Jim Buck

Drug Test Wall Street

2011-09-28T20:05:00.000-07:00

Drug testing the unemployed and welfare recipients has been all the rage recently from Utah Senator Orrin Hatch to South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley and Florida Governor Rick Scott among others.

While living in New York in the 80s it was common “knowledge” that many traders on Wall Street were addicted to cocaine. That was mostly among the younger traders who thirty years ago are now the old guard and the younger traders today have obviously grown up in the drug culture dujour.

With the severity of the recession we are in, and the focus of right-wing state and federal politicians on cutting spending and targeting the poor with cutbacks, is it not more logical to look at the source of the problem?

Is it not logical to assume that the abundance of drugs used on Wall Street, among bankers, stock traders and brokers—and maybe even the cops pepper spraying the protestors—may have altered their thinking in ways that exacerbated their greed about brought about, if not contributed to, the Great Recession we are in?

If yes, then is it not also logical to drug test someone who has access and an effect on millions and billions of dollars with an altered mind rather than someone who simply receives $250 to $500 per month?

Where are the priorities? Driving a car under the influence is a crime. Should the same or a vastly greater punishment and prevention be applied to driving an economy under the influence?

Drug test Wall Street now. And for a similar subject, check out this.

Thou Shall Not Kill

2011-09-21T20:05:00.000-07:00

I haven’t posted anything here in months. Tonight I was beginning to work on a script while watching MSNBC’s coverage of the Troy Davis execution. Being bombarded with so much and so often in today’s news media cyclone, I was familiar with Davis’s case but not tremendously so.

I have tried to put myself in Davis’s shoes and it becomes uncomfortable.

I am very angry at those in the State of Georgia responsible for this right now that they would execute someone who I believe is obviously innocent.

I am very angry at Clarence Thomas for rejecting the stay of execution. I don’t care what narrow legal question the law permitted the Supreme Court only to consider. Something is wrong.

Isn’t Thomas famously quoted as saying he was the victim of a “high-tech lynching”? It seems to me Davis’s execution is the State of Georgia finding any ol’ black man and hanging him from a tree because it satisfies their racist blood lust.

As Lenny Bruce said, “Thou Shalt Not Kill means that, not amend section A”. Killing innocent people is wrong and we must end capital punishment in America.

Here’s a link to the Innocence Project. Please do what you can to change things.

http://www.innocenceproject.org/

God bless Troy Davis’s soul.

Is Michele Bachmann’s Husband Secretly Gay?

2011-07-01T20:32:00.000-07:00

I’ve been aware of Michele Bachmann for several years now. But I never knew anything about her husband—not even his name. I did, however, assume he was a rugged, self-made flannel-wearing man from pioneer stock who allowed Michele to bring home the bacon while he chopped wood as a lumberjack or raised livestock on a family farm—sort of the Minnesota version of Todd Palin.

As with Rev Ted Haggard and George Rekers, various right wing anti-gayers are many times are found in their own homosexual scandals. Perhaps Rekers can be most closely compared to Rep. Bachmann’s husband, Dr. Marcus Bachmann, in that both are proponents of gay-to-straight conversion therapy. Dr. Bachmann himself is rumored, according to Think Progress, Dan Savage and Democratic Underground to “straight-en” out gays.

On Wednesday, Think Progress reported that a year ago, Dr. Bachmann referred to gays as “Barbarians” who needed “to be educated” and “disciplined”. That was when I first saw a photograph of Dr. Bachmann. And that was when I first thought, independent of anything elsewhere on the internet, that Dr. Bachmann was a closeted gay man.

It seems to be a pattern: the self-hatred is so strong that a severely closeted gay man seems to spew his self-hatred at all gays as a way of making himself feel better about his own oppressive and repressive psychological dynamics. If my theory is true, it makes Michele’s blatantly obvious psychological issues so much more understandable. For example, it is so much easier for her to bend American history and her other Tea Party political proclamations into “pretzelized” versions of reality because she is in deep denial about her own husband and has been for more than 30 years.

Last night when I began “Binging” my theory about Marcus Bachmann I found I wasn’t alone.

If Dr. Bachmann ever revealed himself to be gay that would obviously ruin Michele’s presidential campaign, so I doubt that will happen anytime soon. It seems his denial is too strong. However, if he ever does, I hope he goes easier on himself than he does on the rest of gaydom.

Deities United: A Future Supreme Court Ruling

2011-06-22T22:26:00.000-07:00

It will happen on a day in the not too distant future; maybe a couple of years from now, maybe a decade. The success of conservatives, corporations and the US Chamber of Commerce will guarantee it. Corporations will have won the day in November 2012—and the election.

In Wall Street boardrooms, suburban Washington think tanks and K Street lobbyists’ offices almost simultaneously, CEOs, Executive Directors and Policy Analysts will all smile the Grinch smile. You know the smile; when the Grinch decides to steal Christmas.

Their collective greed and corruption will want more after Obama loses in 2012 because Karl Rove and Tom Donohue will have succeeded in funneling Saudi, Chinese and Russian money to determine our election.

After the glow of victory wears off, and after their stomachs have digested their victory like a Quarter Pounder with cheese and they are suddenly hungry for more, they will all turn their attention to satiating their new pangs.

Suddenly, the Citizens United Supreme Court ruling will seem to them like leftovers or an item on the menu that no longer suffices. In an instant, corporations are people too will not be so tasty or filling. No, nothing will satisfy any longer. No, nothing short of…

Corporations are Gods too.

“Yes,” the lawyer for Deities United, America’s newest conservative 501c4, 50 year old Kirk Cameron, will proudly exclaim before the assembled Supreme Court justices, “corporations are gods too!”

The justices will lean back in their high-backed, black leather chairs, smiling with anticipation about the show that has commenced before them.

The case before the nation’s highest court, Deities United v. US Department of Defense, will seek to overturn the DOD’s prohibition on corporations fighting the Battle of Armageddon against all the Middle Eastern countries immersed in the Arab Spring of 2011.

Deities United is the lobby group of Xe, formerly Blackwater, and filed the suit to make billions more by killing millions more.

“Corporations are as rich as god,” Cameron will shout, “not poor like churches. Corporations are responsible for inventions that change god’s laws in ways that people cannot, that corporations, perched atop skyscrapers way up in the heavens, tower above people like gods perched atop the clouds, that corporations inspire as much awe the world over as god inspires in His multitudes, and finally, corporations are more jealous, more wrathful and more vengeful than god.”

The Solicitor General, disgraced former Congressman, Anthony Weiner, will argue that corporations can never be considered gods because corporations’ CEOs do not have beards, they do not have moral codes conveyed in commandments and they are not invisible.

The Supreme Court will make their landmark decision 5-4 along party lines in favor of Deities United.

Justice Thomas will write the majority opinion, citing that corporations more than people and god are responsible for changing the earth and therefore fulfill the function of God on earth and that in time Corporations will supplant god in significance and importance on earth…”if corporations are allowed to have their way”, his wife Ginny will chime in, proving once again that Thomas is an activist justice.

House Speaker John Boehner, in an obvious dig at former president Barack Obama, will announce that the decision “gives the special interests and their lobbyists even more power in Washington — while undermining the influence of average Americans who make small contributions to support their preferred god”.

Former Blackwater president, Erik Prince will say, “Gods especially have the power to take lots of lives without the annoying interference of Congressional investigations.”

Senator Mitch McConnell will attend the announcement of the ruling and will proclaim “it a strong blow for the First Amendment and a victory for freedom of religion.”

And after the Deities United ruling was decreed in 2015 there was no need for the presidential election of 2016 or any other election in any other year thereafter, for corporations had more money than God.

And it was put forth to the people that as the Romans and Greeks had a pantheon of gods, a deity for every aspect of human existence, corporations as gods served the people in a similar way—the god of offshore drilling, the god of convenient shopping and cheap material goods and the god of weapons to keep us safe, among many others.

And Christians wept, not because of the allusions to Roman and Greek gods, but because from Deities United they believed there was now a greater appreciation of God throughout the land.

All Praise be to the Glory of Wal-mart and to Exxon and to General Electric in the recently renamed US Temple of Commerce and the Prophet Tom Donohue.

Amen!

SataYnism

2011-06-10T22:54:00.000-07:00

Last week, after a religious conference, Paul Ryan was chased down by a young Catholic dude and offered a Bible, which Ryan turned down. The young Catholic asked Ryan why he preferred the extreme ideology of Ayn Rand over the economic teachings in the Bible. Here’s the vid:

A group called American Values Network created an ad which attacks politicians who have been inspired by Ayn Rand and uses her anti-Christian statement from a 1959 interview with Mike Wallace.

At the beginning of the clip Ayn Rand says she regards religion as evil. However, many would say that Ayn Rand has inspired "evil". This is very ironic, because what hasn’t been discussed in public yet is how Ayn Rand also inspired modern American Satanism.

Howard Stanton Levey became Anton Szandor LaVey and founded the Church of Satan and authored the Satanic Bible. As the Wikipedia article on LaVey states, LaVey created a “synthesized system of his understanding of human nature and the insights of philosophers who advocated materialism and individualism, for which he claimed no supernatural, metaphysical, or theistic inspiration.”

Ayn Rand’s “Objectivism” is just a fancy word for material selfishness. As John Kenneth Galbraith said, "The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness."

Rand’s atheism is no doubt from her upbringing in “godless” Russia. And It is perhaps convenient for the purposes of her Objectivism philosophy, which, given it promotes a self-serving series of choices should actually, it seems, be called Subjectivism.

But the compassion of Christ—obviously missing in many Christians—runs counter to Rand’s Objectivism. And it is perhaps also missing in many of LaVey’s followers. I hesitate to claim that as a truth because I’ve never met a Satanist that I can remember.

It is ironic that so many conservatives worship Ayn Rand because in 1979 on the old Tomorrow Show with Tom Snyder, she told Snyder that "conservatives will destroy this country". You can find that clip on YouTube.

So, what many of us have believed for decades finally has a correlation: right-wing conservatives are evil and probably more so than Satanists because right-wing politicians are power hungry and persecute the weak and vulnerable.

Even Ayn Rand knew that--which goes for some liberals as well. And that is me being as "objectivistic" as I can possibly be.

Driving Change in the World

2011-06-03T23:48:00.000-07:00

When I was three or four my parents bought me a pedal car, a small metal-bodied car with pedals that propelled the car forward. I loved that car. I became quite fast driving it around our house. When I was a little older my father put me on his lap and let me steer our car down the street. I absolutely fell in love with driving and got my first license as soon as legally possible, at sixteen years and one month old.

To me driving represented freedom and self-determination, thrill and satisfaction, solitude and meditation. It still does. I love to drive.

I simply cannot imagine how I would feel if, after all that, my government told me I was not allowed to drive a car because I was too tall, too dumb or because I was a man.

I’ve been hearing stories here and there about women wanting to drive in Saudi Arabia for some time now. Today I read a story on Huffington Post about Saudi women asking Hillary Clinton to help them be allowed to drive. I say go for it. They should also appeal to Laura Bush since “W” and his family are closer to the Saudi royals than Hillary.

There is a petition which I signed on the Change.org website, which was recently cyber attacked by China because of their support for Chinese artist/activist Ai Weiwei.

According to Women of the Revolution, Manal al-Sharif dropped her campaign to call for the driving ban to be lifted. She was detained and released on May 21, 2011 and rearrested the next day and released on bail on May 30, 2011. She’s a computer security consultant but she can’t drive.

A video of her driving and discussing the ban was posted on YouTube. It is here.

Saudi Arabia is the only country in the world that prevents women from driving so it’s not a Muslim thing as perhaps the “Shariers”—my new word to denote those who try to scare gullible Americans that American Muslims are trying to institute Sharia law here in the US in much the same way the “Birthers” tried to scare gullible Americans that Obama…you know the rest—might have us believe.

Wahabism is the dominant form of Islam in Saudi Arabia. And Wahabism is as fundamentalist conservative as the Reverend Ted Haggard was before he realized the door to his closet was opened.

We cannot surmise for certain that granting women the right to drive would commence in Saudi Arabia a social revolution for gender equality, but there may, however, become a large number of Saudi soccer moms.

In Iran, women are working as taxi drivers, picking up only women as fares. And, as Lubna Hussein made progress for women in the Sudan in 2009 by wearing trousers, the Muslim world is slowly changing.

This morning, while driving to work, I saw a crowd of Syrians outside the CNN building on Sunset Boulevard holding signs that read “Free Syria” and “Where is the media?”

That may be their mistake; confusing CNN with legitimate media, thinking that CNN cares. But I used to do that too—protesting outside Rockefeller Center in 1986, hoping to raise NBC’s awareness and concern about the forced relocation of the Navajo just so Peabody Coal could strip mine coal.

A century ago the American Suffragist movement was working hard to gain women the right to vote, which it won in 1920. Saudi women will get the right to drive one day.

Maybe royal Saudi nephew and Fox News investor, Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal, can help. I suggest we all write him letters asking him to intervene directly at Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal, c/o Fox News Channel, 1211 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10036.

This can have a double affect. Bin Talal has already called for it. Show him and shower him our support. And it makes visible again, the close connection between Fox and bin Talal, the guy who wanted to fund the Ground Zero Mosque that Fox on-air conservatives were against.

We may also want to write to “W” at his Presidential Center. The website talks about Middle East’s “Wave of Freedom”, a Bush Institute Area of Engagement is “human freedom” and one of the Bush Institute’s Integrated Initiatives has a women’s initiative. Bush has to do some good in the world. You can send them an email at lwike@bushcenter.com. You may need to copy and paste this email address. And I say why not?

Perhaps for the betterment of the world we should commit to this century being the century of women. We have Hillary encourage the Saudis to give women the right to drive and we allow the Iraqis, Afghanis and Libyans to successfully encourage Hillary, Barack and the rest of us to give women in those three countries the right not to have their children and babies killed in our wars.

I’m harping on the death of children in war again, eh? What a downer. Well, here’s an upper. “Drive My Car” performed by the man who wrote it (with Lennon) and sang it, ex-Beatle Paul McCartney.

The Problem with Some Christians

2011-05-26T22:22:00.000-07:00

This whole end of the world-Armageddon-Anti-Christ mass delusion some Christians have perpetrated on us is actually more damaging to America and the world than it is humorous or good subject for ridicule. It creates in conservative Christians the need to be righteous and pious and to them, I believe, it means controlling us by stepping on the rest of us.

Believing in a Messiah is akin to a drug addict believing that someone is going to come and cure him of his drug addiction and he won’t have to do anything. That’s not how recovery works and that’s not how the world will work.

My theory is supported by something in the Bible, Psalm 95. According to Wikipedia: “A common modern rabbinic interpretation is that there is a potential messiah in every generation. The Talmud, which often uses stories to make a moral point (aggadah), tells of a highly respected rabbi who found the Messiah at the gates of Rome and asked him, "When will you finally come?" He was quite surprised when he was told, "Today." Overjoyed and full of anticipation, the man waited all day. The next day he returned, disappointed and puzzled, and asked, "You said messiah would come 'today' but he didn't come! What happened?" The Messiah replied, "Scripture says, 'Today, 'if you will but hearken to His voice.'”

I would argue that there is not only a potential Messiah in every generation but there is a potential Messiah in every one of us.

This messiah prophecy stuff was developed at a time of relative primitivism. The mindset that developed the belief that someone would come to their rescue like Superman was the same mindset that also believed in hell.

The belief that a Messiah will come down and everyone will be saved creates the psychology that those believers do not have to be responsible for themselves, or others, or to the world.

There will never be a Judgment Day and there will never be an End Times just like there was never a Biblical Adam and Eve. Those are myths designed to convey the author‘s political point. They were not real, living, historical human beings. Doesn’t one think with the fervency of Christian validation by Believers through the sciences, that someone would find the Garden of Eden?

Maybe the messiah concept is based on Ezekiel’s wheel and the space aliens are the messiah Judaism believes in; they are little grey men.

What Jesus said was very instructive and beneficial to creating a just world for all. But Christians are more concerned with oppressing others than loving others.

Christians don’t have the right or the moral authority to force anything on anyone until they first abide by Jesus’ words. One commandment that is fitting today is “Love thy neighbor as thyself”. Many Christians don’t seem to be capable of that.

Greed is one of the biggest problems in the world today. It’s one of the Seven Deadly Sins. Don’t you think Christians would charge around the world battling greed just as Jesus charged into the Temple to battle the money changers who turned his “Father’s house into a den of thieves”?

Gandhi said: “I like your Christ; I do not like your Christians. They are so unlike your Christ.”

”Love your neighbor as yourself” and “the Kingdom of Heaven is within you” are so very relevant today—and much needed. But for much of the rest of it, I believe it is important for humanity to get past these ancient beliefs because they do not serve us properly anymore. It’s like continuing to wear the same shoes as an adult that you wore as an adolescent. They hurt your feet and you cannot walk properly anymore

For those of us with a belief in “god” (I hate the word but it is easily understood by many) we must strip religions down to only what works and what creates a better world and discard the rest. We must only be interested in our spiritual reality. Our spiritual selves are bound by spiritual laws just as our physical selves are bound by physical laws. What really are those spiritual laws? And how do I, by using them, make myself and my world better for myself and others?

So, what next? Well, on to the next end of the world—October 21, 2011. And when that doesn’t happen, on to December 21, 2012.

And don’t blame that on the Maya for that. That’s a modern western interpretation of what is simply the end of a “baktun—a cycle in the calendar— in the Mayan calendar and is not meant to suggest the end of the world as the idiots would have us believe.

As a species we have always been very insecure about our origin, our destiny and our purpose. So we’ve created myths with our ability to reason in our limited ancient minds to answer questions we could not answer with science so long ago. We no longer have those ancient limitations and we must move forward. With globalism and the worldwide web, now is the time that we as humanity and we as a species take a quantum leap forward in understanding our spiritual reality and our true humanity.

Oil Things Must Pass

2011-05-17T00:17:00.000-07:00

I went to the beach last weekend and stepped in a pile of asphalt that had been floating in Santa Monica Bay and had washed ashore after being dumped by a tanker at the oil refineries south of LAX. It made me mad. Oil companies get away with everything, including soiling my shoes.

Last week, the CEOs of the big five oil companies testified before Congress about why they needed their welfare checks while making record money from gambling. Because of Wall Street oil speculators, the price of a barrel of oil is driven up (in some estimates) $44 a barrel to about $100 a barrel.

Speculation has nothing to do with the hands on exploration and production of oil, nor does it have to do with supply and demand. Speculation should be made illegal or heavily regulated. Obama needs to rein in these speculators. He promised in June 2008 that he would do so. Do you think he will now?

Right. On to the next paragraph.

I believe big oil’s Gang of Five should pay for all wars fought in the Middle East. It is as obvious that Libya is not about human rights as it was that Iraq was not about WMD.

I also believe that in wars fought for oil by governments on behalf of oil corporations, the corporations should not only pay for the wars like a business expense, but they and their proxy governments should be liable for damages just like in business, but not like in oil spills. These are blood spills, so they would not be able to be passed on to the taxpayer, consumer and next generation American like BP is doing in the Gulf. Talk about your entitlements!

This means that killing innocent children in their profiteering wars would cost them monetarily in amounts much greater than the 1-2% taxpayer welfare they so hate to lose. One oil executive threatened to move their operation out of the US. I say “Go ahead! Leave! And don’t let your rig hit you in the ass on the way out!”

Necessity is the mother of invention and if America needs to invent a better way to do everything without oil and gas we will.

In fact, is it not a good idea to start a boycott of one of the big five to send a message and scare the hell out of the other four? Of course it is.

And hey, what about the sequel to Who Killed the Electric Car called Revenge of the Electric Car? Try to see it if you can. We need to change the world we live in. Maybe this is a way.

The Mandarin Candidate

2011-05-10T22:13:00.000-07:00

Given that all the Republican candidates are head cases, the only viable Republican seems to be John Huntsman. However….

Yeah, if my beliefs are correct it could be interesting.

Huntsman knows he won’t get the nomination in 2012. But he’s putting his name out there because he knows the Republican-Tea Party self-destruction and the deconstruction of America won’t be tolerated much past 2014 which, by then, the Republican-Tea Party cabal will have brought America to the brink of armed insurrection on a multiple statewide level. That’s right, unemployed gun carrying yahoos firing at the Florida statehouse and governor’s residence (among a few other red states) recalls with extreme prejudice.

If Obama is a shoo-in for re-election because of the Bin Laden killing and other things—and Huntsman knows it—he’s positioning himself to be the best-qualified Republican to run against Hillary in 2016—again, after the coming Republican collapse.

Huntsman went to Wall Street for fundraising, to DC for strategy, and to South Carolina for the Gong Show. Perhaps we can derive from his attempt at a candidacy that the political winds are blowing from a different direction.

Or, perhaps we can derive that Huntsman is just another egotistical politician with delusions of grandeur and the usual maniacal desire for power.

Or, Huntsman is a brainwashed tool of the Chinese—the Mandarin Candidate—come to cart off of America the last of what the Republicans and the corporations have already given them.

Or, perhaps the Koch Brothers are trying a different political strategy—that Huntsman will run as a charming and smart independent to draw votes away from Obama like Perot did in ’92 for Bush 1 and President Richard John Santorum will be sworn in on January 20, 2013.

Children and War

2011-05-05T22:32:00.000-07:00

We are human beings with some control over our shared destiny. The world is getting smaller. We are all becoming closer. I have no misconceptions about being able to end war anytime soon. However, is it not possible for all of us to resolve that children should never ever die in a war?

According to an April 14, 2009 article in The Telegraph, of the people killed in US air strikes whose gender could be determined, 46 percent were women and 39 percent were children. The same article states that a sizable number of children killed in Iraq were killed as part of warfare between ethnic and religious rivals.

Regardless of whether its smart bombs or sectarian bullets, the death of children is wrong. It doesn’t matter if today’s religions consider it a sin or not. When I look around the world I don’t see that today’s major religions are making the world better—in fact, their effect is quite the opposite.

A 1996 report from UNICEF titled “Children in War” stated that “Recent developments in warfare have significantly heightened the dangers for children. During the last decade, it is estimated (and these figures, while specific, are necessarily orders of magnitude) that child victims have included:

2 million killed;

4-5 million disabled;

12 million left homeless;

more than 1 million orphaned or separated from their parents;

some 10 million psychologically traumatized.”

That was from 15 years ago.

And then there are the drug cartels. Last April 9 The Washington Post ran an article titled “Mexican drug cartels targeting and killing children”. Read it. The details are abhorrent.

For children who survive war, there’s The Children and War Foundation. You may be interested in finding out more about them and other similar organizations.

From Qaddafi’s grandchildren last weekend, to all those kids killed in Vietnam, to those Hitler destroyed in camps, to the American Indian children massacred by the US Calvary, to the children Herod killed, to all children killed since the beginning of time, killing children for any reason is wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. There are some things that should be sacred globally. Loving and nurturing children should be high on that sacred list.

