the Armchair Curmudgeon

Governance thru Hypocrisy:

Where to begin?

How about hypocrisy that extends upwards towards government.

Let me cite an example.

Ask yourself:  "Who were the funniest people in the world?"

If you are of a certain age and around in the sixties, it's likely you would have admitted it was

 the Pythons.   Five graduates of the elite schools of Britain....they all managed to find each other and gravitate into humor....and, in the process, change the constructs of humor and  the world.

If you are an old fan of humor going back to the sixties and remember their predecessors who influenced them most  it was "Beyond the Fringe" humorists Peter Cook and  Dudley Moore        and, later, "This Was the Week that Was!"  hosted by the unquenchable David Frost  who opened some new doors for the Pythons.... and nobody ever looked back.

The Pythons specialized in satirizing everything; nothing was sacred. They went beyond anything up to that point with their hysterical brand of humor....

Who can ever forget the fish slapping dance, the dead parrot, or the Spam, spam, spam sketch?

What is amazing to me is that they so perfectly fit each other, they are all cut from the same piece of cloth it seems.  This had to be  a group made in Heaven!

At some point in time, they decided to take on faith, and decided to address the birth of Christianity in their poke at extremist religiosity, not to poke fun at the faith, per se,  but the trappings of early Christianity and their view of the misperceptions of the people and their ideas.....

And that's the hook but it was not understood by the bigoted thin skinned extremist religious groups with no sense of humor who proved ready to assail them from every direction.

When the Life of Brian first previewed in New York, the pickets ran around the block.
Protestors carrying signs that read "Warner Bros was in league with the Devil!" they said and other words that critiqued the good natured ribbing of the Pythons and clearly did not understand that the Pythons were merely trying to provoke a laugh with a little harmless insanity.....

Even in London some critics crawled out of the woodwork to critique the Pythons describing a plethora of religious crimes they were guilty of..... "Hogwash!"  said most, who ignored their extremist views and simply laughed with the Pythons who marvelously pushed off their vacuous remarks.

Actually, ask most comics and they will admit the Life of Brian was perhaps the funniest film they had ever seen!....

Is raping and molesting young women a Christian approved action?   Is it okay to cheat employees out of their wages or to cheat on your taxes?.  What about setting up a profitable university that cheats the student of the education they expected to see--many investing their only savings in this bankrupt venture?  Is it moral, to have a foundation that only finances your own interests and gives nothing to charity which is fraud?   Yet, these are the actions of the man we promoted to lead our country into the future.  .    And yet his biggest block of supposedly firm religious extremists stays mum about his actions and his behavior....and buys into his perveresities and mythologies and is willing to overlook everything and give him a pass!....
 mythologies....

Now that was then.  We survived the Christian leaders who got a tax break for their purported immorality and contribution to the world Christianity has claimed to produce....

We don't aspire to being Doubting Thomas's but consider this : If we are so gung ho about protecting our Christianity, why have few if any leaders said anything about Trump's trashing of Christianity with his outrageous remarks, his contempt for Christian charity, and his commitment to dividing people up by color and spiritual belief.  Is this consistent with Christianity?.....   And why were Christians so upset by innocent humor and so indifferent about Trump's evident immorality?  I don't get it.  Frankly, I doubt whether he has ever opened a Christian bible; said a real prayer, believed in anything.  Instead he lives a life of perpetual anger and hostility against anything that doesn't support him 100%.  He has attacked people with physical ailments, veterans, heroes, and parents of military heroes?  Is that God's teaching?    He explains that caravans of Mexican murderers and rapists are coming here to take advantage of Whites.  He has also said in the riots in Charlottesville that there were fine people on those who caused the riots and the death.  That sounds more like a White Supremacist or a Neo-Nazi rather than a good Christian....

We are between a rock and a hard place.

  We take a hypocritical stance against a comedy group where spiritual Christians are taught that humor is destructive of their faith; yet, mind you, it's okay to practice immorality, unchristian attacks against people, and ridicule of those who serve their country and our great Christian spiritualists say nothing.   It seems to me a damned good definition of hypocrisy….. and reason to reconsider giving tax breaks to further hypocrisy.

