Living in New York City: In the Aftermath of the Blizzard of 2010

Foto by tgw, "Morning After the Blizzard," New York City, December 2010
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Note, we lost Dr. Billy Taylor over the holidays. I knew Dr. Billy Taylor as founder of NYC radio station,WBLS, as a jazz FM station. He was also head of the Jazz Mobile program. Billy lived a good long life, 89, which is natural for jazz pianists--the coolest of jazz performers--I joke of course...though check it out: Hank Jones just died at 92; and Dave Brubeck's still alive in his 80s.
Billy Taylor, 89, American jazz pianist and composer, heart attack
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A Writer With Too Much to Write About
I was trying to write this morning. And I wrote all morning. Trying to understand the thinking of Leo Strauss and relating myself to Leo Strauss via the University of Chicago. Leo Strauss taught political philosophy at the University of Chicago. He was a native German. He was Jewish. He went to the University of Hamburg. He was a Sociologist of the antipositivist school--and I have discussed in a past post the big dilemma in Sociology is the one that says in order to be a respected science Sociology must have a system of measurements with which to keep its statistical gatherings as close to the actual reality of a society it is studying as it can honestly get. The dilemma derives from the two schools of Sociological Theory: Emil Durkheim, a Frenchman with direct connections to the Positivist founder of Sociology, Auguste Comte, who believed the empirical scientist must base his findings on observations and deductions gathered in an unbiased way--in other words, the opinions of the empirical observer must be factored out of the eventual conclusions. On the other side of the fence was Max Weber, the German Sociologist, whose viewpoint was that it doesn't matter if a Sociologist allows his or her own biases to color a gathering of unbiased "facts."

I wrote for a very long time on my own reverence to the work of German Neo-Kantian Sociologist Georg Simmel and I tried to give a clear indication of Simmel's "dyad" (two people in a relationship) and "triad" (three people in a relationship) theories--how in the dyad there can still be individualism but how if you add a third party to the dyad and make a triad, then individualism is out the window and the Sociologist must now deal with a variety of societal relationships, intricate relationships, entangled relationships, knotted relationships, mass movements, social psychologies, etc.

And I wrote all morning on Leo Strauss and Plato and Nietzsche and Heidegger and Weber and Simmel--and I really struck a vein of golden ideas when I in reading a criticism of Leo Strauss came across the concept of the "Noble Lie." Nietzsche talking about how great leaders, supermen, need noble myths to promote their leadership qualities. Leo Strauss agreeing with Nietzsche in the sense that he, too, believed in using the noble LIE in order to have a social democracy since the masses are afraid of change but change is of the natural order, so it is the noble lies (the noble myths) that allow our leaders to ready us for a major change.

And then...after all of this writing...I had a fully packed post racked up all the way down the lines to the sign-off line...I in a spur-of-the-moment decision trashed the whole thing.

That left me with these blank pages to fill up.

We the People of the USA are up to our necks in a broad range of noble lies.

Take the case of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg. Aha. You now see where this is leading? First clue: the Espionage Act of 1917. Truth out: at the time of the USA's being on the brink of getting involved in World War I (the war to end all wars--this in itself a noble lie), there was a huge block of opposition in the US against this involvement. Antiwar sentiment was thick as hops from coast to coast. Of course, our government at the time wanted to get in this war. Remember, this US war economy started after the Revolutionary War but really hit high gear after Thumping Teddy Roosevelt got out his Great White Fleet and on feet as silent as cat's paws prancing up a wet beach this Great White Fleet carried Teddy's Big Stick showboating around the world to pompously exhibit our military might and to introduce the oldest World Orders to this New World Order of Imperialist upstarts. Why, heck fire, that was the true beginning of the New World Order. Woody Wilson, that creepy history professor, decided it wasn't a time for dissent in this country. He had to get around that god-damn legalistic Constitution's Bill of Rights, stupid Jefferson, out of guilt for his White Plantation way of imperialistically thinking, adding on that Bill of Rights. What rights? Plus that god-damn First Amendment...the RIGHT of free speech. But that ain't RIGHT according to the right, and so Wilson decided, "Hey, White brothers, we need a way to get around that damn free speech amendment." And the boys spent many a long night in the backroom of the White Man's House over whiskeys and cigars secretly coming up with the Espionage Act of 1917.

From Wikipedia (they need money; hey, who doesn't?):

It [this Act] made it a crime:

• To convey information with intent to interfere with the operation or success of the armed forces of the United States or to promote the success of its enemies. This was punishable by death or by imprisonment for not more than 30 years or both.

• To convey false reports or false statements with intent to interfere with the operation or success of the military or naval forces of the United States or to promote the success of its enemies when the United States is at war, to cause or attempt to cause insubordination, disloyalty, mutiny, refusal of duty, in the military or naval forces of the United States, or to willfully obstruct the recruiting or enlistment service of the United States. This was punishable by a maximum fine of $10,000 fine or by imprisonment for not more than 20 years or both.

The Act also gave the Postmaster General authority to refuse to mail or to impound publications that he determined to be in violation of its prohibitions.^[4]

The Act also forbids the transfer of any naval vessel equipped for combat to any nation engaged in a conflict in which the United States is neutral. Seemingly uncontroversial when the Act was passed, this later became a legal stumbling block for the administration of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, when he sought to provide military aid to Great Britain before the United States entered World War II.

Using this Act as grounds, We the People of the USA electrocuted Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, US citizens, Ethel more than probably totally innocent of any knowledge that her stupid husband was peddling atom bomb-making secrets (and the secrets he peddled weren't that important) to the Soviet Union, at that time, remember, just being changed from Ally status to enemy combatant status in a Cold War invented by John Foster Dulles, Dwight David "I Like Golf" Eisenhower's (he literally played golf nearly every day he was president; had a putting green built at We the People's expense on the White Man's House lawn--had a big heart attack while playing golf while staying out at his Denver retreat--rumors had it that the president's secret mountain bunker was in Denver) Sec'y of State. So Julian Assange get ready to be "whited" out--get ready to get the good ole patriotic juice applied to your terrorist ass. What you did didn't really reveal anything that most of the world already knows or certainly had suspicion of. Come on, anybody who lived through the Civil Rights and AntiVietnam War era knows the devious tricks of the FBI then still under J. Edgar Hoover, a true pervert, a sexual pervert, who kept huge dossiers on the sex life of prominent Americans, especially the politicians who he had by their balls. And the CIA and their tricks. Come on, who the hell doesn't know about how corrupt and devious and dunderheaded the CIA is? Assassinations are their specialty. Anybody care to know how many human beings the CIA has assassinated over the years. Patrice Lumumba, for instance. Salvadore Allende, for instance. And look at the innocents in Afghanistan and Pakistan CIA drone attacks and assassination team attacks have killed. One of the earliest Wikileaks leak was the leaked video of the Air Force goons blowing away a bus load of Afghans on their way to work or school--and our pilots under orders blew all these poor bastards to bits, women, children, grandparents, it doesn't matter to the CIA. Their job is the same as the U.S. Armed Forces: to Kill or Be Killed. You have to keep that in mind when you try and understand military logic. These boys are trained to kill or to be leaders and disciplinarians enough to order dumbass teenagers to KILL on command--shoving them into win-lose situations under the mantra of "You either kill 'em over here, or they're gonna be killing you and your family back in the Good Ole Never Wrong USA." And, yes, if Ethel and Julian Rosenberg deserved death under the octopus tentacles of the 1917 Espionage Act then so does Julian Assange deserve it--and read that Act carefully, from a legal perspective: hell yes all of We the People can be sentenced to death under the many tentacles of that unConstitutional law--and in the case of the secret-leaking evil Rosenbergs, ironically, look how many countries have tons of nuclear weapons these short half-a-century of years later--like how did Israel get ahold of their nuclear weapon secrets? For instance, check out how North Korea got ahold of their nuclear capabilities. Think Donald Rumsfeld and Unka Dick Cheney through a Swedish nuclear company they had stock in. So, hey, let's fry Unka Dick's ass in the same chair we're gonna fry Assange's ass in. And now North Korea is threatening nuclear annihilation if the USA through their South Korean stooges doesn't stop all this war taunting going on over there currently. All of this war taunting being fueled, equipped, engineered, and managed by the U.S. Military, the U.S. State Department, the President, and the U.S. Treasury.

Ah, but you must remember, I love irony. And irony leads to so many Noble Lies--golden bough myths that inevitably lead human-monkey civilizations to ruin. Nature, the Jungle, takes these once-great human-monkey achievements back over. Look at all those Mayan ruins still hidden by the Jungles of Guatamala and Honduras, the ruins of a very large city previously unknown recently uncovered in Guatamala. And we hold ruins up as collectibles. As antiques. As treasures. Yet, they are the sign of failure. Think of all those magnificent buildings that went to ruin after Rome fell to the Barbarians. Their ruins are impressive, but think of how impressive they were when they were new. When they still had their stuccos of so many different colors and designs plastered over their now decaying skeletons. Like Aztec and Mayan temples were plastered with colorful murals and emblazoned carvings--they papered their walls with gold leaf. Yet they were true civilizations carved out of thick jungles--escaping our true natures to follow a series of Noble Myths--myths based on the gigantic powers of the elevated to the divine chimpanzee who refers to himself in the masculine as MAN. And from MAN came...woman. According to ancient myths, woman came from the ribs of MAN. Woman inheriting the Woe of Man. Woman is condemned to be Mother Nature or Mother Earth. While MAN becomes God the Father. The Great White Father. The Rooster before the egg.

And now we are in the final chaotic moments of our crumbling and falling into ruin civilization.

The Great Blizzard of 2010 is now a thing of the past. Here in New York City, the piles of blackening once lusciously soft and inviting snow are now rot-melting in our gutters and curbs, leaving behind the trash, empty beer cans, Styrofoam containers, vomits, pisses, that are the remainders of a landscape that only a few days ago was engulfing and dominating and too much for our Billionaire Mayor and his REDUCED sanitation department (he had just fired 400 sanitation workers). Our little-man mayor has ever since been interrupting teevee programs madly to whine and duck and dodge the reasons why large portions of New York City are still snowbound--making fire and emergency vehicle getting around fast impossible. And this morning in front of my building, the garbage is piling up to mini-skyscraper heights. In fact, my building's garbage pile is now higher than the piles of rotting snow that still plug up our street's gutters and curbs. But, hey, all this snow didn't keep Hiz Little Man Honor from getting to all his teevee pulpits--even showing up at the big NYPD graduation ceremonies that went on in Madison Square Garden just a day or so ago--and the Mayor gave this speech in which he said the NYC police department was the finest known to all men and that under our Shanty Irish Police Commissioner, Little Man Ray Kelly (a man who was accused of a mishandling of finances when he was head of G.W. Bush's U.S. Customs Department), We the Citizens of NYC are just snug as little obedient bugs in a rug--why hell, you noticed though we've had attempted attack after attack from these weirdo homegrown Islamic jihadists, they've all been disrupted by the NYPD, who by the way, don't have a new contract yet under Hiz Bloomingidiot Honor; nor does the NYFire Department, who the Mayor has been honoring down at Ground Zero National Monument--it's all enough to make a correct-thinking chimp like myself commit suicide like my heroes Papa Hemingway and Dr. Hunter S. Thompson. I'm too old to have to go back to work in a war plant. Nor do I care to spend my final years in a concentration camp. Or hell, I hope I'm wrong in sensing ovens are being built at some dark secret place in this country as I type this--they are perhaps setting up a FINAL SOLUTION for those of us no matter our politics who begin to protest...to risk joining Julius and Ethel Rosenberg and Julian Assange in the electric chairs awaiting those of us who DISSENT in this country. Espionage. GUILTY.

