To Think That It Would Come This Far

Doubling down by excusing the concept of an economy!
The country’s economic condition takes a disturbing turn.
One word: job-lock.

Worse, advancing on censorship.
The government is now going after TV stations nationally, as the Obama campaign has gone after competition.  The same nature, but with the power of the FCC, FTC, etc., making a false claims narrative about the opposition.  Talk about liars amounting to legal penalties for those speaking truth to power.  How ancient Rome, and other forms of corrupt, unbridled power.  The way I see it, if this isn’t stopped, then the complete destruction of the U.S. is the only way it will die. …Such as the way immigration is going.

FCC whistleblowers blew the whistle, and the FCC backed off.  But determined, believing they are justified in their way, the nuts in power will find a way.  These years, at some measure, they always have.  Dismissive social justice, so-called “diversity”— the kind without diverse opinion.

2014.02.28

Fight over sovereignty: Russian military forces enter Ukraine.
Some 2,000 troops arrived overnight; Russian-speaking guards are very nervous.  So far, all the violence of last week, with flash grenades and fires in the streets, the deaths of many, including… pro-fascists?

The U.S. response to all this?  Weak.  Putin’s govt. recognized the weakness and misunderstanding in 2009, and has taken advantage of the U.S. ever since.  Vladimir Putin doesn’t have to care.

No prison time.
Gary Hegna, a man in his forties, reduced to third-degree sexual assault, raped a pre-teen for five years.  He, and a woman, who also committed sexual assault on a pre-teen, were given probation by a MN judge, and ever since the story was reported there’s been no transparency, no comment.  The reporting in the state has been light.

With an international twist.
Store chain Sears the latest in potential compromise of credit and debit card information hacking of retail stores.  Sears can’t say whether or not anything was actually compromised, but the Secret Service is investigating.

The end of real education in America.

Texas appeals court: teachers can sext students.
‘As protected by the First Amendment,’ a Fort Worth Junior HS teacher was sending sexually graphic texts to a 13-year-old student.  Certified (but not currently working), the school can’t fire him.

All of the resources are put in social media.  We really work hard at limiting sex offenders’ contact with children through the internet and through Facebook, said Community Supervision and Corrections Dept. Director Terry Easterling.  We do polygraph offenders on a regular basis to make sure that they’re not on Facebook and that they’re not on social websites and things like that.  But, he added, I can’t imagine that this (sexting in Texas) will stand through another legislative session.

Court rules in favor of northern Ca. school’s U.S. flag shirt ban.
A three-judge panel unanimously decided that the fear of ‘racial strife,’ or “safety concerns” in all things stereotypical, real or not, outweighed the students’ freedom of expression rights.  Live Oak High School administrators feared the Tees would ‘enflame Latino students celebrating the Mexican holiday,’ and ordered the students either turn them in or go home for the day.

From a Nation of Laws to a Nation of Lies

…But it’s also hard to govern a police state when everyone around you is incompetent.
A female Islamic terrorist, with nine aliases, said to be involved in an Israeli bombing, lied on her application, and was hired as a “navigator” in the Obama admin.  Sworn in as a U.S. citizen after studying English, she would’ve gotten ten years if convicted, but was freed in a prison swap.

A former convicted pot dealer was also given a job: selling legal pot.

It’s a scam, ultimately.
A federal scam: Obamacare enrollies still finding it difficult to verify their claims.  Expect nothing but being an enemy of the state if you fight it.

If you like your doctor, you be able to keep your doctor.
PoliFact rated the President’s claim as “true.”  The internet is such a black hole that even the “fact checking” websites are spotty at best.  At least Hillary Clinton, with HillaryCare (in the Clinton library’s recent release of documents— thousands of pages), supervisors (namely, Todd) said it would be misleading to say that patients would be able to keep their doctor under the HMO-style HillaryCare … the framework there aged twenty years ago should add some answers as to what may happen… adding to the socialized medicine in several countries in the world that has led to decreases in life expectancy; people just sort of… give up taking care of themselves.

But being a D means you can say whatever you want

Despite the treatment Mitt Romney got, partly for being a Mormon, Harry Reid is somehow able to say whatever pops into his head, where the target is guilty until proven innocent, including Romney.  Someone called me over the phone, (as, if) and told me that Mitt Romney doesn’t pay his taxes.  It was somehow Romney’s responsibility to prove he does after that.

Insulated by the media, Reid’s supporters, whenever on the air, beyond pointing fingers, try to change history, or start with, “what he meant to say was…”  Reid’s just able to face the C-SPAN camera and make these boldface lies, and nothing is ever done about it— he keeps getting elected, and remains the Speaker of the Senate until he wants to step down.

Reid’s crap this week, in the face of ACA victims: all the horror stories, all over the country, regarding Obama-care, the cancer patients— All of them, untrue.  He actually had the mendacity to attempt to discredit the victims.  Even by D standards, he’s despicable.  And Jay Carney backs him up via Paul Krugman’s Koch brothers narrative.  Oh, those pesky Super Koch Brothers, launching their fireballs on us.  If only the voters knew … but even there, the bases are reduced to fringes, left and right.

From the Audacity of Hope to the Mendacity of Nope.
The government is screwing things up more than anything else.  The people in power are unable to lead, and so they can only make things a matter of campaigning, which mostly consists of lying about their ‘opponents,’ which unfortunately now includes average citizens.  Narrative after narrative, selling points and extortion.  And an increasing role of… misplaced roles of agencies abroad.

An ideological or religious cult.
With “convergence of a very large number of elites … [they] control media, universities … [such that scientists are] unable to get grants without [some aspect involving] climate change.”

Sentimentalled school district superintendent gets $663,000/yr., and upon retirement his pension alone may break the school district.

2014.02.27

Daniel Henninger (WSJ): the world is more interconnected with the U.S. than ever that slow growth here means conflict abroad.

Propaganda, Inc.
Can’t avoid more media-generated crap regarding SB 1062.  It’s not as clean as 1070 (which would the be reason to vetoe it), but still… lies.  ‘An anti-gay bill out of Arizona … Jan Brewer called on by [everyone] to veto it.’  Nowhere does the bill mention gays!  You can expect those that believe what they read, including my IGNORANT mother, to not read the bill, and basically plug their ears so they can concentrate on the B.S. of the day, much including their own B.S., believing they have a life— just wasting time, only to wonder… ‘boy, the time flies.’  Worse, learn from that by insulating themselves from life even further, to have more time concentrated, waste more effort on wearing themselves out on junk.

