Tag Archives: ron olsen

A View From The Pasture

I’m reading about the “Tik Toc Generation.” What’s that? Is that even a thing? Did I misspell it correctly?

Feeling very much left in the dust. I don’t even have a smartwatch, but feel as though I should get one to signify that I am not completely irrelevant. I can’t imagine what’s going through young people’s minds with regard to anything, much less whether they give a damn about anything other than climate change which they apparently worry about a great deal. As they should. I see a former colleague has written a book, or perhaps I should say another book, about the early days of tv news in Los Angeles. Does anybody care?

I’m a guy who has multiple Emmys, a wall covered with various other awards from multiple organizations, including a Peabody, as I happened to have been with KTLA when George Holliday called CNN – only to be put on hold – so he called us and asked if we wanted his video of the cops beating the hell of some guy in Lake View Terrace. Just days later, a 15 year-old black girl, Latahsa Harlens, was shot and killed by a convenience store owner in South Central in a dispute over a $2 bottle of OJ. Not that any of this matters, but these and other factors did eventually contribute to causing the Los Angeles riots. I covered all of it.

At varying times, I also chased OJ up the 405 freeway in a news van and flew around South Dakota in a converted DC-3 with George McGovern, as he campaigned to get his senate seat back. I also got the very first and exclusive interview with John Z. DeLorean, following his acquittal on a charge of cocaine trafficking. Don’t remember John Z? Think “Back to the Future,” with Michael Fox.

I’m the guy who broke the story about the mammoth Casmalia toxic waste dump. A 252-acre superfund site that made the 17-acre Stringfellow site look like a kiddie pool. I was also one of the first journalists to arrive at the Bundy murder scene in Brentwood, I may have been the first reporter, in fact, when the bodies had yet to be covered and a river of blood flowed down the walkway. Carl Stein, a photog for CBS, was there before us.

There’s much more, like the invention of ENG and live news coverage in the mid-70’s, when we switched from film to tape, as well as the very first wall-to-wall live trial coverage featuring legal experts. You can blame us, broadcasters of my place in time, for what’s currently being done on MSNBC and CNN. We invented all that stuff for the Simpson trials. I was being called a “legal analyst” at the time, even though I never spent a day in law school.

There was also the “synergy” thing, when my boss, the Tribune Company, bought the Los Angeles Times, or specifically, the Times Mirror Company, which owned the newspaper. The price, as I recall, was something north of $6 billion. They came to me and wanted to know if I would be the go-between for KTLA-TV and the newspaper in an attempt to get those of us on the tv side working in some kind of partnership with the print journalists at the paper – most of whom hated those of us on the broadcast side. And so, I took a desk at the Los Angeles Times, and became one of the very first of only a handful of journalists to try and make cross-platform journalism or so-called “synergy,” work. I eventually got it done, although the effort put me in Cedars-Sinai, with a heart attack.

I have more than 40 years in the news biz and have offered my services as a speaker to two institutions of higher learning here in Maryland. Neither, favored me with a response. They used to at least send out a form letter. Now, you get nothing. This is all very interesting to me, in that UCLA asked me twice to teach an extension course back in the days when I was covering Simpson, and had no time to do anything else. Just goes to show, I guess, that when you’re hot you’re hot, and when you’re not, you’re out in the pasture flinging cow pies baked hard by the sun.

Thank you for listening, or reading, actually, not that specificity matters much any more. Not in this era of click-bait creativity and doing whatever gets you by with the least effort and highest degree of cost-effectiveness. Not that long ago, I actually thought the emphasis on hair and makeup was a problem.

(Originally published in the “Back Focus” group on Facebook)

Seinfeld And Me

Interesting day so far here in the Mid-Atlantic. First came the vultures.

Our friend Sue notified my wife that several vultures had congregated near the trash she had left out for pickup in her front yard, and she wasn’t sure what, if anything, she should do about it. This was new for me. I had no idea what, if anything, to say about it, but I can see where vultures hanging around the house, particularly in the front yard where they would be the first thing you see when you look out the window, could be a real drag. Particularly for those of us in our 70’s and 80’s. I just put a new roof on the house and it’s a chilling thought that the roof will probably outlast me. So there was that. Until receiving news of the great DC housefire.

A friend, who lives down near the district, was about to jump in the shower when there was a banging at his door. It was a neighbor lady from across the street, frantic with news that there was smoke coming from the house next door and that the elderly man who lived there, wasn’t home. My friend, we’ll call him Fred, took it to heart. He threw on a robe, went outside and saw white smoke pouring out of the chimney of the house next door – which, according to the neighbor lady, was empty.

