Pathetic Larry Craig

Today is Thursday, 30 August 2007.

What is the sin of Senator Larry Craig?

Or, ought we not ask: what is the sin of many, if not most, in this country?

Despite Mr. Craig’s evasive maneuvers, one thing is clear: he chose to plead guilty to, in an airport bathroom, attempting to, giving or receiving, presumably, under the circumstances, anonymous oral sex.

This while he supports the Bush-Cheney regime in it's extermination of 500,000+ Iraqis.

I find his choice of venue discourteous to fellow air travelers, but, given the homophobia prevalent in this country, hardly surprising.

Given his quarter-century of marriage, I don’t know if he is strictly homosexual or bi-sexual. I cannot know if his wife knew and approved, knew and tolerated, knew and accepted, or didn’t know.

One can only speculate, that his life might have taken an entirely different trajectory if the sin of homophobic bigotry were not so prevalent, honoured, and celebrated throughout this country.

The sin of Senator Craig is that he, a wealthy and powerful person, seems to have enjoyed sexual pleasures he would, as a legislator, criminalize for others. He cynically built his prosperous career on the ruins of other humans.

The sin of many, if not most, in this country: the grand hate of bigoted homophobia, driving so many into the closet, ruining so many lives, and gleefully dancing in the light of the fires of a new Inquisition.

Senator Craig should resign, not because of his desire for sex, as the homophobes in this country would have it, but because of his efforts on behalf of the homophobic bigot agenda.

In Memory: Hilly Kristal

Today remains Wednesday, 29 August 2007.

In 1973, a visionary named Hilly Kristal created one of the most wonderful skanky clubs I ever was in, in New York City, and that's one hell of a compliment, considering the clubs in which I have been, the legendary CBGB.

In the days before The Bowery began to gentrify, he was the first serious club owner to book the likes of The Ramones, Blondie, and Talking Heads. There was punk born.

Word came today he died yesterday of cancer, at 75.

Herewith, in his honour, my fav Talking Heads tune, which many of my friends in NYC thought should be my Personal Anthem, a concept to which I couldn't object.

"This ain't no party, this ain't no disco".

New Orleans: 2 Years After

Today is Wednesday, 29 August 2007.

This is T. Albononi, Adagio in G Minor.

Maybe next year, on the anniversary of the American abandonment of New Orleans far before Hurricane Katrina, I will know how to match up this music with the images of the destruction of New Orleans, instead of the beauties of nature.

Which would be more ironic?

Can't Stop The Dream

Today is Tuesday, 28 August 2007.

On this day in Washington, DC, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. gave the "I Have a Dream" speech.

As good a lead-in as any, for tomorrow's 2nd anniversary of Hurricane Katrina making landfall.

Bush: Institutionalize or Imprison?

Today is Monday, 27 August 2007.

Last week, in a speech before a veterans’ group, George W. Bush, who refused to fight in Vietnam, but was all in favour of millions of others fighting a dying and dying there, made a bizarre statement.

He claimed that the “precipitous” US disengagement from Vietnam was responsible for the Khmer Rouge genocide of ca. 1.7 million Cambodians.
Let’s review.

Is he referring to the “precipitous” disengagement which took 6 years (1969-1975), which was the product of the presidency of Richard Nixon, a Republican whom he supported?

Let’s review further.

In 1954, the regime of Ike Eisenhower installed an vicious, corrupt, but incompetent civilian dictator (Diem) at the head of the South Vietnamese dictatorship. In 1963, the JFK regime authorized the assassination of Diem by a direct military dictatorship, whose various members proved also brutal, corrupt, and incompetent.

In 1969, Richard Nixon became president with the policy of “Vietnamization”, or nonprecipitous disengagement.

In the 1960s, the Royal Government of Cambodia had managed to steer reasonably clear of the Vietnam War. Sure, they had to let both the North Vietnamese and US do some combat on their soil, but nothing like the carnage in Vietnam proper. In 1970, Nixon and Kissinger got the great idea to support the overthrow of the Cambodian government and the installation of a military dictatorship friendly to the Nixon regime but … brutal, corrupt, and incompentent.

