Post Racial America
It is a cliche among certain pundits that this is not “Post Racial America.” No one seems to know what PRA would look like. PRA might be less noisy, with fewer odors, than the current model. The opinion that we do not live in PRA seems unanimous. After PG heard the denial of PRA one too many times, he began to wonder something. Who said America is Post Racial?
Mr. Google has 119 million answers to the question “who said america is post racial?” The short answer is nobody. The closest thing on the front Google page is an NPR commentary from January 2008. This was the early stages of the BHO run for the White House. The commenter said that the election of a dark skinned POTUS might usher in a post racial era in America.
This piece will not have any fresh opinions about race relations in America. That subject has been worn out elsewhere. If someone finds it to their advantage to denounce “racism”, there will be an audience. The truth is, very few people have ever said that America is Post Racial. This is a repost. Pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.
The Prayer Breakfast Speech
President Barack H. Obama gave a speech at the National Prayer Breakfast Thursday morning. Some are not happy with POTUS giving a speech reinforcing the belief paradigm, and including phrases like “people of faith,” “word of G-d,” and “children of G-d.” The name used today, for a higher power is dog spelled backwards.
POTUS is an American politician. A certain ritual invocation of the G-word is part of the game. BHO is probably a hypocrite when he says “You know he’s not saying it because it helps him advance, or because somebody told him to. It’s from the heart.” It will be a long time before a professed atheist is elected POTUS. It is part of the ritual.
There has been blowback to the speech. When a Democrat POTUS says something, the Republicans feel obligated to criticize. It is how the game is played. This is where we get to hear someone really important, like the former Governor of Virginia. “He has offended every believing Christian in the United States. This goes further to the point that Mr. Obama does not believe in America or the values we all share.” That is telling him!
So what values is the former Governor talking about? The first thing BHO called for is humility. “And, first, we should start with some basic humility. I believe that the starting point of faith is some doubt — not being so full of yourself and so confident that you are right and that God speaks only to us, and doesn’t speak to others, that God only cares about us and doesn’t care about others, that somehow we alone are in possession of the truth.” It is easy to understand why professional Jesus worshipers don’t like talk about humility.
The speech lasted 24 minutes. It was two sentences that ruffled feathers. “And lest we get on our high horse and think this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ. In our home country, slavery and Jim Crow all too often was justified in the name of Christ.”
Perhaps the most ridiculous reaction, or reaction to a reaction, was at The Atlantic. Ta-Nehisi Coates is fond of high octane rhetoric. He is in rare form in denouncing the linkage of Christianity to slavery. “The “all too often” could just as well be “almost always.” There were a fair number of pretexts given for slavery and Jim Crow, but Christianity provided the moral justification.”
The embrace of Christianity by African America is not mentioned. Black people might be the most Christian population in our Jesus-mad country. There is a poignant irony in the fervent celebration of a G-d, by people whose ancestors whose enslavement was justified by that same G-d. Mr. Coates notes “(Confederate Vice President Alexander) Stephens went on to argue that the “Christianization of the barbarous tribes of Africa” could only be accomplished through enslavement.”
The feature at the Atlantic is illustrated by a picture of a Klan rally. As we mentioned before, the loyal opposition is going to criticize the POTUS. And some are going to lose their minds, and compare this criticism to a cross burning. This, as Mr. Coates might say, “gives you some sense of the limited tolerance for any honest conversation around racism in our politics.”
Pictures from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.
Direct Deposit Your Privilege
PG poured a cup of coffee, and got busy multi tasking. A splendid selection of images from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library” await the editor’s magic wand. Some of these images appear with this post.
Cropping/level adjusting/labeling uses hands and eyes, but not ears. This leaves a sense open for input. The audio component listens to podcasts. That leaves smell as the underutilized sense. The internet does not play to the literal sense of smell … figuratively the nose works overtime.
The soundtrack this morning is episode 33372 of Bloggingheads.tv. Talkers Aryeh Cohen-Wade and Freddie deBoer discuss a recent bit of thumb pulling by Jonathan Chait, Not a very PC thing to say. The links page is sponsored by the NRA. “Defend Your Freedom… Join NRA Today … Your Membership includes this FREE NRA Rosewood Handle Knife.”
