What They Are

(Photo: © Newscom / Wenn)

A long time ago, I was involved in speech and debate competitions. 'Extemporaneous Speaking' was one category, where you were handed a slip of paper with three topics chosen from current news events. To compete, you had to know what was going on in the world; to inform yourself (so our debate coach told us), you had to read the weekly news magazines of the 1950's and 60's: Time, Newsweek, and U.S. News and World Report.

It was clear from their editorials, and the general focus of their articles, that the major news magazines were ideologically split: U.S. News was solidly conservative; Time, a creation of Ol' Henry Luce, was Center-Right; and Newsweek (owned by the Washington Post's redoubtable liberal publisher, Katherine Graham) leaned to the Left. This editorial split remained true for nearly forty years.

In the early 1990's, when the Republicans had taken control of the House, and Newt Gingrich had become the new Speaker and the intellectual power of the GOP, I remember Newsweek publishing a balanced portrait of the man -- even so, you walked away thinking This guy's a vicious little ass. What led me to that conclusion were two incidents Newsweek had reported.

Gingrich had grown up with a stepfather, an officer at the U.S. Army's infantry school at Ft. Benning, Georgia; he had been diagnosed with cancer when Gingrich had just begun his political career in the Congress.

At one point, the stepfather had broken down, exhausted by disease and treatment, crying, telling his family he was frightened of dying. Newt refused to comfort him, telling him to "Shut up and act like a man".

Nice.

The second vignette is by now well-known, but when Newsweek reported the story, it was a fresh revelation: That Gingrich had served his first wife, Jackie Battley, with divorce papers as she was lying in a hospital bed recovering from Uterine cancer surgery.

Very nice.

A year later, he married again -- and he would divorce his second wife, Marianne, under similar circumstances as she was suffering from a serious illness -- to marry a young staffer with whom he'd been having sex in his office, or in his car in the Congressional parking garage ("If you see my car rockin'", he reportedly told an aide at the time, "don't come knockin'").

Over the years, the magazines have been sold (Newsweek will shortly be sold to Sidney Karmann, billionaire and partner/founder of Harmann-Kardon). Since 1992 and Newt's "Contract For America", our political Right has become more and more strident and aggressive; even Gingrich has been outdistanced by the ramblings of a Rand Paul, or the continuing drama of a Glenn Beck.

And, publishers have decided that it's better to go with what they believe is the future of America: Sarah Palin, Michelle Bachmann, Rupert Murdoch, Evangelicals and Teabaggers. Newsweek made a right turn some time ago. They would never publish the kind of portrait of Gingrich as they had in 1994 when it appeared he might be poised to run for President against Clinton.

And Ol' Newt is resurgent -- now appearing on the Sunday talk shows as the intellectual, the rapid-speaking leader-in-waiting of America's conservative movement. He's opened PACs and already received sizable contributions for a possible Presidential run in 2012.

This week, Esquire magazine published an article about Gingrich -- actually, an extended interview with Gingrich's second wife, Marianne (Newt is currently on wife number four, I think).

It's not pretty. Apparently, Herr Gingrich just couldn't keep his zipper up and his wick dry, and had been congenitally unfaithful to Marianne. And everyone knew it; Gingrich turned out to be the cause of his own political demise.

One night, Marianne says, Bill Clinton called from the White House. She answered the phone and the President asked if he could please speak to her husband. Could the Speaker come over immediately? After he hung up, Newt summoned his driver and went in the back door to the Oval Office. During that meeting, he would tell her later, Clinton laid it out for him: "You're a lot like me," he told him.

A classic scene, something right out of All The King's Men: In the Oval Office, Clinton gets up from behind the same desk used by JFK, takes Gingrich over to the sofas in the middle of the room and tells him they're two Southern boys. They're a lot alike. Then he tells Newt what they had on him about his sexual escapades, and that if he stepped out of line he'd be washed up in politics and in Washington.

Ironic, given what happened to The Clenis a year later.

Newt Gingrich was muzzled in the critical run-up to the [19]98 midterms. Three weeks before the election, Gingrich got a visit from Kenneth Duberstein, a senior Republican who had served as chief of staff to Ronald Reagan.

