Every Major Military Strike Has Advance Warning?

War Tard

Still The Precipice, Again?

Is there literally no one safe in their own homes who doesn't know war is an easy way out for enemies to have not to compromise? The real game of life. Push and shove and now in Syria's case what do they mean, jumping line? Feigning having little idea that the use of chemical weapons betrays this advantageous strategy shared by nations whereby wealth is military hardware distribution that has nothing to do with preventing acts of destruction since we're all, after all, so mature, smart and civilized? 

But crackpots released the gas? And why did idiots believe it was just the right stuff to have lying around waiting to be cracked open? Because enemies don't compromise? That's the deal? Death and zealotry define us, win, lose or draw? Spelled out the facts aren't so cute, huh? While we're all just standing in virtual awe of the absolute power of corruption.

Yet everyone's expected to be intelligent with the dangerous toys only used for honorable wars that, guess what, is the problem to begin with as honor is in the defense, not the war. Signals are crossed then, if ends justify lethal means? 

So it would be nice if referees just stepped in between and said, "stop fighting. The cycle of revenge has to end." 

But that's comic book superhero mythology. Where ultimate warriors of objectivity just drop in on warring neighbors and beat everyone up that needs destroying. However ridiculous, the cycle of revenge be damned. Uh huh. That life exists under the ultimate might of military right is reality. As is the problem also of Syria's Assad thinking like everyone else that he's not just a pawn too?

ALL ANYONE CAN SAY IS GIVE PEACE A CHANCE?

 Justice Is Not Revenge  

No not Pontoon. Pawn too. Soapbox View 

President Putin, The Last Word?

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Are Politics Just Standing On Our Acrobatic Heads?

Politics are essentially mental calisthenics that don't take actual Einsteins to figure out how much shrewd ruthlessness is rewarded above all else? Only paling in comparison to the indignity life is by being both bought and sold out for no other reason than the same ole song and dance my friend? 

Turns out that the staunchly labelled and well tailored liberal Bill Moyers, who conservatives wanted whitewashed as a poison inside Public Television where William F. Buckley, Jr. planted the Conservative Firing Line flag a generation back, continues enacting his revenge on the political game on his show, Moyers & Company. For instance this past week, except for his closing editorial, Mr. Moyers  interviewed Mark Leibovich of The New York Times Magazine, for the entire show, about Mr. Leibovich's book This Town.  

Their discussion cut to the nitty-gritty basics of how Washington D. C. is finally the place to grow rich for the reasonably young and successful entrepreneurs this country is already supposed to be thriving on. Now.

"all it's about is bein here"

On the other hand this literary review episode actually copies an April 27, 2012 Moyers & Co. softball presentation of the tainted money in politics issue with the writer of Eddie Murphy's The Distinguished Gentleman, Marty Kaplan of The Norman Lear Center. *            Solutions?

* Both Moyers and Leibovich had huge grins during the distinguished film satire's rendering on their episode.

"Son the system ain't perfect. The fleas come with the dog."

And you know what they say about sleeping dogs? You let 'em lie.

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We Know What's Happening?

There's not much to be confused about. Money is a simple enough system. Yet corruption is just the surface of what the real problems are with power that generally makes people seem outright mean. Our generation has learned to make a lot of money mean a lot and a little not enough. But it takes money to accomplish anything and that's for the best. Cut to the chase,

Then Corruption For Everyone Is The Real Test? *

The Soapbox View Satirical Twist in pursuit of the Twin Legacies

Andy Rooney and I.F. Stone?

* Russia's Kremlin is used here to represent the entire world's Institutions of Authority. Merely historical coincidence this ideal structure is so intricately beautiful.

United States Secretary of State HILLARY CLINTON Hopes KIM JONG-UN Charts Different Course For His People

PERHAPS SALAD AND APPETIZERS?  OR HAPPY MEAL.

  But if ever a point of sarcasm couldn’t lessen frustration with World Politics, the calamity of North Korea’s closed-border is painfully it. Even so, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton ignored North Korea’s thin-skin advocating transformation while meeting with their rival South Korea in Washington, D. C. Urging North Korea’s new leader to chart a different course than his father, saying First Secretary of the Workers’ Party of Korea Kim Jong-un could steer his nation away from a dark history of starvation and oppression, Reuters reported.

