Archive Listing
October 15, 2011 - October 8, 2011

Monday, November 15, 2010

ARE WE THE DUMB ONES WE'VE BEEN WAITING FOR? We all know Fox News wants to seem fair and balanced despite the fact that most of their opinionators -- i.e.,, primetime commentary shows --are right of center. Why their main news anchor, Shepard Smith, is an evident lefty and their loftiest journalistic host, Chris Wallace, frequently gives righty guests a much harder time than he does their lefty colleagues and is happy to take public credit for it. But including Geraldo Rivera in the lineup of Fox News commentary shows is a bridge too far.

[For the record, I'd be happy to get rid of Huckabee's show too. At least 40 percent of his guests are cornpone relics I'd assumed were long dead. My most irrational Fox fear is of accidentally tuning in to Huckabee's hour-long interview with the loquacious and unexpectedly born-again mummy of my grandma's favorite entertainer, Lawrence Welk.


Sorry to have shared this particular nightmare... Won't happen again.]

But Geraldo isn't just a bore. He's a disgrace. The guy who started out as Jerry Rivers is now a feckless advocate of illegal immigration whose only vocal network opponent is the boob Rush Limbaugh rightly describes as the cable version of Ted Baxter.


Then Geraldo shows up on Fox & Friends and gets to make the same hysterical points more quietly to obsequious airheads like Gretchen Carlson and Steve Doocy, who know everything there is to know about obediently supporting Fox promos, regardless of their own inarticulate, dumbshit, as-libbed opinions.

You see. I'm not letting anybody off the hook. I truly believe the best thing Fox News could do for its own credibility would be cancelling Fox & Friends. Remove this sore thumb of temptation and Jon Stewart would lose fully half his material. (The first person who defends Brian Kilmeade will lose a significant limb, and I'm not talking toes or little fingers.) Immense gains in prestige would accrue to a harder news morning show -- say, one hosted by Dorothy Rabinowitz and Juan Williams, with Jonah Goldberg as resident movie/TV/pop culture critic and Tom Waits providing the daily weather report. Not likely, I know. But if we're talking the no-holds-barred ideal, I'd also go for the ghost of Frank Blair reading the headlines once an hour (instead of that godawful, illiterate misspelled trailer that rips off the wire services without ever evincing a mention of real news on-air.) He was always my touchstone on the old pre-Jane Pauly Today Show -- for someone just waking up, he was perfect. His rough, hoarse voice said it all  He, too, had obviously just been rudely awakened after a hard night of drinking or insomnia, who knew which, and he was as weary and deadened as all working people feel at that hour. Who needs all the goddam perkiness? Who wants it? Who likes it?

Well, I don't anyway. I want Frank Blair.


If you'll notice, even Baba Wawa was restrained, soft-spoken back then. Think about it. Before the Courics and Willard Scotts (Happy Fucking Birthday, you 88-year-olds!) and other fake pollyannas. How about a retro morning show that remembers, "We know you just got up. We're not really morning people, either. Some of us are, well, hungover. We promise to speak in a quiet, low-key tone of voice. We wish we were still in bed, too. But the world has to be faced, and here -- uh, sadly, tragically -- is the world. But we still have Jonah, who would have a joke if it weren't so damned early. As it is, he's had just enough coffee to be soothingly droll."

Come to think of it, maybe Jonah Goldberg could be the new Frank Blair. Wake him up really early and remind him we're all zombies immediately upon rising. Believe me, he knows.

Apologies. I meant this to be serious. Fire Geraldo! I'm dead serious about that. (Pun intended. Hell, my puns are always intended.) It's just hard to be seriously serious about Geraldo as a journalist, as an opinionator, or as a recipient of big media bucks from any source. Here's his latest:


Like most of what Geraldo's done in his career, this isn't journalism. It's pandering, sensationalism, and self-promotion. He's a malignant narcissist idiot. Exactly like... well, hold the thought. (We'll get to Olbermann by and by.) The question of Building 7 and its fate is old news, exhaustively debunked in respect to 9/11 conspiracy theories. All a reasonable person needs. The definitive explanations dot every 'i' and cross every 't.' If you cared about facts.

But Geraldo has never cared about facts. That's why he made a fool of himself outside the supposed secret vault of Al Capone. Maybe he should look inside it again for the Bush administration conspirators who brought down the twin towers.

