David Glenn Cox's Open Salon Blog

The Secret Bridge

Sun, 4 Nov 2012 10:11:51 -0500

The Secret Bridge
By David Glenn Cox

There is a hint of a chill in the air as the leaves of the trees bleed out their spectrum colors, fall is culminating and succumbing. The Hallows eve approaches, as the land of mythical and magical, fearsome and fanciful. I was shown something special, something of which I can only share a part of,

Hollywood couldn’t make up such a story as this. Aways off in the woods, not too far from here, lost in an urban wilderness there in an obscurity, a curiosity, an item left behind and almost forgotten. A historical relic, like a civil war belt buckle, only this belt buckle covers many acres. Traversing the grounds we would find the odd bits and pieces of a buried past, sleeping covered by a moss, and pine straw blanket, old red bricks mixed in with cob rough pieces of mortar and concrete.

But first, you must first drive up the hill about a half a mile on an old brick road. A road laced with red brick pavers which should more rightly be painted yellow for they lead up to a ridge of fantasy, mayhem and magic. When you reach the end of this brick service road, there is an aging rusted steel guard rail separating yesterday from today, signifying the beginning and the end of our realm. The forest canopy was lush when I first saw it, turning a bright sunny afternoon to the light of shaded overcast. It was dark, with just a hint of moisture in the air, some how just enough, to let you know that this story is going to involve water.

Climbing up to the top of the ridge you can see we are surrounded by water on three sides, bordered by a steep terrain. To me at least, this says, that whatever the purpose of this facility, confinement was at least a peripheral issue. Stepping beyond the rusting monument and into the deep foliage, in a near ten steps she stands before you in all her raging glory. She is a crumbling concrete bridge, fancy, with all the trimmings. She’s at least a hundred feet long spanning in an arc pattern with concrete sconces build onto alternating arched bridge pilings.

This isn’t just your everyday walking across the creek bridge, she is beautiful and ornate. And with just a tiny leap of fantasy she becomes, a bridge in medieval France, or the bridge to Frankenstein’s Castle. That’s the kind of bridge she is all right, a right fancy bridge that someone built up on a ridge, out in the boon docks to do something, to someone. To do what and to whom, are merely your first opportunities for conjecture.

At first, I thought this secret bridge might have been built by the W.P.A. there are numerous examples of W.P.A. & C.C.C. construction works still around in the area and I assumed that this might just be one more of them. When I came back to visit for a second time, I examined underneath the bridge and around the other structures. Underneath the bridge on either side are large rooms built in and on the far side of the bridge. On the far side, the room has an old iron fuel tank of some kind; I’d guess the tank held maybe five to six hundred gallons. The tank is very old, as its seams are rivet ed, but to hold what and for why, I can’t say really, this is a cafeteria ghost story, so you may take from it whatever you like.

So there’s this elaborate bridge built to connect a remote ridge top to the community. A room with an old riveted fuel tank, and since commercial arc welding didn’t come along until the 1920’s, maybe, we can date the bridge by the tank. Just guessing, I’d say the turn of the century to prior to WW1, but what if, let’s say, the bridge could be fifty years earlier? That would put the bridge’s age somewhere in the 1850’s or sixties. According to secret bridge folk lore, this place was originally a camp built during the civil war, possibly for the insane and shell shocked of battle, or perhaps, it was just wounded men recuperating.

As we continue investigating these relics, we find among them the teen hangouts, complete with Flintstone benches and logs dragged into a community square for communal beer, bowls, bonfires and teenage benedictions. We already knew they were here, we weren’t surprised by them. If anything, we are the interlopers, adults going back in time, going through their perfectly wonderful teen theme park in the woods and remembering our own. But what is it? And what was in the room above the tank, because in the room where I found the tank, I also found a collapsed floor from above. What was its purpose, a big iron fuel tank under a big ornate bridge out in the woods?

On the ground beneath the secret bridge are the remains of a concrete footpath, complete with a concrete and stone footbridge to cross the body of water flowing under the secret bridge. The flow of water is so small you can almost leap across. The mystery deepens, why build this elaborate and ornate bridge for such a small body of water? At some point in time in the past, people were working under this bridge or else they wouldn’t have needed the concrete foot paths. The secret bridge is an amazing and thought provoking spectacle even now, what must it have looked like back then, in all its newness and splendor?

