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Friday, August 29, 2008
My Orgasmic Orgone Accumulator
http://blog.lavacocktail.com/2008/08/23/my-groovy-orgone-accumulator.aspxMy Orgasmic Orgone Accumulator
Posted by Lava Cocktail at Saturday, August 23, 2008
A few years ago, after being sent a review copy of The Orgone Accumulator Handbook by James DeMeo, I made a portable one out of a coffee can, wool felt and plenty of steel wool. I then stuffed steel wool into a rain gauge and this serves as my accumulator wand, although the instructions call for a test tube which I couldn't find at the time of construction. I also made a two ply accumulator blanket as well, which I use in my healing work.
The most tangible orgone results have been gotten from putting flower seeds into the accumulator for approx. ten days. Not having a green thumb whatsoever, I have to confess that I was quite amazed at how robust the flowers have become. considering that I just dumped them in the dirt and raked them a few times to spread them out during an unusually cold spring in Minnesota. They continue to grow, some over waist high now-without any application of fertilizer on my part. I've done nothing other than weeding the flower bed once and watering the plants on a regular basis, making sure to praise their good growing job, out loud of course.
Flowers from seeds put into an Orgone Accumulator
First developed by Wilhelm Reich who was most likely murdered by the AMA/ FDA for coming up with something that worked, i.e. using orgone energy to do everything from dissolve people's character armor and alleviate neurosis to improving plant growing as described above, we still can benefit from his genius and insight by making accumulators of our own. It is a fun project for sure and even a sequential klutz such as myself was able to follow the directions which can be found in DeMeo's book in chapter 16.
Orgone is most likely Reich's name for what is otherwise known as prana, chi, etc. i.e. life energy that diminishes with such things as pollution, emfs from cell phone towers and chem trails. Ironically, Demeo denies the existence of chem trails. Thus prompted, I sent him several pictures of them, one of which is included in Jerry E. Smith's Weather Warfare book, but DeMeo dismissed them all. My take on this is that he is worried about losing his credibility-esp. since he is an advocate of Reich's work and has successfully continued on with it without suffering the same harassment as Reich did, as far as I know. Maybe he'll see the reality of chem trails someday and not be afraid to admit it-then apply his knowledge of Reich's work in this area.
Reich also developed cloud busting technology which is thoroughly described in Heretic's Notebook: Emotions, Protocells, Ether-Drift and Cosmic Life Energy edited by James DeMeo and which I also reviewed a few years ago (it will take some digital digging to find it but when I do I'll post it here)-certainly worth checking out. For now I'm going to stick with the flowers and be grateful for such living proof of the efficacy of orgone accumulators.
Check out James's website @: http://www.orgonelab.org/
(C)2008-Jaye Beldo
http://www.lavacocktail.com
A Toast to your Psychic Health
Orgone is most likely Reich's name for what is otherwise known as prana, chi, etc. i.e. life energy that diminishes with such things as pollution, emfs from cell phone towers and chem trails. Ironically, Demeo denies the existence of chem trails. Thus prompted, I sent him several pictures of them, one of which is included in Jerry E. Smith's Weather Warfare book, but DeMeo dismissed them all. My take on this is that he is worried about losing his credibility-esp. since he is an advocate of Reich's work and has successfully continued on with it without suffering the same harassment as Reich did, as far as I know. Maybe he'll see the reality of chem trails someday and not be afraid to admit it-then apply his knowledge of Reich's work in this area.
Reich also developed cloud busting technology which is thoroughly described in Heretic's Notebook: Emotions, Protocells, Ether-Drift and Cosmic Life Energy edited by James DeMeo and which I also reviewed a few years ago (it will take some digital digging to find it but when I do I'll post it here)-certainly worth checking out. For now I'm going to stick with the flowers and be grateful for such living proof of the efficacy of orgone accumulators.
Check out James's website @: http://www.orgonelab.org/
(C)2008-Jaye Beldo
http://www.lavacocktail.com
A Toast to your Psychic Health
Inside the Rings
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/25/sports/olympics/25clarey.html
August 25, 2008
Inside the Rings
China Fulfills Its Wish for Olympic Domination
By CHRISTOPHER CLAREY
BEIJING — In a country of numerologists, it was surely not lost on the Chinese that the last medal they won at their undeniably successful Olympics was also their 100th.
It came late Sunday afternoon, shortly before the Closing Ceremony, from boxer Zhang Zhilei in the super heavyweight division, and the only thing that did not seem entirely appropriate as Zhang collected his prize was that he had just finished second.
Gold, not silver, was the color that defined these Games for the Chinese. They finished with 51 gold medals, the highest figure for any nation at an Olympics in 20 years, and they won them across a wider range of sports than any team in Beijing.
“Here the message is clear; you’ve got to win,” said China’s fencing coach Christian Bauer, a Frenchman, in an interview last week with the French newspaper L’Equipe. “When you’ve got a gold medal here, you’re somebody. When you have a silver, you’re not.”
The individual most defined by gold, of course, was Michael Phelps, whose eight gold medals included dramatic, too-close-to-call finishes in the 100-meter butterfly and the 4x100 freestyle relay. It will take an unimaginable effort to trump Phelps. Who will have the ways and means to even compete in nine medal events at a future Olympics, much less win nine?
Usain Bolt, the Jamaican sprinter, certainly did all within his preternatural power to match Phelps’s global impact: winning the 100 and the 200 and the 4x100 relay all in world-record times and giving his ailing sport its latest shot of adrenaline.
One can only hope that there is no dark epilogue to either Bolt’s or Phelps’s phenomenal success stories. This is an era when too many larger-than-life sports figures have turned out to be frauds, including Marion Jones, who has now been stripped of the five track and field medals she won in Sydney at the 2000 Games
“I know, for me, I’m clean,” Phelps said. “I purposely wanted to do more tests to prove it. People can say what they want, but the facts are the facts.”
The only prominent athlete to test positive during these Games was Lyudmila Blonska of Ukraine, who was stripped of her silver medal in the heptathlon and removed from the women’s long jump final. But the Games’ competitive landscape was also altered before the Olympics began when track’s governing body, the International Association of Athletics Federations, suspended seven Russian athletes for tampering with their doping samples, including Yelena Soboleva, the overwhelming favorite to win the women’s 1,500 in Beijing.
With Soboleva absent, the Kenyan women won their first Olympic gold medals on the track, taking the 800 and 1,500.
The Russian Olympic team showed signs of decline, dropping to third in the overall medal standings behind the United States, which finished with 110, and China with its conveniently round 100.
The Russians won 36 gold medals and 88 over all in 2000; they won 27 golds and 92 over all in Athens. This time the final tallies were 23 and 72.
It will be intriguing to see whether Russia, with its increased national wealth and intention to upgrade its sports facilities, will be able to reverse the downward trend in time for London 2012.
The Chinese, however, are clearly in the ascendancy. They continue to dominate in diving, weightlifting, badminton and table tennis. But they also won their first Olympic gold medals here in archery, rowing, boxing, sailing and the gymnastics discipline of trampoline. They won their first medals in beach volleyball, synchronized swimming, rhythmic gymnastics and field hockey.
Remarkably, they won the gold medal count despite failing to win any golds in traditional team sports or in track and field, which awards more medals than any other sport. They also failed to win a medal in basketball, the sport that clearly generates the most passion in China, as was evident to anyone who had the earsplitting experience of watching the national teams’ games.
In track and field, the Chinese won just two bronzes and lost their biggest status symbol, Liu Xiang, to an Achilles’ tendon injury before he could even clear the first hurdle. But Chinese athletes were so successful that even the disappointment of Liu could not spoil this extraordinary national celebration.
China’s rise meant less gold for the rest of the world, with 52 nations winning gold medals here compared with 56 in Athens in 2004. But the overall spread was more balanced, with 87 nations winning at least one medal here, including Olympic minnows like Togo and Mauritius, compared with 74 in Athens.
With impeccable timing with London looming, the British were the biggest mover, climbing from 10th in the medals standings last time to fourth by any measure this time. Their 19 gold medals and 47 overall medals gave them their best overall performance at an Olympics in a century.
Rebecca Adlington, their 19-year-old surprise double gold medalist in swimming, and Chris Hoy, their triple gold medalist in track cycling, will surely not lack for attention over the next four years.
Nor, of course, will Phelps or Bolt, both of whom intend to compete in London. But they, like all future Olympians who try to match their achievements, now have an exceedingly difficult act to follow.
August 25, 2008
Inside the Rings
China Fulfills Its Wish for Olympic Domination
By CHRISTOPHER CLAREY
BEIJING — In a country of numerologists, it was surely not lost on the Chinese that the last medal they won at their undeniably successful Olympics was also their 100th.
It came late Sunday afternoon, shortly before the Closing Ceremony, from boxer Zhang Zhilei in the super heavyweight division, and the only thing that did not seem entirely appropriate as Zhang collected his prize was that he had just finished second.
Gold, not silver, was the color that defined these Games for the Chinese. They finished with 51 gold medals, the highest figure for any nation at an Olympics in 20 years, and they won them across a wider range of sports than any team in Beijing.
“Here the message is clear; you’ve got to win,” said China’s fencing coach Christian Bauer, a Frenchman, in an interview last week with the French newspaper L’Equipe. “When you’ve got a gold medal here, you’re somebody. When you have a silver, you’re not.”
The individual most defined by gold, of course, was Michael Phelps, whose eight gold medals included dramatic, too-close-to-call finishes in the 100-meter butterfly and the 4x100 freestyle relay. It will take an unimaginable effort to trump Phelps. Who will have the ways and means to even compete in nine medal events at a future Olympics, much less win nine?
Usain Bolt, the Jamaican sprinter, certainly did all within his preternatural power to match Phelps’s global impact: winning the 100 and the 200 and the 4x100 relay all in world-record times and giving his ailing sport its latest shot of adrenaline.
One can only hope that there is no dark epilogue to either Bolt’s or Phelps’s phenomenal success stories. This is an era when too many larger-than-life sports figures have turned out to be frauds, including Marion Jones, who has now been stripped of the five track and field medals she won in Sydney at the 2000 Games
“I know, for me, I’m clean,” Phelps said. “I purposely wanted to do more tests to prove it. People can say what they want, but the facts are the facts.”
The only prominent athlete to test positive during these Games was Lyudmila Blonska of Ukraine, who was stripped of her silver medal in the heptathlon and removed from the women’s long jump final. But the Games’ competitive landscape was also altered before the Olympics began when track’s governing body, the International Association of Athletics Federations, suspended seven Russian athletes for tampering with their doping samples, including Yelena Soboleva, the overwhelming favorite to win the women’s 1,500 in Beijing.
With Soboleva absent, the Kenyan women won their first Olympic gold medals on the track, taking the 800 and 1,500.
The Russian Olympic team showed signs of decline, dropping to third in the overall medal standings behind the United States, which finished with 110, and China with its conveniently round 100.
The Russians won 36 gold medals and 88 over all in 2000; they won 27 golds and 92 over all in Athens. This time the final tallies were 23 and 72.
It will be intriguing to see whether Russia, with its increased national wealth and intention to upgrade its sports facilities, will be able to reverse the downward trend in time for London 2012.
The Chinese, however, are clearly in the ascendancy. They continue to dominate in diving, weightlifting, badminton and table tennis. But they also won their first Olympic gold medals here in archery, rowing, boxing, sailing and the gymnastics discipline of trampoline. They won their first medals in beach volleyball, synchronized swimming, rhythmic gymnastics and field hockey.
Remarkably, they won the gold medal count despite failing to win any golds in traditional team sports or in track and field, which awards more medals than any other sport. They also failed to win a medal in basketball, the sport that clearly generates the most passion in China, as was evident to anyone who had the earsplitting experience of watching the national teams’ games.
In track and field, the Chinese won just two bronzes and lost their biggest status symbol, Liu Xiang, to an Achilles’ tendon injury before he could even clear the first hurdle. But Chinese athletes were so successful that even the disappointment of Liu could not spoil this extraordinary national celebration.
China’s rise meant less gold for the rest of the world, with 52 nations winning gold medals here compared with 56 in Athens in 2004. But the overall spread was more balanced, with 87 nations winning at least one medal here, including Olympic minnows like Togo and Mauritius, compared with 74 in Athens.
With impeccable timing with London looming, the British were the biggest mover, climbing from 10th in the medals standings last time to fourth by any measure this time. Their 19 gold medals and 47 overall medals gave them their best overall performance at an Olympics in a century.
Rebecca Adlington, their 19-year-old surprise double gold medalist in swimming, and Chris Hoy, their triple gold medalist in track cycling, will surely not lack for attention over the next four years.
Nor, of course, will Phelps or Bolt, both of whom intend to compete in London. But they, like all future Olympians who try to match their achievements, now have an exceedingly difficult act to follow.
Beijing’s Bad Faith Olympics
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/23/opinion/23sat1.html
August 23, 2008
Editorial
Beijing’s Bad Faith Olympics
The Beijing Olympics still have one more day to run. But the final gold medal — for authoritarian image management — can already be safely awarded to China’s Communist Party leadership.
Beijing got what it wanted out of this globally televised spectacular. It reaped a huge prestige bonanza that it will surely use to promote its international influence and, we fear, further tighten its grip at home.
It pocketed these gains without offering any concessions in return. When it increased repression — rather than loosening up — a supine International Olympic Committee barely offered a protest. Most world leaders, including President Bush, were nearly as complicit.
In Beijing for the opening ceremony, Mr. Bush seemed eager to play the role of the apolitical sports fan, instead of publicly pressing China’s leaders on the ongoing Olympics crackdown. That nicely fit into the Chinese script of talking up sports while shutting down politics.
To win the right to host these Games, China promised to honor the Olympic ideals of nonviolence, openness to the world and individual expression. Those promises were systematically broken, starting with this spring’s brutal repression in Tibet and continuing on to the ugly farce of inviting its citizens to apply for legal protest permits and then arresting them if they actually tried to do so.
Along the way, government critics were pre-emptively rounded up and jailed, domestic news outlets tightly controlled, foreign journalists denied full access to the Internet and thousands of Beijing’s least telegenic residents were evicted from their homes and out of camera range. On Friday, the Chinese police confirmed that six Americans protesting China’s rule in Tibet had been sentenced to 10 days of detention.
Surely one of the signature events of these Games was the sentencing of two women in their late 70s to “re-education through labor.” Their crime? Applying for permission to protest the inadequate compensation they felt they had received when the government seized their homes years ago for urban redevelopment.
A year ago, the I.O.C. predicted that these Games would be “a force for good” and a spur to human-rights progress. Instead, as Human Rights Watch has reported, they became a catalyst for intensified human-rights abuse.
Mr. Bush has taken some note of China’s appalling human-rights record this summer — privately meeting with Chinese dissidents in Washington just before his visit to the Games and gently nudging his hosts on religious freedom while in Beijing. With these repression-scarred Olympics now drawing to a close, Mr. Bush and other world leaders must tell Beijing that its failure to live up to its Olympic commitments will neither be ignored nor forgotten.
The medal count and DVD sales cannot be the last word on the Beijing Games.
August 23, 2008
Editorial
Beijing’s Bad Faith Olympics
The Beijing Olympics still have one more day to run. But the final gold medal — for authoritarian image management — can already be safely awarded to China’s Communist Party leadership.
Beijing got what it wanted out of this globally televised spectacular. It reaped a huge prestige bonanza that it will surely use to promote its international influence and, we fear, further tighten its grip at home.
It pocketed these gains without offering any concessions in return. When it increased repression — rather than loosening up — a supine International Olympic Committee barely offered a protest. Most world leaders, including President Bush, were nearly as complicit.
In Beijing for the opening ceremony, Mr. Bush seemed eager to play the role of the apolitical sports fan, instead of publicly pressing China’s leaders on the ongoing Olympics crackdown. That nicely fit into the Chinese script of talking up sports while shutting down politics.
To win the right to host these Games, China promised to honor the Olympic ideals of nonviolence, openness to the world and individual expression. Those promises were systematically broken, starting with this spring’s brutal repression in Tibet and continuing on to the ugly farce of inviting its citizens to apply for legal protest permits and then arresting them if they actually tried to do so.
Along the way, government critics were pre-emptively rounded up and jailed, domestic news outlets tightly controlled, foreign journalists denied full access to the Internet and thousands of Beijing’s least telegenic residents were evicted from their homes and out of camera range. On Friday, the Chinese police confirmed that six Americans protesting China’s rule in Tibet had been sentenced to 10 days of detention.
Surely one of the signature events of these Games was the sentencing of two women in their late 70s to “re-education through labor.” Their crime? Applying for permission to protest the inadequate compensation they felt they had received when the government seized their homes years ago for urban redevelopment.
A year ago, the I.O.C. predicted that these Games would be “a force for good” and a spur to human-rights progress. Instead, as Human Rights Watch has reported, they became a catalyst for intensified human-rights abuse.
Mr. Bush has taken some note of China’s appalling human-rights record this summer — privately meeting with Chinese dissidents in Washington just before his visit to the Games and gently nudging his hosts on religious freedom while in Beijing. With these repression-scarred Olympics now drawing to a close, Mr. Bush and other world leaders must tell Beijing that its failure to live up to its Olympic commitments will neither be ignored nor forgotten.
