July 29, 2007
Forget all about this blog. My new website, 200motels.net is now open for business, with the latest in comedy, satire and commentary, and with advanced graphics to entertain the discriminating reader.
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Posted on 7/29/2007
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July 28, 2007
Oh, so now Hillary Clinton has got her drawers in a knot because people are paying attention to her shabby wardrobe, which looks like it was bought off the discount rack at Bolton’s!
She’s complaining that the press is remarking on a tiny bit of cleavage that she showed while delivering one of her marvelous speeches before the United States Senate, instead of focusing on the idiotic speech. First of all, we all know her speeches blah blah blah. Second of all, I pray to God to deliver me from Hillary Clinton’s pathetic cleavage.
If she would have anything at all, maybe Bill Clinton would have focused on that instead of being sacrificed to the ravages of Monica Lewinski’s thong underpants.
If you don’t even have the talent to attractively package yourself as a person in public life, how can you be trusted to conduct public business? Everybody looks terrible!
Any Italian barber in New York could do a better job for $20 on John Edwards’ haircut than what he is getting now for $400 in South Carolina. Who gets his hair cut in South Carolina anyway, except for B’rer Rabbit and the Tar Baby?
Eliot Spitzer looks like a raincoat flasher on the 7 train. Whatever you say about New York State Senate Majority Leader Bruno, at least he has the decency to appear in public wearing nice suits. He looks like Johnny Carson, but that’s not so bad, considering that he’s no kid. Bruno may be stealing like crazy, but at least he has the presence of mind to spend some of his stolen money on decent clothes.
Whoever is promoting the concept that you need to look shabby to be taken seriously needs to have his head examined. I think the rationale is that if you are focusing on your appearance, you can’t be spending enough time thinking about serious policy questions. That’s like saying you can’t walk and chew gum at the same time. Anyway, even on their best day, the middlebrow dorks who are formulating public policy are no literary geniuses no matter how you look at it.
New Yorkers are particularly susceptible to this line of reasoning. New York is a city where ugly people have got all the good jobs and attractive people are working as bartenders and cocktail waitresses. Like the fable of Cinderella and her ugly sisters, the homely people intend to maintain the status quo, and are prepared to go to serious lengths of destruction to enforce it.
Ugly does as ugly is. Look who we got running things, and look how they’re being run. It’s Halloween 365 days a year, with bow-tied neo-conservatives in wingtip brogues and broads in “Hairspray” bouffant hairdos calling the shots, and the city is being run like a shithouse.
We need a political party where only smart-looking people are allowed to join. I guarantee you good ideas would come out of a situation like that, and people would smarten up to be admitted. Look how great they’re doing in California with Schwartznegger! We need that here, instead of freakin’ Eliot Spitzer and Giuliani, who should be used as a scarecrow on top of the Liberty Tower to scare terrorists.
Elegance and charm still count for a lot in this world. By insisting that our public figures appear as though they forgot to remove the hanger from their suits before putting them on we are shooting ourselves in the foot.
While we are on the subject, let me be the first to call for Eliot Spitzer to resign as governor. I voted for him, but I don’t care about him anymore. He is guilty of the same kind of targeting of political enemies that sank Nixon. Now the cover-up, like Nixon, is worse than the original blundering. The man is a rube and a political neophyte. Six months into his first term as governor, he has been hogtied and hung out to dry by Bruno who, for all his faults, is a competent politician.
Spitzer comes from a background of coarse, loudmouth blowhards. New York Magazine reported that eating dinner with the Spitzer family, with screaming and yelling, is like an Animal House food fight. At these dinners any kind of civilized intercourse is considered to be insubstantial and superficial, and people fight over policy differences and social polemics to the extent that you can’t even eat. This Spitzer seems to believe that nothing is getting done unless the atmosphere is ratcheted up to the point of sickness and nausea. His big reputation is that he is revolting and obsessive to the point of hysteria, which is OK, I guess, if there is a point to it, but as a general day-to-day procedure, I think I’ll take a pass. New York already has enough big pricks. What we need is calmness and rationality (Bloomberg), not freakin’ screaming banshees and enemies lists.
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Posted on 7/28/2007
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July 27, 2007
FRENCH PRESIDENT SARKOZY WITH MUAMMAR KHADAFY, MICHAEL JACKSON’S NATURAL FATHER
The American establishment loves France’s new president, Nicholas Sarkozy, because, unlike his predecessors, he has been intelligent enough to address some complimentary remarks with regard to our nation.
That’s a beautiful thing, but unfortunately, as former president Jacques Chirac discovered to his eventual discomfiture, a warm embrace can lead to a picked pocket. (Chirac, incidentally, is on his way to being indicted in an insider trading scandal)
Sarkozy and his stunning blond wife, Cécilia, who professes to have no interest in politics, have pulled off a major coup in obtaining the release of five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor from a Libyan jail where they were under sentence of death for supposedly infecting 400 children with AIDS at a hospital where they worked. In return, the Sarkozys promised to conclude agreements between France and Libya in areas that included defense, health, education and the construction of French nuclear power plants.
France is also intensely interested in Libyan petroleum. Its 39 billion barrels of proven reserves are thought to be the biggest on the African continent, surpassing Nigeria and Algeria. France’s Total Oil Company has already signed a joint venture with Russian Gazprom to exploit Algerian oil deposits, motivating the Russians to allot France a leading position in the extraction of important Siberian deposits.
The French nuclear utility, Areva, has concluded an agreement that is expected to focus on the building nuclear reactors for electricity purposes, including some that will power desalination of Mediterranean seawater for drinking and agricultural irrigation.
As all this frenzied activity is taking place, American diplomacy and industry are nowhere to be found in the equation. U.S. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice has expressed interest in visiting Libya, but by the time she finally gets around to arriving, the banquet will be over and Sarkozy and Khadafy will be sitting at the table clinking their little glasses of “digestifs.”
For a guy who plays down intellectual activity in favor of direct action, Sarkozy’s behavior certainly has a strong element of meticulously calibrated calculation about it. He may not make speeches about a multi-polar world designed to enrage American policy makers, but his frenzied activity (he arrived in Tripoli and signed the development agreements the next day after the Bulgarian hostages were released. Not a month later – the next day!) shows that the new France is not letting any grass grow under its feet.
My friends in France, who voted for the Socialist candidate, Ségolène Royal, expressed disdain for Sarkozy as somebody who was unfashionably aggressive and ambitious, telling me “His fangs are so long that they’re cutting grooves in the floor.” I love that. Maybe what the world needs is a nasty little French wolverine of a guy with a voracious appetite, so that the whole planet doesn’t become one boring Anglo-Saxon plantation.
Sarkozy is going to make a great caricature for some zany French comedy movies, a compulsive, impulsive, rapid-fire kind of a maniac jogger like the great French comedian Louis de Funès used to portray. The actor who figures out how to satirize him is going to make a fortune of money.
In the meantime, America better figure out how to get with the program or Sarkozy and the other comedian, Russia’s Vladimir (Vlad The Impaler) Putin are going to eat up everything in sight.
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Posted on 7/27/2007
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July 26, 2007
These days you’re nobody if you don’t go into rehab a couple of dozen times. Judge Garson gets convicted of accepting bribes to decide divorce cases, he demands rehab. Mel Gibson gets caught screaming “Fuck The Jews” in the middle of the Pacific Coast Highway like a coyote baying at the moon, rehab. Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton, Robert Downey – rehab. It’s a revolving door.
Rehab for drug addiction, rehab for sex addition (it used to be called “horny”). What the world needs now is a rehab for rehab addition. I had to go into rehab for gambling addiction. I bet my house on an NBA point spread and lost it to my bookie. It was bought on one of those sub-prime mortgages, and the day after I signed it over to him they doubled the interest rate. Now he’s stuck with the payments and I still have a great credit rating, even though I’m living in a shelter.
These days you can’t trust anybody in sports. They caught Michael Vick fixing a dog fight. “Rover, if you throw the fight there’s an extra can of Alpo in it for you.”
