May 31, 2010
LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 693
Anyone wondering whether it's better to be rich or poor is not only poor, but stupid. Do the math. Of course it's better to be rich than poor.
May 26, 2010
AND A (MUSLIM) GUITAR PLAYER SHALL LEAD THEM...
Salman Ahmad is a huge rock & roll star. He has sold over 30 million albums of his music, both with his band Junoon and as a solo artist. So, how come you never heard of the guy? Well, he's Pakistani, for one, and a Muslim, and for another, he plays something called "sufi-rock," a sort of Led Zeppelin meets poetry few Westerners have ever heard of.
His records sell mainly in Central Asia and in Pakistani immigrant communities scattered throughout the world, but his social activism is giving him a high profile in the West, sort of like a Pakistani Bono (of the Irish band U2 fame). Mr. Ahmad, who is rock star and not a religious figure, has nonetheless become one of the most famous Muslims in the world to repudiate killing in the name of his faith, calling the bloodthirsty Imams a bunch of killers masquerading as men of God.
Which, on the face it would an seem an unremarkable observation of the obvious if not for the fact that Salman Ahmad has so little company. He didn't exactly have to push his way onto a crowded podium and elbow aside a whole bunch of other internationally famous Muslims who have the balls to call murder by its real name.
Now, Salmon Ahmad is tackling the AIDS plague, swept under the rug by too many Muslim leaders determined to make it appear that Islam has no AIDS problem (no gays in Iran either!), and Muslims do not share humanity's problems. Ahmad knows this to be a lie, and says so. While lying sacks of shit try to wish it away, the AIDS Plague kills and infects millions, and it's up to a Pakistani guitar slinger to point that out. Someone had to.
See, that's the thing about rock & roll musicians, they speak their mind, which is the whole idea of rock & roll. Some even make sense. Bob Marley comes to mind here, John Lennon. Mr. Ahmad's very public opinion is that this phony jihad being waged by power-mad killers is against everything Islam stands for.
His is an unambiguous attack on both international terrorists and your basic garden variety militias that plague his homeland. This stance no doubt puts his life in danger, proving once again that there is more courage and integrity in one rock & roll musician than a thousand Bishops. Or Imams, Ayatollahs, Rabbis, "Most Holy" Reverends or Popes.
Or political leaders, for that matter. His music has been alternately censored and banned by various Pakistani regimes when he criticized nuclear tests in his homeland and protested the official policy of treating India as an enemy, asking simple questions like "Why escalate the arms race when people still need water?" and "Why treat our neighbors as enemies when we are so close?"
Those 2 questions opened up 2 huge cans of worms in his part of the world. He also denounced the Pakistani government's negotiations with the Taliban, citing their outrageous destruction of cultural treasures and their banning of music and films.
See, this rocker knows what big-shot politicians won't admit, that book-burning is only Step 1. Next stop: Honor killings. Surrender a single province to book burners and soon you're Afghanistan with your women in chains, your culture destroyed and a superpower invading your land to kill the terrorists your nation attracts like flies to dog shit.
Salmon Ahmad does not want that fate for his nation. Patriots always want peace, safety and freedom for their land. He is also is a man who refuses to allow others to tell him what his religious faith means, especially the corrupters that can be found in within the ranks of every religion.
The silence of prominent Islamic religious figures in the face of global terror in the name of Allah is pathetic, but not unprecedented. Where were the Men of God in the pulpits and temples of Germany and Japan in the early 1920s and 30s, while there was still a chance to turn the Axis powers to another path?
Unfortunately for the world, rock & roll hadn't been invented yet to fill the void of submissive silence, and 60 million people were slaughtered in World War 2. Since that global disaster, artists of every discipline have stood up and spoken out against tyranny. It cost the singer and songwriter Fela his life in Nigeria, and got Bob Marley wounded by a would-be assassin at a peace rally in Jamaica.
This hasn't stopped other rock&rollers from pointing out obvious truths. Rockers have balls, and don't care who approves of what they have to say or the way they choose to say it. That musicians have become the target of the book burners is no surprise. Singers are in the truth business, people are buying. Who doesn't know a bunch of Marley tunes by heart?
Salmon Ahmad is a good man in good historical company, men who do not remain silent about the evil they witness, but he could use a little more living company to join him in repudiating Islamic terror and fighting the stark reality of AIDS, whether their reputations derive from political or religious authority. Maybe he will inspire some Islamic leaders to grow a pair of balls and join him in his call for peace. That is if they can get over being out-thought and upstaged by a guitar slinger. May he continue to point out the obvious.
His records sell mainly in Central Asia and in Pakistani immigrant communities scattered throughout the world, but his social activism is giving him a high profile in the West, sort of like a Pakistani Bono (of the Irish band U2 fame). Mr. Ahmad, who is rock star and not a religious figure, has nonetheless become one of the most famous Muslims in the world to repudiate killing in the name of his faith, calling the bloodthirsty Imams a bunch of killers masquerading as men of God.
Which, on the face it would an seem an unremarkable observation of the obvious if not for the fact that Salman Ahmad has so little company. He didn't exactly have to push his way onto a crowded podium and elbow aside a whole bunch of other internationally famous Muslims who have the balls to call murder by its real name.
Now, Salmon Ahmad is tackling the AIDS plague, swept under the rug by too many Muslim leaders determined to make it appear that Islam has no AIDS problem (no gays in Iran either!), and Muslims do not share humanity's problems. Ahmad knows this to be a lie, and says so. While lying sacks of shit try to wish it away, the AIDS Plague kills and infects millions, and it's up to a Pakistani guitar slinger to point that out. Someone had to.
See, that's the thing about rock & roll musicians, they speak their mind, which is the whole idea of rock & roll. Some even make sense. Bob Marley comes to mind here, John Lennon. Mr. Ahmad's very public opinion is that this phony jihad being waged by power-mad killers is against everything Islam stands for.
His is an unambiguous attack on both international terrorists and your basic garden variety militias that plague his homeland. This stance no doubt puts his life in danger, proving once again that there is more courage and integrity in one rock & roll musician than a thousand Bishops. Or Imams, Ayatollahs, Rabbis, "Most Holy" Reverends or Popes.
Or political leaders, for that matter. His music has been alternately censored and banned by various Pakistani regimes when he criticized nuclear tests in his homeland and protested the official policy of treating India as an enemy, asking simple questions like "Why escalate the arms race when people still need water?" and "Why treat our neighbors as enemies when we are so close?"
Those 2 questions opened up 2 huge cans of worms in his part of the world. He also denounced the Pakistani government's negotiations with the Taliban, citing their outrageous destruction of cultural treasures and their banning of music and films.
See, this rocker knows what big-shot politicians won't admit, that book-burning is only Step 1. Next stop: Honor killings. Surrender a single province to book burners and soon you're Afghanistan with your women in chains, your culture destroyed and a superpower invading your land to kill the terrorists your nation attracts like flies to dog shit.
Salmon Ahmad does not want that fate for his nation. Patriots always want peace, safety and freedom for their land. He is also is a man who refuses to allow others to tell him what his religious faith means, especially the corrupters that can be found in within the ranks of every religion.
The silence of prominent Islamic religious figures in the face of global terror in the name of Allah is pathetic, but not unprecedented. Where were the Men of God in the pulpits and temples of Germany and Japan in the early 1920s and 30s, while there was still a chance to turn the Axis powers to another path?
Unfortunately for the world, rock & roll hadn't been invented yet to fill the void of submissive silence, and 60 million people were slaughtered in World War 2. Since that global disaster, artists of every discipline have stood up and spoken out against tyranny. It cost the singer and songwriter Fela his life in Nigeria, and got Bob Marley wounded by a would-be assassin at a peace rally in Jamaica.
This hasn't stopped other rock&rollers from pointing out obvious truths. Rockers have balls, and don't care who approves of what they have to say or the way they choose to say it. That musicians have become the target of the book burners is no surprise. Singers are in the truth business, people are buying. Who doesn't know a bunch of Marley tunes by heart?
Salmon Ahmad is a good man in good historical company, men who do not remain silent about the evil they witness, but he could use a little more living company to join him in repudiating Islamic terror and fighting the stark reality of AIDS, whether their reputations derive from political or religious authority. Maybe he will inspire some Islamic leaders to grow a pair of balls and join him in his call for peace. That is if they can get over being out-thought and upstaged by a guitar slinger. May he continue to point out the obvious.
May 25, 2010
LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 691
There is no one stupider than people who disagree with you. What the hell is wrong with them, anyway?
COULD WE STAND IT IF LIBERALS WERE LIBERAL AND CONSERVATIVES CONSERVATIVE, MINUS THE HYSTERICS? LIKE WHEN IKE WAS AROUND.
It's always Silly Season in American politics, even at a time like this when we have a calm man at the top of the food chain. President Obama is the most even-tempered, lucid and reasonable person to occupy the White House since Dwight D. Eisenhower. A lot of people said that Eisenhower was an inactive president, a kindly war hero/father figure who became president as a reward for saving the world from Naziism. His amiable personality, good humor and complete and total sanity makes him perhaps the most normal and well adjusted of history's great conquerors and leaders. Everyone liked Ike. Respected him, too.
His unshakeable faith in the American people, his quiet competence and transparent optimism were contagious, and the 1950s were perhaps the most hopeful of American Eras. And this guy did plenty. He ended the war he inherited, The Korean War, within 5 months of taking office. This general that will go down in history alongside Caesar, Alexander and Napoleon, when it was his turn to run a war as his nation's ruler, declined the honor and pursued a policy of peaceful coexistence with the other big victor in World War 2, The Soviet Union.
Presiding over the only modern economy untouched by the war's devastation, Eisenhower put this unprecedented prosperity to good use. Inspired partly by the strategic advantage in rapid mobility that the Autobahn gave the Wermacht in Germany, and partly by his native Texan-American wanderlust, Eisenhower built the Federal Interstate Highway System, and in the process transformed America completely and permanently into the Mobile Society. Without endless highways, what the hell would the young Bruce Springsteen have written about?
Ike also got America involved in the space race, even though JFK got most of the credit. He presided over 8 years of peace and prosperity and left office with the most accurate prophecy by any president exiting the office when he warned of the grave danger posed by "the military-insdustrial complex."
When Eisnehower left office is pretty much when America started getting weird, with the assassinations, the Civil Rights riots, Vietnam, Nixon, and so on and so on through the Cheney Administration. The Generation Gap became the Red and Blue Gap, a Them-vs-Us attitude usually reserved for one's wartime enemies, not your neighbors.
Now that we don't hate each other over race anymore, we all hate each other for political reasons or religious reasons (or both), and call one another horrible names. Half our leaders on both the political right and the left are scary megalomaniacs that need to be sedated. The hatred they spread is almost Biblical in its complete unreasonableness. It's not enough to disagree these days, now you have believe that only a traitorous heretic could possibly see things differently. Ike wouldn't have put up with that childish crap for a second.
Eisenhower swiftly ended the Korean War and passed his proposed agenda with the cooperation of members of both political parties. This was a time when members of Congress actually considered the merits of an idea idea more important than who thought of it. When a maniac rose up among them, one Joseph McCarthy, and threatened this nation with Stalin-style loyalty purges, members of his own party joined with opposition leaders to defeat and completely discredit him.
Eisenhower detested McCarthy and all he stood for, and didn't let the fact that they were both Republicans stop him from showing his contempt for the man and all he stood for. There would be no room for a reasonable and responsible man like Dwight D. Eisenhower in today's Republican Party. These days, integrity and conscience are subordinate to party loyalty on both sides of the aisle, even though our public servants swear an oath of loyalty to the United States of America, with no mention of party affiliation.
Maybe Obama is trying to tear a page out of the Eisenhower field manual, playing the mature gentleman and telling the unruly kids in Congress to stop their silly squabbling and do their damned jobs. He's got an uphill climb with this batch of Representatives and Senators, a Congress with no shortage of very strange and shrill voices in these strange and shrill times. Many people openly question Obama's patience and wish he would spend more time trying to talk the spots off leopards rather than doing the job he was elected to do. They wish that President Obama would get all worked up into a lather and lose control of himself like they do.
There's a reason why the President doesn't do this, the same reason why America elected him. He is not a hysterical person. He's not going to lose it. Which, along with brains, ethics, commitment, ideas and a basic human decency, is one of the things you look for in a president. LIke it or not, the American President is the most prominent leader in the world, perhaps the only nation on earth where every other country takes notice of who's in charge and what he's all about.
This was not lost on Eisenhower, and it is not lost on Obama. With perhaps only their even temperaments in common, these two Presidents brought a mature sanity rarely seem in modern politics to the Face of America on the world and the national stages. This is how a grownup is supposed to act, like an adult comfortable in his beliefs and choices, but one who realizes that reasonable people might disagree. These things happen.
Those waiting for Obama to lash out will be disappointed. Tantrums are for children, and they get reprimanded when they throw one. For our president we picked a serious man this time around; modest but confident, optimistic but realistic, even-tempered but resolute in purpose. In short, a grownup. Well, if he can do it, maybe it's time for the rest of us to play nice with those no good rat bastards who disagree with us.
His unshakeable faith in the American people, his quiet competence and transparent optimism were contagious, and the 1950s were perhaps the most hopeful of American Eras. And this guy did plenty. He ended the war he inherited, The Korean War, within 5 months of taking office. This general that will go down in history alongside Caesar, Alexander and Napoleon, when it was his turn to run a war as his nation's ruler, declined the honor and pursued a policy of peaceful coexistence with the other big victor in World War 2, The Soviet Union.
Presiding over the only modern economy untouched by the war's devastation, Eisenhower put this unprecedented prosperity to good use. Inspired partly by the strategic advantage in rapid mobility that the Autobahn gave the Wermacht in Germany, and partly by his native Texan-American wanderlust, Eisenhower built the Federal Interstate Highway System, and in the process transformed America completely and permanently into the Mobile Society. Without endless highways, what the hell would the young Bruce Springsteen have written about?
Ike also got America involved in the space race, even though JFK got most of the credit. He presided over 8 years of peace and prosperity and left office with the most accurate prophecy by any president exiting the office when he warned of the grave danger posed by "the military-insdustrial complex."
When Eisnehower left office is pretty much when America started getting weird, with the assassinations, the Civil Rights riots, Vietnam, Nixon, and so on and so on through the Cheney Administration. The Generation Gap became the Red and Blue Gap, a Them-vs-Us attitude usually reserved for one's wartime enemies, not your neighbors.
Now that we don't hate each other over race anymore, we all hate each other for political reasons or religious reasons (or both), and call one another horrible names. Half our leaders on both the political right and the left are scary megalomaniacs that need to be sedated. The hatred they spread is almost Biblical in its complete unreasonableness. It's not enough to disagree these days, now you have believe that only a traitorous heretic could possibly see things differently. Ike wouldn't have put up with that childish crap for a second.
Eisenhower swiftly ended the Korean War and passed his proposed agenda with the cooperation of members of both political parties. This was a time when members of Congress actually considered the merits of an idea idea more important than who thought of it. When a maniac rose up among them, one Joseph McCarthy, and threatened this nation with Stalin-style loyalty purges, members of his own party joined with opposition leaders to defeat and completely discredit him.
Eisenhower detested McCarthy and all he stood for, and didn't let the fact that they were both Republicans stop him from showing his contempt for the man and all he stood for. There would be no room for a reasonable and responsible man like Dwight D. Eisenhower in today's Republican Party. These days, integrity and conscience are subordinate to party loyalty on both sides of the aisle, even though our public servants swear an oath of loyalty to the United States of America, with no mention of party affiliation.
Maybe Obama is trying to tear a page out of the Eisenhower field manual, playing the mature gentleman and telling the unruly kids in Congress to stop their silly squabbling and do their damned jobs. He's got an uphill climb with this batch of Representatives and Senators, a Congress with no shortage of very strange and shrill voices in these strange and shrill times. Many people openly question Obama's patience and wish he would spend more time trying to talk the spots off leopards rather than doing the job he was elected to do. They wish that President Obama would get all worked up into a lather and lose control of himself like they do.
