As this year’s Remembrance Day was approaching, folks in the Los Angeles area were noticing that radio station KGIL has a new format and is calling itself retro1260 (dot com) because they are playing pop music from the Fifties and Sixties and that, in turn, reminds this columnist of some “never to be forgotten” lessons that seem to have become as obscure as some of the songs that haven’t been heard on the radio for forty years.  What would the soldiers who died in Vietnam have to say about the very likely scenario that President Obama is about to send another 40,000 troops to Afghanistan?  Can an entire country get Alzheimer’s disease?

Last year, this columnist was in Sydney on Remembrance Day and was very moved by the news coverage of that day’s events in their country. 

Anyone who graduated from college in May of 1965 will surely recall that the very next month LBJ sent six divisions of U. S. Marines to South Vietnam to clean the mess up. 

In May of  1965, Ford Motor Company’s Mustangs were all “fresh out of the box” new and the really shrewd guys were buying the ones souped up by Carroll Shelby’s team.  Some really smart fellows were renting “competition ready” Mustangs from Hertz and taking them out to a nearby track and using them to compete.  Why put that kind of wear and tear on a car that you own?

The bunnies at the Playboy Club served drinks with a maneuver known as the bunny slouch so that their cups wouldn’t runneth over.

If KGIL really wants to bring back memories, why don’t they use some recordings of the classic sixties disk jockeys introducing the songs?  Who can forget the voice of Wolfman Jack which was heard “coast to coast, border to border, wall to wall and tree-top tall”?  Didn’t Don Sherwood modestly call himself the world’s greatest disk jockey?  Isn’t Cousin  Brucie heard outside of Manhattan on satellite radio these days?

Leaving Scranton to take a job in New York City meant being exposed to unorthodox ideas.  Scranton’s own 109th Infantry Regiment from the 28th Infantry Division had been among the troops capture at Bastogne and they were the loudest warning the local kids that anyone advocating less than full commitment to the Vietnam war effort was probably a Communist.  Wasn’t the proof the fact that the only people against the War in Vietnam (in 1965) were college professors and show business people?  You didn’t have to be a big fan of the House Un-American Activities Committee to know what that meant.

In 1965, FM radio was a phenomenon that (mostly) hadn’t yet happened.  In Scranton, WEJL used the feed (with station identification blurbs) from WQXR which featured classical music.  Heck this columnist had listening habits that meant he was a fan of both Johnny Cash and Wagner (and that was long before the German got such a memorable plug in the movie “Apocalypse Now.”)

Back then the expression “Bookrow of America” referred to more than just the Strand Bookstore.  The one and only Barnes and Nobel bookstore was just a short walk away. 

Does the Wannamaker store still have that bridge that carried shoppers from one building to another over the street?

Back then, a policy called “the Hayes code” mandated that any criminal portrayed in any film had to be apprehended.  Thus young people were constantly reminded that the bad guys would always get caught.  The thought that an American could commit war crimes and then get a pass was a complete contradiction.  It would never happen, so don’t waste time worrying about that.  The WWII vets backed that philosophy with very strong assertions that Americans were the good guys and would never think of torturing a prisoner. 

Who had the “good guys” T-shirts?  Were they offered by WABC or WMCA?

Scranton may not have been a candidate city for housing the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame but it was the home for WARMland and WICK.  It was rumored that the Sunday morning programming in the Polish language earned enough money to underwrite the rest of WICK’s programs featuring the pioneers of Rock.

Will Fox News mention the irony of the fact that this year’s observance of Remembrance Day comes at a time when a new Afghanistan strategy is about to be revealed and that example of poor timing seems to make a mockery of the “never be forgotten” oratory that abounds each year when America marks “Veterans’ Day”?  Doesn’t the word “veteran” apply only to those who survived the carnage?

When KGIL plays “My Way,” we half expect them to dedicate it to George W. Bush.  “Through it all/when there were doubts/I ate them all . . . and did it my way!” 

Folks shouldn’t say “we will never forget,” if it’s obvious that they damn well have.

Youtube offers a clip of Cousin Brucie from 42 years ago promoting an effort to send a shipment of Christmas items to the troops serving in Vietnam.  That will suffice for this column’s ending quotation.  Here’s the link to that clip.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cxb8PD_uQPE

When the Armed Forces Radio in Vietnam played Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas,” that was the signal that the final evacuation of Saigon was commencing, so now, just because he’s a sentimental old fool, our disk jockey will tear himself away from KGIL long enough to play that very song.  Maybe it’s time to contact America’s “granny war correspondent” and find out how to apply for an embed in Afghanistan and get out of Cali.  Have a week full of “foonman brothers” ads (or have you forgotten that “Laugh-In” shtick?). 

