TIME TO UPDATE AMERICA'S FAT CAT ICON

I like to observe the cultural icons we've created for our 

national conceptual shorthand and deconstruct them. Like 

this one for instance, universally understood in America to 

signify a rich, exploitative capitalist. It's a hold over from the 

J.P. Morgan image at the close of the 19th century: The 

banker's striped trousers. The upper class silk top hat. The 

expensive Cuban cigar. The overfed corpulence indicating 

piggish, I-scarf-up-more-than-my-fair-share behavior. The 

white handlebar moustache signifying that it took time to 

accumulate a fortune. No Mark Zuckerbergs, Bill Gates or 

Steve Jobs overnight billionaires in their 20's back then. The 

only ham-handed element to assure everyone gets the 

message of the icon is the money bags. How long will we 

keep this image? It's already been 120-130 years. Cultural 

touchstones like Aunt Jemimah and Betty Crocker have 

been modernized. Will this kind of update happen to the rich 

capitalist icon? If so, what will he look like in the year 2100?

SO HOW'S THAT MAGIC OF THE MARKETPLACE THING WORKIN' OUT FOR YA AMERICA?

"The energy market is not like most other markets. Indeed, 

the economics of alternative energy are such that private 

investors, left to their own devices, are bound to underinvest 

in it, since the considerable social benefits - cleaner air, fewer 

greenhouse emissions - accrue to EVERYONE, not just to 

direct customers. That means that the economic rate of 

return is significantly less than the social rate of return. 

Despite the immense size of the energy market, as of 2005 

spending on energy R&D accounted for just 2% of total 

spending on R&D in the U.S. This creates an opportunity for 

the government to add value by investing smartly, just as it 

can add value by spending money on education or 

infrastructure, other areas where the social returns are 

greater than the economic ones " - James Surowiecki, 

Columnist for the New Yorker Magazine's Financial Page

"COME TOGETHER" - John Lennon

Bank consolidation over the years that has created the 

monster behemoths that extort the middle class into paying 

whatever fee they dictate. (click on the graphic to make it 

larger....just to be clear, I mean you can make the graphic        

larger, not the outrage).

"YEAH....BUT FOR ME IT'S DIFFERENT. IT REALLY IS. SERIOUSLY. NO. WAIT. I CAN EXPLAIN..." - AYN RAND

Revealed in the "Oral History of Ayn Rand" by the founder of 

the media department at the Ayn Rand Institute: In the end 

Rand was (secretly) one of the parasites she despised. Eva 

Pryor (a consultant to Rand's law firm of Ernst, Cane, Gitlin 

and Winick) verified that on Rand's behalf she secured Social 

Security and Medicare payments which Ayn received 

under the name of Ann O'Connor (husband Frank O'Connor). 

Pryor said, "Doctors cost a lot more money than books earn 

and she could be totally wiped out" without the aid of these 

two government programs. Ayn took the bail out. Throughout 

her life she said it was wrong and weak for everyone else to 

do so..

DON'T TOUCH ME THERE

The August issue of Motor Trend magazine reports that in

December, Volkswagen will desperately attempt to counter its 

steep recessionary slump by releasing an upscale, eight 

cylinder model. They plan to market it heavily in the United 

States using none-too-subtle sexual innuendo. This limited 

edition car will be called the 2015 "Tailia". Volkswagen's

advertisements will attempt to lure potential buyers with ads

featuring male and female supermodels plus a SLEEZY

double entendre declaring: "This winter be one of the lucky

few Americans to get their hands on our powerful new Jetta

Tailia." These Teutonic bastards have no shame. None

whatsoever. Nada.

