TONGUE BITING

During the first meeting of an SF City College music class titled simply “Woodwinds,” the teacher asked us, “Does the flute have an octave-key?”

The other two instruments to be taught are Sax and Clarinet, which do have special keys that facilitate movement between octaves (actually “registers”) but the flute simply doesn’t.

The simple answer is No.

But one of the students took the bait and suggested that a particular right-hand pinkie key might be what he meant.

“No,” the teacher said, “where is the octave key on the flute—anyone else?”

No one else spoke so I answered, “In your imagination.” This apparently was also wrong.

Then an experienced student, (one can take the class four times) piped up with what he knew would be the answer—“In the embouchure [lips].”

And that’s what the teacher said. … which is a correct answer to “How do flutists change register since the flute has no octave-key?”

I bit my tongue, as per my mom’s story from five decades earlier.

In the late 1950s I was about eight when my mom took a class at LA City College, some English thing.

One of the questions on her first homework assignment was “List five words that can be used as both a noun and as a verb.”

One of the words my mom listed was “see.”

The teacher marked that answer wrong, explaining that the noun was spelled differently, S-E-A.

My mom told us kids that the teacher was wrong. The noun “see,” as anyone should know who wishes to be thought literate in English, is the common name of a Catholic bishop’s jurisdiction. If nothing else, we’ve all heard of the pope’s jurisdiction as “The Holy See,” which is not, repeat not, a body of water.

My mom explained that the embarrassment the teacher would feel and any resulting backlash were not worth correcting such a small injustice.

At the time I dismissed her attitude as mere timidity—if a teacher mistakenly marked one of my answers wrong I would have raised Cain. I would have gone to the mat, hell, to the gallows, insisting that “see” is a noun.

Higher education prepares us to work for large corporate and governmental bureaucracies in which it is essential to agree with one’s superiors, even if they are dead wrong, unless disagreeing would somehow be a positive career move.

Theobald Boehm developed the modern flute that we see in western orchestras these days. There are flutes from various cultures, as well as historic flutes, such as the recorder, from European culture.

The first level of distinction, when a flutist is asked what type of flute he or she plays, is Boehm versus non-Boehm.

A major impediment to this discussion is the pronunciation of Mr Boehm’s name. Here in California it’s pronounced simply “bame,” rhyming with game lame tame same and name.

Anyway, next class maybe I can impress the teacher by announcing the flute octave key’s true location—in the trash heap outside Theobald Boehm’s workshop.

It's kind of strange to think that I'm going to get a grade for this.

Then I can really get on Mr McCarthy's good side, our teacher's name is Charlie McCarthy, by inquiring about the welfare of Mortimer Snerd.

----- o -----

OBAMA IRRELEVANT

Early yesterday morning I saw workers setting up temporary chain link fencing in the west end of Golden Gate Park.

Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.

Fencing within Golden Gate Park is erected for events that require paid tickets. Such events, in my small mind, are antithetical to the idea of public parks, but nobody seems to care any more about that—everyone’s grabbing what’s left.

The area being fenced for a three day rock concert, which includes unprecedented nighttime performances, is a huge part of the park that includes the Polo Field.

Radiohead and Tom Petty seem to be the headliners. For such as they you pay $85.00 per day or $225.00 for all three days

I’m reminded of a previous concert at the Polo Field that included:

The Grateful Dead
Jefferson Airplane
Quicksilver Messenger Service (lead singer Janis Joplin)
Santana
Steve Miller Band

Additionally, there were appearances/speeches/readings from:

Dick Gregory
Allen Ginsberg
Timothy Leary

According to Wikipedia, Owsley made a special batch of LSD and distributed it for free at the event, which was billed as “A Gathering of the Tribes for a Human Be-In.”

I didn’t get any of the acid which is probably a good thing. I was only three months past my eighteenth birthday facing enormous pressures regarding the draft, and just beginning to confront my gayness. My senses were already sensitive enough.

The word Be-In has entered our vocabulary without its pun value.

There were maybe twenty or thirty thousand people there, though I recollect that the venue seemed too large for the crowd. It was a brilliant winter day. There weren’t any particular problems.

It was free of charge. There was no temporary chain link fence. No tickets. This was in January 1967, five months before the “Summer of Love,” which began the conversion of hippie into a commodity.

Anyway, I got a mailer recently from Barack stating that a core Democratic value is that we want to give our children more prosperous lives than we had ourselves.

Besides the idiocy of this perpetual-motion idea, we all know that American prosperity reached its peak in the mid 1960’s, when state-college tuition was free and so were the Dead, the Airplane, and QMS (which legendary groups were billed on the above poster simply as “San Francisco Rock Bands”)

No one in this presidential race has uttered the words “human population growth.” Hell, in all the Olympic coverage we’ve heard nothing about China’s one-child policy.

The kind of prosperity experienced by regular Americans in the 1960s is largely an outcome of World War II. Unfortunately, short of the world finding a humane way to control its population, such prosperity will come again only on the other side of a major Malthusian event.

So it doesn’t matter who-the-fuck’s on the Supreme Court.

----- o -----

CASTRO PRICE WAR

I resolved to report/comment on any good news as soon as I hear it.

