Bawb the Revelator

"Opinions are like assholes. Everybody has one."

2008-07-31T11:32:00.000-07:00

Chronicle of a journey from youthful
know-it-all to old-fart astonishment.

For much of my now-getting-to-be long life I thought Sax Man Gerry Mulligan [right] originated the title above. He may well have but Bartlett's Quotations and all Google's assembled corollaries have no such reference. So while I try sticking to what I know to be true, it turns out maybe I misled myself and others. NOT "misspeak" as sundry Pols and other bullshit artists fashionably say these days. What I'm writing here is Yeah, I really WILL vote for Barack Obama this November! What pushed me over this particular edge was The Nation Magazine's Open Letter To Barack Obama on his FISA Court vote and Political Principles in general. "Well now," as SNL's Church Lady used to say, "isn't THAT special!" And, if I may add (In the imitation Bronx-Irish brogue of my 35-year buddy Mary Margaret Hogan) "Holy Jaysus Joomping Fooking Chroyst!!" http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080818/open_letter

On one hand I loathe Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, the Crazed Lady (above, Left) with the heat of 10,000 Suns. Given my druthers, Russ Feingold would be Dem Nominee. He's not. Luckily neither is Nixon in a Pants-Suit. Her loyalists are
now threatening to sit out '08 or worse because Princess Bird-Wing's Investiture was derailed by.....by (GASP!) A MAN!

Question: How the eff many times do y'all need a bitch-slapping by Drool-Buckets like Reagan through BSers like Hillo's Spine through a Casino Toad like Sheldon Adelson?

Way back when I shrunk the occasional head, my Shrinkees were generally women who'd had the Living Shi'ite slapped outta them repeatedly by guys who, somehow, were EVEN WORSE FATHERS than they were either husbands or boyfriends. Their excuses and rationalizations were endless, even brilliant, and I wasn't much good to any of the women. Then I asked: "Why are you teaching your kids and the kids they know that slapping around is just swell by you?" After that was game set and match and not a moment too soon. Never was that kinda Shrink. Mostly they left the Sumbitch for good. A few said "Maybe" and I referred em to good Shrinks ASAP. Never was the type. Hand-holding was/is for my Sweet Bride and for my kids. It's nice and all that but just not my style. Anything over five-minutes for any client and boredom kicks in like Colt-45 Malt Liquor aftertaste. Do right, get their check, say "Thanks," show 'em the and cash that damn check fast.

Obama hasn't shown me any more than he's shown you or anyone who isn't Tony Reszko - which is how Big-Boy Politics is played everywhere eapecially in the USA. His early campaign slogan "We Are The People We Have Been Waiting For!" sounded like the deliberately vacuous "We Are The People!" in Martin Scorcese's Taxi Driver. So yes, I hate giving the nation's worst Prez and, likely, first ever White House criminal enterprise One More Live Body or Five-Cents More than they've already looted from Proles-Like-Us. And please let's NOT FORGET Pelosi, Ried and the Loyal Enabling Opposition. But before 86ing THESE two Simps and their Blue-Dog Dem turd-sniffers, first things first! DON'T WITHHOLD YOUR VOTE BECAUSE THESE ASS-WIPES WITHHELD THEIRS! It's ALL YOU HAVE LEFT! Now that Karl Rove has $250-Million in petty cash to plant Dog Poo on your front door http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPOdtvy9GxY&feature=related courtesy of Casino Weasel Sheldon Adelson Your vote still might not be enough! In case my point eludes any One-Issue sensibilities, this is not the time for Angst und weltschmertz whether Barack Obama did or didn't vote "correctly" on the FISA Courts. I happen to think Obama voted the way he voted to Insulate the Democratic Party's ass against the usual "Soft-on-Stalin-Khruschev-Mao-Gorby-Osama-Willie-Horton-Speedy-Gonzalez" jive the GOP trots out every four years after Labor Day. That's because Barack's a Grown-Up. Feel me? Now go read about Sheldon: ttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheldon_Adelson

Don't believe an Red-Diaper nearly-never-was like Dr. Bawb? Try Samantha Power http://www.nybooks.com/articles/21670 who Obama 86ed for calling Hillary a "monster." Besides, why in THE HELL is Gore Vidal signing that Nation Magazine petition for when that very jackball BRAGS THAT HE HASN'T VOTED FOR YEARS! Swell Gore. You dissed my dad's friend decades ago who asked you a perfectly reasonable question at a Santa Monica Book-Signing. I shut down your shit bad manners then and got cussed out for it by my dad all the way home. He's long-gone and maybe you're not the flaming asshole you were that night. If you are, remember: We BOTH go regularly to Cedars-Sinai Hospital and I ain't lost one damn step.

"SPAZ AT WORK!!!!!!" Dr. Bawb's Blawg Undergoes Facedown...uh, FaceLIFT!!!! B-B-B-Back Soon.

2008-07-22T16:29:00.000-07:00

Chronicle of a Shrink's journey from youthful
know-it-all to inevitable old-fart astonishment.

Why Doctor Bawb Avoids Reading Most Stuff He Already Agrees With.

2008-07-18T23:41:00.000-07:00

Chronicle of a journey from youthful
know-it-all to old-fart astonishment.

Reading, hearing or looking at stuff that Dr. Bawb already agrees with is, mostly, boring. Kinda like the picture on the right shows. This is no "Eureka!" discovery to anyone over Age Three who ever went to school, sat in some House of Worship or got married more than three times. We know what's coming and what's coming good or bad, is the Same Old Crap: Long Division and "Whaddaya mean 'Inappropriate?'"

So even while Doctor Bawb's dad was Left and Doctor Bawb remains Left [a reliable sign of having liked one's dad according to one long-time buddy] poring over William F. Buckley's God And Man At Yale brought only "Why are you wasting time reading that crap?" onto my pizza-faced, teenaged head. Mommie Dearest's chiming in with the observation that Buckley and Adolf Hitler combed their hair alike cut little ice. Especially followed up by "I bet HIS mother didn't have to remind HIM to tuck in HIS shirt 50-times a day!" Yes the future Doctor Bawb nearly asked: "Buckley or Adolf?" But dad had serious-ass rules about back-talking. A few years before, during a stupefyingly dull Sunday ride into long-ago-semi rural LA County, Mommie Dearest mused aloud about her sulking, Cerebral-Palsied son stowed in the back seat: "You know, one day maybe he'll become a Farmer." Dad nearly drove off the road. A father-son procedural question was clarified forever that afternoon. Which brings Dr. Bawb's Lefto bad taste to TNR and Jon Chait's

http://www.tnr.com/story_print.html?id=69067f1c-d089-474b-a8a0-945d1deb420b smackdown of Naomi Klein's equally Lefto Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. Chait beat me to this new "Axis of Evil" beat-down by three or four days. Today Time and the LA Times are whaling the hell outta Naomi for her over-simplified idea of everything like she was Dick Nixon or George W. Bush.

As this screed's title reads, Dr. Bawb stays away from books, especially long books, he's pretty sure he'll mostly agree with if not completely. Hannah Arendt's Origins of Totalitarianism was a slog but worth it since Pointy-Head Intellectuals generally agreed Hannah's book was pretty definitive on how and why Lenin, Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Fidel and Robert Mugabe all got to the same positions. Dick Cheney gamed the system. Hillary always was Nixon in a Pantsuit. so, at least for the present, the US hasn't had a real heart and soul "presidential timber" Fascist since Charles A. Lindbergh in 1940.

TThat's Hermann Goering [far right] presenting Lindy with a Nazi medal on behalf of der Fuhrer during one of Lucky's "fact-finding" trips abroad. When FDR refused to reinstate Lindy's Air Force Commission for our National Hero. This was called "petty jealousy" by the GOP in some book Doctor Bawb was thumbing through at UCLA's Powell Library during his $1.50/hr. "Shelving Years." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Lindbergh
Nor was Lindy big on the Jews as his SRO address at Madison Square Garden before America First! "If it isn't one thing, it's another," as the late and much-missed Gilda Radner as Roseanne Roseannadanna would say. Or "THINGS CHANGE!" as today's wildly pro-NeoConservative GOP and Crazy John Hagee-loving AIPAC assuredly will say ad nauseum. So let's go back to Naomi Klein - who along with Gilda and FDR is probably a better all-around human being than any of the aforementioned loons ever thought
about being. See http://www.nybooks.com/articles/21470 and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Israel_Public_Affairs_Committee and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Hagee.

First, given Doctor Bawb's premise of avoiding books he probably agrees with anyway, cut the girl some slack. She's just 38, good looking http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naomi_Klein especially for a Public Intellectual [that term's a problem for Shrinks like or unlike Dr. Bawb]. But even on whatever in hell a "World Public Intellectual" ranking is, Naomi's #11 and top female, too.

Before Dr. Bawb bores y'all hopelessly by rehashing a wasted education and career testing at-risk South-Central LA kids and adults, let's spin the USC Grad School "Way-Back" Machine. This bring up a basic Test Measurement variable called The Hawthorne Effect. Put simply, what in THE HELL are we measuring and why bother? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne_effect. To go didactic ever so briefly on y'all, here's what it means: An experimental effect in the direction expected but not for the reason expected; i.e., a significant positive effect that turns out to have no causal basis in the theoretical motivation for the intervention, but is apparently due to the effect on the participants of knowing themselves to be studied in connection with outcomes measured.[6]

Put simply, when Author/Psychologist James Dobson referred to Dr. Joe Nicolosi as "America's leading authority on PRE-GAY [my caps] toddler behavior" Dr. Bawb wondered just how the fuck much USC Grad School has the far-more illustrious Dr. Dobson forgotten? The fact that PRE still means "BEFORE" or "HASN'T EVER HAPPENED" was thrown out as being too complex for Dr. Bawb's mind to grasp. Same thing with Naomi Klein's 11th-Ranked World Public Intellectual: All that means is Ten People got more votes than Naomi from 20,000 readers of Prospect and Foreign Policy magazines. Impressive, huh! Here's the list:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_2005_Global_Intellectuals_Poll. [Dr. Bawb welcomes explanations as to how Tom Friedman made #16 on any MTA subway car much less the New York Times or the world].

Naomi Klein SHOULDN'T be getting "piled on" during this or any other week. She's just written a more detailed account of what Willaim Greider wrote in One World, Ready or Not and The Soul of Capitalism.
Or Benjamin Barber's Jihad Versus McWorld. Naomi's even gone and built on Fernand Braudel's magisterial three-volume History of Capitalism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fernand_Braudel.
And for this, Jonathan Chait, Time Mag and every other Wanna-Be-On-A-Dumbass-100-Intellectuals-List jumps Naomi's bones.

Sexism? Too easy. If FoxNews can put it on Five-by-Eight Cards and sticks to easy-to-say words, Sean Hannity will handle that. Dr. Bawb's best guess [remember, he AVOIDS 571-page books he agrees with - It's an OLD-AGE thang, see?] is Naomi overlooked Dr. Freud's "Overdetermination" principle http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overdetermination. Economic systems, like Dreams, are determined by any number of factors and NOT just one. Forget Milton Friedman or Leo Strauss or even Neo-Conservatism - the latter of which is desiccating as this is written. You're young, you have your act together and some Jonathan Chait-wannabe is gonna be there to get Andy Warhol's Fifteen-Minutes of Fame. It goes with the territory as Dr. Bawb's own Sweet Bride had to remind him over and over.

"Truth Is My Bitch!"

2008-07-15T22:16:00.000-07:00

Chronicle of a Shrink's journey from youthful know-it-all to old-fart astonishment.

Real life sometimes exceeds even
the disgusting, warped, tasteless mockery of an aged class-clown like Dr. Bawb who wallows in swill without audience or attentive
classmates to speak of. The other day a Wall Street Journal review of several books on the follies of psychiatry, once Dr. Bawb's profession, seemed a big, wet enough spitball to sling and, potentially, piss-off certain Giants of the Shrink Industry like the makers of Zoloft. A brief description of Desperate Cures and the US Lobotomy fad of the 1950s prompted finding a 6000-year old Peruvian Indian lobotomy. above, seemed plenty to show even this was nothing new: "Lobotomies later went into mass production when American psychiatrist, Walter Freeman, began to travel across the country to treat patients using nothing more than a glorified ice pick that he pushed through the soft bones in the roof of their eye sockets to sever their frontal brain regions. and how the media promoted it (after Egas Moniz, neuro-surgeon and self-promoter, received the Nobel Prize in 1949), and how patients with chronic anxiety, depression and schizophrenia http://online.wsj.com/public/article_print/SB121461316011612643.html
were transformed into quiet mental invalids." Winging polysyllabic spitballs or even an Uzi that shot 15 hot barf-cartridges per second wouldn't work for Dr. Bawb today ["UZI" left, is well-mannered and remains well above any of this]. Earlier today John "Goddam" Conyers
deigned to allow Rep. Dennis Kucinich to lay out his case for impeachment of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. "We're discussing...but we're not doing impeachment," said Conyers. Real 'White' of you, John. A lifetime of Stiller Fandom, towering contempt for anything http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x3622221Cleveland - especially the Brownzos - and their Congressguy's all that's between democracy, Dr. Bawb and any stove still too hot for Bush, Cheney et al to steal. John: go get Nancy and please have the Congressional Comity not to SHTUP "Madame Speaker" while the CSPAN camera's on.

But this wasn't the worst thing: Forget Ben Bernanke telling congress Freddie Kruger needs bailing out and the LAPD "monitoring" the since-5am-PDT lines of panicky Encino CA depositors http://ktla.trb.com/business/ and http://www.latimes.com/news/local/valley/la-fi-indymac16-2008jul16,0,4988921.storywith OVER $100K deposited at the bank - mostly telling those people to "go home and don't worry." It was this:

" Lancaster: mother killed
Lucy Preciado, 26, a Latina woman, was stabbed to death during a domestic dispute in the 4100 block of West Avenue L in Lancaster about 2 a.m. Saturday, July 12. Paramedics pronounced Preciado dead at the scene. The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department said Preciado was found dead inside her home. She was stabbed by a large sword, possibly in front of her four children, who were inside the house when deputies arrived. Detectives from the Sheriff's homicide bureau sought the public's help in locating Preciado's 28-year-old Latino boyfriend, Jesus Humberto Canales, at right. Authorities said Canales is wanted for questioning in the alleged stabbing of Preciado. Authorities said Canales is driving a 2002 bronze GMC Safari van with a California license plate 6CBY663. Authorities said Canales is considered to be armed and dangerous. Anyone with information is asked to contact Sheriff's homicide bureau detectives at (323) 890-5500. Jesus Humberto Canales, is 28 years of age, according to a news report.

Tomorrow's a new day like always.

Gawd Knows I TRIED To Figure Out Nancy Pelosi!

2008-07-13T10:20:00.000-07:00

Chronicle of a journey from youthful
know-it-all to old-fart astonishment.

There, I wrote it! "In front of God and everybody!" as Troy Donahue pauses after confessing his love to the late Sandra Dee in 1959's unintentionally hilarious A Summer Place. Dee gasps, swallows hard, then replies: M : "Have you been bad, Johnny? Have you been bad with other girls?"
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0053320/ Try not to blame Doctor Bawb too much for his Freshman Punk years. Memory is wierd: Some things stick, some others don't. Gawd knows I didn't have any "druthers" here or that woulda been Dead Meat two hours after staggering outta whatever theater to the relief of rapt, annoyed patrons who'd been shushing us UCLA wise-asses for 40-minutes straight. Meanwhile Nancy Pelosi ISN'T Winston's "mystery wrapped in an enigma." Nancy is Mayor Tommy D'Allesando's Italian American Princess. "Shut up and count the damn votes!"

Doctor Bawb spent 90-minutes he'll NEVER GET BACK on why Pelosi hasn't poured kerosene on Karl Rove's peckerwood fat ass in addition to Impeachment's off the table. Now it's back on the table. Thanks, Nance! Didjya check it with Harry "Sluggo" Reid first? Didn't bother? Sluggo's a tool anyway.

My late, great dad, without whom Dr. Bawb would be warehoused in some small-town Group Home
taught me stuff but was no word-merchant. "Liberals are radicals without convictions" seems and is a cliche straight outta the Oh-So-Mid-1930s-Left playbook.

But dad was born in 1903, was old enough to be excited by Journo Lincoln Steffens' "I have seen the future and it works!" on returning from the brand-new CCCP in 1919. Compare that to the US's Crazy Woodrow [Divinely Ordained to become Prez, as in 43] CW's AG Mitchell Palmer's Raids of the same name. Next to that, Dr. Bawb's age 15 dad's cheers for Lenin's Worker's Paradise begin to make sense. Coralling and 86-ing "Kraut-looking Bolsheviks" began young J. Edgar Hoover on his way to accumulating files that still make Prezes and Night Watchmen uneasy. Cross-Indexing
paused only when the Director was needed to tell America that Organized Crime is a national myth [R] O. J. Simpson on The Director's right gives [or recieves] an award. .

All this has what to do with Nancy Pelosi? Nothing - or next to it. Yesterday Joe McDonnell had Paul Alexander, author of Machiavelli's Shadow: The Rise and Fall of Karl Rove. Joe's a very distant acquaintance of Doctor Bawb's. He's Jock-Talked on stations all over the dial and does Air America for small change. The interview had minutes left when Joe asked what everyone's wondered: "So why hasn't Pelosi gone after Rove since 2006?Alexander said. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Alexander "John Conyers is dying to nail Rove. One of [Conyers'] aides said he has more than he needs to make Rove's life terrible!"

Spent 45-minutes skimming Machiavelli's Shadow at Barnes & Noble. It's okay but has little anyone familiar with Turd-Blossom hasn't already heard ["Boy-Genius" has been Rove's presdential nickname since the 2004 re-election]. Pelosi isn't mentioned in the book. The usual is there. Rove lies about "lessons learned" per his Apprenticeship with Lee Atwater. Truth: Lee barely knew Rove and what Lee knew he disdained. Poppy is nice, Barbara is scornful. Rove is not and can never be, a Bush.

Writing about Rove there's no "there" there. The late Sen. Alan Cranston did the first-ever English translation of Hitler's Mein Kampf mfor his Stanford Ph.D. Dissertation mighta agreed about Adolf. Except AH at least was telling the truth in 1922 about what he would do if he ever came into real power. Call Adolf anything except a liar http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mein_Kampf. So much for Nancy, Sluggo, Rove and moments lost forever. Behold. Have a great week!

"Miz King! Mis King! Dem shif'less darkies on yo' lowah 40! Mist' King yo' husban' done turnin' "Tara" into a humungous, low life, Thanksgivin' Day, Frisco-Style, unGawdly Ac's Pride P'rade!

Anti-Gay Republican Caught Having Gay Sex07-12-2008Transworld News
According to reports, Alabama Attorney General Troy King, who has called homosexuality the “downfall of society,” has allegedly been caught in a gay sex scandal.

King, a conservative Republican, was reportedly caught by his wife Paige King having sex with a male assistant in their Montgomery home. Reports say King was kicked out of his home by his wife and is set to resign over the scandal.

King is known for voicing his opposition of abortion and homosexuality. He has worked to outlaw sex toys in Alabama. King frequently wrote editorials for The Crimson White in which he called homosexuality the “downfall of society.” In 2004, King was appointed to Attorney General by Alabama Governor Bob Riley. He previously serves as the Assistant Attorney General. King is considered a potential candidate for Alabama governor in 2010.

"So I tell the Commies my outfit's names are 'Greene, Greenwood, Lambert, Blount, Ham and Fats!'"

2008-07-11T19:39:00.000-07:00

Chronicle of a journey from youthful
know-it-all to old-fart astonishment.

POW John McCain began his 13th straight year of torture by the North
Vietnam commies. Oblivious to McCain's refusal to break, 1976 was one kick-ass year for the Stillers, the USA and even for Doctor Bawb who worked the mean streets of Watts a mere 11-years after "Burn baby, burn!" went down. O. J. Simpson's future mouthpiece, Johnnie Cochran, then an obscure Deputy DA in LA, was shrewd enough to sieze the Brass Ring outta the then-greatest civic rebellion since the Civil Woah.

SNAP QUIZ: Which statement is False?

A; Confederate Robert Coke Kennedy
[left] was hanged in 1865 for trying to
burn down New York City.

