Category Archives: Blogs' Archive

Now, I haven’t actually seen Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” and probably won’t any time in the near future. Hyper-violence is not my thing, although he does usually tell an interesting story and he does the hyper-violence thing with such style, and such humor. I like him a bit better than David Lynch, but both of them are in the “I’ll wait until I can download it or watch it on Netflix or something” category. I don’t need to spend money on that.
But, that’s not really the point of this blog. I was just reading a Facebook friend’s review of it, and he complained about how Tarantino didn’t understand the zeitgeist of the ’60s. I think that’s pretty likely. Pretty much nobody gets the zeitgeist of the ’60s, and it seems to me journalists and the media have been getting it wrong ever since, well, the ’60s.
You can’t describe it the way you can other decades. It’s not defined by it’s fashions. Although they set it apart, the only fashion the Hippies believed in was anti-fashion. The fact that it became fashion is sort of a comment on herd mentality, but it’s not what the time what the Hippies were all about, and when we’re talking about the 60s, we’re talking about the Hippies. Of course, there were millions of people, a majority even, who were not Hippies, but that is true in every generation. Most people today are not Rappers or Gangsters.
It’s not totally defined by it’s music, although the music was great, and important. The 70s, the 80s, the 90s, and so on have all had their music, and some of it has stood out.
The difference between the 60s and other time periods, between the Hippies and the Yuppies and the Punks and all that followed is that the Hippies had a philosophy. We were making a concerted effort to give some meaning to our lives. The philosophy was threefold. Freedom was one point. Do your own thing. Equality was another. People living and grooving together. And love. We tried to live on love.
It was basically Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite. The ideas have been around a long time, and occasionally surface under other guises.
Of course, Hippiedom wasn’t really sustainable as an economic model, and as musical and fashion trend, those are always on limited time, so the movement died down – to a simmer.
I am 65 but still proud to have been a Hippie, and as far as the basic philosophy of it is concerned, to still be one.

Elizabeth Warren is getting a lot of good press lately. They’re calling her a candidate with bold new ideas. They’re saying she’s on fire, or surging. Part of that might not be a bad thing. It makes it harder for other candidates to be critical of universal health care, seeing as how Bernie’s been advocating for it for decades.
And a tax on the ultra-wealthy is a great idea, too. Again, Bernie was there first. And college debt forgiveness. Thank goodness Elizabeth came up with that plan, and it’s very fortunate for the Dems that it’s the same as Bernie’s plan. Should be easy to work together.

The thing is, Elizabeth Warren made the wrong call when she didn’t endorse Bernie before the Massachusetts primary in 2016. I imagine she thought she would be Hillary Clinton’s vice president, but the big money people said no to that, and she was left with nothing. She might have been offered a place in a Clinton administration, but that was not to be. Warren bet on the losing horse, and when you lose your bet, you lose your bet.

Now, the press is united and praising Warren, but if she were to get anywhere near 51%, those same rich people who are now praising Warren to the skies would turn on her. Once they can get past the first ballot without a winner, they call in the superdelegates and nominate some total piece of shit. (Cenk Uygur also pointed this out) Because bankers are still Bankers and Elizabeth Warren, as lightweight and compromised as she might be, is still too far to the left for them.

If Warren can’t see that she’s being used, that she’s being played again, then we may have a serious problem.

I am back in Prague and straight back to my  old habits, i.e. spending too much time on Facebook and watching Netflix (current two binges:  Lemony Snicket, and one I just started called Another Life, which is about a space mission to make first contact and it’s kind of fascinating but hella dark.  All of the Star Trek series had a bit of comic relief here and there, I prefer that) and smoking too much pot.
Last night didn’t write my blog because it just got too late and I got too stoned and told myself I’d write it in the morning but there’s no one single topic that presents itself and on Facebook I’m currently involved in a hopeless conversation with a group of Hillary die hards saying vote blue no matter who but, of course, in the end they won’t if the nominee is Bernie Sanders.  That’s going to be the hardest demographic for us to reach.  The rednecks will come around with the offer of Medicare for All and fuck the rich, but with the Hillary people it’s that they resent us just as much as we resented her.
So, my goals for the next week are to clean up my poetry page here on gurukalehuru, so that when people go there they see only books and not the pages of random notes and rubbish, and to get my next book “Cup of Tea” (which was just a working title but I think I’m going to leave it because my wife would like that) published.  But, those are two things that depend very much on my IT department (i.e. aforesaid wife) and she told me I need to write her blog and stop nagging at her and she’ll get on it.
So, blog out, until this evening.

