April 6, 2020

Actually, I *do* have a partly analogous story, re: the brute force response of some top brass.

Analogous, yes: Because at bottom, the military has a follow-orders, authoritarian, my-way-or-the-highway orientation. Plus a culture of the chain of command lubricated by ass-kissing.

Analogous, perhaps or maybe not: Because this captain appears to be a whistleblower about his brass not protecting the crew, while the fellow in my story has no known motivation and some observable behavior that was inexplicable, while the way he was dealt with was similarly brutal.

So my ship in Vietnam was one in a group of seven, each with its Captain (actually, a Lieutenant for this small ship). Over the group was a "Commodore," a rank revived from the Civil War.

So the junior officer was in the entry level of Navy officers, Ensign. Each officer headed up a Department of his own - Engineering, Deck, Supply, etc. Of course there is a semi-Feudal class system, with the Captain as the king, the officers as nobility, and all us Enlisted as peons. It all can't function if there is no humanity in it, some kind of human kinship crossing the social barriers, camaraderie between the officer and his work force.

Yet as classes, the officers and Enlisted are always aware of the distinction between them. So while almost all of the officers had some degree of friendly relations with their Enlisteds, this junior officer, let's call him "JO" or Ensign JO, was the *ONLY* one who would OCCASIONALLY drop by the living quarters of us Enlisteds after evening chow, where we did our "living" - writing letters home, playing cards, somebody playing a guitar, etc. He would sit on a laundry bag and just talk a bit, mostly listen, find out who we were, etc. This was not some kind of unseemly fraternization, just that he was a nice guy.

So fairly late in my year's tour, we had one of those tizzies where the Word from the top is that something Big is decreed to happen and we are all thrown into doing stuff to Make It Happen. Some arbitrary, whimsical Word or something real, who knows. So this time the thing was that the COMMODORE was going to pay us a royal visit and we all had to drop our routine tasks and make the ship as spic and span as the rust bucket could be made to appear: "Paint this WHITE!1 Polish that brass thing!1" So that happened.

The royal visit happened while we were anchored in the River (in the Mekong Delta) at the Army base (Can Tho) where we were unloading our cargo - bulldozers, gigantic bags of cement, whatever it was that time (pallets of Coca Cola). Before somebody questions a ship being in a river: My ship was an LST (Landing Ship Tank) with a flat bottom for handling SHALLOW water as well as deep deep ocean, like what was used at D-Day; and these rivers in Vietnam were BIG AND WIDE. Still are. And my LST was built in 1945 maybe for D-Day but too late, and we were using it thirty years later, leaking at the rusty seams and all. Talk about putting crew at risk.

So perhaps it was to show off for the Commodore, whom I never saw, by the way, but the Orders for the Enlisteds on that night's Watch were that there was intel that Charlie might be sending Swimmers to outfit the ship with mines under the water line. So with typical military OVER?-compensation ('cause nobody wants to be blamed later for *UNDER* compensating if something goes horribly wrong), the Order was for each Watch to shoot off his (M16?) all night long at anything that moved - leaves floating by, anything - because it might be a "Swimmer in the Water". Or perhaps it was all intended to be a fireworks show for the Commodore. Fine.

But before night, every time we were at our destination of the Army base for the 3 or 4 days there, we were allowed to go to the Enlisted Men's Club ("bar" ), meaning, go get drunk and be back by 7 P.M. Since we were anchored out, we rode a Liberty Boat (Lifeboat repurposed for its current mission) to get there and back. So that would happen and everybody was always back on board as scheduled. We climbed up the Jacob's Ladder, and at the top as we stepped onto the deck, we had to salute towards the back (fantail) where the flag was (out of sight), and then salute the Officer of the Deck and say, "Request permission to come onboard, Sir!" And the OOD would say, "Permission granted," and we would proceed to our quarters, at times like Liberty in whatever stumbling condition we were in.

So the final Run by the Liberty Boat was done and everybody was accounted for - except for one, guess who, Ensign JO. Now to recap, this fellow had an image of being IMPECCABLE in his observable behavior, uniform, everything, with the added little icing of being a good human being. Of course, we Enlisteds knew nothing beyond external appearances, what personal dynamics, if any, went on, being the hidden lives of our overlords. About him, there had never been a whisper of any flaw. Officers go on Liberty, too, AND do things like get drunk or even perhaps visit sex workers - DO they, don't they?!

So the Liberty Boat made another Run or two or three to find him and finally, success. So I was the Messenger assigned to the OOD, standing behind and to the side of the OOD, seeing everybody as they climbed up from the Jacob's Ladder, first the head, then the arms pulling the body up, the salutes, and the stumblings off.

