HOT DAMN! A US Military Presence in AFRICA!

Foto by tgw, New York City, 2011
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Say Goodbye to:
He grew up on boogie-woogie; moved from Baltimore to L.A. where he met Mike Stoller who was playing jazz piano in an East L.A. dive for $3.00 a gig but who also liked boogie-woogie and these two met because Mike could "put notes down on paper" and Jerry Leiber had some lyrics--like "Hound Dog"--and soon they were the hottest songwriters in rock 'n roll:
Jerry Leiber, 78, American songwriter ("Stand By Me", "Hound Dog", "Jailhouse Rock", "Kansas City"), cardiopulmonary failure.

And on the same day, ironically, another great lyricist died: Nickolas Ashford, 70, American R&B singer-songwriter (Ashford & Simpson), throat cancer.

And finally, say goodbye to: At one time it looked like this Harvard grad would become one of the great pitchers of all time--hey, he won 23 games one season and the Cy Young Award with the Baltimore Orioles, but then injuries hit him hard and he was traded to the Toronto Blue Jays where he failed as a starter and was reduced to being a reliever--Mike in college at UMass-Amherst was the basketball teammate of the great Dr. J, Julius Irving: Mike Flanagan, 59, American baseball player (Baltimore Orioles).
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Barack Obama Is Becoming Worse Than Our Worst President Ever
President Obama gave a snide little speech yesterday where he sort of smugly announced NATO forces had trooped into Tripoli and pretty much successfully invaded and occupied Libya--of course he added that We the People of the USA had foot the bill for our BRAVE and DUTY-BOUND COURAGEOUS (they always are even when they fail at their missions like John McCain did) Air Force pilots dropping the bombs on this oil-rich country while our U.S. Navy shelled 'em with Tomahawk missiles and 500-lb bunker busters. That in this process of democratizing Libya we killed scores of civilians wasn't mentioned--why, Obama hinted that more than likely this bombing was pinpoint accurate via hitting only Kha-Daffy's army's positions--yeah sure. I mean this whole speech was like our president was making future plans for Libya in his head on the basis that WE will be backing the Libyan rebels--hey, good news, Hillbilly Hillary will be giving them guidance--and all during this speech, I'm thinking, Jesus X. Christ, another spieling out of total bullshit by our two-faced president. Yep, folks, we have successfully invaded another country, this time using NATO forces while none of OUR soldiers's BOOTS hit the ground. Our president called NATO the finest and most powerful organization on earth right now--and it should be, We the People of the USA are paying its cost to be the boss and furnishing it with weapons of mass destruction, it all sanctioned--on Susan Rice's insistence--by the UN and a group of our Arab friends, like Saudi Arabia, that great Islamic democracy, and fightin' Muslims from the great Democratic Free Republic of Sheikdom Qatar--wasn't it the Qataran Sheik's yacht that Unka Dick used to go deep sea fishing on? Thank God we have Good Muslims like the Saudis and the Qatarans--and, oh yeah, I forgot about our al-Queda-fightin' buddies in Bahrain and Yemen. Isn't it amazing how the uprisings in Yemen and Bahrain where the governments slammed the protesters down to the ground with the help of Saudi-Arabian aid and troops (and I'm sure our CIA and Blackwater troops, too) are just fine but Kah-Daffy in Libya isn't allowed to bomb or shoot to kill his protesters--when he does it its inhumane but when the Bahrain and Yemen forces shoot and kill their protesters it's perfectly fine with us.

So now everything is hunky-dory in Libya. Well, not quite. I'm reading where one of Kah-Daffy's sons the rebels said they had captured wasn't really captured after all but instead was still fighting--bellowing as he did that he would crush the rebels! But, hey, never fear, we'll let NATO drop some more 500-pounder bunker busters on their raggedy ass towel-headed heads and soon NATO will be triumphantly blasting its way into Tripoli where it'll be met with tons of roses being thrown at it: the liberating NATO forces and Qatar forces and the CIA Special Forces and the Blackwater mercenaries--with our Bush-beatin' for out-and-out lyin' dog War tactics President bragging how no US Armed Forces's boots hit the ground over there--of course this excludes our CIA Special Forces that are active in all these Arab countries (they are behind the uprising in Syria--Look out, here comes NATO!) and it excludes our many mercenaries (contractors) on the ground there.

