Breaking News

 

Hey! I’ve Published a Book …

And You Can Have Your Very Own Copy

 

I know what you’re saying – “Tell me more, Art.” Well, it’s entitled Explanations & Alibis and it’s a potpourri of short pieces – “Outtakes, short takes, stories & essays (and movie reviews!) culled from a lifetime in the journalism racket.” A couple—three, four of them—have appeared in other places, but you haven’t read them, the rest of them is stuff emptied out of the notebooks I’ve been filling up for decades.

          Let’s do the specifics (because I’ve been asked to). We have 15 separate “chapters” covering reporting, recollections & ruminations about… our current political battlelines; the history of the LA’s Laurel Canyon music scene; the tragic death of Robin Williams; casting “Hamlet”; ringside for the Klitscho-Jennngs heavyweight-title fight; every movie Hollywood ever made about Mars (the planet); “Alice Cooper Meets the Press”; “My Trip to Boston” (a short story; fiction); “Every Stinking  Movie I Ever Saw in Vietnam”; ruminations on Fascism; a natural history of the cockroach;  and “Notes from Rehab” (mine, yes, but what you can expect should it happen to be yours).

          None of that float your boat? Buy copies for all the people you don’t like. Birthday presents.

          It’s available from Amazon (what isn’t?) and you can – and should – have your very own copy. Go on the computer; go to amazon.com; and in the search field type Arthur Durbano … zap! You’re right on the page. Fill in the prompts,  and Jeff Bezos will send you a copy. $10.95. Cheaper than a Napoletano Brothers Italian hoagie! And lasts longer! And once you’ve read it twice, you can regift it!

 

          Now here’s the interesting part. If you’re reading this, it’s because you know me. (Or vaguely remember me.) If you’re not family (or an ex-in-law), you’re among our tribe of former or still-in-there-swinging or at least still aspiring ink-stained wretches genetically hard-wired to write and morally driven to reward a usually uncaring world with the undeserved pleasure of reading the stuff we’ve labored so long to reward you with.

          The problem has always been getting someone to publish it.

          I don’t know anyone at Scribners. I don’t know anyonea at Random House (a division of Penguin Random House LLC New York) either. And this won’t surprise you, I don’t know any literary agents either. But in looking for them I have become acquainted with any number of bunco artists who will be delighted to make my great American novels “publishable” in exchange for a generous fee.

          You talk on the phone with even one of these people and presto-chango! you are on a list.

          The last guy who called me (from a phone number on the Eastern Shore of Maryland) promised to get a book of mine in print for a mere $200. He called like three or four times (I thought of our old TV GUIDE joke: “If you’re talking to me, your career must really be in trouble…”) and then he let slip the word “Kindle.”

          WTF!!! I know what that is. They publish it. You do All the Other Stuff. And suddenly, you know what? I’m all in. I’ll try it.

          Now over the years, I have written four novels, contemporary fiction/romantic comedy. One of them is set entirely in Vietnam (For Your Consideration: Timothée Chalamet runs the US Army Information Office in Qui Nhon!) … My last one is about a movie critic consigned to making the best out of being stuck in a nursing home. It’s all gold dust. Nobody is enthused: “You want an advance?!” All right, I’ll give Kindle a shot, but fuck paying Mr. Eastern Shore 200 anythings. I’ll do it myself.,

          Ah, but I’m not giving away the gold dust to Amazon. (Not just yet.) I’ll cook up something—which I already have! Twenty years; thirty years; more of stuff in my notebooks. Stuff originally in the various novels that works by itself … stuff that just piqued my interest and I just wrote it down … stuff that might have gone into another book I’ll never get around to writing. I mean, I tried my best to make Explanations stand on its own.

          “Notes from Rehab” (all true; no stretchers) is probably the best thing in it. (Maybe it should have led off instead of hitting in the 9 hole). I like the Laurel Canyon piece (and the way Alice Cooper keeps showing up in this book). Klitscho-Jennings is blow-by-blow accurate. And Bryant Jennings is still active, with a career record of 27-4 (15 KOs). His next fight is next month! Anyway, the book is just meant to entertain . . . Oh, and as for that joke, if you don’t like the book, “your money will be grudgingly refunded”? That ain’t going to happen.

Russia Russia, Russia

 

Let’s think about Trump-Russia for a moment. And let’s try to put ourselves into the minds of our (for want of a better word) co-conspirators. We have Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, and it is the year 2015.

                Vladimir Putin, ex-Red Army intel thug, ex-KGB boss, has ascended to Complete Power in the Russian Republic following the collapse of the Comedy Administration of (drunken) Boris Yeltsin; he controls a country that feels denigrated by the West, suppressed, and yet a country with vast resources (especially in the energy sector) and the second-largest nuclear arsenal in the world. Putin himself is the Absolute Master of All He Surveys, unchallenged head of the Most Complete Kleptocracy in History. He is not only the richest individual on Earth; he is the wealthiest person in the entire history of humanity. (This is true; it was true in 2015 and it will still be true tomorrow, whenever you read this.)

Donald Trump -- do I have to waste your time? Real-estate charlatan, casino ghoul, deadbeat faux billionaire, four-time bankrupt, Trump wine, steaks, ties, University; reality-television middleweight [yes, his shows were never exactly “Survivor,” were they?]; moral abomination -- all of that now (in his ever-desperate need for money) turned Populist Republican candidate for President.

What do these two men have in common in 2015? Nothing much. Trump would Do Anything for Putin’s permission to build one of his shitty hotels in Moscow; Putin couldn’t pick Trump out of a lineup … seriously, something that looks like Donald Trump! 

But by 2016, it’s (albeit remotely) possible Trump could win the Republican nomination! And this becomes Of Interest to V. Putin because everybody knows (and everybody was right) that Hillary Clinton was going to win the Democratic nomination -- and there was No One on this planet that gospodin Putin hates more than he hates Hillary Clinton.

So. It’s one of those tedious foreign-policy meetings, late afternoon in late January -- it’s darker than Hell outside -- and the last thing on the agenda is the US elections.

[An oily sycophant musters the courage to speak.]: Mr. President, FSB has a file on the American capitalist-enemy Trump. … A very eeen-ter-est-ing file

VP: WHAT IS IT?

OS: Theeese man was in Moskva in 2013 to produce the Miss Universe show … he wanted you to attend … [VP is losing his celebrated patience with this nitwit] … Comrade Agalarov had spotted him

VP: Agalarov? Hmm. Go on.

OK, you already know what the oily sycophant told Putin: the hotels, the hookers … I’ll tell you what you don’t know. Whatever they call KGB these days -- FSB, FDA, FBI, FBLA -- Aras Agalarov was a Big Deal in it. And his whole family, including his rock star-manqué son, Emin Agalarov, was a totally paid-up member. Agalarov is identified in the US media as an “oligarch.” Russian “oligarchs” are not businessmen who have somehow cornered a valuable hunk of market share in something: They are fucking hoodlums who have extorted, strong-armed and murdered their way into valuable hunks of market share in something. And they’re Government hoodlums (something we won’t have until Trump’s second term)

Now, like any sports team, intelligence agencies have playbooks. “One out, man on first, you play the infield at double-play depth and pitch the hitter outside” is the same in spy-lingo as “Always keep the airports, train stations and bus depots under surveillance for new arrivals.” It’s what you do. Every playbook has its equivalent of “Philly Special” and so does FSB’s. The Eagles ran “Philly Special” on fourth-and-goal at the one with time winding down in the first half of the Super Bowl. In comparison, FSB’s “Moscow Special” was something off the practice field before it came incredibly more significant. The play -- Honey Trap 4.0 --basically involves getting “the mark” (a technical term for “the idiot you’re getting dirt on”) into the most disgusting, degrading position you can conjure up and then photographing what happens next.

Well, you know what they did, Trump doesn’t remember it, but everybody in FSB knows damn well what happened. How do think Christopher Steele found out about it? Because it was a Soviet Intel Urban Legend. It was their “Philly Special” before there even was a Philly Special. It was FBS’s Greatest Hit. All the gray, little people who had a hand in it -- all the hopped-up cab drivers, the swarmy hotel clerks, all the keyhole-peepers, all the pimps, all the drug dealer-hot dose artists -- everyone who had conspired to make this crème de la crème of konspiratsia come true were so beside themselves they had to tell somebody. This was FSB’s “Layla.” Of  course a guy like Steele was going to find out about it  . (I may have met some of these Russians back in the day; I’m a little miffed they didn’t call me to boast about it.)

· The 2016 Election was certainly “Stolen” for the benefit of Donald Trump & the Republicans. But exactly why Trump won (and Hillary Clinton lost) is not a cut-and-dried “Putin did it.”

