If people spoke about Donald Trump the way Trump speaks about President Obama

 Trump said that "everyone is entitled to their own opinion," and that many people have questioned the legitimacy of Obama's birth certificate. When he was asked to say who, Trump replied, "I don't give names." –ABC NEWS report

 One might, if one were either uncharitable or bluntly honest, conclude that Donald Trump is lying through his teeth, distrupting the electoral process, and that he’s acting not much differently than an agent provocateur sent by Al Queda might act if Al Queda were sending people here to roil the American presidential election and give America a black eye. And perhaps, if they follow Donald Trump's cues, they will.

And then there’s the man Trump supports and is giving money to, Mitt Romney. Here's what Romney said when asked about accepting Trump's money and support:

"You know, I don't agree with all the people who support me, and my guess is they don't all agree with everything I believe in," Romney told reporters on Monday. "But I need to get 50.1 percent or more, and I'm appreciative to have the help of a lot of good people." 

What a cop-out!


Both quotes, here lifted from an ABC news story but appearing in many other media, are getting around the Internet like a cockroach infestation in a garbage dump.

But wait, Trump and Romney can’t play that game unchallenged. So here I go, treating Trump and Romney as if they had Democratic doppelgangers. And I'm not saying what follows is true. I'm just saying that this is what I'm saying.

I believe that Donald Trump is a bonafide Nazi. The reason he combs his hair forward is that he has a giant Nazi swastika tattoo on his giant bald spot, and he’s trying to hide it.

Why do I believe this? Plenty of people have told me they’ve seen Trump in locker rooms and places, quickly combing over the swastika on his giant bald spot. Who? I don’t give names. Same as Donald doesn't.

But the reason I believe this is true is, if Trump is not a Nazi, why doesn’t he shave off that ridiculous comb-over and show us what’s tattooed on his giant bald spot? You know why and I know why. So who does Trump think he’s kidding?

As for Romney, why is he refusing to repudiate Nazis and the swastika on Donald Trump’s giant combed over bald spot? Do I have to spell it out for you. Okay then:

So in other words, Romney is planning to sell out America to the Nazis for a few extra percentage points in the election. That's why he refuses to repudiate Trump. And don’t just take my word for it. Lots of people say so, and don’t ask me who. Like Trump and I have both said, I don’t give names.

Besides, if this isn’t true, how come Trump hasn’t shown us his college transcript and his tax returns for the last ten years? And why has Romney limited showing his own tax returns to only two years? Why not ten years' worth like Obama has done?

If Trump and Romney weren’t members of subversive Nazi college organizations, they ought to prove it. They should release their college transcripts. They should also release their tax returns for the last ten years, all their family papers including the closing papers on their homes, and shave their heads. Otherwise I have to keep believing they're both Nazis with secret tattoos, out to subvert America and the Constitution. 

That’s my opinion, I’m entitled to it, and I’m not backing down. Pass this along.

Perv Brit editor at overly perv-oriented Murdoch chain accused by Brit justice officials of being pervy about something really big: perverting the course justice

It was back in 2006 that Jack Shafer posted a piece in Slate magazine about the New York Post’s over-use of the slangy word “perv.”  For the eight years ended with the article’s publication, the Post had used the word “perv” in headlines “at least” 642 times, and shoehorned in the word pervert in 59 more stories, Shafer grumbled.

“That’s almost 90 a year,” added Shafer, who may have been writing with a calculator on his desktop, foreshadowing CNN anchor Erin Burnett’s TV puff piece self-hyping her credentials on the grounds that when she was a business reporter she always ran her own numbers.

But Slate's story wasn’t just about pervy bean counting. Shafer had a point to make. “It’s not just that the Post goes there. It’s that they go there so often. It’s enough to make you wonder, who are the real pervs?” he asked.

Good question. The succeeding years haven’t made Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post any less perv-happy. For examples go here. Or here.  Or (yecch!) here. Or even here.

Some of the stories had to do with people I’d agree are perverts. In other cases, the label is so egregiously pasted on so many people that you gotta wonder whether the mere act of pasting labels has become a perversion.

It’s so bad that now the Daily News and other local and online publications are getting their teeth into the P-word. This is one of Rupert Murdoch’s lesser contributions to the quality of life in New York. Although, come to think of it, I can’t put my finger on any greater ones just now.

That is why I’m so thrilled that Murdoch’s right-hand editorial woman, Rebekah Brooks, has been busted in England for “conspiring to pervert justice.” Oh the pervyness of it all!

Look, given the loosey-goosey way in which Murdoch publications pitch people as pervs, I’m glad to invoke similar standards in judging Brooks. She spells her named “Rebekah?” Right there, that spelling is pervy. Have you seen a picture of her red dredlocks? Pervy if you ask me.

All kidding aside, perverting justice is no joke in England. 

All this journalistic hackery has led to phone hacking, trial-by-headlines, a perversion (there’s that word again) of the American justice system as well as the British, and probably to sour milk in supermarkets.

What should we do? If it were up to me, I’d throw Murdoch, Brooks and the entie editorial staff of the New York Post in the pig barn, lock the door, and throw away the key.

Mad-As-Hell-Men (or Why I Haven't Posted in a While)

I started in advertising during the "Madmen" era. I think the TV show by that name has the office architecture of the time right, but the spirit wrong. I got into the business and and stayed in it because everybody in the better ad agencies was having fun.

Yes, there was smoking, and drinking (and later on marijuana-ing) not to mention tons of fornicating. But all those people on Madmen go about it with such intense, gloomy, humorless earnestness. We were having a ball – telling stories about this one who woke up in the wrong bed on Christmas morning, and that one, who woke up on New Year's eve on a pland to the opposite coast with somebody from the office, not his wife, snuggling up to him him, and the one whose secretary-and-girlfriend parked what turned out to be a stolen Mercedes in his suburban driveway "just for a few days," before she vanished. And then his wife began asking question.

