Tag: politics

Because he can’t, he won’t, and he don’t stop

The latest caper from Mike Carona’s corruption trial is good. He’s being offered free legal services by a couple of high-powered defense attorneys who have helped such upstanding citizens as Ollie North, Scooter Libby, and Chinese spies.

Good call on the choice of lawyers, but not such a good call on the free services. According to the complaint from our local spending watchdog, that’s only permissible when you’re being charged with election violations, not regular corruption. Limit on donations should be $395.

These two Mafia white collar attorneys claim they’re doing this because it “interests them.”

Of course the voice of this latest plot is our local political fixer and hit man Mike Schroeder, who says it’s just twaddle to say that volunteer time is a financial donation.

This Saturday at the Island Hotel here in Newport!

You know it’s a sad event when the only speaker who shouldn’t be in prison is Pat Sajak.

The Claremont Institute presents the 20th Anniversary Dinner in Honor of Sir Winston Churchill, in honor of Donald Rumsfeld, with honorary co-host Dick Cheney (by video from his Castle of Evil) and introductory remarks by William J. Bennett!

Two war criminals, a gambler Tartuffe blowhard bigot, and a game show host. I hope Pat goes off on all of them for being unclean and then pulls the string on a suicide bomb. “You called me here today to be the emcee for your dinner. You wanted a nice friendly puppet, someone crass, a real pro, a get along guy. WELL YOU GOT A MAN ON A MISSION, SUCKERS!” [blam] Okay, fantasy over.

Don’t go anywhere near Newport Center if you want to avoid the anal probe and/or worst traffic ever. I’m sure the presence of Rummy & Bill will result in a terrordome being lowered over the entire zip code. No need to protest. I could just show up within 3/4 of a mile in my not very clean car and wham it’s gitmo.

Don’t go ’round tonight.

I went to a restaurant the other day to celebrate the birthday of a friend. The place was a cheerful surf-themed tacos ‘n’ booze joint of the kind you see a lot around here. It was the early end of Saturday night and a covers band was playing.

We had a good time. The food was mediocre, the band was awful, and we were all good friends who don’t see each other enough.

While waiting for my car outside, I heard the band go into CCR’s “Bad Moon Rising.” There was a happy yell from the crowd and the all-white, mostly middle-aged people on the dance floor capered inexpertly.

I am too young to remember that song as new, but I know its story. John Fogerty wrote “Bad Moon Rising” on the occasion of Richard Nixon’s election as President in 1968. Nineteen sixty-eight was one hell of a year. Nixon’s election came after the disastrous Chicago Democratic Convention where the liberal dream died, after the Tet Offensive, after another thousand things gone wrong, many of them permanently. Fogerty’s song is an accurate assessment of a grim situation.

Watching the boomers and fortysomethings shake it happily to CCR’s doom song wasn’t easy. Some of them were old enough to know better: old enough to have fought in Vietnam or lost friends there, old enough to have seen badgeless cops beating people in the streets of Chicago. What the hell were they doing here? It’s a great song but it’s not boogie. It’s a warning. These people had chosen isolation: not just from poverty, not just from the poison gift of privilege, but isolation from meaning itself. War and terror and the loss of innocence? Maybe partying will help.

Later that night I went to the drugstore. I entered amidst a wave of high school boys. The high schoolers were laughing and punching each other and jumping up and down for nothing. One of the drugstore employees, a large affable black woman I’d talked to before, was restocking nearby.

The kids recognized her and ran over to say hi. They knew her son from school, although he was older and had graduated. She asked how they were doing and they gave bouncy teenager answers, “just hanging out!” and “oh I’m all around!” She smiled indulgently. “So how’s Greg?” one of them asked. “What’s up with him?”

She kept her smile. “He’s serving. Abroad.”

The kids didn’t know what to do. They kept hopping about, looking blank. She kept her pleasant smile. After about ten seconds of this some more kids came roaring up and greeted her and things were easy again.

Hope you got your things together
Hope you are quite prepared to die
Looks like we’re in for nasty weather
One eye is taken for an eye

che-che-che cheetos

It is customary for followers of a cult not to know the real life story of their hero, the historical truth. (Many Rastafarians would renounce Haile Selassie if they had any notion of who he really was.) It is not surprising that Guevara’s contemporary followers, his new post-communist admirers, also delude themselves by clinging to a myth—except the young Argentines who have come up with an expression that rhymes perfectly in Spanish: “Tengo una remera del Che y no sé por qué,” or “I have a Che T-shirt and I don’t know why.”

http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=1535

HAY GUYS REMEMBER ACADEMIC FREEDOM?

UCI UNHIRES LIBERAL LAW SCHOOL DEAN

The Chancellor thought the Regents would block it, so he said, and that the fight would somehow tarnish the new law school. Chancellor Drake, that’s your job. You are supposed to argue with the Regents on behalf of UCI. What is it, exactly, that you DO here?

Also, UCI is not Orange County University. It is an internationally known research institution and member of a statewide University. It doesn’t have to have a major in John Wayne or a Disneyland Institute. And don’t let Donald Bren tell you what to do because he gave you $20 million and you named the law school after him. What’s he gonna do, take it back?

Don’t worry, Mr. Chemerinsky. We’ll visit you on Sakhalin Island.

Bonus points: Chapman says they’ll hire him in an instant. And not just Chapman, but the Chapman legal dean, who’s a rightwinger and debates Chereminsky weekly on the radio. Oddly enough he’d very much enjoy having his debate opponent working in his office. Viva Chapman!