The medal count and DVD sales cannot be the last word on the Beijing Games.
IOC’s gymnastics probe falls well short
http://sports.yahoo.com/olympics/beijing/gymnastics/news?slug=dw-iocprobe082208IOC’s gymnastics probe falls well short
By Dan Wetzel, Yahoo! Sports
8-22-8
Finally, gold Aug 19, 2008 Johnson only sees the silver lining Aug 17, 2008
BEIJING – At least when the NCAA runs one of its bogus investigations of Big State U, it sends some people out in the field, conducts some interviews and then after a few months (or years) claims that the Ferrari Enzo the star tailback was driving really did come from grandma back home and not the booster or the agent.
The International Olympic Committee apparently sees no need for such pause or pretense.
The “investigation” it ordered into whether some Chinese gymnasts were under the minimum age of 16 was concluded after just a few hours Friday.
The not-so stunning verdict: The Chinese are innocent.
Please move along, now. Nothing to see here.
“We believe the matter will be put to rest and there’s no question … on the eligibility,” IOC spokeswoman Giselle Davies said. “The information we have received seems satisfactory in terms of the correct documentation – including birth certificates.”
While you slept, the IOC swept.
Sorry, the matter isn’t being put to rest no matter how many whitewash inspections are done. A real investigation does not take hours. It takes days or weeks or however long is necessary.
What exactly did they do except look at the same questionable info – government-issued passports – they had previously been presented? Did they ask He Kexin if she was 16, cross your heart and hope to die?
The Associated Press says the Chinese turned over information to the International Gymnastics Federation (FIG) on Thursday evening. It included the current and former passport, ID card and family residence permit for the double-gold medalist. All had the same and proper birth date.
That was enough for FIG, which by Friday morning had declared everything fine.
No word on the old websites, interviews with friends and families, a trip to the birth hospital or discovery of old school records. Nothing.
Perhaps this would have amounted to little and perhaps He and the others are, indeed, 16 – but this was nothing but the most ridiculous kind of propaganda.
A 12-hour investigation? Really? No one at the IOC or FIG has even the sense to think, “Perhaps we should at least pretend to care before simply clearing the gymnasts?”
The investigation by FIG was so fast word of its start didn’t make the Chinese government-controlled English newspaper China Daily. No news is good news.
This in the face of mounting evidence from multiple media and citizen investigations in America and England that showed more and more old registration forms, gymnastics websites and athlete logs that showed three of the six Chinese gymnasts used to list birth dates from 1993 and 1994, which would make them too young to compete at the Olympics.
In an effort to protect young athletes before their bones and muscles fully formed, FIG mandates that to compete in the Beijing Games a gymnast must be born in 1992 or before.
First came stories in The New York Times, The Associated Press and the Times of London that listed He’s birth date as a too-young Jan. 1, 1994. Then private citizens got involved. The latest was from a New York computer expert going by the name Stryde Hax who combed old Chinese documents on the web that found even more of the same.
Just last December government controlled media wrote stories about He calling her a 13-year-old “little girl” and a “star of the future.” The future became now when she showed up at the Olympics with a Chinese passport that claimed she was born Jan. 1, 1992.
There were also suspicions about two of her teammates. The birth date of Yang Yilin was listed on official national registration lists posted by the General Administration of Sport of China website for three years from 2004 to 2006 as a too young Aug. 26, 1993, according to the AP.
On her passport her birth date is Aug. 26, 1992.
Jiang Yuyuan’s birthday was Oct. 1, 1993, as recently as a registration list for a 2007 competition. On her passport she was born Nov. 1, 1991.
Perhaps the birth date of one gymnast could be confused one time, but half the team on multiple occasions? Considering 2000 Chinese bronze medalist Yang Yun later admitted on state television she was 14 that year, the IOC or FIG should have been all over this.
Instead, they did nothing until the USOC requested action. Then they just brushed it aside.
Having younger, and presumably smaller and more nimble athletes, can be a significant advantage in some gymnastics disciplines. Romania’s Nadia Comaneci scored seven perfect 10s in the 1976 Games when she was just 14, before FIG set the age limit.
This investigation isn’t fair to the sport of gymnastics, which will forever look suspiciously on the competition here. It isn’t fair to the United States, Romania and Russia, who all deserve to move up one spot on the medal stand if China used ineligible athletes.
And it isn’t fair to China, He and her teammates, who if innocent don’t deserve this to hang over their heads forever.
The IOC and FIG have never been about fair, though. They’ve been about kowtowing to the powerful and cashing the checks. They have so lost their way, have become so insulated by the power, they can’t even fathom no one is accepting a kangaroo court investigation.
Even the NCAA is smarter than that.
First to break records in 100, 200 at same Games
http://sports.espn.go.com/oly/summer08/trackandfield/news/story?id=3544110
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Bolt is first to break records in 100, 200 at same Games
Associated Press
BEIJING -- Usain Bolt kept driving for the finish line, knowing the race was won but there was something even bigger out there.
Not just another world record, but history itself. Not just an unheard-of blowout, but the chance to be called the greatest sprinter ever.
Bolt may have done just that Wednesday night, on his sport's biggest stage.
Usain Bolt ran Wednesday's 200 meter final in 19.30 seconds, breaking Michael Johnson's 12-year-old record of 19.32.
The Jamaican wunderkind hurtled to his second world record and his second Olympic gold medal, finishing the 200-meter race in 19.30 seconds to break Michael Johnson's 12-year-old mark. In doing so he became the first man ever to break the world record in both the 100 and 200 at the same Olympics and the first since Carl Lewis in 1984 to win the sprint double.
That he did it was one thing -- how he did it was even more memorable. He beat Churandy Martina by 0.52 second -- about four body lengths -- the largest margin of victory in an Olympic 200 since the first race in 1900. Martina ended up being disqualified later, however, for running out of his lane.
The last man to hold both world records simultaneously was none other than Donald Quarrie, the 1970s Jamaican star whom Bolt said he always wanted to pattern his running after.
Now Quarrie and everyone else -- Lewis, Jesse Owens, any of the other six men to complete an Olympic 100-200 double -- takes a back seat. Nobody other than Johnson had ever run a 200 in under 19.6 and nobody had broken 9.7 in the 100 before Beijing.
Now Bolt has done both.
He had this one won about halfway through, but unlike his record-setting performance in the 100 four nights before, there was no hot-dogging, no celebrating until he crossed the line. He went hard all the way, looking at the clock down the stretch, leaning at the line, knowing that Johnson's venerable mark was within reach.
When he saw the number come up -- a number that never has before -- he raised his arms, then fell flat to his back, arms and legs outstretched, and basked in the roar of the Bird's Nest crowd.
Wallace Spearmon of the United States finished third but also was disqualified for leaving his lane. He was celebrating along with Bolt -- even picking up his friend -- carrying the American flag around the track for several minutes after the race and was shocked when an official told him of the DQ.
The U.S. team filed a protest after the race, saying Martina had run out of his lane. The protest was accepted, and that meant Shawn Crawford of the U.S., the defending Olympic champion, ended up with the silver medal. Another American, Walter Dix, ended up with the bronze medal despite being the fifth man across the finish line.
Bolt is simply a different kind of runner -- coiled power in his 6-foot-5 frame, supposedly too big for success in the 100, but certainly built to run the 200.
His move out of the starting block isn't nearly as important in the longer race, which makes this more about raw speed. But a good start certainly doesn't hurt. He got one in this race, bursting out of the blocks from Lane 5, overcoming the lag about a quarter of the way through, then beating Martina to the line by four body lengths.
Bolt's 100 record is 9.69 seconds. He averaged 9.65 per 100 meters in the longer sprint, running into a very slight headwind.
"Incredible," Johnson, now the former record-holder, said after the race. "He got an incredible start. Guys of [6-foot-5] should not be able to start like that. It's that long, massive stride. He's eating up so much more track than others. He came in focused, knowing he would likely win the gold and he's got the record."
Bolt won the race on the eve of his 22nd birthday and a version of "Happy Birthday" played over the public-address system as he took off his gold shoes and wrapped the Jamaican flag around his shoulders like a scarf.
He did another hip-swiveling dance, then raised his hands and pointed toward the scoreboard. A little later, he posed near the scoreboard -- the traditional picture that all world record-setters take. Bolt now has three of them -- this, the 100 from Saturday and the picture he took in New York in May when he broke the 100 record the first time.
"You're back there giving it everything you've got -- it's brutal," said Kim Collins, the 2003 world champ who finished seventh. "He's doing it and making it look so simple. Michael Johnson did it, and it didn't looked that easy."
Bolt's victory made Jamaica 3-for-3 in the Olympic sprints, and the women's 200 Thursday will include three Jamaicans with gold-medal potential -- Veronica Campbell-Brown, Sherone Simpson and Kerron Stewart.
None of them, however, will surpass what Bolt has done at these games. And while Michael Phelps and his eight swimming golds may be The Story of these Olympics, Bolt's sheer dominance in the most basic tests of speed there are will not soon be surpassed -- unless he does it himself.
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Bolt is first to break records in 100, 200 at same Games
Associated Press
BEIJING -- Usain Bolt kept driving for the finish line, knowing the race was won but there was something even bigger out there.
Not just another world record, but history itself. Not just an unheard-of blowout, but the chance to be called the greatest sprinter ever.
Bolt may have done just that Wednesday night, on his sport's biggest stage.
Usain Bolt ran Wednesday's 200 meter final in 19.30 seconds, breaking Michael Johnson's 12-year-old record of 19.32.
The Jamaican wunderkind hurtled to his second world record and his second Olympic gold medal, finishing the 200-meter race in 19.30 seconds to break Michael Johnson's 12-year-old mark. In doing so he became the first man ever to break the world record in both the 100 and 200 at the same Olympics and the first since Carl Lewis in 1984 to win the sprint double.
That he did it was one thing -- how he did it was even more memorable. He beat Churandy Martina by 0.52 second -- about four body lengths -- the largest margin of victory in an Olympic 200 since the first race in 1900. Martina ended up being disqualified later, however, for running out of his lane.
The last man to hold both world records simultaneously was none other than Donald Quarrie, the 1970s Jamaican star whom Bolt said he always wanted to pattern his running after.
Now Quarrie and everyone else -- Lewis, Jesse Owens, any of the other six men to complete an Olympic 100-200 double -- takes a back seat. Nobody other than Johnson had ever run a 200 in under 19.6 and nobody had broken 9.7 in the 100 before Beijing.
Now Bolt has done both.
He had this one won about halfway through, but unlike his record-setting performance in the 100 four nights before, there was no hot-dogging, no celebrating until he crossed the line. He went hard all the way, looking at the clock down the stretch, leaning at the line, knowing that Johnson's venerable mark was within reach.
When he saw the number come up -- a number that never has before -- he raised his arms, then fell flat to his back, arms and legs outstretched, and basked in the roar of the Bird's Nest crowd.
Wallace Spearmon of the United States finished third but also was disqualified for leaving his lane. He was celebrating along with Bolt -- even picking up his friend -- carrying the American flag around the track for several minutes after the race and was shocked when an official told him of the DQ.
The U.S. team filed a protest after the race, saying Martina had run out of his lane. The protest was accepted, and that meant Shawn Crawford of the U.S., the defending Olympic champion, ended up with the silver medal. Another American, Walter Dix, ended up with the bronze medal despite being the fifth man across the finish line.
Bolt is simply a different kind of runner -- coiled power in his 6-foot-5 frame, supposedly too big for success in the 100, but certainly built to run the 200.
His move out of the starting block isn't nearly as important in the longer race, which makes this more about raw speed. But a good start certainly doesn't hurt. He got one in this race, bursting out of the blocks from Lane 5, overcoming the lag about a quarter of the way through, then beating Martina to the line by four body lengths.
Bolt's 100 record is 9.69 seconds. He averaged 9.65 per 100 meters in the longer sprint, running into a very slight headwind.
"Incredible," Johnson, now the former record-holder, said after the race. "He got an incredible start. Guys of [6-foot-5] should not be able to start like that. It's that long, massive stride. He's eating up so much more track than others. He came in focused, knowing he would likely win the gold and he's got the record."
Bolt won the race on the eve of his 22nd birthday and a version of "Happy Birthday" played over the public-address system as he took off his gold shoes and wrapped the Jamaican flag around his shoulders like a scarf.
He did another hip-swiveling dance, then raised his hands and pointed toward the scoreboard. A little later, he posed near the scoreboard -- the traditional picture that all world record-setters take. Bolt now has three of them -- this, the 100 from Saturday and the picture he took in New York in May when he broke the 100 record the first time.
"You're back there giving it everything you've got -- it's brutal," said Kim Collins, the 2003 world champ who finished seventh. "He's doing it and making it look so simple. Michael Johnson did it, and it didn't looked that easy."
Bolt's victory made Jamaica 3-for-3 in the Olympic sprints, and the women's 200 Thursday will include three Jamaicans with gold-medal potential -- Veronica Campbell-Brown, Sherone Simpson and Kerron Stewart.
None of them, however, will surpass what Bolt has done at these games. And while Michael Phelps and his eight swimming golds may be The Story of these Olympics, Bolt's sheer dominance in the most basic tests of speed there are will not soon be surpassed -- unless he does it himself.
Paraguayan heartthrob breaks our collective hearts
http://sports.yahoo.com/olympics/beijing/blog/fourth_place_medal/post/The-hot-Paraguayan-goes-cold-at-OlympicsTuesday, Aug 19, 2008
Paraguayan heartthrob breaks our collective hearts
By Chris Chase
Leryn Franco is just your run-of-the-mill javelin thrower/pageant queen/model with her own calendar. But during the Beijing Olympics the 26-year old Paraguayan became so much more to the American people; she became our javelin thrower/pageant queen/model with her own calendar. So, my fellow Americans, it is with a heavy heart that I regret to inform you that our favorite Paraguayan athlete (sorry Jose Luis Chilavert) was eliminated from the Olympics this morning after failing to qualify for the javelin finals. Take all the time you need.
Ms. Franco became the object of our attention after she was noticed by NBC cameras during the Parade of Nations at the Olympic Opening Ceremony. Fourth-Place Medal's fledgling Investigative Unit discovered her identity eight magical days ago and since then our schoolboy crush blossomed into unrequited love.
Leryn -- can we call you Leryn? -- didn't return our collective calls, but we didn't mind. We knew she was busy preparing for her event: the javelin throw. She competed this morning, finishing second-to-last in the qualifying round with a throw that was 12 meters short of her personal best. It was a disappointment, to be sure, but not altogether surprising. After all, Leryn's goal was never to medal; it was to win the hearts of men and women worldwide. And in that event, Leryn Franco won gold.
Hasbro Gives Clue Board Game A Makeover
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=93417780
Hasbro Gives Clue Board Game A Makeover
The new version of Clue takes place in a modern mansion at a party of the rich and famous.
All Things Considered, August 8, 2008
The much-beloved murder mystery game Clue is getting a makeover. It's been on the shelves for 60 years, but game maker Hasbro has redesigned the game for a modern audience.
Rob Daviau, who helped design the new version, tells NPR's Melissa Block that the new game takes place at a modern mansion — at a party of the rich and famous.
The weapons have changed, the characters have bios and the mansion has new rooms, like a spa, a theater and a guesthouse. And the company added an element of suspense with a second deck of cards.
"A board game is basically a story that you're telling around the table together. In this case, it's a murder mystery," Daviau says. "So what's the pacing? How nervous should you be? How much time do people have? Because we know that people have less time now than they did before."
The new game has nine weapons instead of six. There is no more lead pipe, and the revolver is now a pistol. The company also added a trophy, an ax and a baseball bat.
"The weapons aren't in scale to each other," Daviau says. "It oddly took a very long time to get the proportions of the baseball bat right — the handle, versus the knob, versus the thickness. My engineer was ready to kill me because I kept sending him back to trim another millimeter off the barrel."
The characters have changed, too. Miss Scarlet has a first name: Cassandra. Colonel Mustard left the military; he's a former football star. Victor Plum, formerly the professor who was always known as the smartest man in the room, became recast as a self-made video game designer — a dot-com billionaire.
But what about people who cherished the classic version of Clue and may not want to see changes? Daviau says Hasbro was very conscious of that when updating the game.
"We wanted something that the mom or dad who's bringing home for the family [could say], 'This is what I remember, and this is what I want to play with my kids,' " Daviau says. "At the same time, we wanted something the kids would feel like it belonged to them. And this is something that's very appealing to them. So we tried to blend those two worlds. It plays like Clue, it feels like Clue, but it just feels like Clue that would have been created in the 21st century."
Hasbro Gives Clue Board Game A Makeover
The new version of Clue takes place in a modern mansion at a party of the rich and famous.
All Things Considered, August 8, 2008
The much-beloved murder mystery game Clue is getting a makeover. It's been on the shelves for 60 years, but game maker Hasbro has redesigned the game for a modern audience.
Rob Daviau, who helped design the new version, tells NPR's Melissa Block that the new game takes place at a modern mansion — at a party of the rich and famous.
The weapons have changed, the characters have bios and the mansion has new rooms, like a spa, a theater and a guesthouse. And the company added an element of suspense with a second deck of cards.
