Awakening from a deep sleep

With no time for a second post this weekend, your inveterate correspondent respectfully refers you to a surprisingly spot on New York Times editorial yesterday, the Goldman Sachs report to which it refers (as reported by Jonathan Karl of ABC News, but which, of course, all viewers of Rachel Maddow heard about on her Thursday broadcast):

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If you were reading Barth junk, of course, you would have been prepared for all this a few weeks ago and even before then.

Is it possible that even te regular media has noticed the disconnect between the supposed "need" to reduce the federal budget deficit, and the fact that people and the economy, coincidentally, need help. Doubt it, but there are signs.....

And then there was the spectacle of Governors Brewer and Haley with Jake Tapper on This Week.

And, Keith is back (in a way).

How Wall Street Beat The Rap

This whole situation reads like some 1920s gangster novel except for one thing. In this case the bad guys win and get the whole city to themselves. I just got through reading this piece by Danny Schechter on the AlJazerra web site. He references the Matt Taibbi article in The Rolling Stone, "Why Isn't Wall Street in Jail?". Both are excellent examinations on the whole Wall Street debacle and how corrupt and involved Washington is in it. Danny Schechter goes into a bit more detail as to why nothing - I repeat nothing will be done about, probably ever. He lists ten problems.

Defending our New Deal

Few of us were born yet and those who were, octogenarians today, were too young to be listening, but the thunderclap from those words still resounds today. The man speaking was accepting his party's nomination for the presidency, a candidacy that all but meant his election given the dire condition of the country as he spoke. What was needed, he said, was "a new deal for the American people."

As he spoke millions had been decimated by a financial collapse of an economy built on fraud, lies and rampant speculation; all thought to be the birthright of people who believed that government had no right to regulate their activities and no obligation to help those who got hurt. That was what freedom was all about, they told us. Anybody can make it, but it is a cut throat world, and those who succeed are those who can make it work for them.

Our economy wasn't the only one destroyed by these people. A war to end all wars had ended with no real winner, just empires crushed and millions displaced and the disruptions which followed included bolsheviks and socialists taking over Russia and threatening to sweep through Europe an onto our shores. Paranoia ran deep, as they say, and panic over what's to some was rampant as the blue blood inheritor of family wealth, and Governor of New York, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, told the Democratic National Convention that

The great social phenomenon of this depression, unlike others before it, is that it has produced but a few of the disorderly manifestations that too often attend upon such times.

Wild radicalism has made few converts, and the greatest tribute that I can pay to my countrymen is that in these days of crushing want there persists an orderly and hopeful spirit on the part of the millions of our people who have suffered so much. To fail to offer them a new chance is not only to betray their hopes but to misunderstand their patience.

To meet by reaction that danger of radicalism is to invite disaster. Reaction is no barrier to the radical. It is a challenge, a provocation. The way to meet that danger is to offer a workable program of reconstruction, and the party to offer it is the party with clean hands.

This, and this only, is a proper protection against blind reaction on the one hand and an improvised, hit-or-miss, irresponsible opportunism on the other.

.

What followed his election was the transformation of the federal government from a passive and almost always irrelevant force, into the guarantor of the social welfare of the people of this country. It did not happen, as is often claimed, overnight. There were setbacks---including a hostile Supreme Court striking down statutes that the forces of the dog eat dog capitalism favored by the haves against the have nots---but the change wrought in our government was transformational.

From that day until this, those who profited by the unregulated economy, those who considered Franklin Roosevelt a traitor to his class and to their vision of this country, have wanted an end to that New Deal he proposed and brought on. They famously hated him, and the President said he welcomed their hatred. They did not accuse him of being a Muslim, though many darkly hinted he was a Jew actually named Rosenfeldt (as scary an idea then as Muslims seem to be today) and were certain that he was a secret socialist. With the Supreme Court they controlled, they were able to slow down the changes and, fighting back, the President described his, and our, opponents well.

The first includes those who fundamentally object to social and economic legislation along modern lines. This is the same group who during the campaign last Fall tried to block the mandate of the people.

Now they are making a last stand. And the strategy of that last stand is to suggest the time-consuming process of amendment in order to kill off by delay the legislation demanded by the mandate.

To them I say:I do not think you will be able long to fool the American people as to your purposes.