But it's all changed. Now, in real life ad agencies, it's  gloom without even the cheating. I don't think those poor bastards could even find the time to cheat.

I got called into an ad agency (which I shall not name here) to do some freelance work a few days ago. The pay by the hour is pretty pathetic by my old advertising agency standards, but they work so many hours you can make it up on volume.

And I keep having the feeling that I'm behind a barbed wire fence, maybe an electrified barbed wire fence, and that the guards in the tower have instructions to shoot anyone who tries to get over it.

Hey, it's no fun. But then, the only fun these days is getting enjoyed by the one percent who on Saturday mornings get in their golf carts and head for the next hole.

With the new wife.

Besides, a man's gotta work so a man can eat.

See you when the gig is up.

He knows a horror when he sees one. Novelist Stephen King slams Mitt Romney, Chris Christie and other fat cat, greedy Republicans

 In a knock-‘em-down-and-stomp-‘em essay in the Daily Beast, horror novelist Stephen King minces no words, not even the four letter ones. For example, there’s this:

“I’ve known rich people, and why not, since I’m one of them? The majority would rather douse their dicks with lighter fluid, strike a match, and dance around singing “Disco Inferno” than pay one more cent in taxes to Uncle Sugar.”

But why should I quote snippets of King out of context when you can read the whole enraged, hard-hitting, spare-no-epithets piece in one delicious gulp.

Go here and read it, now!

Cross Posted at No More Mr. Nice Blog

Billionaire New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg wants to keep the citizens of his city in poverty. He says it's good for business.

When he was running for his second term as Mayor (or was it his third after he overturned a term limits law to keep his job?) New York’s Michael Bloomberg ran advertising on television showing him  on the streets of new york without necktie, wearing a windbreaker, and getting referred to as “Mayor Mike.” Since then, I can’t remember seeing him in public wearing anything less than a perfectly tailored suit and tie. And these days it's "Mayor Bloomberg," thank you very much. But never mind that.

Lately, “man of the people” Bloomberg is willing to spend a significant part of the city’s dwindling treasury to make sure a bunch of working stiffs don’t earn a penny more than $7.25 an hour.

This is in a city so expensive to live in that, regardless of national figures, an income for a family of three below $16,841 means you're poor. At $7.25 an hour, your annual income would come to $15,080. That’s more than a thousand bucks below the poverty line, where currently 21 percent of the financially drowning population is gasping to survive. (See chart.) 

Billionaire Bloomberg’s anti-living-wage stance stems from a fracas he’s having with his own City Council and its speaker, Bloomberg’s usual political ally, Christine Quinn. This time, even Quinn isn't going along with him.

The Council wants to pass a law requiring owners of buildings subsidized by the city’s taxpayers to pay a minimum wage of $10 an hour plus benefits.

Seeing a man earning ten bucks an hour really rankles Bloomberg’s precious sensitivities, even as he counts his billions. (I’ve seen estimates that he has as little as $17 billion. And as much as $21 billion.) 

Now the extra $2.75 an hour probably wouldn’t pay the heating bill on Bloomberg’s personal mansion on East 79^th Street, not to mention the cost of traipsing off to Bermuda regularly with his girlfriend. (And no, he doesn’t get there flying tourist class. Why go through all that when you can just take a fistful of high denomination bills out of your pocket and rent a plane that leaves when you’re ready, skipping all those inconvenient schedules and security screenings.)

But if a working stiff threatens to earn an extra $2.75 for cleaning out ten floors of urinals and mopping up the pee puddles under them, what does the mayor do?

Bloomberg throws a hissy fit

Pay the workers? As Bloomberg sees it – and said it on the radio – that’s akin to bloody communism. 

Declared the mayor: “It’s interesting if you think about it. The last time we had a big managed economy was the USSR, and that didn’t work out so well.”

And then he waxed poetically impressionistic: “We cannot stop the tides from coming in. We need jobs in the city. It’d be great if all jobs in the city paid a lot of money and had great benefits for the workers...But if you force that, you will jut drive business out of the city.”

Whoa! Wait! Just wait an effin’ second! We’re talking only about employees working for the landlords of buildings that the city is subsidizing with taxpayers’ money. Most employers in the city would be completely unaffected. Most building owners would face the choice of paying a handful of employees an extra $2.75 an hour or giving up hundreds of thousands, and in many cases millions of dollars in subsidies. Who does the mayor think he’s kidding?

The mayor also argued that requiring a minimum wage would interfere with the free market. Speaker Quinn replied that this is exactly what the Bloomberg subsidies to his corporate real estate pals do in the first place, adding that if a business isn’t looking for taxpayer dollars, they’re under no obligation [ to pay the proposed $10 minimum hourly wage.] 

Somewhere in there, the 12^th, (Or is he the 15^th? Or is he the 17^th?) richest man in the world let his deep inner resentments of paying a few of those nasty poor a piddling $2.75 boiled to the surface. Wage bills like the one under discussion, he complained, are “a throwback to the era when government viewed the private sector as a cash cow to be milked rather than a garden to be cultivated. In those days, government took the private sector for granted. We cannot afford to go back to those days…..” and on and on.

Oh that poor under-cultivated billionaire flower! How he must smart at getting “milked” and getting “taken for granted.”

He vetoed the bill. The City Council overrode him. So what’s the mayor going to do?

In a city whose treasury is squeezed for cash, with a budget gap of $4.63 billion that had to be closed by cutting city services and, umm, "increasing revenues, "he’s planning to take his own city to court. 

