"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.
The poor things had to fill out extra forms in order to receive tax exempt status for their efforts to feed the hungry, house the homeless, and heal the sick. It’s tyranny, I tell you! Hitler was a wuss compared to the Kenyan freedom-hater whose name we shall not even breathe [and it’s probably phony anyway.]
Social Service
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See what I’m doing here? Just trying to be as full of horseshit as the Tea Party-ists and their fellow mollycoddlers and squealers.
Natch, breitbart.com and WND are shrieking to high heaven that the Muslim, commie, fag, abortionist who currently occupies the White House illegally is trying to crush the Tea Party and other saintly patriots not via guns or imprisonment but — worse, far worse — through red tape. Oh, the humanity!
Alright, people, looks like I have to say this again. Those right wing conservative groups were trying to game the system by applying for tax exempt status. They are not — repeat, not! — social service organizations.
In fact, their raison d’être is not to feed the hungry, house the homeless, or heal the sick. Quite the contrary. According to the Tea Punks and their philosophical patron saint Ayn Rand, the hungry, the homeless, and the sick deserve to be that way. Rick Santorum and Paul Ryan and Rand Paul are leaders — successes — not because they were born on third base but because they hit a triple.
Rand: “Me. Me. Me. Me. But, On The Other Hand, Me.”
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The sooner this holy land rids itself of the lamprey eels that are the hungry, homeless, and sick, the better we’ll all be.
Why do you think these Radical Right-ists are four-square in favor of slashing funds for social service agencies? The only honest social service agency is the one that recognizes that the mud people and the undesirables have no place in this great free market heaven that once was and will be again.
Tax exempt, huh? Like I’m gonna pay with my tax dollars for them to spread their hork-ish, self-centered, whitey-jive without a fight.
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If You’re Unhappy, I’m Happy
Not that the excessive self-love of the Me Party-ists is anything new in these great United States. I was thumbing through Bill Bryson’s neat book, Made in America, last night and came upon this passage:
By 1990, America’s sense of declining economic prowess generated a volume of disquiet that sometimes verged on the irrational. When a professor of economics at Yale polled his students as to which they would prefer, a situation in which America had 1 percent economic growth while Japan experienced 1.5 percent growth, or one in which America suffered a 1 percent downturn but Japan fell by even more, 1.5 percent, the majority voted for the latter. They preferred America to be poorer if Japan were poorer still, rather than a situation in which both became more prosperous.
Honestly, they’d rather suffer as long as the dirty Japs were suffering, too? That’s not schadenfreude; that’s lunacy.
This Ought To Make Those Students Happy
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It’s also telling that the poll’s respondents were students in an economics course, meaning they were most likely business students. As in future leaders who, for their very own benefit, will lay off tens of thousands, sully the air and the water, sabotage the success of others, and, overall, commit countless crimes against humanity.
Future Tea Party-ists, in other words.
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Living For The City
For a brief, precious moment, we actually gave a damn about the problems of other people. How quaint!
“When you carry a gun, you mean to harm somebody, kill somebody.” — Bill Cosby
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A LITTLE ANTHONY IN BLOOMINGTON
The stars were out yesterday afternoon in front of Williams Jewelry on Walnut Street.
Bloomington’s political heavyweights came out to dedicate an historical plaque honoring Susan B. Anthony’s appearance at the long gone Presbyterian church that once stood on the present day site of the Redmen Building.
Mayor Mark Kruzan, City Clerk Regina Moore, County Commissioners Iris Kiesling and Julie Thomas (elect), County Prosecutor Chris Gaal, County Council members Cheryl Munson (elect), Geoff McKim and Julie Thomas, Bloomington common council member Susan Sandberg, and, of course, the grande dame of local politics, Charlotte Zietlow, all made the scene in the brilliant sunshine.
A group of some fifty citizens watched as speakers told the story of Anthony speaking at the Walnut Street church back in 1877 when she toured the country pushing for women’s suffrage.