Could this have really been a civil war camp for the insane? The lore says, that after the war wounded had all passed away, it became a children’s home. A children’s home with a Hollywood past, according to the legend, this children’s home one night had a terrible fire. Many children were supposedly burned and died running in terror in these woods fleeing the fire. They say, their souls still haunt this place, and well, you can’t prove it by me, but I’m not just ready to spend the night up there yet. We continue scouring the woods for relics, we find many small building foundations with two or three rows of brick still paying attention, while the rest lie scattered and lost in the weeds and moss of the undergrowth.

We also found a concrete sidewalk going to and from invisible destinations, just a mysterious sidewalks out in the woods, pretty cool huh? This sidewalk led us to where we could see there was once a road which had been cut from out of the terrain, now overgrown, the road led us directly to a steep chasm with a creek at the bottom. Soon we discovered, down the hill a bit, pilings for another bridge. This one, of a much lighter construction than the secret bridge, perhaps a footbridge which was now lost to the past. Where do you suppose it would takes us? With lost history right under our feet, in a strange cacophony of calamity or who knows, maybe it’s just nothing at all, except an old bridge out in the woods. But I wouldn’t want to think about this secret bridge like that, she is way far too cool a relic to waste on the mundane in last week of October.

Walking through these ruins, it was clear there was something up here alright. Too many foundations, cisterns and septic tanks, which all have that distinct look of being government overbuilt. On the far side of the ridge, almost inaccessible from our direction, are the ruins of an old cabin. It was a large and elaborate cabin with a concrete foundation and a large stone fireplace which I have named Frodo’s ruin. In these thick dark woods, on this forgotten relic of a complex, it just can’t be mundane; it just can’t be, so it is Frodo’s ruin.

Standing at one end of Frodo’s ruins, a complete chimney, fire brick on the inside and round stones outside. You can see the fire stains on the bricks from heavy usage and you can also see the effects of fire where the roof joist had once connected. So now, we have evidence of a fire, in a substantial building, could this have been a kitchen or a mess hall? Could there have been a fire which spread to a dormitory? The elements are all there, it’s a mad libs story, like a Barbie Doll, dress it up any way you like.

We do have proof that during the 1930’s the facility was called a sanitarium, and oh, isn’t that a wonderful word to find in the waning days of October? During those, way back days there were many types of sanitariums out there, sanitariums to dry out, sanitariums for TB or VD or crazy Uncle Charlie sanitariums, as well. Times were different and people didn’t wash their dirty laundry in public.

But there is more to this story, what good is a ghost story that isn’t without more, we went to Google Earth and looked up the location of the secret bridge. At the top of the ridge, there was displayed on the screen a very old and very large old home. It’s hard to say exactly, what style of a home it was from a Google Earth photo. Hard to make value judgments on such things, but I would say at best, this house was, your least favorite Grandma’s house, the one who called you Herbert when your name is Dave. The Grandma that had butter mints congealed into a pile like civil war cannon balls in her candy dish on the coffee table, The one all your relatives told you to be nice to kind of house.

At worst, the house has a mean and hard look about it, dormitory dreary. A kid dropped off in state car at two in the morning and given a bed in a dark room look about it. Only, a funny thing happened, when we went back to look for this old house. We had assumed that we had simply missed the path to the house before. But when we returned, no amount of looking could locate it; there was nothing, no sign of a house. We returned to Google Earth and there, once again, was the old house. We speculated between us, the possibilities that the house had been removed in say the last four or five years. If so, you couldn’t tell it by me.

So there it is, a do it yourself ghost story, good at camp fires every where and like Tinker Toys, you can build the story differently every time.

So there was this old Civil War hospital for the insane, one night during a full January moon, the inmates all went crazy and rioted. They burned down the house and the footbridge after they had murdered the staff, but they was crazy see, and they didn’t know the foot bridge was the only way off the ridge. The escaped lunatics wandered aimlessly in the woods, all night, until they froze to death. One of the inmates was found right over there, his body frozen to a tree. When they broke his body loose from the bark, one of the old man’s hands was missing, all they found just an empty bloody coat sleeve. Then in a serious and calming tone of voice, you ask your victim, preferably a small child, “and do you know where they found the old man’s hand?”

Then as your victim looks up at you with innocent and trusting eyes, you shout, “Right Here!” as you grab the victim menacingly.

The secret bridge is a playground for the mind, for those tiny little bits of us left over from childhood. Creepy dark woods, strange buildings both real and imagined, a strange, strange ornate bridge built way out in the woods for some different purpose other than just crossing the crick. Where is this secret bridge? I can’t tell you or it won’t be secret, but I am sure there are many more bridges out there, wherever the imagination is allowed to play. On the week of Halloween, we all need our own secret bridge where we allow our imagination and inner child run wild and fall is complete.