There's a reason why the President doesn't do this, the same reason why America elected him. He is not a hysterical person. He's not going to lose it. Which, along with brains, ethics, commitment, ideas and a basic human decency, is one of the things you look for in a president. LIke it or not, the American President is the most prominent leader in the world, perhaps the only nation on earth where every other country takes notice of who's in charge and what he's all about.
This was not lost on Eisenhower, and it is not lost on Obama. With perhaps only their even temperaments in common, these two Presidents brought a mature sanity rarely seem in modern politics to the Face of America on the world and the national stages. This is how a grownup is supposed to act, like an adult comfortable in his beliefs and choices, but one who realizes that reasonable people might disagree. These things happen.
Those waiting for Obama to lash out will be disappointed. Tantrums are for children, and they get reprimanded when they throw one. For our president we picked a serious man this time around; modest but confident, optimistic but realistic, even-tempered but resolute in purpose. In short, a grownup. Well, if he can do it, maybe it's time for the rest of us to play nice with those no good rat bastards who disagree with us.
May 24, 2010
HOW WILL YOU WASTE YOUR SUMMER? SOME TIPS.
Well, folks, it's almost here, our most widely anticipated season, Summer. We whip out the light clothing and bathing suits, get the barbecue ready for action, we MAKE PLANS. This is going to be the best, most active and adventurous summer ever! We'll go here, do that, see this and get the T-Shirt to prove it! It's Summertime and all things are possible!
Then the actual Summer hits and it's blazing hot. Suddenly you're not feeling so ambitious. Moving around is a chore, your skin is on fire and your get-up-and-go got up and went. And so you go about the true business of Summer; fucking off. All those projects you were going to tackle? Your tools ain't going anywhere and those jobs will keep.
That hiking trip into the mountains? It's a thousand degrees in the shade, what were you thinking? The reclining lawn chair in the backyard is looking better and better, while that road trip to the Gulf Coast fades from memory.
The local beach is about as far and wide as you want to range, and then only to lay on the sand like a beached walrus in between leaps into the ocean to cool off, absently hoping that the kids recall all your dire warnings about drowning and don't do anything too stupid that would require physical exertion on your part to save their hyperactive little asses. That's what Life Guards are for, right?
In the evening you set fire to various kinds of processed meat and call it dinner, then sit around swapping lies and sipping something strong and refreshing to gather your strength to face tomorrow's inferno. You might look into obtaining some books to read, the light summer variety written in a strict formula that requires very little mental effort on your part, a Clancy or a Steele or one of those other do-all-the-work-for-you authors.
Then there's the movies, not so much to catch up on the latest teenage vampire soap opera or rock-em-sock-em explosion crapola, but to just sit there nursing some horrid frozen slurpy concoction in the frosty air conditioning, lowering your body temperature back down to survivable. With a little practice one masters the art of killing a whole day sneaking from one theater to the next in today's multiplex theaters without having to pay 15 bucks for each of these cinematic stinkers.
Night time is the only time for semi-normal activity in the Summertime. Once the sun goes down, energy returns. If one is lucky enough to be in New York City, Coney Island at night is one of the Wonders of The World during Summer, with thrilling rides, hot dogs, cold beer, cotton candy, the world's most famous boardwalk, frequent fireworks displays and as fascinating an international cast of characters as can be found anywhere. Coney Island means having a ball while not doing much of anything.
Then there's the time honored Summer tradition of wandering about aimlessly at night through the streets and parks, maybe checking out the free outdoor concerts or street performers, then stopping in at a night spot for some refreshments, camaraderie and frosty air conditioning. No need to rush about willy-nilly. A slow stroll is about as swift a pace as is necessary. It's Summer. Forget your PLANS and grand schemes, that's just not happening. The best answer for "What did I do on my Summer vacation" remains "Not much, not much at all. I basically fucked off the whole time." Season's Greetings.
Then the actual Summer hits and it's blazing hot. Suddenly you're not feeling so ambitious. Moving around is a chore, your skin is on fire and your get-up-and-go got up and went. And so you go about the true business of Summer; fucking off. All those projects you were going to tackle? Your tools ain't going anywhere and those jobs will keep.
That hiking trip into the mountains? It's a thousand degrees in the shade, what were you thinking? The reclining lawn chair in the backyard is looking better and better, while that road trip to the Gulf Coast fades from memory.
The local beach is about as far and wide as you want to range, and then only to lay on the sand like a beached walrus in between leaps into the ocean to cool off, absently hoping that the kids recall all your dire warnings about drowning and don't do anything too stupid that would require physical exertion on your part to save their hyperactive little asses. That's what Life Guards are for, right?
In the evening you set fire to various kinds of processed meat and call it dinner, then sit around swapping lies and sipping something strong and refreshing to gather your strength to face tomorrow's inferno. You might look into obtaining some books to read, the light summer variety written in a strict formula that requires very little mental effort on your part, a Clancy or a Steele or one of those other do-all-the-work-for-you authors.
Then there's the movies, not so much to catch up on the latest teenage vampire soap opera or rock-em-sock-em explosion crapola, but to just sit there nursing some horrid frozen slurpy concoction in the frosty air conditioning, lowering your body temperature back down to survivable. With a little practice one masters the art of killing a whole day sneaking from one theater to the next in today's multiplex theaters without having to pay 15 bucks for each of these cinematic stinkers.
Night time is the only time for semi-normal activity in the Summertime. Once the sun goes down, energy returns. If one is lucky enough to be in New York City, Coney Island at night is one of the Wonders of The World during Summer, with thrilling rides, hot dogs, cold beer, cotton candy, the world's most famous boardwalk, frequent fireworks displays and as fascinating an international cast of characters as can be found anywhere. Coney Island means having a ball while not doing much of anything.
Then there's the time honored Summer tradition of wandering about aimlessly at night through the streets and parks, maybe checking out the free outdoor concerts or street performers, then stopping in at a night spot for some refreshments, camaraderie and frosty air conditioning. No need to rush about willy-nilly. A slow stroll is about as swift a pace as is necessary. It's Summer. Forget your PLANS and grand schemes, that's just not happening. The best answer for "What did I do on my Summer vacation" remains "Not much, not much at all. I basically fucked off the whole time." Season's Greetings.
May 23, 2010
LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 689
If you are obsessed with avoiding deep embarrassment over trivial matters, you may be Japanese. If uncertain, consult your local geneticist immediately.
THE WORLD WIDE WEB WAS SUPPOSED TO BELONG TO BIG BROTHER
A funny thing happened on the way to the future. If anyone remembers any of a hundred science fiction books and movies, there was going to be some sort of global communication network that was beamed into every home, office and public space all over the world. It was to be be tightly controlled by some all powerful world government, or a corporation that got so huge that it runs the world.
This global network would be the only one in existence, and would be tightly censored, broadcasting only officially approved content. In this way every human would have his or her life closely monitored and controlled, all of humanity finally under the Big Thumb of Big Brother.
You know the story, you've seen and heard it so many time you could probably wake up out of a deep sleep and write a pretty decent one yourself. Only thing is, the reality of a world wide communications web is here now, but it features stuff like fat guys playing "Stairway to Heaven" with armpit fart noises on YouTube. So much for Big Brother and his army of censors.
So the first part of our science fiction story came true alright, but the part with some James-Bond-villain-in-a-Nehru-Jacket kind of guy controlling the thought police and calling the shots while small underground cells of rebels figure out ways around the tight security of the overlords to send out messages of hope and freedom to the oppressed masses, well... that part never happened. Didn't have to, thankfully.
Somehow, the World Wide Web belongs to no one, and literally anyone can post content or retrieve whatever data they feel like. For free, no less, and that includes as many repeat viewings of fat guys playing their armpits to the tune of "Stairway To Heaven" as one's heart desires. All this must be killing the wannabe Big Brothers of this world, men who possess obscenely vast fortunes and wield enormous power.
How this small but influential class of beings missed the boat of owning and controlling the internet is astounding. These people had TV, radio, publishing and the mainstream press locked up for decades, and enjoyed unfettered access to every important politician in the world, and outright control of a great many of them. Not much that was broadcast, reported, filmed, recorded or written was released outside of the strict supervision of one titanic corporation or another.
Television was a wasteland of the same old same old. Until stiff competition from Cable TV came along, an honest show on network television was as rare as an honest game of 3 Card Monte. Movies were bland imitations of one another and popular books were rehashed variations on several well-worn themes. This corporate uniformity, safety and predictability of our art was becoming as bland as a mini-van, and about as threatening as a kitten.
Even the music industry had been taken over by indifferent corporate suits who didn't care whether they sold washing machines or records. The result was a bunch of bland, sound-alike corporate rock bands or homogenized silky-smooth R&B acts, triggering another round of music-saving rebellion in the form of Rap, Hardcore, House, Hip Hop and Indie music, which in turn was snapped up one by one, assimilated, homogenized and corporatized into copy cat tameness by Big Music.
Enter the Internet. Free access. No censors. Instantaneous worldwide dissemination, far outstripping the reach of any television network or radio station. People started writing letters again, called e-mail. Every business not wishing to perish started doing e-commerce. Google provided the road map to negotiate the millions of websites and social networking pages.
Corporations and governments put up elaborate websites, and so did families, showing snapshots of junior, videos of their barbecues and graduation announcements. Something called chat rooms sprung up for the lonely, the voyeuristic, or both. A Golden Age of Pornography was born, with an astounding variety of flavors available, putting Baskin-Robbins to shame (and often to good use).
Writers wrote what they felt like, musicians recorded what they wanted to and the results were available to anyone anywhere. Blogs were born, on-line newspapers sprang up overnight. YouTube, FaceBook, MySpace and all sorts of other social websites have hundreds of millions of accounts, with few rules regarding the content that people place on their pages.
Musicians are saying screw the record companies and marketing their own music online, as are authors, painters, photographers and other artists. People are texting and tweeting and Skype-phoning each other on the opposite side of the world all the time and there's nothing anyone can do about it.
The internet is doing nothing less than completely transforming human society, on a par with The Bronze Age, The Navigation Age and The Industrial Revolution. We don't notice it since we're right in the middle of it, any more than a foundry worker in Manchester in 1837 figured he was on the cutting edge of history.The forest for the trees and all that...
But that is exactly where we are, at the Dawn of A New Age, the very beginnings of the Internet in its exciting formative stages. Perhaps one day this era will be called The Age When No One Owned The Web And Fat Guys Armpit-Farted on Video. A little wordy for naming an Age, perhaps, but still an improvement over the sterile sounding Information Age. That doesn't begin to describe the far reaching and humanity-changing events of today, with perhaps one of the biggest changes being the lack of private ownership.
This global network would be the only one in existence, and would be tightly censored, broadcasting only officially approved content. In this way every human would have his or her life closely monitored and controlled, all of humanity finally under the Big Thumb of Big Brother.
You know the story, you've seen and heard it so many time you could probably wake up out of a deep sleep and write a pretty decent one yourself. Only thing is, the reality of a world wide communications web is here now, but it features stuff like fat guys playing "Stairway to Heaven" with armpit fart noises on YouTube. So much for Big Brother and his army of censors.
So the first part of our science fiction story came true alright, but the part with some James-Bond-villain-in-a-Nehru-Jacket kind of guy controlling the thought police and calling the shots while small underground cells of rebels figure out ways around the tight security of the overlords to send out messages of hope and freedom to the oppressed masses, well... that part never happened. Didn't have to, thankfully.
Somehow, the World Wide Web belongs to no one, and literally anyone can post content or retrieve whatever data they feel like. For free, no less, and that includes as many repeat viewings of fat guys playing their armpits to the tune of "Stairway To Heaven" as one's heart desires. All this must be killing the wannabe Big Brothers of this world, men who possess obscenely vast fortunes and wield enormous power.
How this small but influential class of beings missed the boat of owning and controlling the internet is astounding. These people had TV, radio, publishing and the mainstream press locked up for decades, and enjoyed unfettered access to every important politician in the world, and outright control of a great many of them. Not much that was broadcast, reported, filmed, recorded or written was released outside of the strict supervision of one titanic corporation or another.
Television was a wasteland of the same old same old. Until stiff competition from Cable TV came along, an honest show on network television was as rare as an honest game of 3 Card Monte. Movies were bland imitations of one another and popular books were rehashed variations on several well-worn themes. This corporate uniformity, safety and predictability of our art was becoming as bland as a mini-van, and about as threatening as a kitten.
Even the music industry had been taken over by indifferent corporate suits who didn't care whether they sold washing machines or records. The result was a bunch of bland, sound-alike corporate rock bands or homogenized silky-smooth R&B acts, triggering another round of music-saving rebellion in the form of Rap, Hardcore, House, Hip Hop and Indie music, which in turn was snapped up one by one, assimilated, homogenized and corporatized into copy cat tameness by Big Music.
Enter the Internet. Free access. No censors. Instantaneous worldwide dissemination, far outstripping the reach of any television network or radio station. People started writing letters again, called e-mail. Every business not wishing to perish started doing e-commerce. Google provided the road map to negotiate the millions of websites and social networking pages.
Corporations and governments put up elaborate websites, and so did families, showing snapshots of junior, videos of their barbecues and graduation announcements. Something called chat rooms sprung up for the lonely, the voyeuristic, or both. A Golden Age of Pornography was born, with an astounding variety of flavors available, putting Baskin-Robbins to shame (and often to good use).
Writers wrote what they felt like, musicians recorded what they wanted to and the results were available to anyone anywhere. Blogs were born, on-line newspapers sprang up overnight. YouTube, FaceBook, MySpace and all sorts of other social websites have hundreds of millions of accounts, with few rules regarding the content that people place on their pages.
Musicians are saying screw the record companies and marketing their own music online, as are authors, painters, photographers and other artists. People are texting and tweeting and Skype-phoning each other on the opposite side of the world all the time and there's nothing anyone can do about it.
The internet is doing nothing less than completely transforming human society, on a par with The Bronze Age, The Navigation Age and The Industrial Revolution. We don't notice it since we're right in the middle of it, any more than a foundry worker in Manchester in 1837 figured he was on the cutting edge of history.The forest for the trees and all that...
But that is exactly where we are, at the Dawn of A New Age, the very beginnings of the Internet in its exciting formative stages. Perhaps one day this era will be called The Age When No One Owned The Web And Fat Guys Armpit-Farted on Video. A little wordy for naming an Age, perhaps, but still an improvement over the sterile sounding Information Age. That doesn't begin to describe the far reaching and humanity-changing events of today, with perhaps one of the biggest changes being the lack of private ownership.
May 22, 2010
LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 688
When shopping around for a new religion, try to avoid those that practice human sacrifice. It's usually the new guy that gets picked for that honor.
IDEAS WHOSE TIME HASN'T COME
Ah, people! Were just chock full of notions, bless our hearts, one bright idea after the next; inventions, rules, philosophies, codes of behavior, religions, laws, poems, essays, operas, stories, texts, tweets, TV shows and recipes. There's just no shutting us up, nearly 7 billion bright ideas.
As a public service, senior analysts and researchers at bobcrespo.com have been working feverishly to sort out these grand ideas being put forth into the arena of public opinion, hopefully separating the wheat from the chaff. The beneficial and successful ideas can be seen pretty much anywhere, while we present some of the less successful ones so that our readers can steer clear of lemons. Consider these non-starters:
Real Crack Hos of Kings County: Set in Brooklyn, this reality TV show follows the lives, loves and foibles of 4 wacky crack-addicted women from the area called Brownsvillle. Watch as Rhonda, Wanda, Chica and Blue Lou scour the ghetto streets in search of money for the drug they love and show the world what they will do do get it. Episode 1: Wanda and Blue Lou are released from the Women's House of Detention and encounter some interesting and imaginative gypsy cab drivers as they whore their way back to Brownsville with no money, trading "favors" for cab rides. Rated PG.
The Time Channel: Cable TV's answer to the phenomenally successful Weather Channel, the Time Channel presents public access to the exact time anywhere on Earth! Wondering if you've got the right time? Wonder no more and tune in to the Time Channel!
iGlasses: Not one of Steve Jobs' and Apple's most popular products, iGlasses were introduced as a complement to the iPod, for music lovers who also enjoy the music videos that often accompany their favorite pop songs, as well as movies and TV shows. iGlasses are just what they sound like, a pair of eyeglasses that plays high definition video before your eyes, anywhere, any time, one after another after another. The problem here was obvious, of course, and Apple wound up settling some nasty lawsuits out of court and quietly withdrawing the entire iGlasses product line.
