Happy Birthday, Mom
Sunday, December 31, 2006
J - James / G - Gerald
Hey Folks,
Here are some thoughts to take us back. Even if we can't ever learn from the past, it's fun to pretend that someday we might - don'tcha think ??
Maybe not.
- Uke Man
December 28, 2006
Lessons Never Learned
By BOB HERBERT
(a ukethanks to Phyll)
It would not be easy to find two men more different than Gerald Ford and James Brown. But I had a similar reaction to each of their deaths — a feeling of disappointment at some of the routes the nation has traveled since their days of greatest prominence.
Both men were important figures, symbolically more than substantively, at crucial periods in postwar American history — Mr. Brown at the crest of the civil rights movement in the mid-1960s and Mr. Ford in the trough of the “long national nightmare” of Watergate.
Both were unlikely harbingers of the new. Mr. Brown, with his gleaming (and anachronistic) pompadour, became the very embodiment of black pride, a troubadour exhorting his followers to “Say it Loud — I’m Black and I’m Proud” at a time when schoolhouse doors were opening and unprecedented opportunities were beckoning to black Americans after centuries of almost unimaginable degradation.
Mr. Ford was more than just the designated healer after Watergate. The U.S. was also in the final throes of the long national nightmare of Vietnam. And it was stuck in a protracted energy crisis. The nation was looking for a way forward.
My disappointment stems from the opportunities never seized and the lessons never learned from those two periods, which were all but bursting with possibilities.
Mr. Brown’s message was relentlessly upbeat and optimistic. Despite the continuing plague of racism, there were dreams in the 1960s of fabulous days ahead for black Americans, days in which the stereotypes and degradation of the past would be erased by a new era of educational, professional and cultural achievement.
Those dreams did not include visions of an enormous economically disadvantaged population that would continue to live in poverty, or near-poverty, more than 40 years later; or a perennially ragged public school system, largely segregated in fact, if not by law, that would turn out generation after generation of educationally deprived children; or a black prison population so vast and so enduring it would come to seem normal to legions of black youngsters, actually dictating to a great extent their tastes in fashion, art and music; or a level of sustained violence that has condemned thousands upon thousands of black youngsters to an early grave.
Oh, there have been plenty of strides since the mid-1960s. That’s undeniable. But one would have to be blind not to notice that there is much cause for disappointment, as well.
James Farmer, who helped create the Congress of Racial Equality on Gandhian principles of nonviolence, once told me that even as the civil rights movement was racking up its stunning successes, its leaders made a grave error.
“We did not do any long-range planning,” he said. “So we were stuck without a program after the success of our efforts, which included passage of a civil rights bill and voting rights legislation. We could have anticipated the backlash that followed. We could have asked ourselves what the jobs prospects would be for blacks in the ’70s, the ’80s, the ’90s, and later on. By and large we didn’t do that, except for affirmative action. We should have had a plan.”
It would be foolish to suggest that the United States as a whole hasn’t made tremendous progress since the 1960s and ’70s. But it’s impossible to reflect on the presidency of Gerald Ford, who formally ended U.S. participation in the war in Vietnam, and fail to notice that his defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, and chief of staff, Dick Cheney, were among the chief architects of the current calamity in Iraq. There were lessons galore to be learned from Vietnam. But Mr. Rumsfeld and Mr. Cheney, like frat boys skipping an important lecture, managed to ignore them.
The trauma of the 1973 oil embargo actually spooked the country into action on the energy front. Fuel economy standards for automobiles were ratcheted up and improvements were made in the energy efficiency of refrigerators, air-conditioners and other household appliances. But those successful early efforts, instead of being strengthened, were undermined by the conservative political tide of the past several years.
Now we’re confronted with the dire threat of global warming, and as usual there is no plan.
If history tells us anything, it’s that we never learn from history. We could have stepped back from the war in Iraq, and stepped up to the challenge of global warming. We could have learned something when James Brown was on the charts and Gerald Ford was in the White House.
Maybe next time.
Here are some thoughts to take us back. Even if we can't ever learn from the past, it's fun to pretend that someday we might - don'tcha think ??
Maybe not.
- Uke Man
December 28, 2006
Lessons Never Learned
By BOB HERBERT
(a ukethanks to Phyll)
It would not be easy to find two men more different than Gerald Ford and James Brown. But I had a similar reaction to each of their deaths — a feeling of disappointment at some of the routes the nation has traveled since their days of greatest prominence.
Both men were important figures, symbolically more than substantively, at crucial periods in postwar American history — Mr. Brown at the crest of the civil rights movement in the mid-1960s and Mr. Ford in the trough of the “long national nightmare” of Watergate.
Both were unlikely harbingers of the new. Mr. Brown, with his gleaming (and anachronistic) pompadour, became the very embodiment of black pride, a troubadour exhorting his followers to “Say it Loud — I’m Black and I’m Proud” at a time when schoolhouse doors were opening and unprecedented opportunities were beckoning to black Americans after centuries of almost unimaginable degradation.
Mr. Ford was more than just the designated healer after Watergate. The U.S. was also in the final throes of the long national nightmare of Vietnam. And it was stuck in a protracted energy crisis. The nation was looking for a way forward.
My disappointment stems from the opportunities never seized and the lessons never learned from those two periods, which were all but bursting with possibilities.
Mr. Brown’s message was relentlessly upbeat and optimistic. Despite the continuing plague of racism, there were dreams in the 1960s of fabulous days ahead for black Americans, days in which the stereotypes and degradation of the past would be erased by a new era of educational, professional and cultural achievement.
Those dreams did not include visions of an enormous economically disadvantaged population that would continue to live in poverty, or near-poverty, more than 40 years later; or a perennially ragged public school system, largely segregated in fact, if not by law, that would turn out generation after generation of educationally deprived children; or a black prison population so vast and so enduring it would come to seem normal to legions of black youngsters, actually dictating to a great extent their tastes in fashion, art and music; or a level of sustained violence that has condemned thousands upon thousands of black youngsters to an early grave.
Oh, there have been plenty of strides since the mid-1960s. That’s undeniable. But one would have to be blind not to notice that there is much cause for disappointment, as well.
James Farmer, who helped create the Congress of Racial Equality on Gandhian principles of nonviolence, once told me that even as the civil rights movement was racking up its stunning successes, its leaders made a grave error.
“We did not do any long-range planning,” he said. “So we were stuck without a program after the success of our efforts, which included passage of a civil rights bill and voting rights legislation. We could have anticipated the backlash that followed. We could have asked ourselves what the jobs prospects would be for blacks in the ’70s, the ’80s, the ’90s, and later on. By and large we didn’t do that, except for affirmative action. We should have had a plan.”
It would be foolish to suggest that the United States as a whole hasn’t made tremendous progress since the 1960s and ’70s. But it’s impossible to reflect on the presidency of Gerald Ford, who formally ended U.S. participation in the war in Vietnam, and fail to notice that his defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, and chief of staff, Dick Cheney, were among the chief architects of the current calamity in Iraq. There were lessons galore to be learned from Vietnam. But Mr. Rumsfeld and Mr. Cheney, like frat boys skipping an important lecture, managed to ignore them.
The trauma of the 1973 oil embargo actually spooked the country into action on the energy front. Fuel economy standards for automobiles were ratcheted up and improvements were made in the energy efficiency of refrigerators, air-conditioners and other household appliances. But those successful early efforts, instead of being strengthened, were undermined by the conservative political tide of the past several years.
Now we’re confronted with the dire threat of global warming, and as usual there is no plan.
If history tells us anything, it’s that we never learn from history. We could have stepped back from the war in Iraq, and stepped up to the challenge of global warming. We could have learned something when James Brown was on the charts and Gerald Ford was in the White House.
Maybe next time.
Saturday, December 30, 2006
One view of Gerald Ford
Hey Folks,
With the passing of former President Gerald Ford, I've seen two views expressed. The most common one is that Ford, never seen as extremely intelligent, looks like Mensa material compared to Bush!!
And, that he was a decent person. This seems supported - at least compared to Bush - in the report below. He was upset by the wiretapping, and he wouldn't have invaded Iraq.
A relative lack of decency among the entire Bush posse could partially explain the vehemence of their misguided, inhuman agenda.
Ford had problems with Bush Iraq policy
Thu Dec 28
WASHINGTON - Former President Gerald R. Ford questioned the Bush administration's rationale for the U.S. invasion and war in Iraq in interviews he granted on condition they not be released until after his death.
In his embargoed July 2004 interview with The Washington Post, Ford said the Iraq war was not justified, the Post reported Wednesday night.
Ford "very strongly" disagreed with the current president's justifications for invading Iraq and said he would have pushed alternatives, such as sanctions, much more vigorously, the Post's Bob Woodward wrote. The story initially was posted on the newspaper's Internet site.
"I don't think I would have gone to war," Ford told Woodward a little more than a year after President Bush launched the invasion.
In the tape-recorded interview, Ford was critical not only of Bush but also of Vice President Cheney — Ford's White House chief of staff — and then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who served as Ford's chief of staff and then his secretary of defense.
"Rumsfeld and Cheney and the president made a big mistake in justifying going into the war in Iraq. They put the emphasis on weapons of mass destruction," Ford said. "And now, I've never publicly said I thought they made a mistake, but I felt very strongly it was an error in how they should justify what they were going to do."
In an interview given with the same ground rules to the New York Daily News last May, Ford said he thought Bush had erred by staking the invasion on claims Saddam had weapons of mass destruction.
" Saddam Hussein was an evil person and there was justification to get rid of him," he observed to the Daily News. "But we shouldn't have put the basis on weapons of destruction. That was a bad mistake. Where does (Bush) get his advice?"
In the Daily News interview, Ford was more defensive about Cheney and Rumsfeld. Asked why Cheney had tanked in public opinion polls, he smiled. "Dick's a classy guy, but he's not an electrified orator," Ford said.
The former president did not like Bush's domestic surveillance program.
"It may be a necessary evil," Ford conceded. "I don't think it's a terrible transgression, but I would never do it. I was dumbfounded when I heard they were doing it."
Woodward wrote in the Post that his interview took place for a future book project, though the former president said his comments could be published at any time after his death.
In another interview released after his death, Ford told CBS News in 1984 that he initially was against using the phrase "long national nightmare" in his first speech as president following
Richard Nixon's resignation, concerned that it was too harsh.
Ford said he reconsidered and sought his wife's advice. "After thinking about it and talking to Betty about it, we decided to leave it in and, boy, in retrospect, I'm awfully glad we did," he said.
In the Daily News interview, Ford, a few weeks from his 93rd birthday, showed frustration with the toll health problems had taken on him, saying he thought doctors were too strictly limiting what he could do.
At one point, he offered to share some butter pecan ice cream, his favorite dessert, with his guest, correspondent Thomas M. DeFrank.
Asked what his doctors would think about that, the former president said, "We have it anyhow."
With the passing of former President Gerald Ford, I've seen two views expressed. The most common one is that Ford, never seen as extremely intelligent, looks like Mensa material compared to Bush!!
And, that he was a decent person. This seems supported - at least compared to Bush - in the report below. He was upset by the wiretapping, and he wouldn't have invaded Iraq.
A relative lack of decency among the entire Bush posse could partially explain the vehemence of their misguided, inhuman agenda.
Another, different view of Ford will be forthcoming.
- Uke Man
Ford had problems with Bush Iraq policy
Thu Dec 28
WASHINGTON - Former President Gerald R. Ford questioned the Bush administration's rationale for the U.S. invasion and war in Iraq in interviews he granted on condition they not be released until after his death.
In his embargoed July 2004 interview with The Washington Post, Ford said the Iraq war was not justified, the Post reported Wednesday night.
Ford "very strongly" disagreed with the current president's justifications for invading Iraq and said he would have pushed alternatives, such as sanctions, much more vigorously, the Post's Bob Woodward wrote. The story initially was posted on the newspaper's Internet site.
"I don't think I would have gone to war," Ford told Woodward a little more than a year after President Bush launched the invasion.
In the tape-recorded interview, Ford was critical not only of Bush but also of Vice President Cheney — Ford's White House chief of staff — and then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who served as Ford's chief of staff and then his secretary of defense.
"Rumsfeld and Cheney and the president made a big mistake in justifying going into the war in Iraq. They put the emphasis on weapons of mass destruction," Ford said. "And now, I've never publicly said I thought they made a mistake, but I felt very strongly it was an error in how they should justify what they were going to do."
In an interview given with the same ground rules to the New York Daily News last May, Ford said he thought Bush had erred by staking the invasion on claims Saddam had weapons of mass destruction.
" Saddam Hussein was an evil person and there was justification to get rid of him," he observed to the Daily News. "But we shouldn't have put the basis on weapons of destruction. That was a bad mistake. Where does (Bush) get his advice?"
In the Daily News interview, Ford was more defensive about Cheney and Rumsfeld. Asked why Cheney had tanked in public opinion polls, he smiled. "Dick's a classy guy, but he's not an electrified orator," Ford said.
The former president did not like Bush's domestic surveillance program.
"It may be a necessary evil," Ford conceded. "I don't think it's a terrible transgression, but I would never do it. I was dumbfounded when I heard they were doing it."
Woodward wrote in the Post that his interview took place for a future book project, though the former president said his comments could be published at any time after his death.
In another interview released after his death, Ford told CBS News in 1984 that he initially was against using the phrase "long national nightmare" in his first speech as president following
Richard Nixon's resignation, concerned that it was too harsh.
Ford said he reconsidered and sought his wife's advice. "After thinking about it and talking to Betty about it, we decided to leave it in and, boy, in retrospect, I'm awfully glad we did," he said.
In the Daily News interview, Ford, a few weeks from his 93rd birthday, showed frustration with the toll health problems had taken on him, saying he thought doctors were too strictly limiting what he could do.
At one point, he offered to share some butter pecan ice cream, his favorite dessert, with his guest, correspondent Thomas M. DeFrank.
Asked what his doctors would think about that, the former president said, "We have it anyhow."
Baaaaaaaaaaaa !!!!! Baaaaaaaaaaaa !!!!! Again
Hey Folks,
I'm re-running this since the deed was done in Baghdad this morning.
For me, the act demands I ponder (once again) the nature of revenge, politics, capital punishment, murder, war, class, greed, "acceptable" psychosis, and the nature and future of humanity.
It will be interesting to hear the prattle that passes for "commentary" that comes out of this today/tomorrow/etc. That will be for laughs.
For serious commentary, think about it on your own.
- Uke Man
Court: Execute Saddam within 30 days
By QASSIM ABDUL-ZAHRA, Associated Press
Dec. 26
BAGHDAD, Iraq -
Iraq's highest appeals court on Tuesday upheld
Saddam Hussein' 's death sentence and said he must be hanged within 30 days for the killing of 148 Shiites in the central city of Dujail.
The sentence "must be implemented within 30 days," chief judge Aref Shahin said. "From tomorrow, any day could be the day of implementation."
On Nov. 5, an Iraqi court sentenced Saddam to the gallows for ordering the 1982 killings following an attempt on his life.
Hey Folks,
It may be that history is repeating itself.
Iraq was invented and arbitrarily drawn on the world map by white foreign fingers, thus requiring animals like Saddam to serve as "leaders" who could control the antagonistic forces suddenly caged together as "brothers."
Now we hear from right-wingers that we need a new "Pinochet" to lead and control those same antagonistic forces, forces still trapped in the pretend "nation," those very forces set free by toppling Saddam.
Yep, hanging Saddam will cleanse us of our sins, but wouldn't throwing him off a cliff be more in keeping with Biblical practice regarding scapegoats?
- Uke Man
p.s. a note from a compulsively "helpful" English teacher: The plan is that Saddam will be HANGED, not HUNG. He may or may not be hung at present, but he expects to be hanged soon.
I'm re-running this since the deed was done in Baghdad this morning.
For me, the act demands I ponder (once again) the nature of revenge, politics, capital punishment, murder, war, class, greed, "acceptable" psychosis, and the nature and future of humanity.
It will be interesting to hear the prattle that passes for "commentary" that comes out of this today/tomorrow/etc. That will be for laughs.
For serious commentary, think about it on your own.
- Uke Man
Court: Execute Saddam within 30 days
By QASSIM ABDUL-ZAHRA, Associated Press
Dec. 26
BAGHDAD, Iraq -
Iraq's highest appeals court on Tuesday upheld
Saddam Hussein' 's death sentence and said he must be hanged within 30 days for the killing of 148 Shiites in the central city of Dujail.
The sentence "must be implemented within 30 days," chief judge Aref Shahin said. "From tomorrow, any day could be the day of implementation."
On Nov. 5, an Iraqi court sentenced Saddam to the gallows for ordering the 1982 killings following an attempt on his life.
Hey Folks,
It may be that history is repeating itself.
Iraq was invented and arbitrarily drawn on the world map by white foreign fingers, thus requiring animals like Saddam to serve as "leaders" who could control the antagonistic forces suddenly caged together as "brothers."
Now we hear from right-wingers that we need a new "Pinochet" to lead and control those same antagonistic forces, forces still trapped in the pretend "nation," those very forces set free by toppling Saddam.
Yep, hanging Saddam will cleanse us of our sins, but wouldn't throwing him off a cliff be more in keeping with Biblical practice regarding scapegoats?
- Uke Man
p.s. a note from a compulsively "helpful" English teacher: The plan is that Saddam will be HANGED, not HUNG. He may or may not be hung at present, but he expects to be hanged soon.
Friday, December 29, 2006
Pinochet Video
Hey Folks,
Just a bit of video commentary from along Pinochet's way toward dying of natural causes, an old man, cradled in the arms of those he enriched by his monstrous behavior.
BBC video: Pinochet escapes standing trial (how convenient):
http://news.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/1430000/video/_1430893_pinochet22_marshall_vi.ram
- Uke Man
Just a bit of video commentary from along Pinochet's way toward dying of natural causes, an old man, cradled in the arms of those he enriched by his monstrous behavior.
BBC video: Pinochet escapes standing trial (how convenient):
http://news.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/1430000/video/_1430893_pinochet22_marshall_vi.ram
- Uke Man
"Hundreds pay respects" - Thousands denounce!!!
Hey Folks,
This is the guy the Right says should be the model for Saddam's replacement.
- Uke Man
Hundreds pay respects to Pinochet
[THOUSANDS spit on him - Uke Man]
By EDUARDO GALLARDO, Associated Press
SANTIAGO, Chile - Hundreds of supporters of Gen.
Augusto Pinochet, many in tears, filed Monday past the brown wooden coffin for the ex-dictator, who was denied a state funeral normally granted to former presidents.
While Pinochet's relatives mourned his death Sunday from heart failure at age 91, his many opponents [the people] celebrated with champagne and lamented that he escaped justice for the torture and killings that marked his 17 years in power after a bloody 1973 coup.
Police surrounded key buildings and intersections Monday to prevent more of the violent protests that spread past midnight to several working class districts.
Deputy Interior Minister Felipe said 43 police officers were injured and 99 demonstrators were arrested in the clashes, which were blamed on a small contingent of the thousands of demonstrators who jammed streets to denounce Pinochet's legacy.
In lieu of a state funeral, Pinochet was granted only military honors at the Santiago Military Academy, and he will be cremated Tuesday to avoid desecration of his tomb by "people who always hated him," said his son, Marco Antonio.
Flags were lowered to half-staff at military facilities only, and President Michelle Bachelet, who was jailed as a young woman and lost her father during Pinochet's takeover, said it would be "a violation of my conscience" to attend a state funeral.
It was unclear whether any diplomats would attend the military ceremony. "We do not consider it appropriate to send a representative," Britain's Foreign Office said Monday, despite Pinochet's support for Britain in past years.
Roman Catholic Cardinal Francisco Javier Errazuriz led the first of several religious ceremonies at the academy. The Chilean flag was placed on top of the coffin, along with Pinochet's blue military hat and gala uniform jacket. Visitors kissed the glass of the coffin, crying openly.
"Our beloved captain general has gone. It's a great pain for all of Chile," said one mourner, Sergio Erazo. "There is much pain, we are all crying."
Pinochet took power on Sept. 11, 1973, demanding an unconditional surrender from President Salvador Allende as warplanes bombed the presidential palace. Instead, Allende committed suicide with a submachine gun he had received as a gift from Fidel Castro.
The U.S. had been working to destabilize Allende's Marxist government and keep Chile from exporting communism, but the world reacted in horror as Santiago's main soccer stadium filled with political prisoners to be tortured, killed or forced into exile after Pinochet came into power.
Although his dictatorship laid the groundwork for South America's most stable economy, Pinochet will be remembered as the archetype of the era's repressive rulers who proliferated throughout Latin America and, in many cases, were secretly supported by the United States.
Chile's government says at least 3,197 people were killed for political reasons during Pinochet's rule, but courts allowed the aging general to escape hundreds of criminal complaints as his health declined.
The announcement of his death on Sunday triggered celebrations at points across the Chilean capital. At the central Plaza Italia, thousands of cheering, flag-waving people gathered to pop champagne corks and toss confetti.
Allende's daughter Isabel Allende — a cousin of the famous novelist of the same name — said she never expected Pinochet to face justice, but she hopes Chile's judicial system will nonetheless continue investigating the crimes committed during his dictatorship.
"What I would have liked was a sentence of condemnation," the lawmaker for Chile's Socialist Party said in Madrid. "I think it would have been important for Chile, for the rule of law, a recognition that we are all equal before justice."
The Bush administration has good ties with Bachelet, a socialist who has continued Chile's free-market economic policies, and White House spokesman Tony Fratto said Sunday that "our thoughts today are with the victims of his reign and their families."
The office of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, Pinochet's staunchest ally in Britain, said she was "greatly saddened" by his death.
Pinochet disbanded Congress, banned political activity and crushed dissent during his rule, and the radical economic reforms he launched triggered financial collapse and dire unemployment at first. But it opened the way for South America's healthiest economy, which has grown by 5 percent to 7 percent a year since 1984.
Pinochet avoided prosecution for years after losing an October 1988 referendum to extend his rule. But his invincibility cracked in 1998 in London, where he had traveled for back surgery. Placed under house arrest there when a Spanish judge sought his extradition on human rights violations, Pinochet was eventually deemed too ill to stand trial and sent home to Chile.
More than 200 criminal complaints were filed against him since then, and none of them ever reached trial because of his poor health.
On his 91st birthday — less than a month before his death — Pinochet's wife read a statement by him saying he took "political responsibility for everything that was done, which had no other goal than making Chile greater and avoiding its disintegration."
___
Associated Press Writer Federico Quilodran contributed to this report.
This is the guy the Right says should be the model for Saddam's replacement.
- Uke Man
Hundreds pay respects to Pinochet
[THOUSANDS spit on him - Uke Man]
By EDUARDO GALLARDO, Associated Press
SANTIAGO, Chile - Hundreds of supporters of Gen.
Augusto Pinochet, many in tears, filed Monday past the brown wooden coffin for the ex-dictator, who was denied a state funeral normally granted to former presidents.
While Pinochet's relatives mourned his death Sunday from heart failure at age 91, his many opponents [the people] celebrated with champagne and lamented that he escaped justice for the torture and killings that marked his 17 years in power after a bloody 1973 coup.
Police surrounded key buildings and intersections Monday to prevent more of the violent protests that spread past midnight to several working class districts.
Deputy Interior Minister Felipe said 43 police officers were injured and 99 demonstrators were arrested in the clashes, which were blamed on a small contingent of the thousands of demonstrators who jammed streets to denounce Pinochet's legacy.
In lieu of a state funeral, Pinochet was granted only military honors at the Santiago Military Academy, and he will be cremated Tuesday to avoid desecration of his tomb by "people who always hated him," said his son, Marco Antonio.
Flags were lowered to half-staff at military facilities only, and President Michelle Bachelet, who was jailed as a young woman and lost her father during Pinochet's takeover, said it would be "a violation of my conscience" to attend a state funeral.
It was unclear whether any diplomats would attend the military ceremony. "We do not consider it appropriate to send a representative," Britain's Foreign Office said Monday, despite Pinochet's support for Britain in past years.
Roman Catholic Cardinal Francisco Javier Errazuriz led the first of several religious ceremonies at the academy. The Chilean flag was placed on top of the coffin, along with Pinochet's blue military hat and gala uniform jacket. Visitors kissed the glass of the coffin, crying openly.
"Our beloved captain general has gone. It's a great pain for all of Chile," said one mourner, Sergio Erazo. "There is much pain, we are all crying."
Pinochet took power on Sept. 11, 1973, demanding an unconditional surrender from President Salvador Allende as warplanes bombed the presidential palace. Instead, Allende committed suicide with a submachine gun he had received as a gift from Fidel Castro.
The U.S. had been working to destabilize Allende's Marxist government and keep Chile from exporting communism, but the world reacted in horror as Santiago's main soccer stadium filled with political prisoners to be tortured, killed or forced into exile after Pinochet came into power.
Although his dictatorship laid the groundwork for South America's most stable economy, Pinochet will be remembered as the archetype of the era's repressive rulers who proliferated throughout Latin America and, in many cases, were secretly supported by the United States.
Chile's government says at least 3,197 people were killed for political reasons during Pinochet's rule, but courts allowed the aging general to escape hundreds of criminal complaints as his health declined.
The announcement of his death on Sunday triggered celebrations at points across the Chilean capital. At the central Plaza Italia, thousands of cheering, flag-waving people gathered to pop champagne corks and toss confetti.
Allende's daughter Isabel Allende — a cousin of the famous novelist of the same name — said she never expected Pinochet to face justice, but she hopes Chile's judicial system will nonetheless continue investigating the crimes committed during his dictatorship.
"What I would have liked was a sentence of condemnation," the lawmaker for Chile's Socialist Party said in Madrid. "I think it would have been important for Chile, for the rule of law, a recognition that we are all equal before justice."
The Bush administration has good ties with Bachelet, a socialist who has continued Chile's free-market economic policies, and White House spokesman Tony Fratto said Sunday that "our thoughts today are with the victims of his reign and their families."
The office of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, Pinochet's staunchest ally in Britain, said she was "greatly saddened" by his death.
Pinochet disbanded Congress, banned political activity and crushed dissent during his rule, and the radical economic reforms he launched triggered financial collapse and dire unemployment at first. But it opened the way for South America's healthiest economy, which has grown by 5 percent to 7 percent a year since 1984.
