Chavez:open car & rose petals / Bush: bulletproof limo & eggs

 

Ironic Timing

Hey Folks,

That evil Hugo Chavez is at it again. What a dictator, making policy by decree rather than going through the legislature ( similar to "signing statements" and "executive orders" and putting presidential toadies in every department of the bureaucracy to over-ride and thwart legislative requirements).

Hmmm... critics say it's "a radical lurch toward authoritarianism by a leader with unchecked power." Hmmm...

Who will feel the pain?

Well, he will "decree nationalizations of Venezuela's largest telecommunications company and the electricity sector, slap new taxes on the rich and impose greater state control over the oil and natural gas industries."

Heavens!!!!!!!!!!

One critic says Chavez' behavior "is unprecedented in Venezuela's nearly five decades of democratic history."

Well, that's true. For the last fifty years, the elite 20% of Venezuela and foreign "investors" have "democratically" ruled the country. Now, unfortunately, the interests of the impoverished 80% are being addressed by - dare I say it - evil socialism.

Hmmm... (next posting: Dictator Bush)

- Uke Man

Chavez to get powers to remake Venezuela
By FABIOLA SANCHEZ, Associated Press

CARACAS, Venezuela - A Congress wholly loyal to President Hugo Chavez met at a downtown plaza Wednesday to give the Venezuelan leader authority to enact sweeping measures by presidential decree.

Hundreds of Chavez supporters wearing red — the color of Venezuela's ruling party — gathered in the plaza, waving signs reading "Socialism is democracy!" as lawmakers read out the proposed bill giving the president special powers for 18 months to transform 11 broadly defined areas, including the economy, energy and defense.

"The people of Venezuela, not just the National Assembly, are giving this enabling power to the president of the republic," said congresswoman Iris Varela, addressing the crowd next to the National Assembly.

Chavez, who is beginning a fresh six-year term, says the legislation will be the start of a new era of "maximum revolution" during which he will consolidate Venezuela's transformation into a socialist society. His critics, however, are calling it a radical lurch toward authoritarianism by a leader with unchecked power.

The former paratroop commander has already said he will use the law to decree nationalizations of Venezuela's largest telecommunications company and the electricity sector, slap new taxes on the rich and impose greater state control over the oil and natural gas industries.

A final draft of the law shows Chavez will also be allowed to dictate unspecified measures to transform state institutions; reform banking, tax, insurance and financial regulations; decide on security and defense matters such as gun regulations and military organization; and "adapt" legislation to ensure "the equal distribution of wealth" as part of a new "social and economic model."

Chavez also plans to reorganize regional territories and carry out reforms aimed at bringing "power to the people" through thousands of newly formed Communal Councils, in which Venezuelans will have a say on spending an increasing flow of state money on neighborhood projects from public housing to road repaving.

Lawmakers were scheduled to formally approve the law Wednesday in an outdoor session in Caracas' Plaza Bolivar, next to the National Assembly.
Chavez's supporters deny the law constitutes an abuse of power and argue radical steps are necessary to accelerate the creation of a more egalitarian society.

National Assembly President Cilia Flores said the special powers will enable Chavez to enact new laws that "will benefit the people, those who were excluded their whole lives. They are laws for inclusion and social justice."

Others say the enabling law is dangerously concentrating power in the hands of single man.

Historian Ines Quintero said that with the new powers, Chavez will achieve a level of "hegemony" that is unprecedented in Venezuela's nearly five decades of democratic history.

She said the effects will be "exponential" because Chavez will wield "extraordinary powers" in a context where state institutions are weakening and the division of powers is not being respected.
Chavez has requested special powers twice before.

In 1999, shortly after he was first elected, he was only able to push through two new taxes and a revision of the income tax law after facing fierce opposition in congress. In 2001, by invoking an "enabling law" for the second time, he decreed 49 laws including controversial agrarian reform measures and a law that sharply raised taxes on foreign oil companies operating in Venezuela.

This time, the law will give Chavez a free hand to bring under state control some oil and natural gas projects that are still run by private companies — the latest in a series of nationalist energy policies in Venezuela, a top oil supplier to the United States and home to South America's largest gas reserves.

Chavez has said oil companies upgrading heavy oil in the Orinoco River basin — British Petroleum PLC, Exxon Mobil Corp., Chevron Corp., ConocoPhillips Co., Total SA and Statoil ASA — must submit to state-controlled joint ventures, as companies have already done elsewhere in the country.

The law gives Chavez the authority to intervene and "regulate" the transition to joint ventures if companies do not adapt to the new framework within an unspecified "peremptory period."

"It always worked before"

 

What'd I say !!

Hey Folks,

In the second post below, I said Bush & Co. had bitten off more than they could chew because they were businessboys who had always gotten their way and who thought they always would.

I've also said that they "don't understand hillbillies."

If you missed that, it goes like this:

Hillbillies (my heritage) have nothing but their pride and their kin. They are not the kind of people Bush & Co. and all the other corporate/governmental ginks are accustomed to pushing around; i.e. fearful, humble souls clinging to their miserable job, kissing up, self-effacing, willing to put up with anything.

No. Hillbillies aren't like that; they have nothing but their pride and their kin (and in some cases their fanatical, backward religion); and when you start fucking with any of that, you are in for the long haul.

You can't talk them into being your "boy." You can't coerce them into kissing your ass. And if you kill one of them, you've just made twenty-five new blood enemies. In the end, unless you exterminate them all, you are going to be disappointed.

Well, Georgie Porgie with the silver foot in your mouth, you are going to be disappointed, you arrogant fool.

Ask your new General/Admiral/Whatever: you "underestimated the enemy's persistence." No shit!! But then YOU've never had to deal with hillbillies, have you, Frat Boy?

You'll never get the picture, but some within your hollow circle are coming to realize that expanding your super-duper-power-empire into the land of the sand hillbillies ain't beanbag and it sure as hell ain't business.

- Uke Man


Fallon says U.S. miscalculated Iraq
By ANNE FLAHERTY, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - Adm. William Fallon, who is poised to become the top American commander in the Middle East, says the United States miscalculated the ability of Iraqi forces to take control and underestimated the enemy's persistence.

"Securing the stability of the country has been more difficult than anticipated," Fallon said in a written statement to the Senate Armed Services Committee. "Our ability to correctly assess the political, economic and security situation in Iraq has been lacking."

Fallon's remarks were submitted in advance of a confirmation hearing Tuesday. Fallon, who commands troops in the Pacific region, has been tapped to replace Army Gen. John Abizaid as head of the U.S. Central Command.

"Book him, Danno!!!"

 

The Emperor Perseveres

Hey Folks,

Doesn't Mr. Krugman know that the Emperor is above the law, not to mention "the normal principles of good government" ?

- Uke Man


January 19, 2007
Surging and Purging
By PAUL KRUGMAN
( a ukethanks to Phyll)

There’s something happening here, and what it is seems completely clear: the Bush administration is trying to protect itself by purging independent-minded prosecutors.

Last month, Bud Cummins, the U.S. attorney (federal prosecutor) for the Eastern District of Arkansas, received a call on his cellphone while hiking in the woods with his son. He was informed that he had just been replaced by J. Timothy Griffin, a Republican political operative who has spent the last few years working as an opposition researcher for Karl Rove.

Mr. Cummins’s case isn’t unique. Since the middle of last month, the Bush administration has pushed out at least four U.S. attorneys, and possibly as many as seven, without explanation. The list includes Carol Lam, the U.S. attorney for San Diego, who successfully prosecuted Duke Cunningham, a Republican congressman, on major corruption charges. The top F.B.I. official in San Diego told The San Diego Union-Tribune that Ms. Lam’s dismissal would undermine multiple continuing investigations.

In Senate testimony yesterday, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales refused to say how many other attorneys have been asked to resign, calling it a “personnel matter.”

In case you’re wondering, such a wholesale firing of prosecutors midway through an administration isn’t normal. U.S. attorneys, The Wall Street Journal recently pointed out, “typically are appointed at the beginning of a new president’s term, and serve throughout that term.” Why, then, are prosecutors that the Bush administration itself appointed suddenly being pushed out?

The likely answer is that for the first time the administration is really worried about where corruption investigations might lead.

Since the day it took power this administration has shown nothing but contempt for the normal principles of good government. For six years ethical problems and conflicts of interest have been the rule, not the exception.

For a long time the administration nonetheless seemed untouchable, protected both by Republican control of Congress and by its ability to justify anything and everything as necessary for the war on terror. Now, however, the investigations are closing in on the Oval Office. The latest news is that J. Steven Griles, the former deputy secretary of the Interior Department and the poster child for the administration’s systematic policy of putting foxes in charge of henhouses, is finally facing possible indictment.

And the purge of U.S. attorneys looks like a pre-emptive strike against the gathering forces of justice.

Won’t the administration have trouble getting its new appointees confirmed by the Senate? Well, it turns out that it won’t have to.

Arlen Specter, the Republican senator who headed the Judiciary Committee until Congress changed hands, made sure of that last year. Previously, new U.S. attorneys needed Senate confirmation within 120 days or federal district courts would name replacements. But as part of a conference committee reconciling House and Senate versions of the revised Patriot Act, Mr. Specter slipped in a clause eliminating that rule.

As Paul Kiel of TPMmuckraker.com — which has done yeoman investigative reporting on this story — put it, this clause in effect allows the administration “to handpick replacements and keep them there in perpetuity without the ordeal of Senate confirmation.” How convenient.

Mr. Gonzales says that there’s nothing political about the firings. And according to The Associated Press, he said that district court judges shouldn’t appoint U.S. attorneys because they “tend to appoint friends and others not properly qualified to be prosecutors.” Words fail me.

Mr. Gonzales also says that the administration intends to get Senate confirmation for every replacement. Sorry, but that’s not at all credible, even if we ignore the administration’s track record. Mr. Griffin, the political-operative-turned-prosecutor, would be savaged in a confirmation hearing. By appointing him, the administration showed that it has no intention of following the usual rules.

The broader context is this: defeat in the midterm elections hasn’t led the Bush administration to scale back its imperial view of presidential power.
On the contrary, now that President Bush can no longer count on Congress to do his bidding, he’s more determined than ever to claim essentially unlimited authority — whether it’s the authority to send more troops into Iraq or the authority to stonewall investigations into his own administration’s conduct.

The next two years, in other words, are going to be a rolling constitutional crisis.

"What's good for me is good enough for America !!"

"You're fired!!!" 

Bully Boys

Hey Folks,

The Amazing Ktistof recently wrote another misguided column in which he "explained" our foreign policy behavior. As he often does, he exposed his faulty understanding of the basics.

He floundered about questioning the wisdom of the official "reasons" we attacked Iraq, wondering why we don't learn from the mistakes of the past, and - most tellingly - asks "why do we act so often against our own long-term interests?"

His two answers are that we are bullies because we can be and because we Americans don't understand the world. A la Thomas Friedman, he offers several solutions that make wonderful sense to him but have NO chance of being pursued.

It's not that "we" don't understand foreign policy. It's that we are run by "businessmen" who won't listen to those who do understand it (Clinton, whatever else he was, WAS competent in understanding foreign policy).

They envisioned running the rest of the world "like a business," just like they run us. That means like arrogant bullies who OWN everyone and everything ("You're fired") just because THEY have been annointed - somehow - to own it.

These clods have grown up always getting their way - if not at first, after proper pressure was applied. In this larger case, they bark self-serving orders and the pressure is applied militarily. They don't give a damn about the best interest of America, its people, or anyone else in the world - they only care about themselves and - to some extent - their necessary cronies.

Superpowers do blunder throughout the world pushing folks around "because they can," but that's not the REASON they do it. They COULD move around the world in benevolent ways, but DON'T. Bush & Co. have MBA's, and business isn't in business for benevolence; personal profit is the basis of capitalism (which is what Bush is pushing in Iraq - not "democracy").

This always works at the small business, public school, city-state-national government, and corporate levels - just like it works for the mafia. Stark power keeps the "right" people on top and reaping the rewards, regardless of any considerations, such as what the average person would consider "American interests" or "American values."

This time, though, the bully boys have bitten off more than they can chew. To that extent there is some truth to Kristof's comment that "we act so often against our own long-term interests" since that the Bully Boys, while reaping large war and oil profits, have somewhat hurt their selfish political interests.

BUT !!!! There is no "OUR" involved in "American interests." Never has been, and that fact should be clearer now than at any time in the last sixty years.

- Uke Man

A Great Time in New York

 

I'm Baaaaaaack!!!!

Hey Folks,

I just flew in from New York; and boy, my arms are tired!!!

The rest of me is tired, too.

Tonight, suffice it to say, I'll be brief and share a picture or two.

I had a great time!! Four nights in New York - Four nights of Ukulele Music:

Wednesday was the show I put together, Ukulele Man & Friends, at Manhattan's Bowery Poetry Club (& the Poetry Stage following our show).

Thursday was Uke Night at Biscuit - a new restaurant in Brooklyn.

Friday night was Ukulele Noir at Mo Pitkin's, put together by Bostonian Craig Robertson.

And Saturday was Jason & Ted's (Sonic Uke's) big show Ukulele Cabaret at Jimmy's in the West Village.

During all that time my friend and former Eighth Grade English student, Ron Hester, put me up at his apartment in beautiful Park Slope, Brooklyn.

I am so grateful to be able to visit and experience our nation's premier city and to share my music with truly amazing artists, performers, and friends. It warms my heart.

I'll share more on all of this once I'm rested, and once Ron sends me the pictures he took (the old guy is slowing down - didn't snap as often as I should have).

- Uke Man

Park Slope, Brooklyn

7th Ave. looking West from 2nd Street 

Looking East

 

Maybe if he'd attended Public School !!!

Hey Folks,

Why can't Georgie read? He attended only the best, private schools. He had all the advantages. Poppy and Mummy-Bar threw as much money at his education as anyone could want; and the monkey STILL can't read - at least not for comprehension.

It's pitiful - but not for him. He's the President.

It's pitiful for our troops and their parents and loved ones. It's pitiful for America and Americans. It's pitiful for the World and for the billions of all those "irrelevant" non-Americans in the world.

But, tough shit!!

The "educator-in-chief" will explain it to us; then we can all shut up and love Big Dumb Brother.

- Uke Man


January 17, 2007
Aux Barricades!
By MAUREEN DOWD
(a ukethanks to Phyll)

WASHINGTON -

Being president can be really, really hard.

“Sometimes you’re the commander in chief,” W. explained to Scott Pelley on “60 Minutes.” “Sometimes you’re the educator in chief, and a lot of times you’re both when it comes to war.”

President Bush has been dutifully making the rounds of TV news shows, trying to make the case that victory in Iraq is “doable.” He thinks the public will support the Surge if he can simply illuminate a few things that we may have been too thick to understand. For instance, he says he needs to “explain to people that what happens in the Middle East will affect the future of this country.” Yes, Mr. President, we get it.

He also told Jim Lehrer last night that in 20 years, radical Shiites could be warring with radical Sunnis and Middle Eastern oil could fall into the hands of radicals, who might also get weapons of mass destruction.

So after scaring Americans into backing the Sack of Iraq by warning that radicals could get W.M.D., now he’s trying to scare Americans into supporting the Surge in Iraq by warning that radicals could get W.M.D.

So many deaths, so little progress.

It’s unnerving to be tutored by an educator in chief who is himself being tutored. The president elucidating the Iraqi insurgency for us is learning about the Algerian insurgency from the man who failed to quell the Vietcong insurgency.

During his “60 Minutes” interview, Mr. Bush mentioned that he was reading Alistair Horne’s classic history, “A Savage War of Peace,” about why the French suffered a colonial disaster in a guerrilla war against Muslims in Algiers from 1954 to 1962.

The book was recommended to W. by Henry Kissinger, who is working on an official biography of himself with Mr. Horne.

Mr. Horne recalled that Dr. Kissinger told him: “The president’s one of my best students. He reads all the books I send him.” The author asked the president’s foreign affairs adviser if W. ever wrote any essays on the books. “Henry just laughed,” Mr. Horne said.

It seems far too late for Mr. Bush to begin studying about counterinsurgency now that Iraq has cratered into civil war. Can’t someone get the president a copy of “Gone With the Wind”?

Maybe it was inevitable, once W. started reading Camus’s “L’Etranger,” set in Algeria, that he would move on to Mr. Horne. As The Washington Post military correspondent Tom Ricks wrote in November, the Horne book has been an underground best-seller among U.S. military officers for three years, and “Algeria” has become almost a code word among counterinsurgency specialists for the mess in Iraq. The Pentagon screened the 1966 movie “The Battle of Algiers” in 2003, but the commander in chief must have missed it.

I asked Mr. Horne, who was at his home in a small village outside Oxford, England, what the president could learn from his book.

“The depressing problem of getting entangled in the Muslim world,” he replied. “Algeria was a thoroughly bloodthirsty war that ended horribly and cost the lives of about 20,000 Frenchmen and a million Algerians. There was a terrible civil war. ...De Gaulle ended up giving literally everything away and left without his pants.”

President de Gaulle had all the same misconceptions as W., that his prestige could persuade the Muslims to accept his terms; that the guerrillas would recognize military defeat and accept sensible compromise; and that, as Mr. Horne writes, “time would wait while he found the correct formula and then imposed peace with it.”

Mr. Horne also sees sad parallels in the torture issue: “The French had experience under the Nazis in the occupation and practiced methods the Germans used in Algeria and extracted information that helped them win the Battle of Algiers. But in the long run it lost the war, because it caused such revulsion in France when the news came out, and there was huge opposition to the war from Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir.”

In May 2005, Mr. Horne gave a copy of his book to Rummy, with passages about torture underlined. “I got a savage letter back from him,” the author said.

The best thing now, he said, is to try to “get around the mullahs” and “get non-Christian forces in there as quickly as possible, mercenaries. As Henry said the other day, if only we had two brigades of Gurkhas to send to Baghdad.”

Meanwhile, maybe W. should move on to reading Sartre. “No Exit,” perhaps.

Hey Folks

I'm keeping busy here in New York. A lot of uke activity.

Unfortunately, I'm having great difficulty posting to the blog.
I'll start a full report Monday!!!

- Uke Man

 

I'm off

Folks,

That's it from Ohio. Tomorrow I'll be in New York.

I hope to be able to add a little to the blog from time to time. We'll see.

- Uke Man

Alan Drogin and Steven Swartz

 

Alan Drogin ............................ in 2 of the 3 NYC Shows

Hey Folks,

Alan Drogin and Steven Swartz, the driving force of Songs from a Random House, a cutting edge, avant guard band founded in the mid 80's and just recently, temporarily, mothballed; once gave me a ride from a Prividence Uke Fest (put on by Dave Wasser and the Gang at the Ukulele Hall of Fame Museum) to Manhattan.

That was the start of a warm friendship that has continued.

Alan will be playing in the Wednesday and the Saturday shows, and Steven will be in the audience Saturday (get autographs). Check out the Scott Simon NPR interview with Steven and Alan. It's fun, and you can also hear three of the band's songs at the site:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4668018

Check out one of Alan's solo Midnight Ukulele Disco performances at:

http://ukuleledisco.com/thumbtack

and a wild solo on:

http://ukuleledisco.com/leftoverstrange

Come hear Alan & us all.

- Uke Man

Alan, his Family. and moi

Ukuleles for Sanity protesting the war 

Alan getting down on the Fez Stage

 

Pat wants the Mountain to come to him

Should it? 

A window on our possible world

Hey Folks,

A lot of people just don't get it. They criticize the Muslims for their narrow views and their efforts - sometimes violent - to impose their particular religious views on the rest of us.

But, too many of us can't see the parallel to the efforts of radical Christians here.

Do we want - in this "free" country to tip-toe around trying not to offend people like Pat Robertson and James Dobson? Do we want to worry that some religious nut or group will assassinate those who go against their interpretation of godliness - say, pharmacists who legally provide "Plan B" or heretical Unitarians?

Well, that sort of thing is clearly going on now in other parts of the world, and a very strong push to intimidate "heretics" here has been under way for some time - along with a determined effort to impose religion on our governing system.

The article below shows what COULD happen here if we don't resist it.

- Uke Man

(the emphasis below is mine)


Danish editor: Cartoon debate to endure
By JAN M. OLSEN, Associated Press

COPENHAGEN, Denmark - An editor of a Danish newspaper that published the controversial prophet Muhammad cartoons said Wednesday he expects the debate about self-censorship in the media and artists' fear of offending Islam to continue for years.

The Jyllands-Posten daily in 2005 published 12 drawings — one of them showing Muhammad wearing a turban shaped as a bomb with a burning fuse. Another portrayed him with a bushy gray beard and holding a sword.