I see where the bomb that blew up 20-or-so Egyptian Coptics (Christians) in their church yesterday is being attributed to, "perhaps," as the news sources are putting it, al-Queda. And oh what a NOBLE LIE al-Queda is.

thegrowlingwolf
for The Daily Growler

Living in New York City: A Wolf in a Blizzard

Foto by tgw, "Evening Snowstorm," New York City, December 2009
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"Bring It On"
Listening to the creationist scientist explaining how the Grand Canyon wasn't billions of years old. "Hah-hah-hah," he chortled as his eyes sparked up with God science, "you see, check this out, when Mount Saint Helens devilish power was released by Satan on that day way back in time, not that long in God's time--1000 years=1 year--or some say, 1000 years=1 hour--but who knows except God and he knows 'cause it says so here in this here Bible I'm holding here in my God-fearin' hand. And look here at this picture. You see that. That's the aftermath of Mount Saint Helens erupting...erupting, Hell, Praise the Lordy Lord...you see that canyon there? That canyon is in ratio-speaking terms just as deep as the Grand Canyon, Praise the Lard and His Holy Platter of Good Ole Hot-buttered Groat Clusters. In fact, the National Geophysical Society has dubbed this 'the Little Grand Canyon,' a name I gave this in a scientific article I wrote. You see this Little Grand Canyon? That was created in a matter of seconds. In fact, film of the eruption shows it only took about 55 seconds for that Little Grand Canyon to be created, Praise the Mighty Bucket of Holy Lard." I, thegrowlingwolf, spoof, of course, dear friends, but it is the jest of what this Christian jester was jingle-belling out as scientific fact. He continued, "...and now these oh-so-high-and-mighty men of so-called science, Darwinian deviltry, say it took billions of years for the Grand Canyon to be created. But I just showed you how a Little Grand Canyon was created in 55 seconds. Take that, ye unholy heathen scientists who base your findings on earthly facts; yet we creationists see God's holy facts...."

I suffered delightfully through this creationist's palaver--and I pause right here to say, I'm like Sherlock Holmes when it comes to storing facts in my brain's attic--Sherlock said it wasn't important to him to know whether the earth was round or flat--and I say it's not important for me to know whether the Grand Canyon is only 55 seconds old or 50 billion years old--what does that matter to me? Whatever the age of the Grand Canyon, there is still no God, there is no Yahweh, Jehovah, Allah, I Ching, Cargo, Tao, Buddha, Dalai Lama, Messiah, Boogerman--so who cares about the age of the Grand Canyon? Or who cares that a meteor once came ashore from the seas of space with a devastating bang to create our own Great Basin--and, yes, that only took a matter of seconds I'm scientifically sure.

And right after the God-fact-chocked creationist scientist had used up his paid-for air time, a weather bulletin came on. "A blizzard warning is in effect...." I usually don't pay any attention to our weather channel weather clones--but atop this blizzard warning ran a crawl that said "New York City under blizzard warning beginning at 6 pm and running through the day Sunday. Winds up to 30 miles per hour will cause blizzard conditions with a possible 11 to 17 inches of snow...." Whoaaaaaaa, that stopped my stampeding mind in its tracks. Seventeen inches of snow being dumped on Manhattan. Being dumped on me.

And just now the blizzard alertists are predicting a chance of maybe 22 inches of snow by Monday morning--that's nearly 2 feet of snow. The last time that much snow fell on Manhattan was way back in the 1980s when I was trying to make it with a knock-out beautiful Italian editor and theater reviewer who lived in the Heights in Brooklyn. It was a February afternoon and after work I boogied over to this woman's apartment bearing a gift and some wine and expecting some scintillating lovemaking on the big bear-like rug she had in front of her working fireplace. And, yes, it started on the bear-like rug and then continued up in her loft bed. And in the middle of the night I got the heebie-jeebies and suddenly wanted to be home and in my own bed. I shivered and flopped-around awake until the morning--and we got up and she was making coffee in just her panties and I was looking at her and suddenly not being turned on by her--and fickle bastard that I was--I suddenly up and decided I had to fly her coop. "Have you looked out the window," she said bringing me a cup of coffee. As she walked toward me her breasts were quivering in time with her footsteps, lolling nicely--but I resisted and turned and went to her front window. Wow. The front steps and the front sidewalk were gone--blanked out by a startling white tarpaulin of snow--even the street was gone...and the cars parked along the street were buried. Snow was everywhere. Pillowed in places. Blown into a barrier in other places. Everywhere. Clinging thickly to the trees--banked up high against the buildings's stoops. It had stopped snowing. In fact, the sky seemed to be clearing enough that some sun was coming through. "That's no hill for a stepper," I bragged, and turned to prepare to go out in the snow and head for the Court Street subway station--the F train back to my midtown Manhattan eerie.

She blocked my path by pushing herself up against me. "Come on. Build another fire and let's have breakfast." She was built and those breasts felt so good pushing against my chest and it was so easy to accept her invitation for a kiss.... By the time in a pool of sweat she rolled out from under me and ran for the bathroom I was again ready to venture forth into that lusciously white powdery snow. I wanted to be home so bad. I jumped up and sweaty and smelly I put on my jeans and shirt and sweater and when she came naked out of the bathroom I was putting on my socks and shoes. "You bastard. What's this, 'wham-bam-thank-you-mam'? Hell, you haven't even thanked me...." "Hey, I'm sorry...er-ah, I...ah...hell, I'm worried about my ceiling leaking under all this snow. You know my ceiling leaks when it snows heavy like this." "Fuck you, Wolfie. Go on and get the fuck out of here. And here, take your fucking gift back...." I didn't even try to make amends. Soon I was trudging (and I mean trudging, too) through this thick-deep crunchy snow, the bottoms of my jeans getting soaked, my jacket and my sweater not enough to keep the cold wind from penetrating their layers to chill me to the bone. At the subway station I soon saw the sign, "All trains to Manhattan are delayed." Three hours later I came up out of the 34th Street midtown Manhattan subway station and it was like Manhattan had been transported to the middle of Antarctica. There was absolutely no motor vehicles on the streets. Coming up Broadway toward me was a man on skis. None of the sidewalks had been cleared. The streets were solid snow from curb to curb up and over the curbs and the sidewalks to bank against the building fronts.

Finally I was home and contented. I sat and looked out my window at all the snow snowcapping all the numbers of water tanks I can see--and snowbounding roofs--and soon the sun flared full force out of the open-clearing sky and I raised the window and took a long deep breath of the final wafts of cold snowy air as the sun began to do its best to exterminate that lovely snow. By the next day the snowplows were barrel-assing around town clearing the streets, plowing the snow up 6-feet-high in the gutters--burying cars--locking us in until our doormen could shovel our sidewalks clean--that snow lingered in unmelted form piled up in our gutters for a week longer--and then as it melted it formed rivers of cold icy water where once the snow was piled to mountain-peak heights.

And as I raise up from typing on this...I glance out my window...and lo and behold, it is snowing.
There is no wind. The snow is fluttering down.
And there it is. The snow arriving in New York City...an exclusive photograph delivered to us via myself by sticking my old Toshiba digital out the window and letting it reflect back what it found--and it found snow...

And I have a lunch date with the owner's son of my fav Irish pub...they're cooking already...and I'm getting hungry...so I'm snowbound there...an answer to my prayer.

thegrowlingwolf(inblizzardconditions)
for The Daily Growler

On a Frostly Snowly Dawn
by Elmer Snowedin, The Daily Growler Poet Laureate

Snooding, grumpy, porcupinish Lum limping sledlike
to plough towards his fainting light, that held high by his
crying wife on a porch that is swaying as the snow dumps
itself blindingly between the man who'd gone a'fore and now
is coming back the vision of a holy ghost
on a snowy white apparitional steed unleashed from
God's open refrigerator door...yes, there is a light in Heaven.

[Mr. Ed: How the hell did this guy get to be our poet laureate, though, on second thought, he fits just fine...I'm all choked up...this is the one-horse-open sleigh season for me.]

