America Dodges A Bullet

The threatened government shut-down we all feared to occur at nine o clock tonight has been averted. KTLA interrupted the boy Lex Luther running in terror through a corn field to bring us an address from the President of the United State. Democrats and Republicans came to an agreement tonight to compromize. The President had to make sacrifices, but now government workers and our troops in uniform in particular, will get paid. Details of the agreement are still not forthcoming but apparently the budget is scheduled for long enough for congress to take one of its many, many vacations - this one two weeks - to return to this budget problem upon their return. The President generally seems happy about this compromise. This breakthrough constitutes a major defeat for the Tea Party, who was counting a shut down to cause general chaos in government and to sabotage this already weak economy. We can now all rest knowing metaphorically that we will live to fight another day.

The following news dispatch hot off the Google press flagged my attention because of it’s assenine nature, so in Rush Limbaugh fashion I am now going to repeat each line point by point. Later on we are going to have some plum remarks by an actual Tea Party afficianado. I decided to go with the alias of "Minister X" because people on the Right are forever quoting "Minister Faracon" on his various statements. (I believe the term is a veiled allusion to the old Black Panther Party that used to address its appointed officers as "Minister") Anyhow, I got to thinking how unfair it was and decided that people on the right deserved also to have the "honor" of being elevated to the status as "Minister". I almost didn't run this tonight but due to a glitch in my computer shutting down, when I came back from buying cigarettes the screen was still up and so I canceled and got to work. The following is vis Fox News.

As the deadline for a government slowdown approaches, liberals are leading the charge to blame the budget impasse on the Tea Party movement. This is because the Democrats last night agreed to a seventy billion dollar budget cut but the tea party crowd said no, and thus quite rightly the tea party is responsible for the shut-down. They after all are the ones with the signs “Shut It Down” and the like.

This progressive political strategy serves a two-fold objective. First, by assigning responsibility for the failing budget negotiations on the Tea Party, liberals hope to avoid any culpability in the morass. But “Hope” has nothing to do with it. The liberals and Obama tried to avert it with every manner of compromise. Second, if there is a government slowdown, they want any public hardships blamed on anyone but themselves. Not just “anyone” but the Tea Party themselves.

After years of trying to label the Tea Party movement as extremist, liberals now hope that shuttered museums, national park closures and concerns about grandma not getting her Social Security check next month, will turn public opinion against the social movement responsible for ending liberals’ virtual monopoly on political power in Washington. That’s true. A government shut down will cause chaos, and the tea party will do anything to sabotage this faltering economy to improve Republican chances next year.

With the potential loss of the Senate and executive branch next year, liberals are looking for the political equivalent of kryptonite to weaken the relative superpower of the Tea Party movement. The tea party controls one half or one half of one half of one third of governmental power. It’s truly a case of the tail wagging the dog. Republicans themselves are divided about the Tea Party. And Republicans comprise only one half the house, which comprises only one half of the legislature, etcetra, etcetra.

Given the high stakes of a government slowdown and an opportunity to exploit the crisis for political gain, it was not shocking to hear about the liberal’s strategy to blame the Tea Party coming straight from the mouth of Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. If car dealer A rips you off and you now turn to car dealer B, I suppose it can be said that “B” profited from how badly car dealer A screwed up.

In a recent conference call with Senate colleagues in which he unknowingly laid out the strategy to reporters who were also on the call, Schumer instructed that the spin was to blame the Tea Party movement for conservative Sen.s sticking to legislation already passed in the House of Representatives that cut a mere $61 billion in spending. “I always use the word ‘extreme,’” he said. “That is what the caucus instructed me to use this week.” “Extreme” seems to me to be the best word for it.

Schumer followed his marching orders as dutifully as Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill. Durbin, commenting about House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said, “And he has to tell his Tea Party ‘roughriders’ to put their horses in the barn. Save this argument for another day.” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., can’t open his mouth these days without slamming the Tea Party movement. The irony, of course, is that it’s not the Tea Party’s fault that in April 2011 Congress is sill haggling over the budget due in September 2010. The accountability for not having a budget resides fully with President Obama and his allies on Capitol Hill, who controlled the legislative agenda with a vast majority until this past January. I don’t understand that myself. Only that congress last year was very productive with a lot of other vital legislation. Like Obamacare, liberals could have used their political advantage to ram a budget through Congress and Obama could have signed it.