In the event that you have better things to worry about, Mr. Chait’s commentary has ruffled a few feathers. The general concept is that some people are more concerned about the way you say something, than the actual content. A number of illustrative horror stories are given. “A theater group at Mount Holyoke College recently announced it would no longer put on The Vagina Monologues in part because the material excludes women without vaginas.”
Ad hominem has a long history as a tactic for dismissing views that you don’t want to talk about. Crying hypocrisy is usually the easiest argument to make, without getting your hands dirty with the details. Many people decide that activism is just not fun anymore, and leave whatever movement they decide to grace with their presence. Sometimes this is a good thing.
Bloggingheads has a device on the viewer enabling the consumer to make a sound bite clip. This clip is delicately known as the dingle link, not to be confused with dingleberry. This can be a problem to the multi-tasker. You are sailing along with your project, and the talker says something that you want to save for posterity, or posterior. You have to stop the player, scroll back to the start of the comment, and do the appropriate clicking mojo to save the clip.
There were three such moments in episode 33372. Mr. Cohen-Wade says the divide and conquer nature of identity politics is similar to the history of southern racism. The idea was to pit the poor whites against the poor blacks, to the benefit of the rich white people. What Mr. Cohen-Wade does not mention is that northern robber barons played the same game with immigrants. After the great migration, rich northerners saw the benefit of a divide and conquer race game.
At the sixty eight minute mark, there are back to back comments. In the first, Mr. Cohen-Wade discusses the privilege of having two parents in the house. This is an advantage in later life, but no one calling out privilege seems to think this is worthy of mention.
Immediately after this comment, Mr. deBoer notes a contradiction in the expression check your privilege. “One of the most surefire signs that someone is privileged is if they use the phrase “check your privilege. … only people who come from a certain level of education know what that means.”
Meanwhile on facebook, someone posted a tawdry video. Men were talking about male stereotypes, and how they don’t want to live up to these so called ideals. All the men in the video were under thirty. Only one of the players was mixed race, or black … it is tough to tell which. This gentleman makes a comment about dick size, and another comment with a bleeped out cussword.
There was a comment. An Atlanta man said “uhhhhh, way to represent the fatties?”. The man posting the video replied “Fat hum?”
The Boston Tea Party Story
For better or worse (it’s ok to curse), the tea party is a part of the scene. The seminal event was the Boston Tea Party in 1775. The first post below is a look at what really happened in Boston harbor. It is tough to discern truth from fable at a distance of 236 years, but we will try. The tea party metaphor gets worked over in another post, would you like a refill?
The second part is a look at the phrase “founding fathers”. This phrase is “liberally” sprinkled into rhetoric of all persuasions. This author sees a square peg being forced into round holes.
In the first year of the Obama regime, America saw the rise of the “Tea Party.” These affairs are usually right wing, and have lots of clever signs. The general idea is that taxes are too high, government is too big, and that the people need to do something.
The namesake event was the Boston Tea Party. On December 16, 1773, crowds of people (some dressed as Mohawks) went on board the Dartmouth, the Eleanor, and the Beaver. The crowds threw overboard 342 chests, containing 90,000 pounds of tea. The crowds were unhappy because the East India Company was importing the tea into America, with a 3 pence per pound tax.
A website called listverse plays the contrarian. (spell check suggestions: contraction, contraption) According to them : “American colonists did not protest the Tea Tax with the Boston Tea Party because it raised the price of tea. The American colonists preferred Dutch tea to English tea. The English Parliament placed an embargo on Dutch tea in the colonies, so a huge smuggling profession developed. To combat this, the English government LOWERED the tax on tea so that the English tea would be price competitive with Dutch teas. The colonists (actually some colonists led by the chief smugglers) protested by dumping the tea into Boston Harbor.”
According to Wikipedia, the Dutch tea had been smuggled into the colonies for some time. The Dutch government had given their companies a tax advantage, which allowed them to sell their product cheaper. Finally, the British government cut their taxes, but kept a tax in place. The “Townsend Tax” was to be used to pay governing colonial officials, and make them less dependent on the colonists.