The New Ground Zero

Thu, 13 Sep 2012 11:09:09 -0400

The New Ground Zero

By David Glenn Cox

The smoke has cleared, the debris has been removed. On February 27^th 1933, the German Reichstag was burned by arson. (The event is seen as pivotal in the establishment of Nazi Germany. Wikipedia) Just two weeks before the German Fuehrer had expressed to Joseph Goebbels his desire to burn the Communists out of Germany. The burning of the Reichstag brought about the enabling acts. The enabling acts effectively voided civil rights in Germany and ended any pretense of a democracy

On September 11, 2001 person or persons unknown hijacked aircraft striking both towers of the World Trade Centers in New York and the Pentagon in Washington. Ostensibly, according to government theorists, these so called terrorists, so hated America they attacked the World Trade Center as a punishment of America’s crimes. Only, why did they strike the Pentagon? What did terrorists gain by attacking the Pentagon? Did they hope to so disrupt the US military hierarchy? So who gained by attacking the Pentagon?

The terrorists gained nothing, dead is dead. The attack on the Pentagon changed the nature of the events of September 11^th. The attack on the Pentagon changed the nature of the event from a civilian attack to a military attack. So I’ll ask again, who gained from the attack on the Pentagon on September 11^th?

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.” – Joseph Goebbels

Within six weeks of the attack, both houses of Congress passed the USA Patriot Act, within two years the United States was involved in combat in two Arab countries. The Bush administration through an intense propaganda campaign implied the direct involvement of Saddam Hussein in the attacks of September 11^th. Isn’t it strange how these enemies du jour suddenly appeared, strange how the security apparatus suddenly appeared as well, strange how the concept of America and Americanism suddenly changed?

Eleven years later, the wars go on still, the checks are still being written, the body bags are still being filled. Less than 90 day before a Presidential election, an election which will either anoint a man so unsuited and unqualified as to be frightening. Or this country will re-elect the rightist Fascist Barack Obama. After the up coming November election America shall see the real Barack Obama, perhaps for the very first time. Obama will be a lame duck and beyond the reach of the electorate. That in and of itself is a frightening prospect as currently Obama’s former chief of staff is fighting the Chicago teachers union. The real issues are not discussed, the campaign is an illusion. Below is the page from the CIA World Fact Book. This is the assessment of the Central Intelligence Agency; this is the government’s own assessment of what is actually going on in this country. Read it carefully, it is far detached from anything you will see reported in the media.

{The US has the largest and most technologically powerful economy in the world, with a per capita GDP of $48,100. In this market-oriented economy, private individuals and business firms make most of the decisions, and the federal and state governments buy needed goods and services predominantly in the private marketplace. US business firms enjoy greater flexibility than their counterparts in Western Europe and Japan in decisions to expand capital plant, to lay off surplus workers, and to develop new products. At the same time, they face higher barriers to enter their rivals' home markets than foreign firms face entering US markets.

US firms are at or near the forefront in technological advances, especially in computers and in medical, aerospace, and military equipment; their advantage has narrowed since the end of World War II. The onrush of technology largely explains the gradual development of a "two-tier labor market" in which those at the bottom lack the education and the professional/technical skills of those at the top and, more and more, fail to get comparable pay raises, health insurance coverage, and other benefits. Since 1975, practically all the gains in household income have gone to the top 20% of households.

Since 1996, dividends and capital gains have grown faster than wages or any other category of after-tax income. Imported oil accounts for nearly 55% of US consumption. Oil prices doubled between 2001 and 2006, the year home prices peaked; higher gasoline prices ate into consumers' budgets and many individuals fell behind in their mortgage payments. Oil prices increased another 50% between 2006 and 2008. In 2008, soaring oil prices threatened inflation and caused a deterioration in the US merchandise trade deficit, which peaked at $840 billion. In 2009, with the global recession deepening, oil prices dropped 40% and the US trade deficit shrank, as US domestic demand declined, but in 2011 the trade deficit ramped back up to $803 billion, as oil prices climbed once more.

The global economic downturn, the sub-prime mortgage crisis, investment bank failures, falling home prices, and tight credit pushed the United States into a recession by mid-2008. GDP contracted until the third quarter of 2009, making this the deepest and longest downturn since the Great Depression. To help stabilize financial markets, in October 2008 the US Congress established a $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). The government used some of these funds to purchase equity in US banks and industrial corporations, much of which had been returned to the government by early 2011.

