Chaos in Prime Time

Foto by tgw, New York City, 2010
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[Jan. 2010 Deaths That Should Be Noticed:
Ed Thigpen, 79, American jazz drummer, after long illness.
Teddy Pendergrass, 59, American soul singer, complications from colon cancer
Bobby Charles, 71, American songwriter ("See You Later, Alligator", "(I Don't Know Why) But I Do").
Carl Smith, 82, American country singer-songwriter.
Willie Mitchell, 81, American musician and record producer,
Beverly Aadland, 67, American actress, girlfriend of Errol Flynn, diabetes and heart failure
Dick Johnson, 84, American big band clarinetist (Artie Shaw Band), after short illness.
Art Rust, Jr., 82, American sports commentator, Parkinson's disease.


The Prime In Terms of Chaos
L Hat, our pal at www.languagehat.com, had a post on the prime yesterday:

PRIME.

I knew the symbol properly used for a foot (measurement of length), as in 5′, was called a "prime," and I occasionally vaguely wondered why, but it's one of those things I never got around to investigating. Now I have, and here's what Wikipedia has to say:

The name "prime" is something of a misnomer. Through the early part of the 20th century, the notation x′ was read as "x prime" not because it was an x followed by a "prime symbol", but because it was the first in the series that continued with x″ ("x second") and x‴ ("x third"). It was only later, in the 1950s and 1960s, that the term "prime" began to be applied to the apostrophe-like symbol itself. Although it is now more common to pronounce x″ and x‴ as "x double prime" and "x triple prime", these are still sometimes pronounced in the old manner as "x second" and "x third".

Mind you, this is followed by "[citation needed]," but it's plausible enough I'm willing to accept it provisionally. If anyone knows of a more dependable resource on the subject, by all means speak up. And remember, it's not 5'10" (with apostrophes or end quotes), it's 5′10″!

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L Hat's editorist approach got me to thinking about the primes in my life. "Prime time" on teevee first pops into my mind. Then I recall in the army a certain truck was called a "prime mover." Then of course from my ancient West Texas past comes "prime the pump before you git the water." Then of course there are "prime cuts of meat." And there are: "He's in the prime..." or "He's at his prime..." or "He's reached his prime." And of course there's the prime minister. The old schoolbook called the primer. And there's a primer in painting a house or a room--there's the prime coat. Man, my life is full of primes. And that gets me playing a curious game with myself--my dumb self really--and I start wondering does "prim" as in "prim and proper" come from prime? God, how questing the human mind is. You must keep your mind questing. You must play mental games like tracing words throughout the various aspects of your life. You must stay in prime condition no matter your age and wear, unless you're one of those unholy ones who can drink, smoke, fornicate, take steroids, etc., and who live what seems like good long lives--like our recently departed Uncle Teddy Kennedy.

Here, in fact, let me save your life--keep you in the prime! Here's a recipe for a priming drink that will be all you need to eat even it's so savioristic--just three of these a day and you'll live longer than that old dawdling fool Senator Robert Byrd, the ex-Ku Klux Klanner of West Virginny, or old Heavy Humping Hugh Hefner (Heifferner):

Blend the following:

A half a beet (or throw a whole beet in there)
5 carrots
4 stalks of celery
half an orange
half an apple
a hefty plug of fresh ginger
you can also add a tad of fresh pineapple if you wish
or I've even thrown a banana in the mix--makes it like a smoothie.

Man, you drink three of those a day and you'll be maneuvering tons better under the prime directive of life: "Live long and prosper."

So there's prim, primary, prime, primate, prime rib...off into the depths of the prime--' x' x'' x'''--but then double X is ok, 2.
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What Are Obama's Prime Motives?
Obama is fascinating me more and more each day as I sometimes find myself standing dumbass with my jaw dropped open in disbelief at some of his "actions." He's backwards thinking, yes, he is; he's showing himself to be just as backwards thinking as G.W. Bush was. But then there is something very devious about Obama's use of backward thinking. I mean, I was appalled to hear Obama appoint Slick Willie Clinton and G.W. (YES our EX-TWO-TERM-FAUX-CRIMINAL-PRESIDENT) Bush as his ambassadors to the devastated nation of Haiti in its time of tragic need. And then I got to boiling when I heard Old Georgie Porgie give one of his little slurring speeches about how "We'er-ah gonna do all we kin fer those wooly-boogers in Hay-tea--those crazy fuckin' field kneegrows whose Catholic-Commie duly democratically elected president I had my Marines kidnap and fly his worthless ass off to Central Africa--so who better to aid these motherfuckers than ME?...and my old pappy's best pal, Mister Billy Jeff Clinton...How's yo mama, Billy Jeff?"

