Second Career No-No

CL is a Cubs' fan, a former Chicagoan born and raised on the North Side, which automatically makes him long-suffering, like every Cubs' fan alive.

I've heard it every summer for the past thirty-nine years, which is how long I've been friends with the Northeast Portland artist.

There is hope (eternal) for this season, all the pundits and insiders say so, and this guy keeps pitching like a Nolan Ryan on steroids.  So it must be true.

The reigning NL Cy Young winner, Jake Arrieta, pitched the second no-no of his young career yesterday as Chicago beat the Reds 16-0 in Cincy.

Sixteen runs?  Just the other day CL was lamenting about the Cubs not hitting yet.  I guess they broke out.

It's early and there's a long way to go, however.

Go Cubs!


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The View from Seattle

That’s why my organization, Socialist Alternative, and #Movement4Bernie are petitioning Bernie to continue running through November as an independent or on the Green Party ticket with Jill Stein, if he is blocked in the rigged primary process, and to call a conference to discuss launching a new party of the 99%...

On the other hand, if despite all their dirty tricks against him, Sanders remains loyal to the Democratic Party and backs Clinton in the general election, it would mean the demoralization and disorganization of much of our movement. Yes, we need a strategy to push back right-wing Republicans, but collapsing the anti-establishment movement behind Bernie into the Clinton campaign – a false unity with the candidate of Wall Street and the political establishment – would leave the field wide open for right-populists like Trump or Cruz to expand their base.


If Sanders chooses that path, continuing the political revolution will mean Sandernistas boldly moving beyond Bernie.--KS

Dynamic and detailed piece by Kshama Sawant, Seattle's socialist councilwoman.


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RIP Prince, 57

One of those rare moments when a cover of a song transcends even the original artist's rendition.

So it was when Patti Smith covered Prince.





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Not Yet

My "Open Letter to Bernie Sanders" was picked up by CounterPunch, which has a much larger readership (that's an understatement) than RBPD.

Writing the short missive, the futility of electoral politics as we know it settled in for me like it always does.  These are desperate times.

Take it from history. You could not beat Tammany Hall until the corrupt pols started to be dismissed out-of-hand, and in some cases lodged behind bars. So it must be on a national scale today, with all the "Boss" Tweeds of our corrupt system being held accountable.

Don't wait up for it.

By settling on one overriding issue and an increasingly canned speech about money, the billionaire class and Hillary's corruptness (a word he is too timid to use) Sanders is negating his own "revolt" and the best of what he has built.

It is a paper-thin approach, which disallows the notion that there is much, much more to talk about when canvassing the current array of problems in the U.S.

Even if the corporate media's narrative promoted it, Bernie isn't up to the task of talking about something beyond his decent but skeletal theme of inequality.

Like the climate, the problems are too hot for the supposed "radical" insider from Vermont, where the MIC contracts pile up like barrels of syrup amid the trees.

The soldiers must have their pancakes with real syrup, after all.  That is realpolitik. Unfortunately.

Economic justice is paramount, but so are many other ideals BS won't touch beyond his rhetorical parlays regarding Israeli/Palestinian relations.

Bernie dipped his toes in dissent when he should have dove in.  Even with the good health only a U.S. Senator can buy, he won't likely see someone young and vital finally take that swim.

None of us will.

As we said when we were kids fighting over the last cookie, "Too bad.  So sad."


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An Open Letter to Bernie Sanders

Bernie, your once-formidable insurgency is no longer about whether you’ll win the presidency.  You are toast.

After New York, Bernie, you and the Left are now about the future of America—not the present, sadly.

Off your New York defeat, a new coalition needs to rise from the ashes.  Clearly, Bernie, you are not palatable to the carriers of the neoliberal consensus.

You’re a menace, a gnat on the asses of the well-heeled in the Democratic Party.

As we thank you upon your exit, we remember you gave all of us something to think about, something to cheer for while hoping you will not automatically concede that your “political revolution” is dead.

Bernie, do not throw your support to the Queen.  Your supporters do not want that to happen, ever.

