Arsenale

Hoping to hang on

2012-01-26T15:26:00.000-08:00

Sighs of sorrow escape
so often, they seem to be
the melody of some long forgotten song.

The pain is
constant as an incurable cough,
resilient as rust on
long buried iron.

In such a state,
time goes
slow as geologic history

The byproducts of delusion
are pent up deep
in some small, infinite cavity
of the body,

where anemic blood
tries nourish the unseen tissues
that function as the wellspring
of the soul

An observer might believe
that I am unaware of
these inner things

that I am ignorant
of the daily vexations
that accumulate
like delinquent debts

until they become
unbearable
until they become
unutterable

There is no choice
just keep going
praying for
working for
some type of transcendence
hoping to hang on til
the miracle happens

what else can one do?

Capitano Tedeschi

Hoping to hang on copyright 26 January 2012 by Jamie Jacks

things Sleepwalkers know

2012-01-19T15:10:00.000-08:00

The cost of obsession
keeps rising
regardless of previous experience
or the onset of old age.

There are things
Sleepwalkers know but
can not tell you

Things you might
see peripherally in a dream
that later appear
in the distorted restructuring of dreaming
known as waking life

Obsession, the loss
of sensible inhibition
a susceptibility to swings of emotion

For example
the 57-year-old Bakersfield housewife
who discovers the skin care secret
that maker her look 20 years younger

She sheds her skin like a snake
and becomes the nubile goddess
the vision that all men desire.

Then she finds herself one day
trapped in a tomb tight as the flue
of a chimney
suffocated in the drunken pursuit of love

Or,
regard the California driver
who discovers the simple driving tip
that insurers don't want you know.
Safety guaranteed you might think
But no,

He drives down dark, forgotten boulevards
and abandoned housing tracks
filled with the wooden skeletons of half-constructed homes.

He gives a ride to a stranger
whose deviance is rewarded
Serendipity is the constant companion
of the deranged.

The pale moon rises, and by
moon set, he has disappeared
bloodstained gravel the only
reminder that he was present at all
on this planet.

There are procedures for tracking
the consequences of delusion
the outcomes of obsession.

Armed with such knowledge,
you should be able to chart
the outcomes and
learn to avoid bad decisions.

No the weakness remains triumphant.
in spite of one's best effort
to stay self-contained, stay apart, stay free.

Capitano Tedeschi

30

things Sleepwalkers know copyright 20 January 2012 by Jamie Jacks

not a spiritually advanced way to begin one's morning

2012-01-18T14:00:00.000-08:00

This morning
I wonder why I feel the cold
so much.

It seems to have settled, in the
semipermeable membranes between
my joints.

The blood in my fingers
courses like winter rain
chilling even the warmest regions
of my torso and thighs.
My first two steps
inform me that
ice crystals are lodged
in my ankles and insteps

There is pain
but worse
I have to ask why?
Or say "Fuck You Pain" or
just plain "Fuck You" in general

Would that there were some
aversive therapy to
keep me from wondering,
bar me, block me
from trying to assemble
a cognitive model or
narrative commentary
that tries to make meaing from
my daily confrontation
with my body

enduring being and movement
I once so blithely
dismissed or ignored.

Let's face it starting the day
with a "Fuck You" is not a
spiritually advanced way
to begins one's morning.

Capitano Tedeschi

30

not a spiritually advanced way to begin one's morning copyright 18 January 2012 by Jamie Jacks

All is perfect in this 6th Dimension

2011-10-27T12:56:00.000-07:00

During the iron age
there were no cerebral inhibitions
there were no violent offenders
living was risking
resilience was simply surviving
you relied on intimidation
or choking the life out of someone
or something.

It is so much, much better
in this modern age
hours are spent not scratching the soil
with a pointed stick.
Instead we are enthralled
by the ghostly glow
of plasma screens in darkened rooms
locked in the ruthless embrace of distant others

All is perfect in this 6th Dimension.
Everything is better when it's transistional.
A YouTube video of a Welsh Corgi chasing
a soccer ball in the snow
is more important
more enhanced and extroverted
than the sighs of the homeless man
searching my trash for soda bottles
and un-used food.

Is this as it should be?
I don't really care.
This is what it is.
What is now will always be
more important
than what was,
or what might happen
or what should be.

Capitano Tedeschi

30

All is perfect in this 6th Dimension Copyright Oct. 27, 2011 by Jamie Jacks
P.S. I have not abandoned this blog

The Concrete Crick

2011-08-25T15:26:00.000-07:00

I am a city boy and care little
for the natural world
but I can not ignore what

Granny on the Beverley Hillbillies

would have called it "The concrete crick."

A 30-year-old Koi pond expanded by

An artificial creek.

A concrete trough with embedded stones

Unnatural nature

The sound of rushing water

and the whir of electric pumps

fill the air

life thrives somehow

Pilgrims arrive

dust from the air
became silt that covers
the concrete bed
like milk chocolate

tadpoles swim nervously

fluttering over crayfish that

slowly move the silt

like grumpy old men puttering

in their underwater gardens

How did the crawdads get here? I ask myself

I don't know.

The frogs, I assumed, hopped.

The Koi were purchased from a pet store.
The turtle must have walked from
the bed of the Kern River
three quarteers of a mile away.

I am a city boy and care little
for the natural world
but since I saw the crawdads
I started watching the concrete crick
like it was streaming video.

I surf the web for info on crayfish and tadpoles.
As I watched the crayfish devour carrion,
I've started wondering about reincarnation
I've eaten lobster.
Lobsters and crawdads are arthropods
These are deep thoughts
I hate deep thinking.

The great wheel of life keeps turning.
In life one you eat an arthropod
in the next life an arthropod eats you
Some day a crawdad might feed on me
Karmically it might happen
but probably not

A butterfly lands on a
dessicated stalk of a day lillyI start to wonder
how did an insect become a kite?
Off on a tangent again.

Capitano Tedeschi

30

The Concrete Crick copyright 8/25/2011 by Jamie Jacks

Tango

2011-08-24T23:00:00.000-07:00

This dance,
as you move you can count it off
queer as clockwork
Left, right, left, pause,
all the while,
the bandeon puffs
like an ore train
climbing in the Andes

the room is humid
draped in red and black
the realm of death or
the infinite bliss
after the sweaty harmony of sex
your silk dress is slightly wrinkled
my hair still
gleaming of Brylcream and sweat
call it amor if you want
Si tu quieres,
Te quiero-Si

jajajajaja--oh such bitter laughter
I move like an elephant on ice skates
in my magic black leather shoes
my torso rigid as the stone
of the Teatro Colon
My arms like masts
draped with the guazy gossamer
of your dress or your body

It's so hot so humid
I can't remember which is which.
I can't think straight
as the habanero melody
forces me to make my feet glide
across the milonga floor.

I hold you and I feel of the bones of
Evita's spine
being gently guided by a push
from the fingers of my right hand
out of the Duarte Crypt of Recolecta Cemetary
an into the crowded night.

This dance, this tango
I chase it
It crushes me the way an
a little girl kills a fly.

Still I return
the music as addictive as sugar
my persistence a mix of desire
and desperation

call it amor if you want
Si tu quieres,
Te quiero-Si

Capitano Tedeschi

30

Tango Copyright August 24, 2011 by Jamie Jacks

HIDDEN FROM OUR VAPID GAZE

2011-07-27T22:58:00.000-07:00

Are you not tired of
their thrice told tales? I am.
Sick of listening to Einstein-like shamans
with their all-seeing X-ray eyes.

Oh they claim to see all
but actually know nothing
standing before green screens
or simple chalk boards
they are totally incapable of
accurately predicting the future
But incredibly adept at
spouting hate, intolerance and paranoia.

They urge us to buy gold
or survival rations
or to "Lean Forward" or vote Democratic
Selling high-priced snake oil
or Andean Tapir Magic

We wallow in uncertainty
or drown in a sewer of useless opinion
pretending to be factual information
constantly hesitating we delay
inaction leads to sloth
sloth leads to damnation

Hidden from our vapid gaze
more ambitious, arrogant, and greedy
women and men sneak through
the hallways of wealth and power
following the bloodstained vision
of their hearts blackest desire

No one notices their treachery
or theft
No watchman shouts a warning
of villainy in the night
til one day
we're left with naught but
empty words
senile hatred and eternal prejudice

HIDDEN FROM OUR VAPID GAZE Copyright July 27, 2011 by Jamie Jacks

HOW DID IT HAPPEN?

2011-07-25T14:50:00.000-07:00

How did it happen?
Sadly and soon we will know
how the five-year-old boy
playing on a swing

is transformed into a
Teflon-coated mass murderer
He was probably dehumanized over time
until his tortured soul
became armoured in hate like some
bionic superman.

It takes years of repression
holding rage in
shuntining it into hidden places
deep inside the body
beyond heart, beyond soul

Hidden from the light of laughter and love,
it festers, bubbles and ferments
until some little provacation
a rude waitress
an overdue bus

It boils over
hot as molten steel and
pours in to the nervous system
and the blood stream

The muscles reach
for the weapons,
the brain recycles its
contingency plans
and the erotic voilence erupts
spite and malice
expressed not with howls or screams
but with explosives and bullets

Each story is different
but the outline of the plot is the same
Too crazy to qualify for food stamps
but sane enough to be able to get a gun
just before the day when
the walls and floors of a school cafeteria
a library reading room, a church sanctuary
are bathed in viscera and blood

And each time we wonder
How did it happen?

Capitano Tedeschi

30

HOW DID IT HAPPEN? Copyright July 25, 2011 by Jamie Jacks

15.789 REAL DEAD PEOPLE PER PAGE

2011-07-24T23:00:00.000-07:00

What type of disease causes
this depravity?
A summer day in Norway
A political extremist kills 76 people

In Norway--it is an obscene tragedy
the worse mass murder since
World War Two.
Here it's just a busy
Saturday evening

You'd think that there'd be
some kind of warning that--
if we'd been paying attention
we might have prevented it this time

You'd think the killer
would have given us more clues
But it's not until afterwards
we check out his online presence
Facebook or Myspace

And find the 1200 page manifesto
that no one would ever read
No one would ever read, except
when the author kills 76 people.
15.789 real dead people per page
the ultimate in vanity publishing

Murder is a rigid transaction
complex and anti-linear
There is no rose-colored lens
that can blur a head exploded
by a bullet or airbrush out
a training bra stained
by the rapid gushing of
arterial blood

No Scandinavian detective
will reluctantly explain it way
or explore the warping of one mind
to rage then mayhem

All I know is that
somewhere in the night
A perpetual loser
A perpetual loner
A failed poet perhaps?
is typing on his computer
planning, planning
actually planning something
for the first time in his life.

Reading the spewed hate
from the right-wing internet
stroking pictures of automatic rifles
with he "finger" of his computer's cursor
Soon he'll show us
Soon we'll see
That he is not to be ignored.

He is coming for us.
The sad and sorry question is
not if, but when.

Capitano Tedeschi

30

15.789 REAL DEAD PEOPLE PER PAGE Copyright July 24, 2011, by Jamie Jacks

This FOG has pride

2011-07-23T21:35:00.000-07:00

It was the last part of a hot
July Bakersfield evening
The sun bright as a golden ducat
was setting
sinking behind the gray foot hills
of the coast range

I was out on my bicycle
trying to get in an evening ride

I am what is known in
cycling circles as a FOG
A Fat Old Guy
Think of Lance Armstrong
or any professional cyclist
wearing a fat suit

I was going fast, moving
faster than the next ice
huffing and puffing
like some asthmatic locomotive

I was having fun,
my gaze focused
on the asphalt five feet
ahead of my
trying to pedal faster
trying not to have
a heart attack and die

Then it happened
I got passed by a teenager
a slender beauftiful young woman
riding a red beach cruiser
on the sidewalk
she wasn't even wearing helmet

As she passed me she
looked and me smile
and laughed
Hmmm Hmmm Hmmm

I have my pride
I sped up to catch her
but she was gone
a red and white blur
fast as a bottle rock

It was hopeless.
I headed home trying to avoid,
old age, broken glass
coronary thrombosis and heat stroke..

Capitano Tedeschi

30

This FOG has pride copyright July 23, 2011 by Jamie Jacks

Would you like a salad with that?

2011-07-18T15:27:00.000-07:00

Lunch time.
Waiting in line at the Sandwich shop
I stare at the menu
trying to make up my mind.

On my left, a wall-mounted flat screen TV
shows some woman on the Food Network
gettin' ready to do somethin' kinky
with ricotta cheese. Yum.

On my right, another flat screen--
CNN has breaking news from Pakistan.
The Taliban have released a video
showing the execution of
16 Pakistani policemen.

People are eating
No one is watching
A man says something funny
to his girl friend and then
laughs loudly at his joke.
A woman gets a soda instead
of an ice tea.
A nurse listens to his cell phone
I order ham and cheese.

And pause to watch
as 16 men, lined against a mud brick wall,
are executed by a firing squad of the faithful.
Kalashnikovs rise and fall from the recoil
the men collapse, some writhing in silent agony
Then a Mujahideen with a Tokarev pistol
makes sure all the men are dead.

The girl at the cash register waits
patiently.
"Would you like a salad with that?"
she asks.

Capitano Tedeschi

30

Would you like a salad with that? copyright July 18, 2011 by Jamie Jacks

What great journey are you planning?

2011-07-15T11:23:00.000-07:00

The washer roars as its parts
complete their electo-mechanical orbits
another cycle of cleanliness
about to be completed

My neighbor's dogs bark at real postmen
and the ghosts of postwomen past
A toy archer is poised on
the crows' nest of a toy sailing ship

The Archer's bow is drawn
but he will never lose his arrow.
The boat's sails are unfurled,
it will never ride the waves
in the bath tub or the sea

Facing the toy boat,
my bronze lion of St Mark
purchased when my grandfather
visited Venice
at the end of WWI
It does not yearn to
return to the Serenissima
But I sure as hell do.

The keys of my computer click
an electronic abacus
that can still calculate the number a Spanish maravedi
it takes to by one Venetian Ducat
information that no will need
or want.

I am continually asked
what great journey am I planning next?
Istanbul or Chile I tell them
when the time and money are sufficient
which is like saying not now

But I am a 57-year-old fat guy
with a comb-over
I don't have many "not nows" left.
I will make it to Chile and to Istanbul.

The more important journey
is the one that beckons here
like a solitary cyclist
climbing a verdant Pyrenees mountain
the one that demands
that I go deep inside myself,
beyond terror, frustration, loneliness
and agony

I am here to
rip off the veils of reality
and try, try, try
to tell you what you don't know
you need to know.

Capitano Tedeschi

30

What great journey are you planning? copyright July 15, 2011 by Jamie Jacks

Today: Don’t try this breakthrough device until you’ve read this special report

2011-07-12T00:28:00.000-07:00

Be warned!
We have come so far that golf balls
Orbit o’er the Sea of Tranquility
Demonstrating once and for all that
Our image of the universe
Is a typically American aberration

From Valley Forge to Viet Nam to the Vale of Kashmir
Everyone knows that we Americans
Can not see the Oceans
For the trees

We seed the world with cluster bombs
And big Macs, bombing our enemies back
Into the stoneage w/out realizing
That we are 20th Century Neanderthals
Living in a 21st Century world

We claim to lead the world
But now the world dances
To Sambas played by sitars
Posted on the internet
By a Muslim woman wearing Hello Kitty glasses
Who lives outside of Kuala Lampur.

Special report? There is no special report
Wouldn’t matter if there was, cause
I can’t read anything over 420 characters

Do the Tech companies have some magical gadget?
Some high tech philosopher's stone?

Probably, probably.
They design it in Finland
Manufacture it in Taiwan
Using lithium mined from Bolivia for the batteries
Running on application code created in Bangalore
The tech companies don’t care if we know about it.

Meanwhile,
Avoid trusting in supernatural authority.
The Heavenly G-Man is no longer on our side
Our civilization has been outsourced
While we consume the $5.00 smart phone, tablet, MP3 player,
that will let us talk to Aliens from
Proxima Centauri.

Capitano Tedeschi

30

Today: Don’t try this breakthrough device until you’ve read this special report
Copyright July 12, 2011 by Jamie Jacks

I offer nothing but false conclusions

2011-06-29T09:54:00.000-07:00

While walking by the Koi pond
on my way to the cafeteria
a bullfrog challenged me
with an excited bellow

Both of us wisely moved away.
He with a plop headed towards
a sheltering stone turning the water
brown and inky with silt.

I kept heading toward
the cafeteria desperately craving
a venti iced coffee.

On the other side of the Koi pond
a black-haired young woman
sits on a park bench
beneath a maple tree

She is in the rapt embrace
of some flourescent computer-mediated discourse
emanating from her laptop.

The signals from the cyber continuum
bring small smiles and silent chuckles
from her otherwise impassive face
The current of microwaves
tugs at her conscious and she drifts along
heedless of time and space and place
bathed in a meandering microwave stream

Meanwhile having gotten caffeinated,
I pause at the Koi pond and ponder the young woman
The fish gather expecting to be fed
I can offer them nothing but false
conclusions based upon brief observation

Still they wait expectantly.
Realizing they'll not be fed
they pray to their Koi Gods
that I might somehow
trip, fall in and drown.

Capitano Tedeschi

30

I offer nothing but false conclusions copyright June 29, 2011 by Jamie Jacks

Chained to your sofa

2011-06-27T21:45:00.000-07:00

for Shanna

From the prison of the body
death has sprung its
trapping mechanism.
The mechanics of the Canyon Maker
mocks medical science
with risk and uncertainty

You are a wake through every minute
as pain erodes the spirit
and a new layer of humiliation
is laid open
to the scorching air

Somewhere far away
a place where you can
no longer go
the turtle surfaces
and dives back into the
space–time clustering ocean
that laps the shores
of lithium disilicates
a million miles away

While you chained to your sofa
watch Dancing With The Stars
and wish you could O.D. on
Peanut M&Ms

You try to make sense of it
this suffering
but there is no way to achieve
differentiation

The coming of the cold
moves closer not even
bothering to be stealthy now
Brought to you by
A persistent pestilence
that devours you from within
and devastates you from
without.

Prayers are useless
years spent practicing the teachings
of Jesus are a joke.
You have not lost faith
but faith has no meaning now.

Capitano Tedeschi

Chained to your sofa copyright June 27, 2011 by Jamie Jacks

Mimicking a monkey

2011-06-26T12:15:00.000-07:00

Why am I always tempted
with desire produced by
male-ego enhancing
hormones that activate the
stupid centers
of my brontasaurus-sized brain?

For when my blood surges
with neuro-chemical compounds
I plunge me into
those silly capers
that should embarrass a rational
middle-aged man.

Before I know it I'm out
asking undercover policewomen
for a date and naming a price,
or asking my boss
how long his brain was deprived
of oxygen before he was revived

Thus I go dancing monkey-like
through the shallower part
of the river of life
squeaking, squealing and
waving arms
which are now longer than my legs

It's then that an observant Fool
Oh, they're everywhere these days
always perched in the dense and somber shade
always watching from the borderline
that separates the magical from the practical

Oh the Fool will see me and by
applying their logical formulas
think they are seeing a miracle
or mistake my squeaks and squeals
for the raving of a new Messiah
or believe that I'm not splashing
I'm really walking on water.

Is that me or my ego's fault?
My fault naturally.
You weren't mistaken
you were deceived.
In time you'll realize
that it was just
testosterone driven me
dancing in life's river
mimicking a monkey
and not really doing
a very good job.

Capitano Tedeschi

30

Mimicking a monkey. Copyright June 25, 2011 by Jamie Jacks

"Like" that one did you?

2011-06-22T14:44:00.000-07:00

My life now
writ large on a six story
virtual billboard.

I am followed on all seven continents
North Korean hackers smirk at
my profile picture
The CIA scans my posts
for clues to the location in Pakistan
of Ayman al-Zawahiri
The world's most buxom women
send me their pictures
and beg me to give them love.
If I'm really lucky I could get
a free IPad for $20.
(Still haven't quite figured out how
that one works yet).

Don't get me wrong
it's a dangerous world
filled with zombies, perverts, and academics.
My movements, visions, and sentiments
are shared with millions.
They smile when they read
that I've just heard the roar of an African lion
Comfort me when I post
pictures of my bleeding finger
and remind me that thistles are barbed
and that roses have thorns.
And when I say that I have just
licked the salty sweat from the skin
of a woman's sternum...

"Like" that one did you?

Capitano Tedeschi

30

"Like" that one did you? copyright June 22, 2011 by Jamie Jacks

The ungodly Godly

2011-06-21T20:51:00.000-07:00

I can't pretend anymore
I can't ignore the warnings
of the coming of a terrible,
dislocating disaster

A volcanic apocalypse
that will entomb us
in suffocating ash
and molten rock

What I'm fearing
Jesus never preached
Jesus never predicted
dying on the cross

So that two millenniums later
his so-called followers
can crucify the world.

Every night the ungodly Godly
use the gleaming beam of false information
to create a ever-changing narrative,
a macho screed of
false posturing and logic
defying half-truths.

I want to scream liar! liars!
as if my angry voice could shatter
them like brittle glass
Still they keeping talking
cause they know if they lie fast enough
they can never be burned.

Oh these pampered spiritual eunuchs
in their silken suits on their naugahyde
upholstered thrones
despising fact
shouting lies in which every sentence
invokes their senile dead God Ronald Reagan
and their faux prelude to Armageddon,
September 11.

The fragrance of their corruption
wafts over the globe
from the torture chambers
of Abu Ghraib
to the office rooms of Goldman Sachs

Can they be stopped?
I don't know
I feel the minor tremors
as their tectonic vileness
subsumes the very ground
upon which I try to stand
I want to flee
to warn others
of the death and ruination
that awaits

As the ungodly Godly embrace darkness
and the darkness--evil
embraces them back

Capitano Tedeschi

30

The ungodly Godly copyright June 21, 2011 by Jamie Jacks

3 poems for June

2011-06-10T11:49:00.000-07:00

I am sending you a picture

I am sending you a picture of my Jonathan,
that naughty boy,
that horn dog, hellfire meat missile.

Don't be afraid.
Open the file and know it's from
my heart.
Know that my hand is demon-possessed.
I want it to scatter
dewy, defocused fluids as it runs down
the soft crevice of your ass
and discovers the bright star
formed by your thighs and as yet
uncrossed legs.

I am sending you a picture of my Jonathan
I want to writhe in the deep verge
the fount of musk, sweet water and
inescapable warmth.

I am sending you a picture of my Jonathan
my muscle of fun.
Oh look at it.
It's an icon of lust works that works miracles.
It is a column of desire and raging blood.

You know what next comes?
My desire overwhelms your defenses
It erodes your dikes
of deny and denial
My pipe yearns to burst
in your conduit

Don't act surprised
I wouldn't do this
if I thought you didn't want this
to happen.

I am sending you a picture
of my Jonathan.

Rituals of exclusions

You don't see it, you feel it.
The mask of your reality
cracking under the strain.

You can't just pull out
your Wizard's spell book
full of rituals of exclusions
and practical strategies
to defy unclaimed experience.

But you do it anyway.
You chant your chants,
a narrative of traumas that sounds
like werewolf cries.
You wave your hand--

The air becomes toxic.
The once clear blue sky shatters
into a heap of
glittering broken shards.

There it's finished.
Are you happy now?

Galaxy of risk

The Devil has wired
this galaxy of risk
we are living magnets
attracting only animated corpses
we call them zombies
but we are the ones
beyond redemption
deficient of Grace

We care, if we care at all
only in the physical and mental well-being
of bullies
While their victims,
well uh...you know
if they weren't where they were
they wouldn't get what they deserve

Oh I stand here
I stand of sacred ground
a paradise of paradox
where as an adult
I act childish not child-like
I can defy those harpy sisters
Science, Reality, Morality
knowing I'll get by
through some miracle or Fate

So I and you--I mean we
dance that kinky Kabuki like dance
feigning false morality
while violating natural and moral law

The seas boil turtles in their shells.
Birds burn as they fly through acid skies
Eight year-olds grow breasts and pubic hair
drinking estrogen laced milk
We dance merrily onward
from gratification to gratification
I'm thinking--
I love what is happening.
I don't even want to return.

