The Daily Grand and Sundry

One of the by products of my tenure working to outwit Communists is that I neither  read nor watch nor listen to people I agree with,too boring. I read and watch  good writers or commentators I don’t agree with, very jolting. One of those really good writers, I don’t usually agree with, is Timothy Rutten, who writes for the Los Angeles Times.

In his review of the new Karl Rove book, he wrote this:“The great architects of recent electoral change ….. were men of vast experience, as well as political acumen.

It’s worth wondering just how much of our current political discontent grows out of the dominance on both sides of the aisle of men and women, like Rove, whose only serious experience of American life is politics itself”

That is a Mr. Rutten’s insight I totally agree with, which brings us to the new Speaker of the California Assembly, Democrat John Perez, but first:

“California is the world’s eighth-largest economy, but it faces serious challenges, including an aging infrastructure, population growth, a burgeoning unskilled and undereducated labor force, a struggling K-12 educational system and an unfriendly business climate.”(Milkin Institute,2010).

That’s right, California is the eighth largest economy in the world, ahead of Brazil, Russia,India, Spain, Canada and Mexico. However, if we were a separate nation, our current status would be Weimar Republic before the Nazis took over, or the Soviet Union before its collapse, or any typical banana republic unable to keep its finances in shape.

California has a  21Billion( that’s RIGHT, Billion dollar deficit); we are closing schools, firing teachers, turning away college students, cutting back home nursing, delaying transportation fixes, releasing criminals from prison. California has the richest farm land in the world, and the farms are dying because the Government cut the water to save a fishlet; California has the richest farm land in the world and in the midst of that bounty, farm workers, Mexican Americans, are standing in food lines waiting to be fed by donated food from China, CHINA.

California is in such a state of both entropy and cascading collapse(to borrow BART SIMPSON’s eloquence, California as a  state, ”sucks and blows at the same time.”

 California is in significant crisis, about to devolve into a cataclysmic catastrophe.

Thank God for Article IV of the US Constitution”The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government”. If it wasn’t for Article IV,our frustrated, Austrian trained, Hapsburg lite, Governor would call out the Highway Patrol, declare a putsch, and install martial law.  The California populace would rejoice, and lederhosen would be the official uniform of every Latino kid in Pico Rivera. It is that bad. 

It is obvious that we desperately need new leadership, men or women of statue, a Thatcher, a DeGaulle, a Ludwig Erhard (the man behind the German economic miracle).someone of vision, a war hero, someone who has survived combat, a financier, an intellectual genius, someone with the experience and fortitude to handle this crisis.The circumstances are so dire, we need maximum leadership, someone who can right the ship in this withering storm. We are so desperate we would take a caudillo, a Generalissimo, a Dear Leader. 

Someone more than,”whose only serious experience of American life is politics itself”

In response to this state of daily degeneration, the Democrats in the California Assembly selected a new Speaker of the Assembly, the SECOND MOST POWERFUL Post in the State of California.

Did they give us a combat veteran who had saved the lives of his fellow men under fire? No. Did they give us a shrewd, worldly man like Willie Brown? No. Did they give us a flinty Marine veteran like Pete Wilson? No. Did they give us a business leader?, a successful entrepreneur? a farmer? someone who has met a payroll? No. Did they give us an intellectual? Did they give us the head of an Union? Like Walter Reuther? No. Who did they give us?

They gave us someone “whose only serious experience of American life is politics itself”

They gave us a pedestrian politician who collects rubber ducks as a hobby. They gave California, a Hispanic COMIC BOOK GUY

A Latino JEFF ALBERTSON

Our new SPEAKER  JOHN PEREZ    http://asmdc.org/speaker/

Eric Hoffer is not turning over in his grave; he is hanging himself in his grave.The second most powerful post is held by a 40 year old Manchild. 

He is as intellectual as any 40 year old drop out from UC Berkeley can be; as business savvy as any person who has never met a payroll can be; as good a leader as any man who has not been a soldier, nor a professional,nor a crisis manager can be.

We are being asked to be led out of the wilderness by a ramrod with this track record, “Most of his adult life has been around advocating for the middle and working classes,” Pulaski said. “

“Perez is described by friends as a congenial intellectual, ….someone so enamored of the Bears,-he attended the University of California at Berkeley but did not graduate- that the logo for his Assembly campaign featured a bear and Cal’s blue and gold campus colors.”