Pay no heed to the right wing contention that President Roosevelt would have stood with those who want to dismantle public employee unions today. They base that claim on an ancient letter he wrote just as the New Deal was in its infancy and the Wagner Act---the first real guarantee of the rights of workers--- only two years old, still controversial and untested.

Those were different days and different situations. There are public employees who are appointees of elected officials who ought to be considered "management" and who are directly responsible to the electorate. But those who are hired to perform the... vastly broader public functions that existed when President Roosevelt wrote that letter, have had the right to organize since 1961 in the federal system and 1959 in Wisconsin. And were President Roosevelt alive then, he would have been foursquare in support of that and public employees today.

When he signed the Wagner (National Labor Relations) Act, made necessary when the Supreme Court held the National Recovery Act was unconstitutional, the President explained what the new law would do:

By assuring the employees the right of collective bargaining it fosters the development of the employment contract on a sound and equitable basis. By providing an orderly procedure for determining who is entitled to represent the employees, it aims to remove one of the chief causes of wasteful economic strife. By preventing practices which tend to destroy the independence of labor, it seeks, for every worker within its scope, that freedom of choice and action which is justly his.

Those of us who entered this world after these struggles, and benefited from the radical change in government's relationship to the people, have often taken what was accomplished for granted. With social security and unemployment benefits in place, with protections for workers and regulations against financial speculation and fraud in place, we often have taken all of this for granted. We did not, therefore, scream out when President Reagan told the country that

government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem

and the era we entered then, which we have not yet come out of, is the anti-New Deal; a continuation of the decade long quest of the right to blot out what was accomplished then and later, and return the country to its dog eat dog roots. Here we are, with the country in ruin again, the result of "deregulation," of even presidents elected as Democrats trying to sell the idea that "big government" is bad, and the prevailing view in Washington, D.C. is not that government has an obligation to spend money to replace the money that individuals can longer put in commerce, but that the deficit requires that the government cut back its expenditures.

David Gregory won't ask the question, but Jon Stewart did while interviewing Austan Goolsbee, the obviously intelligent chairman of the President's Council of Economic Advisers:

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We kept hearing for years deficits don't matter. Dick Cheney famously said [that] Ronald Reagan proved deficits don't matter when people came in the republicans came in for eight years, deficits don't matter.

Suddenly deficits are the only thing that matter....

If stimulus is the thing that got us out of this recession and we still need to stimulate the economy to generate jobs, why has [the] administration in some respects backed away from stimulus spending and said well, actually stimulus spending did it there but now we actually have to address the deficit.

What Wisconsin is about, what Jon Stewart's question (never satisfactorily answered) and what the New Deal was, and is, a response to, is the need for government to even the playing field, to make and enforce the rules of the road and to help those who needs it help, not just those who can and do contribute to expensive campaigns. The failure to do so, the failure to listen to the cries of pain, might have resulted in a very different history for this country if the Roosevelt administration failed to do what it had to do then, and still could today.

We have a government which is organized for the purpose of winning elections, and not for solving problems. We have a government which is funded by political contributions and not by taxes (which are a bad thing, because it cuts into how much money can be contributed to political campaigns.) Short of providing public financing for all campaigns, any other "reform" is considered an assault on the First Amendment and, indeed, our country has been based on the idea that anyone who wants to support one candidate over another should be able to do so any way they want. The result has become, sadly, a government that skirts on the edge of irrelevancy and worse. It is a scary thought, but no less true than ever before.

As Stewart also illustrated the other day, all of this happens under the gaze of supposed news correspondents who breathlessly interrupt reports of an historic decision by the government to view discrimination against homosexuals as a "suspect classification" justifiable only the strict scrutiny test (the way, for instance, racial discrimination is measured)so as to be able to report on whether a movie actress might have to go to jail.

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Served by such idiots, it is perhaps unsurprising that many people stay home rather than vote when there is no presidential election at stake. Wisconsin should illustrate the hazard of such an approach and the people there are getting the government that results when people do not take the ten minutes out of their lives to press a lever, or who allow their disagreement with Democrats over one issue or the other, to cloud their minds about issues that are more forest than trees.

Maybe Governor Walker will do for us what President Bush (II) did and wake up the sleeping giant. It was the massive destruction of lives which made it possible for President Roosevelt to convince a Congress and the citizenry that major changes were required. That kind of energy is needed now, too, and we can only hope that Gov Walker has unleashed those forces that will make what needs to be done begin to happen.

