From the Flotsam-Lined Shores of Lake Flaccid, New York, Comes the Daily Growler Jots & Tittles Man

From Out of the Fall Foliage of Lake Flaccid, New York, Appears a Man Covered in Bits and Pieces of Information...The Daily Growler Jots & Tittles Man:
Barabbas Munn-Dayne...........................................................................................

Dammit I just raised up...I'm out on my screen porch (yes, it still has bullet holes in it from last year's duck season) working today, a beautiful day here in lovable if abominable Lake Flaccid...and I banged my noggin on the edge of a shelf. I'm a little whoozie from the collision. The left side of my head is ringing. The wound is just a scratch but the impact was like one of those poor NFL quarterbacks I watched Sunday being flopped back on-the-backs-of-their-heads first, SNAP, then BANG back hard on the turf--and, yes, I was bored so I watched stupid pro football. I watched the Tennessee millionaires (the old Houston Titans team) kick the delusional Dallas Cowboys millionaires square in the gonads. I marveled as they kept showing and gloating over the Arkansas hick, Jim Jones, who owns the Dallas team. He was being constantly "viewed" sitting like an archduke in his special luxury box in his brand-spanking new multitiered tax-break-boondoggle bodaciously luxurious stadium (my Philadelphia Eagle fan-friend told me tickets to the Eagles games now start at $250).

The old Arkansas hick's monumental stadium holds a hundred thousand good ole folks when it's filled to the brim. Jones moved the Cowboys from Irving, a suburb of Dallas, out to Arlington, which is closer to Fort Worth than it is to Dallas. It's like the New York Giants and the New York Jets play in New Jersey. I mean in my days as a Giants fan, if one of those teams had a moved to New Jersey, we old Giants fans would never have crossed the Hudson to see them play--plus we'd sue them and make them change their names to the New Jersey Giants. And the billionaires who own the Jets and the Giants have a brand new stadium courtesy the good folks of New Jersey--who elected an idiot as their governor and now Jersey is sinking into its own miasma--the state is broke; the school system is broke; the towns are broke and their fat-boy governor's solution is to cut human services. Why have a state government at all if it only takes your money and gives you nothing back but a constant political snake-oil show of improbable promises and renigs on promises and having to constantly lie and give out the right old song and dance--attracting those true believers.

New stadium fever takes hold of these multibillionaire team owners about every 20 years now. The Giants once played in the original Yankee Stadium--and when they did, they were a NEW YORK CITY football team. But then so did the Yankees once play in Yankee Stadium. And I add here an observation: baseball is becoming boring due to certain teams still making the money and most of these millionaires's hobby teams are losing money--therefore, the teams with the most consistent attendance records are the most successful in terms of income--and under the major league owners agreement, the successful teams support the loser teams--like I just read where the Japanese-owned Seattle Mariners are once again going down the tubes due to lack of interest in what since the Japanese bought them has been a dismal team, a second-division team--an under .500 percentage team--like the New York Metropolitans were this year. And how did I get off on baseball?

It's fall here in Lake Flaccid. Cecil the Dog-Faced Boy III I'm sorry to say is still in parts unknown--whether in parts...pieces...or whole...his whereabouts and condition are still unknown. His house is totally boarded up and sits like a haunted house now where once it was the pride of Lake Flaccid's finest neighborhood. I'm such a coward. I have his sister's phone number but I'm pissed at her. I mean she ditched me...yes, I'll admit, we had a bit of an affair while she stayed at Cecil's place last year while he was judging the big annual Freak affair in Miami. But, the second time she was up here and we got together, she spilled the beans on me that she'd met a dude in Florida who was well heeled--in the pungent supply business, whatever the hell that is. Anyone ever heard of the pungent supply business? Whatever his thing, he charmed Barbara out of my arms and into his. Good for him. I'm not the jealous type.

'Nuff gossip, let's get on with the show:

Jots & Tittles

--Fuck US Senior Citizens: did you notice that once again Social Security has said the Bureau of Labor Statistics statistics have revealed that since gasoline prices have dropped from a high of $4.20-a-gallon two years ago down to $2.40-a-gallon today, once again this year, poor old worn, weathered, wizened, and in most instances torn and broken Senior USA citizens are NOT getting a cost-of-living increase in their Social Security checks. Jesus Christ, another wrench put in the hands of the anti-Hussein Obama Teabaggers that they can use to gum up the already gummed-up works. It's during Obama's first term that the first time since the cost-of-living-increase law was passed that these poor old souls haven't gotten their raises revoked and their sore asses shafted. The facts are, the average Social Security payment is $1100 a month. There are 56 million Seniors pulling down $1100-a-month! OH MY GOD! Such wasteful spending! The White House is spinning this voter problem away from President Obama as hard as they can spin it by saying the President has nothing to do with the matter since it's based on a Congressional law passed back in the Dark Ages of the past, that past which President Obama has no time for. Of course, President Obama could by Executive Order issue an emergency payment to Seniors (a bailout) to help them overcome the plights most of them are facing. This is certainly going to push Seniors a little closer to their graves ("Hurry up and die!" the government is shouting at its Senior Citizens). What will happen one day when the Libertarian-Rightwing-Teabagging-Capitalist-Republicans get their way and do away with Social Security altogether? Will people in wheelchairs have to be going out looking for a job? or people on respirators or life-support machines?--can such people get jobs?--maybe at WalMart? Home Depot? Burger King?

