Hang in there, Francois.  It was nothing but a coincidence.  Probably.  Had to be.  Surely.  Unless the Germans have come up with a way to control the weather.   Which, all things considered, is not beyond the realm of possibility.   You might want to consider getting back to work on the Maginot Line?

A couple of passings I’ve been avoiding.  First, race car designer, Carroll Shelby.  He died in Dallas, at the age of 89.   He did so much.  If you were around in the 60’s,  you can’t help but remember the Shelby Cobra.    That, in and of itself, is more than most of us have accomplished.  The other, is bass player, Donald “Duck” Dunn.  If you saw the Blues Brothers movie, you saw Dunn.  He was easy to recognize.  He’s the only bass player I can think of who smoked a pipe while on stage.  Dunn, was one of the originators of what some now refer to as “Memphis Soul.”  A member of the legendary “Booker T. and the MG’s, Donald Dunn, died while on tour in Tokyo.  He was 70.

Another idea that appears to make sense, is the so-called “Robin Hood Tax.”  I learned of it while watching a Bill Moyers interview with RoseAnn DeMoro, the Executive Director of National Nurses United, representing 170,000  registered nurses.

DeMoro, and her nurses, are pushing for a sales tax on Wall Street speculation called the “Robin Hood Tax.”  Robin Hood, of course, was a legendary English bandit who stole from the rich and gave to the poor.    DeMoro, says the wall streeters can easily afford the tax which would raise up to $350 billion a year.  Gee, that’s $700 billion in two years and $1.5 trillion in three.  Is that right?  Golly, that’s a lot of zeros.  That would help, wouldn’t it?  Ms. DeMoro and her colleagues will be among those demonstrating in Chicago on May 18th, which was to be the opening day of the G8 summit, before President Obama, decided to move it to Camp David, far away from the prying eyes of  protesters.   Maybe he’s smart enough to know that he’d better not mess with the nurses?  You can get away with a lot in this country, but don’t mess with our nurses.  Or our moms.  However, it appears the demonstration will move forward with or without the G8 in town.  Chicago will also play host to a two-day NATO summit, beginning May 20th, so it isn’t as though there won’t be any political fish to fry.   Six of the G8 countries will be represented at the NATO event which is considerably larger than the G8 meeting.

Let’s see, $162 billion from Buffett over ten years and another $350 billion a year from Mr. Hood.   It might be enough to get us to stop pretending that a significant number of the millions of jobs that were off-shored will be coming back anytime soon and to start some badly needed public works projects, putting Americans back to work rebuilding crumbling roads and bridges. Some of the money might even be used to provide basic health care to 50 million Americans who remain uninsured and to keep school lunch programs going for kids from a growing number of economically disadvantaged families.

Here in California, 93,000 people were just dropped from receiving extended unemployment insurance, because, in the eyes of the Federal Government, the sate is doing so well.  That’s 93,000 losing their unemployment on top of the 664,649 Californians whose insurance had already run out.  But it gets even better.  And by that, I mean worse.  Governor Jerry Brown, just announced a $16 billion shortfall.  Among other austerity measures, he want’s to cut health and welfare programs while furloughing state workers.  The unemployment rate here in Los Angeles is above 13%.  In the San Joaquin Valley and Fresno areas it’s something above 16%.  And Jerry Brown wants to furlough state workers while the feds cut unemployment insurance?

It’s not like there aren’t solutions to our economic woes, if you can go so far in your thinking as to understand that we can’t get what we need from those who have nothing to contribute.  It’s not surprising that American nurses, our real-life angels of mercy, are showing us the way.

Britain couldn’t do it.  Soviet Russia, with all its military might, failed and got out, but we’re going make it work?  Somehow the United States and those allies that are left, will turn Afghanistan into former President Cheney’s vision of a secure western style democracy in the Middle East, even if we have to stay there for how many years?  What’s President Obama’s current estimate?  2024, if necessary?  Is he kidding?  It’s not his problem.  It’s a Republican problem.  A Republican pipe dream the NeoCons came up with after they refused to listen to those who had actually been to war and took us in without an exit plan.  It isn’t working out.  How much more obvious does it have to become?  They blew it.

According to career military officer turned whistle-blower, Lt. Col. Daniel Davis: “Senior ranking US military leaders have so distorted the truth when communicating with the US Congress and American people in regards to conditions on the ground in Afghanistan that the truth has become unrecognizable.”

