Category Archives: Citizens United

06/29/2015
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Citizens United, Fidel Castro, Koch Brothers, NASA, Privatization, Same-Sex Marriage, Space-X, US Supreme Court

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The Next Appeal

Much of America jumped for joy upon hearing the Obergefell decision last week. Other Americans, though, groused, clenched their fists, and vowed to…, um…, to do something.

Those of us who think we’re familiar with this holy land’s system of writing, enacting, and interpreting laws might react with a derisive snort to the Religious Right’s pledge to act. As we understand it, once the US Supreme Court rules on a disagreement over a law, well, that’s that. There is no higher authority than the Supremes.

Ah, but that’s not so, say the Holy Rollers. There is god.

Anti-Same-Sex Marriage

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The Big Daddy-o in the Sky is mightily pissed, they tell us. Almightily pissed. They know because they talk him him regularly. The fact that their conversations always are one-sided means little to the pious of our nation. Somehow they know what his immensity is thinking. He’s thinking about unleashing earthquakes, hurricanes, epidemics, and other annoyances upon our blighted land because we’re now allowing same-sex couples to get married.

Don’t mess with god, the Very Right sez. He’ll hit you so hard your mother’ll fall down.

Teehee, the rest of us say.

Put the brakes on your snorting, sez me. Don’t laugh at the Religious Right. They’ve got a power behind them greater even than god. They’ve got the Koch Boys.

Murrica’s second richest clan engineered the Citizens United decision — declared, natch — by that very same Supreme Court in 2010. CU gives the Kochs the mechanism by which they can control elections hereabouts. And do you know what remedy some Republicans are touting? The election of US Supreme Court justices.

As in, Hey, vote for me, I’ll set you free! Imagine Donald Trump on the Supreme Court. Or Glenn Beck. How about Sarah Palin? You know, of course, one doesn’t have to be a lawyer to be a US Supreme Court justice, don’t you? The Constitution says nothing mandating lawyers as bench warmers.

Palin

Habeas Who? Nolo What?

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But if, say, Sen. Ted Cruz has his way, some specially anointed water-carrier for the Kochs just might make it into a black robe. Cruz is telling the world via his recently-released political memoir that we must start having general elections for Supreme Court justices.

Acc’d’g to him, the justices should reflect the will o’the people. Acc’d’g to reality, such elections would more likely reflect the will of the Koch Boys. And if the Kochs figure a candidate for the Supremes — who just happens to be a flamboyant god-ist — will serve their lofty interests, they’ll throw their dough behind him. Dough wins elections.

Let’s be frank: It’d be a sure bet a guy who’s philosophically simpatico to the Kochs would be a crucifix waver. Davey and Chuck know better than anyone the history and efficacy of the American plutocracy using Jesus to further its interests.

Those of us giddy that the US Supreme Court has ratified the freedom of any two adults who want to chain themselves together in wedlock had better watch out. The Religious Right has god behind them. And god has the Kochs behind him.

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The Explosion Of Privatization

So, another Space-X rocket ship has exploded upon taking off. It’s a shame. Now the astronauts in the International Space Station will have to wait for their latest copy of Entertainment Weekly magazine.

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Space-X is the rocket booster manufacturer and operator that scored a contract with NASA to resupply the ISS in the aftermath of the Space Shuttle era. The idea being private industry can do the job immeasurably better than a gov’t agency. That’s the philosophy behind privatization, right?

Right. Elon Musk put together the Space-X aerospace corp. with one of its stated goals being putting a crew of humans on Mars. Eventually. Till then, though, Space-X’d do the heavy lifting for the ISS.

In the last eight months, though, two Space-X vehicles have blown themselves to smithereens. That is, the last two Space-X ships are now nothing more than metal splinters. Make no mistake: space travel is a risky business. Hell, I can’t even lift myself off my recliner without help half the time. A rocket booster must lift tons and tons of stuff, pushing it up to 25,000 mph to escape the Earth’s gravitational pull. The Falcon 9 vehicle that blew up yesterday is designed to carry up to 27.5 tons of food, water, magazines, and toilet paper. That’s even more than I weigh.

Nobody can do it without taking the chance that the damned thing’d disappear in a burst of flaming fuel. Not a gov’t agency. Not a private corporation.

When NASA was first trying to launch rockets into space in the late 1950s, the ratio between successful liftoffs and blow-ups was a terrifying 1-1. In the ensuing six decades, though, the US gov’t agency in charge of space stuff learned how to send people and things off the Earth with a reasonable expectation of success. Oh sure, there’ve been disasters — Apollo 3, the Challenger, and the Columbia — but whenever NASA experienced such a spectacular failure, it had to shut down operations for long months and even years and explain to the American people why it screwed up. As for the non-governmental Space-X outfit, the American public will forget about Sunday’s explosion by the day after tomorrow. That is, those who even were aware of the explosion in the first place.

At least NASA had to put the lives of astronauts and the negative PR fallout from a mission failure on the front burner. The pols who authorized the billions of dollars for the agency’s operations insisted NASA launch a safe vehicle, and costs be damned.

That was then. Now, with privatization, cost is king. Private corps. put profit on the front burner. If one safety check or another cuts too deeply into the total expense of a mission, well then it just might have to be made more flexible, shall we say, or even nixed altogether. Shaving cost is the god of for-profit business. Maximizing revenue is its heaven.

I have no idea at this moment if Musk’s Space-X cut corners to put together its Falcon-9 vehicle. I assume NASA and the company itself will conduct a thorough investigation. But, guaranteed, that investigation will be done outside the public eye. And its findings will make about as much splash as the news that the City of Bloomington is using a new brand of paint for its parking meters.

Suffice it to say I’m no fan of privatization.

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Magical Monocrat

Funnyman Aaron Freeman points out a prediction made by then-Cuban prime minister Fidel Castro in 1973:

The United States will talk to us when you have a black president and the world has a Latin American pope.

Some folks are saying this is evidence of the revolutionary boss’s psychic powers — or at least his ability to read the geopolitical tea leaves. I say, Bah. His “prediction” was really code for “When hell freezes over.” I doubt he would have ever guessed that Satan would be shivering while he — Castro — was still alive.

Castro & Doves

Fidel & His Famous Dove Trick

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Now, if he would have said, “… when homosexuals can marry in the US and the Pope rails regularly against the evils of capitalism…,” then we could talk about his extra-sensory perceptions.

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01/24/2015
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Citizens United, Darryl Neher, Ernie Banks, Iowa Freedom Summit, John Hamilton

Hot Air

Let’s Play Two!

A Cubs giant is now playing with the angels.

Banks

Ernie Banks, January 31, 1931 — January 23, 2015

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Givin’ ‘Em What They Want

Funny, I just happened to glance at the numbers for this global communications colossus and whaddya think I found? Yeah, the Pencil in recent weeks has garnered some of its biggest daily unique visitors stats since its inception.

Crowd

Pencillistas

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For those of you unhip to the jargon of the interwebs, unique visitors are individual people who request to view pages within a given period. The number is much more indicative of a site’s or a blog’s popularity than simply the number of hits it gets. If I, f’rinstance, visit the website for the North American Nude Motorcycle Riders Association I’m a unique visitor. But if I visit the site, say, 23 times in a day, each visit counts as a hit. Then NANMRA can brag it got 23 hits out of me when in reality I’m just one guy doing, um, research.

So, yeah, I’ve been drawing unique visitors by the bushelful of late. Only I’ve hardly been posting at all since the first week of December.

