"The blog has made Glab into a hip town crier, commenting on everything from local politics and cultural happenings to national and international events, all rendered in a colorful, intelligent, working-class vernacular that owes some of its style to Glab’s Chicago-hometown heroes Studs Terkel and Mike Royko." — David Brent Johnson in Bloom Magazine
We’ve seen and heard tons of whacked-out statements from the deranged Far Right since this holy land elected its first Muslim, communist, abortionist president who was born in Kenya. They’ve spewed their crazed ideas about Obama himself and about god, guns, gays, and a gazillion other topics.
Let’s skim a quick list of such maniacal ejaculations:
“I think video games is a bigger problem than guns because video games affect people.” Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn)
“… [T]hey are absolutely essential to living the way god intended for us to live.” Rep. Tim Donnelly (R. Calif) on guns
“A holstered gun is not a deadly weapon…. But anything can be used as a deadly weapon. A credit card can be used to cut somebody’s throat.” State Rep. Dan Dumaine (R-New Hampshire)
Deadly Weapon
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“President Obama wants everybody in America to go to college. What a snob. Oh, I understand why he wants you to go to college. He wants to remake you in his image.” Former presidential candidate Rick Santorum.
“… [A] total sham and a travesty…. We are not a democracy.” Plutocrat Donald Trump on the 2012 reelection of President Obama.
“All family and friends, even close family and friends, who I know to be Democrats are hereby dead to me. I vow never to speak to them again for the rest of my life, or have any communications with them. They are, in short, the enemies of liberty. They deserve nothing less than hatred and utter contempt.” Libertarian/Republican blogger Eric Dondero.
Then, of course, there are those cherished chestnuts gargled out by political self-immolators whose weird word combos were so alarming that even rank and file Republicans have conveyed to them the strong suggestion that they should seek other forms of employment:
“I think even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that god intended to happen.” Former Indiana senatorial candidate Richard Mourdock
“First of all, from what I understand from doctors [it] is really rare. If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.” Former Rep. Todd Akin (R. Missouri) on pregnancy resulting from rape.
And what list like this would be complete without at least one citation from the Empress of Whack, future former Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn)?
Teachers, she once splurted, are trying to “normalize” homosexuality and “desensitize” our darling children to it. “[A] very effective way to do this with a bunch of second graders is take a picture of The Lion King, for instance, and a teacher might say, ‘Do you know that the music for this movie was written by a gay man?’ The message is: I’m better at what I do because I’m gay.”
Raving Royalty
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What a trip down memory lane!
Just when you think you’ve heard it all, someone, somewhere, says something that makes even the above paranoiac ideations seem, well, tolerable.
I doubt, though, any statement made yet or in the future about the evils of President Barack Osama Adolf Joseph Al Capone Norman Bates Obama can ever, ever, ever top a recent “revelation” by the deep thinkers at a website entitled We Will Not Be Disarmed.
The WWNBD scribblers claim to have intercepted a report from the Russian spy agency GRU that the Prez had planned a nuclear attack on the city of Charleston, South Carolina, in order to create “chaos” in the US.
Why would he do this? WWNBD doesn’t say. Maybe he’s suffering a mid-life crisis. Who knows?
“Nuke ‘Em!”
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Anyway, a US military jet was to drop a ground-penetrating nuclear device that would, it was hoped, trigger an earthquake underneath the historic southern city. That was the plan until four key generals bravely stood up to the gay, Nazi, fascist, jihadist usurper of presidential power. The generals, WWNBD claims the Russkie spook report reports, directed the pilot of the jet to drop the bomb in the ocean off the coast of S.C., where is exploded harmlessly.
Natch, Barack Osama bin Laden pitched a fit when his orders were disobeyed and fired the generals on trumped-up charges of gambling, alcoholism, and other vices. This despite the fact that the four, acc’d’g to the putative GRU paper, were among the finest human beings this or any other planet has ever been home to.
The Imam-in-Chief will not be deterred, WWNBD concludes, citing a Ron Paul interview with tinfoil hat wearer Alex Jones this month that a declaration of martial law is just around the corner.
Phew.