He’ says, in other words, that he’s willing to spend big bucks to have city lawyers sue their own city  – to take $2.75 an hour out of the pockets of janitors and building superintendants, rather than out of the pockets of landlords to whom the city gives hundreds of millions.

I mean, is Emperor Mike a great American, or what? 

Cross posted at No More Mr. Nice Blog

Five things you can do to give overpaid corporate CEOs a poke in the pocketbook

Once upon a time, most (not all) CEOs of public companies were pretty fairly paid. Yes, they made about 24 times what their workers made. But hey, they were the CEOs.

But weird stuff started happening. By 2011 the average CEO was making 243 times what the average worker was making. And today it’s even worse – if the worker is working at all.

And remember, we’re only talking “average” CEOs. Forbes.com just ran an exposé of what some of the CEOs in communications get paid, which, if nothing else, might help explain why you’re paying through the nose for cable TV.

CEOs and their paid apologists

So-called executive compensation consultants claim that outrageous incomes are necessary to “incentivize” the CEOs to make more money for their companies. Of course, at many if not most publicly traded companies, the CEO is the Chairman of the Board of Directors. And that board is the one that hires the compensation consultant — who then decides that the boss who helped hire him needs a raise.

So in other words, the CEO is hiring his own paid apologist at the expense of stockholders and consumers.

More and more of the resulting scandals are beginning to poke their ugly heads up from under rocks. The nature of these scandals? Executive pay and the value executives create (or don’t create) for their stockholders are completely out of whack.

Consider these figures from that recent Forbes article:

• Last year, Disney’s Robert Iger (total annual compensation $34,000,000) got a 12 percent increase in pay while the value of his stockholders’ shares went down one percent.

• Janet Robinson of the New York Times got paid $24,000,000 (including termination pay) an increase of 433 percent, her “reward” for shriveling the value of her company’s stock by 22 percent.

• Similarly, Tom Glocer of  Thomson Reuters got a 109% pay increase for work that helped to screw shareholders out of 30 percent of the value of their stock. And on and on.

Executive pay soars out of control

The truth of the matter is, the compensation consultants don’t get called back if they don’t keep on recommending to boards of directors that the company up the ante on executive pay. It’s a never-ending upward spiral. The more outrageous it gets, the even more outrageous it will get next year.

Listen, I have no complaint with executives getting well-paid. But I draw the line at “too well paid” and so should you.

For you capitalists: The more top execs get paid, the less there is to distribute to you and your fellow stockholders.

For you non-executive corporate employees: The more top execs get paid, the less money there is to see that your salary even keeps up with the cost of living. And the more incentive there is to outsource your job to Mumbai or someplace else where some third world wage slave can do it cheaper.

For you consumers: Prices go up to drive up profits to the maximum, so that the CEO and his top management buddies can reap the maximum bonus their puppet boards of directors have offered them this year, and so that the ante can be raised next year.

For anyone who votes: The reason so many corporations have lobbyists who thwart the overwhelming sentiments of the American people is because the same lobbyists have been seeing to it that senior executives get taxed at a relatively low rate compared to your own (see the Buffet Rule). Obviously, if we had tax rates that ran, say, to 70 percent, as they once did, the money senior executives steal from a corporation’s other constituencies would go right back into the public till, instead of into their fourth and fifth homes, yachts, and securities investments.

So here’s what you can do:

1. Take the trouble to read and vote the proxies you get if you’re an individual stock owner. Once a year, corporations are required to ask stockholders to vote on a variety of matters.

2. When voting on a proposal from dissident shareholders that the Chairman of the Board should not be an executive of the company, vote yes on this one.

3.  When voting on a guidelines proposal for executive salaries, vote no,  even if the company claims the executive salary guidelines suposedly align management’s interests with those of the stockholders. They may “align” but the sheer amount of bucks executives get for increasing profits comes at least morally close to grand theft of company assets. Just keep voting no, no, no on all compensation proposals generated by the company and the board until the boards realize they’re paying too much for executive help. Period.

4.  From time to time a dissident stockholder will demand that the company disclose to its stockholders any expenditures for lobbying or political influence, and any corporate campaign contributions. Vote yes on proposals like this. (Note that inevitably the board will recommend against voting yes. Of course. They want to keep the corruptocracy safe from prying eyes.)

5. If you belong to any organization that invests large sums of money in the stock market such as a union that has a big pension fund, or a state pension fund,  make it clear you want the fund managers to vote the same ways that are recommended above.

Will any of these actions change things? Not in the short run. But as the pressure builds over the years, and with fewer and fewer shareholders are willing to go along with corporate boards, the boards and the execs they supposedly control will get the idea.

And then maybe — just maybe — we can begin to sweep out and disinfect the corporate corruption that is poisoning America.

P.S. Here’s a sixth thing you can do. Start sending your friends links to this post and to blog posts like it. Help spread the word. And write your Congressman and Senators, letting them know where you stand on these matters.

Memo to a not-very-bright hooker: Next time, girl, ask for the money up front.

I mean, look what you've gone and done, sweetheart. You've got the whole world focused on your  profession's operations in Cartagena, Columbia, embarrassing not only the United States Secret Service (whose agents, as a group, seem even dumber than you, judging from the news I'm reading) but also embarrassing your own country's government. And you've caused a shift in focus – away from the real problems of Latin America and onto how much Columbian hookers get paid. (Or how little they get paid, depending on your point of view.)

Listen, I have nothing against the "oldest profession." In fact, back when I was a college student, eons ago, I discovered an establishment in Newport, Kentucky, called The Fourth Street Grill. It was a clapboard one-family house that appeared to have a lunch counter in front. In fact, you actually could get a hamburger there until 8 pm. 