[Postscript: Much of the foregoing was written last week for a post which you might have loved, but which was murdered by computers or internets. That is why there was nothing from Barth last week. Fortunately, there is always Rachel Maddow (or Chris Hayes) to say what needs to be said.]

PYGMALION

Pygmalion  

Monday, I viewed the 1938 film version of this play and learned much once again through my laughs and tears.

Did you know that Shaw wrote the ‘Script & Dialogue’ for this film; winning an Academy Award which he pretended to eschew? I mean, damnation! It was a thoroughly English production after all. For an English film to receive American Awards was rather a big thing in those days.

Leslie Howard plays my favorite Professor Higgins; one year before he fights for the Confederacy in Gone With the Wind.

I have no doubt that my second favorite Higgins, Sexy Rexy,  who had been on film and stage as much as Howard by that date, took the trouble to watch Howard before doing his musical presentation of the phonetics expert on stage and screen.

Harrison actually starred in the 1941 film adaption of Major Barbara.

I had just seen my annual presentation of My Fair Lady last week and was struck by the way that sets were copied and scenes were staged with the first movie’s take on things. 

And knowing all about the play and the ‘38 presentation makes one giddy over how the musical came about.

They had to wait till George Bernard was dead before they presented the first stage production of the musical in 1956.. Hahahahaha. Shaw had died in the year of my birth but it took Lerner and Loewe six years to figure out how to turn it into a musical. The bastard almost lived an entire century and was vehement that his play would never become a musical. Hahhaha

Too much money involved for the keepers of the decedent’s estate to keep that wish fulfilled I would imagine.

In My Fair Lady, Pickering is portrayed more like a Watson to a Holmes in the old Sherlock films. More of a what what what kind of speaking by Mr. Wilfrid Hyde-White and I rather prefer his adaption for the part.

In Pygmalion, Pickering is more commanding and appears more upper class in manner.

In the 30’s flick, the housekeeper (Mrs. Pearce) is much more demanding and instructing and dictates her orders with a wonderful Scottish brogue. The servant ordering the gentleman is alluring to me.

There will never be a better Doolittle than that presented in My Fair Lady; there is something about the timing and posing demonstrated by Stanley Holloway; I don’t know. Of course the two songs presented by Doolittle in the musical are permanently lodged in my mind so that my opinion might be clouded.

Middle Class morality!

Now Eliza... 

I loved Audrey Hepburn and I love her back story—her bio; a wonderful woman in all respects even though she seemed to despise food of any sort.

But Wendy Hiller is superb in this role as Eliza Doolittle in Pygmalion.

I have always been caught by her portrayal and since Audrey never really sang in the musical, Wendy wins my award in a landslide.

Wendy Hiller looks so very young and sensitive and you read her hopes and dreams in her face; really a magical portrayal in all respects. Describing the death of her aunt is always priceless:

Them that pinched it, done her in!

Gin was mother’s milk to her.

Shaw actually picked Wendy Hiller to play this role.

I am so very touched by the 30’s version anyway because I know that the hands of the godless Shaw are present in every scene. I see HIM in the decors presented on the several stages.

I apologize but I always have worshipped Shaw since college and always will. He was a scoundrel, a mean eugenics philosopher, an avowed socialist with a totalitarian slant and a man with whom it would be very difficult to discuss a subject. Shaw to some extent represents the devil as presented by beckerhead when you think about it. He just was more into Shaw’s laws rather than Sharia Law. ha

The man who supped at Stalin’s table. Hahahahaah

Of course the Brits threw a happy ending into the film; much to the consternation of Mr. Shaw. Hahaha

We must face the fact that Shaw rarely ever ‘finished’ a play anyway. He usually ended with some drawn out philosophical essay. He certainly has no ending for Pygmalion. He just goes on and on about how Eliza might marry Freddy and operate a flower shop or she might….

After reading many of his plays, several times, I always read Shaw into the role of Higgins. 

That is seeing in him a man who viewed other people as roles or pawns to be distributed upon the stage as he wished and to defy anyone to challenge his choices. What is really strange to me is that he really wanted Charles Laughton to star as Higgins in the film!

George was middle class and not upper class as Higgins; the Shaws were Protestant in an occupied Dublin. He barely finished what we would call a high school. He lived with his mother after that receiving  a pound a week while he educated himself at local libraries.

