The Wicked Witch Of The North

I cannot for the life of me understand this vitriol, scorn and bile heaped upon Sarah Palin, whose only crime, it appears, is being picked as vice-presidential candidate. Not qualified, chime the pundits of the Eastern liberal media, scoffing at the hick woman governor. I can’t recall the same mockery being aimed at Arnold Schwartznegger, who was installed in dubious circumstances as the leader of the world’s fifth largest economy - what makes him qualified?

What makes anyone qualified to be President? This is America, where ANYONE can aspire to the highest office, not just Ivy League intellectuals. We have one of those in office now and he’s sold out his followers faster than a two-bit whore in downtown Vegas. The way it’s been going with Obama, I don’t see Sarah Palin could be any worse.

They say she’s ignorant. Well, there’s millions of ignorant people in this country who need representation. If Palin has never heard of Afghanistan, she won’t send troops there, will she?

I don’t agree with her conservative views, but she never put any draconian laws into place in Alaska. As a matter of fact, she appointed a pro-choice judge to the Alaskan supreme court. People who are making her out to be stupid… well, they’re the fools. Sarah Palin is a product of her environment and upbringing and very, very bright at that - how many housewives get to be governor of a state? Give the woman a break and look at what she’s accomplished.

Let’s cut the hypocrisy - Joe Biden did far worse on Katie Couric and Sarah cleaned his clock during the debates. As for questions like “What is the Bush doctrine?” - well, George W. Bush himself couldn’t answer that. Oprah just had her biggest ratings in years by interviewing Sarah - yes, she sat the like a morose stuffed cabbage, not cracking a smile until the 45th minute, whilst Sarah dazzled like the super star she is.

Let’s face facts - Sarah Palin, in the words of Camille Paglia, is a genuine cultural heroine, on her way to becoming the most powerful woman in the country. Freezing people camp out overnight to catch a glimpse of her, only because she’s Sarah.

Well, she gave up the governorship. She did the right thing. If only Obama had the grace to give up his Senate seat whilst running for bigger things. She’s against stem cell research and anti-abortion. Obama just condemned millions of poor women to back alley abortions through his horrendous health care bill, so what difference does it make?

When’s the last time a woman was so vilified… let me think… an educated, erudite woman called Hillary. Honestly, I think sexism is a far worse problem in this country than racism. Accomplished, smart, attractive, powerful women - oh, the nerve of these witches - send them back to Salem already.

As a political prospect, Palin is terrifying; as someone who embodies an American story, she is fascinating. She is Huck Finn in reverse. Instead of fleeing civilization and lighting out for the territory, she started in the territory and lit out for civilization. What she discovered is that civilization—our politics, and our media—is even more feral, less bound by morality, and more unforgiving than the wilderness she had come from. We know this dirty little secret of civilization theoretically—cynicism about everything is our American meat and milk. But we rarely come across a public person whose experience of it is so raw and uncontrolled. - Lee Siegel "Leave Palin Alone"

image by Bill Pugliano, Getty Images

The Myth Of Warning Signs

We should’ve seen it coming, say the pundits about Major Hasan of Fort Hood, he was troubled and psychotic. Well, there’s a lot of troubled people out there, who don’t kill 39 comrades in cold blood. We should’ve known about the kids at Columbine and paid closer attention - most teenagers are rebellious, sullen, impossible, but they don’t mow down half the student body on a whim.

It’s the availability of guns. Put killing machines in the hands of troubled people - suicides, too - and they’re likely to use them. You have a society full of guns, people are going to die.

Every time a suburban serial killer is unmasked, bewildered neighbors are trotted out in front of TV cameras, stunned they’ve been living next to a gruesome killing factory “Such a nice man, quiet, helpful with the groceries. Who knew?”.

Nobody knew and no one can predict anything.

