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February 10, 2010
Once upon a time in a land far far away.
• “Roosevelt is a socialist, not a Democrat,” declared Republican Rep. Robert Rich of Pennsylvania during a debate on the House floor on July 23, 1935. That remark came after Republicans hinted they were considering a move to impeach Roosevelt, according to the New York Times .
• “The New Deal is now undisguised state socialism, declared Senator Simeon D. Fess (R-Ohio) today as he pictured President Roosevelt as the New Deal’s leading socialist,” reported the Chicago Daily Tribune on Aug. 7, 1934. “The president’s recent statements,” Fess said, “remove any doubt of his policy of state socialism, which necessitates increased activities of the government in either ownership or operation of industry, or both.”
• “The Russian newspapers during the last election [1932] published the photograph of Franklin D. Roosevelt over the caption, ‘The first communistic President of the United States,’” said Sen. Thomas Schall, a Republican from Minnesota. “Evidently the Russian newspapers had knowledge concerning the ultimate intent of the President, which had been carefully withheld from the voters in this country. In fact, the voters of the United States were meticulously misled as to such intentions Continue reading Socialists Need Not Apply to the Tea Party Convention
February 10, 2010
You wake thinking something exploded. Someone hit the house with a hammer and everything shakes. You jump out of bed because something has just happened and yet the house is quiet. A meteorite just hit the house. A UFO landed on the roof. A jetliner crashed in your yard. Your wife runs in and says there has been an earthquake. Your son says his bed moved across the room.
The earthquake last night hit in the middle of a snowstorm and I thought snow must have fallen from the roof and hit the porch. There was no news of an earthquake. It is Illinois for Godsake. So I run around the house looking for damage. Nothing. I look outside trying to see if there is a smoking meteor or a plane that crashed in the neighborhood and shook the house.
And it is then I have a small glimmer of what people in Haiti went though. The terror is not knowing what is happening. There is the feeling of the world suddenly lurching out of control and your once sane existence is threatened by an unseen hand shaking your house like a box of popcorn. We go on the Internet looking for any news but there is nothing. Continue reading The Illinois Quake-Glimmers of Haiti
January 28, 2010
We live in a age when fame is the ultimate bar of success. John Kennedy Toole. How many people have heard of him? Maybe some. Maybe.He wrote A Confederacy of Dunces. The novel went on to win a Pulitzer. Highly reviewed. A classic. The author. He committed suicide ten years before the book ever saw print. 32. He was just thirty two when in 1968 he decided to cash it in. Written a huge manuscript dog eared and typed and smudged. Sitting down in New Orleans with his mother. Doing nothing. Waiting to be discovered. Eating rejection letters. Waiting to be discovered. Not many people know what that’s like. You spend your best moments. Your heart and soul. Give your best years to this mound of paper filling your desk and then you begin funneling it out to the world at large and it comes back. No one gives a damn.
So you can imagine old John. I personally never knew him but I do know him. Any writer does. You have one horror as a writer. Comes to you at night in your sleep. That you will die in obscurity. That what you have to say will find no voice among your fellow man. You write because you are driven. You write because you have no other way to make sense of your existence publish so you will leave footprints. That no one will see your passage is the knife at your throat as the sands flow. Time. It starts to run you down right after you finish your book. How long will it take to get it in print. Will it ever get in print. Will it stay in print.Will the manuscript ever escape the box, the basement, the attic. Immortality. A flag that you have passed. Continue reading The Politics of Obscurity
January 28, 2010
People are either Republican or Democrat, conservative or liberal. But this says nothing about why we vote. It is not issues. Issues are the window dressing we paint over our biases. The reason we vote the way we do goes back to childhood. Did we hear dad use the N word? Did we grow up on a farm? Did dad nash his teeth about taxes and swear the minorities were all getting a free ride. Did we see race riots on television?
I Maybe there was a sense that other people were getting things unfairly. Maybe country music played in the car. Maybe the city was viewed as dangerous, a place where bad people went to do bad things. Maybe the corporation was viewed as something that would take care of your family. Maybe you were a jock instead of a burnout. Maybe you don’t like to read novels. Maybe your brother or sister was a screwup. Maybe someone in your family was in the military. Someone died in a war. Continue reading Why We Vote
January 28, 2010
In the early days of Obama’s run for President a lot of people said he had no experience. Remember all those people who said this guy had just been a Senator for a couple years and did he really have the experience to walk into the ring and govern and be the leader of the Free World. Barack wrote a couple books and gave some outstanding speeches and then the economy tanked. John McCain went flaky and suddenly the man with a couple years of experience looked pretty good.
Fast forward a year later. We have a man who has reigned over a super majority in congress and now a simple majority and yet he seems to be backsliding. He has taken on a lot of issues and approached them the way any intelligent man would, but now the question is has his lack of experience bit him in the you know where. There is the way things are done outside a system and the way things are done inside a system and we have to admit that President Obama has had to operate outside the system because he was so new. Continue reading Was Obama too inexperienced?
January 28, 2010
Guess what. We cant afford ideologies anymore. Like our credit we have used them all up and at the end of the day they mean nothing anyway. The Democrats are socialists and the Republicans are right wing fascists who want us all to be teabaggers now and the independents want to overthrow the government. Please. Those days are over now. DEAD. Massachusetts and all.
Oh its a referendum on change. Ok. The United States has problems. Take healthcare and the charge the Democrat s want to wreck the economy. The healthcare system is fine. No. It needs changing of some kind. You cant throw sick people in the street. But the Republicans say no no no. Obstructionists. These words mean nothing now. They are IDEOLOGIES.
People are losing their homes and they are unemployed. So lets help them. Lets take money and give it to the bottom. We tried giving it to the top and that didn’t work. If you think that is is socialism then lets give people jobs. Lets give them something and don’t stand there calling names. The ideologies are mind candy, window dressing from talking heads who get paid. You don’t. They do. Continue reading The United States Can’t Afford Ideologies Anymore
January 28, 2010
F Scott Fitzgerald said in the opening of The Great Gatsby, “I was going to become that most limited of all specialist the well rounded man. This isn’t an epigram, life is more successfully looked at from a single window after all.” Certainly President Obama is that most limited of specialists…the visionary. He is at his best when painting a picture, providing a vision, pointing us the way. Then he gets in his limousine and heads for the next campaign rally.
This isn’t something new. We have had very successful Presidents that are visionaries. President Reagan was masterful at pointing us in a direction and letting others do the hard work of implementing his vision and for a demoralized country it worked. Visionaries are leaders. They touch a star and tell us how to get there and then have legions of people do the dirty work while they ride herd. The question is…can we afford a visionary now?
Healthcare reform would say no. President Obama was masterful right up to the point the whole thing blew up. He carefully remained above the fray right up to where he lost touch with the American people. As any visionary knows it is a balancing act between staying above and intervening just enough to keep things moving. With President Obama we began to get a remote control type of Presidency. Continue reading The Visionary–Can we afford this now?
January 28, 2010
When I wrote my last novel Rocket Man about a man struggling to keep his home, I emphasized the chaos of the American Dream and threw everything but the kitchen sink at my poor main character. Now this fictional character seems to have moved down the pike into the mainstream of suburban America. A bank representative told me years ago that what we would have in this country is a nation of squatters. He said that so many people will go into foreclosure that the banks will not be able to take reclaim the homes and there will be people living in their homes for years as squatters. This has come to pass.
