Cali Cool

Open Letter to William Kristol

In regards to William Kristol's opinion piece, "The Paranoid Style In American Liberalism" (The Weekly Standard, 12/28/05), it is good to see the ideo-cons continued utilization of the dirty political tools crafted by Arthur J. Finkelstein to libel prominent Democrats. How dare the Democrats do their job by calling out the Administration on its illegal spying on American citizens.

The hypocrisy is stunning, especially coming from Mr. Kristol, this most prominent ideo-con. Kristol helped divert the United States and its citizenry, resources and lives away from the legitimate fight against terrorism, and into this stupidly executed, illegal and immoral folly in Iraq. Said action has helped destabilize the region, endangered our allies (especially Israel), and turned Iraq over to the terrorists, who have made it a terrorist training ground.

Such polemics coming from Mr. Kristol are always amusing. He didn't bother to serve himself, and his prominence in Washington circles among the corporate media and other venues of disinformation results only from his riding the nepotistic coat-tails of his prominent father. Now he is among the mostly irrelevant chattering classes, spewing polemics and diatribe, backed by sloppy political theories, which are supported by abhorrently poor scholarship.

You go Willie!

Regifting Pejoratives (Don't Be Conned By The "Ideo-Cons")

My gift to the Republican party, to be used repetetively by all thinking people everywhere, is to propose that the word "Conservative" be preplaced with a new, improved and, more accurate descriptive term, "Ideological Conservatives," and utilized through it's contraction, "Ideo-Con's." To be effective, progressives, independents, liberals, and realists who are not conned by the faithbased fiction of ideo-con ideology should use the term not only to describe the ideo-cons, but as a pejorative term to deride their ideas, philosphy and lies. By way of example, "Don't be ideo-conned by the ideo-cons who hide their tax cuts for the wealth behind the fig leaf of 'class warfare." My inspiration?

"Arthur J. Finkelstein (born 1946) is a United States Republican Party political operative. He has directed a series of campaigns, considered to be quite successful, to elect conservatives in the United States and Israel in the past 25 years...[Arthur J.] Finkelstein is known for his hard-edged political campaigns, which often focus on repeating a single message with great repetition. He is occasionally credited with making "liberal" a dirty word in the late 1980s and 1990s." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_J._Finkelstein)

Happy Holidays

What? Me, Run For Supervisor?

San Francisco Sentinel
December 19, 2005, 7:30 p.m.

District 6 Supervisor Chris Daly will run for re-election, Daly disclosed last week in a televised interview.

"Daly also said he expects the race to get 'ugly,' but says he's going to run a 100% positive campaign," SFist reported. The interview appeared on The Bruce Petit Report.

The San Francisco Elections Departments lists seven other District 6 contenders on the department's potential candidate list for the November 2006 election.

They include Nadia S. Cabezas, Matthew Drake, Rodney Hauge, Manuel Jimenez, Bobby Jordan, Andrew Rucker, and William Stewart...

[For entire story, click on link above]

Tragedy and Farce <-- Read this book

This is an unsolicted book plug for "Tragedy and Farce: How the American Media Sells Wars, Spins Elections, and Destroy Democracy" (The New Press, November, 2005). It is coauthored by John Nichols and Robert W. McChesney. They discuss the abysmal performance of America's corporate media in dealing with such issues as the Iraq war and the presidential election of 2004. I'm only half way through the read, and can already recommend it.

Good Quotes from Book:

"It is difficult not to regard the conservative campaign against the 'liberal' media as anything but a brazenly opportunistic and unprincipled exercised in propaganda." - pg. 34

"We consider the coverage of the Iraq war one of the darkest moments in the history of U.S. jouralism. And we consider the deplorable war coverage one of the main factors constributing to the dismal 2004 election coverage." - pg. 38

"The word occupation....was never mentioned in the run-up to the war. It was liberation. This was [talked about in Washington as] a war of liberation, not a war of occupation. So as a consequence, those of us is journalism never even looked at the issue of occupation." - pg. 63 (quoting Jim Lehrer)

If you want to read my untrained perspective of the American corporate media and its failures, see me entries of 12/5/05, 11/10/05 and 10/27/05.

