Saturday, July 24, 2010

Nixon,the enemies list, Daniel Schorr and the Smothers Brothers

JFK during 1960 campaign: "I carry a great deal of responsibility. I'm the only person standing between Nixon and the WH"
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On this super Summer weekend, it is good to reflect on the past.
If you think our current political environment is toxic, the past was little different.

Daniel Schorr died yesterday.
He was a good investigative reporter who spent decades working to "drain the swamp" of Wash.DC.

He was #17 on Richard Nixon's WH "enemies list". The list was a result of RN's fertile paranoiac mindset,and was produced by little trolls in the WH (like Chuck Colson,the Germans, and then troll John Dean).

Paul Newman also made the list.

Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

I'm also reading David Bianculli's new book on the Smothers Brothers,"Dangerously Funny: The Uncensored Story of 'The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour'.

The show was on CBS for three years, and was cancelled by CBS suits after three years. The censorship war was rift by the 3rd year,and was centered on anti-Nam war skits and humor used on the show.
There are videos of the 3rd season shows available, and a video,Smothered, that deals with the censorship war.
The show is used in many college classes as an example of good writing and the political toxic atmosphere of the late 1960ies.

The show offered a venue for 1960ies new age talent,writers like Steve Martin, Rob Reiner, Pat Paulson, and Dave Steinberg.
All of these creative writers moved the Smothers Brothers to the political left...perhaps Tom Smothers was always there.

The Johnson WH,CBS suits, and the Cold War intelligence apparatus moved to silence the Smothers Brothers.
And succeeded.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixon's_Enemies_List

Wednesday, July 14, 2010

ElRushbo

Re El Rushbo: "If character were elastic, he wouldn't have enough to make a parakeet suspenders."

Or re Rush, from Fred Allen,describing another person long ago:
"You could fit his heart in a flea's navel, and still have room for dozens of caraway seeds."

El Rushbo has sold his NYC condo. He pledged to leave NY entirely when Albany imposed a temporary millionaires surtax.

He resides in Florida,which has no income tax. He also hides mucho greenbacks in the Cayman Islands.

LeBron James is going to Miami. And Huckabee says it's because of the NY high taxes.James will have no Florida tax on his $15 million annual salary. And being a legal Florida resident,he'll have no tax on his endorsement $s.

There could be a race to the bottom. Ohio could become the Florida North by eliminating its' top 6.24% income tax rate. NY could eliminate its' top rate of 12.62%

The better option is to have Florida impose an income tax.

There should be a race to the top of El Rushbo and James' mansions to collect taxes on their obscene income.

And we should get the IRS down to the Caymans.

A good read by a teapartier tax cutter is:
http://www.nypost.com/f/print/news/opini...

Former Sen. Alan Simpson tells a joke re ElRushbo and he talks to the governors

Ole' Al Simpson is a humorist,but he is also dangerous.
He is the co-chair of the POTUS's National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform ,along with Erskine Bowles,the businessman accountant-type.
Their commission,composed of 18, including 6 Dems.and 6 GOPers from Congress,and Andy Stern, must report their recommendations by Dec.
Congressional leaders suggest they will allow an up or down vote on the recommendations. Simpson knows Congress, and says that is huey,lol.

Simpson is obsessed by SS and believes it has an untenable future. Bowles is less of a flamethrower on SS.
They take the SS acturials and agree that by 2039, SS will only have enough to pay out 75% of required payment levels.
But that leaves time for tweaking...raising retirement age (talk is 70yrs);making SS payments based on need;raising the SS wage tax;using a value added tax to contribute to SS;taxing all income etc.
I don't trust Simpson on SS.
He has never liked the entitlement.

In their talk with the governers Sat. in Boston, they didn't mention two cost-cutting suggestions.

Ron Paul and Barney Frank are co-sponsoring a defense budget cut of $1 trillion over 10 years...$100b annually.
And some health care reformers suggest that our entire health care costs can be cut 50%..half of the health care costs are wasted.

Simpson and Bowles displayed very little real humor in their description of the deficit/debt crisis.

But at the governor's conference, Simpson told a ElRusbo joke.

"A guy is looking to buy an expensive car, tests it out, and comes back to the dealer to complain, 'This is an expensive car, but the radio doesn't work.' The dealer explains, 'No, no, this is a high-tech state of the art car radio. All you have to do is say what you want to hear. Say 'country music' and country music comes on. Say 'rock n' roll' and rock 'n roll comes on." The guy says, "Great, I'll take it." The guy is driving it off the lot and turns into the street when another motorist cuts him off. "JerK!' he mutters—and Rush Limbaugh comes on."

The mattress economy

The conservative Michael Barone calls Obamaeconomics "the mattress economy". And I say trickle-down is sleeping in a bunk bed.

Conservative analyst,writer Michael Barone paints a very dark portrait of the current economy and recovery.
He accuses Obama and the WH of creating a mattress economy,

"Government policies designed to stimulate the economy seem to be having the opposite effect. Consumers aren't buying, businesses aren't hiring, and those fortunate enough to have some cash on hand don't seem to be investing.

