LAURAL'S DISH
Laural is our dog, my dog. Everyone else heads off to school, "people like me and Laural" stay home. He's a fine companion, but you have to understand. If he's having a really good time he tries to bite you, me, anyone. Not hard, just…similarly, if you're scratching his belly real good, but then shift to his (apparently less preferable) ears, he'll growl at you. The irregular spelling of his name results from the time that Alexandra and I were mulling the possibilities, in a tunnel in Newton Abbot, when we came across the graffiti: Laura L is a dog.
Laural loves to eat more than any living being ever created, and he will eat absolutely anything. We've weaned him from rocks but he once tried to eat an unopened can of Carlsberg Export. surprise! So his dish frequently has unusual things in it, bits of this or that, absolute treasures that others might consider slightly unfit for human consumption, for whatever stupid reasons.
Beneath please find my literary reflection of Laural's Dish:
Laural's Dish comes out on Fridays, before lunch, usually.
26 August 2011
Oh good, then I won't buy it. Now if she urges her fans to never buy ANY of her albums we'll be in full accord.
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20095497-503544.html
I would like to say some things about Libya. Much of the Western media discussion has centered around whether or not it is a victory for President Obama, the president wisely chooses to discuss the matter more in terms of a victory for the Libyan people. I believe that it is (at least for now) a victory for both the president and The People.
Gaddafi did a lot of good things for Libya, but I believe that the balance had (perhaps long since) changed to the point of where he was doing significantly more harm than good. That he had become more accommodating to the Western powers that be is a fact, as documented by his treatment in our media that changed from terrorist pariah (1980s-90s, and documented evidence of his work with the CIA) to…not quite, ever, friend (pre-revolution). But he was-like Saddam Hussein for a long time-someone we could deal with, learned to deal with. That matter made him oil friendly, not necessarily a great leader.
He was a dictator, and dictatorship is, generally, a bad thing. It may be argued, and I would agree in impossible theory, that the most effective form of government is benevolent dictatorship, but it's more true and frequently said that "power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." Gaddafi had become so enamored with the trappings of power that he turned on his own people. I wish that things had happened differently, but given the circumstances I think-it appears at the moment-that it's all turned out about as well as it could have. (I'm not quite sure that Gaddafi doesn't have another last wild card up his sleeve, but it seems unlikely to be more than, and most likely far less, than a "dirty bomb" that can take out a couple blocks of the new government, wherever it sets up…to be fair, I also never believed that they would take Saddam alive…even the most self-glorified despots tend to lose their nerve when faced with the final reality)
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/gaddafi-heartlands-tough-eastern-rebels-015931152.html
In any event, some fighting will continue in Libya, and people will die. That's inevitable no matter the course. World leaders have to deal in the exchange of lost lives, and so I'm sure that's why the rest of us are glad we don't have to do it.
I welcomed our intervention in terms of the early defensive air strikes, but what we did went beyond my comfort zone*. That Gaddafi has apparently fallen so much more easily than I anticipated vindicates the president for staying the course.
*this particular admission strikes me in some way sadly akin to the dethroned George W. Bush, assuring us that his decision to invade Iraq would be better assessed by future historians. I laughed at the time-and I laugh now-a sad derisive laugh, because it looks worse and worse every day. In the immediate situation, for example, it discredited us in the eyes of those we should have been able to work with, and continues...for so long as they last...as the best recruiting tool for al-Qaeda.