Hillary Clinton more than helped: Rules don’t apply to the Clintons; she HAD to use a private e-mail server; she had to bait them. She’s the most hated national politician since George Wallace, and she has to flaunt it. She’s the first woman this close to the Presidency, and she took it for granted that somehow she was inevitable …

The third parties didn’t do her any favors.

The Russian hackers (aided & abetted by Jared Kushner) targeted [maybe, maybe not] enough voters in Michigan, Wisconsin & Pennsylvania to swing those states. And if they didn’t …Good ol’ fashioned GOP Voter Suppression in not just those states but 20 others was more than enough to boat this marlin. Because, this election was always closer than anyone with a brain in his head could imagine. People were tired of Obama (and at the same time already nostalgic about him), and the mood in this country was Mean. White people have a lot of angst, a lot of anxiety, a lot of fear, and no power and no influence. And FUCK FACEBOOK. Facebook did not win the 2016 election for Donald Trump. Good old-fashioned GOP Voter Suppression was more than enough.

Not that we shouldn’t impeach, remove, bankrupt, strip naked & flay all the skin off Donald Trump (I’ll do it myself), but we gotta stop this voter suppression. First. Now. Everybody with a Social Security Number gets a card with his/her picture on it. It is your Voter ID. Flash it on Election Day. And vote for Trump if you want to … it’s up to you             

So it seems as if the Russians on Facebook targeted tiny little minds, on their devices, here in America with exotic intellectual poison such as "Hillary's no good," "Donald Trump is even more White than you are," and "Don't be stupid/Be a schmarty/Come & join the 'publican party" - AND THIS COST THE DEMS THE ELECTION. And now we should put Trump & his whole invertebrate family into Leavenworth. Because of THIS? ... Dumb opinions? Playground bantz?
                Look, if I'm getting this right, "Russian collusion" is a crime because It Changed People's Opinions? When did trying to get you to switch to Pepsi become a crime?

Fast Forward Christmas 2025. We are (somehow) still being “governed” by an antisocial kleptomaniac whose only political “support” comes from two (minority) thirds of the minority party, the Tea Party/Freedom Caucus zealots & the Nativist/Fascists. How we got into this shithole will be providing material for Ph.D. theses until the 23^rd Century or until the Vogon destructor fleet comes through, whichever comes first.

And, if I may, a final thought. Here’s a lovely word: exculpatory. It’s an adjective with a Latin background, and it describes, actually in a quasi-legal sense, the evidence or the testimony that you provide to prove that “all these charges against me are nonsense.” The best exculpatory evidence is an airtight alibi. “Don’t blame me. I didn’t do it!” That bank job happened at 2:15 in the afternoon. At that very moment, I was in Citizens Bank Park watching the Phillies & the Marlins. At 2:25, all 59 people who were watching the telecast of that game on CSN saw me make a one-handed catch of a foul ball off the bat of Aaron Altherr.” That’s exculpatory. (I might have masterminded that bank job, but I wasn’t there pulling it off myself…)

But that’s not the point. The point is: Ever since Trump-Russia burst onto the radar, we have had a mountain of evidence (and speculation & innuendo & wishful thinking) about how guilty the Trumpistas are. We have not had a single shred of Exculpatory evidence. Explain that for me, willya, Pal?

 Hollywood’s Red Menace

 Decade After Decade, in One Cheesy Movie After Another, the Message Stays the Same: Mars Is Hazardous to Your Health!!!

Recent confirmation of primitive life on Mars eons ago didn’t surprise Hollywood a bit. Filmmakers have always known there’s life on Mars. And they’ve always known Something Else: It’s hostile.

            In the Hollywood canon, there are two kinds of Mars movies. You can go to Mars -- and meet a monster. Or, as is more often the case, you can stay home and wait for Mars to attack (as it invariably will). Either way, Mars is a sinister place, and it exerts a baleful influence, especially on filmmakers. Check out the catalog of Mars movies listed chronologically below and you’ll see what I mean. Maybe it’s something in the water, but Mars has a way of making movie people do some really stupid things . . 

            Rocketship X-M (1950). Astronauts Lloyd Bridges and Hugh O’Brian (…yeah; 50s’ TV’s Mike Bridges & Wyatt Earp) crash-land on the Red Planet and find themselves fighting for their lives against hideous mutants left over from a nuclear war that destroyed Martian civilization. Of course they do. 

            Flight to Mars (1951). Crash-landed astronaut Cameron Mitchell has to fight for his life against Martian sword-rattlers who want to use his spacecraft as the prototype for a Martian invasion fleet. (See a pattern here?) One of the last-gasp productions of the late, unlamented Monogram Pictures, and the first Mars movie made in color.

            The War of the Worlds (1953). Producer George Pal’s update of H.G. Wells’ 1898 novel, with Gene Barry as the Earth’s first line of defense, remains the “Citizen Kane” of Mars-attacks movies. The Oscar-winning special effects actually hold up nicely.

            Invaders from Mars (also 1953). Director William Cameron Menzies’ paranoid nightmare (and Cold War parable) finds hideous mutants from you-know-where sucking Earthlings underground (in little Jimmy Hunt‘s backyard) and controlling them by sticking radio-directed implants in the back of their necks. Only some late intervention and heavy firepower from the U.S. military keeps the Martian plot from succeeding. Two things: “Invaders from Mars“ is so good that Hollywood felt duty-bound to let Tobe Hooper remake it in 1986. His version has the feel of the original (and much better production values) but not its heart. It’s also missing Hillary Brooke, in a brief but memorable turn (in a brief and memorable negligee) as little Jimmy’s mother.

            Robot Monster (yup, once again, 1953, the annis mirabilis of Mars movies). A gorilla from Mars kills everyone on Earth except George Nader and his family. This movie is so shockingly awful that it’s hilarious. Made for exactly $16,000 (much of which went for stock footage from 1951’s “Flight to Mars”), it nevertheless grossed more than $1 million. Elmer Bernstein wrote the score.

            It! The Terror from Beyond Space, from 1958, is a Martian vampire, played by Ray “Crash” Corrigan in a rubber suit. If you’ve ever wondered where Ridley Scott found the plot for “Alien,” look no farther. (And never forget: a Classic, by definition, is just something that is better than everything it steals from.)

            The Angry Red Planet (1959). Astronauts Gerald Mohr, Nora Hayden, Les Tremayne and Jack Kruschen battle Martian monsters that look like plants, except for one that looks like a gigantic cross between a mouse and a spider. A cult classic. And why? Because -- to duplicate the surface of the Red Planet -- this turkey was shot in a process called “Cinemagic” that only makes everything come out a nauseating shade of pink. Also because it was co-produced and co-written by a guy named Sid Pink (no kidding).

            The Day Mars Invaded Earth (1962) is a knockoff of Don Siegel’s “Invasion of the Body Snatchers”: It eventually dawns on dim bulb scientist Kent Taylor that the Martians are replacing Earth people with exact replicas. I am now going to give away the ending (if only to spare you some crummy special effects and lotsa cringe-worthy thespianism). It’s part of their conspiracy to conquer Earth, of course, but the sinister beauty of this movie is, try as he might, Taylor is helpless to stop the Martians -- and their plot succeeds! A terrific premise ruined by pedestrian execution.

            Robinson Crusoe on Mars (1964) is a knockoff of Defoe. It stars Paul Mantee as the stranded hero, and Mona, the Woolly Monkey actually has third billing, but it’s not that bad. Really. Co-penned by the same Ib Melchior who directed “The Angry Red Planet.”

            Santa Claus Conquers the Martians (1964). The title says it all. Arguably, the worst movie ever made. But not for my money. My money’s on . .. .

            Frankenstein Meets the Space Monster (1965; a.k.a. Mars Invades Puerto Rico). Frankenstein here is neither a mad scientist nor a reanimated monster, but rather a NASA android in a cheesy costume. The Martians, with the Space Monster in tow (and cheesy costumes of their own), are here to kidnap Puerto Rican women and take them home to repopulate the Red Planet. I didn’t say the premise of this movie was idiotic but everything else about it most definitely is.

            The Wizard of Mars (1965). John Carradine was 108 years old when he essayed the title role in this embarrassing set-on-Mars variation on “The Wizard of Oz.”

            Mars Needs Women (1966). Who doesn’t? What has never been needed is this imbecilic variation on “Frankenstein Meets the Space Monster,” but without Frank. Utterly irredeemable.

