Well, Maybe I am a Drunk Monkey’s Uncle

While basking in the tropical temperatures of Sun City West this month, Corky and I saw an ad in the local paper that brought a good howl. A travel agency was pushing a “Summer Getaway” for Phoenix residents: “Fabulous Summer Getaways! Madison, Wisconsin for two weeks—only $999!” Madison is a modern Midwestern vacation hideaway, considering the thousands of hot spots in the rest of the country. Phoenix weather was consistently about 15 degrees above average while we were there. I really don’t like the desert anyway. The only things green are golf courses and the faces of geezers with the flu.
Arizona Republicans approved a bill in committee
that would bar Arizona authorities from participating in discussions with the Western Climate initiative, an organization of Western states concerning environmental matters. Is this dumb or what? Arizona, particular with the growth of the Phoenix-Mesa area, is in danger of running out of water. One would think the Republicans would want to know when they have to shift to sand showers. This supports the maxim that conservatives never do something for the first time. It also supports a quotation of Mo Udall, a politician who knew the desert well: “I have learned the difference between a cactus and a caucus. On a cactus the pricks are on the outside.”
I see the Republican network known as Fox News

is claiming the “liberal” networks—specifically ABC, NBC and CBS—are supporting all of President Barack Obama’s policies while picking on the fat windbag Rush Limbaugh, the Grand Poobah of the Republican Party. Who owns NBC, owner of 13 TV stations (which reach 28 percent of U.S. households), MSNBC, MSNBC business TV, and Court TV? Why, it’s General Electric Corporation: producer of consumer electronics, nuclear turbines, nuclear reactors, nuclear power plants, diesel and electric trains, and military hardware.
The “MS” in MSNBC belongs to Microsoft which donated $2.4 million to George W. Bush’s presidential campaign.  I would call that “conservative” money.  Jack Welch was CEO of GE.  He made sure his boys and girls gave millions to elect Lurch. In fact, on election night in 1999, Welch was in a TV station sweating blood because of the closeness of the election. 
The CBS network is owned by Westinghouse, which also owns Westinghouse Electric, Westinghouse Governmental Environmental Services Company, and Group W Satellite Communications.  It operates 14 stations and has over 200 affiliates, networks.  CBS finally dumped Dan Rather by setting him up with a Republican nominated “advisory board” over the “Where The Hell Was George Bush When He Was Supposed To Be Protecting Us From The Viet Cong Affair.”

George H.W. Bush’s Secretary of Defense Frank Carlucci of the Carlyle Group and a staunching Republican is top guy on the Westinghouse Board of Directors. The amount of money given to the Bush campaign is in the millions. I will be interested to see how the Dan Rather lawsuit against CBS turns out. He just might win it. 
The ABC network is owned by Disney, which gave $640,000 to the Bush campaign. It operates 10 stations covering the 24% of the nation’s households. It also runs ESPN, Lifetime TV, A&E, the History Channel, and E1 which promotes T&A 24 hours a day. It also owns 11 major newspapers and has controlling shares in Sid R. Bass, a major oil and gas company. “Liberal network?” “Fair and balanced?” My ass.

What would be the offer in good times?

Even the rich are whining about money, but it seems they still have heavy pockets. An empty Gatorade bottle Tiger Woods drank from during the PGA Championship was recently offered for bid on eBay. The top bid reached $1 million, but eBay pulled it when it realized some miscreant could possibly discover Tiger’s DNA. The auction house has a human remains and body parts policy. Last year some idiot bid over $30,000 for an apple Tiger had bit into and then thrown away on a course. The apple was later recalled!

On a page in the Arizona Republic paper,

teachers were complaining about lack of funding for schools, huge classes, no substitutes when sick, and the number of special education students assigned to already large classes. Arizona has no income tax but soaks the poor with an 8.5% sales tax. Just above this story on the same page, the real estate section editor bragged about the number of million-dollar homes sold in Phoenix last week: one on Desert Mountain in Scottsdale for $8 million, another on Desert Mountain for a measly $4 mil, another in Scottsdale for $3,670,798 (maybe they sold the furniture with it), another in Scottsdale for $3.15 million, and a mansion with pool in Paradise Valley for $2.7 mil. There were many million-dollar homes below that sum, but they are too numerous to mention. Shucks, there’s no money for such amenities as schools when there’s a recession on!

George W. Bush’s famous Leave No Child Behind law

is coming up for renewal or defeat in this session of Congress. I have always felt it was a 1950s law that featured rote learning and test-taking abilities instead of learning-how-to-learn and creativity. An engineer or scientist without imagination or creative urges might as well get a job planting rice by hand. I call it the “Leave No Children’s Behinds” law. Nicknames developed by educators and others are now sweeping the nation. Among them are:

No Child Left Untested
No Child’s Behinds Left
No School Board Left Standing
Double Back Around to Pick Up the Children We Left Behind Act
Rearranging the Deck Chairs Act
Teach to the Test Act
Mental Asset Recovery Act
Could We Start Again Please Act
Act to Help Children Read Gooder

As in keeping with his leadership style, Bush actually stole the theme from Marian Edelman, the founder of the Children’s Defense Fund and a lifelong leftist Democrat, who often used the theme in speeches in the 1990s. Hillary Clinton used to work for it. The Children’s Defense Fund actually registered it as a trademark in 1994. Maybe Lurch thought it was part of the Constitution he shredded.