B: POW John S. McCain defied North
Vietnam captors by identifying his
squad members as the famed 1976
Pittsburgh Steeler "Steel Curtain."

TIME'S UP! The correct answer is "B!"
In FAITH OF OUR FATHERS McCain's best-seller the presumptive GOP nominee state that in the Vietnam War which ended in 1975
he named the Green Bay Packers. Great Caesar's Ghost of Vince Lombardi! Some ultra-Lefto Burgh "news reporter" deliberately asks a TRICK QUESTION. Then the entire media "Jackal Pack" to paraphrase misunderstood commie hunter Joe McCarthy tears McCain apart for making an honest mistake.

Doctor Bawb as readers know is a hopeless Stiller junkie in addition to being an ageing slacker and woulda caught this "gotchya moment" without reading McCain's book [didn't] or KDKA-TV's help. Nonetheless: Yesterday in Pittsburgh, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., professed his love for the Steelers to KDKA-TV.

In Doctor Bawb's opinion, one of filmdom's horrific, "disgusto" characters was magnate-villain Noah Cross as played by John Huston in 1974's Chinatown http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinatown_(film). There's a part where Cross is talking to Private-Eye Jack Nicolson [Jake Gittes]

Jake Gittes: I just want to know what you're worth. Over ten million?

NoahCross: Oh my, yes.

Jake Gittes: Why are you doing it? How much better can you eat? What can you buy that you can't already afford?

Noah Cross: The future, Mr. Gitts, the future.

Later, during the same conversation:

Noah Cross: See, Mr. Gitts, most people never have to face the fact that, at the right time and the right place, they're capable of... anything!

"Noah Cross" is ultra-creepy because he embodies a world-view of people with more money than Cross. They have power and craziness extending beyond bringing water to mid-1930s Los Angeles. One almost feels sorry for John McCain, Barack Obama and any adult who ever had visions of meaningful leadership.

"No KaKa Where You Eat!" Bonus For Y'all: An Amazing Bo Diddley!

2008-07-09T16:28:00.000-07:00

Chronicle of a Shrink's journey from youthful
know-it-all to old-fart astonishment.

Dawg my Katz if Zorny, Gawd of Instant Available Parking Places doesn't work in myterious ways! Shortly after the most recent Blawg Entry, Claudia of Hawaii e-mailed a tactful yet firm reminder of my sytematically screwing up the spelling of POTOMAC - as in "The Churchill of the Potomac." Systematic-Spelling-Screwups B-Me! I'm not gonna fall back on some lame F. Scott Fitzgerald couldn't spell. Or my Grade 4 teacher, Mrs. Beatty telling my dad: "Don't worry. Bobby will have a Secretary to spell for him when he grows up."
Here's what Claudia sent: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potomac_River. Here's Our Churchill in New Orleans, August 2005.

While correcting that Screw-Up I tested the YouTube link that supposedly kicked on Will I. Am's "Yes We Can!" video with a cast of many which coordinates well with an early Barack Obama victory speech. Though it got a zillion "hits," my message read: Video has been damaged in tranfer.

No biggie. We Cerebral Palsy gimps get used to such messages. But BELOW that was a teeny sing-along YouTube of BO DIDDLEY with Bo, Kenny Rogers, Ronnie Hawkins and the late Jim Croce. Wow: One door closes, another opens! Nice but only 1:12 and an ad for the DVD. Here 'tis: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDb1q-1QNgY But not enough!

A bit more looking and KA-BLAM! Here's Mr. Diddley in his prime years for over four-minutes! Hope you like it even half as much as I do. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sgzn7VyoqEw&feature=related

GWB's Billions of Reasons NOT To "October Surprise" Iran Get More 'No KaKa Where You Eat' Reasons

2008-07-09T14:33:00.000-07:00

With G. W. Bush preparing his Victory Lap in his own mind[Latest Bush Family POTUS Terms Served Standings:
W 2; Poppy 1; Jeb 0; Neal 0]
many are realistically worried about an October Surprise bombing of Iran. Supposedly this will be the time-running-out Field-Goal that wins it for the GOP and John McCain. A lot like what Adam Viniteri did for the New England Patriots, Bill Belichick and Tom Terrific Brady - until the Pats unloaded Adam V.
While Bush 43 knows he is to be remembered the "Churchill of the Patomac," neither he nor Chancellor Cheney are big on loyalty. Barack caught with a live boy or a dead girl are possible and likely in the Age of PhotoShop. That alone
won't dropkick John McCain and the GOP through the goalposts of victory. If David Vitter and Larry Craig cosponsor the Protection of Marriage Amendment and it did not originate at the ONION a case for the GOP flying on Auto-Pilot can be made.

Yesterday's self-doubting entry suggests Dr. Bawb is an optimist by nature but tries very hard not to be a fool. Example: Barack Obama turning rightward was predictable and is less of a worry than Israel bombing the hell outta Iran or doing the deed ourselves. "Never trust a Pol produced by the Illinois Lege" was the advice of my friend Joe O'Shaughnessy, Chicago resident who oversees Sprawling Ramshackle Compound blog. Joe said this long before Obamania peaked and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjXyqcx-YY&feature=related obliterated the field - Dr. Bawb's first Prez choice included.

Attacking Iran will instantly make the weekly $106.00 fill-up of Cheapo-Unleaded seem like the good old days. But that's never really been the problem for The Churchill of the Patomac or the Chancellor. Absent "weirdos" like Bernie Sanders, Russ Feingold, Barbara Lee, James Wexler, Dennis Kucinich and Henry Waxman [Dr. Bawb's Congressguy] it doesn't seem to be Congress' problem either. Today I read Charles Krauthamer on Obama's gradual morphing into John McCain. As the late Pittsburgh Steeler announcer Myron Cope screamed into his microphone: "Now, what's going on down there!" It's bad enough to agree with Kraut, surliest over-the-top cheerleader for Bush, Cheney, AIPAC and, like Dr. Bawb, wheelchair jockey. Kraut's privileged, Orthodox intellect likely has

never been polluted by once-upon-a-time LEGAL early 1960s LSD http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/07/08/america/NA-US-Tainted-Treats.php blotter-paper. What's the bet Kraut never has seen Frankenstein Meets the Werewolf? I'd send Bought-And-Paid-For-Kraut the CD but why? Paul Krassner, hands-down Hunter S, Thompson's satiric equal, once speculated on, then rejected the notion of slipping Nixon some Acid in his Realist "All you get is a "turned-on" Nixon," wrote Krassner with great sensibility. Same with Kraut's apocalyptic, tantrum-prone Weltenschaung. http://www.discord.org/~lippard/realist.html

So, what's to be done? Not a helluva a lot IMO. BUT Barack and First Lady-in-waiting Michelle Obama publically admitted they made A MISTAKE! Practically unheard of during the last 16-years by anyone in or near the Oval Office. And The Mistake:

2008 - 2:57pm
WASHINGTON (AP) - Don't expect to see more of Barack Obama's young daughters on television any time soon. The Democratic presidential candidate and his wife, Michelle, allowed the syndicated program "Access Hollywood" to interview their daughters, Malia and Sasha, as Malia celebrated her 10th birthday. The four-part interview began airing Tuesday.

On Wednesday, Obama said he had second thoughts after seeing how much attention the interview had received. The Obamas had been keeping Malia and 7-year-old Sasha out of the media spotlight. "It was an exception, it was Malia's birthday, we were in Montana, everybody was having a good time," he told "Good Morning America" on ABC. "I think we got carried away a little bit. Generally what makes them so charming is the fact that they're not spending a lot of time worrying about TV cameras or politics and we want to keep it that way." Asked if he regretted the interview, Obama said: "A little bit of pause, Michelle and I, particularly given the way it sort of went around the cable stations. I don't think it's healthy and it's something that we'll be avoiding in the future."

Baby Steps beat No Steps. I prefer looking at the Half-Full Glass - and the Busted Flush poker-shark Obama reportedly can play and even win. In that spirit, behold:
John Edwards holds a lot of titles bearing the word “former,” including: senator from North Carolina, Democratic presidential candidate and vice-presidential contender four years ago for Senator John Kerry. That, perhaps, best explains why he may be a long shot to sit atop this year’s list of prospective running mates. If Mr. Obama is serious about winning North Carolina, a state that leans Republican, would Mr. Edwards offer enough of an edge to tip the balance? He did not do so four years ago. Perhaps in 2008, with poverty and joblessness far larger questions than in 2004

Mr. Edwards would be a more tempting choice.

"The Road Not Taken."

2008-07-08T11:48:00.000-07:00

Chronicle of a Shrink's journey from youthful
know-it-all to inevitable old-fart astonishment.

Dr. Bawb has periodically regretted his years-back
descision not to stick with UCLA Pharmacology; another name for Neurophysiology. That's American poet Robert Frost who recited
at JFK's 1961 Inaugural although not one of his more familiar works which include The Road Not Taken. A pretty commonplace occurance for us all at any point in life. Doubts recur anytime and anywhere. My job [and many other ethical therapists] was NEVER to force choice[s] upon clients. To me best ability I tried to clarify the ambiguities and leave choosing to the client. How better can any therapist show respect for any Client?

The dilemma may present as simply as young Marlon Brando's "I coulda been a contender!" rant to his cousin cum gangland boss Lee J. Cobb in On The Waterfront or with the complexity of Robert Frost's The Road Not Taken. As a one-time Therapist and full-time human being with strengths and frailties of youth turned to old age I demanded of myself and Once-and-Future Therapists I supervised identical respect be given to the Dilemma - haltingly or eloquently expressed. Consider Robert Frost at his best:

THE ROAD NOT TAKEN

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

Let's Assume Obama's Strategy Has Bob Shrum and Susan Estrich As General Carl von Clausewitz

2008-07-07T10:04:00.000-07:00

Chronicle of a Shrink's journey from youthful
know-it-all to inevitable old-fart astonishment.

First, it would be 'Pick-Em' between a Press Conference announcing Obama's innovative "Take the Low Ground" strategy or an O.J. Simpson appreciation to "....Brother Barack for giving me a chance the public never gave me! Me and him are gonna find Nicole's REAL KILLERS! AND take Florida!"

Not really. Shrum, for any who lost count Field-Marshaled Al Gore in 2000 and John Kerry in 2004. Estrich's USC CV reads in part: Professor Estrich was a special assistant to Senator Edward M. Kennedy, and staff counsel and special assistant to the chief counsel for the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee. She has been actively involved in Democratic presidential politics, serving as national campaign manager of the Dukakis-Bentsen campaign in 1988. See where BLOWING a 24-point post-convention lead to Poppy Bush gets you? No, my own Professor, the late Lawrence J. Peter, did not endow a Peter Principle Chair at USC law school. Estrich did it her way! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Principle.

Thus as a public service Doctor Bawb will, through Election Day, reprint The StoneZone. Why publicize the self-absorbed musings of GOP dirty-trickster Roger Stone? First, I like Roger for incomprehensible reasons. Flat-Earth Liberals hate him, a 98% great reason to read him in my book, Next, the real Karl von Clausewitz would approve. Finally No one ever learned ANYTHING by reading only that which says what one already says.

Point? I'm NOT a Democratic Party "Wise Man" OR a Law-Prof-Talk show-Host and general LA AM radio annoyance. But I'm not Krusty the Klown either. Here's the StoneZone: http://stonezone.com/

Krusty: There are only two rules in TV -- don't swear and don't whip it out! It's not rocket science!

New reason for Dr. Bawb to despise Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and 98% of the worthless Democratic Party

2008-07-06T19:50:00.000-07:00

Chronicle of a journey from youthful
know-it-all to old-fart astonishment.

From the Newsdesk
Judge: FISA trumps state secrets, binds executive branch
By Julian Sanchez Published: July 03, 2008 - 02:48PM CT
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act provides the "exclusive means" for electronic eavesdropping within the US, a federal district court judge in California ruled yesterday, and explicitly supersedes the government's claim that it may invoke the "state secrets" privilege to shield documents from court scrutiny. The plaintiffs in the suit against the government, the Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation, now have 30 days to show—without recourse to secret documents—that they were targets of government wiretaps. But the language of the decision also strongly suggests that if they do, any surveillance that occurred outside the bounds of FISA will be found unlawful, notwithstanding the president's assertion of an "inherent authority" to ignore the law in the name of national security.
The Al-Haramain case has its origins in a government blunder that tore a rare hole in the veil of secrecy surrounding the National Security Agency's surveillance programs: The foundation was accidentally given a classified document, which the government has since reclaimed, showing that its directors' telephone conversations had been intercepted. An appeals court later ruled that, notwithstanding the inadvertent disclosure, that document should remain under seal, and the government has sought to invoke its privilege to protect state secrets in order to have the case dismissed.
But in yesterday's 56-page opinion, Judge Vaughn R. Walker ruled that in Section 1806 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, Congress provided specific procedures by which "aggrieved persons" may have sensitive information reviewed in camera by the courts, thereby preempting the common law protection for state secrets pertaining to the type of surveillance covered by FISA. And more broadly, Walker insisted that FISA really does provide the sole, binding process by which the executive branch may conduct foreign intelligence wiretaps.
"Congress appears clearly to have intended to—and did—establish the exclusive means for foreign intelligence surveillance activities to be conducted," wrote Judge Walker in his opinion. "Whatever power the executive may otherwise have had in this regard, FISA limits the power of the executive branch to conduct such activities and it limits the executive branch’s authority to assert the state secrets privilege in response to challenges to the legality of its foreign intelligence surveillance activities."
There remains one last catch-22, however. FISA trumps the state secrets privilege only in cases involving "aggrieved persons." But plaintiffs must prove that they are "aggrieved" without making use of the secret document they had obtained before the law will permit documents, and others concerning surveillance of Al-Haramain, to be used in court. Exactly what standard of proof they must meet, however, is unclear because there is so little case law governing the question.
Jon Eisenberg, the attorney for the Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation, nevertheless notes that the judge "gives us some hints," suggesting that the sort of independent evidence adduced in the high-profile surveillance lawsuits targeting telecom firms might be sufficient. Eisenberg is optimistic that he can meet this hurdle. "I think there's compelling, unclassified circumstantial evidence," he says, "that would lead any reasonable person to believe our clients were surveilled."
Perhaps just as important is the judge's implicit rejection of the idea that the executive branch has the power—perhaps, as some have argued, pursuant to the president's Article II powers as commander in chief—to conduct surveillance outside the bounds of FISA. Though the ruling does not directly consider this question, it does hint at how Walker, who was appointed by George Bush Sr., would be likely to rule on the merits. If FISA provides a real and binding limit on the surveillance power of the executive, after all, then it is hard to avoid the conclusion that the NSA's secret program of warrantless surveillance was indeed illegal. "If we get standing," predicted Eisenberg, "we win."
The ruling does not directly affect the more well-publicized class-action suits against telecoms complicit in the NSA's surveillance, which are currently in limbo before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals—presumably pending next week's vote in the Senate on a bill to grant the telecoms retroactive immunity for their actions. But Kurt Opsahl, an attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation who is litigating those cases, notes that the ruling "undercuts one of the talking points" that Democratic leaders have advanced as a rationale for endorsing the pending bill.
"A reason given for agreeing to the current form of the FISA bill," says Opsahl, "was that the exclusive means language"—a provision reasserting that foreign intelligence surveillance must occur pursuant to FISA—"was part of the trade-off the Democrats had made." This ruling makes clear, as critics of the FISA amendments compromise have argued all along, that FISA is already the "exclusive means" of lawful surveillance, not a new concession won by Democrats in Congress. And according to Opsahl, "this shows that the litigation can proceed under longstanding secrecy procedures that have worked for many years."

IslamoFascism? US Fascism? Nah! It's Just New-Pragmatism Season.

2008-07-06T11:51:00.000-07:00

Chronicle of a journey from youthful
know-it-all to old-fart astonishment.

In 1933 80-ump year old Paul von Hindenberg was no Fascist when he made democratically elected Adolf the Chancellor of Germany. Nor at the time, technically, was Adolf who had to take the Berlin-to-Rome Express, met Mussolini who constructed Yes! An Imperial City-front made entirely of Stage-Props http://www.fpp.co.uk/books/Morell/Morell.pdf. I'll take the words of Ernst Morrell and Karl Brandt, Adolf's personal physicians, who accompanied the health-conscious, veggie-eating future Fuhrer on this um...Fact-Finding mission http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism. One MD might lie or exaggerate but TWO? And what IF the scam
on Dr. Morrell comes from convicted Holocaust-Denier David Irving? So he's batshit crazy. So was my Watts Clinic Supervisor Dr. Paul L. who made taking 1971 CA State Boards a walk in the park. Irving's an ex-Oxford Don with a Nazi-fixation. One doesn't stay at Oxford by getting the Fuhrer's decades of daily medical charts all wrong. Let's skip the civil-right thickets as to why batshit crazy David Irving did time but gifted and equally
batshit crazy Dr. Paul L. didn't in two small "d" democracies. Go there and you hit a Road-Runner paradox. I pass on that thanks. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJJW7EF5aVk. Anyway Adolf saw all he wanted then caught the train back to Berchtesgarten. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFGR-JMgtOw.

Robert Jay Lifton is one of many mental health professionals who http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Jay_Lifton do wonderful work, go about their business, avoid Stupid Human Tricks by shrinks that make me think putting in 40-years as Night Sweep-Up guy at Mickey D's mighta a more honorable career choice. On the other hand I DID supervise grad student, now Dr. Joseph Nicolosi, long enough to phone the California School of Professional Psychology and ask:
"Exactly how did this loosely connected nerve net get into college much less into
your doctoral program?" Hey: Author/ Psychologist James Dobson now calls Joe "America's top authority on pre-Gay Toddlers." RESOURCE LIST: HOMOSEXUALITY RESOURCES BOOKS. http://www.exgaywatch.com/wp/2007/04/dr-nicolosi-getting-in-touch-with-his-inner-spoiled-child/ Who knew?

Lifton's a wonderful "explainer." This morning,
age 77, Lifton quietly dismissed the notion of Bush-Cheney fascism by using the Senate appearance of Cheney-aide David Addington and John Yoo: "They [Bush administration] have been brilliant at tying everything they've done to democratic process, albeit a highly authoritarian democratic package....that's very distinct from the Fascism [under which] The Nazi Doctors
made their medical decisions." Immediately I thought of Reagan's UN Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick's Though-The-Looking-Glass measuring rod for what nations would get US military support and which would get Bitch-Slapped: "Traditional authoritarian governments are less repressive than revolutionary autocracies."[2]. Take one pill that makes you LARGER and one pill that makes you SMALL and one pill that doesn't do ANYTHING AT ALL.
Still confused? Call Grace Slick and the
Jefferson Airplane in the morning. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xhYk9PEmXA. Kirkpatrick then and Addington now can't help being smarter than Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid.

What have we learned? That Robert Jay Lifton's as smart as David
Addington; that The Nazi Doctors began weeding out those with "no useful life" gimps like Dr. Bawb before getting around to the Jews and the Gypsies; Bush-Cheney et al are small 'd' democrats and NOT Fascists. We learned Nancy Pelosi was, is, always will be the Self-Admirer who took impeachment off the table - but that was awhile ago. Meantime He-Who-Talk-Only-To-Higher-Father [HIM??!!!!] is Free-World leader for another near 200 days. Everyone's spooked about an "October Surprise" in Iran. I dissent not just from glandular optimism but also from the "Don't Shit Where You Eat" rule. Halliburton's in the neighborhood. Dubai's WAY bigger and better than Vegas and there's no "colored side of town." Don't ask me. I was the Shrink who couldn't make a silk purse out of NARTH Executive Director Joseph Nicolosi, Ph.D. The "Vision Thing," I guess.

http://www.pbase.com/bmcmorrow/dubaiaerials&page=all."

"Another Bullshit Night In Suck City." Closing the Books on Crazy Doctor L.

2008-07-04T08:22:00.000-07:00

Chronicle of a journey from youthful
know-it-all to old-fart astonishment

That's the kickass best book title I've heard of in years. I haven't yet read it but that'll happen in the fullness of time or sooner. I'm not the Advanced-Copy reviewer type. Another Bullshit Night In Suck City reminds me of cartoonist Harvey Peker [above] on Cleveland. Actually it's Boston; either city suits a Pittsburgh Stiller junkie just fine.