Eight o'clock was the witching hour when Marge The Madam posted herself at the screen door. (It was summer.) As taxis brought men to the establishment she'd say, "The grill's closed honey. Want a woman?"

If the answer was no, she'd shoo the man away, with no more respect than someone chasing off a rat with a broom. If the answer was yes, the customer was led into the restaurant, and through a back door into an adjoining parlor, where about seven pretty young thangs from the backwoods of Kentucky sat around in their J.C. Penny party dresses, waiting for a man to take upstairs.

But here's the point, sweetheart. They always asked for the money upfront. No ifs. No buts. No maybes. My college roommate, now a well-known mystery writer, and I were allowed sit at the counter up front and watch the action after we'd spent our allowances upstairs . I suppose that's because Marge the Madame thought we were a couple of cute college boys. Or something. (She once asked, "What do you boys  think you're doing? Writing a term paper on pot and prostitution at my expense?")

At any rate, I saw more than one furious customer come crashing out the door and go muttering into the street, followed, moments later, by one of the girls in off-the-shoulder blue chiffon, who'd inform Marge, "He had no money." Importantly, none of those girls had ever so much as unzipped for these guys. Money first. No money, no action. 

With that in mind, sweetheart, I am shocked, shocked that you'd spend an $800 night with a man without pocketing the moolah first. They sure do grown 'em naive down in Cartagena. 

As for the Secret Service guy who Facebooked about checking out Sarah Palin while assigned to guard her,  that was such a stupid move that I think you're giving dumb cops a bad name.

Ditto whichever cheapskate Secret Service agent it is who sleeps with an $800 hooker and offers her $30 bucks after the fact. 

"I was drunk," was no excuse. Especially not when you're supposed to be working on protecting the President of the United States.

Anyway, honey, looks like you opened up the sluice down which a whole passel of career Secret Service agents will now come crashing like an avalanche – out of government employment and into McJobs.  I don't really hold that against you, sweetheart. They did it to themselves. But the first rule of your profession is, you're a hooker, not a banker. So don't give any of these guys credit. I'm just saying, ya know what I mean?

If Ozzie Guillen gets kicked out of the Marlins, somebody had better get on Tim Tebow’s case

I know, I know, I’m mixing apples and oranges here. Or baseball and football. Not to mention, as you'll see shortly,  God and Fidel Castro. But bear with me for a few paragraphs. This is important stuff.

In Florida, it appears as if the entire state is having a meltdown because Ozzie Guillin, the Miami Marlins manager, made a statement favorable to Fidel Castro.

Guillin has been suspended for five days. He was forced to apologize for having had a political opinion. (Whether he’s right or wrong is immaterial to this discussion.)  A member of the Miami Dade Board of County Commissioners says Guillin’s suspension is not punishment enough, because is “doesn’t really address the magnitude of his statements.”

Huh? What magnitude? Guillin said he loved and admired Fidel Castro for hanging on all these years. That seems to be about it. His statement contained no obscenity, no profanity, no attack on any individual, no attack on, or criticism of, the United States. It was simply an opinion, although admittedly one with implicit political overtones. You can buy into it or reject it, but the last time I heard, we still had freedom of speech in this country.

Yeah yeah, I know a Marine sergeant named Gary Stein is facing dismissal and loss of his pension for criticizing President Obama on Stein’s Facebook page by implying the president is a jackass. I strongly disagree with Stein. However, I think he has a right to express his opinion, too. Or even if he doesn’t because it’s “prejudicial to military discipline” whatever that means, he’s in the armed forces, subject to military discipline, and his case may be a somewhat different kettle of fish than civilian self-expression.

But in civilian life, if anybody can be fired for having a political opinion, nobody’s safe. Not you. Not I. And while we’re at it, not Tim Tebow.

Where the hell – if Giullin can’t praise Fidel Castro – where the hell does Tebow come off making overt displays of fervor that favor one religion on the football field? Reports the Washington Post, “When asked what needed to change in America, he [Tebow] said ‘first and foremost … what this country was based on: one nation under God. The more that we can get back to that,’ he continued, to applause.”

For Mr. Tebow’s information, that “one nation under God” line came along in 1955, under the Eisenhower administration. I know 1955 was a long time ago before you were born, Tim, but you might be interested in learning that Eisenhower was not a founding father. The American Revolution dates to 1776, a century and then some before the Pledge  was written. 

As a matter of fact, Tim, God is not mentioned in the United States Constitution, for good reason. Jefferson and the signers were skirting establishment of religion. The closest you can come to a mention of God in the story of America’s founding is the line in the Declaration of Independence that talks about all men being “endowed by their creator.” The term “creator” had to be used because lots of the founding fathers were pretty darn skeptical as to whether that creator was God in the traditional sense. They did all agree that there was an original “source” of all life. They never declared it to be God because so many of them were deists, not Christians. So they called that force a “creator.”

You can take that or leave that. All I’m saying is, if Tim Tebow can start making speeches and put on public displays of religion, as well as ignorant political  statements to the effect that what this country needs to “get back” to is a national belief in God, then Guillin is entitled to state his opinions about Fidel Castro.

I don’t care which of the athletes is right, or wrong, or whether both of them are right, or wrong. All I’m saying is, people should be allowed to peacefully say what they think without the state of Florida and a bunch of Cuban immigrants coming down on them like a lynch mob.

Is New York City falling down on its 911 emergency service? “None of your damn business!” Bloomberg tells New Yorkers.

Well, he didn’t use precisely that language, any more than President Gerald Ford actually told New York to “Drop Dead.” But the gist of what Michael Bloomberg is saying is just about the same thing. 

Government operating in the shadows – and the public be damned

According to CBS New York, the mayor has been refusing to release a consultant’s report on New York’s 911 emergency response system. Instead, his administration “has been fighting to keep private” what the consultant had to say. Even though the information was commissioned by a city government with taxpayer funds.