In January 2009 the US Congress passed and President Barack OBAMA signed a bill providing an additional $787 billion fiscal stimulus to be used over 10 years - two-thirds on additional spending and one-third on tax cuts - to create jobs and to help the economy recover. In 2010 and 2011, the federal budget deficit reached nearly 9% of GDP; total government revenues from taxes and other sources are lower, as a percentage of GDP, than that of most other developed countries.

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan required major shifts in national resources from civilian to military purposes and contributed to the growth of the US budget deficit and public debt - through 2011, the direct costs of the wars totaled nearly $900 billion, according to US government figures. In March 2010, President OBAMA signed into law the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, a health insurance reform bill that will extend coverage to an additional 32 million American citizens by 2016, through private health insurance for the general population and Medicaid for the impoverished. Total spending on health care - public plus private - rose from 9.0% of GDP in 1980 to 17.9% in 2010. In July 2010, the president signed the DODD-FRANK Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, a law designed to promote financial stability by protecting consumers from financial abuses, ending taxpayer bailouts of financial firms, dealing with troubled banks that are "too big to fail," and improving accountability and transparency in the financial system - in particular, by requiring certain financial derivatives to be traded in markets that are subject to government regulation and oversight. Long-term problems include inadequate investment in deteriorating infrastructure, rapidly rising medical and pension costs of an aging population, sizable current account and budget deficits - including significant budget shortages for state governments - energy shortages, and stagnation of wages for lower-income families.}– The CIA World Fact Book

This is the truth! This is what your government tells its own employees about what is going on. It is the truth, but it is not what either political candidate is telling you.

Since my arrival in Cleveland, I have visited two grand tombs. The first was the tomb of President James Garfield, a grand tomb displaying the outpouring of a wealthy nation’s affection towards its fallen leader. The second tomb is much larger and in its size and grandeur, it tells the story of us all. It is a symbol and a repository of all that is wrong and of all that has been done to us a people.

Its former name is the Euclid Square Mall but to me, it is the new ground zero. This is an attack made upon the lives of a people far more sinister than could be carried out by aircraft. This is a terrorist attack made by bankers who crashed our economy. Not because they weren’t making any money in this country but because they could make more money in China. The Euclid Square Mall is the tomb of Capitalism. The empty stores and kiosks, the dry fountains and worn carpets ask, where are the people? Where are their jobs?

I spoke with the mall staff in the person of Rosemary Luksic, a lovely older lady who promised me, “We’re coming back.” But she agreed that they can’t come back until people find jobs. This is the crux; this is the tip of the pyramid, the point of the spear. There are no jobs and there will be no jobs as long as the same trade policies are followed.

These criminals have done this to us, this isn’t an accident, this is treason. All across this country tens of millions of hard working men women and children have had their lives stolen away from them by a few thousand bankers and Wall Street executives who for mere money have sold out the well being of a nation. They weren’t motivated by god or by some nut ball religious fervor but by simple unadulterated greed. Walk the halls of this new ground zero, and then tell me this isn’t a replay of the Great Depression. The amazing irony of “A new Pearl Harbor” only when the Nazis burned the Reichstag there was no one inside.

Herbert Hoover didn’t understand the Great Depression and when Hoover was President the factories were only closed, not gone. The sole legitimate reason for government is to protect the well being of its people. When government ceases to protect the interests of its people, it ceases to be legitimate. When government works against the interests of its people, no matter what political handle we ascribe to it, it is a tyranny and it is nothing less than the abject failure of Capitalist system. It is nothing less than the abject failure of the two party system; a system based upon lies and greed.

“I am opposing a social order in which it is possible for one man who does absolutely nothing that is useful to amass a fortune of hundreds of millions of dollars, while millions of men and women who work all the days of their lives secure barely enough for a wretched existence.” – Eugene Victor Debs

“Above all, always be capable of feeling deeply any injustice committed against anyone, anywhere in the world.” – Ernesto Che Guevara

Portland is Like Algebra

Fri, 31 Aug 2012 15:08:56 -0400

Portland is Like Algebra
By David Glenn Cox

Portland is like Algebra, it is hard and it’s complicated and I just don’t get it. This has been a hard one for me, my luck had been changing, I’d got an ID and a cryptic letter from the state of Georgia which promised hope when out of the blue, I lost a dear friend. I lost a friend while trying to be one, by telling the truth when they didn’t want to hear it. When you leave out of Portland all is lush and green, by the time you reach The Dalles, the scenery is tan and golden brown covering over the volcanic basalt rock which pops through periodically.