The Santa Monica Ice rink has opened and in Australia the citizens are getting all enthusiastic about Tuesday’s Melbourne Cup race.  It’s their version of America’s Kentucky Derby.  Many women go to work on the first Tuesday of November dress up as if they were going to the opera.  Bets are made during the day and by five minutes after three in the afternoon; it will all be over for this year.  Do Americans care about that bit of foreign culture?  Should we write about that or can we find a new take on the Bush wars?

In Los Angeles, the morning of November 1, 2009 was a living advertisement for the rich color saturation characteristic of Kodachrome film – or it would have been if you could still buy that type of film – because there wasn’t a cloud in the sky and it seems like a perfect summer day was beginning.  There were various and sundry bits of evidence that another Halloween had been celebrated and they subtly suggested that perhaps it would be a good day to write a column about ghosts such as the specter of repeating Vietnam era mistakes.

A quick check of the Sunday edition of the Los Angeles Times showed that the only topics they found worth considering were a portrait of President Obama, a tough talk piece on Iran by Doyle McManus, the possibility of fraud in the Afghanistan’s runoff election, and two assessments of economic challenge faced by the state of California.

Speaking of Shepard Fairey’s version of the Obama portrait do you think that someday someone will write about about the AP image just as one has been written about Alberto “Korda” Diaz Gutierrrez’ famous shot of “Che” Guevarra titled “Che’s Afterlife:  The Legend of an Image”  (written by Michael Casey)?

A few weeks back, while we were staying at the Hostel California, in the Venice Section of L. A., and we noticed that one of they young folks bore a striking resemblance to Ernesto “Che” Gueverra.  We asked the others if they saw the resemblance to the Cuban rebel leader and the reply was:  “Who is Che Guevarra?”

Luckily a laptop was nearby and a quick Google Images search produced a picture and the young travelers were delighted to see that the resemblance was quite striking, especially when the young man was shot in a way that would duplicate the famous “Guerrilero Heroico” image.   Cameras were activated and the one young lady who got the best shot promised to send a copy to this columnist.  Unfortunately, it hasn’t arrived in time to be used as an illustration for this column.

Just a few days ago, we were recounting that incident and when they didn’t respond to the name of the place where it happened, we gave them a clue via a line from an Eagles song:  “you can check out anytime, but you can never leave. . . .”  Some of the young folks knew who the Eagles were (no, not Perth’s West Coast Eagles), and that song in particular, but some didn’t. 

Hah!  Isn’t it ironic?  The peacnik hippies, who were on the young side of the Vietnam era’s “Generation Gap,” are now explaining that era’s cultural references to today’s younger generation.  Could it be that thanks to Rush Limbaugh, today’s college students are pro-war and the older hippies are still advocating Peace, Love, and Brotherhood?

Yikes, do the students at Berkeley, who protested budget cuts last month, know the origin of the line “the kids still respect the college dean”?

How can kids, who think they are in the “counter culture”on Telegraph Ave., be “hip” if they don’t know the titles of the Fugs’ biggest hits? 

Were the lyrics: “I used to live in New York City
Every thing there was dark and dirty
Outside my window was a steeple
With a clock that always said 12:30” about the doomsday clock? 

What was the name of the Susan Sontag essay that spawned the “Trivia” craze in the Sixties?  If that one stumps you follow this link
http://interglacial.com/~sburke/pub/prose/Susan_Sontag_-_Notes_on_Camp.html

Back in the Sixties every college student knew the answer to this question:  “What was Fibber McGee’s address?”

It’s not that there haven’t been any good bands that formed since the Sixties ended; the band calling itself “U2.” seems promising and wouldn’t Guns’n’Roses be quite good if they could just “get it together”?

This columnist can recall a conversation held in a bar in New York City advocating skepticism about “Tricky Dick’s” plan to win the 1968 election with a secret plan to end/win the War in Vietnam.  The older fellow chuckled when he heard the label we had pinned on Richard Nixon and informed me that was what his kids also called the Republican candidate.

