Cool in August

August 10, 2008
Los Angeles

Johnny Cabral

A very odd week, indeed. We’ve had temperatures in the 70’s. Very very odd, but maybe it is just nature having fun with Al Gore --the PT Barnum of Global Warming and we’re all doomed. I get physically ill when I see Gore ranting and sweating like a full immersion Baptist turned tree hugger. If he asserts something my gut tells me it has to be wrong. It’s not that there isn’t warming, it’s just that if Barbara Boxer and Patty Murray -- air heads both -- think they know how to fix it, then we are really in trouble. Of course “all the scientists are in unanimous agreement on Global Warming” and they will burn any heretics at the stake. This includes any and every sorry ass nerd who disagrees even slightly with the "settled" collective wisdom. My belief is that even thinking that humans can have a big time impact one way or the other on global warming is an both hubris and wishful thinking. At best we can have an effect around the edges, but we have as much control of weather and climate as the fleas have control of their host dog.

There, that is my first rant.

I found on the web an off off broadway satire, “Jihad -- the musical.” It is currently playing on the Fringe at the Edinburgh Festival. It has generated a huge outcry of protest by Islamic Activists and gotten tut-tut’s from certain members of the Labour Party.

I couldn’t imagine why except it is a satire in the snappy tradition of Yiddish Theater, like Mel Brooks. The chorus line are covered head to foot in Scaparelli pink burkas as they dance with fake Kalashincov’s and RPG’s. The great hit number is a wonderful “I want to be like Osama.” There are other good songs, like the French want to be jihadist who being French always chickens out and splits when the deed is to be done. Perhaps he thinks virgins are overrated and he prefers live strumpets and tarts to celestial virgins. Check it out: Google “Jihad the Musical.”

Did you see the the Democratic Presidential candidates at the AFL-CIO “debate”? This was another episode of Hillary and the seven dwarves. All of them pandered and ass kissed shamelessly as they pledged to defend the workers and the Union Bosses, indicted or not.

For me the high points of the past week or so have been the huge uproar over Hillary and “cleavage.” This is the most silly and stupid press flap in decades. Senator Clinton is an attractive and intelligent woman of a certain age who appeared on the Senate floor in a dressy business suit and the blogsters and the news went bananas. The small amount of “cleavage” she exposed was well within the accepted bounds of her Midwestern Middle Class Methodist heritage. Yet it became the biggest rumpus since Congressman Joe Baca (D-Riverside) called Congresswomen Loretta Sanchez (D-Santa Ana) a whore (puta) at a Latino Caucus meeting.

I am beginning to feel considerable sympathy for Senator Clinton. It must be tough to be an intelligent and hard working adult in the weird casting call of Presidential contenders. She does far less gross pandering than any other Democrat and most of her statements on important war and peace issues are well thought out and serious. Sure she throws the audience enough “red meat” partisanship to keep them listening, but the lady has done her homework and she is making it clear that she is capable of being President. Not that I would vote for her, but she is the class of the field on the Democrats side.

Of the others, well Senator Obama proves he is still green by his weekly verbal blunders. Like the sex education for kindergartners which only got worse as he tried to explain it away. Then there were his making hay of an otherwise well crafted foreign policy speech. Obnama said that he would not bomb an enemy like Iran but was quite prepared to invade an ally, Pakistan, which has its own Atomic Bombs to boot. Then he said he would never use atomic weapons if children were involved. I’m still trying to capish’ what that translates to in terms of “rules of engagement.” A couple weeks ago he said it was vital that the US get out of Iraq and quickly. When asked about the chance of setting off a major episode of genocide he said it was OK with him so long as we got out. Did he endorse genocide as a legit policy objective? He later sort qualified that he didn’t, but what he really meant is anybody’s guess. A very bright guy who is still inexperienced in major league play.

Of the other Democratic contenders, I will give my reaction to a few of them. Senator Biden is a very nice man and an intelligent one too, who has a unique ability to derail his presidential hopes with really dumb off the cuff remarks that top Dub’ya at his west Texas worst. My favorite Bushism is “Imports are things we buy from other countries, mainly.” Biden for some unknown reason. Biden got tangled up in a very unfunny joke about Indian and Pakistani store clerks.

