Start speadin' the news

Off to NYC

Hey Folks,

Friday I'm on my way to New York City for shows Friday, Saturday, and Tuesday nights.

You can see the Tuesday show on your computer screen - see posting a little ways below.

Pickings here may be sparce for a while (especially the graphics), but I'll be back at it under full steam next Thursday.

Yours - Uke Man

They Keep Killing Kenny

Something from a While Back that Still Applies!!!!

Hey Folks,

Why do we kill? Well, here's what I said a while back. Killing is as American as apple pie!

- Uke Man


Natural Raised Killers


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.
Now hardly a day goes by without some talking head calling for, promising, or congratulating the killing of someone.

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.

Jason Tagg at the console for M.U.D.

How to Watch the Uke Man on TV via Computer

Hey Folks -

In a few days I’ll be heading to New York for two shows (scroll down to earlier postings for details) and a local access TV program, "Midnight Ukulele Disco." You can check out the show's archives at: http://www.ukuleledisco.com/ (lots of uke videos - I'm among 'em).

But to see the Uke Man LIVE Tuesday Night, May 1, here's what you do:

A bit before 9:00 Go to: http://www.ukuleledisco.com/about

you’ll see: “Live web stream”: http://www.mnn.org/

Click on it. On the next screen, on the left you’ll find:
56/84 http mms (the show is on channel 56)

Click on it, and there you are (on my computer, I also have to click “Launch External Player” when a small screen pops up).

If you can't be in New York for the stage shows Friday and Saturday, tune in the PC tube to NYC on Tuesday!!

See you then,

- Uke Man

Don't cry for these crybabies, Venezuela.

Hey Folks,

The other day driving home I heard an NPR "Market Place" piece purporting to compare the Bush/Gonzales and Hugo Chavez policies on firing government employees. The performance gave credence to the point I've made before: The news is almost always presented from the perspective of the privileged.

Bush's firing of supporters (8 U.S. attorneys) who weren't aggressive enough against Democrats before the election is compared to Chavez' firing of public detractors ("on a much wider scale").

Then four members of the privileged class (2 Venezuelans [government lawyer & a film-maker] and 2 Americans [both capitalistic economists - see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riordan_Roett] ) weigh in with their self-interested, class-freighted comments.

You can listen to the piece at: http://marketplace.publicradio.org/shows/2007/04/10/PM200704106.html

The transcript is below. I've commented in red.


- Uke Man



KAI RYSSDAL: The House Judiciary Committee sent Attorney General Alberto Gonzales a little note today. Part of it was in Latin, though. The word "subpoena" was right at the top of the page. Congress is looking for more information about the firing of those eight U.S. attorneys as the controversy moves into the political arena.

There is a somewhat similar controversy going on in Venezuela. The politics of the two presidents involved, Chavez and Bush, couldn't be more different. But critics in Caracas say there it's blatant political discrimination happening against some government workers there, and on a much wider scale. The critics are the ones who, before Chavez, blatantly abused 80% of the population for personal gain, and would again if they could eliminate Chavez. From the Americas Desk at WLRN, Marketplace's Dan Grech reports.

DAN GRECH: Rocio San Miguel worked as an attorney for 13 years with the Venezuelan government. In December 2003, she signed a petition to recall President Hugo Chavez, who she felt was abusing his power. And keeping her from abusing hers.

Sorry, folks, but this poor little rich kid can't be too bright. Government jobs are GOVERNMENT jobs. In our country you won't keep your job long if you're signing recall petitions against your boss. And it's worse in the private sector.

The names of those who signed were leaked to a Chavez loyalist, Congressman Luis Tascon, and posted on his website.

[SOUND: Chavez on TV]

Chavez even promoted the site live on national TV. Sort of like having Robert Novak out Valerie Plame.

PRESIDENT CHAVEZ:Doble v doble v doble v punto luis tascon punto com. [www.luistascon.com] Metense alli.

One month after she signed, San Miguel was summoned into her boss's office.

ROCIO SAN MIGUEL [voice of translator]: He told me that, unfortunately, he had to fire me. He said, "How could it have occurred to you to sign against the guy who pays you?"

San Miguel experienced a cascade of emotions.

SAN MIGUEL: Indignation. Impotence. Anguish. I knew right away that something terrible was happening to me. And I began to collect evidence. Hmm. . . just like Wal-Mart employees fired for trying to start a union against their boss's wishes - but that's different.

San Miguel was one of three people in her office who signed the petition against Chavez. All three were fired. Duh!!! Try and recall what Tom Delay pulled regarding corporations hiring ONLY Republican lobyists.

The Venezuelan constitution forbids discriminating against employees for their political beliefs. Nonetheless, according to the Organization of American States, the Chavez administration has shown a growing "tendency to intimidate, harass, and stigmatize" the opposition. Our laws forbid the union-busting activities regularly practiced by outfits such as Wal-Mart, but the laws are never enforced. You don't hear much about THAT around here.

The public employees union in Venezuela documented 780 cases of political discrimination, including 200 firings. There are 25,375,000 Venezuelans. Eighty percent of them (or 20,300,000) are poor, and they have ALWAYS been discriminated against politically and otherwise. If 200 people have to be fired, 200 people who don't like Chavez working to help 20 MILLION people, that doesn't sound so bad to me. It's a lot better than the other way round.

Wesleyan University's Francisco Rodriguez says this amounts to economic blackmail. Sort of like the World Bank applies economic blackmail: "Screw your people over for our gain, or there will be a high cost; you're not going to have an economy; we'll screw all 25,375,281 of you."

FRANCISCO RODRIGUEZ: OK, so you want to become an opponent of Chavez? That's going to have a high cost. You're not going to have a job. All 200 of you!!

Political patronage has always been part of the landscape here in Venezuela. But Riordan Roett with Johns Hopkins University says Chavez has turned ideological discrimination into a science. Hey, Bozo, take a look at Bush & Co. regarding lobbyists, prosecutors, contractors, appointees, CIA and FBI intelligence operatives, the White House press corps, etc. - It's generally recognized that Bush has "turned ideological discrimination into a science."

RIORDAN ROETT: It really has become a monstrous mechanism for placing fear in the hearts of many Venezuelans. Yeah, the former ruling class - the ones who haven't already fled - are justifiably crapping themselves.

Three and a half million people signed a petition against Chavez in 2003. That's about 14% of the total population, and doesn't even include the entire ruling class - 6% short.

ROETT: These people have now been identified as enemies of the state (enemies of the people). Many people have lost their job, others cannot be hired. It's also generated outward migration. People have begun to leave, and in relatively large numbers. What did I say?

Roett says the government is accused of using the list to screen applicants for social programs, scholarships, even credit from state banks. Golly, why shouldn't the wealthiest 20% get first shot at social programs, scholarships, and credit from state banks - instead of the losers in the 80% below the poverty level???

ROETT: And so it really has become a blacklist, almost in the way you had lists in totalitarian Europe in the 1930s. Notice that this American gink compares it to European totalitarianism. Later, the Venezuelan film maker slips up and compares it to McCarthyism (oops!!!).

The difference is this list takes advantage of 21st century technology. A simple computer program, searchable by name or ID number, contains the political preferences of 14 million Venezuelans. It's called the Maisanta program, after Chavez's great grandfather.

Venezuelan Communications Minister William Lara as well as Ambassador to the U.S Bernardo Alvarez declined requests for comment.

[SOUND: Chavez speaking]

Under international pressure, Chavez called for the list to be buried two years ago, saying it had outlived its usefulness.

The problem is, no one can be sure the list is truly buried. To this day, street vendors in Caracas sell the Maisanta program for about five bucks.

Regardless of whether the blacklist is actually being used, many people still think it is. That seed of doubt has infected the entire society. NO IT HASN'T!! There it is again: what affects the small minority that has, had, or would like to again have its boot on the neck of the masses is presented as infecting "THE ENTIRE SOCIETY." What bullshit!!! It never works the other way around.

FRANCISCO MORENO: That's the subtle part. That's the dangerous part. That's the sad part. For him.

Filmmaker Francisco Moreno made a documentary called "The List: A Society Under Suspicion."

MORENO: I could never know if I'm being denied the right to work, or being denied a contract with the government, or being denied a film grant, because those guys know that I signed. It's McCarthy all over again.

After she got fired, Rocio San Miguel has not been able to find work as an attorney. She's taken her evidence to the Venezuelan courts, but they're packed with Chavez supporters (Before Chavez they were packed with lapdogs to the privileged - AGAIN, which is better: law that serves the mass of people? Or law that serves a minority of oppressors??) . She's now waiting on an appeal to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.

In Caracas, I'm Dan Grech for Marketplace. And we know that the MARKET is god!!

- Uke Man

From the January Cabaret

Uke Man, Ted, & Jason

New York Ukulele Shows

Hey Folks,

In a few days I’ll be heading out to New York City once again to enlist in the “Ukulele Wars.”

It’s a long story, not worth elaborating upon. Suffice it to say that I and my fellow Bizarro Ukesters will be presenting two shows April 27 & 28, counterposing two shows of the Dark Lord himself, Darth Bulldog.

Information on the second of these shows (April 28), “Ukulele Cabaret” can be obtained at:
http://www.ukulelecabaret.com/ (six videos for your entertainment) (for info on the first show, scroll down a bit).

Or from the pictures below (click on them to enlarge them).

– Uke Man

Circus of Cool !!!

Hey Folks,

Friday night I once again had the pleasure of participating in Circus of Cool, where one reads a Rant or Poem backed by a Jazz Band - a Beat thing!!

Here's the rant and some pictures. There was much more after midnight, but the old guy had to get on down the road for his beauty rest.

- Uke Man

Pogo Shtick


I know these people.

I‘ve known them all my life.
Kiss-ups: self-serving sycophants, knee-padded beggars entreating crumbs in exchange for their honor, cowards taking the “safe” route, disgusting vermin.

I know these people.

Posers: paradigms of prodigious emptiness, icons of Warholian temporality, revered May Fly Royalty quickly caught under foot and swept away, winners at musical chairs, sad little bullet heads.

You know these people too.

You’ve known them all your life.

Snobs who say: “How do you like my new dress?” And “What are YOU doing here?” And “Well, I must be going now.”

They say, “We run this town.” And “MY son is going to PRIVATE school.” And “See you at Rotary?” (do you think they wear beanies with plastic propellers there?)

You know, snobs:

To the manor born, stainless steel spoon in their mouths, careful parents protecting their precious ones from the “undesirable” element, on the school board so Junior can take the LOSING jump shot, class-conscious warriors in the classless Homeland Defense against “class warfare,” puffed up pontificators of their own inescapable worthiness, inexhaustible exhibitionists of self-stimulation, demigods of consumption, tin pot aristocrats with streets named after them, polishing their putters and their silverware, gross toads in tiny cellars.

We know these people.

Lip-twisted Jesus-lovers spewing their racist vomit, their sexist, homophobic, parochial, creationist, censorial bile across the landscape. Moaning “persecution!” at the slightest hindrance of their self-righteous pogrom. Well-healed healers crippling their crippled sheep during the shearing - and in turn – the carnivorous sheep, transmogrified raptors - healed and born again - return the favor to their brethren. Rendering unto Caesar. Rendering the carcass of humanity to grease the wheels of commerce. Burn the witch! Burn the Jew! Pass the plate and the ammunition too!!!