What was so funny about a line in a New York City newscast that said:  “The Jets won and Heidi married the goat herder.”?  Huh?

Is it true that the Smothers brothers got tossed off network TV for not being “fair and balanced”? 

What does the expression “Up Creek Alley without a paddle” mean?

Back in the Sixties the oldies stations played Big Band music.  Now, do the oldies stations feature Sixties music?

Yikes!  As mortgages go upside down has the Generation Gap returned with the hippies now playing on the old fogies team?

Is Joey Heatherton still the hottest go-go dancer you’ll ever see?

Why didn’t kids say that Keith Leger was playing the role made famous by Burgess Meredith?

Will Harry Harrison be able to reassure me that New York City is the greatest city in the world?

There is one intriguing question that remains to be answered about a revival of the draft and a massive surge in Afghanistan:  If Fox News supported Bush’s efforts to start the war in Afghanistan, why will they ridicule President Obama for trying to continue it?  Won’t that indicate a contradictory attitude about the war, the current occupant in the White House, and bring up questions about the sanity of their contradictory stances on the same war as conducted by different Presidents?

So, if President Obama, this week, announces a surge in troop levels for the War in Afghanistan, this columnist expects to endure a massive case of déjà vu and will need to hear repeated playings of certain record albums.

The young people who seem oblivious to the dangers of an eternal war that can’t be won might learn something if they talked to some hippies about war and peace and how America’s latest wars got started. 

[Note:  while this column was going through its final polish (at a coffee house in Venice CA) a bunch of younger people were furiously pounding out key stokes as a group mtual support exorcise for the National Novel Writing Month contest.  When their half hour burst is over we’ll ask them about the clock that always says 12:30.  The second youngest one knew it was from a Mama and Papas song.]

Che is quoted online as having said:  ““If you tremble indignation at every injustice then you are a comrade of mine.”  Sounds like he was a hippie.

Now, the disk jockey will play the Snoop-Dog and Willie Neslson duet song, titled “Superman” as well as “Eve of Destruction,” and “Fixin’ to Die Rag,” maybe even throw in Joan Baez’s “Hello in there.”  It’s time for us to go splitsville.  Have a “Hey, Hey, LBJ” type week.

Our post about running away to join a hippie commune has brought in some hits and so we will post this link to one in Tennessee

http://www.thefarm.org/general/visit.html

Maybe we should go there and do a story/column about it?

Since this will be the weekend to contemplate scary nightmares, this column postulates the idea that Jeb Bush will win the 2012 Presidential Election and we’ll throw some “connect-the-dots” items out and let the readers have a chance to frighten themselves into a state of hysterical paralysis 

Most Liberals maintain that George W. Bush’s team (with Karl Rove as the captain calling the plays) stole the 2000 and 2004 elections but somehow didn’t engineer a win for Senator John McCain in 2008. 

The way conspiracy liberals tell it; in 2004 the electronic voting machines were used to steal the results in Ohio and that was enough to deliver the win.

If this is true, why didn’t they also put the fix in for John McCain?  How could they be so forgetful?

Perhaps, since the Republican political juggernaut was fomenting a massive amount of resentment for  wars, torture, and the handouts of bailout bonuses to the banking industry, they wanted to let the Democrats (almost) take over.  (You know like in the cartoons when the bird hands the dynamite stick with a burning fuse to the coyote?)  The conspiracy corner residents, who think that the electronic voting machines permit the Republicans to micro-manage results, might want to take note of the fact that the Democrats thanks to Joe Lieberman may not have a filibuster-proof majority after all.  Did Rove dream up an “almost, but not quite” style “majority”?

So, if the Republicans can sabotage the Obama program for four years, they can then run a campaign emphasizing that Bush’s successor did not accomplish anything and therefore he needs replacement.

If this premise is valid, won’t the electronic voting machines be used to further cripple the Democratic majorities in the House and Senate, next year?

If, like President Bill Clinton, President Barack Obama has to constantly battle a solid wall of recalcitrant Republican oppositionists, he would go into 2012 with an emaciated accomplishments list, which would set the stage for an “elect someone who will get something done” type Republican campaign against him.

The mainstream press has ignored the issue of the electronic voting machines’ reliability factor and so it seems likely they would greet a 2010 Republican “surge” with a shrug and a “the voters confounded the pollsters again” type of spin-cover story.