It may not be news to you, but I just found a source of cheap Nag Champa in Eureka Valley (“the Castro”).

I thought the price was pretty standard, around $0.13/gram, a little more for the 15g box, less for the 40g box.

Then, the Bead Store near the Castro Theater raised their price for the 15g box from $2.00 to $3.00.

This is still incredibly cheap when you consider that the raw ingredients and the packaging, not to mention labor, all have a cost that is greater than zero, and then the shipping halfway around the world, then the merchant’s markup. I wonder what the price could be FOB/factory.

I was unaware that Planetweavers with their glitzy uckteen-dollars-per-square-foot façade [pictured below] on Castro was the same group as the funky erstwhile shop on Haight, or I would have tried them.

So I saw some moving-in activity at a storefront next to sfmike’s favorite dildo emporium on 18th Street and checked it out. Turns out it’s Planetweavers. I guess rent is an issue. [They haven’t updated their website yet; to find them follow the directions to Autoerotica.]

Planetweavers has a large selection of incense including the most popular Nag Champa at $2.99 for the 40g box. This works out to $0.0748/gram. At the counter the guy even gave me a 25% discount.

Good news has been rarer than sunshine in the Sunset District lately. And there’s no escape. Gas costs too much. Biking or walking burns unaffordable food calories.

But, hey, incense is still cheap.

I light up a stick of Nag, close my eyes, and it’s like I’m in India.

----- o -----

OBAMA BOMBS

In a dichotomized system, voters get only one more

choice than they would under a totalitarian regime.

Wikipedia, "Two Party System"

In his Unity, NH, unity appearance with Hillary Clinton (who repeated her Goldwater-girl omission* yet again) Obama stated his Iraq policy as “responsible, gradual withdrawal.”

These are obvious weasel words that carry no clear promise. These words actually endorse the status quo in Iraq, since the status quo is something to be changed only “responsibly” and “gradually.”

Amazingly, this grim outlook is omitted from the list of Obama’s policy shifts to the right (NAFTA, FISA, guns, death penalty). Arianna breaks it down as well as anyone.

For instance:

In an interview with Nina Easton in Fortune Magazine, Obama was asked about having called NAFTA "a big mistake" and "devastating." Obama's reply: "Sometimes during campaigns the rhetoric gets overheated and amplified."

Overheated? So when he was campaigning in the Midwest, many parts of which have been, yes, devastated by economic changes since the passage of NAFTA, and he pledged to make use of a six-month opt-out clause in the trade agreement, that was "overheated?" Or was that one "amplified?"

Because if that's the case, it would be helpful going forward if Obama would let us know which of his powerful rhetoric is "overheated" and/or "amplified," so voters will know not to get their hopes too high.

Conventional wisdom is that Obama needn’t worry about his party’s left wing because those people (we) have no other choice. For us Obama’s message will be monotone: the awful consequences of a McCain presidency.

This is not unlike McCain’s main argument.

Fear itself.

So I’m voting for Nader, even though he can’t figure out Obama’s background.

Obama is not, as Nader so awkwardly stated, half African American. He’s half white-American and half black-Kenyan.

Whatever ancestral stories Barack Obama heard around the dinner table, they didn’t include American slave experiences, or Jim Crow experiences, because none of Barack’s ancestors were victims of either.

I gave up on Barack when he gave up on Reverend Wright. Barack wants us to know that he personally shares none of the Reverend’s anger and bitterness. Why should he? Obama can "turn the page" on historical wrongs much more easily than those who actually suffered them.

One of his rightward moves took place on Fathers Day when he chided black fathers for abandoning their children, as if this accounted for the disparity between US blacks and whites.

How ironic! Barack’s father cut out when Barack was only two or so. Yet Barack grew up to be a presumed Democratic nominee for president. It helps to have white grandparents who can provide entrée to white society, private schools, for example.

Anyway, I agree with 95% of everything Ralph Nader says about economic, social, and foreign policy. The difference between Obama’s policies and Nader’s are infinitely greater than the differences between those of Obama and McCain.

Neither McCain nor Obama promise any significant resistance to the corporatization of all human experience.

Two rudderless rafts are carried by powerful currents toward the edge of Niagara falls. One of the rafts is captained by Obama, the other by McCain.

* Hillary has been repeating her “four decades of political involvement” fib, so she can claim that her husband had two of the three democratic presidential elections victories in that period. Of course, Hilary’s political involvement began four years earlier with her work for Barry Goldwater’s campaign in 1964, won, incidentally, by a democrat, which she continues to omit.

----- o -----

CATHOLIC TEST

Floating in the smarmy effluence that is the Russert death coverage are attestations by Chris Matthews on MSNBC of the importance of the Catholic faith, which he shares with the deceased.

Then we cut away to the public viewing at St Albans School (where Russert sent his only son). St Albans is a private Protestant prep school for the ruling class and for those eager to serve the ruling class.

[Click on picture for source.]

When I was a kid the nuns taught us that even entering a non-Catholic church or synagogue was “giving scandal” and should not be done.

When it comes to young Catholics eager to serve the ruling class (thinking perhaps that a “gentleman’s gentleman” is actually a gentleman), distinctions about religion tend to blur.

Chris Matthews has been one of the louder voices ragging on Obama for “sitting in the pew Sunday after Sunday,” listening to extremist views without objecting.