And the bullies! Pushing ahead in line, eating your lunch, establishing the pecking order (enforcers for the long term), attack dogs of the virtual reality, teacher’s pets, quarterbacks, coaches, principals, cops, mayors, editors, clear-channel mouth organs, cable “news” vampires; offal, officially elected; statesmen, patriarchs, the smirking half-wit president of the US of A!!!

We know the bullies.

Home on the hill, sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-suburbanites, gated communitarians. Upper crust bluebloods, thoroughbreds. Orthodontia, acrylic nails, hair transplants, fancy pants; plastic surgeons, eggs of sturgeons; Gucci-Gucci-Gucci.

We know the bullies.

Playgrounders who steal the ball if they can’t win. Self-perpetuating slackers, self-aggrandizing losers, cardboard cutouts, ostrich-eyed/bird- brained incompetents who leave their droppings where they may and delegate the clean-up.

Exploiters who bring good things to life. Engineers and oligarchs; saviors, heroes, icons; holy men and businessers, suits and CEO’s.

Politicians preying and praying (with an “e”-ing and an “a”-ing). War-mongers abandoning vets - who forgive and forget (from their sick bed or their barstool) just BEFORE the next war.

And we know the cowards, you and I. We know them all already, know them all!!

The willow reeds bending with the wind, chameleons blending in, willing wallflowers, self-deceivers, band-wagoners; toadies, informers, collaborationists, company men; narks, snitches, good soldiers, good Germans, apologists; wearers of rose-colored glasses, takers of the easy path.

Do it to Julia! Do it to Julia! Not to me!

Windup parrots squawking of god and country, reciting the provided script, premeditatedly oblivious to hypocrisy and lies and the obvious degradation.

They say, “It is our duty.” “We must support our leader.” “It is the white (and red and blue) man’s burden!

Disgusting slugs sliming the world in their spineless, paralyzed rush to avoid being stepped upon themselves. Oh, what a well-deserved iridescent mess THAT would be, and how luminescently appropriate!

The possum warned us of these ersatz Ishmaels, riding the coffins of others to save themselves for one more day of self-delusion - these “survivors” - wrapped in the armor of self-righteous nonsense, spouting judgmental distractions, propagating emotional calluses, lips eternally puckered, shadow soldiers of the living dead struggling inch by perverted inch down the Primrose Path to the tables down at Morey’s where they pass and are forgotten with the rest.

Krista

The Band

Performance

Friends

Ah, Jazz!!!!

TWO Crazy Nuts !!

The Quipper & the Gipper

Bombs & missles -
two funny guys !!!

Bomb,bomb,bomb,bomb,bomb, Iran

Hey Folks,

If you've heard about it, but haven't seen it, here it is:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9rNqxn0ynO0&session=PdfBgi9vTPLDNYdwv5gAPj1KVbqf0iatPKe5XQl-qePWqfTf3vME0hQucJ89Nb2nbgKU9CmCgv-J5RDCqI5Nl8C-sB5_a3qnQLI8l1CC0BQMlJASoZJZJnV9TDhoaQuCJijjIERbBs0y3N2-y70Zuo9aDh0FVO0V6VG-9XqtYNp7UlcbHqwuCU7ADm34GxCZXnsaOwm4BfSL5k9EoyWUxJye2GWARB1q

- Uke Man

They Keep Killing Kenny

Listen to this man!!!!

Hey Folks,

I have some ideas as to why things like those at Blacksburg and Columbine happen. After the Columbine incident, I expressed them in an essay which I will soon post here.

Below is Bob Herbert's explanation of the Blacksburg massacre. Perhaps the most striking part of his piece is:

"we still profess to be baffled at the periodic eruption of murderous violence in places we perceive as safe havens. We look on aghast, as if the devil himself had appeared from out of nowhere. This time it was 32 innocents slaughtered on the campus of Virginia Tech. How could it have happened? We behave as if it was all so inexplicable."

When things like this happen, we always hear the same explanations (Hollywood, Rap, video games, the counter culture, etc.). We never face up to the real underlying causes. That takes courage.

Bob Herbert courageously stares into the face of reality!!

- Uke Man



April 19, 2007
A Volatile Young Man, Humiliation and a Gun
By BOB HERBERT
(a ukethanks to Phyll)

“God I can’t wait till I can kill you people.”
— A message on the Web site of the Columbine killer Eric Harris.


In the predawn hours of Monday, Aug. 1, 1966, Charles Whitman, a former marine and Eagle Scout in Austin, Tex., stabbed his wife to death in their bed. The night before he had driven to his mother’s apartment in another part of town and killed her.

Later that Monday morning, Whitman gathered together food, water, a supply of ammunition, two rifles, a couple of pistols, a carbine and a shotgun and climbed the landmark 30-story tower on the campus of the University of Texas.

Beneath a blazing sun, with temperatures headed toward the mid-90s, Whitman opened fire. His first target was a pregnant teenager. Over the next 80 or so minutes he killed 14 people and wounded more than 30 others before being shot to death by the police.

More than four decades later we still profess to be baffled at the periodic eruption of murderous violence in places we perceive as safe havens. We look on aghast, as if the devil himself had appeared from out of nowhere. This time it was 32 innocents slaughtered on the campus of Virginia Tech. How could it have happened? We behave as if it was all so inexplicable.

But a close look at the patterns of murderous violence in the U.S. reveals some remarkable consistencies, wherever the individual atrocities may have occurred. In case after case, decade after decade, the killers have been shown to be young men riddled with shame and humiliation, often bitterly misogynistic and homophobic, who have decided that the way to assert their faltering sense of manhood and get the respect they have been denied is to go out and shoot somebody.

Dr. James Gilligan, who has spent many years studying violence as a prison psychiatrist in Massachusetts, and as a professor at Harvard and now at N.Y.U., believes that some debilitating combination of misogyny and homophobia is a “central component” in much, if not most, of the worst forms of violence in this country.

“What I’ve concluded from decades of working with murderers and rapists and every kind of violent criminal,” he said, “is that an underlying factor that is virtually always present to one degree or another is a feeling that one has to prove one’s manhood, and that the way to do that, to gain the respect that has been lost, is to commit a violent act.”

Violence is commonly resorted to as the antidote to the disturbing emotions raised by the widespread hostility toward women in our society and the pathological fear of so many men that they aren’t quite tough enough, masculine enough — in short, that they might have homosexual tendencies.

In a culture that is relentless in equating violence with masculinity, “it is tremendously tempting,” said Dr. Gilligan, “to use violence as a means of trying to shore up one’s sense of masculine self-esteem.”

The Virginia Tech killer, Cho Seung-Hui, was reported to have stalked female classmates and to have leaned under tables to take inappropriate photos of women. A former roommate told CNN that Mr. Cho once claimed to have seen “promiscuity” when he looked into the eyes of a woman on campus.

Charles Whitman was often portrayed as the sunny all-American boy. But he had been court-martialed in the Marines, was struggling as a college student and apparently had been suffering from depression. He told a psychiatrist that he absolutely hated his father, but he started his murderous spree by killing his wife and his mother.

The confluence of feelings of inadequacy, psychosexual turmoil and the easy availability of guns has resulted in a staggering volume of murders in this country.

There are nearly 200 million firearms in private hands in the U.S., and more than 30,000 people — nearly 10 times the total number of Americans who have died in Iraq — are killed by those guns each year. In 1966 Americans were being killed by guns at the rate of 17,000 a year. An article in The Times examining such “rampages” as the Charles Whitman shootings said:

“Whatever the motivation, it seems clear that the way is made easier by the fact that guns of all sorts are readily available to Americans of all shades of morality and mentality.”

We’ve learned very little in 40 years.

Sonic Uke

The Heart of NYC's Ukulele Consciousness

New York Ukulele Shows

Hey Folks,

In a little more than a week, I’ll be heading out to New York City once again to enlist in the “Ukulele Wars.”

The war’s a long story, not worth elaborating upon. Suffice it to say that I and my fellow Bizarro Ukesters will be presenting two shows April 27 & 28, counterposing two shows of the Dark Lord, Darth Bulldog.

Information on the first of these shows (April 27), “Ukulele Rejects” can be obtained at:
http://www.ukulelecabaret.com/rejects (six videos for your entertainment)

Or from the picture below (click on it to enlarge it).

More later !!!

– Uke Man

Click to Enlarge

So much for Momentum . . .

Hey Folks,

Bob Herbert says below, "Not only is the society still permeated by racism and sexism and the stereotypes they spawn, but we have allowed a debased and profoundly immature culture to emerge in which the coarsest, most socially destructive images and language are an integral part of the everyday discourse."

I believe that the biggest cause of that (and much more) is the Capitalistic system under which we toil. Think about it: the prime directive of capitalism is the accumulation of PERSONAL wealth, and "Competition" is the holy means to that end. Those who "win" increase their hoard; those who fail get what they deserve and should suffer in silence. It's all blessed by the mystical, infallible, Market Deity.

To compete, individuals and entities must, for one thing, sell; and, so, selling trumps everything: ethics, morality, the law, health, the environment, the truth, decency - everything. Racism assists oppressors increase their personal worth in a million ways, as does sexism, classism, and all prejudice and bias. An underclass is an easily exploited class.

Cut-throat competition does not allow for questions of taste and propriety; or the long-term effect on people, the culture, the national heritage and ideals. If it sells, if it makes money; then it WILL prevail. Only if it is a money-loser will it fail. Since the youth market is so big, and by definition youth are immature, it's no surprise that an immature, coarse, lowest-common-denominator culture should emerge and, indeed, be nurtured by those seeking wealth.

In the Imus case, it was the decision by a large number of sponsors that Imus's mouth was a money-loser that caused his firing. It had very little to do with what is right or wrong; it was just a question of how it would affect the accumulation of personal wealth, a question of whether sacrificing Imus or overlooking the racist slandering of innocent young Black women would pay the largest return.

Herbert heroically calls for keeping on the pressure, building momentum, and responding accordingly in the face of future outrages, but as I write this - two days after Herbert's column - all that you can hear or read in the media has to do with the massacre in Virginia.

Violence sells better than day-old racism, and what sells is what it's all about.

So much for momentum.

- Uke Man


April 16, 2007
Signs of Infection
By BOB HERBERT
(a ukethanks to Phyll)

People in positions of great power are the ones who define those who are relatively lacking in power. So when Don Imus, a very powerful radio personality, dropped his disgusting verbal bomb on the members of the Rutgers women’s basketball team, he sent a powerful message across the airwaves: that the young women on the team (the black ones, at least) were crude, ugly and genetically inferior, and that all of the women were whores.

That message, which Mr. Imus insisted was meant to be funny, reinforced views already widely held in our society, which is why I could get the following e-mail from a reader:

“Who woulda thunk that the Imus idiocy and the Duke Debacle would hit home on the same day. Both stories bring to mind what my father told me 60 years ago: Stay away from colored women.”

The attention surrounding Mr. Imus’s very public self-immolation is an opportunity for Americans to acknowledge that we have a problem. Not only is the society still permeated by racism and sexism and the stereotypes they spawn, but we have allowed a debased and profoundly immature culture to emerge in which the coarsest, most socially destructive images and language are an integral part of the everyday discourse.

