Existing in New York City: Are We All Republican Assholes?

Elston Howard, the first Black to play for the New York Yankees.  Ellie became one of the great ML catchers of all time, plus in his later years he was a Golden Glove outfielder.  On the Yankees, he was the first Black MVP in the American League.  Ellie also played in 10 World Series with the Yankees.  He ended his career with the Red Sox. This is a Yankee promotional photo of Ellie down at spring training at Al Lang Field (now it's called Steinbrenner Field) in Tampa, Florida, in early 1950s.  (From the collection of tgw)
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Say Goodbye to: Jean Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier, Papa Doc's son, Baby Doc, both ruthless dictators of Haiti back in the "Good Ol' Days" or the American exploitation of Haiti. I almost got to meet Baby while I was in Haiti getting a divorce.  Jean-Claude Duvalier, 63, Haitian politician, President (1971–1986), heart attack.
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Say Goodbye to: George "Shotgun" Shuba. He had an arm like a shotgun. George Shuba, 89, American baseball player (Brooklyn Dodgers
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And Speaking of the Bloody Irony of All Things American
This is a great piece by Ben Schreiner in Counterpunch:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/09/30/a-dictionary-reference-to-the-war-on-isis/
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High-paid Right-Wing Pundits Are Trumpeting That the Backward-Thinking Republicans Will Retake Control of the Senate in the Coming Mid-Term Elections
Yeah, all those dumbass pundits like George Will, Georgie Boy Stephanopolis, and the Right-Wing nutjobs who appear weekly on the teevee politico shows are saying in retaliation against President Obama (all these White pundits hate Black Obama with their subconscious racist feelings even though to me Obama is more White Republican than he is a Black Democrat) the Republicans will win enough seats in the backward states to put them back in control of our already backward-thinking Senate.  One pundit says Colorado and Iowa (two very divided backward states) will be the deciding states in whether this Republican takeover happens or not.

Since I am a worshiper of Chaos, I welcome such a disaster, and that's what a Republican control of both Houses would amount to. It would be a disaster for the majority of We the People, but then, as you should know, I consider Americans to be the dumbest and most easily hornswaggled people in the world; otherwise how the hell do off-the-wall Republicans like John "Failed Mission" McCain, John Bonehead Boehner, Mitch "Jock Itch" McConnell, et. al., keep getting re-elected or elected in the first place?  Or Sarah "Paleface" Palin, a total wacked-out woman with her vagina for brains, and I wonder puzzlingly who the hell listens to and believes anything this backward-thinking progress-wrecking broad from the low-populated and backward state of Alaska has to say

Republicans are, like Obama and the Dumbocrats, for more and more war (we live in a war economy, folks).  Some, like John "Oops, I Got Shot Down Over North Vietnam" McCain, would like a nuclear war.  In fact, the Republicans are for more nuclear power plants (build them over earthquake faults like Diablo Canyon in California that is built smack-dab over the San Andreas Fault); for more fracking all over the world (the Koch Bros. benefit immensely from fracking); for building crude oil and natural gas pipelines all across the country; for the use of more coal-burning plants; for outsourcing our industries (what's left of them); for more tax breaks for the rich, the class in which a lot of these creeps (like Mitt "the Mormon" Romney) belong; for bringing back slavery, the cheapest form of labor there is;  for some Republican jerks, like old Rick "The Praying Governor" Perry, they would like for their states to succeed from the Union (and I say, let 'em all go and restore the Confederacy); some Republican nutjobs are for privatizing (selling off) our National Parks and Government (the People)-owned lands and wildernesses; for continued bailing out of our crooked bankers and Wall Street pirates (a simple transfer tax on each bought and sold stock would erase a hell of a lot of our trillion-dollar debt to Communist China); for branding all Muslims terrorists and putting all American Muslims in concentration camps or putting them all before firing squads like they execute in the great backward state of Mormon-believing Utah (they gave us that nutjob Oren Hatch); for running another worthless Bush son, Jeb, against Hillbilly Hillary (who Bill Clinton, who rules the Dumbocrats, will insist on being the Dumbo candidate since he owes Hillary big time in order to maintain his profligate image).