            Total Recall (1990) is not a Mars movie per se; it’s actually a meditation on the evils of Imperial Colonialism; it just happens to be set on Mars. That said, it is also rip-roaring science fiction and the only time in screen history when Arnold Schwarzenegger has been married to Sharon Stone. It even has half a brain in its head, based as it is (though ever-so-loosely) on Philip K. Dick’s classic short story “We Can Remember It for You Wholesale.” Not to be confused with the 2012 version with Colin Farrell, which is closer to PKD and miles short of Entertaining.

            Mars Attacks! (1996). Just when you thought the genre was played out comes this affectionate parody (“Nice planet. We’ll take it.”) from director Tim Burton. With Jack Nicholson as the President and Tom Jones as Himself, I think you can kinda see what Burton’s going for here.

            Wanna make 114 minutes seem like Eternity? Plop yourself down in an uncomfortable chair with a six pack of Light Beer and unreel Brian De Palma’s Mission to Mars from 2000. And then watch in slack-jawed amazement as Don Cheadle and his Mars I crew are knocked off right after the opening credits, and then -- maybe they weren’t. So Gary Sinise and Tim Robbins and a whole other crew are sent off to … what? Maybe rescue Don; maybe sacrifice themselves trying? Or find out the Meaning of Life? Believe me, you won’t care.

            John Carpenter’s Ghosts of Mars (2001). Quintessential Mars movie, a schlock sandwich that’s so delicious you’ll never want another; tags every base. Monsters? Check: Martian mine workers whose bodies have been taken over by the title characters, rendering them into slobbering zombies. Crummy production values? Check; the whole movie was shot -- in the dark -- in a New Mexico gypsum mine whose normally white walls have been drenched in red paint to give it that -- well, Mars look. How ‘bout cast? Cast! Natasha Henstridge (of  “Species” infamy) as a police lieutenant charged with bringing Snake Plissken-esque outlaw Ice Cube to book. Jason Statham! Pam Grier! Joanna Cassidy! … Cost $28m to make, recouped exactly half of that.

            Doom (2005), based loosely (but perhaps not loosely enough) on the shoot-’em-up video game, is an absolute one-off: a movie with Karl Urban in it that is, nevertheless, unwatchable. Never happened before; hasn‘t happened since (and I‘m including that stupid Viking movie, “Pathfinder.”)

            The Martian (2015), the last Matt Damon helmer anyone paid money to see, is basically “Robinson Crusoe on Mars” for audiences who have lived through the Space Age. Based on a crackerjack novel (by Andy Weir); directed by none other than Ridley Scott. The one thing you take from this Rescue Impossible movie is the realization of just How Fucking Far Away from us Mars actually is. That’s the best news you’re liable to uncover in this whole damn book.

Good Afternoon, Everyone.

This is a test. To see if this Blog can be revived using the antiquated computing I am stuck with.
Why? Because I am hoping to use blogspot as a (forever) alternative to Facebook.

Cross your fingers.

 Lenten Musings 2017

6 March 2017
Over the past w/e came the 0535 hrs. Twitter storm … from Mar-a-Lago (where the much put-upon American taxpayer is shelling out millions every w/e for Enhanced Security while the upscale boutiques of West Palm Beach & environs are losing their shirts (what a shame. Not Fair).
    All kidding aside, the storm alleges that during the campaign & the interregnum, Trump was being wiretapped under orders from President Obama. (You read that correctly.) Three days into this shit storm, Trump has demanded that Congress (!!!) launch a full-blown investigation into these allegations, and Congress seems to be saying, “OK, Donnie.”)
    This is probably just what we’ve been waiting for.
    • None of the tweets has any substantiating evidence for the charges. (There are three “wiretap” rants; the next tweet is about Arnold Schwarzenegger’s departure from “Celebrity Apprentice.”)
    • I’m no lawyer, but even I understand that these charges, if false, are libelous, even though directed @ a “public figure,” and they’re actionable.
    • Why bring Congress into it? Trump is the Commander in Chief. He can have the directors of FBI, NSA, CIA, USACIC, ONI, everybody, on the carpet in 20 minutes & just demand to know: WHO THE FUCK DID THIS? But he didn’t do that; he fobbed it off on Congress (which, of course, has been so speedy gonzalez in convening hearings on the whole Trump/Russia bidness).
    • (This won’t shock you.) Trump heard this story from some wing nut radio guy who was later picked up on Breitbart. The wing nut was just hallucinating. But my guess is: He made a lucky guess. Trump IS under surveillance by his own government. Not in the White House, but Trump Tower, certainly, and definitely Mar-a-Lago (that one’s a Gift from the Gods for the snoops).
    • We have to back up a second. Everyone connected with the Obama Administration vehemently denies that they are or were wiretapping Donald Trump.
    If the Obama Adm. WAS wiretapping DJT & his campaign, then either (1) The Government got a Warrant (therefore they proved in Federal court that there was probable Cause of a Crime & we wanna’ know what) … OR (2) There was no warrant & the taps were gotten up by a freelance bunch of rogues, who intended to do … what?
    • Let’s not lose the thread here. Was Trump under surveillance? Not personally. But many, many persons he was in contact with were under surveillance (and I daresay still are). The people legally under scrutiny are all foreign nationals, you don’t need a warrant to wiretap a foreign national. Jared Kushner didn’t know that, although he maybe he does now. Mike Flynn knows now.
    • How does Trump know he was being wiretapped?
    Because over the past weekend, the Russians told him so.
    There are transcripts of him speaking with Russian operatives, and US Intelligence has them and in due time will use them. And over the weekend, Malcolm Nance and his boy Bourne did the right thing: They told their Russian counterparts the jig was up. (No one wants nuclear war; on either side).
    Trump’s response was to cook up this I’m-a-Victim-of-Wiretapping story (since rescinded & fobbed off on Congress) but it hardly matters. It’s over.

*****
    • This is All About Money, and DJT’s 1040’s (every line item of which is almost certainly “misstated,” incidentally) are now a Matter of National Security (as well as forgery, perjury & embezzlement). .
    •  “The Facts” are DJT owes the private wing of Deutsche Bank hundreds of millions of dollars he cannot pay. He’s leveraged to the hilt, and he has to keep booking Chinese government Christmas parties into the Post Office Bldg hotel just to make his nut. He’s like a puppet on a string, and Vladimir Putin, who IS the Very Richest Man on This Planet, is pulling the strings.
    What does Putin want? (Same thing Steve Bannon does) Chaos in the World Order: (1) a weakened NATO; (2) the breakup of the EU; (3) Russian military expansion in the Black Sea & especially the Mediterranean; (4) the reconstruction of the USSR; and, most important, (5) US complicity in this agenda.
    Back in the fall, Putin must’ve been pissing himself. It SO looked like he had it all. Trouble was, Vladimir Putin isn’t that smart. Trump fooled him, too! Just like he fooled all those racists in PA & MI. But he, Putin, is a real Communist, a real chiliast: he really thought he could jump-start history, do in six months what would have/should have otherwise taken a century to accomplish.
    And if “the deep state” plays this out the way I suspect they will try to, the (eventual) Fall of Trump will be the first domino in the (subsequent) Fall of Putin. And wouldn’t that be nice? 

11 March
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? It’s an old question, and you want all the gory details? Pull up wikipedia and type in the question. (I must say this, though: I first read Juvenal as a senior in high school; my version of the Saturarum [Hardy, 2nd edition, 1891], which I still own, did not include the sixth satire, which even in 1965, and in Latin, was considered too risqué for adolescent minds!) Suffice to say the context for the quip is: How to deal with a faithless wife? Or in our case, a faithless, traitorous Administration.
    What do we do about Trump and bringing him to account? Congressional hearings? House and Senate Intelligence Committees? They’re ultimately run by Republicans, who set the rules. What stops them from suppressing information? Not even bothering to call certain witnesses who could be as embarrassing to them as they would be to Trump?
    A Special Prosecutor? You have to have a legitimate suspicion that there have been Crimes committed or conspired over before you prosecute. And Trump’s own Justice Department would be running the prosecution -- with a whole bunch o’ US Attorneys recruited this week.
    How ‘bout an Independent Commission, a la the 9/11 Gang? Better than the other two; independent of Trump & Sessions, but do they have subpoena power? Or is it going to be Mitt Romney and John Kerry co-chairing, in effect, a whitewash in which no one  “remembers” or goes on the record but instead does his best impression of Rafael Palmeiro in front of the Senate Steroids Committee?
    If what I think is true … that the Russians took every advantage of the greed, venality & utter damnability of Donald Trump and his band of traitors to wheedle him and his people into power, then this is far from over. Putin has pulled us inside out. The President of the United States is a Soviet mole, with the power to do anything he wants to (1) make life easier and more lucrative for Russian autocracy; (2) make life easier and more lucrative for the rich people who bankroll the Congressional Republicans; (3) enrich himself and his sub-human family beyond the wildest dreams of avarice; and (4) Cover It All Up while he’s doing it.
    You think I’m a wing nut? Fifty Days in -- we’ve rolled over on helping maintain an independent Ukraine & let Soviet military power loose in the Eastern Mediterranean … let McConnell & Ryan turn health care over to the tender mercies of “the Market” = millions dumped off the rolls, massive tax cuts for the richest few thousands of Americans, higher insurance premiums for millions more; fuck you cuts for the oldest, the poorest, the most infirm, the disabled, all of whom rely on Medicaid … China (!!) has granted Trump 38 new trademarks and patents … And where are the lawyers & the tribunes of the people to redress these grievances?
    Oh, we need an Independent Commission all right. And I’m afraid there’s only one person I trust to head it: Jack Ryan. [Think of it as a 21st-century take on “Tinker, Tailor,” with Putin as Karla & Rex Tillerson as Gerald, the mole.] Ryan can call in the IMF, I hope, of course the Secretary has disavowed them, Malcolm Nance, Evan McMullin, the Washington press corps, and if he needs even more muscle, he has access to Jack Reacher, John Wick, and the Equalizer (plus the guy Gerard Butler plays in those “[your location here] Has Fallen” movies. And maybe Obama’ll come outta retirement in Act IV.
    Quis Custodies Ipsos Custodes, indeed.

