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HOW TO SUCCEED IN THE AIR FORCE BY TRYING REALLY HARD

9/29/2012

How To Succeed...
   In 1950, flying home tourist class after a European dance tour, I sat beside a graying Air Force Lt. Col. My hitch in the Air Force Reserves had ended just before the Korean War began. When I mentioned that I’d been a bomber pilot, he said that pilots were needed and that if I went back in, I’d get an automatic raise to 1st lieutenant. I still try to imagine what life would have been like as a career military pilot.
   I’d always loved flying, but as a working (or out of work) dancer, there was no way be in the Reserves, and anyway, my flying days, like my dancing days, would end too soon. But old Air Force pilots got interesting assignments and had great job security. Dancers had no job security. If they couldn’t get into some related field, big trouble. I spent my post dance life teaching, yet always dreamt of flying.
   I recently read the memoir of a Col Topp (name changed at his request) USAF retired. He’d not been a pilot (because of eyesight), yet it gave me insights into life in the military. His entire 28-year career was a drive for high job ratings toward that next raise in rank, motivated by the knowledge that the Air Force was eager to find and reward excellence, and that job ratings were the main sign of it.
   Col. Topp went to school continuously, earning an MBA and a law degree, plus countless courses offered by the Air Force. He gave up weekends at home, family vacations, smoked collegial cigars, matched an alcoholic commanding officer drink for drink, retiring to the men’s room to vomit, then back for more because he needed the job rating the guy would give.
   With his family in NYC but assigned to a base near Washington, DC, the Commanding Officer of a NYC unit invited him to join. He sensed a trap. The CO had to bestow ratings on his staff officers, but could not give high ratings to all. Topp realized that he was being invited so that he, a newcomer, could take the fall. He walked away.
   It should be no surprise that the army, like every giant organization, has a giant bureaucracy in which the game of “career management” is fiercely played. Many a self-help book for civilians offers stratagems, like, Up The Organization, and How To Succeed in Business Without Really Trying. Col. Topps’s book is their military equivalent. It could be called How To Succeed in the Air Force by Busting Your Balls. Not everyone would find it as absorbing as I did. And since dancing has neither job security nor bureaucracy, I didn’t have to think about career management until I joined the faculty of NYU.

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WHY MITT ROMNEY DARE NOT RELEASE HIS TAX RETURNS

9/27/2012

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Why Mitt Romney Dare Not Release His Tax Returns
   When Mitt Romney is asked what Bain Capital does, he cites Staples. “We turned it around!” A recent piece in the NY Times is about a nasty form of bait and switch by Staples. They advertise a great price on a laptop, but when you try to buy one, unless you also buy a two-year service contract, they’re “out of stock.” Employees are warned that if they sell one without the contract, they’re fired.
   Romney mouths against China, but doesn’t mention that he’s had (may still have) a stake in CNOOK, a state-owned Chinese company that does business with Iran. Maybe he’s worried that the tough stand Obama is taking against Chinese dumping will hurt his Chinese interests.
   Forbes reports that Romney’s politically sensitive investments [wouldn’t you like to know!] were sold off in 2009 in preparation for his presidential run.   He's likely hiding his 2007, 2008 and 2009 returns because he made a winning bet against the housing market with his friend and fundraiser John Paulson, who made $15 billion by shorting the mortgage market, part of the foul deal in which Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank designed securities certain to go bad, which they then bet against. Of course he’d dare not release those tax returns.
   Forbes also reports that Romney’s 2011 tax return reveals that he gave charity thousands of shares of Sensata and Dunkin, companies bought out by Bain Capital. Donating the shares to charity allowed him to avoid paying capital gains taxes, but would have made his rate so low—far lower than claimed—that he rejected $1.8 million of the deduction so that he could report a tax rate of 14.1 percent.
   Romney holds securities in a Swiss bank whose value is based on foreign currencies, including the Russian ruble. If the dollar depreciates against those currencies, he profits big. How does the idea of a U.S. President with a big bet against the U.S. grab you?
   Becoming Teapublican candidate of the country he’s outfoxed repeatedly for years is no small achievement. And what a victory over his billionaire friends if he manages to become CEO of the whole country. He’ll have gone from being a minor wriggler in a nest of vipers all the way to top snake! Release his tax returns? He may have the scruples of a Mafia don, but he’s not crazy.
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   (TO SEE "MITT ROMNEY RAP," CLICK HERE)