The most important-and unanswerable-question remains….Now what? The Rebels are a very mixed grill, and it's not clear what kind of government will emerge. If it's a democracy of some sort, as it surely appears that it will be…we've seen in Afghanistan and Iraq that that's not necessarily a completely good answer, in and of itself. In fact, if you dig a little deeper it is unsettling to reach something akin to the conclusion that the new Libya will most likely be either, (1) a Western satellite government, like Afghanistan, that will likely lead to secondary, tertiary and perhaps endless revolutions and civil war with the various tribes trying to rule each other, or (2) a completely hostile nation hell-bent on the pan-Arabism that Gaddafi so desperately desired but could never attain, focused, for example, on apartheid in Palestine, and Western occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq. Whether either could conceivably be better than even worst sense-Qaddafi Libya remains to be seen, though I'm on board with the "something had to be done" crowd, and so willing to share the blame of the consequences, if not to the extent that the Libyan people may.
http://news.yahoo.com/egypt-recalls-ambassador-israel-over-ambush-083600043.html
As I said above, I believe that Obama and NATO have done well in at least presenting unfolding events as an internal Libyan matter, never mind our bombs falling from the skies backing the guys we like. It was obviously also a money-maker for U.S. arms dealers, though I do not for one moment believe that to have been the central impetus. What I DO believe, however, is that China is sick and tired of seeing American arms dealers make all the profit off of such events, and you don't have to look hard to see them moving in.
If recent events are merely a precursor to a second, kinder, gentler Cold War, with the United States and China backing sectarian factions (i.e. China moving into the role the Soviets vacated when they ran out of cash, which the Chinese aren't likely to do anytime soon)…it's a disaster for the world, not least the people of the region.
To take it one step further. Though they deny it, everyone knows that Israel has the nuclear bomb, replete with impressive delivery system. That is no small part of why they've been relatively safe, for some years. If the relationship between…say, Egypt and China…develops to the extent that allows Egyptian operatives to steal the secrets the way that the Israelis did from us (yes, clearly they had friends in our government, but everyone has spies, since, like 1580 b.c.; I don't believe we gave it to them as policy)…and IF intelligence oversight is as lax/impossible in Egypt as it was in North Korea…and don't forget, Egyptian politics can blow any number of ways, none particularly friendly to Israel and some particularly open to Iran….that's not a small mess.
The long answer is that we should have pressured Israel on Palestine decades ago, and the short answer is that it needs to immediately be moved up from being a spot-check issue ("We told them to do their best…they're going to…") to one of absolute import.
I talked about this a bit last week, interesting follow-up that makes you wonder how long it is until corporatists start just screaming "YOU OWE US EVERYTHING! WITHOUT US, YOU ARE NOTHING!!" from the steps of Wall Street.
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20095497-503544.html
Occupied Wall Street.
Gosh, you know, the Gaddafi compound kind of reminds me of Buckingham Palace, but in more modernist better taste....when are we gonna do it?
http://www.contactmusic.com/news.nsf/story/ghostbusters-3-to-shoot-next-year_1242039
Ok, so on now with the best Hollywood gossip in years...oh yeah, sure Bill Murray is going to let them do a Ghostbusters without him; more like he's stoned and not bothering to read the script because he's already figured it all out and is going to do it on the set, impromptu like....how about an end-of-the-summer film update...in the order of good they'd be at a drive-in...Peace!
19 August 2011
Ok, in the spirit of British Riviera siesta-with the mornings feeling like late September if you get up at 5 am as I've been doing-we're going to do something a little bit different. Now, by the standards of Laural's Dish doing something a little different may mean something more like doing something normal. Anyway, having not worked on it at all this week, beyond noting a few stories, we're gonna run it straight through in a single shot, like the news ! This will allow me to engage in those cool impromptu segues like they do, you know, "…well Steven, I'm really sorry we accidentally blew up yet another vegetable market in Istanbul, but that reminds me that I bought vegetables in Oakville once, where they're having a pumpkin festival"… or perhaps "that cyclone sure must have knocked down a lot of trees, and speaking of trees, I don't think enough can be said about the fire department's efforts this afternoon in liberating old Mrs. Wilmer's cat from a very large oak tree over on Granite Street…" You get the idea, yeah? Ok, here we go
http://news.yahoo.com/stop-coddling-super-rich-buffett-084140678.html
Now I can't claim to know much about Warren Buffett. I know he's a venture capitalist of some sort, and so probably some kind of vampire. But I do recall that he made the most succinct, appropriate comment on the politics of the last thirty years (better than me, better even than Dr. Hunter S. Thompson), in the New York Times on November 26, 2006. He said, then, "There's class warfare, all right, but it's my class, the rich class, that's making war, and we're winning." That insightful-more than that, honest if obvious-comment won my begrudging respect. A respect, Muriel, that's in some way akin to, or at least reminds me of something that the late hopelessly over-rated* and under-rated** commentator William F. Buckley once said of Dr. Thompson, "He inspires the same kind of respect that you'd have for a streaker at the queen's funeral." Yes, and so Mr. Buffett inspires the kind of respect that you'd have for someone at the same event, trying to sneak into the casket to steal the crown jewels.