"A board game is basically a story that you're telling around the table together. In this case, it's a murder mystery," Daviau says. "So what's the pacing? How nervous should you be? How much time do people have? Because we know that people have less time now than they did before."
The new game has nine weapons instead of six. There is no more lead pipe, and the revolver is now a pistol. The company also added a trophy, an ax and a baseball bat.
"The weapons aren't in scale to each other," Daviau says. "It oddly took a very long time to get the proportions of the baseball bat right — the handle, versus the knob, versus the thickness. My engineer was ready to kill me because I kept sending him back to trim another millimeter off the barrel."
The characters have changed, too. Miss Scarlet has a first name: Cassandra. Colonel Mustard left the military; he's a former football star. Victor Plum, formerly the professor who was always known as the smartest man in the room, became recast as a self-made video game designer — a dot-com billionaire.
But what about people who cherished the classic version of Clue and may not want to see changes? Daviau says Hasbro was very conscious of that when updating the game.
"We wanted something that the mom or dad who's bringing home for the family [could say], 'This is what I remember, and this is what I want to play with my kids,' " Daviau says. "At the same time, we wanted something the kids would feel like it belonged to them. And this is something that's very appealing to them. So we tried to blend those two worlds. It plays like Clue, it feels like Clue, but it just feels like Clue that would have been created in the 21st century."
Jerry Wexler, producer of Aretha and Ray Charles
http://wsws.org/articles/2008/aug2008/wexl-a20.shtml
Jerry Wexler, producer of Aretha Franklin and Ray Charles, dead at 91
By Hiram Lee
20 August 2008
Jerry Wexler, the legendary music producer of Atlantic Records, died of congestive heart failure on August 15 at his home in Sarasota, Florida. He was 91.
Wexler was a significant and influential figure in American popular music. During his long career he produced and shaped the sounds of some of the most important R&B musicians of the period between the 1950s and the 1970s, including Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin, Wilson Pickett and Donny Hathaway. Wexler is credited with coining the very term “Rhythm and Blues.”
The future producer was born in the Bronx, New York on January 10, 1917. He was raised in the mostly immigrant neighborhoods of Washington Heights in Manhattan. His father, a Polish immigrant, worked as a window washer. His mother, Elsa, was a socialist and sold copies of the Daily Worker in Harlem.
Elsa Wexler insisted that her son be cultured and have a richer life than she and her husband had known. Hoping the young boy would become a writer, she bought Jerry works of Shakespeare, Moliere and Theodore Dreiser to read. Jerry, however, would take a different path, soon embarking on various cultural pursuits of his own.
Wexler cut classes as a teenager and spent time hustling in poolrooms. After his 1932 graduation from high school, he attended, briefly, City College of New York, but dropped out. Around this time he developed a love for jazz music and constantly searched for old records in various thrift stores throughout the city.
When his mother tried to put him once more on a more studious path by sending him in 1936 to Kansas State College of Agriculture and Applied Science, her plan backfired. The school was only 100 miles from Kansas City, with its thriving jazz and blues scene, including, perhaps most famously, the great Count Basie orchestra. The move only intensified her son’s love for the music.
After two years at Kansas State, Wexler moved back to New York, where he worked for a time alongside his father washing windows. He was drafted during the Second World War and stationed in Texas and Florida. Following his stint in the military he returned to Kansas State and earned a degree in journalism. He then returned to New York in hopes of finding a job at one of the big newspapers. Instead, he got a job with Billboard magazine.
It was at Billboard that Wexler coined the term “Rhythm and Blues.” The editors had asked their writers to come up with a new name for the black music charts which had, up until that time, still been called “race music.” Wexler casually suggested the title be changed to “Rhythm and Blues” and it stuck.
During his time as a music journalist with Billboard, Wexler established ties with performers and industry figures, eventually developing a friendship with Ahmet Ertegun and Herb Abramson, the co-founders of the independent Atlantic Records label.
Asked to come work for the label, Wexler insisted he be made a full partner. While Ertegun first considered this an outlandish proposal, when Abramson went into the army in the early 1950s Wexler finally was brought on as a partner. It was in his role as music producer with Atlantic that Wexler made his greatest contribution to the art form he loved.
Wexler oversaw the recording sessions of a truly remarkable collection of musicians. His credits include work on songs and albums by the likes of Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin, Big Joe Turner (including “Shake, Rattle and Roll”), Ruth Brown, the Drifters, Solomon Burke, Wilson Pickett (including “In the Midnight Hour”), Percy Sledge, Betty Carter, King Curtis, and many others. There is no shortage of classics attached to his name.
But it is his work with Charles and Franklin for which he is perhaps best remembered today. Wexler produced Charles’s first No. 1 R&B single, “I Got a Woman,” and a string of others, including “A Fool For You,” “Drown In My Own Tears,” and “What’d I Say.”
Wexler and engineer Tom Dowd, another of the incredibly influential and creative voices at Atlantic, gave Charles and his band room to breathe on these recordings, and the natural chemistry of the group comes through brilliantly. “I just loved it,” Charles would say in later years, “because they just let me do what I wanted to do.”
It was important to Wexler that his role be one of enhancement and support when working with artists. While his productions certainly bore his familiar fingerprint, they did not bear his signature, figuratively speaking. He was not the star producer-as-auteur in the way that a Phil Spector was. Wexler certainly knew when to take a guiding role, but he also knew when to lay out and let the artist be the artist.
In the case of Aretha Franklin, Wexler played a more significant role of shaping, or reshaping, her work and persona. Prior to signing with Atlantic, Franklin was on the roster of Columbia Records. There she sang in a more popular, cabaret style.
Wexler helped her return to a more southern, gospel and blues-rooted music. It was the music made after this important change in course that earned Franklin her iconic status.
Her Atlantic debut, the album I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You (1967), was for both Franklin and Wexler a masterpiece. This was the album that featured now legendary tracks such as “Respect” and the great Dan Penn composition “Do Right Woman, Do Right Man.”
The album epitomizes the Atlantic R&B sound. There is the stomping backbeat, with a full-bodied snare drum (in contrast to the “popcorn” snare of James Brown’s funk music) snapping down hard on the 2 and 4 of the beat. The bass guitar is given a prominent role in the front of the mix. Franklin’s piano, played loud and heavy, finishes off the rhythm section, making very clear the gospel influence that was such an intimate part of her sound as well as Wexler’s. Horn sections, on this and all the great Atlantic recordings, are never recorded with undue brightness or gloss, but are allowed to retain a “dryness” and a growl, not unlike the sound of the Kansas City shout blues groups Wexler must have heard in the late 1930s.
The album is mesmerizing and justly remembered as one of the all-time great R&B classics. By no means their only memorable collaboration, Wexler produced no less than 16 of Franklin’s albums for the label.
During his Atlantic career, Wexler also fell in love with southern soul, the Stax records and Muscle Shoals sound. He worked with numerous musicians who came out of that scene. And when the great British pop and R&B singer Dusty Springfield signed with Atlantic, Wexler took her to record in Memphis. The result was another masterpiece, Dusty in Memphis. Here, Wexler’s production and his assembling of a stellar band of R&B musicians—the Memphis Cats—inspired Springfield and brought a performance out of the singer that surpassed anything she had done previously.
Apart from Wexler’s duties as music producer at Atlantic Records, he was, of course, also a businessman. While details have been hard to come by in recent tributes, perhaps for fear of speaking ill of the dead, there have been more than a few descriptions of his business practices as being “sharklike” or “ruthless.” He was certainly no stranger to “payola,” the practice of bribing radio stations and disc jockeys to play a record.
There is no need to sentimentalize the past, particularly with regards to the music industry, or to make Wexler out to be a “pure” figure in a mercenary industry. Nevertheless, one can say that while Wexler was in business, he was first and foremost in the music business. That is, he had a genuine passion for the art form and, above all, good taste. He was actively involved in the creative process. He was not an executive who was in business in a general sense, and who happened to own a music property or two. Music was Wexler’s life.
As Ray Charles once said, when contrasting a Jerry Wexler or an Ahmet Ertegun with the typical music executive of today: “There are people in the record industry today—that control it—that can not keep time to a march!” Wexler and Ertegun, he said, “were truly into the music itself. They could feel it.”
There is no doubt, in tributes following Wexler’s death, that artists and fans alike are mourning not only the man, but also the absence of a similar creative and artistic atmosphere in today’s music industry. To take note of Wexler’s contributions is also to take note of the sharp decline of the music industry and overall cultural life in the United States, which, already to be seen in Wexler’s heyday, is at such a pronounced level today.
Jerry Wexler, producer of Aretha Franklin and Ray Charles, dead at 91
By Hiram Lee
20 August 2008
Jerry Wexler, the legendary music producer of Atlantic Records, died of congestive heart failure on August 15 at his home in Sarasota, Florida. He was 91.
Wexler was a significant and influential figure in American popular music. During his long career he produced and shaped the sounds of some of the most important R&B musicians of the period between the 1950s and the 1970s, including Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin, Wilson Pickett and Donny Hathaway. Wexler is credited with coining the very term “Rhythm and Blues.”
The future producer was born in the Bronx, New York on January 10, 1917. He was raised in the mostly immigrant neighborhoods of Washington Heights in Manhattan. His father, a Polish immigrant, worked as a window washer. His mother, Elsa, was a socialist and sold copies of the Daily Worker in Harlem.
Elsa Wexler insisted that her son be cultured and have a richer life than she and her husband had known. Hoping the young boy would become a writer, she bought Jerry works of Shakespeare, Moliere and Theodore Dreiser to read. Jerry, however, would take a different path, soon embarking on various cultural pursuits of his own.
Wexler cut classes as a teenager and spent time hustling in poolrooms. After his 1932 graduation from high school, he attended, briefly, City College of New York, but dropped out. Around this time he developed a love for jazz music and constantly searched for old records in various thrift stores throughout the city.
When his mother tried to put him once more on a more studious path by sending him in 1936 to Kansas State College of Agriculture and Applied Science, her plan backfired. The school was only 100 miles from Kansas City, with its thriving jazz and blues scene, including, perhaps most famously, the great Count Basie orchestra. The move only intensified her son’s love for the music.
After two years at Kansas State, Wexler moved back to New York, where he worked for a time alongside his father washing windows. He was drafted during the Second World War and stationed in Texas and Florida. Following his stint in the military he returned to Kansas State and earned a degree in journalism. He then returned to New York in hopes of finding a job at one of the big newspapers. Instead, he got a job with Billboard magazine.
It was at Billboard that Wexler coined the term “Rhythm and Blues.” The editors had asked their writers to come up with a new name for the black music charts which had, up until that time, still been called “race music.” Wexler casually suggested the title be changed to “Rhythm and Blues” and it stuck.
During his time as a music journalist with Billboard, Wexler established ties with performers and industry figures, eventually developing a friendship with Ahmet Ertegun and Herb Abramson, the co-founders of the independent Atlantic Records label.
Asked to come work for the label, Wexler insisted he be made a full partner. While Ertegun first considered this an outlandish proposal, when Abramson went into the army in the early 1950s Wexler finally was brought on as a partner. It was in his role as music producer with Atlantic that Wexler made his greatest contribution to the art form he loved.
Wexler oversaw the recording sessions of a truly remarkable collection of musicians. His credits include work on songs and albums by the likes of Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin, Big Joe Turner (including “Shake, Rattle and Roll”), Ruth Brown, the Drifters, Solomon Burke, Wilson Pickett (including “In the Midnight Hour”), Percy Sledge, Betty Carter, King Curtis, and many others. There is no shortage of classics attached to his name.
But it is his work with Charles and Franklin for which he is perhaps best remembered today. Wexler produced Charles’s first No. 1 R&B single, “I Got a Woman,” and a string of others, including “A Fool For You,” “Drown In My Own Tears,” and “What’d I Say.”
Wexler and engineer Tom Dowd, another of the incredibly influential and creative voices at Atlantic, gave Charles and his band room to breathe on these recordings, and the natural chemistry of the group comes through brilliantly. “I just loved it,” Charles would say in later years, “because they just let me do what I wanted to do.”
It was important to Wexler that his role be one of enhancement and support when working with artists. While his productions certainly bore his familiar fingerprint, they did not bear his signature, figuratively speaking. He was not the star producer-as-auteur in the way that a Phil Spector was. Wexler certainly knew when to take a guiding role, but he also knew when to lay out and let the artist be the artist.
In the case of Aretha Franklin, Wexler played a more significant role of shaping, or reshaping, her work and persona. Prior to signing with Atlantic, Franklin was on the roster of Columbia Records. There she sang in a more popular, cabaret style.
Wexler helped her return to a more southern, gospel and blues-rooted music. It was the music made after this important change in course that earned Franklin her iconic status.
Her Atlantic debut, the album I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You (1967), was for both Franklin and Wexler a masterpiece. This was the album that featured now legendary tracks such as “Respect” and the great Dan Penn composition “Do Right Woman, Do Right Man.”
The album epitomizes the Atlantic R&B sound. There is the stomping backbeat, with a full-bodied snare drum (in contrast to the “popcorn” snare of James Brown’s funk music) snapping down hard on the 2 and 4 of the beat. The bass guitar is given a prominent role in the front of the mix. Franklin’s piano, played loud and heavy, finishes off the rhythm section, making very clear the gospel influence that was such an intimate part of her sound as well as Wexler’s. Horn sections, on this and all the great Atlantic recordings, are never recorded with undue brightness or gloss, but are allowed to retain a “dryness” and a growl, not unlike the sound of the Kansas City shout blues groups Wexler must have heard in the late 1930s.
The album is mesmerizing and justly remembered as one of the all-time great R&B classics. By no means their only memorable collaboration, Wexler produced no less than 16 of Franklin’s albums for the label.
During his Atlantic career, Wexler also fell in love with southern soul, the Stax records and Muscle Shoals sound. He worked with numerous musicians who came out of that scene. And when the great British pop and R&B singer Dusty Springfield signed with Atlantic, Wexler took her to record in Memphis. The result was another masterpiece, Dusty in Memphis. Here, Wexler’s production and his assembling of a stellar band of R&B musicians—the Memphis Cats—inspired Springfield and brought a performance out of the singer that surpassed anything she had done previously.
Apart from Wexler’s duties as music producer at Atlantic Records, he was, of course, also a businessman. While details have been hard to come by in recent tributes, perhaps for fear of speaking ill of the dead, there have been more than a few descriptions of his business practices as being “sharklike” or “ruthless.” He was certainly no stranger to “payola,” the practice of bribing radio stations and disc jockeys to play a record.
There is no need to sentimentalize the past, particularly with regards to the music industry, or to make Wexler out to be a “pure” figure in a mercenary industry. Nevertheless, one can say that while Wexler was in business, he was first and foremost in the music business. That is, he had a genuine passion for the art form and, above all, good taste. He was actively involved in the creative process. He was not an executive who was in business in a general sense, and who happened to own a music property or two. Music was Wexler’s life.
As Ray Charles once said, when contrasting a Jerry Wexler or an Ahmet Ertegun with the typical music executive of today: “There are people in the record industry today—that control it—that can not keep time to a march!” Wexler and Ertegun, he said, “were truly into the music itself. They could feel it.”
There is no doubt, in tributes following Wexler’s death, that artists and fans alike are mourning not only the man, but also the absence of a similar creative and artistic atmosphere in today’s music industry. To take note of Wexler’s contributions is also to take note of the sharp decline of the music industry and overall cultural life in the United States, which, already to be seen in Wexler’s heyday, is at such a pronounced level today.
Free Janine!!!
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2008/08/22/state/n200735D95.DTLPorn star pleads guilty to tax charges
Friday, August 22, 2008
PORTLAND, CA (AP) -- An adult film actress from California faces up to a year in prison and a $100,000 fine after pleading guilty to intentionally failing to pay her federal income taxes.
Federal prosecutors said Friday that 39-year-old Janine M. James, also known as Janine Lindemulder, of Huntington Beach, California, failed to pay more than $200,000 in taxes owed to the Internal Revenue Service.
As part of her plea agreement, James admitted making a down payment on a $647,000 house in Eugene, and purchasing a new Jeep and recreational vehicle while knowing she owed the taxes.
Sentencing was set for October 24 in U.S. District Court in Eugene.
Portia de Rossi Will 'Cook and Clean' for Me
Robalini's Note: Finally, someone who is not afraid to say they're gonna put their bitch in her place...
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,407121,00.html
Ellen DeGeneres: Portia de Rossi Will 'Cook and Clean' for Me
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — Now that they're married, Ellen DeGeneres says Portia de Rossi will "cook and clean" for her.
"What can I say? I'm the luckiest girl in the world," DeGeneres, who wed the former "Ally McBeal" actress on Saturday, told People magazine. "She's officially off the market. No one else gets her. And now she'll cook and clean for me."
DeGeneres also wrote about the nuptials on the Web site of her syndicated TV show.
"I had a big weekend," writes the "Ellen DeGeneres Show" host. "I got married to Portia de Rossi! Sorry, John Stamos ... this one's taken."
DeGeneres, 50, and de Rossi, 35, tied the knot on Saturday in the biggest celebrity union since California legalized same-sex marriage.
"It feels different," DeGeneres told People of being married. "I was already planning on spending the rest of my life with her. But until you're married, you just don't know. It fees wonderful."
