The 0bama Depression Worsens
Son of Krakatoa
James A. Wechsler, like most famous radical hand-me-downs from the '30s and '40s, seemed to believe that art should be used to promote leftist causes. Wechsler had been one of the heroes of my growing-up. I used to read him on the pages of PM, that great journalistic experiment, a newspaper without advertising. Years later, calling himself "an unreconstructed radical," Wechsler became the editor of the New York Post, where I eventually was encouraged to call him Jimmy, which started me thinking I was a hot-shot writer.Jimmy had a son named Michael whom he loved and doted on as any devoted father would. But when Michael hit his teens, Michael fell under the spell of a poet friend who idolized Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac and the Beat Generation. This annoyed Jimmy, who had planned for his son to grow up to be an unreconstructed radical like himself. As part of his own personal crusade to prove to Michael that Michael's idols were assholes, Jimmy agreed to participate in the so-called Brandeis Forum, which had, as its subject, "Is There A Beat Generation?" In what turned out to be a major cultural event for the under-thirty college crowd of the day, this soon-to-be-legendary great debate took place on November 8, 1958, at New York's Hunter College Playhouse, where Jimmy joined elderly Princeton anthropologist Ashley Montague and British Angry Young Man Kingsley Amis in ganging up on a very stoned Jack Kerouac. Clearly drunk when he arrived, Jack had been promised 20 minutes and dreamily tried to read from a prepared text which was later published in Playboy under the title of The Origins of the Beat Generation. Dressed in his trademark checkered shirt, black jeans and ankle boots in contrast to Wechsler, Montague and Amis, who all wore suits, Jack was swaying at the podium but delighted the student audience with his visionary, metaphysical and romanticized interpretation of what had been happening in America, saying:
"It is because I am Beat, that is, I believe in beatitude and that God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son to it. . . Who knows, but that the universe is not one vast sea of compassion actually, the veritable holy honey, beneath all this show of personality and cruelty?"Jimmy was aiming his fire where, according to Jimmy's unreconstructed radical way of thinking, Kerouac should have been. But all the while, Jack was actually on another world. Calling the Beat Generation a joke compared to the progressive causes from which he'd earned his own medals, Wechsler attacked the Beats' "flight and irresponsibility." Jack didn't know what Wechsler was talking about and wondered aloud whether Wechsler did, too. Jimmy became more and more outraged at Jack for being so unresponsive to Jimmy's best thrusts. Unresponsive, that is, except to push Dean Kauffman aside, grab the microphone and call Wechsler, Montague and Amis "a bunch of communist shits" bent on "the Sovietation of America," a place in which no such debates would ever be allowed.
Kerouac nailed the left with one drunken outburst. If it were up to people like Wechsler, those of us who disagree with the left would have no rights at all. You can easily see that in practice now, with the debates on global warming, socialist health care, etc.
Can you imagine what would happen if some Republican were to refer to Wechsler et al as "a bunch of communist shits"? They would be screaming "MCCARTHYISM!!!!" at the top of their lungs. But Kerouac was the founder of a counterculture movement. They couldn't pin such a ridiculous charge on him even if they tried.
if we stick with business as usual, in terms of carbon-dioxide emissions, average surface temperatures on Earth by 2100 will hit levels far beyond anything humans have ever experienced.
So what does this world-renowned author and journalist recommend we do?
Even better, Tom gave the commencement address at the University of Delaware last May 30, and had this to say:The fourth is decoupling — the program begun in California that turns the utility business on its head. Under decoupling, power utilities make money by helping homeowners save energy rather than by encouraging them to consume it. “Finally,” said Harvey, “we need a price on carbon.” Polluting the atmosphere can’t be free.
“The recession of 2008 is not just an economic event. It was the market and Mother Nature telling us in their own ways that the system for growth that we had settled into was not sustainable, financially or ecologically.”
The notion that more is better came to be represented both literally and figuratively in the size of individual Americans and their homes, Friedman noted.
“From the beginning to the end of the long boom, the size of the average new house in America increased by half,” Friedman said.
