Part I conclusion:
Cartoon drawn by James Thurber.
Conclusions drawn by yourself.
Privatize Profits, Socialize Losses
The last half-century has shown us four things that come with Republicans in power:
- Exploding deficits. (“Reagan proved that deficits don’t matter,” quoth Darth Cheney.)
- Scandal (Not a blow-job-in-the-White-House scandal, but a major outrage, e.g. Iran-Contra, Valerie Plame.)
- Invasion of a country perceived to be unable to defend itself. (Grenada, Panama, Afghanistan/Iraq)
- Taxpayer bailout of financial industry after meltdown brought on by repealed regulation. (Savings & Loan, Derivative Trading)
The current administration has already given us numbers 1 and 2; number 3 is in the works. As sure as Mitch McConnell is democracy’s gravedigger, number 4 is coming.
Influenza Centennial
A hundred years ago, November 11, 1918, the armistice ending four years of fighting the Great War was signed. Armistice Day was later renamed Veterans Day. The Great War became known as World War I to differentiate it from the even greater war that broke out in 1939, a little more than twenty years later. WW I killed 8.5 million combatants, another 28 million wounded or missing. Add to that a million or so civilian deaths. The end of the war did not mean people stopped dying, however.
The Self-Declared Self-Made Billionaire
Having lived for a couple decades in Sonoma wine country, I’m familiar with the old riddle:
How do you make a small fortune in the wine business?
You start with a large fortune.
I’ve since learned that a version of this joke is also passed around among farmers and ranchers in Texas.
The failing New York Times took a deep dive into how the current occupant of the White House made his fortune. John Cassidy summarized the report in The New Yorker magazine and concluded:
He is a shameless flim-flam man with practically no regard for the truth or the quaint notion that wealthy people like him have a civic duty to pay their fair share of taxes.
Creeping Memory Loss
Bob Dylan purportedly gave this advice to young songwriters: Don’t write songs with a lot of words; it’s hard to remember ‘em when you get old.
Aaron Neville has been touring, just himself with only piano accompaniment, performing mostly soulful ballads. A music stand close to Neville held a book of song lyrics which he referenced a few times.
Performing solo, John Hiatt stopped in the middle of a song, trying to remember the next lyric. Someone in the audience called out, “Just go ahead with it.” Hiatt responded that a person with obsessive-compulsive disorder couldn’t do that; he has to sing the song from beginning to end. After a few more beats, he smiled, nodded, then re-started the song from the beginning.
Even a much younger singer needs a little help remembering the words… or maybe it was just part of the act.
Why We Love Kimberly Berg
KOIN-TV visited Kimberly Berg’s Rose City Rebels Boot Camp – fighting Parkinson’s disease.