05.19.11

Creepy Mean Old Man TV — Nugent on CNN

Posted in Extremism, Ted Nugent at 9:13 am by George Smith

Ted Nugent was granted an hour with Piers Morgan on CNN last night.

A reader tipped me. But the results were still grim as one might expect.

Some points to Morgan for trying to employ critical questioning and, as the interview wore on, showing that he politely but visibly detested his guest.

Some parts of it (the full transcript is here):

MORGAN: You gave an interview to some guy on a BBC show.

NUGENT: Boy, did they need me there, huh?

MORGAN: And just to describe how you thought went with this British interview, you said they sent this young limey prick who pretended to be my friend. He tried to — with me on all these political correct levels. I gutted him. I danced on his skull.

NUGENT: But before I gutted him —

MORGAN: Will you dance on my skull, Ted?

Then there’s the regular GOP/Ted meme of shitting on people on foodstamps because they’re leeches.

NUGENT: Well, safety nets. Welfare for example. Welfare isn’t just about helping the needy anymore. Welfare is now about rewarding people who take advantage of the corruption and the abuse of that condition.

That’s more widespread than actual needy people getting help. I mean I don’t know how often you shop around this country, or how often you hang out with people around this country. But it is not like the president said.

The America he doesn’t know that people are using food stamps for something other than good nutrition. You gotta be kidding me. We got a bunch of idiots out there that are absolutely raping and pillaging an otherwise positive humanitarian system.

MORGAN: Well, I admire the passion you bring. I don’t have a problem with people having opinions. Even if I don’t agree with some of them.

My issue about you and the welfare thing is it showed — to me it showed no sense of compassion for people who have genuine problems. Who genuinely need it.

NUGENT: Well, you see —

MORGAN: Your judgment, if you don’t mind me saying, is all encompassing. All sweeping. You think they’re all on the fiddle.

MORGAN: Well, you’re very — you’re very, very pro the troops. I get that. But you yourself, I mean you dodged the draft.

NUGENT: No. Now, see, I’m glad we’re here on the Piers Morgan show to set that straight for the 10 million —

MORGAN: Set the record straight.

NUGENT: No, did I not dodge the draft. I was 17, and I was a clueless idiot, which most 17s qualify. I bet you were —

MORGAN: I was quite suave.

NUGENT: Being that as it may, no, I was enrolled in Oakland Community College. And I had a one-wide deferment. Did I register — I registered. Did I volunteer? No. Should I have? Yes.

MORGAN: Do you regret that?

NUGENT: You know, I do regret it on one level. On the most important, fundamental level, is that I have a duty to earn this experiments in we the people self-government. And I’ve spent my time and I’ve intentionally put myself in harm’s way going over to Iraq and Afghanistan, right into hell zones of unnamed trenches in Afghanistan danger zones, I do —

MORGAN: Is part of that a guilt thing on your part?

Ted then spent some time complaining and denying it’s a guilt thing. Morgan wouldn’t have it so Ted called him a bastard.

Ted is revealed as a closet birther.

MORGAN: Did you agree with [Trump] about the birther issue?

NUGENT: You know, I agree that we should be able to demand evidence and I, like he and many others, I had not seen the official document. And I think we the people should be able to demand of our elected officials —

MORGAN: Have you seen Sarah Palin’s?

NUGENT: I have not seen — but she’s not president.

MORGAN: Why aren’t you demanding to see hers?

NUGENT: If she runs for president I would.

MORGAN: Yes, but some say that the only reason people wanted to see Obama’s was because he’s an African-American.

NUGENT: And isn’t that offensive? Isn’t that pathetic that they have to reduce it to a race issue? That is the most evil, rotten, soulless condition in America that as soon as you disagree with someone of a different color, that the racist accusations fly. That is soulless, inaccurate, and wrong.

MORGAN: Fine. Have you ever asked to see the birth certificate of any other president or presidential candidate?