A few years ago I got caught in my own point shaving scandal. I was a judge for the Betty Crocker Bake-Off and these mob guys forced me to fix the Pineapple Upside-Down Cake Olympics. The security camera caught me squeezing a tube of Chinese toothpaste in Mrs. Schwartz’s cake batter before it went into the oven. For punishment they made me eat the whole cake, and I came down with a severe case of dropsy. Food is a vicious racket.
So what if the NBA is nasty and the NFL is nasty. At least we got bicycle racing, right? A bunch of fruity French guys in tights riding bicycles. Yeah, right! Over in the Tour de France they threw out the top guy for doping and then, the very next day they had to throw out the new top guy because he had somebody else’s blood in him, like Dracula. So many players and teams have been disqualified that the race organizers seriously considered canceling the whole thing because there was nobody clean left. It sort of makes you nostalgic for Floyd Landis, the champion who got thrown out last year.
In this environment, Lindsay Lohan makes perfect sense for trying to run over her personal assistant on the streets of Santa Monica with her SUV and getting busted for drunk driving and coke possession, and Britney Spears cleaning up after her dog using a $6,000 dress and trying to run out after her photo shoot wearing a million bucks worth of borrowed jewelry. Whatever happened to Mahatma Gandhi’s philosophy of forsaking all personal possessions and spinning cloth in a straw hut wearing just his underpants? Oh yeah, he got assassinated by one of his own people. Nice going there, man!
Lindsay Lohan said she didn’t know she was being arrested. She couldn’t hear the police sirens because her ankle booze detector was making such a racket that she thought it was her iPhone, and when she answered the iPhone she pushed the wrong button and a rubber snake flew out and hit her in the face. That’s when she saw the flashing lights, but she thought it was a coke flashback to the VIP Room in the Tao Club.
Hey, it could happen to anybody! All of those years of playing witless suburban teenagers in dopey Disney movies at the behest of the eternal summer camp kid Michael Eisner finally took their toll and, as the laws of Newtonian physical science instructs, for every action there’s an appropriate reaction.
At least she heard the sirens and flashing lights, which is more than the Mickey Mouse Club at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue can say. When George W. Bush pushed the wrong button on his iPhone a boxing glove popped out and punched him in the head, rendering him senseless. Bush is feeling no pain, though the rest of us are waking up with a headache. Thoughtless, arrogant leadership has brought a nation to its knees many times in history. The examples are too numerous to site here. Bush insists the Iraq war is going great, and I guess beauty is in the eyes of the beholder. Picasso filled a whole museum in Paris with art that he nailed together from junk he garnered at the garbage dump. Maybe Bush is a great artist.
An artist of disaster. And I don’t even mean Iraq, which is to the American body politic what a herpes sore is to a person shot through with disease. I’m talking about the economy, which is doing a perfect swan dive into an empty swimming pool. Bush’s tax cuts and borrowing of hundreds of billions and trillions of dollars to fund Iraq have reversed the surpluses of the Clinton years with a bottomless black hole of deficits. He tried to loot Social Security too, but they stopped him. This business of selling sub-prime floating rate mortgages to people who were already broke and then using the worthless mortgages to float worthless bonds to suck in yet more idiots, which also comes to us compliments of the Bush gang, is now sinking the entire bond market and spreading to the stock market. Seven years ago a dollar bought 1.2 euros. Now a euro buys 1.4 dollars, a fifty percent appreciation of European currency against ours.
We haven’t even come close to hitting bottom. An additional $500 billion in sub-prime mortgages are due to get hit with higher rates, and these people, by definition, can't even afford what they’re paying now! One guy I read about saw his monthly payment jump from $2,000 to $4,000, and then they foreclosed. The foreclosure offices are already working overtime, and the way things are going, the only secure jobs in town will be evicting people from their homes. The black hole is even sucking in people with previously good credit. The chairman of Countrywide Financial, America’s largest mortgage lender, said in a three-hour conference call to analysts that the only time things were worse than this in the mortgage market was during the Great Depression of the 1930’s.
If this estimation is accurate, then we are sinking into a world of deep shit. Whole communities thrown out and forced to live in their cars. Food riots and revolution. A worthless dollar. Bush figures he can do whatever he wants because he’s like a little count or duke like in one of those Russian novels by Tolstoy. A million peasants get killed in a war because the generals were drunk? Tough, somebody’s got to be in charge.
Against a backdrop like this, what do I care what freakin’ Lindsay Lohan drank for lunch or if Britney Spears is wearing her panties? Get th’ fuck outta here!
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Posted on 7/26/2007
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July 23, 2007
The last thing the world needs is a French George Bush. Newly elected president Nicholas Sarkozy’s clarion call to the French people to stop dithering like so many Talmudic scholars about how many angels dance on the head of a pin and Kick Out The Jams is itself so much intellectual posturing. He would have you believe that that nation, with just 60 million inhabitants and yet the world’s fifth largest economy, dwarfing those of many much larger countries, is composed of lotus eating flâneurs and tail-chasing poodles.
His fer-de-lance in this campaign to wean his compatriots off their navel-gazing proclivities and roll up their sleeves is finance minister Christine Lagarde, a lawyer who emigrated to the U.S and worked for many years at a top Chicago law firm. All well and good. I’m glad she was successful in this country and that she returned to France with such a high opinion of our society. If I went to work at a kangaroo preserve in New South Wales, I’d probably have a blast too, but it’s doubtful that I’d return to the States as a cheap imitation of Crocodile Dundee.
Living in Chicago, Mlle. Lagarde probably resided on Lake Shore Drive with a panoramic vista of Lake Michigan. It’s doubtful whether she ever saw the side of that town documented in Saul Bellow’s telling novel “The Dean’s December.” Bellow, incidentally, acknowledged many times that he stayed in Chicago for most of his life because he had been unable to find teaching work in his first city of choice, New York. He freely described Chicago as a philistine environment populated by third-rate minds.
Think about it. Chicago is an economic powerhouse, no question. But it is not America’s Second City, as it likes to promote itself. It’s not even the country’s third- rated city. Maybe fourth. Anybody from New York or LA who found himself exiled to living in Chicago would likely drive his car off Wacker Drive into the Chicago River like Jake and Elmore in “The Blues Brothers.”
I have intimate associations with Chicago. I spent part of my life growing there, and it was a fantastic place for a kid, with friendly girls and dynamite Lake Michigan beaches in the summer months. But I never harbored any illusions about the nature of the people there, whom I found pedestrian and provincial even at that tender age. I got the hell out and I never returned. For the Minister of Finance of France to consider the city as a model to be emulated by the civilization that engendered Louis XIV, Napoleon, Victor Hugo, André Malraux, Marivaux – I could go on and on – all I can ask is, what exactly is she thinking?
I live on New York’s Upper East Side. Every day I see the same sights: the East River bridges, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Empire State Building. On the weekends I take the subway to the beautiful, pristine beaches of Fort Tilden in Rockaway. After a while, you get blasé. Blah blah blah, same old place, same avenues, same luxury health club, same beautiful girls.
So it is with the French and Paris. Blah blah blah Avenue Foch, Boulevard St. Germain, same boring Bernard-Henri Lévy. Same stifling intellectuals and thieving captains of industry as characterized in “Topaze” by Marcel Pagnol (you think I’m slandering them by calling them thieves? I’d like to sell you some Eurotunnel shares). After a certain point the organ grinder monkeys and idiotic imbeciles who compose Chicago’s legal and financial élites start to seem fresh and attractive, the same as Paris Hilton or the GEICO cave men.
But let’s keep things in perspective. Sarkozy never had a real job in his life. While he was still in his 20’s he got himself elected mayor of Neuilly-sur-Seine, and his concept of work is essentially sleazy, back-stabbing politics (ask Jacques and Bernadette Chirac, no slouches either in that regard). Nothing wrong with that, but for him to badger Frenchmen that they don’t work hard enough is like Bush, who is so weak as a person that he is not even capable of manipulating his own marionette strings, exhorting people to pull themselves up by their freakin’ bootstraps.