And I thought I was delusional because I truly believe the Chicago Cubs might win a World Series in my lifetime.
Not so fast, everybody. I know, I know, Ted Cruz just shot himself in the groin with his bizarre performance during his un-fillibuster earlier this week. Conventional wisdom now holds that Ted Cruz is a joke, Ted Cruz is out of the picture for the 2016 presidential election, and, in fact, Ted Cruz pretty much has no political future at all anymore.
Doh, Canada
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Like I said, Whoa. This is America here, darlings. For a few years at least, Sarah Palin was seen as a serious candidate for something or other. When Donald Trump makes his occasional hominid grunts about running for the highest office in this holy land, the corporate press actually covers said guttural ejaculations as if they are somehow related to human communication. And, hard as it may be to believe at this remove, one Michele Marie Bachmann, née Amble, was taken as a serious candidate for the presidency.
And, to be sure, none of the three aforementioned is any nearer to occupying the Oval Office than, say, Carrot Top, but stranger things have happened in this nation’s glorious political history.
AAAIIIIIEEEEE!
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Here, for example are highlights of an election night press conference rant delivered in anger a mere six years before the man who spoke these words became the President of the United States of America.
… [N]ow that all the members of the press are so delighted that I have lost, I’d like to make a statement of my own….
I believe Governor Brown has a heart, even though he believes I do not.
I believe he is a good American, even though he feels I am not.
… [F]or once, gentlemen, I would appreciate if you would write what I say, in that respect. I think it’s very important that you write it — in the lead. In the lead.
And our 100,000 volunteer workers I was proud of. I think they did a magnificent job. I only wish they could have gotten out a few more votes in the key precincts, but because they didn’t Mr. Brown has won and I have lost the election.
One last thing: What are my plans? Well, my plans are to go home. I’m going to get reacquainted with my family again. And my plans, incidentally, are, from a political standpoint, of course, to take a holiday. It will be a long holiday.
I did not win. I have no hard feelings against anybody, against my opponent, and least of all the people of California.
And as I leave the press, all I can say is this: For 16 years, ever since the Hiss case, you’ve had a lot of — a lot of fun — that you had an opportunity to attack me and I think I’ve given as good as I’ve taken. It was carried right up to the last day.
I made a talk on television, a talk in which I made a flub — one of the few that I make, not because I’m so good on television but because I’ve done it a long time — I made a flub in which I said I was running for governor of the United States. The Los Angeles Times dutifully reported that.
… And I can only say thank God for television and radio for keeping the newspapers a little more honest.
The last play. I leave you gentlemen now and you now write it. You will interpret it. That’s your right. But as I leave you I want you to know: Just think how much you’re going to be missing.
You won’t have Nixon to kick around anymore because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference….
Not only did Richard M. Nixon win the presidential election of 1968, he was reelected in 1972 by one of the greatest landslides in US history.
She takes on anti-vaccination parents. By “takes on” I mean she assaults them with facts and unassailable logic. Me? I’d fling paper bags full of dog poo at them
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Three What?!
Speaking of great bloggers, The Blogess (AKA Jenny Lawson) delivers one of the finest lines in interwebs history:
Did you know that kangaroos have 3 vaginas? Because they totally do and that’s probably why they’re always hitting each other.
And — wouldn’t you know it? — a lot of them are refusing to be pricked due to their religious beliefs.
Satan’s Prick
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What is it about religion that makes people want to hurt themselves and others?
The irony is so many hospitals in the early part of the previous century were run — gasp! — by religious outfits.
Yup. Organizations like the Catholic Church actually practiced succoring the afflicted back in those hazy days, running many big city hospitals. Had you been laid up with lumbago, say, in the 1940s, a nun was as likely to bring you your ginger ale or Jell-o as an LPN.
Nursing School Graduation, 1964
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Now, of course, the Catholic Church is more concerned with burning issues like whether you’re getting naked with someone of your own gender.
Anyway, one fired oncology nurse told Fox news she eschewed the needle because it would have violated her nondenominational Christian beliefs.