NUGENT: No, I haven’t.

MORGAN: Why not?

NUGENT: I was never active enough in politics —

It continues, Ted seeming to realize he’s been backed into looking foolish. At one point he suggests a “government panel” to review birth credentials before petering out.

NUGENT: So I admire Sarah Palin across the board. Great woman, perfect American.

MORGAN: Other than that, you’re quite keen on that?

NUGENT: Other than that what?

MORGAN: You’re quite keen on that?

NUGENT: Yes, I’m keen on that. Plus, she’s so good looking.

Nugent said this with an obvious leer which prompted the next response from Morgan and a commercial break.

MORGAN: I need a break after that quite nauseating tidbit. So we’ll have a short break.

NUGENT: You’re damn right we need a break.

Next, Morgan makes Nugent squirm over his constant gay-baiting.

MORGAN: When we come back, we’re going to talk to you about homophobia. That should fire you up a bit.

NUGENT: I’m sorry to hear you’re having that problem. I can help you with that. I’m gay.

CNN the aired a video of Kobe Bryant and the LA Lakers pressed into providing a public service announcement in which they vow their respect for others.

NUGENT: Amen. I like that. We’re all in this together.

MORGAN: Well, yes, except that Kobe Bryant was fined 100,000 dollars for using a gay slur during a Lakers’ game. And Ted, you wrote a piece after and I’m going to read what you said here. You said that homosexuals are the most protected class of people in America.

And you said, and I quote, “The NBA should hold homosexual night during halftime and homosexuals could come down on the court, hold hands, prance around the court to music by The Village People.” You also said that homosexuality was morally wrong.

NUGENT: Do you have a problem with that?

MORGAN: That’s claptrap.

NUGENT: That’s like Clapton trap. No, let’s put it this way. If you’re gay, have a nice day. I could give a rat’s ass. I don’t —

MORGAN: Are you homophobic?

NUGENT: Not at all, no.

MORGAN: Would you be happy if one of your —

NUGENT: I’m heterophiliac.

MORGAN: What’s a heterophiliac?

NUGENT: It means I’m hopelessly addicted to women — woman. [As someone notorious for his unfaithfulness, note Ted’s Freudian slip.]

MORGAN: Right. If one of your children came up and say, Dad, I’m gay. How would you react to that?

NUGENT: I’d say, get the gun, let’s go kill a deer. Inconsequential.

MORGAN: You wouldn’t mind morally?

NUGENT: Not at all. I am repulsed at the concept of man on man sex. I think it’s against nature. I think it’s strange as hell. But if that’s what you are, I love you.

MORGAN: But do you believe it’s morally wrong? You have suggested that before.

NUGENT: You know, I’m not going to judge another’s morals.

MORGAN: You judge people all the time.

In the next segment Nugent began making nonsensical arguments comparing the outlawing of guns to the outlawing of water. Morgan subsequently mocked him and the conversation degenerated even further.

MORGAN: What is a quaint old thing where if there aren’t any guns nobody gets shot?

NUGENT: And if there isn’t any water, no one will drown. I tell you what. You work on the guns and stop the government. I’ll work on the water so no one drowns anymore. I’ll see you at noon.

MORGAN: You’re right. Wait.

NUGENT: It’s impossible.

MORGAN: If there is no water, nobody does drown.

NUGENT: Wow! All right. Then let’s ban water, Piers.

MORGAN: No sunshine, nobody gets sunburned.

NUGENT: You’re weird. That’s impossible.

MORGAN: I’m not weird.

NUGENT: You can’t ban water and you can’t ban guns. Can’t do it.

MORGAN: Why would you ban water?

NUGENT: To stop the drownings. We want the poor, fat children to float.

MORGAN: Now you’re just be facetious.

NUGENT: No, I’m being absolutely — if you can ban guns, I’ll ban water. If you can get rid of guns, I’ll get rid of water.

Through it all, Nugent never seemed to realize how he’d been made the fool.