That’s not the worst of it. Sarkozy is deluded if he thinks he is going to gain traction by denigrating the intellectual life of French society that, for all its faults, is really the blooming flower of world civilization. Let me put it to you succinctly: if you don’t speak French you don’t know shit. Not to speak French is the intellectual equivalent of a life term in solitary confinement. There, I said it! For the president of France to offhandedly dismiss as surfeit the intellectual and cultural patrimony that has been shaped by artists like Balzac, Flaubert, Hugo, Zola, thousands of brilliant painters throughout history, playwrights, filmmakers, clothing designers, is an abomination. The modern France of today is like a sculpture that has been shaped by all those hands and minds throughout 6,000 years, and for this boring Sarkozy, who was elected to be the trustee and protector of all this incalculable wealth to diminish it and say that the French should emulate a failed social system of indescribable jungle savagery, because that is what we in this country have for a system right now, is insane.
In “The Dean’s December,” published in 1981, Bellow recounts the experiences of Dean Corde of the University of Chicago as he haunts the black precincts that surround the lily-white campus enclave located in the Hyde Park section of that city.
Bellow’s gift for painting all the pastel nuances of his relationships with his wives and acquaintances did not extend to discerning any human motivations on the part of people of color, whom he more or less considered to be witless savages. The descriptions of the heinous murders and rapes described in “The Dean’s December,” far from being mitigated by any understanding of the social environment that stimulated them, as in “Black Boy” and “Native Son” by Richard Wright or “The Jungle” by Upton Sinclair, all of which were also set in Chicago, betray absolutely no interest in the kind of analysis that informs the social realism of the historic novels of Émile Zola, whose oeuvre was so essential in setting the tone for the reform movements and the ascendancy of the Socialist Party in early 20th century France.
“The Dean’s December” is pure apartheid. All that is missing is the classic line from “The Godfather,” which, incidentally, is the only reference to black people in all three films of the “Godfather” series, where the New York crime families, negotiating the guidelines for heroin trafficking in the city, decide to confine it to the black neighborhoods because “They’re animals anyway. Let them lose their souls.” What did Coppola have in mind when he decided to leave that in?
The extent of Saul Bellow’s interest in Africa and Africans can be gauged in his “satirical” novel “Henderson The Rain King,” which takes the reader on a trip to an Africa populated by imbecilic, fat-lipped natives who seem to be directly lifted from the comic book adventures of Tin-Tin. They talk funny, they behave hilariously and they’re not above a little degustatory sampling of missionary stew.
(All right, in the interest of disclosure let me state here that I am a nephew of Saul Bellow, and at the time of the publication of "The Dean's December" I was operating a leather boutique on Montreal's Ste. Catherine Street called "Deans Boutique de Cuir." Furthermore, Bellow's narrative of Henderson's adventures in the African village which take place in "Henderson The Rain King" is replete with a running joke about African Amazon women running around naked from the waist down, adorned only in leather vests and carring whips. My biggest selling items in "Deans Boutique de Cuir" at that time were: leather vests and whips, and I know something about leather-clad naked women wielding whips, you better believe it! It's funny how masturbatory fantasies can be transmitted from one generation to the next by the simple process of heredity)
A cursory review of the biographical profiles of Saul Bellow and Nicholas Sarkozy reveals some superficial similarities. Both are first generation citizens of their countries of Eastern European descent who rose to the top of society like the mythic 99 44/100 percent pure white bars of Ivory Soap that used to float to the top of the bathtub in the classic television commercials. Bellow, the writer, and Sarkozy, the activist politician, are not afraid to confront malfeasance and disorder created by disruptive elements of society. Sarkozy was perfectly clear about his intentions during the riots of 2005, when he told the lady, in no uncertain terms, like a Bruce Willis action figure or Mr. Clean, “Lady, we’re here to get rid of the scum.” Later he even used the analogy of blasting out the insalubrious elements with a power washer. Sarkozy meant to demonstrate to the world that he plans to “Kill ‘em all and let God sort ‘em out!”
Nowhere in all this frenzied activity is room left for any kind of reflective analysis. At least that seems to be the kind of image Sarkozy desires to project. Of course, a great deal of it is hyperbole, meant to distinguish Sarko from his much-disdained predecessor, Grandpa Chirac, much the same as a teenager wanting to demonstrate independence from his antecedents. Nobody really believes he is going to come out like Rambo with both guns blazing. But maybe he is going a bit far with all that anti-intellectual posturing in a country that has come to symbolize precise analysis and rationalism in its planning. French people elected Sarkozy by a wide margin, mostly, I suspect because Ségolène Royal was not able to clearly define any new ideas and relied mostly on tired moralizing. Certainly, the concept of injecting a little of the vigor inherent in the Chicago ethos, where you certainly don’t need brains to get rich so much as commercial talent and ambition, might produce some rearranging of the economic furniture.
But would the father of modern France, de Gaulle, whose minutely calibrated planning is responsible for clearing the way for so much of that nation’s present-day success, approve of the kind of mindless forward motion, like a robotic vacuum cleaner that, bumping into an obstacle, automatically reverses direction, that is suggested by Sarkozy’s temperment? De Gaulle, the intellectual, writer and man of action, would certainly have expressed disdain at any suggestion of Chicago being an example to be emulated by French society.
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Posted on 7/23/2007
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July 22, 2007
The casual observer strolling through Manhattan cannot but be astounded by the legions of female joggers and exercise buffs sweeping through our city’s streets and parks. These ladies, outnumbering the male athletes by a ratio of about 10:1, are so fanatically devoted to their fitness regimes that any potential reportage on the phenomenon is rendered physically hazardous to the interviewer, who risks being steamrollered underfoot of zombie-like phalanxes of willowy runners, iPods jammed in their ears, racing glassy-eyed like herds of lemmings hell-bent on their rendezvous with destiny.
Where are the males, one is compelled to wonder! The answer is to be found by knocking on any apartment door, where the men are cloistered like digital age monks, a pizza in one hand, a Budweiser in the other, manipulating their little joysticks to direct Formula One race cars barreling around a virtual track.
Even as the men are thus manually occupied, the women are maniacally burning and firming. A peek inside any exercise class will reveal platoons, companies, even battalions of women with not a guy to be found anywhere on the premises. Why this disparity of gender distribution in the world of fitness? It would be admirable and marvelous to attribute it to the women’s desire to achieve peak performance in the spirit of excellence like unto the ancient Greek marathoners and javelin flingers of yore, to whom the human body was a temple of spirituality, muscular arms and legs stretching, reaching to the heavens in an effort to connect with the deities of Olympus and achieve singularity with the celestial constellations suspended in the cosmos.
Dismally, the answer is to be found rather closer to the earthbound realities of the marketplace. The whole time that these girls are sweating and straining, their consciousness is fixated on the Dow Jones Blue Chip Index and the latest Harvey Nichols sample sale, where Cash Is King and Jimmy Choo pumps are selling at astounding discounts. They are calculating the available credit left on their Mastercard and Visa, and what utility bill to leave fallow in order to pay their Diamond-Encrusted Platinum American Express cards.
Living in Manhattan is not cheap if you want to do it right, and these ladies are straining to the last drop of perspiration to transform themselves into a marketable commodity that will bring in the requisite income. All their calculations have led them to the same conclusion – snare a rich husband. But with the competition so evidently sharpened to a knife’s edge, and with the pool of rich guys drying up like a waterhole in the African veldt during the dry season, the women, whose instincts have been honed by millions of years of evolution to a fine point of survival, are now cornered like lionesses in a drought, compelling them to run and leap like a wildcat whose prey sits tantalizingly just out of reach on an overhead tree limb.
The men, like stupid kangaroos grazing in a pasture as the girls zoom past, are blissfully unaware that they are the intended target of all this frenzied activity, until they are snagged and sucked dry like male spiders who are devoured by their mates after a breeding session.