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TAILSPIN

9/25/2012

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Tailspin
   If an inept pilot pulls back the stick and puts a plane into a steep climb with too little power, it will fall to one side, the lower wing stalled out but not the upper, causing a rapid corkscrew plunge straight down—a “tailspin.” In the early days of flight it was a killer. Instinct screams, “Pull back the stick!” but it’s already back. The world whirls until the crash. Curtains.
   A tailspin meant death until a nervy pilot, acting against intuition, slammed the stick forward. The spin stopped, the plane came out of its deadly dive and leveled out. Today, recovering from a tailspin is one of the first things a student pilot learns.
   Economies, like airplanes, can take off, gain or lose altitude, climb steeply, or go into a tailspin and crash. Recovering is surprisingly similar to dumping an airplane’s stick; instead of pulling back you push forward. And like in the air, it’s counter-intuitive and takes guts.
   It starts with a steep price climb, like tulips in 17th Century Holland, or real estate in 21st Century U.S.A. People buy, prices rise, those who don’t want the product, tulips or houses, buy to sell, or “flip,” for a profit. In the real estate boom, banks got into the game selling bad loans, which they bundled and sold, fueling the fire while eliminating risk to themselves. The bubble burst in 2008 wrecking markets, halting new construction, sales of materials, transportation, furniture, appliances, and all the jobs that went along. Pension funds, cities, counties, even countries who’d invested in junky mortgage-backed securities, were suddenly drowning in debt, and so were banks who’d bought “credit default swaps.” In the crashed economy, people stopped buying. Lacking customers, manufacturers stopped producing. People suffered and hoped for recovery. But how?
   The inept pilot pins his hopes on “the market” as Herbert Hoover did in 1929, causing worse suffering until FDR came in with a raft of stimulus packages, NRA, CCC, WPA, FHA, HOLC, PWA, even SSA—Social Security—the most successful program in history. Yet even that might not have been enough if not for WW-II, which justified high taxes and a still greater stimulus—building a military. The recovery lasted all the way into a post-war boom. But you don’t need a war to fix a crash, just horse sense and guts. Barack Obama has both and is fixing it. Four more years he’ll have the economy humming again.
   That is, unless confused Teapublicans get Mitt Romney elected, stick jammed into his lap, stuck in the “run its course” delusion. He still thinks GM and Chrysler should have gone bankrupt while the country spun into the worst crash ever. Imagining that corporations are people (and people are corporations?), he doesn’t understand that people feel pain, hunger, can starve, can die. He and his friends though, in their insulated estates with two-Cadillac elevators, won’t lose a thing. The irony is that his Teapublican base stands to lose all it’s got.
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(TO SEE "MITT ROMNEY RAP," CLICK HERE)

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"I WISH I COULD HAVE GONE TO VIETNAM." Mitt Romney

9/23/2012

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MITT ROMNEY (rt) AND FRIENDS, STANFORD UNIV, 1965

“I wish I could have gone to Vietnam.”
   George Washington established a powerful link between soldering and the American Presidency, and many presidents since have served in the military. Some were good presidents, others not, because running an army is not like running a country. And yet, it is mind-boggling that draft-evader, Mitt Romney, son of a governor, with more than six years of repeated draft deferments, and who never served a day, can say, “I wished I could have gone to Vietnam.”
   “Oh, really?”
   In the 1940s, every male had to register for the draft, and if you were classified 1A, at age 18 most were called up. It was a time when citizen-soldiers were ardently supported. A hitch hiker in uniform never had to wait more than minutes for a ride.
   Soldiers drafted in the mid-1960s were not as fortunate. They were also likely to go to Vietnam, a war that divided the country. Students were sitting on floors in the offices of their deans, and the draft was drawing public protests. But not by Mitt Romney at Stanford in 1965, comfy with the first of several educational deferments, laughing broadly while picketing in his white slacks and dark sport jacket, one hand in a pocket, the other holding a sign: "Speak out. Don't sit in."   Those around him, some having biked over for the photo shoot, are laughing too, all with the relaxed demeanor of young preppies taking a break.
   Today, no one is drafted and our professional military is widely admired. But there's also plenty of claptrap political lip service, including by presidential candidate, Mitt Romney, who dares to say, “I wish I could have gone to Vietnam.”
     Ann should wash out his mouth with soap.
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(TO SEE "MITT ROMNEY RAP," CLICK HERE)

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HEADLINES FROM AN ALTERNATE UNIVERSE