Same Old Same Old Just Keeps Rollin' Along

Foto by tgw, Coney Island (before its destruction), 2010
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Obama Hath Turned On Us (We Correct Thinkers) Once Again
In his campaign rhetoric, Obama stood firmly, chin up, with a determined look on his face and he said he was going to defend Internet neutrality right down to the bone. This affects every citizen, he spouted out, and by golly I'm standing firmly...blah, blah, blah." (The word "blather" would fit nicely in there, too.) Today (Tuesday, Dec. 21 (the first day of Winter...not Johnny Winters)), Obama's handpicked FCC chairman is going to fuck We the People and contradict President Obama's campaign rhetoric...well, to put it bluntly, there's gonna be an Internet tier system whether we like it or not. AT&T and Verizon and Comcast, the big dogs in the Internet service provider industry, have had their goons doing some backroom dealing with Obama's handpicked FCC chairman and as a result...well, let's see...the old Internet connection methods--dial-up or DSL or CABLE--will still be under neutrality, BUT...and here come the butts again...BUT the Wireless Network, which, by the bye, is the future of the Internet (wireless laptops, iPads, Notebooks, etc.), is going to be BIASED (the opposite of neutrality). Yep, the big Wireless providers--guess who? If you said AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast, you are correct sir or madame (parodying old Ed McMahon, remember him?). Obama's handpicked FCC chairman says letting these communications behemoths price Wireless service any way they want to is necessary in order to bring big-buck investors into the Internet--that means the Wireless Internet is going to be TIERED. Priced according to what sites you'll be trying to get on the most. The big buck sites--yep, they'll speed you to those for a certain price; but say you want to go on a blog--hold on to your hat, that service is going to be oh-so slow. So Obama, that son of a two-faced bitch, has compromised with the big communications companies--and he soon will stroll out in front of his microphones when he has a press conference tonight about the matter and he'll say, "OK, I've fulfilled another campaign promise. Internet neutrality has been saved...well, er-ah, half of it has, at least. I mean, come on, I couldn't save the Wireless network...shit, I mean, come on, AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast are going to fill my campaign coffers with some big bucks for my 2012 campaign, a campaign I'm currently concentrating on, fuck what I promised in my successful campaign in which I raised about $300,000 from regular old US citizens, but $700,000 in corporate campaign contributions, mostly from our too big to fail corporations, which I saved from bankruptcy...blah, blah, blah, and a lot of that $700,000 came from AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast [and yes, as an aside, Obama will allow Comcast to buy NBC's Universal Sports Network]. Therefore, I'm proud to announce that there will be Internet neutrality still on the old dial up, DSL, and CABLE connections, but, as to the Wireless network...well, investments in the Wireless network are very important in recovering our economy, which I have done. We are no longer in a recession and you people will now have plenty of disposable bucks so, hell yeah, prices are going up...get used to it." So Obama breaks another campaign promise, which by now is no big deal. It's obvious: HE'S GOING TO BREAK ALL OF HIS CAMPAIGN PROMISES EXCEPT ONE: TO BE A GREAT COMPROMISER IN THE REALM OF HIS HEROES, HONEST ABE LINCOLN (who really wanted to send all Blacks back to Africa--hell, he offered 'em one-way tickets to Liberia) and RONNIE "FLYING TO TOKYO IN THREE AND A HALF HOURS" REAGAN. Obama's faithful are still holding on to his coattails--their hope is Obama has something trick-baggy up his sleeve--though they're fingers are losing their grip on those coattails. And come the second week in January Crybaby Johnny Bonehead will take over as House Speaker--just two slots away from being president--and then the fun will begin. The compromising will be over and soon, HOT DAMN, we'll be a totally National Socialistic nation. I would get used to saying "Sieg Heil!"...oh, and by the bye, have your papers ready when you're stopped as suspicious by the FBI, your local police, or your state's Homeland Security cops and charged as an enemy combatant. Such a shame this all is. Is Obama a little boy trying to be a big man? Wish I could go one-on-one with the guy over some beers.
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The rest is Sunday's post
Say Goodbye to:
Walt Dropo, 87, American baseball player (Red Sox, Tigers, White Sox). I had a chance as a 10-year-old kid to meet Walt Dropo while visiting one of my superintelligent but crazy as a bedbug cousins while he was a student at Texas A&M, where Walt was a member of the Aggie baseball team. Big Walt Dropo he was always tagged.

Phil Cavarretta, 94, American baseball player (Chicago Cubs, Chicago White Sox), complications from a stroke. I first remember Phil when he played first base for the never-winning Cubs--then later when he was manager of the Cubs and the Dallas Eagles minor league team was a farm club of the Cubbies. Check out how baseball players in the main live long lives--Bob Feller who died last week was 92, Big Walt 87, and Phil 94.

And, of course, another goodbye to Captain Beefheart. We're no longer using the Captain's heart as an ashtray.

Don Van Vliet
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Gone Are Their Days
I sadly watched a sad show on sad television. On stage were three at-one-time top-of-the-heap journalists: Pete Hamil, Gay Talese, and Liz Smith. Ugh. They were hard to watch. They are all sagging badly. The men bearded. Think of the pocked-marked skin under those beards. And Liz, well, she's sagging, too, getting dog jowls and noticeably osteo-hunched--though Liz always was rather low-hung and mannish in her presence. And they were all gabbing away about their careers--I looked at 'em with a jaundiced eye as is my nature and, yes, they had fabby lives due to their local and national identities--Pete Hamil was the Brooklyn boy who pandered his journalistic wares (at the New York Post) as a guy who was deeply identified with the old neighborhood life that once was but is no more in New York City--now a moveable feast, like Hemingway signed off on Paris in his last book before he blew his brains out. Gay Talese is the former New York Times feature writer, a New Jersey Italian-American boy, said to be the mind behind the "New Journalism," said to have invented literary journalism before both Lillian Hellman and Truman Capote, though of course the latters use of literary journalism made them more famous and richer than Gay Talese, though Gay ain't no poor slob; he's married a long time to Nan Talese, who has her own imprint with Doubleday. Gay had one good quality: he loved baseball and wrote well about it. Liz Smith? Well, you can have Liz Smith. I care nothing about her. She's a Fort Worth, Texas, girl who went to the University of Texas and majored in journalism and bisexuality coming to New York City in the 50s as a news producer on Mike Wallace's staff in the CBS Newsroom. Liz, however, an old crow now, by the way, 87 years old, who recently suffered the New York Post dropping her inane gossip column--that's Rupert "Aussie Asshole" Murdoch's losing-money newspaper. Rupert, an old fart himself, was polite about dumping Liz and said it was due to cost cutting--but more than likely Liz is getting a little addlepated at her advanced age, though, hey, good for her living 87 damn fun years in this damn rat race world. Of the three, I've read more and know more about Pete Hamil (he wrote for the Post and the Village Voice) than I've read or know about Gay Talese. I have never read a Liz Smith column ever. To be wolfishly blunt, I can't stand Liz Smith. Though I'm more familiar with Pete Hamil's work and only know Liz from her time on NYC teevee doing her boring and sloppy-snobby-bitchy gossip shit, of the three, I have the most respect for Gay Talese both as a journalist and as a writer. I read an interview with Talese way back in the 60s--I think it was right after he gained fame for an Esquire article he wrote called "Frank Sinatra Has a Cold" (on Gay's Wikipedia entry this article is called one of the greatest journalistic pieces ever written). In that interview, Gay caught my attention when he said after he'd finished his day's writing, he would tack the pages up on a bulletin board and then read them through a pair of binoculars. I mean that caught my young writer's attention and the next story I wrote, by golly, that's what I did, I pinned it to the long curtains in my studio and looked at it through my binoculars. And YES. It worked. It was so easy to see where I needed a rewrite or an edit or a cut. And the story sold.

Anyway, I watched these three now OLD people going back over their careers but soon one of them said, I think it was Liz, and I paraphrase her, "Well, let me tell you what saddens me today about the newspaper business, it's just that now with the Internet and anybody and his dog having a blog or a Website, you can't trust the information these amateurs are putting out there." The same old story. Poor old newspaper people--they are seeing an end to THEIR kind of newspaper and therefore journalism. As authors, they are also seeing the old NYC publishing scene disappearing--going the way of all flesh--most of the major publishers sold off to European publishing giants.

I've admired journalists since I was a kid and my brother was a reporter on my hometown newspaper and I was by that newspaper office all the time and like I've mentioned in past posts, I was privileged when my brother became a sports reporter to tag along with him to sporting events as his spotter at football games and as his scorekeeper in basketball games and free passes to all the home games of my hometown's Class D minor league baseball team. Then when I went off to college 30 miles north of Dallas, Texas, my brother became a columnist on the afternoon Dallas paper--the largest newspaper in Dallas at the time. After I graduated college, I lived with my brother until I found a job. Every day I would end up my daily jaunts into downtown Dallas to look for a job by going over to my brother's paper and hanging there until he headed for home. I knew all that paper's top journalists; I could go all over the paper from the city desk area to the various departments and even down into the composing room or out on the back platforms where the papers came sliding down off the big presses to be stacked and bound and then thrown on the backs of the trucks to be delivered all over the Dallas metro area. I would watch the men and women reporters pounding away with brilliant speeds as they rushed to get their copy ready to be sent to editorial for approval, revisions, cuts, and things. Every day except the weekends that place was a madhouse. By this time, yes, I knew I liked writing, I liked the arts, music and painting also, but I got my most kicks trying to write. However, for some reason, and I can attribute it to many factors that developed while I was still an adolescent, I developed a rather antagonistic view of newspaper work. I took a journalism course in college but didn't do well in it because I really wasn't interested in journalistic writing. This even though my writing hero at the time was Ernest Hemingway for whom newspaper work had made it possible for him to live in Paris giving him a steady income as long as he sent featured articles in to the Toronto Star, this after serving time on the famous Kansas City Star as an apprentice reporter. Hemingway never put down his newspaper work. It sustained him all of his writing career. Though his novels brought him fame--and money, don't get me wrong--his journalism experiences got him into covering the Spanish Civil War and then World War II and also gave him license to travel all over Europe...eventually even taking him as far off as China. But Hemingway's celebrity came as a novelist and short-story writer and those were the ways I met Papa, not through his journalism.

My other writing hero, Henry Miller, also had newspaper experience, though not as a journalist, but rather as a proofreader for the Paris office of the New York World Tribune.

Me, I never worked for a newspaper. My brother published one of my book reviews one time in the Dallas afternoon paper and my first published poems were in the Paragould, Arkansas, newspaper's poetry page. I was proud of those poems because Hemingway had a connection through his wife Pauline Pfeifer with Paragould, Arkansas, as that was her hometown. Hemingway visited Paragould one time--in fact, he did a little bird shooting with Pauline's father there.

Now. Now, I must admit, I don't buy or read newspapers--the only time I buy one is like if I'm out on the street and suddenly caught in an unexpected gully washer rain and need a quick and cheap umbrella. As an umbrella, I prefer Rupert Murdoch's New York Post. The Post was once a well-thought-of liberal well-run and edited newspaper. Union problems at the Post and the death of the paper's long-time owner (Dorothy Schiff) sent this once great paper on the road to newspaper hell, first when a nutjob, Abe Hirschfield, bought the paper and began firing people right and left--so bad was Abe at owning a newspaper, he was soon out the back door and from out of nowhere came Rupert "the Aussie" Murdoch to bail the paper out of the doldrums, though currently the Post loses several million bucks a year--money, given his continuing free ride in terms of not having to pay taxes, Rupert has plenty of to burn. Murdoch's goal at the time he came to this country was to buy up as many US media companies as he could, something he was able to accomplish with relative ease and big-shot privilege, buying the New York Post, eventually buying Twentieth-Century Fox from which he formed his spin-off Fox television network--a network whose first success (and it still is a success) was a cartoon show, The Simpsons. Murdoch's latest confiscation was buying the Wall Street Journal a few years ago. [Note: Language Hat (www.languagehat.com) wrote a brilliant comment giving the straight facts about what really happened at the Post back in the days it changed from progressively liberal to outright contentious Aussie Conservative, but this comment was accidentally lost when we updated this post from Sunday to today. LHat reminded us that Abe Hirschfeld, not Al the cartoonist, didn't takeover the paper from the Schiffs--it's more complicated than I presented it--Peter Kallikow the bigshot developer who had intentions of wrecking an East Side community by building a big hi-rise condo development over there also bought the Post only to go bankrupt...which is how Rupert "Aussie Asshole" Murdoch got back into the deal. My reply to LHat's fact checking was, "Hey, L Hat, remember, our fact checker is a horse."]

