I LOVE/HATE NEW YORK

My Favorite Maniac

One of the most magnificent maniacs to walk on the planet earth.

Jonathan Winters died at age 87.

 Finally With English Subtitles!

I survived the flu...back in action!

A Message From The NRA

Have you had your gun today?

You've Been Having A Rough Night, Huh?

More from the Orquestra Was soundtrack, Forever's A Long Long Time.

A rough night? I'm having a rough day with a nasty little stomach flu...

Give me a few hours, I'll recover or die.....

The Church Of What's Happening Now!

For all of you who are interested in the fine world of motorcycle culture, I would like to give a plug for this months issue of Cyclesource Magazine, which has a very fine feature on my little nephew, Tommy Granger and a visit to his rather infamous New Jersey Garage, The Church Of What's Happening Now, out back of his house. It's the April Issue, out now. If you want to check it out on line here's the link! There's a picture of his 1926 Studebaker Contraption Hot Rod which he arrived in great style at my wedding in Manhattan a few years ago! (The Contraption was featured in a few Bruce Springsteen photo shoots...Tommy was a bartender/bouncer at the Stone Pony in Asbury Park for years) Tommy is one of Americas true originals and I had to let y'all know just how proud I am of the youngster.

Miss Maggie

Renaud - Miss Maggie par Brownsugar18
The 1985 French Version of Margaret Thatcher by Renaud.
(It took me a few hours to translate this and I know I could have done a better job. I met Renaud once in the 1980's and I still have brain damage.)

Woman in the world or hell

Which are often the same

Normal woman, star or black pudding,

Females of any kind I love you

Even the last of bitches,

I want to dedicate these few lines

From my disgust men

And their moral warrior

Because no woman on the planet

N 's'ra so stupid that his brother

Or prouder or more dishonest

Except perhaps Thatcher

Woman I love you because

When sport is war

There's no or very little chick

In the hordes of supporters

These fanatics, crazy-mad

Watered hatred and beer

Deifying goons in blue,

Insulting bastards green

There's no female hooligan,

Stupid and deadly

There is none even in Great Britain

Except of course Thatcher

Woman I love you because

A sitting at the wheel

You don 't get as stupid as

These poor nerds who bump

A lighthouse a little messed up

Or a finger pointing up high

They are people who go to gun down

To save their radio

The honor of these arms bastards

No woman is quite common

To use it with a vengeance

A share can be Thatcher

Woman I love you because

You will not die in war

Park 'that the sight of a gun

Not shiver your ovaries

Park 'in the ranks of hunters

Who dégomment doves

And occasionally Beurs

I've never seen a female

Not a woman is pretty pathetic

To polish a revolver

And feel invulnerable

Except of course Thatcher

This is not a female brain

What exit the atomic bomb

And not a woman has on her hands

The blood of the American Indian

Palestinian and Armenian

Demonstrate the merits of their graves

That genocide is male

As a SS, a bullfighter

In the fucking humanity

Assassins are all brothers

Not a woman to compete

A share can be Thatcher

I love you above all women finally

For your weakness and your eyes

When the force of man is

In the gun or in its tail

And when will the last hour

Hell s'ra populated by morons

Playing football or war,

A person who pissing

I'll change into a dog if I can stay on Earth

And as daily street

I offer myself Thatcher

Self Righteous Self Defeating Tea Brained Idiocy In Action

On April 4, 2013, the ACLU of Ohio released The Outskirts of Hope, a chronicle of blatantly illegal debtors’ prison activity across the state of Ohio and the many lives that have been impacted.

View this document on Scribd

In conjunction with this report, the ACLU has sent letters to seven Ohio courts, calling for an immediate end to these illegal debtors’ prison practices. We have also sent a letter to the Ohio Supreme Court, asking them to enforce the law with statewide guidelines to stop this terrible practice in Ohio.