My proposal: Trade Geraldo Rivera to MSNBC for a long-legged blonde draft choice to be named later. Then America's most insane network could put Keith Olbermann on waivers and gain the ratings bonanza of watching lady-killer Geraldo seduce Rachel Maddow into the irresistible world of psychopathic hetero priapism, where she undoubtedly would reach the end fulfillment of her rage to... uh, whatever. (Wait for her wild-eyed clawing resistance, the 'season-ending cliffhanger' before her submissive September purr...) I guarantee it would produce ratings points that would make it more of an event on cable than 'The Event" has proven to be on the umbrella Nanny-Begets-Community-organizing network starring Brokaw, Williams, and Lauer. (The part of Obama is played in the above clips by Blair Underwood.)

Which would open up a weekend primtetime spot for Juan Williams to host a thoughtfully Democrat show people might actually watch without vomiting.

Unless Fox could be also be persuaded to hose down Hannity with a return to a more balanced program called Hannity & Williams.

Or... why not do it all? Juan in the morning, Juan in primetime, and Juan on the weekends? Weren't we the first with the term 'All Juan all the time'? We always know what we're doing. Even when we have no clue.

Friday, November 12, 2010

IT'S CALLED 'WEATHER' AND IT'S NORMAL. It's not that there's really any news. What there is is a kind of nervous breakdown on the left.

The President continues to unimpress his subjects in his role as world messiah.

Lefty women are totally spazzing out on the subjects of Sarah Palin and purported American racism.

Lefty politicians continue to think the lesson of the mid-terms is that Americans are stupid and just don't get the incredible scientific brilliance of Democrat policies.

The lefty media can't bear to confront the fact that their own absurd bias is a major cause of the mid-term "shellacking" and wholly lacking in credibility.

And the answer of congressional Democrats is to keep on keeping on. Because, as Larry Sabato wrily (leadenly) implies, they'll still win eventually.


Unless this Obama guy is even worse than Jimmy Carter. What are the odds on that, Larry?

SORRY. I can't resist the acorn theme. Or this. Or this. (Never stop, never stop, never stop, you make a grown man cry, uh, Nancy...) Because an acornvoter registration fraud on behalf of a bankrupt 'party of the people' is its own reward. As every progressive knows. When a crisis comes, take everything. What we've learned from Nancy 'Violet' Pelosi. If what you want is an acorn, grab onto that perfect nuttiness and never let go.


If you haven't seen it, it is a great movie on its own merits. Any appearance of politics is incidental. There's a becoming if accidental niceness about it. Like this but more benign.

MORE LAMESTREAM CRAPOLA. An email exchange I just had with Eduardo this morning.


 

Uh huh. Donovan is a nice guy. Up to a point. He's faithfully married with a fine family and no record of any kind of thuggery or personal misconduct (as well as a long record of unselfish charity work), but he is also a spoiled mother's boy. He always used the pronoun 'we' to take credit for Eagles successes without ever quite explicitly crediting the play of his O-line, receivers, backs, the defense, and special teams or the support of the fans. And when the subject was failure and loss, he was always quick to claim leadership responsibility and then immediately proffer excuses for why he shouldn't be blamed. And equally quick to resent, preemptively and passive-aggressively, the likelihood that he would be blamed for the failures he ostentatiously took responsibility for  If anybody missed his drift, his mama's blog made it clear next day. Poor poor Donovan. What's clear to long-suffering Eagles fans in the current controversy is that these kinds of soap opera dramatics seem to accompany McNabb. Somehow he's always the misunderstood, under-appreciated martyr and somehow never personally at fault for anything.

This kind of act gets old. It got old in Philadelphia after more than a decade of mysteriously failed opportunities for greatness. (ESPN likes to point out how many conference championship games he played in; they conspicuously omit that he lost four out of five, and his one victory and subsequent humiliating Super Bowl loss led to his victimization by the dread T.O. How unlucky can an elite quarterback get?) And I suspect it will get old in Washington, DC, in less than one season. He's an elite quarterback in his own mind, but you'd be hard-pressed to find instances of him doing what the youngsters Joe Flacco and Matt Ryan did last night. The Eagles succeeded under McNabb when they did by getting big leads that didn't have to be defended in the final bitter seconds. When they had to defend slimmer leads, McNabb mostly failed. I can't prove it (though maybe someone can), but I'm fairly sure the Eagles have lost more games to incredibly long, late field goals after an inside-two-minute three-and-out than any other team in the league. Not a bad quarterback, but not an 'elite' one either.