G.W., by the way, is looking in his prime these days [as is Billy Jeff Clinton]--he's diggin' the good life, folks, the good life We the People are providing for him, and his whole fucking family, I might add. There's also no telling how many millions this little prime asshole stole out of our Treasury--remember he misplaced 40 billion dollars or was that 40 trillion dollars out of the budget and also remember all that oil he and his oil pals siphoned off those Iraqi oilfields and shipped out through Israel before the Turkestan and Iraq oil workers cut the pipelines and went on strike--but think of the millions this little crooked creep probably packed away in his own USB Swiss tax-evasion accounts (and We the People bailed USB out--remember Obama playing golf on Martha's Vineyard with the big dog at USB?) or socked away in the Cayman Islands or perhaps hidden in one of his father's offshore accounts or one of the Bush Family's foundation accounts or maybe in Pappy's Tsunami Tax-Free Aid Account he cofounded with his new best friend Slick Willie Clinton--though I must admit, Slick Willie didn't look so happy when Obama forced him up on stage with Georgie Porgie.

I sat there still jaw-dropped watching as G.W. made his little pipsqueak statement--I was watching Obama. He seemed to be having a ball pushing these two clowns together and forcing them to FIX Haiti since they're the ones who fucked it up during their administrations--they are the ones who forced Haiti under Slick Willie's FREE TRADE bullshit--his turning us over to GATT and GAPP and the WTO and the IMF and the bullshit of NAFTA. Here again, Slick Willie stepped into Pappy Bush's shoes in his dealings with Haiti. It was Pappy Bush who first gave Aristide hell when Aristide was duly elected the first democratically president maybe in Haiti's whole history--I'm not certain. Pappy Bush and the Power Elite hated Aristide because he was a reformist. In pure meanness because of Haiti's attempt at becoming a democratic nation, Pappy Bush's Power Elite started pulling our factories out of Haiti--i.e., the Rawlings Co. pulled their baseball factory (where Haitian women made baseballs 12 to 14 hours a day for a dollar a day--WHAAAAA! CHEAP LABOR. Always keep those two words in mind when you consider the prime motive of our unprimed government) out of Haiti and moved it to Costa Rica.

Though Pappy Bush pulled back his opposition of Aristide and allowed him to stay in power, Bush forced Aristide to give an exemption to US corporations shipping their goods out of Haiti inspite of an embargo on the rest of the world. Then under Slick Willie's free-trade bullshit and deregulation bullshit the WTO told Haiti their successful sugar industry could no longer compete in the Global Marketplace with the USA's sugar industry. In fact, under the new WTO rules (GATT and GAPP accounting), Haiti was forced to plough up their sugar cane fields and buy Louisiana and Texas sugar. By doing this We the People of the USA ruined the Haitian economy. Things got so bad as our corporations moved in and enslaved the Haitian workforce--the Haitian farmers lost their farmlands--a big IMF-backed dam project in Northern Haiti wiped out 1000s upon 1000s of acres of fertile farmlands...we drove the Haitians off their farms and into the Port au Prince area and into slum cities like Cite Soleil--we restructured Port au Prince from a city of 200,000 tops to a city of 2 to 7 million.

It was Pappy Bush's insane presidency that put us in the record hole in terms of US debt, even deeper than Reagan's Voodoo Economics had taken us (even then old Pappy Bush had Haiti on his mind)--this is the economic debt that got Slick Willie Clinton elected--remember when the weakening economy was the big item? And Slick Willie the White Obama got elected by promising to bring down our debt and deficit spending, to even-steven up the budget, give us an open-door White Man's House--and, he, too, promised us a National Healthcare Plan, which we all suddenly knew was bullshit when he announced after he was president he was making the head of his National Healthcare Plan "Mah very capable wife." Remember Bill and Hill standing together and Bill holding up a credit-card-size card and saying "Now, ever-body's gonna have one of these here National Healthcare Cards, blah, blah, bullshit, blah, blah, blah." To me, putting your wife in charge of something as important as a National Healthcare Plan means you're not too serious about keeping that promise.