Then he touts his own Catholicism as if it’s views were uncontroversial and mainstream.

I wonder if Chris Matthews is a real Catholic.

Here’s a quick test. The three statements below are ironclad Catholic doctrine. To call oneself a real Catholic one must agree 100% with all three statements (and a whole lot more).

Catholic Test:

1. Homosexual orientation is a grave disorder and all homosexual acts are gravely disordered.
o Agree 100% (Catholic)
o Don’t agree 100% (non-Catholic)

2. Willful, therapeutic abortion is murder.
o Agree 100% (Catholic)
o Don’t agree 100% (non-Catholic)

3. The use of condoms or other artificial contraception is always a mortal sin.
o Agree 100% (Catholic)
o Don’t agree 100% (non-Catholic)

Many people (me) would say that these are “extreme views.” Actually, when it comes to extreme views I prefer those of Reverend Wright (but not that awful white priest), to those of the ex-Nazi Pope Benedict.

The difference is black and white.

Anyway, Chris Matthews should tell us if he’s a real Catholic, or if he’s a St Albans Catholic.

btw: It’s hard for me to consider the RCC these days without thinking about the Mayan Codices, which conquistador-priests destroyed almost four hundred years before Hitler burned his first book.

----- o -----

HPIT: MUNI METRO

HOW PATHETIC IS THIS!

Not the fact that Muni Metro had an accident with itself (SFGate story). We’ve come to expect such. And with current operator-contract negotiations stalled we might expect more such.

We keep reading about Muni deploying exotic rolling-stock (ancient restored streetcars, double decker buses) all in an effort to support and cement San Francisco's role as a tourist town.

The problem with Muni is poor human performance, not boring buses. Muni management knows how to spend money on rolling stock, but they don’t know how to manage human performance.

One problem is that the performance standards for other City employees are so low that Muni drivers feel singled-out. So that part is intractable.

Not intractable are English-usage errors. With the Chronicle downsizing and all, you’d think they'd have a few competent copy editors eager to keep their jobs. Yet we get this (emphasis mine):

At 2:03 p.m., a westbound one-car T-Third train rear-ended a two-car N-Judah train, which had stopped at a light on King Street between Third and Fourth streets.

Let me shout to the world: there is no such thing as a “one-car train.” A single car is a single car. You don’t get a “train” until two or more cars are coupled together. Sheesh!

Webster's Online:

Main Entry: train
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English, from Anglo-French, from trainer to draw, drag

7 a: a connected line of railroad cars with or without a locomotive

And stating the fact correctly wouldn’t have been that difficult, like:

At 2:03 p.m., a single westbound T-Third streetcar rear-ended a two-car N-Judah train…

I guess the editors figure that anything that rolls on tracks is a train, regardless of the number of cars.

So this would be called a “one-car train”:

Or this:

Or this:

----- o -----

KUDOS, KAMALA

Kamala Harris has been such a terrible District Attorney that it’s hard to imagine anything good coming out of her office.

Most recently she failed to prosecute a cousin of Mayor Gavin Newsom for what looked like a tight DUI-drugs case. (Mayor Newsom, like DA Harris, gained his present office mostly through the influence of Willie Brown.)

She herself is the subject of a Federal false claims investigation.

[Click on image for source.]

So I was prepared to rag on Kamala when she announced she would pursue criminal sanctions against parents of chronically truant kids (SFGate story).

Great! Murder is out of control, so let’s crack down on hooky.

Upon consideration, this move shows her true concerns and points to a possible gracious exit from her current position in which she is way over her head.

Wikipedia says she has a history of involvement in child welfare legislation and enforcement.

And chronic truancy (more than one-third of school days missed) is almost always the result of a home environment that is not good for children.

I know, from various war stories I’ve heard over the years, that for many children who are growing up in chaotic or abusive family situations the hours spent at school are the safest, most supportive, most predictable and orderly hours in the day.

My Education Informant knew one third-grade boy who had to stay home two or three days a week to watch his infant sister while papa went to the methadone clinic.

In this country, at this time, a child has a right to a primary education. Keeping a child out of school is a crime. This means that a family that’s unable to organize itself well enough to get the kid to school regularly shouldn’t have custody of the kid.

The families need help, but the kids can’t wait. So we applaud DA Harris.

Go Figure:

Summer vacation from school, in this country, came about because children’s labor was needed on the farms. Now, the children are out of school but the law forbids their employment as farm laborers.

Some local commenters seem to think that Barack, if elected, might appoint Kamala Harris Attorney General. This seems like a little hometown grandiosity. Her paltry record and her unsavory associations should prevent such an ascension.

But she could probably handle and enjoy an appointment to head some child warfare branch of the Justice Department.

You go, Kamala! To Washington. And see to it that all the children get a good education.

----- o -----

CARV

Representative Eshoo (per SFGate) wants to regulate the sound volume of TV commercials.

What will I do with my stains if I can’t Shout them out?

When Eshoo succeeds with her volume campaign she can do something a little more serious, about misleading content.

Recently a young man died near the Giants’ ballpark in an episode of violence that included just one punch. Not a long, sustained fist fight. Just one punch.