11,400 square feet in Bethesda, Maryland. 7 1/2 bathrooms. Maybe he has a windmill hidden somewhere on the property?
h/t to Ed Lasky and Greg Pollowitz.
WASHINGTON — Supporters of Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor are quietly targeting the Connecticut firefighter who's at the center of Sotomayor's most controversial ruling.
On the eve of Sotomayor's Senate confirmation hearing, her advocates have been urging journalists to scrutinize what one called the "troubled and litigious work history" of firefighter Frank Ricci.On Friday, citing in an e-mail "Frank Ricci's troubled and litigious work history," the liberal advocacy group People for the American Way drew reporters' attention to Ricci's past. Other advocates for Sotomayor have discreetly urged journalists to pursue similar story lines.
Specifically, the advocates have zeroed in on an earlier 1995 lawsuit Ricci filed claiming the city of New Haven discriminated against him because he's dyslexic. The advocates cite other Hartford Courant stories from the same era recounting how Ricci was fired by a fire department in Middletown, Conn., allegedly, Ricci said at the time, because of safety concerns he raised.
The Middletown-area fire department was subsequently fined for safety violations, but the Connecticut Department of Labor dismissed Ricci's retaliation complaint.
Hey stupids. Ricci's discrimination lawsuit concerning his dyslexia and his firing by the Middletown fire department have what to do with the issue of racial preferences? Absolutely nothing.
So get a load of what the 'People for the American Way' have to say about Sotomayor's decision in the Ricci case:
"Sotomayor and her panel colleagues were bound by long-standing precedent and federal law," People for the American Way executive vice president Marge Baker said in a June statement. "They applied the law without regard to their personal views."
If that's true, Marge, then why did the Supreme court reverse her stupid decision? And why did Sotomayor say this about her feelings on the impact of race on job performance of judges?
"I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would, more often than not, reach a better conclusion."
That sentence, or a similar one, has appeared in speeches Sotomayor delivered in 1994, 1999, 2002, 2004 and 2001. In that speech, she included the phrase "than a white male who hasn't lived that life" at the end, which sparked cries of racism from some Republicans.
Since Sotomayor believes skin color can have an impact on the job performance of a judge, it is quite likely she also believes it can have an impact on the job performance of a fireman. It is clear that she has indeed used her personal views on race in her decision in the Ricci case.
ANCHORAGE - A resident of Sarah Palin's hometown has filed an ethics complaint against her, just days after her surprise announcement that she will resign as Alaska governor.
Zane Henning alleges in the complaint filed Monday that Palin is violating state ethics law by collecting per diem when she stays in her Wasilla home instead of the Governor's Mansion in Juneau.
It's the 16th ethics complaint filed against Palin, who noted in her resignation speech last week that "frivolous" ethics complaints had set her back more than $500,000 in legal debt. She steps down July 26.
Most of the complaints, including another one by Henning, have been dismissed.
Two can play at this game. There are 28 states that have Democrat governors. For that matter, there is one here in Oklahoma.
In computer terms, the blinking cursor is a passive non-response to an instruction the CPU, for whatever reason, can't comprehend or process. I'm thinking this is pretty close to an accurate description of what's happening in Obama's head when events defy his own intentions, plans, and worldview. The Iranian people got in the way of his plan to negotiate with Ahmadinejad. The reality did not compute and he was unable to process it. The Honduran semi-coup does not compute with his plans to charm the world by negotiating equably with Chavez and the Castro brothers. Does not compute.But it better compute. This is a world in which serious and unexpected events happen all the time. Like an airline pilot who is paid not for all the routine flights but for the moments of sheer terror that require instant action, the President of the United States is paid at least as much for his responses to catastrophe as he is for the policies he soberly noodles out with his experts.
If Obama can't make decisions when things go differently than he expects, we're all in a ton of trouble. Republicans and Democrats alike.
If a serious foreign policy challenge comes about during 0bama's term, we are in trouble. The belief that the USA and capitalism are responsible for all the world's problems will not serve him well when he is trying to administer the USA's foreign policy.
Oklahoma City Tea Party: July 4, 2009 
