A great quote from "Don't Rock The Boat" (the 2000 politics/president movie starring Jeff Bridges)

By Pablo Fanque, National Affairs Editor

"You've got five apes in a cage. You've got a banana hanging by a string in the middle of the cage. You've got some stairs going to the banana. Now, pretty soon, one of those apes is going to go for the banana and as soon as he hits the stairs you take a hose and you spray all five apes with freezing cold water for five minutes. Now, some time passes and pretty soon another one of the apes is going to make the same attempt with the same result. All five apes get sprayed with a cold water. You never use the cold water again. One of the apes is going to go for the banana. He hits the stairs, the other four apes pounce on him and beat the shit out of him. Right? Okay, understandable. Now you replace one of those original apes with a new ape. After a while that new ape is going to spy that banana and when he goes for the stairs, the other four apes are going to jump on him and beat the shit out of him. Right? Now, time passes, you replace another one of the original apes with a new ape. That new ape is going to go for the banana. The other four apes beat the shit out of him. Right? Including the first new ape, who has no idea why he's so enthusiastically beating the shit out of this poor guy nor why he himself had the shit beat out of him. Okay? Now you keep replacing the original apes with new apes until finally you've got a cage filled with fives apes who have never had the freezing cold water sprayed on them and never the less not one of those apes will never attempt to climb those stairs again. Why not? Because that's the way it's always been done around here."  - Jackson Evans, The Contender

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ATIT reheated: A salute to two political MILFs: Governor Sara Palin and Ex-Prime Minister of the Ukraine, Yulia Tymoshenko.

By Pablo Fanque, National Affairs Editor

[reheated from ATIT in April, 2007]

Remember way back, when Sarah Palin was just a cute Governor?  She was plucked from relative obscurity by Senator John McCain and became his VP candidate in 2008, soon became a pariah, lost the election, went back to Alaska, later quit her job as Governor, wrote a best-selling book that made her rich, starred in a reality show, began endorsing and campaigning for other people, and then faded into obscurity during Rep. Michele Bachmann's brief flash in the plan.  She has been quiet for a while now.  I expect we'll hear from her soon--she doesn't seem to like being out of the limelight for too long.  The limelight, however is becoming elusive

Yulia Tymoshenko, now 50, was sentenced to seven years in jail last month after being found guilty of abusing her office as prime minister. Critics branded the case a showtrial.  She is reportedly now in such poor health that she can barely get out of bed in prison. . .

Alaska Governor Sara Palin

Ex-Prime Minister of the Ukraine, Yulia Tymoshenko

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Senator Jay Bulworth visits a talk show and raps about TV, Big Money, and procreative racial deconstruction

You know the guy in the booth who's talking to you in that tiny little earphone?
He's afraid the guys at network are gonna tell him that he's through
If he lets a guy keep talking like I'm talking to you
Cause the corporations got the networks and they get to say who gets to talk about the country and who's crazy today
I would cut to a commercial if you still want this job
Because you may not be back tomorrow with this cooperate mob
Cut to commercial, cut to commercial, cut to commercial.

Ok ok I got a simple question that I'd like to ask of this network
That pays you for performing this task
How come they got the airwaves?
They're the peoples' aren't they?
Wouldn't they be worth 70 billion to the public today?
If some money-grubbin Congress didn't give them away for big campaign money?
It's hopeless you see
If you're runnin for office without no TV
If you don't get big money
You get a defeat
Corporations and broadcasters make you dead meat
You been taught in this country there's speech that is free
But free don't get you no spots on TV

If you want to have senators not on the take
Then give them free air time
They won't have to fake
Telecommunications is the name of the beast
that, that, that, that, that's eating up the world from the west to the east
The movies, the tabloids, TV and magazines
they tell us what to think and do
And all our hopes and dreams
All this information makes America phat
But if the company's outta the country
How American is that?

But we got Americans with families that can't even buy a meal
Ask a brother who's been downsized if he's getting any deal
Or a white boy bustin ass til they put him in his grave
He ain't gotta be a black boy to be livin like a slave
Rich people have always stayed on top by dividing white people from colored people
but white people got more in common with colored people then they do with rich people
we just gotta eliminate them.

