If you’ve read your morning paper, then you’ve seen the story about the billionaire who put in a $2 billion bid to buy the LA Clippers from the Sterling Trust.  Doesn’t something about it feel vaguely obscene?   Like the story shouldn’t be about the sale of the team, but rather that one man, given our current national condition, can or would cut a check for two billion dollars to buy a basketball team?  Particularly when the team’s actual value is believed to be far below $2 billion?

Basketball.  A game.  A form of entertainment which, if it went away tomorrow, would have little or no impact on our well being.  We could all get along without it.  However, at the same time-

According to the Dept. of Housing and Urban Development, there are 633,782 homeless people in America.  According to Amnesty International, the U.S. has five times as many vacant homes as we have homeless people.

Experts believe the nation’s real unemployment rate is much higher than you might think.  Much higher than the 6.7% that’s officially being reported.  That when those who have given up on finding a job are factored in, the real unemployment rate is closer to 13%.

Economists tell us that Wall Street remains out of control, as it continues its high stakes risk taking, gaming the markets, that will likely lead the nation and then the world into another economic crash.

A new study points to species being killed off at an increasingly accelerated rate by our inability to control ourselves.

Climate Change is what it is.  We continue to moving toward the necessary switch from carbon-based fuels to wind, solar and other alternative energy sources at a rate that is much, much too slow – provided you believe in science more than in fairy tales or the lies being told by greed driven corporate leaders who care more for “building shareholder value” than the survival of the human species.

Republicans in the House and Senate continue to demand austerity, completely disregarding the fact that a Republican administration took the nation into two wars while cutting taxes, and that a significant amount of history teaches that the best way to get out from under a major economic downturn is through job creation requiring more and not less federal spending.  Clearly, anyone who looks at the facts will see that the demand for less regulation and greater austerity, the cutting the government has done to date, is not working.   And the cutting has been extreme.  According to the Congressional Budget Office, our federal tax rate is the lowest its been in 30 years.

And yet-

“More than 16 million children in the United States – 22% of all children – live in families with incomes below the federal poverty level – $23,550 a year for a family of four. Research shows that, on average, families need an income of about twice that level to cover basic expenses. Using this standard, 45% of children live in low-income families.’ -Nat’l Center For Children In Poverty

Income inequality, the gap between the rich and the poor, is at a level not seen since the Great Depression.

While employee compensation is at its lowest level in 65 years, corporate profits have hit their highest level since 1929, just prior to the Great Depression.

And here in Los Angeles, in a move reminiscent of “The Great Gatsby,” and with the zeal of a kid buying a new bike, one man has just put in a $2 billion bid to buy a basketball team.   Not that there’s anything wrong with that.  It’s his money and he can do whatever he wants with it.  It’s the American way.

The sanctimony in the House is knee-deep, with calls from Dems and Republicans alike for the removal of Eric Shinseki as Secretary of Veterans Affairs.   Records in Phoenix and elsewhere have been falsified.  Veterans have to wait months for care.  The problem is apparently “systemic.”

Shouldn’t the issue be that the VA had a systemic problem following the return of my generation from Vietnam?   That it only grew worse with the passage of time as the government failed to anticipate the needs of additional patients and the refusal of Congress to increase funding to handle the bigger load as the congressional mantra, especially from the Republicans, has been “cut the budget.”

In March of 2012, Ed Patrick Bellon and Christopher Miller reported in “Veterans For Common Sense,  “The federal budget is a statement of  priorities. In the Rep. Ryan version of the 2013  budget subsequently embraced by Gov. Mitt Romney, the word veteran never appears. The budget proposal runs to 98 pages. Zero mention of veterans.  Two protracted conflicts, high veteran unemployment and a multitude of coming home issues and not one mention of veterans in this budget proposal. It clearly states that veterans are NOT a priority. This budget proposal is worse than an empty thanks for your service, an empty thanks would require being mentioned. Veterans did not even make the list of priorities. Veterans were ignored entirely. Veterans are essentially being told thanks for nothing, you are on your own. This is absolutely unacceptable. Especially coming from an aspiring commander-in-chief.”

