Category Archives: Margaret Thatcher

08/29/2012
1 Comment
Bill Clinton, Dirty Harry, George W. Bush, Hurricane Katrina, Jimmy Carter, Julie Christie, Kristen Stewart, Margaret Thatcher, Meryl Streep, Michael D. Brown, Morning in America, Republican Party, Richard M. Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Soviet Union, Tip O'Neill, Vietnam War

The Pencil Today:

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THE QUOTE

“I was born with a need to be the center of attention and, of course, you’re the center of the world when you’re acting.” — Julie Christie

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IT WAS SEVEN YEARS AGO TODAY

Former House Speaker Tip O’Neill once famously said, “All politics is local.”

I, less famously, counter: “All politics is theater.”

Most of the Republican Party’s formula for success since the late 1960s has been its ability to present its standard-bearers as tough guys, strong men, and decisive generals. The GOP has acted more as a talent agent than a producer of statesmen for the last 45 years.

Richard Nixon won the 1968 presidential election because he told the nation he would stand firm against the madness in the streets. He’d beat down the savage blacks who were threatening to explode out of their ghettos. And he’d swiftly kick the crap out of the North Vietnamese and bring the boys home.

Save Us, Dick

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We believed him. Just as many of us have believed pro wrestling is on the up and up and Judge Judy is our nation’s top jurist.

Ronald Reagan won the 1980 presidential election because he told us we were terrific and the 1984 campaign by telling us it was Morning in America. Ham that he was, he knew the Soviet Union was on its way out so he talked tough and thereby snatched all the credit for that empire’s inevitable collapse.

Make Us Feel Good About Ourselves, Ronnie

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Theater.

George W. Bush’s role as resolute CEO of the Great United States, Inc. propelled him to victory over a couple of namby pamby Dem opponents in 2000 and 2004. The nation was terrified of presidents who liked blow jobs, college educated eggheads who’d ponder us into paralysis, and crazy Arabs who’d blow up our cities. Bush was the antidote to all those existential threats.

Be The Boss, George

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But then came Hurricane Katrina and the theater went dark.

The worst natural disaster in America’s history presented Bush with a dramatic challenge he was unable to play. It was as if Kristen Stewart were cast in the role of Margaret Thatcher.

Streep As Thatcher; Stewart As, Um, Stewart

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Katrina’s president was a role that was written for Bill Clinton. He’d have set up a second White House in New Orleans. He’d have hugged the storm’s victims until his arms ached. Had Clinton been in office when Katrina hit, people would have been marveling to this day about how fabulous the federal government’s response was to the tragedy.

And in the most practical sense, Clinton wouldn’t have done a thing different than Bush did.

Bush knew how to play the business executive and the military commander. He had a feel for the role of the manly hero who saves the day.

His greatest line before his downfall was, “They hate us for our freedoms.”

Which was, of course, as phony a line as, say, “Go ahead, make my day,” or “I love the smell of napalm in the morning.”

“Well, do ya, punk?”

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But we in this holy land have always been a cooperative audience. We’ll forgive any political actor for chewing the scenery as long as it makes us feel good. It’s only when pols don’t make us feel all tingly and warm or bold and adventurous that we turn on them.

Witness Jimmy Carter’s malaise speech. Bye bye, Jimmy.

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Bush’s Carter moment came when he uttered those unforgettable words, “Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job.”

People were still sitting on rooftops waiting to be rescued when Bush said that. The Superdome was filled with refugees at the time of the quote. New Orleans cops were shooting up citizens.

Yet Bush found it important to bestow frat boy bonhomie upon his emergency response point man at that moment in time.

Bush Takes It All In From Above

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And like that, Bush was finished. No matter that no government could ever have responded adequately to Katrina. Nothing like it had ever happened before in America.

But when nature sucker punches us in the belly, we have to blame someone. And it’s not just Americans who react that way. Be it an earthquake in Afghanistan or a flood in India, people will shriek “Where’s our government?” even as the government is digging itself out of the rubble.

