Wednesday, June 12, 2013

The Great Lost Revolution



And now we come to the latest wrinkle on what used to be referred to as “The Military Industrial Comples”.  I’m moving this story to the top when I post this.  Randy Rhodes today was saying that one third and growing percent of everything the CIA does has been farmed out to private corporations.  We learned that that joker Edward Snowden who leaked that stuff last weekend- - got his security clearance not from our government but from Booze Allan or whoever, the private corporation he was working for.  We learn that law enforcement farms out their stuff to private data collection agencies that violate the law by giving authorities information for a prosecution they by law aren’t allowed to.  Randy says that there are so many secret government projects that “nobody can keep track of them all”.  This one guy tells of being shown a power point presentation of all of the government’s secret programs and wasn’t allowed to take any note and said “Stop this - - my head is about to explode”.  I don’t know about the Obama administration anyhow.  He does just enough stuff to tick off just about everybody.  President Obama prides himself on being an “equal opportunity political offender”.  Now the Obama Administration is reversing their ruling on letting girls younger than age seventeen walk in and purchase a Morning After pill called “Plan B” without any prescription or note from any doctor.  You can’t do that with tranqualizers such as valium, or even regular birth control pills.  Heck, the Food and Drug Administration throws a spaz retracting approval of some pain medication is it raises the risk of heart attack of stroke or something by fifteen percent. Now you have this powerful drug that when you take it will eliminate the risk of conception on the spot.  This is going to tick off the “moral majority’ because - - they have given up the last bastion of the power to control and threaten women with Hell damnation or whatever.  The right wing believes, rightly or wrongly, that even if a woman is raped- - they must bear the shame of their “sin” even if he means getting pregnant with the rapist’s child.  Sometimes the President will be bold.  He knew the Hollywood community would be a good source for money during the 2012 campaign and he knew if he came out for Gay Marriage he could get it.  But while the President is doing this- - - he is now willing to “corporatize” the central intelligence agency.  Of course private corporations, contrary to Judy’s cherished belief, is inherently less efficient dollar for dollar, than the government can do it himself.  That’s because the profit motive is always there and they owe their shareholders their loyalty and not the American public.  Of course we know we won’t get the truth- - be you on the left or the right - - from the commercial Media because they are “owned” by these big corporations.  They have therefore an inherent conflict of interest as long as you have this “info-tainment’ news division that opporates from the Profit Motive rather than risk running a loss but they have to do News to keep their broadcast license like they did in the old days.  There is something to be said for some “Old Days”.

We are suddenly informed that a lot of fifty year anniversaries are upon us.  We were told that the "Equal Pay" act was signed fifty years ago Monday.  Then we learned that George Wallace fifty years ago today stood on the school house steps and refused to let two Black Students enter for classes, until President Kennedy federalized the National Guard, to them in.  Then we are told that President Kennedy from that moment on decided to press congress hard for a Civil Right's bill.  But only a few days later Medger Evers was gunned down in the back as he came home one evening.  Bob Dylan did a song about it called "Only a pawn in their game".   But this was the last Dylan Bob Dylan would ever do dedicated to protest causes.  Of course news events were hard upon us in that era.  President Kennedy pressed through the atnospheric nuclear test ban treaty.  Then Martin Luther King gave that historic speech in the March on Washington.  Dylan recorded most of "The Times they are a Changing" in October 1963.  Of course the first of November the United States had the leader of Viet Nam bumped off and we put in a leader we thought was more amenable to us.  Then President Kennedy himself was gunned down.  In other news - - Teamster Boss Jimmy Hoffa got himself into quite a lot of trouble in early 1964.  And it was Easter of 1964 that Malcolm X had his "Ephimany" that all races could and should get along harmoniously together.  He went to the Mideast at one of their pilgramages and was impressed to see races from all over the world worshiping Allah in harmony.  Some have pointed out that in "Nation of Islam" areas- - these people dressed in suits and sun glasses just "get the word out' that no drug dealers will be allowed in this neighborhood.  Drugs and gangs and prostitution are a scourge of the ghetto.  Of course Bob Dylan, crusader that he used to be, has never been all that concerned either about the poliferation of drugs- - or things like women's rights.  Some have criticized Bill Cosby for not coming down harder on the poliferation of Crack houses in the ghetto thank in large part to the activities of Oliver North.  But it could be that Bill Cosby was too much in bed with the Reagan Administration having an all black version of "My Three Sons' or what have you.  I would hope that Mr. Cosby would speak out on the matter of the Jackson Family's lawsuit, some might say "crusade" against AEG entertainment.  It's clear now from observing their goons on the stands that they are afraid to give a direct answer to a direct question.  Of course in the end it all seems to come down to money and profit motive, just like the previous paragraph.  The AEG people probably feared that if Jackson blew this - - fifty concert world tour- they would stand to lose an awful lot of money and were willing to gamble with the life of the client whose interest they were supposed to be looking out for- - to insure the profit motive.

Here is a Represe of an album that first "came out' in late April of 1979.  Considering the length of this posting I won't elaborate at this time but to say deliberate modifications have been made.