OPEN THE GATES TO GREATER JOBS - A MICROCOSM OF OUR NATIONAL STRUGGLE

The great debate of the digital age, i.e., the struggle between Apple's IPhone (with it's "private" apps usable only on IPhone) and Google's Android (with universal apps that stand on any platform except Apple's) is a reiteration of the Mac versus Microsoft PC struggle of the 1980's, and most surprisingly as I just realized today, a kind of microcosm of the competing liberal (more control, better and safer experience for all) versus Conservative (let 1,000 flowers bloom and the competitive bloodletting begin because the consumer will benefit) world views. Is it better, as Apple believes, to tie the hardware, software and content handling into one tidy system that assures a simple user experience and higher quality control? Or is it better to give users and manufacturers more choice and free up avenues for more innovation by creating software systems that could be modified and used on different devices? The benefit of a "closed" Mac platform is control. But Microsoft and Google have a specific belief that "open" is the better approach, because it leads to more options and competition and consumer choice. As Bill Gates has said: "Most of the improvements in PC's came because consumers had a lot of choices, and that will someday be the case in the world of mobile devices. Eventually, open will succeed. In the long run, the coherence thing, you can't stay with that." Steve Jobs believed in "the coherence thing." He noted that "Google says we exert more control than they do, that we are closed and they are open...Well look at the results - Android's a mess. It has different screen sizes and versions, over a hundred permutations. I like being responsible for the whole user experience. We do it NOT to make money. We do it because we want to make GREAT PRODUCTS, not crap like Android." So today I asked myself where we are at this point in time? Where does America stand today, digitally speaking? As of today, APPLE (with its focus on control and a high quality experience versus Android with its focus on profit and choice) is the most innovative, most successful, most influential, most profitable corporation in the entire world. Apple products are universally acknowledged as the standard of excellence world wide. It is breathtaking how the archetypal digital struggle and the archetypal political struggle can be so amazingly similar!

THE JUNIOR MOMENT

We all use the ever popular "Senior Moment" to describe an older person forgetting something (particularly as in losing his train of thought smack in the middle of talking). When this happens younger listeners often look knowingly at one another and smirk out a patronizing "had a senior moment, did ya?" Well, how about introducing the concept of the "Junior Moment." This could be the instance when a mature individual has provided a younger person with some life lesson advice, which the younger person has ignored and then when the younger person subsequently falls prey to the thing about which he was warned, claims (in order to avoid an "I told you so") that he was never warned. In this instance, observing seniors could look knowingly at one another and smirk out a patronizing "having a junior moment, are ya?"

THE AFTER-IMAGE

In the old days of cameras with flash bulbs, a bulb would go off in a burst of blinding light and leave a dark after-image obscuring normal, healthy vision for a long, long time after the picture had been taken. Even if you blinked, or completely closed your eyes, the after-image indelibly remained. That's an apt analogy, I think, for both slavery in America and what is happening in Ferguson Missouri.

"The history of Saint Louis is burdened by a hyperconsciousness of dividing lines. The Dred Scott case of 1857 (that spark in the powder keg of the Civil War) began in St. Louis as a question of whether a man's freedom and human rights evaporated when he crossed the border into a slave state. In the decades since then few cities have taken a more systematic approach to racial separation. The shooting of unarmed African American teen Michael Brown and the violence that followed happened smack on one of those borders. And this phenomenon is, of course, not confined to Missouri. In 2012 Trayvon Martin was killed. Weeks ago Eric Garner, an unarmed black man died after an apparent police choke hold on him. It would be useful to know how often this happens. But that is data the United States declines to collect. The federal government can tell us how many pounds of boysenberries Americans harvest and how many hours per day the average American woman spends gardening. Yet no agency is tracking the number of people killed by police, [let alone the number of unarmed black people killed by them]" - Time Magazine.

The explosive flash of American slavery left the majority of our nation (with the exception of the victims themselves) blinded to the horrific evidence of slavery's continued consequences (in most cases consciously imposed by the white majority), and willfully ignorant about just how these consequences unfold on a daily basis, because America refuses to recognize, accept, and decisively overcome, the fact that almost one hundred and fifty years after slavery "ended", what should by now be normal, healthy vision is still woefully absent...blotted out by the dark after image of our sin.