When is the last time you saw such an outcome portrayed in fictional TV or movies?

There was a similar incident out here in the Avenues a few years ago that involved racial stuff, plus bicyclist vs motorist stuff, but there was just one punch, head hits curb, RIP.

It seems the reaction to the recent ballpark death was one of simple surprise. There were no racial or other social-issue overtones, just a death resulting from “normal” male adolescent/young adult behavior. (Contrast: the Golden Rule.)

There was shock that one punch could so change the prospects, not only of the dead victim and his family, but also of the perp and his.

It seems that not much malice is imputed. It was more like a freak accident.

The Greeks would have attributed it to mischief of the gods.

People get punched in the face all the time, maybe get knocked down, but they get right back up. We see it repeatedly on TV, everyday. Heck, if you believe TV, punching is a major and constant component of human interaction.

The Committee for the Accurate Representation of Violence wants to require TV and movie producers to accurately portray the consequences of all violent incidents.

For instance, the cop who subdues a suspect with a knockout punch to the jaw, must go directly to the hospital to have the broken bones in his or her hand set and put in a cast, and he/she must wear that cast for the next six weeks of the narrative.

And the suspect has to show up with his jaw wired.

We shan’t hold our breaths.

Among the most famous pictures in the history of photography are those by Mathew Brady of U.S. Civil War dead.

Those brave and unfortunate Americans who have died in Iraq and Afghanistan can not be pictorially represented even as flag-draped coffins. TV news shows them in pictures taken when they were alive—as if the transition from live fighter to dead hero is as painless and antiseptic as turning off a light.

The fact that our poodledog-press accepts such restriction might indicate how close to the end America is in the lifecycle of empires.

I assume that the young man accused in the ballpark incident can honestly say he had no idea that one punch could result in death. This is the fault of our inculturation system, which includes schools, media and individual family values.

When CARV gets its way, boys and young men will know what one punch can do.

----- o -----

THE KAMALA KONNECTION

Kamala Harris, San Francisco’s District Attorney, currently under Federal investigation for submitting millions of dollars in false claims for border-protection funds, was a prominent endorser of victorious Proposition G, which gives hundreds of acres of San Francisco property to Lennar Corporation in exchange for one dollar and some promises.

In an apparently unrelated story reported this last Saturday, Ms Harris has struck a deal with “politically connected” concrete contractor, Ricardo Ramirez, who allegedly sold substandard concrete to numerous public works projects, The deal is that the contractor pleads guilty to one count of some environmental violation and agrees to stay home for a year (so-called house arrest). In return Harris dropped 14 felony and other charges.

According to the SFGate story:

Harris' office had no explanation for why it dropped the concrete case. It issued a statement stressing that Ramirez had pleaded guilty to the "most serious environmental charge" he faced and that he would pay restitution.

So we are left to speculate, is Ms Harris protecting one sadsack contractor, or is she protecting that contractors’ political connections?

Notable for our story is that Mr Ramirez allegedly sold substandard concrete for use on the new (disastrous) T-Third streetcar line, an albatross originally promoted as a boon to Bayview Hunters Point.

So, the fraudulent sale of substandard concrete to a project promoted as benefiting the mostly black population of BVHP, is not something Ms Harris chooses to prosecute. It’s as if it never happened.

The major promoter of the T-Third line, (a major infrastructure investment with no demonstrable benefit) was then Mayor Willie Brown.

We shouldn’t forget that Ms Harris was once a mistress of Willie Brown, per this SFGate copy regarding her first run for public office against incumbent lefty Terrence Hallinan, who had actually indicted SFPD brass for corruption. According to an SFGate story at the time:

But, because a large number of her contributors also have been donors to Harris' onetime boyfriend and political sponsor, Mayor Willie Brown, Hallinan is painting his challenger as a machine candidate who would be obliged to ignore local government corruption once in office.

"People don't give you money for nothing," Hallinan said. "One of the responsibilities in the next administration is to clean up the corruption that Willie Brown is leaving behind him. If Willie Brown is raising hundreds of thousands of dollars for her -- and has really created her -- that means she's indebted to him."

Also, we should remember that Gavin Newsom achieved his first elective office via Willie Brown appointment.

----- o -----

SFWILLIE RECOMMENDS:

Next Tuesday, June 3, will be my third of four elections this year: the special primary, the Lantos-replacement primary, this, uh, regular primary, and the general election in November.

Regarding the ten propositions on this particular ballot, sfwillie’s blog provides a mechanically simple recommendation:

YES on E and F
NO on all the rest

You can find E and F, right next to each other, mark them both YES, then go back and mark everything else NO. Very easy.

VOTE YES

Prop E. YES. This gives more power to the Board or Supervisors over the Public Utilities Commission which just recently instituted huge, family-unfriendly water rate increases. This should be a no-brainer. Currently the Mayor appoints the entire commission, with minimal BOS oversight.

Prop F. YES. This is a poison pill to stop the giveaway of land to Lennar Corporation which plans to move the poor folk out of the adjoining neighborhood. Sometimes poison pills are good.

VOTE NO

Prop A. NO. I ranted about this in a previous post.

Prop B. NO. The only thing guaranteed by this proposition is that retirement payments to city retirees will increase by approximately $80 Million per year, starting immediately. Some savings on retiree health care expense are promised, but not for ten or twenty years.

