March 31, 2008
HEY HILLARY, YOU FEELING OKAY?
So, did Hillary Clinton finally talk her way out of the Democratic nomination for president this year? She claimed to have been rushed off a plane under sniper fire in Bosnia back in the 1990's when that nation was in the world focus for their genocidal ethnic-cleansing civil wars. Her husband President Bill Clinton had ordered NATO air strikes on that nation to get them to cut that stuff out and Hillary claimed she was sent there because it was too dangerous for the president to visit. Now, nobody said the Clintons had the ideal marriage or that roving-eye Bill didn't get a annoyed with his strident know-it-all wife from time to time, but isn't that a little extreme to claim that the president would send his wife and their only child into the teeth of sniper fire? Isn't that what Vice Presidents are for?
And why would the president want to expose the comedian Sinbad and the singer Cheryl Crow to sniper fire? They accompanied her on the trip, for reasons nobody can explain, neither one of them having big fan bases in the Balkan States. Again, not our most talented entertainers, but there's no sense killing them either since when that happens you have to endure endless retrospectives of their bland careers and nobody wanted that, to say nothing of the negative publicity that would have ensued by getting your wife and daughter shot in a place where crazy people were slaying their neighbors that looked just like them because they practiced a different religion. That sort of thing has been a national pastime in the Balkans for many centuries, a bit incomprehensible to us, sort of like the Europeans' fascination with soccer, that most boring of sports; an hour and a half of small men running back and forth feverishly and producing usually but a single point. They'd have you believe that 's an indication of the difficulty of the game when the more likely explanation is that soccer players are horrible athletes.
But I digress. Back to Hillary Clinton dodging bullets in Bosnia. Well, it turns out the whole thing was a lie. You'd think that Ms. Clinton would recall that her every move as First Lady was videotaped by somebody and her arrival in Bosnia was no exception. She was met at the airport by women with flowers, reviewed the troops arrayed to greet her, and leisurely strolled around the airport afterwards in the company of her daughter Chelsea and Bosnian women and children. If there were any snipers aiming at anybody there, they were about as skilled as soccer players trying to kick the ball into that giant net with no success at all. All in all it was a peaceful afternoon completely unlike what Ms. Clinton described.
The question is; WHY? Why would Ms. Clinton make up a story like this? What sort of brain fever gripped the woman? You feeling okay, Hillary? If this spells the end to her campaign, what a disappointing final act this will be to what has been an interesting and spirited campaign for the Democratic nomination, sort of like the endings to "The Sopranos" and "No Country For Old Men" where you're left hanging with more questions than resolutions to interesting stories. It was also a history-making campaign, with the two surviving candidates from the long campaign season being a woman and a black man. So it's kind of incomprehensible that a skilled old political pro like Hillary Clinton would shoot herself in the foot like this with a blatant lie. Now you wonder who you really want answering the phone at 3 in the morning when a crisis occurs.
Looks like it's going to be President Barack Obama. I'm comfortable with that, I voted for the guy in the primary. He was leading in all categories anyway; electoral delegates, states and the popular vote, but Ms. Clinton could have made it closer with wins in the upcoming primaries in Pennsylvania and other delegate-rich states. Then her hopes would be pinned on the uncommitted Super-delegates, many of whom she has a relationship with of one sort or another, personal or political. She is, after all, a well-connected and seasoned political pro and could have eked out the nomination if Obama entered the Convention without a complete numerical lock on electoral votes. Now it looks as if that scenario won't happen with the sniper lie. All in all, a puzzling thing in a year that looks like the Democrats will regain the White House no matter who runs.
Of course I could be wrong about that and we could wind up with another integrity-compromised senile old man like Ronald Reagan in the White House, John McCain. Not a bad guy, really, and a genuine war hero, but that's no reason to make him president. For one thing, he's vowed to follow Bush The Younger's policies in Iraq. Who knew Bush had policies? Wasn't he sort of winging it? Anyway, that's one indication of advancing senility, along with his insistence that America will maintain troops in Iraq for as much as a hundred years. He must think we're stealing their oil with a hand siphon pump or something. Any fool knows it won't take that long to relieve Iraq of their sea of oil. What we need is a president who can figure out way to get us out of that mess, out of the oil stealing business and out of the empire racket altogether.
America is just not cut out to be an Empire. We might have the guns and the money and go around acting like an Empire, but our heart just isn't into that whole world-domination crap. John McCain didn't learn that lesson in the war he fought and during which he became a high-profile prisoner, the Vietnam War. We lost that war because the country could not bring itself to completely crush the North Vietnamese, something it was in our power to do but we lacked the will to do so, which is not a bad thing, really. But it was a horrible thing to waste the lives of 58,000 of our soldiers and uncounted hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese people while we figured that out.
It's the same now with Iraq. A true Empire would have crushed all resistance, slaughtered as many people as it took to subdue the nation completely and not gave a rat's ass who approved or disapproved. They'd have openly stolen their oil instead of doing it on the sly like we're doing now. An Empire would certainly not have attempted to install a democratic government. But a half-assed imperial wanna-be like America invades, crushes their army and then tries to remake these dusty little tribal nations into mini-Americas, something that in their very long histories has never occurred to these people. If Middle Easterners or West Asians had any history of a deep longing for self rule and setting up a nation of laws instead of brutal dictatorships, tribal warlords and decadent kings they've been pretty good about keeping it a secret for a few thousand years. Real good.
So maybe Hillary Clinton did us a favor by reminding us that no good ever comes to America when we intervene in other nations' business. It's not like the Balkans have become models of good national citizenship. They are still claiming each other's territory from their Connecticut-sized nations and still teaching their children that it is right and proper to want to murder their rivals in their beds, man, woman, child, goats and dogs. Even when they do elect democratically chosen leaders they usually pick the most bloodthirsty and Medieval candidate to lead them in yet another murderous crusade against their neighboring nations.
So we ought to elect Barack Obama president, who's main idea is to de-Balkanize our own politics here at home, where partisan strife has gotten out of hand to the point that many American politicians feel that members of the opposition party are enemies of the state. That was never the case until recent years and it is crippling American government and it made possible the coup 'd etat of Dick Cheney and his political/corporate conglomerate eight years ago. Bush The Younger is merely the simpleton front man for these corporate gangsters, sort of like elevating Fredo Corleone to the job of don while abler hands pull the strings. Any hint of John McCain's desire to continue in their footsteps is an aberration. Let America try to be the best America it can be. That will go a lot further as far as gaining interational respect than all our guns and planes and, more importantly, it will give us back our self respect. Obama in'08.
And why would the president want to expose the comedian Sinbad and the singer Cheryl Crow to sniper fire? They accompanied her on the trip, for reasons nobody can explain, neither one of them having big fan bases in the Balkan States. Again, not our most talented entertainers, but there's no sense killing them either since when that happens you have to endure endless retrospectives of their bland careers and nobody wanted that, to say nothing of the negative publicity that would have ensued by getting your wife and daughter shot in a place where crazy people were slaying their neighbors that looked just like them because they practiced a different religion. That sort of thing has been a national pastime in the Balkans for many centuries, a bit incomprehensible to us, sort of like the Europeans' fascination with soccer, that most boring of sports; an hour and a half of small men running back and forth feverishly and producing usually but a single point. They'd have you believe that 's an indication of the difficulty of the game when the more likely explanation is that soccer players are horrible athletes.
But I digress. Back to Hillary Clinton dodging bullets in Bosnia. Well, it turns out the whole thing was a lie. You'd think that Ms. Clinton would recall that her every move as First Lady was videotaped by somebody and her arrival in Bosnia was no exception. She was met at the airport by women with flowers, reviewed the troops arrayed to greet her, and leisurely strolled around the airport afterwards in the company of her daughter Chelsea and Bosnian women and children. If there were any snipers aiming at anybody there, they were about as skilled as soccer players trying to kick the ball into that giant net with no success at all. All in all it was a peaceful afternoon completely unlike what Ms. Clinton described.
The question is; WHY? Why would Ms. Clinton make up a story like this? What sort of brain fever gripped the woman? You feeling okay, Hillary? If this spells the end to her campaign, what a disappointing final act this will be to what has been an interesting and spirited campaign for the Democratic nomination, sort of like the endings to "The Sopranos" and "No Country For Old Men" where you're left hanging with more questions than resolutions to interesting stories. It was also a history-making campaign, with the two surviving candidates from the long campaign season being a woman and a black man. So it's kind of incomprehensible that a skilled old political pro like Hillary Clinton would shoot herself in the foot like this with a blatant lie. Now you wonder who you really want answering the phone at 3 in the morning when a crisis occurs.
Looks like it's going to be President Barack Obama. I'm comfortable with that, I voted for the guy in the primary. He was leading in all categories anyway; electoral delegates, states and the popular vote, but Ms. Clinton could have made it closer with wins in the upcoming primaries in Pennsylvania and other delegate-rich states. Then her hopes would be pinned on the uncommitted Super-delegates, many of whom she has a relationship with of one sort or another, personal or political. She is, after all, a well-connected and seasoned political pro and could have eked out the nomination if Obama entered the Convention without a complete numerical lock on electoral votes. Now it looks as if that scenario won't happen with the sniper lie. All in all, a puzzling thing in a year that looks like the Democrats will regain the White House no matter who runs.
Of course I could be wrong about that and we could wind up with another integrity-compromised senile old man like Ronald Reagan in the White House, John McCain. Not a bad guy, really, and a genuine war hero, but that's no reason to make him president. For one thing, he's vowed to follow Bush The Younger's policies in Iraq. Who knew Bush had policies? Wasn't he sort of winging it? Anyway, that's one indication of advancing senility, along with his insistence that America will maintain troops in Iraq for as much as a hundred years. He must think we're stealing their oil with a hand siphon pump or something. Any fool knows it won't take that long to relieve Iraq of their sea of oil. What we need is a president who can figure out way to get us out of that mess, out of the oil stealing business and out of the empire racket altogether.
America is just not cut out to be an Empire. We might have the guns and the money and go around acting like an Empire, but our heart just isn't into that whole world-domination crap. John McCain didn't learn that lesson in the war he fought and during which he became a high-profile prisoner, the Vietnam War. We lost that war because the country could not bring itself to completely crush the North Vietnamese, something it was in our power to do but we lacked the will to do so, which is not a bad thing, really. But it was a horrible thing to waste the lives of 58,000 of our soldiers and uncounted hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese people while we figured that out.
It's the same now with Iraq. A true Empire would have crushed all resistance, slaughtered as many people as it took to subdue the nation completely and not gave a rat's ass who approved or disapproved. They'd have openly stolen their oil instead of doing it on the sly like we're doing now. An Empire would certainly not have attempted to install a democratic government. But a half-assed imperial wanna-be like America invades, crushes their army and then tries to remake these dusty little tribal nations into mini-Americas, something that in their very long histories has never occurred to these people. If Middle Easterners or West Asians had any history of a deep longing for self rule and setting up a nation of laws instead of brutal dictatorships, tribal warlords and decadent kings they've been pretty good about keeping it a secret for a few thousand years. Real good.
So maybe Hillary Clinton did us a favor by reminding us that no good ever comes to America when we intervene in other nations' business. It's not like the Balkans have become models of good national citizenship. They are still claiming each other's territory from their Connecticut-sized nations and still teaching their children that it is right and proper to want to murder their rivals in their beds, man, woman, child, goats and dogs. Even when they do elect democratically chosen leaders they usually pick the most bloodthirsty and Medieval candidate to lead them in yet another murderous crusade against their neighboring nations.
So we ought to elect Barack Obama president, who's main idea is to de-Balkanize our own politics here at home, where partisan strife has gotten out of hand to the point that many American politicians feel that members of the opposition party are enemies of the state. That was never the case until recent years and it is crippling American government and it made possible the coup 'd etat of Dick Cheney and his political/corporate conglomerate eight years ago. Bush The Younger is merely the simpleton front man for these corporate gangsters, sort of like elevating Fredo Corleone to the job of don while abler hands pull the strings. Any hint of John McCain's desire to continue in their footsteps is an aberration. Let America try to be the best America it can be. That will go a lot further as far as gaining interational respect than all our guns and planes and, more importantly, it will give us back our self respect. Obama in'08.
March 30, 2008
LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 11
Life is not like opera or baseball. When the fat lady sings, it's still not over. It's that quiet guy in the hooded black robe carrying a sickle you have to look out for.
March 29, 2008
MORE OF WHO'S IDEA WAS THAT?
Who decided to ask New York Governor David Paterson to stop making revelations about his personal life? Paterson was Eliot Spitzer's Lieutenant Governor until a couple of weeks ago when Spitzer got caught using prostitutes and resigned as Governor. So Paterson figures he'll clear the air about himself right off the bat and starts telling everybody that he had multiple love affairs outside his marriage, and his wife had an affair too. I guess he figures let everybody know he is who he is and lets get on with our lives without the childish prying into the sex lives of others. Then he says he used to use pot and cocaine. Fair enough, he admits it and gets that out of the way too. Now I'm wondering what's next. Three-ways? Orgies? Opium dens? Robbing liquor stores? Then somebody talked him into shutting up about his personal life just as it was getting interesting. Dang, I figure he was about to reveal that he killed a couple of guys once in a beef over a poker game in a bordello
Who's idea was it to give Donald Trump a show? Do we need another obnoxious megalomaniac on TV? We've already got Bill O'Reilly and a bunch more like him. Unlike O'Reilly, Trump has other talents besides being annoying. He's a builder and a developer who has erected an impressive number of buildings, most of them with his name on them in forty-foot high letters, so it's not like he needed the publicity. Be that as it may, nobody that met him actually liked the guy, and some genius saw fit to let the whole country get to know and hate him. I wonder who gets to fire The Donald when they cancel his show. Line forms to the left.
Who thought it would be great to hold the 2008 Olympics in China? Other than the Chinese government, of course. They want to rehabilitate their image as being short on human rights and long on economic development. Well, the economic development part is going great guns if you check the "Made in China" labels on practically everything you wear or plug in. It's those pesky human rights complaints that have the Chinese government ticked off. So ticked off they've cracked down on all sorts of people who are questioning their right to imprison people on a whim and banned political commentary of even the mildest sort from their billion and change citizens. And we're not talking a desk appearance ticket and a 50 dollar fine here for violators. Think more of along the lines of prison, work camps, torture and heavy reprisals on one's family.
China has also conquered and occupied Tibet and her soldiers are earnestly beating unarmed monks in robes as we speak for having the gall to point out that China is one of the most repressive regimes around. Too bad the United States wasn't in a position to call them on this, what with our own problems incarcerating people for no reason and having conquered and occupied Iraq in no less brutal fashion. Then we could boycott the Olympics like Jimmy Carter did to protest the Soviet Union's occupation of Afghanistan. Oops, looks like that's out of the question too. If we'd listened to President Carter, a man who advocated boycotting nations who abuse their own citizens' civil rights and start wars of aggression, we wouldn't be in this mess.
As things stand now, we'd have to boycott ourselves. Which, when you think about it, is exactly what Mr. Carter's successors have done, shipping all our manufacturing jobs elsewhere. They have achieved what no other foreign power was able to do, making a "Made in America" label as rare as an honest politician. Many people say the Carter administration was a failure. Could it be that America failed the Carter Administration? Mr. Carter had a better idea of what is America and how we ought to behave on the world stage than any recent president. Reagan tripled the size of the Federal Government and was pretty much of a senile old coot who saw no evil as he presided over scandal after scandal, Bush the Elder was a political and corporate hack , Clinton sold our jobs overseas and Bush The Younger is the worst president we've ever had and the most anti-American, a man who doesn't seem to be aware of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, to say nothing of his rapacious imperial foreign policy. Carter had a better idea of what is America than any of these guys. I guess peace and human decency is is a tough sell in the political marketplace.
And who's idea was it to vote "No Country For Old Men" the Oscar for Best Picture even before it was edited and finished? It had the makings of a good story but that story never really unfolded, did it? It did, however, provide us with a cool new psychotic villain, Anton Chigur, played by the great Spanish Actor Javier Bardem. Nobody does sociopaths better than American movies. Then again, we've produced more than our fair share in real life, even electing one to the Vice Presidency, good old Shotgun Dick Cheney, who upon being sworn in immediately took over the presidency from Bush The Younger, who probably still doesn't know.
Who's idea was it to give Donald Trump a show? Do we need another obnoxious megalomaniac on TV? We've already got Bill O'Reilly and a bunch more like him. Unlike O'Reilly, Trump has other talents besides being annoying. He's a builder and a developer who has erected an impressive number of buildings, most of them with his name on them in forty-foot high letters, so it's not like he needed the publicity. Be that as it may, nobody that met him actually liked the guy, and some genius saw fit to let the whole country get to know and hate him. I wonder who gets to fire The Donald when they cancel his show. Line forms to the left.
Who thought it would be great to hold the 2008 Olympics in China? Other than the Chinese government, of course. They want to rehabilitate their image as being short on human rights and long on economic development. Well, the economic development part is going great guns if you check the "Made in China" labels on practically everything you wear or plug in. It's those pesky human rights complaints that have the Chinese government ticked off. So ticked off they've cracked down on all sorts of people who are questioning their right to imprison people on a whim and banned political commentary of even the mildest sort from their billion and change citizens. And we're not talking a desk appearance ticket and a 50 dollar fine here for violators. Think more of along the lines of prison, work camps, torture and heavy reprisals on one's family.
China has also conquered and occupied Tibet and her soldiers are earnestly beating unarmed monks in robes as we speak for having the gall to point out that China is one of the most repressive regimes around. Too bad the United States wasn't in a position to call them on this, what with our own problems incarcerating people for no reason and having conquered and occupied Iraq in no less brutal fashion. Then we could boycott the Olympics like Jimmy Carter did to protest the Soviet Union's occupation of Afghanistan. Oops, looks like that's out of the question too. If we'd listened to President Carter, a man who advocated boycotting nations who abuse their own citizens' civil rights and start wars of aggression, we wouldn't be in this mess.