The conclusion? The populace of this holy land prefers looking at a blank page than actually reading a Pencil post. Thanks, America!

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Meet The New Boss

So, while I’ve been busy transcribing interview tapes for Charlotte Zietlow’s memoir, Bloomington’s 2015 mayoral race has begun to take shape. The front runners right now appear to be City Council member Darryl Neher and 2011 mayoral bridesmaid John Hamilton. Both, naturally, are Democrats.

Neher/Hamilton

Neher (L) & Hamilton

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There are, to be sure, a couple of Republicans who’ve declared their candidacies. If you want to know who they are or what they look like, check the milk carton in your refrigerator.

Unless some surprise Dem candidate jumps into the fray, this town’s next mayor will be Neher or Hamilton. I can live with either. Neher has been blessed by outgoing Mayor Mark Kruzan. Hamilton’s the darling of Indiana University’s Maurer School of Law where his bride, Dawn Johnsen, is a prof.

Whoever cops the big office, he (or she, should a woman opt in and win) will be in charge of an historically small town that has designs on big city-ness. Hotels are sprouting up like fungi. Tallish apartment developments have turned College Avenue near Courthouse Square into a mini canyon. Quaint shops and Mom & Pop stores have been replaced by glitzy sports and wine bars downtown. Moneyed students from around the country and, for that matter, around the world are tooling down Kirkwood Avenue in shiny luxury SUVs and even Maseratis.

Townies loathe the new Bloomington. IU digs it the most. Hamilton, as mentioned, has an IU connection — his campaign once again will be raising scads of cash from law school instructors. Neher is a senior lecturer at IU’s Kelley School of Business. Loads o’folks are going moan that either candidate will be doing the dirty work of the archcriminal Michael McRobbie. Problem is, that’s a facile charge. IU Prez McRobbie’s wishes by and large would be granted no matter who claims the mayor’s chair, even if it were someone like a young, contrarian, Charlotte Zietlow.

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With Citizens Like These, Who Needs….

“Citizens United” may be two of the dirtiest words in the English language these days.

That’s the moniker attached to the landmark US Supreme Court decision allowing corporations and large organizations to send dump trucks full of cash to political candidates despite legislation and regulations designed to minimize the effect of money on the electoral process. Citizens United, the group, argued that money is speech and the Reagan/Bush/Bush court gleefully agreed.

As a result, elections today give us the finest candidates money can buy.

Citizens United is a Right Wing gang that screeches for our holy land to withdraw from the United Nations, considers the ACLU to be at war with America, has worked hand in hand with the thankfully dead Andrew Brietbart to portray the Occupy movement as a mob of rapists and drugged-up vandals, and even characterized John McCain as a dangerous liberal. In short, it’s a club for lunatics.

The club is holding its annual Iowa Freedom Summit this weekend, wherein bitter, suspicious, xenophobic sociopaths can gather and tell each other how saintly and patriotic they are. Speakers this year include:

Ernst

Joni Ernst: Leading America Into The 1950s

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Attendees will fall all over themselves cheering for these rage monkeys. Ayn Rand’s and Ronald Reagan’s names are sure to be strewn about like pocket candy at a child molesters convention. Oh, and Jesus Christ himself is sure to be welcomed in spirit. Not, of course, the spirit the “son of god” intended but, y’know.

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06/22/2014
3 Comments
Benghazi, Campaign Finance Laws, Citizens United, Environment America, IRS-gate, Jordan Belfort, Scott Walker, Wasting Our Waterways, Water Pollution, Whitewater

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Top O’the Nation!

The great state of Indiana comes in number one among the 50 states in terms of total poundage of toxic chemicals released into our waterways. The advocacy group Environment America released a study this month detailing our holy land’s dumping of dangerous crap into rivers, streams, and lakes.

Surprisingly — or perhaps not so surprisingly — the Hoosier State out-dumps even such environmental backwaters as Texas and Louisiana. See for yourself:

Environment America

From The Study, Wasting Our Waterways

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Give us credit for working hard at fouling our drinking, bathing, and fishing waters: six of the 10 states on this list have greater populations than Indiana.

[h/t to Hondo Thompson.]

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Digging For Fool’s Gold

We on the Left think we’re superior to the grunters, armpit scratchers, and mouth-breathers on the other side.

For instance, we laugh at and about those twin faux scandals — Benghazi and IRS-gate — that are to Republicans as fresh rhino feces is to a gang of dung beetles. The Right, we tell ourselves smugly, is so full of it. They’re just dying to make something out of these nothings. They’re trying and trying and trying, yet nothing of substance ever comes out of the countless congressional hearings (started by the GOP, natch) on the above-mentioned non-crimes.

We know they’re obsessed with these things solely because they want them to be high, impeachable infractions. Those on the Right are like nine-year-olds, stomping, begging, screeching, and pouting in hopes of getting Mom to let them play with daddy-o’s blow torch. It ain’t gonna happen but the kids are going to rave on nonetheless.

Oh, we’d never be so childish, so stupid. Would we?

We might. This Scott Walker scandal looks like a good place to start. Apparently the bete noir governor of Wisconsin, Scott Walker, and his peeps attempted to coordinate national conservative fundraising groups’ efforts to funnel cash into the Guv’s recall campaign back in 2012. In case you’ve forgotten, Democrats were outraged that Walker had governed the state pretty much exactly as he promised when running for office so they mounted a costly and eventually failed effort to oust him from his Madison manse.

Certain state prosecutors have banded together to say that Walker’s coordination of dollar-begging work violated campaign finance laws the states and the federal gov’t have instituted in an effort to convince the American people that dollars, god forbid, do not equal votes.

Oh, but they do. That’s a topic for another few thousand posts.

Anyway, my sisteren and bretheren on the Commie/Abortionist side of the political fence are salivating over the prospect of Walker being led away in handcuffs like Jordan Belfort. See, we couldn’t beat him in a regular election, we couldn’t oust him in an insanely-ill-advised recall election, so now maybe we can ice him by throwing him in jail.

From Daily Kos

Dem Porn

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The investigation into campaign finance improprieties has been going on for two and a half years now. A state judge has found no probably cause for continuing the investigation. One federal judge has ordered the investigation halted twice under the Citizens United ruling. Another fed judge just last month found any legal proceedings in the case to be without basis. Still, the anti-Walker forces press on: they’ve taken the case to the US Seventh Court of Appeals.

Sheesh, the whole thing is starting to stink of Whitewater.

Kids, it ain’t gonna work. Let it go. Let’s focus our efforts on voting him out in November.

Oh, but that would take hard work: ringing doorbells, making phone calls, stuffing envelopes — you know, the kind of things those grunters, armpit scratchers, and mouth-breathers on the other side are good at.

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04/23/2014
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2014 Election, Citizens United, McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission, Shelby County v. Holder, US Supreme Court, Voting Rights Act of 1965

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Why Vote?

So, what’s the diff. between the Dems and the Republicans again?

You’ve heard this Q. many times. I’ve even wrassled with it myself a time or two. A quick glance at the last three presidencies — Bill Clinton’s, George W. Bush’s, and Barack Obama’s — might lead a common citizen to think they’d all three come from the same college fraternity, the one that also funneled dozens and dozens of future capos into the Goldman Sachs mob.

There’s a lot of truth in that assessment. But there exists a greater truth, and here’s proof:

● Clinton & Obama: Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor

● Bush II: John Roberts, Samuel Alito

Yep, those are the US Supreme Court nominees of the last thee presidents. Justices selected by Clinton and Obama voted in the minority against yesterday’s Court’s decision (Schuette v. Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action) to uphold Michigan’s voter ban on racial quotas in college admissions. (Breyer, it should be noted, uncharacteristically joined the majority in Schuette.)