Gangsta rappers trapped in the throes of the Stockholm syndrome have spent years encouraging black people to see themselves as niggers and all women as whores. Michael Savage, one of the most prominent figures in talk radio, with an audience substantially larger than Don Imus’s, has called Diane Sawyer a “lying whore” and Barbara Walters a “double-talking slut,” according to Media Matters for America, a group that monitors some of the excesses of talk radio.

The culture that has given us such wonders as jazz, blues, baseball, Hollywood, the Broadway musical theater, rock ’n’ roll, and on and on, is now specializing in too many instances in language and entertainment fit only for the gutter or a sewer.

Something has gone completely haywire when young American boys and girls are listening to songs like “Can You Control Yo Hoe” and “Break a Bitch Til I Die,” by Snoop Dogg, formerly Snoop Doggy Dogg, formerly Cordozar Calvin Broadus.

“It’s gotten pretty savage out there,” said Tom Brokaw of NBC News during an on-air discussion of the Imus situation.

Mr. Brokaw, who believes that firing Mr. Imus was the right thing to do, said: “There’s been an absence of civility in public discourse for some time now. The use of language across the racial spectrum, and across the political spectrum, and across the cultural spectrum, has been, in any way you want to describe it, debased to a certain degree.

“The words that you hear used commonly on the street, or on the air, or on radio, or in rap lyrics, are words that in the worst days of segregation in this country, in the worst segregated parts of this country, you would not have heard on radio. Now you hear them commonly.”

The language, of course, is just a symptom. Mr. Brokaw went on to mention, in a tone that sounded a bit sad and somewhat resigned, that Americans had steadfastly refused to face the race issue honestly and head-on. “I had hoped,” he said, “I guess somewhat naïvely 20 years ago, that we would be in a far different place than we are now.”

We should also be in a better place in the way that women are viewed and portrayed in the culture. And one of the first steps in a conversation about how to honestly address these issues should be a discussion of how to get more more blacks, other ethnic minorities and women into positions of real authority in the major news and entertainment outlets.

Another part of the conversation should deal with why the bullying and degradation of other human beings is such a staple of popular entertainment in this country. One of the Rutgers players expressed astonishment Thursday night when Mr. Imus told her that making fun of people was how he’d made his living for many years.

The people who fought back against the racism and misogyny of the “Imus in the Morning” program need to keep the momentum going. Keep the pressure on the companies that sponsor this garbage. Keep the matter before the media.

Imus, Snoop Dogg, Michael Savage — it doesn’t matter where the bigotry is coming from. What’s important is to find the integrity and the strength to see it for what it is — a loathsome, soul-destroying disease — and then to respond accordingly

Don Imus & Mike Wallace

Hmmmmmm . . . is America shockable???

Hey Folks,

We've heard a ton of Imus reporting, and this was written before Imus was fired, but it's worth a look. For my part, I have seen nothing else that showed the problem so clearly.

- Uke Man

April 12, 2007
Paying the Price
By BOB HERBERT
(a ukethanks to Phyll)

You knew something was up early in the day. As soon as I told executives at MSNBC that I was going to write about the “60 Minutes” piece, which was already in pretty wide circulation, they began acting very weird. We’ll get back to you, they said.

In a “60 Minutes” interview with Don Imus broadcast in July 1998, Mike Wallace said of the “Imus in the Morning” program, “It’s dirty and sometimes racist.”

Mr. Imus then said: “Give me an example. Give me one example of one racist incident.” To which Mr. Wallace replied, “You told Tom Anderson, the producer, in your car, coming home, that Bernard McGuirk is there to do nigger jokes.”

Mr. Imus said, “Well, I’ve nev — I never use that word.”

Mr. Wallace then turned to Mr. Anderson, his producer. “Tom,” he said.

“I’m right here,” said Mr. Anderson.

Mr. Imus then said to Mr. Anderson, “Did I use that word?”

Mr. Anderson said, “I recall you using that word.”

“Oh, O.K.,” said Mr. Imus. “Well, then I used that word. But I mean — of course, that was an off-the-record conversation. But ——”

“The hell it was,” said Mr. Wallace.

The transcript was pure poison. A source very close to Don Imus told me last night, “They did not want to wait for your piece to come out.”

For MSNBC, Mr. Imus’s “nappy-headed ho’s” comment about the Rutgers women’s basketball team was bad enough. Putting the word “nigger” into the so-called I-man’s mouth was beyond the pale.

The roof was caving in on Mr. Imus. More advertisers were pulling the plug. And Bruce Gordon, a member of the CBS Corp. board of directors and former head of the N.A.A.C.P., said publicly that Mr. Imus should be fired.

But some of the most telling and persuasive criticism came from an unlikely source — internally at the network that televised Mr. Imus’s program. Women, especially, were angry and upset. Powerful statements were made during in-house meetings by women at NBC and MSNBC — about how black women are devalued in this country, how they are demeaned by white men and black men.

White and black women spoke emotionally about the way black women are frequently trashed in the popular culture, especially in music, and about the way news outlets give far more attention to stories about white women in trouble.

Phil Griffin, a senior vice president at NBC News who oversaw the Imus show for MSNBC, told me yesterday, “It touched a huge nerve.”

Whether or not Mr. McGuirk was hired for the specific noxious purpose referred to in the “60 Minutes” interview, he has pretty much lived up to that job description. He’s a minstrel, a white man who has gleefully led the Imus pack into some of the most disgusting, degrading attempts at racial (not to mention sexist) humor that it’s possible to imagine.

Blacks were jigaboos, Sambos and Brilloheads. Women were bitches and, above all else, an endless variety of ever-ready sexual vessels, born to be degraded.

The question now is how long the “Imus in the Morning” radio show will last. Just last month, in a reference to a speech by Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton in Selma, Ala., Mr. McGuirk called Mrs. Clinton a bitch and predicted she would “have cornrows and gold teeth” by the time her presidential primary campaign against Senator Barack Obama is over.

Way back in 1994, a friend of mine, the late Lars-Erik Nelson, a terrific reporter and columnist at The Daily News and Newsday, mentioned an Imus segment that offered a “satirical” rap song that gave advice to President Clinton on what to do about Paula Jones: “Pimp-slap the ho.” Mr. Nelson also wrote that there was a song on the program dealing with Hillary Clinton’s menstrual cycle.

So this hateful garbage has been going on for a long, long time. There was nothing new about the tone or the intent of Mr. Imus’s “nappy-headed ho’s” comment. As Bryan Monroe, president of the National Association of Black Journalists, told me the other night, “It’s a long pattern of behavior, and at some point somebody has to say enough is enough.”

The crucial issue goes well beyond Don Imus’s pathetically infantile behavior. The real question is whether this controversy is loud enough to shock Americans at long last into the realization of just how profoundly racist and sexist the culture is.

It appears that on this issue the general public, and the women at Mr. Imus’s former network, are far ahead of the establishment figures, the politicians and the media biggies, who were always so anxious to appear on the show and to defend Mr. Imus.

That is a very good sign.

"The District"

Washer Women

The World's Oldest Capitalists

Hey Folks,

A long time ago, when I was only 20 years old, my highschool and college pal, Jim Gunther, and I went to Europe for two months.

We went on the “$5.00-a-Day Plan,” and – if you subtracted the air fare – it worked. That covered hotels, train and other travel, food, entertainment, and souvenirs. Needless to say, we were on the economy/youth track – no frills for us; wash your clothes in the sink/hang ‘em in the shower to dry; walk a lot; eat a little; splurge seldom.

Once on the French Riviera I ran into a movie theater in my bathing suit screaming “toilette,” “W.C.,” “bathroom” and holding myself because I’d refused to use the pay toilette at the beach, choosing to wait until I’d returned to the hotel. Since I had developed the infamous traveler’s gut (”the runs”) in the first week of the trip, that was a bad decision. Fortunately, someone at the theater deciphered my gibberish and saved me.

Anyway, by the time we got to Amsterdam, washing underwear and socks in the sink and “drying” them over the course of a week became a chore; and other clothes, too, had reached their limit of re-use – even by the standards of college-aged boys.

One evening we got directions at the hotel regarding the nearest Laundromat and set off to do our laundry.

Somewhere along the way, quite unexpectedly, we passed by a large window behind which sat a rather buxom woman dressed scantily in “sexy” fashion. It was a bit startling to two young guys seriously bent on finding the local Laundromat. We had read about “the District” in the tour book; we just didn’t know our hotel was on the outskirts (so to speak) of the place.

We got a number of eye-fulls, but proceeded steadfastly on to reach our destination.

It was closed.

So, we retraced our steps to the hotel, along the way ogling the Ladies once again. In the morning we returned to the now-open Laundromat and did our clothes – right alongside a number of the women we’d seen in the windows the night before. These were the legal professionals mentioned in the story below.

We also crossed paths with a bootlegging prostitute stationed in our cut-rate hotel. Jim and I had seen her; she was no beauty, and I would never have guessed her profession from her looks, but we got the low-down from some young Canadian soldiers staying there.

Professional girls are independent contractors, licensed and inspected regularly, and restricted to the district. Bootleggers follow none of the rules, work for pimps, and troll around in or near the district (our hotel??).

Anyway, the unfortunate woman in question was one night soundly (but far from soundlessly) beaten by her pimp, according to our Canadian friends (I later saw the black eyes myself). It is open to conjecture why he beat her – probably over money, but - honestly – I didn’t see how she could make much money as a siren, not equipped as she was by nature.

According to the story below, the District remains active and popular in Amsterdam, and – like everything else – has a few problems, but I’m glad it’s still in operation. As long as it remains, I’ll know there is one honest spot on earth where hypocrisy is banished !!! (and where goofy young men can do their laundry with advice from professionals as to how best to go at it).

- Uke Man



Visitors flood Amsterdam's red-light district
By Alexandra Hudson Sat Mar 31

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - Amsterdam's sex workers came to work early on Saturday to offer a free look at the city's famed red-light district.

Hundreds of wide-eyed visitors queued in the sunshine to enter the dimly-lit sex clubs and peep shows that draw thousands to the city and to snoop around prostitutes' neon-lit boudoirs.

"I think the open day is a great idea," said Love, an erotic dancer at Amsterdam's Banana Bar, who was on hand to answer questions and pose for photographs in fluorescent negligee.

"It is especially interesting for women. If they learn what we do here they will realize it is not a big deal if their husbands or boyfriends want to come here."

Organizers staged the open day to counter bad publicity surrounding the 800-year-old district after harrowing reports of forced prostitution, human trafficking and organized crime.

More than 30 brothels are fighting closure after officials revoked their licenses last year over suspected links to money laundering and drug dealing.

But tourism authorities say the district -- a warren of narrow alleys and canals lined with sex shops, brothels and neon signs - - is as big an attraction as Amsterdam's art museums and coffee shops, where marijuana is freely smoked and sold.

Every night visitors throng the streets, agog at scantily clad women sitting behind huge red-lit windows, and who sell their services for as little as 50 euros ($66.58).

"I am here because my wife was interested in coming along," said 63-year-old Evert Rijnders from Haarlem.

His wife Jos added: "This has been a chance to look behind the scenes, and some things have definitely surprised me."