But Thomas Flynn's Suck City is a memoir of Flynn's father with rave reviews. It's been compared with the classic 1969 Stop-Time Frank Conroy's memoir that influenced a generation of American writers and included wannabes and never-weres such as Doctor Bawb. Conroy died recently at age 69. ttp://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/07/books/07conroy.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Shrinkery began as strictly a Day Job for me. Neither Conroy then nor Flynn now couldn't have had more encouragement longer than I did. TimeStops don't happen in our world. At my age and time
spent I'll pass on a duke out with Einstein. Or Marcel Proust tp://rhetoric.berkeley.edu/graduate_coursesSp2008.html.

My half century long buddy brought up Another Bullshit Night In Suck-City while we "greased" at a Greek joint
http://losangeles.citysearch.com/profile/39448272/
"Ulysses' Voyage" that's walking/SpazMobile distance from my place. I broke up laughing figuring Suck City referred to LA and especially its Let's-shut-our-eyes-and-wish-REAL-HARD!-the-USA's-Deficit-cum-Mortgage-Crisis-Goes-Away-and-Tinker-Bell-Gets-Well! crowd. But what's a guy s'posed to imagine with The Grove [LA's NEW Center And Place To Be!] 125-feet east and Up-To-The-Yang crowded on a Wedneday night?

Turns out the LA Times' review of Suck City, also thumbs-up, can't bring itself to print the word Bullshit or Suck. No bad thing. Our Only Paper has roused readers to actually USE their imaginations or else go on-line to find the book's title. Using the LA Times Book Section search, my first two pages were mostly LA Lakes [why not?], some Obama and Hillary hits plus a Sally Field ["You like me! You REALLY like me!" Osacar winner] The Watts shooting of a man found dead in his yard with his puppy atop his body on Search Page three was the first use the word Bullshit that I found. mes.com/homicidereport/2007/11/watts-murder.html.

Questions how and/or why LA's major paper handled same-named title of Princeton Prof. Harry G. Frankfurst's bestseller best referred to Prof. Leon Kass, ever helpful Chairman of the G.W. Bush Ethics Advisory Board. Like Barack Obama, Kass taught at the U. of Chicago and shatters stereotypes. One that a Black can teach Constitutional Law at a prestigious law schools. One that a Jew can teach Bioethics at the same prestious law school then fit it whetever Owl Entrails were most recently read by Author/Psychologist James Dobson.

On the way home from "Ulysses' Voyage," my friend suggested that 98% of all Blogs [my Blawg especially included] are an on-line form of Free-Association.

"Damn staight!" I replied even though he divides his retirement time among the Pasadena Jet Propulsion Lab, upgrading the UCLA Computer System, going to wierd-ass film festivals, reading the LA Times and claiming not to remember what he did. "Yeah, bro!" I said: "Remember I wrote about the Watts Clinic and the phuqued-up Doctor L?" "Yeah," he answered: "You were always pissed-off about him. I met him at your wedding reception or something."

[My...ummm, lightning Shrink Reflexes say DON'T call my buddy on his "I-Recall-Nothing" bullshit. But that's like forever].

"You know that raggedy-ass sent me and MWTC [My Wife The Christian] a bill for him talking about himself for five damn hours!"
"You pay it?"
"Phuque no! Kept it just in case I need it for a State Medical Board hearing."
"So what did Dr. L. do?"
"Nothin' but more varations on the same old shit. Wasn't in him to do elsewise. Great, great supervisor and batshit crazy. Until MWTC yanked his chain."
"How'd she do that?"
"You know. She worked one Department, I worked another. We never talked t work. We never talked ABOUT work at home."
"So what did she do?"
"One day L's pitchin' some fit at me over nothing and she walked by. Slowed down but didn't even stop: "Paul," she tells him gently. "The reason you and Robert lock horns is you remind him exactly of his mother." She kept walking. Dr. L. never said shit again and we never discussed it EVER at home."Maybe I did whatever I was s'posed to do. Anyway I plan doing it until I get the Hook.

Here are all the reviews for Suck City. Happy Fourth holiday!"

http://aolsearch.aol.com/aol/search?invocationType=searchbox.webhome&query=reviews+%22another+bullshit+night+in+suck+city%22

Reverend James Bevel Was MLK's Right-Hand Man In 1963. He's The Same Man Now He Was Then.

2008-07-02T21:19:00.000-07:00

Chronicle of a journey from youthful
know-it-all to old-fart astonishment.

Long ago during my Watts Clinic internship, a very competent, very unpleasant supervisor mockingly told me: "You talk to everone the same way! Sober, drunk or stoned it's the same person!" Dr. L. was dead on. and an asshole until the day he died. He was also black and Gay before either was hip. Dr. L. figured nit-picking me to death would make me quit. Once he called me away from my Bride at dinner up
to his friuty Hollywood apartment. Was the same as his routine My-Shit-Doesn't-Stink! escoriation of EVERY mistake I'd ever made at Watts Clinic including some I'd never made. He began at 7:45pm when I found his place. Having lost count near 1:00am of Dr. L's smirking homilies re my ineffective
worthlessness and how I wasn't nearly grateful for his thankless patience I reminded him of Intakes he'd assigned me for 7:00am. "You're ASSUMING I've forgotten, aren't you Doctor? Let me walk you to your car." Dr. L's screed ended when I pulled away, down Sunset, left at Western and home. "What did Dr. L. want?" My Wife the Christian asked sleepily as I slid into bed. "You don't wanna know, I don't wanna think about it."

Of course "MWTC" DID want to know. Next night when I told her, she got the verbal-shrapnel Dr. L. had tried but failed to goad me into to have me fired by Watts Clinic for insubordination. Big-Time Rule for People and even Shrinks: IF some wildly crazy-ass "MoFo" actually SUCCEEDS at making you angry, NEVER let him or her outta the office WITHOUT telling 'em exactly why you're P.O'd. WHY? Cause some innocent person is gonna take the HEAT! Fair? No. But neither is life as someone or something reminded JFK to remind us.

The point of all this is that Rev. James Bevell was at war with his same Incestuous Demons as Dr. King's First Lieutenant in 1963 Birmingham as in 2008 when James Bevel was convicted in Virginia of unlawful fornication for sexually molesting one of his children. Bevel's awaiting formal formal sentencing later this month. Child molesters do for
http://omnipotentpoobah.com/2008/05/25/good-man-bad-man-the-strange-case-of-rev-james-bevel/ me what spiders do for most people. Since I'm incapable of detatchment I've never treated one. Not even a "sympathetic case" like Bevel's. HATE Passive-Aggressives but they're just endlessly annoying, self-indulgent bores and don't creep me out. The prospect of spending my life treating Passive-Aggresive goobers drove me to hopefully something more "useful" in South Central. But I'd do 10-years of straight "P.A's" before I'd go near even James Bevell. Granted I'm well to the Left [is child molestation political?] of whack-jobs like Austria's Dr. Suzanne Winter whose wonderfully insane "Allah Was A Child-Molester!" slogan looks cribbed from either Groucho Marx or the Focus On The Family playbook. Ultimately, James Bevell rose above his demons long enough to help make the world a tad more hopeful for my two-week old grandson and those like him. J.P. Sarte wrote that the man [or woman] who battles his [or her] homosexual desires has earned a right not to be called homosexual. One of the great thing about America is it remaining, for some at least, the land of Second Chances: Yes, the Protection of Marriage Amendment's back. http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/16020.html. No names of the Senate sponsors, but here's a hint:

Tax-Day Bummer gone? Awesome! Here's CPA David Walker with his Bigger, Better Bummer for y'all.

2008-06-30T18:48:00.000-07:00

Chronicle of a journey from youthful
know-it-all to old-fart astonishment.

Glass half-full Shrinks, of which I am one, NEVER EVER "bum out" Clients or Readers! Got it? Not for nothing are we key players in what most of us and a few of y'all call the Helping Professions. Not that I ever said it with a straight-face in 37-years. But all fields have blemishes to mar the careful gloss. It's too late in life to "front,"so lemme say it now: Ron and Nancy made ME feel good!

It may not have been for the same reasons most of America felt good and the times mighta been shorter - LOTS shorter to be truthful - but I liked seeing my late, great dad take his final foreign trip [to Cuba, where else?] and make back probably all the money and more playing the Reaganomic stock market
that he'd lost back in 1929. I'm an only kid, like you couldn't tell, but I truly had no eyes to inherit his dough. Dad was aces, worked his ass off and my dream was him kicking, age 104, leaving total assets of $1.73. Nothing succeeds as as planned.

To come outta Economic DisneyLand once he died in 1988 took a
now-disbarred lady lawyer from Fairfax High, dumb-luck, her ripping off a deaf couple for another $109K and four years. Undeterred, she enrolled at USC and got her Ph.D. in Deaf-Studies. She has since sued a deaf graduate student from another school whose M.A. Thesis on her unfactual and plagiarized Doctoral Dissertation annoyed and embarrassed USC's Graduate School considerably. Some other time, if ever, for this One Woman Crime Wave. Back to David Walker, CPA.

Walker is a good deal more than just another CPA. More to the point he was Comptroller General of the United States until March 12, 2008 Walker didn't resign in order to "spend more time with my family" as did, say, Alberto Gonzales. But Alberto never told Chancellor Cheney much less going on tour of the country to tell anyone who would listen the USA is now $50-trillion [FIFTY-TRILLION DOLLARS] in debt and that's increasing by $3-trillion each year and unless we address it now we're SUNK! But that was after Walker testified before both Senate and House Finance Committee telling the new Democratic majorities the same thing. ONLY NOBODY WAS LISTENING! Paul O'Neill, this White House's Den of Thieves first Treasury Secretary, wrote that when he said something like Walker said, the Chancellor snarled: "Reagan said deficits don't matter!" Walker, exasperated that neither Dems nor GOPs were, are or will be receptive to his message: MEDICARE ENTITLEMENTS ARE MORE DANGEROUS TO THIS COUNTRY THAN OSAMA EVER THOUGHT OF BEING. resigned. Is it true that Americans can't handle the truth? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9FuOXdPtrA&feature=related
Several weeks ago Medicare bought me a new Power Wheelchair. Less than a week ago, Medicare delivered and installed a brand-new Electric Hospital Bed in my home. Are both nice? Bet on it! Could I do without both? Bet on that too! I'm a healthy, tolerably rugged guy, 70 years and Cerebral Palsy not withstanding - and damned fortunate to boot. My previous power-chair is battered but FIXABLE. A Lamborghini bed? Been sleeping great on one of the old beds the twins had as teeny kids. Years ago, me and a buddy hopped the same freight-train Jack Kerouc wrote of in "On The Road." Why? Because we could. The future Dr. Bawb fell asleep on a damn flat-car! Like Walker, though the comparative scale is microscopic in my case, no one listened to my :"I don't need a new chair" It equaled "Low self-esteem." My ass and M.C. Rove's face! Still it's merciful not all 70-year olds, disabled or not, are like me. OTOH U.S. wretched excess is stunning. I don't keep good records but people like David Walker do. It's their Job Description. Here's who Walker works for. Check out the YouTubes on it and DON'T call a Shrink in morning.

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June 27, 2008 by Sarah Williams and Erica Matthews
While most people understand that we have an aging population, the magnitude of the challenge this poses is not as widely understood. PerotCharts puts it into perspective: By 2040, the number of people who are over 65 will have...
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Empowering the Next PresidentApril 2, 2008What if President William Howard Taft and his Congress had written laws that specified how all the government's revenues at the beginning of the 21st century were to be spent? Preposterous? Well, the laws on the books today not only dictate how all revenues collected in 2030 and beyond will be spent, they also predetermine most of the next president's spending.
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In Late-Breaking Brachial-Chop News...

2008-06-29T20:01:00.000-07:00

Chronicle of a journey from youthful
know-it-all to old-fart astonishment.

My friend Joe O'Shaugnessy, a Chicago cop, is teaching a move I'd give... well, not years off my life to master. In my own, or anyone elses, 70th year that offer becomes sure fire Point-and-Laugh material. Joe went to New Orleans immediately following Katrina to help out. These days he and his family return to work with Habitat For Humanity as did
one former Prez and one Prez hopeful. No names please. Because, as still another former Prez put it: "That would be WRONG!"

Joe writes that he "lives for this [Brachial-Chop move]." 35-years of mostly South Central LA Shrinkery plus CA-mandated
Continuing Ed. courses suggests to me that a Happy Teacher is a Good Teacher. Living far from "ChicagoLand," not having been there in decades plus being well disposed towards Joe and his family I've not personally seen his methods. I'm an emperical kinda Shrink
and got tout-suite fed-effing-up with the Carriage-Trade's "I KNOW my problem now, Doctor! And that's half the battle, right?" > and so moodied on back forever to the 'hood. Joe's Blog is http://sprawlingramshacklecompound.blogspot.com/2006/06/i-never-get-tired-of-this.html Anyway here's that move as done elsewhere:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MoDG3k5cPZw

Enough to make an ancient By-His-Fingernails Jew-Boy muse on a Faustian Bargain http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0016847/mediaindex

Let's Look At The "Good Side" Of Natural Disasters and Genocides.

2008-06-29T10:33:00.000-07:00

Chronicle of a journey from youthful
know-it-all to old-fart astonishment.

Lady Bird Johnson's monument as First Lady is, or was, making the national highway system more scenic. Former First Lady, now First Mother, Barbara Bush told America`about the good side of Hurricaine Katrina for refugees from New Orleans' Ward Nine who then were huddled in the Houston SuperDome. Mike Kelly of Arcata, CA, took the unretouched picture [above] of the Lavendar Sun which would be impossible without the vast forest fires blazing away now in Northern CA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0FT3OtmbZc&feature=related AND http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yV8vcpMPPPA&NR=1 AND http://modis.gsfc.nasa.gov/gallery/individual.php?db_date=2008-06-29
Readers of this Blawg know Dr. Bawb as a Half-Full Glass kinda Shrink - to which label: "Damn straight I be!" The great Satchel Paige's rule [one of them] is equally, if not more, of use: "Never look back. Something might be gaining on you!" This applauds Kevin Phillips' "American Dynasty" and refutes InterNet rumors that Barbara Bush's father was Aleister Crowley. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satchel_Paige
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleister_Crowley

"What I'm hearing which is sort of scary is that they all want to stay in Texas. Everybody is so overwhelmed by the hospitality. And so many of the people in the area here, you know, were underpriviliged anyway so [CHUCKLE] this is working out very well for them." Sept 5, 2005

Sail on, sail on, Great Mother of State! say I in paraphrase of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's immortal poem. Before being overcome by desire to paraphrase the best line in the unintentionally funniest flick ever, "Youngblood Hawke" http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058764/
and ask aloud: "Should we call you 'Longy' or 'Bloody'?" here are Longfellow's exact words. Laissaz bon temps roulez!

O Ship of State

Thou, too, sail on, O Ship of State! Sail on, O Union, strong and great! Humanity with all its fears, With all the hopes of future years, Is hanging breathless on thy fate! We know what Master laid thy keel, What Workmen wrought thy ribs of steel, Who made each mast, and sail, and rope, What anvils rang, what hammers beat, In what a forge and what a heat Were shaped the anchors of thy hope! Fear not each sudden sound and shock, 'Tis of the wave and not the rock; 'Tis but the flapping of the sail, And not a rent made by the gale! In spite of rock and tempest's roar, In spite of false lights on the shore, Sail on, nor fear to breast the sea! Our hearts, our hopes, are all with thee. Our hearts, our hopes, our prayers, our tears, Our faith triumphant o'er our fears, Are all with thee, -are all with thee! Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

News From The "Who Cares?" Desk: A Barely-Known Good Flick

2008-06-28T09:36:00.000-07:00

Chronicle of a journey from youthful
know-it-all to old-fart astonishment.

That's unsolved-murder writer James Ellroy on the right, looking like he does in "James Ellroy's Feast of Death" which I saw last night after severing my last tie to the Democratic Party ["WHAT!" you say. "Quit now when there's real hope on the way?" Exactly, and this too shall be shortly explained].

I've read five or six Ellroy books, saw the quite good "LA Confidential" when it came out a few years ago. "Blood Feast" was a pleasant surprise. It's a documentary about Ellroy's life, generally based upon "My Dark Places," his autobiography. Turns out Ellroy and Dr. Bawb not only went to the same high-school, Fairfax in L.A. but also to "JB" - aka John Burroughs Junior High though I was about nine-years ahead of Ellroy.

Ah, yes: "With honor and service, our watch-words now to thee/ True to your colors, our hearts will ever be!/Fairest and dearest, John Burroughs Junior High!" went the final chorus of that three-year horror school's Alma mater.
Out of a student body of 2000, all with Raging Hormones, I was the Lone Spastic. Further my chainsaw stutter theatened to drown in a near-drooling 24/7/365 state of grimacing muteness. Bad eh? Ellroy's three years TKO's mine two-minutes into Round One: A year before "JB," the body of his mother a nurse and enthusiastic Bar Fly was found raped, strangled and partially dismembered by some Little Leaguers. The "perp" remains unknown through today. Mazel tov, Jim! Your JB story kicks the crap outta mine. No wonder you're weirder than I ever thought of being. No wonder you wrote the hell outta the 1947 Elizabeth Short Black Dahlia case. Which, until I saw you and a half-dozen of your buddies of the LAPD murder police kicking back at the Pacific Dining Car, one of LA's truly great steak houses [The "Baseball Steak" above], also remained unsolved. Omitted forgiveably from the movie version of your Auto-Bio "My Dark Places" was your shrewd plan to get expelled from then-mostly Jewish Fairfax High by wearing a Swastika arm-band. Nothing personal: My dad showed up to face down Fairfax's then-Principal, a fine broth of a Jew-hater, who refused to seat Weird Young Me on the Student Council. No one messed with my pissed-off dad! We do what we gotta do. That Swastika shtick coulda got you what you wanted anywhere. Good show! Again, as one Weirdo to another, Mazel tov!

In truth, my admiration of Ellroy goes much further than his splendid plotting and writing. Spend a long enough time in the Shrink dodge and one wonders [at least I do] how a kid as bleeped-up as Ellroy was can [A] Survive and [B] Become, then sustain, productiveness on his/her own terms. One need not "approve" of the manner and style of those who emerge intact from unspeakable beginnings. Given my "druthers," I prefer never to meet James Ellroy. I've had my fill of Ellroy's "mannerism wannabes." "Real articles" remind me of catastrophes I've dodged and how it otherwise could have been. He and I are fortunate.

In 2006 a glint of Democratic Party Future prompted the excellent Anonymous Liberal to write of David Addington thusly: http www.anonymousliberal.com/2006/06/look-out-david-addingtons-head-just.html. Yesterday, 6/27/2008, smirk intact, Addington and side-kick John Yoo gave the Middle-Finger Salute for three-hours to the U.S. Congress generally, earnest, moderately annoyed Democrats more specifically and the US Constitution in particular. Having suspected 98% of all elected Democrats are 100% invertebrate, this was no bulletin. What made me spatter the screen of this 'puter [Why in THE hell watch grown-ups try and fail to lance a pair of putrescent, throbbing carbuncles on the neck of decency?] was Chairman John Conyers thanking both for "arranging your time to appear before this committee." Say WHAT??? So it's a Pro forma courtesy! So Conyers DIDN'T break off a bottle and jump both mocking ass-wipes like Ernest Borgnine as Sgt Fatso Judson came at Sinatra in From Here To Eternity! http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0045793/

Damn! My 70th year; One week as Grandfather of Jayden Robert Starr; Awards up the yang and I STILL demand justice! Maybe, like Professor Kingsfield said in "The Paper Chase" http://www.imdb.com/find?s=all&q=the+paper+chase&x=14&y=3
I shoulda applied to the School of Theology.

"Roll Over Ivan Pavlov and tell James Dobson the news!"

2008-06-27T09:36:00.000-07:00

Chronicle of a journey from youthful
Know-It-All to old-fart astonishment.