Since the laws of finance and economics are driven by the same base compulsions that have defined animal motivations since the beginning of life on this terrestrial orb, a new kind of economic activity has evolved to broker these transactions, The New York City Butt Exchange. Closely modeled after the real estate market, this exchange defines the value of women’s backsides according to neighborhood, quality of accommodations and square footage, to achieve for the participants the best value for the dollar.
Unbelievably, women’s butts are most highly valued in the Bowery area below Houston Street, where just a few years ago a woman’s backside could be acquired for $20 per square foot. Now, the rate has skyrocketed to $500,000 to $1million as a new crop of Vassar and Bryn Mawr graduates have recently migrated to an area previously populated by crackheads and hookers, rather like the 10th century transmigration of the Uigur people from the frontier of China to what is modern Uzbekistan.
At the same time, values on the Upper West Side have been dropping due to the aging of the population and the decline of fashion boutiques along previously fashionable Columbus Avenue, which has contributed to a diminution of the exterior façades adorning the women’s backsides.
The Upper East Side has been experiencing a surge in the value of women’s butts due to the easy availability of gym facilities, which has led to a regression of cellulite, and the resurgence of Spandex butt coverings in the neighborhood. Conversely, the market has become more competitive, as men are able to better evaluate the true state of women’s backsides through the Spandex when they bend over to tie the laces on their $200 Nike running shoes.
Naturally, all these values ultimately depend on the state of the stock market. The decline of the dollar and uncertainty over the market’s firmness have recently led smart women to hedge their butts.
THE NEW 200MOTELS WEB SITE. ORIGINAL STORIES AND GRAPHICS AT:
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Posted on 7/22/2007
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July 20, 2007
“Welcome to Lucha Libre Night at the Taco Bell Arena in Chihuahua, Mexico. I’m Edificio Del Huevo, your color commentator, and I’ll be assisted by six-time Mexican female mud wrestling champion, Rosita La Chingada.”
“¡Hola amigos!”
“We’ll be reporting on the hugely anticipated grudge match tonight between Mexican champion Comandante Marco and his American rival, El Grande Bush. There’s a lot at stake in this battle for North American supremacy, wouldn’t you say, Rosie?”
“¡Ooooh sííííí! Mexico has been pushing for a rematch since 1846, when the malditos gringos cabrones put a gun to our heads and made us sign over Texas and California. Now if we want to go there for a vacation we have to swim through rat-infested sewer pipes, and mutherfuckers telling us ‘Speak English! Speak English!’ I like English. I luv it! But I don’t need no gringo mutherfucker breathin’ down my neck.
“Anyway, if Comandante Marco wins the match tonight, we gonna get back all our land and then we be telling you cocksuckers to speak Spanish.
“I know the first thing I’m gonna do when we take over is to move into the Presidential Suite at the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas and go skinny-dipping in the Grand Canal. Show the mutherfuckers what a real Mexican chocha looks like!”
“Sounds good to me, Rosie, but as they say ‘Don’t count your huevos rancheros before they’re hatched.’ Remember, the norteamericanos are not going to give up all that loot without a fight.
“And as we speak, El Grande Bush is entering the ring. He’s wearing his trademark pink tu-tu, dunce cap and glitter mask, and they’re playing his music, ‘Cheeseburger in Paradise.’”
“Hey, Bushie, Bushie! Can we get a word from you for our studio audience?”
“Waal, I’d like to address my remarks to the brave men and women fighting in Eye-Rack for the forty-second consecutive year. I honor the sacrifice you are making in the war on terror, and I want you to know that I plan to win tonight so that when you come home you’ll have a home to come home to.
“The threat we are facing in this arena here tonight is whether our western states will remain The Home of The Free And The Brave, or are allowed to become an open-air taco stand like the one on Alvarado Street in downtown LA, where the crackheads and stray dogs hang out, behind the convention center.”
“How inspiring! What’s your strategy for fighting Comandante Marco?"
“I plan to shock and awe him with my lightning speed, twist his head in the ropes and bite his knuckles.”
“Excuse me, Ed, cut out that shit. Here comes Mexico’s national hero, Comandante Marco of the Zapatista Revolutionary Army of Chiapas. He looks ready for battle with his headdress of quetzal feathers, jaguar-skin tights and crocodile nose mask. His musical accompaniment is the Mexico City rock band Molotov singing their anthem ''Viva México Cabrones.' Every time I hear that song it brings tears of pride to my eyes, especially the part where they sing ‘No Me Llames Cerdo.’ When I was a leetle girl in the shantytown overlooking the security wall separating Nuevo Laredo from Brownsville, Texas, my mother used to lull me to sleep by singing to me from Molotov’s romantic love song ‘Chinga Tu Madre’, where they sing:
Nos vemos Acapulco a la fin de semana
Mientras yo cuido à tu hermana
Chinga tú chinga tu madre
[Ed. See you in Acapulco
But first I fuck your sister]
“Hey, big boy! You got something to say to your fans?”
“Hola, Rosie. I dedicate my life to the glory of Mexico. After I win, not only are we going to reconquer our lost territories, but we are going to sacrifice El Grande Bush on the ancient Mayan altar at Chichen Itzà by ripping out his still beating heart and feeding it to the pirhana fish that swim in the holy cenote. The whole ceremony is going to be filmed by Mel Gibson for his upcoming movie “Jews of The Jungle.”
“Sounds great, sweetie. Only how do you plan to vanquish such a great warrior like El Grande Bush?”
“I plan to shoot him with a curare-tipped blow dart and then, when he’s paralyzed, I’m going to stomp on his balls.”
“And there’s the bell! The two fighters are circling each other warily, looking for an opening, and they are being watched by the masked referee, El Misterioso, who is also wearing a mask. Ed, what do we know about El Misterioso?”
“Only that he gained fame as the fiercest lucha libre fighter in South America.”
“Wow! Now El Grande Bush leaps forward and head butts Comandante Marco in the chest, but instead of falling onto the mat El Comandante does a backflip, kicking Bush in the face. Bush goes down and Comandante Marco sits on his face, locking him in a French Butt Hold, squeezing the air out of Bush like an Anaconda python between the steel vise grip of his powerful glutes.”
“With his last, dying breath Bush reaches between Marco’s legs and manages to insert his two fingers in the man’s nostrils and flip him across the ring like a slingshot. Bush jumps to his feet and delivers a shattering roundkick to the head of El Comandante, who goes flying into El Misterioso who, enraged, punches him in the face. Hey, he’s not supposed to do that. He’s the ref!”
“Wait a minute! Now El Misterioso grabs a folding chair and breaks it over the head of El Grande Bush.”
“The audience is going berserk. The mariachi band Los Tigres Del Norte has started playing the romantic sentimental love song ‘Volver’, I suppose expressing their wish for a return of Mexico’s northern territories. Meantime, on the American side, Ted Nugent is shooting off machine gun riffs from his guitar. Oh no, that’s not his guitar, it’s a real machine gun! Now gunfire is breaking out all over the place and bullets are flying.”
“Comandante Marco and El Grande Bush have recovered from the surprise attack by El Misterioso, and they’re punching the shit out of him in the corner of the ring. They rip off his mask.”
“Omigod, it’s Hugo Chavez, the president of Venezuela, and he’s got an oil gusher shooting out of his butt!”
“Well, let’s get out of here before the whole place explodes. Reporting to you from Taco Bell Arena, I’m Edificio Del Huevo.”
“And I’m Rosita La Chingada…”
“Wishing you a big cuevo en el culo, cabrones!”
THE NEW 200MOTELS WEB SITE. ORIGINAL STORIES AND GRAPHICS AT:
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Posted on 7/20/2007
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July 19, 2007
I originally conceived this blog for comedy, correctly reasoning that we needed a few laughs in an increasingly grim world. As my boxing coach, Dirk, put it: “Making money is bleaching everybody white.”
Nevertheless, current events are proceeding faster then my ability to write new gags. I don’t intend to throw in the comedy towel, but my readers (all two of them) deserve to hear the truth.