Capitano Tedeschi

30

I am sending you a picture, Galaxy of risk, and Rituals of exclusion copyright June 10, 2011 by Jamie Jacks

tomorrow is an improbability now.

2011-04-07T13:16:00.000-07:00

In this dark nation
so obsessed with empire.

Everyone knows
from reading the Bible or History
that the legacy of Empire
is dust.

But the deluded and the authoritative leaders
still utter the gamblers mantra,
"this time different, this time lucky."
Meanwhile, in secret laboratories
where they synthesize the toxins of the future

transgenic mice die in their cages
their mass extinction heralding a doom
that goes unnoticed, eliciting neither
reaction or response.

Is a long night coming?
Does there creep across the land
a suffocating silken blackness
darker than the Devil's shadow
and heavier than mountains?

What do I know?
I can still recognize the moon
in the foul cloudy sky.
What care I for tomorrow?
What care I that Grace evades me?
Retribution may come tomorrow
but tomorrow is an improbability now.

Be afraid I am having a dinner party

2011-03-19T00:49:00.000-07:00

I am hosting a dinner party tonight. Let me repeat, I am hosting a dinner party tonight. I can't cook, my house is a mess, and I entertain rarely. Is disaster imminent? I hope not.

Why am I hosting a dinner party given that being a host is not one of my strengths? The answer is quite simple. As a member of a church, I belong to a group that do supper once a month. The group divides up and six people have dinner on a weekend at someone's house. I have been to a couple of these parties. People have opened their houses to me. People have fed me. Now it is my turn.

I am okay with that and gladly accept my social responsibility. But noble intentions are the paving stones of the road to perdition and that would give even the most pompous fool a moment's pause. What I am having trouble accepting is how unsuited I am to do this particular task. I live alone and I enjoy living alone. When I bought my house, I thought it was an excellent idea, better than living in an apartment because in this case, the landlord is a jerk who doesn't fix anything and the tenant is a slob, who is well on his way to starring in the reality show Hoarders. Since I am both tenant and landlord I get along fine with me.

But tonight I'll open my house to a group of people who have no idea regarding the disorder of my private life. I am a terrible cook, which means I am an okay bachelor cook. Most of the things I eat are fresh fruits, vegetables, the all-to-frequent microwaved baked potato or chicken pot pie, and chicken or fish that is broiled or seared until they reach leathery toughness. Does that mean I am a terrible cook. No! I can say for a fact that no one has ever lived to complain about my cooking. Conceptually a dinner cooked by me is like an airline flight. Every one of my meals that you walk away from is a "good" meal.

But my guest have nothing to fear. They are bringing the salad, dessert, and garlic bread. I am serving lasagne. Once, long ago in the past, when I was married I may have actually learned how to make lasagna. But now that I am divorced, what simple cooking skills I once possessed have gone the way of other lost skills, such as being able to answer the question about fat women in bathing suits or proper foot massage technique. So the meat lasagna is being purchased from Caesar's Italian Delicatessen in Bakersfield. The meatless lasagna is coming from the frozen food case of Albertson's. So as long as everything is heated thoroughly everything will be fine.

But being a bachelor means that I didn't have enough plates and bowls for my guests. When I got divorced, the ex got the house, the car and all the kitchen stuff. So I went to Wal-mart and bought a 4-piece place setting to go with the plastic lawn chair and folding card table that constituted most of the furniture of my apartment. Not wanting my guest to eat off paper plates, I decided to go to Target and buy dinner ware for eight people. That also included place matts and napkins. I've stayed true to myself in the sense that nothing matches, but at least there's enough to ensure that all my guests have something to eat off of. What was really great was that it reminded of the joys of shopping in preparation of a divorce. But it was better there were no lawyers or ex spouses to deal with.

All that remains to do is pick up and clean the house prior to guests arriving. But that is an Augean labor that would give Heracles a moment's pause. It will require me pickup all the crap, mostly paper, and shove it into plastic bags and hide in a spare bedroom until they can be sorted, shredded, recycled or saved. Don't hold your breath. The carpet will have to covered with somekind of smelly cleaning stuff and vacuumed the kitchen and bathroom floors mopped. I should also replace the cracked toilet seat in my main bathroom, but I don't think that is going to happen.

But it's worth it, I guess. Every person needs to be part of a community. All I can hope is that when I open my house, my guests will notice that I am opening my heart as well. If that is the case they hopefully they will ignore the chaos of my solitary life, have an evening of good food and fellowship, and walk away from the dinner. Well that pretty much sums it up. Walk away from the dinner without worrying about being poisoned.

Capitano Tedeschi

30

Be afraid I am having a dinner party copyright March 19th 2011 by Jamie Jacks.

Photo credit National Cancer Institute Len Rizzi Photographer retrieved 3/19/2011 from http://visualsonline.cancer.gov/details.cfm?imageid=2547

Random Thoughts March 15, 2011

2011-03-15T23:34:00.000-07:00

Rep. Michele Bachmann's gaffe hear 'round the world

There's been a lot of chortling regarding Minnesota Congresswoman (Tea-Liban 6th District) Michele Bachmann's recent gaffe about Revolutionary War geography while in New Hampshire. Representative Bachmann told an adoring crowd,

"Before headlining a GOP fundraiser, the possible presidential hopeful told a group of students and conservative activists in Manchester, 'You're the state where the shot was heard around the world in Lexington and Concord.'" according to the Huffington Post. Which was an unfortunate mistake to make if she has presidential delusions.

I wanted to say something biting like the deranged Roman Emperor Gaius Caligula once appointed a racehorse to the Roman Senate and the people of Minnesota's 6th Congressional District have elected Michele Bachmann to Congress. (notice how I snuck it in here).

But before I did that I read Rep. Bachmann's biography in Wikipedia. She has a law degrees from Oral Roberts University and William and Mary. She was a tax lawyer for the IRS. She's intelligent.

Which means I have a hard time explaining many of her bizarre policy positions and statements. The Economist once called George W. Bush, "intellectually incurious." I wonder if Rep. Bachmann has this defect as well. She has found an ideological niche and is now comfortably ensconced in it. Many of her political beliefs and positions all no room for compromise. It seems that her political success depends in part on not compromising.

When my back was to the wall, comedically speaking

Saturday night, I did my first comedy monologue. It was for a pledge drive dinner for the Unitarian/Universalist Fellowship of Kern County. The last time I tried to do stand up comedy was over 30 years ago.

It was not an auspicious debut. It was an open mic night a bar called The Levee at 43rd and Main. I got up on stage and tried to do something crazy, like kicking a chair and acting strange. I didn't last long. As my friend Stepbuddy Anderson later wrote, "I had a chance and blew it."

This time was better and different. I actually wrote out my jokes beforehand. What was surprising was how easy I thought that was. After I finished creating my monologue, I was suspicious about how easy it was. But in way it was easy. I am a storyteller, I tell stories. I also know that if I make jokes about myself, I have an endless supply of funny stories and my jokes won't hurt anybody.

It went okay. But I was nervous and rushed my delivery. Which means I need to practice and I need to start creating an archive of funny stuff.

Phrases I liked today

One of the things that has just been archived, is the phrase"counterfactual deficits." Sorta know what it means,

Found a definition for counterfactuals, "Counterfactuals are mental representations of alternatives to past events. Recent research has shown them to be important for other cognitive processes, such as planning, causal reasoning, problem solving, and decision making—all processes independently linked to the frontal lobes. "

Sounds like something I should suffer from. Also came accross the phrase, "sarcasm perception." Psychologist are doing research on counterfactual deficits and sarcasm perception. I don't intend to read any of that research but I do like the phrases.

Capitano Tedeschi

30

Random Thoughts March 15, 2011 copyright March 15, 2011 by Jamie Jacks.
Michele Bachmann official photo, (government document in the public domain) source:

http://bachmann.house.gov/Biography/OfficialPhoto.htm

The Devil dances live from Cairo

2011-02-18T13:02:00.000-08:00

The whole world is rupturing.
We see it unfolding on the nightly news.
Pundits like Jeremiahs tell us of
disasters now unnatural.

The floods now are from rivers of people
not water.
The explosions of are not of coal seam methane
but of human rage pent up
not in the tunnels underground
but in ancient alleys of distant streets.

We are witnesses thanks to
the uses and gratifications of social media.
But this new technology fills us with
a sense of fear
not feelings of transcendence.

We see the collapse of alliances and long-time allies,
while angry masses in their thousands demand
Bread, justice and peace.
And meanwhile they hurl epthitets on the nightly news
we know they are hurling monkey wrenches
into the delicate cogs and gears of the American
Imperial machine.

Now we know the Devil dances
live from Cairo
over wi-fi now.
Destroying in a moment our democratic
mythologies and conciets.

The demonstrators in the Muslim streets
delicate as dancers whose dancing shatters
our sunny sky with future filled with
higher food prices and
predictions of $5 a gallon gasoline.

We witness a reclamation of indigenous rights
and realize that
we stand on the floor of canyon
where black gray skies threaten inundation
and not just rain.

An inundation that drowns our world
while creating a new world
beyond reason and brighter than
the rainbow.

A dawn of a new era
in which we participate
but do not wish
to see.

Capitano Tedeschi

30

The Devil dances live from Cairo copyright by Jamie Jacks 18 February 2011

Photograph from the U.S. Department of Defense. Source: http://www.defense.gov/dodcmsshare/newsphoto/2011-02/hires_110204-M-8012P-076.jpg. In the public domain.

Gerry Rafferty? No Al Stewart.

2011-02-16T22:17:00.000-08:00

On January 4th, 2011, Scottish folk singer Gerry Rafferty died. His song Baker Street, was an iconic rock ballad of the 1970s. But as I was reading Rafferty's obituary and feeling somewhat saddened that his life had been devastated by alcoholism and depression, I was trying to remember the lyrics of another song, that I thought that Rafferty had also written.

It was about a Russian soldier who fought the German's in World War II. So I did a search on You Tube and found out it was not a Gerry Rafferty song, but a song written by another Scottish singer Al Stewart, who is very much alive. Al Stewart song Year of the Cat came out in 1976 and Rafferty's hit song Baker Street came out in 1978. So they would have been playing on F.M. radio about the same time.

The song I was thinking of was Roads to Moscow. Which tells the story Russian soldier who fights the Germans from the start Hitler's invasion of Russia to the conquest of Berlin. War over he expects to go home but,

I'll never know, I'll never know
Why I was taken from the line and all the others
To board a special train and journey deep into the heart of holy Russia
And it's cold and damp in the transit camp, and the air is still and sullen
And the pale sun of October whispers the snow will soon be coming
And I wonder when I'll be home again and the morning answers "Never"
And the evening sighs and the steely Russian skies go on forever

source: http://www.answers.com/topic/roads-to-moscow

Stewart writes beautiful music. He also enjoys writing songs about history. That makes for interesting music. It also pretty much guarantees that many of his songs won't be played on MTV or what passes for FM rock radio. One of my current favorites of his is Hanno the Navigator, about the Carthaginian admiral who first explored the coasts of Africa. The lyrics are beautiful and playful at the same time.

It's a good day
for going to sea
Hanno the Navigator said to me.
There's an open sky and a steady breeze
out beyond the Pillars of Hercules.
Above the foam-kissed waves seagulls scream
up in the masts of our trireme
and it's a good day
for going to sea
Hanno the Navigator said to me.

source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZ7RD7ebZUA

Gerry Rafferty is gone and that's sad, but in researching his life and trying to remember his music, I was able to find another artist, Al Stewart whose music I enjoyed when it came out some 30 plus years ago. The other great thing is that Al Stewart will be playing here Bakersfield on April 16th. Count on it, I intend to buy tickets.

Capitano Tedeschi.

30

Picture of Gerry Rafferty by Eddie Mallin,(6 September 1980) retrieved from Wikipedia on 16 Feb. 2011. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Gerry_Rafferty.jpg and used in accordance with permission granted by Creative Commons.

Gerry Rafferty, No Al Stewart copyright 16 February 2011 by Jamie Jacks

The cult of the dead God--Ronald Reagan

2011-02-10T16:57:00.000-08:00

source: http://reaganboner.tumblr.com/page/4

Ronald Reagan the president, well I'm not a fan but he was probably a better president than I give him credit for. Sadly, Ronald Reagan, the president, has become the god of what I call, The Cult of Ronald Reagan. It is the Cult of Ronald Reagan I despise. Its is tenants are no longer effective and it's principal priests are debased and false.

What tenants you ask? Well the idea that Reagan advanced that Government is not the solution, government is problem.

Many of the cult's followers no longer engage in debate, refuse to compromise and rigidly adhere to creeds and dogmas that currently have no relevance in a rapidly changing world.

For nearly 22 years, the Cult of Ronald Reagan has exerted its baleful influence on American public life. Our republic is on the edge of bankruptcy and economic demise to the misguided pursuit of pseudo-Reaganistic policies by Bill Clinton and the two Bushes. Now as the country is slowly recovering from these policies, it is members of the Cult of Ronald Reagan have regained control of the House of Representatives. Now in power, they threaten to destroy the country's fragile economic policies that demand tax cuts for the rich while destroying what remains of the nation's social safety net.

What I find really amusing is the idea that Ronald Reagan might not be able to win elective office in what passes for today's Tea or Republican parties. As Alex Massie notes in his blog,

"For a long while and certainly at the time he was in office Reagan was an under-rated President; today he's in danger of being over-rated. The problem with the Cult of Reagan is not Reagan, but the impact membership has on the believers. He was more flexible than his admirers today sometimes acknowledge. Few of today's Republicans would, one supposes, endorse Reagan's tax-raising 1982 budget. Nor, one suspects, would today's nationalists approve of his decision to talk to the Soviets (indeed, at the time there were some who whispered that Reagan was "soft on Communism".) Nor, for that matter, could a Republican with national aspirations today endorse Reagan's liberal approach to immigration issues.

"Indeed, it's not clear a less gifted communicator armed with Reagan's actual beliefs could really win the Republican Presidential nomination today. And that's fine! Times change and so do parties. What was appropriate for the early 1980s isn't necessarily appropriate now. Reagan should no more be held as a template for modern Republicanism than Churchill should for the Tory party. (Mind you, the Cult of Churchill is also stronger in the United States than it is in Britain.) But nor should an imaginary Reaganism hold sway over, or demand unthinking fealty, from today's conservatives."

source: http://www.spectator.co.uk/alexmassie/6677674/the-cult-of-reagan-president-of-all-our-hearts.thtml

I agree with Alex Massie. Like I said I am not a fan of the Reagan Administration. Ronald Reagan, the Dead God of the corrupt Cult of Ronald Reagan, well he's just a figment of some people's imagination and not a real man at all.

Capitano Tedeschi

30

The cult of the dead God-Ronald Reagan copyright Feb. 10, 2011 by Jamie Jacks

Tule Fog

2011-01-27T00:17:00.000-08:00

The last of the day is hazy,
but there was some sun and some warmth.
night becomes gray with fog

I drive into the evening
attempting to perform and gain certainty
from the rituals of my daily life
Headlight beams distorted
Distance disappears when landmarks
are swathed in vapor

I try to come to terms with
a new year
I feel late like I'm
26 days behind the rest of the world
Lost, groping cautiously
Propelling myself in to a future
I cannot see my way clearly

The night is cold,
All the world seems besieged
What once was known no longer has meaning
I’m up late pondering the nature
The nature of all manner of darkness.

Capitano Tedeschi

Tule fog copyright Jan. 27, 2011 by Jamie Jacks

Luis Aragon carved simple santos by hand

2010-09-14T14:33:00.000-07:00

Not everyone knows
the nature of the carving
the mind sees,
the point of the knife
sharp and inquisitive
the blade
shaving away the false
leaving only the truth.

Every man is part of the holy trinity
of Land, Flesh and God.
Crops rise from sandy soil
children and goats romp
in the simple circle of the corral.

At night, while the woman slept and
the dog snored at the threshold
It was by lamplight pale yellow like
the glow from the gates of heaven
that the carving was done.
It was then that you searched for God
through the transubstantiation of
mesquite wood.
Without knowing how,
You'd see Saint John
in a piece of mesquite.
by your knife,
Saint John would be freed
from the wood
his body inverted trapezoids
of faith that was harder than flesh
his face a grainy vision of righteous anger.

In the morning,
Saint John would have gone
given to some stranger from Santa Fe,
who had stopped to ask for directions.
The Saint no longer belonging to you,
but to God.

All your days were spent this way.
Wrestling a living from the harsh,
uncompromising earth.
Watching the flocks and grandchildren grow
and in the evening
the mad passion of your hands
recreating the bible
in scrap pieces lumber.
Until that final day, when you
fell like a wood chip
to the hard earthen floor.

You are gone now.
St. John is a prisoner
standing on display
in a plexiglass case
owned by a museum that never
gives anything away.

Capitano Tedeschi

30

Luis Aragon carved simple santos by hand copyright Sept. 15, 2010 by Jamie Jacks

Isle of the Immortals

2010-09-13T16:48:00.000-07:00

(poem inspired by a Chinese Painting)

I think this mountain
was a giant once
perhaps he was in love
with an empress or
a water spirit

Why is that we love
that which is so elusive?
It is sad to love
someone who can not
love in return.

When the giant finally realized this
all he could do was sit down
and weep.
He cried and cried.
He cried so long,
he turned to stone,

He cried so much his tears flowed
like streams and waterfalls.
The land sighed
and the sea surrounded him

Trees grew like moss
on his arms and shoulders
clouds congealed in what was once
his lap.

There in those clouds
I build my house.
But some days
the pounding of my hammer
the rasping of my saw
echo strangely.

I must be careful
not to awaken him.
I must be careful
not to revive
memories of you
beloved.

Capitano Tedeschi

30

Isle of the Immortals copyright Sept. 13 2009 by Jamie Jacks

R2 D2 returned from the wars

2010-08-21T22:51:00.000-07:00

Numbers all is numbers
numbers never lie
The tireless droid
Skywalker's gallowglass
came to the end of the galactic wars
The Evil Empire vanquished
The Dark and Light side of the Force
locked in tight harmony
D2 ran the numbers
and randomly threw itself back into time
and landed in a parallel galaxy
by an irrigation canal in almond orchard
not far from Bakersfield California
Droid disguised as an irrigation pump
something close R2D2
calculated to turning a sword into a ploughshare.
The silly humans here
still believe you can hear explosions
in the depth of space
D2's memory banks aare filled with silence
where there should have been screams

Once R2D2 spanned the universe
destroying Emperors and Death Stars
now it's regulating the flow of water
to the orchard
and attempting to model
the falling of almond blossoms
blown by a spring breeze
and erasing databanks of
distant,violent, and dire days.
Sometimes on winter nights
when the Tule fog seeps into
circuitboards seared by war
wounded, repaired, replaced
but never fully restored
the old days come back to the droid
Laser blasts
and space as cold as Vader's breath
or stranger still Princess Leah's message to Obi Wan
is warped into a strange lullaby
that sings it to serene stasis
if not actual sleep.

Thus the days go
the rains fall
the brown water flows
and the orchard blossoms
the Almonds are harvested.
D2 knows someday
they'll come to scrap this strange pump
Atoms will be recycled
Then R2D2 will be reborn
innocent, empty
to be filled with the same new numbers
to journey across time
to save the Galaxy once again
D2 knows not urgency
it knows how to wait.

Capitano Tedeschi
30.

R2D2 returned from the wars. Copyright 8/19/2010 by Jamie Jacks

Collecting for a funeral on a Friday Afternoon

2010-07-27T09:30:00.000-07:00

It was a boiling hot
Friday afternoon
when I ventured forth
for some toing and froing

At the Gas station,
A phalanx of Ford F-150 pickups
were fueling up
readying for a weekend of
lifestyle enhancing activities.

Such as driving to mountains
whose glaciers had not yet disappeared
or towing boats to beaches
as yet unfouled by tar and oil

At the Credit Union
The lines were not as confident,
perhaps cause they were filled with
survivors and refugees
of the latest financial disaster
There to empty
their coffee cans full of near-worthless coins
in a vain attempt to stave of
personal fiscal apocalypse
Many were wondering
if they could hang on to the next pay day.

On the way to Starbucks
while waiting at a red light
I saw an old man
hatless in the summer sun
with a hand painted coardboard sign
asking for donations
for a "Funeral Ambulance"
whatever that was
Silly old geezer thinks I,
Even the ancient Greeks knew
that trips to the after life
can't be paid for with checks or credit cards
or a little bit of spare change.

I didn't give the hatless
old geezer any change
and drove off in my pickup
thinking that standing on the corner with
a cardboard sign asking for change
was a hell of a hard way to pay for
a six pack, pint of vodka,
or to pay for transportation
for a funeral.

Capitano Tedeschi

30

collecting for a funeral on a Friday afternoon copyright July 27, 2010 by Jamie Jacks

Not really human anymore

2010-07-07T12:56:00.000-07:00

Not really human anymore
No heartbeat only
a gravitational pulse
No blood only
a silicon solution coursing through
permeable strata
No ribs and bones, only
beams of sandstone
No skin, only
a sheath of opaque micah.

Life is lived in speed geologic.
it takes aeons to move a millimeter
A tectonic migration trudging along,
trudging alone, ignoring and
never learning from disaster or decay.

He never listens. Why?
Others stopped listening to him aeons ago.
Now he communicates through
petroglyphs scratched on igneous rock
in a fossil of a language
no one cares to decipher

Pity that, for once
these crude scratching had great powers
could cause the rain to fall from desert sky
trick the deer to pause before the hunter's obsidian arrow

Now? Now,
sandstorms have scoured and eroded sedentary stone
moss devours the glyphs etched in granite
Few notice. Fewer care

A wandering geologist sometimes will take
a sample from the crumbling monument
An amateur archeologist still attempts to decipher
the magic runes scraped on a rock face

He no longer wonders
why they bother.

Capitano Tedeschi

30

Not really human anymore copyright July 7, 2010 by Jamie Jacks

Apocalypse by key stroke

2010-07-03T01:01:00.000-07:00

In the incestuous online world
most blissfully unaware of the danger
ignorant of the evil eyes watching
on computer terminals in
Moscow, Terehan, Pyonyang and Bejing.

Deep in their wired lairs
these Fifth Generation spiders
brew the poisons
that will paralyze or devour
anything connected to the internet.

No B-52s will be needed to drop
these bombs on their unsuspecting
targets--You, me, us.
All of us with an internet connection
an I-Phone, a copier, a nuclear submarine
have a bullseye painted on our foreheads

No bullets need fired for you to die
The malelevolence that has been bred
in the polyhedonic minds of these digital vipers
are poisons so toxic they can
make airplanes fall from the sky
nuclear missiles explode in their North Dakota silos

your execution could be caused
by a hack into the electric grid
while you lie senseless on an operating table
power failure during a heart bypass
or incineration by atom bomb
makes no difference
you are still dead.

Do not ask if????
Better to ask how or when?
Or what if anything might be done?

But you might be asking in vain
No politician will dare tell you
the nature of this peril
No corporate leader wants to pay the costs
Truthfulness is not the 21st century American way.

Imagine it for a moment--
The world ended not by a cascade of atom bombs
but with a keystroke

No one is worried because
no one really wants
to know.

Capitano Tedeschi

30

Apocalypse by key stroke. Copyright July 2, 2010 by Jamie Jacks

he still thinks he can bite

2010-05-13T21:17:00.000-07:00

My head aches
as if I've come down with some
acute, critical and wasting illnes
Has a fever scorched or
burned out
the cells that archive both
memory and common sense?
I feel like I've lost the ability
to differentiate reality
from illusion

I think I am seeing that science
has no importance anymore.
It is as disgusting as a
sexually transmitted disease.
Facts, like wise, have no power
and are overwhelmed, drowned
by a flood of plausible and oft-repeated lies.