Organizer Jacco Wanders displayed a typical prostitute's bedroom, usually concealed behind red velvet curtains and fitted with an emergency alarm bell in case a client turns violent.

He laughed as visitors posed in the tall street-facing window or bounced around on the mattress.

"This day is to help break down taboos around prostitution and to create more understanding and respect," he said.

The "open day" concludes with the unveiling of a statue to an unknown sex worker, intended to honor those employed in the industry world-wide, including those without the same protection found in the Netherlands, where prostitution is legal.

Amsterdam's window-prostitutes are self-employed tax payers, hiring their own windows at around 110 euros per night.

"People who work in the sex industry don't get enough respect," said Mariska Majoor, a former prostitute who now runs the red-light district's information center.

"There are millions of them and many are in trouble. Some are abused by clients or pimps and it is important for them to know that they deserve respect."

(Additional reporting by Anna Mudeva)

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

Oscar Wilde

Protesting while Black

Throwing tantrums while Black

Hey Folks,

I wonder why they don't arrest those damned noisy babies on airplanes or the nasty kids dipping thgeir fingers in everything at the buffet. That'd show 'em.

A baby or a 6-year-old can disturb the peace and spread germs "just as much as any other person.”

- Uke Man


April 9, 2007
6-Year-Olds Under Arrest
By BOB HERBERT
(a ukethanks to Phyll)

Avon Park, Fla.

When 6-year-old Desre’e Watson threw a tantrum in her kindergarten class a couple of weeks ago she could not have known that the full force of the law would be brought down on her and that she would be carted off by the police as a felon.

But that’s what happened in this small, backward city in central Florida. According to the authorities, there were no other options.

“The student became violent,” said Frank Mercurio, the no-nonsense chief of the Avon Park police. “She was yelling, screaming — just being uncontrollable. Defiant.”

“But she was 6,” I said.

The chief’s reply came faster than a speeding bullet: “Do you think this is the first 6-year-old we’ve arrested?”

The child’s tantrum occurred on the morning of March 28 at the Avon Elementary School. According to the police report, “Watson was upset and crying and wailing and would not leave the classroom to let them study, causing a disruption of the normal class activities.”

After a few minutes, Desre’e was, in fact, taken to another room. She was “isolated,” the chief said. But she would not calm down. She flailed away at the teachers who tried to control her. She pulled one woman’s hair. She was kicking.

I asked the chief if anyone had been hurt. “Yes,” he said. At least one woman reported “some redness.”

After 20 minutes of this “uncontrollable” behavior, the police were called in. At the sight of the two officers, Chief Mercurio said, Desre’e “tried to take flight.”

She went under a table. One of the police officers went after her. Each time the officer tried to grab her to drag her out, Desre’e would pull her legs away, the chief said.

Ultimately the child was no match for Avon Park’s finest. The cops pulled her from under the table and handcuffed her. The officers were not fooling around. In the eyes of the cops the 6-year-old was a criminal, and in Avon Park she would be treated like any other felon.

There was a problem, though. The handcuffs were not manufactured with kindergarten kids in mind. The chief explained: “You can’t handcuff them on their wrists because their wrists are too small, so you have to handcuff them up by their biceps.”

As I sat listening to Chief Mercurio in a spotless, air-conditioned conference room at the Avon Park police headquarters, I had the feeling that I had somehow stumbled into the middle of a skit on “Saturday Night Live.” The chief seemed like the most reasonable of men, but what was coming out of his mouth was madness.

He handed me a copy of the police report: black female. Six years old. Thin build. Dark complexion.

Desre’e was put in the back of a patrol car and driven to the police station. “Then,” said Chief Mercurio, “she was transported to central booking, which is the county jail.”

The child was fingerprinted and a mug shot was taken. “Those are the normal procedures for anyone who is arrested,” the chief said.

Desre’e was charged with battery on a school official, which is a felony, and two misdemeanors: disruption of a school function and resisting a law enforcement officer. After a brief stay at the county jail, she was released to the custody of her mother.

The arrest of this child, who should have been placed in the care of competent, comforting professionals rather than being hauled off to jail, is part of an outlandish trend of criminalizing very young children that has spread to many school districts and law enforcement agencies across the country.

A highly disproportionate number of those youngsters, like Desre’e, are black. In Baltimore last month, the police arrested, handcuffed and hauled away a 7-year-old black boy for allegedly riding a dirt bike on the sidewalk. The youngster was released and the mayor, Sheila Dixon, apologized for the incident, saying the arrest was inappropriate.

Last spring a number of civil rights organizations collaborated on a study of disciplinary practices in Florida schools and concluded that many of them, “like many districts in other states, have turned away from traditional education-based disciplinary methods — such as counseling, after-school detention, or extra homework assignments — and are looking to the legal system to handle even the most minor transgressions.”


Once you adopt the mindset that ordinary childhood misbehavior is criminal behavior, it’s easy to start seeing young children as somehow monstrous.

“Believe me when I tell you,” said Chief Mercurio, “a 6-year-old can inflict injury to you just as much as any other person.”

Kurt Vonnegut

Harvey salutes Kurt

Harvey Wasserman
Peace be with you, Kurt Vonnegut
April 13, 2007

As the media fills with whimsical good-byes to one of America's greatest writers, lets not forget one of the great engines driving this wonderful man---he HATED war. Including this one in Iraq. And he had utter contempt for the men who brought it about.

Kurt Vonnegut was a divine spark of liberating genius for an entire generation. His brilliant, beautiful, loving and utterly unfettered novels helped us redefine ourselves in leaving the corporate America in the 1950s and the Vietnam war that followed.

Having seen the worst of World War II from a meatlocker in fire-bombed Dresden, Kurt's Sirens of Titan, Cat's Cradle, Slaughterhouse Five and God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, cut us the intellectual and spiritual slack to seek out a new reality. It took a breathtaking psychic freedom to merge the interstellar worlds he created from whole cloth with the social imperatives of a changing age. It was that combination of talent, heart and liberation that gave Vonnegut a cutting edge he never lost.

Leaving us in his eighties, Kurt also leaves us decades of anecdotes and volumes of writings---and doodlings---about which to write. But lost in the mainstream obituaries---including the one in the NewYork Times---is the ferocity with which he opposed this latest claque of vicious war-mongers.

Vonnegut gave his last campus speech in Columbus. He and I met here many years ago, after another speech.Not knowing me from Adam, he was gracious enough to give me his home address.

Out of the blue, I sent him a book-length poem about the passing of my parents. I was shocked when he called me on the phone about it. I asked for his help in finding a publisher. He said to publish it on my own, and gave me advice on how to do it, along with a blurb for the cover.
From then on we talked by phone. His conversation was always friendly, funny, insightful. When last I asked him how he was, he replied: "Too fucking old!"

Last year, apparently on the spur of the moment, he agreed to speak again at Ohio State. It would be his last campus lecture.

When word spread, a line four thousand students long instantly formed at a university otherwise known only for its addiction to football.

Anyone expecting a safe, whimsical opener from this grand old man of sixties rebellion was in for a shock."Can I speak frankly?" he asked Professor Manuel Luis Martinez, the poet and writing teacher who would"interview" him. "The only difference between George W. Bush and Adolph Hitler is that Hitler was actually elected."

Holding up a book about Ohio 2004, he said: "You all know, of course, that the election was stolen. Right here."

Explaining that this would he his "last speech for money," Vonnegut said he couldn't remember his first one. But it was "long long ago.

"I'm lucky enough to have known a great president, one who really cared about ALL the people, rich and poor.That was Franklin D. Roosevelt. He was rich himself, and his class considered him a traitor.

"We have people in this country who are richer than whole countries," he said. "They run everything.

"We have no Democratic Party. It's financed by the same millionaires and billionaires as the Republicans.

"So we have no representatives in Washington. Working people have no leverage whatsoever.

"I'm trying to write a novel about the end of the world. But the world is really ending! It's becoming more and more uninhabitable because of our addiction to oil.

"Bush used that line recently," Vonnegut added. "I should sue him for plagiarism."
Things have gotten so bad, he said, "people are in revolt against life itself."

Our economy has been making money, but "all the moneythat should have gone into research and development has gone into executive compensation. If people insist on living as if there's no tomorrow, there really won't be one.

"As the world is ending, I'm always glad to be entertained for a few moments. The best way to do that is with music. You should practice once a night.

"If you want really want to hurt your parents, go into the arts." He then broke into song, with a passable,tender rendition of "Stardust Memories."

By this time, the packed hall was reverential. The sound system, appropriately tenuous, forced us all to strain to hear every word.

"To hell with the advances in computers," he said after he finished singing. "YOU are supposed to advance and become, not the computers. Find out what's inside you. And don't kill anybody.
"There are no factories any more. Where are the jobs supposed to come from? There's nothing for people to do anymore. We need to ask the Seminoles: 'what the hell did you do?'' after the tribe's traditional livelihood was taken away.

Answering questions written in by students, he explained the meaning of life. "We should be kind to each other. Be civil. And appreciate the good moments by saying 'If this isn't nice, what is?'

"You're awful cute" he said to someone in the front row. He grinned and looked around. "If this isn't nice, what is?

"You're all perfectly safe, by the way. I took off my shoes at the airport. The terrorists hate the smell of feet.

"We are here on Earth to fart around," he explained,and then embarked on a soliloquy about the joys of going to the store to buy an envelope. One talks to the people there, comments on the "silly-looking dog," finds all sorts of adventures along the way.

As for being a Midwesterner, he recalled his roots in nearby Indianapolis, a heartland town, the next one west of here. "I'm a fresh water person. When I swim in the ocean, I feel like I'm swimming in chicken soup. Who wants to swim in flavored water?"

A key to great writing, he added, is to "never use semi-colons. What are they good for? What are you supposed to do with them? You're reading along, and then suddenly, there it is. What does it mean? All semi-colons do is suggest you've been to college."

Make sure, he added, "that your reader is having a good time. Get to the who, when, where, what right away, so the reader knows what is going on."

As for making money, "war is a very profitable thing for a few people. Jesus used to be so merciful and loving of the poor. But now he's a Republican.

"Our economy today is not capitalism. It's casino-ism.That's all the stock market is about. Gambling.

"Live one day at a time. Say 'if this isn't nice, I don't know what is!'

"You meet saints everywhere. They can be anywhere.They are people behaving decently in an indecent society."

The greatest peace, Vonnegut wraps up, "comes from the knowledge that I have enough. Joe Heller told me that.

"I began writing because I found myself possessed. I looked at what I wrote and I said 'How the hell did Ido that?'

"We may all be possessed. I hope so."

We were joined for after-speech drinks by the professor and several awe-struck graduate students.Kurt expressed an interest in renewable energy, so I sent him another book, and he called back with another blurb, and more advice on how to publish it.

We planned to have dinner. I wanted more than anythingto introduce my daughters to him. But when I finallymade it to New York, he was too ill. Now he's gone.When a national treasure and a being of beauty like Kurt Vonnegut invites you to dinner, don't make plans,hop on the next plane.

The mainstream obituaries are emphasizing Kurt's"off-beat" career and the "mixed reviews" for his books. Don't believe a word of them.

Kurt Vonnegut was a force of nature, with a heart the size of Titan, an unfettered genius who changed us all for the better. He was possessed of a sense of fairness and morality capable of inventing religions that could actually work.