There was another moment worth repeating, not included in the transcript, in which Ted tried to pass himself off as a certified policeman. Ted was, he said, a “cop” who’d gone on countless arrests as well as operations with military men.

Sort of like reality TV one guesses, only the cameramen and hosts don’t consider themselves part of the police force or military, only ride alongs or embeds.

One of the features of Ted’s regular summer tours through the rib shacks, casinos and brokedown old ballrooms of the heartland are the articles on him which appear in local newspapers and the alti-weeklies.

In entertainment and music journalism most writers have chosen to always portray him as an intelligent political activist from the right, if slightly idiosyncratic.

As the CNN interview showed, and as everyone who reads this blog knows, Ted is not a person one would use the word “intelligent” on loosely. And he is unfailingly profane.

If the interviewer asks questions Ted doesn’t like he can be counted on to try and change the subject. If that fails his fallback plan is always slurs and non sequiturs.

05.17.11

Rubs vaseline into his hair every morning

Posted in Extremism at 1:22 pm by George Smith

Excerpt from Paul Ryan’s recent big idea statement, noted here for only two things.

First, the collapse into Ayn Rand repackaged for — hmmm — an audience that’s disintegrating:

This sets up a debate in which we are really just arguing over who to hurt and how best to manage the decline of our nation. [Which is precisely his gig.]

To begin with, chasing ever-higher spending with ever-higher tax rates will decrease the number of makers in society and increase the number of takers. Able-bodied Americans will be discouraged from working and lulled into lives of complacency and dependency.

Makers and takers. The supermen and all the rest of us parasites.

However, that’s small potatoes.

The worst part exposes Ryan as an asshole beyond compare:

Our plan is to give seniors the power to deny business to inefficient providers.

Anyone who knows one elderly person well knows the last thing to put upon them as they enter the part of their lives characterized by medical issues (often disastrous) is more challenge.

“[The] power to deny business to inefficient providers]” is a line only a fiend could invent.

Yes, old, weakened and frequently sick old people want nothing more than worthless vouchers and having to wrestle with the insurance industry.

Just when their mental faculties ebb, their ability to read and interpret documents purposely made unclear and confusing dims, when they have trouble getting to the telephone much less wading through computerized corporate menus in hopes of getting a human being — that’s just when they want to wield the power of the free market to “deny business to inefficient providers.”

Why, all the insurance companies will just drop right into line at the threat of it.

Paul Ryan looks every part the slippery fellow who rubs grease and black dye into his hair every morning.

Happily he’s been castigated, refuted and insulted by economists like Paul Krugman enough that he’s severely damaged goods.

By the middle of next week Ted Nugent will still be a fan, though.

05.12.11

Goldbug/fiat money kooks

Posted in Extremism, Fiat money fear and loathers at 12:17 pm by George Smith

I’m almost tempted to start a new tab to supplant “ricin kooks” and the Cult of EMP Crazy covered in “crazy weapons.”

And name it either “Goldbugs” or “Fiat Money Kooks.” They certainly share some characteristics with the Cult of EMP Crazy.

They’re all from the GOP, they’re all white and they’re fearful of imminent catastrophe always defined in subtext as the unjust end of white god-fearing American-led civilization.

So now whenever something with “fiat money” or “Weimar” ends up in the text and anchored somewhere in Google, it attracts those who’d never read this blog. Just like those who occasionally drift in to post comments in the old Electromagnetic Pulse Crazy threads.

From yesterday, worth bringing up to the top of the page for a few moments:

Guess what the US Dollar, the ZIM Dollar, and Weimar marks have in common? Everything!

Oh, wait. Unlike Zimbabwe and Weimar Germany, the USA has a balanced budget, no debt, and responsible politicians who don’t spend more for entitlement programs than we net in taxes!

Never mind, our FIAT DOLLAR is safe.

I don’t care if someone wants to open the mouth and remove all doubt as to being the fool.