The Clinton/Obama gang also voted in the minority against

● McCutcheon v. the Federal Election Commission: Removed limits on how much money individuals can contribute to candidates or political action committees in in campaign cycle.

● Citizens United v. the Federal Election Commission: Corporations and other special interest organizations may contribute as much as they like to coandidates and political action committees in any given campaign cycle. This decision produced, as a byproduct, the concept of “corporate personhood.” It also led to the idea that a corporation’s money is the moral and legal equivalent to an individual’s free speech.

● Shelby County v. Holder: The section of the Voting Rights Act allowing the federal government to monitor the voting rules of states that had previously allowed slavery and, later, had instituted Jim Crow laws was dismantled. This decision was immediately followed by several states enacting stringent voting restrictions.

The current majority in the Supreme Court also includes Saint Ronald Reagan’s boys, Anthony Kennedy and Antonin Scalia, as well as Pappy Bush’s nominee, Clarence Thomas.

Buttons

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So, what can we glean? This: The conservative-dominated Supreme Court believes that the wealthy should have greater sway in the electoral process and that blacks are on their own, even in the face of long-standing, institutionalized prejudices and legal impediments.

Sorry if I sound didactic here today but the pressure’s on. It’s an election year — an off-year election, to be sure, but all 435 seats in the US House of Representatives are up for grabs. I don’t know what’s so off about that other than voters in this holy land usually don’t give a damn about non-presidential elections.

Conceivably, putative next prez, Hillary Clinton, could be forced to work with both a Senate and and a House dominated by Me Party-ists, Right Wingnuts, regressivists, Birchers, crytpto-racists, and the odd moderate Republican who somehow manages to slip through.

Good luck, Hillary, on getting a Supreme Court nominee through that thicket.

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04/19/2014
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Al Jazeera America, Bruno VeSota, Bundy Ranch, Citizens United, Dick Contino, IU Cinema, James Ellroy, Koch Brothers, Literacy, McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission, Meryl Streep, Opie Taylor's, Peter LoPilato, Roger Corman, Secession, The Ryder, US Supreme Court

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Legends Walked Among Us

Bloomington’s own cinema maven, Peter LoPilato was all dressed up with somewhere to go when he strolled into The Electron Pencil’s back office (some people call it Soma Coffee) yesterday AM.

This intrepid reporter grilled him re: his fancy duds — sports coat, collared short, freshly creased trousers and shiny (-ish) shoes.

“What’s up witchu?” sez I. BTW: I just happened to be uploading a pic of legendary film director and producer Roger Corman in my roll as online manager of LoPilato’s Ryder mag. The big feature this month is a long (repeat: lo-o-o-ong) profile of Corman, who just happens to be in town this weekend. Corman’s visit comes hot on the heels of that of mega-screen icon Meryl Streep who was in town earlier this week to cop an honorary degree from Indiana Unversity. Corman lectured at the IU Cinema yesterday afternoon and several of his films are featured there this weekend. (FYI: You missed The Wild Angels and The Trip yesterday. Today you can catch The Intruder, The Tomb of Ligeia, and a documentary, Corman’s World: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel.

Streep/IU

Streep Fêted

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I mention Corman because, mirabile dictu, he’s why LoPilato was togged up.

“I’m going out to lunch with Roger Corman,” he said.

I, of course, could only gasp, “Wow.”

Corman/Price

A Young Corman (l.) On A Set With Vincent Price

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I fondled Peter’s lapel for a moment, hoping some of his cool could rub off on me, then pressed my interrogation. “Where are you two going?”

Peter LoPilato merely smiled and said, “I’m not at liberty to say.”

Harrumph.

Anyway, I hope Corman paid for the meal. Every time I ask the boss for a raise, he motions back over his shoulder at a small crowd of waifs, shoeless and forlorn, staring at me with hungry eyes. “I would, I swear it,” he says, invariably, “but I’ve got a family to feed.”

Funny thing is I thought Peter only had two kids. The magic of Hollywood, I imagine. Well, like I say, I hope Corman picked up the check.

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Superlative Celloloid

My absolutely fave Corman flick is The Attack of the Giant Leeches (he produced it and, to be honest, his fingerprints are all over it). Somehow, on a microscopic budget, Corman and director Bernard Kowalski manage to recreate a steamy, indolent Louisiana bayou world so faithfully that you find yourself perspiring just watching the thing. They get a workmanlike performance out of horror film vet Bruno VeSota, playing his usual corpulent baddie. I don’t know which movie I prefer VeSota in, this one or Daddy-o with Dick Contino. Either way, he’s a treat.

Giant Leeches

VeSota & Yvette Vickers in “… Giant Leeches”

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Oddly, though, despite the loving care Corman & Kowalski take in presenting an oppressive, heat-wilted world, their titled giant leeches look about as leech-like as, well, so many papier mâché Chinese New Year dragons. Then again, it’s got to be a challenge trying to make a leech scary. Slimy and gross? Sure. Scary? Uh-uh.

Giant Leeches

A Leech Carries Off A Victim

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As long as we’re playing the association game, noted LA gruesome murder chronicler James Ellroy wrote a novella entitled, Dick Contino’s Blues. You can find it in Ellroy’s 1994 short story collection, Hollywood Nocturnes.

Daddy-o

Dick Contino Makes The Scene in “Daddy-o”

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Back to Hollywood-comes-to-IU: Roger Corman and Meryl Streep represent two extremes of what the American filmmaking industry does best. Either one is aces by me, as opposed to Hollywood’s current penchant for recycling superheroes and Nicholas Sparks books.

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Huh?

From an article in Aljazeera America:

Aljazeera Screenshot

Click Image To Read Full Article

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Notice in the subhead where it warns about isolating kids from “the digital world of multitasking”? As if that’s a horror that must be avoided at all costs.

When I first saw this, I figured it was a satiric story, you know, where there author turns you around by saying We’d hate to have our precious snowflakes not be able to be psychological overwhelmed by multitasking and productivity pressures because, hell, who wants a kid that isn’t developing a stomach ulcer by 13 and isn’t on antidepressants by 15?

The author says kids today are part of the “net generation.” They learn by absorbing tons of information merely by darting like hummingbirds from one web page to the other. Earlier generations dove into books and concentrated for long periods of time. That’s old hat.

Information is the stuff that’s liable to fill your mind so much that there isn’t any room left for knowledge (this is me speaking). “Information is not knowledge,” Einstein has been credited with saying. It’s also believed he said, “Learning is experience. Everything else is just information.”

Yet, members of the net generation are happy as clams that their brain cases are crammed with data. Their parents, apparently, are giddy about this as well.

“Opponents to deep, immersive reading come from all directions. Among American boys, there remains a generations-old sense that books are for sissies; I remember this from my own childhood. For neoliberals and technocrats, reading novels is not ‘what the market wants.’ Concentrated reading doesn’t require ideological opposition to be endangered: The pace of contemporary life, even for children, means that there’s simply no time or energy left for it,” the author writes.

Man, that’s a lousy life.

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Wither Our Nation?

So. I’m sitting in a booth at Opie Taylor’s with The Loved One and our friends Hondo & Les. We’re playing a raunchy, sick joke card game that Hondo’d bought on eBay because…, well, because the mere playing of it will condemn any and all participants to hell if such a place turns out to be real. I really think he’s daring the god neither of us believes in to damn him for all eternity. And, I guess, I’ll be following him.