The Land of the Lost

Sleestak: The face of the ugly American (The Red State Voter)

Welcome to Red State America.


Having been born in the late 60's, and having watched an inordinate amount of saturday morning cartoons in the early 1970's (I still get sentimental for Schoolhouse Rock), it recently struck me that the classic (if little known to persons not of my vintage) television show, The Land of the Lost was in fact a deft prognostication about the future of the American political landscape, disguised as entertainment for children.

The premise of the show is that a father, son and daughter (Rick, Will and Holly Marshall) go rafting, and while rafting fall through a portal that leaves them stranded in a strange prehistoric place inhabited by dinosaurs and other interesting beings. This misplaced family tries to escape from the unfamiliar, foreign land in which they only find themselves because of a mysterious accident of misfortune. Much like G.W. Bush finds himself being president, a place he doesn't belong, and to which he arrived through a mysterious accident of fortune (misfortune for the American people).

In the Land of the Lost live the Sleestak. In this amazing foretelling of the devolving American political process, the Sleestak obviously represent Red State America. The lizard-like Sleestak "were a race that evolved in reverse. The race became primitive after starting out highly intelligent." (www.kensforce.com/landotlost.html) One of the characters on the show was Enik, who also ended up in the Land of the Lost by falling through a time portal. Enik was from a race of Sleestak that were the fore fathers of the ones living in the Land of the Lost. "He came from the past, where all Sleestack were intelligent and peaceful, and was horrifed to see that his descendants were violent and really unskilled marksmen." (www.landofthelost.com/faq.html)

Although the circumstance of the Marshall family symbolizes the ubsurdity of the G.W. Bush presidency, they do not in themselves represent G.W. Bush. That is left to Chaka, "the little monkey boy...[who] had his own language..." (www.landofthelost.com/faq.html)

Middle of the Road Finish for 10/30/05 SFBMA alleycat

Unfortuately I came in fifth in a field of ten racers.

Profiles of Fear

It is unfortunate to watch Major Gavin Newsom attempting to score political points on the backs of the SFPD. His Police Chief is becoming a polarizing force within the department itself. Instead of backing up the police department, Newsom has used the police force as a whipping boy to pander to various constituencies in the city.

Newsom could have approached the recent and unfortunate video tape incident as a leader with reassuring determinism to investigate and take appropriate action, if deemed necessary. Instead, he and Heather Fong (who should be standing by her own force) throw a press conference, filled with rhetorical hyperbole and polemics attacking the first responders who put their lives on the line on a daily basis.

Sometimes a Cigar is Just a Cigar

"Vietnam can kill me but it can't make me care."

Stanley Kubrick's movie 'Full Metal Jacket' came out in 1987, the year I enlisted in the Marine Corps. By the time I went off to basic training, every one of my fellow recruits had witnessed the flick. Like 'Patton' before it, Full Metal Jacket is an anti-war war film, that glorifies war.


Life imitated art as I went through basic training with recruits heavily influenced by the film. I never went to war, or saw combat, but I did witness violence. Every few nights, the still dark of the squad bay, housing some ninety or so recruits, would light up with the brutality of another blanket party. These displays were creepy compared to the other sanctioned rituals of fratricidal violence, like the circle jerk (where you are surrounded by your comrads, facing away from you, while they "bend and trust," causing them to kick you with the backward thrust of the excercise). What ever "fuck-up" was the guest of honor would be attacked in the middle of the night by fellow recruits wielding towels or socks weighted with down and used as flails, causing the heavy bed racks to jump across the floor with a eerie rattling sound.


Although I never participated in the nonsense, I always vaguely knew who the potential recipients were. One night, a recruit named Dunn was the guest of honor. Dunn was one of those "crazy brave" people. Dunn knew what was coming before he went to bed. When guests arrived, Dunn jumped out of his rack, in his skivies, wearing his combat boots, and swinging a piece of pipe at his attackers (I still wonder where he got the pipe). What balls. Dunn never was the guest of honor at another blanket party.

Timo's Tough Trek to School...In a Thunderstorm.

Check out my online childrens book.

Buffoons and the press.