Industrial capacity, driven by China’s need for natural resources, is not keeping up with demand. There are not enough freighters to transport essential commodities like iron ore and liquefied natural gas. As a result freight prices are rocketing through the roof, adding to inflationary pressures.
Meantime, the dollar is collapsing. One euro now costs $1.38 American, which translates to a $5.00 Coke for American travelers in Europe. The American Federal Reserve chief, Bernenke, another one of Bush’s loser appointees, refuses to even address the collapsing dollar, stating before congress, “I don’t comment on the dollar.” If the Federal Reserve Chief is not willing to get involved in the currency, then you know something is happening but you don't know what it is, do you Mr. Jones?
Let me put it in terms that even a college freshman can understand. Ten years ago the biggest problem this country faced was what we were going to do about all the surpluses we were raking in. The Republicans, who were the main beneficiaries of all this largess, instead of kissing Bill Clinton’s butt, tried to impeach him and throw him in jail. All they could think about was looting the treasury, which they did with Bush’s tax cuts.
But that didn’t go far enough. They then took us to war against Iraq, borrowing the money by selling government bonds to foreign dollar holders. As though that weren’t enough, they then tried to loot Social Security by pushing through private retirement accounts, which would have thrown trillions more into the pockets of mutual fund salesmen and investment banks, and we all know how ethical these guys are. Fortunately, when people saw even their Social Security being ripped off they forced congress to put it off limits.
Nevertheless, all the stealing has bled us dry as a nation. The Republicans came up with a scheme to sell houses to people who were already broke at usurious rates of interest, bundled the worthless mortgages together and used them as collateral to sell bonds. Now the mortgages have collapsed, with delinquency rates (people unable to make their mortgage payments) at a staggering 12%. If you hold bonds backed up by these mortgage payments, like the two funds managed by Bear Stearns, those bonds are worth exactly – zip! And it’s only a matter of time when real bonds backed by real assets also collapse, when people get scared and pull their money out of the markets.
Oooh, we are sinking fast into a world of shit! Oil is at $80 a barrel, when under Clinton it sold for $20. A very smart analyst predicts it will go to $120 a barrel, and I believe him. Remember, Bush is beholden to the oil interests.
When the dollar collapses we will be paying $20 for a quart of milk and people will be driving out into the countryside and butchering cows in the pastures to bring home meat for their children, like they did in Argentina.
I would rather be writing comedy, but this shit ain’t funny. We have the Republican leadership to blame for this disaster, and all the blame should be laid at their feet. The only thing that might restore world markets’ confidence in the American economy would be to impeach Bush now and replace him with somebody credible, and not for the Iraq war, which is just the outward manifestation for a deeper sickness.
The Iraq war is just a joke. It’s a stupid herpes sore. The real sickness is the willful destruction of the American economy by a bunch of insane bozos who think they were anointed by God and believe that they are above accountability for all the asshole blunders they have committed through sheer arrogance.
Next year will be too late. The stock market historically collapses in September or October, when the smart money starts back to work and seriously begins to size things up. If there isn’t some meaningful effort to replace Bush now, during the summer, it will be too late and the whole world will suffer a crash that will last for years.
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July 14, 2007
One of the reasons people in Los Angeles speak English instead of Spanish is that in the first three hundred years of its modern history, Mexico never considered it important to populate its northern territories. As pressure in the United States grew for expansion to the Pacific Ocean, one of the justifications for annexation of the Mexican territories under the doctrine of “Manifest Destiny” was that the land was desolate and going to waste. Abraham Lincoln joked that the Mexicans never did anything with the land and after only three years we had discovered gold in California.
If the lands from Texas to California had been populated by thriving towns and cities and productive agricultural areas, annexation by the Americans would have been much harder to achieve both militarily and in the court of domestic American and world opinion.
Nature abhors a vacuum, and that is why sparsely populated countries like Canada, Australia and Brazil have historically maintained such liberal immigration policies to discourage potential foreign incursions into their sparsely populated territories.
Ninety percent of Canada’s thirty million inhabitants live within a day’s drive of the U.S. border, and with its immense natural resources and strategic location Canada has a great deal to protect, particularly in its vast, unpopulated northern territories, rich in petroleum, gold and diamonds and protected by only a few icebreakers patrolling the Northwest Passage to assert sovereignty by showing the Canadian flag.
At this writing, the American consciousness, distracted by the Iraq war and left-leaning regimes in Latin America, is not yet focused on our charming neighbors to the north, but that could change from one day to the next in light of Quebec’s vast supplies of fresh water (one-seventh of the world’s total supply) and its huge hydroelectric generating facilities.
All it would take to focus American attention on Canadian hydroelectric resources would be a breakdown in our hydroelectric grid, or a drought, or both. Then you would see how fast the good neighbor policy would vanish with the extinctive speed of the Patagonian Wingtip Booby. The Canadians depend on us to protect them (as if they had a choice!) but who will be there to protect them from the loving embrace of their protector? That is a question that is yet to be proposed in polite society.
Another world region that is almost a mirror image of this situation is Russian Siberia adjacent to China. With Russia’s vast natural resources on one side and China’s impoverished masses on the other, this scenario would seem to be a likely laboratory for my theory about hungry populations moving in to fill a vacuum the way the Turkmen inhabited ancient Anatolia.
Mindful of the vast resources they had to protect, the Russian czars and then the Soviet Communists made settlement of Siberia a priority, and sometimes mandatory, policy. The Trans-Siberian Railroad served much the same purpose as the Union Pacific in the States, to facilitate settlement between the Urals and Vladivostock and the transportation of resources to western manufacturing centers. Settlers who were willing to move east under the Soviet system were afforded privileged treatment in the form of cash bonuses, modern apartments and yearly Black Sea vacations.
But even at its zenith under the Soviet empire, the combined population of all the republics peaked at just 250 million souls. With the breakup of the constituent republics, the number of inhabitants in the present Russian Federation numbers no more than 150 million, few of whom are inclined to immigrate to Siberia for a couple of measly kopecks or an apartment.
So, filling up a geographical area the size of Siberia, stretching 12 time zones and encompassing a gigantic area stretching from Kazakhstan to the North Pole is a pipedream. The population needed to populate an area that size would be more than China and India combined.
Meanwhile, as China’s population explodes and such resources as it possesses rapidly deplete, the attention of the Chinese population must inevitably focus on the huge, rich, barren territories to its north. Currently growing at a rate of 11% a year, China is a voracious devourer of resources, even at its current low level of industrial development. What its needs will be in 20 years’ time at its current rate of growth is anybody’s guess, and the sparsely populated region of Russia’s far east must tantalize Beijing’s policy planners even now. Russia has a huge nuclear arsenal to prevent Chinese penetration, but with China now a nuclear power too, can a Sino-Soviet standoff over the Russian far east be far in the future?
American strategists fly into a rage every time the French bring up the subject of a multi-polar world, but the French, with their miniscule military presence and symbolic nuclear “force de frappe,” represent no threat to anybody except as the inspirers of European social and technical innovation. Nevertheless, multipolarity already exists between America, with its economic and military power; Russia, with its energy and mining resources; and China, with its huge population and manufacturing capacity. To suggest otherwise would be to turn a blind eye to reality.
Russia’s Premier Putin has already manifested his intention to exert iron-fisted control over the country’s energy resources, abrogating extraction agreements with foreign oil companies operating in the Sakhalin peninsula and using oil and gas exports as leverage to gain advantage against former Soviet republics and Western Europe. The Chinese are cannily using their leverage as our most important supplier of manufactured goods (whose fault is that?) to control the foreign exchange rate to their advantage and to further their foreign policy objectives in Asia and farther afield. These levers are at least as important as that of military superiority, which may be shown to be to a certain extent overrated in light of the Iraq experience.
In preparation for this article I consulted with one of my foreign policy experts, a cocktail waitress named Cindy at Peggy O’Neill’s Sports Bar in Coney Island. When I asked her opinion about petroleum extraction in Russia’s Sakhalin peninsula, she reflected at length and then gave me her considered opinion, “As long as it’s good for us.” Whether the interests of Chevron Texaco and BP exactly mesh with those of American society at large is open to debate, but for the purpose of this article I shall assume that they do. Other countries support the efforts of their national oil companies, whose practices are no less predatory than our own.