Wow. Presumably this is a woman who has studied at a university and has specialized in one of the most advanced areas of modern medicine. It’s not as though she’s some backwoods Luddite. Yet, she believes that her god isn’t at all interested in stemming the spread of the seasonal flu virus which, by the way, kills some 3000 to 49,000 Americans a year, depending on the severity of that year’s outbreak.
As Bad As The Flu
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In some years, more people die from the flu than from automobile accidents.
Yet there are highly trained medical professionals who won’t take a simple step to protect themselves and others from this scourge.
I mean, I assume I’d disagree with any choice that gang of basket-weavers would make. They and I look at the world through radically different lenses.
They could have tabbed Paul Ryan, who hitched his wagon to the runaway mule that was the Mitt Romney campaign. I don’t care at all for Ryan’s politics, philosophy, or theology. But had WND designated him POY, I’d have been cool with it.
They aren’t, after all, going to dub Rachel Maddow their top 2012-er.
They could have named Speaker of the House John Boehner person of the year. He did stand tall against a certain Mau Mau, Muslim, commie, abortionist who wants to take away all our precious, sexy guns.
Again, cool. It’s their team; they get to choose the captain.
But Michele Bachmann?
Yes, Michele Bachmann!
Here’s what WND has to say about the Congressperson from Minnesota.
“Bachmann is a gutsy, pro-life fiscal conservative who dared to vote against raising the debt ceiling. She’s a God-fearing, gun-loving advocate of tax cuts and domestic oil drilling — and has proven to be one of Obamacare’s worst nightmares.”
Couple of interesting lines in there. I like the “God-fearing, gun-loving” thing. Shoot, if only sweet Jesus had a good Bushmaster AR-15 in his hands when the Roman soldiers came calling with the intent to nail him to the cross. He would have let his daddy-o sort ’em all out.
Jesus Is Love (Of Guns)
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The other thing that caught my eye was that Bachmann is “one of Obamacare’s worst nightmares.” So, a more equitable system of health delivery has taken on anthropomorphic form in the fever dreams of the fringe right, so much so that this piece of legislation even has nightmares.
Man, these folks are whacked.
Wait a minute. Maybe Michele Bachmann is the perfect WND person of the year.
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CRAZY, HE CALLS ME
Uh, yeah. Dedicated to those delightful folks at World Net Daily. And their darling, Michele Bachmann
“Homophobia is like racism and anti-semitism and other forms of bigotry in that it seeks to dehumanize a large group of people, to deny their humanity, their dignity, and their personhood.” — Coretta Scott King
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FAIRY TALE
Before you do anything else this morning, grab the Sunday New York Times op/ed section and read the piece by Frank Bruni about a lesbian woman whose stepsister is virulently homophobic.
The woman’s name is Helen LaFave.
Her step-sister’s name is Michele Bachmann.
Step-sister
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Bachmann, of course, is the wild-eyed Congressbeing from Minnesota who confers regularly with the putative creator of the Universe and is married to a Rip Taylor clone.
One Of These Men Is Mr. Michele Bachmann
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Bachmann, the Mrs., was a big force behind a statewide referendum Minnesotans will vote on November 6th that calls for a state constitutional amendment banning gay marriage.
Bachmann also has claimed that homosexuals as a group target children and that those who enjoy gay sex are living as “slaves.” Now, there’s a long-standing S&M boy bar on North Halsted Street in Chicago called The Cell Block whose clientele actually seeks a brand of indentured servitude, but I don’t think that’s what Bachmann was talking about.
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Anyway, Michele invariably says “I love you” to Helen every time they see each other at family functions. Considering the fact that Bachmann has made her political bones by vilifying gays and lesbians every chance she gets and she and her Rip Taylor-clone husband believe homosexuals can be “cured” of their dreaded disease, it seems likely she has no idea what the word “love” actually means.
STUDIO TOUR ◗ Brown County, various locations — The Backroads of Brown County Studio Tour, free, self-guided tour of 16 local artists’ & craftspersons’ studios; 10am-5pm, through October
MUSIC ◗ Cafe Django — Brunch Show: Peter Kienle on guitar; 11am
“Life contains these things: leakage and wickage and discharge, pus and snot and slime and gleet. We are biology. We are reminded of this at the beginning and the end, at birth and at death. In between we do what we can to forget.” — Mary Roach
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POLITICAL DISCOURSE
Oh, man! NFL football players are jumping on the gay marriage bandwagon!