The possibility that the Republicans could use the kowtowing journalists in the (supposedly) liberal mainstream media to cast Jeb in a variation of a modern Restoration Drama role which would be as likely as your personal skepticism of journalism’s reliability factor would permit. 

With the help of a complacent press, Jeb could take the podium at the 2012 Republican Convention amid an enthusiastic partisan crowd and a “hear no evil, see no evil” press gallery would conveniently miss the zombie symbolism of the Bush family’s return to power.

Recently Smirking Chimp featured a story about the fact that Germany’s Supreme Court ruled that electronic voting machines were unreliable.

http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/24469

A few days earlier the Bradblog web site (which has been covering the electronic voting machines’ poor performance record in test situations) reported that a Georgia Supreme Court ruling established that electronic voting results can not be contested on grounds that voters were thereby disenfranchised.

http://www.bradblog.com/?p=7445

At this point, it becomes a personal call for each member of this column’s audience:  If you can discount the 2004 objections, the failed tests stories, the ruling of Germany’s Supreme Court and the belief that the Republicans might stoop that low, then you can accept the possibility of a Bush Family return to power in 2012 as a legitimate news story.    If you concede all these points then you have to either find a plausible reason for the Republicans not to engineer such a scary scenario or you can start to prepare yourself for the gleeful Rush Limbaugh programs that would be used to (metaphorically) rub salt into the Democrats wounds following a Jeb victory in 2012.

This was just an attempt to provide a speculative Halloween column as entertaining as any of the installments of the Saw movie series.  If it turns out to be a prophesy . . . we tried to warn folks about the electronic voting machines, but they didn’t listen.  If we really wanted to scare you with this column, we’d elaborate on the particulars of just how long Bush’s “Forever War” is going to last 

Shakespeare wrote:  ‘Tis now the very witching time of night,
When churchyards yawn and hell itself breathes out
Contagion to this world.

Now, the disk jockey will play the traditional Halloween carol of Bobby “Boris” Pickett’s “Monster Mash.” (Were you expecting him to play the entire “Music to Scare the Hell Out of Your Neighbors” album?) We have to go see if our contact at Playboy can get us into this year’s party at the Mansion.  We are afraid that it ain’t gonna happen.  Have a “Don’t ever scare me like that again” type week.

If Jack Kerouac were alive today, it seems quite likely that since he liked to be in the avant-garde contingent of contemporary writers, he would be blogging, but what sort of items would he deem worthy of his attention?  Would he point out the fact that after serving seven years as President, George W. Bush’s apologists were stoutly advocating the idea that some problems were the result of  Bill Clinton’s policies but a mere 8 months after President Barack Obama was sworn in, those same Republican folks were firmly maintaining that now all of America’s current problems are the results of the new President’s agenda? 

Perhaps Jack Kerouac would point out that the fact that Clinton had a long lasting effect and that the new President had quickly taken control might be a subtle indication that Bush’s interim period had been ineffective and impotent.  Do Republicans’ really want to imply that the USA’s first Negro President was a virile buck who has put his mark on world affairs that quickly and that Bush never managed to achieve that in seven years?  

After reading “Why Kerouac Matters,” by John Leland, this columnist realizes that a misperception had formed.  This reader had leaped to the assumption that Kerouac would sympathize with the political views of writers like Paul Krasner, Art Kunkin (of Los Angeles Free Press fame), or Hunter S. Thompson.  Such a surmise is very wrong.  Leland asserts that millions of Kerouac’s readers have misunderstood what Kerouac was saying.

Leland postulates that the father of the Beatnik movement actually held strong conservative convictions as far as political philosophy was concerned.  The literary critic then doles out the evidence to back up his contention.  (See page 28 in particular.)

Kerouac did not inject many (if any) references to the Korean War in his novels.

Who will win the Series?  Although Kerouac’s name was synonymous with New York City, he didn’t seem to care much about pro sports let alone root for the Dodgers, Giants, or Yankees.

For as much traveling as Kerouac did, he hardly ever extols tourist attractions.  He seemed to concentrate on jazz, drinking, and sex.  That and his spiritual visions endeared him to the hippies and they assumed that his mystical moments constituted permission to experiment with mind altering drugs. 

Would Kerouac have blogged about topics which were not to be found on the Internet, such as the hypothetical “Bloggers’ Hall of Fame,” or would he have extolled patriotic approval of all of George W. Bush’s war crimes?  What would you expect of someone whose hero was William F. Buckley?