The entire topic is no laughing matter. The study, too-blandly called a “review,” was commissioned after ambulances were stranded in snowdrifts and the emergency call system backed up in 2010, the consequence of a December blizzard.

But the city tried to keep the report secret, insisting that it’s only “a draft.”

A New York Supreme Court judge, Arthur F. Engoren, ordered the city to release the report, and wiped up the floor with the mayor, comparing the city government's behavior to that of Richard Nixon claim of executive privilege during the Watergate scandal.

"A coverup plain and simple"

"The city [government] is not the only interest group here. And the city’s not infallible,” the judge thundered.

Added an attorney for union employees of the fire department, which was demanding to see the report, “They could label this a draft in perpetuity. It’s a cover up, plain and simple.”

The judge ordered the documents released to the firefighters, which may decide to introduce them into evidence during an arbitration hearing.

Emperor Bloomberg’s was reported “irritated” and said, “We are studying our options.”

Right. Maybe options like stonewalling the judge.

Antioch College rises from its own ashes — maybe

Back in 2008, the fate of my alma mater, Antioch College, received some formidably cranky attention in this corner of cyberspace. Little wonder. Over the decades, the college had found scores of ways to screw itself – and ultimately to screw its faculty and students.

Its small endowment got squandered. It followed over-ambitious plans to expand into a nationwide university – a university with an oedipal instinct to destroy and devour the little Ohio college in Yellow Springs that fathered it.

Meanwhile, on the Yellow Springs campus, more than a century of academic and cultural rigor had been flushed down the toilet in favor of backstabbing and doctrinaire insanity. The college became a “radical boot camp” where people got “called out” for having political opinions contrary to those that were popular on campus, militant feminists put out almost the equivalent of a manual of how and under what circumstances people could engage in sex, and at least one professor discouraged reading of authors who had points-of-view that did not comport with her own.

Little wonder the transfer rate was high, while precious few good students continued to apply. At the same time, the college and its finances began to rot. As the budget sank, buildings literally decayed, the campus landscaping began to look ratty. Members of my graduating class, back for a reunion, shook our heads sadly and told each other, “I won’t let my kid go here.”

A passion, a Roosevelt, and a revival

The university finally decided to shutter the college. That’s when the original college’s alums and some faculty, passionate about the great college Antioch had been, revolted in outrage. I won’t take you through all the twists and turns, but this academic year, after a two-year closure, the college was again open for business, independent from Antioch University – at least for now – and undergoing what appears to be a renaissance.

It’s led by a new college president, Mark Roosevelt, a descendant of rough-riding Teddy. The first new class is reaching the end of its freshman year. Roosevelt, who has little choice but to play guts poker with precious dollars, has decided to let the first four classes since the revival attend college tuition-free. The result has been spectacularly positive.

Thousands of eager high school students have applied for a few limited places, giving Antioch a pick of students that some first rate colleges would envy. But it’s a gamble both for the students and for the college’s trustees, alumni and staff.

Guts poker for students, too

The students know from the outset that the college does not yet have accreditation. The process of regaining its credentials is long and onerous. If the college succeeds, the accreditation may be granted some time after the first new freshman class graduates. If the college fails to gain accreditation, an Antioch College degree will become almost as worthless as that of some of those on-line, for-profit institutions' degrees.

But the risk extends further. If the college fails to get accreditation, the students, faculty and stream of money is likely to vanish. And the University, under a contract that set the college free, will recapture the college’s assets – campus, buildings, bank account, logotype and all.

For the moment, the college is financed in part by generous alums and in part by the sale of one of the college’s assets, the Yellow Springs Instrument Company, which was founded over 70 years ago by the then-president of the college, Arthur Morgan, as an income generator.

That sale gave the college $35 million to work with, according to the college’s President Roosevelt, who spoke at a New York alumni meeting that I attended last week.

There’s an opportunity here for foundations, wealthy individuals and alumni to keep building the college’s wealth so it can survive.

Perhaps you ought to be one of them.  Yes, it’s guts poker. But I’m betting Roosevelt is holding at least a couple of aces.

Airline crews going bonkers in flight – what’s up with that? Here are a couple of paranoid theories.

By now you’ve most assuredly read or heard that the pilot of a JetBlue aircraft went nuts enroute from New York to Las Vegas, had to be restrained by the passengers and other crew, and is now in Texas facing Federal charges for interfering with the crew, which presumably included himself.

Amusing, save that

A) the charge in effect says he was interfering with himself, among others, a felony that can result in a long prison sentence, and that

B) had things not  been handled as well as they were by the co-pilot, crew and passengers, we could be reading about a crashed Airbus and a lot of dead passengers.

But before we rush to throw the captain in the clink, let’s remember that he had an umblemished 12-year record with Jet Blue. And that pilots as a class have a deserved reputation for calm under situations of extreme stress. Sully Sullenberger isn’t the only one of his kind:

Uh, this is your captain speaking. Looks as if our landing gear somehow fell off sometime during flight. No need to get upset about this. We’re simply going detour a bit and fly over a big old glacier in Alaska and put ‘er down like a giant toboggan. Since we may be slipping and sliding on the ice for a while, I do strongly recommend you put your head between your knees, cover it with your arms, and  fasten your seat belts. I'll be having another chat with you folks just as soon as we put this big bird down and bring her to a stop.

So how does an airline captain suddenly go bonkers? It almost certainly wasn’t a case of his consciously making a decision to be a bad boy. One theory floated is that he forgot to take his meds – except that there’s no record that I’ve seen of his ever having been on meds.