Schools were a waste of time and teachers merely wardens.

It is wagered that he never had sex with his wife eschewing carnal knowledge which is the kind of man Higgins presents without the pretense of marriage. Critics and professionals being human and all, suspect that those men who avoid carnal knowledge with women are homosexuals or priests or both.

And Shaw was a phonetics nut coming up with his own Shavian Alphabet. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shavian_alphabet

So I guess that is why I see so much of Shaw in Higgins.

At any rate, these two films must be seen every year, for me anyway.

And not one gun shot, not one Zombie, not one act of intercourse, not one murder, not one fist fight, and not one ad in either one.

The end

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_Sj9o7DWJU

(This is written from memory, while watching Pygmalion, using wiki to ‘polish’)

Governing

Aren't you just a little bit jealous? Revolution is sweeping the middle east as those whose interests take a back seat to the oligarchs who have longed ruled the country got fed up. They collected together and forced change. What kind of change they have brought on remains to be seen, of course, and their road forward, with the secret prisons and beatings of those who oppose the ruling class---seen by the New York Times only a week ago----offer just a hint of how steep is the road ahead, but they are on it and have set a course for their country that recognizes the need to do something.

Not here, though. No Tunisian shopkeeper will wake us up from our stupor, it seems. We remain quite in the free fall described here over a year ago. As Bob Herbert eloquently explained this morning and argued here over and over, unless we find a better way to finance our elections, our government will grow increasingly unresponsive to its citizens and that, as we have seen this week, is a recipe for the unpredictable to happen. As we know from having studied the Beatles, revolution always sounds like a better idea than it necessarily is. Just think of how the Constitution would read if it were drafted today and you will understand that point immediately.

The Herbert column points to the obscene tax relief to those who should instead be helping their fellow citizens recover from the ditch to which we have been thrown, and the rants of your faithful blogger were directed at health care, but the disconnect between the public interest and what passes for political thought is not remotely issue specific. Gov Cuomo the First famously spoke about campaigning in poetry, but governing in prose, but this imagines that those who campaign can "govern" or participate in governing, or that they have any interest in doing so. It is hard to believe that they do.

The best current example comes from the daily drumbeat, as our official unemployment rate is said to be 9.0% but known to be much, much higher, that the main issue facing the economy---the thing that government most urgently has to address, is the federal budget deficit. The Speaker of the House tells us that only "liberal economists" disagree and that it is time to follow the oracle John Ashbrook---he of the 9% vote when he challenged President Nixon's relection in the New Hampshire Republican primary in 1972. In fact, the Wall Street Journal and Washington Times insist, and Mourning Joe whines every morning, the success of government should be measured by how well they reduce the federal budget deficit.

The Speaker knows the truth, though. It is not just liberal economists who tell us how absurd it is to reduce government spending during a recession. Even the financially illiterate, such as your blogger, know that if people will not spend money, the government has to or we all descend into a trough.

There is no division of thought among those who consider the issue and not the politics. From the Economist magazine to Jamie Galbraith and everywhere in between the obvious is plain, based as much as on common sense as the Great Depression and the New Deal's embrace of John Maynard Keynes: that this is not the time for government to "tighten its belt".

The disconnect between reality and our politics is huge. Watch the Sunday shows this week as they ruminate over the big, bad deficit with their knowing looks. You know what they are really saying as they run on as if they know something that nobody else does: here is our cover to cut "entitlements": the safety net erected by President Roosevelt to protect us all against the depredations of a cruel marketplace.

With few of the advantages we have, the children of Egypt found a way to fight back. We can, too, but there is no sign that we will.

Not About Egypt

not literally, anyhow, but, of course, it is:

Freedom has many difficulties and democracy is not perfect....[but]
let me ask you, as I close, to lift your eyes beyond the dangers of today, to the hopes of tomorrow, beyond the freedom merely of this city of Berlin, or your country of Germany, to the advance of freedom everywhere, beyond the wall to the day of peace with justice, beyond yourselves and ourselves to all mankind.

Freedom is indivisible, and when one man is enslaved, all are not free. When all are free, then we look -- can look forward to that day when this city will be joined as one and this country and this great Continent of Europe in a peaceful and hopeful globe....

All -- All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin.

And, therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words "Ich bin ein Berliner."