Fearing the worst, my buddy Fred grabbed his 100 foot garden hose and directed water at the top of the chimney while yelling at the neighbor lady to “Dial 9-1-1! Call the fire department!” Which she did. They also tried knocking on the door, but nobody answered, adding to fears that the house was unoccupied. I should add, just to be fair, that it isn’t all that common to see smoke pouring out of a chimney in July when temperatures are in the 80’s.

The fire department got there pretty fast according to Fred, as their firehouse is located less than 200 yards from the “incident.” The firemen arrived and started banging on the door and this time someone answered. The old man who lives in the house told everybody to calm down. He had been in the basement he said, where he couldn’t hear the knocking. As for the fire, he needed to get rid of some old papers, he explained, so he was burning them in the fireplace, causing smoke, which in the words of my buddy Fred, “Looked like the fire at the Vatican when they’ve got a new Pope!” Which is why he was standing there in his bathrobe pouring water on the chimney.

Interesting day here in the Mid-Atlantic. Wondering what’s coming next. Maybe Kramer and Elaine will drop by for lunch.

The Simpson Trial – A Story That Has No End

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Ron Olsen and Kitty Felde

25 years ago today, Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman were viciously murdered on Bundy Drive in Los Angeles. And so it began. An event that would mark our lives and change news coverage forever. Regularly scheduled panel discussions with legal and other experts on live tv began here, as did the mainstream media following reports in supermarket tabloids – some of which turned out to be accurate in spite of checkbook journalism – and tv helicopters following every “slow speed chase” that came down the freeway.

Some believe the “wall to wall” coverage of the case by KTLA-TV, Court TV and CNN, laid the groundwork for the 24-hr news cycle and the explosive growth in reality show tv. There were no “Kardashians” on tv, before Robert Kardashian joined the “dream team.” The case made the phrases “It’s a no-brainer” and “The question’s prejudicial impact outweighs its probative value” famous as Johnnie Cochran and Marcia Clark became legal superstars with an entire nation transfixed on the “trial of the century.” According to Time Magazine, 57% of the country tuned in to watch the verdict in the criminal trial, with a summer filled with depositions and the civil trial in Santa Monica, still to come.

At the time, KTLA was coast to coast on cable and satellite and worldwide on SkyTV. We were in the eye of the storm. Only those who were there will be able to understand all that it was, and in some respects, continues to be, as the continuing divide between black and white America has again been painfully highlighted by Charlottesville. It was suggested by one therapist who was interviewed for a series done by local radio, that for those covering the case, it was not unlike going to war.

For those of you who may be new to the story, football star O.J. Simpson, was found “not guilty” in a criminal trial in Los Angeles, and then conversely, he was found liable for the deaths of Ron Goldman and his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson, in a civil trial in Santa Monica, and was ordered to pay damages in the amount of $33.5 million. Ron Goldman’s father, Fred Goldman, has repeatedly complained that Simpson has never willingly paid one penny of the settlement, which now, with interest, reportedly amounts to around $70 million.

According to the AP, Simpson is currently living in Las Vegas, with pensions keeping him fiscally afloat. An analysis done by CNN/Money indicates that Simpson’s NFL pension could run as high as $100,000 a year, with more pension money coming in from his work in the movies and from Social Security which could run as high as $42,000 a year. Retirement income is protected from any civil court judgement.

The two children he had with Nicole are reportedly in the real estate business in Florida.

Has Our “Constitutional Crisis” Arrived?

Turned on CNN International this morning to hear their guest, a law professor, stating that the United States is now in the midst of “a constitutional crisis.” This, following the Attorney General of the United States, William Barr, allegedly the nation’s highest-ranking law enforcement official, refusing to show up for questioning before the House Judiciary Committee which is trying to get to the bottom of what was redacted from the Muller Report and whether Mr. Barr has greater interest in being the Attorney General of the United States or a personal attorney for Donald J. Trump, doing all he can to give Mr. Trump cover from his obvious collusion with the Russians, followed by his equally obvious obstruction of justice, outlined in the Mueller Report. A report which, Mr. Barr now admits, he has not read and did not read, prior to telling the American people that it clears Donald Trump of any wrong doing. That is to say, no collusion and no obstruction of justice.

We now know, of course, following Barr’s appearance before a Senate committee on Wednesday, that Mr. Mueller complained in writing to Mr. Barr, that he had mischaracterized the contents of the report to the American people. When his complaint was ignored, Mueller, complained again. Barr, apparently did not care, as he went before the Senate Judiciary Committee and said he had a conversation with Muller and that Muller’s chief complaint was not that Barr had mischaracterized the report’s contents, but that the media was getting it all wrong.