[Marianne recounted to Esquire] "He says, 'What's going on? We're gonna lose seats if something doesn't change.' "

Marianne jumped in, too. "I asked Newt, 'What are you doing? Why aren't we out there blasting them?' "

This was his true turning point, she believes. As his personal failures and his political contradictions closed in on him, she began to entertain fears about his fundamental decency.

So, Newt Gingrich is a vicious little ass, a serial adulterer, a liar, and Esquire lays it out rather neatly.

Please pay attention to this part, though, because it will be on the final: If, despite plentiful evidence about his character, Newt still becomes one of the GOP front-runners (if not their candidate) for President in 2012 -- then I would become very, very afraid.

Look: The actual unemployment rate in America is between 16 and 18 per cent. The "recovery" has stalled. The Republicans in Congress will do nothing, and the Democrats can't seem to do the right thing because they've sold their soul to the Fed and the Banksters. Communities are laying off teachers, firefighters, police; roads are being plowed back to gravel; they're talking about doing away with Social Security and Medicare -- and no one is out in the streets raising their voices about any of it.

The possibility of a Gingrich Presidency would be as bad as Lil' Boots Bush (the only difference is, Gingrich has a better command of spoken English) -- but if such a thing ever becomes possible, it will be because -- even with clear evidence of what kind of man he is -- it would not matter to voters.

It would be more proof (if you needed it, that is) that the game is rigged; the fix is in; that it's Chinatown -- and that Americans will prefer government by sociopaths; and proof that the lowest common denominator in this country will have suddenly fallen to depths unimaginable even twenty years ago.

If you want to stop and consider that for a moment, it's what many thinking Germans must have felt when their country mutated into something clearly and unmistakably malignant, right in front of their eyes.

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Fazed And Contused

© Tom Tomorrow 2010

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If You Want A Taste Of The Future You Must Bring Your Own Spoon

Last month (reports the New York Times online), the United Kingdom of Great Britain, Ireland, and Those Dominions Across The Seas, began the slide down The Great Austerity: "[T]he British government abolished the U.K. Film Council, the Health Protection Agency and dozens of other groups that regulate, advise and distribute money in the arts, health care, industry and other areas."

The shiny new Tory Conservative British government has decreed that to reduce the national debt by lowering annual budget deficits, cuts must be made in nearly every spending category across the board. And their effects will be immediate.

In June [the New York Time reported], the government announced its first round of cuts, removing about $10 billion from the current year’s budget.

While that is a drop in the bucket compared to the final goal, the reduction measures have already had severe consequences. Public sector workers across the country, except for the lowest paid, will have their salaries frozen for the next two years. Oxfordshire, facing a nearly $1 million trim in its road safety budget, has been forced to shut down all its 161 traffic speed cameras.

The cuts mean that Nottinghamshire plans to close three recycling facilities and some of its day care centers. And that the city of Coventry, which already cut spending in January, is trying to find $5.6 million more to cut from its current child services budget.

But none of this is much compared to what the country will face when the government issues its long-term budget plans in October. Mr. Mutton, the Coventry official, predicted that the next round of cuts would cost the city at least 10,000 jobs in the public and private sectors. Analysts have estimated that some 600,000 public-sector jobs could be lost nationwide.

... and no idea how many private sector jobs. I wonder where those people will find work? Basically, I believe Britain in the immediate future will be very much like England in the nearly twenty years after World War Two (1945-63), when Great Britain was a cold, drab place -- certainly not Tony Blair's "Cool Britannia".

And the British Tory politicians who have done this have American Cousins in the House and Senate who believe we should do exactly the same here.

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Western Civ. 103: The Seldon Theories

Glenn Greenwald posted an article at Salon today ("What Collapsing Empire Looks Like"), enumerating the slow-motion of deterioration wrought by the Crash.

>> Plenty of businesses and governments furloughed workers this year, but Hawaii went further -- it furloughed its schoolchildren. Public schools across the state closed on 17 Fridays during the past school year to save money, giving students the shortest academic year in the nation.

>> Many transit systems have cut service to make ends meet, but Clayton County, Ga., a suburb of Atlanta, decided to cut all the way, and shut down its entire public bus system. Its last buses ran on March 31, stranding 8,400 daily riders.

