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.


TS

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.


TS 

Bruce and Tom

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

Whatever, but this collaboration worked.


TS

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.


TS

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


TS

On and On

Nothing new to report.


TS

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.


TS

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.



TS

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.


TS

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.



TS

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.


TS

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.


TS

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.


TS

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!


TS

Free Music!

This might interest Neil Young fans.


TS

Truth to Power

TS

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.


TS

Poem

Lamentations of the Old Radical

The radical old man lets himself go
when he knows there is nothing left
to be done with the world.

His revolutionary clothes become a
little tattered; his teeth, if he has
them, glow an awful yellow; his pot

belly grows harder than love as his
liver begins to tighten up and fail.
Sometimes the old radical will grow

his hair out long to concoct the look;
the pluck to signal he no longer cares
what common folks prefer to believe.

The radical old man laments his limp
penis, for it was such a tool years ago!
He laments cities where the houses are

huddled together like recluses, the
homes drawing people into themselves.
No doubt the radical old man dreams

of radical women and families. He could
write a mind-blowing poem--but for the
old man his lamentations prevail. To sit

in front of  technology and force a yell?
Yearning is neither something natural,
nor something he does willingly or well.

TS

Willie Taggart's Bad Form

Oregon offered coach Willie Taggart a new deal last weekend with the hope that he’ll stay in Eugene even if a coveted job in his home state opens this weekend, SI.com has learned. If Taggart accepts, the new deal would pay a little more than $20 million over five years. But Taggart has reason to wait. If Jimbo Fisher leaves Florida State for Texas A&M, Taggart could be a candidate for the Seminoles’ job.--SI.com

Here in Oregon we're watching the slime ooze out of the beautiful game of American college football.

I wasn't a fan of this hire in the first place, figuring something like this would happen.  You bring a guy in from Florida.  He gets homesick and misses his recently widowed mother.

He talks a big game, raises platitudes to new heights.  Oregon is a great job, unlimited potential to win it all. Got everything, facilities, great fans, money up the yang hole, etc., etc.

But in the end it is as meaningless as empty words.

I agree with this.

Oregon ought to be looking for a way to fire Willie Taggart and find someone who wants to be in Eugene.  Someone who will say it loud and clear and mean it.

No half-assed jokers. No con men. The game Taggart is playing is all about the bad form, the sleaze that surrounds college football, and other games as well.

I'm tired of it.


TS

Frosting

The US government, a lot of heavy-breathing members of Congress, and the bulk of the corporate media in the US at this point are suggesting that journalists like me are at best “useful idiots” helping to promote Russian propaganda in the US — propaganda that our government claims is designed to sow discord among the citizenry and to undermine support for American democracy. Why, RT has been accused of such heinous behavior, according to former National Security Director James Clapper “promoting a particular point of view, disparaging our system, our alleged hypocrisy about human rights, etc.”--DL

People are clueless, brainwashed and absurdly stupid.  That's the real news.


TS

Recovery

Oregon's bball team isn't ready for the big time.

Oregon's football team is good when the star QB is healthy.

And Oregon's X-rated blogger TS isn't healthy at all, spent the entire weekend with the most fucked-up cold/flu symptoms he's had since '10.

He recalls that year because it is when he came in from the cold and moved into a warm pad, and immediately got sick from the sudden clime-change and soft life.

The antibiotics were flowing like cheap wine back then; well, I needed the same Friday and Saturday.  Alas, I resisted the ER like a liberal Democrat.  I haven't slept well since Thurs.

Today?  Today, I am finally feeling better.

Hope for tomorrow.


TS

To Hell with Duke

Some of college basketball's biggest stars, players and coaches, are headed to Portland for the PK80 this weekend, a basketball tournament to honor Nike founder Phil Knight a few weeks ahead of his 80th birthday.

Nike of course has revolutionized college sports on the backs of impoverished workers in Southeast Asia.  Been doing so for years now.

