September 27, 2011
September 25, 2011
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September 9, 2011
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August 12, 2011
Who hasn’t read “The Decline and Fall . . .”?
While the Democrats constantly hum the refrain in the Eagle’s song about a fellow who spends his whole life locked up in chains only to discover that he has had the key in his hands all the while, the Tea Baggers are desperately hoping that those folks don’t read Edward Gibbon’s magnum opus, “The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,” because if the perpetually stymied Democrats do peruse that example of literature, they might suddenly have a solution to the riddle of how to finance a country’s essential services while fighting capricious and strategically unnecessary foreign wars.
When the Democrats eventually suggest not fighting optional wars, the Tea Baggers will quickly defuse (bellicose pun?) that argument by responding: “World Peace will be a ‘Jobs Killer!’”
Think of all the jobs that Peace would eliminate. Then think of the “Age of Aquarius” and how many jobs that spawned. Aren’t “Head shops” illegal in many states? Once folks have listened to the “Hair” album a hundred times, then what?
Recently when we learned that Willie Nelson was starting a new political group called “The Teapot Party,” we sent the link to the web site to a fellow who knows George Clayton Johnson (of Twilight Zone fame) and asked that the information be forwarded to Mr. “Kick the can.” Did that get us any new regular readers? No! Would Hunter S. Thompson endorse Willie’s political endeavor?
When we imitate Merle Haggard and make fun of the “hippies out in San Francisco,” the column gets twice as many hits; so (wink, wink, nudge, nudge) expect some more columns with more sarcastic references to “drug addled morons.”
Speaking of the Hippies out in San Francisco (Hey, stoners, have you heard: It’s just like the Jim Morrison song says; the Vietnam war is over!), they are just the kind of people to think that the recent “Kids for Cash” trial in North Eastern Pennsylvania is proof that the privatization of prisons was a bad idea.
Does the fact that a judge was convicted of doling out excessive jail sentences for minor drug offenses (in return for a “finder’s fee”?) provide conclusive proof that privatizing jails was a bad idea?
Speaking of getting children headed in the right direction, on Thursday, August 11, 2011, on his radio program, Mike Malloy had a story about how the corporate farms were providing berry picking jobs for kids. It was Malloy’s assertion that a seven year old kid had an entitlement to ten more years of public education rather than an opportunity to live out a “rags to riches” success story that is a basic ingredient of life in this “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” paradise for motivated citizens.
Apparently Malloy hasn’t seen “Fast Times at Ridgemont High.” He seems to be stuck in the nostalgic sixties with the “kids still respect the college dean” philosophy that superseded the “flower power” image of sticking a daisy down the barrel of an M-1 rifle.
Which would be a better choice for seven year old kids: the lyrics of the Roy Orbison song “Workin’ for the Man,” that teach berry pickers that if they work hard, then someday they might own the farm, or the lyrics to “Smokin’ in the Boys Room”?
The kids in school are blasted out of their minds and mouthing the song segment about seeing a picture of themselves on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine. (“Buy five copies for my mother.”) Wouldn’t it be better for them to be outdoors in the fresh air doing some hard work?
Has moving their headquarters out of San Francisco helped Rolling Stone magazine? The latest issue invites readers to jump to the conclusion that if (subjunctive mood) Rupert Murdoch used extortion to influence politics in Great Britain he might be doing the same thing in the United States of America. When Rolling Stone moved, did they lease some available office space in the Amalgamated Conspiracy Theory Factory?
In his essay, “Faking It,” Michael Sorkin wrote: “If any accident produces coherence, all coherence is artificial.” Thus if the Republicans can convince voters that their crazy quilt Party isn’t the medium but is the actual message, then the Democratic attempt to provide a coherent response will be perceived as artificial and doomed to fail.
When Sorkin referred to wrestling on TV, he stated: “It tightens the link between the representation of reality and the comparable validity of its infinite distortions.” Couldn’t the same be said of the Republican Party?