How reassuring, his logo is the mascot of an university he failed to finish; we have a leader who has a track record of failing to finish.

I have known many drop outs in my time, I am from Brooklyn; but every drop out I have known who aspired for leadership, whether it was in a business firm, the Armed Services,or the Professions, had, by the age of 40, gone back to college to finish the job, even if it meant night school.  Perez is an academic quitter, a Democrat version of that renowned faux intellectual, the man who quit Yale, Vice President Dick Cheney; and we KNOW how well that turned out. 

We don’t get leaders any longer, we don’t even get working men like LULA of Brazil,  or haberdashers like Truman, we get ADVOCATES to salvage our lifestyle.  An advocate is NOT a leader.

An astute reader will ask, why is Gerry comparing Speaker Perez to THE COMIC BOOK GUY from THE SIMPSONS? Does he collect comic books? 

“Pérez collects rubber ducks. He has hundreds, said Shannon Murphy, spokeswoman for the Assembly’s Democrats.”

The Second most powerful position in the eighth economy in the world, home to 36,971,664 souls (US Census Bureau, July,2009) with a 21BILION dollar deficit is in the hands of a man who collects rubber ducks. Oh  now I feel so confident in California’s future.

Perez’ admirers  call him “BIG PAPI”, comparing him to the legendary Speaker Jesse Unruh, “Big Daddy.”

Big Daddy Jesse Unruh  graduated from USC, and did not collect rubber ducks, nor did he make a profession of whiny advocacy…..this is Big Daddy’s personal and political  philosophy,

“If you can’t drink a lobbyist’s whiskey, take his money, sleep with his women and still vote against him in the morning, you don’t belong in politics.”  

Big Daddy took their smokes, their booze, their hookers,their bribes and still voted for the people;Big Papi curates rubber ducks.

Speaker Perez diminishes the definition of Big; California is so much smaller because he is Speaker. 

“Ex-Rep. Harold Ford Jr weighs NY Senate race”

Ths blog vigorously supported Mr. Ford’s exploration of running for the Moynihan seat(see below); but alas…..

From the ECONOMIST

“…..fragmented Democrats. The state party was recently frightened by the possibility that Harold Ford, a black former Tennessee congressman, might run against Ms Gillibrand. (He has now ruled it out.) Leaders wanted to avoid a primary, fearing that the charismatic Mr Ford could divide their members and strengthen the state Republicans. Running for office in New York is expensive: a primary could cost $10m and a general election $20m. Jay Jacobs, the state party chairman, told Mr Ford that there are other options for him in New York politics”

 
 
Daniel Patrick Moynihan was one of the great Senators in American history, a man of smarts, vision, patriotism,unity and integrity. The loss to this nation by his death in 2003 has been incalculable.
 
Daniel Patrick was an out of the box thinker,who defended  the key  traditional American value of fair play. He never allowed the rules to be changed to hurt the weak. Ford is like that.
 
Moynihan’s Senatorial career ranks up there with Bob LaFollette, Robert Wagner, Jacob Javits, Hubert Humphrey,Robert Taft,Howard Baker, Daniel Webster. Moynihan was just as smart as Henry Clay, but thankfully had more integrity.
 
Harold Ford Jr is honed from the same sod; he is a native Volunteer, from Tennessee,…the guts of Davey Crockett, the patriotism of Sam Houston and the pure fighting spirit of Andrew Jackson. With all those traits, he adds the social conscience  and class of Al Gore SENIOR.
 
People we need brains and guts, vision and fair play  to survive the mess we are in, and putting Harold Ford Junior in the US Senate, will be a major step to our nation returning to greatness, sanity and fairness. He will renew the American compact between Politician and Fair Play.
 
Harold Ford is this Generation’s Bobby Kennedy.
 
No one is more equal to Moynihan’s seat than Harold Ford Junior. 
 
 
Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the late Great Senator for New York
 
 
 
Harold Ford Jr.

Being from Brooklyn, I had to attend Sandy Koufax’s on stage appearance at the Nokia; it was time wisely spent.

“The story line was a simple one: two guys from Brooklyn talking baseball.

Joe Torre invited Sandy Koufax to visit with him and talk about their lives playing a game as a way to raise money for his Safe At Home Foundation to combat domestic abuse.