But the budget was not a priority. Instead, Obama and his progressive congressional allies spent their political capital and time having the government take over our nation’s health care system and trying to legislate fossil fuels out of existence through a “cap-and-trade” scheme. A budget just didn’t fit into this busy progressive agenda. “Cap and trade” sucks. Taxes on energy are the last thing we need in this recession.

Liberals’ failure to act left it up to the new congressional leadership. The conservative House passed a budget in February, but the Senate — still controlled by liberals — has yet to pass anything similar. The senate is controlled by Democrats. I would not call them all liberals.

Words can lie, but numbers don’t. In context, cutting $61 billion — or the $100 billion wanted by the Tea Party — from a federal budget expected to spend $3.8 trillion is far from extreme. They aren’t cutting waste in medicare or the military or funding for any of our three wars. They aren’t closing tax loopholes. They are cutting the small percentage of discressionary federal spending that helps the least fortunate among us. The sheer fact that liberals are threatening a government slowdown over a mere 1.6 percent cut in the total budget just reeks of political shenanigans. No liberals are “threatening” a government shut down. Again it is the tea party that is clamoring for that.

As opposed to the last government slowdown, liberals are misplaying their hand. Clinton-era slowdowns hurt conservatives, and that’s what the liberals expect this time. Or in the words of Dr. Phil, “The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior”. What they are not considering is that debt was not a concern back then. This bit of detail is immitareal to the general belief it will hurt the tea party. Fear of the exploding national deficit — a key Tea Party rallying point — is on virtually everyone’s mind these days. Moreover, progressive demonization of the Tea Party movement is not working. It didn’t work when they tried to marginalize and discredit the movement by calling its members racists and it’s not working now as they try to blame the Tea Party movement for the lack of a budget deal. The racism of the tea party is there on the public record for all to hear, and this debacle will also be evident for all to see.

More problematic for Obama and company is that more Americans are siding with the Tea Party, and this rise seems to correlate with increasing frustration over Congress.

According to polling conducted by Rasmussen Reports:

• 49 percent of voters believe the Tea Party movement is having a positive effect on the nation; I don’t believe that number for a second. • 48 percent of likely U.S. voters say that their opinions on major issues match the average Tea Party member more than average member of Congress; and • 45 percent think Tea Party members understand the problems facing America better than the average member of Congress. The media covers any rally of the tea party no matter how small but when massive demonstrations occur in support of labor unions or against the Wars we are in, the media ignores that.

Tea Party activism is the driving force demanding accountability from the government that serves the people. Liberal efforts to play political word games and smear tactics is not a substitute for an effective political strategy to meet the challenges facing Americans. The clock is indeed ticking, and time is running out for politicians playing the same old games. Dylan once said, “Don’t speak too soon for the wheel’s still in spin and there’s no telling who that it’s naming”. I predict that a year from now the Tea Party will be just a bad memory as Republicans scamper to nominate someone like Mitt Romney who is not universally known as a political extremist. The whole political strategy, formulated by the Koch brothers, is based on sound bites and talking points to be repeated endlessly without question. One tea party afficianado made the following remarks about President Obama just this morning, as follows.

