A WEEK OF TEARS … AND OTHER MEDIA RANTS

THE FINAL SEND OFF FOR MICHAEL JACKSON

SMILE (sung by Jermaine Jackson)

It was a week of tears as Brooke Shields tearfully describes her friendship with Michael Jackson at his memorial service, Michael’s brother Jermaine choked back tears and smiles as he sang Michael’s favorite song Smile (written by Charlie Chaplin), Madonna’s mass moonwalk for Michael, the Reverend Al Sharpton’s biting eulogy. For more Michael Jackson coverage go to: http://abcnews.go.com/enter…

Here’s my question. In 1994 when Michael was arrested and put on trial for child molestation, where were all these so-called, solid citizens then? Where was Al Sharpton’s biting criticism of the media and papparazzi who tried and convicted Michael in the media before a trial even began? Where was Stevie Wonder and why was he not standing shoulder to shoulder with Michael throughout the ordeal? Or Brooke Shields, Michael’s so called best friend? Where was brother Jermaine when Michael needed family and guidance after his disastrous trip to Berlin, Germany where the King Of Pop dangled baby “Blanket” over a hotel balcony. Clearly Michael needed help raising those children. Where was the Jackson 5 then? After Michael made them all millionaires by age 9. Only Elizabeth Taylor stood by Michael throughout all of it.

Fair weather friends every single one of them. It’s easy to be an icon’s friend after he has died- harder to be his friend when he has been arrested for child molestation and put on public trial. Heaven forbid, Stevie Wonder, Brooke Shields or Al Sharptons reputation be stained.  Avoiding guilt by association is more important to Hollywood’s biggest stars than being a true friend. One need only look at the deaths of all big stars, Marilyn Monroe, Judy Garland, John Belushi, William Powell- they all died alone yet I bet many people claimed to be their “good” friend or their best friend.

Living with Michael Jackson: A Tonight Special:  In February 2003, Martin Bashir conducted a rare interview with Michael Jackson and was given unprecedented access to the reclusive performer’s private life.As delicately as possible, Bashir tried to ask Michael the tough questions about his face, the accusations of child molestation and about the horrific abuse Michael suffered as a child of 9 at the hands of father Joe Jackson.

It is worth a watch if you haven’t seen the interview.

About Michael’s face- a picture is worth a thousand words. This link demonstrates best the lengths people like Michael Jackson with money and power get carried away with elective surgery. Understandable, particularly knowing how Michael’s father Joe tormented Michael during adolescence about his big nose.

THE HISTORY OF MICHAEL JACKSON’S FACIAL SURGERY

Michael Jackson’s final resting place a mystery. After a life of horrific physical and verbal abuse and living his entire life under a microscope- I hope at long last, Michael will find peace.

Is it just me or does Michael’s daughter Paris Katherine Michael Jackson look more like Brooke Shields than Deborah Rowe?

SARAH PALIN TUNES IN- DROPS OUT

For weeks the rumors of a criminal investigation against the governor have been brewing. They are rumors, but are swirling fresh again with Palin’s resignation. In a press conference call this morning, Alaska’s Governor Sarah Palin announced she will not run for re-election and is stepping down as governor.  Watching Sarah Palin’s press conference on Friday was like watching a drunk seal trying to land a plane. Alaskans  started seeing a proliferation of ethics complaints against Palin upon her return from a disastrous Presidential campaign and many assumed it was a matter of time for the other shoe to drop. The press conference was called at the last minute on a busy holiday weekend, in Wasilla,  Alaska and the news was even more unexpected: Sarah Palin, a potential 2012 presidential candidate, will step down as Alaska’s governor. No one — not aides, former staff members or political allies — say they were prepared for her announcement of her departure more than two years before the end of her term

Top 10 Real Reasons Sarah Palin Is Resigning As Governor

10. She’s pregnant again and is having John Edwards’ baby
9. She’s “hiking the Appalachian Trail” with Mark Sanford
8. She wants to spend more time teaching abstinence to her family
7. She’s joining the cast of “I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here!”
6. She cracked under the strain of watching Russia from her house
5. She wants to devote herself full-time to making comedians apologize for the new wave of jokes they’re about to unleash on her
4. Her daughter Bristol is actually having Alex Rodriguez’s baby
3. She’s taking up Playboy’s offer to pose nude as part of their upcoming “Governors Gone Wild” issue
2. She came to the end of the Bridge to Nowhere that is her political career
1. She didn’t resign at all. It was an elaborate hoax pulled off by Tina Fey

Since Palin first burst upon the scene in 2008 as McCain’s running mate- Palin has been the running butt of one joke after another. Even parodied by SNL’s Tina Fey. Maybe Palin got tired of being a joke or perhaps the former Gov thinks she can skirt scandal and investigation of wrong-doing by stepping aside. Whatever the reason, the Republican Party is breathing a collective sigh of relief that she is gone and will not be running for President in 2012.

HE CERTAINLY HAD A WAY WITH B-O-L-O-G-N-A

If bologna had a first name, it was Oscar. Oscar G. Mayer, retired chairman of the Wisconsin-based meat processing company that bears his name, has died at the age of 95. Generations of kids grew up singing the Oscar Mayer song, visiting the Weiner-mobile and feeding their kids Oscar Mayer hot-dogs. He was the third Oscar Mayer in the family that founded Oscar Mayer Foods, which was once the largest private employer in Madison, WI. Mayer retired as chairman of the board in 1977 at age 62 soon after the company recorded its first $1 billion year. The company was later sold to General Foods and is now a business unit of Kraft.

THE CRAZY MONKEY PISSING IN HIS MOUTH VIDEO

This video  is so popular it was even mentioned in Will Ferrell’s new movie, LAND OF THE LOST. As Will’s co-star Danny McBride says in LAND OF THE LOST, “God-bless the internet.”

Land Of The Lost

McNAIR KILLED BY “OUT OF CONTROL” MISTRESS

Just two months after Steve McNair taped a youth suicide prevention public service announcement, his lover shot and killed him as he slept. Nicknamed Air McNair, was an American football quarterback who spent the majority of his NFL career with the Tennessee Titans^. American gridiron star Steve McNair was asleep on the sofa when he was shot dead by his young mistress in a murder-suicide last weekend. Nashville police confirmed Wednesday that Sahel Kazemi, 20, killed McNair by shooting him four times before shooting herself once in the head.

Kazemi had been distraught in recent weeks about making ends meet financially. She feared her rent was going to double because a roommate was moving out on her. She was also making payments on two cars and dealing with a drunk driving episode. She told friends and associates that her life was all messed up and that she was going to end it all.

Police said Kazemi purchased the gun illegally in the days leading up to the murder.

“While we may never know exactly what drove Ms. Kazemi to make that decision, the totality of the evidence clearly points to murder-suicide,” said police spokesman Ronal Serpas, adding there was no suicide note. “We believe there was evidence she was spinning out of control.”

Five shell casings recovered matched the weapon purchased by Kazemi last Thursday. The five bullets recovered were all fired from the weapon at the scene. Nashville-Davidson County assistant medical examiner announced that traces of gun residue were found on the hands of Sahel Kazemi and confirmed that their deaths were the result of a murder-suicide, with McNair the murder victim.

A three-time all-star, McNair shared the most valuable player of the NFL award in 2003. He was married and had four sons total: Steve Junior, Steven, Tyler and Trenton.

TRANSFORMERS: REVENGE OF THE BOX OFFICE

A movie that many movie critics called, “Loud, Obnoxious, and Loud, ” the “Transformers” sequel  (REVENGE OF THE FALLEN) has topped $600 million worldwide in 14 days of its release.  That makes it the second-fastest movie to top $300 million, behind last summer’s “The Dark Knight,” which made it in 10 days. Whatever happened to the days when movies told a story, had gripping narrative, biting dialogue? My fear is that young movie directors today will see the success of mindless sequels like Transformers 2 as a “get rich quick” career and that a dozen years down the road, the only movies America will have at the multiplexes are mindless sequels. The summer 2009 hosts at least a dozen sequels including Star Trek, Harry Potter, Transformers.

THE NEW BLACK KENNEDY

U.S. President Barack Obama and France’s President Nicolas Sarkozy  take their places with junior G8 delegates for a family photo at the G8 summit in L’Aquila, Italy, July 9, 2009. Leaders of the Group of Eight major industrial nations and the main developing economies are meeting in the central Italian city of L’Aquila until Friday to discuss issues ranging from global economic stimulus to climate change and oil prices. At the moment this photo was taken it looks like the young US Prez has more pressing matters on his mind raising the questions in many people’s minds, have we another Kennedy in the White House? (John Fitzgerald “Jack” Kennedy (May 29, 1917 – November 22, 1963), often referred to by his initials JFK, was the 35th President of the United States, serving from 1961 until his assassination in 1963 and his brother Bobby, both enjoyed reputations as “Playboys” while in office) On May 19, 1962, Marilyn Monroe sang for the president at a large birthday party in Madison Square Garden. The charisma of Kennedy and his family led to the figurative designation of “Camelot” for his administration, credited by his wife to his affection for the contemporary Broadway musical of the same name.

Despite a request for a wives’ boycott of this week’s G-8 summit to protest the personal behavior of the Italian prime minister, first lady Michelle Obama and other spouses came as planned — and found themselves touring with a former topless model-turned-government minister filling in as the official hostess for the prime minister’s soon-to-be ex-wife. Every first lady since Lou Hoover — save Bess Truman — has been featured in the high-fashion magazine, VOGUE, but Mrs. Obama is only the second to grace the cover. Another Jackie-O???

Have the ’60’s and Camelot returned?

KH

ALL WE GOTTA DO IS …

ALL WE GOTTA DO

“It’s so easy to see

If only they’d listen to you and me

The answer we’re seeking is staring us right in the face

All we gotta do is ……”

The nation’s unemployment rate rose to 9.5 percent in June, the highest rate since August 1983, according to figures released Thursday by the Department of Labor. The U.S. economy lost 467,000 jobs in June, according to the report. The unemployment rate has now jumped nearly 2 full percentage points since Obama became president. Employers cut a larger-than-expected 467,000 jobs in June, driving the unemployment rate up to a 26-year high of 9.5 percent, suggesting that the economy’s road to recovery will be bumpy. The Labor Department report, released Thursday, showed that even as the recession flashes signs of easing, companies likely will want to keep a lid on costs and be wary of hiring until they feel certain the economy is on a solid ground.
June’s payroll reductions were deeper than the 363,000 that economists expected. If laid-off workers who have given up looking for new jobs or have settled for part-time work are included, the unemployment rate would have been 16.5 percent in June, the highest on records dating to 1994.

So whose to blame? President Obama or the greedy corporations in America like Kroger, Vail Resorts, Safeway, who continue to cut employee wages to bare minimum, while operating with skeleton crews and making remaining employees do more and more work? No wonder King Soopers and Safeway both have rejected recent contracts and are considering a prolonged strike over employee benefits.  It is not President Obama who has contributed to the highest unemployment in US history it is corporate greed which ran unchecked for eight years during the Bush /Cheney administration.

First and foremost, the American people are concerned about the economy, job creation, and the unsustainable debt obligations incurred in the last 6 months. As job losses continue to mount, families’ worried about losing their health-care, paying their mortgage, and sending their children to college,  continue to intensify. The finger pointing in Washington continues to be business as usual with Republicans blaming Democrats and Dems like Nancy Pelosi blaming Repubs.

Partisan politics – Red and Blue states is killing America.

“This is the only recession since the Great Depression to wipe out all the jobs growth from the previous business cycle,” said EPI economist Heidi Shierholz.

Obama administration officials called for patience and vowed to do whatever was necessary to revive the economy and the labor market.

Of particular concern, the number of long-term unemployed – those out of work for 27 weeks or more swelled by 433,000 last month to 4.4 million, the report said. This group now represents 29 percent of unemployed workers. The U.S. government, once crafted as a system that would serve the interests of the people, has devolved into a system of plutocracy where corporations control both the government and the people. Virtually every government regulatory department, for example, is now run by the corporations it is supposed to be regulating. Just look at the FDA, USDA, FTC, FCC, NRC (Nuclear Regulatory Commission) and most other government regulatory bodies and you’ll find a room full of politicians and bureaucrats who utterly disregard the People while prioritizing the financial needs of influential corporations. Our nation’s policies on health, finances, agricultural, national defense and even education are increasingly slanted towards enriching the corporations, usually at the expense of the People.How did the corporations gain so much power over government and the people? It’s simple: Campaign finances. The corporations hire hoards of lobbyists who dart in and out of lawmakers’ offices in Washington, leaving behind trails of cash and corruption. Most lawmakers hardly ever meet with the actual people they claim to represent. Instead, they spend their time cavorting with corporate rabblerousers who operate based on the simple principle of greed. Think Enron, but times a thousand. That’s who controls Congress today.

To keep the People in line, public protests have been limited and outlawed in many areas, where new fenced-in “free speech zones” have been set up to force protestors to protest out of the way somewhere. (Note to all: If free speech is limited to a “zone” then it isn’t free speech at all!)

So where is it all heading?

To a desperate place, unfortunately. It’s a natural cycle of nation states. Following abundance comes greed, then corruption, then police state tyranny, then collapse. After the collapse there’s rebirth, reconstruction and a new cycle of abundance until the whole thing repeats itself over and over again, one century after the next.

Well intentioned as he is, President Barack Obama cannot and will not stop the system of corporate greed that America has had in place since Jimmy Carter left office. “The WalMart’s, Home Depots, Targets, Kroger’s of the world all have corporate lobbyists in state after state, that use every trick in the book to prevent workers from having a voice on the job,” says UFCW organizer Harold Embry. “They do everything that’s within the law, and some things that are not.”

It is not President Obama that has created the highest unemployment rate of 10-percent in America it is the corporate greed by Kroger, Walmart, Target, Home Depot, Safeway and others.  Corporate fast-food chains like McDonalds, Burger King, Taco Bell, Starbucks, and others were once honorable companies  but are now have a corporate attitude of greed turning them into a bad neighbor who seems content to trash communities for the sake of fat profits.”

As companies shed jobs and stocks plummet, hundreds of chief execs collected extra pay last year. Here’s how boards justify these rewards. Despite terrible performances that cost lots of jobs and produced huge shareholder losses, hundreds of CEOs pocketed millions in bonus pay last year — thanks to good friends on company boards. As millions of Americans cope with job losses and struggle to make ends meet, there’s been only a little belt tightening in the corner offices. Despite terrible performances that cost lots of jobs and produced huge shareholder losses, hundreds of CEOs pocketed millions in bonus pay last year — thanks to good friends on company boards. Consider the Ryland Group (RYL, news, msgs) CEO whose bonus went up in 2008 compared with 2007, though more than a third of the homebuilder’s employees got the boot. Or the Honeywell International (HON, news, msgs) chief who missed the benchmarks for his annual bonus — and got $3.5 million anyway.

All told:

* Among all the Fortune 1,000 companies, nearly 400 CEOs got bonuses last year, taking home $402 million in annual bonus pay, according to Equilar, an executive compensation research firm. But that’s only part of the picture; more bonus pay figures will roll in as additional companies file reports on 2008.

* These privileged CEOs got an additional $66 million in “discretionary” bonus pay. Annual bonuses are linked to some performance target, while boards can hand out discretionary bonuses for whatever reason they choose.

* These bonuses topped off already-large pay packages. CEOs at larger companies earned about $10 million on average last year, according to Equilar.

How does a CEO earn a big bonus when his company is staggering? Experts chalk it up to a broken pay system. The compensation committees that determine CEO paydays set up vague and flexible criteria that keep bonuses rolling no matter how badly a company performs.
“Compensation committees are on automatic pilot,” says Timothy Smith of Walden Asset Management, a social and environmental investment shop that monitors compensation. “They continue to reward top management while shareholders and employees suffer.”

TEN THINGS KIDS (AND PARENTS) CAN DO TO
JUST SAY NO TO CORPORATE GREED

1. Write a letter to the CEO’s of corporations such as Nike and Disney, asking them about their labor practices in Third World Countries.

2. If you have a choice, don’t buy the expensive brands of shoes, such as Nikes, who are known to engage in unfair labor practices.

3. If you must go to a Fast Food,  (McDonald’s, BK, etc) just buy the food, don’t buy the kiddie meals which have the tie-in merchandise.

4. Don’t go to the movies, just because all your friends want to go.

5. If you want to see the movie, wait for it to be rented at the video store or the Red Box instead of buying it.

6. Pay attention to local strike issues, such as the current farmworker struggle with the strawberry farmers.

7. Research the cost of production for an expensive item, and compare it to the amount of money being paid to the workers to produce it. If the difference is more than 15%, you probably shouldn’t buy it.

8. Recycle the greed. Donate usable items to food and clothes closets so that someone else might use them.

9. Send for the year-end reports for major corporations, just to see how much money the CEOs make vs. the “average” worker.

10. Tell your friends why you are taking the stands you do.

US President Barack Obama, under fire over the payment of huge bonuses to traders at the floundering insurance giant AIG, Wednesday vowed to end the culture of corporate greed in America.  He said that the ‘culture’ of ‘excess greed, excess compensation, excess risk’ has to change and pledged regulatory reform to put more controls on the finance industry. He said the government was working to set up a ‘resolution authority’ similar to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, which regulates banks and insures bank deposits.

I think people are right to be angry. I’m angry,’ Obama said. ‘What I want us to do, though, is channel our anger in a constructive way.’

One of those ways might be to stop patronizing coporate box stores like Home Depot, WalMart, Target, City Market, Safeway  and instead giving our business to “small businesses,” Ma and Pa businesses. Instead of forking out big bucks at KFC or City Market for fried-chicken, visit the small restaurant in your area that offers up great fried-chicken along with great customer service.

ALL WE GOTTA DO IS:

JUST SAY NO TO BIG BUSINESS!

JUST SAY NO TO WALMART, HOME DEPOT, TARGET, CITY MARKET, SAFEWAY

JUST SAY NO TO McDONALDS, BURGER KING, SUBWAY, TACO BELL, CHIPOTLE, CORNER BAKERY, STARBUCKS (instead patronizing the Ma and Pa coffee roasters, the small hamburger joints in your area, the local Mexican restaurants).

KH

THE NEGLIGENT HOMICIDE OF THE KING OF POP

Michael Jackson last rehearsal photos and private photos with his kids and friends

You know Im bad, Im bad-come on, you know
(bad bad-really, really bad)
And the whole world has to answer right now
Just to tell you once again,
Who’s bad . . .

A pop star abusing prescription painkillers the last six months, an unscrupulous cardiologist who was millions in debt, the Medical Coroner’s office ruling there was no foul play but dragging their feet with toxicology reports and impounding the car of Jackson’s doctor at Jackson’s home hours after Jackson died saying it could contain medication or other evidence. a sleazy rock concert promoter who had Michael Jackson insured up to the hilt, famous civil rights activist Jesse Jackson and national spiritualist Deprak Chopra involved, Michael Jackson’s death has all the scandalous elements as did his life since his downfall as the “King Of Pop.”

And everyone is suddenly asking the big question: what happened to all Michael Jackson’s millions?

“It’s become a culture with celebrity doctors who in one sense get a sense of importance by hanging around with celebrities.” Elvis had one. So did Anna Nicole Smith and Marilyn Monroe. They are the doctors who cater to celebrities, dispensing powerful painkillers and sedatives to some of Hollywood’s best-known entertainers. As police investigate Michael Jackson’s sudden death, questions are swirling around the King of Pop’s personal cardiologist and his actions in the superstar’s final days. Dr. Conrad Murray reportedly was with Jackson when he stopped breathing Thursday and performed CPR until paramedics arrived. An ambulance crew worked on Jackson at his home for 42 minutes before rushing him to UCLA Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead. Within hours of Jackson’s negligent homicide, the cardiologist hired a Houston-based law firm and on Saturday, an attorney there said he was cooperating.

What else are defense lawyers supposed to say?

The investigation of Conrad Murray fits into a long-standing pattern of celebrity doctors becoming entangled in death investigations involving prescription drugs, recently the tabloid death of Anna Nicole Smith. In most instances, the doctors themselves have questionable pasts like Murray  or significant debts, and caring for a celebrity allows them to make large amounts of money,  Some of these people, like Murray,  might not be the most successful doctors, so the money will also buy their complicity in fueling a drug habit. Over the last 18 months, Murray’s Nevada medical practice, Global Cardiovascular Associates, has been slapped with more than $400,000 in court judgments: $228,000 to Citicorp Vendor Finance Inc., $71,000 to an education loan company and $135,000 to a leasing company. He faces at least two other pending cases. Court records show Murray was hit last December with a nearly $3,700 judgment for failure to pay child support in San Diego, and had his wages garnished the same month for almost $1,500 by a credit card company. Another credit card claim for more than $1,100 filed in April remains open. He also owes $940 in fines and penalties for driving with an expired license plate and for not having proof of insurance in 2000.”

Now, as police reluctantly investigate Michael Jackson’s sudden death, questions are swirling around the King of Pop’s personal cardiologist and his actions in the superstar’s final days. Dr. Conrad Murray reportedly was with Jackson when he stopped breathing Thursday and performed CPR until paramedics arrived. An ambulance crew worked on Jackson at his home for 42 minutes before rushing him to UCLA Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead.
Dr. Murray remains in L.A. since  Jackson’s death  Investigators who ruled out foul play are now reluctantly admitting Dr. Murray is considered a witness and is not in any way a target of any kind. That’s the politically-correct code for “person of interest” or “suspect.”

Also on Saturday, the Rev. Jesse Jackson said the singer’s family wants a private autopsy because of unanswered questions about how Jackson died and about Murray’s involvement. Michael Jackson’s longtime friend Deepak Chopra said he’s been concerned since 2005 that physicians were overmedicating the singer.

The suspicions of Jackson’s friends and family fit into a long-standing pattern of celebrity doctors becoming entangled in death investigations involving prescription drugs. Doctors can become enchanted by the glamour of the celebrity lifestyle and may find it hard to refuse potent painkillers for their cli

ents because of their wealth and power. “It’s a big issue with people who are used to getting what they want. And if someone says no, they can pay someone else to get what they want,” said Karen Sternheimer, a sociologist at the University of Southern California who is writing a book on social problems and celebrity culture.
“The physician is not immune to that heady feeling of being in a celebrity’s inner circle.”

In other instances, the doctors themselves may have questionable pasts or significant debts, and caring for a celebrity allows them to make large amounts of money, said Julie Albright, a sociologist at the University of Southern California. “Some of these people might not be the most successful doctors, so the money will also buy their complicity in fueling a drug habit,” said Albright.

Records reveal years of financial troubles for Murray, a 1989 graduate of Meharry Medical College in Nashville who prac

tices medicine in California, Nevada and Texas. Over the last 18 months, Murray’s Nevada medical practice, Global Cardiovascular Associates, has been slapped with more than $400,000 in court judgments: $228,000 to Citicorp Vendor Finance Inc., $71,000 to an education loan company and $135,000 to a leasing company. He faces at least two other pending cases. Court records show Murray was hit last December with a nearly $3,700 judgment for failure to pay child support in San Diego, and had his wages garnished the same month for almost $1,500 by a credit card company. Another credit card claim for more than $1,100 filed in April remains open.
He also owes $940 in fines and penalties for driving with an expired license plate and for not having proof of insurance in 2000.

Best-selling author Deepak Chopra, a longtime friend of Michael Jackson and a licensed medical doctor, said he first became concerned about the pop star’s prescription drug use in 2005, when Jackson visited him shortly after his trial on sex abuse allegations. Chopra said Jackson asked him to prescribe painkillers and already had a bottle of Oxycontin.

“I was kind of a bit alarmed. I said, ‘Why are you taking that. You don’t need that,’ and then I started to probe a little further, and after I grilled him a little bit, he admitted he was getting them from a bunch of doctors. The nanny of Jackson’s  four children called Chopra repeatedly concerned that Murray was overmedicating Jackson. “This is a strange addiction. You cannot get these pills or injections unless a physician prescribes them, and he had this bunch of enabling doctors who were in a sense criminals. And they get away with it half the time — and I hope they don’t this time.”

MICHAEL JACKSON DEATH PICTURES AND VIDEO!

Anna Nicole Smith, was an American model, sex symbol, actress and television personality. She first gained popularity in Playboy, becoming the 1993 Playmate of the Year. She modeled for clothing companies, including Guess jeans and starred in her own reality TV show, The Anna Nicole Show. She died at age 39, apparently as a result of an overdose of prescription drugs. In the months before her death, she was the focus of renewed press coverage surrounding the death of her son, Daniel Smith.  Daniel died while visiting his mother Anna Nicole along with Julia at the maternity ward in Doctors Hospital in Nassau, The Bahamas, on September 10, 2006, days after she had given birth to his half-sister, Dannielynn Hope. Cyril Wecht, an American forensic pathologist, stated Daniel Smith accidentally overdosed on methadone and escitalopram. It is not known how he came into the possession of either drug. On September 11, 2006, Reginald Ferguson, assistant commissioner of the Royal Bahamas Police Force, told reporters Daniel Smith was found sitting upright in a chair after going to see his mother and his new half-sister in a private Doctors Hospital in Nassau. “It would appear from our report that the mother had gotten up, saw him in the chair and he appeared to be sound asleep. She tried to wake him up, he was unresponsive and she sounded the alarm.”

Elvis Presley’s autopsy commissioned immediately after his death involved draining all body fluids, removal of all vital organs, and sent to a pathology lab for testing to ascertain the cause of death. The coroner, Dr Jerry Francisco, who with Dr Eric Muirhead and Dr Noel Florredo attended the autopsy on Presley… they initially concealed the facts by attributing the cause of death to a massive heart attack.  The fact is,  Vernon Presley upon receiving evidence that a mixture of addictive-drugs was indeed the cause of his beloved son’s death, panic and quickly paid off officials to keep the document a secret. Elvis Presley, who died in 1977 at 42, was known to travel with George Nichopoulos, a former physician who overprescribed drugs to clients. Nichopoulos lost his medical license but was acquitted of criminal charges related to Elvis’ death.

The deaths of Michael Jackson, Anna Nicole Smith, Elvis Presley and other’s were all negligent homicides- “murder” performed by doctors who cater to celebrities, dispensing powerful painkillers and sedatives, fueling the celebrities drug habits for large amounts of money. In other words, “murder for profit.” In none of the cases involving celebrity homicides have the attending doctors like Conrad Murray ever been convicted or served time in a penitentiary. Celebrity doctors know they can commit murder for profit and get away with it. Los Angeles County prosecutors charged a psychiatrist and a doctor with conspiring to provide Anna Nicole Smith with thousands of prescription pills.

In the few cases that the attending physician has been charged, the celebrity doctor hires a high=priced mouthpiece (lawyer) and walks with no more than a slap on the wrist. The case of Conrad Murray will be no different. Celebrity doctors and murder for profit have become ingrained in the Hollywood, rock-n-roll culture  in America.

As the Jackson family gathered at his parents’ suburban Los Angeles home on Saturday to make funeral arrangements for the troubled King of Pop amid reports that they are seeking a second, independent autopsy, the entertainer’s father, Joseph Jackson, issued a statement calling his son’s death “one of the darkest moments of our lives.” The celebrity website TMZ.com reported that a second autopsy was underway at an undisclosed location in Los Angeles on Saturday afternoon, on the orders of the Jackson family. The outcome of any further autopsy’s will only confirm for the Jackson family what close friend and spiritual advisor Deprak Chopra and the jackson family already know, that Jackson;s death was induced by abuse of prescription drugs, pain-killers, or daily injections of the synthetic narcotic Demerol.

As for Dr. Conrad Murray- his high-priced Houston law firm will get him off with a slap on the wrist- just one more tragedy involving the Hollywood, entertainment culture.  After  the LAPD lost the MJ child-molestation trial and with Jackson leaving the country, it’s doubtful that the LA prosecutor’s office will zealously prosecute Murray.

As the Jackson family gathers to decide whether to have a private or public funeral for Michael- my advice would be, after all the scandals and Michael having lived his life under a microsope, that his funeral should be a private, family and close friends only event. Motown in Detroit who signed Michael when he was 9 years of age plans to have a huge public memorial. I say let this be enough. Let us all remember Michael Jackson and the effedt he had on our own lives in our own way.

In his song, I Want To Rock With You, Michael said:

when the groove is gone you know that love survives

It would be nice to know that with Michael’s negligent homicide that the justice system in America will finally crack down on celebrity doctors who get away with murder for profit and that we will hold doctor’s accountable. I suspect Michael, if he is looking down is not seeking revenge – just thinking what a horrible mistake his death was. He had the comeback of a lifetime scheduled. 50 sold out concerts which would not only eliminate his massive debt but put reinstate Michael once again as the King Of Pop. That will never happen now. Life is what happens to you when you’re busy making other plans. What we can all take away from Jackson’s tragic death is the love that Michael gave us while he was with us. In the 1970’s, when Michael sang with his brother’s, the Jackson 5,  I grew up very poor. All I had the summers of 1970. 71, and 1972 was an AM radio to keep me company. Michael kept me company with his songs ABC, Ben, I’ll Be There, and Never Can Say Goodbye.” Michael was the close friend I never met.

The groove is gone now but the love survives and I will miss my friend Michael and always remember those days on May Street when I hear one of the Jackson 5 songs.

KH

Iran election crisis- “peace train” derailed in Iran

Iranians protest against election results

There has long been the saying, “Freedom isn’t free.” After eight-years of a totalitarian Bush/Cheney administration in which they mistakenly believed that they, (the Republican Party) could give Iraqi’s freedom and democracy, as if freedom and democracy were Christmas packages beautifully wrapped with ribbons and bows,  Iraq, Afghanistan, and now recently Iran are now quickly learning the age old adage that, “freedom isn’t free,” that democracy is not a gift that someone can give you. Democracy is something that you have to fight and die for and earn for yourselves. Much as America learned this lesson in 1776 in our own revolution against the British.

As America had to determine its own destiny in 1776, by drafting our two most sacred documents of independence, The Declaration of Independence and The Constitution, so now it is time for that region of the world, Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Syria, Tibet and S. Korea to determine their own destiny’s, draft their own Declaration of Independence and fight their own revolution.

As much as I agree, 100-percent,  that President Obama is absolutely correct that the U.S. response to Iran should be mostly silence lest those inside Iran  make this argument be about America’s intrusion in foreign politics rather than a complete meltdown and dissatisfaction by the people for  Iran’s ruling religious council. Faced with the dilemma of an apparently rigged Iranian presidential election. Hundreds of thousands of people have taken to the streets, protesting against the incumbent president and the ruling religious council. President Obama has categorized the resulting violence as “troubling” and has called on Iranian leaders to respect the democratic process. That, aside from a reiteration of our preference for dealing with leaders in whose popular support we can have confidence and a preference for free and open democratic processes, is about as far as our commentary should go.