So there had been a tizzy about Ensign JO being missing, and finally here he was. He came up the Ladder (rope, by the way), no Cover (hatless), disheveled, khaki uniform askew. DRUNK or something AS A SKUNK, in that happy kind of drunk mood, where everything is FUN. And he stood himself up at Attention, and did a BIG salute, exaggeratedly so as for a theatrical stage, to his peer Officer (the sun had set so there was no flag to salute), as he said with booming emphasis, "REQUEST PERMISSION TO COME ON BOARD, *SIR*!1" The OOD gave him the most disgusted, infuriated, deadly look and snarled at him, "GET in there!1" So Ensign JO stumbled his way down the deck in the direction of Officers' Quarters.

The people on Watch had already been posted for the night, one each at the Bow (front), Fantail (back), and Starboard (right) and Port (left) sides, and the orders for the night were to "make noise," fire off the pieces sporadically and randomly. But suddenly, running up the deck towards the OOD area, came Ensign JO clad only in his skivvies, running past all, up the deck to the Bow, yelling, "SWIMMER IN THE WATER!1 SWIMMER IN THE WATER!1 DON'T SHOOT, DON'T SHOOT!1" And when he got to the Bow, he *JUMPED* off, making a really big splash, later in more ways than just the literal.

This LST was the length of a football field, a ship on the smaller side of things, with a crew of 250, not like the aircraft carrier in the news that has a crew of five thousand. So then, Sir Ensign JO *swam* from the Bow back to the Jacob's Ladder and made his second boarding of the night, dripping wet, barefoot, and with a couple of our toughest sailors as an honor escort. Somehow there has to be a kind of grudging, astounded admiration, at the minimum for the physical prowess involved - drunk, in the dark, among who knows what live critters or inanimate hazards, perhaps having fought off a Swimmer in the Water or two, if so, probably scaring the bejeezus out of the alleged Swimmers in the Water. Actually, when you think about it, he was the only crew who possibly engaged in hand to hand combat. I mean, our ship was hit by rockets on three separate days during my year, and we crew of course fired our big cannon and smaller 30? 40? caliber type of Gatling Gun things, but it was at a far distance to the treeline at the horizon, where the puffs of smoke from the rocket launchers were. So Ensign JO faced something close up.

So the scuttlebutt the next day was that, whatever happened in Officers' Quarters the night before, the next morning the Commodore had the four Enlisteds who had been on duty hauled up to stand at Attention in a row in front of Him, and after recapping the events of Ensign JO's episode, screamed at them: "You had ORDERS to shoot anything that moved in the water!1 --- YOU. SHOULD. HAVE. *SHOT* THAT MAN!1"

That part I didn't witness. But, the soon to be formerly-Ensign, JO was confined to Officers' Quarters for his last couple of days on board, only allowed to cross the passageway between his tiny 2-Officer stateroom and the Ship's Office located in the officers' area. And I had a proto-Forrest GUMP moment, since at that time my day job was to deliver the mail to different areas and the office was one of them. Normally, the four Enlisteds who worked there were there, but this day when I opened the door, there was only one person there: JO. His back was turned to the door. And there was an Akai reel tape recorder playing some instrumental Blues. Really blue Blues. Wailing, heart breaking Blues. In the hot, steamy air. (Can it be any more Blues here?) And his shoulders were hunched and he didn't turn to see. And I just looked briefly for a fossilized moment and left the mail on the desk and closed the door quietly. A mere Enlisted me could never have been so presumptuous as to address a human word to an officer.

**********So, within a day or two ex-Ensign JO was disappeared off the ship, never to be seen or heard from again. Yes, the career was over. Nobody could say a negative word about him before, and NO word was said about him after. What little I knew of him, he was a good man. Or was he? Did he seek out Enlisteds because he had problems among his peers? Why did he specifically pick the hyper-dramatic scenario of the Commodore's visit for this? Was he just on booze or were there drugs? I don't know.

As for how this relates to the Captain in the news: Things in play are the same. Whoever made the decision had some asskissing to do, also had to put the military retribution where the military MOUTH goes. And often, military judgment is brutally authoritarian and over-reaching. And military cogs all up and down the line are individuals, some willing to have one of their own shot.

March 31, 2020

Who knew?!1 (I just learned.) "Trumpets" (actually: Bugles) are a rank/symbol for firefighters

There was a pop-up advert for law enforcement badges and it was a charming thing of what I thought were "trumpets" (think: angels' long horns). I looked at the website and there were badges with different numbers of "trumpets" on them labelled for firefighters, called the company to ask why "trumpets" were associated with firefighters. The dude just said they are "Ranks" for firefighters. Once the speakerphone's garbled "Ranks" got clarified, I said fine but why TRUMPETS with firefighters. He said that all he knew was the ranks part, not the WHY.

So, of course, that's what the internet and The Google are for, so it turns out these are *BUGLES* (not trumpets), specifically "speaker bugles" like megaphones that in the olden days were used for yelling orders and directions in the chaos of the fire scene. Like how a ship's bell used to be for ringing the time. And that now, replica brass bugles are presented at retirement ceremonies and such. I'm sure there are firefighters or family amongst us here who knew that. Wow. A beautiful brass item of this can be ordered - I'm thinking, I'm *THINKING*!1



**********QUOTE*******

http://www.fireserviceinfo.com/ranks.html
In the early days, of North American fire departments, orders were given to the troops, by officers, through the use of a large brass device that resembles a megaphone. These were very ornate brass horns. They were commonly called “bugles” or speaking trumpets.