Partnered with ESPN Events and the 16 Nike-branded schools involved, the world's largest sports-related apparel company is dressing everyone in fancy, colorful uniforms suitable for TV viewing and calling the Moda Center and the Memorial Coliseum home for three days of run and gun fun.

Like the hype around the modern game of basketball itself, the 16-team tourney (actually two simultaneous 8-team tournaments) at Portland's two large basketball arenas, is a bit of modern overkill.

Here is ESPN's description of the event Disney created to entertain basketball junkies and sell a shitload of advertising during this first of two traditional U.S. holidays; one being a gigantic celebration of gluttony and bird-slaughter while bestowing metaphysical thanks to our lucky stars that America's initial genocide turned out so well for the white man; the second being the annual shopping and gift-giving ritual that makes America great and theoretically devoted to Christ-like goodness, if not Christ himself.

In the West we shop to prove our faith in God and his celestial sun/son, while in other Kingdoms people tend to march off to sacred cities to show respect for the Great Father, as happens in the Middle East during their sacred holidays.

Or something like that.

Anyway, you can be sure that the poor laborers of Southeast Asia won't be in Portland this weekend to watch the game they've sewn their hearts out for, though some of their bosses surely will be.  It's a spendy proposition.

But that's just the way it goes, doesn't it?

I'm debating whether I should spend my last centavos to go.  I'm that fucking free, mind you, though as poor as a stitcher from "over there," the one with a travel ban tattooed on his forehead.

The tourney is just across the river and the concrete-jungle parking lot from my pad here in the good old USA, so at least I don't have to buy an airline ticket and rent a price-gouged hotel room for the weekend just to get a big boner on for my team, the Mighty Oregon Ducks.

On the football front, the annual game between Oregon and OSU, or the Civil War as it is quaintly known, will be played Saturday at 4 p.m.

Oregon must win to avoid a second straight embarrassing loss to the heavily dogged Beavs.

Oregon has its QB back.  If he can stay on the field the Ducks should win.  Unless the unimaginable happens.

I don't want to think about it.  Or, I'll put it this way.  If first-year Oregon coach Willie Taggart really is contemplating jumping back to Florida next season because he misses the sunshine (which would be bad form), he'd best go ahead and leave if he loses to OSU.

Duck fans will otherwise make his life hellish.


TS

Praise for an Idiot

As Alfred McCoy demonstrates in his recent book, In the Shadows of the American Century, that is a particularly disingenuous description of a 70-year history in which Washington supported and, in a remarkable number of cases was directly involved in, the destruction of free societies. A list of examples would perhaps begin with the 1953 British and U.S.-backed coup against the democratically elected Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh that would install the despotic Shah in power in that country.  It would certainly continue with the 1954 U.S. and United Fruit Company coup against Jacobo Arbenz, the democratically elected president of Guatemala (an early instance of Washington’s post-World War II “encouragement” of anything-but-free-trade); the 1960 CIA-backed coup against, and the murder of, Congolese Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba; and the 1973 military coup in Chile. An honest history would also include the active “encouragement” of societies that were anything but free, including those run by juntas, dictators, or military governments in Greece, Brazil, Argentina, the Philippines, Indonesia, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras, Uruguay, Iraq, and South Korea, to name just a few.--RG

The sickening rebirth of GW Bush.


TS

World of Hurt

Trudeau, Merkel, Turnbull, Macron and Obama, along with the Clintons and the United Kingdom’s Tony Blair, represent the last desperate phase of corporate capitalism. Once their sunny faces are spurned, the face of hate rises to take their place. The con artists and thieves, no longer hiding behind the curtains, come out to pillage in the open, actively making war on the anemic democratic institutions, from the press to the courts, all of which long ago surrendered to corporate power. These protofascists rely for control on the array of undemocratic tools legalized by their “moderate” predecessors—wholesale surveillance, militarized police, the criminalizing of dissent, the primacy of “law and order” and the revoking of due process and other rights by judicial and legislative fiat.--CH

A proper essay to start your week.

