens. I’m not a scientist and I don’t know the figures, but I have a suspicion that one little mountain out there, in these last several months, has probably released more sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere than has been released in the last ten years of automobile driving or things of that kind.”
– Ronald Reagan, quoted in Time magazine, October 20, 1980. (According to scientists, Mount St. Helens emitted about 2,000 tons of sulfur dioxide per day at its peak activity, compared with 81,000 tons per day produced by cars.)“…until now has there ever been a time in which so many of the prophecies are coming together. There have been times in the past when people thought the end of the world was coming, and so forth, but never anything like this.”
– President Reagan revealing a disturbing view about the “coming of Armageddon,” December 6, 1983“Ronald Reagan is the first modern President whose contempt for the facts is treated as a charming idiosyncrasy.”
– James David Barber, presidential scholar in “On Bended Knee: The Press and the Reagan Presidency,” by Mark Hertsgaard“He demonstrated for all to see how far you can go in this life with a smile, a shoeshine and the nerve to put your own spin on the facts.”
– David Nyhan, Boston Globe columnist“He has the ability to make statements that are so far outside the parameters of logic that they leave you speechless”
– Patti Davis (formerly Patricia Ann Reagan) talking about her father in “The Way I See It.”“Poor dear, there’s nothing between his ears.”
– British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher
Quotes selected from a post at DemocraticUnderground.com.
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February 7, 2011
America’s 17.5-trillion-dollar loss: Time to move Tahrir Square to Wall Street?
I’m really really glad to be leaving for Antarctica in a few days — because America’s undemocratic financial system is really really starting to piss me off. Here in land of the (once-upon-a-time) free and the home of the (used-to-be) brave, America’s elite financiers are making all the rules and raking in all the profits — while the rest of us just shut up and pay. And pay and pay and pay.
Maybe if I spend some time down with the penguins, I’ll be able to cool off.
In a recent article entitled, “Another Crash is Certain,” economist Mike Whitney quotes Nomi Prins, author of “Shadow Banking”. According to Prins, “at the height of federal payouts in July 2009, the government had put up $17.5 trillion to support Wall Street’s pyramid Ponzi system.” http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/mike-whitney/34150/another-crash-is-certain
Is Prins saying that American taxpayers could possibly lose $17.5 trillion dollars to a Wall Street Ponzi scheme? Yeah, duh. You’d better bring on the penguins. Boy am I pissed.
And over in Egypt these days, people are pretty much going nuts in Tahrir Square because Hosni Mubarak had pocketed approximately $70 billion dollars from the money his country has received from American taxpayers. Just 70 billion? That’s not very much — not when you consider that we taxpayers here at home have just gotten hornswaggled into putting up 17.5 trillion dollars to cover Wall Street’s latest pyramid shell game. Yet people in Egypt are royally pissed off by this blatant corruption — while most of us Americans are just sitting around on our hands.
Where’s the outrage here in America? Where are OUR protests! Where is OUR Tahrir Square!
I would love to see every single patriot in America — right-wing or left-wing or both — drop everything he or she is doing right now, run down to the Safeway, 7-Eleven or Piggly Wiggly, stock up on snack food and then surround Wall Street, K Street and the Federal Reserve Board (located at the Eccles Building on Constitution Avenue between 20th and 21st Streets, NW, BTW) and stay there for as long as it takes to get America’s elite financial mountebanks to leave.
I’d love to see millions of us flooding these plazas, eating picnic sandwiches, taking turns using the bathrooms — and demanding justice and OUR money back.
But if I were to actually propose such an obviously patriotic action, would I get in trouble with the FBI for trying to incite a riot? Get my phone tapped? Get put on a no-fly list? Be ridiculed by the mainstream media? Be called a kook?
I would love to propose that it’s time for every red-blooded American patriot who is finally fed up with having his or her paycheck robbed by the Robber Barons month after month — that we all go surround the American Stock Exchange, the Eccles Building and the corner of 14th and K Street, just like the Egyptians did in Tahrir Square.
And I would also propose that we stay in place and don’t move until the American Stock Exchange, all corporate lobbyists and the Federal Reserve Board are completely shut down — eliminated, kaput, put out of “business” forever.
But if I did that, would I be called a terrorist? Or, worse, would I be called a Socialist? Get my home also raided? Be put in jail? Become a pariah? Get audited by the IRS? Lose my Social Security card? Not be allowed to embed in Iraq or Afghanistan ever again? Waterboarded? Be dismissed as some weirdo with bad hair?