Shirley Fitzgibbons & Cathi Crabtree Unveil the Plaque
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The respective women’s commissions of Bloomington and Monroe County sponsored the plaque. The fact that Anthony spoke here only became known again in recent months. Shirley Fitzgibbons of the county commission and Cathi Crabtree of the Bloomington bunch unveiled the plaque after the pols had their say.
One sad note: Sophia Travis also worked to make the plaque a reality. After the ceremony her father offered Cathi Crabtree tearful congratulations.
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QUEER REASONING
How weird is it that satire can so easily be confused with reality these days?
Case in point: The Daily Currant, an Onion wannabe, ran a piece the other day headlined, “Santorum Claims Homosexuals Stole Election.”
What looks to be about half the commenters on the piece expressed shock and revulsion that Pennsylvania’s most notable altar boy had jumped (bare)back onto his fave bandwagon — the fag monster that hides under his bed every single night of his life.
Little Rickey: Always Thinking
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Dig: Santorum thinks about gays more than most gays think about gays; GOP loyalists insisted not only to the bitter end but beyond that their boy Mitt was going to win — this despite the fact that a total of zero independent polls showed him ahead; and, finally, much of the Republican reaction to Tuesday’s election at least hints that fraud was committed in the name of the secret Muslim, socialist, fascist abortionist who was granted a second term.
Ergo, the Cassock Kid coming out with a lavender-tinged conspiracy theory sounds perfectly reasonable. A story about Santorum telling CNN that homosexuals have staged a junta in this (formerly) holy land is no more ridiculous than, oh, Glenn Beck advising his flock to buy farms, pull their kids out of school, and stock up on guns in the wake of the president’s reelection.
Beck: Arm Yourselves, Real Americans!
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Here’s the Daily Currant “quoting” Santorum on the “plot”:
I see the hand of the homosexual in this massive election fraud. Romney was tied or leading in most polls before the election. And then he loses? Homosexual dirty tricks. It is the only explanation that makes sense.
He goes on to accuse noted gays such as David Geffen and Elton John of having the money and the power to initiate a Mattachine overthrow.
It could have been a virus in the election machines, the Currant has him saying.
It’s all a gag — something I suspect Little Rickey knows an awful lot about.
Barack Obama’s reelection seems to have caused millions of pot-bellied white men to believe their genitalia are shrinking. That’s my take on the gun sales surge.
“Experts” claim jes’ plain folks are snapping up the artillery because they fear Obama will crack down on gun ownership. The problem is, they did the same thing after he was elected in 2008 and Obama did absolutely nothing about guns during his first term.
The dwindling population of pasty-faced reactionaries who still can’t believe a brown man is their leader are arming themselves to the teeth because they honestly fear that, as a soon-to-be minority, they’ll be discriminated against, forced to live in ghettos, and denied equal rights under the law.
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Makes sense. After all, that’s the way they‘ve always treated minorities.
FAIR ◗ Holiday Inn — Bloomington’s Spirit Fair, Consult with psychics & tarot readers, Shop for New Age objects, Booths for numerology, astrology, reiki, crystal healing, and palmistry; Through Sunday, 10am-5pm
CELEBRATION ◗ Trained Eye Arts Center — The Big One: Trained Eye Arts 1-year Anniversary, Featuring live music, games, performers, studio open house; Noon
MUSIC ◗ IU Ford-Crawford Hall — Master’s Recital: Nicholas Cline, composition; 1pm
OPERA ◗ IUMusical Arts Center — “Cendrillon (Cinderella),” Presented by IU Opera Theater; 2pm
MUSIC ◗ IU Auer Hall — Doctoral Recital: Pei-San Chiu on flute; 2pm
MUSIC ◗ IU Musical Arts Center Recital Hall — Junior Recital: Caleb Wiebe on trumpet; 3pm
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
“Politics is the entertainment branch of industry.” — Frank Zappa
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SAVE US, RICK
Gotta say it: I miss Rick Santorum.