The result: by 1975, the Khmer Rouge, which had been a truly pissant, rag-tag tiny cadre of loony insurrectionists, had exploited the incompetence of the Nixon-backed dictatorship, taken over the country, and began returning Cambodia to “Year Zero”, which involved the attempt to eradicate all “Western” influences, which resulted in the murder of ca. 1.7 million human beings.

Then, in the 1980s, after the Vietnamese had invaded Cambodia and driven the KR from power, the Reagan-Bush1 regime gleefully supported the genocidals of the KR, so as to bleed the Vietnamese.

As Casey Stengel liked to say, “You could look it up”.

It was not the US withdrawal from Indochina which led to genocide. It was the US attempt to conquer and colonize Indochina which let to genocide.

Just as the Bush-Cheney attempt to conquer and colonize Iraq has led to genocide.

Is Bush sincerely psychiatrically delusional, and should therefore be institutionalized?

Or is he a cynical genocidal warlord, who should be permanently imprisoned?

End of An Era

Today is Friday, 24 August 2007.

Word comes of the passing of L, the father of my dear friend B. He was a true New Orleans Original, and is deeply missed.

Herewith, some of his favorite songs:









This one is from me. Don't know if Mr. L knew it or liked it or whatever. I met him too few times, but ... he was totally class.



And here's Thomas Kid Valentine. :

The Never-Ending Wrong

Today is 23 August 2007.

On this date in 1927, the Italian-American dissidents Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, having been falsely convicted of murder, were judicially murdered in Massachusetts.

The title of this column is from a book on the case by Katherine Anne Porter.

It's 2.37 AM CDT, Ms. HH woke me up for a cuppa java, and then snoozed off, I'm totally wired, I've got half a tank of gas, a six-pack, cigarettes, and I'm wearing sunglasses.



Be one of those daze.

Isn't it something like ... Mr. Wizard ... correct me if me wrong ... "Fasten your seatbelts, kids, it's gonna be a rough night."

Smokes, the stars, B. Davis and Paul Henreid:

Sure, some would say, there's something vulgar about appending all this to the death of S & V, but isn't that the whole point about exterminating people: it's vicious and vulgar?



And the hits just keep on coming.



Surely, the assasination of Sacco and Vanzetti was ... in the vernacular, a circus:



The miricale of "Electronovision:"



9.34 PM CDT and took the cocker out to do bizness. we live in a middle-middle hood, with low-cost housing a half mile away. just heard five shots, I suspect a Glock or such, def not auto. (You live in NYC, U known your ammunition.)

Happy Birthday, Ray Bradbury

Today is Wednesday, 22 August 2007.

The Museum of the Bourgeois is totally pleased to wish Ray Bradbury “Happy Birthday!” on this, his 87th.

Thank you, sir, for the enduring poetry of The Martian Chronicles.

Herewith, in your honour, sir, a bit of Shakespeare.

Sonnet 29

"When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes"

When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf Heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself, and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featur'd like him, like him with friends possess'd,
Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least:
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee,--and then my state
(Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven's gate;
For thy sweet love remember'd such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings'.

And also, in your honour, sir, one of my favourite fragments of music: Ralph Vaugh Williams, The Lark Ascending:

Day of Mourning

Today is Tuesday, 21 August 2007.

During the night of 20-21 August 1968, Soviet and puppet Warsaw Pact military forces invaded Czechoslovakia and ended the “Prague Spring”.

On 21 August 1972, your author was convicted in Federal court in the Northern District of Oklahoma of draft resistance, for the act of “nonpossession of draft materials”, having torn up his draft cards and mailed them to his local draft board and then-president R.M. Nixon.

The latter action, of course, failed to turn the tides of history by a fraction of an inch. If, however, [perhaps the saddest construction possible in the language], hundreds of thousands of others had so acted … or acted at so many moments in history, surely millions and millions would not have died.

Today is one of my personal Days of Mourning.

