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Occupy Cal graphics for Valentine’s Day

Occupy Cal Mushroom

“I left my ♥ in San Francisco . . . ♫ . . .”

Is America being set up for the return of the Bush Dynasty? Has the legacy of Murrow’s Boys morphed into a shameless spectacle of his network’s modern on air talent kowtowing to the Republican Party in the form of stories about a political triumph that is being spun as a “compromise”?

In the early morning hours on Thursday, KCBS news radio in San Francisco reported that the payroll tax cut had been extended because the Republicans folded on their insistence that it be balanced by corresponding budget cuts.

Isn’t the “payroll tax cut” code talk for cutting back on workers’ contributions to the Social Security Trust fund? Hasn’t destroying the Social Security program been the top Republican political goal since the day FDR signed it into law?

They get to take another major step towards dismantling the Social Security Program and make their dreams come true and a step to destroy (eliminate funding from) other social programs is postponed and that qualifies as a compromise? GMAFB!

Hasn’t cutting social programs become the Sadistic highlight of the post St. Reagan era for the Republicans? Wouldn’t getting America’s free press to applaud the trend just be icing on the cake? Could the trend to cut social programs funding be compared to being the budgetary equivalent of Sherman’s march to the sea?

Isn’t portraying the lack of cuts as a humiliating compromise the final nail in the coffin for America’s Freedom of the Press?

Do employees at Fox News really start the day by facing a photo of Murdoch, taking an loyalty oath, and then putting their hats over their hearts while singing along to “Memo from Turner”? Or is that just an urban legend?

The World’s Laziest Journalist thinks that he remembers a posting on the Columbia Journalism Review’s website castigating American Journalists for using the dishonest “payroll tax cut” euphemism in place of the more politically charged term “raid on the Social Security Trust Fund.”

In the conservative dominated realm of spin, ascertaining the truth in American Politics has come to resemble the classic chase scene in Orson Wells film “The Lady from Shanghai.” Which image is political reality, which is diabolical spin? Remember if you make a guess and it is incorrect, you will lose more of you rapidly diminishing supply of Constitutional rights. (Good luck!)

Hasn’t the pervasive Conservative noise machine pummeled Americans into surrendering their insistence that the function of the press is to provide citizens with accurate information that will permit them to make well informed decisions when they vote? Isn’t amusing and entertaining what just what Edward R. Murrow and his posse, called Murrow’s Boys, really wanted?

Have you heard the radio ads that tout a method for getting a choice of approximately 500 American radio stations? (Define “a hall of mirrors.”) Should the ever narrowing window of opportunity for access to foreign news sources be compared to Hitler’s edict that proclaimed that listening to foreign radio stations had become a capital offense?

What would be so bad about listening to Sky Rock from Paris, Triple J from Australia, or (if it still exists) Radio Caroline?

Wasn’t there a book a while back in the USA, with the cryptic title: “Ladies and Gentlemen; this way to the showers!”? What was that supposed to mean?

At the World’s Laziest Journalist’s Headquarters we thought we saw a mention on the Internets (and a story in last Sunday’s edition of the New York Times) about some newsmen getting arrested in Great Britain because of a hacking scandal investigation. Did we just imagine that?

Before Dubya sent American troops off to Afghanistan and Iraq, the American Free Press ran “we don’t want another Vietnam” essays on their Op Ed pages. Now as America prepares to use the principles established at the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials outlining the necessary condition for permitting a preemptive strike, the lefties in the press realize that such divisive diversions are counter-productive and seem to have given up that lame attempt at circulation building stunt journalism.

If Rupert Murdoch tells the journalists to jump, they must jump and ask “How high?” on the way up.

America established the principle of war for humanitarian reasons before authorizing drone attacks on Libya. This week the need to send drones attacks against Syria as a means of protecting that country’s citizens from a bloodthirsty national leader is becoming abundantly clear thanks to the fair and balance new coverage being provided by America’s Free Press.

Weren’t the trend spotting reporters in American Journalism right on top of the “Linsanity” phenomenon this week? We may have to personally direct the Pulitzer Prize selection committee’s attention to some of the best of the lot.

Not all the work done at the Amalgamated Conspiracy Theory Factory is devoted to deep dark secret government plots against its own citizens. One of the Factory’s midlevel management team, earlier this week, dug out an old item from long ago when he was only a summer intern there.

According to his theory; if you take the segment of Madonna’s “Truth or Dare” documentary film where she ridiculed actor Kevin Costner and speculate that that incident must have occurred just about the time he (as Executive Producer for the film project called “The Bodyguard”) was making assessment about who should be given the role of the female singing sensation (what is type casting?); you just might come up with some speculation about how Whitney Houston’s big career boost was directly attributable to some rudeness delivered by Madonna. (Didn’t Madonna used to have some aspirations for an acting career to augment her musical achievements?)

This week Tony Bennett was given the key to the city in a ceremony at San Francisco City Hall. Some pre-event publicity indicated that part of the program would include the honoree singing “I Left My ♥ in San Francisco.” He didn’t. (OMFG! Somebody has left the ♥ symbol loose on the Internets! Now it will spread like the bubonic plague!)

The Occupy Cal rebel encampment on Sproul Plaza was moved to another area of the campus late this week. (Note: On Friday morning, it was being reported by an Occupy Potester that the encampment on the steps of Doe Library had been removed. A Google News search was inconclusive.)

On Thursday, we saw news reports that stated that a brokered Republican Convention might be offered the choice of JEB Bush or Sarah Palin to function as a “tie-breaker.”
(How many Democrats will be dumb enough to believe that the Republican Party is ready to name a beauty contest winner as commander-in-chief of the American military? {This is what mystery fans call “a red herring.”})

There is a bit of folk wisdom in Hollywood that advises script writers to leave some “wiggle room” at the conclusion of a horror film, so that the monster can return in a sequel.

Wasn’t there a bunch of news reports about the Bush Dynasty being as extinct as the dinosaurs when George W. Bush’s term in office was concluded? Is Karl Rove going to pull an astonishing sequel scenario out of a hat this summer just as if American politics were as predictable as a Wes Craven movie sequel?

Are the liberal pundits in America’s Free Press just going to sit there and not bring up the possibility of the political effort to reincarnate something that was deemed extinct?

If this column isn’t reprinted on the Op Ed page of the New York Times next week, maybe the World’s Laziest Journalist should try to contact the United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney (New South Wales) and see if there’s any possibility of being a guest lecturer there before the November election. Don’t people into scholarship value alternative viewpoints . . . especially if in retrospect they were spot-on?

To be continued . . .

Former San Francisco columnist Ambrose Bierce’s Devil’s Dictionary included this entry: “Cynic, n. a blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be.”

Now, the disk jockey will play The Jefferson Airplane’s “White Rabbit,” Janis Joplin’s “Down on me,” and Quicksilver Messenger Service’s “Holy Moly.” We have to go to the poster shop and get the one of the flying Mustang from “Bullitt.” Have a “Make Love, not war” type week.