Examples abound.
An aging beauty queen makes millions of $$$
uttering lies and sheer nonsense.
Such is her charisma she hopes to replace
the Electoral College with a swimsuit competition.
Meanwhile a non-plumber not-named Joe
stomps down the corridors of the
Mega-temple of Conservative, Christian power
ranting like a bald-headed Jeremiah
because the promised book deal and the TV gig
haven't come through.
Finally saddest of all the aged war-hero
the self-styled Maverick gelds himself
so he can cling to the trappings of political power.

Such lies lurk like a cancer.
A signal in the bones that
some of my cells,
damned to immortality,
have formed into a venonmous spider
that feeds on silk swathed pieces
of my brain and heart.
I am paralyzed by their gnawing.
The real world , glittering in the morning sun
beyond my grasp.
I have become an endangered species
no longer relevant.
A bit player in someone else's story.
An exhibit in alien museum or zoo
hidden behind a sign that says
"Please don't feed this animal."
He's old, fat, and toothles
and he still thinks he can bite.

Capitano Tedeschi

30

He still thinks he can bite copyright May 13, 2009 by Jamie Jacks

Sacramento 10th and J Streets

2010-04-29T16:03:00.001-07:00

In Sacramento,
Two blocks from the Capitol
Streets once paved by
the discovery of gold
not safe at night.

The streets lead
to suburbs full of
foreclosed homes.
Cars drive past
the historic buildings,
the emporiums
that sold rivets to the railroad
and hardtack and pick axes
to greenhorns headed to the gold fields
Back then Sacramento merchants
knew it was more profitable to mine
the greenhorns than to mine for gold.

Even the city's merchant princes
the Stanfords, Crockers and Huntingtos
all gone now.
In place of the giants of commerce
we now have the pygmies of politics, led by
an ex-Austrian with a steroid
enhanced ego.

Even the pols don't hang around here at night.
The alleys and doorways are filled with
haunted schizophrenics
who panhandle tourists for spare change
to buy Gallo burgundy and Starbucks cappuccinos
all the while ranting about "Godless Whores" and
the "Evil Empire of Pussy."

But this morning on my walk
I saw signs of hope,
like wildflowers blooming
in this landscape of slow decay.
Bureaucrats on bicycles
riding to their cubicles to tend
the workings of this most dysfunctional state.
Planners drawing plans for New Jerusalem
over iced coffees.
Venture capitalists sitting
in a plush hotel lobby practicing
their pitches for state grants
for the next Hewlet Packard.

It is evening rush hour now
and everyone except the homeless
head for home.
As I head for the train station,
I wonder am a leaving
an urban wasteland
or a 21st century frontier.
Standing on the corner of 10th and J Streets
in Sacramento,
I don't really know.

Capitano Tedeschi

30

Sacramento 10th and J Streets copyright April 29, 2010 by Jamie Jacks

Defenders of the Gunfighter Republic

2010-04-23T20:23:00.000-07:00

By their works you shall know them
their Bible says
They are the Defenders of
The Gunfighter Republic
They have no doubt that
Theirs is
The TRUE America

Their heroes are cardboard cutouts
of senile B-Movie cowboys
The Duke, The Gipper,
and of course The Maverick

Their leaders are the
college drop-out pundits
of 24-Hour cable news
The pundits paid
by the Crony Capitalists of
the previous regime

Who Rumplestiltskin-like
spin hate and paraonoia
into Euros and Yen by selling the Defenders
all the guns, gold and Army rations
they can buy.

And buy the Defenders do,
for theirs is no ordinary madness.
Every week they throng in the hundreds
(made legion by Faux News)
With signs and their sacred guns
spewing vicious hate and
believing that their rantings
are a Noble and Masculine spectacle

Showing that they are prepared
for the coming Apocalypse or Armageddon
When God's Elect will be sent
direct to their Disneyland Dream
of Heaven

While the earth below is roiled
by Satan or the Anti-Christ or Barack Hussein Obama
or whoever they happen
to hate at the moment.

Capitano Tedeschi

30

Defenders of the Gunfighter Republic copyright April 23, 2010 by Jamie Jacks

Myths and their meaning

2010-04-21T13:22:00.000-07:00

I imagine myth
as a kernel of truth
embedded in the husk of a fantastic lie
or an irrational fantasy

But myths like seeds can make things grow
consider these myths
"all are created equal,"
"work hard and get ahead,"
and "follow your bliss."

Even though the chances of success
may be razor thin
I have used such myths
in my daily life
through them I gave
performances of meaning
that in individual and small ways
gave a satisfying taste
to daily real life.

I even discovered
that some myths can extend
beyond me, beyond the time
when and where I reach my
personal Day of the Dead.

Sometimes myths can become
lies embedded in the husks of lies
then what is fantastic becomes evil
and that which once revealed inner truths
now is a spur to self-deception.

The fires of my personal hells
were fueled by lying to myself
living a lie
made me prey to a stupidity
that spread itself through the
molecular proteins of my being.
Selfishness, stupidity and self-deception
became the structure around which
I built my life.

I ceased to care for others
ceased asking when? or how? or why?
I no longer had time
for such simple one-word questions

I was one of millions
floating above the ground
like a wind-driven plastic bag
all my actions and interactions
driven by delusion
everything I did or do
takes a life
or turns an oasis into a desert

All the while I continued to make
meaningless sacrifices
to gods now senile
their gold flaked icons
stripped of mystical value
myths had lost their meaning

I caught glimpses of decay
in the corner of my eyes
phantom dogs
feeding on the corpses of
the abandoned and unloved
my fellow beings two-legged simulacra
running bent over like deranged apes
trying to scavenge some type of sustenance
from a moonscape of poverty,
degradation and despair.

Capitano Tedeschi

30

Myths and their meaning, copyright April 21, 2010 by Jamie Jacks

Wolf in Shepherd's Clothing, While the Carrollers sang Oh Holy Night

2010-04-13T15:19:00.001-07:00

Wolf in Shepherd's Clothing

You can strangle
perception by assuming
the manners of
or looking like your enemy

In the world of wealth
without wisdom
it is easy to decieve
and fleece the sheep
who have all the money
Because no one questions
a wolf in Shepherd's clothing

Money the bible says
is the root of all.
If a demon has enough money
he can exploit poverty
to indulge in every vice
every excess of deviance.
Money is the lever that
allows you to create
Create a cult of diabolic power
to turn good people into the servants
of darkness
Money buys freedom to
indulge desires that lurk
always in the dark.

Protected all the while by the
impenetrable shield
of patriarchal authority,
by day you play the saint
by night you pursue all
all manner of erotic violence

Preying on youth
destroying all innocence
There's no limit to what you can do
when you are shielded by the hand
that wear's St. Peter's ring.

While the Carrollers sang Oh Holy Night

Coldest Christmas ever in Des Moines
the parishioners said.
It was cold that Friday night
But the yellow church bus
was happy and warm as it rumbled through
the cold, dark winter's eve.

The carrollers sang "Oh Holy Night"
He sang loudest of all
the lusty angel of the Lord.
No one saw how his right hand
stroked Tommy's upper thigh

Whenever the carrollers paused
to catch their breath
he would whisper in the boy's ear
"Tommy are you safe?"
"Tommy are you warm?"
"Yes, Father," Tommy would whisper.

Ten months ago the whole congregation
marvelled when he 'adopted' the 11-year-old
runaway boy.
Now no one wondered
no one noticed at all.

The Carrollers sang
Oh Come All Ye Faithful
his fingers gently pinched Tommy's thigh
"Tommy, God loves you," he whispered.
"Do you know God loves you Tommy?"

"Yes, Father," Tommy whispered.
Knowing what was coming.
Trying not to cry.

Capitano Tedeschi

30

Wolf in Shepherd's Clothing & While the Carrollers sang Oh Holy Night Copyright April 14, 2010 by Jamie Jacks

virtuous shadow warrior

2010-04-08T12:54:00.000-07:00

The guardians of Americanity
now float above in the sky
unseen, unheard
hovering at 20,000 feet
on their singing wings
like omnipotent, autistic children
idiot savants
whose talents are hellfire missles
who hasten death
through aggressive harm reduction

Below on the barren ground
of Waziristan and the Swat Valley
in the back alleys of
Karachi and Kandahar
vendetta is visceral
the knife knows not subtleties
amongst the people whose lives
are on the edges of the bomb craters
and the kill-zone
every death is a war crime
every grave a martyr's shrine

After 9 years of conflict
the global clash of cultures
we find that this is best death
our money can buy
But we never see the deaths
or the damage, except as
viral videos on YouTube
Share them with your followers or friends.

Do we still believe
that we are the virtuous shadow warriors?
Does death dealt by men and women
in silhouette in some air-conditioned trailer
enforcing the policy of Peace Americana
help stop end an endless war?
Or do we do it 'cause it's easy,
'cause we can, 'cause it's exciting to dwell
in the virtual space
where war is a video game?
ZAP!

Capitano Tedeschi

30

virtuous shadow warrior copyright April 8, 2010 by Jamie Jacks

the malignant syndrome once called "our love,"

2010-03-18T13:03:00.001-07:00

I no longer count
the wasted years I spent
with you,
Pragmatic female demon,
in what was once described
as a "transitional"
"heterosexual relationship."

Now despairing and disruptive
I have drunk of you to the bitter dregs
my mouth no longer desires
the MacDonaldized taste of your kisses.

My ears no longer wish to hear
the torrential nonsense that
errupts from your mouth
I don't believe that
global vaginahood
will save the spotted owl
or that the all wars will end
when people embrace each other with love

I don't believe that and I don't really care
I am so battle fatigued from being with you
that I should be in hospice on morphine
I spent years fighting that silent epidemic
of poor oral sex and all other manner
of pathologizing practices.

For the record I admit
for a time I enjoyed
huffing the fear and exhilaration
from our years of risky play.
Now what can I say
the malignant syndrome once called
"our love,"
must be aborted.
There I've said it in un-plain English
Do you want really want me
to repeat it again?

Capitano Tedeschi

30

the malignant syndrome once called "our love," copyright March 18, 2009, by Jamie Jacks

Oh how we yearn to return to that paradise now

2010-03-11T17:25:00.000-08:00

For you there may be
no happy ending
For we seeded
your future
with all manner of woe

You will reap the harvest
of all our many follies
Reaganism, the Prosperity Gospel
and the greatest of all frauds,
the so-called American Dream

Meanwhile we sleep undisturbed
by our disasters
believing ourselves to be
more than just works in progress
entering our 60th years
stronger, healthier and more
psychologically deluded
than all our illustrious forbearers

Pride bringeth folly
Oh yes it do!
Delusion bringeth death
not just for us but for you
When we yielded to the deviant temptation of power
power is more erotic and as one ages
as good and maybe even better
than kinky sex
I'll get back to you on that.

We were not blind
Make no mistake we were
tatooed on body and on soul
with mission statements and corporate visions
The world was...our mirror
everywhere we looked we saw ourselves

We had no time for the petty, eccentric
ethics or habits of the dying Victorian Age
not for us was thrift, or prudence or patience
we were all just artists
we were all just doin' our thing.
soon our run will be over
right now there's not a whole lot of ooomph left

I'll tell you plainly this place
wasn't paradise when we entered this world
But as we get older we look
at the world of our childhood
in black and white photos
Oh how we yearn to return to that paradise now

Sorry the way things worked out
Very bad for you, not so hot for us either

Capitano Tedeschi

30

Oh how we yearn to return to that paradise now copyright March 11, 2010 by Jamie Jacks

The Big House Dwelling People

2010-02-24T13:38:00.000-08:00

Who really understands
the logic of these brain-diseased
who sociologist describe
as "The Big House Dwelling People?"

Their behavior came from axons
deep in their bones.
For decades bred they had been
selection determined by the regression
from logic to instinct
and a genetic inability
to delay gratification
or count the cost.

Oh, they worshipped their God
with rational ritual
and prayers for permance
of their personal objects:
money, cars, waning sexuality, and
other healthful consumer choices.

Their prayers sadly
never prevented
never preserved.

The things they called
"Ethical Failures,"
Lying, Cheating or Genocide.
Never mattered because
they believed they had a ticket to ride
they believed the ride would never end

The ride ended
they suffered grief
beyond normal grief
but after all their suffering
thought was never given
to the injuries they had caused
nor to anyone else's well-being

Do they deserve our sympathy
as victims
or our contempt when they
are tried as defendants?

No one should ever judge
who has not walked a mile
in their smelly Gucci shoes?

But this brief chronicle of their folly
shows that there is really no limit
to human self-deception.

That much is certain
That much I can confidently say.

Capitano Tedeschi

30

Big House Dwelling People copyright Feb. 24, 2010 by Jamie Jacks

Please don't make me a Socialist.

2010-02-23T22:14:00.001-08:00

source: http://www.socialismisnojoke.com/.

I came out into the parking lot at work and found a sticker like the one above with the phrase socialism is no joke, affixed to the tailgate of my beat up 1994 Toyata pickup. I was vexed by this not too serious act of vandalism. I have the remants of an Obama Biden bumpersticker on the bumper of my truck, a sticker showing I am a member of CSEA (California State Employees Association) and a sticker showing I am a Unitarian Universalist and a former member of the Kern Wheelmen.

Obviously, by putting those sticker on my truck, I am as Shakespeare would say, "Wearing my heart on my sleeve for the daws to peck at. There was a time when I didn't put bumperstickers on my truck, because I didn't really want people to know what I was thinking. But the last years of the Bush Administration made me change my mind. Suddenly it was important to let people know, I was a proud union member, a proud Unitarian/Universalist and yes a proud Obama Democrat.

But such actions have consequences. Since I work on a University campus, the sticker was stuck on my truck as a joke. Well the sticker is removed. I've filed a complaint with the campus police, and have stated that I will file charges if this particular prankster is ever caught.

I'm not a socialist. I own stock, have house and a 401k. Success of capitalism, especially American capitalism is important. Being middle class does not mean that ignorant of the problems facing people not only in Bakersfield or America but around the globe. I imagine myself as I am someone who is working in a small way for social justice. Yes I am an Obama supporter.

When I see a sticker placed on my truck (my property) I understand it's probably a one-time deal a prank. Sadly the current hatred of right-wing reactionaries who are posing as hard-core conservatives, towards anybody who objects to their corrupt political and fanatical religious and social views demands that they call anyone who disagrees with them as an enemy to "their America." That forces them to falsely villify Pres. Obama by comparing him to the Joker, and to insult me by putting their foul sticker on my truck.

I am not their enemy. Like them, I care about America and am working as a citizen to try to make it a better place.

Capitano Tedeschi

30

Bernard Kerik fallen hero

2010-02-19T12:08:00.000-08:00

"I met Bernie in 1990 at a meeting to organize the annual Buczek Foundation...I was immediately impressed with his organizational skills and was delighted when two years later he joined my campaign...As an outsider and a risk-taker, Bernie wouldn't accept 'that's not the way we do things' as a reason new strategies couldn't tried."
Source: Giuliani, Rudolph W. (2002) Leadership. NY : Hyperion, c2002. p. 83.

On Feb. 18, 2010, Bernard B. Kerik was sentenced to 33 months in prison according to the New York Times after pleading guilty "to eight felony charges, including tax fraud and lying to White House officials."

When I first read this news item, I wanted to use it to demonstrate the unfitness of Rudi Giuliani to ever be elected Senator of New York or President of the United States. I realized that Bernard Kerik's fall, had a lot do with how anyone can be corrupted by power. That is something I have to keep reminding myself these days. Anyone can be corrupted whether it's a union activist like myself or someone like Bernard Kerik, who came within an ace of being chosen as the first head of the Dept. of Homeland Security. Kerik will begin his sentence on May 17th. It will not be easy to be a prisoner of after being a prison warden and head of the New York Dept. of Corrections. His conviction destroys his many years of public service.

There are two aspects of his fall that merit mention. First during this trial many people came forward and offered testimony lauding both his character and his many years of distinguished public service. But there was no testimony or praise from his former patron Rudolf Giuliani.

In his book Leadership, Rudolph Giuliani devotes a whole chapter to loyalty, calling it "The Vital Virtue." According Giuliani, "A leader who distances himself at the first sign of trouble migh save a few popularity points but it's shortsighted. Eventually no on wants to work for someone like that. The best people don't apply, know that should trouble arrive, they'll be left twisting in the wind." (p. 235).

Perhaps the severity of Bernie Kerik's crimes made support by Mr. Giuliani impossible. It might also be the Mr. Giuliani left Mr. Kerik twist in the wind."

The second interesting thing about the conviction of Mr. Kerik, was that he was convicted for "lying to White House officials." The White House officials in questions were serving the George Bush and Dick Cheney. I think it's funny you can go to jail for lying to White House officials but these very same White House officials, like Dick Cheney's counsel Scooter Libby, don't go to jail for lying to us.

On Feb. 8, 2010, the the New York Times published the prosecutor's memorandum to judge pertaining to Kerik's sentencing, “The defendant’s egotism and hubris were the tragic flaws that led him to commit the considerable number of crimes to which he ultimately pleaded guilty,” the memo said. Mr. Kerik “became a wealthy man by shamelessly exploiting the most horrific civilian tragedy in this nation’s history.”

Kerik is not the only man to try to "shamelessly exploiting the most horrific civilian tragedy in this nation’s history.” Rudy Giuliani ran for President in 2008 , most ly by promoting himself as Mr. 9/11. Former Vice President Dick Cheney, who recently admitted to authorizing torture is a welcome guest on the Sunday morning talk shows. His success has been so good he has been able to boost the career of his daughter Liz, whos e only creditials as a conservative leader seem to be she shares genetic information with the vice president. John Yoo, who wrote the legal memos authorizing the C.I.A. to torture prisoners of war, gives speeches on CSPAN, and former Cheney speechwriter Marc Thiessen, now has a weekly column at the Washington Post. Theissen recently went on a Catholic cable channel to justify Bush administration torture policies. Sarah Palin , the half-term former Governor of Alaska, wraps herself in the American flag and brags about how she would deal with terrorists in Iraq and Iran.

As shown above, Bernie Kerik is not the only person trying to exploit 9/11 and will to go to any lengths to do it, but so far he's the only man being sent to jail for committing crimes to satisfy his greed money and power.

Capitano Tedeschi

30

Quotations taken from: Giuliani, Rudolph W. (2002) Leadership. NY : Hyperion, c2002.

photo credit: Bernard Kerik when he was NY Police Commission retrieved Feb. 19, 2010 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:At_the_Landfill.jpg

Bernard Kerik fallen hero copyright Feb. 19, 2010 by Jamie Jacks

The cult of the cardboard Ronald Reagan

2010-02-18T23:54:00.000-08:00

To me right now feels like a winter
that has nopromise of the rebirth of spring
Now is the twilight of Empire,
It's as if we live at the intersection
of two acidifying and dying seas.

But unworried are some
sedentary, aging Americans
who hate gays, love guns, and believe
that everything in the bible
is the word of God and everything
in the bible is true.
That God will take care of his elect
and God's elect don't include
me or you.

Their thinking has been stunted
since elementary schoold
they are blind to how
their preferences and their perversity
are now shaping their consequences
the way a broken lathe
mars the once perfect steel.

Their every day lives
are lived apart
they are guided by the senile
cult of a cardboard Ronald Reagan
and the pernicious optimism
of the bizzarre propserity Gospel,
which says God is like a slot machine
prayers are like nickels and if
you believe and pray
the machine will finally pay off.

They love AMERICA,
That romanticized
Ozzie and Harriet world
where gas was 47 cent a gallon
Negroes and Mexicans were amusing and
kept their place.
But since this world doesn't exist
they try to recreate it wherever they wander
Sucking oil from hostile ground and
complaining that Swedish Wal-Marts have
high prices and marvelling that it
costs the equivalent of $17.40
to get a Whopper and Fries at
the only Burger King in Oslo Norway.

To perserve their illusions
they don't mind attaching some A-Rab's
testicles to a car battery.
That to them is justice, not torture.
That sex education is abstinence only because
sex is for procreation and only
sanctioned in man-woman marriage.

Don't waste their time
arguing different biological perspectives
or mention Anthropogenic global warming
whatever that is.
There is no environmental contamination
or embryonic abnormalities
leading to higher rates of infant mortality
amongst the so-called poor.
"Lazy is as Lazy does," they'd say.

It would be easy to dismiss them
save for the fact that when criminals get
political power disaster is there way.
In WWI the Germans used mustard gas
against the British, Americans, Beligians and French,
But sent Lenin to Russia to spread the virus of
Bolshevism.
The cult of the cardboard Ronald Reagan
The pervision of the Prosperity Gospel.
That is the new virus,
they are the new Bolsheviks.
Their way is human suicide.
That is what must be treated now.

Capitano Tedeschi

30 The cult of the cardboard Ronald Reagan copyright Feb. 19, 2010 by Jamie Jacks

War stories of my father

2010-02-18T23:41:00.000-08:00

One of my Facebook friends, Gary Funk, has a blog My War in Europe, that documents the testimony of his 88-year-old father, who was an Army infantryman in WWII and later served as part of the occupation forces.

I thought this was an excellent idea. My father was a Marine who served in China during the last days of WWII. I have some pictures, perhas some of his letters and memories of stories he told of that time. Though my father was a Marine, he was not one who wore his Marine Corps training proudly, the way most Marines do. But perhaps now is a good time to investigate his time in China, post his snap shots and do some research on Marine activities in China in the last days of the Second World War.

So what do I remember. Colorful medals, and a silver ring with the First Marine Division badge on it, which my dad gave my when I was five or six, 1959 or 1960. These treasures, I subsequently lost. Stories that he told of his service in China, some snapshots including one of an a Navajo code talker.

More to follow.

Capitano Tedeschi

30

Democrats, Republicans, Boobus Americanus and the National Debt.

2010-02-17T22:49:00.000-08:00

An article in the New York Times about the Federal Deficit was sad and difficult reading. The article, Party Gridlock in Washington Feeds Fear of a Debt Crisis, is yet another sad and sorry tale about the grim financial situation the country has allowed it self to fall into. According to the Times,

"After decades of warnings that budgetary profligacy, escalating health care costs and an aging population would lead to a day of fiscal reckoning, economists and the nation’s foreign creditors say that moment is approaching faster than expected, hastened by a deep recession that cost trillions of dollars in lost tax revenues and higher spending for safety-net programs."

We are rapidly reaching a fiscal tipping point. Entitlement programs and interest on the Federal Debt will soon make it impossible for the government to fund any type of program. This problem is further exacerbated by political gridlock in Washington. The Republicans feel they can return to power as long as they refuse to raise taxes. The Democrats are losing power because they refuse to take the radical social measures necessary to change, such as cutting entitlement benefits. Then there is "Boobus Americanus", the average dull-witted American, who wants wars, empire, Medicare, Social Security and a myriad of other governement services, yet refuses to pay for these services.

We are As the Roman historian Livy said “finally began the downward plunge which has brought us to the present time, when we can endure neither our vices or their cure” ). So Federal Government is rapidly approaching a point where it can neither endure the consequences of the rapidly increasing federal debt or effect some cure for it.

The solution requires compromise and the willingness to sacrifice the good of a particular faction for the good of the country. Will the Republicans or the Democrats or Boobus Americanus be willing to come together to make such sacrifices in the form of HIGHER TAXES AND LOWER GOVERNMENT BENEFITS?. I don't know.

Capitano Tedeschi

30

Making a desert and calling it the American Dream

2010-02-11T17:16:00.000-08:00

There is no going back
to the good-old-used-to-be.
The Ozzie & Harriet world
of my mythological youth

Beaver Cleaver on crack!
The idea stinks worse than
a roadkilled skunk!

I don't yearn for the misremembered days
I can't feel your pain.
The past you dream of is dead
That's a clear as if
it were written on a six-story billboard.

There is no virtue
in worshipping dead gods
whether they were carved on Easter Island,
dreamed up by Madison Ave., or enshrined on Mount Rushmore.

