Ugh Redux

Another damn cold.

I just got over one not long ago, though this one doesn't have the congestion--yet.  Knock on wood.

I'm clearly doing something wrong.  I can't recall the last time I've been this sick back-to-back.

Immune system finally tanking?  I need to remind myself I'm not invincible any more.  Sad thing is when I'm not sick I feel great!

Oh well, lots of football and basketball to watch from my sick bed.  Reddit is too cool for words.


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Thump! Oomph!

How long are American liberals going to put up with this bullshit?  How long before they wash the mud from their eyes and acknowledge what should be as plain as the nose on their face; that their precious investigation of Donald Trump is nothing more than a witch hunt designed to intimidate or destroy political rivals?

The persecution of Jill Stein strips away the facade once and for all exposing Russia-gate as a complete fraud that is being used to exact revenge on the adversaries of Hillary Clinton and her reprobate friends. Even the New York Times admits as much.

Why is there still no evidence of  wrongdoing after more than a year of relentless, non-stop investigations?  Why are there just accusations, allegations and baseless claims?--MW

The Democrats take a counter punch to the gut from a good fighter.


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Bruce and Tom

I once wondered, did BS like the RATM cover of "The Ghost of Tom Joad?"

Whatever, but this collaboration worked.


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Pizza, Plagiarism, Poor Weather and the Inevitable

Hope y'all had a great Christmas.

Mine was pretty good, but I missed the party I was invited to because I didn't feel like fighting the snowy-cold, icy weather that moved into Portland on Christmas Eve.

I don't own a car, and when it's very cold in this town the trains seldom run on time, if at all.  Same with the buses, which must chain up and battle the hills and narrow streets that make up a large portion of the city's terrain.

So I stayed home and divided my time between the NBA and the NFL.  I ventured to the store and got a pizza for myself and baked it up on the cool Pizzazz "oven" my daughter sent me for a Christmas present.  I washed the pizza down with PBR and called it a night.

Speaking of gifts, a nice one came my way on Christmas Eve when an old friend donated to Round Bend Press.  He likes this blog, which makes him very special, and probably rare!  Thanks old friend!

Now, if I could just get more of my unknown readers from around the world to pony up I could buy more pizza and beer as needed. Haha.

                                         ***

Here is an interesting piece by the editors of CounterPunch.  They've published some of my work, and along with appreciating their occasional interest in what I've written I've long admired them for all the hard work they do as editors.

The volume of mind-bending, insightful pieces they publish and the tight deadline they must meet daily is hella more than this lazy procrastinator is capable of, that is for sure. A slip up like the one they describe in their "Alice Donovan" piece is understandable.

Radical journalism comes with its risks and hazards, as well as its rewards, just like everything else.

                                        ***

In a few weeks I'll turn 67.  That doesn't seem possible or real given the history of my lifestyle.  There's a genetic component, I know, but I've done everything within my power to override it at times. My paternal grandmother lived to 105, but she was a saintly prohibitionist.  My mom and her mom, two more saints, lived to 90. My dad, certainly not a saint, died at 51 in an accident, but he was otherwise in good health at the time despite battling mental illness, another genetic marker I've lived with.  I've had a few accidents and close calls myself over the years, but luck has been on my side thus far.

Not a chance here that I'll live very much longer.  When I think about age I think about Vietnam.  Who knows what might have happened to me if my choices and luck were much worse at that crucial time?

Maybe missing that Christmas party was a good thing.  I could have ended my days by falling into a snowbank on the way home, perhaps a slightly better scenario than dying in a rice paddy in Nam in 1969, but nonetheless disconcerting to think about.


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Merry Christmas!!

Christmas Poem*


Them Russians have made this a very difficult
Christmas for Americans because Putin is evil!

Them Russians have pilfered our clothes and
made us run naked into the abyss of our dreams.

Them Russians have put our heads on a block
and brought a bloody blade down upon our necks.