A new report by the Brookings Institution reveals that “the largest and fastest-growing population of poor people in the U.S. is in the suburbs.” Overall, the report showed that from 2000 to 2008, the number of poor people in the U.S. grew by 5.2 million, reaching nearly 40 million, 15.4 percent increase. That still does not include figures from 2009, when joblessness and foreclosures skyrocketed. But what is staggering is the amount of people who are upside down in their homes and have stopped paying their mortgages. They are the new squatters. Continue reading A Nation of Squatters–Poverty comes to the Suburbs
January 28, 2010
Grace under Pressure was Hemingway’s definition of courage. It certainly rings true as President Barack Obama faces his second year in office. Being a President is not a popularity contest and the will of the people is a relative term. Leaders are not defined by approval ratings or pundits or bloggers–they are defined by their ability to see above the fray and act in the quiet capacity of great men.
Healthcare may rise or fall. The war in Afghanistan may go badly. The economy could slide off even further. There are a lot of opinions out there and a lot of polls and a lot of advisers, but the buck does stop in the Oval Office and the President alone must face the consequences of his actions.
History is littered with great men who were nearly not great. Lincoln was hardly revered when he put his faith behind a general who drank too much and lost so many men people started calling him Grant the Butcher. If Eisenhower had misjudged the weather on D DAY and the invasion failed as it almost did, then we certainly would not have been the revered General of World War II. FDR was called a dictator and a war monger when he passed New Deal Legislation and started giving war material to Britain in a Lend Lease program that went against the views of most Americans that we should stay out of European wars. Continue reading Grace Under Pressure–Obama has hard decision
January 28, 2010
He could have given a feel good speech. There is no one who can give a better speech than Barack Obama. He can soar to the heavens and take us with his vision, his eloquence, his verbal acuity. But he did none of that. He told it like it is and it was a hard speech. But it was honest.
Take the attack on our inability to get anything done in Congress. You could have heard a pin drop when he looked at the Republicans and said just saying NO is not an option. You could have heard an even smaller pin drop when he chided the Supreme Court for opening the flood gates of lobbyist money. He did not back down and he didn’t let anyone off the hook.
He put jobs first, yes, but we knew this was coming. But he did not abandon healthcare, challenging the Republicans to come up with an alternative. I am eager to hear it he said. And the Republicans sat and stared, only one of many awkward silences during his speech. It was not an Obama speech. There were not the usual soaring moments to give us all relief. In this way it was a very Un Obama speech. Continue reading Tough State of the Union-Obama pulls no Punches
December 17, 2009
Joe Lieberman needs to be bitch slapped. We need Hillary or someone to get in and fight for us now. The President is too remote, too Ivy League, too government by deal. As Keith Obermann said in a piercing comment, “there is a big difference between compromise and compromised. “With the loss of the Public Option, no Medicare buyi n and the ability to charge whatever they want for preexisting conditions, surely President Obama has gotten his hat handed to him and told to not let the door hit him on the way out. Insurance has won. The Republicans have won. The American people have lost because no one has fought for them. The case for a legislative victory becomes weak when we are the Poles who just lost the Danzig corridor in the name of appeasement. You can almost see President Obama on a carrier, “I have just secured healthcare reform in our time!”
So we need Hillary. We need someone who will get in there and burn these namby pamby conservative Democrats to the ground and push the obstructionist Republicans to the side. We need someone not afraid to get dirty. Barack is looking a little too crisp these days, a little too polished while Harry Reid and the boys look like they have gone though a war. They have. They have had to fight without a commander. Mr. President, get in there and fight for us! Don’t take this watered down garbage that is now passing for reform. Make Joe Lieberman accountable. The man got a million dollars this year from the insurance companies. He is as tainted as any Tammany Hall politician ever was. Continue reading We need Hillary to bitch slap Lieberman
December 8, 2009
Tis the season. They come in drips and drabs. One, two, three, then a flood as the yuletide approaches. The cards are store bought hand made or sometimes they are an ecard that we flick open and forget. And sandwiched in this holiday flood are three by five envelopes that stand out in the short epistles of Happy Holidays Hope To See You Soon. Or they drop out of an envelope like an unwanted guest and suddenly we are privy to something we didn’t bargain for…the Christmas letter.
Now these letters are divisive. Some people approve of these letters and some do not. But as the recipient you are about to enter into a world of personal information you may not have bargained for. For the Christmas letter is a mini summation of a person or a families life and it is told in a sort of first person aint we grand voice. But I like hearing about people. Bully for you. But for the rest of us we are now getting slapped with little Johnny’s latest or little Suzie’s best or worse (actual letter) the performance of stock portfolios and 401k’s. At the least we are going to get some proselytizing…”May God Bless you as it has Blessed Us and we are most fortunate in his blessings.” Continue reading Those Christmas Letters
December 8, 2009
All things go around eventually. The darling becomes the bum. The favored becomes the forgotten. The chosen one is relegated to the also ran. And honeymoons end. Unfortunately. Now Fox and MSNBC are both turning their guns toward President Obama. This more than anything else should demonstrate the President goes his own way. He makes his own decisions regardless of politics. Sounds like a leader to me.
I may not agree with his troop deployment but frankly I don’t know enough about it. There seems to be a lot of contradictory information and we have to assume President Obama knows things we don’t. But it is a new experience to see Keith Obermann tee off on the President. There is anger among the left who scream it is Vietnam all over again. Depending on your view of history, one can make a case either way. One can say there are only a hundred rag tag fighters or there is a vast empire. Again, depending on the pundit we hear both versions. Continue reading President Bashed by Left
December 8, 2009
If you watch the former cheerleader and horsey vineyard owner you start to feel what crept up when Richard Heene played his theme song for his science reality show and you realized that people will go to extreme lengths to become famous. The couple on Good Morning America talked in subdued tones of the egregiously injured–”our life has been torn away from us.” They are somber and seem like toppled gentility until Matt Louer brings up another interview. “Oh yes, we are coming to New York.,” the quietly outraged Virginian nodded. And then his reality show wife nodded in agreement. “Oh yes, we are coming to New York.” And that’s when the feeling hits you…almost famous. They will do anything.
Same title of the movie we watched years ago we are a nation preoccupied with the almost famous. The woman who had a zillion babies, Carrie Prejean, the mistresses of those famous (ie Tiger Woods) who suddenly flash into national consciousness only to vanish again as the media machine moves on. Now we have the gate crashers who claim they will be exonerated when everything comes out, but we know already from their protestations it is all a sham. Continue reading Almost Famous–Party Crashers hit White House
December 8, 2009
Whoops. Another icon falls. Sports figures just keep going down like the proverbial dominoes. Barry Bonds, Sammy Sosa, Tiger Woods. But he is such a good golfer! The best. The sports pundits line up in their suits and nod and speak in low tones. Yes yes he has made some bad choices but I believe he will play even better because of this…ah incident. Ah…yeah. That’s what this is really about…Tiger Woods playing even better.
Tacit understanding in sports world is that athletes at the top of their games get a pass while the not so lucky fall because they were not playing at the top of their game. Remember the Michael Jordan gambling mystery? His father ends up murdered on the side of the road at the same time rumors of Michael Jordan’s addiction to gambling were swirling around. We remember it here in Chicago. Or Pete Rose. So he bet against his own team. So what…he was a great player and should be admitted into the Hall of Fame. What’s a little gambling on the side. Continue reading Tiger Hooks one into the Rough
December 8, 2009
About six months ago we gave up plastic. Shock. Paralysis. Fear. No bottomless well of credit to cushion the stupid decision, the rash moment, the dinner that started out as a snack and ended up costing over a hundred dollars. We literally never had any cash in our pocket. We were debit card people who saw money as a number downloaded into Quicken or a text in a Blackberry from the bank telling us our balance. In short money had ceased to be money, currency had become a nebulous number that one kept as far away from zero as possible.