You CAN'T be "So fed up with James Dobson you could shit!" my late mother The Shrinkette would say [but Mommie Dearest never ever said "shit"]."You're just jealous, Mister Ph.D!!!" First, while
Mommie was alive I didn't know Jimbo nor care enough about him to be jealous - which is the way it is now. That "Mister Ph.D!" is how she'd get her general
disdain for everyone and everything off her chest. Survive 'mommie' and you have nothing left to fear. FDR told a broken nation in 1933 much the same thing a few years before I was born. Any of my three kids can and will enumerate
Poppa's faults. Among their big breaks [aside from not doping nor boozing] was never having met Gramma Dearest. Her memory is
a Michelin Guide for how not to be.
Bright woman, big waste, nuf said.
Back to Author/Psychologist James Dobson.

A good e-mail friend, Betsy Shaw, sent a response by theologian Jim Wallis to Dobson's screed this week about Barack Obama's "fruit-cake interpretation of the US Constitution" among much else.

http://www.oneplace.com/ministries/Focus_on_the_Family/archives.asp?bcd=2008-6-24 What up Dobs? (as we say in the 'hood). I was goofing off at USC grad school during obligatory Constitutional-Law-For-Future-Shrinks? Was Barack woofing all those years while he taught Constitutional Law at U. of Chicago? Gawd! Maybe I'll plead "dumb-ass" and return all my awards. Nah - I'm a born show-off. Let's get on with it!

James Dobson's act is 100% based upon AMBIGUITY. I'll base the premise on Nobel Prize Winner Ivan Pavlov's work on the effects of Perceptual Ambiguity. Dobson, like any psychology graduate student at top flight graduate schools, is familiar with Pavlovian Learning Theory. This is especially true in "child psychology," Dobson's professed specialty. Pavlov, a 19th and 20th c. Russian physiologist, founded what became the cornerstone of all learning theories in all experimental psychology. From the 1930s through the 1970s Muzafer Sherif used Pavlov's pioneering experiments work to expand upon

causes of individual and group dispute and resolution/agreement by use of "Perceptual

Ambiguities. While Pavlov's methodology used dogs, Sherif's research utilized individual men and women plus groups of people. See Pavlov

http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/1904/pavlov-bio.html :and Sherif

http://www.muskingum.edu/~psych/psycweb/history/sherif.htm.

gs think Dobson IS a Theologian despite"Aw shucks!" denials. The folksy act works every time.
Dobson learned the same Ivan Pavlov I did. We learned Experimental Ambiguity made Dr. Pavlov's dogs so neurotic they REFUSED FRESH MEAT PLACED IN PLAIN SIGHT AND SCENT! How?

One group of dogs was Conditioned ("Rewarded") with meat for choosing a path marked by a SQUARE. The other group was Conditioned to choose a path marked by a CIRCLE. Both groups had been given a very mild electric shock for making incorrect choices IN ADDITION TO NO "MEAT REWARD."

Pavlov began to gradually make the SQUARES more CIRCULAR. Pavlov also made the CIRCLES more SQUARE. There was no choice difficulty for either group at first. Both CIRCLE and SQUARE dogs learned equally well. Pavlov gradually made the square more circular and gradually made the circle more square. He thus increased the "choice difficulty" for both groups. As SQUARE and CIRCLES became more similar, dog from both groups whined, barked and hesitated more. Choice-Of-Path Errors increased. So did the frequency of electric shocks (or Aversive Consequences) from the floor. Both Square-conditioned and Circle-conditioned dog groups became hungry (or food-deprived.)

Once visual cues were indistinguishable from each other, Pavlov removed all the experimental apparatus, placed fresh meat in front of each dog and left the room. But the dogs were now so "neurotic" that ALL refused food in order to avoid the electric shock. Hungry as each dog was for food all fought and snapped at their trainers when forcibly dragged toward the meat! Both groups of dogs eventually ate only when returned to their familiar kennels

The inference should be obvious: Everyday life gives enough "aversive experience" without Dr. Pavlov around to oversee everything. Groups of otherwise bright people will trust an avuncular Psychologist who quotes Scripture. When the same Shrink says he's no theologian but is merely "following the Word of God," who cares if he's not ordained? Dobson's advice, wrong-headed or not, is comforting. To paraphrase Gimme That Old-Time Religion, whatever Dobson says is plenty good enough for the Focus On The Family flock. Speaking from a multitude of pulpits increases its effectiveness. It's great theater. Think 1935 Nuremberg Rally. Dr. Phil's not half so slick.

In a message dated 06/26/08 23:48:49 Pacific Daylight Time, Treetops38 writes:
Butwhy should America care about how a child psychologist votes?

Doctor Dobson's Fatwa On "Fruitcake Christianity."

2008-06-24T01:25:00.000-07:00

Chronicle of a Journey from Youthful
Know-It-All to Old-Fart Astonishment.

Give some credit my professional colleague and fellow USC Trojan Alumnus already!
The Author/Psychologist Dobson didn't call Barack Obama an undercover Agent and Mole for Osama bin Laden and Islam. Not so far anyway.

Look, it's June. The "totally unacceptable" presumptive GOP nominee might repent. Then suck-up to Dobson so abysmally that the Ayatollah of Colorado Springs may call upon his Divisions of Evangelical Lemmings to get out and vote! Votes with Noses Held count just like the Enthusiastic kind. The deal, as always, will come down to what Jim Dobson can get John "The Maverick" McCain to give him.

Mighty visions of the late, sainted Richard Daley were beheld by each of them! Even though a recent Pew national poll reveals 83% of all Americans believe in an afterlife of some sort, they also believe that no one form of religious faith has "The Answer" to the truth. If my memories of Auther/Psychologist Dobson serve (As previously noted in this Blog, Dobs was two-years ahead of me at USC Grad School. Our interactions then
are best be described as "The Cue-Ball glancing off the Eight-Ball.") hard-core American Theocrats will be happy with a Dobson-fueled McCain administration. Even that's gonna last as long as the average bubble http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/religion/stories/062408dnrelpewstudy.2f6d9020.html from your kid's plastic Bubble-Maker.

Rumors of McCain pleading health and dropping out persist. Any notion of Straight-Talk taking a dive for the Party seems lifted from Pulp Fiction
with Ving Rhames and Bruce Willis Marsellus: In the fifth, your ass goes down. Say it. Butch: In the fifth, my ass goes down. Not hardly, I say.
http //www.boxofficetrailer.com/Crime/Pulp- Fiction.html. But I also said no way Karl Rove doesn't do time for perjury in the Valerie Plame Case. In Pat Fitzgerald's dreams! And mine. Who figures Vivica Novak (no relation to Crazy Bob) tips off Turd-Blossom's lawyer accidentally. A Ronald Reagan-style memory cramp ensues. Rove skates away, easy as a Dick Button toe loop. A Double Toe Loop is a spin done in a spiral or arabesque position, where the free leg is vertical to the ice. In a toe loop, the skater jumps from the forward toe position, changes feet, and spins on the other leg in a back toe loop. Performing a Toe Loop is thrilling for a skater. Pat Fitzgerald is a stronger, better human being than I for his ability to just walk away from that snake-pit without screaming nor saying any word I know of about Dick Cheney's US jurisprudence. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viveca_Novak .

So John McCain's this out-of-control blow-top Senator who boinked a Cindy McCain look-alike during 2000. Whose temper fits scare the BeJeebus outta the Joint Chiefs of Staff should his fingers ever get near the Red Phone.

Scuse me if I don't buy into the Huffington Post's
inside dope about about McCain's drop-out in favor of some Cotton Mather wannabe cut more to James Dobson's or John Hagee's jib. I'd compare McCain's style or lack thereof to 1950s heavyweight champ Rocky Marciano. Rock never weighed 200-lbs
had no style, short arms, wasn't pretty and punched like a sledge with either fist. In 42 fights Rock won them all by KO or TKO. He quit undefeated, was a paranoid miser with umpteen bank accounts in false names. Decades after his plane crash death they're
still being found. Got the idea about McCain now?

What's comforting to me is not all pro-Obama writers think Barack is a slam-dunk. Or McCain being "cast-out" by James Dobson is just the Fruit-Cake apparitif. I'd be damn worried. But that's me.

George Carlin, H. L. Mencken and Falling Out Of "Like" With Obama.

2008-06-23T19:50:00.000-07:00

Chronicle of a Journey from Youthful
Know-It-All to Old Fart Astonishment.

George Carlin auditioned yesterday at the Great Comedy Store. http://www.biography.com/search/article.do?id=9542307&page=print. He was 71, lived hard, fast and went out quick and pretty close to the way all of us must. "Too soon" is an academic term and depends entirely on one's point of view. Carlin often said. Absent stand-up comedy, he would like to have taught Linguistics at some university. His course woulda been "SRO" too. George mighta guest lectured at, say, UC Berkley's Journalism School or presented at the Peabody Journalism Awards where he'd surely have given his opinions on the sorry state of Investigative Reporting and "Headless Torso in Topless Bar!" news. Dhaljit Dalawa (right) amiably complained about that very headline on PBS a few years ago. She said Americans don't get nearly enough news, especially news about foreign countries. But as Rupert Murdoch's FoxNews holoids remind us 24/7/365 The USA and GOP are #1!http://gothamist.com/2007/07/02/daljit_dhaliwal.php.

FoxNews' Gresham's Law ("Bad Drives Out Good!") gave a new form of Trench Mouth to the Democratic opposition as personified now by Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton. This form is worse than Carlin's famous "Seven Dirty Words You Can't Say On Radio or TV" in that both Spine and Words quickly become terminally infected. http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/06/21/obama/print.html

Obama endorsed Bush's FISA compromise. This sent liberal talk-jocks into "WTFITS?" mode. It should! Clinton, his opponent for the party nomination started earlier. But she's older and way preferable to FoxNews' stalking horse. To pick a fairly recent example from an embarrassment of riches, Clinton condemned video game Grand Theft Auto-IV "We need to treat violent video games the way we treat tobacco or alcohol," Clinton declared. http://chronicle.com/temp/reprint.php?id=gg9fp99q42q3t8djnsxxcllxqx616h9n "No one," as jounalist H. L. Menken wrote after the Scopes Monkey Trial ever went broke betting against the intelligence of the American people." To paraphrase the article above: Play GTA-IV for a few hours. Then go out at night. Look at a few parked cars. When you find an appealing one, see if you feel an overwhelming urge to carjack it. Ditto any neighborhood hookers. Take a kid with you for the sake of Scientific Validity. Point? I wonder whether Clinton or Obama might have come down against Scopes, Clarence Darrow and Mencken and for God and Tennessee if it meant winning the 2008
election. You can damn well guess where the opposition stands.

Hey Look! A Potentially USEFUL Blog Entry! And a "P.C." Apology!

2008-06-22T18:20:00.000-07:00

Chronicle of a journey from youthful
know-it-all to old-fart astonishment.

You bet that's Mantan Moreland and Benson Fong pictured there! When I was a kid Benson portrayed the inscrutable Chinese Detective Charlie Chan's #1 Son. Mantan was kept busy chauffuring Charlie and/or others in the family's gasoline guzzling LaSalle limosine with lines expected from a superstitious, intellectually challanged black supporting actor. Like: "Mist' Chan! Mist' Chan! Ah knows an' you knows but do de Ghos' know?" And: Feets! Do yo' stuff!" Nor did a Chinese ever play Charliehttp://www.charliechan.net/mainmenu.html .Oh the days when we ALL knew our places.

Relax! This isn't gonna be a tedious sermonette plea for "Tolerance" as they called it then. Yeah that's a power wheelchair like mine. But mine doesn't have Pittsburgh Steeler rims like Timmy's. Team logo Wheelchair Rims aren't yet part the overpriced made in Guatemala crap the NFL hustles. Think I'll rant about a fake TV character like Bush Veep Dan
Quayle ranted about Candice Bergin's single mom character? Mama mia!You make-a da beeg-a joke on-a poor Doctor Bawb, Mister Soprano! I'm a elderly Blue Collar Shrink with an equal-opportunity tasteless mockery blog. According to Truthiness Enyclopedia, "Murphy Brown" also served as an aide to Vice-President Quayle.
http://www.wikiality.com/Candice_Bergen

Anyway I promised a "Useful Entry" and so here's that part: a Blog ago I introduced Jayden Robert Starr, my first grand-kid who came home yesterday.

My amazing next-door neighbors the Woods been by with great stuff that I either got outta USC Grad School textbooks, then "winged it" with our own three. Sharon now heads what now is
USC's on-campus facility for really teeny kids. And three-weeks early, Jayden qualifies as "teeny." It's all a bit foreign to Doctor Bawb's mental map. Plus LA's been in a king-hell heat wave lately. Following is a long distance Cyber-Colloquy between a terrific friend in Hawaii, Claudia Woodward-Rice and me.

Claudia was as concerned as I re the possible adverse effects of a NON-AIR-CONDITIONED HOUSE (OURS) ON LITTLE JAYDEN. Frankly, so was I!! If even I could "get it," y'all will have no problem. It might even help someone else out there. Bon chance!

We're fine, Claudia.

Sharon and Tim from next door have been helping out from jump. Their house and mine are the two places WITHOUT A/C - but here's what I've learned so far: Sharon has had three kids and now takes care of teeny kids at USC full-time. According to her no A/C is no "biggie." Believe me, they can easily afford it. Newborns like Jayden PREFER WARMTH! She taught Asenath how to swaddle the kid [which word was just a word til yesterday].

I have a ceiling fan that does me fine. Sharon and Tim have em in every Second Floor room where her 97-y.o. mom was staying so, again: no A/C, no foul! I bought a BIG floor-model fan since their room DOESN'T HAVE one on the ceiling. "Not necessary" said both Asenath and Sharon. Heat-wave breaks tomorrow. Whole new world........an' 'at.

2008-06-21T23:10:00.000-07:00

Chronicle of a journey from youthful Know-It-All to Old Fart astonishment.

At the end of the last post I promised to relate the adventures of the Hedge-Fund Manager who got way rich at the expense of the National Foreclosure Derby that's now playing in a town near you. Or on the block near you as in my case. Or, worst of all, maybe to you or yours. No joke at all if so. Then my first Grandson, Jayden Robert [above], was born and got home this afternoon. What can I say: "Things change?" Damn straight they change! Everything changes all the time by the way. Isaac Newton http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton figured this out in 1687. The day Oprah's "bookers" called Dr. Phil was the day Phil figured out how to turn Newton's idea into big dough. I'm not that smart but neither was Isaac Newton. I'm just glad to be here to keep my promise about writing what I promised y'all I'd write. Anything else after this is pure Giblet Gravy.

Most of you have never heard of a Hedge-Fund Manager named John Paulson. A month ago, neither had I. Last tax-year, 2007, Paulson made over Four-Billion - with a "B" Dollars. This tax year, 2008, I'll bet he makes at least as much. Maybe more. Paulson became the 163rd richest American according to Fortune Magazine. Like 1970s sit-com The Jeffersons, Paulson's "Movin' On Up." Social mobility and Theme-Song aside, Loiuse and George Jefferson have as much in common with John Paulson as I have with Sir Isaac Newton. Only I'm better off than Sir Isaac: After Philosophica Principia Naturalis Mathmatica in 1647 he spent 40-years trying to turn Lead into Gold http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophi%C3%A6_Naturalis_Principia_Mathematica. George Jefferson and Dr. Phil probably aren't that greedy but who knows.
Anyway you'd think Paulson would be one real happy guy by now. He's not. A little background here: Paulson's NOT the guy who's putting my neighbors and yours outta their houses! Just when your New Second Floor or Dream Kitchen or Wet Bar or Backyard Spa plus all the remodeling, rewiring, painting and Construction Permit misery has begun to fade into just another really hideously awful memory. Paulson's no sweetheart either.
Paulson couldn't care less whether you, me and the Sisters of the Poor are homeless. Trust a Shrink just this once [Since I've used the phrase before I promise not to write "Just This Once" again]. While President Irrelevant urged every American to "Take your families to Disney World!" Paulson, while a contributor to the re-election of the Free World's Leader began using Galileo's gravity principle whether or not Paulson realized it. Namely, what goes up must come down. A few years later after some
really furious King-Hell calculations, Paulson's Hedge-Fund began to bet that Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan's prime-interest rate cuts would end the Sub-Prime Mortgage Rate bubble. Like the same guy under a different President burst 'Dot-Com' dreams of yuppies who `KNEW Alan was Ronald Reagan's
"Shining City on the Hill" guy. So a speechwriter cribbed one of Reagan's memorable phrases
from John Winthrop, Puritan head honcho of the Massachusetts Bay Colony? BFD! So Winthrop most famous act was banishing Anne Hathaway forever as a Heretic Witch? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Hutchinson. History's BIG fun!!

So why is John Paulson, the Four-Billion Dollars in 2007 Man, an unhappy guy? The money he got last year could pay the Boston Celtics Big Three's salaries outta petty cash. It's legal too! Enter A Matter Of [gasp!] HONOR. A WSJ story dated 1/15/2008 by Gregory Zuckerman indicates Paulson, a "previously little-known Hedge-Fund Manager got the biggest one
year pay in Wall Street history." But what's apparently stuck in Paulson's craw is he confided in a once-good friend by the name of Jeff Greene. According to Paulson, Greene an LA Real Estate hustler, up and made - ready for this? - $36-Billion [with a "B"] Dollars in 2007 AFTER PROMISING NOT TO USE PAULSON'S METHOD UNTIL PAULSON'S HEDGE-FUND WAS READY.
"He never said not to use it," smiled Greene to the WSJ. Their friendship is reportedly strained. Here's Paulson's story:

http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB120036645057290423.html

Here's Greene's.

http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB120036645057290423.html

And here's Greene's. Moral? You're on you're own.

To Honor Becoming a Grand Dad Today, Bawb Will Eat Bread, Salt and Tell the Truth - More or Less.

2008-06-19T10:47:00.000-07:00

Chronicle of a journey from youthful
know-it-all to old-fart astonishment.

First, I DON'T drink whiskey ever. If I really had to drink the stuff and had any choice in the matter it definitely would not be "Old Grand Dad" [pictured]. I'm no prude nor even a wine snob. From politeness I'll nurse the same drink all night, toast whoever or whatever at parties and leave it untouched. When my Bride and I hosted we tried to supply what we had a hunch people liked to drink. Same thing: She at least could stand the taste of alcohol: I hate it. I lost friends over dope. "Have a hit, man! This stuff gets you there!" Like Jehovah's Witnesses, Scientologists and die-hard Marxist-Leninists they could not accept I was fine where I was. Win a few, lose a few..

What I'm getting to [more Truth here] is how I came to have
a TransUnion and Experian Credit Score as Non-Credit-Worthy as these scores get. First, It wasn't easy. Second, DON'T TRY THIS AT HOME! At least don't UNLESS you have the same or very similar Weltanschauung as my own.
Pictured to the right is a single-family home that's scarily close by the single-family home my late, great dad bought in 1954 where I've lived since 1993. That home's foreclosed. Mine's paid for, taxes included. My huge wish is that anyone reading this doesn't sense self-satisfaction and smugness. "Live within your means" was my dad's dictum to me from jump. He may have been the least afflent resident in this neighborhood. I am equally "least." I try to earn some of the respect and friendships he enjoyed. Any homelessness is wrenching.
One need not have lived and worked for decades in South-Central LA to know it or to have seen it first hand. first hand.
. .
My first "real internship" was 7760 South Central Avenue in Watts. The 1965 riot was fresh. No brand new Ph.D. in his or her right mind wanted to practice much less intern anywhere near Central Avenue. No "better site" for post-Doctoral Internships would have a new minted spastic, stuttering USC Ph.D. The black MD who founded the then-new Watts Clinic didn't want me there any more than I wanted to be there. The staffing grant said "One Psychologist." None would go to Watts. We settled for leftovers. After a year of seeing clients other staff feared or didn't want State Boards were a snap. I stayed far longer than one year. Beverly Hills is even an easier snap for an Ofay spastic Jew-Boy shrink who's faced down Bloods, Crips, Cons, suicidal druggies AND the homeless on Central Avenue. By then Beverly Hills was too dull.

