DeRosaWorld

Saturday Musings

- - Some political notes from the field and a DeRosaWorld poll: I was in Pennsylvania and New Jersey last week and talked a lot of politics with a lot of people. I think Senator Obama is going to take both states by a large margin. Most people I spoke with were Hillary supporters, but it is any Democrat against McCain for them. These are the 'Archie Buckers' the Obama campaign painted with racist colors during the primaries. They have forgiven him.

They are so sick of the Republican Party and President Bush, Jr. that they are supporting Obama. Race may or may not be an issue for them, but not a show-stopper. They are afraid of McCain and despise the policies of the Republicans that have brought about the housing foreclosures, the high price of gasoline, and the Iraq war and shame. Shame, a word I heard repeated.

They are also tired of all the right-wing media bleating on and on and on in defense of the Bush, Jr. Administration. They don't believe it anymore. They are afraid that their sons will be drafted. These are the things they are talking about.

The politics of fear worked too well and now the electorate is afraid of the Republicans.

There is a concern about Obama out here, but it is not the color of his skin. They are worried because they know nothing about him. They are afraid of his inexperience. They are afraid he will fail before he can turn things around. They are now pinning their hopes on an unknown. That is how desperate they are. So if the skinny kid with the funny name doesn’t have any more Larry Sinclairs out there with pictures of him snorting cocaine off his boner, then I think we are going to have ourselves a Democrat in the White House come November…and he is going to get a lot of white support, both male and female, rich and poor.

- - The progressive blogosphere was of a mixed mind this week. Some wanted to be mad at Senator Obama for caving into the FISA bill…and they are right to be mad. What was he thinking?

Others were begrudgingly clapping for Senator Clinton for supporting their man…and they are right to be happy. The Hillary supporters are going to come out strong for Obama in November. Could the same be said of the Obama supporters if the Democratic Party nominee were Senator Clinton?

- - The Stonewall Riots began on June 28, 1969 in New York City on Christopher Street at the Stonewall Inn. The NYC cops got as good as they gave that day. This day is still celebrated in the bars of the West Village. Before Stonewall is a great documentary about the gay community and the times leading up to the riots.

- - I couldn’t fit Don DeLillo’s Underworld into the carry-on, so I took two slim Gore Vidal novels with me, hoping the Office of Homeland Security didn’t open my bag. In A Yellow Wood and Dark Green, Bright Red are two very honest and unique novels. They have been reprinted in England; you cannot get them in America. I got them from Amazon UK. (Beware the weak dollar vs. the euro.)

Two post World War Two novels that the New York Times either didn’t care for or refused to review because of The City and the Pillar scandal. In A Yellow Wood (1947) is a rare look at life in New York City immediately after the war as veterans come home and take up the business of America. And in that glorious time between VJ Day and the Communist witch hunts when American artists thought they could be honest with us and themselves. This is the time of film noir in Hollywood. Something was wrong. The defeat of fascism didn’t bring peace, just prosperity. There was something new out there that was in charge now, and to be afraid of …and it turned out to be us.

Dark Green, Bright Red (1950) is a great example of the cliché “ahead of its time”. This book shows us what America was up to in Central America before most Americans could find Guatemala on a map; empire building, with a little sex in it. If there was ‘special rendition’ in 1950, Vidal would have been shipped off to the basement of the Pentagon for revealing state secrets.

- - Yes, I did have a soft pretzel and of course cheese steaks. Three cheese steaks in fact. I also had some decent Chinese Food, something California is in as short supply as water. How hard is it to make an egg roll with a little hot mustard on the side?

- - Get yourself some good sipping whiskey and buy Emmylou Harris’ All I Intended To Be. At first you’ll sit and feel sorry for yourself and feel the aches and pains of middle age, but by the end you will be refreshed and ready to get up and face the world. She captures that middle-aged need to put your feet up feeling. Fuck the young; let them suffer with the High School Musical soundtrack. This album was made for adults by adults.

- - One last word on flying in modern America. It sucks and the airline industry should be ashamed of itself. If they don't want to do the job anymore, give it up and let us have a lot of smaller, independent airlines with the American, small  business mentality. Let's make the FAA do its fucking job and in this new century let the major airlines go the way of TV news, movies, rock & roll, cheap gasoline and other 20th century Americana. Something needs to change because Americans need and want to travel around this great country of ours and the current major airlines do not deserve our business. Americans do not deserve being treated like this.