Sometimes we lose a friend to suicide, leaving behind grief-stricken family, riddled with guilt. We should’ve done something. There’s nothing anyone could’ve done. You have to want to be saved. A smart psychiatrist once told me that people hell-bent on offing themselves, will find a way to do it - she used to find patients on her ward, who hung themselves in a horizontal position in bed during the night. They just wanted out.

Like a skull and bones flag on a pirate ship, some warning signs are there for all to see. The armed forces have a high suicide rate - the job makes people crazy. If you’re being fired upon and you’re killing people daily, for no reason, well, that’s no career. You’d have to be crazy to do it - Catch 22.

All our giant banks and financial institutions crashed last year - all of them, without exception. Oh, that’s a normal blip, says the nice man in the White House. Just empty the Treasury and give it to them and continue your Christmas shopping - nothing to worry about. Yes, but did they fundamentally change the way they do business? We ignore some warning signs, because it’s too big to deal with - there’s nothing we can do and there’s a football game tonight.

I did not vote for Obama. When he burst upon the scene, I looked up his campaign contributors - Goldman Sachs was his biggest donor. That’s enough of a warning sign for me. But he’s a good man, bent on reforming the system from the inside - how else are you going to change things?

I can’t change anything, other than the way I live my life. My decision to distrust Obama, my decision not to shop at Walmarts - if they can’t pay their workers a living wage, they’re not getting a nickel from me, my decision not to buy bottled water, when I get the same thing from my kitchen faucet.

Warning signs abound that times of prosperity for most working Americans are over. And we’re better off not noticing, otherwise we’ll all go crazy. Me, I’m looking to marry an 80-year-old billionaire with cancer, who’d quite like a bad-tempered wife - that’s my solution, if I can find one.

Nobody’s perfect, not even a perfect stranger - The Pretenders “Time The Avenger”

I'd Better Stay Healthy

The only thing I understand about President Obama's new health care bill is that I'd better not get sick. Others explain it much better:

This is how, in the words of Barack Obama, our Democratic solons "answered the call of history": with a bill that places an onerous financial burden and threat of punishment on those least able to bear it, while stripping millions of the most vulnerable women in society from access to completely legal medical procedures easily available to the middle-class and the rich, and delivering to the corrupt, cruel and price-gouging insurance companies "50 million new consumers, many of them subsidized by the taxpayers," in the gushing words of Nancy Pelosi, who shepherded the bill through the House -- and who was responsible for stripping abortion coverage from poor women by greenlighting the single allowed amendment to the bill.

(So, we get the first woman Speaker of the House, and what happens? The House kicks poor women in the guts -- literally. What next? Our first African-American president repealing the Civil Rights Act?) - Chris Floyd

At first the "public option" was to be a massive but less-than-universal healthcare plan that would prove so efficient and effective that over several years the public would all opt into it. It was a backdoor to a civilized system of Medicare for all. Now what's left of it? Now it's a public option for 2 percent of Americans, and in some states 0 percent, to be run by private corporations, with prices set to avoid any efficiency or competition for the wasteful health insurance companies.

Is that better than nothing? No, it's worse, because this pathetic scam of a healthcare plan is plastered like lipstick on a pig to a bailout for the health insurance corporations. (Sure, the bill contains some reforms to the insurance corporations' practices, but that's like trying to reform piranhas.) And when the healthcare crisis continues to worsen in the coming years, the blame will be placed on the nearly nonexistent public option, thus justifying making things even worse, if possible. And the same bill goes out of its way to prevent states from solving the problem on their own, allowing them to opt out of the perverse public option (opting into which would hardly be noticeable anyway) but denying states the ability to create real healthcare funding for their residents. Congressman Kucinich's amendment to remedy this has been stripped out by Speaker Pelosi. - David Swanson, The Two Percent Robustness

image: Operation On The Head by Brueghel (1568)

In The Army Now

Major Hasan, a psychiatrist with the U.S. army, shot a whole bunch of soldiers at Fort Hood last week. He was only doing what he was trained to do - kill in cold blood. Had Hasan mowed down men, women and children in Afghanistan with such precision, he’s be in line for a medal. I guess his timing was way off.