*by conservatives, who thought he was being sincere all the time. He wasn't.
** by liberals, who thought he was automatically wrong about everything. He wasn't.
But it does deserve notice when the mega-rich start demanding to be taxed. They've lost something since Henry Ford realized he'd make a helluva lot of cash if he paid his workers enough to buy one of the cars they were building. Banks and Wall Street have collectively worked us to the extent that we don't have anything left for them to rip off anymore, and guys like Buffet do NOT like that. So let's give some back, so they can take another shot at it 'eh?
http://news.yahoo.com/real-liberal-tea-party-220100979.html
[yeah I know that's a picture of the wrong Van Johnson, news does that kind of shit all the time, but I bet the second one is closer]
Speaking of people you might like to shoot. How about a guy who sits around thinking he's going to rally liberals by weeping in front of reporters as he contemplates the kindness of John McCain? Just when you thought the story peaked in the first sentence he then goes on to explain that the reason that Obama's sold out every position he ran on isn't his fault, but those silly liberals who are critiquing him all the time instead of supporting the sell-outs. He concludes, like a Saturday Night Live sketch, by declaring his eternal loyalty, " I will do everything in my power to make sure he stays head of state until they have to pull him out of there." Well I say let's pull them both out of there, put Van Jones in the loony bin and make Obama a greeter at a slightly upscale New York delicatessen…
Yes, just when it seemed impossible that we-American liberals-could conceivably employ a more self-defeating strategy…Van Johnson comes up with this. Unbelievable, and I don't know what I'll do if anyone tells me that they support him and don't understand why we're getting our asses kicked.
http://news.yahoo.com/obama-says-warren-buffett-taxes-203903366.html
Speaking of why we're getting our asses kicked even though we WON the last presidential election. Oh that's so nice. Before the big points he says all the right things, after the big points he says the right things…it's only during the big points that he transmogrifies into a spineless wimp whimpering his agreement with, apparently, anything.
Now, speaking of someone whose ass the Corporate media is getting ready to kick, seriously. Ron Paul. He's not my candidate, I don't really have one, I guess he's running second to Gary Johnson, I think I could vote for him whereas there's no way I can imagine voting for Obama…
The Republicans are fascinating. The corporate media has kind of figured out-based on his performance of all things, in 2008 and ever since and before-that Mitt Romney will never be president. So they float Tim Pawlenty as an alternative. Tim never catches fire, or even fizzles, ignominiously retiring after a straw poll that doesn't count and you had to pay to vote…a corporate candidate who can't beat a Texas outback congressmen even when you have to buy votes? So Tim's out, and as if it matters Romney finished waaay behind Tim.
Speaking of what happened that very moment, new corporate stalking horse Rick Perry enters the race…now he's created lots of jobs in Texas, but it turns out that they're all McJobs. Minimum wage crap while Perry coddles the corporates. Still, that's probably more electable than Romney, but what's the first thing that he goes and says…that the head of the Federal Reserve might be about to commit treason, which we all know is punishable by firing squad….so….the new shining knight corporatist wants to execute the head of the Federal Reserve? Waaaaal, there might be a tea party vote in there somewhere, but the corporatists are back to the drawing board.
Which leaves Ron Paul with the most solid identifiable base of support, a record that's been right on Iraq and NAFTA and, and….(believe me, hundreds if not thousands of private dicks are trying to figure this out for corporatists at this very moment)…a President Paul would cost Wall Street a lot of money, now and maybe forever if it really is starting to run out the way they seem convinced it is.