 
  Many U.S. officials and North Korea experts fear the nuclear brinkmanship and repression of his father Kim Jong-il, whose death in December elevated the untested 28 year-old from relative obscurity. But Clinton told reporters, “This young man, should he make a choice that would help bring North Korea into the 21st century, could go down in history as a transformative leader. Or he can continue the model of the past.” And Clinton said regardless of what Kim did, it was her belief that the hermit state would eventually change direction. “Because at some point, people cannot live under such oppressive conditions – starving to death, being put into gulags and having their basic human rights denied.” North Korea denies there are gulags witnesses say is true.

  In a joint statement, the four ministers “urged North Korea to cease its provocative behavior,” but Secretary of State Clinton said young leader Kim Jong-Un still had a chance to change. The United States and South Korea left the door open, saying a “path for North Korea to rejoin the international community remains available” if it refrains from provocation and gives up nuclear weapons.

Meanwhile Boston.com reported U.S. special envoy for North Korean human rights issues, Robert King, talked with participants during the Korea Institute for National Unification’s International Conference on North Korean Human Rights in Seoul, South Korea, Thursday, June 14, 2012 as well. Reminding attendees that through open communication North Korea could change.

  While the problems are probably more closely tied to the ebb and flow of world economics than we’re likely to face for a while longer. Starving North Koreans first became a problem when the Soviet Union fell and like Cuba, the North Koreans no longer received Communist economic and food subsidies and suffered what was called the first North Korean Famine of 1994-98. Economic decline provided the context, but floods and storms provided the catalyst. Cuba has floods and storms but North Korea doesn’t have the bright sunny beaches that draw the world’s real financial attention.

  So what does North Korea’s military elite have to gain from the rest of their country having some moderate comfort? That’s right, show them with Cuban vacations posing as an economic summit. Dressed diplomatically however opposing politicians want, but the story is the same all over the world. Everyone needs a taste. Isn’t it time North Korean children had theirs?

  So if Kim Jong-un has any real power it will be to teach his country the power to say no is no substitute for national equality. And Cuban vacations for everyone should be his real goal after feeding his people dessert.

Photos added Jan. 3, 2013

6/14/2012

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United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton Hopes KIM JONG-UN Charts Different Course For His People

6/14/2012 concluded: So if Kim Jong-un has any real power it will be to teach his country the power to say no is no substitute for national equality. And Cuban vacations for everyone should be his real goal after feeding his people dessert.

Aug. 15, 16 & 30 - Sep.6, 2016

Some Coincidence?

  Obviously my 6-14-12 attitude toward Kim Jong-un's assuming power was a euphoric show short of reality. Hence hoping North Korea's dictator was anywhere near capable of taming the conceit and deceit involved in ruling just to rule. While the rest of the world's inflationary conspiracy undermines the working or disabled poor. The world rightfully and righteously demands raises THAT NEVER CATCH INFLATION. But capitalist rule does at least visit the ballpark of socialist results. But, but has authoritarianism ever let people's imaginations reign? A Soviet claim Gorbachev faced. Claims rulers the world over hide from by pronouncements that their elite's different from others. 

  Pursuing individuals' freedoms is a vigilant exercise as America's imperfections attest. 

  Capitalism is socialism, Kim Jong-un. Just as socialism is capitalism when it works and capitalism socialism when either works. You should give it a shot. Socialism is not just another word for state rule as some politically powerful people have misled Americans to accept and gloss over some of the worst acts of bizarre laziness by corporate bureaucracy claiming it's not as inept as government. Building better private schools without taking on all the challenges public schools face. Free economy our a__es. 

  So further criticizing. The facts are power's sufficient of its own self. Responsibility, not a full co-defendent in politically successful grifts. For instance, New Jersey's Governor Christie, (Gateway), once had dinner with Donald Trump after a successful court case relieved the future presidential candidate of a larger financial burden owed New Jersey while still claiming no untoward influence when I recently heard Governor Christie petting his "friendship" with Mr. Trump of "sixteen years." 

  Maybe the whole world's just like Brazil  currently where power's necessary to keep your conspiracies of individuals out of jail, too. Which is in fact not mere conjecture but relative fact all over. Why the American Parties are so eulogized to patronize the public past their human and political frailties. 

  Yep. Too cryptic for American voters and mass opinion to grasp how Americans feelings of patriotism are induced to politically grind the flag in the dirt by honoring national mistakes and condemning, not just "constitutionally protected protest," but basic decency, America. It was close to a century after that d_____ war just to start America's facing racism. Face the present. We'd be further as a culture now if the reasons for protest were completely faced. Indoctrination is a failure to teach your children to learn well. While the best schools in the world have really produced competent teams of individuals dividing the world's spoils. Polishing the networking craft as it exists in legal, as well as corrupt, corruption terms. End the Criminal Enterprise System. 