To make matters worse, Hasan is a Muslim. Just how many American Christian soldiers now have an added impetus to kill “the other” with abandon? Once you train to kill, you can’t untrain - once you’ve unleashed people with guns, you can’t ever contain them. Timothy McVeigh had to use that pent up knowledge on something, anything, his addled brain looking for enemies, real or imagined.

If we’re only killing bad people in the Middle East and Asia, boy, that’s a lot of terrible folk who live there. Good job we’re taking them out.

Truth of the matter is, we’ve been going over there, meddling in their affairs and plundering their resources since, well, the crusades of the 12th century. With the advent of the automobile, Lawrence of Arabia was dispatched to make nice with the Arabs. Let’s turn the extracting of oil that doesn’t belong to us into a civilized affair - heck, they ride camels and don’t need it.

After centuries of oppression, they hijack four planes with maximum effect and America is in a righteous uproar. Hey, don’t dish it out if you can’t take it. Lest anyone forget, we, the West, started this unfortunate chain of events with no end in sight. Heaven forbid the insolent ragheads actually fight back - the nerve of these people.

As much as I love the America of Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday, Cole Porter, Elvis, Hemingway, Hollywood - the list is endless - we’re not the good guys anymore. There are no good and bad nations, just nations with bigger guns and collective delusions of superiority.

Now Toby Keith can write a stirring song about Fort Hood and we’re good to go.

image by Mr. Fish

Suicide Tourism

Swiss authorities are cracking down on tourists who come to commit suicide. No, they don’t leap off the Matterhorn, they check into assisted dying clinics like Dignitas and Exit and are put to sleep in the manner of a beloved pet. It’s a service for terminally ill people, but some clinically depressed people have slipped through the system.

Switzerland is now known for mountains, cheese, chocolate and death. Meet Heidi and off yourself. Not a good image for such a glorious and deathly dull place, that only ever produced the cuckoo clock and Roger Federer.

I can only speak for myself, but if I didn‘t have my brain anymore, why linger? Ronald Reagan was so senile he would introduce himself to his children at the White House receiving line. But he had Nancy to look after him and he probably always introduced himself to his children.

What about Stephen Hawking then? The man can only move a straw with his lips and is a world renown genius. Would Dignitas accept him?

That’s the problem with these clinics. If they’re for profit, well, you might want to widen your patient base. What’s to stop a greedy family from booking the extremely rich and demented 101-year-old Mrs. Astor on the next flight to Zurich? They’ve already tried robbing her and that didn’t work.

Such clinics should not exist. I’m sure a good doctor aids his patients discreetly when there’s no soul or quality of life left - it’s his job to ease suffering. Damn right Kevorkian went to jail - a doctor specializing in death is somewhat evil. I wouldn‘t want him removing as much as a splinter from my toe - one thing could lead to another. You treat what comes in through the door and if it’s not treatable, you still have to help.

Abortion clinics should be outlawed too. Every gynecologist should do the procedure routinely at the woman’s request - whatever happened to doctor/patient confidentiality? If the pro-lifers were really for life, they should rush to the nearest orphanage and adopt a kid. Put your money where your mouth is.

As for me, I have a living will. If ever I should become sweet, kind and helpful, put me down immediately, because obviously I’ve taken leave of my faculties. It’s not the Wolynski we know anymore. If I can’t be my ornery self, life would not be worth living.

cartoon by Callahan

Horror Photography Of Joshua Hoffine

Joshua Hoffine specializes in horror photography, like some people specialize in horror films.

Are You Really Useful?

In the movie “Deep Impact” an asteroid is on collision course with earth. When it hits, there’ll be a tidal wave all the way to Ohio. Morgan Freeman, the president, announces they have a network of caves and 250,000 Americans can be saved. 50,000 will be handpicked and the rest, by lottery. No one over 50 is eligible, unless they’re outstanding.

