Selection of Twitter comments re Clint Eastwood's GOP convention speech.

Maybe Clint is a sleeper agent for the Democrats sent in under deep cover to make the Republicans look stupid. No wait, that's Romney.--Simon Pegg

Clint Eastwood on the phone with Obama now: "It all went according to plan,sir." --Chris Rock

I know what it was like for Clint Eastwood. In my career, I’ve talked to more than a few “empty chairs.”--Conan O'Brien

If Clint wanted to run for important office, the Base would veto him. He's speaking to the Republican Party of his memory.--Roger Ebert

Clint's imaginary Obama uses the F bomb. My imaginary Obama feels Clint really humiliated himself tonight and feels bad for him.--Sean Mannion

Dear GOD... let's hope that Eastwood doesn't die before making something great. This and his wife's reality show would be sad last memories.--David Poland

Analyzing Mitt Romney and opening act Clint Eastwood..

If you're Clint Eastwood, you're used to running things and getting your own way.  This probably explains why Clint's Thursday night GOP convention speech (demonstrating a willingness to try for improv comedy; i.e. the Empty Chair prop) had the air of something that might be seen in a luxury restaurant/penthouse at a Republican candidates fundraising dinner with millionaires/billionaires (and no ordinary people) in attendance.  I can easily imagine the Mitt Romney entourage giving Clint a prepared speech--and Clint throwing it aside saying "I'M NOT GONNA READ THIS CRAP!"  Ergo, the rambling ruminations which sounded a lot like Clint's character putting down all in sight during the early reels of GRAN TORINO.

As for Mitt Romney: There was a lot of rose-colored Remembrances of Simple Loving Times Past rhetoric which gave me the impression that both Peggy Noonan and Karen Hughes may have contributed to his speech.  There was the inevitable attempt to link Barack Obama to Jimmy Carter.  And, most sickening, the primal Dog Whistle to the conventioneers and TV/online audiences: "THE HELL WITH CLIMATE CHANGE!  I'LL MAKE YOU FEEL GOOD ABOUT YOURSELVES JUST LIKE REAGAN DID!"

Must-read: Matt Taibbi on Mitt Romney and Bain Capital.

From Matt Taibbi's article:
By making debt the centerpiece of his campaign, Romney was making a calculated bluff of historic dimensions – placing a massive all-in bet on the rank incompetence of the American press corps. The result has been a brilliant comedy: A man makes a $250 million fortune loading up companies with debt and then extracting million-dollar fees from those same companies, in exchange for the generous service of telling them who needs to be fired in order to finance the debt payments he saddled them with in the first place. That same man then runs for president riding an image of children roasting on flames of debt, choosing as his running mate perhaps the only politician in America more pompous and self-righteous on the subject of the evils of borrowed money than the candidate himself. If Romney pulls off this whopper, you'll have to tip your hat to him: No one in history has ever successfully run for president riding this big of a lie. It's almost enough to make you think he really is qualified for the White House.

The unlikeliness of Romney's gambit isn't simply a reflection of his own artlessly unapologetic mindset – it stands as an emblem for the resiliency of the entire sociopathic Wall Street set he represents. Four years ago, the Mitt Romneys of the world nearly destroyed the global economy with their greed, shortsightedness and – most notably – wildly irresponsible use of debt in pursuit of personal profit. The sight was so disgusting that people everywhere were ready to drop an H-bomb on Lower Manhattan and bayonet the survivors. But today that same insane greed ethos, that same belief in the lunatic pursuit of instant borrowed millions – it's dusted itself off, it's had a shave and a shoeshine, and it's back out there running for president.

Mitt Romney, it turns out, is the perfect frontman for Wall Street's greed revolution. He's not a two-bit, shifty-eyed huckster like Lloyd Blankfein. He's not a sighing, eye-rolling, arrogant jerkwad like Jamie Dimon. But Mitt believes the same things those guys believe: He's been right with them on the front lines of the financialization revolution, a decades-long campaign in which the old, simple, let's-make-stuff-and-sell-it manufacturing economy was replaced with a new, highly complex, let's-take-stuff-and-trash-it financial economy. Instead of cars and airplanes, we built swaps, CDOs and other toxic financial products. Instead of building new companies from the ground up, we took out massive bank loans and used them to acquire existing firms, liquidating every asset in sight and leaving the target companies holding the note. The new borrow-and-conquer economy was morally sanctified by an almost religious faith in the grossly euphemistic concept of "creative destruction," and amounted to a total abdication of collective responsibility by America's rich, whose new thing was making assloads of money in ever-shorter campaigns of economic conquest, sending the proceeds offshore, and shrugging as the great towns and factories their parents and grandparents built were shuttered and boarded up, crushed by a true prairie fire of debt.

Mitt Romney – a man whose own father built cars and nurtured communities, and was one of the old-school industrial anachronisms pushed aside by the new generation's wealth grab – has emerged now to sell this make-nothing, take-everything, screw-everyone ethos to the world. He's Gordon Gekko, but a new and improved version, with better PR – and a bigger goal. A takeover artist all his life, Romney is now trying to take over America itself. And if his own history is any guide, we'll all end up paying for the acquisition.


Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/greed-and-debt-the-true-story-of-mitt-romney-and-bain-capital-20120829#ixzz2549UrXsd

Will vote for Obama again--but with reservations.

In 2012, we're faced with a clear choice between two Presidential candidates.

Either vote for the flawed incumbent or vote for the even-more-flawed challenger who wants (among other things) to take American women back to the no-choice patriarchal era of the past.

Regarding Barack Obama, it's quite likely we're in for another four years just like the first term.

In the September issue of HARPER'S, there's a must-read article by Thomas Frank on "Obama in the desert of centrism."  And it says things that most of the blind-faith Obama supporters don't want to read/hear.

Here are a few quotes from the article:
"...President Obama has pursued government secrecy to a degree even the Bush administration never dared, and that he has arrogated to himself the right to kill American citizens overseas who have not been convicted of any crime.  President Obama likes (or used to like) to extend the hand of kindness to the nation's bankers: "Help me help you," he implored them back in 2009.  When he decided to go populist and snarl at the One Percent, he took care to dispatch an emissary to New York to let the finance industry know he didn't mean it.  (Just as he didn't mean it when he badmouthed NAFTA or promised to revisit the Patriot Act.)"

"For the Obama years to be terminated [if he loses because of GOP attacks on him as a "socialist"] on such grounds would furnish future historians with vast deposits of irony.  The president is a man whose every instinct is conciliatory.  He is not merely a casual seeker of bipartisan consensus; he is an intellectually committed believer in it.  He simply cannot imagine a dispute in which one antagonist is right and the other is wrong.  No, there is always something honorable about both sides, some concession to be made by each.  His presidency has been one long quest for a "grand bargain," as he has sometimes put it, between red and blue."

"What Barack Obama has saved [referring to the financial crisis] is a bankrupt elite that by all rights should have met its end back in 2009.  He came to the White House amid circumstances similar to those of 1933, but proceeded to rule like Herbert Hoover.  Today the banks are as big as ever, and he has done precious little about it.  The regulatory system is falling apart, and he is too idelogically demure to tell us why.  Organized labor is crumbling, and he has done almost nothing to help it recover.  Meanwhile, the people who told us that finance was king, that the "new economy" changed all the rules, that we didn't really need a strong supervisory state--those people are still riding high, still making their pronouncements from the heights of the op-ed page and the executive branch."

Nonetheless, I will go into the voting booth in November and mark my ballot for Obama's re-election.  If a Romney administration comes to power, it will be with truly dire consequences for the nation and the world.  Better to stay with a President who has scored a few mild victories in spite of willful GOP obstructionism--even if the notions of Hope and Change are little more than campaign promises that, like most, remain undelivered upon.

Roundup of Twitter comments (including my own) on the Ann Romney/Chris Christie GOP Show.

Media will go gaga over A Romney speech, make it seem like it is a momentum shifter. But in the end, it won't change many minds, if any.--Joe Adalian

Ann Romney is Princess Fiona working warm-up to Chris Christie's Shrek.--Colby Hall

Ann channels Oprah vocalese: "I love you WOMEN!!!"--me

When was the last time Ann Romney had to worry about grocery bills? Fn please--Mac G

Ann Romney knows well all "the little things" that average American women face. Like broken private garage elevators.--Marc Cooper

Ann Romney mentions her dad, omitting that he died an atheist & Mitt led a Mormon proxy baptism for him.--John Fugelsang

"Try to do okay" is actually not horrible advice to give a child.--Paul F. Tompkins

 

Ann Romney on how her husband "built success" -- yea, with internet, education, roads,infrastructure supported by government.Community,Ann.--Katrina vanden Huevel

 

Ann's portrayal of being impoverished in college got her in trouble in '94 Sen race--they lived off Romney stock options.--David Shuster

 

Chris Christie will spend a great deal of time introducing nat'l tv aud to a Repub he thinks they should know better. Chris Christie.--David Carr

 

Somebody tell Chris Christie the GI bill that put his father through Rutgers University was a government program.--Sean Mannion

 

Wondering if Chris Christie ever seriously listened to the lyrics on DARKNESS ON THE EDGE OF TOWN.--me

 

Ann Romney said she wanted to talk about love. Chris Christie says the country is "paralyzed by a need to be loved."--Think Progress

 

Christie: "Tonight, we're going to choose respect over love."... Ann Romney: "Tonight I want to talk to you about love,"--Sam Stein

 

Note to Chris Christie: You balanced your budget with STIMULUS money.--Joseph J. Santorsa

 

Christie sounds as if he's about to say, "and I accept your nomination as president"--Sean Mannion

 

Christie mentions his dad graduating from college (GI Bill?) and daughters marching w/soccer team (Title IX).--Glennia

 