Just when did Dick Cheney go nuts?

Here’s a guy who would fit right in with the likes of Franco, Mussolini, Idi Amin, Nero, Mao, and Saddam Hussein. Cheney, who hasn’t been right for almost a decade, is now attacking President Obama, a president who can actually speak in meaningful sentences while thinking. Some examples:

“Mr. Obama is making it more likely terrorists will launch a catastrophic unclear or biological attack on the United States—because we don’t torture prisoners, violate the Geneva Conventions, and ignore the Constitution and federal law.” Geez! Maybe Cheney is the reincarnation of Chinese and KGB thugs with a slave overseer with a whip thrown in.

“Mr. Obama is more concerned about reading the rights to an el Queda terrorist than with protecting the United States against people who are absolutely committed to do anything they can to kill Americans.”

Since we have invaded Afghanistan and Iraq, it’s estimated we may have killed up to 650,000 Muslims. That means we only have to kill 1,299,350,000 more Muslims if we continue to treat all of them as if they are wild-eyed radical extremists. So much for the Bush-Cheney “Bring ‘em on!” plan.

Would the Arizona Legislature vote for a Clean Water Act if they knew the facts?

It seems that water is not very clean in the West. An Associated Press investigation last year revealed that traces of pharmaceuticals were present in the drinking water of 41 million Americans. Drugs to control angina, cholesterol, and epilepsy, as an example, accumulate in the body. Scientists don’t know why yet. Texas fish have loads of Prozac in their brains. Maybe that’s why Lurch failed to learn anything. He had a constant buzz on because he loves to eat fish.

W.C. Fields, who was known to drink whiskey and gin instead of water, said he had a great fear of water because “fish fornicate in it.” Actually, in a roundabout way, there is something in Bill’s bizarre thinking. The Potomac River is so loaded with estrogen-like endocrine disrupters that mature male fish have been found with immature eggs in their testes.

Charles Darwin noted in his Descent of Man,

when he was attempting to substantiate his theory of evolution, that monkeys got drunk just like men and had similar hangovers. His graphic description: “On the following morning (after drinking fermented spirits), they were very cross and dismal; they held their aching heads with both hands, and wore a most pitiable expression.”

The Greeks as early as Aristotle had come up with a plan to catch monkeys. They would set out jars of palm wine, and then the monkeys, like participants at stadium barbecues in parking lots, would pass out from drink and would become easy prey.

Biologists have determined that creatures from bees to elephants have happy hour in nature, guzzling fermented fruit, sap, and nectar from exotic or regular plants. Dogs, pigs, and bears love beer and pay no attention to last call. However, loris and pentailed threeshrews, related to some of our closest relatives, have a natural tolerance to alcohol. These “monkeys” will have as many as nine drinks before they get silly like humans. I would suggest we do the genome so we can identify and transplant the gene which keeps them from getting blotto.

A study at Newcastle University in England

indicates that cows that are named and live in a cow-friendly atmosphere give an average of 68 more gallons of milk a year than those that respond to “hey you!” Medically, if cows feel humans are not friendly, they become stressed and release cortisol, a hormone which decreases milk production. An American dairyman supports the research. Jon Bansen owns 165 cows, has named every one of them, and often strolls among them, talking to them and calling each by name.

Cows do have different personalities. When I was young I had my half-dozen cows to milk, and I was often drafted to get the cows from the pasture. I had my names for them too, some printable, some not. Some cows were like puppy dogs, playful and bouncy, but a few were like Lizzie Borden, just waiting for an opportunity to chase me up a tree for the fun of it.

As long as we are now doomed to be socialists

by the greed of Wall Street bankers and investors and Washington politicians, it’s about time we studied Karl Marx to see what made him tick and right. Marx said capitalism depended on the concentration of economic and political power of an ever more exclusive parasite class. This is a class that depends on making money off money instead of actually being productive and making something. Think of Madoff, Thain and the bonus boys of Wall Street, who couldn’t even think of how close they came to being chased down Wall Street with sharpened pitchforks and 12-gauge blunderbusses. And it could still happen if things get worse.

Marx wrote that capitalism would not be defeated by its enemies, but by internal rot. Think of Countrywide Financial, Lehman Brothers, AIG TOOBIGTOFAIL, Alan Greenspan, Phil Gramm, Bear Stearns, Senator “didn’t-know-I-was-getting-a-deal” Conrad and all of the Harvard and Yale MBAs who can’t find their butts with both hands.

I have used this quote many times, but I think Ghandi’s should be repeated until the common people are sick of it: “The things that will destroy us are: politics without principle; pleasure without conscience; wealth without work; knowledge without character; business without morality; science without humanity; and worship without sacrifice.” The glove fits. We are convicted.