However, I do have one question.

Are there any women — at all — who are goldbug/fiat money kooks?

Being the spouse of one doesn’t count.

And that’s because I’m thinking this is embedded on the genetic material for maleness but recessive, so it doesn’t show up in all us white guys.

Plus it’s linked to other strong traits — like wearing of baseball caps indoors, predilection to quotation of meaningless scripture, ownership of certain small businesses associated with ammo, petrochemicals, hardware, sales of fertilizer, pest eradication and control, and so on. I haven’t been able to nail the entire list yet.

That requires more research.

Krugman does most of it. He has empirically determined data and charts mean nothing to them.

05.10.11

The Rising Menace of Beggars

Posted in Extremism, Permanent Fail, Phlogiston at 2:05 pm by George Smith

Sometimes the only thing you can do is laugh at the comically mean people on Fox News.

On Saturday around lunch time I caught a few minutes of Stossel.

Run out of ABC a couple years ago, Stossel’s new show has one theme: Afflicting the afflicted. There’s no person or class too poor or bottom-out-of-sight to be spared the lash and some mocking laughter.

And while there’s always a lot of merriment at the expense of others on Stossel, the real humor is in catching the kinds of guests rubbing their hands together in glee and yukking it up over how they’ve exposed the manifold evils of the poor.

In another manner of speaking, Stossel brings fulfillment to the same demographic niche served by bear-baiting competitions.

On Saturday, it was the rising menace of beggars, attested by two “experts” from — paradoxically — the poor man’s Heritage Foundation, the Manhattan Institute.

First up, Stossel put on a fake beard and pan-handled for the camera. He told viewers he could have earned a decent living doing it, extrapolating a salary from a modest sum he allegedly earned after a few hours.

Think of the argument this way: You find a twenty dollar bill on your way to the market tomorrow. If you continue with that as proof of your earnings power per hour, starting as a baseline, you’ll think you can make $160 a day, tax free.

Uh-huh.

But the guests took the cake, with everyone at one point — near the end — pointing out that poor people are the fattest in America. Because they, like, get a lot of free food and then use all their begging money in the purchase of liquor and drugs.

The only rational response is to laugh at the cartoons masquerading as rational people, for instance, one named Heather MacDonald of the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal.

McDonald’s routine is getting an audience to believe begging is out of control and that, by extension, beggars have the highest sense of self-entitlement in America.

Indeed, she’d have no career if it wasn’t actually rather easy to persuade a certain percentage of stupid but sometimes influential white people in cities that the real reason things are in decay around them is all the damn beggars and vagrants lousing up the joint, refusing to straighten up and fly right.

And if, in your opinion, begging hasn’t yet been sufficiently criminalized it’s only because MacDonald and the Manhattan Institute don’t have the lobbying might of agencies like the National Rifle Association or the Chamber of Commerce. It’s certainly been criminalized but enough is really never enough in 2011 USA.

I’d send you to Fox but the show was too long to endure just for the sake of seeing MacDonald.

Instead, I’ll just cite some of her over-the-top claims (you can read the rest) on the menace of beggar youth in San Francisco, here:

Four filthy targets of Homelessness, Inc.’s current relabeling effort sprawl across the sidewalk on Haight Street, accosting pedestrians. “Can you spare some change and shit? Will you take me home with you???? Cory, a slender, dark-haired young man from Ventura, California, cockily asks passersby. “Dude, do you have any food???? His two female companions, Zombie and Eeyore, swig from a bottle of pricey Tejava tea and pass a smoke while lying on a blanket surrounded by a fortress of backpacks, bedrolls, and scrawled signs asking for money. Vincent, a fourth “traveler,??? as the Haight Street punks call themselves, stares dully into space … The girls wear necklaces and bracelets of plastic disks and other hip found objects; their baggy tank tops and stockings are stylishly torn.