The VA has a backlog?  When Shinseki got there the operation had not yet switched from tens of thousands of old paper files to a computerized system as more of the aging “Boomer” vets started coming in, in need of care for a variety of age-related reasons.

An article by Brandon Friedman in Time Magazine in June of last year, is revealing.  Friedman reports that Shinseki took over an operation that had been dodging the issues of Vietnam vets suffering from the effects of Agent Orange and Gulf War vets feeling the effects of PTSD, unless they could point to and prove a specific instance that caused their condition.   Friedman reports that expanding eligibility for Agent Orange and PTSD, “more than doubled” the backlog of claims.  He writes that much of the load on the VA was coming from vets going all the way back to World War II and not from an influx of new veterans from the Gulf War.

According to Friedman, ” In fact, claims filed by Iraq and Afghanistan veterans are only a small portion of VA’s inventory and backlog. Currently, they make up 20% of VA’s pending inventory. They represent 21% of the backlog. Only 10% of first-time claims in the backlog belong to Iraq or Afghanistan veterans.”

And all these problems were there when Eric Shinseki was appointed to the top job.  When he got there he acknowledged that the problems existed.  That it was so bad that it would take some time to turn things around, a task which, no one in government had been able to do for years.  Friedman reports-

” On the January afternoon Eric Shinseki took over as the nation’s seventh VA secretary, he inherited a mess.

To his immediate front, the former Army chief of staff faced a paper mountain of 391,127 separate disability claims—filed by veterans from every conflict since World War II. Nearly a quarter of the claims (more than 85,000) had been languishing in the system for more than six months.

The gravity of this situation in early 2009—with one war ending and another still raging—was not lost on the new boss. Compounding his problem, however, was the fact that he had little to work with in terms of a technological solution. VA was paper-bound, its IT system antiquated—and it had been this way for years.

Everyone knew this.”

By May of 2013, a new electronic record keeping system had been installed in all the VA’s regional offices.

Now, with an election approaching, the indignity of Republicans and Democrats alike overflows as they demand Shinseki’s head on a pole, even though some of these very same politicos repeatedly refused to increase funding for the VA.

They can’t have it both ways.

I don’t pretend to know whether General Shinseki should stay or go.  It’s complicated.  But it might make more sense to get rid of John Bohener and his “party of no” Republicans who have done all they can to block everything that comes down the legislative pike, which includes funding for the VA.

Maya Angelou (photo: courtesy of Adria Richards)

“History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again.”

– Maya Angelou 1928-2014

It’s being reported by Bill Moyers and others, that the best is yet to come from Edward Snowden.   Apparently Snowden and Glenn Greenwald have held back the best for last.

Apparently, Snowden, via Greenwald, is going to name names of those the NSA was (is?) spying on.   Which could mean very little to most Americans, unless the NSA has been spying on political figures for political purposes, or business leaders for purposes of assisting one business or another.  If that’s the case, if they’ve gone beyond inadvertently scooping up certain persons in their massive cyber-spying dragnet and instead have been targeting otherwise innocent business and political leaders, activists, writers and others for reasons that have nothing to do with hunting down terrorists, then this could be huge.  Bigger even, than listening in on the cell phone conversations of German Chancellor Angela Merkel.  At least it should be.

Perhaps the question isn’t who the United States is cyber-spying on, but who isn’t the United States cyber-spying on?  Anybody?

I’m reminded of an article in the Wall Street Journal in August of last year entitled, “NSA Officers Spy On Love Interests.”  