In Charleston, New York, and Philadelphia, the tea boats were turned around, and returned to England with their merchandise. In Massachusetts, Governor Thomas Hutchinson insisted that the tea be unloaded. Two of the Governor’s sons were tea dealers, and stood to make a profit from the taxed tea. There are also reports that the smugglers were in the crowd dumping tea into the harbor.
The photogenic tea party movement seems to be destined to stay a while. The question remains, how much does it have to do with the namesake event?
People often try to justify their opinions by saying that the “founding fathers” agree with them. They often are guilty of selective use of history. A good place to start would be to define what we mean by the phrase founding fathers.
The FF word was not used before 1916. A senator from Ohio named Warren Harding used the phrase in the keynote address of the 1916 Republican convention. Mr. Harding was elected President in 1920, and is regarded as perhaps the most corrupt man to ever hold the office.
There are two groups of men who could be considered the founding fathers. (The fathers part is correct. Both groups are 100% male.) The Continental Congress issued the Declaration of Independence, which cut the ties to England. Eleven years later, the Constitutional Convention wrote the Constitution that governs America today. While the Continental Congress was braver than the Constitution writers (We must hang together, or we will hang separately), the Constitution is the document that tells our government how to function. For the purposes of this feature, the men of the Constitutional Convention are the founding fathers.
Before moving on, we should remember eight men who signed the Declaration of Independence, and later attended the Constitutional Convention. Both documents were signed by George Clymer, Benjamin Franklin, Robert Morris, George Read, Roger Sherman, and James Wilson. George Wythe left the Constitutional Convention without signing the new document. (He needed to take care of his sick wife. Mr. Wythe later supported ratification.) Elbridge Gerry (the namesake of gerrymandering) refused to sign the Constitution because it did not have a Bill of Rights. Both Mr. Wythe, and Mr. Gerry signed the Declaration of Independence.
The original topic of this discussion was about whether the founding fathers owned slaves. Apparently, PG is not the only person to wonder about this. If you go to google, and type in “did the founding fathers”, the first four answers are owned slaves, believed in G-d, have a death wish, and smoke weed.
The answer, to the obvious question, is an obvious answer. Yes, many of the founding fathers owned slaves. A name by name rundown of the 39 signatories of the Constitution was not done for this blogpost. There is this revealing comment at wiki answers about the prevalence of slave ownership. “John Adams, his second cousin Samuel Adams, Alexander Hamilton, and Thomas Paine were the only men who are traditionally known as founding fathers who did not own slaves. Benjamin Franklin, a founder of the Abolitionist Society, owned two slaves, named King and George. Franklin’s newspaper, the Pennsylvania Gazette routinely ran ads for sale or purchase of slaves.
Patrick Henry is another founding father who owned slaves, although his speeches would make one think otherwise. Despite his “Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death” speech, he had up to 70 slaves at a time, apologizing a few times along the way, saying he knew it was wrong, that he was accountable to his God, and citing the “general inconvenience of living without them.”
Patrick Henry was a star of the Revolution, but not present at the Constitutional Convention. The author of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson, was in Europe during the convention. Mr. Jefferson not only owned slaves, he took one to be his mistress and kidsmama.
One of the more controversial features of the Constitution is the 3/5 rule. Here are the original words “Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons.” In other words, a slave was only considered to be 60% of a person.
That seems rather harsh. The truth is, it was a compromise. The agricultural southern states did not want to give up their slaves. The northern states did not want to give up Congressional representation. This was the first of many compromises made about slavery, ending with the War between the States. This webpage goes into more detail about the nature of slavery at the start of the U.S.A.
The research for this feature turned up a rather cynical document called The myth of the “Founding Fathers” . It is written by Adolph Nixon. (The original post is no longer available. Here is a partial substitute.) He asks : “most rational persons realize that such political mythology is sheer nonsense, but it begs the question, who were the Founding Fathers and what makes them so great that they’re wiser than you are?”