Do you actually believe that
we can continue are hydrocarbon-based
credit card-driven consumer culture
'til the end of time?
Towing the Beemer behind the RV
to visit the grandkids in Spokane,
is that what the American dream
is all about?

Some may think so
but the Brazilians, Chinese and Indians think not.
The sad truth waits
with the menacing barbians
who are part of the human traffic
crossing the Arizona border.

If the mythical past,
shallow as a text message
as malignant as a sex offender,
is dead, what then?

It's time to break the chain
of ordinary madness that dooms us
to an unsustainable future
It's time to stop making a desert
and calling it the American Dream

Can we do it? I don't know.
If we do, then we can
become straight "A" students
in the eyes of our ancestors.
We can create a new America.
A country that would make Washington, Lincoln,
Roosevelt, and Martin Luther King proud!

Capitano Tedeschi

Making a desert and calling it the American Dream, copyright Feb. 11, 2009 by Jamie Jacks

30

I am a taxpayer am I not?

2010-02-07T00:27:00.000-08:00

I am sitting safe and warm
in a Bakersfield Starbucks
12,000 miles from
Terrorist or Taliban

I am not troubled by
news of distant wars.
The rumblings of our empire
are not shown on the television I watch
or computer screen I read

I am a taxpayer am I not?
I support the troops.
We must do what it takes
to keep the Homeland secure.

So in 8 years,
I still don't know what
type of crater a Hellfire missile makes
after being fired from a Predator drone
I am told a six inch piece of shrapnel
can shear off a babies's leg
sharp as razors shrapnel pieces are.

I have not been told of
that terrible moment
when brave men realize
that the ammo has run out
and the choppers won't get there
in time.

Oh, I might in an odd moment
see a video of a funeral procession
in the online version of the local paper
Or a picture of an acquaintance
crying and holding the folded flag that
draped the coffin of his dead Marine son.
Or I might see a college student
with one metal leg, the other
lost to an Iraqi IED
I am told a six inch piece of shrapnel
can shear off a man's leg
sharp as razors shrapnel pieces are.

Seldom am I bothered
enough to ask why?
Or ask how?
Or ask what can we do to
fight these wars better?
Or what will it take to end them?
No leader has even bothered to ask me,
and I sure as hell haven't asked
What I can do to help?

I am sitting safe and warm
in Bakersfield Starbucks
12,000 miles from
Terrorist or Taliban

I am a taxpayer am I not?
I support the troops.
We must do what it takes
to keep the Homeland secure.

Capitano Tedeschi

30

I am a taxpayer am I not? copyright Feb 6, 2009 by Jamie Jacks

Alabama Senator Jeopardizes National Security in Order to Get Some Pork

2010-02-05T12:05:00.000-08:00

Theoretically, the Democratic Party, has sizeable majorities in both houses of Congress, and controls the White House. But sadly it is not the major party.

The dictionary defines "major party." A political party with enough electoral strength to gain control of the government or to effectively oppose the party in power." In the United States the Republican Party, a political minority controls the government.

A perfect example of this appeared today in the New York Times today. In The Caucus, the politics and government blog, there was a column "White House Blasts Shelby Hold on Nominees."

Apparently Sen. Shelby has placed "a blanket hold on dozens of President Obama's nominees. Senators can and do place holds on nominees, but according to the Times article Sen. Shelby's blanket hold "is considered rare."

This hold really has to do with political pork. "Senator Shelby placed the holds over concerns he’s raised about a proposed contract involving a tanker (Northrop Grumman has interests in Alabama); and over financing he’s sought for building a counterterrorism center in Alabama." the Times reported.

Marc Ambinder blogging in in Politics for The Atlantic writes, "if you're trying to really hammer the point home that the reason why it seems that your party can't govern or get results is due to factors beyond your control... you'd turn Richard Shelby's unprecedented blanket hold on 70 nominees for reasons no more pure than the preservations of two favorite programs into not only a talking point... but also a way of justifying recess appointments for these nominees."

Talking Points Memo editor Josh Marshall, describes Shelby's stunt,
"In this case, we're not dealing with a stand on partisanship or ideology or simple political shiv play which I guess can each be respected in their own place. This is more like just a stick up. Gimme my money and I'll give you your Senate back! Worse than a squeegee man and not much better than a bank robber, Shelby is shutting down the president's ability to appoint anyone to anything until he gets his way."

Sen. Shelby's stunt is just one of many examples of the dengeneration of American political culture due to corruption, false political ideology and rabid partisanship. According to Michael Winship in his column ''My State Legislature's Crazier than Yours. Oh Yeah?'', which was re-posted on Bill Moyer's PBS web site. "It’s all a nasty game that puts cronyism, partisan bickering, and corrupt, despicable self-interest above the needs of increasingly desperate citizens."

It's important to note, that such behavior has been exhibited by Democrats as well as Republicans. But Sen. Shelby's recent attempt to hold up Pres. Obama's appointments for posts in the Departments of Defense, State and Homeland Security so he can get make sure that Alabama gets a couple of Federal projects, is not only outrageous it jeopardizes the national security of the United States.

Capitano Tedeschi

30

Source: Official Photo of Sen. Shelby, http://shelby.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=PressRoom.OfficialPhoto

Copyright Feb. 5, 2009 by Jamie Jacks

San Joaquin Valley Sunset

2010-01-17T23:15:00.000-08:00

So often food, love, life
Whatever
By me devoured but not savored
Like going to all-you-can-eat buffet
The nothing is tasted, just consumed
And always left with a desire for
More

But today for one happy moment
Different
At the stop light
I saw the sunset
Of a warm Bakersfield winter day
The sun swallowed by
The mountains the Spanish called Temblors
Gray horse-hair clouds
Filtered just one band of golden light
and trapped it between
the gray clouds and now gray mountains

Red turned to green
The car ahead of me shuddered to life
My foot madly crushed the gas pedal
In my head there was a metallic roaring
Was it me or just the sound
Of my truck's engine?

Capitano Tedeschi

30

San Joaquin Valley Sunset copyright Jan. 17 2010 by Jamie Jacks

Way too much Facebook, and other ways of wasting too much time.

2010-01-12T14:17:00.000-08:00

Greetings Earthlings,

It has been awhile since I condescended to type anything for this venue. My apologies. Been spending way too much time on Facebook, virtually farming, running a virtual Mafia clan, being a virtual pirate or sending virtual cutsey hearts to all the 6,337 people who have made the mistake of allowing me to be their "friend" on Facebook.

To it's credit, Facebook allows me to post brief snippets of interesting things I find out on the internet, in much the same way Andrew Sullivan does in his blog. Sullivan is very good running brief focused comments on the news, videos and other information. He also knows how and when to write columns on news stories that evoke his interest.

When I want to write on this blog, I usually want to write long, complicated pieces on topics of interest. That's hard to for me to do. Hard for now, I hope not hard for the rest of the year. One of the purposes of this blog is to get me into the habit of writing everyday.

Having said that, I want to wish the three people who sometimes read this stuff, Happy New Years.

Capitano Tedeschi

Flying down to Buenos Aires

2009-12-09T22:21:00.000-08:00

Tonight was my last tango class of 2009 with Barbara Bates at Greenacres Community Center in Bakersfield. It was a wonderful class. I was pleased becaused when I started I didn't know if I could even dance for a half an hour because I have two left feet and two arthritic knees.

But I've done well. The tango is a difficult dance to learn, because it has so many intricate moves. I have been taking lessons since July and the main thing I've learned is I have a lot more work to do.

I have come a long way. During early lessons, it was all I could do to try to remember the initial steps and try not to step on my partner's toes. Tonight, I was dancing, sometimes moving gracefully to the music, sometimes not. But I am glad I stuck with and didn't give up. I also know that when I return from my trip, I will continue to take lesson and probably take ballroom classes as well.

Soon I leave for Buenos Aires. The flights to and from my destination will be 13-16 hours. So I'm not looking forward to flying all that way. But if I want to go to Argentina, a long flight is necessary. I'll be by myself in a strange city, I will have the help of a local tour guide and travel agent. I've studies travel guides and read up on my destination, but I don't have a very clear idea of what I want to do. I'll get a guided tour of the city and a ticket to one tango show. My Hotel is in the Retiro neighborhood of Buenos Aires, north of the city center. I plan to eat steak, and buy some tango shoes while I'm in Argentina. Other than that, I don't know.

All that remains is to pack for my trip, leave my dog Bella with a friend, take a cab to the Airport Bus of Bakersfield and then get on the plane.

Capitano Tedeschi

30

My garage door has been sabotaged

2009-12-08T11:26:00.000-08:00

Friends,

I know it sounds silly, but it always starts with the small things. This morning, I tried to open my garage door and it WOULDN'T WORK! I and by I, I mean we America need to get my garage door fixed, because the longer my garage door is inoperable the greater the danger that my country, our country will cease to be FREE!

"Why is that important?" you ask. First of all if you move the "F" from FREE and put it at the end of the word, you get REEF!. Reef. Think about it for a moment. The American Ship of State is sailing towards a REEF because secret agents from the Kenyan Province of Hawaii, have found a way to sabatoge my garage door. Why? you ask am I warning you about my garage door. "Capitano, the fate of the United States doesn't hinge on your malfunctioning garage door. It's no big thing."

No big thing? Re-arrange the letters of "No big thing" and you get the phrase "NOTHING GIB." Gib, Gib, that sounds familiar. I know a Robert Gibbs. Robert Gibbs. Who does he work for? No. No. It can't be. Yes, it's true. Robert Gibbs works for the White House!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And that's not NOTHING!

So you see friends, things--things have unforseen consequences. Some housefrau in Post World War I Vienna, refuses to buy a hand painted postcards from a wounded German WWI veteran named Adolf, the next thing you know the Wiemar Republic falls due to hyperinflation and before you can say "Gott im Himmel," I can't get my car out of my garage. If I can't get my car out of my garage, I can't buy 50-caliber ammunition for my sniper rifle and cat food. No freedom-loving American should be without ammunition or cat food.

I'M sorry...I'm all choked up. You see I love my country. Not only do I love my country, I need someone to fix my garage door. So if you know of anyone who can fix my garage door, please let me know. I need someone who'll show up, on time would be nice. The ability to actually fix a garage door would be miraculous.

So please send any recommendations to me. With your help, I can get my garage door fixed and together we can steer the American Ship of State away from the REEF and keep us FREE. God bless you and God bless our country!

Capitano Tedeschi

30

My garage door has been sabotaged copyright Dec. 8, 2009 by Jamie Jacks

Aging Tiger's Tail's a Draggin'

2009-11-24T23:27:00.000-08:00

Happy night. Found out that there was a beginning Tai Chi class being held tonight in the gym of Piar & Marrota Physical Therapy. It was a beginning class and I decided to go. Tai Chi is something I've been doing off and on, mostly off for nearly 28 years.

I taken martial arts classes, jujitsu, aikido, karate and tai chi over the years. But I never was ableto devote the time necessary to advance beyond beginner status. Of all the maritial arts I've studied, Tai Chi is the one I've practiced the most.

Sadly, I stopped practicing, forgot all the moves and really lost the benefit of a wonderful form of meditation and exercise. So tonight I went.

The class was hard. It was a Yang style Tai Chi class, but the moves felt different from the moves I've learned in other Yang classes. But once I started practicing, the muscles seemed to remember so much on their own.

So I am glad I went. I also think I'll keep going.

Capitano Tedeschi

30

P.S. Please forgive my laxity in not maintaining my blog. Been spending too much time on Face book, which is okay, but the funny thing is many of my Face book posts are short blog essays. So, I promise to do better in the future.

Il Capitano

Just a few remarks Solitary Argonaut,

2009-10-29T13:30:00.000-07:00

Just a few remarks on madness in 21st Century America

I was there, as giant step by giant step
we became mired in folly.
We are all blemished, yet
no one will be punished or stoned.

You can’t just peek into Pandora’s box
madness makes risk taking inevitable
thinking in terms of MUST!!!
and not MISTAKE

We did this to ourselves
while we raced the storm
Failing to practice moral deliberation
a perverse torture not to be indulged in

After excessive self-injury
Where are we?
Where should we go from here?
For our great wound is there a cure?

We are not better men nor
have we made a better world
No one wants apology or remorse
from death row inmates

Solitary Argonaut,

In high school,
when I imagined
the evolutionary calculus
of my future life

I saw myself as
a solitary Argonaut,
with the cruel eyes
of a Spanish Conquistador
a Pizzarro or a Pirate Prince
sailing across the turbulent
fluid of the Seven Seas

Ever avoiding apology or remorse
performing behavioral mind change
through brawls and
repeated display of inappropriate
practices and beliefs
my big business
pushing for the breakthrough
ever in the future search
perpetually justified bending the rules

That imagined future
turned out different.
My experience has been
collaspes, suffering, and madness
howling like a gut-shot dog
and praying to my momma.

In the dysphoria of personal reflection.
I find no great humor
in painful self disclosure
like the fact this emperor
always winds up needing
new clothes

Capitano Tedeschi

30

Just a few remarks, A solitary argonaut copyright Oct. 29, 2009 by Jamie Jacks

Matters Medical

2009-10-26T22:59:00.000-07:00

I have spent much of late September and most of October dealing with medical issues. Today, I am home sick with what may be some version of the flu. I don't know if it is the seasonal or the swine flu. I was lucky that when I felt myself feeling feverish I asked my doctor for a perscription for Tamiflu. Tamiflu does not lessen the flu per se, but it does amelioarate some of the symptons. I while I have not felt great, I haven't been devasted by the flu.

Since the H1N1 swine flu is very serious, I have made an effort to get a flu shot. There will be a seasonal flu vaccination on Friday at the knowledge factory. For the swine flu, I have contacted both my doctor and the Kern County Dept. of Public Health asking for vaccinations. I was told that there is no vaccine available in the County, but some should be available by the end of the month.

Friday, Oct. 23rd, I had my fourth MRI. My neurologists wants make sure that I still have a brain. I am kinda curious myself. This was my fourth MRI. I consider myself somewhat claustrophobic. The first imaging experience I requested a tranquilizer. The upside of being knocked out was that I was really mellow during the procedure. The downside of this was that one of my friends from church had to stay at doctor's office while was undergoing the procedure.

The next three MRIs have been done without anesthetic. The second was something of a triumph, I was able to meditate and make up songs to the electronic shrieking of the imaging machine. My second one without anesthesia was an ordeal. During that M.R.I. while I was essentially lashed to the table and instructed not to swallow, fidget or fart, I was able to meditate on a variety of things. And during the last 12 minutes when it was particularly grueling, I was able to recite Chapter 5 "How it works" and the Prayer of St. Francis. When it was over, I was able to joyfully say in no uncertain terms "Next time I'm taking the Valium." Hopefully though that won't be for another 2 or 3 years.

But when the time came to do another one, I was worried. I wasn't going to do the valium because, I didn't want spend the rest of the day doing nothing while waiting for the drug to wear off. But I hadn't been meditating or doing yoga and I was worried that I might not be able to lie still for the 45 minutes it would take to do the procedure.

There was no need to worry, this MRI was the easiest of all of them. The strapped my head into place, gave me an emergency button, I closed my eyes and they moved me into the bowel of the machine. I was happy to realize that once I closed my eyes, I moved into the infinite darkness that lies just behind my optic organs. It felt like a cathedral with a vaulted roof, a safe yet vast space and I felt that I could stay in that space as long as I kept my eyes closed and found ways to occupy my time.

I was lucky in two ways. The first bit of luck was musical. Thanks to blogger Andrew Sullivan, I've become acquainted with the music of he Pet Shop Boys, the English dance music duo. Their music is ideal play in one's head while one has to listen to the industrial screaming, screechings, poundings and whirring of the MRI machine. So I had a sound track and videos from the Pet Shop Boys (It's a sin and Pandemonium) going on in my head. The other bit of luck was that I would doze off during the procedure. I would fall asleep, sorta wake up, making sure to keep my eyes shut, try to make songs from the noise of the machine and then doze off again. Thanks to closed eyes, 80s dance music and sleepiness, time passed quickly and I was able to almost enjoy the process.

So sick with the flu, I turn to this blog. I talk about the upcoming flu season, which may be very severe. Get a flu shot, if you feel yourself getting sick, you might try to use Tamiflu. My latest MRI was enjoyable thanks to some nice bits of serendipity, the Pet Shop Boys and the fact that the procedure was scheduled during my usual nap time.

Il Capitano tours Bakersfield's newest Target

2009-10-17T22:07:00.000-07:00

A new Target Department store opened in Bakersfield's newest retail development site, the River Walk. The store opened on Oct. 11. Today I decided to visit the new store.

When I visited, it was a typical Saturday morning in Bakersfield. The weather was sunny, the parking lot was full and all sorts of people were gleefully entering the new Target. I was reminded about of a story by fantasy writer Fritz Leiber, Bazaar of the Bizarre. In that story, Leiber talks about a race of alien invaders called "the Devourers." Leiber describes them thus,"The Devourers are the most accomplished merchants in all the many universes-so accomplished they sell only trash." Once the Devourers set up shop on a new planet, they "sell and sell!-sell trash and take good money and even finer things in exchange."

Was Bakersfield newest Target, a front for an invasion of the Devourers? No, not really. The store is new, looks very and has all the usual products that you find in all the other Targets. This one's grocery section has been expanded to include fresh fruits, vegetables and meats, so it can take some customers away from Albertson's and Vons. It is filled with all the stuff that any red-blooded American consumer would want to buy. All the goods are reasonably priced, of average quality and made practically everywhere but the United States.

That was my attitude or prejudice as I walked through the new Target. In one instance, I saw three generations of women, mother, daughter and grandmother, pushing a shopping cart through the girls clothing section. The mother seemed to have the determined look of veteran bargain hunter, searching for the latest deal on Hannah Montana tops, shorts and matching sandals. The daughter and grandmother followed along as best they could also looking for deals. Judging from attitude of that family, not all of the shop-til-you-drop American consumers have cut up their credit cards or have been plunged into bankruptcy.

But the American consumer's day of being the engine of driving the world economy are probably over. The recent financial crash has made it clear that not only is the American consumer broke, but the money he uses to be cheap Asian manufactures is worth less and less every day. I have no doubt that Target, like Leiber's Devourers will soon be seeking new worlds to invade, by opening stores in places like Bangalore, India or Cheng Du, China.

It's easy to be smug and rail against consumerism. Fritz Leiber was doing that in 1963 when Bazaar of the Bizarre was first published. It also appears that a new Super Wal-Mart will also open in Bakersfield in the near future. But rest assure gentled reader, as a good union man, I will not set foot in the new Super Wal-Mart.

Capitano Tedeschi

30

Flying down to Buenos Aires Part III

2009-10-14T22:51:00.000-07:00

Went to tango class again tonight. Part of me didn't want to go. I had missed last week and I hadn't really practiced any dance steps during the past two weeks. I know that if you want to become good at something you have to practice it. But knowing that I should do it and getting myself to do it are two different things.

But once I got to the community center none of that mattered. The instructor didn't care whether I had practiced or not. All that mattered was learning the steps and moving gracefully to the music. Tonight, I was so happy to be there that I had a really great attitude, I would try anything and even though the steps were difficult, I kept telling myself that I could do them. So I had a lot of fun tonight and I am getting a better at doing the Tango.

The time when I start my journey is getting closer. Just two months to go. There'll be the ordeal of a 18 hour plane ride and the challenge of being a solitary traveller in a busy foreign metropolis. So I have a lot of work to do. But tonight, I held on to my dream of dancing the tango in Buenos Aires. I am not looking forward to the ordeal of airports, long lines and security hassles. But I am looking forward to going to a Milonga and watching the people dance.

Capitano Tedeschi

30

Health Care Reform Clears Baucus Committee

2009-10-13T22:49:00.000-07:00

Today, the Senate Finance Committee passed a health care reform bill crafted by Montana Senator Max Baucus. The vote was almost along party line with Democratic Senators voting for the bill and all the Republicans except Maine's Olympia Snow voting against it.

According to the New York Times, the Baucus bill will now be reconciled with a more liberal bill passed by the Senate's Health Education Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee. Health care reform then must pass the Senate and then reconciled with any bills passed by the House of Representatives.

The battle for health care reform has been long and hard. The debate has at times been loud, angry and sometimes bizzarre. Still, health care reform moves forward. Once the reform bill is signed by the Senate, it can be modified and changed to meet the changing needs of the nation. I hope that the Health Care Reform bill will be like The Civil Rights Act of 1964. The Civil Rights Act has been amended several times since it was first became law.

It is too early to predict the future of any health care reform bill passed by Congress in the forth coming year. There is still a lot of work to be done on the bill, and there is still a lot of work that we as citizens must do to make sure that when its passed, it will be the start of true health care reform. It is important to remember that health care is an important social problem, but there are other more difficult problems that must be dealt with as well, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, an energy bill, entitlement reform and restoring the Republic to a sound financial footing by reduing the federal deficit.

If you are a supporter of health care reform, today can be a day of celebration, the Baucus Bill has made it out of the Senate Finance Committee. It is not yet law. More civic work must be done.

Capitano Tedeschi

30

President Obama (& America) win the Nobel Prize

2009-10-10T22:39:00.000-07:00

I was humbled and proud when I heard the announcement that the Nobel Prize Committee had awarded this year's Nobel Peace Prize to President Obama.

It was a surprise. While Obama's rhetoric during the campaign and at times when he has been president has soared, his list of accomplishments 9 months into his presidency have been small. It is not easy trying to change the nature and direction of a country like a America.

The reasons for Obama's lack of progress in realizing many of his campaign promises are numerous and complicated. He ordered the closing of the Guantanamo Bay detention center, but that has become mired in difficulties regarding the legal status of many of the inmates and the reluctance of Americans and other countries to house or allow the return of many of those inmates. He has done nothing to end the war in Iraq, and has been content to follow the Status of Forces agreement signed by the Bush Administration. On the domestic front the president proposal's for reform of health care and of the financial services industry have met fierce and determined opposition from what is left of the Republican Party and intense lobbying from insurance companies and the financial services industry.

In accepting the award the President has shown that while he is grateful for the award it may appear that the award is premature. Critics on both the right and the left have said that the President's effort to change America have borne little fruit.

The critcs have a valid point. But there is an important counter argument. The American people elected the president and we the people ( or most of us anyway) want to change America's course. After 30 years of Reaganism and eight years of the Cheney/Bush junta much work needs to be done to return the country to its founding proposition that all men are created equal and that all are entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

I look at the Peace Prize as an encouragement. The Nobel Committee is acknowledging our effort to change and encouraging to continue on this long difficult path. Obama and his supporters have talked the talk regarding changing America, and some in the world find such talk refreshing after the last eight years of arrogance, stupidity and folly on both the world and domestic stage. But it is up to us to continue working for change, to end the failed wars in Iraq and sadly Afghanistan, reduce our consumption of fossil fuels and our emmission of greenhouse gases, and finally create an America whose economy and political system is sustainable and innovative for many decades to come. The damage done by the narcissistic ideology of Reaganism and of the Cheney/Bush administration will not be corrected in a few months, it will take years.

Though it may take many years to complete America's metamorphosis, it is work that is worth doing. The sooner we start, the sooner we'll be done. The award of the Peace Prize to President Obama can be considered a sign the world appreciates our desire to change. It is up to us to fulfill the promise that we made to ourselves when we elected President Obama in November of 2008. Yes we can!

Medical Procedures

2009-09-30T00:49:00.000-07:00

Tonsilectomy 1960

I was in 1st Grade, when I had tonsillitis
I was taken to old Providence Hospital
In Kansas City Kansas
Where I was born
7up with ice cubes that
they made drink though it burned
like fire going down my throat.

I fell asleep
as they took
on the gurney,
The attendant told my
Mother I had fallen asleep
I fell asleep so they wouldn't
Give me a shot.

