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September 5, 2014

Ice cream, Ferraris, and more War

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , , , — Bob Patterson @ 12:29 pm

crop of right rear

President Obama’s reputation for playing chess while his opponents are playing checkers may be resurrected this fall because he now has a chance to put the Republicans into a binary choice situation where they can’t win no matter what choice they make.

If President Obama asks for Congress to authorize the drone strikes in Iraq via the War Powers Act, then they will have a choice of either: A exemplifying the “Alligator mouth, hummingbird ass” warrior concept and denying him backing for the drone strikes they encouraged or B confirming that he is the commander-in-chief and has their backing for the bombing missions.

If he wins the Forever War he will be a national hero. If he doesn’t and the conflict hasn’t been resolved by the end of his second term, at least he won’t have gotten himself impeached for ignoring the War Powers Act.

If President Obama does not seek a War Powers Act approval for what he is doing, he could provide the Republicans with a chance to prove that their mastery of hypocrisy has reached the highest level because they could then Impeach Obama (and probably get a conviction in the Senate) for exceeding his authority to order the drone strikes which would ignore the fact that President George W. Bush essentially did the same thing and was never held accountable for his cavalier disregard for the War Powers Act.

Would the Republicans have the temerity to impeach Obama for something that duplicated what George W. Bush did? Wouldn’t such blatant hypocrisy make the November mid-term elections very interesting?

Diverting America’s attention to the beheadings of journalists will get much better ratings than a long and monotonous explanation of the legal intricacies involved in debating the possibility of a violation of the War Powers Act and so the old TV adage, “If it bleeds; it leads” will help network executives to make a decision that will win the audience’s approval.

Obsessing on beheadings will cause a very dramatic bit of blowback. If folks get used to beheading videos then the terrorists will be obliged to up the voltage and slowly increase the gruesome factor for each new installment of their “execution of the week” reality TV series.

That, in turn, would only serve to taunt America’s citizens into fully endorsing the “Apocalypse Now” philosophy expressed in Col. Kurtz note: “Drop the bomb, exterminate the brutes.” That, in turn, would mean that America would become fully (i.e. bipartisan support) committed to a long and brutal war which already has been called “The Forever War.”

It is now just a curious historic footnote to note that reprisal killings were condemned at the Nuremburg War Crimes Trails.

When George W. Bush first announced the “Shock and Awe” TV specials, many Democrats objected citing moralistic reasons. Now that President Obama has gotten most members of the Democratic Party onboard for the “Forever War” future historians can revisit the summer of 2014 and try to isolate the factors that were involved in the slow and gradual process that dissolved the Democrats’ initial reluctance for not endorsing and approving the Bush war plan.

The fact that the marketplace for punditry is glutted with conservative voices means that any columnist who is inclined to argue the minority opinion (What? Me Irish?) might just as well try to piss up a rope. (WTF?) The best that the World’s Laziest Journalist can hope for is to provide innocuous and esoteric bits of information that hold the attention of regular readers and realize that the anti-war movement is moribund.

Students at the University of California at Berkeley were on the forefront of students who protested the war in Vietnam. Now anti-war sentiment is as antiquated as tie-dye T-shirts. (Yeah they abound in Berkeley but when was the last time they were worn in “fly-over country”?)

California’s highly praised public education system was blind-sided by Prop 13. Homeowners rushed to save them selves a paltry amount of tax money and thereby delivered a stealth bonus to corporations that ultimately caused the University of California system to boost the costs of a college education to much higher levels. Now, a goodly number of students are from wealthy families from outside the country come to Berkeley for their college education and so they could care less what the latest war protest in the USA is about. Many of the students, who can afford to go to college, are committed to preserving the status quo and so they just ignore war protests. The people who have to get student loans to attend college would suffer economic devastation if they miss classes to chant “Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?” and get expelled. At that point they would be SOL (surely out of luck) because they would be out on the street and still owe their student loans. So they watch it on The Evening News.

We have seen some reports that high risk loans for car buyers seem to be a viable threat that a new banking crisis could occur if enough car buyers default on their loans.

Home foreclosures seem to have fallen out of favor as a news topic but the number of homes being foreclosed is still at a formidable level.

Speaking of cars, over the Labor Day Weekend, the World’s Laziest Journalist spotted an Olive Drab Ferrari (F-40?) in Berkeley CA. We know that such a tidbit of information isn’t even close to being political punditry but since real attempts at political analysis is extinct in the mainstream media, then we have to select the perks for our effort that appeal to us.

After posting this column, we will feel obliged to go to Oakland and cover a September 5 protest against the militarization of America’s police departments. We may get some news photos or we may get some stock shots and information for use with future columns mentioning the new protesting trend.

If our attempts to provide some modicum of analysis rather than political propaganda are unique in the attempt, then like a celebrity chef we can add unique ingredients to our recipe for writing columns (such as finding an Olive Drab colored Ferrari F-40 in Berkeley CA) and shrug off any criticism that Edward R. Murrow would disapprove.