Being tight-lipped in the face of this crisis is not about abandonment of principle, nor is it a retreat from our historic advocacy of democracy. It is, rather, an acknowledgement that what is happening reflects a split in Iran’s ruling religious council, as well as a calculation of the probable effect of our words and concern for the well-being of the Iranian people. if we push hard for a recount, or international observers, or accommodation to the will of those Iranians clamoring for the installation of presidential candidate Mr. Mousavi, how will our pressure translate in Tehran? There is a very real possibility that the incumbent, Mr. Ahmadinejad, would rally the public to his side by railing against the “outside interference” such pressure would represent. This step, in fact, is already under way. Then, identifying his political opponents as a fifth column for Iran’s external enemies, he would turn international pressure for open elections into a hunting license. If you are fortunate enough to know any Iranian Ba’hias, ask them how that works.

The other part of the problem is this: What are we prepared to do about Iran’s flawed presidential election? Our president retains his faith in the persuasive power of speech, diplomacy, stern talk. Are we prepared to go to war with Iran when we are currently bogged down in Irag and Afghanistan and being bullied by N. Korea’s nuclear threats? And should we go to war in Iran- do we also then take on Russia and N. Korea as well, two of Iran’s strongest trading partners and allies?

Presdient Obama’s caution- contrary to the wishes of a genocidal Republican party is admirable for a young black man, as such an underdog, whose race would more likely identify with the underdogs and lean toward revolution. Neither blandishments nor bluster have turned Iran from its course on nuclear reprocessing. In fact, Mr. Ahmadinejad used President Obama’s Cairo speech as an example of Western impotence in the face of Iranian defiance — not a good portent.

And while I urge the Obama administration to exercise caution and restraint, I cannot help but smell the CIA’s involvement in the middle of this post-election violence. That’s what the CIA has demonstrated for the last 50-years that it excels at- stirring up revolution in Third-World countries to overthrow the corrupt regime. Financing the Contra’s in Nicaragua, arming the Taliban against the Russians in Afghanistan (Charlie Wilson’s War).

US involvement in the 1953 coup which overthrew the government of Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh.  The CIA, with British backing, masterminded the coup after Mossadegh nationalised the oil industry, run until then in by the British-owned Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. For many Iranians, the coup demonstrated duplicity by the United States, which presented itself as a defender of freedom but did not hesitate to use underhand methods to get rid of a democratically elected government to suit its own economic and strategic interests.

If Obama decides that Americans are unprepared or unwilling to do more than talk, we should speak only as is necessary. Aside from statements of principle favoring fair and open elections and a clear preference for processes which do not leave the streets littered with bodies, we should remain silent. When tensions run high, we should parse our words carefully to avoid misunderstanding or to give those within Iran- an excuse to go to war with the US or to ally themselves with our enemies in Iraq and Afghanistan like the Taliban and al-Qaeda. In the past we have not done this, and the results have been both bloody and shameful and have come back to bite us in the ass like Bosnia, Sarajevo, and lately N. Korea’s tough talk.

If Obama, as Commander-in-chief of America’s armed-forces decides military action in Iran is unavoidable, then we should make it a surgical strike not prolonged ground action and target everyone of Iran’s military installations, taking them out as quickly as possible thus neutralizing Iran from further military reprisals against US Forces.

Peace Train by Cat Stevens

But for now- the “Walk softly but carry a big stick” approach seems best and America is fortunate that we have a young President who know this.

KH

Cellphone-itis, a more infectuous disease than H1 N1.

(Jimmy Two Shoes Cell phone-itis)

Here’s a cultural phenomenon that drives me crazy. Everyday, no matter where I am I see women walking around with a cell-phone stuffed in their ear canal engrossed in a intense conversation about God-knows what. There’s an obsessive/compulsive condition prevailing in our society which I describe as “cellphone-itis.” This addiction to cell phones reaches across all socio-economic classes, ages 15-50, among both males and females. This seemingly uncontrollable behavior has turned people into mini-robots who walk, and drive, oblivious to the world around them as they focus totally on the phone in their hand as if it were a crystal ball. It’s as if they have an insatiable need to hear a voice, or to send and receive a text message minute by minute.

People with cellphone-itis can be seen everywhere. They are loud, rude, and obnoxious as they pace in circles like a caged animal, phone to their ear, totally engrossed in animated conversation. You see and hear them in supermarkets, at the mall, the post office, pumping gas, driving through red lights, walking across streets without looking, in rest rooms, at sporting events, and in restaurants where it is not uncommon to see couples who never talk to each other – instead each is on a phone. This addiction is even becoming a major issue in our school classrooms. The comedy of this situation would make for a great standup routine if it were not outweighed by the insanity and seriousness of this addictive behavior which is taking control of people’s lives. Let me point out that I take this position not as some neanderthal man, living in a cave, writing messages on a stone tablet. In fact I’m writing this on my PC, and I do own a cell phone; however, the cell phone does not own me. In my judgement, the cell phone is a valuable tool, if and when it is used properly 7-clock in the morning these women are involved in an intense phone conversation on their cell. Like who the hell are they talking to at 7 a.m. in the morning? I was once at a McDonald’s while on the road on business, and for the hour I was there working on my laptop- two girls sitting next to me had a conversation for the entire hour about their nails and one was on her cell-phone the entire time. Conference call girl-chat about their nails?

Has the cell-phone become a security blanket or baby-sitter for the 2000’s?

CELL=PHONE-ITIS: ( A socio/psychological condition characterized by ones inability to stop talking on their cell phone; commonly unable to turn their cell phone off; often and especially in enviornments that are not appropriate for personal phone conversing. This condition is often associated with a deeper emotional/psychological/spiritual condition of vacuousness and refered to as a chataholic.

Teenagers who excessively use their cell phone are more prone to disrupted sleep, restlessness, stress and fatigue, according to a research abstract presented on Monday at SLEEP 2008, the 22nd Annual Meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies (APSS). “Addiction to cell phone is becoming common. Youngsters feel a group pressure to remain inter-connected and reachable round the clock. Children start to use mobile phones at an early stage of their life.

“There seems to be a connection between intensive use of cell phones and health compromising behaviour such as smoking, snuffing and use of alcohol,” said Dr. Badre.

Cell phones are driving me crazy. You know, the appendages growing out of everyone’s ears that come in psychedelic colors and glow in the dark. I’m surprised we don’t see more cell phone rage. Like the passengers on an airline who grabbed a man’s cell phone and took turns stomping it to death. The last time I missed a flight and had to take up temporary residence in a terminal, I sat next to one of these obsessive cell talkers who was graphically explaining how a truckload of cow manure was delayed and had gotten too warm sitting in the sun. I wanted to reach over and jerk his ear plug out and lace the cord through the eyes of his shoe. Some of these electronic compulsives are so out of control they no longer live in the real world. I, for one, don’t believe some of these nerds actually have someone on the other end of the line. Think about it, how many friends can they have? Their phone activity is non stop and they don’t even take time to change clothes. Just the other day I spotted a window washer twelve stories up holding a cell phone to his ear. Okay, I had binoculars, but I saw him. Some of the worst offenders hang out in restaurants. The wife is on the phone telling someone about a shoe sale while her husband just sits there like a dummy waiting on the food to be served. Then there are the cell shouters. All their friends have a hearing problem. If you’re seated next to one you might as well ask to be moved to another table because it doesn’t get any better. Rest rooms are no longer private either. There is nothing more embarrassing than answering someone in the next stall before you realize they’re not talking to you – they’re talking on the phone! Admit it. You’ve answered at least one of ‘em.

Grocery shoppers are the pathetic ones. Men no longer trust their grocery lists. You see them on the phone as they wander down the aisles calling out the brand names on all the cans. By the time they reach the cantaloupes their insecurity kicks into overdirve. Their spouses try to step them through the squeeze, smell routine but they don’t have a clue what a fresh one looks like. So they move on to the mangos and go through the whole routine again. Drivers have to be the most annoying. If you’re stopped behind one of these compulsive talkers at a stop light, you can count on sitting through at least three light changes before the driver looks up and notices the light has turned green.

Surely there is a way to stop this onslaught of phone verbiage. The media could put the word out that cell phones cause male baldness. As for the women, CELLULITE would be a good buzz word. Cellphone-itis is not however limited to women though in my experience they are the greater offenders. I have seen men taking a piss in the urinal in the men’s room while conducting a business call on their cell phone. Does he think that the person on the other end can’t hear toilets flushing?

AND WE HAVE ALL HEARD ABOUT THE WOMEN WHO CONTINUE’S HAVING SEX WITH HER PARTNER ON TOP WHILE TALKING ON HER CELL PHONE.

Common sense, however, must prevail and unfortunately it is obvious that the situation is totally out of control. If we do not address this problem, the rate of accidents and deaths related to this addiction will only increase. A few years ago, cell phones were a luxury for adults. Now, they are a must-have for most people, including kids. Further, escalating costs are about to choke the typical family. A recent story in The New York Post reported that 11 federal, state and city levies add as much as 33 percent to the cost of New Yorkers’ cell phones.

If over-chatting and texting doesn’t get you, rising taxes will. If cell-phone bills are leaving you begging for mercy, you may have an out. Prepaid cell phone service is like a prepaid phone card. You buy the cell phone (some companies are giving a free phone to get started), activate it and pay to put minutes or “units” on your account. As you use the phone, minutes come off your account. When you run low, you pay to add more minutes. For a growing number of people across the globe, the idea of being out of touch, even just for a 90-minute movie, is enough to induce anxiety, says a University of Florida psychologist who studies addictions to the Internet and other technologies.

Addicted to Your Cell Phone? Addicted to Your Cell Phone? Tangled in a web of wireless? Maybe you should ask yourself these questions:

1. Do parts of your body tingle when you get free cell phone minutes?

2. Does raising your children interfere with programming your speed dial?

3. Do you have long-distance conversations while sitting on the toilet in a public restroom?

4. Does the term fashion statement mean to you matching your outfit with your cell phone carrying case?

5. When getting into a car accident, is your first response “Can you hold on a moment, I’m hemorrhaging?”

6. Does the sound of static trigger dark memories of ill-fated connections?

7. Do you use the menu light as your night light?

8. Does it take you an hour on a regular phone to get the same feeling of a five-minute cellular call?

9. When receiving a phone call, do you ever ask the film projectionist to lower the volume of the movie?

Some resort hotels in the Rockies are selling rest and relaxation to BlackBerry addicts and cellphone fanatics by offering to lock up their electronic devices during their stays. The Fairmont hotels in Banff, Jasper and Lake Louise, as well as Whistler, B.C., are promoting “electronic rehab” packages where guests sign a waiver authorizing the hotel to keep their devices in a safe. In exchange, vacationers get herbal teas, meditation books, guided hikes, spa visits, canoeing or golfing, depending on the location. “The idea is to get out and enjoy nature and meditate and relax and enjoy all that’s around without the buzzing and the cellphone ringing,” said Lori Grant, spokeswoman for the Fairmont Hotels and Resorts. The IRS wants to tax the use of cell phones issued to individuals as a fringe benefit. According to The Wall Street Journal, “The Internal Revenue Service proposed employers assign 25% of an employee’s annual phone expenses as a taxable benefit.” It is not a novel idea. Since 1989, the IRS has expected people who use company-issued phones for personal calls to count the value of those calls as income. Cellphone-itis Iis not limited to America but has spread to every country in the world that has the technology.

Are cell-phones driving us crazy???

Lately, Mexican society is experiencing Cellphone-itis. Mexico to Fingerprint Cell Phone Users to Fight Crime. Reportedly, there are around 700 criminal bands in Mexico, many of which utilize prepaid handsets in order to take care of business. Oh, and if you just so happen to lose your phone or loan it out, you’ve got to “report it immediately to avoid being held responsible for a handset used in a crime.”

A bus driver thought he found a loophole in the MBTA’s new ban on operators using cellphones: He did not bring

a cellphone to the job, which is now banned, and he did not talk on one while driving. Instead, the 41-year-old driver put his Route 111 bus in park on Sagamore Street in Chelsea, borrowed a cellphone from a passenger and spent nearly five minutes talking while riders sat waiting for him, according to a video taken by a camera installed on the bus. The driver, whose name MBTA officials would not release, was fired Thursday.

Perhaps more business establishments should emulate the action taken by the MBTA to ban all cell phone use on the job. Certainly that action alone would not remove cellphone-itis from society, but it would be a first step in the right direction.

KH

“Don’t ask” because this Supreme Court “Won’t tell.”

Jon Stewart Nails Obama on Don’t Ask Don’t Tell

The one line America’s military will not cross is the “Chorus Line.”

The Supreme Court yesterday declined to hear a constitutional challenge to the Pentagon’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy banning openly gay people from serving in the U.S. military, a move that effectively leaves it to the Obama administration to resolve the issue. President Obama is on record as opposing it. The court thus spared the administration from having to defend in court a policy that the president eventually wants to abolish pending a review by the Pentagon.

The case, Pietrangelo v. Gates, was filed by James Pietrangelo, a former Army captain who was discharged for being gay. He was originally part of a group of 12 plaintiffs who were dismissed under the policy because of their orientation. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit in Boston rejected their suit last year. He appealed to the high court on his own; most other plaintiffs asked the court not to step in, preferring to let the Obama administration deal with the issue.

The Supreme Court is the nation’s highest appellate court, which means the vast majority of its work involves re-examining cases that have already been handled in lower courts. Parties that lose at trial or on their initial appeals can petition the high court’s nine justices for a final review of the case. The justices agree to hear cases when they find a so-called “federal” issue to resolve: conflicting interpretations of federal laws, regulations or the U.S. Constitution. The justices get first crack at resolving only cases that raise questions beyond the jurisdiction of any lower court, such as disputes between states. (Think of arguments over water rights, for example.)  The high court does not hold trials, with witnesses, evidence and a jury. Instead, lawyers argue their cases directly to the justices, first in written briefs and then during a live session. Once a case is heard, it can take anywhere from a month to six months for the justices to issue a decision. Their rulings are as final as it gets in the law: No other court can undo their decisions.

Therein lies the rub: when the Supreme Court makes a bad ruling, based on personal prejudices or voting along party lines, it’s difficult if almost impossible to reverse its decision. Which has led Federal judges in all 50-states to becoming “activist judges” instead of merely interpreting law. Judicial activism is a philosophy advocating that judges should reach beyond the United States Constitution to achieve results that are consistent with their political leanings.

Activist judges by their very judicial rulings, create law, at least in the state in which they sit on the bench. Activist judges in California for example: have created new laws concerning gay marriage, activist judges in other states have limited the ruling of the US Supreme Court in the case of Roe vs. Wade, Gay Marriage, and now the “Don’t Ask- Don’t Tell” policy of gays serving openly in the military which many deem as an unconstitutional law that should never have been signed into law in the first place.

“I think this decision is an absolute travesty of justice and I think every judge on this court should be ashamed of themselves,” said Pietrangelo, who served six years in the Army, seven years in the Vermont National Guard, and fought in Iraq in 1991. In opposing Supreme Court review of the Pietrangelo case, opponents of “don’t ask, don’t tell” have noted that Obama pledged during his presidential campaign to end the policy. They say he appears to be proceeding carefully toward ending the ban by first asking the Pentagon to study the implications and report its recommendations. When President Bill Clinton tried to end the military ban on service by gays and lesbians shortly after taking office, a firestorm erupted. This led to adoption of the “don’t ask, don’t tell”policy in 1993.

The Obama administration comes under growing pressure to use his executive powers to place a moratorium on the discharges while he lobbies Congress to overturn the controversial 1993 law which was enacted as a compromise after then-President Bill Clinton set off a mutiny when he tried to allow gays to serve openly in uniform. More than 13,000 troops have been discharged for being gay since 1993.

Since then,  times have changed, and the public is more supportive of letting gays serve in the military. The failure of this Supreme Court to finally sign into law meaningful change and the tennis-m,atch between political parties over confirmation of  Sonia Sotomayor as replacement judge for retiring David Souter shows that the Supreme Court and the politicians are more interested in “playing politics” then enacting meaningful reform in America.

Politicians on the state and federal level pass “nuisance laws” which most police departments agree can never be enforced to show that they, the politicians, are doing something constructive, that they are doing what the voters sent them to Washington to do. Hogwash!

The politicians are wasting our time and placing a burden on already over-burdened law enforcement agencies who now have to enforce these nuisance laws, (wearing seat belts, talking on a cell phone while driving, recently in the state of Colorado, text messaging while driving.) Like how the hell is law enforcement ever going to enforce, much less catch anyone text messaging while driving. If you’re sitting in bumper to bumper traffic during rush hour which hasn’t moved for 20 minutes, is government going to tell me I can;t text message or use my cell-phone to call my employer or family that I am running late?

Shades of the Boston tea party. To government which passes nuisance laws like these but refuse to pass meaningful reform which actually would impact people on a daily basis (like gays being able to openly serve in the military) I say to government-

UP YOURS!

If government wants people to obey the laws- then perhaps government should pass laws which actually make sense and with whom the majority of people agree on, gay marriage, gays being able to serve openly in the military, a woman’s right to get a “late-term” abortion, legalizing and regulating Marijuana for adult use. As long as our government continues to pass “nuisance laws” which make absolutely no sense and which common sense tells us our law enforcement can not possibly enforce- the majority of the public will remain “scofflaws.”

We must change the way we conform Supreme Court justices like Sotomayor and not subject them to the three-ring circus of useless confirmation hearings which blowhards like Gingrich, Rush Limbaugh use to name-call and defame the candidate. End conformation hearings and replace them with appointments. A Presidential appointment does not need conformation. Obama should be able to “appoint” Sotomayor as a Supreme Court judge without the mockery of a three-ring political circus which makes everyone in government look bad. The three-ring confirmation hearings take away from the respect of the office of the highest court in the land.

And we should pass a national referendum outlawing “nuisance laws” on any level, local, county, state or federal. Are cops really going to arrest people for spitting on the sidewalk when they can;t even catch the child molesters or drug lords over running our major cities?

Here’s a thought: no traffic offense except those of a felony nature should be a criminal offense. They should be “municipal” tickets. Failure to pay fines, court costs should be reflected on your credit report- they should not be punishable by incarcerating someone and penning them with rapists, murderers, hard core criminals as is the case now. Many judges around the nation, particularly here in Denver, Colorado are refusing to jail low-level drug offenders, instead; farming them out to probation and counseling services and making the offender pay all costs for his treatment,  length of probation, home detention and electronic bracelets.

A steady number of troops are being discharged from the US military for being gay, according to the latest Pentagon statistics, which show that 619 troops were kicked out last year under the controversial “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy that bars homosexuals from serving openly in the ranks. If sexual orientation is irrelevant to military performance then why does it matter if gays can openly declare their sexual orientation? I for one don’t think it is any of my business what anyone else’s sexual orientation is – it comes under the heading of too much information (TMI) for me. I don’t care who sleeps with who; I just want the military to do a good job, which they are doing.

Are gays not Americans? They have equal responsibility toward our national security, just as we so called “straight men” do. And if any American wishes to defend his or her country, why should sexual orientation be a hindrance. Don’t Ask-Don’t Tell is a senseless policy which needs to be repealed–the studies cited in this article provide ample proof that gays serving openly in the military is not a detriment to morale. To continue a policy that is stripping the military of highly trained and experienced people because of their sexuality is beyond foolish.

Here’s why gays being allowed to serve openly in the military is a good thing.  (Can we still be friends?)

Almost Seventy Percent of Americans Support Allowing Gays to Serve in the Military according to a Gallop Poll conducted May 7-10, 2009. The US military desegregated in the 1940’s while huge areas of America were still strictly segregated — it was several years before Brown v. Board of Education. The objections were identical. White people were wailing, “how can you expect whites and blacks to shower together???” Truman carried it out, the sky didn’t fall. Neither will the sky fall if Obama allows gays to serve openly in the United States Military. Allowing gays to serve openly with no fear of “shame” will be another historic precedent just as America’s first black president set a historic precedent. And while Obama goes about setting historic precedent’s, how about these historic precedents:

1. Letting gays serve openly in the military

2. Letting gays marry

3. A woman;s right to have an abortion and a woman’s right to receive a “late-term” abortion without fear.

4. Embryonic Stem Cell Research signed into law

5. A Federal law outlawing the creation of “nusiance laws.” and  A US Supreme Court which does not kow-tow to party lines but actually enacts meaningful reform and puts an end to the “Country Club” atmosphere which has dominated the court the last 50-years.

These are the laws the Supreme Court need address in the next eight-years of a historic presidency not … spending the majority of their time undoing past decisions of the Court like Roe vs. Wade, the mud wrestling involved with conformation hearings, kowtowing to party lines or loud-mouthed blowhards like Gingrich or Rush Limbaugh. The purpose of the US Supreme Court is to enact meaningful legislation that will aid and guide our policy makers, our judicial system, federal judges who would act as activists and for the Supreme Court to keep in mind that their rulings are as final as it gets in the law: No other court can undo their decisions.

If they cannot or will not remain true to their purpose, the Supreme Court should be disbanded and replaced with state Supreme Courts whose decisions are final.

No wonder David Souter and Sandra Day O’Connor couldn’t wait to retire.

KH

Roadsinger: the long musical evolution of Cat Stevens (Yusuf Islam)

Roadsinger (To Warm You Through The Night)

Roadsinger #2

Roadsinger rode on to another land,

though the people spoke a different tongue they’d understand.

Show’d him the path to heaven through the desert sand.

It’s been a long, long road since a young British singer with long brown hair and almond brown eyes burst forth upon the American music scene in the 1970’s becoming a musical legend by the name of “Cat Stevens” but the roadsinger is back and better than ever. The 70’s have returned.

Even the video for the title track on his new album, Roadsinger (To Warm You Through The Night) is very 70’s as Yusuf Islam starts up a VW micro-bus and backs it out of the parking stall as we see his white beard and white hair behind silver rimmed glasses in the rear view mirror. As he turns on the radio and pulls down the road we see the camel on the dashboard. Nice touch Yusuf.

Where do you go after lies are told and the light of truth is blown out, and the night is cold?

~Roadsinger (Yusuf)

So many lies and misinformation have been told about Cat Stevens since his conversion to Islam in December, 1977, It’s been a very long journey for the artist who began his musical career as Cat Stevens.

Cat Stevens transition to Yusuf Islam

Born Steven Demetre Georgiou, 21 July 1948),best known by his former stage name Cat Stevens, is a British musician of Greek Cypriot and Swedish ancestry. As Cat Stevens, he has sold over 60 million albums around the world since the late 1960s. His albums Tea for the Tillerman and Teaser and the Firecat were both certified as Triple Platinum by the RIAA in the United States.  Cat Stevens converted to Islam at the height of his fame in December, 1977, and adopted his Muslim name, Yusuf Islam, the following year. In 1979 he auctioned all his guitars away for charity and left his music career to devote himself to educational and philanthropic causes in the Muslim community. He has been given several awards for his work in promoting peace in the world, including 2003’s World Award, the 2004 Man for Peace Award and the 2007 Mediterranean Prize for Peace. In 2006, he returned to pop music, with his first album of new pop songs in 28 years, entitled An Other Cup. He now goes by the single name Yusuf. He currently lives with his wife and children in London, and spends part of each year in Dubai. His newest album, Roadsinger, was released on May 5, 2009.

Cat Stevens was living the fast-moving life of a pop star, and in early 1968 at the age of 19, he became very ill with tuberculosis and a collapsed lung. Near death at the time of his admittance to the King Edward VII Hospital, Midhurst, he spent months recuperating in hospital and a year of convalescence. During this time Stevens began to question aspects of his life, and spirituality. He later said, “To go from the show business environment and find you are in hospital, getting injections day in and day out, and people around you are dying, it certainly changes your perspective. I got down to thinking about myself. It seemed almost as if I had my eyes shut.” He took up meditation, yoga, metaphysics read about other religions, and became a vegetarian. As a result of his serious illness and long convalescence, and as a part of his spiritual awakening and questioning, he wrote as many as 40 songs, which were much more introspective than his previous work. Many of those songs would appear on his albums in years to come.

Boots and Sand

So,  it was ludicrous on 21 September 2004,a shameful Bush/Cheney administration labeled Cat Stevens a terrorist and banned him from entering the U.S. Yusuf Islam was on a United Airlines flight from London to Washington, travelling to a meeting with singer Dolly Parton, who had recorded “Peace Train” several years earlier and was planning to include another Cat Stevens song on an upcoming album. While the plane was in flight, the Computer Assisted Passenger Prescreening System flagged his name as being on a no fly list. Customs agents alerted the United States Transportation Security Administration, which then diverted his flight to Bangor, Maine, where he was detained by agents from the Department of Homeland Security.

Instead of an apology for the misunderstanding, as was typical of the Bush/Cheney administration, the following day, Yusuf Islam (Cat Stevens) was deported back to the United Kingdom. The Transportation Security Administration claimed there were “concerns of ties he may have to potential terrorist-related activities.” The Israeli government had deported Yusuf Islam in 2000 over allegations that he provided funding to the Palestinian organization Hamas; he denied doing so knowingly. “I have never knowingly supported or given money to Hamas,” says Yusuf Islam, who repeatedly has condemned terrorism and Islamic extremism. “At the time I was reported to have done it, I didn’t know such a group existed. Some people give a political interpretation to charity. We were horrified at how people were suffering in the Holy Land.” However, the United States Department of Homeland Security added him to their FBI- watch list. The U.S. deportation provoked a small international controversy, and led British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw to complain personally to U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell at the United Nations. Powell responded by stating that the watch list was under review, and added, “I think we have that obligation to review these matters to see if we are right.” Yusuf Islam believed his inclusion on the watch list may have simply been an error, a mistaken identification of him for a man with the same name, but different spelling. On 1 October 2004 Yusuf Islam requested the removal of his name, “I remain bewildered by the decision of the US authorities to refuse me entry to the United States.“ According to a statement by Yusuf Islam, the man on the list was named “Youssef Islam”, indicating that Yusuf Islam himself was not the suspected terrorism supporter.

As was typical of the Bush/Cheney administration, the “Either you’re for me or you’re against me administration,” the decision to deport Cat Stevens (Yusuf) was not right, nor the decision to expand the terrorist war from Afghanistan into Iraq. To this day- there has been no apology from the outgoing Bush/Cheney administration for either.

Two years later, in December 2006, Yusuf Islam was admitted without incident into the United States for several radio concert performances and interviews to promote his new record. Islam said of the incident at the time, that, “No reason was ever given, but being asked to repeat the spelling of my name again and again, made me think it was a fairly simple mistake of identity. Rumors which circulated after made me imagine otherwise.” Yusuf Islam has written a song about the 2004 deportation experience, titled “Boots and Sand”, recorded in the summer of 2008, featuring Paul McCartney, Alison Krauss, Dolly Parton, and Terry Sylvester.

Yusuf (Cat Stevens) is not a terrorist, he does not sponsor state terrorism nor terrorist organizations like Hamas.

In October 2004 the British newspapers The Sun and The Sunday Times voiced their support for Yusuf Islam’s deportation by the U.S. government, claiming that he had supported terrorism. Islam successfully sued for libel and received a substantial out-of-court financial settlement and apologies from the newspapers stating that he had never supported terrorism and acknowledging that he had recently been given a Man of Peace award from the private Nobel Peace Prize Laureates Committee. He appeared on videotape on a VH-1 pre-show for the October 2001 Concert for New York City, condemning the 911 attacks and singing his song “Peace Train” for the first time in public in more than 20 years, an a cappella version. He also donated a portion of his box-set royalties to the September 11 Fund for victims’ families, and the rest to orphans in underdeveloped countries.

Peace Train

In 1976, Cat Stevens nearly drowned off the coast of Malibu, California and claims to have shouted: “Oh God! If you save me I will work for you.” He says, right afterward, a wave appeared and carried him back to shore. This brush with mortality intensified his long-held quest for spiritual truth. He had looked into “Buddhism, Zen, I Ching, Numerology, tarot cards and Astrology“. Stevens’ brother David Gordon brought him a birthday gift from a recent trip to Jerusalem. It was a copy of the Qur’an. Stevens took to it right away, and began to find peace with himself and began his transition to Islam. During the time he was studying the Qur’an, he began to identify more and more with the name of Joseph, a man bought and sold in the market place, which is how he had increasingly felt, within the music business.Stevens formally converted to the Islamic religion on 23 December 1977. In 1978, Stevens took the name Yusuf Islam. Yusuf is the Arabic rendition of the name Joseph. He stated that he “always loved the name Joseph” and was particularly drawn to the story of Joseph in the Qur’an.

Return to music

On 21 April 2005 Yusuf Islam gave a short talk before a scheduled musical performance in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, on the anniversary of the Prophet Muhammad’s birthday. He said, “There is a great deal of ignorance in the world about Islam today, and we hope to communicate with the help of something more refined than lectures and talks. Our recordings are particularly appealing to the young, having used songs as well as Qur’an verses with pleasing sound effects. In December 2006, Yusuf was one of the artists that performed at the Nobel Peace Prize Concert in Oslo, Norway, in honour of the prize winners, Muhammad Yunus and Grameen Bank. He performed the songs “Midday (Avoid City After Dark)”, “Peace Train”, and “Heaven/Where True Love Goes”. He also gave a concert in New York City that month as a Jazz at Lincoln Center event, recorded and broadcast by KCRW-FM radio, along with an interview by Nic Harcourt. Accompanying him, as he had in the Cat Stevens days, was Alun Davies, on guitar and vocals.

In March 2006, Yusuf Islam finished recording his first all-new pop album since 1978.  The album, An Other Cup, was released internationally in November 2006 on his own label, Ya Records (distributed by Polydor Records in the UK and internationally by Atlantic Records) — the 40th anniversary of his first album, Matthew and Son. A single was simultaneously released from the album, called Heaven/Where True Love Goes. The album was produced with Rick Nowels, who has worked with Dido and Rod Stewart. The performer is noted as “Yusuf”, with a cover label identifying him as “the artist formerly known as Cat Stevens”. The art on the album is credited to Yoriyos. Yusuf Islam wrote all of the songs except “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood“,and recorded it in the United States and the United Kingdom. Islam was asked by the Swiss periodical Das Magazin why the title of the album was An Other Cup, rather than “Another Cup”. The answer was that his breakthrough album, Tea for the Tillerman in 1970, was decorated with Islam’s painting of a peasant sitting down to a cup of steaming drink on the land. Islam commented that the two worlds… then, and now, are very different. His new album shows a steaming cup alone on this cover. His answer was that this was actually an other cup; something different; a bridge between the East and West, which Islam explained was his own perceived role. He added that, through him, Westerners might get a glimpse of the East, and Easterners, some understanding of the West. The cup, too, is important; it’s a meeting place, a thing meant to be shared.