The person with the bugle hanging from his neck or shoulder was easily identified as the person in charge. Officers became identified with these objects so a small pin in the shape of a bugle became a type of rank insignia for officers. The more “bugles on his collar” the higher the rank. An expression still used today.

Note: It is probably OK that we traditionally refer to fire department rank insignia as a bugle, even though they are not really musical instruments. Some people object to the term "bugle" because it is not a brass musical instrument, and never was. Let's face it, this is the way people name things. We latch onto something the item resembles or was derived from historically. This best example might be the fire "plug". It is not a plug. It is a hydrant. What many fire departments call a PTO has long been replaced by a transfer case. A fire engine and its crew is traditionally a "company" not a unit! Jackrabbits are not rabbits at all, they are hares. The Belgian Hare, a popular pet, is a rabbit. (Who stores gloves in a "glove compartment"?) There are hundreds (perhaps thousands) of other examples of common inaccurate names being derived from historical, fictional or erroneous perceptions. Yet we don't seem to worry about them. It is the nature of a living language. (BTW, "Bugles" are also a tasty corn chip and a glass bead sewn into clothing.)

***********UNQUOTE********

March 3, 2020

Thanks for understanding Tweety, but "this crowd" is my crowd - and so are you!1

February 28, 2020

My profile of Tweety is about 15-20 years old, see paragraph 2 His Misogyny (updated for WARREN)

Etymology of "Tweety". During Campaign 2000 the media noise machine was swooning over the nicknames Shrub was giving some of them. Media Whores Online ran a contest to nickname Chris MATTHEWS. In the first three or so weeks, there was no clear, catchy front runner, with "The Screamer" sort of leading. Then one of MATTHEWS's own Hardball staff leaked to MWO that they themselves called him "Tweety" because of the Clairol shade of hair coloring he favored. This was immediately declared the winner. But in some quarters, it wasn't entirely satisfactory. For one thing, by the time the name was declared, the shade had changed to platinum, leading to a suggestion he be called "Carole LOMBARD".
   
Plus, "Tweety" sounded too affectionate. 

His Misogyny.  Then M-TV held its 20th or 25th or whatever anniversary, and all the cable echo chambers were doing segments of Britney shedding her duds down to almost nothing. Not to be left behind, Tweety followed suit, with a guest "culture" commentator from Time Mag, the young humor columnist, Joel STEIN. The staff kept re-running the Britney clip, and Tweety was clearly DROOLING disgustingly. STEIN said, "You're beginning to creep me out." Tweety responded, "Yeah, well, wait till YOU're 50." This led to the suggestion that "Tweety" be modified to "Tweezer" to retain the hair reference while canceling out the affection factor and also adding the (dirty old) "geezer" angle.
Back when, misogyny was a wink-wink/smirk-smirk thing among the old style flunkies like him, there were many examples of his, with HRC being his prime target for years until she was becoming a real contender, when he yearned to host her, but the bridges had been burned. 
But here's a vignette from back in the day, regarding his wife Kathleen. He deigned to host her or let her co-host a segment or so, this time with him and another recycled miscreant Mike BARNICLE. She was standing like at the front of a class and they two were sitting like the smirking, spit-balling, Catholic schoolboy-jerks that they really are. She trudged through her presentation, taking her subject seriously while the two of them smirked, giggled, and mocked all the way. But regarding Kathleen, he exemplifies one signature characteristic of misogynists: Despite the obviously hostile behaviors, they claim to adore, honor, put-on-a-pedestal women. And Tweety frequently does that over-compensating, protests-too-much thing by referring to her as, "MY QUEEN." 
*************So flash forward decades to the TWITLER atrocious era, specifically calling Senator WARREN “Pocahontas.” Tweety hosted her soon after a TWITLER episode of it, besides a manic outburst of his sputtering interrupting, almost giggling every time he said that name, catching himself each time then protesting that it was a horrible thing, like Beavis/Butthead giggling at a dirty word. So WARREN kept to the high road and that TWITLER was not going to silence her. So then he struck, like when he lashed out at DONAHUE. He was in bursting giggle mode and said, "So, for you 'Pocahontas' will be like a clarion call for you to come charging out!1" and he busted his gut. WARREN looked sucker punched. 

Darrell HAMMOND "Doing" Tweety on SNL. Tweety's ego was massively stroked after the debut of HAMMOND's impersonation of him, either in 2001 or 2002. He said, "I am now an ICON: I have been 'done' on Saturday Night Live'." The funniest line in the debut was HAMMOND as Tweety, cracking himself up with, "For the ... FIFTY ... people who watch this show...” (Hardball, not SNL). In the first few times HAMMOND featured him, the target was Tweety himself -- manically interrupting, spitting, and drooling. However, the characterization evolved, not true to the original, where Tweety became the "rational" character surrounded by oddball, extremist "guests", with HAMMOND-Tweety shaking his head in disbelief at their partisan spin.   

