Friday Night Fish Fry

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The song is "The Fever." If you're expecting a cover version of Peggy Lee, you're too damn old. Myself, I'm on the cusp.



I chose this version because of the bonus lead-in comedy from SCTV, which is my favorite sketch comedy show ever. It's hilarious seeing Dave Thomas and Catherine O'Hara bickering with a definitive air of comedy menace. I don't recall ever seeing a bad episode.

Anyway, stick around for Southside Johnny (music begins about 1:05). I didn't know this was a Springsteen composition until long after I'd heard Southside's rendition---first live at The Quiet Knight in Chicago around 1975. When I listen to Springsteen recordings from this era, so much of it sounds pretentious and melodramatic to my adult ears. Not Southside, though. If I had to choose between seeing one of the two performing today, I'd take Southside in a second.

Too lazy to document the provenance of this clip tonight, but as always it's embedded from YouTube, embedded for noncommercial commentary, critical discussion, and educational purposes.

Pigs yokking it up

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The heading of this post obviously represents a slander of pork-based members of the animal kingdom, but it serves the purpose of providing a comparison that most people immediately understand.



The motive for this vandalism is impossible for me to understand. The motive for the perpetrators to record a video of it is simple for anyone to understand: stupidity, ignorance,  profound disrespect for the planet, and probably a sense of immunity from accountability for transgressions that they "didn't really mean." If this clip actually shows what it seems to show, then perhaps these smirking clots of phlegm should spend about a year residing in a federal penitentiary to reminisce about the jolly time they had. Also, let's fine the motherfuckers about $250K apiece, which is the same amount of reparations that a person pays for, say, pirating a copyrighted movie.

Birthday Girl Fish Fry!

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Little Oscar, my favorite geezer lady, is having a birthday for a few more hours, so here's a treat for her from the days when "Doug Stephenson" roamed the earth and Columbia Record Club would send you five---FIVE!---free LPs as long as you'd buy one a month for the rest of your life or send it back within 7 days at your own expense.



Whatever Gary Lewis album this was on, we heard the damn thing about five times a day for the entire summer of 1965 in heavy rotation with Jay & The Americans and Jan & Dean. Probably no one is more responsible for me taking up leaded gasoline for recreational use than Little Oscar and Gary Lewis' goddam Playboys!

I embedded this particular version of the selected tune, however, for reasons that have much to do with me and nothing to do with Little Oscar. See if you can guess what they are. Unfortunately, LO did not have any hot friends like the ones tearing it up above, with the possible exception of Terri W. who I was still slightly too young to "appreciate." But she and her bra-stuffing girlfriends were all nice girls, with no vices other than Pepsi. They were never a pain to be around. And that's about the nicest thing any kid can be expected to say about his big sister.

Happy Birthday, Little Oscar!

Little Miss Go-Go, Gary Lewis & the Playboys (1965, Liberty 55778 [45 rpm single; can't track down the album catalog number]), via YouTube, embedded with a claim of fair use because it's Little Oscar's birthday!!!

Editor's note: I read in the liner notes of my CD greatest hits collection that this recording was Take 27! Can you imagine that? I think Brian Wilson must have put together "Good Vibrations" in fewer takes than that.

Origins of the Opt Out movement

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Apropos of this, my "product rollout" of the Opt Out movement is behind schedule. That is OK with me, and it also serves as a demonstration of opting out. In this case, I have opted out of rushing myself. Opting out of self-imposed, imaginary urgency generally has been my first major success with applying the concept. I believe the contagion of phony urgency is a blight on the life of most people; the quality of my own life has greatly improved in direct relation to my success of opting out of this unasked-for, nonconstructive stress.

See? Opting out is easy. Here's how it works: you identify a condition imposed on your life that thwarts the authentic aims of human life---your own in particular---and opt out of it. Opting out is just a simple, elemental exercise of free will. It's one of the two acts of will an individual can exercise: the deliberate choice not to do something. (Since visitors to this blog are all in the fast reading group, they can infer the other way to exercise will.)