A new pop album, Roadsinger, was released on May 5, 2009. The lead track, “Thinking ‘Bout You”, received its debut radio play on a BBC program on March 23, 2009. ^[87] Unlike An Other Cup, Yusuf promoted the new album with appearances on American television as well as British. He appeared on the first episode of the Chris Isaak Show on the A&E network in April, 2009, performing live versions of his new songs, “World O’Darkness”, “Boots and Sand”, and “Roadsinger”. On May 13 he appeared on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno in Los Angeles, and on May 14 on The Colbert Report in New York City, performing the title song from the Roadsinger album. On May 15, he appeared on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, performing “Boots and Sand” and “Father and Son”. Both Colbert and Fallon stated that they were Cat Stevens fans, complimenting the singer on his new album and inviting him to appear again on their shows. On May 24 he appeared on the BBC’s The Andrew Marr Show, where he was interviewed and performed the title track of Roadsinger.

“To be what you must …..

you must give up what you are.”

~Yusuf

With the release of Roadsinger, the 70’s are back. Sometimes you have to see where you’ve been to know where you’re going and Cat Stevens video of the title track in his VW microbus reminds us of the ideals that were important to us in the 1970’s before Americans became obsessed with making money, real estate and politics. Before Red and Blue States separated us ideologically. Before the “hate speech” by pompous windbag talk show hosts like Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck,  Michael Savage, Ann Coulter. Before the empire building of George Bush and Dick Cheney, the torture, the waterboarding. A time when America still had the respect of the world.

By the way, he chose the stage name Cat Stevens, in part because a girlfriend said he had eyes like a cat, but mainly because he said, “I couldn’t imagine anyone going to the record store and asking for ‘that Steven Demetre Georgiou album’. And in America, I was sure they loved animals.” Thus a legend was born.

For a man who had a spiritual awakening as a result of  two near death experiences, a man whose entire life musically and philanthropically has been devoted to the spiritual path, Yusuf’s voice has been silent for far too long. It’s great to have him back, shepherding his flock once more down the path we were meant to walk as individuals.

KH

There’s a kind of hush … all over the world

There’s a kind of hush …. all over the world

After N. Korea threatens the UN with imposing sanctions- there’s a kind of hush … all over the world.

During the 2008 Presidential primaries- there was a running skit on Saturday Night Live parodying Democratic candidate’s Hillary Clinton and  Barack Obama. The skit was to which candidate would handle the 3 a.m. phone-call better. One of Hillary Clinton’s most memorable ads showed a White House phone ringing in the middle of the night, and a voice asking, “Who do you want answering the phone?”

The 3 a.m. phone call was a joke… until this week when President Barack Obama actually got the 3 a.m. phone call. North Korea’s test of a nuclear device Monday is just the sort of national security crisis that President Obama’s campaign rivals warned he would face early in his term — a challenge to America’s credibility from an erratic, potentially dangerous regime halfway around the globe. The underground explosion, which the Russian government said was about as big as the blast that leveled Hiroshima, Japan, in World War II – the blast’s yield at 10 to 20 kilotons is comparable to the bombs that flattened Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

“So this is what a “3 a.m phone call sounds like.” And it’s no joking matter. Whether Hillary or Obama answered that 3 am call- the scenario still scares the bejeebers out of the world community.

Defense Sec. Robert Gates on Thursday said North Korea’s nuclear test and missile launches this week provocations but did not constitute a crisis that required additional troops in the Korean Peninsula. N. Korea threatens the entire world with Armageddon and Barack Obama’s appointee as Secretary of Defense Gates says it’s not a crisis. Not yet. “We’re talking about a country with over a million soldiers, enough nuclear fissile material for six to 10 bombs, chemical and biological weapons. And if it becomes unstable or starts unraveling, it’s not a crisis you can manage part time,” says Michael Green, a professor at Georgetown University.

My question to you  Robert Gates is do we wait until it is a full blown world crisis? Or do we take pre-emptive action now to prevent Armageddon in the Far East? I would have thought that the least Barack Obama would have done was have a naval blockade of N. Korea. North Korea already faces a range of economic sanctions that have helped make it one of the world’s most isolated and impoverished countries. Its reclusive leader, Kim Jong Il, has spurned diplomatic overtures and pressed ahead with a nuclear program the Obama administration says could be used to supply terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda or threaten other countries — including the USA, if North Korea’s technology progresses.

Here’s a little parable one of my college professor’s tried to instill on a class of social workers. A little boy was running around summer camp pointing an arrow at people and threatening them with it. One by one the camp counselors would sit the boy down and try to explain to him the error of his ways. How he could poke someone;s eye out.  “Don’t you want to fit in with the rest of the boys and girls?” Assuring them he would change his behavior- five minutes later the boy was again running around camp pointing the arrow at campers and threatening them with it. Again some enterprising social work camp counselor would sit him down for a “time out,” and again, five minutes later the boy would be seen running around the camp threatening  other campers with the arrow. This went on most of the afternoon until the boy ran by the visiting college professor who ripped the arrow out of the boys hands, broke it in two pieces and handed the pieces back to the boy.  Shocked, the dejected boy most assuredly stopped his threatening behavior for that day.

The point my college professor was trying to make is that sometimes swift, decisive action is needed to halt a problem before it becomes a larger problem.

The administrations of Nixon, Ford, and Jimmy Carter dilly-dallied with terrorists like Yassar Araraft, the regime of Ayatollah Khomeini and Muammar Gaddafi’s which led to Iran’s kidnapping 52 Americans who were held hostage for 444 days, under a weak, lilly-livered Jimmy Carter. On the day Ronald Regan was sworn in as President, Iran and the Ayatollah suddenly released the American hostages. Why? They believed that Ronald Reagan would have bombed the shit out of their country. The United States bombing of Libya (code-named Operation El Dorado Canyon) comprised the joint United States Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps air-strikes against Libya on April 15, 1986.the air strike killed at least 40 people in Libya. Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi and his family rushed out of their residence in the Bab al Aziziya compound moments before the bombs dropped. Gaddafi escaped injury but his 15-month-old adopted daughter Hanna was killed, and two of his sons were injured.

In July 2008, Gaddafi’s son Saif al Islam announced that an agreement was being negotiated with the United States whereby Libya would make any future compensation payments to American victims of terror attacks conditional upon the settlement of claims by victims of the U.S. bombing of Libya in 1986. On August 14, 2008 the resultant U.S.-Libya Comprehensive Claims Settlement Agreement was signed in Tripoli by Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, David Welch, and by Libya’s Secretary for American Affairs, Ahmad Fituri.

In October 2008 Libya paid $1.5 billion into a fund which will be used to compensate relatives of the:

* Lockerbie bombing victims with the remaining 20%;
* American victims of the 1986 Berlin discotheque bombing;
* American victims of the 1989 UTA Flight 772 bombing; and,
* Libyan victims of the 1986 US bombing of Tripoli and Benghazi.

As a result, President Bush signed an executive order restoring the Libyan government’s immunity from terror-related lawsuits and dismissing all of the pending compensation cases in the US.

Perhaps this was the swift, decisive action my old college professor lectured us about. No bargaining table, no “time-outs” no lectures, no sanctions, why give N. Korea the time to make threats and hold the world hostage? Just swift, sure military action, a naval blockade. But let’s make sure our actions are supported by China, Japan, Russia and other world leaders who also have an interest in this thing.

No more “cowboy diplomacy” no more “going it alone” as under the Bush administration. We sit down and sit down quickly with Russian and Chinese  leaders, convince them that swift military action is in the interest of the world, enlist their participation or get assurances of non-intervention.  Like  my college professor, the US must rip the arrow out of the threatening bully’s hand, break it into pieces,  and hand it back to him. Obama  sitting down at the bargaining table with a deranged lunatic of N. Korea (Kim Jong IL) who has already thumbed his nose at the US shows Kim Il that the US is weak, that the US is a paper tiger and that there is nothing we will do to stop his outrageous behavior or nothing we can do. At this point in history, Kim Il thinks he has the upper hand. Kim’s regime sees the nuclear program as its best bargaining chip to ensure its long-term survival.

Even without a nuclear weapon, North Korea is a potentially scary foe. Its mid-range missiles are capable of hitting all of South Korea, where roughly 28,000 U.S. troops are stationed. The military journal Jane’s Defence estimates the North could hit South Korea’s capital, Seoul, with up to 500,000 artillery shells an hour.
North Korea’s mastery of the nuclear fuel cycle means it can sell its expertise to other states that are seeking to make plutonium for weapons — something the Bush administration accused it of doing with Syria last year.

Obama’s best chance for punishing North Korea short of a naval blockade might lie in persuading China to implement its own sanctions on trad e. China shares an 880-mile border with North Korea and provides the regime with fuel, food and other goods key to its survival. The Chinese regime would be “very reluctant” to push for more sanctions. Beijing has said it fears a wave of refugees from North Korea if the government there collapses. Do I hear shades of  North Vietnam here?

Kim II has the US and the world over a barrel and he knows it. Whatever the United Nations and the US might try to do to punish N. Korea for its arrogant, threatening behavior toward the rest of the world, N. Korea is in a position to strike back. Another land war is not in the US best interests but a Navy blockade, a ring of ships surrounding N. Korea all armed with missiles that could rain down a steady stream of missiles on all N/ Korea military targets for 3 days in a row if necessary would cripple N. Korea. N. Korea is an peninsula. They have nowhere to go except into China and China doesn’t want a wave of refugees in 2009 any more than they did in 1968 during the Tet Offensive in Vietnam.

Caught between the two largest armies in the world, the US and China, N. Korea is bottled up. They have no place to go.

Whatever the Obama administration decides to do- the Obama administration though and Secretary of Dunce-Cap Robert Gates must secure the cooperation of China and Japan to militarily contain N. Korea.

A naval blockade would prevent terrorist sponsored states like Iran and Syria from shipping arms and munitions to N. Korea.President Barack Obama is weighing a possible naval cordon sanitaire around North Korea as one means of ratcheting up sanctions amid the fierce global criticism of this week’s nuclear and missile tests by the reclusive communist country. Washington s ready to “step up” efforts “to intercept and interdict prohibited cargo from North Korea”.

Other advisers, like Dunce-Cap wearing Robert Gates,  take the opposite view, arguing that the most effective response is precisely to ignore the regime. This school says that North Korea craves only attention and to be recognised as a ranking member of the nuclear club. Gates could not see a crisis if it bit him in the ass and then he would probably ignore it as a rash until it consumes 2/3rd’s of his body. BY that time- pre-emptive medical help is too late.

Obama should do two things in regards to N. Korea-

1. A strong naval blockade preventing anything from getting in or out. Such a naval blockade given full autorization by the Obama adminstartion to “fire back” if fired upon.

2. Fire Robert Gates as Secretary of Defense. (any moron who cannot see that the recent nuclear test by N. Korea, a 10-20 kiloton blast comparable to the bombs that flattened Hiroshima and Nagasaki) is most definitely a “crisis” and the most eminent threat the world has faced since the Cuban Missile Crisis (they were quick to call that a “crisis” as in CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS) cannot possibly defend America or Americans and should be given the sack by Obama immediately.

Gates is the same “Moron” who was involved in the scandal called the Iran-Contra Affair and was in a position to have known of their activities. In 1984, as deputy director of CIA, Gates advocated that the U.S. initiate a bombing campaign against Nicaragua and that the U.S. do everything in its power short of direct military invasion of the country to remove the Sandinista government. After 2006 midterm election, President George W. Bush announced his intent to nominate Gates to succeed the resigning Donald Rumsfeld as U.S. Secretary of Defense. Gates term in office under Bush involved the following scandals:

* Walter Reed Army Medical Center neglect scandal

* troop surge in Iraq which escalated the violence in Iraq and led to dozens of kidnappings and be-headings of American contractors, journalists and soldiers.

* Gates, as deputy director of CIA, allegedly vouched for the comprehensiveness of a CIA study presented to the Senate and President Reagan alleging that the Soviet Union played a role in the 1981 shooting of Pope John Paul II.

* Gates was quoted in the Los Angeles Times as saying NATO forces in southern Afghanistan do not know how to properly combat a guerrilla insurgency and that could be contributing to rising violence in the country.

NOTE TO OBAMA: Robert Gates needs to be fired as Secretary of Defense and replaced by someone who knows an imminent threat when he sees one and has the balls to step up to the plate,  do what is necessary to contain the threat,  before the threat becomes so great all the world can do is accept North Korea as a nuclear power.

The test seeks to “show the world  that  we have to treat N. Korea as  equal counterparts.

And should that happen, there will be a kind of hush … all over the world.

KH

Lets replace increasingly schizophrenic American behavior with, “Yes We Can!”

Yes We Can

“I don’t think one should let the perfect be the enemy of the good here,”

~Stanford University economist Lawrence Goulder

We are living in a time of schizophrenic government and a schizophrenic American public. President Barack Obama after his first 100 days in office must be shaking his head in bewilderment during this time of damned if you do-damned if you don’t public opinion.

The truth is- the American government and the American people don’t know what they want.

Not six-months ago when Barack Obama campaigned for the office of the presidency,  most of his supporters, all anti-Bush advocates called for the closing of Camp Gitmo, the US base at Guantanamo Bay where the detainees from the two-week Iraq war have now been detained for eight-years. Obama as one of his campaign promises, vowed to close Gitmo and upon his second day as Commander-in-Chief gave said order.

This week, the American media was in an uproar as Obama actually tried to make good on his campaign promise and close Gitmo. Fear-mongers like Rush Limbaugh and others stir up the American public by broadcasting fears that Obama is going to release what is left of some 200 detainees into American society. Suddenly, Americans who demanded closure of Gitmo and denounced waterboarding and other means of torture used by the Bush administration are demanding that Camp Gitmo remain open. A US Federal Judge ruled government properly holding two Guantanamo detainees

So a young President Obama finds himself in a damned if you do- damned if you don’t position, not only about Camp Gitmo but about every other campaign promise he has made. President Obama’s plan to cut fuel usage by vehicles will lead people to drive more and hang onto their gas guzzlers longer, some economists say.

Just today, as Obama unveiled his new energy policies for Detroit to manufacture vehicles that can achieve 35 mpg by the year 2012, already the media is quoting anonymous economists who say that Obama’s plan is disastrous for the economy, that Americans will keep their gas guzzling hogs longer and that the new vehicles are unsafe. Obama just announced his plan today. Don’t you think we should at least give his plan a chance to work before denouncing it? A week? Six months? A year? Don’t you think it would be a good idea to actually manufacture said vehicles first before denouncing them as unsafe?And who are these anonymous economists that the media espouse? What are their credentials, if any, if these sources even exist. Give the names of these economists. Give their credentials, list their experience before lambasting a president who is trying to make good on his campaign promises?

Economists say a gasoline tax, though politically unpalatable, would be far more cost-effective in slashing gas use and global-warming pollution.

Perhaps Obama knows Americans do not want any more tax increases- on anything. If the so called economists are the experts that they are quoted to be by USA TODAY, gee; you’d think they’d know that as well. The tax rates are so high in Chicago that major corporations are moving out of Chicago and Illinois to neighboring states. The taxes in Cook County are killing them. So they move out, lay everyone off. Which is why Chicago is #2 in the nation in unemployment right now. But according to USA TODAY anonymous economy experts- lets impose yet another “gas tax” to slash gas consumption. Horse-hockey!

The schizophrenic media, the schizophrenic American public and even Obama’s own schizophrenic Democratic party have created an impossible situation for Obama. With their schizophrenia, their wishy washiness, they have created a damn  if you do – damned if you don’t environment in Washington that must have the young president wringing his hands asking, “What is it you want America?

“You want me to close Camp Gitmo- fine! I’ll close Camp Gitmo. Oh, now you don’t want me to close Camp Gitmo. You want me to bring the troops home from Irag- fine! I’ll bring the troops home from Iraq. Oh, now you don;t want me to bring the troops home. You want me to create a cleaner, greener environment, force Detroit to actually make cars that get good gas mileage and cars that the American public actually want to buy? Fine! I’ll do that. Oh, now you don’t want that.You want me to close our borders tp prevent illegal immigrants from  over-running America. Fine! I’ll put National Guard on the Mexican border. Oh, now you don;t want me to do that.”

Just what is it you want America?”

When several of the most powerful financial institutions in the world offered several explanations for paying high salaries to their employees — and, by extension, to themselves. [...] President Barack Obama wasn’t in a mood to hear them out … “My administration,” the president added, “is the only thing between you and the pitchforks.” The very next week an Obama administration engineered new bailout initiatives in a way that it believes will allow firms benefiting from the programs to avoid restrictions imposed by Congress, including limits on lavish executive pay, according to government officials.

WHAT???

During the presidential campaign, right-wing attacks on Obama accused him of not only leading the country down the road to “socialism” and “economic Marxism” but also of a nefarious plan to sabotage the U.S. dollar. Obama’s bleak analysis of Chrysler and G.M.’s prospects for survival this week was seen by many  as a betrayal of the unionized autoworker and further proof that the White House may have changed occupants, but still pledges undying fealty to Wall Street. Does Obama swear fealty to Ayn Rand or Vladimir Lenin? Because it can’t be both, right? Or is it further proof of a schizophrenic administration kowtowing to a schizophrenic American public who are fueled by a schizophrenic oput-of-control American news media?

Because both can be right.Barack Obama is obviously one of the smartest political strategists in modern U.S. history. (Do you really think an inexperienced, 47-year-old liberal African-American with little personal wealth won the White House without significant reserves of political cunning?) Brack Obama got himself elected as the 44th President of the United States because of the clarity and strengthth of his better vision for the United States in the 21st century. So what has happened to Obama’s superior vision to that of fuddy-duddy McCain and Moose-shooting, hockey-mom Palin who had no vision for America other than doing parodies of themselves on SNL?

Americans can be an oddly schizophrenic lot. Even before President-elect Obama took office, Americans seemed indirectly determined to cripple him via our deprecating second-guessing. Many liberals savor believing that they hold their politicians to a higher, purer, superior standard of behavior and belief than conservatives. And then, they lament miserably when their neutered candidates lose time and time again. Think Al Gore and John Kerry.

On Thursday, speaking from The National Archives, President Obama addressed a group of lawyers to particularly address the closing of Camp Gitmo, National Security and the return to Amnerica being a nation of laws, accountability and he touched on the fearmongering being done in the media by loud-mouthed blowhards like Rush Limbo, Hannity, Coulter and other’s. President Obama will attempt today to answer critics of his dismantling of Bush-era policies on detention and interrogation, in a speech reminding Americans that strong national security and adherence to laws and national values are not mutually exclusive.

Here are some of the talking points:

“I recognize that many still have a strong desire to focus on the past. When it comes to the actions of the last eight years, some Americans are angry; others want to re-fight debates that have been settled, most clearly at the ballot box in November,” Obama said. “We see that, above all, in how the recent debate has been obscured by two opposite and absolutist ends. On one side of the spectrum, there are those who make little allowance for the unique challenges posed by terrorism, and who would almost never put national security over transparency. On the other end of the spectrum, there are those who embrace a view that can be summarized in two words: “anything goes.” Their arguments suggest that the ends of fighting terrorism can be used to justify any means, and that the President should have blanket authority to do whatever he wants – provided that it is a President with whom they agree. (referring to blowhards like Rush Limbaugh)

“We will be ill-served by the fear-mongering that emerges whenever we discuss this issue,” he declared.

Fear mongering (or scaremongering) is the use of fear to influence the opinions and actions of others towards some specific end. The feared object or subject is sometimes exaggerated, and the pattern of fear mongering is usually one of repetition, in order to continuously reinforce the intended effects of this tactic, sometimes in the form of a vicious circle.

“Both sides may be sincere in their views, but neither side is right.,” Obama said. “The American people are not absolutist, and they don’t elect us to impose a rigid ideology on our problems. They know that we need not sacrifice our security for our values, nor sacrifice our values for our security, so long as we approach difficult questions with honesty, and care, and a dose of common sense. That, after all, is the unique genius of America. That is the challenge laid down by our Constitution. That has been the source of our strength through the ages. That is what makes the United States of America different as a nation.

It’s time for Americans and the American news media to grow up and act like responsible adults, not  schizophrenic victims.

It’s time to let Obama be Obama.

Americans elected Barack Obama for good reasons. It’s time for Americans to get out of our own way  and to let our leader lead and not put our president in a damned if you do-damned if you don’t position.. It’s time to do more trusting and truly following our chosen leader, and less carping critically at every decision, no matter how minuscule. Why even bother to come up with a plan if you’re not going ti give that plan an adequate amount of time to work or fail on its own merits?It’s time to shut-down the fear-mongering like Rush Limbaugh and others whose recent statements come close to sedition. If we are a nation of laws as Obama declares, let the government make a case against Rush Limbaugh for sedition and treason, for inciting fear and working and planning against the government. Let Hush Bimbo take his chances in a court of law in front of a jury of his “peers.”Balancing the values of an open society with the need to gather, analyze and occasionally act on clandestine information is one of the great challenges a democracy faces. The ‘who said what, when’ public cat-fight is not the forum to confront such challenges and fear-mongering, the likes of which Rush Limbaugh does is sedition and treason that former WW2 administrations  would not have put up with. FDR would have arrested a Limbaugh as he did the Rosenbergs.

Like Stanford University economist Lawrence Goulder said:

“I don’t think one should let the perfect be the enemy of the good here” and that’s what the schizophrenic media and the schizophrenic American public are doing. They’re so afraid of making a mistake that Americans would rather see us do nothing at all than try to do something, even if that fails.”
To my uneducated ears, the perfect is the enemy of the good means that when something essential needs to be done, you can’t wait for the perfect solution, you go with what’s good enough and you should never put off doing what needs to be done by doing nothing because you are waiting a perfect situation. Right?

Perhaps the American voter wasn’t listening during the campaign when Obama said, “Yes we can.”

Note to Americans: Yes we can … if we give up this schizophrenic behavior when it comes to our government and concentrate on the things that can be done, and give up the fear and fear-mongering, the finger pointing and playing the “Blame game.” If we cannot move beyond this schizophrenic behavior when it comes to our president and administration, if we cannot come up with a plan, give that plan an adequate amount of time to become successful, then Americans will stop taking risks, live in an atmosphere of fear and every four years the American voter will be manipulated by fear-mongerers like Dick Cheney, Rush Limbau g, and elect idiot presidents like John McCain who will lie to us and make us feel “safe” when actually the opposite will be true. President Obama is correct, America  went off course.

Americans, let’s replace the atmosphere of fear with “Yes We Can!” support our president and his administration, apply our power and our principles to getting the job done as the leader of the free world and once again earning the worlds respect.

KH

The women??? Oh, please ….!

If I see Meg Ryan in one more cutesy comedy about a woman who gets dumped by their husband/boyfriend, finds themself, wins back the affections of the spouse who dumped them, I think I’m gonna barf.

Now, I like Meg Ryan. She’s cute perky, fun to watch but the material they give her is the same lame stuff that Hollywood has been doing for years. Woman gets dumped by boyfriend or husband, woman finds herself by becoming a fashion designer and having a runway fashion show where she scores a big contract with Saks, woman gets back with boyfriend/husband who has a newfound respect for her now that she’s found herself, in the meantime, she bonds with her estranged daughter/son, and girlfriends.

Oh please ….!

There are a million twists on this same basic plot but the story is all the same whether Meg Ryan is doing it, Susan Sarandon, Julia Roberts, Jennifer Lopez or Bette Midler. Please Hollywood writer’s …. enough already!

The Women (2008) an updated version of George Cukor’s 1939 version with Joan Crawford and Rosalind Russell was fresh for a 1939 sympathetic, women-centered narrative. (featuring only women in the movie- no men anywhere.) Today, Hollywood tried to “cutsey” it up and if we hadn’t seen the same plot a thousand times the last twenty-years, it might have been interesting. But the Diane English version with Meg Ryan and Annette Bening just made me want to barf! Nothing but Stereotypes. Is this how Hollywood really sees America?

Maybe if the writers put down the cocaine and actually went out into America like Jack Kerouac did 50-years-ago, (Jack Kerouac – Books – New York Times) they might discover the real America, the one you and I see everyday, the America we actually live in, work in, play in. Not the America where all the people on screen live in large, roomy houses where they all have a St. Bernard, a large backyard, and drive luxury SUV’s, where all the kids have cell-phones, I-Pods, dress like Hannah Montana. Real Girls don;t dress like that. Leastways not the real girls I see in the wealthy town I live in. They wear blue-jeans, KEDS, plastic bangles on their wrists because mom won’t let them wear expensive jewelry. And the real women whose boyfriend or husband dump them, “find themselves” by getting real jobs- a factory job, WalMart, Starbucks, bagging groceries at the supermarket, all the while having to sucking up to 20-something spoiled-brat managers. Real women who get dumped by their husbands have to move into a run-down apartment in a crime-ridden neighborhood because that’s all they can afford after their husband screws them in the alimony settlement. In Hollywod they move back in with mom and dad- (another overdone comedy idea). In real life, mom has lost dad to cancer and is struggling financially, or mom and dad are in a home with Alzheimer’s.

Real women rarely find themselves by becoming fashion designers, building small collections and being discovered By SAKS, or becoming a Mary-Kay Tycoon, (such Hollywood nonsense!) It may happen to one in a million women. Jennifer Lopez came close to portraying a “working mom” in Maid In Manhattan (2002) but then the Hollywood fantasies took over and she ends up with the rich guy after posing as a hotel guest, stealing a wealthy hotel guests’ outfit to wear. In real-life she would have been both fired and criminally prosecuted.

Why is it that Hollywood lives in a bubble? So much so that their vision of the world we live in is all the same in every comedy they make? From Hancock to The Women, every comedy portrays Hollywood’s version of America and Americans, wealthy, predominately well-to-do because that’s what they are in Hollywood. When Goldie Hawn lied, manipulated, and moved into a house that was not hers in Housesitter, (1992), funny movie but again in real-life, she would have been arrested for breaking and entering, trespassing, identity-theft and other criminal charges. I cant bear to watch anymore Hollywood comedies because their vision of America is not the America I live in. I guess no one would go to see a movie about a “real woman” bagging groceries or folding clothes at WalMart.

And when Hollywood does make movies about real people like The Promotion, it’s too depressing to watch.

KH

Hugh Hefner just a “dirty old-man”

When Hugh Hefner launched Playboy Magazine December, 1953, he took his biggest gamble by lending his furniture for $600, raising $8,000 from 45 investors — including $1,000 from his mother. The first issue, published in December, 1953, featured Marilyn Monroe on the cover, as well as in nude photographs inside. Hugh was hip, trendy, cool, happening and definitely cutting-edge. Playboy would become the template for dozens of copycat publications including Penthouse and Larry Flynt’s Hustler.

It was the sixtie’s baby and it was groovy ….

James Bond, fast women, fast cars, cutting-edge technology, Playboy Clubs and Playboy Magazine were part of the scene. Hugh lived the life that every red-blooded American boy fantasized about. We wanted to be James Bond and Hugh Hefner.

Today, at age 88, as Hugh Hefner prances around the California Playboy Mansion in his PJ’s with the Playboy girls ( why are they mostly blonde by the way?) featured in the TV-reality-show, The Girls Next Door- Hugh comes off as creepy, a perverted, dirty-old-man. Even in this photo of sexy Pamela Anderson presenting Hugh a piece of cake, Pam comes off as sexy, hip, trendy, happening while Hugh just looks like a dirty old pervert.

Hugh’s big mistake was not in grooming one of today’s hot males to take his place,  (the word is “Protege,”) but letting his only child, a daughter; run the Playboy empire. At age 56, even Christie Hefner, Chairman of Playboy Enterprises comes off as a little creepy. The majority of American women really do not get into porn- and to have a 56-year-old, grandma running a mens porn magazine is a little creepy don’t you think?

Hugh has lost the opportunity to groom one of America’s rising studs to take his place. Someone like Heath Ledger, Brad Pitt. Ben Affleck.

Now he’s just a pitiful, dirty-old-pervert prancing around in PJ’s when he can’t even get it up at his advanced age and the women only desire his money and what he can do for them career-wise.

Hugh … it’s time to gracefully retire from public life. You’re beginning to “creep-out” America.

Surprise her with the size of your intimacy

Like many of you, I receive a lot of SPAM mostly from people trying to sell me something I don’t want or need. Aluminum siding when I rent a condominium. Most of the SPAM is sexual in nature. Jeanie wants me to add her as a my-space friend (so I can check out her professional sex web-cam site). Most of the SPAM of late has been for penile enhancers. At first I used to chuckle at the ridiculousness of these claims. There were times when I would burst out laughing. Not because I’m uncomfortable, but because it is funny when a tele-market or spammer insinuates that you have a puddly and informs you that you can grow your puddly to enormous proportions. For a price, of course. And that only their product,  (no one else’s), can accomplish this miraculous feat.

That was years ago when I only received one or two of these fraudulent ads. Lately, even though my SPAM filters are in place, (and I highly recommend everyone set up their personal SPAM filters), Lately, my Junk-Mail box is full of at least a hundred of these ads. Setting up my SPAM filter allows me to delete all of them at the click of one button. Still, the voluminous amount of these penile enhancer junk-mails are beginning to annoy me.

SURPRISE HER WITH A BIGGER PENIS!

the ads all claim. You know this would be a real surprise. After months of taking their product, the first time we are in the mood to have sex, I whip it out and it’s three-feet long. That would really surprise her and I imagine her eyes would look very much like the ones in this photo.  The ads promise:  If your wife or your girlfriend thinks your penis is not big enough then you can surprise her with one inch bigger size in just a couple of months. For best results (up to 3 inches longer penis) you need to undergo the full course of taking the penis enlargement supplement (usually between six and nine months).

Feller’s, I got news for you, if your wife or your girlfriend thinks your penis is not big enough then you have a real problem. Maybe the problem is not the size of your equipment, maybe the problem is the size of your intimacy (your woman or your relationship). Maybe you need to either find another woman, one who appreciates you or you need to work at your relationship. If the problem is so severe that you need to seek professional help, you have to re-examine option A again, (find another woman) or determine if the woman you have is a keeper and then invest the time and money in professional counseling. But merely, increasing the size of your manhood is not going to solve the problem, if the problem could be solved that way. It can’t. It’s a scam! It’s fraud!

The average size of a man’s penis is 5 1/2 to 6 inches. That’s it fellers. If you are bigger than consider yourself well-endowed and fortunate. But for millions of men world-wide, 5 1/2 to 6 inches. That’s it.

I noticed in one ad (in the before and after photos) the penis was not larger, it was the same, the photo had been zoomed. Neat optical trick to sell products but an optical illusion is not going to save your relationship.

Women giggle about “size does not matter” secretly hoping for a lover who falls above the normal range (well-endowed) but inwardly all women know that it’s not the size- it’s how you use it. And not just how you use the equipment, how you use your other equipment, heart, mind and most importantly, your ears.

Any sex-therapist from Dr. Laura to Dr. Ruth will tell you that the key to great sex is great communication.

So feller’s, the next time your woman makes an issue of the size of your equipment, don’t fall for these marketing scams and the Pamela Andersen mentality in believing that it’s the size of your penis that  matters, pay attention to what she’s really telling you. She’s telling you that you have communication issues, that you don’t listen to her or talk to her enough. That’s what creates intimacy. Surprise her with the size of-your intimacy, caring, communication, not the size of your penis. If you are one of those few who suffer from a constant puddly- (you don’t have the equipment)- Hey! You can always get the equipment. There are sex toys you can buy to make up for your lack of girth. Become an expert at communicating with your woman first and use of one of these sex-toys second, and you will never hear her complain about the size of your equipment again.