I just did a story for CNNmoney.com.. http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2009/pf/0912/gallery.living_debt_free_cash_only/index.html describing our bold decision to get off our plastic addiction. We were hopelessly addicted. I had come from a father who loved plastic. Our family culture was one of new cars and dinners out and rented homes. My dad was a salesman described clearly in Rocketman…http://www.billhazelgrove.com who never gave a thought to the amount of debt we were carrying. His assumption was there would always be more. And really, when you think about it, that has been our assumption as a nation for the last twenty years…there would always be more. Continue reading Going from Plastic to Cash
November 25, 2009
Now Every Democrat down in the Senate liked healthcare reform a lot, but among the Democrats there was one who did not. The Liebergrinch hated healthcare reform – the whole Senate season. Now, please don’t ask why; no one quite knows the reason. It could be, perhaps, that his shoes were too tight. Or it could be that his head wasn’t screwed on just right. But I think that the most likely reason of all may have been that his heart was two sizes too small.
For every ten years they took up the cause and the Liebergrinch knew what was in store. They’ll debate and debate and there will be no TV for me and then I will be left behind with the Republicans and little to see. And the noise! The noise! But this year, I know just what I’ll do. I’ll filibuster just to show them a thing or two. They think they will make a bill and we’ll see about that…not with the Leibergrinch they wont and I’ll stop them dead in their tracks. Continue reading The Liebergrinch who Stole Healthcare Reform
November 17, 2009
http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/podcasts/hazelgrove-w/
November 16, 2009
Even if we agree that our journalism is less than objective these days and television now resembles the carnival more than the domain of the Cronkite’s and the Murrow’s with hawkers yelling at us as we walk down the dusty aisles…that still doesn’t mean we can’t try for a representative news channel. You could never quite figure old Lou out. Was he a newscaster giving us the news or was he a pundit giving us his views? It was further complicated by the fact he was on CNN–a news organization that is akin to Switzerland while WWIII rages between Fox and MSNBC.
But there was Lou. He wasn’t Glenn Beck with his hyper alarmist calls for revolution and teary monologues on our veering from the vision the founding fathers had for America. He wasn’t Bill O’Reilly who routinely goes ballistic when he veers from the bubble-headed blond pundits on his show and actually has a guest who disagrees with him. Or the football throwing Hannity whose American panel is a stacked mirror that throws back his own views–don’t’ you agree that Barack Obama is a socialist? Yes we agree Sean. And he’s certainly not Keith Obermann or Rachel Maddow throwing back the leftwing view to Fox’s right wing serve. So who was Lou? Continue reading Why Lou Dobbs Had To Go
November 12, 2009
“Inappropriate. You are being inappropriate Larry.” Now this sounds like Larry whipped out something from his pants or cracked an obscene joke or flipped Carie Prejean the bird or swore. Larry did something far worse…he hit the wall. The wall is where the Bush Doctrine meets Sarah Palin…what do you think of the Bush Doctrine? It is where Dan Quayle misspells potato. It is Senators quoting the Declaration of Independence and calling it the Constitution. It is Sarah Palin saying she can see Russia from her back door. It is Carie Prejean on a book tour.
Carie Prejean..the fallen Beauty Queen who has become the darling of the far right with her strange incantations about free speech as her sex tape and nude photos shoot around the internet. The woman who proclaimed marriage should be for a man and a woman and then didn’t bother showing up at required events and then was fired from the pageant and then did the talk show circuit of Fox and Fox and more Fox and told everyone she was the victim of conservative woman oppression. Ok. She is riding the gravy train, but last night gave us a new low for American gutter culture surpassing even the guy who sold his kid down the river to get a reality show. Continue reading Revenge of the Bimbo–Prejean spanks inappropriate Larry King
November 10, 2009
In the depths of the Great Depression the United States government undertook the largest project in the United States to date–The Hoover Dam. Billed to provide electricity and water for the West from the Colorado river and to finally tame the Colorado so it would quit washing out farms–the dam was audacious. No one knew first of all if it could be done. The price tag was huge…a whopping 146 million. There were no companies big enough to even attempt the project. There was no infrastructure in the desert, no railroad tracks or roads. The entire Colorado river had to diverted while the dam was built. People doubted that anyone could ever dam the Colorado with a giant cement plug. People said we had enough problems without spending money on a giant public works project.
The damn was contentious from the start. Men died. The temperatures reached one hundred and thirty degrees. The contractors had strict deadlines and safety was not a premium. Men fell to their death, died from heat exhaustion, dynamite, trucks, steam shovels. But the work went on. Herbert Hoover made a speech at the ground breaking that went nowhere. People didn’t believe in him. FDR took over and immediately changed the name to Boulder Dam. No one wanted to think about Herbert Hoover now that unemployment had hit twenty five percent. The workers went on strike for better conditions and the construction companies hired more men and broke the strike. The work went on. Continue reading Maybe Healthcare Reform Is our Hoover Dam
November 9, 2009
“I have a constitutional duty to make the right decision for my district whether or not the decision was popular.”
When was the last time we heard that? It gets better. “I had to make a decision based on the needs of the people in my district…a lot of my constituents are uninsured, a lot of them are poor.” BOOM! Game over. Mr. Cao, a freshman republican from New Orleans just did the unthinkable–he voted to to help the people who ELECTED HIM. What a concept. Not an ideologue, not someone in it for personal gain. Mr. Cao just broke the mold of the modern American politician left and right–HE VOTED ON PRINCIPAL! I would vote for Mr. Cao because I have not heard these words out of anyone with integrity for so long. He went against his party and he will probably not be elected again.
We might be at the beginning of a movement here. Could it be called the play of the INDEPENDENT.
Mr. Cao might be onto something here. Fed up with politicians tied to ideologies regardless of consequence…there might be a new sheriff in town. Mr. Cao said he went over the entire health care bill and then made his decision. Then he ducked reporters and left. He will pay a price. He will be vilified by his own party for his vote. He will be the target of ideologues who can crank ratings over his defection. Continue reading Lets Hear it for Mr. Cao–Republican breaks ranks.
November 8, 2009
I know a man whose job it is to call up doctors and hospitals and knock down their fees. He has a large home and shiny sports cars and acreage and stocks and bonds and his kids will go to Big Ten schools and he is very affable and is known as a man who knows how to negotiate. But what Frank does is call up a doctor after you go and get a stress test and say, listen, we aren’t going to pay a thousand dollars for that stress test, we will only pay seven hundred. And right there the doctor takes the hit.
Or you have just gone into surgery and emerged minus an appendix and after all is said and done there is a bill for fifty thousand dollars then Frank swings back into action and tells the hospital that they need to knock it down to thirty thousand. That’s what Frank does. He decides what an insurance company will pay and the average is thirty percent that he knocks off the bill.