Arthoscopy 1987

The day I hurt my knee,
I asked her to marry me
A month before my wedding
They shaved cartiledge from
My right knee
You may have arthritis later
In your life my doctor said.
My fiancée took me home
Where I drank chicken broth
And took darvocetts for pain.
As I write this my right knee hurts
She has remarried and has a 5 year old child

Endoscopy 1994

What can I say,
I had a lot of job stress at work
My brother was dying of
Incurable heart disease
And stomach acid would keep me up
Til the middle of the night
The Indian Doctor put me under
Yelled at his nurse
After the procedure was over,
My throat was sore and
I had a hietal hernia and was lactose intolerant
A few days later, my brother went code blue
And literally died before my parents eyes.
No parent should ever have
To live through the loss of a child
My mother later said.

Colonopscopy 2004

I was suffering from rectal itch
It was the same Indian doctor
He had mellowed and didn't
Yell at nurses now.
I did the "colon cleanse"
48 hours of shit happens
and happens and happens
after the ordeal
my friend Sam took me home
The doctor recommended I take
Metamucil for the rectal itch.
And get another colonopscopy in 5 years
Two months later I had my first blood clot
A year later, the first symptoms of MS

Endoscopy and Colonopscopy 2009

It was a new colon cleanse
That lasted only 36 hours.
I lay on the gurney and tried
To sleep wishing at least that
The ghost of my mother was
Walking me down the hall
To the procedure room
Where a different Indian Doctor
Shove a tube down my throat
And up my toucus
I could see on TV the program
I called up Jamie's colon
It wasn't all that fascinating
As the demorral wore off
The different Indian Doctor
Told me I had ulcers
Gave me a scrip
And rushed off to grab a sandwich
Or a game of golf.
He also told me he'd see me again
In one month and again
In five years.
I can,
Hardly wait.

Capitano Tedeschi

30

Medical Procedures copyright Sept. 30, 2009 by Jamie Jacks

Can't abide a sloppy man

2009-09-22T00:18:00.000-07:00

Neat, that's how he's always looked
His momma always made sure
His hair was combed, his shirt was pressed
"Can't abide a sloppy man," she'd always say.

Marines made him neat as well, tougher too.
Korea was hell but when he was on
R&R in Japan, his boots and belt buckle
always gleamed.

Working in the Midway Sunset oilfield
Was hot, dirty and hard.
But he never was sloppy.
In the oilfields, like Korea, sloppy got you killed

He looks dapper today
Straw cowboy hat
Bolo tie with the blue turquoise slide
starched plaid shirt and pressed khaki pants.

Riding his power scooter
round the block by the assisted living facility
no need to change the habits of lifetime.
Never was sloppy. Sloppy gets you killed

Capitano Tedeschi

30

Can't abide a sloppy man copyright Sept. 22, 2009 by Jamie Jacks

El Corazon Del Valle San Joaquin

2009-09-19T18:05:00.000-07:00

El Corazon Del Valle San Joaquin

For Teresa Anderson (died Jan. 9, 2006).

Fox

The San Joaquin Kit Fox
is like a magician
Kit foxes can make themselves disappear
Once I saw a kit fox with a kitten
in its mouth trotting away
from a house on the edge of Bakersfield
one minute it was there
next it just disappeared
invisible amongst the sage and dessicated grass

Owl

The burrowing owl
pretends to be wise
he stands outside his borrow
close to the Kern River Bike Path
by the shores of Lake Truxtun
fishermen, joggers, walkers, and cyclists
all pass by
None of them bother or frighten him
At night he soars above the parking lots
at the edge of the Market Place shopping center
he listens for the squeal of the mouse
and then he swoops
no more squealing just the flapping
of his wings.
during the day he ignores
the people on the bike path
It is not night
they are not mice
Did I not say the burrowing owl
pretends to be wise?

Grizzly Bear

The California Grizzly Bear is history.
The last one in Kern County
was killed in 1898.
But the grizzly bears once were everywhere
Places names bear this out
Bear Mountain, Big Bear, Los Osos
They ruled California before man first came
They ruled California when man came
because Indians' flint arrows and small bows
could not kill all of them.
But when the Spaniards and the Americans came
with their big bore muskets
The California Grizzly was doomed.
They survive in Canada and Alaska
There have been rumors
that grizzlies have been sighted
in the Sierras of northern California.
But who, who I ask you,
believes rumors?

Ernesto

Ernesto, (Call me Ernie) is a retired
PG & E engineer.
His grandparents came from Mexico
in 1910 refugees from the civil war
His father and mother picked grapes
in Delano, except during the strike.
He spends his morning in Starbucks
talking to his friends, he has many.
Today he sits alone talking on his cell phone
to his youngest daughter,
a student at CSU San Francisco.
I eavesdrop on his side of the conversation.
"What do you mean you want to quit college?"
"Where you gonna live?"
"No you ain't living with me.
"I got no room in my house for a college dropout!"
End of conversation.

All

Fox, owl, bear, and man
we live in this land, sometimes we share it.
Mostly we share the bad,
the heat, lack of rain, smoggy air, pesticides,
and poverty.
Making do. Trying to do better
than eat, sleep, mate, and survive
Doing better ain't easy,
but some how it gets done.

Capitano Tedeschi

30

El Corazon Del Valle copyright Sept. 19, 2009 by Jamie Jacks

Rain Maker

2009-09-15T22:57:00.000-07:00

Rain Maker

It is getting dark
The sun has set,
All that is left of the day is
A yellow band of light
A ribbon hovering
Just above the peaks of the mountains
Of the Temblors and the Coast Range
Like a wind blown piece of silk

I sit on a bus bench, that is on an edge
Of the city of Bakersfield
Drinking ice water from a sports bottle
My dog lies behind me
Licking her paws.
In the distance I see lights starting
To blink a reddish yellow
The lights are people in houses
In Fellows, Mariposa and Taft.
Lights of pumping units and
Transformer stations
Strung like party lights
Along the foothills of this mountainous bowl
That rings the Southern San Joaquin Valley.

Seven years I have lived
One half mile from this bus bench
And this is the first time
I have come with my dog
To contemplate the sunset
So I sit as twilight becomes
Evening and a cool summer night begins.

Finally it is time for me and my dog
To head home.
I pour my remaining water out as a libation
Thank God for the blessing and the gift of rain
I pray for rain for this drought stricken valley
Cars rush by.
kids racing past the high School
Adults in SUV's on some important errand
I don't expect my prayer to be answered
Miracles happen all round me
Provided I have eyes to see
I don't need my prayer to be answered.
But I guess, one has to pray for something.

Capitano Tedeschi

30

Rain Maker copyright Sept. 15, 2009, by Jamie Jacks

Small Price That, First Day of Classes

2009-09-15T00:22:00.000-07:00

Small Price That

He came into the University library
A youngish man in his mid-twenties
With an artificial lower left leg
I wondered where he had fought
Afghanistan, probably Iraq.

George W. Bush, and his dreams of Empire
We'd be welcomed as liberators Cheney said
We were, but then welcomed with land mines
And roadside bombs.
The Decider decided to get the man
Who tried to kill his daddy
Got him too

Safe now in his Dallas suburb
The Decider still no regrets.
It's too bad that
This someone, is one thousands of someones
who lost his lower left leg to get Saddam.
Small price that.

First day of classes

They come
for a different kind of knowing
To sign on, watch a video, or email
An invisible professor.
They want their class schedules and
Online course passwords
They come .
With different needs
Seldom are there questions
That I can answer

Above my empty, aching head,
Knowledge lies filed
And is waiting
Theories of poetry when written poetry
When poetry was formed
Proper prayers to cure the plague
from the 14th Century
The letters of a Union soldier
From an Iowa Regiment
Computer languages
and the proper way for a nurse
to conduct an MRI

Meanwhile the call centers in Bangalore
Have thousands solving all our computer problems
In China thousands of engineers work
60 hours a week for $600 a month
designing future electric cars
as for the new students
they wander in
I sigh,
Against such relentless competion
There is so little
I can give them

Capitano Tedeschi

30

Small Price That, First Day of Classes copyright Sept. 14, 2009 by Jamie Jacks

Defying the Sun, Osama Bin Laden & Like a Beggar

2009-09-12T21:56:00.000-07:00

Defying the sun

Today I did defy the sun.
It was 98 degrees and air was
So polluted that it can
make lungs feel like you’re
just huffed exhaust fumes
from the tail pipe of a Hummer

I soaked my jersey and cycling cap
in water before the ride
I rode slowly on shady back streets
That had little traffic.

The sun was setting and I pedaled from
shady spot to shady spot
until my cycling was done

I came home to all those
wonderful rewards,
a cool drink of water
a shower that rinses away
both care and sweat
and then I laid naked on clean sheets
While the cool air of the fan
evaporated the remaining moisture from my body.
I closed my eyes and rested

I have traveled the world
And drunk deep
searching for release
from lonliness, pain and regret.
All my efforts to find oblivion only
manufactured more pain and misery.
During all those sad times,
I never--not never

imagined such sweet pleasures
as a cool drink, a quick shower.
a nap beside a whispering fan.

Much is wrong with me
but cycling
even in the heat of a smoggy summer day
cures some of that

Osama Bin Laden

He spends his days
A hunted man
In a safe house in Pakistan
Drinking tea, surfing the internet
Raising his children
Fondling his wives

Some day he’ll die
Though I doubt that
No American missile
Will kill him

But on that day
In the slums of Cairo
And the streets of Karachi,
He will be celebrated
As the first great Military genius
Of the 21^st Century.

With just 4 jet liners
And 20 men,
He set in motion the
Chain of events
Which has brought America,
the greatest
Nation of the 20^st Century
To the brink of destruction

Of course he was lucky
George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and
Donald Rumsfeld were his enemies

Like a Beggar

Why do I bother with you?
Like a beggar pretending to be deaf
Or a deaf man pretending to be a beggar
I just stand here waving my hands
As if the waving had meaning.

But in the end all there is
Is my need.
And who really needs that?

You reply with a shake of your head
I'd have to be blind not to know
What that means.

Capitano Tedeschi

30

Defying the Sun, Osama Bin Laden & Like a Beggar copyright Sept. 12, 2009 by Jamie Jacks

Spare Change & Arise Tim McVeigh

2009-09-01T22:17:00.000-07:00

Spare Change We Can Believe In

The bum
outside the bookstore
Asks for spare change
probably to buy crank or Ripple

Would he be here
if he had had access to
affordable mental health care?
I don’t give him
Any spare change
either.

Arise Tim McVeigh!!!

A Kenyan Muslim is president
Liberals, those Socialist, Nazi, Commie, Fags
run my country
in eight months
they have destroyed America
with their false promises
of affordable health care
And their unspoken threats to
seize our guns.

The body of Oklahoma City bomber
Timothy McVeigh moulders
in some unmarked grave.
His soul yearns to rent a Ryder truck
and park it outside
an inner city daycare center
His proud soul yearns
to march on
America awake!!!!!!!!.

Capitano Tedeschi

Spare Change & Arise Tim McVeigh copyright Sept. 1, 2009 by Jamie Jacks

Eco-Lover's Lament

2009-08-25T07:41:00.000-07:00

In Los Angeles,
Angry Green Girl
And her girlfriends
Wearing skimpy green
thong bikinis
Are giving a “Green, Free Car Wash”
To anyone driving a hybrid.
Alas, I have no Prius.
In this dry, desolate, and dying world
Is there no end to my longing?

Capitano Tedeschi

30

Eco-Lover's Lament copyright Aug. 25, 2009 by Jamie Jacks

McCarthy Follows Party Line on Health Care

2009-08-11T14:27:00.001-07:00

Why is Rep. Kevin McCarthy smiling? Because as a congressman, he has government sponsored health insurance.

On June 18, 2009, I received a letter from my health insurance company. It's not a letter someone with a chronic medical condition wants to receive,

"We reviewed your request to obtain Copaxone Kit under your plan. As we informed your doctor, we are unable to approve your request for the following reason, coverage is proved where therapy can preserve function and provide the patient benefit in performing activities of daily living. The information provided by your prescriber indicates that your use of this medication does not meet this requirement for coverage."

The letter, a portion of which was quoted above, was one part of a drama that started on June 18, 2009, when the company that manages perscriptions for the state of California refused to refill my perscription for Copaxone. An unkown and unnamed insurance company bureaucrat refused to refill a perscription for a medication that I need and gave me no reason except that my doctor did not answer their questions correctly. I was also told I had TWO HOURS!!! to call my doctor, get him to call the insurance company and then answer their question correctly (I asked what questions) but the operator refused to say. If I didn't get that done by the end of the business day, I would have to appeal the insurer's decision.

Needless to say, I was angry and in turmoil. I wrote about my concerns on my Facebook page."Having to argue with my insurance company regarding refill of medication. Told I had little more than 2 hours to get my to doctor to call their pharmicist for "prior authorization." This happens, but it is very vexing. Single payer health care I'm for it!" By the end of the week, my doctor called the insurance company, answered their bullshit questions correctly and got my perscription refilled.

But, I am still angry about because for five days my health was hostage to the whim of a FACELESS, NAMELESS, INSURANCE COMPANY BUREAUCRAT, whose job is to deny claims for no apparent reason. I discovered there is a reason, but first I'd like to talk about health care reform, Congressman Kevin McCarthy's stance on health care reform, and the fact that insurance companies are using "recission" to deny claims to policy holders who make the mistake of getting sick.

The 24/7 news outlets have been giving a great deal of coverage to health care reform and the bizarre reactions of certain segments of the American population. A lot of news coverage has been given to one of the more bizarre segments of the bizzarre population, the people who are protesting by participating in town hall mobs. Many of these people are so afraid that President Obama is the re-incarnation of Adolf Hitler, that they have no problem using Hitlerian tactics to disrupt important civic discussion on health when they are held by Democrats or moderate Republicans (Do they still exist?).

Do moderate Republicans still exist? I guess so, I mean supposedly Kern County Republican Kevin McCarthy is a moderate Republican. In the past, that description used to be given to men like Dwight Eisenhower or Abraham Lincoln. Unfortunately, I am beginning to believe that Rep. McCarthy is starting to flirt with the dark side of the Republican party. I have on occasion seen in on National Television basking in the dolorous glow of House Minority Leader John Boehner's fake tan. He is also beginning to quote the inane policy pronouncements of Minority Whip Eric Cantor on his congressional web site.

I mention Rep. McCarthy because on Thursday Aug. 6, 2009, I made the mistake of spending 15 minutes listening to Rep. McCarthy, R-Bakersfield conduct a "telephone town hall" on health care. It was sad to hear him reguritate the Republican talking points on health care, Government health care bad, Nancy Pelosi bad and so-on. He didn't actually lie, but he misrepresented the truth. If I had wanted that kind of crap, I would have watched Fox News. If you want to know the depth of Congressman McCarthy's views on health care you can visit his web site. It is the usual stuff, of letting the market set prices and give everyone, especially the rich a tax cut, and curbing ambulance chasers who are hounding well-heeled quacks out of the medical profession,

We must ensure that the quality of American health care received by our patients remains the best in the world. Doctors, not Washington bureaucrats, should make decisions about your health. Market-based solutions serve our families' freedom to choose their best health care option at an affordable price. Common-sense tax relief and lawsuit abuse reform can help work towards the goal that all Americans should be able to afford their own health care plan that meets their own unique needs.

It's the typical Republican health care boiler plate. Some of it might even be worthwhile. One interesting thing is the fact is that no one is talking about insurance companies issuing policies and then refusing to pay legitimate claims. Author Peter Gosselin in an interview on PBS' Tavis Smiley on June 24, 2008, had this to say about a woman named Deborah Potter who made the mistake of getting sick.

And then Deborah Potter gets diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, and she couldn't collect on the very policy that she'd been selling to people. The company simply denied her claims and denied them for three and a half years, and it took this insurance insider three and a half years, the hiring of a lawyer, and an "L.A. Times" reporter writing a long story about it to get her benefits turned on.

Tavis: What do you make of that?

Gosselin: Well, the moral I draw from it, I try to step back from these stories of individual people and try to draw the broader moral. Her benefits in the case of that policy are governed by a single federal law. All of our benefits that we get from our employers are governed by a single federal law. It's called ERISA, and ERISA was meant by its authors, its congressional authors, to protect employee benefits. And we know that because it says so right in the preamble of the law.

But over the last generation, the Supreme Court and increasingly conservative federal appeals courts have rendered a series of decisions that have basically flipped the law on its head, making it easier for employers, for insurance companies, and for benefit administrators to deny people like Deborah Potter her benefits.

Deborah Potter was denied benefits due to an insurance company practice called "recissions." According to Gosselin in his book Highwire recissions are a method where, "insurers sold policies, collected premiums, and even sometimes paid small claims. But instead of carefully of carefully scrutinizing an applicant in advance, the insurer would wait until a policyholder filed a big claim, then sometimes cancel the policy and refuse to pay."

The result, according to Gosselin is that "It is hard to overstate how using recission except in the rarest of instances turns the very logic of insurance on its head." It's a great business, sell policies, collect premimums and then when the bills arrive stiff the poor schmuck who bought the policy in the first place. Bernie Madoff should have run an insurance company he'd be a free man today.

How good a business is it? McClatchy commentator Joe Galloway give us a glimpse in an Aug. 7, 2009, editorial on the McClatchy web site,

It's because those same corporations have, in just one decade, driven their profits and overhead (hiring those lobbyists and buying those congressional critters and building their fleets of private jets) from 5 percent to nearly 20 percent. In other words, the corporate bite has gone from 5 cents of every dollar paid in premiums to 20 cents of every premium dollar. It's good old unregulated American greed of the same stripe that drove this country into its current economic meltdown. Wall Street loves these guys.

The key question of the health care debate is simple, do we continue the status quo, or do we try to develop something better? No system will be perfect and there may be cost increases and rationing of care. Employer sponsored health insurance is going the way of the defined benefit pension. According to Peter Gosselin, insurance companies can not be trusted to provided a fair and reliable private option. Insurers will also refuse to allow all-Americans into a health insurance risk groups. Whether we like it or not the government may have to step in,

"Insurers cannot be counted on to assemble those groups on their own; the financial incentives to take the healthy and avoid the sick are simply too great. If employers are no longer to play the role they have traditionally played of assembling these groups, there is only one alternative--government. Unwelcome as many Americans may find the idea of goverment playing a bigger role in health care--and as much as we may object on philosophical and other grounds--we must not fool ourselves into believing there is some simple alternative."

Congressman McCarthy and many Republicans and some Democrats are asking you to trust them and oppose President Obama's efforts to achieve health care reform. If you like the status quo, do nothing. Oh, and do not get sick. Because if you get sick you will probably receive a letter refusing to pay for treatments you thought your insurance company would cover. I received such a letter, have you? If you haven't received such a letter, can trust the Republicans to carry out adequate health care reform?

I don't.

Capitano Tedeschi

30

Photo of Congressman Kevin McCarthy source: http://kevinmccarthy.house.gov/showpage.asp?ID=62

Source for quotations from Peter Gosselin, High wire : the precarious financial lives of American families. Peter Gosselin. NY : Basic Books, c2008.

McCarthy Follows Party Line On Health Care, copyright Aug 11, 2009 by Jamie Jacks.

The Honduran Political Crisis

2009-08-05T17:07:00.000-07:00

What is Honduras to me? Or, me to Honduras? Those are two interesting questions. I have a Facebook friend who does mission work in Honduras, and she has been writing passionately about Honduras on Facebook. I admire her passion and her desire for social justice in that Central American country, so I decided to do some research.

In case you didn't know it, Honduras is the middle of a political and social crisis. Political and social crises in Honduras are fairly common. It is one of the poorest countries in the world. The United States is its major trading partner. Honduras exports bananas, clothing, illegal immigrants and drugs.

According to the CIA World Factbook,

Honduras, the second poorest country in Central America, has an extraordinarily unequal distribution of income and high unemployment. The economy relies heavily on a narrow range of exports, notably bananas and coffee, making it vulnerable to natural disasters and shifts in commodity prices; however, investments in the maquila and non-traditional export sectors are slowly diversifying the economy. Economic growth remains dependent on the US economy its largest trading partner, and will decline in 2009 as a result of reduction in export demand and tightening global credit markets.

Most Americans can't spell Honduras and most couldn't place it on a map. Since I had five years of Spanish in high school, my ignorance is less. Capital: Tegucigalpa. I know it fought a senseless little war with El Salvador (The Soccer War) in the late 1960s. It was one of our staging points for Reagan's dirty war against the Ortega Regime in Nicarauga and it was the place where KMart's Kathie Lee Gifford line of clothing was manufactured in sweatshops using child labor. (Bit of an embarassment that) I imagine the sweatshops are still there and indigenous people are still being exploited.

So now that I've told you a little bit about Honduras, I will describe, the current political crisis, the international and national reactions to the crisis and the interesting way that certain conservative political constituencies have attempted to use the crisis to embarass the United States and the Obama administration.

The current political crisis Honduras has been a democracy, but at best a fragile one. Its current president, Manuel (Mel) Zelaya, was elected as a conservative in 2005. During the last couple of years he has allied himself with leftist and populist elements in the country. Internationally, he has also embraced the Latin American brand of socialism expoused by Hugo Chavez of Venezuela. Like Chavez, Zelaya wanted to run Honduras beyond the end of his 2009 term. So he tried to hold a plebescite to allow him to continue past Nov. 2009.

Zelayas attempt to stay in power, caused a political firestorm. The Honduran Supreme Court declared his actions illegal. The Army rousted him out of bed and flew him to Nicaragua. He was replaced by Congressional Leader Roberto Micheletti. International reaction to Zelaya's ouster was swift and fairly consistent. The Obama Administration joined the European Union and the rest of the world in labeling Zelayas ouster as a coup and insisting that President Zelaya be allowed to return to Honduras and finish his Presidencial term. The Obama administration also encouraged both sides to negotiate a compromise under the auspices of Costa Rican President Oscar Arias.

I became aware of the crisis when my Facebook friend posted this op-ed by current Honduran President Roberto Micheletti in op-ed in the WSJ

One of America’s most loyal Latin American allies—Honduras—has been in the midst of a constitutional crisis that threatens its democracy. Sadly, key undisputed facts regarding the crisis have often been ignored by America’s leaders, at least during the earliest days of the crisis.

The op-ed made me curious, because while the Wall Street Journal is a great place for news regarding investment, its editorial page has become the mouth piece for American right wingers.
Once I started looking, I found considerable Right-wing support for coup Magazines, the National Review and the Weekly Standard support the Micheletti government and criticized the Obama administration for failing support the ouster of Zelaya.

Soon some Republican members of Congress were beginning to express dismay at the Washington’s lack of support for Micheletti. On July 24, Congressman Connie Mack of R-Florida posted an editorial in Human Events, castigating Secretary of State Hilary Clinton for supporting negotiations conducted by Pres. Arias.

Day after day, the message from the State Department has been that we should let the negotiators negotiate and ultimately accept the outcome from the Arias talks. But in what seems to be Secretary Clinton’s first conversation with Honduran President Roberto Micheletti since the removal of Mr. Manuel Zelaya, Secretary Clinton joined the likes of Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez and other leaders in the region and warned President Micheletti of serious consequences if he did not back down and allow Mr. Zelaya to return to power.

According to Congressman Mack, supporting negotiations was tantamount to letting the terrorists win,

“Our nation’s legitimacy as the leader of the free world comes into question when we accept the Administration’s argument that by joining the thugocrats, we neutralize their anti-American rhetoric and leave them deflated and without an enemy to fight.”

Mack then went down to Honduras to investigate the political crisis first hand. After returning from Honduras, Mack denounced the administration’s cancelling the visas of four Honduran diplomats.

“Having returned from a trip to Honduras this past weekend where I met with President Micheletti, Members of the National Congress, the Supreme Court President, Honduran and American businessmen, and human rights organizations, it is clear that the Honduran people want a peaceful, lawful resolution to the upheaval. They don’t want the United States to cut off aid to their country. They don’t want our country to pull diplomatic visas. And they don’t want us to stand with the “thugocrats” of the Western Hemisphere like Hugo Chavez.