I’m Dr. Hall and that’s all the time we have for today.

KH

Is the bar too high now even for “Superman” to leap in a single bound?

Hell Boy II theme song (Rammstein – Mein Herz Brennt) The Dark Knight sure raised the bar for super-hero action/special effects movies just as Harry Potter raised the bar for children’s fantasy books. Over the next few years the movie-going public will see a proliferation of super-hero movies, all trying to “cash-in” on the success of Dark Knight.  Just as we did following the success of Spiderman. (Which may or may not have been the incentive for making the new round of Batman movies  that had already been done by Tim Burton).

Jack Nicholson’s Joker or Heath Ledger? Both were superb! Just different.

Most of the new super-hero movies will be God-awful.

They will resurrect every super-hero from Hell-Boy, Spawn, to Green Lantern and a renewed interest in America’s number-one super-hero, Superman; along with every super villan from The Joker to Lex Luther and Solomon Grundy. (Green Lantern).

We will see more sophisticated plots,  even more spectacular special- effects and villians as the special-effects and villians that have already been tired out by Dark Knight and others,  simply won’t excite us anymore. We will also read newspaper accounts about stunt-men being injured or killed in bringing us these new never before seen spectacular stunts for these new super-hero movies. The pressure to “cash-in” by Hollywood producers will ramp up the competition as well as stress-levels in Hollywood to have that big blockbuster movie of the summer. We used to have one or two blockbuster movies every summer (Independence Day)  now we seem to have a half dozen. Usually one movie breaks out of the pack like Iron Man and Dark Knight. Timing and release dates will be critical in Hollywood as well for success. An ill-timed release date has sent many a shipwrecked movie onto the rocks. (Deep Impact, Mars Attacks!, Volcano, The Forbidden Dance, Red Planet, Wyatt Earp and Valmont).

Hollywood- I would like to see new super-hero’s that we have not seen before.

Green Lantern is a good start. Marvel Comics, the creator of Spiderman gave us a plethora of super-hero’s and super-villans in the 1960’s and ’70’s. I had never read the Hell-Boy comics growing up as I was into Spidey and Green Lantern so I did enjoy the last two Hell-Boy movies. Ron Pearlman is a hoot and a holler. Everyone needs to watch the recent Golden Army movie just for the scene where Hell-Boy (Pearlman) and Dr. Abe Sapien (Doug Jones) get roaring drunk and start commiserating about their prospective love-lives while singing the Barry Manilow tune, “Can’t Smile Without You.“  It’s is up-roaringly hilarious. This is the kind of sophisticated writing I wish to see in any future super-hero movie. I wonder if Barry liked it.

Hollywood- I want to see good writing/good acting and not so many special-effects. You’ll remember Johnny Depp’s performance in Pirates Caribbean 3 was underscored by too many special effects.

So Hollywood … get busy and continue to give us the superb writing and acting that we, the viewers witnessed in Dark Knight while trying to keep the sense of humor as in Hellboy II: The Golden Army.

KILBURN HALL

The path of least resistance?

It’s a well known axiom that people dig a comfortable rut for themselves which they follow day after day. Then one day, there’s a bear in the trail and it eats them. In politics, the voting public treads the path of least resistance because it’s safe, it’s comfortable, it’s familiar. The voting public fears change and the politicians that run for office every four-years know this, so they play on our fears. My opponent is to be feared, he’s black, a muslim, he’s a re-distributionist, he has terrorist ties. My opponent is 72 years old, has a heart condition, is senile, will give you eight-more years of George Bush’s failed policies. They play on our fears and so, every four-years, like clockwork, we vote for the lesser of two evils. or the lesser evil that we perceive.

The problem with voting this way is that the path of least resistance, is to step off a cliff.

On September 11, 2001, Al-Qaeda terrorists flew planes into the World Trade Towers, Pentagon and into a field in Pennsylvania. They created an atmosphere of absolute fear in America. The newly elected President, a falling down drunk in the secret-fraternity Skull and Bones, played up our fears, created a color-alert warning system, stepped up the occupation of Iraq and barely, barely, got himself reelected for another four-years. Americans voted the path of least resistance and we all stepped off that cliff together, holding hands.

I will be saying a prayer for America this November 4th. The choice we have this election is historic. It’s not about two shady politicians whom neither has convinced us as to their honesty or integrity, the choice we have this election is about closing our eyes and taking one large step forward into the future or remaining stuck in our comfortable rut waiting for the bear (China) to show up one day and eat us.

Obama may keep his promises of leading America into a more economically secure future, a more “green” future- then again he may get bogged down by his own party and may turn out to be just another mediocre President. John McCain would certainly keep us stuck in the past.

Elections are a lot like gambling. You rolls the dice- you takes your chances. That’s why they call it gambling. But every four-years when Americans are forced to roll the dice, elect the lesser of two evils and hope for the best, and are then delivered more lies, deceit, fabrications, the American voter becomes a little more disenfranchised until they don;t care anymore. When that happens to the public- as Europeans are quick to do, (throw in the towel) Europeans end up with Fascism, Communism, Socialism and other “ism’s” – that promise to do good but end up making a slave of the people.

This is America’s last chance to roll the dice, gamble, take a chance on stepping forward into the future. China is quickly becoming the world’s number-one superpower. Other countries like India, Iran, North Korea are all developing nuclear weapons. If America doesn’t get with the program, if America fails to lead, if we prefer to practice “isolationism” – then we will fall backward and wake up one day to find that the bear (China) has eaten us. America will, as most Japanese believe right now, be good for nothing other than sports and movies which they will continue to pirate from us.

So America this is it. On November 4th- Election Day – we all need to hold our breath, join hands, and step forward into an undetermined future for if we fail to do so, we might as all jump off that cliff for politics will never change in America but only provide us with one buffoon (like McCain)  after another until there won’t be much left of the country we once knew.

KH

Even Halloween and slasher films on TV don’t seem as scary to us these days as American politics

Super Obama

I was walking home last night in the dark to see political campaign-signs dotting the lawns up and down my street and I realized that it’s a con. Every four-years, the politicians put Americans through the meat-grinder, repeat the same lies every four years. Politicians whose names we have never heard of make the same lame promises that somehow they manage to forget once they’re in office. Lozar is running for this, Peterson is running for that.

Every four years politicians create a climate  of fear and division in this country that only a Super-Obama can save us from. The polarized environment in this country that underlies my concerns still exists however. The United States has been divided. The country has been split into “left vs. right,” “red state vs. blue state,” “Republicans vs. Democrats.” All of this is false division. And who created this division? Who created the red state, the blue state? The politicians.

Why? For the money and personal power. Politicians would tear this country apart, turn neighbor against neighbor all so they can see their name (Lozar) on a campaign poster in front-yards all over the suburbs, read the article about themselves or  see their picture in the paper. Being a politician must be one massive ego trip.
Four years later however, we are left with the same broken system, the unkept promises, and the meat-grinder starts up all over again. The 72-year-old politician with the false smile and the sincere sounding, “My friends.” The folksy but ditsy running mate (By Golly!) with the worst environmental record in the state of Alaska. But gee, they smile, they throw out their soundbites and cleverly zing their opponents with their biting innuendo’s. “He’s my best friend  and I love him to death but he’s out of his ever loving mind.”  “Truth express missing a wheel there.” “Trying to nail down his tax plan is like nailing jello to the wall.” Gee, aren’t they clever?

Face it! Our political system in America is broken. Time to scrap it as our founding fathers did some 200-years-ago. It doesn’t work. It’s broken. It’s time to come up with a new system a works. A vote of confidence like the Canadians have. Putting Americans through this political meat-grinder every four years, creating this climate of fear ever four years is turning this nation into one giant looney-bin with the inmates running the asylum. It’s time to fix the problem not the blame. It’s time to recreate the American dream. It’s time to retire the words, “Partisanship, Mavericks, My Friends, Joe Six-pack and Joe-the-plumber.”

Have you ever asked yourself, ” Why every four-years?” Why not elect a President every six-years or eight- years? Politicians give us some lame-story about Roosevelt dying in office and how they want to prevent that but it’s big pile of steaming horse-manure my friends. We go to the polls  every  four-years because the politicians want us to go to the polls every four-years. They’d like it to be every two-years if we would let them. So, the political weenies we have never hear of like Lozar, Foster, Canary, Campbell, Kinsey, Lohmiller,  Moore and other’s  (like who gives a rats ass?)  who want to make $100-grand a year, get all those free junkets from lobbyists and have all that prestige and personal power have a shot at achieving their dim-witted political goals every four years. And heaven forbid a politician stays in office for life- we’ll just create a little scandal like Senator Stevens of Alaska to boot him out of office. Not a terribly big scandal which would imprison him for the remainder of his life or ruin his wife and family- just a little one to get him to step down so we can move in.

The tragedy is that Nov, 4th people go to the polls, look at the names on the ballots of these pinheads they have never heard of, close their eyes and pick one. Most likely we punch a democrat or republican candidate we have never heard of because that’s the political party affiliation of our choice.
We are one people, and once Americans can forget their differences, we can all start to fix our broken political system and  focus on the issues that truly matter – like Halloween. (see next blog)

I don’t know about you but I’m worn out and I wasn’t even running for office. After the hell of this tough primary race, we all need a break and Halloween, (which brings out the little child in all of us), is just the ticket. Even Halloween and gory-slasher films on TV don’t seem as scary to us these days as American politics.
KH

Hey buddy, can you spare a cup of coffee?

Ron Howard Obama ad (Funny or die)

I went to my favorite coffee hide-a-way in the Chicago suburbs last week, (Biggby Coffee) to get a cup of my favorite blend, (Michigan Cherry)  when I noticed the city had plastered these obnoxious neon-green stickers all over the front door with very official/threatening sounding language. “Anyone caught selling on these premises subject to Class A Misdemeanor.”

Obviously the franchisee, had a licensing problem with the city or got behind in  city taxes.

John McCain would give tax-breaks to big business/corporate America to keep them here in the state’s. He’s said so. Obama favors hitting on big-business, and helping small businesses like the Biggby franchise, “stay in business” by spreading the wealth around. McCain calls him a redistributionist. I ask- so what’s wrong with spreading the wealth around?

Ronald Regan was a quack politician and a third-rate actor. His trickle-down economic policies were total horsehit, favoring only the wealthy by deregulating everything. Think of an hour-glass filled with sand. The trickle-down-effect cannot reach you if you’re at the bottom of the sand heap, you have to be in the upper 1/3 of the sand to feel any trickle-down effect. The working-class in the ghetto never feel the effect of trickle-down economics. It’s a load of crap to deceive the working-class while the rich, wealthy upper-class laugh all the way to the bank.

John McCain believes in Regan economics and deregulation. In short, McCain is a quack who would continue to favor big business and the wealthy. If McCain is elected Nov, 4th- Americans are going to have to get used to bending over, spreading our butt cheeks and liking it.

It’s a visicious “Catch-22;” helping corporate America stay in the state’s and provide jobs or helping small business owners. Personally, I’m rooting for the small business owner. The tragedy of the last 25-years is that we’ve seen corporate America like WalMart move in and take over America, peddling Chinese junk, thwarting unionization of its workers, working the employees to death,  while paying them meager wages.

Can you imagine the freedom and happiness we would have in this country if the majority of Americans who wanted to open/run their own small business like the Biggby franchise owner, could?

Competition is a good thing. The more small businesses we have, the more specialty stores and services, the better, not worse,  customer service becomes. Instead, we are stuck with giant, cold/impersonal, behemoth, corporate monstrosities like WalMart, Target,  Home Depot, Super Value (Jewel) who jack up the prices to $5.49 for a pack of Oscar Meyer hotdogs, while treating their employees like dirt and paying them minimum wage with no health benefits.

So, I hope come Nov. 4 that Obama wins and sticks it to corporate America. I hope the unions take over the WalMarts, the Home Depots, the Jewel (Super Value) Kroger,  and all the corporate-owned and run retail, grocery-chains and others.

If you haven’t seen the Ron Howard ad for Obama I have posted it here. Ron Howard,  Andy Griffin, and Henry Winkler who do not normally take an official stance in elections, felt strongly enough that America is heading in the wrong direction that they felt compelled to speak out … or die. Funny stuff.

Please vote for change America on November 4. Vote for “real change.”  So I can go back and have a cup of coffee at my favorite coffee place and not have to bend over and spread-em for the likes of corporate America like Starbucks.

KH

Sometimes the words just get in the way

The most powerful drug used by mankind is not crack, cocaine, valium, marijuana, heroin, or alcohol; it is the use and misuse of “words.”

“Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind.”
~Rudyard Kipling

There is a hair-design place in the western suburbs of Chicago that really sucks. Suk’s Hair Design that is. I kid you not. Can you imagine  commenting to a friend when she asks where you got your new  “do”  and you reply, “At  Suk’s.”

“It Suck’s?”

“No.  At Suk’s.”

Sounds like an Abbott and Costello routine. (Who’s on first).

As a retired journalist, author of nine books, and an active blogger, the meaning of words has always been very important. My eighth-grade English teacher, Mrs. Royer unwittingly gave me my life’s philosophy  from a mnemonic-device designed to help us learn to spell.

“It’s no lie to believe!”

Two door’s down from Suks is a psychic adviser who chose for the name of  her business simply, “Psychic.” Short and very to the point.

WORD: the smallest amount of something spoken or written. But then a word can be a noun, (be as good as one’s word, break one’s word, have a word with you).  Verb, (he words his request in a particularly ironic way).  Adjective, (a strongly worded letter of protest. That Jay is one dangerous character. “Word.”)  Adverb. (keep one’s word, put words in my mouth, a man of few words).

Then there are oxymoron’s, (words which combine two contradictory things, “jumbo-shrimp,” “deafening silence,”) cliché’s, (cliche is a phrase, expression, or idea that has been overused) To coin a phrase, “words are a dime a dozen.”

Then there are the truly confusing use of words like  portmanteau  which is used broadly to mean a blend of two (or more) words into nonsensical words like Frankenword, (blending “Frankenstein” and “word”). Author Lewis Carroll (Alice in Wonderland) was a great user of portmanteau. The usage of the word ‘portmanteau’ in this sense first appeared in Lewis Carroll’s book Through the Looking-Glass (1871) in which Humpty Dumpty explains to Alice the coinage of the unusual words in Jabberwocky. Humpty Dumpty’s theory, of two meanings packed into one word like a portmanteau, seems to me the right explanation for all.

For instance, take the two words “fuming” and “furious.” Make up your mind that you will say both words … you will say “frumious.” ‘slithy’ means ‘lithe and slimy’… You see it’s like a portmanteau—there are two meanings packed up into one word. “‘Mimsy’ is ‘flimsy and miserable’.

It can all get so confusing!

Down the street from the strip-mall is a ghetto-like apartment complex called Park Place. Which looks nothing like Park Place. In the 1940’s, they used to used the slang expression, “That’s very Park Place,” meaning; upscale, fashionable, trendy, exclusive. Today, most Americans only know the meaning of the phrase “Park Place” from the  Monopoly game.

In America, we have countless subdivisions named after trees where no such trees exist or were planted after the fact,  (Aspen Meadows, Pine Grove, Oak Hill)  or after bodies of water that don’t exist, (Mill Creek, Mill Pond).

You can bet a subdivision named “Tall Firs” won’t have many, if any, tall fir trees left or a sub-divison named after a body of water won’t have that body of water. So why do the developers misname them?  They give them a cutesy name simply to attract buyers but the name means nothing.

Today, words are thrown at us for marketing purpose’s, to manipulate us. Words are casually used and misused, but the words themselves have lost all meaning, except to humorists who catch the double-entendre, (a spoken phrase which can be understood in either of two ways, a play on words).

“A man walks into a bar and asks the barmaid for an entendre. She says, ‘Certainly sir, single or double?’ He says double and she replies, ‘OK then sir, yours is a large one.’”

(Entendre also being an alcoholic drink containing Champagne, Grenadine, Pineapple Juice, and Vodka).

Many commercials for Overstock.com feature double entendres, as an attractive woman talks about the “O” and “Big O”, which could refer to the website itself, but clearly call to mind the word “orgasm”, which is often called the  “Big O.”

When the words mean nothing, Americans stop paying attention.

One only need look at the phony political process every four years making the same repeated, phony promises. Americans tune out the “words.”

The power of words  create emotional appeals, fallacies, manipulations, disinformation, misdirection, propaganda, and Political Correctness, that defeat our common sense, twist our thinking and control our behavior.

In the days of the old-west, snake-oil salesman were armed only with the power of words to sell their phony products.  Oils from the Chinese water snake contained none, and were instead mixtures of camphor, some form of fat (often beef), and alcohol. The unsavory reputation of people selling snake oil began to gather steam as most people who bought the stuff found no benefit from using it.

Salesmen, politicians, journalists, those in the media always get their own way, get you to agree with their point of view, give them what they want, do what they ask and buy what they are selling through their trickery of words. They use the power of words in a dishonest way. These are enormous powers, largely because they are invisible. You’ve been persuaded, manipulated, and controlled without your knowing anything about it. And written words are even more powerful since they are often accepted, uncritically, as being true.

Ever wonder why lawyers and the justice system still use “latin” for legal terms? The traps set by the legal word-mongering often leave the normally intelligent citizen dumbfounded: They don;t want the average lay person to really know what they’re talking about.

Every field has their unique “speak” or “jargon” which only those in that particular field know what the words mean. Writing that contains technical terms not commonly intelligible or talk that is considered clumsy or circumlocutory is termed “jargon”. The term is applied to the cant of a class or to the peculiar vocabulary of a particular art or science, trade or profession.

{agonal, scoop-and-run, obiter dictum, Pro bono, corpus dilecti, Code Seven, (out for lunch) phonemic awareness,Points. CMO, CLTV Ratio,  CMBS, CRA, pull quote, concretable, plyboo, granny-flat. gerry-mandering, Blaxploitation}

I examined the tissue under the microscope and detected squamous epithelium with normal margins”, the doctor deposed. “The centre portion was markedly thickened and keratinization had increased. These papillary-like projections in some regions showed distinct calcification. The underlying fibrous connective-tissue stroma revealed no pathogenicity”
The Judge interjected: “In simple everyday language, Doctor, what did the plaintiff have?”
The doctor looked sheepishly at the judge and answered: “A wart”.

Journalists back in the day, of Samuel Clemens, Nelson Algren, Colonel McCormack,  used to use the power of words for truth. Words create impressions, images and expectations. They build psychological connections. They influence how we think. Since thoughts determine actions, there’s a powerful connection between the words we use and the results we get.

Some of the funniest comedians, Abbott and Costello, (Who’s On First) Lucille Ball, George Carlin (Seven Dirty Words” comedy routine was central to the 1978 U.S. Supreme Court case F.C.C. v. Pacifica Foundation, in which a narrow 5–4 decision by the justices affirmed the government’s power to regulate indecent material on the public airwaves.)  Monty Python, (Wink, wink, nudge, nudge) Eddie Murphy (F**k), SNL’s John Belushi/Dan Ackroyd, Johnny Carson/Jay Leno, Cheech and Chong  all use the power of words” in  comedy sketches to hilarious effect as do hundreds of political-cartoonists the last-century like Charles Addams (Addams family creator). “It’s so nice to have a “thing” around the house. (Thing was a hand with no body attached). Macabre, dark sense of humor.

One of my favorite song’s done by  John Prine and other’s is called, Let’s Talk Dirty in Hawaiian.

Lets talk dirty in hawaiian
Whisper in my ear
Kicka pooka mok a wa wahini
Are the words I long to hear
Lay your coconut on my tiki
What the hecka mooka mooka dear
Lets talk dirty in hawaiian
Say the words I long to hear

All of the great songwriter’s, Harry Chapin, Jim Croce, )Working at the Car-Wash Blues) Seals and Crofts, John Denver, Gordon Lightfoot, (Wreck of the Edmond Fitzgerald)  Dan Fogelberg, John Prine, Steve Goodman (Lincoln Park Pirates) used words to tell a story. Some refer to them as “Balladeer’s.”

“Whatever words we utter should be chosen with care for people will hear them and be influenced by them for good or ill.” ~Buddha

So  …….

“Gimme gimme oka doka make a wish and wanta polka
Words I understand hey!

Aloha,
Kilburn Hall

AC/DC Rock-N-Roll train rolls on

“I remember when rock was young
me and Susie had so much fun.”
~Elton John

For those about to rock, the AC/DC rock-n-roll train rolls on.  Unless, that is, you want to buy the Australian heavy metal group’s newest album, “Black Ice,” on iTunes, or anywhere but Wal-Mart when it drops in record stores on October 20th, 2008.

Call them old (they are– but the rock group known as AC/DC, alias the young brothers, Angus and Malcolm, are 53 and 55, while vocalist Brian Johnson is 61)  still won’t give up that schoolboy uniform.

Despite distasteful business practices and  crass-commercialism at its worst (AC/DC selling its new album “Black Ice” at only one retail chain- Wal-Mart) another reminder of just what is very, very, wrong in America, the blatant crass-commercialism, and Wal-Mart as usual, is stuck right in the very middle of it.

but hey kid, rock and roll, rock on …..  ooh my soul

As a child of the ’60’s, many of today’s bloggers and blog-readers are too young to remember that in the 1960’s and 1970’s- most rock songs were protests songs, in fact;  much of the rock-n-roll movement was a protest movement, (anti-government, make love – not war, burn your brassiere’s) people bought rock albums as a political statement not because slick marketing executives at Wal-Mart made a big media event out of it. In the 1960’s, if a crass commercial entity like Wal-Mart tried to sell a Door’s or Jimi Hendrix album- there would have been riots, protests, and marches, outside the front door of Wal-Mart not to mention this thing called Pot and LSD.

Today’s kids, or rather, consumer’s, have been brain-washed.

None of that matter to the folks at Wal-Mart cause the kids in black are back.

Wednesday, “Black Ice”  AC/DC’s first album in a dozen-years, debuted at No. #1 on the billboard albums chart, selling more than 780,000 copies in its first week , on Thursday. Wow! Not made for old men such as myself in their fifties. We still now how to rock Generation X-er’s.

Still looking for that blue jean, baby queen during the second night of its U.S. tour and the first of two sold-out shows here in Chicago, the quintet rocked as righteously and as mightily as any rock group ever could.

But hey kid,  rock n roll,   rock on …  ooh my soul

Some things just never get old or seem tired, and high atop this list of the best things in life is that simple, monolithic, four-on-the-floor AC/DC beat (bassist Cliff Williams and drummer Phil Rudd remain one of the most underrated rhythm sections in rock history)

I never knew me a better time and I guess I never will
Oh lawdy mama those Friday nights
When Suzie wore her dresses tight
And the crocodile rocking was out of sight

The AC/DC rock-n-roll train rolls right along despite a 12-year hiatus and having listened to the album or rather CD as they call “albums”  these days, all train wrecks-should be this much fun. I suppose Black Ice is as much a testament to AC/DC’s endurance as it is to the crass-commercialism and clever marketing by the folks at Wal-Mart who will soon make us all learn to speak Chinese. To make things happen in China, you have to know people. “Knowing” is what the Chinese mean by “guan xi” or “connections.” When you cultivate “guan xi” with people, you might get them to bend over backwards for you, let alone buy into your demands and style and no one has perfected the art of bullshit, er …      “guan xi” like the folks at Wal-Mart. But just as the folks at Wally-World made $7 million-dollars on Black Ice- you think Wal-Mart would let AC/DC perform in one of their stores? I’m guessing not.

but they’ll never kill the thrills we got
burning up to the crocodile rock
we really thought the crocodile rock would last

So hey kids, rock and roll, rock on … but remember not to become too brain-washed by Wal-Mart who will use AC/DC, Brittany Spears, Madonna, Michael Jackson, Lindsay Lohan or any other troubled teen, personality, or commercial entity, they can take advantage of to line the coffin of old Sam Walton who is probably lying there with a huge smile on his face.

KH

After today, (Nov. 4th) consider me gone

There is a song by Sting that says,

“After today … consider me gone.”

That’s what one the candidates will be saying Tuesday, Nov. 4th as America heads to the polls.  As John McCain and Barack Obama plunge through the final weekend in their final sprint for the White House, it’s a numbers game at this point. Only 100-hours more to go. Thank God!

I wasn’t even running for political office and I got to tell you- I’m worn out after this very intense, political year. The primary between Hillary and Obama was intense, unlike anything American voters have seen in the past. Between now and Tuesday you’ll see headlines such as these as the bean-counters, pollsters, and media armchair generals try to spin the numbers.

• AP poll shows Obama backers gleeful, McCain’s glum AP
• Stump to the Finish ABC News
• A campaign for the ages, tilting toward Democrats AP
• Obama-McCain Duel Spurs Charges of Voter Fraud, Suppression Bloomberg

Here in Chicago, authorities are bracing for as many as a million people in downtown Grant Park Tuesday night to cheer on Barack Obama as election returns come in, a potential celebration and security headache.

Can The Republicans win? Depends on what news-source you listen to. Just as there are “red” and “blue” states there are also “red” and “blue” media sources. Here in Chicago at my former employer, The Chicago Sun-Times, black columnist Mary Mitchell is a “blue” news source, her counterpart columnist Michael Sneed is a “red” source. Both are the very best columnists in the business today, they just work opposite sides of the aisle. They’re probably the best of friends as well personally. Professionally they spar. It’s all part of the game. In politics, you can’t take anything personally as Hillary supporters found out the hard way at the DNC convention last August in Denver.

Gallup Daily: Obama 52%, McCain 42% Among Likely Voters

The hard work is done. Now, it’s just a numbers game. Both campaigns will kick back in their prospective campaign headquarters as the bean-counters crunch the numbers and confirm what most Americans already know. They just can’t make it official until the evening of Nov. 4th when the candidate with the least numbers steps up to the podium to make his concession speech.

Americans learned during the first Bush W. election that popular election results are nice, but they don’t win you elections. Just ask Al Gore who is still crying in his beer. Elections are won by electoral votes.

So, McCain can brag that he’s won Montana, North Dakota, even Sarah Palin can brag that she carried her home state of Alaska. Big deal. Each state has only 3 electoral votes. The big states needed to win are California with 55 electoral votes, Illinois with 21, New York with 31, and so forth. If you clink on the above link you’ll see that most of these states, (the one’s with the largest number of electoral votes) are all “blue” states. Obama mama’s.

That smiling guy walking down the street? Odds are he’s a Barack Obama backer. The grouchy looking one? He voted for McCain.

So, don’t listen to all the numbers crunchers, the bean-counters, media-pollsters, media arm chair quarter-backs or you’ll drive yourself crazy. Instead, kick back, hold up your glass and toast the obvious winner as America holds it’s breath and takes one giant and courageous step into our future together as Americans. And oh yeah,

DON’T FORGET TO VOTE!!!

You’ll see all kinds of wild poll results between now and Nov. 4th, but after Nov. 4th- one of the candidates will be singing that Sting song,

“history reeks of the wrongs we have done
After today, consider me gone.”

KH

The $5-dollar slop sandwhich

I got this flyer in my daily paper from Subway.
A full-page photo ad for  Subway’s  new $5 Chicken Pizziola. I admit the photo with the melted Mozzarella cheese, chicken, pepperoni and tomato’s on a toasted  foot-long Italian Bread looked so good I had to try one. And the $5 price for a foot-long seemed reasonable. Here’s what I got for my $5 bucks- a slop sandwich. The Mexican behind the counter barely spoke English- the Mexican girl mopping the floor- spoke no English at all. The sandwich maker slopped Mostacholi sauce on it, barely put any chicken or pepperoni on it, sprinkled Parmesan cheese on it and forgot to add the Pepper-Jack or Mozzarella cheese or whatever it was supposed to get. It was the worst piece of slop I have ever been served. When I showed it to him and requested that he remake the sandwich., he became rude and insulting. I demanded my money back. It was either that or  climb over the counter and beat him to death with the sandwich.

Which brings quickly me to the point of this blog. The corporate fast-food empire in America is evil. They have had Americans bending over so long, spreading our butt-cheeks and liking it, that they think they can get away with whatever they want, whenever they want , and treat the customers however they want. McDonalds makes billions-of dollars every year. Last year McDonalds revenues reached a record high of $22.8 billion on global comparable sales of 6.8% and returned $5.7 billion to shareholders through shares repurchased and dividends paid. Yet. last week, McDonalds announced that they are no longer going to offer its customers free water. Other cutbacks include charging for extra dipping sauces for McNuggets  and mustard/ketchup packets, Now this is a company that made $22 billion dollars folks and they’re too cheap to offer  the customer a free glass of water? I am not going to spend $4 bucks for the four-piece frozen McNuggets and have to pay extra for an extra dipping-sauce. Now, they’re eliminating cheese from the double-cheeeseburger on the dollar menu. That imitation-cheese-slice will cost extra.

Cheap bastards.
Other fast-food chains are also doing the same.

Last time I went to McDonalds, I ordered a hamburger off the dollar menu. Here’ s what I got for my dollar. I had to lift the bun to find the meat patty, they slopped on a tablespoon of ketchup. there was one pickle slice and three small dices of onion. In-other-words, I got a slop sandwich for a dollar.
Fast food companies, rake in billions every year while hiring illegal aliens ,who they work like dogs, pay them practically nothing, the restaurants are dirty, bathrooms are filthy, the quality of the food product is deplorable and they treat their customers like crap. Most fast-food workers are rude and insulting, particularly if you ask them to remake a sandwich. or correct a mistake they made in the ordering or delivery of your product. They then add insult to injury, after you’ve paid $10 for a dollar-grease burger with cheese, fries and a coke by asking if you want to spend even more money by super-sizing that grease-burger, low-trans-fat fries that taste like pencil-lead and watered down Coke.

Forty-five-years ago a man by the name of Ray Kroc visited a San Bernardino burger joint. The quality of the food was awesome, the service fast and courteous, Kroc knew he would make a fortune spreading the idea of fast, courteous service nationwide. Kroc bought out the McDonnell brothers for $2.7 million, The rest was history.

Today, McDonalds (having served over 99-billion) is not the same courteous, fast service that Kroc found in San Bernardino. They have become a faceless corporate monster whose lawyers swoop down on anyone who tries to name their new restaurant anything that sounds like McDonalds,  impugn the character of McDonalds (while the quality of their product has gone to the dogs), try to unionize its workers all the while treating its employees and customers with contempt. Taco Bell, Burger KIng, Wendy’s have all followed suit.

Why have these faceless corporate “evil empires flourished the last 25-years? They’ve been getting away with whatever they want and treating the customer however they want because we let them. Americans are too polite to “speak-up.” Americans have looked the other way for so long that the corporate food  pirates have gotten used to getting their own way. Plus, the fact that these corporations are so big that they can squash the little guy. Anyone who tries to open their own burger (Good Times, Checkers) Pizza (Pizza Hut) Taco (Taco Bell) or chicken (KFC) chain.