>> Even public safety has not been immune to the budget ax. In Colorado Springs, the downturn will be remembered, quite literally, as a dark age: the city switched off a third of its 24,512 streetlights to save money on electricity, while trimming its police force and auctioning off its police helicopters.

>> It's probably also worth noting this Wall St. Journal article from last month -- with a subheadline warning: "Back to Stone Age" -- which describes how "paved roads, historical emblems of American achievement, are being torn up across rural America and replaced with gravel or other rough surfaces as counties struggle with tight budgets and dwindling state and federal revenue."

>> Utah is seriously considering eliminating the 12th grade, or making it optional.

>> And it was announced this week that "Camden [New Jersey] is preparing to permanently shut its library system by the end of the year, potentially leaving residents of the impoverished city among the few in the United States unable to borrow a library book free."



The nation didn't stop falling after the Crash of 2008. Only the pace has slowed, enough to make us believe that, somehow, we avoided real trouble. And as we continue to fall, the descent is accompanied by commercials and television, iPads and SmartPhones; anything to keep people from realizing what's happening to the society they've lived in all their lives, and to the promises that society has held out to them as the American Dream.

It's human to not want to see the water rising, to focus on the familiar and the comforting, not to hear the sound of the steady drummer, "drumming like a noise in dreams".

In our Western Civilization classes, the rise and fall of empires -- Egyptian, Persian; Greek; Roman, Merovingian; Danish, Swedish, Russian; French, British, German -- was covered in a few chapters; a night's reading before the exam. In my particular area of interest, Wiemar Germany lasted less than twelve years, followed by a Great Depression, and then another twelve years of nazi rule and a devastating worldwide war: 1919 to 1945 -- still, something you could read through in a few hours if you had the stomach for it.

Different, now, to live through times which -- with the added crisis of climate change -- we're just on the cusp of. The fun hasn't even started in earnest yet, and who knows where we'll all end up.


Natley (Art Garfunkle) And The Old Man: Catch-22 (1970)

OLD MAN: ...Italy is a poor, weak country. And that is why we will survive, long after your country has been destroyed.
NATLEY: What are you talking about? America's not going to be destroyed.
OLD MAN: Never?
NATLEY: Well...
OLD MAN: Egypt was destroyed; Greece was destroyed; Rome was destroyed; Persia was destroyed -- Spain was destroyed. All great countries are destroyed. Why not yours?
NATLEY: ...What you don't understand is that it's better to die on your feet than to live on your knees.
OLD MAN: You have it backwards. It's better to live on your feet than to die on your knees. I know.
NATLEY: How do you know?
OLD MAN: Because I am a hundred and seven years old. How old are you?
NATLEY: I'll be twenty in January.
OLD MAN: If you live.

-- Buck Henry; Screenplay to Mike Nichols' Film of Catch-22 (1970)

Will America dissolve into a State run by 'Pastors', conservative Oligarchs? Will most of us queue up for water, clothing; living space? Will we become like Britain, with CCTVs on every light pole and an electronic dossier on every citizen's email, personal buying and travel habits? Will someone in the Nuclear Club finally decide to uncork the Genie again?



We don't believe these things are possible; not here, in America. This is a land of opportunity, almost a meritocracy -- we don't have a class structure here based on family lineage or money; and we are the guardians of truth, justice, and the Rule Of Law™. You can rise as high as you can reach through hard work and the Free Enterprise system.

We don't murder our leaders; we don't single out people for imprisonment or harassment because they espouse unpopular opinions. We are free to speak or write or create as we like. We are the strongest military and economic power on the face of the earth. We're not dictators. We don't quit, we don't surrender; we treat our enemies fairly and with compassion because that's the American Way.



Right.

As I've mentioned before, a Romanian acquaintance once said, while Chaucescu was still in power, "In the Eastern Bloc, if you are enough of a problem for the authorities, they take you out into the woods and shoot you in the back of the head. In America, if you are enough of a problem, they restrict your ability to make money."

And, today, what passes for common wisdom among the political elite, pundits and media is that in order to prevent higher deficits and more National Debt, the government should enact policies that reduce it -- to privatize Social Security, reduce Medicare to a voucher system, freeze the pay of the military (that'll go over well with the boys and girls in Afghanistan), and slash every Federal program possible. To cut, and not stimulate.