But the Dodgers manager didn’t think the reclusive Koufax would come.

“Sandy’s not comfortable with this stuff,” Torre told his wife, Ali.

Only Koufax did show up.

“It gave me goosebumps,” Torre said of the sold-out crowd of 7,100 at Nokia Theater, which included the likes of Ron Howard, Billy Crystal, Penny Marshall and Jon Lovitz and raised more than $750,000.

“Where’d you go,” sportswriter T.J. Simers asked the 74-year-old Hall of Famer Koufax, who retired from the game at the age of 30 and was returning for one of his rare public appearances.

“I went home,” Koufax said, later explaining that it was something his grandfather taught him that has kept him out of the limelight.

“Your most precious asset is time,” Koufax said. “Spend your money foolishly, spend your time wisely.”

Koufax told this story, his dying grandfather met him on a park bench…there he asked Sandy, how much money did he, Sandy, have?

Sandy, proudly, told him the exact amount, give or take a thousand.

His grandfather smiled, and told Sandy that is the secret to Life, you will always know how much money you have; you will NEVER know how much time you have.

HAROLD  FORD JUNIOR

It is with a sad heart that I have learned that Harold Ford Jr. will not stand for the Moynihan seat in New York. He could not pacify the interest groups of New York. What those interest groups fail to understand is the Age of Parochial Interest Groups is about to end. As our current crisis metasizes, the only interest group surviving will be Citizens of the Republic Against The Calamity Brought About By Crooked,Corrupt and Inept Politicans.

We will greatly miss Mr. Ford’s talents, my advice to him is, stick around, New York will yet call.

Now, as an  American, when I watch TV opinion programs , I feel like one of those horses in the film THE HORSE WHISPERER; some people are paying other people tons of money because some people(foreign pundits)  tell other people(the American public) that they understand the American horse. Though they don’t know my mind, they tell people they do. In reality this is what I am thinking, my choices are either stomp this fool to death and run free, or go to the glue factory.

OBAMA AS DAVID DINKINS

I wrote a blog comparing President Obama to the failed Mayoralty of Davd Dinkins,

http://gerrymaxeyworkshop.com/blogging/?p=3118

On The February 28th Edition of FAREED ZAKARIA’s CNN program,  GPS, there were two guests,  a British Reporter, playing second chair to a noted  British  historian, who pontificated on American politics. His name is Simon Schama. These are his words:

“SCHAMA: I remember his dad. He wouldn’t have done that. He had balls of steel. There is a fury developing in the Republican party, which we’re going to see unfold month after month, year after year. Be careful what you wish for, you know, Michael Steele and even Sarah Palin. Whether or not they have complete command or control of a seriously potentially violent, with a very small V, but extremely angry, rather anarchic movement on the right, and whether it’s ever really compatible with party organization when you come to have to win an election, is really a moot point.

Obama will never want to win an election by default. But that — with the excellent Ross Perot analogy — may well be the case. It may well be the case that if the Tea Partiers, who are straight out of chapters from my revered predecessor Richard Hofstadter’s book on the “Paranoid Stalin in American Politics,” are really — it’s striking, isn’t it, actually how hostile they are to some Republican party stalwarts right now. If they don’t feel they can take control of the Republican party in the name and sake of Constitution, they may well- run a third party candidate. “

Where do these British pundits come from? like Tina Brown, Andrew Sullivan, and Katty Kay. I have this feeling they only discover America by discussing America with other Brits. So let me do my American duty, and educate Professor Schama; the Republicans can nominate  LASSIE or better still BORAT, and the Tea Party will support the nominee.

I understand and appreciate that Great Britain has had no real political passion on its soil since Bonnie Prince Charlie.  Therefore I would ask them to do this; imagine the Tea Party as a group of Irish Republicans, and President Obama as a British King…get the picture now?,

The Tea Party really, Really, REALLY, REALLY  dislikes President Obama, Really. They would never split the Republican Party to see Obama re elected,his re-election would defeat their entire raison d’etre, which is Obama’s defeat and exile from power. When Senator DeMint spoke about his perferable future for President Obama, he used the word, Waterloo as shorthand for the desired result. That was no mistake. They want President Obama on St. Helena,and they intend to buy him a one way ticket there.

To think otherwise is an insult to their proclaimed manifestos, and belief systems.