Just as with Wimpy’s promise of payment next Tuesday for a hamburger today, promises made by the current group of CityHallers can’t possible justify the delivery of an $80 Million hamburger today.

Prop C. NO. More bullshit. Sweet Melissa explains that this includes disability retirement benefits with other retirement benefits that can be stripped from a City employee convicted of a job-related crime of moral turpitude. This would prevent City employees who are about to be fired and stripped of regular retirement benefits from filing bogus claims for disability retirement.

A genuine claim for work related disability retirement should not be stripped. What this measure assumes is that the City Attorney is incapable of protecting the City from bogus disability claims. If true, we need a new City Attorney, not Prop B.

Prop D. NO. Pure political correctness bullshit. Better to burn the cash—less overhead.

Prop G. NO. This gives valuable San Francisco land to Lennar Corporation so that they can make a profit. A side effect of this plan is that poor minorities will be forced out of the adjoining neighborhood and eventually out of the City altogether. Supporters see this a good way to help solve the “crime” problem.

Prop H. NO. This proposition was placed on the ballot by Mayor Newsom. Enough reason to vote against it.

STATE MEASURES

Prop 98. NO. The two state propositions are competing. One is terrible the other is benign. Just to be sure I’m voting NO on both. The status quo is ok.

Prop 99. NO. The two state propositions are competing. One is terrible the other is benign. Just to be sure I’m voting NO on both. The status quo is ok.

----- o -----

A PROGRESSIVE REGRESSIVE TAX

The first thing my parents taught me about politics was, Never cross a union picket line.

The second thing they taught me was, Republicans support regressive taxes and Democrats favor progressive taxes.

Yet, it seems that almost all SF opiners who call themselves “progressive” support Proposition A, a “special” parcel tax that supports general non-capital operating expenses for San Francisco’s public schools.

These “progressives” seem not to notice that some of their usual villains also support Proposition A, which would add $198.00 to every property tax bill in the city.

The owner of the largest office building downtown would pay an extra $198.00 per year, to rise with inflation. The owner of the biggest mansion in Pacific Heights would also pay the extra $198.00.

Likewise the young couple who are already struggling to meet the mortgage on their tiny fixer-upper in the Bayview will also pay the additional $198.00.

The public school teacher (more likely two of them married) trying to own a home in San Francisco will also pay the same additional $198.00.

Why the heck would Warren Hellman and Donald Fisher bankroll the campaign to pass this textbook example of regressive taxation? Because they support public education?

More likely it’s because they support the principle of regressive taxation, per se, and want to see as much of it as possible.

Later on my parents taught me, All taxes are fungible.

I understand this to mean that once a governments gets their hands on tax revenue they do whatever the hell they want with it.

So, when they want to raise taxes the government pushes forward a simpatico government program, such as teachers, or baby hospitals.

Then they tell us they really really really need $1,100,000.00 for a ten foot wheelchair ramp (indoor).

Or that Gavin really really really needs four six-figure (campaign) consultants and the money should come out of Muni, because, I guess, it’s all about transportation anyway, transporting Gavin’s ass to Sacramento.

Board of Education President Eric Mar, (who tried to scuttle JROTC and put the kids who found safety there back in general population) is running for Supervisor sometime soon.

Chief pro-Prop A contributor, Don Fisher is trying to ripoff a prominent part of the Presidio to house his completely unspectacular (I’m told) modern art collection.

Assuming Prop A goes through, we’ll want to track Eric Mar’s position on Fisher’s land grab.

So I guess our brave new century has spawned a new kind of progressive, a “parcel-tax progressive.” Not exactly like a Margaret Thatcher liberal, but sort of.

BTW: The ballot statement in favor of the Proposition-A parcel tax, which is signed by Gavin Newsom, the school board, the C of C, the teachers’ union and some parents group, contains this astounding claim:

Voting YES will ensure that we have a quality teacher with the proper qualifications, training, and support in every San Francisco classroom.

I guess the people who believe this statement could also be persuaded that a parcel tax is a fair way to finance government.

Warren Hellman believes in regressive taxation, as does Don Fisher. At least they don’t call themselves “progressives.”

----- o -----

CLINTON ORDERS HIT

The media consternation regarding Hillary’s RFK assassination comment is way out of proportion to their supposed interpretation of the remark. The pundits are afraid to say exactly what Hillary’s comment intended.

Senator Clinton’s comment was clearly a request that one or more of her supporters assassinate Barack Obama.

The only way, she suggests, to put her in the White House, and to keep a black man out of it, is to kill the black man.

Given her famous support among poor, uneducated, gun-owning white people, Hillary’s request could reach dangerous ears. Lone nuts don’t get all their instructions from Mars.

The assassinations of the 1960s set back US political progress forty years. Barack Obama is the first serious threat to the corporatization of all human experience since George Wallace was silenced by J Egger’s crew.

If Barack gets offed, there’s going to be some serious explaining to do.

----- o -----

GO GENTLE, TED. IT'S OK.

Ted Kennedy has been a prominent feature of the US political landscape longer than most Americans have been alive. The possibility, as suggested by recent medical reports, that he will soon depart the scene caused an acute spike in cable news coverage.

