Living in New York City--the Inescapable City

Foto by tgw, New York City, Winter 2006 --------------------------------------------------------------------
I tried to get out of this New York City in which I live. To wander off into parts unknown even though there aren't many parts unknown left in this human-dominated world. So I soon discovered I couldn't get out of this city this time or last time or any time. God-damn, I hate this city for that reason: I can't escape its eating me raw and spitting me out over and over, grinding beast that it is. No wonder people crazed by money and jealousies and efforts at territorial and spiritual dominance want to blow New York City off the map. New York City is the USA's symbolic city--a city that fully represents and symbolizes OUR collective greed.

This City is going down slow. The city can sing along with Saint Louis Jimmy Odom, "I have had my fun/If I don't get well no more/My health is failing me, Boys/I believe I'm goin' down slow." And I'm going down slow right along with this going-down-slow city. I feel it's my duty to keep on acting out my own life on this city's stage. I'll sink or swim (except I can only swim in imaginational streams) in this city right up to either my end or its end, my end really not an end as much as it will be a relief.

This City is so full of ironies. Currently, here in this corrupted city, small businesses are folding and closing down all over town; yet our powers that be keep telling us our future looks bright. There are for lease signs up all over town--hi-rise luxury buildings are hanging out the "Now Renting" signs, and yet, the chic, the conspicuous consumers, are out in droves, buying overpriced Euro-labeled Chinese-made goods, hanging out with constant superposing glee, spending millions going to Disney animated movies and spending millions going to Disney-produced Broadway shows in Disney's own Broadway theaters, Times Square now looking like a DisneyLand parking lot. The truly insulting characters out of this mix are the twentyish Baby Boomer babies out spending as much of daddy's money as they can before it runs out, partying heartily as if there ain't no troubles going on anywhere. Partying at any of the hundreds of new trendy Baby Boomer Baby (BBB) hang outs, drinking exotic drinks being mixed up for 'em by millionaire bartenders, former stock brokers working for former stock brokers who decided they had leisure time and stolen money enough to open trendy bars and restaurants and hire their friends as partners, bartenders, and their babes as managers. [Big City Tip: Definitely if you're coming to New York City and you're in your early twenties, maybe with intentions of being an actor, or being a fashion designer, or maybe even being a stock broker, first go to bartending school (shell out a thousand or so) and become a bartender.]

Up the street from me is a trendy little place tucked into the darkest corner of the set-back-off-the-sidewalk 50-story hi-rise luxury building in which it resides. Out in front of this trendy little corner place is the inset slabwalk of the 50-story hi rise, which the trendy place has turned into a sidewalk-cafe setting with tables sitting under large umbrellas, all enclosed in a web-belt railing suspended from brass poles, the railing garnished here and there with phony evergreen trees in tacky white plastic buckets. The tables have umbrellas obviously to keep things from falling into the customers's food from above, like rain, but also like bird shit or human spitting, since sunlight seldom gets back into that tacky little corner, like not even at noon. The place is pushed deeply back into that hi-riser's armpit corner, it's ass abutting the extending-on-out brick wall of the building next to it on the west, the original Life Magazine Building, when Life Magazine was like England's Punch, a satirical rag that made fun of social and political times in the late 19th Century. The Life Magazine Building is now called the Herald Square Hotel even though it's three long blocks away from Herald Square.

The trendy little corner nook place has a weird trendy foreign name, I think it's Azya, something like that, and its subtitle declares Azya a "Wine and Chocolate Bar." In the role of a neighborhood clown/agitator, I one jolly afternoon around rush hour stuck my head in this trendy place's dank interior and asked a person in there if they served coffee and this skinny dworkish wannabe actor said, very brightly, acting as if he were the head waiter, "Yes, we do, sir." I said, "Then where's the manager, I have a beef. I wanna know why this joint isn't called a Wine and Coffee and Chocolate Bar. I'm the honorable Glenn Spleen and I represent the Coffee Growers Union of Tanzania and I wanna hear an explanation why since you can get coffee in here as well as wine and chocolate the word coffee isn't prominently displayed in your sign over the entrance out there? Every time I see that coffeeless sign I wanna tell your customers how they're being deceived. Why should I have had to ask you if you had coffee if your sign would have informed me of that fact, which it doesn't, and that's what peeves me to this clownish rage."

And this overpriced little nook of this "Old World" (that's the buzz word the twentyish style setters use to describe this overkill of bars and restaurants that supposedly reflect an Old World attitude, meaning I assume having a European flavor in their beer, wine, and cocktail selections and in the food they serve) is always packed. Even on fairly chilly days lately here this joint has been packed with the flush sitting at these cold aluminum tables covered in the half-filthy table clothes and protected from bird shit and human expectorations with the even-filthier than the table clothes umbrellas hanging over the food. These flush folks are sitting eating directly across the street from a Con-Edison Sub-Station Power Plant housing three huge Siemans (a Nazi company still thriving) generators, colossal things, spinning so fast and shooting out such powerful surges of electrical blitz they have to be cooled down with tons of city drinking water--their power so exhausting they constantly spew out mercury and dioxin poisons into my neighborhood's air. These people eat their food in these conditions and think they're being highly fashionable doing it.

The idiots packing this wine and chocolate dump (and in terms of putting a spotlite on it, it is a dump--probably tons of rats and roaches having balls and feasts after they shut down for the evening) are spending as much as $35 for a Euro-trash skimpy meal lassoed on the plate by that horrible raspberry slop these Euro-Trash chefs love using--to make their poverty-stricken portions look larger--along with a $7.50 glass of some supertrendy wine like maybe a Coppola Chablis for the white-wine-drinking White ladies and a bold Mondavi Bordeaux for the White gents (I have never seen any black people in this joint)--all the Hollywood overpaid creeps are gobbling up vineyards in Napa Valley to produce their own celebrity wines--sots that they are probably--and this ain't wine for the thousands of winos laying around Hollywood and Vine rotting off Napa Valley's original wines, the wines of the Gallo Brothers--Italian Swiss Colony--Thunderbird ("What's the word?/Thunderbird/What's the price?/Thirty twice"). One of my favorite wines when I drank wine was Gallo Hearty Burgundy. What did I know?

I had a bottle of 100-year-old wine one time. I was at a dinner at one of my brother's fat-cat friend's Dallas mansions where we all got to chugging down this dude's table wine and we all were getting chatty and jokey and finally the fat cats got to brag-fighting--you know, big shots bragging about their possessions, comparing fame and fortunes by playing a vigorous White dozens on each other. At the height of this Texas bragging session, our host started trumpeting on his fabulous wine collection. "In fact," he said, "even though this wine here you guys are guzzling so joyously ain't bargain-bin wines, I can do much better." With that, he left the table, disappeared for about 5 minutes. When he returned, beaming ear to ear, he was holding up a dusty drab half Jeroboam of wine saying he'd just paid $9,000 for it that morning at a wine auction held at Neiman-Marcus (Stanley Marcus might even have been present that night; certainly his daughter was). This guy said he was going to treat us to a 100-year-old bottle of Chateau Lafitte, 1877, as he began to uncork it. He poured a dollop in a wine glass and handed it to a famous film director who was sitting next to him. The film director took a sip of this 100-year-old $9,000 wine. His eyes lighted up. He held the glass up to the room's light and he said, "What a pleasure. By god, that's quite a pleasure. Amazing how the lustre has remained so viable in its taste. It's like drinking a bit of French history." Then our host poured each of us a glass of this prize wine and stood back as we all tasted it. Ohhs, ahhhs, magnificos, chorused around me. I took a taste. It tasted like shit to me. It tasted like I was drinking a mouth full of liquid decay. It tasted like an attic smelled. It tasted like dirt, dry dirt. Yet all the phony baloneys were holding their glasses up to the light and praising its vintage lustfulness, its still bold fruitiness, with a taste that captures those good-time vintages of so long ago on the roof of your mouth.

"I say, I hate to swallow this it's so, how shall I put it, divine?" said a famous Dallas interior decorator. It still tasted like shit to me. I was still mocking these phonies under my breath as one of the fat cats, a man with an art collection, a rare coin collection, and possessor of an amusement park, went into a rapturous animation telling his story about trying to buy a bottle of wine he said was guaranteed by Christies to be from Tom Jefferson's personal Monticello wine cellar--a bottle old Tom had brought back with him from his sojourn in France, hand labeled, then the label signed by the man himself. This guy said he bid $225,000 on it but it went for $250,000, and coincidentally to an old friend of his, a Dallas restaurateur who collected vintage wines. All the while I'm thinking, wow, I'll bet after Tom died, his slaves maybe drank his wine up in celebration of their Master's death, then they filled those empties back up with piss. Some Frenchman, I sarcastically thought, certainly pissed in this bottle this dude paid $9,000 for this morning we were all sipping.

So a sparse-portion of half-a-swordfish steak, grilled with a sprig of fennel across it, with two small red potatoes on the side, all surrounded by that lasso of raspberry syrup (you talk about high fructose corn syrup!) at this trendy corner wine and chocolate bar is $35. Add a couple a'glasses of celebrity wine at $7.50 each and that comes to $50 for one...oh, I forgot to add on that chocolate mousse, let's see that was $15...why, here ya go, lunch for two at this Wine and Chocolate Bar comes to $130. "Ah, and worth every penny of it," the hayseed tourist from Iowa says as he pushes back from the rickety table. "Hope you enjoyed your overpriced paltry Eur0-trash meal," the cute actress/waitress chirps. "Oh, honey, it was so Europe, you know, so cultured, I'm leavin' here feelin' like a god-damn duke or earl or something like that." "Well, thank you, and you all come back soon--that is if we're still in business."

And the joint is always packed. Who are these people that pack these joints from one end of Manhattan to the other--spreading over into Brooklyn, into Williamsburg, into Green Point? I assume this is the New York City middle class both our lousy mayoral candidates are kowtowing to trying to get their vote. So who the hell are all these smug fuckers who are traipsing all over my used-to-be Korean neighborhood acting like they own it now and, in fact, acting like they've always owned it?

Pshaw! I say to it all. And you don't see "Pshaw" used as mild-mannered cuss word at all anymore, do you? Pshaw nuff.

I am distracted by a whirling around in my brain of pestering thoughts. I think too much therefore I'm burnt out.

And I pass this corner trendy place right on by--unless I feel like acting the clown/agitator again--like asking them for a glass of water and then revealing that I'm Dr. Glenn Spleen from the Young Republican Water Studies Commission and I'm insulted by their serving water but not noting the fact that they serve water on that "Wine and Chocolate Bar" sign out front...clown, clown, clown, clown, clown.