Homelessness was here long before this was my neighborhood. We we moved from South LaSalle Avenue the same week the
Rodney King riots shook up LA and made national news. Looters looted stores and burned places where my family and I had shopped and laughed and generally had hung around at for the past 18-years.
http://www.emergency.com/la-riots.htm. Playwright Anna Deveare Smith

http://www.cateweb.org/CA_Authors/smith.html

wrote and starred in a one-woman show about that event which my sweet bride and I went to see a few years later at LA's fashionable Mark Taper Forum. By then the "Dot-Com Bubble" was expanding and so, except during intermission, who in the hell cared about the Homeless anyway. About then, my bride's Alzheimer's kicked in hard. Suffice it I let my licenses lapse. Didn't renew Mark Taper season tickets and did a noteworthy Spastic, Stuttering Juggling Act: Bride, Kids, School, Meds, Appointments, Children's Court. 24/7/365, Five years. NO COMPLAINTS! Why? Given the opposite circumstance, my Bride woulda done for me just the same, but with less mess.

While I got what I had to get, Boiler-Room Cold-Callers swarmed like locusts
http://www.imdb.com/video/screenplay/vi900333849/ selling thousands of dollars of worthlessness to my Bride http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104348/quotes. As fast as it came I "Returned-To-Sender." A Trickle became an Avalanche http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RuVsCRQkXvw&feature=related. I work by priorities; Drek doesn't make the cut. Courtesy ends before the Telemarketer says "Hi!" When my work finally ended and my bride was settled I slept long hours for two weeks. Then I noticed stacks of envelopes on which was printed: "You Have Given Us No Choice Except To Seek The Court's Most Extreme Legal Remedies!" Oh yeah: Those.

I like novelist Nelson Algren I envied Algren being periodic shack-partner with Simone de Beauvoir http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simone_de_Beauvoir. When a mortician dunned Algren for interest on the money Algren's mother put aside for her burial he wrote back: "My loss is greater than yours." Apocryphal? Beats me. My point is that my Credit is ruined past all repair because I remained polite and courteous to each and every nasty, threatening Collection Agent who called about my Bride and her so-called "purchases."

She would have bought none of these unopened gimcracks absent Alzheimer's "Want them back?" I asked. "They're here." FAR, FAR TOO LATE! ran their prepared blustering. IT'S YOUR WIFE'S LAST CHANCE TO AVOID THE LAW! "Why not talk to her?" I suggested. "Hold on." Putting the reciever into the desk-drawer and closing it I went on with whatever had been occupying my attention before the phone rung.

Calls slowly but certainly vanished over the next 18-months. I heard only the click of a disconnecting Malaysian, Indian, Irish, Kazhak or Taiwanese telephone. Even this most loathesome, humiliating and lowly telemarket job Outsourced for the sake of some Off-Shore shell-corporation's "Bottom Line." Still some Straw-Boss somewhere had crunched the numbers and realized no profit was possible with me, the Cordial Scofflaw, using an "888" number even at subsistance wages.

I'm not proud. Preoccupied with my family, I missed the great Refinance-Your-House-Now! musical-chair match: "The biggest No-Brainer in the history of Mankind!" screeched one oh-so-reasonable, ubiquitous LA SoCal mortgage weasel http://www.consumeraffairs.com/finance/countrywide_mortgage.html

NEXT: Who hosed the Foreclosure-winner and how?

"The Decider" #1 in a Let's-See-If-This-Flies-Anywhere-At-All! series.

2008-06-16T17:20:00.000-07:00

Chronicle of a journey from youthful
know-it-all to old-fart astonishment.

Americans dislike throwing away anything including their disgraced and disgraceful Presidents. The one above (Not Elvis) became an Elder Statesman and has his Presidential Library in nearby, to me at least, Yorba Linda, CA. I keep putting a visit there off. At first the excuse was "I'll have to keep a straight face." Not necessary, I'm told. Anthony Hopkins played him for Oliver Stone
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113987/. His name came up anytime Major League Baseball looked for a new Commissioner. He and son-in-law David Eisenhower chose a quite creditable all-time all-star baseball team during his Presidency. An Opera is named for him.
One President and several fomer Presidents showed up to eulogize him and U.S. tax-dollars ($4000 worth) went towards digging up then re-burying Checkers, the Cocker Spaniel credited with saving his boss' ass when Dwight Eisenhower wanted him off the 1952 GOP ticket for a penny ante precursor of Watergate. Not even an eye-blink when you think of Iraq or Afghanistan much less Gulf War I or Grenada, but I digress as will nearly all geriatrics including the "Second Childhood"
(or is this still my first?) smart-ass I've become. Waste not, want not.

Passions running as they do about Mr. Bush it may seem premature to think about what a President with Approval Ratings in the Mid- to Low 20-somethings can do. Before you say "Just go away and leave us alone!" let's return to Mr. Nixon. Sure, John Dean was Presidential Counsel, did time and learned enough from his experience to reinvent hinself
http://www.democracynow.org/2004/4/6/worse_than_watergate_former_nixon_counsel
Sure Dean made dough outta Watergate. Who didn't? This IS still America! Dean's still GOP but the current WH
crew gave him a new book writing career. This outfit's made a comparatively evolved liberal outta Kevin Phillips. Phillips invented Nixon's Southern Strategy, sports fans!http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy

That's what kept the GOP winning election after election for a generation, gave you Ronald Reagan and gave Democratic Party "Wise Men" like Bob Shrum the delusions of Karl Rove's powers. That Rove was Pittsburgh Steeler Hall of Fame linebacker Jack Lambert in a Fat-Guy Suit. "FOCUS!" as Lambert used to scream at his Steel Cutrain and Super Bowl champ teammates when I was young and dumb. Or younger and dumber. A new day's here. No one's ever been able to Re-Do five-seconds worth of Past. Marcel Proust put 20-years and 4000 pages into trying http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcel_Proust
Trust a Shrink this one time.

Me? As this screed's entry put it earlier, I'm an old fart with a new wheel-chair. My first grandkid's due next month. My twin boys are teenagers and better than I in some ways, not as good in others. Nobody drinks or dopes or deals and that's all anyone can ask. I'll show up again at the VA where I volunteer, mostly shut-up and never ever say: "I know how you feel!": Since I don't know how anyone else feels, that's half the battle. GeeDub will, like Nixon, land on his feet without my wasting time or keystrokes on his future . A few VA guys have no feet to land on. They do their best, I do mine. Carpe deum!

carpe diem........ sieze the day
carpe deum........ god is a fish
carpe carpe....... sieze the fish
crape diem........ bad day
carpe diem........ complain daily
carpe per diem.... sieze the checkc
carpe canem....... sieze the dog
carpe devo........ sieze the record
carnivore carpe.... RUN!!
carpe calypso.... .sieze the DAY-O or sieze the dance or sieze the boat
carpe Teva........sieze the sandal
carpe noctum...... sieze the night
carpe horribilis.. sieze the ugly bear
carpe badjokius... sieze the teller of these jokes

"Welcome to the NBA Finals! Do Not Approach TV Stars! Face the Jumbotron! Smile! Have Fun."

2008-06-15T11:30:00.000-07:00

Chronicle of a journey from youthful
know-it-all to old-fart astonishment.

I'm tempted, but not much, to suggest Benito Mussolini [right] inspired whoever built LA's Staples Center where the Lakes face Win-Or-Go-Home v. the Boston Celtics today. In truth the Celt's Kevin Garnett lives 35-miles away in Malibu but who wants to be a Father's Day killjoy. Kevin bought his Crib a year ago when he thought his Minnesota Timberwolf days were done and Kobe Bryant shrieked "Trade me to a winner or I'll walk into the Pacific! Then y'all'll be REALLY SORRY!" Kobe [shown smashing some trophy in anger] aroused the somulent Lake GM Mitch Kupchak into shaking owner Jerry Buss into offering Garnett big dough to become a Lake. But nooo! Timberwolf GM Kevin McHale [who as a Celt "clotheslined" Lake Kurt Rambis to assure Larry Bird and himself of another champeenship] holds grudges: Enough to condemn Minnesota fans to more decades in the NBA toilet. McHale called old, dim, Celt teammate now Celt GM Danny Ainge to offer Garnett at a thrift-shop cost. Ainge is NBA "Executive of the Year." Praise heaped on his shrewdness. Ainge: Toast of the Charles River!

Do NOT mistake this screed for LA Lake "Sour-Grapes!" I was a Gym-Rat Wannabe in Grade 11 and saw Jefferson High with 6-11 Billy 'the Hill" McGill edge Jordan High for the 1955 LA City Title. Billy, maybe not Rhodes Scholar timber, signed with the University of Utah. UTAH! That was when Mormans knew black folks were descended from Noah's jerk-off [literally] son, Ham.

http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/OneBlood/chapter6.asp. This must mean Mormons like all Gawd's organized folks except if needed. The Sports Arena rocked when I bought $3.00 nosebleed seats to watch Bill Russell, Hondo, Sam, K.C. and Red Auerbach kick the shellac outta the Jerry West-Elgin Baylor Lakes. They mostly lost me when Wilt came. Owner Jack Kent Cooke built his Pompous-As-Jack Forum. Staples Center, seen from the air looks, like a pre-$4.50/gallon gas cap. Check out the view $75.00 non-celebrity seats get you:

Somewhere il Duce is smiling. Somewhere else late, legendary Voice of the Lakes Chick Hearn will not be saying: lakers.wav : "I don't think that the Lord and all of his disciples could have stopped the Lakers tonight." Right, Chick. Except once the Lakes let Chairman Phil run Jerry West outta town it never again mattered quite as much.

I Can't Define Porn Or Grosz, But I Know A Grosz When I See One.

2008-06-14T19:35:00.000-07:00

Chronicle of a journey from youthful
know-it-all to old-fart astonishment.

Malady of Love [right] wasn't the George Grosz I saw today at the LA County Museum of Art's new and expanded Eli Broad-funded and Renzo Piano designed wing. But it was a Grosz and it stopped my new SpazMobile on a dime and gave change. Grosz might not have been the Berliner who inspired Reichmarshal Hermann Georring's "When I hear the word 'Culture' I reach for my gun." but he definitely was on the Short-List. On the other hand, GOP Veep hopeful Rudy Giuliani went, please excuse the French, Ape-Shit over a photo called Piss Christ [below] and took half the nation with him. I went outta my way to see Andres Serrano's award winning photos in person. I briefly wondered WTFITS?* [*What The Fuck Is This Shit?].They were subdued, respectable, a tad churchy. Including the "scandalous desecration." I wondered if Serrano's work woulda got any enzymes in an uproar if he'd called it Lemon Kool-Ade Christ which could just as well substituted for "Piss" and may well have. In post-WWI Germany Grosz knew that you can't please the Georrings any more than Serrano could please the Giulianis or Dubya's base. Grosz just never bothered.

This began as LACMA rather than a Grosz-Giuliani nitpicking. Its contents are over-whelming. IMO the Armand Hammer near UCLA remains LA's best and best-kept secret for the sheer quality of its permanent collection and imagination of whoever is Curator there. Everybody's already jumped Eli Broad's [Funder] and Renzo Piano's [Architect] bones. LA Culture Grrl [sic] Lee Rosenbaum's good if you like reading how the way, way rich throw their dough around. That hasn't been me for a long time. Here's her link:
http://www.artsjournal.com/culturegrrl/2008/02/renzo_pianos_architecture_for.html Back in Watts Clinic days, a Nam vet named Mike K. was in my "office" every available moment with intricate Flow-Charts showing how 10-years from then we would form a Syndicate to buy the then-LA Rams from then-owner Carroll Rosenbloom. This is a public service to demonstrate how some Mental Health Professionals spent their between-clients time. For obvious reasons the example no longer happens in LA.

My point is LACMA's exhibits are beyond the sensoria of all but dedicated art connosieurs who've done their research ahead of time. Watching dazed out-of-towners slouch out and then into a free Latin Jazz Concert held at the next-door park........ Hey: Park in my driveway; take a key; Walk the 15-minutes there-and-back; Take some in; Eat; Go to sleep in the livingroom; DON'T disturb Kitty-Kitty-Bang-Bang; Repeat until sated.

Wednesday, saw my Bride. Tim Russert 86ed working. Given the options, it's not a bad way to go.

2008-06-13T21:02:00.000-07:00

At WORK I mean. Not 'Quick' or 'Sudden' or 'Painlessly' or any other of the euphemisms typical of funeral
occasions. Russert may not have been the best newsman or TV Cross-Examiner ever but he wasn't the worst either. FoxNews proves this every Quarter Hour on the Quarter Hour. To my knowledge Russert never humiliated his audience or himself like grown-ups Charles Gibson and George Stephanopoulos did six weeks ago* [In Pa. Debate, The Clear Loser Is ABC When Barack Obama met Hillary Clinton for another televised Democratic candidates' debate last night, it was.....another step downward for network news] ff;??* NOTE! Use of the term "Grownups" disqualifies Mr. Hannity [Left; Shown with optional eyebrow controls] and the rest of the National FoxNews Team. Anyway Tim Russert even wrote a book in praise of his dad while the old man was around to appreciate and/or be embarrassed by it. The man did good.

Wednesday wasn't the first time I'd visited my wife the Christian since getting the new SpazMobile.

She was up, at 'em and as alert as she gets since her 4/11/2005 stroke which ended my 24/7 /365 home watch. You do what you can do and no more. Only you yourself know what that is. After that you do it for as long and the best you can. When the Unknowable-Except-By-You Point comes You, Or I, Don't Pour Hot Wax Over Your Psyche! Further, you, or I, don't allow anyone else to pour it over you either!

If you did everything you could there isn't anything else thing left. Sure you forgot to do stuff! Who doesn't forget to do stuff? Did they show up to tell you when it was "nervous time?" If not, chill. My bride showed me over and over again for 40-years. Everyone should be as fortunate. She, my Bride, hasn't yet placed me, that I know of, in a dilemma similar to the husband's in Sara Polley's wonderful "Away From Her" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ct7eXP-ivAk. When or if that time comes, it will be still another adjustment for me to make. Ford knows the adjustments my bride made. Our bargain remains in effect. Consider this: http://www.slate.com/id/2192178/ Tomorrow is my First Born's Baby Shower. MyGawd! Prior to noon I thought these were Ladies Only thangs. You learn stuff every day [See First-Born below].

Dobson: "Hoop Documentary Is Newest 'Barack Obamanation' Of Our Traditional American Family!"

2008-06-11T23:45:00.000-07:00

Chronicle of a journey from youthful
know-it-all to old-fart astonishment.

Author/Psychologist James Dobson stopped short of endorsing presumptive GOP nominee John S. McCain today but warned the traditional American family could soon be a thing of the past if Barack Obama becomes President of the United States. It was the first time Dobson has mentioned the Illinois Senator from his "Focus On The Family" headquarters in Colorado Springs. "You're all waiting for me to say Barack Hussein Obama, aren't you?" chuckled the folksy, consersative 71-year old spiritual guide for tens of millions of Evangelical Christians. "But I don't need to."

Taking questions at a scheduled press conference, Dobson was at the podium with California psychologist, Dr. Joseph Nicolosi, who Dobson refers to as America's top authority on pre-verbal and early childhood homosexuality. Dr. Nicolosi, Founding Executive Director of NARTH, deferred all questions to Dobson when asked his opinion of "Obamanation." http://www.narth.com/docs/repair.html "Of course Joe's capable of answering for himself," said a smiling Dobson. "Joe's a partner at "Focus On The Family." Joe doesn't need any more trick questions from the Obama-Cult media and frankly neither do I." Dobson apparently referred to the Nicolosi-Anderson Cooper tiff following his talk http://www.exgaywatch.com/wp/2007/04/dr-nicolosi-getting-in-touch-with-his-inner-spoiled-child/ Dobson reiterated "Focus'" dissatisfaction with McCain despite his warm endorsement from President Bush. "We're vetting and vetting but we don't want to be fooled even once, let alone twice."

"Where the rubber meets the road is yet a new threat to decency and tradition," continued Dobson. "Can Mom and Dad expect the Lord to bless dinner when Grace is mocked by a Junior or a Sis who dress and look like this?" Dobson pointed to an easel-sized head-shot of head-band wearing Allen Iverson of the Denver Nuggets.

"I don't claim to know the Lord's will," concluded Dobson. "I'm as good a sports fan as the next man. But the Democrat Party's nominee can set traditional family values back to the hippy 1960s. Can we afford this? I speak as a psychologist and call it an Obamanation." Dobson concluded with several YouTube videos of head-band wearing slam dunks http://blackfivesblog.com/?p=401 and excoriated filmmaker Spike Lee's "He Got Game" for naming a high-school basketball star Jesus http://www.imdb.com/title/tt012471

Roger Stone? Bo Diddley "woulda whupped him with a ugly-stick!"

2008-06-10T08:37:00.000-07:00

Chronicle of a journey from youthful
know-it-all to old-fart astonishment.

Blues/Rock legend Bo Diddley died last week at 79. I listened to Bo in his prime at LA's Fairfax High which is now famous for turning out City, State and at least one #1 ranked national basketball teams. Yeah, I woulda dug that AND Bo Diddley back in the day. In my time the student body had legendary Wall of Sound music producer Phil Spector.
"http://it.youtube.com/watch?

That was then, this is now. I recall nothing untoward. Phil put together the occasional Saturday Night gig in Michael Spencer's parents' livingroom. Those gigs helped make me whatever I've become. They helped my Since-Grade-Six-Good-Friend Mike Spencer put together Hospital Audiences Incorporated which has helped who knows how many of NYC's disabled people; few if any of those who HAI has helped over 40 years have had my good fortune http://www.hospitalaudiences.org/hai/index.htm>.

In 1955, a year before I graduated from Fairfax High in LA, the entire school took the Iowa Test of Academic Proficiency [ITAP] We [Fairfax, a public school!] finished #2 in the nation. The whole USA! Allegedly behind a Private School in D.C. ITAP scores were percentiles. Most of my friends got 99-plus. I got 93. A "retard." Maybe it's why I hung with guys who took all-day Auto Shop too. They scored lower than me. Hanging with bad-ass muthas assured me I wasn't alone in costing Fairfax #1. Besides what the hell: I was gonna write sports by day. Be a Stand-Up by night. Screw the ITAP! So Mr. William J. Goodwin our Principal began his Rotary Club-style congratulations to the Student Body innocently enough. Mr. Goodwin then meandered into an Eisenhower-era deep muddy: "The problem with you Jews is that not enough of you like to work with your hands!" Say WHAT? http://images.encyclopediadramatica.com/images/0/0c/IYBRAINshattersupression.jpg
I'd been aware our chipmunk-cheeked Gym Teacher and assistant football coach sang variations on Dean Martin's "That's amore!" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtmsIq0-T54 ["When-a your nose hits-a your toes/Like a beeg-a rubber hose/You're at-a Fairfax!"]. Since Coach Smith was regarded as a good-natured "card" and generally wacky faculty all my "Hey, Coach Smith really HATES JEWS!" observations were usually regarded by classmates as just one more “Mother of Mercy, is this the end of Rico?” bit. "

So here we are in 2008; I should know better than to point out the obvious but do so anyway. To quote my long-time San Diego buddy-cum-honest-lawyer Steve Groen: "I can see the 30-second PrimeTime [527]
TV commercials in the fall." So meet Roger Stone's tattoo.

Roger's the king of GOP "527 ad," self-promotor uber alles. Rand is a functional dead ringer for a long gone UCLA summer dorm roommate named Don P. Don died of asthma complications decades ago - hise means of visible support tied to his wife and programming whiz, Bobbie. Don P. was never UCLA student. A friend remarked: "If P. lived in [the then-CCCP], he'd be arrested as an 'Idler.'" Like Roger, Don P. was a tailored suit-and-tie guy. Hanging with us starving students and grad-students there was nowhere to go that needed coat and tie. So what? Don was into "making the scene." Evidence of Don P's having "made the scene" was an 8x10 glossy of him shaking hands with an equally plastered John Wayne. I gracelessly refused my offered free copy. Upstairs from Don P's beach-front apartment [more fruit of wife, Bobbie P's, sought-after labor] lived a strange, glad-handing guy named Peter Maletesta. Peter turned out to be a Bob Hope shirt-tail relative, party-giver, and later Veep Spiro Agnew's aide. Aide for WHAT?http://encarta.msn.com/media_461515425/spiro_t_agnew.html No matter: Peter was a "scene-giver" and Don P. was always there.