Have you read any George Saunders, the American short-form satirist?  Read out of his 2006 collection, "In Persuasion Nation,"  over the weekend.  Talking puppets and vegetables, lives lived in perpetual commercials and reality TV programs, etc.  The usual stuff of American insolence and confusion rife for the plucking. Quite funny and worth a chance if you haven't gotten to him yet (or never planned to).


TS

Getting There

The weekend has mercifully arrived, and you know the drill and the rules.

Your assignment is to start here and to read on until you collapse from information overload.

After a short recovery period of your own design (some people need more time than others), you may then get on with the rest of the things you deem important to do with the remaining hours of your weekend.

You will not wear any of your new knowledge as an affectation.

You will become serene and knowing among friends and neighbors, devoid of illusions and despair.

You will laugh often and freely; you will have arrived, finally, as a human being.


TS

RIP Bobby Doerr

After the 1936 season in San Diego, Doerr spent the winter fly-fishing for steelhead in Oregon, where he fell in love with the teacher in the one-room schoolhouse after meeting her at a dance. The next spring Doerr was called up to the Red Sox to join future Hall of Fame stars Joe Cronin, Jimmie Foxx and Lefty Grove.--ESPN

Because every Oregon town had a one-room schoolhouse in 1936, ha ha.

I wonder what Doerr thought of the white-water rafting crowd taking over his river?

Or this gang.

Jeez, he retired the year I was born, albeit somewhat early from injuries. Ninety-nine is really old.


TS

Bring It On

There are within America’s corporate power structures individuals, parties and groups that find the hysterical, imbecilic and irrational rants of demagogues such as Trump repugnant. They seek a return to the polished mendacity of politicians such as Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. They hope to promote the interests of global capitalism by maintaining the fiction of a functioning democracy and an open society. These “moderates” or “liberals,” however, are also the architects of the global corporate pillage. They created the political vacuum that the demagogues and proto-fascist movements have filled. They blind themselves to their own complicity. They embrace their own myths—such as the belief that former FBI Director James Comey and the Russians were responsible for the election of Trump—to avoid examining the social inequality that is behind the global crisis and their defeat.--CH

Too good to ignore.


TS

Brian Berg

I received a note over the weekend from TD, a former restaurant co-worker of mine who was a student at a Portland art school in the mid-90s.  He didn't mention where he lives now, but I know at one point he earned entry to Hunter College in NYC to pursue his advanced art degrees.

I hired this kid to be the restaurant's weekend morning chef.  He did a helluva job, too.

He found my blog when he was "feeling nostalgic," he said.  He discovered my piece on Kal Tanner, a Portland musician TD and most others in our crowd really liked, which caused me to look up what I'd written.

That is how I discovered that another music friend who breezed in and out of the old neighborhood--when it was teeming with artistic and musical talent, from the daily performance art of one's existence to the bands that provided the sound track to that existence--had died.

Brian Berg was 58 when he died in Oct. 2015, apparently of suicide, in his Salem apartment.  Along with Kal Tanner, who was also from Salem, these two band leaders rocked Portland before the big record companies found out that Portland's music scene was on par with Seattle's, which had been labeled the "grunge capital" of the USA.

Kal led the Webbers.  Berg's outfit was .44 Long.  Their music was good old fashioned rock and roll with some alt-country influences.

Both bands made my days and nights a pure festival.  Berg, like Kal, was a big-hearted dude.  His talent was also awe-inspiring.  Even Rolling Stone gave him high praise.

I was bothered all day yesterday after learning of Berg's death.  It reminded me again of how far from the mad old crowd I've roamed.  Life was different back then, most of it better than today in many respects.

Listen to Berg's voice on these tracks from the band's first album.




TS

Tip Off!

College hoops starts today, and if you're a degenerate-junkie fan like I am you might want to peek at the opening schedule.

I'll be watching all day and into the late evening, with time out to eat, poop and buy some beer. Watch at  the Reddit College Basketball streams page to get your game in.