Of all the destinations on the “traveler??? circuit, the Haight carries a particular attraction to the young panhandlers, thanks to the Summer of Love. Starting in late 1965, waves of teens from across the country began pouring into what was then a ramshackle, blue-collar neighborhood of pastel Victorian houses and low-rent businesses, drawn to the emergent drug culture and its promised liberation from the bourgeois values of self-discipline and hard work. “The time has come to be free,??? a local flyer proclaimed. “Be FREE. Do your thing. Be what you are. Do it. Now.??? This insipid philosophy was eventually co-opted by consumer capitalism, while the hippie ethos gave way to punk, daisy chains to piercing, acid to meth, and mindless utopianism to mindless nihilism.

Over the last several years, the Haight’s vagrant population has grown more territorial and violent, residents and merchants say. Pit bulls are a frequent fashion accessory …

Merchants trying to clean up feces and urine left by the alcohol-besotted youth are sometimes harassed and attacked …

An unintentionally hilarious letter to the San Francisco Chronicle in January 2010 revealed just why the homelessness-industrial complex is so desperate to claim the Haight infestation for itself: government contracts. “The majority of the youth on the streets and in the park are in the Haight seeking support to address the issues that have led them there,??? wrote the executive director of Larkin Street Youth Services in criticizing the sit-lie proposal. “Funding to help these youths through outreach, case management, education and employment has been severely cut over the past two years. . . . Rather than rallying in anger, a better use of our time is to focus on helping youths exit the streets so they can find work and housing and become contributing members of the community.??? Translation: Homelessness, Inc. wants more money.

As for becoming “contributing members of the community,??? that’s definitely not on the agenda, either. Asked what he saw for himself in the future, a “traveler??? in the Stanford documentary rolls his eyes, smiles nervously, and shakes his head for nearly a minute before replying: “A hot dog, there’s definitely a hot dog in my future.???

For Stossel, beggars were momentarily expanded to a national problem, one perhaps contributing to the economic state of malaise.

Vagrants and freeloaders have such nerve!

And you know beggars are always the fattest people you see on the streets. Unfortunately, there’s no hunger in America. It’s because of all the free food and booze money, damn right. These people even have enough left over to feed pit bulls.

Or did I already mention that?

05.06.11

Won’t someone please buy Nugent’s records again?

Posted in Extremism, Ted Nugent at 2:53 pm by George Smith

If only to slow down his print output.

As a writer, Ted Nugent is a useful metaphor for systemic fail in America. While Uncle Ted is big on talking up merit and innate ability as a basic foundation for success, if such things were even the slightest requirements for his getting book contracts or print space, Nugent would never have earned enough money to buy even one weekday copy of a Michigan newspaper.


Good news, lads! Good news! Howard knows how to spell the word ‘cockroach.’

This week’s discouraging exhibit of solid C minus high school English essaying, notable for record-breaking use of the names of common arthropods:

“flea-infested maggots” — (1), not biologically possible

“subhuman goat ticks” — (1), redundant

“rabid dogs” — technically, not arthropod, but what-the-hey!

“cockroaches” (6 invocations, including once in the subhed)

As for the last reference, you know Nugent really wanted to use “cocksuckers” but WaTimes editorial policy still isn’t quite ready to let him go that far.

Fiat money, Zimbabwe, Weimar = code

Posted in Extremism, Fiat money fear and loathers at 9:00 am by George Smith

Quote of the day, from the Economist, referring a Paul Ryan claim about examples of old hyperinflated currencies being handed out:

And then finally, Mr Ryan said, America needs sound money. He told stories of traveling around Wisconsin and being handed pieces of currency from Weimar Germany and Zimbabwe, he remarked on how nothing was more insidious than inflation …

It’s rotten ol’ Tea Party fruit, the crop from years of Fox News’ hourly gold bug commercials, Glenn Beck and parades of experts. One in particular, whose name I forget, was fond of showing an example of some astronomically numbered Zimbabwe note.

He had turned it into a souvenir business.