The one up and coming presidential candidate that scares me worse than Hillbilly Hillary is Pappy and Mammy Bush's "good" son, Jeb.  I'm afraid that the American voting idiots (read: White folks) love the Bushes.  Why in the holiest of hells would you be on the side of the Bushes?  All of them are failed snobs from a pre-Pappy Bush family that got rich off war by aiding Adolf Hitler in keeping track of his money and investing for him during World War II.  Pappy's failed in every oil-business venture he tried after WWII, his family supporting him plus through marrying Mammy Babs he got his sweaty worthless hands on her inheritance (she was a St. Louis newspaper mogul's daughter).  And thus popped up the head of this dumbass, one-track-minded family of pompous numbskulls, George H.W. Bush, the failed oil man living in Midland, Texas, who decided to take advantage of that old reprobate Strom Thurmond's taking his Confederate-leaning Democrats out of the beginning-to-look-like-a-nigger-loving Democratic Party, a nigger-loving bunch of White cowards the Dixiecrats blamed on F.D. Roosevelt and his New Deal politics; and remember, Southern assholes like Strom Thurmond used to hint that Eleanor looked like she had a little knee-grow blood in her.  Ironically, after his death it was revealed that ol' Strom had been messin' out in his plantation's woodpile with one of his black gal servants resulting in Ol' Pure White Strom having a Black daughter.  Don't you just love the ironies of life?

The Same Ol' Same Ol'
When you've lived as long as I have and have experienced what I've lived through in terms of survival, you become quite aware of how nothing ever changes except our mechanical objects and they change every six months, so rapidly that only whiz kids working in deep-thinking factories can keep up with their board-room-ruling need-for-profits pit bosses' demands.  "Profits are sagging, Elmo, so let's whip those young puppies into creative action...is it time for a new cell phone...you know, add a couple of apps or something...make 'em in pastel colors...do something quick...China's peones are demanding more money per hour...God-damn, why can't they be happy making three dollars-a-day?"

theboredgrowlingwolf
for The Daily Growler

Existing in New York City (the Bull's-Eye on the Terrorists' Target): When Will We Ever Learn

The Harlem Blues and Jazz Band in 1981 at The Ginger Man in New York City.  From left to right are George James, alto; Gene Rogers, piano; Johnny Williams, bass; Al Casey, guitar; the great Eddie Durham, trombone; Bobby Williams, trumpet.  Missing from the photo are Tommy Benford, drums (you can see his tom and some of him behind Bobby Williams); George James, alto. (from the collection of tgw)
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From the Lucid Pen of C. Wright Mills (from his book, The Power Elite (1956)
There is still one old American value that has not markedly declined: the value of money and of the things money can buy-these, even in inflated times, seem as solid and enduring as stainless steel. 'I've been rich and I've been poor,' Sophie Tucker has said, 'and believe me, rich is best.' As many other values are weakened, the question for Americans becomes not Is there anything that money, used with intelligence, will not buy?' but, 'How many of the things that money will not buy are valued and desired more than what money will buy?' Money is the one unambiguous criterion of success, and such success is still the sovereign American value.

Whenever the standards of the moneyed life prevail, the man with money, no matter how he got it, will eventually be respected. A million dollars, it is said, covers a multitude of sins. It is not only that men want money; it is that their very standards are pecuniary. In a society in which the money-maker has had no serious rival for repute and honor, the word 'practical' comes to mean useful for private gain, and 'common sense,' the sense to get ahead financially. The pursuit of the moneyed life is the commanding value, in relation to which the influence of other values has declined, so men easily become morally ruthless in the pursuit of easy money and fast estate-building.

A great deal of corruption is simply a part of the old effort to get rich and then to become richer. But today the context in which the old drive must operate has changed. When both economic and political institutions were small and scattered-as in the simpler models of classical economics and Jeffersonian democracy-no man had it in his power to bestow or to receive great favors. But when political institutions and economic opportunities are at once concentrated and linked, then public office can be used for private gain.

