Saturday, May 24, 2014

The Round Up

I will be off to visit with my family in Queens. I love spending time with my daughter. As I get older the time with my daughter means more to me. Oddly, I never seem to think of my own moments as a child.

It is memorial day and I am not doing the usual survivor tour. My older half brother was in the Navy and sometimes servicemen would want to retrace the events of an ordinary man. 9-11 is far enough away that the people signing up really don't seem to think about that much.

I want to thank those who served as well as the families who stayed at home while their loved ones served.
Some of us respect the traditions and honor that go with serving in the military.

I remember being in the South on Veterans day at the Golden Corral.  I was with a few friends that served and felt embarrassed when vets thanked me for my service as a federal officer. I pointed out I don't carry a gun. They pointed out the nature of the work commands respect. It was a humbling experience.

There are those at work who claim the new mission is punishment. My opposition to one task is well known. Sadly, if this is a punishment I am enjoying it. I don't have to fix mistakes of people who boast about their work. The attorneys are not pleased because I am a popular guy and can be counted on for a fair hearing.
Peers that are burned out are annoyed because I don't have to interview unless it is an emergency. I can stay in my office get cases done and listen to SURF music. I actually enjoy interviewing, but that aggressive format is not for me. Also you get to see who does what in that format and not seeing the work of your peers is best.

Right now I am in the infrastructure phase.

Enjoy the holiday

Monday is Guyana independence day as well as the birthday of John Wayne and James Arness.

23 comments:

Ducky's here said...

Visit your family? Why don't you live with them?

Anonymous said...

Correction, Marion Robert Morrison was born on May 26, not John Wayne. Wayne was born sometime later.

Get ya self and those facts together Bleaks.

beakerkin said...

Communists like yourself have made great use of aliases. Lenin, Stalin
and Trotsky were classic uses of aliases.

John Wayne, who continues to vex commies even after he is gone, used
a stage name.

Anonymous said...

Again, wrong.

Marion (Duke) Mitchell [Robert] Morrison, used a stage name.

"Communists like [my]self"! Ain't no communists like me dude!

beakerkin said...

You protest too much. Commies never
come out and admit what they are.
Even Arthur Miller never admitted
he was a member of the Communist Party for years. The Crucible was pitched incorrectly for years.

Communists and their crimes were real and Miller knew it.

Bernie Schwartz became Tony Curtis
it was a common part of Hollywood.

Commies used aliases because they were criminal.

Anonymous said...

You mean Tony Curtis wasn't his real name! NO! Get outa town!

Next you'll be telling me Muddy Waters' real name was McKinley Morganfield! And if you tell me that, I'll just go crazy!

Anymore commies you know of?

beakerkin said...

As stated Tony Curtis who went to the New School used a stage name.
Commies use aliases because they are
criminal like that classic Pol Pot.

Ducky's here said...

Beak, are you sure Bo Diddley wasn't really Ellas Bates?

Next you'll tell us that Albert Brooks' real name is Albert Einstein.

You're a stitch.
Speaking of Commies, look up Netfali Ricardo Reyes Basualto

Anonymous said...

No, Berbard Schwartz used a stage name, which was Tomy Curtis.

As far as criminals go. What about these recent ones,

Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush |, Clinton, Bush ||, Obama.

Could go back further, all the way to say, Washington.

Commies the bloody lot. Especially that Washington guy, eh! What a dickhead he was.

beakerkin said...

Duncy

Don't encourage morons. Communist leaders have aliases because they are criminals. Obama is a horrible President. But he is far removed from Pol Pot.

Anonymous said...

So I made a few typos, Berbard instead of Bernard and Tomy instead of Tony, that's no reason to call me a moron.

And I don't need Ducky to encourage me. You're doing just fine Bleak.

Hey, I see a bit of nuance has crept into your commie detectoring. Obama's not as bad as Pol Pot. Wow. Was that hard for you? A stretch?

