Category Archives: Washington Post

01/30/2015
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Bloomingfoods, Dave Matthews Band, Jeff Weiss, Mandatory Civics Tests, Monroe County Community School Corporation, Suzanne Dovi, Washington Post

Hot Air

A Refreshing Truth

I was sitting around shooting the breeze with a few MCCSC employees, one principal and two teachers, earlier this week.

Now generally I tend to run like the wind when there are teachers around but I have to admit that since I’ve moved to this town I’ve met some teachers who don’t make me want to scream. In fact, I’ve met a teacher or two hereabouts whom I’m actually fond of. Imagine that.

Take the principal from last night. S/he (See how cagey I’m being here? Just try to figure out who this is — I dare you.) told us about the parents at his/her school. A photo of them, s/he implied, could illustrate the dictionary def. of “helicopters.”

“They’re involved in everything,” this principal said — and it was no compliment. The stress this person put on the word every made his/her lip curl in disgust.

This inspired one of the two teachers to spout off about parents who post gazillions of pix of their little darlings on Facebook. “Yeah,” the other teacher chimed in, “and what about the all the people who have to comment about how gorgeous and cute the kid is.”

Mom Meme

Mom Meme

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“And these parents who constantly say that their kids are the absolute joy of their life!” the principal said. “I mean, c’mon! No kids are that perfect.”

One of the teachers nudged the principal. “Tell ’em what you told me that time about your kids,” the teacher said.

“Oh yeah,” the principal said. “You know how these parents go on and on about how their kids have brought nothing but joy into their lives? I mean, I love my own kids, sure, and they really do bring joy into my life but, honestly, they turn all the other joys of my life into shit!”

Now there’s an educator (and parent) who’s got this kid thing figured out.

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B-foods Kirkwood Store to Shutter

Bloomingfoods is doing the right thing. Any time I’ve ever gone into the Kirkwood store, I’ve felt as though I’m walking into the set of some post-apocalyptic movie. Y’know, not much of a selection and no other customers around.

Bloomingfoods

Ghost Town?

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Sometimes you have to admit the times have passed you by. Besides, the place never did offer the caviar and Champagne fare the new breed of Richie Riches at Indiana University demands.

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Know Your Homeland?

From Washington Post blogger Suzanne Dovi comes the news that nearly a dozen states may make passing civics tests mandatory for their high school students. A sample test reveals the knowledge demanded of HS seniors amounts to little more than memorizing a few dates and geographical locations of certain historic landmarks. Civics Lite, as it were.

From "Ferris Bueller's Day Off"

Anyone? Anyone?

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Dovi offers the following Q’s for a more thorough understanding of this holy land’s civic environment:

True or False:

  •  If the police knock and ask to enter your home, you don’t have to admit them unless they have a warrant signed by a judge. (Answer: True)
  •  If the police come to your home and ask you to step out and you do, they no longer need a warrant for your arrest. (True)
  • If you are arrested outside and you accept any offers to let you go inside — to get dressed, for instance — the police can escort you inside and then search the rooms you enter without a warrant. (True)
  • The police are not allowed to lie to you. (False)
  • The right to videotape the police depends on the state you live in. Twelve states have adopted “eavesdropping” laws that prohibit videotaping police without the officer’s consent. (True)
  • The police are allowed to delete photographs or videos on your phone under any circumstances. (False)

Multiple choice:

  • If you feel that your rights have been violated by the police, to whom could you file a written complaint?
    • Police department’ internal affairs division
    • Civil complaint board
    • ACLU
    • All of the above
  •  Under OSHA regulations, an employer cannot retaliate against whistleblowers by:
    • Firing
    • Demoting
    • Denial of benefits
    • Reducing pay or hours
    • Blacklisting
    • All of the above

The answer to the T-Fers are T, T, T, F, T, F. Both multiple choicers are All of the Above. Howdja do?

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A Boatload Of Criticism

I have no particular axe to grind concerning the Dave Matthews Band. Meh is pretty much the most voluble reaction I can muster regarding them.

Pitchfork music critic Jeff Weiss has schooled me, though, on turning a non-reaction into an emotional extravaganza, thanks to this critique written by him and passed along by bassman extraordinaire Gordon Patriarca:

Once upon a time/When the world was just a pancake/Fears would arise/That if you went too far you’d fall/But with the passage of time/It all became more of a ball.

— some Dave Matthews lyrics

You want a real American Horror story? Sit in the back of an SUV with off-key sorority house members singing along to Dave Matthews Band. “Dave” is a jam act with no jams. They make Perrier seem vibrant and ethnic. Dave Matthews croons like Kermit with a hangover, for a presumed intended audience of trustafarians and frat bros bonding via hacky sack and horseshoes. Them, and folks whose favorite book is The Da Vinci Code and favorite TV show is Two and a Half Men. They are permanently beige, the sonic instantiation of Ambercrombie & Fitch cargo shorts, South Carolina Gamecocks hats, and flip-flops flailing.

