Donating My Third Kidney

So just before Xmas I get, out of the blue, an email from a friend of mine, someone that I've known for years (I used to work for her mother, some 25 years ago), with a surprising bit of quite alarming news:

Hi,
Sorry I did not inform you about my sudden trip out of the country to Belgium. Am here to see my ill cousin, she is suffering Kidney disease and must undergo Kidney transplant to save her life. Kidney transplant is very expensive here so i want to transfer her back home to have the surgery implemented.
I really need to take care of this now but my credit card can't work here. I traveled with little money due to the short time I had to prepare for this trip and never expected things to be the way it is right now. I need a loan of $1,500  from you to take care of things here and I promise to reimburse you at my return. Kindly get back to me asap if you can assist so I'll advise on how to transfer funds.
Thanks
Kristine
[errors in the original]

Wow, what a shocker. Naturally you can imagine my distress. I didn't even know she had a cousin in Belgium, nor did I know that medical care was SOOO expensive in Europe (take that Mister Barack Socialized Medicine Obama!). So I lost no time in responding to her:

Thanks for thinking of me in your time of need. Sad news about your cousin, but fortunately for everyone, this comes at a time when, due to my well-known volunteer work with the Chernobyl cleanup, I happen to have an extra Kidney. Since I don't need three of them, and the third one is inconveniently living outside my body in an extruding sac that, if the truth were known, is turning into quite an eyesore, not to mention a hassle when I try to put on my pants, I will gladly donate it to your cousin.
I'd love to send money as well, but as you know, I've had to spend most of my savings on a new wardrobe to accommodate my extra Kidney -- ironic in that if I donate the Kidney, I will have to spend an equal amount of money to have my wardrobe altered to fit me once again. Oh, well...
So, that being said, I am willing to get on a plane and fly to Belgium tomorrow, if needs be, to give your dear cousin my extraneous body part. Please reserve me a room at the Stilton, and inform room service that I would like some Belgian waffles, some Belgian ale, and some of that incredible Belgian tiger stake-and-Kidney pie (from the Belgian Congo, of course) garnished with Belgian endive waiting for me. Yum I can hardly wait...
BUT...the only problem I have is with the money: I don't have enough to actually buy the ticket, so I have taken the liverty to forward your Kidney email to our mutual friend Bob Giblette.
I'm kind of surprised, actually, that you didn't contact him yourself, since as you know he recently came into that substantial "inheritance" from his dearly-beloved "aunt" in Nigeria, so much money in fact that he is actually contemplating retiring from the FBI and becoming a gentleman of leisure/private detective.
I'm sure that Bob, while he is still employed at the Omaha Field Office of the FBI, will be more than happy to work with you.
Expect a contact from him soon.
Very soon.
[misspellings etc., e.g., "liverty", are intentional]

Breastfeeding in Public and Wackjob Cousin II

My wackjob cousin hasn't sent me anything from the rabid right in a long time. She's probably written me off as a lost cause. It's likely I won't be invited to the next family reunion. And that's just as well, since there's an old saying among the men in the Farnsworth Clan that the best place to hook up with women is at family reunions and funerals... (we do have our roots in Appalachia, after all).

But, living proof that nature abhors a vacuum, we now have a contender for the official title of Wackjob Cousin II. This time it's a cousin of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed who fortunately, for all concerned, lives in SoCal and gets up here only once a year or so.

Sidebar: She works with the chronic poor and the thinking impaired in the WIC program, the significance of which will be apparent shortly.

So I'm doing my level best to avoid her, but SWMBO came into my study and asked me point-blank to come out in the living room or she'll think I am avoiding her.

If there was ever a Duh! moment, that was it. But those of you who have been in a "significant other" relationship for any length of time will understand why I didn't belabor the obvious and why I agreed to show my face for a while.

The saving grace was that we watched a movie on Netflix and that ate up about two hour and a half hours -- the movie was genius director David Lynch's great Mulholland Drive".

Then things turned to shit on me.
"So, do you ever watch The Daily Show?" I asked. Innocent question, right? I thought so too, but apparently WJCII had an issue.

"No," she shrieked, frightening the cats who ran under the furniture. "Jon Stewart said that women breastfeeding in public was disgusting!"

"Huh?" was my considered response, followed shortly by. "I don't believe it."

"I heard him say it! I heard him say it! Are you saying I'm lying???"

"Uh, okay, no...I believe you think you heard him. I don't believe he really said it."

"I heard him say it! I heard him say it!"

"Okay, maybe he did, but gimme a break. It was part of a bit. It's a comedy show."

"You just don't know! They are very subtle..."

"Okay, prove it to me. That show is online with all the episodes. It ought to be easy to find it."

And then the "conversation" took an unsuspected turn: "This is the only country in the world where a woman can't breast feed in public! And it's all because of Hugh Hefner!"

Me: "??!"

As you can imagine, this caught me flat-footed. I didn't think until it was too late to ask if that statement was true for places like Saudi Arabia or Yemen (I think not) or what the hell Hugh Hefner had to do with it, since boobs have been around since long before he was born.

"These," she yelled, pointing at her relatively flat chest, "are FOOD! How would you like to eat under a blanket?"

"It's a fucking baby! It doesn't know and doesn't care where it eats. If it comes with your attitude, then it IS disgusting!"

Well, given that this is an issue about which she obviously feels very strongly -- irrationally, some would say -- some more verbal dueling ensued in the heat of the moment, culminating in her screechingly repeated, "I am not coming back here! I am not coming back here! I am not coming back here!"

Jeez, have a cracker, Poll Parrot. So then I retreated back into my man cave. She whipped out her Apple laptop and started a search. Not trusting her, I did my own search.

This is what I found: Absolutely NO reference to Jon Stewart saying anything remotely like that, which didn't surprise me since it would have been totally out of character for him. But what I did find is that Bill Maher was the one who said it. And, as I suspected all along, it was a fucking joke. If you've ever watched Bill Maher in action, who can be an obnoxious asshole, you'll understand.

So, long story short, I ended up apologizing for my part in this. After all, I was as SWMBO pointed out baiting her. Kind of. But I also swore that if she goes back on her threat and does come back here, I will have some important business out of town to take care of during her visit. Like volunteering to pick fly shit out of pepper in a school cafeteria in Walla Walla.

I think I prefer my wackjob cousins to be in touch by email. If at all. It's too hard on me to deal with it in the personifiction of an escapee from the Atascadero State Mental facility.

What do the Birthers Really Want? To Deport Obama

What is it with the Birthers? They just won't give up, not even in the face of overwhelming evidence that Barack Obama was actually, physically, really and truly born in the then-Territory of Hawaii in 1961. World Net Daily has pretty much given over its entire editorial sections to shrill screeds on the topic from Orly Taintz and her flying-monkey minions.

Like many of us over here in the Reality Based Community, I've been vacillating between being just bemused and totally nonplussed by their neurotic OCD obsession with the whole thing. I've been at my wits end for going on four years now, trying to figure out what the fuck the "Birthers" really want? I've tried asking them, and even the few who will still talk to me (i.e., my wackjob cousin) can't -- or won't -- answer my question.

