A bunch of old rich white men, and maybe a few women, but they probably won’t speak, are debating whether or not to debate the future of American health care. This ought to be a real treat.
The United States Senate… what a pack of losers, bought, sold and scared. Not scared of their constituents, but of the lobbyist and the media. Whatever they come up with, I probably don’t want, because it is not in my interests they meet today.
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I heard that President Obama visited China last week. I saw it on the BBC. I tried to find some wall-to-wall coverage of the President abroad, but American TV didn’t cover it. I wonder what the President and those 2 billion Chinese talked about?
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I wish the progressive blogs would write more posts featuring progressive people and less time on what conservative and crazy-right pundits had to say. I really don’t need a re-cap of what Glenn Beck said every day. I don’t watch him for a reason. I don’t want to hear what he has to say. A strange cycle some blogs have found themselves in… recapping the stupid.
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I have a good idea for health care… Medicare… and extend it to every U.S. citizen. How do we pay for it? Let’s try not fighting a foreign war for maybe like a decade and see how much money we save… or maybe only just fight one, you know, to keep us in shape.
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Can you imagine if President Obama announced the end of military activities in Afghanistan, effective immediately. And then he puts the 9/11 left-over terrorists on trial in Manhattan and kind of just wraps up the Bush, Jr/Cheney era war on terror… you know, starts his own version of peace and security instead of trying to prop up what previous administrations have done…and starting in 2010 we have the Obama Doctrine. I wonder what that would look like.
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My television is dying. I have the last fat, really heavy, tube TV in the United States. Last night it started to fade to black and then slowly fade back up to picture again. I thought it was just the movie I was watching, some strange film editing trick, but then the picture would turn purple and only fill half the screen, then bounce back. I guess it’s time to go flat screen, LCD, LED, HD and all that. I don’t watch any weekly series. I don’t have TIVO... I wonder if I can get by with just my computer.
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I broke my two month on-line book buying fast. I bought a birthday present that had to be shipped across the country. I bought my nephew Philip Caputo’s The Voyage.
KPFK in Los Angeles has been in the midst of a Beg-A-Thon fundraiser for weeks. Look folks, I love you all, and support you, but maybe people can't afford to give this year.
I can't listen to the pleading anymore. It becomes pointless after a while. Maybe...obviously... no one is listening and that is what you should be concentrating on.
How would Raymond, Chandler, Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie or Dashiell Hammett deal with this technology?
"In the heart of New York Police Department's (NYPD) Real Time Crime Centre (RTCC), Inspector Kenneth Mekeel surveys data coming in on a giant monitor the size of a cinema screen.
As queries come in from officers on the street he brings up different data streams and punches them back to the officers.
Inspector Mekeel is on the digital front line of North America's fight against crime.
He is also part of a new wave of policing which increasingly relies on technology and immediate access to digital information."
For christ’s sake. Now we’re going to have Mark Green or Liz Holztman challenging her in the primary. And you don’t think Rick Lazio is on the phone to the RNC right now?
The Democrats are going to lose a Senate seat from New York and her House seat will go back to the Republicans, all because Arianna Huffington is jealous of Caroline Kennedy.
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It took less than a week for President Obama to realize what everyone else in the Democratic Party already knew. There is no bipartisanship left in Washington, D.C. He would know that if he had a little more experience in government… (Sorry…true!).
Make the Republicans vote against you if they dare and we’ll see what happens to Congress in 2010 and 2012. As of today, we have your stimulus package. Fuck debate. Put it to a vote. What works, keep. What doesn’t, change. But move!
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The President also needs to realize that the Press…all of it…is the enemy of Democrats. Not just Bill O’Reilly, Limbaugh, the skinny blondes, but the networks, CNN, and all the magazines and newspapers. Oh yes, and the radio, including NPR, who should have their funding revoked.
If the Republicans don’t think they can tame you, they will shoot you, or impeach you, or get the Press to humiliate you. (See all past Democratic Presidents (and nominees) since 1960).
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In my search for self, meaning and understanding in my life…I have been mining regional writers. I have been traveling the highways and rivers of Pennsylvania and there-abouts the past year or so. The Tawny O’Dell dig didn’t come up with much. I have had more luck with non-fiction. President Buchanan is a deep vein of gold and coal, as is the Civil War. So history is where I have had the most success, but I got my hands on a couple of Stewart O’Nan novels, so we’ll see where that leads.
