BartBlog

Seven years ago my wonderful granddaughter Mena was born right before Christmas and so every year, because there is a lot less going on in August than in December, she has an “un-birthday” party in the summer instead of an actual birthday party on her actual birthday.

This year, Mena wanted her party to have an animal theme. Does that mean that I have to get all dressed up in a cat suit or something? No way! “C’mon, grandma! It will be fun!”

So I thought about it a lot and finally came up with a really great animal costume, one that would still let me wear my usual uniform of jeans and a tee. I simply printed out a sign that read, “I am a HUMAN BEING, the most dangerous predator on the planet,” and then slapped said sign on my back. Problem solved.

The un-birthday party was a huge success.

But then, after reading an article on Global Research stating that four million Muslims have been killed by US and NATO troops since 9-11, I also got to thinking about exactly how completely accurate my costume actually was.

In 2001, an attack on the Twin Towers became an all-too-convenient excuse for Wall Street and War Street to instantly switch into predator mode and heat up their notorious and endless Wars for Oil. http://www.globalresearch.ca/four-million-muslims-killed-in-us-nato-wars-should-we-call-it-genocide/5470424 And these predator massacres are still going on in Palestine, Libya, Syria, Iraq, Egypt, Yemen and Afghanistan today, 14 years later. http://mondoweiss.net/2015/08/killed-saudi-bombing

Want more examples of human predator behavior? Not a problem!

In medieval Europe, human beings executed approximately 57 thousand women for “witchcraft”. King Leopold of Belgium apparently was responsible for two million deaths in the Congo. Then there were the various wars on Native Americans, Aztecs, Incas and First Nations — between 50 million and 100 million killed. My own great-great grandmother walked the Trail of Tears and watched her fellow human beings fall prey to cold, lonely and miserable deaths at the hands of human predators. https://www.intellectualtakeout.org/blog/8-frightening-characteristics-propaganda

And don’t forget those two bloody World Wars and the vicious brutality of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. https://consortiumnews.com/2014/08/09/the-very-un-christian-nagasaki-bomb/ And the African slave trade and its bloody results, “Straight out of Compton” — and Ferguson, Baltimore and San Quentin too. And then there are the current African massacres, millions more human beings dead in the Congo for blood diamonds and that stuff they put in computers. http://fightimperialism.org/2015/08/09/free-saif-al-islam-gaddafi-stop-the-execution-usnato-out-of-africa/ And the massacres in Indonesia and East Timur, approximately three million more human beings slaughtered for oil. http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/04/27/genocidal-indonesia-executing-drug-convicts/

Yikes!

PS: The T-Rex used to be the most dangerous predator on the planet. Now it is completely and totally extinct.

And then the lion became next on the predator totem-pole list. I wonder what happened to lions? Oh, right. They became an endangered species, mainly because there was nothing else left for them to prey on. Soon that will probably happen to human predators too. We’ll all be going up in (atomic and/or toxic) smoke. http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-age-of-imperial-wars/5470957

PPS: Not all human beings are psychotic predators. Some of us actually shun attacks on our own species. Really we do. There really are some mentally healthy humans among us — take Pope Francis, for instance. “Human beings, while capable of the worst, are also capable of rising above themselves, choosing again what is good, and making a new start, despite their mental and social conditioning.” http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/encyclicals/documents/papa-francesco_20150524_enciclica-laudato-si.html

And, heck, even I know better than to kill people for fun and profit.

Has America’s free press gone flatline or is it DOA?
By Bob Patterson as told to Belle Starr, Outlawyer

Making American Journalism great again?

Donald Trump’s psychological manipulation of Hillary to get her to attend his wedding is similar to a situation 40 years ago.

Due to the fact that the worldslaziestjounalist is the volunteer librarian/historian for the Marina Tenants Association, we are aware that in the early 80’s Steve Coll researched and wrote about the origins of the unique real estate situation in Marina del Rey.

In the late 70’s, the  Marina Tenants Association had similar suspicions about fiduciary relationships between developers and the LA County Board of Supervisors …the MTA had suspicions 40 yrs ago before Donald Trump spilled the beans on his manipulation tactics regarding Hillary and other politicos.

As we mentioned, 75 years ago Edward R. Murrow was reporting from London during The Battle of Britain.  Now all we see are reports featuring people overwhelmed with the challenges of life, crying.  We call that Soap Opera Journalism. Has CBS’ standards fallen that far that fast?

My assessment of the qualities  inherent in well-done journalism includes:
a) should feature efforts to foil political malfeasance, and
b) highlight and shed light on examples of miscarriage of justice such as CNN’s Death Row Stories and 50’s TV “The Big Story”

Coincidentally,  we noticed that a person named Steve Coll has been named dean of the columbia school of journalism   Surely, we thought, if anyone is qualified to see the parallels between  what has happened in LA and what is set to happen in SF it will be Steve Coll.