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,407121,00.html
Ellen DeGeneres: Portia de Rossi Will 'Cook and Clean' for Me
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — Now that they're married, Ellen DeGeneres says Portia de Rossi will "cook and clean" for her.
"What can I say? I'm the luckiest girl in the world," DeGeneres, who wed the former "Ally McBeal" actress on Saturday, told People magazine. "She's officially off the market. No one else gets her. And now she'll cook and clean for me."
DeGeneres also wrote about the nuptials on the Web site of her syndicated TV show.
"I had a big weekend," writes the "Ellen DeGeneres Show" host. "I got married to Portia de Rossi! Sorry, John Stamos ... this one's taken."
DeGeneres, 50, and de Rossi, 35, tied the knot on Saturday in the biggest celebrity union since California legalized same-sex marriage.
"It feels different," DeGeneres told People of being married. "I was already planning on spending the rest of my life with her. But until you're married, you just don't know. It fees wonderful."
Singer's metal fence has heavy impact in Marin
"Bunch of assholes."
Jeff Bridges as The Dude on Metallica in The Big Lebowski.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/08/19/BAR512DGHR.DTL
Singer's metal fence has heavy impact in Marin
Matthai Kuruvila, Chronicle Staff Writer
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
Marin County -- James Hetfield co-founded the influential heavy metal band Metallica and, as its chief songwriter, helped pen and perform strident songs such as "Don't Tread on Me." It might as well be his anthem for property rights in Marin County.
The Marin County resident has erected a barbed-wire fence on his property near San Rafael, cutting off a fire trail that locals say has been used for at least a half-century to access treasured hiking trails along scenic ridgelines.
Hetfield's representatives have told county officials that the metal and barbed-wire fence is a response to vandalism on the property. Nonetheless, the decision has infuriated the bikers, hikers and equestrians who use the trail. Some locals say it also threatens a century-old county tradition of property owners giving public access to open space.
"This is really a slap in the face to the community," said Connie Berto, 75, who has been using the trail since the 1960s. "It's atrocious. The fence is outrageous."
The case exemplifies a trend in Marin County: New residents are buying properties that were private ranchlands but open to hikers and other outdoors enthusiasts, said Marin County Supervisor Steve Kinsey, a 32-year resident of the county who said he has used the trail many times.
"As real estate values have gone up and different folks have moved into the county, there's a different sense of property rights," Kinsey said. "There's a learning curve that has to take place with new owners about the historic use of the lands, while also respecting that these are private properties."
"In every single town, from Sausalito to Novato, these historical uses exist. Many people consider them to be public. But all it takes is a change of owner to make an abrupt change, depending on the attitude of the property owner."
Messages left with Hetfield's manager, his band's record label (Warner Bros. Records) and his contractor (Redhorse Constructors Inc.) were not successful in getting a comment.
Supervisor Kinsey said the county has negotiated several agreements with property owners to allow access for the public. Kinsey cited Hetfield's neighbor George Lucas as one such example.
Hetfield bought his land in unincorporated Marin County in 1999, according to property records. He planned to make a 14,000-square-foot home as well as a 6,000-square-foot studio, which also functioned as a caretaker's home, according to a 2002 Associated Press story. Kinsey said only the studio has been built.
In 2002, Hetfield made a trade with the county that was beneficial to both sides. He traded away the right to develop 44 homes on his property, which it had been zoned for, and gave an easement for 438 1/2 acres to be maintained as public space by the county. In exchange, Hetfield received the right to build his home higher on the hillside and also larger - at a time when it was difficult to get approval for a 4,000-square-foot home, Kinsey said.
At some point, Hetfield also obtained the Luiz Ranch, which contains the fire road that is under dispute.
The Luiz family had long had an open - but ad hoc - relationship with the public. They even installed gates that latched closed behind hikers, preventing livestock from escaping. Kinsey said it was part of county tradition that dates at least to the 19th century allowing public access to wildlands.
Though the Luiz Ranch Fire Road had been used by the public for decades, Kinsey said it was made an official part of the county trail system in 1983. Still, the relationship between the property owners and the public was mostly informal.
As former ranchlands have changed hands, the county has taken steps to ensure continued public access, said Kinsey, president of the Marin County Open Space District.
Sometimes the county buys the land needing access. In other instances, the county has worked out easements where the county builds fences, puts up signs and does a certain amount of monitoring. In one case of a particularly worried property owner, Kinsey said the county pays a landowner an amount - less than $10,000 a year - for the public to walk through. In that case, the property owner has been satisfied to the extent that Kinsey hopes to secure a permanent easement.
In the case of Hetfield's property, Kinsey said members of the public can sue if they can prove that there was continuous and broad public access to the road before 1972.
"If that was necessary, there was a very well-documented history of use on this trail," he said, noting that a lawsuit is an adversarial approach that ought to be only a last resort. "We aren't even approaching that at this time.
"It makes sense to reach out to Mr. Hetfield and encourage him to meet with us and see if we can find a solution that will work for him and the community."
E-mail Matthai Kuruvila at mkuruvila@sfchronicle.com.
Jeff Bridges as The Dude on Metallica in The Big Lebowski.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/08/19/BAR512DGHR.DTL
Singer's metal fence has heavy impact in Marin
Matthai Kuruvila, Chronicle Staff Writer
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
Marin County -- James Hetfield co-founded the influential heavy metal band Metallica and, as its chief songwriter, helped pen and perform strident songs such as "Don't Tread on Me." It might as well be his anthem for property rights in Marin County.
The Marin County resident has erected a barbed-wire fence on his property near San Rafael, cutting off a fire trail that locals say has been used for at least a half-century to access treasured hiking trails along scenic ridgelines.
Hetfield's representatives have told county officials that the metal and barbed-wire fence is a response to vandalism on the property. Nonetheless, the decision has infuriated the bikers, hikers and equestrians who use the trail. Some locals say it also threatens a century-old county tradition of property owners giving public access to open space.
"This is really a slap in the face to the community," said Connie Berto, 75, who has been using the trail since the 1960s. "It's atrocious. The fence is outrageous."
The case exemplifies a trend in Marin County: New residents are buying properties that were private ranchlands but open to hikers and other outdoors enthusiasts, said Marin County Supervisor Steve Kinsey, a 32-year resident of the county who said he has used the trail many times.
"As real estate values have gone up and different folks have moved into the county, there's a different sense of property rights," Kinsey said. "There's a learning curve that has to take place with new owners about the historic use of the lands, while also respecting that these are private properties."
"In every single town, from Sausalito to Novato, these historical uses exist. Many people consider them to be public. But all it takes is a change of owner to make an abrupt change, depending on the attitude of the property owner."
Messages left with Hetfield's manager, his band's record label (Warner Bros. Records) and his contractor (Redhorse Constructors Inc.) were not successful in getting a comment.
Supervisor Kinsey said the county has negotiated several agreements with property owners to allow access for the public. Kinsey cited Hetfield's neighbor George Lucas as one such example.
Hetfield bought his land in unincorporated Marin County in 1999, according to property records. He planned to make a 14,000-square-foot home as well as a 6,000-square-foot studio, which also functioned as a caretaker's home, according to a 2002 Associated Press story. Kinsey said only the studio has been built.
In 2002, Hetfield made a trade with the county that was beneficial to both sides. He traded away the right to develop 44 homes on his property, which it had been zoned for, and gave an easement for 438 1/2 acres to be maintained as public space by the county. In exchange, Hetfield received the right to build his home higher on the hillside and also larger - at a time when it was difficult to get approval for a 4,000-square-foot home, Kinsey said.
At some point, Hetfield also obtained the Luiz Ranch, which contains the fire road that is under dispute.
The Luiz family had long had an open - but ad hoc - relationship with the public. They even installed gates that latched closed behind hikers, preventing livestock from escaping. Kinsey said it was part of county tradition that dates at least to the 19th century allowing public access to wildlands.
Though the Luiz Ranch Fire Road had been used by the public for decades, Kinsey said it was made an official part of the county trail system in 1983. Still, the relationship between the property owners and the public was mostly informal.
As former ranchlands have changed hands, the county has taken steps to ensure continued public access, said Kinsey, president of the Marin County Open Space District.
Sometimes the county buys the land needing access. In other instances, the county has worked out easements where the county builds fences, puts up signs and does a certain amount of monitoring. In one case of a particularly worried property owner, Kinsey said the county pays a landowner an amount - less than $10,000 a year - for the public to walk through. In that case, the property owner has been satisfied to the extent that Kinsey hopes to secure a permanent easement.
In the case of Hetfield's property, Kinsey said members of the public can sue if they can prove that there was continuous and broad public access to the road before 1972.
"If that was necessary, there was a very well-documented history of use on this trail," he said, noting that a lawsuit is an adversarial approach that ought to be only a last resort. "We aren't even approaching that at this time.
"It makes sense to reach out to Mr. Hetfield and encourage him to meet with us and see if we can find a solution that will work for him and the community."
E-mail Matthai Kuruvila at mkuruvila@sfchronicle.com.
MEET THE NEW LARA CROFT
http://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/view/47188/Meet-the-new-Lara-Croft/MEET THE NEW LARA CROFT
12th August 2008 By Emily Garnham for dailystar.co.uk
MEET the feisty brunette set to dazzle video game fans with her killer high-kick and acrobatic stunts.
This sultry 23-year-old receptionist from Croydon is the brand new face and body of Tomb Raider star Lara Croft.
Elite gymnast Alison Carroll fought off hundreds of muscular hopefuls to take on the role of sexiest leading lady in the virtual world.
And here she is armed to the teeth as the world’s most famous action heroine and archaeologist.
The stunner – who has had 12 years’ experience as a display gymnast - can’t wait to dazzle her fans with her perfect body and awesome moves.
“This is my dream job - I have always wanted to be an action hero and hope to be able to use my gymnastic ability to perform all of Lara’s stunts,” she said.
The weapon-wielding heroine will be following in the footsteps of blonde bombshell Nell McAndrew and Hollywood heartthrob Angelina Jolie.
And she’s already gearing up for a host of global appearances on TV commercials, chat shows and international modelling assignments.
To make sure Alison’s up for the challenge as her hardcore alter-ego she’s already started a gruelling training regime, working up a sweat in the gym six times a week.
And with SAS survival, combat and semi-automatic weapon firing skills to master in Eastern Europe and crash courses in world archaeology, it looks like this Lara Croft will have her work cut out.
Aaay! Bronze Fonz Hits Brew Town
http://www.eonline.com/uberblog/b24545_aaay_bronze_fonz_hits_brew_town.html
Aaay! Bronze Fonz Hits Brew Town
8-19-8
Gina Serpe
Finally, a Fonzie that's incapable of jumping the shark. If only he existed 30 years ago.
A statue of Arthur Fonzarelli was unveiled to a Happy Days-loving crowd on Wisconsin's Milwaukee River today, commemorating the 10-year run of the classic sitcom and its most iconic character in the city where the series was set (but, alas, never shot).
Fonzie alter ego Henry Winkler was on hand for the invite-only occasion, as were show creator-director-producer Garry Marshall, stars Anson Williams (Potsie), Don Most (Ralph), Marion Ross (Mrs. Cunningham), Tom Bosley (Mr. Cunningham) and Erin Moran (Joanie), as well as Laverne & Shirley leads Penny Marshall and Cindy Williams. Ron Howard was on location and unable to make the unveiling.
Winkler took quite a liking to his life-size leather-jacketed likeness, giving it the ultimate seal of approval: two thumbs up.
"I hope that this statue really represents in the way that this city deserves," Winkler said.
"This is one of the great cities in the United States of America, and everyone should actually come here to enjoy the theater, enjoy the good food, enjoy the warmth of the people and the Fonz!"
Obama selects Biden to reassure the US ruling elite
http://wsws.org/articles/2008/aug2008/bide-a25.shtml
Obama selects Biden to reassure the US ruling elite
By Patrick Martin
25 August 2008
The selection of Senator Joseph Biden as the vice-presidential candidate of the Democratic Party underscores the fraudulent character of the Democratic primary campaign and the undemocratic character of the entire two-party electoral system. Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, the supposed protagonist of “change,” has picked as his running-mate a fixture of the Washington establishment, a six-term US senator who is a proven defender of American imperialism and the interests of big business.
The rollout of the Biden selection over three days of escalating media attention, culminating in the text-message announcement early Saturday and a kickoff rally in Springfield, Illinois, is a metaphor for the entire Obama campaign. His presidential candidacy represents not an insurgency from below, but an effort to manipulate mass sentiments, using Internet technology and slick marketing techniques, aided by a compliant media, to produce a political result that is utterly conventional and in keeping with the requirements of the US ruling elite.
Long gone are the days when the selection of a vice-presidential candidate by one of the two major big business parties involved a complex balancing act between various institutional forces. In the Democratic Party, this would have involved consultations with trade union officials, civil rights organizations, congressional leaders and the heads of particularly powerful state and urban political machines.
Today, neither party has any substantial popular base. In both parties there is only one true “constituency”: the financial aristocracy that dominates economic and political life and controls the mass media, and whose interests determine government policy, both foreign and domestic. The selection of Biden, the senator from a small state with only three electoral votes, whose own presidential bids have failed miserably for lack of popular support, underscores the immense chasm separating the entire political establishment from the broad mass of the American people.
Obama has selected Biden to provide reassurance that, whatever populist rhetoric may be employed for electoral purposes in the fall campaign, the wealth and privileges of the ruling elite and the geo-strategic aims of US imperialism will be the single-minded concerns of a Democratic administration.
An establishment figure
Biden has been a leading figure in the political establishment for three decades. He was first elected to the US Senate from Delaware in 1972, when Richard Nixon was president and Obama was 11 years old, and he has held that position through seven administrations. He has headed two of the most important Senate committees: Judiciary, which vets nominations to judicial positions, including the Supreme Court, and Foreign Relations, which Biden chaired in 2001-2002 and again since the Democrats regained control of the Senate in the 2006 election. Biden ran for president 20 years ago and again this year.
In the 1990s, with Bill Clinton in the White House, Biden was one of the principal proponents of US intervention in the former Yugoslavia, a role that he describes in his campaign autobiography, published last year, as his proudest achievement in foreign policy. In the mid-1990s he called for the US to arm the Bosnian Muslim regime against Serbia, and then advocated a direct US attack on Serbia during the 1999 Kosovo crisis, joining with a like-minded Republican senator to introduce the McCain-Biden Kosovo Resolution, authorizing Clinton to use “all necessary force” against Serbia.
This legislative proposal provided a model for a 2002 congressional resolution authorizing Bush to wage war against Iraq, which Biden co-authored with Republican Senator Richard Lugar. The Bush administration opposed the Biden-Lugar resolution, because it was limited to ridding Iraq of weapons of mass destruction, and successfully pressured the Democratic-controlled Senate to adopt a broader war resolution, for which Biden voted.
On domestic policy, Biden is a conventional liberal whose roots go back to the Cold War era. He combines occasional populist bromides about concern for the poor and downtrodden with close relations with the trade union bureaucracy and unquestioning defense of the profit system. Like every other senator, he has “looked after” the interests of those big corporations with major operations in his state, including the Delaware-based MBNA, the largest independent issuer of credit cards until it was acquired in 2005 by Bank of America.
In this capacity, Biden was one of the most fervent Democratic supporters of the reactionary 2005 legislation overhauling the consumer bankruptcy laws, making it much more difficult for working class and middle-class families to escape debt burdens exacerbated by the corrupt and misleading marketing tactics employed by companies like MBNA. The 2005 law has compounded the problems of distressed homeowners seeking to avoid foreclosure.
Biden defended the bankruptcy bill during the Senate debate and voted for the legislation along with the overwhelming majority of Republicans, including John McCain. Obama opposed the bill, and has attacked it repeatedly during the 2008 campaign as a punitive measure against working families.
Employees of MBNA were the biggest single financial supporters of Biden’s campaigns over the past two decades. In 2003, MBNA hired the senator’s son, Hunter Biden, fresh out of law school, quickly promoting him to the position of executive vice president. (While his father is not wealthy by US Senate standards, Hunter Biden has since become a hedge fund multi-millionaire).
Biden has occasionally taken positions slightly more liberal than those of Obama, most recently voting against the bill (which Obama supported) authorizing a massive expansion of government surveillance of telephone calls and e-mail, and providing legal immunity to the giant telecom firms that collaborated with such illegal spying over the past seven years. But he is a fervent supporter of the USA Patriot Act, defending it during the recent Democratic primary campaign against criticism by some of his opponents.
Biden and the war in Iraq
Senator Obama prevailed over Hillary Clinton in the Democratic nomination contest in large part because she had voted in October 2002 to authorize the Iraq war, while Obama, not then a US Senator, verbally opposed the decision to go to war. This difference in political biographies was utilized by Obama’s campaign to make an appeal to antiwar sentiment, although Obama’s record once he arrived in the Senate in January 2005 was indistinguishable from Clinton’s.
Biden’s record on Iraq makes his selection as the vice-presidential candidate all the more cynical, since he was an enthusiastic supporter of the war far longer than most Senate Democrats. He advocated measures to drastically increase the scale of the violence in order to win the war, including the dispatch of 100,000 additional US troops and the breakup of Iraq into separate Sunni, Shia and Kurdish statelets—on the model of the former Yugoslavia—which would presumably be more easy to control.
