Paul Krassner : My Tweets of 2012

Paul Krassner tweets @ZenBastard. Graphic by James Retherford / The Rag Blog.
Paul Krassner’s Tweets of 2012

By Paul Krassner / The Rag Blog / December 27, 2012

This is my first tweet. I have Writer's Block. I mean Twitter's Block. I'm waiting for a cure to be developed.

A minimalist summation of American culture in the Los Angeles Times on Conan O'Brien: “The Masturbating Bear will remain the intellectual property of NBC.”

Perhaps Toyota should borrow a slogan from McDonalds: "You deserve a brake today.”

Texting while having sex? Two thumbs up.

Double standard: Charles Rangel pays restitution for unpaid taxes; Wesley Snipes is sentenced to a few years behind bars for a similar response.

Excuse me, I have to take a Wiki-leak.

Join me in signing a letter to stop the inhumane detention of Private Bradley Manning.

I saw the movie The King's Speech and was disappointed that it didn't end with Porky Pig saying, "Th-th-the-that's all, folks!"

Steve Jobs' legacy is a form of alchemy -- he transformed planned obsolescence into a virtue.

Poor Rick Santorum, he's afraid that if Roe vs. Wade isn't overturned by the Supreme Court, there will an epidemic of recreational abortions.

I stopped channeling Lenny Bruce the day he reminded me, "C'mon, Paul, you know you don't believe in that shit."

Today marks the 15th anniversary of Allen Ginsberg's death; he once told me he smokes not to get high, but rather because he likes to cough.

I went to the dentist today, and the hygienist gave me a choice of X-rays or a pat-down.

Summing up the presidential campaign: It'a battle between "Keep the government out of my Medicare" and "Keep the government out of my vagina."

I covered the Dan White trial and coined "the Twinkie defense."

The world desperately needs a campaign beginning with Kickstarter to raise funds to build an Iron Dome for the Palestinians.

Plan B has been aborted.

I voted for Barack Obama again, and yet now, although he wept for the loss of 20 kids, he never wept for the 178 kids killed by U.S. drones in Yemen and Pakistan.

The digitally colored edition of the infamous Disneyland Memorial Orgy poster by Mad magazine artist Wally Wood is available only at paulkrassner.com.

Have a Merry War on Christmas and a Happy, Snappy and Fulfilling New Year.

[Paul Krassner edited The Realist, America's premier satirical rag and was an original Yippie. Krassner’s latest book is an expanded and updated edition of his autobiography, Confessions of a Raving, Unconfined Nut: Misadventures in the Counterculture, available at paulkrassner.com. Read more articles by Paul Krassner on The Rag Blog.]

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Michael Simmons : I Was a Texas Jewboy!

Left to right: Larry Campbell, Michael Simmons, Jim Rider, and Kinky Friedman at the Lone Star Roadhouse, New York City, 1989. Photo by Cleveland Storrs.
Move over, Kinky:
I was a Texas Jewboy!

The Kinkster blew my still-growing mind and helped make me the disrespectful malcontent I am today.

By Michael Simmons / The Rag Blog / December 6, 2012

My first live sighting of Richard “Kinky” “Big Dick” Friedman was at Max’s Kansas City in New York in 1973. He was headlining Upstairs at Max’s with his band the Texas Jewboys and I was an 18-year old hometown Jewish country singer who revered both Hank Williams and Lenny Bruce. The Kinkster blew my still-growing mind and helped make me the disrespectful malcontent I am today.

Kinky practiced the freest of free speech, the kind guaranteed in the Constitution but relatively unused, particularly here in the 21st Century. He’s always insisted on telling the truth no matter how many people he pisses off.

Kinky’s songs satirized racism (“We Reserve The Right To Refuse Service To You”), serial-killing Boy Scout/Marines (“The Ballad Of Charles Whitman”), rednecks (“Asshole From El Paso”), religion (“They Ain’t Makin’ Jews Like Jesus Anymore”), and male chauvinism (“Get Your Biscuits In The Ovens And Your Buns In The Bed”). That proto-politically correct feminists failed to see the wit in the latter wasn’t Kinky’s fault and there were some ugly incidents including the storming of the stage in Buffalo, New York, where band and leader fled for their lives.

But Kink could also do poignant like nobody’s bidness in “Sold American,” ostensibly about a washed-up country star, but really about greed-American style, and “Ride ‘Em Jewboy,” a heartbreaking meditation on the Holocaust from his viewpoint as a Hebe from Kerrville, Texas. There’s a damn good reason the Kinkster is one of Bob Dylan’s favorite songwriters.

His tagline onstage was “Thank you for being an American!” Damn, he made this little hippie patriotic! I knew that night at Max’s that one of my goals in life was to be a Texas Jewboy. Me and my band Slewfoot were soon a popular act on the Northeastern country circuit, a crew of Yankee headnecks adept at Western Swing with a cannabinoided baditude.

In 1977 Slewfoot open-nighted a new honky-tonk on Fifth Avenue called the Lone Star Café where Kinky began regularly gigging, eventually settling in NYC. We were introduced and broke bread with a spoonful of irving. (Irving Berlin wrote “White Christmas” ...you do the math.) The Texas Jewboy invited me to sit in and I simply never left the stage. It wasn’t a stretch -- I knew all the songs!

The original Texas Jewboys had recently scattered and Kinky’s new band included, among others, Sweet Mary Hattersley on fiddle, Corky Laing (from Mountain) alternating with Howie Wyeth (Rolling Thunder Revue) on drums, Sredni Vollmer on harp, and a killer lead/pedal steel guitarist named Larry Campbell. Larry was bandleader, would later tour over six years with Dylan and became the late Levon Helm’s ringleader.

I played rhythm and, with mandolinist Jim Rider, sidekicked with the Kinkster, singing harmonies and staging semi-elaborate dance routines. Although technically we weren’t the original Jewboys -- names like the Entire Polish Army and the Exxon Bros. came and went -- people still referred to us as such, satisfying at least one of my life’s goals. (I’ve yet to do the hucklebuck with Catherine Deneuve.)

Kinky was (and remains) a celebrity magnet. He’s got an authentic and peculiar genius that can’t be duplicated and the talented and famous like to get close. In the Lone Star days, a partial list included my heroes Mike Bloomfield and Abbie Hoffman, as well as John Belushi, Hunter Thompson, Keith Richards, The Band, Dr. John, Robin Williams, of course Dylan, and a lot of others who are dead or ought to be.

There were fringe bohemians like JFK impersonator Vaughn Meader, who’d lost his job on November 22, 1963. I also met my best friend, author Larry “Ratso” Sloman, in that menagerie. And there were many women, so many that Kinky and I had a running joke that involved him inadvertently acting as my pimp.

We did some strange gigs, including a bar mitzvah in New Jersey that was more like a coronation. And in 1985, Kinky, Ratso, and I flew to Toronto for a three-night engagement, the surreal highlight of which was meeting Grand Ole Opry star Little Jimmy Dickens in full-dress Nudie Suit at Pearson International Airport.

But by the mid-‘80s, Kinky was burning out on rock ‘n’ roll and irving, not necessarily in that order. “I need a lifestyle that doesn’t require my presence,” he told me. He loved Agatha Christie and began scribing mystery novels with himself as the Sherlock, Ratso as the Watson, and our friends as other characters, real names and all.

I’m a hard-drinkin’, Hank-singin’ murder suspect in A Case Of Lone Star and am described as engaging in all kinds of debasement. (It may have been what did my late mother in when she read it.) The books became best-sellers and Kinky became hugely famous in your household definition and Bill Clinton’s favorite author. Some were appalled when he likewise palled around with George W. Bush, but Kinky’s World is a big one, as anyone who followed his noble -- albeit failed -- 2006 run for Governor of Texas knows.

No matter how many books he autographs, the Kinkster has always identified with outsiders – particularly musicians. You can take the Texas Jewboy out of music, but you cannot take the melody out of Kinky. He and guitar are currently out on his Bi-Polar Tour -- 28 shows in 27 days. “It’s a much higher calling being a musician than being a politician,” he says.

It’s been (almost) 40 years since that night at Max’s Kansas City and there are few public figures who’ve consistently entertained me and even fewer friends who are as loyal as Kinky Friedman. Thank you, Kinky, for being an American.

Kinky Friedman performs two shows at McCabe’s Guitar Shop in Santa Monica, California, Friday, December 7 at 8 and 10 p.m. Brian Molnar -- and maybe even Michael Simmons -- will open up.

A version of this article appeared in the July 29, 2010, issue of the LA Weekly.