I pass this precious little trendy place right on by and head up to the Subway on the corner for a 5-buck sandwich, a package of trans-fat-loaded Cheetos, and a 16-oz Barq's Root Beer for $7.00. Or I can pass the Subway on by, turn onto trashy Fifth Avenue, go down a block (Holy Shit, some Baby Boomer Baby has just opened a Scuba Diving shop on Fifth Avenue--can you imagine that), and there find a store with a French name run by a Chinese dude. Here they have a food bar where for 9 bucks I can get 3 or 4 slices of grilled chicken breast, a load of baby spinach leaves, a tablespoon of jalapeno slices, tomato slices, a pile of cold slaw, some grated jack cheese, olives, a chow-chow-like salsa the Mexican cooks make, a couple of spring rolls, some sliced cucumbers, several slices of an Italian sausage they have that's excellent, a whole grain French baguette, and a bottle of Big Cranberry juice drink from the Nantucket juice dudes--AND for a buck and a half more, I can get a big styrafoam cup of French roast coffee.

That's another compelling thing about New York City--if you find yourself broke, in the street, and hungry, this is the greatest city in the world for bad weather-protecting scaffolding to sleep under at night, for food scraps in garbages outside restaurants, delis, and fast-food joints, or for street food jockeys who for 5 bucks'll give you great pyramid portions of lamb, brown rice, grilled onions, and lettuce and tomatoes as gyro platters or rolled up in pita bread and dripping with white sauce and hot sauce and the juice from those greasy grilled onions.

Yes, I'm still insulted by both our mayoral candidates in their teevee commercials selling themselves to what they call the New York City "Middle Class." Polls are showing our billionaire mayor is going to be swept back into office, an illegal third term, the first mayor in the history of New York City to ignore term limits and defy voters and force himself on the ballot for this unprecedented third term. This billionaire little prick born and raised in Boston, lucking out in New York City by a couple of big Wall Street firms contracting his systems software, forming Bloomberg LD--then Wall Street handing him the Bloomberg Network and the next thing you know, this little prick from Boston is a blooming billionaire, the 65th richest man in the USA until after he becomes mayor in the footsteps of his hero Rudolph "Mussolini" Guiliani after the city had just been rocked by the 9/11 attacks (the Existentialist Cowboy is convinced the Mossad and the Pentagon cooked up 9/11) when he rockets up the Fortune Richest Bums in the World 500 to 5th richest worthless asshole in the USA. This guy has spent 62 million of his own money running against the Dumbocrat Black wimp who hasn't got a ghost of a chance in beating Mikey the Rich Boy in this election. Bill Thompson's ads are Bloomberg copycat ads--aimed at what Bill, too, calls New York City's Middle Class.

In the meantime on PBS this week there was an edition of "Now" called "Close to Home" about shop owners up on Manhattan's Upper Class Upper East Side (it runs from East 57th up to East 86th between the East River on the East and Fifth Avenue on the West) losing customers, unable to keep up with their rents, a lot of them going bankrupt and abandoning their shops. The show shows row after row of vacant retail stores for rent or lease up and down Madison Avenue in that area. The foreclosings on their houses in New York City and down in Florida are up. Overall home sales are down in spite of the Wall Street Journal (remember it's owned by Rupert Murdoch, that shiftless skunk Aussie asshole) announcing just a few days ago that home sales had showed an upward movement. Also it was announced yesterday, consumer spending is off as the year's big X-mas season approaches and these big outlet stores are stocked to the gills with the latest trendy model cell phones, the newest and greatest iPods, Blackberries, new model laptops, with Bill Gates's latest Windows operating system effort (Vista was such a flop, Bill had to get his wonder kids to fiddle with it and come up with Windows 7) , new superslick wireless notebooks--new and better and more downloads per nanosecond than the gods can shake a stick at.

So the depression is coming to New York City full blast. My expenses have doubled over the past year. My only salvation is I still pay cheap rent. I'm lucky I live in the only affordable housing left in New York City. All around me here in the middle of Manhattan are buildings rising like sore thumbs into our already disrupted skies--the new 60-story tacky monstrosity hotel over on Sixth Avenue now blocks out my old western view out over the Hudson and New Jersey, the source of so many great sunset shots I used to make shooting out one of my apartment windows--I called them "Window Shots," setting the camera up on a tripod in this window, the setting it to go off every five seconds, shooting sequentially that way.
I can no longer shoot the above view--that view is no longer extant--there's a 60-story block-long hotel on Sixth Avenue blotting it out now.

I continue on in this continuing present tense--and tense it really is, too (what ever happened to Tensor lamps?). I'm an I character stuck in the heart of The Big Apple like a well-aimed intentional arrow.

thegrowlingwolf
for The Daily Growler
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Yankees Take 2nd Game of World Series From Phillies
Old has-been Pedro Martinez came out beaming tonight as the second game of this year's World Series started. He was facing the Yankees disappointing-in-regular-season ace, A. J. Burnett--a pitcher who usually doesn't win if the Yankees aren't hitting. He also is subject to one or two innings where whatever brilliance he's shown in previous innings are erased as he gives up walks, hits, and runs.

Pedro started out on fire. The Phillies got a run quickly off Burnett and the game was 1-0 going into the bottom of the fourth inning. I mean Pedro was pitching like the Pedro of his glory days--with great control, not walking anybody, striking out 4 of the first 6 batters he faced including Jeter and A-Rod. He struck Jeter out twice. In the bottom of the fourth, Pedro was doing fine until Mark Texiera came up and poled one 413 feet to land it over the right centerfield fence and right into the glassed-in Yankees new bullpen sanctuary to tie it 1-1. And that's how it stayed until the next inning when Pedro, again humming along, gave one up to Matsui. Coincidentally, Matsui's home run cleared the Japanese signboard in right field just at the foul pole. After that, the Yankees started hitting, even Jerry Hairston, Jr., got a hit, and next thing you know that Korean(?) pitcher, Chan Ho Park, is that his name?, came on to relieve Pedro and he gave up a hit and the Yankees scored another run and then Mariano Rivera came in in the eighth and that was it for the Phillies--3-1. Burnett and the Yankees are whooping it up tonight.

Last night's great game was marred by two big umpire call mistakes--one on the Yankees when the Phillies first baseman, Ryan Howard, caught a drive on a short hop and the umpire called it a catch and the Howard threw to second where they tagged Posada out for a double play. A really bad damaging call. Then in the next inning the umpires fucked up a call on the Phillies, a ground ball hit to Jeter who got the runner coming into second but on the throw to first the runner beat the throw but the umpire called him out and that stopped the Phillies in their tracks. If that call had of been made right, the Phillies would have scored the tying run. They are fixing to bring play reviews into baseball. That's a shame. Nothing was more fun than when players could get up in an umpire's face and call him every name in the book--and managers could come out and either jaw up in the umpire's mug or kick dirt on him. In those days you heard "Kill the umpire" from the stands. Now all you hear are cheers like "Let's go Yankees." Soon I suppose there'll be peroxide blondes and Black skinny minnies in skimpy costumes leading the crowd in cheers--like they do at Japanese baseball games. Baseball is soon going world like golf has already gone world.

I truly think after the Yankees win this World Series, I'm going to have to eat crow. Joe Gerardi will certainly be selected manager of the year--an honor he will have now gotten by being manager of the year in both major leagues--MOY when he managed the Florida Marlins, now MOY when he and the Yankees win the WS this year. The saddest part is, if Joe and the Yanks win the World Series, Gerardi will surpass Joe Torre as the best active manager in baseball. Joe failed us all by being unable to pilot his Dodgers to victory over these same Phillies. The Phillies averaged 7 runs a game against the Dodgers.

The Phillies are a good team, but the Yankees are an awesome team, especially when they start hitting. They are vulnerable when their pitchers conk out. Pettite goes next for the Yankees--he's a toss up, but he'll win if the Yankees start hitting--and surely that will happen soon.

marvelousmarvbackbiter
for The Daily Growler

A Daily Growler Blast From the Past

From December of 2008: Bashing Obama and Words From Ralph Nader

Monday, December 01, 2008

Have We Been Shucked & Jived?

Obama and the Same Ole-Same Ole
Yesterday I was getting apologetic about bashing Obama. Adelaide Sanford got me thinkin' that she had a point when she said it was an African tradition to gather your backers and antagonists together under one tribal roof and there "reason together." I bought that line yesterday but not today. Obama's pulled one on our hopeful asses. He looks like NOW he's just another plain-ole self-promoting hat-full-of-tricks politician. God-damn him! Why? I've got to ask him a whole series of "whys." His press conferences--like the one today where he announced all these Clinton toadies he's bringin' on board his "transistion" team--are beginning to sound like G.W. Bush press conferences, all bologna and no nutrition. It's same ole same ole Dumbocratic Party politics (the politics of giving into your opponent's agenda)--the Party that's made Obama its lapdog politician. I don't see Obama as being as black and hearing his African roots talking to him instinctually as Adelaide Sanford does. I'm, and I admit it is with reluctance, being pulled in by the feeling there is nothing new under the political sun. Nothing's going to CHANGE!--and Ralph Nader's been saying this all along--for decades now. And Allen Ginsberg said it back in the 1970s--the CIA, the Mafia, the Oil companies, the monopolistic corporations, et al--I call 'em all the Power Elite--rule us their iron fists of wealth and privilege--they're rich and we ain't--they are the overserved, as Adelaide Sanford calls them.

Here, read old Ralph Nader on the subject of Obama's favoring ruthless, reckless, and deja-vu-Clintonistas by surrounded himself with them. Like War Criminal John Brennan! And Jami Miscik! Holy Smothering Cats! Why Jami Miscik? Why? I scream! Like keeping Robert Gates as DOD head! Why? I scream! Why? Why? Why? And Hillary RodHAM "Hillbilly" Clinton as Sec'y of State! Holy Cow! Why? What qualifies this wife of an ex-President to be anything in any body's cabinet? What qualifies her to even be a senator? She hasn't done a god-damn thing as Senator from New York State except giveaway millions of dollars worth of boondoggles to her and her husband's financial contributors! [Question, Who the hell pays 2 million bucks to hear Slick Willie "Who's That Chickie Over There?" Clinton give a speech?] You surround yourself with jive-ass turkeys and you yourself become a jiveass turkey.