I can see the directors of nursing homes around the country kicking old farts out into the street since they can no longer afford to pay their bills--"Get a job and then come back and see us," the nursing home director shouts at them as he sits 'em out on the curb.

In the meantime, those bailed-out criminal bankers and financial wizards will be rewarding their leisure-class selves with huge bonuses paid out of the huge profits they are still accruing using the trillion bucks We the People of the USA gave them to keep them all from going bankrupt. Some of that trillion bucks came out of the incomes of those Senior citizens on Social Security. Seniors have to pay taxes on their Social Security money, don't you know? Plus, thanks to Obama's going in cahoots with the big Pharmas by not allowing Medicare pharmacies to use generic drugs, Seniors are soon going to have to pay retail prices for their medicines--those medicines for-profit doctors are prescribing by the multiples working for the for-profit HMOs. Generic drugs would be 50% cheaper than branded-under-patents medicines. Generic drugs are simply the names that appear in parentheses under the brand names of Big Pharma patented drugs--like the old antipsychotic drug Geodon is in actuality a chemical formula called ziprasidone, its generic name.
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---Vietnam Figures: 56,000 US troops were killed in the Vietnam Fiasco. TWO MILLION Vietnamese died in that Republican-formulated war. And to this day, AntiWar Activists are stoned and spat upon and humiliated and still infiltrated by the CIA and FBI. John LeCarre (aka: David Cornwall) may be right, AMERICANS LOVE WAR. War is a male ritual. Though I must salaciously admit I find female military personnel in their uniforms very sexy. There are some pretty women who join the military though I can't imagine a woman wanting to join the military? Why? For sexual reasons? Of course, I can't see why men join the military either. Or become cops for that matter.
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--An Ezra Pound Poem: October 30 (1885) is Ez's birthday. So I thought I'd celebrate his B-day a little early and offer this little Ez diddy here:

Salvationists

1
Come, my songs, let us speak of perfection---
We shall get ourselves rather disliked.

II
Ah yes, my songs, let us resurrect
The very excellent term Rusticus.
Let us apply it in all its opprobrium
To those to whom it applies.
And you may decline to make them immortal,
For we shall consider them and their state
In delicate
Opulent silence.

III
Come, my songs,
Let us take arms against the seas of stupidities---
Beginning with Mumpodorus;
And against this sea of vulgarities---
Beginning with Nimmin;
And against this sea of imbeciles---
All the Bulmenian literati.

Selected Poems of Ezra Pound, New Directions, 1957, 25th ed., p. 32.

Ez would be a jaunty 125 years old this coming 30th.
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--Solomon Burke is dead. Sorry to read that Solomon Burke dropped dead in a Netherlands airport a few days ago. A big man, he weighed over 400 lbs., he has been enjoying a comeback that started several years ago and has since rendered Burke 3 albums that got him some new glory back in his old-timey bones. He was rollin' along just fine, until he hit the front door of that Netherlands airport. So sing a few choruses of "Cry for Me," and shed a little tear for the once top-dog soul singer who was on a holy rebound--he got a little reverendish in his 60s, too--dead at 70 or 72 or 74. White people like to joke about White people not really knowing the exact birthdays of Black people.
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--Former CEO of eBay. I listened to a short debate between Meg Whitman and the perpetual politician, Jerry Brown, both currently running for Governor of California. Meg Whitman is the former eBay CEO who took eBay from a 4-million-buck company to a multibillion-dollar, Wall-Street-listed company--she made 2 billion buying Skype for 2 billion and reselling it for 4 billion (billionaires love buying companies and then flipping them for big profits). How? Through reorganizing (reengineering) the company into multidivisions with her hand-picked executives coming into the company and totally rebranding and retooling it. And where did Meg learn her business deceits and skills? Why at Harvard Business School, where else?