*****
The point of all this is the saddest thing: Just How Much in Common Putin’s Russia & Trump’s America have with one another.
    The Soviet Union has gone up in chunks and Vladimir Putin, for one, is the Last Man on Earth who wants to resurrect it. His Russia is an Oligarchy (and he’s the Head Oligarch; the Wealthiest Man on the Planet). I daresay Trump knows him well enough to idolize him.
    [I’d love to see a dossier on Putin. I figure him as ruthless, expert @ tradecraft & the dark arts of espionage & subversion; as a Russian patriot and imperialist; also as an aesthete (he counts Grygyev as a friend!); not a European, though; and certainly not a Christian. There’s nothing of real Russian culture -- Tolstoy’s humanism, or Solzenitsyn’s conservatism -- in him. He’s one of Dostoyevsky’s Devils not one of his heroes…]
    The USA, too, is an Oligarchy.
    We have a Ruling Class, the One Percent, on which there are no checks & balances whatsoever; they do whatever they want; and when they run afoul of some old law or regulation that impedes them, they get our Tribunes of the People to change it, or ignore it or repeal it, or make sure it doesn’t specifically apply to Them.
    Why shouldn’t reactionary & counterrevolutionary elements in the Russian oligarchy collude with like-minded Americans in “arranging” their/our elections (all of which are polite fictions, anyway). Putin hated Hillary Clinton for getting up on her high horse & trying to influence Russian elections into being truly democratic (as if anyone in power could give a Flying Fuck what the Great Unwashed Thought About Anything).
And that’s Trump. He’ll tell you ANYTHING. And if he can’t think of anything germane, he’ll just fucking make something up. … He’s venal, greedy (my God!), vain, infantile, Narcissistic, sexist, and dystopian -- he has none of the Four Cardinal Virtues & displays every one of the Seven Deadly Sins shamelessly -- luckily, he’s too stupid to do any permanent damage.
    And he may even be a blessing in the long run, because We Elected Him. Maybe people will think next time … and maybe he is so out of touch that, like Mrs. O’Leary’s cow, he’ll start the conflagration out of sheer clumsiness. Unless, of course, 330 million people just don’t give a shit; give them their opioid suppositories & their NFL & their devices and internet porn, and repress all the niggers and wogs they’re afraid are going to steal their devices and you can probably get away with Fucking Anything. Or not. But we’re well on our way to finding out if you can, aren’t we?

13 March
Dear GOP,
    Congratulations!
    The tar baby now (and hereafter) known as ‘Trumpcare’ is SO YOU!!!
    Yes, it Actually lowers the deficit over 10 years, but it does the Big Stuff first: Cuts taxes for the Needy One-Percent & shifts the bill onto people (in districts you guys don’t represent) who are such slags that most of them are barely making $26,000 a year. Brilliant! [And fuck ‘em if they can’t take a joke, especially that guy making $24K whose health bill goes from $1750 p/a to $14,355 under your plan; you are Not Expected to be bothered.]
    The GOP is the P of the Stakeholders. And these schmendricks have no Stake in anything.
    Just one little inconvenience: All these fools are also Trump Voters. Sure, Trump Voters make the Stepford Wives look like Bolsheviks but lower Federal health-care spending by one trillion dollars over the next 10 years and even these dim bulbs might figure out they’re being had. “Heap bad for White Chief”: Trump Voters might start blaming Trump for being the Lying, Psychotic one … “Heap bad for Tribe”: They might actually vote for a Democrat next time.
*****
    In the wake of that Twitter Tirade on “wiretapping” (06 March), the walk back from 1600 is making the Long March of Mao Tse-Tung seem like two centenarians running a 50-yd. dash. Now “wiretap” has air quotes around it, per Spicer, and -- Honest to God, we had no idea that accusing an ex-President of treason could be construed as a Felony (and actionable, even against a sitting President). Look, we just thought it was still the campaign ,,, is that so Wrong?
    So now the story is: there was “surveillance” and WE WERE SURVEILLED against our rights, and our wishes …
    And you know what? There was Surveillance: of the Russians. FBI tapped their phones; NSA had listening devices stuck up their rectums; CIA had ALL of them covered the second they crossed the border. They Bugged the Russians’ communications! And the little bonus in doing this is getting to hear the people On The Other End of The Fucking Call. Now, usually, it‘s just hookers (gender negotiable), but a lot of the time it was the other regulars, or: as they call them down @ the Precinct House: “The Trump Campaign.” 
30 March
• Tonite: Flynn volunteers to talk -- in exchange for immunity.
    Usually, the first guys trapped in the investigation tell their tales and get the most lenient sentences: “Yeah, you did it. The Truth’ll make you free. Six months in Danbury (you’ll serve seven weeks). Go away, and sin no more.”
    This time, the first name on the docket isn’t Segretti or Dahlberg or even one of the burglars: it’s the fucking Campaign’s National Security Adviser!! (Who all the while he was exhorting the lynch mob in Cleveland to “Lock Her Up!!!” was also a Paid Secret Agent [secret from -- well, everybody except his paymasters] for Putin ally Turkey.)
    Hand it to Comey. He only started in July but he went through the small fry like shit through a goose; he’s got the goods on Flynn in less than eight months. Flynn’s ready to sing “Vesti la giubba” to stay outta Danbury. God, would I hate to be Paul Manafort right now. … Not to mention Donald Trump. … Look, I always hoped we could just box this in: “the voters made a mistake, we’ll quietly fix it, paper it over with medical shit & a resignation, etc. Sorry. Nope. I think we really do have ourselves a Constitutional Crisis here. I just want to make sure it doesn’t end in a world war.
• FTR: Russia had a whole smorgasbord of Misinformation, agit-prop, fucking nonsense, etc., etc. -- which is STILL in place and being used to muddy any waters still standing. Know where Trump got the idea that Obama was wiretapping his campaign? (Of course, you do.) This is far from over.
    Let’s be fair: Nothing Russia did, hack wise, effected the vote count. It only effected/affected the voters. We’re not talking about election fraud; we’re talking about an Act of War v. the American electoral system & our ’free market of ideas.’ Anyone on our side who colluded with that attack, advised it, directed it, knowingly profited from it,
is a traitor.
• On the first day of the House hearings (almost two weeks ago), FBI director Comey stood up and called President Trump a liar about his “wiretap tweets,” then he said the Trump campaign has been in the FBI’s crosshairs since July 2016. He dared  Trump to fire him!!
    Nixon, even in extremis, had no compunction about firing Archibald Cox, even though his own Attorney General, Elliot Richardson, and Richardson’s deputy, William Ruckelshaus, both resigned rather than obey the President’s order. [The man who did fire Cox, Robert Bork, did it because he couldn’t see how it was illegal. But he did regret doing so; perhaps never more than when it helped cost him a seat on the Supreme Court he was extraordinarily well qualified for.]
    Tell you what’s funny about that first (and, since then, only) day of those House Committee Hearings: The Democrats (& Comey) tore Trump a new asshole, and all the GOP guys did was bitch about how awful & shameful & embarrassing LEAKS are and it’s gotta be stopped. Nunes let Schiff open with a 15-minute grand jury indictment & none of the Republicans said a single discouraging word about the Russians as they threw Trump under the bus!
• We’re still a long way, of course, from Grand Juries, but already tonight, Devin Nunes’ midnight escapades from earlier this week, going to the Eisenhower Bldg. on the WH grounds to see classified info that is literally “Eyes Only” & then going back to the WH to tell Blondie (right after he told his Speaker) but didn’t tell his Ranking Member or the rest o’ da committee is -- even before the first Grand Juror is sworn -- starting to conjure the Killer Phrase in all this conspiracy shit: Obstruction of Justice.
• The Burr/Warner Committee is negotiating to call MI6’s Christopher Steele to testify.
Nothing to do with politics …
****
Jimmy Breslin is dead. I’m betting he outlived Rosemary. Of all the writers I learned from, all the writers I’ve treasured all these years, he’s the one I stole the most from. I stole everything from him. I loved Hemingway & Chandler, but I couldn’t write like them, cause I didn’t know anything they knew. Jimmy Breslin wrote in the newspaper about the stuff I knew and he showed me how to do it. Give me a lotta credit here, cause what he did so effortlessly was so difficult to do: I filled a dozen Gregg notebooks 1965 ff writing about my day-to-day life and writing about it as if I were Jimmy Breslin, always looking for the weird characters, the O. Henry twists, the punch lines, the glib one-liners that made every Breslin story just POP: On arsonist “Benny the Bug”: the cop says, “we find gas cans in the place, they’re not paying off even if Eisenhower owns the building!”