In the run-up to the launching of the unprovoked US aggression in March 2003, Biden echoed Bush administration propaganda. At a hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee just after Secretary of State Colin Powell’s notorious appearance before the United Nations Security Council in February 2003, Biden gushed, “I am proud to be associated with you. I think you did better than anyone could have because of your standing, your reputation and your integrity ...” Every major element of Powell’s indictment of Iraq has since proven to be false.
Once the Bush administration’s lies about weapons of mass destruction and Iraqi connections to Al Qaeda and the 9/11 attacks had been exposed, Biden began to express increasing alarm over the failure of the Bush administration to find an adequate rationale for maintaining public support for the war.
He bemoaned the Bush administration’s failure to sell the war effectively to the American people. In a speech to the Brookings Institution in June 2005, he declared, “I want to see the president of the United States succeed in Iraq...His success is America’s success, and his failure is America’s failure.”
Biden was particularly critical of the rosy forecasts of imminent success in Iraq being issued by the Pentagon and White House, which were at odds with the reality on the ground. “This disconnect, I believe, is fueling cynicism that is undermining the single most important weapon we need to give our troops to be able to do their job, and that is the unyielding support of the American people. That support is waning.”
Only after public opinion turned decisively against the war did Biden shift from advocating escalation to a limited pullout of US troops. A Washington Post column in late 2005—which noted the convergence of views of the longtime senator from Delaware and the newly elected senator from Illinois, Barack Obama—described Biden as “an early and consistent supporter of the US intervention against Saddam Hussein.”
Once the Democrats regained control of Congress in the November 2006, Biden became chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, where he played a major role in the capitulation by the congressional Democrats to the Bush “surge” policy. Millions of antiwar voters had cast ballots for the Democrats seeking an end to the war, but the White House escalated the war instead, and the Democrats postured impotently and then went along.
The Democratic-controlled Congress meekly submitted after Bush vetoed modest restrictions on the conduct of the war, and in May 2007 passed full funding for military operations in both Iraq and Afghanistan. When several Democratic senators voted against the funding bill as a protest—including Clinton and Obama—Biden denounced them for undermining the safety of the troops.
Two weeks after this critical vote, Biden denounced antiwar critics of the Democratic Congress, claiming, “We’re busting our neck every single day” trying to end the war. There could be no end to the war, he said, until a significant number of Republican senators defected, to provide the two-thirds majority needed to override a Bush veto, or until a Democratic president was in the White House. “We’re funding the safety of those troops there till we can get 67 votes,” he declared.
By then, the Democratic presidential contest was well under way, and Biden, despite winning little support and no delegates, played an important political role. As the World Socialist Web Site noted following a candidates’ debate in August 2007, “Biden has carved out a niche as the Democratic presidential candidate most willing to publicly rebuke antiwar sentiment.”
In the course of the debate, Biden attacked those who suggested that by threatening a quick withdrawal, the US government could compel Iraqi politicians to establish a stable government in Baghdad. He denounced illusions “that there is any possibility in the lifetime of anyone here of having the Iraqis get together, have a unity government in Baghdad that pulls the country together. That will not happen.... It will not happen in the lifetime of anyone here.” In other words, the US occupation would have to continue indefinitely.
There have been numerous suggestions from Democratic Party officials and the media over the past few days that, given Biden’s reputation for verbal confrontation, his selection signals a more aggressive attitude from the Obama campaign. On his record, however, it is quite likely that Biden will be deployed as an “attack dog” against antiwar critics of the Obama campaign.
This fact makes all the more despicable the fawning embrace of Biden by purportedly “antiwar” publications like the Nation. John Nichols, Washington editor of the left-liberal magazine, wrote that the choice of Biden was an “acceptable, perhaps even satisfying conclusion to the great veep search,” which could tip the polls back in Obama’s direction.
Commenting on the Springfield rally Saturday, Nichols gushed, “When Biden went after John McCain, with a vigor and, yes, a venom that has been missing from Obama’s stump speaking, it was a tonic for the troops who have been waiting for a campaign that is more prepared to throw punches than take them.”
This response only confirms a fundamental truth about the political crisis facing working people in the United States: it is impossible to conduct a serious struggle against American imperialism, and its program of social reaction and war, without first breaking free of the straitjacket of the Democratic Party.
Working people have no stake in the outcome of the Obama-McCain contest, which will determine, for the American ruling elite, who will be their commander-in-chief over the next four years. The task facing the working class is to break with the two-party system and build an independent political movement based on a socialist and internationalist program.
Obama selects Biden to reassure the US ruling elite
By Patrick Martin
25 August 2008
The selection of Senator Joseph Biden as the vice-presidential candidate of the Democratic Party underscores the fraudulent character of the Democratic primary campaign and the undemocratic character of the entire two-party electoral system. Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, the supposed protagonist of “change,” has picked as his running-mate a fixture of the Washington establishment, a six-term US senator who is a proven defender of American imperialism and the interests of big business.
The rollout of the Biden selection over three days of escalating media attention, culminating in the text-message announcement early Saturday and a kickoff rally in Springfield, Illinois, is a metaphor for the entire Obama campaign. His presidential candidacy represents not an insurgency from below, but an effort to manipulate mass sentiments, using Internet technology and slick marketing techniques, aided by a compliant media, to produce a political result that is utterly conventional and in keeping with the requirements of the US ruling elite.
Long gone are the days when the selection of a vice-presidential candidate by one of the two major big business parties involved a complex balancing act between various institutional forces. In the Democratic Party, this would have involved consultations with trade union officials, civil rights organizations, congressional leaders and the heads of particularly powerful state and urban political machines.
Today, neither party has any substantial popular base. In both parties there is only one true “constituency”: the financial aristocracy that dominates economic and political life and controls the mass media, and whose interests determine government policy, both foreign and domestic. The selection of Biden, the senator from a small state with only three electoral votes, whose own presidential bids have failed miserably for lack of popular support, underscores the immense chasm separating the entire political establishment from the broad mass of the American people.
Obama has selected Biden to provide reassurance that, whatever populist rhetoric may be employed for electoral purposes in the fall campaign, the wealth and privileges of the ruling elite and the geo-strategic aims of US imperialism will be the single-minded concerns of a Democratic administration.
An establishment figure
Biden has been a leading figure in the political establishment for three decades. He was first elected to the US Senate from Delaware in 1972, when Richard Nixon was president and Obama was 11 years old, and he has held that position through seven administrations. He has headed two of the most important Senate committees: Judiciary, which vets nominations to judicial positions, including the Supreme Court, and Foreign Relations, which Biden chaired in 2001-2002 and again since the Democrats regained control of the Senate in the 2006 election. Biden ran for president 20 years ago and again this year.
In the 1990s, with Bill Clinton in the White House, Biden was one of the principal proponents of US intervention in the former Yugoslavia, a role that he describes in his campaign autobiography, published last year, as his proudest achievement in foreign policy. In the mid-1990s he called for the US to arm the Bosnian Muslim regime against Serbia, and then advocated a direct US attack on Serbia during the 1999 Kosovo crisis, joining with a like-minded Republican senator to introduce the McCain-Biden Kosovo Resolution, authorizing Clinton to use “all necessary force” against Serbia.
This legislative proposal provided a model for a 2002 congressional resolution authorizing Bush to wage war against Iraq, which Biden co-authored with Republican Senator Richard Lugar. The Bush administration opposed the Biden-Lugar resolution, because it was limited to ridding Iraq of weapons of mass destruction, and successfully pressured the Democratic-controlled Senate to adopt a broader war resolution, for which Biden voted.
On domestic policy, Biden is a conventional liberal whose roots go back to the Cold War era. He combines occasional populist bromides about concern for the poor and downtrodden with close relations with the trade union bureaucracy and unquestioning defense of the profit system. Like every other senator, he has “looked after” the interests of those big corporations with major operations in his state, including the Delaware-based MBNA, the largest independent issuer of credit cards until it was acquired in 2005 by Bank of America.
In this capacity, Biden was one of the most fervent Democratic supporters of the reactionary 2005 legislation overhauling the consumer bankruptcy laws, making it much more difficult for working class and middle-class families to escape debt burdens exacerbated by the corrupt and misleading marketing tactics employed by companies like MBNA. The 2005 law has compounded the problems of distressed homeowners seeking to avoid foreclosure.
Biden defended the bankruptcy bill during the Senate debate and voted for the legislation along with the overwhelming majority of Republicans, including John McCain. Obama opposed the bill, and has attacked it repeatedly during the 2008 campaign as a punitive measure against working families.
Employees of MBNA were the biggest single financial supporters of Biden’s campaigns over the past two decades. In 2003, MBNA hired the senator’s son, Hunter Biden, fresh out of law school, quickly promoting him to the position of executive vice president. (While his father is not wealthy by US Senate standards, Hunter Biden has since become a hedge fund multi-millionaire).
Biden has occasionally taken positions slightly more liberal than those of Obama, most recently voting against the bill (which Obama supported) authorizing a massive expansion of government surveillance of telephone calls and e-mail, and providing legal immunity to the giant telecom firms that collaborated with such illegal spying over the past seven years. But he is a fervent supporter of the USA Patriot Act, defending it during the recent Democratic primary campaign against criticism by some of his opponents.
Biden and the war in Iraq
Senator Obama prevailed over Hillary Clinton in the Democratic nomination contest in large part because she had voted in October 2002 to authorize the Iraq war, while Obama, not then a US Senator, verbally opposed the decision to go to war. This difference in political biographies was utilized by Obama’s campaign to make an appeal to antiwar sentiment, although Obama’s record once he arrived in the Senate in January 2005 was indistinguishable from Clinton’s.
Biden’s record on Iraq makes his selection as the vice-presidential candidate all the more cynical, since he was an enthusiastic supporter of the war far longer than most Senate Democrats. He advocated measures to drastically increase the scale of the violence in order to win the war, including the dispatch of 100,000 additional US troops and the breakup of Iraq into separate Sunni, Shia and Kurdish statelets—on the model of the former Yugoslavia—which would presumably be more easy to control.
In the run-up to the launching of the unprovoked US aggression in March 2003, Biden echoed Bush administration propaganda. At a hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee just after Secretary of State Colin Powell’s notorious appearance before the United Nations Security Council in February 2003, Biden gushed, “I am proud to be associated with you. I think you did better than anyone could have because of your standing, your reputation and your integrity ...” Every major element of Powell’s indictment of Iraq has since proven to be false.
Once the Bush administration’s lies about weapons of mass destruction and Iraqi connections to Al Qaeda and the 9/11 attacks had been exposed, Biden began to express increasing alarm over the failure of the Bush administration to find an adequate rationale for maintaining public support for the war.
He bemoaned the Bush administration’s failure to sell the war effectively to the American people. In a speech to the Brookings Institution in June 2005, he declared, “I want to see the president of the United States succeed in Iraq...His success is America’s success, and his failure is America’s failure.”
Biden was particularly critical of the rosy forecasts of imminent success in Iraq being issued by the Pentagon and White House, which were at odds with the reality on the ground. “This disconnect, I believe, is fueling cynicism that is undermining the single most important weapon we need to give our troops to be able to do their job, and that is the unyielding support of the American people. That support is waning.”
Only after public opinion turned decisively against the war did Biden shift from advocating escalation to a limited pullout of US troops. A Washington Post column in late 2005—which noted the convergence of views of the longtime senator from Delaware and the newly elected senator from Illinois, Barack Obama—described Biden as “an early and consistent supporter of the US intervention against Saddam Hussein.”
Once the Democrats regained control of Congress in the November 2006, Biden became chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, where he played a major role in the capitulation by the congressional Democrats to the Bush “surge” policy. Millions of antiwar voters had cast ballots for the Democrats seeking an end to the war, but the White House escalated the war instead, and the Democrats postured impotently and then went along.
The Democratic-controlled Congress meekly submitted after Bush vetoed modest restrictions on the conduct of the war, and in May 2007 passed full funding for military operations in both Iraq and Afghanistan. When several Democratic senators voted against the funding bill as a protest—including Clinton and Obama—Biden denounced them for undermining the safety of the troops.
Two weeks after this critical vote, Biden denounced antiwar critics of the Democratic Congress, claiming, “We’re busting our neck every single day” trying to end the war. There could be no end to the war, he said, until a significant number of Republican senators defected, to provide the two-thirds majority needed to override a Bush veto, or until a Democratic president was in the White House. “We’re funding the safety of those troops there till we can get 67 votes,” he declared.
By then, the Democratic presidential contest was well under way, and Biden, despite winning little support and no delegates, played an important political role. As the World Socialist Web Site noted following a candidates’ debate in August 2007, “Biden has carved out a niche as the Democratic presidential candidate most willing to publicly rebuke antiwar sentiment.”
In the course of the debate, Biden attacked those who suggested that by threatening a quick withdrawal, the US government could compel Iraqi politicians to establish a stable government in Baghdad. He denounced illusions “that there is any possibility in the lifetime of anyone here of having the Iraqis get together, have a unity government in Baghdad that pulls the country together. That will not happen.... It will not happen in the lifetime of anyone here.” In other words, the US occupation would have to continue indefinitely.
There have been numerous suggestions from Democratic Party officials and the media over the past few days that, given Biden’s reputation for verbal confrontation, his selection signals a more aggressive attitude from the Obama campaign. On his record, however, it is quite likely that Biden will be deployed as an “attack dog” against antiwar critics of the Obama campaign.
This fact makes all the more despicable the fawning embrace of Biden by purportedly “antiwar” publications like the Nation. John Nichols, Washington editor of the left-liberal magazine, wrote that the choice of Biden was an “acceptable, perhaps even satisfying conclusion to the great veep search,” which could tip the polls back in Obama’s direction.
Commenting on the Springfield rally Saturday, Nichols gushed, “When Biden went after John McCain, with a vigor and, yes, a venom that has been missing from Obama’s stump speaking, it was a tonic for the troops who have been waiting for a campaign that is more prepared to throw punches than take them.”
This response only confirms a fundamental truth about the political crisis facing working people in the United States: it is impossible to conduct a serious struggle against American imperialism, and its program of social reaction and war, without first breaking free of the straitjacket of the Democratic Party.
Working people have no stake in the outcome of the Obama-McCain contest, which will determine, for the American ruling elite, who will be their commander-in-chief over the next four years. The task facing the working class is to break with the two-party system and build an independent political movement based on a socialist and internationalist program.
Motormouth Joe Biden
http://rense.com/general83/biden.htm
Motormouth Joe Biden - Warmonger, Wordmonger And Political Hit Man
By Webster G. Tarpley
8-25-8
WASHINGTON DC -- The vice presidential candidate chosen to run with Obama is Senator Joe Biden of Delaware, a discredited, sleazy, and shopworn political hack -- and therefore an anti-climax for all the callow and feckless youth who got the word via text message at 3am in the morning. The ability of the Trilateral-Bilderberg machine which controls Obama to put up a person like Biden already reflects the further degradation of US political life over the past 9-12 months, largely as a result of Obama's own demagogic, no- issues, personality cult agitation.
A year ago, there was wide agreement in the US middle class that Bush and Cheney should be impeached, that the police state be rolled back, and that the Iraq war should be ended as soon as physically possible. Thanks largely to the advent of the vapid and messianic Obama, these issues have now been thoroughly deflated. Biden is himself an incurable warmonger who voted for the Iraq war and blathered ceaselessly in favor of Bush's aggressive adventure to all who would listen. Naming Biden is a brutal insult to the antiwar majority of the Democratic Party, and Obama is obviously hoping that the Iraq war issue is dead, so nobody will care. Last year, Obama promised that he would work against the mentality that produced Iraq; if anyone incarnates that mentality, it is Biden. Biden is an incurable imperialist and an eager advocate of the discredited Bush-Cheney "war on terror." He even tried to use one of the Democratic debates last year to whip up hysteria in favor of attacking Sudan over the Darfur issue, and with some success. "I went there. I sat in the borders. I went in those camps. They're going to have thousands and thousands and thousands of people die. We've got to stop talking and act," Biden postured in Manchester New Hampshire on June 3, 2007 in an apparent call for bombing Sudan, a coup in Khartoum, or an invasion. Incredibly, the crowd applauded wildly.
Biden remains convinced that it is up to the United States to dictate the form of government and economic system of virtually every country in the world. His specialty is blatant interference in the internal affairs of sovereign states, with left-cover of soft power issues like human rights and humanitarian concerns furnishing his favorite pretexts. Biden has learned nothing from the Iraq debacle except that Iraq was not the right victim; more appropriate victims and more effective methods will have to be found, argues Biden. The real lesson of Iraq (and Lebanon 2006) is that US-British imperialism and world domination are finished historically, but this is lost on Biden.
Biden is the author of the odious plan to balkanize, partition, and subdivide Iraq into three zones: a Kurdish state designed to carve up Iran, Syria and Turkey as well as Iraq; a landlocked and oil- poor Sunni desert entity; and an oil-rich Shiastan in the south that might absorb the Arabistan or Achwaz province of Iran is a later breakup scenario for Iran. Biden's plan is a continuation of the Bernard Lewis plan to break up the existing states of the Middle East in a way destined to create a mosaic of pseudo- independent, squabbling mini-states or micro-states. This approach places Biden squarely behind the Zbigniew Brzezinski "dignity" doctrine of breaking up the existing nation states of the world in favor of a crazy quilt of micro-states based on ethnic and religious parochialism and particularism; not one of these micro- states could stand up to Exxon-Mobil or JP Morgan Chase.