I don’ t do fast foods.

I don’t patronize them  for the reason that the last few times I have visited fast-foods my experience was atrocious both in the food quality and rudeness I received. The attitude of these fast food czars has become, “If you don’t like it go somewhere else.” Hey, they made $22-billion last year alone- they don’t need your business.  One less customer more or less is not going to put much of a dent in a $22-billion-dollar a year operation. And that attitude is horrible customer service. It shows just what contempt these corporate food stuffs really have for us, the consumer. 45-years ago, they actually wanted your business. You got a burger, fries and coke and change back from your dollar.

I am not going to spend $5 on a quarter-pounder, or Double Whopper, a greasy, heart-attach causing shit sandwich. For about the same price that these grease-pits charge for their “shit”sandwich, I I can go to a real bar, order a real burger on a real bun, (not like the bun at McDonalds and BK which falls apart when you pick it up in your hands). The bar also gives me a side of coleslaw and a cold dill pickle, I also get a smile from the bartender as he hands me my cold draft beer to wash it all down.
I am a great believer in small business not these evil corporate empires who don’t give a crap about the quality of-their product or your experience just about the amount of dividends they can return to their shareholders.
When Taco Bell first opened 20-some years ago in my suburb in 1977,  (the small store with the slanted terra-cotta roof), the quality of the food was great and you couldn ‘t beat the price. That’s why all the Mexicans ate there. This summer, I had the misfortune  to visit a Taco Smell. The refried beans were raw, the spanish-rice all dried out, the dollar beef-burrito was so runny it looked like diarrhea.   Even dogs eat better than this in America. I am just tired of paying $4 for a Gordita that is going to give me the shits an hour later.
Aren’t you?

Big Business, Corporate America,  think they’ re immune. They, like McDonalds, BK, Taco Bell, Wendy’s, KFC and all the other giant corporate fast-food chains think their brand-name is worldwide and that the company is so huge that they can coast on their past success. Which is why they do whatever they like, when they like, and treat their customer however rudely they like.  Americans are so used to putting up with it that we’ll keep paying for it and liking it. Or so they think.

But here’s the thing that a lot of corporate businesses are beginning to find out, competition is a good thing. Just bad for them. Competition forces these giant businesses to keep their prices low, keep the quality of their product high and maintain fast, courteous service or the consumers will take their business elsewhere. To the corner bar perhaps where I go for a beer and a burger.

Twenty-five-years ago ,Pizza Hut had the Pizza business locked up, today;  they have lots of competition with Domino’s, Uno’s, Papa Johns, California Pizza Kitchen, Wolfgang Puck’s, and other’s.
McDonalds competes with #2 BK, Checker’s, Good Times, and new burger chains start up every week. Subway goes head to head with Quizno’s and other deli chains, KFC dances with Pop-eye’s and other chicken chains. Taco Bell competes with Taco Johns and Del Taco who is quickly catching up.
So folks, as a consumer, you no longer have to bend over and take it from these faceless corporate fast-foods who care nothing about you but just want to separate you from your money.

The next time some insulting illegal alien serves you a $5-slop-sandwich while working for a corporation like Subway or McDonalds that makes billions of dollars a year, you don’t have to take it. You can speak up, demand your money back,  jump over the counter and beat the SOB to death with his own sandwich or- you can walk next door to the small business owner who has just started up a burger, deli, chicken, or taco stand and give them your business. Not only will you get your $5 worth with probably the best burger, taco, chicken, you have had in awhile but the courteous, fast service you receive will make you want to come back time and time again. That’s how the McDonnell brothers in San Bernardino did it to make almost $3 million-dollars. Too bad, the faceless bureaucrats at McDonalds have forgotten just how they go to 99-billion served.

So bend over Subway and McDonalds. It’s time you spread your butt cheeks and liked it.

KH

The Rule Of Three

Jurassic Park Theme

From the time I was a small boy, I would hear the public respond  to the death of a celebrity by saying, “It always happens in three’s.” Over the years, the theory for the most part seems to have held up. I have come to call it, “The Rule Of Three.”

As an author, I know that The “Rule Of Three” is not some new Dan Brown novel but a principle in English writing that suggests that things that come in threes are inherently funnier, more satisfying, or more effective than other numbers of things. The Rule of Three (also Three-fold Law or Law of Return) is a religious tenet held by some Wiccans. It states that whatever energy a person puts out into the world, be it positive or negative, will be returned to that person three times. If that is the case, then the three friends and mentor’s I lost this past week were giants among men and as such, their loss creates a gigantic void that will not soon be filled.

Over the years, as I became increasingly aware of this “death in three’s,” it seemed to me each time a celebrity died that all three deceased were employed in the same career field. Recently, Michael Crichton, Tony Hillerman, and Studs Terkel were all authors. When Katherine Hepburn died, it seemed to me that all three deceased were in the acting profession. When Mel Torme died in 1999, it seemed to me that all three deceased were employed as musicians.

Maybe God, up there in his heaven, feels a void from time to time or has need of three great talents in the same career field to entertain him so he takes them all at once. Maybe it’s just the Wiccan Rule of Three- whatever energy a person puts out into the world, be it positive or negative, will be returned to that person three times or conversely, when that  energy is taken out of this world- it is taken from us three times.

About his friend, Director Stephen Spielberg said this: Michael’s talent out-scaled even his own dinosaurs of ‘Jurassic Park.”  Spielberg,  directed the blockbuster movie version of Jurassic Park and its sequel, “The Lost World.”

Michael  Crichton (Jurassic Park), creator of ER and other TV series, died unexpectedly in Los Angeles, (November 4, 2008) after a courageous and private battle against cancer. He was 66. Crichton, a medical doctor turned novelist and filmmaker whose books have sold more than 150 million copies worldwide.

Tony Hillerman (Thief of Time) died of heart-related problems at age 83. (listen to Catfish Muse)

Chicago legendary journalist Studs Terkel, died peacefully in his sleep of old age at age 96.

Studs Terkel, who died on October 31, 2008 at the age of 96, was a born story teller and a radio pro, even though, he said: “I don’t know how a tape recorder works!”

About writing and being an author, Michael Crichton once said:

“Books aren’t written – they’re rewritten. Including your own. It is one of the hardest things to accept, especially after the seventh rewrite hasn’t quite done it.”

All three were giants on this earth. They were my friends,

and my mentors and I will sorely miss them.

Thanks for all the Dinosaur’s and Kokopelli’s.

Kilburn Hall

R-E-S-P-E-C-T

R-E-S-P-E-C-T
Find out what it means to me
~Aretha Franklin

I admire Barack Obama. Let me tell you why. When you think of what the man has accomplished, not only is it historic, (since everyone is using that word lately) it’s just down right phenomenal. How many of us could achieve what Barack Obama has achieved the last two years? With all the challenges he has had to face? A black-man running for the highest office on the land, with the threat of white-supremacy, the thought of assasination hanging over his head. You know, it was a mere 38-years ago that then Governor of Alabama, George Wallace, was denying blacks entrance to an all-white school. The National Guard was called in. White Supremist wack-jobs (KKK) were killing black leaders all through the deep-South.  I needn’t remind Americans of the horrors of the civil-rights movement and the assassination of black leaders like Malcom X and Martin-Luther King. What a very long way we’ve come in such a short time. What Americans did at the polls Nov. 4th went beyond historic. Miracle is a word that comes to mind. A miracle on so many levels. A miracle that Americans could move beyond their prejudices to “do the right thing.”

As President-elect Obama said in his acceptance speech from Grant Park:

“If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible, who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time, who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer.”

As Obama fielded phone-calls from  world leaders today, these world-leaders all saw the same thing that I did, that I hope, you all did, that America not only got a historic president, America got a courageous president.

Most people in America are giving the new president-elect the R-E-S-P-E-C-T he deserves.  Obama, “a good sport” kept quiet the day after his landslide victory to allow McCain and Palin time to make a graceful exit. That’s our president showing his opponents the R-E-S-P-E-C-T they deserve. It’s too bad McCain’s own campaign staff couldn’t show Sarah Palin, McCain’s running mate the R-E-S-P-E-C-T she deserves. Telling tales out of school that Palin didn’t know (Africa)  a continent from a country, about the $150,000 the RNC spent on clothes for her and her family because she was so “ill-prepared” when she got the call, is inappropriate, back-biting, and does all Americans a dis-service. We should be bigger than this.

Ok, so you disagree with her politics or lack of.  So you think she’s a moose-shooting lunatic. The fact is- the woman is Governor of Alaska, a former candidate for Vice-President, (the 2nd highest office in the land), and she lost …  as such she’s still deserving of that Aretha Franklin R-E-S-P-E-C-T.

As my childhood friend Snagglepuss always used to say;

“Exit …   Stage Left.”

Both McCain and Palin showed real self-R-E-S-P-E-C-T by making a quiet exit.

Palin’s handler’s were flooded with a ton of interview requests from the likes of a Barbara Walter’s (”Babs”) and others who would’ve pinned the blame for the demise of the Republican party on her. Wisely, she declined those interviews to return home and sleep in her own bed after nine months. Palin/McCain showed their new PREZ the respect he’s due by not engaging in unsportsmanlike conduct and finger pointing. They lost- they lost big- and it was all fair-and-square. No charges of voter fraud, no demand for a re-count like Al Gore who still can’t believe he lost eight-years later.

Note to AL: “AL- you lost pal!

Get over it.”

John McCain drove himself home, Palin and family flew into Alaska to be greeted by a storm of controversy- un-sportsman-like conduct by McCain’s people who helped prep her for her Vice-Presidential debate against Joe Biden. (Our new Vice-President). Naturally, Sarah is fighting back today and I say good for her and good for the Republican party. If anyone can help save the Republican party these days it is Sarah Palin. The Moose-shooting, hockey-mom, and friend of  Joe-sick-pack. This is the Republican base, (You know), Rush Limbaugh windbags-who think their slicker-than-snot but walk around in flannel shirts, burping and farting, getting America involved in an eight-year occupation of a country filled with nothing but sand solely on the basis of one “Axis-of-Evil” speech. (I refer to the movie W- 2008).

So Re-pubs, if you ever, ever, want another chance at controlling 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue again, you’d do well to brush up on your Aretha Franklin and start humming a few bars of:

“R-E-S-P-E-C-T
Find out what it means to me and treat me right when I get home.”

I’m Kilburn Hall.

Obama’s nation has begun

Obama’s nation
has begun.

Join the
(Patriotic, Resilient, Conservative)
Resistance

The website ad blares.

Welcome to Obama’s nation…
The “transformational” figure who will “change the world” is now in charge, and he’s on a mission. Emboldened by an overwhelming electoral victory and a near-super-majority in Congress, President-elect. Obama and his allies are preparing to implement his liberal, “post-American” agenda. Simply put, what President-elect Obama and the Pelosi-Reid Congress have in store has the potential to rapidly move America to the socialist Left.

The man just won the election not one week ago, will not take office until Jan. 20, 2009 and already the Neo-Cons and Neo-conservative grassroots organizations like Grassfire.org and others are already on the attack. They claim Obama wants to move America to the socialist left. I say- what’s wrong with that?

We tried it their way, the Neo-Conservative way, for eight years and it did not work. In fact, not only did it not work, it caused a meltdown in this country which will take an Obama administration eight-years to undo. Under the Neo-Cons and Grassfire,org-like groups, greedy bankers/lenders caused a banking meltdown with many major banks going out of business, a housing/lending crisis with credit being frozen in America, millions of Americans losing their homes to foreclosure, we’ve seen the meltdown of our Stock-Market not to mention markets around the world in-Japan,  and Europe. America has been bogged down not in a war- (we won the war in Irag in two-weeks time), America has been bogged down in an eight-year occupation, spending billions of needed dollars at home, needless loss of life of thousands of American GI’s in a country that has nothing but sand, sand …..

Not oil, not technology, not crops but filthy dirty rag-wearing terrorists that live in caves and subsist on a steady diet of rodents. It’s called Empire Building. The British tried it for a 100-years and it did not work, they were driven out of India, Africa, and every other country/continent they tried to occupy.

1 million citizens resisting… the ad claims.
I find it unlikely they have 1 million citizens with the election barely a week over. But if they do- who are these people? What are their names? Publish their names on the web or in newspapers so we can verify that these are legitimate citizens and not a figment of Grassfire,org’s imagaination.

Secondly- who is funding this 1-million person resistance? Publish the names of your donors again so we can verify that these are legitimate donors and not a figment of Grassfire,org’s vivid imagination.

But you know Grassfire.org will not publish the names of the 1-million so called resistance, because there are not 1 million people who resist an Obama administration (likely one hundred sore Neo_con losers who bungled McCains campaign and are now crying in their beer). Grassfire.org will not publish the names of the donors who are funding this “tripe” they call resistance because the names would be people like Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, John/Cindy McCain,  Limbaugh, Cheney, Rummy, and other’s who have lost their power and now have to sit idly by on the sidelines the next eight-years planning and scheming their comeback like the little spiders they are.

Specifically, The faceless, scheming beaurocrats behind Grassfire,org state that they specifically resist:

1.Socialistic wealth redistribution including any and all tax increases and big-government welfare programs. Silencing conservatives through the Fairness Doctrine and other efforts that restrict free speech.

Did they not listen to Obama’s plan? If you make under $120,000 a year – you don;t got to worry about any tax increase folks. The people that are worried about any redistribution are the scheming little spiders sitting on top of the heap of gold, corporate America, and others who pay relatively little taxes due to a collection of legal loopholes, tax deductions, and who have moved their corporations to China who have no controls whatsoever. The super rich. These are the people who are worried and rightly so. Deregulation did not work. Trickle down economics is a scam! It can’t trickle down to you  if you’re at the bottom of the sand-pile. You have to be in the upper-third of the sandpit for  trickle-down economics to affect you. The Super rich do not want their wealth to “trickle-down” especially to me and you.

So, I say tax the rich. Tax the hell out of-them! Make them pay for the damage they have caused this country by lining their pockets the last eight-years, ignoring the little guy, ignoring the American worker. Go after Wal-Mart and squeeze them like they have squeezed Americans with their hiring of ex-CIA agents to spy on Wal-Mart employees, thwarting unionization of its workers, paying their workers as little as they have to, working them like a dog, intimidating their workers in meetings that strongly suggest you vote for McCain or you no longer have a job at Wal-Mart These bastards need to go,  (which is highly unlikely),  so lets regulate the hell out of them. And who are these conservatives who would be silenced by an Obama administration? Name names! But  (Grassfire.org)  won’t tell you the names of the scheming little spiders who stand to lose under eight years of a Democrat-party controlled Washington the way our founding fathers intended democracy should work.

2.Open border anarchy including amnesty for illegal aliens and promotion of multi-nation “unions”.

There is an old Mexican saying, “Space does not separate people so much as culture.”

I have a Mexican friend who came here in the 1970’s from Mexico legally. He and his wife learned to speak English, they took the test for citizenship and passed and became U.S. citizens legally. They played by the rules and they have been rewarded for their hard work and are now buying their second home. My friend has nothing but contempt for these illegal Mexican who come here illegally and spit in our face. By being here illegally and working under the table- they rob both countries, (America and Mexico) by not paying taxes in either country. Most illegals, after two-three years, take their earnings and move back to Mexico. I say these people are criminals not illegals and as criminals we should not deport them (so they can hop-the first Greyhound bus back to the states and begin working illegally all over again), we should treat them like criminals- put them in jail, make them work off the cost of their incarceration. Instead, these Neo-Cons under George W. built a “Berlin-Wall” like fence along our southern border. If the Berlin Wall did not stop Eastern-block-citizens from escaping to freedom- you think the Bush-Wall will really deter illegals from Mexico who wish to escape poverty-stricken conditions by escaping to America for the chance at a new life?
I say give them a work permit and let them work and live here legally for any company like McDonalds willing to hire them and pay them minimum wage and make them pay taxes on their income like all U.S. citizens do. Like you and I do. Let them find out how expensive it is to live in America- maybe they’ll be running back over the border once they start paying Cook County, Illinois taxes of 10.5-percent or higher.

3. Government-run health care that weakens our system and imposes more tax burdens on citizens.

Please! Obama is not going to give us government run health care or have his administration hand out condoms to grade-school children.  But Obama made a valid point in his last Presidential debate- every child in America should be insured. If you starve your child, beat your child, neglect your child, have sex with a child, these are all crimes. So, why is it not a crime to “not”  provide adequate medical care for all children? I say, prosecute those fringe-religious groups like Christian Scientists and others who deny children basic medical care and those irresponsible parents who will not make an attempt to insure their child to pay for basic medical costs. We live in the greatest country on earth. Living in America is a privilege- not a right. Basic medical care for small children should be a right not a privilege.

4. Weakening of our military through rapid pullback from Iraq, defending our troops and overall disarmament.

An Obama administration is not going to give us a Bill Murray (Stripes)  military. Don’t listen to the “fear-mongerers.” In fact, our military will become a leaner, smarter, fighting machine. Ground occupations, (the kind we fought in WWII and Korea) are obsolete. President Clinton was on the right track with his “fly-swatter” approach to terrorist-sponsored nations and I think an Obama administration would be wise to follow suit. America does not have the manpower nor the resources to become the world’s policeman. This is why we have the United Nations. Under George W, the U.N. became an irrelevant debating society. A smart President Obama would put sanctions on the United Nations, forcing them to do the job they should have been doing all along or kick their butts out of the U.S. Make them find another country for their headquarters’. Another country the U.N. can sponge off of while at the same time denouncing them as they have us.

5. Social liberalism including radical pro-abortion agenda, the end of marriage and the homosexual agenda. Liberal court activism that undermines faith, family and liberties while expanding government control.
Total rubbish. A marriage is a union between two people -period!. Marriage guarantees certain rights, the right to visit your partner in the hospital, extend medical/insurance coverage, shared living arrangements and other joint legal arrangements entered into. Do gays love their partner less than hetero’s? The Neo-Cons and Grassfire.org would have you believe so. I say, extend the same rights to gay couples that straight couples have. For to not do so is discrimination, and harassment. The religious right, under King James Dobson,  creates a climate of fear, having straights bekieve that if we allow gay marriage the gays will run around buggering our small boys in the schoolyard. Total rubbish. Gay marriage simply would put an end to the power and control the scheming religious spiders like James Dobson, Pat Robertson, Bennie Hinn,  now enjoy not to mention a dent in their pocketbooks. I say that no one should be discriminated against, harassed, beaten, or killed because of their sexual orientation nor denied the same inalienable rights as that of hetero’s.

6. Post-American globalism that diminishes our global role and threatens our national sovereignty.
Environmental extremism,  the CO2 tax, undermining coal and nuclear, and bans on
exploration.

Oh, like the globalism that has gone on the last eight years under the Bush administration and whack-jobs like Grassfire.org? Obama has promised the first true “green” administration in history demanding that Detroit turn-out 150,000 alternative-fueled automobiles a month. An Obama administration would sign the Kyoto accords, crackdown on illegal Japanese whaling, start drilling again so our Arab neighbors can’t take advantage of Americans anymore while sending their terrorists to fly planes into our Trade Towers. The 911 terrorists, Osama Bin Laden, were not Iraqi nor Afghani, Iranian, nor Syrian folks, they were Arab, Arab terrorists. The same Arabs who last summer charged every American $5 a gallon of gas, the crude drilled in Arab countries, shipped from Arab countries, and refined in America utilizing Arab workers. All funded and protected by the American CIA.

Under an Obama nation, Grassfire.org and their cronies at Enron who profited under a Bush administration are going to take a very palpable hit and that’s what this so called Grassfire.org Obama-resistance movement is really al about. It has nothing to do with politics folks- it’s just the old-fashioned shell-game. Make you so busy watching the right hand you don’t see what the left hand is doing.

The Grassfire.org Obama resistance (the Neo-Cons),  is about G-R-E-E-D. plain and simple. They’re the folks who are going to have to sit idly by on the sidelines watching as Democrats line their pockets for a change. Well, for the next eight-years anyway.

Change is a good thing as is redistribution of  wealth and political power from time to time. It’s called Yin and Yang. Through the shift from Neo-Conservatism to far-leftism, (Yin and Yang) balance is achieve.

It’s time to resist any Obama resistance and damn well time to start fighting back against Grassfire.org, Neo-Cons, Rush Limbaugh and other far-right conservative nut-jobs who would create a climate off fear in this country and get Americans to resist change, to resist what we know is the best path for us.

So join the (Patriotic, Resilient, Democrat) Resistance  The Obama Nation has begin.

Join with Obama, lets create a new America while resisting the same old tired, business-as-usual politics and climate of fear of Grassfire.org and the Neo-conservatives.

KH

Creating tomorrow’s dirty-laundry today

“What’s the difference between a Journalism and a catfish? One’s a bottom-dwelling scumsucker, the other’s a fish.”

When I was growing up as a kid, the most deplorable of professions was that of an ambulance chasing lawyer. After Watergate, it was the politicians. Today, at the bottom of the food-chain it is “Journalists.” Are you old enough to remember when journalists actually reported the news without creating the news? In the James Bond film, Tomorrow Never Dies, Elliott Carver makes a wonderful antagonist, the head of a billion-dollar media-empire he creates tomorrow’s news today. The tool of his trade? Creating and promoting an atmosphere of fear. No one can suck the fun out of a room faster than CNN.

Almost thirty years ago to the day, (November 18, 1978) the tragedy of the Jonestown Massacre in Guyana still shocks the public, and Jim Jones continues to loom as America’s worst cult leader. Jones was the role model for whack-jobs to follow like Rev. Moon, David Khoresh and the Branch Divideans, (in which 76 Branch Davidians, 21 of whom were children, were killed in the ensuing blaze. Autopsies confirmed that many of the victims, (including David Khoresh),  died of single gunshot wounds to their heads, (murder-suicide pacts), Applewhite and his Heaven’s Gate Cult mass suicide in which 39 people died by mixing phenobarbitol with applesauce or pudding. Each of the cult members wearing black Nike sneakers, and eight of the male members of the cult had been castrated. All this because they thought the earth was being invaded by UFO’s. Wacko’s, nut-jobs, give us dirty laundry.

So why, after 30-years, when American government failed to learn their lesson at Jonestown is CNN regurgitating the horrible tragedy?

WE NEED DIRTY LAUNDRY!

“We got the bubble-headed-bleach-blonde who
Comes on at five
She can tell you bout the plane crash with a gleam
In her eye
Its interesting when people die.”

Give us dirty laundry.”

What’s the point of regurgitating senseless tragedy merely because it is the 30th anniversary of something?  Does it make us better journalists, better citizens, does our government learn from the horrible tragedies of our past to prevent them in the present? Obviously not because America still continue’s to turn out David Khoresh’s,  Applewhite’s, Fundamentalist LDS leaders who still rape underage girls.

The parents of the victims at Guyana, many of whom are old or deceased have come to closure with the tragedy there and made peace with it. Why pull the scab off an old wound?  I say that we should allow the parents of the victims to have some peace about the tragedy. But, CNN has to have its ratings.  WE NEED DIRTY LAUNDRY!

Many, of the children from 1978,  (brothers and sisters of the victims, sons/daughters of the parents_ who died at Jonestown now have children and families of their own. They are hopefully older and a lot wiser and politically astute than America was back in its naivete of 1978. Do we really need to revisit the carnage with the video footage of stacked bodies on all the major networks?

CNN and the networks do not care about your pain!

Nor do network executives care about their own reporters many of whom, would rather not have to regurgitate the tragedy of Jonestown and turn it into a some sort of American Idol or Dancing With the Stars. This is the state of journalism as we find it in 2008, the Elliott Carvers of the “new media” who make Rupert Murdock look tame in comparison.

As a young journalist I learned quickly that, “If it bleeds- it leads.”

We exercised restraint in what we reported and more importantly how we reported it. Today’s young infotainment twenty-something journalists (under pressure for ratings and looking to build careers) do not labor under such restraints or compassion. What made Dan Rather great was that he reported “live” from the rice-paddies of Vietnam about the blood, death, and carnage, all around him but he did it with such compassion that it brought tears to your eyes. How did our industry repay this great journalist, who is right up there with Edward R. Murrow, and Walter Cronkite?  His own network (CBS) set him up to fail, the young-twenty-somethings who control entire networks these days set him up to report a false story about George W. Bush’s military record with bogus documents for a “60 Minutes” report charging that President Bush received favorable treatment in the National Guard. Welcome to the dog-eat-dog world of journalism where ratings and getting ahead are the only thing that matter and to the victor go the spoils. I looked up the definition of journalists in the dictionary recently. This is what it said: “Bottom-dwelling scumsuckers.”

GIVE US DIRTY LAUNDRY!

In the 1970s, Jones, the ever charming and charismatic Reverend gained attention and cultivated swift popularity amongst influential political leaders within his San Francisco community. That was his public face. In private, he was a gun-toting, drug-using tyrant who suffered from paranoia and a persecution-complex and who seduced most of the married women and young girls in his church. The 1970’s were a time when most Americans were not familiar with what a “cult” was or what constituted a “religious cult.” The overall positive but fake message Jones preached drew large numbers of congregants to his sermons. Even as he requested money in exchange for miracle healings and preached the need for a complete separation from society for anyone not a member of the Peoples Temple,  Jim Jones also did something almost unprecedented for a white religious leader. He advocated integration of his Church, and his black and white followers worshiped side-by-side at a time when racial tensions were still extremely high across the country. Tragically, they also died side-by-side in true black/white integration.

When authorities began looking into allegations that Jones  was engaged in a wide-ranging criminal enterprise which included welfare fraud, election fraud, child abuse, and extortion, instead of the FBI detaining him,  the government hiccuped allowing Jones to flee to French Guyana, a Banana-Republic that had no extradition with the U.S. at the time. Once there, under the protection of the Guyanese military, Jones and The People’s Temple purchased 3,800 acres of land to occupy in Guyana and  through long-distance phone calls and letters, convinced nearly one thousand  fanatical followers to up-root their lives and family and follow him down to the Peoples Temple Agricultural Project,  under the leadership or dictatorship of Jim Jones. On November 17, 1978, Congressman Leo Ryan traveled to Guyana to investigate the concerns of constituents, (parents and relatives of the cult-members), many of whom were believed to be held against their will and not allowed to leave. Ryan offered space on his DC-8 to any cult member wishing to leave. Jone’s security force along with the Guyanese military gunned down Ryan and everyone at the landing strip. Convinced the CIA would come after him (that paranoia-persecution complex again) on November 18, 1978,  Jim Jones and 908 Jonestown residents died on the compound. Most were coerced into drinking cyanide-laced kool-aid, an idea concocted by Jones. Others were shot while attempting to flee, and at least one resident, Jim Jones himself, committed suicide before the CIA was able to secure the compound.

Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

In 1993, a religious cult, named the Branch Divideans had David Khoresh as their leader. They had a “compound” on the outskirts of town. Authorites received complaints about child abuse, the stockpiling of automatic-weapons, child rape, forced marriages, etc. The Davidians were recieving lots of government aid, food stamps, etc. So, the ATF (a new organization wanting to flex its might)  goes out there like an army to force this and that. The armed Davidians denied them entrance. It became a standoff.

After the disastrous events at Ruby Ridge, The FBI  wanted to wait it out. But attorney-general Janet Reno, (on the ropes after the Elian Gonzalez fiasco), decided to prove her might.  The ATF  decides to invade using a riot tank.  There has been a lot of controversy about how it went down, some say the government started the fire in the huge main house to smoke them out, others say the Davidians themselves started the fire to commit suicide. Most didn’t come out, they died in the fire or committed suicide in there. All 903 of them, men women, small children.

Jim Jones, People’s Temple, the mass-suicide at the  Peoples Temple Agricultural Project,  The Branch Davidians at Waco Tx, Applewhite and Heaven’s Gate Cult, Rev. Moon  remain fascinating case-studies for social scientists and psychologists for years to come as they seek to answer the all consuming question on everyone’s mind,

How could society have let this happen?

Could it happen again? Is it happening again?

The events at Waco, TX. with the Branch Davidians, Applewhite and Heaven’s Gate Cult, Elian Gonzalez, Ruby Ridge, the recent government mistep in Texas with the kidnapping and detaining of Fundamentalist LDS Church kids. (The Texas Supreme Court ruled there was no constitutional grounds for the raid based on the basis of an anonymous phone call. They’re in the process of returning the children to their mothers).

Don Henley is rock-critically correct with his song Dirty Laundry as is Harp, Vibe, Spin, and Rolling Stone magazines. The American media has become incapable of policing itself.

The country is really standing on a cliff when it comes to media concentration. When you go over that cliff you are going to be fundamentally changing what this country is about, and not for the better.”
– Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR

Folks, American journalists went over that cliff along time ago. Those remaining journalists like Anderson Cooper who think they matter or that they’re really making a difference are mere walking-zombies. The real journalism being done today is by bloggers like Matt Drudge (The Drudge Report) Arianna Huffington, myself and other’s. Don’t get sucked in by network journalism and FOX NEWS, who “kick em when they’re up- kick em when they’re down.” Take the time to become a blogger, read blogs. With more than 14 million blogs in existence this year and another 80,000 being created each day, there is limitless information available to the average reader to help you make a more informed decision.

Personally, I’m sick to death of watching cute news couples like “Randy and Nancy”  or Nerissa and Drew Sugars, or some other cutesy husband/wife news team or the obligatory bubble-headed bleach-blonde anchor with her perfect hair and designer jewelry reporting on the senseless tragedies as if it was some sort of cutesy entertainment story.

We can do the innuendo
We can dance and sing
When its said and done we havent told you a thing
We all know that crap is king

I don’t really need to find out whats going on, I don’t really want to know just how far its gone.  Just leave well enough alone, and leave the families of the victims of whatever horrendous tragedy alone.
Eat your dirty laundry!

Kilburn Hall

Secretary Of State? Oh no … Mrs. Bill

One of the names in consideration this week to fill the secretary of-state position in the new Obama administration is Hillary Clinton. I’m keeping my fingers crossed.

Knowing Hillary, as we know her, she would make Madeline Albright look like that girl scout in The Addams Family movie who tried to sell Wednesday Addams some girl-scout cookies. Hillary Clinton as Secretary Of State is a great choice- for America- just not for Hillary’s political ambitions. As Secretary Of State- Hillary would be a tough old broad.

She would walk softly and carry a big stick.

Most Secretary of State’s from Colin Powell on back to Henry Kissinger do not fare well politically. They usually end up making their living on the lecture circuit talking about the mistakes their administration (not they personally) made with foreign policy. The Secretary Of State position the last thirty-years has become the whipping boy, the doormat, to flawed Presidential administration policies and shifting world demographics, economics, and balance of power.

In Ben Franklin’s day, Secretary of State was an honored and revered position, akin to being the President of the United States. You were hosted by countries that actually requested your presence like France.  (No Freedom fries in those days). Banquets were given in our honor, keys to the city, with a Statue Of Liberty dumped on our doorstep.