The origins of the Opt Out movement, for me, go back to an undated entry in an electronic notebook file midway through the Stupor Mundi phase of this blog during the Bush Junior administration. In thinking about Republican demolition of New Deal institutions and demonization of its ideals, I came upon the Wikipedia article about Franklin Roosevelt's Four Freedoms:

1. Freedom of speech 
2. Freedom of worship 
3. Freedom from want 
4. Freedom from fear

My intent was to promulgate a set of post-Reagan freedoms that could be exercised beneath the radar of the surveillance state. (Let's ignore the unwarranted arrogance that would allow Stupor Mundi to express such a conceit.) My problem with the Four Freedoms (4F---just like FDR!) was that they're really not freedoms, and two of them are different than the other two.

The first two are constitutional rights in the United States, and they're understood by all except the most reactionary to be universal human rights. By definition, a right is inalienable, but the freedom to exercise the right can be abridged by any actor that has coercive power.

The third and fourth are aspirational sentiments, one dealing with material sustenance and the other with psychological wellbeing. Whether they are rights is debatable. Whether they're universally achievable by the will of every human under the sky is not debatable: they aren't.

Beyond the general woolliness of FDR's Four Freedoms is that use of the term freedoms (versus rights) carries the unstated assumption that these laudable aspirations are something to be dispensed by governments instead of asserted by regular people. Stupor Mundi's Four Freedoms would have to be liberties that can be exercised without the permission of any government or corporate authority. As a personal historical footnote of trivial significance, I present an early draft of the SM 4F:

1. Freedom to spend your discretionary income wherever you want to, or to save it.
2. Freedom to change the TV or radio station, or to turn it off.
3. Freedom to not answer your telephone, or not to own one.
4. Freedom to vote for or against whomever you wish.

I do feel these are useful, liberating ideas that everyone should keep in mind. And in fact, they're behind a lot of the opting out that a person can do. But they're obviously not universal or encompassing enough to form the basis of a philosophy or social movement. So the SM 4F lay fallow in my notebook, but not forgotten. Then, later, the following things happened:

• People who call themselves liberal and moderate took nominal control of the executive and legislative branches and yet permitted a neo-Confederate federal nullification clique to push the nation further into authoritarianism than it was under Bush.
• The Occupy Movement scared the living cocoa wheats out of everyone from Glenn Beck to Hillary Rodham Clinton. 
• I read Havel's Power of the Powerless, which introduced me to the concept of parallel structures.
• It finally dawned on me that the concept of opting out of various terms and conditions of web-based services was the only meaningful way to push back against forces that want to fully monetize every human transaction.

So, about a year ago, I realized that an inherent property unifying the SM 4F might be the negative half of each expression. The liberty not to spend money, for example, or the freedom to deny access to intrusive communications media. These are acts of opting out.

Opting out is inseparable from individual responsibility, and it implies the intentional acceptance of consequences. But so does opting in. In the world that has grown up around us, I think opting out has much more potential as a tool of self-actualization, mutual support, and greater personal tranquility.

Totally impersonal special deliveries

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Special deliveries of cryptic messages to persons known and unknown because I'm too damn busy to catch up with you individually right now:

Beer-D: upon reacquainting myself with a Shostakovich favorite this evening for the first time in over 40 years, I discovered that this composer was the father of Klingon opera.

Anna: I didn't recognize your voice in comments at first, but if you know of Fonzo Serbo then contact me through regular channels. I would be happy to hear from you.

Helm**6: started writing you a note, but thanks first for the one you sent. The story sounds fairly normal to me, actually.

Gurlitzer: I know the blog has sucked and been neglected for a long time, but I was getting concerned that you hadn't shown up in comments lately. Guess everything is OK and I just need to write something interesting once in a while.

Mr. Summers, Class of 1970: good to meet you last month. Somewhat startlingly, I can't find a single hit on Google or Duck with the name of our college and "ACME" or "hundt". Two decades of our alma mater seems destined to swirl down the memory hole.

Little Oscar: Happy birthday! "Take an Indian to lunch this week!" (It's not the precise Stan Freberg reference for the occasion, but it's an appropriate one.)