Weiss is a wordsmith. Permanently beige? Inspired. Trustafarian? Brilliant.
Sometimes the curmudgeon’s art must be acknowledged.
BTW: The DMB was involved in one of the grossest incidents in Windy City history a few years back. It seems the band’s tour bus was crossing over the Kinsey Street Bridge, one of the city’s landmark ironwork bascules spanning the Chicago River. Just at that moment, the bus driver opted to empty the vehicle’s septic tanks. Now, Chi.’s bascule bridges have iron grate roadways so the effluent dropped down toward the river below. Only the tour boat Chicago’s Little Lady, carrying a hundred passengers who, prior to the incident, were enjoying an architectural tour on a sunny afternoon, happened to be immediately below the bus.
They got hit with 800 pounds of the band’s piss and shit.
Kinzie St. Bridge

Chicago’s Kinzie Street Bridge

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From a Chicago Tribune article on the driver’s plea agreement in which he pleaded guilty to misdemeanor reckless conduct and water pollution, the tour boat’s passengers “described a downpour of foul-smelling, brownish-yellow slurry that ruined their clothes and made several of them sick.”
Happy Friday!
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11/22/2014
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2015 Election, Barack Obama, Bob Goodlatte, Books, Impeachment, Mark Kruzan, Regina Moore, Washington Post

Hot Air

Moore No More

So, now both citywide candidates for public office have announced they’re turning in their lunchboxes.

City Clerk Regina Moore yesterday sent out an announcement to all her supporters and pals that she won’t seek reelection  next November. She joins Mayor Mark Kruzan in planning for a life without headaches, handshakes, and harping constituents.

Regina Moore

Moore (David Snodgress/Herald Times Photo)

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I’ve got to imagine Moore must have grown a cauliflower ear from listening to so many friends and acquaintances try to weasel their way out of parking tickets over the phone. I can honestly say I never put the touch on her to spring me from the $20 fine — but I thought about it every single time I found that green envelope on my windshield.

Truth is, I’ll bet she’d have told me to take a hike. She was — hey, wait a minute: is — one of the finest public servants imaginable. What a couple, she and Don Moore, no?

I hope to see the two of them browsing in the Book Corner even more than they already do once she surrenders her keys to the City Hall office supply closet.

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What Barack Has To Look Forward To

The US presidential impeachment process really is simple:

  • 1) The House Judiciary Committee concludes that the President must be impeached
  • 2) The Chair of the Judiciary Committee sends Article(s) of Impeachment to the full House

Goodlatte

House Judiciary Chair Bob Goodlatte

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  • 3) The full House approves one or more Articles of Impeachment by simple majority; this means the President has been impeached
  • 4) Now the Senate puts the President on trial; all 100 Senators will serve as the jury
  • 5) If 67 of the Senators (two-thirds of that chamber) vote to convict the President, another vote is held to either remove him from office or levy another form of punishment or censure on him

That’s it, kids. Oh sure, there are a gazillion little details interspersed: hearings to determine charges, votes to determine the rules of the trial, and so on. But these five steps are the process in a nutshell.

It’s so hard to get 67 Senators to vote one way on anything that doesn’t either enrich them or their campaign coffers that impeachment probably is — and will always be — used only to harass the President.

Certainly that’s what happened in 1998 when Bill Clinton was impeached. The Republican House couldn’t possibly have figured to get a Senate conviction on his fellatial (I just coined a word) crimes and misdemeanors but they loved — I repeat loved — dragging him through a four-year-long ordeal. (The first special prosecutor was appointed in January, 1994 to investigate the Whitewater financial affair and the death of Clinton lawyer Vince Foster; the Senate acquitted Clinton on unrelated charges in February, 1998.)

WaPo

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I don’t know if Bob Goodlatte‘s (R-VA) Judiciary Committee will decide to consider Articles of Impeachment as its first act when the 114th Congress convenes in January, but I just know it’ll do so eventually. Goodlatte seems a tad, well, more sane than some of the more virulent Me Party-ists of the new, total GOP Congress. But the pressure’s going to be on him from the madman wing of the party to make Barack Obama’s last two years in office a living hell.

As if the first six years haven’t been already.

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Really Reading

Speaking of the Washington Post (look up), the paper has released its list of 2014’s 50 Notable Works of Nonfiction.

I plan, over the next few years, to read nine of the books. Wait a minute — over the next few years? Yeah.

See, because I peddle books, people think I read everything that comes in. I don’t. I can’t. No one can. And if, in some distance bookstore, another peddler says she or he does; know that s/he’s toying with the truth. Reading entails submerging one’s self in a book, savoring it, understanding it, being in it. Speed reading and other tricks of the hyper-caffeinated set do not, in my unhumble view, constitute reading.

Books

My Nightstand’s Under Here Somewhere

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At least once a week, a customer’ll pull a title off the New York Times Bestseller list shelf and ask, “Have you read this yet?” Invariably I say no. And the cust. usually responds with a a look of pained shock. I wanna say, “Look, you want me to read one of Bill O’Reilly’s Killing… fetish books? Or Heaven Is for Real? Hell, I haven’t even gotten to Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist yet. Whaddya want from me?”

Anyway, throwing the list of nine in with the several dozen other books already waiting for me to devour, I’m being almost overly-ambitious by saying I’ll get to them in a mere few years.

That said, here are the latest nonfiction books that have gone into my reading queue:

  • The Bill of the Century by Clay Risen — about the passage of the 1965 Civil Rights Act
  • The Birth of the Pill by Jonathan Eig — the simple daily contraceptive pill was perhaps the most important development in the women’s rights story in the second half of the 20th Century
  • Countdown to Zero Day by Kim Zetter — about Stuxnet, the first burst in the 21st Century’s cyberwar
  • The Divide by Matt Taibbi — I’ll read anything by Taibbi; here, he lays out in his trademark rational rage style how money buys justice in this holy land

Book Cover

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  • The Invisible Bridge by Rick Perlstein — a confession: I’ve already read it. Perlstein covers the years 1974 through 1976 in his series on the history of the conservative movement in the US
  • My Age of Anxiety by Scott Stossell — the author has scads of phobias (and so do I); here. he tackles them with candor and humor
  • The Nixon Defense by John W. Dean — the disgraced ex-president’s White House counsel gives the ultimate insider’s view of the tragi-comic scandal
  • The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace by Jeff Hobbs — Peace grew up in the Newark slums and went on to study molecular biology at Yale; he also was a nails-tough street thug who ran a profitable dope trade
  • A Spy Among Friends by Ben Macintyre — Brit spook Kim Philby bamboozled pretty much everybody in the intelligence community, apparently not a difficult trick

If you phone me and I don’t answer, it’s because I’m reading.