Now all over the Internet the journalists are starting their own blogs. Their newspapers and magazines, too, carry blogs and Twitter and Facebook (I don't understand the interest in either of these "social networking" tools) editions for their top journalists.

I quit reading the New York Times when computers and the Internet came along. I came to New York City with a great respect for the New York Times. I had read the Sunday editions from the time I was in high school and worked in my brother's newsstand. When my wife and I got to New York City, we immediately got into buying a New York Times every day but especially going out Saturday night around 9:30 to the newsstands where the first editions of the Sunday Times were delivered and being assembled by the newsstand dudes and taking them home and then making a big deal the next morning over coffee and doughnuts (or cream puffs from Bloomingdale's pastry shop). I got my first jobs in NYC (as a copyeditor) through the Times Classifieds. It was where you went to look for a job in those days (1969). In those days, too, we read the Times from stem to stern--I mean even their Sports section was good--but especially their Entertainment section and the New York Times Review of Books was required reading for both my literary-minded wife and me.

It was while my literary-minded wife and I were reading the Sunday Times one Sunday afternoon in late January of 1974--I was reading it while listening to Bach on my stereo headphones--that my wife kicked me aware with her delicate foot--and when I took off the headphones and said, "Yeah, Toots, what'ya want?" She replied, "I want a divorce." Ironically, it was in the New York Times that she later read about how it was cheaper to get a Haitian divorce in New York than it was to get a NY State divorce. It was also in the Times that she found the way to go about obtaining a Haitian divorce...and on a bright spring day in March of '74, my wife and I, just as chummy and natural looking as we always had looked as a couple, boarded the Metro-North train and ended up in Bronxville, New York, in drawing up the divorce papers that later in that month I took with me to Haiti, where in the National Palace I got divorced from my beautiful young wife of 10 years--and I ended up staying in Haiti for over a month to allow my grief at the divorce to disappear and my newly freed self to begin the wonderful task of finding another "perfect" woman that I could pop the old question to. Soon I was married to another woman and she and I, too, were devoted to buying and keeping up with things through the New York Times.

As of right now. Sadly, and it is sad, I haven't bought an NYTimes in maybe over a decade. When I got my first Mac computer at the job I was working at, I did read the Times on line. But that ended when I lost my last job. Today, I never go on the NYTimes on-line site. Besides, now the Times is so desperate for money (income), that they charge you to read their on-line edition. Plus, I can't forget the damage to this nation Judith Miller's NYTimes CIA-controlled articles did by leading us into this economy-wrecking Iraq war. That pretty much turned me off of journalists. Journalists can only be free to write what their editorial boards approve of them writing. The freest form of American journalism now is found amongst the millions of blogs and the thousands of on-line commentators and newsy analytical posts.

We here at The Daily Growler kind of consider this as journalism--though it isn't. It's nonfiction-fiction. It's like a New Journalism effort. It's a Gonzo journalism effort, too; and I was one big Dr. Hunter S. Thompson fan after reading the amazing Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, which to me, along with Lolita, is one of the funniest god-damn pieces of writing I've ever read.

thegrowlingwolf(withthehelpoffranny&zoeyourtwo-headedgirlreporter)
for The Daily Growler

Republicans Shouting, "Vengeance Is OURS, Praise the Lord!"

Foto by tgw, New York City, November 2010
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Say Goodbye to The Captain...Captain Beefheart just left the mortal coil. Finally his ashtray heart gave out.
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Say Goodbye to Bob Feller, one of the greatest baseball pitchers of all time who easily could have won 400 games had he not joined the U.S. Navy in World War II and spent three years putting his life on the line in the South Pacific--those three years were in terms of his age the years most pitchers hit their peak. Still he came back from the service and pitched the Cleveland Indians (his team for life) into American League prominence from 1948 on into the 50s when Cleveland had some of the finest teams in baseball with an awesome pitching staff headed up by Bob Feller--said to have thrown the fastest ball ever--this before the days of speed guns.

Bob Feller, 92, American baseball player (Cleveland Indians), member of Baseball Hall of Fame, leukemia
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You measure a democracy by the freedom it gives its dissidents, not the freedom it gives its assimilated conformists.

I believe in compulsory cannibalism. If people were forced to eat what they killed, there would be no more wars.
Abbie Hoffman
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I miss Abbie Hoffman. He died in a converted turkey coop in New Hope, Pennsylvania, as Bruce Freed, a fugitive from justice, after taking 150 phenobarbital pills. He had recently been diagnosed with bi-polar disorder. Abbie lived a FREE life. He was a psychology major at Brandeis where he studied with Abraham Maslow, the Humanitarian Psychologist.

Classic economic theory, based as it is on an inadequate theory of human motivation, could be revolutionized by accepting the reality of higher human needs, including the impulse to self actualization and the love for the highest values.

Abraham Maslow
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Finding good players is easy. Getting them to play as a team is another story.
Casey Stengel
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We currently are having a bi-polar moment in the USA. Like we were enthusiastically excited after we swept Obama into the White Man's House with great expectations only to begin to have doubts about that "hopeful" enthusiasm with his first actions as president. Some of us had doubts before he was elected, but we were called spoilsports and too cynical for our own good.

My doubts about Obama (especially his being touted as a centrist liberal) for me really began after I saw him meeting with departing (faux)president Bush in the White Man's House as he was moving out and afterwards saying he found George W. Bush a likable fellow--saw nothing wrong with the man's ideals--especially the way he handled the War on the Afghanistan people. That signaled an "Uh-oh" in the cynical side of my brain. Bush right-on on Afghanistan? Afghanistan, where we've left hundreds of thousands of innocent Afghanistans dead, Afghanistans who now collectively feel their moms, dads, brothers, sisters, babies were murdered by this uninvited, invading-with-the-intent-to-occupy, foreign military force, an invasion ordered by a U.S. Commander in Chief, Georgie Porgie "A.W.O.L." Bush. This Commander in Chief a man, remember, who when Governor of Texas (see the Existentialist Cowboy's latest post on how G.W. and Rick Perry have ruined Texas) wrecked the education system, took the state into debt, and allowed 157 executions on Huntsville Prison's Death Row, one only one a few women to have ever been executed by the State of Texas. Little G.W., through both his birth family and his step-family in Saudi-Arabia, had direct connections to the US oil giants who have nurtured plans to put an oil and gas pipeline through the middle of Afghanistan. This idea has been well known by us clear thinkers since way back in the Clinton era (actually since the fall of the Soviet Union when those ex-Soviet states (especially those in Central Asia that had oil) were opened up to the worst of Capitalists, the Mafioso kind). This is an oil pipeline propositioned originally by oil company executive hotshot and Unka Dick Cheney/Hoover Institute-protege Condo-Leasing Rice along with the U.S. oil companies's man in Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai (where have I heard that name before?), both at the time working for a U.S. oil giant. So this little pipsqueak faux-president, G.W. Bush invaded with intentions of occupying the sovereign nation of Afghanistan on the pretense of capturing Osama bin Laden. At that time ironically Osama's brother, Prince Bandar bin Laden, was still considered a Bush Family member (Prince Bandar Bush). Georgie Porgie, our faux president, almost immediately after he was interrupted from reading My Pet Goat to a bunch of Florida elementary school kids (was this a payback to his brother, Jeb, who stole him the 2000 election?) was just darn sure Osama bin Laden (Bush) was the mastermind behind the Saudi-Arabian box-cutter-wielding hijackers preemptive attack on our sacred soil using American-based carrier airliners to miraculously bring down the twin towers of New York City's World Trade Center (a white elephant all its sordid life) and even further miraculously also bringing down several other unconnected WTC buildings (like buildings 5 & 7) and in the process wrecking our economy (nobody relates that miraculous military attack on 9/11 to any of our current fiscal problems). Then only 2 years later, Bush Baby, after bogging us down in Afghanistan for over a year and without a captured bin Laden, suddenly up and says to a question about bin Laden asked him by a journalist in one of G.W.'s dumbass press conferences that he was no longer interested in bin Laden and couldn't give a shit where he was or what he was doing. Then later, this failed oilman-baseball-team-owner ex-worthless President's worthless son near the end of his second stolen term in office washed his hands clean of the Afghan War by declaring it no longer a US war. NOW, he up and said, it was a NATO war. He turned the war over to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization forces (staffed by an overwhelming majority of US armed forces--like say 150,000)--NATO being an obsolete WWII organization that should have been shut down and forgotten in the 1950s.

Of course Obama promised he'd get us out of both wars during his hyperbole-chocked campaign speeches--getting us first out of Iraq immediately followed by Afghanistan a few months down the line. So what does he do when he gets into office? Why he extends his time line on when we're getting out of Iraq (and please don't tell me we are out of Iraq now) to a couple of years and not only doesn't he even think about ending the Afghanistan War, he suddenly says we ain't shutting that war down after all, and instead, he's gonna make it an even bigger war; in fact, he said, he's not only not going to shut down the Afghanistan War, he's going to send MORE troops to Afghanistan and make it an even bigger war than Bush could come up with--and remember now, neither president is interested in bin Laden anymore (though the CIA still gets billions of bucks for its bin-Laden-hunt-down-and-assassinate special forces unit that is perpetually funded in the CIA's unaccounted-for budget).

Then Obama throws a bucket of shit in our faces when he decides to carry this obnoxious and murderous Afghanistan War over into Pakistan (like Nixon trying to take the Vietnam War into Cambodia to keep it going--Nixon, too, excused his invasion of Cambodia on the grounds the Cong were using Cambodia to bring military supplies into Vietnam) to the point where it's now referred to as the Afghan-Paki War--and is also now referred to as "Obama's War," a title Obama has not denounced.

That's when the mental depression started setting in for progressives and liberals and where the maniac rightwingers who were depressed after losing to a Black Man began to pound their breasts in a gesture of extreme macho excitement over perhaps being able to put this dichty Black man in his place while at the same time bringing a vengeance down on Liberals, Hunanitarians, Senior Citizens, Poor People in General as they soak We the People dry...shit, it's too confusing to write seriously about. Like Abbie Hoffman, founder with Jerry Rubin of the Youth International Party--the Yippies--who ran a Pig for president, you have to keep your wits about you when you are a clear thinker by talking about such depressing and inevitably destructive comings in a humorous way--and Abbie could be so god-damn funny sometimes with his quips and scenarios. When I first moved to New York City, Abbie was a regular guest on radio station WBAI's late night show that radio personality Steve Post hosted. This was during BAI's glory years--when they as a radio station were actively involved in national and local politics and economics and sociology--when it really was a pacifist radio station. You can see Abbie's style-effect on entertainment personalities the likes of the Ramones, Paul Krassner, George Carlin, and later Howard Stern, who even imaged himself after Abbie--and Joey Ramone.