This, too:

The basic things expected by our people of their political and economic systems are simple. They are:

Equality of opportunity for youth and for others.

Jobs for those who can work.

Security for those who need it.

The ending of special privilege for the few.

The preservation of civil liberties for all.

The enjoyment -- The enjoyment of the fruits of scientific progress in a wider and constantly rising standard of living.

These are the simple, the basic things that must never be lost sight of in the turmoil and unbelievable complexity of our modern world. The inner and abiding strength of our economic and political systems is dependent upon the degree to which they fulfill these expectations.

and, really, this, too.




Yes. Really.

Democracy ain't pretty.

I came upon this article on the AlJazerra English site. A letter to the Tunisians and Egyptians from Yuliya Tymoschenko, the Ukraine opposition leader. Some thing we here need to consider as well, I think.

Determining the will of the people does require expression through the ballot box. But elections alone cannot solve the fundamental political problems confronting Egypt and Tunisia. In particular, they cannot create a liberal order and open society.

To be effective, elections must be preceded by an extensive debate, in which political arguments are made, attacked, defended - and, ultimately, embodied in ideologically coherent party organisations. Democratic consent can truly be given only when voters know what they are consenting to. Whoever refuses to make a public case for what he or she intends to do when in power, or lies about it – as Ukraine’s president, Viktor Yanukovich, did during his campaign against me last year – is no supporter of the democracy that citizens risked their lives to establish.

Moreover, democracy must be rooted in the rule of law. There must be accepted rules that are binding on everyone in politics, so that whoever does not accept or obey them is disqualified. Yanukovich’s naked attempt to hijack the election that precipitated the Orange Revolution should have caused him to be banned from running in future elections. Yet he was not.

Now, as president, Yanukovich’s crude instinct is to treat the law and constitution as Karl Marx thought of them: as a mixture of sentimentality, superstition - and the unconscious rationalisation of private interests. Stealing elections, suppressing the vote, and behaving in contempt of the rule of law are negations of democracy. Those who engage in them must be seen as democracy’s enemies - and treated as such.

A second lesson follows from this. The fact that a government has been democratically elected does not mean that the cause of freedom has prevailed. The rest of the world must not turn a blind eye to authoritarian backsliding. Yet today, not only are many of Ukraine’s neighbors silent about Yanukovich’s strangulation of Ukraine’s democracy - but some openly celebrate the supposed “stability” that his regime has imposed. For decades, Egyptians and Tunisians paid a high a price in freedom for the stability of others. They must never be asked, or forced, to pay it again.

Democracy like healthy relationships is oft times very messy, unruly and seemingly chaotic. The free expression of ideas often is. Become concerned when the people are too quiet for they are either being lied too or repressed or both.

Possibilities

One of the areas I have the most trouble with when I construct a project for my radio interests is the physical layout of the larger components. The big variable capacitors and switches and coils and the like. I usually look at how others have done this and sometimes use this as a guide.  But I usually go with some current traditional method and am not always happy with the way it turns out. Oh it works OK but quite often it is larger than I want or not as elegant as I would like. This last time was no different.

Communication is the problem to the answer

I was discussing in chat the other night with a friend about congress and the Wall Street and how we could get real financial reform, among other things. One of the problems that I see with our current political mess is that the people on the left have a major communication problem. Not only do most not know how to communicate their ideas to the general populace, but far too often their message is hollow and hypocritical. 

How can one preach about financial reform and how the uber rich do not pay enough tax or get obscene compensation or play fast and loose with the money they have when you yourself engage in or those activities or secretly (and sometimes not so secretly) wish you could do so yourself ?

Those that are struggling to make it are not going to listen to some ones ideas if these ideas come from people who drive over priced BMW or Mercedes Benz SUVs, live in expensive gated communities and pull in 6 figure salaries and justify to the nines their right to do so.  And when they do speak, they talk at people rather than with them and come of as preachy, arrogant and self righteous.  Instead of honest gut level expression.

How can anyone talk about having a fair and just economy and society when they are not willing to make the sacrifices necessary themselves to bring it about.  You have to be willing to walk the walk before you earn the right to talk the talk.

The big news now of course is Egypt and the Middle East. I wonder how many on the left would be willing to take the risks and put out the effort and make the sacrifices the Egyptians have these last 12 or so days for what they say they want ? How many would be able to communicate their desires in an honest, gut level way instead of some intellectual BS that sounds good on the surface but says essentially nothing. 

