Wednesday, April 30, 2008

Today is April 30, 2008 and of course it’s the anniversary of Adolph Hitler, Eva Brown, Joseph Goebles and his wife and family in Hitler’s bunker. It is said that any day Hitler dies is a Jewish Holiday. May first, ironically is a Russian holliday for I’m not sure what reason. I don’t know if they just appropriated it from the pagens or what. In school on May day we would make flowers out of construction paper symbolizing spring. I guess the question this year is whether any demonstrators will be beaten up by cops. This is more of a posting just to "see where we've been" as a people and note "how far we've come" and what we can do about it, more than it's about anything new or profound. Phil Donahew was on the Stacy Taylor show. He’s a reminder of course of the past. People say it’s like the ‘eighties now but it’s really not because in the ‘eighties we had talk shows like Donahew to raise our collective consciousness about pressing national issues. On the network news there would be open criticisum of the Reagan administration talking about the homeless crisis or the farmers crisis or whatever. A lot of the political reality of today was only a pipe dream in the Reagan Adminestration. You will remember that the House was democratic the whole period of the Reagan administration, and the Senate went democratic the final two years. Back then there were liberals like Michael Jackson on a major radio network. You didn’t have this stranglehold the conservatives have now over the media. Donahew was pitching his new movie about a paralyzed veteran from the Iraq War. It’s apparently a movie about the War from his point of view. I’d like to insert something from an E mail at this point on the blog. OK let me just summarize. (transmission problems) Bush is obsessed with this Iraq War and like all obsessions it clouds your judgements to the point of being unreasonable. I don't care if we're winning; I don't care if we're losing; it's time to get out as soon as physically possible. Of course Thom Hartman talked about some important “Fairness” doctrine that was repealed in 1987 and another related (?) law that was changed by the Clinton administration in 1996. But we are talking about the Iraq War. Instead we’re talking about showing a teenager’s bare back in a magazine photo. There seems to be more uptightness about sex in society today than there has been in fifty years. I suppose in some ways this is a good thing. Some of these mothers you see with their hard faces complaining about today’s loose morays, you wonder whether their brains were transplanted from fifty years ago or something. Back, say when I was eighteen, I never would have dreamed that women my age would be so uptight one day. In light of all this I’d peg the chance of republican victories in November as excellent. As bad as this recession is- - and it figures to be the worst in nearly thirty years- - it doesn’t seem to be tilting votes in favor of the democrats. You still see John Mc Cain holding his own against either democratic candidate. If the recession gets worse- and it no doubt will- - I don’t think this will change, because for the first time in either my generation or my parents generation, economic affairs have become divorced from Presidential politics. The people look and see that President Bush is doing all he can, short of instituting a negative intrest prime rate. I just wish I had one of those six hundred dollar checks going in the mail next week. It’s been said we use sitcoms like drugs today to take our minds off problems. What’s worse is that people are STILL buying things they can’t afford- - just to try and take their minds off the fact that we’re in a recession. There is a lot of “living for today”. This Iraq War is the most cleaverly marketed war in American history. It’s a shadow war that unless you have someone in your family who is actually stationed in Iraq, you just don’t care. All people ever hear from politicians of EITHER party are reasons why we have to stay in Iraq and how getting out is unthinkable. If a politician hints they’d like to end the war they get thrown back at them ten reasons why dire things would happen in that country “and it would be all our fault”. Donahew said that Nazis like Goering came up with the notion of merchandizing fear and seeing protesters as the bad guys. People on the right speak in comparison fashion to World War II as if they had actually lived through that war. Nobody short of an octogenarian is even old enough to remember that war. This is a classic case of “false memory sidrone”. But somehow there are warm fuzzy feelings associated with World War II. It’s like they’ve received brain implants of dead people. The big question now is “Where is all of this going?” Where are we headed as a people with reactionary attitudes such as we have? I can’t say for sure but you know as a fact that you never wind up where you think you are headed and there is such a thing as “the law of unintended consequences”. An obvious consequence is the loss of our civil liberties and “becoming like the enemy we are fighting”. Obviously President Bush’s vision of “democracy flowering throughout the middle east when they see what we have accomplished in Iraq” isn’t any more of a reality than Chuck Smith’s vision of Born Again Christianity breaking out in Israel. I have predicted darkly that we will indeed get into a war with Iran in the next administration. We aren’t dealing with the real frustrations of the Islamic peoples. We’re like a parent who complains about the conduct of his teenager and yet passes up chance after chance to talk to him or her- - and both parties continue to stew in their pent up frustrations and resentments. Till finally some crisis event comes along, and right away the adult looks to anyone to blame for this event other than themselves. But it’s also a fact of political reality that “the people aren’t ready for a new war with Iran”, at least- - yet. What the right is hoping and praying for is another 9 – 11 that we can somehow blame in Iran as an excuse of going to war with them. But I want to emphasize that some of the danger out there is REAL. But all that means is that NOW is the time to prevent the next war BEFORE it starts- -by negotiations and accords, and just plain old getting to know each other better.

I'd now like to take a stroll down memory lane back to late summer of 2004 during the Republican convention. Even at that date it seems I wasn't too enthusiastic about Bush being re-elected, even though I did end up voting for the President in November and considered myself a loyal Bushy through early fall of 2005.

President Clinton is in Presbyterian Hospital in NY and he plans to have quadruple by-pass surgery. When you’re famous when you hiccup they all jump. Clinton was having mild pains in his check and they did an angiogram this morning and saw the acute warning signs. It’s all that junk food he eats. Someone remarked that he had been losing weight lately. Yesterday I called Judy about file search and she said she didn’t even know what that was. Is she kidding?

Zel Miller was a governor of Georgia as you know. I also learned today that he was a segregationist and a friend of Lester Maddox. Today on KABC Curtess what’s-his-name, head of the guardian angels was on. I never knew the guy was so right wing. He referred to Arnold Swartzenegger as “Bill Clinton on steroids”, and Curtess mocked his choice of Nixon for a role model saying that Nixon was regarded as socialist by Barry Goldwater (which isn’t true) and he started all these programs like the environmental protection agency and social programs like the negative income tax and wage and price controls. Curtess also spoke of giving demonstrators “wood shampoos”, beating them over the head, and saying protestors aren’t very tough today. It was Curtess who also said that his favorite convention speech was Zel Miller’s.

Last night at the convention it was Governor Pataki. Isn’t “Patak” a cuss word in Klingon or something? After this they had the usual film documentary. George Bush spoke on a specially constructed round stage. He unfurled a lot of new social programs extending education and health care. And he also talked about his step by step reasons for going to war in Iraq. But at a key point in his speech a demonstration broke out. It turns out some outside protesters came in and were being shouted down. He spoke till 8:15, which was just over an hour, and after this there were balloons and confetti, and then the commentators got their turn. They are now saying Kerry is so far down in the pools he’s going to “implode”. Both Sean and Curtess were saying this. Kerry spoke at midnight and these two called him “emotionally unstable”. I disagree. Kerry just made the same points he’s been making, hoping it will stick this time.

Will and Grace were on at nine. Football is on right now. Before one I had this computer on doing word searches. On the soap operas Bo has asked an Irish judge to allow him to exhume the rest of the bodies, starting with Abe and Roman. Belle and Philip are headed to Green Mountain. Jennifer had a boy. On Passions, Sheridan fell into a snake pit and now her mother is down there with her.

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