Our Nobel-Peace-Prize-winning Pro-War president is once again confiscating Middle-East oil, Libya a big oil-producing country. Plus, in this instance, Commander in Chief Bush...er-ah, I mean, Commander in Chief Barack Obama (come on, it is hard to tell them apart) is gaining that Libyan ground on which we will soon be building the world's largest army and air force base and the world's largest naval station and the second largest Embassy in the world (second to the world's largest in Iraq). Praise the Lard, our Military Industrial Complex has a foothold on African soil, a mission George W. Bush failed at--and a mission President Obama failed at when he went to Ghana, another oil-producing country, and tried to make a military deal with them but they turned him down. But We the Warmongering People of the USA showed those African bastards--We simply sent our NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which now is mainly the US and Britain and Scandinavian countries--a leftover World War II organization), into Libya. NATO, a group our brilliant Commander in Chief George W. Bush turned the Afghanistan War over to, though, of course, We the Warmongering People of the USA are still in charge of it and paying for it. Hey, where do you think NATO gets its money and gasoline and ammunition and weapons?

And as two-faced Barack Obama was declaring We Won in Libya, Leon Pa(i)netta, the Clintonista, was with serious tones in his voice and a furrowed brow stating that first of all the democratically elected government of the Democratic and Free State Republic of Iraq--John Brennan is still involved in all of this--had begged the US not to pull our troops out by the end of next year, but rather, Iraq is begging us to stay on--maybe FOREVER. Wow, I know, I'm jumping around my room shouting "Hot Damns" all over the place--we are nailing down that Iraq oil--Royal Dutch Shell already in there pumping it out and sending it down to Israel--oh yeah, the Israelis are marching in the streets by the thousands, too--it seems the Israeli economy is tanking--OH GOOD, We the Warmongering People of the USA just sent Israel another 30 billion to keep them solvent under Nut'inYahoo!

And then, son of a bitch, in almost the same breath, Leapin' Leon Pa(i)netta announced, you damn right, we're staying in Afghanistan, too, until Hell Freezes Over--or at least into the 2020s.

So our Nobel-Peace-Prize-Winning President has now got us involved in wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, the Sudan, with continuous killer drone flights and CIA Special Forces and Blackwater mercenaries in Pakistan. Why! New York City's little Shanty Irish police commissioner is advocating drone flights over New York City--to protect us from another al-Queda attack--though he has no plans for evacuating New York City should we ever have an earthquake hit here--and should that earthquake rupture the core at the Indian Point nuclear facility just 25 miles up the Hudson from us.

In the meantime, our bureaucratic propaganda mill is telling us the economy is recovering--and, Praise the Lardy-Lard, it shot up big time today!!!--BUT, pay no attention to the roller-coasting stock market. It's manipulated by the Power Elite--I mean, come on, folks, Warren Buffett and Little Billy Boy and Melinda Gates by shifting a few million shares of their personal stock around can control the stock market easily--make it go up and down at will. Who are these shareholders who must be appeased? They ain't me and you--for every share of stock you or I may own, a dude like Warren Buffett owns like 100,000 shares (or more); or the New York State pension fund controls millions of shares. One solution to bringing down the debt would be to put a 4-cents-a-share transfer tax on every share traded daily in the stock market. There are 100s of millions of trades daily--just think of the revenue that one little 4-cent tax could rake in--you collect it on every share that's sold or bought. How about, too, simply taxing corporate bonuses at say 50%. I mean that would leave them with plenty of excess bucks. [I, being from New York City where we once had a 1-cent-a-share stock-transfer tax, have been advocating for using it once again as revenue for the 6 years I've been punditing on this blog--and just as I was typing this sentence, I see where a pundit on BuzzFlash has finally discovered the idea and is writing about it--I swear I think some of these pundits read the Growler. By the bye, Ed "How'm I Doin'" Krotch (Koch) when he was mayor caved in to Wall Street's threat of moving to Jersey City, New Jersey, and got New York City's stock-transfer tax thrown off the books. Thanks a lot, Ed. Plus, thank you for giving us that max-tacky Javitts Center.]