  So. As a measure of honoring presidential election year equal time. She's not him, but. This is politics. The first President Clinton aided and abetted the ramping up of the Criminal Enterprise System that's been advertised relatively adequately of late as what's part of disheartening America today. Whereby the patriotic act of protest during the National Anthem is depicted as an unpatriotic act. In an America where turning a blind eye produces profit, opened eyes profit too. As in the country's responsibility for China's attitude towards polluting the plant, we'd done most of up to now. If capitalism really required the car Detroit wouldn't have gone broke in the first place. 

  Anyway. Corruption's the rule rather than just symptom. If only Kim Jong-un could be brought to a Texas supermarket to cry as Yeltsin must have. But Kim had seen Switzerland. And current public sacrifices fulfill his elite's self-satisfied needs. If only you, Kim Jong-un, could say to yourself, "I'm the most powerful person in my country and only I can truly free my people and at least give them a real shot at contentment as Gorbachev had." Because life shouldn't just be parades and tyrants supervising nothing. It was Soviet believers in their revolution that faced the communist vision's distortions. Because communism wasn't supposed to have anything to do with being kept slaves. No one should want to shoot anyone. Kim and North Korea, face it. The façade needs put to rest, please Mr. Chairman? 

  What could pierce your leadership's shielding theirselves from social reality? So North Korea shines and rebellion isn't a threat if your bureaucracy really lets North Koreans shine which marching in unison doesn't quite mean. An East German has the power to rule Germany for a while. No reason North Korea has to lose an identity. Nor turn everything over to exploitation as is Cuba's public reasoning for moving awkwardly slow, at least slowing the asphalting of the entire island. 

  You should face things too, Kim. Because you're not looking at yourself in the mirror image your country shows you, apparently shown an entire different show? 

  Feed the people is the No. 1 concern. Though probably the Western Media's fault we haven't heard how well-fed the people've become since a few privileged heads, threatening greater privilege, rolled? 

  Well, nothing's really new about military state enforced nationalism as their citizens' identities. The world's supposedly nicest democracies do similar things. Power is its' own reward, etc. But something has happened, August 18th, that probably, possibly, could be the best news concerning factual change that's happened in too long an ignorant time. Discontinuing national private enterprise prisons. Spurred on by market speculation to fill with the punished portion of the Criminal Enterprise System. That no doubt possibly will be torn to shreds by private entrepreneurs claims responsibility and blame for greedy mistakes is governments' alone. Congress once again for handling business. PRISON. Still. The Criminal Enterprise System's barely touched. Create to punish brutality. Uh huh. 

This Land Is My Land (And Yours Too!)

by Nicholas Kristof in The New York Times

Free Enterprise isn't free if a consequence is destroying National Parks.

Patriotism is much more than sycophantic.
Speaking of not admiring the benefits of a Police State.

Where Morality's A Bubble of Conceit Should Stop

Fast Eddie

  I rode next to Eddie down Lexington Avenue at Steve (who'd even asked why I never called him Steve the Greek) Athineos' Memorial Ride. Eddie said he'd taken a picture of me, years ago, riding up the Williamsburg Bridge as if in a golden glow of light. May yours shine forever Eddie. We truly wish you were here.

Ex-New York State Senator Guilty of Skimming From His Own Nonprofit

  Called “pugnacious” by The New York Times, former New York State Senator Pedro Espada Jr., was found guilty of padding his personal life with proceeds from the Soundview Health Center he operated since 1978 in the Bronx.

  Mr. Espada’s lawyer, Susan R. Necheles argued “so what if he wants to live the good life?” And. “If he was entitled to the meals, then who cares what kind of meals he had?”

  And, why not, when Mr. Espada, as a politician from the other side of the tracks, competed in the well-funded political game where allies aren’t cheap since the cost of living is so really high? His publicists have probably already planned how to revive Pedro’s career. Painting him as a Boss Tweed, who while he skimmed for himself spread more to the public than the skin-flints of Manhattan before and after Boss Tweed of Tammany Hall, New York City.