Click here to read the letters

Something must be done! The Ohio Supreme Court governs the conduct of these local courts. They must make a clear plan for ending debtors’ prison practices in Ohio and they must hold these courts accountable for flouting the law.
You can help! Take a minute to urge the Ohio Supreme Court to end debtors’ prison practices in our state. It’s fast and easy! They’ve already prepared the language to get you started!
Hear how two Ohioans have been impacted by this practice:

This is not a problem that is just a local Ohio issue. This has been a trend that has been exponentially growing all over America, in states with an electorate that has been duped into electing tea brained conservatives who have convinced them that they are libertarians who want to protect them from both Big Government and the huddled masses of the angry poor. What happens? Government just gets bigger and the poor get angrier. I have been destitute a few times in my life, but I always expected to be treated with the same dignity that I gave others. This is the utter denial of dignity. This is the kind of repression that breeds hate and rebellion.  I wrote about this regressive, simplistic and fascist approach to appeasing the upper classes while not even attempting to deal with the real issues almost a year ago. This is just another festering infected carbuncle on the fat ass of America. It's the conservative, corporate prison culture that has made America #1 in the percentage of incarcerated citizens in the world! The time to stop this is now!

18th Century Debtors Prison by William Hogarth

More ranting after the break!!!!!

BDSM Sklavin Zuchtigung im dunken Hobbyskeller teen Fesselspiele?

Was ist das?

In the interest of "science' Torrent Freak was been looking at the BitTorrent video-downloading from the small pool of downloaders in Vatican City, and they've reported in with the Vatican's favorite pornography. I was going to post a link to some of the films posted here, but, then if you are that interested, go google yourself! I can safely say though, that there are a few commandment that are being ignored here. I believe the curiously titles, RS77_Episode 01 handily violates any number of commandments all at the same time in just a matter of only a few minutes. But then, I'm hardly an expert, Torrent  Freak documents it here.
Torrent Freak tried to find a Vatican expert to comment and apparently the Pope was “busy” yesterday. On a Sunday?

Bettye LaVette

I'm in love with this voice. Another of Detroit's Natural Wonders.

She's been doing this since the early 60's...

What a great band, great interpretation of the Gnarls Barkely classic, Crazy!

If I Ever Grow Up

If I ever grow up, I wanna be Bootsy....

I think this was a pilot episode for a cartoon series that never happened...

Sometimes, I wish I could be a cartoon character.

Love? Hate?

What ever...if you ain't a rich teabrain crook like Dave, You Already Lost!

Montana desperately is trying to get back in the running for the lead for the most extreme whack teabrained legislators in America. Todays leader of the pack is Republican Representative Dave Hagstrom. Not only is he against abortion rights, he most definitely, sir, doesn't want to pay to take care of premature babies who are already born, no siree!
Read this letter in which a House Republican mocks single mothers and hungry kids and tells his tenants they should die sooner.
This month, Dave Hagstrom (R-Billings) sent his tenants one of the most bizarre and distrubing letters you might ever read. Hagstrom works for the Affordable Housing Development in Billings.In a lengthy letter (that is very much worth reading and can be found(HERE), Hagstrom tells his tenants – you know, the people who pay him rent every month – that they are living “a fairly-tale life-style.” What “fairly-tale” means remains a mystery. Maybe Hagstrom meant to write “fairy-tale.” I kinda think his version of a fairy tale is a movie that starred Bob Mitchum....let's face it, this letter gets pretty bizarre and more than just a little creepy when Hagstrom write, “I feel it would not be loving of me not warn you about” the impending social crises facing Montana.
Hagstom contends that the root of all our problems “is a very bad practice” of providing “free healthcare services at Riverstone Health, more money for food in schools for the kids, more money to help pregnant single moms stop smoking, more money to help elderly people get out of nursing homes and get individualized care in their own homes, etc.”
If that weren’t enough, the Representative from Billings goes on to mock single mothers. The government “creates a mindset that if I have kids and their dads are dead-beats, the government should buy my groceries and help me get a job while they provide day-care for my kids and send me to school to educate me so I can get a better job.”
You literally can’t make this stuff up. For good measure, Hagstrom also mocks school programs that feed hungry kids.
In Hagstrom’s closing, he makes five recommendations to his tenants. The first is the most notable and disturbing. He recommends that “you accept that not everyone, including yourself, needs to live as long as they currently do, or as ‘comfortably’ as they currently do.”
That’s right. Go and die as soon as possible.
UPDATE: Hagstrom was also one of three legislators to vote against assisting veterans returning home with affordable housing. This from the man who works for the Affordable Housing Development in Billings.
Personally, this is my favorite part of his letter:
One of the ways this problem has become real to me is that in Helena, I am being asked to vote for many bills that spend money from the Federal government for programs and services that are in fact real to all of us in the neighborhood. These would be bills that provide free healthcare services at Riverstone Health, more money for food in schools for the kids, more money to help pregnant single moms stop smoking, more money to help elderly people get out of nursing homes and get individualized care in their own homes, etc.
There are literally dozens and dozens of government programs to help people who have health issues, transportation issues, housing issues, criminal issues, addiction issues, etc. And though it could be argued that the intentions of these programs are good, the practice of printing money to pay for these programs, in my opinion, is a very bad practice.
Among the many reasons it is a bad practice is that it creates in the mindset of the people a dependency on the government to meet all their needs. It creates a mindset that, if I have a premature baby, the government should spend Whatever it takes to keep it alive. It creates a mindset that if I have committed a crime while on drugs, the government should give me a treatment program rather than send me to prison.