After Hillary caved in to the Corporate thugs, then Slick Willie convinced us through his mouthpieces, Robert Ruben and Larry Summers (and probably Pappy Bush), that with great creative bookkeeping trickery the Slick One had not only bailed out the economy but by God he had ended up with tons of bucks left over. Old Bill had not only evened up the budget, but he had billions of bucks left over, a blessed miracle. Hot damn! We were on our way to world domination! Thus the Global Marketplace took over the world. That takeover meaning that now Neo-Con principles ruled We the People and not our Bill of Rights or Constitution and not our Congress and not our Supreme Court--if anything, those institutions became distrustful of all of We the People, and I do mean all of us, People of Color as well as White folks.

What a sordid history, right? The Neo-Cons became like a cancer in our political gut--their agenda has always been, and we keep reemphasizing this: CHEAP LABOR! Don't we get it? NO.

The prime objective of the Neo-Cons has been CHEAP LABOR beginning with the Ronnie the Raygun Administration (what a fool Ronald Reagan was--with his died hair and jellybeans and depending on Jeanne Dixon for advice). The way to achieve CHEAP LABOR on a Global Playing field these ex-Trotskyites admitted they intended to drive our economy down ("toward the bottom") so that our high-end-lifestyle (Middle-Class) expectations could be driven down to a Third World level. Our reengineered USA-chartered corporations were turned into Global Corporations that said "FUCK national laws, we're bigger than any nation on earth, so fuck nations, WE ARE OUR OWN NATION!"

CHEAP LABOR being the way to continue profits beyond belief. For every dollar of profits made, somebody has to lose a dollar. It's the same in the rigged gambling casinos (and all gambling casinos are rigged in favor of the house--who once was the Mafia), for every dollar you win, some poor bastard's lost his whole paycheck. Plus, don't worry, you'll keep taking chances and soon your winnings will be wiped out and the casino will implode that casino and build and bigger and gaudier casino in its place and then the stakes go way up.

Another prime example of Global Corporation skulduggery is found in the "win-win situation." This is a term invented by the management consulting firms (formerly accounting firms) in their creative bookkeeping (book-cooking) departments in the "bridging the gap" 1990s. This is where you are constantly chipping away at your loss columns until you get them to a point where you find yourself in what they call a "Win-Win Situation." This was the creative bookkeeping that came up with those PRIME mortgages PRIME loans PRIME property schemes, those PRIME real estate deals! This is the Win-Win situation making us all eventual LOSERS.

Backwards Thinking has backed us right back into the dumps and has left us dependent upon a Communist country for our future. At the same time, the absolutely toeheaded stupid Repugnicans are flinging the "commie" accusation all around the Beltway when it comes to progressive politics, the politics of We the People. We want fucking affordable healthcare! We are told that's not the American Way. The American Way, according to Pappy Bush, Bill Clinton, Bushy Boy Bush, and Barack Obama, is the "Pull Your Fucking Self Up by Your Bootstraps and quit depending on the government for your safety nets" way.

Why the hell shouldn't we at least have FREE BASIC HEALTHCARE?--free clinics backed by both city, county, state, and Federal monies? OK, if we find out at the free clinic we have cancer, then OK, we should be prepared for that sort of tragedy--on the other hand, why are cancer treatments so fucking expensive? And why is there so much cancer? And why are drugs so expensive? It doesn't take but about 3 cents to make a pill--so why by the time that pill is supposedly saving your ass does it cost $40? Because of PROFITS. Because somebody's bank account has to be drained in order for the bigshots and investors in HMOs and our criminal insurance industry and the big pharmaceuticals to keep on making more and more bonuses, high salaries, paying out big dividend checks, making big venture capital investments, and more growth in their private (PRIVATE) equity schemes.