As things stand now, we'd have to boycott ourselves. Which, when you think about it, is exactly what Mr. Carter's successors have done, shipping all our manufacturing jobs elsewhere. They have achieved what no other foreign power was able to do, making a "Made in America" label as rare as an honest politician. Many people say the Carter administration was a failure. Could it be that America failed the Carter Administration? Mr. Carter had a better idea of what is America and how we ought to behave on the world stage than any recent president. Reagan tripled the size of the Federal Government and was pretty much of a senile old coot who saw no evil as he presided over scandal after scandal, Bush the Elder was a political and corporate hack , Clinton sold our jobs overseas and Bush The Younger is the worst president we've ever had and the most anti-American, a man who doesn't seem to be aware of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, to say nothing of his rapacious imperial foreign policy. Carter had a better idea of what is America than any of these guys. I guess peace and human decency is is a tough sell in the political marketplace.
And who's idea was it to vote "No Country For Old Men" the Oscar for Best Picture even before it was edited and finished? It had the makings of a good story but that story never really unfolded, did it? It did, however, provide us with a cool new psychotic villain, Anton Chigur, played by the great Spanish Actor Javier Bardem. Nobody does sociopaths better than American movies. Then again, we've produced more than our fair share in real life, even electing one to the Vice Presidency, good old Shotgun Dick Cheney, who upon being sworn in immediately took over the presidency from Bush The Younger, who probably still doesn't know.
March 27, 2008
LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 9
Sometimes it rains. Hard. Life is full of surprises. Don't let it rattle you.
I WAS VERY OPTIMISTIC
"I'm very optimistic."
"I'm brimming with optimism!"
Sound familiar? You anticipate something good that is going to happen and then it turns out to be a big disappointment. It could be the election of some promising new politician, it could be a relationship or a new job, or life itself. The candidate turns out to be just another corrupt hack with a good line of bull. Maybe the person you were so crazy about turns out to be just plain crazy. Perhaps that new job you had such high hopes for is just another dull grind. And maybe even your life itself has gone haywire. These things happen.
Do you stop brimming with optimism and enthusiasm? Become a pessimistic sourpuss always expecting the worse? Those people are a pain in the ass, but at least they are seldom disappointed. What's the proper response to life's endless letdowns? Well, we can laugh at our selves, that works. Sometimes the predicaments we find ourselves in are pretty funny. Or you can bitch and moan about the unfairness of it all, as if anybody ever told you life was fair. Bitching and moaning seems like just another poor choice, though, becoming one of those tedious people we so studiously avoid.
I'm thinking it's best to stay optimistic, but don't go overboard about it. No sense being a complete fool about things. When bad stuff happens, and it happens a lot, you've got to be a little prepared, at least emotionally. Sometimes things happen that no one saw coming, for which there is no preparation possible. Having a mildly retarded president springs to mind. So, when that happens, what do you do? Well, for one thing, you don't re-elect the boob for four more years to see if he can become un-retarded. So none of us is immune from bad choices, are we? It would seem Britney Spears has a lot of company in that department, no?
And when that retarded president reacts to an attack on our country by one guy, you would think that the Congress would sort of make sure the dopey president doesn't attack some other guy who had nothing to do with it, what with them being Senators and Congressmen and all. You know, responsible grown-ups, experienced leaders and governors that can sort of shield the nation from the excesses of a simpleton president. Isn't that what you'd think would happen? Well, it didn't, did it? They went along with every cockamamie notion that sprang into his pin head, didn't they?
And now you've got the bad guy who attacked us still at large, making more videos that Fifty Cent and an innocent country in shambles thanks to the retarded guy and the Congress who wouldn't discipline the overgrown child. As they say, you can't make this stuff up. FIve years and 4,000 dead American soldiers later nobody still knows what to do with the country we broke, as if it were our decision what to do with somebody else's nation. There are those who say we have to stay there now and fix what the retarded guy broke.
Isn't that sort of saying that the guy went into to some stranger's house and sawed one leg of the table too short and now it's wobbly so we have to keep sawing the other legs shorter to make it stable. The only problem is that there are three different people in charge of the other three legs of the table and no one can agree how much to shave off each one so that the table can stand up without wobbling. So far, that dinner table has been shaved down to the height of a coffee table and still they keep taking pieces off the legs without consulting one another and even that short coffee table wobbles like crazy. Do we stay in this person's house until he table is a flat piece of wood with no legs at all? Maybe tell them that we made them a nice new door?
Of course the best possible outcome would have been to not let a retarded guy loose in their house with a saw in the first place. The table they had was not the best table in the world and a pretty lousy guy sat at the head of it, but it was their table, not the retarded guy's or ours to mess with. When pinhead sawed one of the legs shorter we should have offered to buy them a new table and left it at that. Now they've got a committee in their house and they've all got power tools and they're all chopping away at the dinner table, sneaking little pieces of it out of the house when they realize they made another measurement mistake and the thing still wobbles like crazy.
But they keep sawing away, still never consulting the guys in charge of the other table legs, figuring the retarded guy is retiring soon and the wobbly table will be somebody else's problem, hopefully somebody who's not mentally handicapped. This is the kind of fine mess we humans get ourselves into all the time, a situation that was a career maker for Laurel and Hardy. Think of Bush The Younger as a grand piano mover with the piano hovering over the sidewalk suspended by the flimsiest of ropes. Now think of Iraq as the hapless pedestrian strolling down that sidewalk without care in the world. Bush The Younger is holding the rope while his boss Shotgun Dick Cheney is taking some heart medication. Bush The Younger has to sneeze in the worst way but knows his boss is cranky and irritable and carries a shotgun everywhere he goes. So who walks down the sidewalk just ahead of Iraq? Why, it's Great Britain, out strolling in the sun wearing a derby and carrying an umbrella, the perfect comedy props!
So now Bush The Younger has somebody to hold the rope so the piano doesn't come crashing down onto the sidewalk. Unfortunately the British guy can't understand the retarded guy's made-up cowboy accent and before you can say "Eh, what?" the retarded guy hands Great Britain the rope, and he drops it just as Iraq comes strolling down the sidewalk. Now Shotgun Dock scolds them both, then proceeds to empty Iraq's pockets, figuring what the hell, he won't miss anything now. Bush The Younger and Great Britain face the camera and give exaggerated shrugs and funny faces while Iraq and the grand piano lay smashed on the sidewalk. Roll the credits.
So that was the comedy short before the main attraction, which will have to be pretty dramatic with a very capable leading man. In the main attraction, the hero will be faced with rebuilding the grand piano and reviving the guy on the sidewalk. It's not a glamorous job or a desirable one, but that's what the next president will be facing, cleaning up the globe after Laurel and Hardy, The Three Stooges, Abbot and Costello, W.C. Fields and the Marx brothers have had their way with it. And we've all seen what they're capable of doing: the hot and cold water faucets will be reversed, the stove will be spouting 5-foot flames and doorways will open up to mid-air where they removed the stairs.
So feel optimistic all you like when your candidate gets elected, just don't expect them to have time to do very much other than stop one leak while another springs up just out of reach. When he reaches for a stepladder to reach a higher place you just know that the retarded guy will have taken his trusty saw to the rungs of that ladder before he left, resulting in more comedy hijinks and pratfalls. How long it will take to fix the unholy mess left by a retarded president with a cranky boss and a derby-wearing sidekick is anybody's guess. But it sure will be a humbling experience no matter who gets that unenviable job.
So let's not feel so bad about the poor choices we have made in our personal lives. Okay, so we got ourselves painted into a corner or two over the years, maybe pulled the steering wheel out of the car and handed it to the guy next to us. No big deal. There's always Act 2 to figure things out. If America can survive a retarded president with an evil cranky boss for eight years without completely falling apart, well, there's more than ample hope for the rest of us. So feel optimistic all you like because it can't get any worse than it's been. It can't, can it? Just in case, let's just replace the table now and leave the guy's house before we do any more damage. We've got enough to fix in our own house to keep us busy for a while. And I for one, am brimming with optimism that we can do it! God help me...
"I'm brimming with optimism!"
Sound familiar? You anticipate something good that is going to happen and then it turns out to be a big disappointment. It could be the election of some promising new politician, it could be a relationship or a new job, or life itself. The candidate turns out to be just another corrupt hack with a good line of bull. Maybe the person you were so crazy about turns out to be just plain crazy. Perhaps that new job you had such high hopes for is just another dull grind. And maybe even your life itself has gone haywire. These things happen.
Do you stop brimming with optimism and enthusiasm? Become a pessimistic sourpuss always expecting the worse? Those people are a pain in the ass, but at least they are seldom disappointed. What's the proper response to life's endless letdowns? Well, we can laugh at our selves, that works. Sometimes the predicaments we find ourselves in are pretty funny. Or you can bitch and moan about the unfairness of it all, as if anybody ever told you life was fair. Bitching and moaning seems like just another poor choice, though, becoming one of those tedious people we so studiously avoid.
I'm thinking it's best to stay optimistic, but don't go overboard about it. No sense being a complete fool about things. When bad stuff happens, and it happens a lot, you've got to be a little prepared, at least emotionally. Sometimes things happen that no one saw coming, for which there is no preparation possible. Having a mildly retarded president springs to mind. So, when that happens, what do you do? Well, for one thing, you don't re-elect the boob for four more years to see if he can become un-retarded. So none of us is immune from bad choices, are we? It would seem Britney Spears has a lot of company in that department, no?
And when that retarded president reacts to an attack on our country by one guy, you would think that the Congress would sort of make sure the dopey president doesn't attack some other guy who had nothing to do with it, what with them being Senators and Congressmen and all. You know, responsible grown-ups, experienced leaders and governors that can sort of shield the nation from the excesses of a simpleton president. Isn't that what you'd think would happen? Well, it didn't, did it? They went along with every cockamamie notion that sprang into his pin head, didn't they?
And now you've got the bad guy who attacked us still at large, making more videos that Fifty Cent and an innocent country in shambles thanks to the retarded guy and the Congress who wouldn't discipline the overgrown child. As they say, you can't make this stuff up. FIve years and 4,000 dead American soldiers later nobody still knows what to do with the country we broke, as if it were our decision what to do with somebody else's nation. There are those who say we have to stay there now and fix what the retarded guy broke.
Isn't that sort of saying that the guy went into to some stranger's house and sawed one leg of the table too short and now it's wobbly so we have to keep sawing the other legs shorter to make it stable. The only problem is that there are three different people in charge of the other three legs of the table and no one can agree how much to shave off each one so that the table can stand up without wobbling. So far, that dinner table has been shaved down to the height of a coffee table and still they keep taking pieces off the legs without consulting one another and even that short coffee table wobbles like crazy. Do we stay in this person's house until he table is a flat piece of wood with no legs at all? Maybe tell them that we made them a nice new door?
Of course the best possible outcome would have been to not let a retarded guy loose in their house with a saw in the first place. The table they had was not the best table in the world and a pretty lousy guy sat at the head of it, but it was their table, not the retarded guy's or ours to mess with. When pinhead sawed one of the legs shorter we should have offered to buy them a new table and left it at that. Now they've got a committee in their house and they've all got power tools and they're all chopping away at the dinner table, sneaking little pieces of it out of the house when they realize they made another measurement mistake and the thing still wobbles like crazy.
But they keep sawing away, still never consulting the guys in charge of the other table legs, figuring the retarded guy is retiring soon and the wobbly table will be somebody else's problem, hopefully somebody who's not mentally handicapped. This is the kind of fine mess we humans get ourselves into all the time, a situation that was a career maker for Laurel and Hardy. Think of Bush The Younger as a grand piano mover with the piano hovering over the sidewalk suspended by the flimsiest of ropes. Now think of Iraq as the hapless pedestrian strolling down that sidewalk without care in the world. Bush The Younger is holding the rope while his boss Shotgun Dick Cheney is taking some heart medication. Bush The Younger has to sneeze in the worst way but knows his boss is cranky and irritable and carries a shotgun everywhere he goes. So who walks down the sidewalk just ahead of Iraq? Why, it's Great Britain, out strolling in the sun wearing a derby and carrying an umbrella, the perfect comedy props!
So now Bush The Younger has somebody to hold the rope so the piano doesn't come crashing down onto the sidewalk. Unfortunately the British guy can't understand the retarded guy's made-up cowboy accent and before you can say "Eh, what?" the retarded guy hands Great Britain the rope, and he drops it just as Iraq comes strolling down the sidewalk. Now Shotgun Dock scolds them both, then proceeds to empty Iraq's pockets, figuring what the hell, he won't miss anything now. Bush The Younger and Great Britain face the camera and give exaggerated shrugs and funny faces while Iraq and the grand piano lay smashed on the sidewalk. Roll the credits.
So that was the comedy short before the main attraction, which will have to be pretty dramatic with a very capable leading man. In the main attraction, the hero will be faced with rebuilding the grand piano and reviving the guy on the sidewalk. It's not a glamorous job or a desirable one, but that's what the next president will be facing, cleaning up the globe after Laurel and Hardy, The Three Stooges, Abbot and Costello, W.C. Fields and the Marx brothers have had their way with it. And we've all seen what they're capable of doing: the hot and cold water faucets will be reversed, the stove will be spouting 5-foot flames and doorways will open up to mid-air where they removed the stairs.
So feel optimistic all you like when your candidate gets elected, just don't expect them to have time to do very much other than stop one leak while another springs up just out of reach. When he reaches for a stepladder to reach a higher place you just know that the retarded guy will have taken his trusty saw to the rungs of that ladder before he left, resulting in more comedy hijinks and pratfalls. How long it will take to fix the unholy mess left by a retarded president with a cranky boss and a derby-wearing sidekick is anybody's guess. But it sure will be a humbling experience no matter who gets that unenviable job.
So let's not feel so bad about the poor choices we have made in our personal lives. Okay, so we got ourselves painted into a corner or two over the years, maybe pulled the steering wheel out of the car and handed it to the guy next to us. No big deal. There's always Act 2 to figure things out. If America can survive a retarded president with an evil cranky boss for eight years without completely falling apart, well, there's more than ample hope for the rest of us. So feel optimistic all you like because it can't get any worse than it's been. It can't, can it? Just in case, let's just replace the table now and leave the guy's house before we do any more damage. We've got enough to fix in our own house to keep us busy for a while. And I for one, am brimming with optimism that we can do it! God help me...
March 26, 2008
LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 8
See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. Unless of course there's evil nearby and you can't help it. No sense pretending otherwise. Try not to create any evil yourself or contribute to the evil of others. Fighting fire with fire just makes a bigger fire and then you've got two headaches, a load of evil and a raging fire. Tread lightly.
ROLL BACK THE AMERICAN EMPIRE
It's time for America to get out of the empire business. We've got a big enough nation already and a huge economy and don't need to gain another square inch of anybody else's land just because we can. Our armies and navies are stationed all over the world in a lot of other people's countries, even those with whom we have no quarrel. Why? To protect American interests? Shouldn't American interests be more focused on, oh, I don't know, maybe, say... America? Anything outside of our borders is not our jurisdiction and the only "interests" we have in other countries are business interests. Businesses are private concerns, not entitled to protection of our military outside of this country if they are not being physically attacked.
We have military personnel in more places than in any time in our history, including World War 2 when we were fighting all over the world. That war ended in 1945, at which point America had 15 million men under arms in many different nations. Today, our all-volunteer armed services numbers around a million and a half on active duty and another million and a half in reserve units, many of whom have been called to active duty to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan. There are also around 450,000 National Guardsmen in all 50 states plus Washington D.C and 3 territories whose job it is to protect their home state and assist in natural disasters and domestic emergencies.
Many of these National Guard units have been shipped overseas to fight as well, as was the case in 2004 when the Louisiana National Guard was 10,000 miles away in East Asia when Hurricane Katrina drowned New Orleans and much of the Gulf Coast. Apparently this administration thought that saving American citizens inside America was less in America's interest than fighting Iraq, a nation that never threatened America or her so-called interests. Iraq's crime was having a tyrannical dictator, which in and of itself is not a criteria America uses to conquer nations, or else we'd be awfully busy all the time all over the world. Iraq's other crimes were sitting on a sea of oil and being vulnerable. No other Administration in America's history ever invaded a country for no reason at all, until Bush The Younger took office with his direct superior Shotgun Dick Cheney. They figured Iraq and its oil were ripe for the taking if only a plausible excuse could be found.
This administration used the attacks of 9/11/01 by Osama bin Laden on the United States as that excuse to attack a nation that had nothing at all to do with those attacks. Only in an atmosphere where America had developed into an Empire could this have been possible. That Congress allowed this bumbling idiot of a president the authority to invade a sovereign nation who had done us no harm at all would have been unthinkable at one time. After our victory in World War 2 Americans somehow got it into our heads that we were now the world's policeman, and for 40 years there was some validity to that argument due to the menacing presence of another super power, the Soviet Union, one that preached world-wide communist revolution and had swallowed up half of Europe following the war.
The Soviet Union collapsed in the early 1990's and by that time America was already established as a world-wide military presence. Even now, with no other super power close to our military capabilities this country spends more on armaments than the rest of the world combined. It seems it's a habit we cannot break and it is fueled by our far-flung business interests who demand the protection of our armed forces to defend their private ventures in the oil, agricultural, mining, and other international businesses. It's very similar to the protection offered by the British Navy to their various trading companies and the Netherlands to the Dutch East India Company. At least those nations openly admitted they were in the empire business and made no bones about subduing underdeveloped countries and pillaging their wealth.
We do the same but pretend we do not. Our covert spy organizations and our military have had a clandestine or open hand in changing any number of governments of foreign nations who annoyed American corporate business interests. The most notable attempt was a failure, the CIA-run invasion of Cuba in 1961 that was defeated by Castro. There have been other failures but mostly successes, if you can call interfering with and overthrowing the governments of sovereign nations you don't approve of a "success." The Shah of iran was re-installed by America in 1953, replacing a democratically elected government that had the temerity to want to control their own natural resources rather than surrendering them to Big Oil for a pittance.