And don’t forget: BLAME EVERYONE ELSE FOR THEIR MISTAKES, implying that people like me are ‘irrational’ while rationalizing less of their own.  When no one with power is accountable, when fraud is the end all that be all, when the shit hits the fan everyone alive suffers, not just those practicing welfare fraud.  These are biblical times.  I cannot understand it any other way.

Obit

Marine, DJ and former The Dating Game host Jim Lange, 81, died Tuesday of a heart attack at his and Nancy’s home in Mill Valley, Ca.

Before becoming a game show host, Jim Lange was a radio broadcaster for 45 years, starting his career as a teenager winning an audition.  He graduated from St. Thomas Academy HS, before enrolling in U-MN on the Chick Evens Scholarship through the Western Golf Association.  After graduating, and serving in the Marines, Lange moved to San Francisco.  He married Fay Madison in 1953.

After making his Bay Area broadcast debut on KGO as “The All-Night Mayor,” he moved to afternoons on KSFO in 1960.  And around there, in 1962, he made his television career debut, with The Ford Show, as an announcer to host Tennessee Ernie Ford.  Only three years later, he signed on for The Dating Game (1965-80), while still on KSFO.  To simplify the logistics of the commute while taping the show, he was mainly introduced to local audiences, such as KMPC in 1970.  He divorced Madison in 1975, and married Nancy Anne Fleming, a former Miss Michigan and Miss America winner, in 1978.

After The Dating Game, he went on to host $100,000 Name That Tune until its end in 1985, but also Hollywood Connection, The $1,000,000 Chance of a Lifetime, The Newlywed Game and short-lived shows like Spin-Off and Triple Threat.  But beyond game shows, he made appearances on several TV shows, as himself, on Bewitched, Laverne & Shirley, Scrabble in 1988, Hollywood Squares and Confessions of a Dangerous Mind for 2002, and even Moesha.

But his radio career would live on.  Lange returned to full-time radio in the Bay Area in the early 1990s, and initially worked afternoons on KFRC.  With Magic 61, he also hosted promotional events, including Big Band Dances and a resurrection of his popular “Leo Birthday Party,” which he’d started on KSFO years earlier.  Lange worked with producer Steve “Dino” Donikian on the Lang Gang show for Magic 61, where Steve would punctuate Lange’s jokes with a ‘crackling’ laugh.  Even with the sale of KFRC, he continued, with a morning gig at KABL in San Francisco (1997), until his retirement in 2005, after KABL went off the air.

Surviving, his wife, Fleming, and their adult children, Ingrid and Steig.

2014.02.26

It begs repeating: laws penalize; that is their purpose.  Only the misguided believe government gives people freedom, or ‘creates jobs,’ creates anything but structure.  (That’s the sole object of govt.: structure.)

Obama administration to unveil new ‘stimulus.’  Selling it as +$302 bn. on infrastructure… really— another slush fund to supporters??  The last one didn’t help infrastructure.  But sold, he got applause by a yesman audience.

FDA found to spy on their own scientists— personal emails; software made a snapshot of their computer screen every seven seconds.  Violating search and seizure (Fourth Amendment), they were trying to find whistleblowers.  (To find those not going along with a lobbied ‘right way’ on approving products.)

Now the FDA debates three-parent babies, opening the door to “designer babies.”  The Food and Drug Admin.?  The govt. is that bloated.

Harry Reid on Koch brothers activity: It’s as un-American as I can imagine.  And just how can I not remember him saying that about any left-wing pol. bullying and misinformation?

TV

More with Alex Trebek when we come back.  Jeopardy! celebrates its 30th year of being on the air with the Emmy-winning Trebek appearing on The Five.  Former contestant Dana Perino co-hosted.

2014.02.25

Where is the money coming from?
For abused entitlement programs, all the fraud, the money’s coming out of defense.  In other words, cutbacks on soldiers.  The nuts in power cut where they want to, and the proportion is the highest it’s ever been.  And I’m not talking about this proportion: China, 2.2 mn. troops; U.S., cutting down to 440,000.

Obama makes the day about drawing down mil. presence in Afghanistan to zero…

S. Africa: judge rules trial of Oscar Pistorius (Blade Runner Olympic runner) may be partly televised— not showing Pistorius, and coverage of testimony will require witness consent.  Report: he was not wearing his prosthetic legs during shooting, not in a panic over ‘an intruder’; instead, he was looking at porn.  (Allegedly.)

New report: 11 mn. workers likely to see insurance premiums spike.
65% of small business firms — $7,000 a month.
96% of businesses say they’ve seen premium rates go up over the past 5 years.
Carrying water, despite how it hurts citizens more: not reported by NYT or HuffPo.

Regulating companies like Dominos out of business.
90% of customers never step foot in the store, but new regulations will require more menu board changes to reflect calorie counts— but all the millions of possible topping options?  Oh, yeah, the bureaucrats will ‘figure it out,’ how to ‘improve people’s lives’ by banning our way to a utopia in so many ingenious ways, yet irresponsible and ignorant of how things work.

The audience seems to react in all or nothing terms.  (Insane.)  At least I know.  Calorie counts will not result in better ingredients!  Use your brain.

The FDA did not specify a deadline date.

This is about freedom.
Joe Biden, the idiot, parroted the “job-lock” nonsense on The View regarding ACA costs pushing people out of full-time work, and puts the CBO estimate in the thousands (not millions), while on another program, DHHS Sebelius the belittles the CBO report and is ‘confused’ on the insurance pool goals, whether 5 or 7 mn., alleging ‘cherrypicking by opponents’ for… repeating her 7 mn. number she stated last year.  “It was a CBO number … I don’t know where they got their numbers from.”  At odds with reality, they don’t like nos. approved by the White House.

At least Biden doesn’t avoid people the govt. hurts at all costs… or maybe he does, —I don’t know with this or that, from them, using that… I don’t know where it came from.

Obit

USA TODAY, other sources: writer, director and actor Harold Ramis, 69, died early Monday at his North Shore home from complications of autoimmune inflammatory vasculitis, which made walking very difficult for him.  In a statement, longtime friend Dan Aykroyd said he was “deeply saddened to hear of the passing of my brilliant, gifted, funny friend, co-writer/performer and teacher Harold Ramis.  May he now get the answers he was always seeking.”