It’s the White House playbook. When caught in a lie, blame the media. If that doesn’t work, blame Hillary Clinton. The folks back home will buy it every time. They don’t read, so all that really matters is what they hear, first from FOX or Rush, and then from one-another.

Ostensibly, William Barr, is refusing to show up for questioning because he doesn’t like the format House Democrats are going to use of bringing in an outside attorney to help with the questioning. Republicans say the Dems are out of line in trying to use this technique, even though it is the same form of questioning the Republicans insisted upon when questioning Christine Blasey Ford.

The Republicans are famous for their “do as I say and not as I do” moves. When you have a constituency that doesn’t read and reacts from emotion rather than intellect, it works every time.

Beyond that, and just to clear up any confusion, the Judiciary Committee is charged with overseeing the Federal Courts and Federal law enforcement agencies, like Mr. Barr and the FBI. So in a very real sense (as opposed to “alternative facts”), Barr, is answerable to the Committee. His refusal to show up for a committee hearing is not unlike telling one’s boss to “go stuff it.”

So here we are. If the law professor is correct, and I think she probably is, Donald J. Trump, and his water-carrying Attorney General, have brought us to the brink of becoming a full-blown banana republic. The United States of America, where tens of thousands have gone into into battle to die or be wounded to protect our way of life, our Democracy, and now a spoiled man-child from New York, a man who may have mental health issues, is being allowed to bring it all to the brink?

When you enter the military, you raise your right hand and take an oath to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic…” Trump seems to have no concept of what that means. He is talking and acting like a monarch, because he is being allowed to talk and act like one. He apparently has no idea that the Congress is co-equal to the Executive.

It’s a problem which, at this point, only the Republicans with their majority in the Senate, can fix. However, to fix it, they will have to put country ahead of their party and the polls. So far they have refused, and in their intransigence and unending support for this President who would be king, they have shown themselves to be traitors to the cause of American Democracy.

They are turning their backs on each and every young American who has taken an oath to “support and defend” the Constitution. A document this current Republican Party has no interest in defending. If they did, they would be joining the growing chorus of those who refuse to stand by and watch our great nation being turned into something resembling a third-world country being run by a tyrant who is beyond the reach of the law and without accountability for his words and actions. A man who has delivered us into a constitutional crisis. He is Vladimir Putin’s fondest desire.

Whether Trump understands what he’s doing is no longer relevant. He is doing it. That, is all that really matters. Have you seen what’s happening in Venezuela right now? Don’t think it can’t happen here.

Poem For The Body Politic

 

Head spinning in disbelief

Losing sleep

Over Russian creep

The more you know

The heavier the burden

Today’s truth

Is tomorrow’s lie

Incomplete tweets

Rally the base

A beautiful and free tomorrow

A message delivered with ease

With tease and please

Freedom in sound bites

Freedom from healthcare

Freedom from rule of law

Freedom from taxation

Freedom to hire private security

Sitting on your stoop

Shotgun in hand

Waiting for a neighbor to steal your food

Pay for your own

Fire protection

Schooling

Libraries

Airports

Fresh air and clean water

Toll roads

Privatize to legitimize

Tear it all down

Let God sort it out

The only civilization left

Government officials

And the military

Controlling angry crowds

War, fear, hatred, ignorance

All that’s left of what we were

Our last remaining civilized thinking

Leaving us with no civilization at all

Just rule by the rich

Oligarchs and Oilgarchs

Who pay nothing

To do what they will

In a big house

On the top of the hill

Their private army stands guard

While we wander naked

Divided and alone

With that which they sold us

And told us

Was freedom

Only to find

That there wasn’t there

 

(copyright – ron olsen)  

Congressman Tom McClintok Calls Trump A Liar

Hard line right-winger from California, Congressman Tom McClintock.  just called Donald Trump a liar.   He did it on the Chris Hayes show on MSNBC and Hayes totally missed it as did DNC Nat’l Chairmam Tom Perez, who was the next guest on the show.

I could be getting this totally wrong.  I’m not DJT, who never makes mistakes, but what happened, as I recall, is that Congressman McClintock was in a heated argument with Chris Hayes regarding what Donald Trump had said about Mexico paying for a wall along the border and McClintock said, “I never believed it.”   So he admits that he believes  Donald Trump to be a liar, because the Donald repeatedly said during his campaign that he would make Mexico pay for the wall.  And McClintock says he never believed what Trump was saying.  Repeatedly.  No question about it.

Thank you Mr. McClintock.   A great many of us agree with your conclusion that Donald Trump is a liar.