[As leader of the band Slewfoot, Michael Simmons was dubbed "The Father Of Country Punk" by Creem magazine in the 1970s. He was an editor at the National Lampoon in the '80s where he wrote the popular column "Drinking Tips And Other War Stories." He won a Los Angeles Press Club Award in the '90s for investigative journalism and has written for MOJO, LA Weekly, Rolling Stone, Penthouse, High Times, the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, CounterPunch, and The Progressive. Currently wrapping a solo album, Michael can be reached at guydebord@sbcglobal.net.]

• Also see Thorne Dreyer's Oct. 25, 2012, Rag Blog article about Kinky Friedman based on his Oct. 19, 2012, Rag Radio interview with the Kinkster.

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James McEnteer : I Drank the Booze Today, Oh Boy

Cover art by Lynn Hatzius from Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses.
Losing the plot:
I drank the booze today, oh boy

Barney considers himself devoted to the Rodney King school of public thought: why can’t we all just get along?

By James McEnteer / The Rag Blog / October 12, 2012

Down at the neighborhood tavern, I was listening for the umpteenth time to my friend Barney lament how food stamps are not accepted for alcohol. Like me, Barney’s been out of work almost two years now. He’s been through the five stages of grief more than once.

About the third beer he segued into his second-favorite topic, the terrible conflicts caused by religious intolerance. Barney considers himself devoted to the Rodney King school of public thought: why can’t we all just get along?

News came on the TV that some Iranian cleric raised the bounty on the life of Salman Rushdie, from $2.8 to $3.3 million dollars.

“Those guys are nuts,” I said. “Rushdie didn’t even do anything. It was some bozo in California made that anti-Islam movie that pissed off all the Muslims. So why are they getting back on his case again?”

“Those California people are kind of obscure. Rushdie’s high profile...”

“So they go after the famous guy instead of the guys who actually did it?”

“Hey, I don’t think he’s worried. I mean, they couldn’t get Rushdie before. They put that original price on his head back in 1989, when three million bucks really meant something. And nobody ever got near him. He finally quit hiding and went back to his normal life of international celebrity.”

“Three point three million isn’t exactly chump change...”

“How do you suppose a bunch of Iranian religious fanatics happened to come by that much cabbage anyhow?”

“Maybe they put the squeeze on the faithful.”

“Maybe we ought to go after that money ourselves,” said Barney.

“What? Assassinate Salman Rushdie? Are you nuts?”

“Well, I mean, we wouldn’t really have to kill him. We could just make him disappear and pretend he’s dead...”

“The Iranians would never believe it.”

“Hey, it worked with Osama bin Laden, no? Is he really dead? Was he buried at sea, like they said? There was no corpse. Did he ever really exist?”

“How could we make Rushdie disappear?”

“Well, he’d have to help us.”

“And why would he do that?”

“To take the pressure off himself. If the Iranians think he’s dead, they’ll stop coming after him, won’t they? Maybe we could sweeten the pot for him too. You know, split the fatwa cash. Give him the half million the Iranians just added...”

“But Rushdie loves the limelight. He’s not just going to walk away.”

“Give me limelight and give me death? What kind of a choice is that? Even Rushdie must realize that discretion is the better part of valor...”

“He would never go along with those kind of cliches,” I said. “And even if Rushdie agreed to such a crazy scheme, we’d still have to offer some kind of proof to the Iranians."

“How hard could it be to come up with a body? People die every day in one disaster or another. We could pay a Hollywood makeup genius to craft Rushdie’s head out of silicon, then hire some starving crazies to parade it through the streets of Benghazi on a stick, shouting ‘God is great!’”

“Sounds sketchy to me, Barn. What if the Iranians refused to pay up?”

“Then it’s back to the Power Ball Lottery for us, I guess. And let Netanyahu kick off World War Three. If the Iranians won’t pay up, fuck em.”

“Yeah, they probably don’t even have the dough. What’re you drinkin?”

“Well, I’d like to try some of whatever Mitt Romney sucked down before he gave that speech calling half of Americans freeloaders. He had to be high...”

“No, man. He’s a Mormon. He doesn’t drink booze.”

“You mean, he was just being Mormonic?”

“Something like that...”

“Well, there’s always the Hong Kong option.”

“What do you mean?”

“There’s a wealthy Hong Kong tycoon offering $65 million dollars to any guy who’ll marry his daughter. He says: ‘I don’t care if he’s rich or poor. The important thing is that he’s generous and kind-hearted...'”

“That could be either one of us. What’s wrong with her?”

“Nothing. I saw her photo. She’s very nice looking, in her early thirties.”

“There must be a line of guys around the block.”

“There is one complication. She’s already married to her girlfriend.”

“Ah, so... Well, nobody’s perfect.”

“You are generous and kind-hearted...”

“Yeah, but that’s what keeps me from the only other get rich quick scheme I know.”

“Which is what?”

“Running for political office.”

“You gotta draw the line somewhere.”

“See, you’re not cut out for politics either.”

“This presidential election is too spooky anyway.”

“What do you mean?”

“An empty chair running against an empty suit. That’s just weird.

“When’s the next Power Ball draw anyway?”

“Friday night.”

“Then there’s still time.”

[James McEnteer is the author of Shooting the Truth: the Rise of American Political Documentaries (Praeger). He lives in Quito, Ecuador. Read more of James McEnteer's articles on The Rag Blog.]

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Harry Targ : Fairness in Hypocrisy Valley

Image from Occasional Links and Commentary.
Fairness in Hypocrisy Valley

Since elections, the public expression of political power, are significantly determined by millionaires, trustees at Hypocrisy Valley usually are the wealthy and powerful.

By Harry Targ / The Rag Blog / July 24, 2012

I have spent much of my adult life in Hypocrisy Valley, a small community which is the regional center of commerce, agriculture, and modest industrialization. It also is the home of a major university, Hypocrisy Valley State University, which has a reputation, we are told, in agriculture, engineering, and science. As a state supported institution it is obliged to serve the research and educational needs of the citizens of the state.

The faculty size of the university and the student population has grown by 25 percent in 40 years. The university is the largest employer in the county, and many workers say that while they receive low wages, are not treated with particular respect (except for the annual spring fling distribution of free hot dogs), they work at the university because of the health and retirement benefits, which exceed benefits from other employers in the area. Of course, state law prohibits Hypocrisy Valley employees from organizing staff or faculty unions.

Hypocrisy Valley historically has had mediocre sports teams but from time to time they defeat the other major state universities. Masses of alumni do descend on the university during the football season to drink, eat, and watch Hypocrisy Valley players suffer defeat. Unrelated to performance levels, football and basketball coaches make huge salaries, as is common in collegiate sports, and the Director of Athletic Programs makes hundreds of thousands of dollars in salary and perks and participates in several academic decisions at the university.

Over the last 25 years, the number and cost of higher administrative personnel have grown enormously. In addition, selected “star” faculty have enjoyed huge raises. Gaps between the salaries of high-tech, big business, drug company researchers and professors of liberal arts, education, and the pure sciences have grown as well. But all celebrate the fact that Hypocrisy Valley has developed a world reputation, even ranked highly by U.S. News and World Report, the arbiter of quality in higher education.

Presidents at Hypocrisy Valley have served one or more five-year terms before retiring and being replaced. Ordinarily, these presidents are celebrated for their historic contributions to the evolution of the university, only to be all but erased from the University’s history upon retirement. Often the Board of Trustees, the big business elites appointed by Governors to rule the university, name buildings or roads after retired university presidents.

This gets to the heart of academic rule at Hypocrisy Valley. The Board of Trustees makes major decisions about the character and future of the university, including faculty and staff employment. Generally, high-paid administrators accept decisions as they are announced. And since the Board is appointed by sitting Governors, higher education policy is directly related to the distribution of political power in the state.

In addition, since elections, the public expression of political power, are significantly determined by millionaires, trustees at Hypocrisy Valley usually are the wealthy and powerful. Often Trustees come from multinational corporations, banks, and real estate interests in the state and the country. And this influence “trickles down” from the selection of higher levels of administration at Hypocrisy Valley, to curricula, to admissions policy, staff and faculty salaries, and student tuitions.

Recently, decisions at Hypocrisy Valley generated more commentary than usual. The outgoing president, who served one five-year term was encouraged to retire. She was granted a $500,000 severance payment, a continuation of her tenured position in an academic department related to her expertise, and a full-paid sabbatical leave, while she serves on boards of distinguished national scholarly institutions.

Information about the severance payment was reported, in the usually pliant local newspaper, the Hypocrisy Journal. The Journal reported also that the Board is reconfiguring faculty and staff health care costs, including increasing recipient co-payments. The severance package of $500,000 will be paid out of university discretionary funds. Increased health care costs for Hypocrisy Valley employees will be paid for by them.