Imagine if someone came in and lopped off thirty percent from your paycheck just because. Or you have just charged a client to do their taxes or prepare their will or remodel their basement and you have figured your costs and then a middleman comes in and goes, nope, we get thirty percent of that and you are just out. Continue reading Insurance Companies Take Thirty Percent off the Top
November 8, 2009
THE RECESSION IS OVER! So says President Barack Obama and government officials. Prosperity is right around the corner. REALLY? Now what corner is that prosperity lurking on? Herbert Hoover’s corner? The bankers corner? The auto manufacturers corner? AIG’s corner? The bail out execs with bonuses corner? Barack Obama’s corner? Geitner’s corner? I mean I must be looking around the wrong corner because I cant’ find that prosperity.
Now the recession is over for the BANKS. Phew! That’s a relief. I was really worried about those billion dollar bonuses not being paid. I thought for a while there some of those executives might not get their retention bonuses and that really had me up at night. But no, our financial system is sound! SO WHAT? They aren’t giving anyone any of that SOUND money. They are so busy being SOUND that they keeping it for themselves and making billions more in their own investments. Continue reading The Recession Is Over! Really!
November 8, 2009
You really should watch Glenn Beck to understand what is going on. The third party is here and it is a radical amalgam of disgruntled teabaggers and 9/12 ers who have coalesced around Republican contests and are now going to unleash their own far right candidates to purge the republicans of moderates and anyone else who smacks of conspiring with the enemy. But back to Glenn. Sweating, crying, animated, running around his set with his voice echoing in the rafters…Attacking both parties as corrupt sellouts on the American Dream to vested interests, threatening harm to politicians who think they can glom on to the new teabagger 9/12ers–Beck is certainly playing the Huey Long card.
Every Man Is A King! Socialism! Long screamed from Louisiana that Roosevelt was bringing the country down and that only he could bring justice to the United States again and empower the little man. EVERY MAN IS A KING. Beck runs around invoking the founding fathers. NO GOVERMENT INTRUSION. OUR FREEDOMS ARE UNDER ATTACK. He promises retribution, promises that those who have done this to our country will feel the wrath of the voters. Continue reading The Third Party
November 8, 2009
I would think he gets it now. There is a subsonic rumbling in America. It breaks out like a volcano on the cable shows. Gas emits from the Palin Beck coalition in the name of taking back America. They took back the election in upstate New York and gave it to a Democrat. They took away two governors from the Democrats. Ok. There is some palpable tremors now in the Obama landscape. Issues need to be addressed and it is nothing new…JOBS!
KEEP IT SIMPLE STUPID. Right. Right. JOBS. Americans need jobs. They need to go back to work and not go to teaparty rallies or join 9/12er petitions. We need work. Work is central to happiness. Humans need to be occupied. WE DONT CARE ABOUT THE BANKS ANYMORE…HELLO!!! The American people are unhappy. They need to be able to feed their kids, pay their mortgages and get back on track with living. This Viet Cong life is getting old fast where you just don’t know when the next shoe will drop.
So what happened? A slap in the face to the President. YES! WAKE UP! WE NEED HELP STILL! OK. The American people are still behind President Obama, but they need JOBS. They need work. This is something FDR saw as fundamental. He said it many times, Americans need relief but what they really need is WORK. The races the Democrats lost are wake up calls in that respect. Business as usual will not work. STIMULUS 2 or whatever, but JOBS JOBS JOBS. Continue reading What do those elections mean for Obama?
November 8, 2009
At a white people rally in front of the capitol yesterday Michele Bachmannn from Minnesota called for revolution. She threw a large stack of paper to the ground and whipped up Teabaggers, 9/12ers, closet Klansmen, guntoters, and the assortment of middleaged white people who hold signs of Obama as Hitler, Healthcare as a concentration camp, and warnings of dire consequences for anyone who attempts to tread on their rights. So the question is then…What does the far far right really want.
Poof. Far far right fairy Godmother. Your wish is granted. The far far right is now in power and can have everything it wants. There is no congress anymore, just the far far right ruling absolutely (see Nazi Germany or Stalinist Russia) Here then is the world of the Michele Bachmann, teabaggers and 9/12ers and anyone else who bothered to show up yesterday
NO ABORTIONS. It doesn’t matter how many times a woman is raped. READ MY LIPS NO ABORTIONS.
NO TAXES. READ MY LIPS NO TAXES. Continue reading What does the far far right want?
November 8, 2009
Twenty three billion trees. That’s how many the Civilian Conservation Corps planted. Eight hundred new state parks. Millions of men taught to read and write and trained for future professions. Franklin Roosevelt’s baby brought charges of socialism and worse. Some thought he was trying to create a personal army the way Mussolini and Hitler were doing. Huey Long saw it as government gone bad and who was going to pay for it..the taxpayers. High taxes and socialism! Sound familiar?
The problem for Barack Obama is he does not have the bold step yet.. Healthcare is bold in it’s scope. The bailout of the banks and the stimulus bill were bold in their endeavor to head off a depression. But there has been no bold step to inspire the American public and put people back to work. Roosevelt’s army hit the field the summer after he was elected! Bold! Let’s just try it!
President Obama needs to get rocking. He needs to move out of the heady world of the Harvard law professor and take the bold step. Roosevelt could do it because he had been to his mountaintop. He had polio. He knew what it was like to hurt. He knew what it was like to have your dreams smashed. So he knew what the American people needed. They needed work more than relief. That was the CCC in it’s core–work. And those armies tackled the environment and started to rebuild the carnage of the dust bowl years. Continue reading Be Bold President Obama–Time to put people to work
October 26, 2009
Seven Million. That’s what insurance companies are spending a week to defeat this healthcare reform. Now why would that be? Is it because they are just so sure they are providing us the best healthcare out there and no other system could better serve the American public than the one where insurance companies decided who will get healthcare and who wont? Is it the altruism that is near and dear to the heart of insurance executives who determine pre existing conditions and cut off people just when they need their healthcare the most? Is it because they are morally opposed to Obamacare and believe that socialized medicine is against our democratic ideal and they don’t want us to be duped into something that smacks of those socialists across the ocean? Or is it because they are making so much money off Americans at their most vulnerable point that they can afford to spend seven million a week and still generate enormous profits.
Any industry that spends that kind of money to fight change is up to no good. On this we can agree. They are making so much money that they can blow twenty eight million a month to fight legislation that will give more Americans healthcare. This is evil. And we know it is evil. Somewhere people got inside the government and have gotten between the people and their elected leaders who job it is to protect the common good. We know this because of the one percent that is keeping all the money in this country now. We know this because Wall Street is giving away billions in bonuses again. We know this because forty six million people are without healthcare. Continue reading Seven Million Bucks a Week to Defeat Health Reform
October 21, 2009
Whatever it takes. That’s what it is now. You don’t want to leave this planet without your fifteen nanoseconods. The woman who had a zillion babies proved that one. Her own show and book deal just for having more babies than anyone else. Now we have the parents who decided to throw the dice [...]
October 21, 2009
Well now why isn’t the economy turning around? Why is the combined unemployment and underemployment in this country topping twenty percent! Why is Wall Street booming? Why is Goldmans posting record profit and giving out record bonuses? Why does the average American have no credit? Why does no money trickle down at all? Why is the housing market still in the dumps? Why can no one qualify for a mortgage? Why are the insurance companies launching an all out counter attack to stop healthcare reform? The answer is easy: we live in a plutocracy where the economy serves only one group of people…the top one percent.