If I’m getting this right, I beg you to cut Chris Hayes some slack, as these Republican worms are telling lies with such ease and frequency that it’s easy to let one slip by.  But when members of Trump’s own party admit they were listening to his ongoing lies and that it’s apparently okay,  that’s pretty damn scary.

 

Will The Democrats Ever Grow A Backbone?

It’s being announced that there is no evidence that Barack Obama wiretapped Trump Tower.  Really?  How much of this crap are we supposed to take?   How many lies, first from candidate and now President Trump?   Where is the Democrat’s outrage at his outrageous behavior?  Where are the leaders in the center and on the left?  When are they going to grow a collective backbone?

I have sent messages via email to both my U.S. Senators and my congressman.    Please be encouraged to do the same.   My message to my senators is posted below.   Feel free to copy it for your own use, if you wish.

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Dear Senator,
I am writing to express my disappointment in the weak-kneed way the Democrats are responding to the ongoing outrageous behavior (lies) of President Trump. Just today the leaders of the House Intelligence Committee held a press conference to announce that there is no evidence that Mr. Obama wiretapped Trump Tower. Really? It was just another Trump lie of course, and you guys should be shouting your heads off that his pattern of lies and deceit must stop now. You should also demand as loudly as possible, that Trump apologize to Mr. Obama and the American people for lying about the alleged wiretap, which, of course, never took place – just like all his other lies beginning with the campaign and then continuing into his Administration, which we still must worry could be aligned with Putin and the other Russian oligarchs. Come on! Trump could be in bed with the Russians??? He is nothing but a bully boy and you have got to start fighting back! If Pelosi and Schumer won’t do it then cut Bernie and Liz Warren loose and let them take the lead. They at least know how to fight back. The future of our nation is at stake, for God’s sake.

Thank you,
Ron Olsen
Bel Air

Poem For Orlando

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Orlando

by Ron Olsen

 

Screams of Terror

Blood flows free

Repeated questions about motive

And extreme belief

Another act without soul

Only the same circular talk

We remain unchanged

Money locks in the status quo

Until the next trainload of grief

Spreads its demon cargo

Across the blood spattered land

Without regard for age, color or sex

A child songbird

Or 50 in a club

No discrimination in slaughter

Driven by ignorance

Or madness

We continue our self-annihilation

The cost of correction

Progression

Redemption

Lying somehow beyond our reach

As we fail ourselves once again

More Than Ever, It’s All About The Money

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An often-used technique by those who would fool you into doing something that’s contrary to your own best interest, is to make the situation seem so complex, so terribly complicated, that there is just no way you can fully understand what’s really going on.   So you give up, leave it alone, and let someone else decide for you.

In a culture that forces so many of us to work twelve hour days or hold down two jobs just to keep the kids fed, this happens frequently, to the point that much of what should be issue oriented news never gets on the air, with news executives declaring that “it’s just too complicated for television.”   No, it’s not.   They just don’t want to put in the time, effort and money necessary to get it done.    So an already exhausted American public becomes a little more dumbed down.

So let’s simplify.

-There is a direct connection between the dumbing down of America and the rise of the new ruling Corporatocracy which began with the tax cuts of “Reagonomics,” and deregulation, and continued on with the Neocon policies of the Republican Party, supported by a Democratic Party,  which,  more often than not sat on its hands while the rich bought our political system and off-shored millions of jobs to countries where slave-labor wages are accepted.   It’s to their advantage to keep you in the dark,  while you are spoon fed overblown issues like Benghazi, by a corporate owned media that cares more for profits than public responsibility.   So you don’t get what you need, you get ratings-driven “infotainment.”

-We are no longer a Democratic Republic, we are an Oligarchy, controlled by multi-national corporations, millionaires and billionaires.   Thinking your vote matters, when the Congress and White House are owned by billionaires and CEO’s, is a sad joke.   The “Citizens United” decision by the Supreme Court drove the last nail in our national coffin, giving free reign to the wealthy of any nation to purchase the U.S. Government.   How’s that for the “New World Order” George H.W. Bush talked about while having no idea what a bar code reader does?   While politicians still must fear losing their jobs by losing an election, that lever has lost much of its clout for the American people, as newcomers who are voted in will eventually fall prey to the millions of dollars flooding the system from lobbyists, giving us the best government money can buy.   The more money you have, the more the government is likely to reflect your wants and needs.

Consequently-

-The United States lags behind the rest of the developed world in healthcare.   We continue to pay more and get less.   Even with “Obamacare.”   We need to catch up with the rest of the developed world with a single payer, government controlled system of Medicare for all.   Dental care and eye care need to be included in the system.   To regard dental and vision care as somehow being separate from healthcare, is madness.