The left and the Democratic party was strong up through the 1960s because it consisted of working people, blue collar and white collar, that were able to express what they wanted and were willing to make the kind of commitments necessary to bring it about.  And tried to the best of their ability to live what they believed. Most had some humility and lived modestly. Not like Wall Street Wannabees or republicans in waiting.

Presidents

We watch with rapt attention as a "President" never elected in a remotely legitimate way see his "regime" crumble before the primogeniture he thought to be his due could be put in place. The Glenn Becks of the world notwithstanding, this is a purely middle eastern event, well described during the week by the remarkable journalists working under the most difficult circumstances imaginable. Richard Engel, on scene, and Rachel Maddow providing context and asking the right questions, stand out, but there are many who have done great work this week and this, for instance, must be read by everyone interested in the subject.

There is little to add to what the great Sleepin' Jeezus posted yesterday. In the meantime, we, back here, will have to endure yet another attempt to sell President Reagan as some who was great, instead of vacant at best, and the front man of the meanest group of people to form a U.S> government in my lifetime


It is unlikely that Meet the Press originated from Hyde Park, New York on the 100th anniversary of the birth of our greatest president in 1982 but, of course, the Sunday talk shows did not stray from Washington in those days. Some say it was not widely celebrated except in New York, but speaking from New York, mu recollection is somewhat different.

The New York Times archives (which are slightly out of whack right now), tells us that New York Governor Hugh Carey, noticing the zeal in which the Reagan administration, then beginning its second year was dismantling the New Deal, told a gathering at Hyde Park that President Roosevelt was "need now more than ever" but, of course, he had no idea what things would be like when President Reagan's centennial came around.

Tomorrow, David Gregory and others who want to ignore the cruel way President Reagan and his acolytes attacked those who most need the help of the federal government, will celebrate the 100th anniversary of his birth. They will not discuss that he began his successful campaign for the presidency in Philadelphia, Mississippi, an unmistakable signal that the murders of Cheney, Goodman and Schwerner were now relics of a past his presidency would remove from our history, much as Congr Bachmann would purge the sin of slavery from it today.

President Reagan was an amiable fellow and, of course, well able to play the part of President, even if the responsibilites of the office did not interest him. He was happy to be the front man for the greedy among us who see no reason why the problems of others are their concern. Forgive me for republishing the following, from February 4, 2008, but time is precious this weekend, and the following, in italics to identify it as recycled stuff, roughly makes the point about the supposed Great Reagan the right wing, and David Gregory are saluting:

This is not literally about The Election, though really it is. It is not actually meant to be yet another one of those what was so great about President Reagan pieces which show up every now and then, such as during the orgy of memoriam when he finally passed away after a long and, for his family, very painful illness. It probably will resemble one anyhow.

It was hard, though, to watch Anderson Cooper swoon about the great Reagan, and see that Air Force One behind the Republicans debating the other night without wondering again about when this actor pretending he was the President of the United States became a great president. He was never the real president, of course; that was, briefly General Haig (who slipped on the day that President Reagan was shot and told the nation not to worry since he was in charge), then Don Regan, then sort of Nancy Reagan, or Don Regan or whichever got to the microphone first and then, when the complete play acting fell apart with the "President" telling the country, in character, that he would never approve of selling arms to Iran, only to find out that "he" had done just that, Howard Baker.

Just as Katrina somehow "proved" to people holding on to a reed of fiction that President Bush was not actually running a government as providing a face to cover all sorts of corrupt misuse of the powers and financial resources of the government, something that any fool with a hint of objectivity could have seen as early as the summer of his first year in office when he told Secretary Powell to stop talking to North Korea, and anybody still open minded about the subject had ample basis to reconsider when they saw the guy reading to school children as the country was under attack, the unmasking of President Reagan by "Iran-Contra" could only shock the utterly unshockable. Here was a supposed President who had to be reminded that Samuel Pierce was a member of his cabinet, whose every speech was filled with stories that were verifiably false and who appeared to have neither a thought or care.

He looked like a president, though, and, in that B actor sort of way, sounded like one. Tom Hanks, a much better actor, has never pretended that he actually flew Apollo 13, but Ronald Wilson Reagan not only got to pretend he was president he was, under the law anyway, actually the office holder.