The following are actual remarks. Then we started talking about current events. Minister X said that Obama was a socialist and hung out with Bill Ayres, Jeremiah Wright, and now a new name is added to the list. Obama is best friends with Louis Faracon and consults with him on making policy. Also Obama “Has made the economy worse than it already war”. And “The President’s policies have not added one single job”. Minister X says “There Is No Recovery”. Also the run up in gasoline prices is all Obama’s fault because the President is against drilling in Alaska. I told him we had only a year and a half’s supply in Alaska” and he said “You’re wrong, Marcus”. I also reminded him that the United States had only two percent of the world’s reserves. Minister X said that if gasoline prices were this high next year it would doom the President's re-election hopes. Minister X said to carry out his socialism he is redistributing wealth from the rich to the poor so now that rich people have no incentive to earn money or to give to charities. Minister X exhibited a complete ignorance of the forces and regulations driving Manufacturing out of this country. I said that if I were a multi millionaire I wouldn't mind paying fifteen percent of my vast accrewed interest in taxes. I said "I wouldn't let a four percent hike from 35% to 39% make me decide I no longer desired to make money". Minister X said, "It's a lot more than four percent, Marcus". "If a businessman has more money he will open up new stores and hire more people". I did not challenge this last remark because it is so demonstrably untrue as far as the big picture is concerned. He also said "People are insecure about their 401 K". There is no need to be; the market is up. Minister X's remarks were so “Beyond the Pale” that I did not even challenge them in my letter to him this afternoon. That would be pointless. Neither did I question or challenge just where he got all his ding-bat “facts” from. He trusts them as if they were handed down on stone tablets. I did not embarrass him by asking just how much news on the economy Minister X listens to on TV each day. This after all is a man who openly brags he only watches ten minutes of news a day because his time is so valuable he can’t “waste his time” on unimportant things.

Government Shut Down More Likely Every Day

It's just two days till Friday. Nobody wanted it but it looks pretty certain at this point that there will be a government shut down. The last one we had was the one brought to you by Newt Gingrich in late 1995 that apparently lasted several weeks. You may not be able to visit our National Parks over Easter break. Of course now the Republicans have rolled out a plan to end medi-care as we know it. They call it a "bold" move and they say their plan will "put us on the path to prosperity". Oh yeah, brought to you by the same people as Camp Krusty complete with all the pitfalls and death traps. They say they wand to give Governors of states more power to facilitate "flexability" but in reality these officials can just pocket the money themselves. This plan will save 6.2 trillion over the next decade or some such thing. Of course from what I hear, no defense spending is even under consideration to be cut. Right now democrats and republicans are dickering over a piddeling thirty billion. They want to keep National Public Radio funding and Planned Parenthood funding. My advice is that they drop these two things if they are the only sticking points. John Boehner says he controls "one half of one third of the government" but he only controls one half of the Republican party. The rest of the Republicans think the Tea Party crowd are nuts. It will only be the second anniversary in a few days when the Tea Party was organized- - on the anniversary of Paul Revere's ride or whatever. Just two years. Apparently the recall efforts in the Wisconsin election yesterday are breaking in favor of the liberals. That's good news. You know on the soap opera I watch there is a lot of talk about impostors. Old time "real" conservatives may think the whole movement has been hijacked by corporate internationalists. You know they don't mind regulation for some people. If regulation will drive small business out of the market and no allow them to be competetive, the internationalists are all for that. Somebody has to draw them all a picture. Liberals have been wondering aloud for three years why this President hasn't used the bully pulpet the way Kennedy and John and Truman and Roosevelt did to make their points. When I was in school we were taught that it was the responsability of a man of principled conviction to lead and convince his fellow man of the moral superiority of his beliefs. But we don't have that today. The same way we don't have news reporters that actually investigate news stories.

They aren't telling us much about the Libyan's campaign today except to say that on the right they are becomming increasingly anti war- - as they seem to now see Kadaffy as a good guy, no doubt because we need his oil. We know America has basically lost her moral compass. We embrace trade with China as though it were our path to salvation, and not our eventual path to economic ruin. People on the right don't even care that much about getting rid of dictators or furthering democracy and freedom. The big reason why they have been behind the previous two Bush wars is because of the profits they have been able to make with under the table military contracts. War really is a racket. I suggest you all read the book "War is a racket" because it really is. Today money is no longer a by-product of a war but indeed is the reason for fighting it in the first place. Nobody seems to care how much they are lied to, and the media won't tell us anything. At least half of the network news is just fluff pieces.