I'm proud that Eagles fans cheered McNabb upon his first return to Philadelphia. But after he went out of his way to proclaim ungraciously in the lockerroom in the wake of his utterly mediocre performance in that game that Philadelphia had made a huge mistake by trading him away, I don't want to hear any chaff about the Eagles fans who will be booing him from the visitor seats in DC on Monday night.

Just saying.

Thursday, November 11, 2010

THERE IS STILL HISTORY. I know Veterans Day is for all veterans, and we presently have hundreds of thousands of troops in the field. I am grateful to all the veterans, but meaning no disrespect, this year I am thinking of the forgotten wars and forgotten warriors. So I'm thinking of Korea and World War I.

Two memory prompts:


And Korea:


Before you criticize me, bear in mind that my dad just missed getting called back for Korea after two years of combat in WWII, and my grandfather was a captain of infantry for the Rainbow division in WWI. I've held the canister containing his moldy gas mask in my ten-year-old hands. Nothing is ever over.

Wednesday, November 10, 2010

EVEN JONAH IS COMPLICIT. Good of somebody to stand up and take responsibility. Of course, nobody ever watched Pat Sajak's show, so maybe he's not really to blame. But somebody is. Something for Darrell Issa to look into. But he has a lot of stuff to look into.

Just a reminder that we've been onto Olbermann for a long time.

Just for Fun (Seriously)
More Trouble in Obamatopia
Transfiguration (just a mention but a fun one)
The Dumbest Talking Head
The Olber-Fuehrer

And lest you forget, he went to Cornell. So did I. Sorry.

Tuesday, November 09, 2010

OR NOT. Before he quit in a huff, JS charged me with being a fake. I guess he's right in some respects. I spent half the night last night talking to Peter, whom some of you may know as a Ron Paul afficianado, and I couldn't make a dent in his benighted foreign policy views. Stone-cold defeat for the fisker-in-chief. I've long regarded him as a son and taken credit for his abjuration of the hippie sixties politics I used to hammer him about in a South Jersey back yard. But now he has reconnected with his biological father and I am happy for him. At the same time, he is anxious to promote this cursed website because he believes in me as a writer (and because I introduced him to quantum physics at 1:23 am.). He's willing to paper the Internet with references to InstaPunk, find me a Microsoft guru to deliver Shuteye Town 1999 to you all in its original intact glory, and he shrugs off the abuse you see here every day as 'blog voice' and yet can't help but see as me as me, that nasty old back yard friend.

But the weak link is me. Brizoni, my other virtual son, is on my ass (and hard) about finishing the punk story. He says (and I'm paraphrasing here) he won't forgive me if I don't give you all the story of the kingships of Kobra Jones, Cadillac Mope, and Gypsy Jackknife on South Street. Like Peter, he's willing to go out of his way to find me the software tools I've lost and hinted (repeatedly, thank you) I must have to all of you -- PhotoShop and AnimationShop 5.0 . So what did I do? I passed him off to my wife. Yes, she's a computer executive, but I -- I'm looking at me now -- the guy who anticipated the Internet ten years in advance... I'm running like hell from the current technology. The only text mssages I ever send are to Peter's sister, my pride and joy and motorhead heir. Why I keep saying I'm old. My third virtual son, Lake, is also disappointed in me. He's teaching, although he took a year out of his life, along with Apotheosis, to put the Boomer Bible online with a living ICR. He thinks I should do what Brizoni's demanding. But I'm too noisily busy writing InstaPunk.

My response. I'm going to the Harvard-Penn game this weekend. Because I'm a shallow asshole? Maybe. Maybe. Peter, Brian, Joshua -- I apologize. The last thing I want to do is let you down. No man could ever have more brilliant and talented offspring than you, even if I'm not the real father of any of you. I wish you were all my sons. I'd be the proudest man alive if even one of you were my biological child. I'm proud to know you, regardless.