It was a great idea to prop this guy up so that his henchmen and such could do their dirty work behind this amiable actor. After all, his immediate predecessor was a very intelligent man, who hadn’t a clue as to what being president meant and was elected only because in his humble, goofy way he appeared to be the antithesis of the Crook named Nixon who we had dumped only at great cost, and the nice enough guy who finished his term but did not seem even close to being prepared to do what a president was supposed to do (to the point that he forgot that Poland was a communist country at the time while in a political debate.)

So by 1980, what the country wanted was someone who did not seem to be a crook, but looked and sounded more like what we hand in mind: you know, like Franklin Roosevelt, or, Dwight Eisenhower. (There is a big difference there, but the point was that we have someone who could, uh, play the part.)

From the minute he was elected, until his vice-president, running to succeed him tried to distance himself a bit from the clueless guy who beat him in the 1980 primaries by making him look like a fool, by saying that his administration would be "kinder and gentler" it seemed that the country had lost its collective mind. The Vietnam War was finally over, and the Iraqi hostages released, and the whole thing, from the day President Kennedy was killed until then seemed so difficult that maybe we would be better off without a real president for a few years and just have an actor there. So when AIDS started to infect gay men, he could console us by pointing out that we weren’t gay men so there was nothing to worry about.

And so, here we are in 2008, seven years after our country was attacked on its own soil for the first time since 1941 by people we have chased into a volatile part of the world in which a least one country apparently has a nuclear bomb, and who are undoubtedly plotting to attack us again and one of the major political parties in this country, the one whose latest pretend president was unwilling to cut short a photo op while the country was under attack, fields a slate of candidates who fall over each other to proclaim themselves the next Reagan. And television news commentators act as if this makes sense.

And one final point in this world of movie acting that we care about so much more than the actual world. The Associated Press reported last week about huge build ups of something, unlikely to be Santa’s elves, in the border areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan, but some movie actor died of something in Soho and that relegated these stories to the dustbin. And Senator McCain: before you or the other dwarfs tell us about how this phony president you gave us (and remember: had Senator McCain run with Senator Kerry in 2004, they would be trying to get re-elected right now) has kept us from further attacks since 2001, keep in mind that the people who are out to get us, got us in 1993, at the World Trade Center and didn’t come back to do it again until 2001. They wanted to get it right and time was on their side, because we do everything we can to help them.

This is not pretend or play acting. This is why we have a president; not to read to children (we call those people "teachers" and we pay them ridiculously low salaries to do this and then whine that they aren’t doing a good job). The idea is to have a president to lead a government that at minimum will protect us from those who want to hurt us. Not to smile while they do and tell us stories about what might have been.

GLENN BECK ON BLACK HISTORY MONTH

            THE PEANUT GUY'S WORK STATION

I discovered this 5 year old radio tape of Glenn Beck’s show by accident:

I come to you this fine February morning to discuss the media-made fiasco called Black History Month.

Our country got along just fine for two hundred years without any Affirmative Action History.

Now I am sure that you all had plenty of American History discussing that great American Uncle Tom as well as that guy who gave us peanut butter.

But now we are to believe that Black men and Black women have been short changed as far as our history texts.

Garbage; this is all nothing but garbage.

Nonetheless, my staff and I have looked into this matter of history—you know of course that I run my own university and you can become part of it for only $10.95 a month. Oh and you can get a discount on even from this small amount if you act now and purchase ten gold coins.

Getting back to our most recent research into this area I found some troubling data I would like to share with you all today.

Going back to the forties and fifties in this country you would find thousands upon thousands of African Americans—we called them Negroes back then—with names taken from our Founding Fathers. There were Adams and Washingtons and Jeffersons and even a Lewis or Clark—do you remember The Jeffersons? One of my favorite shows as a kid, really.

Anyway, somewhere along the line beginning in the 1960’s a conspiracy was developing.

A Jihadist conspiracy that nobody was really aware of came to the fore.

All of a sudden, little Tommy Jefferson changed his name to Allah or Mohammed or Ali or El-Weigh.

I recall this great fighter by the name of Cassius Clay receiving that name from a Transylvanian scholar. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassius_Clay_%281810%E2%80%931903%29

Don’t misunderstand me, I am not saying that the original Cassius Clay was Dracularian or anything, but he certainly was what we might call a ‘Freethinker’.