We gave them seven hundred billion dollars. They have taken that money and made themselves richer. The bonuses of Wall Street are in the billions again. Well now why wouldn’t they be? If someone gave you seven hundred billion dollars and said go put it in the market and you are the market and you know that buying treasuries or stocks with billions of dollars will send them skyrocketing then you would clean up also. It’s like we gave the OWNERS of the casino the money to bet on their craps table. Talk about a stacked deck. Continue reading The Rich Just Get Richer
October 21, 2009
Richard Heene and the great balloon hoax does have historical precedence. Orson Wells on October 1938 pulled a balloon hoax of his own with a War of the Worlds episode broadcast in New York City. Millions of people thought the Martians had landed and panic ensued. Wells said he was sorry and that was pretty much the end of it. So why is Richard Heene getting so lambasted for his stunt?
Couple of reasons. One. Our patience is at an end. We are sick to death of reality shows and the lowbrow people that go with it. Two. Henne’s hoax involved an active pitch to get a television show. Three it involved a child. Four there was an active rescue effort mounted and Heene did not come clean until his son barfed on national television and told Wolf Blitzer they did it for the show. Five, the times are just different.
When Wells did his stunt there were actual disclaimers on the radio broadcast. The problem was that a lot of people only listened to part of the show and didn’t hear the disclaimers at the end. Also Wells did amp it up by the realism and holding back that the show was fiction until the end but there was not a plot for personal gain to dupe the American public. Also, Wells already had a show, The Mercury Theater, and this episode was a scheduled event. Continue reading Orson Wells and Richard Heene
October 14, 2009
Posted by Bill Hazelgrove in: Entertainment, Governance, Minorities, Opinion, Politics, Republican, Social Issues, Sociology, Sports, Television, The Media, The Pundit's Corner, The Writer's Corner
 So Rush Limbaugh is down for the count. No NFL team for him to hang his hat on. Seems the NFL wants nothing to do with him or his views. They repudiated the Limbaugh world hook line and sinker. Which of course for Rush is something he will make much of and increase ratings, [...]
October 1, 2009
Ken Burns newest film is amazing. The parks are amazing. We watch and watch and I have been at it eight .jpg) hours now after four episodes. At times it is like a marathon with the people and parks running by you in a mind stream of sequences of people and events that you struggle to keep straight as the Juggernaut of Burnsian vignettes hits you. Still…you want more.
It is that these people are no longer with us and they are just like us. The couple who tried to go to every park in five different Buick’s and took pictures and kept them in albums is heartbreaking to know that the husband died and she kept going and found herself at the end alone in the vast wilderness she knows she will never see again. Or the couple who went down the Colorado on their honeymoon and disappeared forever. Or the man who went to the Smokies after losing his family and found himself and then began to campaign to turn the area into a national park. Continue reading America’s Best Idea is Us–Ken Burns Film
September 25, 2009
Sarah and Rod–strange bedfellows of fame and fortune
by Bill Hazelgrove
Used to be you had to run for something or be in office. Not anymore. You can be considered viable and newsworthy and even political merely by keeping a media presence on the national radar screen. Rob and Sarah are strange bedfellows but [...]
September 24, 2009
 You know Jay Leno moved to an earlier time slot because demographics being what they are show all the boomers getting older and going to bed earlier and so they don’t want to stay up and watch the edgy late night shows. So Jay is now Jay Lite. No desk. Sitting on a couple of cushion chairs that look like something from the seventies that used to be in basements and were no good even then to sit on. Jay does seem out of his element.
I watched Vince Vaughn on last night as he and Jay yucked it up over Chicago hotdogs and the Cubs and generally did what Jay used to do pretty well–give guest latitude to be themselves with very little venality coming from the host. Contrast that to the surly Letterman and you have the two poles of what used to be late night television.
But now Jay looks like a bad Doctor Phil. He has lost the edge of sitting behind his old desk and lampooning little idiosyncrasies of guests while getting them laughing. The band is still there. The offstage comments are still there. Jaywalking. Etc. But there is something missing. Could it be it’s just too early? Could it be this sort of Cafe Au Lai for the I’m going to be by ten crowd is a little too Lawrence Welkian. Are older people less sharp, dull, less inclined to want something probing, a little off the wall, a little out of the box? Continue reading Jay Leno Putting us to Sleep
September 22, 2009
Leopards don’t change their spots. We see this with the banks. The bankers will continue giving each  other bonuses and doing business as usual. Why? Because the market has not dictated they change. They received their TARP money are doing just fine thank you very much. Too late really. But this debate over health care is silly without a public option. If the market remains the same then health insurers will do nothing different. That unfortunately is capitalism.
We all know this. Free markets go to where the money can be made. If insurers can still make money knocking people off who have preexisting conditions or torpedoing people who get sick then they will continue to do it. Why wouldn’t they? That’s how they make money. It’s just business. Right. Right. But unfortunately this business affects peoples lives. So we can’t just let the free market dictate our health care. Not anymore. Continue reading Healthcare reform without a public option is a joke
September 18, 2009
It is not about healthcare
by Bill Hazelgrove
It is not about healthcare. It is the fear of the other. Rural whites and glenn beck runnaways have coalesced with a broad populace that has lost their credit their jobs and their homes. Swindled at the pump they believe ala cable heads there must be [...]
September 16, 2009
Guns around the President–gasoline on the fire
by Bill Hazelgrove
Um, is it just me or does anyone else find it strange that fully armed people are popping up outside of venues where the President is speaking? I mean the second amendment is the second amendment but shouldn’t we have a bubble of security [...]
September 15, 2009
MTV ups the ante…Kanye is the new Sacha Cohen
by Bill Hazelgrove
Can you top Sacha Cohen coming down from the rafters inverted with his ass showing and landing in Eminem’s lap and giving him such a crotch shot as he runs out in disgust from the awards? Too bad they staged it. So [...]
September 14, 2009
 The American President–Obama should take heed
by Bill Hazelgrove
 In the Michael Douglas movie, The American President, he plays a President who takes a girlfriend played by Annette Bening. Richard Dreyfuss is a conservative senator who wants to run for President and he starts a smear campaign against Bening and by proxy the President. Advisers around Douglas tell him he has to come out and take on Dreyfuss, but he doesn’t, saying he is not going to get down in the mud of a character debate. He has a crime bill he wants to get passed and he doesn’t want to rack off the big three auto manufacturers in Detroit he needs for his crime bill.
Things get worse. Dreyfuss is relentless and basically calls Bening a prostitute and unAmerican because she marched in a demonstration in Washington ten years before. Still, Douglas remains above the fray. He doesn’t want to get down in the mud and start slinging it out with Dreyfuss who is going up in the polls as Douglas falls. He wants to keep his crime bill on track and secretly sells Bening down the river on an environmental bill she has been championing to get the big three onboard. She finds out and leaves him.
Sound familiar? You fill in the players and we are not that far off. Our President remains above the fray as everyone hacks away at his health care plan, his stimulus plan, his charater…calling him a liar among other things. He wants to keep everything cool and calm and he does not want to get into a character debate. When Representative Wilson called to apologize, he accepted. No problem. When the conservatives tell him they will torpedo his health reform, he says he wants to reach across the aisle. When the talking heads call him Hitler, a socialist, a Muslim terrorist–he never swings back. Continue reading The American President–Obama should take heed
September 10, 2009
Someone let a craker in the house
by Bill Hazelgrove
C’mon Mr. South Carolina lets cut to the chase here.  You can do better than YOU LIE. You wouldn’t do that to a white man now would you boy? I’m from Virginia Wilson…I know the score. My people fought in the Civil War on the side of the Confederacy…you can be straight with me. You wanted to say it didn’t you boy? You just got a little tangled up with them issues and figured you’d’ call him a liar first. Well thats a good first step.