  Aspiring to big and powerful is presumably how Mr. Espada got himself in his mess on the government’s bad side after throwing his vote in 2009 with the New York State Republicans making theirs the majority party and him Senate Majority Leader Espada. Though the Times cites the government had been after him on those charges for ten years, the case seemed to find momentum after Mr. Espada became a political star.

  The dynamic political move was his Waterloo and points all too clearly to how if you think you’re powerful enough you can get away with anything.

  America is a wonderful country and Mr. Espada luckily probably won’t have to serve the full ten years for each count he could be sentenced. Negotiating down from forty leaves a solid eighteen months, or thirty years of parole, or a lifetime of heartache? Nah, Pedro’s a politician. He could be doing Jay Leno before we all wake up tomorrow.

5/15/2012

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Ex-New York State Senator Guilty of Skimming From His Own Nonprofit 

 5/15/2012 concluded: ... Nah, Pedro’s a politician. He could be doing Jay Leno before we all wake up tomorrow.

December  9 - 18, 2015

  Not exactly funny. But Jay Leno before we wake up tomorrow could be relatively amusing. In fact polish before substance is par for the course when resurrecting an image? Although now the sarcasm would be directed at The Tonight Show current host's own constant sycophantic laughter substituting for ongoing conversation or other gesture the craft relies on. At least(?) The Late Show's Stephen Colbert is only a half-step off that sales-pitching pace of back-slapping claptrap people apparently take to the office in agreement to undermine the careers of those who do the real work and can't be bothered with the nuance-less politics of back-stabbing career preservation glad-handers excel in. But, as with Pedro's problem, the reality is no one survives without enough allies. So Pedro's mistake was fighting his way up from the less lucrative Bronx? Rather than a better-funded Brooklyn or Manhattan fiefdom. If only there'd been a bigger mass of money behind him he'd still be standing? But Pedro was simply a victim of his own ego as most people are. 

  Well while looking through Wikipedia there was no mention of Sigourney Weaver's father Sylvester Weaver creating The Tonight Show as well as Today although his personal page credits him. Even Wikipedia hides individuals in corporate America's construction of entertainment reality? So only commercial interests still dictate what's seen, as, for instance, in the case of the Corporation for Public Corporate Broadcasting? But it was Sylvester who'd worked for Young & Rubicam who separated the advertising business from direct influence on what was broadcast. A seemingly useless pursuit but he tried. While, once again, advertising isn't necessarily evil as it did reduce the public's direct cost of entertainment, but made up for in the loss of independent voices. Yeah Murrow's lineage, though those exceptions to the rule floundered as pieces of the action were withdrawn from real skeptics. 

  For instance what a fawning disappointment 60 Minutes has become. The new profiled Drug Sap, (who doesn't like the drug czar name but if the shoe still fits), director of National Drug Control Policy, Michael Botticelli accurately derides the negatives of alcohol and appreciates his own happy recovery from said drug but still wants marijuana to remain the linchpin (lynchpin) in the Criminal Enterprise System while making treatment for addicts rather than criminal prison our great social breakthrough. No doubt facilitating a nation of finks as William S. Burroughs warned and even 60 Minutes profiled the week before. Elitist morality still better than the pitiable falling victim to their adventures? The pity quotient to the point of making sure the law and disorder people maintain respect for each other. Gutless. Period. But my disappointment isn't just with the President's riding along. It's with Americans who love lounging on thrones. Pretentiously damning others for a profit as per usual you heartless land of hypocrisy. That really doesn't have to be.

  And 60 Minutes paragon Charlie Rose lauding the great English Formula 1 driver, Lewis Hamilton, is fine and the billions that industry circulates between themselves. But a real 60 Minutes would condemn their not using and helping develop alternate fuel as was racing's original role in developing the automobile industry. Excusing relentless selfishness and being above criticism is no way to live and people should stop living for that satisfaction. 

RETIRE FOSSIL FUELS? WHILE AMERICAN NETWORK NEWS PIPES THAT FUEL'S AVAILABILITY AND FALLING PRICE IS NOT GIVING A DAMN. MONEY TALKS B___S___ AND FREE ENTERPRISE SHOULD KNOW BETTER. 

Another industry (conspiracy of individuals) deciding God's judgement for themselves?

  Climate change conferences etc. sound like facing reality. But what about actual remorse? China that was already riding bicycles over twenty years ago copied AMERICA. The bright and shining beacon on the hill that will either show the world what really facing the truth is, or lazily keep grinding the whole she-bang under in the belief we're sorry mistakes happened rather than really being remorseful. Realistic? Bah, humbug.

