A MUCKRAKER OTHER

WARNING: No minced words here. İ rake the muck of the 'other', the so-called open-minded side who's preference is to whine and distort reality. If still suckling mom's tit or warped by delusions of polıtıcally correct equality you WİLL be offended by such materıal. Welcome to Reality.





Crude reality of crude oil



Only several weeks past the world stuttered when a prankster of sorts sold his lot of oil barrels for roughly ninety-nine dollars. He wanted to be the first. Well now the $100 tag is looking like the good 'ol days in lieu of the current $120 price tag for crude oil which pushed the national retail average to a record $3.50.


Welcome to the oil olympics! Get on your good running shoes because you'll probably not be able to afford to drive to the stadium.


As gas prices reach record highs our USD$ is crumbling to new lows against the euro, both of which keep me using public transportation and living abroad. Yeah!





American mainstream media touched on several possible reasons for rising gas prices but none of which concerned global warming or the Iraq War. That's hellaqueer. Surely waging war in an oil rich land plays some large role in the cost you see at the filling stations. Granted, I chose to study Intro to Constitutional Gov over Econ 101 but one needn't be an economist to deduce a legitimate case of cause and effect. In fact, one only need be a consumer---an informed consumer---to relate the escalating catastrophe of the war (still no capture of WMDs or Bin Laden...) with the dwindling economy and rising cost of living. Our interest rates are continually cut yet few voices besides Al Gore and Ralph Nader are stressing citizens to consume less and conserve more; consequently, those cut rates are only giving pause to the inevitable.

To get out of bed with the Saudi Emirates now would be to find ourselves kicked to the curb like a midnight cowboy as the Saudis' kindness in trading oil in dollars versus euros is largely keeping our oil dependent appetites from growling.

The hand that rocks the Spanish cradle

Used to be a time when pregnant women stayed at home. Now is no longer that time.

Of all the girl power stories this one out of Spain takes the bull by the tail. Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, in an obviously political move, appointed an obviously pregnant career woman Carme Chacón to, get this, the post of Defense Minister. What can be more antithetical to the image of Defense Minister---as in military, force, soldiers, war---than a pregnant woman?! You guessed it, a drag queen...or, worse, Pedro Almodóvar. (Maybe that will be the next leader's bold progressive step.)

Man, are these soft, silly times in which we live. Women in power used to be intimidating and larger than life. Golda Mier...Eva Peron...Barbara Jordan...Queen Victoria...Cleopatra. Now we have saps like Nancy Pelosi and Lady MacBeth herself, Hillary Clinton (both of which are largely more popular than powerful, a thing which unfortunately is taken as one and the same by celebrity obsessed Americans. But appearances are deceiving. W is supposed to be a lame duck president by now yet he's still causing havoc).

Not only does the royal house have a divorcée in line to be queen---Sophia, they just don't make 'em like you and Elizabeth anymore---but now the country's military answers to a young woman (with little military training) in keeping with Sr Zapatero's ambitious gender equity. Remember the last renown country to follow that drumbeat?


That said, I can see France, Libya (oh that Gadhafi!), the Netherlands or Venus having a female Minister of Defense; I can even more easily imagine female kings or cats in hats eating green eggs and ham but, no ma'am take no offense, I cannot see for the life of me a mother to be as Minister of Defense.

Avoid more than the water in Tijuana



Just in: A devastating shoot-out through the streets of Tijuana has claimed the lives of about seventeen. The good news is the dead men were all involved in the Arellano-Felix drug cartel that terrorize the weak and the poor and the prosperous, and keep the flow of drug trafficking flowing. Amazingly, with the gun battles speeding through populated boulevards crowded with businesses and people, no bystanders were killed.

One such survivor reported to the Associated Press that when he got up from taking cover he saw "bullet holes in the wall behind him, a dead man lying in a pool of blood and 11 abandoned, bullet-ridden SUVs on the street."

That brings the '08 sum to about 190 people that have been killed in the city alone, increasing the national count to more than 900 this year!

Just another day in Tijuana.

Hitman membership drive




Be all you can be---in the drug cartel?

Such was the audacious advertisement hung prominently across a thoroughfare earlier this month by Mexican drug traffickers belonging to The Zetas. The banner and similar signs in Nuevo Laredo, which borders with El Paso, Texas, declared: "Operative group 'The Zetas' wants you, soldier or ex-soldier. We offer good salary, food, and benefits for your family. Don't suffer anymore mistreatment and don't go hungry. We won't give you instant noodle soup."