Born in Chicago, to shoekeepers and store owners Ruth and Nathan Ramis, Harold had an upbringing of his own stronger than that of the Jewish religion he was taught by his parents: real screwball comedy.  He worked in a mental institution in St. Louis for seven months.  Later on, he said that his working there “prepared me well for when I went out to Hollywood to work with actors.  People laugh when I say that, but it was actually very good training.”

It didn’t take long before the kid with the brain and the man with the glasses would become a onetime joke editor for Playboy; and in 1969, entering his mid-twenties, he joined the Chicago Second City improvisational comedy troupe, and performed on radio.  During the Vietnam War, he avoided the military draft by taking math to fail his physical.

Ramis eventually left for New York, but the SC humor— and alums— stuck with him.  His work was soon seen on TV, with The National Lampoon Show, and in 1976, he was head writer for SCTV.  His alums, including Bill Murray, Gilda Radner and John Belushi, moved on to shows like Saturday Night Live, but he turned to the big screen.

Animal House (1978), which he co-wrote, was so big and influential that it propelled John Belushi to stardom and inspired decades of college-set films.  Meatballs (1979), zany gopher-hunting in Caddyshack (Ramis’ 1980 directorial debut), and the military spoof Stripes (1981) would have a similar effect with fellow Windy City ‘icon’ Murray, before starring together, along with Aykroyd, in Ghostbusters.

Ghostbusters (1984), the sci-fi, ghost-hunting commercial success, and its 1989 sequel, were both written by Ramis and Aykroyd, made its stars household names.  There, among his roles as the ‘voice of reason’ during comedic hijinks, Ramis could be seen as Egon Spengler, the somewhat fearless R&D behind the Busters, producing ghost capturing tech, arming the trio-then-quatro (adding Ernie Hudson in the sequel) with special effects-laden ‘proton packs,’ and… being scared by a librarian ‘ghost’ out of the library and all the way out of the building to an upbeat song (the piano sequence of The House is Rockin’).  The franchise was big enough to launch not only TV cartoon series and toys but a video game, where Ramis voiced Egon once again.

The Groundhog Day writer/director also directed National Lampoon’s Vacation (1983, with Chevy Chase and Beverly D’Angelo), the clone-tastic Multiplicity (1996, with Michael Keaton), Analyze This (1999, co-written, with Billy Crystal as a therapist for a mobster) and its 2002 sequel Analyze That, and The Ice Harvest (2005).

Among acting roles, he could be seen as Ben’s (Seth Rogen) father in Knocked Up (2007), with the twist that his character typically gave bad advice to his kid, now grown up but still smoking pot, now faced with an unplanned pregnancy.  (The father finally summed up life as something that “doesn’t care about your vision; you just gotta roll with it.”)  But Ramis was seen more as a doctor/scientist, including a small role as the neurologist in Groundhog Day (1993).  Groundhog Day was so groundbreaking that it won Ramis a BAFTA for original screenplay.  And, in 2005, a year after getting his St. Louis Walk of Fame star, he received the Austin Film Festival Distinguished Screenwriter Award.

Jack Black, the star of the biblical ‘sendup’ Year One (2009), Ramis’ final film as director (and co-writer), had some words to add: Harold was a force of good in the universe — so funny, sweet and thoughtful.  He will be deeply missed.

2014.02.23

Amid unrest, parliament gives power to the speaker.
Ukrane: parliament aims to form a new government with an acting president (Oleksandr Valentynovych Turchynov) after voting out president Viktor Yanukovych.  Yanukovych may have left the building— attempting to flee the country on a charter plane, but stopped— he says he vows not to resign.

Former PM Yulia Volodymyrivna Tymoshenko (first female PM there), taking a leadership role in the protests, having left the hospital says she will run for president.

What a week.
Facebook buys an app for $19 bn. dollars.  “WhatsApp”?  What?  Why?  450 mn. users around the world use the phone service app; that’s why.  …And Facebook ‘service/page not available’ errors.  Will it work, given that WhatsApp is ad-free?

Bully Politics: Censorship in the U.S.

Govt. goes after Julie Boonstra, cancer patient.
‘Stop your whining, lady; Obamacare is progress.’  While attacking her, threating TV stations that run political ads featuring her.  She didn’t say that her premiums will go up, though her out-of-pocket expenses may.  She didn’t even go into detail.  Mostly she spoke on how she doesn’t know what the hell is going to happen.  Sort of a hidden costs nightmare, where transparency is needed, but missing.  Things would be impossible for her if it wasn’t for her specialist.

This day and age of depravity.
NBC, with a tweet, amounts to calling the lifestyle of a young athlete participating in the Olympics “alternative.”  He’s married with kids, and talks about God.  How is that not traditional?  The lower life expectancy of decades, a hundred years ago, etc. made marriage and child-bearing with God while young common.

Bad leadership: the common factor in all disparity, unrest

A war between Shiites and Sunnis growing, “Iraq Changes Direction: Karbala, not Mecca — a 2013 headline.  With bloodshed already major, especially in Syria (to even shock al-Qaeda!), virtually allowed— nothing done to stop it, extremism will bring about the worst.

Iran may not build nukes, but in the ‘deal,’ they may buy them?  In obtaining, they will proliferate.  In proliferating, the insane ones will use, at least in blackmail.  In using, Armageddon will occur.  Sides taken, “talks” may promote peace, but only moments of peace.  In the support of all the growing nonsense these days, criminal and homicidal insanity will eventually make chaos.

As we participate in the nonsense, we cannot help but see the makings— that is, for those that don’t hold our eyes and ears shut.  Until clarity prevails, denial will hold central, in truth and in power.  The great darkness, which is the great evil may lead to nuclear war.  In the greatest battle mankind has ever seen, the blood of hundreds of millions will be spilt, and there will be immense, enumerating and enveloping fire.  Over the globe, the trees will burn.

Despite changes in view, Revelation is still happening.  The events are still coming to pass.  This “return of Christ,” with the rising of the dead (in its true interpretation) is not a happy thing.  But, once the seven-year war has ended… immortality.  ……That also sounds bad to me.  Damn.  Jack van Impe & company keep smiling on the return aspect.  Things have to be irrefutably horrendous for that! … :(

2014.02.22

The final nail in the coffin for floppies (besides how they degrade automatically, that any ones you have are probably dead anyway): hardware drive emulation, using SD cards.  This dates back to 2012, so even the beginning of the final nail is old…

Protesters in control of the city.
In the of Ukrainian town of Kiev, protesters tore down statues of Lenin, as what seemed to settle at one time or another erupted again.  The president of the country ended up leaving.