On a happier note (but one Jimmy would’ve smiled at), I offer you some advice: If you’re ever just chatting with Barbara Stanwyck & she just casually mentions “accident insurance” -- just put on your hat, open the door & RUN FOR YOUR LIFE. [“… I killed him … for money and a woman. And I didn’t get the money & I didn’t get the woman.” … “Straight down the line, Walter.”]
    How much of that is Cain & how much is Wilder & Chandler? I dunno. … Anyone who remembers Fred MacMurray nowadays will remember “Flubber” & My Three Sons, but there was an Edge to MacMurray -- as the mutinous writer/instigator in “The Caine Mutiny,” as the lecherous office tyrant in “The Apartment,” as Walter Neff, the mild-mannered insurance man who kills both (!) the Dietrichsons -- this guy could be dangerous: “Straight down the line, Baby.”

31 March
• The Phillies current financial commitment to their entire 2018 roster is $6.8 million. (Think about that.)
• PBS stations are STILL using Scorsese’s “The Last Waltz” to raise money! The other night on WNJT was like August 1980whatever @ Broadkill Beach all over again (except for the sex & the seafood).
    It’s still the Quintessential Marty movie: (1) it’s a musical (2) it’s gorgeous looking and irresistibly watchable and (3) all of its lead characters are thoroughgoing second raters, guys who you wouldn’t want to share an elevator with let alone have a personal relationship with. To whit, Every One of the Guest Artists Who showed up @ Bill Graham’s Winterland Ballroom on Thanksgiving Day 1976 to perform @ this farewell concert is head and shoulders better than everyone in The Band.
    Marty was doing a LOT of coke @ the time (which explains those goofy interview segments) & was developing a long-lived man crush on Robbie Robertson (another undercurrent of the movie production that pissed off the rest of the guys, almost as much as the money they saw from the DVD’s et al., which was None.)
    Best Guest Performances (totally subjective): Neil Diamond, Paul Butterfield, Dr. John, Muddy Waters, “Caravan” !! … Hell, ALL the Guest Performances are fucking great!
    Guest Performance that I Never Before Realized Was That Great: Emmylou Harris
    Best Tagline: “Why do the best things always disappear?”

• Always wanted to see this movie and thanks to TCM On Demand, I’ve finally gotten to: Ishiro Honda’s 1954 (dare I say it?) masterpiece “Gojira.”
    You know damn well what this is because in the summer of 1956 you went to a local bijou to see the American version of it, something called “Godzilla, King of Monsters,” starring a Canadian-born Hollywood heavy named Raymond Burr as Steve Martin, a US newspaperman who narrates a tale about an Atomic monster who damn-near destroys Tokyo.
    The US version of “Gojira” is a mess, a grindhouse ripoff. But it’s a grindhouse ripoff of a Really Good Movie. The TCM version is Honda’s 1954 original, in Japanese with English subtitles, first seen here at various film festivals in 1982.
    Talking Points:
    (1) Plot: Professor Yamane wants Gojira preserved for study … pitting him against the swaggering salvage company captain, Ogata, who also loves Yamane’s daughter, Emiko, who, in turn, is betrothed to the enigmatic Dr. Serizawa, who obsessive study of Oxygen has led to a terrifying discovery: The Oxygen Destroyer, which removes all O2 from water.
    (2) Serizawa, in a moment of rashness, shows his device to Emiko, and swears her to secrecy. But after Godzilla’s second assault on Tokyo, all bets are off. She & Ogata go to Serizawa demanding he weaponize the Oxygen Destroyer. He destroys all his notes so no one else can ever build the device … and, as the script tells us, he destroys himself in the finale so that no one else can force him to remember how he built it in the first place. Harrowing stuff. And hanging over it all is the Hydrogen Bomb. H bomb fallout has revived Gojira ..
    (3) Honda & his producers wanted to do Gojira in stop action animation, which would have taken seven years and more yen than anyone of them could borrow … “Gojira” is an amalgam of the Japanese words for ‘gorilla’ and ‘whale’; they decided on a dinosaur Gojira instead. (At one point Prof. Yamane tells us Gojira hails from the Jurassic, which he says was two million years ago. Hardly.)
    (4) Point is: Honda knew on Day 1 his King of Monsters was a man (two men, actually, taking turns) in a rubber suit. So he did just what Spielberg did in “Jaws”: He held off as long as he could before showing you Gojira, racheting up suspense that’s been totally obliterated in the cut-and-paste Raymond Burr version.
    (5) And it’s the inspiration for my all time favorite Woody Allen ripoff: Speaking of my own love life, not Alvy Singer‘s, “I just wanted a relationship that would last as long as the one between Emiko and Doctor Serizawa.”

15 April
59 Tomahawk jet-propelled Cruise missiles (at a million dollars a throw) shot off o’ ships at a Syrian airfield and they didn’t even put potholes in the runways … The “Mother of All Bombs” -- 11 tons of TNT (at $1.45 million a ton) targeting ISIS in Afghanistan -- manages to kill anywhere from 36 to 94 of the fuckers (and how do they know that? Somebody go in and count?).
    This is your Commander in Chief, folks, Two Gun Trump. A man who never wore the uniform; and man who bent every loophole to make sure he would never have to wear the uniform, a man who has never heard a shot fired in anger (least of all one fired in his direction). A physical and moral coward. A golfer.
    OK, Golfer, what are you going to do about the North Koreans? (Besides just hoping the Chinese make them go away?)
    C’mon, amaze me.

As a faithful steward of the Public Purse, Two Gun, so far, is making Jack Sparrow look like the tight-ass down @ the DB Cooper Federal Credit Union who gave you that car loan back in 2013. This schmendrick has already pissed away more than $35,000 of the taxpayers’ money on (wait for it) GOLF CART RENTALS. … Each of the $1m missiles was a total write-off, but depending on getting an exact body count, we can make a pretty good estimate from the MOAB blast: One dead IS fighter costs us anywhere from $177,800 to $450,000. Think about that. 

While Congress is in recess (with GOP types avoiding their districts as if they were leper colonies) we’ve been treated to a week or so of Donald Trump the Clintonian: flip-flopping on a whole bunch of his Campaign Shit (suddenly sucking up to “currency manipulating” China, proclaiming NATO “solete,” shooting off rockets & bombs Whack-a-Mole style @ any Moslem who pops his head up anywhere in the Middle East); this in addition to running the first 15 (scripted) plays from the Clinton Playbook: fill the West Wing with unpaid advisors who just happen to be members of your own family, and hire a bunch of guys from Goldman Sachs to run the economy and plan your tax-reform agenda.
    MEMO TO MY FRIEND HUGH HEWITT: Don’t despair! Domestically, ol’ Two Gun is still Your Boy. He got Gorsuch onto the Court; he destroyed forever the time-honored tradition of Senate bi-partisanship, he let a bunch o’ states defund Planned Parenthood; he’s going to let Firefox sell Everybody’s browser history to Ashley Madison (no use trying to flog it to WikiLeaks; they already have it), oh! And he’s going to roll out version 2.0 of ACA Repeal, the no-frills version, which is basically Survival of the Fittest (and the rest of you can fucking die).  … He HAS to do health care first because “health care” is really just an elaborate way to put even more millions into the pockets of the One-Percent, and without it, his “tax reform” can’t be “deficit neutral.“
    Don’t be surprised, though, if Trump/Ryan “tax reform” is a National Sales Tax, what the Brits lovingly call the VAT.
    Know how not to pay sales tax? Don‘t buy anything. Lease it. Although you might wanna‘ think about buying stock in Rent-A-Center and Aaron‘s.