Saturday Musings

- Tim Russert didn’t want to learn the lesson all working class Irish, Italians and Jews learn the hard way. Never trust the WASPS.

- The Great Game in Afghanistan took a hit this week. About 870 prisoners escaped during a Taliban bomb and rocket attack on the main prison in southern Afghanistan that knocked down the front gate and demolished a prison floor, And in western Afghanistan today, a roadside bomb exploded near a U.S. military vehicle, killing four Americans.

- Bush, Jr. is still in Europe.

- The Cedar River was a force to be reckoned with this week in Iowa. And Des Moines’ levees were ruptured by the Des Moines River today. Let’s hope the government response matches the task.

- The Supreme Court decided that habeas corpus is an important part of the American Constitution. Bush, Jr. said he would nod his imperial head and abide by the Court’s ruling, although it was only a 5-4 decision….huh?

- The world continues to shake and quiver. Northern Japan took a hit yesterday. Is mother nature trying to tell us something, like “get off”.

- Speaking of getting off earth, NASA’s latest Mars lander, Phoenix has collected particles that offer a snapshot of millions of years of life on the Mars. NASA is hoping to find evidence of the existence of water and life-supporting organic minerals in the polar region. Now wouldn’t that be a kick in the head?

- I hope that lift off clip thing that fell off the Space Shuttle doesn’t fall and hit me in the head. Something else to worry about.

- I’ve been under the weather lately, knocked down by one hell of a cold, with a slight fever, heavy chest congestion and lots of runny nose. Yesterday I made a lunch out of a can of imported tuna in olive oil from Genoa, Italy, a clove of fresh garlic and some rigatoni. I felt a lot better. I try to hold off the American over the counter medicine if I can, but not this time. Mucinex and Afrin are my bff.

- Glen Campbell has an album coming late summer in which he covers his favorite rock songs. I am so excited. There will be some Green Day and some U2 and god knows what else. That old boy can sing and play the guitar.

- Emmylou Harris, the reigning queen of alt-country also has a new album. All I Intended To Be. I need to catch up with Emmylou. She’s keeps churning out records and changing partners and I just can’t get enough of her.

- Don DeLillo’s Underworld…okay, so the opening is Pafko At The Wall, a tour de force of sports writing that seems like he turned his manuscript over to Oliver Stone to edit. I don know. There is something so un-noble about this so noble a moment in baseball. The kid listening alone on the rooftop and the people spilling out in to the streets captures the uniqueness of the moment, but most of the characters are out of the film noir era, post WW2 America that scared the hell out of the Republican Party and J. Edgar Hoover (and enamored the French). It is a big book and I will blog about it here each week until finished. The opening is certainly crafty, but am I reading the great American novel? I’ll let you know.

Saturday Musings

- Senator Barack Hussein Obama, Jr. (D-IL) age 46 is the presumptive Nominee of the Democratic Party for President in 2008.

- Arianna Huffington can finally relax. Hillary won’t be the nominee.

- The white, male talking heads exploded all at once across the networks when Hillary gave her campaign wrap-up speech after the South Dakota and Montana primaries earlier this week and did not concede the election. Russert, Matthews, Obermann, Toobin, Gergen. It was awesome. You could see they wanted to kill her. MSNB even split the screen like Hollywood Squares so they called all scream at once.

- One thing to be concerned about, Senator Obama lost eight out of the last ten contests to Senator Clinton.

- The Senate Intelligence Committee finally gets to release its 2004 report that proved Bush, Jr. lied to America about the need to go to war in Iraq. Who arrests the President?

- NASA tells us that Bush, Jr. lied to us about their findings on climate change and even changed the data in their reports. Does anybody in the Press want to ask him about this?

- How about those gasoline prices? Ready to throw garbage at Bush, Jr. public appearances yet? No, let’s wait to blame the new President.

- Was talking to a 9/11 conspiracy nut and she said, If everything Bush, Jr. ever told us was a lie, and then challenged me to prove her wrong and I couldn’t, then why would he tell the truth about 9/11? The argument gave me pause.