In addition, with the impending retirement of the University president, a nationwide search for a successor was carried out. A search firm, a faculty staff committee, and the Board of Trustees, after extensive work decided that the best candidate to be the next president of Hypocrisy Valley was the outgoing governor of the state, who in fact appointed the Board of Trustees which now decided that he, the governor with no academic experience, was the best candidate to be the next president.

In addition to the appearance of political skullduggery, the governor had already cut higher education budgets, helped establish an online university as an alternative to traditional higher education, supported the privatization of public education from K to grade 12, opposed women’s access to reproductive health, and signed anti-labor legislation. Some of his strongest defenders argue that having a new president with no higher education administrative experience might make him best equipped to run this world-class institution.

Meanwhile, the Hypocrisy Journal, while publishing a few opinion pieces criticizing the appointment of the outgoing governor as the new president, shifted most of its editorializing to strong support for the appointment, despite a few well-researched stories about the less transparent aspects of the appointment.

I am sure that Hypocrisy University will survive the moral and political corruption of the presidential appointment. Major changes in university policy will not occur. Big corporations and banks will continue to be served by the bulk of ongoing research and teaching. The Board of Trustees will continue to rule in relative secrecy.

Faculty, in the main, will complain in the corridors but will not think of organizing. Students will endure higher tuition to pay for administrative salaries. Growing numbers of young people from around the state, often minorities and working class kids, will search for alternatives to the prohibitively expensive education costs at Hypocrisy Valley.

As Hoosier novelist, Kurt Vonnegut once wrote: “So it goes.”

[Harry Targ is a professor of political science at Purdue University who lives in West Lafayette, Indiana. He blogs at Diary of a Heartland Radical -- and that's also the name of his new book which can be found at Lulu.com. Read more of Harry Targ's articles on The Rag Blog.]

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INTERVIEW / Jonah Raskin : Paul Krassner Is Still Smokin' at 80

Paul Krassner at his 80th birthday party.
The counterculture was
a spiritual revolution:
A Rag Blog interview with Paul Krassner 

As the editor of The Realist, Krassner taught me not to take myself too seriously and not to gaze with absolute reverence at the icons of the Sixties.

By Jonah Raskin / The Rag Blog / June 7, 2012

Alive and well and still kicking, with a satirical brand of biting humor that’s right on-target and as deadly as ever, Paul Krassner is an American national treasure.

In April 2012, he celebrated his 80th birthday with his daughter and grandchild. During the first week of June, he published, in a new, updated edition, his 1999 marijuana compendium, Pot Stories for the Soul. (Soft Skull Press; $17.95).

Right about here, and now, the ethics of the profession demand that I make a full disclosure. Krassner and I belong to the vast American underground that began before 1776 and that like him is still going strong. I’m also in his new book, along with Kate Coleman, Lynn Phillips, Robert Anton Wilson, and the usual suspects: Tommy Chong, Hunter S. Thompson, Wavy Gravy, Allen Ginsberg, and more.

The provocative editor of The Realist, as well as one of the zaniest of the zany Yippies, and a founding brother of the underground press, Krassner surely needs no introduction, at least not to survivors of the Sixties, readers of The Rag Blog (to which he is a semi-regular contributor), and to lovers of political satire from any generation.

Still, it might be helpful to remind the old, the young, the in-between, and even those in the know, that Krassner belonged to Ken Kesey’s band of outlaws, the Merry Pranksters, that he testified at the Chicago Conspiracy Trial, and that he has written or edited 11 books, several of them classics of American humor: Confessions of a Raving, Unconfined Nut; The Winner of the Slow Bicycle Race; and the superlative, Who’s to Say What's Obscene?: Politics, Culture, and Comedy in America Today.

Unafraid to poke fun at himself and unafraid to move at the pace of a turtle, not a rabbit, he has outlived many of his hilarious and deadly serious co-conspirators including Jerry, Abbie, Phil, and Stew (Rubin, Hoffman, Ochs, and Albert). As the editor of The Realist, Krassner taught me not to take myself too seriously and not to gaze with absolute reverence at the icons of the Sixties.

In 1970, when I submitted an article to The Realist about my experiences in Algeria with Eldridge Cleaver and Timothy Leary, he promptly changed my title and published it as “Eldridge & Tim & Kathleen & Rosemary.”

The previous year, moviegoers had flocked to theaters to see Paul Mazursky’s romantic comedy, Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, with Natalie Wood, Elliot Gould, Robert Culp, and Dyan Cannon. Ads for the movie depicted the two couples in the same bed together. With a sharp eye on the sense and nonsense of pop culture and an unerring sense of satire, Krassner ran, on the cover of The Realist, a cartoon of Eldridge, Tim, Kathleen, and Rosemary in bed together.

I don’t know if they laughed, but I did, and thanks to Paul I have been laughing ever since, as much as I can, even when it hurts.


Jonah Raskin: The new, updated version of your old book is entitled Pot Stories for the Soul. Why the “the soul” and not “the head”?

Paul Krassner: It was a takeoff on the series of books entitled Chicken Soup for the Soul. I suppose if those books had been called Chicken Soup for the Head, then my book would be titled Pot Stories for the Head.

Why do you think that President Obama -- a pot smoker as a teenager -- is so opposed to pot now?

Fear of losing the election. Maybe Big Pharma threatened not to fund his campaign. But it's still a mystery. After all, his position on same-sex marriages "evolved" because of the polls. The irony is that if he had been busted as a teenager, he would never have been elected president.

In the title of your book, why do you call it pot and not weed, marijuana, cannabis, or grass?

It just felt right: the rhythm and the informality.

Do you really think that pot has medicinal values, or is that concept just a stalking horse for legalization for recreational purposes?

I absolutely believe it has medicinal values, not only because of research, but also from my own experience. Even if it could only relieve stress, the cause of so much disease is stress. Medical vs. recreational is a false distinction -- it's the anti-pleasure movement in action. Nobody ever says you should drink red wine and eat dark chocolate for their medical properties, but not for enjoyment.

Is there any truth to the rumor that The Realist was published on hemp paper?

It's a great rumor, though false, but if I had to do it all over again, it would be true.

Do you think that there’s a Yippie gene and that some are born with it and some not?

I think that every child is born with innocent irreverence, but it's canceled by the osmosis of cultural repression. It’s retrieved by those of us fortunate enough to break through society's brainwashing.

Few if any plants take more abuse than marijuana. Why is that? What’s so funny about marijuana?

What's funny is that Prozac is expensive and a side effect is suicidal tendencies, whereas marijuana can be grown in your window box for free, and the "worst" side effect is the munchies.

In 1968, the Yippies called for the legalization of marijuana. It’s almost 45 years later. Why didn’t legalization happen?

The influence of anti-pot propaganda, and the fact that Richard Nixon ignored the advice of the commission that he authorized.

If pot makes you forget what would you most like to forget after taking a hit?

I'd like to forget, but can't, that there are so many prisoners serving time, as Lenny Bruce said, "for smoking flowers." The abuse of power without compassion extends to the injustice and inhumanity of American drones killing children in Pakistan.

I suppose at your age you don’t think pot will be legalized in your lifetime?

It's not impossible. All the president has to do is have it removed from Schedule One of dangerous drugs. Maybe I'm just optimistic from smoking too much pot. High Times once published a questionnaire, and one of the questions was, "Is it possible to smoke too much pot?" A reader responded, "I don't understand the question."

Is there pot in Heaven, in Hell? Who’s more likely to smoke it: god, the goddess, the devil?

There's pot in Heaven on Earth, not in Hell on Earth. Only the Goddess of Reefer Madness knows why it's called Devil Weed.

Who are the leading pot smokers in your Hall of Fame?

Willie Nelson, Bill Maher, Jack Herer, Ken Kesey, Allen Ginsberg, Valerie Corral... the list goes on.

And what enforcement figures are the main figures in your Hall of Shame?

Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, Eric Holder, Ronald Reagan, the DEA, and the prison guards’ union.

In a group, how can you tell the pot smokers, growers, and smugglers on trial from the lawyers who defend them?

The defendants are the ones who supply their lawyers.

Are you stoned now?

Of course, it was on my to-do list.

Can you tell me where I can buy a righteous joint or two?

Most likely from your students.

You were born before TV, before the fax, email, the cellphone, Facebook, Google, and Twitter. Would you like to return to the golden age of radio?

I prefer to live in the present; it's a matter of choice. I decided to quit Facebook after I reached 5,000 "friends." It just became too much of a distraction.

What were the 1960s about, other than sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll?

At its core, the counterculture was a spiritual revolution, replacing religions of control with disciplines of liberation.

What would Lenny Bruce say about pot if he were alive today?

"Hey, this shit is fucking powerful."

[Jonah Raskin, a regular contributor to The Rag Blog, is the author of Marijuanaland: Dispatches from an American War, For the Hell of It: The Life and Times of Abbie Hoffman, and American Scream: Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl” and the Making of the Beat Generation. Read more articles by Jonah Raskin on The Rag Blog.]