In modern times,  Secretary of States,  (like Madeline Albright and  Condoleza Rice) and others who have shown such elementary disregard for foreign public opinion the last 30=years, most times have to duck out the back door before people start throwing garbage. Should Benjamin Franklin, arguably America’s greatest diplomat,  witness the harm Albright and “Condi” have done to America’s relations with the rest of the world (and America’s public diplomacy) he would roll over in his grave.

One of reasons the really qualified politicians turn down the position of Secretary Of State when offered them – it’s political suicide.

If Hillary has any political aspirations for running for the Oval Office in 2012- it would be political suicide for her to accept such a position that could blow up in her face. Should Iran start lobbing missiles at Israel- she can kiss her political career goodbye. Should the Iraq/Afghanistan conflict escalate  and become truly bloody again (as the six months following our invasion of Iraq)- kiss it goodbye Hillary.

Should the world economic/stock markets totally collapse and Japan and Europe suffer a severe recession/depression- kiss it goodbye Hillary.

Should Obama’s well intended foreign policy turn into shit hitting the proverbial worldwide fan- kiss it goodbye Hillary. You won’t be in the position to say, “I told you so” in 2012 for you have now become part of the Obama problem and no longer representing a solution.

Surely, Hillary’s political advisers must be telling her this. Surely they have been telling her that becoming the next Secretary Of State is political suicide and that should it all blow up in her face she has no chance in hell of any future political designs.

Face it, her husbands foreign policy was called, “The Flyswatter technique.” (Lob a few missile into Arab countries when the terrorists/freedom fighters act up) Take out a school or factory by mistake. Under Bill Clinton we had Black-hawk Down- (that tragedy in Mogadishu caused by Bill’s total contempt for our own military while respecting he rights of terrorists who were trying to kill us). Mr. Bill also gave us the bombing of the USS Cole- the newest and most state-of-the-art destroyer in the U.S. Fleet,  with a hole blown  in it the size of a barn simply because he wouldn’t give the officers on deck bullets for their service revolvers.
Oh No … Mr. Bill!

There they were, gathered at George Washington University,  five people who had made history and shaped American foreign policy for nearly four decades. Vietnam and détente. Hot war with Iraq and Cold War with the Soviet Union. Mideast peace-conferences and arms control. Kosovo and Iran. Rwanda and Iraq.
The fall of the Berlin Wall and the scourge of drought, poverty and AIDS in the developing world. Five former American Secretaries of State. The conversation was remarkable for its candor, depth and realism. But the advice the five former Secretary of States were offering President Obama’s pick for the office was this: “Get over it. Get real. Be smart.”

This coming from the five people who have been responsible for America’s safety the last 30-years? I have a five-year-old neighbor boy who could give better political advice.

How could President Obama and whoever he picks do any worse than these idiots?

Madeleine Albright suggests a nuclear confrontation with Iran (like that is gonna work. The only way to win that game is not to play). James Baker wants to increase the military even more. More men in the field when American families want their loved ones to come home.  All that these former politco minds can offer American’s is this:

“Engage the whole world.”

Attack soundbites. That’s it?  Nothing about a Benjamin Franklin or Abraham Lincoln detente, just blow up the whole world?  Smart advice when Russia has recently invaded Georgia, Putin is caving  to the KGB hardliners who want to bring back the Cold War, China’s spying and human-rights abuse against its own people are at atrocious levels, North Korea just closed the border with South Korea, Chavez (that South American wacko)  wants all neighboring countries to join him in a war against the U.S. By all means Henry Kissinger, James Baker, Warren Christopher, Madeleine Albright, Colin Powell, lets engage the whole world and watch WWIII destroy the entire planet.

_____________________________________________________

Fortunately for America-

President Obama “gets it.” He wants to sit the wacko’s like Arman-a-dinner-jacket and Castro down at the table for a little detente poker. You can’t make peace with your enemies if you don’t talk to them Obama says. Makes great sense to me unlike the five retired politcio whack-jobs who would wish to watch the world burn. It’s not their beat anymore and they can make even more money on the lecture circuit critizing an Obama administration and making un-wanted/un-needed suggestions. I get so tired of Jimmy Carter shooting his mouth off. He was  horrible President, his foreign policy was this- Americans were held hostage in Iran for a year. So, why does he shoot his mouth off and offer to fix every political crisis that comes along the last 20-years? Stay at home Jimmy- build your houses for Habitat for Humanity where you can actually do more good for Americans.

My hope for Secretary of State is Hillary.  However, I think she’s too smart to fall into that trap.

Whomever President Obama picks for his Secretary Of State,  I hope he/she will, as In Ben Franklins day, restore the Secretary of State post to a once more honored and revered position.      I would rather see our new Secretary Of State wining and dining our enemies at state dinners than ducking out the back way with Molotov cocktails being slung after them or Al-Qaeda making that warbling sound they do with their throats while waving rifles in the air. We’ve seen enough images like this to last a lifetime.

Ben Franklin said it best:  “Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.”

You can’t make peace with your enemy if you don’t talk to them.

KH

The Lost Art of Bond, James Bond.

The art of James Bond, 007, was this:

he longed for the foreplay and the cigarette afterward and we, the reading public and movie-fans, longed for his longing.

I was severely disappointed with the latest Bond release (Number 24 in the long list of Bond films) Quantum Of Solace not just as an author of a Bond novel, RED INDIANS but as a James Bond fan. Ian Fleming, the creator of Bond never intended that 007 become a “terminator” or two-dimensional cardboard cut-out action figure. Violence was always an annoyance for Bond which distracted him from his passions in life, (girls, cars, Baccarat), and his number one passion, the Vodka Martini, shaken not stirred. No twist of lemon  or Mojito as was added by Pierce Brosnan, just a simple Vodka Martini.

Four years ago,  Bond fans revolted when it was announced that Daniel Craig would be taking over the part from Pierce Brosnan, who played Bond like sex-on-a-stick. That was not the essence of the real Bond either, 007 was not a runway model, though Brosnan could do the double-entendre. Craig is a buffoon in a Tom Ford suit. He cannot do nuance  or smooth like Sean Connery, tongue-in-cheek like Roger Moore or double-entendre like Pierce Brosnan. In fact, Daniel Craig is best as James Bond when he speaks as little as possible. Now, how are you going to bed down the villians girlfriend to extract information from a Pussy Galore if you can’t do the tongue-in-cheek, the double-entendre, the practiced art of the metaphor?

What Craig does best is skull bashing. Might as well have cast him as Conan and given him a sword. (Oh wait, they tried that, he turned down the role of Captain America).  As if that was any more of a cardboard action figure than the Bond he plays in Quantum.

Garrett Young please … no more Bond pictures like this last one or you’ll lose all your die-hard Bond fans if you haven’ t already.

For me, the Bond franchise died when George Lazenby decided not to return for a second film following, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. George was great as James Bond, he could do smooth, suave, the practiced art of the double-entendre and he could do the action as well as any of them. Lazenby just didn’t have the fan base that Roger Moore had coming off The Saint (TV series) so Cubby Broccoli gave him the axe just as recent producers axed Pierce Brosnan because of his age. Have they ever considered how old James Bond would be these days? He would be chasing women in a geriatric ward and his Vodka Matini’s, (shaken but not stirred),  would most likely be Prune Juice. Had Lazenby had the time, he would have settled into the role and perhaps surpassed Sean Connery as the Bond favorite of all time.

Depending on when you were born, you have a different favorite Bond. Most of us, products of the sixties, irrevocably see Sean Connery as our favorite. Lazenby my second favorite with Brosnan a c close third. Those who came of age in the seventies, will always think of Roger Moore as their favorite with Generation X’ers- it is Timothy Dalton who was not half bad in The Living Daylights.

Quantum of Solace  (title which Bond affecionado’s like myself get but whose title confused today’s movie-goers) was the sequel to Casino Royale, the book that first introduced the world to James Bond. Born of an ornithology book about BIrds of the West Indies, Bond was seduced by an agent working for a criminal organization called Quantum whose head was the elusive Mr. White. Bond falls in love with the agent (Vesper Lynd)  sent to set him up  who is killed by Quantum. The sequel refers to the fact that getting revenge for Vesper Lynd’s murder leaves Bond with just a quantum or “minute fraction” of solace (satisfaction). “A quantum of solace.” Get it?

There is no Q,  (played rather brilliantly by former Monty Python founder John Cleese), no Moneypenny or the sexual double-entendre. Bond doesn’t even try to bed down the luscious Camille whch leads me to believe that the producers are turning Bond into a homosexual or effeminent lout. What next? A half-black, half hispanic, gay, transvestite, non-smoking, non-drinking, politically correct James Bond? Take me out and shoot me now.

As far as an evil villain, there is no diabolical Dr. Evil (Mike Meyer) and his usual accoutrement of henchmen. We get a warehouse, some dock workers and a hotel out in the middle of a desert that blows up with few quests staying in it other than the bad guys. Who stays at places like this anyway? Even when Bond strands Mr, Green out in the desert with no water but just a can of motor-oil to drink, we think what a horrible way to go out. We like this Bond with his unique sense of justice. Then we find out from M (played brilliantly by Judi Dench) that Mr. Green is shot three times in the head and the can of motor oil left untouched. Why do the producers do that? Give Bond a villainous heart and then soft-soap the violence to the public. We want Bond to be villainous of heart- just not all the skull bashing. We want Green to die of thirst with only motor-oil to drink in his last moments. (Green was trying to corner the water supply of some third-world country) the motor-oil an ironic metaphor.

The poor script, acting, plot,  and unabashed skull-bashing made me want to gag!

It’s time for a return to the lost art of Bond or for James Bond to retire gracefully once and for all with his dignity and balls intact.

Any further mucking about with the character by producers or lame acting of Daniel Craig will further serve to kill the franchise. Like Playboy, Hugh Hefner, Walther PBK, Aston Martini, Vodka Martini (shaken not stirred), James Bond, 007, is an icon and as such, there are some icons you just don’t tamper with.

Either return Bond to his elevated perch or kill the bastard off in a diabolical way that Blofeld would be proud of and have done with it once and for all. But no more mucking about with a blonde-haired, inferred homsosexual gnome in an ill-fitting Tom Ford suit who can’t speak more than one or two syllables of intelligent dialogue.

As 007 himself would advise:

You Only Live Twice

“We’ve had some interesting times together – I’ll be sorry to go”

(Bond, just before he dies).

KILBURN HALL

author of Red Indians (A James Bond 007 thriller)

Zack and Miri make a controversy

Since 1994 with the release of the movie, Natural Born Killers, Hollywood has faced an engma. How do you portray violence and sex without showing violence and sex? It’s a Catch-22. The controversy surrounding release of Natural Born Killers is similar to the controversy surrounding release of the recent film, Zack and Miri Make A Porno.

Platonic friends since grade-school, roommates Zack and Miri look to solve their respective cash-flow problems by making an adult film together. As the cameras roll, however, the duo begin to sense that they may have more feelings for each other than they previously thought.

Pretty simple comedy idea from the people who brought you the 40-Year-Old-Virgin. So why is 40-Year-Old Virgin funny and Zack and Miri Make A Porno controversial? The movie trailer poster was banned in the US by the MPAA for it’s content.  The bothersome title made getting ads for the movie difficult in some places.

“Zack and Miri Make a Porno” has been rejected because of the five-letter word that ends the title, said Gary Faber, head of marketing for the Weinstein Co., which is releasing the film.”

Those refusing to carry ads numbered about 15 newspapers and several TV stations and cable channels. Commercials for Zack and Miri during a Los Angeles Dodgers games on Fox Sports was dropped at the team’s request after some viewers complained.

Like who would complain?

We all like sex don’t we? Particularly after living through the 1960’s  and the Kennedy adminsitration where the “babes”  were running out the back door of the White House as fast as Jackie O was walking in the front door? Aah … there’s the rub.

We don’t all like sex. Some of us use “sex” to manipulate others into doing what we want, into giving us the political power or religious dictatorship over others that we crave. Our self-anointed religious saviors like King James Dobson and Jerry Falwell who are often caught in embarasing moments with their pants down around their ankles with a transvestite hooker and many of our Catholic Priests with Alterboys.

The reason that “sex” or even the mention of the word “porn” is controversial is that Americans like their sex behind closed doors. And we like “death” behind closed doors. We don’t like our “sex” lives or sex acts or “death” on public display. We feel uncomfortable discussing it around the dinner table at Thanksgiving. Our uncomfortableness is what keeps the Russian Mafia with its billion-dollar-a-year “Porn” industry on the web in business with its millions of sex webcam sites like Jasmin.com, Liveprivates.com, Cam4.com, Imlive.com, and others.

We are so umcomfortable about having our “sex” in public that sixteen-year-old popstars like Jamie Spears and the daughter of Vice-Presidential candidate Sarah Palin are pregnant out of wedlock. Americans like “to do it” we just don’t like to talk about it. Therein lies the problem. Americans love “to do it” but we feel uncomfortable talking about it. Well, someone has to talk about it. Someone who is not a quack like Dr. Ruth or Dr. Laura. Someone other than the Hispanic gangbanger looking to bang your daughter.

What makes 40-Year-Old-Virgin a funny comedy and Zack and Miri a controversy? One word.

“Intimation.” (a slight suggestion or vague understanding).

Steve Carrell (40-Year-Old Virgin) “intimates” sex never providing graphic details. Even the sex scenes are intimated. In Zack and Miri the sex is graphic and it is raunchy. There is the blonde porno actress who is constipated delivering a hershey-kiss on screen, there is the porn star Bubbles demonstrating for millions of movie-going fans just how she earned her nickname before strapping on a dildo and giving it to her man doggy-style.

The devil is in the details and religious whack-jobs like James Dobson, Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson are foaming at the mouth. They live for soundbite moments like this.

As with the controversy of Natural Born Killers which was deemed “too violent” by the MPAA how does Hollywood have an open and honest conversation about “sex,” “porn” or “graphic violence” without actually showing any “sex,” “porn” or “graphic violence?”

The honest answer is they can’t.

Personally, I loved the movie. I thought Zack and Miri was hillarious and more genuine than the disingenuous 40-Year-Old-Virgin. Who is a virgin at age 40? And who are we fooling by suggesting someone could still be a virgin at age 40? Even our 13-year-olds know we are lying. So how can we have an honest conversation with our kids about responsible sex when we make comedy’s that lie to them? Or comedy’s that lie to ourselves?

Sex in most of todays comedy’s and films is a device, a gimick, a lie, something to move along the plot or storyline. Not something genuine. Take the recent comedy, House Bunny about a Playmate that is kicked out of the mansion and has to fend for herself. Perfect opportunity about a frank and honest discussion of the lifestyle choice of a pornstar or woman who chooses to be one of Hef’s playmates, what really goes on at the mansion, the glamorous lifestyle that results as being one of Hef’s accessories and the disappointing crash and burn when that glamourous lifestyle ends. Instead we get a stereotypical comedy about a playmate with the IQ of a frog. Today’s Playmates are not the dumb blonde bunnies of the 1960’s, (If they ever were). they are sharp, cold, calculating business-women who use Hef (as much if not more) than the retired old pervert or his Playboy Enterprises can use them.

Instead what we get in comedy’s like House Bunny is the stereotypical comedy about the dumb bunny whose only talents lie in her fashion sense and beauty makeup tips.

Please! Pass me the paper-bag now because I think I’m gonna throw up.

Zack and Miri might be one of the more honest comedies made about the reality of sex and the distinction between sex and making love. (Note to parents: if you haven’t checked your teenage daughter’s room lately, chances are she has a porn website of her own and doing things on live webcam which would make Bubbles in Zack and Miri Make A Porn look like a Catholic school-girl).

It is disingenuous for Hollywood to keep making the same, lame, tired-out, “lies”  (about sex or violence)  which refer to sex as merely a device to move the plot along and not engage the movie-going public in an honest and frank discussion about sex or violence. Yet, when they try to have these open, honest and frank discussions, like with Zack and Miri  Make A Porn or Natural Born Killer’s, they are slammed by their own MPAA as too controversial and used as a bully-pulpit for preachers like Falwell, Dobson, and other’s whose only desire is to make us feel guilty about it all so as to continue to line their own pockets.

Zack and Miri Make A Porno is a good start towards having this open and honest discussion about sex just as Dark Knight (the recent Batman flick) was a good start towards having an honest and open discussion about terrorism and the use of violence.

If you’re a movie fan looking for such open and honest discussion, I highly recommend both these films and like Zack would say:

Zack: EVERYBODY wants to see ANYBODY f**k. I hate Rosie O’Donell, but if somebody said “I got a tape of Rosie O’Donell getting f****d “stupid” I’d be like, “Why the F**K aren’t we watching that right now?”

KH

WALMART PUTS THE WORD “CHRISTMAS” BACK IN SALES

WalMart’s recent Christmas TV ad is set to the classic Christmas Carol, The Carol of the Bells, as Wal-Mart associates flicker their checkout lane lights in time with the music.  At the end, they say they will open all lanes to accommodate more “Christmas shopping.”  Additionally, when shopping there at Halloween, I saw a large sign outside their garden center displaying the words, “Christmas Central.”

That’s right. WalMart is using the C-word again. A radical departure from 2005, when WalMart banned its employees from saying, “Merry Christmas,” unless it had been said to them first. Not everyone celebrates Christmas and WalMart didn’t want to offend anyone.” (lest it cut into their sales revenues). Heaven forbid, customers might be offended by having a minimum-wage earning cashier who’s scared of losing her job wish them a “Merry Christmas” and take their business to Target.

“Isn’t it a bit hypocritical to sell and make lots of money off of any item that has to do with religious significance and not acknowledge the religious significance? Like “Christmas” signifying Christ. The Christ in Christmas?

Christmas Made In China

Lee Scott, CEO of Wal-Mart and the higher ups decided it wasn’t politically correct to wish someone a “Merry Christmas” or recognize the religious significance of the holiday for all the cheap knockoff Chinese junk they sell. Might as well wish Wal-Mart customers the following Chinese proverb:

The weasel comes to give New Year’s greeting to the chickens; no good intention in mind.

The giant U.S, big-box retailer Wal-Mart changed its greeting in 2005 from “Merry Christmas!” to “Happy Holidays!” Naturally,  it drew complaints- from WalMart’s “Christian” shoppers. The Catholics came to the rescue, a boycott was duly summoned, WalMart relented, and heads rolled for anyone not using the officially approved WalMart phrase, “Happy Holidays.” (which is WalMart’s way of saying, “Bah Humbug!”)

Although reminders of Christmas were all around last year, you’d be hard pressed to find the word “Christmas” in any store signs, displays, and advertisements. Only a handful of stores at the malls included the word “Christmas“ in their storefront displays. Bath & Body Works had the words “Celebrate the perfect “Christmas” on their store window, while Finish Line had the words “All I want for Christmas” at the top of a gigantic wish list. Last  year most retailers  omitted “Christmas“ from their displays and advertising to make shoppers of all faiths feel welcome in their stores.

This year, 2008, with the horrible economy and  money being tight, retailers are bending their own rules and using the word “Christmas,” at least once in their ads. Does that mean the alleged war on “Christmas” is over?

Hardly. (postponed would be a better word)

Retailers in a bad economy have to bend over and kiss a little consumer butt if Black Friday is to put them in the “black” once more so  consumers will be hearing the word “Christmas” at least once in ads. But the word “Christmas” is a manipulation being used by the Scrooge’s that run WalMart and the “big-box-stores” instead of  “Bah Humbug!”  The female voice doing the Carol Of The Bells WalMart TV ad, says the word “Christmas” like someone was holding a gun to her head.

Though the retailers use the word  (Christmas) instead of  “happy holidays” they don’t mean it as anything  other than a device to get you in the door to separate you from your money.

But “Save money, live better, and Bah Humbug! Implying that, “We just want your money fools!”

After the events with WalMart the past few years, I was shocked to hear them saying let alone using  the word, “Christmas.” Guess the economy is so bad this year, money so tight that WalMart doesn’t want to offend wealthy Christians lest its wealthy Christian customers put a dent in their sales revenue.

Nice hypocritical company that WalMart. Nice to know that they value your money more than your beliefs or their own religious beliefs.

I plead with all that believe in the spirit and reason for Christmas, even if not in the strictest religious of reasons, to say to every WalMart employee you see in the store,

“Merry Christmas from your future union who has your best interests at heart.”

If you  have the nerve, stand at their front door and wish everyone that comes through,  “Merry Christmas from the union.” You could make a game out of it with your friends. Go to different stores and time that store to see how long it takes the poh-lice to show up. Shortest time wins … err loses. (for you)

WalMart hates the idea of a union. Being forced to treat their employees as human beings and not use intimidation and extortion to keep employees in line.

I think it was more honest when WalMart said Bah Humbug! err … “happy holidays.” At least we knew where they really stood.

With only 30-days to Christmas, already I am so sick of Christmas I just want it to be over with.  I am sick of Christmas because all that Christmas has become to retailers is a manipulation,  a device,  just like Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, and Easter. Though they mouth the words, there is no sincerity behind them. You feel like the Grinch is giving you his calculating stare.

Just once, I would like to see Walmart and the other retailers really show the Christmas spirit by not laying people off, paying a “liveable” wage,  becoming more involved in the community they serve by doing community outreach. Why can’t Wal-Mart employees visit all the shut-ins in their community, delivering (as Christmas presents) all the the cheap Chinese knockoff junk they make a volume profit on?  Or, serve soup in the soup kitchens to the thousands of homeless this year? Target does it! Why can’t WalMart employees sing carols in the front of the store? Hand out free little bags of candy to the kids? Why can’t WalMart put a Santa in the store’s? I have never seen a Santa in WalMart stores have you?

The Bottom line is this-

giant “big-boxers” only care about their bottom line and its management, about year-end bonuses. They will do anything, say anything, bend any which way the wind blows to get you to spend money in their stores.

Personally, I’m getting into the true spirit of Christmas by boycotting WalMart and not stepping foot in a big box store this year. I will spend my money at the little ma-and-pa stores the shop around the corner, which are truly desperate for my business so they might be around next Christmas.

So, Merry Christmas Lee Scott, and Happy Unions!

KH

THE WORLD MUMBLES IN MUMBAI

America’s foreign policy is in shambles.

As Americans headed over country and through the woods to grandmother’s house enjoying its most American of holidays, “Thanksgiving,” American foreign policy mumbled as terrorists calling themselves the Deccan Mujahideen stormed luxury hotels, restaurants, and hospitals in Mumbai, India rounding up Americans and British tourists for execution and spraying commuters with bullets at the Chhatrapati Train Station. The media dubbed the incident, “India’s 911.” The death-toll so far stands at 82 with 120 wounded and Indian Army snipers man rooftops battling gunmen to retake control of that city. The U.S. has issued a travel ban to India through December 31st. The visciousness of the attack left most Indian people stunned. It was cold, calculated, and deadly, the images on the front pages of major newspapers- appalling. The attack on India’s financial capital had all the earmarks of al-Qaida, (simultaneous assaults in iconic buildings meant to kill scores of Westerner’s).

Many of the Middle-Eastern countries are beginning to realize now what George W. has been telling them all along about terrorists. They have no “rules.” And that quickly brings me to the point of this blog. America is a nation of laws, of rules. We have a moral compass to guide us. We are the “nice guys.” Terrorists have no rules. Former Secretary of State, Warren Christopher,  kept telling President Clinton, “the only way to get rid of terrorists is to terrorize the terrorists.” Become as viscious, bloody, and brutal as they are.

Therein lies the problem. America, with its moral compass cannot bring itself to act like barbarians and so when it comes to Al-Qaeda, Mujahideen and other terrorist groups who commit barberous acts, when we go head to head with them in any ground action- we will lose, despite all our modern-day technology. Whatever ground action we take simply escalates the level of violence. In the recent Dark Knight movie, the police want to beat the crap out of the Joker until they realize that he would enjoy it too much. Which raises the question: how do you deal with someone who just wants to watch the world burn? Someone instills violence in others and enjoys the violence perpetuated on him without it creating an armageddon?

It’s a no win situation. The only way to win is not to play that game and for the news media not … to give the terrorists the publicity they crave. The media needs to start seeing terrorists as the thugs they are, criminals, scumbags, dirtballs, and not play up to them as glorified freedom fighters. The only cause terrorists believe in is anarchy and death. The Taoists believe that anger begets more anger, violence begets more violence- terrorists believe in “Jihad.”

The recent massacre in Mubai shocked a world who believed George W. that America had put an end to terrorism. Apparently not. Terrorism wasn’t thwarted by our 5-year occupation of Iraq, merely postponed;  and is back in full force now that we have a presidency in transition. The terrorists are testing our new presidents resolve before he has even been sworn into office. What does this say about their resolve to commit barberous acts.

George W. may have been right in going after the terrorists, but wrong in getting side-tracked by false intelligence and WMD’s and invading Iraq where we have now been stuck for the last five-years. The real war against terrorism has been in Afghanistan all along and America helped create it. We created the Mujahideen when Congressman Charlie Wilson (Wilson’s War starring Ton Hanks) financed arms for the Mujahideen to defeat our then supposed enemy (Russia) in Afghanistan. Charlie Wilson before leaving office, begged the powers to be to build schools, roadways, hospitals. America instead cut and ran leaving a  void which was filled by Osama bin Laden, Taliban, Al-Qaeda and Mujahideen. Charlie Wilson was right.

“The part that I’ll take to my grave with guilt is that . . . I didn’t stay the course and stay there and push and drive the other members of Congress nuts pushing for a mini-Marshall Plan,” he said. “And I let myself be frustrated and discouraged by the fact that (the Afghan) leadership was so fragmented that we were unable to do the things we needed to do, like clear the mines, like furnish them millions of tons of fertilizer to be able to replant the crops.”

George W.  has opened Pandora’s Box and there is no closing it again if America continues to operate “Old-School”  and  engage terrorists on their terms with ground action and occupation the bloodshed, violence,  roadside bombs, the kidnapping and herding of tourists into stairwells for execution will continue. The terrorists know America plays by the “rules” – they have no such rules. In the end, we cannot possibly hope to win an occupation of Iraq or Afghanistan by force but our troops will be overrun as they were in Vietnam. Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.  America cannot continue its “Cowboy” diplomacy,  (our “go it alone” foreign policy) while snubbing our noses at our best friends and allies like France, Germany, Britain. We cannot do everything by ourselves we need help. Even help in new found friends and allies like former President Ronald Regan forged with Gorbachev and Russia which have been recently put on hold by Bush’s insistence to build a missile-defense-system in Europe, a defense system that Bush wants but that the Russians do not want or feel they need.

Now that terrorism is out of the box,, the only way to combat and  defeat it  is a combined world-wide effort including countries in the process like Russia, India, Pakistan and Iran who now are becoming targets themselves. This is what they get  for years of looking the other way while terrorists sought sanctuary .America’s new foreign policy must be “inclusion” not division. Not “cowboy” diplomacy which didn’t even work much for the cowboys in the days of the old west. Hanging badguys from the nearest tree didn’t discourage organized crime syndicates like “The Cowboys” or “Red Sash Gang”  in Tombstone.

With the round-up and execution of foreign tourists in Mubai, India’s financial district, the government and Army of India are now faced with a choice. To step up and join the fight against these terrorists or continue to look the other way and do nothing.

The line in the sand has been drawn. George W, drew that line  for all Americans and every country in the world who would give terrorists sanctuary. There is no going back now. Pandora’s Box has been opened, the forces of terrorism have been unleashed. George W. is gone now in a few weeks, he won’t  have to shoulder the burden of a failed terrorist policy in the MIddle East,  future Presidents like Obama  have inherited that burden. It’s unfortunate because Obama could have been a great President. If his administration can’t figure out a way to include countries like India and Pakistan in the war against the terrorists and rally our allies like France, Germany, Spain,and other’s- the cause is lost. America will pull out of Iraq and Afghanistan, the region will fall back into anarchy  under  control of the war-lords, Iran will develop nuclear capabilites which threaten the stability of its neighbors like India and Pakistan who already have nuclear capabilities. The result will be catastrophic.

I feel confident an Obama adminstration will pursue a vigourous foreign policy based on public debate and inclusion, (a sit-down-at-the-table tough talk)  not “cowboy” diplomacy ground troops, and division. America must convince India, Pakistan, Iran,  and Syria that it is in their best interest to join the fight against  terrorists.. Only then, with their comittment, troops, and determined cooperation, can we hope to wipe out al-Qaida, Mujahideen and other terrorist groups who now threaten the stability of the entire world.

Otherwise, Mumbai will become the rallying cry of terrorists everywhere and Americans will not be safe even here in the states. Our subways, railways, airlines, and our largest shopping malls will all become targets for bombers.

The biggest mistake of the Bush adminstration was its  “cowboy,” go-it-alone diplomacy instead of pursuing the policy of negotiation and missile-deterrents (also known as the Fly-Swatter techinque) implemented by the Clinton administration where America was beginning to see slow but steady progress.

As Secretary Of State, hopefully Hillary Clinton will put America back on the right path diplomatically and not create a shadow government with her husband Bill. America must restore our alliances which have served us so well the past 100 years. We must  talk-tough with our enemies, practice “inclusion” not division, and head off the wacko’s like Chavez in South America who have now convinced Russia to provide them with the means to create a nuclear program.

America is the last super-power. The last shining example for the rest of the world to follow. If we fail- the world fails. The recent presidential election of 2008 demonstrates to the world that Americans can put our century-old prejudices behind us, hold hands united, and take one step forward into the future instead of remaining stuck in the past. Now, if we can just get the rest of the world to do the same, view terrorists as the Deccan Mujahideen like the criminals they are and not glorify them as heroic freedom fighters, deny them sanctuary, freeze their bank accounts, conduct vigourous border crossing checks, the terrorists will find there are few places to hide.

But there can be no more mumbling by world governments as Mumbai burns.

KH

THE BUSH LEGACY

Every President leaves a legacy. George Washington, founder of our nation left us democracy. Thomas Jefferson left us the Declaration of Independence,  Lincoln freed the slaves, Teddy Roosevelt created our national parks, Franklin D. Roosevelt, the Nobel Peace prize and a determination to defeat the Nazi’s, Nixon ended the Vietnam conflict and opened trade with China, Regan tore down the Berlin Wall while ending communism and George W. ???

In a few weeks, the 43rd-President of these United States will turn over the reigns to President Barack Obama. There will be a new round-table. As with all outgoing President’s, George W. is concerned about his legacy, which will be known as “The Bush Legacy.” George W, is hoping history will see him as a president who liberated millions of Iraqis and Afghans, who worked towards peace and who never sold his soul for political ends.

I however, think history will view him as a reckless President who opened Pandora’s Box, unleashing a form of terrorism on the world that we cannot put back in the box. One who pushed his “Cowboy” go-it-alone diplomacy which alienated some of America’s oldest friends and allies, and infuriated old enemies like Russia and latin America.