We have encountered difficulties in passing a news tip to a legitimate member  of the mainstream media about our concerns that the taxpayers of SF are being set up for another scam.

The fact that no ne seems interested in news tips exacerbated our concern that the American hallmark of democracy, a free press, is doing the cheshire cat trick.

Note: The worldslaziestjounalist wrote about Pasqualama and we scooped the BBC with our story so we must know a little bit about quality journalism (Google Hint : Pasqualama glacier gold)

If our speculation about American journalism being DOA is accurate then we conclude journalists have adopted the policy of don’t rock the boat, don’t make waves.

Hence, we are pinning our hopes for foiling the SF Board of Supervisors  super strategy to institute a policy of perpetual campaign donations under the cam “The Candlestick Cash Cow”.

Note: If the the worldslaziestjounalist  is going to indulge himself with delusions of grandeur we need some advice from our regular readers :  should we   try to convince Donald Trump that restoring the  American free press to its former glory is a way to augment his program to restore America to its former greatness?

… or should we try to prod Dean Coll into inspiring greater efforts from his students by taunting them with the possibility that they are not as investigatively curious as the worldslaziestjounalist ?

… or should we goad the public to demand better, more inciteful journalism from their favorite media outlets?

Summer Intern Note : Rockin’ Robin got the lowdown on the chickadee and this wise old owl asks why is Diane Feinstein’s mother being hidden in a conservatorship old-age home in San Francisco?

Is this is the same mother she claims to be unhinged and violent in “Season of the Witch?”

Why do “care not cash” programs enrich the elites like the  president of UC, Blum, Feinstein and Newsom-Getty ?

Google hint: richkidsclub chat forum. Where sharing with others is not caring but trading information on how to steal grandparents and parents funds through conservators raiding the funds for the care at the lowest levels for cash paid at the highest levels to one stop shops where the new raiders with their professional trustees, conservators, attorneys and board and care homes (and insiders) tend to make the slippery slope greasy.

(Let’s hope Donald Trump’s kids don’t read this column.)

…our children, who do not want to wait for their inheritances because after all the “end is near” and they need to party while the food chain collapses…

… and  wasn’t Hilarious Hillary so lovable when she tossed her quip about “wipe it with a cloth”?

If all that American readers want is information about hilarious videos about kitties that look like Hitler then have we got a hint for you: Youtube search hint: monkey with ak47  (just like the song says don’t ever play with guns. Johnny Cash knows them Folsom Prison blues).

The final quote for this column has to be “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus”

Now the DJ will play the “Johnny live at Folsom Prison” album, Phil Harris’  “Get outta here with that bump bah bump” and Buffalo Springfield “For What it’s Worth”….and the old standard blues song where she done him wrong…Frankie and Johnny

So have a “don’t rock the boat” type week.

(Funny Fukushima and radiation therapy thoughts: Did anyone notice? Hiroshima by John Hersey found on the street with the poem of a child:

“Atomic Courtesy” by Ethel Jacobson: To smash the simple atom, All mankind was intent. Now any day, The atom may, Return the compliment”).

After last weeks column was posted a  doctor, who does some pro bono work for the VA,  offered the opinion we were a little too hard on the VA.

point taken

Disclaimer: Writing and posting from a hospital bed is a major challenge. We will try to keep the string alive, but that may not happen every week. Stay tuned.

In the process of writing this article, I’ve started to feel a bit like a World War II master-spy or Mata Hari or something. James Bond?

Books have been disappearing from the Berkeley Public Library at an alarming rate lately. “How many are gone? And where did they go?” Time to put on my trench coat and find out.

Apparently our new head librarian has been “weeding the collection” at our main branch — and doing it all on his own. This weeding process is usually gently conducted by the library’s entire staff, but only after serious consideration for each book. However, the new head librarian has now taken this task on all by himself and is throwing out books left and right.

But how many books have actually disappeared in the past year? “Not all that many,” claims the new head librarian. “Just a few. 2,220 at most”. But a closer investigation has revealed that over 39,000 books have gone missing. Yikes! http://www.dailycal.org/2015/08/12/berkeley-community-members-rally-over-number-of-books-weeded-from-berkeley-public-library/

“So what happened to all these books?” you might ask. Well, apparently some other local undercover agent recently held a stakeout at the rear door of our main library, and what that agent observed was that huge piles of boxes of books were being left out on the sidewalk back there — and then a large unmarked white van comes along and hauls them all away.

“But where does the van take them?” you might ask next. Who the freak knows. I’m assuming that there will be a book-burning somewhere.

“But what kind of books are disappearing?” Apparently anything to do with women’s studies, civil rights, the labor movement, LGBT, etc. Sounds like an effort to de-radicalize Berkeley and dumb us all down. http://petitions.moveon.org/sign/librarygate-stop-senseless?source=s.icn.em.cp&r_by=2101677

Then I talked with another undercover agent who said, “Apparently the Koch brothers have financed a library institute that trains librarians how to weed out all left-wing, progressive and anti-empire books in libraries throughout America. Perhaps this librarian is a Koch-brothers infiltrator too.” Good grief!

