Denying various prophets of doom their day of darkness, the President of the United States, Barack Obama, made it from the airport to not one, but two engagements, and then back to another airport without causing any earthquakes, floods, fires or riots, in spite of dire warnings from the local media which made it sound as though Armageddon was on the way.  Apparently, there weren’t even any major traffic tie-ups, as was predicted by some on local tv, whose reportage bordered on the irrational.

Way to go, folks.  Hype it to the max to get those numbers up.

I’m reminded of a personally horrifying experience here in Los Angeles a few years ago.  My cameraman and I were standing by, about to do a live report on a political issue, when the following message bored itself into my brain via the telex in my ear:  “Ron, we’re in a book, so sex it up!”   The message was coming from a neophyte producer who shouldn’t have been allowed near a tv news operation without more supervision.  The “book” she was talking about, was a rating book.  We were in a rating period and I guess she wanted me to drop my pants and do a little dance?

Anything to get the numbers up.  American journalism – RIP.

 “Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life, son.” – Dean Vernon Wormer,  Faber College

########

A couple of interesting headlines this AM.  One reads “Number of Diabetic Americans Could Triple by 2050.”   According to the story, the federal estimate is that one in three adults could have diabetes by 2050.

The fact that 63.1% of all Americans are either overweight or obese might have something to do with it.

The other reads, “AP/GfK Poll: Americans split on health care repeal.”  According to this one, Americans are split down the middle on the Republican call to repeal Mr. Obama’s health care reform.   Legislation that reformed a system that was bankrupting the nation.

This leads anyone with enough intellectual firepower to light a match, to several conclusions.

One, is that the Republicans won’t have an easy time repealing health care reform, even if they capture the House.  Another, is that as a nation our dietary habits are killing us, while making the pharmaceutical and agribusiness industries rich.  Further still, it appears obvious that as a nation we will need more and not less help with health care as we move into the future.  Repealing what little reform our bought and paid for Congress was willing to pass, will only make things worse, not better.  Health care as it was before reform, was unsustainable.   It was also (and continues to be), monopolistic.  A little problem we needed a public option to deal with.  Unfortunately, that idea went away as lobbyists for the health insurance industry hauled a few more loads of hot and heavy cash freshly pilfered from the American public over to the greedheads on Capitol Hill.

During this current year, the insurance and health care industries have contributed more than $358,000 to the campaign of House Minority Leader, John Boehner.  So far.  The year isn’t over yet.  And that’s Boehner, alone.  Suppose all that cash will influence his thinking?

I come from Minnesotans who were solidly Republican.  But that was the Republican Party of Ike Eisenhower, five-star General of the Army, Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in Europe.  A man who led a form of Republicanism that was abandoned long ago.   It has morphed into something which is, quite simply, an embarrassment, as contemporary Republicans continue to put party politics ahead of the nation’s well being.

I have to think that were General Eisenhower to suddenly reappear, his first move would be to kick John Boehner squarely in the ass.

In the last election, Eisenhower’s granddaughter, Susan, a “lifelong Republican,” switched sides and threw her support to Barack Obama.  Here is some of her rational for doing so, as reported in the Washington Post.

“Deep in America’s heart, I believe, is the nagging fear that our best years as a nation may be over. We are disliked overseas and feel insecure at home. We watch as our federal budget hemorrhages red ink and our civil liberties are eroded. Crises in energy, health care and education threaten our way of life and our ability to compete internationally. There are also the issues of a costly, unpopular war; a long-neglected infrastructure; and an aging and increasingly needy population. ” -Susan Eisenhower

At this point I can’t imagine why anyone would remain a member of the Republican Party.  Unless they have been (or are being) paid off.  For their part, the Democrats are only marginally better.  Nevertheless, the margin is there.

If all of this is more than you can bear, have a drink and forget about it.  It’s becoming increasingly easy to do.  ABC News reports that since 2002, 14 states have ended bans on Sunday alcohol sales.  In conservative Kansas,  16 counties have “gone wet.”

As for me, I remain, as always, a mostly sober independent.  Or, forgive me, they are now calling us “Decline-to-state” voters here in California.   It’s so much more politically correct.  And I really do hate it.

   Just watched the report on KABC TV.   Mr. Obama, will be arriving in L.A. tomorrow to appear with Jerry Brown and Barbara Boxer at a fund raiser at the University of Southern California in South Los Angeles.   A few streets around USC will be closed from late morning to mid-afternoon.

God help us.