This has been a long time coming; we should have done it long ago— Mayor Simpson.
In Utero turns 20, and… artist Randi Hubbard, Aberdeen (Wa.) mayor Bill Simpson unveil a ‘creepy’ statue of Kurt Cobain— a statue with resemblance to “And Jesus Wept,” as Cobain, with scruffy beard, is crying.  Nirvana will be inducted into the R&R Hall of Fame in April.

Obit

CNN: veteran broadcast newsman Garrick “Big Man” Utley, 74, of Meet the Press and Live from the Met, died Thursday of a two-year agressive form of prostate cancer.

And a Big Man he was: a big, big guy, said Matt Lauer on Friday’s Today, of the 6-foot-6-inch man.  He was an imposing figure physically, but also intellectually.  He was a smart man.

He was really the old kind of journalist, Gertje, his wife of 40 years, said the same day.  He was the old kind of trenchcoat-clad journalist who wrote his own copy — always wrote his own copy.  During his early years at NBC, the network was not excessively sparing on devoting resources to newsgathering, according to the widow.  That’s what he always talked about.  The early days were the lucky days.

Born in 1939 Chicago, to Clifton and Frayn Utley, a radio and television news couple, Garrick graduated from Carleton College and studied at the Army Language School in Monterey.  After winning a Fulbright Scholarship, he moved to Berlin to study East-West relations.

In 1963, John Chancellor, at NBC, hired him, the boss’s son, as an office assistant to the network’s bureau in Brussels.  After the Huntley-Brinkley Report expanded that year from 15 min. to 30, the network was looking for more material, and Utley ‘caught the eye of the brass.’  He covered a couple of stories for the Common Market, as it was called then.

But mainly, within the year, there was this little war going on, and they didn’t have a journalist there.  So Garrick started the NBC office in Vietnam.  When he arrived in Saigon, Garrick was the bureau’s only occupant; when he was done, a couple years later, twenty were staffing the bureau.  He still went back several times to report on key events as the 1968 Tet Offensive and the ’73 U.S. pullout.

Garrick went on to serve as bureau chief in Berlin from 1966-68, and then to Paris, where he met Gerje, in 1971.  From 1973-79, he was chief foreign correspondent for Europe and the British Isles.  He became fluent in German and French, and developed a working knowledge of Russian and Spanish, Gertje said, as NBC sent him from location to location, to China, to Zimbabwe, only a few weeks at a time.  It was still the journalism where you actually had to have the knowledge and explain a situation.

A weekly anchor on NBC Nightly News and moderator of Meet the Press, he wasn’t just a correspondent.  He had a ‘ubiquitous presence.’  But over the years, the network cut newsgathering resources, she said.  Today, journalism is somebody telling you what you see behind them.  Garrick still gave the background of the political situation, and why it is that way.  —I’m sorry, this is a proud widow talking.

After GE bought NBC in 1986, he really witnessed the decline, she said.  Garrick had a brief stay at ABC, but Disney bought ABC out, and cut resources the same way there too.  It wasn’t until 1997 that he moved to CNN as a contributor.  And what a presence he was, said CNN editorial director Richard T. Griffiths, in an e-mail to colleagues Friday.  In his calm, measured, voice anchoring on 9/11 and in countless pieces, Garrick delivered thoughtful analysis that always raised the bar.

It was wonderful to have this platform and the wherewithal and the budgets to go out into the world, Garrick said in 2012, during a reunion of NBC hosts.

But as the general state of journalism declined, the network did not embrace Utley’s tone, Gertje said.  He actually was reprimanded for it.  Garrick, why do you have to be so serious?  Carol Marin, his sister-in-law, also saw his serious demeanor, but noted Garrick’s kind of dignity.  We saw it in his death, and we knew it in his life.

Over his career, Garrick served on the boards of the Council on Foreign Relations, Carleton College and Public Radio International, the board of advisers of Medecins Sans Frontieres and as chairman of the American Council on Germany.  He received a number of honors, including an Edward R. Murrow Award and a George Foster Peabody Award.  He wrote a memoir, You Should Have Been Here Yesterday: A Life Story in Television News (2000), described by the New York Times as a moving account of Utley's experiences in the business…

When he left CNN, in 2002, Utley’s farewell note cited advice he’d received from J. Chancellor, back in the early days.  ‘Keep your voice low and your sentences short.’  I am not sure how much of a place there is for low, quiet voices in our chosen field today, but brevity is still a virtue.  For a journalist, there are few joys greater than the opportunity to craft and contribute reports on subjects ranging from the weighty, to the ephemera of a changing culture.  CNN has offered me the opportunity to do so, and for that I am grateful.  I will continue in various guises.

I could go on, but I won’t.  Surviving, his wife, his two brothers, David and Jonathan.

2014.02.20

Air travel terror warning: shoe bomb threat.

2014.02.18

196 dead, hundreds injured in brutal Kiev protests, and it isn’t dying down anytime soon.  You have the govt. response, and… fires.

Second demolition worker arrested over the collapse of a Philly buliding; six died in the collapse.

Worse than Chavez.
Protests in Caracas over— what else, lack of access to toilet paper.  It’s supposed to be a rich oil nation, like Saudi Arabia, but no, the oil companies were nationalized.  This is what happens under socialism— not even being able to get TP.  But these days you’re up against forces fighting logic and reality, even the definition of socialism, as if it’s not evil.  ‘You’re not doing it right’— it doesn’t work, period!

Socialism (n.): the instance of government dictating property rights.  Compare that to…

Capitalism (n.): a financial system that allows and aids individuals to keep everything they earn.

Tell me, which one of those amounts to freedom?  Opportunity?  There is no such thing as a single pie economy.  It seems like a zero-sum when things are centralized— especially currency; people are more productive in local organization, when things aren’t worn thin for some national or global effort.

2014.02.17

The new hunt for WMDs: John Kerry goes after, not threats by Iran, but climate catastrophe— ‘we can now call it a weapon of [stutter] mass destruction.’  ‘President Obama and I…’  Now worse than the Bush admin. on that, and, of course, the media are silent like the Nazi that said, I see Nohzing!  (Hogan’s Heros reference.)