We need oil, and our oil companies are being shut out of market after market as countries wise up and assert control over their own resources. For many years we held all the cards, pulled all the strings and cracked all the whips. We were so loaded that we were able to eschew the necessity for a competent diplomatic service or intelligence service. Now we are sorely feeling the need of those facilities. The Chinese are playing a nuanced game, gaining terrain a millimeter at a time, and all those millimeters are starting to add up. The Russians have a long tradition of intellectual and philosophical erudition and are the world’s greatest chess players.
This country’s blatant contempt for diplomacy and “foreign entanglements,” as they are disdainfully called, is most blatantly characterized by the awarding of strategically crucial ambassadorships to social climbing political campaign contributors and society mavens, a system that may have been relatively benign when we were so strong that it didn’t matter, but now that we are facing more effective adversarial competition for world resources and markets it may have to be reevaluated – if we possess the capacity and will to change.
American diplomacy has had one coherent diplomatic strategist that I can think of: Henry Kissinger, though his efforts were wasted in pursuit of nonsense. Kissinger’s thinking can still be referenced since, like a ghoul, he refuses to do us the honor of dying like his boss, Nixon. He’s no genius, but he pursues a step-by-step approach to diplomacy and he adheres to historical precedent. His approach to a resolution of the Iraq war? A multilateral convention, which this blog has advocated for years. Never mind that. Kissinger is knowledgeable about the historical processes of diplomacy and diplomatic alliances.
He long ago formulated a policy of triangulation, playing the Russians against the Chines in pursuit of American interests. This was at a time when relations between those countries were already tense, following an ugly border incident in 1968 that astonished a world conditioned to believing in monolithic communism – as though the kinds of contradictions that cleave two capitalistic countries couldn’t replicate across communist borders. Kissinger understood that historical realities don’t get obliterated with a transient change of regimes or ideologies, and he set a course of playing the two countries against each other in order to achieve American purposes. The problem is: the goals he strove for, outlined by his boss, Nixon, were at best illusory and at worst pernicious.
But Kissinger’s unholy alliance with evil in order to satisfy his overweening personal ambitions does not negate the soundness of his thinking. Kissinger is amoral. He would have gone to work for anybody. Who knows? If a respectable statesman had given him employment he might have ended up doing real good for the country as well as himself.
His strategy of triangulation deserves to be revisited and studied, to see if it can gain us access to Russia’s natural resources and some leverage of control over China’s massive balance of payments surpluses, as well as that country’s growing military influence over Asia. To put it in oversimplified terms, which are the only ones I can understand, Russia needs alliances to help it protect its Siberian resources, China needs access to those same resources, China also borders India and Pakistan, which both possess nuclear weapons and depend upon American markets. There is a lot of room for American diplomacy to play triangulation here if it can define rational, realistic goals.
That’s impossible under the current administration. Bush is still playing the old game, wherein we throw our weight around without regard for the consequences. I am anticipating a Clinton administration (unless Bush is impeached and it’s Pelosi). Hillary Clinton is a much more professional person, and her husband did a quite successful job of administrating American diplomacy, in addition to which he had his own effective techniques of triangulation.
Maybe they could even bring back Kissinger in some capacity, like a zombie.
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Posted on 7/14/2007
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July 11, 2007
In an effort to placate world opinion and restore confidence in its food and manufactured imports, China executed the former head of its Food and Drug Administration, Zhang Xiayou.
The method of execution was by forcing him to eat a plate of polluted catfish and then brush his teeth with contaminated toothpaste.
“It was distasteful to watch, but we wanted to demonstrate to the world that China is a civilized society,” said an official from the Ministry of Justice, Kung Fu Wonton. “Zheng confessed to taking bribes for allowing the manufacture and export of filthy food and poisonous medicines and he didn’t even share the swag with the rest of his revolutionary comrades.
“We considered executing him by firing squad, but since the rifles were Made In China we weren’t sure they would work.”
China carries out more executions than the rest of the world combined. The Bush administration is so impressed with that country’s speedy dispatch of convicted criminals that it has sent a team of observers there to research ways of streamlining the Texas judicial system. “If we can reduce the appeals process from fourteen years to two days it would sure cut down on court costs,” enthused one admiring attorney. “Not only that, but China executes criminals for a much wider range of offenses, like sticking chewing gum under the seats in movie theaters.
“Let’s face it, if you want to make egg foo yung you got to break a few eggs.”
China’s reputation as an exporting country has suffered recently, especially among dog lovers whose pets have died as a result of eating dog food laced with chemicals used to flush out engine blocks and alkaline drain cleaner.” “This misunderstanding is a result of a clash of cultures,” said the Justice Ministry official. “In our country if a beloved pet dies we light a joss stick to pacify his spirit and then we cook him up with some cardamom and sesame and eat him for supper.” As for human beings who might fall ill from ingesting shrimp raised in pools of irradiated petroleum by-product, he recommends washing it down with a heaping tablespoon of counterfeit Chinese Pepto-Bismol and listening to some soothing music from pirated compact disks played on tinny, imported stereo systems.
“Sometimes when people die, it’s not from the food at all, he opined. “Maybe it’s bad feng shui, which creates disharmony in the intestines when rancid scallops are eaten in a room facing a southern exposure. Maybe the person is suffering because he has done something to offend his ancestors.
“Look at it this way,” he explained, “for hundreds of years the round-eyed devils forced the Chinese to smoke opium and get hooked on drugs. Maybe all these nasty things you are eating is our way of repaying the favor!”
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Posted on 7/11/2007
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July 10, 2007
The beautiful thing about Brooklyn is that it shows you the unvarnished reality of life. Here I am sitting in front of Peggy O’Neill’s bar on Surf Avenue in Coney Island, drinking Long Island Iced Teas, right next to Keyspan Park, which is anticipating a minor league baseball game between the Brooklyn Cyclones and the Staten Island Yankees.
Next door, in the stadium parking lot, a company called Zipcar has set up an exhibit of Mini Coopers. The NYPD patrols, who patrol the area in little green dune buggies wearing short pants, have found a reason to waste an hour hanging around the Mini Coopers, making gossip, asking useless questions about the stupid Mini Coopers and making calls on their cell phones. If a police captain would happen to drive by right now and catch them goofing off, they would find themselves assigned to Brownsville or East New York, where there are no equivalent attractions to distract them, only muggers.
Meanwhile, while the cops are having a blast at Keyspan Park, the junkies and crackheads in the Coney Island Houses, a block away are scoring dope and the hookers are having a blast selling $20 blow jobs.
The bar’s band hasn’t started yet because one-half of the duo hasn’t appeared. Instead, the paying customers are being regaled with recorded music of Marvin Gaye, and Frank Sinatra singing “I Get A Kick Out of You.” The girls are walking in with tight jeans and white stiletto heels, just like Paris Hilton, talking on their cell phones. Anybody who believes that Paris Hilton is not a major icon of American popular culture would do well to visit the farthest reaches of Brooklyn, where the girls are imitating all the photos of her published in The New York Post.
The food, served by Mexican servers, is unbelievably huge. Mountains of French fries with gigantic cheeseburgers. For $25.00 you can get unlimited food and alcohol prior to the game. We walk up to the boardwalk just in time to see a huge, 10-storey high cruise ship departing from New York Harbor on a 9-day cruise to Bermuda. The ship is immense, and Magpie’s and my tongue hang out from envy. It will be in Hamilton tomorrow morning. Meanwhile, Latin rap music is blasting out behind us as the Wonder Wheel spins and the Cyclone roller coaster roars. All of this will be torn down next year to make way for an upgraded, $2 billion dollar amusement park.