According to KABC, it’s gonna be bad.  Real bad. Men and women abandoning their cars and running through the streets, tearing their hair and wailing.  Mass prayer vigils, seeking divine intervention (or at least a little help from the auto club) are being planned to deliver us from the traffic evils of the demon Obama.   Earthquakes, hurricanes and the possibility of clouds of locusts blowing in from Pomona are in the forecast.  It’ll be so bad that you should probably just stay home.  And it’s all Mr. Obama’s fault.  If he would only stay away, none of this would be happening.  Like it did the last time he was in Los Angeles and he caused all this trouble.   He’s screwing up our traffic patterns and he’s a terrible person.  Waaaaa.  Waaaaa. Waaaaa.

I’m not sure why, but the KABC report left me with the impression that the whole west side will be impassible.  Or maybe impossible.  Or maybe both.  I never have gotten used to the little old ladies playing chicken in their S-Type Mercedes, or the drug-crazed housewives in their giant SUV’s running red lights as they make what appear to be emergency missions to the nearest Whole Foods market.

Mr. Obama’s got nothing on them.

Nowhere in the report, was it mentioned that tons of potential traffic trouble will be avoided, because the President may be taking a helicopter from the airport to the event.   The fact that Mr. Obama might be traveling by helicopter was mentioned, but nothing was said about things possibly being a whole lot worse, if he were traveling by motorcade–or about the efforts being made by the White House to avoid another traffic tie-up of the kind that occurred in August.  No context was provided.

This is what happens when the President of the United States visits, people.  We aren’t all that used to it anymore because George W. Bush, saw us as a big blue enemy camp.  He hated us, and so he stayed away.   He also screwed us, every chance he got.  Remember the energy crisis, when all the power generating plants in the state were shut down simultaneously for “routine maintenance,” leading to brownouts from the north to the south, and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission  did absolutely nothing about it?  There were in fact, reports from D.C., that the FERC had been told by the White House to stand down and let the free market seek its own level. And so, the power plants went off line and whole sections of our major cities were in the dark.  A problem that hasn’t been repeated since the price of electricity went through the roof.  Remember those glorious days?

I do.  I remember asking one of the guys over at So. Cal Edison why the FERC wasn’t doing anything.  “That’s what we’d like to know” he replied.

And, duh, other presidents have been here too.  Duh.

Bubba Clinton used to traverse Los Angeles by motorcade, causing traffic tie-ups.  But he wasn’t subjected to the kind of media barrage Mr. Obama now faces.

Taking it back to July of 2009, I seem to recall sections of the 101 and 134 freeways being closed to traffic for Michael Jackson’s funeral procession.

We gave the Jackson family exclusive use of our freeway system for a funeral and now they’re melting down over the President of the United States coming to town?

Wonder who started this media “follow the leader let’s get Obama on the traffic issue” campaign?  Fox News, maybe?    Just a guess.

Is some traffic trouble two or three times a year all that much to put up with if it means keeping Los Angeles and California on the White House radar?  He’s the President of the United States and an election is only days away.  And he likes California, land of the terminally unemployed.  According to one report he’s taking a chopper from the airport to the event.  He’s the President.  Get over it.

   In France, protesters are filling the streets.   Flights are being canceled at Charles de Gaulle.  Gas stations are running out of gas.  At issue, is a move by the French government to raise the retirement age for a partial pension from 60 to 62 and a full pension, from 65 to 67.

The newscasters aren’t telling you that part of it.  They usually only talk about the 60-62 issue.  Taking it all the way up to 67 is a slightly different story, isn’t it?

Protests are also underway in England, where there are demonstrations over spending cuts, privatization, outsourcing and budget cuts that will crank up the retirement age to 66 by 2020.

The French are reportedly concerned their country is moving toward the same kind of capitalism that we have here in America.  You know, the government-supported monopoly-driven health insurance coverage no one can afford.  People being evicted even after the government used public funds for a massive bailout of the banking industry (more than two and one-half million homes are currently in foreclosure).  Credit card rates that continue to represent a government sanctioned criminal enterprise.   That kind of capitalism.  The stuff we’ve all come to love while the nation heads for its next huge economic meltdown.

But wait, if we were truly capitalists, the banks would have been allowed to fail.  There would have been no bailout.  We would have let the market deal with it.

Here in America then, we advocate capitalism, except when we don’t.  Socialism is a bad thing, except when the wealthy have gambled away their money and need public funding to be bailed out.  Then it’s suddenly okay.   But only for the very wealthy, not for the rest of us who need affordable health care.