From Ralph Nader:
While the liberal intelligentsia was swooning over Barack Obama during his presidential campaign, I counseled “prepare to be disappointed.” His record as a Illinois state and U.S. Senator, together with the many progressive and long overdue courses of action he opposed during his campaign, rendered such a prediction unfortunate but obvious.

Now this same intelligentsia is beginning to howl over Obama’s transition team and early choices to run his Administration. Having defeated Senator Hillary Clinton in the Democratic Primaries, he now is busily installing Bill Clinton’s old guard. Thirty one out of forty seven people that he has named so far for transition or appointments have ties to the Clinton Administration, according to Politico. One Clintonite is quoted in the Washington Post as saying – “This isn’t lightly flavored with Clintons. This is all Clintons, all the time.”

Obama’s “foreign policy team is now dominated by the Hawkish, old-guard Democrats of the 1990,” writes Jeremy Scahill. Obama’s transition team reviewing intelligence agencies and recommending appointments is headed by John Brennan and Jami Miscik, who worked under George Tenet when the CIA was involved in politicizing intelligence for, among other officials, Secretary of State Colin Powell’s erroneous address before the United Nations calling for war against Iraq.

Mr. Brennan, as a government official, supported warrantless wiretapping and extraordinary rendition to torturing countries. National Public Radio reported that Obama’s reversal when he voted for the revised FISA this year relied on John Brennan’s advise.

The top choice as White House chief of staff is Rahm Emanuel—the ultimate hard-nosed corporate Democrat, military-foreign policy hawk and Clinton White House promoter of corporate globalization, as in NAFTA and the World Trade Organization.

Now, recall Obama’s words during the bucolic “hope and change” campaign months: “The American people…understand the real gamble is having the same old folks doing things over and over and over again and somehow expecting a different result.” Thunderous applause followed these remarks.

Read the rest of Ralph's article at the great sleptonnews blog:

www.slepton.com/slepton/viewcontent.pl?id=2283

thegrowlingbashingobamawolf
for The Monday Daily Growler

The Saturday Evening Post--C Wright Mills's The Warlords

C Wright Mills "The Warlords" (From The Power Elite, Oxford Press, 1956

The Warlords

from the book

The Power Elite

by C.Wright Mills

Oxford Press, 1956

During the eighteenth century, observers of the historic scene began to notice a remarkable trend in the division of power at the top of modern society: Civilians, coming into authority, were able to control men of military violence, whose power, being hedged in and neutralized, declined. At various times and places, of course, military men had been the servants of civilian decision, but this trend-which reached its climax in the nineteenth century and lasted until World War I-seemed then, and still seems, remarkable simply because it had never before happened on such a scale or never before seemed so firmly grounded.

In the twentieth century, among the industrialized nations of the world, the great, brief, precarious fact of civilian dominance began to falter and now - after the long peace from the Napoleonic era to World War I - the old march of world history once more asserts itself. All over the world, the warlord is returning. All over the world, reality is defined in his terms. And in America, too, into the political vacuum the warlords have marched. Alongside the corporate executives and the politicians, the generals and admirals-those uneasy cousins within the American elite- have gained and have been given increased power to make and to influence decisions of the gravest consequence.

***

The military world selects and forms those who become a professional part of it. The harsh initiation at The Point or The Academy-and on lower levels of the military service, in basic training-reveals the attempt to break up early civilian values and sensibilities in order the more easily to implant a character structure as totally new as possible.

It is this attempt to break up the earlier acquired sensibilities that lies back of the 'breaking' of the recruit and the assignment to him of very low status in the military world. He must be made to lose much of his old identity in order that he can then become aware of his very self in the terms of his military role. He must be isolated from his old civilian life in order that he will come eagerly to place the highest value on successful conformity with military reality, on deep acceptance of the military outlook, and on proud realization of success within its hierarchy and in its terms. His very self-esteem becomes quite thoroughly dependent upon the appraisals he receives from his peers and his superiors in the chain of command. His military role, and the world of which it is a part, is presented to him as one of the higher circles of the nation. There is a strong emphasis upon the whole range of social etiquette, and, in various formal and informal ways, he is encouraged to date girls of higher rather than of lower status. He is made to feel that he is entering upon an important sector of the higher circles of the nation, and, accordingly, his conception of himself as a self-confident man becomes based upon his conception of himself as a loyal member of an ascendant organization. The only 'educational' routine in America that compares with the military is that of the metropolitan 400's private schools, and they do not altogether measure up to the military way.

West Point and Annapolis are the beginning points of the warlords, and, although many other sources of recruitment and ways of training have had to be used in the emergencies of expansion, they are still the training grounds of the elite of the armed forces. Most of the top generals and all of the admirals of today are of West Point or of The Academy, and they definitely feel it. In fact, if no such caste feeling existed among them, these character-selecting and character-forming institutions would have to be called failures.

The caste feeling of the military is an essential feature of the truly professional officer corps which, since the Spanish-American War, has replaced the old decentralized, and somewhat locally political, militia system. 'The objective is the fleet,' naval Captain L. M. Nulton has written, 'the doctrine is responsibility, and the problem is the formation of military character.' Of the period when most present-day admirals were at Annapolis, it was asserted by Commander Earle: 'The discipline of the Naval Academy well illustrates the principle that in every community discipline means simply organized living. It is the condition of living right because without right living, civilization cannot exist. Persons who will not live right must be compelled to do so, and upon such misguided individuals there must be placed restraints. To these alone is discipline ever harsh or a form of punishment. Surely this is just as it should be. The world would be better if such individuals were made to feel the tyrannical, unyielding, and hard-nailed fist in order to drive them from an organization to which they have not right to belong.'

The military world bears decisively upon its inhabitants because it selects its recruits carefully and breaks up their previously acquired values; it isolates them from civilian society and it standardizes their career and deportment throughout their lives. Within this career, a rotation of assignment makes for similarity of skills and sensibilities. And, within the military world, a higher position is not merely a job or even the climax of a career; it is clearly a total way of life which is developed under an all-encompassing system of discipline. Absorbed by the bureaucratic hierarchies in which he lives, and from which he derives his very character and image of self, the military man is often submerged in it, or as a possible civilian, even sunk by it. As a social creature, he has until quite recently been generally isolated from other areas of American life; and as an intellectual product of a closed educational system, with his experience itself controlled by a code and a sequence of jobs, he has been shaped into a highly uniform type.

More than any other creatures of the higher circles, modern warlords, on or above the two-star rank, resemble one another, internally and externally. Externally, as John P. Marquand has observed, their uniforms often seem to include their facial mask, and certainly its typical expressions. There is the resolute mouth and usually the steady eye, and always the tendency to expressionlessness; there is the erect posture, the square shoulders, and the regulated cadence of the walk. They do not amble; they stride. Internally, to the extent that the whole system of life-training has been successful, they are also reliably similar in reaction and in outlook. They have, it is said, 'the military mind,' which is no idle phrase: it points to the product of a specialized bureaucratic training; it points to the results of a system of formal selection and common experiences and friendships and activities -all enclosed within similar routines. It also points to the fact of discipline-which means instant and stereotyped obedience within the chain of command. The military mind also indicates the sharing of a common outlook the basis of which is the metaphysical definition of reality as essentially military reality. Even within the military realm, this mind distrusts 'theorists,' if only because they tend to be different: bureaucratic thinking is orderly and concrete thinking.

The fact that they have succeeded in climbing the military hierarchy, which they honor more than any other, lends self-assurance to the successful warlords. The protections that surround their top positions make them even more assured and confident. If they should lose confidence in themselves what else would there be for them to lose? Within a limited area of life, they are often quite competent, but to them, in their disciplined loyalty, this area is often the only area of life that is truly worthwhile. They are inside an apparatus of prerogative and graded privilege in which they have been economically secure and unworried. Although not usually rich, they have never faced the perils of earning a living in the same way that lower and middle-class persons have. The orderly ranks of their chain of command, as we have seen, are carried over into their social life: such striving for status as they have known has been within an unambiguous and well-organized hierarchy of status, in which each knows his place and remains within it.

In this military world, debate is no more at a premium than persuasion: one obeys and one commands, and matters, even unimportant matters, are not to be decided by voting. Life in the military world accordingly influences the military mind's outlook on other institutions as well as on its own. The warlord often sees economic institutions as means for military production and the huge corporation as a sort of ill-run military establishment. In his world, wages are fixed, unions impossible to conceive. He sees political institutions as often corrupt and usually inefficient obstacles, full of undisciplined and cantankerous creatures. And is he very unhappy to hear of civilians and politicians making fools of themselves?

It is men with minds and outlooks formed by such conditions who in postwar America have come to occupy positions of great decision. It cannot be said that they have necessarily sought these new positions; much of their increased stature has come to them by virtue of a default on the part of civilian political men. But perhaps it can be said, as C. S. Forester has remarked in a similar connection, that men without lively imagination are needed to execute policies without imagination devised by an elite without imagination.

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That's one dumb bunch of Power Elitists. Yet, they have the power to engulf us in endless and devastating war. Speaking of air pollution--have you ever stopped to consider how much air pollution is caused by militaries around the world? How much land destruction is caused by militaries around the world? How many people have to die by the hundreds every day from militaries around the world?

thestaff
for The Daily Growler

Giving Credit Where Credit Is Due, a The Daily Growler Concession, of Sorts

Foto by tgw, New York City, 2006.
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Word From the Front
It's New York City. Of course it's the front. The beginning of another New Frontier. This frontier fronting the width and breadth of that new dragon the Global Marketplace.

He who consumes the most is blessed. He who cannot consume is doomed. Life has become a pay or die situation. Those who can pay live forever.

Progress is noisy. Because of that, thegrowlingwolf reports to us that "the infernal hammering hath rendered me baloney for brains. All I can think of and dream of and spout about is hammering. It's like being rapped at all day by a god-damn pestering raven with Edgar Allen Poe's face. It's either the loony bin for my nervewrecked ass or the cold glistening beckoning snows of the Great Lakes shores--like if you're looking for me, don't!" With that, he's disappeared from our radar.

Did We or Did We Not?
There's a battle going on here in The Growler offices as to whether or not The Growler got scooped yesterday by the Existentialist Cowboy. This is referring to our adding yesterday morning a quick diatribe from Walter Crackpipe on one of The Growler's favorite people, T. Boone Pickens, the West Texas oil-and-gas-and-poker-playing tycoon, making a speech day before yesterday saying he was of the opinion that the USA had the rights to all of Iraq's oil, basing that right on the fact that so many Americans had died in Iraq bringing them freedom and democracy the Iraqi people had to sacrifice their oil to pay us back for getting us into this War on Iraq mess.