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Indie 103.1 is no longer on the air in Los Angeles. So it’s Radio Disney or nothing, kids. This week, I recommend Rich Kids Blues by Marianne Faithfull. Don’t just jump into Broken English or you’ll end up either killing the neighbor’s dog, on drugs or staring in internet porn.
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After seeing the Oscar nominations released to no fanfare, not even in Los Angeles (can you really get excited about Kate Winslet being nominated again?) I thought it was time to do something about the state of the movie industry in my own small way.
There are some younger folks at work who stopped going to the movies as a weekly thing that young people do. It is ‘gaming’ that kills time for them now. (Trolls and elves and shit.) Two of them have actually been film majors in college. I got a lecture recently on the complexity of the dramatic arc of the Saw movies .
So I have dug out my John Ford At Fox collection and my Italian neo-realist movies and a handful of film noir and I am going to have a little film festival for them to let them know why people like me used to love movies so much. These kids even own cameras and their computers have the ability to edit film...so you would think they would be making movies, but sadly, no.
The best the Republican Party can do is Newt Gingrich? Every time I turn the TV on, one of our right-wing, suck-ass News shows is interviewing the biggest loser from the 1990s.
Where are the Republican leaders? Where are their smart people? And don’t give me this Sarah Palin bullshit.
Are there no Senators or Congress-folks from the Republican Party that are not consider freaks by any normal American? I guess not because there are none available…and my cable news babble is 24/7.
The Republican Party is deader than dead in the water. Looks like their policies, both domestic and foreign, have left their philosophies and their 'brand' in tatters…as well as leaving the nation shipwrecked.
So why not just not interview any Republicans? Nobody wants to hear from them. We want to know what the Democrats are thinking.
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I don’t like Bill Richardson, never have. But I do think it is very interesting that President-elect Obama would talk to Senator Clinton about the Secretary of State job. Boy, what a Democratic whammy that would be.
The professional Clinton haters, both conservative and liberal progressive, are already screaming reasons why Bill would fuck things up if his wife were in such a prestigious job. But think about it; think of how Democrats voted in this last primary. It sure would be tempting to have Hillary around and Bill only a phone call away, even if just bounce ideas off of.
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Well, there just doesn’t seem to be any good news for Americans as the holidays approach. Our kids are so used to getting anything they ask for and this season that may just not be possible. It will test our mettle as a ‘brat-nation’. We’ll see if our kids still love us when they can’t have a new Wii or iPhone...or worse, have to drop out of college...or move with the family out of your house and into an apartment.
I don’t want to debate a New Deal; I just want a rocket lit under one.
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I have a credit card that has moved between four different banks since the summer.
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Question of the day…I would call it the question of the week, but we may not have that much time…Will the Volt save Detroit?
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I couldn’t wait for Christmas. I bought myself the latest installment of the Oxford History of the United States, From Colony To Superpower: U.S. Foreign Relations Since 1776 written by George C. Herring. 1000 pages of history. Yummy. It’s going straight into the bathroom.
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My favorite song this week is Elvis Presley’sTomorrow Is A Long Time, a cover of the Bob Dylan song. I have listened to this song over a hundred times this week. It is a great version and brings out the best in both artists. I wish Elvis had done more serious work like this song. He never seemed to trust himself to take himself seriously…or had doubts others would. This song shows why Elvis is the once and future King.
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I’m out of Port! That will not stand. Today’s mission is to venture out and re-supply.
From the AP: "The Comeback Kid is having a convention comeuppance
Bill Clinton was supposed to beam at the side of his wife at the Democratic convention as she was crowned their party's presidential nominee. Instead, he will have reason to wince as their upstart rival, Barack Obama, is coroneted...
...Now he is playing second fiddle to his wife, who is second fiddle to her one-time opponent— in part because of her husband's undisciplined campaigning through the primary. At the same time, he is trying not to hog Obama's spotlight."
Where the fuck did this come from?
Who put the ASS in Associated Press?
Warning, America: The AP and Yahoo! News have tilted to the right.
The AP is out-of-the-closet evil and will either tell us what a great job the McCain Administration is doing or what a terrible job the Obama Administration is doing over the next four years.
Yahoo! News isn't any better with their right wing news feeds. Don't be fooled by the daily doses of fad diets and celebrity gossip.
When you are having your breakfast the AP and Yahoo! News are feeding you a bunch of right wing propaganda.
And remember, the right wing is a disgraced group of politicians, pundits, corporations and news organizations that have committed gross acts of treason in this country. How is the deficit? How is health care? How is education? How is crime? How is our military? How are your monthly bills? According to the AP and Yahoo! News, you have nothing to complain about.