And to me the question is a pretty simple one: If Obama's mother was a US citizen -- which no one is disputing -- then isn't her son automatically a US citizen, regardless of where he was born? Hasn't that been the law since like, forever?

Well, that's what I thought, anyway, but when I did my own research, it turns out that this isn't such a straightforward question with a straightforward answer. It all depends on WHEN he was born. Over at VisaLaw Immigration Information, I found this:

What are the rules for people born between December 23, 1952 and November 13, 1986?
Again, children born abroad to two US citizen parents were US citizens at birth, as long as one of the parents resided in the US at some point before the birth of the child.
When one parent was a US citizen and the other a foreign national, the US citizen parent must have resided in the US for a total of 10 years prior to the birth of the child, with five of the years after the age of 14.  An exception for people serving in the military was created by considering time spent outside the US on military duty as time spent in the US. [Emphasis added]

Yes, now it all makes sense to me. Obama was born in 1961, and his mother was just 18 at the time of his birth, and so it is temporally impossible for her to meet the "five of the years after the age of 14" stipulation.

That's why it's so fucking important to the Birthers to establish that Obama was born in Kenya. Or Indonesia. Or where the fuck ever Orly Taintz wants us to believe this week, just as long as it was outside the borders of the United States. By the simple fact that if he was not born in the United States, he is, ipso facto and QED, not a United States citizen.

Jeez. I wasn't expecting that... But okay. what then? Well, I'm more than 100% certain that, not satisfied to strip him of the presidential mantle that he paraded around in so arrogantly, so illegally, so blackly, for the last four years, they will also insist on deporting him as an illegal alien. You know how the whole right wing feels about so-called illegal aliens, and here would be the biggest illegal alien of all, right in their sweaty grasp. He is so outta here!

But wait. First I want to relate a story from my own family. My cousin Jimmy* was born in occupied Berlin, in a German hospital, in 1948 to my uncle, an American soldier who was just nineteen and had been shipped there after advanced individual training, and a young German mother (they were married at the time, but just barely, having just achieved that status before Jimmy was born, in a traditional German Zwangsheirat). He eventually grew up in my home state after his father was discharged and moved his family back to the US. Jimmy graduated from high school in 1965 and enlisted in the Army, following in his father's footsteps.

Unfortunately he had the bad luck to be assigned to the25th Infantry Division near Cu Chi, and after less than three months in country he was shot up severely, ambushed while he was on patrol, injured to the extent that he has to spend a substantial amount of his remaining time in a wheelchair, to the extent that he was awarded a VA disability pension of 100%.

He eventually got married, had two children (that part still worked!), and went on to college (GI Bill, naturally); afterwards he got a job, from which he is now retired and drawing Social Security. He just finished paying off his house and putting his youngest child, a girl, through college. He has two grandchildren by way of his oldest daughter.

Got the picture? Now let's go back at take another look at that immigration law, cited on the VisaLaw page, this time another section:

What are the rules for people born between January 14, 1941 and December 23, 1952?
As before, children born abroad to two US citizens, with one parent having resided in the US, the child was a US citizen at birth.  No further action was required to maintain citizenship.
When one parent was a citizen and the other a foreign national, however, the rules changed substantially.  To pass citizenship, the citizen parent must have resided in the US for at least 10 years before the birth of the child, and at least five of those years had to be after the parent turned 16.  Because this rule made it impossible for parents under 21 to pass citizenship, in 1946 the requirement was amended to create an exception for parents who had served in World War Two. [Emphasis added]

Oh, okay. Whew. That WWII exemption ought to take care of it. But wait a minute, no it doesn't! Uncle Bud was born in 1929 and didn't join the Army until after WWII. He was barely 19 when Jimmy was born. So he didn't meet the residency requirement, either.

Wow. Based on the law in effect at the time, it turns out that Jimmy is not really a citizen of the US after all. So it would seem that he will have be deported as an illegal alien along with Barack Obama, and probably lose both his VA disability and his Social Security. This deportation will, of course, come as a wrenching shock and appalling surprise to him and his family, especially his grandchildren. Everyone except for his ex-wife, who will no doubt be glad to see him go...

The only fortunate thing is that he will get to be repatriated to Germany, which has a solid social safety net and which will take care of him. He also still has some cousins there on his mother's side who know him and like him, and who already call him "Jakob"; they will be glad to help him out.

Unlike my old Army buddy Eladio, who served with me in Vietnam and if the same rule applies to him (my memory of his situation is a little hazy after all these years, but I think it is in large measure basically the same as Jimmy's), he will have to return to El Salvador, where things are short in social safety nets but long in military junta dictatorships who work with United Fruit (a partially-owned subsidiary of the CIA) using their US-made military weapons to torture and repress the common people, especially Johnny-come-lately types who have been expelled from the great El Norte.

It will also come as a surprise, I would imagine, to the officials in the Reagan State Department who first issued Jimmy a US passport, apparently assuming he was the citizen that he claimed to be, and that common sense dictated that he was. Too bad for them as well -- I'm sure heads, if there are any still around 30 years later, will roll over that decision.

Now you have it. It's not all so cut and dried after all, is it? You goddam Birthers, you really want to strip my disabled Vietnam veteran cousin Jimmy of his citizenship -- which he apparently never really had -- and deport him? Strip away his Social Security and his VA disability pension? And Eladio's too, as long as you're at it, even though he's been a productive member of society and has run a successful small business in Texas for the last forty years, employing nearly 20 (legal, he assures me) workers?

Never mind, I already know the answer to that. I heard it during the Rethug presidential debate when the audience screamed, "Let him die!"

Even Baby Doc Bush claimed to be a "compassionate conservative". I don't even hear that weak pabulum puking out of the craven vulture craws of any of the new "leaders" on the right.

One final note: Fuck you, Birthers! You are an embarrassment to political discourse and to rational thinking. And to the whole Human Race as well.

----------------

[Footnote: Please respect the man's privacy. No, Jimmy is not his real name, he has a different last name from me, and he is not even on the same side of the family as my infamous "wackjob cousin" --she doesn't even know him.]