Now I know you wouldn’t have said it to President Bush. Course not. You’re a good old boy. I know. See in Virginia we had these crackers my father wouldn’t let in the back door. Poor white trash we called em. In my fathers day blacks had to walk in the curb when a white man approached and he wasn’t allowed to play with Jews or Catholics. Now those were the days.
Course. You can’t build Rome in one day. So I think your outburst was a good first step. You kind of let the world know what a cracker can do in the United States of America. We elect just about anybody don’t we? Hell, what’s the big deal? So you called a black man a liar. Yeah, he’s the President and all and he was giving a speech to Congress, but you can’t pick your places either. I think you timed it just right. Let the whole world know what a cracker can do. Continue reading Someone let a cracker in the house
September 9, 2009
Will the Beatles ever go away?
by Bill Hazelgrove
 Um, I know it is blasphemous to say, but, will the Beatles just ever, you know, sort of fade away? I mean not like their music fades away of course…it is fantastic, but this media event stuff over…well nothing is kind of stupid. So they are now on Guitar Hero or whatever and so there are remastered songs…ok…So what? They did not not get together and produce new music to my knowledge. Now that would be news of course considering two members no longer walk the earth.
But this constant bombardment of media blitzing for a bunch of guys who formed a band fifty years ago is sort of depressing. It shows that there is nothing new that we can point to in music. Why are the Beatles still so fascinating? Could it be no one has really eclipsed their level of talent, insight, genius. Has there been on one since who could sum up the pathos of Yesterday or the existential muse of A Day in the Life. Guess not.
Or we would not be slathered with Beatle mania again every year. Beatle songs are going to IPOD. Beatle songs are being re-released. Ringo is touring. Paul is touring. Paul is divorcing. Paul’s wife is a witch for taking his money. Yoko is making a statement. I can understand a lot of this as by products of celebradom. But this over the top incessant Beatle media over essentially…nothing…is just weird. Continue reading Will the Beatles ever go away?
September 8, 2009
President Obamas speech–victimized again by television
by Bill Hazelgrove
 Television may appeal to what is banal and base and it may be low art but it should not be used to hurt our democracy. We have been victimized again. Talking heads on the left and the right have hacked it out over the Presidents speech to school children. We now have parents keeping their children home, protesting against indoctrination by the Obamaites to socialism. What is going on? Where does this post McCarthyism come from?
It comes from that blue box in front of you. We take the passive act of watching television for granted but we do not register that is has been hijacked by people who do not have our best interests at heart. Television is selling. It is all about selling. Ever since RCA did field tests in 1936 they knew that this would be a sponsor based entertainment medium. Ratings. There must be ratings to sell the product. Ratings are produced by drama. Drama is produced by exaggeration. This is true in fiction as well. Continue reading President Obamas speech–victimized again by television
September 4, 2009
The conversation we can’t have–politics
by Bill Hazelgrove
A lady the other day started spouting off about how Obama was ruining the country. I was working in  the corner of this coffee shop and didn’t say anything. Then she started going on about how she hates the media because of the way they treat Sarah Palin and how she would never watch the condescending talking heads. I say nothing and continue working. Then she goes on about how Obama is a socialist and has created the mess we are now in. So I said something.
You got to be kidding. Bush created this mess over a period of eighty years. The woman stares at me and then says with an imperious brush of the shoulders. “I’m not going to talk to you.” And that was that. Another gag order on political dissent. This woman was shocked I had called her on her beer hall speech of one. I had dissented with the majority view. The real problem is not that she had said anything or I responded but that we couldn’t even have a real conversation Continue reading The conversation we can’t have–politics
September 2, 2009
Necessity is the mother of invention–the unemployment generation
by Bill Hazelgrove
.jpg) Here is the dirty secret of unemployment compensation–it kills your incentive to get a job. Sure there are people that bust it out and keep looking and never slow down. But for the rest of us we know that check is coming every two weeks and it does affect you. You do a quick little math equation in your head–I make more on unemployment if I don’t take that menial job. I make more on unemployment tax free than that entry level position. So you ride along until it finally runs out and that could be a very long time with all the extensions
The argument for unemployment compensation is sound. People need time to get back on their feet. They need transition income so they don’t fall through the cracks. But the point is a lot of people don’t look for a job when they know that they are covered. Human nature. If we can eat and have shelter then we pull back. Wait. Wait until things really get bad. It is the hunter gather nomad in us. Once we are satiated we sit back until we get hungry again.
And now we have ten percent unemployment. We have over thirty million people out of work. We have an unemployment generation. A whole swath of people who are on the dole and will not get off of it until it ends. The economy will come back but it will be in a different form and a lot of those jobs will not come back. So then we have the permanently unemployed. In Britain they call it being made “redundant.” Or on the “dole.” In the United States we have unemployment compensation, but it does end. Continue reading Necessity is the mother of invention–the unemployment generation
August 27, 2009
 The last Kennedy
by Bill Hazelgrove
 I grew up in Baltimore and Virginia and my parents were Kennedy liberals. They loved JFK much the same way people love Obama today. It was the hope and passion and idealism that John Kennedy inspired and even as a very small child I can remember seeing the funeral on the television after he was assassinated. Then Robert Kennedy ran for President and everyone thought it was the second chance to have that progressive agenda realized again. Sirhan Sirhan decided it should not be so after a speech in California and another Kennedy was lost.
Still my parents believed in the Kennedy myth. That they did represent change, a start toward something better, more equitable. Ted Kennedy did not measure up to his brothers but he was a Kennedy and after Chappaquiddick everyone breathed a collective breath of disappointment. So Ted Kennedy would remain the Senator. The man who carried the Kennedy torch in a much more muted fashion. But he was still there fighting for a progressive liberal agenda. Now he too is gone. Continue reading The last Kennedy
August 25, 2009
Death of a Movie Star?
by Bill Hazelgrove
Read an article in the New York Times about the cratering of big movies with big stars. Seems  people don’t care about movie stars anymore. Scratch that…they care they just don’t care enough to lay down almost ten bucks for a ticket. Tom Hanks, Sandra, Julia, Cruise–where have all our stars gone? They used to be so bankable. Maybe they are still, but the current fare of Hollywood dribble is not even getting the lowest common denominator to shell out.
So what is Hollywood to do? And what does this mean? Could it be celebradom has lost some of it’s moxie. Well of course. When your neighbor can end up on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire or in some Survivor spin off or maybe just had a bunch of babies and now has their own show or maybe is a truck driver or a fisherman and is now popping up nightly for all the world to see–then surely the bloom is off the celebrity rose. We can’t have our cake and eat it too. Continue reading Death of a Movie Star?
August 19, 2009
by Bill Hazelgrove
Vapidity aside…is it just me or has cable become the dumping ground of all that is cheap, shallow, worthless, produced in a nanosecond on a shoestring with a gnats intelligence? Certainly the pay channels are the only refuge now. I was just reading David Foster Wallaces’s essay on television written in 1990 and not much has changed. Or has it?
