The Drugging, Numbing, Influence of the Corporate Run Media

We liberals are still victims of the propaganda wars of the corporate media.  In the first place I would rehabilitate the word “liberal’ itself, as a derivation of the words “freely” and “freedom”.    You could divide my Chris Matthews watching this (Saturday) morning into the Ebola stuff- and all the political stuff.  The big news over the past day is that Governors Christie of New Jersey and Cuomo of New York made a joint announcement stating that they were going to disregard the laxity of the center for disease control and institute a mandatory 21 day quarantine of all air passengers arriving from Africa who have had contact with any Ebola patient.  Under the new rules this newest “victim”, a woman- who it turns out- seems not to even have Ebola, will be slapped with the 21 day quarantine.  From Christie’s point of view any time he can get his face before the cameras and the press- - he’ll take it.  It can only enhance his political chances to be someone who can be “decisive” and stand up to the President and the CDC at the same time.  But the rest of the Chris Matthews material centered around politics.  It goes without saying that any time the Right Wing can keep things like Ebola in the news it will enhance their chances - - both because of the fear factor of “turn to ANYBODY ELSE as though the republicans had the answers” and also just to keep people generally more afraid to go around people in public, like a polling place.  You have this lady Joni Earnst of Iowa- and in this case with a woman running against a man - - vote for the man, because “At least he isn’t nuts” the way Earnst is.  But the problem is the media described him as “dull” and ‘lackluster” and “not a good politician” where she is viewed as “much more refined than the Nevada lady” two years ago running against Harry Reid two years ago.  Of course the democrat’s name is Brayley, which is too reminiscent of a braying jackass, and too readily leads itself to a political cartoon.  And yet Earnst statements this year have been in fact MORE “up front” and explicit as to her intensions than the lady two years ago.  She has come out and said that citizens have the right to “nullification” and that people from the federal government trying to enforce a law that’s been duly passed should be arrested, or failing that, shot on sight- and that that’s what you need your guns for.  This is the hog castration lady, which tips you off as to her general lack of subtlety so to speak.  And the thing is that Earnst, the woman, is leading this Brayley guy by two points.  As I have said (whether it’s actually true or not) that the media portrays all dozen or so key races in this election- - either for governor or the US Senate- - - as being captured by the Republicans, and that includes having a lady hog castrater as a US Senator.   It seems to be either a Senator or a Supreme Court Justice even, in this day and age, requires very little actual legal background.

Staying in a political vein- - Rudy Giuliani continues to disgust me with the right wing stances he has taken in order to playcate what he must now consider his 'tea party" base.  The guy is a big blow-hard showman in the tradition of Governor Christie.  Now he's endorsing Rick Scott as part of some political vendetta against Charlie Christ for his - - failure to endorse him in his 2008 Presidential primary campaign in Florida.  The guy is like a "boo-hoo" little kid throwing a tantrum.  The guy lost.  Nobody said he had to pick up his marbles and go home, he could have well decided to stay in the race.  But he's like Sarah Palin - - she likes the publicity of politics more than the actual nitty gritty of hard work involved in politics.  Just like Sarah Palin just got bored with being governor of Alaska,  Giuliani apparently got bored with the notion that he'd actually have to EARN the republican nomination and not have it handed to him on a silver platter for his heroics, so called, in 9 - 11.  Christ decided to endorse Mc Cain, who by the way- won.  Christ backed the right horse.  Now we have the contest for State Superintendent of Schools in California between Tuck and Twerelicson.  Tuck has taken to running these ads saying "California schools aren't doing very well so just make a change- - ANY change- pick Me".  But Twerelicson has the background in education that Tuck doesn't.  Tuck was given an "F" of no confidence by 80% of some group.  Teachers back Twerelicson.  Twerelicson actually has a performance track record to run on.  We then come to proposition 46 again.  I continue to marvel that now the latest NO on 46 ad approach is "Proposition 46 is a proposition with other measures in it to "desguise" the fact that basically it's supported by trial lawyers".   In other words- the fact that Proposition 46 will weed out bad doctors doesn't matter so much as one trial lawyer gets a higher contingency fee.  Ideally - - if the bad doctors are weeded out there won't BE as many mal practice cases.  Funny they never thought of that!  But what they DON"T tell us- - that other ads on TV DO - - is "Who the hell is doing YOUR ads?  Tell me what "interests" would profit most from proposition 46 failing.  Huh?

This is Saturday October 25, 2014 and Jack Bruce died today of liver cancer at age 71.  He was easily one of the top ten vocalists in rock you’ll ever come across, not to mention being a world class harmonica player, up there with the best.  Of course I have been a Jack Bruce fan ever since August of 1967 when I first heard “I’m So Glad” by Cream.  I continued to be a Jack Bruce fan even after the demise of Cream in January of 1969 - as did Paul.  "Crossroads" was revived off of "Wheels of Fire" as one of their two last hits.  (Their last two hits were fronted by Eric Claptin rather than Bruce)  Paul bought or acquired “Songs for a Tailor” and I bought the first West, Bruce, and Lang album- - the “Next Triunverate” he was in.  And in early 1981, I also bought “BLT” with the food photo on the cover.  I think he remains one of the under-appreciated artists in rock history.  Of course he was first in “Manfred Mann” and of course “Cream”, a group of legendary proportions and significance.  They say that Cream broke up because of friction between Jack Bruce and drummer Ginger Baker.  I heard about his death coming from Joe’s radio on the back benches around nine thirty this morning.  In other news- around nine I went to the office window and borrowed five dollars.  I went out to the liquor store and got the rest of the pot of coffee, which was so strong, I was able to add water to completely fill the cup- and not adversely affect the taste. 