Talk about ¡cajones! Not only is Mexico known the world over as a corrupt, taco-eating Third World country whose many citizens live in Los Angeles but it is so Third World the bad guys advertise for workers on par with Hewitt-Packard and McDonald's. Join our team! We offer great worker benefits! I especially like the above photograph, taken on April 13, 2008, showing the truckload of soldiers passing by the banner in broad daylight.

Left unsaid is their penchant of putting you on the cover of Alarma should you miss a shipment or refuse to sing a ranchero song or lose/win a cockfight.

Mexico is an unfunny joke on more fronts than eight. Its war on drug traffickers is as ludicrous as ours on "terror" and homeland security. Twelve million plus illegal immigrants living and working in the U.S. Hello! As regards Mexico, every Mexican knows that narcotraficantes (drug traffickers) operate in border cities Tijuana, Mexicali, Nuevo Laredo and live in big mansions and ranches throughout the country. Imagine sixteen year olds driving Bentleys around the 'hood and you get an idea of the farcical opposition to drug smuggling.

Mexico is not doing more to combat its problems because its problems soon become our problems and that suits them just fine. Apparently the logic is Why deal with it when someone else will? Hasn't failed them yet. President Calderon has addressed the drug problem more aggressively than any of his predecessors and with effect. One notion behind the recruitment banner is that, while authentic, it was hung as a grand flip-off to the government for meddling more so than to seriously attract new blood desperate to eat more than Manchuran noodles.

Whether or not many disillusioned soldiers or dead-end innocents gravitate to the Zetas it remains for certain that the drug cartel is behind the recruitment postings. If the bad guys are this bold in broad daylight---always a bad sign---when are the "good guys" going to step up and fight, not compromise, negotiate, or dialogue, but fight fire with fire?!

Lucky to be Obama -Pt.2 (Mayor McDumbass)


If Geraldine Ferraro was
taken out of context, then Thomas McDermott, Jr's accusations against the Obama camp are plainly as racist as they are spurious. The mayor of Hammond (IN) and pro-Clinton supporter slammed its neighboring city Gary for busing and carpooling students to the polls in advance of the May 6 primary.
Rather than a commendable effort, Mayor McDermott sees it as underhanded politicking.
To the mayor it seems "like an orchestrated effort on behalf of the Obama campaign to take kids who should be in school learning to read and write, instead giving them a day off and telling them to vote for Obama."

For one, to describe anything Gary officials do as "orchestrated" is complimentary. For another, he likened the organized effort to "corralling"---as in chattel---and is convinced Gary's youth population will vote overwhelmingly for the black candidate over his favored white candidate, and he hates the prospect.

"These kids come from the worst performing schools in the state of Indiana and we are giving them a day off to go vote for Obama," quote the mayor. "They can vote on election day like everybody else."

Huh? I know American high schoolers are not the sharpest knives in the drawer but they can read well enough to discern 'Clinton, Hillary' from 'Obama, Barack' and with only two names on the ballot the math won't pose a problem either.

Hammond, it might interest you, was founded in 1884 (it is the oldest city in Lake County) and has never elected a non-white (or woman) mayor. Any rationale behind Mayor McDermott's slam fall short of being anything but racist; and if not racist then highly unpatriotic, which in our history has always been the bigger of the two injustices anyway.

Lest we forget, if it were remotely possible, our country is at war and if those same students, be they honor society or special ed, can be dined and driven to the MEPS by military recruiters to sign up and die for this country, then they can certainly afford to miss a few periods of textbook education in lieu of real life civics education.
How could any elected official or public servant discourage voters from performing the civic responsibility of voting? American forces---elder statesmen, military might, even celebrities---venture to distant, often turbulent and violent lands to secure the people's participation in the democratic process which for many parts of the world turns out to be a new exercise. A new exercise in freedom.

Freedom? Hammond, it might interest you, used to famously host grand KKK rallies during the terrorist group's heyday. Oh how the Klan paraded through Hammond, Indiana's main streets with no fewer than a few city officials amongst the fold---and every adult in the region today knows it, including junior.

The mayor's attacks are baseless of facts---Obama's camp hasn't a thing to do with it. Gary officials are not pushing or grooming or "corralling" students to vote one way or the other and, besides, who knows, a few might even have Republican sentiments...like his father the republican and former mayor, Thomas McDermott, Sr (and vote for Clinton)---tactless---"
I think Sen. Obama should distance himself from this type of behavior"---shameful, and desperate.

And that's a good sign for supporters of Mr Obama!