Now is the time for us to discover your true worth.  Tonight, you should create a radical coalition with Jill Stein and take the combined Greens and disgruntled Dems into a new realm.

This may not help us in 2016.  But beyond Hillary Clinton, our polity needs answers, adjustments, and a new democratic imperative.

Switch now!  Be loud!

We stand with you in solidarity.

Sincerely, Buddy Dooley.


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Retiring Great

I've listened to Vin Scully call games twice this season, and hopefully I'll catch him a few more times in this, his 67th and final season announcing the Dodgers.

He started at age 22, in Brooklyn.

I heard him describe Madison Bumgarner's tale of the snake and rabbit last week.

Listen to him read the grocery list as well.

Oh, and if you have the cash, buy a Napoleon Grill.  They're great.


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Song of the Day

CL dropped this one on me.  Very nice, Lucinda stylin' the John Hartford classic.


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Beggars and Thieves

Some days the encampment under a bridge just south of downtown and just north of Chicago’s Chinatown has the feeling of a bedraggled back yard barbecue. Men from Mexico, Honduras, and Guatemala cook frozen shrimp or crab over a fire, drink beers, joke, and even sing. On this Saturday in February, however, the men are silent, and the fear and misery in the air are palpable. It is just too cold.

These men are homeless but they are not unemployed. They work at Chinese buffets, Japanese sushi bars and steakhouses, and other restaurants across the midwest, sent by Chinese employment agencies that are being investigated by the Illinois attorney general for alleged civil rights, human rights and labor law violations.

The dirty little secret of restaurant work.

Years ago I worked in a famous Portland restaurant that paid minimum wage and charged you for anything you ate.  The place had its entertainment value at times, however.  The owner was in the middle of an affair with his top hostess and the wife would come in frequently and pick a loud fight with her husband and the girlfriend.

So it had that going for it.


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A Long, Hot Summer of Discontent

The hundreds of arrest this past week have been largely ignored by a corporate media whose lobbyists, along with those of other corporations, are a familiar presence on Capitol Hill. The mass media’s blackout of the largest number of arrests at the Capitol in decades is one of innumerable examples of our corporate coup d’état. And until corporate power is overthrown—and it will be overthrown only from the streets in sustained acts of civil disobedience—the nation will continue to devolve into an authoritarian police state. Corporations will continue to strip us of our remaining rights, carry out the deadly assault on the ecosystem, impoverish workers, make a mockery of our democracy and cannibalize what is left of the country. The system of corporate power is incapable of reform. It must be destroyed.--CH.

This won't end soon.  Pounce!

I'll be there if I can make it.  Long trip, but it would be worth it this summer.  My first arrest since calling a cop a "fucker" in 1970*.

Wouldn't that be cool for an old shit?

*Hush, my liberal friends, it was a worthy indictment.  If you only knew...

Everybody, go if you can.


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Forbidden Love

Here is a question not frequently asked in the so-called "debates" among political candidates this year.  "What would you purpose to do with Edward Snowden?"

Imprison him or admit he is right?  Let him come home and move on?  Or scapegoat him?

Very simple questions.  Not one of the candidates, including the gold standard of soft social radicals, Bernie Sanders, will answer.  It is a question dare-not asked.

What a joke.

How sad.


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How it Computes

I chipped this essay/book review on the history of word processing from CD's blog today.

The early stages of the tech revolt didn't interest me very much, though its effect was beyond my comprehension at the time.

Today I could give a damn about the refinements in word processing, except if you try to steal my laptop with Word installed I'll hunt you down and kill you dead.

Like several of the authors named in the article, I've found what I need in the computing world and I'm happy with it.  But it was a matter of luck, and I've fallen into something that works for me.

I don't own an iPhone and wouldn't have one unless somebody gave it to me and paid the monthly charges.  The gizmo is too small for my hands.

I want to type the old-fashioned way that I learned 50 years ago in high school. I'm not interested in the phone's other functions, including its internet capabilities. My texting dexterity is nil. My buddy TC shoots wonderful photos with his iPhone.  I prefer a cheap camera. Notebooks and the iPad are net-worthy but boring.