But isn't it great, Bill Clinton is such a fuck up?
The Third Reich, The Empire of Japan and The Soviet Union couldn't inflict the damage on the American heartland and industry that the Republican Party and the right wing have since the end of World War Two.
The AP and Yahoo! News are proud sponsors of the right wing in America. Be afraid. Be very afraid.
- - Jesse Helms, a mean, foolish, racist five-term Republican Party Senator from North Carolina died at age 86. His legacy is that of a leader of the hate-spreading conservative American spirit. Whenever we, as Americans get too haughty and brag about our democracy and freedom and liberty, remember we are also Jesse Helms.
- - Re-writing 9/11 history before Bush, Jr. leaves office…The new official history of the September 12, 13, 14 executive order given by President Bush after the 9/11 attacks to allow members of the bin Laden family and other Saudis to leave the country despite the total lock-down of flights over America is now being re-written. If you try to find information about this act of Presidential.. Treason?... Stupidity?… Saudi bullying of Bush, Jr.?... you get a story that states the good bin Ladens and other goodSaudis were allowed to fly out of America for their own safety (because Americans would have hurt them) AFTER… AFTER the flight ban was lifted and after the FBI cleared each and every one of them. I am not a journalist, I am just a blogger, but maybe ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN and FOX News could send some reporters out to investigate the truth. It is important to history.
Also, there is finally a documentary out, in Britain at least, that explains WTC 7’s collapse into its own foot print on 9/11…. fire. We were all just conspiracy theorists and the fire in Building 7 melted the structure in such a way, THANK GOD!... that the building collapsed in the same way an imploded building would, a free-fall into its own footprint...no pancaking, no toppling. That’s a relief. Go with God, George W. Bush!
- - Senator Barack Obama is getting a little taste of what it is like to run as the Democrat Party nominee for President. He is not only up against the Republican Party candidate and the Republican machine, but also the national media. He has got print, radio, and TV against him. The Internet is still mostly his and the popular progressive blogosphere has been busy cleaning up his messy week. FISA, abortion, Iraq funding support, Iraq withdrawal issues…it is tough stuff this running for office.
I want a Democratic Presidential nominee who is threatening, on day one, to arrest Bush, Jr. Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Condi Rice, et al. That would be change and hope for America’s future. No more bullshit.
- - Interesting week too, for General Wesley Clark. Man, the national media does not let anyone get away with swift boating Republican Party candidates, do they? I mean when Dan Rather went after Bush, Jr.’s military record, we never saw him again. And I haven’t seen this much indignation expressed on TV news since Al Gore was trying to contest the 2000 election decision. When John Kerry’s war record was attacked in 2004, the media ran with the story daily for the entire election cycle, without checking any facts. Book TV seemed to have an open invitation to John O’Neill and Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry all summer and all fall.
- - California is on fire again. It bumped the Midwest floods off the hourly TV News cycle.
- - Gasoline is going up and helping to fuel the economic crash the Republican Party has, once again, left the American people. Why is there still a Republican Party?
- - Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origins of all poems… Not a lot of time for reading this week, but did celebrate the 4th of July with Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass.
DeLillo’s Underworld sits on my nightstand, untouched for two weeks.
- - I don’t know if this falls under Music or Film or Television, but three times this week I came across the movie (the movie based on the musical based on the movie) Hairspray, the ending to be specific, a big song and dance extravaganza with John Travolta in drag. The music is infectious, but the images were grotesque, especially the woman. I think there was supposed to be a point in their somewhere about what is beautiful and sexy, thin vs. fat, black vs. white. I think fat was a metaphor for gay, but I’m not exactly sure.
Viacom said it wanted the data to "compare the attractiveness of allegedly infringing video with that of non-infringing videos." Saywhatifyousuckdick?
Viacom, which owns MTV and Paramount Pictures, has alleged that YouTube is guilty of massive copyright infringement. Don’t worry, its not about porn, it is all that unfiltered news, very un-American, that we have been looking at. Americans should not be viewing anything that has not passed through the corporate filters. Just look at the trouble all those 9/11 conspiracy videos have caused.
-The gruesome body count of US soldiers is on in Iraq as we approach the magic number 4,000 killed. Then we will forget again until 5,000. No judgments from the media. No condemnation. No protest. Dick Cheney fishes and parties with his freaky billionaire friends in the Middle East. The President is stupid and says mean, hurtful and foolish things.