The staff tells me that this Walter Crackpipe piece was put into the post (blog) around noon but that due to the laziness on top of the poor editing skills of our copyeditor the piece was pulled and drafted several times all day long and finally published "fully edited" in the afternoon, after another staff member had noticed in our blog links sidebar the Existentialist Cowboy had changed his post description to one that stated he was commenting on T. Boone Pickens and that speech!

Crackpipe's article was a lambasting of T. Boone Pickens and the OIL domination society he represents. His article started off picking on Pickens's stupid speech before a bunch of his Oil Power Elite buddies. But then that picking on Pickens turns to a battering ram against OIL and how all our troubles, woes, and wars these days and in the many days past are due to our competitive urges to control the world's oil due to our addiction to oil.

I haven't read the Cowboy's piece yet so I can't comment on whether he and Crackpipe are on parallel lines or not.

I'll add here that coincidentally, Crackpipe, thegrowlingwolf, the Existentialist Cowboy (Len Hart) are Texans. The Wolf Man and the Cowboy are further coincidentally from West Texas. Those of you who were fans of the late J. Orlin Grabbe might find it interesting to note he, too, was from West Texas, from just a little northwest of the Wolf Man's hometown and just east of where the Cowboy's from.

I myself, though not a native Texan, moved to Texas to attend the University of Texas in Austin, a university tied deeply, as Crackpipe said yesterday, to OIL and the OIL barons who have ruled Texas since oil was discovered there a decade prior to World War I. An OIL baron Power Elite up through which the Mexican oil lease buying and CEO of the Zapata Offshore Drilling Co. (a failed company), George H. W. "Pappy" Bush ascended to his political throne, bringing along with him his worthless sons and his only daughter, a pack of weasels if ever there was one. Living in Austin, Texas, for about a day suddenly makes you aware of the power of OIL in the politics and everyday lives of Texans. The University campus when I was there had an oil derrick as a monument in back of the towered library, a really magnificent building, built by OIL contributions, probably, since like Crackpipe said the University of Texas was once the second largest endowed university next to Harvard. I've read recently where Harvard's suffering a little money trouble--seems like enrollment is way down.

Here's some excerpts from the Existentialist Cowboy's article:

Texas oil man T. Boone Pickets typifies what is dead wrong about America and what passes for 'foreign policy'. Pickens claims the US is 'entitled' to Iraqi oil. How convenient for the oil barons who conspired with Dick Cheney to carve up the oil fields of Iraq before 911 would give Bush the pretext he would need to attack and invade Iraq, a nation that had nothing whatsoever to do with 911.

Here, the Cowboy gets controversial--good for him:

Nevertheless, it would be claimed that Iraq was --somehow --a part of the 'war on terror'. Is there no end to the lies? Might I remind that on 911, it was a gang of Israelis, perhaps criminals from Mossad, who were seen dancing and celebrating! It was NOT Iraqis who celebrated the deaths of innocent Americans! Clearly --Bush waged war on everyone but the 'real terrorists'.

Mossad is just as crooked as is the CIA about which I have written, possibly, thousands of pages [See: Why the CIA is the world's number one terrorist organization] Secondly, the US is perpetually auctioned off to the highest bidders on K-Street! And the the most powerful lobby on K-street is most certainly the Jewish Lobby. Meanwhile, Israel is breaking every international law with respect to Palestine as we write and post.

Has the Cowboy been reading The Daily Growler? Check this out:

I say revolution now! I say bring down this elite! I say arrest the war criminal who continue to rape the sovereign nation of Iraq! I say file capital charges against George W. Bush, his guilty staff and the Pentagon brass who knowingly and willing planned the entire heist on behalf of big oil!

We applaud and cheer the Cowboy. Read the whole article here:

existentialistcowboy.blogspot.com/

Here's an excerpt from a thegrowlingwolf article posted on The Daily Growler, December 7, 2006. My God, the Wolf Man is mentioning our deserving Iraq's OIL--

So Jimmy Boy Baker comes out of his meeting and this brilliant gang of illicit businessmen spank Georgie Porgie on his cute little ass by saying, "Yep, G.P., old buddy-buddy, the god-damn atheists, anarchists, commies, hippies, cowards, socialists, Castro-lovers, traitors, bleeding-heart liberals, and bloggers were right all along, we’re losing in Iraq; in fact, little buddy, we’ve lost in Iraq and it’s time to get the F out of there and leave it to the towel heads to work out their own shit—EXCEPT, little oil baby…" and here comes the whole crux of my growling: the red light went off on the word EXCEPT—and they continued, "before we get out of Eye-rack, the cowards left alive over there must concede their oilfields to privatization and first grabs to those oilfields will go to U.S. corporations, first dibs on it, dammit, OR we will withhold aid and reconstruction promises and shit like that from them, plus we’ll keep military bases there, by God, or F 'em."

Methinks, some blogger pundits have been reading the Growler since we started Growling in April of 2006. L Hat sent us a Joe Bageant blog post that the Wolf Man said was a well-written piece with a lot of moxie that read like Joe's been reading The Daily Growler.

We here at the Growler believe in pushing things in faces! Especially faces full of anger, threat, meanness, pomposity... Like we'd like nothing better than to shove a shit pie in T. Boone Picken's face! And by the bye, Soupy Sales, speaking of pies in the face, is dead and gone!

Soupy near the end--he had a bad heart. This photo from a Rick Saphire release saying the National Enquirer was full of shit when it reported that Soupy was half dead already. Rick went on to say Soupy was doing just fine and was back on the circuit wowing 'em dead with his wacky humor. I never thought Soupy was funny--but then I'm not old enough to remember him as a kiddie show host.

The following is from a Rick Saphire press release issued in October 2008, ironically almost exactly one year before old Soup left the mortal coil.

Soupy's heart problem was diagnosed years ago, and is under control. He is mostly confined to a wheelchair due to a Parkinson's type condition that he has had for a very long time. But none of these health issues have taken away Soupy's smile and his ability to meet and greet his fans"

Rick Saphire has known Soupy Sales for 43 years, and has represented the star for personal appearances for a decade. Saphire reports that Soupy Sales has a full schedule of appearances booked well into 2009, and he expects to make it to each and every one.

It's too bad we all have to go some time.

austinhighchew (managing editor)
for The Daily Growler

Living in New York City--in an Embalming Solitude

foto by tgw, "the moon way out over Jersey," new york city, 2005.
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Sitting Here Thinking
I'm deep in thought in the deepest part of a New York City night. The air is still. The calm is embalming. Where my room is, at the back of a building, I look out my windows over Broadway, and that to one's thinking should be a view containing much cacophony as its soundtrack; yet, in this deep part of this New York City night, it is graveyard quiet, conducive to thinking, which I'm sitting here doing.

I've just come off one of my fav sites, wood s lot--a site so full of brilliant creations I sometimes rebel at the temptation of checking it out for fear something so intellectually beyond me will bite my ass and poison me to my own creative endeavors. I'm especially afraid of the photographs MW takes himself or plucks out of Internet-space. They are sometimes so awesome they do combat with my own theories of photography (out of my oval of vision) and roar against my humble attempts at photographing my urban life from local rooftops. Some of these photographs cause me to want to whirl myself and my old camera off the highest of these roofs around me, my suicide note being the images I capture as I'm falling off the edge of my world.

Three days ago now, wood s lot featured the photography of Lisette Model. I had totally lost track of Lisette Model even in my vaguest memories.

Lisette Model was born Elise Stern (her father who molested her changed the name later to Seyberg) into a privileged upbringing among Vienna's Austro-Hungarian hoi-poloi (her father was a physician to the royal family)--private tutors, learning three languages fluently--at 19, she became so accomplished a musician she studied with Arnold Schoenberg. She took up photography because of her younger sister who became a professional photographer before she did. She also studied painting in Paris, but photography took over her life and soon she was doing magazine photography for big French fashion magazines and then, on and on her fame as a fashion and style photographer went on and she made big bucks and was recognized the world over.

Suddenly seeing Lisette Model staring back at me through the lens of her camera I was taken back to an old book of photographs that used to be out on a table among other "picture" books in my grandmother's Carnegie Library. Every time I was down at her library, and that was quite a bit, my mother using my grandmother and the library as a babysitter (my brother wrote a book about growing up with a library in your family), I immediately went to that book and started "longing" my way through it photograph by photograph--especially fascinated by the photographs of Manhattan in that book--especially those by Berenice Abbott BUT also more especially with those shot by Lisette Model. She had moved to New York City in the late 1930s and stayed here until her death in 1983. It was her storefront photographs she shot in Manhattan, street-level sidewalk shots (she also took high-floor and rooftop shots, too) that really attracted me. My favorite of hers in that old book of B/W photos was "Two Singers in Sammy's Bar," very, very Manhattan to me even then, very Manhattan and Manhattan calling me through these photos. Remember, I was primed for coming to New York from a young age because I had a step-grandfather who was a native of New York City and who was like the New Yorker he was constantly bragging to us Texas hicks about the wonders, marvels, and overwhelming aspects of Manhattan, of all the boroughs. He claimed he'd been the chief electrician during the construction of the Empire State Building in 1931 and he had a certificate claiming him as such from the Empire State Corporation and signed by old Al Smith, one of my Catholic step-grandfather's heroes, the former Governor of New York who made the tune "The Sidewalks of New York" the city's anthem almost up until someone decided Frank Sinatra, a Jerseyite by birth, singing "New York, New York" became the city song kicking "The Sidewalks of New York" off the sidewalks of New York and into the gutter of washed away memories. And from my step-grandfather's tales I knew all about all the different famous bars and pubs and drinking establishments in New York City and "Two Singers at Sammy's Bar" stuck in my craw as the real NYC--plus, the man on the right looks a lot like my step-grandfather, who did wear boutonnieres in his lapels when he dressed up.

Lisette Model, "Two Singers at Sammy's Bar," NYC, 1940 (courtesy Addison Gallery, Andover, Mass.).
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Lisette Model, self-portrait

It was those many Lisette Model images of New York City that I now recall as having been a cataclysmic factor in turning my future desires toward this great city--it becoming a bull's-eye I fine-tuned my narrowest aim at--eventually hitting my target in 1969, after traipsing about the US, Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala, Venezuela, Colombia (the banks of the Amazon), Trinidad & Tobago, Florida, California (as if Fla. and Calif. weren't a part of the US), British Columbia, looking for a home.
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Berenice Abbott, Herald Square (34th and Broadway), 1936.