Old Bob Byrd, former Klansman who’s not afraid to waggle the Constitution at us, wept and declared his love for Teddy. Best friend Chris Dodd was visibly shaken.

Then Teddy left the hospital and the story went away.

The theme of most who spoke during the newsspike was “fight.”

“Teddy has always been a fighter.”

“Teddy’s gonna fight this, and beat it.”

So the story which was basically, “Teddy’s gonna die,” became “Teddy’s gonna fight.”

That way we can put off thinking about death.

Teddy’s seventy-six years old. Despite what my retiree tennis acquaintances say, seventy-six is plenty old, especially for a man, especially for one who’s had so much to eat and drink.

According to some third-party medical analysts, chemo and radiation can extend Ted’s life only a few months. Surgery appears futile.

So, what’s to fight?

Ted, if you don’t want to spend your remaining days as a patient, it’s ok.

It would be a great example to us rapidly aging boomers if you went the hospice route, abjuring the lopsided end-of-life expenditure of health care resources.

I think that for many terminally ill elderly, doctor visits, tests, and treatments gives them something to do, instead of just sitting around waiting to die. And Medicare pays…

Even for my mom, who was fairly hardbitten about such things, she got bored with hospice morphine and Atavan, and for a week or so wanted to know “what’s next?”

It wasn’t easy to tell her, “Well, death.”

The news this morning showed Teddy piloting his sailboat. The wind looked pretty good.

I’ve always been annoyed by our culture’s denial of death.

Death always comes as a surprise. Death is an aberration . Death is just a disease that medical science has yet to cure.

The dominant European religion tells us that we, as individual identities, live forever and that death is merely a transition from earth to heaven.

I was somewhat reassured recently to find this issue baldly mentioned by Aeschylus in Prometheus Bound.

We recall that in Greek mythology (religion) Prometheus stole fire from the gods and gave it to humankind. Zeus punished Prometheus by binding him to an isolated rock.

Lost to me, until my recent re-reading, was that Prometheus had given humankind another gift, referred to in Aeschylus as “blind hope.”

Prometheus: I caused mortals to cease foreseeing doom.

Chorus: What cure did you provide them with against that sickness?

Prometheus: I placed in them blind hopes.

Chorus: That was a great gift you gave to men.

Prometheus: Besides this, I gave them fire.

[Translation by David Grene, U of Chicago series]

As a gloomy pre-adult I questioned the value of living a life, with all its stings and sparrows, when death was the inevitable result. In short:

Why live, when you’re only gonna die?

Needless to say, these thoughts are not well received. Our tribe doesn’t need its members moping around, questioning the meaning of life.

It is painful for an individual’s brain to contemplate its own annihilation.

To live a life without blind hopes, neither fearing nor denying the temporary nature of one’s self, constitutes, I think, a worthy, maybe noble, goal.

Still, it’s hard to imagine a world without Ted Kennedy in it. Or sfwillie for that matter.

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F for FAIRNESS, G for GREED

Lennar Corporation is sponsoring heavy TV advertising in favor of Proposition G, a redevelopment plan for Hunters Point and its mostly minority residents.

The ad touts the benefits to San Francisco of this plan cooked up by City Powers. Of course, we have to filter these claims through the knowledge that Lennar Corporation has only one performance standard—profit.

Organizations and residents of Bayview Hunters Point along with grassroots progressives and others opposed to the corporatization of all human experience have qualified a competing ballot measure, Proposition F, aimed at affordable housing and fair treatment for current BVHP residents.

I’ve been having trouble remembering which is which, so I’m using this mnemonic, which sort of indicates my preference:

F for FAIRNESS.

G for GREED.

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OUR ZIONIST CANDIDATE

We assume that our mayor’s sojourn in Israel has more to do with his gubernatorial bid than with personal tourism preference.

We assume that Newsom is doing what he does best—getting the support of rich people.

There must be potential donors to Newsom’s campaign for whom pro-Zionism is a necessary condition.

Thanks to the SF Bay Guardian for finding this egregious example of Newsom’s Zionist ass-sucking: Newsom repeats the tired old party line that anti-Zionism equals anti-Semitism. In a Jerusalem Post interview Newsom says:

“To those who make that assertion [that Israel oppresses Palestinians], I would like to see it backed up in the context of the capacity of understanding. I think there is a lot of bias and bigotry, and frankly a lot of anti-Semitism…"

Clearly the interviewer was fishing for the last statement, “I think there is a lot of bias…” Very strange are the weasel words that precede it. “I would like to see it backed up in the context of the capacity of understanding.”

What could this possibly mean?

There’s “understanding.”

Then there’s “the capacity of understanding.”

Then there’s “the context of the capacity of understanding.”

Understand?

Newsom said he "absolutely" believed some of the anti-Israel speech emanating from his city was anti-Semitic.

Poor Newsom! What’s he supposed to say? He could as easily have agreed that some of the anti-Israel speech was… psychotic.