Governmental agencies contain no more of the higher immorality than do business corporations. Political men can grant financial favors only when there are economic men ready and willing to take them. And economic men can seek political favors only when there are political agents who can bestow such favors. The publicity spotlight, of course, shines brighter upon the transactions of the men in government, for which there is good reason. Expectations being higher, publics are more easily disappointed by public officials. Businessmen are supposed to be out for themselves, and if they successfully skate on legally thin ice, Americans generally honor them for having gotten away with it. But in a civilization so thoroughly business-penetrated as America, the rules of business are carried over into government-especially when so many businessmen have gone into government. How many executives would really fight for a law requiring a careful and public accounting of all executive contracts and 'expense accounts'? High income taxes have resulted in a network of collusion between big firm and higher employee. There are many ingenious ways to cheat the spirit of the tax laws, as we have seen, and the standards of consumption of many high-priced men are determined more by complicated expense accounts than by simple take-home pay. Like prohibition, the laws of income taxes and the regulations of wartime exist without the support of firm business convention. It is merely illegal to cheat them, but it is smart to get away with it. Laws without supporting moral conventions invite crime, but much more importantly, they spur the growth of an expedient, amoral attitude. 
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When the Hell Will We Ever Learn 

Obama looked so stern as he declared war on the CIA-created ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria). ISIS started off as at best a 10,000-man force; now, after we've built them up into a TERRORIST organization, they are now estimated to have a 50,000-man army.  They also have a government set up; they collect taxes; they takeover banks and steal the money; they get arms from WHERE? why the U.S.A., of course.  We're the biggest producers and sellers of war machinery and arms in the world.

What a bunch of propaganda, scare-tactics bullshit Obama spieled out as he, again looking so damn stern (I could just see that ISIS true believer who decapitated Foley and Sotloff shaking in his U.S.-made (made in Communist China probably) boots..."Ooooh, Obama scares so much hell out of me, I'm surrendering immediately and become a Christian") roared out his war-drum-beating plans.  All over the Middle East, I'm sure young hothead Washables are running as fast as their Nike sneakers can take them to the ISIS recruiting office to sign up to fight the hated Americans.  And just think how Obama could have become our greatest president ever if after he beat G.W. "Lyin' Bastard and AWOL Coward" Bush if he'd simply brought all our troops home, ended these illegal wars, and offered a hand of peace to the Middle East.  They were ready to accept him.  Remember the scenes of the Arabs wearing Barack Obama teeshirts on the night he was elected?  Instead, our Nobel Peace Prize-winning president decided to go the G.W. Bush/Cheney way, which also was the Slick Willie Clinton and Hillbilly Hillary way [how to go from a $30,000-a-year governor of the backward state of Arkansas to a multimillionaire in 8 years of hornswaggling the American people into thinking this sociopath profligate hillbilly boy was a great president, he wasn't, and is now still honored as a honorable man, he isn't].  And look at the chaotic mess these lying bastards have gotten us into.  We are verging on a nuclear holocaust as we go pompously about declaring our exceptionalism while condemning all Muslims as terrorists and making gestures of defiance against Russia, a nuclear power led by a former KGB head. 

Again recall Bill Moyers' 1987 report on our "Secret Government," the one that truly rules us, all its shenanigans conceived in secret backroom plans for continuous war.  Every power-hungry demon out there's desire is to RULE the WORLD.  That was Alexander the Great's intent.  That was the Roman Empire's intent. That was the Islamic Golden Horde's (the Caliphate) intent.  That was Napoleon's intent. That was the intent of the British Empire.  That was Hitler's intent.  And after World War II after We the People of the US got this exceptional big head our intent became to rule the world (the evil John Foster Dulles, an Ivy League-propagandized poor little rich boy, decided we were the World's Policemen).

So here we go again, folks.  Obama, as Commander-in-Chief, is "policing" at a pace John Foster Dulles would be proud of using of course the same tactics the bastards who started all this mess back after 9/11 used as they followed the Neo-Con (the New World Order) dictate for a backroom-planned takeover of the world and of the world's OIL, and truly, folks, this bullshit Obama is proposing is all about ISIS blocking our ownership of Iraqi oil (they now control an oil field and are shipping out black-market oil).  ENERGY.  We are soaking up all the world's energy.  We the People of the USA rely on oil to keep our military machine roaring about the world creating havoc, destruction, despair, annihilation, corrupt regimes...throwing us lock, stock, and barrel into the throes of our Great Lord CHAOS.