More Moronic Teabaggery - 'This is Chilling'

One of the few advantages of having a wacked-out Rethug as a cousin is that she continually sends me crap like this:

Don't just take your hat off .........your [sic] head is next!!!!!!!!.....This is the REAL THING.........Bare [sic] Arms!!!~!~!!!@
This is chilling ...
In 1952 President Truman established one day a year as a "National Day of Prayer."
In 1988 resident [sic] Reagan designated the First Thursday in May of each year as the National Dayof [sic] Prayer.
In June 2007 (then) Presidential Candidate Barack Obama declared that the USA Was no longer a Christian nation.
This year President Obama, canceled the 21st annual National Day of Prayer ceremony at the White House under the rouse [sic] Of "not wanting to offend anyone"
On September 25, 2009 from 4 am until 7 pm, a National Day of Prayer for the Muslim religion was Held on Capitol Hill, Beside the White House. There were over 50,000 Muslims that Day in DC.
I guess it Doesn't matter if "Christians" Are offended by this event - We obviously Don't count as "anyone" Anymore.
The direction This country is headed Should strike fear in the heart of every Christian. Especially knowing that the Muslim religion believes that if Christians cannot be Converted they should be Annihilated
This is not a Rumor - Go to the website To confirm this info: (http://www.islamoncapitolhill.com/)
Pay particular attention to the very bottom of the page: "OUR TIME HAS COME" I hope that this Information will stir your spirit. We must pray for Our nation, our communities, Our families, and especially our children. They are the ones that are going to suffer the most
If we don't PRAY! May God have Mercy... IN GOD WE TRUST.
Please pass this on, Maybe someone, somehow can figure out a way to put America back on the map as it was when we were growing up, a safe place to live and by [sic] The Ten Commandments and Pledge of Allegiance.

I retained the original spelling and other grammatical errors, just as an illustration of the kind of mentality it takes to pass this shit around. Of course the original was in a huge WWIII-Headline-sized font festooned with colors, especially red for the "shocking" bits. And those inappropriate capitalisations in the middle of sentences? The original was centered and that's where it started a new line.

My cousin, it of course ought to go without saying, is also a "birther".

Anyway back to this email that is making the rounds. I hardly know where to begin...

1. First, since the malignant Islamic jihad community is mentioned so prominently, go take a look at that that website. Yeah, it does say "our time has come" but so what? It also says this:

IN THE NAME OF ALLAH....
The objective of this gathering is to invite the Muslim Communities and friends of Islam to express and illustrate the wonderful diversity of Islam. We intend to manifest Islam's majestic spiritual principals as revealed by Allah to our beloved prophet Muhammad (PEACE BE UPON HIM) of Arabia. Likewise; we intend to inspire a new generation of Muslim to work for the greater good of all people. We shall serve all people, regardless of race, religion or national origin.

Yeah, I know. "Those people" believe that it's okay to lie to infidels, cut off their heads if the won't embrace Allah, yadda yadda yadda. Here's Snopes on a similar situation.

2. Canceling the National Day of Prayer? Here's Snopes:

In 2009, President Obama decided not to host an ecumenical service in the White House in observance of the National Day of Prayer (held on the first Thursday of May) as his predecessor, President George W. Bush, had. He did not (as is commonly claimed) "cancel" the observation of the National Day of Prayer; instead, rather than holding a White House service, the president opted to issue a public proclamation and observe the occasion privately:
"Prayer is something that the president does every day," said White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, adding that Obama would sign a proclamation to recognize the day. "I think the president understands, in his own life and in his family's life, the role that prayer plays. And I would denote that the administrations prior to the past one did proclamations. That's the way the president will publicly observe the national prayer day. But, as I said, privately, he'll pray as he does every day."

Now here's a guy who is willing to follow the admonitions of Joshua bar Joseph (aka Jesus) who told his adherents to go into their closets and pray in private. But no, that's part of that whole wimpy-assed "love thy neighbor" Jesus thing that the fundos and their wackjob sheeple can't abide...

Note that he didn't say he didn't want to "offend" anyone...

3. Anyone who has actually been to Washington DC knows that the White House is not on Capitol Hill -- that's where the US Capitol Building is, which is why -- duh! -- they call it Capitol Hill. The White House is actually about a mile away from Capitol Hill. And the Muslims? They actually did meet at the US Capitol building and not next to the White House.

4. Obama said US was "no longer a Christian nation"? In 2007? Wrong on the quote, wrong on the date.

What he actually said, in 2009, was this: "One of the great strengths of the United States ...is ... we have a very large Christian population -- we do not consider ourselves a Christian nation or a Jewish nation or a Muslim nation. We consider ourselves a nation of citizens who are bound by ideals and a set of values."

Don't believe it? Huffpo has the video -- watch it and weep.

And what this letter-writer ignores, as does every single brain-fart-residue-enhanced moron in the Religious Right/Wingnuttery/Teabaggery is the Treaty of Tripoli, in which is found the following line: "...the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion..."

As I've mentioned before, there used to be such things as Civics classes in school. I can forgive (kind of) the younger generation for their ignorance of American history and government, but since the Teabaggers seem to be, by and large, old (i.e. my age or beyond) it's unconscionable that they seem to have conveniently forgotten that treaties, once agreed to by the Senate and signed by the president, are the "supreme law of the land":

This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding. [Article Six of the US Constitution].

No, I obviously am not making this up, but the Teabaggery will likely claim that I am, and when confronted with the truth will come up with something like "it says that but it doesn't mean that". That's the approach they are taking with Article 11 of the Treaty of Tripoli.

BTW, as an aside, it is that same Article Six which contains what I think may be the most important provision in the constitution:

The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States. [emphasis added]

While the First Amendment provisions of separation of church and state are paramount to me, the Religious Right has been active in their pursuit of their "separation of church and state are found nowhere in the constitution" crap, but they don't really have an answer to this simple declarative statement that doesn't leave a lot -- bullshit, it doesn't leave any -- wiggle room.

It's an article that's mostly been overlooked in the debate, but to me it is a totally clear statement of the separation of church and state. That's why I consider it the most important provision in the whole document.

So, bottom-line, I agree that "this is chilling", but naturally not in the way the original writer intended. I am especially bothered by the "bare arms" line. I am going to assume that the intention was not to wear a tank top to get a tan on your upper appendages. This is the kind of throwaway line that contributes to the rise in the level of potential violence -- and actual violence -- that bodes ill for the future of this country.

Okay, I know I've been really long-winded today and kind of all over the map, but whenever I get this kind of BS it puts me into an intellectual frenzy. Which is probably why she keeps sending it to me. But what the hell, it gave me a chance to vent on some topics that I think are important to know the facts about, and I hope it's given you some ammunition to fire back at that IBIL* of yours when he passes this on to you.

[IBIL = Idiot Brother-In-Law]

My Wack-Job Cousin is At it Again

Regular readers know that I have a wack-job cousin who is continually sending me crap that she apparently has been able to swallow whole, without even a burp afterward.