“The Honduran people, in their fight for freedom from the tyranny of Manuel Zelaya, have earned our support and deserve to have the United States stand with them as they seek freedom and democracy for their country.”

Mack is not the only congressional Republican to criticize or express concern regarding the Administration’s handling of the Honduras’ current political crisis. Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Indiana) and Jim DeMint (R-South Carolina) have also shared their concerns with the State Department.

The Republican view point is wrong headed according to a July 23, 2009, article in the Economist

This argument is short-sighted and wrong. Mr Zelaya’s many faults did not justify his early-morning arrest and summary deportation. Coups are bad whatever the political colour of their victims. That is a lesson Latin America learned the hard way. Any election held under Mr Micheletti will be seen by many as illegitimate. But it is similarly wrongheaded to seek to reverse the coup through violence, as Mr Zelaya, egged on by Mr Chávez, seems to wish. The evidence suggests that only about one Honduran in three supports Mr Zelaya.

While the right-wing media and certain Republican members of Congress, condemn the Obama Administration for not supporting acting President Micheletti and blessing the coup, other voices are examining the implications of the long-term damage that endorsing the coup could cause.
Kevin Casas-Zamora, a Fellow at the Brooking Institution took a dimmer view of the view of the coup. The intervention by the military was illegal and wrong.

Now the Honduran military have responded in kind: an illegal referendum has met an illegal military intervention, with the avowed intention of protecting the constitution. Moreover, as has been so often the case, this intervention has been called for and celebrated by Zelaya’s civilian opponents. For the past week, the Honduran Congress has waxed lyrical about the armed forces as the guarantors of the constitution, a disturbing notion in Latin America. When we hear that, we can expect the worst. And the worst has happened. At the very least, we are witnessing in Honduras the return of the sad role of the military as the ultimate referee in the political conflicts amongst the civilian leadership, a huge step back in the consolidation of democracy.

The U.S. has been spending a great deal of time and our tax dollars to provide a varity of of aid to Honduras. Some of that aid has been dedicated to improving the quality of the Honduran government. The U.S. has been working with Honduran officials trying to improve the quality of their government. Aid has been directed to improving the quality of government officials. Better government will allow the Honduran government to improve the quality of life of its people, reduce poverty and foster real economic growth. According the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) it has been ,

working to strengthen the transparency, accountability, and responsiveness of local governments; increase civil society participation in the oversight of public funds and local decision-making; support free and fair elections; and promote civic education among Honduran youth. USAID promotes democracy and governance in Honduras primarily through decentralization (the transfer of responsibility and resources from the central government to the local governments) to increase participation in local decision making.

To its credit, Honduras has been run by civilians and not the military for nearly 20 years. The use of soldiers to end the coup can be seen as a bad omen. No one wants the military to seize power. Some supporters of the coup said the soldiers were acting lawfully when the escorted President Zelaya to Nicaragua. But still having the military topple the current president is not in the best long-term interest of Honduran democracy.

Recognizing the Micheletti government would also play into the hands of Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua. Zelaya was attempting to use the populist left-wing ideas exposed by Chavez to maintain his hold on power. The Obama Administration appears to have been acting wisely when it refused to recognize the coup and encouraging negoitiations mediated by Oscar Arias.

According to the July 28 article in the Miami Herald, a balanced, patient approach to the crisis has forced Mr. Zelaya depend on Washington and has limited Hugo Chavez to bellicose posturing,

Chavez has limited his action to calling for Hondurans to rise up to reinstate Zelaya, even as pro-Zelaya protests have been small. Instead, the Venezuelan president has been a talkative bystander, calling coup leaders "gorillas" and referring to Micheletti as "Goriletti."
This is not the role Chavez imagined for himself. In a decade in office, he has used his nation's oil wealth and his vision of a united continent free of "U.S. imperialism" to cultivate a leadership role beyond Venezuela's borders.

At the moment, Chavez cannot accuse the United States of preaching the benefits of democracy in one hand while supporting the overthrow of the democratically-elected Zelaya. This would give Hugo Chavez an opportunity and justification to meddle further in Honduran politics.

Conclusion,

As of today, not much has changed. Zelaya appears to be slowly running out of time and political options. The Micheletti government benefits by delaying his return and since the United States is still encouraging both sides to negotiate a solution, while holding the threat of harsher economic and political sanctions. The Obama's administration's demand that both parties negotiate a settlement will probably lead to a non-voilent transition of power, and a new election.

But what of the Honduran people? It appears that the current political crisis is just another in a long line of politcal crises. Most Hondurans don't have much faith in their government or their politicians. Until the country's chronic poverty and economic problems are solved it will not matter too much who runs the country. Politicians like Micheletti and Zelaya are just mirror images of one another. Roger Marin Neda, in a July 6, 2009, editorial "Who Cares About Zelaya?" described the political apathy of many Hondurans,

After almost 30 years of formal democracy, Julia, like most Hondurans, has lost all trust in politicians. While we have had basic liberties and precarious growth, our leaders have thoroughly failed to ease this country’s poverty and longstanding social divide. For these reasons, many Hondurans are apathetic about politicians — and politics in general.

According to Marin Neda, nothing will change until the politicians change,

Mr. Zelaya may or may not return to serve the remaining months of his term. But for the future of Honduras, does it really even matter? Until a new generation of young, uncontaminated, democratic politicians take control — and the deep inequalities in our economic system are addressed — we will not be able to trust our leaders.

Capitano Tedeschi

30

MSNBC as Democratic Party Shill

2009-07-28T23:07:00.000-07:00

I hate to admit it, but as a liberal, I like to watch the Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow on MSNBC. I watch Olberman and Maddow because their programs are entertaining and their news reporting can be insightful. I became a fan of both these programs during the run-up to the 2008 election. I didn't like the Bush Administration and Olbermann and Maddow's programs ran stories that reflected my prejudice.

Recently my fanaticism for Countdown has begun to wane. I've noticed that Olbermann isn't too much different from his chief competitors Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, and Glen Beck. I thought this opinion reflected a new trend in the way Countdown presents the news. I discovered I was wrong. I became aware of my error after I read Olbermann's biography on Wikipedia, I discovered that Countdown was not a "traditional newscast," even though it started out that way. "Although it began as a traditional newscast, Countdown with Keith Olbermann has adopted an opinion-oriented format. Much of the program has featured harsh criticism of prominent Republicans and right-leaning figures, including those working for or supporting the Bush Administration."

Last night, I had to come to terms with the sad fact that watching Countdown or the Rachel Maddow Show was like watching the liberal version of Fox News. My epiphany came as I watched Gov. Howard Dean, former head of the Democratic Party was guest host for Keith Olberman last night. The transcript of the program is here.

I didn't bother to watch the whole program. Gov. Dean needs a lot of work as a newscaster.I was also vexed by the idea that a former official in the Democratic was hosting a network news program and was thus given an hour to spout the talking points of the Democratic Party. Okay, I'm a registered Democrat and I would probably agree with most of those talking points, but still I have some illusions that a new work news program would have some balance.

I don't have to watch MSNBC, I could watch the News Hour with Jim Lehrer on PBS, which still offers informative and balanced news reporting. There is one problem with watching the News Hour, it tries to have balanced reporting, which can be kinda of boring and I'd also have spend a half an hour listening to people who have views I don't agree with. Why should I have to do that?

There is an answer to that question and it is a good one. The problems of this country are so great right now that no one political party can really solve them. The problems we face are not red-state or blue state problems, their American problems and their solution requires compromise and also shared sacrifice. Compromise and agreement to sacrifice won't come if all we do is spend our time blaming each other for the country's problems. I know the country is very polarized right now, but if we can get past name-calling and actually start talking, people might be able come to some agreement on national problems and then start taking action.

Wow, I can't believe I actually think something like that. As for Gov. Dean, he'll be hosting Countdown again tonight (July 29).

Capitano Tedeschi

Walter Cronkite and Network

2009-07-19T13:09:00.000-07:00

Walter Cronkite, The movie Network

Walter Cronkite died July 17th, 2009. He was 92. He was an American icon, a great newsman and television pioneer. What struck me was the reaction to his death. On the night his death was announced, Rachel Maddow spent most of her program paying tribute to the CBS anchorman. My impression as I was that the coverage mirrored the reaction to Michael Jackson's death except that it had more gravitas. Brian Williams and Tom Brokaw, were interviewed by phone, both men gave moving tributes. The intensity was the same, but the tenor was different. Instead of pictures of Michael with Bubbles the Chimp, there was a clip of Cronkite in an Air Force transport reporting on prospective astronauts experiencing the effects of weightlessness, along with other clips of Cronkite's reporting such as political convention, space launches, and narrating the nightly news.

While I watched Maddow's reporting, I was reminded of the 1976 movie Network. Cronkite's daughter Kathy, was in the movie. Network was directed by Sidney Lumet, worked with Cronkite. When Network was released in 2006, Walter Cronkite was interviewed about the film as one of the dvd's extra segments. That was how I got started comparing Maddow's show to Network, and its faux news program which is refered to by Wikipedia as

The Network News Hour (referred to as The Howard Beale Show): The retooled news show featuring segments with "Sybil the Soothsayer", "Jim Webbing and his It's-the-Honest-Truth-department", "Miss Mata Hari and her skeletons in the closet" as well as "Vox Populi." The show also opens with editorial by Howard who goes on ranting and raving until he passes out.
As I watched Rachel Maddow, (whose program, I enjoy by the way,) I was wondering if it was that dissimilar from the Howard Beale Hour. The answer is probably very similar the Howard Beale Hour. Times change and the world has changed since Network was in theaters in 1976. Network news has changed dramatically since Cronkite retired in 1981.

I watch MSNBC because it is entertaining and it also has news. But there is a problem with mixing news and entertainment. As Howard Beale points out,

You're beginning to believe the illusions we're spinning here, you're beginning to believe that the tube is reality and your own lives are unreal. You do. Why, whatever the tube tells you: you dress like the tube, you eat like the tube, you raise your children like the tube, you even think like the tube. This is mass madness, you maniacs. source: The Internet Movie Database

Dan Heaton in a 2006 review of the Dvd, on digitallyobsessed, mentions that Cronkite was interviewed about the film.

Legendary television newsman Walter Cronkite worked with Lumet on the You Are There series in the '50s. He shares his opinions about the film in this final segment, and while he admires the movie considerably, he regards it as a comedy. Cronkite does recognize the dangers of media consolidation and offers interesting comments on the subject.

Sidney Lumet was interviewed by the Associated Press on Feb. 22, 2006, the article's author mentioned Lumet, Cronkite and Network

Lumet’s career began in television, notably directing CBS’ “You Are There,” anchored by Walter Cronkite. (The show, offered re-enactments of historical events, thus blending show-biz with news.) On the “Network” DVD, Cronkite, a good friend of Lumet’s, remembers first watching the film with his CBS cohorts.

“We howled with laughter, rolled over on the floor with the depiction of [TV news],” he says.
But Cronkite says he considered “Network” an exaggeration and recalls being concerned people would think it represented the truth about TV news.

In another interview, published in the May 2003 issue of DGA Monthly Lumet says,

"Once [Network] it opened, everybody kept saying, 'Oh, what a brilliant satire.' But Paddy [Chayefsky, screenwriter] and I always said, 'This isn't satire, it's sheer reportage.' We were both brought up in television, so we knew what we were dealing with. But I've got to tell you — I don't think I've seen it in 20 years (I don't usually like to look at my work) — I'm stunned at how prescient it is. A lot of what was hilarious 25 years ago got no laughter tonight because it has all come true. So it hits you with a kind of impact that was not originally intended."

Glen Abel, in his review of the Network Dvd, for the blog DVD Spin Doctor also commented on Network's prescience.

Writer Chayefsky, equally mad as hell, used his black comedy about a raggedy fourth TV network to denounce the hypocrisies of 1976 and warn of media evils to come.
Like his creation Sybil the Soothsayer, "Paddy was capable of seeing the future," director Sidney Lumet says. Chayefsky warned of entertainment masquerading as news, corporate meddling, violent reality shows, the tyranny of ratings, foreign ownership of U.S. media -- essentially the strip-mining of what already was a vast wasteland.

The vision that the movie displayed so eloquently is alive today," producer Howard Gottfried maintains. Adds Lumet, "TV today has become its own satire."

There is one current television personality who apparently does not see the satire or the sadness of Network. That personality is Fox News Glen Beck, who according to an article in the March 29, 2009 New York Times, identifies with Network's deranged protagonist, Howard Beale. According to the article,

In an interview, Mr. Beck, who recently rewatched the 1976 film “Network,” said he identified with the character of Howard Beale, the unhinged TV news anchorman who declares on the air that he is “mad as hell.”

“I think that’s the way people feel,” Mr. Beck said. “That’s the way I feel.” In part because of Mr. Beck, Fox News — long identified as the favored channel for conservatives and Republican leaders — is enjoying a resurgence just two months into Mr. Obama’s term. While always top-rated among cable news channels, Fox’s ratings slipped during the long Democratic primary season last year. Now it is back on firm footing as the presumptive network of the opposition, with more than 1.2 million viewers watching at any given time, about twice as many as CNN or MSNBC.

Sadly Beck, misses an important point, the in the movie Network, newsman Howard Beale is mentally deranged. Hal Broedecker in his The TV Guy and More Blog for Orlando Sentinel wrote on March 31, 2009 that, Beck's comment about Beale might make some people go back and review the movie in a different, light.

Maybe that comment will send more people back to the movie to see Peter Finch's brilliant, Oscar-winning performance as Beale. Beale becomes a public favorite with his "mad as hell" rant, but here are some points to remember:
1. He goes off his rocker.
2. He becomes a pawn in the story.
3. He is used and discarded with harrowing results. Bad ratings can kill you.
Beale is in no way a hero. He is a fad. His madness destroys his career. And he is a dead end.
Being "mad as hell" will take you only so far, writer Paddy Chayefsky explained. Does Beck understand that?

Probably not. Cronkite saw Network and was afraid people would take it as a depiction of current network news. I didn't see it that way. I loved the movie for its powerful, theatrical language, its satire and its cynicism. In 1976, I never really had any inkling that The Howard Beale Hour would become a template for many network and cable television shows. But when I see the movie now, I marvel that life has imitated satire.

I mourn the passing Walter Cronkite. As I watched news coverage of his death, I wondered about his relationship and reaction to Sidney Lumet's masterpiece Network. There is a connection. Cronkite knew Lumet, his daughter had a role in the movie. His original impressions as he and perhaps some of his CBS colleagues watched the movie was that it was outrageous satire, a comedy. But what I'd like to imagine Cronkite actually got was a glimpse of the a future. He was connected to an artwork that not only played in movie theaters and won Oscars, but was also a prediction or prophecy that seemed so fantastic that it could never come true. But then over the next 33 years satire became the model for many television news programs. Glen Beck, Keith Olberman, Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert, could all perhaps trace their roots to the ruminations of Howard Beale.

What would Howard Beale have to say about the passing Cronkite? In his eulogy of UBS Chairman Edward Ruddy, there is a clue perhaps.

Howard Beale: [arms outstretched to the heavens] Edward George Ruddy died today! Edward George Ruddy was the Chairman of the Board of the Union Broadcasting Systems, and he died at eleven o'clock this morning of a heart condition, and woe is us! We're in a lot of trouble! So. A rich little man with white hair died. What has that got to do with the price of rice, right? And *why* is that woe to us? Because you people, and sixty-two million other Americans, are listening to me right now. Because less than three percent of you people read books! Because less than fifteen percent of you read newspapers! Because the only truth you know is what you get over this tube. Right now, there is a whole, an entire generation that never knew anything that didn't come out of this tube! This tube is the Gospel, the ultimate revelation. This tube can make or break presidents, popes, prime ministers... This tube is the most awesome God-damned force in the whole godless world, and woe is us if it ever falls in to the hands of the wrong people, and that's why woe is us that Edward George Ruddy died. Because this company is now in the hands of CCA -- the Communication Corporation of America. There's a new Chairman of the Board, a man called Frank Hackett, sitting in Mr. Ruddy's office on the twentieth floor. And when the twelfth largest company in the world controls the most awesome God-damned propoganda force in the whole godless world, who knows what shit will be peddled for truth on this network? Network (1976) source: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074958/quotes

With Cronkite, we didn't get hysterics or entertainment, we got something better. Daniel Schorr, in an op-ed piece in the Los Angeles Times, wrote the following,

The tremendous amount of ink and airtime expended on the Cronkite legend since he died Friday might seem odd given that he was a figure of a generation ago in a career that now generates deep skepticism. But during much of the period he anchored the CBS Evening News, Cronkite represented something deep in the psyche of America, embodied in the word trust.

With Cronkite you got news that was considered verifiable truth. With the our current 21st Century Howard Beales, you get news and you can be sure that it will be entertaining. Who knows, in some cases it might actually be true.

Capitano Tedeschi

Carter's Crisis of Confidence Speech 30 years later

2009-07-15T12:49:00.000-07:00

Now the LORD had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights. Jonah 1:17

I sometimes think about the biblical story of Jonah. I believe that a couple of decades ago, I was called to change the course of my life. Whether it was the march of events or an act of God is depends upon your point of view. I believe I was called by God to change, and this was an instance where I heard the call and answered it.

So when I see someone who his called, I think of the old testament prophet Jonah. God commanded Jonah to rail against sin in the ancient city of Nineveh. Fearing for his life, Jonah fled and tried to escape by going overseas. God sent a storm, the sailors threw Jonah overboard and Jonah was swallowed by a great fish. After three days in the belly of the fish, Jonah was vomitted up on shore and finally obeyed God's original command to preach to the sinful of Nineveh.

Over the years, I have been called to make other changes in my life, sometimes I have and sometimes I haven't. When I have refused to answer the call, the consequences have been hard to bear. What is really vexing, ignoring the call to change my life usually means that the situation reappears and is worse because the problems I have needed to change have become progressively worse. For example, refuse to pay your credit debt one month, the next month another bill arrives with added penalties and interests. Ignore a pain in your leg and the next thing you know you spending a week in the hospital. Ignoring warning signs is not just an individual failing, it is a failing of nations and cultures as well.

American is a country that has been ignoring the warning signs of imminent national catastrophe. July 15, is a good day to reflect on it. Why July 15th? Because July 15, 2009 was the 30th anniversary of President Jimmy Carter's famous "Malaise Speech." There was an excellent editorial about the making of the speech by Gordon Stewart's New York Times. Stewart was one of Carter's speech writers and was involved the process of creating Carter's Speech. Carter's Speech Therapy, gives an inside look at history of how the speech was created. Today it known as the Malaise Speech, and it was derided by many American Conservatives, including Ronald Reagan.

I was first led to reconsider Carter's speech when I was listening to Andrew Bacevich on Bill Moyer's journal. Bacevich was interviewed by Moyers on Sept. 26, 2008, just five weeks before the 2008 election. Bacevich considered Carter's speech astute and prophetic,

Well, this is the so-called Malaise Speech, even though he never used the word "malaise" in the text to the address. It's a very powerful speech, I think, because President Carter says in that speech, oil, our dependence on oil, poses a looming threat to the country. If we act now, we may be able to fix this problem. If we don't act now, we're headed down a path in which not only will we become increasingly dependent upon foreign oil, but we will have opted for a false model of freedom. A freedom of materialism, a freedom of self-indulgence, a freedom of collective recklessness. And what the President was saying at the time was, we need to think about what we mean by freedom. We need to choose a definition of freedom which is anchored in truth, and the way to manifest that choice, is by addressing our energy problem.

He had a profound understanding of the dilemma facing the country in the post Vietnam period. And of course, he was completely hooted, derided, disregarded.

The actual title of the Malaise Speech was Crisis of Confidence. In that speech President Carter addressed the American people and urged the neation to wean itself from its dependence on foreign oil. In his speech Carter said,

Looking for a way out of this crisis, our people have turned to the Federal Government and found it isolated from the mainstream of our Nation's life. Washington, D.C., has become an island. The gap between our citizens and our Government has never been so wide. The people are looking for honest answers, not easy answers; clear leadership, not false claims and evasiveness and politics as usual.

What you see too often in Washington and elsewhere around the country is a system of government that seems incapable of action. You see a Congress twisted and pulled in every direction by hundreds of well-financed and powerful special interests. You see every extreme position defended to the last vote, almost to the last breath by one unyielding group or another. You often see a balanced and a fair approach that demands sacrifice, a little sacrifice from everyone, abandoned like an orphan without support and without friends. Often you see paralysis and stagnation and drift. You don't like it, and neither do I. What can we do?

First of all, we must face the truth, and then we can change our course. We simply must have faith in each other, faith in our ability to govern ourselves, and faith in the future of this Nation. Restoring that faith and that confidence to America is now the most important task we face. It is a true challenge of this generation of Americans.

What was amazing was that Carter's call for sacrifice and change well-received by the American people, but then political blunders by Carter and criticism of the speech by his political opponents, quickly drained support for this change. Carter's speech was soon being derided as the "Malaise Speech."

Carter speech writer Gordon Stewart was surprised by the American people's change in attitude.

To this day, I don’t entirely know why the speech came to be derided for a word that was in the air, but never once appeared in the text. Still, the “malaise” label stuck: maybe because President Carter’s cabinet shake-up a few days later wasted the political energy that had been focused on our energy problems; maybe because the administration’s opponents attached it to the speech relentlessly; maybe because it was just too hard to compete with Ronald Reagan and his banner of limitless American consumption.

The real reason is probably that there was never any way the Jimmy Carter we all know would avoid saying: “There is simply no way to avoid sacrifice.” Where the speeches of Reagan and Barack Obama evoke the beauty of dreams, President Carter insisted on the realities of responsibility and the need for radical change. Mr. Carter’s sense of our own accountability, his warnings about the debilitating effects of self-centered divisiveness were the speech’s true heresies. They are also the very elements that keep it relevant today.

One of the people who derided Carter's speech was Ronald Reagan, whose optimism appealed to a vast majority of American voters in 1980. Reagan's defeat of Carter, would have consequences that affect us to this day. According to Kevin Mattison's article A Politics of National Sacrifice, which appeared in the April 8, 2009 American Prospect, even liberarians and conservatives should begin to pay heed to Carter's 1979 speech.

Looking back now, the malaise speech indicates a turning point in our history, one that helps define Barack Obama's recent victory. The age of conservatism -- from Reagan's 1980 election up through the end of George W. Bush's second term -- has been framed not by Carter's tones of humility but by celebratory nationalism. In fact, the conservative game plan was laid by Ronald Reagan's direct retort to the malaise speech, made when announcing his candidacy against Carter. Reagan explained, "I find no national malaise." Instead, America stood as a "shining city on a hill," a term he used persistently throughout the campaign.

From that moment, sacrifice and civic obligation faded from presidential rhetoric. You never heard Carter's language from either of the Bushes -- not even in the wake of September 11, when W. instead told Americans to go shopping. Or consider 2008 GOP vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin, who suggested all was well in "real America" -- it was only Washington that had problems. Such was the end-game of right-wing populism: government bad, people good.

As Mattison points out Obama election in Nov. of 2008 is a reaction to the 30 years of right wing populism. While many would like to cling to the ideas expoused by President Reagan, the idea that the rugged individualism and free markets can solve our current national problems have been proved false. They might been acceptable in 1980, but thirty years later Reagan's ideology appears impotent and sometimes corrupt. A different perspective and a different ideology needed and it was articulated by the junior Senator from Illinois, Barack Obama.

On January 19, 2009 Barack Obama was sworn in as the 44th President of the United States. While his political campaign was full of beautiful rhetoric about America's need for change and the power of the American people to affect that change. His inaugural address was sterner, a description of the crisis facing us all and also a call to action. It is very similar to Carter's Crisis of Confidence speech.

That we are in the midst of crisis is now well understood. Our nation is at war against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred. Our economy is badly weakened, a consequence of greed and irresponsibility on the part of some, but also our collective failure to make hard choices and prepare the nation for a new age. Homes have been lost, jobs shed, businesses shuttered. Our health care is too costly, our schools fail too many -- and each day brings further evidence that the ways we use energy strengthen our adversaries and threaten our planet.