Wallace did not see the advent of reality television. When he wrote his essay there was just a few nascent starts of Married with Children or Cops. A sort of precursor warm up to Survivor and American Idol or Dog the Bounty Hunter. Reality television tells us about ourselves as it reflects back everyday life. No thought. No work for the viewer. The couch potato has become the comatose patient in the mental ward staring blindly at nothing. One thing about reality television is there is no plot and certainly no meaning so we recall it the way you might talk about an accident–did you see that dude forget his song on American Idol?
Forget about the cries of cultural demise–there is no culture here and whats more in cable land no one cares. The real shows have been relegated to pay or the networks that still care about trying to get some ratings through drama–but cable simply shrugs and puts out more American gladiator type of fare or more cooking shows or more fallen stars followed around with camera crews. Ratings are ratings and the good news is that Americans will watch just about anything with sensational lore.
Continue reading Our cultural heritage–cable television
August 17, 2009
Bright Shiny Morning–a meditation on fame
by Bill Hazelgrove
James Frey. Isn’t that the guy who duped Oprah. Yep. That’s him. Just read his latest book Bright Shiny Morning. It is about LA. Very interesting writer. Sort of man who skates very fast on thin ice. Not dishing the novel but I see why A Million Tiny Pieces did so well. Even if it wasn’t true it must have read like a streak because Bright Shiny Morning reads like a streak. It is episodic. It starts and stops and takes crazy twists and ends up a in different place.
You really have to detangle the writer from the work although there is a thinly disguised chapter where Frey defends himself. He promises us tapes that will vindicate him. It is just an aside in a book of asides. And it is hardly germane to the book although one of Frey’s main themes is fame and the pilgrimage to LA for fame. There is a lot of carnage for the fame seekers and Frey spells this out very clearly for us.
But back to the novel. This is a novel. A good novel. I know why James did what he did on the first book that caused Oprah and so many others sorrow. He couldn’t sell it. Of course he couldn’t. No big hook and no big author then you are so much fodder for the rejection mill no how good the book is. But Frey is established now even if it is in the old there is no bad publicity and certainly the amount he received for this book (a cool mil and a half) bears this out. So he can now write whatever he wants and know that there is a good chunk in the bank. Continue reading Bright Shiny Morning–a meditation on fame
August 16, 2009
by Bill Hazelgrove
Do it for the forty six million. You may have health care, you may have very good health care and you don’t want anyone fooling with it. I get it. So why be in favor of health care reform? Do it for the forty six million who don’t have health care. These are your brothers and sisters and mothers and grandmothers and fathers and uncles and aunts and all the people you will never know–do it for them. These are your countrymen and we cannot leave them behind.
Maybe you work for a corporation. Maybe you are a teacher or a government worker. Good. You have health care. Of maybe you pay for it yourself like I do. Good. You have health care. But there are people who do not go to the doctor. They have the same fears as you do when they feel a pain except they cannot hear the words “you will be fine.” They have to tough it out. They have to wonder if they will be fine. And these are not bums. These are not street people or drug attics or welfare queens–these are every day mothers and fathers sons and daughters and they are you.
They have done nothing wrong. Maybe they don’t live in a big house. Maybe they were born in the wrong neighborhood. Maybe they were working and got laid off. Maybe they were realtor’s, mortgage brokers, construction workers, builders, carpenters, plumbers, adjunct teachers, professors, accountants, lawyers, bricklayers, hygienists, factory workers, autoworkers, bank representatives, data entry clerks, salesman, sales managers, architects, roofers, electricians, health care workers, nurses, pilots, stewardesses, title company employees, dishwashers, cooks, chefs, writers, poets…maybe they are you. And they do not have what three hundred other million Americans enjoy-the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and yes that includes health care. Continue reading Let’s do it for the Forty Six Million
August 15, 2009
And then you are at the end and it is over. Your vacation flew by like everything else and you can’t help but feel you missed something. So you stand for a last minute to try and take it all in. You stand and inhale the peace and quiet and realize you have missed [...]
August 14, 2009
We don’t know how to be bored anymore. We know how to work how to stress how to charge ourselves up to work but we don’t know how to be bored. On vacation we become bored. It is part of being on vacation. We don’t want to structure all of our time and suddenly [...]
August 13, 2009
By the fourth day of your vacation you are ready to let go. It happens this way you have tried to maintain some control of your old world but you realize there is nothing you can do. Emails will go unanswered and phone calls not returned. You simply quit caring and that is the [...]
August 11, 2009
Your first moment of disorientation comes a day into your vacation. I am in the boundary waters away from television and blogs and any kind of talking head. All I have is this blackberry that I write on and then journey to a lodge in this remote wilderness of a million acres to pick [...]
August 11, 2009
I am in the boundary waters away from the drudgery of American life. Americans are the most overworked people in the world. Our work ethic has gone bad and enslaved the middleclass in a death march to the grave. We no longer have a middleclass but a working class with no hope of getting [...]
August 8, 2009
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The American vacation – a dying institution
by Bill Hazelgrove
A German friend of mine said the other day that Americans are the most overworked people in the world. “Ja, what is wrong with these people they never relax…you people work too hard..” Another friend of mine never uses his vacation days and in the winter he broods about how he will have to sit home for a week and use up his days. “I just wish they’d give me cash. What am I going to do at home?” It never occurred to him to take a vacation and actually use his vacation days.
When I was a kid my dad used to get three weeks vacation and we would take it. We’d go to Virginia beach or North Carolina and rent a cottage. It seemed we were there forever. Today,I can’t imagine it. THREE WEEKS. No cell phone. No computer. No Blackberry. My dad would go to a general store and call in every few days for messages and then by the second week he didn’t call at all. He was just on vacation. That’s amazing. Disconnected for weeks from the world at large. Truly this belongs to a bygone era.
We used to take two weeks vacation. People would stare and ask how we could go go the middle of nowhere and just sit for two weeks. We thought it was normal. My wife would disappear from the Chicago Advertising agency and if I was between books or jobs or whatever I was doing I would make arrangements to call in every few days. Then we were just gone. When we came back to the world we felt like we had been away for a year. Continue reading The American vacation – a dying institution
August 6, 2009
You gotta love President Clinton. They guy just has the touch. Remember that. Remember the guy who could just touch something and everything would align and people would make money and we all were in cahoots with the man who effortlessly could order the word. President Regan had it. Bush did not. It remains to be seen if President Obama will have it. He seems to be laboring mightily and things are happening but that is the difference–President Clinton just seemed to do it all without effort.
Certainly the gift of gab is key. A winning personality helps. A good organization makes it even better. But then there is something else. Some way to pull off what is seemingly impossible. Certainly there was plenty of advance work and the setup was there, but the fact is Clinton brought home the journalists. He brought home the goods and this brought back all sorts of nostalgia. The nineties were back and we were cruising along in our economy and the world seemed moderately under control and yes there was some snafus with interns and threats of impeachment but generally things just seemed to work out. Continue reading Slick Willie rides again
August 5, 2009
Jets hitting turbulence and throwing passengers into the roof. Jets disappearing over the ocean with no real clue as to what happened–everyone dies and even the black box cannot be found. Small airplanes that auger into the ground after the pilots have a conversation about icing on the wings. Airplanes that catch fire, lose wheels, lose parts, land in the Hudson after birds take out the engines. Is it any wonder people have a fear of flying?
Statistically planes are safer than cars. Tell that to the people who vanished after flying into hundred mile an hour winds over the ocean. Or the people who literally went through the ceiling when their plane hit turbulence. There is just something about getting into this sealed up tube with a bunch of other people and feeling all that steel go off the ground that is unsettling. Man was not meant to fly. We know this. We have to to go great lengths to do what birds do effortlessly. And sometimes it just doesn’t work out.