Free advice for a miserabler hurensohn with a pink tie

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My best guess about the Tea Party nullify-Obama movement and its activities has been that their period of useful idiocy to their paymasters will lapse when corporate oligarchs begin losing money or, alternately, when the political environment becomes too unpredictable to assure a constant and growing return on investment. There have been signs that the day is approaching, with outfits like Fox, The Wall Street Journal, and the Chamber of Commerce making moderate-sounding noises with respect especially to Tea Party intentions to interfere with raising the US debt ceiling. TPM ran the first direct story on the topic today, which I think is significant.

To be clear, I don't think anyone mentioned above is becoming more "moderate." But I do think that there is a growing demand for things to return to post-Reagan normal, meaning that Republicans play conventional bad cop to the Democrat good cop in the march toward globalization and its manifold "benefits" (such as destruction of national sovereignty in the areas of labor law, environmental protection, consumer rights, finance, etc.). So given my pessimistic view of things, I'm not sure there's any benefit to sweeping the Tea Party aside. But I have a plan for Herr John Boehner, galaxy-class sack of chickenshit and all-around SOB, that could exile them to the wilderness in short order.

Although there would be some scheming and logistics involved, not to mention more guts than Boehner ever had at his disposal, it's pretty simple: expel every one of them from the Republican Party.

I don't know the pertinent law, but I'm reasonably sure that nobody can run as a Republican (or Democrat) without sanction by the controlling party committee. For the sake of argument, let's just say that's true. So here's how it would work. If there really is a "silent majority" of Republicans who would vote for a clean CR if there were no danger of being primaried by a TP goon, then simply bring the clean CR to the floor to pass with Republicans and Democrats. But first make it clear to everyone in the caucus that a vote against it will mean that you may no longer promote yourself as a Republican. No more campaign funds or other party support. Most importantly: no rebellious TP'er will be slated as a Republican House candidate in 2014, whether as an incumbent or as a primary challenger.

US election laws make it very difficult for a third-party candidate to make the ballot. And with an irritated donor base consisting of corporate chieftains who don't like being ignored by peckerwoods and no-nothings, one would expect to see campaign money backing GOP party regulars in a majority of the cases.

The risks are self-evident, including a split of the right-wing vote to an extent that could lose a significant amount of GOP seats in swing-type districts. But in gerrymandered "safe" districts, I can't think of any reason why a new "moderate" Republican couldn't win the seat of an incumbent Tea Partier.

Republicans would surely lose the House. But let's face it, they've rarely controlled the House since the Great Depression. Yet the GOP has marched the whole country toward the end of the plank of representative democracy since Ronald Reagan smirked his way into the hearts of disillusioned Baby Boomers (i.e., dudes who couldn't tag enough pussy in the 1970s). Business as usual could return, and we could resume the lurch toward rule by transnational corporations---Republicans dragging regular people there kicking and screaming, alternating with the silky persuasive stylings of hip hierarchs like Barack Hussein Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Mr. Boehner: feel free to take my advice, but not that you owe me one jumbo Swiss bank safe deposit box stuffed with stocks, bonds, and lots of green stuff from Lloyd Blankfein's wallet.

Fifty50 fall product rollout!

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As Andrew Card once said (i.e., unintentionally confessed) about the timing of the Bush administration's public push for (an unprovoked) war (of aggression) on Iraq:

From a marketing point of view, you don't introduce new products in August.

And right he was. So here's mine:

The Opt Out movement.

There---it's now "a thing." After rolling around the canyons of my mind for at least a year.

You don't get to learn much about it tonight because I'm tired and have already written my quota of text for the day. But it's a real thing, at least to me. Here are a few basic points.

First: it can only be a movement with a lower-case em. In my view, the era of the Upper-case Em movement has been over for over 40 years, except as an adjunct to a sales campaign or a political swindle.

Second: I am not the leader of it, nor is anyone else. I don't even qualify as the discoverer of it, although I do qualify as a discoverer of it. Maybe the first discoverer with an internationally renowned blog, though.

Third: "opt out" doesn't mean "drop out."

Fourth: anyone can participate at no cost and, as far as I can tell, at no personal risk. All you have to do is... nothing.