PS: Here in Berkeley, we not only have to worry about librarians “weeding the collection” and burning our books (who would ever think that I would have to write such a sentence!)

Developers here are also marching in, “weeding the collection,” tearing down homes and businesses that used to belong to non-Yuppies (probably carting them away in mysterious unmarked white vans too) and building over a thousand condos on our main streets to replace them.

Our mayor is ecstatic!

But the City of Berkeley now has to pay for the extra fire, police, sewer and street services for these new condos and the approximately 10,000 new residents involved. However, there are families in Ireland who are not so ecstatic about all these new condos.

PPS: And if you think it’s an outrage that our local librarian lies to us, then be prepared to be totally outraged that our corporate-owned federal government lies to us constantly — through their teeth!

For instance, did you know that NATO is happily preparing for nuclear war with Russia? And that, contrary to what we are being constantly told, none of this is Russia’s fault because NATO (read Wall Street and War Street) started it all? And that we Americans might even end up getting fried like KFC chicken — and also have to pay for this pleasure ourselves? Shades of the Sudetenland lies! http://www.theweek.co.uk/russia/64754/russia-and-the-west-actively-preparing-for-war

For instance, what exactly do you actually think is going on in Syria right now? Here’s a report from my friend in Aleppo who tells an entirely different story about what is happening there than the one our corporate-owned MSM would have us believe. https://thewallwillfall.wordpress.com/2015/08/13/syria-from-the-sublime-to-the-shameful/

Or consider this report by Andre Vltchek on refugees from the Middle East now hunkering down in Europe? Why are they there? Not for the hate-filled reasons we are being told. Read this to find out. http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/08/14/the-refugees-are-coming/

In the Middle East, the foxes are definitely guarding the hen house. According to America’s official Congressional position, the United Arab Emirates is now in charge of “addressing humanitarian relief” in Syria and Iraq — even as the UAE pays for and supports ISIS. http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/08/18/huffington-post-arabic-a-new-lair-for-the-muslim-brotherhood/

Turkey is now in charge of “stopping the flow of foreign terrorist fighters”. Hell, Turkey welcomes them with open arms and then sends them on over to Syria (to force the New Ottoman Empire down Syrian throats) http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/08/20/ankara-the-new-capital-of-jihad/, and to Iraq (to kill more Kurds)! http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3202317/Kurdish-activists-condemn-Turkish-police-naked-bloodied-corpse-female-militant-killed-country-s-special-forces-leaked-online.html

The United States is currently in charge of “supporting military operations, capacity building, and training” — apparently of ISIS.

Britain has been put in charge of “exposing ISIS’s true nature” — even as it gives ISIS hot tips on how to run an appealing FaceBook page.

And the House of Saud is “cutting off ISIS access to financing and funding”. That is huge whopper! The House of Saud itself has been financing ISIS for years.

And of course let us also consider the biggest lie of all — the 9-11 “conspiracy theory” theory, wherein no pilot or engineer alive today can even think about (let alone mention) all the many flaws in the official story of that tragedy without being laughed at or shamed by the MSM.

Talk about your propaganda? Javohl for sure!

?The Game of War? WTF?
By Bob Patterson as told to Belle Starr, Outlawyer

War isn’t a f*****g game! It’s a bloody shame!

When a physical therapist says to you “we better take a break you’re turning purple”, that  indicates one of 2 things: you should take a break or it’s time to take a selfie.

(Naturopath Note: Turmeric and also Taurine are neuroregenerative and BioPQQ is energy (mitochondrial) regenerative.  Tell a Doctor would you, the nurses are aware and interested.)

Rehabilitation after a stroke makes it hard to find a scapegoat (Lawyers are terrible stenographers!) Realizing the amount of exertion it takes to make gains in the rehabilitation  process has brought home one point in particular with a vengeance : the kids who were sent off to war with stirring music playing and patriotic phrases echoing in their ears, were the victims of a bait and switch because lately our physical therapists have been telling us the vets are not getting the amount of support and therapy that was implied in the stirring political speeches that were given to increase their enthusiasm for their military adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The image of them standing at attention in dress blues contrasts sharply with some images of learning how to ambulate with artificial legs

Conservatorships for profit – mills for millennials, real estate brokers and all the charlatans to make money warehousing people and they do it “ex parte”- without you (a vet in the hospital or in jail) to lose all rights and ability to control their own finances despite being able to, maybe with difficulty, make their wishes known.  The ex parte situation would find a certain Harvard professor of Physics with the first name “Steve” incompetent as he can’t feed himself or talk on his own without electromechanical assistance.