As Predicted by The Daily Growler
Good news, just as we here at the Growler predicted, the master rapist and all-'round good-guy French pompous ass, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, has been cleared of all charges by New York City's District Attorney, a political parasite, Cyrus Vance, Jr. They based freeing this pest on the grounds the little bitch from Africa was framing Dominique. Well, yes, he did get a blow job from her--and he was pretty rough while fucking her mouth--fucking it until he shot his wad--but, still, I mean, come on, this little bitch was in cahoots with her drug-dealing boyfriend, blah, blah, blah. Dominique's free now to run for President of France--safe at last. Remember the sex shit President Mitterrand admitted to after he got cancer and was dying? So now if you are rich as sin and staying in a $3,000-a-night room in a slicker-than-cat-shit hotel and the maid comes in and bends over in front of you while you're naked--it's perfectly OK for you to come up behind her and tackle her, feelin' up her tits while you're taking her down--I mean, come on, you're already naked and have a hard on, why waste it?--at least get a blow job out of it. Remember what our own Slick Willie Clinton said about blow jobs: "I did not have sex with that woman." Blow jobs ain't sex. In fact, it is possible this little African bitch may end up in prison--naughty, naughty, girl!

Mitt Romney is currently bulldozing down his 12-million-dollar La Jolla, California, "vacation" home and replacing it with a 20-million-dollar "vacation" home. His reasoning, the current place just isn't enough room for the Romney family and friends. This becomes even more ludicrous when you learn that besides Mitt's Massachusetts home (a mansion), he also, besides the La Jolla "vacation" home, has "vacation" homes in New Hampshire and Utah! Remember when John McCain admitted he really didn't know how many mansions he owned? Hell, old John "Failed Mission" McCain didn't even know for sure how many cars he owned. Thorstein Veblen, the great American Sociologist/Economist, called this Conspicuous Consumption. It's a traditional way of the Power Elite to flaunt their wealth in the faces of the peones who worked their asses off for the lowest wages possible to make these sleazebags wealthy. Why would We the People want these crooked scumbags ruling us?

Speaking of Conspicuous Consumption
The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey has just been given authority by big fat Chris Christy, Repugnican-Teabagger governor of New Jersey, and Mario Cuomo's political parasite son, Andrew, governor of New York, to raise the tolls on the tunnels and bridges that lead from Jersey into New York and the bridges around New York City to levels where soon commuters from Jersey into New York City will be forced to pay exorbitant bridge and tunnel tolls. Currently, for instance, it costs $8 to cross the Verrazano Bridge from Staten Island to Brooklyn. Under the new tolls, it's going to cost $16 to cross it. Why, you may be asking, is this worthless Power-Elite-managed Port Authority raising the bridge and tunnel tolls? Why because of the enormous cost overruns on this stupid wasteful and egomaniacal Ground Zero building bullshit--this high and mighty building that was once called The Freedom Tower but is now called 1 World Trade Center since it's proven to be not free at all but cost-overrunning into the 20-billions soon, thus making it the most expensive building ever built in the world--putting on the tight NYC real estate market acres of office space New York City doesn't really have any use for in this overbuilt city where soon another real estate bubble is sure to blow sky high. The subway station they're building under this 1 World Trade Center is now cost-overrunning into billions of dollars itself--the world's grandest-ever subway station. And all of this disastrous building going on down there is an ego-trip showing how though those dirty Arab bastards blew down our original World Trade Center, we'll build it back taller and more grandiose than before--giving the al-Queda terrorists an even bigger and tackier and gaudier target to attack next time. [Here's the NYTimes story about this 1 World Trade Center "White Elephant":
www.nytimes.com/2011/08/20/opinion/nocera-911s-white-elephant.html?_r=2

Thanks to one our favorite artists here at the Growler, Nick Jainschigg, we are reminded that the new Martin Luther King, Jr., Memorial being unveiled soon in the Mall between the Lincoln and Jefferson Memorials was sculpted in China by a Chinese sculptor--oh what a wonderful irony, eh? I suppose there are no American Blacks capable of sculpting such a memorial--I mean, I think they're missing an essential bone in their hands--you know, that bone needed to hold a chisel or a file or a buffer--whatever--besides, who knows more about FREEDOM and the abhorrence of slavery (including child labor) than a Commie Chinese sculptor?

thehappyandcontentedgrowlingwolf
for The "Earthquake" Edition of The Daily Growler

A Little Taste of American Art:

Stuart Davis
Hot Still-Scape for Six Colors - 7th Avenue Style, 1940