Mr. Nixon reviews the 39 white men who signed the Constitution. He does not follow the rule, if you can’t say anything nice about someone, then don’t say anything at all. Of the 39, 12 were specified as slave owners, with many tagged as “slave breeders”.
The Constitution, and the Bill of Rights, have served America well. However it was intended, it was written so that it could be amended, and to grow with the young republic. It has on occasion been ignored. (When was the last time Congress declared war?) However fine a document it is, it was created by men. These were men of their time, who could not have foreseen the changes that America has gone through. Those who talk the most about founding fathers often know the least.
A big thank you goes to wikipedia Pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library”. This repost was written like H. P. Lovecraft.
Bad Monkey
When getting started on this book report, PG copied the title. The initials are BM. A certain school of thought has it that the expression your mother uses for feces has an impact on your life. For PG, this is BM, as in short for bowel movement. Someone told PG’s mom that this was the “proper” word for animal waste. BM has a smarmy, slightly uppity taste that is missing with “poop.” BM has none of the onomatopoeic utility of “shit.” BM can also stand for black male.
Is this Carl Hiassen novel, Bad Monkey, similar to BM in more ways than one? It is not the best book by Mr. Hiassen. There are a few too many coincidences. The plot twists are just a bit on the implausible side. It is quite possibly word factory product. There is a demand for Carl Hiassen stories, and the market demands that they be written. Maybe this one was a contractual obligation.
Still, it is not a shitty book. The devil is in the details. When the teenage lover of one character comes to Florida with his old lady, the told is gleefully told. Loverboy is now fat and bald, and has a bite mark above his left nipple. The hero wants him to put his shirt on.
Readers of Mr. Hiassen know the formula. There is a disgraced law officer, who in this story is a restaurant inspector. There is a hideous crime, which the DLO gets involved in, even though it is totally none of his business. The perpetrators are unconventional, sadistic, greedy, and not terribly bright. The developers are fouling the Florida landscape, which is hot, buggy, and hurricane prone.
The usual quota of weirdos is present. Mr. Hiassen says he does not make up anything, but waters down what happens in what is facetiously known as real life. Skink and Chemo are resting. They will probably return for future stories.
At some point in the investigation, the DLO winds up with a girlfriend. In Bad Monkey, it is a Miami coroner. There is a sex scene on a metal autopsy table. The gf gets involved in the investigation, and nearly gets fed to the sharks. GF is saved when Bad Monkey puts the bite on crime. This is not a story for hate the sin, love the sinner.
Should you buy this book? Probably not. PG found it at the library. It was copy 8/13 for the Dekalb county libraries. You can probably find a copy without paying for it, which someone makes it more fun. It is worth your time, unless you just want to read something that will change your life. The only thing this book will change is the diaper worn by Bad Monkey. Pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.
The Great Speckled Bird
One day in the eighth grade, PG had a sore spot in his eye. They called it a stye. One afternoon, he got out of school, walked to Lenox Square, saw a doctor, and got some eye drops.
When he left the doctor’s office, there was a man, standing in front of Rich’s on the sidewalk, selling a newspaper. He had blond hair down past his shoulders. PG asked what the newspaper was. Mostly politics, he said. PG gave him fifteen cents for a copy of “The Great Speckled Bird”.
The Bird was an underground newspaper. It was so bad, it needed to be buried. If you are under fifty, you have probably never seen one. These papers flourished for a while. The Bird was published from 1968 to 1976. The April 26, 1968 edition was volume one, number four. This was what PG bought that day.
The Georgia State University Library has a digital collection. Included in it are copies of The Great Speckled Bird. Included in this collection is edition Number Four. PG went looking for that first copy. He needed to be patient, for the GSU server took it’s time. Finally, the copy he asked for came up. It was mostly politics.
When PG saw page four, he knew it was the edition from forty four years ago. “Sergeant Pepper’s Vietnam Report” was the story of a young man sent to Nam. It had a paragraph that impressed young PG, and is reproduced here. The rest of the article is not that great, which is typical of most underground newspaper writing.