  Now back to the essay's original political sphere, there's the bringing down of New York state powerbrokers Sheldon Silver and Dean Skelos. Pitched as a corrective for statehouse outside skimming while briefly-in-the-extreme Silver's was exposed as inflated real estate being behind him. News that dropped down the rabbit hole with the rest of the secrets about how everyone's become cheaper against skyrocketing costs. Bet even the real estate industry would feel more comfortable about being just real estate than the greasing of pockets it has come to mean. As always though, the tragedy's the power Silver's district once had that may never be seen again until another celebrity veneer's constructed. Democracy a fight for power among elites is what communism's distortions were too. Yeah? Governor "my golden path" Cuomo is going to end seat of the pants capitalist corruption that's really not that different than his glad-handing friendships Silver's goals were plated with. Geez, too many sentences ending in a preposition? Throw more fuel on the barbie and burn this shrimp alive?

  Political corruption's a tidy package. Hardly a transparent label. But out of control now that financial interests are in such a gear "legal money" today would have the past's most corrupt salivating them from their sleep to the trough every morning before their supposed working people allies eat their first piece of toast. 
  Paying the police better than the crooks was always the solution and not really bothered with years ago because under-the-table bred such prosperity without much actual work. But now morality is the line to tow so it's essentially corrupted too. The fix is in money's narrow circulation. Instead selfishness preserves its exclusivity at the top. People would just like to think its a growing pain in Africa yet entrenched all over the world.

  "Sit down Mr. Espada. Make yourself at home. How's things now that space can't even be bought to frame your image better in the public eye? 

  So now the New York City Council that had no power to stop the exaggeration of the New York City real estate market wants raises to keep up. Ooo. Minimum wage criers, then as inflation reigns it all in and out of reach once again who has the real power for those raises all over again? The legal padded system.

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THE ROOTS OF CORRUPTION

  As the lights rise erasing darkness the stage reveals a den. Men. Laughter. People whose introspection was the darkness so light never fully arrived. The corpulent one behind the large desk, streamlined by diet industry interests, offers cigars with a nod since none of the others wanted to be seen as the gopher and so there they sat till a servant was called to hand them out so they could all grin with satisfaction. Smoking tobacco on a strived for pedestal too token to appeal to actual pride but backbones for those who'd never face themselves. 

  "So," their leader snickered, "whose report will cheer me up most and whose will lie that I'm less exposed?" Stalinesque introspection.

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  Trump's a problem? Smoke and mirrors at its finest. Muslims a problem? What about the tribalism at the religions' roots? Allah/God's chosen over others in battle? The very cause and still just really a complete mistake blaming these things as God/Allah's idea or fault. Rather they're ours not getting past what's really seriously silly, utterly ridiculous jargon. 

Allah For Everybody! All is God. Our portion should straighten up on principle and stop scapegoating the other side's responsibility.

  Justice? Don't kid yourselves that Robert Durst is finally facing justice. In his mind he got away with murder. Now he's old, declining and it clearly just doesn't matter to him while other vultures are sure of getting their piece. Not that lawyers or the law is evil, it's just don't be confused revenge is a solution. Justice should have meant the victims are still living or at least lived out their lives as Robert Durst pretended.

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HELP WANTED

  Film: Robert Redford. 1998, his publicist announced Mr. Redford's interest in portraying Dr. Armand Hammer if the right script came along because he'd studied the man. Making sense for The Hammer and Cycle Messenger Service, I never forgot. But I'm satisfied for history's sake the book's obscurity will fit well opposite Mr. Redford's legacy as a liberal icon. Unfortunately, I guess, as dedicated as I've been, this marks the end of my giving a rat's a__ one way or the other. Professionals claim interest in the world's intellectual growth, then that's what should be remembered. Along with Andrew Wylie I think of "movie" industry movers as people whose word is reliable only for being mistrusted. Despite all the success in BREAKING IN by Nicholas Jarecki. Although my book's deserving, my feeling is there's many who're not honest enough with themselves to see jackals in the mirror when they wake every morning. Or are extremely proud of it. Either way, I put in half-a-century on what privilege's not BIG ENOUGH to tackle. Representing an industry where puckering's an art and truth, liability. Satisfied, no. Acceptable, no. Inevitable, no. So pucker, the rat's on retainer.

Good night Chet. 
Any day now look for the Miss Stein's Drawing Room 
Interview in The Wolfian.
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Dave Brubeck