I have a problem with the lottery part - you should be saved only if you do something useful. There are many jobs in present day America, even without an asteroid coming, that are so useless to society, it boggles the mind.

Take the financial sector - stockbrokers, investors, accountants, financiers, bankers, hucksters, only there to make sure money begets more money and making our lives miserable. When the floods come, a plumber is more important than Donald Trump. To my mind, he’s more valuable even without the floods. No, we’ll only need a couple of book keepers to keep track of the seeds and the rest of the accountants can be hung out to dry.

We don’t need businessmen, a rather broad term. My definition of a businessman is a crook gone straight. After the robber barons plundered the land, they couldn’t go on calling themselves robbers, so they came up with businessmen, as did the Mob. Nice name to cover a multitude of skullduggery.

A career in marketing - what the hell is this? What is it that you do exactly? Take meetings all day with other parasites? Marketing consultants, focus groups, anything to do with sales - a whole plethora of people who call themselves vice-presidents, produce absolutely nothing, but feed off those who do.

After the floods, we won’t need salesmen of any kind, insurance or otherwise, or tele-marketers or any agents or middlemen. If you want to sell widgets, first make them yourself. The insurance industry, like Wall Street, is legalized gambling and produces nothing of value. Go back to insuring ships at sea and nothing else.

But the capitalists might argue, look at all the jobs and careers we’ve created that never existed before. Well, with unemployment officially at 10% (that’s unofficially 20%), looks like those bogus careers are bogus after all. When I walk down the street, I can see plenty that needs doing and no one to do it.

Ask yourself, am I really useful? Making money for the sake of making money will eat away at your soul (and that goes for poker players, too). At the end of the day, have I made a difference? If not, have I made one person laugh?

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.” - Upton Sinclair

“Accountants hover over the earth like helicopters,
Dropping bits of paper engraved with Hegel's name.
Badgers carry the papers on their fur
To their den, where the entire family dies in the night“.

- Robert Bly, "Poems for the Ascension of J.P. Morgan":

I Don't Give A Rat's Ass About Climate Change

I don’t give a rat’s ass about climate change - I don’t recycle or lose sleep over the freaking ice cap. My life is without a car or bottled water - I don’t make enough money to create much damage.

The 40 million in America without health care or the wretched unemployed don’t give a toss about global warming either - not their problem. Saving the planet for future generations? They have a devil of a time keeping their loved ones alive in the here and now and to hell with the dolphins.

Climate change is definitely occurring, but that’s been going on since the dawn of time. We don’t know if it’s our emissions or solar flares or something else. Yes, it’s good to breathe fresh air and drink clean water and for that reason alone, we should keep our planet clean.

But climate change is not a stand alone issue - if Americans had decided enough of bombing third world countries for their resources, we would’ve developed alternate energy eons ago. It’s ridiculous to go green while bombing the bejusus out of ragheads.

As for Al Gore and his money-making green schemes called “An Inconvenient Truth” - not every picture of a parched desert is cause for doom and gloom - it’s the desert, get over it. Not every animal skeleton is evidence of our imminent demise. If you’re that concerned, Mr. Gore, go to your rich industrialist pals and tell them to stop spewing chemicals all over the place. And take public transport instead of private planes. Don’t put it on me and my fluorescent light bulb bullshit - I’m not the problem, you are.

Who are we kidding? The green movement is a preoccupation of the well-to-do, who aren‘t scrambling for survival. Urban ghetto kids never get to see the ocean - oh, yeah, they should worry about the fucking plankton. Who are we saving Chesapeake Bay for? Regular working stiffs (if they still have work) will never get to see it, unless they’ve come to fix the plumbing. What minimum wage family goes to Yellowstone on vacation? They’ve never had a vacation in their lives.