I'm interested in where you'd place, say, Chomsky, Finkelstein, Uri Avnery, Ilian Pappe, Amira Haas, Howard Zinn,...I could go on.

A scale of 1-10 will be fine. Pol Pot being 10 and say Obama, is, what, a 2 or 3? I mean he has been responsible for some pretty criminal acts. Assassination of he who shall not be named, without trial (who cares), drone attacks that (accidentally)kill many many civilians (who cares), etc.. So perhaps he's more like a 4 or even a 5. Maybe 6. Hard to judge when it comes to killin'. (Just thought of Clint Eastwood. Sounds like something he'd say, you know, "...when it comes to killin'." That is his real name. Marion liked killin' Injuns, didn't he?). Ok, 7. One can get to 8,9, and 10 pretty quickly as the killin' gets ramped up. Exponential like.

What about the great and glorious Reagan? He was a commie, wasn't he? You use the term so flippantly and loosely it's hard to get a handle on any definition. If it's anybody who even steps to the left, even while dancing, I guess Reagan would qualify, but otherwise perhaps he doesn't. Still interested in where you rate the murdering son of a bitch though, next to Pol, and all the other great killers of the twentieth century.

Anyway, look forward to your reply.

Sincerely,

Anonhole Cumwad.

beakerkin said...

I am not going to play numbers games. There are plenty of ex communists who made a break with the death cult. Their actions speak loudly enough.

Ducky's here said...

Beak, would you call Chomsky an anarchist or a commie?

Does that kind of dichotomy matter to you?

beakerkin said...

Chomsky calls himself an Anarchist.
He feigns that he criticizes Communists, but he is a text book example of the BS games lefties play with labels.

His peasant mule skinner Finklestein was more honest and called himself a Maoist. He omits this when peddling his crank populist anti Semitic books.

Anonahole seems to forget that Finklestein the mendicant has described Maoism as a cult when discussing BDS.

Ducky's here said...

Are lefties the only ones who play games with labels?

What's a "Rudy Republican", someone who keeps the world safe from squeegee men?

Ducky's here said...

Sometimes I think you imagine you're on Groucho's old show You Bet Your Life and the secret word is feign.
You write it often enough and the duck is going to drop down with a Franklin.

Anonymous said...

Haven't forgotten anything Beak. Just interested in where you sit on those dudes. You know, given your nuanced stance and subtle arguments regarding the "left" and your obsession with anti-semtism, which is equally nuanced and subtle!

beakerkin said...

Duncy

A Rudy Republican is simple enough

1) Tough on crimee
2) Liberal on social issues
3) Sound governance as opposed to
the Obama record of circus clown
hires like Holder and Gomer Kerry.

Anon

Real Jews ( Ren is no Jew) see lefties the same way a Black man sees the KKK.

Anonymous said...

Real Jews?

How is this determined Bleak?

Is there some secret criteria?

So at one point Chomsky was a Jew and then not? Was that when he began to feign interest in anarchism? Is that all it takes?

All Real Jews are never of the left?

Many questions, I know, so take your time. One at a time will be fine Bleaks.

So how's the Rudy republican record?

Tough on crime? Spouse that depends on the socio-economic position of the perp.

Liberal on social issues? Some elaboration would be good. Need to know where the line is. You know, what KIND of social issue. Social's a big word.

Sound governance? 700,000,000,000 for the motherf#£%$ers who screwed over ordinary citizen, the bewildered herd. Spose that's pretty sound governance. Looking after big pharma and health insurance companies as opposed to people. Sounds sound to me. A war here, a war there, illegal invasions there, free trade agreements here (f$&@k Mexico, again!), supporting dictators there, here and everywhere, undermining democratically elected leaders here and there, spying on citizens, oh, and screw global warming, it's a scam I say, more fracking I say, I say, I say.

Sorry Bleak, but I don't see no real difference between ruddy republican and damn democratic. Obama got ticked off by the same dudes who ticked off on Bush.