A couple of years later, PG spent the summer working at the Lenox Square Theater. The number two screen was a long skinny room. If you stood in the right place, you could hear the electric door openers of the Colonial Grocery store upstairs. The Bird salesmen were a feature at the mall that summer, which not everyone appreciated. This was the year of the second, and last, Atlanta Pop Festival. PG was not quite hip enough to make it. He was back in the city, taking tickets for “Fellini Satyricon”. The Bird was printing 26 pages an issue, with lots of ads, pictures, and the distinctive graphics of the era.
Stories about hippies, and the Bird, can be found at The Strip Project.
Pictures are from ” The Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library” .
This is a repost, written like H.P. Lovecraft.
Georgia Is Determined To Kill Warren Hill
Georgia is stubborn when it smells blood. When the state wants to execute someone, they don’t care how bad it is going to look to the rest of the world. They don’t care how many times they have to appeal the case. Money is no object, when it comes to paying lawyers for death penalty appeals.
The latest man to be the target of the state’s bloodlust is Warren Hill. After numerous reprieves, the state is scheduled to poison Mr. Hill Tuesday, January 27. This is the first day of a seven day “execution window” specified by the Lee County judge who ordered the execution.
Why it is so important to kill Warren Hill? The execution is for the murder of Joseph Handspike. There is little doubt that Mr. Hill is guilty. The killing took place in prison. Mr. Hill was serving a life sentence for killing Myra Wright. Mr. Handspike was also incarcerated for murder. The family of Mr. Handspike does not want Warren Hill to be executed.
There is also the issue of “intellectual disability.” There is some debate over Mr. Hill’s i.q. Some say he is smart enough to be executed. The state disagrees.
“In Georgia, defendants must prove “beyond a reasonable doubt” they are too mentally impaired to be executed. Despite doctors finding that Hill is likely mentally disabled, with an IQ of around 70, the American Psychiatric Association (APA) standard for mental disability, the state intends to put Hill to death because he cannot prove “beyond a reasonable doubt” that he is indeed mentally disabled.”
Whether or not Mr. Hill is technically disabled, his execution will be bad p.r. for the state of Georgia. Numerous celebrities, including former President Jimmy Carter, are calling for clemency. Once again the state of Georgia looks bad. Is this something to be proud of?
It is not known why the state is so stubborn about this matter. Will it provide a deterrent to other prisoners not to kill each other? Will the execution of an intellectually disabled man make the streets safer? Or will it show the iron will of the state of Georgia? When Georgia wants to poison someone, nothing will stop it. Nothing.
This would not the first time the Georgia has executed an intellectually disabled man. Robert Holsey had an i.q. of 70, and came from a background of horrific childhood abuse. Brandon Rhode “was born in Mississippi to a young mother, who as a 15-year-old was not even aware she was pregnant for the first five months. During this time she consumed alcohol and drugs. Brandon Rhode … “definitely suffers from a Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder” (FASD)… “
The execution of Mr. Rhode took a curious turn. ““Rhode tried to kill himself by slitting the side of his neck and both arms. By the time he was discovered, Rhode was unconscious and had lost half the blood in his body; he was revived at the hospital in nearby Griffin…Rhode had concealed the razor blade he used to cut his neck and arms while lying under a blanket, said Joe Drolet, a lawyer for the state attorney general’s office. He was being observed by guards, but they could not see what was happening under the blanket and took action when they saw blood.” There are reports that the razor was given to Mr. Rhode by a prison guard. This is denied by the officials. “There’s not a pattern of recklessly handing out razors to suicidal death row inmates.”
Mr. Rhode was taken to a hospital, and nursed back to health. He was then taken back to the prison. Brandon Rhode was executed September 27, 2010.
There is also the case of Troy Davis. There is little doubt that Mr. Davis was present when Mark MacPhail died. There is, however, doubt that Mr. Davis pulled the trigger. The case made the state of Georgia look very bad. It would have been easy, during the unending appeals before the execution. to quietly put the case aside. There were other killers to be executed, and provide a deterrent to those contemplating murder. However, the state was stubborn, and fought a long, expensive legal fight for the privilege of poisoning Troy Davis.