Magpie and I had a fantastic day in Coney Island. We went swimming in the ocean, drank beer at Cha-Cha’s, drank Long Island Iced Tea and danced the Lindy at Peggy O’Neill’s, shopped for fresh produce at the outdoor stands on Brighton Beach Avenue in the Russian quarter. Get th’ fuck outta here! Not only are we still young, we’re still stoopid, which is a blessing.
I may be stupid, but I’m not as dumb as the guy in Cambodia who injected his penis with hair tonic to make it thicker. Instead, the pain was so intense that he hanged himself. Or what about the guy in Oregon who was smoking reefer, which deranged him so bad that he mistook a snorkler in the ocean for a large water rat and shot him full of holes with a rifle, resulting in a long prison sentence. Where can I score some of that cool shit?
First Prize goes to the guy right here in Coney Island who, just yesterday, walked up to a lifeguard on the beach and, after instructing the lifeguard to call 911, pulled out a revolver and blew his own brains out. Wow! This brings to mind the old joke about the man who discovered his wife in bed with his best friend. He pulled out a gun and put it to his own head. When they started laughing at him he warned them, “Don’t worry – you’re next!”
But the biggest loser in New York is the general public, whose two highest elected state officials, Governor Eliot Spitzer and State Senate Leader Joe Bruno, engaged in an Animal House food fight more closely resembling the war of insults indulged by our two fattest citizens, Donald Trump and Rosie O’Donnell.
The latest episode in this misbegotten battle of dimwits concerns Spitzer’s keeping tabs on Bruno’s use of state airplanes, helicopters and State Police escorts when engaged in strictly partisan political activities like fundraising, which he is not supposed to do, as opposed to using government transportation when traveling on official state business, which is permitted.
Naturally, a lot of politicians get caught monkeying around using state facilities for private purposes. The list is too long to cite here, but for instance, State Comptroller Alan Hevesi had to cop guilty in court and resign for using state drivers and cars to chauffeur his wife and private friends around. Spitzer figured it would be a fantastic weapon to use on Bruno if he could catch him doing the same thing, so he had the State Police start keeping a log on Bruno’s movements.
The problem is, Bruno’s too cagey to get caught as something as stupid as that, so he would schedule state business and fundraising on the same trip in order to justify the use of a 20-car State Police escort. Bruno accused Spitzer of singling him out for selective prosecution. Why should he be the only one under surveillance in the whole state government for this activity when there are over a hundred sleazy pricks working as state assemblymen and state senators, he demanded to know. He accused Spitzer of “police state tactics.”
Good point. Everybody in America is entitled to benefit from the presumption of innocence, even the leader of such a notoriously seedy club as the New York State Senate. This is an instance of Eliot Spitzer getting run over by his own “fucking steamroller.” The repercussions of this little bit of ham handed stupidity are going to take a long time to play out. Bruno wants to activate senate committees to investigate Spitzer. It probably will blow over in the ling run, but not before Spitzer gets his ass handed to him in a sling, to mix a metaphor.
Spitzer has been having a fine time over the last few years messing with powerful people and often getting concrete results, but sometimes he runs up against people who, while engaged in illegal or unethical activities, are nevertheless smarter than he is. One of them was Maurice Greenberg from the AIG insurance conglomerate, whom Spitzer was never able to get the goods on and who stuck his fingers in Spitzer’s eyes like a Three Stooges cartoon. If Spitzer hopes to survive and carry out the mandate awarded to him by the voters of this state, including myself, who voted for him and who are counting on him to do good, then he better start to play a more professional game against these sharpies. Otherwise the Republicans will regain the advantage and take the state straight to hell, which is where we were going before we elected him.
Meantime, I am sticking to my prediction that Bush is going to get impeached, and that the main impetus for it is going to come from the Republicans, who are going to BEG the Democrats to get rid of him.
The Democrats are half-heartedly trying to push for a withdrawal plan from Iraq, but only half-heartedly. They like what Bush is doing because the way things are going, they will win a landslide in next year’s election. The Republicans, though, are in a panic. The only hope they have is to get rid of Bush and Cheney and install Nancy Pelosi as president so they can run against her instead of Hillary Clinton. If they jettison Bush and install Pelosi, it will derail Clinton’s candidacy and set up the ultra-liberal San Francisco-ite House speaker for them to oppose.
Maybe this sounds unbelievable, but I believe the tectonic plates in American politics have shifted leftwards and we are living in a whole new world.
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July 04, 2007
Meeting of the CIA Planning Committee
January, 1970 – Arlington, VA
“We all know why we’re here, but let me just state a brief summary to put this meeting in perspective. The White House is planning several initiatives in Southeast Asia and in Latin America this year to shore up our positions on foreign policy. NSA chief Henry Kissinger is particularly concerned about Latin America, where he believes Castro is making progress. President Nixon is determined to stop infiltration by NVA regulars into South Vietnam using the Ho Chi Minh trail in Cambodia by increasing the bombing and, if necessary, crossing into Cambodia.
“But before we can pursue these initiatives we have to solidify domestic support for the president’s policies or the Soviet Union and our allies around the world will think we’re weak. Too much internal dissent from the president’s policies will be interpreted as a lack of resolve, and with much of our resources tied down in Asia, could encourage our adversaries to try to test us at certain pressure points where they might consider us vulnerable.
“A certain amount of domestic dissent is desirable up to a point because it legitimizes the administration by showing that we are free democracy. Beyond that point, it becomes a liability, particularly if foreign countries believe that the administration is domestically weak and, again, with so much of our military tied down in Vietnam, we can’t afford to be perceived as weak.
“The White House believes that is has been able to keep the Democrats in congress under control by going over their heads and explaining the administration’s position directly to the electorate, and so far this has been the case. Unfortunately, the extra-parliamentary opposition has been more intractable, and the adverse publicity they have been able to generate has been a distraction for the White House.
“I’m not talking about the political radicals. SDS and the Black Panthers have been easy to infiltrate and manage. Hoover tells me that the political radicals are totally under control. In fact, many of the bombings, demonstrations and shootouts with the police have been advantageous because they have polarized public support in the president’s favor.
“The one aspect we have had been less successful in controlling is the cultural aspect. Support for the administration has been eroded by Hollywood, the entertainment industry and the music industry. When a politician makes a speech, people listen to the speech and they forget it and go about their business. But when a singer sings a song the effects of the song continue to reverberate, particularly if the song is a hit and the radio stations play it endlessly.
“In some countries if a folksinger gets up in a coffeehouse and sings a song against the president he can be made to vanish the next day. Radio stations won’t touch that kind of content. It used to be like that here as well. But the huge profits to be made in recorded entertainment, and by that I mean the music business, has eroded the willingness of record companies and radio stations to cooperate with the establishment.
“Things are spinning out of control because of this music. All these antiwar acts and anti-establishment acts are causing the president’s support among decisive sectors of the population, particularly white, college-educated young person, to deteriorate. The president may be a great guy, but when these kids get lured into smoking pot and engaging in sex and drug orgies, particularly when these events are colored by hatred of the establishment and of the military, then it becomes a much deeper problem.
“Look at France. That country has a strong leader, De Gaulle, and a strong economy. But last year the longhaired hippy radicals brought the whole country to its knees and forced De Gaulle to resign. If that were to be replicated here it could endanger our whole way of life and erode our whole overseas empire.
“Let’s not forget that every empire has been destroyed not by external pressures but by an erosion of resolve at its core.
“This meeting was called to establish a program to staunch the internal hemorrhaging that is occurring inside the body of our society. Strong medicine may be required, and by that I mean the liquidation or elimination of the more virulent and destructive elements that are causing so many problems for society in general and for the Nixon administration in particular.
“This agency has had an excellent record of eliminating political threats to the system. We eliminated both Kennedys and Martin Luther King, though we had less success against Castro and the third Kennedy brother. I’m not here to assign blame for Edward Kennedy’s survival. Our operatives did a good job of forcing him off the bridge at Chappaquidick. His car was totally submerged in ten feet of water. Maybe they could have stuck around a while longer to make sure that the fat slob wouldn’t float back to the surface, but what’s done is done. Obviously, a bullet would have been more decisive, but with the other two brothers having been shot it would have been too much of a coincidence. Fortunately, he was so loaded that he didn’t even know what hit him, so we’re totally off the hook on that.