-Barack Obama spoke this week in Philadelphia. It wasn’t quite the second coming or an Elvis encore, but the pundits liked it. We were told that history was spoken that day. My impression was that the Senator needs a psychiatrist.
-John McCain spoke this week, too. The stupid, old-man ramblings over Iran and the war in Iraq. Man, he seems old. President Reagan never gave off the impression of an old man. McCain oozes it. They say The Gipper’s mind was slipping during the second term. McCain seems to have lost his already.
-Senator Clinton seems poised to win big in Pennsylvania. This thing is a street fight. She spoke this week on Iraq, too. Her sensible moderation may be too little, to late. She seems to be the only person left standing who understands Iraq, but her words are no longer echoing.
I guess we leave it up to the racists to see if she can pull this out. Her strength is the economy, or lack of economy, right now. I think people are voting their pocket book when they vote for her, not their racial prejudices.
-Speaking of racism and economics. In Philadelphia, there was a plan to make the entire city WI-FI friendly. Internet for everyone, rich and poor…then the companies did the math and there was no profit to be made in the poorer, mostly black neighborhoods, so they are changing their minds. Something similar happened in the 1980s in Philadelphia when cable TV was being introduced across the country. No company wanted to lay cable in the poor neighborhoods where the population was mostly black. Philadelphia became one of the last major cities to have cable TV. So maybe the Archie Bunkers aren’t just living in the wilderness of Pennsylvania. They are also in the penthouse suites of communication corporations including some Gen-X and Gen-Y favorites.
-Arthur C. Clarke died this week. Kids today will have no idea what they have missed if they do not seek out his works. His fiction inspired reality in young scientists’ minds. Your cell phones and satellite technology for example.
Arthur C. Clarke formulated the following three "laws" of prediction:
1. When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
2. The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.
3. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
Go for it! It’s the 21st century!
-Anne Garrels is a senior foreign correspondent for NPR's foreign desk. She has spent the past four years in Iraq. She did a retrospective series of reports this past week. What caught my ear at one point was a harrowing story in which her transport came under attack, but she said” Al-Qaeda was firing on our vehicle!” I thought, how did she know who was firing on her vehicle? Suddenly her story started to smell of propaganda. I just don’t trust NPR. I wish I could. Sorry Anne.
-Governor Bill Richardson of New Mexico endorsed Senator Obama for President. He worked for President Clinton as Ambassador to the United Nations, and as the Secretary of Energy and it was expected he would throw his support behind Senator Clinton's candidacy. Richardson said that Obama has ‘something special’.
No endorsement yet from John Edwards. No word from Al Gore either. I wouldn’t be surprised if Gore did not endorse anyone. Why should he? No one endorsed him after he won the election in 2000.
It should have been John Edwards this year. If Big Al didn’t want it, Edwards was the guy. Democrats have made an historic mistake, here I think.
-Wow, I actually saw a skull appear over hot Dana Perino’s face during her press briefing this week. It was just like the ending of the movie PSYCHO. She was stuttering and spitting trying to roll back Bush, Jr.’s lies and stupidity. It was really cool. They really are devils!
-Made Fallenmok’s Spaghetti Punttanesca last night and it was delicious. Some folks aren’t used to the olive, caper, garlic combination. Sometimes that taste clashes with red wine. But if you follow his recipe, I think you will be hooked. (Just ask the whores of Naples)
-Stop everything! Buy Gnarles Barkley’sThe Odd Couple. For the kids today who don’t know what TSOP is. Check this out and then go download The Stylistics, The Three Degrees, Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes, and The O’Jay’s.
iTunes has Stacey Keach reading The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway. The drawback to this collection is the stories are not listed individually as tracks. It is one big track, so getting to a specific story is impossible. But Keach is the right person to read these stories. Hemingway's stories are very clear when read aloud.
"Second Life is a 3-D virtual world entirely built and owned by its residents. Since opening to the public in 2003, it has grown explosively and today is inhabited by a total of 7,100,422 people from around the globe."
I read a SF novel back in the 90's called Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson that explored the future of virtual worlds and virtual lives. It was the peak of the cyberpunk novels.
Now we have Second Life in which you can create an avatar of yourself ( a virtual you...or something you want reperesenting you) and you can 'network'...?
Anything to distract ourselves from the real world I guess. Wouldn't it be better to try to make this life the best life we can and this world the best world we can?
So you can fly and teleport... And you can advertise...there's the rub. Get a bunch of credit card-addicted kids into this virtual playground and sell them shit.