The Cost of Exceptionalism.

In Chris Matthews’ ad, he talks about American “Exceptionalism” and how one of the primary examples of this is the man sitting in the White House right now, a man of different nationalities, who didn’t have a father growing up or special opportunities handed to him, yet, today, he sits at the pinnacle of power.

Pretty heady stuff!

When I was a kid growing up, I thought everything about America was exceptional. It was exceptional that me a poor kid growing up in Spanish Harlem could spend his afternoons visiting at the governor’s house, that he could get not only a good undergraduate education but a graduate one at that and could go on to run seven different businesses and make all the relevant “Who’s Who” books? What a great country!

I also believed that my good fortune required someone of my ilk to give back and I have tried to do that all my life in all possible ways.

But what Chris Matthews failed to address is that American exceptionalism is undergoing deep-rooted change! People of narrow vision and a meaness of spirit have taken over our government and steered us away from all the things that made us great in the past and pushed us towards balancing the books over greatness. And, sadly, the archetype for this American exceptionalism, president Obama has bought into their view of the world and is not only allowing them to have their way, he has been hard at work finding ways to cut back those areas that contributed to our exceptionalism!

Oddly, that nobody has connected the dots to see that ‘exceptionalism’ that we tout, did not simply fall from the heavens fully formed, but was the product of sacrifice, hard-work and commitment.

It is disappointing that America has listened to their claptrap and not declared it unfitting to a resurgent America; instead, we take it like lap dogs. In fact, it is astounding to me that we are so compliant that we are already sliding down the flag pole into a state of benign mediocrity. And that’s particularly troublesome for me having visited many of America’s cemeteries around the world where people fought and died to protect what we stood for.

How easily we forget!

I think about how dad spent most of his life in VA hospitals after five years on the front lines and wound after wound that sent him to the hospital and then back to the lines, only not to recognize all of his mates because they had been killed; and even after the War when he couldn’t adjust to civilian life, joined the Army air force until he crashed into a lake and spent a year recuperating. He had believed that America was worth the sacrifice.

I think about my own experiences visiting all the America cemeteries through-out the world, from northern Europe to Hawaii. I think about what I knew from my service during the Korean War and Vietnam era and the trips to Washington to see the black granite and weep openly for names I didn’t even know….

And I ask myself how is this happening after the passage of so few years. What we have failed to real;ize is that you have to work for exceptionalism; it is not a free gift.
And our particular brand extends back more than two hundred years to the founding of this great country. And I shed a tear to think that a blind-sided Congress which such little vision could somehow set the tone for an America I can no longer be proud of.

The People’s Movement Escalates….

First observations:

Today, I watched and listened as they covered the build-up to the protest on Wall Street. And I came away with a few observations . For one, I disagree with most of the critics and especially Obama strategists, who see the election in terms of independents and democrats, and the black and white issue.

The Obama strategists recognize that their hopes rest on the Independents. I agree with that, but I do not feel based on what I’ve seen up ‘til now with the burgeoning protests anything that indicates color as an issue. What in fact I do see is not based on party politics, but issues. And it is to the credit of the planners of the protest that they have left it open ended, because under those conditions “one size fits all.”

As a result, people of every political persuasion and perhaps no persuasion at all are finding a place in this big tent where it seems everyone represents a different perspective, a different point of view that inveighs against the party in power.

Mostly, if we were to generalize the themes that come through have most to do, it seems to me, with politics and business in bed together and the dissonance it produces among the people who make up this country of ours.

What is most moving is the fact that the people are showing far more common sense, far more in common with each other than apart, and that the politicians, per se, don’t come close to representing their interests. And nowhere have I seen the specter of black and white politics introduced.

As a result of this open-ended spectrum that only invites more dissatisfied people into the tent, I don’t think it is a movement likely to fold any time soon….quite to the contrary, it seems like a movement that will continue to grow as long as there is dissatisfaction among the rank and file, and until the parties learn to talk with each other.
For them, the danger is that this kind of a forum could replace either one or both parties and it could happen relatively quickly if politicians forget the powers of the people to replace them.

I will have more to say in coming days.