It wasn’t until I reached Baker City, Oregon before I’d finally figured it out. The Cascade Range shields Portland; it is like a Shangri-La unto itself, separating its self, from the real West waiting, just on the other side of the mountains. By the time you reach Umatilla County, the land is sandy brown and dry on undulating hills frozen in time. They made it into an Indian Reservation, if that helps sharpen the image. But now, Baker City is famous from Oregon Trail fame. It conjures up images of covered wagons, pioneers and John Wayne movies.

I guess what upset me the most, was watching my friend dismantle her own life. Not through drugs or alcohol, that would be understandable, this isn’t. You can stop drinking and dry out, but this? I don’t know, maybe something snapped, maybe it was chemistry, or stress or paranoia or dark demons from the past come to call. Whatever it was, it hurt, because I don’t have much real family besides my son and I loved her like a sister.

Maybe it’s just the luck of the draw, but there is a full moon out tonight over the high desert, seems I always travel on the full moon, maybe its astrology, or maybe just dumb luck. We rumble along in this rattly Greyhound bus, which is far from the pride of the fleet. That’s a funny story in its self, I stood outside gate number eleven for about a dozen hours and right on the other side of that door sat this beautiful rich blue and grey shiny new bus. It proudly advertised WiFi and electrical plugs and I got all excited, then at the very last minute, I mean the absolute, very last minute, as we stood in line waiting to board they pulled it away from the gate and pulled in this bus. Which I suppose was the pride of the fleet a dozen or so years ago. The overhead lights don’t work, the air conditioner fan rattles and outside of the window passes some of the most extraordinary panoramas the human eye can ever experience.

We’re headed for Boise, Salt Lake and Denver now, funny thing, the last time I was in Denver I snuck up on it from the other side. It gets really dark when the mountains block the full moon; through the dusty windows it appears to shine two searchlight beams. When it hides, I can’t read the road signs like, Dead Man Pass or Old Emigrant Hill, the last one made me smile, conjuring up images of old Emigrants sitting up on a hill in rocking chairs. The roads are twisty and the turns are sharp, it feels as if we’re following the Chef Boyardee route. Foothills on both sides of us, as the moon pops over a hill once in a while, just long enough to wink.

We are out in the high desert headed for Boise, a haze now covers the moon, and it’s a spatial filament letting off a warm and comforting glow, like a night light, which watches over us but doesn’t listen. Boise appears to be a city of consequence with a five lane Interstate highway, sound barriers and billboards advertising gambling casinos. It’s really too dark to tell much more or perhaps is it too light? The Interstate has homogenized our cities with the usual assortment of fast food joints and only occasionally something odd. As we pulled out of B town, there was a neon lit marquee sign for a funeral home and it just struck me as less than somber or subdued. Out of the dark, off to the left, ghostly mountains appeared, at least the way the light played on the shadows they looked like mountains to me. The lights of civilization stopped right where the shadows began, so I have named them the Phantom Mountains, at least until the sun comes up. As I look out the other side of the bus I see my other dear friend the moon, is also slipping away, I will miss her, hell, I’ll miss them both.

As the new sun rose in the morning, we were headed for the land of Mormons and murder. It appears some of them Mormons beat me to naming those mountains. You get a little loopy after hours on a bus, but you know what? You only live once, and it’s a fair trade for a full immersion in America. They’s real folks on a bus, ain’t no sissified dandies here. They’s folks going home or moving on, going to a job or leaving one or leaving someone. You start as strangers and in a couple hundred miles, your pals. We hit all the high spots in the Mormon holy land with their nice bus station with a lousy intercom. The station was filled with last nights overflow and so, I began to worry.

Two lines divide the station from front to back, with some folks who’d been waiting since I began my relationship with the moon the night before, but it all ended well. They brought us out a shiny bus with WiFi, enabling me to catch up with my E-mails. Before long, we were into the lunar landscapes of Wyoming, shining with glass shards from broken beer bottles. Kind of like sticking a wad of gum on the Mona Lisa, nothing but scrub, greasewood and sagebrush as far as the eye can see, and still, man finds a way to fuck it up.

They’ve got snow fences put up and signs which read, “Interstate 80 Closed when flashing.” Way off in the distance I can see downpours, cloudbursts maybe twenty or thirty miles away. It’s the closest I’ve been to rain in months, as even soggy Portland has dried out for the driest August on record.

Perfect silhouettes of ancient nature made pyramids arise, as the blue grey down burst shimmer off in the distance like flowing curtains. The color of the land cannot be described; it is sand and tan, brown and black, tinged in pale illusive greens. It is all so humbling and awesome and magnificent in its own special splendor that it makes you weep for the blind. Ancient palisades capped with cell phone towers as the pallet plays out in colors Crayolla never dreamed of. It’s is so beautiful, I’d ride on top of the bus just to see it. The down pour has been here, but we’ve missed the show as it appears to be going the other way.

