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I.
I am interested in betrayal, the abuse of privileged access, and after only half a century's thought was driven to read the passages in the Bible about Judas Iscariot. It is Judas whose upper body is literally in the mouth of Satan in Dante's Inferno, with a couple of other miscreants, in Cocytus, the lowest pit of Hell.
The circle is reserved not for pagans, adulterers, child molesters, mass murderers or disco singers, who frolick in circles of hell high above, but for, in descending order of compound fraud,
So Judas is sitting at the last supper, and somebody says, which one of us will betray you? And Jesus says, the one I give this piece of dipped bread to (communion?). He gives it to Judas. And Judas says, apparently in surprise, Is it I, Rabbi?. And Jesus says, You have said it.
However this can be interpreted, it is an extremely interesting emotional transaction.
II.
I am interested in Matt Lauer's upcoming interview with George Bush.
I have a lot of questions I would ask him. The first thing I'd do is say, I have no hidden agenda. I am going to lay this on the table right now, don't answer it yet. This is what we all want to know.
A.
First, when your little sister died of leukemia it is said that it was then you became your mother's cavalier. Not a mama's boy, but her cavalier. Your mother and her mother-in-law, your Grandmother Bush, are notorious for holding a grudge and competitiveness. For two years I asked every sensible person I know what was the real reason we had gone to war with Iraq. The two best answers had to do with your character. The first was, that you are, as they say in the 12-step community, a dry drunk. These are famous for being entitled to their anger. And everybody in the 12-step community is worried that you quit drinking and went through detox by yourself, which is admirable but really dangerous. This combined with your mother's legacy of holding grudges, it is thought, provided the real reason for the invasion of Iraq, that Saddam Hussein had tried to assassinate your father. In your heart, you know we're right.
In which case, why not send in an Entebbe assassination team and shoot the fucker?
We think this is true because the neo-con agenda of regime change, supported by the WMD arguments and the idea that Islamic states want "democracy" (which is definitely not capitalism driven by Britney's belly button, of which the Islamists are not the only people repulsed and horrified), is patently bullshit, and the paleo-con Kissinger argument of leaving Saddam in place to put the fear of God into Ahmadinejad is a good one. Regime change has meant that Ahmedinejad could go forward into nuclear armament with impunity, achieving a genocidal arsenal aimed at Israel much more dangerous than anything Saddam could have raised.
Of the options, Entebbe, paleo-con, neo-con, why did you pick the one that would valorize Iran, al Qaeda and jihadists everywhere?
B.
Kanye West is a douchebag. Why do you care what he says?
Isn't the failure to evacuate the poor of New Orleans a failure of privatization, deregulation, states' rights and Federalism? The plan apparently was Nagin's, that you should get in your private car and drive away.
It has been a research-supported fact for at least a generation that 80 per cent of the people in the barrio and the ghetto have no access to private transportation. Which means, as we saw, that 80 per cent of the people in the barrio and the ghetto will drown when public safety is privatized.
The whole infrastructure is breaking down. Public schools are full of rats, bridges collapse, all as the result of giving the power to take care of this to the states.
The states are not, will not, and cannot take care of it. This is what Kanye West would say were he not a douchebag. You can see his point: neither Nagin nor George Bush care about black people. Isn't the lesson of Katrina that the Federal government needs to preserve and maintain public safety? What about public education and the infrastructure?
C.
The other one is about power, and how he only felt he'd earned it after the second term election. I'll fill this in later, gotta go to the gig at KWRK.
I am interested in betrayal, the abuse of privileged access, and after only half a century's thought was driven to read the passages in the Bible about Judas Iscariot. It is Judas whose upper body is literally in the mouth of Satan in Dante's Inferno, with a couple of other miscreants, in Cocytus, the lowest pit of Hell.
The circle is reserved not for pagans, adulterers, child molesters, mass murderers or disco singers, who frolick in circles of hell high above, but for, in descending order of compound fraud,
- treacherous to kin,
- treacherous to country,
- hosts who betrayed their guests, and vice versa, and (whips out ancient copy of Ciardi translation always kept close to hand, in my genocide library, between Charred Lullabies, Daniel and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder DSM-IV and Beyond, Davidson)
- masters who betrayed their pupils, and vice versa.
So Judas is sitting at the last supper, and somebody says, which one of us will betray you? And Jesus says, the one I give this piece of dipped bread to (communion?). He gives it to Judas. And Judas says, apparently in surprise, Is it I, Rabbi?. And Jesus says, You have said it.
However this can be interpreted, it is an extremely interesting emotional transaction.
II.
I am interested in Matt Lauer's upcoming interview with George Bush.
I have a lot of questions I would ask him. The first thing I'd do is say, I have no hidden agenda. I am going to lay this on the table right now, don't answer it yet. This is what we all want to know.
A.
First, when your little sister died of leukemia it is said that it was then you became your mother's cavalier. Not a mama's boy, but her cavalier. Your mother and her mother-in-law, your Grandmother Bush, are notorious for holding a grudge and competitiveness. For two years I asked every sensible person I know what was the real reason we had gone to war with Iraq. The two best answers had to do with your character. The first was, that you are, as they say in the 12-step community, a dry drunk. These are famous for being entitled to their anger. And everybody in the 12-step community is worried that you quit drinking and went through detox by yourself, which is admirable but really dangerous. This combined with your mother's legacy of holding grudges, it is thought, provided the real reason for the invasion of Iraq, that Saddam Hussein had tried to assassinate your father. In your heart, you know we're right.
In which case, why not send in an Entebbe assassination team and shoot the fucker?
We think this is true because the neo-con agenda of regime change, supported by the WMD arguments and the idea that Islamic states want "democracy" (which is definitely not capitalism driven by Britney's belly button, of which the Islamists are not the only people repulsed and horrified), is patently bullshit, and the paleo-con Kissinger argument of leaving Saddam in place to put the fear of God into Ahmadinejad is a good one. Regime change has meant that Ahmedinejad could go forward into nuclear armament with impunity, achieving a genocidal arsenal aimed at Israel much more dangerous than anything Saddam could have raised.
Of the options, Entebbe, paleo-con, neo-con, why did you pick the one that would valorize Iran, al Qaeda and jihadists everywhere?
B.
Kanye West is a douchebag. Why do you care what he says?
Isn't the failure to evacuate the poor of New Orleans a failure of privatization, deregulation, states' rights and Federalism? The plan apparently was Nagin's, that you should get in your private car and drive away.
It has been a research-supported fact for at least a generation that 80 per cent of the people in the barrio and the ghetto have no access to private transportation. Which means, as we saw, that 80 per cent of the people in the barrio and the ghetto will drown when public safety is privatized.
The whole infrastructure is breaking down. Public schools are full of rats, bridges collapse, all as the result of giving the power to take care of this to the states.
The states are not, will not, and cannot take care of it. This is what Kanye West would say were he not a douchebag. You can see his point: neither Nagin nor George Bush care about black people. Isn't the lesson of Katrina that the Federal government needs to preserve and maintain public safety? What about public education and the infrastructure?
C.
The other one is about power, and how he only felt he'd earned it after the second term election. I'll fill this in later, gotta go to the gig at KWRK.