Fifth: the basis of the Opt Out movement is a set of concrete freedoms that cannot be denied. These are not to be confused with abstract rights that, while inalienable, can be denied by anyone who owns a gun or a bank or a company you may wish to work for.

I'll throw in two other un-numbered points to close: the Opt Out movement is related to my occasional recent references to the late Vaclav Havel and his magnum essay, The Power of the Powerless. And it's arguably beyond the comprehension of the people who felt it was acceptable to wage chemical warfare on participants in The Occupy Movement.

Sound interesting?

No? Then buzz off and go watch the complete second season of Sanford's Got Talent.

Saturday Evening Prayer Meeting

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I discovered that this track was available at Amazon or iTunes as an MP3 and copped it for my "8th" playlist (meaning radio hits from the 8th grade slice of my life, 1966 - 67). It's part of my vinyl 45 collection, scavenged from a thrift store in the mid-70s, when it was still possible to find original-issue singles in reasonably good shape. But my personal vinyl digitization backup project is perpetually just over the time horizon, and I didn't feel like waiting that long to enjoy the song again. This YouTube version is in glorious mono, which I prefer for my pet radio hits.



My grand observation about this song, other than how solid it still sounds, was going to be that it would have been right at home on a Beach Boys album of the same era. It's every bit the production of "Good Vibrations," in my opinion, but surely didn't cost even a tenth of what Brian's masterpiece did (either financially or in terms of mental health). Then, in looking up this song on Wikipedia, I found that the production has more than one connection to Wilson and his dysfunctional band of surf boys.

Sagittarius was a band in a similar way that The Archies was a band. They were a pickup studio group produced by a gentleman named Gary Usher, who wrote lyrics for some early Brian Wilson compositions. The band he pulled together for this record included stand-in Beach Man Glenn Campbell; and Campbell's later replacement, Bruce Johnston. So the fellas knew something about singing close harmony... so there!

I'd love to know where Usher ganked the scratchy, needle-drop toreador clip during the psychedelic musique concrete-type bridge. Even back in 1967 I was certain I'd heard it before, probably from one or more cartoon soundtracks.

Anyway, it's not heard very much on the syndicated corporate oldies radio stations, which is fine by me.

My World Fell Down, Sagittarius (1967, Columbia 4-44163 [45 rpm single]), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial commentary, critical discussion, and educational purposes.

"It would have been bad news - in spades," he wrote

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As my interest has shifted from the topical news narrative to reports on the global deep state, I am somewhat startled at what is available in the public domain (if not on Public Radio). An example, stumbled across this evening: a Guardian report on a declassified document about a 1961 US nuclear weapons accident that few people under 60 have heard of:

The accident happened when a B-52 bomber got into trouble, having embarked from Seymour Johnson Air Force base in Goldsboro for a routine flight along the East Coast. As it went into a tailspin, the hydrogen bombs it was carrying became separated. One fell into a field near Faro, North Carolina, its parachute draped in the branches of a tree; the other plummeted into a meadow off Big Daddy's Road.

Jones found that of the four safety mechanisms in the Faro bomb, designed to prevent unintended detonation, three failed to operate properly. When the bomb hit the ground, a firing signal was sent to the nuclear core of the device, and it was only that final, highly vulnerable switch that averted calamity. "The MK 39 Mod 2 bomb did not possess adequate safety for the airborne alert role in the B-52," Jones concludes.

The Jones being quoted is a gentleman named Parker Jones, whom the Guardian identifies as "a senior engineer in the Sandia national laboratories responsible for the mechanical safety of nuclear weapons". The title of this post quotes a remark by Mr. Jones in characterizing the results if that fourth safety switch had failed along with the other three.

It seems clear to me that the archives of the global deep state must be jam-packed with files that are every bit as exciting as this one. Read the whole Guardian story; it's short.

Friday Night Prayer Meeting

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Another piece (of several posted previously) masterminded by one of the most ubiquitous music men of the past 60 years.