Then, eerily, there was the American Airlines hostess who went similarly bonkers in flight earlier the same month. Go here, to listen to her swimming so far past the deep end that you might be tempted to throw her a pair of water wings. She, was reported to have said she was off her meds. But she also raved about the aircraft crashing – mid-flight scripting and behavior not terribly different from the JetBlue pilot’s. So declarations about not being medicated might have been nothing more than another example of irrational raving that had nothing to do with reality.

And all this highly unusual behavior in the course of one month.

Of course, it could be coincidental. But let me stroke your paranoia gland for just a bit here. Is the similarity just a coincidence or….

• Did the CIA or some other American governmental entity slip both crew members some weird kind of psychedelic? Remember, unaware Americans were poisoned with LSD once as part of a CIA experiment that made them  "unwitting subjects in social situations."   Is it possible we have a new generation of mad government scientists (or private entrepreneuers like the former Blackwater Group, which changed its name from Blackwater to Xe, an then from XE to Academi) playing cloak-and-dagger games?

• Is it possible that the hostess and the pilot are both victims of an Iranian or Al Queda poison-the-crew operation, designed to bring down airplanes without smuggling anything onto planes? And if so, will they keep trying until they succeed? 

I don’t know which paranoid thought is scarier, but when there are no previous events in recent memory of airline crew dropping their marbles all over the airplane, and then two occur in the same month, I would caution you to be afraid, be very afraid.

Most especially be very afraid if the airline pilot is sequestered, with no exposure to the public during which he can tell his own story – and instead we’re simply told informed he is in an instution somewhere.

Yeah, probably along with that American Airline hostess. What did become of her after a month, by the way?

Only asking. 

Sleeping with the enemy: is AARP about to betray its senior citizen members still another time?

This isn’t the first time I’ve blogged that AAARP appears to be betraying its members. You’ll find one of my my cranky complaints about AARP here: 

Now it would appear they’re at it again. Once more, my source is an e-mail from at FiredogLake.com below, which I encourage you to read in full.

Which raises another question. I’ve noticed some TV spots lately in which AARP members are invited to come to meetings and express their opinions. For what purpose? None is stated.

If AARP is trying to get an accurate sense of what its members think about Social Security and Medicare, it would be far more cost-effective to commission some reliable market research than to run a national advertising campaign asking self-selecting members to show up at meetings.

My guess: if AARP is actually planning to agree to cuts in Social Security and Medicare, they’re going to use the claim “we listened to you” as part of their excuse.

Don’t let them get away with it. Click on the link in the letter below, and let AARP know how furious you’d be.

Dear friend,

AARP is holding back-room meetings to strategize with social security opponents.

The Huffington Post reports that AARP CEO Barry Rand is inviting outspoken safety net opponents to an "off-the-record, salon style" meeting on March 27th on the future of social security, called The E Street Exchange, including US Chamber of Commerce Tom Donohue, Merrill Lynch Executive Harold Ford Jr. and former MI Gov. John Engler from the Business Rountable for corporate CEO's.1

Once again, AARP is working behind the scenes to build support for benefit cuts while masquerading about as an ardent defender of the safety net to its massive, dues-paying membership.

This is outrageous, and AARP should immediately call off the event and disavow this shameful attempt to throw its weight behind benefit cuts. Can you join us in demanding AARP CEO Barry Rand cancel the back-room E Street Exchange meeting on cutting social safety net benefits?

Tell AARP CEO Barry Rand to cancel the E Street Exchange event and abandon his efforts to throw AARP's support behind benefit cuts.

Click here to add your name: http://action.firedoglake.com/page/s/aarp-rand
Last summer, our campaign of over 32,000 activists was successful in getting AARP to backtrack after their board voted to drop its opposition to social safety net cuts.2

But while AARP is offering a pathetic 6-question survey and 'town hall series' called "You Earned A Say and We're Listening" as a gesture towards "listening" to their 40 million+ membership, it seems they are most interested in adopting the same kind of off-the-record, unaccountable negotiations over benefit cuts that have characterized numerous attempts to dismantle the social safety net over the past few years -- from the Catfood Commission to the Super Committee.3

Laughably, while Rand's E Street Exchange is holding "relaxed and robust" discussions on "Strengthening Social Security: Facing up to the Challenge" with Washington's 1%, AARP's 6-question online survey assures its members: "...AARP is taking the debate about the future of these programs out from behind closed doors in Washington, so you can make your voice heard."4

Clearly, just from looking at the invitation to their salon style talk, nothing could be further from the truth.

Tell AARP CEO Barry Rand to cancel the E Street Exchange event and drop his efforts to throw his organization's support behind benefit cuts.

http://action.firedoglake.com/page/s/aarp-rand
The E Street Exchange is scheduled to take place in Washington, DC on March 27th, and we're going to do everything we can to stop this silent assault on the social safety net. I hope you will join us in once again holding AARP accountable for its actions.

In solidarity,

Brian Sonenstein
Director of Online Activism,
Firedoglake.com

Let’s start calling people APPROPRIATE derogatory names. We can begin by changing the language we use to characterize Rush Limbaugh.

The trouble with most obscene and derogatory words is that they’re so over-used, they’ve lost their oomph. Sixty years ago, when he wrote The Naked and the Dead, Norman Mailer had to make up the word “fug,” in attempt to replicate the speech of soldiers during a war. Printing the actual F-word would have landed him and his publishers in the clink and might have resulted in his best-selling book getting yanked off the bookshelves.

These days, anything goes, and far too many words are either overused or inaccurately used, with a resulting loss of impact.

We can start with the misplaced notion that Rush Limbaugh is somehow an ‘entertainer.” (Google his name and the word “entertainer” and something like 312,000 references come up.)