She's been pretty quiet lately, but yesterday I received the following broadside (probably because she knows that I am a gun owner and might respond positively):

It has started.
Very Important for you to be aware of a new bill HR 45 introduced into the House. This is the Blair Holt Firearm Licensing & Record of Sale Act of 2009.
We just learned yesterday about this on the Peter Boyles radio program.
Even gun shop owners didn't know about this because it is flying under the radar.
To find out about this - go to any government website and type in HR 45 or Goggle [sic] HR 45 Blair Holt Firearm Licensing & Record of Sales Act of 2009. You will get all the information.
Basically this would make it illegal to own a firearm - any rifle with a clip or ANY pistol unless:
It is registered
You are fingerprinted
You supply a current Driver's License
You supply your Social Security #
You will submit to a physical & mental evaluation at any time of their choosing
Each update - change or ownership through private or public sale must be reported and costs $25 - Failure to do so you automatically lose the right to own a firearm and are subject up to a year in jail.
There is a child provision clause on page 16 section 305 stating a child-access provision. Gun must be locked and inaccessible to any child under 18.
They would have the right to come and inspect that you are storing your gun safely away from accessibility to children and fine is punishable for up to 5 yrs. in prison.
If you think this is a joke - go to the website and take your pick of many options to read this. It is long and lengthy. But, more and more people are becoming aware of this. Pass the word along. Any hunters in your family - pass this along.
Peter Boyles is on this and having guests. Listen to him on KHOW 630 a.m. in the morning. He suggests the best way to fight this is to tell all your friends about it and "spring into action". Also he suggests we all join a pro-gun group like the Colorado Rifle Association, hunting associations, gun clubs and especially the NRA.
This is just a "termite" approach to complete confiscation of guns and disarming of our society to the point we have no defense - chip away a little here and there until the goal is accomplished before anyone realizes it.
This is one to act on whether you own a gun or not.
If you take my gun, only the criminal will have one to use against me. HR 45 only makes me/us less safe. After working with convicts for 26 years I know this bill, if passed, would make them happy and in less danger from their victims.

It's obvious that she didn't write it, and equally obvious that she didn't even bother to do a rudimentary "Goggle" search. Otherwise she would have found that the ever-reliable Snopes has already dealt a death blow to this one.

This isn't as bad as some of her "birther" rants and anti-Islamic boilovers and Socialist-Fascist-Communist meltdowns, so maybe I shouldn't be so critical. After all, as the saying goes, you can't blame a girl for trying.

Uh... yeah, you can. Despite the fact that she's in her late 70s and maybe senile dementia is creeping in, you can still blame her.

She's a moron. And she votes Republican. But I repeat myself...

Thanksgiving and the Holiday Season

The time between now and Xmas has never really been my favorite time of the year. My childhood memories of that time are, shall we say, less than idyllic... Only in America do we have national holidays dedicated to celebration of the Seven Deadly Sins...

Plus it's always cold and wet and dark, and that all gets exacerbated by all of the cloying commercials for greed satiation that seem to start earlier every year.

This year we are not going to do anything with family for the holiday. Half of my kids are not speaking to the other half and my cousin who usually hosts these dinners is in treatment for leukemia (not the wackjob cousin, unfortunately...); my IBIL* will have to get by on his own, without me as a foil. Instead we are going to go out to our local excuse for a fancy restaurant and get the Gluttony Special (i.e., their all-you-stuff-in buffet).

For those of you who are still stuck with some of your Republican relatives, though, here's some good advice from Care2: 10 Ways to Deal With Conservative Relatives During the Holidays.

Me, I will probably be lying low for a few days...

---

[*IBIL = Idiot Brother-In-Law]

The Men My Father Hated

My father didn't really hate a lot of people, although he joked a lot about his "cancer list" -- this was a list of a dozen or so people he was going to rub out if he ever got inoperable cancer and had only six months to live. The people populating this list varied from year to year, depending on who had pissed him off the most in the last year. But it was always just a (sort of) good-natured gibe -- "He's on the list!" or "You're off the list!"

In any case, he didn't get cancer, he got some god-awful wasting kidney disease and was not in good enough shape to even lift a gun, let alone shoot someone with it. Ultimately that list never came to its terrible potentiality.

But there were three men who were on his Permanent Hate List and in the family we learned never to even mention their names in front of him unless we were willing to listen to a ranting-and-raving hour-long (but entertaining, I'll grant) diatribe about how fucked up it was that they were still taking up space on this planet and still breathing his air.

One of course was Herbert Hoover. My father came of age in the Great Depression and, along with everyone else cast into unemployment and poverty, my whole family put the blame squarely on Herbert Hoover, who was president when the Stock Market crashed and the US economy, followed by the world economy, went into the shitter. His mother, my grandmother, widowed at an early age with a litter of children, was forced to "crawl" (her word) before a church-affiliated relief agency just to get marginally-sufficient food for her family.

People have debated ever since the Great Depression whether all the blame could or should be assigned to Hoover, but that didn't matter to the families who were suffering in poverty and hunger. Hoover was president and he refused to do anything to help The People. End of story.

The second man was a guy named Ezra Taft Benson. That name might sound a bit familiar to you since he was, at the end of his life and his career, enthroned as the Prophet, Seer and Revelator of the Mormon Church, i.e., President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (aka "The One True Church"). But that is not what earned him my father's enmity.

No, in 1955 Benson was still Secretary of Agriculture in the Eisenhower Administration, and pulled a "free-market" removal of all the federal price supports for milk. The small dairy farmers who depended on agricultural subsidies to eke out an existence had to sell their cows for pennies on the dollar to big factory farms and were forced off their land and into a nomadic latter-day neo-Grapes-of-Wrath-like flight to the west. Many of them made the time-honored trek to California. We ended up in the Pacific Northwest, where my mother's people all lived. My parents lived in Oregon and Washington for the rest of their lives, but he always missed Oklahoma.

But the greatest amount of my father's wrath was reserved for General Douglas MacArthur. He could hardly stand to see the old general appear on television to reap the praise of, in my father's view, "the stupid people who idolized the bastard" even after his reckless arrogance had gotten him fired from his command in the Korean War.

So it was MacArthur's arrogant attitude and his imperious behavior, sure, but it was way more personal than that. My father's cousin had joined the Army in 1938 and was stationed in The Philippines when the Japanese invaded. Douglas MacArthur and his wife were evacuated by submarine to Australia, leaving behind all of the soldiers under his command to go on the Bataan Death March and then suffer years of cruel captivity at the hands of the Japanese. But what really cinched it for my father was the story that Mrs. MacArthur insisted that her furniture also be rescued with them, and that furniture took up valuable space on the submarine, space that should have gone to other soldiers who could have been evacuated as well. My father's cousin survived the Bataan Death March, but died in a prison camp later in 1942.

I don't even know that the furniture story is true, but in many ways that doesn't matter. The old man hated MacArthur with a burning passion, and if he had ever gotten the opportunity to ... well, we'll never know. It's just a good thing MacArthur never showed up at any events in Portland or Seattle during his retirement years.

Salutegate: More from My Wackjob Cousin

Even though I've taken some time off, my wackjob cousin hasn't. Here's one of her latest:

Disgusting absolutely disgusting. A few minutes ago Mr. Obama left the White House to board Air Force 1 helicopter. Upon approaching the helicopter the Marine in his dress blues snapped to attention and saluted Mr. Obama. Mr. Obama showed total disregard or respect for the marine refusing to return salute. Mr. OBAMA THE MAN JOINED THE MILITARY AND WOULD PUT HIS LIFE ON THE LINE FOR YOU ANY DAY OR ANYTIME . Out of respect you deserve to return that salute. ACTIONS speak louder than words. We know how you feel about our constitution and our country.

What a lie you tell. And where is he headed, to FT Bliss to parse the military, what an idiot.