The political debate has pretty much petered out now that the wackiest altar boy in the nation has quit the presidential race.
We Miss You, Man
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Barack Obama and Mitt Romney are involved in a staring contest over who loves women more. Romney said recently, “93 percent of the job losses during the Obama years have been women who lost those jobs.” Obama, in turn, has dispatched his wife, not to correct Romney’s awkward sentence construction, but to say her man is the greatest thing to happen to women since the invention of chocolate.
Michelle Obama actually said this about the her husband’s deeds for women: “We have an amazing story to tell. This president has brought us out of the dark and into the light.”
Oy.
Suffragette Introducing Featured Speaker Barack Obama
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And in some weird, Twilight Zone-ish turn of events, Ann Romney, a woman who has struggled valiantly to assemble a staff of nannies and maids, has become an icon for all the hard-toiling homemakers of this holy land.
See, I’m pumped about the release in two weeks of the fourth volume in Robert Caro‘s brilliant series of books on the life of Lyndon Baines Johnson. It deals with the 1960 presidential election, Johnson’s ascendency to the presidency following the Kennedy assassination, and his electoral coronation in 1964.
Johnson Drives His Beloved Amphi-car
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LBJ was one fascinating man. He stole elections, bullied opponents, battled for civil rights legislation, loathed John F. Kennedy and then served under him as vice president, allowed the nation to slip into a senseless war in Vietnam and found himself mourning that course of events. He issued orders to members of his staff while perched upon the porcelain princess with the door wide open.
Caro won the Pulitzer Prize for “The Power Broker,” his look into the life of New York City strongman Robert Moses. (BTW, Oliver Stone is working on an HBO biopic based on Caro’s book.) He copped another Pulitzer for the third volume in the Years of Lyndon Johnson series, “Master of the Senate.” For my dough, Caro has to win a third Pulitzer for “The Passage of Power” if it’s even half as good as the previous three tomes on the man.
Robert Caro
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Pick up any of the aforementioned Caro books; you’ll understand a lot more about how America works if you do.
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BEYOND HUMAN UNDERSTANDING
Dig this observation by social ecologist Peter Drucker:
“Like the forces of war, depression shows man as a senseless cog in a senselessly whirling machine which is beyond human understanding and has ceased to serve any purpose but its own.”
Peter Drucker
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The quote, written in 1939, has been interpreted as a description of the madness that was the Great Depression. It sounds to me more like an indictment of unfettered capitalism itself.
“I got my head bashed in at a demonstration against the Vietnam War. Police were losing control because they were up against a world they really didn’t understand.” — Terry Gilliam
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AND THEN THERE WERE TWO
Gotta tell ya, folks, I hate to see Little Rickey Santorum go, for the loss of his entertainment value alone.
Now the presidential race is down to two politico-economic fraternal twins, each of whom is about as exciting as a can of beige paint.
Definitely Not Beige
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If it wasn’t for guys like Santorum, I’d have to actually take the Republicans seriously and you know how disconcerting that prospect would be for me.
Digging the Santorum campaign was like having a daredevil hobby — bungee jumping off tall bridges, say, or rowing across an ocean. Exciting, sure, but if things go wrong, you’re screwed.
In this case, the worst-case scenario would have been a Santorum presidency
Zinn and Ellsberg became friends in 1969 during the anti-war movement. Ellsberg earlier had worked for the RAND Corporation, which was assigned by the US Department of Defense in 1967 to write up a history of the Vietnam War. Ellsberg actually did much of the grunt work researching this nation’s involvement there.
He learned that President Harry Truman authorized the funding of France’s colonial war against Vietnam independence fighters as far back as the 1940s. President Dwight Eisenhower in the 1950s threw US support behind Vietnam strongmen who opposed free elections in that country.
Throw in a pile of other falsehoods, exaggerations, forgeries, and intentional inaccuracies on the parts of generals and politicians executing the slaughter in Southeast Asia, and Ellsberg understood that our stated aims there were a colossal sham.