The phrase “fiat money” is more code for the same thing. Here, a sample from Google — it’s all Ron Paul, goldbuggery, catastrophe, conspiracy and fear & loathing associated with quantitative easing. Another example, as if you needed one, of how Google results can easily be bombed into trash by the practices and world beliefs of a relatively small social class. (An it’s also an example of what story one uses to persuade people who aren’t such hot thinkers to vote for tax cuts for the super-rich and elimination of social programs and public school education.)

All Tea Party articles of faith, now firmly passed into the realm of fears associated with a life driven by superstitions. And it’s exclusively a baseball-capped or blobby disgraceful white man’s disease.

If you run across people like this — and I see the house of one of ’em everyday when I cross the el Molino Street bridge on the way to Rick’s at lunch, a place with a big lawn sign advertising some kook AM radio host — it is best to cross to the opposite side of the street.

How do I know this? By-product of census work.

An even money bet is that the people who buy souvenir Weimar marks and Zimbabwe dollars also have Confederate and Gadsden flags to fly, too.

More code: Fair Tax, abolition of IRS, Bretton Woods, questions re “What do you think about a consumption tax?”

05.05.11

So what’s Matt Groening’s excuse?

Posted in Extremism, Ted Nugent at 10:15 am by George Smith


Good news, lads! Good news! Not only is Ted up for the part of Howard in the remake of The Treasure of Sierra Madre, but he’ll also be on the Simpsons!

Nugent to act as presidential candidate in a future episode of The Simpsons.

Ted Nugent, for Fox, on Hollywood — last week:

Here is a man that has been attacked for my militant hatred for drinking and driving, and drunk idiots ruining lives because in Hollywood, if you aren’t drooling, puking and dying it is not a party. If you want to see a party watch Uncle Ted – I have been clean and sober for 63 years and this is a f**king party! Write that down!

Homer Simpson’s favorite beer: Duff.

Ted Nugent on gays, two weeks ago:

If the NBA had any true gay convictions, the NBA should host a Homosexual Night. During halftime, the homosexuals could come down on the court, hold hands and prance around the court to music by the Village People. The NBA could then give each homosexual a pink basketball as a symbol of solidarity.

Homer Simpson on gays:

I like my beer cold… my TV loud… and my homosexuals flaming.

04.29.11

More jokes from the most jokeful country

Posted in Extremism, Phlogiston, Rock 'n' Roll at 2:15 pm by George Smith


Good news, lads! Good news! Michele Bachmann is a TIME VIP! (Fast forward to 2:11, note sign in background.)

“We’ll make some films about people white and crazy/And all they have to do is act naturally.”

Not bad as a prediction.

From the Center for American Progress, by Eric Alterman:

The Time 100, however, is the opposite of journalism. It is a series of pre-packaged lies and public relations exercises that, in many cases, are unlikely even to be authored by the people claiming the bylines. Were they to be taken seriously, they would fall afoul of every conflict-of-interest rule known to the profession (and a few they may have invented on their own).

I wrote about last year’s issue, focusing on the oddity in particular of inviting Ted Nugent to lie on behalf of Sarah Palin. But even the adoring profiles that did not lie—or were not written by lunatics—still enjoyed zero journalistic value, and were useful or significant only to the people who got to put framed copies of their alleged wonderfulness on the walls of their studies …

Where is this year’s equivalent of Ted Nugent snuggling up to Sarah Palin? Well, this year’s Sarah Palin, you might have guessed, is Michele Bachmann. And the writer to take a good, hard journalistic accounting of her strengths and weaknesses? You guessed it. Rush Limbaugh.

Rush doesn’t mind admitting that he is “a great admirer of Michele Bachmann’s,??? as she is “a strong spokeswoman for unapologetic conservatism. She is neither extreme nor unreasonable, which is why her philosophy has resonated with grassroots conservatives.??? Problem is, says El Rushbo, that “she’s conservative. So because she is smart, talented and accomplished and a natural leader—not to mention attractive—the left brands her as a flame-throwing lightweight.???