In the meantime, I am getting pangs of deja=vu from old movements and old marches and having the Unions cover my back; maybe even plant a little time capsule at the foot of the Big Bull outside the Big Board to remind myself that the last decade was the decade of terrorism and big government controlled by business, and, now, ten year’s later, we are at the beginning of the Fall of those “Too big to fail!”

And, so, in these final moments in the lead up to 2012, the people are speaking out. When that happens, both sides of the spectrum should be paying close attention; their survival may depend on it.

The people are speaking.

And that most ephemeral of things, hope, is in the air again! Makes me feel like I’m back in the 60’s.

The question is will the rest of us listen.

The Zombies of the GOP cannot settle on anyone they like enough…

Whew!....These repugs are tough; they’re apparently not happy unless they are eating their own!.... Case in point, the darling of the Conservatives, Bachmann is now scoring below Huntsman in the latest popularity polls. And the newer lover boy to come along, Perry is showing more cracks than a Tokyo skyscraper after the Tsunami.

What’s the operative word here, heartless, fickle? Call it what you will, but it seems that candidate popularity in “the party that takes no prisoners” lasts no longer than a cigarette between coffee breaks.

Front runner, Romney still holds the lead he has had in the last four years, give or take a blip here and there, but the faithful are not running out chanting Romney. Apparently, they are not sure that he is conservative enough and his Mormon credentials label him an unknown outsider even though he seems to have been running since I was knee high to a milkshake….Ask a southern believer what he thinks, and his expression tells you all you need to know.

But that seems to be the way it goes!

Now, the punjabs of the pocketbook are trying to reel Christie in, figuring him to be a populist and the next best thing to a serious candidate who can come on strong next to an Obama who is seen right now as stronger than their front line which seems to shift daily depending on the barometric reading.

Christie seems to be a plain talker but he may be vulnerable to the more radicalized right’s view of what a real conservative is….that hasn’t been determined yet; while one suspects that the whole Bush family is foaming at the mouth to get the real inheritor of the Bush mantle up and running, the one that is said to still have a few live brain cells, Jeb. How that is going to materialize is beyond even Swami-like prognosticators of the party’s future to comprehend.

Meanwhile, the most responsible of the GOP’s candidates lapses in obscurity, John Huntsman, who one could say, “he makes some sense….” But the mainline gurus think that Huntsman does not have enough of anything to endear him to anyone except perhaps intelligent independents and disenfranchised democrats who don’t see their future with Obama.

Even Newt has a good day now and then but lags behind virtually everyone. In fact, the other day, Santorum got off a good one that appealed to the GOP crowd and for a moment, he had a fleeting touch of fame that came and went. And the other day, the former Godfather pizza chairman razzle dazzled the onlookers by winning the latest straw poll and then alienated the minorities by referring to them as brain-washed.

By the end of this contest, it seems like they will all collapse into a hopeless mass of used up bodies and somebody will appear out of the woodwork to save the Republican’s proverbial backsides, yet, it seems that the party, influenced by the chronically intolerant would rather applaud death in the electric chair a la Perry and their anti-gay credentials than actually be taken seriously by anyone.

Les Aaron

Manifesto for the Common Man...

or Kick-starting Democracy!.... A Way Forward!

I believe that change is compatible with a changing and growing America. It is especially critical at this time, when we find ourselves having endured ten years of special interests, an arrogant and intractable posture from Congress and a retreat from real world concerns by the bulk of the population who feel beset upon by the powerful moneyed interests who control increasingly the legislation and the dialog that is pervasive in America today.

In short, it’s time to take the government back for the people who have suffered a double, if not triple indemnity at the hands of the ruling class as the rest of us watch our democracy evanesce into wisps of smoke and democracy looks more and more like the faded symbol of what was once the beacon to the tired, and poor of half the world.