Thanks to the study, Ellsberg saw that President Lyndon Johnson’s assertion that the North Vietnamese had started a war just for kicks in the summer of 1964 was an out and out lie.
Johnson, see, had said some North Vietnamese in a little motorboat had attacked a couple of American cruisers just sitting in the waters of the Gulf of Tonkin and minding their own business. Johnson parlayed this whopper into getting Congress to sign him a blank check and the next thing you knew, a half million American soldiers were fighting for who knows what in Southeast Asia.
Johnson, Finally Grasping What Vietnam Had Become
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Ellsberg and some other RAND researchers privately agreed that they had to say something to the American public about our country’s shenanigans in Vietnam.
They figured Middle American folks would trust them, sub-contractors to the Pentagon with 7000 pages of damning documents in their hands, rather than wild-eyed hippies carrying peace placards.
So they sent a letter to major newspapers around the country calling for an end to the war. The New York Times and the Washington Post both published the letter, but nobody really gave a damn about it.
Meanwhile, the United States military went on happily killing and bombing in Vietnam. Then there was a Green Beret murder scandal and the My Lai Massacre. Ellsberg already was wracked with guilt for his country over what he knew and these atrocities only pushed him over the edge.
Destroying The Town In Order To Save It
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He contacted another former RAND colleague and together they photocopied the 7000 pages with the goal of releasing the classified documents. The two agreed it was worth going to jail for exposing government secrets if it might shorten the war somehow.
Their hope was the release of the papers would turn even the most die-hard patriots against the war. They contacted the offices of a few congressmen and found no one willing to touch their hot docs.
Finally, they went to the New York Times with their bundle of papers. After a few months, the Times went ahead and published what would become known as the Pentagon Papers. Ellsberg was charged with theft and violations of the Espionage Act. He faced 115 years in prison. He turned himself in to the FBI in Boston on June 28, 1971, after having run off many more copies of the Papers and distributing them to other newspapers.
Setting The Type For The New York Times Pentagon Papers Edition
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While Ellsberg was on trial, it was learned that the Nixon White House had ordered mugs to burglarize his psychiatrist’s office in hopes of finding incriminating notes against him there, and other mugs to harass him at public appearances. The federal judge declared a mistrial in Ellberg’s case due to these government interferences.
“At least Bank of America got its name right. The ultimate Too Big To Fail bank really is America, a hypergluttonous ward of the state whose limitless fraud and criminal conspiracies we’ll all be paying for until the end of time.” — Matt Taibbi
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NAH, IT CAN’T BE — CAN IT?
Gawker had this first, then Roger Ebert re-posted it. It’s a purported commercial for the Rick Santorum campaign.
Ebert says he can’t believe it’s real. And, quite frankly, neither can I.
I mean, Little Rickey is the altar boy who loved all the attention the priest lavished on him, leading him to become the world’s most prominent closeted figure. His resultant damaged psyche then led him to turn the Republican primary battle into a cheap Outer Limits episode, natch.
But this? For real?
Well, just watch. Someone out there has to know if this is legit or not. Lemme know, would you?
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PSANTORUM IS PSYCHO
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Here’s the definition of Paranoid Personality Disorder, as presented in the DSM-IV-TR, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, 4th edition, text revision, that is the bible (you’ll pardon the pun) of the psychiatry profession:
A. A pervasive distrust and suspiciousness of others such that their motives are interpreted as malevolent, beginning in early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts, as indicated by four (or more) of the following:
suspects, without sufficient basis, that others are exploiting, harming, or deceiving him or her
is preoccupied with unjustified doubts about the loyalty or untrustworthiness of friends or associates
is reluctant to confide in others because of unwarranted fear that the information will be used maliciously against him or her
reads hidden demeaning or threatening meanings into benign remarks or events
persistently bears grudges, i.e, is unforgiving of insults, injuries, or slights
perceives attacks on his or her character or reputation that are not apparent to others and is quick to react angrily or counterattack
has recurrent suspicions, without justification, regarding fidelity of spouse or sexual partner
B. Does not occur exclusively during the course of Schizophrenia, a Mood Disorder With Psychotic Features, or another Psychiatric Disorder and is not due to the direct physiological effects of a general medical condition.