THY KINGDOM COME

Exciter (Judas Priest)
Trick of the Light (The Who)
It's Allright Ma, I'm only Bleeding  (Bob Dylan)
Sabbath Bloody Sabbath  (Black Sabbath_
---------
Summertime Blues (Blue Cheer)
Motor City Madness (Ted Nugent)
Tallisman (Guess Who)
Electric Funeral Pyre (Black Sabbath)
Third Degree (West, Bruce, and Lang)
Below Your Means (Alice Cooper)

CD TWO

One of these Days (Ten Years After)
Truckin'  (Grateful Dead)
The Last Days of May (Blue Oyster Cult)
Revolution No 9 (The Beatles)
---------
Goon Squad (Elvis Costello)
Ballad of a Thin Man (Bob Dylan)
Mystic Eyes (Them)
We're All Gona Die (Co Joe and the Fish)
We Could Be Together / Volunteers (Jefferson Airplane)
All This And More (Procol Herum) 


We now pick up yesterday's economic narrative of woe.  To quote another song “That’s when the heart aches begin”.  Jennifer seems intent on being the “summer replacement” I guess.  I asked her how much money I had in my account right off resolving to face whatever bad news it was.  After a little math and haggeling, it was confirmed that I had sixteen left in my account.  I wanted to take out all sixteen knowing I already owed Janet four out of that, which I paid her immediately.  Jennifer talked me into taking out just ten, which of course left me with six.  I went to the store and bought a pack of John Blacks.  Again I’m a little pissed at Bill because he has kicked in nothing for all the coffee I’ve given him in weeks, and coffee doesn’t grow on trees.  (so to speak)  I got to thinking that as of Tuesday June 4th I only had a total of twenty two dollars to spend for the entire month.  That’s not much.  You know I keep thinking of Bill Clinton’s speech last summer about how the US economy is improving and ‘Maybe you don’t feel it now, but things will get better and then everybody will feel it”.  I’m here to say that- - this hasn’t happened yet.  This is ten months later and my personal situation has never been worse than it is right now.  I can’t borrow any more money because there’s no way I’ll ever pay it back.  I think of Mom and about once a year she hints that if I quit smoking- - - maybe she’d have money for me.  The trouble is- - and this flies in the face of what “they” all say about me- - but I am not stubborn.  Yesterday I was recalling a list as long as my arm of all the “If only’s” that the family members have laid on me as that ONE thing that if I would just remedy - - then everything would be hunkie dorrie.  But it doesn’t happen that way.  And I’m not the only one who has “failed to see any light at the end of the economic tunnel”.   (OK Dr. Levy there’s a metaphor for you)  Mort Zuckerman, with whom I seldom agree - - is absolutely right when he says that this recovery in order to be serious should be adding three hundred thousand dollars per month, and we are nowhere near.  There are vast numbers of American’s this recovery hasn’t “tricked down to”.  We have inflation- - but it’s not really “inflation” in the normal sense of the word.  It’s just “higher prices”.   People, even if they are employed, are working longer hours for less pay, and everybody knows that.


I would like to conflate Tuesday’s “Days of our Lives” with Wednesday’s because the two go together like hand and glove.  The latest “gaslight job’ pulled on Samantha was that the person she shot had no weapon at all on him.  But apparently a finger nail file was found in the heater vent.  So maybe the assailent was planning to manicure Raphael to death.  All I can tell you exactly what Samantha said.  She saw Raphael in imminent danger by a guy in the room leering over the victim, who wasn’t on the visitor’s list, and was intending to do him harm.  In the cold light of day given 20 – 20 hindsight, perhaps this was not the best strategy to pursue.  That one time police detective, our rogue cop, has since died.  The surgery was a success but the patient died.  This is good for both Stephano and Samantha.  Nobody can now tie Samantha that she had with the same man at the police station.  If there are any witnesses who come forward at the police station Samantha could still have trouble, because now she’d have prior motive.  Stephano could not out of sheer vengeance decided it was time to resurrect that evidence against Will Horton and make things real hard on them.  The trouble is when you have one of these ‘choloric” or hot tempered personalities and are a little trigger happy by nature, it can come back to bite you in the ass.  Meanwhile I’m not sure why Christine Di Mira hasn’t left town yet.  To quote some advice “There’s nothing for me here, so I will disappear”.  I heard names being called but I didn’t know if it was for money draw or to see the doctor.  When I went down at two- - I don’t recall either seeing a line or Dr. Satan in his office.  I went on and there was no money draw line outside the door.  After Jennifer confirmed my name, she called me in. 


This “winter in June” of my economic content is obviously going to hang over me at least the entire month.  I woke up at twenty to six and caught twenty winks and got up at ten after and turned on Stephanie Miller.  I was surprised when I went down to the dining room at a quarter after seven all the bowls of oatmeal were already on the table, but there was no silverware at my place.  I was a little irritated.  So I went through that “obstacle course” careful to maneuver around JW’s wheel chair to pick up a bowl of cereal from the cart.  JW turns around and grabs my arm and says angrily “Don’t bump my wheel chair” and then repeated the remark a little more angrily and said something about “I consider it part of my body”.    The thing is JW hasn’t said a civil word to me in years.  It must have been a year ago when he almost snapped at me when I asked if he had any cigarettes I could borrow.  And I have noted at residents meetings his complaints have become increasingly “old man crotchety”, if you know what I mean.  He will almost always refuse to move so that people can pass- - and some of these wheel chair guys seem to pride themselves as to how far back from the table they can sit.  They will wheel themselves and lodge themselves at “choke points’ of crowd movement, and then not move.  And they have a complete lack of consideration when it comes to rolling their wheels over people’s toes, or even backing into them suddenly without warning.  Or you have these people with their little “lounge chair’ things that refuse to get in line even though they can walk but sit at their ease, but then demand to be let in line at the last minute later.  Jesse saw that I looked mad and asked me why so I told him.  Eventually I got my scrambled eggs and toast and butter and jelly.  Then Hilda kicked in with a needed second bowl of oatmeal.  The coffee cup was filled to the brim.

 

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