If American businesses need capital to keep themselves going, they can always borrow money from a bank or a credit union. Businesses don’t need no freaking stock market in order to save their bacon. Wall Street alone needs the stock market. Only Wall Street itself needs it. Businesses don’t need it. And We-the-People surely do not. Wall Street is nothing more than a casino — and with all its bets hedged in favor of the house.
And don’t even get me started on the Federal Reserve — it’s nothing more than a whitewashed gentrified glorified counterfeiting operation. I know that. You know that. So let’s shut it down. Give us our money back!
And as for K Street? I just threw in that suggestion because the lobbyists there have pissed me off even beyond anything that sweet cute cuddly penguins can do to help. K Street owns our government lock, stock and barrel. Freaking welfare recipients. Get a real job!
But I really should just keep my mouth shut about this. And so should you. Apparently the elite financial establishment of America has us all by the balls.
However. If a few million American patriots take turns surrounding each of these three locations every single day for as long as it takes, Americans might actually start to see some REAL reform for a change, not just the whining platitudes now being paid lip service by the stooges of rich guys — but you didn’t hear all this from me. I’ll be off visiting penguins.
PS: America, however, ain’t Egypt in one more respect. Egyptians finally grew a pair, sure, but Egyptians also aren’t having to deal with the worst blizzard of the century either. Perhaps we should wait until the spring thaw before staging our own Tahrir Square.
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What can we do to help?
The world’s laziest journalist approached Super Bowl XLV with great trepidation not just because the Super Bowls haven’t been as good since the days when Broadway Joe pulled a magnificent upset, but also because of a great sense of shame because the American Journalism community, which would flock to cover an earthquake in Indonesia and would send as many reporters to New Orleans as there were soldiers on the Normandy Beaches, doesn’t seem capable of running a blurb about the recent monsoon disaster in Australia.
Suppose the Australians have a Spartan’s pride and need help but can’t bring themselves to ask for a helping hand? Shouldn’t American Journalism be covering the devastation story as well as they are attempting to cover the crisis in Egypt?
The United States should be asking “What can we do to help?” Let’s not wait to be asked. America’s strongest ally shouldn’t have to ask for help. It should be being offered right now.
Australia loved Oprah. Isn’t she retired or retiring? Couldn’t she make an attempt to be the catalyst for an instant benefit concert and thereby show some love in return?
Do you think that if Russell Crowe, Nicole Kidman, and Mel “Mr. Road Warrior” Gibson (Maybe we should put Hugh Jackman’s or Cate Blanchett’s name in here, rather than reference the bad boy out in the ‘bu?) asked some musicians to perform one song, they’d get some positive responses? Isn’t Australia a farm club for Hollywood? (Yeah, yeah, yeah. We know that Crowe was born in kiwi land. His apartment is in the Wilamaloo section of Sydney [rather close to Harry’s on Wheels hot dog stand] and his production company office is [?] in Santa Monica.)
Do you know what the official name of Australia’s Border Patrol is? It’s called The Coast Guard and they use boats not horses and SUV’s. Dude, is there any country in the world with more beaches? If he were alive wouldn’t Patrick Swayze, who played Bodie – the ultimate surfer – in the movie “Point Break,” (Where is Bell’s Beach?) lend his name to an Aussie Aid Benefit Concert?
After British Prime Minister Winston Churchill offended Australians, during WWII, by insisting that they send Australian troops to defend the Suez Canal (the British Navy needed the oil that traveled through that strategic bit of geography), Americans won a considerable amount of gratitude when they won the battles of the Coral Sea and Midway and saved Australia from a planned Japanese Invasion.
The threat was so real that the Australian government officials worked on the details of a potential surrender negotiations. They were ready to sign a peace treaty that would have let the Japanese occupy most of the Northern half of the island continent.
During 1943, the Thomas Y. Crowell Company published a book by Corporal Thomas R. St. George, titled “c/o Postmaster,” which was a humorous look at the story of a Yank who was shipped off to Australia and sat there at a remote post in Australia laughing about the SNAFU. Reading that book after learning the importance of the early battles in the Pacific during WWII, while visiting the War Museum in Canberra, it is obvious that for generals expecting a Japanese Invasion, it was a wise strategic deployment of allies’ troops and not a paperwork blunder. Expectations of an impending Japanese invasion were best kept secret from America’s civilians.