Iran had ousted the royal family and elected a popular Prime Minister, starting on the road to democracy similar to our own adventure in 1776, but the CIA pulled that rug out from under them and shoved the royals down their throats again. Look at where Iran is today, a modern nation ruled by Medieval bloodthirsty religious thugs, torn between two worlds. Thanks, CIA! It is said the move was made for strategic reasons having to do with the Cold War, as if the rest of the world and their political, social and personal ambitions, and their very countries themselves were expendable pawns on America and Russia's chess board. The paranoia evoked by a Soviet dominated world was used as an excuse for too many years and in too many instances of criminal interference with the affairs of other nations.
The truth was that many of these operations were done at the behest of corporate interests, especially in South America where oil and agricultural conglomerates have a long and shameful history of exploiting poor people in collaboration with a series of corrupt governments. The corporations and the corrupt governing elite grew wealthy while small nations saw their national wealth siphoned off, leaving their people hungry, ill and illiterate. When one of these nations would try to redress this situation through elections or rebellions the U.S. corporations would call out the Marines, or in more recent history, the CIA. The sin is that our government would comply. The same government founded on the principle that all men are created equal and a champion of tolerance and liberty time and again denied small nations the liberty to control their own destiny.
It's about time we stopped this crazy nonsense. A nation that grew and thrived by trading in good faith with other nations need not throw her military weight around. Number one, it is wrong, and all the explaining away and rationalizing in the world won't make it right. Never have we been as blatantly wrong as in Iraq, all pretense of being a peaceful nation stripped away by this heinous crime. The excuse used, that Sadam hussein might have weapons of mass destrucction, was absurd. The administration knew this to be untrue and sent Colin Powell to the United Nations to lie to the world about it, even going so far as to use drawings and calling them reconnaissance!
And even if Hussein did have weapons of mass destruction, he was no threat to America. The weapons of mass destruction this nation possesses make any weapons he could have had look like pea-shooters by comparison. And as far as him threatening our allies, hardly. He was evil, not stupid, and would never have attacked Israel, for example. The fact is, Sadam Hussein was not a religious man and his government was not one of the fanatical jihad governments in that region that are always threatening to wipe out Israel. Not that we should go to war over Israel either. It's not our 51st State and doesn't exactly have an admirable record when it comes to the human rights of the Arab peoples living under its thumb. We should tell israel that our alliance isn't written in stone if they don't clean up their own oppressive act.
But first we've got to clean up ours. America needs to get out of everybody's business and tend to our own. Already our Imperial tendencies have come home to roost with this administration's actions to strip Americans inside America of the protections of our Bill of Rights. This imperial/corporate government that has evolved since World War 2 has become as indifferent to the rights of its own citizens as it has been to the rights of the nations we have been bullying. The disparity between the haves and have-nots is growing greater by the day as Bush the Younger and his band of thugs transfer massive amounts of wealth from the working classes to the wealthy. Home foreclosures are epidemic and unregulated banks are playing Monopoly with the nation's wealth again, further limiting access to cash and credit for the non-wealthy.
The dollar is eroding compared to the Euro and other world currencies so apparently this government by the wealthy elite isn't working out so well. Our military that costs us so much is being stretched thin by wars of corporate adventure while the perpetrator of the 9/11/01 attacks sits unmolested in Pakistan, our supposed ally. Why we maintain these crazy alliances is a mystery. Do we really need to still be a part of NATO? Can't Europe defend its own damned self anymore?Should we give a crap about Japan's ability to compete with China? Do we need to guarantee that Taiwan will have our protection for ever and ever? Or the Philippines? Our nuclear arsenal pretty much guarantees that nobody will try to invade this country. And if we station our soldiers here we will have a lethal deterrent right here where it belongs, not all over the world making enemies.
That doesn't mean we need to become isolationist, which is sort of impossible in today's global economy anyway. But we should re-evaluate our priorities as a nation and and re-negotiate our crippling alliances to more realistic terms. And whatever happened to Jimmy Carter's idea simply not to deal with nations who oppress their citizens? That was a good idea, and a very traditionally American one. He was the least imperial minded of our recent presidents and his presidency is deemed a failure by many who view him as too weak to be an emperor. Too smart is more like it, and too principled. He knew there are many other ways to affect the way other nations behave other than militarily. There's plenty of places to buy bananas, oil and bauxite. Deal with the ones who don't slay and oppress their own citizens and countries will get the message. A good example goes a lot further than a visit by the Marines.
As far as our "obligations" to the world? Other than being a good citizen, what exactly are they? Being the world cop and sacrificing our soldiers for lost causes? Protecting multi-national corporations' bottom lines? Intimidating nations? Hardly. Let the world take care of itself. It's not as if our world-straddling presence has ushered in a Pax Romana, a hundred years of relative peace. The globe is still rife with wars large and small and genocide is on the rise. So one supposes we're not suited to be the new Rome. What we can do, however, is rededicate ourselves to pursuing the best America we can create, following the blueprint created by political geniuses in 1776. Until somebody comes up wih a better idea, it's time to get out of the empire business and tend to our own garden. Either that or make the president wear a toga like Caesar.
We have military personnel in more places than in any time in our history, including World War 2 when we were fighting all over the world. That war ended in 1945, at which point America had 15 million men under arms in many different nations. Today, our all-volunteer armed services numbers around a million and a half on active duty and another million and a half in reserve units, many of whom have been called to active duty to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan. There are also around 450,000 National Guardsmen in all 50 states plus Washington D.C and 3 territories whose job it is to protect their home state and assist in natural disasters and domestic emergencies.
Many of these National Guard units have been shipped overseas to fight as well, as was the case in 2004 when the Louisiana National Guard was 10,000 miles away in East Asia when Hurricane Katrina drowned New Orleans and much of the Gulf Coast. Apparently this administration thought that saving American citizens inside America was less in America's interest than fighting Iraq, a nation that never threatened America or her so-called interests. Iraq's crime was having a tyrannical dictator, which in and of itself is not a criteria America uses to conquer nations, or else we'd be awfully busy all the time all over the world. Iraq's other crimes were sitting on a sea of oil and being vulnerable. No other Administration in America's history ever invaded a country for no reason at all, until Bush The Younger took office with his direct superior Shotgun Dick Cheney. They figured Iraq and its oil were ripe for the taking if only a plausible excuse could be found.
This administration used the attacks of 9/11/01 by Osama bin Laden on the United States as that excuse to attack a nation that had nothing at all to do with those attacks. Only in an atmosphere where America had developed into an Empire could this have been possible. That Congress allowed this bumbling idiot of a president the authority to invade a sovereign nation who had done us no harm at all would have been unthinkable at one time. After our victory in World War 2 Americans somehow got it into our heads that we were now the world's policeman, and for 40 years there was some validity to that argument due to the menacing presence of another super power, the Soviet Union, one that preached world-wide communist revolution and had swallowed up half of Europe following the war.
The Soviet Union collapsed in the early 1990's and by that time America was already established as a world-wide military presence. Even now, with no other super power close to our military capabilities this country spends more on armaments than the rest of the world combined. It seems it's a habit we cannot break and it is fueled by our far-flung business interests who demand the protection of our armed forces to defend their private ventures in the oil, agricultural, mining, and other international businesses. It's very similar to the protection offered by the British Navy to their various trading companies and the Netherlands to the Dutch East India Company. At least those nations openly admitted they were in the empire business and made no bones about subduing underdeveloped countries and pillaging their wealth.
We do the same but pretend we do not. Our covert spy organizations and our military have had a clandestine or open hand in changing any number of governments of foreign nations who annoyed American corporate business interests. The most notable attempt was a failure, the CIA-run invasion of Cuba in 1961 that was defeated by Castro. There have been other failures but mostly successes, if you can call interfering with and overthrowing the governments of sovereign nations you don't approve of a "success." The Shah of iran was re-installed by America in 1953, replacing a democratically elected government that had the temerity to want to control their own natural resources rather than surrendering them to Big Oil for a pittance.
Iran had ousted the royal family and elected a popular Prime Minister, starting on the road to democracy similar to our own adventure in 1776, but the CIA pulled that rug out from under them and shoved the royals down their throats again. Look at where Iran is today, a modern nation ruled by Medieval bloodthirsty religious thugs, torn between two worlds. Thanks, CIA! It is said the move was made for strategic reasons having to do with the Cold War, as if the rest of the world and their political, social and personal ambitions, and their very countries themselves were expendable pawns on America and Russia's chess board. The paranoia evoked by a Soviet dominated world was used as an excuse for too many years and in too many instances of criminal interference with the affairs of other nations.
The truth was that many of these operations were done at the behest of corporate interests, especially in South America where oil and agricultural conglomerates have a long and shameful history of exploiting poor people in collaboration with a series of corrupt governments. The corporations and the corrupt governing elite grew wealthy while small nations saw their national wealth siphoned off, leaving their people hungry, ill and illiterate. When one of these nations would try to redress this situation through elections or rebellions the U.S. corporations would call out the Marines, or in more recent history, the CIA. The sin is that our government would comply. The same government founded on the principle that all men are created equal and a champion of tolerance and liberty time and again denied small nations the liberty to control their own destiny.
It's about time we stopped this crazy nonsense. A nation that grew and thrived by trading in good faith with other nations need not throw her military weight around. Number one, it is wrong, and all the explaining away and rationalizing in the world won't make it right. Never have we been as blatantly wrong as in Iraq, all pretense of being a peaceful nation stripped away by this heinous crime. The excuse used, that Sadam hussein might have weapons of mass destrucction, was absurd. The administration knew this to be untrue and sent Colin Powell to the United Nations to lie to the world about it, even going so far as to use drawings and calling them reconnaissance!
And even if Hussein did have weapons of mass destruction, he was no threat to America. The weapons of mass destruction this nation possesses make any weapons he could have had look like pea-shooters by comparison. And as far as him threatening our allies, hardly. He was evil, not stupid, and would never have attacked Israel, for example. The fact is, Sadam Hussein was not a religious man and his government was not one of the fanatical jihad governments in that region that are always threatening to wipe out Israel. Not that we should go to war over Israel either. It's not our 51st State and doesn't exactly have an admirable record when it comes to the human rights of the Arab peoples living under its thumb. We should tell israel that our alliance isn't written in stone if they don't clean up their own oppressive act.
But first we've got to clean up ours. America needs to get out of everybody's business and tend to our own. Already our Imperial tendencies have come home to roost with this administration's actions to strip Americans inside America of the protections of our Bill of Rights. This imperial/corporate government that has evolved since World War 2 has become as indifferent to the rights of its own citizens as it has been to the rights of the nations we have been bullying. The disparity between the haves and have-nots is growing greater by the day as Bush the Younger and his band of thugs transfer massive amounts of wealth from the working classes to the wealthy. Home foreclosures are epidemic and unregulated banks are playing Monopoly with the nation's wealth again, further limiting access to cash and credit for the non-wealthy.
The dollar is eroding compared to the Euro and other world currencies so apparently this government by the wealthy elite isn't working out so well. Our military that costs us so much is being stretched thin by wars of corporate adventure while the perpetrator of the 9/11/01 attacks sits unmolested in Pakistan, our supposed ally. Why we maintain these crazy alliances is a mystery. Do we really need to still be a part of NATO? Can't Europe defend its own damned self anymore?Should we give a crap about Japan's ability to compete with China? Do we need to guarantee that Taiwan will have our protection for ever and ever? Or the Philippines? Our nuclear arsenal pretty much guarantees that nobody will try to invade this country. And if we station our soldiers here we will have a lethal deterrent right here where it belongs, not all over the world making enemies.
That doesn't mean we need to become isolationist, which is sort of impossible in today's global economy anyway. But we should re-evaluate our priorities as a nation and and re-negotiate our crippling alliances to more realistic terms. And whatever happened to Jimmy Carter's idea simply not to deal with nations who oppress their citizens? That was a good idea, and a very traditionally American one. He was the least imperial minded of our recent presidents and his presidency is deemed a failure by many who view him as too weak to be an emperor. Too smart is more like it, and too principled. He knew there are many other ways to affect the way other nations behave other than militarily. There's plenty of places to buy bananas, oil and bauxite. Deal with the ones who don't slay and oppress their own citizens and countries will get the message. A good example goes a lot further than a visit by the Marines.
As far as our "obligations" to the world? Other than being a good citizen, what exactly are they? Being the world cop and sacrificing our soldiers for lost causes? Protecting multi-national corporations' bottom lines? Intimidating nations? Hardly. Let the world take care of itself. It's not as if our world-straddling presence has ushered in a Pax Romana, a hundred years of relative peace. The globe is still rife with wars large and small and genocide is on the rise. So one supposes we're not suited to be the new Rome. What we can do, however, is rededicate ourselves to pursuing the best America we can create, following the blueprint created by political geniuses in 1776. Until somebody comes up wih a better idea, it's time to get out of the empire business and tend to our own garden. Either that or make the president wear a toga like Caesar.
March 25, 2008
WHO CARES ABOUT CABLE WIZARDS?
Does anybody really take any interest at all in the inane blatherings of the likes of Joe Scarborough, Bill O'Reilly, Lou Dobbs, Hannity or Colmes? These guys get all worked up about all sorts of things that don't mean a hell of a lot and then harangue the rest of us that we don't share their mean-spiritedness. Please! These guys make fortunes for not knowing all that much but pretend to be experts on just about any topic that crosses their narrow minds. What exactly are their credentials outside of their wooden and affected acting skills?
Any PhDs in philosophy, politics, business, or sociology hanging on their office walls? Any extensive experience at anything other than wearing makeup, sitting behind a desk and screaming at us? Any scholastic or politically serious books to their credit other than their endless variations on the theme "My America, And Why You Should Hate Anybody Who Disagrees With Me," where they basically write down their prejudices and godawful mis-readings of America and what it means. These guys are such lightweight intellectuals that they make even that flunked out college freshman radio host gas bag Rush Limbaugh look smart by comparison, no easy task.
They all pretend to have the answers for America, yet outside of Scarborough, a mediocre Congressman at best, none of them have felt it was their duty to implement those goals by running for public office. I guess a brief glance at the pay scale of politicians in the position to make a difference in comparison to the princely sums they receive from cable TV for making no difference at all has dissuaded them from acting on their beliefs, being instead content to be back seat drivers and Monday morning quarterbacks. And they all seem to know what's best for our military even though none of them ever saw fit to join up. As if any and all foreign policy difficulties ought to be met by lethal force or the threat of lethal force like we were some modern Roman Empire.
These clowns view our soldiers as implements to project their will, forgetting that soldiers are human beings who bleed and die in service to their nation, even when their mission is patently ridiculous. That one soldier who is worth a hundred of these morons should die in a misadventure publicly supported by them is a travesty, but the Cable Wizards revel in the blood of our sons and daughters, claiming their valor, their honor, their grievous wounds and even their spent lives as their own. From their studios where they are in no danger from anything worse that a paper cut they advocate killing and maiming in the name of America, confident in the knowledge that they will never have to actually participate in these activities, nor will their children. Like any other rich man, they have "people" to do that for them, and like a lot of wealthy patricians, the "people-to-do-that-for-me" designation implies a less than human being, more of a tool or a utensil than an actual person, a man or woman who may suffer horribly or die as the result of "doing things" for them.
They wax nostalgic about Ronald Reagan's call to tear down the Berlin Wall and then advocate rebuilding it in the American Southwest. They forget that Ronald Reagan was a senile old coot who tripled the size of the Federal Government he vowed to shrink, who sowed the seeds of unrest in the Middle East by selling arms to Iran and arming Osama bin Laden and his band of not-so-merry-men in Afghanistan, thus starting him on the path to 9/11/01. These guys also support Bush The Younger in almost every criminal act he perpetrates and every rollback of the Bill of Rights he forces down America's throat with skillful fear mongering. Bill Clinton is to them a devil for getting a blow job but Bush The Younger and Shotgun Dick Cheney can screw us all in the ass time and again and they give them standing ovations and curtain calls. Real clear thinking here, guys. Can you bend over backwards any further to excuse the felonious behavior of the malicious fools you support?
So who cares what these assholes think? They shriek and howl and run in packs because their kind is dying. They scream "America first" and advocate the exact opposite. If they had America as their top priority they would use their very public pulpits to call for better education, universal health care, a call for increased gas mileage and research of alternative energy sources, an end to the phony war on drugs that drives a multi-billion dollar industry of government and private sector jobs involved in maintaining the status quo of mass incarceration, prosecutions, interdictions, bribery and corruption. "America first" does not mean protecting international corporations all over the world with our soldiers. Let Exxon hire Blackwater Guards mercenaries when they're feeling adventurous in somebody else's country. Why should we pick up the tab for a company who rips off the American public and cheats our government out of taxes?
Our soldiers are to fight our enemies, not make new ones. And not to fight people the giant corporations wish to subdue for their oil. The one true and proven enemy the United States has, Osama bin Laden, has been given a reprieve since he had the good sense to hide out in a region where our corporations could make no large profits, pretty much proving his point that the current American government is a money-driven enterprise with no scruples or moral compass. Greed and the lust for power is now the calling card of a nation that used to be a beacon of hope for the world. That was not always the case and it will not always be the case, but that's where we stand now and none of these guys, or their vicious pit bull sister Anne Coulter, has the courage to call a spade a spade and work towards reclaiming America, the one with a government of the people, by the people and for the people.
These people read the same newspapers we do, live in the same world as the rest of us and yet cannot admit that what we are seeing is real. They insist on attributing alternate motives to the obvious deeds of the current administration and their corporate sponsors. When a president lets an enemy that attacked our country and inflicted 3,000 deaths off the hook by invading an oil-rich country that never attacked America, why did anybody buy into the reasoning that this invasion was an extension of the war on terror? When 9 billion dollars in U.S. currency disappeared why did anybody accept that it was the Iraqis' fault, like they were illiterate shepherds who could not count instead of an educated and sophisticated society of long standing? When it was revealed that all the oil meters on Iraq's pipelines and waterfront oil shipping depots were broken and no one could say how much oil was being stolen daily, none of these Cable Wizards questioned the explanation the it must be the rag-tag militias who engineered this sophisticated heist. Or demanded the meters be immediately replaced and rigorously guarded.