These are the indicators of crisis, subject to data and statistics. Less measurable, but no less profound, is a sapping of confidence across our land; a nagging fear that America's decline is inevitable, that the next generation must lower its sights.

Today I say to you that the challenges we face are real. They are serious and they are many. They will not be met easily or in a short span of time. But know this America: They will be met.

Three decades have passed since Carter's Crisis of Confidence speech. We have come full circle and are back to roughly where we were in 1979. Granted we aren't spending hours waiting in lines at service stations for gasoline, but we are staying up late worrying about whether we can pay our mortgage, our doctor's bills, credit card bills and still have money left to buy food.

The tough question is back before us again. Are we going to answer the call, first issued by Jimmy Carter in July of 1979 and later by Barrack Obama in January of 2009? Will we answer the call and sacrifice and work for radical economic, social and political change. Will we work to build a better future? or will we be like Jonah and try to flee from the challenge that the march of events (or God) have placed before us.

I am hoping that the health care crisis, global warming, the financial crisis, the wars in Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan that have hammered this nation in the past few years, will inspire Americans to work together to change the country's direction. If we work together perhaps we can solve many of the terrible problems that face our nation. But if we stay divided and do nothing these crises may overwhelm the Republic.

If we try, we may find that our solving our problems can unite us and allow us to achieve great things. I for one am willing. Let's get together, figure out what needs to be done, roll up our sleeves and get to work. We don't have any more time to waste--Do We?

Capitano Tedeschi

Wing-nut Pundits love Russian Blogger's Op-Ed

2009-07-13T15:46:00.000-07:00

As my dear old grandfather Litvak said (just before they swung the trap), he said "You can't cheat an honest man. Never give a sucker an even break or smarten up a chump." W.C.Fields You can't cheat an honest man. source: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0032152/quotes

This saying of W.C. Fields came to mind when a I read a post on a the political section of the company bulletin board. A couple of days ago, one of my co-workers posted an editorial American Capitalism Gone with a Whimper, by one Stanislav Mishin. The article originally appeared in the April, 27, 2009, online version of Pravda, which has the same name as the former political newspaper of the Soviet Union. According to Pravda the editorial was reprinted from Mishin's own blog Mat Rodina.

According to Mishin, "It must be said, that like the breaking of a great dam, the American decent into Marxism is happening with breath taking speed, against the back drop of a passive, hapless sheeple, excuse me dear reader, I meant people."

Mishin blames our "decent" into Marxism partly on the degenaracy of average American due to dumbed downed educations and television programs, their lack of Christianity, and their addiction to MacDonald's quarter pounder.

But the final straw, according to Mishin was the election of Barack Obama,

The final collapse has come with the election of Barack Obama. His speed in the past three months has been truly impressive. His spending and money printing has been a record setting, not just in America's short history but in the world. If this keeps up for more than another year, and there is no sign that it will not, America at best will resemble the Wiemar Republic and at worst Zimbabwe.

That's when the quotation from W.C. Fields came to me, an honest person would have realized that Mishin's editorial was at best written by someone who is either totally ignorant about America and its people, is totally deranged, or is being paid a substantial amount of money to publish this anti-american nonsense.

But what about the suckers and chumps? I'll talk more about them later. First, let's look at the weaknesses in the Mat Rodina blog post. After reading this "editorial" I found its premises and opinions simplistic and stupid. At the moment, anti-American sentiment is high in Russia and Capitalism Gone with a Whimper, is typical of such screeds. It reminds me of the Tsarist Okrana's anti-semitic hoax, Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Mishin's blog post was published in Pravda online, which is different from Pravda the newspaper. After looking at its web site, it looked like the Russian version of the National Enquirer.

What is irritating is that extreme right-wing media is hailing this article as some kind of foreign insight into the fall of the American Republic. First of all Mishin is just a Russian Blogger. That makes him an expert on American Affairs how? My friend Jeri has a Facebook page for her dog Truman. I trust Jeri's dog more than I trust Stanislav Mishin. I am not the only one who is totally unimpressed by Mishin's jermiad against President Obama and his alleged efforts to turn America into a Communist state. Another vexing thing was that while Mishin's anti-American rant has drawn rave reviews from various right-wing know-nothings, and paranoics, there have been very few articles countering Mishin's warped interpretation of America's political, social and economic situation. Fortunately, I was able to find a few honest people who refuse to accept the Mishin's fabrications.

Reginald Killingley in a letter to the editor of his local paper, commented upon reading Mishin's opinion piece noted the following

"On the Saturday Forum page Tom Leahy referenced an article "American Capitalism Gone With A Whimper," by "Mat Rodina" on Pravda Online . This publication is not the old Soviet-era newspaper but a web-based nationalist and sensationalist tabloid. Its compelling articles include titles such as "Men can really breasfeed [sic] and have third nipple," and "Aliens downed Tunguska meteorite to save Earth." Is Pravda Online a source you can trust?"

The media watchdog Media Matters analyzed Mishin's editorial and reported the following,

Several media figures falsely claimed an opinion piece on the Russian website PRAVDA On-line, which attacked President Obama for instigating an "American decent [sic] into Marxism," was published by the Russian newspaper Pravda, which is not related to PRAVDA On-line.

Moreover, Mishin himself has a history of inflammatory rhetoric. Mishin's piece as published on PRAVDA On-line referred to Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) as "Senator Barney Franks [sic], a social pervert basking in his homosexuality." In previous posts to his blog, Mishin has described Russian gay rights activists as "attempt[ing] to drag Holy Russia to the depth of Hell and vulgarity that they have driven the West into"; claimed that "the current resident of the White House has come to pander to the Islamics, like no other"; and the United States as "a democracy where the rights of the minority, such as the homosexuals and Muslims, routinely trumps the rights of the Christian majority, who are viewed by the elites as a vast unwashed, ignorant economic unit to be taxed as needed, bled for the right causes ... in foreign wars and socially experimented on, at the elites' whim."

Blogger Jenny Kakasulerf, was also dismissive of Mishin and the reactionary pundits who spread his so-called editoral.

Mishin is the authority on capitalism because he lived under socialism, and thus can atest to it's evils, and why we should avoid socialism at all costs. However, Mishin is arguing for the collapse of the global financial markets, including our own, and mocks our way of life. It seems the GOP, and Rush Limbaugh in particular, who unapologetically admits that he hopes the president fails, have quite a bit in common with their new socialist media darling. Except, the only capitalism he supports, is an internal capitalism that operates solely on the basis of Russian entrepreneurialism and investment, through maximum government intervention so as not to enrich the few, that is cut-off from the globalized marketplace. Isolationism to the highest degree.

The same boogeyman, fear tactics that have been employed most notably by the conservative wing of American politics to invoke Italian Fascism, German Nazism, and Russian Socialism are, at best, disingenuous. These same intellectually dishonest commentators were certainly lackadaisical in their rhetoric when Bush initiated the TARP plan, and effectively, the largest government bailout in history. Eight years of deficit explosions, and not one single tea party. Beck is not alone in claiming to be an independent, though his hate speech, directed primarily at the left, does not fall on deaf ears and makes his political leanings more than obvious.
These claims of socialism lack admission of the fact that we already are, and have been for quite some time, a socialist country. Any time that the government redistributes wealth through taxation--that is socialism. It is not going away any time soon. FOX News' lovefest with George W. Bush did not stop him from growing the government to a larger size than it has ever been. Neither democrats, nor republicans, see value in a society completely absent of social services, and nowhere near a majority of Americans are persuaded by libertarian ideology.

Socialism is used interchangeably with fascism as an attempt by conservative pundits to confuse the mass public and invoke an irrational fear of Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini, which is why they are constantly forcing the comparison down their audiences throats. When free-speaking individuals start being “disappeared,” when protests are met by violent military action (think Tiananman Square), and when journalists start getting gunned down in our streets, like they do in Russia, then perhaps I will take claims of fascism more seriously, and the accusations from Russia that we are light on human rights.

The spread and wide acceptance of Mishin's anti-American rant is typical of type of commentary coming from "conservative media" right now. It is perhaps unfair and cruel to refer to all people who approve of or agree with Mishin's editorial as suckers and chumps. But a sucker or a chump are words I would use to describe my co-worker who posted Mishin's Pravda editorial. He accepted on face value because it agreed with some of his prejudices against President Obama's administration. There was no effort of verify or examine Mishin's statements because he had seen them posted somewhere on the internet.

Andrew Sullivan in a recent post about Sarah Palin best describes this worrisome trend.

the broader problem with American conservatism right now. It is less a movement than an industry. From Fox News to talk radio to conservative publishing houses, it has created an alternate and lucrative media reality that is worth a fortune to those able to exploit it. Alas, these alternative media thrive on paranoia, hatred of liberal elites and growing extremist rhetoric made worse by a hermetically sealed echo chamber of true believers.

It is both strange and sad that as America and the world are facing political, economic and global crises that there are Americans who read, approve and spread the works like American Capitalism Gone with a Whimper, by Stanislav Mishin. Again, as W.C. Fields observed, you can't cheat an honest man (or woman). And now is the time for honest people, people of good will, to come together and work to solve the problems facing both America and the world.

If there are those who choose to believe the sentiments expressed by Stanislav Mishin, all I can do expose the errors and encourage them to listen to the angels of their better nature. If they won't do that, then they deserve to be called suckers and chumps.

Capitano Tedeschi

30

Remind me, why do I watch the Tour de France?

2009-07-09T11:52:00.001-07:00

Capitano Tedeschi in Italy getting ready to climb the mountain June 2004

I have been spending several hours this week watching the 96th Tour de France on Versus TV. I've watched parts of the time trials in Monaco, the first stage, from Monaco to Brignoles, and I spent Monday morning watching the third stage from Marseille to La Grande-Motte. I did the same thing Tuesday morning watching the team time trials. So as I sit in front the television I ask myself, why I am watching watching this event?

I cycle to stay fit. I enjoy cycling. On the other hand, I consider time spent watching a sporting event on TV a waste of time. I don't watch football or baseball, even though I am a die-hard fan of the Kansas Chiefs and a so-so fan of the Kansas City Royals. College sports? well I sorta care about KU basketball and Ku football but that's about it. I occasionally check the box scores on ESPN when these teams play and truth be known, if I find myself spending more than 45 seconds on that task, I feel like I am wasting precious time.

There are many reasons why I am not a big fan of sports in general and team sports in particular. It was the way I grew up. My father was an accomplished amateur bowler, which meant my Saturdays were spent having to watch bowling instead of getting to watch cartoons. So as I was growing up, I came to believe that watching cartoons was more important than watching sports. Another reason was that I was never any good at sports growing up. I was big, fat, slow and uncoordinated. (Some things never change, alas). I always got picked last and usually got picked on during and after the games. So sports for me was an ordeal, a "rite de passage,"or an "auto da fe`."

But why do I care more about the Tour de France than in red-blooded all-American sports like football, baseball and basketball? Part of the answer has to do with my development as an “athlete.” Over the years, I participated in a variety of athletic activities after I graduated from college. I was a world-class pub-crawler, but they don’t give gold medals or product endorsement deals for that. After I retired from amateur pub crawling, I tried a lot of different activities to the fill the void I felt after my early retirement from the Kansas City pub crawling scene.

I did all the trendy things like jogging and swimming, and then in 1989, I got a bicycle. So I've been cycling for 20 years. I was never really serious about cycling until I decided to go on a cycling tour in 2004. In June 0f 2004, I was part of a group of Americans that cycle from Venice to Florence. It was just before that year's Tour de France, which culminated in Lance's Armstrong's sixth win. Going on a bicycle tour was a great experience. It was physically challenging to ride 30-40 miles a day. Spending 4-5 hours on a bicycle is both lonely and painful. But it was also incredibly enjoyable.

Since I was one of the slowest riders, I was usually by myself in the back of beyond in nothern Italy. After the first day, I hurt and I learned what it felt like to be impaled on a bicycle saddle. While we were in Italy, they were just getting ready to start the 2004 Tour. My leisurely travels by bicycle that summer gave me a whole new appreciation for the sport of cycling. When I am watching it on television, I can see both the beauty of the sport, and discipline and determination of those who race for the yellow, green, and polka dot jerseys. I understand their pain, the lonliness of having to peddle over long distances. I also understand the struggle of climbing a mountain and then feeling the exhilaration of going 25-30 miles an hour down a winding and dangerous mountain road.

Come the weekends, I'll be spending my mornings watching the Tour as the cyclists make their way from Monaco to Paris. Part of me is rooting for Lance Armstrong, who is cycling for the Astana Cycling Team as well as team Garmin Slipstream, who were the subject of a documentary Blood, Sweat & Gears, that is currently appearing on the Sundance Channel. Blood, Sweat & Gears really puts a human face on the sport of professional cycling and the lives of professional cyclists. It's not a glamorous life, for most pro cyclists, it's a job. But what beautiful and terrible job to have. There are 190 men competing in the 2009 Tour de France. I was them all the best of luck.

Capitano Tedeschi

30

What? Me? Watch the Tour de France? copyright text and photo July 9, 2009 by Jamie Jacks

Michael Jackson

2009-07-09T10:31:00.000-07:00

A lot has been written about Michael Jackson's death. I've been listening to his music since I was in junior high and high school. I never bought any of his albums or attended any of his concerts. I did enjoy watching his videos on MTV. I didn't read the many tributes that have been posted.

Save for one, and that was by the British magazine The Economist. Obituaries in The Economist are beautifully written, eclectic in their profiles, poignant and insightful. The one for Michael Jackson was a very understanding tribute.

Oddness overshadowed his real, hard-won achievements: world adulation for a black pop star, the birth of video celebrity, and millions of dollars given to black causes. If the press stayed on his weird story, he believed, his records would sell. The risk was that the weirdness would multiply until he was hardly human.

His last public appearance, before his death of apparent cardiac arrest, was to announce a series of 50 sold-out concerts in London. Hours before his death he was rehearsing for them, exuding joy, energy and sharp judgment. His glitter jackets, the tabloids claimed later, hid a body that was half-starved, subsisting on painkillers. Though he was worth $1.3 billion, said the Sun, he died with debts of $300m.

But he had sold 750m albums and, from Riga to Rio, children danced like him. Source: The Economist July 2, 2009 http://www.economist.com/obituary/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13941042

After reading this tribute, I could appreciate, the beauty, the accomplishments and the sadness of Michael Jackson's life and death.

Capitano Tedeschi

30

Bizarre Republican Tricks

2009-07-03T13:54:00.000-07:00

So, the Govenor has finally resigned. Oops! Sorry folks. Not South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, but Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.

It appears that she was planning on announcing that she wasn't going to seek re-election in 2010. According to the statement she made in front of the camera, since she wanted to avoid lameduck status as a Governor. She used the basketball metaphor, saying she was the victim of "a full-court press" from the national media. So she said that passing the ball to another player so the "team" i.e. Alaskans can win. According to Gov. Palin, "I know when it's time to pass the ball for victory."

She then went on to say, "All I can ask is that you trust me with this decision, that it is no more poltics-as-usual." According to Gov. Palin, "Some are going to question the time of this, but this decision has been in the works for a while." She then contradicted that statement by saying that her resignation was like calling "an audible to pass the ball in time so the team can win." She also didn't seem to realize that her resignation was not the final act of her state political career. She praised Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell, and then said, that she will, "always be standing by, ready to assist." She concluded her statement by quoting Gen. Douglas MacArthur, "We are not retreating, we are advancing in another direction."

In the her statement, which somewhat clearer, since it was devoid, of right-wing cliches, attacks against the media, and inane sports metaphors, Palin said,

I am determined to take the right path for Alaska even though it is not the easiest path," said Governor Palin after the announcement. "Once I decided not to run for re-election, I also felt that to embrace the conventional 'Lame Duck' status in this particular climate would just be another dose of 'politics as usual,' something I campaigned against and will always oppose. It is my duty to always protect our great state. With that in mind, my family and I determined that it is best to make a difference this summer, and I am willing to change things, so that this administration, with its positive agenda, its accomplishments, and its successful road to an incredible future, can continue without interruption and with great administrative and legislative success. I look forward to helping others - to fight for our state and our country, and campaign for those who believe in smaller government, free enterprise, strong national security, support for our troops, and energy independence.

When you decide to enter into the life of a public servant, your life becomes public, and you also commit to serve. If Gov. Palin had wanted to keep the lives of her and her family out of the public spotlight, she should have declined John McCain's offer of the second spot on the Republican Party's 2008 Presidential ticket. She also seems to think that it is unfair that she is catching a lot of media attention, i.e. heat, for her incompetence, unethical behavior, and just general unfitness for any kind of public office higher than mayor of Wasilla Alaska.

Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo had an a good take on Palin's announcement,

Okay, we're getting our first indication of what happened. It seems like a colossal sulk on Palin's part, or perhaps better to say an effort on her part to ingeniously combine anti-liberal media bias agitation with Christianist politics by portraying herself as having been crucified by the liberal media.

Said Palin, according to a reporter at the press conference, "You are naive if you don't see a full-court press on the national level, picking apart a good point guard."

Oh, my. Her political career is essentially over. Andrew Sullivan of the Atlantic said

I guessed right, which I suppose reflects just how much time I've spent trying to figure what goes on in her head. I think the simple truth is that, as even Alaskan Republicans told us last September, she was far from able to be governor of Alaska, let alone vice-president of the United States. Once the klieglights hit, it was only a matter of time before she imploded or exploded or some gruesome combination of the two. The librul media will be blamed for everything on her inexorable path to becoming a Fox News celebrity. Maybe a reality show? Someone hire her for The View!

Mark Kleiman writing at The Reality Based Community was a little more generous than Sullivan,

I'm trying to remind all my friends that Palin, like Bush, is not stupid, and that calling her stupid offends tens of millions of Americans who know as little about public affairs as she does, or less, don't consider themselves stupid, and are in fact capable of making perfectly reasonable decisions about the things they do know and care about. But I'll certainly concede "incoherent."

If there's not a huge bombshell about to explode, then we can only conclude that that woman John McCain wanted to put one unreliable heartbeat from the Presidency is simply a total flake.

We may never know the real reason why Gov. Palin chose to resign. The Anchorage Daily News, whose reporting on Gov. Palin, has been at all times rigorous and fair, summed up the situation best,

Sarah Palin is a charismatic leader with a devoted national following and ambition to match. So there's no surprise if she sees a future for herself beyond Alaska.

But we thought she'd finish her work on the home front first. She hasn't made clear why she won't.

BOTTOM LINE: Governor's explanation for resignation doesn't make sense.

Unless there were serious health and family issues, Gov. Palin's resignation showsher continued willingness to dispose of people and supporters once they have helped her achieve her political ambitions. Her rambling media statement did not give health or family reasons for stepping down, I assume that she has decided to dispense with her committment to the people of Alaska, to either make a run for the White House or make a lot of money as a commentator on Fox News Network.

As the people of Alaska have just found out, you get what you pay for, whether it's cars, gadgets, or an aging beauty queen turned politician.

Capitano Tedeschi

Random thoughts on recent news

2009-07-01T00:27:00.000-07:00

First of all, justice has been done, sorta. Bernie Madoff, was sentenced to 150 years in prison. Madoff is 71. Try to do as much of it as you can Bern!!! Some in the media hailed this sentence as a get tough warning to Wall Street. Heifer dust! No one at AIG, Lehman Brothers, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs or any of the other financial corporations the United States partially owns have been indicted for frauds related to the financial meltdown. The bond rating agencies, who were accessories abetted the fraud by giving AAA ratings to all of the mortgage backed securities have not even been given a slap on the wrist.

Carolina Governor Mark Sanford continues to provide the press with more details of various infidelities, actual and mental. Gov. Sanford fib about "hiking the Appalachian Trail," is now a euphemism for sneaking of to meet your mistress. Swampland's Michael Scherer is starting to lose sympathy for the errant governor:
Every time he talks about the pain in his heart, that organ, as seen through newsprint and cable news, seems somehow to shrink. Each new round of confessed aches and longing, every Biblical allusion, all the vagaries of his non-coital betrayals, of his dance floor marriage therapy, his electronic soul mate, his South American crying, the Hamptons tryst--all of it makes him look smaller and less significant. I don't care about his private pain.

I have a funny feeling that Gov. Sanford may soon be the butt of divorce barbie type jokes. The divorced Barbie joke? Q: What comes with the new Divorced Barbie Doll? A: All of Ken's Stuff. Q: What happens if your wife finds out you've been "hiking the Appalachian Trail?" A: She might let you keep the tent.

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin stated in the August 2009 issue of Runner's World Magazine that she'd beat President Obama in a Marathon race. Good for you Gov. Palin. The only reason I looked at the story was that the Huffington Post and other online media outlets had a headine saying that Palin could be Obama. The headline made you assume that Gov. Palin was referring to the 2012 election, when actually she was referring to racing Obama in a Marathon. Unfortunately Sarah Barracuda was the subject of an unflattering article in Vanity Fair, by Todd S. Purdum. Gov. Palin, is not a Wasilla hockey mom, but

a political novice with an intuitive feel for the temper of her times, a woman who saw her opportunities and coolly seized them. In every job, she surrounded herself with an insular coterie of trusted friends, took disagreements personally, discarded people who were no longer useful, and swiftly dealt vengeance on enemies, real or perceived.

Finally, I want to congradulate the California State Legislature and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger for failing to pass a state budget by June 30. They should be proud this is political incompetence at the highest level. The governor and the Republicans are refusing to countenance any increase in taxes. Unfortunately, there is no way to balance the state budget without some tax increases. This idiocy and unwillingness to compromise is bringing calls for a new California Constitutional Convention, which is probably the only way that state government effectively for all the people instead of for corrupt special interests and the intellectually challenged Sacramento politicians they support.

Capitano Tedeschi

30

The street lights are on now

2009-06-25T16:56:00.000-07:00

It’s a cool summer night
The sun’s on it way
to be swallowed by the horizon.
The street lights come on

Time to stop playing
Time to stop playing
You mother is calling
It’s time to go home

But the fort in the
Blackberry bush is a special place
No chores to be done
No angry father to face

The street lights seem smaller
The more the sun sets
Momma stands at the back door
And keeps calling your name

Your old black dog finds you
Brothers search too
You know you’re in trouble
What are you to do?

Time to stop playing.
No time to roam.
Mother is calling
it’s time to go home

The branches of the blackberry bush
have changed into wires and tubes
they offer not shelter
they can not hide you

The streetlights seem dimmer
It’s so dark and so cool
Time to go inside now
It’s time to go home

Capitano Tedeschi

30

The street lights are on now, copyright June 25, 2009 by Jamie Jacks

Flying down to Buenos Aires Part 2

2009-06-24T15:40:00.000-07:00

One of my dreams is to dance the Tango in a milonga (dance hall) in Buenos Aires. Now why do I want to do this? I became fascinated with the Tango when I watched Carlos Saura's Tango. The movie starts with a view of the sunrise over the harbor of Buenos Aires. After watching that movie I was hooked. The trailer is here http://www.imdb.com/video/screenplay/vi1033175321/. Other Tango movies also enchanted me. Sally Potter's The Tango Lesson was beautiful and romantic movie. (Yeah, I can be a sucker for romantic movies provided they are not "chick films"). Robert Duvall's Assassination Tango was also interesting because as Roger Ebert said in his review "The tango is a fragment to shore against his ruin."

Is the tango a "fragment to shore against my ruin? I don't know. It'has been one of my dreams to travel to Buenos Aires and dance in a milonga. I realize that it may be a colossal mistake. But as my recent trip to Santaigo de Compostela in Spain shows, failing spectacularly is not only expensive, it's can be a lot of fun.

On the train ride from Santiago to Madrid, the movie on the train was a the Spanish language version of Richard Gere's Shall We Dance. The trailer for Gere's movie is here http://www.imdb.com/video/screenplay/vi619053337/. Now if I were superstitious, I considered watching the film on that train as some sort of sign. But I am not that superstitious. But it was an interesting way to take my mind of the fact that I had to leave a $900 bike at the train station in Santiago de Compostela.