Whooda thunk it?
My least fave professional sporting league generally is known for political and social outbursts that would make Mussolini proud. But Baltimore Ravens linebacker Brendan Ayanbadejo came out publicly in support of Maryland’s gay marriage ballot initiative recently.
Well, that just got Minnesota Vikings punter Chris Kluwe teed off enough to send a letter of his own to Burns, defending his league-mate as well as gay marriage. Among the zingers Kluwe included in his red-assed missive were:
“Your vitriolic hatred and bigotry make me ashamed and disgusted to think that you are in any way responsible for shaping policy at any level.”
“What on earth would possess you to be so mind-bogglingly stupid?”
“I can’t even begin to fathom the cognitive dissonance that must be coursing through your rapidly addled brain right now….”
“… [W]hy do you hate freedom?”
“If gay marriage becomes legal, are you worried that all of a sudden you’ll start thinking about penis?”
This is beautiful!
“I can assure you that gay people getting married will have zero effect on your life. They won’t come into your house and steal your children. They won’t magically turn you into a lustful cockmonster….”
Kluwe is becoming the modern-day Oscar Wilde.
Chris Kluwe
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“In closing, I would like to say that I hope this letter, in some small way, causes you to reflect upon the magnitude of the colossal foot in the mouth clusterfuck you so brazenly unleashed on a man whose only crime was speaking out for something he believed in.”
And Kluwe closes the letter by calling Burns, “Asshole.”
I dunno about you, but suddenly I’m a Minnesota Vikings fan.
King sits on the Agriculture, Small Business, and Judiciary committees. He also is a big shot in the Congressional Tea Party Caucus, natch. (Indiana’s Mike Pence, now running for governor, also is a member.) King’s already become known for loathing abortion and birth control, digging Rep. Todd Akin, and deeming racial profiling to be pretty cool.
Per Think Progress, though, we learn that King is just as whacked out as the more notorious Michele Bachmann — whom he also digs the most.
Pals
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Here are a few revelations about a guy Mitt Romney endorses for reelection
King wants the US to build an electric fence at the border with Mexico. “We do this with livestock all the time,” he says by way of explanation.
King wants states to ban birth control but feels state bans on pâté de foie gras are unconstitutional.
He’s a birther.
King was sympathetic to the man who crashed an airplane into an Austin, Texas IRS building in February, 2010.
King once described witch-hunting Sen Joe McCarthy as “a great American hero.”
Some Hero
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Romney says if he’s elected president, King would be “my partner in Washington.”
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FRANKEN-COOKIES
The world is coming to an end.
Want proof?
Here it is:
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Oh, no, this ain’t no Onion stuff. Nabisco is actually putting these boxes of extruded tumors on sale Monday, September 10th.
You can stock up on them through Hallowe’en, by which time an orthopedic surgeon will be sawing both your legs off below the knee, thanks to the ravages of orange and white cookie-induced diabetes.
Enjoy!
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A SECOND CAR?
Folks, I wonder if you think I’d look good in this little model.
A 1961 Ford Gyron Concept Car
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Well?
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SIZE AND MEN
Yeesh, this one gives me vertigo just thinking about it:
Back on Earth, the chicks (and the one or two males who pitch in occasionally) at Skepchick have been bombarded with hate emails and Tweets of late.
Their offense? Merely that they’re outspoken females (and the one or two guys who tolerate them).
What puzzles me is why loads and loads of men despise women. Even if you think women are nothing more than sex objects, wouldn’t you say to yourself, “Man, I dig those sex objects!”?
I don’t get a lot of things, which is often frustrating, but this is one thing I’m glad I can’t grasp.
“Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about war than we know about peace, more about killing than we know about living.” — Omar Bradley
Some 10,000 soldiers and civilian responders are play-acting what they’ll do in the event that some mad brown people drop a nuke on, say, Bloomington or even Indy.