The point I’m trying to make is this: I believe we are supposed to evolve and progress into becoming a peaceful and passive species. If others also believe that, can we not choose to progress toward that eventuality? Is it not a mixture of belief and destiny that controls our fate anyway?

And can we not at least resolve to try to protect children as a step toward eradicating war forever and as a step toward that peaceful, passive destiny?

We may not be able to bring peace to the world, but can we not begin to bring limits to war? To scale it back? I may sound naïve. I may be naïve. But to change things for the better, we must start with what is considered impossible.

The global pro-peace, anti-war movement is within all of us. We just have to choose to follow it and build it. It may not be easy, and it may take a long time, but it can be done.

The first, arguably, attainable goal we must make toward realizing that goal is: no more children will be killed in wars for oil. Maybe we should begin counting the price of a barrel of oil not in dollars, but in the number of bodies of dead children.

And we can strengthen that decision by choosing to permanently move away from oil for all its uses and purposes.

Obama sin laden

2011-05-02T21:12:00.000-07:00

Yes, this title, a silly play on words, is intentional.

On Saturday afternoon I was angry at the news that three of Qaddafi’s grandchildren under the age of 12 were killed in a missile attack which also reportedly killed Qaddafi’s son. Then came disagreement in the some parts of the blogos-fear (clever, aren’t I?) whether he was or was not the evil, older son. A cursory view just now of some liberal websites to verify, clarify and research for this writing has become frustrating because the news of Osama’s killing is everywhere in a multitude of aspects and angles serving its purpose as collective conscious and unconscious distraction.

The death of these kids was the result of a NATO strike. But don’t we own NATO? Should we, the superior “Christian valued nation”, firstly, not go to war, and secondly, not kill children? Now here’s the infuriating question: for oil???!!!

The possibility/probability (your choice) that these kids (and many others around the world in many different wars and military and “police” actions we’ve fought) died for oil is on par with being godless…unless our god is oil and/or geopolitical control.

There are human rights abuses in many places around the world and there have been human rights abuses in Libya for a long time. Suddenly the US is involved? Suddenly NATO is passing resolutions and sending missiles?

Oil.

And each and every child killed in a war for oil (or Halliburton or the US Chamber of Commerce or Walmart), the loss of their lives are, each and every one, an unconscionable sin that Obama is quickly becoming laden with.

For oil.

The old adage is fight fire with fire. But sometimes that strategy cannot and should not apply. How can you fight human rights abuses with human rights abuses? And if a NATO missile killing children doesn’t violate these kids’ human rights I don’t know what does.

Oil.

Have I said it enough?

Oil?

Barack Hussein Oilbama.

What a silly word play.

Paul Ryan's Sick Joke

2011-04-28T22:42:00.000-07:00

“A Senior walks into a hospital looking for treatment and steps up to the nurse’s desk. The Nurse asks, ‘May I help you?’ The Senior says, ‘I can’t breathe, I’m coughing up blood and my Paul Ryan-Medicare substitute voucher’s out of money, can you help me?’ The Nurse says, ‘I have some good news and I have some bad news.’ The Senior says, ‘What’s the good news?’ The Nurse says, ‘The good news is I know what’s wrong. You have cancer.’ The Senior says, ‘That’s the good news?? What’s the bad news?’ The Nurse says, ‘The bad news is we could cure you but your voucher’s out of money.’

Because of all the hits yesterday's blog received, I decided to put the joke in its proper context.

Playing the Ol' Class Card

2011-04-27T23:57:00.000-07:00

What’s the future of America, and the world for that matter, when it comes to the widening gulf between the rich and poor?

The recent and continuing attempts to throw off the yoke of dictators, whether Middle Eastern, or Wisconsin anti-union means the “man” ain’t gonna be too happy until they get everyone under submission again.

When Martin Luther King Jr. became the leader of the Civil Rights Movement the concept of “playing the race card” had not been invented because the Civil Rights Movement was creating a whole new deck for a whole new game. Since the 70s, to my memory, there were many times when blacks—and whites for that matter—were accused of “playing the race card”.

The lack of respect for the needs of poor and vulnerable is reaching a fevered pitch in this country. It seems that the time may not be far off when politicians and activists in talking about their concern for poor people and complaining about the lack of respect that Republicans, and some Democrats, have for them that they will be accused of playing the “class card”, or the “poor card”.

For two years, racist jokes about our first black president have been making the circuit on the internet and through emails. And with contempt for the poor and the vulnerable so obvious in the GOP’s push to privatize Medicare, it seems to me we are not far from seeing classist jokes from being discovered in Congressmen’s emails.

For example, jokes like, “A Senior walks into a hospital looking for treatment and steps up to the nurse’s desk. The Nurse asks, ‘May I help you?’ The Senior says, ‘I can’t breathe, I’m coughing up blood and my Paul Ryan-Medicare substitute voucher’s out of money, can you help me?’ The Nurse says, ‘I have some good news and I have some bad news.’ The Senior says, ‘What’s the good news?’ The Nurse says, ‘The good news is I know what’s wrong. You have cancer.’ The Senior says, ‘That’s the good news?? What’s the bad news?’ The Nurse says, ‘The bad news is we could cure you but your voucher’s out of money.’”

God Tells Me

2011-04-13T00:36:00.000-07:00

God tells me that when He created the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, He originally thought to call it the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Kinda Bad but realized that “kinda bad” spelled backward was “dabadnik”, which in Lithuanian means “transmission repair”, and wasn’t as cool as the “evil"/“live” thing.

Lenny Bruce

2011-04-09T00:23:00.000-07:00

For more than 30 years I’ve had some Lenny Bruce albums: “Thank You Masked Man”, “The Berkeley Concert”, “The Law, the Language and Lenny Bruce”. I think I also had “The Sick Humor of Lenny Bruce”, but I believe that got stolen and sold by a heroin addict I used to live with in New York back in 1985.

Ah, those were great days.

Inspired by my friend Dennis Perrin’s stand-up comedy endeavors, and my desire to re-experience my nostalgia-colored “better times”, lately I’ve been buying late-50s early-60s comedy records. There is something about the times. Despite the racism, sexism and other isms back then, there was a sense of style and sophistication in the air. Nightclubs were not discos. Men wore suits and ties, women wore dresses. The ever-present swirl of cigarette smoke gave everything a mystique that Mad Men captures very well, but you had to be there to really understand. Going out then had a specialness to it that seems to be missing in today’s miasmic culture.

The comedians of the time were considered by Time Magazine in an article titled, “COMEDIANS: The Third Campaign”, to be intelligent, insightful and funny. That may seem shocking today, but that’s because it’s been a whole half century of comedy between now and then. And it was those comedians who first inspired and created a more cerebral approach to comedy that led to Richard Pryor, George Carlin, Bill Hicks, Chris Rock, Dave Chappelle, and others.

I have three Mort Sahl albums with another on the way. And I’m seeing, thirty years after falling in love with Lenny Bruce, that I never gave Mort Sahl the credit or exploration he was due. A comparison of Lenny and Mort can be made which would easily complement both. Both were intelligent, instinctual, philosophical, Jewish and quick, but Lenny was more conceptual while Mort was more of a straight commentator and analyst. Lenny did voices and characters. Mort did not. Lenny did heroin. Mort did not.

The world is different today. But it hasn’t changed that much in fifty years. And there are enough problems of today that comedy today would have enough material to talk about with meaning and laughs. I would love to see a renaissance of a type of comedy that was intelligent and philosophical and funny. But comedy today is ruled by forces I don’t understand. It’s too controlled and sanitized in this 21st century way. Comedy in the Fifties was sanitized too. My point is maybe that renaissance of intelligent, topical, philosophical comedy may be just over the horizon.

So, for all you future comedians of the renaissance, let me do my part by saying: explore Mort Sahl, Dick Gregory and Lenny Bruce see how they did it. I will write a post about Sahl and Gregory in the near future, but this is about Lenny.

Lenny was impish. He had a child-like quality about him. He had fun being in front of an audience. He did funny voices and made himself laugh. But Lenny was deep. He would do bits about kids sniffing airplane glue to get high. No one did that back then. That gave Lenny an air of danger that made him—what that’s word everyone loves to use?—oh, yeah, Lenny was “controversial”.

Lenny did bits about religion, racism, sex, drugs and popular culture. And these were structured bits with a narrative. Observational humor is great, but Lenny’s “Religions Incorporated” is a classic comedy bit no matter who did it. “How to Relax Your Colored Friends at Parties” was genius because the character Lenny played in the bit said everything every white person was thinking who went to an integrated party in the late 50s, early 60s. The Carnegie Hall Concert is my favorite because Lenny is so relaxed and philosophical. And he isn’t chasing after laughs. He is preaching with humor.

Lenny became a target of the popular culture and they drove him to his death. As detailed in the HBO documentary Lenny Bruce: Swear to Tell the Truth, Lenny exposed an offer of a bribe, which was a basis of the persecution he suffered. However, his ideas must have been the wood society built at his feet when they burned Lenny at the stake. That’s what they did to heretics in the old days. And they considered Lenny a heretic because Lenny was effective.

So much has been written about Lenny, there is nothing I can add of value. All I can say is Lenny feels very comfortable like an old friend. He reminds me of a time when I was young and hopeful and amazed by so much of the world.

Here are a few of what is available of Lenny on YouTube. The first is Lenny on Steve Allen.

This is the first of seven parts of the Lenny Bruce Performance Film which was performed shortly before Lenny died and is available on DVD.

Remi Gaillard

2011-04-03T23:33:00.000-07:00

In my opinion, the best humor has an element of anarchy to it. About a month ago, my friend Guillaume wanted me to watch some videos of Remi Gaillard, beginning more than ten years ago. I’m naturally skeptical when someone wants me to see something because they think I will like it, but, as with my friend Dennis and Lily Tomlin’s “Glenna--A Child of the 60s” back in the winter of 1982, I found myself laughing very hard.

Gaillard is French and very talented with a soccer ball. In fact, his most notable prank was participating in the victorious celebrations from a soccer game disguised as a player and meeting then-president of France, Jacques Chirac. And as this video, titled “Foot”, shows, his talent for kicking a ball is in many ways as skilled and amazing as Will Rogers talent with a rope.

But the anarchy comes when Gaillard takes his talent for kicking a soccer ball and applies it to the police. Watch the Montpelier gendarmes chase Gaillard down the street, only to give up.

Gaillard has been arrested many times. But he doesn’t rely solely on his skill with a ball to get laughs or amaze. And, like good slapstick, what makes Gaillard’s comedy so funny is that the pain is real, as you will see with the police at the end of this video.

The sight of two policemen tackling and restraining a man dressed in a butterfly outfit is hilarious. But the seriousness of the situation, which is even funnier to me, is underscored when the cameraman begins running away.

But Gaillard’s anarchy is not just perpetrated upon the police; it has also been perpetrated upon one of America’s most world-famous multi-national corporations.

Even French people and establishments were targets of Gaillard and his associates. And again, it’s funnier when you know the pain is real.

It beats the hell out of “Jackass”, don’t ya think?

If you’re interested in seeing more Remi Gaillard videos, visit his website.

Happy April Fool's

2011-04-01T00:27:00.001-07:00

At the meeting pictured above exactly one year ago today, Obama reportedly said to Qaddafi: "In one year I'm going to bomb your country--just kidding, April Fool's!!!"

Lately, I've been having a desire to return to the blog I left so abruptly nearly a year and a half ago. Some things in my life, like the death of my father, to whom a Father's Day tribute launched this endeavor, have changed. Some things have not changed so much.

There is nothing special about this particular post except to reintroduce me to the process. Happy April Fool's Day, everybody.

Terrorists In Our Army? Are They Muslim or Christian?

2009-11-13T00:02:00.000-08:00

Hasan looks nuts. He doesn’t look like a terrorist. The look on his face says goofy. It reminds me of Oliver North. Was North a terrorist?

Oh, yeah, I guess he was, wasn’t he?

But North wasn’t a terrorist in the way Muhammad Atta was. Atta certainly didn’t have that pseudo-goofy look at Hasan has. Atta could scare people in a horror movie without an axe, a chainsaw or a hockey mask.

In the other photo Hasan looks like Marlon Brando as Kurtz in “Apocalypse Now”. From all accounts so far, Hasan was psychopathic not terroristic.

Michigan gubernatorial candidate and House Intelligence Committee ranking Republican and overall spiller of national secrets, Pete Hoekstra was on Fox yesterday trying to drive home the false point and expand the foundation of this phony issue that Hasan murdering GIs last week was terrorism.

Beck, Hannity and O’Reilly are all trying to beat the same drum—that terrorists in the military is the new Communists in the State Department is the new Kenyans in the White House.

And we know how that’s going.

Idiots.

Chenemy Combatant

2009-11-11T00:03:00.000-08:00

How long is it going to be before Dick and Liz get on Fox or Strapon-opoulos and complain that Obama is to blame for Major Hasan shooting American servicemen at Fort Hood, or complain that Obama secretly and personally encouraged Major Hasan to shoot those servicemen, or complain that Obama secretly shot those servicemen posing as Major Hasan.

Given the nature of these conspiracies, which have not yet been offered by Dick and Liz, I have a conspiracy of my own.

What if Dick used his contacts at the CIA to turn Hasan into a MK-Ultra killer just to be able to try to convince the American people that we are not safe with Obama—the same vaudeville act he and his daughter have been doing for months now, not realizing that vaudeville died long ago.

Or, what if Dick and George developed Hasan into an MK-Ultra killer way back in 2007 and his programming leapt to the “kill stage”?

Michigan Republican Pete Hoekstra, who sits on the House Intelligence Committee yesterday revealed that our intelligence community had been monitoring the emails between Hasan and Yemeni imam and Al Qaeda Tupperware party organizer, Anwar al Awlaki. He reportedly has also launched an investigation.

This comes as a surprise to the Pentagon, which was never told about the monitoring of Hasan. Hoekstra claims the Obama administration is purposefully withholding information on Hasan.

What a fucking opportunist! He is also running for the governorship of Michigan and wants to use these scare tactics to get elected, assuring Michiganers that he is hard on terrorists so he’ll definitely be able to protect the Great Lakes State from Canadians.

Like Hoekstra, Cheney is also running…to stay out of jail for torture and other crimes against humanity, and is using scare tactics—therefore, terrorism—to scare Americans into protecting him from being forced to wear the orange jumpsuit.

Hurry up, Spain!!

The photo above is not only the product of wishful thinking, it is also a tool of visualization for all you people who can bend reality in accordance to their will based on the images they focus their incredible concentrative mental powers on with candles, crystals and psilocybin.

The Astro Turfer

2009-11-10T00:01:00.000-08:00

Like the Silver Surfer, Marvel Comics has introduced its new comic book character, the Astro Turfer, seen here with a hangover after a night on the town hall meeting.

While the Silver Surfer roams the galaxy looking for planets for Galactus to consume, the Astro Turfer roams the U.S. looking for health care discussions to obliterate with screaming and shouting.

The Silver Surfer’s work stems from his profession, an astronomer, and his identity is known as Norrin Radd, while the Astro Turfer’s work stems from his role as someone against health care for all.

And while no one knows the Astro Turfer’s identity, many suspect him to be either Joe Lieberman or Barack Obama.

Baa Baa Barack Sheep

2009-11-06T00:00:00.000-08:00

There is no blog today. Have a good weekend and remember: one of those sheep up there may be Obama waiting for Marine One to land and for health care reform to be finished.

e(lection dis)Harmony.com

2009-11-05T00:15:00.000-08:00

Does Tuesday mean it's over between them?

Keeping Eyes on the Prize

2009-11-04T00:01:00.000-08:00

According to MSNBC Obama was not a factor in the New Jersey and Virginia gubernatorial races. In fact, to extrapolate on that assessment, Obama doesn’t seem to be a factor in much of anything these days—certainly not health care reform.

However, Palin, Beck, Limbaugh and Armey may have been a factor in the very telling election in New York State’s 23rd district. Their candidate, Doug Hoffman, looking like someone arrested on “Dateline: To Catch a Predator” conceded, handing a victory to a Democrat in that district for the first time since the Civil War.

The strange thing about all the brouhaha raised by conservatives in getting Hoffman into the New York 23 race is that district gets absorbed by surrounding Democratic districts in a redistricting based on the 2010 census.

I can’t wait to hear how Beck, Limbaugh and Palin spin the Hoffman loss. Gingrich ought to have a bit of fun with this. Let’s keep the civil war going.

For Democrat losses, Chris Christie is said to be a moderate, a fiscal conservative but not a social conservative, so the Tea Baggers will not make any real headway there until they put tremendous pressure on him and he caves to Birther demands, if that happens.

Bob O’Donnell effectively refused Palin and her brand of conservatism and won anyway over a weak Democrat. However, she will probably take credit for his victory.

Jon Corzine was apparently an unappealing incumbent. His approval was at 39%. There is speculation that his connection to Goldman Sachs may have contributed to his downfall in addition to other issues. The voters are tired of Wall Street.

Bloomberg got a run for his money, literally, by someone without much political power or billionaire bank account. Bloomberg is also another incumbent and is associated with Wall Street.

Bloomberg and Corzine are connected to Wall Street. This does not bode well for Obama in 2010 if he does not get the economy going by then or does not punish Wall Street more harshly than Geithner and the boys have so far.

While the losses of Corzine and Deeds do not necessarily presage the future of the Democratic Party, they do presage the future of similar Democrat candidates—those weak Democrats like Harry Reid, Blanche Lincoln and others who refuse to be tough.

Reid wants to wait until next year on health care. Obama’s response will probably be, “Well, if you say so.”

Some believe this is a bad idea. I entertain the possibility that they want to move Republican refusal to participate in an historic piece of bad bill legislation that the vast majority of Americans want, despite all that poser Tea Bagger nonsense in July and August, as close to the primaries as possible.

A year ago tonight the great Anarchist of Ann Arbor and I discussed our beliefs that the first party to split, thereby creating a third party, would be the Republicans. We may be seeing that materialize right before our eyes. The Tea Baggers will be so incensed by Hoffman’s loss in New York that they will come back in greater numbers and intensity in 2010.

But the Democrats beginning to split between progressive and conservative may become the speculative talk of 2012 if not sooner.

A possible Democrat strategy for 2010—or simply my delusion—is the Democrats may be hoping the conservative wing of the Republican Party will defeat a sufficient number of Republicans in 2010 primaries so that Democrats gain the Republican seat easily in the general election a year from now.

I do not know what the issue for the 2010 general will be right now that will separate the Democrats from the Tea Bagger/Birthers. Certainly health care reform should be decided in favor of the insurance companies by then. There is still time.

And maybe that strategy applies to conservative Democrats as well. Goodbye Lincoln, Bayh and those in the House too numerous to mention. The delusion disclaimer is still in effect.

One thing I believe this election says loud and clear is: Democrats get off your asses, get some guts and do the right things before 2010.

Obama, this means you too.

The Wrong Things

2009-11-03T00:01:00.000-08:00

How is it that in a country of 300 million-plus, in a representative democracy of 535 Senators and Representatives, that one man can “kill” something that benefits, well, according to an AP story over the weekend, a whopping two percent of our population.

Well, everybody’s talking about Joe Lieberman exercising his option in the Senate to filibuster this extremely weak health care reform bill that will benefit almost no one which progressives have promised to bend over and vote for just to be loyal democrats.

And Obama talks about how hard change is. While he made small and medium advances on his agenda, his legacy will most likely be judged (by me) on health care reform, Afghanistan, Iraq and the economy. How many times have I and others tried to get him out of the White House and involved in the health care reform process.

But he didn’t and now Lieberman may wreck all that change Obama promised way back when. Didn’t Obama reach out to Lieberman earlier this year and convince democratic leadership to give ol’ Joe some important committee chairmanship, like Homeland Security?

I never graduated Harvard and I’ve never been elected president, but even I knew bi-partisanship was bullshit. Sure, change is hard—especially if you keep fucking it up from the beginning.

Right now I’m watching “The Right Stuff”, the 1983 Phillip Kaufman film based on the 1979 book by Tom Wolfe. And while the film may have taken some artistic license and emphasized the pilot over the scientists and the politicians who made it happen, the fact is without the pilots’ expertise, how different would the space program have been. Armstrong’s piloting of the LEM on the moon with only a few seconds of fuel is a perfect example.

A couple of months ago while watching “Serpico” I wrote that we needed a Frank Serpico in Congress to clean it up and get rid of the corruption.

Now I’m writing that we need a new generation of politicians with, you guessed it, the right stuff.

These new politicians would hold with pride, dignity and integrity, the weighty meaning and solemn responsibility of the office which they would hold. They would be leather jacket-wearing, gum chewing, whiskey drinking courageous hotshots who would push the boundaries, just as Yeager broke the sound barrier, of creating and enacting legislation that helps the people, just like all the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo astronauts who also did what no one did before them.

American space exploration since Kennedy’s call to action drew qualified and fearless men and women to the mission.

But when Obama called for Change, no one—not even Obama himself—seems to have heeded that call. With Kennedy’s announcement about the moon shot, we made it to the moon many times. But in this analogy, with Obama’s call for health care reform, we exploded just above the launch tower.

Until we can get some politicians with the right stuff, it may suffice if Obama would simply put Joe Lieberman on the moon.

An Obvious Lie

2009-10-30T00:11:00.000-07:00

GOP secret revealed: Republicans don’t want a public option or health care for the poor (including poor white Tea Baggers) because they know there is a Swine Flu vaccine shortage and they want poor people to die from H1N1.

Huffington Post ran a story about Dana Perrino and Swine Flu vaccine shortage which conservative critics of the public option are using as proof that the government cannot run a health care program despite the fact that Medicare, Congressional health care and the military are all government-run.

But what these “conservative critics” failed to mention is the secret and real reason the GOP doesn’t want a public option or health care for everyone or to approve Obama’s nominee for Surgeon General is they know there is a shortage of the Swine Flu vaccine and they want to capitalize on that fact.

Conservative Republicans don’t want poor people to have health care through a public option, but especially single payer, because they want poor people who are uninsured to die from Swine Flu because they know that means there will be more vaccine for the rich.

Republicans want poor people to be forced to die from Swine Flu.

What they also won’t tell you is that Swine Flu re-emerged during the Bush Administration and was re-named “H1N1” because they believed poor people were so uneducated that they would get confused about its meaning.

The “h” and “n” are said to mean “have nots”—the poor in America. 11 means 11 million which is the number of poor in America they hope will die.

Republicans will deny this because they are Republicans and love the rich.

Ask Cheney, Palin, Beck and Limbaugh why they hate the poor and want them to die from Swine Flu and see how they deny it and change the subject by accusing Obama of being Hitler-ish.

Be sure to wash your hands after shaking mitts with a Republican or Blue Dog—they may be trying to infect you if they think you are poor.

There is even some speculation that Rush Limbaugh has become addicted to the vaccine which means the shortage will only increase in the coming months.

There is also speculation that Glenn Beck uses his show to mind control Republicans in the Senate to hold up Obama’s Surgeon General nomination because he too hates poor people because he thinks they’re crybabies about their “disadvantage”.

Senators or Cynictors?