White people, black people, brown people, yellow people, get rid of 'em all
All we need is a voluntary, free spirited, open-ended program of procreative racial deconstruction
Everybody just gotta keep f***in' everybody til they're all the same color
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A rap from Senator J. Billington Bulworth

In a scene from one of my favorite (but deeply flawed) movies, at a big fundraiser, Senator J. Billington Bulworth grabs the mike, goes out into the well-heeled audience and starts rapping:

One man one vote
Now izzat really real?
The name of our game is
Let's make a deal.

Now people got their problems
The haves and the have-nots.
But the ones that make me listen
Pay for 30-second spots!...

I ain't getting' it in South Central
I'm getting' it in Beverly Hills.
So I'm votin' in the Senate
The way they want me to and
I'm sending 'em my bills.

But we got babies in South Central
Dyin' as young as they do in Peru.
We got public schools that are nightmares
We got a Congress that ain't got a clue...

We got factories closin' down
Where the hell did all the good jobs go?
Well. I'll tell you where they went --
My contributors make more profits
Hiring kids in Mexico.

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A video anthology of Senator John McCain's recent brain meltdowns

This spooky compilation comes from TPMtv. While Senator McCain flings innuendo, Britney and Hilton ads, and even worse Senator Obama's way, his brain-freezes, confusion, and befuddlement stand out in stark juxtaposition to Obama's appearances and statements to the press.


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Tommy Chong once again talks horse sense

Tommy Chong once again surprises us with cogent commentary...

The spooks come clean: CIA to release details on decades of secrets

The Central Intelligence Agency will soon declassify thousands of pages of documents on spook operations from over three decades ago. The , CIA Director Michael Hayden said according to Reuters.

The "Family Jewels" documents chronicle foreign assassination attempts, domestic spying, kidnapping and infiltration of leftist groups from the 1950s to the 1970s. . .according to a summary posted on the National Security Archive site.

The documents to be released next week also include accounts of break-ins and theft, surveillance of U.S. journalists, the agency's opening of private mail to and from China and the Soviet Union, and "behavior modification" experiments on "unwitting" U.S. civilians.

"Much of it has been in the press before, and most of it is unflattering, but it's the CIA's history," Hayden said in a speech on Thursday to the American Foreign Relations Conference.
"This is about telling the American people what we have done in their name," Hayden said.

The CIA chief said the documents provide a glimpse of "a very different time and a very difference agency." Hayden said 11,000 pages of analysis from would be available on the CIA's Web site.
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The LBJ Museum and Library in Austin

I took my second trip to the LBJ Library on the University of Texas campus yesterday. There were a lot of great exhibits as usual, and especially the one on the Electrification of Rural Texas. If you get a chance to go to Austin, don't miss this place. Hero or monster, or both, LBJ was a key president, and probably did more for African-Americans than any President since Lincoln.

The library is not afraid of showing all the contradictions in this often tortured, frequently cranky, and always ambitious man. LBJ often frequented the library in the last years of his life...

On campus, you can also see the Tower. The tower is where the first mass shooting of innocents occurred in America—a harbinger of what was to come, really. It is where the first American parallel killer went bananas. Charles Whitman went up in the tower in 1966, and killed fourteen people and injured dozens more in a little over ninety minutes. They closed the tower for over 20 years, but it reopened a few years ago. To get up there you have to pass through metal detectors, and there are armed guards on the observation deck.






Other recent postings on LBJ:

LBJ responds to White House correspondent Dan Rather (and links to other LBJ photos) (has links to dozens of great photos).
Three more photographs of LBJ
Jerry Seinfeld Called Them The Close Talkers, Or, The Study Of Proxemics
LBJ responds to White House correspondent Dan Rather (and links to other LBJ photos)
LBJ meets FDR
Photograph: LBJ howls like a dog
Another good LBJ photograph - circa 1960
Photograph: LBJ in Vietnam
Photograph: LBJ agonizing over the Vietnam War
Photograph: LBJ and MLK meet up
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Scarred For Life?

Sometimes I wonder what it has meant, raising three children in the reign of George Bush? In their hearts what do they think of The President? And The Presidency? Have they been scarred for life?

When I was a kid people kind of liked the President (even if he was from the "other" party. Did that kind of fizzle out around about 1969, not long after President Nixon took office? Or maybe it was LBJ that killed it. I just don't remember people so actively disliking, say, Ike, or JFK, or even Ronald Reagan. As much as we disagreed with Reagan, at least you thought he believed in what he was doing. We just don't get that vibe from President Bush.
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