So the French and English, who still have affordable health care, and don’t want their systems morphed into American capitalism,  are in the streets protesting.  While here in America, we do…..basically nothing.  Why?  Our Social Security program is climbing to 67 (even though most of us who spent our lives contributing to the system were promised we’d get our money at 65) while conservatives continue their move to kill it off altogether through privatization (worked real well for Wall Street, didn’t it?) as we continue paying through the nose for health insurance while we wait for our share of the TARP money to trickle down as bankers continue foreclosing on homeowners in record numbers.

How’s all that working for you?   You gonna be able to retire anytime soon?

Could it be that the French and British understand something Americans fail to grasp?  That there’s a wealthy elite in the world that goes untouched, or even profits by difficult economic times, while the wealth is redistributed from the  lower, middle and upper-middle class to those relatively few at the top?  Could it be the British and the French know about this scam, while Americans are simply unaware?

Watched an interesting lecture by an economics professor from U. Mass the other day.  He pointed out that over the past 20 years or so (thank you Ronald Reagan for your union bustin’ ways), wages for the vast majority in America have remained flat while prices and corporate profits have zoomed upwards.   It left many Americans in the middle and upper-middle class dependent on credit cards, causing a further erosion of their financial well being while they continued working 7/24 to support their increasingly difficult to maintain lifestyle.  That is to say, eating and paying a mortgage and such.  It’s burning out average Americans, caught in an impossible financial bind.   Seems to be working for the banks and the corporations though.   Unless they lose it again with their gambling addiction and need another bailout, which some are saying is exactly what will happen if adequate regulation isn’t restored.

Oh wait, we can’t do that.  Re-regulating the banks would be contrary to the rules of free-trade capitalism, and that’s what we’re all about.   Except when we’re not.

Could it be the Brits and the French understand something most Americans just don’t see?   Could it be that without a major course correction we might be headed for a two class “New World Order,”  with a very wealthy minority ruling class at the top and everybody else down at the bottom?

I’m sure Sarah Palin and Christine O’Donnell will figure it all out, come up with a plan to fix things and spread the word via broomstick across the land.  From sea to greedy sea.

It’s enough to turn you into a Yellow Dog Democrat, were it not for the fact that they too appear to have lost their cojones.

“4:20 p.m., police responded to
Washburne Avenue for a
report of a man screaming
and jumping up and down.
Upon arrival, the man was
identified, and police learned
that he was having an argument
with his sister on the
phone. No further action was
taken.”

Here in Los Angeles, jumping up and down and screaming while on the phone is pretty much normal behavior.

   It’s being reported that the proposed partnership between the Daily Beast and Newsweek Magazine has failed.  Here’s the memo from Beast Editor Tina Brown to her staff-

“Hi guys,

Tina”  

Partnering with the Beast looked like a smart move for the failing Newsweek.  Wonder what the magazine’s new owner Sidney Harman will come up with now?   Maybe he’ll buy the Daily Beast?

 “America:  The Best Democracy Corporate Lobbyists Can Buy”

    Is Journalism in its death throes, or just going through an agonizing realignment?  Whatever you might think, there’s a whole lot going on, it isn’t pretty, and nobody really knows how it’s eventually going to shake out.

So, at this point in time, why would anybody major in journalism?  Why pay all that money for a degree, possibly digging yourself into a deep financial hole, just to get into a dying industry?

Beats the hell outta me.  Dreamers and romantics?  I do know we’ll all be in deep trouble if professional journalism goes down for the count.  I don’t know if the economic powers that be care enough to save it.   Some are trying, with web operations like ProPublica and Truthout, but who knows what’ll be left when the shaking stops?

Meantime, why bother going to journalism school?  Because you hope some billionaire with pangs of social responsibility will feel the need to support a non-profit news operation on the web that might go away at the click of a mouse?

David Folkenflick, examines the issue on NPR.

 “At USC, undergraduate tuition alone reaches $40,000, and, when taken with fees, books, room, board and other charges, a year’s cost can exceed $55,000. These days journalism schools around the country are often challenged to justify a mission that trains students at such a high cost for a collapsing industry that doesn’t even require a degree.

After all, many newspaper companies have been forced to seek bankruptcy protection, including the owner of the nearby Los Angeles Times. ABC News just let go a quarter of its entire staff. And Newsweek and BusinessWeek magazines were in such tough shape their longtime owners sold them for $1 a piece.”-NPR

What future does the nation have without professional journalists?

   The WSJ is reporting that ten Facebook apps, including “Farmville,” are feeding user’s personal information to dozens of advertisters and Internet tracking companies.   Facebook has apparently taken action to disable the apps that violate their terms.  According to the Journal, most of the apps are made by third parties.

Most?  You mean Zuckerberg and company aren’t wealthy enough already?

I’m now wondering if I should delete my account, and if I did, whether all my personal info would still be stored somewhere on a Facebook (or other) file?