Former Senator Edwards is a utter mystery to me. He has to to be the most shallow and transparently opportunistic candidate I have ever seen. Now he is pretty boy, the David Beckham of politics. He has one of the shortest and least distinguished resume’s of any Presidential candidate of either party. There is no there there, as Gertrude Stein said about Oakland. He lives in the largest private dwelling ever built in his home state, a home of 28,000 square feet. (The White House is only 32,000 square feet.) That is pretty good for the passionate advocate of the “poor.” He is a bullshit red neck populist of the most crass and shameless sort. His voting record shows he believes in nothing in particular and always votes for the most popular position. But he smiles and his hair glistens like a Breck Shampoo advert. He is eloquent in a smarmy trial lawyer used car salesman manner. The lord of the manor of North Carolina’s mini San Simeon, Edwards is a grinning empty suit of zero executive ability. His wife is a trooper and moxie, but she is also a mother of small children and a woman afflicted with stage four cancer. As I said I admire her fighting spirit but I can not for the life of me figure what they are doing in a Presidential race right now. The campaign is longer than the lady’s life expectancy. This is very peculiar, at least it is for me. Finally, since he feared running for reelection and failed to carry his home state for the Kerry-Edwards ticket in 2004, I can not see any Democratic nominee wanting him as a running mate. The one requirement of a VP nominee is that he or she can carry their home state.

Now there is Dennis Kusinich, a Congressman from Cleveland and and a time warp figure who still seems to think it is 1969. I have not give the vegetarian politician much thought since Dennis Miller point out his strong resemblance to the character Gollum in the Lord of the Ring. Poor Dennis, still questing for his precious golden ring.

One of the guys I like a lot is Governor Bill Richardson. He has as heavy and distinguished a resume as Edwards is empty fluff. His position on the war is utter nonsense. Even in the best circumstances it would take nine to 15 months to extract our forces from Iraq. However, he is a gifted diplomat who has a track record of success in dealing with hard case if not criminal dictators and even the North Koreans. When the North Koreans request a session with him, both Bill Clinton and George Bush have supplied him with a State Department plane and staff and sent him off. This is important since negotiating with them is a wretched job that is worse than a three day marathon of root canals. Richardson is a western Democrat and the one Democrat with an proven ability to work across the aisle with Republicans. A moderate liberal, he is the one candidate who might be able to pour oil on the political waters and lower the currently toxic level of partisanship.

Senator Chris Dodd is an old warhorse and model of a long surviving political hack. His major accomplishment was as a guy who could drink Senator Kennedy under the table in the days when they cut a wide swath. Their favorite trick was the cocktail waitress sandwich. When his long time partner Joe Lieberman got in trouble, Dodd didn’t help him.

On the Republican side I have to say Governor Romney sure looks like a real Great White Father more than any politician since Franklin D. Roosevelt. His five kids and ten grandchildren are an impressive tribe.

Senator John McCain is a very salty old Navy man who has a big heart and no patience for petty partisanship. I like him and admire him. He is far more impressive face to face than on the tube. His time may well have passed, but he is guy who knows what he believes and goes for it. His deep support for the Iraq combined with thumbing Bush and Rumsfeld when they needed it is heartening. His son just entered the Naval Academy and looks like he follow in the family business -- the US Navy.

Rudy Giuliani is my choice. You got a problem with that? Good!

It’s going to be him and Hillary. Both honor students -- a good thing after two elections of nothing but “C” students -- Kerry & Gore had even worse grades than Dub’ya. Both are hard chargers and have a reputation for not always letting bygones be bygones. While Governor Bill Richardson would be a great VP choice for Hillary, I understand she does care for him. I would bet she picks a good gray qualified guy for her running mate, somebody who would never ever up stage her. Both have very public and messy history in the marriage department, Rudy because he’s been married three times and Hillary because she has stuck with her one and only when most women would have thrown his clothes on the driveway and changed the locks.

A big bonus for both parties is that Rudy and Hillary are hated by the “eyes that glow in the dark” activists that infest their parties. A race of Hillary vs. Rudy would be sock in the nose to both the Moon bats (lefties) and wing nuts (righties).

- xxx -

April really is the cruelest month.

Monday morning thoughts:

a. A little two paragraph article in the LA Times reported that over the
weekend police apprehended a young man from La Verne in a hotel room with
considerably more weapons and ammunition than the Virginia Tech lunatic used
to kill 32 faculty and students last week. Inshallah. But for the grace
of God, we were that close to another mindless bloodbath.

b. As my daughter Mara pointed out, the third week of April is clearly a
major bad karma gully. Let me list just a few of the catastrophes that have
occurred during this period:

a. The V-Tech massacre 2007
b. San Francisco Earthquake & Fire 1906
c. Columbine High massacre
d. Oklahoma City bombing of the Federal Building
c. Wreck of the Titanic 1911

These are just a few of the more notorious events of this time period.

c. Hey, Hip-Hop ain’t new really, it’s just Bones & Tambo come back to
entertain the white folks.