My solution to our bi-polar disorder is not 150 phenobarbital tablets, but rather a need to relax and start all over again--like have another Continental Congress or something, but this time, let the American Indians lead the sessions and let the members with the highest values from each culture work on writing the new Constitution. "Members with the highest values." That's Abraham Maslow's meaning in the above quote. There are positive values; yet, we only hear our oppositional sides pouring over the negative values. "The Democrats are spending us into chaos." "The Republicans are scary and ooooh, we have to be careful with them or we'll lose our one-billion-dollar-rich campaign coffers we'll need to run Obama or Mrs. Clinton in the 2012 election; an election we must be careful...." The Honest Liars (the Teabaggers and ultraConservatives--the revolutionaries, as Paul Krugman calls them) versus the Dishonest Liars (right now President Obama and the corporate clowns in whose asses he has chosen to bury his nose--even as I type this--he is meeting with big shots from the Top 10 corporations behind closed White Man's House doors). The "honest" liars are those who agree with the idiot goon Republican politician in New Jersey recently trashing Obama's wanting to extend unemployment insurance for 13 weeks for the 10-to-20% of We the People who are out of work or another 50% who are currently losing their jobs at any moment of every day. This goon's reason for trashing the unemployed: in his goony dunderheaded way, he felt extending unemployment benefits was conducive to giving these lazy bastards a free ride for a year--because you see, with extended unemployment "benefits" (13 weeks in this new Tax-Break (for) Bill(ionaires)), these lazy bastards (and to Republicans, and this can be proven historically, all American workers of the workingclass kind are lazy good for nothings) will be tempted to just sit around idling away time instead of going out and finding another job immediately. Oh boy. Yes, you're unemployed for the past 26 weeks. You've been looking for a job but there aren't any--not even at the local Walmart. Suddenly it's Christmas and your unemployment insurance is coming to an end. The last check comes. And Congress is hung up over whether to give these poor bastards a government-backed extension of unemployment insurance payments for 13 weeks. In the meantime, sitting with no job and no unemployment insurance and bankers traipsing around your property all day taking photographs and foreclosure predators ringing your doorbell and driving slowly by you house 24/7--and here's this New Jersey Republican asshole politician calling you a lazy good for nothing bastard who should have a job by now. You catch my drift I'm sure. This Republican asshole who as a politician has a job making over $130,000-a-year, with the finest healthcare benefits in the world and with a salary for life for just serving one term in Congress perhaps--and here's this asshole holding up an extension of unemployment payments with one of those famous Republican smirky attitudes--it's that Bush-approved "Pull yourself up by your bootstraps" (and under their breath they say, "Whether you've got boots or not") way of personal achievement--you know follow in his footsteps to success. (I add in sarcastic apology that "These lazy bastards" were not this New Jersey nutjob's words: his words were "these people," though those of us who read "honest" liar code words, "these people" usually means Blacks and Latinos...and, yes, the lowest of the poorest Whites, who by the way, are going to see their taxes go UP and stay UP after January 1st, 2011. And that's why this goon was not going to vote for an extension of unemployment insurance. But you see, the goon is lying, but it's "honest" lying because in this fool's "heart" he knows he's right. He knows these are the people who used to line our welfare roles back when the Democrats were taking us toward a Socialist agenda.

I recall as a kid back during WWII hearing this same rhetoric used by the Republicans (Taft-Rockefeller-Standard-Oil Republicans) against President Franklin Roosevelt's National Recovery Act and Works Project Administration set up in order to give jobs to the Great Depression's (a depression caused by Republican rich-boy economics--Hoovernomics) unemployed. And I hazard to say one of the reasons Obama is looking like a Republican asskisser is he's trying to avoid being tagged a New Deal Democrat, the Democrats who the Republican truly hate. These are the same "liberal spending" "Keynesian" Democrats who whipped their asses royally in the 1932 election that swept Democrat FDR into office; then Harry S. Truman shocked their racist asses in 1948 by squeaking one by tough-guy, former DA of NYC, Tom Dewey. Then came the 1964 election when Lyndon Johnson kicked slimy Barry Goldwater's ignorant ass a 100 times around the block in the largest mandate vote in the history of presidential elections up to that time. They are also, don't forget, revenging the Democrats's treatment of Richard "I Am Not a Crook" Nixon after that crook got caught breaking into Dumbcratic headquarters in the District of Corruption (of course Tricky Dick deny, deny, denied any knowledge of this break in--but then John Dean testified that hell yes the Tricky One knew about it; hell, he'd even approved the idea). And all of this bullshit led to the boring Wategate hearings that eventually led to Nixon being impeached, except he resigned in a fit of overdramatic melodrama before Congress voted on it to then be "forgiven" by the never-elected President Gerald Ford, the man, remember, who Lyndon Johnson said was so dumb he couldn't walk and chew gum at the same time. The Republicans tried in revenge for Nixon's disgrace to impeach Bill "Casanova" Clinton, at which they failed, though don't worry, it's a revenge they will now try and impose on President Obama. Obama knows this. He's got Dirty Dick Morris around still advising him--anybody remember Dirty Dick?

Obama's in political shit now up to his sinking chin--watch his victory speeches--his head is held high and he's determinedly proud--now watch his speeches--he's hulking, hunched, with begging continuance, and head fallen so obviously--just as his hair greys further every day he's in office. All our presidents turn grey in office, with the exception of Ronald "Raygun" Reagan whose hair actually got henna-dyed redder the longer he stayed in office, even after he became an Alzheimer's poster boy his second term in office when Nancy Reagan and Jeanne Dixon the phony soothsayer were running the government.

It is such a damn shame about how Obama turned out. Such a farcical moment in our history that is so serious...I mean, come on, like Abbie, you gotta turn this into a comedy act--and we progressives have had our brilliant comics--Mort Sahl, Abbie, Dick Gregory, George Carlin. The trouble is, these comics are so brilliant a lot of their humor goes right over the dumbass populaces's heads.

The Republicans at this moment are not yet the majority in the House. The Dumbocrats are still the majority in both Houses. Why is Obama making compromise with these assholes now when he has the majority? After January 12th, the Repubs will be the majority in the House--then forget compromises--these bastards are going after We the People with a vengeance. First of all they are going to start blaming the deficit not on themselves but on Obama. They are going to start cutting like mad not where they could cut and easily fix the deficit--but NO, they aren't cutting in those places. The biggest budgets in government spending are the MILITARY, HOMELAND SECURITY, FOREIGN AID, MEDICARE, and SOCIAL SECURITY. Now, you figure it out. Where are they going to cut? Damn right if you said Medicare and Social Security--oh yes. Social Security is a huge pool of monies that workers pay into through the 6% FICA taxes--which means the worker is buying into the Social Security system--and your SS payments are based on the amount you earned in your lifetime and the payments you made--I think the best you can make on SS is $1100-a-month; most Americans, especially women, don't get the top-level money but rather say $800-a-month or $900-a-month. Even at $1100-a-month, that's only $13, 200-a-year. Tell me who can live on $13,000-a-year and I'll show you a financial genius who should be an economic advisor to President Obama. Even retired couples where both are getting SS are only making tops $26,000-a-year--which is according to our government the border line of poverty. The SS pool was supposedly a pool unto itself, a self-perpetuating pool of money--the government holding securely our own paid-into retirement plans. It's a genius plan really, as is our Medicare plan, a plan used by many other countries much more successfully than we use it. (I just read where big pharmaceuticals have bilked We the People through fraud of billions of dollars (in Medicare fraud and fraud in Bush's hard-sell Plan D drug-payment part of Part B Medicare and fraud through doctors, who are notorious anyway of bilking Medicare for billions a year).)

Remember the corporate world is Republican. The Military Industrial Complex's ex-general overseers are all Republicans. John Stockwell said he was a staunch Republican at first. His being a Republican was the reason he became a gung-ho soldier in the first place and definitely the reason he proudly joined the CIA when they recruited him. And, yes, the CIA does keep track of every soldier in the US armed forces, checking them out as potential agents--I myself upon discharge from the U.S. Army was contacted by the CIA Kansas City office and offered a job as an Economics evaluator, which meant I would sit all day reading newspapers and searching them for local economics items like county pig production or local grain prices or local crop problems or cost-of-living indexes for all the towns and cities in a certain area.

Rudy Giuliani is a Republican. He alone would keep me from ever becoming a Republican. Billionaire Mayor of New York City (he wants to rename it Bloomberg City) Mike Bloomberg is wishy-washy, he's been a Democrat before, but now he's a Republican, though, he's so fucking rich he can be anything he wants to be--he'll pose as an Independent when he makes his own run for President in 2012. Alan "Hardheaded Old Fogey Asshole" Simpson is a Republican. Oh yeah, the billionaire politicians (the K(r)o(t)ch Brothers, Tom De Lay, Mitt Romney, the Rockefellers, for instance) are Republicans. Wall Streeters are all Republicans. Your bank president is a Republican. I worked at an advertising firm that promoted Republican candidates--the company's "Vision," too, was packed with Republican ideals. "Hard work gains the greatest rewards." "Loyalty to the company is premier" (why whistleblowers are considered stoolies rather than revolutionaries).

So, it's gonna be a hard rain that's gonna fall on We the People of the USA. A rain that's gonna leave all avenues of escape so muddy we may be struck in a rut of a large measure of the blue-willie-doldrums (the Heebie-Jeebies) these fast-coming fast-passing years in this country. Mostly we'll be depressed, but there'll be moments of great expectations--"OH NO," as Mr. Bill used to say.

By the way, the Democrats caved in to the Republican assholes on the tax break issue last night--by a 60% majority vote, which means some Dumbocrats had to cross the aisle. There was debate but nobody listened to the reasonable aspects of what debate there was.

I wonder what kind of comic relief will be offered us clear thinkers when We the People of the USA elect Sarah Palin (put "Palin" in SpellCheck and you get "plain" as your first choice for change) our first woman president? Oh boy, I can't wait. "OH NO," as Mr. Bill used to say.

theverydisappointedgrowlingwolf
for The Daily Growler

To Be Remembered, By the Way, the Unidentifiable Characters Who Keep This Open-Air-Thinking Blog Going:

Managing editor: Austin Highchew
Reporters: Walter Crackpipe, Senior Reporter; Frannie Silverstein/Zoey Silverstein, Reporters; Mr. Ed out of Cantankerous, editorial editor; Helen Highman-Klein-LaCloos, poetry editor; Elmer Snowedin, The Daily Growler poet laureate; Barabbas Munn-Dayne, The Daily Growler Jots & Tittles Man; marvelousmarvbackbiter, Sports Reporter; Mr. Met, a sometime contributor; Donkey Hote (the late great Fred Rogers), mascot.