At the same time, these same Austerians say that raising income taxes is regrettable, but must be done. Only -- they mean raising taxes for everyone except the top two per cent or so, who will receive a tax cut. Because the wealthy are the ones who,through their purchases of Bulgari jewelry, Bentleys and designer clothing, will raise the rest of us up from poverty... a millimeter at a time.

This isn't a joke. It's policy. As Paul Krugman notes, "We must place priority on reducing the deficit, say Republicans and “centrist” Democrats. And then, virtually in the next breath, they declare that we must preserve tax cuts for the very affluent, at a budget cost of $700 billion over the next decade."

(The wealthy, in America particularly, remind me now of the 'Owners' in Paul Theroux's 1986 novel, O-Zone, which I strongly recommend; it's as perceptive a book about the future in its own way as Atwood's Handmaid's Tale or Huxley's "Brave New World").

So official policy is to protect the wealthy, and allow the country to pass slowly into history. Greenwald concluded his column with a quote from International Monetary Fund Chief Economist Simon Johnson, from his article last year in The Atlantic Monthly, "about what happens in under-developed and developing countries when an elite-caused financial crises ensues" -- and not targeting the rich is just par for the course:

"Squeezing oligarchs, though, is seldom the strategy of choice among emerging-market governments.

"Quite the contrary: at the outset of the crisis, the Oligarchs are usually among the first to get extra help from the government, such as preferential access to foreign currency, or maybe a nice tax break, or -- here's a classic Kremlin bailout technique -- the assumption of private debt obligations by the government.

"Under duress, generosity toward old friends takes many innovative forms. Meanwhile, needing to squeeze someone, most emerging-market governments look first to ordinary working folk -- at least until the riots grow too large...

"But there’s a deeper and more disturbing similarity: elite business interests —- financiers, in the case of the U.S. -— played a central role in creating the crisis, making ever-larger gambles, with the implicit backing of the government, until the inevitable collapse. More alarming, they are now using their influence to prevent precisely the sorts of reforms that are needed, and fast, to pull the economy out of its nosedive. The government seems helpless, or unwilling, to act against them."

I don't know why, but I keep thinking of a poem written just before the beginning of the Great War; Barbara Tuchman used it as a section title ("The Steady Drummer") in her 1966 book, The Proud Tower -- another book I recommend; not many are being written like them any longer.

On the idle hill of summer,
Sleepy with the flow of streams,
Far I hear the steady drummer
Drumming like a noise in dreams.

Far and near and low and louder
On the roads of earth go by,
Dear to friends and food for powder,
Soldiers marching, all to die.

East and west on fields forgotten
Bleach the bones of comrades slain,
Lovely lads and dead and rotten;
None that go return again.

Far the calling bugles hollo,
High the screaming fife replies,
Gay the files of scarlet follow:
Woman bore me, I will rise.

A.E. Housman, "A Shropshire Lad" (1896)


At the Moment, This Idea Seems Reasonable...

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Apathy Sets In

(Courtesy Donka Ufman)

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More Unspeakableness

An Entire Chicken In A Can


Even H.P. Lovecraft Could Not Have Envisioned The Badness

This isn't going to become a regular item -- but another thing in a can was made known to me recently. As a Dog, I'll eat a wide variety of food (and the occasional non-food) items -- but even this is too much for me to contemplate: Sweet Sue's Canned Whole Chicken.


It Emerges: Ia! Ia! Sweeta Sue Chiken ARRROOOOOO!!

First, the unsuspecting housewife releases the Thing from the chamber where it slumbered. Then, without warning, it grew -- and grew, and began to threaten mankind with the unbelievable fury of unleashed cosmic forces!!!

And, as we all know, you don't want to mess around with Cosmic Forces.



Unleashed, The Beast Began An Orgy Of Feeding --
But, Only In North Beach And Fisherman's Wharf

ANNOUNCER: We're here on CBS Sportstalk Radio; I'm Bob Hampton, and we're talking about the giant tentacled monster that's making life a little hectic for the drive-time commute in the Bay Area this morning... And how about those Giants, huh? Will the Raiders make their move to Santa Clara? Let's take your calls.

Hello, you're on CBS Sportstalk 96.

CHTULU: Hi, Bob; this is Chtulu from Ryleh. Love your show.