At this point the U.S. government is so dysfunctional, so badly broken and unresponsive to the will of the majority, one wonders if there’s anything the nation’s leaders can’t pull off and then just skate away.   Like letting the Supreme Court decide the outcome of a presidential election by stopping the ballot count in Florida.  Like taking us into another “Gilded Age” by letting billionaires and corporations send their money offshore to escape taxes while making sure average folk pay every last penny they owe.  Like continuing to subsidize big oil even while the oil companies profits soar.  Like ignoring a poll showing that 90% of all Americans want expanded background checks on gun purchases.  Like setting aside whole sections of the Constitution, thumbing their noses at due process and privacy, while spying on millions of American citizens without proper court approval.  And Edward Snowden, is being demonized as a “traitor?”

Naming names,  could be huge.  If America still cares.  If we haven’t already given up on who and what we’re supposed to be.

The names will eventually be published online, in “The Intercept.”

Pope Frankie traveling to the Holy Land with a Rabbi and an Imam as “wing men?”  Jesus, would undoubtedly approve.   Go get um, Frankie.  Any number of us, heretics and true believers alike, like your style.

” Help one another. This is what Jesus teaches us. This is what I do. And I do it with my heart.” – Pope Francis

The gunfight at the O.K. Corral took place in 1881.  It remains among the most famous incidents of the old west.  You’d have to go some to top it and it was mostly about gun control.

When the Earps moved to Tombstone, Arizona, they faced a problem that was not uncommon in the so-called “boomtowns” or”cowtowns.”   Cowboys, armed to the teeth, would ride into town to hit the bars, visit the brothels and generally get drunk and shake the trail dust from their boots.  Groups of heavily armed drunks roaming the streets was an obvious formula for trouble, and so, the City of Tombstone drew up an ordinance banning the carrying of firearms inside city limits.  That ban, was ostensibly the reason for the gunfight, after Marshal Virgil Earp, decided to disarm a group of cowboys at the O.K. Corral.  It wasn’t the only reason.   The Clantons, McLaurys and the rest of the “Cowboys” gang had been trading barbs with the Earps and Doc Holiday for several weeks before the shooting started, so it was definitely personal.  Beyond that, it appears that at least some of the Cowboys had refused to give up their weapons while inside city limits in the past and continued to do so.  And so the ban on carrying gave the Earps legal justification for going after Clanton and company at the O.K. Corral.

Fast forward to December 14, 2012, at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.   A single gunman kills 20 kids and 6 adult staff members.

A year later, the British newspaper, “The Telegraph” reports, “Massacres like the one that killed 26 at Sandy Hook Elementary School a year ago are rare, but there have been 23 mass-shootings in the US since.”

And now, fast forward to  Isla vista, California, Friday, May 23, 2014.  Seven are dead and thirteen injured as a lone gunman, armed with three semi-automatic pistols, goes on a shooting spree near the University of California, Santa Barbara.

According to a Washington Post – ABC News Poll, nine in ten Americans want expanded background checks on gun purchases.  The bill failed to pass the U.S. Senate by six votes.   Who is running the government?  The NRA?  The National Rifle Association has around 2-million “most active” members.  There are 317-million of us in the United States and 90% of of us want expanded background checks.  The obvious and transparent fact that our elected leaders in Washington continue bowing to the demands of minority special interest groups as opposed to the will of the majority is an indicator of just how broken and unrepresentative our federal government continues to be.   Unfortunately the governmental dysfunctionalism radiates out into the states.

Not long ago, the Governor of Georgia, signed a bill which, Time Magazine reports, “…allows licensed owners to carry guns in more public locations than ever before.”   Places like bars, airports and schools. 

How will you feel when somebody shows up at your kid’s ballgame carrying a firearm and bragging, “See my gun? Look, I got a gun and there’s nothing you can do about it.”   In Georgia, frightened parents canceled the ballgame and hustled their kids away from the ballpark.  

There’s a vast difference between banning the carrying of firearms inside city limits, and banning ownership.  Nevertheless, more  than 130 years later, as the nation grows increasingly weary of gun violence, one wonders what Wyatt and Virgil Earp might say to Georgia Governor Nathan Deal and his new open carry law, taking us back into the mid-1800’s, before open carry was banned in Tombstone.