- Don DeLillo’s Falling Man may be the first really big book about 9/11. I’m preparing myself to sit down and revisit that day. I think this read requires I sit in my chair over a long weekend and don’t get up until the end.

- Bo Diddley has left the stage. My introduction to him actually comes from George Thorogood’s cover of Who Do You Love. As a youngster, I loved to track back music I liked to its roots. Artists like Janis Joplin led me back to Bessie Smith. Elvis Presley led me back to Big Mama Thornton. Christine McVie of Fleetwood Mac led me back to Etta James. Fleetwood Mac started out as a blues band with Peter Green that led me back to many of the great blues artists and guitarists from the 1940s and 1950s.

- Netflix movie review: There Will Be Blood coming from my eyes if I have to watch this movie to the end.

- This Saturday is Chicken Parmigiana day. First I make the tomato sauce. I have two double chicken breasts. I pound them. A little salt and pepper. I mix egg, milk and a lot of various Italian spices, especially oregano into the mix, dip the chicken. Coat the chicken in Progresso Italian Style bread crumbs, fry it up. Then I put the water on, cook the spaghetti. And of course Chianti.

Robert F. Kennedy: Assassinated 40 Years Ago

Senator Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated June 5, 1968. It has been a rough 40 years in American politics since then. The Democratic Party has never really recovered.

A Good Thing IKE Was Answering The Phone At 3am

When the history is written of the men from the Pentagon in the late 1940's and 1950's, the death of the American Dream will be revealed.

"President Dwight D. Eisenhower overruled some of his military commanders in the summer of 1958, ordering them not to use nuclear weapons against China if communist forces blockaded the Taiwan Strait, according to declassified Air Force documents.

Eisenhower "made it clear that the Chinese would be given a warning with conventional explosives before he would authorize dropping of the deadlier ordnance" on Chinese territories, according to the documents made public by George Washington University's National Security Archive.

The president had the support of a congressional resolution to use force in defense of Taiwan. His decision not to use nuclear weapons still left them available if needed for subsequent attacks, according to the newly released narrative by a contemporary Air Force historian, Bernard C. Nalty.

Disclosure of the top-secret document was one in a collection obtained by a freedom-of-information lawsuit filed by the Archive after more than a decade of requests that the documents be declassified, said William Burr of the Archive.

As the crisis grew, according to the papers, five B-47 bombers on Guam went on alert in mid-August to conduct nuclear raids against Chinese airfields.

The idea of using nuclear weapons to prevent the Chinese from using ships and aircraft to isolate Nationalist-held islands in the strait was accepted by Eisenhower's Cabinet — except for Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, who was away on vacation.

The chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Air Force Gen. Nathan F. Twining, had explained at a Cabinet meeting that U.S. planes would drop 10-to-15 kiloton nuclear bombs in the vicinity of Amoy, a coastal city on the Taiwan strait now called Xiamen.

The idea was that the Chinese would have to lift their blockade. Otherwise the United States would proceed to attack Chinese airfields.

But Eisenhower ruled out the initial use of nuclear weapons, concluding the fallout would cause civilian casualties in China and on Taiwan, risking nuclear escalation."

Saturday Musings

- After almost 8 years of squatting in the White House, President Bush, Jr. finally has an economic plan. In order to stop another American revolution, he is going to send regular folks a check to buy gasoline.

- Some car manufacturers are making theft-proof gas cap doors, anticipating Americans stealing from each other. When all we have to do is elect Hillary Clinton President. I remember paying 89 cents a gallon at one point during Bill Clinton's Administration.

- So, Pennsylvania... It took a while to see because there was a lull in primaries, but Senator Obama's campaign came to a crashing halt. Now all Hillary has to do is win a few more and get to the convention. Obama has no support left among the Democratic Party power brokers. So Bill Clinton and Ed Rendell and Wes Clark and Gerry Ferraro and the like are going to be working the coat rooms and hallways. You gotta love American politics. I can smell the whiskey and cigar smoke.

- As for the Philadelphia debate on ABC leading into the PA primary. Senator Clinton swats media "gotcha" questions like flies. If the Senator from Illinois can't handle a hostile Press, then he needs to concede the nomination to someone who can.