2014.02.16

“Ain’t nothing more powerful than the odor of mendacity.”—‘Big Daddy’ in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.

East coast quakes, ring of fire.
First a mag.-3.2, Georgia/South Carolina, then a 4 on Friday only just over 100 miles away.

FBI looks into claims of male and female Satanic Craigslist killers.  The woman is now 19, so… huh?

KickStarter hacked.
No credit cards compromised, but the company wants people to change passwords.

TV

Among the ‘unusual’ programming on Adult Swim: Morty’s shrunken down and injected into a TB-infected man in a pseudo-Jurassic Park plot; and, on China, Illinois, it’s a hog-apocalypse, having to survive a sea of murderous hogs— a relatively expensive episode for AS.  Both had uncensored use of the word ‘shit.’

2014.02.15

Dunn — firing into a vehicle and claiming the guy had a shotgun — case.
After many, many hours of deliberation, the jury found Michael Dunn guilty on three counts of second-degree murder, manslaughter, in the killing of Jordan Davis.  Dunn faces a minimum of 20 years in prison, but the judge declared a mistrial on the murder count— how does that work?

2014.02.14

Winter storm makes for a sucky St. Valentine’s Day: already half a million in the dark, and 21 deaths blamed.  Record numbers: 75,000 flight cancelations since late December; 7,000 in a few days.

Body of Leanne Bearden found in TX, less than a mile from where she was reported missing.

The commercialization of pot.
You only have to turn to the Netherlands to see what will happen with marajuana here: the use has tripled, and the treatment for drugs has grown dramatically.  The government there doesn’t like the tourists that come there— the “bad” tourists that travel there just for pot, going as far as to even close the coffee shops that sell it.  It’s bad.

Treat it like alcohol.  Yeah, turns out pot is just as addictive as alcohol.

TV

For this V-Day, TBS runs a marathon of The Bachelor, starring Chris O’Donnell and Renee Zelwegger, the rip-off of the Buster Keaton silent-era film, where Keaton did a far better job of running from a giant mob of brides, not to mention boulders, downhill— an amazing sight, if you’ve never seen it, performing his own stunts.

2014.02.13

Many people taking Thursday off because of the storm.

2014.02.12

Abraham Lincoln turns 205.

Fedl. jury finds fmr. New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin guilty on 21 of 22 counts, including bribery; the potential time is some sixty years (3/charge), though it is unlikely that he would get that kind of sentence.  Nagin was indicted in Jan 2013.

Overstepping bounds, and all things out of control.
The 27th delay— sorry, “phased implementation,” “added” to ACA, a law with provisions that offer no flexibility, the President signed yet another executive order; the Constitution says he has no authority.  If you’ve been paying attention, you’d know that the Constitution has been violated on a regular basis for decades.  And, of course, on behalf of that other political expediency, Fox News is among the media that will let it slide for the most part.

“Superfluous” attributed to Rand Paul’s effort, with FreedomWorks, suing the government over illegal spying on its citizens.  Beyond sufficient?  What, exactly is going to happen?  Denial.  That’s it.  Transparently more corrupt than the govt. under—and with—Nixon, paranoid yet now more narcissistic, you can only hope that they get lazy— the nation, however, still vulnerable, by the way, with the info on people spread to other countries, our so-called allies, when none of this is justified.  “Within reason,” stretched, irresponsibility defined.

“Smoke it, chew it, whatever you do (with it), it will hurt you.”
Bill O’Reilly supports CVS’s move to not sell tobacco, by shopping there whenever he can.

W.H. dinner visit of François Hollande.
Twas Big media speculation over who’ll be sitting next to Hollande, complaining of their own shadow.  Hollande, not bringing anyone, sits next to… Steven Colbert.  A less expensive dinner than before.

Obit

Actor, ambassador Shirley Temple, 85, died Monday of ‘natural causes.’  In 1972, she was diagnosed with breast cancer, and, according to her experience in McCall’s, had a mastectomy.  Her longtime husband, Charles Black, died in 2005 of complications from bone marrow disease.

Shirley Temple wasn’t the first film child star, but she became the one that all child stars would be compared to, as well as a face of joyful innocence during the Great Depression.  Born April 23, 1928 to Gertrude, a Santa Monica housewife, and George Temple, a banker, Shirley was taught straight from the crib, to sing, to mimic, to sway to music, and eventually, to tap dance.  Mother Gertrude signed Shirley up for dance school at age three, and before long, secured a contract with 20th Century Fox, where Shirley did a few smaller roles before being “loaned” to Paramount for Little Miss Marker.

In Stand Up & Cheer (1934, the year her career took off), the short five-then-six-year-old stole the show.  At $307K (in pre-WWII money), the young Temple was among the highest-paid actors in 1937, with movies like Heidi, before Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (1938).  Most of the money she made was actually in licensing and endorsements— her brand and ‘trademark head of 56 curls,’ in the millions of dollars.

Among the memorable roles and dance numbers during her peak: Bright Eyes (1934), as an orphan; and The Little Colonel (1935), patching things up between the grandfather and southern belle mother, but also dancing alongside Bill “Bojangles” Robinson in a staircase number.

Most famous for the formulaic “Oh, My Goodness” charm as a small child, success faded out with her age.  In 1940, Fox decided to drop her, but she kept on trying, this time attempting to make ‘the odd movie.’  In her teen years, Temple appeared in fewer films.

In The Bachelor and the Bobby Soxer (1947), she played a high school student living with an awe-struck older sister (Myrna Loy).  (Loy’s character has a crush on an artist played by Cary Grant.)  Eclipsed by up-and-coming young female stars like Natalie Wood (Wood also did ‘odd’ movies), at 17, in what seemed as a ‘bid for independence,’ Temple married John Agar, someone she barely knew at the time.  Four years, The Story of Seabiscuit (1949), and one daughter later, she divorced the serviceman, and left the film industry for good.

In 1950, Shirley Temple married WWII hero/business executive Charles Black, and moved to the Washington, D.C. suburbs, where politics were— and always have been— a way of life.  She campaigned for Richard Nixon in 1968, was appointed to the U.S. delegations at the United Nations, and served out much of her life as an ambassador, to Ghana (from 1974, under Gerald Ford), and then to Czechoslovakia under George Herbert Walker Bush.