Donald Trump may "trump" all of the other republican candidates if he is the first to get into the race and steal the limelight from all the other candidates. Apparently in years past, by this time we've had a lot of candidates declaring for the office by now, like the President did yesterday. I never knew that Donald Trump went for all this tea party shit. Now he has become a birther saying that the President was not born here. But clearly Donald Trump is the most visually appealing and verbally articulate of the field of ten or more republicans, who are too lilly-livered to throw their hat in the ring. Many of these other two bit wanna-bes are such media whores they don't want to give up their radio talk shows or whatever else they would have to forgo to become an actual candidate. They know the minute they declare their lives would be scrutenized in ways they prefer not be done. Maybe that's it.

GALLERY OF DIRTY ROTTEN STINKING RE-MAKES

Listed in order of severity of infraction

Hooked On A Feeling (1974 remake) "Ooh-ga-cha-ka"

Please Mr. Postman (Carpenters)

Maggie's Farm ("Live Rain" live version)

Panic In Detroit (Live Version from Rare Bowie)

Tomorrow Is A Long Time (Rod Stewart)

Talk Talk (Alice Cooper)

Stand By Me (Rock and Roll by John Lennon)

Summertime Blues ("Live at Leeds")

The Loco-motion (Grand Funk Railroad)

Hand Jive (1974 Eric Claptin album)

Baby, It's You ("Smith" (?))

Eight Days a Week (Procol Herem)

I"m So Glad (almost ANY version attempt done Live)

Gloria (The Shadows of Night)

Only You ("Goodnight Vienna" Ringo)

Not Guilty ("George Harrison" album version)

Dancing in the Street (Van Halen)

You Really Got Me (Van Halen)

You're No Good (Linda Ronstat)

When Will I Be Loved (Linda Ronstat)

Out of Time (Stones orchestra version)

Lucille (Beatles at the BBC)

Lovers Concerto (The Toys)

All Things Must Pass (official Album version)

Let It Be (Album version)

Sincerely (Mc Guire sisters)

Good Night, Sweet Heart, Good Night (artist?)

Hearts of Stone (Fontane Sisters)

Hang On, Sloopy (Mc Coys)

Tracks of my Tears (Johnny Rivers)

Hi Heel Sneakers (Jose Feliciano)

Accross the Universe ("Let it Be" album version)

I Me Mine ("Let It Be" album version)

Teddy Boy ("Mc Cartney" album)

Heat Wave (The Who from "A Quick One")

Shout! (The Who from "Who's Missing?")

Peter Gunn (Jimi Hendrix from "War Heroes")

"OK they were just screwing around in the studio here"

Koran Burning Sparks International Incident

Well some people are just plain stupid jackasses. This Florida pastor couldn't leave well enough alone but had to burn a copy of the Koran twelve days ago and word got out to Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and our people at the Embassy there were violently attacked. To this the Florida pastor says that none of it was his fault because if he didn't burn the Koran, the Moslems would just find some other excuse for their violence. The Federation has practically called the Moslems sainted martyrs in their editorials lately coming down on the desecration of a Holy Book. I think the US troops are spread too thin around the world. It's some incident like this that just could give the enemy new found strength to rally his troops. It's too bad the US can't say to the Afghan insergents, "Remember when we were on the same side of a conflict allied against the Soviets?" I just don't see why we don't engage in better "diplomacy". And by the way I think Wikkileaks.com was wrong to publish diplomatic communaques. Confidence here is important to national security. Mc. Laughlin is on now with their suddenly anti war mantra.

The media is making much of the "drop" in national unemployment to 8.8%. They point to all the places over the USA that are hiring now. However I heard unemployment among Blacks is up. The Mc Laughlin group sees a double dip recession, which by then will be a full scale depression. Many say a new mortgage is inching closser. Home sales are down and home prices are down 13% or whatever in February. Also consumer confidence is down 9%. As is pointed out this is all the more troubling because this economy is already the most enemic recovery in the face of such massive stinulus. You know, there is a logical possability that it may already be too late to salvage this economy, even if we were to have 20 / 20 foreknowledge of the future. It could be that all possabilities for salvaging this economy have passed. (Selah)

It seems as if the NATO crowd crapped out on the Libyan rebels. Last week beginning on Monday the rebels were halted and then retreated a hundred miles in a few days. Monica and others on Mc Laughlin say that these rebels are a mixed bag and we could well end up with some radical Islamic group in power like the Moslem Brotherhood. Pat Buchannon points out that the President may already have his feet in hardening cement because if we try to get out now, Kadaffy will seek vengeance on all those who opposed him with stern reprisals. We already know the President's poll numbers are down. This campaign hasn't played well in Peoria. Now there is talk of "doubling down" to insure that Kadaffy leaves office. People like Pat are saying there will be foreign "boots on the ground" and let's just hope and pray they aren't ours.