I think Mrs Clinton should distance herself from questionable and racist boosters like Mayor McDumbass. Her campaign has certainly had enough practice at it.

Lucky to be Obama


Bob Johnson's at it again
and there is no mistaking it this time. He meant just what he said, namely that being black has paid off oodles for Barack Obama's presidential run. Hello.

"What I believe Geraldine Ferraro meant is that if you take a freshman senator from Illinois called `Jerry Smith' and he says I'm going to run for president, would he start off with 90 percent of the black vote?" Johnson said. "And the answer is, probably not."

As a man of media it should come as no surprise that he is comfortable broadcasting his opinions; As an über successful businessman he knows how to stand the heat in the kitchen. Mr Johnson is a billionaire---a self-made man---so, really, he is more than confident in speaking his mind come
controversy or high water. In speaking his mind to the Charlotte Observer newspaper Mr Johnson plainly noted one other salient fact: He's black.
"Geraldine Ferraro said it right. The problem is, Geraldine Ferraro is white."

And he's right.

Miss Ferraro was neither condescending, offensive, nor incorrect in observing the novelties of the Democratic contenders---id est race and gender---but the old, white bitch forgot that said observation was coming from the mouth of, well, an old, white bitch. Thus, to juxtapose the demographics of Mr Obama and the famous Suffragist, the words
"If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman (of any color) he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept" easily and not wholly unfairly, translated into a pat on the head; a belittling gesture in the black community. A belittling gesture to any one's manhood, really.

Being of the same demographics as the black candidate Mr Johnson won't catch the same hell as Miss Ferraro, at least not from popular media like Diane Sawyer or CNN. The crucial point the former vice presidential nominee missed (and Johnson appreciates) is that it matters a great deal who is doing the pointing about whom. Yes, you better believe, race matters, sex matters, gender matters, along with physical appeal, popularity, money and those other attributes folks lie about not regarding.

Woody Allen gets away with hamming up Jewish mannerisms because he's a funny Jew; Francis Ford Coppola can get away with serializing the Italian mob archetype because he is Italian; Hugh Hefner can get away with sexually objectifying women because he is a playboy; and in like cadence Bob Johnson, black man and founder of BET (Black Entertainment Television), can get away with the brash remark that Mr Obama owes his candidacy to his race.

Now if Miss Ferraro wasn't biased and had gone further to highlight the former First Lady's overriding attributes of being female and the wife of popular former president Bill Clinton, then she would not have come off as sounding racist or anti-Obama. But she neglected to do so and got torched for it.

No one doubts the intangible qualities of Mr Obama. He is intelligent, articulate, compelling and inspiring, educated, professional, upstanding, organized and serious, capable. The content of his character is not scandalous and is certainly above that of our Monkey-and-chief. Neither, however, is the color of his skin invisible.

Education exodus

America won't stay on top for much longer. At least, not if we have to depend on natural born Americans and that haunting cliché, the future: High school graduates.

If, as the ubiquitous commencement address hearken, the graduates are our future, then the country is screwed whether the Monkey-and-chief goes quietly into private citizenship or not. Not everything can be blamed on W. Although...it is curious the national educational quotient is so perilous during the administration of one of our very least intelligent presidents. So much for those C student aspirants! According to a report on national graduation rates released this month by the America Promise Alliance and the EPE Research Center only 1 of 2 students in major city school districts---exempli gratia NYC, Cleveland, LA---graduate. That is practically a coin toss!

For some intriguing reason blacks and Native Americans share the same probability. Why the reservation and urban neighborhood have the same connection when it comes to earning a high school diploma beats me. Maybe, contrary to liberal ideology, there is more to be learned from nature over nurture. Whilst curriculum are being re-prioritized with multiculturalism, diversity seminars, gender studies, GLBT rubbish, wellness (versus physical education) and anger management over geography, American history, fine arts, home economics, graduation rates are plummeting like the American dollar.

So what are American students learning?
Whatever it is, of those learning it enough to pass are Asian descendants (80%) followed by whites (76%) and Hispanics (58%), and females who matriculate about 74% to boys' 66%.

Despite all of this I, a college graduate, could not land more than seasonal stockroom jobs in such major U.S. cities as NYC, Chicago, LA, San Francisco, Miami Beach. Education and resume, my foot.

Nearly every one of the interviewers for the past seven years has been either a female, Hispanic or a homosexual.