Did any of these geniuses see anything wrong with handing out 30-year oil leases to administration cronies in somebody else's country? Or handing Halliburton, Shotgun Dick's company, multi-billion dollar no-bid contracts to rebuild the Iraqi infrastructure we blew up and then watch them fail to perform their contractual obligations and overcharge the United States above and beyond the agreed-upon billions? Then they get rewarded with huge contracts to rebuild New Orleans, which at last glance is still a little light in the the rebuilding department, and still these cable dopes adore Bush The Younger and his gang of thugs. Did any of these people use their shows to call for investigations of the administration? No, they were too busy praising the government for invading our privacy, doing away with the right to a writ of habeus corpus for those arrested, torturing prisoners like some modern-day Gestapo, gutting the Bill of Rights and transferring an incredible amount of the nation's wealth from the working classes to the super-rich. That was all hunky-dory with these America First blowhards.
And then they perpetrate the lie that the American media is too Liberal. Yeah, right. Like we're all blind and believe what these John Birch Society rejects say. You remember Liberals, right? The people these clowns would have us believe are traitorous cowards? The people who delivered the Bill of Rights, Social Security, the 8 hour workday, equal opportunity, unemployment insurance, safe working conditions, Civil Rights, the vote for women, the war on poverty, abolition, the New Deal, the defeat of the Axis Powers, the space program, the Peace Corps, women's rights, the Head Start Program, the rights of the individual in America and the whole idea of America itself. Yeah, those devils, those traitorous cowards. The ones who made it possible for gas bags like the Cable Wizards to lie and scream on television, many of whom laid down their lives in the process, putting their money and a whole lot more where their mouth is.
So I suppose Liberals are the opposite of these guys. They saw things as they are, not as they wish them to be, and they did something about it other than blathering about some wished-for reality that did not exist. Where they found injustice they sought justice. Where they saw need they provided help. Where they saw a legitimate threat to our nation and its cherished liberty threat they responded with force. When our nation was wrong they said so. They did not respond by calling for the imprisonment or disenfranchisement of those in opposition to their thinking, knowing that such an act would reduce them to the state of their enemies, and then nothing would separate them from the imprisoners, the dividers, the condemners and the would-be fascists. They knew freedom for one means freedom for all, regardless of what a horse's ass one might be.
So if these guys want to function as the Bush the Younger Administration Ministers of Propaganda, well, that's their right to do so. If they make a mockery of their claim of impartiality and are an embarrassment to the cause of open social discourse, well, they have the liberals to thank for that opportunity. Not that they'd ever acknowledge that debt, but they are allowed to be the biggest frauds around because of the sacrifices of their liberal forebears, who they hate because their brand of commentary is completely dependent upon having a bogey man to assign blame and with which to frighten people. In the absence of intelligence or simple logic they resort to bullying and fear-mongering to further their agenda. It's a political tactic as old as tyranny itself, and as transparent as the camera lens they love so dearly.
Smart people never pay much attention to fools like his, recognizing them for what they are, shills and hucksters of the worst sort, cranky, squeaky wheels begging for grease, always part of the problem and never the solution. This is a free country even if they wish it were less free for people other than themselves. They sort of do make for some amusing entertainment sometimes, as each of them over time becomes a comically disturbing self parody. But that doesn't mean any one of us has to take them even a little bit seriously or give a flying fandango what they think. They are, after all, merely entertainers, and not very talented or interesting ones at that.
Any PhDs in philosophy, politics, business, or sociology hanging on their office walls? Any extensive experience at anything other than wearing makeup, sitting behind a desk and screaming at us? Any scholastic or politically serious books to their credit other than their endless variations on the theme "My America, And Why You Should Hate Anybody Who Disagrees With Me," where they basically write down their prejudices and godawful mis-readings of America and what it means. These guys are such lightweight intellectuals that they make even that flunked out college freshman radio host gas bag Rush Limbaugh look smart by comparison, no easy task.
They all pretend to have the answers for America, yet outside of Scarborough, a mediocre Congressman at best, none of them have felt it was their duty to implement those goals by running for public office. I guess a brief glance at the pay scale of politicians in the position to make a difference in comparison to the princely sums they receive from cable TV for making no difference at all has dissuaded them from acting on their beliefs, being instead content to be back seat drivers and Monday morning quarterbacks. And they all seem to know what's best for our military even though none of them ever saw fit to join up. As if any and all foreign policy difficulties ought to be met by lethal force or the threat of lethal force like we were some modern Roman Empire.
These clowns view our soldiers as implements to project their will, forgetting that soldiers are human beings who bleed and die in service to their nation, even when their mission is patently ridiculous. That one soldier who is worth a hundred of these morons should die in a misadventure publicly supported by them is a travesty, but the Cable Wizards revel in the blood of our sons and daughters, claiming their valor, their honor, their grievous wounds and even their spent lives as their own. From their studios where they are in no danger from anything worse that a paper cut they advocate killing and maiming in the name of America, confident in the knowledge that they will never have to actually participate in these activities, nor will their children. Like any other rich man, they have "people" to do that for them, and like a lot of wealthy patricians, the "people-to-do-that-for-me" designation implies a less than human being, more of a tool or a utensil than an actual person, a man or woman who may suffer horribly or die as the result of "doing things" for them.
They wax nostalgic about Ronald Reagan's call to tear down the Berlin Wall and then advocate rebuilding it in the American Southwest. They forget that Ronald Reagan was a senile old coot who tripled the size of the Federal Government he vowed to shrink, who sowed the seeds of unrest in the Middle East by selling arms to Iran and arming Osama bin Laden and his band of not-so-merry-men in Afghanistan, thus starting him on the path to 9/11/01. These guys also support Bush The Younger in almost every criminal act he perpetrates and every rollback of the Bill of Rights he forces down America's throat with skillful fear mongering. Bill Clinton is to them a devil for getting a blow job but Bush The Younger and Shotgun Dick Cheney can screw us all in the ass time and again and they give them standing ovations and curtain calls. Real clear thinking here, guys. Can you bend over backwards any further to excuse the felonious behavior of the malicious fools you support?
So who cares what these assholes think? They shriek and howl and run in packs because their kind is dying. They scream "America first" and advocate the exact opposite. If they had America as their top priority they would use their very public pulpits to call for better education, universal health care, a call for increased gas mileage and research of alternative energy sources, an end to the phony war on drugs that drives a multi-billion dollar industry of government and private sector jobs involved in maintaining the status quo of mass incarceration, prosecutions, interdictions, bribery and corruption. "America first" does not mean protecting international corporations all over the world with our soldiers. Let Exxon hire Blackwater Guards mercenaries when they're feeling adventurous in somebody else's country. Why should we pick up the tab for a company who rips off the American public and cheats our government out of taxes?
Our soldiers are to fight our enemies, not make new ones. And not to fight people the giant corporations wish to subdue for their oil. The one true and proven enemy the United States has, Osama bin Laden, has been given a reprieve since he had the good sense to hide out in a region where our corporations could make no large profits, pretty much proving his point that the current American government is a money-driven enterprise with no scruples or moral compass. Greed and the lust for power is now the calling card of a nation that used to be a beacon of hope for the world. That was not always the case and it will not always be the case, but that's where we stand now and none of these guys, or their vicious pit bull sister Anne Coulter, has the courage to call a spade a spade and work towards reclaiming America, the one with a government of the people, by the people and for the people.
These people read the same newspapers we do, live in the same world as the rest of us and yet cannot admit that what we are seeing is real. They insist on attributing alternate motives to the obvious deeds of the current administration and their corporate sponsors. When a president lets an enemy that attacked our country and inflicted 3,000 deaths off the hook by invading an oil-rich country that never attacked America, why did anybody buy into the reasoning that this invasion was an extension of the war on terror? When 9 billion dollars in U.S. currency disappeared why did anybody accept that it was the Iraqis' fault, like they were illiterate shepherds who could not count instead of an educated and sophisticated society of long standing? When it was revealed that all the oil meters on Iraq's pipelines and waterfront oil shipping depots were broken and no one could say how much oil was being stolen daily, none of these Cable Wizards questioned the explanation the it must be the rag-tag militias who engineered this sophisticated heist. Or demanded the meters be immediately replaced and rigorously guarded.
Did any of these geniuses see anything wrong with handing out 30-year oil leases to administration cronies in somebody else's country? Or handing Halliburton, Shotgun Dick's company, multi-billion dollar no-bid contracts to rebuild the Iraqi infrastructure we blew up and then watch them fail to perform their contractual obligations and overcharge the United States above and beyond the agreed-upon billions? Then they get rewarded with huge contracts to rebuild New Orleans, which at last glance is still a little light in the the rebuilding department, and still these cable dopes adore Bush The Younger and his gang of thugs. Did any of these people use their shows to call for investigations of the administration? No, they were too busy praising the government for invading our privacy, doing away with the right to a writ of habeus corpus for those arrested, torturing prisoners like some modern-day Gestapo, gutting the Bill of Rights and transferring an incredible amount of the nation's wealth from the working classes to the super-rich. That was all hunky-dory with these America First blowhards.
And then they perpetrate the lie that the American media is too Liberal. Yeah, right. Like we're all blind and believe what these John Birch Society rejects say. You remember Liberals, right? The people these clowns would have us believe are traitorous cowards? The people who delivered the Bill of Rights, Social Security, the 8 hour workday, equal opportunity, unemployment insurance, safe working conditions, Civil Rights, the vote for women, the war on poverty, abolition, the New Deal, the defeat of the Axis Powers, the space program, the Peace Corps, women's rights, the Head Start Program, the rights of the individual in America and the whole idea of America itself. Yeah, those devils, those traitorous cowards. The ones who made it possible for gas bags like the Cable Wizards to lie and scream on television, many of whom laid down their lives in the process, putting their money and a whole lot more where their mouth is.
So I suppose Liberals are the opposite of these guys. They saw things as they are, not as they wish them to be, and they did something about it other than blathering about some wished-for reality that did not exist. Where they found injustice they sought justice. Where they saw need they provided help. Where they saw a legitimate threat to our nation and its cherished liberty threat they responded with force. When our nation was wrong they said so. They did not respond by calling for the imprisonment or disenfranchisement of those in opposition to their thinking, knowing that such an act would reduce them to the state of their enemies, and then nothing would separate them from the imprisoners, the dividers, the condemners and the would-be fascists. They knew freedom for one means freedom for all, regardless of what a horse's ass one might be.
So if these guys want to function as the Bush the Younger Administration Ministers of Propaganda, well, that's their right to do so. If they make a mockery of their claim of impartiality and are an embarrassment to the cause of open social discourse, well, they have the liberals to thank for that opportunity. Not that they'd ever acknowledge that debt, but they are allowed to be the biggest frauds around because of the sacrifices of their liberal forebears, who they hate because their brand of commentary is completely dependent upon having a bogey man to assign blame and with which to frighten people. In the absence of intelligence or simple logic they resort to bullying and fear-mongering to further their agenda. It's a political tactic as old as tyranny itself, and as transparent as the camera lens they love so dearly.
Smart people never pay much attention to fools like his, recognizing them for what they are, shills and hucksters of the worst sort, cranky, squeaky wheels begging for grease, always part of the problem and never the solution. This is a free country even if they wish it were less free for people other than themselves. They sort of do make for some amusing entertainment sometimes, as each of them over time becomes a comically disturbing self parody. But that doesn't mean any one of us has to take them even a little bit seriously or give a flying fandango what they think. They are, after all, merely entertainers, and not very talented or interesting ones at that.
March 24, 2008
SPRINGTIME IN BROOKLYN
Contrary to popular misconceptions there's plenty of trees in Brooklyn. On my little street the Maples and English Plane trees are starting to sprout their little buds that will soon become the broad green leaves that provide us with shade and beauty. The gardeners at the co-ops across the street are already starting to spruce up their lawns and hedges and blowing away the remnants of last year's dead leaves with noisy leaf blowers. The ice cream vendors are tuning up their trucks to get ready for cruising the streets making children of all ages happy as they ring their joyious bells along their appointed rounds.
Spring is here and the blood in our veins is throbbing with new life, just like the trees lining our streets. While this past winter was not a severe one, it was plenty cold enough to make the Springtime sweet, the anticipation of warmth and renewal affecting all of us. In a couple of weeks the spectacular Cherry Groves at the Brooklyn Botanical Garden will be a mass of soft blossoms spraying their pink and white petals and sweet aroma all over delighted children in the caressing breezes of Flatbush. Gardeners are already turning over the soil in their yards and window boxes and planning this year's crop of flowers, fruits, spices and vegetables. Overcoats, scarves and gloves are being stored for the season and the ladies are already shopping for this year's Spring and Summer clothes. Can't wait to see what they come up with this time. They never disappoint.
What's not to love about the Spring? Is there a more joyous and invigorating time of year? Of course having a Spring means that you had to survive a Winter, otherwise Spring wouldn't mean all that much. I feel sorry for places that don't have all four seasons, which to me are the full measure of life. The colder and more harsh the Winter, the sweeter the Spring, the more alive one feels when the warmth and bountiful growth of life arrives. And a beautiful Spring prepares us for the joys of Summer, when we unashamedly shed most of our clothing and play in the sun, children of a bountiful earth. That sweet summer comes to an end with the bracing air of Autumn, when we harvest earth's bounty and prepare for the frosty Winter of snowmen, warm fires and hot chocolate. And the Winter that so tests us rewards us with yet another Springtime as our reward for enduring everything Mother Nature has thrown at us. All in all, a pretty good system.
And so now it is once again Springtime in Brooklyn. The grannies are out and about, walking with their grandchildren, telling them all about Brooklyn and life, one and the same in many a mind. Hot dog wagons are reappearing and Coney Island is all set to reopen for another season of fun and wonder by the sea. The kids in the street have put away the footballs and are throwing the baseballs back and forth. The parks are full of people again, and the basketball courts have waiting lines to challenge the winners for the court. Bicyclists, skateboarders and skaters are rolling everywhere. And in another sue sign that Spring has arrived, the roads are seeing more and more motorcycles roaring by.
On the waterfront which surrounds Brooklyn on 3 sides, the pleasure craft are being readied for boating season and the commercial fishing fleet is booking day trips to catch the ones that got away last year. Canarsie Pier is already lined with anglers trading lies and fishing tips. A lot of birds are coming back from their winter down south, lean, hungry and glad to be back in Brooklyn. Rooftop pigeon coops are being repaired and the baby birds are learning to fly in formation with their flocks. And the sun is lighting up the whole place at a slightly different angle, softening the hard ground, opening the buds of the flowers and trees and warming hearts.
Even traffic cops are giving more breaks than usual to speeders and stop sign beaters. Everybody seems to lighten up a bit. By the end of winter we're all getting on each other's nerves and now that's changed. Greetings are friendlier, people are cutting each other more breaks. The quick hellos to a neighbor on a cold day are now catch-up conversations in the sun, lingering with one another for a friendly chat or exchange of gossip. People are dropping by more and rushing around less. The kids are running around doing wacky kid things and making wacky kid noises again, music to our ears after the muted tones of winter.
Pretty soon Spumoni Garden will open up its famous outdoor picnic tables so their one-of-a-kind pizza can be enjoyed outdoors. Countless other cafes and restaurants with outdoor seating are also getting ready to feed us on the sidewalk once again. Sheepshead Bay is filled with strollers on their leisurely urgent missions to nowhere special, as is the boardwalk of Brighton Beach. Proud parents are planning graduation parties, and kids are looking for Summer jobs. College kids are getting ready to go make a nuisance of themselves in Florida during Spring Break while a lot of the elderly snowbirds are shutting down the Florida condo to return to Brooklyn where the sublime chaos makes more sense to them than the orderly self-contained little communities where they spent the winter.
Me, I'm looking at my house and getting ready to resume some of the never-ending repair and maintenance jobs we didn't finish before winter set in. There's also the barbecue grill to be uncovered and put into use.There's patio furniture waiting to be liberated from the storage shed and maybe painted again. There are no gardening chores for yours truly since I covered my yard with cement and white marble stones. Nothing grows in my yard but appetites and I can't wait to entertain family and friends in the sun again. I'm already checking the calendar and checking who's available on what weekends. Planning some menus too.
Hoping to play some outdoor shows, too. Those are always a blast. I'd like to catch some other bands' shows, too, and check out some of the city's cool street fairs. Baseball season is here, too, so a few trips up to the Bronx are in order this year to say goodbye to old Yankee Stadium in it's last season. Hope the new one measures up when it opens in '09. Big shoes to fill, building-wise. There will also be plenty of decent baseball games to watch in Brooklyn at Marine Park between the various kid leagues or in Coney Island's Keyspan Park where the Mets Single A minor league team plays.
With any luck the season will be one without too much news about steroids and HGH, and both the Yanks and the Mets have interesting teams that can possibly make to the World Series this year. Both teams have their little flaws and weaknesses, but that's what makes the game interesting. It's more fun watching a flawed team overcome their weaknesses to play solid baseball that an invulnerable powerhouse of a team steamroll the opposition all year. Being a Yankee fan that sounds like blasphemy but too bad. None of us in Brooklyn are without our contradictions here and there. Even with all the controversy with all the Hercules drugs and Congress investigating the superstars, the game's still the thing and there is no better game than baseball. Will the rookie learn to hit the breaking pitch? Will the old veteran coax another great season out of his battered body? Will that wild young pitcher harness his skills and win 20 games this year? Play ball!
There is no better place to live than Brooklyn and no finer time of year than Springtime. Everybody's out and about, the place is getting spruced up and Spring Fever is breaking out in its annual epidemic. There's three million of us here feeling the same feelings, taking long walks on familiar streets in our annual Spring inventory. So far every thing seems in order. The women are beautiful, the children happy and the men a lot less grumpy. All is as it should be.
Spring is here and the blood in our veins is throbbing with new life, just like the trees lining our streets. While this past winter was not a severe one, it was plenty cold enough to make the Springtime sweet, the anticipation of warmth and renewal affecting all of us. In a couple of weeks the spectacular Cherry Groves at the Brooklyn Botanical Garden will be a mass of soft blossoms spraying their pink and white petals and sweet aroma all over delighted children in the caressing breezes of Flatbush. Gardeners are already turning over the soil in their yards and window boxes and planning this year's crop of flowers, fruits, spices and vegetables. Overcoats, scarves and gloves are being stored for the season and the ladies are already shopping for this year's Spring and Summer clothes. Can't wait to see what they come up with this time. They never disappoint.