Really? Well, you know -- and she should have known -- that I just couldn't let this slide by without a response:

Jesus, that's what you are going with now? Now I must conclude that your visceral hatred of Barack Obama knows no bounds.
Oddly enough, the same people who are now slavering over this alleged "disrespect" are the very same ones (WND, Faux "News", Free Republic, etc., i.e., all of the "regular" sources which you seem to cite routinely) who said that Bill Clinton had NO RIGHT to return that same salute because he was a "draft dodger" who had never been in the military.
Really?
If you want to consider a REAL affront to the military, take a listen to Romney's speech last night (here's the full transcript, from Fox News so you know it hasn't been edited: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/08/30/transcript-mitt-romney-speech-at-rnc/, in which you will find exactly ZERO references to the troops in Afghanistan, even though he had a virtually unlimited amount of time to speak.
Mr. Romney, those men joined the military and if you were president, they would put their lives on the line for you any day or any time. Don't they deserve at least a passing mention, if not a loud and enthusiastic "shout out" of appreciation for their service?
How about that?

Okay, so after a couple more emails back and forth, one of which addressed the Romney-ignoring-the-troops thing by her saying dismissively that Romney is a busy man and the troops didn't mind:

Funny thing on that whole salute business, but I can find no record of any president doing it before Ronald Reagan, not even Dwight D. Eisenhower, who had more right than any other president with the possible exceptions of Washington and Grant. I remember the discussion in my VA "rap session" rehab group around the time that Reagan whipped out that first salute in 1981. No one had ever seen it happen before (and our ages ranged from vets from WWI on up through WWII, Korea and Vietnam), and we were somewhat divided over whether it was proper or just more of that famous Reagan showmanship.

But at the end of the day, the consensus was reached, as I recall, that no civilian, not even the commander-in-chief should salute a military person. Here's our reason why: One of the great concepts enshrined in our Constitution is that the military is always under civilian authority, command and control, and for a civilian, even the CIC or the SECDEF (Secretary of Defense), to salute a military man tends to blur that sharp distinction. For more on this topic, you might want to take a look at an interesting and lively forum discussion on this topic among some current and former service members on Military.com from several years ago, before this became a big current affairs issue: http://forums.military.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/409192893/m/9150000112001.

BTW, you can't tell me with a straight face that, if the tables were turned and it was Obama who "forgot" to mention the troops in Afghanistan in a similar speech that you would be all right with that. I don't for a second believe that. And, on what the troops themselves thought of Romney's omission, we seem to be in disagreement -- you think they didn't mind, and I think that they did. Since neither of us is a mindreader, we'll have to let this one drop, except for me to add that when I was in the Army and in Vietnam, it was nice to have our commander-in-chief acknowledge our service and our sacrifices. It contributed greatly to morale and esprit de corps, and both Johnson and Nixon, consummate politicians that they were, knew that.

Hell, yeah, I'll play the Vietnam Card!  In a New York minute!

Well, as She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed never tires of reminding me, you can't argue with stupid and you shouldn't argue with crazy... Yeah, true enough, but Jeez, sometimes it's just so goddam much fun!

Take That!

Whew, the election is over and while the Washington State Secretary of State race has still not been decided, all of the rest of my candidates in this watershed election won.

So take that, Mitt Romney! Take that, Lyin' Ryan! Take that, Tea Party! Take that, Rethugs! Take that, Citizens United! Take that, Supreme Court! And take that, Wackjob Cousin!

In 2004 Shrubby Bush, on much shakier grounds, claimed that he had a mandate, and that he had political capital that he intended to spend. It was a sign of his utter cluelessness that he even thought that.

Now Obama really has a mandate, and since he doesn't have to worry about getting re-elected, he's got a ton of political capital. Start spending it and let's send the Rethugs to the ash heap of history where they belong.

And me? I'm tired, so I'm going to take some time off. Catch up with you later.

--The F Man

A Worker Without a Union...

My wack-job cousin, as regular readers know, is constantly needling me about my leftwing views. Recently she sent me an email she got from one of her fascist friends about the public sector union movement. It was the usual bullshit:

...the left seem to conflate private sector unions with those in the public sector, which obfuscates the real problem. I've not heard any outcry to dismantle private unions. But public employee unions are an entirely different problem ... a very large problem.
Without question state budgetary issues related to public union excesses have done as much as anything to create fiscal crises across the country. Public unions have deliberately and systematically worked to overcharge for their services by "negotiating" with the powers that be, resulting in fat salary and benefit packages and retirement plans...

And on and on in that vein. It's nothing new. I've been hearing this crap for 30+ years, how the greedy public employees who are lucky to have a job have been sucking up all the tax dollars, blah blah blah.

You can't reason with these people and it's best to ignore them.

Except I did send her back this little zinger:

A worker without a union is like a mouse in a roomful of cats negotiating what to have for lunch.

That kind of burnt her, I think, since she doesn't belong to a union and has been whining for years about how low her pay is, how fucked up her working conditions are, etc etc etc.

Snark. Take that.

George Soros and Gun Control?

Jeez, it just never stops. Regular readers know that I have a wackjob cousin who insists on sending me the worst kind of crap imaginable. But I don't cut her off because they are invariably entertaining. Plus I can almost always count on them to provide fodder for the OPOVet gristmill.

Here's today's example:

Don't know if this true or not ! Worth checking out .
Subject: WOW! This is scary!
For the last several years a company called "The Freedom Group" has been buying up American gun and ammunition manufacturers.
Some of these companies are:Bushmaster,
Marlin,
Remington,
DPMS,
Dakota Arms and
H&R.
DPMS Panther Arms
NEF
Dakota Arms
LC Smith
Parker
AAC
Barnes Bullets
EOTAC
INTC
Some people worry that Freedom Group is going to control most of the firearms companies in the United States. Of course, If you control the manufacturers you can decide not to sell to civilians, or, you can raise the prices to rediculous levels or you can make the supply of guns and ammo scarce - all sorts of logjams.
What a perfect way to control America's guns!
If you do some digging you will see that The Freedom Group is owned by a Wall Street investment company called "Cerberus Capital Management".
"Cerberus" in the epic book "The Inferno" by Dante Alighieri, is a three-headed demon hound (from Roman mythology) that guards the Gates of Hell to prevent those damned souls who have just crossed the river Styx, from escaping back to the world.
Investor GEORGE SOROS owns Cerberus!
Please pass this on to all your freedom loving friends. This needs to come out - and quickly! Why have we not heard about this in the "mainstream" media? I would think this would be BIG news.
The absence of big media coverage on this important subject should be BIG news to you, too!

You'd think that an email that starts out with "Don't know if this true or not! Worth checking out" would normally be followed by the person actually, you know, checking it out. But in this case you would be wrong.