All of those trillions of dollars that Obama and Bush gave away to the Pentagon, to the Financial Industry, to the Healthcare Insurance Industry, to those criminal wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, came from We the People's pockets--from our checking accounts, from the monies they gouge out of us through taxes and fees on our credit card bills and telephone bills, etc.--from our 401Ks, from our savings accounts, from our pension funds, from foreclosing on our homes and property--from lowering salaries gradually--or stopping giving raises--no more overtime--forced overtime on regular salary--stock optioned workers's stock losing value--while the stock market does a heathen dance back and forth between 10,300 and yesterday it fell 100 points down from 10,600. They'll shoot it up over 11,000 again when the 2010 elections come around. Obama will make a flowery well-worded speech on how the stock market back at 11,000 proves the "recession" is over. Praise the damn Lard--and pass me some of those holy groat clusters over here, please.

My best guess is that President Obama is pitting his enemies against each other now, which perhaps was his strategy all along. Because, trust me, I think Obama doesn't trust Slick Willie Clinton and Pappy Bush anymore than I would--I think he knows that G.W. Sonnyboy Bush is a criminal and really only a pimple on his political ass, but I think he's very watchful of Clinton (Obama captured Bill's wife right out from under him) and old Pappy Bush (have you ever thought about Pappy Bush appealing to Obama to not go after his criminal son?)--nor can he possibly trust the followers of the Neo-Con policies in both parties; yet he seems handcuffed to them by the prime chaotic situation at hand he inherited.

Is this Obama's own Black-White feelings emerging? As a Black man he has to know these scoundrels have no love of black people in their fetid souls. Bill Clinton said Obama should be serving him coffee! Hey, old Willie was jest joshin'--don't you know? I remember when the Slick One ran for President the first time how they spread the rumors he had a little black bastard baby out there in the world somewhere. I'll bet you a worthless dollar that down deep Bill Clinton grew up hating blacks and Latinos--Arkansas had wetbacks in its cottonfields--you bet it did. Yes, he probably loved their sense of humor and he probably did check out the sweet asses and perky titties on the black gals of Hope, Arkansas, but I doubt if he considered marrying one or bringing one home to his trailer-house momma as his new girlfriend. I'm also pretty sure that when Governor Slick Willie was leisurely playing a little golf out at the restricted Little Rock Country Club his association with blacks was where he feels most comfortable with them, with them serving him coffee--plus popping him open a cold one when he signalled for one--or maybe having some of big black males standing around him wearing black suits and dark glasses as his body guards (that's a servent role, isn't it?)--or certainly having them carry his golf clubs and jive with him as he played golf with his White racist associates.

Besides, god-dammit, Slick Willie was governor of Arkansas during the Contra-crisis when Pappy Bush was VP and was said to be in charge of the cocaine for arms flights that were almost daily in and out of that airfield in Mena, Arkansas, the arms going down to Nicaragua and the cocaine coming back to Arkansas. Oh yeah, Slick Willie's full of primo information about that era. Hillary, too, has a lot of skeletons in her Arkansas closets, though Obama easily put old Hillary out of his way by making her Sec'y of State, getting her bogged down in PR problems, which is what the Sec'y of State does--PR work--explaining why we are continuing to bankrupt our asses with these two and a half (the new war in Pakistan) wars and the potential future wars (Iran, Yemen, the Sudan (G.W. Bush armed the Ethiopian Army and then had them invade the Sudan with our blessing and drive out the Sudanese Muslims into the desert)--possible wars brewing daily on our sun-sinking horizon!

One can only imagine the cross-prime-objectives clashing in President Obama's head--his Black side, supported by his wife and kids; but there's also his White side--the trainings of his mother and his grandmother, who I declare, trained Obama to think of himself as an International character--a worldly man with a worldly vision that turns its back on the past and thinks only of what he should do every morning when he wakes up and finds out what the hell next chunk of heavy bullshit he faces on yet another day. His black side is proud, able to defy criticism and threats; his white side is weak--that's the side of him that has trouble justifying risking his life being a humanist warrior--for the sake of what, the White Power Elite still taking over anyway--and his political career probably down the tubes.

Obama's Administration is as basically broke; even broker than George W. Bush's ruthless Administration ended up. We as a nation are bankrupt. We have no industry, only industry headquarters buildings--these billion-dollar towers still springing up like mushrooms around Manhattan--the big new Bank of America Building up and running and AIG's new fabby headquarters glass-menagerie skyscraper is partying hearty--I'm sure Goldman-Sachs is considering building a new skyscraper with their bailout bonanza. I heard a New York City real estate woman say this morning on local teevee how New York City isn't an American city anymore; it's an International city. She went on to say the New York City real estate market is the most resiliant in the world because of foreigners coming here to take advantage of the good prices of real estate in this city. She said, the bitch, that "When the market drops and say the Japanese pull out of the market, why here will come the Taiwanese to start buying and the market starts going back up again. Wow. Isn't she an enemy combatant. Allowing foreigners to takeover New York City real estate--foreigners who don't move here and live, but just invest in buying up New York City property. New York Citians haven't got the money to buy their own property. Such a shame. A crying shame. But it does no good to cry.