If Ron finishes first or second in the real Iowa caucuses-as appears likely-and then does well in New Hampshire as he would…the corporate media won't be able to ignore him. And they won't report on him, they'll tell on him. His supporters will wish they'd continued to ignore him. They will paint him as a Hitlerian racist. RACIST!!!!! Now, I do not personally believe that Ron Paul is a racist (and wouldn't consider voting for him if I thought he was...I will be paying close attention to what he says and whom he convinces when he has to say), but they've got plenty of ammo. Let's face it, it's impossible to go anywhere in Deep South Republican (and probably Democrat) politics without brushing shoulders with real racists, but Ron frequently contributed to a periodical with some.
What's that mean? To me, something but not much. I've contributed to periodicals including Police World (or something like that) where they celebrate the firepower of machineguns in handling domestic situations (my contribution, obviously, was quite different, as Ron Paul's contributions were not racist) and even Forbes publications, but that's not what they're going to tell you. It's going to be nasty, like nothing you've ever seen, it's going to make what they did to McCain in 2008 look positively genteel.
If the corporate wing of the Republican party can play the Tea Party to a standstill/locked convention they'll trot out Mike Huckabee as a unification candidate, and refuse to mention that one of his closest allies' pet project is promoting the death penalty for gays in Africa. That's their best hope.
Except for Obama. Which is why he'll be re-elected even though no one likes him at this point.
Speaking of people who urinate, boy, didn't everyone's favorite French actor just do to the First Class carpet what Obama's been doing to his own supporters for the past four years?
Speaking of people who behave badly, here are some millionaires who didn't. Just so you know it can happen.
12 August 2011
In Spain, where the weather's beautiful most all the time, they have perfected the art of siesta. They take a nap or lie down or just relax during the hottest hours, and then get back to it for awhile, and then go social. American businessmen had at one point perfected the "three Martini lunch." Then things got all cocaine and corporate power lunches, that's a fading one. In England we pretty much just shut down for August. Well, I don't, not entirely anyway, but anything that demands a response…I know I pretty much have to wait for September.
There are no siestas or alco-lunches in a presidential campaign. I used to get exhausted-first thing in the morning-just reading Jerry Brown's itinerary in 1992: 6:45 wheels up Burlington, 7:15 wheels down somewhere else. speech, wheels up and down, appearance, speech, wheels up and down, maybe the final event concluding near midnight. Next morning, same thing, wheels up some forgotten airport before dawn…for eighteen months. Yes, he did take a few days break at an unusual point in the campaign to go white-water rafting with the leaders of the Crips and Bloods…took 'em off to Colorado…but there were very serious problems in L.A. (Rodney King riots) and he was a candidate that allowed reality to trump the delegate counting game, if only for a few days. For everyone else it's a fixation, not a game, not the only game in town, reality confined.
http://news.yahoo.com/bachmann-pawlenty-clash-heated-debate-031456157.html
It's not a well-written article, but it's the beginning of a campaign that promises to be fun, absolutely promises a Republican Civil War and, you know, amuses me during this month of semi-siesta.
"…they vie for conservative support in a straw poll that could make or break their campaigns."
That line made me laugh out loud. There is no such thing as a make or break straw poll. It might help fundraising a little bit, but it doesn't count. Basically no one but the media cares; the candidates look at the results and think how it reflects on their organization. More interesting is that Pawlenty is attacking Bachmann, instead of his rival for corporate support, Romney; and Bachmann is attacking Pawlenty (from her state) instead of Romney and Pawlenty and the corporate oligarchs that have run the United States of America for at least twenty-some years. Bachmann's a weird candidate-and I don't mean that in any personal sense-she's a Tea Party loyalist whose views could hardly be more corporate friendly. I'm not saying she's out, but she probably is, and she's vulnerable to Ron Paul on the populist side and isn't going to sway wallets on the Romney end. She may be playing for a book deal like that lady from Alaska, and Pawlenty at least for the moment appears to be positioning himself for second fiddle on a Romney/Pawlenty ticket. A ticket that now has a chance, but didn't have any hope before President Obama sold out social security and medicare with the same vast aplomb that he's sold out everything else.