Bottom line, don’t be surprised with an executive order, for your own good, to impose conservatorships on us all when we go to sleep (and whether you wake up is up to your conservator). … a kinder, gentler, administrative Khymer Rouge?

Hint to “THE” assignment desk @ The NYTimes : conservatorships for profits, cradle to grave care (according to what you need least) and they keep your cash. Orphans if not previously aborted, prisoners (those who don’t get to learn to steal and lie in schools), disabled, elderly….sleepers and those in pharmacomaland (OH OH OH)

How many are vets? How many consigned after they are no longer commercially viable to the nightmare of a paupers’ asylum where it doesn’t matter if you have dementia or not, you will wish you did, so as not to go mad.

See a Patient Advocate at your local VA to get on Veterans Choice Program (Google hint choiceact) : they have to refer you out for services that cannot be supplied within 30 days at the VA hospitals and affiliates. VA Choice is a game changer for our suffering vets, we, both my intern and I, surely hope.

(Patriotic Aside: This “Summer Intern” served in The Peace Corps in Ethiopia in the eradication of smallpox. No good deed goes unpunished – benefits?)

Ads for video games are part of the deception. having legs blown off by an IED is a real life, not a digital life, experience.

(History in a Nutshell: Massacres are documented back to 5,500 BC! Google hint: Schoeneck-Kilianstaedten)

Selling the video games to kids and leading them to expect a similar level of enjoyment  from deployment to a combat zone as the ultimate level of the video game is the ultimate hypocrisy.

Ads for goods that don’t deliver is an american tradition, isn’t it.? Breaking contracts made with citizens is a generational pastime of congressional effietes.

Advertising can be manipulative. Think of the deceptions caused by fitness training sites. For example, anyone who has dabbled with weight lifting to help with weight management knows that ads seen at the beginning of May promising to help clients to get in shape for summer at the beach are not realistic.  If they really wanted to help their customers wouldn’t it be more realistic to run ads between Christmas and New Year’s Day urging people to commit to a program of working out at least three times per week which would probably begin to show some results about the beginning of May?

? what’s wrong with San Francisco? It seems a large share of TV ads shown in the bay area market feature scenes of Venice Beach and/or UCLA campus.

12 hrs after this column published last week, Trump mentions he’s for vets (is Trump reading this pundit?). Have you noticed in the past week D.T. and several other Republican hopefuls have urged the US to consider sending troops into Syria to seize control of the oil fields?
(Hi Don!)

If you agree the vets need help please share the link of this column WITH ALL YOUR FRIENDS.  and if you agree with the Republicans that the austerity budgets mandate as much cost cutting as possible then don’t do anything but vote for Jeb.

Our physical therapists tell us, off the record, that the veterans facilities are in crisis mode and need considerably more staff. Are the kids who are being shipped off to war told about this?

At this point it would be easy to let this column disintegrate into a series of book recommendations such as Vance Packard’s, “Hidden Persuaders”,  Jerry delaFirma’s,  “From those wonderful people who brought you Pearl Harbor” (or are they selling her lips?)

And a few others which slip away unlisted at this point.

Or we could plug the website vintage country event dot com because we want to help a friend promote their website which is all about weddings and wedding planning.

Heads up for fans of the Oscar awards – we predict that Ricky and the Flash will earn 8 oscar nominations.

Current plans include an attempt to secure a press pass to cover the next award’s ceremony…our pitch will be linked to the fact that it is an example of nostalgic  time travel to the past for us as we were in attendance and reporting at the Oscars 40 yrs ago when
Cuckoos Nest swept the awards.

Dewey decimals  in the 300’s being deleted  (unions, women’s rights… tip of the cap to Jane’s idea).  Google Hint: Jane Stillwater’s blog.

Cue up :   the  DJ will play the best of Freddy Aguilar and best of Freddy Fender

Disclaimer: I have had a stroke and my thinking process isn’t as refined as when I got an A in logic at a Jesuit university in Scranton. Sorry about that,  we will try to keep the flow of esoteric arcane and interesting (?) facts flowing as well as they did in the past.  However indications are against us.  Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!

(Summer Intern: If you smile and one side droops or if holding both hands straight out in front of you one drifts down or slurring of words is apparent, left side numbness, trouble seeing, severe headache without a known cause confusion or trouble walking …

Call 911 for yourself or if you are a friend of that person or just a compassionate soul).

Closing Quote for this column HAS TO BE the classic line from Apocalypse Now :
I Love the Smell of Napalm in the Morning…

Where Have All the Liberal Pundits Gone?  …
By Bob Patterson as told to Belle Starr, Outlawyer

Money is the mother’s milk of politics, no one disputes that.  Almost all of the money donated to Republican political funds will be spent  for ads run in conservatively owned  media – hence there is an  unlimited amount of money to pay for eloquent quality conservative punditry.