Repugnicans are very scared of Obama so he does has some power over them--a power they are afraid of--I mean, White Repugnicans have been openly RACIST in dealing with Obama and his future and the power he has to do something about our future with from the very beginning. Could a Democrat protester have shown up at a George Bush Town Hall meeting packing a gun and gone on home without even a slap on the wrist? Hell no, that son of a bitch would be one of the "What ever happened to old so and so?--he just disappeared from the face of the earth after I saw those Federal guys visiting him that day."

My prime way of thinking sees clearly a Chaotic situation continuing on for many years to come though in my imagination, I hope Obama surprises me--sometimes I think he's getting the picture--and then he does something like accepting a peace prize while he's the waringest son of a bitch in the world right now. We killed nay a hundred or so more innocent Pakistanis this month with our backwards thinking KILL POWER drone attacks on the sovereign nation of Pakistan. Can you imagine our reaction if the Canadian Air Force sent drones into Minneapolis and bombed a school saying they had information that an anti-Canadian al-Queda or Taliban bigshot was suspected of hiding out at that school and they're sorry if 30 school kids were blown to bits by the bomb, but they have to act quickly when given information that a threat to the lives of Canadian citizens is being organized and planned in that Minneapolis school?

I think we've forgotten to PRIME our pumps--that's why we're coming up bone dry in the progressive watering department. Our energies are too busy explaining why backwards thinking is locked in so tight in our instinctual attitudes that we can't break out of it--I mean, if this is all God's will.... In the meantime, I'm sadly reading that Haitians are still screaming for help in the ruined streets of ruined Port au Prince--still screaming for help in the dark at night and fighting for water and food during the day--and still I read where 8 senior Haitians were simply left to die in the street--no one had any means to save them. Now they are reporting Haitians are praying to God and singing and chanting religious songs into the stale and sullied air. They are breathing death in Haiti tonight.

As an example of how our billionaire mayor and his ass-licking city council have sold our city out to developers. The nonunion building site next door to me is noiseily at work today, Martin Luther King, Jr., Day. A man who fought for oppressed workers, the sanitation workers of Memphis, Tennessee, who were getting screwed from all sides, with only the power of their union and the strike on their side. Martin Luther King knew how effective a boycott was. Why We the People aren't using our individual boycotts--like stop shopping a fucking WalMarts--drive them out of business--or how about boycotting stores that sell Chinese goods--or how about stop shopping a process-food-and-rat-infested grocery stores and shop at farmer's markets, buying locally grown products--if you don't have a farmer's market, then form a coop and start one in your community. There are local farmers who would be glad to drive their products in and sell them at your coop market. And why not boycott the big banks. Pull your money out of them. Here in New York City we still have some local banks holding on--like the Apple Bank or like the Ridgewood Savings Bank out in Queens. Yes, the big hooey banks are on every corner--a huge new Bank of America just opened up in what was once a controversial building owned by Ferdinand Marcos, the Philippine dictator We the People gave special privileges to--he and his shoe-hoarding wife, Emelda!

My telephone bill just arrived. There are fees, taxes, surcharges, a 911 tax (that's me having to pay for the 911 emergency number) totaling $22.00. Verizon is robbing us, folks, with these fees and taxes and that weird no-use surcharge on you if you don't use your long distance--I get charged $3.95 cents whether I make a long-distance call or not. If I make a long distance call and it comes out to say $1.50, these scurvy bastards will charge me the $3.95 for the call plus the $1.50, making my one long distance call now $5.45. How's that for robbing your ass? My hackles are up. Watched a PBS Bear-Wolf docudrama last night. Wolves aren't afraid of bears. Me neither--especially bear-like human beings or corporations.

thegrowlingwolf
for The Daily Growler

If You'd Like to Contribute to Haitian Relief, Here's Wycliffe Jean's Website:

www.yele.org