9/21/2012

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News Headlines from an Alternate Universe
   * Romney/Ryan ticket wins Florida by one vote.
   * Five to four Supreme Court decision declares Mitt Romney President.
   * Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg hits Chief Justice Roberts on head with gavel
   * Ronald Reagen Lunch Program revived: fries with two veggies: ketchup and pickle relish.
   * Taxes of top 1% reduced to 1%.
   * Federal tuition imposed on grades K-12.
   * 50 Trillion corporate cash repatriated tax-free.
   * Arizona Safe Neighborhoods Act nationalized. Half million undocumented aliens self-deport. Eleven million sent to Guantanamo.
   * Archer Daniels Midland loses thirty thousand farm hands. Workfare clients shipped to farms demand minimum wage. “We’re trying to help these people but they prefer being victims,” Pres. Romney declares.
    * Ship-building industry revived with 50 super luxe cruise ships each accommodating 300 passengers, crew of 2,000, Sheldon Adelson Casinos, sex kittens, and boy toys. Funded by College Tuition Tax.
   * Cadillac, Mercedes, BMW, Jaguar, and Lamborghini owners offered federally subsidized car maintenance. Paid for by tax on food stamps.
   * Ann Coulter becomes third female member of Augusta National Golf Club.
   * Country club membership fees made tax deductible as business expense.
   “Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck declare, “We’re soulmates!” Married by Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
   * Racing yacht, America’s Cup One, presented to President Romney by super pac, Restore Our Future. “We had a few bucks left over,” says Donald Trump.
`   * One thousand 500-acre retreats carved out of National Parks for sale to job-
creators. Funded by elimination of Environmental Protection Agency.
   * Black sea sturgeon imported to produce caviar in mini-sea bulldozed out of the Colorado Plateau Desert. Water piped from Canada in exchange for quadrupling bituminous oil flow through tar sands pipeline.
   * Pres. Romney deploys troops to chase jobless Iraq and Afghanistan vets out of “Romneyvilles” in D.C. and state capitals.
   * Zebra dressage exhibitions on White House lawn. Sponsored by Ann Romney.

                       (TO SEE "MITT ROMNEY RAP," CLICK HERE)

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GIRL WALKS INTO A BAR...

9/19/2012

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                 (TO SEE "MITT ROMNEY RAP," CLICK HERE)

Girl Walks Into A Bar...
    I am drawn to HIWs—highly intelligent women—and if they happen to have a keen sense of humor and are good looking, it’s a perfect storm. I read books they write, which can be alien and scary, like, Don Quixote, by Kathy Acker, poignant and inspiring, like Wild, by Cheryl Strayed, or funny and touching, like one I finished yesterday, Girl walks Into A Bar..., by Rachel Dratch.
    Dratch is a comic actor, and if not a household name, is recognized in public by fans of Saturday Night Live. In my HIW gallery, female comics have a special place; they intimidate me. Not all, I hasten to add. Lily Tomlin and Whoopi Goldberg can put me in stitches without losing one iota of lovable goddess-of-the-harvest appeal. But I’m daunted by those who play up their witch-bitch side like Phyllis Diller and Joan Rivers, and also chromium beauties like Tina Fey, Margaret Cho, and Sarah Silverman. Who’d dare be a loving companion to someone who sees through every move you make, and can turn anything into a laugh? Rachel Dratch, whose humor hisses and disses (herself, mostly) on every page, didn’t entirely answer that question, yet did relax me about it. Her book reveals a search for Mr Right, made difficult by shyness and what seemed to be an irresistible urge to go for numberless Mr. Wrongs,
    She starts with the usual pre-teen discovery of performing, followed by a stumbling path into show buz, to find herself among her kind in the improvisational nexus of Chicago’s Second City. This led to a 15-year stint at SNL, yet the sub-text is always Mr. Right, and how to find him among the (alcohol, drug, and sex) addicts, gal pals, and gays with whom she normally consorted and felt safe, and who cut her off from prospective loving partners.
    If she never quite worked that out, it sort of worked itself out despite her, and I began to understand that a wisecracking HIW can also be a vulnerable soul longing for a soul mate. Dratch’s book doesn’t quite have a fairy tale ending, yet she does get the one thing she most wants. If she writes a sequel, I’ll be an advance customer.