"Turning" from Being a Democrat. He (like G.E.RUSSERT and Pat CADDELL) still trades on having been a Democrat in the CARTER/O'NEILL era. In the hothouse of big time political flunkydom, STATUS and POWER come from the SUCCESS of your boss. RAYGUN kicked Tweety's bosses' rears, and Tweety gravitated to admiring that "success". When he started up his media career he was mentored by G.E. RUSSERT, who had himself already started "turning" by "reaching out" to LIMBOsevic and expending his formerly-Lib-bleeding-heart on those poor wingnuts who had been maligned and marginalized by the Liberal Elite, lo those many years. Tweety started doing video valentines to RAYGUN, promenading arm in arm with Nancy. He might have tapped into the frenzy of the FAKE impeachment, but "hatred of the CLINTONs" isn't what made him turn. The last time he was identifiably a Democrat was sometime around 1988 when Hardball (the book) was published.  Throughout the year of Campaign 2000 he savaged the Dem candidate daily and went on to years of bromance over Shrub, renouncing any Democratic heritage.  He said his parents were “cloth coat" (Rethugs), and that basically what first drew him to the Dem side was Irish-Catholic pride over JFK.  Not ideology, not idealism.  He said the reason he joined the Peace Corps was specifically to avoid going to Vietnam. 

How Tweety "Executed" DONAHUE on MSNBC. Tweety was on his book tour for another one of his "books" (large type, wide spaces between lines, blank half-pages). It was in the jingoistic hysteria in the run-up to the illegal Iraq attack. The book was about supposed "Americanism" -- an American Civ 101 ripoff about books and movies and cultural stuff that are essentially American (think, "The Great Gatsby" ). So Phil welcomed him as a colleague and peer on Phil's MSNBC show for the full hour to plug the book. From the moment he appeared, there was a strange, deadly snake look in Tweety's snake eyes. Phil was walking around the audience, apparently not sensing anything, while Tweety was motionless, following him only with his eyes. Phil brought up something or other questioning blind, kneejerk jingoism, and Tweety STRUCK! He started out with venom dripping, "You see, THIS is EXACTLY what's wrong with YOU Liberals: You are NEGATIVE about this country, you find NOTHING good about it," and on and on. It took awhile before Phil figured out what was happening. Later, Phil, devastated and spent, was sitting at the table with Tweety and, weaker and weaker, did some of his trademark shoulder shrugging and arm waving. Tweety delivered the coup de grace, "What's THIS (mimicking the movements)??!! What's with the --APE-- movements???!" Days or a week or two later, Phil's cancellation was announced and took effect. 

How Tweety "Triggered" a Gun Incident (re: Kathleen WILLEY). At the height of the FAKE impeachment, Ms WILLEY claimed that a mystery jogger had threatened her or her cat or somebody, with the insinuation that there was a CLINTON connection. Several months later, there was gossip that the jogger had been identified. Tweety hosted her and it appeared they had discussed the identity off camera. He tried mightily to get her to say the name on the air, which she wouldn't do. Finally, he himself blurted it out, "Was it (Name/Surname)?" She wouldn’t confirm it. Within days there was a bizarre incident, with the mentally disabled brother of Pat and Bay BUCHANAN going with a gun to the house of the supposed jogger named by Tweety, where there were only some foreign exchange students present. Later it was determined that the person Tweety named on the air had NOTHING to do with the supposed jogger incident. 

"Heroes" Tweety and Tom DeLAY. In the aftermath of the 07-24-98 shooting of two Capitol police officers when the slain officers were duly eulogized and called heroes, Tweety latched on to this, the way we have seen him attempt to glorify himself in other instances: Like saying he was assigned to Africa in the Peace Corps and "WALKED THE SAME GROUND" THAT CHURCHILL had passed through. Or when he said, "I am an ICON! I have been 'done' by SNL!". So now that the Capitol policemen were being called heroes, Tweety came forward to say that HE had been a Capitol policemen, TOO, JUST LIKE THEM, when he was starting out. It turns out that he had worked a (temporary?) job for three months as that. In all the years before the officers were shot and eulogized, he probably NEVER referred to that job, most likely thinking of it as a rent-a-cop turn, until he could see in retrospect the glory that he had been DESTINED to from the beginning.  But he is not the only glory hog. When that incident was happening, the news of the moment reported that Tom DELAY had hopped a plane out of town and immediately turned around in Houston when the incident was over. This show of courage is why he has been dubbed, "Tom-DePLANE!-DePLANE!-DELAY".  But searches of countless news reports of that time show no mention of the hopping-the-plane. Only this is left: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm /... "...House members, many rushing out of town, did not have to remain behind. DeLay slipped out the main door of the Capitol less than 15 minutes after the shooting. He looked stricken. Asked if he'd seen anything, he said, "Did I ever. I don't want to talk about it." Aides rushed him into his waiting car. ...."