Scott Glover and Lisa Girion report in the Los Angeles Times, that two California counties, Orange County and Santa Clara (Silicon Valley), have filed a lawsuit against five of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies, alleging big pharma has acted like a pusher, “causing the nation’s prescription drug epidemic by waging a “campaign of deception” aimed at boosting sales of potent painkillers such as OxyContin.”

The newspaper reports that the lawsuit is “reminiscent of the legal attack against the tobacco industry…”

Glover and Girion report that the “100-page lawsuit brought on behalf of the entire state seeks compensation for the damages allegedly caused by the drugs, as well as a court order forcing the companies to forfeit revenue based on the contested marketing campaign.”

A hearty congratulations to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, for beating back the Tea Party and winning his primary race in the great state of Kentucky.  While watching Mr. McConnell, it appears he might be slowing down just a tad, that he’s not quite so quick on the uptake as he used to be.   Not bad for someone who is 72, though.  Makes you wonder if he’s been in for a brain scan recently.  According to the Mayo Clinic, some of the symptoms of dementia are-

-Inability to reason

-Inappropriate behavior

-Hallucinations

-Paranoia

-Agitation

I’m not a doctor and I’m not saying McConnell is exhibiting any of these symptoms.  Or is he?  There are those who might say he is sometimes agitated and appears to exhibit an inability to reason.  He is remember, all of 72.  Of course, he has nothing on 80 year old Chuck Grassley of Iowa or Orin Hatch of Utah or Richard Shelby of Alabama, who are also 80.  Some of these guys stick around for a long time, don’t they?

The beginning stages of dementia would explain a great deal with regard to angry aging right-wingers who are as stubborn in their refusal to compromise as they are in their inability to retire from the Senate even while their confusion about what’s best for the country continues to grow.   They may be hallucinating?  Is that even possible?  Remember the terrible threat from non-existent WMD’s?  Remember when Ronnie Reagan had to ask “Mommie” what the men were saying?

Next to most of these oldsters Mrs. Clinton, looks like a spritely college freshman.

Then again, Mr. McConnell, is probably just fine?  That doesn’t mean his mental condition and the possible conditions of his aging Republican colleagues in the Senate shouldn’t be an issue, right?   Isn’t that the point Karl Rove was making just the other day?

Wouldn’t you feel more comfortable if you knew for sure?

I keep seeing stories with smiling anchors throwing to smiling reporters talking about how wonderful it is that all these American kids are graduating from college…..with no reference at all to the fact that most of them are being forced to start their work-a-day lives $80,000 or more in debt, so that uber-wealthy greedheads like the Koch brothers and our other gazillionaires can horde more money by dodging taxes. Can we please start telling the truth?

Four or five years of college is tough enough without being forced to load up on debt.

Forcing our kids to start their adult lives saddled with an enormous debt load is an unnecessary national travesty. We are ALL being played for suckers to support the wealthiest 1% at the top.  Our kids, all of us, deserve better than this.

It’s being reported that AT&T has purchased DirecTV for umpteen billions of dollars…..blah, blah, blah.   Okay, it’s $48.5 billion, like it really matters.  What are we down to now?  Less than a dozen really big telecom companies ruling the American telecommunications landscape as the FCC (which is supposed to be looking out for us common folk) decides how to best chop up the Internet into pieces so those same telecom giants can jack up their prices by selling products and services piecemeal to us 300 million plus common boobs who pay the freight for everything?

Figured any of this out yet?   It’s simple see.  You just charge a little more from millions upon millions of people and the return can be amazing and the sheeple will barely notice it and by the time they do it will be too late, they’ll all have been fleeced and AH, HAHAHAHA, MONEY, MONEY, MONEY! and……oh, never mind.  Details can be such a bore.  Bottom  line is that the rich people who have all the money will make even more money which is what our political leaders in D.C. have been paid off to do.  And oh boy, are they doing it.  To us.  In the worst ways possible.