--Meg's a Long Island girl. Cold Springs Harbor. She graduated high school in 3 years and wanting to be a doctor, she went to Princeton and studied math and chemistry, pretty tough subjects evidently because after working in advertising one summer she decided she wanted to be a CEO so she transferred from Princeton to the Harvard Business School. Upon graduating from Harvard, she worked for Proctor & Gamble. She's pretty good looking so soon she found herself raised to the level of junior vice president and soon Meg was on her way to the top. She worked for Uncle Walt Disney's Mickey-Mouse Corporation, then switched over to Stride-Rite, then she got her first CEO job with the Florist On-line Delivery Co. Her big moment came when Hasbro, the toy folks, hired her. We have Meg to thank for giving We the People of the USA the British Teletubbies, you know, the group of nerdy Nerf-looking characters of which one was Gay and carried a purse. And, yes, Meg is a Teabagger. She worked for ex-Governor of Massachusetts (poor dumb Massachusetts idiots), Mitt Romney, the Mormon nutjob who ran for President but was beaten for the Repug nomination by John "Mission-Accomplished-NO," "the Failed Flyboy" McCain and the woman Forrest Gump, Sarah Palin. Meg's work in the Repugnican Party got her being touted by McCain as his Sec'y of Treasury. Also, lo and behold, in 2009, Meg was on the Board of...guess what company? If you said Goldman-Sachs, you are correct sir or madame. Meg is also a member of the Business Hall of Fame--and she's married to a DOCTOR. Meg, by the bye, has spent more money on her campaign than any other self-funding politician ever, 119 million so far--thus topping New York City's Billionaire Mayor Mike Bloomberg who only spent 100 million in his illegal third-term run for mayor, which he won by 50,000 mere votes over an unknown Black man, Bill Thompson. Meg was asked by Warren Buffett to join him in his bullshit billionaire charity club but she declined saying she has her own foundation, thank you, which she does, named after her Long Island parents. Meg is pro-abortion but she was anti-illegal Mexican until it was discovered she used illegal Mexican aliens as servants in one of her many mansions both on earth and in heaven so now she's toned her anti-Mexican immigrant blab down a bit. Rumor has it that Meg didn't even vote for a number of years--she was too busy turning eBay into a money-grubbing multibillion-dollar business that has such a built-in base--I mean the name stands for "Electronic Bay," meaning an electronic auction bay. She used her shares from eBay to start her foundation.

--Jerry "Political Parasite" Brown: Meg's running against Jerry Brown, yep, that same old Jerry Brown who's been Governor of California before and he's also been mayor of Oakland--yep, Jerry is a political parasite (ex-Governor of California Pat Brown's worthless son and former Buddhist)...though what Jerry's contributed to progressive politics, one doesn't know, do one? Jerry talks a liberal game but whether he is one is another matter. California is not too bright when it comes to the politicians it elects. Ronald Reagan was governor of California. And Arnold "Cigar Smokin' Tit-grabbing" Swartzennegger, whose father was a Nazi policeman, is their current governor. What a choice for California's idiot voters--Meg Whitman or Jerry Brown. Yahoooooo.
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--Saint British Petroleum. Due to the miraculous (Praise all gods) end to the most horrendous oil spill in US history (remember, the Exxon Valdez spill was in USA waters). I mean word of the Gulf Coast oil spill is all but lost in our past now; totally a non-subject now, like Katrina and rebuilding New Orleans. In fact, good ole Ken Salazar (from Colorado) has granted permission for these sleazy rip-off oil companies to resume drilling up the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico--yep, these crooked corporations are back to drill, drill, drilling away. Soon, too, Brother Salazar will give them permission to resume drilling up our Alaskan Wilderness into oil-covered used-to-be wildness. We are desperate for oil. Why? Check out how much oil our military consumes.
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--The US Armed Forces and OIL:

from Crude: The Story of Oil by Sonia Shah. Seven Stories Press, 2004. 256 pages. ISBN-10 1-58322-723-7

“The U.S. military consumes about 85 million barrels of oil a year, making it the biggest single consumer of fuel in the country and perhaps the world. Accordng to an interdisciplinary panel convened by the Defense Science Board (DSB ), cheap oil has distorted the American military into a handful of super-killing steel monsters, with the majority of the forces devoted to the logistics of simply feeding and fueling them.

“The Army employed sixty thousand soldiers solely for the purpose of providing petroleum, oil, and lubricants to its war machines, which have themselves become increasingly fuel-heavy. The sixty-eight-ton Abrams tank, for instance, burns through a gallon of fuel for every half mile. With its inefficient, 1960s-era engine, the Abrams tank burns twelve gallons of fuel an hour just idling.

“So much time and money is spent fueling the American fighting machines that, according to the head of the Army Materiel Command, a gallon of fuel delivered to the U.S. military in action can ultimately cost up to $400 a gallon. Indeed, 70 percent of the weight of all the soldiers, vehicles, and weapons of the entire U.S. Army is pure fuel.”

Thanks to Languagehat for feeding us this feed.
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--Sick and Tired of Donald Trump: Take the "T" off Trump and you've got Rump. And that's what Donald "Bankrupt" Trump is, a big ASS, with an asshole for a mouth. Saw him this morning being fawned over by the CBS Morning Show babes as he appeared on that worthless morning show with Jack Welch, the big fatass pompous bullshitter who drove GM into the ground; yet, this fool is still touted as a great Capitalist genius--not much to it since the world's leading Capitalists are now The People's Communist Republic of China and the former Soviet Communist Union--check out how Russian billionaires are going about the world buying up properties and businesses. Donald Trump has gone bankrupt 5 times; yet, no one ever questions this pompous nobody asshole about how he gets to use bankruptcies to get out of paying his debts; yet, his kind are the kind who deny ordinary citizens a chance at going bankrupt anymore. Trump has been a bigger failure than he has been successful. Where did Donald get his original monies--why from his father, the original Trump real estate crook.
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And that's it for Jots & Tittles and the look at the world from Lake Flaccid, New York.

barabbasmunn-dayne,thethedailygrowlerjots&tittlesman
for The Daily Growler