I can't remember what I've written about Quincy Jones in the past and don't feel like looking it up, but his fingerprints are all over jazz, pop, rock, and movie scores that even people somewhat familiar with the man wouldn't suspect. The Wikipedia writeup covers a lot, but misses interesting projects. He worked for, with, or over everyone from Dizzy Gillespie to Lesley Gore, Billy Eckstein, Michael Jackson, and Steven Spielberg. He did lay his share of stinkers along the way, unfortunately. His "Soul Bossa Nova" is loathsome, and practically ruins his 1962 album Big Band Bossa Nova to my overly delicate sensibilities (it's that stupid, flutey theme used in Austin Powers movies). Also, his experimentation with trying to make Louis Jordan into a rock and roll star on Mercury is interesting for an occasional listen, but the results are fairly sickening to a Jordan fan even if they sound swell in a way.

The album where this track originates, Walking in Space, is a record that made a number of alienated white high-school boys feel pretty hip. In listening, you can probably tell why. It's lush, it swings, and it's easily accessible to anyone who wants to hear. Upon recently repurchasing this album on CD, I find that I'm not quite as enamored with it as I was in 1969. Of course, I'm also no longer enamored of railroad-stripe bell bottoms and my electric blue spread-collar button-up type shirt purchased from Chess King.

Even when I was a teenager, there was a thing or two that sat wrong with me about the sound, but I couldn't put it into words. (I was just then emerging from my Leaded Gasoline Phase.) Today I'd express that uneasiness as two related criticisms. One is that the whole project pretty much talks down to many jazz listeners, even younger ones, with its relentless mellowness and too-easy solos. That recording session was staffed with major stars of all jazz eras up to that time, including "moldy figs" like Kai Winding and Snooky Young as well as younger giants like Roland Kirk, Ray Brown, and Eric Gale.  My other beef is that Jones uses only background vocals throughout without any prominent lead. (Even the solo vocal on the title track is produced like a background.) The orchestral setting seems designed to showcase a strong vocalist, but instead Jones arranges for an ethereal collection of background voices who serve roughly the same purpose here that go-go dancers served in mid-sixties rock. Today, this strikes me as somewhat creepy.

But I'm being too much of a dick about it. There's no reason to be any more of a snob about the sound of this album than Thriller, which I really enjoy a few times a year. I have plenty of space in my life for hookey, easy listening music, which is why I put it on the player tonight.

Killer Joe, Quincy Jones (1969, from "Walking In Space," Verve 314 543 499-2 [2000 CD reissue]) via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial commentary, critical discussion, and educational purposes.

Posting about topical current events is pointless

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[Editor's note: the following text isn't written very well.]

I'm about done with trying to post about stuff that's in the news now-now-now. I'll fade away sometime during this Syria issue and try to focus on a bigger picture with reference to journalists and writers who perform real reporting and analysis outside of the disgusting narrative-formation machine.

Was just listening to President Peace Prize on the radio, in high dudgeon, ask his "liberal friends" how they could reconcile their beliefs with images of children writhing and dying on cold hospital floors in Syria. This kind of argument is one of the core tactics of classic propaganda: an appeal to emotion that bypasses reason. Therefore, it's not an argument at all. Since our schools don't teach rhetoric and applied logic, this cheap-jack public speaking technique ties most people in knots---especially liberals who are "troubled" by issues such as the Obama-propelled NSA surveillance state and the proposed launching of missile attacks on weak countries without a compelling US national interest. Liberal blogs are full of sentiment along the lines that while they don't agree with the President on these issues, he's still a sincere and awesome man who they like and who shares their values. And this sentiment also carries a halo effect to produce comments like this one from Balloon Juice:

Even with the NSA and Syria and whatever other Watergates I’ve forgotten about, it’s hard not to feel good about the future of the Democratic party right now. 

All because Rush Limbaugh wrote a stupid book that must be mocked. Why should this fool be cheered by the future of a Democratic party that can swallow any Republican-type policy atrocity as long as their own guy is in charge? It's as if they think Republicans don't already control all three branches of the government through obstructionism, domination of mainstream media, and undiminished mastery of fomenting the worst instincts of the populace. The Democratic version of this crypto-fascist performance art is acceptable because they like their president's style?