The Prairie Home Jihadist: This was a very short-running radio show designed to cash in on a new demographic: American born alienated young Muslim men. Sponsored by a mosque in Queens, the broadcast was a combination variety show and talk radio, featuring inspirational condemnations of The Great Satan, a repertory company called The Gen-X Jihadis, something called "Bin Laden's Greatest Hits," and a comedian telling infidel jokes in Farsi (Translation: "Q: How many infidels does it take to screw in a light bulb? A: What's a light bulb?"). It also sponsored many vacations abroad for Islamic bachelors, mostly to "Koran Kamps" in Pakistan to reconnect American Muslims with their roots.
Methane fueled cars: Everyone knows what methane gas smells like. Thanks, but... Back to the drawing board, Einsteins.
The Remote Remote: How many times has this happened to you? You're on the couch, the snacks and dip are laid out, drinks are on ice at your elbow, you're snugly wrapped in your slanklet and settled in for a night of Reality TV, but you can't find the remote!You don't want to get up, but what are your options? With The Remote Remote, problem solved! A pendant-sized keypad that hangs around your neck, this labor saving remote control controls your remote control when it is out of reach. Or in someone else's hand! Watch their faces when they tune in to their favorite shows and discover that your show pops up every time! Act now and get a free TV Buddy Bed Pan, and you'll never have to get off the couch again!
The Tea Party: With many Americans fed up with both the Republican and Democratic parties, the time is ripe to form a new one. Unfortunately, the new Tea Party is not a real political party, but a subsidiary of the GOP, and so far offers nothing but rage. Sort of like a lot of those scruffy 1960's activists; good for a protest rally, or a sit-in with some good TV face time ranting about "The System," but a little light on The Plan, Stan. Any solutions? Acceptable alternatives maybe? We're all ears. So far, it's all "don't pay any damned taxes and carry your sidearm openly in the supermarket," like some 8 year-old boy's cowboy dream. Oh yes, there's also "Providing health care is Stalinism and Obama is the Manchurian Candidate." What, the two Forever Wars are okay with today's takin'-it-to-street tough guy rebels? Bunch of wimps. No tear gas, no street cred. At least those 60's guys helped to stop their Forever War. Did it stoned on pot and LSD, too. The Republic endured.
As a public service, senior analysts and researchers at bobcrespo.com have been working feverishly to sort out these grand ideas being put forth into the arena of public opinion, hopefully separating the wheat from the chaff. The beneficial and successful ideas can be seen pretty much anywhere, while we present some of the less successful ones so that our readers can steer clear of lemons. Consider these non-starters:
Real Crack Hos of Kings County: Set in Brooklyn, this reality TV show follows the lives, loves and foibles of 4 wacky crack-addicted women from the area called Brownsvillle. Watch as Rhonda, Wanda, Chica and Blue Lou scour the ghetto streets in search of money for the drug they love and show the world what they will do do get it. Episode 1: Wanda and Blue Lou are released from the Women's House of Detention and encounter some interesting and imaginative gypsy cab drivers as they whore their way back to Brownsville with no money, trading "favors" for cab rides. Rated PG.
The Time Channel: Cable TV's answer to the phenomenally successful Weather Channel, the Time Channel presents public access to the exact time anywhere on Earth! Wondering if you've got the right time? Wonder no more and tune in to the Time Channel!
iGlasses: Not one of Steve Jobs' and Apple's most popular products, iGlasses were introduced as a complement to the iPod, for music lovers who also enjoy the music videos that often accompany their favorite pop songs, as well as movies and TV shows. iGlasses are just what they sound like, a pair of eyeglasses that plays high definition video before your eyes, anywhere, any time, one after another after another. The problem here was obvious, of course, and Apple wound up settling some nasty lawsuits out of court and quietly withdrawing the entire iGlasses product line.
The Prairie Home Jihadist: This was a very short-running radio show designed to cash in on a new demographic: American born alienated young Muslim men. Sponsored by a mosque in Queens, the broadcast was a combination variety show and talk radio, featuring inspirational condemnations of The Great Satan, a repertory company called The Gen-X Jihadis, something called "Bin Laden's Greatest Hits," and a comedian telling infidel jokes in Farsi (Translation: "Q: How many infidels does it take to screw in a light bulb? A: What's a light bulb?"). It also sponsored many vacations abroad for Islamic bachelors, mostly to "Koran Kamps" in Pakistan to reconnect American Muslims with their roots.
Methane fueled cars: Everyone knows what methane gas smells like. Thanks, but... Back to the drawing board, Einsteins.
The Remote Remote: How many times has this happened to you? You're on the couch, the snacks and dip are laid out, drinks are on ice at your elbow, you're snugly wrapped in your slanklet and settled in for a night of Reality TV, but you can't find the remote!You don't want to get up, but what are your options? With The Remote Remote, problem solved! A pendant-sized keypad that hangs around your neck, this labor saving remote control controls your remote control when it is out of reach. Or in someone else's hand! Watch their faces when they tune in to their favorite shows and discover that your show pops up every time! Act now and get a free TV Buddy Bed Pan, and you'll never have to get off the couch again!
The Tea Party: With many Americans fed up with both the Republican and Democratic parties, the time is ripe to form a new one. Unfortunately, the new Tea Party is not a real political party, but a subsidiary of the GOP, and so far offers nothing but rage. Sort of like a lot of those scruffy 1960's activists; good for a protest rally, or a sit-in with some good TV face time ranting about "The System," but a little light on The Plan, Stan. Any solutions? Acceptable alternatives maybe? We're all ears. So far, it's all "don't pay any damned taxes and carry your sidearm openly in the supermarket," like some 8 year-old boy's cowboy dream. Oh yes, there's also "Providing health care is Stalinism and Obama is the Manchurian Candidate." What, the two Forever Wars are okay with today's takin'-it-to-street tough guy rebels? Bunch of wimps. No tear gas, no street cred. At least those 60's guys helped to stop their Forever War. Did it stoned on pot and LSD, too. The Republic endured.
May 20, 2010
THE POLITICS OF LOVE
Lost in the noise and clamor of our politically polarized nation is the notion of love, that most basic human concept and the main ingredient of what we like to call our humanity. Love for others was one of the prime factors in the creation of this place called the United States of America. Would anyone claim that "All men are created equal" if they did not have love in their hearts?
The claiming of inalienable human rights for every citizen is a statement that all human beings are worthy of dignity, freedom, opportunity, respect, and love. When you include "the pursuit of happiness" as a main point in your first Declaration, there's no denying the love and humanity of our Founding Fathers.
The rights to free speech, freedom of assembly, a free press and freedom of religion apply to all Americans, rights we are all exercising like crazy lately, telling one another how wrong they are and where to get off. Many of us are even attacking the patriotism of those who disagree with our politics, the act of a scoundrel with no ideas and one unworthy of our heritage of love.
Like we do today, our Founding Fathers had their fair share of knock-down, drag-out fights over what it means to be American, but never questioned the motives of their opponents, only their correctness. That's love. The founders of America came from many different backgrounds and brought vastly differing life experiences and world views to the negotiating table when it was time to decide what sort of nation America would be.
There were strong central government advocates, weak central government advocates, those who would split the colonies into several nations, and those who would erase the boundaries of the various states. There were limited monarchists, parliamentarians and those who only wanted a different relationship with Britain, sort of like what we become the British Commonwealth system.
All were heard from and all ideas considered by the framers of the U.S. Constitution, taking their cue from Voltaire when he declared: "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend unto death your right to say it." From the very beginning of America all men were accorded dignity, respect and the right to their own minds. Only love is strong enough to transcend differences of opinion, either on a personal level or in the political arena.
Which is not to say that our Founding Fathers or their Constitution were perfect. They themselves recognized this by including a process on how to correct their mistakes by amending the Constitution. And amend it we did, redressing the disenfranchisement of slaves, Native Americans, women and those who did not own land. They designed this country to expand its love and humanity, never to limit or narrow it.
This broad umbrella of freedom attracted immigrants from everywhere on earth, not for some nebulous dream of streets paved with gold, but just for a chance to live and work as an integral part of society, not as a vassal or second-class citizen. Once here, our melting pot made for some strange bedfellows, with ideas from all over the world bumping up against one another and competing for our ears, but no one was killed or imprisoned for their words or beliefs. Love doesn't roll that way.
People everywhere get into arguments, we rub each other the wrong way, we try to convince the other guy we are right. It doesn't always work out, like with the Civil Was that America had to endure to finally erase the stain of slavery from our young democracy. What is war but our failure to embrace love, a breakdown of our human decency? Love is the basis for passing laws that benefit people, whether to expand their civil rights, to provide health care for the elderly or to allow every voice to be heard in the voting booth.
Love is why we require that every child receives an education and immunization against disease, and why every worker benefits from Social Security in their twilight years. Love does not abandon people to cruel fate. Love is what allows the peaceful transition of power every four or eight years, with no exceptions in our 234 year history. Love is okay with another person being a conservative, or a liberal, or a member of a different religious faith or a seemingly exotic ethnic background.
After all, if someone seems exotic to you, then the reverse must be true and it is you who seems strange to them. The simple truth that love teaches us is that none of that matters very much when respect, honor and dignity ad=re mutually granted. Love may agree to disagree, but love is never tempted to kill, injure or imprison another human being for frivolous reasons.
The Politics of Love is as simple as the Golden Rule: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." Unless you enjoy being condemned and attacked, odds are you won't do that to the other guy. Like the song says: "What the world needs now is love, sweet love." We need love in our hearts, in our lives and in our politics. Hatred, rage and warfare are beneath us. Let us not be afraid to speak of love in our political affairs. We need it.
The claiming of inalienable human rights for every citizen is a statement that all human beings are worthy of dignity, freedom, opportunity, respect, and love. When you include "the pursuit of happiness" as a main point in your first Declaration, there's no denying the love and humanity of our Founding Fathers.
The rights to free speech, freedom of assembly, a free press and freedom of religion apply to all Americans, rights we are all exercising like crazy lately, telling one another how wrong they are and where to get off. Many of us are even attacking the patriotism of those who disagree with our politics, the act of a scoundrel with no ideas and one unworthy of our heritage of love.
Like we do today, our Founding Fathers had their fair share of knock-down, drag-out fights over what it means to be American, but never questioned the motives of their opponents, only their correctness. That's love. The founders of America came from many different backgrounds and brought vastly differing life experiences and world views to the negotiating table when it was time to decide what sort of nation America would be.
There were strong central government advocates, weak central government advocates, those who would split the colonies into several nations, and those who would erase the boundaries of the various states. There were limited monarchists, parliamentarians and those who only wanted a different relationship with Britain, sort of like what we become the British Commonwealth system.
All were heard from and all ideas considered by the framers of the U.S. Constitution, taking their cue from Voltaire when he declared: "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend unto death your right to say it." From the very beginning of America all men were accorded dignity, respect and the right to their own minds. Only love is strong enough to transcend differences of opinion, either on a personal level or in the political arena.
Which is not to say that our Founding Fathers or their Constitution were perfect. They themselves recognized this by including a process on how to correct their mistakes by amending the Constitution. And amend it we did, redressing the disenfranchisement of slaves, Native Americans, women and those who did not own land. They designed this country to expand its love and humanity, never to limit or narrow it.
This broad umbrella of freedom attracted immigrants from everywhere on earth, not for some nebulous dream of streets paved with gold, but just for a chance to live and work as an integral part of society, not as a vassal or second-class citizen. Once here, our melting pot made for some strange bedfellows, with ideas from all over the world bumping up against one another and competing for our ears, but no one was killed or imprisoned for their words or beliefs. Love doesn't roll that way.
People everywhere get into arguments, we rub each other the wrong way, we try to convince the other guy we are right. It doesn't always work out, like with the Civil Was that America had to endure to finally erase the stain of slavery from our young democracy. What is war but our failure to embrace love, a breakdown of our human decency? Love is the basis for passing laws that benefit people, whether to expand their civil rights, to provide health care for the elderly or to allow every voice to be heard in the voting booth.
Love is why we require that every child receives an education and immunization against disease, and why every worker benefits from Social Security in their twilight years. Love does not abandon people to cruel fate. Love is what allows the peaceful transition of power every four or eight years, with no exceptions in our 234 year history. Love is okay with another person being a conservative, or a liberal, or a member of a different religious faith or a seemingly exotic ethnic background.
After all, if someone seems exotic to you, then the reverse must be true and it is you who seems strange to them. The simple truth that love teaches us is that none of that matters very much when respect, honor and dignity ad=re mutually granted. Love may agree to disagree, but love is never tempted to kill, injure or imprison another human being for frivolous reasons.
The Politics of Love is as simple as the Golden Rule: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." Unless you enjoy being condemned and attacked, odds are you won't do that to the other guy. Like the song says: "What the world needs now is love, sweet love." We need love in our hearts, in our lives and in our politics. Hatred, rage and warfare are beneath us. Let us not be afraid to speak of love in our political affairs. We need it.
May 19, 2010
THE POLITICS OF ANGER
Who among us hasn't done or said something we regret in the heat of anger? Something really dumb or hurtful. If there are any hands raised, just nominate yourself for sainthood and drop out of this conversation. Either that or help us out here, since we mere mortals have been venting our rage in the political arena, where decisions made in anger can often bite us in the ass.
And who can blame us for being angry? The billionaires stole all our money and sold our jobs to foreign nations, there's a hole in the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico hemorrhaging enough crude oil to fill a ballroom every few minutes, we are fighting two interminable wars in two miserable, insignificant countries that are dragging on and on, sucking American lives and treasure into the black hole of hatred, tribal and sectarian violence, and failed statehood for Iraq and Afghanistan.
Our education system, once the gold standard, has slipped badly and is not turning out enough graduates prepared to compete in the modern world. The financial industries that stole all our money are getting away with their crimes, and our politicians are too spineless to take them down. Our automobile manufacturers were saved from disappearing only by federal government bailouts and the fortuitous timing of Toyota's massive screw up. People's homes have lost much of their value, with millions of Americans owing more on their mortgages than their properties are worth.
While all of these problems can be directly linked to 8 years of dictatorship under Shotgun Dick Cheney and his amiable but dimwitted puppet Bush The Younger, they have become President Obama's problems to solve. Ever since assuming office a year and a half ago, there has been nothing Obama turned his hand to that was not poisoned by the Cheney Administration. The U.S.Treasury and the workers' bank accounts had been looted when Dictator Cheney gave huge tax breaks to the wealthy and enabled fewer than 1% of American to possess more wealth than the bottom 95% combined.
The regulatory agencies designed to police our industries had been rendered impotent by the Dictator Cheney, and our industries did what any group of humans will do when there is no law, anything they felt like. What our nominally American corporations didn't feel like doing was paying taxes to America or answering for their crimes against Americans. Potential polluters polluted at will, and financial operatives gambled and stole trillions of dollars of other people's money. The moron Bush The Younger fiddled with simple sentence structure while Rome burned.
For 8 years war was waged on America from within the halls of government by the Dictator Cheney, who attacked Iraq using falsified evidence, who threw a cinder block to New Orleans while it was drowning, exposed an American spy to settle a minor political score, and even went as far as attempting to dismantle the Bill of Rights. Americans were rightfully angry, so in the 2008 elections the voters stripped all national power from the Republicans and in the process made history by electing a black man to the Presidency.
The only problem was that President Obama, while enjoying a majority in both Houses of Congress, did not come equipped with a magic wand to make all this damage go away overnight. Mr. Obama is a careful and deliberate man by nature, while many Americans were eager for a proactive and brash FDR-style approach to this country's many problems. Angry people don't think in the long term and so far very little our new president has done has dramatically improved their lives. These things take time.
But anger does not get along well with patience, so Mr. Obama risks being turned out of office in 2012 by the same anger that swept him into the White House in 2008. The only thing that makes that unlikely is the complete disarray within the Republican Party, which has used its own petulant anger at being tossed aside like an old broken toy to purge its ranks of reasonable people, further ensuring their marginality. The Tea Party people have taken over the GOP, with no ideology or policies beyond their raw anger, and are earnestly ridding the party of anyone with any brains or ethics at all. How that helps them regain power is beside the point.
