Kee-rist! And they call ME cynical.

So -- it's the day after BP CEO Tony Hayward gives us the clumsiest, most obvious, most callous performance of what is politely called stonewalling (and more properly called "Fuck you -- we don't need no stinkin' badges,") since we watched John Mitchell and the Haldemann-Erlichmann Twin Sociopaths insist they had NO IDEA what those radical liberal commies were yammering about.

The Brit press is accusing the Senate Committee of neo-Spanish Inquisition tactics (oh, let's have the bloody Black & Tan Chorus have a Kumbaya moment with the old IRA Glee Club as they all join in and sing a few verses of Londonderry Air).

Hayward was replaced today (in function but not yet in title) by someone who can say with a little bit of credibility "I don't know-- I wasn't in this job  at that time."


AND -- in the cynical cherry on top of the oil-spill sundae -- BP has begun running a commercial using a black man with a gulf-state accent to tell us all how heart-felt sick and concerned BP is about the poor poor (small) people around the gulf.

"Hi -- I'm Darryl Willis and as you can see, since the camera is holding my face full-frame for this entire commercial,  I am an actual black man who talks with the local accent and that's supposed to make you realize that the Brits are without any racial attitude or bias, and we love all you small people and are offering you a phone number to call so we can tell you HOW to apply for compensation -- because we REALLY do not want an independent outfit with a bunch of Jews who support Israel handling the loot."


And that's the most cynical use of a "See, we got one of THEM -- we're not ALL clueless white boys -- we got some clueless black boys too" since Clarence Thomas was the scowling black-face House N----r for the all white Reagan Justice Dept.

Perhaps this fellow will also get the same kind of a cushy payoff job when this is all over, and when asked his qualifications for the position will have a scripted answer to shame the questioners -- as Uncle Thomas did when asked what qualified him for a LIFETIME appointment -- "THIS IS A HIGH-TECH LYNCHING." (And none of the white guys had the clarity or cojones to say "First of all, Judge Thomas -- this is a job interview and second, you wouldn't have even been nominated if you weren't a Reagan-Bush token black African. So answer the fucking questions or walk away.")

And they call ME cynical.

These guys make the above-mentioned Nixon crew look like the 12 Apostles.

Robo-calls

I have a rule in my life -- I will not vote for anyone who uses Robocalls, even if it's someone I was planning to vote for, someone I thought was a really good person.

I felt weird about that for a while until I realized that anyone who uses Robocalls is showing me that he or she isn't the good person I thought.


And that solves the problem for me.

The only problem I have left with Robocalls is that it's not very satisfying shouting "FUCK YOU" at a recording that says "Hi, this is Mitt Romney..." or "Hello, this is President Clinton.." (Oh, I still shout it, but it's sort of unsatisfying.)

A young woman called me the other day and asked me if I had time to talk about voting for her uncle for Superior Court judge. I said I didn't but I had the voter's pamphlet. She was very polite, and it wasn't until after she hung up that I realized I should have told her that she being a living person and not a recording, raises her uncle --- previously unknown to me -- to the status of worthiness of public office.

Rush Limbaugh gets married again -- GAWD the image it conjures up... YIKES...

Conservative radio man Rush Limbaugh is taking a fourth stab at marriage with a weekend wedding to Kathryn Rogers, an events coordinator 26 years his junior, according to various reports. Limbaugh, 59, will reportedly marry the 33-year-old Rogers at his Palm Beach compound. The childless Limbaugh's first two marriages were over by the time he rose to national prominence. His third wedding, to Marta Fitzgerald in 1994, was officiated by his friend, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. They divorced in 2004.

OK -- this may seem slanderously outrageous, not that I would consider that sort of thing inappropriate to making a comment about Mr Limbaugh -- but honesty and ethics demands full disclosure:

this is just an impression -- a hideous image that comes to mind without any basis in actual fact -- Nonetheless, as Eleanor Roosevelt once said -- nonetheless:

He's 59 she's 33.
Given how many dozens of times he has shared with us the image of him bending over and grabbing his ankles, how often he's used taking it up the ass as his favorite metaphor, I can only imagine that young Ms Rogers has a deft hand with a large dildo.

