What’s insidious about Country & Western Music? I’ll tell you. I thought I was just incensed at its hypocrisy because it rewards multimillionaire entertainers for talking like hicks. Country singers pretend to be simpleton hillbillies, possessed maybe with down-home smarts, but really they are finely-honed corporate media assets.

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I was recently introduced to a young couple, both 21 years old, proud parents of a month-old baby. They live in low-income housing, dad works a joe job. . .mom stays home, no friends or family nearby, to take care of baby.

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COLORADO SPRINGS- I had the pleasure Tuesday night to attend a membership recruiting meeting for a Minuteman border protection group. About fifty citizens turned up, with a collective IQ of probably about that. Lots of people eager to use their handguns against brown usurpers of American land, jobs and social programs.

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Google it. “Ernesto.” See what you get: Ernesto the hurricane and Ernesto Che Guevara. This season’s brightest prospect for an action weather spectacular has been given a decidedly un-American name.
 
To me it’s reminiscent of the 2004 season when the National Weather Service would not conceal its election year partisanship. The 2004 hurricane names alluded to three countries which led the opposition to our planned Iraq invasion. Frances, Ivan, Karl. Not to say anything about last year’s villain, invoking a perennial nemesis, “Katrina.”
 
It’s coincidence no doubt, but as Hurricane Ernesto was downgraded to a Tropical Depression, Jeb Bush still kept Florida in a state of emergency because as he said, “a hurricane is a hurricane.” Doesn’t it sound like he’s talking about a commie?

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But let me share it with you!

The other afternoon I was crossing a quiet street on the West Side and heard behind me the thump of something dropped to the pavement, followed by a man’s surprised curse. “Shit.” I turned to see a broken twelve-pack carton and beer cans slowly rolling in all directions from their impact point in the dead center of a four-way stop. A man on a bicycle was stopped in his tracks above them.

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Have you ever noticed how easy it is to be a wise parent–as long as you don’t actually have kids?

Television used to be free. They were the public airwaves and the networks were given the use of those airwaves so long as they were serving the public good. What’s happened?

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The main obstruction to getting Democracy Now aired on KRCC has left the building, unceremoniously let go, hopefully with a restraining order.

In an airport the other day I overheard Connie Chung making an announcement. Our national threat level is elevated to Orange apparently, further precautions are necessary, etc, etc, please report any suspicious activity to the TSA.

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Did the Neocons flat out buy the National Geographic? It was a brilliant coup.
 
If you were to have asked yourself what periodical has been the most trusted and revered, it would have been the Geographic.
 
Right behind hobbiest zines like Popular Mechanics I suppose, and Hearst’s PM too falls suspiciously in the conservative think-tank stable.

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Little JonBenet Ramsey’s killer has been found. How many stories like JonBenet are on the back burner, waiting for a lull in the news or for the need for a distraction from the news?

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Speaking of shit. Is it time to resurrect a prank played on our president when he visited Europe in 2003?
 
Before Bush paid his visit, clever Belgians and French took little party favor flags in Bush’s image and stuck them into the nearest available sidewalk tributes to his image.

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Writing an column for Crank Magazine some years ago, I announced my intention to describe how to make a bomb. Crank Magazine took out a newspaper ad in the local daily to publicize the upcoming issue , mentioning the forthcoming bomb recipe. As a result we received letters and legal threats warning us not to reveal bomb-making secrets to the public at large.

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Concerned nations await clear rules of engagement before agreeing to send soldiers to keep peace between Israel and Lebanon. Israel has opposed ceasefire terms because they would inhibit Israel’s opportunity to deal blows to Hisb’Allah. Here are perhaps peacekeeping orders the Israelis could approve:

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This is my favorite eatery in LA. You stand along the wall until there’s a seat free at the counter. You’re breathing down their necks, actually. Luckily those seated are eating at the pace they are being served. Fast. The guy working the counter will keep your glass topped, pour the ketchup for your fries, even draw a napkin out of the dispenser as he sees you reach for it. In one fluid movement he’s reached your mouth before you do, or it feels that way.

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We held a protest today at the front gate of Peterson Air Force Base. It was to commemorate the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki 61 years ago. It’s an annual remembrance.
 
The event also offers us a chance to reflect on the lunacy of nuclear weapons.
 
The protest was lost on the airmen who drove through the gate leaving the base. None of them seem to know what date it is. Let alone that it represents a tragic milestone for mankind.

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Remember the eco-revolution of the 1970s? Recycling was the rage. Manufacturers cut down on packaging.

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In Norway you can’t speed or run a light anywhere without getting a ticket. In Norway they have cameras mounted sporadically along the roadways so you have no choice but to drive properly. Even on a country road, even if you’re running late, it makes no sense to break the law and that’s rather stress-averting in itself.

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At a precinct meeting to suggest planks for the Democratic Party platform, a friend of mine was stuck on 9-11 truth telling. He’d like to write it on a blimp. I agreed but argued, first things first.
 
Anti-war first I said, then a Democratic majority in Congresss, then time to re-investigate 9-11. What condescension. I told him that I thought a truthful account of 9-11 would be too hard to swallow.
 
Since the party convention, and since this summer’s 9-11 breast-beating, I am absolutely certain that I was wrong. Ninety nine percent of Americans don’t work in skyscrapers, nor do they cross the Atlantic on airliners, yet the fall of the WTC threatened their sense of security. The myth of their insecurity has got to fall.
 
9-11 is still the GOP rallying cry. We must take it from them because we will not win an election without decrying their lie.
 
It’s our 9-11 crackpot theory versus their 9-11 crackpot fable. If the simple folk cannot swallow this, do we think they will buy black box voting or our American tradition of malevolent multinational corporate imperialism?

Never mind that the London plotters never got beyond plotting. Never mind that the likely success of their bomb smuggling strategy is yet unproved. Already the Department of Homeland Security has decreed that no one can take liquids or gels aboard a plane.

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1. Aluminum Siding
In the German film epic HEIMAT, an unscrupulous brother brags about the lucrative post-war business of aluminum siding. Barry Levinson’s 1987 TIN MEN depicted the same competitive salesmanship arena stateside. In Germany the aluminum siding industry was more of a scam because the aluminum wasn’t covering clapboard houses.

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Can somebody explain the psychology of our boys in their black gloves? Am I too distracted by the bad-guy movie image? Black gloves remind me of hired assassins, mafioso, bad cops, sadists, interrogators and torturers.
 
Did I miss any good guys who wear black gloves? Scuba divers? Al Jolsen?

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This is 14-year old Abeer Qasim Hamza al-Janabi’s ID.
From Al-Mahmudiya. She is the young girl who was gang raped by five American servicemen who killed her family, and incinerated her body once they were done.
 
The press reported that she was an Iraqi Woman. When pressed, Army spokesmen admitted that her age might fall anywhere between 26 and 14. Abeer’s ID was already confirming her true age for the International Press. Even a week after the military admitted the rape victim’s age had been 14, American papers were still reporting the story as the rape of an Iraqi young woman.

I just learned how they make horses and bulls jump up and down at the rodeo. I must admit I wondered why it was that the animals suddenly leaped about madly (bronc’d) after they got out of the gate and not before, and why did they stop once the rider was thrown?

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