• Listen to Thorne Dreyer's three hour-long interviews with Paul Krassner on Rag Radio, and read Paul Krassner's writing on The Rag Blog.

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Lamar W. Hankins : Satire and the Abortion-Rights Deniers

Garry Trudeau's controversial series of Doonesbury cartoons satirized the Texas sonogram law.
Taking on the abortion-rights
deniers with satire

No other right, except for perhaps the right to organize a union, has been under such assault in the U.S.

By Lamar W. Hankins / The Rag Blog / March 20, 2012

The abortion-rights deniers have worked tirelessly for 36 years to make abortion uncomfortable, shameful, difficult, painful, and exhausting, if not impossible.

By driving health facilities that provide abortions out of business through regulations and legal hurdles too high to jump over, their work has prevented many women from exercising their right to terminate an unwanted pregnancy. When that didn't work well enough, they tried murdering a few doctors and health-care providers (seven to date) who provided the medical expertise necessary to accomplish safe abortions.

No other right, except for perhaps the right to organize a union, has been under such assault in the U.S. When the abortion deniers realized that the right to privacy guaranteed to every woman the right to decide not to carry a pregnancy to term, they set about to undermine the right to an abortion in any way possible, including by passing laws that allow doctors to withhold medical information about the condition of the fetus (such as those laws introduced in Arizona and Kansas).

I don’t know a single person who advocates abortion, which is how the abortion-right deniers like to characterize the position of those people who believe that a decision to terminate a pregnancy is one made by each individual based on her own circumstances and health care needs.

I do not advocate abortion, but I do advocate the right of a pregnant woman to make that decision for herself, unencumbered by the religious and moral beliefs of the rest of us, and without being subjected to the authoritarian views of some others.

The abortion-right deniers, on the other hand, have bombed and burned health clinics; they have intimidated women going to clinics for reproductive health services of all sorts (including abortion); they have committed acts of vandalism; they have stalked and assaulted pregnant women; they have tricked pregnant women into not showing up for appointments; they have falsely advertised anti-abortion clinics as family planning clinics; they have made the procedure more expensive for women and their health care providers; they have had abortion doctors prosecuted for performing abortions; and then they hit on the current strategy of legislating against abortion at the state level.

The abortion-right deniers tried laws that delay abortion, like waiting periods, but this was not effective enough. A few years ago, they were satisfied to require women to view a sonogram image of the fetus before having an abortion. Recently, they hit on the idea of requiring an intravaginal ultrasound, an invasive procedure that some have likened to legal rape because it requires by government mandate that a medical instrument be inserted into a woman’s vagina against her will.

The cartoon Doonesbury, written and drawn by Gary Trudeau, has taken on this latest tactic of the abortion-right deniers, satirically depicting a woman seeking to terminate a pregnancy, who is instructed to wait in a “shaming room” where “a middle-aged, male state legislator” will introduce her to the procedure to make sure that she hears the heartbeat of the fetus and sees the body parts that can be identified, or hear them described to her.

Trudeau’s characters call the medical devices "ten-inch shaming wands," and the doctor performing the procedure says "By the power invested in me by the GOP base, I thee rape." Trudeau skillfully lampoons the GOP plan to create a “shame spiral” that may cause a pregnant woman to change her mind about having an abortion.

But cartoons are not the only means for taking satirical aim at these absurd, unnecessary, tyrannical, dispiriting, and intrusive laws. Some state legislators have struck back by proposing laws that make having a child a bit more of an equal responsibility for men, and make receiving certain health services used primarily by men just as uncomfortable for them as the intravaginal ultrasounds are for women, who are compelled to endure them to receive what is their right under the Constitution.

Last year, in Texas, Rep. Harold Dutton thought that the man responsible for creating a pregnancy with any woman who changed her mind about seeking an abortion after viewing an ultrasound image of the fetus should have to pay the child’s college tuition. When that proposal failed, he proposed that the father should have to subsidize the child’s health care costs until age 18. When that idea didn’t fly with the legislators, Rep. Dutton lowered the age to six, with the same result.

In Delaware, a state senator’s bill requiring rectal exams and cardiac stress tests for men seeking prescriptions for erectile dysfunction was narrowly defeated.

After Georgia’s house considered a bill banning abortions for women 20 weeks or more pregnant, a female representative proposed a bill prohibiting vasectomies because they leave “thousands of children... deprived of birth.”

A state senator in Ohio thought that special regulations were needed to protect men who sought prescription drugs for impotency. Had her bill passed, such men would have had to submit to psychological screenings. As Sen. Nina Turner explained, “We must advocate for the traditional family and ensure that all men using (impotence drugs) are healthy, stable, and educated about their options -- including celibacy as a viable life choice.”

A state representative in Illinois had a different idea about how to educate men seeking Viagra to relieve their impotence. Under the bill, such patients would have had to watch a video showing the alarming treatment for persistent erections -- those lasting four hours or more.

Nine female lawmakers in Missouri became concerned about an elective medical procedure available only to men after the legislature voted to reject the President’s contraceptive coverage mandate. They co-sponsored a bill restricting access to vasectomies unless a patient seeking a vasectomy risks death or serious bodily harm without the procedure.

The bill provided that, “In determining whether a vasectomy is necessary, no regard shall be made to the desire of a man to father children, his economic situation, his age, the number of children he is currently responsible for, or any danger to his wife or partner in the event a child is conceived.”

When Oklahoma’s state senate tried to declare zygotes persons to be protected under Oklahoma law, Sen. Constance Johnson introduced an amendment that would have declared ejaculating anywhere except in a woman’s vagina as “an action against an unborn child.” The Senator also suggested the need for a law that would require any man who impregnates a woman without her permission to pay a $25,000 fine, support the child until it reaches the age of 21, and get a vasectomy. She saw this as needed “in the spirit of shared responsibility.”

A colleague proposed a provision that would require the father of a child conceived without permission of the mother to be financially responsible for the mother’s health care, housing, transportation, and nourishment during the pregnancy.

There is little doubt that these proposals were as intentionally and equally ridiculous as the ideas that gave rise to them -- ideas that would have subjected pregnant women to unconscionable requirements intended only to interfere in the exercise of their constitutional right to terminate an unwanted pregnancy no matter what the circumstances.

As the Daily Koz put it, discussing changes in Arizona’s laws about women seeking a full range of health care services:

Arizona is the latest state to decide that womenfolk need closer supervision when it comes to their own health choices; they're even upping the ante by proposing that individual employers ought to be able to monitor the ostensible morality of women employees themselves. That's, um, nuts.

To understand the cruelty of the requirements of government interference with the decision to terminate a pregnancy, read this account in the March 15, 2012, Texas Observer. Carolyn Jones explains her situation and what Texas’ new sonogram law meant for her:

Halfway through my pregnancy, I learned that my baby was ill. Profoundly so. My doctor gave us the news kindly, but still, my husband and I weren’t prepared. Just a few minutes earlier, we’d been smiling giddily at fellow expectant parents as we waited for the doctor to see us. In a sonography room smelling faintly of lemongrass, I’d just had gel rubbed on my stomach, just seen blots on the screen become tiny hands. For a brief, exultant moment, we’d seen our son -- a brother for our 2-year-old girl.

Yet now my doctor was looking grim and, with chair pulled close, was speaking of alarming things... My husband looked angry, and maybe I did too, but it was astonishment more than anger. Ours was a profound disbelief that something so bad might happen to people who think themselves charmed. We already had one healthy child and had expected good fortune to give us two.

Instead, before I’d even known I was pregnant, a molecular flaw had determined that our son’s brain, spine and legs wouldn’t develop correctly. If he were to make it to something our doctor couldn’t guarantee -- he’d need a lifetime of medical care. From the moment he was born, my doctor told us, our son would suffer greatly.

...It felt like a physical blow to hear that word, abortion, in the context of our much-wanted child. Abortion is a topic that never seemed relevant to me; it was something we read about in the news or talked about politically; it always remained at a safe distance. Yet now its ugly fist was hammering on my chest...

[T]he young woman... told me reluctantly about the new Texas sonogram law that had just come into effect. I’d already heard about it. The law passed last spring but had been suppressed by legal injunction until two weeks earlier.

My counselor said that the law required me to have another ultrasound that day, and that I was legally obligated to hear a doctor describe my baby. I’d then have to wait 24 hours before coming back for the procedure. She said that I could either see the sonogram or listen to the baby’s heartbeat, adding weakly that this choice was mine.

“I don’t want to have to do this at all,” I told her. “I’m doing this to prevent my baby’s suffering. I don’t want another sonogram when I’ve already had two today. I don’t want to hear a description of the life I’m about to end. Please,” I said, “I can’t take any more pain.”