-We are badly behind most of the European countries in rail safety, as was just highlighted by the tragic train derailment in Philadelphia, a crash that might have been prevented by technology that automatically slows trains to a safe speed.   Technology the Europeans have been using for years, but we don’t have it, as the railroad industry and Congress argue over who is going to pay to have it installed.   By one estimate, 140 rail accidents might have been prevented had the new “Positive Train Control” system been installed.   Instead,  congress voted to cut rail funding on the day of the Philadelphia crash.    This isn’t a high speed bullet train we’re talking about folks, it’s old fashioned 20th Century train travel.   And we can’t afford to get it right?   Oh well, at least we’re good at making war.   What about once the war ends?

-The U.S. continues to offer inadequate support to its veterans.  According to the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans, “Although flawless counts are impossible to come by – the transient nature of homeless populations presents a major difficulty – the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) estimates that 49,933 veterans are homeless on any given night.

Approximately 12,700 veterans of Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF), Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) and Operation New Dawn (OND) were homeless in 2010. The number of young homeless veterans is increasing, but only constitutes 8.8% of the overall homeless veteran population.”

We didn’t give adequate care to our vets following Vietnam, and now we’re doing it all over again with those returning from the Middle East.

There’s more, but isn’t this enough?    The rich do well, while the middle class is gutted.   Our infrastructure goes begging while our elderly can’t afford dental or vision care and millions of Americans are forced to pay for “Obamacare” which still has no “public option” to provide real competition for the insurance industry.

At the heart of the problem is a lack of campaign finance reform.  They’ve bought us, folks.   They own us.  Our government is going to the highest bidder.    Many of our politicians are in bed with the CEO’s on Wall Street who nearly bankrupted the nation.   But none of the big shots went to jail and the “too big to fail” banks are still there.

It’s relevant that a significant cause of World War II, was a worldwide depression that got its start on Wall Street.

It’s really very simple.   Our representative government is gone.  You now get all the representation you can afford to buy.   With enough money you can defraud the nation, nearly crash the world’s economy, and stay out of jail.  Our Senate has routinely been called a “millionaires club.”  Professional politicians like the Clintons enter office in debt to eventually become millionaires who set up their personal legacy with a fund that’s received millions in donations from the Saudis.   Then there’s the speaker’s circuit, which can be incredibly profitable if you have the right friends.   Politico reports that Bill and Hillary, have pulled in roughly $25 million in speaking fees since 2014.   On the other side of the isle, the uber-rich Bush family takes us to war in Iraq, while maintaining a close ties with Saudi royalty.    Are you beginning to see a pattern?   It’s all about who you know and who is willing to buy your influence.

At the same time, so many Washington fat cats, particularly on the Republican side,  refer to Social Security and Medicare as “entitlements” that should be eliminated.   Entitlements?  Hell,  many of us, with no friends in Saudi Arabia to rely on,  have been paying into those programs since we were in our teens.   They’re not entitlements, they are earned benefits for our national social good, as Bernie Sanders has repeatedly stated.  FDR got it right and now Bernie, and populists like Elizabeth Warren, may be our last best hope.   Remember that term.   Earned benefits.  They are EARNED.   They are NOT a government handout.

Don’t let all the smoke and mirrors confuse you.  It’s all about the money.  Always has been.  Everything else is an illusion.   Until all that  money is somehow gotten out of politics,  we the people out here on Main Street are flat-out screwed, as our trains crash, our highways crumble, homeless veterans live in cardboard boxes under an overpass while we continue paying twice as much as the rest of the developed world for prescription drugs and our old folks are forced to sign “reverse mortgages” in their golden years, as the wealthy on Wall Street develop yet another method to extract every last bit of wealth Middle America has.

In Defense Of The American Garage

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In some parts of the country there appears to be a trend shifting away from the two-car garage to a one-car garage or to no garage at all.  This is troubling, in that the housing industry is undoubtedly looking at forecasts pointing  to a future with far fewer cars and hence, less need for a garage.

Perhaps they feel global warming will force us to abandon personal transportation in favor of riding a bus, or maybe they see the American middle class being so economically devastated by the off-shoring of jobs that homebuyers won’t be able to afford both a new house and a car?   In either case, the American garage appears to be in trouble and that’s seriously bad news for the U.S.A.

But “oh” you say, “surely that’s an overstatement!”  Really?