2009-10-29T00:03:00.000-07:00

I get angry when I watch the news about health care reform, then I become fatigued by the anger. Unh…I, I…need to go lie down….

I am tired of all this legalized corruption and legalized bribery that enables Senators Joe Lieberman and Evan Bayh, among many others, to sabotage health care for Americans who need it because of campaign contributions from the health insurance industry.

I for one think we should call our Congresspoersons and tell then we sincerely believe their adult male of large mammal feces.

What a great photo above, eh. While Jesse Helms took pride in being called “Senator No!”, I think Ben Nelson may take offense at being called “Senator Nose”.

Okay, my apologies—wait, what?—oh, another one:

I don’t know which Ben Nelson is less capable of—health care reform or hair care reform? I mean, is that a really bad toupé or are his hair weaves made of wool?

Badaboom!

But seriously, Obama worked hard to get Lieberman the Chairmanship of Homeland Security. Was this Obama’s attempt to show forgiveness and induce his prized bi-partisanship? Did Rahm make him do it? I don’t get Obama anymore. Is there a Quija board in the White House?

Salon writer Glenn Greenwald was on Rachel Maddow last night (FF to 5:30) and revealed that Bayh’s wife sits on the board of Wellpoint and they own nearly a million dollars of Wellpoint stock and, consequently, Bayh may vote to filibuster for reasons of “fiscal responsibility”.

Obama wanted bi-partisanship but he got Bayh-partisanship. Obama promised transparency, but the only thing completely visible are these guys’ true motives in denying reform.

Bayh and Lieberman should be investigated not only by the Senate Ethics Committee but by the FBI.

The American people (are you listening, progressives—I mean, reading?) need to remember what these Senators have done with their elected responsibility and vote them out. They are corrupt, they do not care about people and they are a cancer.

I will say it louder.

They are a cancer in the body of America!

We need health reform just to cure us of them.

Voting. That’s the real public option.

Single payer!

Single payer!

Single payer!

Single payer!

Back on the Cheney Gang

2009-10-26T00:07:00.000-07:00

Dick Cheney attacking Obama for not creating more war is an awfully unnecessary charade.

At least George Will had the clarity of vision to say yesterday on George Stephanopoulos that he wished Cheney and Bush had dithered more before invading Iraq where there were no weapons of mass destruction.

But it wasn’t about WMD or terrorist connections anyway, it was about destroying Iraq so KBR could profit from taxpayer paid military logistical support and Halliburton could profit from taxpayer paid contracts to rebuild the oil plants and infrastructure.

The angle of war profiteering seems never to surface in any mainstream media analysis of Cheney’s statements, or his motives for making those statements. His daughters are only surrogates in this tactic.

It seems to me all the Cheneys want is war, war, war and the multi-billion dollar profits that go with it, and they will stop at nothing to get it. Cheney’s war profiteering connection to Halliburton and its subsidiaries, including KBR, must be examined by the media daily, making Cheney answer to questions about his true motives.

According to the Cheney/Halliburton chronology that appears in Halliburton Watch, KBR was under investigation by the SEC for its accounting practices way back in 1998 while Cheney headed Halliburton. KBR paid $7.5 million in fines and was allowed to continue, promising it would no longer commit or cause future securities violations. How they were allowed to participate in Iraq in ways that killed soldiers and raped contractors must be due to Cheney.

A quick read through shows how Halliburton made money through contracts with Iran and Libya, which violated a US ban on trading with nations which sponsored state terrorism.

This should fall under Michelle Bachmann’s call on “Hardball” a year ago for an “in-depth exposé” of un-American members of Congress and other parts of the government. To send American men and women to their death just for billions in profit is criminal and un-American.

Fox does exposés on ACORN, but do they have the balls to expose Cheney and the war profiteering of Halliburton, KBR and other defense contractors in determining military policies?

For that matter would MSNBC be allowed to run with that story given that their owner, General Electric, is also a major defense contractor? Doubtful.

CNN? Ha! They confuse passivity with fairness.

Cheney doesn’t care about America. If he did, he would not have steered Iran Contra House Committee Chairman Lee Hamilton away from the drug aspect of that anti-American scandal from those patriotic posers, Reagan, North, Bush, Poindexter, et al.

I remember a couple of years ago when security for American ports was being outsourced to a company from the United Arab Emirates, Dubai Ports World, and Americans went ape shit until the government prevented that from happening and gave it secretly to another company based in the Middle East.

Perhaps if Americans fully realized how Halliburton and its subsidiaries were compromising US military lives through their corruption—nah, it would never work unless Americans felt the fear somehow that Halliburton, through greed, was allowing Middle Eastern countries and possibly terrorists compromising our security by exploiting and bribing Halliburton CEOs in the UAE.

Well…??

With Halliburton moving to the UAE to allegedly avoid answering to US government investigations, maybe someone needs to explain this to the American people in the context that Cheney wants war in Afghanistan so his dear Halliburton and their subsidiaries can profit secretly through a maze of back door connections.

Halliburton, KBR and the other subsidiaries have proven they have no morals or scruples or love of country, and Cheney, as their former CEO and Chairman, is doing as ex-vice president what he was doing as Chairman and CEO—manipulating America for war profits.

Maybe one day, because of Cheney and Halliburton, calling someone a capitalist will have the same insultative (new word) meaning as calling someone a socialist. What Halliburton does is not capitalism, its “crapitalism” or “corrupitalism”.

Okay, now I’m becoming too, too clever—or annoying. But not like Cheney.

Somebody get Spain on the phone. Tell them to hurry up and put Cheney on trial for war crimes before he starts another war in his New American world domination Century.

Johnny Carson

2009-10-23T01:28:00.000-07:00

It is customary in blogland to honor someone on the day they died rather than on the anniversary of their birth. But who knows if I will be doing this in January and I want to take this opportunity to pay tribute to someone who I admired greatly as a child and young man, someone who helped determine the direction of my life.

Two hosts of the Tonight Show and nearly seventeen and a half years ago, Johnny Carson left the Tonight Show and I cried. Nearly six years ago he died and I cried again. I had a few male role models when I was growing up and Johnny Carson was one of the biggest.

As I mentioned here once before, I first heard the sounds of the Tonight Show from the other room when my father would come home from work more than forty years ago and settle in front of our old 16 inch black and white television with the antenna and bad reception with a Pepsi and a box of Cheezits and laugh.

Carson began the Tonight Show when America was a completely different country.

He was on television every night before the Civil Rights movement was subjected to the violence it endured in Birmingham, the murder of Medgar Evers, the March on Washington. The same day Carson took over the Tonight Show, James Meredith enrolled at the University of Mississippi—the resulting riots about which caused JFK to send 5,000 federal troops to quell the violence.

He was on every night before JFK was assassinated and while all the assassinations that followed throughout the 60s, including the murder of Lennon (who he knew) in 1980 and the attempt on Reagan in 1981.

He was on every night before JFK ramped up Vietnam and through its end in 1975 and all the years after while America came to terms with exactly what Vietnam was and what it meant to our divided country.

He was on before JFK made us all aware of the Cuban Missile Crisis and left the Tonight Show several months after the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

He was on before the 60s counterculture grew and on to the early-90s nostalgia of 60s counterculture.

In this space, I have written about the power of popular culture to transform our world politically—especially specific entertainers, like Michael Jackson and the Beatles. The same can be said for Carson. His easy humor and gentle charm got us through all the difficult moments during his thirty years on the air mentioned above and many more.
And it is for having enabled us to cope by being there every night (except Mondays, guest hosts and vacations) that Carson was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1992 and honored by the Kennedy Center in 1993 for his contribution to American culture.

Carson saw America through one of the more difficult periods in our history, save for the Revolution, the Civil War, the Depression and World War Two.

It can be argued that Carson helped facilitate some of the transformation America went through with regards to Civil Rights because he launched the careers and gave valuable national exposure to so many black entertainers like Bill Cosby, Redd Foxx, Flip Wilson, Richard Pryor—and that’s just comedy. Let’s not forget Sammy Davis Jr., Ike and Tina Turner, Muhammad Ali.

Carson was the last Tonight Show host, and one of the last talk shows hosts other than Dick Cavett, to feature authors and scientists and thinkers back when the Tonight Show was 90 minutes and some even after it became an hour long.

While Carson did showcase some members of the counterculture, his biggest contribution in this area was helping to launch or strengthen the careers of those like the Smothers Brothers who would feature the alternative mindset through humor and music.

Had the nameless (and brainless) NBC executive not decided to erase the entire Tonight Show tapes from the 60s, we would obviously had a better idea of Carson’s 60s legacy. Instead, the legacy with which we are most familiar is after the show moved from New York to Burbank and became more focused on Hollywood entertainment for its guest list, and may be deemed as more showbizzy. If we had his 60s Tonight Shows, we may have had a better idea of how great his achievement on American television really was.

Perhaps the closest we can come to that is the show with Bob Hope, Dean Martin, Judy Carne and George Gobel from 1969. The segment where Gobel is doing his bit and Dean Martin keeps flicking his cigarette ashes in Gobel’s plastic cup without his knowledge is at the end of this post.

At one time, he was the highest paid person on television and its most powerful person. As Jackie Mason said upon Carson’s death, “He will go down as the most powerful personality in the history of that whole damn box.”

Carson owned the Tonight Show while hosting it and he never let NBC executives control him as Leno and O’Brien were forced to tolerate. Carson walked in 1967 for more money and when he returned after NBC caved to his demands, he remarked that NBC stood for “Nobody But Carson”.

Carson monologue was the daily group therapy session for the country as we navigated 30 years of turmoil and recovery. Carson’s gentle humor appealed to so many on almost all sides of the political spectrum.

Many people allayed their fears during his monologues, conceived their hopes and made plans to realize their dreams by seeing others do it through their first appearance on his show.

While I did not think all of Carson’s attempts at sketches and characters fit his style and some of his conceptual humor was obviously borrowed from Letterman’s Late Night show, and may have been an obvious stretch to capture younger viewers, his comedic strength was obviously his conversational wit and ability to poke fun at himself and his failed monologue jokes.

Carson was an intelligent man who had a tremendous appreciation for the comedy and show business icons and institutions that came before. Because of the length of his tenure, he was a bridge to almost all that came before.

He had an easy-going style and charm, a handsome face with soothing, twinkling eyes. Everything about Carson to me as a kid when I regularly started watching him in the early 70s was perfect. There was no other place to find spontaneous humor. He was kind and quick with guests.

He mocked Watergate almost mercilessly in his own style. He may have done the same with Iran Contra but I was unable to watch him regularly then because of the tenuousness of my daily existence in New York back then.

I was so taken by Carson that I sent him Carnak jokes when I was 13 and did oil portraits of he, McMahon and Severinsen also when I was 13 or 14 and was going to send them but didn’t.

I became a disc jockey at the age of 19 because Carson started in radio. I developed a comic style long ago first borrowed from Carson, then others.

In 1980 I told Jay Leno in his dressing room where a bunch of local comics, including former “Family Feud” host, Ray Combs, were discussing comedy and show business when Leno was opening for Perry Como when he asked what my career aspirations were, that I wanted to take over the Tonight Show, but not from Carson—I wanted to take over from the person who took over from Carson.

Obviously I blew that opportunity this past June, or way back in 1993, or way back in 1980, depending on how you think show business works and what you know of me.

A dream came true in 1984 when I appeared on the Tonight Show in March of that year via videotape as a Bad Mime character for a Robert Klein segment from New York for “NBC’s Bloopers and Practical Jokes”. The part was created by a former David Letterman writer and friend. Carson laughed loudly at my only line and that filled me with endless joy and a sense of accomplishment. I sent the videotape to a former performer friend and never got it back.

Because of Carson’s gentle style and institutional status he was mocked by some in the 70s who did a harder-edged comedy and mocked as well in his later years on the Tonight Show because he was an older institution and therefore a target of ridicule by some younger comedians who now don’t seem to even have a career.

Carson’s wit, timing and encyclopedic memory always made him better than his material. He almost always stepped outside the material, mostly with just a look. Had he trusted newer comedy writers his could have expanded his appeal in later years. But he always trusted older comedy and never seemed to want to explore. His older writers did not seem to be able to handle the Letterman style of humor.

I wish those who release the Best of Carson DVDs would just repeat the shows as they were on Comedy Central or some other cable channel. I also wish they would go back into the early 70s and release more material from those shows.

Watching a Best of DVD right now, the comedy seems timely, like the shows I am watching that are thirty years old now were taped this evening.

The genius of Carson’s longevity is that his humor was witty, spontaneous and intelligent with just enough playful silliness on good nights. That’s why he worked well with animals, children, old people and average Americans.

And he was more than just a comedian he was also a showman as well as an intelligent conversationalist. He had a personality which was magnetic and with which one could easily identify, which harkens back to old show business, rather than simply being a performer. You knew Carson, or wanted to know him.

He understood what entertainment really was and he endeavored to bring the best to his audiences for thirty years. He loved to laugh which helped him as an entertainer because he entertained himself. He also admired clever and inventive comedians and gave them every break he could.

He left when he knew it was time and he never looked back. That made his legacy even greater because he had integrity, while single-handedly spawning the next generation of late night American television talk show comedy.

He’d be 84 today.

Vote Yes on Rape

2009-10-22T00:08:00.000-07:00

I have known several women who were victims of rape and child sexual abuse. I have a deep sensitivity to the effect it has on women—and men for that matter.

But this post is not about the Jamie Leigh Jones case, but rather the political fallout from the vote on the Franken Amendment to the 2010 Defense Appropriations bill. I state this up front so as not to seem insensitive.

So, having said that, I have said in this space two or three times before that if Democrats and/or progressives work real hard in 2010 they could unseat a few Republican Senators and Representatives over health care reform because they were so blatantly against the will of the people.

Now, another issue has emerged to further batter them into oblivion—30 of their Senators having voted against the Franken Amendment which prevents government contracts from being awarded to companies that prevent—as KBR did—employees from suing their employers for rape and assault.

The case of Jamie Leigh Jones is particularly egregious because it shows the arrogance of contractors under the Bush Administration’s fatal folly in Iraq such as Blackwater seeming to, literally, get away with murder. It also shows the arrogance and insensitivity of Republican lawmakers who are used to voting like this in a business as usual/status quo approach.

But there is a backlash against the 30 Senators. In newspapers in their states, editorials are popping up against the Senators’ votes throughout the Midwest and the South.

This is exciting news because it is Republican Senators being called out by constituents in their own conservative communities.

I particularly hope Saxby Chambliss of George is defeated because of his Swift Boat-style dirty tricks against Max Cleland in the 2002 election.

An Obama strategy I saw in an Associated Press story was to appeal to women on health care to get reform passed. With this horrific story revealing the relationship between contractors and the Republican side of our government in the “terror-industrial complex”, Obama may have an opportunity to change business as usual in Washington and Democrats may have an opportunity to also change business as usual in Washington.

Right now the Republicans are not only imploding and exploding but they are doing it to themselves by themselves and not from anything the Democrats are forcing upon them.

Imagine what can happen when Democrats and progressives begin working to defeat them in the 2010 elections. Republicans are simply on the wrong side of issues that benefit the American people and that has to be the basis of election strategies in the midterm.

This is why progressives have to organize, fundraise and work hard to defeat Charles Grassley, Tom Coburn, David Vitter, Johnny Isakson and Mike Crapo. They may lose Harry Reid but still be able to gain seats if they lose no others.

And if progressives really work hard there are a few Democrats who should be defeated as well. Unfortunately, Ben Nelson, Kent Conrad and Max Faucus (cheap joke) are not running.

I think Democrats should throw the controversy surrounding this vote in the face of the Cheneys and make them shut up.

The Fox and the Henhouse

2009-10-21T00:15:00.000-07:00

Much is being made about Obama’s Henhouse taking on the Fox. Suspicion and doubt is easier than the patience of waiting to see how a game plays out. Presently, Obama is taking on the radical right and pointing out what fakes Fox is.

However, one way of looking at this is it creates the illusion that Obama is the good ol’ liberal we knew we elected and secretly he using this Fox attack as a distraction as we get to the crucial time when he, the health insurance industry and participating Democrats drown the public option like nine year olds pouring water on an ant hill. Obama says he “prefers” a public option but won’t demand it. Yet, most everyone I trust says quite correctly that without a public option it is not real reform.

Either Obama is playing a very sophisticated strategy in pursuit of the promises he made last year or he is slowly selling us out.

As the Kinks sang, “Paranoia will destroy ya”, however there are possible realities we must consider just to understand the terrain of the whole battle field.

His ratings dropped fifteen points in the polls recently on health care at the same time the polls attest that most Americans want a public option more than they want bipartisanship.

I think the Obama Henhouse has sniffed the air and smelled the change in the direction the wind is blowing, which means they know Americans are tired of his delaying delivering on his promises. They are afraid the American people are soon to be as vocal about a public option as gays are for Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.

Obama gets close to the issues in which he made impassioned campaign promises about and then all he does is make a speech.

He’s made a speech about DADT, he’s made speeches about health care reform, especially in admiring the not necessary to be admired Olympia Snowe vote, and on and on.

Sometimes I get the feeling he’s stalling for time until the Supreme Court rules that corporations are people too and he’s given the signal by his overlords to declare martial law, force us all into corporate labor camps, work co-ops and employment pools while being forced to buy their health insurance or imprisoned, forced to buy their products or fired and forced to fight in their wars to take oil, uranium and water, and nuke Iran, Russia and make an uneasy peace with China.

That’s the new America for the new American Century.

What’s the difference between a neo-con and a paranoiac? Paranoiacs don’t get political appointments, they only get elected.

Obama and Fox has repercussions. As Craig Crawford said on Olbermann tonight, it only makes Fox bigger. It means they will mobilize the conservative vote in 2010 and take House and Senate seats away from Democrats.

Another way of looking at that is: by turning up the heat on Fox, and with mid-terms at stake, it may serve to further divide the Republican Party so that the far right breaks off and neither trusts the other and they cannot get their act together to mount any sort of solid opposition to Democrats.

But, if Obama was truly interested in skewering Fox for its bias, why doesn’t he next go after CNN for its bias as well, or for it simply being ridiculous in covering certain issues.

Obama changing how the major media in this country performs its democratic function and inform our citizenry would be something I could believe in.

I’m waiting for him to tell us we just couldn’t get a public option and blame it on Fox’s influence on the Teabaggers and the Teabaggers’ influence on Congress—which we all know is a lie.

Muslim Interns

2009-10-20T00:03:00.000-07:00

Much is being made on the right about Muslim interns infiltrating Congress.

Oh, the hypocrisy.

Back in the 70s, Reverend Moon Shine’s Out His Ass had a plan which he implemented where he was going to put sexy young women in the offices of Congressmen and those women would convert the Congressmen into Moonies and obey Moon’s commands in his quest to rule America.

According to Wikipedia, “In 1977 and 1978, a subcommittee of the United States Congress led by Congressman Donald M. Fraser conducted an investigation of South Korea – United States relations and produced a report that included 81 pages about Moon and what the subcommittee termed "the Moon Organization." The Fraser committee found that the KCIA [the Korean Central Intelligence Agency] decided to use the Unification Church as a political tool within the United States and that some Unification Church members worked as volunteers in Congressional offices.”

This made Moon an enemy to the United States. Moon is still powerful and well-respected within far right Republican and Christian Right groups—the very club that Representatives Sue Myrick, John Shadegg and Paul Broun belong to. Apparently this started with World Net Daily, which is obviously so myopic, bigoted and fervent they cannot see what damage lobbyists are doing to Congress compared to Muslim interns.

Oh, the hypocrisy.

Oh, the paranoia.

Oh, the book sales.

According to Suhail Khan, a former Capitol Hill staffer and political appointee of George Bush on Rachel Maddow, this all began as a way to sell the book that Sue Myrick admitted to writing the forward for, “Muslim Mafia”.

CAIR is the new ACORN.

Many of you may be too young to remember a young Iranian parliamentarian named Yusuf Makarti who, back in the 70s, tried to make a name and career for himself by claiming Christians were secretly infiltrating the Revolutionary Guard.

He became very powerful and preyed on the anti-Christian paranoia that gripped Iran during the decade in which they lost their lovable Shah.

Do ya feel me? Do ya get me?

Iranian-Canadian journalist Maziar Bahari was released on bail today.

Persepolis

2009-10-19T00:09:00.000-07:00

I got back a little while ago from Santa Barbara and have not had the time to put into a piece about Obama being a wimp on the public option.

While up there, my friend and co-writer Rinde on our honor killing script, had me watch Persepolis, an animated feature by Marjane Satrapi, based on her graphic novel, and Vincent Parannoud that was nominated for a 2008 Academy Award for best Animated Feature. The English version stars the voices of Gena Rowlands, Sean Penn and Iggy Pop.

The story is based on Ms. Satrapi’s life beginning with her childhood in Iran before the fall of the Shah and how the changing Iran affected her life and the lives of those around her. It is funny, and sad and enlightening.

Neo-cons and other idiots, like John Bolton, would have us go to war with Iran because of the religious regime and the nuclear power/bomb controversy, Persepolis allows one to identify with people in Iran, through the story of Marji. Her ups and downs and fears, doubts and confusion mirror our own. But what Marji survives, we in America could never comprehend because we have not been controlled by a ruthless dictator, nor have we had a strict religious government control every aspect of our society and our country—yet (give the tea baggers another four-five years)—and we have never been at war and had our family members killed by the authorities simply for their beliefs.

As told from the perspective of little Marji, beginning as a little girl and growing into adulthood in Teheran and abroad in Austria, it is very charming and endearing, especially as the more serious themes of the film are presented.

Normally Americans seem to have problems enough with French culture by itself. However, Persepolis adds another culture to the mix and makes the world thrice smaller. The humor is universal and transcends any cultural barriers real or perceived to the individual viewer.

The visual style is minimalist but powerful. The animation is constantly clever and inventive.

The world becomes smaller and the people in countries we are told are our enemies become our friend through popular cultural endeavors like Persepolis. As the east and west come together through conflict and tension in many circles, a film like Perspolis can make the fear go away.

We in America need as many Persepolises as possible—especially when it comes to people in Muslim countries—especially right now. We need to know that people are people.

The Baron and the Terror-Industrial-Cheney Complex

2009-10-16T00:03:00.000-07:00

As I write this, I am watching the audio commentary of Terry Gilliam and Charles McKeown on the DVD, “The Adventures of Baron Munchausen”, the 1989 Gilliam film, a wonderfully surreal film that uses its surrealism to hide a very serious message.

If any of you watched Countdown tonight and last night then you may be way ahead of me.

I bought Munchausen on Tuesday and was watching it while writing the Liz Cheney post that appeared on Wednesday, the day Gilliam asked Olbermann the question about the Colin Powell comment about the terror-industrial complex in the September 2007 GQ Magazine article.

The actual “terror-industrial complex” quote is in the last three sentences of Powell’s answer to the question, “So do you think we’re getting too hunkered down and scared?” on page 2.