Writers are always striving to convey a sense of place and so perhaps we can inject a few words here that illustrate how Australia today is comparable to the United States in the “Wild West” phase of its history. On a bright December morning, in 2008, after nighttime noise in the hallway of a hostel in Kalgoorlie indicated that an altercation had occurred, two of the fellows, who were good friends, were suspected of being the ones who had the scuffle. They looked “pretty beat-up” but both the Falcon and the Bishop would only respond to inquiries about the noisy encounter by saying: “I don’t know what you are talking about!” What made folks think it was those two good friends who had the fight?
If you go to Google News and scroll down to the links for other news pages, the one for Australia will deliver a much clearer indication of the recent disaster than you can find in/on American news media. Whatsamatta Rupert Murdrock? Is he also using the stoical “I don’t know what you are talking about” Aussie macho pose? Or is he more interested in helping a certain potential Republican Presidential Candidate by keeping America’s attention focused on the Egyptian Crisis rather than Obama’s domestic agenda?
The great Greek humorist Plato once predicted that someday every man would be sitting in his hovel looking at his computer screen thinking that he (OK- or she) was accurately perceiving the world outside the 99th floor of his block. So it is that most Americans spent Sunday, February 06, 2011, worrying about the entertainment value of a Super Bowl without Joe Namath rather than checking up on the news from America’s closest Ally.
Australia has sent troops to Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. What the hell does the tribal bickering in two far away countries (one is completely landlocked and the other almost is) have to do with the welfare of the island nation that is famous for koala bears and kangaroos? The reason they are there is because the US said they need them and friends don’t balk when they are asked to help. Shouldn’t that be a “two way street”?
Speaking of conspiracy theories from insane bloggers, this might be a good time to slip in the question: “Where was Felix Rodriguez on the day Australian PM Harold Holt went for his last swim?” (We don’t think that certain files in Langley will ever be released by a Freedom of Information request.)
Here’s another almost incomprehensible full of bits of arcane, obtuse, and esoteric material that baffles teabagging trolls. This columnist is a big fan of the guy who does the Brad Blog and fills in for Mike Malloy on his radio program when he is sick or on vacation, but (there’s always a “but” in these columns, eh?) we would love to see/hear what would happen if one of Malloy’s most popular callers, an Australian called “Blue,” would be ever get the call to come in and substitute for Malloy. It seems to this listener that Blue would provoke Rush, O’Reilly, Hannity and a few regular liberal listeners more than Ann Coulter ever upset the liberals.
When the Internets opened and the pioneer bloggers wanted to “go beyond the black stump,” the most optimistic declared that perhaps the fad would generate some “unique voices.” Others feared it would limp along and eventually devolve into a homecoming/prom king popularity contest that would mirror the ratings races of the major media.
Gentle reader, please, if you agree with this columnist’s suggestion that an effort to send monsoon cleanup money and aid to Australia should be made, please send the link for this page to all your posse and suggest that they do what they can to increase a grass roots effort to hold an Aussie Aid Benefit Concert. They have also had a drought and a previous big fire, so maybe they deserve a good will gesture?
It’s obvious that it would be better to “go along to get along” and echo the daily cause and join the chorus in an internet version of the chase sequence in “Lady from Shanghai” rather than persisting in an attempt to follow Longfellow’s “I shot a column into the ether world . . .” example, but it kindda looks like the Crisis in Egypt is now so last week, why waste the time and energy doing a column that’s “a day late and a dollar short”?
Didn’t the lady who just sold her news aggregator site for $315 million, once say that bloggers don’t need to be paid? Were Murrrow’s boys in the union and getting union scale? Was Ernie Pyle in the guild? Will any bloggers see one penny of the proceeds from that sale? Isn’t the Ayn Rand philosophy of life so profitable? We digress.
The other day while walking among ghosts on Spoul Plaza, this columnist was approached by a young lady who asked: “Do you like vaginas?” It turns out that she was promoting a production of “The Vagina Monologues,” which will be held February 10, 11, and 12 at UC Berkeley. Can you just imagine her doing that in Australia?
In the book mentioned above, Corporal St. George, as he prepared to leave Australia and finally go to a combat zone, described it thus: “I amused myself with some morbid guesses on who, of these men in our truck, would be the first to “go.” Some online searches indicate he lived through the war, married an American nurse he met while stationed in Australia, and became a newspaper man in the Mid-West.