Might as well stop screwing around and let one company take all the telecommunications business right now as opposed to messing around with mergers for the next ten to fifteen years before deciding a monopoly doesn’t work (again) and proceeding with another mammoth round of trust busting.  Remember Ma Bell back in the 50’s?

Or maybe a handful of corporations will just control everything, like Jimmy Caan in “Rollerball.”  Might be no avoiding it.  See the movie, read the short story.   While you’re at it, rent a copy of “Soylent Green” and buy some stock.   Unless you’re a gazillionaire with your own hedge fund manager with his finger on the pulse of high-speed computer trading you won’t be able to afford to buy enough to get any real return, but what the hell.   Buy a few shares of something.  You’ll feel better.

I’m thinking of bottled water and private security.   Both are sure to be huge in the coming American neo-feudalism.

So Karl Rove implies that Hillary Clinton could be brain damaged, knowing any number of people will believe it, true or not.  He then comes back and retracts his baseless statement  only to have the Republican Party return a day later to run with it anyway, which was probably their plan when Rove first baselessly uttered his suggestion with absolutely no evidence at his command.  We know he had no evidence because if he did, he would have used it.  He was speculating.  It was BS.

It’s the old NAZI “big lie” technique of telling a lie that’s so “colossal that no one would believe that someone could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously.”

Interesting that almost no one said a word about Ronald Reagan being 69 when he was elected for his first term?   Beyond that, is Republican Chairman Reince Priebus suggesting that none of the millions upon millions of Americans who have suffered a concussion are qualified to do their jobs?

I know these people have no shame, but their sociopathic “win at any cost!” gall, regardless of the damage done to the country, continues to surprise me.  After claims of “mushroom clouds” and all the rest of their “WMD” palaver, changing their  story about the reason for invading Iraq several times, it shouldn’t, but it still does.  It’s because I cannot relate to people who can tell these kinds of lies on such a massive scale, be they outright or through innuendo, with such potentially tragic outcomes – like the death of representative Democracy and the rise of the new American Oligarchy.

That’s where these people are taking us and they are using Nazi techniques to get there.

Can we talk?  Most Americans had never heard of a “WMD,” prior to the Bush/Cheney crime family’s propaganda campaign to sell an illegal and immoral oil war to the American people based upon a non-existent threat.

These people need treatment, or at the very least to be called out and excoriated.  They’re the ones with serious brain issues, not Mrs. Clinton.  They are possibly clinically and certifiably ill.   Why else would anyone strive to destroy something so beautiful as the American dream?   And yet, that’s precisely what they and their billionaire supporters are doing.

I was shocked to learn that the cost of a 4-year degree at one of our private universities here in the Los Angeles area is currently running around $227,000, while, at the same time, the new Oligarchy seeks to cut funding for public education.  Or better yet, eliminate it altogether through privatization.

They are taking down what was mostly an egalitarian country and getting away with it, in large part because much of the American media, our Fourth Estate, continues to look the other way.

The problem with Karl Rove implying that Hillary Clinton may have suffered from some form of brain damage, or maybe not, is that no matter how unfounded, hair-brained, disgusting and politically nefarious his implication might be, there are those who will continue to believe it.  Just as there are those who continue to question Ann Richard’s sexual orientation, or believe that Barack Obama was born in Kenya, or that Iraq represented a nuclear (pardon me, “nucular”) threat to the United States, or that John McCain had an African-American baby, that Benghazi was a State Department failure of nearly unprecedented magnitude for which Mrs. Clinton is specifically at fault, or that John Kerry went to Vietnam because secretly he really wanted to be wounded to get his political career off to a big start and that his three purple hearts continue to be a joke.  Never mind that he could easily have been killed.

That’s the problem with outrageous, baseless charges.  You don’t really have to say anything directly.  Just suggesting a certain thing might be this way or that will be enough, because there are those who will continue to believe it no matter what, supported by a media that repeats baseless charges without calling them what they are.