Dead Movie Stars

Wayne Kramer, Guitar and vocals. 

1996 from the CD, Dangerous Madness.

Spoken Word Jazz/Rock Improv Performance Art.

If this is real, I might even pay to see it....

Robert Reich Explains Chained CPI

Watch this video by Robert Reich, then please sign this petition. I just did!

The Chained CPI, deceptively portrayed as a reasonable cost of living adjustment, is a cut to Social Security that would hurt seniors. Robert Reich concisely explains why Chained CPI is so stingy in this video. Please sign his SignOn.org petition to President Obama at: 

http://www.signon.org/sign/mr-president-please-do-1/.

The DPRK Game

A 30 year old man sits at the head of the Armed Forces of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

I've been making some very silly gifs lately reflecting how I feel about what he is doing and why. Yes, though I feel that Kim Jong-un is a veritable puppet and he is not in any way in complete control of North Korea, the North Korean Regime sits on very shaky ground trying to maintain the iron fisted Stalinist ideological absolute physical and mental control of their starving population.   I don't feel as if he is competent enough to take any kind of action to assume control, but the bottom line? His finger controls the trigger. He is a very dangerous person through his inexperience and incompetency.
This young man had had some foreign education. But what he has NOT had may make all the difference in the world for millions of people.
He’s grown up as a child of extreme privilege, doing basically whatever he wanted to do, with little restraint. He’s never moved in the circles most of us move in, and probably has no idea of what life is like for the common prole. Nor, of course, would he have any real concept of consequences.
For perspective, let’s review the life of this fellow’s grandfather. His grandpa had been a guerilla for decades when he rode into Pyongyang at the head of the Soviet occupation army. Like the present leader, his grandpa was a young man when he took over as leader, though he did indeed have a couple of decades of fighting under his belt. In spite of the horrors of war that his grandpa knew all too well, his youthful inexperience with being a leader led him to conclude that he could win a military campaign to bring the southern half of Korea under his leadership. And that young man’s gamble cost at least 3,000,000 Korean lives, and left the entire peninsula utterly destroyed.
This over privileged inexperienced young man knows nothing of war. As a result, I’d wager that he’s more likely than even his grandpa was to gamble a little. He is also very open to the loudest, most ambitious mouth in his coterie of flatterers.

There is some positive news coming our of Pyongyang...in spite of all the bluster, Pak Pong Ju, the former prime minister who was responsible for many of the economic overtures to South Korea was reappointed. He had been in political "exile" for years. The Obama Administration is actually holding talks with the Chinese over their concerns about the noise coming from Pyongyang. China has been the sole lifeline that has kept the DPRK afloat for decades. The Chinese are beginning to get alittle pissed with Kim Jong-un.
But, I keep seeing these political cartoons that highlight the supposed weakness of the DPRK, and the buffoonery of its leader. This completely ignores that, weak or not, the DPRK has thousands of hardened artillery sites within range of Seoul.The warning for a sudden release of an artillery volley on Seoul can only be measured in seconds, not minutes. Win or lose an actual war, the DPRK can utterly flatten Seoul before anything can be done to stop it from happening. At least tens of thousands will die within minutes, and the economy of the Republic of Korea will be destroyed. Whatever happens to the DPRK at that point is almost irrelevant.
Those of us in America seem to think that the situation in Korea is some kind of a high-tech video game. It isn’t. Millions of lives are on the line. This is nothing to be joking about.

Excuse Me Colonel, Could I Borrow Your Newspaper?