If someone doesn’t start the Blogger’s Hall of Fame, what good is blogging?

How can a blogger compare the Golden Gate Bridge to the Sydney Harbor Bridge if he doesn’t make the effort to see and walk across both of them?  Why state a conclusion if there is no chance that the results won’t take the blogger a step closer to just getting nominated for a place in such a hypothetical institution?

Kerouac said “Why must I always travel from here to there as if it mattered where one is?” 

Isn’t the answer the same as the one to the question about why did that guy climb Mount Everest; “Because it’s there!”?

Kerouac did rewrites and polished his work and presented one draft of “On the Road” on one long continuous sheet of paper as if it were a product of a spontaneous burst of creative energy.  He gave encouragement to bloggers who tends to write fast and post in haste by saying:  “Why let your internalized high school English teacher edit what God gave you?”

Speaking of putting a roll of teletype paper into your typewriter and starting a marathon of keystroking, the folks at National Novel Writing Month (http://www.nanowrimo.org/) are about to start their annual November typa-thon competiton.  Kerouac wannabes, you have been given ample notification.

Can you just imagine a talk show chat featuring Jack Kerouac and fellow conservative Ann Coulter?

Just before the posting process for this column was started, a quick bit of fact checking shows that the site for the annual blog awards (http://2009.bloggies.com/) contains a notation for repeat winners that they are considered to be at the Hall of Fame level of achievement. 

Who would get a link on a Kerouac Blog?  How about the teacher going around the world on a bicycle? 
(http://teacherontwowheels.com/) Talk about a road trip.

Why did this columnist and so many others leap to assumptions about Kerouac if the ideas weren’t in the words?  Leland leaves the questions about the possibility that those messages were present on the subconscious level and thereby more effectively communicated, to other future critics-analysts.

After reading Leland’s book, a re-read of “On the Road” seems quite likely.

“Why Kerouac Matters” doesn’t have an Index.  (Boooo!)  Somewhere in the book, didn’t Leland mention a jazz composition titled “Kerouac”?  Without an Index, that fact slips through the existentialist’s time warp and disappears into the either.  An Index would also help to determine which of George Shearing’s tracks Kerouac liked and which he didn’t because he thought they showed a new attitude of cool and commercial.

In “On the Raod,” Kerouac wrote:  “He said we were a band of Arabs coming to blow up New York.”

Now, the disk jockey will play Dexter Gordon and Wardell Gray’s “The Hunt,” Prez Prado’s “Mambo Jambo,” and Slim Gaillard’s “C-Jam Blues.”  It’s time for us to bop out of here.  Have a “Go moan for man” type week.

This old Citroen was seen in Venice CA today (October 23, 2009) getting a frontal shot of it looked to be more bother than it would be worth, so we cranked off a telephoto shot and said “good enough.”

(Venice CA) While standing in line at the Cow’s End Coffee House waiting for my turn to order a white hot chocolate drink, the TV monitor featured CNN’s coverage of the barf boy and balloon dad. They were relaying the information that last week’s scientific experiment gone bad might have been a publicity stunt that failed. It seems balloon dad is more than just an amateur clone of “Back to the Future’s” Dr.Emmett “Doc” Brown (Christopher Lloyd); he actually is more of a combination of Cuthbert J. Twillie (W. C. Fields), Orson (War of the World broadcast) Wells, and Rosie Ruiz all rolled in to one. [Why can’t the news shows play “Up, up and away (in my beautiful balloon)” as background music when they give updates on the “balloon boy” story?]

It seems that the “Let’s revitalize the concept of Zeppelins” guy is a bit disappointed by the prospect that his chances to land a reality TV gig have just gone down the toilet. Well, this columnist came up with a suggestion that should leave balloon dad flush with excitement and get his spirits flying higher than the Hindenburg on a cross ocean trip to New Jersey. Since it looks like he’s going to “the joint,” “the big house,” or the place where Johnny Cash recorded a live version of “A Boy Named Sue;” why doesn’t he see if the reality TV production company would like to put some video audio equipment in his cell for 24/7 coverage of him paying his debt to society. That way folks could participate vicariously in his attempt to become rehabilitated.

The only possible objection to such a venture would be that it would set a precedence and that would open the possibility that some other company could up the ante by initiating pay-per-view access to Charlie Manson in his cell.