“But come on, this is not a threat to our survival! The only thing that can really destroy us is us. We shouldn't do it to ourselves, and we shouldn't use fear for political purposes—scaring people to death so they will vote for you, or scaring people to death so that we create a terror-industrial complex.”

As you all know (the only reason for this paragraph is this advert for “Why We Fight”), the terror-industrial complex line is an update of Eisenhower’s military industrial complex line.

So now we have another nail to put into the political coffin of the Cheneys. Fear for political purposes is exactly what the Cheneys are doing, in addition to trying to revive the phony national security issue from 2004 which almost gave Bush/Cheney/Cheney the vote, but it didn’t so they had to resort to dirty tricks in Ohio.

Cheney’s connection to Halliburton should be proof enough as to what his and her motives are. Politics is so filled with phony issues to leverage power. The problem is the mainstream media will not accuse or question the Cheneys about using fear for political gain or about their obvious motives for claiming Obama will not keep us safe from terrorists.

After all, the real purpose of Keep Halliburton Rich—I mean, Keep America Safe, is not to scare us terroristically but to scare Obama politically and remind him to make sure the war profiteers’ gluttony and greed are continually satiated with tax dollars that could be used to give us all free health care—fully paid by our tax dollars for our entire lifetimes rather than be given to the terror-industrial complex.

As many of you know, Eisenhower’s complete line was going to be “military-industrial-congressional complex” but he decided to omit the congressional reference at the last minute, or thereabouts.

The pertinent part of Eisenhower’s quote is:

“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.”

Here we are nearly 50 years later with Obama doing nothing on his campaign promise to end no-bid Federal contracts over $25,000 and breaking his campaign promise about tougher rules against revolving door lobbying in his administration.

Maybe Liz and Dick are doing Obama a favor, making his job easier in helping the system of war mongering maintain the pace it achieved during the last eight years.

Cheney (take your pick) is the Right Ordinary Horatio Jackson in Munchausen—killing the truth (as personified by Munchausen) and lying by telling the story to the city of the enemy Turk being just outside the gates to maintain control.

As Gilliam puts it in the commentary at the end of the film when Munchausen forces them to open the gates to reveal no threat, “And we open the door, and has it all been a dream, has it all been an illusion? Were we ever under threat? Are there terrorists in the world, we ask ourselves, or is it just an illusion to maintain power?”

Obviously we have terrorists in our world, but how much of what Cheney is doing simply to use fear to feed the terror-industrial complex? We may never know.

Don’t Read This Blog

2009-10-15T00:00:00.000-07:00

A potpourri of disjointed thoughts about some of today’s political realities:

Mr. T. Party "Sucka!" I was giving the Tea Party guy Allen Olson the benefit of the doubt until he answered Chris Matthews question about who he’d like to see replace Lindsay Graham as Senator in South Carolina and he said, “Sarah Palin”. And I heard her name in my head a whole second before he said it.

I’m human. Even I get tired of being angry at the Tear Partiers and the Birthers and the Deathers because they’re so stupid. I want to understand and accept them as humans with concerns and needs and loved ones to protect the best way they know and feel.

But since I cannot control my emotions because I’m a passionate (read: angry) liberal (actually I’m not a liberal, I prefer to be called a “liber-real”). I’m a leftist with a coherent grasp on reality and the state of the world and my enemies’ place in it—just kidding—but I cannot accept the idea of Sarah Palin as anything other than a cartoonish Halloween costume and mask (glasses not included) or a talk show host on Fox.

A Real Deather! Rick Perry may have killed an innocent man. Perry always reminded me of a good-looking, dumb jock kind of guy. And, he did the jock kind of thing by pulling the plug on the innocent father. Perry probably had two thoughts going simultaneously—his re-election and at least the father would finally be with his dead daughters in Heaven.

This is precisely why I have been against the death penalty since I was young and growing up in a death penalty state—because of the very real possibility of convicting and killing the wrong person. You see, the arts and culture can affect the masses. That thinking is what “To Kill a Mockingbird” did to me.

Drop kicked! Black team players and the businessmen involved with the St. Louis Rams have rejected Rush Limbaugh’s desire to participate in the team as an owner. To paraphrase Malcolm X, “The ‘I hope he fails’ have come home to roost”.

A great capper in all this would be to take Limbaugh’s football-shaped head and kicking a field goal with it.

Goddama Obamma! Yesterday Mr. Change thanked Olympia Snowe for her vote when the Democrats didn’t need it and for her political courage. Let’s hope that means he has become sufficiently inspired by her to find some of his own.

For those salivating uncontrollably and feeling unfulfilled by the above mention of Mr. T, I have taken pity on the fools!

American Domination

2009-10-14T00:02:00.000-07:00

Well, Liz Cheney is at it again. For a woman who has no more brain power than is required to watch one’s neighbors from one’s front porch rake their leaves, she is trying to make herself seem important by creating a phony issue which she is also trying to make seem urgently important.

And for her efforts—and lies!—she seems to hope the result is: Republican victories in 2010 and 2012.

The issue is Keep America Safe. It is also a website.

The whole project is spearheaded by Ms. Cheney and William Kristol, whose greatest claim to fame is being the son of Irving Kristol and creating Sarah Palin, the political force so powerful she imploded halfway through her first term as governor and not even the Virginia gubernatorial candidate wants her to campaign for his election; so politically savvy, the editorials written for her but attributed to her were refuted as being full of lies, confused logic and misinformation.

One can judge Kristol’s intelligence level not only by Palin’s “success-ion”, by also that inane, bufoonish smile permanently plastered across his face. To paraphrase an old saying: “Ignorance of one’s ignorance is bliss.”

But back to Liz. She is repeating much of what her father said back in the summer, most all of which was proved false by reports, experts and operatives who work every day in the business of keeping America safe.

Break through the façade Liz presents and you may find her father’s connection to defense contractors who want wars to keep going for profit. This is something the mainstream media never presses them on, preferring to be polite rather than journalistic.

Accusing Obama of being a radical is like accusing daddy Dick of being Wild Bill Hickok, or accusing Orly Taitz of being Perry Mason, or accusing me of being Noam Chomsky.

Dick Cheney was vice-president before 9/11. He has access to the intelligence that said Obama was determined to strike in the U.S. and he was as attentive to that as he was while hunting with Harry Whittington. The Republican tactic is to charge their opponents with what they are guilty of.

Liz should do what she is best at. So, Liz could use her numerous talents to also keep America…many things.

For example, I suggest Liz is capable of launching the following campaigns and their accompanying websites…

Keep America Dull.

Keep America Scared.

Keep America at War.

Keep America Hated.

Keep America Ridiculous.

Keep America Paranoid.

Keep America with conservatives permanently in the minority because America has changed and won’t buy their bullshit anymore.

NOTE TO OBAMA: Chill on the radicality, bro. And watch your back that Liz and Dick aren’t conspiring with those who are launching an attack on the U.S. just to scare American’s further into voting Republican. The way you’ve been going it’s going to be an uphill battle for you to get re-elected. Know why? You can’t make the same promises again that you’ve reneged on so far.

Christoffa Corombo

2009-10-12T00:33:00.000-07:00

The right likes to complain that Wikipedia is a misinformation, propaganda and brainwashing tool of the socialist, liberalist left. Ha! Wrong again Capital-istas! The description in the Wikipedia article of Cristoffa Corombo (yes, that was his real name in his native Genoese language) states that he was an “navigator, colonizer and explorer”.

If Wikipedia was so lefty, they would have added “terrorist” to the list, don’t you think?

No offense to all my Italian, Genoese, Spanish and Portuguese friends who celebrate Corombo as a great explorer and Columbus Day in his honor.

While the U.S. is presently engaged in its “War on Terror” and we recently observed the day when terrorists attacked us “for our freedoms”, many may take offense at my use of that word, but Wikipedia’s Wiktionary has two definitions for “terrorist”: “One who governs by terrorism or intimidation…” and “Any one who uses terror as a weapon in a political struggle…”

Wiktionary’s usage notes for “terrorist” adds, “The use of the label "terrorist" is often controversial or subjective, since one person's terrorist may be another's freedom fighter, and vice versa.”

And there you have it. Those who won, celebrate Corombo as a hero, but those who lost, namely between 9 and 20 million native inhabitants of the New World see him as something else. And their vision of him is based on his actions, not on the propaganda of the victor.

Would you believe it was more than mere coincidence if I told you that the origin of the word “genocide” is “Genoacide” to honor Corombo’s origins?

Just kidding! But what a wonderfully ironic, almost fateful, coincidence it is.

Islamic terrorists refer to us as “unbelievers”. That is exactly how Corombo and the Spanish Crown saw the Taino and Arawak. We rightly condemn the beheadings of American contractors in Iraq, but we revere a man like Corombo even though he and those under his command have done far worse.

Many Columbus apologists like to say that’s just the way it was back then, expecting humanitarianism 500 years ago is ludicrous. It would be if 1500 years before Christoffa Corombo there wasn’t another man who embodied humanitarianism and who Corombo’s first name derives from? You know who I mean. But more than that, Corombo came from that religion and yet his actions suggest he was the unbeliever.

If you think this is harsh, wait until you read my Thanksgiving post. The sooner we de-mythologize people and our history which does not reflect the most sacred, truly sacred, of American ideals like pursuit of happiness and everyone created equal, the sooner we can rebuild America into a country where free health care for all is a reality. If not, George Bush may one day be Saint George.

The right claims the media in America has a liberal bias. But if the media had a liberal bias would we not see more stories about issues in Indian communities on CNN and MSNBC? Not necessarily. Why? Because most liberals don’t care and aren’t aware of the realities in Indian Country.

This seems to me to be the power of Corombo in America. Human rights abuses in foreign lands are high on liberal agendas, but human rights abuses with regard to Indians in America are not.

It’s obvious that conservatives have bought the bullshit. The sad, tragic reality is that even many liberals have been brainwashed not to think outside this little box. As the Anarchist of Ann Arbor will tell you, many libs are just knee-jerk reactionaries, people playing on the other team with no real desire for change, just difference.

I used to work as a dishwasher in a Beverly Hills hotel. We had a Mexican cook who would tease me about being American by accusing me of having stolen land that once belonged to Mexico. Instead of guilt and an apology, my response was, “Yeah? And who did Mexico steal it from? Do you even know the name of the people to who this land really belonged?”

He couldn’t answer. But I’m sure he’d heard of Christoffa Corombo.

Had Lennon Lived

2009-10-09T00:01:00.000-07:00

John Lennon was born during the bombing of Liverpool in WWII. He came into this world in the middle of some of the worst violence of the last century and he left through violence.

The CW—conspiratorial wisdom—is that John Lennon was murdered by agents of the Reagan Administration who knew what their plans were for Central America in the early 80s when Lennon emerged from reclusion and did not want Lennon interfering with their anti-communist crusade as he had with Nixon’s in Vietnam.

Jon Weiner wrote “Gimme Some Truth: The John Lennon FBI Files” to explore the FBI’s surveillance of the ex-Beatle during his era of radical politics in the early 70s. The documentary “The US vs. John Lennon” explores the same.

It does not matter why Lennon was killed because nothing will change that fact. However, had he lived, we may well be living in a different world now. The same could be imagined if Bob Marley, who died in May 1981, had lived.

A couple of months ago I wrote a post espousing my theory that we would not have a president Barack Obama today had Michael Jackson’s influence not been felt in America especially for the last three decades.

The same is true with Lennon. Had Lennon lived he would most likely have focused first on his music and being a father. He had a young son to raise and an older son to get to know.

If memory serves, Lennon said in the Playboy interview that he had plans to do new versions of “She Loves You” and “I Want to Hold Your Hand”. “Milk and Honey” would have had some new songs and he would surely have worked with a wide variety of musicians. He would have appeared on the 1981 Grammy’s to universal adulation.

The Beatles would have certainly re-united for the Anthology albums and, chances are, they may have re-united for new Lennon and McCartney collaborations and Harrison compositions from their matured perspective to help us look back at the 60s and project those values of peace and love throughout the 80s, 90s and now on an album or two or more and perhaps even a handful of performances—especially in Liverpool and maybe Hamburg—almost always for a worthy cause.

Perhaps Lennon would have teamed with his son Julian. Perhaps Julian would not have even pursued a career had his father lived.

He may have worked with Oliver Stone on a film project or two. He almost certainly would have performed at the big anti-nuclear rally in Central Park in June 1982 that Dennis and I attended.

Had Lennon lived, he and McCartney would have been able to snatch their songs away from Michael Jackson and we’d be spared the abuse of Beatles’ songs by Target and whatever credit card/bank that commercial is for.

But Lennon’s greatest effect may have been politically. If Lennon had avoided politics, America’s involvement with the Contras would have ignited his awakening. A benefit concert for CISPES seems appropriate, where Lennon may have sung and recorded a new version of “Give Peace a Chance”. Maybe a solo album titled “The Savior”, the English translation of El Salvador, or “The Agency”.

As Iran Contra developed, that scandal’s political embarrassment for Reagan, North, et al would have whetted Lennon’s appetite for political blood and revenge against conservative American presidents and their self-serving egos.

He may have made some critical remarks in interviews or at rallies about Reagan, North et al which would have caused a stir. He may have re-united with Abbie Hoffman who had re-emerged by 1980 as well, and may have inspired Jerry Rubin to put aside his success in business long enough to get radical about Central America.

Having survived the Strom Thurmond-inspired plot to have the INS deny his Green Card and deport him, Lennon may have felt inspired and emboldened to take on Reagan and the CIA. He would certainly have inspired many to take on Reagan, North et al, which is the reason for his death that the conspiracy theory mentioned at the top of this post is based on.

Had Lennon lived perhaps Reagan, North et al would have imploded harder and Bush would have lost to Dukakis, who, if he won, would have lost to Bush in ’92—or Clinton—primarily because of the economy.

Had Lennon lived it may have been harder for the Christian Right to become as powerful as they had because Lennon would have skewered the right-wing Christian hypocrisy in Central America—and right here in the U.S.

“Imagine” may have been followed by another anthem, “Realize”. He would have performed in Berlin right after the fall of the wall since they performed several times in Hamburg before and after its construction. The wall’s fall was certainly in keeping with the world vision he expressed in “Imagine”.

He and Yoko may have introduced America to some form of self-help psychology on Oprah. And just for the hell of it, for a week, he and Yoko may have taken the center square on the New Hollywood Squares, hosted by John Davidson from 1986 to 1989.

The Internet would have been the perfect tool for Lennon’s peace movement. But the big question is: How would Lennon have reacted to September 11th?

I think he would have reacted by reaching out to Muslim activists and musicians, which means he would most definitely have worked with Salman Ahmad and Junoon. After all, Lennon was a major inspiration to Junoon founder Ahmad.

Through Ahmad, Lennon would have reached out his message of peace and “Imagine” throughout the Muslim world to any of those who would listen. And he would have succeeded.

I wrote about Junoon in two posts, one of the 52nd anniversary of Lennon meeting McCartney and another post three days later about Junoon.

The American government feared Lennon in the 70s because of his influence over America’s youth. As Lennon got older and there were new generations of youth, Lennon’s influence would have naturally grown much bigger.

The changes he could have helped bring about are left to all of our imaginations. And isn’t that what he said. I think what is most important to be remembered about Lennon is he used his imagination as a tool.

We must all do the same.

Lennon was a Libra—the most powerful star sign in the whole zodiac. Librans understand what I mean.

Sorry, just a little astrological elitism.

Here’s one of my favorite Lennon songs:

Possessive Progressive

2009-10-08T00:05:00.000-07:00

After the vote on Al Franken’s amendment to the Defense Appropriations bill, I am even more convinced that a progressive agenda can gain ground in 2010 and prevent Republicans from increasing their seat count in the Senate and perhaps even the House.

Of course, that is, provided the progressive movement can generate money and organization in time.

Conservative Democrats and Republicans have shown themselves to be against the American people and that can be proven with the health care reform shenanigans making it abundantly apparent that they have been on the side of the anti-people health care/insurance industry.

With Franken’s amendment Republicans have further shown themselves to be on the side and in the pocket of the defense industry and against women’s rights and the American people.

The Republicans are currently led by Limbaugh and Beck. They have no leadership, they have no policies, they have no plans. Not even Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman can save them.

Max Baucus has revealed himself to be an automaton for the health insurance mafia. So have Conrad and a host of other God Damnedocrats.

Republicans, it has been said, are going to run on Cap and Trade and a few other issues. After their eight years in power and their recent behavior they can be further ostracized from American politics with some effort. And that’s not including the further damage they can and will do to themselves between now and then as their desperation, stagnation and ignorance forces them to continue being stupid. And I mean, really stupid.

Conservatives are now so desperate they are starting to re-translate the liberal parts of the Bible to make Jesus seem like a heartless capitalist.

And Sarah Palin is still around, isn’t she?—lots of embarrassing self-destructiveness there to exploit.

However, I caution progressives not to get too greedy. Right now Americans want and need a progressive approach to various issues, but I suggest progressives wait on immigration reform and a few other issues until progressives have proven themselves to the voters they need that they are not commies and socialists and the economy has revived.

The pundits are wrong about Democrats losing in 2010 if progressives take charge.
Come on progressives. Now is the time to begin rising to these challenges.

100

2009-10-06T00:07:00.000-07:00

When Lorne Michaels was meeting with NBC execs before “SNL” went on the air, he told them not to judge the show by the first few shows, but to judge it by its 17th show. One exec whose name I cannot recall actually promised he would watch the 17th show.

That show was hosted by Gerald Ford’s press secretary Ron Nessen—proof that “SNL” was a hit.

This is my 100th blog, and thankfully I never encouraged anyone to judge my blog by its 100th installment.

What strikes me today is news that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who Iran’s Ayatollah would have us believe is Iran’s president, has Jewish ancestry. This is actually an old story, as it was reported back in January on Israel National News.com and others had it before they did.

I know everyone is making much ado about this today and they should. A rightwing Iranian president with a Jewish background claiming the Holocaust did not happen is like a former Roosevelt Democrat claiming Medi-care is socialism.

Ahmadinejad being Jewish saying he hopes the Jewish Zionist state vanishes from the pages of history is like Limbaugh saying he hopes Obama fails.

No, wait, it’s more like Dick Cheney shooting Harry Whittington in the face.

No….

Representative Mark Kirk telling China last year America is not good for its debts?

No.

Is it like Max Baucus elected by the people but serving the insurance industry; because, as you know, access to an appropriate health care profit is a corporate right.

No.

Regardless, what this means is Iran will soon be embroiled in its own movement calling for its president to reveal the truth about his roots and heritage in much the same way our own “birthers” are doing with our president.

This is perfect timing for Orly Taitz, who has just about shredded everyone’s patience—and FINALLY her credibility—in the US by now claiming Judge Clay Land, who recently ruled against her, with secretly meeting with Attorney General Eric Holder in a diner across the street from his courthouse in Georgia.

Perhaps Madonna should go to Tehran and get Ahmadinejad involved with Kabbalah. She can entice him by telling him it is, after all, Kab-allah.

It’s not that Ahmadinejad’s Jewishness is being exposed that is embarrassing, it is that his identity as a Mossad operative is being exposed.

That’s right. Mossad sent Ahmadinejad to Iran to rise to the ranks of president so he can round up Muslims on the streets of Tehran just as they round up Muslims on the streets of Gaza and the West Bank.

Ahmadinejad who was once only a self-hating Jew is now also a self-hating Muslim. Only the Muslims he hates himself are the people of Iran.

Ahmadinejad has issued a decree that the Muslim holy month in Iran will henceforth be known as Rosh Hamanadan.

Ahmadinejad’s Jewish name was revealed to be Sabourjian. What wasn’t revealed was that now the Ayatollah Khamenei refers to him jokingly as Matzomoud.

On to 101.

October Fifth Throughout History

2009-10-05T00:03:00.000-07:00

This day is important—at least in this post—for three reasons: the Beatles released their first record, “Love Me Do”, on this day in 1962, “Monty Python’s Flying Circus” premiered their first show on this day in 1969, and I breathed my first breath on a Saturday night on this day in 1957.

For the longest time I thought these two events were signs of some greatest that I would achieve. Let it be understood from this day onward that God is definitely a practical joker.

But I’m not writing about me and Python and the Beatles sharing this day. This is written to introduce you readers to the man with whom the Beatles and Python share a connection and without whom they arguably may not have existed or would have been different—perhaps even detrimentally different.

Terence Alan Patrick Seán Milligan, otherwise known as “Spike”, is also one of my comic heroes.

In America, Spike Milligan is largely unknown even though his contribution to the Beatles and Python is easily recognizable. It seems some smart PBS or syndication executive would have run Spike’s “Q” series over here back in the 70s as “the Goons” as they are affectionately referred were aired on many public broadcasting stations. After all, Benny Hill made it to America.

Silly American programming executives.

Milligan, along with Peter Sellers and Harry Secombe (and Michael Bentine at the beginning), created The Goon Show, which was a BBC radio show that ran from 1951 to 1960 and was not only hilarious, it was revolutionary.

Before the Goons, British comedy was largely the music hall variety with baggy pants, silly hats and joke jokes, similar to our early vaudeville. The Goons shaped a type of humor that has inspired much of British humor today. It was surreal, it was silly, it lampooned contemporary events as well as the stuffy, upper class British culture of the day.

How the Goons inspired Python is easier to see because both are comedy. In fact, Milligan’s Q5 series was broadcast months before the premiere of the Pythons, and in the Q link above, John Cleese recalls telephoning Terry Jones and discussing with him how terrified they were because Milligan was already doing the show they wanted to do.

Not only that, but all the Pythons were schoolboys when the Goons were influencing all of Britain in the 50s.

Another school boy influenced by the Goons in the 50s was John Lennon. Back in 1972 Lennon wrote a review for a book of Goon Show Scripts. Lennon was also a big fan of Lewis Carroll. But the Goons contributed much to Beatle humor, not to mention personnel.

George Martin, the man who brought the Beatles music alive—along with the Beatles, of course—produced records for Peter Sellers and the Goons. In fact, recognizing Martin’s connection with the Goons was one of the things that endeared Martin to the Beatles, according to Martin in, perhaps, several interviews. In fact, George Martin served as Milligan’s best man for his 1962 wedding.

Richard Lester, who directed “A Hard Day’s Night” and “Help” also directed “The Running, Jumping, Standing Still Film” with Sellers and Milligan. The same high-speed silliness in “A Hard Day’s Night” was first explored in “The Running, Jumping, Standing Still Film”.

Milligan suffered several mental breakdowns, a true example of the fine line between madness and genius.

It is no accident that the root of the word “funny” is “fun”. And despite Milligan’s manic depression, The Goons are pure escapist fun. The silliness is contagious. And the genius can be influential as well.

The Goons had fun doing the show as the adlibs and off-mike laughter will attest. One cannot help but get carried away with them. If you’ve had a bad day, the Goons will soon make you better. My two favorite characters are Bluebottle (Sellers) and Eccles (Milligan).

So, my birthday present to all of you is Spike Milligan. I hope he brings you as much joy and pleasure as he has me. I was introduced to him by an ex-writer for Late Night with David Letterman.