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10/18/2014
1 Comment
Andy Borowitz, Bill O'Reilly, breitbart.com, Centers for Disease Control, Commercial Development, Dr. Thomas Frieden, Ebola Outbreak, Epidemiology, Kim Jong-il, Kim Jong-un, North Korea, Parking, The New Yorker, Trolley Circulators, Washington Post

Hot Air

We’re all gonna die!

Like the headline sez, but it ain’t gonna be ebola that gets us.

This is not West Africa. We’re turning ourselves inside out over the fact that one guy has died (and he was recently arrived from West Africa.) Now two other people have it.

The populace of this holy land is having conniption fits over this non-epidemic, thanks mainly to a corporate media whose most precious talent is the ability to scare the poo out of us. They’re doing so.

Anyway, let’s turn to a little science. Have you caught this piece in the Washington Post?

From WaPo

Click Image For Full Story

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Each of the grid charts illustrates how a specific disease spreads and kills (if at all). Ebola may be a killer but it ain’t a spreader. At least not a fast one. It simply does not jump from body to body easily.

An alert medical system and educated populace can stem the disease relatively quickly.

So, no, Centers for Disease Control head Dr. Thomas Frieden does not need to resign, despite the demands he do so by that noted epidemiologist Bill O’Reilly and the learned experts at breitbart.com. See, Frieden does not think ebola is gonna kill us all, nor does he want to seal our borders against the even more terrifying and dangerous natives of Africa.

Almost as perilous is what fear of ebola is turning us into. Andy Borowitz of The New Yorker states the case clearly and firmly (satire alert, natch):

From The New Yorker

You Know The Drill — Click For Full Story

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And, of course, since we live in a nation awash in grievances, some among us consider themselves victims even though they haven’t got a fever. For instance, I know a nurse who is loudly proclaiming on the interwebs that nurses, as always, take the blame for everything. She’s referring to suggestions that the nurse who caught ebola from the Liberian man in Dallas may have employed faulty personal protection practices while caring for him.

The idea being, she might have touched her eyelid or mouth with a contaminated glove finger, a simple mistake that any human can make. But, naturally, chronically aggrieved parties interpret any criticism as the moral equivalent of slavery.

Post

Nah, Don’t Click The Image

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This is the first time I’ve ever heard that nurses are being blamed for anything. They, like teachers, are the Virgin Marys of our society, above reproach, free of sin, spotless vessels. Now, suddenly, they’re the fall guys for everything?

We Americans are weird.

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Big City Blues

The Herald Times reports this morning (paywall) that Monroe County is going full steam ahead with plans for a 220-spot parking garage next to the Zietlow Justice Center and jail. Only “The full cost of the project is not known.” and “A construction date has not been set.”

So scotch the full and the steam. The ahead while you’re at it, too.

All I know is the county and the city had better get cracking on throwing up some parking garages quickly, what with hotels springing up everywhere near the formerly quaint Courthouse Square. Hell, no fewer than three developments are in the planning stages for the intersection of Lincoln and Kirkwood avenues alone. And another is planned for the bank property at Washington and Kirkwood.

Hong Kong

Bloomington’s Future?

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It’ll be easier to catch ebola in Bloomington than find a parking space once all these structures go up. To steal and mangle a line from Jerry Seinfeld, They’re gonna be building hotels inside of hotels soon.

Anyway, here’s my suggestion. Let’s build a nice round number of parking facilities spaced out to ring the downtown area. Say six of them. The existing parking facilities — on 4th Street, on Walnut and 7th, and behind the Buskirk Chumley Theater will give us a total of nine. (Let’s leave the Monroe County Municipal Library lot for library patrons, shall we?) Eliminate street parking for a two or three block radius around the Square, maybe more. Contract with a private company to run regular trolley service between all the lots, the Courthouse, the Zietlow facility, the hotels, the library, the Buskirk Chumley, the Sample Gates, City Hall, and whatever other attractions and municipal service centers there are in the vicinity.

Trolley

Catch The Trolley

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How do we pay for it all? Slap a room tax on all the new hotels going up. Add a food and beverage tax to all appropriate places within the service area. Hell, a five-dollar surcharge on a hotel room isn’t going to kill anybody. And adding 50 cents to a dollar to everybody’s grub and booze tab isn’t going to stop people from stuffing their faces and getting sloshed.

If Bloomington wants to pretend it’s a big city, it’s going to have to act like one.

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The Haircuts Of Kim Jong-Un

As a public service, I’m providing a photographic timeline of the North Korean Dear Leader’s coifs. Historians and researchers will benefit greatly from this.

KJU 1

A Very Young KJU With His Daddy-o, KJI

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KJU 2

KJU Adopts The Adolph Look

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KJU 3

KJU Opts For The Collegiate Crew Cut

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KJU 4

KJU Shaves The Sides

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KJU 5

KJU Ditches The Part

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KJU 6

KGU Sprouts Speed Racer Villain Horns

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KJU 7

KJU’s Pompadour/Fade Begins To Attain Towering Heights

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You’re welcome

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06/24/2014
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Barack Obama, E-books, George Will, Guns, Indiana University Press, Open Carry, Rape, Rick Perlstein, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Washington Post

Hot Air

Changes

A little house wren whispers in my ear that the debate is ongoing over at Indiana University Press regarding whether or not the outfit should cease publishing actual books.