Pinochet avoided prosecution for years after losing an October 1988 referendum to extend his rule. But his invincibility cracked in 1998 in London, where he had traveled for back surgery. Placed under house arrest there when a Spanish judge sought his extradition on human rights violations, Pinochet was eventually deemed too ill to stand trial and sent home to Chile.
More than 200 criminal complaints were filed against him since then, and none of them ever reached trial because of his poor health.
On his 91st birthday — less than a month before his death — Pinochet's wife read a statement by him saying he took "political responsibility for everything that was done, which had no other goal than making Chile greater and avoiding its disintegration."
___
Associated Press Writer Federico Quilodran contributed to this report.
Thursday, December 28, 2006
Birthday - December 29, 2006
Well folks, it’s my birthday. I’ve become 62; two more years before I have to ask the musical questions.
And what do I think, having achieved such great age (great from the standpoint of youth, who’ve thought I was ancient since I was forty? Thirty ?
I guess I’d have to say that almost everything I have previously thought was isn’t. At times I want to write a book to let everybody in on the joke, especially young people.
I want to tell them, “It’s all fake; nothing is as it seems; nothing is what it claims to be; we live in a mad house where patients give lobotomies to the doctors and nurses.”
When I was very young I thought well of the mayor and the city council; I outgrew that and looked up, instead, to the governor and the state legislature ( whose chambers I visited and was allowed to sit in the Special chair - momentarily, of course ); I outgrew that as well, and looked up to the President, the federal legislature, and the Supreme Court all of whom - the television and everybody said - deserved our respect.
They were fake, too; and, in turn, I outgrew them.
Sometimes I want to write a book and let everyone in on the joke, especially young people. But I don’t think it would work. They wouldn’t believe me. Too many of my fellow inmates would call me a liar, say I was nuts, needed a straightjacket. They’d condemn me to hemlock for corrupting the youth.
And, anyway, what kid is going to believe that the president of the United States of America (whom anyone can grow up to be in this greatest nation on the earth and under God) is a totally self-centered, egotistical, ignorant, foolish, and heartless clod?
Nope. They wouldn’t believe it.
And what kid is going to believe that “An Army of One” is just so much Madison Avenue crap to lure the disadvantaged and oppressed into the deadly service of their oppressors, who won’t even spend the money it takes to equip them properly or care for them adequately when they are maimed and ruined? But will spend money like water to enrich their corporate cronies?
Nope. They wouldn’t believe me; that’s all too hideous to consider; it can’t be true.
So, I guess I won’t write the book.
Instead, on my birthday, I’ll share a poem with you and share it in honor of my Mother, whose birthday was always on New Years Eve:
The Music Crept by Us
...........................................By Leonard Cohen
I would like to remind
the management
that the drinks are watered
and the hat-check girl
has syphilis
and the band is composed
of former SS monsters
However since it is
New Year’s Eve
and I have lip cancer
I will place my
paper hat on my
concussion and dance.
- Uke Man
And what do I think, having achieved such great age (great from the standpoint of youth, who’ve thought I was ancient since I was forty? Thirty ?
I guess I’d have to say that almost everything I have previously thought was isn’t. At times I want to write a book to let everybody in on the joke, especially young people.
I want to tell them, “It’s all fake; nothing is as it seems; nothing is what it claims to be; we live in a mad house where patients give lobotomies to the doctors and nurses.”
When I was very young I thought well of the mayor and the city council; I outgrew that and looked up, instead, to the governor and the state legislature ( whose chambers I visited and was allowed to sit in the Special chair - momentarily, of course ); I outgrew that as well, and looked up to the President, the federal legislature, and the Supreme Court all of whom - the television and everybody said - deserved our respect.
They were fake, too; and, in turn, I outgrew them.
Sometimes I want to write a book and let everyone in on the joke, especially young people. But I don’t think it would work. They wouldn’t believe me. Too many of my fellow inmates would call me a liar, say I was nuts, needed a straightjacket. They’d condemn me to hemlock for corrupting the youth.
And, anyway, what kid is going to believe that the president of the United States of America (whom anyone can grow up to be in this greatest nation on the earth and under God) is a totally self-centered, egotistical, ignorant, foolish, and heartless clod?
Nope. They wouldn’t believe it.
And what kid is going to believe that “An Army of One” is just so much Madison Avenue crap to lure the disadvantaged and oppressed into the deadly service of their oppressors, who won’t even spend the money it takes to equip them properly or care for them adequately when they are maimed and ruined? But will spend money like water to enrich their corporate cronies?
Nope. They wouldn’t believe me; that’s all too hideous to consider; it can’t be true.
So, I guess I won’t write the book.
Instead, on my birthday, I’ll share a poem with you and share it in honor of my Mother, whose birthday was always on New Years Eve:
The Music Crept by Us
...........................................By Leonard Cohen
I would like to remind
the management
that the drinks are watered
and the hat-check girl
has syphilis
and the band is composed
of former SS monsters
However since it is
New Year’s Eve
and I have lip cancer
I will place my
paper hat on my
concussion and dance.
- Uke Man
Wednesday, December 27, 2006
Bill MACHO'Reilly !!!
Hey Folks,
You may remember a while back when Bill O'Reilly was upset with the French. Well, Billy was going to nail those frogs!! He'd organize a bouycatt and teach those whimpy America-haters a lesson.
Since then, he's been heard to claim just how badly France has suffered under his boot.
Well, here's the latest report.
- Uke Man
French wine and spirit exports see bumper year
by Christian Charcossey Sun Dec 24, 3:46 PM ET
PARIS (AFP) - French wines and spirits are set to have a record year in 2006, with exports of cognac, champagne and bordeaux wines, and even French vodka, projected to bring in 8.0 billion euros (10.5 billion dollars).
"It's a very good result, despite frenetic competition, an unfavourable euro-dollar exchange rate and slow growth in consumption around the world," said Philippe Casteja, president of the French association of wine and spirit exporters, or FEVS.
Exports of bordeaux wines rose 27 percent in value in the first ten months of 2006 compared to the same period last year, according to customs office figures released late December by FEVS.
Champagne exports rose 17 percent in the same period, cognac exports went up 12 percent, armagnac exports rose 19 percent, and burgundy wine exports went up 9.3 percent.
France, not traditionally associated with vodka, also managed to boost its exports in the first 10 months of this year of the drink by a hefty 132 percent.
This was largely due to the success of the Grey Goose vodka brand in the United States. France exported 320 million euros' worth of the drink in the first 10 months of this year.
The previous record for French wine and spirit exports was 2003, when the country exported 7.8 billion euros' worth of the drinks.
You may remember a while back when Bill O'Reilly was upset with the French. Well, Billy was going to nail those frogs!! He'd organize a bouycatt and teach those whimpy America-haters a lesson.
Since then, he's been heard to claim just how badly France has suffered under his boot.
Well, here's the latest report.
- Uke Man
French wine and spirit exports see bumper year
by Christian Charcossey Sun Dec 24, 3:46 PM ET
PARIS (AFP) - French wines and spirits are set to have a record year in 2006, with exports of cognac, champagne and bordeaux wines, and even French vodka, projected to bring in 8.0 billion euros (10.5 billion dollars).
"It's a very good result, despite frenetic competition, an unfavourable euro-dollar exchange rate and slow growth in consumption around the world," said Philippe Casteja, president of the French association of wine and spirit exporters, or FEVS.
Exports of bordeaux wines rose 27 percent in value in the first ten months of 2006 compared to the same period last year, according to customs office figures released late December by FEVS.
Champagne exports rose 17 percent in the same period, cognac exports went up 12 percent, armagnac exports rose 19 percent, and burgundy wine exports went up 9.3 percent.
France, not traditionally associated with vodka, also managed to boost its exports in the first 10 months of this year of the drink by a hefty 132 percent.
This was largely due to the success of the Grey Goose vodka brand in the United States. France exported 320 million euros' worth of the drink in the first 10 months of this year.
The previous record for French wine and spirit exports was 2003, when the country exported 7.8 billion euros' worth of the drinks.
Tuesday, December 26, 2006
to avoid any confusion: below you will find a three-part card regarding Bill O'Reily, Santa, and the "War on Christmas." Start at the top and work on down to see what Santa says to Bill.
Bill O' - Santa - & the War on Christmas
click the pictures for a better view, then hit the "back" arrow
Monday, December 25, 2006
Luke 2:14
Hey Folks,
We get Christmas cards suggesting “Peace on earth; goodwill toward men.”
I’ve heard that this suggestion, properly translated, is “peace on earth to men of goodwill.”
It makes a difference. The first is universal: peace everywhere and goodwill toward everyone. The second restricts peace to only those of goodwill. The first is truly to be wished but unlikely. The second is closer to being attainable and fits better with the human character.
What does it say that we ALWAYS hear the first version and never the second?
Not only do we choose to have Angels broadcast what never has been and likely never will be; but we actually work to restrict, hobble, or smash those few “men of good will” who DO exist, especially “peacemakers” – Jimmy Carter, for example.
This Christmas I don’t feel too hopeful about the human race. I’ve been feeling less hopeful right along now for some time. I saw the problem, starting way back with Reagan – the grinning grandpa who "ought'a be on Rushmore" - and then working its way through Papa Bear Bush, Slick “Triangulation” Willie, and (now) Baby Bear Bush.
Under the Gipper there wasn’t too much goodwill toward men or peace to men of goodwill, either. And the screws have been tightened right along, especially since the Moronic Monkey Boy came into his own, anointed by god. And, if you ask me, the newly dominant Democrats are not going to reverse the slide any more than Clinton reversed Reagan; the pace may slow and be more nuanced / less blatant, but the slide WILL continue.
Just recently the mainstream media has begun talking about the decline of the Middle Class and what is behind it - something I’ve been screaming about since Reagan. Short of an uprising by angry citizens (what are the odds?), in my childrens’ lifetime the USA will be a third world nation.
Indeed, if things continue as they are, during my grandchildren’s lifetime the entire globe will be homogenized – Everywhere we will find (1) a small minority of rich beasts running things, (2) a necessary number of their lapdog retainers/enforcers/overseers floating in the middle air, and (3) the rest of us peasants/peons/slaves glad to have sweatshop jobs so as not to starve all at once.
Mark my words.
This pogrom, this enslavement, this perversion of all that is "holy" is no accident, but a premeditated assault against the mass of humanity. Worse, those leading the assault talk loudest about loving their country and about loving God, while trampling the highest ideals and teachings of both. As I said, short of rebellion, this is the future.
Do you think that “patriots” who care more about bashing gays and immigrants than in liberty and justice for all, combined with “Christians” more worried about “losing” in Iraq than in feeding the hungry, are likely to revolt?
To put it another way, do you think men of ill will can find peace? Do such slugs even WANT peace for anyone but themselves?
So, this Christmas I’m not too hopeful about humanity. But then, I’m old.
If you are young, you have a lot more reason than I to hit the streets or hit the bottle.
Happy New year !!
- Uke Man
We get Christmas cards suggesting “Peace on earth; goodwill toward men.”
I’ve heard that this suggestion, properly translated, is “peace on earth to men of goodwill.”
It makes a difference. The first is universal: peace everywhere and goodwill toward everyone. The second restricts peace to only those of goodwill. The first is truly to be wished but unlikely. The second is closer to being attainable and fits better with the human character.
What does it say that we ALWAYS hear the first version and never the second?
Not only do we choose to have Angels broadcast what never has been and likely never will be; but we actually work to restrict, hobble, or smash those few “men of good will” who DO exist, especially “peacemakers” – Jimmy Carter, for example.
This Christmas I don’t feel too hopeful about the human race. I’ve been feeling less hopeful right along now for some time. I saw the problem, starting way back with Reagan – the grinning grandpa who "ought'a be on Rushmore" - and then working its way through Papa Bear Bush, Slick “Triangulation” Willie, and (now) Baby Bear Bush.
Under the Gipper there wasn’t too much goodwill toward men or peace to men of goodwill, either. And the screws have been tightened right along, especially since the Moronic Monkey Boy came into his own, anointed by god. And, if you ask me, the newly dominant Democrats are not going to reverse the slide any more than Clinton reversed Reagan; the pace may slow and be more nuanced / less blatant, but the slide WILL continue.
Just recently the mainstream media has begun talking about the decline of the Middle Class and what is behind it - something I’ve been screaming about since Reagan. Short of an uprising by angry citizens (what are the odds?), in my childrens’ lifetime the USA will be a third world nation.
Indeed, if things continue as they are, during my grandchildren’s lifetime the entire globe will be homogenized – Everywhere we will find (1) a small minority of rich beasts running things, (2) a necessary number of their lapdog retainers/enforcers/overseers floating in the middle air, and (3) the rest of us peasants/peons/slaves glad to have sweatshop jobs so as not to starve all at once.
Mark my words.
This pogrom, this enslavement, this perversion of all that is "holy" is no accident, but a premeditated assault against the mass of humanity. Worse, those leading the assault talk loudest about loving their country and about loving God, while trampling the highest ideals and teachings of both. As I said, short of rebellion, this is the future.
Do you think that “patriots” who care more about bashing gays and immigrants than in liberty and justice for all, combined with “Christians” more worried about “losing” in Iraq than in feeding the hungry, are likely to revolt?
To put it another way, do you think men of ill will can find peace? Do such slugs even WANT peace for anyone but themselves?
So, this Christmas I’m not too hopeful about humanity. But then, I’m old.
If you are young, you have a lot more reason than I to hit the streets or hit the bottle.
Happy New year !!
- Uke Man
Crumpet the Elf - David Sedaris
Hey Folks,
This is WONDERFUL !!! You WILL laugh and laugh !!!
If you've heard it before; well, so have I, but I STILL laugh!!!
If you don't laugh, Santa will come to your house and steal all your stuff!
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5066175
- Uke Man
This is WONDERFUL !!! You WILL laugh and laugh !!!
If you've heard it before; well, so have I, but I STILL laugh!!!
If you don't laugh, Santa will come to your house and steal all your stuff!
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5066175
- Uke Man
Sunday, December 24, 2006
Videos
Check out some of the show in video form at:
http://www.ukulelenoir.com/pages/videos.html
or
http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=99F29CD1152A5224
http://www.ukulelenoir.com/pages/videos.html
or
http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=99F29CD1152A5224
The Highlight of my evening !! Dave Wasser !!
This guy!!! He "couldn't make the show" - Then he appeared out of nowhere - all the way from Providence !!!That's my pal !!!
Sounds right to me
Hey Folks,
This guy has been right before!!
- Uke ManGeorge W. Bush: A dangerous, cornered, rabid animal
Hill Street Blue
(a ukethanks to Phyll)By DOUG THOMPSON - Dec. 13, 2006
My gut tells me the President of the United States has become a cornered animal - wary of a party that has all but shunned him, distrustful of even his closest advisors, angry at an American public that has rejected him and fearful of his own inability to cope with his growing madness.White House insiders tell me George W. Bush grows more sullen and moody with each passing day. His paranoia, they say, is increasing to manic levels as he launches into tirades about traitors in his own party, in the press and among his allies.
They describe a man living on the edge and stepping too often over it.
Bush, they say, feels betrayed by former Secretary of State James Baker who he now feels held his administration up for public humiliation in the Iraq Study Group report. Although he told the press after meeting with ISG co-chairs Baker and Lee Hamilton that the White House will take the group's recommendations "very seriously," Bush says privately that he has no intention of going along with their plan.
"Fuck 'em," Bush reportedly said after his breakfast meeting with Baker and Hamilton last week. "I'm the President. I'm the one who decides what's best for this country."
Reports from within the White House show an administration in turmoil, torn from within by dissension over a failed Iraq war policy that everyone but Bush says is a no-win situation.
I wish I had proof of this. I don't. I have snippets of information passed on by people who should be in a position to know along with rumors and a gut instinct honed by 40 years of watching politicians try to squirm their way out of trouble.
One needs only to closely watch the President in his appearances to see that this is clearly a man in emotional trouble, struggling to hold on. His eyes dart from side to side and his eyelid movements when he speaks indicate a textbook example of dishonesty.
This attitude carries over into other White House staffers. Press briefings with Presidential Press Secretary Tony Snow have become increasingly confrontational with Snow quick to label anyone who dares question administration policy as a "troublemaker." He accuses reporters of partisanship, an ironic bit of hypocrisy since Snow came to the White House from Fox News, clearly the most partisan game in town.
Bush's decision to delay his "major policy speech" on Iraq until next year is, Snow claims, just to give the President time to hear all sides of the argument before proceeding. But others say privately the President has already made up his mind and is in no hurry because he doesn't plan to make any major changes.
And while Bush delays, America hit a grisly milestone this week when the "official" number of Americans dead or wounded in his dirty little war hit 25,000. I say "official" because the Pentagon has played fast and loose with the statistics on just how many Americans have come home without arms or legs or in body bags and the real figure could be even higher.
Whatever the "real figure" is or is not, one inescapable fact remains: Many more Americans will die in Iraq and/or other actions spawned by Bush's illegal invasion of a country that posed no threat to this nation. And many, many more will come home physically maimed and/or emotionally scarred for life.
Because the Iraq war is not over nor will it end anytime soon. It will continue to be waged by a cornered animal named George W. Bush.
And, as any real hunter knows, nothing is more dangerous than a cornered animal.
Saturday, December 23, 2006
A Christian sent me this
Hey Folks,
I am not religious and personally don't believe in God, but I respect people who practice a religion of "good will" (a term appearing on many Christmas cards). Jimmy Carter, I believe, is a good example of a Christian of good will.
I'd bet, too, that Jimmy already knows and practices the recommendations made in this letter (sent to me on the net).
Happy & Merry Everyday!!!! - Uke Man
A letter from God to His children:
Dear Children,
It has come to my attention that many of you
are upset that folks are taking My name out of
the season. Maybe you've forgotten that I
wasn't actually born during this time of the
year and that it was some of your predecessors
who decided to celebrate My birthday on what
was actually a time of pagan festival. Although
I do appreciate being remembered anytime.
How I personally feel about this celebration
can probably be most easily understood by those
of you who have been blessed with children
of your own. I don't care what you call the day.
If you want to celebrate My birth just, GET
ALONG AND LOVE ONE ANOTHER. Now,
having said that let Me go on.
If it bothers you that the town in which you live
doesn't allow a scene depicting My birth, then
just get rid of a couple of Santas and snowmen
and put in a small Nativity scene on your
own front lawn. If all My followers did that
there wouldn't be any need for such a scene on
the town square because there would be many
of them all around town.
Stop worrying about the fact that people
are calling the tree a holiday tree, instead of
a Christmas tree. It was I who made all
trees. You can & may remember Me anytime
you see any tree. Decorate a grape vine if you
wish: I actually spoke of that one in a teaching
explaining who I am in relation to you & what
each of our tasks were.If you have forgot that
one, look up John 15: 1 - 8.
If you want to give Me a present in remembrance
of My birth here is my wish list. Choose
something from it.
1. Instead of writing protest letters objecting
to the way My birthday is being celebrated, write
letters of love and hope to soldiers away from
home. They are terribly afraid and lonely this
time of year. I know, they tell Me all the time.
2. Visit someone in a nursing home. You don't
have to know them personally. They just need
to know that someone cares about them.
3. Instead of writing George complaining about
the wording on the cards his staff sent out this
year, why don't you write and tell him that
you'll be praying for him and his family this
year. Then follow up. It will be nice hearing from
you again.
4. Instead of giving your children a lot of gifts
you can't afford and they don't need, spend time
with them. Tell them the story of My birth, and
why I came to live with you down here. Hold
them in your arms and remind them that I love them.
5. Pick someone that has hurt you in the past
and forgive him or her.
6. Did you know that someone in your town will
attempt to take their own life this season because
they feel so alone and hopeless? Since you don't
know who that person is, try giving everyone you
meet a warm smile. It could make the difference.
Also, you might consider supporting the local
Hot-Line: they talk with people like that every day.
7. Instead of nit picking about what the retailer in
your town calls the holiday, be patient with the
people who work there. Give them a warm smile
and a kind word. Even if they aren't allowed to
wish you a "Merry Christmas" that doesn't keep
you from wishing them one. Then stop shopping
there on Sunday. If the store didn't make so much
money on that day they'd close and let their
employees spend the day at home with their families.
8. If you really want to make a difference, support
a missionary, especially one who takes My love &
Good News to those who have never heard My name.
You may already know someone like that.
9. Here's a good one. There are individuals &
whole families in your town who not only will have
no "Christmas" tree, but neither will they have any
presents to give or receive. If you don't know them
(and I suspect you don't) buy some food & a few
gifts & give them to the Marines, the Salvation
Army or some other charity that believes in Me &
they will make the delivery for you.
10. Finally if you want to make a statement about
your belief in and loyalty to Me, then behave like a
Christian. Don't do things in secret that you wouldn't
do in My presence. Let people know by your
actions that you are one of mine.
P.S. Don't forget; I am God and can take care of
Myself. Just love Me & do what I have told you to do.
I'll take care of all the rest. Check out the list above
& get to work; time is short. I'll help you, but the ball
is now in your court. And do have a most blessed
Christmas with all those whom you love and
remember, I LOVE YOU.
God
I am not religious and personally don't believe in God, but I respect people who practice a religion of "good will" (a term appearing on many Christmas cards). Jimmy Carter, I believe, is a good example of a Christian of good will.
I'd bet, too, that Jimmy already knows and practices the recommendations made in this letter (sent to me on the net).
Happy & Merry Everyday!!!! - Uke Man
A letter from God to His children:
Dear Children,
It has come to my attention that many of you
are upset that folks are taking My name out of
the season. Maybe you've forgotten that I
wasn't actually born during this time of the
year and that it was some of your predecessors
who decided to celebrate My birthday on what
was actually a time of pagan festival. Although
I do appreciate being remembered anytime.
How I personally feel about this celebration
can probably be most easily understood by those
of you who have been blessed with children
of your own. I don't care what you call the day.
If you want to celebrate My birth just, GET
ALONG AND LOVE ONE ANOTHER. Now,
having said that let Me go on.
If it bothers you that the town in which you live
doesn't allow a scene depicting My birth, then
just get rid of a couple of Santas and snowmen
and put in a small Nativity scene on your
own front lawn. If all My followers did that
there wouldn't be any need for such a scene on
the town square because there would be many
of them all around town.
Stop worrying about the fact that people
are calling the tree a holiday tree, instead of
a Christmas tree. It was I who made all
trees. You can & may remember Me anytime
you see any tree. Decorate a grape vine if you
wish: I actually spoke of that one in a teaching
explaining who I am in relation to you & what
each of our tasks were.If you have forgot that
one, look up John 15: 1 - 8.
If you want to give Me a present in remembrance
of My birth here is my wish list. Choose
something from it.
1. Instead of writing protest letters objecting
to the way My birthday is being celebrated, write
letters of love and hope to soldiers away from
home. They are terribly afraid and lonely this
time of year. I know, they tell Me all the time.
2. Visit someone in a nursing home. You don't
have to know them personally. They just need
to know that someone cares about them.
3. Instead of writing George complaining about
the wording on the cards his staff sent out this
year, why don't you write and tell him that
you'll be praying for him and his family this
year. Then follow up. It will be nice hearing from
you again.
4. Instead of giving your children a lot of gifts
you can't afford and they don't need, spend time
with them. Tell them the story of My birth, and
why I came to live with you down here. Hold
them in your arms and remind them that I love them.
5. Pick someone that has hurt you in the past
and forgive him or her.
6. Did you know that someone in your town will
attempt to take their own life this season because
they feel so alone and hopeless? Since you don't
know who that person is, try giving everyone you
meet a warm smile. It could make the difference.
Also, you might consider supporting the local
Hot-Line: they talk with people like that every day.
7. Instead of nit picking about what the retailer in
your town calls the holiday, be patient with the
people who work there. Give them a warm smile
and a kind word. Even if they aren't allowed to
wish you a "Merry Christmas" that doesn't keep
you from wishing them one. Then stop shopping
there on Sunday. If the store didn't make so much
money on that day they'd close and let their
employees spend the day at home with their families.
8. If you really want to make a difference, support
a missionary, especially one who takes My love &
Good News to those who have never heard My name.
You may already know someone like that.
9. Here's a good one. There are individuals &
whole families in your town who not only will have
no "Christmas" tree, but neither will they have any
presents to give or receive. If you don't know them
(and I suspect you don't) buy some food & a few
gifts & give them to the Marines, the Salvation
Army or some other charity that believes in Me &
they will make the delivery for you.
10. Finally if you want to make a statement about
your belief in and loyalty to Me, then behave like a
Christian. Don't do things in secret that you wouldn't
do in My presence. Let people know by your
actions that you are one of mine.
P.S. Don't forget; I am God and can take care of
Myself. Just love Me & do what I have told you to do.
I'll take care of all the rest. Check out the list above
& get to work; time is short. I'll help you, but the ball
is now in your court. And do have a most blessed
Christmas with all those whom you love and
remember, I LOVE YOU.
God
Friday, December 22, 2006
Ukulele Noir 20 - Boston
Hey Folks,
I’m back in Round Town and getting my flat-land legs under me. It was a long trip home, and I think I brought a few species of foreign gut-bugs back with me; but I’m almost my weird/normal self again.
Anyway, the plan is to share with you a bit about the show (Ukulele Noir 20) with which I started this adventure in New England son-visiting.
After a long drive to Boston I was put up by the dark and noir-ishly impish “King of Ukulele Noir, Craig Robertson in his charming and art-filled home. Next day was the show, and it was great to see old friends in a beautiful venue.
Below are some shots taken a bit before the musical fun began. More to come.
- Uke Man
I’m back in Round Town and getting my flat-land legs under me. It was a long trip home, and I think I brought a few species of foreign gut-bugs back with me; but I’m almost my weird/normal self again.
Anyway, the plan is to share with you a bit about the show (Ukulele Noir 20) with which I started this adventure in New England son-visiting.
After a long drive to Boston I was put up by the dark and noir-ishly impish “King of Ukulele Noir, Craig Robertson in his charming and art-filled home. Next day was the show, and it was great to see old friends in a beautiful venue.
Below are some shots taken a bit before the musical fun began. More to come.