Now the disk jockey will play “Waltzing Matilda,” “A pub with no beer,” and “Dirty deeds done dirt cheap” (did you catch that bit about obscure and esoteric references?). We have to go find a news story about the fires near Perth. Have “Mad Max” type week.
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February 6, 2011
Birthday cake blues: “Back before there was cancer…”
I just read an interesting article about some scientists in white coats who investigated ancient Egyptian mummies and discovered that almost none of them had suffered from cancer. That’s amazing. According to Ben Wedeman of CNN, cancer appears to be a relatively new phenomenon.
“Just imagine: a world without cancer. It’s a tantalizing thought, recently floated by researchers at Manchester University in the UK. That world may well have existed, but in the distant past, according to their survey of hundreds of mummies from Egypt and South America. The researchers found that only one mummy had clearly identifiable signs of cancer.” http://articles.cnn.com/2010-10-26/world/egypt.mummies_1_mummy-room-salima-ikram-bone-cancer?_s=PM:WORLD
Back in the day, apparently, almost nobody had cancer.
What possible cancer-causing factors do we modern humans now possess that weren’t available to ancient Egyptian mummies way back then — besides, of course, Hosni Mubarak? Hmmm. We now have the internal combustion engine, plastic, Monsanto, nuclear fallout, TSA scanners and…sugar!
Did ancient Egyptian mummies ever eat sugar? I think not. But do modern-day Americans eat sugar now? Heck yeah. The average American today eats approximately 150 pounds of sugar a year. Maybe that’s why so many of us (including myself) have developed so many different forms of cancer? Perhaps I should do some further investigation here.
So in the interests of science, I trundled off to a lecture about sugar presented by Oakland’s Women’s Cancer Resource Center and nutrition expert Sandy Der — and the nutritionist told us more stuff about sugar than I could ever have imagined. “Did you know that sugar is more addictive than cocaine? Sugar is as addictive as opiates.” I didn’t know that!
“How many people in this room are addicted to sugar?” Der asked. Almost all of us raised our hands, including me. “After lab rats had been given cocaine until they became addicted, they were then introduced to sugar.” No contest there. Within just three days, the rats were no longer interested in cocaine and were off main-lining sugar.
And I bet that if you try that experiment on any little kid too (not the cocaine part, just the sugar), they too will become addicted to sugar within three short days. That’s just pathetic. Only nine months old and already all-too-many American kids have already developed a jones.
And me too!
I too have become addicted to sugar. Obviously, birthday cake is the perfect food! And how about taking a break so I can run off to Fenton’s for a hot caramel sundae? And don’t you just LOVE eclairs? I’ve even done research on eclairs! http://www.berkeleyside.com/2010/06/24/in-berkeley-the-search-for-the-perfect-eclair/ Yeah I’m an addict.
“So let’s navigate our way through Candy Land here,” continued the lecturer. “Our cells get their energy from glucose — but too little glucose or too much glucose can be harmful. There is a safety zone of blood-sugar levels that your body works best within.” And if your blood-sugar levels are outside of that zone, there’s going to be trouble.
“Perhaps even cancer?” I asked.
“I would not infer that sugar causes any disease in particular,” answered the nutritionist, “although it may increase risk. For instance, sugar does not cause cancer.” Okay — but I still want my Mummy!
However, according to Der, eating too much sugar can cause lows and spikes in blood-sugar levels, sending your body on a wild roller-coaster ride that could result in hormone imbalances, insulin resistance, LDL problems, loss of vision, Alzheimers, diabetes, heart disease, stroke, kidney damage, cardiovascular disease and who knows what all else. So when you stray away from the mid-range of blood-sugar levels, you could be setting yourself up for nasty stuff to happen.
“What about if we just use artificial sweeteners instead?” someone in the audience asked hopefully.
“Artificial sweeteners aren’t food. They are just chemicals,” Der replied. Oh. So I might as well just be eating Rogaine or Drano?
Then the nutritionist gave us some suggestions on how to become unaddicted. Go cold turkey? Visit some posh rehab center? Join Narcotics Anonymous? Just Say No? Der’s suggestions were more practical and convenient.