------------

February 27, 2020

Excellent topic & my experience is unfortunately vast. Over 50 years

Despite my being a Dem political junkie with 2 generations of it, the closest acquaintances have almost all been apolitical, perhaps because I draw them from non-political functions (school, military, work) rather than political rallies.

They are all from the most discriminated-against groups - ethnic minorities, Gays, subsistence Labor, women - AND they don't vote, don't do the news, yet somehow wingnut talking points have filtered down to them. It's the voting-against-own-interest syndrome, or rather NOT voting.

Mostly it's about: Living day to day.

The Romans knew: Leave the State matters to the Big Boys/players, don't worry your pretty little heads about things that are above you, just eat your bread and bet on the Super Bowl.

February 19, 2020

Blast from the past: KERIK's slightly less criminal exploits, featuring Judith REGAN

(Am searching the archives for my own post. ON EDIT: O.K., found it, May 29, 2013: https://upload.democraticunderground.com/10022916431 )

Where to start -- well, gotta be with the latest thing, the last bit from Cindy ADAMS's social note (below), to the effect that Bernie taught a LIFE CLASS while in prison and he'll be happy if his wisdom helps keep ONE dude from returning to prison. Did he give himself extra credit for auditing himself so that HE! won't be one of the returnees?!

But for youngsters, a Brief History: Bernie was Rudy GHOULIANI's police comish on THE 9-11, and shot to supposed "leadership" and Security fame in that VOID of same when pResident Shrub was lost for three days, and when Shrub-CHEENEE had to create SOMEthing to appear responsive, besides Color Codes, they needed a Security tsar, and GHOULIANI sponsored this Bernie dude, who then had to be withdrawn because he was on the road to PRISON!

Nay, but the most fruitful chapter involved one Judith REGAN, who was a protégé herself, her mentor somebody bigger than GHOULIANI, Rupert MURDOCH of NewsCorp/Faux Propaganda Network, who gave her her own publishing imprint, "REGAN Books" that was responsible for LIMBOsevic's first book and a slew of other wingnut crap. She was known for devil-wears-prada horrifics of temperament, one time challenging her staff to be creative by screaming at them, "Why do women like Bill CLINTON?! Because they WANT TO FUCK HIM, THAT'S why!" Finally, she crashed and burned around the time of a title, "If I Did It" ascribed to O.J. SIMPSON.

But while she was in full blossom with MURDOCH, she even scored a half hour interview show on Faux on Saturday nights, where she would interview other wingnuts and excoriate Dems/Libs. Scathingly. But one of her authors was this selfsame Bernie, who had (supposedly, since you never know who writes O'LOOFAH's books either) penned his biography. The hook was that this totally macho man, TOUGH, the most testosterone filled life form EVER! told in this book the SENSITIVE, heart wrenching story of having been abandoned by his disturbed mother, who puzzled the boy by not showing up to claim him at a hearing, and he found out years later she had been confined or something .

Fine. But the really "good t.v." was what, to an insightful eye like that of moi, was going on in this interview. Well, it was hard to see the screen sometimes, due to there being some kind of steam or film clouding up the camera lens. La Judy and Bernardo had an eyelock, more hers than his, that was more secure than GHOULIANI's office. As she teetered in her chair, body all taut and rigid, her eyes pierced him, wingnut heart breaking over his sad sad story. But then they shifted, inevitably, to 9-11, and she asked him, intensely, "Where were you when you first heard?!" As lawyers say, never ask a question you don't already know the answer to. So he shyly let his head duck down a bit then looked up at her with puppy dog eyes and said gruffly, toughly, but sensitively, "Stepping out of the shower. (Pause, pause.) After working out."

Whoa! the smoke alarms went off louder than the Emergency Broadcast System! Like Frida KAHLO's self-portrait with Diego RIVERA's face imprinted on her forehead, Bernie's presumably nekkid image was just PALPABLE on Judy Judy Judy's area where Frida had her unibrow.

At that time, none of us knew anything beyond the public information about these people, but I SENSED something was UP with these two. Much later, sure enough, it appears that the publisher-author relationship had another depth and plumb to it, yes, HOT WINGNUT SEX, because why should workplace sex be for Bill and not bipartisan?! But not only that, their love nest for their Hot Wingnut Sex sessions was no place other than an NYC apartment paid for by the City as a rest-up place for First Responders or clean up crews of the WTC site. That's all right, those people were probably too busy to need a rest-up apartment anyway, and no sense letting things go to waste.

Meanwhile, in all these years since 9-11, GHOULIANI has been collecting filthy lucre all over the globe, Mexico City anywhere, for giving whatever his expertise is on Security against terrorism, along the lines of how to walk down the street with dust and powder on you and then how to insert and enunciate "nine eleven" into any conceivable topic with inconceivable frequency.