I had gotten in touch with some old friends through Facebook, and was really starting to like the thing.  This kinda throws a very large bucket of cold water on it….and raises an important question.   Even if they do put limits on the apps that have access to their system, to what degree will they be able to keep their user’s personal Facebook info away from marketers who want to mine their data base?

Hope you didn’t give them too much of your personal info.

 Here’s a new twist on that little red wagon you had as a kid.  The reporter is Christine Kim, from KTUU-TV in Anchorage.

   Here’s the problem.  The U.S. tax code rewards big business with tax credits for sending jobs overseas.  President Obama, is apparently pressing the Congress to change the law and eliminate some of the tax credits.

The Republicans and some Democrats, including  the honorable and good Max Baucus of Montana,  don’t want to do it.   They say they fear it would put U.S. companies at a competitive disadvantage.  Nonsense.  Their real fear is that their corporate masters will cut off their campaign funding.

Baucus alone has received $887,919.00 from the securities and investment industry in 2010.   And the year isn’t over yet.

Let the good times roll!

Anyway, why create jobs here, when poor Communist Chinese and Vietnamese are willing to break their backs for less than $2 an hour?  By one account, some rural Communist Chinese are working for 45-cents an hour.  That being the case, how devastated will our middle class have to become, before Americans demand more equity in the way wealthy corporations share their profitability?  Contrary to capitalism?  Maybe, but it’s a question that needs to be answered before the American middle and upper-middle class are completely wiped out.

While we wait for our great thinkers in Washington to come up with an honorable solution that will preserve the wealth of our wealthiest 2% (God bless them and their trickle down thinking), we can only hope for a resurgence of interest in campaign finance reform.   I’m afraid Ralph Nader’s hope that the billionaires may save us won’t come to pass.  Gordon Gekko, really doesn’t give a damn.   The New World Order, trumpeted by George H.W. Bush is arriving, and it looks a whole lot more like a dragon than an eagle.   Consequently, it appears we’ll have to save ourselves, and public campaign financing appears to be the only way.   Which could mean we’re doomed.  Hope not.

Fact is though, most of these guys and gals in the Congress are bought and paid for.  They have no shame and they’re gonna dance with the one that brung um while they pretend to be working for the greater good.

I wish I could be more optimistic.  In the meantime, at least Mr. Obama’s trying to do something about American corporations gutting our middle and upper-middle class to increase their profitability.

Or maybe it’s all just for show?   Maybe they just want to make it appear as though something is being done, or at least an effort is being made to prevent a peasant uprising out in the hinterlands, beyond the sacred confines of the holy Washington Beltway?

This should be a key issue for every mid-term candidate.   Or those that can grasp the concept.

   So yesterday, one of our phone lines goes out.  It still works, but there’s a lot of static and cross-talk on the line.  It’s on all four extensions, so I know it’s the phone line and not the equipment in our house.   My DSL service is on the same line, so my internet connection is lost too.

I took a deep breath, reconciled myself with the fact that it would be a less than satisfactory experience, and I called  the phone company.

After going through the impersonal aggravation of an automated menu, I finally get a human being on the line.  She’s the DSL lady.  It takes a while, but she finally gets to the point where she seems to understand that the problem is with the telephone line coming into my house, and not with my “equipment.”  In other words, this is going to require a human being to come out and make repairs.  An actual human being.  A person.  A member if the greater Homo Sapiens tribe.

Rather than transferring me to another actual human, she gives me another 800-number to call.   I explain to her that I have two hard lines and two cell phones and a DSL connection with her company, and that it disappoints and distresses me that she can’t help me fix this problem — that she expects me to now place a second call to another 800 number, where I will undoubtedly be forced to waste my time going through another automated menu which will matter-of-factly tell me that I can get it all done on the company’s website — which I (DUH) can’t use because their damn service is down and my DSL line is cut off, which is why I’m calling them…DUH.

I then tell her not to take it personally, that I understand it’s the golden parachute-wearing corporate greedheads running the company she works for who are to blame, and not her, and that I hope someone in power will actually hear the conversation we’re having, a conversation which I’m sure is being taped “for quality control.”   Something corporate America cares oh so much about.  But only when it has a negative impact on their bottom line.

I then dial the number she gave me.  I get the automated menu which again tells me I can fix everything if I will only take a moment and go to their wonderful website.  I punch my way through the menu without the ability to speak to an actual person, either here, or in Mumbai.  Instead I am directed to make an appointment for a person to come to my house and fix the problem.

The earliest anyone can come out is 8 days away.  8 days.  Until then my my internet service is down.