George W. would also like to be seen as the President who relieved HIV/AIDS and malaria on places like the continent of Africa; but truth be known, HIV has swallowed up 2/3rd’s of that continent with America not being able to get the rest of the world community on board its relief efforts financially. Bush would also like to say that he helped elderly people get prescription drugs and Medicare as a part of a basic package but the elderly are more confused about Medicare and prescription drugs than ever before with increased government regulation and red-tape.

About the only claim to success that Bush can claim is the removal of Saddam Hussein, one of the most evil dictators in history. But then, it was America, the CIA and George Bush Sr. that put Saddam in power in the first place.

Frankly, I’m glad to see George W, stepping back into the shadows. He stepped on too many toes, rubbed too many people the wrong way, stirred up animosity the world-over against the U.S. and its citizens (which is why terrorists were singling out U.S. citizens for execution in Mumbai). Under Clinton, the world loved America- under Bush, the world hates us and seeks our destruction. So, it is time for him to go back into the shadows from whence he came.

In his defense, though the CIA had warnings of a coordinated attack on America, they lacked the specifics (where, when, how). There is no way George W. or his administration could have prevented 911. Osama bin-Laden had been planning the attack on America during the Clinton administration. George W, did however restore dignity to America’s military unlike the contempt Bill Clinton had for our military. But Bush’s “Cowboy” go-it-alone diplomacy, his five-year occupation of Iraq, his insistence to build a missile-defense system in Europe which angered the Russians who have been feeling impotent of late, his “axis-of-evil” speech have not inspired world-leaders to band together to defeat terrorists or terrorism but instead only seem to inspire the terrorists themselves in their drive and comitment to thwart U.S. empire-building and single out and kill Americans;  any Americans, civilian or military.

Bush opened Pandora’s Box, unleashing world-wide terrorism and the brutality the likes of which have never before been seen on earth. In Mumbai, 197 were rounded up and executed by the Deccan Mujahideen. Today in Nigeria, sporadic bursts of gunfire rattled the central Nigerian city of Jos as security forces tried to prevent more clashes between Muslim and Christian gangs in which hundreds of people have been killed. Somali pirating has become so bad in the Persian Gulf that many of the supertankers refuse to use the Suez Canal after Somali Pirates hijacked the world’s largest supertanker the Sirius Star.

Terrorism, after 911 and the successful attack on America has become  premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents. Groups like al-Qaida, Deccan Muhajideen, Taliban, and others with links to organizations outside the country they operate in, who get their training, funding, and affiliation, without the knowledge of the authorities who provide law enforcement in those countries. Brut force, will not halt the spread of worldwide terrorism, violence only seems to increase the level of the terrorists brutality. The only way to defeat this systemic cancerous growth of terrorism is by a concerted world-wide effort. The incoming Obama administration is smart enough to recognize that America cannot be the world’s policeman and that in order to achieve this worldwide cooperation, we need to enlist the help of allies and other countries, to win back worldwide respect by sitting people down at the table and getting them to talk to us, including our enemies. You can’t fight your enemy if you can’t find them.

Only history knows how the Bush administration will be judged and what, if any, will be the “Bush Legacy.” But the Bush Legacy will not be what he hopes it will be. If anything, I think history will see that the Bush years took America and the world a huge step backward, escalating the level of violence around the world and almost wrecking the world economy.

Iraq, of course, remains the main argument that Bush and his few remaining supporters use to justify his legacy. Didn’t Bush get rid of Saddam Hussein? George W. Bush actually believes the Iraq war was a success and is “very pleased” with what is happening there. George W.’s war on terror has only seemed to increase terror around the world as copycat terrorist groups emmulate the success of al-Qaidi. Instead of Afghanistan becoming safer after the Taliban, it has become an even more dangerous place as remaining terrorists go out of their way to commit barbaric beheadings and other crimes against women and Americans. Mrs. Bush said that women in Iraq are safer now since the American occupation yet the attacks against women there, (throwing acid in their face) have escalated since the Americans arrived.

One of the American guards at Guantanamo Bay (Camp Gitmo) was quoted as saying, “if they didn’t hate America when they came here, they sure will after what we’ve done to them here.”

It’s a good thing Bush is leaving.

The saber rattling has increased with  a palsied intensity the last eight years while our closest friends and allies have tried to quietly tell us that America is only increasing the violence around the world. America, plain and simply, needs a “time-out.”

First came Afghanistan, Americans  wondered,  when the Ruskies spent years there to no avail why we were able to overthrow the Taliban so quickly. Then came the two-week war in Iraq. Bush in his flight suit strutting his stuff and here five and a half years later, American GI’s are still in surge mode. The president only has a few weeks left with India and Pakistan melting down fast and Iran still “touch and don’t go.”

George W.’s overly-aggressive response to 9-11 eventually sent liberals and Democrats over the edge. While Afghanistan was mostly supported, his invasion and occupation of Iraq sealed his doom. America has had few allies in this endeavor, and now faces an even greater number of enemies around the world. Proclaiming himself a “compassionate conservative”, George W. did nothing to reduce the size of government and cut government spending, he deregulated to the point where greedy lenders and investors have brought down not only our economy but the world economy to the point of a global melt-down.

So what will George W. Bush’s legacy be? Simply this.

It will be that he foolishly believed that bringing democracy to a region that had never experienced it would remove the terrorist threat in the long term. You cannot give democracy to anyone. They have to want it for themselves and be willing to fight for it as our founding fathers did in 1776. Secondly, that you cannot defeat terrorists by brute force but that brute force only emboldens them.

In the long term, these lessons might be a great legacy should Americans chose to learn from them and never forget them. But at the cost of almost ruining the American way of life, losing the respect and friendship of our oldest allies, earning the hatred and murderous contempt of terrorists around the world and giving them the “Jihad” they always wanted and an excuse to kill Westerner’s, it might have been lessons the world could have done without.

KH

Today’s sex in advertising goes from ‘So Fly’ to ‘No Fly.’

Yuh nuh see how mi fat in a mi jeans,
kitty kat just phat a buffy – nuh any bowy can handle mi speed,”
Bad Gal Ce’Cile “ from her latest hit single ‘So Fly’

The old adage used to be that “sex sells.”  Ads laced with sexual imagery of women geared toward men to buy Budweiser, expensive cologne, cigarettes, and alcohol products.  Images of sexy men to get women to buy those needed cleaning products sold by a sexy bald-headed Mr. Clean, along with perfume, cigarettes, condoms and fashion.

Many young people are surprised that sex in advertising has been around the block once or twice believing it to reflect the sexual revolution of the 1960s and 70s. Farrah Fawcett was a sex-in-advertising icon in the 1970s. The use of “sex” in advertising to sell a product however has been around as long as there have been advertisers. Where in the 1960’s, (with the strict FCC),  sex in advertising was an innocent form of flirtation, today’s FCC seems to have relaxed the rules to the point where the sex being hinted at is kinky and quite perverse with sado-masochism, bondage, and other forms of titilation being hinted at.

The “does sex sell?” question is actually pretty simple. The answer is “yes, it does.” However, only to a point.

In the last forty-years, companies have embraced sex in advertising with some really fun, successful, sexy and/or annoying results. But they’re not depending on their sexy ads to pay the bills. While a nice rack might get a spike in traffic or sales, they’re not the most reliable meal ticket. Good looking models that demonstrate weight-loss products promise to make you look better (the benefit of that is being more attractive to others, especially to the opposite sex) is a good use of sex in advertising. Ramping up the sexual content to the point that people are thinking about sex rather than the product, then the sex overwhelms the product message. That has been the problem lately for advertisers trying to use sex to get our attention. They have to ramp up the sex because after  40-years of sex in advertising, it’s harder and harder to get our attention. We’ve become desensitized.

Sex in advertising can also be a lame cop-out used by marketers who lack imagination to create more compelling work that will sustain itself beyond the initial titillation and as such, will continue to be used in advertising because it’s a quick and easy solution which doesn’t require much thought and can garner the immediate attention some marketers need for their promotional efforts. The question being asked lately by those in the industry is just how much is enough? How much is too much? When do the advertisers cross the line of public decency?

The public has long tolerated the use of the sexual double-entendre in advertising on radio and TV thinking it cute and adult. Young children for example, do not get the meaning of “The Big O” used for the “Big O” website or other sexual double entendre’s. An all-time classic use of innuendo was Clairol’s “Does she or doesn’t she?” The overt meaning is obvious: “Does she color her hair or not?” However, a covert meaning could be does she or does she not have sex. Even the rest of the headline, “Only her hairdresser knows for sure.

“There was a young man named McNair, Whose cologne did defile the air. Women with him were brusk, Until he tried Jovan Musk, And now he gets more than his share.”~Jovan sponsored limerick contest in 1979.

Two ads for Noxema in the 1970’s are excellent examples of sexual double entendre and innuendo. In one spot, Fawcett sings the jingle, “Great balls of cum… fort.” Another features Joe Nameth playfully lamenting, “I’m going to get creamed,” as Fawcett lathers his face with Noxema shaving cream. “You’ve got a great pair of hands.”

“Can you keep it up for a week?” The Vegetarian Society asks encouraging non-vegetarians to try shunning meat for seven days.

In the ad for Nissan, Kim Catrall is heard telling a car salesman: “Why didn’t you tell me it was so big, I just wasn’t prepared for it. The all-new Nissan Tiida makes you feel really, really, really good inside.” And after her test ride, the star goes on to comment: “Ah! That was amazing. Absolutely fabulous! I mean the great body and the way you moved it.”

Sexual content in fragrance advertising is manifest in the usual ways: as models showing skin-chests and breasts, open shirts, tight-fitting clothing-and as dalliances involving touching, kissing, embracing, and voyeurism. These outward forms of sexual content are often woven into the explicit and implicit sexual promises  to make the wearer more sexually attractive, more likely to engage in sexual behavior, or simply “feel” more sexy for one’s own enjoyment.

There’s a danger people could become, and perhaps already have, desensitized to sex in advertising as a method for motivating behavior, (the slippery road for Axe commercials). Changes in advertising are, of course, changing as society changes.  Women in today’s society are much more liberated in their sexual mores than they have been in millennia past. Advertising, realizing this change in women’s perception of sex and sexual activity, is beginning to alter its approach to sex as a selling tool to women.

You know those weird Wendy’s ads with guys wearing the red pigtailed wig and people doing odd things? The ad company loved them. They said they were funny even though the commercials gave off a weird “transvestite” vibe. Wendy’s scrapped the concept because they weren’t making people buy burgers. Old Dave would be turning in his grave if he saw the company he started go the way of “transvestism.”

Too much sex. Too much funny. Same thing. And why do advertisers do this? Because they think everyone else is as bored with their product as they are.

The sadomasochistic, kinky pickup scene the ad company sold Microsoft recently starring Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates is also being scrapped. Two guys meet in a shoe store. The one guys offers a churro to the other—an obvious phallic symbol, possibly a code word. The guy refuses. So the guy with the churro starts to massage the other guy’s foot, and asks about what he’s feeling. The guy who relented at first says a definite code word: “leather.” The two look furtively at each other for an uncomfortably long time. They scene is just short of a wink taking place. One mentions “showering” with clothes on. The next thing you know the twosome, now each holding rigid churros, walk off together. One asks the other to adjust his underwear as a “sign.” Mysteriously the advertising campaign stopped, changed directions, and Seinfeld was no more.

The increasing use of sado-masochism in TV ads is becoming disturbing. Take the Altoid-Sours TV ad. In a blind taste-test, the taster only likes the mint after the sexy blonde female tester slaps him with a black leather glove.

What is particualry distrubing is that our young people who are just learning about sex and how to form natural realtionships are exposed to all these unnatural choices which disrupt their normal sexual development. Should I be homosexual or lesbian? Should I be into S/M? They see it on TV, in TV ads, and so they think these examples must be the norm. To what extent does advertising create people’s image of the human body and sex? The trend of portraying sado-masochism shocks feminists but at the same time, advertising works with fantasies, advertising starts trends, like the recent wave of “fashion pornography.”

Most people aren’t shocked when they see very sex-oriented advertising and that should give us some cause for concern, particualry when it comes to the messages we are sedning our kids. People have seen women on TV wearing nothing but a bra and panties for 20 years. If we dont; speak up, our children interpret this as our acceptance or approval of the message which implies to a teenager that its okay to do this. Which is why you have teen pop idols driving drunk, exhibiting their nudity in public, posting private sex tapes to the internet for millions around the world to view. Where did they get the idea that this behavior was acceptable? From television and the movies. From Madison Avenue with its too sexy ads for Victoria’s Secret and from Hollywood portraying teenage sex and nudity in movies. We’ve seen the end result, spoiled, pompous little diva-sluts like Paris Hilton, Britany Spears, Lindsay Lohan, Miley Cyrus and other’s.

Creating an ultra-thin ideal of the body, as personified by top model Kate Moss has certainly had a big influence on anorexic teenagers. The depiction of homosexuals, is a major revolution. Surveys show people aren’t in the least shocked by the presence of homosexuals in advertising images. All this has helped to win acceptance for the idea that a man has the right to take care of his body and choose his own sexual lifestyle. Some could argue then that advertising today has become more than just an ad to sell a product, it is  a political statement. In the 1980’s, a time of increased VIV/AIDS scare, the headline for a Coty Emeraude perfume ad read: “I love only one man. I wear only one fragrance.” Talk about mixing advertising and political-correctness.

The matter of constitutional freedom of speech as applied to advertising has raised serious questions concerning control of sex and decency in advertising. Are there any taboos left in the way the human body is depicted and what should be taboo? The last taboos, thankfully, are pedophilia and zoophilia. I don’t think we want to see that in a TV ad for Wendy’s, pink wig or not.

KH

THE GHOSTS OF CHRISTMAS SINGERS (PAST, PRESENT, FUTURE)

“I’ll be your Christmas past present and future baby
My yesterday every day tomorrow too
Underneath the mistletoe
Let me show what I know
I’ll be your Christmas past,  present, and future.”

Christmas Past, Present, Future
Album : “School’s Out Christmas” CD, 2002
(Al Kasha Ron Dante Paul Murray)
Ashlee Simpson

I was trucking through Jewel the other night ( a grocery-store chain in Chicagoland) when I heard Bing Crosby booming out a Christmas classic (Ba-Ba-ba-Boom) followed by crooners Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra. They sounded like they were stuck in a time-warp, some Norman Rockwell Christmas somewhere that no longer exists. “Dated” is the word they use in the industry. Though their material was hip, hop, happening in their time- today they sound like the tunes you hear sung at old folks homes.

As we head into Christmas and think about Dickens, A Christmas Carol, and Ebeneezer Scrooge being visited by three ghosts, (ghost of Christmas past, present and future) it dawned on me that every year, we to, are visited by the ghosts of Christmas past,

present,  and future-singers in the form of Christmas Carols or songs being played non-stop betwen October 31st and Christmas day.

Every year, they trot out the same lame Christmas songs we have heard for half-a-century, It’s starting to feel “contrived.” There’s Burl Ives singing, Have a Holly Jolly Christmas or Frosty the Snowman (the two biggest hits he ever had), Bing Crosby doing the Ba-Ba-Ba-Boom, “I’m dreaming of a white Christmas,” as I begin to nod off while Dean Martin croons Christmas Blues on another station and Elvis strums Blue Christmas on a Gibson sun-burst guitar on yet another.

Isn’t it interesting how Karen Carpenter’s career is reborn every Christmas with her song Merry Christmas Darling? Other ghosts of Christmas past singers include John Lennon’s Happy Christmas, and then there are what can o

nly be described as the “wierd” or most annoying Christmas songs. These were novelty songs that played well the first few times but after the 5,000th playing of Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer- we just want to scream or pull our hair out.

The ghosts of Christmas present are unfortunately well known to us. There’s Madonna beltong out her version of Santa Baby  (voted one of the top-ten worst Christmas songs of all time) Bon Jovie doing their version of Back Door Santa making it sound very “gay” the Valley-Girl crowd (Ashely, Brittany, Christina, and other’s) doing their take on a Christmas classic and usually singing the ass off it.

Finally we have the ghosts of Christmas future-singers, like Gloria Estefan whose song, Christmas in Your Eyes is destined to go on to become one of the most popular Christmas songs of all time surpassing Bing Crosby’s White Christmas, or Nat King Cole’s version of Mel Torme’s, The Christmas Song.

Some people don’t like Christmas songs because they find them too familiar or overly sentimental. But I have been reminded that some people don’t like Christmas songs because they don’t like Christmas. I sympathize. It does seem so arbitrary to just pick a month and then say we’re all supposed to be happy and get along with everybody. If your life isn’t like that the other 11 months of the year, then Christmas ain’t gonna do it for you. The message of the season may not be that it’s a wonderful life. It may be that life sucks — believe me, sometimes it royally sucks — but we carry on anyway. We rise above. We carve out that little hollow in the snow and curl up for warmth in a cold, cold world and Christmas songs, the good, the bad and the annoying help us get through the process every year.

To honor the festiveness of the holidays I present to you, oh blog-readers, my version of the best and worst of Christmas singers past, present and future.

Ghosts of Christmas past-singers Best:

1. White Christmas by Bing Crosby

2. The Christmas Song sung by Nat King Cole

3. Christmas Blues by Dean Martin.

4. Have Yourself a Very Merry Little Christmas by Judy Garland

5. Happy Christmas by John Lennon

6. Blue Christmas by the King (Elvis Presley)

No one does Blue Christmas like Elvis and he  looked oh sooooooooo good in that black leather jacket strumming that Gibson sun-burst guitar.

7. Merry Christmas Darling by Karen Carpenter

8. Peace On Earth/Peace On Earth – Bing Crosby + David Bowie

This makes the list just because it was such an odd but wonderful pairing – spaceman Bowie and old timer Bing, the voice of Christmas. The odd couple teamed up to record this hit in the late 1970s for a TV Crosby Christmas Special and Bowie swears to this day he has no recollection of the performance. Still, Christmas magic all the same – Par-um-pah-pum-pum!

9. Feliz Navidad by Jose Feliciano

10. You’re A Mean One Mr. Grinch

originally done for the 1966 cartoon special How the Grinch Stole Christmas. The lyrics were written by Dr. Seuss, the music was written by Albert Hague, and the lyrics were performed by Thurl Ravenscroft.

Because Ravenscroft was not credited in the closing credits of the special, it is often mistakenly attributed to Boris Karloff, who served as narrator and speaking voice of the Grinch in the special.

11. Someday At Christmas by Stevie Wonder

Spinner’s 12 Best Christmas Songs:
“I Want an Alien for Christmas,” Fountains of Wayne
“Pretty Paper,” Willie Nelson
“Candy Cane Children,” White Stripes
“Christmas Is the Time to Say I Love You,” Billy Squier
“Someday at Christmas,” Stevie Wonder
“Christmas (Baby Please Come Home),” U2
“Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree,” Brenda Lee
“Santa Claus Go Straight to the Ghetto,” James Brown
“River,” Joni Mitchell
“Blue Christmas,” Elvis Presley
“Happy Xmas (War Is Over),” John Lennon and Yoko Ono
“Christmas in Hollis,” Run DMC

Ghost of Christmas Past-singers worst:

1. Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer by Elmo & Patsy (so bad it’s good)

This song might have been funny when it was written 25 years ago, but in today’s world, this is about as humorous as the average episode of “The Wiggles.” Even worse, it spawned an animated special, a number of spin-off songs, a ringtone and one truly dumb music video.

2.  The Christmas Song by Alvin and the Chipmunks

3. Barking Jingle Bells by Don Charles/The Singing Dogs

4. anybody singing Santa Baby

5. anybody singing a “cutsey” version of Jingle Bells

6. Snoopy’s Christmas by  The Royal Guardsmen

7. anybody singing I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus

8. Please, Daddy (Don’t Get Drunk This Christmas)’
–John Denver (1975)

The late Rocky Mountain troubadour sometimes introduced this song as a funny little ditty that took on more serious overtones over time. It’s hard to see what could have been funny about a seven-year-old pleading with Daddy not to pass out under the tree. Not when you consider that Denver had two DUI arrests before his death in 1997.

9. Run Rudolph Run (Chuck Berry)

Whizzing like a shooting star the R & B has been featured in countless number of really bad Christmas Movies like Home Alone 2.

10. Dominick The Donkey (The Italian Christmas Donkey)
by Monte, Lou

Even if I was Italian and in the mob and the Godfather’s kid wrote this song, this would still be a really awful Christmas song.

11. Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree” by Brenda Lee
Yes, I know that this song is considered a classic by many music fans. But there is something about Lee’s piercing vocals and 1950’s delivery that has always managed to give me a headache.

12. Wonderful Christmastime” by Paul McCartney
McCartney’s post-Beatles discography falls into two basic categories. There are the really great tunes, such as “Band On The Run” and “Jet.” And then there are the goofball, maudlin songs that often make me suspect those rumors about McCartney being replaced by a look-alike back in the 1970’s just might be true. While this song was a modest hit when it was released, it gets played a lot on the radio every year. And it’s managed to get more annoying as the years pass, primarily because the cheesy synthesizers and looping vocals make it more appropriate for playing at a roller skating rink than at a Christmas party.

13.  ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas by Liberace with George Liberace & His Orchestra

14. Jingle Bells by Looney Tunes Sing-a-Long

15. Santa Claus Is Comin to Town by Bruce Springsteen

Spinner’s 12 Worst Christmas Songs:
“Santa Baby,” Madonna
“Wonderful Christmastime,” Paul McCartney
“Christmastime,” Smashing Pumpkins
” Days of Christmas,” Destiny Child
“Santa Claus Is Coming to Town,” Bruce Springsteen
. “Christmas Conga,” Cyndi Lauper
“Santa’s Beard,” Beach Boys
“Merry Christmas With Love,” Clay Aiken
“Merry Christmas (I Don’t Wanna Fight Tonight),” The Ramones
. “Oi to the World,” No Doubt
“Please, Daddy (Don’t Get Drunk This Christmas),” John Denver
. “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” Band Aid

Ghosts of Christmas present-singers best:

1. Ave Maria by Kenny G or any Christmas song by Kenny G especially Auld Lane Syne (Faith). Kenny plays the hell out of that song.

2.  The entire A Charlie Brown Christmas CD by Vince Garibaldi

3. Driving Home For Christmas by Chris Rea

4. I Believe in Father Christmas by U2

5. All I Want For Christmas by Mariah Carey

While Christmas albums seemed to be the trend in the 1990s for pop artists, not many went the places that this Mariah Carey single did. Granted, everything that Mariah Carey touches turns to gold, but having been released as recently as 1992, the classic status that this record has acquired is quite impressive.

6. There’s Something Stuck Up In The Chimney by Bob Rivers

Ghosts of Christmas present-singers worst:

1.  Santa Baby by Madonna

Madonna had been around the block far too many times to get away with playing the infuriating Betty Boop-ish ingenue. When Eartha Kitt made a case for being a good, deserving girl — “think of all the fellas that I haven’t kissed” — it was mildly amusing. When Madonna trotted out the line, it was just another reason for Sean Penn to start throwing ornaments.

2. Backdoor Santa” – Bon Jovi:

This song was originally part of the very first “A Very Special Christmas” benefit album. I guess other people realized how bad the song was because on later copies of the CD, they replaced this song with another only slightly less bad Bon Jovi song. Fortunately it appears that you can’t buy this song anymore. Talk about your Christmas miracles!

3. I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday by Wizards

4. 12 Redneck Days of Christmas by Jeff Foxworthy (so depressing because it’s true when it comes to rednecks, Christmas and mobile homes)

5. Last Christmas – George Michael

This song has become a staple of Christmas radio airplay, seeing nearly as much as classics like Jingle Bell Rock. With two recent covers of the song, one by Hilary Duff and another by Indie-Rock trio Jimmy Eats World, it is unlikely that any one will be forgetting George Michael’s poor contribution to Christmas music any time soon.

6. Do They Know It’s Christmas by Band-Aid

Another eighties classic, 1984’s call to action for the American people to look at the poverty crisis in Africa is still resonant today. The Boomtown Rat’s Bob Geldof has been a constant crusader in this battle that he began over twenty years ago, all starting with this one simulcast song. While community activism is good and all- this song gives me a migraine and it sounds like the theme song from Dr. Who.

7. Merry Christmas Everybody by Slade

8. Merry Christmas by Schelle

9. Merry Christmas Everyone by Shakin Stevens

10. I Can’t Believe It’s Christmas by GiR2007

Ghosts of Christmas future-singers best:

1. Christmas In Your Eyes by Gloria Estefan

This Grammy Award-winning Cuban American singer and songwriter, in the top 100 of best selling music artists with over 70 million albums sold worldwide, has recorded what I think will go on to become the number one Christmas song in the future even surpassing The Christmas Song, White Christmas, Blue Christmas and other’s. Give it a listen and you’ll soon agree.

2. Ave Maria by Barbara Bonney.

Barbara Bonney, who also sang with Michael Crawford in the Phantom Of The Opera, this is quite possibly the most beautiful version of Ave Maria I have ever heard. “O wärst du da!” (”Oh, that you were here!”) Barbara Bonney was 38 when she made this breakthrough Schubert recording in 1994.

3. Don’t Save It All For Christmas Day by Celine Dion

4. Peace by Norah Jones

Ghosts of Christmas future-singers worst:

1. Christmas Shoes by Newsong

2. Christmas Past. Present, Future by Ashlee Simpson and The Little Drummer Boy” by Jessica and Ashlee Simpson
Jessica Simpson is an impressive singer, and her Christmas CD, “Re-Joyce: The Christmas Album” is an overall entertaining package. But this tune — a duet with sister Ashlee — sounds more like a German military march than a Christmas tune. And without being unduly mean, let’s just say that Ashlee’s voice does not quite come up to the standards of her sister.

3. I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday- Sarah Brightman

Winter Symphony is a Christmas album from the English soprano singer Sarah Brightman, released in November 2008. Although Sarah is brilliant when it comes to Opera, she absolutely sucks when it comes to pop or rock.

4. Last Christmas by Hillary Duff

For those new parents starting families of your own and Christmas traditions of your own, here are the 25 most recognizable Christmas songs:

According to the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, these are the Top 25 most-performed “Holiday” songs for the first five years of the 21st Century:

1. The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire) – Mel Tormé, Robert Wells
2. Santa Claus Is Coming To Town – Fred Coots, Haven Gillespie
3. Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas – Ralph Blane, Hugh Martin
4. Winter Wonderland – Felix Bernard, Richard B. Smith
5. White Christmas – Irving Berlin
6. Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow! – Sammy Cahn, Jule Styne
7. Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer – Johnny Marks
8. Jingle Bell Rock – Joseph Carleton Beal, James Ross Boothe
9. I’ll Be Home For Christmas – Walter Kent, Kim Gannon, Buck Ram
10. Little Drummer Boy – Katherine K. Davis, Henry V. Onorati, Harry Simeone
11. Sleigh Ride – Leroy Anderson, Mitchell Parish
12. It’s The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year – Edward Pola, George Wyle
13. Silver Bells – Jay Livingston, Ray Evans
14. Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree – Johnny Marks
15. Feliz Navidad – José Feliciano
16. Blue Christmas – Billy Hayes, Jay W. Johnson
17. Frosty The Snowman – Steve Nelson, Walter E. Rollins
18. A Holly Jolly Christmas – Johnny Marks
19. I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus – Tommie Connor (PRS)
20. Here Comes Santa Claus (Right Down Santa Claus Lane) – Gene Autry, Oakley Haldeman
21. It’s Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas – Meredith Willson
22. (There’s No Place Like) Home For The Holidays – Bob Allen, Al Stillman
23. Carol Of The Bells – Peter J. Wilhousky, Mykola Leontovich
24. Santa Baby – Joan Ellen Javits, Philip Springer, Tony Springer
25. Wonderful Christmastime – Paul McCartney (PRS)

BEARS FANS DIE HARD.

It’s one-degree outside at 9 a.m. on a partly cloudy Sunday morning. Beautiful weather for a Polar Bear, Penguin, or Chicago Bears fan. The Metra trains are jammed-pack with Die-Hard Bears fans who have tickets to sit in the 7-degree-weather to watch the Bears put the sunshine boys from Jacksonville out cold.

Having grown up in Chicago, a veteran sports-writer for the Chicago Sun-Times, personally I think its pathetic that all these people are willing to risk illness sitting out in sub-zero weather watching a team that has played as pathetically as the Chicago Bears have the last few years. Last week, all I saw was purple watching the game as the Minnesota Vikings stomped the Bears. The week before all I saw was a “green-wave” as the Green Bay Packers did the same thing.

Chicago fans are either to be pitied for their love and loyalty or committed for insanity. Personally, I think its the latter.

“It’s cold up here, there’s no way around it,” said Bears coach Lovie Smith, a Texas native who began his NFL coaching career with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Another sunshine state team. Lovie, you think?

Instead of Lovie Smith worrying about the cold, he should be worrying about his future with the team since his new “defense” hasn’t been working all season. The new defense he sold to Bear owners. The defense folds like a cheap accordion. Somebody needs to tell the defensive players and Lovie and Babich that the defense now stinks, and can no longer be the focus of the team. You can’t game plan to win with defense and special teams. Not with this defense and this special team. These next four games will be crucial, though.  There probably won’t be a wildcard in the NFC North.  The Bears might either rise to the top of the division, looking for the Vikings or Packers to falter, or end up getting nothing.

My bet, if I was in a sports-book in Vegas would be nothing.

The Bears should be in their element today, playing in cold weather typically places a greater premium on the running game, which also should help the Bears and generally “sunshine state” teams can’t play in artic climes like Chicago and Green Bay. With a game-time temperature of 7 degrees and wind gusts up to 40 miles per hour dropping the wind chill to 18 degrees below zero, passing the ball will be virtually impossible. As a result, the Bears will be committed to the running game. That makes it essential for the Chicago Bears to have some kind of defense, which they don’t seem to have this year.

I prefer to stay toasty-warm in the sports bar watching the game in front of a roaring fireplace while swilling down cold brewskies instead of watching the game out in the cold swilling down Hot Chocolate with Peppermint Schnapps.

Even if die-hard Bears fans won’t be able to feel their toes today, the weather is the least of coach Lovie Smith worries. If he can’t salvage a decent season, he may well not have to worry about coaching in sub-artic temperatures next season for he may be  looking for another coaching job in a “sunshine state.” Bears fans however, will show up next year in sub-artic weather as they did last year to watch the same excuse of a team lose so pathetically.

It’s tough being a Chicago sports fan. To live in a town where the owners of all the teams are so cheap they just won;t spend the money to hire the talent that will get them to the Super-Bowl, Stanley-Cup, World-Series or NBA Finals. And so, Chicago sports-fans are the most long-suffering fools on the face of the planet.

I learned my lesson the last two times the local media made a fuss about the Chicago Cubs going to the World-Series (who remained in first place all last season) only to be pathetically swept in the first round of the playoffs. They couldn’t even win one game. Pathetic is the only word that comes to mind when I describe Chicago sports teams, any teams.