Time for Mr. Obama, to place the blame where it belongs, squarely on the shoulders of the NeoCons, and get us out of there.

But he can’t, can he?  Not in an election year.

If he did, Republican spin would blame him for what they would surely claim is his failure to secure Afghanistan going forward. They would surely lay the “wasted blood” of our dead and wounded and all the billions spent on arms and private contractors at Mr. Obama’s doorstep, even though their bungling took us in and failed to get us out while their attention was diverted to Iraq, with bogus reports about “weapons of mass destruction.”   Yes, the Democrats in Congress at the time were guilty of having gone along with it all, but with the nation covered by a blanket of fear cleverly spread by the Bush Administration, what choice did they have?  Anyway, none of it happened on Mr. Obama’s watch.  He inherited the ill-conceived Bush Doctrine of preventative war and all the rest, and now he’s stuck with trying to untangle it.  The opposition will lie through their teeth to get out from under the mess they’ve made.  They’ll blame it all on Obama.  And there are those who will believe what they say.  And this is an election year.

I suppose it really doesn’t matter.  It’s only a movie.  Throw in another explosion here and some automatic gunfire there.  Overwhelm the senses with enough ear-splitting noise and pretty colors and the kids will love it.  Or maybe it doesn’t work for anyone who hasn’t seen every superhero movie that’s come out over the past ten or twelve years and read all the comics?  I’m sure they were pitching the bow and arrow guy and the Thor/Loki duo to a different demographic.  Nevertheless, this film feels like a bunch of ideas thrown together in an attempt to come up with a viable plot, and it’s just not there.  It’s silly and mostly boring.  With a runtime of 2 hours and 22 minutes, it’s way too long.  The movie’s only saving grace is the one-two punch of Robert Downey Jr., as Iron Man and Mark Ruffalo, as The Hulk.  Their acting ability and character development so outpaces their fellow superheroes as to give them the appearance of two master thespians who somehow stumbled into a high school acting class.

Why so many critics are buying into this explosion of noise, color and nonsense in need of a viable plot is an absolute mystery to me.   They would have been better off doing another Iron Man.

I’m looking forward to seeing “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel” with the great Judi Dench to help regain my demographic balance.  “Dark Shadows” is also in the pipeline.  It’s being panned by many of the same critics who loved “Avengers,” so it’s probably very good.  For me it’ll be worth the price of admission just to watch Johnny Depp and Michelle Pfeiffer on the same screen, with or without a single explosion and nary a shot being fired.

The George W. Bush/Henry Paulson bank bailout might be compared to the George W. Bush/Dick Cheney/Donald Rumsfeld invasion of Iraq.  In both cases the Bush Administration’s reason for acting kept shifting from one talking point to another, until finally, any sign of reasonableness was lost.

JPMorgan Chase, is one of five big banks that were parties to a $25 billion settlement with charges of “botched loan modifications, wrongful foreclosures and unnecessary fees tacked onto the accounts of struggling borrowers.”   The other four were Wells Fargo, Citigroup, Ally Financial and Bank of America.

This is the thanks the American people were given for the bailout.

The newscasts didn’t do much with the story of JPMorgan’s $2 billion hit.  Can’t blame them, as the wall streeters appear to be making up the rules of their high stakes game as they move forward, or backward, such as the case may be.  Hopefully the Fed will get up off it ample backside and at least attempt to determine what’s going on, as the the market value of other major banks fell following the announcement by JPMorgan Chase.

Politically, it’ll be interesting to see if and how the Republicans try and spin this to make President Obama look bad, which won’t be difficult as this is happening on his watch.  Our collective national amnesia is sure to blunt the impact of the fact that both the banking mess and the bailout got started during the administration of George W. Bush.  The Republicans, are sure to make this Obama’s problem, even though they’ve done nothing to break up banks that continue to be too big to fail, as banking industry lobbyists continue greasing the political wheel on Capitol Hill.  A process which, experts say, threatens to take our economy to the brink yet again.  According to McClatchy News, “Commercial banks spent nearly $62 million last year on lobbying, another record total for an industry that has become one of the most active voices in the political arena.