Temple summed up much of her career, as well as how top-notch you have to be, in her memoir, Child Star (1988), but audiences had a lot to say too.  She received numerous awards for her efforts, on and off the stage, including the Screen Actors Guild Lifetime Achievement Award in 2006, and the Kennedy Honors in 1998.  She was popular enough in 1934 that then-President Franklin Delano Roosevelt said, As long as our country has Shirley Temple, we will be all right.  When the spirit of the people is lower than at any other time during this Depression, it is a splendid thing that for just 15 cents, an American can go to a movie and look at the smiling face of a baby and forget his (sic) troubles.

Surviving, her children: Linda Susan Agar, Charles Jr. and Lori Black.

Writer and comic actor Isaac Sidney “Sid” Caesar, 91, dies at his home in Beverly Hills, of a short illness.

The youngest of three sons born to Max and Ida (Raphael), two Jewish immigrants that ran a restaurant, living in Yonkers, NY.  By waiting on tables, their son learned to mimic the regional dialect, the accents, and a technique he would come to describe as “double-talk,” which he used throughout his career.  But during those early days, much of his drive was in music.

Though he ran into a few roadblocks along the way, he had the intent of becoming a musical performer, a saxophonist from age fourteen, performing in the Swingtime Six band with Mike Cifficello and Andrew Gals, and at military revues and shows after enlisting in the U.S. Coast Guard in 1939, and briefly with Shep Fields, Art Mooney, Charlie Spivak and Claude Thornhill.  And with Benny Goodman, as of early, and late in his career for a TV performance (Sing, Sing, Sing).

His career spanned six decades, but Sid was best known for the 1950-54 sketch comedy show Your Show of Shows, with comedienne Imogene Coca (kind of a pre-Lucille Ball).  It’s said that the Show was the precursor to Saturday Night Live.  His eventual role in the history of sketch comedy was so pivotal that Mel Brooks commented, Sid Caesar was a giant, maybe the best comedian who ever practiced the trade.  And I was privileged to be one of his writers and one of his friends.

And Sid’s shows were the best, the crème de la crème of fifties television, according to Gerald Nachman, and a gold standard for for TV sketch comedy, to actress Nanette Fabray, as they were smarter and sharper than most anything else comedy on TV during the 1950s.  Historian Susan Murray noted that Caesar was best known as one of the most intelligent and provocative innovators of television comedy.

He gave fellow writers significant latitude for a TV show; he was the inspired idea man who allowed the writers to take more risks, according to Nachman.  Making mainly only final decisions on dialogue, Mel Brooks said the comedy writers under him had a great instrument in Caesar that we could play, and we played it very well.  This didn’t come without consequences.  It was a zoo, said Brooks.  Everyone pitched lines at Sid; jokes would be changed fifty times.  Using him like a puppet, there would be ‘explosive’ episodes.  The scene in Blazing Saddles (1974), in which Brooks punches out a horse was based on one of Caesar’s.

No doubt, Sid had it hard.  Nobody’s talent was ever more used up than Sid’s, said Brooks.  He was one of the greatest artists ever born.  But over a period of years, television ground him into sausages.  It was bad enough that, in 1977, he blacked out during a stage performance of Neil Simon’s The Last of the Red Hot Lovers, and aimed to give up alcohol “cold turkey,” according to his autobiography, Where Have I Been? (1982).  In his second book, Caesar’s Hours (2004), where he chronicled his struggle with alcohol and addiction to sleeping pills.  In 2009, Florence (Levy), his wife of well over sixty years (1943–2010, until her death at 88), said that, of course, [y]ou know, he’s not funny all the time.  He can be very serious.

But there were brighter days.  And reunions with fellow castmates and writers.  Caesar appeared on Larry King Live in 2001, among Carl Reiner, Fabray and Drew Carey.  Add a 40th anniversary celebration for It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World in 2003, and a TV Land Awards’ Pioneer Award in 2006, presented by Billy Crystal … Sid double-talked for over five minutes in his acceptance speech.  He won many awards, as early as 1948— the Donaldson Award for Male Debut in a Musical, and two Emmys, in 1952 and ’57, and was nominated for many others.  But not just honors for entertainment, but by the Humane Society for ‘producing outstanding works that raise public awareness of animal issues.’

A comic king, a giant, and a saxophonist, Caesar likened performing the 90-minute show, live before a theater audience, without the aid of cue cards or TelePrompTers, to doing a new Broadway show each week.  And they did it 39 weeks each season — Dennis McLellan, for the L.A. Times.  And out of that pressure cooker came innumerable classic comedy moments.

2014.02.11

State of Emergency issued across Georgia state, and it’s not looking good for the Carolinas either.  Snow, sleet, and half an inch of ice at least, part of a big storm that will continue on the East coast to become a Nor’easter.  Meteorologists are comparing this storm to hurricane Katrina.

Religious persecution growing in the world.
Attacks on Coptic Christians are more rampant in the Middle East, not just Egypt; 50 murdered in the latest attack.  And, of course, the U.S. admin. doesn’t care.

Working through it, undisclosed.
Newsman Tom Brokaw has been getting treatment for multiple myeloma— that is, multiple malignant tumors out of the bone marrow; it doesn’t look good.

100% of those audited in 2013: conservative.
Chuck Schumer wanted it, and so the IRS did.  The new excuse: ‘we were confused.’  And to continue in the deliberate off-plan (in secret) effort, as stated in emails sent to Lois Learner dated 2013, to put conservative groups out of business.

NAACP leader defends position as “speaking the truth.”
The question posed came with laughter; it shows how corrupt the NAACP is that they discuss things on false, politicized terms and consider the childish namecalling (that they believe in) the truth.  These aren’t leaders, and they hurt African Americans in the country, going out of their way to harm those that don’t stick to the monolithic, “Progressive” mindset that hurts everyone.

The increasingly lawless Holder.
The (in-)Justice Department wants to relax vote stripping for some felons… of course, for votes, not for legitimate reason— bend things to satisfy for corrupt reasons.  Reducing recidivism, I agree with, releasing people that have served their time, and didn’t like what they did, have been reformed, and like someone I know, have even turned themselves in… but that would mean that they shouldn’t have been declared a felon for an infraction in the first place.