Isn’t the 2012 Presidential Election going to be a variation of TV wrestling? Won’t the Republicans (who always get to frame the issues) present the idea that the Republicans are the clean cut All American hero types doing their best to get the referee (The United States Supreme Court) to notice that the other fellow is cheating? The other fellow is always depicted as a slimy villain flip flopping out of the hero’s best move and then using an illegal punch to stun the hero?
Jack Armstong (AKA the all American boy) will be pitted against a villain (oil sheik, Apache warrior, a guy in a German WWI helmet, an illegal alien, or [worst of all?] a Frenchman [can you say “existentialist,” boys and girls?]) who will immediately incur the disdain (This train? This stain? Whatever!) of the patriotic red blooded Americans in the audience.
Would it help Jack Armstrong to validate his attempt to portray himself as “the next President,” if two members of his immediate family had previously worn the POTUS (President of the United States) crown?
At that point the staff at the Amalgamated Conspiracy Theory Factory will roll out their effort to conflate confusion with conviction and assert that President Obama is a Republican mole and encourage prejudice via a vote for any other available candidate?
Isn’t that hypothetical future example of stealth racism just as absurd as the idiotic suggestion that Gorbachev was a CIA mole? Wasn’t Mata Hari the most famous example of a double agent (also known as “a mole”)?
What are they smoking during their breaks (at least 20 feet away from the doors) near the entrances to the Amalgamated Conspiracy Theory Factory?
Jack Kerouac may have been speaking a bit prematurely for the Democrats when he said: “We are a beaten generation.”
Now the disk jockey will play Scott McKenzie’s “San Francisco [Be sure to wear a flower in your hair],” Merle Haggard’s “Okie From Muskogee,” and The Jefferson Airlane’s “White Rabbit.” We have to go see if we can get a ticket to see “the Fanatics.” Have a “Plastic fantastic” week.
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August 7, 2011
July 31, 2011
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June 30, 2011
June 17, 2011
May 30, 2011
Down By the Old Rumor Mill Stream, Part Whatever
Devon Keester’s Hollywood Lowdown
“The dark, sweaty juncture where politics and show biz meet!”
[Note: Since Keester’s sources are shady and unreliable and usually found near a vinyl-covered barstool, his ramblings should be taken with a several grains of salt from the rim of his next margarita.]
– Biden Over and Out: Obama will not be running with Biden as his Veep in 2012. Word is, Joe Biden is feeling every one of his 68 years and not anxious to enter another national campaign after finally facing the realization he’ll never be president. That’s okey-doke with Obama, as it gives him the opening to offer the VP slot to Hillary Clinton, further underwriting his re-election. Now that the sharp edges of the 2008 campaign have softened, and BHO and Sec-of-State Hill have a good working relationship, he would welcome her as a running mate, and the youthful 63-year-old Clinton would have a springboard for a presidential run in 2016. The only question that remains is if Hillary will sign on. She may not have the stomach for another national campaign herself, preferring, maybe, the governorship of a state to be named later instead. If not Clinton, Obama would like to make history, and notch his appeal to women voters, by naming someone of the female gender. Next on the list if Clinton doesn’t bite is supposedly Jennifer Granholm, the former governor of Michigan, although US Rep. Loretta Sanchez of California, Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri and Sen. Patty Murray of Washington state are said to be strong possibilities as well.
– The Story Behind the Story: Yup, Newt Gingrich had a suspicious interest-free revolving charge account at Tiffany’s for two years that racked up $500 grand in billings, but that’s not all. Ignoring for the moment that regular customers pay 21 percent interest on their charges, Newtie’s current wife Callista, when she was a lobbyist, had ties to the silver mining industry from which Tiffany’s fabricates its overpriced doodads, and Gingrich himself, while in the House, interceded to get the jewelry company a very sweet deal on use of public lands for mining. The Newtster may soon have more to worry about than his doomed SNL-skit presidential campaign — the feds are taking notice of his involvement with the Tiff, and whether he actually paid down that half-mil himself or if some or all of it was written off by the grateful company as a lobbying fee. Whichever way it goes, Newt is going to end up in a courtroom somewhere, trying to stay out of the hoosegow, and probably still running for president in his fevered little brain. No wonder Newtie was reluctant to answer any questions about his $500K shopping spree at Tiffany’s — it’s looking like a quid pro quo bribe.