Anyhow that was all fine and good but after the Jihadist Communist got ahold of this great fighter, we lost Cassius Clay and ended up with Mohammed Ali.

There I said it.

Here was a man who proved that it did not matter what the color of your skin was, you could still be world champion.

And after receiving all this acclaim and all that money, this ingrate refused to enlist in the military and protect us from the Communists overseas.

And do you know why that is?

We are told by Dick Cheney that he refused to enlist because he had another agenda ahead of him which was to save us from communism in other ways. Besides we all knew he had this cardiac condition since his first heart attack on his high school football field.

Well Cassius Clay was hijacked by those commie Jihadists and taken to Babylon for some period of time.

Now few people know this. And do you know why this prize fighter was taken to Babylon?

So here it is. The Tower of Babel as most people know it is these people got together and the king said let’s build a tower and it will reach the sky and it will reach heaven and then God got pissed off and came down and destroyed them, confused their language and they all scattered. That’s really not the way the story goes, and it’s important that you understand the story. It has affected us do you know that Bugs Bunny actually used to call Elmer Fudd Nimrod? And do you know why? He used to call Bugs Bunny was the one that really made Nimrod really popular because Bugs Bunny was the one that called Elmer Fudd Nimrod, Nimrod, Elmer Fudd was the hunter. He wasn’t a king at first. He’s first described in the in Genesis as a hunter, but not a hunter of animals. A hunter of men. A hunter of people. And the people, after Noah, they all, they get off the boat and they do what two and two do and they make four and six and et cetera, et cetera. And so then they repopulated the Earth. And they’re all focused on God. And that’s when the first time an oppressive government, the idea of a totalitarian leader comes to the forefront, and it’s done by a hunter of men, Nimrod. And what he says is he gets together and he says to everybody, "Hey, let’s build bricks." Why would you say let’s build bricks? Does that sound like anything anybody would want to do? Let’s build bricks? Oh, and then we’re going to build a big tower and it will reach heaven.

That’s right. These Nimrodders got ahold of one of our greatest athletes and turned him into a raving lunatic; a raving communist; a raving Jihadist.  A shame, a damn shame and something that should be remembered for all time. And look at Cassius Clay today. Do you know why he looks like that?

Implants. They chloroformed Cassius and too him to Babylon and implanted Manchurian doodads into his brain.

Those implants were what made Cassius a communistic Jihadist and when that machinery wore out, it left the poor man a mere shadow of himself.

A similar thing happened to Malcolm Little. Here was a kid born in Omaha with a bright and happy future and ended up a ruthless felon, sentenced to prison for sins committed against his fellow man and his personal God.

Well, the communist Jihadists got ahold of him while he was in prison and turned him into that hateful Malcom X. Actually it was worse than that. I mean at first they turned him into El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz.

Now I think he took his first jihadist name to fool people into thinking he was not that Malcolm Little guy anymore. I mean it would make it easier for him to get a job. 

A lot of violent felons change their names you know.

Frankly, Malcolm Little spit on Jesus and took a new road straight to hell thinking he might end up in heaven with all those virgins.

A shame. Just a damnable shame.

And of course, as soon as Malcolm figured all this out, the Jihadists shot him dead.

Ferdinand Lewis "Lew" Alcindor, Jr. is another sad case of a good man, a great athlete who turned to the devil at the behest of communist jihadists.

Here was a kid who was born with everything. I mean he had all this talent, he was so very tall and muscular, he folks were hard working middle class people, he had a good Catholic School education—you know without that pope fellow, a Catholic School education aint half bad.

And what happened to this kid who had everything?

Well the commie Jihadists got ahold of him and turned him into a devil worshipper.

Now I found this statement on the net that gives one pause:

Abdul-Jabbar was well known for his trademark "sky hook", a hook shot in which he bent his entire body (rather than just the arm) like a straw in one fluid motion to raise the ball and then release it at the highest point of his arm's arching motion. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kareem_Abdul-Jabbar

This strange development in Alcindor’s basketball play was code ladies and gentlemen.

Bending his body into a straw was a way of telling Sunni’s to kill Christians all over the world.

Since he began bending like this with mass media televising this code all over the world, over 5 million Christians have been killed by Jihadists.

And it’s a damn shame I tell you.

Well that is enough Black History for today. 

Stick with the original Cassius Clay and that guy who knew how to make good peanut butter.

The rest of it is all communist jihadist code.