ANNOUNCER: Thanks. Where is Ryleh? Is that Contra Costa County, near Pinole?

CHTULU: Actually, it's an ancient city, sunken deep in the ocean for many, many Millennia, and initially a base for many of the Old Ones. You see, the history you've been taught about your world, and the Universe, is about as wrong as Y. A. Tittle staying in football past Forty. Many things existed on Earth, long before human history began. And, one of them was Me -- I've been out the loop for a while, but I'm back now and just wanted to AAARRRRRRRROOOOOO!!!!



Sorry about that, Bob. It's just so good to be out.

ANNOUNCER: Uh-huh. You just get out of the Big Q, huh?

CHTULU: Not a prison as you would understand it, Bob. But I was just listening to your program this morning and did want to comment on the appearance of the 'tentacled monster' you mentioned a moment ago.

ANNOUNCER: What's your comment?

CHTULU: Well, you see -- the stars are right, Bob, and the Great Wheel has come around; and it's time for the ancient forces that once ruled this planet to assert themselves. So I don't think anyone should be surprised when they open a can of something like a whole chicken, only to have it transform into something as big as the Bank Of America building in a matter of hours and threaten all of human civilization.

ANNOUNCER: Okay. Did you catch the Giants' game last night by chance, Chtulu?

CHTULU: What?

ANNOUNCER: Did you see last nights' game?

CHTULU: Bob -- with all due respect; I'm a long-time listener, and I've always liked this program -- but we're talking about a radical shift in human consciousness, here. We're talking about the most beautiful mysteries, and the most terrifying nightmares, of humanity made manifest in this world simply through the energy of thought. This is an event that's... well, it's Galactic in its implications, and frankly, Bob, in light of that I'm a little less interested in what Buster Posey will or won't do this season.

ANNOUNCER: [Pauses] So you're saying Posey won't do well heading into the season?

CHTULU: Huh? Bob -- try focusing a little. There's an Octopus the size of Cleveland out in the Bay. I see on CNN that they're considering carpet-bombing the Golden Gate with nerve agents -- nerve agents, Bob.

ANNOUNCER: All right; well, that's an interesting perspective, but I'd say Posey's gonna have a great career with the San Francisco Giants, and we look forward to that.

CHTULU: Not going to mean a thing if he gets eaten, Bob.

ANNOUNCER: Okay; and we thank you for your call. Hey, the time is 11:30, and whenever you just don't have time to spend on meal preparation, Sweet Sue's Whole Chicken In A Can can help!


The Peasants Begin To Understand: They're Doomed --
In The Horrifying Tales Of The Plush Chtulu!

After all, while Sparkle Christmas Tree Sweater Bear, for example, was a friend to all boys and girls, and Ellie the Happy Elephant was beloved by all who knew her, neither they nor any of the other animals commanded a worldwide fanatical cult of believers ready to do their bidding, not to mention being an ageless, indestructible creature from Beyond the Stars.

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Operation: Static Kill

BP Attempts To Perform 'Static Kill' in the Gulf.

We hope it works. So we can say good-bye to:






And, if this proves successful, British Petroleum will move on to Operation: Bottom Kill

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Triumph Of The Shill

(Art By Mongo)

Little Rupert Murdoch, ten years old, watches his favourite film for the 5,432nd time: Leni Reifenstahl's Triumph Of The Will. And every morning, Little Rupert wishes he he had been born as Joey Goebbels.

But that's okay. He believes Joey was, at heart, just a businessman -- just as Little Rupert, in his heart, is... something else.

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Unspeakable

Packaging The Crazy



Yes, Virginia; there are sandwiches in a can -- joining the noble canned ham, the Schlitz and Rolling Rock and Budweiser; the deviled ham, and even the little Sardine as items sealed with a shelf life for future generations to wonder at, and bring to Antiques Roadshow.



EXPERT: Well, what you've got here is, obviously, an item known as a 'Candwich', manufactured at the beginning of the century and is -- well, it's a sandwich, in a can. What can you tell me about it?

WOMAN: My father received this in exchange for some work he did during, you know -- 'The Unpleasantness' -- right before the aliens and all that. I don't remember it very well, but when the government came through during the mutant roundups, my father was taken away and we kept his belongings but never looked through them.