******************** QUOTE******

By CINDY ADAMS

Yesterday 9 a.m., after three years and change in jail, Bernie Kerik, NYC’s former police commish, USA’s former Homeland Security Chief nominee, Cumberland, Md.’s now ex-inmate No. 84888-054, was driven home-sweet-home. 9:15 he phoned me from his friend’s car. He’d eaten nothing. “Not even stopping for coffee,” he told me. “I’m not wasting one minute. I can’t wait to get back and hold my kids. ....

Not remanded to a halfway house, he’ll wear an ankle bracelet until his official October release time. Social occasions like dinner in Manhattan — no. Kerik is confined locally to family duties. Fetch his kids at school, attend church, work-related activities. He’ll check in steadily with a New Jersey penal authority who must be told what, where, when and who. ....

Slimmed down measurements required new clothes sent for his release. Size 33 jeans, undershirt, T-shirt, pullover sweater, socks, belt, shoes.

As he told me: “I’m already planning my next book and have been writing, longhand, daily. Some inner thoughts were occasionally sent home and retyped on the outside . . . years when I missed my daughters birthdays and our November wedding anniversary killed me. Being away from the family was like ripping my heart out of my chest.

“It’s strange. I’ve been in gun battles, war, threatened by Cali cartel, lived through 9/11 devastation, but nothing as emotionally upsetting as living separated from them.

“In prison, I’ve taught a class on life’s lessons — self-esteem, raising kids, skills, bullies, peer pressure, rejection, dealing with adversities. If it just helps one of these men not return to prison, I’ll be happy.”

************UNQUOTE**********

This is one of DUer underpants: ) *************QUOTE***********


http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/058421.php
Then there's Bernie Kerik. I had a kind of trip down memory lane last night reading over my posts on the K-man from December 2004 -- one of a few events in the late winter of 2004 that helps salve the pain of the election result. Anyway, one thing I realized or rather remembered was that there were so many scandals, hijinks and misdeeds Kerik had in his closet that peoples' minds quickly reached a saturation point. There was just too much to remember. For instance, you know of course that Kerik took the apartment donated by a wealthy real estate developer as a place for 9/11 relief workers to rest and used it as his own personal love shack to boff celeb book editor Judith Regan. That of course was before the other city employee he was doing there left a love note that Regan found. But did you know that after Regan bailed on him she had to get protection because Kerik was apparently stalking her and her kids? Great guy.

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0314-12.htm
The News reported that Kerik used a secret apartment overlooking Ground Zero to carry on extramarital affairs with Regan and a female correction officer in the weeks after the terrorist attacks.

http://www.dailysentinel.com/hp/content/shared-gen/ap/N...
But the nomination was confronted with news reports about stock-option windfalls, his connections with people suspected of doing business with the mob and overlapping extramarital affairs with two women: Judith Regan, the publisher of his memoir, and a city correction officer. The liaisons reportedly occurred in an apartment near ground zero that had been set aside for rescue workers.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/2007/11/12/2007-11-12_r...
Yesterday, beneath the place at the jail where Kerik's name used to go, the correction officer said, "Where you going next, that love nest down there at Ground Zero where used to shack up with Judith Regan?"

She was talking about one of the apartments for emergency workers where Kerik used to go with Regan, his publisher at HarperCollins, for somewhat more than work on punctuation and grammar. All the while Giuliani was treating Kerik like some fellow legend of the city.

*************UNQUOTE********

February 5, 2020

My ltr to the Editor now timely apparently. Paper felt safe posting it now.

I submitted it a month and a half ago and had given up on its seeing the light o’day and even missed when it ran a few days ago. Meanwhile the Deplorable gets his zombie pro-SHITLER letters posted at a clip of one or two per week. He’s one of those (retired?) Federal employees who reap Federal benefits while proselytizing for policies that penalize others. Anyway, the paper probably found the courage to post it now after impeachment.

*************

Letters to the Editor

(SHITLER deplorable)’s letter of Nov. 8 lamented that every single body is not working “in unison with this president for the good of ‘We the People,’ and not for the good of the party.” This would be funny if it weren’t disastrous that no other president has demonstrated less concern for this country and for We the People, only single-minded interest in what is good for him.

It used to be said that “it can’t happen here,” but we are faced with the real possibility of rule by one man, who believes in Mafia power for himself, everything being about personal loyalty to him, and thinking that he owns the government, the military, and us.

I was accosted in a parking lot by a fellow to thank me for my service because I wear my veteran’s cap. He was wearing a Trump 2020 red cap and I said, “No Trump for me.” He withdrew his handshake and yelled, “No America for you!”

I realized how far gone his supporters are that they accept the idea that this country is the same thing as one man. And they don’t know or care that by accepting that idea they are betraying the country.