They were angry and they lashed out, and that was the whole point, the politics of anger. While it may feel pretty good to shout "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore!," that was line from a movie, not a set of solutions to some very real and very pressing problems. Coming up with solutions and policies is President Obama's job, and luckily, he seems to be the only one who isn't mad as hell, or at least a person who is mature enough to channel his anger into constructive action.
The proliferation of Cable TV "Political experts" who never held public office isn't helping the President, or anyone else for that matter. These people are the angriest of all, many of them such completely frivolous and absurd human beings that they border on being living, breathing cartoon characters. Great political movements are hardly ever founded by angry cartoon characters. The last one who managed that was Ronald Reagan, who, like most cartoon characters, did the exact opposite of what he said he would do.
The difference was that Reagan was not angry, just amiable and sort of dopey in an endearing way. So when he railed against "Big Government" and then proceeded to triple its size, screamed about government spending and left trillions in deficits, acted like a tough guy but ordered the Marines to retreat from amateurish terror gangs, his supporters chalked it up as "Ronnie just being Ronnie," and elevated him to sainthood anyway, hoping that the the mists of time would erase his actual deeds with his empty words.
To the minds of many, that is exactly what happened, and we have a millions of angry fools worshipping at the altar of Saint Ronald the Daft. Ignored is the real Reagan legacy of deregulation, trickle down economics and reversing the upward motion of poor people in society. Facts are very inconvenient when creating a saint, while repeated fabrications are so much more appealing. It's odd how many people bought into that, so strange that no self-respecting writer of the worst potboiler fiction could make this up.
Even that extremely angry man, Shotgun Dick Cheney, professed his dedication to Saint Ronald. This would-be Great Dictator, a combination of Doctor Strangelove and Yosemite Sam, left no legacy of positive achievement, only failure, corruption and cynicism to all he touched, sort a Bizarro World Midas. Unlike Reagan, however, Cheney is despised and feared, not even beloved by his own family or close aides. That's what anger buys you every time. Also hatred, intolerance, brutality and fascism. These days Cheney travels around posing as human being, calling people sissies because they won't torture anyone like the Gestapo, and ridicules Bill Clinton for presiding over an era of peace and prosperity, or as he calls them, "the wasted years."
If we don't control our blind anger and channel it into positive action, America will be a long time recovering from the Cheney Dictatorship. There is much work to do. If we can stop calling each other traitors and screaming at one another, we have a chance to do great things. If we are not mature enough to get a handle on it, look for another Dick Cheney to ride our angry asses into the White House and then whip us like rented mules while the Corporate Princes continue to steal the eyes out of our heads. We need to think our way out of our problems, not add to them by lashing out. Let the Politics of Anger go away, and let the door hit it hard in the ass on the way out.
And who can blame us for being angry? The billionaires stole all our money and sold our jobs to foreign nations, there's a hole in the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico hemorrhaging enough crude oil to fill a ballroom every few minutes, we are fighting two interminable wars in two miserable, insignificant countries that are dragging on and on, sucking American lives and treasure into the black hole of hatred, tribal and sectarian violence, and failed statehood for Iraq and Afghanistan.
Our education system, once the gold standard, has slipped badly and is not turning out enough graduates prepared to compete in the modern world. The financial industries that stole all our money are getting away with their crimes, and our politicians are too spineless to take them down. Our automobile manufacturers were saved from disappearing only by federal government bailouts and the fortuitous timing of Toyota's massive screw up. People's homes have lost much of their value, with millions of Americans owing more on their mortgages than their properties are worth.
While all of these problems can be directly linked to 8 years of dictatorship under Shotgun Dick Cheney and his amiable but dimwitted puppet Bush The Younger, they have become President Obama's problems to solve. Ever since assuming office a year and a half ago, there has been nothing Obama turned his hand to that was not poisoned by the Cheney Administration. The U.S.Treasury and the workers' bank accounts had been looted when Dictator Cheney gave huge tax breaks to the wealthy and enabled fewer than 1% of American to possess more wealth than the bottom 95% combined.
The regulatory agencies designed to police our industries had been rendered impotent by the Dictator Cheney, and our industries did what any group of humans will do when there is no law, anything they felt like. What our nominally American corporations didn't feel like doing was paying taxes to America or answering for their crimes against Americans. Potential polluters polluted at will, and financial operatives gambled and stole trillions of dollars of other people's money. The moron Bush The Younger fiddled with simple sentence structure while Rome burned.
For 8 years war was waged on America from within the halls of government by the Dictator Cheney, who attacked Iraq using falsified evidence, who threw a cinder block to New Orleans while it was drowning, exposed an American spy to settle a minor political score, and even went as far as attempting to dismantle the Bill of Rights. Americans were rightfully angry, so in the 2008 elections the voters stripped all national power from the Republicans and in the process made history by electing a black man to the Presidency.
The only problem was that President Obama, while enjoying a majority in both Houses of Congress, did not come equipped with a magic wand to make all this damage go away overnight. Mr. Obama is a careful and deliberate man by nature, while many Americans were eager for a proactive and brash FDR-style approach to this country's many problems. Angry people don't think in the long term and so far very little our new president has done has dramatically improved their lives. These things take time.
But anger does not get along well with patience, so Mr. Obama risks being turned out of office in 2012 by the same anger that swept him into the White House in 2008. The only thing that makes that unlikely is the complete disarray within the Republican Party, which has used its own petulant anger at being tossed aside like an old broken toy to purge its ranks of reasonable people, further ensuring their marginality. The Tea Party people have taken over the GOP, with no ideology or policies beyond their raw anger, and are earnestly ridding the party of anyone with any brains or ethics at all. How that helps them regain power is beside the point.
They were angry and they lashed out, and that was the whole point, the politics of anger. While it may feel pretty good to shout "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore!," that was line from a movie, not a set of solutions to some very real and very pressing problems. Coming up with solutions and policies is President Obama's job, and luckily, he seems to be the only one who isn't mad as hell, or at least a person who is mature enough to channel his anger into constructive action.
The proliferation of Cable TV "Political experts" who never held public office isn't helping the President, or anyone else for that matter. These people are the angriest of all, many of them such completely frivolous and absurd human beings that they border on being living, breathing cartoon characters. Great political movements are hardly ever founded by angry cartoon characters. The last one who managed that was Ronald Reagan, who, like most cartoon characters, did the exact opposite of what he said he would do.
The difference was that Reagan was not angry, just amiable and sort of dopey in an endearing way. So when he railed against "Big Government" and then proceeded to triple its size, screamed about government spending and left trillions in deficits, acted like a tough guy but ordered the Marines to retreat from amateurish terror gangs, his supporters chalked it up as "Ronnie just being Ronnie," and elevated him to sainthood anyway, hoping that the the mists of time would erase his actual deeds with his empty words.
To the minds of many, that is exactly what happened, and we have a millions of angry fools worshipping at the altar of Saint Ronald the Daft. Ignored is the real Reagan legacy of deregulation, trickle down economics and reversing the upward motion of poor people in society. Facts are very inconvenient when creating a saint, while repeated fabrications are so much more appealing. It's odd how many people bought into that, so strange that no self-respecting writer of the worst potboiler fiction could make this up.
Even that extremely angry man, Shotgun Dick Cheney, professed his dedication to Saint Ronald. This would-be Great Dictator, a combination of Doctor Strangelove and Yosemite Sam, left no legacy of positive achievement, only failure, corruption and cynicism to all he touched, sort a Bizarro World Midas. Unlike Reagan, however, Cheney is despised and feared, not even beloved by his own family or close aides. That's what anger buys you every time. Also hatred, intolerance, brutality and fascism. These days Cheney travels around posing as human being, calling people sissies because they won't torture anyone like the Gestapo, and ridicules Bill Clinton for presiding over an era of peace and prosperity, or as he calls them, "the wasted years."
If we don't control our blind anger and channel it into positive action, America will be a long time recovering from the Cheney Dictatorship. There is much work to do. If we can stop calling each other traitors and screaming at one another, we have a chance to do great things. If we are not mature enough to get a handle on it, look for another Dick Cheney to ride our angry asses into the White House and then whip us like rented mules while the Corporate Princes continue to steal the eyes out of our heads. We need to think our way out of our problems, not add to them by lashing out. Let the Politics of Anger go away, and let the door hit it hard in the ass on the way out.
May 18, 2010
LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 685
Being featured on an episode of "America's Most Wanted" might be a sign that you are developing some serious character flaws. Take heed.
BREAKTHROUGH IN MEDICAL SCIENCE: A NEW DISEASE CREATED OUT OF THIN AIR!
This just in from the world of medicine: There's a dreaded new disease on the block, folks, one threatening at least a quarter of working people. It's called Shift Work Disorder, that condition that affects the minds, bodies and general welfare of people who work either the night shift, or worse yet, rotating work schedules. Normal reactions (basically, getting tired) to irregular schedules seems like a huge "Du-uh!" to you and I, but the reality is that this frightening plague has been striking countless victims right under our noses! Who knew there was an actual disease involved in this very commonplace work schedule?
The people at Worldwide Megatitangiant Pharmaceutical Corporation Unlimited, that's who! Why cure those nasty diseases like cancer, diabetes and multiple sclerosis when you can make up your own? Control them too, with some handy-dandy powerful drugs concocted especially to combat Shift Work Disorder by Megatitangiant. It's called Super-Cognizine Plus and comes in Non-Drowsy or I'll Sleep Next Week Formula for those patients whose jobs require them to be extremely alert, like train engineers, medical personnel or knife throwers in the circus.
That's the beauty of it: cancer and all those other diseases are really complex, and a lot of money gets wasted trying to find elusive cures. To avoid this drain on the Executive Bonus Fund (the EBF), pharmaceutical executives invent a new disease and act all Jonas Salk when they announce both the disease and the maintenance drug all at once! This way the public thinks drug companies want to cure diseases and make people well. How would they make any dough that way? Now that they've conquered Shift Work Disorder with amphetamines, scientists at Megatitangiant are hard at work finding relief for these future diseases:
Connective Obsessive Disorder (C.O.D.): Millions of Americans suffer from this debilitating disease, an involuntary obsession be in instant communication with someone, only if that person is nowhere near them. Sufferers of C.O.D. ignore anyone who is physically present in order to text, tweet or call someone else. Symptoms include hand cramps, distraction, and eventually, severe loneliness when a;; your friends get tired of getting dissed. Researchers at Megatitangiant are testing a sedative-based tablet to slow their involuntary spastic reflexes down long enough to notice there's real people to talk to right in front of them.
Greed Obsessive Disorder (G.O.D.): Megatitangiant is only weeks away from announcing this exciting new disease, along with the medicine that does not quite cure, but controls it, assuring a lifetime of satisfied customers. This affliction has reached epidemic proportions among wealthy corporate leaders, sort of the sickle-cell anemia of white guys in expensive suits. G.O.D. sufferers are often considered healthy, well-adjusted individuals, to outward appearances successful and content. Unfortunately, not so much for them as for the rest of us, Greed Obsessive Disorder drives these people to steal fortunes and to take unimaginably huge gambles with other people's money. The medicine, called Amassoff, will not be marketed directly to G.O.D. victims, who generally feel there is nothing wrong with them, but instead to their secretaries, personal assistants or whoever else makes their coffee in the morning and prepares their meals. Highly addictive, soon the CEOs themselves will be seeking Amassoff on their own. While their greed will still be intact, severe addiction issues will soon cost them their jobs, with the hope that their replacements will be free of G.O.D. issues.
Also in the experimental stages at Megatitangiant Research Laboratories are the diseases Flicker Tic Syndrone (FTS), an inability to stop pressing the buttons on the TV remote for longer than 12 seconds, iMAC Degeneration Disease (iDD), describing the compulsion to discard your expensive cell phone, computer or iPad every six weeks when Steve Jobs introduces a newer model, making iDD victims feel like they are driving a Model T Ford, and finally Drones Disease (DD), that nagging affliction caused by overexposure to Cable TV News Commentators, causing sufferers to believe that, just like their TV hereos, they are now experts on everything you can think of and the disturbing belief that if they repeat something completely absurd enough times in a row, that it becomes fact. Like the G.O.D. medicine, the DD placebo, um, that is... maintenance drug, will not be marketed directly to patients, but to those around them who want to see them get better, and maybe shut the fuck up once in a while.
The people at Worldwide Megatitangiant Pharmaceutical Corporation Unlimited, that's who! Why cure those nasty diseases like cancer, diabetes and multiple sclerosis when you can make up your own? Control them too, with some handy-dandy powerful drugs concocted especially to combat Shift Work Disorder by Megatitangiant. It's called Super-Cognizine Plus and comes in Non-Drowsy or I'll Sleep Next Week Formula for those patients whose jobs require them to be extremely alert, like train engineers, medical personnel or knife throwers in the circus.
That's the beauty of it: cancer and all those other diseases are really complex, and a lot of money gets wasted trying to find elusive cures. To avoid this drain on the Executive Bonus Fund (the EBF), pharmaceutical executives invent a new disease and act all Jonas Salk when they announce both the disease and the maintenance drug all at once! This way the public thinks drug companies want to cure diseases and make people well. How would they make any dough that way? Now that they've conquered Shift Work Disorder with amphetamines, scientists at Megatitangiant are hard at work finding relief for these future diseases:
Connective Obsessive Disorder (C.O.D.): Millions of Americans suffer from this debilitating disease, an involuntary obsession be in instant communication with someone, only if that person is nowhere near them. Sufferers of C.O.D. ignore anyone who is physically present in order to text, tweet or call someone else. Symptoms include hand cramps, distraction, and eventually, severe loneliness when a;; your friends get tired of getting dissed. Researchers at Megatitangiant are testing a sedative-based tablet to slow their involuntary spastic reflexes down long enough to notice there's real people to talk to right in front of them.
Greed Obsessive Disorder (G.O.D.): Megatitangiant is only weeks away from announcing this exciting new disease, along with the medicine that does not quite cure, but controls it, assuring a lifetime of satisfied customers. This affliction has reached epidemic proportions among wealthy corporate leaders, sort of the sickle-cell anemia of white guys in expensive suits. G.O.D. sufferers are often considered healthy, well-adjusted individuals, to outward appearances successful and content. Unfortunately, not so much for them as for the rest of us, Greed Obsessive Disorder drives these people to steal fortunes and to take unimaginably huge gambles with other people's money. The medicine, called Amassoff, will not be marketed directly to G.O.D. victims, who generally feel there is nothing wrong with them, but instead to their secretaries, personal assistants or whoever else makes their coffee in the morning and prepares their meals. Highly addictive, soon the CEOs themselves will be seeking Amassoff on their own. While their greed will still be intact, severe addiction issues will soon cost them their jobs, with the hope that their replacements will be free of G.O.D. issues.
Also in the experimental stages at Megatitangiant Research Laboratories are the diseases Flicker Tic Syndrone (FTS), an inability to stop pressing the buttons on the TV remote for longer than 12 seconds, iMAC Degeneration Disease (iDD), describing the compulsion to discard your expensive cell phone, computer or iPad every six weeks when Steve Jobs introduces a newer model, making iDD victims feel like they are driving a Model T Ford, and finally Drones Disease (DD), that nagging affliction caused by overexposure to Cable TV News Commentators, causing sufferers to believe that, just like their TV hereos, they are now experts on everything you can think of and the disturbing belief that if they repeat something completely absurd enough times in a row, that it becomes fact. Like the G.O.D. medicine, the DD placebo, um, that is... maintenance drug, will not be marketed directly to patients, but to those around them who want to see them get better, and maybe shut the fuck up once in a while.
May 15, 2010
LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 684
No one really buys XXXL size clothing for comfort. You don't see many XXXL chairs or doors. Might be time to do the math and drop some pounds.
THE DEPARTMENT OF POINTING OUT THE OBVIOUS POINTS OUT THE OBVIOUS: HAITI IS STILL AN EMERGENCY.