Note: Some streams are better than others, but you know by now not to click on the ads, many of which are strung out on malware and evil intent. As a general rule, any site with 2 or fewer overlaid ads is a good bet, so look for them.

My favorite is GrandmaStreams.  Another good one is lovereddit.  Anything streamed from YouTube is a good bet.
 
One of Reddit's most reliable streamers says he'll have 95% of the games up at any given time, which makes him more important than the president of the United States of America.

If you'd like to read about college basketball's ongoing messy scandals before you dip into the corruption, try this.

What am I watching for?  Early upsets, of course, because these early non-conference games can be one-sided.  Crossover-intraconference tournaments are the best, where the championship usually involves power teams.

Storylines: the women.

Have your weekend as you want it.  Goodbye and good luck.


TS

Essay

Those of us who write about the U.S.-led demented wars and provocations around the world and the complementary death of democracy at home are constantly flabbergasted and discouraged by the willed ignorance of so many Americans.  For while the mainstream media does the bidding of the power elite, there is ample alternative news and analyses available on the internet from fine journalists and writers committed to truth, not propaganda. There is actually far too much truth available, which poses another problem. But it doesn’t take a genius to learn how to research important issues and to learn how to distinguish between bogus and genuine information.  It takes a bit of effort, and, more importantly, the desire to compare multiple, opposing viewpoints and untangle the webs the Web weaves.  We are awash in information (and disinformation) and both good and bad reporting, but it is still available to the caring inquirer.--EC

The uses and misuses of propaganda.


TS

Mr. Fish

Thanks Mr. Fish.


TS

Fine Words

Today, the new McCarthyism is being led by centrist and liberal democrats utilizing the almost comical notion that capitalist Russia possesses the power and influence to not only impact elections but also create racial tensions. And once again, Black opposition is being cast as somehow foreign influenced and, therefore, a security threat that justifies special targeted repression.--AB

The pure genius of Ajamu Baraka.



TS

Hedges Burning

The corporate state, however, is in trouble. It has no credibility. All the promises of the “free market,” globalization and trickle-down economics have been exposed as a lie, an empty ideology used to satiate greed. The elites have no counterargument to their anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist critics. The attempt to blame the electoral insurgencies in the United States’ two ruling political parties on Russian interference, rather than massive social inequality—the worst in the industrialized world—is a desperate ploy. The courtiers in the corporate press are working feverishly, day and night, to distract us from reality. The moment the elites are forced to acknowledge social inequality as the root of our discontent is the moment they are forced to acknowledge their role in orchestrating this inequality. This terrifies them.--CH

A must read at Truthdig from one of America's greatest political/cultural philosophers.

The CounterPunch fund drive was a 99% success, btw.


TS

Oregon Report

After Walden's good friend Donald Trump and his special friend Betsy DeVos get done with the public educational system there'll be no "need to properly fund our schools."

I'll bet the good constituents of Walden's 2nd District are looking forward to the privatization of their schools because they have all the money in the world to pay to the Education Corporation of America.

Of course, with the new GOP tax plan, all the phantom trickle down monetary effects will tickle them to death--and bludgeon them.

Well, if the cost of a private education becomes too prohibitive, the country folk will still have their good old cultural and moral values to fall back on.

I'll bet Walden chuckles himself to sleep every night thinking about how he's pulled this charade off for so many years.


TS

Idiots on Parade

This AP story is full of shit, another instance of the oligarchy telling you that you can't--worse, shouldn't even try to--think for yourself.

In my case,  Russian propaganda caused me to vote for Jill Stein for president, I guess, because I was incapable of listening to the propaganda of the Dems and Repubs, who were evidently victimized by Putin's gang of counter-propagandists.

I don't like the two-party U.S. system, so I've been corrupted by Russians.

That makes sense, doesn't it?  Well no, not exactly.


