posted by richzubaty on Jul 8
CLICK HERE to listen to The Rude Guy Podcast #69
or RIGHT CLICK HERE (Apple command/click) then click “Save Target As” to DOWNLOAD the podcast to your computer or playback device
Or CLICK HERE to read the TEXT version of The Rude Guy Podcast #69
posted by richzubaty on Jul 8
The Rude Guy Podcast #69 July 8, 2010
[BP and the CIA, The Cost of War, and Grow Your Own]
Rich Zubaty here. Cranking out another podcast for no reason other than I’m turning 62 and have no good idea what else I’m supposed to be doing with my life.
Old age sucks. My memory is going the way of the giant bluefin tuna, I have bone spurs in my neck so I can’t lift heavy suitcases, if I get five hours a day where my attention span is greater than that of a hummingbird I feel like throwing a party. I can’t sensibly go on one of my famous invigorating, therapeutic, traveling expeditions, to Brazil, or Bali, or somewhere, to clear the cobwebs out of my brain, unless I somehow recruit a younger stronger traveling companion.
On top of that, Kathleen Parker from the Washington Post just seemingly ripped off one of my podcasts, and gave me no credit whatsoever. On June 30, 2010, she came out with an opinion piece called: Obama: our first female president. In October 2009 I made a podcast called: Barack Obama: our first female president. How about that? She even segued into it like I did by saying…if Bill Clinton was our first black president, then Barack Obama is our first female president. Then she echoed me again, this time from last month’s Podcast 68, noting Obama’s cautious feminine, management style…in the face of the gulf oil gusher, that cried out for decisive leadership…saying, as I had said…what was he doing delivering jokes to the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, when he should have been on Air Force One flying to the Louisiana coast. Three coincidences in a row? It looked like flat out plagarism to me.
So I emailed her and the Washington Post Ombudsman. She said she’d never heard of me, and that anyway she doesn’t write the titles to her pieces, someone else does. After a few more emails back and forth I concluded that she did not go to my podcast, listen to it or read it, and rip it off. I am not accusing her of that. However I still believe some combination of summer interns at the paper, clever quipping at Washington cocktail parties, by trendy eavesdroppers, and maybe even some precipitation from the…Overmind, [RG voice: the Overmind] conspired to materialize my ideas in her head. That’s kind of how memes work, spreading like a virus from mind to mind. And it happens to me a lot. Which is why I do not think it is entirely accidental. For instance, I do a podcast bit about how being born a poor white guy in America does not confer any great advantage, and three weeks later presidential candidate Obama is saying that being born a poor white guy in America is like arriving here as an immigrant. Someone out there is listening. And repackaging my stuff.
Years ago Bill Maher lifted material right out of What Men Know That Women Don’t, but in that instance I had sent him the book, so I know it got across his drawbridge. Yes, I’m delighted they steal my stuff, I just wish they would mention my name and send a few dozen more people to my podcast and web site. But I’m sure they learned years ago, from their media attorneys, never to admit to anyone that they stole your idea, because that admission might mean they legally owe you something. Said Lionel Trilling: “Immature artists imitate. Mature artists steal.” By and large mainstream media types are thieves. That’s how they got there and that’s how they stay there. What could it hurt to say: here’s an idea I got from Joe Blow, or Rich Zubaty.
[donkey]
And then, of course, as you know, I’m demoralized by the job Barack Obama is NOT doing, running our government. We voted for Martin Luther King Junior and got Redd Foxx. He fired McChrystal but didn’t fire the war. The only word for that is…stupid. He got handed an opportunity to pull out and blame it on the generals, but instead he’s doubling down. On track to spend more money on war than any president since World War Two.
The man is too gullible to be president. He BELIEVES in things, that are not worthy of being believed.
His first mistake was believing Tom Dashle – that he was the perfect Washington insider to spearhead healthcare reform. But Senator Daschle had neglected to pay his taxes on a free limousine service that had been provided to him for years, by a billionaire patron, so the Republicans ate him alive, and fucked health care reform right out of the gate.