“To start with, avoid processed foods — because they may contain a lot of hidden sugars. But if you do eat processed foods, read the labels first in order to avoid sugars often hidden in items like salad dressing, cereals and peanut butters. Chose whole foods instead. Nature itself offers us foods that don’t have a lot of sugars. Try to eat within a healthy blood-sugar range. And another advantage of eating whole foods is that you will not longer have to read labels.” There are no labels on grapes and squash. “But if your food does come with a label, don’t be fooled by its use of big words. If an ingredient’s name ends with ‘ose,’ that means it is a form of sugar.”
Der then stated that eating complex carbohydrates such as fruit and whole grains is better than eating straight sugars because while there are also sugars present in complex carbohydrates, it takes the body longer to break these sugars down — due to the presence of fiber — and for this reason, complex carbs provide a much steadier blood-sugar source.
“I would suggest limiting carbohydrates, bu if you are going to eat them, they should be of the complex variety that usually contains fiber — which slows the conversion into glucose.” Der herself is a great fan of vegetables. “Try to eat five to seven servings a day.” Did mummies do that? I guess they did.
“And while protein and fats do not contain sugar per se, they are, however, an excellent energy source.” And you can get the highest quality energy from proteins contained in grass-fed animals and from healthy fats such as olive oil — thus accessing more energy but without getting stuck with all those weird hormones, pesticides and toxins that Egyptian mummies knew nothing about.
“The key to healthier eating is in your complex carbs. You want to generate a slow release of glucose into your blood,” continued Der. This will apparently help keep you from falling prey to sugar addiction. “In the beginning,” while trying to kick the sugar habit, “it might be good to eat mostly frequent small meals and snacks consisting of protein, fats and complex carbohydrates.” The great advantage to this strategy is that you will never have to wait a long time until your next meal!
“But you will always be tempted to fall back into your sugar addiction, so you need to develop a plan regarding how to regulate your blood-sugar.”
I don’t suppose that me running out to buy a half-gallon of Ben and Jerry’s Coffee Heath Bar Crunch right now is the kind of plan that Der is talking about. Probably not. Although she did note that eating ice cream is better than eating frozen yogurt because the fat in the ice cream slows the conversion of sugar to glucose.
“Also, in order to kick the sugar habit you need to exercise, reduce stress, get seven to nine hours of sleep a night and drink lots of good clean water.” And apparently if you can just wait out your sugar-craving for just fifteen minutes, it will go away all by itself. Yeah right.
“And if you feel yourself falling into the roller-coaster dips of low blood-sugar, you might want to eat a healthy snack to bring your blood-sugar back up. But never eat anything in excess. And also remember that eating white flour, refined carbs and highly-processed grain is practically the same as eating sugar. Eat real food. Like our ancestors did.”
Yeah but it was easier for them. They were mummies.
PS: Although I tend to be satirical, flippant and facetious on the subject of sugar, in fact even I realize how important it is to curb my sugar jones. Addiction to sugar may not kill you as fast as getting hit by a speeding 18-wheeler, but too much of it may kill you just the same. And the crucial importance of Der’s lecture on sugar is inestimable to me. I’m gonna start eating complex carbs, taking smaller, more frequent whole-food meals, and stop being a sugar junkie right now!
“Sure you will,” commented my daughter.
PPS: For more information on nutrition and health, please visit Der’s website at http://betterwaytowellness.com/. She is also available for individual nutritional consultations.
PPPS: I’m leaving for Antarctica on February 9, 2011 and from what I have heard regarding the horrors of seasickness caused by crossing the Drake Passage, I won’t be wanting to eat ANYTHING for a while. Here’s a video of the boat I’ll be going on as it got rescued last December after giant waves broke all the windows on its bridge, destroyed all its communication equipment and slowed its engine down a whole lot: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eDTbopUYg20
But if I do get washed overboard or something while navigating the “roughest stretch of water in the world” and don’t return home alive, then I won’t have to worry about being addicted to sugar any more either. “They ain’t got no Snickers bars down in Davy Jones’ locker.”
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February 5, 2011
Not again?
[Note: for this one column, the writer will forego the pose of being “the World’s Laziest Journalist” and use traditional debating form to address a possible explanation of the events in Egypt, which has seemed to stymie both liberal and conservative pundits.]
In 1980, the Republicans conspired with radical Muslims to use the Iranian hostages as pawns in the Presidential Election process, so it isn’t inconceivable that some Republicans might stoop that low again for the same reason. It could it even be that the same Republicans who negotiated with the Iranians for the release of the American hostages are again using stealth deals to influence American politics. Didn’t the Republicans use agreements with Muslim extremists to get the money to use in the Iran-Contra deal? Was that ever fully investigated beyond the level of sending some low level intermediaries to jail? Who gave the marching orders to those intermediaries?