Lisette Model after coming to New York City became friends with Berenice Abbott who took the above photograph of my neighborhood way back before I was born. Berenice Abbott, like myself, liked photographing from building tops; in fact, at one time she had an apartment high up among the gargoyles she photographed atop the stainless-steel Chrysler Building, briefly the world's tallest building until the Empire State Building out stretched it in the competitive race of architects to eventually build a building that will successfully reach outer space in close proximity to the corporate-Power Elite heaven--that closed community of hi-heaven-rise luxury penthouses in some fabulous sky.

I tried to read some of the writings in wood s lot --in particular one on Neo-Marxist architecture and the Situationists by a man named Lebbeus Woods (why didn't my mother name me a cool name like Lebbeus?--Lebbeus Wolfe--how would you like to be named Growling?) but I ran aground. Here's an example from that piece, a la wood s lot :

New Babylon was inspired by and contributed to the work of the Situationists, a group of intellectuals, theorists and writers, as well as artists who were anything but Modernists in the classic capitalist mold. They were inspired by the irrational forms and practices of Dada and Surrealism, and were what we can could call neo -Marxists, meaning inspired by Marx’s vision of revolutionary socialism but seeking to use the capitalist system to achieve their ends. GuyDebord and others invented tactics such as derive, psychogeographie, and detournment, which seized upon then subverted capitalist notions to develop radical ways of living that were to culminate in revolution (Archigram first heard of these through Constant’s lecture, no doubt). Constant joined the Situationists early on and became their architect, much the same as Antonio Sant ’Elia had done with the Futurists, half a century before. The spaces of New Babylon were intended to be spaces of disorientation and of reorientation, from rational, functionalist society to one that is liberated and self-inventing. It was meant to replace capitalist exploitation of human labor and emotion with anarchist celebration of them. Its architecture was to provide a complex armature on which could be woven endlessly new, unpredictably personal urban experiences, determined by ever-changing individual desires. In the end, however, the architecture of the New Babylon seemed to overwhelm such playful, radical spontaneity by its sheer weight and monumental scale.

Whooo boy, as interesting as Lebbeus's introducing us to these beautiful dreamers, their dreamstates, and the thinking they did in those dreamstates at some soon point it got too deep for me. Lebbeus's relating his own experiences with men named Peter Cook and Mike Webb and relating those men to the architect Constant Nieuwenhuys and relating all of these men back to the 50s and 60s, a time of my attempting to be a Renaissance person, a time that is major in my time, on my time line, along my bee time vine, pissing my omniscient self off because for the life of me I've never heard of these dudes, the New Babylon project, Archigram, Constant Nieuwenhuys, or the architecture of Nothing. As much as I'm impressed by these guys, I don't have time to wade into their pool of dreams. I don't have time to investigate and sentimentalize over forgotten intellectuals, theorists, writers, as well as artists. Lebbeus mentions the Futurists, and that triggers in my mind my adventures as a Renaissance child and a brief fascination with the Futurists, fascinated first by F. Marinetti (the manifesto-writing king of all time), then by the composer Luigi Russolo, and the off-the-wall Umberto Boccioni. I joined them in their hatred of the past but not necessarily in their idolization of the future, especially the future of the machine and the mechanized society, a future that in a childish way frightened me--a technical world of automatonic rulers. And Luigi Russolo wrote music based on the sounds of machines--and George Anthiel the expatriate American in Paris wrote his famous Ballet Mechanique that is still to this day to me an amazing piece of American music, long now, I assume, lost in the deep woods of a really recent but quickly getting-fogbound past. So, you see, I've already lived through that and intellectualized on that. I began laboring trying to read Lebbeus's piece, and I suppose it's a well-written piece, and I'm sure Peter Cook and Mike Webb are smartass-interesting anarchists, but suddenly it all bored me--I had so heard it all before--and I returned to looking at Lisette Model's marvelous photographs.

The words MW was republishing weren't as impressive to me as those photographs. Let me add here that MW (the wood s lot proprietor) is a pretty good photographer himself--getting better and better in terms of his perspectives every time I check his stuff out.

I learned photography from my late best friend who had a great knowledge of cameras and how they worked and the wonders that could be created using them and who was a really great teacher of photography. I didn't "learn" photography as a student of his, I learned it from being with him so damn much, absorbing it from him as we bon vivanted around Manhattan, watching him always looking for "photographic perspectives."

Once we were walking up 6th Avenue (toward Central Park) when he suddenly stopped and said, "Look up there on your right at where those buildings join...up there, see?" I followed his finger to where it was pointing. "Tell me, do you see a photograph up there anywhere?" I said no. He said, "Look at that top shadow up there...see it?" Suddenly, yes, I saw that top shadow and, yes, I saw what he was trying to teach me, I saw the photograph--that shadow did look like the shadow of a bird--an architectural bird, as though the shadow was part of the building's canvas on which the sun had painted it. That's how I learned photography. I learned photography--what I didn't learn was the camera, using the camera manually, you know, knowing all about it, how it works, what it can do with different size lenses, and filters, and what it can do with distances or with close ups. That I didn't learn. Besides, my friend spent thousands of dollars on his cameras--he had 2 Nikons and one Hasselblad...I know the Hasselblad cost him over 5 grand. I didn't have that kind of money to buy that kind of equipment. Besides, he worked for Time, Inc., and had access to film and processing and bullshitting with some of the greatest photographers in New York City and the world at that time. He was close friends with Roy DeCarava and Gordon Parks--I met DeCarava through him and have a signed book of his, signed to me, while I was standing in front of him, to prove it.

I argued photography with my friend sometimes--I'd say, "Now say you set your camera up focused on a subject and while your back's turned a baby crawls up and accidentally sets off the shutter on your camera and it shoots and leaves you with a shot! Who gets credit as the photographer on that shot? You or the baby?" To which he quickly responded, "Me, I'm the photographer since I'm the one who set up the camera on the subject. It was my EYE that produced the photograph. The baby merely operated the camera. It doesn't matter who takes the picture. Look at all the people around us 24/7 shooting pictures--look over there, that guy's taking pictures now, yet those people aren't taking photographs because they don't have photographic perspectives in their mind's eye when they focus on what they think is an object worthy of taking a picture of...." And we would argue off into long nights into early dawns, one time going up on the highest walkway of the 59th Street Bridge at the crack of dawn, me with my notebook to write spontaneous poetry as the sun came up and he shooting away with his Hasselblad like a wildman--with my friend suddenly saying, "My photographs are my poetry."

thegrowlingLEBBEUSwolf
for The Daily Growler
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READ ALL ABOUT HER, an article on The Daily Growler Official Pastor and Spiritual Adviser, Pastor Melissa Scott

www.marieclaire.com/world-reports/news/latest/melissa-scott-porn-pastor

It's All About Oil
a special report from our old curmudgeon reporter, Walter Crackpipe

While puffing on my pipe this morning I heard an interesting statement--you notice no men smoke pipes anymore? I suppose it has to do with cancer but since when were people who devoutly smoke worried about cancer? As one of thegrowlingwolf's ex-wives said, "I'd rather risk cancer than do without my Salems." Needless to say, since The Daily Growler is a fun place for the tongue-in-cheek, sarcasm, vulgar insinuation and accusation, bad attitude, and glorification of ironies and parallel-line persuasions and dissuasions, that wife died of lung and throat cancer at age 59. They said, however, no matter how she suffered, she died with a satisfactory smile on her face and they said as she was being cremated the crackling of her fats as she was cooked away were like she was laughing at the fire like she had laughed in the face of those who always pestered her with "you know you'll die of cancer if you keep smoking those Salems." And I agree, one must risk death in order to truly enjoy life--life that is getting harder and harder to survive given the direction OIL is taking us--the fires of Gehenna and Hell or Hades or whatever you wish to call the core of the earth are surely fueled by oil--"Earl" as old Texas folk types used to call it.

What I was listening to while puffing on my pipe this morning, was T. Boone Pickens, that scoundrel, giving a speech before some oil and gas tycoons (all so fucking cowboy rich they have no idea of anything except their own utopias--utopias where they control the power, the energy, the OIL). In this speech, old dumb Amarillo, Texas, high plains crooked oil man hick, T. Boone, said it was his opinion that by God, We the People of T. Boone Pickins's USA had the right by God to ALL of Iraq's oil, those sorry bastards. We had the right to ALL their oil because by God 3,000 Americans died because of those sand monkeys perpetrating 9/11 on us, that wonderful oil empire day of reckless glee--remember after 9/11 how oil prices shot from 35 bucks a barrel to over 200 dollars a barrel? As a result, Exxon-Mobil's profits set world records. Chevron's profits went through the roof. Conoco-Phillips (the Continental Oil Company merging with Phillips Petroleum of Bartlesville, Oklahoma) profits zoomed up past supernatural roofs.

Well, hell, Mel, T. Boone has at last admitted we were in Iraq for that OIL. Oh hell, how quickly we'd forgotten that. We stupid liberals believed we were in Iraq because Madman Saddam Hussein (pronounced "Sad-Dam Hoosane" by Pappy Bush) had tried to kill our ex-faux president's old daddy. Now T. Boone is telling us dammit we were there to revenge the 3,000 who died in the 9/11 military attack on the WTC and the 4,000 brave American soldiers who sacrificed their lives to revenge 9/11 and to teach militant A-rabbs (how T. Boone pronounces "Arabs") a lesson. Those A-rabbs who didn't lay down their bodies in the streets of Baghdad so the US Army could roll their "Mission Accomplished" forces with relative ease into Baghdad to pull down that statue of The Butcher of Baghdad so that the Iraqis in unfettered joy could throw rose petals at the revenging US troops so they could go victoriously immediately to secure the perimeters of the Iraq oilfields and begin the construction of the George W. Bush International Airport (I wonder if it's still called that?)--oh, you had forgotten about the George W. Bush International Airport? How about the name Chalabi? Does that name ring a bell?

So T. Boone says, dammit, that's OUR oil, fuck the Iraqis, fuck the Kurds, fuck Turkey, fuck Iran.