To make liberal punditry pay, writers are encouraged to go to Shattuck Ave in Berkeley and hold up a cardboard sign saying “Will write liberal political punditry for $$$$$.”  (Or, “Will Run for Mayor, Need Campaign Funds”).

… what makes the worldslaziestjournalist think he can have unique perceptive comments that the other members of the punditry community missed completely, we ask the question: Did any national pundit review Jeb’s tax return and extract a news nugget from there about his involvement in the Broward S&L scandal?

… according to a recent newstip, Google is on a real estate buying binge in the Venice Beach area. Apparently, the silicon beach phenomenon will be bolstered by these acquisitions.

After being sent to the penalty box (aka the hospital), it seems natural that my visitors want to discuss political events and the latest news tips from Fort Zint. (Where they were delighted to hear that The Donald wants in on the Post Office action-particularly Washington, D.C.)

When Jane Stillwater came to visit, since our column writing efforts have bogged down (my lawyer is lousy at keeping up with dictation), we gave Jane the topic tip of Orphanages for Profit.

According to a tip we got, orphanages for profit are rapidly becoming a hot topic in the liberal community.  It is alleged that the children of homeless mothers are being placed in facilities that are approximately orphanages for profit. Jane recently worked as an extra in a movie about an orphan struggling to regain her family history and heritage. So, Jane has a good hook for a column on that topic.

(Tip to columnist intern: Pitch a story to the National Review because they are the only one taking pitches publicly).

At abut the same time Belle Starr, a column-assistant,  is doing ok as my gopher and some day may make it if I keep salting the bird’s tail. The  Mayoral campaign is heating up and it looks like another great chapter in San Francisco historically different characters is being written by the moving fickle finger of fate.

(Sidebar: Belle Starr (OccupySF Legal Counsel by Consensus since 2011, is supporting the “face of Occupy” Scott Olsen, Iraq vet put in the hospital by Oakland PD, and who is running for KPFA public radio board to rescue us from the actions of the “..current board majority  to break up or privatize the network”.)

Belle is an OH – Original Hippie and mentioned that at a recent reunion of charter members of the flower children, one blurted out that a film based on Bill “Legendary Rock Entrepreneur” Graham should be made. We second the motion.

Belle and Jane have a treasure trove of memories from the sixties and since that is an extremely popular topic we will list suggestions for our readers who want to  time-travel , via literature, back to the psychedelic sixties. Katy bar the door.

We would list these books:  The Maltese Falcon by Dashell Hammett; On the Road (of course) by Jack Kerouac and  Been Down so Long it Looks like up to Me by Richard Farina.  We suggest a stop at The City Lights Bookstore and The Bookstore section of the nearby Beat Museum. Also see the movies “The Graduate” and “Bullett”. (Don’t forget The Love Book by Lenore Kandel and Google “Smoking Typewriters”…OH)

…or try the slanted and often inaccurate “Season of the Witch”-Speed Kills and heroin came into the Haight from December 1966 to January 1967, not later-I was there OH

Again, for those who think the amateur online pundit can’t come up with perceptive insights we will ask this question did any republican on the FOX debate program mention that pot should be made available to vets with PTSD?  Did any of them mention the veterans at all?

If liberal pundits can’t turn writing into a money generating endeavor, liberals better start preparing themselves for the third member of the Bush Dynasty.

Audiences get what they are willing to pay for. You don’t have to be Phineas T. Barnum to know that. No one is going to pay for hideous idiosyncratic liberal punditry . So, they better get used to the idea that FOX News and Rush Limbaugh are going to choose the next president for them.

… if the Chairman of the Board, Frank Sinatra, can offend chicks and get away with his snide references to frails, skirts and broads, why can’t Trump get away with it, too? … the real winner of the Fox Debate was Megyn Kelly. (Her agent must love Trump because  hasn’t  Trump guaranteed an additional annual million dollars to her salary in the future?)

… 6 people died in the Berkeley Balcony tagedy, now we have to see if anyone is going to jail.

Cue up the wrap-up music: (and roll a joint for my outlawyer):
Strange Days by the doors.  Working in a coal mine (whoop!, rehabilitation is hard work). And Teen age enema nurses in bondage, as we fade out.

DISCLOSURE: The world’s laziest journalist reminds regular readers the column is being written under stressful conditions. We will try our best to maintain a high quality of editing and reporting. We thought keeping the 15 year string of weekly postings trumped  being compulsive about spelling and punctuation.
(We sometimes make up words and/or sentence structure for shock and chaos.)

Now its time for the disc jockey to play “They’re coming to take me away, ha ha…”.

Yes, I know that Cecil the Lion is old news right now, just one more forlorn leftover from last week’s media cycle and therefore not really chic any more — but bear with me. There is still a very important question of morality here, one that I can’t seem to keep from haunting the back lobes of my poor over-worked brain.