Anyway, the talk turns, as usual, to how eff’d up this holy land is. The problem with guys like Hondo is they read and listen to too much Far Right palaver. It upsets their stomachs as well as their minds. The minute some minor candidate for the Nebraska statehouse says something like women enjoy being slapped around because then their slapping husbands and boyfriends go all out of their way to apologize and be nice to them, Hondo and his ilk send out urgent messages to the rest of us saying the whole country’s going insane.

Which it is. I just accept it, largely. Sure, I point out funny (in a sad way) wingnut things here on The Pencil and sometimes stamp my foot about Rand Paul or Kirk Cameron or Rick Santorum. But for the most part, I can’t really keep up with all the loons who have YouTube accounts or blogs through which they can lobby for the regression of America to those grand old days of the Salem witch trials.

Witch Trial, 1692

Good Old Days

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I’m more attuned to the utterances of, say, the Reagan/Bush/Bush Supreme Court, especially when it rules that rich guys should own and operate all polling places. Then I’ll yell that the country’s going insane. Between the two of us, Hondo and me, we’ve got the wingnut-osphere covered, I suppose.

Back to lunch at Opie’s. I think it was Les who asked, “Well whaddya think’s gonna happen here over the next few years.”

Natch, I had a ready answer.

The sanctified, blessed, and exceptional Yewnited States of Murrica is in for some changes. As long as the Supremes have codified the establishment of a plutocratic ruling class, the have-nots among us are going to be more restless than ever. Sure, the US always has been run for the benefit of captains of industry and financial pirates, but throughout our history we’ve always pretended that the common citizen meant something herein. No more.

If you have scads of dough, you count much more than if you don’t. That’s law now. Once you shatter the illusion of equality, there is nothing left of the mythical American Dream. When dreams die, people panic.

Now, most of the pop. of this nation is too dense to grasp that a new overclass has been installed, officially, brazenly, and w/o apology. Too many of them think their grand old flag has been sullied by Mexicans sneaking over the border to become busboys and maids, women who want the gov’t to pay for their slut pills, gays and lesbians who want to eliminate every trace of heterosexuality in our precious snowflake children, and, of course, the Kenyan who has taken over as Dictator and Tyrant-in-Chief Forever.

And, yeah, a health care reform that’s turning us into New Stalinville.

While everybody’s shrieking over these imagine threats, John Roberts, Antonin Scalia, and their coatholders turned the keys over to the Koch Bros. and said, “Here. It’s yours.”

No matter why people think the USA has become the homeland of Satan, they’re fast losing any and all loyalty to the nation. The Bundy Ranch confrontation will be repeated with alarming regularity in the coming years. And one of these times, somebody’s trigger finger is going to get itchy. Once the first shot is fired, all bets are off.

Militia at Bundy Ranch

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A desperate band of gunfondlers is coalescing these days, certain that the US has been taken over by the aforementioned evil people. They’re not terribly organized just yet; their only real commonality is the passel of hatemongers who bark at them daily over Right Wing talk radio and, to a lesser extent, via Fox News. But, book it, some demagogue is going to pop up. He’ll preach “defense” and separation. And a lot of people are going to fall into line behind him.

What have they got to lose? They don’t have jobs, money, or power.

Perhaps Texas will be the first state to make secession noises. Arizona and Utah may join in the chorus. Then we’re going to see some real breaking news.

Think it’s impossible? Why?

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04/04/2014
1 Comment
Alternative Radio, Alycin Bektesh, Brendan Eich, California Proposition 8, Citizens United, David Barsamian, Firefox, Hampton Sides, John Roberts, Martin Luther King, McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission, Mozilla, Same-Sex Marriage, Shaun McCutcheon, US Supreme Court, WFHB

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Drive, I Said

Pull out your wallet or your checkbook because the WFHB spring fund drive kicked off this morning. The beg-fest will run for 10 days, until a week from Sunday, and the station hopes to pocket some $40,000.

Kick in a sawbuck or two. Every little bit helps.

Spot Button

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As part of the festivities, WFHB will bring independent radio savant David Barsamian to town on Sunday, April 10th. The founder of the Alternative Radio network will speak about Media, Capitalism, and the Environment. The talk begins at 7:00pm at the Bloomington-Monroe County Convention Center. Tix are $5 for the speech alone and $35 for the speech and a meet-and-greet with Barsamian after.

Barsamian

David Barsamian

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WFHB News Director Alycin Bektesh worked her newshound paws to the bone to pull this special appearance off. Get tickets here. Barsamian, BTW, is forgoing his speaking fee so all proceeds go to the station.

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April 4th, 1968

This day, 46 years ago, a racist drifter whacked Martin Luther King, Jr. Many believe evidence exists that the drifter’s stalking of the civil rights leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner was bankrolled by one or more wealthy segregationists.

For public consumption, President Lyndon Johnson shook his head and said it was a terrible thing. So did tons of governors, mayors, and chiefs of police. Their crocodile tears belied their relief that King was erased from the scene because he’d recently begun to talk about the enormous gulf between the haves and the have-nots as well as the evils of unfettered capitalism. That, my friends, was and is a mortal sin.

Abernathy & King

Ralph Abernathy Tends To The Mortally Wounded King — Note King’s Cigarette on Walkway (Photo/Life)

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Meanwhile, acc’d’g to legend, when news of King’s slaying reached the FBI office, agents jumped out of their chairs and cheered.

You want a good, un-hysterical account of the assassination, read Hampton Sides’ Hellhound on His Trail.

All I know is April 4th, 1968, was the day I began to see this holy land in a more clear light.

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Yer Out!

So, the Mozilla CEO up and quit his new job because of all the hollering over his financial support of California’s anti-LGBT Proposition 8 in 2008.

Brendan Eich gave a thousand bucks to the Proposition 8 forces, who fought tooth and nail to get an amendment into the state constitution banning marriage by anyone except Ma and Pa Kettle. The Prop 8-ers were successful at first, but the amendment was ultimately ruled unconstitutional.

Eich

Mozilla-ites Don’t Like Eich

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Mozilla, and its flagship product Firefox, are positioned as toys of the people — young, hip, open-minded people, specifically. Throwing money at anti-same sex marriage bigots isn’t looked upon kindly by that demographic. So they screamed and Eich is out.

Which is fine by me. Well, sorta. I’m glad the dope is out but I’m made a little itchy by a loud public outcry costing someone his or her job. It all sounds a little tyranny-of-the-majority to me. We were just lucky — this time — that the object of righteous rage was a bigot.

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The Rich Are Something Else

I’m here to guide you through the thickets of the legal and political systems which can be so confounding in this holy land.

For instance, many of us are wondering why the Supreme Court once again ruled against campaign finance regulations, using as its justification the 1st Amendment guarantee of free speech.

Many of us might say, Hey, wait a sec. What does money have to do with free speech?

The answer: Nothing.

Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the majority opinion in McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission Wednesday, effectively allowing any and every rich guy to donate thousands, millions, or billions, if he so chooses, to candidates, parties, and PACs.The ruling ends whatever caps were left in place after the Citizens United decision in 2010. When the Big Robe writes an opinion, that means the majority thinks the case is mighty important.

They’re right. McCutcheon defines us as a nation.

See, an uber-wealthy political donor named Shaun McCutcheon wanted to plow ever greater piles of his money into the Republican Party and its candidates. The FEC said, Hold on there, pard, we’re trying to level the playing field here. McCutcheon and his lawyers responded by wringing their hands, weeping, gnashing their teeth — and suing, natch. McCutcheon figured, What’s the good of having all the dough in the world if I can’t buy a statehouse or two or even the White House?