Second Obama mistake was believing that the health insurance companies really wanted healthcare reform. Is he soft in the head, or what? Then he believed the generals who told him they could wrap up this Afghan war lickety split, if Obama would just give them more troops so they could have a surge, like in Iraq. Problem is, our surge in Iraq had nothing to do with decreasing the violence. The Shiites beat the crap out of the Sunnis and the Sunnis made peace with them. At the same time, we gave up our insane plan to have our oil corporations run the Iraq oil industry by finally resurrecting the Iraqi government Oil Ministry. The surge won’t work in Afghanistan because it didn’t work in Iraq. It’s irrelevant. It’s stupid. It just makes them hate us more.
Next Obama made a total ass out of himself, telling us offshore drilling is safe, because he had believed in the oil industry’s reassuring propaganda, on oil-spill containment. From that he moved right along to believing Wall Street’s opinion that America needs mammoth, too-big-to-fail, banks, in order to compete globally, right…and that capping credit card interest rates would quote “hurt small business”, right…and that fantasy synthetic derivatives, like betting on movie box office receipts — that bleed capital out of the nuts and bolts REAL economy — will NOT be regulated as the Las Vegas style casino gambling they really are, but will get allll dressed up in the thin-lipped arrogance of Wall Street securities…right. And there’s no need to discuss putting a tax on all stock market transactions, like England has, to raise money to put our people back to work rebuilding bridges and roads. The people saved the markets, but we have no right to expect the markets to save the people. Right…So much for banking reform. Over and over again Obama’s employed the same guys who made the mess, to clean up the mess. You do that with plumbers and auto mechanics. Not with bankers and oil companies.
I just read a column in Huffington Post by John Hari, from the London Independent, who said, in 2006 speculators like Goldman Sachs saw the housing market start to collapse, so they pulled their money out of that and started speculating in the worldwide food market, driving up the price of wheat 80% and rice 320%. 200 million people starved, there were food riots in 30 countries and one government was violently overthrown. But bizarrely, more food had been produced that year than the year before, but the year before the real market had set the prices of food, and in 2006 the market speculators had set the prices. The greedheads and banksters took their hundreds of billions in profit out of the housing mess, and had nowhere to stick ‘em, so they stuck ‘em in food. And starved and murdered people worldwide. Barbarians in $2000 suits.
And these are the people Obama believes.
Does anyone see a pattern here? Read the rest of this entry »
posted by richzubaty on Jun 1
CLICK HERE to listen to The Rude Guy Podcast #68
or RIGHT CLICK HERE (Apple command/click) then click “Save Target As” to DOWNLOAD the podcast to your computer or playback device
Or CLICK HERE to read the TEXT version of The Rude Guy Podcast #68
posted by richzubaty on Jun 1
[The Rude Guy Podcast #68 June 1, 2010]
[Obama’s Oil Spill]
[clip of FDR speech: I welcome their hatred!]
Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The president of presidents. A real man’s man. Even though he was crippled with polio and couldn’t walk.
This is Rich Zubaty the Rude Guy. I don’t know why I still make these shows, but a couple hundred people still download ‘em, so I guess that’s something. Though they never email, and never donate anything, so it’s hard to know why they download ‘em. Or if they even listen.
Once upon a time I thought that this show could exert some populist pressure to push President Obama further to the political left. But I’ve given up on that. He’s too ignorant. He’s too conservative. He’s too slow of a learner and I am tired of being caught up in his learning curve. He still thinks corporations are his friends, even as this BP disaster mires his presidency waste deep in petroleum muck. Even as the health care industry turned health care reform into a joke. Even as Wall Street turned banking reform into a joke. Even Donna Brazille, big black mama of the Democratic National Committee, said that the problem with the Obama administration is, that it’s not tough enough.