Now he's having dinner with our beloved siren of social justice, Molly Ivins, sharing a Manhattan, scorching this goddam war and this latest batch of fucking idiots.

It hurts to think about it. But we should be grateful for what we got, and all they gave us. So it goes. --


Harvey Wasserman read Cat's Cradle, Sirens of Titanand Slaughterhouse Five in college, sought Boku-Maru,and has never been the same.

Kurt Vonnegut

We've lost another warrior of the mind

Author Kurt Vonnegut dies at 84
By CRISTIAN SALAZAR, Associated Press

NEW YORK - In books such as "Slaughterhouse-Five," "Cat's Cradle," and "Hocus Pocus," Kurt Vonnegut mixed the bitter and funny with a touch of the profound.

Vonnegut, regarded by many critics as a key influence in shaping 20th-century American literature, died Wednesday at 84. He had suffered brain injuries after a recent fall at his Manhattan home, said his wife, photographer Jill Krementz.

Vonnegut's more than a dozen books, short stories, essays and plays contained elements of social commentary, science fiction and autobiography.

"He was sort of like nobody else," said fellow author Gore Vidal. "Kurt was never dull."

A self-described religious skeptic and freethinking humanist, Vonnegut used protagonists such as Billy Pilgrim and Eliot Rosewater as transparent vehicles for his points of view.

He lectured regularly, exhorting audiences to think for themselves and delighting in barbed commentary against the institutions he felt were dehumanizing people.

"He was a man who combined a wicked sense of humor and sort of steady moral compass, who was always sort of looking at the big picture of the things that were most important," said Joel Bleifuss, editor of In These Times, a liberal magazine based in Chicago that featured Vonnegut articles.

Some of Vonnegut's books were banned and burned for suspected obscenity. He took on censorship as an active member of the PEN writers' aid group and the
American Civil Liberties Union.

The American Humanist Association, which promotes individual freedom, rational thought and scientific skepticism, made him its honorary president.

Vonnegut said the villains in his books were never individuals, but culture, society and history, which he said were making a mess of the planet.

"I like to say that the 51st state is the state of denial," he told The Associated Press in 2005.
"It's as though a huge comet were heading for us and nobody wants to talk about it. We're just about to run out of petroleum and there's nothing to replace it."

Despite his commercial success, Vonnegut battled depression throughout his life, and in 1984, he attempted suicide with pills and alcohol, joking later about how he botched the job.

"I will say anything to be funny, often in the most horrible situations," Vonnegut, whose watery, heavy-lidded eyes and unruly hair made him seem to be in existential pain, once told a gathering of psychiatrists.

Vonnegut was born on Nov. 11, 1922, in Indianapolis, and studied chemistry at Cornell University before joining the Army. His mother killed herself just before he left for Germany during World War II, where he was quickly taken prisoner during the Battle of the Bulge. He was being held in Dresden when Allied bombs firebombed the city.

"The firebombing of Dresden explains absolutely nothing about why I write what I write and am what I am," Vonnegut wrote in "Fates Worse Than Death," his 1991 autobiography of sorts.

But he spent 23 years struggling to write about the ordeal, which he survived by huddling with other POW's inside an underground meat locker labeled slaughterhouse-five.

The novel that emerged, in which Pvt. Pilgrim is transported from Dresden by time-traveling aliens, was published at the height of the Vietnam War, and solidified his reputation as an iconoclast.

After World War II, he reported for Chicago's City News Bureau, then did public relations for General Electric, a job he loathed. He wrote his first novel, "Player Piano," in 1951, followed by "The Sirens of Titan," "Canary in a Cat House" and "Mother Night," making ends meet by selling Saabs on Cape Cod.

Critics ignored him at first, then denigrated his deliberately bizarre stories and disjointed plots as haphazardly written science fiction. But his novels became cult classics, especially "Cat's Cradle" in 1963, in which scientists create "ice-nine," a crystal that turns water solid and destroys the earth.

He retired from novel writing in his later years, but continued to publish short articles. He had a best-seller in 2005 with "A Man Without a Country," a collection of his nonfiction, including jabs at the Bush administration ("upper-crust C-students who know no history or geography") and the uncertain future of the planet.

He called the book's success "a nice glass of champagne at the end of a life."

Vonnegut, who had homes in Manhattan and the Hamptons in New York, adopted his sister's three young children after she died. He also had three children of his own with his first wife, Jane Marie Cox, and later adopted a daughter, Lily, with his second wife, Krementz.

Vonnegut once said that of all the ways to die, he'd prefer to go out in an airplane crash on the peak of Mount Kilimanjaro. He often joked about the difficulties of old age.

"When Hemingway killed himself he put a period at the end of his life; old age is more like a semicolon," Vonnegut told the AP.

"My father, like Hemingway, was a gun nut and was very unhappy late in life. But he was proud of not committing suicide. And I'll do the same, so as not to set a bad example for my children."
___
Associated Press writers Michael Warren, Hillel Italie and Chelsea Carter contributed to this report.

Tucker rhymes with

Libertarian !!

Kick a Libertarian in the Ass Today, Please!!

Hey Folks,

I'm so fucking fed up with these brilliant Conservative/Libertarian/know-it-all/personal-wealth types. All my adult life these shitheads have been running off at the mouth about how government can't do anything, and shouldn't even try.

These wealthy, selfish goofs would have no government at all - except for the police and the
military, to protect their wealth from the people they've screwed over to get it. Taxes are bad - except those supporting the wealthy's bodyguards - everyone, though, gets to pitch in for that.

These devils work hard to increase their hoard by sacrificing the standard of living of everyone else. That's what union-busting, flat-taxation, "free trade" agreements, deregulation, down-sizing, and out-sourcing - to name a few - are all about.

See below how this attitude works out in regard to our national infrastructure.

- Uke Man


April 5, 2007
Our Crumbling Foundation
By BOB HERBERT
(a ukethanks to Phyll)

Fifty-nine years ago this week — on April 3, 1948 — President Truman signed the legislation establishing the Marshall Plan, which contributed so much to the rebuilding of postwar Europe. Now, more than half a century later, the U.S. can’t even rebuild New Orleans.

It doesn’t seem able to build much of anything, really. According to the American Society of Civil Engineers, the U.S. infrastructure is in sad shape, and it would take more than a trillion and a half dollars over a five-year period to bring it back to a reasonably adequate condition.

If there’s a less sexy story floating around, I can’t find it. It certainly can’t compete with the Sanjaya Malakar saga, or with the claim by Keith Richards that he snorted his dad’s ashes with “a little bit of blow.”

But, as we learned with New Orleans, there are consequences to neglecting the infrastructure. Just a little over a year ago, a dam in Hawaii gave way, unleashing a wave 70 feet high and 200 yards wide. It swept away virtually everything in its path, including cars, houses and trees. Seven people drowned.

On the day after Christmas in Portland, Ore., a sinkhole opened up like something from a science fiction movie and swallowed a 25-ton sewer- repair truck. Authorities blamed the sinkhole on the collapse of aging underground pipes.

Blackouts, school buildings in advanced states of disrepair, decrepit highway and railroad bridges — the American infrastructure is growing increasingly old and obsolete. In addition to being an invitation to tragedy, this is a problem that is putting Americans at a disadvantage in the ever more competitive global economy.

Felix Rohatyn, the investment banker who helped save New York City from bankruptcy in the 1970s, has been prominent among those trying to sound the infrastructure alarm. Along with former Senator Warren Rudman, he has been criticizing the government’s unwillingness to invest adequately in public transportation systems, water projects, dams, schools, the electrical grid, and so on.

He recently told a House committee that Congress should begin a major effort to rebuild the American infrastructure “before it is too late.”

“Since the beginning of the republic,” he said, “transportation, infrastructure and education have played a central role in advancing the American economy, whether it was the canals in upstate New York, or the railroads that linked our heartland to our industrial centers; whether it was the opening of education to average Americans by land grant colleges and the G.I. bill, making education basic to American life; or whether it was the interstate highway system that ultimately connected all regions of the nation.

“This did not happen by chance, but was the result of major investments financed by the federal and state governments over the last century and a half. ... We need to make similar investments now.”

Politics and ideology are the main reasons that government has turned away from public investment over the past several years. Zealots marching under the banner of small government have been remarkably effective in thwarting efforts to raise taxes or borrow substantial sums for the kind of public investment that has always been essential to a dynamic economy.

That this is counterproductive in a post-20th-century world should be as obvious as the sun rising in the morning. There is a reason why countries like China and India are racing like mad to develop their infrastructure and educational capacity.

“A modern economy needs a modern platform, and that’s the infrastructure,” Mr. Rohatyn said in an interview. “It has been shown that the productivity of an economy is related to the quality of its infrastructure. For example, if you don’t have enough schools to teach your kids, or your kids are taught in schools that have holes in the ceilings, that are dilapidated, they’re not going to be as educated and as competitive in a world economy as they need to be.”

Mr. Rohatyn and Mr. Rudman are co-chairmen of the Commission on Public Infrastructure at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. They believe that failing to move quickly to address the nation’s infrastructure needs — through the establishment of a national trust fund, for example, or a federal capital budget — could lead to long-term disaster.

But words like trust fund and long-term and infrastructure find it very difficult to elbow their way into the nation’s consciousness. We may have to wait for another New Orleans before beginning to take this seriously.

The Little Liar in Chief

Lies, lies, lies - was Mencken right?

Hey Folks,

H.L. Mencken said something like, "Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public." Was he right?

Adolph Hitler said, "What good fortune for those in power that people do not think."

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

Marshall McLuhan said, "Only the small secrets need to be protected. The large ones are kept secret by public incredulity." I think he's right about the "large secrets," but the small secrets don't seem in danger of discovery either.

Didn't Sadam have a connection to the attack on the towers and Pentagon?

- Uke Man


April 9, 2007
Sweet Little Lies
By PAUL KRUGMAN
(a ukethanks to Phyll)

Four years into a war fought to eliminate a nonexistent threat, we all have renewed appreciation for the power of the Big Lie: people tend to believe false official claims about big issues, because they can’t picture their leaders being dishonest about such things.

But there’s another political lesson I don’t think has sunk in: the power of the Little Lie — the small accusation invented out of thin air, followed by another, and another, and another. Little Lies aren’t meant to have staying power. Instead, they create a sort of background hum, a sense that the person facing all these accusations must have done something wrong.

For a long time, basically from 9/11 until the last remnants of President Bush’s credibility drowned in New Orleans, the Bush administration was able to go big on its deceptions. Most people found it inconceivable that an American president would, for example, assert without evidence that Saddam and Al Qaeda were allies. Mr. Bush won the 2004 election because a quorum of voters still couldn’t believe he would grossly mislead them on matters of national security.

Before 9/11, however, the right-wing noise machine mainly relied on little lies. And now it has returned to its roots.

The Clinton years were a parade of fake scandals: Whitewater, Troopergate, Travelgate, Filegate, Christmas-card-gate. At the end, there were false claims that Clinton staff members trashed the White House on their way out.

Each pseudoscandal got headlines, air time and finger-wagging from the talking heads. The eventual discovery in each case that there was no there there, if reported at all, received far less attention. The effect was to make an administration that was, in fact, pretty honest and well run — especially compared with its successor — seem mired in scandal.