- Uke Man
Fun & Friends Before the Show at Johnny D's
The club, Dave Wasser,Mark Occhionero/Joel Eckhaus/Robert Wheeler, Craig & Cecile Robertson 
Sheehaqn guilty - Pinochet still untried (but dead)
Hey Folks,
Figures, doesn't it.
- Uke Man
Sheehan among 4 convicted of trespassing
By SAMUEL MAULL, Associated Press
NEW YORK - Peace activist Cindy Sheehan and three other women were convicted of trespassing Monday for trying to delivery an anti-Iraq war petition to the U.S. Mission to the United Nations.
A Manhattan Criminal Court judge sentenced them immediately to conditional discharge, which means they could face some form of penalty if they are arrested in the next six months, and ordered them to pay $95 in court surcharges.
Sheehan and about 100 other members of a group called Global Exchange were rebuffed last March when they attempted to take a petition with some 72,000 signatures to the U.S. Mission's headquarters across a street from the United Nations.
After Monday's sentencing, the women returned to the Mission; this time, their petition was accepted.
Prosecutors said they were arrested in March after ignoring police orders to disperse.
The four were acquitted of disorderly conduct, resisting arrest and obstructing government administration. They had faced up to a year in jail if convicted of all counts.
"We should never have been on trial in the first place," Sheehan said in a statement after the verdict. "It's George Bush and his cronies who should be on trial, not peaceful women trying to stop this devastating war. This verdict, however, will not stop us from continuing to work tirelessly to bring our troops home."
Sheehan, 49, of Vacaville, Calif., lost her 24-year-old son Casey in Iraq on April 4, 2004. She has since emerged as one of the most vocal and high-profile opponents of the war, drawing international attention when she camped outside President Bush's Texas ranch to protest the war.
The women, calling their campaign "Women Say No To War," had hoped to give the petition to Peggy Kerry, the mission's liaison for non-governmental organizations and sister of Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., as they had in 2005.Kerry refused to meet with the women in the presence of Sheehan and the news media. She testified during the trial that the presentation seemed like a publicity stunt.
The women ignored police orders to leave and were reading it aloud on the sidewalk when officers arrested them. The women sat on the sidewalk and were carried to patrol wagons.
Following Monday's court session, the women returned to the U.S. Mission to ask for an apology and resubmit the petition.
They were met by Richard A. Grenell, the mission's director of external affairs, but didn't have the petitions with them. After obtaining copies of the petition, they went back a second time and handed them over to Kerry and Grenell in the building's lobby.
Grenell did not explain why the petitions were accepted this time.
Sheehan's co-defendants were Melissa Beattie, 57, of New York; Susan "Medea" Benjamin, 54, of San Francisco; and Patricia Ackerman, 48, of Nyack, N.Y.
Figures, doesn't it.
- Uke Man
Sheehan among 4 convicted of trespassing
By SAMUEL MAULL, Associated Press
NEW YORK - Peace activist Cindy Sheehan and three other women were convicted of trespassing Monday for trying to delivery an anti-Iraq war petition to the U.S. Mission to the United Nations.
A Manhattan Criminal Court judge sentenced them immediately to conditional discharge, which means they could face some form of penalty if they are arrested in the next six months, and ordered them to pay $95 in court surcharges.
Sheehan and about 100 other members of a group called Global Exchange were rebuffed last March when they attempted to take a petition with some 72,000 signatures to the U.S. Mission's headquarters across a street from the United Nations.
After Monday's sentencing, the women returned to the Mission; this time, their petition was accepted.
Prosecutors said they were arrested in March after ignoring police orders to disperse.
The four were acquitted of disorderly conduct, resisting arrest and obstructing government administration. They had faced up to a year in jail if convicted of all counts.
"We should never have been on trial in the first place," Sheehan said in a statement after the verdict. "It's George Bush and his cronies who should be on trial, not peaceful women trying to stop this devastating war. This verdict, however, will not stop us from continuing to work tirelessly to bring our troops home."
Sheehan, 49, of Vacaville, Calif., lost her 24-year-old son Casey in Iraq on April 4, 2004. She has since emerged as one of the most vocal and high-profile opponents of the war, drawing international attention when she camped outside President Bush's Texas ranch to protest the war.
The women, calling their campaign "Women Say No To War," had hoped to give the petition to Peggy Kerry, the mission's liaison for non-governmental organizations and sister of Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., as they had in 2005.Kerry refused to meet with the women in the presence of Sheehan and the news media. She testified during the trial that the presentation seemed like a publicity stunt.
The women ignored police orders to leave and were reading it aloud on the sidewalk when officers arrested them. The women sat on the sidewalk and were carried to patrol wagons.
Following Monday's court session, the women returned to the U.S. Mission to ask for an apology and resubmit the petition.
They were met by Richard A. Grenell, the mission's director of external affairs, but didn't have the petitions with them. After obtaining copies of the petition, they went back a second time and handed them over to Kerry and Grenell in the building's lobby.
Grenell did not explain why the petitions were accepted this time.
Sheehan's co-defendants were Melissa Beattie, 57, of New York; Susan "Medea" Benjamin, 54, of San Francisco; and Patricia Ackerman, 48, of Nyack, N.Y.
Thursday, December 21, 2006
Olbermann on X-Mas at the W-House with Barney et.al.
Hey Folks,
Have some Barney fun !!
http://video.msn.com/v/us/msnbc.htm?f=00&g=e8a83b1a-86de-4fd1-8684-0db52ddb8ffc&p=News_Comment%20-%20Analysis&t=c1149&rf=http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036677/&fg=
- Uke Man
Have some Barney fun !!
http://video.msn.com/v/us/msnbc.htm?f=00&g=e8a83b1a-86de-4fd1-8684-0db52ddb8ffc&p=News_Comment%20-%20Analysis&t=c1149&rf=http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036677/&fg=
- Uke Man
Sunday, December 17, 2006
New Hampshire Notes
Hey Folks,
I'm still in New Hampshire - still with limited access to the geek machine, but here's something:
My son Travis, the doctor, graduated yesterday - hopefully for the last time. Had a nice ceremony in Concord and a party later at Cristina's house (Travis's mother-in-law). The Uke Man played a couple tunes near the end when the guests had thinned out some and the bourbon had done its work.
Earlier in the day my grand daughter Paloma met with Santa, so that's taken care of too.
The weather is uncharacteristically above freezing and completely lacking in snow. People are (for real) complaining about it. And THIS is the year my son decided to get a big, expensive snow-thrower for X-Mas. Global warming !!!!! Bah !!!
I've about given up on pictures for you until I get home. I'll have some then AND hook you up with videos of the Boston show.
There's a Latke Party today with the title: "Eat Free or Die," a play on the state motto "Live Free or Die." The state probably would do well to replace its motto with the party's. If Duhbya has his way, everyone in New Hampshire will have to die.
Before the party, I'm told, we'll get to play woodsmen and cut down a live Christmas Tree. That's fine; I just hope I don't get drafted to string the lights. Bah!! Humbug !!!
A Merry and Happy Everyday to you!!
- Uke Man
I'm still in New Hampshire - still with limited access to the geek machine, but here's something:
My son Travis, the doctor, graduated yesterday - hopefully for the last time. Had a nice ceremony in Concord and a party later at Cristina's house (Travis's mother-in-law). The Uke Man played a couple tunes near the end when the guests had thinned out some and the bourbon had done its work.
Earlier in the day my grand daughter Paloma met with Santa, so that's taken care of too.
The weather is uncharacteristically above freezing and completely lacking in snow. People are (for real) complaining about it. And THIS is the year my son decided to get a big, expensive snow-thrower for X-Mas. Global warming !!!!! Bah !!!
I've about given up on pictures for you until I get home. I'll have some then AND hook you up with videos of the Boston show.
There's a Latke Party today with the title: "Eat Free or Die," a play on the state motto "Live Free or Die." The state probably would do well to replace its motto with the party's. If Duhbya has his way, everyone in New Hampshire will have to die.
Before the party, I'm told, we'll get to play woodsmen and cut down a live Christmas Tree. That's fine; I just hope I don't get drafted to string the lights. Bah!! Humbug !!!
A Merry and Happy Everyday to you!!
- Uke Man
Good dog!! Good Barney!! Good doggy!!
Hey Folks,
Here's a Tragedy fit for the season !!
- Uke Man
December 9, 2006
The Oval Intervention
By MAUREEN DOWD
(a ukethanks to Phyll)
It is not a happy mood in the Oval Office.Poppy is sobbing, his face in his hands, slumped in one of the yellow-and-blue striped chairs. Laura is screaming the words “Oscar de la Renta” and “rendition” into her cellphone, still seeing red after showing up at a White House gala in the same $8,400 red gown as three other women who did not happen to be first lady.
Bob Gates is grim-faced, but not as grim-faced as Barbara, whose look could freeze not only the Potomac but the Tigris and the Euphrates. Scowcroft is over on the couch, trying to nap while Kissinger drones softly in his ear.
And, of course, there is the Deprogrammer for the Decider, James Baker, perfectly suited in bright green tie and suited perfectly for his spot behind the president’s desk.
The Council of Elders had hoped this Apocalypto moment wouldn’t be necessary. They had assumed that the scorching Iraq Study Group report would have the same effect on Junior as the bucket of cold water that Mr. Baker’s strict father, a lawyer known as “the Warden,” used to throw on his face to wake him up as a boy.
But Junior is trying to wriggle away completely, offering a decidedly cool response to the attempt to yank him into the reality-based community. He rallied his last two allies — his English poodle and his Scottish terrier, Blair and Barney.
He is loath to give up his gunslinger pose to go all diplo. He cleaves to the neocon complaint that it is the realists who are now being unrealistic, thinking the administration can bargain with Syria and Iran, or that the Army can train Iraqi security forces (or, as they are known there, death squads) in a matter of months when they haven’t been able to do it in years.
The Velvet Hammer is undeterred. He’s doing an all-out intervention, locking Junior and Barney in the little study next to the Oval. To stress the seriousness of the situation, they don’t give the president his feather pillow.
The group gathers at the door of the study. “My boy,” his dad tells him between sobs. “We love you. We’re here for you. We’re worried about you. You’re not just hurting yourself, you’re hurting others. This is a safe place. No one’s judging you ...”
“What are you talking about, Dad?” Junior snaps. “I just actually read 96 pages of your friends’ judging me in that cowpie report.” Barney woofs in support.
Barbara can be heard muttering from across the room. “We were right about Jebbie.”
Henry the K lumbers up to the door and in a low Teutonic rumble says: “It’s time we stopped taking care of you and started caring about you. Would you like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich?”
Junior is getting even more furious. “You all think you’re so realist. But you’re unrealist. I’m realist. Are you sitting at my desk, Baker? Get out of there! Everyone says you’re so Mr. Ride to the Rescue, but none of your surrender monkey ideas would work. Talk about Pretend Land — Israel giving up the Golan Heights? Yeah, right. And they call me delusional.”
Baker glides up to the door and says, in his most satiny drawl, “Son, I just threw a few D.O.A. ones in there for you to reject so you could preserve your manhood.”
There are sounds of feet stomping. “You say I can’t stay the course but I can too stay the course!” Junior yells. “I can! I can! You say I have to put the two trillion dollar war cost in the budget, but I don’t! You say we have to cuddle up to evildoers in Iran and Syria. Why do you hate the troops? Where’s Condi? I want my Condi!”
Realizing the president is getting hysterical, the group looks at Laura, hoping she can calm him down.
She approaches the door and coos in a soft voice: “Bushie? Listen, now, this is important. How do you get someone audited? Can’t we send Oscar de la Loser to Gitmo?”
Baker gently nudges Laura aside. “Now son, hear me out. We’ve disabled your enablers. Rummy has written his last self-serving memo. Dick’s got his hands full explaining his darlin’ new grandchild’s Two Mommies. Don’t bother calling for Condi. She’s at the bottom of Foggy Bottom. You’ve got to know when to hold’em, know when to fold ’em.”
It’s not sinking in. “We must achieve our objective,” Junior sputters. “Our objective is success. To succeed we must have success. If we don’t win, we lose.We are the winners. We can’t let the ... we’re in an ideological struggle and that’s why we have a strategy ... AL QAEDA! We must help democracy in Iraq succeed because ... ISLAMOFASCISTS! ... that is the objective of a successful...”
Barney scratches at the door, trying to cut and run.
Here's a Tragedy fit for the season !!
- Uke Man
December 9, 2006
The Oval Intervention
By MAUREEN DOWD
(a ukethanks to Phyll)
It is not a happy mood in the Oval Office.Poppy is sobbing, his face in his hands, slumped in one of the yellow-and-blue striped chairs. Laura is screaming the words “Oscar de la Renta” and “rendition” into her cellphone, still seeing red after showing up at a White House gala in the same $8,400 red gown as three other women who did not happen to be first lady.
Bob Gates is grim-faced, but not as grim-faced as Barbara, whose look could freeze not only the Potomac but the Tigris and the Euphrates. Scowcroft is over on the couch, trying to nap while Kissinger drones softly in his ear.
And, of course, there is the Deprogrammer for the Decider, James Baker, perfectly suited in bright green tie and suited perfectly for his spot behind the president’s desk.
The Council of Elders had hoped this Apocalypto moment wouldn’t be necessary. They had assumed that the scorching Iraq Study Group report would have the same effect on Junior as the bucket of cold water that Mr. Baker’s strict father, a lawyer known as “the Warden,” used to throw on his face to wake him up as a boy.
But Junior is trying to wriggle away completely, offering a decidedly cool response to the attempt to yank him into the reality-based community. He rallied his last two allies — his English poodle and his Scottish terrier, Blair and Barney.
He is loath to give up his gunslinger pose to go all diplo. He cleaves to the neocon complaint that it is the realists who are now being unrealistic, thinking the administration can bargain with Syria and Iran, or that the Army can train Iraqi security forces (or, as they are known there, death squads) in a matter of months when they haven’t been able to do it in years.
The Velvet Hammer is undeterred. He’s doing an all-out intervention, locking Junior and Barney in the little study next to the Oval. To stress the seriousness of the situation, they don’t give the president his feather pillow.
The group gathers at the door of the study. “My boy,” his dad tells him between sobs. “We love you. We’re here for you. We’re worried about you. You’re not just hurting yourself, you’re hurting others. This is a safe place. No one’s judging you ...”
“What are you talking about, Dad?” Junior snaps. “I just actually read 96 pages of your friends’ judging me in that cowpie report.” Barney woofs in support.
Barbara can be heard muttering from across the room. “We were right about Jebbie.”
Henry the K lumbers up to the door and in a low Teutonic rumble says: “It’s time we stopped taking care of you and started caring about you. Would you like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich?”
Junior is getting even more furious. “You all think you’re so realist. But you’re unrealist. I’m realist. Are you sitting at my desk, Baker? Get out of there! Everyone says you’re so Mr. Ride to the Rescue, but none of your surrender monkey ideas would work. Talk about Pretend Land — Israel giving up the Golan Heights? Yeah, right. And they call me delusional.”
Baker glides up to the door and says, in his most satiny drawl, “Son, I just threw a few D.O.A. ones in there for you to reject so you could preserve your manhood.”
There are sounds of feet stomping. “You say I can’t stay the course but I can too stay the course!” Junior yells. “I can! I can! You say I have to put the two trillion dollar war cost in the budget, but I don’t! You say we have to cuddle up to evildoers in Iran and Syria. Why do you hate the troops? Where’s Condi? I want my Condi!”
Realizing the president is getting hysterical, the group looks at Laura, hoping she can calm him down.
She approaches the door and coos in a soft voice: “Bushie? Listen, now, this is important. How do you get someone audited? Can’t we send Oscar de la Loser to Gitmo?”
Baker gently nudges Laura aside. “Now son, hear me out. We’ve disabled your enablers. Rummy has written his last self-serving memo. Dick’s got his hands full explaining his darlin’ new grandchild’s Two Mommies. Don’t bother calling for Condi. She’s at the bottom of Foggy Bottom. You’ve got to know when to hold’em, know when to fold ’em.”
It’s not sinking in. “We must achieve our objective,” Junior sputters. “Our objective is success. To succeed we must have success. If we don’t win, we lose.We are the winners. We can’t let the ... we’re in an ideological struggle and that’s why we have a strategy ... AL QAEDA! We must help democracy in Iraq succeed because ... ISLAMOFASCISTS! ... that is the objective of a successful...”
Barney scratches at the door, trying to cut and run.
Friday, December 15, 2006
Sister Charles Bronson
Hey Folks,
I was at Borders in Columbus the other day, and I asked a lady who works there about a book I'd heard discussed on NPR: Sister Bernadette's Barking Dog:The Quirkey History of Diagramming Sentences. Having been an English teacher for 31 years, I DO have an interest in diagramming (which became passe during my years in the education wars). And the Sister Bernadette angle was a hook since I spent eight years in the chatechisimal wars as well.
Anyway, they didn't have the book and would order it, but I didn't really want to buy the book; I just wanted to look at some of the diagrams of famous persons' sentences - especially Henry James'.
Before I turned away, though, the lady said, "I had a friend who almost got kicked out of Catholic school for the way she capitalized and punctuated a sentence presented to the class by Sister."
The task, she explained, was to correctly capitalize and punctuate the following:
billy cant read beowulf today hell do it tomorrow
Of course, there are several options:
Billy can't read Beowulf today. He'll do it tomorrow.
Billy can't read Beowulf today; he'll do it tomorrow.
The clerk's friend got in trouble because she solved the problem this way:
Billy can't read Beowulf today. Hell ! Do it tomorrow.
- Uke Man
I was at Borders in Columbus the other day, and I asked a lady who works there about a book I'd heard discussed on NPR: Sister Bernadette's Barking Dog:The Quirkey History of Diagramming Sentences. Having been an English teacher for 31 years, I DO have an interest in diagramming (which became passe during my years in the education wars). And the Sister Bernadette angle was a hook since I spent eight years in the chatechisimal wars as well.
Anyway, they didn't have the book and would order it, but I didn't really want to buy the book; I just wanted to look at some of the diagrams of famous persons' sentences - especially Henry James'.
Before I turned away, though, the lady said, "I had a friend who almost got kicked out of Catholic school for the way she capitalized and punctuated a sentence presented to the class by Sister."
The task, she explained, was to correctly capitalize and punctuate the following:
billy cant read beowulf today hell do it tomorrow
Of course, there are several options:
Billy can't read Beowulf today. He'll do it tomorrow.
Billy can't read Beowulf today; he'll do it tomorrow.
The clerk's friend got in trouble because she solved the problem this way:
Billy can't read Beowulf today. Hell ! Do it tomorrow.
- Uke Man
Thursday, December 14, 2006
Hi from Boston and Manchester
Hey Folks,
I'm finally on a computer with a little time to write. Pictures may be sporadic or non-existent until I get home next week, but I'll try to post periodically.
The trip to Boston wasn't as difficult as I'd expected (during the trip at least). It took about 13 1/2 hours. It seems to get dark earlier farther east (makes sense - same time in Massachesets and Ohio; different sun location). It was midnight-black at 5:15 p.m..
The next day my old knees and feet told me about the long trip, but I was up to it. Had a Middle Eastern lunch Wednesday with my friend Pete Cassani of the Peasants.
The band and I played a gig with him on Harvard Square the last time I was in Boston; and we set up a couple gigs with him in Columbus. He and Bob Starker, my sax man, founded the Peasants way back when. Check out his site: http://www.thepeasants.net/ .
Craig Robertson of Ukulele Noir fame cordially put me up in his art-filled Somerville home, and we left together for Johnny D's to have supper and set up for the show.
I had a great time, enjoyed the other performers' sets and I got some pictures too. They'll be up eventually, as will a video (I'm promised) on Youtube in a few days. I'll share when I get home, if not before.
One wonderful surprise was that my friend Dave Wasser of Ukulele Hall of Fame fame (who'd conned me into thinking he couldn't make it), tapped me on the shoulder at the bar right after I got off stage. It was great to see him, all the way from Providence!
A Wonderful time in Boston!! Really!!
Just one negative comment: I was REALLY glad to get out of town!! DRIVING was a necessity, but it was still a mistake. I got lost getting to Craig's the day I arrived; got lost three different times during the next day; and got lost trying to get onto the road to New Hampshire. I'm told that's normal since Boston's roads were laid out following the original colonial cowpaths.
Seems a reasonable explanation.
More when I can !!
- Uke Man
I'm finally on a computer with a little time to write. Pictures may be sporadic or non-existent until I get home next week, but I'll try to post periodically.
The trip to Boston wasn't as difficult as I'd expected (during the trip at least). It took about 13 1/2 hours. It seems to get dark earlier farther east (makes sense - same time in Massachesets and Ohio; different sun location). It was midnight-black at 5:15 p.m..
The next day my old knees and feet told me about the long trip, but I was up to it. Had a Middle Eastern lunch Wednesday with my friend Pete Cassani of the Peasants.
The band and I played a gig with him on Harvard Square the last time I was in Boston; and we set up a couple gigs with him in Columbus. He and Bob Starker, my sax man, founded the Peasants way back when. Check out his site: http://www.thepeasants.net/ .
Craig Robertson of Ukulele Noir fame cordially put me up in his art-filled Somerville home, and we left together for Johnny D's to have supper and set up for the show.
I had a great time, enjoyed the other performers' sets and I got some pictures too. They'll be up eventually, as will a video (I'm promised) on Youtube in a few days. I'll share when I get home, if not before.
One wonderful surprise was that my friend Dave Wasser of Ukulele Hall of Fame fame (who'd conned me into thinking he couldn't make it), tapped me on the shoulder at the bar right after I got off stage. It was great to see him, all the way from Providence!
A Wonderful time in Boston!! Really!!
Just one negative comment: I was REALLY glad to get out of town!! DRIVING was a necessity, but it was still a mistake. I got lost getting to Craig's the day I arrived; got lost three different times during the next day; and got lost trying to get onto the road to New Hampshire. I'm told that's normal since Boston's roads were laid out following the original colonial cowpaths.
Seems a reasonable explanation.
More when I can !!
- Uke Man
Hey Folks,
Here's last year's dog show at W's house:
http://video.yahoo.com/video/play?p=White+House+dog&prssweb=Search&ei=UTF-8&b=0&oid=9058f5aa7f93a61e&rurl=www.ifilm.com&vdone=http%3A%2F%2Fvideo.yahoo.com%2Fvideo%2Fsearch%3Fp%3DWhite%2BHouse%2Bdog%26prssweb%3DSearch%26ei%3DUTF-8
More about Barney soon!!!
- Uke Man
Here's last year's dog show at W's house:
http://video.yahoo.com/video/play?p=White+House+dog&prssweb=Search&ei=UTF-8&b=0&oid=9058f5aa7f93a61e&rurl=www.ifilm.com&vdone=http%3A%2F%2Fvideo.yahoo.com%2Fvideo%2Fsearch%3Fp%3DWhite%2BHouse%2Bdog%26prssweb%3DSearch%26ei%3DUTF-8
More about Barney soon!!!
- Uke Man
Tuesday, December 12, 2006
Monday, December 11, 2006
Minor disruption of the Matrix
Hey Folks,
After this posting, I'll be away from the computer for a while. The next date I'm sure I'll be able to post is Thursday, December 14. Maybe on Wednesday, but unlikely.
I'm off to Boston for the Noir 20 show:
http://www.ukuleleman.net/2006/12/blog-post_116562646152962345.html Noir Poster
http://www.ukuleleman.net/2006/12/ukulele-noir-in-boston-wednesday.html Noir Text
I'll be reporting as I can and sharing pictures likewise for the next week. Don't think I've left town forever.
- Uke Man
After this posting, I'll be away from the computer for a while. The next date I'm sure I'll be able to post is Thursday, December 14. Maybe on Wednesday, but unlikely.
I'm off to Boston for the Noir 20 show:
http://www.ukuleleman.net/2006/12/blog-post_116562646152962345.html Noir Poster
http://www.ukuleleman.net/2006/12/ukulele-noir-in-boston-wednesday.html Noir Text
I'll be reporting as I can and sharing pictures likewise for the next week. Don't think I've left town forever.
- Uke Man
Here's an example
Hey Folks,
Here's what I was talking about in the previous posting.Remember Kent's claim: : CEO's jobs are to keep their jobs; so, they can't be loyal to workers; they have to please higher ups in the corporation who don't care about loyalty to anything but sales, profit, and stock value (which, Kent somehow felt, absolved the corporation of any guilt).
Well, I've highlighted areas of the AP business report below. It isn't difficult to see that the corporation is shafting employees (why do they hate Christmas??). Nor is it difficult to see what screwing employees does for profits, stock value, and - aparently - sales expectations.
It's worth noting, too, that the 1,500 workers who will be losing their livlihood are not involved in an enterprise that is losing money. They were employees of an enterprise that didn't make as much money as could be made by firing them.
Well, when the bills come due for the X-mas presents they've already bought, I wonder if Kent will have any suggestions as to how they should "adjust" to the "change"?
- Uke Man
DuPont cutting 1,500 jobs
By ALEX DOMINGUEZ, Associated Press
BALTIMORE - DuPont Co. is cutting 1,500 jobs and consolidating manufacturing in its agriculture and nutrition division, and the chemical company said it will put the $100 million in annual savings into its seeds business as it steps up competition with rival Monsanto.
The changes announced Monday are expected to affect about 10 of the division's 250 sites worldwide, but DuPont spokesman Doyle Karr said the company was not disclosing which sites would be affected.
"It's a commitment that DuPont made earlier about realigning its resources toward high growth opportunities, so Ag and Nutrition is looking at streamlining its low return activities and low growth areas and then investing those savings into high growth areas," Karr said.
The changes include the closing or streamlining of the manufacturing units, with most of the changes expected to be completed in 2007, the company said.
DuPont expects to book a related $200 million pretax charge in the fourth quarter to cover the restructuring.
In a separate announcement, the company sharply increased its fourth-quarter earnings target to reflect a series of tax gains that will more than offset the restructuring charges.
Wilmington, Del.-based DuPont said it now expects to earn $3.25 per share in the quarter, including $370 million, or 39 cents per share, in net one-time gains. The previous estimate was for profit of $2.86 per share, including a gain of 1 cent per share.