BIDEN IS MORALLY INSANE ON GEORGIA
Biden's ample track record as an agent provocateur against Russia goes back more than a decade to the time he mobilized his mouth to help demonize Milosevic of Serbia as part of the Albright-Holbrooke- Wesley Clark anti-Russian campaign of those years, which ended with the NATO bombing of Serbia, an act of unprecedented historical vandalism. In the past week, warmonger Biden has rushed to the side of the latest tin pot mini-Mussolini of the Brzezinski-Soros faction, the infamous war criminal and gangster Mikhail Saakashvili of Georgia. "I left the country convinced that Russia's invasion of Georgia may be the one of the most significant events to occur in Europe since the end of communism," raved Biden on his return, documenting his own moral insanity by siding with the aggressor. "The claims of Georgian atrocities that provided the pretext for Russia's invasion are rapidly being disproved by international observers, and the continuing presence of Russian forces in the country has severe implications for the broader region," added the Orwellian senator.
BIDEN: $1 BILLION FOR MADMAN SAAKASHVILI
In presenting Biden, Barky reveled in Biden's "tough message" for Russia; we are sure Putin is trembling. Biden wants to prop up the madman Saakashvili with $1 billion of the US taxpayers' money, a gesture which is every bit as obscene as the worst Bush-Cheney excesses. $1 billion would get us on the road to fully funding a program like WIC (high-protein foods for expectant mothers) or Head Start, but this thought does not occur to Biden when he is trying to provoke Russia. We can see the cruel elitism of a financier- controlled Obama regime taking place before our eyes.
Obama and Biden resemble each other closely, Both are insufferable windbags besotted with their own rhetorical verbiage. Biden's celebrated gaffes will provide comic relief, as long as they do not gaffe us into World War III, which is always a distinct possibility. Obama and Biden are addicted to the sound of their own voices, and this may turn out to be the fatal flaw that sinks them when the voters get sick of the endless parade of speeches. Obama and Biden are in danger of drowning in their own endless blabber. Each one has more than a touch of megalomania, which prevents them from seeing their limits. Biden's middle name is Robinette, which is close to the term for a faucet tap in French. Biden has never been able to find the tap to turn off his own mouth.
TWO PLAGIARISTS ON THE DEMOCRATIC TICKET
Obama and Biden are both plagiarists; words are their stock in trade, and even the words are fake. It emerged this spring that Obama was spouting verbatim the canned speeches of Governor Deval Patrick of Massachusetts, his fellow clone from the Trilateral stable. Biden is a picaresque paladin of plagiarism. His 1988 presidential campaign was aborted when he was found to have stolen paragraphs of a speech by the Labour Party leader, Neil Kinnock. He had also embroidered his campaign biography. Biden had also been guilty of plagiarism at the Syracuse University law school which he attended, but he had somehow talked his way out of those charges.
BIDEN A CREATURE OF THE WORST CREDIT CARD GOUGERS
Biden represents Delaware in the US Senate. Delaware is not a state, but a giant post box for Dupont, General Motors, and many of the giant corporations and Wall Street firms. The state politics of Delaware are dictated down to the most minute detail by the bankers and their corporate lackeys, since everything depends on keeping a pro-oligarchical political climate in the state. Biden personally is a tool of MBNA, a credit card issuer that was recently absorbed by the Bank of America, which presumably now also owns Biden. Biden got at least $215,000 from MBNA over the past decade. MBNA is notoriously one of the biggest predatory lenders and interest rate gougers in the entire usurious world of credit cards, and Biden's services to them are precisely in this area: Biden was a big supporter of the 2005 bankruptcy law which makes it much harder for working families to escape debt bondage and debt slavery just what the looters at MBNA ordered. Biden has also boasted that he wrote the ban on assault weapons, a measure that is sure to cause problems among the bitter clingers of Appalachia who are concerned about gun ownership.
Obama has voted for the rotten compromise on FISA illegal wiretaps ordered by Bush that grants retroactive immunity to the telecoms. Biden is also an enthusiastic police state totalitarian. In 1995, after the Oklahoma City false flag bombing, Biden submitted an oppressive police state bill, in many ways a precursor of Bush's infamous Patriot Act. "I drafted a terrorism bill after the Oklahoma City bombing," boasts Biden. "And the bill John Ashcroft sent up was my bill." Biden's only regret is that he was not able to undermine political freedom as much as he wanted to.
Obama's drooling acolytes have argued all summer that to name Senator Clinton to the ticket would negate Barky's profile of youth, change, hope, and so forth. Clinton has been a national figure for almost twenty years, but she has been dumped in favor of Biden, who has been in the US Senate for about 36 years and is about as stale and hackneyed as a political figure could be. The difference is that Biden's track record established him as an obedient servant of the Wall Street banks that have their post box headquarters in his state; the Clintons, by contrast, represent the closest thing we have to political combination not wholly owned by Wall Street and capable of saying no to the bankers when they demand austerity and aggression, as they are assuredly doing now. Rockefeller and Soros do not want Sen. Clinton in the presidential succession under any circumstances, and this is an important positive qualification for the New York senator.
BEAU BIDEN, THE CORRUPT ATTORNEY GENERAL OF DELAWARE
Joe Biden's son is Beau Biden, the current attorney general of Delaware. Beau is involved in one of the dirtiest enemies' list operations in recent memory against Larry Sinclair, who has come forward with explosive charges of gay sex and crack cocaine use in 1999 on the part of Obama. When Sinclair came to the National Press Club in Washington on June 18 to make his case, he was arrested on a trumped-up warrant issued by Beau Biden. Sinclair is being threatened with a long jail term, essentially because he has spoken out against Obama. It was a clear bid to do a favor for Barky and get Joe Biden on the ticket in the veep slot. That has now occurred on the basis of a police state operation against an outspoken political opponent which goes beyond Nixon or Bush- Cheney, since Obama is not yet president and may well never be.
The Biden announcement was thoroughly botched and bungled by Axelrod, Plouffe, and Favreau. The text message gimmick is drawn straight from the Kiev Orange revolution of 2004 and the Tiflis Roses revolution of 2003, the models for Obama's attempt to seize power. The proceedings were a carnival of gaffes and Freudian slips, all ignored by Obama's loyal brigade of media whores. According to Barky, Joe Biden would help enact "a new energy policy to freeze ourselves from our dependence on foreign oil" a chilling prospect.
"BARACK AMERICA" AND OTHER FREUDIAN SLIPS
Barky made another revealing Freudian slip: "the next President the next Vice President Joe Biden." Does Barky know that Biden will act as his resident in-house controller? Biden, evidently mindful that he will have to sell the radical subversive Obama as a wholesome product of the heartland, returned the gaffe by calling the presumptive nominee "Barack America" or "Barack American." Perhaps he was trying to imitate the old Subliminal Man of Saturday Night Live, but was too slow.
Behind Barky's Freudian slip is the fact that Biden will evidently run foreign policy for the clueless Obama in much the same way that Brzezinski ran foreign policy above and behind Carter, or that Cheney has run foreign policy above and behind Bush. Obama is so ignorant and cognitively impaired that he could hardly understand the instructions that bankers' spokesmen like Brzezinski and Soros will be shouting to him on the phone. This is where an experienced hack like Biden is needed. The media, in a transparent attempt to portray an apostolic succession for Biden, are still feeding the illusion that Biden was chosen by Caroline Kennedy. In reality, the choice was probably made by Trilateral-Bilderberg operative Jim Johnson, who was forced to retreat from his announced role as The Vetter by revelations about a sweetheart mortgage, but probably just kept going behind the scenes.
The Obama campaign has repeated ad nauseam its mantra that McCain is running for Bush's third term. McCain has answered that Obama is running for Jimmy Carter's second term. The reality may be that Joe Biden is running for Dick Cheney's third term as the resident controller of a lazy and shallow puppet president Obama, the Manchurian candidate of the Trilateral Commission.
Webster G. Tarpley is the author of Obama: The Postmodern Coup, and Barack H. Obama: The Unauthorized Biography, both published by Progressive Press of California.
Motormouth Joe Biden - Warmonger, Wordmonger And Political Hit Man
By Webster G. Tarpley
8-25-8
WASHINGTON DC -- The vice presidential candidate chosen to run with Obama is Senator Joe Biden of Delaware, a discredited, sleazy, and shopworn political hack -- and therefore an anti-climax for all the callow and feckless youth who got the word via text message at 3am in the morning. The ability of the Trilateral-Bilderberg machine which controls Obama to put up a person like Biden already reflects the further degradation of US political life over the past 9-12 months, largely as a result of Obama's own demagogic, no- issues, personality cult agitation.
A year ago, there was wide agreement in the US middle class that Bush and Cheney should be impeached, that the police state be rolled back, and that the Iraq war should be ended as soon as physically possible. Thanks largely to the advent of the vapid and messianic Obama, these issues have now been thoroughly deflated. Biden is himself an incurable warmonger who voted for the Iraq war and blathered ceaselessly in favor of Bush's aggressive adventure to all who would listen. Naming Biden is a brutal insult to the antiwar majority of the Democratic Party, and Obama is obviously hoping that the Iraq war issue is dead, so nobody will care. Last year, Obama promised that he would work against the mentality that produced Iraq; if anyone incarnates that mentality, it is Biden. Biden is an incurable imperialist and an eager advocate of the discredited Bush-Cheney "war on terror." He even tried to use one of the Democratic debates last year to whip up hysteria in favor of attacking Sudan over the Darfur issue, and with some success. "I went there. I sat in the borders. I went in those camps. They're going to have thousands and thousands and thousands of people die. We've got to stop talking and act," Biden postured in Manchester New Hampshire on June 3, 2007 in an apparent call for bombing Sudan, a coup in Khartoum, or an invasion. Incredibly, the crowd applauded wildly.
Biden remains convinced that it is up to the United States to dictate the form of government and economic system of virtually every country in the world. His specialty is blatant interference in the internal affairs of sovereign states, with left-cover of soft power issues like human rights and humanitarian concerns furnishing his favorite pretexts. Biden has learned nothing from the Iraq debacle except that Iraq was not the right victim; more appropriate victims and more effective methods will have to be found, argues Biden. The real lesson of Iraq (and Lebanon 2006) is that US-British imperialism and world domination are finished historically, but this is lost on Biden.
Biden is the author of the odious plan to balkanize, partition, and subdivide Iraq into three zones: a Kurdish state designed to carve up Iran, Syria and Turkey as well as Iraq; a landlocked and oil- poor Sunni desert entity; and an oil-rich Shiastan in the south that might absorb the Arabistan or Achwaz province of Iran is a later breakup scenario for Iran. Biden's plan is a continuation of the Bernard Lewis plan to break up the existing states of the Middle East in a way destined to create a mosaic of pseudo- independent, squabbling mini-states or micro-states. This approach places Biden squarely behind the Zbigniew Brzezinski "dignity" doctrine of breaking up the existing nation states of the world in favor of a crazy quilt of micro-states based on ethnic and religious parochialism and particularism; not one of these micro- states could stand up to Exxon-Mobil or JP Morgan Chase.
BIDEN IS MORALLY INSANE ON GEORGIA
Biden's ample track record as an agent provocateur against Russia goes back more than a decade to the time he mobilized his mouth to help demonize Milosevic of Serbia as part of the Albright-Holbrooke- Wesley Clark anti-Russian campaign of those years, which ended with the NATO bombing of Serbia, an act of unprecedented historical vandalism. In the past week, warmonger Biden has rushed to the side of the latest tin pot mini-Mussolini of the Brzezinski-Soros faction, the infamous war criminal and gangster Mikhail Saakashvili of Georgia. "I left the country convinced that Russia's invasion of Georgia may be the one of the most significant events to occur in Europe since the end of communism," raved Biden on his return, documenting his own moral insanity by siding with the aggressor. "The claims of Georgian atrocities that provided the pretext for Russia's invasion are rapidly being disproved by international observers, and the continuing presence of Russian forces in the country has severe implications for the broader region," added the Orwellian senator.
BIDEN: $1 BILLION FOR MADMAN SAAKASHVILI
In presenting Biden, Barky reveled in Biden's "tough message" for Russia; we are sure Putin is trembling. Biden wants to prop up the madman Saakashvili with $1 billion of the US taxpayers' money, a gesture which is every bit as obscene as the worst Bush-Cheney excesses. $1 billion would get us on the road to fully funding a program like WIC (high-protein foods for expectant mothers) or Head Start, but this thought does not occur to Biden when he is trying to provoke Russia. We can see the cruel elitism of a financier- controlled Obama regime taking place before our eyes.
Obama and Biden resemble each other closely, Both are insufferable windbags besotted with their own rhetorical verbiage. Biden's celebrated gaffes will provide comic relief, as long as they do not gaffe us into World War III, which is always a distinct possibility. Obama and Biden are addicted to the sound of their own voices, and this may turn out to be the fatal flaw that sinks them when the voters get sick of the endless parade of speeches. Obama and Biden are in danger of drowning in their own endless blabber. Each one has more than a touch of megalomania, which prevents them from seeing their limits. Biden's middle name is Robinette, which is close to the term for a faucet tap in French. Biden has never been able to find the tap to turn off his own mouth.
TWO PLAGIARISTS ON THE DEMOCRATIC TICKET
Obama and Biden are both plagiarists; words are their stock in trade, and even the words are fake. It emerged this spring that Obama was spouting verbatim the canned speeches of Governor Deval Patrick of Massachusetts, his fellow clone from the Trilateral stable. Biden is a picaresque paladin of plagiarism. His 1988 presidential campaign was aborted when he was found to have stolen paragraphs of a speech by the Labour Party leader, Neil Kinnock. He had also embroidered his campaign biography. Biden had also been guilty of plagiarism at the Syracuse University law school which he attended, but he had somehow talked his way out of those charges.
BIDEN A CREATURE OF THE WORST CREDIT CARD GOUGERS
Biden represents Delaware in the US Senate. Delaware is not a state, but a giant post box for Dupont, General Motors, and many of the giant corporations and Wall Street firms. The state politics of Delaware are dictated down to the most minute detail by the bankers and their corporate lackeys, since everything depends on keeping a pro-oligarchical political climate in the state. Biden personally is a tool of MBNA, a credit card issuer that was recently absorbed by the Bank of America, which presumably now also owns Biden. Biden got at least $215,000 from MBNA over the past decade. MBNA is notoriously one of the biggest predatory lenders and interest rate gougers in the entire usurious world of credit cards, and Biden's services to them are precisely in this area: Biden was a big supporter of the 2005 bankruptcy law which makes it much harder for working families to escape debt bondage and debt slavery just what the looters at MBNA ordered. Biden has also boasted that he wrote the ban on assault weapons, a measure that is sure to cause problems among the bitter clingers of Appalachia who are concerned about gun ownership.
Obama has voted for the rotten compromise on FISA illegal wiretaps ordered by Bush that grants retroactive immunity to the telecoms. Biden is also an enthusiastic police state totalitarian. In 1995, after the Oklahoma City false flag bombing, Biden submitted an oppressive police state bill, in many ways a precursor of Bush's infamous Patriot Act. "I drafted a terrorism bill after the Oklahoma City bombing," boasts Biden. "And the bill John Ashcroft sent up was my bill." Biden's only regret is that he was not able to undermine political freedom as much as he wanted to.
Obama's drooling acolytes have argued all summer that to name Senator Clinton to the ticket would negate Barky's profile of youth, change, hope, and so forth. Clinton has been a national figure for almost twenty years, but she has been dumped in favor of Biden, who has been in the US Senate for about 36 years and is about as stale and hackneyed as a political figure could be. The difference is that Biden's track record established him as an obedient servant of the Wall Street banks that have their post box headquarters in his state; the Clintons, by contrast, represent the closest thing we have to political combination not wholly owned by Wall Street and capable of saying no to the bankers when they demand austerity and aggression, as they are assuredly doing now. Rockefeller and Soros do not want Sen. Clinton in the presidential succession under any circumstances, and this is an important positive qualification for the New York senator.
BEAU BIDEN, THE CORRUPT ATTORNEY GENERAL OF DELAWARE
Joe Biden's son is Beau Biden, the current attorney general of Delaware. Beau is involved in one of the dirtiest enemies' list operations in recent memory against Larry Sinclair, who has come forward with explosive charges of gay sex and crack cocaine use in 1999 on the part of Obama. When Sinclair came to the National Press Club in Washington on June 18 to make his case, he was arrested on a trumped-up warrant issued by Beau Biden. Sinclair is being threatened with a long jail term, essentially because he has spoken out against Obama. It was a clear bid to do a favor for Barky and get Joe Biden on the ticket in the veep slot. That has now occurred on the basis of a police state operation against an outspoken political opponent which goes beyond Nixon or Bush- Cheney, since Obama is not yet president and may well never be.