The cartoons, which were reprinted in a range of Western media, triggered international protests across the Muslim world and attacks on Danish embassies in January 2006.

Flemming Rose, the culture editor of the newspaper — one of Denmark's biggest — had asked Danish cartoonists to draw Muhammad. He reiterated that the decision to print the drawings was meant as a challenge to a perceived self-censorship, not to insult Muslims.
"The drawings have started a very important debate that will last for many, many years," Rose told a news conference, ahead of the one-year anniversary of the cartoon crisis. "In the coming years, this will become a bigger discussion."

Rose said he "felt provoked when I heard institutions, media and people in Western Europe were putting reins on themselves because they were afraid of offending Islam."

He gave several examples, from art removed from exhibitions to standup comedians saying they didn't want to poke fun at Islam. In 2004, Danish writer Kaare Bluitgen complained he could not find an illustrator for his children's book about Muhammad, for fear of retaliation for depicting the prophet.

"It reminded me of what I had seen in the Soviet Union, where I saw a society where people were intimidated by the system," said Rose, a correspondent in Moscow in the 1980s and 1990s.

He reiterated that he regretted if the cartoons had offended Muslims and apologized to them but stood by the decision to print them, saying it was within Danish law.

Muslims around the world were offended because Islam forbids the depiction of any prophet from the Quran.

Heather Lev

 

Heather Lev - also part of Wednesday's Show

Hey Folks,

I met Heather Lev via the anti-war movement. We both sang in the show protesting the New York Republican National Convention, "Dubya's Ukulele Farewell Party," and we both have marched together in the same cause several times since then.

Check out some of Heather's songs at:
http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/heatherlev2/from/jkloss

And enjoy a video at: www.ukuleledisco.com/theway

Come hear Heather and us all Wednesday night at the Bowery Poetry Club (see: http://www.ukuleleman.net/2007/01/uke-man-in-new-york-city_21.html )

- Uke Man

 

"That's my boy !!!"

 

Well, now it starts

Hey Folks,

You heard it here first - long ago: Monkey Boy-George worships Ronnie Raygun more than his own father and (if truth be known) his "Higher Father"

Ronnie, his role model, spent the country into the poorhouse in order to thwart spending on the mass of American citizens. He spent like a drunken sailor, taking care of his pals; and when the Dems came to power, claimed 1) there wasn't any money for the people and, indeed, 2) the people would have to sacrifice by having their programs cut.

Long ago, I said Duh-bya was doing the same thing: tax cuts for the rich, a trillion or more thrown down the Iraq oil hole, sweetheart deals with his corporate cronies, balooning the deficit. I said then that he was emulating Raygun and that the day would come when he'd cry: "1) there isn't any money for the people and 2) the people will have to sacrifice by having their programs cut (their "entitlements").

Well, read it and weep:

Burden Set to Shift On Balanced Budget
Bush Likely to Force Democrats' Hand
By Lori Montgomery and Nell Henderson
Washington Post
January 16, 2007

When he takes the House rostrum next week for the State of the Union address, President Bush will list among his goals a balanced federal budget, a shift for a president who has presided over record deficits while aggressively cutting taxes.

Politically, analysts say, the president is calling the bluff of Democrats, who won control of Congress in part by accusing Bush of reckless fiscal policies. While Bush now shares the Democrats' goal to erase the deficit by 2012, the politically perilous work of making that happen -- cutting spending or raising taxes -- falls to the Democratic-run Congress.

"The Democrats have assailed deficits under President Bush. The White House is telling Democrats to walk the walk," said Brian M. Riedl, a budget analyst at the conservative Heritage Foundation.

Budget experts and economists from across the political spectrum, including some who worked in the Bush White House, say that Bush is unlikely to offer real concessions toward a balanced budget in the plan he delivers to Congress next month.
. . .

This month, Bush cited the "challenges" of entitlement spending as a factor in his decision to offer a balanced budget plan. Analysts said forcing the government to live within its means in the short term would lend credibility to the president's campaign to address the entitlement problem during his final years in office.


What did I tell you, Folks??
Now let's wait and see how long it takes for anyone in the media to point out what I just went over.

- Uke Man

Entire article at:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/15/AR2007011501085.html?referrer=email

Ron Hester

 

The Uke Man in NYC - Ron

Hey Folks,

I'll be relatively out of touch starting Wednesday, but I'll try to keep the blog chugging away as best I can while in New York.

In the meantime, I plan to intersperse the regular fare with some musical treats relevant to the tour, featuring some of the folks I'll be appearing with, starting with Ron Hester.

Ron was in my 8th Grade English class many moons ago. He grew up to pursue painting, graphic arts, music; and the hectic but incomparable life of a vibrant, creative New Yorker.

It was Ron who got me "playing out" in the beginning and who enabled me to visit New York for the first time (by putting me up at considerable inconvenience and by helping the bumpkin navigate the intricacies of the City). He's also why I can return this time.

Thanks, Ron.

Check out Ron's My Space site: http://www.myspace.com/ronhester .

Four great songs await your ears.

- Uke Man

Ron Hester 

& Heather Lev & Alan Drogin 

Uke Man in New York City

Hey Folks,

The Uke Man (moi, Tom Harker) will be in New York City for two (2) shows January 24 & 27.

I’ll be at the Bowery Poetry Club
(map & directions at: http://www.bowerypoetry.com/ ) 308 Bowery, New York, NY 10012 - tel. 212-614-0505

From 10:00 p.m. until Midnight
on Jan. 24 with my New York Friends:

Ron Hester
http://cdbaby.com/cd/hesterron ( website under reconstruction)

Sonic Uke ( Jason & Ted & Allan)
http://www.sonicuke.com/

Heather Lev
http://heatherlev.com/

David Hornbuckle & his Dixieland Space Orchestra
http://www.mdhornbuckle.net/dso/

A great show is planned for your giddy enjoyment !! Please drop in !!!

The Uke Man will also stick around for and perform in “Midnights w/ Moonshine,” the Poetry stage, which follows our show.

THEN !!!!!

I'll be part of the January Ukulele Cabaret
at Jimmy's
43 E. 7th Street
212-982-3006

Saturday, January 27
8:00 p.m. "'til late"

This is sponsored by Sonic Uke and is a great spectacle that gets bigger and bigger every month. Check out videos from past performances at:http://www.ukulelecabaret.com/

Jimmy's map/directions: http://local.yahoo.com/details;_ylt=AqvotSQhzZnSUajUgq9ctbWHNcIF?id=34654300&state=NY&city=New+York&stx=jimmy%26%2339%3Bs&csz=New+York%2C+NY&fr=dd-local-more&ed=e3nhe6131Dxzh1xAtvjhsExjJXW.ooLmOFitrVmasYwDQEAUr84z.y4-&lcscb=MsjBOvKFjHV

I hope to see you there - Uke Man

Sonic Uke 

 

"I'm the Decider !!"

Hey Folks,

One Emperor,Napoleon, said: "History is what I say it is !"
How do you feel about that?

Another Emperor, G.W. Bush, said: "The law is what I say it is."

How do you feel about that ?

- Uke Man


You’ve got mail, and the president might be opening it
Tuesday, January 09, 2007
TOM TEEPEN

It turns out that as the holiday season was nearing its annual peak of panic and few were paying much attention to anything else, President Bush declared, in effect, that he is welcome to open your mail if he wants to.

Well, not him personally, of course. The president is a busy man. He would have his agents do it.

If not a fullblown flap, then at least a flaplet has been stirred by the New York Daily News’ discovery that Bush, as is his habit, first signed new legislation and then declared it null and void, sort of. The mechanism was the "presidential signing statement," a traditional option but in the past used rarely and mainly just to clarify technical ambiguities in a statute.

Bush alone has misused the signing statement as a means to undo Congress’s work wholesale — he has issued more than 800 so far — and, in sum, to declare he will rule by fiat whenever and however he jolly well pleases.

In the instant matter, Bush signed a law declaring that the government must get warrants to open first-class mail, but attached a signing statement saying his administration would take the provision as meaning "in a manner consistent, to the maximum extent permissible, with the need to conduct searches in exigent circumstances."

Translated, that means be circumspect in your love letters.

The president’s spokesman, Tony Snow, shrugs off the matter. Bush, he says, was only reaffirming an authority sanctioned by long-standing law that the Postal Service may open first-class mail if there is good reason to suspect it contains a bomb or other material posing an immediate threat to public safety.

That would indeed be fine but, then, why this therefore-redundant codicil? And why is the administration resisting efforts by Salon.com to find out to what extent and in what way it may be recording envelope information from presumably unopened first-class mail?

No benefit of the doubt accrues to this administration in such matters. Remember, Bush used a similar dodge to poke into Americans’ overseas mail and phone calls without a warrant, even though lawful means stood ready for it to get a quickie OK from the very agreeable Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. This is the most pathologically secretive administration of modern times — maybe ever, period.

The signing statement has been stud and joist alike to the administration’s construction of an executive branch unanswerable to court or Congress.

Bush has used signing statements to override or undermine laws requiring the FBI to tell Congress how it is using the Patriot Act to search homes and seize papers; forbidding the use of torture or cruel, inhuman and degrading methods against prisoners; requiring that scientific information developed by government researchers be available uncensored to Congress, and instructing the Department of Energy and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission not to bar employees from providing information to Congress.

You remember all that stuff you heard in civics class about this being a nation of laws, not of men? You might as well forget it. Certainly your president has.

Tom Teepen writes for Cox News Service.
teepencolumn@coxnews.com

hairy Frank Luntz with his pal the "Ethics Tzar" & after Bennet's fall ...

He shaved that man right out of his hair!!! 

Now, here's a Sophist for you.

Hey Folks,

Frank Luntz was recently interviewed on NPR's Fresh Air:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6761960

I don't know a better example of sophistry. Luntz shamelessly pretends that the manipulation he advocates, enables, and practices - far from being dishonest - is benevolent.

He makes a lot of money and helps heartless vampires understand how best to hoodwink the people into gladly sacrificing themselves to the good of the undead. Listen to his comments on the "death tax," and "gambling" and ask yourself how this is any different than calling the Mafia "the Family" or prostitution "the profession"?

He's all spin designed for manipulation. For Luntz there is no truth, only appearances.

Listen to him and ask, "How does any of this help the people? How does any of this make a better world?" and, finally, "Shouldn't we all kick this guy in the ass?" Er ... maybe I should have said, "Let's put our best foot forward and give this guy a boost?"

Yeah !! That's the ticket !!!

- Uke Man

 

Monkey Boy George - the Missing Link

Skull suggests human-Neanderthal link
By RANDOLPH E. SCHMID, Associated Press
Jan 15, 2007

WASHINGTON - A skull found in a cave in Romania includes features of both modern humans and Neanderthals, possibly suggesting that the two may have interbred thousands of years ago.

Neanderthals were replaced by early modern humans. Researchers have long debated whether the two groups mixed together, though most doubt it. The last evidence for Neanderthals dates from at least 24,000 years ago.

The skull bearing both older and modern characteristics is discussed in a paper by Erik Trinkaus of Washington University in St. Louis. The report appears in Tuesday's issue of Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences.

The skull was found in Pestera cu Oase — the Cave with Bones — in southwestern Romania, along with other human remains. Radiocarbon dating indicates it is at least 35,000 years old and may be more than 40,000 years old.

The researchers said the skull had the same proportions as a modern human head and lacked the large brow ridge commonly associated with Neanderthals. However, there were also features that are unusual in modern humans, such as frontal flattening, a fairly large bone behind the ear and exceptionally large upper molars, which are seen among Neanderthals and other early hominids.

"Such differences raise important questions about the evolutionary history of modern humans," said co-author Joao Zilhao of the University of Bristol, England.

It could reflect a case in which ancient traits reappear in a modern human, or it could indicate a mixture of populations, Zilhao said. Or it simply may be that science hasn't been able to study enough early modern people to understand their diversity.

Dr. Richard Potts of the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History noted that the skull represents the earliest modern human ever found in Europe.

It's a big deal in that sense, he said, but the combination of characteristics don't necessarily indicate interbreeding between populations.

Overall there is no strong evidence for mixing of Neanderthal and modern human populations and "this doesn't add any," said Potts, who wasn't part of the research team.

None of the features cited as unusual in modern humans is exclusively Neanderthal, Potts said. Rather, they could be features passed down from earlier populations in Africa.

The field work that uncovered the skull was conducted in 2004 and 2005.

Meanwhile, a research team led by Svante Paabo of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, is trying to map the Neanderthal genome in hopes of better understanding any possible relationship to modern people.

The research was funded by the U.S.
National Science Foundation, the Wenner-Green Foundation, Washington University, the Leakey Foundation, the Portuguese Institute of Archaeology, the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Science, the Romanian National Council for Academic Research and the Foundation Fyssen.

 

Manly Michael Manley's Manly Mail

Hey Folks,

I LOVE the psychos who write letters to the Dispatch editor. I LOVE the Dispatch!! They're psycho, too!!

Throughout my entire life they have been printing letters like Michael Manley's (second below), as if they represented the sage wisdom of sane philosophers.

I've always wondered how many of these nuts actually are "out there" in the Columbus cow pasture. Do they represent a considerable percentage of the community? Or does the Dispatch print them disproportionately as a professional courtesy?

They don't usually print my wise-assed responses. Hence, I publish it here.

- Uke Man

To the Editor,

Poor Michael Manley sounded really upset in his recent letter! Maybe Taft and DeWine put extra fluoride in his tap water. Those weenies!

Saints preserve him from the nefarious, socialistic Democrats. They’re the kind who would eat up all the saltines in our Civil Defense bomb shelters, blame the disappearance on rats, and then buy replacement crackers with Michael’s own hard-earned money – some of which they’d surely stuff down the rat holes just for fun. Those gutless wonders!

But thank God for folks like Michael who produce something, folks who “make” rather than “take” and pay taxes so that, for example, unionized postal workers can put waste in their mailboxes.

For that and other reasons, I’ll bet Michael is really popular with the folks at work where – and I’m just guessing – he powers a number of turbines with the steam coming out of his ears.

Yours - Tom Harker



DeWine undeserving of ‘Dispatch’ praise
Tuesday, January 16, 2007


I respond to the Jan. 4 Dispatch editorial "Departing DeWine." As with former Gov. Bob Taft, The Dispatch portrayed outgoing Sen. Mike DeWine as a really good guy, well-intentioned, a pragmatist and a moderate. Every liberal loves miniliberals. DeWine is a spineless weenie, absolutely for nothing, other than making himself a "good guy" for all the poor and underprivileged of the world.

Hey Dispatch and DeWine apologists, the money these gutless wonders pour down rathole after rathole does not come from government. It comes from those like me who actually produce something and actually work and support our families and our communities.

Now Ohio has genuine socialists all around, Taft and DeWine being Republican amateurs, with Democrats Gov. Ted Strickland, U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown and U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich. They can continue to chase the long-gone labor force and heavy manufacturing factories that lost all viability in the ’50s and ’60s. Of course they still have local, state and federal unions that produce nothing but waste.

The division of those who take and those who make will continue to widen.

I’m certain The Dispatch noticed, although attempted to hide, the nation’s unemployment rate went down again while Ohio’s went up again. Keep on wasting education dollars and chasing closed factories.

Compliments to DeWine, Taft, Republican U.S. Sen. George V. Voinovich, Democratic state Rep. Ted Celeste, et al.

MICHAEL MANLEY
Columbus

Jimmy Swaggart - Christian - Headed for heaven? 

1st Amedment - Double Standard

Hey Folks,

It's really pretty clear that the teacher in question was out of line under the Constitution; it is just as clear that the students - who presumably see themselves as "Christians" are lying when claiming the teacher never told the class only Christians had a place in heaven.

It raises a number of questions about how much some so-called Christians respect their nation's Constitution and their religion's code of honesty.

Those who disrespect both are neither good Christians nor good Americans.

- Uke Man

Putting God in His Place
New Jersey student-warrior for the Constitution gets a death threat
by Nat Hentoff

Shortly after school began in September, the teacher told his students at the [public] Kearny High School in New Jersey . . . that only Christians had a place in heaven—according to audio recordings made by a student.—"Talk in Class Turns to God," The New York Times, December 18.

By the time of the adoption of our Constitution, our history shows that there was a widespread awareness among many Americans of the danger of a union of Church and State. . . . [And] the founders of our Constitution knew that a "union of government and religion tends to destroy government and degrade religion."—Justice Hugo Black, writing for the Supreme Court, Engel v.Vitale, June 25, 1962.

When 16-year-old Matthew LaClair, a junior at Kearny (New Jersey) High School, 10 miles west of Manhattan, recorded eight lectures by popular teacher David Paszkiewicz in an accelerated American history course, he started a furor not only in his hometown but elsewhere around this country—whose Constitution has been degraded for the past six years by the president and the Republican-controlled Congress,with the acceptance of many of the citizenry, either ignorant of their constitutional liberties or willing to yield them in fear of homicidal terrorists.

Constitutional law professor Jonathan Turley, a columnist and a litigator in national-security cases, said in an October 18 interview with MSNBC that history will ask this generation of Americans—who "are strangely silent in this national yawn as our rights evaporate"—"Where were you?"

Matthew LaClair will be able to answer that question proudly, although at present he is a pariah among many of his fellow students at Kearny High—and on his computer, there are curses from outraged Americans around the country. He has even received a death threat.

How dare he covertly record the religious beliefs of this esteemed person—described by school principal Al Somma as an "excellent teacher. . . . As far as I know, there have never been any problems in the past." After all, doesn't teacher David Paszkiewicz have the academic freedom, under the First Amendment, to tell his students—as Tina Kelley reported in the December 18 New York Times (and LaClair himself taped)—that the doors of heaven are closed to nonbelievers in Jesus and that a "specific Muslim girl would go to hell"?

Also, this teacher, in addition to his position at the high school, is a youth pastor at Kearny Baptist Church. Not surprisingly, he told his students at the public, taxpayer-financed Kearny High that "evolution and the Big Bang were not scientific."

The teacher, after Matthew turned over his recordings to school officials, is no longer religiously proselytizing in class. And Matthew, who tells me he's lost a lot of friends, adds that he's "extremely surprised by the hostile opposition" in much of the community.

Matthew did question the teacher's conclusions in class, but he also felt it necessary to record those statements. "Because otherwise," he told me, "nobody was going to believe they'd been made. Even now, students in the class, protecting the teacher, say he didn't say those things."

While the school's principal says there has never before been a problem with this teacher, he is now aware—as bloggers around the world are tuning into this fractious constitutional lesson—that this growing problem goes to the heart of the "Establishment Clause" in the First Amendment.

While the First Amendment insists there be no law "prohibiting the free exercise" of religion, it also forbids any law "respecting an establishment of religion."

What that means was clearly explained in a New Jersey case, Everson v. Board of Education (1947),by Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black:

"Neither a state nor the Federal Government can pass laws which aid one religion, aid all religions, or prefer one religion over another. . . . No tax, in any amount, large or small"—suchas those that fund Kearny High—"can be levied to support any religious activities . . . or teach or practice religion."

And, in speaking of public schools, Justice Felix Frankfurter put it as plainly as possible why Matthew LaClair is so valuably instructing his high school and the nation as he stands up for the Constitution—even as some of his friends forsake him. There must be, said Frankfurter, " strict confinement of the state to instruction other than religious, leaving to the individual's church and home indocrination in the faith of his choice." (Emphasis added.) Also left to our choice is to have no religious faith at all. The Constitution protects atheists, too.

To those in and out of Kearny, New Jersey, who scorn atnd rebuke Mathew LaClair, I urge attention to what Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson wrote, as it applies to the teacher Mathew recorded:

"We start down a rough road when we begin to mix compulsory education with compulsory godliness."

Matthew's own road is currently, as he puts it, "a little tough." He continues, "My faith is in this democracy we have in America, but we have to work at it to keep it. I don't want to see this kind of teaching in this school now, or when I leave, or anywhere across this country."

He then read to me from a booklet, "The Program of Studies at Kearny High School," that, he says, every student receives. Among the goals of instruction are "to think critically [and] understand the role of a good citizen in the practice of democratic ideas and ideals."

In view of Matthew LaClair's outstanding dedication to those goals, I would hope that Principal Al Somma would call a school-wide assembly at which to present Mathew with an award named for the chief architect for the First Amendment, James Madison, who started his road to the Constitution at the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University).

James Madison said of the First Amendment that it "strongly guarded . . . the separation between Religion and Government in the Constitution of the United States." If he were still here, I think Mr. Madison might well be glad to meet Matthew LaClair.