Calling what Rush Limbaugh puts out “entertainment” is as ghastly as calling a public decapitation “a comedy show.”  Rush Limbaugh is no entertainer. He’s just an abusive gasbag. He tells lies. He twists meanings. And when he libels and slanders people in public broadcasts, those people could, and should find a legal avenue to sue him off his perch.

Case in point, Limbaugh recently slandered a law student who dared to testify before a Congressional committee in favor of medical coverage for birth control. He called her a prostitute. He called her a slut. He declared, "She's having so much sex she can't afford contraception. She wants you and me and the taxpayers to pay her to have sex." No such thing, as this video of her testimony clearly demonstrates. 

In light of this, words like “liar” and “slanderer” ought to be used by the press to describe Limbaugh, rather than a mild statement like “not true,” that characterizes what he says, but not the personality that issues the words.

As for the rest of decent America, declaring that “Rush Limbaugh is a liar and a gas bag,” would probably have triple the impact of calling him an “asshole,” which may be true in a metaphorical sense, but which is overused and considerably less specific about what Limbaugh has done to deserve an opprobrious epithet.

Not completely dissimilarly, when Mitt Romney, or Newt Gingrich, or Rick Santorum state things about Obama, or the economy, or American history that have little or no basis in truth, the press shouldn’t label them “false” or “not true.” They should be labeled what they are. They’re lies. Clear, boldfaced, deliberate, disingenuous, and often malicious lies.

Which makse the Republican candidates who issue these liars little more than self-serving liars.

But back to Limbaugh’s slander of a law student. In today’s foulmouthed, free-spewing climate, “self-serving liar” delivers a powerful counter-impact to anybody who dares label an innocent woman a “whore” or  a “slut” because Limbaugh doesn’t agree with her political point of view.

Another thing to call Limbaugh would be a “profit killer,” whose appearance on a broadcast station tends to suck the revenue out of its bottom line. Reminding national advertisers that sponsoring Limbaugh tends to interrupt their advertising plans and suck the black ink out of their bottom lines would go a long way toward keeping Limbaugh off the air, and in the sewer, where his outrageous personal attacks belong.  

And to think, I was ready to support Planned Parenthood to the death

Alas, I came across this, umm, fascinating case of what Planned Parenthood in Seattle is doing with QR codes, those square patterns of blobs and lines you see more and more in advertisements these days.

Very smart, Planned Parenthood, Seattle. If the enemy has no real ordnance to fire at you, send over a carload of ammunitions to help them out.

As my friend Hershey the Hit Man use to say, "It's pointless to shoot an armed man. Just wait for him to shoot himself."

Chastity Belt Manufacturers’ Association Endorses Rick Santorum

Washington, D.C.: The American Association of Chastity Belt Manufacturers today endorsed former U.S. Senator Rick Santorum in his campaign to become Republican nominee for the Presidency of the United States.

“After long and hard consideration, America’s chastity belt manufacturers have determined that Rick Santorum would best promote the ideals of chastity and submission that are the bedrock of traditional morality and of our business,” said Duane LaPoubel, chairman of the multi-member K Street association.

“In this noble spirit,” LaPoubel declared, “we have formed a Superpac called Americans for Life and Chastity.” The pro-life chastity super-pac is expected to contribute $190 million to the Santorum campaign, drowning out Mitt Romney and other candidates in the remaining   primaries, and overwhelming President Obama in the national elections.

LaPoubel noted that “the chastity belt is the most effective means of contraception known to humanity. It is far more powerful than the disgusting and life-destroying pill, as well as other mechanical or latex devices. It is even more powerful than abstinence. An abstinent person has to abstain. With a chastity belt, it doesn’t matter what a person tries to do. Or for that matter, what two people try to do. Unchaste activities are securely kept under lock and key.”

The chastity belt manufacturers for years have been attempting to promote their devices for purposes not only of contraception, but also for “encouraging young people to wait until marriage,” and for the prevention of rape.

In recent years they had become discouraged until Santorum announced his candidacy. The manufacturers believe Santorum is the candidate most likely to institute government programs mandating the use of chastity belts on women until they are wed, and in some cases well after marriage if their husbands choose.

The chastity belt manufacturers, for their part, have been refining their products to utilize modern technologies. For example, one chastity belt, the I-belt®, can be locked and unlocked only with a smartphone app coded by the person who has attached the woman’s belt. Another contains a tracking device that lets fathers or husbands know exactly where their women are at any given moment.

“These innovative new products are part of our pro-life campaign,” said LaPoubel. “When you think about it for a moment, nothing is more pro-life than a chastity belt.”

Encouraged by the medieval revivalist atmosphere enveloping Santorum, a few of the chastity belt manufacturers have also begun developing branded new products. Among them are stainless steel witch-dunking stools and fireproof stakes, which can be re-used many times for burning heretics, according to the manufacturer.

"These are the finest new anti-witch devices in eight hundred years," said LaPoubel.

Johnson & Johnson’s DePuy division: “Since nobody’s stopping us, let’s keep on crippling people. There’s big money in it.”

So okay, Johnson & Johnson’s DePuy division comes up with an artificial hip that supposedly is going to last longer and provide more durability than other artificial hips and help make walking look and feel more natural.

Let’s wildly assume that the product was brought to market in good faith. Nevertheless, by 2009, the DePuy hip is failing like a dimwitted six year in an advanced calculus class. People who’ve had the implant are in severe pain. They’re not only not walking better, they’re walking like people who’ve been crippled by their pain.

Surgeons who implanted the hips open their patients up again and find what the New York Times called “mysterious masses of dead tissue,” inside and around the thighs of some of these patients.

Worse, DePuy “received repeated warnings that the implant was failing and that surgeons were abandoning it.” And what  did DePuy do? For a painfully long time (pun intended) they kept stating despite the evidence that the hip implant was performing “on a par with competing devices.”