Should the Press decide to quit the paper and ink racket, it would confine itself exclusively to electronic publishing. The bird asks, “Whaddya think?”

“As long as there still are people who grew up with hard copy books, there’ll be a demand for them,” I sez. “As soon as those generations die off, that’ll be the end of the printing press.”

The bird nods and says no more.

People tell me it’ll be a sad day when there are no more actual books. Of course, people probably said 30 years ago, “It’ll be a sad day when my VCR isn’t half the size of a city bus.”

Vintage VCR

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Target Practice

NPR reported this AM that Prez Barack H.O. has been making his security forces jittery of late by opting to walk hither and yon in the nation’s capital.

From NPR Morning Edition

Out In The Open

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After five and a half years of voluntary incarceration in the White House, Obama, like many another C-in-C before him has grown weary of living in the gilded cage. The report quotes Harry Truman, f’rinstance, as referring to the White House as “the great white jail.”

It was a cute story, characterizing BHO as a bear strolling around in search of food. The first reaction that hit me, though, was less than cute: There are at very least a few hundred Open Carry fanatics and, worse, clandestine gun-toters who right now are walking around in a state of tumescence over the golden opportunities Obama’s idylls are presenting them.

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Love Guns

Speaking of this holy land’s erotic fixation on shootin’ irons, my academic historian hero/man-crush Rick Perlstein writes in Salon that the gun industry’s recent triumphs over decency and common sense are more than just a clear and present danger to innocents who wish only to go to a movie, sit in a classroom, or have lunch in a mall food court. The victory of the Wayne LaPierre gang over humanity actually erodes the primacy of law and may actually be an irreparable breakdown of, well, these civilized United States.

To wit: The Cliven Bundy ranch showdown in which the feds backed down in the faced of armed lunatics means that Open Carry and other gun eroticists actually beat the law as well as the entire structure of the nation. He writes, “When legitimately constituted state authority stands down in the face of armed threats, the very foundation of the republic is in danger.”

Perlstein finds an unlikely villain in the gun madness that has overtaken Murrica — the Democrats. My own party (and his, he acknowledges) once stood in stark opposition to unfettered access to guns. The Dems represented what I like to think of as a majority opinion that guns should be controlled. And, just prior to the Age of Reagan, it was conventional wisdom that people who dug automatic weapons, called for unlimited access to ammunition, and fantasized strutting around town armed to the teeth were sick in the head.

Once upon a time, Democratic presidential candidates robustly argued for gun control — that, as the party platform put it in 1980 (the year the NRA made its first ever presidential endorsement, of Ronald Reagan), “handguns simplify and intensify violent crime”; Democrats support “enactment of federal legislation to strengthen the presently inadequate regulations over the manufacture, assembly, distribution, and possession of handguns.” Note no mention of machine guns, because back then the notion that there should be no barrier to their ownership would have seemed self-evidently ridiculous to most reasonable observers.

The Dems, though, lost a key election or two and decided to drop the whole gun control idea in hopes of wooing Southern white men. A courtship, BTW, that was never consummated.

Open Carry

He Never Would Be Dem Material

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Sometimes, sometimes…, no, most of the time, I feel not happy at all to identify myself as a Dem. Then again, what choice do I have?

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Chilling Effect

Sure, George Will made an ass of himself when he bleated that women dig identifying themselves as rape victims. He wrote earlier this month in the Washington Post op-ed page that colleges and universities, essentially, are teaching young women that it’s cool to have been raped and Commie/abortionist Washington is encouraging this brand of thought. Will opined our institutions of higher educ. are making “victimhood a coveted status that confers privileges.”

That, my friends, is the reasoning of a jerk.

Will

Jerk

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The news came last week that the St. Louis Post-Dispatch will no longer carry Will’s screeches from the WashPo syndicate. “The column,” the paper’s eds. wrote, “was offensive and inaccurate.” So, for all intents and purposes, the Po-Dis fired him.

I suppose that’s their right but it makes me uncomfortable when I hear of an opinion columnist losing her/his job for writing something controversial. Even if it is idiotic.

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04/15/2014
1 Comment
Daniel Ellsberg, Donna Tartt, Edward Snowden, Guardian US, Harrison Salisbury, New York Times, Non-profit Organizations, NSA, Pentagon Papers, Pulitzer Prize, The Goldfinch, The Secret History, Vietnam War, Washington Post

Hot Air

And The Winner Is….

Let’s talk awards.

The Pulitzers Prizes are the Oscars of the newspaper and scribbling biz. If I were to reveal one dream that I’ve harbored all my life, it’d be that I’d win the Pulitzer.

Pulitzer Prize winning author Big Mike Glab.

Trips off the tongue, no?

Maybe. But it won’t trip off the Pulitzer judging committee’s collective tongue. Not at this late date. And there, kiddies, lies the bare-bones moral of pretty much every novel that’s ever won the Pulitzer itself. Dreams die.

Sigh.

Anyway, Donna Tartt won this year’s fiction P.P. for her book, The Goldfinch. It’s about 16,000 pages long, which makes sense, considering it’s only the third book she’s had published in her so-far 22-year pro career.

Tartt

Donna Tartt

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I haven’t cracked open The Goldfinch yet but I did read Tartt’s The Secret History back in the ’90s. It was quite good even though it was about privileged, over-the-top neurotic white college kids. See, I’m not a complete bigot.