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COMBINE THE OLYMPICS AND PARA-OLYMPICS

9/16/2012

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(TO SEE "MITT ROMNEY RAP," CLICK HERE)

Combine the Olympics and the Para-Olympics
   Seven time Tour de France winner, Lance Armstrong, has opted out of his trial. Although the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency takes it as an admission of guilt, it leaves him free to maintain innocence and tend to his foundation for cancer victims.
   But it seems clear that the entire sport of cross country bike racing has been a research project for the latest drugs not detectable by tests, including “procedures” that drain an athlete’s blood, suffuse it with cloned human hormones that stimulate creation of oxygen-rich blood cells, and pump it back in before a race. Is this simply drugging, or something that may become a life-enhancing medical procedure some day? The only way to know is create two bicycle racing categories, one where anything goes, the other 'organic,' meaning drug and procedure free. Doctors would then be able to compare the two. If chemically treated athletes began dying at age 40 with shriveled testicles, it would be important data. If they lived long healthy lives and had healthy kids, doctors would learn from that too. But sports in general need a more basic re-conceptualizing.
   Since South African double amputee, Oscar Pistorius, ran a respectable sprint in the London Olympics on prosthetic legs (since beaten by another double amputee, Brazil’s Alan Oliviera), sports in which all athletes can be prostheticly enhanced must follow. In addition to racing shoes, ice skates, skis, and vaulting poles, there should be events for crutches, wheel chairs, and prosthetics. On the Brooklyn Technical High School swimming team, I learned that big feet are a big advantage; with my 9 ½s, no matter how many laps I put in, guys with size 12s could beat me. Swimmers already wear caps, special eye glasses, and take an hour to skin into low resistance synthetic fabric suits. Why not swim fins and web-fingered gloves?
   One day the Olympics and para-Olympics will be one glorious two-week celebration of talent, training, and grit. If events can be based on use of bicycles, racing sculls, and skate boards, why not human-powered airplanes? In 1979. Gossamer Albatross (see photo), crossed the English channel. Think of a hundred human-powered air craft—solo, dual, and team—racing from Chicago to New Orleans, or coast-to-coast! As long as the basic power is human, athletes should be free to use whatever gear they need. A brilliant new age of competition would dawn!

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MITT ROMNEY RAP

9/12/2012

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Mitt Romney Rap is in Public Domaine. It may be performed or adapted in whole or in part without permission.

Willard Romney, call him Mitt
There’s a guy who just won’t quit
Twelve years since he began
Running for Prez, now he’s The Man.
Candidate Republican

Wants to be President, next election
Twenty twelve, Secret Service protection
Doesn’t drink Coca Cola, or any hard liquor
A White Bread candidate, don’t snicker!
Time you started to appreciate,
White Bread made this country great.

Willard Romney, call him Mitt,
His great granddad was a Brit.
Came across the Atlantic ocean
Settled in Utah, “land o’ Goshen.”
Started up a family.
Got him a wife, then two, then three,
But the country wasn’t ready for polygamy,
When the hand of the Fed came down
All the Romneys had to skip town.
Jumped the border into Mexico
Bought property from Porfirio
Where Mitt’s daddy, George, was born,
But Mexico was too war torn
Emiliano Zapata
Turned it into a hot piňata
When he started his revolution.
There was only one solution,
Back again to Salt Lake City.
Pretty soon they’re sitting pretty.

Mitt’s dad became CEO
Of American Motors, don’t ya know,
Country in the Vietnam war,
Some against the draft, young Mitt for,
So he went to college, four years deferred,
Two more as a missionary, draft demurred.
Body bags coming back from ‘Nam,
Mitt’s dad elected gov’ner of Michigan,
Mitt goes to Harvard, marries Ann,
Never did serve as a soldier man.

Talked the talk, didn’t walk the walk
What you call a chicken hawk

Law and high finance degrees
Keeps his money in deep freeze
Bermuda, the Caymans, overseas.        -0--
Says he pays his income tax
But nobody knows the facts
Says he’s perfectly law abidin’
Maybe so, but what’s he hidin’?

One thing about Willard, call him Mitt,
You wonder, is this guy a twit?
That glassy stare, that nervous glance
That happy hair, those denim pants.

Wifey Ann says he’s a doll
And seriously conservative pol
Rich, but hey! he hasn’t got Billions
Only a few hundred Millions
Almost middle class, you see,
Like him, and her, and you, and me

Willard, Mitt Romney says,
Here’s what I’ll do if you make me Prez
Kill Obamacare, taxes fall
Kick out the aliens, jobs for all.
Just leave everything to me.
I’m a business man, know economy.
Campaigning now, when I get to you,
Listen politely, and please don’t boo.
Show me your best party manners,
Clap and cheer and wave Mitt banners.
The White House needs a white bread resident,
Do your duty, elect me president!
Time folks started to appreciate,
White bread made this country great!                     5