The Roger Stone parallels with Don P. are endless. Wretched excess: 200 imported silk ties and a watch-fob fixation by one;
Steuben Glass ashtray angulation by the other. Joyless sui-generis cruelty: A Nero-esque, catered New Year's Eve Party in his hospital suite by one. Hectoring an 80-year old father of a naive New York Governor who convicted and jailed white-collar thieves by the other. Once I'd ceased being perversely amused by Don P., a dorm resident and UCLA Math Ph.D opined: "Someday when you're in New York look around. There'll be 50 Don P's on each corner!"

A few days ago Roger Stone or his wannabes began circulating the following on the Internet a few days ago. The real Roger Stone?
Not necessarily. Neither Stone nor the 50 Don P's per Manhattan corner belong in truly polite society. Sadly, from now til election day it only gets worse. Behold:

PICTURES OF THE NEW FIRST FAMILY??
PLEASE READ THE FINE PRINT
AND FORWARD TO OTHERS.
How come we haven't seen or
known about some of these....?

Barack Obama's grandmother, Sarah Hussein Onyango Obama
U.S. presidential hopeful Barack Obama's uncle has been a prisoner in his own home, trapped by post election violence that has left more than 600 Kenyans dead. 'If Barack Obama were elected, he would improve relations between Africa and America because he had his roots in Africa', his uncle said.

Malik Obama, older brother to Barack Obama, holds an undated picture of Barak, left, and himself, middle, and an unidentified friend in his shop in eastern Kenya

Luo dancers from the Senator
Barack Obama Primary School

Barack has stated his support for Luo Raila Odinga

With mother Stanley Ann Dunham. In his own autobiography Obama writes,'How and when the marriage occurred remains a bit murky, a bill of particulars that I have never quite had the courage to explore.' (His father was still married to his first wife Kezia in Kenya at the time.)

Mother's 2nd husband Lolo Soetoro (Indonesian Muslim),
their daughter Maya, and Obama.
Abandoned by his father and shipped off by his mother to his white grandparents, Barry Sotero becomes Barack Hussein Obama. Obama would describe his grandparents as 'white folk.' (Yeah, 'white folk' that would NOT abandon you, their grandchild. Shame on you Obama.)

Barack stands behind Kezia (stepmother) in a Kenyan family shot.
(Including brother Abongo ' Roy ' Obama who is a Luo activist and a 'Militant Muslim' who argues that the black man must 'liberate himself from the poisoning influences of European culture.' ) 'Abongo's new lifestyle has left him lean and clear-eyed, and at the wedding, he looked so dignified in his black African gown with white trim and matching cap that some of our guests mistook him for my father,' Obama wrote in Dreams
From My Father.

Obama's visit to Africa '06
(Where are the transcripts of the speeches he gave here? Campaigning for Odinga? Wouldn't it be great to be able to read these? Do the people of the state of Illinois know about Obama's radical background?)

SINCE CBS, ABC, NBC, CNN, AND THE NEW YORK TIMES WILL NOT SHOW THESE PICTURES, AND WE WONDER WHY NOT, WILL YOU FORWARD THESE TO THE (APPROXIMATE NUMBER) 200 MILLION AMERICANS THAT HAVE INTERNET ACCESS?

THANK YOU.

Sean Hannity: Deliver Us From Ourselves and Barak Osama [sic]

2008-06-07T16:25:00.000-07:00

Given that Sean's core demographic is America's 22% still willing to tell President Bush: "Take my job sir and please cue the Rapture!" this may be Fox's l'il rascal's toughest miracle yet. Sen. McBush hasn't picked Joe Lieberman for Veep yet to show Big Media the "Maverick" he is. It'll please John Hagee's set and go far in getting Author/Psychologist James Dobson to endorse him. A JoeMentum to whisper corrections when McBush screws up an obvious point is win-win. Bipartisan. Multicultural. It takes the Youth Vote from Barack Hussein Osama!...ummm, Obama! Joe's being Jewish doesn't mean much. The industrial strength Orthodox on my block voted Bush twice and they'll vote McBush this time no matter. Rabbi Groman is my neighbor, their titular leader and very cool guy since I was a teenager. He'll vote McBush, maybe. That's because Groman's not crazy. He recalls my wife the Christian gladly being Shabbos Goy and one who the Rabbi Groman's late wife could and did talk to quite often. Who's perfect? Back to Sean [shown with optional Eyebrow Controls]. Since the main idea is to use his FoxNews Bully Pulpit to keep Barack Obama outta TR's and Gee Dub's Bully Pulpit. But if Gramps McBush has turned into a GOP nightmare like American Idol Sanjaya, Sean's gonna call ex-buddy Hal Turner outta the bullpen quicker than you can say "White Power!" Hal WHO? These days a YouTube is worth between Zero and Ten-Thousand words, but y'all judge for yourselves: erhttp://technorati.com/videos/youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DhoLFSSyKyPg.

A careful, generally reliable 2003 backrounder on Turner was written by Max Blumenthal http://www.thenation.com/doc/20050620/blumenthal/print. Good DittoHeads who watch Sean nightly know the "Nation" as a Commonistic [sic], free-love promting scandal sheet whose writers all have 666's on their several foreheads per Book of Revelation. Albrecht Durer's most famed work is Praying Hands. The illustration below is a 1647 antecedent of the modern PopeMobile and was quite an atteck on the Vatican in its time. Since RC's also vote come November 2008, Sean'll likely invoke Hitler-medal" winner Henry Ford's "History Is Bunk! Rule and just let that all pass. In short my hunch is Hal Turner never will appear on Sean's TV or radio shows at all. Sean's "image" can't take heavy-duty stuff like this: http://halturnershow.com/. Turner may be right about Morris Dees' Southern Poverty Law Center - as in: "Even a blind pig can find an acorn." SPLC has done some good work and may well keep keeping on: Only Morris Dees showboats much the same as Sean Hannity's thriving lunatic from Bergen, NJ.

Neither Sean nor the FCC nor Hal's Muppets will tolerate this http://www.youtube.com/watch?. But trust Sean to give us the expurgated Hal Turner - with assistance from Pillar of Rectitude Karl Rove http://mediamatters.org/items/200805140009

One scary-ass summer straight ahead.

Vinny Announced Koufax's Perfect Game At The Top Of The 6th. So Lemme Say "The Unsayable" Now:

2008-06-04T13:55:00.000-07:00

Chronicle of a journey from youthful
know-it-all to old-fart astonishment.

BARACK MIGHT BE ASSASSINATED! There. Breathe now! I'm as hopeful that a President Obama lives up to even part of his speech in Minnesota last night. We know there's lotsa US wackos who'd get off on this particular Illinois Politician getting his. Better sooner than later, by the way. Giuseppe Zangara http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giuseppe_Zangara shot at President-elect FDR in 1933 and hit Anton Cermack. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anton_Cermak .FDR veep Cactus Jack Garner [NOT "Veep isn't worth a pitcher of warm spit!"] might've inspired us through the Depression and against Hitler and Japan. Don't bet the lower 40 on it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Nance_Garner_House . Hillary ought never to have apologized for her Bobby Kennedy remark: it was an accidentally sincere remark in her otherwise Le etat est moi! campaign. I woulda voted Papoon if she'd won. http://www.firesigntheatre.com/papoon/. No, I wouldn't! But lotsa Hillo's lemmings will vote McBush come November. Trust me here. Which

means the College Dorm slackers actually must vote. If they DON'T, 10,000 Karl Rove wannabes will be trying and succeeding at outdoing The Master without giving "credit" where it's due. Only Roger Stone had the perverted decency to tattoo his mentor's image onto his should-be-mortified flesh. Following this porn sighting, you deserve a far, far better mental image: the poetry of Scully's call shall clense all that preceded it - for the moment:

"29,000 people and a million butterflies"
- - - - - - - - - - - -By Vin Scully

"Three times in his sensational career has Sandy Koufax walked out to the mound to pitch a fateful ninth where he turned in a no-hitter. But tonight, September the 9th, nineteen hundred and 65, he made the toughest walk of his career, I'm sure, because through eight innings he has pitched a perfect game. He has struck out 11, he has retired 24 consecutive batters, and the first man he will look at is catcher Chris Krug, big right-hand hitter, flied to second, grounded to short. Dick Tracewski is now at second base and Koufax ready and delivers: curveball for a strike.
0 and 1 the count to Chris Krug. Out on deck to pinch-hit is one of the men we mentioned earlier as a possible, Joey Amalfitano. Here's the strike 1 pitch to Krug: fastball, swung on and missed, strike 2. And you can almost taste the pressure now. Koufax lifted his cap, ran his fingers through his black hair, then pulled the cap back down, fussing at the bill. Krug must feel it too as he backs out, heaves a sigh, took off his helmet, put it back on and steps back up to the plate. Tracewski is over to his right to fill up the middle, Kennedy is deep to guard the line. The strike 2 pitch on the way: fastball, outside, ball 1. Krug started to go after it and held up and Torborg held the ball high in the air trying to convince Vargo but Eddie said nossir. One and 2 the count to Chris Krug. It is 9:41 p.m. on September the 9th. The 1-2 pitch on the way: curveball, tapped foul off to the left of the plate.
The Dodgers defensively in this spine-tingling moment: Sandy Koufax and Jeff Torborg. The boys who will try and stop anything hit their way: Wes Parker, Dick Tracewski, Maury Wills and John Kennedy; the outfield of Lou Johnson, Willie Davis and Ron Fairly. And there's 29,000 people in the ballpark and a million butterflies. Twenty nine thousand, one hundred and thirty-nine paid. Koufax into his windup and the 1-2 pitch: fastball, fouled back out of play. In the Dodger dugout Al Ferrara gets up and walks down near the runway, and it begins to get tough to be a teammate and sit in the dugout and have to watch. Sandy back of the rubber, now toes it. All the boys in the bullpen straining to get a better look as they look through the wire fence in left field. One and 2 the count to Chris Krug. Koufax, feet together, now to his windup and the 1-2 pitch: fastball outside, ball 2. (Crowd boos.)
A lot of people in the ballpark now are starting to see the pitches with their hearts. The pitch was outside, Torborg tried to pull it over the plate but Vargo, an experienced umpire, wouldn't go for it. Two and 2 the count to Chris Krug. Sandy reading signs, into his windup, 2-2 pitch: fastball, got him swingin'!
Sandy Koufax has struck out 12. He is two outs away from a perfect game. Here is Joe Amalfitano to pinch-hit for Don Kessinger. Amalfitano is from Southern California, from San Pedro. He was an original bonus boy with the Giants. Joey's been around, and as we mentioned earlier, he has helped to beat the Dodgers twice, and on deck is Harvey Kuenn. Kennedy is tight to the bag at third, the fastball, a strike. 0 and 1 with one out in the ninth inning, 1 to nothing, Dodgers. Sandy reading, into his windup and the strike 1 pitch: curveball, tapped foul, 0 and 2. And Amalfitano walks away and shakes himself a little bit, and swings the bat. And Koufax with a new ball, takes a hitch at his belt and walks behind the mound. I would think that the mound at Dodger Stadium right now is the loneliest place in the world.
Sandy fussing, looks in to get his sign, 0 and 2 to Amalfitano. The strike 2 pitch to Joe: fastball, swung on and missed, strike 3!
He is one out away from the promised land, and Harvey Kuenn is comin' up. So Harvey Kuenn is batting for Bob Hendley. The time on the scoreboard is 9:44. The date, September the 9th, 1965, and Koufax working on veteran Harvey Kuenn. Sandy into his windup and the pitch, a fastball for a strike! He has struck out, by the way, five consecutive batters, and that's gone unnoticed. Sandy ready and the strike 1 pitch: very high, and he lost his hat. He really forced that one. That's only the second time tonight where I have had the feeling that Sandy threw instead of pitched, trying to get that little extra, and that time he tried so hard his hat fell off -- he took an extremely long stride to the plate -- and Torborg had to go up to get it. One and 1 to Harvey Kuenn. Now he's ready: fastball, high, ball 2. You can't blame a man for pushing just a little bit now. Sandy backs off, mops his forehead, runs his left index finger along his forehead, dries it off on his left pants leg. All the while Kuenn just waiting. Now Sandy looks in. Into his windup and the 2-1 pitch to Kuenn: swung on and missed, strike 2!
It is 9:46 p.m.
Two and 2 to Harvey Kuenn, one strike away. Sandy into his windup, here's the pitch:
Swung on and missed, a perfect game!
(38 seconds of cheering.)
On the scoreboard in right field it is 9:46 p.m. in the City of the Angels, Los Angeles, California. And a crowd of 29,139 just sitting in to see the only pitcher in baseball history to hurl four no-hit, no-run games. He has done it four straight years, and now he caps it: On his fourth no-hitter he made it a perfect game. And Sandy Koufax, whose name will always remind you of strikeouts, did it with a flurry. He struck out the last six consecutive batters. So when he wrote his name in capital letters in the record books, that "K" stands out even more than the O-U-F-A-X."

salon.com Oct. 12, 1999

Ted Kennedy Redux: You Search For One Thing, You Find Another.

2008-05-31T09:57:00.000-07:00

Chronicle of a journey from youthful
know-it-all to old-fart astonishment.

A few Blawgs back I got on the national Bad-luck-old-boy! bandwagon for Ted Kennedy's inoperable brain-tumor. I said and meant that Ted was and is my favorite Kennedy - Camelot and Died-Too-Soon soft focus myths included. I have nothing in common with Ted except politics [mostly] and being a screw-up. Ted and me are not Hall of Fame Screw-Ups like George W. Bush, Richard Nixon or three-time Pittsburgh Steeler Head Coach Walt Kiesling.WHO? Wikipedia notes: Perhaps the biggest blunder in Steelers history is attributed to Kiesling, when as head coach he benched a young Pittsburgh born-and-bred Johnny Unitas through an entire training camp before cutting him, allowing the Baltimore Colts to acquire his rights. But back to Ted Kennedy.

I was Googling for my all-time favorite political cartoon: Herblock's 1956 cartoon of then-Vice President Nixon leering at President Dwight Eisenhower [who had suffered a mild heart-attack] and saying: "Hey Ike! Race you up the stairs!" Never found it [I MUST have it!] but accidentally found a likely speculation that not only is Ted the luckiest male Kennedy but how and why Chappaqudick happened. Even I'm not that lucky - and my new SpazMobile finally showed up this week. Tim Roeser.com is a Chi-town talk-jockey who once was a JFK Fellow at Harvard and an ex-Veep at Quaker Oats http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaker_Oats_Company[Notice the resemblance between that company's logo and Bush 43's Mom].

Anyway, Roeser likes to write and seems less full of Shi'ite than Rush or Michael Savage. I hope this doesn't damn Tim with faint praise; those two plus any Bush 43 Press Secretary are certain to join Casey Stengel, Jim Bakker and Grigori Rasputin in the Bullshitters Hall of Fame. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grigori_Rasputin
Last week Roeser wrote a Ted Kennedy rememberance which seems to explain the implausably hokey excuses Ted invented to explain Chappaquiddick and Mary Jo Kopechne's death. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Jo_Kopechne. Roesner's a great story-teller as you'll see. I reprint from TimRoesner.com. Should Tim wanna sue [Why the hell would he?] well thanks and good luck.

5/28/2008
Personal Aside: Ted Kennedy’s Good Fortune…er Fortunes.