Funny how the companies that dumped Mr. Imus, until now our national grouch,
did not dump their holdings in highly profitable Hip Hop music. Imus was a
nasty-mouthed bully, although I doubt that any of the young women on the
Rutger’s Womens Basketball squad ever heard of the old coot. If they did,
they no doubt would have thought he was an ancient relic of decades of drug
and booze binges now on the wagon and less than happy about it.

But Hip-Hop, what a God-damned shuck. The bling draped dudes might as well
be in burnt cork black face cakewalking around the stage of a showboat or in
a tent at a county fair grounds. They kick up a fuss and show the white
folks how different Black folks are. Of course we love them showing us
their mastery over black women -- making them walk on all fours with a
leash around their necks like the “bitches and ho’s” they are supposed to
be. And the hip hop dudes, they don’t sow or reap, they be pimps.

Of course, our two great Pharisees in chief -- Rev’s Sharpton & Jackson will
now go to war against the rappers, right? Like we believe that.

Funny, but the good if slightly sleazy Reverends and the Rappers are all
creations of the white media. Sure some African American entrepreneurs are
colorful fellows -- Don King is more flamboyant than Donald Trump. But how
do black folks get stuck with those two shady clergymen when they could have
Congressman Charles Rangel, Montel Williams, or Charles Barkley as
leaders. And Oprah and Connie Rice, both the Secretary of State and her
cousin, USC Law School firebrand Connie Rice. How about the Dean of
California politics, Willie Brown, Esq. or LA Supervisor and former
legislator Evyonne (?) Burke. Al and Jesse are just not in the same league
as these and hundreds of other African Americans, so I ask: Who elected
them? At a civic luncheon a few years ago my wife Sue and I sat a table
with a group of African American women. They made a series of disparaging
remarks about Rev. Sharpton not being their spokesman. Then they talked
about Brigadier General Brooks, a very young looking Air Force General who
was one General Tommy Franks press spokesmen before and after the fall of
Baghdad. General Brooks was well spoken, tall and lean, one lady said he
looked like a prince of the Masai in camouflage fatigues instead of the
traditional scarlet toga.

More and more African Americans are sick and tired about self-appointed
people speaking in their behalf and having white owned media conglomerates
like Times Warner and Bertelsman, Viacom and SONY (obviously not owned by
white folks) spreading gangster based values on their kids.

It’s a sad story but the rappers strut and pose to entertain the white folks
-- most rap music is bought by suburban kids. They are just Bones & Tambo
come back with bling and their ho’s and bitches. They be bad and reassure
the white folks that black people are different and not like them. It’s
just the same greedy racial game the public got with old time Minstrel
Show and what was call “Coon Songs” prior to WWI. (If you doubt this check
out sheet music and player piano rolls from the period.)

Does it have to be this way? It was forty years ago when Motown was
dominant force in popular music and the songs were listened to by everybody
and AFVN Radio Saigon played the Sherell’s everyday.

d. The French election yesterday shows that the close split of recent
American elections is not just a local phenomenon. In the past year the
elections in Italy, Germany, Mexico and Canada also came down to almost
perfectly even splits -- less than one percent of the vote between the top
candidates. The French electorate appears to be evenly split too. The
common wisdom is that M. Sarkozy (center/right) will take the run off in two
weeks over Mde. Royal (center/left) by five percent. In many ways it is
very much like our potential 2008 election of Rudy Guiliani vs. Hillary
Clinton.

e. Our politics is in near gridlock and will stay there for the near term.
In their need to hold their base I feel Harry Reed in the Senate and Nancy
Pelosi in the House are setting themselves up for PR disaster when they have
to back down in the end and give Bush a relatively clean money bill for the
Iraq war. In the end I see them saving face by including advisory non
binding language in the final bill -- one without the outrageous pork the
House passed version which was stuffed with more goodies than a birthday
party piñata. [pork in a piñata?]

-xxx -

The following is a response I made on an article in Friday’s Guardian, the
major left leaning English daily newspaper -- when we were young it was the
“Manchester Guardian.”
The article itself was by a Mr. Abromsky, a Guardian staffer who looks like
Borat’s younger brother. He said essentially, he thought the
anti-Americanism sloshing around was overdone. There are many things he
dislikes about America, but there was a lot he likes too. He then explained
why he like to take his kids on vacation to the States and how he enjoyed
New York and also rural American towns.