The Biden announcement was thoroughly botched and bungled by Axelrod, Plouffe, and Favreau. The text message gimmick is drawn straight from the Kiev Orange revolution of 2004 and the Tiflis Roses revolution of 2003, the models for Obama's attempt to seize power. The proceedings were a carnival of gaffes and Freudian slips, all ignored by Obama's loyal brigade of media whores. According to Barky, Joe Biden would help enact "a new energy policy to freeze ourselves from our dependence on foreign oil" a chilling prospect.
"BARACK AMERICA" AND OTHER FREUDIAN SLIPS
Barky made another revealing Freudian slip: "the next President the next Vice President Joe Biden." Does Barky know that Biden will act as his resident in-house controller? Biden, evidently mindful that he will have to sell the radical subversive Obama as a wholesome product of the heartland, returned the gaffe by calling the presumptive nominee "Barack America" or "Barack American." Perhaps he was trying to imitate the old Subliminal Man of Saturday Night Live, but was too slow.
Behind Barky's Freudian slip is the fact that Biden will evidently run foreign policy for the clueless Obama in much the same way that Brzezinski ran foreign policy above and behind Carter, or that Cheney has run foreign policy above and behind Bush. Obama is so ignorant and cognitively impaired that he could hardly understand the instructions that bankers' spokesmen like Brzezinski and Soros will be shouting to him on the phone. This is where an experienced hack like Biden is needed. The media, in a transparent attempt to portray an apostolic succession for Biden, are still feeding the illusion that Biden was chosen by Caroline Kennedy. In reality, the choice was probably made by Trilateral-Bilderberg operative Jim Johnson, who was forced to retreat from his announced role as The Vetter by revelations about a sweetheart mortgage, but probably just kept going behind the scenes.
The Obama campaign has repeated ad nauseam its mantra that McCain is running for Bush's third term. McCain has answered that Obama is running for Jimmy Carter's second term. The reality may be that Joe Biden is running for Dick Cheney's third term as the resident controller of a lazy and shallow puppet president Obama, the Manchurian candidate of the Trilateral Commission.
Webster G. Tarpley is the author of Obama: The Postmodern Coup, and Barack H. Obama: The Unauthorized Biography, both published by Progressive Press of California.
Fourteen Reasons Why Biden Was a Stupid Choice
http://noquarterusa.net/blog/2008/08/24/fourteen-reasons-why-biden-was-a-stupid-choice/
Fourteen Reasons Why Biden Was a Stupid Choice
By PatRacimora
Email: susanunpc@gmail.com
August 24, 2008
Barack Obama, Joe Biden, vice president
An Exclusive for No Quarter by Democratic Political Strategist (incognito) “Sam Copeland”
The selection of Joe Biden as the Vice Presidential nominee by Obama was a big surprise for me. Biden was not even on my list of finalists.
Why?
I didn’t think anyone – not even Obama – would make a strategic blunder of this magnitude.
For the record, I really like Joe Biden as a person and as a Senator. My analysis is simply political and doesn’t speak to his abilities as a Senator.
The typical criteria for selecting a VP include one or more of the following: (a) win a key state, (b) reinforce a message, (c) balance the ticket (cover different regions of the country), (d) bring the party together, (e) provide a contrast favorable to the candidate (Nixon selects Agnew, Bush selects weaker Quayle), and (f) enlist a hatchet man to do the dirty work. With the exception of “f”, Biden does none of these and he does “f” at a big cost.
Read the rest ->
In announcing Biden as the VP selection, New York Times summarized in a nutshell the problem with this choice:
It reflected a critical strategic choice by Mr. Obama: To go with a running mate who could reassure voters about gaps in his résumé, rather than to pick someone who could deliver a state or reinforce Mr. Obama’s message of change.
Here are my 14 reasons why this is a terrible political decision:
1. During the primary, Biden made many remarks about Obama’s lack of experience and the need for experience in order to be President. That has already given the Republicans a free round of attacks. Throughout the campaign there will be constant contrasts between Biden’s experience and Obama’s lack of it, further questioning Obama’s readiness for the office. Americans don’t care if the VP has experience; they want it in their Commander in Chief.
2. The selection of Biden sends a mixed campaign message. The Obama message was about hope and change. In politics, you must “stay on message.” This sends a mixed message — do you need hope, change, and judgment to lead the country or someone who knows what they are doing? If you say both, then you get into a nuanced discussion of when you need hope vs. experience, why can’t one leader have both hope and experience, and so on. Contrast this with the pick of Senator Gore by Governor Clinton in 2000. This reinforced the message of “A New Democrat” (since both had similar political philosophies).
3. To paraphrase James Farley — one of FDR’s ‘36 campaign managers and DNC chair, “As Delaware goes, so goes Vermont.” In other words, Delaware’s 3 electoral votes should have been in Obama’s column before this pick; it gives him no pick-up. Contrast this with picking Kaine or Bayh, who would have put Virginia or Indiana in play. (The original Farley quote was “As Maine goes, so goes Vermont.” Maine and Vermont were the only 2 states won by Alf Landon in 1936; up until that election Maine was considered a bellwether state in predicting the outcome of national elections).
4. Obama’s electoral strategy was to reconfigure the map by making gains in the Western states. This pick does nothing to help in that area. It actually hurts. Why would people in Colorado, Nevada, Montana, and New Mexico be impressed with a Northeasterner? Contrast with Clinton/Gore 2000 where both were Southerners and thus made the statement, “We are here to win the South.” The selection of Biden also writes off Southern states. Obama had hopes in Georgia and North Carolina; I don’t see how it helps in the border states or in Florida.
5. Obama’s election strategy has now become the equivalent of drawing to an inside straight in poker. He hasn’t secured his base states (particularly Ohio, Michigan, and Pennsylvania), but yet he is campaigning in states like Colorado. Ohio, Michigan, and Pennsylvania are like the inside cards he needs to draw a straight. Biden helps with eastern Pennsylvania because of his roots and religion, but not with Ohio and Michigan (with fewer Catholic populations). In other words, Obama just spent a lot of political capital to win a state - Pennsylvania - that he should be winning by larger numbers anyway.
6. The argument for Biden is that he will appeal to the Hillary base of blue collar workers. This is somewhat true in Pennsylvania where there are strong Catholic ties. (Hillary’s strongest support among men came from Catholic blue collar workers, who Biden should also appeal to). However, blue collar workers in Ohio and Michigan do not have those Catholic roots and it is not clear how much Biden will help. Furthermore, Biden does little (and most likely does harm) in securing the other major portion of Hillary’s base — women. Symbolically, Biden is from the “old white boys” club and is only moderately pro-choice (a NARAL rating of 36%, although he is probably more pro-choice than this number suggests). Some women are already suspicious of Obama’s position on abortion, and Biden’s selection doesn’t help reduce those concerns. I think the selection of Biden indicates that Obama now realizes he needs to unite the party and secure the votes of traditional Democrats; this is a poor tactical play in a correct strategy that should have been executed throughout the primary and completed no later than June.
7. Biden is gaffe prone. Already, the news media is covering past Biden gaffes. This takes away from the impact this announcement was suppose to have. Further, if Biden makes one or two gaffes during the election, then that will take Obama off message for a week or two as everyone tries to cover for them. That will be costly.
Biden’s past gaffes make him look like a quarterback who has some great abilities but who fumbles the ball and throws interceptions as critical game moments. Thus, in voters’ minds, you have a situation where you are starting a high school quarterback in the Super Bowl, and this high school kid is being backed up at quarterback by a veteran who is capable of playing at a high level but is also prone to make critical fumbles. No one wants to go into the Super Bowl with this quarterback situation and, if you had to, you would go with the veteran back-up as starter and not the kid. This is not the image you want if you want to win the Presidency.
8. Biden’s strength is that he can deliver a strong blow to his opposition if need be. He is a great hatchet man. But, this comes at a cost including: (a) he also makes gaffes, (b) it undermines Obama’s claim to run a different campaign (he really boxed himself in with this promise), and (c) he spent a lot of political capital on a hatchet man. In sports metaphor, you have spent a first round draft pick on a person who comes off the bench to foul instead of a franchise player. Obama needs an attack dog. However, given that he has promised a clean campaign, the attack dog can’t be too close to Obama (say, like a VP pick). Instead of making his VP a hatchet man, he should have developed a team of surrogates and made use of his netroots for stealth attacks.
9. Biden supported the resolution to go to war. If it is about judgment and not experience– as Obama has proclaimed — then Biden does not have the qualities needed to be President. Biden also has a different plan to end the Iraq war (withdrawal vs. stay there long enough to sort the contending coalitions into their own geographic space). This mixed message can be exploited by McCain as he uses one against the other.
10. Biden supported the bankruptcy law and legislation favoring credit card companies and banks. This now neutralizes a key democratic issue in the campaign: sub-prime lending and the economy in general. Depending on how the issues in the campaign unfold, McCain can exploit this to drive a wedge to further separate blue collar workers from the Democratic Party (and thus neutralize Biden on this strength). McCain can also use Biden’s connections to the financial industry to show lobbying ties and thus neutralize Obama on this issue.
11. One of Biden’s major strengths is his patriotism. His son is leaving his post in Delaware state government to go serve in Iraq. This is an inspiration to most Americans. Obama probably thinks that it will neutralize McCain’s war record. Here is what will actually happen. McCain will praise Biden and his son for their service to America. Biden will need to reciprocate and praise McCain for his service (or else Biden looks like a jerk). With McCain and Biden praising each other for their service to America, guess who is left out of the discussion? Answer: Obama. Where is his service to America?
12. Biden was accused of plagiarism in 1988. Do I need to say more than this: “Change you can Xerox.”?
13. Biden has over 30 years of speeches, votes, and positions. The Republicans have this material indexed. This gives them an enormous amount of material to be used on a tactical basis as the campaign unfolds.
14. Last week, David Gergen noted that the Obama campaign was losing momentum and needs a game-changer. Gergen is correct in his analysis. The selection of Biden is not a game-changer.
The left-wing blogosphere is changing course and now come, not to bury Biden, but to praise him. They marvel at what a great choice this is (last week they were saying the opposite). They also are in utter admiration for how the selection was announced.
Over at Daily “I-Think-Ned Lamont-is-a-Winning-Political-Strategy” Kos, they put it this way:
This has been the best Veep rollout EVER. . . . [I]s there a better example than this that old media is getting left out in the cold?
Let me conclude by telling you why his roll-out of this announcement was actually terrible.
1. Way too much hype for the selection. Obama hyped this thing up and had everyone on pins and needles for — Joe Biden? Had it been Al Gore or Hillary Clinton or someone like that, then it would have made sense. This is like a nonstop 2 week PR blitz for the movie Gigli.
This hype comes at a cost. First, it reinforces the perception that this campaign is about Obama and not about the American people. Second, I am seeing more and more that Americans are growing fatigued –call it Obama fatigue– by all the theatrics. They want to know how their lives will be better.
2. Daily “I-think-Ned-Lamont-is-a-Winning-Political-Strategy” Kos is absolutely correct that this roll-out made the media look bad because they were not supposed to be the first to know. And this is a good thing? Who do you think will be filtering the news for most Americans during this election cycle? The media is lazy and doesn’t do its job; the one thing it likes most of all is being perceived as being in the know. This roll-out undermined that perception, which can’t help but anger the media. How do you think they will even the score?
3. The use of text messaging was a brilliant idea. It helps build excitement, involves people in the campaign, and builds a voter base. That being said, it was poorly executed, and did more harm than good. Those folks who signed up for the alert were NOT the first people to know, as promised. The media scooped Obama, anyway. This was a let-down to all those who signed up. It sends a signal that Obama really can’t change things (the media is still in control).
The media figured it out because they knew to watch the Secret Service as a tip-off. They knew that the first person to know would not be the text-messengers but the Secret Service, and that the Secret Service would show up to Biden’s house before the announcement. Obama’s people didn’t know that. Obama thought he could out-fox the media, but didn’t know enough about how the media works its sources to do so. Once again, he is the rookie high school quarterback playing in the Super Bowl. He thinks he is clever by calling the “Statute of Liberty” play, but the play gets quickly shut down by a vastly more knowledgeable and experienced press corps (at least more experienced at these sorts of games). The end result is a dissed media, disappointed supporters, and a reinforced rookie image.
Sam Copeland’s Political Rule #29: You cannot make up a political deficit by hiring a surrogate. That only makes the political deficit more apparent.
Fourteen Reasons Why Biden Was a Stupid Choice
By PatRacimora
Email: susanunpc@gmail.com
August 24, 2008
Barack Obama, Joe Biden, vice president
An Exclusive for No Quarter by Democratic Political Strategist (incognito) “Sam Copeland”
The selection of Joe Biden as the Vice Presidential nominee by Obama was a big surprise for me. Biden was not even on my list of finalists.
Why?
I didn’t think anyone – not even Obama – would make a strategic blunder of this magnitude.
For the record, I really like Joe Biden as a person and as a Senator. My analysis is simply political and doesn’t speak to his abilities as a Senator.
The typical criteria for selecting a VP include one or more of the following: (a) win a key state, (b) reinforce a message, (c) balance the ticket (cover different regions of the country), (d) bring the party together, (e) provide a contrast favorable to the candidate (Nixon selects Agnew, Bush selects weaker Quayle), and (f) enlist a hatchet man to do the dirty work. With the exception of “f”, Biden does none of these and he does “f” at a big cost.
Read the rest ->
In announcing Biden as the VP selection, New York Times summarized in a nutshell the problem with this choice:
It reflected a critical strategic choice by Mr. Obama: To go with a running mate who could reassure voters about gaps in his résumé, rather than to pick someone who could deliver a state or reinforce Mr. Obama’s message of change.
Here are my 14 reasons why this is a terrible political decision:
1. During the primary, Biden made many remarks about Obama’s lack of experience and the need for experience in order to be President. That has already given the Republicans a free round of attacks. Throughout the campaign there will be constant contrasts between Biden’s experience and Obama’s lack of it, further questioning Obama’s readiness for the office. Americans don’t care if the VP has experience; they want it in their Commander in Chief.
2. The selection of Biden sends a mixed campaign message. The Obama message was about hope and change. In politics, you must “stay on message.” This sends a mixed message — do you need hope, change, and judgment to lead the country or someone who knows what they are doing? If you say both, then you get into a nuanced discussion of when you need hope vs. experience, why can’t one leader have both hope and experience, and so on. Contrast this with the pick of Senator Gore by Governor Clinton in 2000. This reinforced the message of “A New Democrat” (since both had similar political philosophies).
3. To paraphrase James Farley — one of FDR’s ‘36 campaign managers and DNC chair, “As Delaware goes, so goes Vermont.” In other words, Delaware’s 3 electoral votes should have been in Obama’s column before this pick; it gives him no pick-up. Contrast this with picking Kaine or Bayh, who would have put Virginia or Indiana in play. (The original Farley quote was “As Maine goes, so goes Vermont.” Maine and Vermont were the only 2 states won by Alf Landon in 1936; up until that election Maine was considered a bellwether state in predicting the outcome of national elections).
4. Obama’s electoral strategy was to reconfigure the map by making gains in the Western states. This pick does nothing to help in that area. It actually hurts. Why would people in Colorado, Nevada, Montana, and New Mexico be impressed with a Northeasterner? Contrast with Clinton/Gore 2000 where both were Southerners and thus made the statement, “We are here to win the South.” The selection of Biden also writes off Southern states. Obama had hopes in Georgia and North Carolina; I don’t see how it helps in the border states or in Florida.
5. Obama’s election strategy has now become the equivalent of drawing to an inside straight in poker. He hasn’t secured his base states (particularly Ohio, Michigan, and Pennsylvania), but yet he is campaigning in states like Colorado. Ohio, Michigan, and Pennsylvania are like the inside cards he needs to draw a straight. Biden helps with eastern Pennsylvania because of his roots and religion, but not with Ohio and Michigan (with fewer Catholic populations). In other words, Obama just spent a lot of political capital to win a state - Pennsylvania - that he should be winning by larger numbers anyway.
6. The argument for Biden is that he will appeal to the Hillary base of blue collar workers. This is somewhat true in Pennsylvania where there are strong Catholic ties. (Hillary’s strongest support among men came from Catholic blue collar workers, who Biden should also appeal to). However, blue collar workers in Ohio and Michigan do not have those Catholic roots and it is not clear how much Biden will help. Furthermore, Biden does little (and most likely does harm) in securing the other major portion of Hillary’s base — women. Symbolically, Biden is from the “old white boys” club and is only moderately pro-choice (a NARAL rating of 36%, although he is probably more pro-choice than this number suggests). Some women are already suspicious of Obama’s position on abortion, and Biden’s selection doesn’t help reduce those concerns. I think the selection of Biden indicates that Obama now realizes he needs to unite the party and secure the votes of traditional Democrats; this is a poor tactical play in a correct strategy that should have been executed throughout the primary and completed no later than June.
7. Biden is gaffe prone. Already, the news media is covering past Biden gaffes. This takes away from the impact this announcement was suppose to have. Further, if Biden makes one or two gaffes during the election, then that will take Obama off message for a week or two as everyone tries to cover for them. That will be costly.