What's not to love about the Spring? Is there a more joyous and invigorating time of year? Of course having a Spring means that you had to survive a Winter, otherwise Spring wouldn't mean all that much. I feel sorry for places that don't have all four seasons, which to me are the full measure of life. The colder and more harsh the Winter, the sweeter the Spring, the more alive one feels when the warmth and bountiful growth of life arrives. And a beautiful Spring prepares us for the joys of Summer, when we unashamedly shed most of our clothing and play in the sun, children of a bountiful earth. That sweet summer comes to an end with the bracing air of Autumn, when we harvest earth's bounty and prepare for the frosty Winter of snowmen, warm fires and hot chocolate. And the Winter that so tests us rewards us with yet another Springtime as our reward for enduring everything Mother Nature has thrown at us. All in all, a pretty good system.
And so now it is once again Springtime in Brooklyn. The grannies are out and about, walking with their grandchildren, telling them all about Brooklyn and life, one and the same in many a mind. Hot dog wagons are reappearing and Coney Island is all set to reopen for another season of fun and wonder by the sea. The kids in the street have put away the footballs and are throwing the baseballs back and forth. The parks are full of people again, and the basketball courts have waiting lines to challenge the winners for the court. Bicyclists, skateboarders and skaters are rolling everywhere. And in another sue sign that Spring has arrived, the roads are seeing more and more motorcycles roaring by.
On the waterfront which surrounds Brooklyn on 3 sides, the pleasure craft are being readied for boating season and the commercial fishing fleet is booking day trips to catch the ones that got away last year. Canarsie Pier is already lined with anglers trading lies and fishing tips. A lot of birds are coming back from their winter down south, lean, hungry and glad to be back in Brooklyn. Rooftop pigeon coops are being repaired and the baby birds are learning to fly in formation with their flocks. And the sun is lighting up the whole place at a slightly different angle, softening the hard ground, opening the buds of the flowers and trees and warming hearts.
Even traffic cops are giving more breaks than usual to speeders and stop sign beaters. Everybody seems to lighten up a bit. By the end of winter we're all getting on each other's nerves and now that's changed. Greetings are friendlier, people are cutting each other more breaks. The quick hellos to a neighbor on a cold day are now catch-up conversations in the sun, lingering with one another for a friendly chat or exchange of gossip. People are dropping by more and rushing around less. The kids are running around doing wacky kid things and making wacky kid noises again, music to our ears after the muted tones of winter.
Pretty soon Spumoni Garden will open up its famous outdoor picnic tables so their one-of-a-kind pizza can be enjoyed outdoors. Countless other cafes and restaurants with outdoor seating are also getting ready to feed us on the sidewalk once again. Sheepshead Bay is filled with strollers on their leisurely urgent missions to nowhere special, as is the boardwalk of Brighton Beach. Proud parents are planning graduation parties, and kids are looking for Summer jobs. College kids are getting ready to go make a nuisance of themselves in Florida during Spring Break while a lot of the elderly snowbirds are shutting down the Florida condo to return to Brooklyn where the sublime chaos makes more sense to them than the orderly self-contained little communities where they spent the winter.
Me, I'm looking at my house and getting ready to resume some of the never-ending repair and maintenance jobs we didn't finish before winter set in. There's also the barbecue grill to be uncovered and put into use.There's patio furniture waiting to be liberated from the storage shed and maybe painted again. There are no gardening chores for yours truly since I covered my yard with cement and white marble stones. Nothing grows in my yard but appetites and I can't wait to entertain family and friends in the sun again. I'm already checking the calendar and checking who's available on what weekends. Planning some menus too.
Hoping to play some outdoor shows, too. Those are always a blast. I'd like to catch some other bands' shows, too, and check out some of the city's cool street fairs. Baseball season is here, too, so a few trips up to the Bronx are in order this year to say goodbye to old Yankee Stadium in it's last season. Hope the new one measures up when it opens in '09. Big shoes to fill, building-wise. There will also be plenty of decent baseball games to watch in Brooklyn at Marine Park between the various kid leagues or in Coney Island's Keyspan Park where the Mets Single A minor league team plays.
With any luck the season will be one without too much news about steroids and HGH, and both the Yanks and the Mets have interesting teams that can possibly make to the World Series this year. Both teams have their little flaws and weaknesses, but that's what makes the game interesting. It's more fun watching a flawed team overcome their weaknesses to play solid baseball that an invulnerable powerhouse of a team steamroll the opposition all year. Being a Yankee fan that sounds like blasphemy but too bad. None of us in Brooklyn are without our contradictions here and there. Even with all the controversy with all the Hercules drugs and Congress investigating the superstars, the game's still the thing and there is no better game than baseball. Will the rookie learn to hit the breaking pitch? Will the old veteran coax another great season out of his battered body? Will that wild young pitcher harness his skills and win 20 games this year? Play ball!
There is no better place to live than Brooklyn and no finer time of year than Springtime. Everybody's out and about, the place is getting spruced up and Spring Fever is breaking out in its annual epidemic. There's three million of us here feeling the same feelings, taking long walks on familiar streets in our annual Spring inventory. So far every thing seems in order. The women are beautiful, the children happy and the men a lot less grumpy. All is as it should be.
March 23, 2008
THE PRICE OF SEX AND DRUGS
You can sell your body legally, we all do it. It's called having a job. But if that job entails having sex for money then you're a criminal. Even if you don't sell your body you may be in violation of all sorts of state sex laws, depending upon where you live. Sodomy is against the law, so is oral sex in many places. Homosexual sex is outlawed in a lot of states, technically designating that 5% of humanity who are born homosexual as criminals. I suppose all this sex law business started with the Puritans, a bunch of psychotic, up-tight bigots who fled persecution in England to come here and get to be the persecutors.
In their eyes no one measured up to their own moral rectitude, not even each other judging by the witch trials they conducted. While the Puritans eventually went the way of all insane fringe groups, their influence lingered and America still suffers from their warped thinking: basically that if it's fun and it feels good it must be evil. What feels good is bad, what feels right is wrong. Kind of a Bizarro World approach to life, but they've left a huge legacy here in America. All our various state, local and federal governments are in the personal behavior regulating business. Which is fine as far as outlawing assault, theft, jaywalking, murder, embezzling and the like.
That's pretty much where the government ought to stop when it comes to telling us what we can and cannot do. Why they are in the sex business hundreds of years after the Puritans fizzled out is a puzzlement. We still have all sorts of laws on the books attempting to regulate our most basic biological functions, a drive so strong that we humans go to any length to satisfy this powerful innate force. Are there any of us out there who are exceptions to this inborn rule? I have yet to meet anyone. You might as well try to outlaw being left-handed or having freckles. Outside of the crime of rape or having sex with minors the government has no business at all telling us what we can and cannot do with one another.
Humans practice an incredibly wide variety of sexual practices, some of them seemingly bizarre to many of us, but so what? Nobody's forcing you to do anything you don't want to do. It's none of our damned business what others do behind close doors. I won't get into specifics since some of the things people do while having sex I find pretty funny. Or creepy and bewildering, but that's more my problem then theirs. To them it's what they like and what satisfies them sexually so the hell with me and what I think. If something makes somebody happy and they're not hurting anybody else in the process, who is anybody to deny them that? Take all the sex laws off the books, let prostitutes work legally and in a safe environment with health regulations and let's get on with our lives.
The same with drugs. Legalize them all. There won't be one extra junkie if drugs are legal. As things stand now, 10% of the population consumes 90% of the alcoholic beverages in America. Alcohol is our most abused drug and our only legal one outside of medicines. Yet, 90% of the people don't become alcoholics. Why? Because only 10% of humanity has the disease of addiction. It's the same situation with drugs as booze, with the 10% of us who are addicts consuming 90% of the illegal drugs. So why are they illegal? Because they're fun? That's one big reason, that Puritan streak rearing its ugly head and telling us we are not allowed to feel good. At least not legally.
And then there's the money angle. There are huge industries making money from illegal drugs. I'm not talking about the drug dealers here, who by definition make large amounts of money charging high prices for products that are manufactured at very little cost. The high price is simply because of the illegality of it. Drug dealers are a group of people completely opposed to legalization. They'd have to get real jobs then. And speaking of real jobs, America had hundreds and hundreds of thousands of workers legally employed in the illegal drug trade. Whether they are judges, DEA agents, police, prison guards, District Attorneys or the guy who supplies the eggs to a prison, there's billions of dollars being spent in the drug trade in America and many thousands of jobs that will be in jeopardy if drugs are legalized.
America now imprisons 1 of every 142 people. That's 2 million people in prison, and almost half of them are there on drug charges. I suppose if alcohol was illegal we'd have another million or so behind bars. Alcohol was once illegal in America for 14 years, 1920 to 1933, and it was a disaster for the nation. Much like today's drug cartels, huge criminal gangs formed to distribute alcohol and became incredibly wealthy. They were also violent and ruthless and these gangs remain with us to this day, still murderous and still sucking money out of society illegally in a variety of ways, drugs and prostitution being a big part of their operations. By the time the ban on alcohol was repealed it was too late to un-form the organized mobs that are now unfortunately part of the fabric of America.
When alcohol became legal again there were no extra alcoholics added to the population. The same 10% were still drinking up 90% of the available supply of alcohol. Addiction is a disease, and drug addicts have the same one as alcoholics. These days most addicts are cross-addicted, mixing drugs with alcohol. And a lot of people besides drug dealers and government employees are cashing in big time on the illegal drug trade. Pharmaceutical companies are making billions producing pain killers earmarked for the illegal drug trade. Of course they have legitimate medical uses, but the drug companies produce hundreds of times more of these drugs than the medical community requires. Yet the executives of the pharmaceutical giants are not on anybody's most wanted list or subject to indictment for dealing addictive drugs.
So let private firms produce cocaine and heroin and marijuana for the masses too, and sell drugs in stores like they do with liquor. Then the huge infrastructure that deals with the so-called drug problem will have to be put to use doing other things, like maybe finally providing universal health care to this nation. And part of health care is treating addiction, which is a recognized disease. Nobody gets sent to jail for having diabetes or being in possession of high blood pressure medication. The cost of sending people to prison for victimless crimes is huge, and prisons tend to create as many criminals as they punish. The prison system is after all an industry and its raw material is people. Why would they actually want to reform anybody? Recidivists are their favorite customers.
And the people who provide food, uniforms, shoes, vending machines and a hundred other services to prisons are also making money from the illegal drug trade and would oppose changing any law that stops the flow of human bodies into a system that is their bread and butter. There are besides prisons hundreds of other state and federal agencies making big drug money, those agencies charged with enforcing the drug laws and intercepting the drugs imported from abroad or shipped state to state(To say nothing of the many millions of dollars in bribes handed out by criminals to public officials, and by pharmaceutical lobbies to members of Congress). If recreational drugs were just another industry like lumber, whiskey or dry goods these agencies would have nothing to do, no one from who they could solicit bribes and would have to be disbanded. Likewise, the court system would need fewer judges, district attorneys and court officers. Defense lawyers would also lose a lucrative clientele without those hundreds of thousands of drugs defendants they represent each year.
Defense lawyers and the court system in general would also be relieved of many thousands of prostitution cases when selling sex is finally recognized in America as the oldest profession and given equal status with any other personal services establishment. Like the alcohol industry, the sex trade and the drug businesses would be regulated, inspected and taxed. No matter what anyone thinks of their respectability, they are real businesses with a huge demand for their goods and services. A lot of people disapprove of saloons but have had no problem living their lives with so many of them around. Just pass them by if they offend you. The same with a drug emporium or a house of prostitution. Not every one's cup of tea but no one's forcing anybody to be a customer. Not everybody likes that goofy religion you practice either, don't forget, and nobody tells you not to practice it or go to jail for doing so. Tolerance is a two-way street.
And with drugs being legal the price will be fairly reasonable and the types of drug addicts who steal(relatively few, percentage-wise among drug users) to support their habits will decrease, further reducing crime and the prison population. With sex being an established industry subject to health regulations , sexually transmitted diseases will decrease as well. And these businesses being legal, there won't be one extra drug addict or one extra prostitute created. The people who go in for that sort of thing have demonstrated for eons they're going to do it no matter what society and the laws say. Being legal or illegal is irrelevant, people do what they do, what they have always done, before there were Puritans, before there was an America, before there was anything we know today. And being that these two behaviors are victimless crimes, well, why are they crimes, then? Doesn't a crime imply a perpetrator and a victim?
In America, a lot of people own guns. If they moved to another country and still had those guns they'd be considered a criminal, even though they hadn't changed a bit from the law abiding good citizen they've always been. In other countries American women would be arrested for dressing the way they do or walking in public unaccompanied by a male relative, or by driving a car or simply expressing an opinion. Those laws seem reasonable to the people who live in those countries but to us they are an aberration, an infringement on individual rights. Why is marginalizing and criminalizing drug users and prostitutes any less aberrant? And how dare anybody outlaw homosexuality or restrict the basic human rights of homosexuals, our fellow human beings?
This is a nation of laws and a nation that prides itself on allowing broad individual freedom. Singling out small percentages of our population for persecution is not American. Nobody said you have to approve or join in, you just have to mind your own damned business and expect the other guy to mind his. Because if the other guys doesn't have any rights, then you could be next when a bunch of Puritans decide to pass another law and it just so happens that your way of life is being criminalized and now you're a criminal. It's happened before and could happen again.
Look at the benefits to America if only marijuana was made legal. Already the nation's second largest cash crop, now it would be grown openly in some states that have an ideal climate for its cultivation and the huge revenues could be taxed and brought into the mainstream economy. The same can be done for narcotic drugs and other recreational drugs, processing them properly and safely, regulating them as is done with the liquor industry. The billions of under-the-table dollars involved in the drug trade will now become part of the general economy, taxed and circulating among honest people doing their jobs. The untold billions in untaxed profits and bribes will be no more. The billions will still be there, but as part of the common economy.
The same will hold true for a legal sex industry. Who knows how much money changes hands in sex-for-sale transactions? Nobody seems to know. We do know that so many of the assignations are conducted in dangerous and unhealthy conditions in a business dominated by unscrupulous pimps. When an industry is outlawed the thugs take over and when thugs run things they are the main beneficiaries of the income stream generated by others, namely the ladies who provide the sexual services. And thugs are violent and ruthless, so why allow them to control a thriving business? Again, another huge underground economy will become part of the overall national economy.
The industry will be regulated, sanitary and safe and the government will gets its fair share of the taxes on the money changing hands. Just like drugs, sex for sale cannot be stopped and will never be stopped. The "war on drugs" was doomed from the start and the war on prostitution has met with the same success it has enjoyed since the oldest profession began, that is, none at all. When will we stop trying to command the tides? And worse, squandering billions and billions of dollars and channeling the life's efforts of untold people into that futile exercise. How would you like to be the cop assigned to changing the course of the Mississippi River? As dedicated and talented as you might be, at the end of your career your life's work will have amounted to nothing at all, that river still flowing north to south as always. You might start thinking there are better ways to contribute to society and more satisfying professions.
You need not condone prostitution, drug use, homosexuality or anything else you don't fell like condoning, that's your business, but you can't outlaw what is none of your affair so long as it's not harming anybody else. That's the way of the Puritans, the Ayatollahs, the tyrants and the fascists. It is not American to persecute and criminalize our fellow citizens, our fellow human beings. You can be who you want to be here, that's the beauty of America. But the flip side of having the freedom to be whoever the hell you want to be no matter who likes it or not is letting the other guy have that same freedom whether you like it or not. And if that person is a drug fiend to you or a dirty whore in your mind, well, that's life. Not yours, theirs, and you don't have to be them, just let them be. Odds are they'll return the favor.
In their eyes no one measured up to their own moral rectitude, not even each other judging by the witch trials they conducted. While the Puritans eventually went the way of all insane fringe groups, their influence lingered and America still suffers from their warped thinking: basically that if it's fun and it feels good it must be evil. What feels good is bad, what feels right is wrong. Kind of a Bizarro World approach to life, but they've left a huge legacy here in America. All our various state, local and federal governments are in the personal behavior regulating business. Which is fine as far as outlawing assault, theft, jaywalking, murder, embezzling and the like.
That's pretty much where the government ought to stop when it comes to telling us what we can and cannot do. Why they are in the sex business hundreds of years after the Puritans fizzled out is a puzzlement. We still have all sorts of laws on the books attempting to regulate our most basic biological functions, a drive so strong that we humans go to any length to satisfy this powerful innate force. Are there any of us out there who are exceptions to this inborn rule? I have yet to meet anyone. You might as well try to outlaw being left-handed or having freckles. Outside of the crime of rape or having sex with minors the government has no business at all telling us what we can and cannot do with one another.
Humans practice an incredibly wide variety of sexual practices, some of them seemingly bizarre to many of us, but so what? Nobody's forcing you to do anything you don't want to do. It's none of our damned business what others do behind close doors. I won't get into specifics since some of the things people do while having sex I find pretty funny. Or creepy and bewildering, but that's more my problem then theirs. To them it's what they like and what satisfies them sexually so the hell with me and what I think. If something makes somebody happy and they're not hurting anybody else in the process, who is anybody to deny them that? Take all the sex laws off the books, let prostitutes work legally and in a safe environment with health regulations and let's get on with our lives.
The same with drugs. Legalize them all. There won't be one extra junkie if drugs are legal. As things stand now, 10% of the population consumes 90% of the alcoholic beverages in America. Alcohol is our most abused drug and our only legal one outside of medicines. Yet, 90% of the people don't become alcoholics. Why? Because only 10% of humanity has the disease of addiction. It's the same situation with drugs as booze, with the 10% of us who are addicts consuming 90% of the illegal drugs. So why are they illegal? Because they're fun? That's one big reason, that Puritan streak rearing its ugly head and telling us we are not allowed to feel good. At least not legally.