Think of what’s come out of American garages.   Apple computers and Microsoft for starters, as well as Amazon.com, Google and Disney.   Ritchie Valens and the Velvet Underground got started as garage bands, and although I can’t prove it, I’ll bet old Buddy Holly did too, along with dozens of others who were foundational for mainstream rock n’ roll.    There’s also  Mattel and Maglite and finally, although this is, if anything, an incomplete list, the great Harley Davidson motorcycle.

They all came out of  somebody’s garage or somebody’s parent’s garage, which argues for more and bigger garages, not fewer.   Considering all they’ve given us, our elected leaders should think about setting aside a date on the calendar as “Garage Appreciation Day.”

The time will come when that piece of oil-stained cardboard your father threw down on the floor because the old Rambler blew a gasket, will be framed and hanging in the local museum as a testament to all that we once were.

Garages have done more than house our cars.   They’ve been a springboard for cultural development and a cultural repository.     Without garages, where will we go to create?   Where will all those kids in the Midwest build their floats for thousands of high school homecoming parades?  Imagine America without Apple, Harleys,  Disneyland and rock n’ roll.   America, without Mickey Mouse and Homecoming?

I suppose those who follow will find some other space to create, but it won’t be the same.  It can’t be, for nothing is more American than the American garage, with its oil stains, old license plates, lawn mowers, a big coffee can filled with mismatched nuts and bolts, old tires, your dead grandfather’s golf clubs, the steering wheel from a 54 Olds, motorcycles, gas cans, garbage cans, outdated pinup calendars, campaign posters, tools on a peg board, greasy rags, old baseball gloves, skateboards,  garage bands and all.

And over in the corner an old mirror hangs cockeyed from a rusty three penny nail, reflecting all that we are.

PAINSOFLOVE

“Pains of Love” – American Garage Band/1970’s – Harrisburg, PA  (click on pic for enlargement) photo courtesy of Michael Jones

Goodbye Jayne

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photo:  wikipedia

Actress and a true force of nature, Jayne Meadows, wife of tv legend Steve Allen, sister of Audrey Meadows of “The Honeymooners,” died at home in Encino, CA, of natural causes on Sunday.   She was 95.  She was a friend.   Condolences to her family.

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Ron Olsen, Steve Allen and Jayne Meadows in later years attend a dinner in Los Angeles, honoring Steve’s lifetime of public service.

 

 

Prosecute Dick Cheney? Yeah, Right….When Pigs Fly

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Kudos to the New York Times for having the stones to recommend that Dick Cheney and other officials of the administration of George W. Bush, should be prosecuted for war crimes.   Of course they should.  The feds should also throw a dozen or so big bankers in jail for committing fraud and crashing the economy in 2008.   But they haven’t and they won’t.   And nobody is going to prosecute Dick Cheney, and the editorial writers at the Times know it.

The big guys at the top almost always take care of one another.  In big business, how many of the CEO’s who have crashed big companies and then bailed out with golden parachutes have been prosecuted?   It’s endemic in our society and the same holds true for politics.  Ford, pardoned Richard Nixon, the Reagan Administration was never held accountable for prolonging the release of the American hostages in Iran in 1981, and and Mr. Obama, won’t condone a criminal prosecution of Dick Cheney.   If he did, a special prosecutor appointed by his new attorney general might have to haul a former president into court to testify.   There’s a precedent no sitting president wants to set.

Beyond that, can you even imagine the uproar from the right, claiming any prosecution of poor Dick Cheney and his inner circle was purely political?   Whitewater, Benghazi, Vince Foster and Monica Lewinsky combined don’t even being to touch it.

Being able to commit and benefit from horrendous acts, either economically or politically, and then walking away without reasonable accountability, may be at the heart of all that ails us as a people.

That doesn’t mean that putting the proposition out there has no value.   Not being able to act on the truth doesn’t mean we should deny it.  Denial, only makes matters worse by implying our tacit approval.   Like looking the other way while the Reagonites cut their deal with the Iranians to delay the release of the hostages until Reagan had been sworn in back in 1981, or when Nixon’s gang of political thugs torpedoed the peace process in Vietnam to defeat Hubert Humphrey in 1968 .

Most Americans never even think about these things.   Denial, is so much easier.