Only twice have I been interviewed by a (heterosexual) black male. (For some obnoxious angst a gay feels the need to make it clear he or she is a homosexual.) Interviewers hire people based on their personal attraction to them, more so than any professional regard for the company. So...if all the gatekeepers are just high school graduates or less, then, guess what, those people won't hire any persons more skilled than themselves; and lord knows how they got the post in the first place.

I can not grow a pair of breasts. I do not have a limp wrist. English is my family's native language.

Fine. I can't hack working under a moron who has to remind me of his "superiority" anyway.

Moral of the story? Learn an Asian language. And for the black community in particular, get over the hip-hop arrogance of "keeping it real" and listen to what Bill Cosby is trying to tell us!

So, baby,...your space or mine?

Did you hear the latest---well maybe not thee latest but one of them---in shameless irresponsibility? The case: Family sues social networking phenomenon MySpace for its child's hurt emotions. The facts: Said child misrepresented herself, id est lied, in creating an online profile and interacted with another older teenager. The claimed drama: The older teenager is of the opposite sex and purportedly sexually assaulted the latch-key liar.

Here we have a blatant example of American parents being too shameless (and litigious) to take responsibility for their daughter's actions. The girl, identified as Julie Doe because she is a minor, was 13 when she created a bogus MySpace profile representing herself as eighteen years old, in clear violation of the web site's requirement that users be at least fourteen. One of the many "friends" she attracted was 19 year old Pete Solis. The Internet generation collects friends like telemarketers gather databases.

After several weeks of cutesy, moronic online drivel the two met in person---like folks did before chat rooms and text messaging---in May 2006 and this is where the girl, by then 14, claimed to have been "sexually assaulted". What exactly that entails, I do not know. The news reports don't elaborate.

The family's $30 million suit was thankfully dismissed by a federal judge in Austin, Texas in February 2007. Then the U.S. District Judge Sam Sparks ruled in favor of MySpace, reasoning, "If anyone had a duty to protect Julie Doe it was her parents, not MySpace."

But the 'Does' won't take common sense for an answer. They are sure their daughter is a clean-minded little damsel and, more importantly, that they are great parents. Oh? Imagination need not come into play here---unless one is trying to side with the guilt-ridden progenitors.

Julie Doe lied and tried to hunt with the big dogs when she ought to have had her pup butt roped to the porch. Now her immature feelings (and, presumably, virtue) are violated and only redeemable by some thirty million dollars. Mr Solis, on the other hand, faces a felony punishable by twenty years!

Grow up.
That message goes to the parents.

To Julie Doe, read about the little boy who cried, "Wolf!"

Take five plus many more



Early this month jazz great Dave Brubeck was awarded the Ben Franklin Award by the the State Department for public diplomacy. Not a hallow trophy by any stretch, the award recognized two things: one, a living legend and two, the power jazz music strikes universally.

Mr Brubeck is an old man. Eighty-seven, to be exact. The above photograph was taken in 2007. Two years ago I had the 'once-in-a-lifetime' pleasure of hearing him play live at Carnegie Hall during his aptly titled tour, Take Five Plus Eighty. Bill Cosby opened the show and it was a pleasurable evening; especially watching Take Five, one of my favorite songs, being performed by the old man as lively as heard on the radio.

My reason for reiterating his senior citizenship is simple. Mr Brubeck is here among us and deserves the laurels whilst he can smell them. Am glad the State Department, which currently lacks the art of diplomacy, was wise enough to honour Mr Brubeck's contribution to democracy and music while he is still alive and kicking.

He said of former Soviet blocs, "If you got caught [listening to jazz] you lost your identification cards, you could never get a good job...never go to school...to the university, because you loved jazz. Why? Because freedom that they wanted to stop and jazz was that voice of freedom and it still is."

Mr Brubeck is correct about the freedom quality of jazz still resonating with young people. Even though the genre doesn't crack the Top 40 charts, as a jazz fan am continually surprised by the number of young foreigners who love the music. In fact, I've met more foreign peers than fellow Americans who enjoy jazz as much as they do hip-hop or rock-and-roll. Several of them come from former Communist countries or regimes with anti-American/Western sentiments.

Mr Brubeck's first State Department tour was in '58 at the request of President Eisenhower (Brubeck served in Patton's army in WWII) where he played freedom in such countries as Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, among others. He toured again
in Eastern Europe on behalf of the Department in '71. In presenting the award, Condoleezza Rice said, "Thank you for your patriotism and leadership in representing America by introducing the language, the sounds, and the spirit of jazz to new generations around the world."

Now if only the bitch could heed those very words.
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