Justices Roberts, Scalia, Thomas, Alito, and Kennedy agreed. They had to base their ruling on something that sounded high-minded and less venal than the real reason.

Follow me so far? Okay, let’s not bullshit each other or ourselves anymore. Let’s tell each other and ourselves the way it is.

For years our elementary school teachers, newspapers and television stations, flamboyantly patriotic candidates for elective office, and other purveyors of myth and nonsense have sung paeans to our democracy. One man, one vote. The voice of the people. The power of the ballot box. Hey buddy, my taxes pay your salary, and so on ad infinitum, bordering on ad nauseam.

You don’t buy that bologna (oh, alright, baloney), do you? I assume you don’t, otherwise you wouldn’t be reading these (almost) daily screeds.

Cheap Lunchmeat

Today’s Civics Lesson, Sliced

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Cutting through the cheap lunchmeat that is politico-legal jargon today and, for that matter, has been every day since this great country arose from god’s mighty hand some 238 years ago, is really awfully easy.

Just remember that even though we pride ourselves on having a classless society and every man is a king and the rest of that blather, the dominant train of thought in this holy land holds that the rich are better human beings than the rest of us. That’s the truth.

And by rich, I mean rich. Not the schlub down the street who may have cracked the quarter-million-dollar-a-year salary threshold. He’s not rich. He’s comfortable. When his car breaks down, he can get it fixed without thinking much about it. He can even buy a brand new car if he wants. He won’t agonize over the decision. His car breaking down is not a disaster. For the rest of us, it may very well be.

But should our comfy neighbor lose his job, he and his family will start hurting sometime in the not too distant future. He may have a pile of dough today, but it won’t last him the rest of his life.

There are, though, people who’ll never have to work again until the day they die. Nor will their children or grandchildren. For that matter, every successive generation until these United States break up or are taken over by Mexicans or Russians or extra-terrestrials or whomever you envision in your paranoiac fever dreams will be rich enough to laugh at the very idea of work.

Work that puts bread on the table. For them, bread is always on the table. They are given bread as a birthright.

They are different than the rest of us. They are better.

We really believe that.

Real wealth in America buys and sells power. Real wealth can sway elections, get laws passed, regulations ignored, misdemeanors winked at, felonies fixed.

The rich — the real rich — are something different. They’re…, they’re…, well, they’re closer to god.

There’s your American dream.

The Reagan/Bush/Bush Supreme Court appointees voted in a bloc once again to codify the American belief that the rich not only are superior human beings but they should be allowed to elect presidents and governors and senators and even, if any of them is so inclined, the odd county commissioner or city clerk.

Money, Roberts and the boys have ruled, is everything.

That, kiddies, is America. And it ain’t no dream.

▲

11/13/2012
2 Comments
Citizens United, Karl Rove, Koch Brothers, Mark Twain, Sheldon Adelson, The Love Boat, US Constitution, US Supreme Court

The Pencil Today:

■

THE QUOTE

“We have the best government that money can buy.” — Mark Twain

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MONEY TALK

Those on my side of the fence seem giddy that the plutocrats who sank hundreds of millions of dollars into last Tuesday’s election pretty much threw their dough away.

Mitt Romney and a host of Republican and Tea Party candidates who were bankrolled by the likes of Karl Rove’s SuperPAC, Sheldon Adelson, and the Koch Boys went down to defeat. Oh sure, there were some GOP victors but if I’m a big-bucks big shot and I’ve invested a seven- or eight-figure sum in the contest, I want a clean sweep.

Adelson Tried To Buy A Government

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The titanic cash outlays were largely a result, of course, of the Citizens United Supreme Court decision. Prior to the election about the only thing more terrifying to Dems and Progressives than a Romney presidency was the specter of corporate cash determining our elections forevermore.

I haven’t heard the words Citizens United or corporate contributions in the week since November 6th. You’d think that just because Dems looked good this election cycle that the problem of corporate financing has simply disappeared.

Not so.

If I know the moneyed cabal the way I think I do, they’ll be refining their strategies and, for all we know, becoming much more adept at buying the government of their choice.

I don’t know precisely how Rove et al will re-jigger their expenditures. Then again, I don’t know precisely how safecrackers do their thing. I only know that when they’re finished doing their jobs, the safe is empty.

The Kochs: Working On Plan B

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Admittedly, the American political system virtually from the start has been protected from greedy, flinty-eyed corporatists by something far less secure than one of those cheap safes you can buy at Target. In fact, the plutocracy has more or less jangled the keys to the safe from its own belt since the Industrial Revolution took hold here — and that was only a few short years after the gang that wrote the US Constitution decided to begin it with the words “We the people….”

So don’t forget about Citizens United. This past election wasn’t its death knell but perhaps its birth slap.

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YOUNG IS OLD

Speaking of the Constitution, those of us of a certain age can recall our history teachers always raving about how the United States was just a babe among the nations of the world. This whole democracy thing, they’d bleat, was a brand-spanking new take on the concept of government.

I don’t know why it was so important to position this holy land as a neophyte on the planet. Perhaps our cheerleader teachers wanted us to think of the US as the avant garde that would move the world into the glorious future of the 1980s.

Television In Our Glorious Future

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But I came across an interesting factoid several times while googling the Constitution. This assertion is repeated time and again and, to the best of my knowledge, is true: The United States Constitution is the oldest national charter on Earth.

In other words, our nation is a geezer. It has been for many years. And it was even as our history teachers were telling us it was young.

Just another example of why high school graduates should promptly erase from their minds the lessons their history and civics teachers taught them.

▲

The only events listings you need in Bloomington.

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Tuesday, November 13th, 2012

MUSIC ◗ Rachael’s Cafe — Open mic; 5-7pm

MUSIC ◗ IU Musical Arts Center Recital Hall — Master’s Recital: Burke Anderson on horn; 5pm

MUSIC ◗ IU Ford-Crawford Hall — Artist Diploma/Doctoral Chamber Music Recital: Eun Young Seo on piano and Jae Choi on cello; 5pm

ART ◗ The Venue Fine Art & Gifts — “The Artistry of the Great Scott,” By Scott Weingart; 5:30pm

ASTRONOMY ◗ Lake Monroe, Fairfax SRA — Star gaze with the IU Astronomy Club, Telescopes set up at Check Station Field; 6-7:30pm

WORKSHOP ◗ Monroe County Public Library — It’s Your Money Series: Investing in Your Future, Long-Term Savings; 7pm

LECTURE ◗ IU Ballantine Hall — 50 Years On: Meeting the Beatles, What They Mena and Why They Matter,” Presented by Anthony DeCurtis of Rolling Stone; 7pm

ROUNDTABLE ◗ Monroe County History Center — Civil War: Confederates Raid Newburgh, Indiana; 7-9pm

WORKSHOP ◗ Monroe County Public Library — Organize and Revitalize Your Book Club; 7pm

LECTURE ◗ Brown County Public Library, Nashville — “TC Steele and the Hoosier Group,” Presented by Rachel Berenson Perry; 7-9pm

DISCUSSION ◗ Monroe County Public Library — “Trans-Pacific Partnership: NAFTA on Steroids,” Sponsored by the Women’s Int’l League for Peace and Freedom, Southern Indiana Branch; 7-8:30pm