MUTC covers a thousand acres and has more than a hundred training buildings including structures up to seven stories tall as well as good old split-level suburban type homes.
Now, I mention mad brown people because that’s who we’re really afraid is going to hurl the big one at us, no?
Didn’t George W. Bush whisper the words mushroom cloud and Saddam Hussein into our ears back in 2002 and 2003 to convince us to go along with him and his cronies on their war party? How much has changed regarding how we look at Arabs and Muslims since then?
I wonder if the people who ran IFCFMY instructed the kids to duck and cover back in the ’50s.
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And how feeble-minded do we have to be to figure we’ll survive a nuclear blast if only we have enough ambulances and EMTs?
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WHAT’S THE ANTIDOTE FOR ANTONIN?
I’ve been taking my time reading Rick Perlstein’s fab book, “Nixonland,” this summer.
Perlstein posits that Dick Nixon was the first television era president to give voice to the bleatings and ramblings of the gleefully uneducated in this holy land.
Rick Perlstein
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Nixon’s was truly a grass roots campaign in 1968. He portrayed college-educated people as snobbish, superior, sex- and drug-crazed lunatics who were going to ram blacks, Jews, peace, welfare, and even a little bit of the Communist Manifesto down good people’s throats. Nixon was savvy enough to realize most Americans had a hard enough time getting out of high school.
He rode a wave of self-pity and manufactured paranoia into the White House.
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The divisions Nixon capitalized on in the United States at the time make today’s Tea Party/Occupy Wall Street tête-à-tête look like a pillow fight.
Perlstein suggests that this nation avoided an actual second civil war by a hair’s width. Bombings, murders, assassinations, mob actions, and the army on American streets were as common from 1965 through 1973 as texting while driving is today.
Watts, August 1965
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Anyway, during Nixon’s early years in the White House, PBS was coming into its own as a news operation to be reckoned with, especially since it didn’t have to answer to advertisers. PBS started nosing into some of the more unsavory aspects of the Nixon administration. The President directed the general counsel for the Office of Telecommunications Policy to draw up a plan to defang PBS.
That general counsel wrote memos spelling out precisely how Nixon could bring PBS to heel. He wrote: “The best possibility for White House influence is through Presidential appointees to the Board of Directors.”
Once Nixon had stacked the board with his boys, they could then work on local PBS stations to play ball with the White House through the granting of moneys that were originally meant to go to the national network. The reason? The national network was top heavy with people from “the liberal Establishment of the Northeast.”
In other words, college-educated men. Bad guys who must be battled.
The author of that strategy was a fellow named Antonin Scalia, now the longest serving member of the US Supreme Court.
Antonin Scalia: Warrior Against Liberals
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Yeah, there was a revolution in the ’60s. Only the guys in power staged it — and won it.
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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.
THIS IS THE OPERATIVE STATEMENT — THE OTHERS ARE INOPERATIVE
How can you not love politics?
“He is the worst Republican in the country to put up against Barack Obama.”
That was Rick Santorum six weeks ago describing Mitt Romney — a man whom he endorsed yesterday.
Best Friends Forever
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Now, if you’re a Dem or you loathe the GOP, don’t start getting huffy and righteous and say something foolish like, Oh, those Republicans — they can’t be trusted. They’ll say anything to get elected.
Let’s go back four short years ago. Hillary Clinton spent a lot of time wagging her finger at Barack Obama during the Dem primaries. Some of her supporters threatened to — gulp! — go Republican if Obama won the nomination. That’s how deep the animus had grown between the two camps. Next thing you knew, both sides had come together to defeat the McCain/Palin ticket that, by all accounts, induced no Clintonistas to switch parties.
See, that’s why I could never be a politician. First, I have no interest in having the skeletons in my closet bared. Second, I know that at some point in time, I wouldn’t be able to stop myself from blurting out, “Jeez, can you believe how full of shit I am?”
BTW: recognize the headline at the top of this entry? That was Dick Nixon’s Squealer, Ron Ziegler, speaking to reporters on April 17th, 1973. Operative statements, in Ziegler’s bizarre argot, were simply today’s lies; inoperative statements were yesterday’s.