 

Bush in the Bunker

January 14, 2007
He’s in the Bunker Now
By FRANK RICH
(a ukethanks to Phyll)

PRESIDENT BUSH always had one asset he could fall back on: the self-confidence of a born salesman. Like Harold Hill in “The Music Man,”he knew how to roll out a new product, however deceptive or useless, with conviction and stagecraft. What the world saw on Wednesday night was a defeated Willy Loman who looked as broken as his war. His flop sweat was palpable even if you turned down the sound to deflect despair-inducing phrases like “Prime Minister Maliki has pledged ...” and “Secretary Rice will leave for the region. ...”

Mr. Bush seemed to know his product was snake oil, and his White House handlers did too. In the past, they made a fetish of situating their star in telegenic settings, from aircraft carriers to Ellis Island. Or they placed him against Orwellian backdrops shrieking “Plan for Victory." But this time even the audio stuttered, as if in solidarity with Baghdad’s continuing electricity blackout, and the Oval Office was ditched, lest it summon up memories of all those past presidential sightings of light at the end of the Iraqi tunnel. Mr. Bush was banished to the White House library, where the backdrop was acres of books, to signify the studiousness of his rethinking of the “way forward.”

"I’m not going to be rushed," the president said a month ago when talking about his many policy consultations. He wasn’t kidding. His ostentatious deep thinking started after Election Day, once he realized that firing Donald Rumsfeld wouldn’t be enough to co-opt the Iraq Study Group. He was thinking so hard that he abandoned his initial plan to announce a strategy before Christmas .

The war, however, refused to take a timeout for the holiday festivities in Crawford. The American death toll in Iraq, which hovered around 2,840 on Election Day, was nearing 3,020 by Wednesday night.

And these additional lives were sacrificed to what end? All the reviews and thinking and postponing produced a policy that, as a former top Bush aide summed it up for The Daily News, is nothing more than "repackaged stay-the-course dressed up to make it look more palatable." There packaging was half-hearted as well. Not for nothing did the “way forward,” a rubric the president used at least 27 times in December, end up on the cutting-room floor. The tossing of new American troops into Baghdad, a ploy that backfired in Operation Together Forward last year, is too transparently the way backward.

“Victory” also received short shrift, downsized by the president to the paltry goal of getting “closer to success.” The “benchmarks” he cited were so vague that they’d be a disgrace to No Child Left Behind. And no wonder:in November, Mr. Bush couldn’t even get our devoted ally, Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, to show up for dinner at their summit in Amman, let alone induce him to root out Shiite militias. The most muscle the former Mr.Bring-’Em-On could muster in Wednesday’s speech was this: “If the Iraqi government does not follow through on its promises, it will lose the support of the American people.” Since that support vanished long ago,it’s hard to imagine an emptier threat or a more naked confession ofAmerican impotence, all the more pathetic in a speech rattling sabers against Syria and Iran.

Mr. Bush’s own support from the American people is not coming back. His“new” Iraq policy is also in defiance of Iraqi public opinion , the Joint Chiefs, the Baker-Hamilton grandees, and Mr. Maliki, who six weeks ago asked for a lower American profile in Iraq. Which leaves you wondering exactly who is still in the bunker with the president besides the first lady and Barney.

It’s a very short list led by John McCain, Joe Lieberman, and neo-conservative dead-enders like William Kristol and Frederick Kagan, who congregate at The Weekly Standard and the American Enterprise Institute,the Washington think tank. The one notable new recruit is Rudy Giuliani,who likened taming Baghdad to “reducing crime in New York” without noticing that even after the escalation there will be fewer American troops patrolling Baghdad than uniformed police officers in insurgency-free New York City.

. . .

The question now is how to minimize the damage before countless more Americans and Iraqis are slaughtered to serve the president’s endgame of passing his defeat on to the next president. The Democrats can have all the hearings they want, but they are unlikely to take draconian action(cutting off funding) that would make them, rather than Mr. Bush,politically vulnerable to blame for losing Iraq.

I have long felt that it will be up to Mr. Bush’s own party to ring down the curtain on his failed policy, and after the 2006 midterms, that is more true than ever. The lame-duck president, having lost both houses of Congress and at least one war (Afghanistan awaits), has nothing left to lose. That is far from true of his party.

Even conservatives like Sam Brownback of Kansas and Norm Coleman of Minnesota started backing away from Iraq last week. Mr. Brownback is running for president in 2008, and Mr. Coleman faces a tough re-election fight. But Republicans not in direct electoral jeopardy (George Voinovich of Ohio, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska) are also starting to waver. It’s another Vietnam-Watergate era flashback. It wasn’t Democrats or the press that forced Richard Nixon’s abdication in 1974; it was dwindlingRepublican support. Though he had vowed to fight his way through a Senate trial, Nixon folded once he lost the patriarchal leader of his party’s right wing.

That leader was Barry Goldwater , who had been one of Nixon’s most loyal and aggressive defenders until he finally realized he’d been lied to once too often. If John McCain won’t play the role his Arizona predecessor once did, we must hope that John Warner or some patriot like him will, for the good of the country, answer the call of conscience. A dangerous president must be saved from himself, so that the American kids he’s about to hurl into the hell of Baghdad can be saved along with him.

 

The Dispatch repeats itself

To the Editor,

In your “Last roll of the dice” editorial (below) you expressed the opinion that “the only way to go is forward” and that “those opposing the president’s buildup plan and those who favor a quick withdrawal also must consider and answer some questions.”

Well, before the war and before the Dispatch had stated either support or opposition to attacking Iraq, many of us urged the newspaper to oppose the action. You did not listen to us.

You supported it and, to some extent, enabled the President’s folly. You were wrong.

Now you are supporting sending more troops into this mess.

Perhaps the Dispatch editorial board should be asking themselves some questions: 1) Why should anyone trust their judgment this time, and 2) what are they enabling now?

Yours – Tom Harker, "Ukulele Man"


Last roll of the dice
President Bush is running out of time to salvage Iraq
Sunday, January 14, 2007

President Bush’s latest plan buys additional time for Iraq’s shaky government. What Iraq’s political and religious factions do with this opportunity will decide that nation’s future.

Bush’s "new approach," announced in a televised address Wednesday evening, commits 21,500 more U.S. troops and additional economic aid to Iraq and calls for a stronger effort by Iraqis to fight the Sunni-led insurgency and Shiite militias and to rebuild their nation.

It might work, although the odds seemed stacked against positive outcomes, as the sectarian conflict descends into civil war. Knowing that Iraq faces dire consequences if the U.S. abruptly ends its military intervention, Bush understandably took action to try to turn around this deteriorating situation.

The president is in a bind. If he withdraws forces immediately, as many Americans want him to do, the civil war will destabilize the region and could bring intervention by Iran, Turkey or Syria. If U.S. troops stay, he risks more Americans dying in a war that could turn out to be a disaster.

Bush’s plan would have had a better chance of success had it been imposed more than a year ago and had it been accompanied by the firing of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, the prime architect of plan that sent too few troops to secure Iraq. Rumsfeld did not resign until after Election Day in November.

The buildup of U.S. troop strength, which stands at 132,000, and nearly $1.2 billion more in economic assistance will pay dividends only if Iraq’s leaders decide to make the compromises necessary to function as a civil society.

The United States, having led the invasion in 2003 to overthrow Saddam Hussein, had a responsibility to provide Iraqis with the opportunity to rebuild their institutions and infrastructure. But Iraqis need to understand, as Bush said Wednesday, that this commitment is "not open-ended."

Iraqis in positions of power and influence have relied on U.S. forces to do the difficult work of pacifying the nation, a job that Iraq’s 325,000-member armed forces should be doing.

A principal reason for this failure is that Iraqi police and soldiers are more loyal to their tribes, sects or ethnic groups than they are to their government.

Concurrent with the U.S. buildup should be an exit strategy. Although Bush resolutely refuses to set a timetable for the troops’ withdrawal, he knows the clock is ticking on U.S. involvement.

This nation lacks the political will to keep slogging in Iraq if brave young Americans are simply babysitting a civil war. Everyone knows that an exit strategy needs to be in place by next year’s presidential elections.

A heavy U.S. presence, with no indication of major troop reductions, would be political dynamite next year, as the two major political parties battle for the White House and control of Congress.

But those opposing the president’s buildup plan and those who favor a quick withdrawal also must consider and answer some questions. What do they propose to do if a U.S. withdrawal results in a regional conflict involving Iran, Turkey or Syria? What if Iraq stabilizes under the rule of a Taliban-like regime that becomes a sponsor of al-Qaida? What if world oil supplies are threatened or interrupted?

Most Americans would like to turn back the clock and call off the invasion of Iraq.

But until someone figures out how to do that, the only way to go is forward, and every path seems fraught with peril.

 

Dr. Martin Luther King - a True American Hero

Hey Folks,

For a very long time I have asserted:

"When Dr. King worked for Civil Rights, they put him in jail. When he worked for economic rights, they killed him."

Dr. King is a true American hero, one of the few, at least as far as I'm concerned.

The "Fresh Air" program linked below relates to the fight in Memphis, the strike of the Sanitation Workers there. Dr. King's involvement with these impoverished, black workers trying to form a union, coupled with his opposition to the Viet Nam War and his ongoing efforts to organize a Poor People's March on Washington were too much for the power structure.

Listen to what the FBI was doing, the Memphis police, the media. You may already know Dr. King's prophetic "Mountain top" speech; he knew. J.Edgar Hoover knew; and others did too. He was murdered the next day.

Notice, too, how the white/business/governmental power structure failed to do the right thing; or, rather, stubbornly refused to be human, "Christian," or in compliance with official American values. After all, they were dealing with poor people, black people, would-be union members - scum, in other words.

Dr. King saw the truth. Dr. King spoke the truth. He fought for the truth, and exposed it. He was murdered to extinguish it.

It is our responsibility to honor Dr. King by searching for the truth, by speaking it, by fighting for it, and exposing it - without regard for ourselves.

- Uke Man

Fresh Air:
http://www.npr.org/templates/rundowns/rundown.php?prgId=13

"Ramses, you look maaahvelous, Daaahling!! "

 

Vanity, thy name is Everyone (or nearly, it seems)

Hey Folks,

Did you hear about the plastic surgeon who hung himself??
Da-duh ...Thump!!

Yes sir, appearances are everything. I mean, all those face girls giving us the news on cable and the networks REALLY know their stuff !! Uh huh, yeah.

Ramses knew the advantages of cosmetic surgery. He even survived death, taking his beauty into the afterlife (see above). Thank Osiris for plastic necromancy!!

It's all pretty pathetic and revolting, if you ask me. Plastic surgery should be used to overcome actual deformities, not "old and tired" looks. Millions of Americans and billions of people around the world have NO medical care, and these wimpy narcissists are paying thousands of dollars to look more lovingly into the mirror.

They should learn to accept themselves. Failing that, they can put a bag over their heads.

- Uke Man


More American men seeking nip n' tuck
by Jocelyne Zablit Sun Jan 14

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Once considered a woman's domain, cosmetic surgery is increasingly attracting American men keen on remaining competitive in the workplace, improving their love life or getting rid of physical hangups.

With procedures for droopy eyelids, bulging love handles and over-sized breasts, more men are readjusting their bodies to enhance their looks and stack the odds in their favor career-wise.

"It's much more acceptable in society today for men to seek plastic surgery," Dr Phillip Haeck, a plastic surgeon in the western state of Washington, told AFP. (Yeah, you can believe him!! He's the one who hung himself)

"There is an incredible push for men to smell good, to have smoother skin and coincidentally to pay more attention to how they look," said Haeck, 53, who underwent surgery on his eyelids two years ago and who has seen a 19 percent increase in male clients in the last five years. (Hmmm . . . do you think the men are flocking to Dr. Haeck because of his luscious new eye lids or because he smells good???)

According to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, the total number of cosmetic procedures on men grew by 16 percent between 2000 and 2005 with breast reduction, tummy tuck, lip augmentation, eyelid surgery and liposuction among the most popular. (not to mention the wallet-flattening dollarsuction procedure)

Dr Mark Solomon, a plastic surgeon in the eastern state of Pennsylvania, said he believes the baby boomer generation is behind men seeking "six-pack abs" and youthful looks beyond their 40s, 50s and even 60s. (Good luck, guys; that'll probably fool Arthur Ritis)

"Competition for jobs continues to increase at an intense pace with people trying to maintain their level of advancement both professionally and personally, and more people are divorced than ever before," Solomon said. "People are also less concerned today about appearing feminine."

He said his male patients, who make up 30 percent of his clientele, span all age groups and backgrounds, from mailmen, to prison guards to executives willing to spend between 2,000 and upwards of 10,000 dollars, depending on the surgery.

Eyelid surgery typically runs between 3,000 and 4,000 dollars and breast surgery about 5,000 dollars. Most of the surgeries are out-patient and require a brief recovery period. (Ah, yes!! Billfold-flattening!!)

"With regard to facial surgery, most of them want to get rid of the tired look," Solomon said of his patients. "For body contouring, it's more that they've dieted and exercised and still can't make their body look they way they want it to."

Haeck said some of his older patients seek a nip and tuck in a desperate bid to keep up with their younger counterparts at the office.

"I've heard everything from 'I've got a younger wife and I want to look younger to I have to hold on to my job and there are a lot more younger people getting promoted and I want to look like them," Haeck said.

Jim Larson, a 41-year-old nurse at Haeck's office said he decided to get rid of the extra skin around his eyelids two years ago because he felt it made him look tired and old.

"I don't regret it at all," he said. "It has made me look a little more younger, a little more awake and alert. (and I would rather LOOK younger, more awake, and alert; Dahling!! than be younger, alert, and awake!! and I look Mahvelous !!")

"If women can do it, I don't see why we can't?" (well guys, if it's to be like women, why REDUCE the size of your breasts??)

 

Speaking of the Dark Side

Hey Folks,

If you missed this recently on PBS, you can see it at:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/darkside/view/


Front Line: The Dark Side

Amid revelations about faulty prewar intelligence and a scandal surrounding the indictment of the vice president's chief of staff and presidential adviser, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, FRONTLINE goes behind the headlines to investigate the internal war that was waged between the intelligence community and Richard Bruce Cheney, the most powerful vice president in the nation's history.

"A lot of what needs to be done here will have to be done quietly, without any discussion, using sources and methods that are available to our intelligence agencies," Cheney told Americans just after 9/11. He warned the public that the government would have to operate on the "dark side."

In "The Dark Side," FRONTLINE tells the story of the vice president's role as the chief architect of the war on terror, and his battle with Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet for control of the "dark side." Drawing on more than 40 interviews and thousands of documents, the film provides a step-by-step examination of what happened inside the councils of war.

 

One more time:Gerald Ford

Hey Folks,

Here's some insight into how what was said of Gerald Ford relates to our Incurious George.

- Uke Man


January 7, 2007
The Timely Death of Gerald Ford
By FRANK RICH
(a ukethanks to Phyll)

THE very strange and very long Gerald Ford funeral marathon was about many things, but Gerald Ford wasn’t always paramount among them.

Forty percent of today’s American population was not alive during the Ford presidency. The remaining 60 percent probably spent less time recollecting his unelected 29-month term than they did James Brown’s “Papa’s Got aBrand New Bag.” Despite the lachrymose logorrhea of television anchors and the somber musical fanfares, the country was less likely to be found in deep mourning than in deep football. It’s a safe bet that the Ford funeral attracted far fewer viewers than the most consequential death video of theNew Year’s weekend, the lynching of Saddam Hussein. But those two deaths were inextricably related: it was in tandem that they created a funereal mood that left us mourning for our own historical moment more than for Mr.Ford.

What the Ford obsequies were most about was the Beltway establishment’s grim verdict on George W. Bush and his war in Iraq. Every Ford attribute,big and small, was trotted out by Washington eulogists with a wink, as an implicit rebuke of the White House’s current occupant. Mr. Ford was a healer, not a partisan divider. He was an all-American football star, not a cheerleader. He didn’t fritter away time on pranks at his college fraternity, Delta Kappa Epsilon, because he had to work his way through school as a dishwasher. He was in the top third of his class at Yale Law. He fought his way into dangerous combat service during World War II rather than accept his cushy original posting. He was pals with reporters and Democrats. He encouraged dissent in his inner circle. He had no enemies,no ego, no agenda, no ideology, no concern for his image. He described himself as “a Ford, not a Lincoln,” rather than likening himself to, say,Truman.

Under the guise of not speaking ill of a dead president, the bevy of bloviators so relentlessly trashed the living incumbent that it bordered on farce. No wonder President Bush, who once hustled from Crawford to Washington to sign a bill interfering in Terri Schiavo’s medical treatment, remained at his ranch last weekend rather than join Betty Ford and Dick Cheney for the state ceremony in the Capitol rotunda.

Yet for all the media acreage bestowed on the funeral, the day in Mr.Ford’s presidency that most stalks Mr. Bush was given surprisingly shortshrift — perhaps because it was the most painful. That day was not Sept.8, 1974, when Mr. Ford pardoned his predecessor, but April 30, 1975, when the last American helicopters hightailed it out of Saigon, ending our involvement in a catastrophic war. Mr. Ford had been a consistent Vietnam hawk, but upon inheriting the final throes of the fiasco, he recognized reality when he saw it.

Just how much so can be found in a prescient speech that Mr. Ford gave a week before our clamorous Saigon exit. (And a speech prescient on other fronts, too: he called making “America independent of foreign energy sources by 1985” an urgent priority.) Speaking at Tulane University, Mr.Ford said, “America can regain the sense of pride that existed beforeVietnam” but not “by refighting a war that is finished as far as America is concerned.” He added: “We, of course, are saddened indeed by the events in Indochina. But these events, tragic as they are, portend neither the end of the world nor of America’s leadership in the world.”

All of this proved correct, and though Mr. Ford made a doomed last-ditch effort to secure more financial aid for Saigon, he could and did do nothing to stop the inevitable. He knew it was way too late to make the symbolic gesture of trying to toss fresh American troops on the pyre. “We can and we should help others to help themselves,” he said in New Orleans.“But the fate of responsible men and women everywhere, in the final decision, rests in their own hands, not in ours.”

. . .

It’s against the backdrop of both the Hussein [snuff] video and the Ford presidency that we must examine the prospect of that much-previewed “surge” in Iraq — a surge, by the way, that the press should start calling by its rightful name, escalation. As Mr. Ford had it, America cannot regain its pride by refighting a war that is finished as far as America is concerned and, for that matter, as far as Iraq is concerned. By large margins, the citizens of both countries want us not to escalate but to start disengaging. So do America’s top military commanders, who are now being cast aside just as Gen. Eric Shinseki was when he dared assert before the invasion that securing Iraq would require several hundred thousand troops.

It would still take that many troops, not the 20,000 we might scrape together now. Last month the Army and Marines issued an updated field manual on counterinsurgency (PDF) supervised by none other than Lt. Gen.David Petraeus, the next top American military commander in Iraq. It endorsed the formula that “20 counterinsurgents per 1,000 residents” is “the minimum troop density required.” By that yardstick, it would take the addition of 100,000-plus troops to secure Baghdad alone.

The “surge,” then, is a sham. It is not meant to achieve that undefined “victory” Mr. Bush keeps talking about but to serve his own political spin. His real mission is to float the “we’re not winning, we’re not losing” status quo until Jan. 20, 2009. After that, as Joseph Biden put it last week, a new president will “be the guy landing helicopters inside the Green Zone, taking people off the roof.” This is nothing but a replay of the cynical Nixon-Kissinger “decent interval” exit strategy concocted to pass the political buck (to Mr. Ford, as it happened) on Vietnam.

As the White House tries to sell this flimflam, picture fresh American troops being tossed into Baghdad’s caldron to work alongside the Maliki-Sadr Shiite lynch mob that presided over the Saddam hanging. Contemplate as well Gerald Ford’s most famous words, spoken as he assumed the presidency after the Nixon resignation: “Our Constitution works; our great republic is a government of laws and not of men. Here the people rule.”

This time the people do not rule. Two months after Americans spoke decisively on Election Day, the president is determined to overrule them.Our long national nightmare in Iraq, far from being over, is about to get a second wind.

 

One of Bush's first Big Ideas

Hey Folks,

As some of you may know, I was a teacher for 31 years. And in Ohio we had a version of the Bush scheme years before W started eyeing all kids' behinds. It was called "The Proficiency Test."

Like Bushy's scheme, it discarded the IQ Test that, in conjunction with the Achievement Test, could tell whether a child - at whatever natural ability - was doing well, poorly, or somewhere in between.

Under the old system of measurement, one could determine that Student X - though quite able and intelligent - was lagging behind in achievement. One could also determine that Student Y - although not intellectually gifted - was making significant progress each year.

Under the "Proficiency Test" system and the Bush policy that replaced it, NO consideration was given to individual differences. The mantra was "All children can learn," as if anybody thought otherwise.