And so the circle of disinformation continues to turn.  Joe McCarthy and Lee Atwater would be proud.

Good morning.

By now you’ve read or heard about the several hundred (two hundred?) kidnapped girls in Nigeria.  Schoolgirls, many of them Christian, who have been forced to adopt Islam while their captors try and decided what to demand for their return.  They currently appear to be wavering between a ransom or the release of jailed comrades.  Initially, they threatened to sell the girls on the international slave market.  What a peachy bunch of guys.

In Russia, Vladimir The Sometimes Shirtless, and his neo-Soviet colleagues are apparently determined to grow their empire even further into the Ukraine.  Or maybe not.  Maybe Putin is an innocent bystander, just trying to be a responsible leader and do the right thing for all concerned.  Or at least for those who are Russian-speaking.  Somehow I have a problem believing a former KGB boss, any former KGB boss, would see things that way and would fail to take advantage of the situation.   Maybe Vlad is different.  But I doubt it.  I keep wondering when and if he’ll decide that Edward Snowden is no longer serving a viable purpose.  Could be very bad for Snowden.

Offshore from Tripoli, another boatload of people have gone into the ocean while trying to escape across the Mediterranean into Europe.   At east 40 died.

Iran, meanwhile, has pronounced President Assad to be the winner in Syria’s ongoing conflict, possibly based upon  nothing more than wishful thinking, while across the way, the Israelis continue to be at seemingly insurmountable odds with the Palestinians over land they agreed to give to the Palestinians to live on, but then decided to take some of it back.

Here in the U.S. the echo of racism continues to be heard even while many of us pretend it was dead and gone years ago, as so many whites in the good old “solid south,” continue to be solidly against anything that smacks of public funding to provide a social safety net for all because they continue to mistakenly believe it will benefit only blacks, poor people who don’t want to work, and “others” who are bad because they are different from they way they are – not to  mention anything the Republican Party wants to do to cause the nation’s first black President to fail.

The Civil War ended in 1865.  The nation remains divided and racist and we need to talk about it, but we’re not.  Not nearly enough.  Can you spell “Katrina?”

Just over the hill, in Beverly Hills, Jay and Mavis Leno take part in a protest against the owner of the Beverly Hills Hotel, the Sultan of Brunei, who has called for the imposition of Sharia Law in his land.   You know, Sharia Law?  Jail terms for not attending Friday prayers?  Severing of limbs for robbery?  Women being stoned to death for committing adultery?  But if you’re a Sultan, you can do pretty much any damn thing you want?

It can’t be easy.  In March of last year it was reported that the poor Saudis might have to stop beheading people because they can’t find enough trained swordsmen.

It’s the 15th Century bumping into Beverly Hills while much of the world grows weary waiting for Islam to arrive at its inevitable reformation, but most are afraid to discuss it.   Salman Rushdie tried, and look what happened to him.

You have to be careful what you say about religious zealots.  They’re liable to turn around and declare a fatwa on your ass.  Or start building settlements on someone else’s property.  Or declare President Obama to have been born in Kenya.

These are the thoughts that greet us as we scroll through our local papers and news services each morning.  Increasingly the words to an old song have been coming  into my head reminding me  of how little things have changed.  An old Kingston Trio number entitled “The Merry Minuet.”   It was written by Sheldon Harnick in 1949.  You may remember Sheldon for a little diddy he worked on called “Fiddler On The Roof.”   His “Minuet,” was popularized by the Kingston Trio in 1959.  Here’s some of it-

“They’re rioting in Africa, they’re starving in Spain.
There’s hurricanes in Florida, and Texas needs rain.
The whole world is festering with unhappy souls.
The French hate the Germans, the Germans hate the Poles.
Italians hate Yugoslavs, South Africans hate the Dutch.
And I don’t like anybody very much!’ -(Sheldon Harnick, 1949)

As old Tom Snyder used to say, “Twas ever thus…”

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