Animal Farm
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THE BUSINESS OF AMERICA IS BUSINESS
Let’s stick with a theme here: How can you not love business?
An IU spokesbeing issued a statement tut-tutting the scalping deal.
Free Market?
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Making money in a free market is the aim of getting a degree from the Kelley school — except, apparently, when you’re trying to make money selling tickets to a celebration of spending four years of your life learning how to make money in a free market.
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HILLARY AT THE SUMMIT
Back to Hillary Clinton. It turns out losing the race for the Democratic nomination for president in 2008 just might have been the best thing ever to happen to her.
You may recall that Hillary was perhaps the most despised human being in this holy land before Barack Obama came along to wrest the title from her.
WWN Wasn’t Half As Hard On Hil As Fox News
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Remember when Bill Clinton told voters he and the missus were a “package deal”? That she was going to be, in essence, a co-president? Middle America had apoplexy — Hillary was going destroy this sacred society by upending our traditional view of what a First Lady should be.
She even had to stop using her preferred hyphenated moniker, Hillary Rodham Clinton, because too many voters figured a woman who keeps her maiden name is most likely a Nazi abortionist.
And then she came out with that famous quote about not being interested in sitting at home and baking cookies. Millions of Americans became convinced at that very moment that she was a also lesbian communist.
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I never felt particularly warm about Hil. Oh sure, I voted for Bill (and her — I bought into the co-presidency idea) but she always struck me as a privileged white person, no matter how quasi-progressive she claimed her politics to be.
I always suspected she was incapable of dropping a gratuitous F-bomb or wouldn’t know how to drink a shot of tequila.
Park Ridge, Illinois, the Chicago suburb in which Hil was raised, was chock full of prim, holier-than-thou folks — even those, like HRC, who entertained near-liberal ideas.
Still, I’ve always had great respect for her. She’s tough enough in her own way to scare the bejesus out of her serial-philandering husband. Plus, she’s smart as a whip and ambitious to boot.
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Barack Obama saw these same qualities and selected her as his Secretary of State. Oh sure, he wanted to keep her occupied for four years as well, just in case she wanted to challenge him again in 2012. Still, he recognized her strengths.
Anyway, she’s done a fantastic job as a globe-trotting SoS. She’s juggling a potentially nuclear Iran, an uppity China, a schizo Pakistan, a mobbed-up Russia, a broke European Union, Myanmar, India, the nagging Isreal/Palestine issue, the Arab Spring, and too many other hot spots to mention. Somehow, the world hasn’t blown itself apart just yet.
She may not be tough enough to suck down a ounce of Tarantula Plata without gagging but I doubt there’s a male national leader on this Earth who has the cagliones to cross her.
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Why, just yesterday she told the Bangladesh government in no uncertain terms to lay off the Grameen Bank, the innovative microlender founded by Nobel Peace laureate Mohammed Yunus that helps women in south Asia develop small businesses and escape poverty. A while ago, Bangladesh had given the axe to Yunus as boss of the bank. Hil’s now staring that government down, saying don’t mess with Grameen.
Trust me, she’s writing her own entry in American history books.
But had she become president, she would have been savaged for her imagined sins nearly as much as Obama has for his. Who knows what form her “Birther” opposition might have taken. Most likely, there’d have been a constant flow of Hillary’s-gonna-force-our-daughters-into-dykedom “revelations” coming from right wing bloviators and Me Party-ists.
She might have had to spend her precious time denying that she leads a satanic sex cult in the White House basement.
It’s better being Secretary of State.
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INDIANA DEMS HAD BETTER BE RIGHT ABOUT MOURDOCK
Finally, speaking of Me Party-ists, their latest darling in Indiana, Richard Mourdock (“End the EPA!”), looks like a lock to unseat long-time US Senator Richard Lugar in the Republican primary today.
Now we’ll see if the state’s Democratic party theory that Mourdock is a preferable foe for their nominee Joe Donnelly in November holds any water.
Donnelly’d better win. Mourdock has been endorsed by none other than Minnesota’s Michele Bachmann.
She’s Back!
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I know, I know — you’d finally swept that name clear out of your consciousness and now I remind you that she’s still around. Hey, politics is a rough game.