From the buffoons that sold the American people a war, and continue to market it based on comments and concepts, such as:

1. WMD
2. The "insurgency" is just a bunch of "Dead Enders." Donald Rumsfeld
3. "I think they are in the last throws, if you will, of the insurgency." - VP Dick Cheney (05-31-05)
4. "My belief is we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators." -VP Dick Cheney (03-16-04)
5. "There's a lot of money to pay for this that doesn't have to be U.S. taxpayer money...We're dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction, relatively soon." - Paul Wolfowitz (03-27-03)
6. "There's overwhelming evidence there was a connection between al Quida and the Iraqi government." - VP Dick Cheney (01-22-04)
7. "You can't distinguish between al-Quida and Saddam." -Pres. G.W. Bush (09-23-03)

Comes this complaint:

"US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld criticized the media's coverage of the war in Iraq, accusing it of a rush to report negative stories about the US military...He called on the media to hold themselves to account for coverage that he said has failed to provide the "full story" in Iraq by focusing on bombings and attacks or sensational allegations." [AFP 12-05-05]

If you're going to criticize the media, why don't you criticize them for something of which they are guilty, like their gross incompetence and complicity in this Iraq adventure.

The Meritocracy Mythology

Martin Luther King stated, "It's okay to say lift yourself up by your bookstraps. But it is cruel to say to a bootless man to lift yourself up by your bootstraps." (08/13/1967)

What is success? In common American discourse, success is the acquisition of wealth, recognition and power. The assumption underlying this defition is that the accumulation of wealth and societal recognition bring with them happiness. Some might argue that success is a flexible concept, which would allow the definition to encompass things such as spiritual fulfillment, or being a good family man, ect. ect. That's not what I'm talking about here. Some vocations bring with them the assuption of success. A doctor for instance is assumed to accumulate wealth better and be more successful than a plumber. The doctor is recognized by society with more respect and esteem than the plumber.

The assumption is that those who are successful, i.e accumulate wealth better and gain societal recognition and approval, have character traits and stengths that from which said success result. This assumption is based on the rebranded Horario Alger philosphy, i.e. "Meritocracy." That is, chracter traits and strengths help one to become successful, and lack of the same, keeps one from achieving success. Under the paradigm of "meritocracy," we can assume positive charachter traits about the successful, and blame societies losers for losing. David Brooks, in his book Bobos in Paradise argues, in part, that society has shifted from a WASPy connections based upper class aristocracy, to a meritocracy. He does this by analyzing the New York Times Wedding Page. "[W]hen you look at the Times wedding page, you can almost feel the force of the mingling SAT scores. It's Dartmouth marries Berkeley, MBA weds Ph.D., Fulbright hitches with Rhodes, Lazard Freres joins with CBS, and summa cum laude embraces summa cum laude..." Just so happens that my marriage was featured on the NYT wedding page (Berkeley marries Columbia, after meeting at Fordham Law).

Or course, other factors influence ones ability to achieve success.

"[Nepotism is] far from disappearing, the practice has become so resurgent in recent years that we can now speak of a 'new nepotism.' In settings ranging from politics, business, and professional life to sports, the arts, and Hollywood, the children of famous and highly successful people have chosen to follow in their parents’ career footsteps in a fashion and in numbers impossible to ignore. George W. Bush, Al Gore, Jr., and Hillary and Chelsea Clinton are only the tip of the iceberg that is an accelerating trend toward dynasticism and family 'branding' in the heart of the American elite…[Adam] Bellow [In Praise of Nepotism: A Natural History]argues that nepotism comes down to the bonds between children and parents, the transmission of family legacies, the cycle of generosity and gratitude that knits our whole society together. And since it is not going away anytime soon, he makes the case for dealing with nepotism openly and treating it as an art that can be practiced well or badly." (quoted from http://www.randomhouse.ca/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9781400079025)

As argued by Paul Krugman (The Nation, The Death of Haratio Alger, Jan. 5, 2004) current government policy under President Bush (a man who has no business being President because he is an intellectual lightweight and baffoon and is incapable of doing his job -- and would not be president but for nepotism), is further entrenching the advantages of the haves against the have-nots through fiscal and social policy. According to economist Thomas Piketty current government policies will eventually create "a class of rentiers in the U.S., whereby a small group of wealthy but untalented children controls vast segments of the US economy and penniless, talented children simply can't compete." (Id.)