Not that many days left for the “social justice” tyrant in the DoJ, who looks the other way, promotes criminality, and just let Operation Fast & Furious happen, where 1,400 guns were lost, reclaimed and used against border patrol at the least.  Did anyone learn their lesson?  No, it was another instance of ‘don’t get get caught.’  Criminal behavior, not just transparent ethical inproprieties.

TV

In protest of the anti-gay propaganda law in Russia, a Canadian commerical was made, and has gone viral: two lugers in slow-mo.  That’s really gonna change people’s minds…

2014.02.10

State of Emergency issued for 45 counties in GA; snow, sleet, ice, could lead to catastrophic outages.

Crack pipe vending machines installed in Vancouver.

2014.02.09

Analysts: U.S. may have missed its opportunity to intervene in Syria; the country is the latest breeding ground for terrorism, with bases everywhere.

One-way DoJ.
A Justice Dept. policy will go into effect tomorrow: relaxing federal prosecution against gay partners, testimony.

Facebook launches ‘paper’ app— editors picking news.
This comes as the company hits age ten.  At a time when the younger demo is falling away (because their parents are on it), Mark Zuckerberg wants something “elegant,” etc.…
Limited: one story at a time, only on iPhone and iPod Touch, pol. slanted (of course).

TV

Tonight Show w. Jay Leno finale got 14.3 million viewers— higher than Breaking Bad.

50th anniversary of the Beatles debuting on Ed Sullivan show marked w. a Grammy® tribute, with today’s musicians, not just the two remaining members (Ringo, Paul).

60 Minutes investigates the medical assumptions on gender.
The sex of the patient does matter, greatly, and it doesn’t just affect the maker of Ambien (with its share of problems).  Pharma has gotten it wrong.

Health

Women are at higher risk of stroke than men.
High-blood pressure the leading indicator; it’s not just w. smoking, but w. migraines, and all things pregnancy-related, including birth control pills, preeclampsia (hypertension during pregnancy, which may occur w. proteinuria).

Deoderant alone contributes to breast cancer.
Aluminum alone clogs pours, can enter the system.  Alternatives?  Baking soda, aeroroot powder— well, the alternatives are out there.

A derivative of butane is found in fast food, but Subway?
Azodicarbonimide, banned in several countries, is in Subway’s 9-grain bread.  So far, they ignore calls about their ingredients— it’s bad.

Don’t drink the tap water if it’s fluoridated!
Sodium fluoride is a neurotoxin.  A neurotoxin promotes brain damage in use, even blindness.

2014.02.08

Power grid attack update:
The sniper attack on a PG&E substation in Silicon Valley last April lasted for 19 minutes, some 150 shots that took out 17 large-scale transformers, caused millions in damage, took 27 days repair.  The grid is resilient enough that power rerouted from other stations stopped a blackout; there are 45,000 substations in the U.S.

This attack was ruled out as terrorism for the time being, but it was well-planned; the attackers knew the area, and knew exactly what they were doing; they cut control lines.  Congress is reacting, and some members want tighter utilities security.  No suspects have been caught.

Such physical attacks are greatly outnumbered by cyberattacks, targeting the software used in power stations and plants.

Some have no idea they’re out-patients.
Rationing is already here: many Medicare patients are forced to pay out-of-pocket, and ACA (surprise, surprise) contributes to this problem via “excessive in-patient admissions” language; “bounty hunters” that fine hospitals— to avoid the risk, they dismiss in-patients.

Nope, still going on.
Not even a smidgen of corruption, said the Pres.  Yeah… people that have had to deal with this government, not just those looking at the internals, would consider that outrageous; it’s bloated, it’s corrupt.  All we’ve gotten are apologies… and hush-hush promotions of those supposedly overseeing what went down.

Katherine Engelbrecht, a no-nonsense representative, became the face in going after the IRS for it’s targeting of conservatives (and they’re still getting redundant questions, with financial costs attached).  What did she get in return other than becoming a major target herself, harassed, w. investigations by several branches of the govt.

2014.02.07

More late-twenties millenials living at home than in a dorm.

The libertarian side of Wendy Davis.
Pro-choice, but pro-Second Amendment as well, she is looking for conceal carry in Texas.

2014.02.06

NYT: a long-term career choice to not work; ACA so good, see your kids, become an artist (in the reduction of the term artist).  Only in the new America.

The two al Qaeda affiliates in Syria are so out-of-control that the leader and brains of al-Qaeda distances himself and the network from them.

Not kidding: role of Somali man in Maine to get other Somalis coming to the country on welfare.  A near-riot occurred yesterday— welfare advocacy.  As if people seeking asylum shouldn’t work— and boy, do many not work.

Rep. Tim Scott (R-SC) reacts to NAACP leader’s reduction of black conservatives, calling Scott a ventriloquist’s dummy.

AZ woman uses diarhea defense in hit-and-run.

What’ll They Destroy Next?: Poo-pooing the Economy.

The economic condition of the country takes a disturbing turn: new numbers coming out show a new negative trend, and the people in the Obama administration are absolutely delusional.  They won’t hear it; everyone that disagrees with the ‘logic’ coming from them is an ‘enemy.’

It’s now being called an opportunity to not work.  After the new CBO report showed a decline in full-time work, Jay Carney and a New York Times editorial pipe a new selling point, giving the need to have to work for health care and food (a.k.a., work for a living) a negative name… after being a major part of the problem as to why it’s so hard to live in America these days.

They call it “job-lock.”  Get out of job-lock, and go see the kids or go paint or something.  And I find it vomit-inducing, ‘see the kids’ coming from political that promote the cycle of government dependency, as if ‘the kids’ aren’t even people— they’re new voters trapped in ‘happy’ welfare.  In this economic terminal illness, the children today are either not expected or allowed to have a career by age twenty-seven.  And by then they’re screwed.

Paid for by those who do work.

It’s one thing to not work and accept the consequences, as any free person has the right to do; but this approach has others paying for an unwillingness be productive.  It’s not their money, their merit; it’s neither retirement nor disability; it’s sloth.

And at a time when welfare fraud is rampant.  And also at a time when marijuana is being legalized almost indiscriminately— a now-very-high potency drug that warrants a prescription, passed around and used recreationally, irresponsibly, ruining people’s lives, with parallels to what other countries have gone through in their process of about-indiscriminate legalization.

Before, government welfare was just an issue, something systematic that was eating away at the economy, but at a seemingly manageable scale.  But now, the facet of government dependency has become permanent, with socialism on a nationwide scale, the administration and its friends going as far as to promote the destructive programs publicly in cutesy and familiar terms.