You can’t call them losers because they win enough regular season games to keep fans coming to the games. They just lose when it counts, year after year after year after year.

Pathetic!

After a 34-14 key loss last week to division rival, The Minnesota Vikings,  it’s time to  push the FireLovieMeter to high. On a longer scale of perspective, Lovie still has us within striking distance of the division and we split the season series with the division leaders, losing on the road.

That’s a really lame excuse for retaining Lovie Smith as coach for next year but one Lovie Smith will be making and very soon.  The Chicago Bears have had 24 quarterbacks since Jim McMahon in  1979.  That’s one of the main problems with the Chicago Bears. For God’s sake, spend some money, go out and hire yourselves a decent quarterback like Matt Leinert with the Arizona Cardinals (Lienert signed a 7-year deal but he is going nowhere with the Cardinals anytime soon) and let the man develop for 7- years like John Elway did with the Denver Bronco’s. But, this switching around the quarterbacks every other game is pathetic! The problem with Chicago sports teams has been and always will be with the team-owners. They’re cheap! As Steinbrener showed the nation with the NY Yankee’s,  you can go out and buy a winning team, if you’re willing to spend the dough. Chicago owners are not.

So, the Bears will remain pathetic for years to come, Lovie Smith will catch the heat and be fired at the end of this season which is just four games away, any remaining player who has talent and a shot at a Super-Bowl ring will bolt for a winning team and Chicago will wallow in its patheticness.

Somethings never Change and if you’re a die-hard Chicago Bears fan you know what I am saying is true. Which is why I don;t understand traveling downtown on a Sunday morning in one-degree temperatures to watch a pathetic team you know might lose, a team that is going nowhere, a team that will most likely fire the coach and get yet another quarter-back next year. Being a Chicago Sports fan is an exercise in futility.

Perhaps it is our determined faith that makes Chicagoans great-           either that or they ought to commit us all.

KH

Won’t Get Fooled Again!

“There’s nothing in the street
Looks any different to me
And the slogans are replaced, by-the-bye
And the parting on the left
Is now the parting on the right
And the beards have all grown longer overnight.
Meet the new boss-same as the old boss.”

Way back in 1971, the English rock band, The Who,  had a hit song called “Won’t Get Fooled Again.” The song’s personification of the age-old struggle – and inevitable exploitation of the common man at the hands of the “powers that be” endures as one of the premier works of Pete Townsend’s sarcasm and irony of its time and genre, constantly reminding us not to expect too much! The messianic fervor which has preceded  Obama’s expected ascension to the White House is a painful reminder that most Americans have once again been suckered into believing that national politics offers any real solutions or any real change to the nations problems.

After eight long years of Bush and “Cowboy diplomacy” America underwent  a fundamental transformation electing its first Black President, and a commitment to radical change. Sound too good to be true?

Obviously it was.

America’s 44th-President won’t even be sworn in until January 20, 2009 but already, from Obama’s cabinet choices, it’s beginning to look like the “new boss – same as the old boss.”

Politicians never keep their campaign promises. You think by now Americans would undertand that. Just once… we were hoping against all hope that America could forever put off the old clothes of poltiics, lying politicians, patronage jobs, and just for once, embrace real and radical change.

Boy,  were we fools!

Americans tried to look beyond symbolism and appearance by electing the first black President but national politics is more about advertising than substance, collective vision/illusion. More than policy, about aspirational hopes more than reality, and Obama, a better actor than Ronald Regan- suckered us all. We believed him. We believed him because we wanted to believe him even though our guts told us that national politics have become a cesspool of lies, treachery, and deceit. The same bait and switch trick again and again every four years.

The more things change, the more they stay the same. Already the signs are there from Obama: reneging on campaign promises, compromise on U.S. Troop withdrawal from Iraq, a band-aid approach to economic problems by caving to his cronies like Emmanuel who, when he left the Clinton administration after voting in NAFTA and riling Democrats, moved home to Chicago to make $18-million as an investment broker. It seems like only yesterday that Obama was promising to end the war in Iraq the moment he was sworn in. Now, he’s reneging on that promise and taking a more aggressive stance with pro-war Hillary Clinton as Secretary Of State (whom the far left alike criticized heavily during the primary), and by retaining the likes of  “Neo-con” Robert Gates as Secretary Of Defense (who was lambasted by the anti-war crowd). New York Federal Reserve President Timothy Geithner has been asked to serve as Treasury secretary. This is a guy who has been quoted as saying:

“Most consequential choices involve shades of gray, and some fog is often useful in getting things done.”

Shades of gray??? There can be no shades of gray when millions are losing their jobs and homes. Shades of gray by greedy bank lenders and stock-market investment brokers are what led America to its financial meltdown this past primary season with the housing crisis, collapse of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and led to the government bailing out Wall-Street to the tune of  $700-billion-dollars in liguidity. That lines a lot of deep pockets folks. Geithner will continue unbridled implementation and expansion of the banker bailout, doling out taxpayer’s money to Wall Street, causing rampant inflation, a lowering in living standards, and the destruction of the dollar.

My 401K is already in the toilet. How’s yours?

Now, Detroit and the Big-3 want a huge government bailout to the tune of $ 38-billion-dollars. If Obama goes along with this, continues to reward the wealthy who have created this mess in America and his wealthy political cronies like Emanuel,  America will be bankrupt in a year and we won’t just have a recession folks, we will have revolution. Crime, anarchy, rioting, and looting will fill our streets. Perhaps, that’s why secretly the “Neo-cons” are laughing at Obama’s election. If it all goes to shit- they can blame the black-guy.

The Far-lefties, the true “Obama believers” are having a hizzy-fit.

People are suffering, almost a million Americans losing their homes and their jobs, national unemployment rate of 7.3 percent (with many economic experts saying secretly that the real unemployment rate, if you count the millions who have just given up their job search hovers around 14-percent).  This past President, with his delusional “cowboy diplomacy” and Empire-building has been embarking on eight-years of constant war, pouring money to sustain corrupt Saudi rulers and financing hugely expensive armaments, for what? It costs $2million for one missile fired from the air against a car below. The Iraqi war has already cost $300 billion. Who do you think has paid for George W’s delusions? President Bill Clinton refused to spend $2-million on a missile to blow up sand.

What did we expect? The Messiah?

With his meteroric rise and ascension to the White-House, the far-left, you know,  “Liberals” all believed Obama’s messianic powers by proclaiming that as soon as he was elected, all America’s problems would simply disappear. And Americans fell for it. The oldest trick in the political black-bag of dirty-tricks. Tell us what we want to hear.

With all the “racism” in America which is buried but not dead, did we really believe we could put the first black-guy in the Oval-Office with his black family and the white-supremists would quielty go along with it? Folks, I got to tell you, some of those ‘white-supremists” have old and long-distinguished names like Rockefeller. Morgan and others. You know, friends of the Bush family. And my friends, that’s exactly who is presuring the new 44th, kid-rock President to stack his cabinet with the same failed losers of the Bush and Clinton administrations.

Last October “They” promised us that a stock market bailout would help the economy, that a Wall Street recovery would be good for Main Street.  It appears it isn’t working.533,000 jobs have been lost according to the major headlines- the worst layoffs since 1974 and the long-lines at the gas pumps. “They” promised us if Obama was elected President we would see real change, radical change. The only radical change I expect are mobs of picketers at the gates of the White House as the layoffs in this country get worse, I expect Obama will bring the troops home, not in a slow drawn-out, orderly-pace but with their tails-between-their-legs leaving behind rioting, looting, and carnage as we did in Saigon all because the Federal Government is bankrupt and has no more money to pay for the war. Under an Obama administration, the causes that the liberal left has been fighting for over the last eight years will simply be forgotten just like conservatives were put to sleep when Bush came to power. Obama is the scape-goat. When the proverbial shit hits the fan, and it will, the attitude in Washington and the nation will be,”Blame it on the black guy. He did what all black people do- he scammed us and we fell for his lies.” Any progress America has made towards ending “racism” will be set back forty-years. The Clinton’s already know this for they are true political sharks. Already, Hillary and Bill are positioning themselves to create a “shadow government” which will step in should Obama get in over his head and bow out in four-years. 2012 may very well see a Clinton Presidency.

Four-years of an Obama administration will not repeal  the Patriot Act, the almost universal contempt for America around the world, shrink the size of government and restore dignity to the office of President. Obama was right about one thing during the primary,

“You can put lipstick on a pig and its still a pig.”

Our 44th-President has inherited a “Pig-Farm” which he is now entrusted to clean out the pig-pens. In order to do that, end the malfeasance and corruption in high places, provide the “change” that everyone is crying out for, this young boy from Hawaii will have to get tough, kick ass and take names with his friends and enemies alike. If his cabinet appointments are any indication, he is already folding his hand knowing he is in way over his head. Instead of tackling the job head on- Obama is already claiming that he can’t do it in the first term. Like we want to give this con artist a second term? He hasn’t even been sworn in or attempted to keep the promises he made to millions of Americans and he’s positioning himself for a second term?

I say in four years, run the bum out of town on a rail.

If you’re a true-Obama-believer, then God help you. But, this is one ol-country boy that won’t get fooled again.

KH

“Wise guy, eh?”

Chain Of Fools

I wasn’t going to do a bog on Blago (Illinois latest govenor that was arrested yesterday on charges of corruption) but it warrants a word or two.

Yesterday,  December 9, 2008, Milorad “Rod” R. Blagojevich was arrested by FBI agents and charged with various crimes in connection with his activities to replace Barack Obama’s Senate seat.

Here’s the thing about Ego’s. They become so inflated that they cause us to lose all touch with reality. Like a helium ballon that lifts us higher and higher  above the stratosphere, we get so lost in the “grandeur” we forget  it’s still a balloon after all that can pop at any time and we fall back to earth- hard.

Rod Blagovoich’s ego was so colossal, causing him to think he was smarter than the rest of us,  that he was so above the law,  that he didn’t know that everybody and everything around him was wired. His home and office phones, his best friend, co-workers. The FBI probably even put a wire on his dog.

Blagojevich,  was the first Democrat to be elected governor of Illinois in 30 years (since Daniel Walker in 1972) with Walker, another Illinois Govenor to be arrested on charges of corruption before doing jail-time. Another case of  colossal ego.

If you’re not a Chicagoan, here’s something you gotta know. There’s a lot of wiseguys here and the cops and the Feds love nothing more than beating down a “wiseguy.” It’s like a sport with them.

“Wise guy, eh?” laughing all the way to the cooker before they throw you in a bullpen.  The “wise guy” thing started in Chicago around the time of the real “wise guys,” Al Capone, John Dillinger, Machine-Gun Kelly and FBI dufus Melvin Purvis who couldn’t seem to catch or convict these “wise guys.” The “wise guys” and their inflated ego’s have been struttin their stuff around the streets of Chicago ever since with the  “beat-down”  by law enforcement an inevitable by-product.  Which is ironic in the fact that many of Chicago’s law enforcement officials (like Cook County State’s Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald)  are themselves, “Wise guys” with their capricious law-enforcement. Who can’t remember the classic eye-poke or the double face slap of  Moe Howard, the ringleader of The Three Stooges?  Or a few of the Stooge’s  classic lines lines heard over and over — “Nyuk Nyuk Nyuk!”, “Why I oughta…”, “Wise guy, eh?” And the ever-popular, “Soitenly!”

“Wise guy, eh? Why I oughta …………

Some of the Three Stooges shtick and phrases blended into popular culture such as “I’m a victim of soicumstance!” Chicago politcs are inundated with “Stooges,” cops and politicians arrested on charges of corruption laughing  and parting all the way to the slammer like it is 1999  give all Chicagoans, Chicago cops, and Chicago politicans,  a black-eye.

Of course,  “Blago-Gate” has made for a media field-day with headlines like, “That’s Not The Patti We Know, Governor isn’t a Cuckoo, he’s just a Chicago Pol,  and The Heat Is On,  everybody from local Chicago media pundits to Mel Harris, Blago’s estranged father-in-law  weighing in on the Gov’s troubles. But here’s the real truth folks, Blago was released on bail and he is still … the Governator who will decide the former Senate seat of Obama. The case against him is weak, just another “he said- she said” case that Cook County State’s Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald likes to bring before the court these days. The most damning evidence they have against Blago is that he and wife Pattie were taped on the phone using the F-word quite a few times. Oh my! It just confirms what I have always said about the FBI in my murder mystery’s which is: “The FBI couldn’t find a hooker in whore house if  she were sitting on their laps.” While cases like this make good newspaper fodder- they are not the stuff convictions are made of. So, Balgo used the F word. Well,  F-word to you to Patrick Fitzgerald. How about doing the job you were hired to do instead of showboating?

President George W.  and V.P. Dick Cheney use the F word quite frequently as do most of our national leaders, not to mention that the F-word is used  in every rap song at least once. Eddie Murphy once did a stand-up routine called Raw which was nothing but the F-word. If we started indicting everybody in this country who used the F-word, our jails would be even more over-crowded than they are now. Perhaps I should have titled this blog, Criminal Use Of  The F-word by one incredibly stupid politician.

It’s a weak case, which I’m sure Blago and his army of legal-begals will have no problem getting tossed. One of the reasons the Feds come up with 70 or 100 different charges these days against individuals is the “shit sticks to the wall” theory. That is, if you throw enough shit against the wall some of it is bound to stick. This is how our top law enforcement officials are doing business these days. Instead of building a solid case with just one charge which would bring a long stint in the pokey, they throw as many darts at the dartboard as they can hoping one of them will stick. It is a theory that does not work for the most part, as juries, overwhelmed with 70 or 100 different charges are confused by the myriad of charges and evidence and do one of three things, throw it out, can’t decide on a unanimous verdict and come in “deadlocked,” or convict on one or two of the lesser charges as with the case of former Illinois Governor George Ryan.  Sharp criminal minds  like former Governor  Ryan, (convicted on lesser charges) and only given three years in the Crossroads Motel, know this, as do most mobsters, drug cartels, and etc. who keep on retainer an army of sharp lawyers.

But, it makes good headlines. Legal begal Fitzgerald gets to see his photo in the paper,  a lot …..  both when he indicts and when the case is summarily dismissed. This is not justice, this is not what we pay our law enforcement officials to do. We pay them to uphold the law, not run their own private little beauty pageant. If the Feds really had anything on Blago- if he was as corrupt, arrogant and stupid as the Feds claim, do you really think they would allow him to return to the Governor’s office? To continue running the State Of Illinois from the Governor’s office? This criminal? They are sworn to protect and serve. To protect the public, (that’s us), from the likes of corrupt officials like Ryan, Blagoevich, Walker, Otto Kearner and Stratton. Obviously he’s not enough of a criminal to prevent him from returning to work in  a politics is a dirty business state. In Chicago politics, one hand has always washed another. You scratch my back-I scratch yours. That’s how it was done in the days of Richard J. Daley. I’m not saying that’s right- that’s just the way politics have always been done in Chicago and Illinois. It’s called, political-patronage. In reality, patronage is really doling out favors to your political supporters or those who finance your election campaigns. Blago, with his colossal ego is just guilty of not being “discreet” about how those favors or Obama’s Senate seat was given out. Most Chicagoans know the matter is business as usual for Chicago politics. But for Blago’s incredible stupidity, and arrogance when he surely must have known he was being watched;

“Wise guy, eh? Why I oughta …………

Blago was not a a victim of soicumstance! he was a victim of his own inflated, colossal ego. You know ego is a powerful persuader.  It can persuade someone like Audie Murphy to become a hero or it can persuade other people like Mummery, Mallory, or Shackleton to chase their ego’s all the way to hell and never return. The trick if you’re an explorer to getting out alive is not to let your ego persuade you to do more than you know you are physically capable of doing.

Undoubtedly, Blago will receive a “media-show-trial.” Plea bargain his way out of it or roll over on friends and associate’s  like Tony Rezko or perhaps Barack Obama for a reduced jail-sentence but will his ego learn anything from this fall from glory? His fall from riches to rages when he’s sent to the Crossroads Motel to sit alongside Illinois other Govenor, George Ryan?

Probably not. Colossal ego’s are like that.

Moe Howard’s word’s,  being uttered today by every Chicagoan in the city should  resound loud and clear  for law enforcement officials as well who care more about showboating than criminal justice.

“Wise guy, eh? Why, I oughta ……..”

KH

The new national past-time (kicking people when they’re down)

Dogs by Pink Floyd

It’s become the new national past-time,  making fun of people when they screw up, kicking people when they are down, and ruining people for sport.

“Kick-em when they’re up, kick-em when they’re down, kick-em where they sit, kick-em all around.”

~Don Henley (Dirty Laundry)

America it seems, has become a mean, petty, and downright ugly society in the way we get our “kicks” these days.  No longer contented to watch TV sitcom’s like the Brady Bunch poke fun at people, their lifestyles, eccentricity’s (behavior), we jump on the media bandwagon to kick a politician who makes a fool of himself running for president (like McCain and Palin) join in the media witch-hunt to crucify a politician who gets caught with his hand in the cookie jar like Blagojevich or George Ryan or laugh at the teen pop-star who has fallen from grace and allowed herself to become a fat slob, (Kristie Alley and Britany Spears) drive drunk,  (Paris Hilton) get caught up in drugs and die from an overdose. (Kurt Cobain or Heath Ledger).

Late night fools like Leno and Letterman fan the flames with comments about latest victim, Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich:

“He’s facing jail time, which will be a switch. In federal prison, he’ll be going to the highest bidder. See, it’s totally different now.” –Jay Leno

Excuse me, but when did late-night comedians give a crap about politics or anything other than getting an immediate laugh? Jay Leno is not one to be throwing stones out the window of his glass house. He was recenty arrested for DUI and being sued for buying a $180,000 custom-made classic car that once belonged to a Macy’s heir at a “sham” auction. Jay Leno, car thief?  Us Weekly reports Snoop Dogg was arrested for “drugs and guns” on Tuesday night after performing on ‘The Tonight Show with Jay Leno’ in Burbank.

Here’s my way of thinking, if you’ve got a warrant  out for your arrest or you have been recently arrested, you keep your mouth shut about someone else’s misfortunes.

Shooting your mouth off is what makes the late-night kings like Leno, Letterman, Conan O’Brien- fools. Thank-God Leno’s last Tonight Show appearance is May 29, 2009.  I, for one, will be very glad to see the fool go with his mean-spirited, kick-em-when-they’re down humor.

While kicking celebrities and politicians when they’re down might make for media ratings and great newspaper fodder for the purpose of selling advertising space, it does not serve  society well when we as a society stoop so low as to kick a person when they’re down. It’s petty, mean, and beneath us as Americans. It makes us forget that we are bigger than this- it makes us forget that Mel Gibson, Paris Hilton, Snopp Dog, Blagojevich, Lindsay Lohan, Brittany Spears and others are human beings with their own  lives, family, and personal problems and that when a celebrity screws up, the same thing could happen to any one of us. Britney’s fast food, heavy drinking, and hard partying lifestyle has happened to a lot of our young people, not just Brittany Spear’s. It is a reflection of a media that glorifies the “living in the fast-lane” lifestyle. Unfortunately, a lot of our young people crash and burn not just Brittany. These are real problems folks, not just fodder for fools like Leno and Conan O’Brien.

The Europeans have been doing it for centuries, kicking people when they are down, which is what keeps Parisians a petty, dirty-little society whose only real asset is the Eiffel Tower which has been turned into a Disney-land-like tourist attraction. The French you will recall, kicked us when America was down, despite supposedly being our friend and ally and we renamed our fries, “Freedom Fries” instead of French-fries.

So, the next time you want to join in the media parade in kicking someone when they’re down with fools like Leno, Letterman and especially Conan O’Brien  remember this – you are being used.  These celebrites don’t give a crap about you as a person- only as a number in the ratings. If you were down and out in Beverly Hills, lying on the sidewalk they would step over you.

Viewing the above link shows how they really feel about you folks. You, your family, and your personal problems are just fodder for their jokes. They don’t care about you other than as a laugh-line. Americans are dealing with “real” problems this Christmas while fools like Leno, Letterman and O’Brien yuk it up in the lap of luxury at our expense. As Pink Floyd says in Dogs, “And when you loose control, youll reap the harvest that you’ve sown.” Payback is a bitch and it comes back to every one of us in its own time- we don’t need fools like Leno, Letterman, O’Brien,  hastening the process.

We should turn the new national past-time into a past-time of our own- kicking these fools and their mean-spirited humor off the air. With the billions of dollars the TV networks like CBS/NBC  make off the advertisers who sponsor the mean-spirited humor of fools like Leno and Letterman,  this would be the funniest joke of all. Letterman and Leno used to be funny once upon a time but pressure to be number-one in the ratings wars, has turned their humor into just pure meanness with celebrities like Madonna blowing up on their sets before storming off. Even that- they use as fodder to continue in their meanness.

You think a fool like Letterman gives a crap if I think he’s a mean-spirited son-of-a-bitch? I doubt it and that’s the point here- we have to make them give a crap by not giving into their mean-spirited humor, by boycotting their shows, and writing their advertisers in enough numbers that their mean humor offends us for it to even begin to become a speck in their eye. Replacing Leno with Conan is just a continuation of the meanness that has come to dominate late-night television. Conan O’Brien is just a Jay Leno Jr with red-hair. An obnoxious red-head like Woody-the-Woodpecker.

Unfortunately, misery loves company and so most Americans will probably go along with Hollywood’s mean-spirited Christmas movies like Four Christmas’s and mean-spirited  talk show hosts  who delight in laughing at others misfortunes- it keeps us from dealing with our own, our own kid who is messed up on drugs and failing in school, our own parents who are struggling with declining health and senility, our own unemployment, alcoholism and drug-abuse. It feels good- to kick someone else because we have been kicked when we were down and can’t catch a break.

So lets:

“Kick-em when they’re up, kick-em when they’re down, kick-em where they sit, kick-em all around.”

KH

The 25 Sexiest Women of all time. (The definitive list)

The 25 sexiest women of all time
Because a man needs to know more than just the arbitrary ratings put out by magazines like Men.Style.com. Cosmopolitan,  FHM, Esquire, Maxim, and other magazines that unenlightened twenty-somethings write for.

If you want my body and you think I”m sexy

“Sex is an emotion in motion”

~Mae West

Lips, hips, tits … what’s not to love about the sexiest woman alive?

Every month I see an article in Esquire for The Sexiest Woman Alive and every month it is a different woman. Now, how can she be the “sexiest woman alive” when they change her every month? Wouldn’t that be, The sexiest woman alive-this month? Or. the sexiest woman of the moment?

I see articles with the titles like, The 25 sexiest women  in film, or The 50-sexiest women alive, The 100-Sexiest women of all time..

Here’s something you have to know. Whoever is doing the rating, it’s an arbitrary rating. It’s arbitrary because well, let’s face it, most of the twenty-something writers magazines like Esquire and Cosmo have these days are just not old enough to remember some really hot, older women of the 40’s, 50’s, 60’s, 70’s or  even earlier. How many of us recall Lillian Gish and Bette Davis?  (She got Bette Davis Eyes by Kim Carnes) with both Lillian Gish and Bette davis being sex-symbols in the 1930’s.

Either a woman is one of the sexiest women alive or she is not,  but plugging the sexiest woman of the moment, to plug a new James Bond film,  sell a product,  or promote something,  is just plain wrong.   I would think that one prerequisite for being named Sexiest Woman Alive is that you have to have been voted in by the public, not the writer’s who are using sex just to sell magazines, plug new products or sponsor the annual Victoria Secrets Christmas fashion-show just to sell frilly underwear.  In order for one to officially be one of the sexiest women alive you have to have been voted a sexy-woman at least once in some kind of public-poll in the last 100-years.

So here is my list of The 25 sexiest women (in all mediums) of all time. All 25 of these women at one time have been voted a sexiest woman, sexiest woman of the month, year, or all time,  at least once. I think few men, real men will disagree with my choice of the women who should be in the top 25.

Leave a comment to let me know who I left out and who should have been on this list.

1930’s

1. Bette Davis (I still get lost in those Bette Davis eyes)

1940’s

1. Mae West (You might have just taken her up on her invitation to, “Come up and see me sometime.”)

2. Betty Grable (WWII favorite of American GI’s)

3. Maureen O’Hara (classy lady who always lifted one leg when being kissed)

4. Lauren Bacall (you know how to whistle don’t you? Just put your lips together and blow to summon this classic 1940’s hottie)

5. Greta Garbo (Ninotchka) and Marlene Dietrich (Destry Rides Again)

1950’s

6. Jane Russell (this sexy outlaw can take me prisoner any day)

7. Gene Tierney (Laura)

8. Bettie Page (boop boop be doo!)

1960’s

9. Diana Rigg (On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, The Avenger’s TV series. This chick could  Emma Peel for me anytime.)

10. Marilyn Monroe (not only would the summers be long and hot with America’s favorite blonde but the winter’s to)

11. Sophia Loren (Italian bombshell)

12. Ursula Andress (The movie should have titled, Dr. Yes)

13. Jane Fonda / Ann Margaret (red-headed Barberella’s)

14. Doris Day (love to see this Virgin queen through a glass-bottom boat)

15. Brigitte Bardo (If God created woman, he threw away the mold after this French beauty).

16. Raquel Welch (One-Million-Years B.C. would not be long enough if she was around)

1970’s

18. Farrah Fawcett (wore out her poster on my college dorm-room wall)
Jacqueline Bisset (beauty down deep)

19. Catherine Deneuve (Intelligent, classy, sexy)

20. Suzanne Somer’s (Three’s a crowd when this babe’s around)

1980’s

21. Sigourney Weaver (sexiest alien hunter around)

22. Demi Moore ( You won’t be looking at ghosts while she’s around)

1990’s

23. Halle Berry (Meow ….)

2000’s

24. Scarlett Johansson / Kirsten Dunst (Spidey won’t be hanging around long with these two hot babes)

25. Rebecca Romijn Stamos (sexiest mutant around)

There were a lot of others who ran a close second like Jayne Mansfield, Dorothy LaMour, Lana Turner, Capucine, Shirley Maclaine, Susan Hayward,  Veronica Lake, Cheryl Ladd, Gina Lollobrigida, Pamela Andersen and etc. but if we’re shooting for the all-time top 25 sexiest women alive, I think my list is the definitive list. Forgive me all you J.Lo lover’s that she did not make the list. There are just too many favorites and I wanted to bring in my list at the top all-time 25 sexy women. Even I, found there were ties.

Here is a link for all the other’s that I do not consider in the top 25-sexiest women alive list.

Link for future Sexiest Woman alive contenders

Here’s my picks for future hottie’s 2010 and beyond:

1. Emma Watson (this little witch will definetly put a spell on you)

2. Jessica Alba

3. Maggie Q (one of the best kept secrets of the Orient).

4. Hillary Duff (This little hottie  likes to wear rings and you might just give her one after spending some time with her)

“I see you’re a man with ideals. I better be going before you’ve still got them.”

~Mae West quotes

KILBURN HALL

Let us not mock the song of peace on earth, goodwill to men

(Then pealed the bells more loud and deep
God is not dead nor does he sleep
The wrong shall fail the right prevail
with peace on earth goodwill to men)

(”I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day” is a Christmas carol based on the poem “Christmas Bells,” composed by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) in 1864).

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was in a dark place when he wrote I Heard The Bells On Christmas Day. America was in the midst of the American Civil War and the news of his son Charles Appleton Longfellow having suffered wounds as a soldier in battle. He had suffered the great loss of his wife Fanny two years prior to an accident with fire.

America, 144-years-after Longfellow,  is in a dark place. The national unemployment hovers at around 6.5-percent, a 14-year high with many secretly saying it is closer to 14-percent if you count those who have just given up on thier job search. Our housing industry is in shambles as is our stock-market and most of our banks due to greedy bankers and investors. Millions of Americans are losing their homes with millions more fighting to keep theirs,  millions of others are being laid off or have been laid off, 141,000-troops are still in Iraq with local journalists throwing their shoe at the head of our President. America’s image around the world is in the toilet. The Cold War is coming back.

The economy,  this Christmas 2008,  finds America in a deepening recession that is beginning to border on a depression.  The 2008 Christmas Retail Rush dove into a dismal and destructive ditch that forced many retailers like Circuit City and Linens and Things to finally throw in the towel. The Washington D.C.-based National Retail Federation, which represents the nation’s 1.6 million retail companies, blamed a relatively late Black Friday — one of the season’s busiest days for retailers — for a 2 percent decrease in November sales compared to the same month last year. The U.S. Commerce Department, which measures retail sales slightly differently, said sales dropped 8.5 percent in November from the previous year. More dramatically, figures released late Sunday by SpendingPulse, a data service provided by MasterCard Advisors, showed that from Nov. 28 — the day after Thanksgiving — through Dec. 6, apparel sales fell 22.9 percent from the same period last year and electronic sales fell 22.3 percent. The unions no longer can guarantee jobs or numbers of hours with many unions only guaranteeing 12-hours-per-week for union workers at a pay-rate hovering around $7.75 an hour.

And in despair I bowed my head
“there is no peace on earth” I said
For hate is strong that mocks the song
of peace on earth goodwill to men.

When Longfellow penned the words to his poem, America was still months away from Lee’s surrender to Grant at Appomattox Court House on April 9th 1865; and, his poem reflected the prior years of the war’s despair, while ending with a confident hope of triumphant peace. The first Christmas after Fanny’s death, Longfellow wrote, “How inexpressibly sad are all holidays.” A year after the incident, he wrote, “I can make no record of these days. Better leave them wrapped in silence. Perhaps someday God will give me peace.” Lt. Charles Longfellow did not die that Christmas, but lived until April 17th 1893.

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep
God is not dead nor does he sleep

This Christmas, 2008, America is just one month away from a new, potentially historic,  Presidency. America’s first black President and first lady. Like Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Americans are privately looking forward to 2009 with confidant hope for a better future.

The wrong shall fail the right prevail
with peace on earth goodwill to men
peace on earth goodwill to men

“Whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away” (James 4:14)

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year America.

As Longfellow, let us not give in to our despair but let us walk trepidaciously into the New Year, with a private prayer on our lips and a confidant hope in our hearts for a better future that the wrong shall fail and the right prevail with  peace on earth goodwill to men, peace on earth goodwill to men.

KILBURN HALL

2008

Forced retirement is a good thing for a failed presidency

Burning Down The House

As President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney are leaving office with one of the lowest approval ratings in the history of numbers. they have to be aware that they are about as popular as taxes and chicken pox. In a recent exit-interview with FOX News. George W.  said: “I didn’t compromise my soul to be a popular guy.” Bush went on to say that he would have liked to have been more popular, but he’s proud that he didn’t sacrifice his integrity.

Stubborn, defiant, pig-headed to the end with his “Cowboy diplomacy” and his “go-it-alone” foreign policy. Dub-ya might as well have burned down the White House.

America says, “good riddance to bad rubbish.”

Now, I tried to give the guy a break after Islamabad’s high on Jiha