Here's what I found with a minimal amount of actual effort. Yeah "BIG news", and it's also big news to Snopes:

As the National Rifle Association's Institute for Legislative Action (NRA-ILA) notes on their web site:
Recently, an old rumor regarding Cerberus — the private equity firm that owns Freedom group, a holding company that in turn owns a number of firearms manufacturers, including Remington, Marlin, Bushmaster, and DPMS — was in some way tied to George Soros.
This rumor is completely false and baseless.
NRA has had contact with officials from Cerberus and Freedom Group for some time. The owners and investors involved are strong supporters of the Second Amendment and are avid hunters and shooters.
In reality, at no time has George Soros ever been a part of the ownership group of Freedom Group or Cerberus, and as a privately traded corporation, there is no possibility that he will be in the future.
This unsubstantiated rumor has caused a great deal of unnecessary concern for gun owners. NRA-ILA urges our members to take great care before repeating baseless rumors found on the Internet.

George Soros appears nowhere on the Cerberus list of senior executives, unlike such other notable socialist-communist-fascist gun control freaks as ... Dan Quayle and Baby Doc Bush's former Treasury Secretary John W. Snow.

Sometimes you gotta laugh. Sometimes you gotta cry. And sometimes you gotta do Andre Breton's ultimate surrealist act: "...dashing down into the street, pistol in hand, and firing blindly, as fast as you can pull the trigger, into the crowd." --Second Manifesto of Surrealism, 1929.

Okay, all you wingnut pantywaists, don't flame me over this. I'm just fucking kidding!!!!!

Nuke 'Em!

Yep, nuke 'em. That's the sum total of my wackjob cousin's latest email regarding the tragedy in Libya. Of course she went off half-cocked, as it were, and initially identified the putative location -- and of course the putative target -- as Cairo. Oh well, never mind those fact-checking details. If Sarah Palin says it's Cairo, then it's Cairo. Besides, it'll still fry a bunch of Muslims, and that's what it's all about.

Naturally she'll be voting for Romney. Even though six months ago she was weeping and wailing and gnashing her teeth over just the possibility that he -- a Mormon cultist -- could beat her boy Newtie Gingrich. Oh how the worm has turned, and it just displays the pathology of her Obama Derangement Syndrome even more, that she is willing to support a guy she totally hated six months ago, just because she totally hates Obama more.

Go figure.

Already Laying Low

Jeez, I'm not back two days and already I'm laying low. But I've been watching the Dems' quadrennial love fest. The first night was spectacular, with rousing speeches from Deval Patrick, Julian Castro (who bears watching as the potential first Hispanic president of the US) and Michelle Obama.

Of course at my age, I get tired out pretty quickly... All that fire burns me me out.

I can't wait for my WJC* to send me her own diatribe. Not that she actually will watch it, but she can always rely on Faux News to give her just what she thinks she needs to know (and no more).

---------------------------

* = WackJob Cousin

On the Lighter Side

Sometimes you gotta stop and smell the flowers -- worn by the clown. Here's a funny one that's currently making the rounds:

The light turned yellow, just in front of him. He did the right thing, stopping at the crosswalk,even though he could have beaten the red light by accelerating through the intersection.
The tailgating woman was furious and honked her horn, screaming in frustration, as she missed her chance to get through the intersection, dropping her cell phone and makeup.
As she was still in mid-rant, she heard a tap on her window and looked up into the face of a very serious police officer. The officer ordered her to exit her car with her hands up..
He took her to the police station where she was searched, fingerprinted, photographed, and placed in a holding cell.
After a couple of hours, a policeman approached the cell and opened the door. She was escorted back to the booking desk where the arresting officer was waiting with her personal effects.
He said, "I'm very sorry for this mistake. You see, I pulled up behind your car while you were blowing your horn, flipping off the guy in front of you and cussing a blue streak at him. I noticed the 'What Would Jesus Do' bumper sticker, the 'Choose Life' license plate holder, the 'Follow Me to Sunday-School' bumper sticker, and the chrome-plated Christian fish emblem on the trunk, so naturally....I assumed you had stolen the car."
Priceless

[HT to Cousin Darlene for this joke]

The Religious Right: They Just Don't Get It

I got another email from my wackjob wingnut religious freak cousin this morning. Strangely, I find myself actually, in a weird car-wreck-on-the-freeway kind of way, looking forward to seeing them.

This one claims (falsely of course) that an NBC poll is absolute proof that 86% percent believe in keeping god in the American culture and the rest of us don't count for shit:

I'll bet this was a surprise to NBC....
NBC POLL
Do you believe that the word God should stay in American culture?
NBC this morning had a poll on this question. They had the highest Number of responses that they have ever had for one of their polls, and the Percentage was the same as this:
86% to keep the words, IN God We Trust and God in the Pledge of Allegiance
14% against
That is a pretty 'commanding' public response.
I was asked to send this on if I agreed or delete if I didn't ..
Now it is your turn. It is said that 86% of Americans believe the word God should stay.........
Therefore, I have a very hard time understanding why there is such a mess about having 'In God We Trust' on our money and having God in the Pledge of Allegiance.
Why is the world catering to this 14%?
AMEN!
If you agree, pass this on , if not, simply delete.
In God We Trust

And, if that weren't enough, it was accompanied by a painting of the Lamb of God looking a lot like, of all people, Brad Pitt! Needless to say, I didn't actually pass this on. Except to all of you by posting it here.

Oddly enough, these are the same people who would say, if you put it to them in a way they could understand, that the United States is not a democracy because of the danger of "mob rule". You know, like your mother used to say, "if all your friends jumped off a bridge, would you do it too?"

They just can't stand the thought of anyone who thinks differently from them having any rights at all. This is the mindset that will gladly usher in a millennium of dictatorial theocracy -- just as long as the right god is being worshipped.

Can you say Dominionism? I knew that you could...

One of Many Reasons Why I Don't "Twit"

You may have noticed a new commenter on this blog since I came back from hiatus. She's Katy Anders and I welcome her to the fray.

She said, in a comment on my post-Thanksgiving report, that she is an adventurous eater but had never had the opportunity to eat pickled pig's feet. Okay, that happens. If you live in Borough Park, Brooklyn or Dearborn, Michigan, it's likely you won't find them in the neighborhood deli. But then I finally dropped by her site, the quirky and interesting and entertaining  Fascist Dyke Motors, and learned that she lives in ... Texas!

Come on Katy, if you haven't had a pickled pig's foot by now, you're going out of your way to avoid them.

Anyway, that's not really the topic under discussion here. What I also found on her site was an account of the Twitterverse imploding on her. Read Why Mia McKenzie Tried to Have Me Lynched for an in-detail report of what happened when suddenly everyone in the world went ape-shit on her. To the point of physical threats and drive-by harassment of her daughter in front of her own house.

Really, this shit has gotten out of hand. Reading that account solidified my belief that I do not need another source of drama in my life. I have She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed, along with four children, eight grandchildren, five-and-counting great-grandchildren, which adds up to 18 people and they all seem bent on doing their level best to keep my life in turmoil. I don't need to go asking for more of it. I had a small taste of that kind of thing back in the good old days of 2004 when I was on my state's Veterans for Kerry steering committee. One guy in Missouri even said he was "gonna git on a plane and fly out there and give you a good ol fashion ass-whuppin".