I call it the mattress economy. People seem to be following this investment strategy: 1) Go to Mattress Discounters and buy the biggest mattress you can find. 2) Take it home, and stuff all your money in it. 3) Lie down, and get some rest..."

I don't agree.
The Great Recession continues unabated.
But even as Barone admits, the private corporate sector is sitting on $2 trillion in cash.
Reports on corporate earnings this week will show robust profits.
So there is something going on,but I don't blame Obama.
The POTUS, and his conservative economic team, have a bunk bed strategy.
Build the top bunk with juicy greenbacks,bailouts to the banks and Detroit etc., and let the bottom bunk,the middle and lower class, scramble for scraps.
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/ope...
The Blue Dogs, and particularily the Blue pups, are in the political fight of their lives.

FDR moved to expand the Supreme Court because the conservatives there were undercutting much of his new deal.
He attempted to purge the Southern Congressional barons from the party.
And unemployment remained stubbornly above 15%.
It's the economy,folks.
The GOP won 75 House seats in 1938, and that essentially halted the New Deal.

There is very little the POTUS,Dems.or the WH can do about the unemployment rate by Nov. It will remain,nationally, at 10%. Black American unemployment will remain at 15%,and Hispanic rates a little lower.

This will hurt in Nov.

There are 54 Blue Dog Dems. in the House,with about half Blue pups..those elected since 2006.
They are from marginal Dem. districts, or GOP dominant districts.
The fate of these Blue Dogs will depend on voter turnout, and the movement of the independents.
And the independents are discontended.

The GOP would like to flip the House. If they do, expect them to move to repeal Obamacare,and generally make the POTUS life miserable. But Obama will still have the veto to stop the most outrageous actions of the GOP.

Short of flipping the House,the GOP could pick up 30-40 House seats.

Little or nothing can be done about the continuation of the Great Recession by Nov.
The POTUS and his cadre in the WH missed their opportunity a year ago...a much greater stimulus was needed.

Some random ruminations

Some random thoughts
*****
The iPhone4 and duct tape
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Consumer Reports says there definitely is a problem with the iPhone4 reception.
It recommends covering a small gap in the antenna with DUCT TAPE.
Does Steve Jobs have a financial interest in duct tape sales?
Wasn't duct tape recommended for protecting our houses during the early Homeland Security recommendations?
And how many millenial users of the iPhone4 know what duct tape is?
And we all thought GH 40 could cure everything,including arthritis. It has nothing over duct tape.
***
Mel Gibson's current movie ,in production, is titled "The Beaver".
He "plays an emotionally troubled man who talks through a beaver puppet".
The mad Mel's best defense will be that it was the beaver ranting to Oksan Grigorieva, and he wasn't even on the phone.
The paranoic mad Mel will also likely accuse Oksana of working undercover for Putin's spy agency.
*****
"A geezer carrying an oxygen tank and wielding a cane went on a shooting spree during a botched robbery in a high-end NYC Midtown clothing store.."
And he got away.
And we wonder how 6'4" Osama, carrying a dialysis machine, eludes capture

Thursday, July 1, 2010

Get smart, all you agent 99s

Get smart, all you agent 99s
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The photo. op. with Bill Clinton and Valdimar Putin in Moscow was intriguing.
Putin, the ole' KGB spymaster, lectured Bill on the US cops rumming amuck, arresting the alleged spies.
Bill, laughing nervously, perhaps worried that he would be arrested for intelligence gathering.

Low level spying takes place everyday in every government and corporation.
This entire spy episode smacks of Get Smart Agent 99 capers. The "spies" were asked to smooze and cuddle with high level mucky mucks. The goal was to get government/corp. info.

The stunning NYC redhead was to party up to the mucky mucks, but she was not a prostitute.

What's the point of all this spying? Information is readily available online. Just buy an IPhone4,but don't tilt it so the phone disconnects.

The group has been charged with money laundering and conspiracy. But not with.espionage.

Let's get over our Cold War mindset. During the height of the Cold War, the Rosenbergs were executed for espionage. Ike was enamered with the U2 spy plane, and ordered U2 flights over the USSR. He knew it violated international law,and could have led to war with the Soviets, but the photos obtained convinced Ike that the Soviet claims of advanced missiles and tech. were lies.

Our side also had a "defector" program where we would send "defectors" into the USSR to gather info. Lee Harvey Oswald was one.

I say send these "spies" back to Putin and let it go.
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The fortune 400 and public libraries

$600 billion would keep alot of public libraries open over the weekend.
*****
David Rockefeller is 95, but he attended a high level billionaires secret meeting in May 2009.
Bill Gates and Warren Buffet asked him to organize the meeting.
They met at the gorgeous Presidential House at Rockefeller University.
Billionaire NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg was there.
Ted Turner showed up.
Gates and Buffet have a plan. They want billionaires to pledge half their net worth to charity, either during their lifetimes or at their death.
It sounds like a super idea.
The Fortune 400's net worth is estimated to be $1.2 trillion.
50% of that is $600 billion.
This elite money group has met several times subsequent to this first confam,and the group has expanded at each meeting.
As cities,states close parks,libraries,senior centers etc., $600b. would be super shot from the super elite of our country.
http://features.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/20...