SFGate ran an op-ed criticizing Newsom’s trip to Israel. Her perspective on the “birth” of the state of Israel:

On May 15, my family will commemorate an-Nakba, Arabic for "the catastrophe," which is the dark underbelly of Israel's foundation. Sixty years ago, Jewish militants and, later, the Israeli army, forced 2 out of every 3 Palestinians - more than 700,000 people - to flee their homes. Many Palestinians who resisted expulsion or were unable to leave were massacred in cold blood, as were those who returned to harvest food from their orchards or gather personal belongings left behind. The Palestinians who fled now constitute the oldest unresolved refugee population in the world, despite their internationally recognized right to return. Meanwhile, Israel permits any Jew from anywhere in the world to immigrate and obtain citizenship.

Newsom’s trip is being paid for by the San Francisco Jewish Community Federation, clearly a pro-Zionist organization. This page explains the programs JCF funds.

I wonder how Newsom accounts for the receipt of such valuable consideration as plane tickets, hotels, meals, and incidentals, from SFJCF. Is this considered a campaign contribution? A gift?

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OBAMA: CONTINUE INT'L CRIME

Chris Floyd on Empire Burlesque quotes Barack Obama’s promise to continue America’s foreign policy of continued dominance. In a late March AP story, Obama says:

"The truth is that my foreign policy is actually a return to the traditional bipartisan realistic policy of George Bush's father, of John F. Kennedy, of, in some ways, Ronald Reagan...."

The rest of Floyd’s article is a bill of criminal particulars against the three presidents Obama names as models.

After making a thorough case for foreign policy despair, Floyd says this:

…an Obama presidency, like a H. Clinton presidency, will mean some measure of genuine mitigation of some of the worst depredations of the Bush Regime.

…but no one who openly embraces the foreign policy of Ronald Reagan and George HW Bush, or John F. Kennedy for that matter, is going to change in any substantial way the militarist-corporate machine that has already destroyed our democracy.

… “Should [we vote] to mitigate some small measure of the mass suffering wrought by this machine; or does that action, that participation, merely legitimize the machine, and strengthen it?”

That is the only question at issue in this election.

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EVERYONE LIES...

True.

Some psychologists assert that telling a successful lie is a key moment in childhood ego-development.

I believe that there are no grown-ups who have never told a lie.

Yet, it is considered serious business to call someone a liar. Like calling a man a fucker—how could that be an insult?

Lies are more or less evil depending on contexts and outcomes.

While everyone has told a lie, not everyone has, or would lie in every context regarding every outcome.

So, when then-Mayor Willie Brown defended his police chief’s newly revealed resume-fib by saying, “Everyone lies on their resume,” we have to apply a truth-test.

Brown’s statement is obviously false. There are actually some people on the face of the earth who have no need, and perceive no need, to lie on their resumes.

Telling oneself that everyone does it makes it easier to do wrong.

So, we shouldn’t be surprised that Willie Brown’s former mistress, and presumable mentoree, turns up defrauding the federal government of $5-10 Million of border protection money. [Sweet Melissa breaks it down beautifully.]

Regarding Kamala and Willie Brown I recall the ending of Yeats’ Leda and the Swan.

Did she put on his knowledge with his power
Before the indifferent beak could let her drop?

Kamala Harris has “taken responsibility” for the false claims. I’m pretty sure this DOESN’T mean she’s repaying the money out of her own pocket.

Hopefully this puts an end to her political ambitions.

We hear that the year-old Baker’s Dozen gang-assault case has resulted in dismissal of all charges except one misdemeanor charge against one of the many assailants.

Insufficient evidence was turned up by an investigation delayed by City Powers for two weeks. We now know that D.A. Harris was too busy creating false claims to worry about mere felonious assaults.

Popular gay Ed Harrington was City Controller at the time of the fraud. He reportedly participated in, and has asserted “good intentions” in the matter.

The money returned to the Federal Government goes into the city’s books as a “defalcation.” It is a controller’s highest duty to prevent “defalcations.”

Harrington was moved from City Controller to an appointed commission just a few days before the Harris-Harrington-Hennessy Federal fraud case was revealed.

Such is our local Democratic Party.

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A MISTAKE

Mayor Newsom’s fiancée, Jennifer Siebel, is both beautiful and photogenic (independent qualities) and she looks great in couture.

Not many local trophy wives, at least per SFLuxe, who have all three talents and Jennifer Siebel is one of them.

Ms Siebel is a first-place trophy, at least in the looks department. [Click on picture for source.]

And she has guts.

Women with weaker stomachs might shy away from suitor whose past infidelity has been so public, and repugnant. Not Ms Siebel.

More “prudent” women would never have gone swimming in the snark tank of SFist’s comments section.

And only the bravest of San Francisco mayoral wives-to-be would register as a member of the American Independent Party (as reported this morning by Matier and Ross).

San Franciscans pretend to be liberal or progressive, and, on national issues this is sometimes true. Certainly most San Franciscans are registered Democrats. So people like Dianne Feinstein and Gavin Newsom, (who are Nelson Rockefeller Republicans at heart) have to work within the Democratic Party, or leave the city.

In San Francisco where the Republican party is déclassé, the American Independent Party is only slightly less anathema than the American Nazi Party, or, maybe, the KKK.

Republican is the party of Lincoln.

Democrat is the party of Roosevelt and Kennedy.

American Independent is the party of George Wallace and Curtis LeMay.

While we don’t share Ms Siebel’s extreme right-wing views, we salute her for standing up for her values as a proud white woman.