I may read The Goldfinch when it comes out in paperback, although I wouldn’t bet the mortgage payment on it if I were you. I shy away from exceedingly long books and movies these days. The Goldfinch actually is 784 pages in hardcover. That translates to at least two weeks of reading time. I just can’t see myself making that kind of commitment anymore.

As far as movies go, my limit is two hours. If you can’t tell me a story up on the screen in two hours, you can’t tell me a story.

The big news, as far as I’m concerned, is that the Washington Post and The Guardian US jointly won the public service award in journalism for publishing the Edward Snowden revelations. Long-time readers of this space know I find Eddie to be a repulsive little character but, just to show what a big man I am, I do allow that he performed an absolutely invaluable and heroic service for this holy land.

I just wish he hadn’t run off to hide in one of the world’s most repressive states after he did it.

For those of you who fret that our great nation is slip-sliding into a fascist, tyrannical police state, take heart in the WaPo/Guardian‘s award. It’s part of a long tradition of American news gatherers winning praise for embarrassing the bejesus out of, well, America. Think back to 1972 when the New York Times copped the prize for printing the Pentagon Papers. It could reasonably be argued that the Times‘s actions harmed Murrica.

Certainly the revelation that our generals, Defense Department officials, and even the President himself had been lying through their teeth about our ill-conceived war in Southeast Asia helped hasten the general populace’s demand that we get the hell out of there. In other words, the publishing of the Pentagon Papers just might have prevented our great country from maintaining its perfect score in the Mighty Nations at War League.

Now, gosh dang it, Murrica’s got that tainted 12-1 mark (not including our record in little exhibition excursions like Grenada).

Anyway, the Buck Turgidsons of the Pentagon in 1972 would have given half the medals off their chests to prevent the NYT from publishing Daniel Ellsberg’s photocopied documents. Instead, the Times got laurels.

From "Dr. Strangelove...."

Bomb The New York Times!

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If America was a fascist state back then, it was a lousy one. Old Adolf H. would have called us a bunch of pansies.

Funny thing is, it’s more likely that invertebrate publishers are more responsible for quashing the free press than all the iron-fisted generals, FBI agents, and presidents combined. In 1966 Harrison Salisbury was the only American reporter resourceful enough to slip into Hanoi. His subsequent series of stories revealed that US Air Force bombs were hitting hospitals and schools and killing civilians. The Pulitzer jury the next year voted to award him their prize. The Pulitzer board of directors nixed Salisbury’s award because they didn’t want to risk the ire of the Pentagon and President Johnson.

The same type of thing could have happened this year. The Far Right would have us believe the Obama Administration is chock-full of jack-booted Nazi lesbian abortionists. Funny, though, how that despotic gang let the Pulitzer committee recognize the Snowden articles.

They must have been too busy having sex orgies in the Oval Office.

And the Pulitzer peeps aren’t even cowering in fear of the Obama Reich.

Some fascist state.

Anyway, huzzah for the Pulitzer committees, for the Washington Post and The Guardian US, and for Edward Snowden (even if he is a weird little fker). I dig my press free.

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Happy Tax Day

Here’s an item that ought to make your red cells sizzle this AM. Apparently, the extremely profitable National Football League does not pay federal taxes.

That’s right; the org. that administers a $10 billion-a-year operation and whose chief profiteer, Roger Goodell, makes a cool $44 million a year, does not turn over any of that lettuce to the feds. This despite the fact that many of the NFL’s franchises play their knee-breaking, cranium-shattering games in palatial stadia bought and paid for by you and me, the people.

Just to clarify: the individual teams do indeed pay taxes on their kingly revenues. It’s the NFL office that doesn’t fork it over to the taxman. Still, we’re talking some hefty scratch that could be going to things like rebuilding Interstate Highway bridges, say, or fixing the ACA online sign-up system. The NFL office’s yearly take amounts to nearly $200 million in dues from its 32 teams plus whatever cuts it gets from licensing fees and other squeezes of the avg. football fan.

Total US tax bill: zero.

Football

Money From Heaven — Tax-Free!

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You may wonder why. The Florida Times-Union in Jacksonville explains: The NFL is a nonprofit. Yep. Just like Habitat for Humanity of Monroe County or WFHB’s parent, Firehouse Broadcasting. No lie.

What, you wanna argue with that? You think nonprofit status should only apply to crunchy, goo-goo, liberal-socialist outfits that, y’know, help people?

Pshh. What country do you think you live in?

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08/10/2012
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Allen Texas, Animal Planet, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Creationism, Finding Bigfoot, Football Concussions, Goldman Sachs, Hillary Clinton, Human Evolution, Human Growth Hormone, Lisa de Moraes, Lloyd Blankfein, Mermaid: The Body Found, Organized Crime, Performance Enhancing Drugs, Robert A. Heinlein, Smokey Robinson & The Miracles, Socialism, Steroids, Sub-prime Loans, Tears of a Clown, US Department of Justice, Washington Post, Welfare Reform

The Pencil Today:

✍

THE QUOTE

“Never underestimate the power of human stupidity.” — Robert A. Heinlein

♢

A NOTE TO MY READERS

If I seem a little cynical today (okay, a lot cynical) don’t blame me. I’m only the messenger.

♢

MEET YOUR BOSS

Make no mistake now. There is no longer any argument.

This holy land is not led by a president or a Senate or House. Nor is it run by Democrats or Republicans. Not even the combined forces of the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines rival the most powerful entity in the United States today.