I suggest to these British pundits that they fly into Joplin, Missouri, drive 100 miles in any direction; stop off at a roadside  A&W Root Beer stand, grab a hamburger, then set about getting a real feeling for the raging pulse of this nation.

These British pundits are Horse Whisperers for Shetland ponies; the current American political scene is a herd of wild mustangs, get use to it.

SIDEBAR

THE SHETLAND PONY

“The smallest of Britain’s native breeds, the Shetland has lived on the Shetland Isles for at least two thousand years.”

THE FREE AND WILD AMERICAN MUSTANGS

Mustang is a free-roaming FERAL Horse of the American West.

” I am a retired fireman, I loved your blog about Obama as Barzini, I am enclosing this information, Thanks for your blog. F“

AND A THANK YOU TO YOU F.

Obama as BARZINI

http://gerrymaxeyworkshop.com/blogging/?p=3686

Little did I know at the time I wrote the blog, the reason the Health Summit reminded me so much of THE GODFATHER  is simple, the GODFATHER is President Obama’s favorite film, as revealed in 2008 to Katie Couric.

Life follows art, again.

COURIC: What is your favorite film?

Obama: Oh, I think it would have to be the Godfather. One and two. Three not so much. So–so–but that–that saga I love that movie. 

COURIC to Obama: Do you have a favorite scene?

Obama: Love–love those movies. I–you know–so many of them. I think my favorite has to be –you know, the opening scene of the first Godfather where, you know, the opening scene of the first Godfather where the caretaker comes in and, you know, Marlon Brando is sitting there and he’s saying “you disrespected me. You know and now you want a favor.” You know it sets the tone for the whole movie.”

That is interesting choice,popular with men of his age(Howard Stern LOVES THE GODFATHER); but the film is not about heroism, nor grandeur, but about the loss of grandeur, the loss of a fixed point,  decline, treachery, conspiracy, the conduct of bitter politics. The Survival of the Smart One.

 It is about the beneficial tonic of vengeance.

McCain’s favorite film is VIVA ZAPATA!, directed by Elia Kazan and written by John Steinbeck; it is about the martyrdom of a rebel.

The official Internet caption to this photograph is: “Eisenhower_with_airborne_troops_before_D-Day_-_June_5__1944.”  It is one of the most iconic photographs of World War II, ranking up there with the photograph of the Marines raising the American flag at Iwo Jima. 

The picture was taken June 5, 1944, the day before D-Day. By the time this picture was taken Eisenhower,”Ike”, knew that weather would permit the D-Day Invasion to GO the next day. He knew, that on June 6, 1944, he would give the order that would send his boys against the Nazis, sending  THOUSANDS of young men to their deaths, to fill the graveyards of France. 

It is June 5, 1944, all the logistics of invasion have been completed, and the weather would permit….everything has been done, except one thing. To prepare for that one thing, to prepare for his place in history, Eisenhower does the extraordinary. He visits the airborne troops; those who  will be parachuted behind Nazi lines at the beginning of the Invasion…their casualty rate will be enormous. 

So he goes down to walk among them, to memorize and memorialize their faces and voices. They are dead men walking, and he walks among them, unannounced, not to make any warlike speeches or say bellicose things like ‘BRING IT ON”, but to mark his soul with all the deaths he is about to cause.

After seeing the faces of those who are about to die, Eisenhower went back to his office to do the final thing that had to be done before he gave the order to attack the Nazis. He wrote the statement he would have to give if the attack failed.  

This is what he wrote: “Our landings in the Cherbourg Harbor have failed to gain a satisfactory foothold and I have withdrawn the troops. My decision to attack at this time and place was based on the best information available. The troops, the air and the Navy did all that bravery could do. If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt it is mine alone.” General Dwight David Eisenhower,Supreme Commander—Allied Expeditionary Force..07 June 1944. None of this, mistakes were made crap, the Invasion failed, and it is my fault.

 ”

At the end of the movie adaption of James Mitchener’s THE BRIDGES OF TOKO RI, a Navy Admiral is reflecting on the sacrifice of airmen given the mission of destroying a group of heavily defended  bridges during the Korean War. The men are successful, but at the cost of their lives leading the Admiral to famously ask,’ WHERE DO WE GET THESE MEN?”

“Where do we get these men?”