Even after the Food and Drug Administration forced J&J’s DePuy unit to take the product off the market, they kept peddling this crippling and evidently toxic implant in Europe, according to an article that popped up yesterday in the New York Times.

There’s more to the story than that, and I urge you, if you haven’t already clicked on the link, to go here and read the disgusting truth in detail.

But there’s more to the story that you won’t find in the New York Times. A few years ago, the Crank’s brother had poisonous DePuy hips inserted on both his left and right side. Last year, he needed to go through surgery to have one of the DePuy hips removed and replaced by a safer brand. The other hip hasn’t failed. Yet.

The Crank’s brother has a law degree and of course is suing J&J. But he is not sanguine about the outcome. He says that if he takes the case before a jury, he is not likely, at the age of 60-something, to live long enough to see the money because corporate law allows deep-pocketed companies to keep on...and keep on...and still keeping on appealing. The case could go on for a decade or more.

J&J knows this, so they're chiseling on settlement offers. The Crank’s brother tells me the company is offering paltry settlements in the area of $300,000 per hip, knowing that few of J&J’s victims want to go through the lengthy and onerous appeals process.

So who gets what from the settlement? According to The Crank's brother, the lawyer trying the case gets a third. The victim of Johnson &Johnson and DePuy gets a third. And the other third? Believe it or not, it goes to the health insurance company – in this case Medicare – which paid for the surgery and hospital stays, since they're victims of J&J and DePuy, too, if only financial victims.

That’s why the corrupt Republicans who want to eliminate medical malpractice law suits ought to be voted out of Congress. If they had their way, neither J&J’s victims or Medicare would get a dime back as a consequence of Johnson and Johnson's callous disregard for safety or human suffering. Both the taxpayers and the surgical victims would suffer.

Ditto for the evil or idiotic Congressmen who want to reduce regulations on businesses such as Johnson &Johnson. This case clearly demonstrates we need more regulation, not less.

As for the senior executives of DePuy and Johnson and Johnson, they ought to be sentenced to having both their hips forcibly replaced with the faulty DePuy hips, with no chance of removal. 

Where are Americans taking their technology? And what does this mean for Presidential election ad campaigns?

A true story first. Decades ago, when I was a young creative supervisor in an advertising agency, I interviewed an even younger guy looking for his first ad agency copywriting job. He showed me some speculative ads he had done. The ads themselves didn’t blow me away, but his initiative and wild imagination did.

One of the things he told me about was a business he had invented for himself. He tried to sell advertising space on the inside of public toilet stall doors.

“Look,” he said, “it’s a captive audience. Some people sit there for a long time and forget to bring in something to read. So I figured…”

It didn't matter what he figured. His wild thinking was too much for the stuffed shirts who made advertising decisions in those Mad Men days. But I hired the guy anyway. His name was Gary Kott. Before long he jumped ship from advertising for a career in movie and television writing. He ended up working on scripts for the Bill Cosby Show. He retired to the Nevada desert, I hear, still young (and richer than Croesus.) 

Crazy-like-a-fox ex-adman

enjoys the last laugh

Suddenly, Kott’s crazy idea doesn’t seem so crazy. And while technology has brought us far beyond john doors, the phenomenon that Kott glommed onto in about 1971 still holds.

According to a survey conducted by 11mark, a marketing agency in Alexandria, VA: 

“74 percent of men and 76 percent of women report they have used their mobile phone in the bathroom. 63 percent report they have answered a phone call, and 412 percent have initiated a phone call. Many (67 perent) have read a text, and 38 perent have surfed the Internet…”

The younger  they get, the more these people can’t drop their drawers without it. Says a press release about the report:

“As expected, Gen Y respondents are the heaviest IT in the toilet users. Ninety-one percent use their phone in the bathroom, but older generations are not far behind. Eighty percent of Gen X report they use the phone in the bathroom, as well as 65 percent of Boomers, and 47 percent of the Silent Generation…” 

Presidential campaign opportunity!

Clearly, this discovery presents an opportunity for the Democrats – as well as for further vindication of youthful  Kott’s brilliant  inspiration. Moreover, given the level of gutter advertising Romney and Gingrich have been hurling at each other, advertising for Democrats in toilet stalls would, if anything, bring up the level of discourse.

Imagine if, in October, you sat down on a john, say at a theater, only to discover a sign on the inside of the door a framed placard that says, “What is Romney’s economic plan? Explanation in four words." And then there's a number to text.

And when the smartphone-equipped person does just that, he or she gets a return message that says, “Romney-nomics: You’re sitting right over it."

Another: "Where will Romney's economics take America?"

When you text this time, the return message says, "press the handle behind you to see where Romney will take the economy."

“Guess what we’ve flushed out?” another john door sign might say. “Go to…” (and here there would be a URL inserted) to learn the no-crap truth.”

The possibilities just keep coming. “Constipated? You’re not alone. Romney’s full of it.”

“If you’re squeezing hard now, wait until you see what Romney does to your lifestyle and if he becomes president.”

Or just a big picture of Romney’s face with the headline, “Got gas?”

I'm not alone in thinking this is the wave of the future. “The writing is on the stall,” says Nicole Burdette, principal of 11mark.”

This is no crap.

Addendum: Gary Kott took a look at this post and tells me my memory is faulty. He writes that he has not only abandoned Nevada for a patch of California but that, " If the NY Times picks up on your blog, please tell them that the stall idea was Ron Gold's -- he's a great guy and I'd hate to hurt his feelings..." (Gary says he was merely selling john door ad space for Ron.)


If I should be so lucky as to hear from the Times about my blog, I will refer them to the paragraph above. 

Watch the best, most lucid and completely coherent policy speech Ron Paul ever made