But, as I said, the weak link is me. There are times when I can hear the faint drumbeat of poetry coming back, even at this late age. But I'm afraid. Old poets are generally bad poets. Why I'm going to the Harvard-Penn game this weekend. Afterwards, we're going to Ralph's, the best and oldest Italian restaurant in Philadelphia. Mrs. IP comes home every night and goes to work trying to decipher Brizoni's clues about how to snag PhotoShop from the ether. She doesn't know about the old poets rule. She still believes in me, too. I'd get back to them all but I'm too busy blogging...

Okay. I have to do better. I am Harry. I am St. Nuke. I am Johnny Dodge.

I am Johnny Dodge. And I have driven the lowlands of New Jersey faster by car and bike than most of you have ever thought
of.

I am Johnny Dodge. Still. Peter, Brian, Joshua. Still.


Whatever you think, I can still make two muskets sing like one. And I remain as ruthless, savage, and uncivilized as you always counted on. I am, to the end of time, the barbarian Scot you knew you knew. I'd apologize but I can't apologize. It's my nature.
.

Monday, November 08, 2010

HALLITES. I first thought of this many many years ago, maybe even before Reagan was elected president. I haven't thought of it for years. But if the Tea Partiers are serious about reducing the size of government, cutting spending and not just the annual rate of increase in spending, this is the only way.

Eliminate withholding of federal income taxes, which began as a 'temporary' WWII measure. Put employers out of the picture as co-conspirators with the government. Give people paychecks including all the money they supposedly receive for their work. Then make them write their own personal checks to the government for their tax liability. I don't care what schedule you select -- monthly, quarterly, yearly -- although the fairest scheme is obviously at the end of the taxable year.

The current system represents an unwarranted assumption that your current rate of pay, and therefore your current rate of taxation, will continue through the end of the year. Say you lose your job halfway through the year and can't find another job (pretty far-fetched, eh?). The taxes you've paid in the first half of the year are a gross overpayment because of progressive tax rates, and the government has, in fact, been borrowing from you money you don't owe them. Note that this wrinkle is also perniciously regressive; it most penalizes those who are most financially straitened.

The likelihood of general annual tax inequity is compounded by the fact that individual taxpayers can't know what legitimate deductions they will have at year end until the year is done. Because some deductions are associated with extraordinary events like gains and losses on investments.

Indeed, everyone who receives a tax refund in the current system should be pissed off, not happy about what they're getting back. That refund is a no-interest loan they have given to the government. It's money they could have invested, earned interest on, or spent before it was devalued by the current rate of inflation. (Yeah, I once majored in accounting in graduate business school. Truth is, no matter how clever you think you are about money, if you don't have to write a check to the feds on April 15, you lose. The government has just robbed you of some of your money and left you with no recourse. Sorry if that upsets any of you shrewd April 14 self-filing deduction imagineers...)

The irony of this is that all the political talk we hear about tax rates is bunk. Nobody in the federal government can tell you what your tax rate is. That's why your tax liability is shown on IRS documents in the form of tax tables, dollar totals not percentages, marginal or otherwise. If they expressed liability in terms of percentages, they'd be open to litigation based on the unpaid interest associated with their presumptive, confiscatory collection methods. Does that sound right? Or does it sound like the incredibly complicated scam it is?

But fairness isn't my point here. That's why I don't care about the schedules. All I care about is making every Tom, Dick, and Harriet who pays income taxes experience the pain and loss of paying them out of their own bank accounts. Money you never see or control or have any power to spend is not real. Withholding from your paycheck is not a convenience or a courtesy or a favor done you by your employer. It's thievery, carried out by government force via your employer as compulsory accomplice.

Do you think you're outraged by federal spending? I've got news for you. If you've ever been happy about your refund, you're part of the problem. If you've convinced yourself that your annual income is actually your take-home pay, you are part of the problem.

I want you to have to write the checks. the way the self-employed (i.e., the smallest of small business owners) do. Why so many of the smallest businesses go under with tax troubles and cash flow nightmares. Why there was so little protest when the feds did away with income averaging a generation ago. If you have a good year, you pay through the nose. If you have a bad year the next year, the cushion you might have had to survive is not there.  You're done. Last year, you were one of the fortunate ones who are obliged to "give back" for your lucky prosperity. This year, you're a deadbeat on an IRS hit list.