Them Russians have taken our  humor to Mars
and made it a plaything for Putin's henchmen.

Them Russians have stolen our freedoms and
traded them to Raul Castro for a barrel of rum.

Them Russians made us despise democracy
and cringe every time we hear Hillary cackle.

Them Russians abused the good name of Fyodor
and gave us thousands of inferior novelists.

Them Russians have greased us with Slavic
idioms when all we ever knew was Noam Chomsky.

Them Russians have seized our souls and placed
them in an unbearable coldwater flat in Omaha.

Them Russians have forced us into the fields
to harvest the crops amid our New Gilded Age.

Them Russians have destroyed our democracy and
given us dear illusions we hold like rare gourds.

Them Russians are armed to the teeth and
threatening our innocence amid the "war on terror."

Them Russians have created the wealth gap
in America and caused our hunger in St. Louis.

Them Russians have created our American anger
and the racism storming through U.S. cop shops.

Them Russians are giving our Democrats and
plutocrats a vodka headache and thirty lashes.

Them Russians have little in common with you
while you are under the spell of CNN and FOX.

Them Russians have designed a colonial U.S.
that gifted us an enormous opioid dependency.

Them Russians want to take our healthcare and
give it to the profiteers lurking in Topeka.

Them Russians want to steal American babies
and send them to work camps in Siberia.

Them Russians have turned our Christmas
into a disaster and abysmal holiday in Utah.

Them Russians have destroyed our ability to
think for ourselves and now we're all Russians!

Them Russians have surrounded the Statue of
Liberty and mocked our corrupt institutions.

Them Russians have infiltrated our CIA and FBI
and made love with our lists of poor dissidents.

Them Russians have taken over our media and
embarrassed the animals in the Bronx Zoo.

Them Russians have done it again and
tricked us and turned Santa Claus against us.

Them Russians are the same mean old Russians
who plotted against our Christmas in 1962 Idaho.

Them Russians are so dangerous that we need
more bombs to scare them away and save Christmas!

Them Russians O them Russians who want to ruin
our Christmas O them Russians are everywhere!


*With apologies to A. Ginsberg


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On and On

Nothing new to report.


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We're All Tom Joad

I wonder if Springsteen liked this very much.

I'm reading his "Born to Run" memoir, so perhaps he'll address it in the last pages where I'm fast approaching.

Good book, btw.


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Insanity

The permanent lie is not circumscribed by reality. It is perpetuated even in the face of overwhelming evidence that discredits it. It is irrational. Those who speak in the language of truth and fact are attacked as liars, traitors and purveyors of “fake news.” They are banished from the public sphere once totalitarian elites accrue sufficient power, a power now granted to them with the revoking of net neutrality. The iron refusal by those who engage in the permanent lie to acknowledge reality, no matter how transparent reality becomes, creates a collective psychosis.--CH

Two to read.

This one from Hedges.

And this one at Common Dreams.

They dovetail so nicely that it is impossible to not see what is happening.

Unless of course you refuse to believe reality.



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Archive Project

When Gabriel García Márquez died in 2014, it was said that only the Bible had sold more books in Spanish than the Colombian writer’s work: Love in the Time of Cholera, The Autumn of the Patriarch, Chronicle of a Death Foretold, The General in His Labyrinth… and yes, of course, One Hundred Years of Solitude, the 1967 novel William Kennedy described in a New York Times review as “the first piece of literature since the Book of Genesis that should be required reading for the entire human race.”--OC

For all of you fans of magical realism and GG Marquez.

Open Culture is great.  What a resource for scholars.


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Pilger

I first understood the power of the documentary during the editing of my first film, The Quiet Mutiny.

In the commentary, I make reference to a chicken, which my crew and I encountered while on patrol with American soldiers in Vietnam.

“It must be a Vietcong chicken – a communist chicken,” said the sergeant. He wrote in his report: “enemy sighted”.