Beyond that, how many are there in Congress who actually understand synthetic credit, the various kinds of derivatives, credit-default swaps and all the rest of it?  How can Wall Street be under the rule of law, if the law as written fails to adequately cover the apparently fluid nature of what the streeters are doing and government oversight is limited?  Is anybody looking out for the American people?   Without the rule of law, aren’t we left with the law of the jungle?

Among those who think Mr. Obama should act, is former Labor Secretary and current Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy at Berkeley, Robert Reich, who wrote in late October of last year, “Economically it would be smart for Obama to go after the Street right now because the Street’s lobbying muscle has reduced the Dodd-Frank financial reform law to a pale reflection of its former self. Dodd-Frank is rife with so many loopholes and exemptions that the largest Wall Street banks – larger by far than they were before the bailout – are back to many of their old tricks.”

Are you comfortable with the knowledge that another even bigger crash could be just around the corner?

One can’t help but think about history repeating itself, and the move in 1902 by then President Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt, to break up J.P. Morgan’s Northern Securities Corporation.   PBS reports, “Morgan condemned the president, not just for what he had done, but for the ungentlemanly way in which he had done it — publicly and without warning. A new paradigm had been established in Washington, and Roosevelt would go on to file suit against more than 40 major corporations during his presidency.

“Too big to fail” is nothing new.

Shouldn’t somebody be asking the real question of why gasoline prices remain astronomically high in the U.S. when all that oil and gas product is being shipped overseas, and why a new refinery hasn’t been built on U.S. soil since 1976?

Come on, ABC.   Let’s try and answer the real questions.  Please.   Do with oil, what you did with pink slime.  The tax breaks these guys are getting amount a public subsidy of big oil.  And still we are being charged more than $4 a gallon?   The oil industry is breaking the law of supply and demand.  With big oil, the more the supply increases, the more the price goes up.  This situation screams for federal oversight and control.  Doesn’t it?   Oh wait, I forgot.  There is no more federal oversight or control.  They’ve all been bought off.  Isn’t that the real story?

This time, the Prez will be stopping by George Clooney’s house in Studio City for dinner.   150 high rollers including Robert Downey, Jr., Barbara Streisand and Jeffrey Katzenberg, will sit down to a dinner catered by Wolfgang Puck.  You could be there too, for $40,000 a plate.  That would have been the up front money.  After that, someone, Clooney, or maybe the White House, or probably both, would have had to deem you to be an acceptable dinner companion for the President.  It’s Clooney’s home after all, and he seems to be a nice guy.  I like the fact that his father comes from journalism.  I also like his acting and the fact that he’s not a right wing mammoth hunter.  However, the way money dominates our political process is something I don”t care for.   It’s at the root of all political evil.   Having to fork out $40 thousand a plate for a sit down with Barack Obama, only makes that all the more apparent.   To be fair, four common folk are being allowed in.  Somebody came up with the idea of letting commoners enter a raffle on the Internet.  For a small campaign donation (the average was $23), you could buy a chance at getting yourself and a guest on the list for the big event.   “Tens of thousands” reportedly went for it.  Their donations will represent about two-thirds of the money the dinner is raising for Mr. Obama.  All that beautiful money rolling in.  And yet, this is better than getting it from a handful of billionaires and corporations, isn’t it?  Of course it is.

When you have the best government money can buy, it takes a lot to keep it going.   We need campaign finance reform.  We need it now and we need it badly.  I seriously doubt anyone at Clooney’s house will be talking about it.  The dinner is expected to bring in $15 million.

Why some have no concern for the future and nary a care for maintaining a humanitarian civilization in the present has always been a mystery to me — the mindless “dog eat dog” philosophy of free-traders, who seem to think each and every one of us should be responsible for ourselves.  The “privatize it all and to hell with those who can’t pay the price” crowd.  Where did all these angry, hateful, mean-spirited people come from and how did they garner such power over our economic and political systems in their push to turn back the clock on human progress and general welfare?   And why is it so many of them claim to be Christians?   Think about it.  Christians, who want to cut school lunch programs and health care for poor children to preserve tax cuts for the wealthy? I spent years in Bible school.  Guess I missed that part.

I don’t recall Jesus demanding proof of payment before feeding the multitude with five loaves and two fishes.

I couldn’t understand it, until I put mammoth hunters together with studies of the human brain.  Suddenly, it all makes perfect sense.  There are Troglodytes among us.  Literally.  Real mammoth hunters.