The $370 million includes a gain of $500 million to reverse tax accruals and tax valuation allowances, and finalize taxes related to the return to the United States of profits earned abroad. The amount also includes a pretax gain of about $60 million related to insurance recoveries.
Karr said the $500 million was money the company had set aside for taxes. DuPont plans to report fourth-quarter earnings Jan. 23.
Shares of DuPont rose 54 cents to $47.44 in morning trading on the New York Stock Exchange.
Here's what I was talking about in the previous posting.Remember Kent's claim: : CEO's jobs are to keep their jobs; so, they can't be loyal to workers; they have to please higher ups in the corporation who don't care about loyalty to anything but sales, profit, and stock value (which, Kent somehow felt, absolved the corporation of any guilt).
Well, I've highlighted areas of the AP business report below. It isn't difficult to see that the corporation is shafting employees (why do they hate Christmas??). Nor is it difficult to see what screwing employees does for profits, stock value, and - aparently - sales expectations.
It's worth noting, too, that the 1,500 workers who will be losing their livlihood are not involved in an enterprise that is losing money. They were employees of an enterprise that didn't make as much money as could be made by firing them.
Well, when the bills come due for the X-mas presents they've already bought, I wonder if Kent will have any suggestions as to how they should "adjust" to the "change"?
- Uke Man
DuPont cutting 1,500 jobs
By ALEX DOMINGUEZ, Associated Press
BALTIMORE - DuPont Co. is cutting 1,500 jobs and consolidating manufacturing in its agriculture and nutrition division, and the chemical company said it will put the $100 million in annual savings into its seeds business as it steps up competition with rival Monsanto.
The changes announced Monday are expected to affect about 10 of the division's 250 sites worldwide, but DuPont spokesman Doyle Karr said the company was not disclosing which sites would be affected.
"It's a commitment that DuPont made earlier about realigning its resources toward high growth opportunities, so Ag and Nutrition is looking at streamlining its low return activities and low growth areas and then investing those savings into high growth areas," Karr said.
The changes include the closing or streamlining of the manufacturing units, with most of the changes expected to be completed in 2007, the company said.
DuPont expects to book a related $200 million pretax charge in the fourth quarter to cover the restructuring.
In a separate announcement, the company sharply increased its fourth-quarter earnings target to reflect a series of tax gains that will more than offset the restructuring charges.
Wilmington, Del.-based DuPont said it now expects to earn $3.25 per share in the quarter, including $370 million, or 39 cents per share, in net one-time gains. The previous estimate was for profit of $2.86 per share, including a gain of 1 cent per share.
The $370 million includes a gain of $500 million to reverse tax accruals and tax valuation allowances, and finalize taxes related to the return to the United States of profits earned abroad. The amount also includes a pretax gain of about $60 million related to insurance recoveries.
Karr said the $500 million was money the company had set aside for taxes. DuPont plans to report fourth-quarter earnings Jan. 23.
Shares of DuPont rose 54 cents to $47.44 in morning trading on the New York Stock Exchange.
"CEOs don’t have time for loyalty"
Hey Folks,
Here's an example of what we're up against. In the first letter below Edythe Turner responded positively to a story in which a company used its brain and heart to try to respect American workers while still making a buck.
She also pointed out that (all the clap-trap about "patriotism" notwithstanding) corporations don't give a damn about America - at least not about the mass of working Americans.
Well, here in Central Ahia, that just doesn't cut it. No. And as sure as the sun rises, some pompous moron ALWAYS replies to set the record straight (see second letter).
Kent Kristy's letter is a good example of what has passed for "informed discourse" on the editorial page of the Columbus Dispatch for the fifty years I've been reading it. That is: ignorance, inaccuracies, incoherence, bluster, propaganda, illogic, and patriotic correctness all smugly full of itself, sounding swell but - beyond announcing the existence of another blind dupe in our presence - meaningless.
I've added comments to Kristy's letter in red.
- Uke Man
Companies should try to help U.S. workers
Monday, December 04, 2006
I respond to the Nov. 24 Associated Press article "Foreign firms tap willing workers in Rust Belt city." I was so encouraged by Williams Lea’s outsourcing effort that I contacted the firm to tell it so.
U.S. companies should be ashamed of themselves for selling out the American people for bigger profit margins and bonuses. Where is their loyalty?
Everyone is patriotic for the U.S. soldier, as they should be, but what about the U.S. worker? Millions of people have lost their jobs so big company pockets can be fuller. I pray that U.S. companies will get their heads straight before they dig a bigger hole in our economy. They need to know that by taking their money out of the United States, they are killing our economic and social structures, not to mention American morale.
EDYTHE TURNER
Columbus
Corporate America not to blame for society’s problems
Saturday, December 09, 2006
I always find it so fascinating how many American people blame corporate America for all the ills of society ("all" the ills? A little overstatement, perhaps?). My parents certainly do it. Makes you wonder if this writer is a sophomore ("wise fool") in some school and living with his parents - whom he aparently lumps with other "fascinating" Americans.
Here's an example of what we're up against. In the first letter below Edythe Turner responded positively to a story in which a company used its brain and heart to try to respect American workers while still making a buck.
She also pointed out that (all the clap-trap about "patriotism" notwithstanding) corporations don't give a damn about America - at least not about the mass of working Americans.
Well, here in Central Ahia, that just doesn't cut it. No. And as sure as the sun rises, some pompous moron ALWAYS replies to set the record straight (see second letter).
Kent Kristy's letter is a good example of what has passed for "informed discourse" on the editorial page of the Columbus Dispatch for the fifty years I've been reading it. That is: ignorance, inaccuracies, incoherence, bluster, propaganda, illogic, and patriotic correctness all smugly full of itself, sounding swell but - beyond announcing the existence of another blind dupe in our presence - meaningless.
I've added comments to Kristy's letter in red.
- Uke Man
Companies should try to help U.S. workers
Monday, December 04, 2006
I respond to the Nov. 24 Associated Press article "Foreign firms tap willing workers in Rust Belt city." I was so encouraged by Williams Lea’s outsourcing effort that I contacted the firm to tell it so.
U.S. companies should be ashamed of themselves for selling out the American people for bigger profit margins and bonuses. Where is their loyalty?
Everyone is patriotic for the U.S. soldier, as they should be, but what about the U.S. worker? Millions of people have lost their jobs so big company pockets can be fuller. I pray that U.S. companies will get their heads straight before they dig a bigger hole in our economy. They need to know that by taking their money out of the United States, they are killing our economic and social structures, not to mention American morale.
EDYTHE TURNER
Columbus
Corporate America not to blame for society’s problems
Saturday, December 09, 2006
I always find it so fascinating how many American people blame corporate America for all the ills of society ("all" the ills? A little overstatement, perhaps?). My parents certainly do it. Makes you wonder if this writer is a sophomore ("wise fool") in some school and living with his parents - whom he aparently lumps with other "fascinating" Americans.
Whether he is or not, this kind of letter appears regularly in the Dispatch, dispatched there by half wits of all ages and educational levels.
Edythe Turner questioned the "loyalty" of U.S. companies to American workers ("Companies should try to help U.S. workers," letter, Monday). The problem with this way of thinking is so simple.To the "simple" minded, perhaps. People equate a company with some family that has been running that company for 150 years. How does he know that, and what is his point in saying it? The truth of the matter is that chief executive officers, board members and power structures within a company change constantly. So? Again what is the point wandering around inside Kent's cranium? There can’t be loyalty when the one thing a CEO can do to keep his job is increase a company’s stock price. OK, there's a point: CEO's jobs are to keep their jobs; so, they can't be loyal to workers; they have to please higher ups who don't care about loyalty to anything but sales, profit, and stock value - as he asserts below.
Profit helps, but if the stock price can go up without profit, that CEO is successful. CEOs don’t have time for loyalty. Say Company XYZ hires a new CEO, and he comes in and raises everyone’s salary by 10 percent and gives every employee a $5,000 holiday bonus. The employees all feel better for a few days or weeks.
Great, but that doesn’t affect sales. And it decreases profit and, likely, the stock price. So, what board member and stock owner of that company would be happy about the actions of that CEO? Kent seems to equate the "company" with the CEO. Edythe was critical of the COMPANY. Nice little twist there, Kent: the company can't be "loyal" to workers because the CEO would have to demonstrate that loyalty, but the company would fire him if he did. It is similar with [sic] the U.S. government. You would think after 230 years, the U.S. government would run smoothly. But the only constant in life is change. Here we go again with "change," and what is the point of bringing in the government? Does it not have time for loyalty to American workers either?
The people in power change, the environments change, economies change, citizens change — the whole world changes. And Edythe is asking corporations to change as well. Kent seems to be arguing that corporations can't change because they are always changing. Politics, world trade, stock markets, financial institutions, debt, wages, etc. — they are all very complicated. But Kent says above, "The problem with this way of thinking [asking for loyalty] is so simple." Hmmmm ... Turner, and so many other Americans, see this as a simple issue: Companies should keep U.S. workers and pay them more money. That sounds great. And I don’t disagree. He agrees, but it's just impossible because corporations will fire CEO's and run-off politicians who are loyal to workers; as he says here:
The problem is, any CEO or politician who thinks in such simple terms isn’t likely to hold his job very long. Again, he's fascinated by Edythe for foolishly blaming corporations for the mistreatment of America and its workers because, as is simple and clear, being loyal would get the CEO fired (by the corporation). In other words, I’d love to win the lottery; reality teaches me that is probably not going to happen. I have to deal with, and adjust to, the changes, situations, obstacles and opportunities that the current world environment offers me. At last a real position !! He's quit talking about undeserved blame and gotten to the point. Essentially he says: It will be a cold day in hell before corporations (or government for that matter) give a damn about workers. So, shut up and adjust !! Be satisfied with whatever you get stuck with.
Our government isn’t perfect, and corporate America isn’t perfect; however, it is my feeling that they are the best in the world. I’m a proud American, and always will be. That's all well and good, but I hope he won't always be as ignorant and confused as he is right now.
- Uke Man
KENT KRISTY Reynoldsburg
Sunday, December 10, 2006
Must see videos: Kid vs. O'reilly / Kid 1 - O'Reilly 0
Hey Folks,
You MUST see this video !!! I find it mind blowing that such a striking perspective can exist contemporaneously with the crap we hear from televangelists (and Bill O'Reilly, "Jesus Camp," et.al.).
Check it out:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8x14cLGh5o
She nailed O'Reilly, religion, and Republicans. Bill couldn't let that pass; so he brings in his zombie expert who goes off about how the kid is saying things that bother people ("vile things" according to Bill - the truth, actually) and - as a result - someone is liable to "hunt this family down." Apparently, the kid is at least right about the bloodlust of Republicans, fundamentalists, and Foxxx News viewers - at least according to O'Reilly's expert. Here's the video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjc9g1-4ytI&watch_response
NOW, here's a third video, that sums it up soooooo well. Enjoy:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVRbMfh52Ts&watch_response
- Uke Man
You MUST see this video !!! I find it mind blowing that such a striking perspective can exist contemporaneously with the crap we hear from televangelists (and Bill O'Reilly, "Jesus Camp," et.al.).
Check it out:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8x14cLGh5o
She nailed O'Reilly, religion, and Republicans. Bill couldn't let that pass; so he brings in his zombie expert who goes off about how the kid is saying things that bother people ("vile things" according to Bill - the truth, actually) and - as a result - someone is liable to "hunt this family down." Apparently, the kid is at least right about the bloodlust of Republicans, fundamentalists, and Foxxx News viewers - at least according to O'Reilly's expert. Here's the video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjc9g1-4ytI&watch_response
NOW, here's a third video, that sums it up soooooo well. Enjoy:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVRbMfh52Ts&watch_response
- Uke Man
They wouldn't listen to me either
Hey Folks,
In February 2003, before the start of the war, I wrote to a Columbus Dispatch columnist urging him to reconsider his recently published support for going to war with Iraq (see below).
He didn't.
You can judge for yourself how accurate my predictions were, but I think I had it scoped out pretty well. A few of the things I mention have not happened - yet - but we are still at war, apparently for a long time yet.
The Krugman posting directly below this one presents the warnings of prominent Americans who were no more successful than I in warding off this unnecessary disaster. We were all ignored.
But here's a thought. I'm just a retired 8th Grade English teacher and a uke player. How can it be that I was more prescient than professional journalists, pundits, and politicians?
My guess is that I thought about it. Some of the go-alongers (including my "fellow Americans") were too stupid to think about it. Some were afraid to think about it. Some were so greedy they lied to themselves about it in hopes of realizing a big payoff.
If I saw it, the truth was there and not too difficult to find.
Ain't we just god's pride and joy !!!
- Uke Man
Dear Mr. Hallett,
As someone who finds your columns a pleasant addition to the “Dispatch” fare, I was disappointed when you wrote in support of a war against Iraq.
Certainly, if your underlying points are valid, your conclusion is valid. However, I respectfully ask that you reconsider several of the supporting assumptions.
You quote Mike DeWine as saying that if left “unrestrained” Saddam will become more dangerous. If we accept that as true, why is war necessarily the only means of restraining him? Doesn’t it sound funny to say that the world’s one super power is incapable of “restraining” the dictator of a tiny, impoverished country short of massive, “preemptive” war that will definitely kill thousands of innocent people?
We have been patrolling and bombing half the country (“no-fly zones”) for years; we have inspectors scurrying across the rest of the landscape; other creative actions certainly could be invented short of all-out war and Saddam would be forced to allow them, considering his present circumstances.
Even if we shouldn’t be dissuaded, as you suggest, from attacking simply because it will kill thousands of innocent people, shouldn’t we be dissuaded from such carnage UNTIL we have exhausted other means?
It is beyond doubt that we will kill thousands of innocents by our attack; it is much less certain that if we increase efforts to restrain Saddam he “will [nevertheless] cause the deaths of many more innocent people than will be lost in an allied invasion.”
Why not give creative assertiveness a try? The UN estimates that 500,000 Iraqis will be killed or wounded in the FIRST week of a US attack. Saddam hasn’t been gassing Kurds or initiating expansionist adventures for a while. Why not let those 500,000 folks live in peace a while longer while we try to use our heads to find a solution that will keep both “W” and Saddam from killing thousands of innocents? Can’t we always kill them later?
Your hope that Bush is agonizing over the certain death of thousands of innocent Iraqis speaks well of your character, but do you really think there is any serious hope that Bush actually cares in more than a perfunctory way? You quite accurately describe the president’s domestic agenda; he doesn’t seem to be agonizing over whether he is damaging the poor and middle class at the expense of the wealthy. He doesn’t seem to be agonizing over the incredible new and costly burden this war will inflict on the poor and middle class (whom he already demands pay a larger share of the tax burden) even in the face of the already existing near-bankruptcy of the states. He doesn’t seem to be agonizing over maintaining the Social Security safety net or expanding medical care to the uninsured or the retired. To paraphrase what we often hear about Saddam, Bush is harming his OWN people; and he’s doing it proudly.
As for giving “the Middle East a chance to taste democracy,” do you feel secure in that estimate? You cite the president’s “insidious” attack on our own Bill of Rights; why should we believe he wants democracy for foreigners when he works to restrict the democracy of his own people (see Robyn Blumner’s Feb.17 column, among others)?
More telling is that every estimate of the cost of “nation building” in post-war Iraq predicts a lengthy and incredibly expensive expenditure of someone’s funds. Without allies, with a crumbling domestic economy, and with the eventual war/deficit-elicited inflation, what will become of, primarily, the poor and, secondarily, the middle class who will have to carry the freight?
Do you actually think Bush will bite the bullet to squeeze the necessary money out of regular folks (or, heaven forbid, the wealthy) to actually bring democracy to Iraq, or will he slough off democracy for a “quick fix” that gives the US hegemony at a cut-rate price without a new, democratic Iraq? Latest news indicates that AMERICANS will be running post-war Iraq for a long time, setting up a government and constitution the US (not Iraq) deems appropriate. What are we doing in Afghanistan to rebuild the country and establish democracy?
Beyond the cost of “building” democracy, what is it about a country created artificially by outsiders to encompass a certain arbitrary area and three or more completely different antagonistic groups, two of which have been zealously ruled for years by the minority group; what is it about that to make hawks so optimistic about good things happening easily, quickly, and cheaply; and what makes them believe that the vast majority of those in Iraq and the rest of the Muslim world will thank us for it? Sounds like a stretch to me.
You seem to dismiss Bush’s motives as irrelevant (i.e. no matter what they are, Saddam must go). Please reconsider. If Bush’s motives are what I believe them to be, his actions could severely harm both the US and the world, and far from saving lives, could lead to the deaths of many more, if not millions.
I believe that this push for war with Iraq comes out of an ideology that existed prior to 9-11. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the US emerged as the sole super power, the only “big boy” on the block. Bush Sr., in his one term, talked about “a New World Order,” but was short-sheeted by Clinton’s victory.
During Clinton’s eight years it became clear that hawkish conservatives believed that Clinton was not vigorously enough using our newly unique position to spread our influence and control over the rest of the world’s countries, none of which could independently resist us. People, including Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Bill Cristal, and other hawks presently in or supportive of the present administration, complained that Clinton was not being aggressive enough in imposing American control around the globe. They called for, among other things, the invasion of Iraq. This suggestion clearly preceded and had NO connection to 9-11 or terrorism.
More recently, Condoleezza Rice stated, “ The international system has been in flux since the collapse of Soviet power. Now it is possible indeed probable that that transition is coming to an end. If that is right, then this is a period not just of grave danger but of enormous opportunity.”
Opportunity for what? A new world order with the US>calling all the shots, and with terrorism (9-11) providing the excuse and the unquestionable justification.
We have the publicly announced Bush doctrine that we will let NO country get even close to our military might, and that we take unto ourselves the right to use “preemptive” war against anyone who starts to get close and even those who MIGHT EVENTUALLY cause us problems.
We reserve this right regardless of what anyone else thinks. As Rumsfeld said, “The mission determines the coalition,” and we keep hearing that they will go it alone if need be.
We have placed ourselves above international law, including such long-standing agreements as the Geneva conventions. We are ignoring and even bullying our historic allies. The “Dispatch” editorial “Pierre contraire” (Feb.16) on the page previous to your column echoes my point. If you re-read it, I think you will agree that it essentially argues that the US is the only super power and that France’s views and interests are no longer relevant; that France should fall into line behind American interests rather than its own (which would make France irrelevant if it weren’t already irrelevant); and that France if by some weird chance it really isn’t already irrelevant - will soon be MADE irrelevant for not surrendering their sovereignty to us. Sounds a little like double talk to me.
I realize that you don’t write these editorials, but I’m not surprised that SOMEONE at the “Dispatch” thinks just like Bush about slapping down anyone resisting the establishment of broader and stronger US hegemony around the world.
Nevertheless, if I am correct about Bush’s motives, then these motives DO weigh heavily upon our consideration of a possible war. These motives are dishonorable, antagonistic, aggressive, selfish, counterproductive (for the vast majority of Americans), disruptive , dangerous, immoral, destructive, and blatantly counter to all that we who grew up patriotically understand America to represent.
We selectively use international laws and institutions when it serves our agenda and totally dismiss them when THAT serves us. For example, we claim the right to attack Iraq because Saddam has gone against UN rules, and at the same time brag that if the UN doesn’t OK our war, WE’ll disobey UN rules and have a war anyway. Everyone and everything must kowtow to the mighty superpower.
Beyond the hypocrisy, stands the danger of disaster.
If one asks, “What is the most we will gain from this?” even the most optimistic answer pales in comparison to what we could lose. We WILL lose troops and capital in the war. We will vastly increase federal deficits, which will, inevitably, result in cuts to the safety net for our neediest citizens and in reduced help for hard-pressed cities and states.
We will disrupt the flow of oil, which will either negatively affect commerce by higher prices or reduce our strategic reserves, or both. We will aid in the recruitment of terrorists dedicated to raining death upon Americans. We will further restrict our own people’s access to the Bill of Rights. We will increase the unjust harassment, investigation, and arrest of innocent citizens and immigrants. We will become a nation overcome by fear and intimidation. We will likely spawn a new McCarthyism aimed at“terrorists” instead of Communists.
In more concrete terms, this untimely war could result in the overthrow by hard-line Muslim fundamentalists of one or more of our “client” states in the Middle East, and to a general hatred for the US on the part of Muslim citizens in all Arab states. It could lead to new resolve on the part of demagogic Arab leaders to use the destruction of our ally Israel as a rallying call for their own power grab. Most frighteningly, it could lead to a fundamentalist overthrow of the shaky Pakistani government, which ALREADY possesses nuclear weapons and the missiles to deliver them.
As a result, the nuclear capability we feared Saddam would EVENTUALLY obtain would fall IMMEDIATELY into the hands of a government that hates us.
Then there’s always North Korea sitting there threatening to ignite the holocaust, believing, as whocan blame them, that Bush is willing to go to any extreme to bring everyone, Iraq, Iran, North Korea, even the American people to heel.
The possibility of a self-initiated Armageddon, more than anything else argues for lengthy further attempts at finding a solution short of preemptive war. Glib assurances from a war-minded clique that all will go smoothly, quickly, and well are not enough for me. As I said, why not wait? We can always kill Iraqi men, women, and children later if we need to. If we go to war now and, counter to assurances, killer vultures come home to roost, it will be too late for Iraqis and too late for us.
Yours - Tom Harker
In February 2003, before the start of the war, I wrote to a Columbus Dispatch columnist urging him to reconsider his recently published support for going to war with Iraq (see below).
He didn't.
You can judge for yourself how accurate my predictions were, but I think I had it scoped out pretty well. A few of the things I mention have not happened - yet - but we are still at war, apparently for a long time yet.
The Krugman posting directly below this one presents the warnings of prominent Americans who were no more successful than I in warding off this unnecessary disaster. We were all ignored.
But here's a thought. I'm just a retired 8th Grade English teacher and a uke player. How can it be that I was more prescient than professional journalists, pundits, and politicians?
My guess is that I thought about it. Some of the go-alongers (including my "fellow Americans") were too stupid to think about it. Some were afraid to think about it. Some were so greedy they lied to themselves about it in hopes of realizing a big payoff.
If I saw it, the truth was there and not too difficult to find.
Ain't we just god's pride and joy !!!
- Uke Man
Dear Mr. Hallett,
As someone who finds your columns a pleasant addition to the “Dispatch” fare, I was disappointed when you wrote in support of a war against Iraq.
Certainly, if your underlying points are valid, your conclusion is valid. However, I respectfully ask that you reconsider several of the supporting assumptions.
You quote Mike DeWine as saying that if left “unrestrained” Saddam will become more dangerous. If we accept that as true, why is war necessarily the only means of restraining him? Doesn’t it sound funny to say that the world’s one super power is incapable of “restraining” the dictator of a tiny, impoverished country short of massive, “preemptive” war that will definitely kill thousands of innocent people?
We have been patrolling and bombing half the country (“no-fly zones”) for years; we have inspectors scurrying across the rest of the landscape; other creative actions certainly could be invented short of all-out war and Saddam would be forced to allow them, considering his present circumstances.
Even if we shouldn’t be dissuaded, as you suggest, from attacking simply because it will kill thousands of innocent people, shouldn’t we be dissuaded from such carnage UNTIL we have exhausted other means?
It is beyond doubt that we will kill thousands of innocents by our attack; it is much less certain that if we increase efforts to restrain Saddam he “will [nevertheless] cause the deaths of many more innocent people than will be lost in an allied invasion.”
Why not give creative assertiveness a try? The UN estimates that 500,000 Iraqis will be killed or wounded in the FIRST week of a US attack. Saddam hasn’t been gassing Kurds or initiating expansionist adventures for a while. Why not let those 500,000 folks live in peace a while longer while we try to use our heads to find a solution that will keep both “W” and Saddam from killing thousands of innocents? Can’t we always kill them later?
Your hope that Bush is agonizing over the certain death of thousands of innocent Iraqis speaks well of your character, but do you really think there is any serious hope that Bush actually cares in more than a perfunctory way? You quite accurately describe the president’s domestic agenda; he doesn’t seem to be agonizing over whether he is damaging the poor and middle class at the expense of the wealthy. He doesn’t seem to be agonizing over the incredible new and costly burden this war will inflict on the poor and middle class (whom he already demands pay a larger share of the tax burden) even in the face of the already existing near-bankruptcy of the states. He doesn’t seem to be agonizing over maintaining the Social Security safety net or expanding medical care to the uninsured or the retired. To paraphrase what we often hear about Saddam, Bush is harming his OWN people; and he’s doing it proudly.
As for giving “the Middle East a chance to taste democracy,” do you feel secure in that estimate? You cite the president’s “insidious” attack on our own Bill of Rights; why should we believe he wants democracy for foreigners when he works to restrict the democracy of his own people (see Robyn Blumner’s Feb.17 column, among others)?
More telling is that every estimate of the cost of “nation building” in post-war Iraq predicts a lengthy and incredibly expensive expenditure of someone’s funds. Without allies, with a crumbling domestic economy, and with the eventual war/deficit-elicited inflation, what will become of, primarily, the poor and, secondarily, the middle class who will have to carry the freight?
Do you actually think Bush will bite the bullet to squeeze the necessary money out of regular folks (or, heaven forbid, the wealthy) to actually bring democracy to Iraq, or will he slough off democracy for a “quick fix” that gives the US hegemony at a cut-rate price without a new, democratic Iraq? Latest news indicates that AMERICANS will be running post-war Iraq for a long time, setting up a government and constitution the US (not Iraq) deems appropriate. What are we doing in Afghanistan to rebuild the country and establish democracy?
Beyond the cost of “building” democracy, what is it about a country created artificially by outsiders to encompass a certain arbitrary area and three or more completely different antagonistic groups, two of which have been zealously ruled for years by the minority group; what is it about that to make hawks so optimistic about good things happening easily, quickly, and cheaply; and what makes them believe that the vast majority of those in Iraq and the rest of the Muslim world will thank us for it? Sounds like a stretch to me.
You seem to dismiss Bush’s motives as irrelevant (i.e. no matter what they are, Saddam must go). Please reconsider. If Bush’s motives are what I believe them to be, his actions could severely harm both the US and the world, and far from saving lives, could lead to the deaths of many more, if not millions.