Think about this. How did the Bush Family Empire get so rich? How did the Rockefellers get so rich? Why is John D. Rockefeller III the Governor of West Virginia; what's a New York City, Ivy-League-trained rich brat son of Nelson "Who Died With a Smile on his Face and His Dick Hanging Out of His Tailor-Made Pants" Rockefeller doing in a hayseed state like West Virginia? How did Unka Dick Cheney get so fucking rich? How did the Halliburtons, a hick Oklahoma family, get so fucking rich? How did Messrs. Kellogg, Brown, and Root (KBR) of Houston, Texas, get so rich? How did the State of Alaska get so rich? How did Greek geeks like Onassis and John Negroponte's father get so rich?

Recently just over the Pakistan border in Iran there was a suicide bombing that killed 5 high-ranking Revolutionary Guard Iranian military commanders. The people who took proud credit for the bomb that killed these five military dudes and 35 nobodies who were there curious as to what was going on were a Sunni anti-Shiite group calling themselves Jundullah, which means "Soldiers of God" (God-damn, if we could just get rid of these gods!). These soldiers of God are intent upon disrupting things in the Iranian province of Sistan-Baluchestan. Right across the border from Balochistan in Pakistan. Never heard of this Balochistan and the Baloch people? Take a guess at why they are so important in our current failing in our invasion and occupation of Afghanistan? Asking yourself, too, as you read this, why did we invade and try to occupy Afghanistan when they had nothing to do with 9/11? Why have we been interfering through Pakistan in this Khyber Pass region of Pakistan-Afghanistan-Iran in the region's politics and warfare since back in the Reagan days? Well, here you go, have a read:

Balochistan is in the southwest portion of Pakistan and borders Iran, Afghanistan, and India. The province is rich in oil & natural gas and its mostly 800 miles of underdeveloped coastline is flush with an abundance of ocean resources. A portion of Balochistan resides in Iran and is known as "Sistan and Balochestan", an Iranian province bordering on the Sea of Oman and Afghanistan and Pakistan. It is Iran's poorest province and is home to roughly 400,000 people. Could the US and Iran find some common ground for an independent Balochistan? Why not link the issue to current US and Iranian grievances with each other? Perhaps Iran cedes some territory for US concessions and economic aid. Once the troublesome Pakistani military is out of Balochistan on the Pakistan side, and the Baloch become independent and negotiate fair treatment for their people, and worthy prices for their land and resources, the Baloch might agree to stop attacking commercial interests.

The Baloch view themselves as an occupied territory and have done so since March 27, 1948 when the Pakistanis invaded Balochistan. Quoting Dr. Wahid Baloch, "Balochistan was a free sovereign independent state with its own parliament, the Dar-ul Awaam, the House of Commons, and Dar-ul Umraa, House of Lords. Soon after the creation of Pakistan, Pakistan invaded Balochistan and forcefully annexed it into Pakistan. From 1977-2005, Pakistan continues its crime against the Baloch people. Thousands of Baloch political activists and students have been arrested and are being tortured in secret jails. Many are missing, including Dr. Allah Nazar Baloch, Goher Baloch and Akther Nadeem Baloch. Pakistani military, paramilitary and security forces are given the task to arrest, kidnap or kill any Baloch who talks or thinks about freedom. More than 600 military check [points] have been established all over Balochistan to control the activities and movements of the Baloch people.

There are 60,000 Pakistani troops stationed in Balochistan and more are on the way. Balochistan has been turned into a military occupied war zone. Baloch people are living in fear and in hopelessness. They are desperately looking to the world community...for their help and rescue against the tyranny of Pakistani and Iranian regimes."

Do you smell the oil in the above? Do you smell the oil in all the conflicts we are involved in around the world at the moment? It's the real reason we are trying to occupy and rule over Iraq and Afghanistan. It's the real reason we have a military base in Uzbekistan, an Islamic nation under a ruthless dictator. It's the reason Russia recently made an invasion into the Republic of Georgia; it's the reason we are the backers of the regime currently ruling over Georgia; it's the reason we pump (a good word for this, too) billions of dollars into the Georgia economy; it's the reason we need Georgia to be on our side; it's the reason we are agitating back and forth with Iran (whose sovereignty the US and Britain have been violating since it began; the same could be said about the sovereignty of Iraq); it's the reason we kiss the big, fat asses of the Royal Families of Saudi-Arabia, the Arab Emirates, Dubai, hey, remember, the new home of Hallitburton, which means these oily bastards can now credit all of the billions of profits they ripped off We the People with their Iraq War contracts to their Dubai bank account and they don't have to pay one dime in taxes back to We the People since it does not appear on their USA books. The IRS knows about these corporations pulling this shifty shit--like WalMart incorporating in Communist China as WalMart-China and beating us not only out of tax money but trade dollars, too, but they claim their hands are tied to do anything to prosecute these big corps without Congress passing laws dealing with these many creative accounting schemes promoted by management consulting firms like Price Waterhouse-Coopers (poor old Lybrand got shafted in the merger). You know, one of the reasons we're so pro-Israel is because of oil and Israel having a Red Sea port--why Israel is so determined to keep the Gaza Strip in ruin because otherwise that Israeli seaport would be in Palestinian/Egyptian territory. And why is that seaport so important? Because it's going to be the terminal for the pipeline that will soon run down from the Iraq oilfields through Israel to that Red Sea port at Eilat, or Umm Rashrash in Arabic.

The Obama Administration is currently considering opening up drilling in Alaska in one of the remotest parts of the world, a wilderness area still abundant with fish, whales, sea lions, walruses, moose, elk, polar bears, Native Alaskans--totally unspoiled, a scene that pains an oil executive to look at. So painful, these oil execs are prodding the Obama administration to give them the right to drill right in the smack-dab middle of this last-wilderness-paradise on earth. Conoco-Phillips, British Petroleum, and Shell Oil support the State of Alaska and all the renegade Whites who invaded it and occupied it for its gold back then; these same White assholes (Sarah Palin's honky relatives) now want to drill the hell out of it for its oil. Fuck the animals. Fuck the fucking Eskimos--Sarah Palin calls them "our native people"--fuck the world's future--these greedy "get it while you can" bastards who already have world-record profits but who are constantly driven by their obedience to the profit motives of Capitalism to the point they, like a mentally disturbed dude who likes to molest and rape children or serially kill innocent young women, molest and rape Mother Earth, especially in the sacred places of North America's true indigenous people--all for OIL.

The Power Elite in this country knows how wealthy it can get off OIL and WAR--most of our WARS since the British Empire started to collapse have been fought over OIL in some fashion or another. Remember that movie, "Oil for the Lamps of China"? Watch that old movie "Boomtown," too, filmed on location in the oilfields around and on the streets of the oil boom town of Burkburnet, Texas, and it will show you the Hollywood glamorized but truth about how ruthless oilmen are and how crooked and deceiving they are, especially in the way they treated the Native Americans in that oil rush that happened in Oklahoma Indian Territory right about the time Oklahoma was suddenly said to deserve statehood (1907) and Tulsa became the oil capital of the world and those are the same oil and gas fields T. Boone Pickens would make his fortune off of.

OIL. We are addicted to oil. Even little pissant G.W. Bush admitted that and he should know--remember his old Pappy gave him and one of his Saudi-Arabian brothers an oil company to ruin, which they did, G.W. Bush coming out OK, but his Saudi-Arabian brother not, found dead one day with his head blown off and a shotgun conveniently placed nearby. Oilmen love guns, by the way. A Texas oilman, Amon Carter, got so rich, he built museums to himself all over Fort Worth, Texas, Cowtown as it used to be called. He also had a fabulous coin and stamp collection. Oh yeah, and a lot of fine art and antique automobiles. Nelson Rockefeller, whose wealth came from OIL, built a museum to hold his fine art collection; plus the Rockefeller family had a big garage full of antique cars up on their Bedford Hills estate. J Paul Getty, a Louisiana oilman, built a museum for his art collection in L.A. Look on the doors over museums--there's usually a rich oil man's name up there.

Think OIL. You're sacrificing everything for it!

waltercrackpipe
for The Daily Growler

Living in New York City Amidst Ironies Galore

foto by tgw, "on a Sunday morning," New York City, 2006.
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Another Repugnican Sunday
I very seldom watch teevee on Sunday mornings. Too much bullshit for me. I did leave my teevee on last night after I watched the Yankees and Angels play 13 innings into past the midnight hour, one of the best baseball games ever, great pitching, great strategic mishmash by both managers, and great clutch hitting. The Yankees are an awesome hitting team this year. That is how they had a rather easy season in the American League. So the Yankees pulled it out of the fire in the 13th. The temperature was in the low 40s, not conducive to baseball; then in the 10th inning it started to rain, big baseball-size drops of rain flooding straight down onto the players out of that Bronx sky--drops so big on pop flies or high flies the players had trouble distinguishing the ball from the raindrops. It was 3-3 when the bottom of the 13th inning started. Fuentes, the best closer, even better than Mariano Rivera, in the American League this year, was pitching. Up to bat came Jerry Hairston, Jr.--I had no idea he was still a viable player--and Hairston, Jr., got a base hit.

One thing about this year's Yankees I noticed: there are tons of new names on the team--yes so same-old regulars but new names are everywhere: Mark Texiera, the former Angel, at first base; Nick Swisher in the outfield; Brett Gardner in the outfield; Felix Guzman and Jerry Hairston, Jr. in utility roles; pitchers who even now I can't remember their names, one I remember a wonderkin from the Mexican League that Brian Cashman, one of the worst general managers in baseball, heard of and went down to Monterey and signed and who had a phenomenal year as a middle-inning reliever and closer, amassing a 10-1 record this year--he didn't look so hot last night.

I have kept up with the Yankees rather vaguely this year, truth being I haven't watched any of their games completely. I remain pissed about how they treated Joe Torre, still the best manager in modern baseball--and even now I'm thinking, hell, if you'd a'fixed Joe up with this team you've bought Joe Gerardi, hell, Joe Torre would have won the pennant going away, too; even I if I had been given that managerial job could have taken this year's Yankees to the World Series, they are that awesome a'baseball team.

So in the bottom of the 13th inning, Jerry Hairston, Jr., led off with a single, then going to second on a Brett Gardner sacrifice bunt. Then Ervin Santana walked Cano and Melky Cabrera came up. The Melkman hit a blistering grounder to the Angels's second baseman, Izturis, who in a fit of showboat fever threw the ball to second base instead of getting the easy out at first. As a result, this showboater threw the ball away, past the short stop, dribbling across to third baseman Chone Figgins who immediately started bobbling the ball. Jerry Hairston, Jr., made it to third easy, slowed down, and then as soon as he saw Figgins bobbling the ball trying to pick it up--Jerry went on home and made it by a mile. Game over, Yankees go two up. Now they move to L.A. for 3 games out there. At the same time, the Dodgers and the Phillies will be playing in L.A., too, over at Chavez Ravine (they don't call it that anymore do they?) while the Angels will be out near DisneyLand in Anaheim where they changed their names from the California Angels to the Anaheim Angels, though everybody calls them the L.A. Angels.