I confess that I don’t know why I said that. I knew it was a fait accompli. The counselor could no more change the government requirement than I could. Yet here was a superfluous layer of torment piled upon an already horrific day, and I wanted this woman to know it...

What good is a law that adds only pain and difficulty to perhaps the most painful and difficult decision a woman can make? Shouldn’t women have a right to protect themselves from strangers’ opinions on their most personal matters? Shouldn’t we have the right not to know?

Sometimes satire is the only weapon available in the face of unremitting cruelty offered by people who have no respect for a woman’s health, or her ability to make an intelligent and informed decision about her health and her body without government interference. Perhaps the explanation for the cruelty is even more basic. Maybe these people have no respect for women.

[Lamar W. Hankins, a former San Marcos, Texas, city attorney, is also a columnist for the San Marcos Mercury. This article © Freethought San Marcos, Lamar W. Hankins. Read more articles by Lamar W. Hankins on The Rag Blog.]

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Bill Freeland : A Balanced Budget for All Citizens!

Graphic by Bill Freeland / The Rag Blog.
Proposed:
A balanced budget amendment for all citizens

The guys who now work at bank loan departments and refinance companies would finally have to go out and find honest work.

By Bill Freeland / The Rag Blog / January 23, 2012

Like many Americans, I am thrilled by the Republicans’ bold support for a balanced budget amendment.

It’s the best way to get our fiscal house in order, they tell cheering crowds across the country.

But here’s my question: does the proposal go far enough!

Consider: if it’s good to limit new federal spending to only what the government takes in during a given year, why not place that same constitutional restriction on citizens? If Washington has to start living debt-free, why shouldn’t every American have to do the same?

That’s fair, right?

So here’s my simple solution: just as with the government under a balanced budget amendment, individual Americans should no longer be able take on more new debt than they could pay off by the end of each year.

Imagine: every American, every December 31st, with every bill from that year paid in full -- just like Uncle Sam!

Here’s some examples of how it would work:

Say you’re a young person about to go off to college but the money you’ve faithfully saved from a sidewalk lemonade stand or mowing lawns simply won’t cover it. Yet, unlike so many students, you don’t want to get a $100,000 bill along with your diploma.

Under this new pay-as-you-go amendment, you would only enroll in the courses you can pay for during each academic year. Result: no student loans -- ever! Of course, at that rate, it would probably take at least a dozen years to finish a four- year degree, but you’d be doing your part to fight nanny socialism.

Once out of school, new grads, of course, will want their first new car. But that would mean an expensive auto loan that can take years to pay off.

No more! Thanks to my consumer balanced budget amendment, these young people will escape that debt trap. What they will be required to do instead is to look for a reasonably priced used car, which with any luck will last them until they have saved up enough to buy their dream car for cash.

The next obvious step for these thrifty Americans would be owning a home. But as with their educational and transportation needs, they will have to save before they spend -- again, just like Uncle Sam.

That will mean finding suitable rental accommodations, perhaps for decades, since multi-year, debt-creating mortgages would be abolished as un-American. Meanwhile they will develop the moral rigor that only postponed gratification can impart.

Now see yourself in old age. Just like our newly prudent government, downsizing will be the order of the day -- including no borrowing allowed against home equity, for example, to pay for nursing home care, etc. That might be considered a downside until you recall that our Founding Fathers never had any such a safety net and yet they managed to build a great nation.

Such a consumer-centered amendment would have other benefits as well. To avoid the temptation to over spend on credit cards, for example, we would simply outlaw that form of “plastic money.” In addition, the amendment would also do away with other sorts of other easy credit. As a result the guys who now work at bank loan departments and refinance companies would finally have to go out and find honest work.

And by the way, since the Supreme Count has determined that corporations are people when it comes to speech, why not treat them like people when it comes to debt. So all of the above applies to them as well.

I’m not saying that a return to a nineteenth century financial system will be easy. After all, spending only what you literally have in your pocket will be challenging.

But if we are really serious about solving our debt crisis, public and private -- as the balanced budget advocates surely are -- this new amendment is what it’s going to take -- both from our government and from ourselves!

[In the Sixties, Bill Freeland was a contributor to The Rag in Austin and Liberation News Service in New York. Read more articles by Bill Freeland on The Rag Blog.]

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Life During Wartime : 'Danse Macabre'

Political cartoon by Joshua Brown / Historians Against the War / The Rag Blog
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Life During Wartime : Our Enduring Commitment

Political cartoon by Joshua Brown / Historians Against the War / The Rag Blog
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Paul Krassner : Why Firing the General Was an Act of God

Cartoon by Larson / The Far Side / The Mutt's Nuts.
Why firing the General
Was an act of God

By Paul Krassner / The Rag Blog / June 25, 2010

1. The volcano in Iceland was considered an Act of God.
2. Smoke from the volcano caused countless flights to be canceled.
3. The Rolling Stone correspondent was stuck in Paris.
4. Embedded there, he hung around with talkative drinkers.
5. They revealed stuff while forgetting it was being told to a reporter.
6. He wrote in his article what they had said.
7. The fact checkers verified those statements.
8. The article was shown to Barack Obama.
9. Whether he fired McChrystal or didn’t, Republicans would criticize.
10. The president fired the general, ultimately due to an Act of God.

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Tom Tomorrow : Free-Market-Man

Cartoon by Tom Tomorrow / This Modern World.

CLICK ON IMAGE TO ENLARGE

Source / Truthout

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Life During Wartime : A Tool in Arizona

Political cartoon by Joshua Brown / Historians Against the War / The Rag Blog
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VERSE / Larry Piltz : We're Focused in Going Forward

"Piggy Banker." Painting © Zina Saunders 2009.

We're Focused In Going Forward (a song)

We're focused in going forward
hoping we're not moving backward
that our dreams are not shattered
and we're doing things that matter

We have a laser-eye view
of what we surgically need to do
but first we synchronize our attitudes
to increase the odds we're not that screwed

We'll strategize our paradigm
to turn this tanker on a dime
then magnetize our money bomb
and incentivize remaining calm

Calm, calm, calm, calm
take a powder take a balm
calm, calm, calm, calm
serenity thy name is Rahm

I yearn to actionize my sweetheart deal
get skin in the game and watch it peel
to hybridize across the board
take a flier and pull the cord

I'll morally hazard deep cramdowns
and turn the plunge team into clowns
creatively destroy the ranks
of dualistic zombie banks

I'll deconstruct the stewardship
and ride risk-free the double dip
but why I do this I won't tell
but two key words are soul and sell

soul, sell, soul, sell
I salivate at the first bell
soul, sell, soul, sell
it's later that I go to hell

We're focused in going forward
hoping we're not ass backward
that our dreams were not hackered
by some spoiled rich cracker
we're focused in going forward


Larry Piltz / The Rag Blog

Indian Cove
Austin, Texas
April 20, 2010

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Greg Moses : Operation Tiny Tim

Operation Tiny Tim:
Retired generals campaign for
Health care equity for all children

By Greg Moses / The Rag Blog / April 1, 2010

A new association of retired military generals plans today to announce "Operation Tiny Tim" to secure the dignity of affordable health care for all children, not only in the USA but in all countries where U.S. bases are located.

"Whether we have to open up our military hospitals or extend the Pentagon budget for health care to civilian facilities, we are determined to share with the children of the world nothing less than the quality medical care that our own children received as military dependents," said General Samuel "Upright" Justice from his home in northern Virginia.

General Sawyer "True Blue" Edgemont, who served three years as Director of Medical Operations for the Joint Chiefs, said he couldn't be more proud of the record that the military has established for quality, accessible, and affordable health care for American soldiers, spouses, and dependents around the world.

"Medical care is mission critical for us in times of war and peace," said Edgemont. "Assuring the right to a healthy body is something we can be honored to stand for wherever Old Glory flies"

Speaking from Pasadena, California, where he serves as volunteer coordinator for a food bank, Edgemont said the idea for Operation Tiny Tim came up in a casual conversation during a Dickens reading circle last summer.

"We have the experience and commitment to excellence in federal health care," he said. "Why not build from the strengths that we already have?"

General Lucinda "Boots" Billingame said the idea comes at a time when Americans are needlessly divided over health care reform.

"Nothing succeeds like success," said Billingame, "so I think we can make a lasting contribution to authentic patriotism if we show ourselves and the world that America is very much a can-do country when it comes to efficient delivery of best practices in health care for coming generations."

Defense Secretary Robert Gates was unavailable for comment at the time of this report, but a spokesman for the Pentagon, on condition of anonymity, suggested that the active-duty uniformed services would respect whatever mission that Congress and the President should decide to order.

"We're here to serve the national interest," said the Pentagon spokesman.