Baseball Quiz!

With another season almost here, time to jog your memories a little ….    

    (1) As of Opening Day, who is active leader in wins by a pitcher?
    (2) Name the three active Major Leaguers with at least 500 career home runs.
    (3) Again among active players, who is the career leader in stolen bases?

Now for the immortals …   
    (4) Nine men have hit 600 or more career home runs. Who is the only one of them who didn’t play at least 20 seasons?
    (5) Reggie Jackson struck out more times than anyone: 2,597 times (in 9,864 AB). And Alex Rodriguez is the active career leader, having been rung up 2,220 times in 10,341 AB. Which inevitable Hall of Famer is second in career K’s, and who is second to A-Rod among active players in being punched out?
    (6) Here’s a select group: The 2,000--3,000--600--2,000 Club, i.e., guys with 2,000 or more Runs Scored, at least 3,000 Base Hits, 600 homers and 2,000 RBIs. Who’s in it? (I’ll tell you someone who isn’t: Babe Ruth.)
    (7) Winning the Triple Crown is no mean feat, especially in MLB. Who won the most recent one?
    (8) Name the only two men to win the Triple Crown twice. And…
    (9) Name the two men who won the Triple Crown in the same year that they were also playing in the same city.
    (10) Rube Waddell was the first Big Leaguer to strike out 300 batters in a season (1903); he punched out 302 in 324.0 innings. Who is the most recent pitcher to turn that trick? (Hint: he only needed 232.2 IP to fan 302.)

Extra Credit.
    Here are the career lines of two recent right-handed pitchers.
                          IP      W         L      SO     ERA    CG    SHO
Pitcher A    2827.1      219    100    3154    2.93    46    17   (18 yrs.)
Pitcher B    3261.0      216    146    3116    3.46    83    20    (20 yrs.)

    Recognize them? One is a first-ballot Hall of Famer, the other one couldn’t get elected as a Donald Trump delegate in Maricopa County. OK, here are their post-season records…

One of Them        14 GS, 96.1 IP, 6 wins, 4 losses, 3.46 ERA
The Other One:    19 GS, 133.1 IP, 11 wins, 2 looses, 2.23 ERA

Got ‘em now?

And, finally, only because I happened to stumble on it: In 1955, while he was having his average season on the mound (305 IP, 23-14, with 3 saves), Robin Roberts came to bat 107 times and hit .252 -- with nine doubles, four triples, two Hrs, 13 RBIs and 18 walks. His OBS was .827

Snapshots

Feb. 21, 2016 -- Jeb! suspended his campaign last night. (One less Wanted poster on the post-office wall.) I suppose he only ran in the first place because he thought it was his responsibility to run. Where he got that idea I can’t imagine (probably from his mother). His father is/was a great human being, a conscientious but uninspiring President; his brother remains -- as a man & a Chief Executive -- something akin to the drinking water in Flint, Michigan, i.e., someone/something that makes Michael Moore wanna make another (tedious, patronizing) fucking movie. Jeb! saved us all a lotta heartache.*    
    Now that we’re down to the Elite Eight Minus One (with Sanders & Clinton already seeded into one of the semifinals), I’m suspending my campaign, too. There’s nothing else I can say or do to ameliorate matters. My younger daughter changed her registration to Democrat (to vote for Bernie) all by herself. On line. You can do that.
    Before I go, by which I mean stop posting election-specific columns on this blog, I would like to indulge myself with some parting thoughts on the folks who are still in the field. And why may I not? If you are reading this, you have sent for me, and engaged to pay for me (with your time and attention), and I am determined that you shall have me -- though I may be the biggest fool in the land, and bore you beyond all precedent.**

    Shufflin’, shamblin’, slow-talkin’ , sleep-walkin’ Ben Carson is really the Poster Boy for what this campaign has been all about. Don’t confuse him with Herman Whatzizname, the pizza guy who was cast as the token black Republican hopeful four years ago. Dr. Carson is the Real Deal. This egomaniac has raised millions of dollars, and done just what I would have done with it -- skimmed off my tribute and then spent every nickel of it on more fund-raising. The Ben Carson campaign isn’t a crusade to save America; it’s an ATM for the Ben Carson cronies who have been cranking out all those TV ads you’ve yet to see one of. Oh, and don’t think it’s been po’ black fo’ who have been sending in all those schekels. That dough has been Mau-Mau’d out of just the kind of assholes who deserve a mugging like this: guilty, white suburbanites from states like, oh -- Pennsylvania. Friends, this fabled neurosurgeon turned motivational speaker actually interrupted his campaign, while his poll numbers were nearly Trumpian, to go on a two-week-long book tour.

    John Kasich looks like a wide-mouth frog. He has been a US Congressman and is the sitting (re-elected) governor of the Great (Swing) State of Ohio. If you have an iron butt, you can read every stance on every issue Kasich has ever endorsed or voted for on his wikipedia page. If you have some vague, generous idea that he is a sheep in Republican clothing, forget it. He is running for Vice President because his views are so toxic that he won’t ever get a third term even from Ohioans. After he drops out of this fool’s errand of a campaign, he will go back to where he came from, filling in for Bill O’Reilly when Bill-O is off on his next “Killing [fill in the blank]” book tour.

    His absolutely glittering CV notwithstanding, Raphael Edward “Ted” Cruz is still assailed, stupidly, over whether he holds jus soli citizenship status. Let me clear that up for you right now: his mother was born in Wilmington, Delaware. He’s an American.
    His father is the Creature from the Black Lagoon.
    Which is why he looks like that. And talks like that. (He doesn’t speak in long sentences with dependent clauses and rhetorical flourishes in them because he has gills.) And it’s why no one who remembers him -- even people from Princeton and Harvard Law and the Federal Trade Commission, none of them -- has ever said a kind word about him. He is a sitting United States senator (albeit from Texas) who has succeeded in shutting down the Government. Now he wants you to let him run it. Like having DB Cooper in charge of American Airlines, or Carly Fiorina running General Electric, or -- I don’t know -- someone like Roger Goodell as Commissioner of the NFL. I mean, what could go wrong?

    That leaves us the Semifinalists.   
    In the Blue Bracket …. Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders are the two sides of the same coin, in this case, a 1943 steel penny (and you don’t see many of them anymore).

    Bernie’s Tails. The flip side. The B side. The “better angels of our nature” side. He expresses, sometimes so that it’s almost understandable, a desire for a better life for everyone, a (naïve) sense of fairness, a sad old man’s regret that the world he’s lived in and the system that he’s served are, when all is said & done, a swindle. Which it is.
    And which he can do nothing about. He’s not a revolutionist. He wouldn’t have a clue where to begin. And (alas) there’s no constituency for revolution, anyway. Which leaves Bernie what he is … at best, a progressive who’s not afraid to slice up the pie so that other people get a bigger piece every so often, and at worst, a senile old fart in a long white robe walking down the middle of Central Avenue in Los Angeles gesticulating wildly and baying at the moon. “Tails” as in “tails, you lose.”

    Hillary’s Heads. The brains. The moxie. The “Heads, I win” heads. … Crusty and crazy and annoying as hell as he may be, you can’t help but like Bernie Sanders: he’s the second husband of your mother-in-law’s oldest sister that you always gravitate toward during those interminably horrible family Christmas reunion parties. … No one gravitates toward Hillary Clinton. She’s a horror. A monster of ambition. (And greedy as hell. Look, I suppose former Cabinet secretaries feel they have to support their families. But if you leave office expecting to run for President, do you actually take a six-figure fee from John Kasich’s old firm, Lehmann Brothers?) And that’s what it is with the Clintons, both of them, they just don’t get it -- for them, “the rules” are for other people. It’s almost as if they’re both Secret Agents from Mars, sent to infiltrate & destabilize Earth from within its very power structures and some dumb Martian bureaucrat gave them the instruction manual from 47 BC. … And maybe the Martian thing is why it sounds to me like a dog whistle every time I listen to her open her mouth.