File these under nice pieces I'm not going to write anything about: you're either the choir, or unconvertible and a dangerous menace to us all.
http://www.democracynow.org/2011/8/9/atomic_cover_up_the_hidden_story
Laural's Dish is a day late this week because I tried to write about the London/UK riots, and what I wrote turned out to be uneditable shite. They were burning down mom&pop corner stores. The hard left is trying to turn it into a political event, which it's clearly not, and the mainstream right is presenting it strictly in social ("bad parenting") terms which are only slightly better. It's a social phenomenon layered on top of a political reality, the political reality being much more of a problem and a helluva lot less interesting. The collective collapse of right and wrong. Here's a nice perspective piece
http://nathanieltapley.com/2011/08/10/an-open-letter-to-david-camerons-parents/
Ah, ok, that's all you get for the middle of British Siesta Month. Just to be cool, here's some film update, how about in the order of how much I would have liked 'em when I was, like, 16….
5 August 2011
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/envoy/norway-couple-helped-utoya-victims-163023260.html
A lot is being written about the atrocity in Norway, I guess one focus being whether or not "Christian terrorist" is a fair term. Why not? The Inquisition. Those guys considered themselves Christians, and what has ever surpassed their depraved barbarism? To jump straight to the end of the scale (and answer the question just posed), Hitler himself considered himself a Catholic of some sort (even chasing Holy Relics because they would give him power), and received little enough opposition from the Vatican.
And to get all historical, Jesus did not pick his disciples one from each lost tribe of Israel. The Zealots were over-represented; radicals who, to paraphrase Malcolm X, intended to remove Romans from Israel "by any means necessary." This is not to say that Jesus himself was a Zealot-witness his response to Simon cutting off the poor guy's ear-but it's clear enough that the Romans were concerned that he might be.
Which, I think, is what millions of Muslims have been trying to say-without anyone paying much attention-for the past decade. To be fair, it must be considered that Muhammad-unlike Jesus-made his initial mark as a warrior. To cut to the chase I think it's safe enough to say that al-Qaeda and the Norway guy have both entirely missed the point; and that religious people of enlightened soul don't turn into mass murderers, nuts turn into mass murderers. Which is, as I say, what the majority of peaceful, soulful, Muslims have been trying to say (too often to deaf ears) for quite some time.
More interesting I guess, in real world terms-at least ones that can improve our immediate situation-is the way that the Corporate Media has dealt with the tragedy. For newcomers, my world view is essentially that corporations control the world (because we let them), and turn thinking people on the "left" against thinking people on the "right" (instead of against themselves) by cartoon depictions of both. Which leaves us neutralizing each other, and the sway of democracy going to the middle; to the people who are willing to believe, for example, that Hillary Clinton is a liberal and Mitt Romney a conservative.
Do you remember how the media described the New York police and fire fighters in the wake of 9/ll? They weren't-like the president-hiding underground, they were above ground helping victims, and at no small readily apparent risk to themselves.
So…when you have this other abomination, and the only heroes are a coupla Scandinavian lesbians running their boat back and forth between islands and through gunfire-and taking a bullet in the side, saving children from a handsome, fair-haired boy devout Christian…what's a good corporate running dog peon editor supposed to do? Short answer: what they all did. Ignore it unless and until it gains traction in the underground/gay press, and then tell on yourself with as little fanfare as possible. Christians, after all, make up that gullible (to the point of politically irrelevant) middle to far greater extent than do homosexuals, and the last thing they want to do is get the middle thinking.
http://www.truth-out.org/ransom-paid/1312207122
In light of the recent budget debacle I don't have anything to add about President Obama. By way of clarification-and despite some things I've written in anger-he's not gutless, he's set himself up to be the most assassinated man in the world. For all his faults he certainly doesn't deserve that. BUT…he either lacks political conviction, or the courage of his convictions. (street translate: he was either talkin' shit when he ran for the office or is a putz)
Nice article by Robert Reich. Shocking he ever worked for President Clinton. Less surprising that he quit, once he saw what that last lame, centrist Democratic president was going to do.