What most people don't realize is that a lot of wage earners and salaried folk are in the same boat. They just never realize it. Good year, bad year, the IRS doesn't care. Plutocrat, deadbeat, the scales that weigh taxable pounds of flesh always have a federal thumb on the scale, always in the government's favor.

Nothing will change until individual citizens, all of them, know what they are paying to the government. Feel what they are paying to the government. Feel that the check they write every month or quarter or year is a direct subtraction from the kids' orthodonture, their college fund, the savings that might be put toward income-producing investments, small business dreams, home improvements, or fulfilling avocations. You are writing a check to an entity that sees you as a usable unit, and their assumption is that the money you send them is money they know better how to spend on your behalf than you do.

Some of their assumptions you might agree with or reluctantly accept. National defense. Border control. Law enforcement. The courts. Roads and bridges, trash collection, fire departments. (Though why do budget cuts always lay off these essentials instead of the constantly rising tide of invisible bureaucrats? When's the last time you saw a sad exodus from a city or a state or federal office building of indifferent, paper-pushing government clerks defunded by budget cuts? No. You've never seen it. Closed police precincts and fire stations and mounting garbage piles are always the direct price of our spending protests. The DMV always seems to retain its full complement of layabouts.) I dare say most of us are even willing to contribute to a safety net within limits for those who would otherwise fall through the cracks. But how much more than that our elected representatives spend to look philanthropic by proxy, give away for favors and influence, and piss away on quid-pro-quo deals and interest groups and utter bullshit, is your business. Because you're writing the checks.

And you just might have a wholly different view of how much accountability they have for their decisions and how closely you should pay attention to their decisions. The reality of it is that we are all paying for all of it, and all the waste and insanity is coming directly out of our own personal accounts. A system that doesn't represent reality but does everything possible to disguise reality and cheat on reality is inherently corrupt.

Think about it. One reform. A reform that's a hell of a lot easier and more effective than rewriting the tax code (fair tax, schmair tax) for thousands of pages and debating it for multiple years. One simple bill. End withholding. Up or down. Real spending cuts and real tax reform would be sure to follow.

It would change everything.

If you agree, pass it on.

WE GAVE OUR STANDARDS. Everyone knows I'm a male chauvinist. But this weekend I saw a horse race I will remember as long as Secretariat's victory at the Belmont. I saw Zenyatta's bid to win her 20th race of 20 entered.

Then I saw ESPN's crawler. "Zenyatta loses -- comes in second by a head."

Loses? By a head? Try a nostril. And besides, the coverage made it sound like she'd been beaten. A horse named Blame outran her. You know. A male horse.

Which is why I want to go on the record. Because I know when I'm seeing genius. Always have. Always will. My wife is a horsewoman. Hates horse racing. Hadn't ever heard of Zenyatta before this particular race day. But even she had to watch.

So we watched. What did I see? What they tried to do cinematically with Sea Biscuit, only in real life. I've never seen a horse so dead last as Zenyatta after the first half mile. My wife -- the horse person -- said, "Sorry. No way we she can win. It's all over. That's just way too much distance to make up. All done."

And then she came. Like a fucking freight train. Making every other horse in the field look like he was standing still. Like a fucking freight train. I've never seen anything like it. Not even Secretariat. He was never coy. He just smacked your ass. He was Secretariat. Zenyatta, on the other hand, is a tease: "I'll let you get this far ahead and then I'll run you down like a dog." That's how fast she is. You could see it happening this time, too. Way, way, way back and then the glorious rush. Twice everybody else's speed. Ten, maybe even five more yards would have done it. Uuuuuh.

Blame won? Like an exhausted fighter who manages to duck and retreat and hide in the last round tp squeak out a win on points. Zenyatta was eating his ass and she was clearly the faster horse, eating up ground at a rate hardly anyone has ever seen before.

Sadly, she just mis-timed the finishing line. There's absolutely no doubt who was the better horse,

Imagine that it was the Belmont. With another eighth mile to go. HA  Blame? Bullshit. An exhausted also-ran.

I'm liking the female runners these days. And I will never ever forget the sight of Zenyatta running down her opposition at the Breeder's Cup. If you can forget it or explain it away, screw you. If that's a loss, so are all of you.

P.S. Just a reminder that Secretariat was, well, Secretariat:


Why does it still bring tears to the eyes? Because, oh you dimwit millennials. Because.

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