I keep asking myself, “How come everyone in America got so completely upset when some jerk of a dentist paid cold hard cash to behead a lion in Africa, but when some jerks in the CIA pay ISIS terrorists cold hard cash to behead thousands of Syrians and Iraqis, no one even gets mildly upset with said CIA jerks for laying out cold hard cash to do the exact same thing?” Who the freak knows. Certainly not me. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article42590.htm

Apparently lions’ lives matter — but Syrians’ lives do not.

If I were a Syrian or an Iraqi right now, I would demand that someone immediately put me in a zoo! Hey, at least there I’d be safe and not on the endangered-species list any more.

And of course we also know how little Black lives matter here in America — as compared to the life of one lion. No one here seems to be getting as upset about the cruel death of Michael Brown or Sandra Bland as they did over Cecil the Lion’s cruel demise. Sometimes it just doesn’t pay to be human. https://secure.piryx.com/donate/mS25KFCe/MORE/mikebrown

And does even your own life matter these days either? Does mine? Hard to tell.

And exactly how old was Cecil the Lion anyway? If he was getting fairly long in the tooth, would that have mattered either? If the dentist hadn’t beheaded him, would Cecil have been kicked off of MediCare and Social Security and stuck in a run-down nursing home for lions because that would be all he could afford? Would the same thing have happened to him that is currently happening to a whole bunch of our elders here in America? http://marygsykes.com/2015/07/22/randy-robinson-continues-to-fight-for-his-mother-in-detroit-michigan-probate/

And what if Cecil had been an African human being instead of an African lion? Would we have minded so much — or even noticed — that millions of African human beings have already been slaughtered in the name of corporate profits by some jerks in the White House, the Congress, the CIA, the Pentagon and Wall Street?

And I bet you anything that Cecil the Lion would love to have his head screwed back on again. And that Syrians and Iraqis (and Africans) would love to get their heads screwed back on again too.

I’d even be willing to bet that most of the Syrians and Iraqis who have lost their heads recently had never even heard about ISIS before their heads got chopped off — or about the CIA jerks behind ISIS either. And I’ll even bet you the farm that the jerks who are currently running our disastrous foreign policy would just love to have their Syrian and Iraqi trophies stuffed and mounted on the walls of Congress, the White House, the Pentagon and Langley too.

PS: Here’s an interesting bit of information about the CIA-trained “moderate rebels” (aka ISIS) that War Street has sent off to terrorize the legitimate government of Syria.

$500 million of American taxpayers’ money has been spent on training just 60 terrorists — in either Jordan or Turkey, I forget which. And 54 of them actually ended up in Syria. And 18 of them actually fought against Syrians.

That’s $925,925 of our tax dollars spent on each one of the 54 recruits sent to Syria. And that’s $2,777,777 per actual active terrorist that the CIA and friends have spent. Geez Louise. For that amount of money, that jerky dentist could have bought a whole zoo.

PPS: “Hearts and Minds”. That was the reason that Wall Street and War Street lost the War on Vietnam — and why they will also lose the War on Syria too. And why they will eventually lose their War on the Entire Planet as well. http://www.globalresearch.ca/why-syria-is-winning-advancing-towards-a-strategic-victory-that-will-transform-the-middle-east/5468277

And “Hearts and Minds” is also why that jerky dentist eventually lost his War on Cecil.

I hate Frank Sinatra. Always have, even when I was a kid. He’s such a phony. He sings all his songs like he’s bragging, “Wow, look at me, aren’t I so wonderful!” Sure, the Chairman of the Board can carry a tune but what’s the big deal? So can a million other blue-eyed guys named Frankie. I just don’t get it. Does he not also put his pants on one leg at a time like the rest of us? Did he not also have wet dreams when he was a teen?

And when Sinatra croons “Fly me to the moon,” is he not also using code words for s.e.x.? Of course he is. Where else did Nancy Sinatra come from if not from doing the nasty?

But guess what? Old Blue Eyes is not alone here. Almost every other adult on this planet, unless they are genetically modified by castration, female mutilation or something else equally gross, has wet dreams. Or masturbates. Or has had, is having or will have s.e.x. How the freak do you think that we got to the point where there are now seven billion human beings on the planet if not for sex? Fairy god-mothers? I think not.

Even priests, monks, nuns, imams, rabbis and probably even zombies have some form of wet dream. And why is that? Because of orgasms, of course. Have you personally ever had an orgasm? Nice, aren’t they — if for no other reason than they force you to stop thinking for just few seconds. During an orgasm, the whole world slips away and you become, for that instant, the king or queen of the world even if you don’t live in Buckingham Palace — and you are rich beyond compare even if you aren’t an oil sheik or corporate pirate living on Park Avenue.

Even the poorest of the poor can afford a wet dream — “Los pobres de los pobres,” as they say in “Black Orpheus”. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NkxGkL7o9xk

This fact must really gall the world’s elite billionaires — that some homeless bum living in a cardboard box under some inner city freeway can have as good as or possibly even better orgasm than them, even without the champagne, call girls, porno flicks and cocaine.