I believe that this push for war with Iraq comes out of an ideology that existed prior to 9-11. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the US emerged as the sole super power, the only “big boy” on the block. Bush Sr., in his one term, talked about “a New World Order,” but was short-sheeted by Clinton’s victory.
During Clinton’s eight years it became clear that hawkish conservatives believed that Clinton was not vigorously enough using our newly unique position to spread our influence and control over the rest of the world’s countries, none of which could independently resist us. People, including Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Bill Cristal, and other hawks presently in or supportive of the present administration, complained that Clinton was not being aggressive enough in imposing American control around the globe. They called for, among other things, the invasion of Iraq. This suggestion clearly preceded and had NO connection to 9-11 or terrorism.
More recently, Condoleezza Rice stated, “ The international system has been in flux since the collapse of Soviet power. Now it is possible indeed probable that that transition is coming to an end. If that is right, then this is a period not just of grave danger but of enormous opportunity.”
Opportunity for what? A new world order with the US>calling all the shots, and with terrorism (9-11) providing the excuse and the unquestionable justification.
We have the publicly announced Bush doctrine that we will let NO country get even close to our military might, and that we take unto ourselves the right to use “preemptive” war against anyone who starts to get close and even those who MIGHT EVENTUALLY cause us problems.
We reserve this right regardless of what anyone else thinks. As Rumsfeld said, “The mission determines the coalition,” and we keep hearing that they will go it alone if need be.
We have placed ourselves above international law, including such long-standing agreements as the Geneva conventions. We are ignoring and even bullying our historic allies. The “Dispatch” editorial “Pierre contraire” (Feb.16) on the page previous to your column echoes my point. If you re-read it, I think you will agree that it essentially argues that the US is the only super power and that France’s views and interests are no longer relevant; that France should fall into line behind American interests rather than its own (which would make France irrelevant if it weren’t already irrelevant); and that France if by some weird chance it really isn’t already irrelevant - will soon be MADE irrelevant for not surrendering their sovereignty to us. Sounds a little like double talk to me.
I realize that you don’t write these editorials, but I’m not surprised that SOMEONE at the “Dispatch” thinks just like Bush about slapping down anyone resisting the establishment of broader and stronger US hegemony around the world.
Nevertheless, if I am correct about Bush’s motives, then these motives DO weigh heavily upon our consideration of a possible war. These motives are dishonorable, antagonistic, aggressive, selfish, counterproductive (for the vast majority of Americans), disruptive , dangerous, immoral, destructive, and blatantly counter to all that we who grew up patriotically understand America to represent.
We selectively use international laws and institutions when it serves our agenda and totally dismiss them when THAT serves us. For example, we claim the right to attack Iraq because Saddam has gone against UN rules, and at the same time brag that if the UN doesn’t OK our war, WE’ll disobey UN rules and have a war anyway. Everyone and everything must kowtow to the mighty superpower.
Beyond the hypocrisy, stands the danger of disaster.
If one asks, “What is the most we will gain from this?” even the most optimistic answer pales in comparison to what we could lose. We WILL lose troops and capital in the war. We will vastly increase federal deficits, which will, inevitably, result in cuts to the safety net for our neediest citizens and in reduced help for hard-pressed cities and states.
We will disrupt the flow of oil, which will either negatively affect commerce by higher prices or reduce our strategic reserves, or both. We will aid in the recruitment of terrorists dedicated to raining death upon Americans. We will further restrict our own people’s access to the Bill of Rights. We will increase the unjust harassment, investigation, and arrest of innocent citizens and immigrants. We will become a nation overcome by fear and intimidation. We will likely spawn a new McCarthyism aimed at“terrorists” instead of Communists.
In more concrete terms, this untimely war could result in the overthrow by hard-line Muslim fundamentalists of one or more of our “client” states in the Middle East, and to a general hatred for the US on the part of Muslim citizens in all Arab states. It could lead to new resolve on the part of demagogic Arab leaders to use the destruction of our ally Israel as a rallying call for their own power grab. Most frighteningly, it could lead to a fundamentalist overthrow of the shaky Pakistani government, which ALREADY possesses nuclear weapons and the missiles to deliver them.
As a result, the nuclear capability we feared Saddam would EVENTUALLY obtain would fall IMMEDIATELY into the hands of a government that hates us.
Then there’s always North Korea sitting there threatening to ignite the holocaust, believing, as whocan blame them, that Bush is willing to go to any extreme to bring everyone, Iraq, Iran, North Korea, even the American people to heel.
The possibility of a self-initiated Armageddon, more than anything else argues for lengthy further attempts at finding a solution short of preemptive war. Glib assurances from a war-minded clique that all will go smoothly, quickly, and well are not enough for me. As I said, why not wait? We can always kill Iraqi men, women, and children later if we need to. If we go to war now and, counter to assurances, killer vultures come home to roost, it will be too late for Iraqis and too late for us.
Yours - Tom Harker
Saturday, December 09, 2006
Because we're stupid??
Hey Folks,
This is always the case. There are always intelligent, thoughtful people who understand what is going down. The question we must ask ourselves is:"Why do we always ignore them?"
- Uke Man
December 8, 2006
They Told You So
By PAUL KRUGMAN
(a ukethanks to Phyll)
Shortly after U.S. forces marched into Baghdad in 2003, The Weekly Standard published a jeering article titled, “The Cassandra Chronicles: The stupidity of the antiwar doomsayers.” Among those the article mocked was a “war novelist” named James Webb, who is now the senator-elect from Virginia.
The article’s title was more revealing than its authors knew. People forget the nature of Cassandra’s curse: although nobody would believe her, all her prophecies came true.
And so it was with those who warned against invading Iraq. At best, they were ignored. A recent article in The Washington Post ruefully conceded that the paper’s account of the debate in the House of Representatives over the resolution authorizing the Iraq war — a resolution opposed by a majority of the Democrats — gave no coverage at all to those antiwar arguments that now seem prescient.
At worst, those who were skeptical about the case for war had their patriotism and/or their sanity questioned. The New Republic now says that it “deeply regrets its early support for this war.” Does it also deeply regret accusing those who opposed rushing into war of “abject pacifism?”
Now, only a few neocon dead-enders still believe that this war was anything but a vast exercise in folly. And those who braved political pressure and ridicule to oppose what Al Gore has rightly called “the worst strategic mistake in the history of the United States” deserve some credit.
Unlike The Weekly Standard, which singled out those it thought had been proved wrong, I’d like to offer some praise to those who got it right.
Here’s a partial honor roll:
Former President George H. W. Bush and Brent Scowcroft, explaining in 1998 why they didn’t go on to Baghdad in 1991: “Had we gone the invasion route, the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land.”
Representative Ike Skelton, September 2002: “I have no doubt that our military would decisively defeat Iraq’s forces and remove Saddam. But like the proverbial dog chasing the car down the road, we must consider what we would do after we caught it.”
Al Gore, September 2002: “I am deeply concerned that the course of action that we are presently embarking upon with respect to Iraq has the potential to seriously damage our ability to win the war against terrorism and to weaken our ability to lead the world in this new century.”
Barack Obama, now a United States senator, September 2002: “I don’t oppose all wars. What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war. What I am opposed to is the cynical attempt by Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz and other armchair, weekend warriors in this administration to shove their own ideological agendas down our throats, irrespective of the costs in lives lost and in hardships borne.”
Representative John Spratt, October 2002: “The outcome after the conflict is actually going to be the hardest part, and it is far less certain.”
Representative Nancy Pelosi, now the House speaker-elect, October 2002: “When we go in, the occupation, which is now being called the liberation, could be interminable and the amount of money it costs could be unlimited.”
Senator Russ Feingold, October 2002: “I am increasingly troubled by the seemingly shifting justifications for an invasion at this time. ... When the administration moves back and forth from one argument to another, I think it undercuts the credibility of the case and the belief in its urgency. I believe that this practice of shifting justifications has much to do with the troubling phenomenon of many Americans questioning the administration’s motives.”
Howard Dean, then a candidate for president and now the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, February 2003: “I firmly believe that the president is focusing our diplomats, our military, our intelligence agencies, and even our people on the wrong war, at the wrong time. ... Iraq is a divided country, with Sunni, Shia and Kurdish factions that share both bitter rivalries and access to large quantities of arms.”
We should honor these people for their wisdom and courage. We should also ask why anyone who didn’t raise questions about the war — or, at any rate, anyone who acted as a cheerleader for this march of folly — should be taken seriously when he or she talks about matters of national security.
This is always the case. There are always intelligent, thoughtful people who understand what is going down. The question we must ask ourselves is:"Why do we always ignore them?"
- Uke Man
December 8, 2006
They Told You So
By PAUL KRUGMAN
(a ukethanks to Phyll)
Shortly after U.S. forces marched into Baghdad in 2003, The Weekly Standard published a jeering article titled, “The Cassandra Chronicles: The stupidity of the antiwar doomsayers.” Among those the article mocked was a “war novelist” named James Webb, who is now the senator-elect from Virginia.
The article’s title was more revealing than its authors knew. People forget the nature of Cassandra’s curse: although nobody would believe her, all her prophecies came true.
And so it was with those who warned against invading Iraq. At best, they were ignored. A recent article in The Washington Post ruefully conceded that the paper’s account of the debate in the House of Representatives over the resolution authorizing the Iraq war — a resolution opposed by a majority of the Democrats — gave no coverage at all to those antiwar arguments that now seem prescient.
At worst, those who were skeptical about the case for war had their patriotism and/or their sanity questioned. The New Republic now says that it “deeply regrets its early support for this war.” Does it also deeply regret accusing those who opposed rushing into war of “abject pacifism?”
Now, only a few neocon dead-enders still believe that this war was anything but a vast exercise in folly. And those who braved political pressure and ridicule to oppose what Al Gore has rightly called “the worst strategic mistake in the history of the United States” deserve some credit.
Unlike The Weekly Standard, which singled out those it thought had been proved wrong, I’d like to offer some praise to those who got it right.
Here’s a partial honor roll:
Former President George H. W. Bush and Brent Scowcroft, explaining in 1998 why they didn’t go on to Baghdad in 1991: “Had we gone the invasion route, the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land.”
Representative Ike Skelton, September 2002: “I have no doubt that our military would decisively defeat Iraq’s forces and remove Saddam. But like the proverbial dog chasing the car down the road, we must consider what we would do after we caught it.”
Al Gore, September 2002: “I am deeply concerned that the course of action that we are presently embarking upon with respect to Iraq has the potential to seriously damage our ability to win the war against terrorism and to weaken our ability to lead the world in this new century.”
Barack Obama, now a United States senator, September 2002: “I don’t oppose all wars. What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war. What I am opposed to is the cynical attempt by Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz and other armchair, weekend warriors in this administration to shove their own ideological agendas down our throats, irrespective of the costs in lives lost and in hardships borne.”
Representative John Spratt, October 2002: “The outcome after the conflict is actually going to be the hardest part, and it is far less certain.”
Representative Nancy Pelosi, now the House speaker-elect, October 2002: “When we go in, the occupation, which is now being called the liberation, could be interminable and the amount of money it costs could be unlimited.”
Senator Russ Feingold, October 2002: “I am increasingly troubled by the seemingly shifting justifications for an invasion at this time. ... When the administration moves back and forth from one argument to another, I think it undercuts the credibility of the case and the belief in its urgency. I believe that this practice of shifting justifications has much to do with the troubling phenomenon of many Americans questioning the administration’s motives.”
Howard Dean, then a candidate for president and now the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, February 2003: “I firmly believe that the president is focusing our diplomats, our military, our intelligence agencies, and even our people on the wrong war, at the wrong time. ... Iraq is a divided country, with Sunni, Shia and Kurdish factions that share both bitter rivalries and access to large quantities of arms.”
We should honor these people for their wisdom and courage. We should also ask why anyone who didn’t raise questions about the war — or, at any rate, anyone who acted as a cheerleader for this march of folly — should be taken seriously when he or she talks about matters of national security.
Friday, December 08, 2006
Ukulele Noir in Boston - Wednesday
Hey Folks,
The Uke Man will be on the road soon to play a show and visit my son and his family. The blog may get thin for a week, especially Tuesday - I'll be driving. But I should generally be able to post something most days.
Wednesday, I'll be haunting museums during the day; the show is in the evening; and after the show, it's just an hour to my son's home.
The show will be Ukulele Noir 20, a ukulele theme evening - the 20th such show since it was first created by Craig Robertson a little over a year ago (http://www.ukulelenoir.com/). The Ukulele Man & his Prodigal Sons played in Noir 6 in Sept. of 2003 ( http://www.ukulelenoir.com/pages/noir_6.html).
This time I'm flying solo.
You can hear music by Craig Robertson, Mark Occhionero (both in Noir 20), and other past performers at http://www.ukulelenoir.com/pages/music.html.
Videos of Davis Sweet (also in Noir 20), Robertson, Occhionero and other past players can be seen at: http://www.ukulelenoir.com/pages/videos.html .
My Videos (as always) can be found at: http://www.ukulelecabaret.com/ .
If you're in the Boston area, stop by and introduce yourself !!
Here are some pictures from the past of Craig. I'll have some new shots soon.
- Uke Man (Tom Harker)
The Uke Man will be on the road soon to play a show and visit my son and his family. The blog may get thin for a week, especially Tuesday - I'll be driving. But I should generally be able to post something most days.
Wednesday, I'll be haunting museums during the day; the show is in the evening; and after the show, it's just an hour to my son's home.
The show will be Ukulele Noir 20, a ukulele theme evening - the 20th such show since it was first created by Craig Robertson a little over a year ago (http://www.ukulelenoir.com/). The Ukulele Man & his Prodigal Sons played in Noir 6 in Sept. of 2003 ( http://www.ukulelenoir.com/pages/noir_6.html).
This time I'm flying solo.
You can hear music by Craig Robertson, Mark Occhionero (both in Noir 20), and other past performers at http://www.ukulelenoir.com/pages/music.html.
Videos of Davis Sweet (also in Noir 20), Robertson, Occhionero and other past players can be seen at: http://www.ukulelenoir.com/pages/videos.html .
My Videos (as always) can be found at: http://www.ukulelecabaret.com/ .
If you're in the Boston area, stop by and introduce yourself !!
Here are some pictures from the past of Craig. I'll have some new shots soon.
- Uke Man (Tom Harker)
Roosting Reality Chickens ???
December 6, 2006
Goodness Gracious! The Truth!
By MAUREEN DOWD
(a ukethanks to Phyll)
WASHINGTON :
First Junior took over the house with grandiose plans to remodel it and make it the envy of the neighborhood. But then he played with matches and set the house on fire. So now he’s frantically trying to stop the flames from torching the whole block.
The Bush administration has gone from a breathless plan to change the Middle East to a breathless plan to preserve it, from democracy promotion to conflagration avoidance.
That was the cold shower offered yesterday by Robert Gates, the former C.I.A. chief, on his way to being unanimously endorsed as the new defense secretary by a Senate panel craving a cold shower.
He told the Armed Services Committee, peppered with wannabe future presidents, that the American occupation could lead to a Baghdad as hostile as Tehran, and set off “a regional conflagration” if Iraq is not deftly handled in the next couple of years.
Mr. Gates asserted that if America left Iraq in chaos, Iran and Syria could encroach more, and Turkey and Saudi Arabia might jump in to stop the ethnic cleansing of Sunnis by Shiites. “We’re already seeing Hezbollah involved in training fighters for Iraq,” he said. “I think all of that could spread fairly dramatically.”
It was the sort of realistic assessment that never came from Rummy, except when he privately admitted in a classified Nov. 6 memo that their Iraq strategy was “not working well enough or fast enough,” offering a silly hodgepodge of wildly tardy or dubious options, like telling the Iraqis to “pull up their socks.”
It was chilling to see in print that the man who spent nearly four years overseeing the war did not have any idea what to do in Iraq; his basic plan was not so much to fix the problem as to lower expectations. The memo, reported by Michael Gordon in The Times on Sunday, offered the following lame-brained prescriptions to manage perception:
“Announce that whatever new approach the U.S. decides on, the U.S. is doing so on a trial basis. This will give us the ability to readjust and move to another course, if necessary, and therefore not ‘lose.’ ” And this: “Recast the U.S. military mission and the U.S. goals (how we talk about them) — go minimalist.”
So with the Pentagon deciding whether to Go Big, Go Long or Go Home, Rummy urged the White House to Go Minimalist and simply streamline the spin.
Junior took the advice to manage perceptions by minimizing Rummy two days after he sent the memo. The walls had closed in on W.; he could no longer minimize the war, which was escalating, or the perception that it was not going well, which had spread into Republican ranks. Even Gen. Peter Pace, yes man that he is, acknowledged on Monday that “We’re not winning but we’re not losing.”
The old criticisms of whether Mr. Gates massaged intelligence were forgotten; the senators would have embraced an ax-murderer if he had seemed sensible about Iraq.
There was no blathering yesterday about “known unknowns” or “Henny Penny” pessimists. The soft-spoken, vanilla Mr. Gates offered a sharp contrast from the finger-wagging, flavorful Rummy. In a remarkable shift from the mindless bellicosity and jingoism of the last few years, Mr. Gates said he did not favor military action against Iran or Syria.
Even though he was a member of the Iraq Study Group, Mr. Gates conceded that there would be no silver bullet. “It’s my impression that, frankly, there are no new ideas on Iraq,” he said. Asked by Robert Byrd who was responsible for 9/11, Saddam or Osama, Mr. Gates did not try to fudge. “Osama bin Laden, Senator,” he replied. Asked who has represented a greater threat to the U.S., he repeated “Osama bin Laden.”
W. insisted to Fox News’s Brit Hume on Monday that his “objective hadn’t changed” and that “we’re going to succeed in Iraq.” Asked by Carl Levin if America was winning in Iraq, Mr. Gates answered, “No, sir.”
After lunch the nominee clarified his remarks, saying he had not meant to criticize the troops, that the reversals in Iraq were not their fault. They don’t lose battles in Iraq because there are no battles. There’s just a counterinsurgency that they can’t see and that they weren’t prepared or equipped to fight.
Gates’s friends from the old Bush 41 gang have been watching closely to see if 43 brought the old Washington hand back for “cosmetic reasons,” as one put it, simply to try to change the perception that W. has been stubborn and deaf on Iraq. Or whether 43 really will give his new defense chief the parameters he needs to make real changes in strategy. Will he let him Go Maximalist?
Goodness Gracious! The Truth!
By MAUREEN DOWD
(a ukethanks to Phyll)
WASHINGTON :
First Junior took over the house with grandiose plans to remodel it and make it the envy of the neighborhood. But then he played with matches and set the house on fire. So now he’s frantically trying to stop the flames from torching the whole block.
The Bush administration has gone from a breathless plan to change the Middle East to a breathless plan to preserve it, from democracy promotion to conflagration avoidance.
That was the cold shower offered yesterday by Robert Gates, the former C.I.A. chief, on his way to being unanimously endorsed as the new defense secretary by a Senate panel craving a cold shower.
He told the Armed Services Committee, peppered with wannabe future presidents, that the American occupation could lead to a Baghdad as hostile as Tehran, and set off “a regional conflagration” if Iraq is not deftly handled in the next couple of years.
Mr. Gates asserted that if America left Iraq in chaos, Iran and Syria could encroach more, and Turkey and Saudi Arabia might jump in to stop the ethnic cleansing of Sunnis by Shiites. “We’re already seeing Hezbollah involved in training fighters for Iraq,” he said. “I think all of that could spread fairly dramatically.”
It was the sort of realistic assessment that never came from Rummy, except when he privately admitted in a classified Nov. 6 memo that their Iraq strategy was “not working well enough or fast enough,” offering a silly hodgepodge of wildly tardy or dubious options, like telling the Iraqis to “pull up their socks.”
It was chilling to see in print that the man who spent nearly four years overseeing the war did not have any idea what to do in Iraq; his basic plan was not so much to fix the problem as to lower expectations. The memo, reported by Michael Gordon in The Times on Sunday, offered the following lame-brained prescriptions to manage perception:
“Announce that whatever new approach the U.S. decides on, the U.S. is doing so on a trial basis. This will give us the ability to readjust and move to another course, if necessary, and therefore not ‘lose.’ ” And this: “Recast the U.S. military mission and the U.S. goals (how we talk about them) — go minimalist.”
So with the Pentagon deciding whether to Go Big, Go Long or Go Home, Rummy urged the White House to Go Minimalist and simply streamline the spin.
Junior took the advice to manage perceptions by minimizing Rummy two days after he sent the memo. The walls had closed in on W.; he could no longer minimize the war, which was escalating, or the perception that it was not going well, which had spread into Republican ranks. Even Gen. Peter Pace, yes man that he is, acknowledged on Monday that “We’re not winning but we’re not losing.”
The old criticisms of whether Mr. Gates massaged intelligence were forgotten; the senators would have embraced an ax-murderer if he had seemed sensible about Iraq.
There was no blathering yesterday about “known unknowns” or “Henny Penny” pessimists. The soft-spoken, vanilla Mr. Gates offered a sharp contrast from the finger-wagging, flavorful Rummy. In a remarkable shift from the mindless bellicosity and jingoism of the last few years, Mr. Gates said he did not favor military action against Iran or Syria.
Even though he was a member of the Iraq Study Group, Mr. Gates conceded that there would be no silver bullet. “It’s my impression that, frankly, there are no new ideas on Iraq,” he said. Asked by Robert Byrd who was responsible for 9/11, Saddam or Osama, Mr. Gates did not try to fudge. “Osama bin Laden, Senator,” he replied. Asked who has represented a greater threat to the U.S., he repeated “Osama bin Laden.”
W. insisted to Fox News’s Brit Hume on Monday that his “objective hadn’t changed” and that “we’re going to succeed in Iraq.” Asked by Carl Levin if America was winning in Iraq, Mr. Gates answered, “No, sir.”
After lunch the nominee clarified his remarks, saying he had not meant to criticize the troops, that the reversals in Iraq were not their fault. They don’t lose battles in Iraq because there are no battles. There’s just a counterinsurgency that they can’t see and that they weren’t prepared or equipped to fight.
Gates’s friends from the old Bush 41 gang have been watching closely to see if 43 brought the old Washington hand back for “cosmetic reasons,” as one put it, simply to try to change the perception that W. has been stubborn and deaf on Iraq. Or whether 43 really will give his new defense chief the parameters he needs to make real changes in strategy. Will he let him Go Maximalist?
Thursday, December 07, 2006
Dec. 7 - Happy Birthday, Aunt Sis
Hey Folks,
December 7 is the day that “shall live in infamy!” – i.e. Pearl Harbor Day.
But it is also my Aunt Sis’s birthday. She turned 90.
Mrs. Duena Kelhoffer Ames is my Mom’s little sister. Mom’s gone, but those two were something in their day – check out their “flapper” picture (Aunt Sis on the left). Actually they were pretty much naïve country girls growing up. Both entered the “big” world via the Mt. Carmel Nursing School in Columbus, Ohio.
Aunt Sis enlisted as an Army nurse in WW II and she was part of the first non-combat troops to arrive after the liberation of the Dachau Concentration Camp. So whenever I hear anyone say that the Holocaust never happened, I know better; my Aunt saw it with her own eyes.
Aunt Sis taught me to tie my shoes.
I love her.
- Uke Man
December 7 is the day that “shall live in infamy!” – i.e. Pearl Harbor Day.
But it is also my Aunt Sis’s birthday. She turned 90.
Mrs. Duena Kelhoffer Ames is my Mom’s little sister. Mom’s gone, but those two were something in their day – check out their “flapper” picture (Aunt Sis on the left). Actually they were pretty much naïve country girls growing up. Both entered the “big” world via the Mt. Carmel Nursing School in Columbus, Ohio.
Aunt Sis enlisted as an Army nurse in WW II and she was part of the first non-combat troops to arrive after the liberation of the Dachau Concentration Camp. So whenever I hear anyone say that the Holocaust never happened, I know better; my Aunt saw it with her own eyes.
Aunt Sis taught me to tie my shoes.
I love her.
- Uke Man
Wages & Morality
Hey Folks,
Below you can see a major problem we face in our most "religious," compassionate, "democracy"-spreading, shining-city-on-a-hill nation.
It's an old problem, one that has existed since the discovery of agriculture allowed "civilization" to crawl into hierarchical form: the people at the upper end of the hierarchy truly believe they belong there and that those below them deserve their status too.
The culture is founded on nonsensical "truths" - more correctly myths - that support the notion that the way things are at present is good, proper, preordained, blessed by God (or gods), in accordance with "holy books," "the way they've always been, the only way things can work, not perfect but still the best ever, etc.
In a pyramid-shaped system, obviously, the few closer to the top of the hierarchy (e.g. Pharo, King, President, Industrialist) reap the greatest rewards; and the very large number near or at the bottom reap the least.
Can you guess what group of individuals revere this arrangement? Love it, like it, accept it, suspect it, resent it, resist it, or hate it? Well, those who benefit at others' expense (or believe they do) always defend the inherent and arbitrary inequality of the system, and trot out the long-established, mythical dogma as supporting proof.
Of course there are those among them who know what they are doing; i.e. cold-bloodedly exploiting other human beings - in some cases millions, maybe billions, of their fellow human beings. But, frighteningly, many of these folks (especially, but not limited to, the Upper Middle Class) actually believe their own propaganda, and actually feel hurt when the immorality of their prerogatives is pointed out to them.
Such is the case demonstrated below in a recent piece appearing in the Columbus Dispatch. I have commented throughout the piece in red and have highlighted parts of the article with blue.
(a column published along side the one discussed below and written from a working person's viewpoint, can be found at: http://www.ukuleleman.net/2006/11/working-persons-view-of-minimum-wage.html )
- Uke Man
Will increasing the minimum wage help lowest-paid workers?
Not necessarily: Supporters gloss over full costs of such laws
Monday, December 04, 2006
GLENN SHELLER
Proponents of the minimum-wage increases passed in Ohio and five other states on Nov. 7 are ecstatic over their success and claim not only a political victory, but a moral one. Paying people an "adequate" wage, they say, is a moral issue.
Presumably, then, if you voted for the minimum-wage increase you acted morally, and if you voted against it, well . . . Anyone who believes the economy is doing well, who claims to be "Christian," who claims to support the ideals of the Declaration of Independence and the Pledge of Allegience and voted against it IS immoral.