One Down and Out of Our Lives: Richard Holbrooke Has Died. "Adios, Dick, enjoy the hell out of Hell."

The Daily Growler Remeets John Stockwell

Foto by tgw, New York City, November 2010
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Meet John Stockwell, for the Second Time in My Case
I had totally forgotten about this guy until the good Gil Noble, a New York City television reporter who hosts a local ABC-tv show called Like It Is, reran a show he produced in 1986 where Gil lets John Stockwell have an hour to tell his extraordinary story. In case you have no memory of Stockwell: From Wikipedia

As a Marine, Stockwell was a CIA paramilitary intelligence case officer in three wars: the Congo Crisis, the Vietnam War, and the Angolan War of Independence. His military rank is Major. Beginning his career in 1964, Stockwell spent six years in Africa, Chief of Base in the Katanga during the Bob Denard invasion in 1968, then Chief of Station in Bujumbura, Burundi in 1970, before being transferred to Vietnam to oversee intelligence operations in the Tay Ninh province and was awarded the CIA Medal of Merit for keeping his post open until the last days of the fall of Saigon in 1975.

In December 1976 he resigned from the CIA, citing deep concerns for the methods and results of CIA paramilitary operations in third world countries and testified before Congressional committees. Two years later, he wrote the exposé In Search of Enemies, about that experience and its broader implications. He claimed that the CIA was counterproductive to national security, and that its "secret wars" provided no benefit for the United States. The CIA, he stated, had singled out the MPLA to be an enemy in Angola despite the fact that the MPLA wanted relations with the United States and had not committed a single act of aggression against the United States. In 1978 he appeared on the popular American television program 60 Minutes, claiming that CIA Director William Colby and National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger had systematically lied to Congress about the CIA's operations.

Listening to Stockwell talk back in 1986 would scare the hell out of most intelligent-thinking human beings--why, it should scare him to near death, because that's where John Stockwell says our government is taking us as a society...in fact, what he's been saying for 25 years should scare the hell out of the whole human race of upgraded monkeys.

Here's a couple of Stockwell quotes:
The major function of secrecy in Washington is to keep the U.S. people ... from knowing what the nation’s leaders are doing.

Enemies are necessary for the wheels of the U.S. military machine to turn.

And here's an excerpt from a lecture he gave back when his book The Praetorian Guard: The U.S. Role in the New World Order came out in the 1990s.

"What we're going to talk about tonight are the CIA's secret wars. But the subject is much broader than merely little CIA dirty tricks and shenanigans. We're talking about a situation ..... We're living in a world which has grievous problems. Our planet is terminally ill, and it's not a long term disease. We're talking about the nuclear arms race. This is something. These 52,000, soon to be 70,000, nuclear weapons are going to be going off sooner, rather than later.

"At the same time, the world is facing serious economic problems of the sort that triggered world wars in the past. Leaders of countries, leaders of banks, for purposes basically of greed, have never been able to balance their checkbooks. They always overspend. They run countries into bankruptcy.

"When the world has gotten blocked up before, like a Monopoly game where everything is owned and nobody can make any progress, the way they erase the board and start over has been to have big world wars. Erase countries, bomb cities, and bomb banks, and then start from scratch again. This is not an option to us now, because of all these fifty-two thousand nuclear weapons."

The lecture ends with this:

"There's a lesson in all this. The lesson is: It isn't just the Gestapo maniacs, or KGB maniacs, who do inhuman things to other people. It's PEOPLE who do inhuman things to other people.
And we are responsible for doing these things on a massive basis, to people of the world today. We do it in a way that gives us plausible denial to our own consciences. We create a CIA, a secret police, with a vast budget, and let them go and run these programs in our name. We pretend like we don't know what's going on, though the information is there for us to know. And we pretend like it's okay because we're fighting some vague communist threat. We're just as responsible for these ONE TO THREE MILLION PEOPLE we've slaughtered, and for all the people we've tortured and made miserable, as the Gestapo was for the people that they slaughtered and killed. Genocide is genocide !!"

To read the whole lecture, here ya go: www.serendipity.li/cia/stock1.html

And of course our government knows John Stockwell; they know him like a book. They consider his kind an enemy, a traitor, and brand everything he reveals as endangering the safety of all us Americans. You see the reason We the People are constantly at War is because our economy, our whole vision for the world, that New World Order crap, is based on WAR, something I've been growling about since I joined CORE way back in New Orleans in 1964 and the Anti-Vietnam War movement in Mexico in 1965. These Warmongers who rule us go to war justifying it by saying we must go to war in order to protect We the People of the USA from being attacked and killed by "terrorists" who are out there all over the whole wide world thinking up deadly ways to attack us and annihilate us. This then leads to the bloody-flag-waving attitude of "We either confront them on their ground or else we'll have to confront them on our ground," which was G.W. Bush's excuse for preemptively striking Afghanistan (that had nothing to do with 9/11; nor did the Taliban have anything to do with 9/11) and Iraq (which absolutely had nothing to do with 9/11 or planning to attack the USA using drone aircraft carrying Weapons of Mass Destruction (weapons We the People of the USA sold to poor old quickly-hanged-by-Bush Saddam Hussein--"He tried to murder my old Pappy!" was also one of Georgie's bloody-flag-waving war-cry slogans). Remember, John Stockwell told us we need enemies in order to justify our warring nature--We the People, and by the way, that statement doesn't include ALL of us; what that phrase stands for to me is We the White People who claim they are the founders of this nation, who claim Great White Fathers with the help of the Christian God wrote the Constitution based on White Christian ethics and principles (thus their justification for prayer in our public schools or having the Ten Commandments in tacky stone in front of our court houses). Now we can become aware of who We the People REALLY ARE thanks to noble men ("traitors") like Daniel Ellsberg (remember, he worked for the Pentagon), John Stockwell (ex-big-time CIA agent), and now Julian Assange (a concerned World citizen and journalist--he was allowed bail just today by a Brit judge). The revelations these men leaked prove beyond intelligent doubt that We the People (no matter our color, our country of immigrant origin, whether we were once enslaved or indentured, whether we are illegal immigrants, or whether we are American Indians, etc.) are now ruled by a giant war machine with generals and ex-generals and corporate CEOs at the controls. Our largest corporations are also producers of war machines and weapons (General Electric, General Motors, Ford, DuPont, Monsanto, AT&T, etc.). And we also now know that the truths revealed by these noble men prove that We the People have a government based on lies and back-room deals and top-secret shenanigans.

WE BECAME THE WORLD'S POLICEMAN when John Foster Dulles, Eisenhower's Sec'y of State (a professional Ivy League-trained diplomat type), came up with the Cold War theory--which included "the Domino Theory" (all proved to be forms of national paranoia)--and his brother Allen became head of the OSS, the Office of Strategic Services (formed by General Wild Bill Donovan in WWII), when it was renamed the CIA, Central Intelligence Agency, through the back-room secret dealings between President Harry S. Truman and the military (who were outright against the CIA). Here's a recollection of the Act that created the CIA:

"In 1949, the Central Intelligence Agency Act (also called "Public Law 110") was passed, permitting the agency to use confidential fiscal and administrative procedures and exempting it from many of the usual limitations on the use of federal funds. The act also exempted the CIA from having to disclose its "organization, functions, officials, titles, salaries, or numbers of personnel employed." It also created a program called "PL-110" to handle defectors and other "essential aliens" outside normal immigration procedures, as well as give those persons cover stories and economic support. [1] (http://www.fas.org/sgp/jud/tenetvdoe-petresp.pdf) The Central Intelligence Agency reports to U.S. Congressional committees but also answers to the President directly. The National Security Advisor is a permanent cabinet member responsible for briefing the President on pertinent information collected from all U.S. intelligence agencies including the National Security Agency, the Drug Enforcement Agency, and others.

"Some critics have charged that this violates the requirement in the U.S. Constitution that the federal budget be openly published.

"In 1988, President George H. W. Bush became the first former head of the CIA to become President of the United States." Source:

www.wordiq.com/definition/Central_Intelligence_Agency

That last line scares the hell out of me. I still consider George H.W. Bush as the kingpin behind all these evil plots against us by criminal people Unka Dick, Karl Rove, Rumsfeld, Ashcroft, these creeps Old Pappy brought with him to power, and these crooks would include his worthless spoiled-brat rich-kid sons and his one daughter. The Bush family from Day 1 of its existence back in Ohio when old Sam Bush went into cahoots with the Harriman family to grab banksful of government-back railroad equipment contracts--on down through Prescott Bush who through the Bush Family-Harriman-connected banking interests kept Adolph Schickelgruber's money and investments safe for him--on through World War II up to this very day has lived off government doles and tax-break-loopholes and rich-family privilege. And this is especially true about the very worthless Pappy Bush and his worthless branch of the family. Pappy's the Prescott-Bush boy who after failing in his business attempts (for instance his Zapata Offshore Drilling company--which he had trouble making ends meet with even given the big tax breaks for oil people on the books back in the late 40s and early 50s--remember the oil-depletion allowance?) turned to politics for his We-the-People-provided nest egg.

So We the People keep on supporting these worthless old political baggages and family empires and hidden-wealth "non-profit" thereby tax-free foundationed families. These richer-than-God assholes all of whom have lived off We the People for over a century now. This bunch of freeloaders also includes now all these hedge-fund billionaires and their worthless families. Did you know thanks to their power in Washington, the District of Corruption, hedge-fund pirates pay no taxes on their capital gains? Another gift to these crooks from We the Stupid Scardie-cat People. Like Warren "Jive Ass" Buffett, a filthy-rich hedge-fund pirate. His old pappy was a conniving shiftless-skunk politician and Wall Street finagler, which means Buffett's family have also feathered their nest with government doles and tax breaks.

It is so frustrating for a clear-thinking American to comprehend how in spite of these creepy Republicans, the Teabagger or the rightwing nutjob side of the Party, whichever, being responsible for our ungodly deficits in the first place--starting with the Great Communicator and his economy-wrecking economic policies and going on through the further economy-wrecking voodoo economics of Pappy "Read My Lips" Bush--the largest-ever deficit until his son took over in 2000 with a Democrat President's surplus and drove us down to the point of economic disaster we are now in--We the People of the USA who vote keep putting them back into power--this in spite of the Democratic presidents of the past being the only leaders to overcome these economic depressions Republican Hoover-Reaganomics gets us into.