Kids Stuff

✍

These Great United States, Inc. are ruled by the investment banking firm and criminal enterprise known as Goldman Sachs.

And that would make the emperor of this nominal democratic republic an unindicted hoodlum by the name of Lloyd Blankfein.

Dear Leader

✍

The capo Blankfein and his underlings yesterday got a huge return on their investments in political bribery and economic blackmail when the Obama Justice Department announced it won’t be pursuing charges against them.

See, Goldman Sachs had been engaged in the selling of subprime mortgage securities for years, earnings ungodly amounts of money. Only Blankfein’s syndicate then went out and bet against the performance of those securities.

In other words, Goldman Sachs sold its clients — including retirement funds, states and municipalities, hospitals, and the like — a pile of shit and then went out and set up a sham insurance safety net protecting itself against the shit smears that would inevitably follow.

The original “Mob” used to have this scam down to an art. A couple of crooked-nosed Charlies would visit a restaurant owner and advise him he needed “insurance” should, god forbid, anything calamitous happen.

Aw, D’at’s Too Bad. Y’See What Can Happen?

✍

The only flaw in the Mob’s plan was its inability to hold off the dogs of justice indefinitely. By and by, some squeaky clean prosecutor would slap the bracelets on the big boys and their underbosses.

But Lloyd Blankfein won’t be a guest of the state any time soon. In fact. the state is now his guest.

This is, after all, his country. Lock, stock, and barrel.

♢

PROBLEM SOLVED

You know how Barack Obama is a socialist? And the Clintons before him?

Real red-underwear-wearing types, right?

✍

At least that’s what the Right would have us believe.

So why is it that the number of people receiving cash assistance from government social welfare programs has fallen a full two-thirds since Bill Clinton’s 1996 welfare reform? And the number of American families who get government subsidies for trivial things like food and heat has fallen by a half?

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The answer, if you believe the Right, is they’ve all gone from the lazy poor to the self-sufficient middle class. Because, after all, it was their own fault they were poor.

The great thing about living in these United States is the fact that we don’t need complicated solutions to baffling problems. The answers, my fellow citizens, are simple.

Oops. I mean simplistic.
♢

ANOTHER SIGN OF THE COMING APOCALYPSE

Everybody and anybody who had a hand in making this monstrosity a reality should have the living shit kicked out of them:

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This is the brand spankin’ new high school football stadium in Allen, Texas.

You read right: High-freaking-school.

The new home of the Allen Eagles cost $60M. It seats 18,000. It has a 75×45-foot video screen scoreboard.

The story about this crime against humanity in Time magazine’s online newsfeed quotes some little bastard defensive back as saying, “We just have to [be] blessed and humble and not take it for granted.”

Go Eagles!

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Yeah. Like the god that doesn’t exist gave it to you in lieu of doing anything about the flooding in India.

Texas, by the way, last year cut $5B from the state public schools budget..

Anyway, the best part of the story is the little teaser in red about halfway down: “MORE: Catastrophic Brian Injuries at All-Time High in High School Football.”

Nothin’ like seeing your boy’s cerebrum concussed into so much gray goo down on the field in a shiny new stadium, is there?

♢

LIFE LESSONS FROM FOOTBALL

Yep. Football’s back.

Remember when Ma & Pa America were all aflutter over teenaged athletes using steroids and human growth hormones to build muscle mass?

The Horror

✍

Heaven forbid our precious scions should risk the devastating side effects of performance enhancing drugs. Like acne.

No. It’s much better for them to suffer permanent disability due to head injuries suffered on the gridiron.

Oh, and thanks to our changing climate (which, I’d bet, plenty o’Texans think is the liberal bunk anyway) more and more high school football players are suffering serious injury and death from practicing in full pads through the August heat.

♢

SCIENCE TAKES ANOTHER HIT

We don’t have cable anymore at Chez Big Mike but if we did, Animal Planet would be on all the time. The Loved One digs critters and I’m partial to two or three species myself.

The bad news is, Animal Planet is slipping and sliding away from real animals this coming season and becoming more about, well, bullshit.

Two of the cable networks big shows will be “Finding Bigfoot” and “Mermaid — The Body Found.”

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According to the Washington Post’s TV columnist Lisa de Moraes, critics pounded Animal Planet reps when the network held its pre-season news conference. One asked if AP “had run out of real animals.”

When it comes to TV, though, no one can argue with the numbers. AP’s audiences love shows about creatures that don’t exist.

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THE POWER OF MYTH

Great. As if I’m not discouraged enough by the direction in which this nation is headed, this poll comes out:

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The site I Fucking Love Science opines: “Well, this is a little bit scary. Come on America, sort it out. You just landed on Mars!”

To borrow a term from the god-fetishists, Amen!

♢

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

❏ I Love Charts — Life as seen through charts.

From I Love Charts

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

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

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

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

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

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

❏ Mental Floss — Facts.

❏ Caps Off Please — Comics & fun.

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

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

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

❏ The Daily Puppy — So shoot me.