TS

Enhanced Stupidity

This entire stupid debacle could be rendered finished if the NFL simply stopped playing the anthem prior to the games--or perhaps better for the knuckle-headed fans who insist on hearing it--played it when the players are in the locker room, as happens at most college games.

However, it could be that the contract the NFL has with the Pentagon to promote militaristic jingoism in front of the games is iron-clad.

In which case people are too stupid to realize their tax dollars are further lining the pockets of the billionaire owners above and beyond the outrageous cost of tickets.

The idiot holding the sign is obviously a stupid jerk.  He's white, probably never been hassled by a cop or spent time in the military, and my money says he's a racist through and through.  On the other hand, he could be a cop.


TS

Weekend Notes

And I could never vote for a Democrat who glorifies the military and its generals, and who pretends that our vaunted “troops” are “serving their country” and defending its freedoms when, in fact, they are serving an empire the very existence of which threatens the basic rights and liberties of all Americans

On the other hand, I would happily support anyone who would forthrightly state the obvious: that, with few exceptions, generals are mostly ‘mad dogs” who like to kill or sleaze balls of the John F. Kelly variety; that soldiers are mostly economic conscripts; and that the last and perhaps the only time that the American military fired shots in defense of freedom was some seven decades ago, in the European theater of World War II.--AL

Start your weekend off the right way--er, left way, with the righteousness of Andrew Levine.

And while you're at it, this one goes from hilarious to troubling in about 60 seconds.

                          ***

Damn, the Oregon State Beavers blew it last night and unfortunately avoided gifting college football watchers the best upset of the year.

How?  By fumbling late in their own territory against Stanford, on a drive that would have iced the upset and made them instantaneous heroes to underdogs everywhere.

Sad to see.  And wow, amazing how the Beavers have improved since their old coach quit at mid-season.  There's suddenly hope in Corvallis...

Now OSU will have to seriously consider giving the job to the young, black former assistant who is interim coach and has the Beavers competing.

A black head coach at Oregon State?  Hell I'm old enough to remember when OSU spurned blacks and a fat-headed racist named Dee Andros ran the show.  They called him the "Great Pumpkin"--because the school's colors are orange and black and the coach, with his great belly covered by an orange jacket, sort of resembled a scary carved-out pumpkin. However, he was in my mind a bumpkin.

Seriously, something about the guy bugged me, though at the time I couldn't have put my finger on exactly what it was.  I had an opportunity to "walk-on" and play for him, but didn't take it.  One, I knew I was too slow and undersized to play major college football. But I didn't like Andros as well.

Oregon hired its first African-American coach this year in Willie Taggart, but I think OSU's guy, Cory Hall, might be a better coach and leader.

If OSU beats Oregon in the Civil War, the interim coach might get the job.  Cool.


TS

Tarkovsky

Embed blocked here and doesn't work but link to YT does.

Good flick, highly recommended.


TS

Please, and Thanks

We seem to scrape by every year, though some years are leaner than others. This has been a very lean year, partly because we’ve lost one of our largest donors, who had graciously supported CounterPunch for 15 years. He said that it’s time to see if we can swim against the current on our own. I told him we’re all taking swimming lessons and are intent on drowning as slowly as possible. But he was quite right. We now have more than two million unique visitors to the site every month. If each of them gave merely five dollars a year we wouldn’t have to run another fundraiser until 2030.--JSC

A day in the life.  Give.


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On Writing

Poetic Measures of Illumination in a Time of Calamity


When writing of love in a time of calamity
keep a sure method of squirming out of it nearby

When pondering your relationship with the
universe keep in mind that God isn't in play

When probing your childhood you best leave
out the tantrums you once felt in your bones

When tackling politics in an age of unreason
allow for the possibility that everyone is stupid

When musing in a coffee shop know that your real
purpose is to create jobs for the underemployed

When scribbling profundities that first appear
lucid allow that they may be poor replicants

When researching the lives of the poets consider
they may all be drunks and highly refined assholes

When printing out the pages of your best poems be
clear that Whitman and Melville died penniless

