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 »