MUSIC ◗ Cafe Django — Jeff Isaac Trio; 7:30pm

GAMES ◗ The Root Cellar at Farm Bloomington — Team trivia; 8pm

MUSIC ◗ The Player’s Pub — Blues Jam, Hosted by King Bee & the Stingers; 8pm

MUSIC ◗ Rachael’s Cafe — Zumba Night/Salsa Night; 8-10:30pm

MUSIC ◗ IU Musical Arts Center — Symphonic Band & Concert Band, Jeffery Gershman & Eric Smedley, conductors; 8pm

MUSIC ◗ IU Musical Arts Center Recital Hall — Guest Ensemble: Génération Harmonique; 8:30pm

MUSIC ◗ The Bishop — James McMurtry, Otto Mobile; 9pm

MUSIC ◗ The Bluebird — Halfway Kooks; 9pm

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ONGOING:

ART ◗ IU Art Museum — Exhibits:

  • “Paragons of Filial Piety,” by Utagawa Kuniyoshi; through December 31st
  • “Intimate Models: Photographs of Husbands, Wives, and Lovers,” by Julia Margaret, Cameron, Edward Weston, & Harry Callahan; through December 31st
  • “French Printmaking in the Seventeenth Century;” through December 31st
  • Celebration of Cuban Art & Film: Pop-art by Joe Tilson; through December 31st
  • “Threads of Love: Baby Carriers from China’s Minority Nationalities“; through December 23rd
  • “Workers of the World, Unite!” through December 31st
  • “Embracing Nature,” by Barry Gealt; through December 23rd
  • “Pioneers & Exiles: German Expressionism,” through December 23rd

ART ◗ Ivy Tech Waldron Center — Exhibits through December 1st:

  • “Essentially Human,” By William Fillmore
  • “Two Sides to Every Story,” By Barry Barnes
  • “Horizons in Pencil and Wax,” By Carol Myers

ART ◗ IU SoFA Grunwald Gallery — Exhibits through November 16th:

  • Buzz Spector: Off the Shelf
  • Small Is Big

ART ◗ IU Kinsey Institute Gallery — Exhibits through December 20th:

  • “A Place Aside: Artists and Their Partners“
  • “Gender Expressions“

ART ◗ IU Mathers Museum of World Cultures — Exhibits:

  • “¡Cuba Si! Posters from the Revolution: 1960s and 1970s”
  • “From the Big Bang to the World Wide Web: The Origins of Everything”
  • “Thoughts, Things, and Theories… What Is Culture?”
  • “Picturing Archaeology”
  • “Personal Accents: Accessories from Around the World”
  • “Blended Harmonies: Music and Religion in Nepal”
  • “The Day in Its Color: A Hoosier Photographer’s Journey through Mid-century America”
  • “TOYing with Ideas”
  • “Living Heritage: Performing Arts of Southeast Asia”
  • “On a Wing and a Prayer”

BOOKS ◗ IU Lilly Library — Exhibits:

  • “The War of 1812 in the Collections of the Lilly Library“; through December 15th
  • “A World of Puzzles,” selections from the Slocum Puzzle Collection

ARTIFACTS ◗ Monroe County History Center — Exhibits:

  • Doctors & Dentists: A Look into the Monroe County Medical Professions
  • What Is Your Quilting Story?
  • Garden Glamour: Floral Fashion Frenzy
  • Bloomington Then & Now
  • World War II Uniforms
  • Limestone Industry in Monroe County

The Ryder & The Electron Pencil. All Bloomington. All the time.

06/20/2012
5 Comments
Arizona Immigration Bill, Beach Boys, Bloomington City Council, Brian Wilson, Citizens United, Columbia University, Corporate Personhood, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Gov. Jan Brewer, Mitch Daniels, Purdue University, Tip O'Neill, US Supreme Court

The Pencil Today:

✍

THE QUOTE

“All politics is local.” — Thomas P. (Tip) O’Neill

♢

HAIL TO THE CHIEF

Admit it, the first time you heard or read the words Mitch Daniels and president this morning, your heart skipped a beat.

Once you caught your breath and realized he’s only going to become the big boss at Purdue University after his gubernatorial term concludes, you might have thought, Good, now we won’t have to worry about him running for Prez of the USA in 2016.

Ladies And Gentlemen, The President Of…

✍

Not so fast, kiddies.

I direct you to your history books. A fellow named Dwight Eisenhower took the gig as president of Columbia University after he’d helped whack the Nazis in World War II. He held the job for a year, during which it was clear he was far more interested in using the post as a platform to position himself as a statesman than he was in running the university. Next thing people knew, he was being dragged into the 1952 Republican National Convention, saying Aw, shucks, and running for the White House.

✍

Part of Ike’s reasoning for taking the Columbia job was, as he put it, to advance the cause of education in a democracy.

Follow me here, now. Mitch Daniels has taken his lumps as the governor who oversaw massive budget cuts for Indiana schools. Daniels’ rep as a benefactor of public schooling was shot all to hell.

Now, mirabile dictu, he’s going to lead one of the state’s two most high profile educational institutions after he leaves Indianapolis.

Sounds to me like a very nice strategy for a guy who wants to repair his image. In fact, he might hope to become known as a respected educator by the year 2016.

♢

PLAYTIME

Click.

♢

SMILE FOR BRIAN

Happy 70th birthday to Brian Wilson.

Brian Wilson

✍

The leader of the Beach Boys was one of the musical geniuses of 20th Century America. The BB album “Pet Sounds” has been lauded as one of the five best discs in the history of the rock era.

The harmonies he arranged throughout the Beach Boys’ run verged on the spiritual at times.

If the very idea of Beach Boys’ music makes you smirk, I suggest you give some of their cuts a listen once again. Try to hear them as music rather than as cheesy cultural artifacts of the 60s. You’ll be surprised.

More Than This

♢

THE CONSCIENCE OF A NATION

The Bloomington City Council is thinking of making a statement about a policy that’s anything but local once again.

Our elected municipal leaders want to make sure the world knows they disapprove of the US Supreme Court Citizens United ruling that essentially gave corporations and big organizations the same free speech rights as individuals. You know, the corporate personhood idea that the Reagan/Bush/Bush court so lovingly bestowed upon us.

Some Of Our Best Friends Are Corporations

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It reminds me of the letter the council sent to Arizona Governor Jan Brewer a couple of years ago when she was fixing to sign that state’s draconian immigration bill.

My guess is Gov. Brewer tossed the letter into the circular file.

I mean, honestly, did our councilors really hope that Brewer might read the letter, take her glasses off, stare out her office window, and muse on the moral implications of the bill? Did they expect her to whisper to herself, “Golly gee, these people really make sense”?

Now That I Think About It…

✍

Now the Council wants to proclaim itself in favor of a constitutional amendment to un-declare corporations as people.

My only hope is they didn’t spend too much time debating the point.

(And, just to clarify my position, the Citizens United decision was among the dumbest-assed things the US Supreme Court has done in decades.)

♢

GOD ONLY KNOWS

♢

04/03/2012
Leave a comment
Barack Obama, Citizens United, Disorder in the Court, George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush, George Zimmerman, Guns, Justice Anthony Kennedy, Lake Monroe, Mitt Romney, Ronald Reagan, Strip Search, Three Stooges, Trayvon Martin, US Supreme Court, Wikipedia, Will Rogers

The Pencil Today:

✍

THE QUOTE

“The average citizen knows only too well that it makes no difference to him which side wins. He realizes that the Republican elephant and the Democratic donkey have come to resemble each other so closely that it is practically impossible to tell them apart; both of them make the same braying noise, and neither of them ever says anything.” — Will Rogers

♢

MODERN PROBLEMS?