– The Story Behind the Story, Part Deux: Sure, it’s been all over the papers like a dog who got into the prune juice that pouty ex-Alaskan Ice Princess Sarah Palin is moving the whole-damn Wasillabilly brood to a luxurious $1.7 million 5-BR, 6.5-bath manse with a concrete swimmin’ hole in Scottsdale, AZ, near enough to America’s wackiest sheriff, Joe Arpaio, to be in the Red Zone if any of his pink-clad prisoners escape. But let’s just get this out of the way: the erstwhile Mama Grizzly is not running for president — her ‘tragic bus’ tour of the Nor’east is just to revive national media interest in her fast-plummeting ‘brand,’ whatever her crackpot brand is these days. How could this be when all the big-time pundits are sure she’s running? Well, she hasn’t been kicked off Fox News, and she’s got a $1 mil-a-year contract there that runs through 2013. But she also allegedly has speaking contracts to read her palm to unfortunate victims through 2014; if she reneges on those contracts — since she can’t legally take the money if she’s a candidate — she’ll have to pay a stiff penalty. That would cost her a bundle out of pocket she can’t afford. Get your laughs now — by 2015 she’ll be off Fox and consigned to introducing second-rate Branson, MO, acts with, “Hi there, remember me? I’m Sarah Palin!”
– Ailes Out at Fox? Speaking of Fox Noose, head-major-domo-top-enchilada, first-among-inferiors Generalissimo Roger Ailes’ contract with king pinsetter Rupert Murdoch is up in 2013. Surely Uncle Rupe will renew it, you say. Not so fast: Murdoch’s recent wife Wendi likes Obama and loathes Ailes, and Rupe’s wives have considerable influence on him; plus, the whole fam damily who will be inheriting the business when Murdoch retires or ascends to Media Jesusland likewise has about as much affection for the former Nixon PR flack as they do for a case of the clap. Word is, James Murdoch, current deputy operating office at Fox parent News Corp, particularly has it in for Ailes after what Rog did to brother Lachlan, supposedly pushing James’ older sibling to the point of a nervous breakdown. The elder Murdoch is also said to not be pleased at the direction Ailes has dragged the GOP-propaganda cable channel; of course, he favors its conservative slant, but the hiring of palpable nitwits like Boom-Boom Palin and Man-On-Dog Ricky Santorum didn’t sit well with News Corps’ Bigga Boss. Look for a shake-up at Fox after the next election, unless the GOP wins Reagan-’84 big.
– One More Fox Tale: A deep, deep rumor says the Keith Olbermann ousting at MSNBC was part of a deal with Fox News’ Roger Ailes. Seems Keith, the former ratings king at MSNBC, was getting under Roger’s skin with his gloves-off jibes at Fox personalities, as well as cutting into Fox’s cable dominance as his ‘Countdown’ show numbers steadily increased. In a top secret meeting with Comcast, then poised to buy up MSNBC parent NBC-Universal, Ailes and unnamed execs from Comcast and NBC allegedly struck a deal to lessen the attacks on Fox and dump Olbermann once the Comcast buy-out was finalized; in return, Fox would go easier on NBC and provide some other goodies. Part of the bargain was that MSNBC would get rid of its top rater and Fox would reciprocate. So Ailes agreed to jettison Fox ratings leader Glenn Beck in return for Olbermann’s exit. Roger got the best of the deal — he wanted to give loose-cannon Beck the heave-ho anyway while MSNBC is now struggling in Keith’s old primetime slot, and Olbermann is fixing to cut down those ‘Lean Forward’ numbers even further when he resurrects ‘Countdown’ June 20th on Al Gore’s Current TV network at his old 8e/7c berth.