Anyone who read my book What Men Know That Women Don’t knows that this feminized, I’m OK you’re OK, touchy feely consensus management style is exactly what produces catastrophes like the gulf oil spill. The woman Obama appointed to head the Mineral Management Service that was supposed to be overseeing drilling regulation just resigned. But that’s not good enough. The buck doesn’t stop there. Obama is harping about “the cozy relationship” between petroleum companies and regulators when he should be ranting about fraud and bribes and corruption. But he won’t do that. Because he’s not tough enough. Becasue he doens’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings. Because he’s the first female president of the United States. And frankly, most women I’ve ever met would do a better, tougher job of running this country.
Moreover…Someone besides me finally said it. Barack Obama is, scary. Chris Mathews from Hardball said Obama’s reaction to the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is, Quote “scary. He’s acting more like a Vatican observer than president of the United States.” Unquote. Then Dan Froomkin on Huffington Post echoed Mathews saying that Obama’s oil disaster behavior is scary.
The New York Times said it’s well past time for Obama to do something, even if it IS risky. But that’s his Achille’s heel. Isn’t it? He’s a school teacher. He’s a risk adverse president. Which is almost a contradiction in terms. Presidents have to be willing to take on risk. But here a momentous crisis explodes in his face, and Obama sits down on a rock to analyze it.
The man is pathetically incompetent, and he is NOT a fast learner. The BP oil spill IS going to be his Katrina. He’s making jokes at the Washington Press Club Dinner, and eating gourmet molé at a trendy Mexican state dinner, while the marine resources for the southern half of the country are being destroyed. When the globs of goop reach Long Island, his presidency will be over.
I just hope Borgs don’t arrive from another galaxy, far far away, while he’s still president, or he’ll start giving speeches about how, resistance is futile, and we’re all in this together, and how there are no American machines, and no American people, but just American machine-people.
I’m sure glad he wasn’t president when Joseph Stalin was around, or France would be speaking Russian. And I’m glad we had Franklin Delano Roosevelt and not Barack Obama to point the way after the great Depression, or the rural electric program and the union movement and the Federal Highway system would not have existed.
I voted for this silver-tongued coward and I feel betrayed. He was an establishment whore from the moment he walked on the national stage, and started babbling about how there was only one America, and it was both black and white. No, there was only one Barack Obama, and he was both black and white.
A former poker player companion of his said, Obama is the worst kind of guy to play poker with. He antes up and takes his cards. If he doesn’t like them he drops out immediately. If he likes them he places bets, and everyone else drops out, and he wins a small pot. Boring. Like watching a turtle run a race.
He’s only had two visions in his life I can think of. One was to marry Michelle. And the other was to become president. But beyond that – nothing. No idea that corporations are too powerful and have to be cut down to size. No idea that we cannot control Asian oil and gas by occupying Iraq and Afghanistan, in obedience to long-disproved cold war geopolitical fantasies. The man got the Nobel Peace prize and sent more troops to Afghanistan the next fucking week. He has NO vision.
He is a tinkerer and a technocrat, jamming political alliances together like they were legos. Let’s see: take this funnel and stick it on the end of that hose, then electrify the hose and jam it up an elephant’s ass, and then, when I talk into the funnel my voice will come out of the mouth of the elephant sounding just like…Hamid Karzai…and the Taliban will be defeated. This is how he thinks! That an incremental patchwork of half-solutions is going to add up to an unprecedented policy victory. Well…it always worked for him before. When he was a school teacher. Duh.
The man never managed anything more complicated than a classroom full of greedy law students, and then he bullshit his way into becoming CEO of the largest corporation on earth. The U.S. Government. How did this happen? We were riding on a national tidal wave demanding something wildly different than we were getting from George W. Bush, and all we got is different skin color. We got a healthcare bill that helps big medical corporations, and a banking reform bill that helps big banks.
We voted for Martin Luther King Jr. and we got Redd Foxx, from Sanford and son.
Barack Obama is a one term president, Read the rest of this entry »