Poem: “The Dinner” (a salute to the white house correspondents dinner)

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The Dinner
by Ron Olsen

The watchers
And the watched
Nose to nose
Too close for those
Of opposing prose
An unholy alliance
Comfortable unease
In a room filled with
Corporate cheese
For those who should question
Not accept
Under the table a lobbyist crept
Doing something down there
I leave it to you
To decide what it was
To the many and the few
But doing it well
As smiles abound
Notebooks down
For the business of politics
Playing the clown
As the rubber chicken goes round and round

The poor forgotten
They’re having a ball
Yukking it up in the big banquet hall

The truth goes begging
Out in the street
While the corporate media
Meet to eat

I envy their status
Their paychecks, too
If I were there
I wouldn’t bother
With you

 

©2015 Ron Olsen – all rights reserved

Mr. Obama, Change Your Neoliberal Ways

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Neoliberalism:  “A political theory of the late 1900s holding that personal liberty is maximized by limiting government interference in the operation of free markets.”   -The Free Dictionary

I fully support the Democrats over the Neo-feudal Republicans and their ongoing push to take us all back into serfdom.  At the same time, Barack Obama, continues to entertain as he keeps trying to play both sides of the aisle.   Or whatever it is he’s now doing.  Some of it is indefinable.

You’ve gotta love the President’s latest nonsense about the need to use a naval blockade to stop Iranian ships from delivering weapons to Shia rebels in Yemen.   He says it’s to protect navigation in international waters.  If that’s the case, why aren’t we protecting the ability of the Iranian ships to navigate into Yemeni ports?    He is making no sense at all.   Unless you get beyond the big lie and understand what’s actually happening.

The United States is blocking the Iranian ships (Shia) because they would deliver arms to Shia rebels trying to push back against Sunni government leaders supported by the Saudis who are also Sunni.   Get it?   As with the rest of the Middle East and North Africa, this is a religious war and we keep sticking our big nose into the middle of it as though we know how to solve the centuries-old conflict.

In this case, the U.S. is supporting the Sunni Saudis against the Shia Iranians at a time when we are attempting to cut a nuclear control pact with Iran.  What a bad joke.  I guess Mr. Obama, has to put Saudi oil above all else?    Admittedly there is also the Israeli conundrum, dictating that anything the United States might do to create a better relationship with Iran, even if that means limiting their nuclear weapons capability into the distant future,  is inherently anti-Israeli.

Mr. Obama is also appearing comical as he continues to defend the Trans Pacific Partnership agreement, which is such a great deal that it had to be negotiated in secret lest the American people would find out what was going on and rise up in anger.

It appears the only people who approve the TPP are Mr. Obama, the international business establishment, those Asian countries who will benefit and the corporate controlled Republican Party.    On the other side are the Democrats and the American people, who might be angry as hell if they knew what was going on.

The TPP.    If it’s such a great deal then stop trying to “fast track” it through the Congress, tell us what  it contains and put it out there before the American people for a full debate prior to any vote in the House and Senate.

Stop cutting trade deals behind our backs.   You guys sold us on killing Glass Steagall while passing NAFTA, CAFTA and supporting the WTO.   It was good for mutli-national corporations, a handful of their major shareholders and a few foreign countries where slave labor continues to exist,  while it wrecked the American middle class.  We may never recover.

And now you want us to trust you with this secret “TPP” deal?  What a joke.   Come on Mr. Obama.   The nation needs you to restore the two-party system and be a Democrat.   Not a neoliberal who chooses sides to fit the moment in an attempt to placate the robber barons of our new Gilded Age.    Do what you were elected to do and put the majority ahead of a wealthy minority.  Come on, you can do it.   It might even help your party at the polls in 2016.   In fact becoming a real populist, instead of continuing to talk the talk while refusing to walk the walk, would make Dems a pollitical slam dunk in 2016.   Of course you’d be taking on Wall Street and the big money multi-nationals, which you can’t really do, can you?    And if you can’t, then what are we?   Are we done?

The United States Leads In Exporting Terror To The World?

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Broad concepts can be deceiving.   They can also be enlightening.    For example, with all the war in the world, all the slaughter and mayhem, why is there almost no discussion about where the weapons are coming from?  Could it be because it might force us to face ourselves?

Illiterate thugs driving around in Japanese and American built pickup trucks blowing each other away, kidnapping little girls and conducting ethnic murder and rape on a massive scale while decrying education and knowledge are not manufacturing pickup trucks, RPG’s, heavy machine guns or assault rifles.   So were is all this stuff coming from?    What truly evil entity could be so unprincipled, immoral and greedy, as to be supplying high-powered weapons of war to an underdeveloped and politically unstable world?   Would you put an assault rifle in the hands of a 10-year old?

Surely, it must be the many faces of evil we see on the network news each night?   You know, the really bad guys like ISIL and Boko Haram?

Not really.  It’s us.   The United States is at the top of the list with Russia coming in second.    France, the UK, Germany and Israel,  also rank in the top ten on weapons exports.

Isn’t this something we at least need to be talking about here in gun loving America, as our leaders wring their hands and shake their heads about all the violence overseas and on U.S. soil?   Isn’t the fact that we are the world’s biggest exporter of weaponry pertinent?    Of course it is.  To the tune of something over $1.5 trillion  a year.   And it’s growing.