♢
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Electron Pencil event listings: Music, art, movies, lectures, parties, receptions, benefits, plays, meetings, fairs, conspiracies, rituals, etc.
Tuesday, May 8, 2012
◗ IU Mathers Museum of World Cultures — Exhibits, “Blended Harmonies: Music and Religion in Nepal”; through July 1st — “Esse Quam Videri (To Be, Rather than To Be Seen): Muslim Self Portraits; through June 17th — “From the Big Bang to the World Wide Web: The Origins of Everything”; through July 1st
◗ Ivy Tech Waldron Arts Center — Exhibits at various galleries: Angela Hendrix-Petry, Benjamin Pines, Nate Johnson, and Yang Chen; all through May 29th
◗ Trinity Episcopal Church — Art exhibit, “Creation,” collaborative mosaic tile project; through May 31st
◗ Monroe County Public Library — Art exhibit, “Muse Whisperings,” water color paintings by residents of Sterling House; through May 31st
◗ Monroe County History Center — Photo exhibit, “Bloomington: Then and Now” by Bloomington Fading; through October 27th
◗ People’s Park — Lunch Concert Series, Starkraven; 11:30am
“The law does not pretend to punish everything that is dishonest. That would seriously interfere with business.” — Clarence Darrow
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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
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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
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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
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“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!
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Only I’ll be glancing over my shoulder in a panic occasionally for the rest of today.
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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.
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
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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:
Chief Justice John Roberts (appointed by George W. Bush)
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.
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.
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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.
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.
“I doubt if a single individual could be found from the whole of mankind free from some form of insanity. The only difference is one of degree. A man who sees a gourd and takes it for his wife is called insane because this happens to very few people.” — Erasmus
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LOCAL WARMING
Correct me if I’m wrong but aren’t these buds popping out on my front yard bushes?
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MR. CLOSET SEES NO CLASSES
I’m not all that mercurial on these pages. That which I espouse or despise in November very likely will be the same in June.
But I have given the thumb to Michele Bachmann as my bete noir du jour. (Is that the French idiom equivalent of mixing metaphors?)
Anyway, Bachmann’s out and Rick Santorum’s in.
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Mr. Closet (my new nickname for Santorum) justified my faith in him when he said these words during a weekend debate among candidates for the Republican nomination for president: “There are no classes in America.”
This is the socio-political analog to declaring that the world is flat. My god, Rick (or, more accurately, your god, Rick), have you visited a criminal courtroom lately? A jail? An unemployment office? A business school graduation ceremony?
I don’t think even Michele Bachmann would have had the balls to say those words (after all, somebody in her marriage has to have balls). Yes, she’s a loon. But — shock of shocks — she might not be as psycho as Mr. Closet.
I’d hate it if Ricky-girl did so poorly in tomorrow’s New Hampshire primary that he’d no longer be taken seriously as a contender. For a smart-ass like me, he’s the gift that keeps on giving.
Bloomington author extraordinaire Joy Shayne Laughter has nailed it. The other day she wrote to me: “Does anybody else get the feeling that the GOP nomination race has become little more than a Las Vegas lounge act? You have to have a pretty guy and a funny guy. Think Martin & Lewis.”
Martin & Lewis (Or Is It Romney &…?)
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JSL says Mitt Romney is the Dean Martin guy — handsome, good hair, can carry a tune. But she thinks Ron Paul is the Jerry-like buffoon. Nah. It’s Mr. Closet.
Speaking of the man who swears he would never, ever, ever, ever kiss a man full on the lips, gently, with slightly open mouth so he might savor the taste, running his fingers through the man’s hair, feeling his heart begin to pound, sensing warmth in his…, um, oh, I mean Rick Santorum, blogger Kris Broughton on Big Think goes all Big-Mike on the not-so-cuddly Jesus-lover and gay-basher.
Broughton writes: “If these utterly myopic conservatives of the Republican Party decide to hitch their wagon to Santorum, this will be the culmination of the last three years that began with Anybody But Obama, devolved to Anybody But Romney, and is now flirting heavily with the latest Republican theme for the 2012 election season, Any Christian White Man With a Suit.”