Who were the Americans who worked out the details for clandestine money and weapons, in the late Eighties (?), to help the Afghan rebels repulse the Russian invasion? Since the White House was occupied by Republicans from 1980 to 1992, you don’t think they let any Democrats play a substantial role in that caper, do you?
What prominent American political family is known for its political ties to the House of Saud in Arabia? Who are the workers who help maintain that cozy relationship?
Did Republicans working on the Policy for a New American Century (PNAC) project express a hope for a “new Pearl Harbor” during the Clinton Administration? Did some such invigorating and inspiring event eventually take place and deliver a unified country into the hands of the people who expressed that wish?
Did George W. Bush use a photo-op moment to make a solemn pledge to the American people to deliver justice to Osama bin Laden (a member of a family that like his own was heavily involved in the Carlyle Group)? Did George W. Bush’s military make a deal with local Muslims to apprehend the culprit and didn’t that bit of delegating authoritiy “inadvertently” let the fellow slip into oblivion that all the best CIA efforts can’t penetrate?
Would there be enough circumstantial evidence to conclude that a deal was made to let the fugitive escape in return for a promise that no further terrorist attacks would be made inside the USA while the Bush family was in the Oval Office?
Was a heavy emphasis placed on the principle of spreading democracy to explain the need for sending the United States military forces into both Afghanistan and Iraq?
In the early phase of the coverage of the unrest in Egypt didn’t some reports say that the protesters might have been coordinated on the Internets with help from some CIA controlled personnel?
When “Departure Day” arrived in Egypt, was there any possible outcome which would bolster President Obama’s chances for reelection?
Events in Egypt had put the Democrats in a box canyon ambush situation because they can’t say that Bush was prescient about the invasion of Iraq causing a large increase in demands from Muslims for democracy in their home countries, they can’t say that the charges that the USA is an imperialistic country meddling in the internal affairs of another country aren’t true, and they sure as heck can’t say Obama looks ineffectual and impotent because that would sound like they were making the Republican talking points to be used in the next Presidential election.
Who stands to gain from the current crisis situation?
Consider this: If a Republican is elected in 2012, won’t most pundits point to this week’s events in Egypt as the turning point and say that from then on, Obama was doomed to be a one term President? No matter what happens now in Egypt, can’t all Republicans say that Obama botched things just as Jimmy Carter did with the Iranian Hostage Crisis? Won’t the Republicans be very happy to say that, thanks to the ruling on Health care by a Reagan appointed judge and the fiasco in Egypt, Obama’s record was a null set?
Now let’s ask another question: Who had more sway with the CIA; a former Senator who hadn’t served one full term or a family with two former Presidents (one of whom was a former CIA director) and a viable candidate in the next election?
Who has more clout in the Muslim world: A family that has close financial ties with the House of Saud and the bin Laden family or a protégée of Henry Kissinger? (Didn’t Obama’s mother work with Henry the K? Didn’t Kissinger help the young Mr. Obama get a job out in Chicago?)
The conservatives have two ways to refute this hypothetical explanation for recent events in Egypt: they can assume that they can just ignore a rogue pundit who isn’t a member of the “in crowd” of liberal bloggers and that his latest column will not be noticed even by members of his own posse or they can use the standard political response of an ad hominem rebuttal. If Charles Manson wrote this column, debating referees would have to consider the information in the column for use in marking their score cards and not be swayed by any effort to sidetrack their judgment on to the topic of the personality of the writer.
To either method, this columnist would respond: Use the Occam’s Razor line of reasoning to evaluate the hypothetical explanation suggested in this column and what do you get? Is there any other viable explanation of the Crisis in Egypt?
All the TV personalities seem to by stumped by the events in Egypt. Isn’t there a line in a popular song that imagines a fellow who spends his entire life locked up in chains only to find that he has held the key in his hand all the time?
This columnist will return to the role of the happy-go-lucky Irish guy soon with a column that asks: If Australia has stood shoulder to shoulder with the USA every time it has gone to war (i.e. they have sent their troops to Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan) shouldn’t somebody (in the mainstream media or the “in crowd” of bloggers) be suggesting ways to help Australia recover from the recent storm devastation? If America can quickly arrange benefit concerts for Bangladesh, AIDS, American Farm AID, the September 11th attack, the Indonesian earthquake and tsunami, and the Hurricane Katrina disaster, then shouldn’t they also be able to make some kind of gesture of solidarity with the Aussies, now?