Tiny, From The Daily Puppy

♢

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

◗ The Venue Fine Art & Gifts — Opening reception: “Articulture” by Marco Zehrung; 6-8pm

◗ Lake Monroe, Paynetown SRA — National S’mores Day celebration, recipe competition and other activities; 6-10pm

◗ Tibetan Mongolian Buddhist Cultural Center — Workshop: Depression and Buddhism, presented by Ani Choekye; 6:30pm

◗ IU Fine Arts Theater — Ryder Film Series: “Kumaré: The True Story of a False Prophet”; 7pm

◗ Muddy Boots Cafe, Nashville — Mizfitz; 7-9pm

◗ IU Cinema — Film: “To Rome with Love”; 7pm

◗ Bloomington Speedway — Sprint cars, UMP super stocks, UMP modifieds; 7pm

◗ IU Woodburn Hall Theater — Ryder Film Series: “The Pigeoneers”; 8pm

◗ Cafe Django — Sad Sam Blues Jam; 8-10pm

◗ The Comedy Attic — Tim Wilson; 8 & 10:30pm

◗ IU Fine Arts Theater — Ryder Film Series: “Polisse”; 8:30pm

◗ Bear’s Place — Chris Wilson & Planet Earth, Charlie & the Groove Factory; 9pm

◗ The Bluebird — The Revivalists, Three Story Hill; 9pm

◗ Max’s Place — Phoenix Down; 9pm

◗ Muddy Boots Cafe, Nashville — Amanda Webb; 9:30pm

◗ Max’s Place — Head Bread; 10:30pm

Ongoing:

◗ Ivy Tech Waldron Center — Exhibits:

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

◗ IU Art Museum — Exhibits:

  • Qiao Xiaoguang, “Urban Landscape: A Selection of Papercuts” ; through August 12th
  • “A Tribute to William Zimmerman,” wildlife artist; through September 9th
  • Willi Baumeister, “Baumeister in Print”; through September 9th
  • Annibale and Agostino Carracci, “The Bolognese School”; through September 16th
  • “Contemporary Explorations: Paintings by Contemporary Native American Artists”; through October 14th
  • David Hockney, “New Acquisitions”; through October 21st
  • Utagawa Kuniyoshi, “Paragons of Filial Piety”; through fall semester 2012
  • Julia Margaret Cameron, Edward Weston, & Harry Callahan, “Intimate Models: Photographs of Husbands, Wives, and Lovers”; through December 31st
  • “French Printmaking in the Seventeenth Century”; through December 31st

◗ IU SoFA Grunwald Gallery — Exhibits:

  • Coming — Media Life; August 24th through September 15th
  • Coming — Axe of Vengeance: Ghanaian Film Posters and Film Viewing Culture; August 24th through September 15th

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

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

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

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

♢

07/22/2012
2 Comments
Amy Goodman, Aurora Colorado Mass Shooting, Chicago Sun-Times, Democracy Now!, Guns, Harriet Hall, Joe Paterno, Joseph Conrad, Lynda Barry, Morehouse College, New York Times, Penn State University, Rebecca Watson, Roger Ebert, Sarah Sandberg, Skepchick, SkepDoc, Susan Sandberg, Tariq Taylor, Toles, Tony Robbins, Washington Post

The Pencil Today:

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THE QUOTE

“The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness.” — Joseph Conrad

♢

THE STRONG CAN BE LAID LOW

Sarah Sandberg commandeered her sister’s Facebook account last night at about 9:30pm to pass on some alarming news and to issue a warning.

✍

I’m hoping Sarah’s prediction that Susan will be back to work soon is a lot more than wishful thinking.

Susan Sandberg is royalty among Pencillistas. Join me in hoping her doctors have a lot of tricks in their black bags.

Pencillista Queen

♢

MY GUY ROGER

America’s best movie reviewer and an incisive cultural observer in his own right, Roger Ebert, has weighed in on the Aurora, Colorado atrocity.

Check his take in the Chicago Sun-Times. Here’s a quote from that piece:

“The hell with it. I’m tired of repeating the obvious. I know with dead certainty that I will change nobody’s mind. I will hear conspiracy theories from those who fear the government, I will hear about the need to raise a militia, and I will hear nothing about how 9,484 corpses a year has helped anything.”

Or you can read his New York Time op-ed piece. Here’s another quote, this one from that piece:

“Should this young man — whose nature was apparently so obvious to his mother that, when a ABC News reporter called, she said “You’ve got the right person” — have been able to buy guns, ammunition and explosives? The gun lobby will say yes. And the endless gun control debate will begin again, and the lobbyists of the National Rifle Association will go to work, and the op-ed thinkers will have their usual thoughts, and the right wing will issue alarms, and nothing will change. And there will be another mass murder.”

This ain’t no movie, kids. This is life. Guns are designed to take it.

♢

TRUTH IN HUMOR

Toles Cartoon From The Washington Post Syndicate

♢

DOWN WITH JOE

Penn State University is doing the right thing.

Workers Tear Down The Paterno Statue At 9:30 This Morning

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Now, maybe the people who run the institution can refocus on something novel: the development of students’ minds.

Joe Paterno made a lot of dough at the school. He signed a three-year contract in 2008 that called for an annual salary of a half million dollars a year. He made piles more — several times that amount per year — from ancillary sources.

The late unindicted co-conspirator was responsible for nothing more than the likes of instructing running backs on which way to turn when linebackers were approaching. It seems to me that particular aspect of the education of young men can be done by any number of “teachers” who’ve studied football (read: “have sat in front of the TV on Saturday and Sunday afternoons”).

Me? I’d spend half a million bucks on five teachers of a different sort, say:

  • Lynda Barry, creative writing and cartooning — The creator of “Ernie Pook’s Comeek”, “The Good Times Are Killing Me” and other works of reality-based fiction and visual art, Barry has transformed the struggles of an outsider into brilliantly funny and therapeutic entertainment. Think of what a role model she’d be for geeky, self-deprecating teenaged girls.

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  • Rebecca Watson, general science — The founder of Skepchick, she works tirelessly to upgrade the status of brainiac girls and female scientists around the world.