– He Won’t Be Baack: A big dime is about to drop (but not in the form of a ‘bag’) on former Kali-forn-yuh guff’nor Arnold Schwarzenegger. Seems the ex-bodybuilder and purported actor had more than one out-of-wedlock bambino while married to Kennedy-kin Maria Shriver — mayhap as many as 6 or 7 — and all of their mamas want more money or they are calling the media. Add to that the news that the California AG is about to prosecute the Teutonic Musclehead for using state troopers to deliver comely young ‘club’ females 18-to-25 to his Governator living quarters at the Hyatt hotel in Sacramento, a clear misuse of state funds. It’s been reported Schwarzy planned to resume his ‘achting’ career post-politics — fat chance, since the word is the major studios now think he’s not ‘bankable’ at the box office anymore. (Perhaps he can nab the independent-film roles Casper Van Dien turns down, at Van Dien pay, natch.) Oh, and one more thing: all the years of stress on his bones and muscles from over-exercising and steroid use have taken their toll — the 63-year-old Ah-nuld allegedly now has the physical mobility of a man 20 years older and can only function normally by taking prescription painkillers.
© 2011 RS Janes.
http://tattlesnake.blogspot.com
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May 28, 2011
May 24, 2011
Death Wish IX: The GOP Presidential Field
Subtitled, for you Latin scholars out there, with what should be the GOP motto in the 2012 primaries: ‘incredibilis vos socius pro nostrum equus fimus iterum’ **
The Death Wish Nine:
1. Tim Pawlenty
2. Mitt Romney
3. Newt Gingrich
4. Rick Santorum
5. Gary Johnson
6. Herman Cain
7. Michele Bachmann
8. Sarah Palin
9. Anybody Else?
(Yes, I’m leaving off gay Republican Fred Karger, former Obama ambassador Jon Huntsman, and that other guy for the sake of brevity.)
Not a Triumph of the (George F.) Will: Mitch Daniels and Tim Pawlenty. But it’s not to be as Daniels, Junior Bush’s former budget director, who turned a $236 billion surplus into a $400 billion deficit, and the financial genius who ‘privatized’ the Indiana Toll Roads for a lump sum payment of $3.6 billion in a 75-year lease that will pay $133 billion to the Australian/Spanish firm of Macquarie-Cintra, has decided not to play, taking his name out of contention. That’s a shame as laugh-lovers will be denied the spectacle of a Daniels/Pawlenty ticket in 2012, AKA the Ambiguously Gay Duo of GOP politics.
Speaking of Pawlenty, he just tossed his hat in the pig feces swamp May 23rd by boldly announcing in Iowa that he will end ethanol subsidies as president. Next he’ll tell the Republican voters of New Hampshire that he plans to take away their guns, and then head to Wisconsin to inform the handful of GOP voters left there of how much he hates cheese and the Green Bay Packers. Apparently Timbaugh, saddled with the same no-Tea-Party, moderate Blue-State GOP governor baggage as Mitt Romney, has decided to show his hairy-chested manliness by metaphorically slapping potential voters across the chops a few times. It’s an entertaining approach, at least, and he may get the nomination just by not being as space-cadet nuts as everyone else in the GOP race.
Speaking of Mitt Romney, he has the mounds of money, confident male underwear model leer, and party contacts to be the frontrunner, but he’s bent over backwards so many times to accommodate the crazy right he looks like Richard III in reverse. Mitt’s the likeable guy nobody in the GOP likes, and it seems his ‘fire in the belly’ has turned to acid reflux — which is why he’ll be quitting after he fails to come in first in the New Hampshire primary. The Money Men in the GOP have apparently decided his goods are too tainted by long exposure to sunlight, so they’re looking elsewhere, and many of the Christopublican rank-and-file aren’t enthused that he’s a Mormon.
Then there’s the popped 1990s bubble of Newt Gingrich, who hangs himself with his own tongue every time he opens his mouth. ‘Champaign Newt,’ who’s collected millions of bucks in his risible alter-egos of ‘Adulterous Defender of Family Values,’ ‘Professor of Fictitious History’ and ‘Knuckle-Dragging Conservative Intellectual,’ has diligently shoveled so much crap for so long that he’s incapable of giving a straight answer anymore. When asked about his respectable Republican-Cloth-Coat account at snooty Tiffany’s that amounted to $500,000 in charges, Newtie mumbled awkwardly and danced around a forthright answer, this following on the heels of his embarrassing, even for a Republican, 24-hour about-face on Paul Ryan’s mad plan to eviscerate Medicare. Although Newt apparently doesn’t think his personal hypocrisy matters, convenient for a man who has made a career of sanctimonious lip service to moral precepts he doesn’t actually practice, GOP primary voters may have a different opinion. He, too, will quit in the snows of New Hampshire and no doubt find a way to blame liberals for his rejection by his own party.