“Now, what I’ve done is to assemble a short list of entertainers who have been particularly damaging to American interests. You all have a copy. Again, nobody should feel bad about liquidating entertainers. Back in ancient China they used to bury writers alive when they proved troublesome. Down in South America they have no problem throwing guitar players out of flying helicopters.
“Let’s go down the list and see if we can arrive at any kind of a consensus:
The Beatles
The Rolling Stones
Led Zepplin
Pink Floyd
Jimi Hendrix
The Doors
Country Joe and the Fish
Crosby Stills Nash & Young
Janis Joplin
The Grateful Dead
Joan Baez
Bob Dylan
Sly and the Family Stone
Buffalo Springfield
Creedence Clearwater Revival
“Now, if anybody here has any ideas or questions, I’m going to open the meeting for suggestions.”
“Sir, a lot of these bands are composed of British subjects. I’m not sure we can afford to anger the British Foreign Office.”
“Your point is well taken. Scratch The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Led Zepplin and Pink Floyd.”
“Jones, sir.”
“Yes, Jones.”
“A couple of these acts, and I’m not saying they’re not bad actors, but they have a very small following and I’m not sure that wasting the Company’s resources on such small fry is the way to go.”
“And to whom are you referring?”
“Specifically, Country Joe and the Fish and Joan Baez.”
“We’ll take that under advisement. The fact that Joan Baez is so political may actually save her.”
“Sir…”
“Yes.”
“Creedence Clearwater Revival is a great band. My kids and I listen to them and they are good Americans. It’s unthinkable that they would advocate any un-American activity.”
“Remember, no one rock band establishes a seditious environment or ambiance. It’s a total environment that we are trying to break up here. Next?”
“Crosby Stills Nash & Young just play stupid elevator music. They don’t mean anything.”
“I agree. I don’t even know how they made the list. Who does that leave?”
Jimi Hendrix
The Doors
Janis Joplin
The Grateful Dead
Bob Dylan
Sly and the Family Stone
Buffalo Springfield
“What about Bob Dylan?”
“Sir, this prick is at the core of the whole thing. He definitely deserves to go. Maybe we could do something to his motorcycle.”
“Good idea. What else?”
“Well, The Grateful Dead are all junkies. One already died from and overdose. Maybe we could get them some really, really strong heroin.”
“Well, we certainly have enough of that. Follow up on it.”
“Ditto Sly and the Family Stone. They’re so messed up that they don’t even make it to their gigs half the time.”
“Put them on the list for the strong heroin as well. Who does that leave?”
Buffalo Springfield
Jimi Hendrix
The Doors
Janis Joplin
“Sir, Janis Joplin is a stone-cold junkie.”
“Good, give her the heroin as well.”
“Buffalo Springfield are real bastards. Their song “For What It’s Worth” has caused us some real problems.”
“Jones is right, sir. The only problem is, they broke up a couple of years ago. A couple of them are now in Crosby Stills Nash & Young, who we already decided to spare.”
“Sir, that song was terribly destructive. I say they deserve to die just on general principles.
“I’ll decide on that later. Who’s left?”
“Jimi Hendrix and The Doors, sir.”
“This is where I’ll state my opinion. Jimi Hendrix is a dead man. He’s probably more responsible for the mess this country’s in than any man alive. If I were a young man again I would choke him with my own hands. Make sure he suffers a particularly gruesome death. The same with this guy from The Doors. He has infected a whole generation of young people with his immoral behavior and obscene stage act. Tell them to waterboard him, submerge him in his bathtub until his heart gives out.
“Well, I think that resolves the issue for now. Anybody have anything else to add?”
“Sir, I’d like to suggest one more artist.”
“And who might that be?”
“Frank Zappa.”
“Never heard of him.”
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July 04, 2007
McDonald’s announced plans to fuel its delivery trucks from recycled vegetable oil, which will be converted into diesel fuel. Not to be outdone, Pinkberry announced that its trucks would henceforth be powered by frozen yogurt.
It turns out that I am acquainted with one of the doctors seized in the London bomb plot. I went to consult him about a hemorrhoid condition and he advised me to insert a stick of dynamite in my butt and light the fuse, which I tried. It didn’t have any effect on my hemorrhoids, but it sure cleared up my constipation.
I later ran into one of these doctors waiting in line to buy an iPhone. When I asked him why he needed such a complicated gadget, he said, “I hear they’re good for blowing up truck bombs.” I thought he was kidding.
I hope these guys are better doctors than they are terrorists. They’re going to need it to heal themselves after they get released into the general prison population. Generally, criminals are as patriotic as the rest of the population at large, and they’re not going to take kindly to a bunch of foreigners trying to blow up their relatives.
One of these doctors was already in trouble for medical malpractice. When he sewed up his patient after an operation they found out that he had left a Kalashnikov assault rifle and two hand grenades inside.
I don’t understand all the fuss about A-Rod’s wife showing up for a game at Yankee Stadium wearing a “Fuck You” tank top. It was in perfectly good taste as far as New York is concerned. In fact, she purchased the top at an exclusive designer boutique on the Upper East Side.
Despite all of Mayor Giuliani’s efforts to turn New York into a theme park for suburban nerds, “Have A Nice Day” and a smiley face still don’t cut it here. “Fuck You” with a rat holding a revolver is more appropriate for a city where the governor, Eliot Spitzer, can tell the opposition assembly leader, “I’m a fucking bulldozer and if you mess with me I’ll knock you down and you’ll never get up again!”
The offended opposition leader, Bruno, who is not from the city but from Open Butte County upstate, is himself under investigation for running a “consultant” business on the side and collecting large fees from companies doing business with the state. This guy, who has been robbing New York City blind for 20 years, complained, “Spitzer’s a bully!”
That’s New York, folks, and if you can’t take a little “Fuck You” with your morning coffee I suggest you move to a gentler clime, like Chicago, where Mayor Cermak was assassinated by a deranged lunatic who was actually aiming at the president, and Mayor Daley Sr used to maintain a punching bag in his office. “I hit it every day 100 times with my left hand, 100 times with my right hand and 100 times with both hands. Then I’m ready to do business with the city council,” he told columnist Mike Royko. Now, that’s class!
In fact, I think New York would go for a morning television show called, “Fuck You In The Morning,” where they would give note-writing lessons and fashion tips for robbing banks, and traffic conditions showing which sidewalks in Brooklyn are safe for avoiding curb-jumping SUV drivers.
In case you haven’t figured it out, yet, New Yorkers are not the most spiritual people. Nobody is advocating the forsaking of worldly possessions and spinning clothe from a wheel wearing your underpants like Mahatma Gandhi. Probably the most spiritual guy in New York is Mayor Bloomberg, who is so loaded that he’s choking on money and insists that he wants to give most of it away. Tell me where the line starts for some of that long green and I’ll be there, believe me!
Bloomberg is a sweetheart. He is a really lovely person who wants people to love him. This is unbelievable, but I ran into him face-to-face on 9/11. I went to vote in the Democratic primary at the grammar school on Madison Avenue and 81st Street, and he was there voting for himself in the Republican primary. I was wearing a loud orange and yellow Hawaiian shirt in honor of the beautiful day (the shirt later became filthy with asbestos dust and debris when I had to flee the financial district in the aftermath of the attacks on the World Trade Center) and I ran smack into Bloomberg in the polling station. He was being trailed by cameramen and reporters, and I had to jump out of his way. I didn’t bother to extend my hand to him because I figured he was another Republican nut-job who was trying to buy the election, like Ronald Lauder. Also, I figured, why would a multi-billionaire want to shake hands with a lowlife like me?
But you know what? Bloomberg gave me a look like HE would have liked to have shaken hands with ME! That’s why I really believe that he’s a saint and a genuinely lovely person. Mayor Bloomberg really loves people!
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