Look at the people waiting to get on a plane and compare them to the people getting off a plane. Night and day. The people waiting are glum, absorbed in their magazines or their study of the plane that will hurl them into the sky. The people getting off are happy and humming to themselves–we made it we made it we made it. Is there anything stranger than watching the city beneath you turn into small building blocks as you go above the clouds and enter a world of vaporous monsters and roaring engines straining to get you up to thirty five thousand feet where gravity will be held at bay for the next few hours? No. It goes counter to everything we are about. Continue reading Fear of Flying
July 31, 2009
The Ha Ha Culture
by Bill Hazelgrove
We live in the ha ha culture now. Maybe you’ve noticed all the magazines and newspapers saying ha ha you don’t have what these people have. It’s literally everywhere. Our culture is based on presenting people with what they don’t have. A trip to the [...]
July 28, 2009
Alright. First of all I want to thank everyone for coming…Professor Gates, Sergent Crowley. I think having a beer in the Rose Garden is very appropriate and I thank both of you for joining me. Professor I think wearing your Academic gown is very appropriate with your honorary degrees around your neck.
Thank you Mr. President.
And Sergeant Crowley, I think being in full uniform is very befitting this occasion as well.
Thank you Mr. President.
Now I ordered the type of beer I think would fit every one’s needs and wants. Professor Gates, I have a Colt 45 for you as befitting a man of your stature and race. And Sargent Crowley, I have a Budweiser for you as I know that is the beer a working man likes. And for myself, I have a Summer Shandy which is beer mixed with lemonade, which befits my background–sort of a yuppie I don’t want to get my hands dirty, beer.
So before we get to those beers. I think we should clear the air. I will begin. First let me say, that I never said the police were stupid as law enforcement has to be smart, up to date and efficient. So I just want to say, I will never use the word stupid in conjunction with the police again and I want to apologize again for any misunderstanding of my use of that word. Now I want both of you to make a statement. Professor Gates why don’t you stand up and begin.
Metals clanking.
Thank you. Mr. President. I would like to say that I will always cooperate with law enforcement and would never even think of saying something like I’ll talk to your mama outside when asked to step outside. I apologize for any misunderstanding. Continue reading A Beer with the President
July 24, 2009
President Obama and the “stupid” police
by William Hazelgrove
Police are in an uproar. The President called them stupid. Was it stupid for the cop to arrest the black  professor from Harvard in his home.? Probably not stupid just more of the same old same old. The police say this officer is stellar. He is fair. Maybe he is. Maybe he is a very good cop. But he went down the same old road of a black man is probably up to no good…even in his own home. This is what the President was saying…this is what the cops can’t admit.
I was pulled over for a broken headlight one night. I told the cop he was wasting his time because it had a short and no matter how many times I fixed the light it went out. He pulled me out of the car and accused me of drinking. He made me take a sobriety test. I was a sober as s judge but I knew that because I was driving an old car in an upscale neighborhood and had dared to talk back that I was at his mercy. He could make a DUI stick to the point where I would be out thousands of dollars. Ok. Was he stupid? No. He just went down the old car and guy who talks back must be a bad guy road. Continue reading President Obama and the “stupid” police
July 24, 2009
 Innocent until proven guilty is the way the system was set up. It was a direct reaction against the British who assumed the colonials were all guilty of something; sedition, treason, bad judgement in being a colonial, bad taste, not being of the upper class. So we created a judicial system that was designed to protect the citizen against an unfair ruling power that could just clap people in jail with the assumption of guilt. The courts know this very well, the problem in this country is someone forgot to tell the police.
So now we have Professor Gates. I couldn’t even imagine what being black is like in this country, but it is no surprise the cop arrested him with the suspicion he was up to no good. He was investigating a breaking and entering and knocked on the Professors door and demanded to see identification. “Why, because I’m a black man,” Gates responded. Now I can tell you now he was doomed. He had talked back to the almighty police. Once you do that you are done. We have all been there. They will find something to pin on you. Continue reading Guilty Until Proven Innocent–Our Police State
July 22, 2009
The Fake Landing on the Moon
There was a show on about how the moon landing never occurred. According to this show the astronauts merely orbited in their can of spam and then after eight days came back down with beards and waved to everyone from the helicopter picking them up like returning crusaders. [...]
July 17, 2009
Ya gotta love the banks. Chase just make a killing. Brilliant! They took TARP money and bought treasuries and rode them up and made billions off of billions. Imagine if someone gave you a millions dollars and then told you what games to play at the casino because they knew the effect of [...]
July 14, 2009
 We need amnesty for the middle class. We are going through the closest thing we have to the Great Depression and it has torched middle class credit. Forget the millions who have lost their homes or the people who have declared bankruptcy. They will be effectively shut out of the credit market for years. But you now have millions of people whose FICO scores have fallen below the magic number of 620 which is the minimum for a government loan–or FHA. These people have now been shut of the credit market as well. What does this mean? It means that the recovery will not come. People have to be able to secure credit to buy homes again and if they can’t then supply will outstrip demand and the values will continue to fall. Credit is the lifeblood of the economy. Because someone is late on a credit card payment or cannot pay a medical bill does not mean they should be denied credit for buying a home. If we go with the assumption that these are extraordinary times then there must be an extraordinary remedy–middle class amnesty.
We did it for the banks and the car companies and the insurance companies. The rational there was yes they made bonehead decisions but these are extraordinary times and for the common good they must be bailed out. So we did. We basically forgave their very bad creditworthy decisions and gave them billions to get their house in order. Isn’t that what we should do now for the middle class? Forgive their bad decisions under the umbrella of extraordinary times? Continue reading Middleclass Amnesty–what is good for the goose…
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when they become very rich–they buy professional sport teams. So he has the right. Absolutely. As Bill O’Reilly said on his show last night, he has right to buy any team he wants and it is unAmerican to tell him he can’t. Ok. But the NFL also has the right to say no..jpg)
the look and feel of a an old boys club, rich men yucking it up on national television with Dave’s peccadilloes moving in the background. Forget that Steve Martin looked like an ass with his socks and his banjos and his self serving self congratulating air or that Martin Short joined in with the bad suits brigade (check out Dave and Steve’s) and got busy sucking up to Steve and Dave and completed the strippers night out with cigars atmosphere–the biggest reason Dave should retire is he is not with it anymore. And he looks bored out of his skull.
What if an African American were elected President?
First of all it would be very difficult to elect an African American President in America today. There would have to be some sort of cataclysmic event like a massive meltdown of or economic system that would cause people to lurch violently left. But let’s just say that happened and an African American were elected. The election itself would spawn ultra right candidates who would appeal to white America with calls of country and God and a new sort of Nascar beer drinking rural constituency would form in reaction. The opposing party would probably come up with an opposing candidate who might be a minority or a woman who would probably be violently right and try to appeal to white American with visions of the country in a 1950′s world.
After the election the President would have to have increased protection because a lot of the country would simply not accept a black man as President. The election might be contested or they might even say he wasn’t a citizen and not eligible to be President. Gun sales would skyrocket in the South and the threat level against him would probably go up four hundred percent. A whole new campaign would immediately be launched to slowly destroy his credibility. Far right commentators would make it their job to bring him down. In effect, the election campaign against him would continue. Continue reading What if an African American were elected President?