I haven’t been the sane since.

Below is the first link to what sitting in the audience for a Goon broadcast must have looked like. It was filmed in 1966 for a show for Harry Secombe, the rotund Goon.

Embedding was disabled, but you can access part 1 through this link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pd0ONww0rrw

This is part 2:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LtcmewIJU2U

Explore Milligan and the Goons and I hope you enjoy them as much as I have.

Venting

2009-10-01T00:02:00.000-07:00

I am considering not participating in Obama’s plan to hold us economically hostage through hefty insurance fees and fines for not signing up for what may well be fake reform through welfare for the health insurance industry.

As Moulitsas said on Olbermann tonight, Obama may think he will be able to take any bill the Senate gives him, call it historic health care reform and sign it believing he is insuring (no pun intended) his place in history.

I did not vote for him twice for his personal glory. This is the strangest position I have been in as a voter. I wanted him to succeed and now feel betrayal. I listen to Republican attacks and find them to be so stupid and yet I cannot get behind Obama while finding 99.9% of Republicans and about 89% of Democrats abhorrent in this health care reform debate.

The mental melt-down on the right with town hall screaming, health reform lies, socialist labels, calls for assassination, guns at rallies, calls for military coups and more lies, lies, lies.

I don’t know which is worse—the inspidness of Limbaugh and Beck on a daily basis or the inspidness of Baucus and Conrad on a daily basis.

I hate that the majority of Democrats are so corrupt they cannot do what they were elected to do.

Does Boehner and Cantor think we believe their bullshit? Does Harry Reid have any look on his face other than just woke up?

The Republican hypocrisy when complaining about Obama and Clinton compared to Bush and Cheney makes me want to scream.

I applaud Rep. Alan Grayson for hyperbolically proclaiming the Republican health care plan as don’t get sick and if you do, die quickly.

I fear for the future of America and wish I had more power to do battle against the corporatists who are “trying to take away our freedoms”. Isn’t that how they used to describe terrorists?

Almost all Republicans and Democrats in Congress are anti-American by the truest definition of American.

Those town hallers are puppets and do not impress me as being real Americans in the Constitutional sense or Christians in the Jesus preaching sense yet they continue to act as morally superior and victimized by everyone.

If they want true socialism, let them go live in Cuba. I am sick and tired of people living in the country with the highest standard of living and the worst health care system for a country like ours of complaining of socialism. They are idiots and they have no appreciation for America.

I am frustrated there is no discussion among progressives that they can, as I believe and have written here many times, actually win elections in 2010 and steer America in a pragmatic progressive direction not the reactionary liberal one. I am frustrated they are not following through with any kind of plans to battle conservative Republicans and Democrats.

If there was ever a time for progressive Democrats and Independents to win by holding lying Republicans and Democrats to their lies it is now.

The Decline of American Civilization

2009-09-30T00:01:00.000-07:00

Now, if I understand correctly, the right is trying to destroy any help the poor have through their ongoing “kill” of ACORN, they are trying to eliminate the working class’s right to organize their labor beginning with their attacks on SEIU, the conservatives in Congress are forcing us to buy $600 billion in overpriced and ineffective health insurance without a public option and if we don’t we are fined about $3,000, and corporations may soon become in control of our electoral process and have unlimited control over our government through unlimited use of their war chests similar to what we saw with the Tea Baggers in July and August because of a possible Supreme Court decision in favor of Citizens United.

What happens to America, what happens to Americans and how long will we take that shit?

I hate to leave you hanging, but I’m still working on this script—it’s almost done—and I can’t really get in to this question right now, but, so, umm, here’s a, uh, rallying…cry....

Why Is the Washington Times Not Out of Business?

2009-09-29T00:10:00.000-07:00

The Washington Times is spreading lies about death panels by proxy. That Ronald Reagan’s favorite newspaper would take the conservative line on health care reform or even lie is not what I am aghast at.

What bothers me is why they are taken even remotely seriously and why the hell they have not been exposed as a tool for the anti-American Moonie agenda and their circulation diminished.

The Reverend Moon claims to have been visited by Jesus on a mountaintop in Korea and proclaimed the Second Messiah. The Christian Right, if they were really right on Christianity, would realize that is heresy (and perhaps even blasphemy) by their own Christian beliefs.

Republican Utah Senator Orrin Hatch is Mormon. He is buddy buddy with Mr. and Mrs. Moon. You can find video of him on You Tube praising the Moons and attending their functions.

The same is true with former Republican North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms who, in 1988 alone, is reported to have spoken at five Moonie functions.

The bump in the logic road here is that back in the 70s, Moon claimed he would take over and control America. How does that jibe with these conservatives anti-Communist sentiment? The Communists wanted to take over and control America as well if I understood correctly.

The difference, as I understand it, is Moon gives away money to bribe politicians. That Reagan said Moon’s paper was his favorite newspaper made the Gipper America’s first Moonie president.

I’ll say it again. Ronald Reagan was America’s first Moonie president. Moon seems to be the Achilles Heel of the conservative right. Why more people don’t expose this is anti-American and anti-Christian.

That crown and cape he and his wife wears is also anti-American and anti-Christian.

If they can run ACORN out of business, shouldn't someone do the same thing with the Moonies?

Oh, I get it. It's because Moonie is pronounced "money". The "u" is a short vowel sound not a long one in Korea and conservative American politics.

More Moon later.

Happy Birthday, Eddie

2009-09-26T00:00:00.000-07:00

I wrote about Eddie Hatcher in my first four posts for this blog called Iran Contra’s Dark Secret Revisited With Activist’s Death. Today would have been Eddie’s 52nd birthday. He died this past May 1st.

When I was in North Carolina in 1996 trying to produce a film about Eddie and the larger Iran Contra cocaine backdrop, I held a press conference to expose what I had uncovered about Jesse Helms and his connection to the cocaine of the Contras and the cocaine-funded military coups in South America, and the conspiracy to persecute Eddie.

At that press conference, there was a reporter/columnist there from the Wilmington Morning Star. Her line of questioning to me was from the perspective that I was glorifying Eddie, who had terrorized 19 people the day he and Timmy Jacobs took the hostages at the Daily Robesonian newspaper.

One of her co-workers had been one of Eddie’s hostages. The woman had suffered nightmares and anxiety from the ordeal she suffered at the hands of Eddie and Timmy.

I have never condoned the hostage taking. I should note here that Eddie and Timmy let many people go free. Regardless, the hostage taking was designed to draw attention to government collusion in the drug running that was destroying Robeson County and other parts of North Carolina—and America—with the cocaine aspect of the Iran Contra conspiracy.

Eddie and Timmy freely agreed to turn themselves over to law enforcement and stand trial. And to the point raised by Eddie’s critics about the hostage taking I would raise this point: George Bush lied to get us into a war with Iraq where 4664 Americans have died so far and 31,494 have been wounded. This does not take into account the, perhaps, hundred thousand who will have nightmares and other psychological disorders as a result of the trauma of war.

What Eddie subjected the hostages to also pales when compared to what Wall Street bankers did to the millions who lost their jobs and their homes with the economic melt down last year they caused.

What about the nightmares and psychological disorders and shattered lives that resulted from their greedy and borderline criminal behavior? I don’t remember them being interested in turning themselves over to law enforcement or standing trial for their misdeeds. I have not even heard them offering up an apology.

And what about the number of people who have suffered as a result of being denied surgeries prescribed by doctors and who went bankrupt because of health insurance industry greed?

What Eddie did had nothing to do with greed, you see, no matter how evil his critics believe his actions were. It had to do with trying to draw attention to a government-involved drug running scheme and avoid being killed by local law enforcement practically the very same day.

His motives were to help stop the drug scourge that was rampant in Robeson County and destroying the community. Eddie did not make billions off his actions.

I used to be confused and confounded by Eddie’s detractors when they did not see the significance of the larger conspiracy Eddie tried to expose in the context of his actions, but after the Tea Baggers this summer, I can see that there are too many stupid people out there.

If Eddie had made billions off his actions he may have been regarded as a folk hero—an opposite and equally erroneous opinion, in my opinion—of what he really was.

But Eddie did not make billions like those who profited off the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, or make billions on Wall Street foreclosing on homeowners, or make billions from honest, hard working Americans paying their health insurance premiums.

Many of those who despised Eddie were ignorant of the larger story. But it goes beyond that. Here in America, it seems there are those who prefer being on the side of those, like Helms, who were responsible for the cocaine coming into America to destroy lives and cause nightmares and psychological disorders.

As I said, I don’t condone what Eddie did, but if you compare Eddie’s actions to the actions of others—like American presidents and CEOs---Eddie should have a statue erected in his honor in Washington, DC.

We Need a Frank Serpico in Congress!

2009-09-25T00:02:00.000-07:00

“Frank, let’s face it, who can trust a cop who don’t take money?” is one of my favorite lines from the 1973 movie “Serpico” starring Al Pacino. I read the book “Serpico” by Peter Maas when I was a kid long before seeing the movie.

In the movie, Frank explains that all his life he wanted to be nothing but a cop. As a nine or ten year old, he recalls, there was an emergency in his neighborhood with lots of excitement and flashing lights and a big crowd gathered around a tenement. And he was asking everybody what happened but nobody knew.

“Then all of a sudden the crowd just parted—like the Red Sea—and there were these guys in blue and I thought, ‘They know.’”

That’s how Frank Serpico, the proto-type of the uncorruptible cop, back in the days when many of New York’s Finest were most corrupt. Serpico idolized, romanticized and idealized being a policeman because of the power and knowledge policemen had—and because of the service the provided to the people.

Perhaps the same could be said of elected politicians—although there are much fewer opportunities to become an elected official than there are cops.

Senators and Representatives, they know, and they are surrounded by crowds and they, supposedly, help the people.

Police corruption is based on the premise that cops sell their power to withhold or avoid arrest and imprisonment for the benefit of criminals. Similarly, political corruption is based on the premise that Congresspersons sell their power to pass laws and enact funding for the benefit of criminals and quasi-criminals.

With the health care “debate”, we have seen how legalized bribes in the form of campaign contributions offered by the health care insurance industry have bought off the Blue Dogs and the Republicans.

America needs a Frank Serpico of Congress. What Serpico went through to maintain is integrity as a law enforcement officer is more than admirable, it is iconic. In ancient times Frank Serpico would have been turned into a Roman God of virtue. In my young mind—and today—that is exactly what he is—only New York is Rome, as it is in many other aspects.

A Frank Serpico of Congress today would make the rest of them shrivel and shrink like demons before an exorcist just because of comparison reasons. Those bribe takers we have now would not be able to easily explain to their constituents who they really work for and why.

Is it the money from lobbyists or concern for the welfare of the people and the betterment of society that they care most about?

Sure, corporations are people too. And so are pimps, prostitutes, pushers, polluters and politicians.

This is supposed to be the official Frank Serpico blog. If we cannot have a Frank Serpico-type Congressperson, then perhaps Serpico’s opinions of current American politics will help.

For those who have never seen the film or read the book, I recommend them both.

Plus, it’s a New Yawk story! And I will always love New Yawk!

God Tells Me

2009-09-22T00:11:00.000-07:00

I’m busy working on this script, as I have been for awhile, but I wanted to impart this to you, because I think it is important.

I was walking through a park surrounded by nature, feeling an inner peace and a connection to God.

And then God came to me and told me something I never ever considered before, which is: for those who are killed in automobile accidents, there is a drive-thru lane in Heaven.

Kids Are People Too!

2009-09-21T00:30:00.000-07:00

“Kids Are People Too!” was a news/variety TV program for teens that ran on ABC from 1978 to 1982. The program grew out of another TV program called “Wonderama” for pre-teens and children that ran for 20 years and was hosted for about ten of them by Bob McAllister, who hosted KAPT for about a year and was fired by ABC due to creative differences.

Corporate wanted something different than creative.

Now, the Supreme Court is poised to decide if corporations are people too. I find the whole thing absurd and see a possible overturn of election finance law as a dark day for America.

Let’s hope some organization files another suit and can prevent the overturn in the event the Supreme Court guts what the Founders intended as the First Amendment in the form of freedom of expression.

While not all corporations are bad and because of capitalism we enjoy a high standard of living, there is enough greed in corporate America and enough unresolved bad in capitalism to require improvement.

Corporate greed is the Achilles Heel of the American corporatism as evidenced by the taxpayer bailout last year. While they seek to dominate us through the class system and their wealth to manipulate everything but the Chinese, they need We the People in ways they do not want to admit.

And they are afraid of We the People, otherwise the health insurance and pharmaceutical corporations would not have funded the tea baggers, birthers, deathers and other nutters to sway the argument back in July and August.

Even Obama is afraid of We the People, otherwise he would not have violated his campaign promise of transparency and prohibited We the People access to his visitor log.

If Sotomayor votes in favor of overturning previous decisions that upheld Tillman, then we will have another example of Obama going the other way.

At that time, I become angry.

Until then, just to whet all our appetites for Change We Can’t Deceive In, here is a post-screening question and answer session with Michael Moore for his new film, “Capitalism: A Love Story”.

Another Comedy Hero is Gone

2009-09-18T00:03:00.000-07:00

As I write this, it is the 37th anniversary of the premiere of “M*A*S*H”, one of the more progressive comedies to come from American television in the history of American television.

I wrote a script for “M*A*S*H” when I was about 16 or 17 that dealt with the acceptance of a prostitute who lived and worked just outside the 4077th. Frank wanted her removed and Hawkeye championed her not for his own sexual gratification, but for her humanity.

“M*A*S*H” was one of my favorite comedy TV series of all time. I especially loved the first four years from 1972 to 1976. The man who created that exceptional bit of TV comedy, Larry Gelbart, died last Friday.

For those not in the know, Gelbart was a giant in comedy. He began at the age of 16 writing for Danny Thomas. He wrote for Bob Hope and Jack Paar. He was one of the writers for Sid Caesar 50 years ago when Caesar had arguably the most genius writing staff of anyone which included, Mel Brooks, Woody Allen, Neil Simon, Gelbart and Carl Reiner.

He wrote the award-winning Broadway hit, “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum”. He wrote the screenplays for “Tootsie” and “Oh, God”. He wrote many other things, but perhaps he is best remembered for “M*A*S*H”.

Military-based comedies on American TV before “M*A*S*H” were “McHale’s Navy”, “Gomer Pyle”, “Sgt. Bilko” and “Hogan’s Heroes” among others.

“M*A*S*H” was the first military comedy to rail against war in a serious way, although utilizing comedy. Granted “MA*S*H” the TV show had “MA*S*H” the movie to set the tone for its anti-war sentiments. Had the film not succeeded it is doubtful Gelbart and Reynolds would have been able to make “M*A*S*H” the success it was. But what Gelbart did with “M*A*S*H” could not have been duplicated by a lesser talent no matter what the success Altman’s film had.

Throughout the history of comedy, those who did social commentary first worked in straight comedy, with the exception of Mort Sahl and perhaps a few others later on, although Lenny Bruce seemed to be bent early on.

But even Lenny started on the Arthur Godfrey talent show doing impersonations and working in the Catskills and early New York television. George Carlin did straight comedy before becoming the counter culture icon he became. Early Richard Pryor did Bill Cosby-type comedy, before the classic, groundbreaking “That Nigger’s Crazy” followed by his follow-up albums.

Obviously there is a big difference between Larry Gelbart and Richard Pryor, but the same was true with Gelbert. He honed his comic craft in the straight comedy of the day before he began utilizing everything he learned to satirize war and warmakers.

“M*A*S*H” was set against the backdrop of America’s “military action” in Korea a little more than 20 years earlier, but at the time America was still in Vietnam. Therefore, the anti-war sentiments in “M*A*S*H” fit nicely with the anti-war sentiment in America and Gelbart exploited that nexus as no one had before. No other sitcom had been so anti-war with the obvious exception of “All in the Family”.

Gelbart’s genius was to entertain while educating. Of course, Gelbart alone was not responsible for the genius that was “M*A*S*H”. He could not have found a better partner to produce such a subversive show than Gene Reynolds who, like Gelbart, had quite an extensive resume in mainstream Hollywood product.

Alan Alda’s “Hawkeye” became iconic and “M*A*S*H” owed much to Alda’s comic acting talent. Larry Linville brought us a Frank Burns that seemed more like a real person rather than the creation of an actor.

The anti-authoritarian banter between Hawkeye and Trapper was very Marxian—Groucho, that is. The well-defined characters helped present a show that lampooned military authority and their desire for and organization of war, juxtaposed with the very human aspect of war, i.e., saving lives and dying, therefore becoming nearly as subversively counter culture as John and Yoko introducing America to the Yippies and the Black Panthers on the Mike Douglas show back in 1972.

Gelbart created the character of cross-dressing Corporal Max Klinger after Lenny Bruce’s own stories of dressing up in WAVE’s uniforms to get out of the Navy in which he served during WWII.

After Gelbart’s departure, “M*A*S*H” would continue and become one of the highest-rated TV series of all time. In fact, the finale of “M*A*S*H” would become the most watched TV show in history.

In his career, Gelbart won an Emmy for ““M*A*S*H” and two Tony’s for the books for “Forum” and “City of Angels” and was nominated for an Oscar for “Oh, God” and “Tootsie”.

I watched a couple of first season Gelbart-scripted “M*A*S*H” episodes tonight and the humor is as funny today as it was 37 years ago. That is a testament to the comic genius of Gelbart as a writer, script consultant and series creator.

Most comedy writers are intelligent and articulate people. Gelbart was one of the most intelligent and most articulate. There is an eight-part interview series from the Archive of American Television on You Tube. This video is part four where Gelbart talks about the creation of “M*A*S*H”.

For those not familiar with Gelbart, I suggest you watch the video. Larry Gelbart is American comedy history.

Max Redroom

2009-09-17T00:04:00.000-07:00

In 1980, the great director Stanley Kubrick committed to film his version of the Stephen King novel, “The Shining”. In the film as in the book, there is a scene where the son Danny writes “REDRUM” on the wall in lipstick so that when it is viewed in the mirror by his mother Wendy (Shelley Duvall) and she sees “murder”.

Max Headroom was a fictional character that was pure artificial intelligence and had a TV show in the 80s.

Max Baucus is the United States Senator from Montana and Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee who, yesterday, revealed his health care bill.

Put them all together and you get a guy named Max who was on TV today and many times in the past, whose intelligence seems as artificial as Styrofoam who has murdered his own Senate health care bill, his reputation in Congress and possibly, and hopefully, his chances of getting re-elected in Montana.

One of my favorite comments from Deep Throat, Hal Holbrook’s character in the movie “All the President’s Men”, is appropriate here: “These guys just aren’t that bright and things got a little out of hand.”

These are a few of Baucus’s comments, “It is balanced, a common sense bill that can pass the Senate,” and “It is time to act. This is our moment in history.”

Now you see why I compared Baucus’s brain to Styrofoam.

Baucus has received more money from the health insurance and pharmaceutical industries than almost any other Senator. No one expected him to deliver anything substantial on health care reform. But he thinks we believe he did.

All these guys do is lie anyway. Even Olympia Stone reportedly described the legislation he created as “watered down”.

All that time wasted in pursuit of bi-partisanship

This makes Obama that much more frustrating. I knew Baucus was ridiculous way back when. Could Obama not have exercised some leadership in July, for God’s fuck’s sake?

Could Obama not have written the health care bill he wanted back in February or March or April and told the Senate and House to make it work by September?

As I offered in a previous post, perhaps Obama was allowing the Teabaggers (and even Blue Dogs connected to the health insurance and pharmaceutical industries) to run their course and then he would take control. I’m paraphrasing my own theory—it had more to do with poker and being Captain Kirk.

Hang on. Am I talking about the same Obama who was brown nosing Wall Street Tuesday, basically asking them to regulate themselves or he’s going to hold his breath?

If Obama can call Kanye West a “jackass”, you know what he thinks about Baucus, Grassley, Palin, Enzi and the rest.

Well, today everyone balked at Baucus. Why? Because Baucus bogged us down and Baucus mocked us.

Yes, the plays on his name are important.

Repetitive ridicule is a superiority tactic most apparent in the principles of school yard/locker room bullying from my youth. I know it well because I was subjected to it mercilessly and failed in turn at it miserably.

We all need superiority over these assholes. I am tired of my government behaving the way it does—and that’s before the corporations take over everything after the Supreme Court rules in favor of Citizens United and makes multi-nationals people too!

HEAVY AGONIZED SIGH

Calling in Sick Today

2009-09-16T00:03:00.000-07:00

Like my friend Dennis, I too am working on a script. And I have a goal schedule of 15 pages per night. But tonight I am starting late, so the blog has to be forfeited. I have many ideas but no time.

As a wise man, or a white man, or a wide man once said, “That’s why God invented You Tube.”

So, here is one of my favorite Blondie songs. I would have presented more but EMI seems to have required embedding to be disabled by the user. Bastards!

This is a live version of “Dreaming” but the audio is not live. Still, the visuals are great and should take anyone back to that time if they lived through it.

The song is 30 years old and always takes me back to those days when I was young, idealistic, hopeful, and had almost no responsibility—or other people’s problems.

The drumming by Clem Burke is most impressive.

The Iraqi Shoe Thrower

2009-09-15T00:01:00.000-07:00

If I typed his name as the heading, you may have no idea who this post was about. His name is Muntazer al-Zaidi, for those who do not know or have forgotten.

At this writing it in unknown whether he will be released today or there will be another delay. I can only hope he is released and hope my positive vibe has its intended effect.

What I find interesting is what he said as he threw the shoes. As many of you know, I do not speak Arabic, but I found the translation in an article: “It is the farewell kiss, you dog,” he shouted before he threw the first shoe, and, “This is for the widows and orphans of Iraq,” he shouted when throwing the second one.

If I were Iraqi, I would be just as angry if some shithead like Bush lied to launch a war for oil and war profits which resulted in widows and orphans and maimed and dead—especially children.

It is unclear what Mr. Zaidi will do for work once released. He may return to work for the Iraqi television station in whose employ he was when he became a hero to billions worldwide.

If throwing shoes is one of the greatest insults in the Arab world, then perhaps the US military, upon the commencement of its invasion way back in 2003, should have lobbed shoes at Saddam and his son’s Uday and Qusay and their palaces. It would have saved a lot of innocent lives and we could have humiliated Saddam into surrender.

A lot of money could be made by throwing shoes, pies, water balloons and other assorted items—tractor tire rims?—at Saddam and his son’s Uday and Qusay, just like at a state or county fair amusement booth not only in America, but in Iraq as well.

Since that is not possible now, perhaps Zaidi would consider working as a taxpayer-paid shoe thrower; lobbing steel-toed boots at Max “Haucus Paucus” Baucus, Kent “Gone Bad” Conrad and Harry “The Need for Speed” Reid.

Then I’m sure he can get hired by liberals at Teabagger rallies. I know I’d pay to see some of those idiots defending the insurance industry’s death panels and their billion dollar profits get a size 13 snow boot on the noggin from a second-story window somewhere near the demonstration route.