I’ve heard too many conversations about people late on the rent and folks looking for a couch, small world, ain’t it? Fence posts, telephone poles and open land, that’s it, but I can’t seem to get enough of it. It’s ten in the morning but it feels like ten at night and it is overcast and around every turn is a new vista and a new pallet of color. Strange sights peculiar names, Green River, Rock Creek and Covered Wagon Road, Clint Eastwood in High Plains Drifter, in the land where old cars go to kill time.

We just crossed the Continental Divide at 7000 feet, while above me, white whale clouds swim by in a deep blue sky. The railroad has on its sidings hundreds of grain cars which won’t be used this year. It is a strange dichotomy, an ocean above a desert below. The high water mark of a continent, being crossed by a bus carrying the bottom 10% of the 99%. We are all lost here, lost in a continent, lost in a government and lost as a people.

Then, just as suddenly, a cloud burst gets us, ten maybe fifteen seconds of spitting rain which appeared out of nowhere and disappeared just as quick, just a reminder, if you close your eyes here, you might miss something. Isn’t that just the way of things, how much we miss while looking at nothing in particular? How many roses we might pluck when not worried about the thorns.

The sun rose slowly over Minden Nebraska, a beautiful fiery orange sphere burning off the night’s gathered haze. Exposing the lush green rolling hills and the specter of dwarfed and dead corn plants, all stunted between three and five feet tall. I’ve never seen a total crop failure before so, now I have and there is something almost apocalyptic about it. Maybe I use that word too much and perhaps, I must learn a new word. Because yesterday, before this sun fell, we rolled into Denver and amidst the glass and steel towers, amidst the beer drinkers on the warm Café patios there was this rescue mission and directly across the street, a small concrete plaza.

The plaza was filled with several hundreds of people of all ages and descriptions. They were poor, so poor that they were ragged. They weren’t just down on their luck, they were down to their last, and it reminded me for all the world of a scene out Mad Max, Beyond Thunder Dome. I’ve never seen a total crop failure before so, now I have and there is something almost apocalyptic about it. Maybe I use that word too much and perhaps, I must learn a new word.

It is all the same, isn’t it? One, ten, a hundred, a thousand, a million, ten million, twenty million on and on. Come spring we shall replant our corn, but what of the people, what of their lives? I travel across thousands of miles of this amazingly beautiful land with a beneficent sun by day and reassuring moon by night. I see something which cannot be described nor quantified, something like a cancer, something like a feeling in your bones, something you can’t describe, but you know it when you see it.

Mitt accepted the nomination for President of the Suicide Party last night and now he and his evil little co-conspirator must go out and convince the populace to elect him and to commit societal Hara-kiri. What Mitt doesn’t know and what his grubby little brown noser can’t see, you can see from a bus window, in America, the ponds have dried up. After the show is over, because that’s all that this is really, is a show, the comedy team of Romney and Lewis will return to their fine homes, they will eat their sumptuous food and live their sumptuous lives. Maybe they will look back and reminisce, saying, “gee whiz, where did we go wrong?”

Never, have so few, been so wrong about so much. Never has a nation’s leadership been so blind as to have not ended up with their brain trust riding on a pike. The sand flows through the hourglass and tells a tale of time, the bough breaks and the limb falls and down will come baby, cradle and all. The mobs will grow in number and intensity, legions of the hungry and dispossessed and today they call for food, but if left unmitigated, will someday call for blood.

Kingfish

Wed, 22 Aug 2012 19:08:50 -0400

Kingfish
By David Glenn Cox

How often the name of Jesus Christ is commonly bandied about, and for a fictional or faith based character, I suppose that’s all right. I mean, well, Jesus allegedly cast the money changers out of the temple and he healed a few lepers and cured a couple of cases of blindness. He was, after all, a carpenter by trade and a messiah only by a calling later in life. Jesus received much well deserved praise for siding with the poor, the uneducated, and the troubled. The common folk loved him for it. But the rich folk, as rich folk often do, perceive any such individual who avows a mission to assist the poor as a threat, and so, as the story goes they nailed him into the sky.

Funny thing about these religious messiah’s, they always want to help the poor but they always tell’em there’s a better world a waiting for them somewhere else, tomorrow, if you’ll only believe today. The Buddha traveled through the land and met with kings and potentates and told the poor people it was their desire which was the cause of their suffering. Politics has long been called the art of compromise, give and take or what’s commonly referred to as log rolling.