BREAK BREAK BREAK

Now, let's just tear your heart out, with Albonni in G Minor:

Shake 4 2 Day

For God's Sake, Let Us Sit upon the Ground

Shakespeare, William (1564-1616)


For God's sake, let us sit upon the ground
And tell sad stories of the death of kings:
How some have been deposed; some slain in war;
Some haunted by the ghosts they have deposed;
Some poison'd by their wives; some sleeping kill'd;
All murder'd: for within the hollow crown
That rounds the mortal temples of a king
Keeps Death his court and there the antic sits,
Scoffing his state and grinning at his pomp,
Allowing him a breath, a little scene,
To monarchize, be fear'd and kill with looks,
Infusing him with self and vain conceit,
As if this flesh which walls about our life
Were brass impregnable, and humour'd thus
Comes at the last and with a little pin
Bores through his castle wall, and farewell king!

Cruel and Shameless Rudy

Today is Sunday, 19 August 2007.

On this date in 1936, the greatest Spanish poet and playwright of the 20th century, Federico Garcia Lorca, was murdered by Spanish fascists for the crimes of sympathy for the working class and being a homosexual.
______________________________________________

Speaking recently in Cincinnati, Rudy Giuliani said, “I was at ground zero as often, if not more, than most of the workers.”

However, as an article in the 17 August issue of The New York Times shows, Rudy’s own mayoral records put the lie to that claim.

From 17 September to 16 December 2001, Rudy spent a grand total of 29 hours at ground zero. Meanwhile, many workers served 12-hour shifts.

Most of Giuliani’s visits had nothing to do with directing work efforts; they involved press interviews and guided tours/photo ops for VIPs.

In this context, it is interesting to reflect on the myth of Rudy’s “strong leadership” on 9/11. Supposedly, Rudy was in charge of rescue efforts at the Twin Towers. In fact, he spent only a short time at the command post on the street near the Towers. He and his entourage then left, seeking a place of refuge. They were unable to go to his emergency command center, known to New Yorkers as the “bunker in the sky”, since he had located it on top of a skyscraper in the World Trade Center complex, which building was afire and would soon collapse.

(Details may be found in Grand Illusion: The Untold Story of Rudy Giuliani and 9/11, by Wayne Barrett and Dan Collins.)

Rudy and company first took cover in a restaurant, then a school, then a fire station, before ending up at the Police Academy. The famous footage of Rudy striding boldly around Lower Manhattan actually shows a man looking for a place to hide.

(Incidentally, recent news reports suggest the only use ever made of the “bunker in the sky” was for late night assignations between Rudy and Judith Nathan, then the woman with whom he was conducting an adulterous relationship, and now Wife # 3.)

Rudy’s attempts to spin personal political gold from the dead of 9/11 began, of course, almost immediately after the tragedy. He lobbied the New York legislature to repeal term limits so he could run again for mayor, and was rebuffed. He then proposed his term be extended, which was also denied.

Giuliani’s attempt to ascend to the White House by trampling the bodies of the 9/11 victims and the rescue workers is despicable, but characteristic of the man.

In Memory: Max Roach

Today is Saturday, 18 August 2007.

I had intended to compose some thoughts on the death of the last of the founders of bebop, Max Roach. Instead of my sorrow and thoughts, just let Max speak for himself:

In Memory: My Father-in-Law

Today is Friday, 17 August 2007.

Two years ago on this day, your author’s father-in-law died at the age of 90.

He was a person of great integrity, unfailingly generous and kind in all ways to family, friends, and strangers.

With greatest sorrow, he is most deeply missed.

"Those Effing Bastards"

Today remains Thursday, 16 August 2007.

A personal shout out to the J and the R:

"Turn Our Heads and Look the Other Way" W/UPDATE

Today is Thursday, 16 August 2007.

Perhaps the greatest thing about Elvis was that, in Mississippi in a time of vicious white supremacist racism, he revered what was then known as “race music” (the industry term for “n-word” music), and fused it with other ethnic traditions.

Yes, 30 years today since Elvis died.

"Babe" Ruth also died on this date (1948), and Bela Lugosi (1956).

Elvis himself:



Can't help this, from Mojo Nixon:



HH admits: he is old enough, as a toddler, to have seen this Elvis appearance on The Milton Berle Show:



More on this tomorrow: The Museum of the Bourgeois memorializes the death this morning of the great jazz drummer Max Roach:

WARNING: THOUGHT CRIME!