Meanwhile, reporters and producers at the international finance channel CNBC were rumored to be scouring sources and experts to determine which companies would be most likely to secure lucrative federal contracts when the campaign goes operational.

Aides for Republican Congressmen who opposed recent reforms known as "Obamacare" were quick to point out that the program proposed by the retired Generals would be expensive.

"War is not cheap," said one well-placed aide. "Especially when you consider that the war they're talking about will never end."

Aides for Democrats supporting “Obamacare” expressed concern that the Generals' proposal would raise the spectre of a "public option" during the upcoming election cycle.

"We’ll be lucky enough to survive voter wrath for the modest expansion in health care insurance coverage," said one insider, referring to the health insurance bill that passed in March. "I'm not sure the American people will tolerate the idea of No Child Left Behind applied to health care."

"There is a lot of anger and mistrust out there," added the insider. "But if an association of Generals says that they can win this Operation Tiny Tim, people on both sides of the aisle might give them a hearing."

[When he is not writing April Fool’s fantasies, Greg Moses is Editor of the Texas Civil Rights Review and a lifetime student of what William James called the “Moral Equivalent of War.” Moses can be reached at gmosesx@gmail.com.]

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Life During Wartime : Corporations Are People Too!

Political cartoon by Joshua Brown / Historians Against the War / The Rag Blog
Thanks to Dr. S.R. Keister /The Rag Blog

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VERSE / Larry Piltz : A Poem of Judicial Atrocity

Corporate zombie. Photo by Ian MacLellan / MacLellan Images.

The Sniff Test
[A poem of judicial atrocity]

The corporate zombie creature
raises a misshapen nostril
out of the feudal muck,
smells air sweet enough to foul
and emerges uncontrite,
lunging onto stolid ground
the mud beneath it splattering,
on a day to be remembered
as belonging to the living dead;
the monstrous titan behemoth
is extinct no more,
its natural enemies,
the living, the free, you, me,
assigned to take its place exiled
in the stifling underground.

December 2000.
January 2010.
A locust cycle.
A plague of robes.
Fascio-Judicial Robespierres,
contorted Terror from within.
A heroic ninety-page dissent
enables a shrewd new
underground railroad
of organized outrage
and wholly natural
resistance in kind.
Justice in kind.
A corporeal response
from a body politic
with 2020 vision.
The gloves are off.


Larry Piltz / The Rag Blog

Indian Cove
Austin, Texas
January 21, 2010

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Rewind and Restart : How the Dems (Could Have) Made 'Health Care' Happen

(A New Years fantasy)

Once more from the top:
An alternative scenario for health care reform

By Zoltan Zigedy / The Rag Blog / January 10, 2010

In February of 2009, with his poll numbers and public expectations exceptionally high, President Obama announces that he supports the House health care reform bill with the most co-sponsors: HR 676, the universal, single payer plan. He notes that this has always been his answer to fixing the broken, for-profit system that now fails patient needs and burdens our economy.

Immediately, the health care industry and big Pharma go into full attack mode, condemning the bill as "socialism." Obama meets with Democratic House leadership and emphasizes that "the American people need this bill and we will give it to them. This victory will pave the way for an overwhelming victory in the 2010 elections!"

House conservative Democrats join Republicans in attacking the House bill, citing industry generated polls and conservative pundits in arguing that the "American people do not want a government plan, but one that leaves health care in the hands of the private market." The health care industry and its friends rush multi-million dollar attack ads into play, much as they did during the Clinton administration.

In the early spring, Obama holds a town hall meeting, nationally televised, in which he brings together, from around the country, hundreds of people who have been victimized by lack of insurance, poor insurance, coverage denials, and obscene health care costs. In a major address, Obama cites the tens of thousands who die every year from a lack of insurance coverage. He declares this as criminally tragic as the September 11 attacks. Also, he emphatically states that placing petty concerns above delivering adequate health care to all is unpatriotic.

That same week, House leader Nancy Pelosi publicly announces that HR 676 must be passed and she will hold Democrats' feet to the fire with all the resources available to the Democratic Party, including election funding, committee seats, and primary challenges. CNN reports live on a conference of pollsters, health care providers, doctors, nurses, and economists who discuss the bill thoroughly, followed by a full endorsement. National media coverage is extensive. The Sunday morning gasbags devote their shows to the bill, grilling opponents in light of the Administration offensive.

As the Senate takes up a health care bill, progressive Democrats call for a rally in support of the bill to take place in DC in the summer. They pressure the House leadership to endorse the rally. The AFL-CIO, NOW, MoveOn, and all other liberal groups endorse the rally.

While seemingly endless debate goes on in the Senate, hundreds of thousands pour into DC to hear a wide range of speakers, musicians, and Congressional leaders in support of the Senate counterpart bill introduced by Senator Sanders. The crowd stirs with the spreading rumor that the President may well appear. Near the end, the crowd roars as President Obama briefly appears, thanking the demonstrators.

The Democratic Senate leadership, stiffened by the unprecedented rally, announces that they will bring the bill quickly to the floor. Senator Reid -- the Senate Democratic leader -- announces that this bill is as significant as any legislation since the Voting Rights Act. He wants his place in history to be identified with this vote. Administration staffer Rahm Emanuel reportedly caucused with Senate Democrats and says: "I don’t give a s*** about Lieberman. And Ben, you better get your ass on board or there will be hell to pay. You can’t even imagine the hell we’ll bring down on you. I want this f***in’ bill passed with ALL the D’s supporting it." Emanuel denies this report.

The Republicans and a few Democrats howl in indignation. Fox news vilifies the House and Senate Democrats with wild charges of socialism and fascism. Harry Reid speaks in the Senate, holding a copy of the Constitution: "Maybe you folks in the Republican Party should read this. Americanism has never been to side with the bullies, and the insurance industry, their rich executives, big Pharma, and their consultants and lobbyists are bullies, forcing their profits ahead of the needs of the American people." The media is shocked by his bold leadership.

Desperate Republican leaders announce a filibuster with the intent of forestalling a majority vote. The President goes on television with a sober, reasoned plea to have the bill passed. When asked by the press about the threatened filibuster, Obama replies with a wry smile: "Bring it on!"

As the Republican filibuster continues into the fall with Republican Senators droning on and on to an empty Senate chamber, public anger grows and grows. Late night comedians devote most of their shows to parodies of Senators quoting Glen Beck and Rush Limbaugh. Constant picket lines of doctors, nurses, and victims of the broken U.S. health care system surround Senate office buildings. Media commentators question this tactic, blaming the Republicans for bringing legislation to a halt. Polls show Republican favorable ratings at an all time low.

Senator Reid is quoted as chiding a Republican colleague: "Don’t stop now. Keep it up until the interim elections!" Senator Reid denies saying this.

Late in November, Republican leaders huddle, recognizing that continuing to filibuster will destroy any chances of survival after the November 2010 elections. They quickly agree to call it off.

In early December, the Senate passes its version of Medicare for all by a vote of 51 to 25, with many Republicans nervously abstaining.

President Obama goes on national television, thanking all of those who worked so tirelessly and intensely to achieve an efficient, universal, and comprehensive health care plan that will rival any system in the world. He assures the American people that all the failings of the current system, referring to World Health Organization’s parameters, will be reversed and the U.S. will become a widely admired leader in delivering the best health care to its people. He promises to sign a final bill before Christmas, stating that he hopes that the new legislative act will serve as a long overdue but welcome gift to us all. "Happy holidays!" he concludes.


Of course this is a fantasy. We do not have the health care bill that we could have had. In fact, almost nothing in this fantasy is true. The President didn’t get behind the House bill with the most co-sponsors, the Democratic leadership didn’t fight hard for real change, there were no tough back room threats, the media didn’t give serious advocates a megaphone, there was no attempt by political leaders to engage and rally the base, political leaders did not show courage, and Democrats did not call the Republican bluff.

I ask my liberal friends and soft-left comrades that they try, in the New Year, to understand why things went so awry. I ask that they turn away from the comforting notion that we live with an economic and political system that can deliver democracy, justice, and equality by our simple participation in the permitted rituals. I ask that, in the New Year, they desist from finding scapegoats for this disaster that should shame us all: whether it be Obama’s betrayal, Blue Dog treachery, or that rotten renegade, Lieberman. It’s the system. Seriously, it’s the system...

[For more from Zoltan Zigedy, visit ZZ's blog.]