INCESSANT TWEETING

Listening to the birds in my backyard this morning. They sound lovely. But when you actually stop and think about it, you have to ask yourself why birds chirp and hoot and whistle continuously? Why doesn't a bird just say what's on its mind and then shut the f*ck up? Don't get me wrong. I love the sound of birds. But their continuous voicing of whatever it is they want is a complete mystery. When I was a kid back in the 40's and 50's, and moms throughout my neighborhood used to open the windows of the apartment buildings we all lived in, and call their kids home for dinner, they didn't continue doing it every 3 seconds until sundown. The kid came in and that was it. What is it that birds want that can never be satisfied by only asking once? Birds are like toddlers, I guess: "Ma. Mommy. Mama. Ma. Mommy. Look Ma. Mommy. Ma. Mama. Mom-Mom-Mom-Mom-Mom-Mom-Dadeeeeeee!"

JEW HEAR GENERAL GRANT ISSUE THAT ORDER, OR DID I JUST IMAGINE IT?

The Treyvon Martin and Ferguson murders have once again made me think about growing up Jewish in America. I'm lucky enough to never need to be frightened for "walking while black." But I do vividly remember my mother telling me something (from the time I was a baby) that I have always remembered : "Jews" she said, "even in America, live in a country at the whim of the majority culture. At any time (especially when things become difficult economically and politically in that country) 'permission' can suddenly disappear. Sometimes it's an unexpected, arbitrary withdrawal (which usually manifests itself on the individual level, with a surprise anti-semitic remark like 'Jew him down' slipping out from someone you previously felt comfortable with) but most dangerously, it's withdrawn systematically amid hysteria by the surrounding culture when it feels threatened, no matter the reason. So Denny, you may believe you are fully acculturated and accepted in America, but you're not viewed that way. You're not viewed as a Jewish American. You're viewed as a Jew living in America. ALWAYS be vigilant no matter how 'comfortable' you may feel." 

My wife Pat (who is not Jewish) understands this phenomenon perfectly and describes it as follows: "Being Jewish is feeling welcome but not really safe." She is exactly right. If you think the advice my mother gave me is paranoid hyperbole (based on the fluke behavior of countries in the world other than the United States) you are dead wrong. I recently read a book about something that happened in our country's history that I did not know about until a few years ago, and which I bet hardly anyone reading this blog has ever heard of.  This book is about the fragility of my welcome.   General Order No. 11 was the title of an order issued by Major-General Ulysses S. Grant on December 17, 1862, during the American Civil War. It became notorious for its instruction for the expulsion of all Jews in his military district comprising areas of Tennessee, Mississippi, and Kentucky. The order was issued as part of a campaign against a black market in Southern cotton, which Grant thought was being run "mostly by Jews and other unprincipled traders." Grant later claimed it had been drafted by a subordinate and that he had signed it without reading. The order has been described as the "worst official anti-Semitic act in American history." 

JOBS SATISFACTION

I SO VERY MUCH WISH I HAD BEEN ABLE TO HEAR THE CORE MESSAGE OF STEVE JOBS' STANFORD UNIVERSITY COMMENCEMENT SPEECH WHEN I WAS YOUNG. IF YOU ARE YOUNG, LISTEN. HERE IT IS......"You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle. Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart. No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true. Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you."

T. M. FUCKING I.

I'm awestruck by something Marshall McLuhan said years ago (he died in 1980, over a decade before the internet exploded into our lives) that predicted the horrific nature of our public discourse today: "When people get close together they get more and more savage, impatient with each other. The global village is a place of very arduous interfaces and very abrasive situations." As the N.Y Times book review said of this quote: "Placing that in a more contemporary milieu, what happens now that everyone is a broadcaster? Ubiquitous, cheap technology (digital cameras) and a friction-free route to an audience (youTube) means that people might broadcast images of their closeted gay roommate having sex and that the unwitting star of their little network might subsequently, tragically, jump off a bridge."   

This led me to the conclusion that when we know everything about everybody, everywhere, all the time, we are bound to consume one another at the same rate we consume the information we get. Or, to put it non-electronically, a wildly overcrowded room inevitably leads to wild altercations

The Bleeding Smart Liberal BEGINS TODAY!

FINALLY....A HUMANE ALTERNATIVE to having your Facebook Newsfeed clogged with my endless posts.  AT LAST....A Choice!  Where YOU decide (not a goddam faceless algorithm) what you want to see or hear without the stealth cruelty of unfriending or blocking me.