I’d love to see Jim “Demented” DeMint have a Payless Shoe Source work boot graze his splanchnocranium.

I envy Mr. Zaidi, as many of us probably do. Why? Because we would all like to have thrown a shoe at Bush but we were only able to scream at the TV while Zaidi actually vented his anger in a good ol’ fashioned, non-lethal way.

But Zaidi paid the price for it, and I don’t think any of us would want to serve the prison time, but that’s the beauty and convenience of vicariousness.

For those who want to see it again here is the best version I could find on YouTube in the brief time I had to search for it.

The Big New York City Move

2009-09-14T00:03:00.000-07:00

On this day 400 years ago, Henry Hudson had already sailed up the Hudson River, although it was obviously not named that back then.

More importantly, it was 27 years ago, almost to the day, that I moved to New York with my friend Dennis Perrin. It was a Tuesday at about eleven pm when we climbed into his big tank of an early-to-mid 70s olive drab color Mercury Marquis with a white vinyl top and missing front grill.

We drove all through the night, seeming to convince each other, if I recall correctly, that we were making the right decision and taking the right direction in our lives. We weren’t going into such a big change blind because we had visited NYC for one week the previous June for the big anti-nuclear rally that began at the UN and ended in Central Park.

We arrived in New Jersey and I was driving when we got pulled over by the New Jersey state police. I had seen them going the other way, unless there were two different troopers.

Driving Dennis’s car we obviously looked like a couple of potheads although I was not into pot as much back then as I would later become.

I told Dennis we were being pulled over and he shoved a joint he’d just rolled—or some similar scenario—as far back under the seat as he could.

I pulled the car to the shoulder and the troopers made Dennis and I get out of the car. One trooper reached up under the seat but could not grab anything. The troopers separated Dennis and I and tried to get us to admit we had some drugs and where it was.

I remember the trooper telling me it would be easier on us if I just told him where the drugs were. Ha! I think it went easier on us just the way it worked out—with me saying nothing.

The troopers took Dennis and I to the trunk where we had crammed all the possessions that would not fit into the back seat.

The troopers were asking who owned everything they held up. Dennis had hidden his stash in the pocket of an article of clothing near the bottom of the pile of clothes. When they asked whose shaving kit it was and I claimed it, I knew we were home free.

I don’t remember the exact sentiment, but I think Dennis and I laughed and celebrated our victory and even saw it as a sign that our trip was ordained by the Gods of Manhattan.

We arrived in Chester, New Jersey where we stayed with the family of a friend of Dennis’s. Her father was a pharmaceutical executive. They were from England and very nice people. We had stayed with them in June.

Dennis and I would drive to Morristown and park the car then get the commuter train to Hoboken, catch the PATH to the World Trade Center and scour the city looking for jobs.

I don’t remember looking for very long. Memory is a bit fuzzy, but I remember sitting on a bench on 26th Street on the north side of Madison Square Park worried about getting a job. The job I got was at 25th and Fifth Avenue, right around the corner, in this building:

It was a shipping and receiving job for Frankel Associates. Dennis had also gotten a job down near Wall Street, if I remember. But he and I were somehow running out of money. I thought I had saved a thousand dollars and I cannot remember how much Dennis had saved. I remember Dennis and I talking in the guest room where we stayed and knowing our backs were against the wall and we had come so far that we couldn’t just go back home.

So, we asked to borrow about $600 from our hosts. I know it was not any easy decision for them, but soon they said yes. The next day, I told my new boss I needed another day to find a place to live.

Dennis had to start work the next day, I believe, so the apartment finding was up to me. I remember sitting in Washington Square Park with the Village Voice and finding a listing for the apartment we ended up renting—apartment 4C at 153 Norfolk Street in this building:

I had no idea where Norfolk Street was, so to find it I “listened to the wind”, as it is called, and I began walking down to Houston and then east. As I approached Bowery, I remember thinking that I didn’t really want to go much farther. The Bowery was scary back then. But something told me that Norfolk was on the other side of Bowery and that was where I went.

I remember paying the money and signing the lease. The rent was $395. Quite expensive for that neighborhood back then, I would say. They knew I was not a New Yorker. But we moved to New York to live in Manhattan, not in Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx or Staten Island. Dennis posted a recent video of our first building on his blog last week.

I remember we loaded up the car and drove into Manhattan on a Sunday night—either the 12th or the 19th. We came through the Holland Tunnel and up to Houston and over to Norfolk. Before we got to Bowery (somewhere around Mott Street) we took the Indiana license plate off the car because we didn’t want people to know we were from Indiana and rob us.

Luckily we found a parking spot right in front of the building and unloaded the car. We didn’t have that much stuff and it didn’t take that long. I don’t remember what we ate for dinner that night. I also don’t remember a giant sense of enthusiasm. There was a real and gripping sense of what lay ahead—adjusting to New York. I had wanted to live in New York since I was 14. I had moved even farther away from home at the age of 20. But New York is New York. If you don’t respect it, it can eat you alive.

Going to work everyday and developing relationships and exploring and learning everything New York had to teach changed me beyond anything I could ever have imagined. Dennis and I developed a sort of New York toughness. The winter was rough but invigorating and the next spring was so rewarding.

Dennis and I moved to a New York that still had a little roughness left over from the 70s. It’s been 27 years ago, but to put it into its proper perspective, we arrived less than two years after John Lennon was murdered, about five years after Son of Sam was arrested, about six years after the release of “Taxi Driver”, and about seven years after the premiere of the “Saturday Night Live”, and the Twin Towers had just nineteen years left to stand.

It’s too bad the memories of one’s more precious days are only relegated to photos and fading memories, whether your own or of the people you shared the experiences with.

It’s too bad there isn’t a You Tube for the things we’ve done and the places we’ve been.

Happy New York Move Anniversary, Dennis.

That Morning

2009-09-11T00:06:00.000-07:00

I write better when I stay up through the middle of the night. In the early morning hours of September 11, 2001, I was up writing. At about 8 am PDT, my roommate Gianin called from Switzerland to tell me with much excitement and breathless anxiety, “Jim, America is under attack! The World Trade Center doesn’t exist anymore!”

This was the same guy who tried to convince me that baby powder was cocaine, that there were UFOs over Malibu and other assorted practical jokes.

When I refused to believe him, he became exasperated. Then I thought, “Well, why would he be calling me so early?”

He begged me to turn on CNN and I did. I was shocked. Aaron Brown and Paula Zahn were talking and there was a shot from the top of CNN’s midtown headquarters at, I believe, Penn Plaza, showing that the World Trade Center no longer existed.

I do not think it is necessary to write about feelings of patriotism or recall the day in greater detail. I do believe the Twin Towers should be rebuilt, so, allow me to link to the piece I posted on July 16th to Rebuild the Twin Towers.

Included in the post is a film about how the Twin Towers were built. We all know how they were destroyed. How they were built is, undoubtedly, even more fascinating.

Two Oh One Oh

2009-09-10T00:01:00.000-07:00

It’s been a rough couple of months for progressives—and Americans—surrounding all this health care reform traveling vaudeville show.

Nothing is certain as yet, but many believe Obama pulled the rabbit out of the hat. I did not get to see the speech because I was picking up a friend at the airport.

However, I saw snippets of it and listened to some guests on the Marxist Socialist Nazi Bolshevik Communist network (MSNBC) and they believe Obama “hit one out of the park” and brought a “game changer”.

The four year conversion time table may complicate my strategy of making America a more progressive country, but we have time.

I said a couple of weeks ago that Republicans could lose even more seats in the House and the Senate in 2010 if the Democratic Party and the progressives in it play it right.

By 2012, progressive Democrats could win even more so that the Blue Dogs are significantly marginalized just in time for the asteroid to wipe us all out because the Mayans said so.

The working, middle and lower classes of America want and need help and not just because of Bush’s economic meltdown. Average Americans have a deep need to know that their government cares more about them.

Senator Tom Coburn’s belief that people should not turn to their government for help is, I believe, classism. If corporations can turn to their government for help, and Republicans agree with that, they are classists and corporatists and hypocrites.

Taxpayers pay taxes. They deserve more for their tax dollar than to have 50 cents of every one of those dollars to be given to the military for contractors and weapons manufacturers who have no oversight or accountability. That is never mentioned by the Coburns and his ilk—I mean, like.

This is their Achilles Heel. Republicans don’t really care about the American people despite the right-wing Christian and abortion and flag-waving brainwashing. This needs to be explained to the American voter provided the Supreme Court doesn’t rule in favor of Citizens United and our elections can be bought and sold by corporate America.

They can also lose from a true Christian point of view because their lack of compassion for the uninsured in favor of insurance companies is certainly un-Christian. If Christ was anything, he was progressive. Lying and scaring old people is not something Christ would approve of. Really make the old Midwesterner Bible Belters understand this and watch what happens.

Someone with guts and balls needs to exploit the Repub’s and Blue Dogs’ lies about health care reform at their town halls and defeat them in the next available election. But that requires a very good opposing candidate.

If health care reform succeeds, all the Birthers in Congress could be forced out of office because of the high poll numbers Obama could well have because of a rebounding economy and the initial successes of health care reform.

I would caution progressives not to get greedy. The goal is to win centrist and slightly-conservative Americans with health care. Americans want to know that people care about them and do not care more about illegal aliens, etc. The Republicans are going to exploit immigration. Progressives should not make the mistake of stepping into the trap.

The goal is to build a better America. That cannot be done by piling on everything all at once. Some issues must be left for another time. If you convince Americans you are for them, they will help you be for others next time.

Certain Congressional races should be targeted, but not all. Perhaps Grassley is vulnerable—and easily defeated—because of his speeches about “death panels”, obstructionism in his “Gang of Six” seat and flip flopping on “death panels” by blaming it on Sarah Palin.

Obama needs to help forcefully. With the anticipated success of health care reform by 2010, Bill Clinton also needs to campaign. His ability to gloat because of the health care victory could be extremely valuable and key to Congressional victories in many, many races.

I personally am slightly more conservative than the average progressive on some issues. But we need to take this country in another direction and swimming to the other shore after the shipwreck we all survived since 2000 is the only real way to recover. We need to get as far away from conservatism and corporatism as possible then we can slide back down when progressives begin fucking everything up in another 10-20 years.

This is a government of the people, by the people and for the people. Grassley, Coburn, Vitter and the others need to be made understand that fact in no uncertain terms.

And if they do not agree, they need to hear the same phrase I remember hearing conservatives say to liberals and leftists when I was a kid, and that was: “This is America, love it or leave it!”

On to Single Payer!

I Pledge Allegiance to the Logo of AIG/AIU…

2009-09-09T00:01:00.000-07:00

Back in 1983 after moving to NYC, I read Alvin Toffler’s “The Third Wave”. One thing I remember from the book was Toffler’s belief that one day multi-national corporations would be stronger and more powerful than governments because of globalization, etc. That became even more apparent today in two stories.

The first was on Huffington Post. It was a New York Times editorial titled “A Threat to Fair Election” about the Supreme Court seeming to go out of its way to hear arguments about overturning a decision the Supreme Court has regularly made which prevents corporations and unions from spending more than the regulated amount of campaign contributions.

This means corporations could spend as much as they want to elect the presidents they want, Senators they want and Representatives they way. This means American citizens will have much less impact on elections than they do now. In effect, our elected leaders will be voted into office by the power of the corporation in much the same way the Deathers and Nutters operated at the town hall meetings this summer.

Given that some liberals believe Obama moved the Supreme Court to the right with Sotomayor, it will be interesting to see how she and the conservatives on the highest Bench in the land vote on this.

Toffler believed, according to the Wikipedia, “The assault on the nation-state from above would include the rise of powerful non-national entities: IGO's, multinational corporations, religions with global reach, and even terrorist organizations or cartels.”

Do Republicans and Democrats count as terrorist organizations and cartels? And which would be which?

The second story was an Associated Press piece titled “Fines proposed for going without insurance” that a bill was floating around Congress that would propose fines between $750 and $3800 for anyone found not to have health insurance. This part of the overall bill—if not the whole bill—was obviously authored by the insurance industry but attributed to Max Baucus.

This means there will be cops in every emergency room ready to take to jail the injured and near death who don’t have Blue Cross.

This means the health insurance industry may soon have the ability—through Congress—to force us to buy their health insurance with all its denials and deductibles and death.

Didn’t we purchase our health insurance last year when we bailed out AIG with 150 billion dollars?

So our future may soon be run by corporations. There will be no need to vote; our corporations will elect who they want to lead us. There will only be a need to be good consumers and workers.

There will be laws passed by the corporations. And there will be town halls where people will be called unpatriotic Communists if they mention they did not buy the products produced by American Corporations.

The Second Amendment of the Constitution reads, “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

How can we as Americans really be free if our lives and our governments are run by corporations and not by ourselves?

It seems the Second Amendment allows us to shoot at CEOs and glass-walled corporate headquarters to maintain our nation’s Constitutionally-guaranteed security.

Then Erik Prince’s Blackwater/Xe mercenaries, hired by the multi-nationals, will return fire on Americans. Why? Because Doug Coe and his twisted right-wing Christian-capitalist-military group The Family had said God likes the rich and powerful but not the poor.

And Prince’s obsession with being a soldier in the Crusades will allow him and Coe and all the Family’s Senators to redefine the Crusades as also being against working, middle and lower class Americans who will also be considered by them as infidels. They already believe that, they just don’t say it.

The Second American Revolution may soon be coming to your country near you.

Does that mean it would qualify as the Third World War just because the corporations are multi-national?

Just kidding!

For those who need convincing—or a good laugh!—here is the best scene from the 1976 movie, “Network”.

Supra Lubna

2009-09-08T00:04:00.000-07:00

Yesterday morning after waking up I looked to see, as I do every day, how many visits my blog has received. Given that it was Labor Day I expected 3. I was surprised to find 61, about 55 of which had read my second piece on Lubna Hussein’s trial being postponed arising from her arrest in Sudan in July on charges of indecency for wearing trousers.

Yesterday it was announced that she had been convicted and fined $200 and the punishment of 40 lashes had been set aside. I laughed because Lubna won. Despite the conviction which they had to give Lubna to save their faces, Lubna backed them down. It was a small victory compared to the conviction but it was a major victory compared to what could have happened.

She had stated to the world media that if convicted she wanted to receive the 40 lashes in public. Because of international publicity Lubna garnered for her case by being brave and outspoken, she backed the Sudanese authorities into a corner and they had no choice under the intense global media spotlight to back down.

I read farther down the story to find that Lubna said she was not going to pay the fine because she was going to appeal the conviction and she wanted the law repealed. An LA Times online story that said she wore the same trousers to trial that she was arrested in.

I laughed again because Lubna inspired me. When I said in my first piece about Lubna, “The world needs more brave souls like her”, I didn’t know she would be this brave.

As I mentioned in yesterday’s blog, I am finishing a screenplay about honor killing that I wrote with my friend Rinde who was born and raised in northern Kurdistan (southwestern Turkey) and writing a book about the history of honor killing, I always try to imagine the audience it would attract world wide.

The movement Lubna could be starting in Sudan could spread far and wide. In America more than fifty years ago, the Civil Rights movement was sparked by a seamstress named Rosa Parks who simply refused to sit at the back of the bus. She was arrested and the Montgomery Bus Boycott began.

What Ms. Parks began obviously led to the election of the first African-American president of the United States, whose middle name happens to be the same as Lubna’s surname.

Change is possible. Because the Civil Rights Movement began in a place as fundamentalist with its Jim Crow laws toward blacks as the Sudan is with its Sharia laws toward women, a Civil Rights Movement for women can begin in Sudan.

I want to emphasize that in no way do I, as a western man, mean to suggest anything bad about Muslim men. Quite the contrary.

A victory for Lubna is a victory for Muslim men everywhere because then Muslim men will not have to use their anger and other emotions and get as upset about something as trivial as women wearing trousers. Then Muslim people everywhere can turn their attention to the more important issues facing people everywhere. It takes a lot of brain power and energy to get angry. And it is very draining.

Why not put that mental and emotional energy to good use in other ways and for other issues like food and education and health care for all the people?

As I said in my second piece about Lubna, Sharia’s indecency laws are constructed so that the woman becomes responsible (by covering up every bit of skin) for Muslim men being tempted when the responsibility should be on Muslim men to see some skin and learn to control their temptations.

Muslim men not being responsible for controlling their own responses only makes them weaker. Therefore, the indecency laws may need to be revised if not only to give women stronger rights and to make women more comfortable in their dress and to make Muslim men stronger to control their responses. Trousers cover all the skin. Modesty is all that is required by Quran. Are Lubna’s trousers not modest?

If Lubna’s trousers violated the indecency laws for many of the same reasons that were discussed 80 years ago in America when Hollywood stars began wearing trousers—the argument that trousers removed a woman’s femininity—then that has nothing to do with indecency as much as personal taste on the part of the Sharia interpreter.

It seems to me that Muslim women wearing trousers would be more in line with the equality that Prophet Muhammad stressed between Muslim women and men. But that’s just the opinion of a westerner who has done some study of Islam and Quran in the past ten years.

When Lubna wins by repealing the law, I suggest she launch her own line of clothes. She will make a fortune selling her own brand of trousers all over the world and could use that money to help other causes for the women and children of Sudan and other countries.

Labor Day, All My Troubles Seemed So Far Away

2009-09-07T00:24:00.000-07:00

According to that well of socialist indoctrination, the Wikipedia, the form of the celebration for Labor Day since its inception in America in 1882 after being borrowed from Canada, involved a parade for labor and trade organizations, followed by a festival for the workers and their families.

Originally, the AFL (American Federation of Labor)—back then not yet joined with the CIO (Congress of Industrial Organizations)—decided that the Sunday preceding Labor Day should be called Labor Sunday to nourish the spiritual aspects of the labor movement.

So, how ironic that Obama is giving his speech to a joint session of Congress a mere two days after Labor Day on historic legislation regarding health care reform for those who have fallen through the cracks that organized labor sought to protect.

It seems that everything everyone in the Obama camp has been saying up to now, including Obama himself; has been telegraphing that he has abandoned the public option in favor of a bill in which all Americans are legally obligated to get health coverage from an insurance company just like car insurance.

This means the next time you get pulled over by a cop and he asks for registration and insurance it may mean registration with a health insurance carrier and proof that a current policy is in force so that if you are in an accident there will be proof that when taken to the emergency room, your emergency health care expenses will not be paid for by those who’ve been bearing the burden up to now.

I prefer to wait until Obama speaks before getting nasty about it.

I have been rewriting this screenplay on honor killing. That’s an even more depressing subject than health care reform. And it is almost as complex.

Honor killing is illegal in Islam. It is against Islam to kill someone without trial. Honor killing takes place only in cultures in which men have absolute control over a woman’s sexuality usually in communities where that is used to judge a family’s “honor”.

We’ve had honor killings in this country. But mostly we’ve just had violence against women in the west.

I am also writing a book about how honor killing began and the birth of honor killings shares the same history as Christianity and Judaism. Perhaps after that history becomes familiar, male domination through all things social, political and religious throughout the world may begin to be resolved and hideous things like acid attacks against teenage girls like those that are common in Afghanistan may become as ancient history.

Even if Obama doesn’t say what we want about public option health care reform, our lives haven’t been put in jeopardy or taken for innocently talking to a stranger and we haven’t had to go to a hospital because acid was thrown in our faces for a variety of insane reasons.

A Few Days Lite

2009-09-03T00:06:00.000-07:00

That’s me in the East Village back in 1985. Glorious days.

I wasn’t happy with what I had written yesterday about Dick Cheney, so I didn’t post it and didn’t post anything in its place. Snarky is no substitute for satire.

I left the Haudenosaunee post hoping more people would read it. I believe it is a valuable piece of American history—especially for the Birthers, Deathers, Gunnutters, Seceders and whites who hate a black president for reasons of skin color as opposed to the frustration and disappointment others feel about Obama.

I am hoping the announcements made today that the Attorney General is required by law to investigate torture could lead to Cheney going away for awhile (until Obama offers a presidential pardon) for torture.

I doubt Obama will make mention of anything significant next week when he addresses Congress about health care. Hope I’m wrong. Perhaps he’ll beg the Republicans to make another attempt to negotiate. Unless he’s playing very high-stakes poker, I don’t understand him and don’t want to try right now. To me, Obama is like an African-American, accentless Schwarzenegger.

Speaking of Schwarzenegger, he must have been someone Teddy Kennedy rolled his eyes about many times at family functions in Hyannisport when Schwarzenegger tried to talk politics. So far Obama is disappointing, but I hope Schwarzenegger is disappearing.

This post serves as fair notice that the next few posts will be light on substance because I need to cram between now and Tuesday to finish a screenplay about honor killing, a very serious subject throughout much of the Muslim world.

As I explained a couple of years ago to that close personal friend of mine who’s a recording artist up the beach, I believe one aspect of the war on terror is for we and the Muslim world to encounter each other as friends and get to know each other and discuss our realities with each other. A better shared future depends on it. This is my way of carrying that forward. A more in-depth book about the bigger issue will follow.

I’m happy about the fifth season SNL DVD release on December 1st. I will buy it its first day out just as I have with the first four season releases.

All the fires and smoke hanging in the air here in Los Angeles and the high temperatures have been a bit debilitating and exhausting.

Happy Labor Day if I don’t post between now and then.

A Little Known Anniversary of the Roots of Our Freedom and Democracy

2009-09-01T00:09:00.000-07:00

One afternoon in 1988 I jumped into the St. Lawrence Seaway and was totally unprepared for the shock that went through my body caused by the cold of the water. The panic on my face must have been evident because of few of my Mohawk friends, notably Lorraine Canoe, grabbed me to make sure I did not drown. I remember trying to force the words from my mouth that I was okay but I don’t think those words were intelligible.

That happened at Akwesasne, the Mohawk Reservation in upstate New York, where I was for a function for the Akwesasne Freedom School headed back then by Mohawk Chief Jake Swamp who I interviewed for the WBAI-Pacifica radio show mentioned in the “About Me” paragraph to the right.

What may send a similar shock through America’s body is discovering the little-known, non-white history of the origins of our democratic freedoms. While we have always been taught that our democracy was founded by our white land owning and slave holding Founding Fathers, the historic fact is that American democracy as we know it would not have happened without borrowing it from American Indians.

That’s right, 867 years ago yesterday one of the giant cornerstones of America’s democracy, our “More Perfect Union” federalism and many facets of the structure of our government, many of our freedoms and various European democracies owe its creation to the Five Nations Haudenosaunee (pronounced Haudeno-shonee), which is the confederation of the Onondaga, the Seneca, the Cayuga, the Oneida, the Mohawk and with the addition of the Tuscarora later, becoming the sixth nation in the Haudenosaunee.

On August 31st, 1142, three hundred fifty years before the conquest of Columbus, the Haudenosaunee, otherwise known as the Iroquois Confederacy, was founded through the Great Law of Peace—the Iroquois Constitution.