Of course, Jennifer is learning that such candor might hurt her future husband’s political career (as if) and so she has to go along with the “mistake” story, claiming she checked “American Independent” on the voter registration form when she meant to check “Decline to State.”

Just like that—she goes from “proud white woman” to “ignorant beyond belief.”

Being a political wifey is almost like a job. What a team Jen and Gav will make!

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BOOZE CLUES

One of the great scenes of the old Mary Tyler Moore show is when Mary invites her boss, Lou Grant (Ed Asner) to her apartment for dinner. Mary, of course, is nervous and wants everything to go right.

She offers Lou a drink, he says “bourbon on the rocks,” and follows Mary into her little kitchen. Mary puts ice in a large glass, then pours some bourbon into a shot glass slow and careful because her hands are shaking.

Lou grabs the whiskey bottle out of May’s hand, saying “That’s not how you make a drink… here’s how you make a drink.”

Lou pours directly from the bottle until the large glass is about half full, and exclaims, “THAT’s how you make a drink.”

Mary is non-plussed. She looks at the nearly-full shotglass in her hand and asks Lou, “What about this?”

Lou looks at the shotglass, grabs it from her hand, and knocks it back.

And Mary does a comic take.

Because it’s more visually complex, movies tend to portray boilermakers (shot and a beer) as depth-charges (shotglass in the beer). But, as I learned as a kid, and as Wikipedia points out:

Classically, the liquor is drunk in one gulp and chased immediately by the beer.

Then after a brief discussion of delivery methods, (sidecars, depth charges etc) Wikipedia states clearly:

Guides differ on the preferred technique, but all agree that speed is the essence of this drink: one generally aims to drink a boilermaker quickly.

This is fairly common knowledge among American working-class drinkers.

Because it’s a working class drink, and a heavy-drinker’s drink, boilermakers usually include well whiskey and draught beer (the cheapest).

So yesterday we see Hillary, full Deerhunter mode, doing a barroom photo-op attempting to drink a boilermaker.

We see Hillary sipping at the shotglass, reportedly filled with Crown Royal, a Canadian whiskey, which costs a lot more than the bar’s well-whiskey.

Then we see her sipping at a beer mug (full pint).

It’s wrong in so many ways.

This shows that Hillary isn’t just elitist, her entire staff is elitist—not one of them could tell her how to drink a boilermaker.

When it comes to booze, an American presidential candidate need remember only four words:

Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey.

As jazz is to the world of music, so Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey is to the world of booze--a uniquely American contribution.

Maybe there’s some local Penn. custom of drinking Crown Royal, that imported Canadian is superior to American stuff, with the crown and all, but this would be self-loathing and shouldn’t be encouraged.

And the beer should be served in a straight-sided glass that holds maybe eight ounces, not in a big old sixteen-ounce pub-style mug. The whole idea is down-the-hatch, and, after a hard day in the coal mines, who has the energy (or breath) to chug sixteen ounces?

Also, what kind of a working-class bar would allow a woman her age to drink standing up? Working class men would have offered their seats to her and refused to sit while Hillary remained standing.

The cameras would have enjoyed Hillary’s thigh-flesh draping over the sides of a barstool, like a real working-class woman.

Not gonna happen.

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SHOCK AND ARRRGH

When Barack Obama discusses ultra-sensitive topics he challenges the accepted wisdom that such issues are “off-limits.”

We can’t talk about the historical crimes against democracy committed by the US government.

We can’t suggest that black people in America tend to get a raw deal.

And we can’t talk about the working class because we don’t have a working class.

To raise these issues indicts corporate big media and their overpaid stooges who recite their corporate version the news.

Eighty percent of Americans including congressional panels and even members of the Warren Commission are convinced that if he shot at Kennedy at all that day, Lee Harvey Oswald did not act alone and therefore there was a conspiracy.

But 99.9% of corporate media talking heads deride such an idea. Anyone who suggests that Oswald didn’t fire the “magic bullet” is labeled by them as a conspiracy nut.

Why does the media respond this way? Because they can’t stand to admit that they muffed the biggest story of post-war America.

Why are they horrified by talk about race and class? Because they have staked their careers on the notion that you can’t talk about those things—that those problems are intractable. They are wrong, just as they were wrong about the Kennedy assassination.

The wave of criticism on MSNBC against Obama’s recent comments on poor-whites is led by new show-host David Gregory, and by Joe Scarborough who seems to be working the angle day and night.

Remember, Scarborough was a Republican congressman from the Florida panhandle with a business constituency and an ignorant, racist, poor-white votership. Why are we not surprised that he doesn’t like Obama?

David Gregory now hosts “Race for the White House” weekday afternoons on MSNBC.

You remember David Gregory, Karl Rove’s back-up dancer. They may as well have been fellating.

In my view, journalists shouldn’t socialize with the people they cover. A journalist is less free if the choice to report something, or not, might affect his or her social calendar.

The major TV journalists are paid enough that they can afford to socialize with the ruling class—at least enough to make themselves presentable at events.

“Off the record” means the journalist agrees not to share valuable information with his or her readership.

Like, who’s your friend?

Stephen Colbert will not be invited back.

David Gregory will.

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