In the current budget, the Pentagon rakes in about 1 trillion bucks--and since the Pentagon hasn't been audited in over a decade, We the People of the USA have no idea how these military monkeys are wasting that grabbag of good ole worthless US bucks they've got their unregulated sticky mitts on--all of which We the People's hard-earned money--dumbass Americans working for $30,000-a-year for fat cats making 10-to-100 times as much. How dumb are We the People to be also keeping on struggling to keep up payments on credit cards designed by these fat cat accountants/bankers/financiers/corporate lawyers to keep us in a perpetual debt. Or keeping our money in these big Goliath banks (like it's gotten so out of hand, Snoopy has his Met-Life Bank; Walmart has declared itself a bank; PayPal is a bank) or continuing to go to them for loans or remortgaging schemes. We the People as income-earners are in debt and the corporate bosses ain't creating any new lower-or-upper-level jobs and the workers look around and see half of the old staff now gone, outplaced, leaving them with more work, maybe a new title, but with less money. Plus, the new "Pull yourself up by your bootstraps" philosophy (which Mr. Compromise Obama has taken up as his philosophy, too) says it's up to the worker to take care of himself and his or her family in terms of getting ahead and not the job of the 1% Power Elite who now control the US government and as such control us, too. Workers either working or out of work have no time or the knowledge to stop and think about their situations. Instead they keep on faithfully struggling for honest bucks at the same time FEARING either losing what barely-making-it job they currently have or FEARING perhaps not being able to find another job when they eventually do get laid off or FEARING suddenly being hit with a crippling disease or being in a car wreck and becoming unable to work, blah, blah, blah--while up above these scared shitless workers in their luxurious top-floor corner offices--those sacred corporate upper rooms containing those altars to Mammon housed in those sacred cathedrals of high finance all full of corporate priests, the fat cats who are busy planning their next fabulous vacation ("We're sailing one of the yachts down to Bora Bora....") or their next teleconference ("I want to meet with the Cleveland office on this workplace spying technology one of their best and brightest has come up with....") or their next vision for the company ("How do we get more work for less money out of these high-paid lazy American workers?"). Our economy is tanking--wars actually wrecking us, but, hey, you can't complain about these wars--without them, we'd all be shoveling shit or selling rotten apples and lead pencils on the street corners--or maybe our women, including our mothers, our wives, or our daughters will have to become whores; fat cats with lots of money and power need whores. That's the true role of women in the Power Elite world.

It is a New World Order dropping down on us like a big net. And this New World Order is a military order. The Bush Family has made millions off all the wars they've put into motion--Pappy Bush and his futile Persian Gulf War (the only war we've won, according to Pappy, since WWII (paying for it using Pappy's scheme of forcing Japan and his Saudi-Arabian pals and other of our allies to help him pay for it) and the two unending wars perpetrated on us by his worthless, spoiled-brat, AWOL-coward, numbskull (Skull & Bones--"Hey, Georgie Porgie, come 'ere and suck my dick! It's a brotherhood thing, bro"), lying-like-a-dog son. The Bushes love war and money. And We the People keep giving their wars and all our money along with 'em.

thegrowlingwolf
for The Daily Growler

thegrowlingwolf Pissing Against the Wall

December 7 was the 69th Anniversary of the Japanese Attack on Pearl Harbor --that "Day of Infamy" that led the US into WWII; yet, I don't recall seeing it even mentioned on the news--not even Amy Goodman noted it. However, the day that American gun-toting loony shot John Lennon was highly advertised in every media--with Yoko "Joko" Ono reenergizing her celebrity by shedding a few crocodile tears over her late naive husband and gathering a bunch of Baby Boomers out at Strawberry Fields in New Yorkers's Central Park--why not name it Lee Morgan Fields? Lee was murdered by his wife Helen while on a break during a gig at Slug's...oh, I'm sorry, Lee was an American Music creator and not an American Music copycat [NOTE: if you click on this text you get the photo below enlarged is all]Foto by tgw, New York City, November 2010
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Anybody Who Knows "Moody's Mood for Love" Is Sad Today--James Moody's Left Us:
James Moody, 85, American jazz saxophone and flute player There is wrong info in Moody's Wikipedia entry: like Kenny Barron didn't play piano with Dizzy Gillespie in 1946--Kenny was born about that time; Kenny did, however, play piano with Dizzy's Quintet that included James Moody in 1964-65.  He replaced Junior Mance in the group.  I was at the first integrated nightclub performance in New Orleans at Al Hirt's Club in 1965 (the Civil Rights Act was in effect), which was the Dizzy Gillespie Quintet--the night I had separate interactions with James Moody (he borrowed a cigarette from my wife and talked about it being hot) and Kenny Barron (he was 18 and talked about how exciting it was to play with Dizzy) and Dizzy himself, my wife and I finding him playing the piano in a Bourbon Street bar, just him and the woman bartender, then him buying us Heinekens (his favorite beer, he said), and sitting with us at the bar where my wife caught him rifling through her purse.  When she asked him what the hell he was doing, he said, "Just keeping in practice."  I lift one for James Moody.
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"A person could piss against a tree, he could piss on his mother, he could piss on his own breeches, and get off, but he must not piss against the wall -- that would be going quite too far. The origin of the divine prejudice against this humble crime is not stated; but we know that the prejudice was very strong -- so strong that nothing but a wholesale massacre of the people inhabiting the region where the wall was defiled could satisfy the Deity." -- Mark Twain, Letters from the Earth
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The Text of Sen. Bernie Sanders's Speech:
timnovo.wordpress.com/2010/12/04/bernie-sanders-amazing-speech-in-text-1-of-2/

President Obama's and the Dumbocrat Party's response to Bernie? "Ah, shut up and sit the fuck down, Bernie, you dumb bastard. We need to continue these tax breaks or we're going to slide back into that recession our President in corporation with the backwards-thinking Repugnicans has lifted us out of. We praise our wealthiest Americans. They are the backbone of this nation. Without their campaign contributions, pal, you wouldn't have a Senate seat. Think big. It's the BIG picture we're talking about, Bernie." Ironically, this recession President Obama's warning us about slipping back into (poor bastard, doesn't know the difference between a recession and a depression--doesn't even talk about inflation) was started when Bush gave those 1-percenters their tax-free rides--remember, we're talking about worthless, spoiled-brat G.W. Bush getting a tax-free ride, too; we're talking about Bush's brothers and his sister getting tax-free rides; we're talking Old Pappy and Mammy Bush getting tax-free rides (this whole family has lived off government doles its whole existence); we're talking about New York City's billionaire mayor getting a tax-free ride; we're talking about ultrafilthyrich Warren Buffett and his palsy-walsy Little Billy Gates and Billy's worthless-drag-on-the-economy wife, Melinda, getting tax-free rides; we're talking about Donald "the Bankruptcy King" Trump and traitorous phony American Rupert Murdoch getting tax-free rides. Since corporations are now individual citizens, this means corporations and their many CEOs and management goons will now get tax-free rides (a further tax-free ride since all of them are already on tax-free rides). Exxon-Mobil, for instance, pays no taxes at all on its huge profits. For God's sake, Mr. President, who the hell's gonna pay taxes? Of course, now that our president is a multimillionaire (and Michelle is too), he's getting a tax-free ride also. Once a person gets rich in this country, fuck their fellowman; fuck their neighbors; fuck their community; fuck their friends. I know, my brother was rich--and stingy, too. Why? Because once a person gets rich--and most of these people are rich on paper only and not in terms of cash--they become paranoid. Everyone suddenly is out to rip them off. Especially poor people--"Like my Black butler--I mean, that son of a bitch is always borrowing money from me and then conveniently forgetting to pay me back. Bought his lazy wife a big fifty-six-inch HD television. 'Oh, yessuh, boss, I'se'a gonna pay you back...in de meantime, does you mind if'n I steals dis silverware?' I hate these servants, but what the hell you gonna do. When you're as rich as I am, you don't stay that way helping these poor lazy worthless bastards keep up their easy-living lazy lives." Anyway, nice speech, Bernie. Too bad the nutjobs who are better than thou are thinking backwards--just like you, Bernie: I mean you backed this deal at first. Hypocrites! Yes, even Bernie Sanders is a hypocrite, but notice: he's the only one beginning to see how hypocritical he is and Congress is and President Obama is and Hillary "Hillbilly Queen" Clinton is and Slick Willie Clinton is--but, no, ex-faux-stolen-election president G.W. Bush isn't a hypocrite--he sticks to and totally believes in the divinity of rich people, which of course includes himself. Remember, these people, C. Wright Mills taught us this in 1956, our Power Elite (those who control a nation's wealth) feel they are above all the rest of us. They do not think they make mistakes. If they made mistakes, they wouldn't be rich. From C. Wright Mills, The Power Elite on Chief Executives:

The economy of America has been largely incorporated, and within their incorporation the corporate chiefs have captured the technological innovation, accumulated the existing great fortunes as well as much lesser, scattered wealth, and capitalized the future. Within the financial and political boundaries of the corporation, the industrial revolution itself has been concentrated. Corporations command raw materials, and the patents on inventions with which to turn them into finished products. They command the most expensive, and therefore what must be the finest, legal minds in the world, to invent and to refine their defenses and their strategies. They employ man as producer and they make that which he buys as consumer. They clothe him and feed him and invest his money. They make that with which he fights the wars and they finance the ballyhoo of advertisement and the obscurantist bunk of public relations that surround him during the wars and between them.

Their private decisions, responsibly made in the interests of the feudal-like world of private property and income, determine the size and shape of the national economy, the level of employment, the purchasing power of the consumer, the prices that are advertised, the investments that are channeled. Not 'Wall Street financiers' or bankers, but large owners and executives in their self-financing corporations hold the keys of economic power. Not the politicians of the visible government, but the chief executives who sit in the political directorate ... hold the power and the means of defending the privileges of their corporate world. If they do not reign, they do govern at many of the vital points of everyday life in America, and no powers effectively and consistently countervail against them, nor have they as corporate-made men developed any effectively restraining conscience.

------------------------------------------------------And now back to our story:

I was going to write a remembrance of things past thing on my remembrance of Dandy Don Meredith, who died out in Santa Fe, my old home stomping ground, a couple of days ago, but then this Wikileaks bullshit popped back up out of my cultural toaster as "untoastable." And me, a drinking man, though a moderate drinker unless the gathering becomes fun and full of witty repartee, then I'm prone to lose count of how many Heinekens or shots of Jameson's Gold I've hoisted, but I love toasts...but, back to my intentions being detoured.