In our ongoing mission to separate the wheat from the chaff, The Department Of Pointing Out The Obvious (DOPOTO) has been following these two news stories centered in the waters bordering the southern part of The United States with keen interest:
The big splashy story (literally) is the gushing geyser of crude oil flowing into the Gulf of Mexico that threatens to become the Grandaddy of all man-made ecological disasters. What stands out is that the giant oil company resonsible for the leak, British Petroleum (BP), has about as good an idea as the next guy for capping a reverse Niagara Falls of oil. Unfortunately, the next guy doesn't happen to be a Deep Sea Gushing Oil Well Repairman, and not only that, there are no Deep Sea Gushing Oil Well Repairmen on the payroll of BP.
This seems to be a serious lapse of common sense when your company is actively engaged in drilling Deep Sea Oil Wells. Instead, BP executives had a meeting one evening after work over Martinis and decided to go ahead and pump junk into the pipe, hoping it clogs, pretty much what any group of drunks who are not in the oil business could come up with at 2 o'clock in the morning. Most people were under the impression that Deep Sea Oil Well Drilling was very high-tech. Seems not to be the case.
In a world where every bicycle rider has a little leather pouch of wrenches, rubber tire patches and an air pump to fix their bicycles, BP engineers didn't think they needed a tool kit and some repairmen handy in case something went awry on a highly flammable mountain-sized steel skeleton floating on a violently pitching sea and using highly sensitive equipment to pump a volatile gooey substance from a mile beneath the sea. At least a competent plumber. The thinking at BP had to be: "What could go wrong?"
Then there is Haiti, a story most people think is over, and if you check the newspapers and other media reports, it would seem so. Researchers and analysts here at DOPOTO have determined that the earthquake of January 12, 2010 that devastated Haiti was only the beginning of this sorrowful story. There are fewer nations more poorly equipped than Haiti to recover from this disaster. Five months later Port-au-Prince is still in ruins, a million and a half are homeless and there is a catastrophic health crisis.
This is, after all, Haiti, a country that by all reports for as long as anyone can remember has been the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere. This one-time beacon of freedom and Democracy in the Caribbean was impoverished by France, forced to pay crippling reparations as compensation for (!) France losing them as slaves. For more than 50 years it has been led by a series of tyrants and its government has been synonymous with brutality and corruption. Suffering, deprivation and oppression has been and continues to be the fate of most Haitians.
Unfortunately for the stricken Haitian people, Big Media has a very limited attention span. Now that there is no more dramatic footage of tumbling buildings and mangled dead people being pulled from the rubble to be shown for sheer shock value, many people assume the story had a happy ending and that Haitians are going about the their business as before. Judging by the miniscule amount of media coverage of Haiti today, that may not be an unreasonable assumption.
Like distracted infants, Big Media moved on to the next shiny object, ignoring the dying throes of a neighboring nation, a nation that has contributed 600,000 solid citizens to the United States of America. The sad truth is that this story desperately needs a happy ending. Haitian recovery depends upon serious international help immediately and for the foreseeable future. Millions of lives are at stake. In this order Haitians are in immediate need of clean water, food, shelter and medical attention. If that sounds like emergency conditions, yes, yes they are. That is only pointing out the obvious, our specialty (Actually, our only function). A 5-month-long-and-counting emergency.
Port-au-Prince and the surrounding areas need to be rebuilt with modern sanitation, solid infrastructure, safe housing, a medical system and a strong commitment to education. This takes money that the poorest nation in the Americas does not have. This is why there is foreign aid, this is why there is a United Nations. This is why there is a United States of America, to remind the world who we are and how much we can help when needed. The people who gave so generously in the immediate aftermath of the earthquake need to do so again if they possibly can in these hard times.
Times are a dozen times harder in Haiti, which is in the exact same shape it was the day after their earthquake. This luckless nation now has the hard luck to have the greatest disaster in their history happen during hard economic times. Their only consolation is that Haiti is not too close to the Gulf of Mexico. This peaceful neighboring nation remains an emergency priority in need of the greatest possible response from America and all her neighbors. Good neighbors just don't help someone put out the fire. They help them rebuild their house.
This was a report from the Department of Pointing Out The Obvious.
The big splashy story (literally) is the gushing geyser of crude oil flowing into the Gulf of Mexico that threatens to become the Grandaddy of all man-made ecological disasters. What stands out is that the giant oil company resonsible for the leak, British Petroleum (BP), has about as good an idea as the next guy for capping a reverse Niagara Falls of oil. Unfortunately, the next guy doesn't happen to be a Deep Sea Gushing Oil Well Repairman, and not only that, there are no Deep Sea Gushing Oil Well Repairmen on the payroll of BP.
This seems to be a serious lapse of common sense when your company is actively engaged in drilling Deep Sea Oil Wells. Instead, BP executives had a meeting one evening after work over Martinis and decided to go ahead and pump junk into the pipe, hoping it clogs, pretty much what any group of drunks who are not in the oil business could come up with at 2 o'clock in the morning. Most people were under the impression that Deep Sea Oil Well Drilling was very high-tech. Seems not to be the case.
In a world where every bicycle rider has a little leather pouch of wrenches, rubber tire patches and an air pump to fix their bicycles, BP engineers didn't think they needed a tool kit and some repairmen handy in case something went awry on a highly flammable mountain-sized steel skeleton floating on a violently pitching sea and using highly sensitive equipment to pump a volatile gooey substance from a mile beneath the sea. At least a competent plumber. The thinking at BP had to be: "What could go wrong?"
Then there is Haiti, a story most people think is over, and if you check the newspapers and other media reports, it would seem so. Researchers and analysts here at DOPOTO have determined that the earthquake of January 12, 2010 that devastated Haiti was only the beginning of this sorrowful story. There are fewer nations more poorly equipped than Haiti to recover from this disaster. Five months later Port-au-Prince is still in ruins, a million and a half are homeless and there is a catastrophic health crisis.
This is, after all, Haiti, a country that by all reports for as long as anyone can remember has been the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere. This one-time beacon of freedom and Democracy in the Caribbean was impoverished by France, forced to pay crippling reparations as compensation for (!) France losing them as slaves. For more than 50 years it has been led by a series of tyrants and its government has been synonymous with brutality and corruption. Suffering, deprivation and oppression has been and continues to be the fate of most Haitians.
Unfortunately for the stricken Haitian people, Big Media has a very limited attention span. Now that there is no more dramatic footage of tumbling buildings and mangled dead people being pulled from the rubble to be shown for sheer shock value, many people assume the story had a happy ending and that Haitians are going about the their business as before. Judging by the miniscule amount of media coverage of Haiti today, that may not be an unreasonable assumption.
Like distracted infants, Big Media moved on to the next shiny object, ignoring the dying throes of a neighboring nation, a nation that has contributed 600,000 solid citizens to the United States of America. The sad truth is that this story desperately needs a happy ending. Haitian recovery depends upon serious international help immediately and for the foreseeable future. Millions of lives are at stake. In this order Haitians are in immediate need of clean water, food, shelter and medical attention. If that sounds like emergency conditions, yes, yes they are. That is only pointing out the obvious, our specialty (Actually, our only function). A 5-month-long-and-counting emergency.
Port-au-Prince and the surrounding areas need to be rebuilt with modern sanitation, solid infrastructure, safe housing, a medical system and a strong commitment to education. This takes money that the poorest nation in the Americas does not have. This is why there is foreign aid, this is why there is a United Nations. This is why there is a United States of America, to remind the world who we are and how much we can help when needed. The people who gave so generously in the immediate aftermath of the earthquake need to do so again if they possibly can in these hard times.
Times are a dozen times harder in Haiti, which is in the exact same shape it was the day after their earthquake. This luckless nation now has the hard luck to have the greatest disaster in their history happen during hard economic times. Their only consolation is that Haiti is not too close to the Gulf of Mexico. This peaceful neighboring nation remains an emergency priority in need of the greatest possible response from America and all her neighbors. Good neighbors just don't help someone put out the fire. They help them rebuild their house.
This was a report from the Department of Pointing Out The Obvious.
May 13, 2010
TAKE DOWN THE WALL STREET CARTEL
Worse than the Mafia, the Russian mob, the Crips, the Bloods, M13, Al Qaeda or any drug cartel from south of the border, there exists a criminal organization in America that has been in operation for a very long time, beyond the reach of law enforcement agencies. Indeed, it has infiltrated the very highest levels of government, placing trusted gang members in positions of influence in the United States Treasury, Congress, the Vice Presidency and in the regulatory agencies created to combat their activities.
They do not deal drugs, promote prostitution, run gambling rings or operate protection rackets, but instead cut right to the chase and engage in worldwide usury (loan sharking in gang terms) and the outright theft of money, manipulating the nation's economy in order to steal as much money as they can. Call them the Wall Street Cartel, the Corporate Princes, or even their own name for themselves: Masters of The Universe. Their greed and unscrupulous practices know no bounds, and the millions of lives they have ruined are of no consequence to them.
These Masters of The Universe came very close in 2008 to destroying the strongest economy the world has ever seen. Almost overnight, 7 trillion (with a tr and not a b) dollars of American wealth disappeared as a direct result of their criminal activities. These gang members had been involved in many fraudulent schemes over a period of years, falsely inflating the value of their companies, issuing mortgages designed to fail and then betting against their performance while selling them to their unsuspecting clients as high-values securities, making mountains of money on both ends of a bad deal. They also invented many other pyramid-type schemes designed only to enrich themselves at the expense of millions of others.
At one time banks and investment houses were respectable businesses run by cautious and earnest men who took their responsibility as the repository of other peoples' money very seriously. They realized that banks produced no products and existed only to serve businesses that did produce goods and services, and working people who wished to save some of their hard-earned money. Banks made loans to businesses and individuals and wrote mortgages, while investment houses and stock brokers traded shares in the companies that produced goods and services, rating them according to their proven performance.
There was no such thing as hedge funds (questionable investment schemes that routinely earn their mangers a billion or more per year), and the derivatives markets were tools used mainly by farmers to protect themselves from the vagaries of Mother Nature. Banking and stock brokering were lucrative trades, often amassing large fortunes for sharp individuals. The really big fortunes, however, were made by the people who invented and sold desirable products, or who founded giant industries employing many thousands of people. Banks and the financial industries were adjuncts of real production, not aggressive players in the consumer markets. These days, the money once used as seed capital for hard industry is no longer available, instead being used in rigged games of chance.
Banks, as the famous bank robber Willie Sutton answered when asked why he robbed them, "are where the money is," and thieves are attracted to other people's money like bees to honey. People smarter than Willie Sutton realized that you can rob a bank far more effectively from the inside than with a note to the teller and a pistol. As far back as the 1920s the criminals started infiltrating the financial industries and the result was Black Tuesday in 1929, followed by 12 years of crippling worldwide hardship called the Great Depression.
Regulatory agencies were created to police the industry, but time and new technology gave the Masters of The Universe more openings to steal. They had also infiltrated the government over the years and had cultivated a facade of respectability to the point that few people in society knew that our financial institutions were being run by gangsters. Then came 2008 and the whole world knew. It is time to use the RICO statutes designed to fight the Mafia to prosecute these powerful and elusive thugs.
What's on the side of law enforcement is the supreme arrogance of the Masters of The Universe. For so many years they have been so far above the law and out of reach of the authorities that they got careless and put a lot of things in writing. They also sent countless incriminating e-mails back and forth, and even Masters of The Universe are helpless against Masters of the Geek Arts who can retrieve any e-mail ever deleted, and peel down the hard drives of any computer to get facts, and the facts of life in the financial industry are very startling. There needs to be a new category of theft created for the magnitude of their crimes. Grand Larceny doesn't begin to describe their activities.
The authorities need to round them up, and all their associates inside the government. When and if convicted, the RICO statutes provide for the confiscation of their ill-gotten fortunes, along with all their fabulous homes, artwork, cars and jets. Ask Bernie Madoff how this works. Those acquitted get to keep their fortunes, just like in any other mob-related prosecution. There are a thousand Wall Street Cartel thugs to be investigated, indicted, tried and convicted for stealing everyone else's money, subverting the United States government and committing fraud on the grandest scale imaginable.
Perhaps a few years can be tacked on their sentences for being the most boring and unappealing batch of bank robbers ever, as shallow and narcissistic a gang as ever breathed. The whole bunch of them combined don't have the personality or charm of a single John Dillinger, Willie Sutton or Jesse James, and less panache than someone in a coma. They had easy 9-to-5 jobs, weekends off, that made them legitimately wealthy, and yet decided to steal and cheat out of pure greed. When wealth, privilege and comfort are not enough to keep you honest, then it's time to lock your boring, greedy ass up with all the other criminals. Spike is waiting for them in prison. Let's see if the Masters of The Universe title can impress him.
They do not deal drugs, promote prostitution, run gambling rings or operate protection rackets, but instead cut right to the chase and engage in worldwide usury (loan sharking in gang terms) and the outright theft of money, manipulating the nation's economy in order to steal as much money as they can. Call them the Wall Street Cartel, the Corporate Princes, or even their own name for themselves: Masters of The Universe. Their greed and unscrupulous practices know no bounds, and the millions of lives they have ruined are of no consequence to them.
These Masters of The Universe came very close in 2008 to destroying the strongest economy the world has ever seen. Almost overnight, 7 trillion (with a tr and not a b) dollars of American wealth disappeared as a direct result of their criminal activities. These gang members had been involved in many fraudulent schemes over a period of years, falsely inflating the value of their companies, issuing mortgages designed to fail and then betting against their performance while selling them to their unsuspecting clients as high-values securities, making mountains of money on both ends of a bad deal. They also invented many other pyramid-type schemes designed only to enrich themselves at the expense of millions of others.
At one time banks and investment houses were respectable businesses run by cautious and earnest men who took their responsibility as the repository of other peoples' money very seriously. They realized that banks produced no products and existed only to serve businesses that did produce goods and services, and working people who wished to save some of their hard-earned money. Banks made loans to businesses and individuals and wrote mortgages, while investment houses and stock brokers traded shares in the companies that produced goods and services, rating them according to their proven performance.
There was no such thing as hedge funds (questionable investment schemes that routinely earn their mangers a billion or more per year), and the derivatives markets were tools used mainly by farmers to protect themselves from the vagaries of Mother Nature. Banking and stock brokering were lucrative trades, often amassing large fortunes for sharp individuals. The really big fortunes, however, were made by the people who invented and sold desirable products, or who founded giant industries employing many thousands of people. Banks and the financial industries were adjuncts of real production, not aggressive players in the consumer markets. These days, the money once used as seed capital for hard industry is no longer available, instead being used in rigged games of chance.
Banks, as the famous bank robber Willie Sutton answered when asked why he robbed them, "are where the money is," and thieves are attracted to other people's money like bees to honey. People smarter than Willie Sutton realized that you can rob a bank far more effectively from the inside than with a note to the teller and a pistol. As far back as the 1920s the criminals started infiltrating the financial industries and the result was Black Tuesday in 1929, followed by 12 years of crippling worldwide hardship called the Great Depression.
Regulatory agencies were created to police the industry, but time and new technology gave the Masters of The Universe more openings to steal. They had also infiltrated the government over the years and had cultivated a facade of respectability to the point that few people in society knew that our financial institutions were being run by gangsters. Then came 2008 and the whole world knew. It is time to use the RICO statutes designed to fight the Mafia to prosecute these powerful and elusive thugs.
What's on the side of law enforcement is the supreme arrogance of the Masters of The Universe. For so many years they have been so far above the law and out of reach of the authorities that they got careless and put a lot of things in writing. They also sent countless incriminating e-mails back and forth, and even Masters of The Universe are helpless against Masters of the Geek Arts who can retrieve any e-mail ever deleted, and peel down the hard drives of any computer to get facts, and the facts of life in the financial industry are very startling. There needs to be a new category of theft created for the magnitude of their crimes. Grand Larceny doesn't begin to describe their activities.
The authorities need to round them up, and all their associates inside the government. When and if convicted, the RICO statutes provide for the confiscation of their ill-gotten fortunes, along with all their fabulous homes, artwork, cars and jets. Ask Bernie Madoff how this works. Those acquitted get to keep their fortunes, just like in any other mob-related prosecution. There are a thousand Wall Street Cartel thugs to be investigated, indicted, tried and convicted for stealing everyone else's money, subverting the United States government and committing fraud on the grandest scale imaginable.