But that slogan was officially interpreted as "All children can learn the same things at the same rate; and, so, should achieve the same level of proficiency." That's nuts. I said so years ago and also listened to the superintendent of Shaker Heights, Ohio schools say it to the Ohio State School Board when they were planning to implement the testing program. They didn't listen.

Below is an essay by an Ohio education "expert" who has supported the testing for years, but has lately come to agree with what I told him years ago.

Better late than never.

- Uke Man

Commentary:Leaving Children Behind
By William L. Bainbridge http://www.ait.net/technos/tq_11/2bainbridge.php


In January 2002, the federal government's No Child Left Behind Act was signed into law. This legislation aims to “improve overall student performance and close the achievement gap between rich and poor students.” No Child Left Behind focuses on school accountability, higher standards for students, and some of the very measurements educational evaluators advocate from coast to coast.

In addition to recognizing the positive aspects of this legislation, however, it also seems prudent to be concerned about what the national legislation lacks. The concern is that measurement alone will not bridge the learning gap that exists between children from homes of various socioeconomic levels.

The introduction to this legislation states that “In America, no child should be left behind. Every child should be educated to his or her full potential.” Mandating standards and tests in and of itself cannot erase the fact that children from homes where parents have little education and minimal resources have many strikes against them.

Evidence indicates that the “digital divide” gets larger each day. Children in homes with computers have huge advantages over those without such technology.

While neurologists have extolled the virtues of high-protein diets for brain growth and development of young children, the economically disadvantaged continue to be plagued with high-carbohydrate diets, even in Head Start and public-school food service programs.

Evidence indicates that more time on task helps to advance learning. The few efforts to increase the school year have mainly focused on poorly structured remedial summer programs doomed from their inception with the “punishment brand.”

A recent report from the Education Trust makes questionable claims that accountability measures alone can improve learning. The organization's slip-shod research dumps results from programs for gifted and talented students and magnet schools into unscientifically selected cohort groups. The study also includes schools with single-year incidences of high scores, which researchers label an “anomaly.”

Well-meaning political leaders on both sides of the aisle, ranging from President George W. Bush to Senator Edward M. Kennedy, supported the legislation. The fact that these men are both products of privilege and private schools may have something to do with their lack of understanding of the needs of children in poverty. The No Child Left Behind legislation regrettably suffers from many pitfalls that some consultants have introduced to schools as part of the effective schools movement.

It is important to consider a basic thinking fallacy of our public policy leaders in Washington that does not hold up under careful scrutiny. That fallacy assumes that all children can learn at the same level and in the same amount of time. All children can learn, at some level. The late professor Ronald Edmonds of Harvard, founder of the Effective Schools movement, once stated, “Most children can learn the basic curriculum if sufficient resources are provided.”

Empirical research does not support the belief that all children can learn the same curriculum, in the same amount of time, and at the same level. The problem with such an unsubstantiated belief is that it may be used to deny differential financial support for those who come to school with environmental disadvantages. Not all children have high-quality nutrition, stimulating homes, and extensive learning opportunities prior to entering school.

Research in cognitive brain development shows that formation of synaptic contacts in the human cerebral cortex occurs between birth and age 10, and most of the brain gets built within a few years after birth. Environment matters greatly in brain development. The period of early childhood is critical to brain development, and those who have high-protein diets and lots of sensory stimulation tend to have more synaptic connections. Brains that do not receive enough protein and stimulation in their environments lose connections, and some potential neural pathways are shut down. These facts help to explain what educators have long observed: Children from impoverished environments, in which they do not receive good nutrition and stimulating experiences, generally achieve at lower levels than children from more enriching environments.

This concrete evidence should be enough to convince us that we should concentrate on improving the lives of children before they come to school. It is not enough simply to proclaim that “no child will be left behind” without enacting proper public policy to provide economic opportunity for families, healthcare for all children, and parenting education for young mothers.

We live in a country where 10.5 million children have no health insurance. Most of them live in poverty. The child poverty rate in the United States is the highest among the so-called developed nations. Recent basic research clearly concludes that children who are disadvantaged have difficulty with cognitive development, acquiring adequate vocabulary, and acquiring the sounds needed for learning to read. Millions of our children attend “holding-tank” childcare centers that stifle creativity and hinder appropriate development.

If we as a society can summon the courage to provide all children with basic human needs, then possibly all children can learn at higher levels and the gap between low-income and more privileged children can really be narrowed.

“Wishes don't wash dishes,” Carl Sandburg said. “Well done is better than well said,” according to Benjamin Franklin. Our colleague, well-known educator M. Donald Thomas recently said, “Those who don't wish to educate all our children well simply substitute pleasant sounding rhetoric for resources.” Merely intoning a slogan like “no child left behind” never taught a child to read or compute. We need to do what we know must be done in terms of providing sufficient resources to educate all of our children successfully. Fifteen state supreme courts have indicated their state's current system does not provide for an adequate public education.

The time has come for public policy leaders to redefine the slogan that “no child will be left behind.” Let's return to the basic research and stress the facts instead of the fallacy that have hurt so many of our children, parents, teachers, and schools.

 

Bush to the people: "Yer on a don't-need-to-know basis!!"

Hey Folks,

Looks like the White House, at least regarding visitor records, has become a Black Hole. Can you feel the power of the dark force surrounding the Emperor ????

- Uke Man

White House places visitor logs off-limits
Saturday, January 06, 2007
Pete Yost
ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON — The White House and the Secret Service quietly signed an agreement last spring in the midst of the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal declaring that records identifying visitors to the White House are not open to the public.

The Bush administration didn’t reveal the existence of the memorandum of understanding until last fall. Now, the White House is using it to deal with a legal problem on a separate front, a ruling by a federal judge ordering the production of Secret Service logs identifying visitors to the office of Vice President Dick Cheney.

In a federal appeals-court filing three weeks ago, the administration’s lawyers used the memo in a legal argument aimed at overturning the judge’s ruling. The Washington Post is suing for access to the Secret Service logs.

The five-page document dated May 17 declares that all entry and exit data on White House visitors belongs to the White House as presidential records rather than to the Secret Service as agency records. Therefore, the agreement states, the material is not subject to public disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act.

In the past, Secret Service logs have revealed the comings and goings of various White House visitors, including Monica Lewinsky and Clinton campaign donor Denise Rich, the wife of financier Marc Rich, who received a pardon in the closing hours of the Clinton administration.

The memo last spring was signed by the White House and Secret Service the day after a Washington group asked a federal judge to impose sanctions on the Secret Service in a dispute over White House visitor logs for Abramoff.

The chief counsel to another Washington group suing to get Secret Service logs calls the creation of the memo "a political maneuver couched as a legal one."

"It appears the White House is actually manufacturing evidence to further its own agenda," Anne Weismann said yesterday. Weismann was a Justice Department lawyer for 19 years and now is chief counsel to Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

The White House and the Secret Service declined to comment.
The Secret Service uses the log information to conduct background checks before White House visits.

The memo "at a minimum will serve to postpone a final resolution of who these records belong to," said Steven Aftergood, director of the Federation of American Scientists’ Project on Government Secrecy.

Subversive little Uke

 

My friend the Ukulele

Hey Folks,

I didn't need the Houston Chronicle via the Columbus Dispatch to tell me that the ukulele was my friend!! So often, the media comes to the table late during dessert and acts as if it's there for the appetiser.

I got a uke by accident or fate back in 1958 when I was in 9th grade. It was the "Folk Revival" and I wanted a guitar. My Dad took me to a pawn shop (interesting places, pawn shops), and the man, noticing that I was a fat little kid with thick glasses, and that my dad wasn't heir to Robber Barons, sold us a poorly-finished baritone uke.

I loved that cheap-assed uke - because I could play it (3-to-4-chord folk song) and because my Dad bought it for me.

It lasted until my college days when my pal Gary Leach - now deceased, killed in the fucking Viet Nam war when the wings fell off his over-loaded transport plane taking off out of the Phillipenes - organized a trip in his red Pontiac convertible yacht to Florida during Spring Break.

The day we arrived, some highschool toughs decided we looked funny standing in line inside a Ft. Lauderdale hamburger joint, and attacked us with beer bottles when we came out.

As you might expect, the uke - which seldom left my hand - was introduced to the head of the miscreant closest to me. Later, it was burried at sea, a ghost uke sailing the Mediterranean in search of Arthur Godfrey and Tiny Tim.

But I digress.

There is so much more about the uke than covered in this article, but for the unitiated, it's a good start. Check out the following sites for more info, videos, and uke fun:

http://www.sonicuke.com/ Sonic Uke

http://www.ukulelecabaret.com/ Ukulele Cabaret

http://www.ukulele.org/ Ukulele Hall of Fame Museum

http://www.ukuleleclub.com/ Ukulele Club of Santa Cruz

Oh yeash, and I got to play on the same stage at the same festival as Bill Tapia, the 99 year old Uke Man mentioned in the article. And - I have a sweet 1922 koa wood Martin soprano uke to replace that old baritone I told you about - found by accident and purchased from a New York City music store where - I'm told - George Harrison and John Lennon both had bought ukuleles.

Yours - Uke Man


‘It’s like a little friend’
Once seen as uncool, the ukulele enjoys mainstream resurgence
Monday, January 08, 2007
Andrew Dansby
HOUSTON CHRONICLE

HOUSTON — For a little instrument, the ukulele carries a lot of baggage. The four-stringed member of the guitar family was tuned for decades to the most uncool connections and connotations in popular culture: dwarfed by the 1960s novelty act Tiny Tim, blinded by the bright Hawaiian shirts worn by Don Ho and smothered by the cleavage of cheesecake models posed on postcards.

In short: It wasn’t considered a utensil for hip musicians.

The uke, though, is in different hands now — and enjoying a peculiar renaissance:

• Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam has an entire album of ukulele music (although he doesn’t plan to release it).

• The uke is heard on recordings by acts such as Jack Johnson, Jens Lekman, Nickel Creek and Andy Partridge.

• Family-oriented artist and former rocker Dan Zanes sells a uke on his Web site.

• Stephin Merritt, frontman for the alt-pop Magnetic Fields, plays only a uke on tour. Their albums, too, make great use of the ukulele, which has inspired a pair of Merritt songs — Ukulele Me! and This Little Ukulele.

• Bruce Springsteen is known to have recently played a uke onstage.

"It’s not perceived as a silly instrument anymore," said Jason Verlinde, editor and publisher of the Ukulele Occasional (with two issues printed in the past three years) and the more regular Fretboard Journal.

"You’re seeing it at more music stores. And the nice thing about it: The ukulele is the one instrument at a music store that you’re never too intimidated to pick up."

The most popular uke lore pinpoints the instrument’s birth as 1879. Traditional Portuguese stringed instruments mutated into the uke in Hawaii by immigrants who worked in sugar-cane fields.

The most popular account pegs the word ukulele as the native term for "jumping fleas" — an observation made about how one of the immigrants played the uke.

The instrument caught on stateside about 1915 and became a favorite with Tin Pan Alley songwriters.

The uke’s popularity waxed and waned, dropping in the 1930s, coming back in the ’50s with TV host Arthur Godfrey, then drifting into novelty songs in the ’60s.

Martin, the instrument company that once made more ukeleles than guitars, eventually ceased ukulele production.

But the uke never became uncool in Hawaii, where it remained the basis for lovely music largely untainted by mainland pop.

And even at its lowest points, the instrument made shy appearances in mainstream pop culture.

At least half the Beatles were uke enthusiasts. Three songs on George Harrison’s final album featured ukulele, and Paul McCartney, whose 1971 album Ram proudly showcased the instrument on a few songs, did a uke tribute to Harrison on his 2002 tour.

Harrison loved the uke.

"It sounds kind of corny, but (playing ukulele) gave him so much joy," his friend Tom Petty told Rolling Stone in 2001. "I was there when he first discovered it. The rest of his life was ukulele. He played the hell out of the thing."

Years after leaving the hardrocking Del Fuegos, Dan Zanes found a second life making family music. His main instrument is mandolin, but he also plays ukulele.

The uke’s simplicity and price — a starter model costs less than $50 — make it appealing, he said.

The Guinness Book of Records once cited the ukulele as the world’s easiest instrument to learn — a point that Zanes echoed.

"It only takes 10 minutes to learn how to play Sloop John B or Jamaica Farewell."

Something about the uke’s simple, small shape and simple, sweet sound is endearing. Unlike the guitar, it lends itself to strumming as you walk around the house; it doesn’t smother conversation.

"It’s like a little friend," said Nickel Creek’s Sara Watkins, who played a custom-made uke nightly on a 2006 tour.

"You can hide in a corner and play, it’s so unintrusive. It’s really useful for those kinds of songs when you’re hiding within yourself."

In the uke’s pop revival, that sadness comes through; its current vogue is distinctly different from the novelty peaks of its past.

Vedder’s album was, according to a source who heard it, largely informed by his split from his wife.

Merritt’s songs fuse big melodies with romantic melancholy.

Similarly, Harrison’s swan song, while upbeat in parts, was recorded after he learned he had terminal cancer.

At 99, the so-called Duke of Uke, Bill Tapia, has outlived most of his friends and family. He says playing helped him get past the deaths of his wife and daughter.

"The ukulele is a powerful instrument," he said. "It hardly leaves my hands."

(a ukethanks to Sondra) 

Olbermann says it all!!

Folks,

It's a wonder that the president has any support from the public left. He is an incompetant boob. So stupid and without personal foundation or understanding that he has had to mouth the talking points, excuses, and lies fed to him by psychopaths such as Cheney, Rove, and the Neo-Coneheads - and throughout the process he's had NO idea of what he was getting himself and this country's people into - and NO care as to what he was doing to the rest of the world, either.

Worse, the pathetic clod keeps on, full speed ahead, into oblivion, "the decider," imposing/demanding more sacrifice of the very people he is selling down the river to the globalized plantations of Asia - while his daughters drink and gambol with the Jet Set.

Whatever one thinks of Bill Clinton, or Gerald Ford, or Jimmy Carter, or Papa Bush, or even senile Ronald Reagan - none of them were so stupid as to allow themselves to descend into the nightmare, Kafkaesque world in which Bush finds himself - a fiendish and guilty Limbo elloquently described by Keith Olbermann in the video below.

We are in deep shit with this madman in charge!!

- Uke Man

http://video.msn.com/v/us/msnbc.htm?f=00&g=bd2234c5-fd27-41eb-84b7-c62e0e38645b&p=News_Comment%20-%20Analysis&t=c1149&rf=http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16583889/&fg=

Fun with Jesus

Kill!! kill!! kill!! (and be sure to buy my favorite Left Behind game!! 

Jesus H. Christ !!!!

Hey Folks,

Here's something to consider. What do YOU think Jesus wants? What do YOU think Jesus would do? What do YOU think Jesus preached??

Well, I don't think Jesus was interested in "the Market" and its demands. I don't think he was interested in shooting (slicing/sticking in those days) Romans or anyone else. Jesus claimed to have come so that we could have LIFE more abundantly.

Well, check out this video (a short ad precedes it), and see what some "Christians" believe.

- Uke Man
p.s. And would you buy a used car from this guy??

http://www.forbes.com/video/?video=fvn/games/ms_jesus121406

 

Spread Socialism: help the people / Spread "Democracy": kill the people

 

Golly!! Utilities and oil belong to the nation?? instead of foreign corporations and wealthy capitalists??What is the world coming to??

Chavez: Will nationalize telecoms, power
By IAN JAMES, Associated Press

CARACAS, Venezuela - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez announced plans Monday to nationalize the country's electrical and telecommunications companies, his boldest move yet to transform Venezuela into a socialist state.

"All of those sectors that in an area so important and strategic for all of us as is electricity — all of that which was privatized, let it be nationalized," Chavez said in a televised speech after swearing in a new Cabinet.

"C.A. Nacional Telefonos de Venezuela (CANTV), let it be nationalized," Chavez said. "The nation should recover its property of strategic sectors."
When Chavez was re-elected by a wide margin last month, he promised to take a more radical turn toward socialism. Monday's announcement appeared likely to affect Electricidad de Caracas, owned by AES Corp., and CANTV, which is the country's largest publicly traded company.

CANTV's American Depositary Receipts plunged 14.2 percent to $16.84 (12.95 euros) before the New York Stock Exchange halted trading. The ADRs had been moderately higher before the announcement.

An NYSE spokesman said it was unknown when trading in the ADRs might resume and that CANTV is the only Venezuelan company listed on the stock exchange.

Chavez also said he would soon ask the National Assembly, which is solidly controlled by his allies, to approve a special law giving him powers to approve such changes by decree and without further approval.
Chavez also said that lucrative oil projects in the Orinoco River basin involving foreign oil companies should be under national ownership, though he did not spell out if that meant a complete nationalization, or under what terms for companies that have been viewed as investing partners by his government.

He said a period known as the "oil opening" that preceded his government should be reversed. "I'm referring to how international companies have control and power over all those processes of improving the heavy crudes of the Orinoco belt — no — that should become the property of the nation," Chavez said.

Since last year, Chavez's government has been in talks with foreign companies involved in four heavy crude upgrading projects in the Orinoco on the formation of so-called "mixed companies" in which the state holds a majority stake.

Chavez threatened last August to nationalize CANTV, a Caracas-based former state firm that was privatized in 1991, unless it adjusted its pension payments to current minimum-wage levels, which have been repeatedly increased by his government.

Chavez's nationalization annoucement came in his first speech of the year, a fiery address in which he also called Organization of American States Secretary-General Jose Miguel Insulza an "idiot" and urged him to resign.

Chavez lashed out at Insulza for questioning his government's decision not to renew the license of an opposition-aligned TV station.

"Dr. Insulza is quite an idiot, a true idiot," Chavez said in a speech after swearing in new Cabinet members. He used a vulgar Spanish term* that translates roughly as idiot. "The insipid Dr. Insulza should resign from the secretariat of the Organization of American States for daring to play that role."

* I'll bet it was: "pendejo" (pronounced pen-day-ho) - look it up on the net; it fits Bush well. Use it.

 

What is Kristof Smoking???

Hey Folks,

I'm entirely for peacefull coexistence with my superstitious bros & sis's, but if "the Christian Right has largely retreated from the culture wars" as Kristof claims, nobody told the folks around here or at Foxxx News.

How about where you are?

Or is "the Amazing Kristof" just smokin something again?

The Bible says, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." Well, the way some of these "Christians" have been treating atheists, liberals, Democrats, gays, pagans, and Muslims (to name only a few), they seem to be asking for it - at least if they want to be treated in the same way they treat others. Or maybe they think their Holy Word doesn't apply to them !

I've commented in red.

- Uke Man

p.s. And "obnoxious"? Compared to the "God hates fags" guy???


December 3, 2006
A Modest Proposal for a Truce on Religion
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

If God is omniscient and omnipotent, you can’t help wondering why she doesn’t pull out a thunderbolt and strike down Richard Dawkins.

Or, at least, crash the Web site of www.whydoesgodhateamputees.com . That’s a snarky site that notes that while people regularly credit God for curing cancer or other ailments, amputees never seem to enjoy divine intervention.

“If God were answering the prayers of amputees to regenerate their lost limbs,we would be seeing amputated legs growing back every day,” the Web site declares, adding: “It would appear, to an unbiased observer, that God is singling out amputees and purposefully ignoring them. What's wrong with this? It's just the other side of the coin from an athlete going on camera to thank Jesus for helping him win the game - we never hear a jock cuss God for making him lose. Is Kristof using a double standard? or just afraid to go at it directly?

”That site is part of an increasingly assertive, often obnoxious (isn't that - like beauty - in the eye of the beholder??) atheist offensive led in part by Professor Dawkins — the Oxford scientist who is author of the new best seller “The God Delusion.” It’s a militant, in-your-face brand of atheism that he and others are proselytizing for. I haven't experienced enough of this to judge whether Kristof is accurate or overstating the case; but, in any case, I am against proselytizing. I'm for education; and I don't want to cram the truth from the physical world down someone's throat any more than I want their view of the metaphysical world crammed down mine.

However, if what Kristof characterises as obnoxious and in-your-face behavior is directed at obnoxious, in-your-face fundamentalist preachers and politicians, I'd call that "fighting back" rather than "proselytizing."

Furthermore, the term "proselytizing" is defined as "converting." While the term clearly applies to religion, I find it unfitting when applied to rational, objective, scientific argument based on observation of the physical world. Is one convinced by or converted to the Periodic Table?