Biden’s past gaffes make him look like a quarterback who has some great abilities but who fumbles the ball and throws interceptions as critical game moments. Thus, in voters’ minds, you have a situation where you are starting a high school quarterback in the Super Bowl, and this high school kid is being backed up at quarterback by a veteran who is capable of playing at a high level but is also prone to make critical fumbles. No one wants to go into the Super Bowl with this quarterback situation and, if you had to, you would go with the veteran back-up as starter and not the kid. This is not the image you want if you want to win the Presidency.
8. Biden’s strength is that he can deliver a strong blow to his opposition if need be. He is a great hatchet man. But, this comes at a cost including: (a) he also makes gaffes, (b) it undermines Obama’s claim to run a different campaign (he really boxed himself in with this promise), and (c) he spent a lot of political capital on a hatchet man. In sports metaphor, you have spent a first round draft pick on a person who comes off the bench to foul instead of a franchise player. Obama needs an attack dog. However, given that he has promised a clean campaign, the attack dog can’t be too close to Obama (say, like a VP pick). Instead of making his VP a hatchet man, he should have developed a team of surrogates and made use of his netroots for stealth attacks.
9. Biden supported the resolution to go to war. If it is about judgment and not experience– as Obama has proclaimed — then Biden does not have the qualities needed to be President. Biden also has a different plan to end the Iraq war (withdrawal vs. stay there long enough to sort the contending coalitions into their own geographic space). This mixed message can be exploited by McCain as he uses one against the other.
10. Biden supported the bankruptcy law and legislation favoring credit card companies and banks. This now neutralizes a key democratic issue in the campaign: sub-prime lending and the economy in general. Depending on how the issues in the campaign unfold, McCain can exploit this to drive a wedge to further separate blue collar workers from the Democratic Party (and thus neutralize Biden on this strength). McCain can also use Biden’s connections to the financial industry to show lobbying ties and thus neutralize Obama on this issue.
11. One of Biden’s major strengths is his patriotism. His son is leaving his post in Delaware state government to go serve in Iraq. This is an inspiration to most Americans. Obama probably thinks that it will neutralize McCain’s war record. Here is what will actually happen. McCain will praise Biden and his son for their service to America. Biden will need to reciprocate and praise McCain for his service (or else Biden looks like a jerk). With McCain and Biden praising each other for their service to America, guess who is left out of the discussion? Answer: Obama. Where is his service to America?
12. Biden was accused of plagiarism in 1988. Do I need to say more than this: “Change you can Xerox.”?
13. Biden has over 30 years of speeches, votes, and positions. The Republicans have this material indexed. This gives them an enormous amount of material to be used on a tactical basis as the campaign unfolds.
14. Last week, David Gergen noted that the Obama campaign was losing momentum and needs a game-changer. Gergen is correct in his analysis. The selection of Biden is not a game-changer.
The left-wing blogosphere is changing course and now come, not to bury Biden, but to praise him. They marvel at what a great choice this is (last week they were saying the opposite). They also are in utter admiration for how the selection was announced.
Over at Daily “I-Think-Ned Lamont-is-a-Winning-Political-Strategy” Kos, they put it this way:
This has been the best Veep rollout EVER. . . . [I]s there a better example than this that old media is getting left out in the cold?
Let me conclude by telling you why his roll-out of this announcement was actually terrible.
1. Way too much hype for the selection. Obama hyped this thing up and had everyone on pins and needles for — Joe Biden? Had it been Al Gore or Hillary Clinton or someone like that, then it would have made sense. This is like a nonstop 2 week PR blitz for the movie Gigli.
This hype comes at a cost. First, it reinforces the perception that this campaign is about Obama and not about the American people. Second, I am seeing more and more that Americans are growing fatigued –call it Obama fatigue– by all the theatrics. They want to know how their lives will be better.
2. Daily “I-think-Ned-Lamont-is-a-Winning-Political-Strategy” Kos is absolutely correct that this roll-out made the media look bad because they were not supposed to be the first to know. And this is a good thing? Who do you think will be filtering the news for most Americans during this election cycle? The media is lazy and doesn’t do its job; the one thing it likes most of all is being perceived as being in the know. This roll-out undermined that perception, which can’t help but anger the media. How do you think they will even the score?
3. The use of text messaging was a brilliant idea. It helps build excitement, involves people in the campaign, and builds a voter base. That being said, it was poorly executed, and did more harm than good. Those folks who signed up for the alert were NOT the first people to know, as promised. The media scooped Obama, anyway. This was a let-down to all those who signed up. It sends a signal that Obama really can’t change things (the media is still in control).
The media figured it out because they knew to watch the Secret Service as a tip-off. They knew that the first person to know would not be the text-messengers but the Secret Service, and that the Secret Service would show up to Biden’s house before the announcement. Obama’s people didn’t know that. Obama thought he could out-fox the media, but didn’t know enough about how the media works its sources to do so. Once again, he is the rookie high school quarterback playing in the Super Bowl. He thinks he is clever by calling the “Statute of Liberty” play, but the play gets quickly shut down by a vastly more knowledgeable and experienced press corps (at least more experienced at these sorts of games). The end result is a dissed media, disappointed supporters, and a reinforced rookie image.
Sam Copeland’s Political Rule #29: You cannot make up a political deficit by hiring a surrogate. That only makes the political deficit more apparent.
No Regrets
http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/August-2001/No-Regrets/No Regrets
Marcia Froelke Coburn
August 2001
At 55, Bill Ayers, the notorious sixties radical, still carries a whiff of that rock 'n' roll decade: the oversize wire-rim glasses that, in a certain light, reveal themselves as bifocals; a backpack over his shoulder—not some streamlined, chic job, but a funky backpack-of-the-people, complete with a photo button of abolitionist John Brown pinned to one strap.
Yet he is also a man of the moment. For example: There is his cell phone, laid casually on the tabletop of this neighborhood Taylor Street coffee shop, and his passion for double skim lattes. In conversation, he has an immediate, engaging presence; he may not have known you long but, his manner suggests, he's already fascinated. Then there is his quick laugh and his tendency to punctuate his comments by a tap on your arm.
Overall, it is not easy to imagine him as part of the Weatherman, a group that during the late sixties and early seventies openly called for revolution in America, led a violent rampaging protest in Chicago, and took credit for numerous bombings around the United States.
One of the Weatherman leaders was Bernardine Dohrn, a smart, magnetic figure who, in part because of her penchant for miniskirts and knee-high boots, was dubbed "La Pasionaria of the Lunatic Left" by FBI director J. Edgar Hoover. After a bomb exploded accidentally and killed three of their colleagues, Ayers and Dohrn "hooked up," in the parlance of the day, and, since 1982, they have been married. This—violence, death, and white-hot rhetoric—is his past and Ayers insists he has no regrets. "I acted appropriately in the context of those times," he says. But it's hard to reconcile this quick-witted man with that revolutionary. Today Bill Ayers seems too happy to have ever been so angry.
Ayers, now a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, claims to abhor nostalgia ("Nothing is more boring than some old person going on and on about the way things used to be"). But he has been thinking lately about the past—both his and the country's—and soon he will likely be engaged in what he calls "a dialogue" about the sixties, the antiwar movement, and the radical life he led. The spur for this dialogue will be the publication of Fugitive Days (Beacon Press, $24), a memoir Ayers has written about the trajectory of his life, from a pampered son of the Chicago suburbs to a young pacifist to a founder of one of the most radical political organizations in U.S. history.
In the pantheon of radicals of the sixties and seventies, Ayers's place is unique. "He was not as notorious as Bernardine Dohrn," says Don Rose, a political consultant who has written about those times. "But what made Ayers of particular interest then was that he was the son of a captain of industry. Now he's interesting because, of all the farther-out radicals, he has achieved the most scholarly reputation."
Writing the book has been "a daunting task," Ayers says, "because I want to be true to those times. I don't feel nostalgic for the sixties, but there is no doubt in my mind that the events I write about were shaping events, and they provided for me a way of seeing the world that seemed so alive and so resonant that I can't escape it, no matter what I do."
Certainly there are moments when Ayers has the sound of the sixties down pat, like when he tells me, "Imperialism or globalization—I don't have to care what it's called to hate it." And then there are moments when he sounds light-years away from his radical sensibilities, more like an old grump lamenting today's uninformed youth: He tells me a story about going into Starbucks and having the young woman behind the counter mistake his photo pin of John Brown for Walt Whitman. "And when I told her, no, it's John Brown, she said, 'Who is John Brown?'"
But I am struck by another part of that story. What are you doing in a Starbucks? I ask the man who professes to hate globalization.
"Oh," he says. "I have an addiction to caffeine."
There you have the complexity of Ayers: a man who once tried to overthrow his country's government and now works for a state university; an opponent of the bourgeoisie who has been married for 20 years; a left-wing radical who loves a good cup of imperialist coffee. Maybe he's always known how to choose his battles. Once one of his sons wanted to hear about how Ayers had been a draft card burner. "Tell me again how you burned your credit card, Pop," his son confusedly asked.
"I'm not that radical," Ayers retorted.
* * *
He grew up in Glen Ellyn, where the grass was literally always greener. His father, Thomas Ayers, was a long-time executive of Commonwealth Edison and served as chairman from 1973 to 1980. "Nice was crucially important," Bill Ayers writes of his childhood, and it's clear in his memoir that what Ayers has long been running from is not so much the law of the 1960s and 1970s but the upper-middle-class sensibility in which he was raised. He attended Lake Forest Academy, where he was the sole member of the Young Socialists of America; he hated every minute of school there. He liked what he found at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor: freewheeling thought, radicalism, and a passionate desire to stop the war in Vietnam, at almost any cost. Soon he dropped out, joined the Students for a Democratic Society, and became a full-time activist; arrests in demonstrations quickly followed, much to his family's dismay.
One of the more amusing passages in Fugitive Days comes when Ayers recounts a generations-in-conflict conversation when his father counseled caution:
"Don't close too many doors to the future," he said. "Don't take too many steps down a one-way street."
"What are you doing to end the war?" I challenged.
"Edison isn't political," he said. "That's not our business. . . . I'd be doubtful about a group calling itself Students for a Democratic Society—this is, after all, a democratic society."
"Well, I'm doubtful about a group calling itself Commonwealth Edison," I said. "There's nothing common about wealth."
He walked out of jail and into his first teaching job, at a daycare center in Ann Arbor. Soon he was the 21-year-old director of the place. It was there he met Diana Oughton, a beautiful and accomplished young woman. They fell in love and attended SDS conventions together. As the war dragged on and U.S. politics became more polarized, some of the war resisters—including Ayers, Oughton, and Dohrn—turned more militant. They started a group called the Weatherman, a name inspired by the Bob Dylan song lyric "You don't need a weatherman / To know which way the wind blows."
In 1969, they decided to "bring the war home" by staging a protest in Chicago during the trial of the "Chicago Eight" radicals accused of conspiring to cross state lines to incite a riot during the 1968 Democratic National Convention here. (Their conviction was later overturned.) "The Days of Rage," as the 1969 protest was called, brought several hundred members of the Weatherman—many of them attired for battle with helmets and weapons—to Lincoln Park. The tear-gassed marches, window smashing, and clashes with police lasted four days, during which 290 militants were arrested and 63 people were injured. Damage to windows, cars, and other property soared to hundreds of thousands of dollars. Around this time, Ayers summed up the Weatherman philosophy as "Kill all the rich people. Break up their cars and apartments. Bring the revolution home, kill your parents—that's where it's really at."
"The rhetoric was excessive because the times were excessive," says Ayers. "The war had escalated, so naturally the language escalated. No one thought I meant that literally."
Between 1970 and 1974, the Weatherman took credit for 12 bombings, including one of the United States Capitol and another involving several police cars. The group always emphasized that their targets were property, not people. And, in fact, no one was injured—except, of course, some of the Weatherman's own.
In 1970, a bomb that was apparently being built in a Greenwich Village townhouse, occupied by at least five members of the Weatherman, accidentally exploded—killing three of the group, including Ayers's beloved Diana Oughton. In Fugitive Days, Ayers tries to imagine what happened. Maybe Diana tried to stop the others from their path? Maybe they all drank too much coffee and smoked too many cigarettes?
Maybe Diana saw that this bomb, packed with nails and screws, would have exacted a heavy human toll if it had ever reached its destination—a New Jersey military base. Could she have, in a gesture of sacrifice, crossed the wires herself? "I'll never know what happened," he says. "That's the price I have to pay."
The deaths—and two federal indictments—sent Ayers and his remaining comrades underground. The fugitives eluded the FBI for ten years through a series of constantly changing identities and locations. In one of the most haunting scenes in Fugitive Days, Ayers wanders through remote Midwestern cemeteries, looking for the gravestones of babies who, like them, had been born between 1940 and 1950 but had died shortly thereafter. It was from those headstones that the fugitives would build their new identities. Overall, Ayers figures, he had at least 12 separate aliases while living in 15 different states. The one he used most often was "Joe." Bernardine's favorite was "Rose," and to honor her, Ayers got the rose tattoo he now sports on his forearm.
In 1980, Ayers and Dohrn turned themselves in. (The first words Ayers's father said to him were, "You need a haircut.") By then they had had two children together, and the bombing conspiracy charge against the couple had been dismissed due to government misconduct.
Dohrn plea-bargained to charges of inciting to mob action and resisting police officers. She was sentenced to three years' probation and a $1,500 fine. Ayers was not charged. Even then he showed a way with words: "Guilty as hell, free as a bird—America is a great country," he said.
The next year, a Weatherman killed a Brink's guard and two state troopers in a bungled armored truck robbery. Kathy Boudin, the daughter of an esteemed New York civil rights lawyer, was sentenced to 20 years to life for her role in the crime; Ayers and Dohrn adopted her infant son. Today Ayers says it was partly because of "[the boy's] questions of who he is and what the background of his mother's life was that [Ayers] started to write this memoir."
* * *
Now, Ayers is a respected name in the field of education; his books, including To Teach: The Journey of a Teacher and A Good Preschool Teacher, are hailed by some as groundbreaking and thoughtful approaches to learning. Certainly they are reactions against the popular theories of the 1950s, which held that students were empty vessels to be filled with knowledge.
"Essentially, you must see the student before you as a locus of energy," he says. "He already has a heart, a soul, a mind, interests, and dreams. You need to help him shape those interests, pursue those dreams." Ayers is distinguished professor of education at the University of Illinois at Chicago, where two years ago the university named him Senior University Scholar, an award given to outstanding faculty members. He also directs the Center for Youth and Society, an organization that brings an interdisciplinary approach to working with youth—from art education to after-school programs. One of the center's recent efforts was a symposium inspired by the book Racism Explained to My Daughter, by Tahar Ben Jelloun. "We brought together people to discuss how to address racism with kids," says Therese Quinn, associate director of the center. What strikes Quinn about Ayers is "his enthusiasm and optimism," she says. "He is just overwhelmingly generous and supportive."
"Teaching has always been, for me, linked to issues of social justice," he says. "I've never considered it a neutral or passive profession."
In Fugitive Days, Ayers has a personable style that pulls the reader in from the book's start—when he describes the moment he heard about the 1970 Greenwich Village explosion. It is the moment, of course, when his own life figuratively blew apart. "In the beginning, Bill wanted to write about the Vietnam War and why he thought it was wrong," says Helene Atwan, director of Beacon Press, who edited Ayers's book. "But I told him that most Americans now believed that that war was wrong and certainly the people reading a book of memoirs would feel that. I wanted him to concentrate on his personal story."
Except for a few minor polemics along the way, Ayers does—and then some. "He very effectively captures the spirit of the times," says Bernardine Dohrn, who is now a clinical associate professor at Northwestern University School of Law. "He conjures it up and reflects on it."
Like her husband, Dohrn claims she feels no need to escape the legacy of the 1960s and 1970s. "I feel it's always with me. It's taken a long time to achieve a precarious balance about it, where it's not all defining and a cartoon. But this isn't just my problem; it's a generation's problem."
For two radicals once living underground, Ayers and Dohrn have raised three accomplished children: Zayd (named for a fallen Black Liberation soldier and colleague), 24, graduated from Brown University and has an M.F.A. degree in writing from Boston University, where he now teaches; Malik (for Malcolm X), 21, is attending the University of California at San Diego; and Chesa, 20, their adopted son, just finished his sophomore year at Yale University.
Recently, Ayers himself has returned to school as a student for the first time since he earned his Ph.D. in education at Columbia University—thanks to the monetary award he received from UIC as senior university scholar. He periodically commutes to Bennington College for the school's low-residency M.F.A. program in writing, in which he is concentrating on nonfiction. So far, he has studied with essayist Philip Lopate and novelist/memoirist Susan Cheever. "It's exciting and scary and all those good things," he says. "They have been wonderful in helping me find my own voice."
That is not something you would have thought Ayers needed help with. It is a different time, though, and he is a different man. But not completely changed. Talk to him for any length of time and some rhetoric of the past slips into the conversation. "I think there will be another mass political movement," he predicts, "because I believe that the kind of injustice that is built into our world will not go quietly into the night."
But the time-warp moment is over as quickly as it begins. Ayers—totally back in the present moment—pauses to sip his double skim latte, then greets a graduate student who awaits his attention. "These aren't mountain times, these are valley times," he says, acknowledging a change in the culture, the political climate, and maybe even in himself. "But you can still work the vineyard where you are."
Photograph: Jeff Sciortino
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