Perhaps a few years can be tacked on their sentences for being the most boring and unappealing batch of bank robbers ever, as shallow and narcissistic a gang as ever breathed. The whole bunch of them combined don't have the personality or charm of a single John Dillinger, Willie Sutton or Jesse James, and less panache than someone in a coma. They had easy 9-to-5 jobs, weekends off, that made them legitimately wealthy, and yet decided to steal and cheat out of pure greed. When wealth, privilege and comfort are not enough to keep you honest, then it's time to lock your boring, greedy ass up with all the other criminals. Spike is waiting for them in prison. Let's see if the Masters of The Universe title can impress him.
May 12, 2010
LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 682
At one time life was very simple. Then multi-cell organisms showed up and it's been pretty hectic ever since.
CAVE MEN R US!
Once again science informs us that we are part caveman, specifically Homo Sapiens Neanderthalensis. That's the scientific name for Neanderthal man, our genetic cousins with whom we shared the planet until they all bit the dust around 25 or 30,000 years ago. These people roamed the Earth for about half a million years, a heck of a lot longer than we've been around. They were very much like us, a bit shorter perhaps, but much thicker and stronger, and by most accounts, uglier. But then again, how ugly could they have been if their DNA shows up in our own genetic code?
As even the most unscientific human knows, the only way that can happen is by doing the horizontal hula with one another, and given the fact that Neanderthal DNA makes up 3 to 4% of our own DNA, well, that's a lot of fraternization, especially when you consider that the human genome shares 75% of our genes with nematodes (worms), and is 98% identical to chimpanzees. While anyone desperate enough to have sex with a worm or a chimp wouldn't produce any offspring, apparently modern Homo Sapiens (Us) and Neanderthals (Them) could and did breed. A lot. Must have been their red hair, always an intriguing enticement.
So call Them Humans 1.0, and Us Humans 2.0, the result of whoever we were before we started screwing cave men and women and who we became after getting so busy. The fact that the pure Neanderthals are all gone doesn't mean that there are no traces of them remaining. They left us their fossil record, their tools... and their DNA flowing through our veins. This sort of puts the label we have given ourselves, Modern Man, into serious doubt, and leads one to wonder who initiated all this inter-species sex, Them or Us.
Since they are no longer around to speak (or grunt) for themselves, we can look at our own sexual behavior for answers. Humans 2.0 (Us) now number almost 7 billion on this planet after only about 200,000 years, quite the crowd, and our sex drive seems to know no bounds. Just Google porn sites and scientific sites and see which outnumber which and which get more hits. When we get older, we seek more medicines and surgical procedures to enable us to keep having sex than we do to keep us alive. Sex wins every time, so you have to figure is was Us doing the flirting, and Them doing the succumbing to our charms, or weapons, as the case may be.
And knowing all this, a lot of our peculiar behavior can be traced to these romantic trysts with Neanderthals. Take the Bible, for example, with Genesis and Exodus being how-to books on conquering new territory and hunting grounds (Slay them down to the last man, woman and child!). Brutality and aggression are mankind's calling cards, continuing relentlessly as we speak. When you wonder why all the Neanderthals died out, this trait of Modern Man cannot be ignored. Maybe the Neanderthals got tired of us and decided that no means no, and we decided that if we can't screw them, then screw them, and proceeded to slay them down to the last man, woman and child.
Then again, for all we know (not nearly as much as we pretend to), the aggression and brutality may be all ours, and our Neanderthal DNA is what gives us whatever civility and kindness we do possess. After all, they had their chance to kill us all off when they were the established majority and we were the new kids on the block, but they didn't do that, adopting instead a live-and-let-live attitude towards their punier cousins. No doubt we learned a lot from them, like how to make fire, weapons and tools, and most importantly how to avoid being on the dinner menu for the Buick-sized predators that roamed the Earth back then.
The world was far less populous then, with plenty of room and wild animals to eat for everyone. Apparently we didn't see it that way, like lions who kill any rival predator in their territory no matter how plentiful the game, and that was the end of the line for for our redheaded predecessors. Or so we thought. Now we learn that Cavemen R Us, and that Neanderthals live on in each and every modern human being. Sort of makes you want to paint a cave wall or slay a giant bison or something. Here's grunting at you, kid.
As even the most unscientific human knows, the only way that can happen is by doing the horizontal hula with one another, and given the fact that Neanderthal DNA makes up 3 to 4% of our own DNA, well, that's a lot of fraternization, especially when you consider that the human genome shares 75% of our genes with nematodes (worms), and is 98% identical to chimpanzees. While anyone desperate enough to have sex with a worm or a chimp wouldn't produce any offspring, apparently modern Homo Sapiens (Us) and Neanderthals (Them) could and did breed. A lot. Must have been their red hair, always an intriguing enticement.
So call Them Humans 1.0, and Us Humans 2.0, the result of whoever we were before we started screwing cave men and women and who we became after getting so busy. The fact that the pure Neanderthals are all gone doesn't mean that there are no traces of them remaining. They left us their fossil record, their tools... and their DNA flowing through our veins. This sort of puts the label we have given ourselves, Modern Man, into serious doubt, and leads one to wonder who initiated all this inter-species sex, Them or Us.
Since they are no longer around to speak (or grunt) for themselves, we can look at our own sexual behavior for answers. Humans 2.0 (Us) now number almost 7 billion on this planet after only about 200,000 years, quite the crowd, and our sex drive seems to know no bounds. Just Google porn sites and scientific sites and see which outnumber which and which get more hits. When we get older, we seek more medicines and surgical procedures to enable us to keep having sex than we do to keep us alive. Sex wins every time, so you have to figure is was Us doing the flirting, and Them doing the succumbing to our charms, or weapons, as the case may be.
And knowing all this, a lot of our peculiar behavior can be traced to these romantic trysts with Neanderthals. Take the Bible, for example, with Genesis and Exodus being how-to books on conquering new territory and hunting grounds (Slay them down to the last man, woman and child!). Brutality and aggression are mankind's calling cards, continuing relentlessly as we speak. When you wonder why all the Neanderthals died out, this trait of Modern Man cannot be ignored. Maybe the Neanderthals got tired of us and decided that no means no, and we decided that if we can't screw them, then screw them, and proceeded to slay them down to the last man, woman and child.
Then again, for all we know (not nearly as much as we pretend to), the aggression and brutality may be all ours, and our Neanderthal DNA is what gives us whatever civility and kindness we do possess. After all, they had their chance to kill us all off when they were the established majority and we were the new kids on the block, but they didn't do that, adopting instead a live-and-let-live attitude towards their punier cousins. No doubt we learned a lot from them, like how to make fire, weapons and tools, and most importantly how to avoid being on the dinner menu for the Buick-sized predators that roamed the Earth back then.
The world was far less populous then, with plenty of room and wild animals to eat for everyone. Apparently we didn't see it that way, like lions who kill any rival predator in their territory no matter how plentiful the game, and that was the end of the line for for our redheaded predecessors. Or so we thought. Now we learn that Cavemen R Us, and that Neanderthals live on in each and every modern human being. Sort of makes you want to paint a cave wall or slay a giant bison or something. Here's grunting at you, kid.
May 10, 2010
SO MUCH FOR OFF-SHORE DRILLING. THE END OF THE AGE OF BURNING STUFF.
President Obama has all the luck, both good and bad. His good luck showed early on by becoming the first black man elected President of The United States and getting a big Democratic majority in both Houses of Congress to boot. That usually signals a golden opportunity for a President to implement his vision for America. Unfortunately for him, that legislative majority was the result of the electorate throwing out the Republicans after 8 years of screwing up the nation in almost every way a government can screw up a nation. So that's his bad luck, inheriting an America with a broken economy, a plague of thieving billionaires, two wars and an empty treasury.
It's pretty hard to implement any "visions" when you're broke, but the guy's been trying hard, with mixed results. While he did get a Health Care Reform Bill passed, it was lacking a Public Option, which was sort of the whole point of health care reform in the first place, but at least it's a start upon which future presidents (or Obama himself if he gets a second term) can build. He's done a lot of other positive things too, but those two nagging, dragging wars still haven't been brought to anything near a satisfactory conclusion, unless you count handing Iraq over to the Iraqi Keystone Kops or capturing a series of #2 Al Qaeda guys in an increasingly chaotic Afghanistan any sort of satisfactory conclusion, which no one on either the left or right does.
And now his initiative to explore the coasts of America for oil got shot down big time by the huge oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. It seems that a British Petroleum (BP) oil rig blew up and now the oil well it was attached to is pumping 5,000 gallons of crude petroleum into the Gulf Mexico every day and the resulting oil slick looks like it will cause a huge ecological disaster if they can't turn off the giant spigot at the bottom of the sea real soon.
So far, no luck, and the oil poisons the water and rapidly approaches the coast. The only answers BP seems to have to clean up this mess is soaking it up with (!) human hair, or stuffing the well with (!!) golf balls and old tires. Not exactly a high tech approach and one that has fishermen and coastline residents a tad apprehensive. This is the same stretch of coastline battered by Hurricane Katrina in 2004 and thrown a cinderblock by FEMA when it was drowning. Looks like another Hell of a Job for America's Gulf Coast.
Just what America needs right now, another disaster costing billions of dollars to fix, that is, if it is even in our power to fix it, and the golf balls, the old tires and the barber-shop sweepings tell us that off-shore oil well repair has a long way to go. So much for anyone else obtaining an offshore drilling permit anytime soon, and America's energy deficit grows by millions of dollars every day, to a lot of unsavory regimes like Saudi Arabia and that Scourge of the Western World, Canada. More bad luck for Obama, and us too. What to do, what to do?
Well, there's always research into alternative energy sources, or at the very least, vastly improved gas mileage for our cars. While this is hardly the quick fix that politicians like to pull out of their hats like a rabbit, it is a necessary investment for the nation's, and the entire world's future. There's only so much oil left in the world, and now there's 5,000 gallons less every day thanks to BP. As the nation that led the entire world into The Age of Burning Stuff to run our cars, factories and power plants, it is only fitting that we be the ones to figure something else out that doesn't foul our air, land and water.
Mr. Obama could still prove to be a great president if he is willing to wait for that judgement. By starting a massive national campaign on the order of the Apollo Program, one commissioned specifically with coming up with a source of clean energy, he can help America, and the entire world, immeasurably. Take every penny he had set aside for off-shore oil exploration and create a think-tank and research facility for energy solutions, and just maybe ten or twenty years down the line we can put The Age Of Burning Stuff where it belongs, in out rear-view mirror. Research, anyone?
It's pretty hard to implement any "visions" when you're broke, but the guy's been trying hard, with mixed results. While he did get a Health Care Reform Bill passed, it was lacking a Public Option, which was sort of the whole point of health care reform in the first place, but at least it's a start upon which future presidents (or Obama himself if he gets a second term) can build. He's done a lot of other positive things too, but those two nagging, dragging wars still haven't been brought to anything near a satisfactory conclusion, unless you count handing Iraq over to the Iraqi Keystone Kops or capturing a series of #2 Al Qaeda guys in an increasingly chaotic Afghanistan any sort of satisfactory conclusion, which no one on either the left or right does.
And now his initiative to explore the coasts of America for oil got shot down big time by the huge oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. It seems that a British Petroleum (BP) oil rig blew up and now the oil well it was attached to is pumping 5,000 gallons of crude petroleum into the Gulf Mexico every day and the resulting oil slick looks like it will cause a huge ecological disaster if they can't turn off the giant spigot at the bottom of the sea real soon.
So far, no luck, and the oil poisons the water and rapidly approaches the coast. The only answers BP seems to have to clean up this mess is soaking it up with (!) human hair, or stuffing the well with (!!) golf balls and old tires. Not exactly a high tech approach and one that has fishermen and coastline residents a tad apprehensive. This is the same stretch of coastline battered by Hurricane Katrina in 2004 and thrown a cinderblock by FEMA when it was drowning. Looks like another Hell of a Job for America's Gulf Coast.
Just what America needs right now, another disaster costing billions of dollars to fix, that is, if it is even in our power to fix it, and the golf balls, the old tires and the barber-shop sweepings tell us that off-shore oil well repair has a long way to go. So much for anyone else obtaining an offshore drilling permit anytime soon, and America's energy deficit grows by millions of dollars every day, to a lot of unsavory regimes like Saudi Arabia and that Scourge of the Western World, Canada. More bad luck for Obama, and us too. What to do, what to do?
Well, there's always research into alternative energy sources, or at the very least, vastly improved gas mileage for our cars. While this is hardly the quick fix that politicians like to pull out of their hats like a rabbit, it is a necessary investment for the nation's, and the entire world's future. There's only so much oil left in the world, and now there's 5,000 gallons less every day thanks to BP. As the nation that led the entire world into The Age of Burning Stuff to run our cars, factories and power plants, it is only fitting that we be the ones to figure something else out that doesn't foul our air, land and water.
Mr. Obama could still prove to be a great president if he is willing to wait for that judgement. By starting a massive national campaign on the order of the Apollo Program, one commissioned specifically with coming up with a source of clean energy, he can help America, and the entire world, immeasurably. Take every penny he had set aside for off-shore oil exploration and create a think-tank and research facility for energy solutions, and just maybe ten or twenty years down the line we can put The Age Of Burning Stuff where it belongs, in out rear-view mirror. Research, anyone?
May 9, 2010
LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 680
Owning more than two cats makes you a certified Cat Person. You might want to seriously consider that before acquiring that third one.
ANCIENT EGYPT: A LEGACY OF GROSS STUPIDITY
Can it be any plainer, can it announce itself any louder, that the more information we find out about ancient Egypt, the more bejeweled artifacts we dig out of the sand, the more ornate and elaborate buildings we can virtually reconstruct, the deeper understanding we have of their hieroglyphic language, that ancient Egyptians had to be the biggest assholes ever to walk the earth sideways? The only question is, who was stupider, their inbred half-wit monarchy, the priest classes who made up fairy tales about them or the people who spent their entire lives building grand buildings that no one but dead kings would ever get to use?
The entire point of everyday life for everyone in Egypt seemed to be to smooth the pathway of their Pharaoh into the afterlife, along with a few dozen hapless servants killed on the spot to join the king when he dropped dead, so they could be his slaves for all eternity. That doesn't give anyone much to look forward to at all. The biggest mystery about the whole deal is why didn't it occur to anyone to just kill the Pharaoh right off the bat to give him a good head start on his road to Heaven without all that tedious pyramid building, gold coffin carving and jewelry making, maybe use the kingdom's wealth, resources and giant buildings for the good of everyone.
It turns out that half of the stuff written on these Pharaoh's tombs was outright lies anyway, resume-building bullshit about conquests that never happened, ignominious defeats described as glorious victories, and florid praise of some queen that turned out to be the guy's damned sister! Not only were these people assholes and liars, they were creepy too. They also worshipped cats. Not the cool kind either, like lions, tigers and leopards, but ordinary house cats, the kind that ignore you and hock up greasy hair balls on the sofa.
How all this translated itself in modern wisdom that Egypt was some sort of "Great Civilization" is a huge mystery. What, Attila the Hun and Hitler get to be history's whipping boys and the Pharaohs get a pass? Much like the Third Reich, here is nothing about ancient Egypt anyone might want to adapt in order to make their own society a better place. Any volunteers to spend your whole life building a colossal tomb, and then getting slain because you were the guy who designed the secret passageways to the rooms where a king's ransom in jewelry was buried?
Anyone think it's a good idea to marry their sister? Or to deify your damned cat? Egypt is notable only for its longevity, and the suspicion is that they lasted so many thousands of years simple because their kingdom was a small one filled with stupid people and surrounded by a sea of burning sand that few conquerors thought would be worth their while. Alexander the Great and the Romans pretty much marched in and subjugated the place with only a handful of soldiers and harsh threats, what with most of the nation being off somewhere in the middle of the desert building yet another dreary tomb for yet another dreary inbred Pharaoh and his sister/queen and not available to defend their nation. So scratch Egypt off the list of Great Civilizations of The World.