He counsels readers to imagine a world without religion and conjures his own glimpse: “Imagine no suicide bombers, no 9/11, no 7/7, no Crusades, no witchhunts, no Gunpowder Plot, no Indian partition, no Israeli/Palestinian wars, noSerb/Croat/Muslim massacres, no persecution of Jews as ‘Christ-killers,’ no Northern Ireland ‘troubles,’ no ‘honor killings,’ no shiny-suited bouffant-haired televangelists fleecing gullible people of their money.” Well, I don't think religion caused these bad situations, but they certainly serve to justify and organize them. People would still be jerks without religion; but, again, it's a counter punch, not an assault. As a teacher for thirty-one years, I'm well aware of an almost daily assertion by a religious chorus that society's troubles stem from not having organized prayer in public schools.

Look elsewhere on the best-seller list and you find an equally acerbic assault on faith: Sam Harris’s “Letter to a Christian Nation.” Mr. Harris mocks conservative Christians for opposing abortion, writing: “20 percent of all recognized pregnancies end in miscarriage. There is an obvious truth here that cries out for acknowledgment: if God exists, He is the most prolific abortionistof all.” And what's wrong with this? Maybe some believers find it rude or obnoxious, and I personally wouldn't say something like this to any individual person unless I were provoked. But it DOES need to be said publicly to those rude, obnoxious "Christians" who, without invitation, get into non-Christians' faces, both personally and through public discourse.

The number of avowed atheists is tiny, with only 1 to 2 percent of Americans describing themselves in polls as atheists. But about 15 percent now say that they are not affiliated with any religion, and this vague category is sometimes described as the fastest-growing “religious group” in America today (some surveys back that contention, while others don’t). With so few Atheists and so many stiff-necked "Christians," what drives Kristof to criticize atheists? They're but a fly speck on the fundamentalist cow pie.

Granted, many Americans may not yet be willing to come out of the closet and acknowledge their irreligious views. In polls, more than 90 percent of Americans have said that they would be willing to vote for a woman, a Jew or a black, and 79 percent would be willing to vote for a gay person. But at last count, only 37 percent would consider voting for an atheist.

Such discrimination on the basis of (non) belief is insidious and intolerant,and undermines our ability to have far-reaching discussions about faith and politics. Mr. Harris, for example, makes some legitimate policy points (implying that most of his points are illegitimate?), such as criticism of conservative Christians who try to block research on stem cells because of their potential to become humans.

“Almost every cell in your body is a potential human being, given our recent advances in genetic engineering,” notes Mr. Harris. “Every time you scratch your nose, you have committed a Holocaust of potential human beings.”

Yet the tone of this Charge of the Atheist Brigade is often just as intolerant —and mean. It’s contemptuous and even ... a bit fundamentalist. I don't value fundamentalist/dogmatic/close-minded perspectives whether of the right or left. Any atheist who behaves as a dogmatic zealot is misguided, but hitting zealously back at misguided "Christians" who would discriminate against women, gays, atheists, Jews, and Muslims is responsible behavior. This is a secular, multi-faceted nation; and those who think it is a Christian nation that should operate under religious control are worse than misguided.

AND - when has Kristof or any other "mainstream" "journalist" gone after fundamentalists for being a "charging, intollerant, and contemptuous brigade" as he does here with atheists?

“These writers share a few things with the zealous religionists they oppose,such as a high degree of dogmatism and an aggressive rhetorical style,” says John Green of the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. “Indeed, one could speak of a secular fundamentalism that resembles religious fundamentalism. This may be one of those cases where opposites converge.”

First of all, if "an aggressive rhetorical style is damning or something to be eschewed, the "Pew Forum" had better inform - in addition to atheists - most politicians, Fox News, and millions of other people - including ministers - in this country that they are out of line.

Secondly, the nature of religion is again being improperly mixed with that of science. "Dogmatism" is incompatible with science. Reliance on "authority" and "faith" are the basis of religion; neither is compatible with science, which requires rational interpretation of observed events in the physical world.

Certainly some could dogmatically support atheism on the basis of "authority" or "faith," but if they did, they would not be scientists or acting scientifically. But at the same time, if a scientist got into a screaming match with a Creationist who claimed everything was 7,000 years old or less; how could anyone call him "zealous," "aggressive," or "fundamentalist"? Anyone, that is, other than a "zealous," "aggressive," or "fundamentalist" non-scientific person?

Granted, religious figures have been involved throughout history in the worst kinds of atrocities. But as Mao Zedong, Joseph Stalin and Pol Pot show, so have atheists. But can anyone in the West claim an objective view of Mao and Stalin? Or are they characterized by the West as Iraqis would characterize Duhbya?

More importantly, a nonexistent god cannot justify injustice as easily as one who exists. Whatever Mao or Stalin did that was wrong had nothing to do with god. God smiled on what white Europeans did to India and China and Africa; and He smiles on what America is doing to the world today; but He paid no attention to Mao or Stalin.

So, Dawkins DOES make sense. Since so many people believe in god, it's more difficult for atheists to justify injustice; theists, however, can simply claim it is god's will and - end of discussion.

Moreover, for all the slaughters in the name of religion over the centuries,there is another side of the ledger. Every time I travel in the poorest parts of Africa, I see missionary hospitals that are the only source of assistance to desperate people. God may not help amputees sprout new limbs, but churches do galvanize their members to support soup kitchens, homeless shelters and clinics that otherwise would not exist. Religious constituencies have pushed for more action on AIDS, malaria, sex trafficking and Darfur’s genocide, and believers often give large proportions of their incomes to charities that are a lifeline to the neediest. This kind of argument always makes me crazy. "Yeah, I told the judge I robbed the bank, but since all my relatives and I donate large sums to Jerry's Kids every year, he let me off."

Now that the Christian Right has largely retreated from the culture wars (Yeah, and bears use porta-potties), let’s hope that the Atheist Left doesn’t revive them. We’ve suffered enough from religious intolerance that the last thing the world needs is irreligious intolerance.

Let's hope that the Christian Right actually DOES retreat from the culture wars - someone tell Foxxx News the new directive.

- Uke Man

Sonic Uke 

 

 

"The World has changed" - Chuck Schumer

Vote Republicrat - not beholding to interest groups of the left, right, or center!! Concerned only about ourselves!!! 

Didn't I say, "if you’re smart, you’ll watch where the Democrats come down."

Hey Folks,

There is some heavy stuff in the "analysis" below. I have highlighted some of it in blue and commented in red.

- Uke Man


ANALYSIS
Democrats must choose between reform (remember what I said about "reform") and reversal
Sunday, January 07, 2007
Carl Hulse
NEW YORK TIMES NEWS SERVICE

WASHINGTON — Democrats realized their political and legislative dream Thursday. Now they must face reality. In the first sentence it claims that the dream is impossible (not real).

As they take control of the House and Senate, members of the new majority must reconcile diverse ideological factions within their ranks and make a fundamental choice. (What's to be factious about? IF they are really Democrats and really care about the people?)

They can spend their energy trying to reverse what they see as the flaws of the Bush administration and a dozen years in which conservative philosophy dominated Congress (and screwed the people). Or they can accept the rightward tilt of that period and grudgingly concede that big tax cuts, deregulation, restrictions on abortion and other Republican-inspired changes have become a permanent part of the legislative framework. This is nonsense, and not a choice at all. If the people wanted to accept the "rightward tilt" of the Republicans, they wouldn't have elected Democrats !! The question is HOW FAST can they successfully dismantle the Republican legacy.

After all, the "rightward tilt" was an unabashed effort to dismantle the New Deal. Why should Democrats accept the Republican's Crooked Deal any more than they accepted the New Deal? If they accept it, Fuck the Democrats; it's time to hit the streets, Folks.

The competing drives were on display amid the constitutional hoopla Thursday and the emotion surrounding Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s election as speaker, a position filled until now by the likes of Sam Rayburn, Joseph Cannon and Nicholas Longworth — men whose names adorn nearby House office buildings. "We have broken the marble ceiling," Pelosi said after she was handed the gavel.

In a meeting with the Congressional Black Caucus earlier in the day, Pelosi made her own allusions to the competing tugs on Democrats, noting the party was rooted in its traditions but not hostage to the past (note to Blacks??: don't expect much - ??). She vowed a new direction "for all the people, not just the privileged few," a reflection of the leadership’s political and policy calculation that Democrats need to champion the average guy. This is pretty ambiguous, but if the "analyst" is right about the "tugs," then alot depends on how the ambiguity sorts out. If the Dems are just being careful to move slowly toward serving all the people, that is prudent. But if they actually are considering accepting much of the R's Contract on America; that's a sellout, and it's time to hit the streets, Folks!!

"The agenda we have is about restoring economic security to a very vulnerable middle class," said Rep. Rahm Emanuel of Illinois, chairman of the Democratic Caucus. "The real activity will be in those areas." Does he mean "for now" or "forever"? "Prudence" or "sellout"?

Yet many Democrats contend that President Bush and the Republican Congress that was his partner moved the dial too far to the right in many cases. And they believe it will be the work of Democrats to make a significant course correction. No shit, Dick Tracey! Where'd you get your first clue? That's sometimes called "the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party. And you know how the party treated Howard Dean.

"I think there are a lot of things the people of America want changed," said Sen. Patrick J. Leahy, D-Vt., the new chairman of the Judiciary Committee and a tough critic of some Bush policies. He and others made clear that the new direction has to begin with American policy in Iraq.

But their domestic legislative agenda suggests that they are picking selected fights rather than going for wholesale change. Again, is this prudence or sellout? On the economy, they will move swiftly to increase the minimum wage. On social policy, they will challenge Bush by calling for expanded stem-cell research. They will try to pass legislation increasing college aid for the middle class. All of those issues have the twin advantages of broad popular appeal tied to measurable impact on individuals. A good start or that's all folks? The analyst would have us believe it indicates surrender.

But Democrats are in no rush to engage in a fight with Bush over the ideological centerpiece of his domestic policy, his tax cuts. And they have showed no inclination to wade back into the abortion issue, despite its potency among many of their supporters. For now? or forever reluctant? Why should they try everything at once? Why shouldn't they be committed to rolling back the Republican reich as soon as it is possible? Why incorporate reactionary shit into the Brave New World of Chuck Schumer?

"We have to keep our eye on the average American family and sort of push aside the interest groups left, right and center," said Sen. Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y. "The world has changed, and it demands new solutions, not the old Democrat and Republican nostrums." Now THIS is scary!!!!!!! What is Schumer smoking? What exactly does he mean by "The world has changed"? Yeah, for the worse, and Bush has led the charge. And if the "new solutions" are accepting all the shit Republicans have pulled, it's time to hit the streets, Folks.

But there is no dispute that Bush’s legislative and executive record will get a microscopic examination via a renewed emphasis on oversight, a congressional function Democrats say was all but abandoned in recent years. And the results of those inquiries could determine what policies Democrats try to unravel if they uncover a strong case against them (IF ?????????).

"The Bush administration has passed an entire architecture of laws that are going to be reviewed," said Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich of Cleveland, one of the most liberal members of the House. And you know the Democrats listen to Dennis even more than they listened to Howard.

Republicans are waiting to see what develops, uncertain if Democrats sincerely want to join hands and produce some consensus on public policy. Or, as one senior Republican asked, will Democrats hostile to the Bush administration be more like the scorpion in the fable with the frog, unable to resist the urge to sting even if they hurt themselves? The task is to sting WITHOUT hurting themselves - not to Lieberman-ize themselves.

Democrats acknowledge that with their minuscule majority in the Senate and one in the House that is not much larger, they lack the political muscle to go too far in reversing Bush policy even if that was their chief goal.(Oh, is the implication that reversing Bush policy is relatively unimportant to Dems?) And they already have their hands full with delivering on their own ambitious legislative agenda, following through on their pledges of bipartisanship (does anybody think that makes sense??) and ethics reform and avoiding anything that costs the party its chance at the White House in 2008. Yes, but that doesn't require accepting the oppressive Republican policy because "The world has changed." And playing around the edges with goodies for the "Average family" - whatever the hell the "Average family" is - doesn't cut it.

Leading Democrats say their best direction is forward, concentrating on establishing a new party legacy rather than obsessing with the perceived (perceived???) failings of Republican rule. The test for the party’s newly empowered leadership and the congressional membership will be whether they can stick to that path. If they "stick to it," then it's time to hit the streets, Folks.

My feeling is that "Leading Democrats" can't be trusted. Just what exactly does it mean to "push aside the interest groups left, right and center" ? Who the fuck remains? People on the left, right, and center who AREN'T interested.

Watch the Democrats, Folks, and what they do will show you whether they care about you and the nation, or whether they care more about going along to get along.

- Uke Man

 

Fun with Elvis

Hey Folks,

The Elvis-a-Thon was a BIG hit. The place was packed, and they liked my stuff!!! We made some money for the homeless shelter and everybody had a great time.

The pictures might give you some idea of the evening (click them to enlarge).

- Uke Man

Ray Fuller (one man Elvis band) 

Bob Sauls 

Mendelvis 

the Skillet Lickers 

Friends of Gladys 

Whoa Nellie 

 

Bend Over for "Reform"

Hey Folks,

Lately I’ve heard all I can stand about “entitlements” and their “reform” – like Popeye, I can’t stand no more !!

“Entitlements” is what selfish rich ginks call things that help people. “Reform” is a euphemism for “cut” or, preferably, “eliminate.” And the hucksters behind such talk can stick it!

First of all, if the people are entitled to these programs, then they are entitled to them; and the greedy pricks should look elsewhere to get off.

The term, however, isn’t used in its denotative sense; it’s used ironically, as if it’s understood that unworthy deadbeats claim they are “entitled” to rob the wallets of upstanding and worthy citizens who deserve to keep all of their money for themselves.

“Reform” is designed to do just that: put more money in the wallets of folks whose wallets are already fat, and the people who suffer as a result have "brought it on themselves."

"Reform" has, by definition, negative implications. The rich don't claim that Social Security and Medicare are good but need "improvement"; rather, they are "bad" and need to be sent to "reform" school to have it beaten out of them - or, as Grover Norquist prefers, be "drowned in a bathtub."

It is never mentioned that the vast majority of people who benefit from these evil “entitlements” need them in the first place because of the never mentioned “entitlements” of the rich.

Yes, the rich have entitlements, and no one EVER suggests they need to be “reformed” - since these entitlements hurt only the poor and the ever-shrinking Middle Class.

The rich can fire almost anyone for no reason at all. They manipulate the labor pool (and, hence, wages) via illegal immigration, licensing and certification requirements, outsourcing, and other gimmics. They have all sorts of ways to escape the taxes the rest of us pay. Millionaires pay social security taxes only on their first $90,000 – that leaves $999,910 of untaxed mad money on the first million, and the rest is gravy. The IRS concentrates on smearing the little guy and not noticing the big boys (check it out, if you don’t believe me). The law aids corporations and restricts unions. The Federal Reserve Board raises and lowers the interest rate to maximize profits and keep wages down. Free speech, according to the Supreme Court, is measured by dollars; those who are loaded cannot be stopped from essentially killing the free speech of regular folks because that would infringe on the free speech of the wealthy (sort of a variation of The Golden Rule: “He rules who has the gold”).

And this is a short list. The entire system is set up to serve the wealthy. The “Safety Net” exists only to divert the people from revolution, a definite possibility before Roosevelt instituted the New Deal. Now with revolution seemingly a more distant possibility, the greedy bastards are bent on dismantling not only as much of the “net” as possible, but also the middle class itself.

As the impoverished are ground deeper into poverty and more and more of the Middle Class drop into poverty, we are continually told that the economy is doing great. And it is – for the people who are abusing the poor and the middle class!!

And it will get even better for them with every step they take along the path of “reforming” those nasty “entitlements” enjoyed by the "unworthy deadbeats" who make up 60 to 80 percent of America.

If you have a brain, you know where the Republicans stand on these issues, and if you’re smart, you’ll watch where the Democrats come down. From what I’ve seen, they’re interested in “bi-partisan” cooperation, which translates to “entitlement reform” with a slightly smaller instrument and a little Vaseline.

- Uke Man

Elvis-a-Thon TONIGHT (Sat.) !!!!!

Hey Folks,

I discovered today that an ancient picture of moi had been placed in the newspaper advertising the Elvis-go-Round !!!!

The clipping is directly below. Click it to make it larger, and come by tonight and see whether that's still me.

- Uke Man

Stop By !!!!!!!

Hmmmm... who's that skinny guy???? 

Friends, Performers, & Little Brothers of Elvis-a-Thons Past

click pic to enlarge 

Elvis-a-Thon

Hey Folks,

The Uke Man will be doing “Heartbreak Hotel” and “Always on My Mind” at the venerable Elvis-a-Thon this Saturday, January 6, at Little Brothers, 1100 N. High Street, Columbus. Thank you, thank you . . . Thank you very much.

Other performers include Whoa Nellie, Ray Fuller, the Skillet Lickers, Bob Sauls, the Randys, Sons of Gladys, Mendelvis, Darylvis, Lollipop Factory, and more.

This benefit for the Open Shelter ($5.00 cover) is always a great show, packed with spirit and energy. All aspects of Elvis’s career will be there for your enjoyment: early, late, popular, obscure, solo, and big band.

Check it out. Time slots are not definite yet, but the show starts at 9:00, and I’ll be going on between 9:45 and 10:30.

- Uke Man

Mmmmm... more for me !!!!

Less for YOU !!!!! Hahahahahahahahahahahahaha!! 

The American ("human"??) Way

Hey Folks,

Below is a column and a letter I sent the columnist. Ms. Harrop's honest commentary is a breath of fresh air. She says nationally what I've been screaming into the empty air about for years.

Bless her. Still, the power ginks won't listen to her any more than they listen to me.

Hey folks, get the hell out of WAL-MART and start sharpening your pitch forks and scythes.

- Uke Man


Dear Ms. Harrop,

Thank you for the insightful and honest column on the costs of outsourcing and wage cuts.

Have you ever noticed that the Classics regarding the Middle Ages concentrate on the royalty rather than the serfs? Have you ever considered that after the serf-soldiers of the noble William (“the Conqueror” – everyone’s ancestor ) had killed the "noble" King Harold, William’s serfs and Harold’s serfs were still serfs living their serf lives but under the glorious new order?!!!

Have you noticed that whenever a large company lays off literally thousands of workers, Wall Street celebrates?

Like me, I’m sure you’ve heard how GREAT the economy is doing. Well, as with the stories of bold knights and fair damsels, everything is evaluated and promoted from the perspective of the “haves.”

It is truly revolting - but I won’t hold my breath while awaiting the revolution. Too many of my possible fellow travelers are busy at WAL-MART buying crap they don’t need, at everyday low prices.

Yours - Tom Harker, “Ukulele Man”


Justifications for wage cuts, outsourcing never figure in poorest workers’ misery
Tuesday, December 26, 2006
FROMA HARROP

There’s a popular theme in America that goes: I’ll cut your wages, but you don’t cut mine. And the outsourcing of your factory job to China is a good thing, because it makes my paycheck go further at Wal-Mart.

We hear this theme a lot in the debate over illegal immigration.

Consider the recent raids on Swift meat-processing plants. Federal agents arrested 1,187 illegal immigrants at facilities in six states. Mere hours later, economists warned that depriving the industry of illegal labor could raise hamburger prices.

Illegal immigration is usually presented as a win-win situation: Undocumented foreigners earn far more than they could back home. Consumers get a bargain.

Nowhere to be seen are America’s working poor who get stomped on 13 different ways. They have to compete with illegal immigrants for jobs and housing. Low-skilled natives and legal immigrants also end up subsidizing the undocumented because they tend to live in the same communities, which must provide hospitals, police, schools and garbage pickup.

Who doesn’t suffer from illegal immigration? For starters, the people who write about it. I speak of the journalism profession, which has the habit of covering the issue by anecdotes. Reporters thrive on sympathetic stories about illegal immigrants who work hard and go to church.

But, were a busload of illegals from Australia to turn up at their newspaper and offer reportage at 10 percent below the going rate, the writers would call the authorities so fast that your head would spin. And the publisher’s argument that thanks to the cheap Australians, he’s able to trim a few cents off the newsstand price would make no impression.

As it turns out, the meat-processing companies that employ so many illegal immigrants have been enjoying a nearly 50-percent discount on what was the going rate. In 1980, the average meatprocessing job paid $19 an hour. The companies then moved their plants to rural areas, far from the Midwest cities and their unions. The industry’s wages now average about $9 an hour.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce likes to wail about the "labor shortage." It says there aren’t enough chambermaids, dishwashers, etc., to work for its members at lousy wages. Odd, but when there’s a shortage of labor doesn’t the price of it go up? The price of unskilled labor in the United States hasn’t gone up. It’s gone down. Because of immigration, American-born highschool dropouts experienced a 5-percent loss in wages during the ’80s and ’90s, according to a study by Harvard University economist George Borjas.