Apropos of a bigger picture, I'd like to suggest a few books that offer some nonconventional perspective. Importantly, they were authored outside the corporate narratives that constrain our imaginations. Start with Four Arguments For The Elimination Of Television, by Jerry Mander. You can get by with reading Part I of the book; Part II is the same material, but written in a more scholarly style with documentation and references. (A significant amount of the material pertaining to the physical harmfulness of CRT-based TVs is passe or overcome by later developments, but all the important principles remain valid and prophetic, in my view.)

If you want to improve your understanding of political conservatism and all its apparent self-contradictions, read The Reactionary Mind, by Corey Robin. Starting from the correct proposition that universities do a poor job of educating students---even political science students---about conservatism and its origins, Robin gets to the origins of the ideology back to Thomas Hobbes, who even predates conservative godfather Edmund Burke. Using the writings of all the seminal conservative thinkers, up through Ayn Rand and Bill Buckley (and later), Robin makes a compelling case that the real tenets of conservatism are much different than what it's proponents have professed to the rest of us.

Finally, track down a copy of Vaclav Havel's Power of the Powerless to read, from the pen of a 20th century dissident with more guts than an abattoir, how authoritarian states begin to lose their hold when citizens refocus on the true aims of life. And remember that formulation: the true aims of life, or the authentic aims of life, or the genuine aims of life.

This last document is important for what I wish to start writing about as I can purge myself of the "dailiness" of the corporate narrative machine. Following it is such a drag, and trying to discuss it with people who believe in it ("news junkies") is worse.

Most interesting thing you'll read this week about foreign relations

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Saturday Night Fish Fry

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I've always considered this a gorgeous pop song, with the mix and more economical edit of the original single being the superior version.



As a lad I responded little and thought even less about pop music lyrics. The main reason is that the words sounded largely unintelligible to my ears, and so I paid attention to vocals almost exclusively in terms of their musical characteristics.

About 10 years later, when my brain was fully developed and I could both understand the words and parse their meaning, I remember being shocked by just how sociopathic the lyrics of this tune really are. By this time in "rock and roll history" (i.e., 1966), there were plenty of really cold lyrics about boy/girl-type stuff, such as Under My Thumb and Norwegian Wood (although I didn't "get" those, either). But, for cryin' out loud, I Saw Her Again is not only pretty, but quite a sweet and jaunty little production. As I say, this tale of a man deliberately and remorselessly exploiting an unsuspecting woman is downright creepy.

Only tonight, when I as looking for a version to post here, I learned that the story behind the composition is even more twisted than I'd suspected. The following is an extract from the notes posted about this cut at YouTube:

Mamas & Papas leader, John Phillips revealed in an interview that the "I Saw Her Again" was composed after he learned that Michelle Phillips (John's wife and fellow group member) and Denny Doherty (also a group member) were having an affair while the group was on tour. He laughingly told Dick Bartley that he wrote the song "so Denny would have to sing it on stage every night and feel guilty".  

You may remember reading in recent years that Mr. Phillips is said to have been quite a piece of work, so his expressed mirth in the above text supports the squick factor of the whole production, as I experienced it when I first paid attention to the lyrics. And because of that (but not the whole drugging-his-daughter-for-incest thing, which allegedly occurred 13 years later), I enjoy this song now more than I ever did before. It's analogous to a principle used in formulating perfumes: every world-class scent includes a minuscule portion of a gut-wrenching odor such as vomit, urine-saturated rags, or rotting flesh. Maybe this is why some of our greatest artists are, in their personal lives, monsters. Or the converse may be true.

Also, for historical interest, go to the notes on YouTube to find out for once and for all whether the famous false start on the outchorus (at 2:15 in the video) was intentional or not. Hint: it was a production error---just what it sounds like---but producer Lou Adler thought it sounded awesome, so they kept it.  

I Saw Her Again, The Mamas & The Papas (1966, Dunhill 4031 [45 rpm single]), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial commentary, critical discussion, and educational purposes.

I wonder if there will be a "debate" on this one

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Kerry Doesn't Rule Out Boots On The Ground If Syria 'Implodes'

I wonder what he doesn't rule out when America implodes.