Yeah, thanks but no thanks. Like the great Joe Pesci in My Cousin Vinny, as much as I might need a "good ol fashion ass-whuppin", I'll have to pass on that generous offer. Besides, that guy probably couldn't even find his way out of Lake O' the Ozarks to an airport. I'd have to take my ass to him for that whuppin.

But that said, more power to Katy if she's willing to put up with it. You go, girl!

'Get Over It'

Remember back in 2001, starting in mid-December of the year before and continuing on for most of the year what the so-called "conservatives" told us?

They ran the same litany four years later when once again we had a legitimate gripe.

"Get over it!" they'd tell us. "Bush is president and there's not a damn thing you can do about it."

Turns out that they were right, to the tune of 4375 American deaths, 31,000+ wounded, a million Iraqi dead and uncountable trillions of our tax dollars disappearing down an infinite number of ratholes.

Guess what. Now it's our turn. Barack Obama is president. Get over it.

Jeez, that felt good.

For more on this subject, take a look at this column by Reg Henry.

Excerpt:

What was the charming little phrase that conservatives would say to those of us disappointed when George W. Bush became president? It's hard to believe that it has receded down the rabbit hole of memory. It was so wonderfully pithy.
Ah yes, I remember now. "Get over it!" This was considered the height of conservative wit back in 2000 and 2004 and all the long years after. You might call it almost Oscar Wilde-like in its cleverness -- that is, if Oscar had not been gay.
Hey, Mr. Liberal, you think the election was stolen because the public was bamboozled by the voting machines? Get over it! Hey, Mrs. Liberal, you think it unfair that the public was bamboozled by gay marriage amendments and the like? Get over it! So we did get over it, sort of, because we didn't think we had a choice. It never occurred to us to behave like spoiled children who didn't get their way, pouting and stamping our feet.
Oh, there was mumbling and grumbling, some crying in our beer, but most liberals aren't much interested in being in a permanent state of agitation. They weren't interested then in forming tea parties for any purpose other than sharing cupcakes. They weren't interested in wearing guns to public events, and not only because they looked odd when worn with kaftans and Birkenstocks
. . .
To the nation's shame, the rage over the legislation has no equal in recent history. Some have suggested that the Democrats are co-conspirators in the lack of bipartisanship. The Democrats are not without fault -- hey, they are the Democrats, a party that could not organize a booze-up in a brewery -- but the basic suggestion is ridiculous.
Not a single Republican voted for the reform package, a display of like mind that would have been the envy of the Supreme Soviet. It was amazing how they recycled their "Country First" slogan from the presidential election to the more workable "Politics First."

So, all you birthers and anti-humanitarians and the rest of you who simply can't stand the fact that an uppity Negro has taken up residence in the White House: Get over it!

* * *

[Note to my cousin who keeps sending me anti-Obama crap: This also means you!]

Book of the Month: The Bitter Waters of Medicine Creek

The book of the month for February is The Bitter Waters of Medicine Creek: A Tragic Clash Between White and Native America, by Richard Kluger

Here, in microcosm, is a sobering illustration of nearly everything that went wrong with the US treatment of America's First Nations people (aka "Indians") in the 19th Century. The Nisqually tribe of Washington State was systematically decimated by the policies of the US government for over 100 years, starting with the shameful and one-sided Treaty of Medicine Creek in December of 1854, and continuing with the death of Chief Leschi, the victim of what can only be described as a judicial lynching the next year.

The chief villain in this story was Washington's first territorial governor, Isaac Stevens, who sadly comes off as a real asshole in the saga. Admittedly -- but this does not excuse his actions -- he was more or less a product of his time, an era when Manifest Destiny meant, at its core, carving a new life for white people out of the flesh of the Native Americans, but Stevens seems to have gone above and beyond the call of "duty" in his treatment of the "savages" of Western Washington who were, naturally and inconveniently, getting in the way of American expansion.

When Leschi complained that the Nisqually were being driven off their land and cruelly forced to live on a non-arable high bluff, from which they could see but could not approach their traditional salmon fishing waters, Stevens declared him an "enemy combatant" and did everything he could to crush Leschi and his followers. A year of skirmishing war ensued, with the ultimate and inevitable outcome that Leschi was tried twice and finally convicted -- on the flimsiest of evidence -- of murder and eventually hanged for his "sins".

Ironically, it was Stevens himself who elevated Leschi to the rank of "chief" -- the Nisqually, like so many other tribes, did not have hereditary leaders, nor did they have anyone who could have been remotely called "chief" in the white-man way of thinking. But Stevens identified Leschi as someone who had the innate abilities of a leader and, more importantly, someone he could manipulate.

Right on one count, wrong on the other. Turned out Leschi was a natural leader, but not the compliant one Stevens was looking for. A year of sometimes bitter skirmish war followed Medicine Creek, until the Washington Territory's official judiciary arm, after two trials, hanged Leschi.

This book is an immensely readable work on the legacy of Medicine Creek, as well as a capsule biography of Leschi, Stevens and a history of shameful treatment of the American Indian in general and the Nisqually tribe in particular.

[Full disclosure: I live about ten miles from the original, historical site of the treaty, and the cousin of a very close friend of mine is the tribal chairperson of the newly-rejuvenated Nisqually Tribe.]

Exploitation Movies: Assassin of Youth (1937)

The 1930s produced a cornucopia of grindhouse exploitation films (aka "sexploitation" movies), usually disguised as "educational" movies that were ostensible cautionary tales about one social problem or another.

Today's feature is the over-the-top exposé of the evils of marijuana, Assassin of Youth from 1937.

Full movie:

This is one of the classics of anti-marijuana propaganda. Sweet girl Joan Barrie is left her grandmother's fortune, but with an odd morals clause. She has to remain "pure" or she doesn't get the money. This doesn't sit well with her blonde(!) scheming cousin, Linda, who sets out to ruin Joan's reputation so that she can get the money. Odd that the "morals" clause applies only to Joan, but never mind that.

Crusading cub reporter Art Brighton goes undercover to expose the danger of marijuana "right here in River City". We learn that marijuana is the worst drug ever, we are treated to a film-within-the-film lecture by a "noted expert" who lectures us pedantically that the word "assassin" comes from "hashish" (here's the Straight Dope on that) and was applied to a group of paid killers in "Syria and Persia"(?) who smoke the dreaded weed and become robotlike murderers. We are also treated to an overwrought recreation of an insane man's confession that he killed five people -- including his uncle! -- while he was under the influence of the "narcotic weed".

In the festive party atmosphere that surrounds the "kids" in this movie (as usual, a bunch of 25-year-old teenagers), Joan falls in the lake and has to take off her clothes to dry them, Linda "accidentally" sets the clothes on fire, and when they return to town Linda and her boyfriend/secret husband make sure that the town busybody sees Joan wearing nothing. Nothing, that is, but a long trench coat that covers everything.