How many undecideds does Christie think he will win over with his menacing macho act? It's dangerous to believe ur own propaganda.--Marc Cooper

 

Uh-oh. Christie essentially promising that Mitt will be an 18th-century doctor bleeding America with the alleged Austerity Cure.--me

 

Christie: "Dems ideas have failed America." So come on everybody, let's start two more unfunded wars AND cut taxes. You loved 2008, right?--Sean Mannion

 

Mitt Romney will tell us the hard truths, like "You're fired" and he will love it.--American Prospect

 

Ahhh, Christie playing the Fox News Fear Card. Well done, sir. Line him up for a show to host.--Sean Mannion

 

Chris Matthews claims Chris Christie's blustering oratory had a "touch of Churchill."--me

 

Rachel Maddow on Chris Christie speech: "One of the greatest acts of political selfishness I have ever seen on a stage."--Dana Stevens

 

Noticed Ann Romney's granite stare at Chris Christie when she and Mitt were applauding from their box.--me

 

Nearly the only thing one could not have taken away from Christie's speech is that one should vote for Romney.--Sam Seder

 

Chris Christie delivered the Menote Speech.--Lizz Winstead

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Passing along another poet's wisdom about hosts and readings.

Here's a Cobalt Poets (available to the public via Yahoogroups) listserve post from veteran SoCal performance poet Bowerbird Intelligentleman, written in 2006.  It's slightly dated since the 2012 scene has shrunk somewhat in terms of venues and featuring opportunities, but worth sharing nonetheless:

i see from an e-mail in my in-box
that venue hosts are being called
"the unsung heroes" of the scene...

yes, hosts do a lot of work, it's true.
and if you've never done it yourself,
you'll likely underestimate, by half,
the amount of hassle that it can be,
constantly dealing with a bunch of
ego-maniacs who want the stage...

but let's look at the other side too...

first, producing gives you a huge boost
in visibility, and perceived "importance",
not to mention stage-time of your own,
and without having to fight anyone for it.

second, the ability to _book_others_
means that you have "a favor to trade",
and the favor-trading is very obvious...

indeed, when deserving poets come to me and
ask how they can get more feature invitations,
i regularly give them two recommendations:
1. just plain ask, and several will follow, and
2. start up your own series and book hosts,
as that's a sure way to get return bookings.

so let's not pretend that hosting is selfless.
it cuts both ways.

how these competing factors "balance"
is up to each one of us to decide, but
i think the fact that there is no shortage
of poetry series -- each with a host --
indicates how most poets weigh it out.

if hosts were really "the unsung heroes",
there wouldn't be so darn many of 'em,
because poets are _not_ very altruistic,
as anyone with experience will tell you.
(and hosts will be the first to verify that.)

no, where we have a clear _shortage_
is with the number of poets who are
willing to come to a show and _listen_,
without a strong ego-need for the stage.
_that_ is how selflessness reveals itself...

so if you're looking for "unsung heroes"
in _this_ scene, look for _those_ people.
(and hey, best of luck on finding any...)

as it is, any events that "host the hosts"
or "honor the poetry series in our scene"
looks like just another mutual back-pat
in the perpetual circle-jerk of our scene
from the perspective of _this_ observer...

-bowerbird

Dana Gioia 2012 vs. Dana Gioia circa 1999: re the L.A. Poet Laureate announcement.

http://www.laobserved.com/archive/2012/08/city_hall_announces_new_p.php

"It is wonderful to announce the new Poet Laureate position,” Poet Laureate Task Force Chair Dana Gioia said. “Los Angeles is the creative capital of the 21st century. Honoring poets and writers with this new public office is a fitting symbol for the power of the language and the imagination in our remarkable community."--from the article above

http://www.laweekly.com/1999-09-23/news/perhaps-these-are-not-poetic-times-at-all/

 "There is a huge renaissance of poetry activity in L.A.," Gioia told me over the phone from his home in Northern California, "but there are no governing standards. You can't have great literature without great standards, and no one wants to hear this, especially in L.A. There's a real mistaken impression that more art is better art, whereas in fact lots of bad poetry will deaden the appetite for good poetry."--from Brendan Bernhard's article "Perhaps These Are Not Poetic Times At All."

Lance Armstrong folds his defense but still says it ain't so re doping.

"The most important lesson of the Lance Armstrong story, though, is the hardest to prepare for and guard against: our own gullibility and willing complicity. What is astounding and disturbing is that one man – a dominant personality as well as a dominant athlete – was able to enforce his will, isolate, bully and silence his doubters and critics, and win the world's top cycling event year after year and make people believe in him, despite there being, apparently, dozens of witnesses to its utter phoniness. Too many people had too much invested in the Lance Armstrong story, and the power of persuasion followed the money."

The above paragraph was taken from an article in the GUARDIAN:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/blog/2012/aug/24/how-lance-armstrong-strongarmed-cycling

And here's Lance Armstrong's white-flag statement:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2012/aug/24/lance-armstrong-full-statement-doping?intcmp=239