In 2016, Tulsi Gabbard resigned from the DNC to support Bernie Sanders, and  you’d better believe she got plenty of flak for it.  Still does.  The media ignore her the same way they ignored Bernie in 2016.  They leave her name off polls and surveys, and frequently fail to mention her in lists of women candidates.
But, she persists, and she’s kind of awesome.  Like the $50 million lawsuit she’s hitting Google with.  She says they discriminated against her by dropping her ad account directly following the Democratic primaries, because she was way ahead of everybody else in Google searches and figured it would be a good time to place some ads.
Here’s what she said:  “Google’s discriminatory actions against my campaign are reflective of how dangerous their complete dominance over internet search is, and how the increasing dominance of big tech companies over our public discourse threatens our core American values.  This is a threat to free speech, fair elections and to our democracy, and I intend to fight back on behalf of all Americans.”  
Damn straight it was discrimination.  If it was a technical glitch, why did it only affect Tulsi Gabbard?  If it was nothing deliberate, why did it happen precisely at that time?
This was way worse than a baker refusing to bake a cake for a gay couple.  Google, for the space of a few, critical hours, refused to accept ads from Tulsi Gabbard’s campaign.  That may well have cost her $50 million.  So, the amount is appropriate and I hope she wins.

I expect Google to use the same defense as the DNC did when they were caught cheating.  “Like, haha, we’re a private organization and we can do  whatever we want and we don’t even have to play fair.”
And they might even win, but to do that they’d have to admit in court that they are not honest brokers of information, but rather slimy operatives  of the ruling class.  I doubt they want to go that route.  $50 million would be a lot cheaper for them, in the long run.

I need to make a correction to last night’s blog.  Lake Sobec is the kiddie pool lake in the camp where we stayed.  Lake Bled, which is the major attraction and has a castle atop a high cliff overlooking it, is nearby and the town of Bled is on it’s shoreline.  A beautiful place, and deserving of more than the 2 hours we gave it after breaking camp and heading home to Prague.  The chocolate cake was delicious, though.  And I found a lucky penny.

On to tonight’s blog.  A guest on MSNBC, Mimi Roca, uttered this statement, a couple of days ago, live and on the air and without a hint of embarrassment, with regard to the esteemed and widely beloved  Senator from Vermont, Bernie Sanders:  “I’m not the political analyst here, but just as a woman, probably considered a somewhat moderate Democrat, I… Bernie Sanders makes my skin crawl.  I can’t even identify for you what exactly it is. But I see him as sort of a not pro-woman candidate,”

I’ve got a few questions:  If she’s not a news analyst, why is she even being interviewed?  Is she a famous actor?  A singer?  Mixed Martial Arts fighter?  And, if she can’t even identify what it is, shouldn’t she maybe be questioning why she feels like that, rather than just launching into a purely venomous ad hominem, completely fact free, attack?  And does she realize that, even though she was speaking just as a woman, there are millions of other women who would not say the same thing?  And why on Earth does she see him as an anti-woman candidate?  He is staunchly pro-choice, and has been for a long time.  Women would benefit at least as much as much and maybe even more than men by a $15 an hour wage, and Medicare for all, and free college.  These are the kind of tools needed to break through that still intact glass ceiling .

But really, the most important question is the first one.  Who is Mimi Roca and why should we care about her baseless opinion?