Until then, enjoy your Super Bowl XLV party and don’t worry about Mubarak.
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YOS Presents Neo Nuts Non-Answers to EVERYTHING Throughout Time
“Because making damn sure NOTHING gets done is the whole purpose when faced with facts.”
“I’m for ending slavery, but I think it should be ‘handled’ on a more local level.”
Scribe: “Oh, yeah, THAT would have happened.”
Here’s a drawing of slavery “handled” on a “more local level.”
Remember, situations like global climate change handled “on a more local level” would make the planet resemble this man’s back: whipped. “Handled on a ‘local level’ is synonymous with, “Let’s not do a damn thing.”
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The Tattlesnake – “Finally We Are Free!” Edition
Title quote via MSNBC from a pro-democracy demonstrator celebrating in Cairo’s Tahrir (Liberation) Square following the resignation of Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak, Feb. 11, 2011.
The US media reported yesterday that Hosni Mubarak had finally resigned, the message conveyed to the world by his Vice President and Torturer-in-Chief, Omar Suleiman. Of course, the pro-democracy demonstrators wildly celebrated Mubarak’s resignation – think of it: in 18 days they had toppled a tyrant without resorting to violence, even in the face of provocation from Mubarak’s street thugs and vicious secret police — but I also thought it was interesting that Hosni is now ensconced in his estate on the Red Sea, surrounded by razor wire and heavily guarded. Some may interpret this arrangement as protecting Mubarak’s corrupt hide, but it could also be seen as a prison from which he could be quickly transferred to a jet bound out of the country, forced into exile by the praetorian guard now ‘protecting’ him from his own people. Then again, perhaps they are merely holding the deposed dictator for trial – the people have demanded Hosni be held responsible for his brutal reign, and they want to know where all the money went. In the wake of the news that Swiss banks have frozen Mubarak’s bank accounts purportedly containing billions in purloined US dollars, they just might find out.
While we celebrate with the Egyptian people emerging from 30 years of darkness under Mubarak, it must be said that, now that Mubarak’s gone, only a part of Egypt’s journey to a free democracy is complete; next, the pro-democracy forces will have the hard work of purging the government of Mubarak’s corrupt cronies, if they won’t leave willingly, and pressuring the military, which has dissolved parliament and taken control, to allow a democratically-elected civilian government to flourish. On the latter score, it’s heartening to note that while the top officers are Mubarak appointees, the rank-and-file in the military are conscripts closer to the demonstrators than the generals, and the scenes of peaceful protestors happily riding on the tanks US foreign aid purchased should have brought that point home to the brass hats. Without the lower ranks solidly behind them, there can be no military coup d’etat.
Meanwhile, public crackpot Glenn Beck has been regurgitating bizarre conspiracy theories alleging that the overthrow of the vile Mubarak is part of some kind of dingbat Marxist-Muslim ‘New World Order’ plot with US progressives to bring about an Islamic Caliphate that will rule the Middle East and Europe. Fox News’ squirrel-bait embarrassment apparently believes freedom and democracy are fine for white Americans, but should be off-limits to darker-skinned Egyptians. (Perhaps this is why his TV audience has dropped by half in the past year – most of us, whatever our political leanings, think democracy, individual rights and liberty are good things for the world.) However, Beck is almost right – there does seem to be a New World Order brewing, but not the evil Commie Caliphate he imagines. Instead, all across Africa and the Middle East, from Tunisia to Iran, the citizenry is yearning for secular government of, by and for the people, dedicated to equality and justice, with the same rights and freedoms Americans are supposed to enjoy. Of course, to corporate scambots like Rupert Murdoch’s rodeo clown, the idea of self-rule and freedom from foreign exploitation is anathema, and the events in Tunisia and Egypt should be sending a chill up spines in the other corporate suites of the world; these non-violent revolutions were also about economic justice as well as getting rid of tyranny, an economic justice the corporate autocrats despise and fear. Whatever meaningless label the Becksters want to hang on it, it is not religious in nature and neither is it some silly strain of Islamic Communism – it is the same thing Americans fought for over two centuries ago: freedom from distant powers and homegrown despots taking your money and deciding your fate without your consent.
© 2011 RS Janes. LTSaloon.org.