In 2013, an execution of Warren Hill was postponed. There were legal issues with the drugs the state was planning to use in the execution. The method of execution, antiseptically known as lethal injection, has had problems. The manufacturers of the pharmaceuticals, mostly European corporations, do not want their products used for executions. This is another p.r. problem.
Georgia has been using mystery drugs to poison prisoners. These substances are produced by a compounding pharmacy, whose identity is secret under state law. So far this proctocol has worked well. There have been no Oklahoma style disasters when executing men with lethal injections.
Is the state of Georgia smart enough to use the death penalty? There are some bad, bad men (and one woman) on death row. Arguably, the state needs to take these people off the planet. However, the ones who get the fatal needle are not always the ones who commit horrific crimes. In the case of Warren Hill, some stubborn bureaucrat seems to have decided that nothing will stop the state from killing him. Are these people smart enough to use this ultimate penalty?
Pictures from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.
Boring Words
PG woke up on a cold January morning, facing a day at the facility. Wrecklessly stumbling into facebook, the first thing to catch his eye was “Um, I’m not the only one who just saw the N-word on Sharon Needles’ FB page, right?”
Aaron Coady has been in the spotlight before. He is an entertainer, with an effort made to be edgy. Some find his act amusing. PG is not one of those people.
It is tough to say who is worse here. If Mr. Coady did indeed use a racial slur on facebook, then he is a poopyhead. If this is a hoax, then someone else is a poopyhead. If this is a Duck Dynasty-style publicity stunt, then a few people have been fooled twice.
There is also the pearl clutching that goes on whenever a PWOC utters a word that is reserved for the exclusive use of POC. Is anyone else bored by this? The judge in the Paula Deen case threw out the racism part of the lawsuit. Maybe, someday, people will find something else to be outraged over.
There is a writing challenge this week. The ides is to use the word whatever, as an adverb. The word should mean that something is useless. The adverb part is tricky. “Whatever floats your boat” qualifies, but is boring. Just like the n word. This is a repost. Pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.
War Letters
In the winter of 2003, it was obvious that America was going to war. Congress had voted approval, the modern version of a declaration of war. The troops. and supplies, were on the borders of Iraq, waiting for the order to go in.
PG felt the need to make a statement. There was no illusion that it would affect the overall decision to invade Iraq. However, PG wanted to go on record as being opposed to the folly to come.
It was a low risk act. In America, we have freedom of expression. This does not mean that the powers that be listen to the people. The only expression that matters is by people who pay the authorities. The people can say anything, but nobody in charge listens.
There were three representatives in Congress to contact. The two Senators were Saxby Chambliss and Zell Miller. The 4th district was represented in the House of Representatives by Denise Majette. She was new to Congress, having defeated Cynthia McKinney in the 2002 election.
The area that PG lives in is gerrymandered into different districts every ten years by the Georgia legislature. This is partly the legacy of the Voting Rights Act, which requires the voting districts in Georgia to be approved by Federal authorities. Today, PG is in the 6th district, represented by Republican Tom Price.
The letters are lost in hard drive crash fog. It started out with the phrase “you were elected to represent me.” Apparently, this left Zell Miller out. He has been appointed to finish the term of Paul Coverdell. Democrat Zell Miller was appointed by Democrat Governor Roy Barnes to complete the term of Republican Paul Coverdell. After this, Zell Miller gave the keynote address at the 2004 Republican Convention. This is what Georgia has come to expect from Zig Zag Zell.
The anti war letter was not great writing. It basically said that the invasion of Iraq was not a good idea. The letter did not address the tax cut. In a bizarre move, Congress approved a tax cut, with an economically ruinous war on the horizon.
The responses to the letter are attached here. Denise Majette gave a thoughtful reply. She did not say “I agree with you” in so many words, but it is clear she is not gung ho about killing Iraqis. Miss Majette said, and PG agrees, that once the war begins, the debate should cease.
Saxby Chambliss sent two replies. Both talked about how well the war was going, and how wonderful it was to be killing people in Iraq. It is a good question whether his staff read the original letter from PG, which opposed the war.