Wait, Will Rogers said that in 1928?

♢

UH OH

The story behind every homicide is complicated and often contradictory.

Don’t get me wrong — this George Zimmerman character is one ultra-weird customer. Mix that with a deranged Florida gun law and you get Trayvon Martin on a slab in the morgue.

But it’s not at all hard to imagine a scared kid acting on impulse and jumping this creep who’s been following him at night in a strange neighborhood.

✍

It’s no capital offense, natch, but it adds a layer of nuance to the narrative.

The problem is our corporate media loath nuance. They dig black and white, good and evil, an unhinged racist versus a black teenager carrying a bag of Skittles.

Oh wait — it was an unhinged racist versus a black teenager carrying a bag of Skittles.

Here’s the real nuance the slick news stenographers are missing — Trayvon Martin died because this nation can’t let go of its Wild West mythology. High Noon, baby. The Gunfight at the O.K. Corral. We aim to protect our womenfolk and churrens.

Book it — George Zimmerman saw himself as the hero saving his neighborhood from the savages. The state of Florida put the gun in his hand. He ain’t the only one unhinged in this case.

♢

STRIPPED DOWN JUSTICE

Your Reagan/Bush/Bush Supreme Court at work: yesterday, the Goths who make up the court’s usual 5-4 majority have affirmed the right of jailers to strip search you repeatedly should you have the misfortune to be nabbed for something even so trivial as riding your bike without a bright enough light at night.

Yeesh.

“This Is Gonna Hurt You A Lot Worse Than It’s Gonna Hurt Me.”

✍

Yep. Some poor schmo who was cuffed because of a clerical error and was strip searched twice while in custody for a week, sued a New Jersey county for his ordeal. The guy was arrested for not paying a petty fine (he actually had paid it but his record was mismarked) so he was thrown in with the rest of the hoodlums, gangbangers, homicidal maniacs, child molesters, arsonists, and other assorted thugs that called the county jail home in 2005.

Naturally, jail officials wished to protect their aforementioned guests from such a vicious character so they inspected his anus and rectum a couple of times to make certain he wasn’t smuggling a submachine gun into the joint.

“Yeah, We Found This Up A Jaywalker’s Ass.”

✍

Little did his jailers care that he was a nice, stable, professional man, a finance executive for a auto dealership with a family.

But who knows what such a man might stash in his trunk. Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the majority, cited cases of people being arrested for the likes of disorderly conduct and public nuisance hiding tobacco and lighters in their rectums. Naturally, an accused person’s dignity and and decency must be disregarded in the face of such imminent dangers.

So, the five justices who gave us the Citizens United ruling have now determined that your ass is ours should you be suspected of even the most minor transgression.

Hey, did I mention the guy who brought suit was black?

♢

BEER LAKE

The Loved One and I are fast approaching our two-and-a-half year mark here in the garden spot of Indiana, beautiful Bloomington.

I still don’t know my way around a lot of this sprawling megalopolis. And many things still puzzle me. For instance, why is there a That Road?

That’s why I like to read the big glossy, full-color Monroe County map that my neighbor and pal Tom Thickstun gave me about a month ago. And — swear to god — I look up Bloomington things on Wikipedia.

See, I’m a trivia junkie and I look things up at random on Wikipedia. Oh, I know it’s not an authoritative resource. Still, it’s got a lot of cool and fun things in it.

So last night I looked up Lake Monroe. I love the fact that I live five minutes up the road from this fairly good sized, pretty lake. I enjoy taking Steve the Dog down to the Cutright and Paynetown ramps at dusk so we can watch people pull boats out of the water. (Yeah, I’ll admit it — my evenings aren’t as scintillating as they once were.)

Do you realize that the entire project to dam Salt Creek, saw down all the trees in the river valley, and even buy out the town of Elkinsville in order to create the lake cost a mere $16.5M. Man, that’s nothing.

Anyway, I kept scrolling and I came to a Trivia subhead. It reads: “According to the List of countries by beer consumption per capita, the total world consumption of beer is approximately 1/3 of the volume of Lake Monroe at maximum capacity.”

Now, I so want this to be true for the simple reason that someone had to calculate the world population’s intake of beer and then compare it to the volume of Lake Monroe.

One-Third Beer

✍

Who in his right mind would do that?

I mean, if it were you, wouldn’t you look for a lake whose volume matched exactly the world population’s intake of beer?

And is that what’s imbibed in a year? A decade? Since the historic “Tastes great — less filling” debates?

✍

I clicked on the List link and saw nothing in the main article to indicate this startling factoid. If such proof exists, it must be in one of the reference articles cited at the bottom.

Believe me, I wasn’t going to click on all those links in search of this bit of hypertrivia.

Oh alright, I know it was probably some smart-assed college kid who was drunk on an amount of beer equal to 1/3 the volume of Lake Monroe at maximum capacity who pranked this Wiki edit.

And Then He Passed Out On The Back Stairs

✍

Still, I wish it were true.

♢

DISORDER IN THE COURT

Uh huh.

♢

03/22/2012
3 Comments
Barack Obama, Beatles, Bees, Bill Clinton, Citizens United, Clarence Darrow, Definition of Life, Douglas Ginsburg, George H.W. Bush, George Harrison, George W. Bush, Indiana University, James M. Barrie, Justice Anthony Kennedy, Justice Lewis Powell, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, Kirkwood Observatory, Law, Lisa Pratt, Mary Damm, Mathers Museum of World Cultures, Michele Bachmann, Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, Robert Bork, Ronald Reagan, Saturday Night Massacre, Truman Capote, US Supreme Court, Watergate

The Pencil Today:

✍

THE QUOTE

“The law does not pretend to punish everything that is dishonest. That would seriously interfere with business.” — Clarence Darrow

♢

BZZZZZZZZZZZ!

Steve the Dog and I just had a major drama. I was in the process of typing up the entries below when Steve started getting unusually curious about something in a corner of the garage (where I keep my office).

Suddenly, Steve screech-barked and jumped back. I went over to see what was up and I saw a gigantic bumble bee staggering and lumbering around on the concrete floor.

The hair on my arms turned to tiny needles.

A Cute Little Bunny — I Refuse To Post A Picture Of A Bee

✍

Apparently, the bumble bee took exception to Steve’s sniffing and gave him a shiv to the snoot. Bumble bees, I understand, essentially commit suicide when they sting. I would normally look something like this up to verify it but I’m not gonna do it.

See, I have a bee phobia. Wasps and hornets, too. Merely typing the words makes me shudder. I can’t even look at pictures of the brutes or else I’ll spend the rest of the day glancing over my shoulder in a panic.

You think I’m neurotic about these guys? Take my sister Charlotte and snakes. She can bear them no more courageously than I suffer yellow jackets. Swear to god, Charlotte one day cut the picture illustrating the entry for the word snake out of her family’s dictionary. That’s nuts.

Wanna know what’s more nuts? I wouldn’t even have the cagliones to cut the picture of a bee or wasp out of my dictionary. When I was a kid I read my family’s set of the World Book Encyclopedia voraciously — all except the B volume. I didn’t want to take a chance on seeing a picture of a bee.

See? No Bees

✍

This reminds me of an incident that happened in the Book Corner last summer. I was straightening out the half-price book table near the big front windows. Suddenly I heard what I originally thought was the drone of a World War II fighter plane. It turned out to be one of those titanic carpenter bees.