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February 4, 2020

It ain't about lung cancer. It's about the hate and damage to the country LIMBAUGH has done. Updated

When I came back to my home stomping grounds after the Navy and university, totaling 11 years, I had been used to morning talk shows in a couple of sophisticated urban areas, with their suave and Liberal talk hosts. So here, I latched on to what was available, which happened to be K***. The syndicated line-up was fairly compatible to the hosts elsewhere. Here, it was a couple of psychologists (Dr Joy BROWNE, Dr David VISCOTT), a regular MD (Dr Dean EDELL). But it took getting used to to hear the local yokel who at that time was breaking in the RAGEFUL WINGNUT persona, with unhinged, self-righteous RANTS, *very* rough around the edges. At my workplace radio was permitted at the desk, so most of the day the stress relieving doctors murmured away pleasantly.

I would type write two page letters attacking the local winger (on my own time) and he would actually answer with typed letters on K*** letterhead. Finally, this must have been before the days of his now medications, he blew up and said, “I’m tired of being your Right Wing whipping boy.” Fine. But for whatever reason of his temperament, he continued to engage.

Then one day, yes, 31 years ago, at my desk, I was *SHOCKED* to hear bizarre (Rock?) music, RAUCOUS stuff, pouring out of my radio, and this LIMBAUGH a-hole burst on the air, precisely spelling his weird name and telling everybody that it would take about six weeks for the audience to get used to him. He enunciated his surname and spelled it and did the warning routinely.

I was *SHOCKED* and embarked on studying (not for his wingnut “school” ) but to catch all of his distortions, lies, ridicule of Dems, of women, of minorities. It was my form of Opposition Research, to be able to answer any wingnuts I encountered, to know what the wingnut world was saying, because to KNOW is better than NOT knowing, because knowledge is POWER, and as the Mafia says, “Keep your friends close, but your enemies CLOSER.”

So all through my final main employment until retirement, I had LIMBAUGH on and took note how K*** soon ditched its precious (to them) local programs like the hokey Farm and Ranch noon thing in order for them to run LIMBAUGH live for the 3 hours, then in a few years, they ditched the civilized doctors to go Full Wingnut with HANNITY, O’REILLY, Laura SCHLESSINGER – all the most DESPICABLE, HATEFUL people possible. Hence, where K*** has been for the past 20 years or more.

Now that LIMBAUGH has come to his latest crisis (previously, drug addiction and deafness) not counting the things we don’t know about (what goes on in the Dominican Republic? Something EPSTEIN-like?), he and his fellow wingnuts are going through their typical victimhood (ironic since they always mock others for victimhood). They claim that his lung cancer is something terrible for such a great man to be struck with. In other words, that he is such a GREAT MAN, that their basis for his greatness is that he rescued and rehabilitated AM radio.

His accomplishment was truly monumental. This is not to say it was GOOD. And it had nothing to do with reinventing AM radio. What he did was to single-handedly resuscitate and rehabilitate the Conservative movement. This was after the Joe McCARTHY UnAmerican movement had been discredited, taking with it later the John BIRCH Society. Then GOLDWATER went down hard, and it was when the biggest media names perhaps WERE skewed to the Left. So then came LIMBAUGH, and while I dispute that he made Conservatism RESPECTABLE, what he did was to WEAPONIZE it. He introduced SCORCHED EARTH, absolutely NO compromise with the Left, NO moderation, NO bipartisanship, leading to the GINGRICH takeover of the House, which later became the TeaBaggers and the Freedom Caucus, et al.

And his tactics were always vicious personal attacks, pre-SHITLER, mocking physical characteristics, always walking the line with IMPLICATIONS against race and gender without using the explicit racist and -phobic epithets, although everybody knew what he was really saying, always claiming to be satirical.

One of his first techniques in rehabilitating the moribund BIRCHers and other overt racists and conspiracists was to shuffle them off the phone as soon as they were being too obvious: He would gently dismiss them, thereby ridding the new Conservatism of the bad image of kooks, conspiracists, nuts.

Continued, PART 2: So LIMBOsevic is nothing if not all about him, so he came before the Faux Propaganda network, and I don't know what role he might have had with AISLES, but the Faux machine coupled with him to horrendous effect from the '90s on. The so-called "mainstream media" and other establishment were unaware and oblivious of him and his massing (now we call: ) Deplorables for several years, but the tide was turning. Since big change is always of fighting previous wars until it's too late, the first sign was when the erstwhile "Democrat" Tim RUSSERT began putting forward his original line that Liberals had been cruel, dismissive, arrogant, and elitist about ignoring poor, lower class, Whites. And he began citing LIMBOsevic as the leader of this group, and then gave him a big spotlight by hosting him on the whole of Thanksgiving weekend, re-running the interview on successive days. That was the beginning of the wingnut meme in the media about Libs needing to reach out and "understand" the wingnuts instead of regarding them as racist whackjobs. This was evident widely by Coup 2000, when George W. Shrub benefited when his F**k-Up persona was portrayed as Good-Ole-Boyism, and GORE was skewered as the personification of the Elitist looking down on him.

