KLEM FM

The younger (older?) Jeff Beck:

He's playing the Greek Theater this August: link  I'd like to go, but look at those prices!

"Putin: Rhymes With Rasputin"

Flashback on the world stage to the moment when Vladimir Putin first appeared to us and William Safire memorably quipped: "Putin: Rhymes with Rasputin."

Put your way back machine on to 2000 and reread Safire's NYT article; it's well worth it -- from a time when I still read that paper religiously. I picked out a few excerpts:

Acting President Putin (pronounced POO-teen, rhymes with Ras-POO-teen) rocketed to popularity on Russian jubilation about the massacre of dark-skinned Chechens who dare to demand independence. He needed a snap election before the blood lust cooled and Russian body bags began returning home.

Was Safire pro-Chechen or just sympathetic? The question is clouded by the Brothers Tsarnaev who were Chechens; remember what they did here: atrocities to bring attention to…? Well, not exactly to bring attention to al-Qaeda...but what then?

It is the Chechens who seek to liberate themselves from Russian rule. The Russian militarists are the ones raining bombs and shells on people who want the same independence as Georgians and Ukrainians. For Clinton to characterize the rape of Grozny as ''liberation'' is an abomination.

Al-Qaeda first appeared on our radar in Afghanistan. But they did fight the Russians (Soviets) before us. It's all so confusing. And Bill Clinton, siding with Putin's take on Chechnya? What will Hillary say and do?

Their task, after last week's coup de main, is to present Putin (means ''born on the road'') to the electorate as a man on horseback out to crush the terrorists trying to tear Mother Russia asunder. 

I would have never guessed that. Safire was very good at etymology; I didn't know he covered Russian etymology too.

Putin is in a race with disillusionment -- that moment when Russians realize that the Chechens won't be beaten without heavy losses, that the flight of capital will continue under Chubais-Berezovsky, and that military spending robs Russia of its ability to compete.

Can I recast that?:

Obama is in a race with disillusionment -- that moment when Americans realize that al-Qaeda won't be beaten without heavy losses, that the flight of capital will continue under Cloward-Piven, and that military spending robs America of its ability to compete.

It's a mixed-up, muddled-up, shook-up world.

Kerry turns the tables on Rand Paul

washingtonpost

The best part:

Jabbing his finger, Kerry disagreed, saying it was guaranteed that Assad would use chemical weapons again if the U.S. doesn't act. 

Kerry, a Vietnam veteran,

The Washington Post reminds us.

reminded Paul that "you've got three of us here who have gone to war" and that they know what it involves. 

They do. Then ends with bluster, claims victoritah, everybody laughs and laughs. I am not impressed with the polemics, though, maybe somebody is. Three of them went to war so that is proof that Assad will use chemical weapons again.

When do they imagine that to happen, anytime I suppose, apparently everyone was laughing too much to ask, the article is brief on the Washington Post and closes abruptly, but my first guess would be on the 2nd anniversary of Obama's red-line statement.

I happened to turn on the t.v. with Sharpton following and critiquing the Facebook opinion of the most important person in the world, Sarah Palin, saying how despicable, dith-PICK-able it is to politicize something so important as war.

!

It was like a ghostly apparition, death itself, two round lifeless taxidermy eyes upon a ghastly skeletal mouth opening and closing mechanically up and down, frighteningly close to a demented self-willed ventriloquist's doll with a strangely groomed mustache and a tuff of sparse frizzy hair glued on top, speaking to itself in a mirror, horrified at its own image, terrified by its aggressively feminine pink vitality so close to its own end.