For some reason, the job of keeping prices low has fallen entirely on the shoulders of the most vulnerable Americans. If we held down chief executives’ compensation and sliced lawyers’ pay by a third, the same thing would happen. Everyone’s prices would drop. The corporation could sell its products for less, and the cost of legal services would fall.

No vocation keeps a tighter lid on immigration than the medical profession. "If we let in 100,000 immigrant doctors," Richard Freeman, another Harvard economist, recently told a group of journalists, "everyone in this room would benefit." Except the American doctors.

Suggest a U.S. labor policy that depresses professional pay as a means of keeping prices in check, and you get laughed out of the room. But say that sitting on the wages of unskilled factory workers stems inflationary pressure — a frequently made argument — and the PhDs quietly nod in agreement.

And that’s how the game is played. High pay for me. Low pay for you. The folks at the economic bottom are obviously not making the rules.

Froma Harrop writes for Creators Syndicate.
fharrop@projo.com

It's the "American Way"!!

All men are created equal - but some are created more equal than others. 

Tiny Tim v. Shameless Sam

Hey Folks,

If you thought the Christmas Uke Man was too pessimistic about things here in America, read the Christmas report below. It looks like most Americans would be better off today if George Washington had lost his war and been executed as a traitor.

Maybe King George was a pain back then, but Emperor George and his cronies today seem to care less about their "subjects" than do the Brits.

- Uke Man

December 25, 2006
Helping the Poor, the British Way
By PAUL KRUGMAN
(a ukethanks to Phyll)

It’s the season for charitable giving. And far too many Americans, particularly children, need that charity.

Scenes of a devastated New Orleans reminded us that many of our fellow citizens remain poor, four decades after L.B.J. declared war on poverty. But I’m not sure whether people understand how little progress we’ve made. In 1969, fewer than one in every seven American children lived below the poverty line. Last year,although the country was far wealthier, more than one in every six American children were poor.

And there’s no excuse for our lack of progress. Just look at what the British government has accomplished over the last decade.

Although Tony Blair has been President Bush’s obedient manservant when it comes to Iraq, Mr. Blair’s domestic policies are nothing like Mr. Bush’s. Where Mr.Bush has sought to privatize the social safety net, Mr. Blair’s Labor government has defended and strengthened it. Where Mr. Bush and his allies accuse anyone who mentions income distribution of “class warfare,” the Blair government has made a major effort to reverse the surge in inequality and poverty that took place during the Thatcher years.

And Britain’s poverty rate, if measured American-style — that is, in terms of a fixed poverty line, not a moving target that rises as the nation grows richer —has been cut in half since Labor came to power in 1997.

Britain’s war on poverty has been led by Gordon Brown, the chancellor of the exchequer and Mr. Blair’s heir apparent. There’s nothing exotic about his policies, many of which are inspired by American models. But in Britain, these policies are carried out with much more determination.

For example, Britain didn’t have a minimum wage until 1999 — but at current exchange rates Britain’s minimum wage rate is now about twice as high as ours.Britain’s child benefit is more generous than America’s child tax credit, and it’s available to everyone, even those too poor to pay income taxes. Britain’stax credit for low-wage workers is similar to the U.S. earned-income tax credit,but substantially larger.

And don’t forget that Britain’s universal health care system ensures that no one has to fear going without medical care or being bankrupted by doctors’ bills.

The Blair government hasn’t achieved all its domestic goals. Income inequality has been stabilized but not substantially reduced: as in America, the richest 1 percent have pulled away from everyone else, though not to the same extent. The decline in child poverty, though impressive, has fallen short of the government’s ambitious goals. And the government’s policies don’t seem to have helped a persistent under class of the very poor.

But there’s no denying that the Blair government has done a lot for Britain’s have-nots. Modern Britain isn’t paradise on earth, but the Blair government has ensured that substantially fewer people are living in economic hell. Providing a strong social safety net requires a higher overall rate of taxation than Americans are accustomed to, but Britain’s tax burden hasn’t undermined the economy’s growth.

What are the lessons to be learned from across the pond?

First, government truly can be a force for good. Decades of propaganda have conditioned many Americans to assume that government is always incompetent — and the current administration has done its best to turn that into a self-fulfilling prophecy. But the Blair years have shown that a government that seriously tries to reduce poverty can achieve a lot.

Second, it really helps to have politicians who are serious about governing,rather than devoting themselves entirely to amassing power and rewarding cronies.

While researching this article, I was startled by the sheer rationality of British policy discussion, as compared with the cynical posturing that passesfor policy discourse in George Bush’s America. Instead of making grandiosepromises that are quickly forgotten — like Mr. Bush’s promise of “bold action”to confront poverty after Hurricane Katrina — British Labor politicians proposespecific policies with well-defined goals. And when actual results fall short of those goals, they face the facts rather than trying to suppress them and slimingthe critics.

The moral of my Christmas story is that fighting poverty isn’t easy, but it canbe done. Giving in to cynicism and accepting the persistence of widespread poverty even as the rich get ever richer is a choice that our politicians have made.

And we should be ashamed of that choice.

 

A Final Report on the Ford Farewell

January 3, 2007
Stained Glass and Strained Egos
By MAUREEN DOWD
(a ukethanks to Phyll)

Washington

It was a scene that Mary McCarthy could have written the devil out of: a funeral for a fine, bland fellow that filled everybody with unfine, unbland thoughts. The formal serenity of the service, disguised, but only barely, the virulent rivalries and envies and grudges and grievances that have roiled this group for many decades.

None of the eulogists noted the irony that the man who ushered out one long national nightmare had ushered in another, the one we’re living in now. It was Gerald Ford, after all, who gave America the gift of Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld — the gift that keeps on taking.

The two former Ford officials, who doomed Iraq to civil war and despoiled American values, were honorary pallbearers yesterday, as was that other slippery and solipsistic courtier, Henry Kissinger.

The Group was even more on edge because of a remarkable trellis of peppery opinions that had tumbled out of the man in the coffin, posthumously. The late president, hailed as the most understated and decent guy in the world, had given a series of interviews on the condition they be held until his death — a belated but bracing smackdown of many of his distinguished mourners.

It was impossible not to wonder what the luminaries were truly thinking, as they sat listening to fugues of Bach and Brahms and encomiums to the ordinary-guy leader.

Nancy Reagan’s imperturbable expression behind her big square sunglasses did not disguise the gloating words visible in the bubble over her head: “And they call this a funeral?”

It could not compare, of course, to the incredible Princess of Wales treatment that her husband had for his state funeral. And Nancy, hypersensitive to any slights to her Ronnie, would not have been pleased with Mr. Ford’s interview with Michael Beschloss published in Newsweek, in which he blamed Ronald Reagan for costing him the 1976 election by challenging his nomination and then failing to hit the trail for him.

It was good of Mr. Ford to bring 41 and 43 together in a solemn respite from their uneasy competition over Iraq.

“Told you so, you sons of guns — we were right to stop at Safwan and stay out of Baghdad,” the father’s bubble read, as he watched Rummy and Henry the K, both of whom had treated Poppy with such veiled contempt, as though he were a feather duster. “Those vicious Moktada-loving Shiites dancing around Saddam’s dead body prove that Brent and I were right.”

Lynne Cheney glared at Poppy as he gave his eulogy, knowing that he privately thinks that the vice president has destroyed not only Iraq and American foreign policy, but the Bush family name. Her storm cloud of a bubble is expurgated.

Hillary’s bubble was full of mockery for another New Yorker in the National Cathedral: “You think you’re so smart, Rudy, but you leave your entire presidential battle plan in a hotel room for your rivals to find? The victim role doesn’t suit you.” Condi’s bubble was as opaquely dark as
Hillary’s was risibly light — drooping with the inchoate fear that her nearby erstwhile mentor, Brent Scowcroft, had been right about Iraq after all.

As Poppy spoke from the altar, praising Mr. Ford’s generosity, he must have been mulling that his predecessor was ungenerous in spitting on him from the grave. Mr. Ford told Mr. Beschloss that Bush Sr. had sold out the party to the hard right and had taken a phony, pandering position on abortion.

Poppy had to have enjoyed watching Dr. K get up and lavish praise on his old boss, after Mr. Ford had sniggered to Bob Woodward that the “coy” Bavarian diva had “the thinnest skin of any public figure I ever knew.”

W. graciously walked Betty Ford down the aisle, even as he must have curdled inside about her husband’s telling Mr. Woodward that it had been “a big mistake” on the part of W., Dick Cheney and Rummy to justify the Iraq war with nonexistent W.M.D. “I just don’t think we should go hellfire damnation around the globe freeing people, unless it is directly related to our own national security,” he said.

Ex-presidents weren’t supposed to criticize sitting presidents. Adding insult to injury, Woodward himself was in the cathedral. How did he manage to get all these deathbed confessions, W. had to wonder. “Jeez,” his bubble read, “does he have an interview with my old man in the can?”

Rummy’s pop-up was as cocky as ever: “Golly, I’ve been gone three weeks and things are really looking up in Iraq.”

James Baker’s secret thoughts were as bright as his tie: “I tried to help you out, son, but you’re too dang stubborn. Or ‘resolute.’ Stubolute. A clear case of TMC — too much Cheney.”

Dick Cheney’s bubble was trouble: “I’m surging, I’m surging, I’m surging.”

The many faces of Bush

The many faces of those killed in Bush's war 

The Numbered Dead

(Since I prepared this on Dec. 26, the death count has passed the 3,000 mark, and I've shared that with you, but the NPR report is still worth hearing - Uke Man)

Yep, Folks,

We're in Iraq so they can kill our kids over there instead of over here. You see, we can control who we send over there to die. If they come here, they might kill important people's kids - I mean, do you think "gated communities" could keep Al Kaida out?

from:
U.S. death toll in Iraq hits 90 for Dec.
By CHRISTOPHER TORCHIA, Associated Press


The U.S. military, meanwhile, said seven more American soldiers had died, pushing the U.S. military death toll for the month to 90. With five days remaining in the month, December is already the second deadliest month for the U.S. military this year, behind the 105 soldiers killed in October.

In Washington, White House Deputy Press Secretary Scott Stanzel said Tuesday that President Bush grieves for each member of the armed forces who has died.

"The war on terror is going to be a long struggle," he said. "We will be fighting violent jihadists for the peace and security of the civilized world for many years to come."

The latest deaths also brought the number of U.S. military members killed since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003 to at least 2,978 — five more than the number killed in the Sept. 11 attacks in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania.

And some folks are just maimed. Here's an NPR report by an American doctor in Iraq: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6682412

- Uke Man

 

too young to "get" the picture ??

Elvis was a big hit on Ed Sullivan's show, Toast of the Town, on CBS (notice the cyclops eye on Ed's pope-hat) 

Henry & Homer ???

 

Another view of Gerald Ford

Hey Folks,

As often is the case, the more we learn about someone the less heroic they seem.

Below is what Terry Lodge, a knowledgable contributor to the Columbus NION list serv, had to say about former President Gerald Ford.

- Uke Man

Folks, I just cannot stand one more minute of history revisionism about Gerald Ford. All this "lookback fondly" dreck is thoroughly disgusting.

Besides his pardon of Richard Nixon - Nixon, a bonafide war criminal who should have been prosecuted assuch for, among many other things, his evil secretbombings of Cambodia during the Vietnam war, theWatergate breakin and its coverup - Gerald Ford himself was directly involved in the prosecution and coverup of a secret war.

In 1975 Ford and Kissinger were returning from an official tour of Asia and stopped over in Jakarta, Indonesia, to meet for several hours with President Suharto, the country's murderous dictator.

In the course of that meeting, it was revealed from government documents released in 2001, Henry Kissingerand Gerald Ford assured Suharto he could invade the neighboring small island country of East Timor with impunity for several weeks and that the Ford administration would not publicly take issue with the illegal use of US weaponry and military aid being used to conduct an offensive war.

Moreover, Kissinger, in the presence of Ford, pledged to minimize and obfuscate the actual conduct of the war, which in the ensuing three decades has cost the lives of perhaps 500,000 Timorese (and at least 100,000 in the first year or so of the Indonesian invasion and occupation).

Another Ford production was the coverup of the Pinochet regime's involvement in the Washington, D.C. midday assassination of Orlando Letelier in 1976 in downtown Washington - the only such crime ever, before or since, in our capital. According to the noted investigative reporter Robert Parry, in fall 1976,George H.W. Bush, then CIA Director under Gerald Ford,deflected a scandal about the terrorist bombing of former (under Allende) defense minister and Pinochet critic Orlando Letelier and a fellow activist.

Though immediately in possession of incriminating evidence pointing to the U.S.-backed Pinochet government's DINA secret police as the murderers, Bush's CIA steered investigators away from the real killers. Gerald Ford was in a close race with Jimmy Carter for election, and keeping this sensational murder a mystery throughout the campaign allowed Ford to surge from behind and only narrowly to lose to Carter.

The Letelier murder was solved only years later when a criminal in custody in New York provided evidence to the FBI, whom Bush the Elder deliberately stonewalled and lied to when he was at the CIA. In 2000, the FBI recommended that Augosto Pinochet be indicted for the murder of Orlando Letelier.

When I hear what a damned nice guy Gerald Ford was, how he was so "common" and had "integrity" and brought"calm" to America after Watergate, how he presided over the end of the Vietnam War, what I think of is a conniving schlump too lacking in principle to question or block the murderous fascism of Henry Kissinger,certainly one of the most singularly ruthless and evil murderers of that, or indeed, any, era; and George H.W. Bush, who was later to figure centrally in Iran-Contra and the secret wars of Central America.

The URLs and introductory information for two excellent sources appear below:

http://www.gwu. edu/~nsarchiv/ NSAEBB/NSAEBB62/

FORD, KISSINGER AND THE INDONESIAN INVASION, 1975-76 Ford and Kissinger Gave Green Light to Indonesia's Invasion of East Timor, 1975: New Documents Detail Conversations with Suharto National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No.62 Edited by William Burr and Michael L. Evans December 6, 2001

http://www.scoop. co.nz/stories/ HL0609/S00350. htm

Bush Shields Dad on Chile Terrorism By Robert Parry Consortium News & Truthout Friday 22 September 2006 Chilean investigators say the Bush administration is undercutting their case against former dictator Augusto Pinochet for his alleged role in the terrorist assassination of a political rival on the streets ofWashington three decades ago, a crime that then-CIA Director George H.W. Bush appears to have tolerated and then helped cover-up.

 

Happy New Year ????

Hey Folks,

The article below calls the war "a military campaign that has scant public support." Well, whoopde F'n doooo.

Looks like the public is a few years late and thousands of lives short. Maybe the public should resolve not to be so fricking stupid the next time some psychopath tries to whip them up into a patriotic froth.

"God bless America" indeed. Maybe the public shouldn't have relied so much on God to take care of their problems. He hasn't done any better than Bush.

- Uke Man

U.S. death toll in Iraq reaches 3,000
BY PAULINE JELINEK, Associated Press
Jan 1, 5:39

WASHINGTON - The day after Saddam Hussein's execution, the death toll for Americans killed in the Iraq war reached 3,000 as President Bush struggles to salvage a military campaign that has scant public support.

The death of a Texas soldier, announced Sunday by the Pentagon, comes as the administration seeks to overhaul its strategy for a conflict that shows little sign of abating. The tally of 3,000 members of the U.S. military killed was a figure compiled by The Associated Press since the war's beginning in March 2003.

In large part because of discontent with the course of the war, voters gave Democrats control of the new Congress that convenes this week. Democrats have pledged to focus on the war and Bush's conduct of it.
Three thousand deaths are tiny compared with casualties in other protracted wars America has fought in the last century. There were 58,000 Americans killed in the Vietnam War, 36,000 in the Korean conflict, 405,000 in World War II and 116,000 in World War I, according to Defense Department figures.

Even so, the steadily mounting toll underscores the relentless violence the massive U.S. investment in lives and money — surpassing $350 billion — has yet to tame.

A Pentagon report on Iraq said in December the conflict now is more a struggle between Sunni and Shiite armed groups "fighting for religious, political and economic influence," with the insurgency and foreign terrorist campaigns "a backdrop."

From mid-August to mid-November, the weekly average number of attacks in the country increased 22 percent from the previous three months. The worst violence was in Baghdad and in the western province of Anbar, long the focus of activity by Sunni insurgents.

Though U.S.-led coalition forces remained the target of the majority of attacks, the overwhelming majority of casualties were suffered by Iraqis, the report said.

The American death toll was at 1,000 in September of 2004 and 2,000 by October 2005.

Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., called the figure a "tragic milestone" and said the government owes its troops "a new policy that is worthy of their heroism and brings them safely home."

Asked about the 3,000 figure, deputy White House press secretary Scott Stanzel said that the president "will ensure their sacrifice was not made in vain."

"We will be fighting violent jihadists for peace and security of the civilized world for years to come. The brave men and women of the U.S. military are fighting extremists in order to stop them from attacking on our soil again," Stanzel said.

President Bush said the nation is mindful of the troops' dedication and sacrifice.

"In the New Year, we will remain on the offensive against the enemies of freedom, advance the security of our country, and work toward a free and unified Iraq," Bush said in a statement released from his ranch in Crawford, Texas.

Having launched the war against the advice of a number of nations, the Bush administration never got a huge international contribution of troops, meaning foreign forces involved in the fighting are overwhelmingly American.

The death toll shows it. As of late December, the British military has reported 127 deaths in the war so far; Italy, 33; Ukraine, 18; Poland, 18; Bulgaria, 13; Spain, 11; and Denmark, six. Several other countries have had five or less.

Poli-Rad Page

Below are the materials I may use in the 2008-2009 school year. At the end, there are also some additional item: An explanation of why middle class people vote against their own interests by Michael Moore (with supporting evidence from a Paul Krugman article). a comment to youth from Kurt Vonnegut, an essay by me about Columbine and the death penalty, and a commentary about "Neo-Liberalism" (the first few, blue, paragraphs will get the point across).

The George Carlin link is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKCnbVWZzvw

Worthington H.S. Class materials

Tom Harker e-mail: ukulele_man@yahoo.com
blog: http://www.ukuleleman.net/blog.html

Introduction:

Nobody knows any more about anything than you do.

Now, I’m not talking about facts like how many different countries exist in the world at any given time or how best to hard boil eggs. Different people do know more or less than one another when it comes to narrow, limited, or esoteric questions. But when it comes to contentious ideas, ideologies, cultural notions, and such; nobody knows any more about anything than you do.

One can plop an issue on a lectern and easily find a thousand “experts” to line up on one side screaming “Yes!!!” and another thousand to line up on the other side screaming “No!!!” We dummies are supposed to side with one “expert” or the other and get in his or her line, but on what basis?

We need to ask ourselves, “If experts know so much, why can’t they ever agree?” It makes no sense. Problems have solutions. Shouldn’t experts be best situated to address them? Sure, but they don’t. Why?

It’s because they don’t want to solve the problem; they want to get us to stand in their line.

Someone said, and I believe it, that every system is perfectly designed to produce exactly what it produces. If that is true, the design of the system is responsible for both the benefits and the problems it produces. It stands to reason that those who have problems will want to change the system, and those receiving the benefits will want to avoid changing it.

Now, ask again, “If experts know so much, why can’t they ever agree?”

Well, if the problem is solved, the system will be changed, and those who presently benefit may be less privileged than before. So, the game becomes “How can I appear to be addressing the problem while really only helping myself (maintaining the system)?” (the movies The Truman Show and The Matrix are good examples of this – see below).

Most often, maintaining the system will involve lies that change very little or nothing and disguise the problem rather than solve it. Sometimes – if the people are sufficiently outraged - it will mean that some competing group presently benefiting from the “problem” will be attacked by the more powerful and expected to make any necessary sacrifices to quiet the unrest, while maintaining both the basic problem and the benefits accruing to the mighty.

In any case, the “problem” is not the focus. Maintaining one’s own privilege is the agenda.

Listen to the “experts,” but don’t believe a thing they say, unless it makes sense to you!!!! Don’t believe anything I say, either, unless it makes sense to you!!!




Stephen Colbert: “Culture is a set of agreed upon opinions.”
Historically, every culture firmly believes wildly different “realities.” As long as the culture is maintained, that “reality” (e.g. the benefit of human sacrifice, the flatness of the earth, the divine right of kings, or the efficacy of Voodoo) IS the reality.

From The Truman Show: “We accept the reality of the world with which we are presented.”
We are born into a culture, and are defenseless vessels into which the official “opinions” are poured. Only later are we in a position to even think of questioning what, apparently, everybody else takes for granted.