In addition  to raising President Eisenhower, Ida also raised, ”Milton Stover Eisenhower, D.H.L. (Hon.)  served as president of three major American universities: Kansas State University, the Pennsylvania State University, and the Johns Hopkins University. Edgar N. Eisenhower  was a lawyer and Earl Dewey Eisenhower was an electrical engineer, and legislator.” 
 
These are the kind of sons, Ida Eisenhower raised,  “After Dwight worked for two years to support his brother Edgar’s college education, a friend urged him to apply to the Naval Academy. Though Eisenhower passed the entrance exam”, he could not attend the Naval Academy  because he had worked two years to support his brother, he was now  too old for the Naval Academy; he settled on West Point, and the Army.
 
Now between Sharon Osbourne and Ida Eisenhower, who is the great mother? You want great leaders, make sure you understand the definition of great. 

 
Eisenhower was not an obviously brilliant man, but two opposite men saw something in him,the American Caesar, General MacArthur chose him to be his Chief of Staff, and President Franklin Delano Roosevelt advanced his career. Eisenhower went from Major in 1940 to heading the American Invasion of North Africa in 1942.
 
And then there was Eisenhower and Vietnam;as a history buff, I am fascinated by the defeat of the French paras and  the French Foreign Legion at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu by the Vietnamese under General Giap, a seminal moment. 
 
As the French defeat became likely, pressure mounted on Eisenhower to save them.

Eisenhower was an avid golfer; one day he was practicing his putting when the Chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff Arthur Radford and the Secretary of State John Foster Dulles (whose brother Allen was head of the CIA) strode in to tell him that the defeat of the French was assured. Their solution was to drop a few atomic bombs on the Vietnamese.
 
Seriously.  
 
From General Douglas MacArthur to the “Mad Bomber” General Curtis LeMay, there has always been a dire desire among American Generals to drop another atomic bomb on scrawny Asians. 
 
Eisenhower did not even bother to look up from his putting, he just told the Admiral and the Secretary, “You boys must be crazy.” No war has ever been better averted; rather than appeal to “the better angels of their nature,” he just called the Admiral and Secretary, “crazy boys .”
 
I know Tiger Woods has made a billion dollars off of playing golf; but in the end, which golfer do you think the Angels will want to play with?   

THE HURT LOCKER,Directed by Kathryn Bigelow

The lead character SGT. WILLIAM JAMES, is not a soldier; he is a berserker.  The profession of war is more important to him than his family, that is unacceptable in the American Armed Services. The best of the American fighting men is not a mercenary nor a berserker, but a patriot.His family back home has to be more important to him than the adrenalin rush of combat.

The lionization of SGT. JAMES is a crucial cultural mistake; this nation has never lionized men like SGT. JAMES, because it is men like SGT. JAMES who comprise tinpot Praetorian Guards. To forestall a Praetorian Guard,America fires men like SGT. JAMES, just as Truman fired the American Caesar.

One critic said that Ms. Bigelow, the Director of THE HURT LOCKER,  had “captured the mentality of the American soldier.” She has not. Audie Murphy, the greatest American soldier ever,  was the mentality of the American soldier. The first thing he did coming home, was to go to the orphanage and rescue his family.

SGT. JAMES endangers his men recklessly, over and over again;American soldiers have a solution for reckless behavior by their Officers and NCOs, it is called “FRAGGING.”

The Republic is facing many problems, Jobs,Immigration, Health Care Reform, Deficits; they mean nothing. The Republic only has two issues, 

Since the colonial militias, the American concept of soldiering has been very simple,you kill the enemies of your nation, and then you go home to your wives.

To see the true nature of the American soldier, may I suggest the reader rent A WALK IN THE SUN, PORK CHOP HILL or 12 O’CLOCK HIGH.

THE HURT LOCKER notwithstanding, this blog believes this: in 2150, some Admiral will be standing on the bridge of the Star Ship ENTERPRISE, as we are defeating the Romulans;  he will turn awestruck to his First Officer and say, “Where do we get these men?”

SIDEBAR

  
(Another picture of Ike before D-Day, visiting the troops he was about to send into battle. Look at his face, showing the Price of Command….compare that to the immaturity of Bush and Cheney and Rice, their jauntiness, as they were about to launch the Iraq War. Where have all the adults gone?  On his left is Field Marshal Viscount Lord Bernard Law Montgomery of El Alamein).