The theory was put forth by futurist Dennis Meadows, on an episode of “American Experience” on PBS.  Meadows, Professor Emeritus of Systems Management at the University of New Hampshire, postulates that we aren’t genetically programmed to think ahead.  At least, some of us aren’t.  The reason he says, is that for thousands of years human beings were living from one moment to the next, faced by a near constant fear of death from other humans or saber-toothed cats or any number of nasty carnivores that were running around chasing our poor ancestors who had nothing but arrows, spears, clubs and fists with which to defend themselves.   Or, they could run.  Maybe they’d get away and maybe not.  It wasn’t an easy living.

Meadows, theorizes that there was no time to think about the future when you were focused on killing a mammoth.  All the mammoth hunters could think about was that the tribe’s survival hinged on killing the giant creature and that any one of them might die without warning should the mammoth suddenly get the upper hand.  After centuries of dealing with that kind of pressure while being repeatedly scared out of our collective wits, we have now come to a point in our evolution where we can sit down, take a breather, and think things over.  According to Professor Meadows, “…as a consequence of that now that we are faced with issues that will really unfold over centuries, we are genetically and institutionally ill adapted for it.”

If the professor’s right,  at least some of us aren’t ready to get into any long-range planning.  That’s one.  Here’s another.

In addition to not understanding those who care nothing for the future, I was never able to understand those on the extreme right, who care nothing for people or a reasonable civilization that needs a reasonable amount of economic support from wealthy individuals.  The uber-wealthy of the far right seem to want it all for themselves.  Even when they have more than they need, it’s still not enough, and they’re willing to bankrupt the nation if necessary, to get there.  It’s nuts.  Except that, maybe it’s not.  Maybe it’s the way they’re programmed.   A study conducted by University College London, indicates that in conservatives, the section of the brain that controls fear, the Amygdala or “primitive brain,” is unusually large.  In liberals, the so-called primitive brain is smaller, while the section that controls courage and optimism is proportionately larger.

Suddenly it all makes sense.   Our political polarization is being caused by obsolete thinking emanating from the fear-driven brains of mammoth hunters.

The following is from Dan Rather, during an appearance on the Piers Morgan show to promote his new book “Rather Outspoken.”   It’s in regard to a presidential briefing by George W. Bush in 2004, following a report by CBS about Bush’s service (or lack of the same) in the Air Nat’l Guard.   Among other things, there were allegations that Bush received special treatment enabling him to enter the Guard in order to avoid going to Vietnam, and that he later failed to show up for a physical and lost his flight status, and that his commanding officer was under political pressure to cover it up.

According to Rather-

“I was at the White House for a briefing for reporters, and I asked him a couple of questions and he answered the questions.   And then afterward he said to me, ‘I hope you’ll be happy retired in Austin.’ That’s my home. I had no intention of retiring in Austin. I have a passion for my work and I plunged myself back into doing work. But that’s the only conversation I’ve had with him since.”

With regard to the report on CBS that led to the end of his career with the network, Rather said-

 ”We reported a true story.  That’s why I’m no longer with CBS News.” 

It always smelled like a setup.  Some speculated that CBS was willing to sacrifice Rather’s reputation, rather than risking a loss of favor with the Bushies.  Maybe that’s what happened.  This is the same bunch who turned their backs on a proud tradition when they caved in to big tobacco, resulting in producer Lowell Bergman leaving the network, all of it becoming the basis for the movie “The Insider.”

Doing unfettered Journalism and “creating shareholder value” are like oil and water.   Always have been.  That’s what appears to have been at the heart of the CBS vs. big tobacco controversy.  It would have been extremely expensive for CBS to back it’s journalists and take on big tobacco.  It would have hurt shareholder value.  So the execs at CBS backed down, cancelling a Mike Wallace interview with a tobacco company whistleblower.  The Dan Rather thing is different as it appears to have been a case of a major network cowering in fear when confronted by a bully in the White House, backed by a web of right wing bloggers.  Or maybe Rather, and a senior CBS producer, simply got it all wrong and ran with the story before they should have.  Or maybe they had it all right and CBS wimped out.  If that’s the case, then the network backing its journalists might actually have helped build shareholder value.  It might also have helped the country by exposing the truth, which is what good journalism is supposed to do.  At least that’s what we used to think it was all about.