1997, Orquestra Was,

Soundtrack from Don Was' short movie collaboration with Francis Ford Coppola, Forever's A Long, Long Time. The movie starred Kris Kristofferson and Sweet Pea Atkinson and the soundtrack featured songs by Hank Williams that somehow became jazz, techno and R&B. Some of the Musicians were Merle Haggard, Herbie Hancock, Don Was and Wayne Kramer. I've posted a very bad quality version of the film on this blog. This piece, Excuse Me Colonel, is a fairly incredible techno/jazz piece featuring  a rather magnificent guitar freakout by Wayne Kramer.
Please turn you computer speakers to 11 and a half!

Slow Down

Hey, why isn't this guy a superstar? Sweet Pea Atkinson, one of Detroits Natural Wonders...

An unstoppable force of nature. He was a member of Was/not was for 27 years, sung with Bob Dylan, Lyle Lovett. Iggy Pop, Bonnie Raitt and Willie Nelson. One of the greatest voices I've ever heard.

When Your ATM Runs Dry........

One solution....

Last week, I wrote a piece called When The ATM Run Dry about Cyprus and what is going on there. 
But, it's not just a Euro Problem. Yes the Cyprus story is linked to the offshore "Treasure Island" banking industry phenomena and specifically, the economic panic in Russia that has forced the very rich to stash their money in off shore accounts.
But way beyond this, it is a huge story, and it takes very little to tell it. This is a story that affects you personally and the regulations and lack of regulations that control the money in the bank you think you have it securely stashed in. These are the basics on deposit confiscation and how we got there:

■ You know that the EU-forced solution to the failure of banks in Cyprus is to require the Cypriot government to confiscate (“tax”) deposits. That news is everywhere you look; it’s not in dispute or doubt. The latest has depositor losses at 60% due to the bailout-related “one-time” tax.
■ “Confiscating deposits” is exactly the opposite of “insuring deposits,” which is what is required in the EU, and also offered by the FDIC (as the ads say, “your deposits are insured up to $250,000″).
■ The next monster taxpayer-financed bank bailout could spark a revolution. Find me anyone who isn’t a friend of Money who doesn’t hate the Bush-Obama bailout. Dem, Republican, Libertarian, frog-on-a-rock — no one liked the bailout.
■ This takes a taxpayer-financed bailout off the table as the next way to make bankers whole when the stumble.
■ But bankers are going to stumble soon, and big. The derivatives market is huge, and they’re aggressively reversing the tepid Dodd-Frank derivatives regulations as we speak. Of course, friends-of-big-banks in Congress are helping.
■ So the next big bailout (which is coming) will have to come from somewhere else.
Guess where that “somewhere else” is? Deposits.
Nations have already started to institute rules that enable deposit confiscation
There’s an international move by national governments to write regulations that permit deposit confiscation in the case of bank failure. This is exactly the Cyprus model, and if the news stories are correct, confiscating deposits was being considered or enabled prior to Cyprus bank-failures.

Just check out what's happening in New Zealand!
The National Government are pushing a Cyprus-style solution to bank failure in New Zealand which will see small depositors lose some of their savings to fund big bank bailouts, the Green Party said today.
Open Bank Resolution (OBR) is Finance Minister Bill English’s favoured option dealing with a major bank failure. If a bank fails under OBR, all depositors will have their savings reduced overnight to fund the bank’s bail out.
“Bill English is proposing a Cyprus-style solution for managing bank failure here in New Zealand – a solution that will see small depositors lose some of their savings to fund big bank bailouts,” said Green Party Co-leader Dr Russel Norman. “The Reserve Bank is in the final stages of implementing a system of managing bank failure called Open Bank Resolution. The scheme will put all bank depositors on the hook for bailing out their bank.
“Depositors will overnight have their savings shaved by the amount needed to keep the bank afloat.
Here’s what the New Zealand government says about “Open Bank Resolution” :
What is an OBR?
The Open Bank Resolution policy is a tool for responding to a bank failure. It allows the bank to be open for full-scale or limited business on the next business day after being placed under statutory management (as a result of, for example, an insolvency event). This means that customers will be able to gain full or partial access to their accounts and other bank services, whilst an appropriate long-term solution to the bank’s failure is identified. …
Why should depositors bail-out banks?
The OBR policy is designed to ensure that first losses are borne by the bank’s existing shareholders. In addition, a portion of depositors’ and other unsecured creditors’ funds will be frozen to bear any remaining losses. To the extent that these funds are not required to cover losses as more detailed assessment of the position of the bank is completed, these funds will be released to depositors. At a high level, this outcome replicates the outcome that would apply in the event that a failed bank was liquidated. The primary advantage of the OBR scheme, however, is that depositors would have access to a large proportion of their balances throughout the process. This contrasts with what would happen under a normal liquidation, where depositors might not have access to any of their funds for a significant period.
Why aren’t deposits guaranteed?
During the recent global financial crisis the government took the decision to put in place a temporary guarantee on retail deposits. On 11 March 2011 the Minister of Finance announced that further guarantees would not be provided following the expiry of the existing scheme. Furthermore, the Minister ruled out the possibility of introducing a compulsory deposit insurance scheme.
Read the rest if you like. That’s a government of New Zealand publication.