And then there's the money angle. There are huge industries making money from illegal drugs. I'm not talking about the drug dealers here, who by definition make large amounts of money charging high prices for products that are manufactured at very little cost. The high price is simply because of the illegality of it. Drug dealers are a group of people completely opposed to legalization. They'd have to get real jobs then. And speaking of real jobs, America had hundreds and hundreds of thousands of workers legally employed in the illegal drug trade. Whether they are judges, DEA agents, police, prison guards, District Attorneys or the guy who supplies the eggs to a prison, there's billions of dollars being spent in the drug trade in America and many thousands of jobs that will be in jeopardy if drugs are legalized.
America now imprisons 1 of every 142 people. That's 2 million people in prison, and almost half of them are there on drug charges. I suppose if alcohol was illegal we'd have another million or so behind bars. Alcohol was once illegal in America for 14 years, 1920 to 1933, and it was a disaster for the nation. Much like today's drug cartels, huge criminal gangs formed to distribute alcohol and became incredibly wealthy. They were also violent and ruthless and these gangs remain with us to this day, still murderous and still sucking money out of society illegally in a variety of ways, drugs and prostitution being a big part of their operations. By the time the ban on alcohol was repealed it was too late to un-form the organized mobs that are now unfortunately part of the fabric of America.
When alcohol became legal again there were no extra alcoholics added to the population. The same 10% were still drinking up 90% of the available supply of alcohol. Addiction is a disease, and drug addicts have the same one as alcoholics. These days most addicts are cross-addicted, mixing drugs with alcohol. And a lot of people besides drug dealers and government employees are cashing in big time on the illegal drug trade. Pharmaceutical companies are making billions producing pain killers earmarked for the illegal drug trade. Of course they have legitimate medical uses, but the drug companies produce hundreds of times more of these drugs than the medical community requires. Yet the executives of the pharmaceutical giants are not on anybody's most wanted list or subject to indictment for dealing addictive drugs.
So let private firms produce cocaine and heroin and marijuana for the masses too, and sell drugs in stores like they do with liquor. Then the huge infrastructure that deals with the so-called drug problem will have to be put to use doing other things, like maybe finally providing universal health care to this nation. And part of health care is treating addiction, which is a recognized disease. Nobody gets sent to jail for having diabetes or being in possession of high blood pressure medication. The cost of sending people to prison for victimless crimes is huge, and prisons tend to create as many criminals as they punish. The prison system is after all an industry and its raw material is people. Why would they actually want to reform anybody? Recidivists are their favorite customers.
And the people who provide food, uniforms, shoes, vending machines and a hundred other services to prisons are also making money from the illegal drug trade and would oppose changing any law that stops the flow of human bodies into a system that is their bread and butter. There are besides prisons hundreds of other state and federal agencies making big drug money, those agencies charged with enforcing the drug laws and intercepting the drugs imported from abroad or shipped state to state(To say nothing of the many millions of dollars in bribes handed out by criminals to public officials, and by pharmaceutical lobbies to members of Congress). If recreational drugs were just another industry like lumber, whiskey or dry goods these agencies would have nothing to do, no one from who they could solicit bribes and would have to be disbanded. Likewise, the court system would need fewer judges, district attorneys and court officers. Defense lawyers would also lose a lucrative clientele without those hundreds of thousands of drugs defendants they represent each year.
Defense lawyers and the court system in general would also be relieved of many thousands of prostitution cases when selling sex is finally recognized in America as the oldest profession and given equal status with any other personal services establishment. Like the alcohol industry, the sex trade and the drug businesses would be regulated, inspected and taxed. No matter what anyone thinks of their respectability, they are real businesses with a huge demand for their goods and services. A lot of people disapprove of saloons but have had no problem living their lives with so many of them around. Just pass them by if they offend you. The same with a drug emporium or a house of prostitution. Not every one's cup of tea but no one's forcing anybody to be a customer. Not everybody likes that goofy religion you practice either, don't forget, and nobody tells you not to practice it or go to jail for doing so. Tolerance is a two-way street.
And with drugs being legal the price will be fairly reasonable and the types of drug addicts who steal(relatively few, percentage-wise among drug users) to support their habits will decrease, further reducing crime and the prison population. With sex being an established industry subject to health regulations , sexually transmitted diseases will decrease as well. And these businesses being legal, there won't be one extra drug addict or one extra prostitute created. The people who go in for that sort of thing have demonstrated for eons they're going to do it no matter what society and the laws say. Being legal or illegal is irrelevant, people do what they do, what they have always done, before there were Puritans, before there was an America, before there was anything we know today. And being that these two behaviors are victimless crimes, well, why are they crimes, then? Doesn't a crime imply a perpetrator and a victim?
In America, a lot of people own guns. If they moved to another country and still had those guns they'd be considered a criminal, even though they hadn't changed a bit from the law abiding good citizen they've always been. In other countries American women would be arrested for dressing the way they do or walking in public unaccompanied by a male relative, or by driving a car or simply expressing an opinion. Those laws seem reasonable to the people who live in those countries but to us they are an aberration, an infringement on individual rights. Why is marginalizing and criminalizing drug users and prostitutes any less aberrant? And how dare anybody outlaw homosexuality or restrict the basic human rights of homosexuals, our fellow human beings?
This is a nation of laws and a nation that prides itself on allowing broad individual freedom. Singling out small percentages of our population for persecution is not American. Nobody said you have to approve or join in, you just have to mind your own damned business and expect the other guy to mind his. Because if the other guys doesn't have any rights, then you could be next when a bunch of Puritans decide to pass another law and it just so happens that your way of life is being criminalized and now you're a criminal. It's happened before and could happen again.
Look at the benefits to America if only marijuana was made legal. Already the nation's second largest cash crop, now it would be grown openly in some states that have an ideal climate for its cultivation and the huge revenues could be taxed and brought into the mainstream economy. The same can be done for narcotic drugs and other recreational drugs, processing them properly and safely, regulating them as is done with the liquor industry. The billions of under-the-table dollars involved in the drug trade will now become part of the general economy, taxed and circulating among honest people doing their jobs. The untold billions in untaxed profits and bribes will be no more. The billions will still be there, but as part of the common economy.
The same will hold true for a legal sex industry. Who knows how much money changes hands in sex-for-sale transactions? Nobody seems to know. We do know that so many of the assignations are conducted in dangerous and unhealthy conditions in a business dominated by unscrupulous pimps. When an industry is outlawed the thugs take over and when thugs run things they are the main beneficiaries of the income stream generated by others, namely the ladies who provide the sexual services. And thugs are violent and ruthless, so why allow them to control a thriving business? Again, another huge underground economy will become part of the overall national economy.
The industry will be regulated, sanitary and safe and the government will gets its fair share of the taxes on the money changing hands. Just like drugs, sex for sale cannot be stopped and will never be stopped. The "war on drugs" was doomed from the start and the war on prostitution has met with the same success it has enjoyed since the oldest profession began, that is, none at all. When will we stop trying to command the tides? And worse, squandering billions and billions of dollars and channeling the life's efforts of untold people into that futile exercise. How would you like to be the cop assigned to changing the course of the Mississippi River? As dedicated and talented as you might be, at the end of your career your life's work will have amounted to nothing at all, that river still flowing north to south as always. You might start thinking there are better ways to contribute to society and more satisfying professions.
You need not condone prostitution, drug use, homosexuality or anything else you don't fell like condoning, that's your business, but you can't outlaw what is none of your affair so long as it's not harming anybody else. That's the way of the Puritans, the Ayatollahs, the tyrants and the fascists. It is not American to persecute and criminalize our fellow citizens, our fellow human beings. You can be who you want to be here, that's the beauty of America. But the flip side of having the freedom to be whoever the hell you want to be no matter who likes it or not is letting the other guy have that same freedom whether you like it or not. And if that person is a drug fiend to you or a dirty whore in your mind, well, that's life. Not yours, theirs, and you don't have to be them, just let them be. Odds are they'll return the favor.
THE TASH BROTHERS RIDE AGAIN!
BOB CRESPO PLAYING LIVE with original Tash Brothers
TONY BURDO, NORMAN TASH GREENBAUM and the elusive BOBBY DEE
also: A.J. Burdo, Greg Brenner, Hugh Boyle and Glen Hubner
Saturday, March 29 in Hoboken, New Jersey of all places The Tash Brothers Band is celebrating our 30th anniversary while our friend Joel Gordon celebrates his 50th birthday. Reliable sources say that founding member Booby Dee will emerge from the deep woods to join us.
Saturday, March 29, 2008, 8PM
McFadden's Pub,17 East 21st. Street
Bayonne, New Jersey 07002
(201) 823-8460
TONY BURDO, NORMAN TASH GREENBAUM and the elusive BOBBY DEE
also: A.J. Burdo, Greg Brenner, Hugh Boyle and Glen Hubner
Saturday, March 29 in Hoboken, New Jersey of all places The Tash Brothers Band is celebrating our 30th anniversary while our friend Joel Gordon celebrates his 50th birthday. Reliable sources say that founding member Booby Dee will emerge from the deep woods to join us.
Saturday, March 29, 2008, 8PM
McFadden's Pub,17 East 21st. Street
Bayonne, New Jersey 07002
(201) 823-8460
March 21, 2008
I'M STILL AVAILABLE FOR VICE PRESIDENT
As the primary campaigns continue, at least in the Democratic Party, little thought has been given to who gets to be Vice President. People who run for the Presidency don't want to settle for that slice of anonymity, a cheap consolation prize at best, at least in the eyes of wanna-be leaders. Outside of mounting a coup like Shotgun Dick Cheney and running the country yourself, Vice Presidents have been an unsung and quiet lot, and that's as it should be. The Constitution of The United States pretty much spells that out; Presidents run the show, Congress proposes legislation, the Supreme Court decides what's acceptable under the Constitution and the Vice President gets a house, a large staff, an airplane and very little to do.
Oh, once in a while he gets to cast the deciding vote in the Senate when they're deadlocked, but that's about it, really. It's more of a ceremonial position than a job, and people who see themselves as president are ill-suited to sitting on their hands for four years while the person who beat them for the presidential nomination gets to put forward their own agenda. In most cases that's the agenda the Vice President vociferously condemned on the campaign trail as being disastrous for America while he or she was trying to become president so naturally the actual president doesn't let them get anywhere near the decision making process. So by definition most Vice Presidents are craven cowards and hypocrites of the worst sort when they pledge to serve the president they spent the whole campaign season vilifying.
That's where I come in. I don't want to be president and don't much care what they do so long as they're not starting stupid wars or taxing the hell out of the working classes. I figure the Vice President should be a traditional one, not doing a hell of a lot of work at all. I've got that covered. I can dress in a suit and shake hands and pretend I know what I'm doing with the best of them. You can trot me out every so often just to let the American people know that indeed there actually is a Vice President out there somewhere doing whatever it is Vice Presidents do and I won't say or do anything outrageous to embarrass the president. That's basically all that's required of the office.
And the beauty of it is that the pay is great and the perks even better and you wind up with a decent pesions for the rest of your life. You get a jet plane, a mansion, Secret Service bodyguards, a large staff, attractive young interns to "train" and no actual work to be performed. What's not to love? Do you know how much of a good time you can have with a set up like that? The president would be more than happy to let you fly all over the world in Air Force 2, pretending to study something or other in some exotic location. You land in your giant jet, shake a few hands, review the troops there to greet you, then check into the finest hotel and proceed to enjoy yourself. One supposes you could have one of your staff prepare some cockamamie report about the place, but even that's optional since nobody cares what the Vice President has to say. Me, I'd just tell them to copy the Wikipedia report about the place and relax and work on their suntans.
Back in Washington my time would be spent at the Vice Presidential mansion playing cards with the Secret Service, swimming in the heated pool with my young interns and having my personal chef prepare lavish meals for me and my many guests. I could catch up with a lot of reading and writing with all my free time and maybe even have a little recording studio installed in the old mansion so I could work on some music.There's nothing in the Constitution that says one of your staff can't be a recording engineer. Vice Presidents already have their own photographer assigned to them, so why not a drummer, too? Hell, I might even hire my whole band while I'm at it. Who needs another secretary for a do-nothing job? What this Vice President will need is background singers and musicians. I figure in four years I could record hundreds of songs for my web site. That would be a hell of a lot more than most Vice Presidents accomplish.
Unless of course you're the kind of Vice President we have now, a guy that took over the government because the President is mildly retarded. And look at the fine mess he's created. The retarded guy couldn't have done any worse. I think the American people are going to elect a smart person this time around and return the Vice Presidency to it's former non-glory, which is only right and proper. When I'm Vice President I promise I won't shoot anybody in the face with a shotgun or mount a coup to oust the president. Who needs those headaches?
Of course I'm not offering my services to John McCain, and not only because I oppose the Republican agenda. I mean, the guy's really old and could die in office, leaving me to clean up the mess our current administration is leaving our country. That wouldn't do at all. McCain is already starting to show distressing signs of senility by vowing to continue to follow the retarded guy's policies! Man, if that isn't a sign he's ready for the robe and the adult diapers, I don't what is. No, I'm staying away from that geriatric quicksand. At least the Democratic candidates are both healthy and vigorous and will need no input from the likes of me. Whether or not they become great presidents, poor presidents or mediocre ones they're going to have to do so on their own.
Me, I'll have my own agenda, and that will be to pursue the leisure life that the Constitution demands of American Vice Presidents. There is no one better qualified for that than me. And given all the perks and the jet and all that stuff, I believe I can set the gold standard for future Vice Presidents as far as being a man of leisure. On the political end of things, well, who cares what a Vice President does or thinks? I will leave exactly no political legacy and never steal the president's thunder. America will be a better place for having me holding down the do-nothing part of a do-nothing office. Bob Crespo for Vice President in '08!
Oh, once in a while he gets to cast the deciding vote in the Senate when they're deadlocked, but that's about it, really. It's more of a ceremonial position than a job, and people who see themselves as president are ill-suited to sitting on their hands for four years while the person who beat them for the presidential nomination gets to put forward their own agenda. In most cases that's the agenda the Vice President vociferously condemned on the campaign trail as being disastrous for America while he or she was trying to become president so naturally the actual president doesn't let them get anywhere near the decision making process. So by definition most Vice Presidents are craven cowards and hypocrites of the worst sort when they pledge to serve the president they spent the whole campaign season vilifying.
That's where I come in. I don't want to be president and don't much care what they do so long as they're not starting stupid wars or taxing the hell out of the working classes. I figure the Vice President should be a traditional one, not doing a hell of a lot of work at all. I've got that covered. I can dress in a suit and shake hands and pretend I know what I'm doing with the best of them. You can trot me out every so often just to let the American people know that indeed there actually is a Vice President out there somewhere doing whatever it is Vice Presidents do and I won't say or do anything outrageous to embarrass the president. That's basically all that's required of the office.
And the beauty of it is that the pay is great and the perks even better and you wind up with a decent pesions for the rest of your life. You get a jet plane, a mansion, Secret Service bodyguards, a large staff, attractive young interns to "train" and no actual work to be performed. What's not to love? Do you know how much of a good time you can have with a set up like that? The president would be more than happy to let you fly all over the world in Air Force 2, pretending to study something or other in some exotic location. You land in your giant jet, shake a few hands, review the troops there to greet you, then check into the finest hotel and proceed to enjoy yourself. One supposes you could have one of your staff prepare some cockamamie report about the place, but even that's optional since nobody cares what the Vice President has to say. Me, I'd just tell them to copy the Wikipedia report about the place and relax and work on their suntans.
Back in Washington my time would be spent at the Vice Presidential mansion playing cards with the Secret Service, swimming in the heated pool with my young interns and having my personal chef prepare lavish meals for me and my many guests. I could catch up with a lot of reading and writing with all my free time and maybe even have a little recording studio installed in the old mansion so I could work on some music.There's nothing in the Constitution that says one of your staff can't be a recording engineer. Vice Presidents already have their own photographer assigned to them, so why not a drummer, too? Hell, I might even hire my whole band while I'm at it. Who needs another secretary for a do-nothing job? What this Vice President will need is background singers and musicians. I figure in four years I could record hundreds of songs for my web site. That would be a hell of a lot more than most Vice Presidents accomplish.
Unless of course you're the kind of Vice President we have now, a guy that took over the government because the President is mildly retarded. And look at the fine mess he's created. The retarded guy couldn't have done any worse. I think the American people are going to elect a smart person this time around and return the Vice Presidency to it's former non-glory, which is only right and proper. When I'm Vice President I promise I won't shoot anybody in the face with a shotgun or mount a coup to oust the president. Who needs those headaches?
Of course I'm not offering my services to John McCain, and not only because I oppose the Republican agenda. I mean, the guy's really old and could die in office, leaving me to clean up the mess our current administration is leaving our country. That wouldn't do at all. McCain is already starting to show distressing signs of senility by vowing to continue to follow the retarded guy's policies! Man, if that isn't a sign he's ready for the robe and the adult diapers, I don't what is. No, I'm staying away from that geriatric quicksand. At least the Democratic candidates are both healthy and vigorous and will need no input from the likes of me. Whether or not they become great presidents, poor presidents or mediocre ones they're going to have to do so on their own.
Me, I'll have my own agenda, and that will be to pursue the leisure life that the Constitution demands of American Vice Presidents. There is no one better qualified for that than me. And given all the perks and the jet and all that stuff, I believe I can set the gold standard for future Vice Presidents as far as being a man of leisure. On the political end of things, well, who cares what a Vice President does or thinks? I will leave exactly no political legacy and never steal the president's thunder. America will be a better place for having me holding down the do-nothing part of a do-nothing office. Bob Crespo for Vice President in '08!
March 20, 2008
LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 3
Life is a process, not an event. So, life is everything that happens between birth and death, the good, the bad and the ugly. A tip: Try to to avoid the latter two as much as possible. While that may not be always be possible, it's a better deal to seek the light rather than darkness.
SCIENTISTS AND BEER AND OTHER ODDITIES
Here's a good scientific report. The scientific journal Oikos published a study about scientists themselves, and why some were wildly successful, some were reasonably successful, others barely marginal and some complete flops. The study found that the more beer a scientist drinks, the less likely he is to be successful, with some notable exceptions here and there. Hell, I could have told them that. That pretty much covers any occupation, no? When was the last time you heard of a guy who downs a case of beer a day being listed in the Forbes' 500? Sometimes you wonder if a lot of these scientists have too much time on their hands.