CNN reports, “Worldwide arms exports are surging. They’re up nearly 30% since 2008, according to a new report from defense analyst IHS Jane’s.”

The circle becomes all the more vicious when organized militias like ISIL, capture arms the United States has supplied to others and turns those same arms on U.S. troops.   Weapons manufacturers are the only winners.

If developed nations want the slaughter to stop, then those same developed nations need to stop supplying weaponry to the world.  Here in the States, we need to stop buying into the argument that controlling the production and sale of assault weapons is an attack on the Second Amendment.

Try and get your head around the fact that the founders had no concept of a rifle with a firing rate of 100 rounds per minute like an AK-47.   The British were hi-tech at the time, and they were using the Ferguson Rifle, a breech loading, single shot rifle, which meant you didn’t have to stick a metal ball in the barrel and ram it down with a rod.   No, the Ferguson was so hi-tech, that it permitted a skilled marksman to drop a ball in the breech (up by the trigger), apply some powder and get off between six and ten shots per minute.    Compare that to an AR-15 rifle with a rate of fire of 90 rounds per minute and an effective range of 547 yards.  And it’s available and perfectly legal at your local gun store.  Not in full-auto mind you, but conversion kits can be had.

Want something more?   Consider the little Colt 9mm SMG (submachine gun).   According to Colt’s website, the rate of fire on full-auto is 700-950 rounds per minute.   Weighing only 6.6 pounds it’s incredibly easy to use.  I know, because I fired one while under DEA supervision.  It was like holding a garden hose, except you were dealing with a stream of bullets instead of water.   To me, it felt pretty much the same.   Just like watering the garden.

That’s what happened during the “North Hollywood Shootout,”  in 1997.   The LAPD came up against two bank robbers wearing body armor and carrying illegally modified fully automatic rifles loaded with “cop killer” bullets that could penetrate so-called “bullet-proof” vests.     With SWAT away on an exercise, the LAPD was armed only with service pistols and shotguns.   They had to run to a nearby gun dealer to borrow a few semi-automatic rifles to fight back while waiting for SWAT to arrive.   In 44 minutes while the two bank robbers held off the police,  eleven cops and seven civilians were injured with more than 1,700 rounds flying through the air.   Both suspects were eventually killed.   The incident, with two men holding off dozens of police officers, led to an increase in firepower at police departments across the country.

I was there and I’ll always remember the words of my friend,  video-journalist David Lopez, who later recalled, “It was just like that movie, “Heat.”  He was right.  It was.   Because the suspects had assault rifles modified to operate on full-auto, the police were simply outgunned.

The Second Amendment argument benefits only the arms manufacturers, allowing them to continue flooding the U.S. and the world not with hunting or sporting weapons, but with weapons of war which have no purpose other than the slaughter of human beings.   And the United States, is by far and away leading the world in the export of what truly should be considered weapons of mass destruction.    We’ve been warned repeatedly about the Military Industrial Complex and profitability.

“Well, come on Wall Street, don’t move slow,
Why man, this is war a-go-go.
There’s plenty good money to be made
By supplying the Army with the tools of the trade,                                               Just hope and pray that if they drop the bomb,
They drop it on the Viet Cong….”                                                                                 -‘Feel Like I’m Fixin’ To Die Rag’ – Country Joe McDonald, 1966

When a hippie singer from the 60’s like Country Joe McDonald is in agreement with Dwight David Eisenhower,  former 5-star General of the Army who led the military that defeated the Nazis and then went on to be elected President on a Republican ticket, it is perhaps time for us to pay closer attention to what’s going on and maybe even try and think things through.

Follow the money, and don’t buy into the nonsense that if we stop supplying the weaponry,  production will simply shift to Russia, China, and a few other countries.   Somebody has to take the lead in stopping this madness.    Since the U.S. is supplying most of the weapons, then a halt to weapons exports by the U.S. would clearly be a good place to start as it would provide the greatest incentive for other supposedly civilized nations to follow suit.

Imagine putting a genuine push for peace ahead of the ongoing promotion of warfare and death.   Imagine trade sanctions on any country that refused to stop exporting weapons of war.   Is that even possible,  or will we have to wait another three or four hundred years to evolve to a point at which we cease being our own worst enemy?

It’s something to think about as we wait for the next body count to come in from Mali or Nigeria, the next mass drowning of war refugees in the Mediterranean, and the next school shooting here in the United States as the developed nations sit back in relative security collecting the profits on arms sales to second and third world nations who hate us for what we are.