LIMBOsevic's Themes, Propaganda Techniques. The veiling of racist, degrading of gender and minorities as satire has been noted. His mastery of propaganda is at the level of the practitioners of the Third Reich, at one end of the spectrum with immature name calling, onward through serious ridicule and personally hurtful degradation, favorite targets being Feminists, Gays, and Black Speech. But at the sophisticated end, turning concepts around to mean the opposite of what they originally connoted. That is, he clearly had simmered with resentment against the accolades given to Liberal heroes like FDR. So he took the Liberal honorifics and recast them onto his wingnut heroes, such as calling RAYGUN "Ronaldus Magnus". The phrase, "low information voter," started off as a Liberal descriptive of the audience of the Faux Propaganda Network, but LIMBOsevic turned it around with relentless repetition to characterize Liberals. The attention span of the country at large is short, and soon the altered versions of things are the accepted ones, and in the blink of an eye new generations don't know there was ever something other than the altered meaning. For example, during the GINGRICH years, the Repuke pollster Frank LUNTZ was introducing his focus group testing of words and phrases and how positive or negative they were, and one of his "innovations" was to tell the GINGRICH Repukes to starts saying "DemoCRAT" (noun) in place of "DemocratIC" (adjective), because this sounded negative. Part of the reason it sounds negative is that the "wrong grammar" triggers an irritation on the ear. If LIMBOsevic didn't originate some of these things, he used them.

January 29, 2020

For the first time in 30 years, the satellite receiver is unplugged.

Tomorrow I'm calling Dish to terminate. And I watched Rachel, some CNN, all without Dish.

Am streaming on the phone, with Screen Mirroring.

January 22, 2020

Not presuming to preach re: Life change, "secret" of life

Have had a couple more big disappointments/challenges/whatever lately. Not fatal ones, just of the one-more-knock (in life) variety, but also of the I've-had-enough variety. Disappointments of tired-of-fighting-The-Man variety, and tired-of-being-a-schlump and tired-of-being-disappointed-by-creepies.

So will turn 73 soon (Pisces) and have been late-blooming, procrastinating, time-wasting whatever, for almost all of it. Something about us Pisces, we're fuzzy and confused and vague, and drawing a line ain't our forte. In a way, it's a plus that we might not be Absolutists and keep many possibilities open instead of claiming that this or that ONE thing (STOPPING HERE) changed our life forever. "Stopping here" meaning, not-open-anymore, not-changing-anymore, am-inanimate-now.

So when the latest disappointments happened recently, went through some reactions, like: What's the use? Move on with something else. And, the Coriolanus (thanks, SHAKESPEARE) response, "There are worlds elsewhere" (iow, Fuck you'bye).

But then, also: Am giving it one more ALL OUT fight, nothing to lose. And, time to cut the b.s.

So, am COMMITTING (sort of, for the moment - I'm a Pisces!1 to ) :

* Focus on the top few or couple of goals. all. the. time. Meaning, cut out time-wasters not aimed at these. I'm looking at YOU/INTERNET. So, instead of spending HOURS here on DU and not writing my lifelong touted "book," will stay away most of the time and use it as a "dessert" and reward for having put in time and effort *first* that day on the "book."

* Cut loose destructive people: The ones who are negative, drags, draining, soul suckers. The ones always kicking the shins. The ones who demand that you CENSOR yourself, with their list of Forbidden Topics, who put Walls up that keep you from being who you are. There are others not that bad to be cut off but can be put on a RESPOND-ONLY status, not Reach-Out-To.

* For the rarely occurring "Happy Few" (thanks, STENDHAL), reciprocate at least as much as their kindness, more so. Today a young nurse was extra pleasant and I was extra pleasant way back. Then entering a convenience store a laboring type held the door and ushered me first, and on the way out I held the door for him. This does not mean coddling horrid types.

**********Will welcome any additions.

****ON further EDITS: Trying hard not to be presumptuous, presumption being in my Boomer DNA: This post of mine smacks of the Hippies of the late stage and Jane FONDA. We thought we had created the world anew, not like anything the previous 5K years of generations had ever experienced before. I remember when the turmoil of the '60s was petering out, there was a slim booklet by an erstwhile Hippie, bidding Farewell to All That, like so blase at having done it all, seen it all. The last chapter was titled, "Avoid Fried Food!1" Like, that was the biggest lesson he had scooped up from the earthshaking changes of his time, his Last Words before he boarded the space ship outta here. And Ms FONDA went through so many changes - legacy kid, starlet, sex bomb, protester, fitness guru, trophy wife, whatever - and through it all, she felt it incumbent on herself to preach her (latest) Word to the rest of us poor schubs, like we were baby birds with our gullets to be stuffed by her.

***UPDATE 1: Self-pity:: Whatever the situation, others are incredibly worse.

***UPDATE 2: Live *MY* life, not a life dominated by the life decisions of *others* (for themselves) that impacted mine.

***UPDATE 3: Recognize *AVOIDANCE* as one of the procrastinating behaviors - avoiding the main task by piddling around with "busy" (seeming) little distracting tasks.