It was a great baseball game and nothing makes me more satisfied than a well-played, well-pitched, extra-inning baseball game. I was exhausted after it was over but couldn't sleep--wide awake until BAM, I passed out.

I didn't get to sleep until 4; I passed out with the teevee still on.

I woke up this morn at 10:30 and someone blabbing on the teevee was irritating me in the haze of just waking up. A voice, a male voice, was irking me. I popped fully awake and was staring right into the face of a man I truly despise, George Will. I started to immediately flip the channels to rid myself of his ugly White ass when he stopped me in my tracks. "The Republicans," Will was saying, "are going to be swept back into office in 2010...blah, blah, blah..." and then he casually refers to a poll recently taken [no references as to just which poll it was; such references are never given on heresay teevee (teevee talks shows, even their "serious" newscasts are really just gossip shows))] showed the Republicans now were 50-50 even-steven with the Dumbocrats in terms of popularity with more and more indications [again no indications referenced] that the American people are now favoring Republicans and Republican ideas over those of our first Black president's ideas (as though Obama's ideas aren't those of the Dumbocrat Party but his alone). [I say fuck references, too. Opinions don't have to be referenced.] Then the other Republican assholes on the panel began to pop in their right-wing agreements with Will--I have no idea what program it was--it was for sure on the Mickey Mouse Channel, ABC, a Disney-owned network that must kowtow to the idiotic right-wing comic-strip politics of old "frozen in time" Walt Disney.

First of all, let me say, George Will's opinions on anything are idiocies. For instance, he promotes himself as a baseball expert and has even written a book on baseball--a piece of asswipe compared to a real baseball book like The Boys of Summer by a real baseball fan and excellent writer, Roger Kahn. George Will's knowledge of baseball is baloney! George Will's a bowtie-wearing cretin. A big-time racist who I'm sure is scared to death of Black people. And all of this came forth from the frothing at the mouth of a madman...when the Black idiot on this show abruptly changed the subject and brought up Rush Limpballs name and then qualified that by spotting on Rush Limpballs being rebuffed by pro football brass in his effort to buy a pro football franchise because of remarks he made a few years back about Donovan McNabb and Black players in general. This Black right-winger-dinger guy said, "Hey, man, yeah, Rush Limpballs is a racist, but, hell, he has the right in this country to say what he believes and, hell, if he believes Black football players aren't what they're cracked up to be then he has the right to say that...." The big issue was, does the NFL and AFL have the right to deny someone from buying an NFL or AFL franchise.

As I listened to this, I got to thinking back to another time, the late 1960s. Then as now we were bogged down in a winless war. We were bogged down in a winless war due to lies. White lies. And we all know, at least those of us who are White know it, that White Lies are OK lies. Why everyone of us is guilty of telling "little" White Lies...but, hey, come on, even big White Lies are one of the privileges you get when you're Free, White, and 21. You get to lie about everything you're up to, especially when you get caught red handed--then you become all White and start hollering, "I Deny, Deny, Deny," that being the White Liar's motto.

Now there's nothing that works a White man into a frenzy like Black Truths, which the White Liar would, of course, call Black Lies in his snideness (a la Limpballs). What are Black Truths? One is that this Land of the Free and Home of the Brave is a White Racist nation. Another Black Truth is that most police forces in this country are racists. You catch my drift? [I say, "You catch my drift?" a lot. Did you ever wonder why? Figure it out. Remember, and I say that word a lot, too, I believe we are all trained to be tricky dogs (obedient to our masters's wills). When I was a kid, one X-mas I got a very small package. When I opened it up, I found a white box containing two magnetized plastic Scotch Terrier dogs, one white and one black, each mounted (with glue) to a little magnet. The name of the toy was Tricky Dogs. The game was you made out like you were a magician, you see. Like you took a metal tray and you showed one of the Tricky Dogs on the top of the tray before you. Then with took an abracadabra attitude and you waved your hands over that top dog and then you said, "I will now magically make this Tricky Dog move forward at my command." That was followed by more hand motions when you then commanded, "Tricky Dog, move forward." And under the tray where you had the other Tricky Dog, its magnet stuck to the above dog's magnet, you simply moved that dog forward and the above Tricky Dog moved forward as though by magic.]

We, all of us who call ourselves "Amuricans," get bogged down in White Lies to the point time passes and floods across us so fast, all we catch during a day are the White Lie headlines and soundbites, like: "America is winning the War in Afghanistan"; nurturing headlines, "The New England Journal of Medicine says a cure for cancer is right around the corner"; headlines of hope, "Treasury Sec'y Timothy Geithner says the recession is over; recovery is on the way"; headlines of faith, "Bill Gates and Warren Buffett combine fortunes to save the world and in doing so become gods."

White Lies tell us that PEACE is only possible via WAR. Black Truths tell us WAR is wrong: "Gonna lay down my burdens/Down by the riverside/Down by the riverside/Gonna lay down my burdens/Down by the riverside/Ain't gonna study war no more"; WAR has led to doom not salvation. White Lies tell us that our US Army is the richest (with the most money), the strongest (with weapons costings millions of dollars a piece), and the most righteous Army in the world (our Army has the Christian god on its side--they sing "Onward Christian Soldiers" as they march along--and in the Army, I guarantee you, any religion besides Christianity gets ridiculed or joked about--I remember when I was in the army even our Black captain made fun of the Jewish kids who were always bitching and moaning and studying military law and refusing to do anything on Saturdays. You see, the Christian troops had to face the biggest inspection of all time on Saturday mornings, inspections the Christians had to pass to get weekend liberty. As a result the Jews being strict in not working on the Sabbath never got a pass off base their whole time in basic training. And then when all the Christian boys were off in Saint Louis doing the yass, yass, yass, the Jews would have to do the KP, the guard duty, and stoke the coal furnaces down in the billet basement boiler rooms).

White Lies tell us we have the largest, wealthiest, and most profitable military in the world and as such we are invincible against the evil darknesses of the world. White Lies tell us that anything Black is evil (you notice the "terrorists" all wear black uniforms and black hoods). Black Truths tell us White is evil. White Lies tell us that Blacks are shiftless, smelly, less intelligent than Whites, and cursed to the servant class by the big White God of the all-White Christian-Judaic Pantheon. Black Truths tell a different story. Black Truths even see God as a totally different character than the All-White God, the mighty Yahweh, that White Lies teach us is the true God, our creator, who created us in HIS image, so Blacks can't be considered creations of God--because Ham was once White, you see...oh shit, come on, it's such a bullshit tale--who could possibly believe it, except maybe hundreds of thousands of born-again fundie Christian freaks like those who follow the voodoo racist and race horse breeder Pat Robertson or those hillbillies and hicks who bounded after that old swindler trickster, Oral Roberts (another Robertson), who is still alive around 90 and living like a duke out in sunny California, God still shoveling down all those tax-free greenbacks on his old anal self. However, bad news, I just read t'other day where old Oral had to bankrupt his miracle God-overseered medical center--that fifty-story skyscraper sitting out on the open prairie overwhelming the skyline of downtown Tulsa, Oklahoma, due to the damn thing going broke. Old Oral built that hospital with a bunch of millions of tax-free God dollars saying it was gonna be a place where God could show off his healing powers; where cancers and heart problems and liver and kidney diseases and bad backs and flat feet would be healed by the finest Christian doctors who while they operated on the sick and weary will be calling on God to guide their hands--Praise the Lordy Lord and pass me some of that fried chicken and a few of those fat biscuits and some of that white gravy! God let Oral down--maybe because Oral's worthless son's wife was jacking off a dorm-full of young Christian boys early in the mornings there for awhile while her husband was cookin' the books inside the ORU presidential suite--anyway, whatever, God let 'em down and they went broke. Could it be there is no God, you dumb asses!

Oral could have built hundreds of clinics among the poor neighborhoods of Oklahoma and have saved hundreds upon hundreds of lives that way, but oh no, selling God is more profitable--you know in building that hospital, old Oral ripped off several million for God's retirement plan for Oral. Yep, he's living very well thank you out in sunny California.

As to Rush Limpballs owning a football team? Who gives a shit? Most pro-athletic-team owners are White male racists--the gender exception being Cincinnati's late owner, Marge Schott; remember her? So let him join some of his biggest fans and own a pro team. Hell, let him make his team an exclusive White team. Watch how fast old Rush does a flip-flop and starts recruiting Black players after his all-White team makes a complete fool of itself. Remember Donald Trump's leisure class attempt at owning his own pro football league? Also, remember when Rasslin's infamous Vince McMahon, Jr. (he inherited his empire from his old racist, crooked-ass daddy, Vince McMahon, Sr.), tried to own his own football league, too? And old Rush has more money than he needs and he has tons of leisure time and he's just itchin' to do some conspicuous consumption, so why not let him dribble away a few million of his easy-made fortune on his own football team? Let him name them the Conservatives! Or how about he puts that franchise in Pulaski, Tennessee, and calls them the Klansmen! I'm sure there would eventually be some Black kids who would sign with the Klansmen when they realized the all-White concept just doesn't work--you need some Darkies on that team--hey, Rush, you could call your team The Darkie Dunkers! Or how about the Deadskins!