Rick Santorum is such a lugnut even some Christopublicans who fear mass bestiality breaking out in the streets should a gay couple marry can’t stand him. In a year when economic issues far outweigh the perverse moral concerns of mouth-breathers like St. Santorum, he’ll fade out in Iowa; broke, miserable and about as popular as Fred Phelps, the virulently anti-gay pastor of the far-from-Christian Westboro Baptist Church. Of course by 2013, Rough ‘n’ Ready Rick, out of politics, will divorce his wife and emerge from the closet, professing his enduring love for a German Shepherd/Dalmatian mix named Rollo.
Then there’s the former GOP governor of New Mexico Gary Johnson. No reason to tarry much on this entry; Johnson shows flashes of sanity and decency that will automatically invalidate him for the Republican nomination. He’s out in Iowa as well.
Godfather pizza-peddler Herman Cain, who I understand was a black man at one time, has enough grease-coated cash to stay in until South Carolina, and maybe beyond. In the same cynical GOP race-pandering that made Michael Steele head of the RNC, party bigwigs think they might have a chance in 2012 by putting Cain in the Veep slot with Pawlenty heading the ticket. Cain will appease the hard-right and nab a few stray African-American votes while Pawlenty desperately tries to convince general-election voters that he really doesn’t believe all the things he said he believed in during the primary campaign without looking like an outrageous liar and hypocrite. But, in the wake of the GOP debacle in the Rust Belt states and Paul Ryan’s ‘kick grandma from the train’ Medicare voucher plan, the chances of this working are about the same as Donald Trump keeping his hair in place during a high wind or speaking the truth in two consecutive sentences.
Meanwhile, Tea Party Queen Bee Michele Bachmann has yet to declare, but her avid desire to make Big Money should she lose her House seat next election will compel her to run, at least until the Republican Big Daddy, the moneyed elite that own the party, take the keys away. She’ll probably win Iowa, then be quickly forgotten after she utters yet another imbecilic interpretation of the Constitution or is caught in a low-cut slinky dress shooting craps in Las Vegas and drunkenly groping a man not her husband.
“Corporations Are People” Gaffe Dooms Romney’s Presidential Bid
These days, Mitt Romney has the haunted look of a mountain climber who just heard half the strands of his lifeline snap while hanging only a few yards from the peak of Mt. Everest. He can’t turn back from his life-long quest to reach the peak, yet he knows there’s a good possibility the rope will break before he reaches his goal and he’ll go plummeting down the side. Along with the overstuffed carload of gobsmacking flip-flops on everything from women’s rights to income taxes to health care that Mitt carries with him like a mummy’s curse, his sure-thing Golden-Haired Boy 2012 GOP presidential nomination is now showing its dark roots, and it’s all the fault of Romney himself.
At the Iowa State Fair the other day, Romney attempted another of those tedious ‘Ask Mitt’ torture sessions where he is forced to extemporize to answer questions from the overly-corndogged locals. This is a dangerous zone for the Mittster, who has a hard enough time getting through his soporific stump speeches without sweating through his magic underwear. Romney no doubt figured he was on safe ground — it’s Iowa and Republican runs here like boiling grease through a deep fryer. But the rubes were having none of it — missiles of verbal pyrotechnics, along with derisive laughter, always deadly for a serious candidate, pierced the hot air as oldsters in the crowd fusilladed Romney about Social Security, Medicare, and raising taxes on corporations and his own top one-percent tax bracket to help pay for them. After taking the standard Norquist stupidity pledge never to raise taxes, which is akin to vowing never to move out of your house, even if it’s burning down around you, Mitt then exhibited the complacently haughty behavior that has appealed to his party’s Christopublican-Teabagger base by serenely patronizing his irate interrogators with “Corporations are people, my friend,” a phrase that will follow Romney like a dead skunk chained to his leg for the rest of his doomed quest for the Republican presidential nomination.