After getting our drink, we talked to some of our fellow Cow customers and in doing so we came up with a curious local belief. According to a reliable source, if a person says a prayer to Bob Marley, within five minutes, someone will offer that person a joint. No! Not Q or “the rock” (isn’t that a national park and not the slammer these days?) a joint as in marijuana.

Now some cynics might suggest that in Venice even if you don’t say the prayer, it’s still gonna happen, but we’re just relaying the local lore.

Actually, we hear that the fire escape to the rooftop crib where (allegedly) Jim Morrison crashed has been removed because so many tourists have been attempting to visit that particular location, the means of getting there had to be removed but that, in turn, has angered the fire inspector.

Speaking of smoking that exotic herb, we heard a rumor that one of the local legal medical dispensaries for that very kind of medicinal cigarette has provoked the usually tolerant and liberal local artists into making a concerted effort to close down one of those angels of mercy (?) efforts because of the fact that they have been a bit rude in chasing away some of the world famous Venice Beach street performers working in close proximity to the “legal medicinal pot” location’s front door.

Isn’t one of that folk remedy’s effects to make the “patient” mellow and easy going? What up with the “scam, kid, ya bother me” type attitude?
There was a time, many, many moons ago, when the “hang-loose” attitude was one of the area’s trademark attributes.

There was a local fellow who would sit on one of the benches and ask for money. On occasion he would use his discretionary funds to purchase a liquid libation which might leave him in the prone position in the middle of the Ocean Front Walk. This columnist can remember seeing a police car drive around the guy and leave him taking his afternoon siesta unbothered. We were never able to verify the local urban legend saying that he was given every possible break because he had won a Medal of Honor during the Second World War.

Guess who is supposed to have been a Venice resident for a mere six weeks (or so) before trying her luck further up the coast where she joined a band called “Big Brother and the Holding Company.” Ironically the singer who became synonymous with the San Francisco sound of the sixties, died in Los Angeles.

It was on Ocean Front Walk where (according to Danny Sugerman’s biography) John Densmore offered fellow UCLA student, Jim Morrison a chance to fill-in that evening for hid band’s singer.

Venice also was home to the only bar in the world that intimidated us away. That didn’t happened in Casablanca, but it did happen when we had the opportunity to have a sarsaparilla at “The Sand Bar.”

This columnist can personally vouch for the inexpensive but filling breakfasts which were offered by the Layafette café.

The Catholic Church displayed a bit of civic pride by naming the local one “St. Mark’s.”

Just about the only thing missing in Venice CA is a bar that could boast that it had been (one of) Hemingway’s favorite gin mills.

Just across the border in Santa Monica, the legendary pioneer punk venue called “Blackie’s” is now a chic restaurant run by a world famous chef.

Don’t get the idea that his columnist has gone Yuppie just because of his visits to the Cow’s End. When this columnist recently chatted with Caleb, the owner, we asked where the cow which was on top of the building many years ago went, he pointed to the cow and immediately knew this columnist was not a “johnny come lately” newbie. We got extra points for knowing that the place, which attracts laptop owners with wifi access, could boast that an episode of “The Rockford Files” had done some location work on the premises.

Do the hippies in Venice refuse to abandon their attachment to the past? Recenlty we saw a young fellow in his old car. He was driving up Lincoln in a green four door convertible 1927 Bentley. Can’t he, at least, get into the Sixties frame of mind and upgrade to a VW bug?

Aimee Semple McPherson did better than balloon dad when she told newsmen: “It’s my story and I’m sticking to it.”

Now, the disk jockey takes great civic pride in playing “Down on Me,” “L. A. woman,” the “They shoot horses soundtrack album” and “the Lawrence Welk Show” theme song.

This is the world’s laziest journalist reporting live (via wi-fi) from our source for white hot chocolate drinks. Have an “out of Vietnam now!” type week.

EXAMPLE ONE
Blurbs with link following words.

Marina Developers Contribute to Supervisors’ Campaigns – Politics: Records show that leaseholders have given $508,044 to members of county board since 1986. They say they donate money to win access to public officials.
By JEFFREY L. RABIN, TIMES STAFF WRITER April 12, 1992
http://articles.latimes.com/1992-04-12/news/mn-480_1_campaign-contribution-reports

Grand Jury Asks D.A. to Review Leases at Marina – Development: It wants Garcetti to determine if laws were broken or procedures ignored in negotiation of long-term deals for prime real estate.
By FREDERICK M. MUIR, TIMES STAFF WRITERS and JEFFREY L. RABIN, TIMES STAFF WRITERS August 11, 1994
http://articles.latimes.com/1994-08-11/local/me-26025_1_grand-jury

EXAMPLE TWO
Blurbs with embedded links

Jeff Rabin LA Times story about Marina Developers Contribute to Supervisors’ Campaigns

Muir/Rabin LA Times story about Grand Jury asking Garcetti to determine if long-trem deals broke any laws.