His article stirred up the damnedest orgy of anti-American drivel I have
ever read in one place. I responded with the following:

[put your letter in italics or indent it from the basic text]

I found the article by Mr. Abromsky open and fair enough. The vile
childish anti-American comments it evoked in many readers is deranged and
uninformed. The American Government is gangsters? Oh really? What about
that corrupt pig Schroeder, or the current President of France? Ah,
Europeans, you sit by silent as Putin demolishes every democratic
institution in Russia and you cluck cluck like chickens as the Sudanese
Government carries out open genocide. Never again? Hardly, “Just leave me
alone” is your typical attitude. It took Bill Clinton to take action when
you morally flexible Europeans were ready to let the Serbs kill every Muslim
they could get their hands on. Didn't do much to stop that one that either,
did you? And in civilized Europe how many cars and transit busses are
burned every night in Paris and a dozen other cities? Gun crime? The UK
will soon equal or surpass most American cities in gun violence.

Please grow up. The empty bitterness of this anti-Americanism seems to be
as much self-loathing as a problem with this or that aspect of America.
Save your Euro bitterness for the French where M. Le Pen is twenty miles to
the right of Bush. What are you going to do if Al Qaeda's recent North
African offensive moves across the water to Spain? Or to Paris or Leeds?

Give it a rest. Better yet, give it a sober rethinking.


RIP, Hon. Boris Nikolaiovich Yeltsin

The news this morning led with the death of former Russian
President Boris Yeltsin. Few men have chance to make history in the way
Yeltsin did and did so with forthright bravery.

A one time Kremlin politician, he was a Siberian from the peasant wing of
the old CP-USSR. However like many Russians who started as believers, he
came to see the burden of the old system and became a leading “reformer” in
the Party. He was purged early in Gorbachov’s rule as General Secretary
only to become a populist figure who was later elected President of the
Russian Federation.

As early as May Day 1989 Russian patriotism became a visible force in the
Soviet Union -- for the first time since 1917, when people marched behind
the traditional white red and blue Russian national flag with the black two
headed eagle of Constantine on the white.

When the Politburo hacks in August 1991 attempted a coup against Gorby in
order to restore Communist Party control they ordered Yelsin’s arrest along
with Gorby’s. The KGB bagged Gorby, his wife, and granddaughter while
Yeltsin led a rag tag collection of Russian Federation Legislators,
students, workers and deserters from the military from the “White House”
which was the seat of the Russian provincial government. Yeltsin rallied
his supporters on top of the few tanks he had under his command and waited
for the Kremlin Guards forces of the Red Army to storm the building. It was
too late and even as the tanks and trucks of soldiers crossed Moscow toward
the “White House” the Russian people met them with Russian songs and
flowers. Before they reached the river and Yelsin’s Russian Government the
soldiers put flowers and tricolor Russian flags on their tanks and went over
to Yeltsin and the Rodina. Russia was now withdrawing from the Soviet
Union. The conspirators in the Kremlin ordered other units to attack
Yeltsin but even when ordered by their commanders the soldier refused to
move and by the end of the day the Red Army was once again the Russian Army
and the units ditched the red banner and ran up the Russian national flag.

That night the coup collapsed and Gorby and his family were rescued. The
next morning the city of Moscow was draped in the traditional Russian flag,
and at a dramatic meeting of the Russian Parliament Yeltsin proposed the end
of the Soviet Union and the return of full sovereignty to the Russian
nation.

What began at the Finland Station in 1917 melted away in the August sun of
1991. It was over. And it happened because Yeltsin was brave enough to
stand on the tanks and risk his life and the lives of his supporters for
something they believed in: Russia their beloved Rodina (motherland).
That night it was like the glorious finale of Rachmananov’s Second Symphony,
known as The Rock. After all the pain and suffering, history spat out the
Communist era and Russia rose from the ashes in hope and glory. These were
heady times. Russian authentic symbols and names reappeared and by the
hundreds statues of Lenin and other Commie big shots were haulled away to
what became literally the garbage dump of history.

Yeltsin was reelected. Californians George Gordon & Joe Shumate ran his
reelection campaign! A made for TV movie told the story with Lev Schreiber
playing Joe Shumate, which was amazing if you know Shumate. Yeltsin’s
daughter was soon his chief of staff and quite competently directed the
Government. Like England, Russia seems to prosper under female leaders.
Things began drifting toward the end of his term, but he was the man who
had the courage to force the inevitable change and do so with a minimum of
blood.

Tonight I’ll lift a glass of a Stolichnaya to his memory.

- xxx -