Well the LA Lakers have won 17 out of 18 games since the NBA Allstars. It gets to be monotanus covering the LA Lakers. The thought just occurred to me that once the play-offs arrive the Lakers will be able to slack off a bit since in the play-offs in this sport they have unusual latitude, and lose almost half their games from then on and still emerge as World Champions. As such perhaps maybe we can just dispense with the next two & a half month play-off schedule and declare the Lakers winners now. I guess since the team as a whole is getting a little long in the tooth, a lot of people will be retiring at the end of the season so next year's Lakers team won't be half the team this year's was.

MY BACK PAGES

(If your preference isn't the Dylan version -

then chirp, like the birds in the cage this morning .

This is an overcast Saturday April 2^nd. Right now on KTLK is this Purity product guy pitching “Astazantan” that name I couldn’t think of in my letter to Tim. If you give it to animals on an otherwise high fat diet, they won’t get fat. It works wonders on the complexion, and if given to race horses in Europe it helps them run faster and if you give it to Rex and Rover they will have energy like they never had before.

John Boehner was doing the same old song and dance about how government spending prevents jobs from being created because it “creates uncertainty”. All these tea party people get their talking points from the Koch brothers. One of these days the American people are going to figure this out, if they haven’t already.

The big news of the day is that Dana will again be selling coffee in a week or so as soon as he gets to Wall-Mart to buy supplies. Last evening just before six when it was baking out on the patio, Janet mentioned off hand, “Well, I guess I won’t be needing my heater tonight” and there was a pause and then she added “They were supposed to have taken all our appliances yesterday but they didn’t”. Now we hear people can keep their coffee makers and stuff but they can’t sell the coffee. So Dana says he’s going to “give it away” and the people will leave a “tip”. I see nothing wrong with that. Dana said he would like to recoup his losses from having to sell everything and make the coffee extra strong the last week or two. Morally, we his customers owe him that and should at least for a while pay him 75 cents for a sixteen ounce cup, which is up from fifty. That will still save us all kinds of money. Right now I have six dollars left and I can buy a pack of cigarettes and not get coffee till after I get to the bank on Monday, at least not much - - or I could borrow cigarettes when I run out and have coffee twice a day till then.

Last night was Bob Geyer’s memorial service. It was just about to start when I got there at a couple minutes to seven. They were very prompt. I was given a program and all the officiators were in suits. The service ran almost an hour. It contained both a Eulogy of his life- - centering on a hit and run auto accident that changed Bob’s life adversely - - causing long term kidney damage. I’ve heard conflicting reports about Bob’s being in Viet Nam. Now they are saying he was a sniper. Loretta Hill, Marcia Merideth, Wally and Manfred spoke, and Richard Powers gave the benediction. There was also a mini sermon discussing Mormon beliefs about the after-life. Afterwards they served ice cream and Oreos. You had your choice of vanilla, chocolate, and chocolate ripple. Dr. Levy was there but I looked for him afterward and couldn’t find him.