Even in the post-9/11 environment, little lies never went away. In particular, promoting little lies seems to have been one of the main things U.S. attorneys, as loyal Bushies, were expected to do. For example, David Iglesias, the U.S. Attorney in New Mexico, appears to have been fired because he wouldn’t bring unwarranted charges of voter fraud.

There’s a lot of talk now about a case in Wisconsin, where the Bush-appointed U.S. attorney prosecuted the state’s purchasing supervisor over charges that a court recently dismissed after just 26 minutes of oral testimony, with one judge calling the evidence “beyond thin.” But by then the accusations had done their job: the unjustly accused official had served almost four months in prison, and the case figured prominently in attack ads alleging corruption in the Democratic governor’s administration.

This is the context in which you need to see the wild swings Republicans have been taking at Nancy Pelosi.

First, there were claims that the speaker of the House had demanded a lavish plane for her trips back to California. One Republican leader denounced her “arrogance of extravagance” — then, when it became clear that the whole story was bogus, admitted that he had never had any evidence.

Now there’s Ms. Pelosi’s fact-finding trip to Syria, which Dick Cheney denounced as “bad behavior” — unlike the visit to Syria by three Republican congressmen a few days earlier, or Newt Gingrich’s trip to China when he was speaker.

Ms. Pelosi has responded coolly, dismissing the administration’s reaction as a “tantrum.” But it’s more than that: the hysterical reaction to her trip is part of a political strategy, aided and abetted by news organizations that give little lies their time in the sun.

Fox News, which is a partisan operation in all but name, plays a crucial role in the Little Lie strategy — which is why there is growing pressure on Democratic politicians not to do anything, like participating in Fox-hosted debates, that helps Fox impersonate a legitimate news organization.

But Fox has had plenty of help. Even Time’s Joe Klein, a media insider if anyone is, wrote of the Pelosi trip that “the media coverage of this on CNN and elsewhere has been abysmal.” For example, CNN ran a segment about Ms. Pelosi’s trip titled “Talking to Terrorists.”

The G.O.P.’s reversion to the Little Lie technique is a symptom of political weakness, of a party reduced to trivial smears because it has nothing else to offer. But the technique will remain effective — and the U.S. political scene will remain ugly — as long as many people in the news media keep playing along.

To get Health Care from Hillary, you need to elect her twice.

Hey Folks,

I think Krugman's right about his theory (below). The people are starting to wake up - maybe the Democrats too. But that latter thought is uncertain.

Krugman may be right that: "the Democrats — who spent most of the Clinton years trying to reassure rich people and corporations that they weren’t really populists — seem to be realizing that times have changed," but the BIG question is:

"How will they react to that change? Just lie to us better while still kissing up to the elite behind the curtain? Or will they really act to improve the lot of the people?"

My reading of history indicates that no capitalistic government ever does any more than the minimun required to buy off the people - nothing beyond that which MUST be provided to maintain order and control by one part of the elite or the other.

Krugman's analysis of developments seems right, but he seems too optimistic about the Democrats' response to the change. We'll hear a lot of talk out of the Dems, but watch and see how they act - how much or how little they serve the people - how much or little they protect the prerogatives of the wealthy and powerful at the people's expense.

Time will tell.

- Uke Man


April 2, 2007
Distract and Disenfranchise
By PAUL KRUGMAN
(a ukethanks to Phyll)

I have a theory about the Bush administration abuses of power that are now, finally, coming to light. Ultimately, I believe, they were driven by rising income inequality.

Let me explain.

In 1980, when Ronald Reagan won the White House, conservative ideas appealed to many, even most, Americans. At the time, we were truly a middle-class nation. To white voters, at least, the vast inequalities and social injustices of the past, which were what originally gave liberalism its appeal, seemed like ancient history. It was easy, in that nation, to convince many voters that Big Government was their enemy, that they were being taxed to provide social programs for other people.

Since then, however, we have once again become a deeply unequal society. Median income has risen only 17 percent since 1980, while the income of the richest 0.1 percent of the population has quadrupled. The gap between the rich and the middle class is as wide now as it was in the 1920s, when the political coalition that would eventually become the New Deal was taking shape.

And voters realize that society has changed. They may not pore over income distribution tables, but they do know that today’s rich are building themselves mansions bigger than those of the robber barons. They may not read labor statistics, but they know that wages aren’t going anywhere: according to the Pew Research Center, 59 percent of workers believe that it’s harder to earn a decent living today than it was 20 or 30 years ago.

You know that perceptions of rising inequality have become a political issue when even President Bush admits, as he did in January, that “some of our citizens worry about the fact that our dynamic economy is leaving working people behind.”

But today’s Republicans can’t respond in any meaningful way to rising inequality, because their activists won’t let them. You could see the dilemma just this past Friday and Saturday, when almost all the G.O.P. presidential hopefuls traveled to Palm Beach to make obeisance to the Club for Growth, a supply-side pressure group dedicated to tax cuts and privatization.

The Republican Party’s adherence to an outdated ideology leaves it with big problems. It can’t offer domestic policies that respond to the public’s real needs. So how can it win elections?

The answer, for a while, was a combination of distraction and disenfranchisement.

The terrorist attacks on 9/11 were themselves a massive, providential distraction; until then the public, realizing that Mr. Bush wasn’t the moderate he played in the 2000 election, was growing increasingly unhappy with his administration. And they offered many opportunities for further distractions. Rather than debating Democrats on the issues, the G.O.P. could denounce them as soft on terror. And do you remember the terror alert, based on old and questionable information, that was declared right after the 2004 Democratic National Convention?

But distraction can only go so far. So the other tool was disenfranchisement: finding ways to keep poor people, who tend to vote for the party that might actually do something about inequality, out of the voting booth.

Remember that disenfranchisement in the form of the 2000 Florida “felon purge,” which struck many legitimate voters from the rolls, put Mr. Bush in the White House in the first place. And disenfranchisement seems to be what much of the politicization of the Justice Department was about.

Several of the fired U.S. attorneys were under pressure to pursue allegations of voter fraud — a phrase that has become almost synonymous with “voting while black.” Former staff members of the Justice Department’s civil rights division say that they were repeatedly overruled when they objected to Republican actions, ranging from Georgia’s voter ID law to Tom DeLay’s Texas redistricting, that they believed would effectively disenfranchise African-American voters.

The good news is that all the G.O.P.’s abuses of power weren’t enough to win the 2006 elections. And 2008 may be even harder for the Republicans, because the Democrats — who spent most of the Clinton years trying to reassure rich people and corporations that they weren’t really populists — seem to be realizing that times have changed.

A week before the Republican candidates trooped to Palm Beach to declare their allegiance to tax cuts, the Democrats met to declare their commitment to universal health care. And it’s hard to see what the G.O.P. can offer in response.

"Arrogance!! arrogance!!?? When one is PERFECT, arrogance is impossible!! Leave my little boy alone, you barbarians!!"

The Insane Arrogance of King George and his Henchmen !!

Hey Folks,

What else is new??

- Uke Man


Arrogance has been Bush team hallmark
Sunday, March 18, 2007
EUGENE ROBINSON

Was it arrogance or ignorance that led the Bush administration to think it could pull off what looks, walks and quacks like a transparently political decision to fire those eight U.S. attorneys? A good deal of both, I’m guessing.

Actually, I take that back. No guesswork is needed.

Arrogance has been the most consistent hallmark of George W. Bush’s presidency. His administration’s simple philosophy of government has been consistent: We can do any damn thing we want.

We can invade Iraq. We can blow off the Geneva Conventions. We can listen to your private phone calls, Mr. and Ms. America, and we can read your private e-mail, too. We can arrest anybody we want, hold them as long as we want, and we don’t even have to tell them why, much less file formal charges or hold a trial. We can even defy the laws of science — or at least ignore the ones that annoy us, such as that whole greenhouse-effect thing. We can pose with the troops for photo-ops when they come back from war grievously wounded, and then basically forget about them.

And we don’t have to explain ourselves, either. The nerve of anyone to even ask us. Don’t you people understand that asking impertinent questions of the White House is exactly what Osama bin Laden wants you to do?

But even given this kind of worldclass arrogance, it’s still pretty amazing that, barely a month after the nation had taken a two-by-four to the administration’s head in November’s midterm election — delivering a not-so-gentle reminder that the president works for us, not vice versa — the White House would still plow ahead with a longbrewing plot to fire a few designated federal prosecutors who couldn’t seem to get with the any-damn-thing-we want program.

Just to be clear, this kind of selective dismissal of a group of U.S. attorneys is highly unusual. It’s bad enough that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales misled Congress about the firings; the specific truths his falsehoods obscured — that the White House was involved in the firings, and that partisan political motivations may have been involved — are much worse.

We know from e-mail — why do people put this stuff in e-mails, which have the half-life of nuclear waste? — that political "loyalty" to the White House was a factor in deciding which prosecutors to fire. We also know that the White House passed along to the Justice Department the complaints of Republican congressmen and other party poohbahs that allegations of voter fraud against Democrats were not being pursued aggressively enough.

All that adds up to arrogance. Here’s where the ignorance comes in: Gonzales accepts responsibility without accepting the blame that comes with it, since he could hardly be expected to know what was going on in the whole vast Justice Department.

I’ve got to admit, I felt a twinge of sympathy for Gonzales when, bravely and cluelessly, he faced the television cameras last week and vowed to find out why he had given Congress categorical assurances that were not remotely true. He bears the burden of being the first Latino attorney general — the first member of the nation’s largest minority to hold such a senior position in the U.S. government. I have a sense of what that must mean to him, a sense of why he is so determined not to resign, why he made a point of declaring that he didn’t get to where he is by giving up.

But it was just a twinge. Then I remembered that Gonzales was the author of the notorious "torture memo" that green-lighted interrogation techniques for war-on-terror detainees that are designed to induce excruciating physical and psychological pain. Gonzales wrote of a "new paradigm" in which there is no conflict between American values and "inhuman treatment" of prisoners.

Determined to keep his job, Gonzales said he will leave no stone unturned in discovering why he said what he said to Congress about the U.S. attorney firings. I’ve got an idea: He can order the FBI to issue a "national-security letter" and then rummage through his private communications on an unlawful fishing expedition, as has happened to many thousands of Americans — on Gonzales’ watch.

If that fails, Gonzales can declare himself an enemy combatant, have himself whisked away in the dead of night to some secret prison and allow himself to be waterboarded until he finally sputters out the truth.

If the man is willing to practice what he preaches, he can stay. Otherwise, he’s got to go.

Eugene Robinson writes for the Washington Post Writers Group.
eugenerobinson@washpost.com

Happy Easter

He has risen!!!

Pee Wee & the Uke Man

Pee Wee in New York

Hey Folks,

A special version of "Pee Wee Where Have You Gone?," recorded in New York on my last trip there in January can be viewed at: www.ukuleledisco.com/peeweecabaret

The Uke Band includes my good friends Ted Gottfried, Alan Drogin (seated), and Jason Tagg - who collectively constitute Sonic Uke, and who are the force behind New York City's monthly Ukulele Cabaret

I'll have the pleasure of their company again at the end of this month.

More on that soon!!