When drinking while writing know that your best
edits await you in the doctor's office next year

When considering your choice between a rhyming
word and a destructive one choose the latter

When sitting at your writing table causes despair
move to your drawing table and reinvent yourself

When choosing a theme for your next masterpiece
avoid religion unless you want to be a known sap

When composing an anti-war poem do not pretend
that a killer is not weighing his next victim just then

When strolling to your university poetry writing
class inspect the insitution's military contracts

When measuring your words and lines in poetic
sequence understand beauty is the life of poetry

When writing in a time of calamity believe for
one  transcendent moment in pity and hilarity


TS

Ghazals

A friend sent me a link to a ghazal by Denver Butson that he admires (thanks RP).

Which got me, naturally, delving deeper into this old Middle Eastern form this morning.

Here's another one I like:


Ghazal: America the Beautiful

Do you remember our earnestness our sincerity
in first grade when we learned to sing America

The Beautiful along with the Star-Spangled Banner
and say the Pledge of Allegiance to America

We put our hands over our first grade hearts
we felt proud to be citizens of America

I said One Nation Invisible until corrected
maybe I was right about America

School days school days dear old Golden Rule Days
when we learned how to behave in America

What to wear, how to smoke, how to despise our parents
who didn’t understand us or America

Only later learning the Banner and the Beautiful
live on opposite sides of the street in America

Only later discovering the Nation is divisible
by money by power by color by gender by sex America

We comprehend it now this land is two lands
one triumphant bully one still hopeful America

Imagining amber waves of grain blowing in the wind
purple mountains and no homeless in America

Sometimes I still put my hand tenderly on my heart
somehow or other still carried away by America

Alicia Ostriker (1937--present)


TS

Spare Us Burns

The U.S. carried out industrial-scale chemical warfare on Vietnam, spraying it with 21 million gallons of the carcinogenic defoliant Agent Orange.  It destroyed half of the nation’s forests, leaving the greatest man-made environmental catastrophe in the history of the world.  When the U.S. destroyed neighboring Cambodia to cover its retreat from Vietnam, the communist Khmer Rouge came to power and carried out the greatest proportional genocide in modern history.  The U.S. dropped 270 million cluster bombs on neighboring Laos, 113 bombs for every man, woman, and child in the country.  Vietnam had never attacked the U.S., had never tried to attack it, had no desire to attack it, and had no capacity to attack it.  All of this was justified through a purposeful campaign of lies to the American people that was sustained by five presidential administrations over more than two decades.--RF

A brilliant essay at Common Dreams.


TS

Time to Give

It's the weekend, thank goodness.

That means it's time for the weekly barrage of brilliant leftist writing at CP that everyone should read now.

When you read it, understand that the lefties are on your side, and Becky Grant needs you to pony up.

Give, don't be a partisan cheapskate. Help crush oligarchy.


TS

Poem of the Day

Time

In the winter I play the piano
Begin to noodle out phrases and figures
Without knowing where I’m going
But for the rain on the windows
And later a few snowflakes

I play to ground myself
It is difficult because my playing
Takes wings of its own
And up in the atmosphere the
Ideas can melt faster than the
Icecaps of the Antarctic

I play to take off and hide from
The rain pounding the windowpanes
Which displeases me so and it is
Certain then finally
That I want to compose something
Anything to
Live on for now


TS

So it Goes

What the Burns documentary does not tell us  – and it is this that makes the work superficial – is that none of this was new. Almost all preceding American violence abroad had been rationalized by the same or related set of excuses that kept the Vietnam slaughter going: the revolutionary War was about “liberty,” the genocidal wars against the Native Americans were about spreading “civilization,” the wars against Mexico and Spain were about spreading “freedom,” and once capitalism became officially synonymous with freedom, the dozens of bloody incursions into Central and South America also became about our “right” to carry on “free enterprise.” As time went by, when Washington wasn’t spreading “freedom,” it was defending it. And so it goes, round and round.--LD

The lies that never stop giving.