In the 2004 election, Denise Majette ran for the Senate. Zell Miller chose to retire, and his seat was up for grabs. Republican Johnny Isakson won the Senate seat. Cynthia McKinney made a comeback, and won the fourth district House seat.
Saxby Chambliss was re-elected in 2008, and retired in 2014. The conflict in Iraq continues to this day. It is a disaster. The withdrawal of American combat troops did not end the civil war. Currently, Iraq is the scene for combat operations from the Islamic State military force.
The financial burden of the war has been immense. The military depends on contractors for many basic services, at increased cost to the Asian war financiers. The National debt has been increasing by a trillion dollars a year. Revenge for nine eleven, directed at a marginally responsible country, has been horribly expensive. Pictures for today’s entertainment message are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.
Rahsaan Roland Kirk
There have been nine presidential transfers of power in PG’s life. Seven of them were in January. PG typically ignores them. He goes out with Mr. Crook in office, and comes home to President Thief.
The best exception was in August,1974. Richard Nixon was finally undone and forced to resign. After watching Tricky Dick’s next to last television speech , PG got in his Datsun and drove to the Great Southeast Music Hall. The entertainment that night was Rahsaan Roland Kirk.
The Music Hall was the sort of place we don’t seem to have anymore. The auditorium was a bunch of bench backs on ground level, with pillows everywhere. It was a space in a shopping center, occupied by an office depot in later years. To get there from Brookhaven, you drove on a dirt road, where Sidney Marcus Boulevard is today.
Rahsaan Roland Kirk was not modest. He was the modern miracle of the tenor saxophone. He would play three saxophones at once, getting sounds that you do not get from a single instrument. At one point, the band had been playing for about five minutes, when PG noticed that Kirk had been holding the same note the entire time without stopping to breathe.
Mr. Kirk played two ninety minute sets that night. He talked about twenty minutes out of every set. Of that twenty minutes, maybe thirty seconds would be fit for family broadcasting. Mr. Kirk…who was blind…said he did not want to see us anyway, because we were too ugly. He said that Stevie Wonder wanted to make a lot of money, so he could have an operation and see again.
The next day, Mr. Nixon got in a helicopter and left Washington. The Music Hall stayed open a few more years, and Sidney Marcus Boulevard was paved. Rahsaan Roland Kirk had a stroke in 1975. He struggled to be able to perform again. On December 5, 1977, a second stroke ended his career. He was 41 years old. This feature is an encore presentation. The pictures used today are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.
The Unedited Quote
Comments are disabled for this video. ~ This quote is (badly) edited. It is from the article linked above. The GQ advertisers would appreciate your clicking on it. The article is titled Why You’re Not Married (to the Woman You Really Want) Here is the unedited quote. 1. You’re a dick. It kind of goes without saying, women want to be with a guy who is nice to them. (Though the first and probably biggest sign you’re a dick is that you don’t believe this.) But when you are sarcastic, argumentative, or contemptuous of a woman’s lady-ways—the messy friends, the astrology-talk, the big, big emotions—you’re not being nice. Even if you open her car door on dates. Being a dick is when you’re so self-centered, you think your ideas are pretty much the only worthy ones and you secretly believe other people are inferior to you. Not that you know you think this. Like your female counterpart, the Bitch, you’d rather believe other people just can’t handle how awesome you are. And you’re right. All that awesomeness sucks, actually. In any case, if you want to be in a relationship with someone who thinks and acts just like you, why not start fucking your dude friends? ~ @KimKierkegaard It take moral courage to grieve; it takes religious courage to be joyful, cause laughing causes wrinkles. ~ Slut Reader – Just grabs whatever looks like fun at the library, yard sale, or trash pile. Doesn’t worry about the approval of others in his pursuit of a good time. ~ NOTICE: If you’re not a bigot, you are welcome. If you aren’t sure if you’re a bigot, I might ask you a few questions to see if we can figure it out together… ~ And all of the white virgin cheerleaders are sucking black jocky dick. The street name is “Touchdown pussy”. Thanks for reminding me Ribeye. Is your daughter fucking a baller? You wouldn’t know anyway. When she gets home, put a finger in her pussy and see if it smells like KFC.