At times like that, the first and best thing government can do is assure us everything will turn out alright. The boys in charge must tell us that they’ll move heaven and Earth to set our lives right again.

Bush didn’t know that. He was the wrong actor for the part.

Theater.

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Here’s how I waste my time. How about you? Share your fave sites with us via the comments section. Just type in the name of the site, not the url; we’ll find them. If we like them, we’ll include them — if not, we’ll ignore them.

❏ I Love Charts — Life as seen through charts.

❏ XKCD — “A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language.”

❏ Skepchick — Women scientists look at the world and the universe.

❏ Indexed — All the answers in graph form, on index cards.

❏ I Fucking Love Science — A Facebook community of science geeks.

❏ Present/&/Correct — Fun, compelling, gorgeous and/or scary graphic designs and visual creations throughout the years and from all over the world.

❏ Flip Flop Fly Ball — Baseball as seen through infographics, haikus, song lyrics, and other odd communications devices.

❏ Mental Floss — Facts.

❏ Sodaplay — Create your own models or play with other people’s models.

❏ Eat Sleep Draw — An endless stream of artwork submitted by an endless stream of people.

❏ Big Think — Tapping the brains of notable intellectuals for their opinions, predictions, and diagnoses.

❏ The Daily Puppy — So shoot me.

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Electron Pencil event listings: Music, art, movies, lectures, parties, receptions, games, benefits, plays, meetings, fairs, conspiracies, rituals, etc.

Wednesday, August 29, 2012

◗ Muddy Boots Cafe, Nashville — Music: Barbara McGuire; 6-8:30pm

◗ Tibetan Mongolian Buddhist Cultural Center — Buddhism in Everyday Life Series: Ani Choekye presents “What Are Realizations?”; 6:30pm

◗ Unity Church — Bloomington Peace Choir weekly meeting, new members welcome; 7pm

◗ The Player’s Pub — Music: Stardusters; 7:30pm

◗ Max’s Place — Open mic; 7:30pm

◗ Harmony School — Contra dancing; 8-10:30pm

◗ The Bluebird — Music: Rod Tufcurls & the Benchpress; 9pm

◗ IU Kirkwood Observatory — Open house, public viewing through the main telescope; 9:30pm

◗ The Bishop — Music: Kentucky Nightmare, Panic Strikes a Chord, Dead Beach; 9:30pm

ONGOING

◗ Ivy Tech Waldron Center — Exhibits:

  • “40 Years of Artists from Pygmalion’s”; through September 1st

◗ IU Art Museum — Exhibits:

  • “A Tribute to William Zimmerman,” wildlife artist; through September 9th

  • Willi Baumeister, “Baumeister in Print”; through September 9th

  • Annibale and Agostino Carracci, “The Bolognese School”; through September 16th

  • “Contemporary Explorations: Paintings by Contemporary Native American Artists”; through October 14th

  • David Hockney, “New Acquisitions”; through October 21st

  • Utagawa Kuniyoshi, “Paragons of Filial Piety”; through fall semester 2012

  • Julia Margaret Cameron, Edward Weston, & Harry Callahan, “Intimate Models: Photographs of Husbands, Wives, and Lovers”; through December 31st

  • “French Printmaking in the Seventeenth Century”; through December 31st

◗ IU SoFA Grunwald Gallery — Exhibits:

  • “Media Life,” drawings and animation by Miek von Dongen; through September 15th

  • “Axe of Vengeance: Ghanaian Film Posters and Film Viewing Culture”; through September 15th

◗ IU Kinsey Institute Gallery — “Ephemeral Ink: Selections of Tattoo Art from the Kinsey Institute Collection”; through September 21st

◗ IU Lilly Library — Exhibit, “Translating the Canon: Building Special Collections in the 21st Century”; through September 1st