What if there was a politician who wouldn’t compromise on his principals? What if there was a politician who dedicated his life to aiding the poor and unfortunate. A politician who didn’t just rub spit and mud into the eyes of the blind, but instead built hospitals for the blind and trained doctors for the sick, schools for the children, night schools for the illiterate. What if there was a politician who cut taxes for the poor, abolished the poll tax and instituted a foreclosure moratorium, built a medical school, doubled the size of the state university and built a public hospital for the mentally ill? Not to mention, over nine thousand miles of paved roads, 111 bridges including three major bridges.

What would you call such a politician in America? He was called a scoundrel and a crook, a demagogue and a dictator.

“A man is not a dictator when he is given a commission from the people and carries it out.” – Huey Long

Everybody gather ’round
Loosen up your suspenders, hunker down on the ground
I’m a cracker, you are too. Gonna take good care of you
Who built the highway to Baton Rouge?
Who put up the hospital, built you schools?
Who looked after shit-kickers like you?
The Kingfish do

Who gave a party at the Roosevelt Hotel?
Invited whole north half of the state down there for free
People in the city had their eyes bugging out
‘Cause everyone looked just like me

Who took on the Standard Oil men and whipped their ass
Just like he promised he’d do?
Ain’t no Standard Oil men gonna run this state
Gonna be run by little folks like me and you

Here’s the Kingfish, the Kingfish
Friend of the working man
The Kingfish, the Kingfish
The Kingfish gonna save this land
– Randy Newman

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http://www.leftistreview.com/2012/08/20/kingfish/davidcox/

Cody the Cardboard Cowboy

Sat, 11 Aug 2012 21:08:02 -0400

Cody the Cardboard Cowboy
By David Glenn Cox

Let’s play a game and in it, you and I are high powered executives working at a marketing firm on Madison Avenue in New York. I wear $1,200 Italian suits and I send the intern back to Starbucks, three quarters of a mile away through the pouring rain if my Latte’ isn’t just quite right. We stand causally in the paneled board room waiting for the meeting to begin and we discuss the advantages of the new BMW over a Mercedes Benz or we complain, because the wife is nagging us to take her back to Europe again when the house in the Hamptons has just been remolded and should be good enough.

Then the boss enters and instantly, the atmosphere of the room changes. The boss looks haggard and worn down by the pressure, and from the looks of him, he’s looking to take it out on some poor unfortunate who dares to swim against the tide. Attentively, we all take our seats as he put his briefcase on the table and takes out his battle orders. He looks up as if he isn’t even speaking to us, but speaking to others in another realm. “Ladies, gentleman… I trust everyone had a good weekend. Our first order of business today is the Frosty sugar coated cardboard flakes account, sales are falling and we need to know why and then, we need to turn it around. Henderson, (Henderson is his favorite lickspittle from research) what have you found out about the sales decline?”

“Well sir,” he begins cautiously and tentatively. If Henderson were to find even one testicle hiding somewhere in his body it would only die of loneliness. As he stood to address us, I wondered how tall he might be if he had had a spine. Besides, it perfectly acceptable to rip on imaginary co-workers, but I digress. “Sales are off by 20 percent and our market research shows that to the average consumer, Frosty sugar coated cardboard flakes taste like a Himalayan Yak has thrown up in their cereal bowl.”

The boss interrupts, “Recommendations Henderson?”

“A 10 percent increase in the prime demographic television advertising budget. The addition of a carton character, “Cody the cardboard cowboy” to the box for the children’s market and finally, adding one cup of bone meal per ton of flakes purchased from the rendering plant then adding a banner ad to the box, “Now Fortified with Calcium!”

“All too expensive Henderson,” the boss says interrupting, “What else have you got?”

Henderson is frightened now; his face looks like he’s about to get the hiccups, “We, we, we sell advertising on the back of the box to offset the costs sir. We hire an animation company to create a “Cody the Cardboard Cowboy” cartoon series. We give the series at no cost to a TV network with three of our Frosty sugar coated cardboard flakes advertisements already included. The network fills thirty minutes of air time at no cost. Frosty sugar coated cardboard flakes gets discount advertisements and best of all sir, if it fails, we can blame it on the animation company.”

The boss is pleased, “Very good Henderson, now run down to the executive washroom and pee for me.”

“Yes sir!”

“And Henderson,” the boss adds catching him going out the door, “Make some time in your schedule this afternoon, I’ll need my balls polished.”

Enthusiastically, Henderson exclaims, “Yes sir!”