The entire point of everyday life for everyone in Egypt seemed to be to smooth the pathway of their Pharaoh into the afterlife, along with a few dozen hapless servants killed on the spot to join the king when he dropped dead, so they could be his slaves for all eternity. That doesn't give anyone much to look forward to at all. The biggest mystery about the whole deal is why didn't it occur to anyone to just kill the Pharaoh right off the bat to give him a good head start on his road to Heaven without all that tedious pyramid building, gold coffin carving and jewelry making, maybe use the kingdom's wealth, resources and giant buildings for the good of everyone.
It turns out that half of the stuff written on these Pharaoh's tombs was outright lies anyway, resume-building bullshit about conquests that never happened, ignominious defeats described as glorious victories, and florid praise of some queen that turned out to be the guy's damned sister! Not only were these people assholes and liars, they were creepy too. They also worshipped cats. Not the cool kind either, like lions, tigers and leopards, but ordinary house cats, the kind that ignore you and hock up greasy hair balls on the sofa.
How all this translated itself in modern wisdom that Egypt was some sort of "Great Civilization" is a huge mystery. What, Attila the Hun and Hitler get to be history's whipping boys and the Pharaohs get a pass? Much like the Third Reich, here is nothing about ancient Egypt anyone might want to adapt in order to make their own society a better place. Any volunteers to spend your whole life building a colossal tomb, and then getting slain because you were the guy who designed the secret passageways to the rooms where a king's ransom in jewelry was buried?
Anyone think it's a good idea to marry their sister? Or to deify your damned cat? Egypt is notable only for its longevity, and the suspicion is that they lasted so many thousands of years simple because their kingdom was a small one filled with stupid people and surrounded by a sea of burning sand that few conquerors thought would be worth their while. Alexander the Great and the Romans pretty much marched in and subjugated the place with only a handful of soldiers and harsh threats, what with most of the nation being off somewhere in the middle of the desert building yet another dreary tomb for yet another dreary inbred Pharaoh and his sister/queen and not available to defend their nation. So scratch Egypt off the list of Great Civilizations of The World.
May 8, 2010
LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 679
If you feel life is too hard, well, there's always the alternative. Death is low-impact, undemanding and has no real responsibilities. And yet, so few go willingly.
ON IMMIGRANT PATROL IN ARIZONA
The recent anti-immigration law in Arizona has been getting a lot of national attention lately, what with it being un-American and unconstitutional and all, so BobCrespo.com has sent operatives to The Grand Canyon State to observe exactly how the people in the trenches, the various local and state police officers, are dealing with enforcing this new law. Few law enforcement agencies were willing to talk to us, but we did find some nice people in an Old West kind of town, a minor tourist attraction near the Mexican border called Dry Bones (pop: 377), who were willing to cooperate. The two officers who make up the town's entire police force were happy to allow us to observe their efforts to enforce this new law.
Sheriff Frank Lee Scarletta and his partner Deputy Woody Johnson are part-timers, given the small population, and not really used to enforcing immigration laws, figuring, as Sheriff Scarletta puts it; "What the heck, we're within spittin' distance of Mexico, and someone's got to clean the motels and work the kitchens around here. It's always been sorta don't-ask, don't-tell around here up until now. Lotsa folks we know got family on both sides of the line for centuries, they come an' go regular, never make no trouble. How ya gonna sort that out? Nothin' to sort out, it ya ask me..." Bobcrespo.com was privy to the Dry Bones Sheriff's Department trying to figure out what's expected of them. Here's how their morning rounds went:
Sheriff Scarletta: "Mornin', Woody. Ready to bag some illegals?
Deputy Johnson: "Frank Lee Scarletta, I don't give a damn!"
Sheriff Scarletta: "Oh, Jeez, what else is new? That one's as old as your Johnson, Woody."
Deputy Johnson: "Figure we might as well get the obvious jokes outta the way right off the bat for the slow learners, Sheriff. Now, what's the deal with this illegal immigrant thing?"
Sheriff Scarletta: "Beats me. All I know is we're not supposed to profile. Just because a person looks Mexican don't mean he is, or don't mean he wasn't born here, or whatever such thing they mean, it's kinda vague. Anyway, I figure we'll proceed with all due caution, as usual."
Deputy Johnson: "Well, Sheriff, that is the Mexican border right there, ain't it?
Sheriff Scarletta: "Since 1848 it is, you know damned well, Woody."
Deputy Johnson: "Then I don't suppose we'll be checking up on too many suspected illegal Swedes. I'm guessing the governor is thinking we oughtta roust Mexicans."
Sheriff Scarletta: "The law says that police officers are to approach a suspect only if they have reasonable suspicion that a person is in the United States illegally."
Deputy Johnson: "What's reasonable around here? Who knows who's Mexican-American or just plain Mexican, and who cares? It'd be easier if they had blue skin or somethin..."
Sheriff Scarletta:"Now there you go profilin', Woody, and the law says we can't do that, not by skin color, not blue, green, white, black, brown or plaid. Suspicious behavior, maybe..."
Deputy Johnson: "How do you act Mexican? Or Swedish, for that matter?
Sheriff Scarletta: "How the hell do you tell a Swede from a Finn, anyway?
Deputy Johnson: "Got me. Ask 'em, I guess. Maybe we oughtta stop a coupla three of them hot blonde babe tourists and check their papers. Ya' never know."
Sheriff Scarletta: "Sounds good to me. Most likely they're from Minnesota or thereabouts. It sure beats roustin' the busboys over at Denny's, but we can't be bothering our bread and butter. This town would blow away without the tourists."
Deputy Johnson: "Then how 'bout Georgie Bellows new gal from LA? Wears a Dashiki all the time, that one. Whatsername... Loquatia? Yeh, that's it, Loquatia. She might be an illegal from some African country."
Sheriff Scarletta: "Everybody knows that people who are really from Africa don't wear Dashikis, Woody. It's only American Brothers and Sisters who wear those things. Besides, we know Georgie all our lives. We wanna get his girl in trouble? Don't forget he's the guy who cooks our breakfast at the diner every mornin'."
Deputy Johnson: "Just kiddin' Frank. Maybe we'll just do what we other towns do when they get the word to bag some for illegals, go down by the Home Depot and round up the day laborers in the parking lot."
Sheriff Scarletta: "Only we ain't got no damned Home Depot in Dry Bones."
Deputy Johnson: "Thank God for that. Well, can we make stuff up, then? "
Sheriff Scarletta: "Now you're talking, deputy! Dry Bones ain't exactly on the radar in Phoenix, Woody. The damned border's right over there, ain't but a line in the sand, so we just report that we been escorting Mexican desperadoes back across the border regular. Who knows, maybe the state will pony up some dough for this Department, maybe make us a regular salary."
Deputy Johnson: "I like the salary part, Frank, but what if they ask for proof?"
Sheriff Scarletta: "Well, we got plenty of Mex friends around here who just might help us out. For a few bucks, that is."
Deputy Johnson: "I think I'm gettin' your drift here, Frank. I know old Alonzo Blanco for one, he's been plannin' to visit his sister and her family across the way, a wedding or christening or some such. We could make a big hoopla about that, maybe even have Charlie over at the paper take a picture and write it up and all."
Sheriff Scarletta: "That's about the size of it, and when Alonzo comes home again there won't be anyone here but us chickens to take note of it."
Deputy Johnson: Bingo, Sheriff. Looks like we just found a way to enforce this damned hare-brained law and maintain the status quo."
Sheriff Scarletta: "If it ain't broke, don't ask me to fix it. We got ourselves a nice, quiet little town here, Woody, and we do a few of these phony deportations with our friends, they'll go away and leave us alone. Now, whaddya say we go to the diner and have Charlie make us a nice big breakfast, the works. All this law interpretation has worked up an appetite. After that we'll go around and serve and protect."
Deputy Johnson: "Serve and protect, Sheriff. Sounds about right..."
So there's one small town's response to the new law in Arizona. This has been an exclusive report on the Arizona Immigrant law from bobcrespo.com
Sheriff Frank Lee Scarletta and his partner Deputy Woody Johnson are part-timers, given the small population, and not really used to enforcing immigration laws, figuring, as Sheriff Scarletta puts it; "What the heck, we're within spittin' distance of Mexico, and someone's got to clean the motels and work the kitchens around here. It's always been sorta don't-ask, don't-tell around here up until now. Lotsa folks we know got family on both sides of the line for centuries, they come an' go regular, never make no trouble. How ya gonna sort that out? Nothin' to sort out, it ya ask me..." Bobcrespo.com was privy to the Dry Bones Sheriff's Department trying to figure out what's expected of them. Here's how their morning rounds went:
Sheriff Scarletta: "Mornin', Woody. Ready to bag some illegals?
Deputy Johnson: "Frank Lee Scarletta, I don't give a damn!"
Sheriff Scarletta: "Oh, Jeez, what else is new? That one's as old as your Johnson, Woody."
Deputy Johnson: "Figure we might as well get the obvious jokes outta the way right off the bat for the slow learners, Sheriff. Now, what's the deal with this illegal immigrant thing?"
Sheriff Scarletta: "Beats me. All I know is we're not supposed to profile. Just because a person looks Mexican don't mean he is, or don't mean he wasn't born here, or whatever such thing they mean, it's kinda vague. Anyway, I figure we'll proceed with all due caution, as usual."
Deputy Johnson: "Well, Sheriff, that is the Mexican border right there, ain't it?
Sheriff Scarletta: "Since 1848 it is, you know damned well, Woody."
Deputy Johnson: "Then I don't suppose we'll be checking up on too many suspected illegal Swedes. I'm guessing the governor is thinking we oughtta roust Mexicans."
Sheriff Scarletta: "The law says that police officers are to approach a suspect only if they have reasonable suspicion that a person is in the United States illegally."
Deputy Johnson: "What's reasonable around here? Who knows who's Mexican-American or just plain Mexican, and who cares? It'd be easier if they had blue skin or somethin..."
Sheriff Scarletta:"Now there you go profilin', Woody, and the law says we can't do that, not by skin color, not blue, green, white, black, brown or plaid. Suspicious behavior, maybe..."
Deputy Johnson: "How do you act Mexican? Or Swedish, for that matter?
Sheriff Scarletta: "How the hell do you tell a Swede from a Finn, anyway?
Deputy Johnson: "Got me. Ask 'em, I guess. Maybe we oughtta stop a coupla three of them hot blonde babe tourists and check their papers. Ya' never know."
Sheriff Scarletta: "Sounds good to me. Most likely they're from Minnesota or thereabouts. It sure beats roustin' the busboys over at Denny's, but we can't be bothering our bread and butter. This town would blow away without the tourists."
Deputy Johnson: "Then how 'bout Georgie Bellows new gal from LA? Wears a Dashiki all the time, that one. Whatsername... Loquatia? Yeh, that's it, Loquatia. She might be an illegal from some African country."
Sheriff Scarletta: "Everybody knows that people who are really from Africa don't wear Dashikis, Woody. It's only American Brothers and Sisters who wear those things. Besides, we know Georgie all our lives. We wanna get his girl in trouble? Don't forget he's the guy who cooks our breakfast at the diner every mornin'."
Deputy Johnson: "Just kiddin' Frank. Maybe we'll just do what we other towns do when they get the word to bag some for illegals, go down by the Home Depot and round up the day laborers in the parking lot."
Sheriff Scarletta: "Only we ain't got no damned Home Depot in Dry Bones."
Deputy Johnson: "Thank God for that. Well, can we make stuff up, then? "
Sheriff Scarletta: "Now you're talking, deputy! Dry Bones ain't exactly on the radar in Phoenix, Woody. The damned border's right over there, ain't but a line in the sand, so we just report that we been escorting Mexican desperadoes back across the border regular. Who knows, maybe the state will pony up some dough for this Department, maybe make us a regular salary."
Deputy Johnson: "I like the salary part, Frank, but what if they ask for proof?"
Sheriff Scarletta: "Well, we got plenty of Mex friends around here who just might help us out. For a few bucks, that is."
Deputy Johnson: "I think I'm gettin' your drift here, Frank. I know old Alonzo Blanco for one, he's been plannin' to visit his sister and her family across the way, a wedding or christening or some such. We could make a big hoopla about that, maybe even have Charlie over at the paper take a picture and write it up and all."
Sheriff Scarletta: "That's about the size of it, and when Alonzo comes home again there won't be anyone here but us chickens to take note of it."
Deputy Johnson: Bingo, Sheriff. Looks like we just found a way to enforce this damned hare-brained law and maintain the status quo."
Sheriff Scarletta: "If it ain't broke, don't ask me to fix it. We got ourselves a nice, quiet little town here, Woody, and we do a few of these phony deportations with our friends, they'll go away and leave us alone. Now, whaddya say we go to the diner and have Charlie make us a nice big breakfast, the works. All this law interpretation has worked up an appetite. After that we'll go around and serve and protect."
Deputy Johnson: "Serve and protect, Sheriff. Sounds about right..."
So there's one small town's response to the new law in Arizona. This has been an exclusive report on the Arizona Immigrant law from bobcrespo.com
May 7, 2010
GOODBYE SPACE TRUCKS, HELLO MARS!
The Space Shuttle is on its last mission, that is if delivering cargo can be properly labeled a "mission." These flying tractor-trailers came to dominate America's stagnant space program for almost 30 years, turning away from an exciting and promising beginning that saw America put men on the moon just one decade after its inception. That whole "go where no man has gone before" mentality was cancelled almost as quickly as the original Star Trek TV series that gave us that motto.
All the talk about colonies on the Moon, Mars and beyond, orbiting space stations and launch platforms, mining asteroids, building hotels in space and exploring the entire solar system and the galaxy beyond gave way to the mundane business of turning the National Aeronautics & Space Administration (NASA) into a truck dispatching office. So much for exploring the stars, or even space tourism. Instead, it was time to explore cargo manifests for local deliveries.
The Space Shuttles are now beat up old trucks with millions of miles on their odometers and are being put into mothballs after this current delivery run. Many within NASA itself won't be sorry to see the end of the Space Shuttle Era, which was ushered in after much hot debate within the agency and the greater Federal government over the future of America's space program. The Explore the Stars faction lost out to the Big Truck Faction and since 1982 no manned exploratory missions were undertaken. The only "ships" sent outside our own planetary orbit were unmanned photo observation ships and exploratory robots that landed on Mars and often broke down with no one around to repair them.
The most exciting thing the cargo trucks delivered into Earth orbit was the Hubbel Space Telescope in 1990. This magnificent camera has been providing us with a steady stream of tantalizingly beautiful pictures of what mankind was missing by choosing not to explore the universe. Hubbel and other similar devices have also identified a number of potentially habitable planets out there in the cosmos, and the itch to enter the Galaxy returned to mankind stronger than ever.
Our initial exciting and motivating steps into space yielded a phenomenal amount of new technology that is still radically transforming our planet 40 years after Neil Armstrong took that giant leap for all of us by being the first man to set foot on the moon. The high tech world we now inhabit is the direct result of the space program, from coaxial cable to silicon chips to the miniaturization that makes all our techno gadgets a reality.
As far as the Big Picture goes, our trips to the Moon were mere drop-ins on a close neighbor, and no human has ever left our planetary system, never mind the Solar System and beyond into the hundreds of billions of stars in our Galaxy (and there's millions of other galaxies too!). The problems to be solved to get there are immense, but not so immense as they were when we started in the late 1950s, a time when the majority of human beings had never spoken on a telephone or ridden in a motor vehicle, and few thought we could land on the Moon. We learned fast.
Because we made that initial exploration, we know a lot more about what we are up against, and what we will need to do, and to invent, to make it happen. Who knows what technology will be developed for this mission, and what wonderful civilian applications it will provide to all of us? Perhaps mining an asteroid will bring us a new metal or other useful substance not found on earth. With President Obama recently announcing that America's stated goal is now to land humans on Mars by the year 2030, perhaps an ice-covered asteroid could provide more water for the Red Planet, and help us transform its atmosphere so that we can breathe it.