If we can do that then we have reassured our self that our attempts to provide an Alamo style stand against the conservative MSM owners’ management of opinionating is worth the effort.

We had never heard of cheese and corn flavored ice-cream but when we found that flavor being offered at John’s in Berkeley, we knew it was our duty as a columnist to become a proxy taste tester. We got a twofer because we learned that it was a delicious surprise (with corn nibletts added) and that the price of a scoop had gone up (for the first time since 1968?) to a buck and a quarter.

This week Armstrong and Getty reported rumors that eleven commercial airliners have gone missing in Libya. (“They” can monitor your phone calls and e-mails but apparently when airplanes disappear they can’t be located. Go figure.) The boys speculated that some terrorist spectacular may be scheduled for next week’s anniversary for September 11. Keep America scared! You stay very scared San Diego and thus you won’t need a laxative.

“Nuremberg Diary” (Farrar, Straus and Company New York © 1947), by G. M. Gilbert contains (on pages 278 – 279) this quote from Hermann Goering: “Oh, that (a U. S. Congressional declaration of war) is all well and good, but voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.”

We challenged the disk jockey to come up with some “chop off his head” songs to accompany this week’s column and so now he will play “with ‘er ‘ead tucked underneath her arm,” (AKA the Anne Boleyn Song), the Jefferson Airplane’s “White Rabbit,” (because of one particular line) and the theme from “Sleepy Hollow.” We have to go check the long term results of Operation Paperclip. Have a “Grosspflicht” type week.

crop of shield

April 24, 2011

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

September 9, 2008

The Tattlesnake – More GOP Goop: Deaf Con 3 Edition

Random Notes Summing Up the End of Summer Bummer in St. Paul

“Fight with me! Fight with me!”
– John McCain in his acceptance speech at the GOP Con, Sept. 4, 2008, so desperate for combat he invited the audience to throw a punch at him.

The 2008 Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minnesota, was entertaining and credible if you happen to have that happy zealot’s mindset indistinguishable from serious brain damage, or you’re a member of the Inner Party with a large Memory Hole nearby and a strong stomach. Indeed, George Orwell could have written the script for this GOP Con and you could hear echoes of the boot-heel patriotism of Oceania ringing in its blaring signage and loudly repeated declarations – “Country First!” “Service!” “Character Counts!” “War Hero!” “Reformer!” “Maverick!” “USA!” “Surge Working!” “NO-bama!” — simple themes for simple minds marinated in the bottomless pit of Big Media Infotainment Newspeak and endless wars against shifting enemies, buttressed by increasingly irrational rationales.

Yet never was heard a discouraging word against the Bush Administration and the avaricious corporate-Republican values for which it stands that have promulgated and prolonged the various disasters sinking us on every front – instead, Frank Luntz’s cheesy framing word “Washington” was employed so that the top-of-the-ticket ‘reformers’ had something to ‘change’ other than the guiding precepts of their own party and Sarah Palin’s prominently-displayed infant son. The unasked question that hung over the convention like a cloud from Hurricane Gustav: ‘Yes, Washington is even more corrupt than usual and we are descending into utter catastrophe – and who is responsible for causing all of this misery?’ He That Must Be Obliged But Otherwise Go Unmentioned appeared on the Jumbotron screen early in the evening on the first day, his embarrassing video endorsing McCain stuck into those hours of the evening when, presumably, small-town America was still having dinner and would never see the Bush Boy and think of his Unmentionable PNAC Partner-in-Crime Dick Cheney, the True Author of our rampant economic and global woes.

McCain and Palin both exhibited signs of having an out-of-party experience as they berated the soulless suppurating boils and abscesses populating the Potomac Swamplands in the form of Big Money lobbyists and Special Interests that have brought the country so low, without ever hinting that most of them had an RNC elephant logo on their money clips and the rapacious Jesus of Mammon in their born-again hearts. For that matter, most of the larger fish work in McCain’s own campaign. But perhaps the most comically surreal moment of the three nights came when Mitt Romney, formerly McCain’s dedicated primary foe, erupted from the podium with this public hallucination to the cheers of the damned and deranged:

“We need change, all right. Change from a liberal Washington to a conservative Washington. We have a prescription for every American who wants change in Washington — throw out the big-government liberals.”
– Mitt Romney, Sept. 3, 2008.

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2008/09/08-2

That’s the essence of the snake-eating-its-tail message emerging from St. Paul to unite the party – let’s toss out big-government liberals Bush and Cheney and start anew.

We’re Not Out of Touch – We’re Republicans Without Issues!

“This election is not about issues. This election is about a composite view of what people take away from these candidates.”
– Rick Davis, McCain’s campaign manager, quoted by the Washington Post’s The Fix blog.

To the party leaders and McCain’s campaign staff, ignorance is strength, and really the only strength McCain has left. If the public can be allayed by clever rhetoric, bamboozled by slick video bios, befuddled by down-is-up deceptions, or baffled by calculated bluster from determining the bitter truth about the Republican presidential candidate and his running mate for just two months, the GOP believes they can seize the White House for the third time in this new century.

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