EXAMPLE THREE
Index
Under multiple listings
Example for L. A. Times story about Grand Jury asking Garcetti to investigate long term deals

County Board of Supervisors
http://articles.latimes.com/1994-08-11/local/me-26025_1_grand-jury

Grand Jury
http://articles.latimes.com/1994-08-11/local/me-26025_1_grand-jury

Gil Garcetti
http://articles.latimes.com/1994-08-11/local/me-26025_1_grand-jury

L. A. Times
August 11, 1994
http://articles.latimes.com/1994-08-11/local/me-26025_1_grand-jury

Leases
http://articles.latimes.com/1994-08-11/local/me-26025_1_grand-jury

Rabin
http://articles.latimes.com/1994-08-11/local/me-26025_1_grand-jury

EXAMPLE IV
Inert link and attempt to activate an inert link

Inert
http://articles.latimes.com/1989-11-13/news/mn-1002_1_county-officials

Activating an inert link
http://articles.latimes.com/1989-11-13/news/mn-1002_1_county-officials

If the link above is in blue that means that you can be taken right to the story on the Internet just by clicking on the blue type.

(El Paso, TX) America is the home of the “Inconsistency for fun and profit” school of business philosophy.  Here’s a good example:  Richard Heene says he didn’t know that his kid wasn’t in the balloon and a large part of the USA reacts by crying:  “Fraud!”  George W. Bush claims he didn’t know that the WMD’s in Iran were a figment of his own imagination and all Republicans respond with this nonchalant reaction:  “well, that’s good enough to start a war (even though it contradicts the American philosophy as stated at the Nuremburg War Crimes Trials) and let’s let it go at that.”  Who, other than the Who, cares about getting fooled again?

Isn’t inconsistency the basis for driving people nuts (as well as the hobgoblin of small minds?)?  When Pavlov’s bell rings and the dog doesn’t get the expected treat isn’t that a good way to make the dog begin to manifest schizophrenic behavior?

Don’t Texans, and especially the 43rd President, know that a different term for hoax is to call it a practical joke or to at least use a deceptively exotic label such as:  “preemptive strike” rather than calling it a “sucker punch”?

Richard Heene should be held accountable for an expensive prank, and George W. Bush should get a pass regarding any war crimes trials and be hailed as the one who should be getting this year’s Nobel Prize for his efforts to track down rogue weapons of mass destruction.  What’s wrong with a little bit of inconsistency?

“You got your mind right, Luke?”

Good patriotic American Christian Republicans have no trouble seeing that a Texan like George W. Bush deserves an “attaboy” for his use of extreme questioning because the results saved American lives.  The Geheime Stastspoltzei used the same methods while questioning French citizens (AKA “frogs”) in an effort to root out members of the resistance and they faced charges of war crimes for their dastardly efforts, but if it could have been proven that by doing so, they had saved American lives, then all the expenses involved in the Nuremberg trials could have been avoided.

Can’t the Democrats see that sending American troops to Afghanistan today is in the same commendable tradition as sending volunteers to the Alamo? 

When Texas was invited to join the United States, they put a secession clause into the contract and by golly if Americans can’t live up to the contracts they sign, then hellfire, they are getting this capitalism stuff all wrong. 

Didn’t some great capitalist say “I don’t want lawyers who will tell me what I can and can not do; I want lawyer who will get done, what I tell them to do!”  Wasn’t whoever said that the same fellow who coined the phrase:  “Get ‘er done!”?  Would he have let some lawyer foil attempts to save American lives by using whatever interrogation methods were necessary to learn what a terrorist didn’t want to tell?  

In a capitalistic democracy the bottom line is king.

The big difference between George W. Bush’s search for WMD’s and Balloon Boy’s adventures is that 43 was smart enough to not let a six year old spill the beans on national TV.  The Bush bunch knew that once you make up a story, you stick to it and so the search for WMD’s in Iraq has become a sacred American tradition that is not questioned.