- Uke Man

Crummy Karl Rove

Rove should be confronted wherever he goes

Hey Folks,

I don't know about you, but I couldn't find much in the press about this. To me, it's BIG!! Maybe it wasn't covered much because it IS big.

In any case, nothing could make me happier than to have beasts like Kkkarl Rove, Grover Norquist, John Bolton, et. al. confronted by Angry citizens every time they go anywhere!!

They're good at dishing it out. Let's see how they can take it.

- Uke Man

Protesters target Rove at university

WASHINGTON - White House adviser Karl Rove was confronted by more than a dozen protesters who blocked his car and threw things as he tried to leave a speaking engagement at American University, officials said.

Rove was attending a guests-only discussion of electoral politics Tuesday night sponsored by the American University College Republicans.

"It was their last meeting of the year, and Mr. Rove spent about an hour with the students," said Maralee Csellar, a university spokeswoman.

When Rove tried to leave a campus building, he was confronted by more than a dozen protesters who surrounded his car to prevent it from leaving, Csellar said.

"They were throwing unknown objects at the vehicle," said
Secret Service spokeswoman Kimberly Bruce. She said members of the Secret Service asked the protesters to move. When they continued to block the vehicle's exit, campus police were contacted.

Campus police lifted some of the demonstrators from the asphalt and carried them out of the vehicle's path so Rove could leave the campus. There were no arrests or injuries, police said.

A telephone call seeking comment from the White House was not immediately returned.

So why isn't the "bottom 90 percent" really pissed off!!??

Hey Folks,

This is insane!! But no one is in the streets throwing bricks through bank windows. Why??

Read this unbelievable story keeping these examples in mind:

There are 300,000,000 (three hundred million) Americans.

1% of that equals 3,000,000 (3 million) Americans (slightly more than the population of Chicago).

10% equals 30,000,000 (thirty million) Americans (roughly the combined population of New York and Ohio).

90% equals 270,000,000 (270 million) Americans (roughly the population of the other 48 states).

I'll comment further at the end.

- Uke Man



Rich get richer, poor get poorer -- again/Gap between wealthiest 1 percent, rest of us growing, data show
Sunday, April 1, 2007 3:39 AM
By David Cay Johnston
The New York Times

Income inequality grew significantly in 2005, with the top 1 percent of Americans -- those with incomes that year of more than $348,000 -- receiving their largest share of national income since 1928, analysis of newly released tax data shows.

The top 10 percent, roughly those earning more than $100,000, also reached a level of income share not seen since before the Depression.

While total reported income in the United States increased almost 9 percent in 2005, the most recent year for which such data are available, average incomes for those in the bottom 90 percent dipped slightly compared with the year before, dropping $172, or 0.6 percent.

The gains went largely to the top 1 percent, whose incomes rose to an average of more than $1.1 million each, an increase of more than $139,000, or about 14 percent.

The new data also show that the top 300,000 Americans collectively enjoyed almost as much income as the bottom 150 million Americans. Per person, the top group received 440 times as much as the average person in the bottom half earned, nearly doubling the gap from 1980.

Emmanuel Saez, a University of California, Berkeley, economist who analyzed the Internal Revenue Service data with Thomas Piketty of the Paris School of Economics, said such growing disparities are significant in terms of social and political stability.

"If the economy is growing but only a few are enjoying the benefits, it goes to our sense of fairness," Saez said. "It can have important political consequences."

Last year, according to data from other sources, incomes for average Americans increased for the first time in several years. But because those at the top rely heavily on the stock market and business profits for their income, both of which were strong last year, it is likely that the disparities in 2005 are the same or larger now, Saez said.

He noted that the analysis was based on preliminary data and that the highest-income Americans are more likely than others to file their returns late, so his data might understate the growth in inequality.

The disparities may be even greater for another reason. The IRS estimates that it is able to accurately tax 99 percent of wage income but that it captures only about 70 percent of business and investment income, most of which flows to upper-income individuals, because not everybody accurately reports such figures.

The Bush administration contends that its tax policies, despite cuts that benefited those at the top more than others, have not added to the widening gap but "made the tax code more progressive, not less." Brooklyn McLaughlin, the chief Treasury Department spokeswoman, said that this year, "The share of income taxes paid by lower-income taxpayers will be lower than it would have been without the tax relief, while the share of income taxes for higher-income taxpayers will be higher."


Hey Folks,

The top 1% and 10% have done better than in any year since the depression.

The combined population of 48 states "dipped."

Now look at what the Bushiters said (in blue) above.

Obviously the claim that "tax policies, despite cuts that benefited those at the top more than others, have not added to the widening gap" is a bald-faced lie. If A is larger than B, there is a disparity between A and B. if X is added to both A and B, the disparity remains the same. But if X is added only to B and more than X is added to A, then the disparity grows.

The Bushiters admit that they "benefitted those at the top more than others," but hope we failed algebra.

To distract our attention, they shift from the question of the income gap (about which they just lied) to a twisted notion of tax progresivity, one apparently based on the gross amount paid by those at the top as opposed to all 90% of the rest of us.

Well, sure. The income of 90% of us dipped; so the gross amount of income tax paid dipped. The income of the top 10% soared by the greatest increase since 1928; so the gross amount of income tax paid increased. THUS (ta-da!!!!!): "the share of income taxes for higher-income taxpayers will be higher."

THAT is not "progresivity"!! Even with a flat tax (one, universal tax rate - NO progresivity) "the share of income taxes for higher-income taxpayers will be higher."

On this one, instead of math, they hope we lack language and critical thinking skills.

At the start of this posting I asked why people weren't in the streets. Maybe we should have applied ourselves more in our math and English classes.

- Uke Man

"Justice" Revealed

Bullshitting from the bench

Hey Folks,

When I was a kid I respected the judiciary, the courts, the so-called "Justice System," the Constitution, and our "elected" officials (our "Leaders").

I'm not a kid any more and Toto has had years of opportunity to pull back the curtain. Saying I don't respect ANY of that any more is putting it mildly.

Perhaps the last to go was my faith in the courts, which in turn eliminated any hope placed in the Constitution. Below is an AP report on a recent Supreme Court decision. The important points are only tangential to the actual matter adjudicated. Controlling emissions is crucial, but the readiness of the Supreme court of the land to decide matters of law and justice on the basis of politics rather than law, reality, the Constitution, or anything else is bigger yet.

Twelve states and thirteen organizations filed this suit asking three simple, important questions (see below). The positive decision came in 5 to 4, with - as the story characterizes them - the four "liberal" justices and the "swing voter" justice supporting the suit and the four "conservative justices" dissenting.

Well, folks, this is how it works: decisions are made on the basis of politics:

The Chief Justice of the Supreme court doesn't even address the issue at hand. He couldn't - not without blatantly demonstrating his political bent. He would have to argue that things are not what they clearly are.

So, instead, he claimed states and organization had no standing to come to court with their problem, that they should go to the legislative and executive branches for redress.

In other words, the legislature made the law; the executive interpreted and executed (or decided not to execute) the law; and if states and organizations believe the executive is misinterpreting the legislation, the court isn't the entity to determine that one way or another.

The states should, instead, go to the legislature and ask for a new law, and then if they believe the executive isn't following that law, they should go back to the legislature for a third law; etc., etc., etc.

The only thing that kept this idiotic dodge from succeeding was that Roberts, Alito, Scalia, and Thomas were one patrician zombie short. It wasn't the law, precedent, the Constitution, persuasion, or anything honorable. Every case they hear is decided before it gets its first lower court hearing; it's decided by the justices' politics.

Once a case gets to the Supremes, it isn't about the supposed issue at hand. It's totally about how the pre-ordained politically-based "decision" can be rationalized and justified to the public as something worthy.

- Uke Man




Top court: EPA can control emissions
By MARK SHERMAN, Associated Press

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court ordered the federal government on Monday to take a fresh look at regulating carbon dioxide emissions from cars, a rebuke to Bush administration policy on global warming.

In a 5-4 decision, the court said the Clean Air Act gives the Environmental Protection Agency the authority to regulate emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from cars.

Greenhouse gases are air pollutants under the landmark environmental law, Justice
John Paul Stevens said in his majority opinion.

The court's four conservative justices — Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices
Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas — dissented.

Many scientists believe greenhouse gases, flowing into the atmosphere at an unprecedented rate, are leading to a warming of the Earth, rising sea levels and other marked ecological changes.

The politics of global warming have changed dramatically since the court agreed last year to hear its first global warming case.

"In many ways, the debate has moved beyond this," said Chris Miller, director of the global warming campaign for Greenpeace, one of the environmental groups that sued the EPA. "All the front-runners in the 2008 presidential campaign, both Democrats and Republicans, even the business community, are much further along on this than the Bush administration is."

Democrats took control of Congress last November. The world's leading climate scientists reported in February that global warming is "very likely" caused by man and is so severe that it will "continue for centuries." Former Vice President Al Gore's movie, An Inconvenient Truth — making the case for quick action on climate change — won an Oscar. Business leaders say they are increasingly open to congressional action to cut greenhouse gases emissions, of which carbon dioxide is the largest.

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said the Bush administration questioned whether it had the legal authority to regulate greenhouse gases as a pollutant. "Now the Supreme Court has settled that matter for us, and we're going to have to take a look and analyze it and see where we go from there."

"We're going to have to let EPA take a good look at it, and they're going to have to analyze it and think about what it means for any future policy decisions," she added.

Carbon dioxide is produced when fossil fuels such as oil and natural gas are burned. One way to reduce those emissions is to have more fuel-efficient cars.

The court had three questions before it.

_Do states have the right to sue the EPA to challenge its decision?

_Does the Clean Air Act give EPA the authority to regulate tailpipe emissions of greenhouse gases?

_Does EPA have the discretion not to regulate those emissions?

The court said yes to the first two questions. On the third, it ordered EPA to re-evaluate its contention that it has the discretion not to regulate tailpipe emissions. The court said the agency has so far provided a "laundry list" of reasons that include foreign policy considerations.

The majority said the agency must tie its rationale more closely to the Clean Air Act.

"EPA has offered no reasoned explanation for its refusal to decide whether greenhouse gases cause or contribute to climate change," Stevens said. He was joined by his liberal colleagues, Justices Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and David Souter, and the court's swing voter, Justice Anthony Kennedy.

The lawsuit was filed by 12 states and 13 environmental groups that had grown frustrated by the Bush administration's inaction on global warming.

In his dissent, Roberts focused on the issue of standing, whether a party has the right to file a lawsuit.

The court should simply recognize that redress of the kind of grievances spelled out by the state of Massachusetts is the function of Congress and the chief executive, not the federal courts, Roberts said.

His position "involves no judgment on whether global warming exists, what causes it, or the extent of the problem," he said.

The decision also is expected to boost California's prospects for gaining EPA approval of its own program to limit tailpipe emissions of greenhouse gases. Federal law considers the state a laboratory on environmental issues and gives California the right to seek approval of standards that are stricter than national norms.

The case is Massachusetts v. EPA, 05-1120.

Pope "Eggs" Benedict

"Eggs," "Tweety Bird," & "W" working to flock the world

Hey Folks,

I was raised Catholic, but it's stuff like the stupidity below that drove me away.

Please!! Mussolini got the trains to run on time; why didn't the world press highlight that about "Il Duce"? Mrs. O'Leary's cow gave sweet, rich milk; but how much did we hear about that???