While proponents are entitled to their victory lap after successful political campaigns, their moral triumphalism is another matter, because it ignores the fact that any economic policy involves trade-offs. If proponents declare the benefits to be morally good, then the drawbacks that result must be morally bad, no? Maybe. Maybe not.
Of course, this is an issue only if the minimum wage is set at a level above what the unfettered market would pay for unskilled labor. If the market already is paying people more than the law requires, the minimum wage is an empty gesture, economically and morally null. It can be argued that raising the minimum wage has some beneficial effect on those earning higher than minimum wages, but there is a more important point to be made.
An "unfettered market" does not exist. The writer's use of this term is an example of the mythology I mentioned above. The notion is that whatever helps wage-earners is a "fetter" to the Market, but direct and blatant impositions on the Market benefitting non-wage-earners are NOT "fetters."
The Federal Reserve regularly manipulates the Market by controlling interest rates. Legislatures owned by non-wage-earners regularly manipulate the Market via taxation (increasing or decreasing), laws restricting union organizing, and adjustment of certification/licensing of occupations in ways to increase the labor pool (which holds wages down).
I've read the Dispatch for fifty years, and while it regularly complains about imposition of "fetters" by labor, I have never seen it editorialize against "fetters" imposed by the privileged.
Moreover, if the morality of this whole question is to be decided by how many more people can get jobs, rather than on the quality of life of workers and their families; then, clearly, the minimum wage should be REDUCED - as far as it needs to be to allow everyone a job. Whether or not the people can survive without turning to crime is apparently irrelevant.
Below you can see a major problem we face in our most "religious," compassionate, "democracy"-spreading, shining-city-on-a-hill nation.
It's an old problem, one that has existed since the discovery of agriculture allowed "civilization" to crawl into hierarchical form: the people at the upper end of the hierarchy truly believe they belong there and that those below them deserve their status too.
The culture is founded on nonsensical "truths" - more correctly myths - that support the notion that the way things are at present is good, proper, preordained, blessed by God (or gods), in accordance with "holy books," "the way they've always been, the only way things can work, not perfect but still the best ever, etc.
In a pyramid-shaped system, obviously, the few closer to the top of the hierarchy (e.g. Pharo, King, President, Industrialist) reap the greatest rewards; and the very large number near or at the bottom reap the least.
Can you guess what group of individuals revere this arrangement? Love it, like it, accept it, suspect it, resent it, resist it, or hate it? Well, those who benefit at others' expense (or believe they do) always defend the inherent and arbitrary inequality of the system, and trot out the long-established, mythical dogma as supporting proof.
Of course there are those among them who know what they are doing; i.e. cold-bloodedly exploiting other human beings - in some cases millions, maybe billions, of their fellow human beings. But, frighteningly, many of these folks (especially, but not limited to, the Upper Middle Class) actually believe their own propaganda, and actually feel hurt when the immorality of their prerogatives is pointed out to them.
Such is the case demonstrated below in a recent piece appearing in the Columbus Dispatch. I have commented throughout the piece in red and have highlighted parts of the article with blue.
(a column published along side the one discussed below and written from a working person's viewpoint, can be found at: http://www.ukuleleman.net/2006/11/working-persons-view-of-minimum-wage.html )
- Uke Man
Will increasing the minimum wage help lowest-paid workers?
Not necessarily: Supporters gloss over full costs of such laws
Monday, December 04, 2006
GLENN SHELLER
Proponents of the minimum-wage increases passed in Ohio and five other states on Nov. 7 are ecstatic over their success and claim not only a political victory, but a moral one. Paying people an "adequate" wage, they say, is a moral issue.
Presumably, then, if you voted for the minimum-wage increase you acted morally, and if you voted against it, well . . . Anyone who believes the economy is doing well, who claims to be "Christian," who claims to support the ideals of the Declaration of Independence and the Pledge of Allegience and voted against it IS immoral.
While proponents are entitled to their victory lap after successful political campaigns, their moral triumphalism is another matter, because it ignores the fact that any economic policy involves trade-offs. If proponents declare the benefits to be morally good, then the drawbacks that result must be morally bad, no? Maybe. Maybe not.
Of course, this is an issue only if the minimum wage is set at a level above what the unfettered market would pay for unskilled labor. If the market already is paying people more than the law requires, the minimum wage is an empty gesture, economically and morally null. It can be argued that raising the minimum wage has some beneficial effect on those earning higher than minimum wages, but there is a more important point to be made.
An "unfettered market" does not exist. The writer's use of this term is an example of the mythology I mentioned above. The notion is that whatever helps wage-earners is a "fetter" to the Market, but direct and blatant impositions on the Market benefitting non-wage-earners are NOT "fetters."
The Federal Reserve regularly manipulates the Market by controlling interest rates. Legislatures owned by non-wage-earners regularly manipulate the Market via taxation (increasing or decreasing), laws restricting union organizing, and adjustment of certification/licensing of occupations in ways to increase the labor pool (which holds wages down).
I've read the Dispatch for fifty years, and while it regularly complains about imposition of "fetters" by labor, I have never seen it editorialize against "fetters" imposed by the privileged.
But certainly, raising the minimum wage above what the free market would pay for unskilled labor has drawbacks. For one thing, it raises the prices that we pay for goods and services. That includes raising the prices paid by the poor, the very people the minimum wage is supposed to help. Depending on how high the minimum wage is raised, it also can mean that jobs that would have been created won’t be created. If you don't know the 80-20 rule taught in business schools, you need to. Eighty percent of what is sold is bought by the top twenty percent of the income spectrum. People earning minimum wage have barely enough to survive. The ginks who will possibly be spending a bit more will be those who can offord it.
Here’s a hypothetical example: A woman owns a small shop and employs two clerks at $5 an hour, for a total labor cost of $10 an hour. The owner feels she needs and can just afford to hire a third clerk at $5 an hour, raising her total wage overhead to $15 an hour. One needs to consider WHY she "feels" that she can afford three workers at $5.00 an hour? How much does she earn a year? How much more, if any, will she make with an extra worker? All of this is important, as I will explain.
But then voters or legislators raise the minimum wage to $7.25 an hour. Suddenly, the two clerks she already has cost her $14.50 an hour, using up all but 50 cents of the money she had hoped to pay to a third clerk. So a third clerk position is now out of the question. Whoever would have gotten that job is out of luck. The woman may, indeed, choose not to hire the third worker, but whether or not that action is "moral" or not depends on the answers to a number of questions.
Does she get a good return on her investment at the $5.00 an hour rate? Would she still make a good but slightly lower return at the higher rate using two workers? Would she make a good but, again, slightly lower return with three workers at the higher rate? Under all three scenarios is she making significantly more than her workers?
If the answer to any or all of these is "Yes," then the increase in the minimum wage is not the problem. The selfishness of the "owner" is the problem. She can pay the higher rate and hire the third worker AND still be OK herself - the only drawback is that SHE would be a little less well-off while her workers' situation would be a little improved.
This argument may sound strange to some because the myth holds that the equation moves in only one direction: wages are cut or layoffs made to increase profits; profits are NOT cut to increase wages. In fact, there are businesses making 6% profit who are cutting workers because Wall Street demands HIGHER profits. It is not always a matter of avoiding bankruptcy; it more often is a matter of "inadequate" profits.
Minimum-wage proponents will point to the two clerks who just got a big raise and pat themselves on the back. They might even claim that since neither of them lost their jobs, this proves that minimum-wage laws do no harm. Well, Folks, the "big raise" takes those $5.00 an hour, full-time workers (if they are allowed that many hours) from pre-tax earnings of $10,400 to a whopping $15,080 (assuming they never miss a day for their own or their family's illnesses or emergencies). And I'd bet my house that the columnist takes home a bit more than both those figures added together - and probably would like a raise besides. Of course, according to the mythology all of that is as it should/must be.
But they can do this only because nobody thinks about the person who won’t be hired. That person is invisible, but was deprived of a $5-anhour job so that somebody who already has a $5-an-hour job could have a $7.25-an-hour job. How’s that for social justice? Here, the mythology frames the debate falsely. Supposedly it is a zero-sum situation. The only way more workers can be hired is if present workers take a pay cut. I've already shown how that is not necessarily the case. Profits could be reduced to "adequate" levels so as to raise wages to "adequate" levels.
That never gets mentioned, however; the mythology asserts that such action is impossible; the pain is supposed to flow in only ONE direction.
In this example, the minimum wage law sets two minimum wages: $7.25 an hour for those lucky enough to have a job already, and $0 for those shut out.
We can argue all day about how much damage any given minimum wage level will do, but even minimum-wage proponents implicitly acknowledge that such laws are harmful. Otherwise, why not set the minimum much higher? Instead of Ohio’s new $6.85 an hour, why not set the minimum at $10 an hour or $25 an hour or more? This doesn’t happen because even minimum-wage proponents know that raising wages artificially does damage. And minimum-wage opponents think that living and raising children on ten or even fifteen thousand dollars a year doesn't causes damage?
Moreover, if the morality of this whole question is to be decided by how many more people can get jobs, rather than on the quality of life of workers and their families; then, clearly, the minimum wage should be REDUCED - as far as it needs to be to allow everyone a job. Whether or not the people can survive without turning to crime is apparently irrelevant.
But there is another moral factor to be considered. In passing minimumwage laws, society is saying, "Every working member of our society should have at least this much income."
But if society decides to impose a policy it considers a social good, shouldn’t all members of society bear the cost of it? Yet with minimum wage laws, the cost of this mandate is imposed on just one sector of society: employers, many of them small businesses. Minimum-wage proponents are claiming the moral credit for a good deed that they forced somebody else to pay for. This is nonsense.
First of all, everyone doesn't pay the cost of government programs any more than government programs serve everyone. Wealthy Libertarians who hate government in almost every way, nevertheless, love it that government provides police and military force to protect their property from impoverished criminals. And, as the writer suggests, EVERYONE is required to help pay (including the poor) for the "justice" system that protects the wealthy from the poor (an overstatement? look who is incarcerated).
Another example of the double standard is tax abatements for businesses. For the "social good" of being allowed to have a job, businesses are allowed to escape paying taxes for some part of their services, many of which serve the Public as well. The Public, however is required to take up the slack. This, of course, is , unlike the minimum wage, "as it should be."
Here the mythology essentially justifies blackmail. State and national governments could outlaw the practice so that business decisions would be made on factors other than how low a community's workers can be beaten down. But that would be against the laws of God, Nature, and the Market. No one ever even suggests such a wild idea.
Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., who will be speaker of the U.S. House when a Democratic majority opens Congress in January, has pledged that a top item on her agenda will be raising the federal minimum wage to $7.25.
No doubt she or some of the proposal’s supporters will claim that raising the wage is a moral issue. I would hope so, because it is.
They’ll be right. But they’re going to talk only about the half of the moral equation that makes them look good. Maybe, but the sad thing is that so many good people who take umbrage at the concept of an "adequate" wage, or its characterization as a "moral" issue are so indoctrinated by the self-serving, mythological propaganda that while they persevere in debasing their fellowman, ignoring the ideals of Christianity, and abandoning the official values of United States of America, they pat themselves on the back for being such moral defenders of everything sacred.
- Uke Man
Glenn Sheller is editorial page editor of The Dispatch.
gsheller@dispatch.com
Wednesday, December 06, 2006
Foreclosure on Milton Friedman - Good Riddance!!!
Hey Folks,
The Uke Man comments below this excerpt from the New York Times Obituary – which includes George Duhbya Bush’s evaluation of Friedman as “a brilliant mind” with a “moral vision” (god told "Duh" to say that).
The entire obit is at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/16/business/16wire-friedman.html?ex=1179291600&en=8018cc5dee1d38dd&ei=5087&excamp=OVBUmiltonfriedmanobituary
Milton Friedman, Nobel Prize-Winning Economist, Dead at 94
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: November 16, 2006
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- Milton Friedman, the Nobel Prize-winning economist who advocated an unfettered free market and had the ear of three U.S. presidents, died Thursday at age 94.
Friedman died in San Francisco, said Robert Fanger, a spokesman for the Milton and Rose D. Friedman Foundation in Indianapolis. He did not know the cause of death.
"Milton's passion for freedom and liberty has influenced more lives than he ever could possibly know," said Gordon St. Angelo, the foundation's president and CEO, said in a statement. "His writings and ideas have transformed the minds of U.S. presidents, world leaders, entrepreneurs and freshmen economic majors alike."
In more than a dozen books and a column in Newsweek magazine, Friedman championed individual freedom in economics and politics.
His theory of monetarism, adopted in part by the Nixon, Ford and Reagan administrations, opposed the traditional Keynesian economics that had dominated U.S. policy since the New Deal. He was a member of Reagan's Economic Policy Advisory Board.
. . .
"
He has used a brilliant mind to advance a moral vision -- the vision of a society where men and women are free, free to choose, but where government is not as free to override their decisions," President Bush said in 2002. "That vision has changed America, and it is changing the world."
When Milton Friedman talked about “freedom”, he meant “freedom” much like that spread by George W. Bush – hence, a self-serving philosophy becomes a “moral vision.” As Friedman is quoted in the Times obituary: “Some of us have lived here quite comfortably all along.”
Hey Folks,
Milton Friedman was a BIG Deal and highly praised; so you’ve probably guessed that I thought he was a jerk. If so, you’re right.
Miltie is responsible for untold misery around this world, what with his clap-trap about “freedom.” He was what’s called a “Libertarian”; or, that is, a “blood-sucking, self-promoting, self-deluded, rationalizing vampire.”
I’ve never met an impoverished Libertarian. I’ve never met a working class Libertarian. Every Libertarian I’ve ever known or read/heard about is either loaded or convinced he soon WILL be loaded. “FREE” is a big word for them because they really believe that THEY should be FREE to continue being loaded and FREE to become even better rewarded for their application of their “individual responsibility” within the purview of the all-knowing Market and its sacred, invisible “hand” – and everyone else can go suck eggs.
Libertarians are against “government” in all its forms (it restricts Libertarians’ freedom to make money at the expense of everyone else). Well, they're against all its forms EXCEPT in regard to government’s police powers. Not surprisingly, they think THAT is a worthy governmental charge. Can you guess why?
It’s pretty clear. The police need to be there to protect the Libertarians from the masses of people they are screwing to maintain their narrow prerogatives (they'd say they're just exercising their “individual responsibility” – I guess).
Do you know the adage: “The poor can’t sleep for worrying over their next meal. The wealthy can’t sleep for worrying over someone stealing something from them”?
Here’s what Noam Chomsky wrote in 1999 on the topic of Friedman’s philosophy, neoliberalism:
“Neoliberalism is the defining political economic paradigm of our time – it refers to the policies and processes whereby a relative handful of private interests are permitted to control as much as possible of social life in order to maximize their personal profit. Associated initially with Reagan and Thatcher, for the past two decades neoliberalism has been the dominant global political economic trend adopted by political parties of the center and much of the traditional left as well as the right. These parties and the policies they enact represent the immediate interests of extremely wealthy investors and less than one thousand large corporations.
Aside from some academics and members of the business community, the term neoliberalism is largely unknown and unused by the public-at-large, especially in the United States. There, to the contrary, neoliberal initiatives are characterized as free market policies that encourage private enterprise and consumer choice, reward personal responsibility and entrepreneurial initiative, and undermine the dead hand of the incompetent, bureaucratic and parasitic government, that can never do good even if well intended, which it rarely is. A generation of corporate-financed public relations efforts has given these terms and ideas a near sacred aura.
As a result, the claims they make rarely require defense, and are invoked to rationalize anything from lowering taxes on the wealthy and scrapping environmental regulations to dismantling public education and social welfare programs. Indeed, any activity that might interfere with corporate domination of society is automatically suspect because it would interfere with the workings of the free market, which is advanced as the only rational, fair, and democratic allocator of goods and services. At their most eloquent, proponents of neoliberalism sound as if they are doing poor people, the environment, and everybody else a tremendous service as they enact policies on behalf of the wealthy few.”
Milton Friedman was one of the more eloquent purveyors of this crap, and was generously rewarded by the blood-suckers he served.
He’s dead.
It didn’t matter how much value was placed on him by his god, the infallible Market. Even its invisible, infallible hand couldn’t save him.
The fucker is dead.
- Uke Man
The Uke Man comments below this excerpt from the New York Times Obituary – which includes George Duhbya Bush’s evaluation of Friedman as “a brilliant mind” with a “moral vision” (god told "Duh" to say that).
The entire obit is at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/16/business/16wire-friedman.html?ex=1179291600&en=8018cc5dee1d38dd&ei=5087&excamp=OVBUmiltonfriedmanobituary
Milton Friedman, Nobel Prize-Winning Economist, Dead at 94
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: November 16, 2006
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- Milton Friedman, the Nobel Prize-winning economist who advocated an unfettered free market and had the ear of three U.S. presidents, died Thursday at age 94.
Friedman died in San Francisco, said Robert Fanger, a spokesman for the Milton and Rose D. Friedman Foundation in Indianapolis. He did not know the cause of death.
"Milton's passion for freedom and liberty has influenced more lives than he ever could possibly know," said Gordon St. Angelo, the foundation's president and CEO, said in a statement. "His writings and ideas have transformed the minds of U.S. presidents, world leaders, entrepreneurs and freshmen economic majors alike."
In more than a dozen books and a column in Newsweek magazine, Friedman championed individual freedom in economics and politics.
His theory of monetarism, adopted in part by the Nixon, Ford and Reagan administrations, opposed the traditional Keynesian economics that had dominated U.S. policy since the New Deal. He was a member of Reagan's Economic Policy Advisory Board.
. . .
"
He has used a brilliant mind to advance a moral vision -- the vision of a society where men and women are free, free to choose, but where government is not as free to override their decisions," President Bush said in 2002. "That vision has changed America, and it is changing the world."
When Milton Friedman talked about “freedom”, he meant “freedom” much like that spread by George W. Bush – hence, a self-serving philosophy becomes a “moral vision.” As Friedman is quoted in the Times obituary: “Some of us have lived here quite comfortably all along.”
Hey Folks,
Milton Friedman was a BIG Deal and highly praised; so you’ve probably guessed that I thought he was a jerk. If so, you’re right.
Miltie is responsible for untold misery around this world, what with his clap-trap about “freedom.” He was what’s called a “Libertarian”; or, that is, a “blood-sucking, self-promoting, self-deluded, rationalizing vampire.”
I’ve never met an impoverished Libertarian. I’ve never met a working class Libertarian. Every Libertarian I’ve ever known or read/heard about is either loaded or convinced he soon WILL be loaded. “FREE” is a big word for them because they really believe that THEY should be FREE to continue being loaded and FREE to become even better rewarded for their application of their “individual responsibility” within the purview of the all-knowing Market and its sacred, invisible “hand” – and everyone else can go suck eggs.
Libertarians are against “government” in all its forms (it restricts Libertarians’ freedom to make money at the expense of everyone else). Well, they're against all its forms EXCEPT in regard to government’s police powers. Not surprisingly, they think THAT is a worthy governmental charge. Can you guess why?
It’s pretty clear. The police need to be there to protect the Libertarians from the masses of people they are screwing to maintain their narrow prerogatives (they'd say they're just exercising their “individual responsibility” – I guess).
Do you know the adage: “The poor can’t sleep for worrying over their next meal. The wealthy can’t sleep for worrying over someone stealing something from them”?
Here’s what Noam Chomsky wrote in 1999 on the topic of Friedman’s philosophy, neoliberalism:
“Neoliberalism is the defining political economic paradigm of our time – it refers to the policies and processes whereby a relative handful of private interests are permitted to control as much as possible of social life in order to maximize their personal profit. Associated initially with Reagan and Thatcher, for the past two decades neoliberalism has been the dominant global political economic trend adopted by political parties of the center and much of the traditional left as well as the right. These parties and the policies they enact represent the immediate interests of extremely wealthy investors and less than one thousand large corporations.
Aside from some academics and members of the business community, the term neoliberalism is largely unknown and unused by the public-at-large, especially in the United States. There, to the contrary, neoliberal initiatives are characterized as free market policies that encourage private enterprise and consumer choice, reward personal responsibility and entrepreneurial initiative, and undermine the dead hand of the incompetent, bureaucratic and parasitic government, that can never do good even if well intended, which it rarely is. A generation of corporate-financed public relations efforts has given these terms and ideas a near sacred aura.
As a result, the claims they make rarely require defense, and are invoked to rationalize anything from lowering taxes on the wealthy and scrapping environmental regulations to dismantling public education and social welfare programs. Indeed, any activity that might interfere with corporate domination of society is automatically suspect because it would interfere with the workings of the free market, which is advanced as the only rational, fair, and democratic allocator of goods and services. At their most eloquent, proponents of neoliberalism sound as if they are doing poor people, the environment, and everybody else a tremendous service as they enact policies on behalf of the wealthy few.”
Milton Friedman was one of the more eloquent purveyors of this crap, and was generously rewarded by the blood-suckers he served.
He’s dead.
It didn’t matter how much value was placed on him by his god, the infallible Market. Even its invisible, infallible hand couldn’t save him.
The fucker is dead.
- Uke Man
Tuesday, December 05, 2006
Elvis-a-Thon January 6 - 2007
Hey Folks,
Just got word. I will again be part of the Elvis-a-Thon at Little Brothers, 1100 North High Street on Saturday, January 6, 2007.
I'll do two numbers: "Heartbreak Hotel" and "Always on My Mind."
It's a GREAT show with a galaxy of performers. If you have never seen it and care at all about Elvis, you ought to plan on attending.
One of the songs I did last year was "My Way"; a version of that song by Elvis himself is here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRUej62Amqw
More when we get closer to the celebration.
- Uke Man
Just got word. I will again be part of the Elvis-a-Thon at Little Brothers, 1100 North High Street on Saturday, January 6, 2007.
I'll do two numbers: "Heartbreak Hotel" and "Always on My Mind."
It's a GREAT show with a galaxy of performers. If you have never seen it and care at all about Elvis, you ought to plan on attending.
One of the songs I did last year was "My Way"; a version of that song by Elvis himself is here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRUej62Amqw
More when we get closer to the celebration.
- Uke Man
Expell the Bully
Hey Folks,
Doesn't it make you wonder? The media continues to wet its pants; the Democrats foolishly hoped that big brother Baker would do their fighting for them; now, will they talk big but do nothing?
What IS it about this swaggering baboon who CLEARLY is not competent enough to manage a Stop & Go, much less this country that makes cowards of everyone?
Or have the media whores and the "liberal" politicians been cowards all along?
- Uke Man
December 4, 2006
Two More Years
By PAUL KRUGMAN
(a ukethanks to Phyll)
At a reception following the midterm election, President Bush approached Senator-elect James Webb.
“How’s your boy?” asked Mr. Bush.
“I’d like to get them out of Iraq, Mr. President,” replied Mr. Webb, whose son, a Marine lance corporal, is risking his life in Mr. Bush’s war of choice.
“That’s not what I asked you,” the president snapped. “How’s your boy?”
“That’s between me and my boy, Mr. President,” said Mr. Webb.
Good for him. We need people in Washington who are willing to stand up to the bully in chief. Unfortunately, and somewhat mysteriously, they’re still in short supply.
You can understand, if not condone, the way the political and media establishment let itself be browbeaten by Mr. Bush in his post-9/11 political prime. What’s amazing is the extent to which insiders still cringe before a lame duck with a 60 percent disapproval rating.
Look at what seems to have happened to the Iraq Study Group, whose mission statement says that it would provide an “independent assessment.” If press reports are correct, the group did nothing of the sort. Instead, it watered down its conclusions and recommendations, trying to come up with something Mr. Bush wouldn’t reject out of hand.
In particular, says Newsweek, the report “will set no timetables or call for any troop reductions.” All it will do is “suggest that the president could, not should, begin to withdraw forces in the vaguely defined future.”
And all this self-abasement is for naught. Senior Bush aides, Newsweek tells us, are “dismissive, even condescending” toward James Baker, the Bush family consigliere who is the dominant force in the study group, and the report. Of course they are. That’s how bullies always treat their hangers-on.
Even now, it seems, the wise men of Washington can’t bring themselves to face up to two glaringly obvious truths.
The first is that Americans are fighting and dying in Iraq for no reason.
It’s true that terrible things will happen when U.S. forces withdraw. Mr. Bush was attacking a straw man when he mocked those who think we can make a “graceful exit” from Iraq. Everyone I know realizes that the civil war will get even worse after we’re gone, and that there will probably be a bloody bout of ethnic cleansing that effectively partitions the country into hostile segments.
But nobody — not even Donald Rumsfeld, it turns out — thinks we’re making progress in Iraq. So the same terrible things that would happen if we withdrew soon will still happen if we delay that withdrawal for two, three or more years. The only difference is that we’ll sacrifice many more American lives along the way.
The second truth is that the war will go on all the same, unless something or someone forces Mr. Bush to change course.
During his recent trip to Vietnam, Mr. Bush was asked whether there were any lessons from that conflict for Iraq. His response: “We’ll succeed unless we quit.”
It was a bizarre answer given both the history of the Vietnam War and the facts on the ground in Iraq, but it makes perfect sense given what we know about Mr. Bush’s character. He has never been willing to own up to mistakes, however trivial. If he were to accept the failure of his adventure in Iraq, he would be admitting, at least implicitly, to having made the mother of all mistakes.
So Mr. Bush will keep sending other men’s children off to fight his war. And he’ll always insist that Iraq would have been a great victory if only his successors had shared his steely determination.
Does this mean that we’re doomed to at least two more years of bloody futility? Not necessarily. Last month the public delivered a huge vote of no confidence in Mr. Bush and his war. He’s still the commander in chief, but the new majority in Congress can put a lot of pressure on him to at least begin a withdrawal.
I’m worried, however, that Democrats may have counted on the Iraq Study Group to provide them with political cover. Now that the study group has apparently wimped out, will the Democrats do the same?
Well, here’s a question for those who might be tempted, yet again, to shy away from a confrontation with Mr. Bush over Iraq: How do you ask a man to be the last to die for a bully’s ego?
Doesn't it make you wonder? The media continues to wet its pants; the Democrats foolishly hoped that big brother Baker would do their fighting for them; now, will they talk big but do nothing?