    And in the Red Corner: Donald Trump vs. Marco Rubio.
    I’ll do Trump first, just to get him out of the way. And I’ll change this up by making a list:

The Most Unlikable Things About Donald J. Trump in No Particular Order of Nauseating
(1) His mouth. Which only seems attached to his skull by invisible wires, and (not a pretty sight, also) hangs open all the time.
(2) The way he always seems to be groping at his hotcha daughter.
(3) That fucking dead bleached raccoon that’s been stapled into his head.
(4) The fact that Franklin Roosevelt didn’t raise the Inheritance Tax rate on every estate above $150.00 to 100% when he had the chance.
(5) The total irresponsibility of the man. People -- OK, maybe not Real People (maybe not even real vertebrates), but GOP primary voters -- are voting to elect this cretin President of the United States, and he refuses to tell anyone what he would do -- and how he would try to pull it off -- if he actually won.
(6) His vulgarity.
(7) His obvious disrespect for the Nation he’s making an international laughing-stock of (and whose wartime draft he so cleverly dodged).
(8) His (latest) trophy wife.
(9) The Ben Carson money he’s making selling campaign gear.
(10) That he plays up -- and up to -- the racialist, sexist, xenophobic hatreds that embody Cliven Bundy’s America.

    On the other hand -- look, I know the list could be lot longer (add your thoughts in Comments) -- on the other hand, he had the balls to say, to South Carolina Republicans, that there were no WMDs, that the (second) Iraq War was folly, that the US military “doesn’t win anymore” (anymore? I’m 68; it hasn’t won a war in my lifetime! It didn‘t even win the war I was in!). He told Jeb! he was “low energy.” He told Pope Francis to “fuck off.” And how do you know Megyn Kelly wasn’t on the rag when she tore into him? All right, that’s the stuff you hope to hear from the next George Carlin. Not the next President.
    Look, the man is a Fascist. Pure and simple. (I’ll drag out the essay I wrote more than a year ago about fascism, clean it up & post it later this week.) He’s also a blowhard, a bully and an ignoramus. If he wins the Presidency, it’ll only be because we were complicit in it.


    Which leaves (my guy) Marco Rubio.
    I like him because he’s young. And the smartest guy in the room. And personable, obviously decent, serious (my God!), well-spoken and politician enough to know that virtually everything he tells his GOP base is horseshit: just the stuff he has to say to get the nomination. I think he wants to be President, and I can’t but admire his ambition. And I think that (unlike Trump) Rubio knows what a President actually does and has to do. I think there’s no doubt he’s a wonk. Day One he’ll have white papers and legislative agendas … and if that makes Marco sound kinda Al Gore-like, well -- that’s my worry.
    There is a bit of Al Gore in Rubio (you don’t just wake them up in the morning, you also have to reboot them). You get the sense with both that even their ad-libs are rehearsed. Al Gore, though, the one we elected in 2000, was the finished product. Son of a legendary Tennessee legislator, to the manor born, Al volunteered for Vietnam, worked his way up through elective offices, etc., etc. When Scalia et al., snatched the ultimate prize away, he eventually had Scalia murdered. [WAIT A MINUTE -- Blogspot Editor]
    I’m sorry. I was talking about Marco. Who wasn’t, as he is fond of saying, to the manor born. He’s the Stranger in a Strange Land in a lot of ways. You see it in his face and his mannerisms. He wants to please; the smile lasts too long; he often seems really uncomfortable. Precocious people are like that. I’ve seen it in the mirror. I guess what I’m saying is I wish Marco had sat down and read a book that wasn’t about policy or history or economics or some other Serious Shit, and that book had made him see that things aren’t all that -- serious.
    Or maybe I should just stop fretting like an old hen and mail him my old copy of “Catch-22.” Best campaign briefing book he’ll ever read.

Footnotes

 *Jeb! & Michael Moore have a lot in common: they both know what’s Good for You, they both buy their clothes at the Men’s Wear House (of Pancakes), and Other People give each of them millions of dollars to advance agendas most Americans couldn’t give a flash-frozen tub of margarine about. I mean, can you imagine how tedious Michael Moore’s “Bush! XLV” would be?

**The first poster in the Comments section (below) who correctly identifies the American classic I am paraphrasing in that last sentence wins Lovely Parting Gifts. [Not necessarily lovely, nor exactly “gifts” -- Blogpost Editor.]

Is Bernie Sanders a Socialist?

February 12, 2016 -- Well, that’s really two questions, isn’t it? What is Bernie Sanders? And what is a Socialist?
    What’s a Socialist? Classically (as derived from Marx--Karl, not Chico), a Socialist is someone who believes that the state should control “the means of production.” I don’t know what that means, either, but I’ll give it a shot: Imagine an America in which the majority stockholder (and in some cases, the monopoly shareholder) in everyone of our large corporations is -- the United States Treasury. That’s Socialism.
    The Government of the United States -- (and who is that, actually? Well, that’s The People) -- owns control of corporate America. We own the Big Banks, the insurance companies, the drug companies, the automakers … we own Corporate Agriculture (you know, ConAgra & Perdue & Dole & Del Monte & Hershey) … we own the energy companies, we own the railroads, we own the utilities, we own the internet service providers. We own the movie studios and the television networks… That’s Socialism.
    We don’t own all of everything, of course. We don’t own little corporations -- until they get to be Big Corporations. Then we buy them. But, as I understand Socialism, we don’t just passively “own” stuff like Sprint or Bank of America or Con Edison or Comcast Universal, we run them. Your elected representatives (executive branch appointments confirmed by the Congress) select the board members who oversee these corporate entities. Tell them what to do. Which is, basically, turn a profit. Because what’s the point of owning all the stock in Comcast Universal if the executives managing the damn thing can’t make money?
    And the other -- really nice -- thing about Socialism: the corporate tax rate on net profits (i.e., gross receipts minus expenses, including depreciation) is 100%. Under Socialism, equity markets as we know them today -- with capital gains, leveraged buyouts, mutual funds, sub-prime-mortgage (junk) bonds & the other stuff in “The Big Short” that went right over my head -- would disappear faster than Kaiser Sose.
    It’s a brave, brave new world, and I would love to live long enough to see my country transition toward it. There are fascinating questions. What would we do with Major League Baseball, for instance? The People aren’t going to own the Philadelphia Phillies. As a limited partnership, they won’t be subject to the 100% rate on corporate profits, although I dare say, their $20 million-a-year leftfielder (should they ever find one) will get a hefty personal income-tax bill every year from the IRS. … And certainly, Socialized America will never tax Venture Capitalism out of existence (better individual entrepreneurs take the risks on the Next Great App You Have to Have than having We, the People lose your money on it). And I could go on, but that’s not the real point tonight.
    The real point is Bernie Sanders, and I think I have reassured all of you who need reassurance that, whatever he is, Bernie Sanders is anything but a Socialist.

    Did you watch the debate with Hillary from Milwaukee on Thursday night? I did it for you. And took notes. So what does Bernie want?
    (1) Universal, single-payer health care for everyone in America.
    (2) Tuition-free public college (presumably, for everyone who can pass the entrance requirements, and pay for their own books)
    (3) Massive public spending on infrastructure improvements
    (4) Bringing “offshore profits” back to the US and taxing them
    (5) Funding (a lot of) these measures by imposing a “speculation tax” on Wall Street
    (6) Raising the minimum wage
    (7) Lifting the cap on incomes subject to the FICA (Social Security) tax
    (8) More (any?) Federal regulation on insurance companies, investment banks & mortgage lenders -- entities that weren’t reined in by Dodd-Frank (as if anyone has a clue about Dodd-Frank, except that “Frank” was the fackin’ gay guy from Boston).
    (9) Invoking Teddy Roosevelt … Break up the Big Banks….
    (10) Take “on” the entrenched interests

The Ten Commandments, huh? Well, George Carlin was here decades ago  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5rLWJntz-o   But that won’t stop me from stealing a page from his songbook: (4), (5), (8), (9) and (10) amount to the same thing: shaking down the financial system for more tax money, or (to be honest) making them pay at least some of the dough they’re hiding from us. (10) alone demonstrates Bernie is no Socialist. He wants to take “on” the entrenched interests. I’m a Socialist. I want to take “over” the entrenched interests.
    The other five demands are just old-fashioned populism combined with common sense. (1) is self-evident. Romney care (which is what we have) just enriches Big Pharma & Big Insurance … (2) is an “obvious” extension of what we have now, except it will enrich a Democratic constituency (unionized teachers) at the expense of local taxpayers. … (3) is what we should have been doing for decades … (6) is another way of raising taxes on small businesses hard-pressed to pay them: raise the wage, you also raise the employers’ share of FICA taxes … (7) is just a way to keep the same money coming into FICA every year after small businesses fire all the people they can’t afford to pay $15 an hour to.
    I have to back up a sec. (5) the “speculation tax” is the one I simply don’t understand. I thought at first it meant a capital-gains tax, which we have, or an increase in capital-gains-tax rates, which are ridiculously low. Now I think I have it figured out. He means an excise tax on stock purchases -- a sales tax. If you buy 100 shares of Universal Widget @ $44.00 a share [$4,400] Bernie would charge you Sales Tax on it (1%? $44) and this would be over-and-above the 6% [$264] you paid your broker to make the trade for you. In other words, you just bought Universal Widget for $47.08 a share. You better really believe it’s gonna go up

    So what’s Bernie? Sad but true, he’s just the latest incarnation of that old Republican bugbear, the tax-and-spend Democrat. In Kipling’s finely turned phrase, he wants “to rob selected Peter to pay collective Paul.”
    He’s Robin Hood.
    He’s a thief.