  It seems that Leo Le Port has found the secret as to why 3 D movies will never catch on in a big way or be regarded as anything more than a guimick.  First of all there’s the whole “naturalism” problem because people’s parallax vision fades out after about 25 feet or so- - and yet in the movies immense distances are attempted to be portrayed in 3 D.  As Milhaus said “I wish ordinary vision could be in 3 D”.  But there is a more fundamental problem with 3 D other than ambliopia, which me and Leo suffer from where the eyes never learn to track properly.  And that is- - when you fix on a salt shaker on a table six feet away your eyes are focused- - at the same distance in the lenses as they are in position or aim- - at that point six feet away.  But here the movie screen may be fifty or sixty feet away- - and yet your eyes are trying to “focus” on some point perhaps ten feet away, and this constant distance disparity is what gives people a headache.  Therefore they have dropped 3 D in new TV’s that formerly had it.  Leo, as do I, much favor a method of increasing the resolution of the 2 D image that IS there.  In movies this means increasingly seventy millimeter film and being shot at 48 frames per second, and in TV that means sixty or perhaps even 120 frames per second.  (with sixty cycle AC current I don’t see how you can manage that)  But If everything is in at least 1080 P it helps - - and a 2 K picture at double that pixel rate is even better, which is what we are headed for- - with ever larger home viewing screens.

Leo was also talking about ham radio.  I get mixed up on the lengths - - but is the citizens band at around one meter in length- or is it three meters?  This is the band just below thirty megacycles that is the citizens band that got so crowded all of a sudden about forty years ago, about the time I got into the game, at least on the receiving end.  Of course you had to be a bit of a geek and know how to say “over” and “out” just like those old Wherlybird shows.  You had to have one of those crazy handles and know the words for your call letters like Hotel, Foxtrot and Tango, or whatever they were.  But twenty years ago the internet was still the predominant hangout of geeks and genious types.  You had to have some kind of brain power even as late as 1994 to be into computers - - as opposed to the riff-raff today that needs no computer knowledge at all.  You had the Pentium chip, and dial up, and read all those HTML books (hyper text markup language) and knew about hypertext transfer protocol.  Of course you were working with Windows 3.1 because that’s all they had twenty years ago, and it was with DOS 6.2.   Of course if you’re going to get me started on twenty years ago again here is more stuff to beware of.  It was back before they’d even begun that completely pointless remodeling of the Buena Park Mall.  How much countless expenditure in freeway widening have we had during that time- - and often in areas further south along the Santa Ana- - it’s like traveling through a jungle of concrete and seemingly unending on and off ramps.  Of course we still were renting VHS tapes and I regularly played VHS tapes, that I either recorded or borrowed from Dad.  And I was still using Mylar cassette tape them.  What was wrong with cassette tapes?   They were sure simpler to use. There were no I Pods, I Pads, or I phones.  In fact cellular phones themselves were in much less wide usage.  I didn’t have any money problems back then and was pretty much free to spend within reason, what I wished.  And back then the economy really WAS starting to “take off” in the latter months of 1994.  The hope then was a reality.  Clinton really did have something to brag about.  The Twin Towers were still there and nobody ever heard of Al Qaeda and airports were a lot more tolerable to get in and out of then.  I can give you a zillion reasons why things were better then.  Just think of all the people, celebreties and people you knew, that were alive then- - or in much better health than they are now.  But you want to know the best thing?  We weren’t inundated so by all of the drug commercials back then.  Back then it was Bayer or Anacin or Excedrin.  Today you have drugs for everything from frequent urination to impotency to prostate problems, to cholesterol and these loathed Staten drugs - - and these other drugs such as Xerelto and the anti depressant adjunct drug, “Abilify”, which sounds like a Billy-goat. 

In terms of cosmic news- - strangely, Jack Bruce’s death may threaten Mal Evans’ hold on his job as Communacations Minister for the Federation.  Because Burt Lombard- - made a successful pitch to Mal Evans to make a big thing out of the death of Jack Bruce.  But the trouble is though he is popular on M 56 (Cremorians) and the M 51 planet - - that perhaps a majority of the Federation rulership have taken an”anti earth” stance, and particular “Anti earth rock celebrity” stance.  So Mal finds himself now in a battle for his job, just like he was a year and a half ago when after some maneuvering - - and support from Stu-baby (who hasn’t been heard from today yet) he was able to keep his job.   Now we come to what I call the “sex reassignment” stuff.  (A tasteless phrase I’d never use to their face)  If it wasn’t clear- - now they are saying that Billy Idol and “Simple Minds” are both of the Phi Collins group (Cassiopian)  but that Idol has Rhondonian karma in his past, but he has “level two control level” sponsorship of the Phil Collins group, which means when he dies he’ll revert back to Rhondonian due to prior contractual rights.  (Technically- - his guardian angels could nullify this contraction with the Rhondonians but they haven’t done this)  Then we have the Palagians - - which I always pidgin holed as “turn of the decade of the ‘seventies” groups.  I think the word “Banal” described their music, but “bubble gum” also works.  We have two new groups to add that came out in the last few weeks of 1969 and these are “Steam”  (“Na – na -  na - na- - hey, hey, Good-bye”) and Shocking Blue (“Venus”)  However I am reminded that what they refer to as the “drone group” (pilot group?) was the Spiral Staircase, with their one hit wonder from the spring of 1969.   One group that is not Palagian is "the Archies", which is Aldeberan A.  However some soul type groups of the era such as the Staple Singers, are Palagian - - and other songs such as "Band of Gold" and "Gona Put It In the Want Ads".