What IS it about this swaggering baboon who CLEARLY is not competent enough to manage a Stop & Go, much less this country that makes cowards of everyone?
Or have the media whores and the "liberal" politicians been cowards all along?
- Uke Man
December 4, 2006
Two More Years
By PAUL KRUGMAN
(a ukethanks to Phyll)
At a reception following the midterm election, President Bush approached Senator-elect James Webb.
“How’s your boy?” asked Mr. Bush.
“I’d like to get them out of Iraq, Mr. President,” replied Mr. Webb, whose son, a Marine lance corporal, is risking his life in Mr. Bush’s war of choice.
“That’s not what I asked you,” the president snapped. “How’s your boy?”
“That’s between me and my boy, Mr. President,” said Mr. Webb.
Good for him. We need people in Washington who are willing to stand up to the bully in chief. Unfortunately, and somewhat mysteriously, they’re still in short supply.
You can understand, if not condone, the way the political and media establishment let itself be browbeaten by Mr. Bush in his post-9/11 political prime. What’s amazing is the extent to which insiders still cringe before a lame duck with a 60 percent disapproval rating.
Look at what seems to have happened to the Iraq Study Group, whose mission statement says that it would provide an “independent assessment.” If press reports are correct, the group did nothing of the sort. Instead, it watered down its conclusions and recommendations, trying to come up with something Mr. Bush wouldn’t reject out of hand.
In particular, says Newsweek, the report “will set no timetables or call for any troop reductions.” All it will do is “suggest that the president could, not should, begin to withdraw forces in the vaguely defined future.”
And all this self-abasement is for naught. Senior Bush aides, Newsweek tells us, are “dismissive, even condescending” toward James Baker, the Bush family consigliere who is the dominant force in the study group, and the report. Of course they are. That’s how bullies always treat their hangers-on.
Even now, it seems, the wise men of Washington can’t bring themselves to face up to two glaringly obvious truths.
The first is that Americans are fighting and dying in Iraq for no reason.
It’s true that terrible things will happen when U.S. forces withdraw. Mr. Bush was attacking a straw man when he mocked those who think we can make a “graceful exit” from Iraq. Everyone I know realizes that the civil war will get even worse after we’re gone, and that there will probably be a bloody bout of ethnic cleansing that effectively partitions the country into hostile segments.
But nobody — not even Donald Rumsfeld, it turns out — thinks we’re making progress in Iraq. So the same terrible things that would happen if we withdrew soon will still happen if we delay that withdrawal for two, three or more years. The only difference is that we’ll sacrifice many more American lives along the way.
The second truth is that the war will go on all the same, unless something or someone forces Mr. Bush to change course.
During his recent trip to Vietnam, Mr. Bush was asked whether there were any lessons from that conflict for Iraq. His response: “We’ll succeed unless we quit.”
It was a bizarre answer given both the history of the Vietnam War and the facts on the ground in Iraq, but it makes perfect sense given what we know about Mr. Bush’s character. He has never been willing to own up to mistakes, however trivial. If he were to accept the failure of his adventure in Iraq, he would be admitting, at least implicitly, to having made the mother of all mistakes.
So Mr. Bush will keep sending other men’s children off to fight his war. And he’ll always insist that Iraq would have been a great victory if only his successors had shared his steely determination.
Does this mean that we’re doomed to at least two more years of bloody futility? Not necessarily. Last month the public delivered a huge vote of no confidence in Mr. Bush and his war. He’s still the commander in chief, but the new majority in Congress can put a lot of pressure on him to at least begin a withdrawal.
I’m worried, however, that Democrats may have counted on the Iraq Study Group to provide them with political cover. Now that the study group has apparently wimped out, will the Democrats do the same?
Well, here’s a question for those who might be tempted, yet again, to shy away from a confrontation with Mr. Bush over Iraq: How do you ask a man to be the last to die for a bully’s ego?
Monday, December 04, 2006
the Star Wars Game
Hey Folks,
Listening to Stephanie Miller’s radio show the other day, I heard her indict the Bush Regime for not really making the effort to defend against terrorism. One example she shared was that Donald Rumsfeld had refused to transfer some funding from the anti-missile defense project to the anti-terrorism effort. Good point.
Obviously, the missile “test” of North Korea notwithstanding, none of our present “enemies” can deliver any sort of bomb to this country by missile. Terrorists, on the other hand, DO have the capability of sneaking one in via less technologically demanding means. So, Rummy is a dummy; case closed.
However, this reminded me of something I have believed since Uncle Ronnie Reagan got us going down this “Star Wars” / “Missile Shield” road. This stuff is NOT in the hopper, we are NOT spending all this money on it, it is not the Republicans’ baby because it will PROTECT us. No!! It is important because it will ENABLE us.
Sure, at some point, a missile “shield” could be needed for defense, but right now it would serve offensively. With the Cold War stalemate broken after the collapse of the Soviet Union, this country became, as many of us grew sick of hearing, “the one remaining super power,” and that gave the money/power-hungry ginks (e.g. neo-cons) wet dreams of world domination.
There is all sorts of evidence in this regard; the neo-cons weren’t shy about sharing their notions that the U.S. should and would dominate the new century, that no one would be allowed to come close to the level of US military dominance, that Middle East oil would be controlled (and used as a disciplinary tool) to maintain and advance U.S. dominance (including by military means whenever and wherever necessary).
This dreamed-of dominance goes beyond control of sheikdoms and other small, relatively impotent countries. It includes everybody. Our “allies” and “friends” can be our pals if they accept our rules and toe the American line, but they WILL be subservient. Hence “Star Wars.”
As shown by the uproar over the potential development by Iran and North Korea of nuclear weapons, the US desperately wants to keep its dominating edge. If small countries have such powerful weapons, they may dare to tell its American overseers to kiss off, lest they blow up the oil fields, destroy major economies, or otherwise tip over the money ginks’ applecart.
A number of countries already have nuclear weapons AND missile technology (Europeans, for example). Others have the weapons and the ability to create delivery systems. These folks can’t be kept in line as easily by threats as can be less developed countries. Hence, Star Wars/Missile Shield.
It’s simple, folks. We need the missile defense to one-up the world so we can say to everyone, not just undeveloped third-world countries, “Do what we say, or we will destroy you!! And you can’t do anything about it."
Somehow, that doesn't make me feel safer.
- Uke Man
Listening to Stephanie Miller’s radio show the other day, I heard her indict the Bush Regime for not really making the effort to defend against terrorism. One example she shared was that Donald Rumsfeld had refused to transfer some funding from the anti-missile defense project to the anti-terrorism effort. Good point.
Obviously, the missile “test” of North Korea notwithstanding, none of our present “enemies” can deliver any sort of bomb to this country by missile. Terrorists, on the other hand, DO have the capability of sneaking one in via less technologically demanding means. So, Rummy is a dummy; case closed.
However, this reminded me of something I have believed since Uncle Ronnie Reagan got us going down this “Star Wars” / “Missile Shield” road. This stuff is NOT in the hopper, we are NOT spending all this money on it, it is not the Republicans’ baby because it will PROTECT us. No!! It is important because it will ENABLE us.
Sure, at some point, a missile “shield” could be needed for defense, but right now it would serve offensively. With the Cold War stalemate broken after the collapse of the Soviet Union, this country became, as many of us grew sick of hearing, “the one remaining super power,” and that gave the money/power-hungry ginks (e.g. neo-cons) wet dreams of world domination.
There is all sorts of evidence in this regard; the neo-cons weren’t shy about sharing their notions that the U.S. should and would dominate the new century, that no one would be allowed to come close to the level of US military dominance, that Middle East oil would be controlled (and used as a disciplinary tool) to maintain and advance U.S. dominance (including by military means whenever and wherever necessary).
This dreamed-of dominance goes beyond control of sheikdoms and other small, relatively impotent countries. It includes everybody. Our “allies” and “friends” can be our pals if they accept our rules and toe the American line, but they WILL be subservient. Hence “Star Wars.”
As shown by the uproar over the potential development by Iran and North Korea of nuclear weapons, the US desperately wants to keep its dominating edge. If small countries have such powerful weapons, they may dare to tell its American overseers to kiss off, lest they blow up the oil fields, destroy major economies, or otherwise tip over the money ginks’ applecart.
A number of countries already have nuclear weapons AND missile technology (Europeans, for example). Others have the weapons and the ability to create delivery systems. These folks can’t be kept in line as easily by threats as can be less developed countries. Hence, Star Wars/Missile Shield.
It’s simple, folks. We need the missile defense to one-up the world so we can say to everyone, not just undeveloped third-world countries, “Do what we say, or we will destroy you!! And you can’t do anything about it."
Somehow, that doesn't make me feel safer.
- Uke Man
Dead Computer
Hey Folks,
I'm writing to you from a friend's computer. Mine bit the bullet, flipped out, went bonkers, and refuses to take its medicine.
I hope to buy a new one and get it operating before tomorrow.
In any case, I apologize for the lack of pictures and possible temporary paucity of postings.
Hang in with me. Tyler Barnes (of the band and computer fame) will be helping the Old Guy with this adventure; so, there IS hope!!
- Uke Man
I'm writing to you from a friend's computer. Mine bit the bullet, flipped out, went bonkers, and refuses to take its medicine.
I hope to buy a new one and get it operating before tomorrow.
In any case, I apologize for the lack of pictures and possible temporary paucity of postings.
Hang in with me. Tyler Barnes (of the band and computer fame) will be helping the Old Guy with this adventure; so, there IS hope!!
- Uke Man
Homo Estupido ??
Hey Folks,
I'm sorry, but what ever happened to peaceful co-existence??
How would religious people think and feel if non-religious people wanted churches hidden behind trees and religious programming broadcast only late at night so as not to influence children whose parents don't agree with religious "theories"? and then "united" to "force" religions to meet these demands?
Hmmmmm . . .
- Uke Man
Scientist Fights Church Effort to Hide Museum's Pre-Human Fossils
Kendrick FrazierSkeptical Inquirer
Famed paleoanthropologist Richard Leakey is giving no quarter to powerful evangelical church leaders who are pressing Kenya's national museum to relegate to a back room its world-famous collection of hominid fossils showing the evolution of humans' early ancestors.
Leakey called the churches' plans "the most outrageous comments I have ever heard."
He told The Daily Telegraph (London): "The National Museums of Kenya should be extremely strong in presenting a very forceful case for the evolutionary theory of the origins of mankind. The collection it holds is one of Kenya's very few global claims to fame and it must be forthright in defending its right to be at the forefront of this branch of science." Leakey was for years director of the museum and of Kenya's entire museum system.
The museum's collections include the most complete skeleton yet found of Homo erectus, the 1.7-million-year-old Turkana Boy unearthed by Leakey's team in 1984 near Lake Turkana in northern Kenya.
The museum also holds bones from several specimens of Australopithecus anamensis, believed to be the first hominid to walk upright, four million years ago. Together the artifacts amount to the clearest record yet discovered of the origins of Homo sapiens.
Leaders of Kenya's Pentecostal congregation, with six million adherents, want the human fossils de-emphasized.
"The Christian community here is very uncomfortable that Leakey and his group want their theories presented as fact," said Bishop Bonifes Adoyo, head of the largest Pentecostal church in Kenya, the Christ is the Answer Ministries.
"Our doctrine is not that we evolved from apes, and we have grave concerns that the museum wants to enhance the prominence of something presented as fact which is just one theory," the bishop said.
Bishop Adoyo said all the country's churches would unite to force the museum to change its focus when it reopens after eighteen months of renovations in June 2007. "We will write to them, we will call them, we will make sure our people know about this, and we will see what we can do to make our voice known," he said.
It was these comments Leakey termed outrageous. Calling members of the Pentecostal church fundamentalists, Leakey added: "Their theories are far, far from the mainstream on this. They cannot be allowed to meddle with what is the world's leading collection of these types of fossils."
For its part, the museum sounded like it was trying to walk a tightrope. It said it was in a "tricky situation" in trying to redesign its exhibition space for all kinds of visitors.
"We have a responsibility to present all our artifacts in the best way that we can so that everyone who sees them can gain a full understanding of their significance," said Ali Chege, public relations manager for the National Museums of Kenya. "But things can get tricky when you have religious beliefs on one side, and intellectuals, scientists, or researchers on the other, saying the opposite."
This article first appeared in Skeptical Inquirer magazine.
I'm sorry, but what ever happened to peaceful co-existence??
How would religious people think and feel if non-religious people wanted churches hidden behind trees and religious programming broadcast only late at night so as not to influence children whose parents don't agree with religious "theories"? and then "united" to "force" religions to meet these demands?
Hmmmmm . . .
- Uke Man
Scientist Fights Church Effort to Hide Museum's Pre-Human Fossils
Kendrick FrazierSkeptical Inquirer
Famed paleoanthropologist Richard Leakey is giving no quarter to powerful evangelical church leaders who are pressing Kenya's national museum to relegate to a back room its world-famous collection of hominid fossils showing the evolution of humans' early ancestors.
Leakey called the churches' plans "the most outrageous comments I have ever heard."
He told The Daily Telegraph (London): "The National Museums of Kenya should be extremely strong in presenting a very forceful case for the evolutionary theory of the origins of mankind. The collection it holds is one of Kenya's very few global claims to fame and it must be forthright in defending its right to be at the forefront of this branch of science." Leakey was for years director of the museum and of Kenya's entire museum system.
The museum's collections include the most complete skeleton yet found of Homo erectus, the 1.7-million-year-old Turkana Boy unearthed by Leakey's team in 1984 near Lake Turkana in northern Kenya.
The museum also holds bones from several specimens of Australopithecus anamensis, believed to be the first hominid to walk upright, four million years ago. Together the artifacts amount to the clearest record yet discovered of the origins of Homo sapiens.
Leaders of Kenya's Pentecostal congregation, with six million adherents, want the human fossils de-emphasized.
"The Christian community here is very uncomfortable that Leakey and his group want their theories presented as fact," said Bishop Bonifes Adoyo, head of the largest Pentecostal church in Kenya, the Christ is the Answer Ministries.
"Our doctrine is not that we evolved from apes, and we have grave concerns that the museum wants to enhance the prominence of something presented as fact which is just one theory," the bishop said.
Bishop Adoyo said all the country's churches would unite to force the museum to change its focus when it reopens after eighteen months of renovations in June 2007. "We will write to them, we will call them, we will make sure our people know about this, and we will see what we can do to make our voice known," he said.
It was these comments Leakey termed outrageous. Calling members of the Pentecostal church fundamentalists, Leakey added: "Their theories are far, far from the mainstream on this. They cannot be allowed to meddle with what is the world's leading collection of these types of fossils."
For its part, the museum sounded like it was trying to walk a tightrope. It said it was in a "tricky situation" in trying to redesign its exhibition space for all kinds of visitors.
"We have a responsibility to present all our artifacts in the best way that we can so that everyone who sees them can gain a full understanding of their significance," said Ali Chege, public relations manager for the National Museums of Kenya. "But things can get tricky when you have religious beliefs on one side, and intellectuals, scientists, or researchers on the other, saying the opposite."
This article first appeared in Skeptical Inquirer magazine.
Sunday, December 03, 2006
Kamini !!
Hey Folks,
Here's a refreshing young man to entertain you. He's sweeping France and You Tube. Why not the world.
Let's join the dance.
- Uke Man
Click here:
http://www.kamini.fr/home.html Then click on "Videos"
MARLY-GOMONT, France (AFP) - A black rapper from a backwater village is rapidly becoming a media sensation in France after a tongue-in-cheek video of him singing about his rural experience debuted on the Internet
Kamini, as he is known, has been thrust into the spotlight since his tune about his home town (population 423) of Marly-Gomont first hit the web in September.
He has been interviewed on television, sung on a talent show, and been fought over by record labels who see him as a new entertainer offering a rap wrested free of the urban angst common to the genre.
"'Marly-Gomont' is a song about my life," the 26-year-old told AFP as he sat outside his home in the rolling countryside north of Paris on Sunday. His father, a Congolese doctor, has his practice on the ground floor.
The video, made over three days by a friend doing film studies, features Kamini rapping about being a young black guy growing up in a rustic setting populated by cows, tractors, old farmers, and more cows.
Although humouristic, it takes stabs at the latent racism he often ran up against, with for instance lyrics that go: "There's no concrete, only pastures, but even so I've come across a lot of trash."
Locals from the village are seen dancing along in the video, which has none of the flashy cars and g-stringed models common to the more traditional rap clips, even in France.
After being sent in as a sample to French music companies, it found its way on to video websites such as YouTube, where the number of viewers has grown to over a million. Its success on Kamini's own site (www.kamini.fr) shows no sign of flagging.
A small label in the northern city of Lille which is backing Kamini, La Plebe, said interest from the big record firms was now running red-hot.
"The majors have contacted us. They know that the public and the media are behind us," the head of La Plebe, Martin Coulon, said.
Kamini, who is keeping his job as a part-time psychiatric nurse until a deal is signed, said that "a lot of people think this is a flash in the pan. But we've got other tracks. We've already got a finished album."
Here's a refreshing young man to entertain you. He's sweeping France and You Tube. Why not the world.
Let's join the dance.
- Uke Man
Click here:
http://www.kamini.fr/home.html Then click on "Videos"
MARLY-GOMONT, France (AFP) - A black rapper from a backwater village is rapidly becoming a media sensation in France after a tongue-in-cheek video of him singing about his rural experience debuted on the Internet
Kamini, as he is known, has been thrust into the spotlight since his tune about his home town (population 423) of Marly-Gomont first hit the web in September.
He has been interviewed on television, sung on a talent show, and been fought over by record labels who see him as a new entertainer offering a rap wrested free of the urban angst common to the genre.
"'Marly-Gomont' is a song about my life," the 26-year-old told AFP as he sat outside his home in the rolling countryside north of Paris on Sunday. His father, a Congolese doctor, has his practice on the ground floor.
The video, made over three days by a friend doing film studies, features Kamini rapping about being a young black guy growing up in a rustic setting populated by cows, tractors, old farmers, and more cows.
Although humouristic, it takes stabs at the latent racism he often ran up against, with for instance lyrics that go: "There's no concrete, only pastures, but even so I've come across a lot of trash."
Locals from the village are seen dancing along in the video, which has none of the flashy cars and g-stringed models common to the more traditional rap clips, even in France.
After being sent in as a sample to French music companies, it found its way on to video websites such as YouTube, where the number of viewers has grown to over a million. Its success on Kamini's own site (www.kamini.fr) shows no sign of flagging.
A small label in the northern city of Lille which is backing Kamini, La Plebe, said interest from the big record firms was now running red-hot.
"The majors have contacted us. They know that the public and the media are behind us," the head of La Plebe, Martin Coulon, said.
Kamini, who is keeping his job as a part-time psychiatric nurse until a deal is signed, said that "a lot of people think this is a flash in the pan. But we've got other tracks. We've already got a finished album."
Tasering the dangerous "enemy"
Hey Folks,
Yesterday, I posted the story directly below this one, regarding the paranoia over "evil" Muslim Americans.
This morning, by coincidence, I came across these videos regarding the tasering of a 23 year-old Iranian-American student, Mostafa Tabatabainejad, by UCLA police inside the university library:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JGlvEcPmug Video & Sound
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zeq_Kid7Fo Audio & Subtitles & some of the story (from the UCLA newspaper, "Daily Bruin," I'd guess).
More information is available at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mostafa_Tabatabainejad
You wonder how some folks who believe in God can say, without choking, "We are made in His image." Based on how stupid, fearful, and violent we humans are, that doesn't seem very complimentary of God.
- Uke Man
Yesterday, I posted the story directly below this one, regarding the paranoia over "evil" Muslim Americans.
This morning, by coincidence, I came across these videos regarding the tasering of a 23 year-old Iranian-American student, Mostafa Tabatabainejad, by UCLA police inside the university library:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JGlvEcPmug Video & Sound
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zeq_Kid7Fo Audio & Subtitles & some of the story (from the UCLA newspaper, "Daily Bruin," I'd guess).
More information is available at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mostafa_Tabatabainejad
You wonder how some folks who believe in God can say, without choking, "We are made in His image." Based on how stupid, fearful, and violent we humans are, that doesn't seem very complimentary of God.
- Uke Man
Saturday, December 02, 2006
Nobody ever went broke underestimaying the intelligence of the American public - H.L. Mencken
Hey Folks,
No surprise here. Historically we've practiced genocide against Native Americans, kept slaves, subjected free Blacks to Jim Crow discrimination, turned away a shipload of Jews fleeing Nazi Germany (sent them back), put Japanese Americans in concentration camps and stole their property, kept women from inheriting property until the 1940's, and passed numerous state constitutional ammendments to discriminate against gays and lesbians.
Why should similar prejudice aimed at American Muslims be a surprise?
Oh, the Uke Man is getting carried away; this shining city on the hill, this "Christian" nation, this home of the free and the brave where everyone is created equal, where we have the sacred right to freedom of religion; where here we have God on our side; He informs us, guides us (almost as well as the invisible hand of the Market). How could we be anything but perfect?
How could we act out of stupidity, ignorance, and fear? Not US in the U.S. - God wouldn't allow that, and our God is bigger than their god; and God talks to our president.
So, there you are. The article below must be just made up propaganda. Yeah, uh huh.
- Uke Man
In U.S., fear and distrust of Muslims runs deep
By Bernd Debusmann, Fri Dec 1, 9:05
WASHINGTON (Reuters)- When radio host Jerry Klein suggested that all Muslims in the United States should be identified with a crescent-shape tattoo or a distinctive arm band, the phone lines jammed instantly
The first caller to the station in Washington said that Klein must be "off his rocker." The second congratulated him and added: "Not only do you tattoo them in the middle of their forehead but you ship them out of this country ... they are here to kill us."
Another said that tattoos, armbands and other identifying markers such as crescent marks on driver's licenses, passports and birth certificates did not go far enough. "What good is identifying them?" he asked. "You have to set up encampments like during World War Two with the Japanese and Germans."
At the end of the one-hour show, rich with arguments on why visual identification of "the threat in our midst" would alleviate the public's fears, Klein revealed that he had staged a hoax. It drew out reactions that are not uncommon in post-9/11 America.
"I can't believe any of you are sick enough to have agreed for one second with anything I said," he told his audience on the AM station 630 WMAL (http://www.wmal.com/), which covers Washington, Northern Virginia and Maryland
"For me to suggest to tattoo marks on people's bodies, have them wear armbands, put a crescent moon on their driver's license on their passport or birth certificate is disgusting. It's beyond disgusting.
"Because basically what you just did was show me how the German people allowed what happened to the Jews to happen ... We need to separate them, we need to tattoo their arms, we need to make them wear the yellow Star of David, we need to put them in concentration camps, we basically just need to kill them all because they are dangerous."
The show aired on November 26, the Sunday after the Thanksgiving holiday, and Klein said in an interview afterwards he had been surprised by the response.
"The switchboard went from empty to totally jammed within minutes," said Klein. "There were plenty of callers angry with me, but there were plenty who agreed."
POLLS SHOW WIDESPREAD ANTI-MUSLIM SENTIMENT
Those in agreement are not a fringe minority: A Gallup poll this summer of more than 1,000 Americans showed that 39 percent were in favor of requiring Muslims in the United States, including American citizens, to carry special identification.
Roughly a quarter of those polled said they would not want to live next door to a Muslim and a third thought that Muslims in the United States sympathized with al Qaeda, the extremist group behind the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington.
A poll carried out by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), an advocacy group, found that for one in three Americans, the word Islam triggers negative connotations such as "war," "hatred" and "terrorist." The war in Iraq has contributed to such perceptions.
Klein's show followed a week of heated discussions on talk radio, including his own, and online forums over an incident on November 22 involving six Muslim clerics. They were handcuffed and taken off a US Airways flight after passengers reported "suspicious behavior" that included praying in the departure gate area.
The clerics, on their way to a meeting of the North American Imams Federation, were detained in a holding cell, questioned by police and
FBI agents, and released. Muslim community leaders saw the incident as yet more evidence of anti-Muslim prejudice.
IGNORANCE SEEN AS KEY PROBLEM
Several American Muslims interviewed on the subject of prejudice over the past few weeks said ignorance was at the core of the problem.
"The level of knowledge is very, very low," said Mohamed Esa, a U.S. Muslim of Arab descent who teaches a course on Islam at McDaniel College in Maryland. "There are 1.3 billion Muslims in the world and some people think they are all terrorists."
Hossam Ahmed, a retired Air Force Reserve colonel who occasionally leads prayer meetings for the small Muslim congregation at the
Pentagon agreed. "Ignorance is the number one problem. Education is of the essence."
There are no hard figures on how many Muslims have been subject to harassment or prejudice and community leaders say that ugly incidents can prompt spontaneous expressions of support. Such as the e-mail a Minneapolis woman sent to CAIR after the imams were taken off their flight.
"I would like to ... help," the e-mail said. "While I cannot offer plane tickets, I would be happy to drive at least 2 or 3 of them. My car is small, but at least some of our hearts in this land of the free are large."
And optimists saw signs of change in the November 4 election of the first Muslim to the U.S. House of Representatives, which has 435 members.
Democrat Keith Ellison, a 43-year-old African-American lawyer, did not stress his religion during his campaign for a Minnesota seat, but said his victory would "signal to people who are not Muslims that Muslims have a lot to offer to the United States and the improvement of our country."
No surprise here. Historically we've practiced genocide against Native Americans, kept slaves, subjected free Blacks to Jim Crow discrimination, turned away a shipload of Jews fleeing Nazi Germany (sent them back), put Japanese Americans in concentration camps and stole their property, kept women from inheriting property until the 1940's, and passed numerous state constitutional ammendments to discriminate against gays and lesbians.
Why should similar prejudice aimed at American Muslims be a surprise?
Oh, the Uke Man is getting carried away; this shining city on the hill, this "Christian" nation, this home of the free and the brave where everyone is created equal, where we have the sacred right to freedom of religion; where here we have God on our side; He informs us, guides us (almost as well as the invisible hand of the Market). How could we be anything but perfect?
How could we act out of stupidity, ignorance, and fear? Not US in the U.S. - God wouldn't allow that, and our God is bigger than their god; and God talks to our president.