“But Jane, you are digressing,” you might say at this point. And you would be right. I actually do have a point to make here. Actually, I have two of them. First, of course, is that the human race needs to “make love not war”. Wet dreams are so much better (and so much more fun too) than the sleazy, greedy pornographic slaughterhouse nightmares being offered to us these days by Wall Street and War Street. And my second point is to always avoid phonies, hypocrites, corporate-sponsored candidates for president and Frank Sinatra.

PS: I just suffered through yet another operation on my poor broken wrist. It’s been over two years now since it was broken and I’m still in great pain. And, unlike Hunter Pence, I am still not quite up to playing center field yet.

But don’t even think for a second that I’m not totally and eternally grateful for the excellent medical care that I have received — the best in the entire world! And thank goodness for MediCare. Without it, I would have been forced to live with a useless left arm for the rest of my life.

And also thank goodness that I’m not living in Libya, Iraq, Palestine, Ukraine, Afghanistan, Yemen, Paraguay, Honduras, parts of Syria or in any of the other countries that have been “liberated” by American neo-colonialists and their neo-colonialist allies. For instance, if I was living in Libya right now, I probably wouldn’t even have a left arm at all. http://www.globalresearch.ca/syria-americas-inherent-resolve-to-destroy-another-sovereign-nation/5464871

Hell, if I was currently living in those parts of Syria and Iraq that have recently been “liberated” by American-trained “moderate rebels” (aka ISIS), I wouldn’t even have a head!

PPS: And speaking of sex, a whole lot of poorly-informed people are proclaiming that the decline of the American Family in recent years has been due to abortions, birth control and same-sex marriages. That is totally not true. According to journalist Robert Putnam, the major cause of broken families and single-parent households in America today is, wait for it, the War on Drugs. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/inge-fryklund/want-to-solve-inequality-and-child-poverty-end-the-war-on-drugs_b_6978462.html

According to “Orange is the New Black,” one out of every 100 American adults has been incarcerated. http://piperkerman.com/orange/bio

So if your dad (or mom) is currently in jail for possession of a baggie of marijuana, then of course your other parent is gonna have to work double shifts down at the car-wash or something in order to raise you by herself. And this is a totally bad thing for the American Family — and also for America in general because incarceration causes more crime than it prevents because it obliterates ex-cons’ earning potential. http://qz.com/458675/in-america-mass-incarceration-has-caused-more-crime-than-its-prevented/

So let’s get all the dads (or moms) out of jail and educate them and provide them with decent jobs (ones that don’t involve slave-labor wages or becoming cannon fodder for neo-colonialist wars) instead. https://www.facebook.com/iseeitall/videos/10153052369309755/?pnref=story

Let’s stop spending so much wasted money on war and prisons and start spending it on, er, sex education? No, spending it on peace and LOVE!

The Gonzo Assignment of a Lifetime
By Bob Patterson as told to Belle Starr, Outlawyer

On the morning of July 14, Bastille Day, The World’s Laziest Journalist, got an assignment card from the great assignment desk in the sky: have a stoke then write a gonzo punditry column about the recovery process and the various thoughts that occur to you in the hospital bed.

75 years ago the high-water mark for broadcast journalism was set by Edward R. Murrow as he was reporting live at The Battle of Britain. Now, airlines are worrying that drones are being used to endanger commercial airlines.

My friend, Belle Starr, Outlawyer and Write-In Candidate for San Francisco Mayor, will get an assist credit on this column.

We’ve collected various thoughts and topics over the past few days.

There are themes running in popular culture that seem reminiscent of my stay in a hospital in 1970 repeating here in 2015 where I am in a hospital recovering from a stroke.

A stroke is an educational process. Culture is a trend.  A journalist’s job is to spot trends. The new word from “The Graduate”,  replacing plastics, is EKSO. (Full Disclosure: Belle wants to buy more of their stock and I want to be in on the action too … )

The exoskeleton from the military is being deployed in this hospital to rehabilitate the world’s laziest journalist and it fits fine and does all the work…with some electrical stimulation.

PHOTO   Rachael Adams
(Google Hint : Ekso Bionics (helps survivors of stroke, spinal cord injury … to walk again. )

When I first  started writing and posting online, I had decided to follow a Walter Winchell  style. He was the  master and originator of three-dot-journalism …

Stringing information together.  You know why writers are stringers?  They used to be paid by the column inch and the editor measured with a string to determine the pay when they paid. The length of the string was converted into the amount of the paycheck.  The string was carefully kept for tax and accounting purposes…NOT!

Then came Herb Caen who  continued the … with a necklace of terms from beatnik to hippie and all the intervening dots and stories from Baghdad by the Bay.

(Snide Aside: How things have changed – Baghdad, psychedelia and rock’n’roll to shock and awe and Babylon.)