They stand about six-foot-three and have a wingspan of some three yards. This particular one was hurling himself against the window trying to get out of the place. Honestly, he was smoking a cigarette. I’m not certain but I think he might have been carrying a gun.

I almost lost control of my bodily functions. I dashed to the other end of the store.

Right at this time, my pal Mary Damm, a soil biology researcher at IU, walked in. She could see the terror on my face.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

I pointed toward the window where, by this time, the carpenter bee was picking up a large volume and preparing to fling it at the glass.

“You’re afraid of a bee?” she marveled. “It won’t hurt you.”

I looked closely at the bee; he glared back at me and drew one of his fingers across his throat in a threatening manner.

“Look,” I said, almost mewling, “I’m scared to death of these things. I don’t know what to do.”

At this point, Mary started telling me what terrific citizens of the Earth bees are. How they keep to themselves and help propagate countless floral species and how they won’t attack you as long as you don’t molest them.

The bee in the window gave me a terrifying glance and made a shushing gesture in my direction. I think I squeaked.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” I said, “but they still petrify me.”

Almost As Terrifying As Bees

✍

“Well,” Mary observed, “that’s not rational.”

“No, it’s not,” I said, my voice shaking. “That’s why they call it a phobia.”

“Well, do you want me to get it out of here?”

Oh! Had I the courage to get within 50 feet of the carpenter bee, I would have run up and hugged her. As it was, I could only shout out, “Yes, please!”

Then I offered to fetch her a cardboard box and a push broom and a snow shovel. “Whatever you need to do the job, I’ll get,” I said. I remembered seeing an axe in the basement and so I made a move in that direction before Mary stopped me.

“I won’t need those things,” she said. “I work in the fields all summer long. I’m used to bees. They don’t bother me at all.”

She directed me to bring her a soft drink cup and a piece of paper. She carefully and calmly crept up on the bee as he stood there, trying to figure out his next strategy. She gently placed the cup over the bee and slipped the paper between it and the glass. Then she took the bee outside and released him over a planter on Kirkwood Avenue.

The bee buzzed off without a single word of gratitude, the hoodlum.

“That’s that,” Mary Damm said. “See. They won’t hurt you.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” I said.

Anyway, the bumble bee today. I grabbed the longest broom I could find and positioned myself as far from the bugger as I could. I stretched and craned and flicked him toward the now-open garage door.

I flicked, that is, if flicking is the proper term one would employ to describe moving something the size of a wrecking ball.

Victory! I got the bumble bee out of the garage.

Safe At Last!

✍

Only I’ll be glancing over my shoulder in a panic occasionally for the rest of today.

♢

HOORAY!

I’m the first guy to howl when the Reagan/Bush/Bush Supreme Court issues one of its baffling decisions — say, the Citizens United imprimatur for big money interests to take over the electoral process in this holy land.

So, when the Court does something praiseworthy, as it did yesterday, I’ll have to give it its props.

Usually aligned with the tories and royalists, Justice Anthony Kennedy, a Reagan appointee, ventured into the world of the sane when he voted with the “liberal” minority to guarantee criminal suspects the right to decent representation.

Kennedy

✍

The gist of the main case before the Court in this question was that prosecutors had offered a suspect’s lawyer a nice plea bargain deal. The client would have served a 90-day sentence for a petty infraction.

The lawyer, though, forgot or neglected to tell the client. The plea bargain offer expired, the client pleaded guilty without the deal in place, and he was sentence to three years in prison.

Only later did the client find out he could have accepted a three-month sentence.

Oh, just in case you’re thinking that murderers and rapists and terrorists will now waltz out of prison or never even serve time because of this decision, well, you’re wrong.

This decision was based on the case of a man who was — brace yourself — driving without a license.

Kennedy wrote that America’s criminal justice system is no longer a procession of trials but a virtual assembly line of plea bargains. Ergo, when a guy is denied a possible plea bargain because his attorney is a knucklehead, he’s being denied justice.

Kennedy was tabbed for the Supreme Court post by President Reagan in late 1987. In fact, Kennedy was Reagan’s third choice to replace retiring Justice Lewis Powell. Old Dutch first named Robert Bork to the Court but Bork’s history as a collaborationist in Watergate as well as the fact that his views on American justice were formed by his attendance at the Cro-Magnon School of Law torpedoed his nomination. Reagan came back with a fellow named Douglas Ginsburg, who, it was learned — horrors! — had occasionally smoked a joint while he was a law student.

Bork Abetted Nixon

✍

So Kennedy, a less reptilian judge than Bork and a man whose lungs were virginal, was named and confirmed.

Since then, Kennedy has been considered a sort-of swing vote in the Court, although he generally pendulates (I just made that word up!) between Right and Far Right as opposed to Right and Left.

The Court since the days of Reagan has become about as Right Wing as a country club locker room. Here’s the current lineup of the Court:

By the way, Kennedy was confirmed 97-0 by the Senate a quarter of a century ago. Doesn’t that kind of bipartisanship seem rather quaint?

Anyway, the Court often rules 5-4 in cases that reflect any cultural or moral divide in these Great United States, Inc. The five, of course, being the quintet of Reagan/Bush/Bush boys.

It’s a court whose core essentially gave us George W. Bush as president. Thanks, guys (and one gal).

“I Owe It All To Sandy O’Connor.”

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The lesson? Even though it appears there’s barely a fine hair of distinction between President Barack Obama and presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney, would you really want Romney to start paying off his political debts by naming a sixth conservative to the Court?

And what if this great nation fully tumbles into the Twilight Zone this summer and fall and somehow winds up with Rick Santorum as president? Who’s he gonna name to the Supreme Court? Michele Bachmann?

“No, Really. My Husband’s Straight. No Lie. He’s Into Women. Really.”

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All I’m saying is your vote matters this November.

♢

AM I ALIVE?

With all the Big Questions swirling around these days, isn’t it disconcerting to realize we don’t even know exactly what life is?

Oh, I don’t mean all those clever answers like “Life is a long lesson in humility” (James M. Barrie) or “Life is a moderately good play with a badly written third act” (Truman Capote).

No, I mean what is life?

As in, what’s the difference between a rock and a human being? We all agree a human being has life, right? And the rock does not.

Not Alive

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Now tell me why we know that.

You can’t.

Nor can the greatest life scientists on this weird planet.

Lisa Pratt, Provost’s Professor of Geological Sciences here at IU, for one, can’t tell us what life is. And, hell, she’s a specialist in something called biogeochemistry. Yee-oww.

Pratt told a panel of life scientists at the Mathers Museum of World Cultures yesterday that no one has developed an agreed-upon definition of life so far. “To accept the fact that scientists can’t seem to reach an agreement on the most basic ideas is troubling,” she said.

Alive

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It may be troubling to her but I find it rather comforting. Nature humbles us. The imams and priests and lamas of the world tell us they have the answers. The scientists, though, say Search me.

Count me on the side of the scientists.

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WHAT’S OUT THERE?

Hey, the weekly Kirkwood Observatory open houses started up again last night.

Kirkwood Observatory, This Past Christmas Day

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From now until mid-November the little domed structure just off Indiana Avenue near the Sample Gate will be open to the public. You can peer planets and stars through the Astronomy Department’s telescopes each Wednesday night, provided the sky is clear. Hours are from 9-11pm until mid-April. Every couple of weeks thereafter the facility will open and close a half-hour later due to Daylight Savings Time. After the June solstice, open hours will begin creeping back earlier as the summer wears on.

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WHAT IS LIFE?

My favorite Beatle, George Harrison.

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