Today still remains Wednesday, 15 August 2007.


Would our masters have their way, the following would be a Thoughtcrime:

Unintended Consequences

Today remains Wednesday, 15 August 2007.

On this day in 1945, Japanese radio broadcast the “Imperial Rescript of Surrender”, in Emperor Hirohito’s own voice, signaling the end of the Great Pacific War.

The war had begun in 1853, when an American naval task force under Commodore Perry sailed into Uraga arbor.

The American warships were there because of the inherently unstable nature of capitalism: American industry desperately needed additional foreign outlets to absorb excess production, thus smoothing the cycle of boom-and-bust (ingenuously named, by certain reactionary economists, “The Business Cycle”, as if it were something as immutable as gravity, and not a social artifact).

One of the prime sources of instability under capitalism is that, while individual producers plan production, there is no overarching coordination. For example, after the American Civil War, in which the importance of railroads had been demonstrated (both militarily and economically), everyone wanted to cash in on railroads, and soon there was a glut of trackage and many went bankrupt.

Similarly, a decade ago, when American fiber-optic cable networks were all the rage, they were overbuilt, much of the mileage stayed dark, and bankruptcies resulted. In the last few years, too many rushed to cash in on sub-prime mortgages (“Don’t bother to prove you can re-pay; sign the contract and take the cash!”), and we’ve seen the results in the past weeks.

In 1853, Japan’s feudal rulers had isolated the nation from the outside world for centuries. They had deliberately retarded the advancement of industrial and military technology, and thus were unable to refuse when Perry showed up with his message, ‘Open your markets, or we open fire’.

American imperialism awakened modern Japanese imperialism, culminating in an economic, and then military, struggle for Pacific hegemony, in Pearl Harbor, millions of deaths, and the Japanese surrender in Tokyo Bay.

The Law of Unintended Consequences: Be very careful how you act, for it will usually lead to consequences far beyond your imaginings.

Technical Difficulties

Today is Wednesday, 15 August 2007.

The apologies of The Museum. Due to technical modem difficulties, we've been off the air since late Sunday night. HH is dealing with a depressingly large backlog of e-mails, and will respond to everyone's kind comments by day's end.

Herr und Hund

Today remains Sunday, 12 August 2007.

From Mike Glover of AP, hot off the press about the Iowa Repub Straw Poll: “Romney scored 4,516 votes, or 31.5 percent, to outpace former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee who had 2,587 votes, or 18.1 percent. Kansas Sen. Sam Brownback was third with 2,192 votes, 15.3 percent.”

Hot Damn, Alabam. Hell’s bells.

Wow. Mitt the S**t spent what, $1,000,000 for 4,550+ votes? Cost effective? I had a higher efficiency ratio in Jr. High and High School, running unsuccessfully for Student Council President. And this Weenie thinks he should be Leader of The Free World?

Let us recall 1962-4, when HH was 10 to 12, and here’s the dirty secret: HH was briefly an avowed Republican.

HH was following the lead of his maternal grandmother, not realizing at the time that she was a hotshot Republican activist only because that was the way my grandfather kept his Kansas state govt. job.

The advent of the Presidential candidacy of the state’s rights white supremacist Barry Goldwater opened his eyes, and HH then briefly became a Scranton Republican [the transition!], and then a life-long anarcho-socialist Marxist free spirit.

In Memory: Thomas Mann

Today is Sunday, 12 August 2007.

The Museum of the Bourgoeis is, of course, fundamentally, as it were, opposed to all forms of propaganda.

That said, HH can't help himself: he must share this classic of Donald Duck jingoistic anti-fascism, which he recalls fondly from his callow youth.



HH thinks Thomas Mann, who died on this day in 1955, and whom HH reveres, would, in his stilted and stuffy way, find Mr. Duck hilarious.

For Your Listening Pleasure

Today is Friday, 10 August 2007.

Janis and Tom:



Those were the days, my friends.

Blame this musicale on Mrs. HH, who asked for some Tom Jones:



And one more:



OK, one more more:



OK OK, one more for the road. A great set of pipes, and groove on the snaps and claps:



OK OK OK, this is really the last. Can't beat it with a stick: Lady and the Tramp.