TS

Jerry Jones is a Racist!

No more kneeling, says the hypocrite.

Wow, for a minute there I thought chattel slavery was over and out.


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RIP Y.A. Tittle

The frame caught the then-37-year-old quarterback, who looked older than his years, after throwing an interception returned for a touchdown by Pittsburgh's Chuck Hinton. Tittle is seen kneeling in exhaustion and pain from an injured rib, blood dripping down his face from a head gash.--AP

Check out the goal posts in the era before a single stanchion became the norm.  Taped and lightly-padded, the dual posts sat at the goal line, giving players another way to hurt themselves by slamming into them at full speed.

Of course this was before football, in Trump's mind, became too "nice" and stupid rules were enacted for the safety of the players.  You know, back when America was great.


TS

Love, NRA Style

Love it or leave it, you liberal commie bastards!


TS

A Confederacy of Dunces

Let's hope, against all odds and reality as we've adorned it, that what happened in Las Vegas stays in Las Vegas.

Not a chance, you say?

Come now, why in the hell not, but for the morons in Congress and the Orangutan in the White House?



TS

Hey Everybody, Look at Me!

TS

Suddenly Thrifty USA

Tom Price was too expensive.  Now, how about the Pentagon and the endless wars?

Well, liberals are happy for a moment, but when will they quit supporting Wall Street's wars?

TS

Say Hey!

In 1954, the year Willie Mays made his epic Game 1 catch at the Polo Grounds in New York, the most replayed highlight in World Series history, there was no World Series most valuable player award.

The first World Series MVP was awarded in 1955 to the Dodgers’ Johnny Podres.

Now, the award will be named after the great Mays, starting this season — the Willie Mays World Series most valuable player award.--SF Gate

One of my earliest childhood heroes, along with Muhammad Ali.

It's always refreshing to hear that an award is named after a human being rather than a major corporation.

The big picture.


TS

The Commies are Everywhere!

Make no mistake about it: The United States has entered an era of a New McCarthyism that blames nearly every political problem on Russia and has begun targeting American citizens who don’t go along with this New Cold War propaganda.

A difference, however, from the McCarthyism of the 1950s is that this New McCarthyism has enlisted Democrats, liberals and even progressives in the cause because of their disgust with President Trump; the 1950s version was driven by Republicans and the Right with much of the Left on the receiving end, maligned by the likes of Sen. Joe McCarthy as “un-American” and as Communism’s “fellow travelers.”--Robert Parry

This is an important essay.

I cringe every time someone starts talking about Putin and his "meddling" habits. The word is useless because there is scant evidence to back it up, and were it true in any case what are you going to do about it?

Bomb Moscow?

The talk always comes around to this: "The Russians have compromised our democracy."

Folks, we don't have a democracy to compromise.

Here's a word I like to use on occasion: "prattle," defined as foolish or inconsequential talk.

You hear a lot of it these days.


TS

Wrapped in a Flag

The Boycott

A one-act monologue

Character: the Fan

Place: A New York Giants fan's man cave. It's decked out in all the regalia a football fan's man cave can hold--all of it thematically related to the fan's love of his team.  Life-sized posters of his NFL heroes are plastered to the walls, there's a bar, and a big-screen television, shelves of Giants' memorabilia, a Giants-themed pinball machine and pool table, refrigerator, the works.

Time: the present; kick off time on a Sunday in the Age of Trump.

Scene: As the stage lights come up a brawny, hairy, unshaven, slovenly man is sitting in his recliner in front of the television, which is turned off. He's naked except for the large American flag that is wrapped around his shoulders, torso and knees. He's wearing slippers with the Giants logo on them. His big belly protrudes from the red and white striped fabric like a sinister omen of an impending heart attack.

He retrieves his remote and flicks the television on. It's pregame, with the FOX gang of football experts talking about the upcoming Giants' game.

The fan flips the experts a "fuck you" finger and flicks the TV off again.