◗ IU Mathers Museum of World Cultures — Closed for semester break, reopens Tuesday, August 21st

◗ Monroe County History Center — Photo exhibit, “Bloomington: Then and Now” by Bloomington Fading; through October 27th

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06/12/2012
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Albert Schweitzer, Bill Bryson, Emergency Medical Services, Great Recession, Margaret Thatcher, NPR, Ronald Reagan

The Pencil Today:

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THE QUOTE (REDUX)

“This preposterous idea, that things must pay their way or be dispensed with, is perhaps the most intractable legacy of the Thatcher years, so much so that it has become received wisdom even among many liberals. But when you think about it even for a nanosecond, it is perfectly obvious that most worthwhile things don’t begin to pay for themselves. If you followed this absurd logic any distance at all, you would have to get rid of traffic lights, schools, drains, national parks, museums, universities, old people and much else besides.” — Bill Bryson

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FOR PROFIT HUMANITY

I ran the above quote the day I ranted and raved about Margaret Thatcher, who was the British bête noire analog to this holy land’s Saint Ronald Reagan.

The world that Thatcher and Reagan have wrought is an ugly place. The two Tory-ists created a global playpen for the most acquisitive, aggressive, ferocious, and predatory among us. Greed not only became good, it became sacred.

Greed Is Better Than Good

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We live in a world of financial smoke and mirrors, where wealth is built on phoney-baloney projections, salesmanship, and transaction fees. Our bubble economy pops every few years now, maiming the general populace but never, ever scuffing the shoes of the plutocracy.

This is the world of the Profit Kings. No item, product, or service — soon, perhaps, not even the very air we breathe — is worth anything unless it generates a profit.

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I think of this because NPR ran a report this morning on ambulance services in sparsely populated and rural sections of the country.

As you know, since the 2008 financial catastrophe, municipalities, counties, and states have been slashing services left and right because their investments turned out to be no more tangible than soap suds.

EMS services have suffered mightily in places like Colorado where one representative ambulance service answers an average six calls a day. The private companies and government agencies that run similar ambulance operations find the business of saving lives to be a lousy one.

Bad Business

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The private companies aren’t able to bill Medicare or Medicaid enough to recoup their operating costs and the government agencies claim they just can’t see their way clear to footing the bill for a handful of daily runs.

So, more and more ambulance services are being cut back or eliminated entirely.

See, everything must make a profit. Or at the very, very, very least, pay for itself.

But, as Bryson points out in the quote, the gang of us humans have a desperate need to do things for each other that won’t make us scads of dough. Like putting up stoplights at intersections or even providing a home for the US Constitution — the piece of paper, that is, not the fever dream Bible-like concept that Ron Paul and Sarah Palin blather about.

Throw That Thing Out; It Costs Too Much To Keep Up

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Funny thing is, for all the talk about NPR being such a liberal tool, nowhere in the report is it mentioned that the idea that ambulance service should make a profit or even pay for itself is, well, just nuts.

Even the liberals have bought into the Thatcher/Reagan Profit King world.

When I was a kid, I used to hear about a fellow named Albert Schweitzer as the paragon of humanity, a guy who lived among the poor and barefoot, who espoused a universal reverence for life, who agitated for peace, who brought advanced medical care to pre-technological societies. I don’t recall ever hearing about how profitable Schweitzer’s operations were.

Albert Schweitzer

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His work was a cash sink. Albert Schweitzer was a very bad businessman indeed.

Now there have been criticisms of Schweitzer, his methods and aspects of his philosophy, in the ensuing years. I won’t argue for or against them here. I’ll only say my image of Schweitzer, flawed as it may have been, was of a man who gave of himself without concern for cost.

He wasn’t in it for a buck.

In fact, his outfit lost dough.

Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan would have been very disappointed.

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TUESDAY DOINGS

Click.