I have a lot of historical relations connected with Dandy Don...we're both Texans of the same generation; we both went through the Texas public school system; we both went to Texas colleges; we both were married three times; we both had the same kind of male charm and wit...but, there we split. I left Dallas; I left Texas; Dandy Don stayed in Texas, stayed in Dallas, and never played a home football game--and this is amazing--in his whole football career--high school through the NFL--outside the State of Texas--outside the Dallas area--high school football in Mount Vernon, Texas; college football at Southern Methodist University in Dallas; His NFL career spent entirely with the Dallas Cowboys under coach Tom Landry. Dandy went to SMU, by the way, when the Mustangs had a nationally ranked NCAA football program and were in the very tough Southwest Conference and played their home games in the huge Cotton Bowl in Fair Park in Dallas, an edifice that just this year was abandoned to be demolished (there is a big-buck demolition industry) when the Cotton Bowl name and game was moved to the Dallas Cowboy's new gaudy stadium in Arlington, Texas--in my remembrance, Arlington was once the home of the big 3 D Stock Farm and the famous Arlington Downs Racetrack (opened in 1929 and was one of the most successful horse tracks in the US until 1937 or so when pari-mutual betting was outlawed in Texas; the law was repealed in 1987) that was right up against U.S. Highway 80--and where now stands the Texas Motor Speedway where they have NASCAR races....

I get to rambling...that's the wild-tale-teller in me--and they're wild tales because they're true. In the wild are all our secrets. In our secrets are all our problems. We start from Zero, the beginning. You see, I don't believe in God, and, no, don't worry, I'm an A, that's an Atheist who's rid himself of the theist part of the word, but if I did believe in God, it would only be because I found what could be defined as a "creative source" in the number Zero. Like we come from Nothing--out of nowhere--space is the infinite existence--so God is Nothing, and I can believe that. Like, when I sit down at this Mac to write on this blasphemous blog, I start at Zero. Creation begins with nothing. Out of nothing comes something. Give that something the value 1. From there evolves addition and subtraction. And soon 1 has been added to or subtracted from until it developes into something of value...or of a greater value than Zero. Simple, right? But then, like Mark Twain, I'm a simple man. I observe things and from my past experiences (my values) turn them into words strung together to form tales. Las cuentas. That Dead Men Tell No Tales, is something I learned early from my collection of Pirate bubblegum cards, trading cards whose art depicted famous and infamous pirates from the past and whose backs told these guys's story (and there were a couple of women pirates in this series, one of whom, Anne Bonney, I had sexual fantasies over for a couple of adolescent years). These cards came from the Bowman Company [Mr. Ed: These cards were actually put out by the Leaf Company:

not the Bowman Company. These cards date from 1948]--[Bowman's was] the bubblegum company who took the old cigarette companies's marketing trick of including baseball trading cards with their packs of cigs and put them in their packs of bubblegum. And one of those [Leaf] Pirate bubblegum cards was entitled, "Dead Men Tell No Tales," and it showed a poor old pirate who'd been left by his mates on a deserted island and on the back it explained that when a pirate broke the pirates's code of justice, they were left on a desert island to die; therefore, "Dead Men Tell No Tales."

Julian Assange, the latest declared terrorist by our rightwing boobs and boobettes, has surrendered to London police. Not to answer his being accused of being a saboteur under the U.S. Espionage Act, but rather to answer the Swedish rape charges against him. In Sweden, he's accused of not using a condom while having hot sex with a couple of hot Swedish babes. I mean this Assange dude is a babe magnet--babes evidently fight over the chance to fuck this guy. Here's AVN's Mark Kernes report on the matter:

LONDON—News stories about Wikileaks founder Julian Assange having been accused of rape have been circulating on the internet for more than a month, but a report on AOL News indicates that the Swedes may be guilty of "over-charging" Assange, and that the true "crime" is "sex by surprise," which carries a penalty of ... $715.
"Whatever 'sex by surprise' is, it's only a offense in Sweden—not in the U.K. or the U.S. or even Ibiza," said Assange's London attorney, Mark Stephens, shortly after Sweden's Supreme Court refused to quash an arrest order issued against Assange. "I feel as if I'm in a surreal Swedish movie being threatened by bizarre trolls. The prosecutor has not asked to see Julian, never asked to interview him, and he hasn't been charged with anything. He's been told he's wanted for questioning, but he doesn't know the nature of the allegations against him."
According to an article in the Daily Mail (UK), the charges against Assange stem from two sexual encounters with Swedish women—one a "blond academic and member of the Social Democratic Party who's known for her radical feminist views"; the other an "art photographer," both of whom attended a weekend seminar sponsored by the Social Democratic Party.
Assange reported stayed at the blond academic woman's apartment while attending the seminar, and during sexual intercourse, Assange's condom broke. The woman was said to be unhappy about this, but the pair attended the seminar the next day, and nothing appeared to be wrong between them.
The other encounter occurred two days later, when the photographer, who'd met Assange at the seminar and gone to lunch with him, paid for a train ticket for Assange to rendezvous with her at her apartment, 40 miles outside of Stockholm. The woman was apparently upset that Assange spent more time with his computer than with her during the train ride, but the pair nonetheless had sex several times, and during at least one of those encounters Assange did not use a condom.
Two days later, according to reports in a Swedish newspaper, the academic had a conversation with the photographer, during which each learned that Assange had had sex with the other, and the photographer expressed worry that she had had unprotected sex and told the academic that she wanted to report the incident to the police.
As a result of police interviews with the women on August 20, the on-call prosecutor, Marie Kjellstrand, decided to issue an arrest warrant on charges of rape and molestation—a decision that was overruled the following day by Kjellstrand's boss, Eva Finne, who told the press that she had not seen any evidence for rape allegations.
news.avn.com/articles/Rape-Charges-Against-Wikileaks-Assange-May-Be-Bogus-418791.html

What a man! Wow. Sex by surprise. I guess that's what rape is...or is it? Like when you come home from a long trip and your wife or your girlfriend greets you at the door wearing nothing and you bang her right there on the floor without closing the front door even--I mean, could you charge your wife or girlfriend with "sex by surprise"? And have her tagged a rapist? Only in Sweden. I've had an experience with a Swedish woman--one of those "blond academic" types so I can understand old Julian's obliging the two Swedish babes who he sexually surprised!

Of course one can easily read the handwriting on the wall for old Julian. He's going to be packed away in a Swedish prison or else released to the custody of a CIA assassination team, and that will be it for Assange and Wikileaks and the two Swedish babes can come to the US and get book contracts and invites to pose nude for Playboy--which might include a night of double sex by surprise in the arms of old Hugh Hefner (he's old but his Steely Dan still works)--and of course an invite to participate on Walt Disney-Mickey Mouse's "Dancing With the Stars" television show--perhaps the Brit judges on that show will want some sex by surprise and they'll win.

In the meantime, President Obama has once again fucked us. Hot damn, finally this compromising fool is getting his compromises from his hero Repugnicans, compromises that led to the Teabagger/Repugs saying "OK, gol-darnit, we'll extend them thar welfare doles to those worthless out-of-work drags on our economy but you gotta extend them thar tax-free rides for our sacred rich people, mostly men, real men, better men than you, you Black foreigner with a Muslim name...[and under their breath]...you son of Satan Islamic jihad Kenyan Black bastard!"

How embarrassing is it for the rest of the world to see this once all-powerful man now down on his knees kissing the asses of the sleaziest Repug deceivers...and doing this humiliating shit with still a Democratic-controlled Congress. And there's old reliable Bernie Sanders saying he's going to filibuster this shit--and Obama will chastise Bernie for blocking passage of his great compromise. In the meantime, unemployment is up--it's really way over 10% though the Bureau of Labor Statistics (remember, statisticians/Economists/Sociologists/Government number crunchers know how to LIE WITH STATISTICS!) is determined to let it bounce around from 9.7 to 9.8. Among the poor Whites, Blacks, Latinos, et al., unemployment is closer to 20% than it is 10%. In the meantime, the rich who already pay a 1000 times less taxes than the bulk of American wage earners are getting an extended free ride and at the same time, the Repugs put this in this compromise, they are getting an added free ride via forcing Obama to reduce the Estate Tax down from 50% to 35% and then not even kicking in until the estate is worth more than 5 million bucks, and in some cases doing away with it altogether. Oh boy, yacht sales are going up; cigarette boat sales are going up; sales of hi-rise penthouse apartments are going up; the number of billionaires is going up. Hot damn and oh boy. But Obama will spin out the fact that's really not a fact, only a fact in Obama's needing to cover his ass, that he's lowering the taxes for the Middle Class (a class I thought no longer existed in this country)...oh boy, oh joy--he's lowering taxes on everybody. How then are We the People going to pay for two fucking billion-dollars-a-day wars?; keep increasing the Pentagon's budget?; keep shelling out billions of dollars a month to worthless dictatorships and rightwing nations in foreign aid?; keep paying off the national debt?

Do you see how utterly politically chaotic and silly and stupid and backwards these scenarios pan out to be?

In a previous post--yeah many moons back now--I gave Don Meredith's fried chicken recipe. Don's mother, like my mother, did fried chicken the old-fashioned Texas way--you roll your chicken pieces in an egg and buttermilk batter--whip it up to a frothy thickness--then crumble up some saltine crackers in a paper sack of flour that has been peppered and salted and put the egg-buttermilk battered chicken pieces in the sack and shake the bejesus out of it. Then you take the chicken pieces and put them in an iron skillet which is half filled with some good bacon grease or lard (my mom preferred Crisco), put the lid on the skillet, and let those pieces fry until they are angelically deliciously golden browned and crispy finger-lickin' good.

Elaine Kaufman's death. When I came to New York City in 1969, Elaine's was the spot where all would-be literary types hung out. It was up Second Avenue, up at 88th, just up road from where I lived. My first time visiting the joint, with my 2nd wife, we sat at the bar. Down the bar from us sat Norman Mailer--he had just begun his manly man defense of his macho attitude against the feminists Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem, and Kate Millett. The man sitting next to us said Woody Allen was there--at a table--and Woody became an Elaine regular--and then Elaine herself, puffing on one of her famous chain-smoked cigarettes that was constantly dangling from her mouth, her oversize body wearing a man's dress shirt, came around and asked us how we were doing. At the time of my first visit--with my wife who by the way was a charter member of NOW--we were living on the upper East Side--on Sutton Place and East 56th. My next visit to Elaine's came in the mid-70s with my 3rd wife when I was living in a loft in BLOHO (far west up Spring Street from SOHO). By then I had published poems and short stories and thought of myself as a successful writer, though I made my living editing. My 3rd and I went to Elaine's a couple of times. By the time of these trips, the literary eyes were off Mailer and on guys like E.L. Doctorow, Toni Morrison, Maya Angelou, etc. My wife, a Sarah Lawrence girl, had studied under Miss Morrison out there--and had taken a Doctorow class, too, but he was on a sabbatical and woman whose name I can't remember taught his class that year. After those visits, I went my own literary way, established myself as a regular at the downtown alternative literary establishment, the Ear Inn.

Elaine Kaufman...what a life, eh? RIP.
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Julian Assange has surrendered to Brit police--Brit judge holds him without bail. Poor old Julian. Will he commit suicide in jail?
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thegrowlingwolf
for The Daily Growler