I've never thought much of Arnold Schwarzenegger. It's always been pretty clear that Sylvester Stallone could kick his ass. Majorly. And so then, if you can't act worth shit and you're clearly an idiot, what's left?
Then he married Maria Shriver and somehow became governor of my favorite State of California. Well, forget-for just a moment, now forever-that his gubernatorial splendour was courtesy of the Orange County Republican Party (same altruistic wallet-ass geniuses that gave us Nixon, Reagan, Pete Wilson…Murdoch lovers…). That he'd married Maria Shriver could not be denied, and included latent potential for entertainment on a level I'd never dreamed of from anything Arnold-related… I awaited with baited breath Arnold's treatment at the hands of Bobby, Jr. and Chris Kennedy Lawford (I imagined their relieving their Scotches of ice by bouncing them off his big ole haid, albeit from a distance, but with perfect aim; which I'm certain that they now wish they had), but it turned out that the erstwhile hoodlums actually admired the clod, or so it was told…grave disappointment, but no reconsideration on my part.
(Look man, the last thing I want to do is turn Laural's Dish into a vaguely more considered version of The Sun or the The National Enquirer, but there are limited sources, ok….?)
So, anyway, I wasn't fooled even if the cooler Kennedy kids were, and I always thought Arnold was an untalented asshole, mainly, a little bit funny when he made fun of himself, which it must be conceded he was willing to do.
At least he had that going for him.
Arnold turned 64 this week, it was his birthday. Five years ago he was running the most powerful state on the planet to no small amount of acclaim (including "leftist" environmentalists), and all kinds of relatively smart people were offering to change the Constitution of the United States of America, just so's he could be President (a change, incidentally, that would have also qualified me). He had the postcard wife and kids; really, really big biceps, and a couple minor controversies more/less behind him.
He turned 64 the other day. Divorced in everything but ink. Thrown, by all, to the hounds. Unsaddled by the economics of those who made him a politician. Disowned by his own children. Disavowing his own attorney's apparently unintentional (! how much an hour? !!/um...didn't talk to the client?) efforts to avoid spousal support. Just another muscle-bound doofus who'd blown the chance to be a decent husband and father and lousy president by fucking a hideously ugly maid and lying about it constantly and incessantly for more than a decade whilst he planned ever-increasing splendour for hisself.
Happy Birthday, Conan. The Destroyer. Really, less than that, The Destroyed.
Happy Birthday, Arnold. I fucking feel for you, I really do. I can't justify it, but I wish it all wasn't like it is. Can you begin to fucking imagine? Sixty-four. Lost children. It's 21st Century medicine and he's only 64, but is there enough time left to salvage anything? Or is it all just regrets and prayers for forgiveness to any God, anyone, any old colleague, anyone, anyone, anyone, anything…who might consider listening?
I don't know, our collective relationship with celebrity is an unusual thing. We celebrate certain individuals because they're apparently different than us in some, usually small, way; and then working with very little information we fill in the blanks by projecting ourselves onto them; recreating them in our own image as much as possible, if we're inclined to like them.
I've never liked Arnold, particularly. But I want to thank him, right now, by way of an almost sincere if not particularly upbeat Happy Birthday. Thank you, for making me feel like less of an idiot, if only for this moment. In a way I hope he's even more vacuous than I'd ever imagined; that he doesn't care that he's lost his family and career and respect of the ridiculous boardrooms and their tabloids that…um, pumped him up. Maybe he can just settle into a happy middle age replete with endless weight-lifting, second-tier Austrian groupies, and a therapist who's as loose with prescriptions as his trainers used to be with steroids. For his sake, short-term anyway, I almost hope so.
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