Weep not for him, he's the luckiest.[Original story appeared in The Chicago Daily Observer-with considerable additions in this version].No, I have not lost my mind. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy’s inoperable brain cancer that will inevitably claim his life is seen in secular circles as a tragedy-but Catholics learn early that since death is inevitable, the chance for what theologians call the ”grace of a happy death” can be gained if…as all of us devoutly wish…there is time before the grim reaper comes is put to good use-which applies to all of us…saints, sinners and those in between…for contemplation, contrition, penance, prayer and calm resignation. Thus it can be said, in theological terms involving repentance and forgiveness for sin, that the 76-year-old lawmaker is incomparably better off than were his three brothers: Joe, 29, who went down in a B-24 Liberator on August 12, 1944 near the village of Blythburgh, Suffolk, England…John, 46, the 35th president who died immediately in assassination on November 22, 1963 in Dallas…and Robert, 45, the New York senator who met death instantly early on the morning of June 5, 1968 as he walked through the kitchen of the Ambassador hotel in Los Angeles having won the California presidential primary. I had a most unusual and pleasant experience with the youngest Kennedy scion. In 1977 I was recommended for a fellowship at the John F. Kennedy Institute of Politics, Harvard, with the approval of Newton Minow, JFK’s former FCC chairman, Abner Mikva my congressman and Andrew Young, ambassador to the UN. For a conservative Republican I thought these supporters have enough liberal ballast to get me in to the Democratic-run think tank. But no. I was blocked and was told by Doris Kearns Goodwin, then a functionary at the Institute, that under no circumstances would I be able to get the Fellowship. Why not? Was the miniscule Harvard quota for Republicans already filled? No. But the Kennedy Institute had its standards and by no means would a corporate lobbyist be admitted. Corporate lobbyists were vermin. So-called “public interest” lobbyists would be admitted i.e. Ralph Nader. Labor union leaders were given a pass. Black civil rights activists were, as well. But corporate lobbyists were seen as so dishonorable that by no means were they allowed to pass through the portals. The door was closed. However, I was told: if I wanted to pursue the matter, Sen. Kennedy interviews all potential Kennedy Fellows and he would agree to see me…if I wanted to return to Cambridge the next week. I decided what the hell, why not? So I flew back. No sooner had I entered his spacious office at the Institute than I reminded him that in my past I had traveled across the state with the legendary Everett McKinley Dirksen who was a special friend and ally of John Kennedy and Robert. That was the smartest thing I ever did aside from marrying my wife. We swapped Dirksen stories for an hour and Kennedy laughed at the old man’s scatological tales until the water rolled out of his eyes. Especially Dirksen’s frequently uttered view of the current state Republican chairman that…and you’ll pardon me for the scatology…the gentleman “was as dumb as dog-shit.” Kennedy roared and said excitedly: “That’s where my brothers got that expression!” Further, I told him that when I decided to try to get congressional approval for affirmative action as an assistant Commerce secretary working for Nixon, I asked Dirksen if this would be a popular idea in the Congress. Dirksen said: “Yes, very popular. About as popular as a case of crabs in a bordello.” At the end of the hour, Ted Kennedy stood up, extended his hand and said the stories I told reminded him of ones his brothers had chortled about over drinks with Dirksen. And he offered me a drink-which I took. Before I left, I asked if I had been accepted. “Accepted?” he said. “For what?” As a Kennedy Fellow. “You go out there and tell the dean that you are head of the class,” he said. That was just about the last time I talked with him. I am indebted to Ted and liked him that afternoon hugely. But few have been as fortunate as he. Even with this malady. For he will have ample time to mull over many-many things during this interregnum…time others haven’t had. I particularly would advise him to review two (of many) episodes. First, the meeting he and Bobby called for the family estate at Hyannisport in 1964 before abortion had become a federal issue. But the issue was moving front and center in state legislatures and the meeting was called to provide advice for Bobby who was running for the New York senate seat-but also for future Kennedys like Ted who wanted to follow Bobby in the presidency. Smoothing the Way for Catholic Abortion Acceptance. Attending that huddle in Hyannisport were Fr. Robert Drinan SJ (later to become a pro-abortion congressman from Massachusetts); Fr. Charles Curran, a non-Jesuit whose writings against Humanae Vitae were condemned later by the Vatican; Fr. Joseph Fuchs, SJ, a professor at Gregorian University, Rome; Fr. Richard McCormick, SJ, later to become the Rose Kennedy professor of the Kennedy Institute for Bioethics at Georgetown and after that a theology professor at Notre Dame; Fr. Giles Milhaven, SJ who later figured in the early operation of “Catholics for Free Choice” and Fr. Albert Jonsen, SJ. According to Philip Lawler in his brilliant new book about how Catholicism receded in Boston, “The Faithful Departed: The Collapse of Boston’s Catholic Culture [Encounter: 2008]”, the hireling theologians worked for two days to develop a rationale for the Kennedys to handle the issue. “Eventually they reached a consensus, which they passed along to their political patrons. Abortion, they agreed, could sometimes be morally acceptable as the lesser of two evils. Lawmakers should certainly not encourage abortion but a blanket prohibition might be more harmful to the common good than a law allowing abortion in some cases…President Kennedy hads already laid the foundation for the argument that a Catholic politician must not attempt to enact his private religious views; now his brothers were prepared to take the next step forward. They were ready to explain that they were personally opposed to the abortion ban, but…” From that time on, a smattering of Jesuit theologians provided a cover for that effort, writes Lawler including after “Roe” Ted Kennedy’s front-and-center support for abortion rights and his vote even for partial birth abortion-though stopping short at supporting the “Born Alive” ban (which Barack Obama personally endorsed while a member of the Illinois legislature, differing from such worthies as Kennedy, Barbara Boxer and Diane Feinstein). Tacit acceptance by Catholicism’s first Democratic family paved the way for the later pro-abort triumphant procession with the entire supposedly Catholic Massachusetts congressional contingent, extending now all the way through the Catholic wing of the Democratic party including Mayor Richard M. Daley, Dick Durbin et al. Nineteen-sixty-eight could well have seen the second Kennedy made president. At the Democratic national convention in Chicago in 1968 with his brother Robert dead, Eugene McCarthy failing to pick up the liberal slack and Hubert Humphrey unattractive to the peace delegates, Mayor Richard J. Daley privately joined with powerful California state house speaker Jesse (Big Daddy) Unruh to try to draft Ted Kennedy at the last minute for the nomination. Ted could have gotten the nomination without a struggle since McCarthy had expressed to this writer and others that he would withdraw in Ted’s favor (“which is what I wouldn’t have done for Bobby”)-but Ted turned it down. His tender age, 36, wasn’t a problem, McCarthy told me later since most of the founders were young men when the Constitution was ratified-Jefferson, 43, Madison, 35, Hamilton, 36. If Kennedy had said yes, the emotion of the country was such after the murders of two Kennedy brothers that he would assuredly have defeated Richard Nixon who had the dark visage of Richard III. Ted decided he could wait until the disruption engulfing the Democrats over Vietnam was settled. He would run in 1972. Wrong. By then he couldn’t. Then Came Chappaquiddick. The second: Chappaquiddick. Less than a year later, on July 18, 1969 came what has ever since been known as the Chappaquiddick Incident and the death of Mary Jo Kopechne, a former campaign worker for Robert Kennedy whose dead body was discovered inside an overturned car belonging to Ted Kennedy in a channel on a small island adjoining Martha’s Vineyard. No satisfactory answer has ever been supplied by Kennedy or his supporters for the tragedy. An unconscionable delay in reporting the accident caused Kopechne’s death. Kennedy passed four homes with telephones after the accident and didn’t call the police until the next morning, the 19th. In the meanwhile, the overturnbed car was found in the pond by two fishermen who called police. A diver was sent down and discovered Kopechne’s body. At the inquest, the diver, John Farrar, testified that Kopechne’s body was pressed up in the car in the spot where an air bubble had been presumably formed. The inquest said the bubble could have allowed her to breathe for two hours afer the accident. Farrar testified: “Had I received a call within five to ten minutes of trhe accident…and was able as I was the following morning to be at the victim’s side within 25 minutes of receiving the call…there is a strong possibility that she would have been alive on removal from the submerged car.” Kennedy’s dithering, cowardice and emotional paralysis…fear of political retribution…led to the stall, most say. Mary Jo had an estimated two hours, trapped in the upturned car, to contemplate: max. The Only Possible Answer. Not long ago, a friend of mine told me a very interesting thing. He is now a prominent educator at Harvard, tenured, fashionably liberal, in his 60s-and in 1968 he was a young staffer to Bobby Kennedy…a close friend of the “Boiler Room Girls,” the females who worked Kennedy campaigns with single-minded dedication. He then served as a staffer to Ted Kennedy. He dated Mary Jo Kopechne. He filled in a blank space on that episode that makes sense. Relatively few know the Kennedy background that this balding professor know…and we spent a good deal of time as he worked through with me his conjecture on how Chappaquiddick happened. Understand, he was not present at the July 18, 1969 reunion of six women known as the “boiler-room girls” who had served in Robert’s 1968 presidential campaign-but his theory seems to me to be water-tight if you’ll pardon the implication. First let’s review the facts: The party was held at a borrowed facility, Lawrence Cottage, on Chappaquiddick island, adjoining Martha’s Vineyard and connected to it by ferry. Present were the six women, Ted Kennedy, Joesph Gargan, his cousin, Paul Markham, a friend of Gargan’s who would become U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts, Charles Tretter, an attorney and John Crimmins, Ted’s part-time driver. Kennedy was competing in the Edgartown Yacht Club Regatta, a sailing competition which was taking place over several days. Among the women present was Kopechne. Rumors have been flying around ever since the incident that she was a sexual playmate of Ted. Not so, says my friend who had dated her casually. In point of fact, Mary Jo was the opposite of a sex object, a kind of ever-loyal female nerd, the opposite of a vamp, who hardly dated, never had a romance (my friend’s association with her was platonic), who was ever-loyal and ready to do the grunt work. She was kind of like everyone’s kid sister. My friend makes no bones about that. She was the kind of girl who ran around in a circle-not a high cheek-boned beauty but a gawky, freckle-faced kid sister everyone sort of protected. While the others were distinctively party-girls, Mary Jo was not. She would take one drink, maybe a watered down cocktail or a glass of 3.2 beer…and as the party would liven up, she would kind of slip out and get in the back of a car owned by the one who brought her, curl up, dose and wait for the driver to come back to take her home. Not that she objected to the liveliness of a party but that she was kind of an oldish young girl, not endowed with looks or charm but just a loyal, dependable type, a kind of younger sister to the boiler-room girls. She came to the party in Ted Kennedy’s car, along with a number of other girls, most of whom were attracted to the Kennedys, especially the senator and who were quite used to the ways of the world with the family, he says: Kopechne being the only odd-exception. There was no doubt that there was ribaldry, drinking and joshing of a sexual innuendo nature that went on…as well as promiscuity… between the men and the attractive young women of the world, he says-as he had been with them at other outings in the company of the Kennedys. According to testimony of the other party-goers, Kennedy left the party at about 11:15 or 11:30 and Kopechne asked for a ride back to her hotel. At this point, my friend, who talked extensively with other party members following the inquest has an important amendment. As was her style, Kopechne had one drink and slipped out to take her accustomed spot, curled up in the back seat of Kennedy’s car, his mother’s 1967 Oldsmobile Delmont 88. Kennedy was feeling no pain nor was his female escort. They gabbed a lot as the half-inebriated senator maneuvered the car, evidently planning a tryst for himself and the girl with Kopechne knowing about the possibility or asleep. Here I stopped him. I asked: Planning a tryst with Mary Jo in the car? He said: “You don’t understand how Bachannalian the Kennedys were, from the old man, who brought Gloria Swanson on the Queen Mary to Europe with him while he traveled with Rose, to John who fooled around with Jackie’s press secretary, Pamela Turnure and scores, literally scores, of others whom Jackie had to know about.” He is right. All you have to do is to read Sally Bedell Smith’s “Grace and Power: The Private World of the Kennedy White House,” a book notable for its explicitness but also its annotation, one that has been cited by most scholars as revisionist-authentic. Kennedy men were reared to be womanizers in imitation of Old Joe-and John Kennedy was one of the worst, often disappearing in social events with a young woman for hours at a time while Jacqueline, as Ethel Kennedy had counseled, was expected to understand. Bobby was less so; Ted was more so. Back to the Chappaquiddick incident as reported by my friend-again, who was not there but whose close acquaintance with those who were has given him a special insight. He added: “Knowing about the possibility was de rigeur with boiler-room girls who protected-and sometimes participated in--the Kennedys’ vaunted womanizing…with the exception of Mary Jo who wasn’t interested, nor were the Kennedys attracted to her. But she was expected to `understand’ the promiscuity and sexual indulgence that would go on. The Kennedys behaved like British kings from the time of Henry VIII. Everyone knew who the concubines were and assented as did Mary Jo.” The story resumes. Inebriated, Kennedy was searching for a place to conduct the tryst with his attractive and willing female companion in the front seat while Mary Jo, curled up in the back seat, understood the drill from many other occasions with both Bobby and Ted. Both Kennedy and his tryst-object were so tanked-and Mary Jo on many other occasions like this one, so silent and acquiescent-they forgot she was present. Kennedy was trying to find a place for seclusion with the female companion. A deputy sheriff testified at the inquest that he saw Kennedy’s car on Dyke Road at 12:40 a.m. and that the driver sped off when he approached it. Now as all agree, Kennedy made a wrong turn onto an unlit dirt road that led to Dyke Bridge, a wooden bridge angled obliquely to the road with no guardrail, and drove over its side. The car plunged into tide-swept Poucha Pond and came to rest upside down under water. Kennedy and his front-seat boiler-girl companion were able to swim free of the vehicle and both were immensely relieved to have escaped death, forgetting in their alcoholic haze about Mary Jo in the back seat. Still inebriated they decided to get out of there, believing that while they were the worse for wear, they had survived. Kennedy claimed at the inquest that he called Kopechne’s name several times from the shore, then tried to swim down to reach her seven or eight times-doubted by my friend. His story is he then rested on the bank for several minutes before walking back alone to Lawrence Cottage where others of the party was still feting. My friend says the two of them walked back to the Cottage. Their walk took them past at least four houses which had telephones where he could have summoned help-but no call was made. His story is that he summoned Markham and Gargan to come to the pond to help him. Both reported they tried to dive into the water to save Kopechne many times. Then, Kennedy’s story continues, when the diving attempts failed, he told them to return to the college, “take care of the girls and I will take care of the accident.” It is their story that they assumed Kennedy would inform authorities once he returned to Edgartown and so they did not do so themselves. My friend’s story makes more sense. Kennedy and the boiler-girl escort who had been seated next to him in the front seat of the car, zapped out of their minds with booze, managed to escape from the overturned car in the pond and stumbled back to Lawrence Cottage, completely forgetting Mary Jo’s having been in the back seat-understandable since her and others’ presence at romantic rendezvous and trysts were always understood-and at the time, dismissed. In fact, Kopechne’s presence was blotted out for a time since the harrowing episode almost cost their own lives. To them, not remembering Mary Jo’s presence, since they had escaped, the event was merely an automobile accident-something that could be reported the next day rather than in the middle of the night to police. When they got back to the Cottage, they told the group and only then somebody said, “where was Mary Jo?” Kennedy and the boiler-room girl both said almost at once: “GOD! She was with us! We remember now!” The boiler-room girl dissolved in tears. The other girls hugged themselves and sobbed at the grisly thought of Mary Jo, trapped in the car and dying. Finally Gargan shouted to them: “Stop it! Stop it now! We can’t help her. We’ve got to protect the senator!” They all agreed. What to do now? A curtain of silence was imposed on the group by Kennedy and the two other men. Boiler-room people had long appreciated that confidentiality was mandated for Kennedy activities. A huddle was called between the three men and a rough plan detailed. By now Kennedy and his boiler-girl escort remembered firmly--Mary Jo had indeed been in the car. But now it was adjudged now too late to save her: the crucial thing was to save Kennedy from embarrassment and prosecution which would end the Kennedy idyll. They never could settle on a plan. It was too complicated. . There was an argumentative struggle over whether or not someone else should take the blame in order to protect Kennedy: but since this would mean prosecution, no one volunteered. But all agreed that the police should be notified. Who would do it? Kennedy insisted that one or the other of the two men do it-he was vociferous that he should not do the reporting. Neither of the two men, understandably, wanted to report something they had nothing to do with. This much they agreed to: Kennedy would go back to his hotel in Edgartown and call the police from there. Some discussion ensued as to whether or not it might be possible to suggest that Mary Jo had taken his keys and had driven his car, overturning it in the pond-but that was vetoed. There was no semblance of a general agreement on how to handle the problem. Obviously it was too late…and all were in too bad a shape…to reach a coherent strategy. What they did agree to was that Kennedy should get the hell out of there and go to the hotel in Edgartown. The girls went home and Kennedy was driven by Gargan and Markham to the Edgartown-Chappaquiddick ferry which connects Chappaquiddick to the rest of the island. But once there, more complications. The ferry was down for the night. As the three stood there wondering what to do, Kennedy said he would at least solve this dilemma. He swam the 500-foot channel back to Edgartown, went to his room, got into dry clothes and fell asleep on his bed at about 2 p.m. The two other men left. There always was the question whether he took off his shoes for the swim. Of course: he would have to. But strangely, that detail was not remembered when my friend questioned around. At the hotel, Kennedy didn’t call authorities about the accident as he had indicated he would do. Instead, he decided he had to invent a scenario that would say he was at the hotel that night. So at 2:55 a.m. he went downstairs, presented himself to the hotel clerk and others and complained that he had been awakened by a noisy party. This was to certify that he was in the hotel. He returned to his room, stayed awake for a time, then dozed. Then at 7:30 in the morning he made it a point to talk casually to the winner of the previous day’s sailing race-again as to establish his whereabouts. Still no phone call. But by then, unknown to him and the others, two fishermen had discovered the upturned car in the pond and called authorities. A diver was sent out to discover if anyone was in the car. Back in Edgartown, at 8 a.m. Gargan and Markham came to the hotel and were astounded to discover that Kennedy still had not notified the police. They got into a heated conversation over why he had not done so-and what to do now. Then all three of them took the ferry to Chappaquiddick, where at a pay phone near the dock Kennedy made a series of phone calls to some friends asking for advice and to Kopechne’s parents reporting her likely death. Now events that were clearly out of control had taken over the operation.A diver, John Farrar, was sent down and discovered Kopechne’s body. He testified at the inquest that her body was pressed up in the car in the spot where an air bubble would have formed. He later concluded that “had I received a call within five to ten minutes of the accident occurring and was able, as I was the following morning, to be at the victim’s side within 25 minutes of receiving the call, in such event there is a strong possibility that she would have been alive on removal from the submerged car.” The car was hauled up and the license plate was identified as belonging to Rose Kennedy-but, of course, a follow-up showed it was driven the night before by Ted Kennedy. When Kennedy finished making his phone calls, he was informed that the car was hauled up and the body discovered, he crossed back to Edgartown and went to the police station to report the accident. The Kennedy scenario was that Gargan then told the boiler-room girls what had happened: my friend says they knew what happened when Kennedy had returned from the accident. Kopechne’s parents did not allow an autopsy to be performed on their daughter. They did not bring any legal action against Kennedy but did receive a payment for $90,904 from him personally and $50,000 from his insurance company-pretty paltry pickings for the enormity of the tragedy that happened to them by Kennedy’s taking the life of their daughter. The Kopechnes later explained “we figured that people would think we were looking for blood money.” Their attitude changed later. There were public recriminations by them. Then they shut up. My friend says they were…let us say…adequately dealt with. The vast Kennedy crisis machine swung into action. On July 25, seven days after the incident Kennedy entered a plea of guilty to a charge of leaving the scene of an accident after causing injury. He wore a neck brace, worn on orders of his lawyers, my friend says, to show he was injured in a serious way-a public relations symbol of a sort to ward off belief that he had not suffered. The Kennedy clout fixed the verdict so that he received a sentence of two months in jail-suspended-and lost his driver’s license for a year. Later on TV he announced it was “indefensible that I had not reported the incident to the police immediately.” He said “I was overcome, I’m frank to say, by a jumble of emotions-grief, fear, doubt, exhaustion, panic, confusion and shock.” He denied he had been engaged in “immoral conduct” with Kopechne or that he had been driving drunk. District Attorney Edmund Denis was granted a hearing on petition for exhumation of Kopechne’s body based on the funeral director’s claim that blood was found on the body and clothing. But there is little evidence to corroborate and the finding is uncertain as to whether she was injured in the crash or in a frenetic struggle within the car. An inquest into her death took plce in Edgartown in January, 1970. Kennedy’s legal team got the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial court to order it be conducted in secret. A 793-page transcript was released four months later. Judge Boyle concluded that Kennedy and Kopechne did not intend to return to Edgartown when they left the party, that Kennedy did not intend to drive to the ferry slip and that Kennedy’s turn onto Dike Road was intentional. He said “negligent driving appears to have contributed to the death of Mary Jo Kopechne.” While under Massachusetts law, Boyle could have ordered Kennedy’s arrest, he did not. Denis chose not to pursue Kennedy for manslaughter despite Boyle’s findings. Do you think anyone but a Kennedy would get off this lightly? And, while we are not given to judge, it is mark of singular good fortune to him that Ted Kennedy will have time to ruminate about the things he did, both good and bad, in his political and private life… …as well as contemplate the lesson his Church has always taught about the purpose of life-specially the folly of elevating fame, riches and political power so as to disvalue the pursuit of holiness. Hang in there, Ted. In more ways that men can count, you’ve been and are a lucky man.
at 5/28/2008 8:21:00 AM

Scamming Nigeria's Scamsters - Second Thoughts

2008-05-28T19:30:00.000-07:00

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Chronicle of a journey from youthful
know-it-all to old-fart astonishment.

Yesterday's muse about turning the tables on "401" scams operating from

Nigeria [complete with pijin-English epithets scrawled on placards held by presumed scammers] leads to today's question: Joseph Kony [right] is sought by the I.C.C. [the International Criminal Court] for what crime? "Genocide probably," comes to mind since it's the I.C.C. assuming you half follow the news and didn't add "but that's Africa, so what's new?" Since Forrest Whittaker won a 2006 Oscar for playing Idi Amin in The Last King of Scotland, you'd be both right and well-informed http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0455590/. Amin comitted genocide.....where? Rwanda? No that was later. Clinton apologized for the the US in Rwanda. We didn't invade Rwanda! Bill's always apologizing and should! http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200109/power-genocide.

Kony the wanted man is from Uganda, not Nigeria. Kony leads the Lord's Resistance Army and is the indiscriminate genocidal nightmare of men, women and children far from Kony's Northern Uganda headquarters. As far as Lagos, birthplace of the Nigerian 401 E-Mail Scam. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Kony. Put another way, Africans feel about Komy the way Americans feel feel about Osama bin Ladin - only Komy's a lot closer to them than bin Ladin is to 99.98% of us. It's not out of bounds to think "X" number of Ugandans were terrified by Kona's madness and sundry random madnesses of his Lord's Resistance Army to end up transversing sub-Saharan Africa to land in Nigeria. A 20-year terror can do at least as much. "The US is the superpower!" raged a Ugandan man. "Why don't they help us!" Any former 9th Ward New Orleans resident can explain better than I. If I were hungry, and alone in a country whose unknown language added to my desperation and someone held out change and said "You! Hold this sign!" I'd do it day and night - but that's me.http://www.huffingtonpost.com/daniella-boston/genocide-in-uganda-the-a_b_21150.html

Final question: What is the difference between US Senator David Vitter [R] Louisiana and the man on the right?

Senator Vitter's sign's been cropped out of his photo.

Scamming Nigeria's Scamsters

2008-05-27T17:59:00.000-07:00

“You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.” — Abraham Lincoln

“There’s an old saying in Tennessee — I know it’s in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can’t get fooled again.” — George W. Bush

Confession #1: I've been scammed several times. Confession #2: So have most detectives working Bunco Squad at your local police department. P. T. Barnum's "THIS WAY TO THE EGRESS!" banner kept the customers moving at his museum http://www.lostmuseum.cuny.edu/home.html and http://www.getty.edu/art/exhibitions/devices/flash/.

Who the hell knows how much of Nigeria's Gross National Product these E-Scams comprise. Must be a good bit. This stuff wouldn't come if it didn't put groceries on Nigerian tables. It's evolved into Iraqi peacekeepers, Afghan refugees, Khazhakstan Crude. In case you're one of the nine Western Hemisphere people who haven't gotten a Chance-of-a-Lifetime they're called 401s after applicable Nigerean criminal codes. Fleeced are the greedy - Beginner through Been There, Done That. At StillerNation.com a Steeler fan is posting his adventures in hustling hustlers. The pic above is one he's recieved at his 12-14 fake addresses. Here are two more:

This mischief certainly isn't in the interest of bringing the gospel of free enterprise and American Get-Up-And-Go to our Nigerian neighbors. Plus there's OIL - lots of it! The Stiller fan also published several angry letters from several free-marketeers:

#1:

"You Will Hit By A moving Train and Vulture will Eat your remains,Your family will never see your body.you will die in pains that is my own players to you also idiot.good fellow."