And aren't scientists the last people you want to hear about chugging a ton of brew? Not quite as dire, say, as a sudsy airplane pilot or surgeon, but still a group of people the rest of us sort of depend upon to explain a lot of mysterious and complicated things. What if it turns out they were drunk and made it all up? For all most of us know, Einstein could have been telling us whopper after whopper about relativity and the speed of light and all that. And what if Isaac Newton was a drunk? Maybe gravity isn't the same everywhere and the laws of physics are something other than what he said they are. What if these new guys we have now got that whole global warming thing wrong and we wake up one day to find a new Ice Age after we've all invested in Bermuda shorts, Hawaiian shirts and suntan oil? Then what? Nobody I know has any experience at all dealing with Wooly Mammoths.
Here's something for beer drinking scientists to study: the difference between Eliot Spitzer's unfaithfulness to his wife and David Paterson's. Spitzer was forced to resign as New York's Governor when it was revealed he was patronizing prostitutes, like it was any of our business. So the guy who took over for him, Lieutenant Governor David Paterson, admits right from the start that he had a number of sexual relationships with women other that his wife. Apparently that's okay since he didn't pay for the sex. That sort of thing is also none of our business either, but it's interesting that nobody was calling for Governor Paterson to resign. Exactly what is America's stand on extra-marital sex? It's okay to have a love affair but not to pay for sex? Wouldn't having a loving and continuous relationship with someone other than the lovely wife be a worse transgression than simply paying for sex? Yet another assumption I got dead wrong.
Okay, with Spitzer I understand the outcry and smug satisfaction over the downfall of a killjoy reformer who spent a good deal of his time as New York State's Attorney General shutting down prostitution rings and generally condemning everybody who was not him. When a guy elevates himself on a pedestal we all love it when he topples. No one likes people like that, hypocritical moral policemen always in other people's business and always pronouncing that they just don't measure up to his arbitrary moral standards. Neither did he as it turns out. And he's just as big a boob as the people calling for his head since he resigned all craven and contrite and ashamed to look the world in the eye, as if having sex with women was some sort of unnatural act. If he had the balls he liked to display to the hookers he'd have told the public that his sex life is none of our damned business.
Still in all, he should not have been forced from office for being the customer of an ancient and thriving industry. He can still be governor and the hypocritical sack of shit he always was, much like a whole lot of politicians. And he can still be governor and a man who sleeps with hookers, again, not a rarity. Of course he would have had to lose his moral superiority card, but that's not a bad thing. It's a good thing to have governor who's forced to be neutral in judging the morals of others. It's an executive administrative job, not a church pulpit. We could have just chuckled at the irony and gotten on with our lives without all the outrage at our Governor's lax morals. Now what separates us from the likes of him? Pretty much nothing is what, except that we've still got our jobs, such as they are.
So, by leaving like he did, Spitzer gets the last laugh since he now turned a whole bunch of people into mini-Spitzers; finger-pointing holier than thou clowns peeking into the private lives of others and giving them a very public thumbs-down and an appropriately superior frown. Especially considering that all the newly minted morality police now have to live with a governor who's slept with a whole bunch of non-wifely women. Spitzer walks away with a victory for his world view. Big Sex Brother is watching and America's adulthood when it comes to sex is further delayed, stuck somewhere in junior high school. Sad.
So, 5 years after Bush The Younger invaded Iraq, putting the hunt for Osama bin Laden on permanent hold, Osama's back this week with another video, this one threatening the European Union for publishing cartoons making fun of Islam. Is there a more humorless cretin out there than this guy? Conspicuously absent in his latest Gangsta Rap was any criticism of the Hamas cartoon mouse that threatens to eat the Jews. Now, I don't understand Arabic, but watching this guy you wonder if there's ever been a less charismatic figure. No matter how you view the guy, as a terrorist, a freedom fighter or a religious figure, he's one dull drink of water. So how dull do his followers have to be to think this is a guy to inspire the masses?
The only interesting thing about Osama bin Laden is that our country's leadership did not move heaven and earth to track him down and kill or capture him after what he did on 9/11/01. If you or I were president that day that would pretty much be the #1 priority of our presidency, no? That's what would make sense, right? The reasons would be obvious and the motivation powerful. So when a president invades an oil-rich nation that posed no threat to America and had no part in the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, why are his motives not obvious? There's only one reason to attack Iraq and that is to steal the oil there, yet people come up with all sorts of implausible motives and desired results when it comes to the invasion of Iraq.
And now you've got Bush and his boss Cheney proclaiming that fiasco a "success." For who? The Iraqi people? The American people? No, it was disaster to both sets of citizens. For the cause of American style democracy in the Middle East? Doesn't seem to be any huge groundswell of support there for the dusty kingdoms where sultans rule, women cower in fear and a lot of men like to date teenaged boys and chant "Death to America" in the streets. For Big Oil? Bingo! Check the price at the pump and the record profits recorded by the big oil companies. Mission accomplished, all right. That Lear Jet parked on the personal landing strip of the mansion in Palm Springs speaks volumes. If it walks and quacks like a duck it's a damned duck and not a war of liberation. Beer-drinking scientists, see what you can find out about self delusion between six-packs and get back to us soon.
Here's a good scientific report. The scientific journal Oikos published a study about scientists themselves, and why some were wildly successful, some were reasonably successful, others barely marginal and some complete flops. The study found that the more beer a scientist drinks, the less likely he is to be successful, with some notable exceptions here and there. Hell, I could have told them that. That pretty much covers any occupation, no? When was the last time you heard of a guy who downs a case of beer a day being listed in the Forbes' 500? Sometimes you wonder if a lot of these scientists have too much time on their hands.
And aren't scientists the last people you want to hear about chugging a ton of brew? Not quite as dire, say, as a sudsy airplane pilot or surgeon, but still a group of people the rest of us sort of depend upon to explain a lot of mysterious and complicated things. What if it turns out they were drunk and made it all up? For all most of us know, Einstein could have been telling us whopper after whopper about relativity and the speed of light and all that. And what if Isaac Newton was a drunk? Maybe gravity isn't the same everywhere and the laws of physics are something other than what he said they are. What if these new guys we have now got that whole global warming thing wrong and we wake up one day to find a new Ice Age after we've all invested in Bermuda shorts, Hawaiian shirts and suntan oil? Then what? Nobody I know has any experience at all dealing with Wooly Mammoths.
Here's something for beer drinking scientists to study: the difference between Eliot Spitzer's unfaithfulness to his wife and David Paterson's. Spitzer was forced to resign as New York's Governor when it was revealed he was patronizing prostitutes, like it was any of our business. So the guy who took over for him, Lieutenant Governor David Paterson, admits right from the start that he had a number of sexual relationships with women other that his wife. Apparently that's okay since he didn't pay for the sex. That sort of thing is also none of our business either, but it's interesting that nobody was calling for Governor Paterson to resign. Exactly what is America's stand on extra-marital sex? It's okay to have a love affair but not to pay for sex? Wouldn't having a loving and continuous relationship with someone other than the lovely wife be a worse transgression than simply paying for sex? Yet another assumption I got dead wrong.
Okay, with Spitzer I understand the outcry and smug satisfaction over the downfall of a killjoy reformer who spent a good deal of his time as New York State's Attorney General shutting down prostitution rings and generally condemning everybody who was not him. When a guy elevates himself on a pedestal we all love it when he topples. No one likes people like that, hypocritical moral policemen always in other people's business and always pronouncing that they just don't measure up to his arbitrary moral standards. Neither did he as it turns out. And he's just as big a boob as the people calling for his head since he resigned all craven and contrite and ashamed to look the world in the eye, as if having sex with women was some sort of unnatural act. If he had the balls he liked to display to the hookers he'd have told the public that his sex life is none of our damned business.
Still in all, he should not have been forced from office for being the customer of an ancient and thriving industry. He can still be governor and the hypocritical sack of shit he always was, much like a whole lot of politicians. And he can still be governor and a man who sleeps with hookers, again, not a rarity. Of course he would have had to lose his moral superiority card, but that's not a bad thing. It's a good thing to have governor who's forced to be neutral in judging the morals of others. It's an executive administrative job, not a church pulpit. We could have just chuckled at the irony and gotten on with our lives without all the outrage at our Governor's lax morals. Now what separates us from the likes of him? Pretty much nothing is what, except that we've still got our jobs, such as they are.
So, by leaving like he did, Spitzer gets the last laugh since he now turned a whole bunch of people into mini-Spitzers; finger-pointing holier than thou clowns peeking into the private lives of others and giving them a very public thumbs-down and an appropriately superior frown. Especially considering that all the newly minted morality police now have to live with a governor who's slept with a whole bunch of non-wifely women. Spitzer walks away with a victory for his world view. Big Sex Brother is watching and America's adulthood when it comes to sex is further delayed, stuck somewhere in junior high school. Sad.
So, 5 years after Bush The Younger invaded Iraq, putting the hunt for Osama bin Laden on permanent hold, Osama's back this week with another video, this one threatening the European Union for publishing cartoons making fun of Islam. Is there a more humorless cretin out there than this guy? Conspicuously absent in his latest Gangsta Rap was any criticism of the Hamas cartoon mouse that threatens to eat the Jews. Now, I don't understand Arabic, but watching this guy you wonder if there's ever been a less charismatic figure. No matter how you view the guy, as a terrorist, a freedom fighter or a religious figure, he's one dull drink of water. So how dull do his followers have to be to think this is a guy to inspire the masses?
The only interesting thing about Osama bin Laden is that our country's leadership did not move heaven and earth to track him down and kill or capture him after what he did on 9/11/01. If you or I were president that day that would pretty much be the #1 priority of our presidency, no? That's what would make sense, right? The reasons would be obvious and the motivation powerful. So when a president invades an oil-rich nation that posed no threat to America and had no part in the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, why are his motives not obvious? There's only one reason to attack Iraq and that is to steal the oil there, yet people come up with all sorts of implausible motives and desired results when it comes to the invasion of Iraq.
And now you've got Bush and his boss Cheney proclaiming that fiasco a "success." For who? The Iraqi people? The American people? No, it was disaster to both sets of citizens. For the cause of American style democracy in the Middle East? Doesn't seem to be any huge groundswell of support there for the dusty kingdoms where sultans rule, women cower in fear and a lot of men like to date teenaged boys and chant "Death to America" in the streets. For Big Oil? Bingo! Check the price at the pump and the record profits recorded by the big oil companies. Mission accomplished, all right. That Lear Jet parked on the personal landing strip of the mansion in Palm Springs speaks volumes. If it walks and quacks like a duck it's a damned duck and not a war of liberation. Beer-drinking scientists, see what you can find out about self delusion between six-packs and get back to us soon.
And aren't scientists the last people you want to hear about chugging a ton of brew? Not quite as dire, say, as a sudsy airplane pilot or surgeon, but still a group of people the rest of us sort of depend upon to explain a lot of mysterious and complicated things. What if it turns out they were drunk and made it all up? For all most of us know, Einstein could have been telling us whopper after whopper about relativity and the speed of light and all that. And what if Isaac Newton was a drunk? Maybe gravity isn't the same everywhere and the laws of physics are something other than what he said they are. What if these new guys we have now got that whole global warming thing wrong and we wake up one day to find a new Ice Age after we've all invested in Bermuda shorts, Hawaiian shirts and suntan oil? Then what? Nobody I know has any experience at all dealing with Wooly Mammoths.
Here's something for beer drinking scientists to study: the difference between Eliot Spitzer's unfaithfulness to his wife and David Paterson's. Spitzer was forced to resign as New York's Governor when it was revealed he was patronizing prostitutes, like it was any of our business. So the guy who took over for him, Lieutenant Governor David Paterson, admits right from the start that he had a number of sexual relationships with women other that his wife. Apparently that's okay since he didn't pay for the sex. That sort of thing is also none of our business either, but it's interesting that nobody was calling for Governor Paterson to resign. Exactly what is America's stand on extra-marital sex? It's okay to have a love affair but not to pay for sex? Wouldn't having a loving and continuous relationship with someone other than the lovely wife be a worse transgression than simply paying for sex? Yet another assumption I got dead wrong.
Okay, with Spitzer I understand the outcry and smug satisfaction over the downfall of a killjoy reformer who spent a good deal of his time as New York State's Attorney General shutting down prostitution rings and generally condemning everybody who was not him. When a guy elevates himself on a pedestal we all love it when he topples. No one likes people like that, hypocritical moral policemen always in other people's business and always pronouncing that they just don't measure up to his arbitrary moral standards. Neither did he as it turns out. And he's just as big a boob as the people calling for his head since he resigned all craven and contrite and ashamed to look the world in the eye, as if having sex with women was some sort of unnatural act. If he had the balls he liked to display to the hookers he'd have told the public that his sex life is none of our damned business.
Still in all, he should not have been forced from office for being the customer of an ancient and thriving industry. He can still be governor and the hypocritical sack of shit he always was, much like a whole lot of politicians. And he can still be governor and a man who sleeps with hookers, again, not a rarity. Of course he would have had to lose his moral superiority card, but that's not a bad thing. It's a good thing to have governor who's forced to be neutral in judging the morals of others. It's an executive administrative job, not a church pulpit. We could have just chuckled at the irony and gotten on with our lives without all the outrage at our Governor's lax morals. Now what separates us from the likes of him? Pretty much nothing is what, except that we've still got our jobs, such as they are.
So, by leaving like he did, Spitzer gets the last laugh since he now turned a whole bunch of people into mini-Spitzers; finger-pointing holier than thou clowns peeking into the private lives of others and giving them a very public thumbs-down and an appropriately superior frown. Especially considering that all the newly minted morality police now have to live with a governor who's slept with a whole bunch of non-wifely women. Spitzer walks away with a victory for his world view. Big Sex Brother is watching and America's adulthood when it comes to sex is further delayed, stuck somewhere in junior high school. Sad.
So, 5 years after Bush The Younger invaded Iraq, putting the hunt for Osama bin Laden on permanent hold, Osama's back this week with another video, this one threatening the European Union for publishing cartoons making fun of Islam. Is there a more humorless cretin out there than this guy? Conspicuously absent in his latest Gangsta Rap was any criticism of the Hamas cartoon mouse that threatens to eat the Jews. Now, I don't understand Arabic, but watching this guy you wonder if there's ever been a less charismatic figure. No matter how you view the guy, as a terrorist, a freedom fighter or a religious figure, he's one dull drink of water. So how dull do his followers have to be to think this is a guy to inspire the masses?
The only interesting thing about Osama bin Laden is that our country's leadership did not move heaven and earth to track him down and kill or capture him after what he did on 9/11/01. If you or I were president that day that would pretty much be the #1 priority of our presidency, no? That's what would make sense, right? The reasons would be obvious and the motivation powerful. So when a president invades an oil-rich nation that posed no threat to America and had no part in the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, why are his motives not obvious? There's only one reason to attack Iraq and that is to steal the oil there, yet people come up with all sorts of implausible motives and desired results when it comes to the invasion of Iraq.
And now you've got Bush and his boss Cheney proclaiming that fiasco a "success." For who? The Iraqi people? The American people? No, it was disaster to both sets of citizens. For the cause of American style democracy in the Middle East? Doesn't seem to be any huge groundswell of support there for the dusty kingdoms where sultans rule, women cower in fear and a lot of men like to date teenaged boys and chant "Death to America" in the streets. For Big Oil? Bingo! Check the price at the pump and the record profits recorded by the big oil companies. Mission accomplished, all right. That Lear Jet parked on the personal landing strip of the mansion in Palm Springs speaks volumes. If it walks and quacks like a duck it's a damned duck and not a war of liberation. Beer-drinking scientists, see what you can find out about self delusion between six-packs and get back to us soon.
Here's a good scientific report. The scientific journal Oikos published a study about scientists themselves, and why some were wildly successful, some were reasonably successful, others barely marginal and some complete flops. The study found that the more beer a scientist drinks, the less likely he is to be successful, with some notable exceptions here and there. Hell, I could have told them that. That pretty much covers any occupation, no? When was the last time you heard of a guy who downs a case of beer a day being listed in the Forbes' 500? Sometimes you wonder if a lot of these scientists have too much time on their hands.
And aren't scientists the last people you want to hear about chugging a ton of brew? Not quite as dire, say, as a sudsy airplane pilot or surgeon, but still a group of people the rest of us sort of depend upon to explain a lot of mysterious and complicated things. What if it turns out they were drunk and made it all up? For all most of us know, Einstein could have been telling us whopper after whopper about relativity and the speed of light and all that. And what if Isaac Newton was a drunk? Maybe gravity isn't the same everywhere and the laws of physics are something other than what he said they are. What if these new guys we have now got that whole global warming thing wrong and we wake up one day to find a new Ice Age after we've all invested in Bermuda shorts, Hawaiian shirts and suntan oil? Then what? Nobody I know has any experience at all dealing with Wooly Mammoths.
Here's something for beer drinking scientists to study: the difference between Eliot Spitzer's unfaithfulness to his wife and David Paterson's. Spitzer was forced to resign as New York's Governor when it was revealed he was patronizing prostitutes, like it was any of our business. So the guy who took over for him, Lieutenant Governor David Paterson, admits right from the start that he had a number of sexual relationships with women other that his wife. Apparently that's okay since he didn't pay for the sex. That sort of thing is also none of our business either, but it's interesting that nobody was calling for Governor Paterson to resign. Exactly what is America's stand on extra-marital sex? It's okay to have a love affair but not to pay for sex? Wouldn't having a loving and continuous relationship with someone other than the lovely wife be a worse transgression than simply paying for sex? Yet another assumption I got dead wrong.
Okay, with Spitzer I understand the outcry and smug satisfaction over the downfall of a killjoy reformer who spent a good deal of his time as New York State's Attorney General shutting down prostitution rings and generally condemning everybody who was not him. When a guy elevates himself on a pedestal we all love it when he topples. No one likes people like that, hypocritical moral policemen always in other people's business and always pronouncing that they just don't measure up to his arbitrary moral standards. Neither did he as it turns out. And he's just as big a boob as the people calling for his head since he resigned all craven and contrite and ashamed to look the world in the eye, as if having sex with women was some sort of unnatural act. If he had the balls he liked to display to the hookers he'd have told the public that his sex life is none of our damned business.