Unnecesary/Stardust

Today is Thursday, 9 August 2007.

The day of, as a book is titled, The Unnecesary Bomb, the one dropped atomically on Nagasaki.

Herewith, in vicious irony, Hoagy Carmichael, “Stardust”.

HH knows the bar in which Hoagy wrote this tune, and the very piano, preserved to this day, and, has plinked out a few notes thereon.



And HH is a hopeless (Hoagy among others, romantic), so here's from HC on the Rosemary Clooney Show (dig the ref at the end):



And this moment, HH thinks about one of our dogs, a wandering waif we adopted, and Bacall and Hoaghy:



And more random association:



And, goodness gracious, might one go more leftie romantic than this:

?

Today is Wednesday, 8 August 2007.

This is the Wolfman, goin' out over the waves of air to all you hep cats who say, "Man, why is that HH always the gloomy negativity"?

Dig: HH could note today is the birthday in 1901 of fan-tas-tic nuclear physcist Ernest Lawrence, who helped whelp the atomic bomb, but he won't.

HH groove you on a song from 1965, when he was 13, and all of us in jr. high dug this song, and especially since the label on the 45 said the group was "? and the Mysterians".

A punctuation mark as your name? Wild! And where can I get a pair of those psychedelic sunglasses?

Chill and ill, dudettes and dudes:

Rewarding High Treason

Today is Tuesday, 7 August 2007.

The Bush-Cheney regime didn’t admit they broke the law and overthrew the Constitution by wiretapping in violation of the FISA law.

They boasted of their crimes.

‘The President, as commander-in-chief of everything, can do whatever he wishes’.

Once upon a time, a previous George (III) got booted out of the Colonies for similar imperial crimes.

And now, a cringing, crass, and craven Congress has rewarded Bush’s crime with a new law … ‘OK, you can overthrow the Constitution for six more months, but then we reconsider’.

Once upon a time, overthrowing the Constitution was high treason.

I expect Republican members of Congress to fall to their knees and worship King George, but Democrats …

Phil Ochs put it well:

In Memory: Hiroshima, Supplemental: "This Is the Life We Have Chosen"

Today remains Monday, 6 August 2007.

I’m thinking tonight of those six miners, trapped in a coal mine in Utah.

I’m wondering if some of the electricity which powers this computer, my lighting, my air conditioning, etc., was generated from coal from that mine.

As a character in The Godfather says, “This is the life we have chosen”.

Our energy-rich Way of Life requires the sacrifice, consumption, inconvenience, by-product, operating charge, call it as one will, of extinguished human lives.

“This is the life we have chosen”.

I can only hope that the lives we lead are worthy of those who give their lives to make our lives possible.

In Memory: Hiroshima

Today is Monday, 6 August 2007.

In addition to the several hundred thousands of human beings murdered immediately and over time by the American atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Andrei Sakharov projected that some 5,000,000 to 7,000,000 would die or endure lives of pointless suffering thanks to above-ground atomic and nuclear weapons testing, primarily by the American and Soviet governments.

In addition, the USA/USE alone has spent in excess of $8 trillion on atomic and nuclear weapons, research, infrastructure, etc. (And this is only the figure which can be documented. The true amount will never be recovered.)

Thus, to the roster of victims must be added an incalculable number of human beings who would not have died or endured lives of pointless suffering had those trillions been used for good instead of wickedness.

The air raid siren (below) is a signal of mourning for these dead and harmed.

http://usmilitary.about.com/od/miscsound/l/blairraid.htm

Happy Day Before Hiroshima Day!

Today is Sunday, 5 August 2007.

The day before the date in history when the Truman regime of the USA/USE inaugurated the era of atomic/nuclear genocide.

Fitting that, a few days ago, in an interview with the Associated Press, Senator Barack Obama, said: “I think it would be a profound mistake for us to use nuclear weapons in any circumstance [strategic pause] involving civilians.”