Unstated assumptions

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It would be helpful for purposes of coherence for the author to explain the unstated assumptions of this post and this one:

President Obama is "going to Congress" about Syria exclusively as an exercise in political theater. I'm old enough to remember his inspirational, New-Deal-type State of the Union message back in January, in which he made a lot of pretty noises about his intention to act on the wealth gap, climate change, and so on. His speech was to thank all the progressive-leaning suckers (including me) who voted for him in hopes that he would repay us by being a more liberal-minded president than Mitt Romney. For more than 4 years now, however, he has been consolidating a terrifying surveillance state into a permanent feature of our democracy. He has done nothing to keep banks from literally stealing houses and possessions from victims of financial racketeering (because "these cases are very complicated"). He has exercised no meaningful political muscle on behalf of basic liberal causes such as reproductive rights, voting rights, or card-check legislation to give union organizers a fair shake.

President North Star knows that the Congress will authorize any action against Syria that he likes. And he also "knows," as expressed by anonymous administration sources via authorized leaks, that he doesn't need congressional approval as long as Secretary Kerry can rattle off half a dozen justifications for military strikes in the style of former Ubergruppenfuehrer Powell.

Some time ago, US policy and media elites determined that The State need not be bothered by the collective opinion of its citizens in matters of military aggression.

Saturday Night Fish Fry

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A nice, nostalgic kettle of fish for you to fry:



This is the UK release of a brisk little ditty by a cheeky group of RAF personnel. The lyrics were toned down for the US market, supposedly, but the only difference I can detect here is the inclusion of a line about birth control... which would still be too controversial for the US pop charts here in good old 2013.

I noticed on the label that the tune was composed and produced by Jonathan King, who is best known (to me) for his 1965 wimp-rock ballad "Everyone's Gone To The Moon." Evidently, according to Wikipedia, Mr. King has had his hands in lots of projects over the years, ranging from work with Genesis, 10cc, the Bay City Rollers, a film called Vile Pervert: The Musical, and a 2001 conviction on charges of sexual assault of five teenage boys between 1983 and 1989.

It's Good News Week, Hedgehoppers Anonymous (1965, Decca F.12241), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial commentary, critical discussion, and educational purposes.

President Peace Prize asks the world what he believes to be a tough question

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I listened to the President's statement today about the inevitable message that will be sent to Syrian President Bashar Hafez al-Assad in the form of Tomahawk cruise missiles that are certain to destroy a number of people not named Bashar Hafez al-Assad. I was listening out of a portion of the corner of one of my two ears, so my brain has no accurate transcription of his remarks, and I am too lazy to look them up. (Plenty of others are busy doing that right now, though, so go read their stupid blogs if you like your disingenuous political speeches to be quoted directly.)

Anyway, there came a point where President North Star asked The World if they were prepared to deal with the consequences of "doing nothing" about Assad's terrifying new way of dealing death to his citizens. I guess this was the President's way of challenging The World to justify the position that a nation should hold its fire until an achievable military objective can be defined and articulated. I suppose the President thinks his question is tantamount to The Riddle Of The Sphinx. It's not, really. One retort might be along the lines of "yeah, conducting chemical warfare violates the norms of 'civilized warfare.' And so does committing an act of war against a sovereign nation that doesn't pose one scintilla of a military risk to the citizens of the United States.

Also, does anyone remember President Peace Prize "sending a message" to the President of the University of California - Davis 2 years ago when her campus dicks waged chemical warfare against peaceful student protestors during the November 2011 Occupy sit-ins?

If the President wanted to "send a message" to Mr. Assad about using chemical warfare against his citizens, why didn't he do that 3 days before the attacks, since US intelligence agencies knew in advance that it was going to happen? Or, at least, why didn't he "send a message" to the intended victims of the gas?

Wait: do US citizens still get to ask rhetorical questions these days?

President North Star wants to send a message

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There may have been a bygone era when the pen was mightier than the sword. But that was then. Now, President North Star---the most peaceful Earthling of 2009*---evidently believes that the cruise missile is more powerful than a menacing diplomatic cable to a pipsqueak tyrant in the Middle East.