Thanks to Jeffrey Segal / The Rag Blog

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Apocalypse 2010 : Meltdown Under the American Bubble

Planet Earth was coming apart at the seams.
Remembering 2010 (if we must):
Mass amnesia, the Rapture,
and the Palin-Bachmann nuptials

By John Ross / The Rag Blog / January 4, 2010

MEXICO CITY -- Book-ended by mass amnesia under the American bubble, 2010 was yet another year to erase from living memory. Although Planet Earth was coming apart at the seams with the usual volcanoes blowing their stacks, earthquakes rearranging the landscape, flood and drought rampaging from one continent to the next, nuclear war raging in the Middle East, and serial economic calamities inducting a billion more sentient human beings into the starvation army, First World elites navigated through daily disaster delusionally convinced that everything was honky dory.

Children played happily with their Chinese mechanical hamsters until the batteries went dead and families gathered around home entertainment centers, even the millions of families who had been evicted from their homes. Neighbors exchanged pleasantries as they cruised empty super market aisles (most brand-name products were recalled because of suspect Chinese-induced E Coli contamination), oblivious of the unseen poor parboiled in their own sweat and tears far beyond American shores. Scientists attributed this massive indifference to the plight of the planet to the presence of toxic amounts of Ambien in the water systems of major U.S. cities.

The majority of U.S. citizens were not even aware of their failing memories and did not know what was missing. Still mass forgetfulness had grave political downsides. One example: no one could remember the name of the U.S. president when just a year ago, it was on the tips of everyone's tongue. Indeed, no one could recall much of anything anymore. Even after the physical environment collapsed and the faithful were taken up in the Rapture, no one seemed to miss them.

The faithful were taken up in the rapture, but weren't missed. Artist reconstruction.
The following month-by-month capsule of how the Apocalypse impaled Planet Earth on the Cross of Catastrophe was scraped together from the author's pitiful scraps of memory before he slipped into total dementia.

JANUARY - The failure of climate change negotiations in Copenhagen (they will reconvene in December 2010 in Mexico City, the most monstrous megalopolis in the Americas) and the formation of a cartel of the world's pollution leaders had immediate repercussions when Somali pirates captured an iceberg floating in the Red Sea.

In accordance with the U.S. Zero Tolerance For Pirates protocol, President What's His Name stealth-bombed the dusky buccaneers who were towing the huge block of ice into port and so-called depleted uranium radiation liquefied it, triggering monumental flooding -- all of Yemen and parts of east Africa remain underwater and the quat crop has been decimated for years to come, causing wide-spread depression on the Dark Continent.

Further north, global warming had a more fortuitous fallout when the melt-down of a thermo-nuclear power plant in the capital city of Nuuk converted the Greenland Ice Cap to boiling water and the Inuit Riviera caught fire as a hot tourist attraction

Back under the American Bubble, on the first year anniversary of his hope-saturated inauguration on the Capital Mall, 78% of those polled by the Pew Institute On Domestic Dementia could no longer remember the President's name -- 72% referred to him simply as "you know, that black guy." Another 16% still had the President confused with Osama Bin Laden but 9% could correctly remember his first and last name although not at the same time.

On the other side of the political ledger, the words "Republican Party" had no name recognition for 81% of those who responded to the Pew poll. Alarmed pollsters hypothesized that the results were symptomatic of mass brainwashing, probably due to "something in the water."

FEBRUARY - Whatever his name was, The President of the United States was confronted with his umpteenth international terrorist crisis when Taliban technicians, employing Sky Grabber technology on sale at Radio Shack for $26 Americano, seized control of an unmanned and unwomanned drone over North Waziristan and redirected it to Kabul where the rebels launched missile attacks against the seat of the puppet government, flattening President Karsai and his entire cabinet, which included three of the world's most influential heroin dealers.

The obliteration of central authority quickly splintered the Afghan Crusade into a series of local mini-wars. Caught in the crossfire between feuding warlords, the U.S. death toll climbed to 502 for the month, topping even Iraq at the nadir of the illegal American invasion and occupation. Both the Nobel Peace Prize winning president and his Commander-in-Chief Stanley McChrystal extolled the high death toll as proof that the U.S. was winning the war and vowed to dispatch 60,000 more troops to Afghanistan.

When Taliban Sky Grabber gear hijacked two more drones and targeted Blackwater/Xe training facilities in the Great North Carolina swamp, Obama or Osama or whatever his name was closed down all Radio Shacks in the continental U.S.

Also under the bubble, cheap Chinese pork chops were deemed responsible for an outbreak of an inscrutable strain of Swine flu ("Swinear flu") that convulsed the breadbasket of the country.

The majority of citizens weren't aware of their failing memories. Image from TheTugboatComplex.
MARCH - A post-midnight coup March 11 in Quito, Ecuador, in which a junta of generals and admirals trained at the former School of the Americas overthrew and subsequently dismembered that tiny Andean country's elected president, the economist Rafael Correa, was the latest violent "regime change" in Latin America.

Since the White House greenlighted the overthrow of right-wing leftist Mel Zelaya in Honduras in June 2009, 11 Latin countries have suffered "golpes de estado," 10 of them this year (Guatemala, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Venezuela, Bolivia, Suriname, Trinidad & Tobago, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay and Paraguay). The wave of coup d'etats is almost certainly being orchestrated by the U.S. South Command operating out of seven state-of-the art bases recently installed in Colombia.

In Paraguay, the U.S. 4th Fleet parked itself off the coast while military gorillas dethroned former liberationist bishop and father of 14, Fernando Lugo. Up until January 2010 Paraguay had no coastline but global warming has brought the Atlantic Ocean to that impoverished majority Indian nation's doorstep.

Meanwhile in Mexico, scattered rebellion has broken out to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Mexican Revolution. In early January, the Zapatista Army of National Liberation occupied sacred sites throughout the country including Chichen Itza in the Yucatan, Palenque in Chiapas, and Teotihuacan near Mexico City, calling upon ancient Mayan and Mexica deities to join their uprising.

Panicked by the prospect of declining tourist dollars, fraudulently elected president Felipe Calderon pulled 50,000 troops out of his failed war with the drug cartels that has now taken 25,000 Mexican lives, to dislodge the Zapatistas. The strategy backfired when the cartels seized statehouses in Sinaloa, Sonora, and Chihuahua.

On March 18th, the 72nd anniversary of the nationalization of Mexico's petroleum from the transnational Seven Sisters, President Calderon was found dangling from the rafters at Los Pinos, the Mexican White House, an apparent suicide -- however, an autopsy turned up a note apparently pinned to the inside of his tie with a single Mexican expletive inscribed: "RATERO!"

Further scandal erupted when photographs emerged of Calderon's corpse, clad only in jockey shorts and plastered with bloody Mexican and U.S. bills, amulets, crucifixes, and rosaries in classic narco fashion, raising questions about the dead president's cartel affiliations.

APRIL - Global warming was deemed responsible for the near-biblical migration of small, undocumented mammals abandoning a disintegrating Mexico for El Norte -- badgers, gophers, skunks, coyotes, foxes, and bats had little trouble burrowing under the 1,000 kilometer-long Separation Wall between the two distant neighbor countries or flying over it. Hundreds of thousands of acres in the southwest were destroyed by the marauding illegals.

Rabid bat of the type that devoured a Minuteman in Lubbock.
When an anti-immigration Minuteman was devoured by rabid bats in Lubbock, Texas, crusading Mexican killer Lou Dobbs flew to the scene of the crime where he was confronted by several hundred indignant skunks that rendered his campaign for the White House permanently unviable. The stench caused frontrunner Sarah Palin to replace Dobbs on the ticket with hysterical TV paranoid Alex Jones of Austin, Texas.

Passions in the Middle East boiled over in April when Iranian patrol boats sunk a Liberian-flagged tanker carrying 176,000 gallons of Chinese-made flan to Spain. The sinking cargo soon gummed up the Straits of Hormuz through which the bulk of oil destined for Europe, the Americas, and China passes each day. Oil prices immediately shot up from a seasonal low of $50 USD to $250, deflating the dementia-driven euphoria on Wall Street. Acting on the self-interest of his Goldman Sachs advisors, the President floated multi-billion dollar bailouts.

MAY - After five months of testy reconciliation conferences between the House and the Senate during which Dennis Kucinich challenged Michelle Bachman to a duel and was shot dead on the House floor, the U.S. Congress announced that it had reached agreement on a compromise version of all but forgotten health care reform. Indeed all the health care reform provisions in the John Doe Omnibus Health Care Reform bill (named for a bus driver who had to sell both his kidneys in order to feed a starving puppy) had been stripped from the measure before it arrived at the White House for the first Afro-American president's John Hancock.

Among the provisions of "John Doe": renewed funding for the wars in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Kerghizstan, and Uzbekistan (two Stans will be added every year though 2018); the criminalization of abortion; and the restitution of the universal mandatory death penalty.

A new Pew poll prepared by the Institute for Domestic Dementia indicated that many Americans (a whopping 77%) had forgotten all about health care reform by May.