The chicken moment seemed to underline the farce of the war – so I included it in the film.

That may have been unwise.--JP

John Pilger on the power of documentaries.



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Football Report

Because big-time D-1 football has been reduced to a calculated political ploy to advance the agenda of the Power-5 conferences and make a ton of money for the usual suspects (ESPNSEC, etc.), and because you'd have to be a dolt like GW Bush to take seriously the CFP committee that has Condi Rice on board, and because a real playoff isn't coming to the FBS world any time soon...well, you don't have to despair.

The FCS 1-AA quarterfinals (the elite 8) commence tonight and continue tomorrow all day.

Just the excuse I need to avoid the Army/Navy game!

Speaking of football, Oregon promoted Mario Cristobal to its head coach position today, a hire I like personally because I think he's a better football coach than the one who left for Florida State.

You can tell he's a lot smarter than Taggart, if brains count for anything in college football, just by listening to him answer media questions.

Figures he's smart.  An ex-Miami and NFL offensive lineman.  O-linemen and QBs are usually the smartest players on any team.

Who knows?  Maybe he'll stick around for a few years.


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Ecstatic Weekend

Both terrorism and a revanchist Russia represent figments of horror in the minds of western citizens. They are the bête noire with which we can shape our worldview and pepper our cocktail conversations. We do not realize that Islamic terror is largely a product of American terror. We do not see that American aggression provokes Russian self-defense. As such, these orientalist caricatures represent the hypocrisy of imperial neoliberalism, which is forever flying the false flag of economic justice and democratic freedom over its just-conquered capitals. Inhabitants of those broken cities know better, as their standard of living plummets and their dictators are replaced by juntas. They know the west is like Joseph Conrad’s sepulchral city, where an alabaster exterior hides a crypt of rotting flesh. That is the real vision that western media works so feverishly to disguise, one no sane person could stomach. That’s why the media must craft fresh Frankensteins at such a feverish pace. Fairy tales of secular missionaries bringing the gift of free-market democracy to the benighted tribes of the east.--JH

Do your civic duty this weekend and read up.

You'll be surprised how good it makes you feel.


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A Dark and Rainy Night

Willie Taggart demonstrated that he wasn't a very good coach when he couldn't keep Oregon afloat after the team's star QB, Justin Herbert, went down for five games with a broken collarbone. Oregon was 1-4 in that stretch before Herbert recovered.

Oregon's fans were quick to blame the sub QB, an inexperienced kid from Arizona named Braxton Burmeister, but the true story is that Taggart couldn't adapt the team's game to take advantage of the other talent on the team.

Taggart was a very bad and hopelessly lost coach without Herbert.  At age 41, he still has time to learn how to coach, he just won't be doing it at Oregon.

That may not be a bad thing in the long run.

In the mean time, I hope he's considerate enough to write Justin Herbert a thank you note.


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The Next Mass Movement

Now that it looks like the President Trump and the Republican Congress will succeed in ramming through the most regressive tax bill (not “reform” bill as the media keep slipping into calling it) in the history of the income tax, it’s time to gear up for the real battle — a battle that calls for not more lame Soros-funded, Democratic Party-led “resistance,” but rather a deadly serious mass movement to defend and expand Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and what remains of federal welfare assistance.--DL

Read all about it!


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Free Music!

This might interest Neil Young fans.


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Truth to Power

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Tired

My Feedjit traffic gadget goes wacky every now and again.  It's been awhile since the straight-up  hourly click from San Francisco invaded RBPD.

Now one visit from Southend, UK, and it reappears sporadically, but way too often to mean anything except the gadget is failing again.

All of this baffles me of course.  Is it technology or humanity screwing around with me?  Does it matter?

My cold (if that is what it is) is a bitch.  One week and counting, and only slightly better.  Phlegm and sinus drain about 50 percent of what it was.  Shit.

Your weekend reading.

That's all, folks.


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