I simply want a decent-sized keyboard. To write.

Thirty-five years ago, I might have been through three sheets of wadded up paper by now and much more frustrated than I am at the moment.

The first time I ever confronted computing was in 1984.  I had a portable Corona typewriter at home at the time, which suited me fine.  The behemoth IBM computers (like the one pictured) I confronted for the first time in the offices of Good Samaritan Hospital where I went to work as a scriptwriter, were daunting at first, but hell, you could not deny some of their time-saving features.

I figured out the basics of the floppy system and gained a rudimentary understanding of DOS, but I never became fluent with it.

Out of my tech fallibility, I found myself using the same writing process I used with my portable typewriter, except I didn't have to throw away a mountain of crumpled paper each day.  I tried to organize my thoughts, and thus my scripts, in advance so I wouldn't have to make a lot of changes to the initial draft.  Even now I write without much alteration if I can get away with it.  I follow the commands for misspellings and sentence structure, and make corrections as I go.  I fill in paragraphs, rewrite, subtract and add.  I seldom move whole blocks of print, something I didn't learn how to do with DOS.

I live with the results of my current expertise, and you do too if you've read this far.

It ain't always pretty, fer sure.

I can do much more with Windows and Word than I could with DOS, of course. Every dummy can.  That was the genius of Microsoft; its eventual ease.  But again, bound to my old habits, I use few of the program's advanced functions. I had to learn some of it as I started publishing books, but I am not nearly as fluid as your average secretary who deals with a constant array of documents every work day.

The command of the story makes the writer.  The tech is a secondary concern.  Writing with clarity is important.  One true sentence after another, as Hem said.

The 75 words-a-minute office worker has become the know-it-all word processing savant these days. That's why he/she makes the big money.

                                        ***

Now we're back in 1984, and I'm doing my best to please everyone, and I'm having lunch with a group of co-workers from the hospital's Human Resources Department because I'm writing a slide show for them.  One of the HR managers asks me what kind of "PC" I planned to purchase.  I dropped my fork, not knowing what she meant.  I can still recall my innocence in the moment.

I recovered enough to say, " I don't know."  The group I was with started talking about the differences between Apple and Microsoft.  I didn't know what the letters "PC" stood for.  In other words, I hadn't at that time even considered buying a personal computer.

All I knew about Microsoft was that DOS was giving me a hard time.

Apple wasn't in my brain quite yet.

I think the people I was dealing with were talking about where they might sink their money; in which company's stock.  Had I known anything back then I might have chimed in, "Go with Nike."

                                         ***

I'll end this swiftly, mercifully.

A couple of years ago I read a piece about Woody Allen's writing method.  He still uses a typewriter, scissors and paste to mock up his scripts before copying them.

My favorite history prof at PSU in 2005, David Horowitz, didn't have an email account, or an office computer.

Even I was shocked by that happenstance just a decade ago.  But he was tenured, and his obsolescence could have been his "fuck you" to technology.


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Interview

Philosopher, linguist, and social critic Noam Chomsky recently spoke about his experiences in campus activism and his vision of a just society to help inaugurate the Next System Project’s ambitious new teach-ins initiative taking place across the country. An initial signatory to the Next System statement, Chomsky explores the connections between culture, mass movements, and economic experiments—which in “mutually reinforcing” interaction, may build toward a next system more quickly than you may think.

The Next System Project talks with Noam Chomsky.


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Cartoon Nation

Thanks to Kos.


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Baseball

Today is Jackie Robinson Day.


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Bernie to Green?

The more I think about it the more I like CD's suggestion today, that Sanders ought to come out of New York with a radical plan (not so radical, actually, but sensible) and throw his support to the Green Party. 

In fact, make Jill Stein his running mate.  Challenge Hillary's women, discard the false labels and abysmal narrative being created by the corporate media.  Bern the Democratic Party to the ground!

I think Bernie's kids would dig it.  Many of his old farts might as well.

Have Stein do all the talking, because she's better at it than Bernie, who can't debate worth shit.

I too believe now is the time, while a little momentum is available.

Good thinking, CD.

TS