He goes over to the pinball machine and starts a game.  He pulls a beer out of the fridge and drinks half the bottle in one long swill.

Fan: (to himself, rambling on) I'm boycottin' my team.  You bet I am.  Trump is right.  Those sons-of-bitches are wrong.  They got no right to kneel like that.  Disrespectin' the flag.  Disrespectin' the military that fights for their freedoms every day!  I'm boycottin' all right.  The NFL can shove it.  As of today, I am not a fan. Who do they think they are? They need to just shut up and play football. Why all of a sudden are they politicians?  They're not anything but football players.  They don't know anything but football.  I ain't gonna use the N-word because I'm not racist.  I kinda like some of them boys.  Some of them are sons-of-bitches, though.  The ones that kneel are SOBs, that is for sure. Why can't they just keep their mouths shut and play football?  Isn't that what they're supposed to be doing? Isn't that what they're paid millions to do?  And who gives them all that money?  We do.  Or did... In my case... Go ahead and bite the hand that feeds you, right?  How stupid is that?  Pissin' off guys like me, guys like me who support them when they just play football and don't act up like... Well, I won't say it, because like I said, I'm no racist. I'm with Trump.  The SOBs who kneel need to be fired. There oughta be a rule. No kneelin'.  No protestin' and no disrespectin' the flag and the military.  That's what gets me riled. Disrespectin' the military like they do.  It's pretty simple isn't it?  The soldiers who fought for their freedoms in every war since day one allowed them the right to play football!  I'm sick of it.  I'm boycotting...

The Fan switches to his pool table and racks the balls, breaks, and starts shooting.

Fan: Well, the NFL is finished, kaput, over and out, goodbye football and hello... uh, what?  It all started with the Kaepernick SOB.  Before he came along everything was fine.  That big hair of his and his big head got him in trouble, though, didn't it?  That kneelin' bullshit when he was the only one doin' it?  Then it started up, a few others. Now look at what you got.  Now look at the idiot.  He's out of football, his career is over, and the moron can't find a job!  Haha.  That makes me laugh. Kaepernick makes me sick...They're all gonna be out of work here soon. 'Cause me and a whole lotta people like me have a say in this deal.  We ain't gonna stand for it no more. Crappy Kaep started all this and we're gonna finish it.  Not a dollar more for them!

The Fan's phone rings.  He picks up and says hello, listens for a few seconds.

Fan: Jesus, Jess, no I don't have the Giants game on. I told you I was gonna start my boycott and stick with it as long as I have to. (pause) You're kiddin', Beckham scored?  Manning is playing lights out?
(pause)  Well, did Beckham kneel? (pause) You're not sure?  Why weren't you watching? (pause) What, you were boycotting and then changed your mind.  How can you do that?  Jesus H. Christ, Jess... (pause) What?  You're kidding me!  Fumble returned for a touchdown!? (pause) Oh, Jesus Jess, I wish I could watch.  I wish those SOBs wouldn't have sat out the anthem.  I could support them then.  Not now. Not now. (pause) Okay, Jess, good talkin' to you, though I don't think you should be watchin' the game. But you can call me again with the final score if you want, maybe talk me through what happened? (pause) Well, I didn't say I wasn't interested, did I?  I mean, I can know the score can't I? You can tell me the highlights can't you?  Like you were just doin'. (pause) Okay, Jess, talk to you later.

The Fan hangs up.  He goes to the fridge for a second beer and walks over to his easy chair.  He looks blankly at the television for a long minute.  He picks up the remote and flicks the TV on.  He switches immediately from the game to a Sunday morning talk show.  Some general or another is being interviewed about the next war.  The Fan flicks the channels again.  A cooking program. Again. The History Channel.  He flicks through all of the stations.

Fan: Son-of-a-bitch... There ain't nothin' on worth watchin'...

The Fan halts his remote search at the Giants game just as Odell Beckham catches a ball for a first down.

Fan: What a catch!  First and ten...!

He reaches for the potato chips and stuffs his mouth with them.


The End