So, there you are. The article below must be just made up propaganda. Yeah, uh huh.
- Uke Man
In U.S., fear and distrust of Muslims runs deep
By Bernd Debusmann, Fri Dec 1, 9:05
WASHINGTON (Reuters)- When radio host Jerry Klein suggested that all Muslims in the United States should be identified with a crescent-shape tattoo or a distinctive arm band, the phone lines jammed instantly
The first caller to the station in Washington said that Klein must be "off his rocker." The second congratulated him and added: "Not only do you tattoo them in the middle of their forehead but you ship them out of this country ... they are here to kill us."
Another said that tattoos, armbands and other identifying markers such as crescent marks on driver's licenses, passports and birth certificates did not go far enough. "What good is identifying them?" he asked. "You have to set up encampments like during World War Two with the Japanese and Germans."
At the end of the one-hour show, rich with arguments on why visual identification of "the threat in our midst" would alleviate the public's fears, Klein revealed that he had staged a hoax. It drew out reactions that are not uncommon in post-9/11 America.
"I can't believe any of you are sick enough to have agreed for one second with anything I said," he told his audience on the AM station 630 WMAL (http://www.wmal.com/), which covers Washington, Northern Virginia and Maryland
"For me to suggest to tattoo marks on people's bodies, have them wear armbands, put a crescent moon on their driver's license on their passport or birth certificate is disgusting. It's beyond disgusting.
"Because basically what you just did was show me how the German people allowed what happened to the Jews to happen ... We need to separate them, we need to tattoo their arms, we need to make them wear the yellow Star of David, we need to put them in concentration camps, we basically just need to kill them all because they are dangerous."
The show aired on November 26, the Sunday after the Thanksgiving holiday, and Klein said in an interview afterwards he had been surprised by the response.
"The switchboard went from empty to totally jammed within minutes," said Klein. "There were plenty of callers angry with me, but there were plenty who agreed."
POLLS SHOW WIDESPREAD ANTI-MUSLIM SENTIMENT
Those in agreement are not a fringe minority: A Gallup poll this summer of more than 1,000 Americans showed that 39 percent were in favor of requiring Muslims in the United States, including American citizens, to carry special identification.
Roughly a quarter of those polled said they would not want to live next door to a Muslim and a third thought that Muslims in the United States sympathized with al Qaeda, the extremist group behind the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington.
A poll carried out by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), an advocacy group, found that for one in three Americans, the word Islam triggers negative connotations such as "war," "hatred" and "terrorist." The war in Iraq has contributed to such perceptions.
Klein's show followed a week of heated discussions on talk radio, including his own, and online forums over an incident on November 22 involving six Muslim clerics. They were handcuffed and taken off a US Airways flight after passengers reported "suspicious behavior" that included praying in the departure gate area.
The clerics, on their way to a meeting of the North American Imams Federation, were detained in a holding cell, questioned by police and
FBI agents, and released. Muslim community leaders saw the incident as yet more evidence of anti-Muslim prejudice.
IGNORANCE SEEN AS KEY PROBLEM
Several American Muslims interviewed on the subject of prejudice over the past few weeks said ignorance was at the core of the problem.
"The level of knowledge is very, very low," said Mohamed Esa, a U.S. Muslim of Arab descent who teaches a course on Islam at McDaniel College in Maryland. "There are 1.3 billion Muslims in the world and some people think they are all terrorists."
Hossam Ahmed, a retired Air Force Reserve colonel who occasionally leads prayer meetings for the small Muslim congregation at the
Pentagon agreed. "Ignorance is the number one problem. Education is of the essence."
There are no hard figures on how many Muslims have been subject to harassment or prejudice and community leaders say that ugly incidents can prompt spontaneous expressions of support. Such as the e-mail a Minneapolis woman sent to CAIR after the imams were taken off their flight.
"I would like to ... help," the e-mail said. "While I cannot offer plane tickets, I would be happy to drive at least 2 or 3 of them. My car is small, but at least some of our hearts in this land of the free are large."
And optimists saw signs of change in the November 4 election of the first Muslim to the U.S. House of Representatives, which has 435 members.
Democrat Keith Ellison, a 43-year-old African-American lawyer, did not stress his religion during his campaign for a Minnesota seat, but said his victory would "signal to people who are not Muslims that Muslims have a lot to offer to the United States and the improvement of our country."
Why am I getting this ????
Hey Folks,
For some reason I've been receiving this unsolicited news letter, and thought I'd share it with you.
It IS concerned, on its face at least, with ecology - a worthy subject; but I can't get past the obvious frenzy to MAKE MONEY!!
These folks are crazed over cashing in!! You can almost hear them slobbering as they rub their hands together in anticipation.
Look who's involved from Barbara Boxer and Al Gore to GE, Dupont and the Chinese "Communist" Government. There's gold in that there filth!!
It seems pretty clear that the capitalist are as capitalist (or more) than ever, and the Chinese "Communists" are capitalist too (where are the anti-communists when you need them??). These money-hungry "communists"/ capitalists aren't interested in things Red ; they're after black ink in their ledger books, just like WAL-MART.
Do they ACTUALLY think I'd go to their orgy? Even if I had great gobs of working people's money stuffing my attic??
Haaa!!!!!
- Uke Man
Eco-Expo
The International Marketplace for the Environment
China Eco Expo Newsletter
April 4-6, 2007 Beijing International Convention CenterChina
Eco Expo is well on its way to becoming the signature event for internatioal products, technologies and expertise that will help China overcome its environmental challenges and move towards a sustainable economy. Some recent developments include:
Exhibit Pavilions
National pavilions are being planned for Italy , Spain , the Netherlands and Canada plus the California Energy Commission, the International Trade Administration, the International Fund for China Environment and the 2008 ( all pavilions are subject to final confirmation ).
Speakers
Recent additions to the list of international speakers include: David Anderson-Fmr Env Minister CA, senator Barbara Boxer*, Hon, Kim Campbell-Club of Spain*, Larisa Dobriansky-DOE, David Dollar-World Bank, S. David Freeman-Chair LA Ports, Vice President Al Gore*, Charles Griffith, Architect, G.M. Kapteijn-Amsterdam Waste&Energy, Mark Levine, LBL, Hon Ed Markey D Mass, Tim Osborne- CEC, Joanne Fox-Przworsky , Gary Starr-ZAP, Achim Steiner* -UNEP, Benjamin Taub-GreenGuard, Paul Wuebben-SCAQMD, *invited.
Conference Program
Recent additions to the program include:A full day seminar on doing business in China , including intellectual property issues, for Exhibitors and international attendees, presented by The U.S. Department of Commerce and Team China .
Hosting a two day Mayors Asian Pacific Environmental Summit (MAPES) conference. Previous MAPES conferences have drawn up to 500 mayors in attendance. (subject to finalization of sponsorship)
A conference of the 2006 International Forum on Environmental Legislation and Sustainable Development, (subject to final approval by the Peoples Congress Environmental Committee)
Green Office of the Future:
Distinguished U.S. Architects James Polshek & Assoc. will design and supervise a Green Office of the Future model building Exhibit in association with Walter Scott Perry head of Ecotech Architects. The exhibit will feature technologies and products from GE, Trane, Shaw, Dupont, Owens Corning, BASF, Honeywell, TAC Schneider, Armstrong and many others.
International Sponsors
Greenguard Environmental Institute, US China Business Council and Cleantech Investments have joined International fund for China Environment Woodrow Wilson Institute California Energy Commission Institute for Sustainable Development, EMSI - Environmental Management, Oriental Environmental Institute, Earth Council Alliance, China Council for Environmental Development and Globalization Partners as international co-sponsors of China Eco Expo.
Partners and Personnel
We are pleased to announce an alliance with Globalization Partners International (GPI)) to provide expert translation services for all China Eco Expo participants. GPI specializes in environmental technology and can accurately translate all materials into Chinese from over 75 different languages GPI will work with your in-house documentation teams to translate and desktop publish sales brochures, labels, user manuals and warranty information. GPI can also translate and create full websites, presentations and instructional videos. Special discounts for our participants. For further information visit http://www.globalizationpartners.com/ or contact by email http://us.f379.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?To=mspethman@globalizationpartners.com
We have made an alliance with C&S Media and Team China group, to spearhead marketing, publicity and promotion in China . The group leader will be Benjamin Chen, Chairman of C&S media. email to: http://us.f379.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?To=bemjamin@ecoexpo.com
Joanne Fox Przeworsky (former U.S. director of UNEP) has been retained as senior advisor for the Conference. email http://us.f379.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?To=jfp@ecoexpo.com
We have appointed Mr Leon Chen as our special representative in Beijing. Email: http://us.f379.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?To=leonchen@ecoexpo.com
ABOUT CHINA ECO EXPO
China Eco Expo is a major trade show and conference dedicated to showcasing international technology, products and expertise to be used in China's great move towards a sustainable economy. China Eco Expo is sponsored by the highest ministries and agencies of the Chinese government. It is an historic opportunity for international companies to establish or expand their share of the world’s largest and fastest growing environmental market. Find out more now at http://www.ecoexpo.com/. Email: http://us.f379.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?To=info@ecoexpo.com Phone (01)818 906 2700
China Eco Expo April 4-6, 2007 Beijing International Convention Center
For some reason I've been receiving this unsolicited news letter, and thought I'd share it with you.
It IS concerned, on its face at least, with ecology - a worthy subject; but I can't get past the obvious frenzy to MAKE MONEY!!
These folks are crazed over cashing in!! You can almost hear them slobbering as they rub their hands together in anticipation.
Look who's involved from Barbara Boxer and Al Gore to GE, Dupont and the Chinese "Communist" Government. There's gold in that there filth!!
It seems pretty clear that the capitalist are as capitalist (or more) than ever, and the Chinese "Communists" are capitalist too (where are the anti-communists when you need them??). These money-hungry "communists"/ capitalists aren't interested in things Red ; they're after black ink in their ledger books, just like WAL-MART.
Do they ACTUALLY think I'd go to their orgy? Even if I had great gobs of working people's money stuffing my attic??
Haaa!!!!!
- Uke Man
Eco-Expo
The International Marketplace for the Environment
China Eco Expo Newsletter
April 4-6, 2007 Beijing International Convention CenterChina
Eco Expo is well on its way to becoming the signature event for internatioal products, technologies and expertise that will help China overcome its environmental challenges and move towards a sustainable economy. Some recent developments include:
Exhibit Pavilions
National pavilions are being planned for Italy , Spain , the Netherlands and Canada plus the California Energy Commission, the International Trade Administration, the International Fund for China Environment and the 2008 ( all pavilions are subject to final confirmation ).
Speakers
Recent additions to the list of international speakers include: David Anderson-Fmr Env Minister CA, senator Barbara Boxer*, Hon, Kim Campbell-Club of Spain*, Larisa Dobriansky-DOE, David Dollar-World Bank, S. David Freeman-Chair LA Ports, Vice President Al Gore*, Charles Griffith, Architect, G.M. Kapteijn-Amsterdam Waste&Energy, Mark Levine, LBL, Hon Ed Markey D Mass, Tim Osborne- CEC, Joanne Fox-Przworsky , Gary Starr-ZAP, Achim Steiner* -UNEP, Benjamin Taub-GreenGuard, Paul Wuebben-SCAQMD, *invited.
Conference Program
Recent additions to the program include:A full day seminar on doing business in China , including intellectual property issues, for Exhibitors and international attendees, presented by The U.S. Department of Commerce and Team China .
Hosting a two day Mayors Asian Pacific Environmental Summit (MAPES) conference. Previous MAPES conferences have drawn up to 500 mayors in attendance. (subject to finalization of sponsorship)
A conference of the 2006 International Forum on Environmental Legislation and Sustainable Development, (subject to final approval by the Peoples Congress Environmental Committee)
Green Office of the Future:
Distinguished U.S. Architects James Polshek & Assoc. will design and supervise a Green Office of the Future model building Exhibit in association with Walter Scott Perry head of Ecotech Architects. The exhibit will feature technologies and products from GE, Trane, Shaw, Dupont, Owens Corning, BASF, Honeywell, TAC Schneider, Armstrong and many others.
International Sponsors
Greenguard Environmental Institute, US China Business Council and Cleantech Investments have joined International fund for China Environment Woodrow Wilson Institute California Energy Commission Institute for Sustainable Development, EMSI - Environmental Management, Oriental Environmental Institute, Earth Council Alliance, China Council for Environmental Development and Globalization Partners as international co-sponsors of China Eco Expo.
Partners and Personnel
We are pleased to announce an alliance with Globalization Partners International (GPI)) to provide expert translation services for all China Eco Expo participants. GPI specializes in environmental technology and can accurately translate all materials into Chinese from over 75 different languages GPI will work with your in-house documentation teams to translate and desktop publish sales brochures, labels, user manuals and warranty information. GPI can also translate and create full websites, presentations and instructional videos. Special discounts for our participants. For further information visit http://www.globalizationpartners.com/ or contact by email http://us.f379.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?To=mspethman@globalizationpartners.com
We have made an alliance with C&S Media and Team China group, to spearhead marketing, publicity and promotion in China . The group leader will be Benjamin Chen, Chairman of C&S media. email to: http://us.f379.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?To=bemjamin@ecoexpo.com
Joanne Fox Przeworsky (former U.S. director of UNEP) has been retained as senior advisor for the Conference. email http://us.f379.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?To=jfp@ecoexpo.com
We have appointed Mr Leon Chen as our special representative in Beijing. Email: http://us.f379.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?To=leonchen@ecoexpo.com
ABOUT CHINA ECO EXPO
China Eco Expo is a major trade show and conference dedicated to showcasing international technology, products and expertise to be used in China's great move towards a sustainable economy. China Eco Expo is sponsored by the highest ministries and agencies of the Chinese government. It is an historic opportunity for international companies to establish or expand their share of the world’s largest and fastest growing environmental market. Find out more now at http://www.ecoexpo.com/. Email: http://us.f379.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?To=info@ecoexpo.com Phone (01)818 906 2700
China Eco Expo April 4-6, 2007 Beijing International Convention Center
Friday, December 01, 2006
Free Speech ???
Hey Folks,
Keith Olbermann is speaking up for us again. This time in the face of the Ging-Grinch who would steal Free Speech.
Where is everyone else in the media? Newt Gingrich should be run out of town on a rail !!
Give a listen: http://video.msn.com/v/us/msnbc.htm?f=00&g=d14cac34-8b00-4527-9b65-925fbe9bbd7e&p=News_Comment%20-%20Analysis&t=c1149&rf=http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15976642/&fg=
- Uke Man
Keith Olbermann is speaking up for us again. This time in the face of the Ging-Grinch who would steal Free Speech.
Where is everyone else in the media? Newt Gingrich should be run out of town on a rail !!
Give a listen: http://video.msn.com/v/us/msnbc.htm?f=00&g=d14cac34-8b00-4527-9b65-925fbe9bbd7e&p=News_Comment%20-%20Analysis&t=c1149&rf=http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15976642/&fg=
- Uke Man
"Ready,gang!! Right-shift-go-along! On two!! Hut!! Hut!!
Hey Folks,
If this guy is right it's time to start buying guns.
We're headed to becoming a banana republic
where - just like in pre-Chavez Venezuela - the
few swells at the top ran everything.
The ONLY way his scenario can come about is
if - as some of my friends say - the Democrats
are TOTALLY part of the ruling class and
committed to serving the same people the
Republicans serve - with just a little more nuance.
The only way his scenario will be realized is if
Democrats will ignore all the issues millions of
people (whom the writer calls "pressure
groups") believe are important.
Just as in Venezuela, where a strong individual
has dared (or connived - I don't really know
which) to come to power promising to address
the needs of 80% of the people (rather than the
top 20%) the Dems could do that here. There
are a lot more of "us" than of "them," and if this
is a fricken democracy, it could work.
The ONLY way this guy's prediction can turn
out to be right is if the Dems - as I suspect
may be true - are more interested in serving
the minority that runs things than they are
in serving the vast majority of us.
This guy's column REALLY upsets me because
he's probably correct. But as far right as we've
already moved since Ronnie Reagan, that is
unacceptable.
The D's are going to have to join the nazi R's in
order to survive? Well, then, fuck the D's too.
I won't be surprised if they take this jerk's
advice, but it WON'T keep them in power.
Once there are only Republicans and
"Republicans" on the ballot, Republicans
will win.
- Uke Man
November 25, 2006
The Struggle Within
By THOMAS B. EDSALL
Washington
(a ukethanks to Phyll)
Can the Democratic Party become fully
competitive? Is American liberalism dead,
the 2006 election a last twitch of life
before rigor mortis sets in? The answer to
both questions is yes. (More on this next week.)
For the Democratic Party to revive, major tenets
of American liberalism, economic and
sociocultural, will have to be discarded. The
party can join Studebaker and the Glass Bottle
Blowers union, it can trudge along as No. 2, or it
can undergo a painful transformation — without
guarantee of success.
To stay in the fight, Democratic leaders will
have to acknowledge political realities
affirmed by the electorate in 1994 and 2006.
Many Democratic constituencies — organized
labor, minority advocacy organizations,
reproductive- and sexual- rights proponents —
are reliving battles of a decade or more ago,
not the more subtle disputes of today. Public
sector unions, for example, at a time of wide
distrust of government, are consistently
pressing to enlarge the state. For these
players, adapting to a re-emergent center
will be costly.
Democrats won on Nov. 7 by carrying a 59
percent majority of independent, moderate
voters angered by the Iraq war and
Republican corruption. These voters
demonstrated 12 years ago that they can easily
turn against Democrats.
An example of the reality that Democrats
refused to face the last time they had a shot
at consolidating power materialized during
the fight to pass Clinton’s 1994 Omnibus
Crime Bill, legislation that sought to
burnish the party’s justice credentials by
increasing the number of felonies subject
to the death penalty. Instead, amendments
added to win support from the left — most
visibly, $40 million for midnight basketball
leagues — caught fire on conservative talk
radio, spread to the establishment media,
and soon became a liability.
When Democrats bend to the will of liberal
interest groups, even in pursuit of laudable
goals, the damage to the party’s credibility
can be devastating. President Clinton
succumbed to such pressure, and Democrats
in the House and Senate paid the price.
Democrats now have a chance to regain
public trust, but even a minor miscalculation
can push the party off the tightrope. Its House
majority is tenuous: 17 of the new Democrats
represent districts that voted for Bush in 2004
by at least 54 percent, according to the
political scientist Gary Jacobson.
The public will desert Democrats placing
a disputed cultural or spending agenda above
the broader public interest. This is especially
true at a time of extreme uncertainty: lethal
struggle in the Mideast, nuclear proliferation,
mounting skepticism toward free trade,
and a rising non-marital birthrate — now at
37 percent — that concerns moderate voters.
The potential for an incendiary controversy
to engulf the Democratic left has sharply
escalated with Web access to each committee
and floor vote under new Congressional
transparency rules, and the development of
aggressively partisan outlets in the
blogosphere. An army of conservative media
is determined to recreate the political climate
so advantageous to the G.O.P. in 1994. At the
same time, very liberal senior House Democrats
now have vastly enhanced power to add
inflammatory provisions to bills moving
through their committees (think Rangel and
the draft).
Nancy Pelosi and her closest advisers in the
House are more likely to support such
radioactive amendments than to serve as
guard dogs protecting a slender Democratic
majority. The first test of Pelosi’s ability to
distinguish between broad-based and special
interests will be when she decides whether
to appoint Alcee Hastings, the once-impeached
federal judge, to head the House Intelligence Committee.
Only two members of the House leadership are
intuitively attuned to such problems: Rahm
Emanuel, chairman of the Democratic caucus,
and Steny Hoyer, the majority leader. But
Emanuel has limited influence, and relations
between Pelosi and Hoyer are distant at best.
Still, the vigilance of Hoyer and Emanuel will
be crucial to a party whose renewal could
easily be stillborn. Congressional leaders are
not all-powerful, but they can set the stage for
a successful presidential candidate, or lay waste
to the center-left, dooming the nominee.
The Democratic Party can secure its 2006
gains, but to do so will require abandoning
a decades-long willingness to indulge pressure
groups on the left that no longer command
broad popular allegiance.
Thomas B. Edsall holds the Pulitzer-Moore Chair at
Columbia University. He is a guest columnist this month.
If this guy is right it's time to start buying guns.
We're headed to becoming a banana republic
where - just like in pre-Chavez Venezuela - the
few swells at the top ran everything.
The ONLY way his scenario can come about is
if - as some of my friends say - the Democrats
are TOTALLY part of the ruling class and
committed to serving the same people the
Republicans serve - with just a little more nuance.
The only way his scenario will be realized is if
Democrats will ignore all the issues millions of
people (whom the writer calls "pressure
groups") believe are important.
Just as in Venezuela, where a strong individual
has dared (or connived - I don't really know
which) to come to power promising to address
the needs of 80% of the people (rather than the
top 20%) the Dems could do that here. There
are a lot more of "us" than of "them," and if this
is a fricken democracy, it could work.
The ONLY way this guy's prediction can turn
out to be right is if the Dems - as I suspect
may be true - are more interested in serving
the minority that runs things than they are
in serving the vast majority of us.
This guy's column REALLY upsets me because
he's probably correct. But as far right as we've
already moved since Ronnie Reagan, that is
unacceptable.
The D's are going to have to join the nazi R's in
order to survive? Well, then, fuck the D's too.
I won't be surprised if they take this jerk's
advice, but it WON'T keep them in power.
Once there are only Republicans and
"Republicans" on the ballot, Republicans
will win.
- Uke Man
November 25, 2006
The Struggle Within
By THOMAS B. EDSALL
Washington
(a ukethanks to Phyll)
Can the Democratic Party become fully
competitive? Is American liberalism dead,
the 2006 election a last twitch of life
before rigor mortis sets in? The answer to
both questions is yes. (More on this next week.)
For the Democratic Party to revive, major tenets
of American liberalism, economic and
sociocultural, will have to be discarded. The
party can join Studebaker and the Glass Bottle
Blowers union, it can trudge along as No. 2, or it
can undergo a painful transformation — without
guarantee of success.
To stay in the fight, Democratic leaders will
have to acknowledge political realities
affirmed by the electorate in 1994 and 2006.
Many Democratic constituencies — organized
labor, minority advocacy organizations,
reproductive- and sexual- rights proponents —
are reliving battles of a decade or more ago,
not the more subtle disputes of today. Public
sector unions, for example, at a time of wide
distrust of government, are consistently
pressing to enlarge the state. For these
players, adapting to a re-emergent center
will be costly.
Democrats won on Nov. 7 by carrying a 59
percent majority of independent, moderate
voters angered by the Iraq war and
Republican corruption. These voters
demonstrated 12 years ago that they can easily
turn against Democrats.
An example of the reality that Democrats
refused to face the last time they had a shot
at consolidating power materialized during
the fight to pass Clinton’s 1994 Omnibus
Crime Bill, legislation that sought to
burnish the party’s justice credentials by
increasing the number of felonies subject
to the death penalty. Instead, amendments
added to win support from the left — most
visibly, $40 million for midnight basketball
leagues — caught fire on conservative talk
radio, spread to the establishment media,
and soon became a liability.
When Democrats bend to the will of liberal
interest groups, even in pursuit of laudable
goals, the damage to the party’s credibility
can be devastating. President Clinton
succumbed to such pressure, and Democrats
in the House and Senate paid the price.
Democrats now have a chance to regain
public trust, but even a minor miscalculation
can push the party off the tightrope. Its House
majority is tenuous: 17 of the new Democrats
represent districts that voted for Bush in 2004
by at least 54 percent, according to the
political scientist Gary Jacobson.
The public will desert Democrats placing
a disputed cultural or spending agenda above
the broader public interest. This is especially
true at a time of extreme uncertainty: lethal
struggle in the Mideast, nuclear proliferation,
mounting skepticism toward free trade,
and a rising non-marital birthrate — now at
37 percent — that concerns moderate voters.
The potential for an incendiary controversy
to engulf the Democratic left has sharply
escalated with Web access to each committee
and floor vote under new Congressional
transparency rules, and the development of
aggressively partisan outlets in the
blogosphere. An army of conservative media
is determined to recreate the political climate
so advantageous to the G.O.P. in 1994. At the
same time, very liberal senior House Democrats
now have vastly enhanced power to add
inflammatory provisions to bills moving
through their committees (think Rangel and
the draft).
Nancy Pelosi and her closest advisers in the
House are more likely to support such
radioactive amendments than to serve as
guard dogs protecting a slender Democratic
majority. The first test of Pelosi’s ability to
distinguish between broad-based and special
interests will be when she decides whether
to appoint Alcee Hastings, the once-impeached
federal judge, to head the House Intelligence Committee.
Only two members of the House leadership are
intuitively attuned to such problems: Rahm
Emanuel, chairman of the Democratic caucus,
and Steny Hoyer, the majority leader. But
Emanuel has limited influence, and relations
between Pelosi and Hoyer are distant at best.
Still, the vigilance of Hoyer and Emanuel will
be crucial to a party whose renewal could
easily be stillborn. Congressional leaders are
not all-powerful, but they can set the stage for
a successful presidential candidate, or lay waste
to the center-left, dooming the nominee.
The Democratic Party can secure its 2006
gains, but to do so will require abandoning
a decades-long willingness to indulge pressure
groups on the left that no longer command
broad popular allegiance.
Thomas B. Edsall holds the Pulitzer-Moore Chair at
Columbia University. He is a guest columnist this month.
About Me
- Name: Tom Harker
- Location: Circleville, Ohio, US
Music and Politics, Politics and Music!!! * * * Everything is political. We’re admonished, “Never discuss religion or politics.” Follow that advice, and we’ll have to quit talking altogether. * * * Well, the Uke Man speaks! * * * Keep track here of my musical shenanigans, my political ruminations, and - from time to time - some other interesting eruptions.
Previous Posts
- "Things are lookin' good !!"
- The Chicken are coming home to roost !!
- The Gateway to Crime !!
- Ice Cream and Coffee can be Dangerous !!
- Bush's Pet (scape) Goat ???
- How Smart Are We ??
- Consumed
- A short (hopefully interesting) discussion
- Hi, atus!!
- So rested he by the Tumtum tree and stood a while ...
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