“Now,” the boss says turning back to us, “the meathead and potatoes of this meeting. Four years ago…” but he is interrupted by our unbridled raucous laughter. “Settle down,” he says breaking into a smile himself. He doesn’t smile much, so this is a good sign. His colon is filled with twenty years of rich foods, long nights, good whiskey and anti-depressants. Maybe we will make it through this meeting without someone being fired after all.

“Ladies, gentlemen please,” he says, “Four years ago, we got our candidate elected. Running against the most unpopular President in American history it was a simple matter to find a clean sheet of paper and fill in the blanks. Voila’, a reformer, the polar opposite of the hated President. Where he was pensive, our reformer was relaxed, where he was inarticulate, our reformer was articulate. Where he was seen as short tempered and mean spirited, our reformer was warm and friendly with a family straight out of central casting. But as you well know, you can’t turn twenty years of marketing around on a dime. We had to make sure that our reformer faced an opponent just as grumpy and mean spirited as the President.

We took a poll and found the most unpopular candidate in the Republican Party. He was sent out on a speaking tour to frighten the party faithful. He was sent to Florida, to tell a room filled with seniors of the need to cut Social Security and despite our very best efforts our reformer could only pull dead even. So we went with the nuclear option, we found for this grumpy and mean spirited candidate the most idiotic Vice Presidential candidate in American history. Barely smarter than a cocker spaniel, she was the anchor tied to the candidates cement overshoes and ladies and gentleman it worked and it worked well!

But that was then and this is now, today four years later, our reformer is a popular as yesterday’s oatmeal, what are we going to do about that! We need answers people and we need answers right now!”

I’ve learned, to keep my head down in these skirmishes until the artillery stopped falling but Schmidt to my right, well he’s a man on his way up. That is, if he can learn to keep his mouth shut. He blurts out, “We could run the cocker spaniel woman!”

“Don’t be stupid!” The boss thunders at him, “it was all we could do just trying to keep her from falling out of the bus!

Then Mary stood and she’s got a good head on her shoulders, “Shouldn’t we concentrate on our own candidate? Couldn’t we paper over his failings and present him to the public as their champion again? A campaign where he is fighting for the people against the overwhelming might of the evil corporations. I mean, the people don’t seem to notice his campaign is funded by those corporations. They don’t seem to notice that he has surrounded himself with the very executives from those banks and corporations. Couldn’t we try, “Hope and change again?””

I wanted to duck under the table, the bosses face got red and he began to tremble with anger. With the crop of white hair on top of his head, from the shoulders up he took on the appearance of a very angry pimple. I feared what would happen next, when through tight pursed lips he answered slowly, filled with invective, “I don’t want to ever hear those words again unless you’re telling me, “I hope, I have change for the bus, now that I’ve destroyed my career.”

I felt sorry for her, but I was in the marketing business not the kamikaze business, so she was on her own here. I thought he was going to give her the axe right there and then but instead, he went to the blackboard at the far end to the boardroom and picked up a piece of chalk making a small circle on the board. Then he points at her, “You! Time out! Put your nose in that circle and thank your lucky stars I didn’t make it the brown circle, the one closer to the ground!”

The herd was thinning and I knew I would soon become the object of his fury. With red beady eyes he looked at me, asking in an accusatory fashion, “Well, what about you, what have you got?”

It was now or never, so I answered, “Right now in America, the most loathsome creature out there is the investment banker. He is more despised than drug dealers, gang members and nearly despised as much as a pedophile. Now, you find yourself a banker, a really, really rich banker. You make him unapologetic about his wealth, make him flaunt it. Dress him up and make him smarmy, almost a caricature of Simon Legree and when the people ask him for his tax returns, he answers as one from America’s entitled wealthy class and tells them arrogantly, “No!” He is the epitome of the one percent, he’s the one percent of the one percent and I promise you, your candidate cannot lose.

I was feeling pretty confident about this time, the redness had faded from him and I could tell he was thinking about my idea. The lines of tenseness were relaxing from his face. But the boss was not the type to pass out adda boys, everyone here had to taste the lash. He pondered my idea for a minute and I could tell I had stunned him with it. Then he turned on me saying, “Alright smart guy, tell me mister know it all, since you’ve got all the answers in your pocket, who should be the Vice Presidential candidate?

I was pushing my luck and I knew it, but I pushed my chair away from the table in a relaxed fashion and I crossed my legs. I looked casually down at my fingernails like I was contemplating my weekly manicure and answered him as if his question were a no brainer saying, “Paul Ryan.”

The boss got this strange look on his face as if he was about to fill his pants, “all right, he said, humbly this time, “what do you call this little plan of yours?”

“American democracy sir and tell Mary she can sit down now, will you?