- As for Obama's big moment in front of General Petraeus...there wasn't one.

- Okay, on to the Republican. John McCain is visiting impoverished regions and bringing nothing but a photo-op. The Press loves him though!

- Out here in California, rumors abound of Governor Schwarzenegger switching Party affiliation...He may become Green!

- Pipelines and US Soldiers got blown up in Iraq this week.

- Afghanistan is so fucked up the media doesn't know how to report on it. So they don't.

- John Adams is dead. After two Yale death scenes Abigail (Laura Linney) and John Adams (Paul Giamatti) passed once again into history on HBO's miniseries John Adams. I enjoyed the show mainly for the time it took to debate the issues surrounding independence in America and the Revolution. I also admired their lack of hero worship and how they portrayed American Presidential politics being corrupt from the first three Presidents on. It helped me put the election of 2000 into perspective.

- Now it's time to get the real dirt. I picked up Gore Vidal's Inventing a Nation: Washington, Adams, Jefferson. America's Suetonius ought to fill in the blanks nicely.

- And the hand wringing and research is over. I put my money down on Babylon 5: The Complete Series. I read every comparison I could find, I asked my geek friends and sci-fi fans...It was either B5 or Deep Space Nine. Harlan Ellison won the day.

- On that same multiple-versions-insanely-opinionated-fans vein, I listened to Jesus Christ Superstar (The Original Studio Recording) this week again after about 30 years. Overall, it got on my nerves before the end, but Heaven On Their Minds, Everything's Alright, I Don't Know How To Love Him and Superstar brought back memories of my Catholic Grade School days and the debate between the lay teachers and the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart over this music being sinful or respectful. Respectful won the day and we were played the music in our classrooms as if it were a Church sponsored event and a victory for Vatican II.

- The weekend is here. It is a perfect Southern California day. I just launched the results of four months worth of hard work. I have a new bottle of Campari and a box of Stella D'Oro assorted cookies. Life is sweet.

The Alien and Sedition Acts

"The Alien and Sedition Acts were four bills passed in 1798 by the Federalists in the United States Congress—which was waging an undeclared naval war with France, later known as the Quasi-War—and signed into law by President John Adams.

(Some Wiki-fun on a Friday night)

The Alien and Sedition Acts were a set of laws that allowed the president of the time period to expel foreign citizens suspected of treason. The law made it illegal to oppose any measure of false or hostile words against the government. The law also applied to the government's policies.

Proponents claimed the acts were designed to protect the United States from alien citizens of enemy powers and to stop seditious attacks from weakening the government. The Democratic-Republicans, like later historians, attacked them as being both unconstitutional and designed to stifle criticism of the administration, and as infringing on the right of the states to act in these areas. They became a major political issue in the elections of 1798 and 1800.

One act — the Alien Enemies Act — is still in force in 2008, and has frequently been enforced in wartime. The others expired or were repealed by 1802. Thomas Jefferson held them all to be unconstitutional and void, then pardoned and ordered the release of all who had been convicted of violating them.

Although the Federalists hoped the Act would muffle the opposition, many Democratic-Republicans still "wrote, printed, uttered and published" their criticisms of the Federalists. Indeed, they strongly criticized the act itself, and used it as one of the largest election issues. It also had enormous implications on the Federalist party after that point, and ended up being a major contributing factor of its demise. The act expired when the term of President Adams ended in 1801.

Ultimately the Acts backfired against the Federalists; while they prepared lists of aliens for deportation, and many aliens fled the country during the debate over the Alien and Sedition Acts, Adams never signed a deportation order. Twenty-five people, primarily prominent newspaper editors but also Congressman Matthew Lyon, were arrested. Of them, eleven were tried (one died while awaiting trial), and ten were convicted of sedition, often in trials before openly partisan Federalist judges.

Federalists at all levels, however, were turned out of power, and, over the following years, Congress repeatedly apologized for, or voted recompense to victims of, the enforcement of the Alien and Sedition Acts. Thomas Jefferson, who won the 1800 election, pardoned all of those that were convicted for crimes under the Alien Enemies Act and the Sedition Act."

They don't write 'em like they used to...or do they?