Sabotaged by the flan crisis, the economy was again in freefall despite White House lies that the 2009 depression was officially over and the country was growing again. As jobless benefits dried up, many families in the lower socio-economic brackets were forced to reduce their daily caloric intake and unemployed carnivores threatened to eat the rich.

Fortunately, rolling black- and brown-outs as river flows slowed to a trickle due to global warming and shut down hydro-electric power plants, caused widespread refrigeration meltdowns and millions of tons of spoiled meat, fruit, and dairy products poured into dumps and landfills where hungry garbage pickers were eager to harvest the putrefying bonanza.

Also in May, the last U.S. daily print newspaper, Rudolf Murdoch's New York Wall Street Times Journal Sporting News, closed up shop.

JUNE - Food riots became generalized in such depression-wracked formerly industrial cities as Detroit and Houston and Fox News Chief Albino Glenn Beck encouraged Tea Party Patriots to arm themselves for self-defense -- the average white North American family now owns 12 to 15 automatic weapons to hold off their equally heavily armed neighbors, according to the Pew Institute On Domestic Violence.

Beck encouraged Tea Party Patriots coagulated around a doddering George H.W. Bush in Texas and Dick Cheney in the Wyoming-Colorado Theater to seize state armories and hold nominating conventions. With armed insurrection being urged on cable news channels, the first Afro-American President of the United States retreated to a hollowed-out mountain in Virginia to watch the NBA Finals.

The Finals themselves generated alarming news when it was reported that Kobe Bryant had been genetically engineered on a farm in Kansas once owned by assassinated late term abortionist George Tiller -- it was not known if embryonic cells were employed in Kobe's modifications. A federal raid on the "farm" led by General Jeff Novitsky (he won his stripes in the Barry Bonds genocide campaign) uncovered thousands of Kobe clones in various stages of assemblage.

In other sporting news, the World Cup Matches in South Africa had to be called off when starving rioters set stadiums aflame, roasting tens of thousands of first world hooligans.

Flood and drought raged from one continent to the next. Image from Worth1000.com.
JULY - Prodded by global broiling, temperatures all across the northern regions of the planet jumped three degrees Celsius in July, one degree higher than the acceptable limits imposed by the polluting nations at the Copenhagen conference. The summer heat was so intense that roadways buckled and bridge struts melted and infrastructure in the U.S. midwest collapsed. The overload on the electricity grid shut down air conditioning units in Chicago, New York, and Philadelphia and sweltering senior citizens dropped like flies. So many old people expired during the month (123,000 according to the Pew Institute On One-Time Senior Citizens) that morgues overflowed and bodies were put out on the street each morning for the dead wagons to collect and carry off to common graves.

By mid-summer with the doomed president's jobless recovery in full flower, 36% of all American families were living in their cars, according to the Pew Institute On Vehicular Gridlock, transforming the nation's highway system into a coast-to-coast parking lot. Then cars began to commit suicide, blowing sky-high with no warning. Homeland Security blamed explosives sewn into drivers' underwear for the plague of car bombings although some experts speculated that the automobile industry was just depressed.

AUGUST - The dog days extended into August with no relief in sight. Despite the intense heat, the Tea Bag Patriots were on the move, traveling mostly at night towards Washington D.C. for the much ballyhooed Palin-Bachman same sex nuptials set for later in the month despite Michelle's pending indictment for gunning down a liberal congressperson on the House floor.

Sarah Palin announced her engagement to Michelle Bachman who had killed Dennis Kucinich in a duel on the floor of the House. Photo from jezebel.
As U.S. troops abandoned Iraq to its own explosive devices, the summer doldrums were punctured when a terrorist commando, the Universal Unitarian Salvation Squadron (UU'SS) thought to be affiliated with the Al Qaeda-Taliban Axis of Evil overran Pakistan's nuclear arsenal near Islamabad demanding, among other items, that the United States get out of the Islamic world, Africa, and South and North America. Holed up in his Virginia mountain bunker, President Osama/Obama called for a diplomatic solution. The Palin-Bachman nuptials were called off, reportedly due to domestic dispute.

Diplomats shuttled in and out of Islamabad seeking solutions to this latest geo-political crisis. One no-show: Osama Bin Laden who had passed away many years before trundling his dialysis machine over the Khyber Pass. A proposal offered by Tuvalo's ambassador that Washington change places with his low-laying Pacific island nation was rejected by the United Nations Security Council on the grounds that moving the U.S. Capital would be an extravagance a bankrupt world could ill afford.

Feeling excluded from the international spotlight, Israel, with a go-ahead from the White House-in-exile, launched a nuclear attack on the Iranian holy city of Qum where the Ayatollahs were putting the finishing touches on their own minaret-tipped nuclear missiles. Mamoud Ahmadinejad, hanging on to power by the skin of his wolf-like teeth, ordered retaliation against the Zionists but his delivery system fell short of Tel Aviv and obliterated Syria and Jordan instead.

SEPTEMBER - By Labor Day weekend, the Tea Party Patriots were encamped on the White House lawn and demanding that the first Afro American President turn over the keys to the executive mansion for the on-again off-again Palin-Bachman nuptials.

The serial catastrophes that now included the incineration of vast swaths of the Middle East had an upside -- Americans no longer worried much about global warming. Although world temperature readings had jumped another point, the calamity was no longer an issue on the 24-Hour news cycle or the Sunday morning talk shows. Despite the fact that humpback whales were beaching themselves in record numbers on whatever dry land they could find and birds had begun to fly backwards, a sign that the Apocalypse was in the pipeline, the general public seemed more preoccupied by Palin's and Bachman's never-ending domestic disputes.

Finally, fed up with the first Afro-American President's stonewalling, the Tea Party Patriots broke into the White House and a troika -- Sarah Palin, her sometimes lover Michelle Bachman, Dennis Kucinich's assassin, and George H.W. Bush, now suffering terminal Alzheimer's Disease -- was sworn in. Glenn Beck was appointed Secretary of Defense and Alex Jones got State. Mel Gibson bought the movie rights.

OCTOBER - While the right-wing fanatics squabbled over power in Washington, most of the planet was either underwater or so radioactive that the land could no longer sustain life. Slowly falling ash blotted out the sun and in the feeble light no one could tell if it was dawn or dusk anymore. Water, although there was plenty of it, was undrinkable and the food chain tainted. Cannibals roamed the roads in packs. Indeed, outside of the Washington bubble, the earth had become a road show of Cormac McCarthy's "The Road." Inside his Virginia mountain, the former president tried to watch the World Series but he was too depressed.

NOVEMBER - All was not lost yet. Vulture Capitalists saw profit in the new holocaust and took steps to bolster their failing fortunes. Murdoch bought up what news was left and changed the channel. A new television season kicked in and sponsors returned. The slate was wiped clean: no more nuclear war, world hunger, mindless terrorism, and global warming. Ambian dosage was increased for all citizens.

The new shows looked a lot like the old shows but since no one could remember the old shows, reruns became the real thing. New generations were enchanted by Lucy and Desi and Ed Sullivan's "Toast Of The Town" ("Gilligan's Island" was submerged deep beneath the graying sea.)

Outside of the bubble, of course, the rainforest was on fire and 39% of all children were born with multiple deformities (the Pew Institute On Monstrous Deformations.) The cities of the world had been abandoned.

Here in Mexico City where 23 million people had once lived cheek by jowl you could spend a whole day without speaking to anyone. On the Day of the Dead, I walked out to where Chapultepec Park lay in ruins behind a curtain of toxic smoke. It was then that I saw my neighbors tramping north towards Mictlan, the direction of the dead, and I tried to stop them. "Wait!" I urged, "Stay! The U.N. Climate Conference will convene here in December and surely, the leaders will fix things up..." But my neighbors just kept marching towards Mictlan.

DECEMBER - Inside the bubble, the Holiday Season was in full swing. Americans went shopping for mechanical hamsters again, not remembering that it was last year's toy to die for. They went to Church forgetting that God was dead and wagered on the Stock Market as if the bottom had not fallen out of the Big Board long ago. Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny led parades and made patriotic, optimistic speeches and Santa promised to visit every home.

So the families went home, those who still had one, and set fire to their furniture and hung their stockings by a roaring hearth. They wrote letters to Santa and left out cookies and cocoa for the jolly old fruitcake but although he had promised, Santa Claus never showed up.

Indeed, he would never show up again. Late-breaking film from the Arctic Circle showed the old gentleman and his eight reindeer keeled over in their North Pole sweat lodge.

[John Ross will launch a three-month, coast-to-coast book tour with his latest and much-buzzed cult classic El Monstruo: Dread and Redemption in Mexico City in Fresno, California, this February 4. For further info and suggested venues (Chicago area and east coast dates are solicited) consult johnross@igc.org.]

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