I don’t suppose the problem could be that Bachmann is also an idiot. She thinks the Revolutionary War began in New Hampshire, not Massachusetts. She thinks the U.S. Constitution abolished slavery. She thinks slaves came to America because they were “risk takers … people that wanted a better life and were willing to do what it took to get it.” She thinks something called the “Hoot-Smalley Tariff,” allegedly passed by Franklin Delano Roosevelt, caused the Depression. She doesn’t know what years Jimmy Carter was president of the United States and thinks he had something to do with the spread of swine flu that happened during the presidency that preceded him. And she’s pretty sure that global warming is “all voodoo, nonsense, hokum, a hoax.”

Bachmann also incited civil disobedience against the census. I got more than a good share of this wonderful fruit.

How many chainsaw massacres per year?

Posted in Extremism, Ted Nugent at 12:12 pm by George Smith

Getting Ted Nugent to do an e-mail interview is an invitation to merriment of the unintentional kind.

Once Nugent gets the word processor going he always hits send before giving it the once over. Much to our continuing joy and delight.

Take this interview, at Fox News on-line today:

It has always been the brain-dead elitist element to disarm others, while they are armed and protected by the other’s tax dollars. The misconception is misrepresentation in the media, and people who look at a gun and immediately look at the tragic use of a gun.

They don’t look at a chainsaw and think of dismembered people, they don’t look at automobiles as the tool of the drunk driver, and it is this bizarre mysticism of some shallow minds that the gun has a personality. Guns save lives.

In the last ten years I can’t think of any gun control legislation in this country. However, let’s let that one slide.

When was the last time you saw something about a chainsaw massacre — other than a movie ad — in the daily newspaper?

Chainsaw massacres, they just happen all the time. Almost as much as shootings.

Nugent is also virulently teetotal. And, he explains, this is why he hates Hollywood and Hollywood hates him:

Here is a man that has been attacked for my militant hatred for drinking and driving, and drunk idiots ruining lives because in Hollywood, if you aren’t drooling, puking and dying it is not a party. If you want to see a party watch Uncle Ted – I have been clean and sober for 63 years and this is a f**king party! Write that down!

Hah-hah. A good portion of ol’ Ted’s current audience is very physically active power drinkers. And it is not unknown for them to get behind the wheel after having been over-served. There is, after all, a reason Ted tours bars and casinos. It’s where the money is for him.

For example, this summer Ted will visit Jim Thorpe, PA, to play a show at Penn’s Peak in mid-August. DD played this venue many years ago when it was known as (and still is) the Flagstaff Ballroom.

Of Flagstaff, I wrote on the DD bio page:

When not playing the 4G’s, a typical gig would have us opening for Pat Travers or Robin Trower, semi-major guitar stars from the Seventies fallen on hard time in the haunch of the Eighties and reduced to performing in the coal town of Jim Thorpe. The venue, called Flagstaff, was an old resort from when Jim Thorpe, originally called Mauch Chunk, had an actual upper class of coal barons in residence around the turn of the century.

Like the south side of Bethlehem, Jim Thorpe was quite depressed. But since Flagstaff furnished very cheaply-priced big-league guitar rock in destitute Carbon County, fans turned out regularly.

Flagstaff was split into two sections, a main floor with an outside balcony that wrapped around the building — and a restaurant. During the shows, the lines to the conveniences would become overlong and the local custom was for the male patrons to march to the outdoor balcony and . . . well, you can connect the dots. En masse, it was quite an astonishing site and, I am told, fabulously irritating to the residents of Mauch Chunk who lived further down the hill from Flagstaff.

Good times, good times.