Consider that prior to this gaffe, Romney’s thin hold on the nomination was threefold: First, Wall Street reptiles with ice in their aortas and gin-embalmed country club Republicans embraced Mitt as a fellow-traveler — a man willing to make the hard decisions before lunch of how many American jobs to cut or send to foreign shores and live without guilt on the proceeds. Secondly, others in the party elite thought Romney was an agreeably vacillating vessel who could easily be packaged as a caring ‘moderate conservative’ with a chance of beating Obama in 2012. Third, he has a pile of his own money to sink in his campaign, always a relief and comfort to the political investment class.
But with his ad-lib proclamation on the personhood of corporations, which comes as close as Romney gets to a core principle, he tossed it all away. Mitt might as well have announced he’s a Communist who worships Joe Stalin. To most Americans, unschooled in the prevailing hallucinations of five members of the U.S. Supreme Court, the ruminants of global high finance, the silly supply-side economists of which there seems to be an endless supply, and the curdled cognoscenti of the Federalist Society, corporations are clearly nothing like flesh-and-blood human beings and should not enjoy the same rights. Aside from the obvious that corporations cannot vote, or be hauled into court, or put in jail, and can only be fined for their wrongdoing. (They could also be put out of business, but in corporate-beguiled Washington that happens about as often as Sarah Palin submitting to an interview outside of Fox News.) Unlike Shakespeare’s Shylock, the modern corporation never suffers from cold nor heat nor injury from wounds physical or emotional and represents a unique eternal legal construct — the front-office executives may change from death and retirement, but the corporation can go on forever. Ambrose Bierce aptly defined this swindle a century ago in “The Devil’s Dictionary”: “Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility.” Adding to the legalized larceny, the multi-national corporations take advantage of tax loopholes that are not available to the average American citizen, nor even small businesses, which gives these artificial abstractions unequal and superior rights to real people.
Most Americans are only vaguely aware of any of this, but they do have the fed-up feeling, rightfully, that those at the top of the corporate pie are making out like bandits, and forcing them to work longer hours at less pay to keep their jobs, and they don’t appreciate that ugly pie smashed into their faces by a spoiled multi-millionaire who thinks he should be president. Uttering “Corporations are people” with the passive-aggressive condescension of “my friend” appended removed any chance of Romney reaching the summit as he publicly tried to flim-flam the Iowans into believing that having a mountain of reeking manure in your backyard is the same as owning a prize racehorse.
In another era, a bland and malleable aspirant such as Tim Pawlenty would have taken the top spot after Romney implodes, but this is not that era in GOP politics as the pathetic two-percenter Pawlenty bends over so far backwards trying to appeal to the Teabaggers he appears to be engaged in a bizarre perpetual circus trick and the Republican base rates his conservative sincerity barely above that of Mitt’s.
Meanwhile, Sarah Palin’s presidential ambitions will be confined to wistful private moments inside her ridiculous tour bus; Ron Paul will, as usual, fade as quasi-libertarianism and oligarchic corporatism actually don’t mix well; and Gingrich, Cain, Santorum, Huntsman and the other GOP stragglers will depart with vanity-wall photos of their brief moment on the national stage.
Predictions at this early stage are foolish, but here’s one anyway: I don’t think Romney will last beyond the South Carolina primary, if that far. If Obama was counting on running against Mr. Corporate Personhood, he might want to recalculate — the vacuous but wingnut-popular Rick Perry is about to announce, and the Ed Rollins version of Michele Bachmann is taking it seriously now, and both are ready to genuflect to the Republican party establishment to get a crack at the White House.
Any progressive or liberal Democrat who takes either the Texas Governor or the Minnesota Congresswoman lightly does so at their peril. Remember the lesson of the 1970s when Ronald Reagan was dismissed as a buffoon too far right to be electable — we are still paying for that mistake.
Copyright 2011 RS Janes.
http://www.fishink.us