Folks, the good the Church does should give it (and Pope "Eggs" Benedict) a free pass to meddle in the lives and choices of every free woman in the world. And the nickels and dimes the nuns shook out of my pockets for "the missions" has purchased dispensation for the curia to encourage discrimination against millions of gays and lesbians.

Right !!

And Cardinal Tarcisio "Tweety Bird" Bertone wants to blame the press for the Pope's foolish and insensitive (if not arrogant and condescending) September remarks about Islam as well.

Right !! If not for the press, both "Eggs" and "W" would be wise and skillful orators.

Good try, Tweety; but it just won't fly.

- Uke Man



Pope's aide blasts media coverage of church
Sat. March 31

PARIS (Reuters) - A top aide to Pope Benedict has blasted the media for highlighting the Vatican's views on sex while maintaining a "deafening silence" about charity work done by thousands of Catholic organizations around the world.

Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, who as secretary of state is effectively the Vatican's prime minister, also accused the media of deliberately misinterpreting the Pope's speeches, especially his Regensburg address last September which angered Muslims.

"We face an extremely grave problem. The church's messages are subject to a type of manipulation and falsification by some western media," Bertone said in an interview with Le Figaro Magazine published in Paris on Saturday.

"I see a fixation by some journalists on moral topics, such as abortion and homosexual unions, which are certainly important issues but absolutely do not constitute the thinking and work of the church," he said.

"Why this deafening silence?" he asked. "We have to say the press does not write much about the social and charity work of thousands of Catholic organizations around the world."

Bertone said journalists had twisted the Pope's Regensburg address -- in which he quoted a Byzantine emperor linking Muslims and violence -- into a speech on Islam rather than the discussion on the role God played in society.

"Pope Benedict's thoughts were neatly blacked out," he said. "Commentators who take phrases out of context in a misleading extrapolation are exercising their trade dishonestly."

He said the German-born Pontiff had made clear in Regensburg that he wanted "a healthy confrontation" with Islam and that several Muslim thinkers had welcomed his invitation to dialogue.

Bertone has been one of the church's harshest critics of Dan Brown's popular novel The Da Vinci Code.

In the interview he also took aim at "The Lost Tomb of Jesus," a new film claiming that archaeologists have found the tomb of Jesus and his family and indications that Mary Magdelene, one of his followers in the gospels, was his wife.

According to the Bible, Jesus never married and rose bodily from the dead after his crucifixion.

"This is a strategy against the church and the divine figure of Christ," he said. "These campaigns try to sap the faith of Christian people and the trust the faithful have in the church."

The apocryphal gospels used as sources for popular books and films were not new discoveries but well-known books written a century or two after the original gospels, he said.

"Authors who try to sow confusion between these two different sources profit from religious ignorance," he said.

"Mah mamma used to say Life was like a box o' chocolates ..."

"But mah head was like a box o' rocks."

Do as we say ...

Hey Folks,

Well, at least the Brits ("enemy combatants"??) Iran captured weren't sent to Egypt or Syria where they "promise" not to torture or to Guantanamo where what we do to prisoners doesn't have to follow the Geneva Conventions and where torture is no longer torture thanks to Alberto Gonzales' new dictionary.

And most likely, the Brits will get out of jail in less than five years - unless, of course, they were packing battery chargers.

Anyway, you can compare how captured Brits in Iran and captured Brits in Guantanamo are treated in the stories below.

- Uke Man




Bush presses Iran to free 15 'innocent' British sailors
Sunday, April 1, 2007 By Deb Riechmann
ASSOCIATED PRESS

CAMP DAVID, Md. -- President Bush yesterday called for the release of 15 British sailors and marines being held by Iran, calling their capture by Tehran "inexcusable behavior."

"Iran must give back the hostages," Bush said. "They're innocent, they did nothing wrong, and they were summarily plucked out of waters."

The president's response came during his appearance yesterday at Camp David with Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

The comments on the captured Britons were the first from Bush. So far, Washington has taken a low-key approach out of concern that more robust intervention might aggravate the situation and shake international resolve on Iran's nuclear program.

Meanwhile, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad insisted yesterday that the sailors had been seized in Iranian waters and called Britain and its allies "arrogant" for refusing to apologize, the country's official news agency reported.

"The British occupier forces did trespass our waters. ... But arrogant powers, because of their arrogant and selfish spirit, are claiming otherwise," IRNA quoted Ahmadinejad as saying.

The Britons were detained by Iranian naval units March 23 while patrolling for smugglers near the mouth of the Shatt al-Arab, a waterway that has long been a disputed dividing line between Iraq and Iran.

Bush repeated the contention that the British sailors were taken out of Iraqi waters, but Iran disputes that.

With the hostage situation in its second week, the president said he supports British Prime Minister Tony Blair's efforts to find a diplomatic resolution.

Bush would not discuss possible actions if Iran does not comply, but he seemed to reject swapping the British captives for Iranians detained in Iraq.

"I support the prime minister when he made it clear there were no quid pro quos," the president said. [ in the article Bush goes on to defend Attorney General Alberto Gonzales]




UK resident: Guantanamo tough to endure
By DAVID STRINGER, Associated Press

LONDON - A British resident released from Guantanamo Bay after nearly five years in captivity said Sunday his detention at the U.S. prison camp was "profoundly difficult" to endure, his first comments since his release.

Bisher al-Rawi, an Iraqi national, had been held at the U.S. base in Cuba since it opened in 2002, but was reunited with his family in south London this weekend.

British officials have long refused to represent resident foreigners held at Guantanamo, but took up al-Rawi's case after it was disclosed he had provided assistance to MI5 — Britain's domestic spy agency.

U.S attorney George Brent Mickum IV said al-Rawi had agreed, during one of at least six interviews with British agents at Guantanamo, to work for the British service in exchange for his release.

Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett said Thursday al-Rawi's release had been agreed, but officials and lawyers have not disclosed precisely when the detainee was freed and flown to Britain.

"After over four years in Guantanamo Bay, my nightmare is finally at an end," al-Rawi said in a statement. "I also feel great sorrow for the other nine British residents who remain prisoners in Guantanamo Bay."

Britain's Foreign Office said only five foreign nationals resident in Britain are held at the prison camp, in Cuba. Al-Rawi said some detained British residents had gone on hunger strike to protest their extended solitary confinement.

"The extreme isolation they are going through is one of the most profoundly difficult things to endure. I know that all too well," al-Rawi said.

Al-Rawi and another British resident, Jamil el-Banna, were alleged to have been associated with al-Qaida through their connection with the London-based radical Muslim cleric Abu Qatada. Al-Rawi had lived in Britain since 1985, and el-Banna was granted refugee status in Britain in 2000.

"The hopelessness you feel in Guantanamo can hardly be described. You are asked the same questions hundreds of times," al-Rawi said. "Allegations are made against you that are laughably untrue, but you have no chance to prove them wrong. There is no trial, no fair legal process."

The two were arrested in 2002 in Gambia while trying to return to Britain with electronic equipment that authorities described as suspicious. The men's lawyers claim it was a battery charger.

Their lawyers have said the two were arrested after British intelligence agents passed on information about their travel plans to the United States.

"Leaving my best friend Jamil el-Banna behind in Guantanamo Bay makes my freedom bittersweet," al-Rawi said in his statement. "He too should be released and reunited with his family."

Lawyers claim that after their arrests in 2002, the men ended up in American custody. From Gambia, the CIA took them on a rendition flight to Cairo, Egypt, where the plane refueled, then to a CIA facility in Afghanistan, where they were held and interrogated as suspected terrorists, Mickum has said.

Al-Rawi claimed in his statement that he and el-Banna were held in a CIA underground prison close to Kabul, before being transferred to Guantanamo Bay.

"Sorry, only "real" men need apply to die for their fascistic plutocracy!!"

Insane Army Recruiter

Well Spartans!! er . . . I mean Folks,

Looks like some of our US of A warriors might be getting themselves mixed up with those rude, muscular "free men" in the "300" movie who killed "weak" babies and other odd folks.

- Uke Man



From: http://www.pamshouseblend.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=1153

Beyond the pale: anti-gay, racist emails from Army recruiter
by: pam
Mon Mar 26, 2007


"GO BACK TO AFRICA AND DO YOUR GAY VOODOO LIMBO TANGO AND WANGO DANCE AND JUMP AROUND AND PRANCE AND RUN ALL OVER THE PLACE HALF NAKED THERE."-- U.S. Army recruiter Sgt. Marcia Ramode, using her military email address to respond to Jersey City resident Corey Andrew, after Ramode learned Andrew was gay.

Is this the General Peter Pace policy at work?

Corey Andrew had his profile and resume posted at Careerbuilder.com, and it caught the eye of Army recruiter Marcia Ramode, who contacted him. He wasn't interested in a position in the military, particularly because of the ban on gays and lesbians in the military.

When Andrew informed Ramode that he is gay, and believed that the DADT policy was wrong, the two engaged in a three-day email exchange that included statements by Ramode, in her official capacity as a recruiter, that boggle the mind. (Jersey Journal):

After more prodding from Andrew on the Army's recruitment policy, the messages escalated into a bigoted tirade. For example, Ramode told Andrew that "being gay is disgusting and immoral."

...Steve Ralls, a director of communications for the Service Members Legal Defense Network, which helps victims of discrimination under the "Don't Ask Don't Tell" policy, says Ramode should be fired.


"The recruiter's remarks were outrageous and offensive in almost every way," Ralls said. "Anti-gay harassment throughout the military is well documented but this is particularly egregious because the recruiter's language is so homophobic and racist."


Andrew forwarded the emails to SLDN, and, well, it blows your mind to see the calibre of people now being allowed to recruit. This is completely unacceptable, and stains the reputation of those wearing the uniform. Can you believe this brazen filth was sent out under a military domain as official business communication --

See "Exhibit 1" below (click on it to enlarge)

and look at this:


See "Exhibit 2" below (click on it to enlarge)


And here's another, where Ramode tells Andrew to "migrate to another country" if he objects to paying taxes to support the military, which discriminates against gay and lesbian citizens, and "if you do not like me writing in caps then delete my email and do not respond I think it scared you to death."

According to a statement from public affairs officer, Sgt. Douglas Smith, the U.S. Army Recruiting Command's Staff Judge Advocate has bumped the case up to Ramode's commander for "review, investigation and appropriate action." Ramode, as you might imagine, didn't return calls from reporters.

Our tax dollars are paying for taxpaying citizens to be treated like this; gays and lesbians are fighting and dying for their country right now, while Ramode gets to sit at a desk and tap out homophobic, racist tirades to U.S. citizens while representing the Army. It's wrong on so many levels.

NOTE: The Jersey Journal article also noted that the name calling went in both directions once Ramode lobbed the first volley of outlandish statements.

The insults were not only flying one way, as Andrew criticized her vocabulary and poor spelling and, after finding out she was a Native American, wrote:

"So take that to your next rain dance."

That was racist and out of bounds as well, but of course the whole nonsense wouldn't have occurred had Ramode simply said that the military's policy is that we don't recruit openly gay and lesbians citizens, and left it at that. She clearly felt the need to unleash the vitriol and it all escalated. She was the one representing the government -- and the taxpayers.

Exhibit 1

Exhibit 2