Given that there is almost certainly no “military” (or “terrorist”, the term each “Our Side” uses for military of “The Other Side”) target which one could nuke without “collateral damage”, the polite euphemism for “civilians who just happen to be in the area” … one can only conclude that Obama would nuke “military” targets, and, since the civilians only get exterminated “coincidentally”, it’s copacetic.

So much for the Obama “New Look”.

Devout United Methodist Senator Hillary Clinton [Full Disclosure: HH was raised in the United Methodist sect] retorted: “And I don’t believe that any president should make any blanket statements with respect to the use or non-use of nuclear weapons”.

A fine crystallization of a problem for all presidential candidates who flaunt their “Christian” “faith”, which seems to be almost all.

For the threat of nuclear extermination to be credible, a USA/USE president must be publicly and relentlessly known to be willing and eager to murder hundreds of millions of human beings in the event of a “Survival of Our Way of Life” crisis.

But WWJD? [What Would Jesus Do?]

Would “The Lamb of God” exterminate hundreds of millions of human beings to preserve The Way of Life of Rupert Murdoch, Paris Hilton, and Every Average American?

St. Cyprian wrote, ca. 200 C.E. [AKA A.D.]: “When an individual kills for personal profit, it is called “murder”. When multitudes kill for the profit of the State, it is called “glory”.

Better Late Than Never

Today is Saturday, 4 August 2007.

This column was meant to appear on 2 August; I thought I had posted it, but hadn't:

Another “dreary date-in-time shtick”, as a recent commenter on this column said.

And precisely what’s the problem with living in history, given that history is living with us? Or, more precisely, that we are constantly living history?
Sure, there’s that insane-egotistical notion that America is “The New World”, and left all that dreary Europeanism behind on the shores of the Old World, and was born sinless and perfect on the shores of Virginia and Massachusetts.

That myth doesn’t quite account for the genocide of Native Americans and African Americans, which seems very Old World. Note that the Reagan-BushOne regime bilked the American taxpayers out of more than $3 billion to finance Saddam Hussein’s dreams of conquest (1981-1988). The Reagan-BushOne regime also conned many Sunni-dominated Persian Gulf nations into giving Iraq grants and loans to kill Shiites in Iran. (Some of our dollars bought poison gas to kill Iranians and Kurds.)

When the dictatorship in Kuwait demanded repayment of some loans, S. Hussein used it as a pretext to invade and conquer Kuwait, ON THIS DATE in 1990 [your dreary date-in-time shtick for today], after the bumbling BushOne regime told Hussein, “Whatever”. (Note that Iraq had long claimed Kuwait was rightfully part of its territory, a claim which the Eisenhower regime had supported. Don’t believe it? As the immortal Casey Stengel said, “You could look it up”.)

This is not “negativity”, this is not whining: this is reality for which we are among those responsible. It is in “dreary” (what a pathetic term) history that we live and move and have our being.

More "Dreary" Dates to Remind Us We Live in History, and For It Responsible

Today is Friday, 3 August 2007.

On this date in 1492, the Columbus expedition set sail. We know how that worked out.

In 1904, Clifford D. Simak, author of the classic Way Station, was born.

In 1940, Martin Sheen was born.

Love to Va

Today is Wednesday, 1 August 2007.

Here's a little something, thinking of the evening I met one of the best friends I ever had, who had the same name as a state of the USA, and, sadly, is no longer with us:

In Memory: The African Slaves on Whose Blood Our Country Was Built

Today is Wednesday, 1 August 2007.

Notice how --- and times your author fails to edit himself, and is guilty of this, it’s so damned engrained in our culture --- that “Black” is used so frequently as a euphemism for “evil”?

Some would say it’s because of the primordial fear of night --- the times before even the flint-struck campfire.

That was then; this is now.

Is it because, in our American culture, many white folks, of which your author is a white folk, though not with the following problem, have this little problem with Slavery, and the Second Slavery (“Segregation”), and the Third Slavery (“Discrimination”), which latter is on-going?

On this date in 1619, the first African slaves were delivered to the birth colony of the USA/USE, Jamestown, Virginia.

"Go Down, Moses": Paul Robeson singing, Lawrence Brown at the piano:



Robeson again, "St. Louis Blues":



"Shenandoah":