There you have it. Little Rickey is damned on at least five criteria: numbers 1, 2, 4, 5, and 6. This man who should be eating soft foods prior to being given his nightly mega-dose of Thorazine may well be your next Republican candidate for Vice President of the world’s only remaining superpower.
The painstakingly preserved 13th Century cathedral in Maastricht, Holland, is the new home of the Dutch Selexyz Dominicanen bookstore.
Dig this shelving under the soaring vaulted ceiling:
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Meanwhile back in this holy land bookstores are closing faster than James Patterson and Nicholas Sparks can type out those disposable consumables they call novels.
“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.
♢
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.
♢
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
✍
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’m supposed to have a PhD on the subject of women. But the truth is I’ve flunked more often than not. I’m very fond of women; I admire them. But, like all men, I don’t understand them.” — Frank Sinatra
♢
BREAD AND CIRCUSES (MINUS THE BREAD)
Time to beat a dead horse again. Didja see where Hamilton County has to sell its physical rehab hospital just so it can pay its debt service bills on the two Taj Mahals it built for Cincinnati’s pro sports teams?
The hospital has been valued at $30M but Hamilton County’s offering it for half that price because, well, it’s desperate.
The Wall Street Journal last July called the public financing of Great American Ballpark and Paul Brown Stadium “one of the worst professional sports deals ever struck by a local government.” Hamilton County took on about a billion dollars’ worth of debt to get the stadia built.
Half A Billion Here…
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County officials promised trusting voters that the two facilities, both on the Ohio River, would usher in a new era of economic fabulousness for downtown Cincy.
Didn’t happen. And, according to the WSJ, it wasn’t going to happen even if the economy hadn’t tanked in the last year of George W. Bush’s reign.
The beauty of this story is the reaction of Cincinnati Bengals vice president Troy Blackburn. The Bengals play football in Paul Brown Stadium. The team pays virtually no operating or capital improvement costs for its palace. Additionally, Hamilton County is contractually on the hook to pay for any as-yet uninvented gizmos like hologram replay devices the team might desire. Swear to god.
… Half A Billion There…
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Blackburn’s Bengals pushed hard for the County to foot the bill and ink a sweetheart lease deal for the team. The Bengals threatened to move to another city if the County didn’t come through.
County officials caved in, of course, as almost all local pols do when sports team owners put guns to their heads. Hamilton County honchos promised the good burghers of Cincy that piles of dough would roll into city and county coffers as well as local businesses if the two cathedrals were built. Voters bought those promises.
When confronted by reporters about the County’s current financial hardships, including yearly shortfalls and essential service cuts, Blackburn shrugged and said his team was not to blame for anything. Hamilton County’s suckers, he rationalized, were “an informed and engaged electorate.”
Hehe.
… Sorry, Nothing Left For You.
✍
Former Cincinnati mayor Tom Luken was against the deal from the start. “Anybody with half a brain can figure out this is a bad deal,” he says.
We are one weird eff-ing country, kiddies.
♢
VIDEO KILLED
Uh oh — we’re even weirder than you and I feared. Some Hollywood producer is putting together a deal to make a film about the start-up of MTV.
As in, VJs and all.
VJs.
For all you kids out there, MTV used to play music.
Ya Gotta Love the “21 Jump Street” Pose
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ILLINOIS SINNERS
Rick Santorum is telling Illinois voters they can atone for their sin of giving the world Barack Obama by voting for him (Santorum) in the state’s primary Tuesday.
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Guess what — a lot of my left-leaning friends are registering as Republicans and voting for god’s candidate. Their rationale? Make Santorum the Republican candidate because he can’t beat Barack.