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02/08/2012
1 Comment
Argentina, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, Falklands War, Indiana State Legislature, Leopoldo Galtieri, Margaret Thatcher, National Weather Service, NOAA, Prince William, Proposition 8, Queen Elizabeth II, Same-Sex Marriage, Sex Pistols, Sun Tzu, United Kingdom

The Pencil Today:

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THE QUOTE

“All war is deception.” Sun Tzu

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WINTER WOE

OMG — snow!

Take Cover!

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I quote from the NOAA National Weather Service Special Weather Statement issued this morning for our neck of the woods:

… Light snow will impact the morning commute…

Don’t know about you, but I’m about to dash out and stock up on staples.

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THE LAW AGAINST LOVE

The Indiana Daily Student carries a story this morning about how the California Supreme Court decision overturning Proposition 8 might affect Hoosier State legislators’ efforts to get an anti-same-sex marriage amendment approved.

One thing that depresses me about the amendment is that it was sponsored by both a Republican and a Democrat.

Sheesh, I can’t even demonize my favorite whipping boys, the GOP, for this.

Criminals (In Some States)

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WANNA FIGHT?

So, the boss of Argentina, a woman named Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, rattled her saber yesterday and threatened to snitch to the United Nations if Great Britain continues to beef up its forces in the Falklands.

Kirchner: “Don’t go there, girl!”

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You remember the Falklands, don’t you? They’re a godforsaken bunch of rocks sticking out of the Atlantic Ocean a few hundred miles off the coast of Argentina. Back in 1982, the UK and Argentina started getting snippy with each other about who should reign over the islands. Next thing the world knew, the two countries commenced a shootin’ war leading to the loss of some 900 human beings’ lives and a bunch of military hardware sunk to the bottom of the ocean.

It’s been said war is hell. I say war is stupid.

Be that as it may, the UK’s Margaret Thatcher got to brag to the planet that her dick was bigger than that of Argentina’s then-capo, Leopoldo Galtieri. Her party, which prior to the war was in a bit of hot water with the British electorate, suddenly became invincible. Her partisans took to calling her The Iron Lady.

Oh, and major — I mean major — defense funding cuts, which had been threatened in the months leading up to the tiff, suddenly were swept off the table, thanks to the war orgasm Brits experienced. Far be it from me to suggest there was any connection between the two events.

Hey, maybe war isn’t so stupid after all.

Oh, Baby, That Was Fantastic — Was It Good For You, Too?

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Argentinians were so humiliated by the loss of the war that they tossed old man Galtieri out of office the very next year.

So, here we are, three decades later. The UK is sending its most eligible inbred bachelor, Prince William, and its top warship as well as a nuclear submarine to the Falklands to shore up its already hefty military presence there.

I wonder if the British defense ministry is facing any funding cuts these days.

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ROYAL PAIN

I bring up this latest UK/Argentina fuss in light of Queen Elizabeth’s celebration yesterday of the sixtieth anniversary of her ascension to her meaningless post. She was named queen while Winston Churchill, for chrissakes, was still cigar-chomping, gin-guzzling, and flatulating his way around 10 Downing Street.

No, Really, She’s Still Alive

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In her honor, I dedicate the song below.

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GOD SAVE THE QUEEN

No, not the tune you expect. This one.

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01/07/2012
5 Comments
Addams Family, Alexander Haig, Bill Bryson, Carolyn Jones, Charles Addams, Earthsky.org, Elvis Costello, Falklands War, Google, Joshua Johnson, Margaret Thatcher, Mark Kruzan, Mary Ellen Diekhoff, Meryl Streep, Nuclear Weapons, Occupy Bloomington, Ranker.com, Snickers, The Iron Lady, The New Yorker, Winter Solstice

The Pencil Today:

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TODAY’S QUOTE

“This preposterous idea, that things must pay their way or be dispensed with, is perhaps the most intractable legacy of the Thatcher years, so much so that it has become received wisdom even among many liberals. But when you think about it even for a nanosecond, it is perfectly obvious that most worthwhile things don’t begin to pay for themselves. If you followed this absurd logic any distance at all, you would have to get rid of traffic lights, schools, drains, national parks, museums, universities, old people and much else besides.” — Bill Bryson

Author Bill Bryson & Former UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher

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CREEPY, SPOOKIE, ALTOGETHER OOKIE

Cartoonist Charles Addams was born on this day in 1912 (h/t to Google). His work graced the pages of The New Yorker magazine for many years. His fictional “Addams Family” eventually became the eponymous sitcom.