The Superman episode was a rerun but I hadn’t seen the end of it before. Judy called a little before 8:30 to talk about adding a new Accronis program to my computer to monitor my hard drive that runs all the time. My worry is that it would tax my limited RAM and slow my computer down more than the stuff already on it. And I know that stuff isn’t free and I sure don’t want to pay for it. She kept going on and on about it and I wanted to get back to the program because there was stuff now on the screen I hadn’t seen before. Judy said something about my giving them her credit card number over the internet or something. Judy still suggests I get a new terabyte hard drive, which is just way more than I would ever use. My feeling is “Yes I’ll have to replace my computer in a few years but up till then I’m good”. If you do the math - 29 Gigabytes is still quite a few 4 Gig camera chips, each holding over two thousand pictures. Then I got back to the TV programs. I went out to the patio and talked with Dana and Steve and others and Dana says he just saw a bunch of colored blue and red lights sweep across the sky really fast. We were a little puzzled. My back, for one, was to the sky. But then he said “I haven’t had any sleep for several days so that just might be it”. The conclusion of that Superman episode was that Lionell Luther is a genetic impostor who was artificially created and has the exact mirror image DNA of the real Lionell Luther. After this “Supernatural” was on where they talked about the archangel Gabrael. I sstayed up this night later than I have been for a while, and once in bet it took me a while to fall asleep.

In the morning I got up at 6:07 and got coffee from the bakery. I turned on KNX radio as usual for a Saturday. We had oatmeal for breakfast and a fried egg and toast and butter and jelly. Sarah filled the coffee cups half way decently. It was after breakfast that Dana told us the good news. I was worried that if I withdrew a lot of cash at the beginning of the month he’d be gone by the end. Now I don’t have that worry.

YOU KNOW YOU’RE LATE IN ARRIVAL

TO THE ROCK AND ROLL SCENE - IF (an amusing bit of self deprecation)

-If most of what you know about James Dean comes from books and encyclopedias

-If you hear the title “Mary Lou” and think of the Ricky Nelson song

-If you think “being square” has something to do with a well balanced diet

-If you think the letters D A stand for District Attorney

-If you associate “jive” with a well coordinated fashion ensambo

-If you never heard “Stranded ion the Jungle” as a new song on the radio

-If you never knew Clyde Mc Phatter was lead singer for the Drifters

-If you can not name the first four of Elizabeth Taylor’s husbands- in order.

-If you can’t remember the 1952 Earthquake

-If you can’t remember Columbus Day ever being a school holiday

-If you hear the title “True Love Ways” and think of Peter and Gordon

-If you hear the name Bobby Freeman and think of “The Swim”

-If you thought “Bo Didley” was a new song by the Animals

-If the first song you heard from Fats Domino was “Lady Madona”

-If you think Estes Keefofer was a Johnson croney who went to jail

-If you think Nixon’s “Checkers Speech” was something to do with Kruschev

-If you think “The Twist” first came out in January of 1962

-If you never watched “Milton Berle”, Edward R Murrow, or “I’ve Got a Secret”

-If you can’t remember Albert Einstein, Winston Churchill, Cecil B Di Mille and Arturo Toscanini all still being alive.

If the first time you heard “Maybeline” you thought it was a Canned Heat re-make of a Johnny Rivers song.

-If the whole concept of an “open campus” is alien to you

If you think the term “nerd” originated on the show “Happy Days”

-If you CAN name all five songs with the words “Little Bit” in the title. (Don’t count “Shout”, “A Quarter to Three” or any song by Donnie Osmond)

-If your school didn’t allow motorcycle gang jackets on campus

-If you never knew that Ronald Reagan used to be a democrat

-If you don’t associate Moroborugh cigarettes with being a “woman’s cigarette”

-If you DO know that few jets are supersonic

-If you never heard the Larry Williams originals to “Slow Down”, “Bad Boy” and “Dizzy Miss Lizzy”.

-If you think “There’s A Riot Going on” (Beach Boys) “Ruby Ruby” by Dion Dimucci, and “Such A Night” by Elvis Presley – are new, original songs.

-If you don’t remember a time when there were no liquor stores open on Sundays

-If making an office memo doesn’t consist of putting a new cylinder in the Dictaphone

-If the whole idea of prayer in the public schools is completely alien to you

-If you think Lonnie Donnigan only had one hit

-If half your high school football team doesn’t consist of nineteen year olds

-If you associate “colored laundry” with clothes that shouldn’t have bleach.

-If your local shoe store doesn’t have X ray things so you can see your foot bones

-If you didn’t have an older brother who fought in the Korean War

-If you don’t know on what “Day the Music Died”.