As a recent example of this anti-autonomy disguised as “freedom,” they try to attract women with a commercial of trained pets.  Sign up on healthcare.org.  Oh yeah, it’s genius for the social engineering order to wage a “war on women” talking point, where every male conservative is taken out of context, while the order itself treat women as if they can’t take care of themselves— like serfs at best.

Over the Heads of the Talking Heads

But I could never imagine that the economy altogether could just be excused like this.  And, of course, not discussed legitimately on CNN or any other so-called “respected source,” that under any other environment would have wall-to-wall coverage, as the economy just flat-out disintegrates.  (Okay, maybe I could imagine, given how much of a degenerate I am.  …But a degenerate that hates politics.)

No, no— this is over the heads of most of the press.  We get snippets of headlines, brief mentions, flagging “political sides of the aisle” as an important fixture, showing how disconnected from reality the media are.  No, still the absolute obsession of “Bridge-Gate,” mainly of MS-NBC.  As if stalled traffic on one of the world’s biggest bottlenecks is worse than the end of prosperity in the country the bridge resides in!

Answer this:
Where did the Beatles get their creative success?  From pot??  No, they played at gigs, gigs in Germany, virtually anywhere to get paid, and they improved their skills and form; they worked at it.

There is no such thing as creative success without work!

2014.02.05

U.S. warns of explosives in toothpaste tubes, air-travelling.

CBO report confirms: ACA will discourage certain employment, 2+ mn. by 2021.  (The CBO’s numbers are always conservative, so… yeah…)

Not well organized, said Obama of the Benghazi compound attackers, in the one-on-one interview w. Bill O’Reilly bef. the SuperBowl.  Yeah, the terrorists used military hand signals, had in-depth knowledge of the place, knew where amb. Stevens was, all the way to gas canisters in store.  Try again.

Because of the costs of ACA.
CVS will be phasing out tobacco products— the selling of cigarettes, cigars, etc.; they will still selling Oxycontin, other scrip. drugs.  …How is not selling cigs cheaper?

Achin’ for Aiken— Clay Aiken that is; the former American Idol contestant is running for a difficult district in eastern NC.

2014.02.04

Soft landing for China’s “Jack Rabbit” on the moon.

Joan Mondale, wife of Walter, dies at 83.

TV

Killer Women on ABC.  It’s… unusual.

The two freed Pussy Riot members on Colbert Report; not fluent in English, they needed a translator.

2014.02.03

After the half-time performance by Bruno Mars and the Red Hot Chili Peppers…
The Seattle Seahawks won, surprisingly— 43 to 8.  I mean, to nearly double the score, post-half-time, while Denver (Broncos) could only squeak in 8 from zero?— 8-0, 14-0, 14-8, 7-0.

AP: Woody Allen calls Dylan Farrow’s allegations of child sex abuse “untrue and disgraceful” a day after Farrow renewed claims dating back to Allen’s ‘tempestuous’ relationship w. Mia Farrow in the 1990s.  Actually, was Allen’s publicist, Leslee Dart, that responded Sunday, via email, on his behalf, adding that the film director will be responding soon.

Dylan claimed that, in 1992 when she was seven, her adoptive father (Allen) led her to a “dim, closet-like attic” in their Conn. home, and “then he sexually molested me.”  She didn’t specify further, but had described other abusive behavior.  These allegations came shortly after Allen became involved w. Mia’s adopted daughter, Soon-Yi Prvin, when she was about 19.

Prosecutors investigated, but had decided to not press charges to ‘avoid a traumatic trial for the young girl,’ according to Litchfield County state atty.  Frank S. Maco in a press conference.  The actions of the prosecution didn’t just draw criticism; a disciplinary panel found that Maco may have prejudiced the on-going custody battle between Mia and Allen by making an accusation without formal charges.

Now, Maco, who had retired in 2003, said Sun. in a press conference that any charges in this case could not be made because the statute of limitations had run out some 15 years ago.  Also on Sun., a spokesman for the Conn. Division of Criminal Justice said the office won’t re-examine the case unless asked to.

Obit

AP: Movie and Broadway actor Philip Seymour Hoffman, 46, was found dead in his New York Greenwich Village apartment, of an apparent drug overdose.  He was found in a bathtub, with a needle in his arm, according to two law enforcement officers, who spoke to AP on the condition of anonymity, given that they were not authorized to discuss the case.

Born in 1967 Fairport, NY, Hoffman was a would-be athlete— a wrestler— until a neck injury ended any hopes of a career in sports for him.  He turned to acting, and at 12, was ‘mesmerized’ by a local production of Arthur Millers All My Sons.  Into his teens he studied theatre with the New York State Summer School of the Arts and the Circle in the Square Theatre.

From slackers, to charlatans, to Truman Capote, to the convincing ‘ordinary friend’ in some comedic roles, Hoffman became considered one of the world’s finest actors.  With his “doughy, everyman physique,” he was able to portray characters with such range without much vanity on his own part that he could seemingly handle roles of any size, on the stage and on off.

He won an Academy Award for his portrayal of the writer Truman Capote in Capote, and over his career-cut-short received four other nominations, for his role as a controller leader in The Master (a tale involving a Scientology-like religion), Doubt and for his portrayal as a CIA officer in Charlie Wilson’s War.  He also received three Tony nods for his work on Broadway, including his portrayal of Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman, and as Jamie in Long Day’s Journey Into Night.

Hoffman had recently opened up about his years of drug addiction, and was a legend among support groups; if he could get better, anyone can.  After 23 years sober, he in interviews last year to ‘falling off the wagon,’ alcoholic drinking, and developing a heroin ‘problem’ that had led to a stint in rehab.  No words for this, said Mike Nichols, who directed the actor in Charlie Wilson’s War and Salesman.  He was too grat and we’re too shattered.

It was an assistant and a friend that made the discovery and called 911.  On Sunday night, a black body bag was carried out on a stretcher, loaded into the back of a medial examiner’s van and driven away.  Upon hearing the news, tributes poured in from Hollywood figures.

Hoffman is survived by his partner of 15 years, Mimi O’Donnell, and their three children.

2014.02.02

SuperBowl XLVIII on FOX.
Security, tight: no tailgating allowed at the Metlife stadium— made for blocked-up train stations.

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