Instead, Dan Rather was cornered into taking a fall at about the same time the “Swiftboaters” were turning John Kerry’s honorable record in Vietnam, into a lie. Once again, the right wing noise machine went to work,  spewing innuendo and doubt,  putting so much smoke in the air that the truth became all but invisible.   And it worked.  America, bought the big lie.

Who’s to say the same thing didn’t happen to Dan Rather, who continues to insist the story is valid.  Why shouldn’t he be believed?  He isn’t just another reporter.  This isn’t just another case of sour grapes.  It isn’t some guy who used to sell souvenirs on Hollywood Boulevard, and decided to build a website.  Dan Rather, inherited the CBS News mantle from Walter Cronkite, who followed in the footsteps of Edward R. Murrow.  Dan Rather, is not just one more reporter.  He represents what was the very best of broadcast journalism.  At the very least, the whole affair was handled very badly by CBS, which forced Rather to issue an apology and showed four producers the door.

Never underestimate the power of a political PR machine to bend public opinion.  Like a pretzel.  It’s being done now more than ever, with the Internet and right wing radio and tv spewing carefully crafted and coordinated talking points.  The mainstream media, once so good at filtering out fiction from fact, seems helpless or unwilling to do anything about it.

It’s probably irrelevant that the Executive Chariman of Viacom, parent company of CBS, Sumner Redstone, thought to be a liberal Democrat, switched sides and endorsed the reelection bid of George W. Bush in 2004.  Frank Rich, reported in the New York Times, in October of 2004, “The current White House has been practicing pre-emptive media intimidation to match its policy of preemptive war. Its F.C.C. chairman, using Janet Jackson’s breast and Howard Stern’s mouth as pretexts, has sufficiently rattled Viacom, which broadcast both of these entertainers’ infractions against ‘decency,’ that its chairman, the self-described ‘liberal Democrat’ Sumner Redstone, abruptly announced his support for the re-election of George W. Bush last month. ‘I vote for what’s good for Viacom,’ he explained, and he meant it. He took this loyalty oath just days after the 60 Minutes fiasco prompted a full-fledged political witch hunt on Viacom’s CBS News, another Republican target since the Nixon years.”

Nobody talks about it anymore, except for Rather.   No, it’s just smiles and fat paychecks all around, the players acting as though nothing happened as network “news” continues to be less about educating and enlightening and more about entertaining an increasingly dumbed down audience, many of whom have no memory that any of this ever took place.

Obama, actually thinks he can dictate that the Taliban must abide by Afghan laws in a nation that’s not really a nation. It’s a medieval society ruled by warlords.   And yet Mr. Obama talks about it (as did Dubya Bush), as though he has the power to remake the region into something resembling rural North Dakota?   A landscape dotted by Lutheran churches with potluck hotdish suppers on Sundays?   Sorry, but history and logic dictate that it’s not gonna happen.

It’s sad,  because in the beginning, Obama, sounded so good.  Like a real populist.  Like somebody who would put the hopeful many above the greedy few.   His transformation from a liberal Democrat to a centrist Republican with NeoCon leanings has been amazing.   And utterly disappointing.

What’s next, Mr. Obama?  You gonna strap on a pressure suit and pretend to land a jet on a carrier?

The country needs another party.  We have nothing but Republicans left, but they aren’t the Republicans of Eisenhower or Reagan.  These guys are off the rails.  It’s their way or no way.  They’ll sink the nation’s economy before reaching a reasonable compromise.  Mostly, though, we’re at a point where compromise is no longer necessary as the uber-rich have bought everybody off and are relying upon our collective amnesia to erase any memory of how things can be.  How they are supposed to be.  How things once were.   These neo-feudalists are a threat to the Republic and they’ve got Obama in their pocket.   A third party, of course, isn’t likely, as it costs tens of millions to front a campaign, and the fat cats are already using most of their spare change to buy off Republicans and Democrats.  Middle class folk can’t begin to match their cash outlay or K Street public opinion/mind control.

I was hoping Barack Obama would live up to the change he promised.  It sounded so good.  I no longer have that hope.  It’s now clear he’s following orders and they aren’t coming from the American people, more than 69% of whom want us out of Afghanistan now.  

What’s that called, when elected leaders repeatedly ignore the wishes of the majority?  Like Congress did in rejecting the Buffett Rule?  Et tu, Barack?