Stop outsourcing jobs and get everyone health care and then maybe we’ll have a reason to go green. If you can’t save your kids, why save the planet? For whom?


We can cut our consumption of fossil fuels. We can use less water. We can banish plastic bags. We can install compact fluorescent light bulbs. We can compost in our backyard. But unless we dismantle the corporate state, all those actions will be just as ineffective as the Ghost Dance shirts donned by native American warriors to protect themselves from the bullets of white soldiers at Wounded Knee.

The oil and natural gas industry, the coal industry, arms and weapons manufacturers, industrial farms, deforestation industries, the automotive industry and chemical plants will not willingly accept their own extinction. They are indifferent to the looming human catastrophe. We will not significantly reduce carbon emissions by drying our laundry in the backyard and naively trusting the power elite. The corporations will continue to cannibalize the planet for the sake of money. They must be halted by organized and militant forms of resistance. The crisis of global heating is a social problem. It requires a social response. - Chris Hedges "Reality Check From The Brink Of Extinction"

10 Photographs That Shook The World

A photographer never knows when she wakes up in the morning, what life-changing image she’ll take that day. Unfortunately, it helps to be in a war- zone or some other catastrophe.

- Migrant Mother by Dorothea Lange
- Times Sq on V-Day by Alfred Eisenstaedt
- Fallen Militiaman by Robert Capa
- Napalm by Nick Ut
- Che by Alberto Korda
- Tianamen Sq by Stuart Franklin
- Man Falling, 9/11 by Richard Drew
- Fire On Marlborough St by Stanley J. Forman
- Child & Vulture by Kevin Carter
- Mercury Poisoning in Japan by W. Eugene Smith

"Wicked people prosper" - Colin McGinn, philosopher

Polanski & Young Girls At Peril

Roman Polanski & Sharon Tate by David Bailey

Lucky for Roman Polanski that Letterman is embroiled in a sordid sex scandal of his own - let the tongues wag about something else. A popular talk show host admitting to having sex with his staffers on the air was quite extraordinary. Probably most bosses have sex with their underlings, but when there’s blackmail, fame and “creepy” involved - well, that really is grand entertainment on the scale of Clinton-Lewinsky.

Thank goodness they finally nabbed Polanski - a dangerous criminal such as he apprehended makes the world safer for all of us. It’s taxpayer money well spent. Aside from the fact that Polanski lived quite openly in Switzerland for years and it’s just now that someone took an interest in an old man.

Yes, Polanski had unlawful sex with a 13-year old. As long as mothers are willing to pimp their daughters to lecherous film makers, half of Hollywood is having sex with minors. As for Gov. Schwartznegger, who is pumping his fist in righteous indignation, wasn’t he accused of serial groping on film sets? Not once, but many times?

If you’re going to arrest Polanski, arrest the mother, who delivered her daughter to his door step. I was 13 once and developed breasts early. The minute they sprout, the opposite sex looks at you with lechery in their eyes and doesn’t let up till you’re 45. Then it all turns off like a spigot and that’s the way it is. It’s up the mothers and daughters to keep themselves safe. Don’t put yourself in a situation inviting rape.

Touring rock stars are followed to their hotels by mobs of screaming teeny boppers. Don’t tell me that John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Mick Jagger never had sex with the willing underaged.

But Polanski got caught. The main reason he’s been on the run for 30 years is that he’s an arrogant and abrasive prick. Had he hung his head in remorse, apologized profusely and not talked back to the authorities, he’d be making Chinatown 5 now. When I was at film school, I attended a lecture/interview given by Polanski at the National Film Theatre. What an arrogant and abrasive prick, I thought, I wish I could be him. I was filled with envy.

What is the point of hounding an old geezer, who has paid tenfold for his crime with his interrupted career? One of the most brilliant film directors ever was not allowed to work in Hollywood. Isn’t that punishment enough? And for us, too - think of the masterpieces that never were.