It’s too late to get along

Posted in Extremism, Made in China, Rock 'n' Roll at 8:58 am by George Smith

Here’s an ABC News clip from a New Hampshire town hall meeting in which the Republican, a Tea Party man by the name of Frank Guinta, gets a mildly hard time from his constituents. I say mild because by the standards of rudeness and disruption, its gentle. Guinta, after all, isn’t even close to being bottled.

Guinta — who looks every bit the overstuffed buffoon who doesn’t even know all the particulars of the legislation he’s defending — can’t take it. He calls for peace after an old white coot stands up, delivers a very brief rant about the president, and is decisively booed.

At that point another man begins to speak (it comes near the end of the segment):

Guinta: If we could refrain from booing…

Man: No!

You’ve asked the people that we cooperate and we all be nice. But you were swept into office by people who really weren’t nice and you didn’t
lift a finger to say, “Hey, let’s chill.” And these people were carrying guns. So it’s a little late for you to condescend …”

And here one sees in action the almost total failure of the president and the Democratic Party. So incapable of framing any powerful arguments. or just afraid to do so, against the prevailing stories leading up to 2010, their political base became dispirited, didn’t get out, and the extremists were put in office. And now there’s palpable regret.

As a resident of California, I can view it with a little detachment if only because the GOP is dead meat in the state. And it’s not that way becaus of anything the opposition did but because Republicans basically convinced almost the entire Latino population that it was a mortal enemy. And that was a fairly accurate judgment.

So let’s not get along. Not now, not soon.

If the President would choose to argue as pointedly as the man in the seats at the Guinta town hall, things could change. But he won’t. And because of that, 2012 will be a repeat of 2010.

Obama will probably win re-election because the opposition will nominate a radical fool. But the rest of the party will get drubbed for not standing for anything or quietly trying to inch the football to the right.

From Krugman, this made me laugh twice:

Lately the inflationistas have seized on rising oil prices as evidence in their favor, even though — as Mr. Bernanke himself pointed out — these prices have nothing to do with Fed policy. The way oil prices are coloring the discussion led the economist Tim Duy to suggest, sarcastically, that basic Fed policy is now to do nothing about unemployment “because some people in the Middle East are seeking democracy.???

But I’d put it differently. I’d say that the Fed’s policy is to do nothing about unemployment because Ron Paul is now the chairman of the House subcommittee on monetary policy.

First, for the obvious line. Second, for the elliptical reference to crazy Ron Paul’s goldbuggism.

This morning’s post is a little too bleak for a Friday, even by my low standards.

So I give you an old DD instrument inspired by the Get Smart villain known as the Claw.

From the web, the Claw, is described:

The Claw … was an evil villain of Asian ancestry — a distant cousin to Bond’s “Dr. No.??? The Claw was so called because one of his hands was missing, a la Captain Hook. In its place, as I recall, was a powerful shoehorn-shaped magnet. (There you go — two strikes already, both disability and ethnic stereotyping.) The Claw spoke English with a heavy accent, which was a good part of the joke. Picture Smart holding him off at gunpoint. Smart would turn to his sidekick, the lovely Agent 99 (Barbara Feldon), and say with a squinted brow, something like: “Well, 99, I see it’s our old nemesis, the Craw.???

Before 99 could respond, the villain would break in, growling: “No, not da Craw — da Craw!???

This doesn’t get at all of it, which in its ethnic stereotyping for the sake of humor is now taboo.

Anyway, the Claw story line also features Harry Hoo, a Chinese detective who worked with Maxwell Smart. Hoo is just another absurd take on Charlie Chan, and in my tune, you can hear the character — played by someone named Joey Forman, saying in a bad accent, “We meet again Mr. Craw!”

Followed by the Claw: “So it is you, Hoo!”

Here’s the tune, now a couple years old — The Amazing Harry Hoo!

Fairly machine-like, as befits the subject.

If the intro sounds familiar, it’s me imitating a sitar riff from The Beatles’ “Love You To.” Key gear: the Roger Linn Adrenalinn III.

Give it a listen! It still makes me smile. Need a video, maybe.

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