On the Eve in New Hampshire

February 2, 2016. OK, Iowa was fun …
    · Hillary & Bernie finished in a dead heat. Not the best news for Bernie. If he can’t beat her among the legions of progressives who make up the Iowa Democrats, where can he beat her? (OK, yes, in New Hampshire, where this morning he seems to be holding a 17-point lead -- something like 58-41 -- but don’t expect a margin like that to stand up.) And down the road, I don’t see unionized Hispanics rallying to Sanders in the Nevada caucus, which is No. 3 on the campaign slog; and I certainly can’t imagine Sanders winning a majority of South Carolina Democrats. The majority of SC Dems are Black.
    · Marco Rubio finished third on the GOP side, grabbed all the TV attention with a pre-11 PM {ET} victory speech -- and pretty much nailed it. He “won” Iowa ‘16 the same way Gene McCarthy won New Hampshire ‘68, just by exceeding expectations; or, doing the very thing Hillary will do next week when she loses NH by “only” seven points.
    · And a big shout out to the sheer chutzpah of the Clintons. The once (& future?) First Family stormed the stage en masse for her stridently bizarro victory speech -- while, on the other half of the TV screen, Ted Cruz was still luxuriating in his no-surprise win.
    · Look, kudos to Marco, but leave us not get carried away. Sixty-three percent of the GOP votes -- 28% to Ted, 24% to Donald, 9% to Dr. Ben, 2% or so to Carly -- went to Rank Outsiders. Iowa! Good God-fearing, Bible-thumping, Hawkeye-stubborn, high-school wrestling, shirt-off-their-backs-should-your-crop-ever-fail, “Field of Dreams” Iowa, where the economy is good, and almost two out of three went with the haters, the prigs, the rabble-rousers & the idiots. Hell, Rand Paul, who probably isn’t a GOP insider, either, even though, at least for now, he is a sitting United States senator, did better than all four of the past & present GOP governors on the ballot!
    · And finally, Bill Clinton looks as if he’s had a stroke. … And when Ted Cruz gets close enough to the nomination to panic the GOP hierarchy, they’ll destroy him -- by leaking everything they have on him in the X-Files.

A Modest Proposal: Primaries

   
January 27, 2016 -- A poll out today, reported by MSNBC, has already made a mockery of next Monday’s Iowa caucuses.
    It says that if 200,000 Iowans show up and caucus, Donald Trump beats Senator Ted Cruz by, like, 47 to 29 (whopping). But if 170,000 show up, Cruz beats Trump 33 to 25. Scenario #1: Donald Trump is America’s Choice. Scenario #2: "Conservative Republicans will not support Donald Trump." Scenario #1: He’s Home. #2: He’s Toast. … So thirty thousand people in Iowa, who either do or don’t turn out, are setting the agenda here? That’s just stupid. Thirty thousand people? More people than that live in Radnor Township; cram 30,000 people into Citizens Bank Park and no one has to sit in the upper deck. C’mon, 30,000 people in a state with six electoral votes? Enough.
    Here’s what we oughta do (& you can have this for nothing…)  
    Leave the Iowa stubborn their moment on the National stage & let them keep their first-in-the-Nation caucuses, last week in January. On the condition that national news media covering these superfluous caucuses devote some serious time to informing Everyone about US Government Farm Policy. Which I will bet tomorrow’s lunch you don’t know anything about.
    What is our agricultural policy? Who gets to decide it? (The President from Chicago? The senators from Arkansas? Nancy Pelosi?) Who gets the subsidies? (we know there are subsidies; that’s the only thing about farm policy everybody Knows). How do those subsidies make the consumers’ lives any easier? …. Why is a pound of hamburger twice the price of a gallon of gasoline today? … Can Willie Nelson & John Mellencamp & Neil Young’s constituents make a living and afford to send their kids to the University of Nebraska, or is the “family farmer” (as I suspect) about to follow the trilobite down the historical oubliette?
    Do we Import food? Or Export it? (Or Both?) Well, I know we import fruit & vegetables (in season) from Latin America because I buy only fresh fruit & vegetables. But what about the big stuff -- wheat & rice & corn & soybeans? I mean, we live in a capitalist society & prices are prices: Is the USA a net exporter or a net importer of agricultural products? I don’t know.
    And if we are net Importers, I’d like to know why; and I’ll bet a lot of potential caucusers in Iowa would too.
 
    As for that first primary, first Tuesday in February, don’t anyone dare take it away from New Hampshire. The small states deserve their day in the sun, and none more than the Granite State … because Everything People Think They Know About NH Is Wrong. There are more Democrats in NH than there are Republicans, and more Independents than there are Democrats. And Independents can make up their minds to vote in either Presidential primary the moment they sign in.
    New Hampshirites (is that a word?) are on average more affluent than most Americans & better educated than most Americans. Over the last 30 years or so, most of the most important elective offices in the state have been held by women. If any state should be the first to pass judgment on this cycle’s Presidential Pretenders (lookin’ at you, Senator Cruz), thank you, Jesus, it’s New Hampshire. … Just outside the Massachusetts-New Hampshire border, IN New Hampshire, I-95, which is at least a six-lane highway here, forks to form a huge island in the middle of the road. On that island is the most amazing liquor store I have ever been in (and I have been in liquor stores in Moscow. Russia.). You want it? They got it. You never even thought about it? They got that, too. And the prices are a  m  a  z  i  n  g. New Hampshire! Chip Kelly used to coach there.

    All that said, after that, though, we’re gonna’ need some reforms. The current SEC Primaries in the first week of March are anything but representative, and yet skew the conversation & the strategies & the donations (shall we say?) disproportionately.  Both parties have to realize that having primary voters in the Old Confederacy essentially pick their national nominees is … well, it’s just stupid, too. The Democrats could run the ghost of Pierre Gustave Toussaint Beauregard in the primary election and still wouldn’t win South Carolina in November. No. This is what we should do:
    After Iowa & New Hampshire, there are 48 states left. Beginning in the first week o’ March over the next nine weeks (we‘re going to skip the Tuesday after Easter), six primaries a week in the remaining 48 states -- in alphabetical order. Week 1: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado …. Week 6: Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Wyoming. … California gets to throw down a marker for the Democratic nominee right off the bat (and maybe it saves someone on a fool’s errand a helluva lot of other people’s money) but you could say the same for how AL, AZ & AK view the GOP field. And I’ll stay up late to see how Colorado views this entire 2016 class.
    The Important Thing is: before these reforms can be made, we have to call a truce. Both parties must agree to stop their voter-suppression efforts, and invite in United Nations observers to make sure every dumb asshole in this wonderful nation of ours gets to express his asshole opinion in a voting booth. Oh, and one more thing, every few years every eligible voter will be issued a Voter Ticket -- an actual piece of paper -- and every so often, such voter must show up on Election Day and literally get his ticket punched. And if you are at any time unable to produce a punched ticket, you are disqualified from buying a gun. In fact, you are disqualified from having a gun. Nobody gets to exercise his 2nd Amendment rights until he can prove he’s exercised his 15th Amendment rights first.
    Takes care o’ that.
    So there you have it. A system that maximizes Participation. And interest. That also somewhat (but crucially) weights things toward the states that really matter: Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas … I’m kinda keen on the idea of really, really, really close races in both parties coming down to Virginia. I’ve lived & worked in Virginia, and I don’t know if nowadays it’s in the South or the North.
    This last little thing we have to insist on … All these primaries .. No more Winner-Take-All states. The Presidential Election is something else. But for primaries, my plan has to insist on proportional representation. Be fair: If it’s February, and 40% of voters want Lennon and 30% want Harrison and 20% want Starkey (and the other 10% is scratching its heads among McCartney, Obama, Dave Clark & Durbano), it’s only fair to parcel out the delegates won proportionally. (Hell, suitably reinforced, Dave Clark might come on to win the nomination!)
    And this is not a hardship or a deal-breaker for the Parties. Both have enough Superdelegate rules written into their nominating processes that they’ll all be able to rally around their party’s most electable candidate, even if it is Mitt Romney. Or Michael Dukakis.