From the 1st “Matrix” movie : “Let me tell you why you are here. You are here because you know something. What you know you can’t explain, but you feel it. You’ve felt it your entire life. That there’s something wrong with the world. You don’t know what it is, but it is there, like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad. That’s what brought you to me.

Do you know what I’m talking about?”

“The Matrix?”

“Do you want to know what it is?

The Matrix is everywhere. It is all around us, even now in this very room. You can see it when you look out your window, or when you turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to work, when you go to church, when you pay your taxes.

It is the world that has been pulled down over your eyes to blind you from the truth, the truth that you are a slave. The Matrix is a dream world built to keep us under control in order to change a human being into a power source for others.

As long as the Matrix exists, the human race will never be free."

“The Matrix” metaphorically presents the world as I’ve described it above. Most people live out their lives believing what they have been led to believe (by the dominant machine race) and seldom have the opportunity to discover that there is a different reality. Those who try to break out of what Stephen Colbert called the “set of agreed upon opinions,” have a difficult time as a result.

To help challenge the “givens” foisted upon us by our culture/society when we are young and as we grow up, I suggest “questioning the dominant paradigm” – so to speak. When one discovers a discrepancy in the official dogma, question it. Here are some examples:



Question the Matrix


1. If experts know so much, why don’t they ever agree?
2. Why do politicians spend so much money to get a job that pays peanuts?
3. If God saves the survivors of a disaster, who killed the victims?
4. Why do corporations give so much money to politicians who are elected by and responsible to the People?
5. If, as studies have shown, in most cases the amount of money spent campaigning determines the victor, what is “democracy” based upon – people or money?
6. If our nation’s foreign policy is aimed at “American Interests,” which Americans’ interests are they? Who benefits from pursuing “American interests”?
7. Why do the vast majority of people surveyed believe THEY will go to heaven but that most of the other people won’t?
8. If Cuba is our enemy because it is run by a “Communist dictator,” why do we like China?
9. If this nation was founded on “Christian” principles, how could it have accepted slavery?
10. In WHAT wars did soldiers fight and die to “protect our rights”? Especially the right to vote.
11. If a majority of voters in a state can outlaw gay marriages, could they also outlaw straight marriages?
12. If it makes sense to say, “Choose life; your mother did,” what about “Have sex with your mother; your father did”?
13. If a number of religions claim to be the one, true religion, don’t all but one HAVE to be wrong?
14. If, as some say, health care is a privilege not a right, does that mean that sick poor people have the right to liberty and the pursuit of happiness, but NOT life?
15. If a Christian is a capitalist, how can he try to run his competitors out of business?
16. If the “death tax” is so bad, why don’t we hear more dead people complaining?
17. If it is wrong to collect a welfare check for doing nothing, why is it OK to inherit Wal-Mart?
18. If winning athletes thank God, why don’t losers cuss him?
19. If we imperfect creatures are the product of God’s “intelligent design,” just how intelligent is He?
20. Were women denied the vote for so long because all men are created equal?




Reality is whatever the Emperor says it is.

October 17, 2004, New York Times Magazine - Ron Suskind, quoting an unnamed aide to George W. Bush:
The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." ... "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."


"Are you gonna believe me, or your lying eyes?" - Red Foxx
Can we KNOW anything?

I think we can. Is it easy to know things? I don’t think so. Is it good to know things? I think so. Is it easier to accept things than it is to know them? Sure.

Do people want to know things, or would they rather accept things they are told and act as if they are known? Good question.

It seems that, at least in terms of how things have been run historically, folks prefer to have their “knowledge” placed in their heads by someone else. Every “civilization” that has ever existed has rested on a dream world - created out of whole cloth, but nevertheless accepted by its people as real. Successive “civilizations” laugh at the “silly” notions of defunct cultures, but go to vicious war to establish the “truth” of their own. There are a lot of possible explanations for why this has always been the case, but I’m not getting into that now.

Instead, let’s look at the possibilities of doing it differently. Perhaps if enough people could become aware of the simple truth above about the relativity of cultural “truth,” it could lead to a saner, better world.

Here is a list of options. If forced to decide, which one of each pair would YOU choose?

Science ---------or------- Faith
Learning -------or------- Accepting
Education ------or------- Indoctrination
Thought -------or------- Feeling
Knowing -------or------- Guessing
Self ------------or------- Authority
Evidence ------or-------- Dogma
Activity -------or-------- Passivity
The Present ---or-------- the Past
Sanity ---------or------- Adjustment
Doubt ---------or-------- Certainty
Discovery -----or-------- Testimonials
Reality --------or-------- Virtual Reality
Objectivity ----or-------- Spin
Truth ---------or-------- Fiction
Freedom ------or-------- Security
Independence -or------ Dependence
Intelligence ---or-------- Emotion
Courage ------or-------- Cowardice

Explanations for the dream-world nature of “civilizations” can be found in the second options. The inherent difficulty of the first options – along with the ease of the alternatives - explains the attractiveness of the second options. Hence, the larger number of people choosing to accept the virtual reality imposed by the culture.

In reading an article on the use of aroma in Las Vegas casinos, I came across this comment:"Our olfactory receptors are directly connected to the limbic system, the most ancient and primitive part of the brain, which is thought to be the seat of emotion."

Our ancient, primitive natures DO make it easy for us to FEEL rather than THINK. Isn’t it ironic that many of the folks who most strenuously object to the notion of evolution – the idea that we descended from animals - are the ones relying disproportionately on their ancient, primitive (animal?) brain centers?

Though they may feel a necessity to do so, they don’t really NEED to. Each of us is equipped to make either the difficult choice or the easy choice. It really IS up to us. It all depends on whether we are courageous enough to use our neo-cortex rather than our limbic system.


Relevant Quotations:


“The power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them. ... To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies—all this is indispensably necessary. Even in using the word doublethink it is necessary to exercise doublethink. For by using the word one admits that one is tampering with reality; by a fresh act of doublethink one erases this knowledge; and so on indefinitely, with the lie always one leap ahead of the truth.”

Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past."
—both above: George Orwell ( in “1984”)

To see what is in front of one's nose needs a constant struggle. --George Orwell

The most dangerous man, to any government, is the man who is able to think things out for himself... Almost inevitably, he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane and intolerable. - H. L. Mencken

What good fortune for those in power that people do not think. —Adolph Hitler

Imagination is more important than knowledge. --Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them. --Galileo Galilei

Only when we know little do we know everything; doubt grows with knowledge." –Goethe

He knows nothing; and he thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political career." —George Bernard Shaw

"Only the small secrets need to be protected. The large ones are kept secret by public incredulity." ---Marshall McLuhan

With most people unbelief in one thing is founded on blind belief in another." --Lichtenberg

Man is what he believes. ---Chekov

"You don’t have any other society where the educated classes are so effectively indoctrinated and controlled by a subtle propaganda system – a private system including media, intellectual opinion forming magazines and the participation of the most highly educated sections of the population. Such people ought to be referred to as "Commissars" – for that is what their essential function is – to set up and maintain a system of doctrines and beliefs which will undermine independent thought and prevent a proper understanding and analysis of national and global institutions, issues, and policies". -- Noam Chomsky


Literal Interpretation of the Bible – Letter to Pres. Bush

Dear President Bush:

Thank you for doing so much to educate people regarding God's Law. I have learned a great deal from you.

I understand why you would propose and support a constitutional amendment banning same sex marriage. As you said, "in the eyes of God marriage is between a man and a woman." I try to share that knowledge with as many people as I can.

When someone tries to defend the homosexual lifestyle, for example, I simply remind the person that Leviticus 18:22 clearly states it to be an abomination... End of debate.

I do need some advice from you, however, regarding some other elements of God's Laws and how to follow them.For example:

1. Leviticus 25:44 states that I may possess slaves, both male and female, provided they are purchased from neighboring nations. A friend of mine claims that this law applies to Mexicans, but not Canadians. Can you clarify? Why can't I own Canadians?

2. I would like to sell my daughter into slavery, as sanctioned in Exodus 21:7. In this day and age, what do you think would be a fair price for her?

3. I know that I am allowed no contact with a woman while she is in her period of menstrual uncleanness - Lev.15: 19-24. The problem is how do I tell? I have tried asking, but most women take offense.

4. When I burn a bull on the altar as a sacrifice, I know it creates a pleasing odor for the Lord - Lev.1:9. The problem is my neighbors, they claim the odor is not pleasing to them. Should I smite them?

5. I have a neighbor who insists on working on the Sabbath. Exodus 35:2 clearly states he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill him myself, or should I ask the police to do it?

6. A friend of mine feels that even though eating shellfish is an abomination - Lev. 11:10, it is a lesser abomination than homosexuality. I do not agree. Can you settle this? Are there 'degrees' of abomination?

7. Lev.21:20 states that I may not approach the altar of God if I have a defect in my sight. I have to admit that I wear reading glasses. Does my vision have to be 20/20, or is there some wiggle-room here?

8. Most of my male friends get their hair trimmed, including the hair around their temples, even though this is expressly forbidden by Lev. 19:27. How should they die?

9. I know from Lev. 11:6-8 that touching the skin of a dead pig makes me unclean. May I still play football if I wear gloves?

10. My uncle has a farm. He violates Lev.19:19 by planting two different crops in the same field, as does his wife by wearing garments made of two different kinds of thread (cotton/polyester blend). He also tends to curse and blaspheme a lot. Is it really necessary that we go to all the trouble of getting the whole town together to stone them? Lev.24:10-16. Couldn't we just burn them to death at a private family affair, like we do with people who sleep with their in-laws? (Lev. 20:14)

Mr. Bush, I know you have studied these things extensively and thus enjoy considerable expertise in such matters, so I am confident you can help. Thank you again for reminding us that God's word is eternal and unchanging.

- Sincerely,


Oscar Wilde said:

“To believe is very dull. To doubt isintensely engrossing. To be on the alert is
to live, to be lulled into security is to die.”

“People go through their lives in a sort of coarse comfort, like petted animals, without ever realizing that they are thinking other people’s thoughts, living by other people’s standards, wearing practically what one may call other people’s second-hand clothes, and never being themselves for a single moment.”

Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.

Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live. It is asking others to live as one wishes to live

We are often told that the poor are grateful for charity. Some of them are, no doubt, but the best amongst the poor are never grateful.They are ungrateful, discontented, disobedient, and rebellious. They are quite right to be so.

As for the virtuous poor, one can pity them, of course, but one cannot possibly admire them.

To recommend thrift to the poor is both grotesque and insulting. It is like advising a man who is starving to eat less.

As one reads history . . . one is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed, but by the punishments that the good have inflicted.

If you want to tell people the truth, you had better make them laugh or they will kill you."


The Uke Man says:

Everything depends on
everyone pretending that
it’s Always been
This Way
(no beginning and no ending).
- - -
It’s life and death to those
On top
Not to let the bubble
(( ( pop ) ))
---
But to those
Down
On the bottom,
I say:
“Smoke ‘em!!”
- - -
(“if you’ve got ‘em.”)


Please Answer Yes or No
(answer quickly – don’t ponder over it but keep track of your answers – maybe print it out first and mark a “Y” or “N” for each one – there are no “correct” answers)

No one in America is “above the law.”

Over the years have our soldiers died in order to protect our rights?

Do you agree that “if you don’t vote, you can’t complain”?

Did God give us the Ten Commandments?

Are people on welfare lazy?

Is this a Christian country?

Is the policeman your friend?

Is capitalism good ?

Does everyone’s vote count?

Is there a Heaven?

In America is there Liberty and Justice for all ?

Is socialism bad?

Is there a Hell?

Can everyone escape poverty by working hard?

Are taxes too high?

Is voting “Them” out the best way to achieve change?

Is there a God?

Do you agree that the two-party system is best for America?

Over the years have soldiers died so that we could vote?

Can a Christian support capital Punishment?

Is it true that government can’t solve our problems?

Is Communism especially bad?

Does Satan exist?

Does the USA basically want to help the rest of the world?

Can a Christian be a capitalist?

Were unions once a good thing but are no longer needed?

Is there a right way and a wrong way to go about something?

Are Zeus, Thor, and Osiris fictional ?

Should a Christian oppose socialism?

Do our elected representatives represent us?

Should government be run like a business?

Is marriage between one man and one woman?

Are we fighting in Iraq to establish Democracy?

Is our government of, by, and for the People?

Can anyone grow up to be president?

Should we never discuss religion or politics?

Are our elected officials the best and brightest among us?


Now, look at your answers. There are established arguments on both sides of these issues. My intent was to group all the culturally “correct” views in the “Yes” column and all the culturally “incorrect” views in the “No” column. Whether you answered “Yes” or “No” is not the point of this exercise, however.

Ask yourself, no matter how you answered, “Can I give the opposing argument?” If so, then most likely your choice was “yours,” informed by your personal consideration. If not, then most likely that view is one placed in your head by the culture without your involvement.

The results of this exercise should give most people some reason to reassess at least some of what they thought they “believed.”

**************************************End ****************************

ADDITIONAL ITEMS:


FROM MICHAEL MOORE’s
Mike’s Election Guide 2008 pp. 113-16

8. Make Social Security Solvent Until the 22nd Century by Having the Rich Pay Their Fair Share. (page 113)

For many years now, the Republican elite has been on a singular mission. That mission has been to dismantle as much of the federal government as possible. The thinking is that by eliminating government programs that help the poor or disadvantaged, they, the rich, will pay less taxes.

That made sense to a majority of Americans, and so we have had a Republican in the White House for 20 of the last 28 years. Why would so many Americans approve of this strategy of being so cruel to their fellow, less-fortunate citizens? It’s a unique thing about us – we really, REALLY hate the riffraff, the destitute, the losers. They’re like lepers to us. We don’t want them around us, certainly not in our neighborhoods where they will bring down our property values. We don’t want to have to look at them on the street corner. We don’t want their kids going to school with our little precious ones.

But mostly we turn away because, in them, we see the possibility of our future. We know that deep down, there but for the grace of God, that could be us. We know how cruel our system of capitalism is, winners and losers – more losers than winners – and we know that we somehow lucked out and got to scrape by on the nicer side of town.

Once the idea of taking away from the poor caught on – so much so that the Democratic administration of Bill Clinton joined in on the dismantling – The Republicans tried, bit by bit, to close down the federal government. They convinced Congress and the president to privatize everything, from taking the census to running the mess hall on an army base.

And the cutbacks resulted in a huge tax savings for the rich - $410 billion since 2001. But by privatizing services – handing these jobs over to companies who had a fiduciary responsibility to make a bigger profit each and every year – it has ended up costing more money, and in many cases, not getting the job done half as well. When you hand an ice truck over to someone who doesn’t know where New Orleans is, and the ice truck is found still driving around Maine two weeks later, somebody is paying for this bill. That would be you.

And when they start a war in order to grab some oil, and that war ends up costing $2 billion a week for five-plus long years, well, the boys at the country club ain’t gonna be paying for that, either. Instead, the government just borrows the money from the rich man and then expects YOU to pay interests to him for the next 20 years.

Yet so much of the middle class wants to keep voting for Republicans because they promise to keep the poor in check – when all the time the ones getting the real body check are the middle class. The poor – don’t worry about them. They’ll survive, they always have. And sooner or later, as history shows, they’ll get fed up and come looking for us.


THE MIXED UP WORLD OF JOE THE PLUMBER

The Real Plumbers of Ohio
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: October 20, 2008

Forty years ago, Richard Nixon made a remarkable marketing discovery. By exploiting America’s divisions — divisions over Vietnam, divisions over cultural change and, above all, racial divisions — he was able to reinvent the Republican brand. The party of plutocrats was repackaged as the party of the “silent majority,” the regular guys — white guys, it went without saying — who didn’t like the social changes taking place.

It was a winning formula. And the great thing was that the new packaging didn’t require any change in the product’s actual contents — in fact, the G.O.P. was able to keep winning elections even as its actual policies became more pro-plutocrat, and less favorable to working Americans, than ever.

John McCain’s strategy, in this final stretch, is based on the belief that the old formula still has life in it.

Kurt Vonnegut from "A Man Without a Country"

Human beings have had to guess about almost everything for the past million years or so. The leading characters in our history books have been our most enthralling, and sometimes our most terrifying, guessers.

May I name two of them?

Aristotle and Hitler.

One good guesser and one bad one.

And the masses of humanity through the ages, feeling inadequately educated just like we do now, and rightly so, have had little choice but to believe this guesser or that one.

Russians who didn't think much of the guesses of Ivan the Terrible, for example, were likely to have their hats nailed to their heads.

We must acknowledge that persuasive guessers, even Ivan the Terrible, now a hero in the Soviet Union, have sometimes given us the courage to endure extraordinary ordeals which we had no way of understanding. Crop failures, plagues, eruptions of volcanoes, babies being born dead - the guessers often gave us the illusion that bad luck and good luck were understandable and could somehow be dealt with intelligently and effectively. Without that illusion, we all might have surrendered long ago.

But the guessers, in fact, knew no more than the common people and sometimes less, even when, or especially when, they gave us the illusion that we were in control of our destinies.
Persuasive guessing has been at the core of leadership for so long, for all of human experience so far, that it is wholly unsurprising that most of the leaders of this planet, in spite of all the information that is suddenly ours, want the guessing to go on. It is now their turn to guess and guess and be listened to. Some of the loudest, most proudly ignorant guessing in the world is going on in Washington today. Our leaders are sick of all the solid information that has been dumped on humanity by research and scholarship and investigative reporting. They think that the whole country is sick of it, and they could be right. It isn't the gold standard that they want to put us back on. They want something even more basic. They want to put us back on the snake-oil standard.

Loaded pistols are good for everyone except inmates in prison or lunatic asylums.

That's correct.

Millions spent on public health are inflationary.

That's correct.

Billions spent on weapons will bring inflation down.

That's correct.

Dictatorships to the right are much closer to American ideals than dictatorships to the left.

That's correct.

The more hydrogen bomb warheads we have, all set to go off at a moment's notice, the safer humanity is and the better off the world will be that our grandchildren will inherit.

That's correct.

Industrial wastes, and especially those that are radioactive, hardly ever hurt anybody, so everybody should shut up about them.

That's correct.

Industries should be allowed to do whatever they want to do:Bribe, wreck the environment just a little, fix prices, screw dumb customers, put a stop to competition, and raid the Treasury when they go broke.

That’s correct.

That’s free enterprise.

And that’s correct.

The poor have done something very wrong or they wouldn’t be poor, so their children should pay the consequences.

That’s correct.

The United States of America cannot be expected to look after its own people.

That’s correct.

The free market will do that.

That’s correct.

The free market is an automatic system of justice.

That’s correct.

I’m kidding.

And if you actually are an educated, thinking person, you will not be welcome in Washington, D.C. I know a couple of bright seventh graders who would not be welcome in Washington, D.C. Do you remember those doctors a few months back who got together and announced that it was a simple, clear medical fact that we could not survive even a moderate attack by hydrogen bombs? They were not welcome in Washington D.C.

Even if we fired the first salvo of hydrogen weapons and the enemy never fired back, the poisons released would probably kill the whole planet by and by.

What is the response in Washington? They guess otherwise. What good is an education? The boisterous guessers are still in charge – the haters of information. And the guessers are almost all highly educated people. Think of that. They have had to throw away their educations, even Harvard or Yale educations.

If they didn’t do that, there is no way their uninhibited guessing could go on and on and on. Please, don’t you do that. But if you make use of the vast fund of knowledge now available to educated persons, you are going to be lonesome as hell. The guessers outnumber you – and now I have to guess – about ten to one.

Natural Raised Killers
By Tom Harker

A while back some angry kids went on a killing spree at their school, and the nation went on an hysterical binge. How could children - "good," wealthy, white children for-God's-sake - go on a violent rampage? It was un-American, unthinkable!! Everyone wanted an explanation of the inexplicable. About the best they could do was to lean on the “Goths” and other "misfits" who "obviously" suffered prominence-envy in comparison with their social betters. Here and there around the country diligent up-scale school officials imposed “zero tolerance” and took advantage of the immediately available psychological profiling programs so as to identify and label the potential “killers” and, thereby, provide a sense of security, responsibility, and hope.


Well, forget that. Let's face facts. Americans kill because Americans love to kill. "Columbine" was devastating not because it involved killing, but because it broke the rules. In America proper killing, is more than acceptable; it is honorable. Some of our greatest role models are killers, directly or indirectly. They are the ones (cops, vigilantes, CIA agents, the military)who kill people that "need" to be killed and those (prosecutors, judges, legislators, governors, presidents) who put the “hit” out on those among us who “need” to be killed.