A permanent outpost on Mars doesn't seem so far-fetched now that we have visited the Moon. The line for volunteers to go even further will stretch for miles when we decide to build real spaceships for very long voyages. Sooner or later, mankind will visit the stars. There's a little bit of Christopher Columbus in all of us, wondering what's on the other side and how canwe get there, and when enough of us wonder, someone will take up the challenge. Might as well be Americans, and it might as well be now. Why wait for someone else to do it? Say goodbye to the Space Trucks, and hello to Mars.
All the talk about colonies on the Moon, Mars and beyond, orbiting space stations and launch platforms, mining asteroids, building hotels in space and exploring the entire solar system and the galaxy beyond gave way to the mundane business of turning the National Aeronautics & Space Administration (NASA) into a truck dispatching office. So much for exploring the stars, or even space tourism. Instead, it was time to explore cargo manifests for local deliveries.
The Space Shuttles are now beat up old trucks with millions of miles on their odometers and are being put into mothballs after this current delivery run. Many within NASA itself won't be sorry to see the end of the Space Shuttle Era, which was ushered in after much hot debate within the agency and the greater Federal government over the future of America's space program. The Explore the Stars faction lost out to the Big Truck Faction and since 1982 no manned exploratory missions were undertaken. The only "ships" sent outside our own planetary orbit were unmanned photo observation ships and exploratory robots that landed on Mars and often broke down with no one around to repair them.
The most exciting thing the cargo trucks delivered into Earth orbit was the Hubbel Space Telescope in 1990. This magnificent camera has been providing us with a steady stream of tantalizingly beautiful pictures of what mankind was missing by choosing not to explore the universe. Hubbel and other similar devices have also identified a number of potentially habitable planets out there in the cosmos, and the itch to enter the Galaxy returned to mankind stronger than ever.
Our initial exciting and motivating steps into space yielded a phenomenal amount of new technology that is still radically transforming our planet 40 years after Neil Armstrong took that giant leap for all of us by being the first man to set foot on the moon. The high tech world we now inhabit is the direct result of the space program, from coaxial cable to silicon chips to the miniaturization that makes all our techno gadgets a reality.
As far as the Big Picture goes, our trips to the Moon were mere drop-ins on a close neighbor, and no human has ever left our planetary system, never mind the Solar System and beyond into the hundreds of billions of stars in our Galaxy (and there's millions of other galaxies too!). The problems to be solved to get there are immense, but not so immense as they were when we started in the late 1950s, a time when the majority of human beings had never spoken on a telephone or ridden in a motor vehicle, and few thought we could land on the Moon. We learned fast.
Because we made that initial exploration, we know a lot more about what we are up against, and what we will need to do, and to invent, to make it happen. Who knows what technology will be developed for this mission, and what wonderful civilian applications it will provide to all of us? Perhaps mining an asteroid will bring us a new metal or other useful substance not found on earth. With President Obama recently announcing that America's stated goal is now to land humans on Mars by the year 2030, perhaps an ice-covered asteroid could provide more water for the Red Planet, and help us transform its atmosphere so that we can breathe it.
A permanent outpost on Mars doesn't seem so far-fetched now that we have visited the Moon. The line for volunteers to go even further will stretch for miles when we decide to build real spaceships for very long voyages. Sooner or later, mankind will visit the stars. There's a little bit of Christopher Columbus in all of us, wondering what's on the other side and how canwe get there, and when enough of us wonder, someone will take up the challenge. Might as well be Americans, and it might as well be now. Why wait for someone else to do it? Say goodbye to the Space Trucks, and hello to Mars.
May 5, 2010
LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 677
People who don't know what the hell they're talking about don't mind repeating themselves over and over until they figure it out.
NEW SUMMER FUN - TERROR CAMP! AMERICAN NEWSCASTERS WANT TO HELP.
So now we have this clown from Connecticut by way of Pakistan trying to kill people in Times Square with a car bomb. He learned bomb-making skills in a "Terror Camp" in Pakistan during a visit there, came back the United States and unsuccessfully tried to put his new knowledge to good use by murdering civilians on the streets of New York City. Unfortunately for him but fortunately for us, his instructors were not American newscasters, who expertly critiqued his failed attempt by pointing our where his car bomb went wrong and how to improve the killing performance of future attempted car bombings by any of his fellow Terror Camp graduates who want to give it a go.
Apparently Terror Camps, like recreational facilities the world over, are not all created equal, with this particular camp that the Times Square guy attended having a woefully inadequate Explosives Crafts Course. So, as a public service to the Jihad-minded, American newscasters are earnestly trying to help improve their future performance. It also serves the news industry well, since their livelihood is reporting the news, and a successful bombing with a whole lot of death and destruction is a far more compelling story than the botched attempt of a murderous but confused loser.
After all, the recent Times Square incident was practically a non-event once the initial is-it-or-isn't-it drama gave way to the reality of an amateurish bungler screwing the whole thing up. Not a single reporter got to wax eloquent about the wholesale loss of life, interview any maimed mothers of three, or give the camera their best somber face as the cameras pan the vast urban carnage. Those things are career makers for news people, coming under the heading of Huge Events. Wars, assassinations and natural disasters are are also golden opportunities for media folks.
While they do whatever they can whenever they can to promote warfare and assassination, it's impossible to instruct Mother Nature on how to properly stage an earthquake or volcano. Heck, you could turn 35 before another giant deadly tsunami happens, and by that time there's no shortage of younger, better-looking media people to man the front lines of Incisive Aftermath Reporting (IAR) in their Land's End duds and impeccably sculpted "messy" hairdos. You can't really blame ambitious reporters with their Bio-clocks ticking away for trying to jump-start their Big Moment in The Media Sun.
Hence the detailed bomb-making instructions from the media, the one instance where the media can practically guarantee a meaty story. The policy here at Bob Crespo.com, a place notoriously short of actual policies, is to never, ever publish bomb-making instructions. You have to draw some lines in the sand, and not publishing bomb-making instructions seems a pretty minimal standard of civic responsibility. It seems that isn't the case everywhere.
You have to wonder why they just don't give out phony information, like suggesting the guy should have used a barrel of cheese, some silly putty, aluminum foil and a candle. You know, the old fool-the-bad-guys gambit. Maybe even mention duct tape, that always sounds reliably handy-dandy and MacGyver-ish. They don't do that, though, since there's no "angle" in it, no fear to be spread and exploited.
And then there's the propensity of Big Media Stars to appear to know every friggin' thing under the sun, and so keep their interns busy Googling the proper way to slay a whole bunch of pedestrians, and then they share their new bomb-making skills with other potential Times Square guys as if they were trained explosives instructors. "Don't try this at home, kids!" Heh heh heh... Seems a bit odd on the face of it, but fear and disaster, or potential fear and disaster, is very good business.
Towards that end, the newspapers and TV Foaming Mouths are now wondering in bold headlines how many more like the Times Square loser guys are out there. Even this non-bombing can be a fear-spreading opportunity if reported properly. Now you have to follow this story for days to see if our demo-expert/newscasters have any solutions other than the bomb-making instructions. They usually do not, and so the story sort of goes away until some guy who paid close attention and took notes at newscasters' instructions gets it right and kills a bunch of people. Then the media can say I Told You So, and launch many lucrative Big Media Careers that day.
Apparently Terror Camps, like recreational facilities the world over, are not all created equal, with this particular camp that the Times Square guy attended having a woefully inadequate Explosives Crafts Course. So, as a public service to the Jihad-minded, American newscasters are earnestly trying to help improve their future performance. It also serves the news industry well, since their livelihood is reporting the news, and a successful bombing with a whole lot of death and destruction is a far more compelling story than the botched attempt of a murderous but confused loser.
After all, the recent Times Square incident was practically a non-event once the initial is-it-or-isn't-it drama gave way to the reality of an amateurish bungler screwing the whole thing up. Not a single reporter got to wax eloquent about the wholesale loss of life, interview any maimed mothers of three, or give the camera their best somber face as the cameras pan the vast urban carnage. Those things are career makers for news people, coming under the heading of Huge Events. Wars, assassinations and natural disasters are are also golden opportunities for media folks.
While they do whatever they can whenever they can to promote warfare and assassination, it's impossible to instruct Mother Nature on how to properly stage an earthquake or volcano. Heck, you could turn 35 before another giant deadly tsunami happens, and by that time there's no shortage of younger, better-looking media people to man the front lines of Incisive Aftermath Reporting (IAR) in their Land's End duds and impeccably sculpted "messy" hairdos. You can't really blame ambitious reporters with their Bio-clocks ticking away for trying to jump-start their Big Moment in The Media Sun.
Hence the detailed bomb-making instructions from the media, the one instance where the media can practically guarantee a meaty story. The policy here at Bob Crespo.com, a place notoriously short of actual policies, is to never, ever publish bomb-making instructions. You have to draw some lines in the sand, and not publishing bomb-making instructions seems a pretty minimal standard of civic responsibility. It seems that isn't the case everywhere.
You have to wonder why they just don't give out phony information, like suggesting the guy should have used a barrel of cheese, some silly putty, aluminum foil and a candle. You know, the old fool-the-bad-guys gambit. Maybe even mention duct tape, that always sounds reliably handy-dandy and MacGyver-ish. They don't do that, though, since there's no "angle" in it, no fear to be spread and exploited.
And then there's the propensity of Big Media Stars to appear to know every friggin' thing under the sun, and so keep their interns busy Googling the proper way to slay a whole bunch of pedestrians, and then they share their new bomb-making skills with other potential Times Square guys as if they were trained explosives instructors. "Don't try this at home, kids!" Heh heh heh... Seems a bit odd on the face of it, but fear and disaster, or potential fear and disaster, is very good business.
Towards that end, the newspapers and TV Foaming Mouths are now wondering in bold headlines how many more like the Times Square loser guys are out there. Even this non-bombing can be a fear-spreading opportunity if reported properly. Now you have to follow this story for days to see if our demo-expert/newscasters have any solutions other than the bomb-making instructions. They usually do not, and so the story sort of goes away until some guy who paid close attention and took notes at newscasters' instructions gets it right and kills a bunch of people. Then the media can say I Told You So, and launch many lucrative Big Media Careers that day.
May 4, 2010
MORE MODERN CHINESE PROVERBS
To help celebrate Expo 2010 Shanghai, that 6-month long celebration of Capitalism, Chinese style, bobcrespo.com has compiled a new list of Chinese Proverbs. Througout history China has provided the world a rich legacy of wise sayings, and very little else. No more. They now provide the world with everything but proverbs, which are in short supply. These days their wisdom is pretty jumbled, what with their leadership pretending they are still a Communist nation when they in fact abandoned Marxism years ago in favor of state-run capitalism, a new hybrid form of government that retains the iron fist of Communist oppression and combines it with the worst tendencies of Capitalism, sort of a huge, hyper-polluting Kleptocracy where the rules only apply to domestic dissidents, journalists and foreign governments. It was difficult to locate any new Chinese Proverbs since the People's Government owns the rights to them now, but diligent research and a couple of expatriate Chinese hackers have allowed these new nuggets of Chinese sagacity to surface.
Who can deny, a brown sky is more attractive than a blue one?
The voice of a single eagle is mightier than a thousand parrots, and so that eagle must be slain.
Nature has provided coal and fire to turn the wheels of progress.
It is written: He who hungers, dies.
Waste no money building sturdy schools.
The wise man knows that life and human rights are fleeting.
Sell a man a flawless product, and meet him but once. Sell him one that breaks down often, have a customer for life.
Practice equality towards all, even dissident dogs and Tibetan swine.
So it is written, the patents and copyrights of the West are so many paper kites in the East.
None can deny, an e-mail worth sending is an e-mail worth official inspection.
A journey of a thousand miles begins with but a single application for official travel documents.
It is etched in jade, that Taiwan belongs to the People's Republic.
The river of life flows through the hydroelectric dams of progress, and those living downstream must drink elsewhere.
The sagacious worker bends to his task, and to authority.
He who would report the news must adhere to truth.
Truth is what the People's Government says it is.
Who can deny, a brown sky is more attractive than a blue one?
The voice of a single eagle is mightier than a thousand parrots, and so that eagle must be slain.
Nature has provided coal and fire to turn the wheels of progress.
It is written: He who hungers, dies.
Waste no money building sturdy schools.
The wise man knows that life and human rights are fleeting.
Sell a man a flawless product, and meet him but once. Sell him one that breaks down often, have a customer for life.
Practice equality towards all, even dissident dogs and Tibetan swine.
So it is written, the patents and copyrights of the West are so many paper kites in the East.
None can deny, an e-mail worth sending is an e-mail worth official inspection.
A journey of a thousand miles begins with but a single application for official travel documents.
It is etched in jade, that Taiwan belongs to the People's Republic.
The river of life flows through the hydroelectric dams of progress, and those living downstream must drink elsewhere.
The sagacious worker bends to his task, and to authority.
He who would report the news must adhere to truth.
Truth is what the People's Government says it is.
May 3, 2010
AH, BARBECUE... SMELLS LIKE AMERICA!
If America has a smell, it is a barbecue.
No one has anything in common with most politicians and are uncomfortable in their presence, even the ones they like and vote for. Successful politicians are high-intensity salesmen who never take a minute off. After a very short while we're all "Geez, can''t we talk about baseball or something? You already made the friggin' sale, you're in, you're elected, you won, okay? We got it! Knock it off with the spiel already."
Is there anything sadder than the ideological purge being carried out in today's Republican Party? Good strategy, kick out the smart ones, let the scary messianic nut jobs lead. Can we be absolutely certain that James Carville didn't orchestrate this whole thing?
One night stands are better than nothing.
When you're in Coney Island, you don't care about a damned thing in the world. Which is the whole idea of Coney Island.
One accurate gauge to measure effective nations and societies is the number of people trying to get in versus the number of people scheming to get out. Americans are damned lucky to be living in the prime destination of the latter group, and a place where anyone can leave if they feel like it. Almost no one does. Where would you rather live?
Cherry trees are so beautiful for 3 weeks a year they don't even have to produce cherries to earn their keep.
Loneliness is everything they say it is, only ten times worse. Connect.
The reason for the existence of time is so we can tell jokes and watch sports without everyone knowing the ending. It also lets men know when to shave and to change the batteries in the smoke alarms.
The "life of the party" is usually hammered.
Very few people think there are nearly enough corporate officers from the financial industries under arrest for grand theft, criminal conspiracy and fraud. There are many thousands of people in prison for lesser offenses. Dollar for dollar, John Dillinger, Willie Sutton, Bonnie and Clyde, Jesse James and The Dalton Gang were pikers by comparison.
Remember, it's not defeat that matters. It's de hands!
No one has anything in common with most politicians and are uncomfortable in their presence, even the ones they like and vote for. Successful politicians are high-intensity salesmen who never take a minute off. After a very short while we're all "Geez, can''t we talk about baseball or something? You already made the friggin' sale, you're in, you're elected, you won, okay? We got it! Knock it off with the spiel already."
Is there anything sadder than the ideological purge being carried out in today's Republican Party? Good strategy, kick out the smart ones, let the scary messianic nut jobs lead. Can we be absolutely certain that James Carville didn't orchestrate this whole thing?
One night stands are better than nothing.
When you're in Coney Island, you don't care about a damned thing in the world. Which is the whole idea of Coney Island.
One accurate gauge to measure effective nations and societies is the number of people trying to get in versus the number of people scheming to get out. Americans are damned lucky to be living in the prime destination of the latter group, and a place where anyone can leave if they feel like it. Almost no one does. Where would you rather live?
Cherry trees are so beautiful for 3 weeks a year they don't even have to produce cherries to earn their keep.
Loneliness is everything they say it is, only ten times worse. Connect.
The reason for the existence of time is so we can tell jokes and watch sports without everyone knowing the ending. It also lets men know when to shave and to change the batteries in the smoke alarms.
The "life of the party" is usually hammered.
Very few people think there are nearly enough corporate officers from the financial industries under arrest for grand theft, criminal conspiracy and fraud. There are many thousands of people in prison for lesser offenses. Dollar for dollar, John Dillinger, Willie Sutton, Bonnie and Clyde, Jesse James and The Dalton Gang were pikers by comparison.
Remember, it's not defeat that matters. It's de hands!
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