To see on YouTube, click HERE

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THE MAGNIFICENT MIDDLE

9/9/2012

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The Magnificent Middle
   Throughout the Democratic convention; all spoke of their commitment to the Middle Class. The rich sneer at it. The poor aspire to it. Some already in it want to rise out, others to drop out. What’s so special about the Middle Class?
   In his fascinating novel, The Disappearance, Philip Wylie imagines a world split into two parallel worlds in each of which the opposite sex disappears. Men without women kill each other. Women without men come together and weep. Extend this concept to a world split three ways, one for the poor, the rich, and the middle class. The poor might revert to savagery, but there are enough of them to build new civilizations. The rich, helpless to operate their mines, factories, corporate farms, mega-stores, and manipulate useless currencies, would be forced to learn basic survival skills or perish in a world taken over by runaway nature. The middle class would hit a speed bump. but soon replace or learn to do without their vanished princes, dictators, CEOs, and hedge fund managers.
   Our planet has environments from boiling hot to icy cold. Life edges into all of them but is wildly profuse in its milder middle.
   Our solar system has planets close to and far from the Sun. But only a middle planet, Earth, has Life, as another, Mars, may once have.
   Our Sun is sized between giant stars that soon burn out, and white dwarfs that live long lonely lives. Astronomers search for extra-terrestrial Life on middle-sized planets circling middle-sized stars.
   Our galaxy has a ravenous Black Hole in its densely populated core, and only a smattering of stars at its outer edges. Earth, teeming with Life, revolves with its Sun in a middle swathe.
   Life as a phenomenon in the middle is likely true for galaxies, which vary from small to immense. And if there is, as some scientists believe, a Multiverse of universes, those in the middle of some unimaginable spectrum will likely be the hosts of Life.
   Middle Class people produce architects, artists, builders, crafts persons, engineers, entrepreneurs, factory hands, doctors, farmers, fire fighters, historians, journalists, managers, painters, philosophers, plumbers, poets, police, preachers, programmers, salespeople, scientists, scholars, secretaries, soldiers, teachers, truck drivers, writers, and much much more. A dazzling spectrum.
   People chase money long after they have enough to live lives of ease. But what can money buy worth more than loving companionship, family, the joys of challenging work, learning, art, feeling kinship with all Life, a chance to explore its mysteries, and ponder its Creator? To richly experience one’s humanity, the magnificent middle class is the place to be.

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People Get Sick, They Cry, They Dance, They Live, They Love, and They Die!

9/6/2012

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       “People Get Sick, They Cry, They Dance,
         They Live, They Love, and They Die!”
   In Tampa, dominated by Teapublicans, the RNC was a 3-day infomercial trying to sell a naked emperor; they had only one recourse—lie. With his flair for striking the core, Bill Clinton summed up the Teapublican case: “We left the country in a mess. He didn’t clean it up fast enough, so fire him and put us back in.” As we used to say in show biz, “too true to be good.”
   On Day One, Michele Obama, who brings a grandeur to the White House not seen since Jacqueline Kennedy left it, uttered the line that will ring in every mind up to the moment of voting: "Being president doesn't change who you are. It reveals who you are."
   Senate candidate, Elizabeth Warren, who masterminded the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau but was blocked by Teapublicans from heading it, electrified the Convention when she cried, “No, Governor Romney, corporations are not people! People have hearts, they have kids, they get jobs, they get sick, they cry, they dance. They live, they love, and they die!”
   Sandra Fluke, who rocketed to national attention after pusmouth Limbaugh called her a prostitute for testifying before Congress, defined Teapublicans as an “offensive obsolete relic of the past,” and flashed star power, saying that you can have a president who either "has our back or turns his back," and “when he hears a young woman has been verbally attacked, thinks of his daughters—not his delegates or donors.”
   Tammy Duckworth, a wounded war vet running for Congress to replace deadbeat dad, Joe Walsh, had been a Blackhawk helicopter pilot and lost both legs in combat, life saved by her crew mates. She strode proudly to the dais on prosthesis legs, exposed the hypocracy of Romney, who ducked out of saying the word, “Afghanistan,” just as he’d ducked the draft during the Vietnam war, demonstrating for it, but wriggling out with one deferment after another. Duckworth said, “Barack Obama will never ignore our troops. He will fight for them.”
   Rep. Emanual Cleaver, a Methodist preacher, brought the convention to its feet imploring Obama to, "Speak of hope to the American people, because it is impossible for hope to overdraw its account in God's bank!”
   Tonight, Day Three, will climax with Barack Obama. Will Mitt Romney dare to watch?

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Author (Yuma, AZ, 1944)

Being 90 years in this world, with great kids, great grandkids, great wives (two, one at a time) and great memories, I wonder why some people seem to have stopped loving the U.S.A.? I will wonder in print right here. If you wonder too, or can provide some answers, please comment.
Stuart Hodes

       With my friend, Nero.
             April, 2012.
    Photo by Ray Madrigal