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ROMNEY’S RELIGIONS
One of the things about Mitt Romney that scares the poo out of the paleozoic wing of the Republican Party is his Mormonism.
The Mormon God, Or Gods, Or What The Hell Ever They Believe In
Who knows? Maybe Romney wants the world to to think Mormonism is not so bad, if only in comparison to Hubbard’s Scientology.
L. Ron Hubbard Made Joseph Smith Look Sane
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OCCUPY BLOOMINGTON GOES TO WORK
This was the scene at People’s Park Saturday at noon.
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No more tents. No more signs. No more Occupiers.
Occupy Bloomington may have been evicted but that doesn’t mean the revolution’s over in South Central Indiana. Stone sculptor Amy Brier points out that OB is now working with the striking limestone workers in Bedford.
Rick Santorum Wore This Suit While Decrying Gay Marriage
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Sheesh! Talk about good news-bad news. I mean, the vast majority of overall-ed voters rejected the notion of a Michele Bachmann presidency, which will go a long way toward ensuring that I get a sound sleep tonight. That’s the good news.
But Rick Santorum?
Here, in his own words, is the guy whom 30,007 Iowans think ought to be able to name the next Supreme Court justice: “I have no problem with homosexuality. I have a problem with homosexual acts.”
Man, Rick Santorum would wake Hamlet’s shrink from his nap.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, when it comes to guys who pontificate the way Santorum does, the “problem” they have is trying to ignore the endless pictures of homosexual acts that crowd into their imaginations every time they turn the lights out.
Rick Santorum’s Problem(s)
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IGNORANTIA LEGIS*
Eek. Monroe County Auditor Amy Gerstman has done the right thing by saying she won’t run for another term.
Gerstman
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But with the latest revelations about her county credit card use for personal expenses, she might do herself a favor and make an appointment with one of the fine attorneys over at Bunger & Robertson to see if she ought to start packing her toothbrush for a little stay away from home.
Gerstman has purchased gifts, groceries, dinners, and other personal items using at least three of the four credit cards registered under her office’s name. The Herald Times reported this morning that she also paid her kids’ private school tuitions with one of the cards.
The auditor (for the moment) has apologized and says she’s paid back all the money. That’s nice. But if a guy robs a bank and, while being chased by the cops, runs back into the bank claiming he wants to return the loot, the heat still slaps the bracelets on him.
By the way, that fourth credit card? Gerstman claims her office has forgotten the password to access online information about it. She also says the bank lady who normally helps her with the account has been on vacation. Both County Commissioner Marty Hawk and the H-T requested info on that card more than two months ago.
Some vacation.
Oh, and another thing. Bloomington Alternative ran a little piece when she announced her run for the office in 2008. Scroll down to the third paragraph where she’s quoted as saying, “There needs to be a change, restoring confidence is essential.”
Some confidence.
* The legal profession’s shorthand for the Latin, Ignorantia legis neminem excusat (ignorance of the law is no excuse.)
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KILL YOUR TV
Make sure you read at least ten books this year.
Here are ten of my faves:
Breakfast at Tiffany’s by Truman Capote
Goodbye, Columbus: And Five Short Stories by Philip Roth
The Canon: A Whirlgig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science by Natalie Angier
Angier
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The Lost Continent: Travels in Small Town America by Bill Bryson
Coming of Age in the Milky Way by Timothy Ferris (the science writer, not the entrepreneurial self-help goof)
Ball Four by Jim Bouton & Leonard Schecter
The Years of Lyndon Johnson by Robert Caro (a so-far three-volume bio of the 36rd President with the fourth book due out this spring)
Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truth by Apostolos Doxiadis & Christos H. Papadimitriou
A People’s History of the United States: 1492-Present by Howard Zinn
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
A simple truth: books make you smart; TV makes you stupid.
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FRICTION
The band Television was fronted by the very talented Tom Verlaine along with high school chum Richard Hell. Born Thomas Miller, Verlaine adopted his stage surname from the French poet Paul Verlaine. He said he did it as an homage to Bob Dylan who also renamed himself after a tragic versifier.