You know that, everyone knows that. We all know they don't care a hoot about, well, even you Bleak. Just keep that ball a rollin' and those profits comin' in. The Market and the Economy are living things that needs looking after. Keep up your good fight Bleak, you hard working unit you!

beakerkin said...

Communists are not Jews or Americans. They are followers of a death cult.

Chomsky plays a paper thin game pretending he criticizes Communists.He claims to be an anarchist but his decades long obsessions reveal this to be a shell game.

I don't do special education. Anyone that can't discern between
sound governance and Obamunism
is beyond help.

I am not the first nor the last to point to the religious aspects of communism. //

Anonymous said...

Was Reagan sound gov? Bush 1 & 2 ?

What is Chomsky's decades long obsession? Really.

Where's this paper thin game criticising communists, Chomsky is playing?

Special Ed seems right down your alley!

Anonymous said...

Some meat for ya!

Anti-Semitism, Zionism, and the Palestinians

Noam Chomsky

It's useful to mention a moral principle that's so trivial it's embarrassing - the reason for doing so is it's near universally disregarded. It's easy (and not even gratifying) to criticise and condemn the crimes of others. It's a little harder to look in the mirror and ask what we're doing because it's usually not very pretty, and if we're minimally decent we're going to try to do something about it. When we do, depending on where you are in the world the problems can vary. In some countries it can mean prison, brutal torture, or getting your brains blown out. In countries like ours its condemnation, the loss of job opportunities, or something mild by international standards. It's much harder than to just talk about how awful the other guy is. For example, there's a US literary genre developing with many books, articles and passionate discussions about a flaw in our character: 'We don't react properly to the crimes of others', and 'What's the matter with us that prevents us from doing this?' There are obviously much bigger problems - like why do we continue to participate in massive atrocities, repression, terror, but we don't do anything about it? But there's no literary genre on that. All of that shouldn't be necessary to say, but I've said it. Beginning with anti-Semitism.

Anonymous said...

Next installment,

In the US when I was growing up anti-Semitism was a severe problem. In the 1930's depression when my father finally had enough money to buy a second-hand car and could take the family on a trip to the mountains, if we wanted to stop at a motel we had to check it didn't have a sign saying 'Restricted'. 'Restricted' meant no Jews, so not for us; of course no Blacks. Even when I got to Harvard 50 years ago you could cut the anti-Semitism with a knife. There was almost no Jewish faculty. I think the first Jewish maths professor was appointed while I was there in the early '50s. One of the reasons MIT (where I now am) became a great university is because a lot of people who went on to become academic stars couldn't get jobs at Harvard-so they came to the engineering school down the street. Just 30 years ago (1960s) when my wife and I had young children, we decided to move to a Boston suburb (we couldn't afford the rents near Cambridge any longer). We asked a real estate agent about one town we were interested in, he told us: 'Well, you wouldn't be happy there.' Meaning they don't allow Jews. It's not like sending people to concentration and termination camps but that's anti-Semitism. That was almost completely national. By now Jews in the US are the most privileged and influential part of the population. You find occasional instances of anti-Semitism but they are marginal. There's plenty of racism, but it's directed against Blacks, Latinos, Arabs are targets of enormous racism, and those problems are real. Anti-Semitism is no longer a problem, fortunately. It's raised, but it's raised because privileged people want to make sure they have total control, not just 98% control. That's why anti-Semitism is becoming an issue. Not because of the threat of anti-Semitism; they want to make sure there's no critical look at the policies the US (and they themselves) support in the Middle East. With regard to anti-Semitism, the distinguished Israeli statesman Abba Eban pointed out the main task of Israeli propaganda (they would call it exclamation, what's called 'propaganda' when others do it) is to make it clear to the world there's no difference between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism. By anti-Zionism he meant criticisms of the current policies of the State of Israel. So there's no difference between criticism of policies of the State of Israel and anti-Semitism, because if he can establish 'that' then he can undercut all criticism by invoking the Nazis and that will silence people. We should bear it in mind when there's talk in the US about anti-Semitism.