After I left George Will and his racist pals tearing down President Obama's agendas as antiRepublican therefore antiAmerican, I tuned back onto to the Mickey Mouse channel at 12 noon and watched Gil Noble's (a purveyor of Black Truths) Like It Is program (a program of Black Truths) and damned if Gil wasn't appropriately airing a program he did in 1991 that was a compendium of Martin Luther King speeches aimed at uncovering White Lies, some of which he uncovered brilliantly in a speech he gave before the New Politics Convention in Chicago in 1967. In that speech, he particularly spells out several ironies regarding Whites's treatment of Blacks in this White nation. For instance, how the USA had a surplus of food (at the time, yes) and, yet, rather than building food-distribution centers in foreign countries where people were starving to death and we could do some good, we built military bases instead. Also he spoke about how in this country Whites promote Socialism for the rich but Capitalism for the poor. King's speech talked about this as the origin of the White philosophy of "pulling yourself up by your bootstraps," especially blowing off helping hard-up folks and telling them to get the fuck off the hand-out line and go somewhere and help their fucking selves by pulling themselves up by their bootstraps or get the hell out of the country--"Go back where you all came from," Whites shout at Mexicans (here in New York City recently there have been several recent racial attacks on Mexican me, one out in Queens this week who was beaten to death in front of his home by five or six men shouting racial slurs at him), Haitians, Puerto Ricans, Indians, Southeast Asians, Chinese...Afro-Americans--aha, Blacks have finally found a name they seem to find enhancing rather than dejecting. And then look what we do to Native Americans. Most of our education, culture, whatever totally ignores Native Americans--even Black commentators ignore Native American poverty--a poverty that is rampant on the reservations, even those with gambling casinos and tax-free cigarettes and especially those reservations who have no casinos. Imagine, the White Power Elite still forces our indigenous people to live on reservations. When I lived in Santa Fe, New Mexico, I saw first hand how Native Americans living on reservations were treated. One bar I played the piano in had a Native American bartender. This dude had to get permission from his Tribe to go off reservation and work and then he had to be back on the reservation at a certain time or the gates would be locked and he'd have to sleep in his car and then in the morning they'd let him in but fine him for being back to reservation after the gates were closed. All a part of the principles of our White Bureau of Indian Affairs who have always run the reservations like military and missionary camps.

Native American Leonard Peltier still sits rotting in prison over the FBI accusing him of shooting and killing two FBI agents at the Battle of Wounded Knee (remember that?). The FBI agents were surely shooting at Leonard Peltier and the men returning the Feds fire with with intentions of killing them.

Remember, White people gave the Native Americans likker (fire water) and then when they drank it and got drunk, the same as White people, they were tagged alcoholics and crazies--"Why them Redskins jest kain't hold thar likker, can they?" The White man also introduced Native Americans to firearms (rifles) and then when they turned those rifles on the White man, he branded them murdering savages! The White man in his Christ-like benevolence gave the Native Americans wool blankets--that they were laced with yellow fever, diptheria, typhoid, that sort of stuff--oh well, the White Lie said it was an effort to make them resistant to those diseases, that's all. Hey, that's just a little White Lie--and we all tell little White lies with impunity--what the hey!

The hypocrites still rule us. George Will. Rush Limpballs. Bill "Shanty Irish" O'Reilly (an American Irish, the worst kind of Irishman believe it or not--even Irish Irish are ashamed of their American cousins). This new bitch on the block, Michelle Bachmann, a Nazi name, a Nazi thinker. She hates Obama--which to me is a form of Black penis envy (except since he's half-White he may have inherited a White penis). Or this other woman fool, this Ann Coulter. I ignore them; I find them way beneath my dignity and intelligence. Yet the White Lie says they are very intelligent and have to be listened to because they are very popular and commercially successful.

One thing I have against The Daily Howler--he wastes a lot of his cool-breeze intelligence trying to educate us "liberals" as to how these clowns are hoaxing us and making us look like fools. Check out the complete definition of "liberal":

lib·er·al (lbr-l, lbrl)

adj.

1.

a. Not limited to or by established, traditional, orthodox, or authoritarian attitudes, views, or dogmas; free from bigotry.

b. Favoring proposals for reform, open to new ideas for progress, and tolerant of the ideas and behavior of others; broad-minded.

c. Of, relating to, or characteristic of liberalism.

d. Liberal Of, designating, or characteristic of a political party founded on or associated with principles of social and political liberalism, especially in Great Britain, Canada, and the United States.

2.

a. Tending to give freely; generous: a liberal benefactor.

b. Generous in amount; ample: a liberal serving of potatoes.

3. Not strict or literal; loose or approximate: a liberal translation.

4. Of, relating to, or based on the traditional arts and sciences of a college or university curriculum: a liberal education.

5.

a. Archaic Permissible or appropriate for a person of free birth; befitting a lady or gentleman.

b. Obsolete Morally unrestrained; licentious.

n.

1. A person with liberal ideas or opinions.

2. Liberal A member of a Liberal political party.

---

[Middle English, generous, from Old French, from Latin lberlis, from lber, free; see leudh- in Indo-European roots.]

---

liber·al·ly adv.

liber·al·ness n.

Synonyms: liberal, bounteous, bountiful, freehanded, generous, handsome, munificent, openhanded
These adjectives mean willing or marked by a willingness to give unstintingly: a liberal backer of the arts; a bounteous feast; bountiful compliments; a freehanded host; a generous donation; a handsome offer; a munificent gift; fond and openhanded grandparents. See Also Synonyms at broad-minded.

Antonym: stingy

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition copyright ©2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2009. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

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Look at those definitions. What the hell is so wrong with being a Liberal of any kind? I know what the Howler's saying--Liberals are their own worst enemies. My argument would be most politicians wouldn't dare admit to being Liberals--main reason, because the Republicans managed to drag that word from its true definition to one that made Liberals sissies, "reds," "commies," "Socialists," queer lovers, nigger lovers, weak, eager to seek a relationship of giveaway with our enemies, providers of welfare to Blacks and Latinos and down-and-outers to the point "those people" (a euphemism for poor Blacks, Latinos, and the poor in general) become terribly lazy and who when they get their welfare checks blow them on Mercedes, big-screen teevees, and sitting around smoking dope and getting drunk all day (just like White people). That's why the Republicans so hated the Roosevelt New Deal and Truman's integrating the armed forces.

Martin Luther King, Jr., in his speech before that New Politics Convention in Chicago in 1967, said how ironic it was that Blacks went to WAR equal with Whites, but when they came home from those WARS, they were still lynched, and shot, jailed, beaten, denied employment, denied voting rights, forced to have to live in poverty, unable to drink at the same water fountains as our Lord's precious White people.

I, as a little tyke, went into the Union Bus Terminal in Saint Louis, Missouri, running ahead of my mother and aunt with whom I was traveling from my West Texas hometown to Philadelphia P-A to see my brother who was in the U.S. Navy there. We had a bus change in Saint Louis, so when I got off the bus there, I ran ahead of my mother and aunt and wandered into the building by myself and ending up in the Black waiting room. All train stations back in those recent Jim Crow days had separate waiting rooms for Whites and Blacks--in my hometown station, the "Colored Waiting Room" was one half of the baggage room. I had no fear of Black people as a little White boy. I had ridden all the way from West Texas to Saint Louis on that Continental Trailways bus sitting on the back seat with a whole bunch of large Black women who kept me entertained (Whites expect Blacks to entertain them) and who treated me to treats like pieces of fried chicken and homemade moon pies and then cups of Mission oranges and Barq's root beers (kept cold in Thermos bottles), which they had in these big lunch baskets they carried along with them. So when I got to the Saint Louis Union Bus Terminal, I just naturally followed these Black women into the Black waiting room.

"Colored" was what Whites called Blacks in those days. If they called a colored man a Black man it was like calling him a Shoe Black or a Blackamoor or a Shine. The academically proper word Whites used for Blacks was Negro, from the Latin word niger for black.

My mother soon couldn't find me and she panicked and ran to find a White policeman. In the meantime, I had stepped up on the little kiddie box in front of a water fountain (in those days it was a porcelain bowl over which hung a silver-metal thing that spewed up a stream of water when you turned the metal faucet on the side of the porcelain bowl) and was getting me a cool drink of water when a White policeman came rushing into the room and came over and grabbed me off that box and started lecturing me. The Black people were all laughing and jivin' about "the little White boy drinkin' out'tha Colored water fountain. Po' little thing, don't know no difference to him...." The cop told me, as he dragged me back into the White waiting room and the arms of my worried mother, "White boys don't drink from the Colored fountains, boy. Niggers drink from those, boy. No tellin' what disease you jest got off that Colored fountain."

My mother thought she had lost me in the large, the huge, White waiting room. When the cop told her where I was, she laughed and said, "Oh my goodness," then she turned to me and said, "Were you with those Negro ladies we met on the bus?" and I said yes and then everything was alright as far as my mother was concerned. By the way, I didn't catch any disease.

Typical Repugnicans-Be-Praised Sunday Morning
It was simply just another Republican hoopla Sunday morning on commercial television. The White Lie is that the Disney Channel isn't racist. Haven't you ever noticed that Mickey Mouse is as black as the Ace of Spades?

How stupid all we human beings are. We deserve to be hoodwinked, robbed, chided into going into fields of death for some subjective vision put forth by some old, old White men who are trick-bagging the hell out of us, conserving us, keeping us ready to be enslaved...

Who's gonna pick dat cotton and tote dem bales in the coming Old Plantation future when you either join the military or head for the cottonfields in order to survive.

May I remind those of you who are out of work and the magpies are circling around your soon-to-be-foreclosed-on home, the government has plenty of jobs--like low-paid census takers who people hate and who people sometimes murder they hate them so--like abortion doctors are hated. You need a quick job, you may also could get a low-paying job at your local Post Office--even though did you read the other day where the Post Office is billions in the red. That's what privatization of government services leads to--a BROKE system, which will keep on raising its prices and cutting back on services once guaranteed us under the Constitution. When We the People owned the Post Office their motto said they were sworn to deliver the mail whenever in whatever condition--hell or high water. Of course, those were the days before eMail when writing letters to people or doing business by mail was the highest form of communication.

I'm tired. I'm going up and watch some of these atrociously vulgar and macabre CIS or Criminal Minds shows. I want to see a maddened male serial killer burying young screaming girls in an underground pit out in some woods...what inspiring moments those shows of vile murder give me--why in one of those CIS shows the other night, I saw a gunfight--on the Miami docks--where 4 FBI agents and a couple of Miami cops were killed along with about 8 demonic-looking, half-Muslim-half-Cuban-looking agents of evil who were about to nuke Miami. 14 actors killed in one explosive scene.

Ah. Murder sells big time in the USA. That's why our White forefathers guaranteed us the right to pack as many weapons as we can on our bodies, in our houses, in our offices--hey, it's rugged individualism time in the USA again. It's outlaw time. It's bank robbery time.

thegrowlingwolf(a tamer wolf now)
for The Daily Growler

We don't know if anyone's ever noticed but all New York football teams wear American flags on their helmets. All New York City cops and firemen wear US flags sewn onto their uniforms. All New York City buses and subways carry American flags. And last night at the Yankee game, the Yankees were wearing American flags. You know why?