Still in all, he should not have been forced from office for being the customer of an ancient and thriving industry. He can still be governor and the hypocritical sack of shit he always was, much like a whole lot of politicians. And he can still be governor and a man who sleeps with hookers, again, not a rarity. Of course he would have had to lose his moral superiority card, but that's not a bad thing. It's a good thing to have governor who's forced to be neutral in judging the morals of others. It's an executive administrative job, not a church pulpit. We could have just chuckled at the irony and gotten on with our lives without all the outrage at our Governor's lax morals. Now what separates us from the likes of him? Pretty much nothing is what, except that we've still got our jobs, such as they are.
So, by leaving like he did, Spitzer gets the last laugh since he now turned a whole bunch of people into mini-Spitzers; finger-pointing holier than thou clowns peeking into the private lives of others and giving them a very public thumbs-down and an appropriately superior frown. Especially considering that all the newly minted morality police now have to live with a governor who's slept with a whole bunch of non-wifely women. Spitzer walks away with a victory for his world view. Big Sex Brother is watching and America's adulthood when it comes to sex is further delayed, stuck somewhere in junior high school. Sad.
So, 5 years after Bush The Younger invaded Iraq, putting the hunt for Osama bin Laden on permanent hold, Osama's back this week with another video, this one threatening the European Union for publishing cartoons making fun of Islam. Is there a more humorless cretin out there than this guy? Conspicuously absent in his latest Gangsta Rap was any criticism of the Hamas cartoon mouse that threatens to eat the Jews. Now, I don't understand Arabic, but watching this guy you wonder if there's ever been a less charismatic figure. No matter how you view the guy, as a terrorist, a freedom fighter or a religious figure, he's one dull drink of water. So how dull do his followers have to be to think this is a guy to inspire the masses?
The only interesting thing about Osama bin Laden is that our country's leadership did not move heaven and earth to track him down and kill or capture him after what he did on 9/11/01. If you or I were president that day that would pretty much be the #1 priority of our presidency, no? That's what would make sense, right? The reasons would be obvious and the motivation powerful. So when a president invades an oil-rich nation that posed no threat to America and had no part in the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, why are his motives not obvious? There's only one reason to attack Iraq and that is to steal the oil there, yet people come up with all sorts of implausible motives and desired results when it comes to the invasion of Iraq.
And now you've got Bush and his boss Cheney proclaiming that fiasco a "success." For who? The Iraqi people? The American people? No, it was disaster to both sets of citizens. For the cause of American style democracy in the Middle East? Doesn't seem to be any huge groundswell of support there for the dusty kingdoms where sultans rule, women cower in fear and a lot of men like to date teenaged boys and chant "Death to America" in the streets. For Big Oil? Bingo! Check the price at the pump and the record profits recorded by the big oil companies. Mission accomplished, all right. That Lear Jet parked on the personal landing strip of the mansion in Palm Springs speaks volumes. If it walks and quacks like a duck it's a damned duck and not a war of liberation. Beer-drinking scientists, see what you can find out about self delusion between six-packs and get back to us soon.
March 19, 2008
LIFE EXPLAINED-PART 2
Life is like having to clean a sink full of dirty dishes. It looks awful but it's not so bad once you get your hands wet.
March 18, 2008
A VERY WOODEN ANNIVERSARY. CIGAR STORE IRAQIS, ANYONE?
So, I looked it up, what to get somebody on their 5th anniversary. Apparently 5 years is not much of a milestone because the gift suggestion is something made of wood. The list I consulted doesn't specify exactly which wooden objects would be appropriate, so I'm goIng to improvise with the 5th anniversary of the Iraqi invasion. I figure Bush The Younger's head is made out of wood, but nobody really wants anymore of the sawdust that passes for his ideas, so we'll have to figure something else out for a gift to the Iraqi people on the anniversary of their "liberation" from Sadam Hussein and subsequent enslavement by America.
What's made of wood that these people could use? Maybe a cord of firewood to heat their homes when the electricity is cut off for half of the day? How about some lumber to rebuild some of those homes? A nice wooden plaque would be thoughtful. Maybe have the inscription read: "Thank you for five wonderful years of hospitality and brotherly love! Our relationship has lasted longer than World War Two." or "Has it been only five years? It seems more like fifty." Okay, maybe the plaque isn't the way to go. The Bush Administration fired all the guys who speak Arabic because they think they are gay and it would be tacky to give them a plaque written in English, sort of like the Roman Empire giving Carthage a plaque in Latin after they razed their cities and salted their farmland.
But one must observe the social niceties, and protocol calls for a wooden gift to the Iraqi people to mark this anniversary. We wouldn't want to forget their anniversary and get them mad at us, would we? Who knows, they might start forming insurgency groups and bombing our soldiers and their own fellow citizens with high explosives, and we wouldn't want that. No, we must show that we appreciate their good old Middle Eastern hospitality. But what to get them that would be made of wood and still appropriate for the Iraqi people? Wood isn't so good for stopping shrapnel and bullets so wooden body armor is out of the question.
We could make them a whole bunch of donkey carts. This way when we suck out their last drop of oil and leave their country in a hurry they will still have a way to get around. But that would mean getting them millions of donkeys, and a quick glance at the anniversary gift chart reveals there is no donkey anniversary. That's a regrettable oversight, since it seems an ideal solution for a nation we are rapidly sending on a time trip backwards. Dare we step out of convention and get creative? I don't know about that since these Iraqis seem a pretty strait-laced bunch, insisting on all sorts of traditional observances like the right to be ruled by a government of their own choosing and not living with a gigantic occupational army for years and years, you know, quaint notions like that. So maybe we'd best stick with a conventional gift and not think outside the box here.
We could get them a wooden Cigar Store Indian. Lots of people think they're a cool gift. But on second thought, that might only serve to remind them of the actual fate of real American Indians, a people who once roamed a giant border-free land and who today live on dusty reservations like lions on African game preserves, with the occasional gambling casino thrown in to make us feel better about the somewhat less than stellar way they were treated by our invading armies back in the day. No sense bringing up old bad blood when we've got plenty of new bad blood we're trying to live down.
So perhaps we should persuade cigar stores not to carve a bunch of Cigar Store Iraqis to put at their entrance to mark the 5th anniversary of the Iraq invasion. Even though they might be cute, it's probably like that whole black lawn jockey deal, rubbing salt into wounds best left to heal. No sense flaunting our insensitivity, at least not openly. Of course behind closed doors all bets are off. Like always, no? Why have a giant army and push the world around if you can't get all smug and condescending about it now and then? Nothing like mindlessly chanting "We're Number one!" over and over again to annoy the crap out of the rest of the world. If they don't like it, well, let them use their own damned army and hire private mercenary companies to terrorize oil-rich dictatorships and scare the hell out of their neighbors! Until then, they should just shut up and welcome the influx of an advanced culture such as ours that brings them sophisticated concepts like fast food, Gangsta Rap and Porkys movies.
We could plant some trees there, what with them being made out of wood and the place being pretty much a dust bowl. Maybe do one of those make-overs like Israel did with their desert land, irrigating it and farming it these days. But no, if they wanted that they'd have done it long ago. Iraq has the second largest oil deposist on the planet and had plenty of money to do what they wanted before the liberators showed up and convinced them how miserable they really were and they didn't plant any trees then. Now the country is pretty broke from 5 years of getting conquered (them versus us), guerilla warfare against the occupying power (us), civil war (them versus them), Turkish raids and everybody helping themselves to their oil. It's like the Great Depression all over again for Iraq.
Which gives me an idea for an anniversary gift. Pencils! They're wood and the unemployed Iraqis can sell them on street corners like destitute people did during the Depression. Lots of pencils, since they're going to be poor for a long time, oil or no oil. Five years of war rips up a place pretty good and there's a whole lot of infrastructure that needs rebuilding. The fireworks display the Pentagon put on for CNN at the beginning of the war blew up a lot of stuff costing a lot of money, things like buildings, highways, bridges, airports, electric plants, homes, apartment buildings, hospitals, presidential palaces, stores, you name it. Clean drinking water is but a fond memory for much of Iraq, as is 24/7 electric supply. Of course we didn't bomb any oil facilities, that would have been counter to the whole purpose of invading an oil producing nation.
Bush The Younger knows who's boss, and it ain't him. The Big Oil Cartel headed by Shotgun Dick Cheney and his Hole in The Head Gang is in charge. Being rich guys and all, they saw right away that there was no big money to be made in Afghanistan, a backward, mountainous, landlocked place nobody else wants so the people who wound up there are not exactly your history-making dynamos. The sort of people who settle for a remote gravel pit at the crossroads to nowhere aren't likely to build a wealthy civilization or at least form a decent mafia. If it wasn't for Osama bin Laden the only reason you'd have ever to think about Afghanistan was in relation to the opium trade, and even there the opium growers are satisfied to make a pittance doing the lion's share of the work while others make millions turning their product into heroin.
Which means that the Afghanis are so devoid of ambition and so obsessed with tribal warfare they have yet to produce a world-clas crime organization or famous criminal. Towards that end, our government has allowed the opium trade to flourish as never before, now supplying 90% of the world's raw material for the heroin trade but we're still waiting for a Mr. Big emerge, ala Carlos Escobar, to keep the huge profits of the drug trade in the nation that is its source. Bin Laden and his al Qaeda boys are plenty famous, but they are out-of-town muscle and not native Afghanis. How much they have to do with the heroin trade is anybody's guess since nobody seems to keep track of them much anymore.
That's probably why little note was made of the 5 year anniversary of our Afghani invasion. We still have a sizable army there so people will still think we're searching for bin Laden but Bush The Younger's focus turned from bringing him to justice long ago. Now, with less than a year to go in office, the Hole in The Head Gang is completely focused on squeezing big dough out of Iraq, handing out 30 year oil leases to their buddies and billions of dollars worth of no-bid contracts to gang associates. Of course the tab will be picked up by Iraq, pretty much guaranteeing Third World status for the foreseeable future in a formerly prosperous nation.
So I think pencils are a proper Wooden Anniversary gift. Every street corner could have its own disabled pencil vendor, and there's no shortage of maimed people over there. The sympathy factor is a big part of any successful pencil vending operation so in retrospect America had done the Iraqis a huge favor by maiming so many of them and making their nation an open arena attracting all manner of competing militias, terrorist groups and jihadists who will continue to supply suitably disfigured personnel for the pencil vending industry for years to come. Sometimes you just have to play the hand you're dealt, even when the dealer is giving you cards from the bottom of the deck.
As to what to get Bush The Younger and his boss Shotgun Dick, well, I think they have petty much everything they need and if there is something they want to acquire they do the old fashioned way; call out the Marines. And if that doesn't work, hire some more mercenaries. So here's wishing Iraq a happy 5th Anniversary. We got you these pencils as a token of our esteem. Feel free to sell them on street corners. We're looking forward to next years anniversary, which traditionally calls for a gift of iron or candy. We'll probably go with the iron.
What's made of wood that these people could use? Maybe a cord of firewood to heat their homes when the electricity is cut off for half of the day? How about some lumber to rebuild some of those homes? A nice wooden plaque would be thoughtful. Maybe have the inscription read: "Thank you for five wonderful years of hospitality and brotherly love! Our relationship has lasted longer than World War Two." or "Has it been only five years? It seems more like fifty." Okay, maybe the plaque isn't the way to go. The Bush Administration fired all the guys who speak Arabic because they think they are gay and it would be tacky to give them a plaque written in English, sort of like the Roman Empire giving Carthage a plaque in Latin after they razed their cities and salted their farmland.
But one must observe the social niceties, and protocol calls for a wooden gift to the Iraqi people to mark this anniversary. We wouldn't want to forget their anniversary and get them mad at us, would we? Who knows, they might start forming insurgency groups and bombing our soldiers and their own fellow citizens with high explosives, and we wouldn't want that. No, we must show that we appreciate their good old Middle Eastern hospitality. But what to get them that would be made of wood and still appropriate for the Iraqi people? Wood isn't so good for stopping shrapnel and bullets so wooden body armor is out of the question.
We could make them a whole bunch of donkey carts. This way when we suck out their last drop of oil and leave their country in a hurry they will still have a way to get around. But that would mean getting them millions of donkeys, and a quick glance at the anniversary gift chart reveals there is no donkey anniversary. That's a regrettable oversight, since it seems an ideal solution for a nation we are rapidly sending on a time trip backwards. Dare we step out of convention and get creative? I don't know about that since these Iraqis seem a pretty strait-laced bunch, insisting on all sorts of traditional observances like the right to be ruled by a government of their own choosing and not living with a gigantic occupational army for years and years, you know, quaint notions like that. So maybe we'd best stick with a conventional gift and not think outside the box here.
We could get them a wooden Cigar Store Indian. Lots of people think they're a cool gift. But on second thought, that might only serve to remind them of the actual fate of real American Indians, a people who once roamed a giant border-free land and who today live on dusty reservations like lions on African game preserves, with the occasional gambling casino thrown in to make us feel better about the somewhat less than stellar way they were treated by our invading armies back in the day. No sense bringing up old bad blood when we've got plenty of new bad blood we're trying to live down.
So perhaps we should persuade cigar stores not to carve a bunch of Cigar Store Iraqis to put at their entrance to mark the 5th anniversary of the Iraq invasion. Even though they might be cute, it's probably like that whole black lawn jockey deal, rubbing salt into wounds best left to heal. No sense flaunting our insensitivity, at least not openly. Of course behind closed doors all bets are off. Like always, no? Why have a giant army and push the world around if you can't get all smug and condescending about it now and then? Nothing like mindlessly chanting "We're Number one!" over and over again to annoy the crap out of the rest of the world. If they don't like it, well, let them use their own damned army and hire private mercenary companies to terrorize oil-rich dictatorships and scare the hell out of their neighbors! Until then, they should just shut up and welcome the influx of an advanced culture such as ours that brings them sophisticated concepts like fast food, Gangsta Rap and Porkys movies.
We could plant some trees there, what with them being made out of wood and the place being pretty much a dust bowl. Maybe do one of those make-overs like Israel did with their desert land, irrigating it and farming it these days. But no, if they wanted that they'd have done it long ago. Iraq has the second largest oil deposist on the planet and had plenty of money to do what they wanted before the liberators showed up and convinced them how miserable they really were and they didn't plant any trees then. Now the country is pretty broke from 5 years of getting conquered (them versus us), guerilla warfare against the occupying power (us), civil war (them versus them), Turkish raids and everybody helping themselves to their oil. It's like the Great Depression all over again for Iraq.
Which gives me an idea for an anniversary gift. Pencils! They're wood and the unemployed Iraqis can sell them on street corners like destitute people did during the Depression. Lots of pencils, since they're going to be poor for a long time, oil or no oil. Five years of war rips up a place pretty good and there's a whole lot of infrastructure that needs rebuilding. The fireworks display the Pentagon put on for CNN at the beginning of the war blew up a lot of stuff costing a lot of money, things like buildings, highways, bridges, airports, electric plants, homes, apartment buildings, hospitals, presidential palaces, stores, you name it. Clean drinking water is but a fond memory for much of Iraq, as is 24/7 electric supply. Of course we didn't bomb any oil facilities, that would have been counter to the whole purpose of invading an oil producing nation.
Bush The Younger knows who's boss, and it ain't him. The Big Oil Cartel headed by Shotgun Dick Cheney and his Hole in The Head Gang is in charge. Being rich guys and all, they saw right away that there was no big money to be made in Afghanistan, a backward, mountainous, landlocked place nobody else wants so the people who wound up there are not exactly your history-making dynamos. The sort of people who settle for a remote gravel pit at the crossroads to nowhere aren't likely to build a wealthy civilization or at least form a decent mafia. If it wasn't for Osama bin Laden the only reason you'd have ever to think about Afghanistan was in relation to the opium trade, and even there the opium growers are satisfied to make a pittance doing the lion's share of the work while others make millions turning their product into heroin.
Which means that the Afghanis are so devoid of ambition and so obsessed with tribal warfare they have yet to produce a world-clas crime organization or famous criminal. Towards that end, our government has allowed the opium trade to flourish as never before, now supplying 90% of the world's raw material for the heroin trade but we're still waiting for a Mr. Big emerge, ala Carlos Escobar, to keep the huge profits of the drug trade in the nation that is its source. Bin Laden and his al Qaeda boys are plenty famous, but they are out-of-town muscle and not native Afghanis. How much they have to do with the heroin trade is anybody's guess since nobody seems to keep track of them much anymore.
That's probably why little note was made of the 5 year anniversary of our Afghani invasion. We still have a sizable army there so people will still think we're searching for bin Laden but Bush The Younger's focus turned from bringing him to justice long ago. Now, with less than a year to go in office, the Hole in The Head Gang is completely focused on squeezing big dough out of Iraq, handing out 30 year oil leases to their buddies and billions of dollars worth of no-bid contracts to gang associates. Of course the tab will be picked up by Iraq, pretty much guaranteeing Third World status for the foreseeable future in a formerly prosperous nation.
So I think pencils are a proper Wooden Anniversary gift. Every street corner could have its own disabled pencil vendor, and there's no shortage of maimed people over there. The sympathy factor is a big part of any successful pencil vending operation so in retrospect America had done the Iraqis a huge favor by maiming so many of them and making their nation an open arena attracting all manner of competing militias, terrorist groups and jihadists who will continue to supply suitably disfigured personnel for the pencil vending industry for years to come. Sometimes you just have to play the hand you're dealt, even when the dealer is giving you cards from the bottom of the deck.
As to what to get Bush The Younger and his boss Shotgun Dick, well, I think they have petty much everything they need and if there is something they want to acquire they do the old fashioned way; call out the Marines. And if that doesn't work, hire some more mercenaries. So here's wishing Iraq a happy 5th Anniversary. We got you these pencils as a token of our esteem. Feel free to sell them on street corners. We're looking forward to next years anniversary, which traditionally calls for a gift of iron or candy. We'll probably go with the iron.
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