Lions and circuses -  The  social media shaming of a dentist for killing  Disneyfied Cecil, the  most beloved,  with hyperbole that personifies the lion, but not nearly as cool as Frazier, the most sensuous lion alive, while depersonalizing a human being misses the point.

Frazier was randy and loved for it.  He was survived by many, many cubs when he died of exhaustion (old age) somewhere in Africa…maybe Kenya.

“Unfortunately,” says the Zimbabwe government, “it was too late to apprehend the foreign poacher as he has absconded…” to Ricks’ in Casablanca, no doubt, where this backhanded payoff is as apparent as Looie’s winnings.

There’s a continent of garbage in the Pacific. Reunion Islands refuse and recycling opportunities. If it took until 1961-62 for remnants of the Battle of the Coral Sea to wash ashore and to be found by beachcombers in Baja, will it be twenty years for the continent of pacific plastic to wash ashore and choke the Reunion Islands?

Camp Justice , Guantanamo, Cuba   Tent city lawyers are dying from cancer in droves.

(Bob is watching too much TV) In the hospital there is a lot of TV at night  and if I am not worn out in my iron man suit. There are 17 republicans running picked by FOX and I ought to sue them.Take a note, counsellor,  Dear FOX, I am the perfect side-kick for Bill O’Reilly and here’s why: I am related to Che’. That’s right, THE Che’. So, I am a Latino Irish Catholic pundit who is more effective at anti-democratic rants. (The Medical Director walks in)  Doctors and caddies go together.

And speaking of TV, have you seen “Velocity”? Shut up and listen to me, Sandy, (if only you had listened…) you have to get a kid who does video and go “Barn Finding” like the 47 Caddy you found for Frank Nicodemus Castle Cadillac Restoration.  When you get a vintage “barn find” we can have a segment “Barn Finding Safari” on Velocity.

I have got to sue FOX, counsellor!  They are discriminating against me as a latino—irish-catholic-democratic pundit and Barbara Lee isn’t liberal enough. It’s all marketing hype.

Governments- North v South, SF BD v LA BD.   Another 50 years in the discussing Candlestick vs Marina del Rey as best  bucket without bottom for campaign contributions.

(News Tip: How the hell can someone get a news tip to Rachael Maddow? For that matter, how do you submit a news tip to The New York Times, because they specifically state the don’t want to be annoyed by news TIPS.)

“Catholics make the best fascists”.
(What me worry? : Death Panels as inevitable as health care and taxes.)  What is a Whore’s bath and is it politically incorrect?   Nurse didn’t know but didn’t think sex-worker’s bath meant the same thing.

(Health Tip: Belle says Turmeric is neuroregenerative. Nurse says I only have to watch sugar and carbs.)

(Sidebar with Lawyer: You can write about the app on indiegogo called “My Data 4 Sale”.)

“The app is to stop the filtching of your data, without compensation, by government, corporations and any hacker who passes by.”

“It’s your gig and you sell your habits for a time period to data miners who pay a certain per unit time fee to you. No more free lunch on your preferences – Your data, your habits, your gig in this gig economy.”

(Google Hint: indiegogo.com and look for mydata4sale.   Over to you, BOB!

We need an official whistleblower’s protective association or union. Remember the whistleblower Victor Risell?  In the 50’s?  Labor?  Acid thrown in his eyes? Is that why Belle wears sunglasses all the time?

This has been the toughest assignment of our journalistic life BUT it does give you a fresh perspective of “every day you wake up is a blessing”.  Amen, brother!  With a lot of work and effort we should be back in the column-a-week groove in about another month.

(Coming Attractions:  Mid-August here in Berzerkeley is the 50th year since the founding of the Berkeley Barb.)

After California had a transgender “Woman of the Year” we  now have a transgender on the cover of Vanity Fair.

It is now clear that men are smarter than women and men make better women than women do.

If Trump has gotten addicted to shocking the public how long before he drops the “N” word in an off-the-cuff sound bite?

Just in: My Outlawyer is implicated in the last two days Front Page News. Mayor Ed Lee is alleged to have taken bribes. Way to go, Mayor Starr! (Google Hint: SF Chron Bob Egelko and Emily Greene).

That’s Journalism!

Now the disk jockey will play a song that became a favorite from my last stay in a hospital in 1970, Carson, Tahoe: I Never Promised you a Rose Garden by Lynn Anderson; Waylon Jennings, I’ve Always Been Crazy and (from the movie Casablanca) As Time Goes By, by Dooley Wilson.

Have a “it will never happen to me” type week. Live life to the fullest and don’t postpone having fun. Live life as if you are a winner on a game show!

DISCLOSURE: The world’s laziest journalist reminds regular readers the column is being written under stressful conditions. We will try our best to maintain a high quality of editing and reporting. We thought keeping the 15 year string of weekly postings trumped  being compulsive about spelling and punctuation.