~ @pourmecoffee I like to be hypocritical in the mornings and point out hypocrisy in the afternoons, but sometimes I flip it around just to mix things up. ~ @KimKierkegaard Hair by Rob Recine; make up by Lucia Pieroni; inner strife & disharmony by some unknown thing I do not even dare to try to know. ~ If you are an english speaker then you should speak up about eighty word sentences. ~ @LindaInDisguise I’ll give up my thesaurus when you pry it from my frigid, frosty, frozen, cadaverous, lifeless, stiff, defunct extremities. ~ there their they’re now ~ It is a way to pass the time in a traffic jam. ~ The fridge was whining. ~ @RedMeatMonday #foxnewsfacts #MeganKelly is dating @maddow ~ This does not speak well for Jesus. ~ a dress is a social prostruct ~ @chamblee54 @Brimshack @eyeneedtono a meme without a source can be assumed to have a phony quote ~ ” I wanna hear what you think!” you are a brave woman ~ @JesusIsAJerk Any atheist who retweets this is going to hell for eternity. ~ Maintaining order rather than correcting disorder is the ultimate principle of wisdom. To cure disease after it has appeared is like digging a well when one feels thirsty, or forging weapons after the war has already begun. Nei Jing (2nd century BC) ~ @TheFunnyRacist I’m sick of the stereotype that all Muslims like to fuck goats! That’s not the case at all! Some of them prefer camels ~ Luke 23:29 King James Version _ For, behold, the days are coming, in the which they shall say, Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bare, and the paps which never gave suck ~ King Jimmy had a way with words. He was also a hypocrite i.e. “paps which never gave suck” ~ This quote was attributed to Jesus. He was about to be crucified. This story is relevant to today’s current events. The authority “have found no fault in this man.” That wasn’t good enough for the mob, which demanded that Jesus be crucified. We all know what happened next. This is what happens when justice is a popularity contest. ~ pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”. ~ selah ~
Frankly My Dear
An English language expression for caring goes give a _____. An unverified internet source tells one story: “(don’t) give a damn -The above phrase was originally I don’t give a dam (yes, the n is missing on purpose) and seems to have been brought back to England by military men traveling to India in the mid 18th century. A dam was an Indian coin of little value. After spreading to civilian usage, the phrase changed to I don’t give a damn and was first recorded in America in the 1890’s”
DGA__ went in two directions. Less offensive words like hoot, toss, and rip were inserted into the blank space. Others chose use more offensive items, like shit and fuck, in the formula.
No one seems to know what a damn is. It is hard to say what exactly is meant by not giving a shit, or a fuck. Fuck refers to a highly prized animal activity. Shit is a vile, smelly substance that is used for fertilizer. When you give a shit, do you gift wrap it?
A link to The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck recently turned up on facebook. Out of 2496 words, 113 are fuck, or incorporate fuck. The f-word is used as a noun, verb, adverb, adjective, preposition, and interjection. The f-word is not used as a conjunction. This is a curious omission. The literal meaning of the f-word refers to the act of conjunction.
It may seem judgmental to say so, but this attitude is selfish, arrogant, and irresponsible. If you stick around for the fine print, you see that it is not enough to merely not give a hoot. According to “Author. Thinker. Life Enthusiast.” Mark Manson, it is a matter of deciding what you want to hoot about. (The period is used at the end of a complete sentence. You should use one period per sentence.)
Here is a brief biography. “Mark Manson is from Austin, Texas, USA and graduated from Boston University in 2007. He began coaching men informally that same year, taking them out to local bars and helping them approach attractive women. Mark founded Practical Pick Up in 2008 and has since worked with hundreds of men in 12 different countries and four different continents. He’s given over 40 public presentations worldwide and has been interviewed for news shows and magazines. In 2011, he changed his business to PostMasculine.com to change his focus away from simply meeting and attracting women and to help with life’s issues at large.”
In other words, he got started coaching men on how to get women to give them a fuck. Mr. Manson has “evolved” into coaching the gender neutral internet on not giving a fuck. What a guy. Pictures today are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.
Chamblee54 
1 comment