What the Iroquois Constitution inspired in our own Constitution are many and fundamental. The two Houses of our legislature, our Congress, are taken from the Haudenosaunee not the Greeks; the three branches of our government are taken from the Haudenosaunee not the Romans; veto power, impeachment and the procedure for when a leader becomes sick were taken from the Haudenosaunee not the British.

All of this and more was borrowed and used by America—the same America which attempted to kill off or assimilate, the bulk of its entire indigenous population, even though it owed a major part of its “democratic experiment” to people who many American military, political, religious and business leaders thought were not even human, or were devils, or were simply beneath whites in all aspects. The term “ignorant savages” as used back then was not nearly as derogatory as it is today.

Founding Father Benjamin Franklin told colonial delegates in 1754, “It would be a strange thing if six nations of ignorant savages should be capable of forming such a union and be able to execute it in such a manner that it has subsisted ages and appears indissoluble, and yet, that a like union should be impractical of ten or a dozen English colonies, to whom it is more necessary and must be more advantageous, and who cannot be supposed to want an equal understanding of their interest.”

Moreover, Europe was inspired to throw off the suffocating shackles of monarchies by the Haudenosaunee through the Myth of the Noble Savage. The French took inspiration to end the reign of Louis the XVI because they saw how the Haudenosaunee lived in harmony with one another and with their surroundings and wanted the same for themselves.

One major difference of the freedoms or the Haudenosaunee and America lies in the intrinsic rights of women—existent among the Haudenosaunee but absent at the founding of America.

According to the book “Indian Givers: How the Indians of the Americas Transformed the World” by Jack Weatherford, Karl Marx was also inspired by the Myth of the Noble Savage to invent communism to reflect the liberty enjoyed by the Iroquois and how their community took care of all of its members without class distinction or structure with equality for all.

So, the founders of the two Cold War enemies inspired by American Indians to want greater control over their own freedoms and personal liberties.

The Great Peacemaker, whose name was Deganawida, and Hiawatha, his spokesman, would perhaps be bewildered at how badly the superior white race comprehended peace, given that the descendents of Marxism and American democracy could not forge a peace between themselves so many centuries after the Haudenosaunee did and that they nearly brought the world to nuclear war—a worse fate of war than the Great Peacemaker would ever have known or imagined in 1142.
On October 21, 1988 the US Senate passed a Concurrent Resolution to acknowledge the contribution of the Iroquois Confederacy in the development of the U.S. Constitution. So, if America says its true, you cannot doubt it.

However, there have been Christian attempts to diminish or deny the influence of the Haudenosaunee on the US Constitution and our freedoms. This is an example of one attempt which, in this link, is roundly refuted. Some Christians can barely get Christian history straight, let alone American history.

What I find fascinating about this is the Birthers, Deathers, Gun Nutters and typical Repubs and Dems are having trouble enough with America being lead by a black president, how much would they hate finding out that their freedoms, the ones that we still fight the “war on terror” to preserve, were created by Indians.

I promised to use this blog to educate about Indians. If you think the Birthers, Deathers, and others mentioned above are bad now, just read a little American Indian history.

And if you believe we can’t get health reform care from our government so easily, just remember, it was once very easy for them to give out small pox.

Just kidding.

Vulturizing Kennedy

2009-08-31T00:03:00.000-07:00

Vultures typically circle in the air over a dying animal or sit nearby in trees, logs and the ground until the animal has died and then they begin feeding.

Ted Kennedy is in the ground less than one day and already Washington’s vultures have decided to feed on his body, thereby helping to sell us out completely on the public option.

Orrin Hatch, the Moonie Mormon, who spoke at Kennedy’s memorial, claimed that Kennedy would have compromised on health care, meaning bye bye to the public option.

John Kerry, in what is said to be a cherry-picked quote by the Associated Press, says that Kennedy would have thrown away public option just to compromise.

Stephanopoulos told O’Reilly that the Democrats didn’t have the votes and that Kennedy would have negotiated and compromised, implying Kennedy would have abandoned the public option.

Last Thursday on “Countdown”, Lawrence O’Donnell mentioned that in 1994 he was in the room when Kennedy told Clinton they should go it alone without Republican votes on health care reform.

That should prove Stephanopoulos, Hatch, McCain and the others wrong. Their lies should help dispel the lie that the media is liberal.

Why is the media reporting on this and not on stories that could help health care?

Apparently the pharmaceutical and insurance industries are giant advertisers on the cable news programs.

Telling a lie like the president is a racist makes advertisers drop you, but telling lies like Ted Kennedy would have dropped the public option means nothing. Obviously the two are not equal.

Defaming a sitting president, immediately followed by a statement totally contradicting the racist defamation is insanity that everyone knew Beck possessed and could hold him accountable for and they punished him advertiserally (new word).

Attributing political convenience to one of America’s greatest Senators—who just happened to be buried yesterday—is slimy.

But how would one punish George Stephanopoulos? You can’t necessarily convince his advertisers to leave for that.

Large parts of the media seem intent on doing their part in ruining Obama’s chances of passing health care reform—more even than Obama himself so far.

Instead of investigating abuses by insurance companies or price gouging by pharmaceutical companies, they are focusing on the negatives of scorekeeping before Congress reconvenes in about a week.

By that time McCain, Hatch, Stephanopoulos and the others will have tried to make America believe that Teddy Kennedy would have been a Republican if he did not have to pretend he was a liberal for the sole reason of upholding his brother’s legacies.

Vultures are capable of digesting rotting corpses contaminated with Botulinum toxin (which is sold as Botox), hog cholera and anthrax.

Needless to say, they use their vomit as quite an effective defense mechanism in much the same way some snakes use their venom as projectiles.

The difference between vultures and cable news personalities and politicians is that what comes out of a vulture’s mouth isn’t as dangerous.

For the Weekend

2009-08-29T00:29:00.000-07:00

Here’s a song I from my childhood. The Fifth Dimension’s “Up, Up and Away” from 1967, I think. It was said to be a drug song. I was always attracted to Marilyn McCoo. She was hot. Ah, the 60s. Too bad you can’t make money just remembering.

Some of my favorites from my 77 blog history.

Reminiscing about childhood and one of mankind’s greatest achievements.

http://jimbuckblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/apollo-11.html

A bit of satire about politicians having scandals they have moralized about when other politicians had the same scandal.

http://jimbuckblog.blogspot.com/2009/06/minority-report-tom-cruise-played.html

A bit of satire about those who claim the moon landing was a hoax by showing how they presented us hoaxes to convince us the moon landing was a hoax.

http://jimbuckblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/moonspiracy-theories.html

Freedom of Speech means you can rebut the man you voted twice for when you think he’s out of line.

http://jimbuckblog.blogspot.com/2009/08/no-obama-got-little-excited.html

I still believe the Democrats can win even more in 2010 if they work hard and smart. Then we start electing Independents and make America a very progressive country it is already becoming.

http://jimbuckblog.blogspot.com/2009/08/republicans-may-lose-more-in-2010.html

Enjoy your American weekend!!

The Prejudice Opposing Health Care Reform

2009-08-28T00:15:00.000-07:00

One day this will all be history. And I hope this generation and the ones that follow will see the important lessons to be learned. One of the most important of which is how strong is the grip by American corporations on our country and our politicians.

In theory, I suppose, American corporations are not a bad thing. But when you factor in greed, and when greed is piggybacked on war profits, oh boy…! All hell breaks loose.

Every political era has its defining moments and its defining issues. It is no different now than it was in the 60s when I was a kid. With Ted Kennedy’s death, Obama on the ropes (hopefully doing a rope-a-dope), the Democrats being weak and spineless and the Republicans also on the ropes but screaming as if vocal intimidation instead of hard hitting punches will win the match, health care reform and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are the defining issues of today.

The passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was a defining moment in America because it helped lead to the correction of a centuries-old travesty in America, meaning slavery and discrimination against the descendents of slaves.

The possible passage of health care reform is similar to the passage of the Civil Rights Act in at least one respect which has to do with prejudice. In the case of health care reform that prejudice is based on class.

Perhaps because we are so focused on white/black and white/Hispanic racism, we have totally ignored and, therefore, not become educated about, nor had a national conversation about class prejudice. It seems that classism and class prejudice was discussed much more a century ago and through the Depression.

But that all seemed to be swept away by the American victory in WWII and to be crushed by the anti-Communist witch hunt of the McCarthy era in the early 1950s and replaced by the growing Civil Rights Movement in the mid-50s through to today with the election of America’s first African-American president and the appointment of our first Latina Supreme Court Justice.

Insurance industry CEOs and their corporate capo regimes are like the Jim Crow bigots of the Old South. They are the lords of the health care power structure just as some Whites in the Old South were the lords of that power structure.

Possible passage of a bill requiring all Americans to carry insurance so that insurance companies make money of the now uninsured 46 million means they control every aspect of health care in America just as the lords in the Jim Crow South controlled nearly all aspects of life for blacks back then.

Insurance industry CEOs view people with disdain and contempt because they know they need us just as the Old South Whites—especially the slave masters—viewed blacks with contempt and hatred and violence because they knew they needed them for as one of the primary pillars of their agrarian economy.

Just as the white power structure in America determined which blacks they approved of, the insurance industry power structure does the same with who gets an operation, who gets an operation denied and who gets coverage period.

Those in Congress now are like those Dixiecrats back in the 60s who tried to maintain their status quo on segregation until the Kennedys, Martin Luther King, Jr., LBJ and others forced the Civil Rights Act through Congress.

The insurance and health industries and their Congressional minions want to maintain the status quo and put the prejudiced power structure and its profits over providing the human right of adequate health care for the People. “The People” in America has always represented a class of people which is usually the heart and soul of America—the poor and working class and small business owners.

One cannot have such a profound lack of compassion for something as fundamental to compassion itself as quality and affordable health care unless they already have a prejudice, a disdain and contempt for “the People”.

Those opposed to the principles of equality during the Civil Rights Movement often resorted to convoluted logic and confused doubletalk when trying to explain why segregation was good and how white superiority was “God’s will”.

We hear this same convoluted logic and confused doubletalk today from Republicans and Democrats opposed to health care reform on unspoken class grounds.

Others simply won’t even participate in the discussion. There are Congresspersons, Democrat and Republican, who won’t even read the bills and won’t vote for health care reform anyway.

Just as they called Martin Luther King, Jr. a “communist” because that was how their simplistic minds processed the concept of equality, they view health care reform as “socialism” because it benefits “We the People” and that is how their simplistic minds view equality.

There are those in the intelligentsia of the insurance industry power structure who use these buzzwords to inflame the situation. The ultimate irony is these racists are accusing Obama of being Hitler without making a coherent argument because they simply cannot due to a complete and total lack of logic inherent in its premise.
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The vocal, violent mob mentality of the Old South’s power structure is very similar to what we see in the town hallers, the tea baggers and those “proud to be right wing terrorists” like that guy at the recent town hall in Reading, California.

The use of terrorism was how the Old South kept control over blacks, largely through the KKK and other vigilante means. The use of the town halls is how an insurance industry prejudiced against working class is keeping control over “the People”.

Between the two political parties, the Democrats were supposed to be for the people. Democrats like Ted Kennedy were, but many are not. Just as there were blacks known as Uncle Toms back in the day who sided with the white power structure that oppressed them and other blacks, many Democrats are traitors to the causes of the People because they are not of the same class.

Obviously Ted Kennedy was also not of the working class but was instructed from a very early age to help those less fortunate and that to whom much is given much is expected. That is compassion. But now they are trying to say that Kennedy was a “centrist” and not a liberal.

Just like some Whites in the Old South, Republicans and conservative Democrats believe that only they should be in power. They, like the Old South, believe it is God’s Will that they lead our country the way they see fit and the rest of us should shut up and be happy.

Now that we have a black president, can we now engage in some amount of discussion of classism in America without detracting from the worthy and ongoing national discussion of racism in America?

I still believe this moment in history gives us a profound opportunity to change America and make this country live up to its ideals that we so loudly profess to the rest of the world.

The forces that oppose health care reform in this country do so out of a deep, deep prejudice against the poor and working class in America. It is that simple and that discussion needs to be had on a national level so that we may out those bigots before they can poison our country any further.

Beyond Teddy Kennedy

2009-08-27T00:08:00.000-07:00

I remember watching JFK’s funeral on TV when I was six years old and crying and not really understanding why I was crying. I don’t really remember hearing the news of RFK’s assassination but I have always taken pride that he was in my hometown the week before.

Tuesday night when I was writing yesterday’s blog, the news of Ted Kennedy’s death came across. But I knew I did not really know enough about his life and career to write a respectable and respectful piece, and that I would leave it to others.

The one thought I had Tuesday night was on a theme I have touched upon a few times, which is that there are certain people in the world who you feel are pillars of strength to guard you from bad things and you almost take them for granted. Ted Kennedy has always been one of those for me. One did not have to pay as much attention because Kennedy was there to do it for us.

There has been much made today of Ted Kennedy’s greatness as a Senator. I don’t doubt that. I think what contributed to our thoughts of Kennedy’s greatness was his special place in our national family as the only surviving brother of JFK and RFK.

We as Americans will never get over the assassinations of John and Bobby. It will simply fade from our collective national consciousness as those who have any memories of them fade into the night.

Who will replace Kennedy in what he wanted to accomplish? I had hoped Kennedy would have lived long enough to make the difference in the current health care reform debate that seems to have been hijacked away from the passionate, eloquence of Kennedy by the thuggish, screaming of the town hallers.

Kennedy’s death should be a wake up call to those with progressive ideals and the skills, intellect and talent to carry them through.

This means you, Mr. President.

Perhaps your attempt at bipartisanship is learned from Ted Kennedy’s modus operandi within the Senate. Well, I believe times have changed and a different strategy is obviously needed. I don’t believe saying you promised Kennedy and just naming the health care reform bill after him is enough to get Republicans and errant Democrats on board. Many of these people seem to have lost their souls long ago.

This means you, Mr. Hatch—Moonie alumni.

There are progressives waiting to be led if you are so inclined to lead, Mr. President. We need toughness and rapid response to shifting sands caused by insurance and pharmaceutical industry con men. If we see you are waiting too long we are prepared to go it alone.

One of Reagan’s famous quotes was, “Government isn’t the solution to our problems government is the problem.” Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn said Tuesday that government was not the solution. Obviously what they want is to de-regulate corporations and to corporatize America in education, health care and Social Security, among others.

We don’t want America to become corporatized. With Kennedy gone, we must now do it ourselves, trust no one and take no prisoners.

Good luck on Saturday, Mr. President. We will all be watching for more than just a eulogy. You have a lot of rising to the occasion to do.

What would America be like if JFK and RFK had lived with Teddy in the Senate? Maybe Oliver Stone needs a new film?

All that’s left in the immediate is for Glenn Beck to make some insensitive comments about Kennedy’s death and lose even more sponsors.

Dem Damn Dems

2009-08-26T00:02:00.000-07:00

A majority of Americans are in favor of health care reform with a public option and are more often than not in opposition with the Blue Dogs and Red Dogs who represent them on this very issue. Why? The corporatization of every aspect of American life.

It was reported last night on Keith Olbermann during Countdown’s report on United Health Group that Obama met twice in May. So, it’s not just bipartisanship Obama is pursuing, it is tripartisanship—Democrats, Republicans and corporations.

While focusing one eye on health care reform, progressive Independents and Democrats should focus the other eye on winning as much as possible in 2010 and then again in 2012. Despite what I think we will be stuck will re-electing Obama at that time, no matter how frustrating and disappointing his first seven months have been.

Recently on Huffington Post, Beltway soothsayer Charlie Cook believes the Democrats may lose a minimum of 20 seats. I assume that is from both the Senate and the House. Cook’s prediction is based on the economy as the predominate issue.

I believe it’s still too early to tell. But I disagree that things will necessarily be so bad in 2010 for Democrats or those with a progressive agenda, but there may be one hell of a fight just to hold and gain ground.

The recent ridiculousness uttered by Tom Coburn, Chuck Grassley and Michael Steele in just the last day provide a bathroom window which progressives can go through if they just make an effort to connect to average Americans.

Can the opponents of Coburn, Grassley, etc. not point out that they and Republicans like them are out of step with the American people and in-step with heartless corporations who don’t care one bit about the American people except as consumers? Of course they can.

Obama is a great campaigner as evidenced by the fact he is our first black president. Can he convince voters that he needs Democrats help to finish his economic recovery? Without any unforeseen catastrophes, what’s not possible here without some hard work?

The other thing Progressives and progressive Democrats have going for them to insure victory and gains in 2010 is we are not that much of a center right country anymore. And we have not been for awhile. Remember, America did not really elect George Bush in 2000 or 2004, but we did really elect Obama last year.

A separation between progressive Democrats and Blue Dogs needs to be made more pronounced in 2010. My sense is the average American embraced a slightly more progressive agenda in 2008 because Bush was sooo bad. Well the Republicans are also bad and I think most Americans are not represented by these town hallers or their corporate agenda. For this reason progressives should go on the attack and paint Republicans and Blue Dogs as the corporate whores they are. I believe progressives can also make more victories than in the past provided they only talk about issues important to Americans and leave immigration reform for another election cycle or until the economy gets better.

Winning in 2010 means Republicans and Blue Dogs must pay for their lies, deception and acquiescence to the insurance industry.

But that means having viable Democratic or Independent candidates who can speak to the American people and show them how Grassley, Coburn, Baucus and the rest have lied to them about death panels, etc.

Progressives can build on this with clean energy and global climate change legislation, just as Republicans and Blue Dogs hope to, because most Americans want a clean energy world, not this “I’m an Energy Citizen” crap. The important thing to remember is set the agenda. That means begin talking about issues important to Americans NOW.

RNC Chairman Michael Steele’s Senior Health Care bullshit is only an attempt for the Republicans to save face in 2010. The Democrats and Progressives may see this as an RNC-Steele hypocrisy—Republicans saying they’re protecting Medicare for Seniors while having bashed Medicare while ranting against health care reform—but progressive may not be looking down the road.

The Democrats are only in power because Bush was so bad. Unfortunately, America electing the Democrats in 2006 was like an abused child running away from its violent and drunken father and into the care of a psychopath.

If a progressive agenda and candidates can hold against the push back in 2010, Republicans will be even more marginalized and crazed and will run someone guaranteed to lose in 2012 like Sarah Palin against Obama.

Barring any political violence—and you all know what I mean—there is hope for a progressive America in 2010 and even more so in 2012 and beyond. President Rahm Emanuel, anyone?

Will Democrats become impassioned by Kennedy’s death to vote for health care reform with a public option? Doubtful.

Most of them are not very bright guys and they will see Kennedy’s death as an excuse not to feel guilty about doing what the insurance industry wants them to do.

Bipartisans Disease Becomes Contagious

2009-08-25T00:03:00.000-07:00

Dateline December 5, 2010.

AMERICA - One month after the mid-term election in which Republicans roundly defeated Democrats and took back 21 seats in the Senate and 112 seats in the House, a strange and curious psychological phenomenon has befallen Americans.

Symptoms were noticed at the beginning of game four of the World Series in October when coaches from the two teams met each other on the infield to determine an outline for how both teams could come together to give America a good game.

The next day, after the media revealed that neither coach really wanted to win the remaining games, many believed the coaches and their teams had become the victims of some unknown freak side effect of steroid abuse that ESPN assumed was an over stimulation of the glands that manufactured estrogen, making the Boys of Summer seem like the Hermaphrodites of Fall. Balls were being dropped in more way than one.

People really began to notice when Heavyweight Boxing became Heavyweight Boring as #1 ranked Vitali Klitcshko and #4 ranked Chris Arreola stepped into the middle of the ring after the bell and began “getting along” with each other. They didn’t begin fighting, they began talking…about serious things—global climate change, international relations, and Jon and Kate Plus Hate as Vitali mis-stated it, causing Arreola and the Referee to laugh.

But the truth was Jon and Kate had inexplicably and suddenly reconciled which caused their ratings to, thankfully, plummet.

In courtrooms all over America, prosecutors and defense attorneys in capital murder cases suddenly began determining that bi-partisanship should prevail and both their interests be met, then immediately agreed that the murderers would be free on Wednesdays, Saturday and Sundays and incarcerated on Mondays, Tuesday, Thursdays and Fridays with a promise not to murder any one unless the murderer and a potential victim agree that attempted murder of the victim complies with a bi-partisan meeting of murderer’s and victim’s needs.

In this spirit Martin Scorsese recently announced plans for GoodFellas II where the son of Tommy (Joe Pesci’s character) grows up to avenge his father’s murder by having a sit down with the son of Billy Batts where he allows Junior Batts to beat him senseless in a Vegan restaurant, stuff him in the trunk of a Prius and bury him in an organic sugar snap pea patch until six months later when they have to “get it out of there” because the pea patch is going to be made into a Buddhist conflict resolution center.

Later in the year, the International Journal of Psychiatry in Medicine termed bi-partisans disease “Obamitis”. At the beginning, some in America confused bipartisans disease with Parkinson’s Disease, but those people were usually in the early stages of Alzheimer’s anyway.

The Journal says that being bi-partisan is the opposite of being bi-polar but is much more dangerous.

Congressman Christ - Episode 5

2009-08-24T00:03:00.000-07:00

Congressman Christ noticed that the Secret Service Agents eyed him suspiciously as he entered the Oval Office. President Obama greeted Christ and bowed before him and kissed His hand—just like he was a Pope—or Saudi King Abdullah.

“Mr. President,” Congressman Christ said.

“Uh,” Obama stammered, “my staff still has not determined how I should address you, your…you see?”

“Congressman is what I was elected as,” Christ said.

“Then Congressman, let’s go shoot some hoops. Are you going to put on some sweats and sneakers? Your robe and sandals will only help me win,” Obama smiled.

“Would sweats and sneakers enable you to walk on water?” Congressman Christ asked.

Obama understood what He meant and smiled. “This way,” Obama said.

Congressman Christ and President Obama headed outside to the basketball court Obama had installed earlier in the year.

As Obama and Congressman Christ walked through the Rose Garden, He turned to Obama, “It’s been awhile since I was in the Garden,” Congressman Christ said with a smile. Obama did not know whether he should laugh or not.

“I was making a joke, Mr. President,” Congressman Christ said.

“I don’t think I can win against you. It wouldn’t be right, it wouldn’t be the…Christian thing to do,” Obama said, lowering his head.

“So you’re saying the liberals are right about you?” Congressman Christ offered.

“What’s that?” Obama bit.

“You’re a wuss,” Congressman Christ retorted with a smile.

A few minutes into the game, Congressman Christ noticed that Obama really was hesitant to play hard. Congressman Christ grabbed the ball away from Obama and held up his hand.

The Secret Service agents on the sidelines became alert, eyeing Christ for more threatening actions against the President.

“Mr. President,” He said, “allow me to offer some advice on your health care reform issue. I am called the Prince of Peace and look at what they do in my name. Look at what America has done using my name, believing I would approve. I don’t.” Christ looked at him intensely.

Obama lowered his head.

“But I said what you do to the lowest of them you do to me,” He said, “If you give the poor good health care, you give good health to me.”

“I am hoping to make it so,” Obama said.