Man, that’s playing with fire.
Plus, I don’t think the GOP needs anybody’s help in committing political suicide this year. They’re handling it just fine already.
♢
GIRLS TO WOMEN
I’m reading Patti Smith’s National Book Award winning memoir, “Just Kids.”
Here’s my capsule commentary so far: She knows how to write and she doesn’t know how to write. That’s what makes the book charming.
✍
I haven’t got past her poverty-stricken early days with Robert Mapplethorpe yet. She’s young and dreaming and certain there is something important she has to bring to the world. Only she doesn’t know just what it is.
Smith was already in her 60s when she was writing the book. Still, it has the sound and feel of a hungry, delightfully pretentious, ambitious, 14-year-old geeky girl.
How refreshing. I’ve had it with reading about men and boys coming of age. It’s time for more women authors to let the reading public know what it’s like to be a proto-emo girl. Or any kind of a girl at all.
Hah! And you thought I was being obsessive by devoting so much of this space to those two execrable professional virgins who sing about Rick Santorum.
All I know is this morning’s TV and radio reports on the victories of god’s candidate in yesterday’s Mississippi and Alabama primaries feature snippets of the song. It has now earned the imprimatur of the corporate media.
And if, by some sick turn of history, the closeted candidate goes into the Republican convention with a chance to unseat putative front runner Willard Romney, the First Love earworm will become a pandemic.
Lady Gaga will wish she’d thought of penning a ballad extolling a rollback of reproductive rights and drooling over the dyed and addled Ronald Reagan.
[Headslap] “I Coulda Had An Earworm Hit!”
♢
KING OF THE SOUTH PACIFIC
Just in case you missed it, Willard won the caucuses in Hawai’i and American Samoa last night. Game On!
“Thank You, My Fellow Samoans!”
♢
THE ILLINOIS GUBERNATORIAL RETIREMENT PLAN
I met Rod Blagojevich the day he started campaigning for a seat in the Illinois House back in 1992.
It was a sunny Monday morning and this earnest-looking guy in a nicely pressed suit and a helmet of hair was handing out flyers in front of the Francisco stop on the Ravenswood el line. I looked at the photo on the flyer and then at the guy and said, “Hey, this is you.”
Vote For Me, I’ll Set You Free
♢
He got a big kick out of that. He flashed a smile that almost blinded me. Lucky I was wearing sunglasses.
He told me why he was the best candidate for the office. He seemed so serious and honest and self-effacing. He made a lot of people think that of him over the years.
He told me he was a neighbor. The Blagojeviches lived a block and a half away from me, on Francisco Avenue. I’d pass his house every time I walked down to the convenience store for a newspaper or an ice cream bar. His bungalow was notable in that it was surrounded by a tall, black metal fence, the kind Mayor Daley had given a sweetheart contract to one of his donor/cronies to surround every park in the city with. I guess Blagojevich figured he ought throw a little business that guy’s way as well.
Rod Blagojevich was nothing if not politically astute.
Well, to a point.
He turned awfully stupid when he was taped by federal prosecutors trying to sell President-elect Barack Obama’s US Senate seat.
Not Free
✍
Today he goes into the slammer for that and other crimes. He’ll serve about 12 years of his 14-year sentence in a minimum security facility outside Denver.
I needn’t recount all his in-office malfeasances and felonies here. Nor will I list all his embarrassing media exploits since being convicted in his impeachment trial in 2009.
I’ll only point this out; it may be his most despicable crime. In October 2002, Rod Blagojevich was the only Illinois Democrat in the US Congress to vote in favor of the authorization of George Bush’s bullshit Iraq war.
Enjoy your twelve year stay in the federal B&B, Rod baby, you earned it.
♢
FOLSOM PRISON BLUES
Dedicated to my ex-state legislator, ex-congressman, ex-governor, and ex-neighbor Rod R. Blagojevich.