The process has taken me around 20 minutes to complete.  Maybe a little longer.  I find no comfort in the fact that many American companies show the same automated disregard for anyone in need of customer service.  Because that friends, is all we are.  Just a bunch of customers whose human value is decreasing exponentially by the moment.

People are increasingly becoming a liability rather than an asset, even though, in the final analysis, all we really have is each other.  Hilarious, isn’t it?

“We have met the enemy and he is us…” -Pogo

(For those who don’t know, the character “Pogo” appeared as a comic strip in newspapers, a folded stack of actual paper with printing containing factual news, information and entertainment, compiled by professional journalists and delivered to a subscriber’s doorstep on a daily or weekly basis.   Like Pogo, newspapers declined and eventually faded away with the advent of automation and the internet as corporate power superseded a Democratic form of government in the United States.)

   Interesting piece by Jerry Hirsch in the Los Angeles Times, on which cars are more likely to get you a speeding ticket.  Statistically, anyway.  The speed you’re driving matters too.

According to a study Hirsch cites-

“Drivers of the Mercedes-Benz SL Class roadster were more than 400% more likely to get a ticket than the average for drivers of all vehicles. Camry-Solara drivers were second at 349% and Scion TC drivers were third at 343%. Hummers came in fourth at 292% more likely to get a ticket, and the Scion xB was fifth at 270%.” – Los Angeles Times

If you want to avoid speeding tickets, get a Buick Rainier SUV.     And don’t speed.

Here’s the full list of those cars most and less likely to attract speeding tickets (if you happen to be speeding) from the Quality Planning Corporation in San Francisco.

   For those of you who didn’t care for what I wrote about the KNBC co-anchor who was dressed in an argyle sweater even though it was approaching 100 degrees yesterday, tough darts.    That’s not proper anchor attire in any weather, much less when it’s hot enough to melt your tires.   It might work on Christmas Eve, when the anchor folk are trying their best to look all fuzzy and cuddly, and down-home.   Generally though, any number of reporters here in Los Angeles have gone far astray from presenting anything resembling a businesslike appearance, with cocktail dresses, Loni Anderson studio hair, boob-job sweaters and whatnot.   It only helps destroy their credibility.

“Well, I coulda been a actor, but I wound up here..

I just have to look good, I don’t have to be clear….”*

Oh, but wait! Credibility doesn’t really matter anymore, since most of the stations have stopped covering news.

Sorry, I lost my grip on reality for just a minute.

Never mind.

*From “Dirty Laundry” by Don Henley

   Trying to get my head around the whole Chilean miner rescue thing.  Sure, it was a big story and all, and I was getting caught up in how great it was that they were getting the 33 miners back uninjured, when one of the commentators on a cable channel compared it to the Apollo-13 moonshot.  Okay, that’s enough.  Time to put on the brakes.

These guys were trapped in a mine, they were not on their way to the moon.  Which, by the way, was only the third time in human history anyone had tried reaching the lunar surface.  People have been going down into mines for centuries.

It’s great that the miners were rescued,  although I’m not sure why it became such a point of national pride for the Chileans.   Chilean President Sebastian Pinera, is being quoted as saying,  “They have experienced a new life, a rebirth, and so has Chile.  We aren’t the same that we were before the collapse on Aug. 5. Today Chile is a country much more unified, stronger and much more respected and loved in the entire world.”

I don’t get it.

While it was iffy, I don’t think it was all that miraculous.  Not with 21st Century mining technology.    Then again, they couldn’t stop a leak on the ocean’s floor in the Gulf, so maybe this was pretty amazing.  I do know that the Apollo-13 astronauts getting back to earth in one piece was in fact, miraculous.

Hopefully the Chilean miners won’t become the next Kathy Fiscus rescue story.  A tale Los Angeles residents have been forced to listen to  ad nauseam over the years.    Come to think of it, if it does replace the Kathy Fiscus story, maybe it won’t be all that bad.

The miners are out!  They apparently all got a free pair of very expensive and fashionable sunglasses!  Nearly lost in all of this was the news that President Pinera fired some people and vowed to overhaul the country’s mining regulations agency.   Chile leads the world in the production of copper.

An improvement in mining safety that might prevent another similar incident will salvage some good from what could have been a very nasty event.   But I’m still left wondering why there’s “global euphoria” over this thing.   Maybe because the world has been so overwhelmed by negativity for so long that it’s nice to have a little positive input for a change?   Maybe the Chilean rescue will be the first incident in what turns into a whole chain of positive events?  That would be nice.  Even if it only means not having to listen to the Kathy Fiscus story one more time.