#2

"Friend,
It is important we come to a conclusion now or never because, I have been hired to kill you, this is the simple fact and I have been paid well for this job to be sincere with you, I have your full data’s, from your name, to your address, to your phone numbers including this email address. I watch you everyday since the past two weeks and I know where you go and when you come back and everything you do. Do not dare me, I am a born killer, which is what I do to survive, I was born and brought up in Mexico. Never the less, I do not want to kill you, reasons best known to me, only if you will comply with my ransom and I will let you go and even send you the pictures of the person in charge (Who Paid me to kill you) including a very important video tape that you might need. NOTE: No Police. Ignore this message if you wish to die, I give you 5 days to comply or I will come for you. I am presently on another assignment. You have your choice."

#3
"Hello ,
How are youdoing today,i got everthing you don tome,but you have to no that i noyou but i willnot come to you.because i have inform the iyelala,and they told me that you have one week.if you donot come out you will big and die. I no all of you that do it.so be ready."

My Stiller compadre has now trod on thin Nigerian ice. More on this developing crisis tomorrow.

Why is Jesse Helms laughing? Cause there's this here colored fella's running for President!

2008-05-26T19:58:00.000-07:00

Chronicle of a journey from youthful
know-it-all to old-fart astonishment.

Time was, Blackamoors knew their place. Jesse once got in the Senate Elevator and there's Sen. Carole Mosely-Braun herself. Upitty as all get-out. From the same state Obama's from. Think Jesse get flustered? Hell no! Didn't give her a thought or word and whistled "Dixie" the whole damn ride. Jesse's retired now, see? Got him a Center liike a Presidential Library too. Not bad for a small-town radio talk-jockey who never bothered with college and worked himself up the hard way. Like a real American. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Helms. Now who's got the last laugh? An whole national TV Network uses lines every night that Jesse moved on from years back! Like this:

Hope your Memorial Day was great!

My dad the "Commonist" [sic] designed a "$50 Billion Crock?"

2008-05-25T13:12:00.000-07:00

Chronicle of a journey from youthful
know-it-all to old-fart astonishment.

"Great Edgar's Ghost!" I might add as long as we're phoneticizing Mr. Hoover's career-long malaprop of the word "commUnist." And "nucUlar" began with Eisenhower, not our current past-parody President. Further, my dad DID draw up final engineering plans for building the Bio-Warfare Labs at Fort Dietrich, MD. Whoever or whatever tells Google and AOL what or what NOT to show the public told then not to show this particular product of dad's Carnegie Tech honed structural engineering skills. The symbol on the right is as close as we're allowed to get. Fort Dietrich does have some very evil stuff cooking in Gawd knows how many petri dishes. Plus who hasn't heard of bioterrorism? there. William R. Clark's new book says we've heard way too much about Bioterrorism http://www.miller-mccune.com/article/355. But since it's among terms that's kept Cheney Mind-Control and Halliburton in the chips for two terms what's the bet Gramps McCain and any Kimodo Lizard running mate start drumming "bio-terrorism," "Islamofascism" and "Barak Seen With Headless Torso In Topless-Bar!" into our lizard-brains 24/7 by Labor Day?

Speaking of Joe Lieberman, TNR called his long mating-dance with the Crackers Right "Zellification." No problem for me. Never was. Lyndon Johnson once told his young senate aide and future Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas: "Every good operator up here in D.C. needs a smart Jew and you're mine." Years ago a spoiled-rotten Jewish kid was into his Crazy Act and cranking up the heat on his differently but equally pathologic mother. The kid signed up for Catholic Instruction and came home with Rosary and a Saint's Day Calandar. "Whatever comes down is cool!" I smart-mouthed. The kid beams. Mom gasps. "Take vows. Choke the chicken. Do a miracle. Get lucky. 300-years from now you're Saint Harvey, the Jew. Mazel tov. No one forgets." The kid's crazy act stops on a dime and gives change. Mom bawls contentedly, leaving

me the squirmiest of three. Why? I can live off these two plus all the equally prosperous, pathetic cases these two therapy-junkies can refer. At minimum, 200 lifers at Mule Creek Prison can riff on Tex Watson's line to the State Parole Board. And Tex probably copped the line from Charlie Manson during the Family's "glory years." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_%22Tex%22_Watson.

If memory serves, thought I, UCLA and USC years were preparation to do something useful. This ain't it, I told my wife the same night. "Then don't do it anymore," she replied, stunning me. "You didn't spend those years to be unhappy and I'm not one who needs to keep you unhappy." Lucky me the first time. She was right. My dad designed the Germ Warfare Laboratory so well that, aside from his shame at not being allowed to know its purpose until much later, the building remains past his life and into my old age.

William R. Clark's book cites the fraudulence of the $50-Billion per year bio-terrorism boondoggle. "A crock," he calls it. This will mean little if anything to those who appropriate funds for Alaskan bridges to no where and "fight for blue-collar white people like..." ..umm, okay: Hillary DID mean me after all. Happy Memorial Monday!

"Beisbol berry, berry good to Sen. Larry Craig!" No More Jeremiads!

2008-05-23T23:37:00.000-07:00

Chronicle of a journey from youthful
know-it-all to old-fart astonishment.

Anything written or said by Josef Goebbels, Ann Coulter or Senator Larry Craig sets off my synapses. My head instantly says: "The opposite must be true" All the paranoids, the schizophrenics, the Type-I or Type-II Sociopaths I evaluated over 30-years kicked on that reflex. After a while I knew the outcome before starting three- or four-hour test batteries plus a more hours scoring tests and writing up the results. My write-ups got praise. Enough that if I'd wanted I could have faked them. But then I'd be just one more routine asshole like Dr. Phil http://icydk.com/2008/01/17/state-of-california-investigates-dr-phil/. Thanks so much but I prefer being the asshole of MY choice. Plus I sleep soundly at night. And yesterday, May 22, 2008 was "Larry Craig Bobblefoot Day" in Minnesota

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/years/2008/0522081saints1.html.

As for whether Jeremiah "jumped" from Barack or was pushed is a "Who Cares Who Killed Roger Ackroyd"-style dilemma. But that question was all that Sen. http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/lr/2003/06/01/stories/2003060100610800.htm

Hillary Clinton needed to distract the voters of the World's Most Envied Nation

[especially Hillo's outraged Lemmings] from Iraq and the Mortgage Meltdown.

http://hotair.com/archives/2008/04/02/stupid-hillary-gets-another-3-am-phone-call-about-mortgages/.

Well the U. S. is NOT President Ronald Reagan's "shining city on the hill" even if he and the electorate shut their eyes and believed real hard. Here are the facts: http://faculty.philau.edu/russowl/country.html. But this was the same President who told a delerious 1988 GOP Convention "Facts are stupid things." Three times no less. Just like Jesus told Peter, apparently our hot-tempered first Pope http://www.ne.jp/asahi/plott/start/PetrusE.html You could look it up.
http://wonkette.com/350900/reagan-reagan-reagan-liveblogging-the-gop-debate?cpage=2 . There was a time when the Wall

Street Journal for all it's GOP biases was a reliable fact-check source. Suddenly Rupert Murdoch took over and Gresham's Law ["Bad Drives Out Good"] kicked in. Coulter, Sean Hannity and Fox Friends aren't yet WSJ's Senior Editorial Board. Rupert's wallet and eye for reliable holoids will overcome the inconvenience all too soon. Below a transcript of Hannity's fawning 2005 interview with Coulter on the week Time Magazine proclaimed her "Ms. Right!" [Notice even FoxNews admits the transcript has been "edited for clarity." I rarely watch TV News and so am grateful in advance for a deconstruction of that phrase. http://www.foxnews.com/printer_friendly_story/0,3566,154024,00.html

Finally, forgive me; Rev. Jeremiah Wriight DID NOT kick on my That's-A-

Raving-Psycho! reflex the night I watched Bill Moyers interview him for an hour. http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/04252008/watch.html. Maybe it's being married to a church-going, Sunday School teaching member of a black church I rarely attend for our 38-years and counting. Maybe I'm "Brainwashed" just like future McCain Veep Mitt Romney's dad claimed to have been. Or maybe you, reader have been hustled by one of thousands of Dr. Phil wannabes. If so, great apologies on my profession's behalf.

Ted Kennedy.

2008-05-21T21:51:00.000-07:00

Chronicle of a Journey from youthful
know-it-all to old-fart astonishment.

I liked Ted better than any Kennedy, Bobby included. It was probably from the moment that I read Gore Vidal's snotty dismissal of the then-young Senator from Massachusetts. It read something like: "Absent the Kennedy name Edward would make a quite amiable bartender." Having hung out in dives far beneath Gore while he consumed a small swimming-pool's worth of the finest scotch and brandy over a lifetime, he'd know best. Gore and Ted drank their share plus whatever amount woulda been my share. I gave up Exhibiton Drinking sometime in my late 20s, having drunk several self-proclaimed connoisseurs under the table on pure dare. [Johnnie Walker Scotch Blue Label 80 Proof Price Range: $174 - $185. This isnt a whisky for beginners....]. What's good enough for stand-up Ron White is good enough for Ted and Gore.

Before leaving the hospital yesterday Ted remarked he'd accomplished far more as a Senator than he could have as President. Not that he didn't want Only Prez. Yesterday found out the "..dream shall never die!" speech LA PBS has been playing forever was Ted's at the 1980 Dem Convention. This after President Jimmy Carter had made good his promise to "kick Ted's ass" for the nomination. Reagan's Revolution [completed by Bill Clinton] dodged yet another bullet.

Ted was the family "screw-up" of nine kids. I did it as an only child. Ted was bounced from Harvard. I failed to ass-kiss a grad school prof. Joe Sr's dough plus "juice" got Ted a U. of VA. J.D. Guile plus dumb luck got me my USC degree. I saw patients no one else could manage in Watts for my State Boards. Ted, had two brothers killed BEFORE he "choked" on CBS and Roger Mudd's 1980 Why-Do-You-Want-To-Be-President? question http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/04/26/remember-when-cbs-wasthe_n_98315.html. Put me in Ted's place and I'd have choked at least as badly. Who needs a target on your back for phalanxes of Lee Oswald-Sirhan Sirhan wannabes to fantasize about? The forced choice of a Senate career and public service let the speech of Ted's Life happen. My only question would be just how "forced" was Ted Kennedy's 1980 choice. With the father Ted had, useful, helpful public service was it's own reward. The hopefully useful professional career I've had made my father proud as he told me I hope Ted's father found time to tell him the same. If so, Ted is truly a fortunate son. Below is his 1980 address to the Democratic Party Convention

http://www.americanrhetoric.com/mp3clips/politicalspeeches/tedkennedy1980dnc.mp3

True Conservatism? Whazzat?

2008-05-20T17:34:00.001-07:00

Chronicle of a journey from youthful
know-it-all to old-fart astonishment.

Trust a Shrink just once: Senator McCain's thankful
nuzzling of George W. Bush's clavical area speaks far more to plain old, Frotteurism than passing the Conservative Torch to a new Energizer Bunny. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frotteurism. If Dr. Phil's recent "Crisis Intervention" in the truly sad life of Britney Spears seemed.....well, gross, be assured the Revelator feels your disgust. Some of us actually have standards and try to live them - professionally and personally. John Cleese once put it right IMO: "Treat a psychologist like you'd treat a plumber."

So meet Andrew Bacevich, who this aged "Red Diaper Baby" woulda voted for from my first C-SPAN experience. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Bacevich. Reading his bio you'd wonder how this guy calls himself a Conservative. Yesterday I wrote of my dad, a lifelong Progressive, who confounded me by professing respect for Senator Robert Taft [Mr. Republican] from Ohio. "He's an honest man," said dad incredulous that I'd ask a stump-dumb question like that. "I hate his [Taft-Hartley] politics but he's a decent, pricipled man who won't sell out." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taft-Hartley_Act.

Won't-Sell-Out sounds so...quaint. "Quaint" in the same sense Alberto Gonzales used the word to weasel around the Constitition to justify getting hospitalized, drugged, temporarily sane AG John Ashcroft to sign-off on another Chancellor Cheney laff-riot [sic]

No matter: Here's Bacevich in the latest American Conservative on why Obama's the "Right Choice." This is bound to really piss-off the Flat-Earth ObaManiacs but what the hell. I pack a Stun-Gun 24/7.
http://www.amconmag.com/2008/2008_03_24/article.html

Barack Buyer's Remorse: First Tiny Cracks in BS-Dam Appear!

2008-05-19T13:23:00.000-07:00

Chronicle of a Journey from Youthful
Know-It-All to Old-Fart Astonishment.

My late, great dad was the kind of Engineer educated to design really Big Stuff: Suspension bridges; industrial buildings; dams that could light up parts of several states. You'd think a Revelator's kid-hood's on Easy Street. Uh-uh. Black Thursday 1929 hit dad at age 26. Ton o' bricks like the other 120-million, minus Fat Cats of course. Being who dad was, his last few bucks bought him a second-class train-ticket outta Pittsburgh. He rode around the USA seeing the sights. Afterward he odd-jobbed with other proles in the Burgh, reluctantly took tide-him-over loans from my great Uncle Al [a Juke-Box concession gave Al "juice" with the mob] til FDR ended Prohibition so dad could work 60-hour weeks in a liquor store. Al, prescient and plain-folks, tried in vain to talk dad outta marrying Miriam. The bad news: Dad did anyway. The good news: I lived to tell the tale.

Today I thought of dad and big-ass dams when I read John Judis on Barack and the Teamster's Union http://www.tnr.com/toc/story.html?id=6e55fd8c-4774-4a3c-ae00-e2004369fbec . Judis' article [JJ's no friend of Billary and his genteel contempt for McCain is abundant] led me here http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/06/us/politics/06teamsters.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin. Say WHAT? Senator "Yes-We-Can!" cutting pre-nomination deals with the crime folks who cut a deal with Poppy Bush to violate the National Labor Relations Board and replace it with "RISE" [Respect. Integrity. Strength. Ethics.]? With a name like RISE a Hollywood mogul has gotta be thinking Remake! of 1951s "On The Waterfront" and Lee J. Cobb's labor boss John Friendly to whom Marlon Brando snarls: "You shoulda looked out for me!..I coulda been a contendah insteada a bum which I am!"

Hey, y'all know me! If the 2000 election didn't cure my idealism and penchant for PROTEST VOTING nothing will. Dad got blacklisted for No-Thing but not "Naming names." Lee J. Cobb wimped out but not my dad. When he got engineering work again it was for shit wages. They used his smarts to design a HUGE project without telling him it was the Germ Warfare installation at Fort Deitrich, MD. Dad was shamed. By then I was of age to blunt the shame some. http://greyfalcon.us/A%20History%20of%20Chemical.htm. . Things being what they are, the idiot Electoral College makes my vote and most of y'all's individually irrelevant. So I'll vote Barack if I must and Hillo if any One of the Seven Plagues arrives. But I'll STILL know how the electorate screwed the pooch letting John Edwards' campaign, a legit hope IMO,die from neglect.

"Please Don't Envy And Hate Me For Being In The "Master Race!"

2008-05-18T16:03:00.000-07:00

Chronicle of a Shrink's journey from youthful
know-it-allness to inevitable old-fart astonishment.

OK, columnist Kathleen Parker

IS better-looking than batshit crazy Ann Coulter. Your Revelator doesn't boink female impersonators. If he did Ihe wouldn't "do Ann" with Henry Hager's apparently tumescent "Johnson." Henry's 15-minutes of fame came last week when he married a Bush daughter and so his Life's Work is set:

1]Help Pop-in-law get the Holy Grail of baseball trading-cards, the Honus Wagner.

2] Get Grampa-in-law's tips how to endure race-baiting Gramma-in-law..........which brings us back to Kathleen Parker. Two-hours ago the only woman writer called Parker I ever heard of was Dorothy. Then Glen Greewald of Salon enlightened me. "Great Caesar's Ghost!" as Perry White of the Daily Planet and Clark Kent's/Superman's boss exclaimed anytime Metropolis came under siege. http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/05/17/parker/index.html

WTF! Is she serious? Is she auditioning for the Neocon Leni Reifenshtal?

http://www.riefenstahl.org/director/1935/ Is there some Miss Eugenics Pageant I mighta missed somewhere? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cesare_Lombroso. Maybe not. Gramps McCain [aging now in Dog Years] does a better General von Hindenburg than Fuhrer. Only that election also was democratic.

Barack Buyer's Remorse [Early Edition]

2008-05-17T20:32:00.000-07:00

Chronicle of a Shrink's journey from youthful
know-it-allness to old-fart astonishment.

It's been awhile since the Revelator's most recent post. John Edwards was still in the race for the Democratic Party's nomination. Look: Edwards was, is, always will be a Politician but so was FDR. Maybe Edwards WAS one more 2008 Con! Still I LIKED his con. Better than I like Barack's and the Gawd Awful Billary. HOPE? Last time I voted Hope was 1992 and Hillo plus the Con Man From Hope. Herman Melville never wrote better
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Confidence-Man

I was a six-year old Revelator on 4/15/45 when the most recent President NOT to be our own National Car Hood-Ornament had his cerebral hemmorhage. At the fatal moment FDR was in Georgia, having his portrait-painted by Missy Lehand, a woman not his wife. Ms. Lehand was his secretary and not noted for her Portature, Presidential and otherwise Lordy! What Would Hagee Say? What Would Dobson Do? A far too-easy question, you'll agree.

My future fellow USC alum and two years my senior was not yet "Author" nor "Psychologist" [Jim hates to be called "Reverend" - a preference I'm happy to honor] and likely has better recall than I of that day. Memories differ. Dobson'd say it was God's judgement, I'd say "Why?" But that sums up how two California State Licensed shrinks see the world. No! I let mine lapse 15-years ago when an ENT guy showed my vocal cords on TV and said one had done the work of two all the time. Fine. A 55-year parts warranty seems fair. What ISN'T fair would be to test kids in South Central with a voice sounding like Brando's "Orange-Peel" death scene in The Godfather. So I quit Shrinery on the spot and became a Mediator. Back to Barack and buyer's remorse:

So far Barack's best moment wasn't even his own. That moment belongs to Will I Am of the Black-Eyed Peas who put together a kick-ass YouTube of "Barack's Best Moment."
http://youtube.com/watch?v=PvuQ3KTWF_0&feature=related. This brings us FULL CIRCLE to the other day to John Edwards and his Barack endorsement. John spent the first five minutes praising the fatally-wounded Hillary. So what happened? Barack-Lemmings booed her name each time! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NC5ID3WZh8Y. And BARACK JUST LET 'EM! "Holy crap!" as Cartman says. Surely Comedian Rush Limbaugh didn't stack the rally to P.O. the Billary Lemmings! So what to be drawn from all this?

Sick as I am of Chancellor Cheney's two terms? Hey:BIG MEDIA ALLOWED Y'ALL TO MAKE THE EDWARDS CAMPAIGN A NON-FACTOR!

In short, Edwards woulda cleaned the Straight-Talk Express's clock. Like FDR over Landon. Or at the very worst, like the Giants over the "Perfect Pats" in SB42 .

Not a lot to add except

Dr. Bawb foretold: And a great Bill Clinton noise shall awaken the Land of Lemmings."

2008-02-26T16:18:00.000-08:00

So Gennifer Flowers is auctioning the tapes of her "pillow talk" with Bill Clinton, eh? Shame on you, Barack Obama for the sleaziest campaign trick yet!! Doctor Bawb can't wait for Barack's apology to the nation, his withdrawal as gracefully as disgrace permits him and just leave the next eight years to Sen. Hillary "Fired-up-and-ready-to-go!" Clinton! Or Gramps McCain, maybe. Swell. If it's Gramps I'll feel younger and better having a Prez older than me. It's been awhile.

On the other hand, could we imagine future Cooperstown great Roger Clemons doing Graybar Hotel time because Debbie Clemons compared Boob Jobs with Jose Conseco's wife at a party? Hey, leave it to "the cleanest U.S. Congress in history" [if you think Nancy Pelosi and Hawwy Weid don't lie anytime their lips move] to track down the truth on stuff that matters to America. Why Sen. Arlen Spector's on the Clemons case like Inspector Javert tracking Jean Valjean in Les Miserables! And the point? Nobody pulls the
wool over the eyes of The Cleanest U.S. Congress in History!Nancy Pewosi and Hawwy Weid said so!