Along the way Joan's little sister takes a few tokes off of some "reefer", goes into a psychotic breakdown, is subjected to some tsk-tsk-clucking by a narcotics-expert doctor, and lingers on in a semi-vegetative state. The reporter enlists Joan's help in exposing the local dope racket, a comedy scene occurs at the court when the judge is trying to render the will, and everything works out in the end: Art rushes in with his stop-the-presses exposé, Linda is exposed, Joan gets the money, and at the end of the movie she and Art are going to get married.

In short, take away all the drug references and it's just another soap opera.

Also notable, for comic effect: The stoned-out party guy, the town busybody Miss Frisbee and her scooter, and Pop Brady who owns the soda fountain where everyone hangs out when they are not partying. (Even though these are all supposed to be high school kids, we never see the school, never see them in class.)

For what it's worth, the innocent girl/lead character is referred to as "Joan Barry" in all the writeups on this movie, but she is listed as "Joan Barrie" in the credits.

The money shot: When she takes off her wet clothes at the lake we see Joan's white skivvies, and then we see her naked, more or less, in a profile silhoutte. There's also some dancing where the girls raise their skirts to mid-thigh and show some -- gasp -- stocking tops.

Lessons learned: Don't dare take that first reefer. And, since all the reefers presented in these movies look like ordinary cigarettes (nobody hand-rolled joints in those days, it appears), better not to smoke at all. And of course, it goes without saying, don't trust blondes.

Directed by: Elmer Clifton, who also gave us Gambling With Souls and Slaves in Bondage

Taglines: Puff--Party--Tragedy! MARIHUANA - a Puff - a Party - a Tragedy!

Also known as Marihuana and The Marijuana Menace

More reading:

• Assassin of Youth on the IMDB
• Marijuana -- Assassin of Youth by Harry F.Anslinger, U.S. Commissioner of Narcotics, from The Reader's Digest, Feb 1938.

Killer on the Road, Part II -- Charles Starkweather

After my first post on this topic the other day, I did a little more thinking about the whole "killer on the road" phenomenon. Billy Cook was certainly not the first embodiment of the Killer on the Road, and he certainly wasn't the last, but he sank into obscurity faster than the musical career of The Hollywood Argyles.

So why did his crime spree fall into oblivion while that of Charles Starkweather, almost exactly seven years later and similar in a lot of ways, become world famous and develop such a lasting endurance that he would be the topic of eight movies over the next 30 years -- including the Martin Sheen-Cissy Spacek vehicle Badlands from 1974 and the "eighth most controversial film of all time", Oliver Stone's neo-noir Natural Born Killers from 1991, not to mention the 1982 moody Bruce Springsteen hit, "Nebraska"?

Aside from Starkweather's first killing, on Nov 30, 1957 (which no one even connected with Starkweather until he confessed after his arrest), his killing spree lasted only eight days, from January 21 to January 29, 1958. His body count was higher, but not all that much higher -- only eleven people as compared to Cook's five. That's kind of paltry when it's compared to later killers such as Ted Bundy (at least 30 victims)  or the now forgotten "I-5 Killer", Roger Kibbe (also known as "Roger Who?"), whose suspected number of victims also runs into the 30s.

So how did Charles Starkweather pull off that notoriety when Billy Cook couldn't? What happened during that seven year interim to make Starkweather's story develop the"legs" to be such a long-lasting part of our culture, our psyche?

Part of it goes to the breathlessly-reported sordid detail that Starkweather had his 14-year-old girlfriend, Caril Ann Fugate, with him the whole time, after first murdering her entire family (shades of Mickey and Mallory Knox!), and the fact that they had terrorized and then murdered a wealthy local industrialist along with his wife and their maid, in their own home!. To the media, a wealthy person's violent death, especially in a home invasion, is worth far more than that of the "Poor White Trash" represented by Caril Ann's family, and consequently that crime gets way more air play and more column inches in the reporting. But that's only part of the story.

What happened in just seven short years comes down to two things: The advent of universal access to television by "the masses", and rise of the Juvenile Delinquent.

In 1951, when Billy Cook made his run, television was something that only the well-to-do had. TVs were expensive, there were relatively few broadcasters, and the general feeling in the entertainment world was that after the novelty wore off, no one would really watch television -- in the words of movie mogul Darryl F. Zanuck, people would soon get tired of staring at a plywood box in their living rooms. By 1957, however, everyone except a few Luddite curmudgeons and cousin-marryin' moonshinin' backwoods-livin' peckerheads had a television set, and it was rapidly becoming THE source for the news of the world. Including news of a violence-prone Juvenile Delinquent serial killer roaming the highways in search of victims.

Anyone who lived through the 50s remembers the archetypal Juvenile Delinquent: Black leather jacket, Levi's, engineer boots, ducktail haircut, long sideburns, bad attitude, lack of respect for authority, cigarette dangling from snarly lips, etc. No, not the emasculated sitcom version epitomized in the pseudo-cool of Henry Winkler's "The Fonz" on the Happy Days TV series. The real JD was dangerous, unpredictable, bristling with switchblade knives and and bubbling over with barely-contained violence. According to the media's stereotypical portrayal of him, anyway.

It was also the media's frantic obsession with "Troubled Youth" (and coincidentally the market share it represented). Starting in the early 1950s, analyzing and explaining the Troubled Youth of the nation became a kind of cottage industry, and television coverage of youth crimes only served to exacerbate that trend.

First comic books were blamed -- they were solely responsible for the increase in teenage delinquency, an accusation that came from the questionable "science" of one Dr. Fredric Wertham and his crusade to have all comic books banned.

Then it was movies. Then it was television itself. Every print media outlet, from The New York Times to Life Magazine to Reader's Digest was wringing its collective editorial hands over the sudden juvenile "crime wave" that had swept up American Youth in its ugly paws. Even the newspaper comics' Dick Tracy got into the act in 1956, in a story arc concerning a punk named "Joe Period" who fit the classic mold -- ducktail haircut, black leather jacket, etc. -- which immediately morphed into a story concerning the murderously violent teenage genius offspring of one of Tracy's most classic villains, 1944's Flattop, one Flattop Jr. by name.

The 1955 release of Nicholas Ray's homage to rebellious youth, Rebel Without a Cause, starring the very symbol of teenage angst, James Dean (despite the fact that he was 24), hit the youth culture like a tidal wave combined with an earthquake  combined with a meteor strike. Charles Starkweather even started modeling himself after the rebellious Dean.

The media were, naturally, quick to pick up on this trend and a ton of Teen Rebellion movies were produced, from the middle-of-the-road Blackboard Jungle to quickie crime-car-culture exploitation films like Hotrod Gang and its cult-classic sequel, The Ghost of Dragstrip Hollow, all of them cashing in on the perceived personal danger inherent in just being around a teenager in 1950s America.

So in 1958 it all came together, and a nation was glued to the little screen for over a week in late January, following the "exploits" of America's new favorite Juvenile Delinquent/spree killer, Charles Starkweather.

Sorry, Billy Cook. Timing is everything.

Oh, and that sudden increase in crime by "Juvenile Delinquents" in the 1950s? It never happened.