Letting a kid commit a blooper that “lets the cat out of the bag,” isn’t a good game plan.  If you are going to fool all of the people all of the time, you’d best select a Svengali spokesman who is erudite and eloquent.  Shouldn’t Donald Rumsfeld have offered his services to the Heene family?

Online Davy Crockett is credited with saying:  “Step down off your high horse, Mister.  You don’t get lard unless you boil the hog.”

The disk jockey will now play, Marty Robin’s “El Paso,” Kinky Friedman’s “Proud to be from El Paso,” and Bobby Fuller’s “I Fought the Law (and the Law Won).”  Now, it’s time for us to go down to Rose’s cantina.  Have a “Just Kidding!” type week.

Speaking of unexpected winners, over the weekend this columnist saw the just released movie “An Education” because of the rash of reviews suggesting that Carey Mulligan’s portrayal of a 16 year old school girl, Jenny, who has an affair with an older man, should earn her a nomination for the Best Actress Oscar.  We concur with the extremely enthusiastic reviews.   She does a superb job in a film which delivers a memorable cinematic experience.

Unfortunately, it seems likely that when the Oscar nominations are announced, most Americans are going to say:  “I missed that movie.”  That will cause them to question the motivation of the Academy voters for selecting an obscure acting job.  The Oscars are not a popularity contest, nor are they meant to be awards for selling the most number of tickets in the previous year.

Does a young person deserve the nomination because of accomplishment or is the expectation that Ms. Mulligan will deliver marvelous performances in the future reason enough to nominate her for the next Best Actress Oscar?

If any patriotic conservative Republican Christians do see “An Education,” they may voice strenuous objections about letting anyone else see a story of illicit love, which will bring up a delicious bit of curious misdirected attempts to promote public morality. 

Rush Limbaugh and other well paid guardians of public morality and enthusiastic advocates of war crimes will blithely see a duty to shut down an entertainment which subtly advocates letting individuals make their own decisions about selecting sex partners at a time when the country in which the film is playing is almost a decade into a war that was based on some misperceptions and might drag on in the unwinable mode for quite some time.

Could it be that these well meaning hypocrites know that since they might be able to shut down the movie but that since the liberals will never convince politicians to shutdown a war that can’t be won, the conservative prudes might as well prove their potency by taking whatever victory they can achieve and let the liberals grumble?

It’s not like the Republicans have established an unblemished record of living up to their vows of fidelity, isn’t it more like a golden opportunity to display the psychological phenomenon known as projection?  They can accuse the degenerate Democrats of nurturing horrible, despicable tendencies to lewd and lascivious conduct, which they themselves can not control in their own lives.  Such a move is very therapeutic for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that conservative Christians love being able to use Democrats as scapegoats, thus avoiding the necessity for confessing their own sins.

Isn’t it odd that a movie about love can be condemned and a war involving needless slaughter of civilians goes mostly unnoticed?

Recently the Nobel Prize committee made it even more necessary to find a new topic to divert public attention away from the war because they gave the prestigious award to the American President (is he the first to win while still in office?) mostly for the reason that such a move would hold up to world wide ridicule the fellow who instigated two wars.  President Obama inherited those two wars when he took office and hence faces a bigger than usual challenge regarding efforts to establish Peace, worldwide fellowship of man, and a reduction of the level of nuclear armament in the world.

So, in a world full of war, a movie about love which doesn’t meet the war mongers’ standard of morality will be harshly received if they notice it.

So, what else is new?

We saw “An Education” at a mall in Los Angeles that had a movie arcade that specializes in attract the audience that prefers “art house” type movies.  While we were walking out we came across some activists from a group that fights puppy mills, so, since we couldn’t fork over a large $ grant to help them, we promised to run a plug for bestfriends dot org because, as we noted, back in our days at Lake Tahoe we were part owner of Sigfied L. von Richthofen, the greatest dog who ever lived. 

Siggy set a standard that will never be equaled, but that doesn’t mean that folks should feel free to patronize puppy mill outlets in their efforts to find a modern day companion who can at least come close?

Actor comedian W. C. Fields is often credited with being the source for the quote “anybody who hates kids and dogs can’t be all bad.”

Now, while the disk jockey plays Patti Page’s song, “How Much is that Doggie in the Window,” we’ll mush on out of here.  Have a “win the Iditarod” type week.