EXPERT: So you've had it all this time?

WOMAN: Yes. And we don't do anything with it except sniff it a little.

EXPERT: Okay. Well, this is really quite an item -- I was showing this to some of my Roadshow colleagues, and we were all quite excited. Most material manufactured prior to the alien incursion and the mutant wars either didn't survive, or was heavily contaminated and had to be destroyed. But this one stayed in your family's possession, and we have to presume you were in a Federal shelter? And it was scanned, of course.

WOMAN: Oh, yes.

EXPERT: So this one is quite safe to bring to the Roadshow. And in almost pristine condition -- a little oxidation there around the top, but that's normal; it doesn't affect the value, and we wouldn't recommend cleaning it. The colors are bright and clear; a few, small dents on the rear near the bottom -- but, again, for something this unusual, that's not an issue. We were shaking it carefully a little while ago, weren't we, and --

WOMAN: We could hear the sandwich inside!

EXPERT: Yes, we could! (Laughs) I wouldn't want to eat it, though. So, do you have any idea of its value? Have you ever had it appraised?

WOMAN: No, not really. My sister thought we should have it placed in one of the memorial ships that are fired into the Sun, but we never did.

EXPERT: Probably a good idea that you didn't. Now, I know of only three Candwich cans in existence -- and only one of them still has the sandwich inside! Another thing is that this appears to be the only Peanut-Butter-And-Strawberry Jelly Candwich anyone has ever seen.

WOMAN: My Beck! For fun, now; no; really?

EXPERT: Really really. Two of the three sandwiches in a can are in museums in Paris and Jerusalem, and the third was sold at auction just after the 25th of Cunegonda this breeding period -- for six point eight Trillion Quatloos!

WOMAN: Oh! Oh! Oh!

EXPERT: Yes; and I would estimate this, in a retail setting, if it were sold, to be worth at least that much, probably closer to nine or even ten Trillion. I would use that figure for insurance purposes, and it easily qualifies for Class Two security coverage as a cultural relic.

WOMAN: I'm just so thrilled. I had no idea.

EXPERT: Yes. Not every day you find out you could buy yourself whaling rights in the Sea Of Japan, eh? Well, we're just so happy you brought this to the Roadshow. We'll provide you with an armored car to take this back to your breeding compound.

WOMAN: Thank you; now I can buy my sister back. All praise to the Leader!

EXPERT: All praise to the Leader.

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Addicted

I See... _______ Pitifully Stupid People; All The Time

Why wouldn't you be addicted to an episodic television program that presents people, trying to help other human beings, which has a serious focus around one brilliant, sarcastic (even occasionally abusive), complicated, but ultimately endearing character -- one who believes those other human beings are worth saving.

Not because of any warm and compassionate expression of the Buddha nature; but because life is weird, and hard enough; and people lie their asses off just because that's their nature -- and saving them is work.



And, I admit some similarities between Gregory House's character and personality and my own: We're both intelligent, funny in an offbeat way, and either leave 'em laughing, slightly amazed, or appalled. But, I don't get to pop Vicodin and use a cane -- though I did lose sensation in a good bit of my right leg after an attack of sciatica three years ago; it's permanent, and I can get a fine limp going after an hour or so walking, which is something I like to do. But no cane, though I own one.

Anyway, I started watching House, MD on an on-again, off-again basis -- earlier episodes, in syndication (I won't watch Fox on principle). But, like so many other programs I never watched when they were on air, I've missed a good deal of the series to date. And now, I'm as addicted to it as House is to the Vicodin.


The Whole Sick Crew, January, 2009, Left To Right: Omar Epps,
Olivia Wilde; Jennifer Morrison; Jesse Spencer; Hugh Laurie;
Lisa Edelstein; Peter Jacobsen, Before The SAG Awards

Luckily, I'm still employed; live alone with my rug and dog bowl by the heater; and have disposable income... to buy the collected Seasons of the program to date, so that I can catch up to where the series is now, which I will begin to watch on Fox just as soon as Little Rupert chokes on one of his wife's thongs.

I like it. You may like drinking beer until you pass out. Or, going to monster truck rallies (House does). And, ultimately, the show is about people working together, their relationships and personalities -- and that's what life is ultimately all about. Maybe.

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