“Do you think I could have gotten the Romans to agree on what was best for Judea—or to get the Pharisees, the Herodians to simply agree based on your bi-partisan philosophy? No,” He said.

“I thought being the Prince of Peace that—“

Congressman Christ interrupted him. “No. I chased the money changers from the Temple with a whip. And they ran because they had never seen the Prince of Peace so angry. There are reasons worthy of becoming angry. You must do the same because those Republicans and Democrats are taking the House of the Laws of the People and turning it into a Den of Thieves for Insurance Companies and Lobbyists. I have seen this.”

“But I am afraid—“

“Yes, we can all see that,” Congressman Christ interrupted again, “But what I did 2,000 years ago, what I died for was for the poor of many varieties, not the rich. I had Our Father on my side, you have the American people and me and Our Father on your side.”

Looking to change the conversation, and get to the game, Obama yanked the ball from Christ’s hands and began to dribble toward the basket for a lay up shot.

Congressman Christ waved his hand and the ball suddenly went flat. The ball did not bounce back up to Obama, who lost his concentration and stumbled into the goal post.

The Secret Service agents lunged at Christ but Obama called them off. They helped Obama stand and gave him a new basketball.

“If I win, I handle this my way—“

“If you win this, you lose that,” Christ said, interrupting Obama.

“If you win, I do it your way,” Obama smiled.

“You’re on,” Christ smiled back.

Obama dribbled toward Christ and then faked Christ to the left. But when Obama ran to the right Christ was standing right in front of Obama. Obama was shocked, so shocked that Christ took the ball from him and made the shot.

Christ threw the ball at Obama who began to dribble. Obama charged at the basket, but Christ stopped his advance. Obama stopped and held the ball aloft, preparing for a shot.

Christ nodded and the ball turned into a big slimy fish. Obama was repulsed and dropped the fish. Christ picked it up and it turned into a ball again and Christ made a twenty foot hook shot. All net.

Obama looked up, amazed. Christ threw him the ball again. Obama began to dribble again. Suddenly Obama could find Christ nowhere around him. Obama looked up at the basket and made the shot.

But by the time the ball left his hands, the goal had turned into a cross and Christ was nailed onto it just like the crucifixion. But Christ wasn’t nailed because he caught the ball while on the cross. He dropped to the court, ball in hand and the cross changed back to the goal post.

Christ turned and smiled at Obama then Christ made the shot.

“I can never win against you,” Obama said, realizing defeat.

“Serve the People,” Christ said, “not the Den of Thieves.”

Tomorrow: Health Care Reform, Republicans and Righteous Rage

For the Weekend

2009-08-22T00:03:00.000-07:00

Join us Monday for another thrilling and rapturous episode of the Internet’s #1 blog serial, Congressman Christ, where President Obama invites Jesus to the White House to shoot some hoops.

And...

Thanks to all those who read this stuff I write. For those new to the Jim Buck Blog, here are five of my personal favorites. Check ‘em out.

The story of Eddie Hatcher battling Iran Contra cocaine in North Carolina and Senator Jesse Helms. It’s my first blog and the first of a four-part series. Iran Contra’s Dark Secret Revisited with Activist’s Death, Part One.

What the Republicans are doing now was called “Rat Fucking” during Watergate. I call what they’re doing today, “Pig Fucking” because it’s just as gross but bigger.

My personal experience being possibly victimized by the Patriot Act.

You’ve heard of the Axis of Evil? Health Care Reform is the Asskiss of Evil

July 6, 2009, the 52nd anniversary of the day John Lennon met Paul McCartney.

No, Obama Got a Little Excited!

2009-08-21T00:01:00.000-07:00

In his radio interview with radio talk show host Michael Smerconish yesterday, President Obama said that the media and progressives got “a little excited” about the public option issue.

I would counter that President Obama got a little excited about the prospect of bi-partisanship for his health care reform effort. He got a little “turned on” one might say about Republicans helping him pass substantial and historic health care reform and I think it goes back to his semi-delusional Lincoln fantasy that he touted during the campaign. Did he think he and the Republicans were going to bring this country together? Is he putting his legacy ahead of the process of health care reform? Shouldn’t he be channeling the spirit of Teddy Roosevelt instead of Lincoln and FDR?

I would also argue that “progressives”—and me—didn’t get a little excited as much as we became a little afraid. Why? Because we can’t read his mind, and lately he has said some things about health care reform which raised concern that he may be selling us out. Also, we don’t fully trust that he knows what he’s doing or he is doing what he should be doing the right way.

Now, while we don’t all crowd into the cockpit to second guess the airline pilot when we’re going through turbulence, Obama seems to have lost some measure of control. Did he jump into this with too much naiveté? And by “this” I don’t just mean health care reform, I also mean his presidency.

I would have approached health care reform in a different way, so obviously there is not as much faith in him as he may expect us to have. Our trust is not strong for this and other reasons. Why? Because this is the President who has gone soft on the Bush-era torture issue prosecutions and policies, he has kept his White House visitor log secret, and he confused and even angered many with his reversal on Guantanamo, among other things during his seven-plus months in office. And, because this is the President who insists he is going to get the very same Republicans to join him who want to destroy him.

He is too nice and calm when I want fight and fire. Has his being born in laid-back Hawaii revealed itself to be a detriment for him? Seems like it. Next time we elect a black president maybe he should be born in Kenya!

Now, if this pursuit of bi-partisanship is a tactic of Obama’s to make the Republicans look bad and lose even more in 2010, I’ll give it a chance. But first, let me explain what I mean.

Only Obama knows exactly what he can and will do on health care reform to get what he promised during the campaign. Just as Captain Kirk frequently took the Enterprise to the brink of destruction—and scared Scotty, the ship’s most intimately knowledgeable engineer, to death—in pursuit of that week’s enemy, perhaps that is what Obama is doing. Perhaps the Spock comparison has been misapplied all along.

If Obama is buttering up the Republicans by being very diplomatic in his pursuit of bi-partisanship by not doing or saying anything rude or mean or nasty to anger them, his strategy may be that he knows the Republicans will reject his attempts in the end anyway and then when Democrats do pass health care reform with the public option alone and the American people like it and find there are no death panels and none of the other scare tactic items they hurled with venom during the August recess, then Americans will have good reason not to trust Republicans. That’s my theory.

Two things anyone who has ever played poker knows are: play your cards close to your vest and always keep a poker face. Is that what Obama is doing? Is that what he did on Saturday when he said the public option was only a sliver of health care reform? Was he bluffing the Republicans?

The Republicans have already shown their hand because we know how many cards they have in Congress and from these stupid town hall bullying sessions, they led early with their best cards. Everyone already knows the Republican believe they are ordained by God to head the American government. Therefore, their actions are somewhat predictable and their hand can be figured out.

However, to embellish my theory about Obama, when the American voter sees how the Republicans shamelessly sided with the insurance industry and blatantly lied to scare them, maybe a sufficient number of elderly, poor and working class Republican and Independent voters may vote against Grassley, Coburn, DeMint and Vitter in the Senate and various Republican and evil Democrat Representatives in the House.

We’ll see.

On the other hand, maybe I’m wrong. Maybe Obama needs to become someone we can trust by fighting. He needs to stop being Barack Obama and become Barrage (of punches) o-BAM!!-a, and he needs to start swinging now.

SOCK!

POW!

ZOK!

BAM!

SOCK!

BLAP!

WHAP!

BIFF!

OOF!

Yes, I loved the 60s Batman TV series when I was a kid.

So, no, Mr. President, we did not become a little excited. It was more like we don’t know you that well or for that long and what you revealed about yourself during the courtship, you changed noticeably once we said “I do”.

What kind of marriage is this going to be?

Well, if we find out after the 2010 elections that Obama has secretly been a Scientologist since the late-80s that may explain some things but we’d better make an appointment with an attorney asap.

If he is or has ever been a Scientologist, he needs to resolve this bi-partisan engram that tortures him and focus on a uni-partisan endgame.

Rimshot!! Goodnight, everybody!!

Join us Monday for another thrilling and rapturous episode of the Internet’s #1 blog serial, Congressman Christ, where President Obama invites Jesus to the White House to shoot some hoops.

Check out the best of JimBuckBlog list over the weekend!!!

Global Climate Change Reform

2009-08-20T00:08:00.000-07:00

Now the Tea Baggers, Birthers, Deathers, Gunners, and other nutbags are taking on global climate change legislation by pretending they are grassroots. But the pay-no-attention-to-that-man-behind-the-curtain moment has already happened. It has been revealed that this new movement is connected to Dick Armey’s FreedomWorks and the oil industry.

Somebody had better be setting a trap for the Congresspersons who are against the public option and for the agenda of the oil industry’s “Energy Citizens” or “Climaters” or “Changers”. I want to be the first to come up with a name for them.

On another note:

This guy with the semi-automatic assault rifle and the semi-automatic assault smile he had on his face in Phoenix on Monday was black. This must have some in the pro-gun, anti-Obama camp worried because what was once, seemingly, an all-white club—the hate-Obama-because-he’s-African-not-American—has been invaded by a black guy. This is almost like the Klan being invaded by a black guy who also hates blacks. Now these gun people will use this guy as proof they’re not racist against Obama while 95 percent of these Gunners will form a separate group and the rest will learn not to be racist, just paranoid.

What would have been great would have been this guy saying he was Muslim. That would have made all the difference. And it would have been so funny to see the looks on all those pro-gun guys’ faces. They would have wrestled him to the ground and taken that killing machine away from him.

What I would love to see is we put all these idiots in a large auditorium and tell them all that there are some secret Nazi Socialists among them and if they can if they can find them they can go home. They’d all beat the shit out of each other because they’re so filled with rage and paranoia which equals zealot.

Obama had better be able to sink one from center court because the Republicans and the insurance industry are not letting him inside.

By the way, what do Dick Armey and Dick Cheney have in common politically other than being Republicans?

They’re both Dicks.

Ha ha. Oh, sometimes I even amuse (not) myself.

A scattered blog, today. Sorry. I spent a lot of time today building the eviction case against the tenant I mentioned yesterday. That can be very draining. And I had the cops in my building again today, this time asking about a former tenant.

But back to greater and lesser realities:

I applaud the Barney Frank exchange today about Nazi health care. I need argumentativeness from Democrats to feel like there’s hope.

I was once accused by a tenant of being a Nazi. I think I had given him a notice about not breaking into the mailboxes. I cannot remember exactly. But this guy was such a nutcase that he permanently disabled himself rather than ask for my help.

He knocked on the door of the on-site maintenance guy and asked him if he had keys for his apartment. The maintenance guy said no because he had just woken up, he did not have the keys with him—they were in the office.

Before the tenant could be questioned further he ran away. The maintenance guy called me. I was on the third floor, so I went back to the office and left the door open thinking he would come to me in the office. I waited and waited and finally I heard a loud slam, followed by a loud “Fuck!”. I ran out the back door and around to the side of the building and found the tenant lying on his side on the concrete walkway. I called out his name. He said, “Jim, please help me!”

He had fallen off an eight inch wide board that he put from the roof of the building next door into the window of his apartment. As he was scooting across the board, his butt hit a nail and he lost his balance. He fell about twenty feet onto the concrete, shattering both his ankles, breaking his hip and permanently disabling himself and his ability to walk.

All he had to do was follow the proceeds and be a little patient. But he was so hyper that I was evil that he became a victim of his own delusion.

And with that…on to the Changers!

A Progressive Option?

2009-08-19T00:04:00.000-07:00

Are progressives now an option in Congress? It has been within progressives control since January 20th if not Election Day last year. By “it” I mean their ability to influence national policy on some issues, the biggest and most important of which is arguably health care reform. But they don’t seem to have done it.

The first draft of yesterday’s blog contained the question “Where are the progressives?” I took it out Monday night because progressive Democrats drew a “line in the sand” on Monday (and we all know how solid and unmovable sand is) about the public option being included in anything that comes out of Congress and goes to Obama’s desk.

Being pro-active is very helpful to get what you want. This may be a gross generalization, but I think most progressives are so passive and peaceful that they even think fighting for what’s right is wrong. Get some cojones! Get your knuckles bloody if you have to!

Today I called the police at the building I manage because the problem-causing guest of a less-than-admirable tenant molested one of my tenants. Yesterday the guest caused another problem which brought everything forward. Now it is a matter of building the case against the tenant which will legally force him to leave because he did not believe he had to control his guest which allowed the guest to molest the tenant. Drugs were involved, of course. Containing and removing threats to other tenants’ peaceful enjoyment of their premises is part of my job and doesn’t happen if I just sit in my office and wait for things to resolve themselves or complain that I have no control over my building.

This is what progressives must do continuously from health care forward because I don’t think most mainstream Democrats have enough cojones to stand up to Republican bullying.

What may help progressives and Democrats in general with regard to public support of health care reform is to define the terms being used in the bills in Congress and the plans Obama has in mind.

At first hearing, who would know what a public option is just from hearing those two words? That sounds like public offering of a stock purchase. A co-op. What the hell? That’s a real estate term to most people. Couldn’t the brains behind Obama’s election and his campaign slogans not have invented terms which makes the specifics of health care reform easy to understand.

Perhaps like politics, landlord-tenant law in California does not always follow common sense or logic. But there is a framework with which I can protect my tenants.

Teabaggers and Astroturfers defined and owned health care debate in this country for a good month through town halls until last week when Obama finally came out of his cave and began to refute the outrageous myths which many Americans believed were true. Republicans defined the game while Obama and the Democrats were on the sidelines warming up. Playing catch up is not good politics.

Progressives need to get ahead of the scare tactic-question of health care reform providing free health care for illegal immigrants.

Should progressives not have started earlier to take control? Hell yes! Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi are simply not fighters. Don’t wait for them to do anything.

I don’t care if this is a recess or not. Reid needs to be on the phone to Max “Raucous” Baucus and Kent “Been had” Conrad and reign them in. I hope they have learned their lesson for agenda items in the future. As the Republicans become more and more controlled by the far right, doesn’t that not also mean that, conversely, lefty liberals should move to take control of the Democrats just to balance things out in America?? Maybe I’m nuts.

The work of the Democrats in the 2010 election, before they become the Dem-o-craps, should be to focus on defeating Grassley, Coburn, DeMint and Vitter.

If the Dems allow Stormy Daniels to be Vitter’s only challenger I will be move to Louisiana and vote for Vitter myself.

HEAVY AGONIZED SIGH

Losing the Public Option

2009-08-18T00:06:00.000-07:00

When Keith Olbermann announced last Election Day that Obama would be our next president, I choked up and became emotional, partly because of the racial aspect—America elected it’s first African American president—and partly due to relief for my two months of concern and frustration about Sarah Palin and her hate-filled campaign rallies where she pretended she had a right to stir up cries of “Kill him!”, and partly because I thought we’d elected a president who may reverse some of the Bush administration’s policies and give America some standing in the world.

Sunday morning when I saw that Obama was considering surrendering the public option to the Republicans and the insurance industry I became angry. “Republican pressure” and “uneasy public” is what it said was Obama’s explanation.

Where are the Democrats’ backbones? So far all I’ve seen on this side of the debate is an ad using the same actors from 1994 who were in an ad against it (Great [heavy sarcasm] gimmick!!) and an ad by AARP. This seems to be a case of too little too late.

And what about Obama? We elect him for “change” and the only thing he changes is what he is doing compared to what he said he’d do. Is he taking this Lincoln fixation he has too far by actually believing he will unite the country. Does he realize Lincoln only did that after winning a war?! Does he further realize he’s not even fighting a war to win health care reform that he could win if he tried.

Immediately after his Inauguration, Obama wussed out by trying to be all bi-partisan, inviting the Republicans to the White House for cocktails. Who gives a shit about cocktails?! Did he think after losing to him that Republicans were going to be civil? That kind of civility is like a thief smiling at you before he pulls the gun.

I am tired of the weak Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and Barack Obama-type Democrats. After eight years of Bush we all have to vent some anger. And nothing does that better than impeachment.

But Democrats are the true Christians because they always turn the other cheek. Democrats love their enemies so much they kiss their ass. In the Bible Matthew 5:40 it says “If anyone wants to sue you and take your tunic (shirt), let him have your cloak as well.” To Democrats their “cloak” is synonymous with majority votes.

Some of these sell-out Democrats are already bought by the Health Insurance industry. That’s the behind-the-scenes aspect to this whole mess that the town halls are a distraction from.

Democrats think that because they gained in 2006 and 2008 that now it’s their turn to be corrupt and get away with it. Their campaign contributions, they think, will go up in 2010 because they “behaved”. Idiots! They’ve been bought and sold like the weak, stupid slaves they are. GodDem damnocrats.

I watched “Goodfellas” yesterday—not on AMC—and it reminded me of this very situation. Obama is the restaurant owner trying to get Joe Pesci to pay his $7,000 bill because fair is fair. Joe Pesci is the health care industry who hits him over the head with a bottle and kicks him in the ass.

All I’m smart enough to do right now is write and manage an apartment building. But even I know that health care reform should have been pre-sold back in June and July by using the same means that helped Obama get elected.

Today there was talk that the Republicans want to dismantle Medi-care. A word of advice to them: ask the Democrats to be bi-partisan and they will do it for you.

Both Obama and Palin played basketball. Palin was so competitive she earned the nickname “barracuda”. Obama’s competitiveness probably earned the nickname “tortoise”.

During the campaign Palin described her ferocity as lipstick on a Pitbull. Obama may as well describe his as Chapstick on a Chihuahua.

Last year Palin was for the Bridge to Nowhere before she was against it. Last year, Obama was for the public option before he was against it and health care reform isn’t going anywhere.

His campaign slogan was “Yes We Can”. Now it seems to be more like “Yes We…Well, Let Me See if They’ll Agree To It First”.

His other slogan was “Change We Can Believe In”. Now it seems to be more like, “Change We Can Deceive In”.

Am I missing something here? Was Blagojevich secretly appointed to head health care in a quid pro quo for naming someone ridiculous to fill his Senate seat so Obama could have it back in January 2013?

We have a first with Obama being the first black president. Will we have another first in that Obama will also be the first president to run for his old Senate seat while serving as president?

All the Republicans have to do now is create a phony national security issue to really wrest the government back from Americans.

On to Global Warming, Social Security, Medi-Care and every other campaign promise he made.

I hope I’m wrong.

Congressman Christ – Episode Four

2009-08-17T00:09:00.000-07:00

Christ has returned to Earth for his Second Coming. In 2008, he ran for and won election to the U.S. House of Representatives from the 27th Congressional District of Texas in Corpus Christi.

“Jesus!” was called out as Congressman Christ walked down the hallway to his office. He stopped and turned.

“I’m sorry, ma’am,” shouted back the Capitol Police officer, “all visitors must go through security!”

“I’m not a visitor, I’m Sarah Palin and I came to see Jesus!”

“Let her through,” Congressman Christ called out.

Palin marched up to Congressman Christ. “Your Messiahfulness,” she gulped then sighed to catch her breath. “I’m an important person in American politics. You probably heard about me even before politics, I’ve certainly prayed to you enough.”

Congressman Christ began to respond but Palin cut him off.

“I’m a Pentecostal. We’re probably the Christians you would approve of most out of all the other Christians.”

“Are you sure?” He asked.

“Some of those other Christians are religious elites. They look down on us for our talking in tongues and our praying against witchcraft and our shooting wolves from airplanes.”

“Shooting wolves from airplanes? You consider that Christian?”

“You betcha. The Lord is my shepherd! Every shepherd knows wolves kill flocks. We literally interpret the Bible,” Palin said.

“Is there something you need from me?” He said, anxious to get to his office.

“Can you make it so that America takes me more seriously?”

“Your pastor prayed for me to make a way for you to be Governor and you became Governor, but then you threw away the answer to your prayer when you resigned.”

“I did it to better serve the people of this Great nation against the evils of Obama.”

“Do you remember when you prayed to be able to go to Hawaii Pacific University and I granted your prayer and then you quit after one semester?”

“Yes, but—“

“And then you prayed to go to North Idaho College and I granted that prayer, but you quit after two semesters.”

“I—“

“And then you went to the University of Idaho without praying and then you prayed to continue your education near your family and to be near Todd, so I granted that and you lasted there for one semester again!”

“Todd was—“

“Then you went back to University of Idaho. You prayed to become a sportscaster and I made you a sportscaster, but you quit that too!”

Congressman Christ was starting to raise his voice.

“Face it! You don’t finish what you start! You’re for the bridge then you’re against it! You speak about Death Panels then you preach civility!”

“Maybe we should go to my office,” Congressman Christ gestured for her to follow him.

“No, there may be a photographer or a news camera coming by any minute,” she said, “I get more political clout having my photo taken with you than with that loser John McCain.”

“I am very busy, Mrs. Palin,” He said.

“I need to ask you something—well, a couple of things, your Saviorship,” she looked at him with fear and desperation.

“Like what?” He asked.

“I need to ask about…divorce,” she said in a hushed tone.

“It is written: anyone who divorces his wife, except for marital unfaithfulness, and marries another woman commits adultery. Are you divorcing?” He asked.

Palin grabbed Him by the arm and hurried him to His office. “Let’s go! We don’t need photos that bad!”

“Do you remember praying almost a hundred times that you wanted me to make Todd love you, that Todd would ask you out, that Todd would call you, that Todd would propose and that Todd would not change his mind?” Congressman Christ asked. His voice became pointed with frustration.

“I was busy answering prayers of people in war,” He continued, “People who were going to die, children who were in trouble! And you kept bothering me about Todd! Todd! Todd!”

Christ had not been this angry since Simon Peter used to run around to all who had gathered when Christ was preaching his sermons, saying, “Pull my thumb”.

The veins were popping out on Congressman Christ’s forehead, he was so frustrated.

“I could care less if you get divorced!” He exclaimed. “First you are for this university then you’re against it, then you’re for the bridge then you’re against it, then you’re for being Governor, then you’re against it, then you’re against civility, then you you’re for it, then you’re against it!”

“I’m sometimes confused,” she said.

“It’s like you’re speaking in tongues when praying, you make as much sense!” Congressman Christ was fed up.

“Instead of fighting Obama on something like un-real like death panels, why don’t you fight him on something un-Christian like torture?!”

Christ fumed. Palin became timid.

“I’m sorry. Sometimes I feel like I’m being crucified.”

“Well, why don’t I get a hammer and nails so you can have the full effect?!”

Congressman Christ paced around his office rubbing his neck to calm down.

“I’m sorry I made you so mad. I do the same to Todd. I have just one more question then I’ll leave.”

“What??!!”

Palin became afraid for a moment then pulled herself together. “I’ve been thinking about running for president in 2012. Are you at all interested in becoming vice-president? We’d win very easy.”

Congressman Christ just looked at her and sighed.

Join us next week for another thrilling and rapturous episode of Congressman Christ when President Obama invites Him to the White House to shoot some hoops.

Congressman Christ - Episode Four - Monday

2009-08-15T16:53:00.000-07:00

Join us next week for another thrilling and rapturous episode of “Congressman Christ” when Sarah Palin asks Jesus to join her on Facebook as a friend.