If it were possible to fly a few Tomahawks up the fundament of Bashar Hafez al-Assad and his senior staff in order to "send the message" that he needs to die, then war hawks and doves would at least have an issue to debate. But it seems more likely that the people who will be dying in the inevitable "surgical strike" on Syria had no meaningful role in the acquisition or use of banned chemical weapons last week. And, to me at least, it seems just as likely that Mr. Assad will go about his business using whatever materiel suits his purpose.

If President North Star would like to send someone a message, my suggestion would be to marshal his eloquence and aim it at Russia and China. Those are the actors who thwart the (potentially) constructive involvement of the only authority that has any business intervening with force against Assad's government, namely the UN. Why not spend a week or two letting the world know who provides Assad with his munitions and cover? Why won't President North Star use his pulpit to take the world to church on this crisis?

(Answer: because it might disrupt some corporate cash flows).
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* Unimportant observation: looking back at the text of the post I linked to above, I'll take a puny victory lap about the main point, but cringe at how naively I framed it. Yuck!

There *are* no liberals

*
My heading is an exaggeration, since Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Alan Grayson qualify. But this is a point I've been trying to make more and more for the past 8 years. This piece by RJ Eskow makes the same point, but mostly not as directly as it could be made. Here's the guts of it:

Since his re-election, Barack Obama has proposed to cut Social Security, echoed the deficit hysteria of the right, continued to negotiate NAFTA-like trade deals in secret (hidden from Congress and the public but available to 600 “corporate advisors”), and continued to privatize the military/national security state. (He has also pursued the most aggressive anti-whistleblower presidential campaign in American history.)

And yet 85 percent of registered Democrats either “somewhat approve” or “strongly approve” of Obama’s performance, according to a recent Washington Post/ABC News poll. While the level and intensity of Democratic support has dipped somewhat, these figures are still surprisingly robust for a President who moved to cut Democrats’ signature achievement – Social Security – and whose other economic policies are so out of line with his party’s base.

Eskow's point is that corporations are using social policy to distract liberal voters from issues of economic justice just as conservatives have been doing with "Kansas" for decades. Democrats and progressive-type voters will tolerate an awful lot of right-wing economic engineering from their liberal heroes as long as they are on the right side of the gay-marriage and immigration arguments.

Since Day 2, the Clintons, in my view, have been the archetypal smiling-faces-sometimes conservatives---every bit as despicable to me as Joe Lieberman. They know how to charm you into silence as you watch them steal the silverware. President North Star earned a lifetime membership in that club of vipers upon following his terrific New-Deal-type inauguration speech rhetoric with centrist appeasement... as if Social Security is his to compromise away. At this point I think I'd rather have Rand Paul than Hillary Clinton as the next president.

Democrats are Tylenol: they keep the fever low enough that the virus can stay in command.

Maybe he could move to Arizona [updated]

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It may be the case that George Zimmerman now sees Florida's Stand Your Ground law as a sort of double-edged petard:

His brother said the former neighborhood watch volunteer was still processing the reality that he wouldn’t serve prison time for the killing, which Zimmerman, 29, has maintained was an act of self-defense. A jury found him not guilty of second-degree murder late Saturday night and declined to convict him on a lesser charge of manslaughter.

However, with many critics angry over his acquittal, his freedom may be limited. “He’s going to be looking over his shoulder the rest of his life,” Robert Zimmerman Jr. said during an interview on CNN.

Somebody should have thought about that before, as Johnny Cash once described it, he shot a man in Sanford just to watch him die.

It's a counter-intuitive outcome, though: when you "stand your ground" it comes to pass that your "freedom may be limited." Maybe even as much as Trayvon Martin's.

Update:  now, according to a musician's son, there's evidently stand your ground, freedom-of-expression style:

Lester [Chambers] was just assaulted on stage at The Russell City Hayward Blues Festival by a crazed woman after dad dedicated ‘People Get Ready’ to Trayvon Martin. He is on the way to the hospital now.

Tick tock Tick KOO-koo!