We killed the indigenous people of this continent by the rules. We killed immigrant and native-born workers - by the rules - when they tried to unionize. We killed black Americans - by the rules - whenever they "needed" lynching. Around the world we have killed and continue to kill foreigners - by the rules - whenever it is said to advance American "interests" (regardless of the foreigners' interests); and Americans still kill "criminals" - by the rules - whenever we get the chance.


Heroes? Role models? There are plenty of natural-born killers in our Pantheon. Historically, the list of honored killers is lengthy, as is the list of those who "honorably" ordered killings: the "great" explorers, "kindly" Puritans, "valiant" Indian fighters, “sturdy” pioneers, "romantic" plantation owners, Manifest Destiny politicians, Rockefeller, Carnegie, the B&O Railroad, Pinkerton agents, coal companies, and a myriad of officially "honorable" presidents, congressmen, governors, judges, and mayors - just to mention a few.


Ronald Reagan killed a baby with a missile. George Bush the Elder gratuitously annihilated helpless, fleeing Iraqi troops. Ohio's Governor James Rhodes allowed protesting students to be killed. Bill Clinton ordered bombings that killed foreign civilians. Pat Robertson publicly supported assassination of America’s “enemies.” The current president, George Bush the Younger, proudly defends his home state's record use of capital punishment. Long ago, before any talk of attacking Iraq, ABC News big-wig/bad-wig Sam Donaldson demanded on his ABC Sunday-morning “news” program that Saddam Hussein be killed.


None of this even raises a mainstream eyebrow because it is all “by the rules.” We are allowed to kill those who “need” killing. Moreover, it is our duty to kill them, and our stature is increased by doing so. Those few who may argue otherwise are ignored, overwhelmed, or – if necessary – silenced.


At the same time, killing outside the rules is not only illegal but “wrong.” If a foreign head of state killed an American baby (not to mention, a president’s adopted grandchild as was the case in Reagan’s Libyan adventure), it would be unspeakably “evil.” Blowing up American soldiers is called “terrorism.” If some foreign leader advocated the assassination of Pat Robertson or Sam Donaldson, there would be a moral outrage (except, perhaps, on the part of Robertson’s understudy and ABC’s advertising executives ).


One American, the president, can “justifiably” blow up any building in the foreign world, thereby killing the folks who work there and still get his pension. The man who blew up a building in Oklahoma (America), killing numerous people, has been executed.


Clearly, the question of “violence in America” suffers from the old “do as I say, not as I do” syndrome. The obvious reality is that America is not against violence and killing. America sanctions killing, essentially licensing certain people, groups, organizations, and institutions to kill under certain circumstances and in accordance with various rules and procedures.


As a result, the message America sends its children (as well as its adults) is not “violence and killing are wrong,” but “killing without permission is wrong.” The message is not that human life is sacred, but that killing is commendable if the killer is sanctioned, but wrong if he is not. This is a low standard.


As a result, “unsanctioned” killers such as those at Columbine need not wrestle with the question “Is killing wrong?” ; obviously (and officially) it is not. No, the question is, “Am I, somehow, sanctioned to kill?” It seems the latter question is much more subject to rationalization than the former – especially in a nation awash with notions of individuality, self-determination, “intrusive/unresponsive” government, vigilantism, and revenge (as in “I’d pull the switch myself!”).


If America truly valued life, young people and others would have to face a real moral dilemma: breaking a taboo, but as it is, they can emulate presidents, judges, prosecutors, policemen, ministers, and TV “celebrities” by deciding for themselves who should live and die.


In his inaugural speech, George Bush the Younger said, that “no insignificant person was ever born,” but he did not address the relative significance of the 135 people he executed as governor of Texas, nor the significance of those innocent persons who most certainly have died over the years at the hands of sanctioned state executions. Talk is cheap, and cheap talk combined with “zero tolerance,” “outrage,” and “psychological profiling” will not end or even seriously reduce killing in schools, federal buildings, or anywhere else. Only a true respect for life can do that. As long as America has rules that sanction killing, many Americans, when faced with difficulties – real or imagined - will follow their own rules and kill. It’s the American way.







Noam Chomsky and the Struggle Against Neoliberalism
By Robert W McChesney
Monthly Review April 1, 1999

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, neoliberalism has for the past two decades been the dominant global political economic trend adopted by political parties of the center, much of the traditional left, and 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, which can never do good (even when well intentioned, 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, these phrases and the claims they imply rarely require empirical 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 impede 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.

The economic consequences of these policies have been the same just about everywhere, and exactly what one would expect: a massive increase in social and economic inequality, a marked increase in severe deprivation for the poorest nations and peoples of the world, a disastrous global environment, an unstable global economy, and an unprecedented bonanza for the wealthy. Confronted with these facts, defenders of the neoliberal order claim that the spoils of the good life will invariably spread to the broad mass of the population - as long as the neoliberal policies that exacerbated these problems are not interfered with by anyone!

In the end, proponents of neoliberalism cannot and do not offer an empirical defense for the world they are making. To the contrary, they offer - no, demand - a religious faith in the infallibility of the unregulated market, drawing upon nineteenth century theories that have little connection to the actual world. The ultimate trump card for the defenders of neoliberalism, however, is that there is no alternative. Communist societies, social democracies, and even modest social welfare states like the United States have all failed, the neoliberals proclaim, and their citizens have accepted neoliberalism as the only feasible course. It may well be imperfect, but it is the only economic system possible.

Earlier in the twentieth century some critics called fascism "capitalism with the gloves off," meaning that fascism was pure capitalism without democratic rights and organizations. In fact, we know that fascism is vastly more complex than that. Neoliberalism, on the other hand, is indeed "capitalism with the gloves off." It represents an era in which business forces are stronger and more aggressive, and face less organized opposition than ever before. In this political climate they attempt to codify their political power and enact their vision on every possible front. As a result, business is increasingly difficult to challenge, and civil society (nonmarket, noncommercial, and democratic forces) barely exists at all.

It is precisely in its oppression of nonmarket forces that we see how neoliberalism operates - not only as an economic system, but as a political and cultural system as well. Here the differences with fascism, with its contempt for formal democracy and highly mobilized social movements based upon racism and nationalism, are striking. Neoliberalism works best when there is formal electoral democracy, but when the population is diverted from the information, access, and public forums necessary for meaningful participation in decision-making. As neoliberal guru Milton Friedman put it in Capitalism and Freedom, because profitmaking is the essence of democracy, any government that pursues antimarket policies is being antidemocratic, no matter how much informed popular support they might enjoy. Therefore it is best to restrict governments to the job of protecting private property and enforcing contracts, and to limit political debate to minor issues. (The real matters of resource production and distribution and social organization should be determined by market forces.)

Equipped with this perverse understanding of democracy, neoliberals like Friedman had no qualms over the military overthrow of Chile's democratically elected Allende government in 1973, because Allende was interfering with business control of Chilean society. After fifteen years of often brutal and savage dictatorship - all in the name of the democratic free market - formal democracy was restored in 1989 with a constitution that made it vastly more difficult (if not impossible) for the citizenry to challenge the business-military domination of Chilean society. That is neoliberal democracy in a nutshell: trivial debate over minor issues by parties that basically pursue the same pro-business policies regardless of formal differences and campaign debate. Democracy is permissible as long as the control of business is off-limits to popular deliberation or change; i.e., so long as it isn't democracy.

Neoliberal democracy therefore has an important and necessary byproduct - a depoliticized citizenry marked by apathy and cynicism. If electoral democracy affects little of social life, it is irrational to devote much attention to it; in the United States, the spawning ground of neoliberal democracy, voter turnout in the 1998 congressional elections was a record low, with just one-third of eligible voters going to the polls. Although occasionally generating concern from those established parties like the U.S. Democratic Party that tend to attract the votes of the dispossessed, low voter turnout tends to be accepted and encouraged by the powers that be as a very good thing since nonvoters are, not surprisingly, disproportionately found among the poor and working class. Policies that quickly could increase voter interest and participation rates are stymied before ever getting into the public arena. In the United States, for example, the two main business-dominated parties, with the support of the corporate community, have refused to reform laws - some of which they put on the boos - making it virtually impossible to create new political parties (that might appeal to non-business interests) and let them be effective. Although there is marked and frequently observed dissatisfaction with the Republicans and Democrats, electoral politics is one area where notions of competition and free choice have little meaning. In some respects, the caliber of debate and choice in neoliberal elections tends to be closer to that of the one-party communist state than that of a genuine democracy.

But this barely indicates neoliberalism's pernicious implications for a civic-centered political culture. On one hand, the social inequality generated by neoliberal policies undermines any effort to realize the legal equality necessary to make democracy credible. Large corporations have resources to influence media and overwhelm the political process, and do so accordingly. In U.S. electoral politics, for just one example, the richest one-quarter of one percent of Americans make 80 percent of all individual political contributions and corporations outspend labor by a margin of ten to one. Under neoliberalism this all makes sense; elections then reflect market principles, with contributions being equated with investments. As a result, it reinforces the irrelevance of electoral politics to most people and assures the maintenance of unquestioned corporate rule.

On the other hand, to be effective, democracy requires that people feel a connection to their fellow citizens, and that this connection manifests itself though a variety of nonmarket organizations and institutions. A vibrant political culture needs community groups, libraries, public schools, neighborhood organizations, cooperatives, public meeting places, voluntary associations, and trade unions to provide ways for citizens to meet, communicate, and interact with their fellow citizens. Neoliberal democracy, with its notion of the market uber alles, takes dead aim at this sector. Instead of citizens, it produces consumers. Instead of communities, it produces shopping malls. The net result is an atomized society of disengaged individuals who feel demoralized and socially powerless.

In sum, neoliberalism is the immediate and foremost enemy of genuine participatory democracy, not just in the United States but across the planet, and will be for the foreseeable future. It is fitting that Noam Chomsky is the leading intellectual figure in the world today in the battle for democracy and against neoliberalism. In the 1960s, Chomsky was a prominent U.S. critic of the Vietnam war and, more broadly, became perhaps the most trenchant analyst of the ways U.S. foreign policy undermines democracy, quashes human rights, and promotes the interests of the wealthy few. In the 1970s, Chomsky (along with his co-author Edward S. Herman) began researching the ways the U.S. news media serve elite interests and undermine the capacity of the citizenry to actually rule their lives in a democratic fashion. Their 1988 book, Manufacturing Consent, remains the starting point for any serious inquiry into news media performance.

Throughout these years Chomsky, who could be characterized as an anarchist or, perhaps more accurately, a libertarian socialist, was a vocal, principled, and consistent democratic opponent and critic of Communist and Leninist political states and parties. He educated countless people, including myself, that democracy was a non-negotiable cornerstone of any postcapitalist society worth living in or fighting for. At the same time, he has demonstrated the absurdity of equating capitalism with democracy, or thinking that capitalist societies, even under the best of circumstances, will ever open access to information or decision-making beyond the most narrow and controlled possibilities. I doubt any author, aside from perhaps George Orwell, has approached Chomsky in systematically skewering the hypocrisy of rulers and ideologues in both Communist and capitalist societies as they claim that theirs is the only form of true democracy available to humanity.

In the 1990s, all these strands of Chomsky's political work - from anti-imperialism and critical media analysis to writings on democracy and the labor movement - have come together, culminating in work like Profit Over People, about democracy and the neoliberal threat. Chomsky has done much to reinvigorate an understanding of the social requirements for democracy, drawing upon the ancient Greeks as well as the leading thinkers of democratic revolutions in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. As he makes clear, it is impossible to be a proponent of participatory democracy and at the same time a champion of capitalism or any other class-divided society. In assessing the real historical struggles for democracy, Chomsky also reveals that neoliberalism is hardly a new thing; it is merely the current version of the battle for the wealthy few to circumscribe the political rights and civic powers of the many.

Chomsky may also be the leading critic of the mythology of the natural "free" market, that cheery hymn that is pounded into our heads about how the economy is competitive, rational, efficient, and fair. As Chomsky points out, markets are almost never competitive. Most of the economy is dominated by massive corporations with tremendous control over their markets and which therefore face precious little competition of the sort described in economics textbooks and politicians' speeches. Moreover, corporations themselves are effectively totalitarian organizations, operating along nondemocratic lines. That our economy is centered around such institutions severely compromises our ability to have a democratic society.

The mythology of the free market also submits that governments are inefficient institutions that should be limited, so as not to hurt the magic of the natural laissez faire market. In fact, as Chomsky emphasizes, governments are central to the modern capitalist system. They lavishly subsidize corporations and work to advance corporate interests on numerous fronts. The same corporations that exult in neoliberal ideology are in fact often hypocritical: they want and expect governments to funnel tax dollars to them, and to protect their markets from competition for them, but they want to be assured that governments will not tax them or work supportively on behalf of non-business interests, especially the poor and working class. Governments are bigger than ever, but under neoliberalism they have far less pretense to addressing non-corporate interests.

Nowhere is the centrality of governments and policymaking more apparent than in the emergence of the global market economy. What is presented by pro-business ideologues as the natural expansion of free markets across borders is, in fact, quite the opposite. Globalization is the result of powerful governments, especially that of the United States, pushing trade deals and other accords down the throats of the world's people to make it easier for corporations and the wealthy to dominate the economies of nations around the world without having obligations to the peoples of those nations. Nowhere is the process more apparent than in the creation of the World Trade Organization in the early 1990s and, now, in the secret deliberations on behalf of the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI).

Indeed, it is the inability to have honest and candid discussions and debates about neoliberalism in the United States and elsewhere that is one of its most striking features. Chomsky's critique of the neoliberal order is effectively off-limits to mainstream analysis despite its empirical strength and because of its commitment to democratic values. Here, Chomsky's analysis of the doctrinal system in capitalist democracies is useful. The corporate news media, the PR industry, the academic ideologues, and the intellectual culture writ large play the central role of providing the "necessary illusions" to make this unpalatable situation appear rational, benevolent, and necessary (if not necessarily desirable). As Chomsky hastens to point out, this is no formal conspiracy by powerful interests; it doesn't have to be. Through a variety of institutional mechanisms, signals are sent to intellectuals, pundits, and journalists, pushing toward seeing the status quo as the best of all possible worlds, and away from challenging those who benefit from that status quo. Chomsky's work is a direct call for democratic activists to remake our media system so it can be opened up to anticorporate, antineoliberal perspectives and inquiry. It is also a challenge to all intellectuals, or at least those who express a commitment to democracy, to take a long, hard look in the mirror and to ask themselves in whose interests, and for what values, do they do their work.

Chomsky's description of the neoliberal/corporate hold over our economy, polity, journalism, and culture is so powerful and overwhelming that for some readers it can produce a sense of resignation. In our demoralized political times, a few may go a step further and conclude that we are enmeshed in this regressive system because, alas, humanity is simply incapable of creating a more humane, egalitarian, and democratic social order.

In fact, Chomsky's greatest contribution may well be his insistence upon the fundamental democratic inclinations of the world's peoples, and the revolutionary potential implicit in those impulses. The best evidence of this possibility is the extent to which corporate forces go to prevent genuine political democracy from being established. The world's rulers understand implicitly that theirs is a system established to suit the needs of the few, not the many, and that the many therefore cannot ever be permitted to question and alter corporate rule. Even in the hobbled democracies that do exist, the corporate community works incessantly to see that important issues like the MAI are never publicly debated. And the business community spends a fortune bankrolling a PR apparatus to convince Americans that this is the best of all possible worlds. The time to worry about the possibility of social change for the better, by this logic, will be when the corporate community abandons PR and buying elections, permits a representative media, and is comfortable establishing a genuinely egalitarian participatory democracy because it no longer fears the power of the many. But there is no reason to think that day will ever come.

Neoliberalism's loudest message is that there is no alternative to the status quo, and that humanity has reached its highest level. Chomsky points out that there have been several other periods designated as the "end of history" in the past. In the 1920s and 1950s, for example, U.S. elites claimed that the system was working and that mass quiescence reflected widespread satisfaction with the status quo. Events shortly thereafter highlighted the silliness of those beliefs. I suspect that as soon as democratic forces record a few tangible victories the blood will return to their veins, and talk of no possible hope for change will go the same route as all previous elite fantasies about their glorious rule being enshrined for a millennium.

The notion that no superior alternative to the status quo exists is more farfetched today than ever, in this era when there are mind-boggling technologies for bettering the human condition. It is true that it remains unclear how we might establish a viable, free, and humane post-capitalist order; the very notion has a utopian air about it. But every advance in history, from ending slavery and establishing democracy to ending formal colonialism, has at some point had to conquer the notion that it was impossible to do because it had never been done before. As Chomsky points out, organized political activism is responsible for the degree of democracy we have today, for universal adult suffrage, for women's rights, for trade unions, for civil rights, for the freedoms we do enjoy. Even if the notion of a post-capitalist society seems unattainable, we know that human political activity can make the world we live in vastly more humane. As we get to that point, perhaps we will again be able to think in terms of building a political economy based on principles of cooperation, equality, self-government, and individual freedom.

Until then, the struggle for social change is not a hypothetical issue. The current neoliberal order has generated massive political and economic crises from east Asia to eastern Europe and Latin America. The quality of life in the developed nations of Europe, Japan, and North America is fragile and the societies are in considerable turmoil. Tremendous upheaval is in the cards for the coming years and decades. There is considerable doubt about the outcome of that upheaval, however, and little reason to think it will lead automatically to a democratic and humane resolution. That will be determined by how we, the people, organize, respond, and act. As Chomsky says, if you act like there is no possibility of change for the better, you guarantee that there will be no change for the better. The choice is ours, the choice is yours.

Robert W. McChesney teaches communication at the University of Illinois. His newest book is Rich Media, Poor Democracy: Communication Politics in Dubious Times (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1999). This article first appeared as the introduction to Noam Chomsky's Profit Over People (New York: Seven Stories Press, 1999).

Meaner and Nicer

war & peace 

New Years Resolutions

Hey Folks,

I hope you have a wonderful New Year.

Did you make resolutions? Here are mine:

1. Be nice to people who might not totally deserve to be treated nicely.

Those people might include:

Friends' children, the mentally challenged, generally decent people who think Rush is a journalist, impoverished Libertarians, Black Republicans, Log Cabin gays, and reactionary "Christians" who keep their ugliness under a bushel.

2. Be as mean as necessary to people whenever they show they don’t deserve to be treated nicely.

Those people might include:

Bullies, bigots, homophobes, sexists, liars, hypocrites, know-it-alls, unsolicited proselytizers, pontificating businessmen, politicians, Libertarians, Neo Conservatives, right-wing talk show hosts, Chambers of Commerce, Grover Norquist, and anyone who thinks the "Market” has an "invisible hand."

3. Think of other categories to add to #'s 1 & 2.

The main consideration for this is watching how someone treats (or mistreats) others. In this country, supposedly, everyone has a right to his or her own opinion. At the same time no one has the right to impose personal opinions on others without a fight.

I respect other people’s right to hold and even express opinions that might be stupid, repugnant, selfish, brutish, etc. – as well as more praiseworthy ones. Some people can’t help being fools, and if they wish to demonstrate the level of their intellect and character, they are free to do so.

They are not, however, free to – as goes the vernacular – “get in my face” or anyone else’s face with it and expect immunity, as if the certitude in which they believe they are wrapped will serve as a shielding/cloaking device - as often is seen with some so-called "Christians" who vigorously persecute gays but claim any kind of counter-punch is religious "persecution."

What crap.

I put “Bullies” first in my #2 list above because it is often a bullying nature that raises foolishness and ignorance to an objectionable level. A businessman with foolish notions about public education is one thing. A foolish person claiming that being a businessman grants him some automatic and superior authority or standing to manipulate ("bully") school policy, for example, is another.

Psychologist James Dobson, head of Focus on the Family, is a right-wing religious nut and has every right to be. But we have every right as well to do unto him as he has done unto us. For example, I want to get the bumper sticker I recently heard about: “Focus on Your Own Damned Family! ”

With New Years Resolutions we resolve to do better. Some may interpret my proposed behavior as “doing worse.” After all, I’m proposing to be meaner as well as nicer.

Well, I would suggest that the insane, deadly, repressive, and ugly situation in which we presently find ourselves has resulted in large part because people like me weren’t mean enough when we should have been.

The bully-boys of the political and religious right have been crapping on us; lying, stealing, and pushing us around since the days of Uncle Ronnie the Gipper; and by not being mean enough in our response we let them get by with it.

Ask the union movement. Ask Al Gore. Ask yourself.

Well, for what they're worth, those are my New Years resolutions. I intend to make every effort possible to overlook and forgive benign/naive stupidity, but if some clod takes on the pose of authority – whether he justifies it by the large number of his similarly ignorant tribesmen, the size of his wealth or fame, what he claims God or some book has declared, or on any other irrelevant qualification; he deserves a strong rebuke.

I resolve to do my best to provide it.

- Uke Man