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Well, fictional to an extent. It’s said both his wives looked uncannily like Morticia Addams. And by the way, if you’re making a list of very hot female sitcom stars, Carolyn Jones as Morticia has to rank at least in the top five.

Gomez And Morticia

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SPEAKING OF GHOULISH WOMEN

Back to Maggie Thatcher. Is it my imagination or is her image is being remade these days, thanks in part to that new movie, “The Iron Lady,” starring Meryl Streep?

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All of a sudden it seems Thatcher is being repositioned as a great icon in the history of the advancement of women. Never mind that she rose to the top employing all the mannish characteristics that have pushed the world to the brink of catastrophe time and again. She was stubborn, insensitive, bellicose, nationalistic, and smug. She cared far more for an economic philosophy than for trivial things like human beings.

When she pushed her country to go to war for some godforsaken piece of rock in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, I observed that she was merely trying to show the world that her dick was as big as any man’s.

In fact, there’s a scene in the movie dealing with the lead-up to the Falklands War. The character playing US Secretary of State Alexander Haig, himself a former Army general, cautions her against being so gung-ho about sending battleships full of soldiers to fight over the little islands.

Thatcher: “We will stand on principle or we will not stand at all.”

Hiag: “But Margaret, with all due respect, when one has been to war….”

Thatcher (interrupting): “With all due respect sir, I have been to battle every single day of my life. And many men have underestimated me before!”

Need I mention that there’s a huge difference between breaking the glass ceiling and a “principle” which cost 907 lives, 1843 wounded, 11,428 taken prisoner, a cruiser, 2 destroyers, a submarine, two frigates, four cargo vessels, a half dozen other sea craft and 75 aircraft?

By the way, British warships and submarines that were part of the expeditionary fleet were armed with tactical nuclear weapons, just in case, I suppose, the Argentinians failed to grasp Thatcher’s “principle.”

Argentine Dead After The Battle Of Goose Green

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OCCUPY UPDATE

As of last night, one woman remained in People’s Park, refusing to leave despite Mayor Mark Kruzan’s eviction order. She’d chained her tent to a tree and stayed inside, refusing to come out when city workers descended on the scene to clear away any personal belongings that were left by the protesters.

Apparently, the city is not going to force her to leave just yet. Officials are hoping to avoid an unpleasant scene.

City officials lauded the Occupiers for the most part, saying many of them helped city crews clean up the park.

Now Bloomington police will again enforce the regular 11:00pm-5:00am park curfew.

And yesterday, Josh Johnson was was arraigned before Judge Mary Ellen Diekhoff. He’d been arrested during the New Year’s Eve Dance Party disturbance Saturday night and Sunday morning. He was charged with two felony counts of resisting arrest with injury to a police officer.

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SNICKERS

Ranker.com today presents a list of the best candy ever made. Snickers is ranked number one.

I have absolutely no quarrel with that.

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SUNRISE, SUNSET

Finding it difficult to wake up in the morning these days? It may be because these days have the latest sunrises of the year, according to Earthsky.org.

The science site explains why the late sunrises in the Northern Hemisphere and the concurrent late sunsets in the Southern do not coincide with the solstice (which, in 2011, was December 21st.)

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WHAT’S SO FUNNY ABOUT PEACE, LOVE AND UNDERSTANDING?

Elvis Costello once said he couldn’t wait for Margaret Thatcher’s state funeral so he could dance on her grave.

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