This foundation document is a work in progress; as such, it is not set in concrete, but may be easily modified, customized, adjusted to to suit individual needs; I am making it available to activist organizations at no charge who are interested in bringing positive change to government that benefits the people…


A Rationale;

Dear Activist/Reformer:

As a citizen concerned for the future of the Middle Class and Democracy, I have prepared
The following document, which I call a Manifesto for Change for the People.
The Manifesto incorporates three parts: an Introduction; Rationale; and the recommendations for a Manifesto for the people which I hope will be used as part of the foundation of a program to move Democracy from the present level of stasis, and confusion as to what is in America’s best interests, but also to stem what I see as an increasing drift towards surrendering to the agendas of the rich and powerful and the subordination of legitimate democratic concerns..

Thank you for this opportunity.


Here's the accompanying preamble:

The Democrats do not have a plan for the Nation much less the middle class. What we’ve seen has been not only amateurish but lacking in drive, continuity and commitment. What we have seen has proved to be sketchy—not fully drawn or articulated, uninformed, demonstrative of a lazy intellect, it suffers from being advanced serially as opposed to in parallel—as part of a total program. After three years, it is clear that the senior advisers Obama has selected are much more aligned with the status-quo than reformers; they know nothing about the needs of the people; nor do they seem to show sufficient angst about the problems we face. It is clear that despite their credentials, they operate more like a group of disjointed amateurs rather than those who had promised to change the status quo, too ready to accept what is on their plate than prepare a serious, real attack on the challenges we face. Out of a need that began when I put together the book, “A Blueprint for Change: Taking Back the White House,” we changed parties, and administrations only to discover that the past looks unfortunately like the present. More importantly, we have a party that doesn’t represent the people and an Admin that is on disconnect and needs life support! We have allowed the GOP to speak for us and there is no blow-back; this is irresponsible and insufferable.

Les Aaron


August 25, 2011
D

Respectfully submitted,
100 Committee
By Les Aaron, Chairman

Facebook (1) | Les Aaron

Facebook (1) | Les Aaron

News and Notes: December 1, 2010

News and Notes for December 1, 2010:

Governor Ted Strickland, Ohio, said today that if the democrats can’t get their act together over defeating the tax extensions for millionaires, then “…they should pack it up!”

Mitch McConnell said in a speech today that he had received assurances from other republicans in Congress that nothing will be approved until they get what they want. That means, unemployment extensions and the Start treaty will be held hostage until the democrats agree to go along with republican tax extensions for the rich in the over
$250,000 category….

Adam Green, Bold Progressives.Org said that president Obama has not said one word in the one month since the mid-term elections as to what exactly he would find important enough to fight for….and this is very troublesome for his base.

Bold Progressives ran an ad today that said that president Obama should not forget his promise to those who voted him into office.



Big Ed, on MSNBC, said that many democrats are ready to bolt if Obama agrees to extend tax breaks for the rich.

A Republican spokesman stated that president Obama admitted to being a Blue Dog Democrat. Dear Mr. President, may we remind you that the Blue Dogs were successfully defeated in the mid-term elections.

The GOP has made clear their goals which include raising retirement to 69, meddling with health care, and SS, and dropping the tax rate from 35% max to 29% for the wealthiest people in America. It is clear that they although they preach fiscal responsibility, they are out to destroy government.

Leo Gerard of the United Steel Workers said that the Right Wing is holding a gun to the head of democrats who are, in effect, saying give us what we want or we’ll bankrupt America.

We must remember that they said nothing when America closed down 40,000 plants and cut back on 8 million jobs! Now, they want to abolish taxes on multi-national firms!


Senator Simpson attacked democrats over wasteful spending on things like Medicare and Social Security. Leo Gerard asks where was he when Bush was running the biggest deficits of all time.

Robert Reich says that the Republicans can’t have it both ways . They want fiscal responsibility and continued tax breaks. Reich says that the president has to stand firm and not extend tax cuts. The rich are already taking home one quarter of all income and not contributing anything to paying down the debt.

.
Racial Discrimination Reinforced by two Republican Representatives: Republicans Steve King and Michelle Bachmann attacked black farmers today in reaction to the settlement of Dept of Agriculture claims.. King said that they were drug addicts making dishonest claims who were encouraged by an Urban Senator who became president.. And Bachmann accused them of black farmers being “frauds” in making claims to the government. In truth, the payment of claims was made after a settlement with the Department of Agriculture that admitted that they had been guilty of discrimination in denying loans to black farmers.