I could be wrong.
Maybe not.

But the unwanted intrusion of that hideous image makes me understand what Sergeant Dickerson meant when he said "Private -- you think too much."  Not that he meant THAT image -- but letting my mind run amok and paying attention to it. --- AIYEE!!

Well, maybe all those years of Tony Blair built a tolerance among the Brits for smarmy and supercilious, but..

Tony Hayward is so unbelievably insincere in his new TV commercial ("Oh I'm so concerned about having destroyed a large part of your country -- and we have a lot of BP employees down here who are also upset. "), he makes the robotic Mitt Romney -- a simulacrum of Vril made as an impersonation of an actual human being -- makes Mr Mitt, in terms of sincerity,  seem like Mahatma Ghandi.


* Also

People who know my ongoing critical attitude toward the country of Israel may be surprised by this...

About Arrogance

After all, I am a person who wrote a doggerel poem titled The Baal Shem Tov Bitch-slaps a Zionist and who ended a Passover seder in a relative's Marin County home by saying about the closing line "Next year in Jerusalem," "Well, if we have the right to take over Palestine because of history, we shouldn't complain when Pomo and Wintu native Californians show up at the front door to take back THEIR historical land."


Those specifics, along with others, have had me classified as an "Enemy of Israel,"and I have expressed my seriously negative opinions at being roughly dismissed  with such pretentious bullshit -- If you criticize US, you're an enemy of Israel and a self-hating Jew. In other words, if I think that YOU have done something shameful and counter-productive to your stated goals, I'm the one hurting the state of Israel? (That attitude is one more thing I detest and I truly believe that people who say that sort of thing -- people like Alan Dershowitz, for example --might actually find a great deal of benefit from an introspective session of trying on self-hating to see if important information might be derived from the exercise.)

But I believe Israel should exist -- actually, that it NEEDS to exist -- that it is vitally important to the mental and moral health of the world that it does. My criticism of Israel is of specific actions and attitudes.*

That said, there is an historical price a country will have to pay for arrogance, usually its collapse, since arrogance ALSO avoids any semblance of self-critical thought, any retrospective examination of one's actions -- such as "Is what I've just done helping my country's continued existence or undermining it>"

That said, I think Benny Netanyahu is the modern poster child for immature self-justifying thoughtless self-aggrandizing arrogance and cruelty.

He finds it so easy to gain power repeatedly by stirring up fear and panic in a population justifiably haunted by being only 50+ years away from a monstrously insane hysterically homicidal cruelty directed at them or others categorized as being like them.  (An era of hideous viciousness deriving energy and intensity at least in part from a total refusal to even ask if any of their own kampfen might have been connected to something they did.)

So my point is this -- Netanyahu and the rest of his ilk -- both currently and historically -- are the ones diminishing the prospects of their country being around for much longer. A man who can NOT say -- EVER -- "Oops -- I fucked up." A man who can't even apologize for the loss of life caused by his actions. A man whose ego and self-image is much more important to him than the safety of his people, that safety being the bell he rings over and over to justify his counter-productive actions.


--And, the news playing in my office I can hear -- synchronously -- another man who is a true co-religionist, a man who subscribes to the dogma of the religion both really believe in, i.e., "Anything I do is right and basks in the light of the lord"  -- Tony Hayward, CEO of BP, is saying how he wants this to be over, saying "I want my life back."

(How do people so incredibly clueless rise to such positions of power?)

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* My point of view has been strongly influenced by -- among others -- the exceptionally brave and intelligent -- and admittedly still controversial -- Jacobo Timerman.   
For a less glowing remembrance, see also this article in The Tablet: A New Read on Jewish Life