Deposit confiscation is being planned in the U.S. and the U.K.

Just as the New Zealand plan has been in process for a while, so is a similar plan in the U.S. and the U.K. This piece is making the rounds and making waves. 

It Can Happen Here: The Confiscation Scheme Planned for US and UK Depositors

Posted on March 28, 2013 by Ellen Brown

Confiscating the customer deposits in Cyprus banks, it seems, was not a one-off, desperate idea of a few Eurozone “troika” officials scrambling to salvage their balance sheets. A joint paper by the US Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the Bank of England dated December 10, 2012, shows that these plans have been long in the making; that they originated with the G20 Financial Stability Board in Basel, Switzerland (discussed earlier here); and that the result will be to deliver clear title to the banks of depositor funds. …
Although few depositors realize it, legally the bank owns the depositor’s funds as soon as they are put in the bank. Our money becomes the bank’s, and we become unsecured creditors holding IOUs or promises to pay. (See here and here.) But until now the bank has been obligated to pay the money back on demand in the form of cash.Under the FDIC-BOE plan, our IOUs will be converted into “bank equity.” The bank will get the money and we will get stock in the bank. With any luck we may be able to sell the stock to someone else, but when and at what price? Most people keep a deposit account so they can have ready cash to pay the bills.
The 15-page FDIC-BOE document is called “Resolving Globally Active, Systemically Important, Financial Institutions.” It begins by explaining that the 2008 banking crisis has made it clear that some other way besides taxpayer bailouts is needed to maintain “financial stability.” Evidently [the writers anticipate] that the next financial collapse will be on a grander scale than either the taxpayers or Congress is willing to underwrite …
No exception is indicated for “insured deposits” in the U.S., meaning those under $250,000, the deposits we thought were protected by FDIC insurance. This can hardly be an oversight, since it is the FDIC that is issuing the directive. …
December 10, 2012 was pre-Cyprus. Deposit-confiscation wasn’t something cooked up on the fly. It’s been in the works for a while, by all the international Bigs. Note that the source of the negotiations is “the G20 Financial Stability Board in Basel, Switzerland.” This is indeed international.
Bottom line
This proves three things, I think:
Major governments exist, in part, to make sure no banker takes a loss anywhere in the world, regardless of risky behavior on the part of the banks. The world and its governments serve the bankers.
The next banking crisis is anticipated to dwarf the last one, and the Bigs have been making plans to bail it out with depositor funds, not taxpayer funds. Cyprus is just the first implementation.
Loss of deposit insurance is coming to the U.S.

Are You Paying Attention, Kids?

Remember,The Rich vs. the Rest. They re  ally have convinced themselves that  “All your money are belong to them“ indeed. The outcome and again, I quote the master, The Grand Master Flash and The Message has bloodshed written all over it. Don't Push Us Cause We're Close To The Edge!

Bottom Line? What can you do? Learn about the place you trust to keep and invest your money. There are banks and credit unions which do not play this game. They are owned by the investors. It's your money and your choice and you are the one who is ultimately responsible! Every dollar taken out of the banking system and responsibly saved reduces the power of the big banks! I have been using a Union Bank for the last 25 years. It's really a credit union, yet I get better hands on money management than you could ever expect from a big commercial bank...Plus, even here in Europe, there is a system of free ATMs supported by my bank. Even when I use non supported ATMs, the fees are nominal compared to what you would pay if you had a CitiBank or Bank of America type of account.