Before He Became a Rock Star, Bob Dylan Figured It Out

Come you masters of war
You that build the big guns
You that build the death planes
You that build all the bombs

You that hide behind walls
You that hide behind desks
I just want you to know
I can see through your masks

You that never done nothin'
But build to destroy
You play with my world
Like it's your little toy

You put a gun in my hand
And you hide from my eyes
And you turn and run farther
When the fast bullets fly

Well like a Judas of old
You lie and deceive
A world war can be won
You want me to believe

But I see through your eyes
And I see through your brain
Like I see through the water
That runs down my drain

You fasten all the triggers
For the others to fire
And then you sit back and watch
When the death count gets higher

And you hide in your mansion
All the young people's blood
Flows out of their bodies
And is buried in the mud

Read more: Bob Dylan - Masters Of War Lyrics | MetroLyrics

 
thegrowlingwolf
for The Daily Growler

As a P.S., how about a scary article from Radical Philosophy:

http://www.radicalphilosophy.com/commentary/deadly-algorithms

Existing in New York City (The Bull's Eye of the Target): As a Member of the Beheading

1967 Poster of Charcoal Drawing of Amiri Baraka (then LeRoi Jones) by San Francisco Artist Erwin Cobbs (from tgw collection)
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A Poem by Amiri Baraka:


Monday in B-Flat

I can pray
    all day
    & God
    wont come.

But if I call
            911
        The Devil
            Be here
        in a minute!
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As a Member of the Beheading
Can you imagine being such a fervid true believer that you would have the egoistic willpower to actually cut a human being's head off with a knife not much bigger than a kitchen knife.  Hacking that head off while the poor decapitation sufferer is still alive, his or her blood spurting wildly, spewing in some cases when the large arteries leading to the brain are cut.  Our CIA trains its goons well.  I'm sure there's a CIA stooge who would on orders decapitate a human being with a kitchen knife.

The humane and the cruel.  Again the "two sides" theory of life pops into my attempt to get on down the road of life with as few obstacles and detours as possible.  Two sides?  Think about it.  There's wealth, but in order to have wealth there has to be poverty.  There's war; there's peace.  Our American mightier-than-the-gods military chieftains claim our military is out to bring peace to the world through war.  So far that effort has been a total failure; yet these war-in-their-blood bastards are as true believing fanatical fools as that ISIS true believer who decapitated Foley and Sotloff.

Eric Hoffer Said:
"The suspicious mind believes more than it doubts.  It believes in a formidable and ineradicable evil
lurking in every person."

"Those in possession of absolute power can not only prophesy and make their prophecies come true, but they can also lie and make their lies come true."
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Even With My Head in the Sands of My Imagination
Through the sands I hear the cries of pain, the cries of the dying, and the sound of approaching death, the sound of people running for their lives, the sound of drones sneaking in to blow whole families into lifeless oblivion, the sound of superjet fighters wasting millions upon millions of dollars of bombs trying to annihilate human beings, the sound of wild fanatics going about butchering people, the sound of a Congress lying like dogs as they feed like pigs at the slop troughs of our corporate dictators, the sound of police all over the USA firing multiples of high-powered bullets into the skulls and chests of Black men...killing them with impunity, the sound of our Vice President (a man with his grateful nose up the ass cracks of the DuPont high priests) ballyhooing our invincibility against the CIA-created ISIS (ISIL). 

Our presidents and corporate dictators turn into killers once they get their fists around the controls of absolute power, the power to annihilate whole groups of people, the power to destroy whole countries' economies, the power to go to war on a whim, the power to assassinate your own citizens as you wish, the power to return whole work forces back into slavery, the power to lie and make their lies come true.  And, look, all their lies are coming true.

theostrich-likegrowlingwolf 
for The Daily Growler