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  • Tariq Taylor, Humanities, black studies — As a Morehouse Collage grad student, Taylor visited Thailand after having never traveled in his life before. His experiences in that country were documented in the video “The Experience,” which reveals how travel can profoundly affect young black men who’ve been cloistered in racial and economic ghettos their whole lives.

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  • Amy Goodman, journalism — The boss of Democracy Now!, Goodman digs deeper than just about any reporter alive.

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  • Harriet Hall, MD, philosophy — The SkepDoc, Hall strips away the masturbatory bullshit that passes for curiosity and inquiry in the New Age and alternative medicine worlds today.

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Wouldn’t you think a hundred G’s a year would be good pay for each of five individuals whose words and guidance might affect literally thousands of students a year? Oh, and none of those students would have to be winners of the gene pool lottery wherein they’d have been born bigger/faster/stronger than 99.9 percent of their peers.

Call me a dreamer.

♢

WHERE THERE’S SMOKE…

As if anybody needed more proof that Tony Robbins is a con artist:

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Or that people who buy into his brand of fraud are dopes?

♢

✍

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

❏ I Love Charts — Life as seen through charts.

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

“What If?” From XKCD

✍

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

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

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

❏ Mental Floss — Facts.

❏ Caps Off Please — Comics & fun.

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

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

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

✍

❏ The Daily Puppy — So shoot me.

♢

✍

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

◗ Twin Lakes Recreation Center — American Softball Association Slow Pitch State Tournament; all day

◗ IU Wells-Metz Theatre — “The Taming of the Shrew”; 2pm

◗ IU Willkie Auditorium — Cultural fair: Silk Road Bayaram Festival; 3-6pm

◗ The Player’s Pub — Benefit for Margery Sauve; 6pm

◗ Bryan Park — Sunday Concert: Steel Panache, steel drum band; 6:30pm

◗ Bear’s Place — Ryder Film Series: “Oslo, August 31”; 7pm

◗ Buskirk-Chumley Theater — Big Brothers Big Sisters fundraising gala; 7:30pm

◗ IU Wells-Metz Theatre — Musical, “You Can’t Take It with You”; 7:30pm

◗ IU Auer Hall — Summer Arts Festival: Pipe organ faculty recital; 8pm

◗ The Root Cellar at Farm Bloomington — The Size of Color, Minus World; 9pm

◗ The Bishop — Daniel Ellsworth & the Great Lakes, the Shams Band; 9pm

Ongoing:

◗ Ivy Tech Waldron Center — Exhibits:

  • John D. Shearer, “I’m Too Young For This  @#!%”; through July 30th
  • Claire Swallow, ‘Memoir”; through July 28th
  • Dale Gardner, “Time Machine”; through July 28th
  • Sarah Wain, “That Takes the Cake”; through July 28th
  • Jessica Lucas & Alex Straiker, “Life Under the Lens — The Art of Microscopy”; through July 28th

◗ IU Art Museum — Exhibits:

  • Qiao Xiaoguang, “Urban Landscape: A Selection of Papercuts” ; through August 12th
  • “A Tribute to William Zimmerman,” wildlife artist; through September 9th
  • Willi Baumeister, “Baumeister in Print”; through September 9th
  • Annibale and Agostino Carracci, “The Bolognese School”; through September 16th
  • “Contemporary Explorations: Paintings by Contemporary Native American Artists”; through October 14th
  • David Hockney, “New Acquisitions”; through October 21st
  • Utagawa Kuniyoshi, “Paragons of Filial Piety”; through fall semester 2012
  • Julia Margaret Cameron, Edward Weston, & Harry Callahan, “Intimate Models: Photographs of Husbands, Wives, and Lovers”; through December 31st
  • “French Printmaking in the Seventeenth Century”; through December 31st

◗ IU SoFA Grunwald Gallery — Exhibits:

  • Kinsey Institute Juried Art Show; through July 21st
  • Bloomington Photography Club Annual Exhibition; July 27th through August 3rd

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

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

◗ IU Mathers Museum of World Cultures — Closed for semester break

◗ Monroe County History Center — Exhibits:

  • “What Is Your Quilting Story?”; through July 31st
  • Photo exhibit, “Bloomington: Then and Now” by Bloomington Fading; through October 27th

♢

04/11/2012
1 Comment
A People's History of American Empire, Anti-war Movement, Buffalo Springfield, Colonialism, Daniel Ellsberg, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Espionage Act of 1917, FBI, Fox News, France, George Zimmerman, Green Berets, Gulf of Tonkin Incident, Harry S Truman, Howard Zinn, Lyndon B. Johnson, Monty Python's Flying Circus, My Lai, New York Times, RAND Corporation, Richard M. Nixon, Rick Santorum, Sean Hannity, Smothers Brothers, Terry Gilliam, Trayvon Martin, US Department of Defense, Vietnam War, Washington Post, Watergate

The Pencil Today:

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THE QUOTE

“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

So, bye-bye Rickey. We knew you all too well.

♢

A SIMPLE QUESTION

Does it surprise anyone that the first media creature George Zimmerman has spoken with is Fox News’ Sean Hannity?

Sympathetic Ear

♢

DANIEL ELLSBERG, PATRIOT

I missed this. Saturday, April 7th was Daniel Ellsberg‘s birthday.

You want a hero? You got him.

Ellsberg

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Here’s the story of Ellsberg’s heroism as told by Howard Zinn in his compelling graphic narrative book, “A People’s History of American Empire.”

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.

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He was lucky.

He was also, as I mentioned earlier. a hero.

♢

FOR WHAT IT’S WORTH

The Buffalo Springfield played this song on the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, February 26th, 1967.

♢

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