Category Archives: Blogs' Archive

Nothing to say tonight, I’ve already said enough about Hillary for the moment, it’s an early stage of the game and guaranteed there will still be surprises galore. Yeah, her logo sucks and it looks so far like she’s running a pathetic campaign, but the absolute shitstorm from the right wing is making me like her a little bit.
Chris Christie’s ignorant and bombastic comments about marijuana don’t exactly endear me to the man, but since I had no love for him in the 1st place it hardly matters.
Just saw a headline that said “How can you tell when you’re talking to a narcissist?” and thought that was rather a silly question. They will tell you. Narcissists are about as up front about being narcissists as Jehovah’s Witnesses are about being Jehovah’s witnesses as a general rule.
Why am I watching a TV program with a couple of guys who talk like morons and are trying to trap a raccoon?
I spent the day today proofreading, which means my mind is numb. That’s all for tonight. Love.

Former Senator Bob Graham (D-Fl) wants the government to release 28 pages of documents he says will prove that the Saudi government was involved in 9/11.
Bob Graham is no slouch. He was a governor before he was a

Senator, and was once a serious presidential prospect. He was on the committee that ‘investigated’ 9/11. He’s seen these documents. He is not Alex Jones. This is huge news.
Not just because it means the FBI knew stuff about 9/11 they kept hidden from the general public. Not just because they knew a foreign government, which was not that of Saddam Hussein, was involved. Not just because they’ve been lying to us all these years.
Rather, because of the closeness between George Bush and the Saud family, and also the Bin Laden family. (Saudi Arabia, let us not forget, is an old school monarchy. The nation of Saudi Arabia is the only nation in the world which is actually owned by one family. The Saud family. That’s why they call it Saudi Arabia.)
Because we still don’t know who gave the order to evacuate a bunch of high level Saudi citizens (including many Bin Laden relatives) immediately after 9/11, or why.
Because if the Saudis were involved, it suddenly becomes very likely that Bush was involved.
Of course the documents should be released. Two wars have been fought over this, and are now over. Millions of lives and trillions of dollars are gone. There is no way any information contained in those 28 pages can possibly hurt national security more than it’s been hurt already.
It is, most definitely, not ‘too soon.’

Just got back from my once a month poetry reading, which gets very mixed reviews this month. It was the first at a new venue, and I was looking forward to that.
We’d been at the Napa bar for a few years and, although it was excellent for most of that time, it seemed like recently the management had cooled to our presence, which is not too surprising. Poets can be terrible cheapskates. They’d started making the basement unavailable, and upstairs is where the regular customers are, and generally if somebody just goes out for a drink with friends, they don’t want to get caught in the middle of a poetry reading.
The new place is conveniently located, right across from Stavovsky Divadlo, which was built by Mozart specifically for the premiere of Don Giovanni, because Mozart loved his Prague audiences. It looked like a classy place, also a theater but we were at the club, down in the basement.
Which still looked very nice, but the problem was obvious even before we started. It seemed to be a popular pub, and a popular pub is a noisy pub. We did have our own room off to the side, but still. I’m pretty sure we’ll be at a different place next month.
The featured speaker seemed like an interesting guy, and I’d like it if his style of presentation were to become a regular thing. Instead of reading his own poetry, he gave us a half hour lesson on the poetry of Elizabeth Jane Weston, stepdaughter of weird alchemist Edward Kelley, and only published female poet of her era, which was the same as Shakespeare’s. You could barely hear him, though.
Ken Nash did his traditional Easter song, Jesus is Naked in the Clouds (and all his dangly bits are hangin’ down, down, down), there was some other interesting poetry, I got to see the people I see every month and some who aren’t there so often, and a student of mine who I haven’t seen for about 8 years, which was nice.
She told me she likes this blog better when I talk about matters of everyday life because she’s not interested in American politics and junk like that which I spend so much time on.
So, this blogs for you, Helena.

It’s official. With a staggeringly bland video announcement (“I want to be YOUR champion!” “When families are strong, America is strong!”) in which she never mentioned a specific policy on a specific issue even once, Hillary Clinton is running for President. For the next about 10 months, the argument among Democrats will not be “Who is oour best possible candidate, it will be “Hillary or not Hillary.”
Either way, I see a risk of the Democratic party being torn apart, to the point where a Republican could get elected. To avoid that fate, the main thing we need to do is keep the internal conversation civil.
With that in mind, here is a short list of things we should not use to attack Hillary Clinton.
1. Her age. Those of us who would gladly support Bernie Sanders, or Joe Biden, can’t say doodly squat about her age. Besides, she’s not really that old. Also, if you make a big deal about her age now, what are you going to say when she gets the nom and the Republicans nominate Rand Paul or Marco Rubio? Sure, you’ll probably still vote for her but you’ll lose serious cred among your friends and relatives, and those are the votes we need.
2. Her gender. Come on, ladies, do you really think we hate Hillary because she is a woman? No, we hate Hillary because she is pro-fracking, voted for the Iraq war, and is far too politically calculating.
3. The fact that Republicans hate her with an insane passion. Who cares? That is actually an argument in her favor but, ultimately, this is not their debate. Also, it’s a dead certainty that whoever gets the Democratic nomination, Rush, O’Reilly, Hannity, Beck, Scarborough and Peggy Noonan are going to immediately brand him or her as the most liberal liberal in the history of liberals.
So, let’s look at the other candidates, try and get behind someone who is good on the issues and good on the campaign trail, and hope for the best. But let’s not poison the well. If she’s the nominee, we’ve got to be ready to run with that.

Things seem to be going well with the U.S. and Cuba. I am quite pleased with this. Cuba is a country I’d very much like to visit some day. This will be good for the Cubans living in Miami, even though some of them might not agree.
One thing I’ve written about before, but here’s a chance to sneak it in again, because I think it’s a brilliant plan: this is Obama’s chance to end the Guantanamo problem. As part of the peace deal with Cuba, turn the base over to them. It is, after all, within their territory. Then, the fate of the prisoners is in their hands, and the Republicans wouldn’t be able to do a thing about it.
Cuba could either repatriate them to their own countries, or invite them to stay, whatever. And, they could turn Guantanamo into a lovely little resort by the bay.
It would be a win all around.

Argentina, I see, has issued an arrest warrant for Justin Bieber. It’s not likely to ever be enforced, just as long as he stays away from Argentina, but, my guess is, that’s all Argentina really wants. I can’t say I blame them. Dick Cheney can’t go to Germany, either. I think we should let both of them be extradited, but I don’t think that’s going to happen.

Not much else to write about tonight, so I’ll leave you with a poem I wrote a couple of days ago, which I am very pleased with:
A musician is a sculptor of the air
Shaping sounds to please the human ear
Extracting meaning from the atmosphere
Something that all human beings can share

A painter sees the world, so wild and strange
And puts a piece of it inside a frame
Like a horse inside a paddock, it’s been tamed
Will live forever, but will never change

The poet uses words to try to name
The clouds, the stones, the flowers and the trees
The birds, the fish, the rivers and the seas
So that everything won’t be the same

And then to reassemble all those parts
To create a universe of art