Now two years after that glorius fiasco, a new journey starts with a single step, or my case an hour's worth of dance steps. Logic dictates that if one wants to dance the Tango in Buenos Aires, one should learn to Tango in Bakersfield. So my first tango lesson is tonight. I signed up for lessons with Barbara Bates, the Iron Lady of the Bakersfield ballroom dance scene. Since I currently have problems with arthritic knees, it will be interesting to see if I can last for the lesson.

If my knees won't allow me to take lessons, that is no loss, I am going to Buenos Aires anyway. If I can't dance, I'll just sit in the milonga and watch the dancers. When I was making a fool of myself in Spain, I learned that the Spanish word for "Folly" is "Tonteria" So Tango in Buenos Aires. Esto es mi neuva tonteria.

Or as Argentinian poet Jorge Luis Borges says

"The tango is a direct expression of something that poets have often tried to state in words: the belief that a fight may be a celebration. " “El Tango es la directa expresión de lo que comúnmente los poetas han tratado de definir en palabras como: la creencia de que la lucha puede ser un festejo” Jorge Luis Borges.
source: http://www.nytutoring.com/libertango/tangology/quotes.html

Wish me luck.

Capitano Tedeschi

30

Flying down to Buenos Aires Part 2, copyright June 24, 2009 by Jamie Jacks

Flying to down to Buenos Aires part 1

2009-06-24T11:56:00.000-07:00

First of all, congratulations to South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford for giving up his chances to be humiliated to by Barrack Obama in 2012 to spend a week in Buenos Aires with his current mistress, whoever she may be. Gov. Sanford's failing is human, so he, his wife, and family have my sympathy.

I would have done the same thing, except, I don't have a wife, a family, a mistress or a chance of ever holding any kind of public office. Still Gov. Sanford has been a decent and principled public servant for most of his career. Life catches us in strange and mysterious ways.

Having been sympathetic for a moment, don't forget that Gov. Sanford had no qualms about depriving of the people of South Carolina $750 million in federal stimulous money. He also voted to impeach Pres. Bill Clinton for lying about his affair with Monica Lewinsky, so he still has to spend some time in the penalty box.

He had the good taste not ask his wife to appear at his press conference, like former New York Governor Elliott Spitzer. Spitzer paid $4300 to spend the night with a prostitute. To his credit, Gov. Sanford didn't pay some kid $5400 to sleep with his mother like Nev. Senator John Ensign. Sanford's fugue still cost a pretty penny, first class round trip from Atlanta to Buenos Aires is about $6800, according to the search I did on Expedia. That doesn't include staying in a four-star hotel ($2200) and renting a car (no estimate) for those long drives along the Argentinian coast.

Are you a powerful politician with presidential aspirations? Well for just a few thousand dollars I can help free you from your delusions of presidential glory. Prices begin at $4300 to $6800 OAC. Democrats, Republicans and Italian Prime Ministers are welcome. Cheaper than the Betty Ford or some rehab in Malibu. (Note to self: business opportunity here).

We should all thank Gov. Sandford for taking the spotlight of media attention from the divorce of Jon and Kate Gosselin. I mean with all this crap about a revolution in Iraq, the bickering over President Obama's health care reform plan by Republicans and weak-kneed Democrats it's hard to focus on the real important stuff like Kate's posing in a bikini or Jon's search for a new apartment. All I know about this situation is what I read in the headlines, which in the case of Jon and Kate is way too much.

Capitano Tedeschi

30

Sanford photo courtesy of the SC Governor's Office
Source
http://www.scgovernor.com/news/photos/

Simon Schama, The American Future on BookTV

2009-06-22T00:24:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I got to watch a thought-provoking lecture by Historian Simon Schama on Book TV. I watched it twice. Below is my take on the speech. Quotations are from my notes and may not be totally accurate. The interpretation is totally my own.

On May 19^th 2009, Simon Schama gave a speech at the Philadelphia Free Library on his book The American Future: A History. Schama, a professor at Columbia University and the author of numerous books on history. I found him to be an engaging speaker. He was invited to the Free Library to talk about his book The American Future and for most of the hour he talked about anything but his book.

Then, in last part of his 30-minute lecture and in the questions afterwards, Schama spoke about the themes that inspired his book The American Future. That is there are now two competing American stories. The first story is the story that we as Americans all know. That we came into possession of a great continent full of abundant natural resources. That any person who came to America could by dint of hard work and perseverance could become whoever we want to be.

That story, myth, or ethos is now being challenged by events. America is entering into an age of limits. We are no longer a nation of limitless natural resources, abundant land, and water. We no longer are the world’s leader in oil production, manufacturing and finance. What is to become of us? What is new story we must tell about ourselves?

According to Simon Schama, the election of 2008, was the first chapter of this new story. This was an election where one candidate, Barrack Obama articulated a new vision of America’s future. According to Schama, Obama took the risk of offering a new story about America’s future. Obama's gamble paid off, in part because the majority of the American peoplehad a desire for a new story. One which described the steps necessary to restore “America’s sense of mutual obligation to each other.”

It is a parable that demands we no longer exploit this continent’s and the world’s resources, but become stewards of the earth, use it wisely and productively. Schama believes this is not a strange or unnatural idea. Environmental stewardship has always been a part of American history.

After hearing Schama’s lecture, I was both encouraged and challenged by this idea of a new story, a new paradigm for America’s future. Schama stated that we are “beginning a new story, our economic future depends on transitioning to a greener future for all us." Schama also stated that in the short term the change from a resource consuming society to resource conserving society will be uncomfortable and require some short-term sacrifice.

Schama says that in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, that many Americans in even the conservative heartland realized, “we want our government to be decent and we want it to work.” After years of being fed the idea that government and government bureaucrats are the problem, there is also an understanding that “there is something honorable and necessary about public service. There is no need to apologize for decent government.”

As I write this my employer, the state of California is on the verge of financial meltdown. As far I’m concerned the time has come both for citizens of California and the United States to demand and work for decent government--a government that takes care of all its people, a government that works.

I understand that the few who read this essay may not agree with my views, but perhaps we can discuss and come up with what we do agree on. Many of America's problems transcend the ideologies of the political left or right. Perhaps we can find a common ground? I hope we can at least try to find some common ground.

Capitano Tedeschi

Because of the invincibility thing

2009-06-20T00:05:00.000-07:00

Because of the invincibility thing
I never thought I’d see disaster
in my corner of the sky.
Then the tragic came upon me
with a paradoxical dynamism
attacking then retreating
taking away, then remitting
then taking away
creating a condition
where my days were fraught
with acts of regression.
At that moment I understood
the riddle of the Sphinx.

My body was once
a multi-faceted, balanced jewel.
Now it is a queer thing
a decaying clockwork.
My muscles are
like springs no longer elastic
The lenses of my eyes are
cracked and unable to focus.
My once sensitive fingers
are mere blocks of wood.

I wanted to stay original,
a man who is the proud possessor
of a strong will.
But my streams of opportunity dry up
I stagger across the border
of a strange land.
Constantly asking
where I am going?
where I am going?

Swear words are well-suited
to such moments.
My prayers strings of profanities.
Life is no longer a journey,
but a journey to a destination.
Like one who is trapped in the desert
I slowly discard possessions
that now have no value and that
I no longer have the strength to carry.

Capitano Tedeschi

30

For Lenny and Dorothy and all who have MS

Zombie Haiku Reunion RSVP

2009-06-18T13:20:00.000-07:00

Zombie Haiku

Just came across some fun stuff, Zombie Haiku, 17-syllable poems about zombies. #zombiehaiku on twitter has some great ones.

My Favorite is

living_deadgirl: His nose fell right off / into the waiting zombies / they did not eat it #michaeljacksonhaiku #zombiehaiku.

Which is a two-fer because its a zombie haiku and a Michael Jackson haiku as well. Sublime.

Below are my efforts

Five Zombie Haikus

undead stranger is
Tearing through my wall
Fresh brains eat!

I was relaxing
In my grave suddenly--
Brains au gratin

Obama zombies
Want my money to buy
more fresh brains

Dinner of sushi
not enough! Now you want
To eat my brain?

My fish is dead
Bloodstained cat toy
Bad zombie cat!

I have a sorta high school reunion coming up. Below is my RSVP (as yet unsent)

Reunion RSVP

You wonder if I
will return to fields
where flowers blossomed
thirty years ago.

Why?
bees harvest nectar
from the rose blossoms
in my garden here.

Capitano Tedeschi

30

Reunion RSVP and Five Zombie Haikus copyright June 18, 2009 by Jamie Jacks

Celebration of the life

2009-06-16T13:40:00.000-07:00

"Bill" , 54, Kansas City, MO, passed away May 28, 2009. Memorial visitation 6-8 p.m. Mon., June 15 at Amos Family Chapel of Shawnee. Contributions to American Heart Assoc., 6800 W. 93rd St., Olathe, KS 66212 or reStart, Inc., 918 E. 9th St., Kansas City, MO 64106. (47 words)

I could not come and
be a witness on that day
they fed you into the
maw of the earth monster

The invention of death
was long ago but every family
reinvents it as well
tonight your mother wishes
it was she and not her son
that was lying in the cheap coffin.

Your children, grown now
perhaps relieved or still filled
with sorrow and a rage, the kind
that tears arms off Barbie Dolls
and pulls the button eyes out of Teddie Bears

Once again they talk of you
as if you were not there
their questions as impotent now as
they were that first day
when storm clouds embraced you
the tornado of grief carried you away
you journeyed ever-deeper into a darkness
the memory of it is buried deep
as if in a cancerous womb
an embryo that will never be born
but will only continue to fester
it is something no one in the family
will ever speak about

Now no one remembers the tenacious
pulling guard for the football team
of Milburn Jr. High School
Nancy the sweetheart from your sophomore year
didn’t come she’s a grandmother in Boulder now
No one reminisced about that
fumble in the State Championship game
even though at the time it was funny.

After the minister stops his mumbling
you linger now only in dreams
visiting your loved ones in their deep sleep
they meet you at the Mission Shopping Mall
In an abandoned art galley which displays
a photographic restrospective of your life
you, at five dressed as cowboy with
a black hat and two chrome-plated cap pistols
or in the team photo of your senior year
you wore your sideburns longer then
or the snapshot of you at your wedding
or that brief videotape of you smiling
when the first of your four children was born

You speak to them but no sound comes forth
only waves of dream speak
subconsciously they know
you only want to explain
but they shake their heads
their faces filled with fatigue, not pity
they don’t even have to you tell go
you realize you can stay here no longer

(353 words)

Capitano Tedeschi

30

Celebration of the life copyright June 16, 2009 by Jamie Jacks

Iranian Elections

2009-06-14T21:37:00.000-07:00

It was sad to read the news that the recent Iranian election may have been stolen by supporters of President Amahdinejad. In these difficult times, it is hard to know what to do.

My initial reaction is that the United States should not recognize the results of this election. I don't know what conditions should be required to allow the United States to recognize the current regime.

The nice thing about the internet is that it allows me to email the President, my senators and my congressman and urge them to move carefully in this matter. If you feel strongly about this matter, I encourage to do the same.

Capitano Tedeschi

Bakersfield California

30

Still Over There w/ Stephen Colbert

2009-06-12T12:47:00.001-07:00

I has been a real pleasure of watch Steven Colbert's, the Colbert Report this week. Colbert had the courage to broadcast his show from Iraq this week. But his USO show was not his only bully pulpit.

It is important to remember that three years ago, Colbert was the guest comedian at the White House Correspondents dinner where he satirically assualted George W. Bush and Washington Press corps. To me it was a powerful "the emperor had no clothes moment," which exposed not only the Bush Administration incompetence, it crude manipulation of the American press, and the press' acquiesance to that manipulation.

Over the last five years you people were so good, over tax cuts, WMD intelligence, the effect of global warming. We Americans didn't want to know, and you had the courtesy not to try to find out. Those were good times, as far as we knew.

Now Colbert is in Iraq, and he is again taking the media and also the American people to task for forgetting the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Not only did he take his show to Iraq, he also guest-edited the current edition of Newsweek, which devoted the entire issue to the all-to-easily forgotten wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and now Pakistan. According to Jon Meacham, Newsweek's editor the magazine and its guest editor both got what they wanted

In one conversation, Colbert asked an interesting question. I know what is in this for me, he said: I get an issue of NEWSWEEK about something I care about and attention for a project—the broadcasts from Iraq—that I care about. But, he asked, what is in it for you? A fresh voice, I replied, and access to his audience—an audience of politically and culturally engaged people

James Rainey, in an article in the Los Angeles Times noted that Americans seem to quickly forget that we are still at war in Iraq and Afghanistan. According to Rainey,

Colbert's satire clearly, and correctly, skewers the media for losing focus, despite the presence of 130,000 troops in the still-dangerous nation. Statistics from the Tyndall Report tracking service show that all three network evening news programs broadcast a total of just 99 minutes of news on Iraq in the first five months of this year.

The media's attention deficit had Colbert telling Gen. Odierno he had assumed the Iraq war had ended and we "had moved on to the new war between a wise Latino woman and old white men."

I watched three of Colbert's shows from Iraq and read some of his guest edited Newsweek. I was impressed by his efforts to try to bring America's attention back to the most important problems facing America. The problem that Barack Obama promised he would solve after his election, ending the war and Iraq and bringing the troops home.

I am sure that with all the problems confronting us we may lose focus again, but Colbert's achievement is remarkable. As Rainey wrote in the Los Angeles Times that Colbert's fictional character had the power, "to bring everyone's attention back to reality."

Capitano Tedeschi

30

Just showin’ up

2009-06-09T13:46:00.000-07:00

I won’t do no Jedi mind trip .
I ain’t Obi Wan Kenobi
I won’t start babblin’ about “the Force.”
His life happened;
his death has happened .

Upon receipt of that grim news,
I realized
that my world had
just gotten harsher.

A world where the sound of his voice
on his answering machine
could calm my panic and
soothe my troubles
better than heroin
is no more.

Oh, he used to vex me.
Like when I would ask him
“How ya doin’?”
“Just right,” he would say “Just right.”
I have no patience with that particular
piece of zen bullshit.
I’ve never been “just right.”

No matter.
He is gone, but
thanks to him
I am embued with
his view of this world.
He taught me that
“all you have to do
is just show up.”
Whether it’s your wedding day or
the day of your execution, it’s the same.
You get to show up.

To which I have added
and I know he would agree
that just showin’ up
is a privilege.

For Al H.

Capitanotedeschi

Just showin' up copyright June 9, 2009 by Jamie Jacks

30

Heart armored with righteousness

2009-06-06T01:26:00.000-07:00

I am not a servant of that gentle Deity,
of whom Jesus preached.

I serve the Old Testament God

I am vengeance terrible vengeance
I am the vortex of the tornado
whirling across the drought-stricken prairie

I am that John Brown
On the mural in the state Capitol
In Topeka
that I saw with my 5^th grade class

As I walk across the fresh mown lawn
of the Baby Murderer’s Church
In my hands a gun and a bible
Old John Brown come to smite the wicked
come to send the spawn of Satan
to Hell and to his Master.

I am sword of the Lord
coming to chasten Pharaoh
in his Wichita temple.
More fool he
to think he is safe.

I come to deliver future innocents
from murder to belonging.
It is not with peace, forgiveness or love
that our wicked world will be cleansed
of its evil.
Forgiveness is a human strength.
As an avenging Angel
I no longer need feel human.

All my life,
I knew that I was damned.
I spent years enduring
my damnation
I every day I walked this earth
my heart became armored
with righteousness.

Now I am redeemed.
I am reborn again.
Innocent as a babe.
One with the Lord,
clean and eternally forgiven.

Capitano Tedeschi

Heart armored with righteousness copyright June 6, 2009 by Jamie Jacks Note, I would have loved to use John Steuart Curry's Tragic Prelude (1938-1940), a mural in the Kansas Statehouse illustrating John Brown and the clash of forces in Bleeding Kansas but did not due to copyright restrictions.

Job interview

2009-06-01T18:34:00.000-07:00

I had my first job interview in at least a dozen years on May 21st. For my part the interview went well and I was pleased with my appearance and performance. But they did ask a question "give us an example where you used creative problem solving?" The Santa Claus story was used as part of my answer. It's true, more so than most of my poems, and happened in Christmas of 1978.

Authenticity

Never, I say never
volunteer to be a Santa Claus

I did once.
It was a fundraiser
for my theatre group.

We had a makeshift booth
at the intersection of Westport Road
and Broadway, in Midtown Kansas City.

Never, I say never
Volunteer to be a Santa Claus
With a hangover.

My body was screaming like
a dying dog as
my aching liver metabolized the alcohol
from last night.

But everybody loved Santa
on that cold December day.
The honked at Santa.
They waved to Santa.
One punk in a pickup honked and gave a finger to Santa
(Santa gave the finger right back)

A pretty young thing with long
red hair sat on my lap
hugged me real hard and said
“I want a gram of cocaine!”
There was no doubt she would find
her Santa.

But the hardest part was
dealing with the kids.
They’d sit on my lap
look into my eyes
not see the twinkle
not see the joy of Christmas
and their faces would contort
with shock and disgust
screaming for their mothers.

They knew that I wasn’t Santa Claus,
I was just a man in a Santa Claus suit.

Never, I say never
volunteer to be a Santa Claus
unless you are actually Santa Claus
and not just a guy
with a hangover, a fake beard and
funny red suit.

Capitano Tedeschi

30
Authenticity, copyright June 1, 2009 by Jamie Jacks

Kansas, Bleeding Kansas

2009-06-01T15:33:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I was shocked and saddened by the murder of Dr. George Tiller in his church in Wichita. When I learned about this terrible murder, my reaction was my God, this is something that shouldn't happen in Kansas. We're not like this. We don't go into a church on a Sunday and kill people. That's not done in Kansas, that's not done in America, that shouldn't be done anywherte.

The murder of Dr. George Tiller was an act of domestic terrorism. Police have a suspect in custody. While the murder itself was sudden, the act of murder, which was done in the sanctuary of Tiller's Lutheran Church has had a long genesis. The more I thought about this murder, the more I realized that murder is not an isolated incident. Kansas has been through this before and all I have to do is think of the geography of my childhood to prove it.

I was born and raised in Kansas. I lived in the suburbs of Kansas City, Missouri, in that part of Kansas known as Bleeding Kansas. Bleeding Kansas earned it name for the years just prior to the start of the American Civil War. My house was on the Kansas side of State Line Road and was just a mile or so away from Loose Park in Kansas City, where the Battle of Westport was fought. The post office for our area was called Shawnee Mission after an Indian School by the same name. In 1865, Thomas Johnson, the director of that "school" was murdered by southern sympathizers for swearing an oath to the Union.

Every day I rode or drove to school along Johnson Dr. which was the start of Oregon and Santa Fe trails. Later, when I was in college, I lived a little town of Wamego Kansas which is not far from Wabaunsee, which is the site of the Beecher Bible church.

So Kansas has known the terrorism of John Brown, William Quantrill and Sen. David Atchison. In the last half of the 19th century, the divisive issue was slavery. Today is it fundamental Christian fanaticism and its many false dogmas, gun rights, anti-gay marriage, hatred of taxes, and abortion. Now it appears that idealogical descendents of Quantrill and Atchison are now attacking churches that disagree with their views regarding guns, god, taxes, and gays. Kansas has seen this trend as well.

In the early 1980s, my parents lived in Topeka Kansas. One day a neighborhood restaurant, called the Village Grill, was picketed by a group of religious fanatics who call themselves the Westboro Baptist Church, led by a self-ordained Baptist minister by the name of Fred Phelps. Phelps was picketing the restuarant because it either hired or served gays. Phelps' demonstrations escalated over the years and he later would picket any church that protested his tactics.

So in Kansas, religious fanatics learned that it was okay to use hate not just against minorities but also religious groups you didn't agree with. But the next atrocity came not in Kansas but in Tennessee. In July of 2008, an deranged loner by the name of James Adkisson stormed into Knoxville Unitarian Universalist Church and killed two innocent people. Is there a connection between Fred Phelps picketing churches in Topeka that disagree with him, James Adkisson murdering Unitarian Universalists in Knoxville, and the man that killed Dr. George Tiller in Wichita? It's too early to tell, but I am not the only one who is worried by this trend.

Journalist Sara Robinson in her Blog Orcinus

The fact that this killing happened on the sixth anniversary of Eric Rudolph's capture bears this out. The date was chosen with a message in mind. It seems very likely that the venue was, too.

I've often said that fundamentalism begins the minute you decide you have the One True Right and Only Way -- and that you have a God-given duty to impose that way on the rest of the world. Because of this, fundamentalists have never been willing to recognize the legitimacy of other faiths. And certain factions on the far right have never had qualms about vandalizing mosques or synagogues in order to harass Muslims and Jews into political and social silence.

But they used to leave Christian churches pretty much alone. The fact that this shooting occurred in a church (again) suggests that this tactic is now being tried out on more closely related faith groups whose views don't comport with the fundamentalist party line. As Dave has often pointed out, bringing violence to houses of worship is usually an overtly eliminationist act. They are trying to terrify liberals by making us feel at risk and unsafe inside our own spiritual sanctuaries -- the very places we go to feel the most security and peace. This is terrorism, plain and simple -- Christian fundamentalist terrorism, committed by people Sam Smith has started referring to as "Jesus's Jihadis."

So Kansas is bleeding again. I'd like to think that as a Kansan "we're not like this." But as a short rummage through the landmarks of my youth have shown, we are. Will it grow into a wider conflict, I don't know.

Capitano Tedeschi

30

love song to my mongrel selves

2009-05-26T17:20:00.000-07:00

I still seek a partner
for my role-playing games:
Cinderella,
Beauty and the Beast,
Taming of the Shrew.
Costumes welcome
but not necessary.

I know--I know --I know.
that these romantic fictions
don’t deliver long-term
opiate intoxication anymore
only a pain in my chest,
probably indigestion,
and not the ache of
inassuageable desire.

I know--I know --I know.
After all these years,
I still sing love songs
written by a rueful, wounded men
(Leonard Cohen, Paolo Conte, Me)
semi-softly to my mongrel selves
hoping SHE might overhear

I know--I know --I know!

love song to my mongrel selves copyright May 26 2009 by Jamie Jacks

The Fighting Cholitas

2009-05-25T09:44:00.000-07:00

I just saw a great short documentary on the Independent Film Channel. (I know what you're thinking. Think it. I don't care. I watch IFC and the Sundance Channel too. okay.)

I digress. The film is called "The Fighting Cholitas". Cholitas are female wrestlers from Bolivia. They dress up in traditional Bolivian costumes, get into the ring with other Cholas and wrestle. The women are mothers and housewives who work as weavers and shop owners. But on Saturday night, they put on their traditional Bolivian outfits, go to the arena and wrestle. The picture above is from a BBC article Women wrestling sweeps Bolivia.

The women wrestlers or luchadoras are serious, disciplined athletes, train rigorously, and wrestle because they love it. To them being a luchadora is a vocation, they can not not do it. As one of the women said,"it's 80% real and 20% fake." The film showed a match between two Cholitas and there was nothing fake about that contest. Another contestant said something to the effect that since the women can't beat up their husbands, they go to the arena and beat up another Cholita. After hearing that, I decided that I didn't need to search for a life partner amongst the luchadoras of Bolivia.

I am fascinated with women's wrestling for nearly 20 years. In the 1930s Kansas City's own Mildred Burke became America's first professional "lady wrestler." In the late 1930s she would tour the country and have matches with other lady wrestlers including Gladys 'Killem' Gillem. Mildred and Gladys came to Bakersfield several times and wrestled in Strelich Stadium.

I enjoyed the film and hope everyone gets a chance to see it. The Fighting Cholitas is being shown on IFC. The film has a myspace page with a trailer and also times when it is showing on IFC.

Capitano Tedeschi

30