True and False Conservatism

Conservatism used to mean something quite different than it does today.  It used to be that liberals were for a rapid rate of progress but that conservatives were for little to no progress.  They would allow for progress only if convinced it were absolutely necessary.  This is very different from the sort of right wing conservatism we’ve seen in the past 35 years.  Ronald Reagan instituted a “revolution” of sorts of gingoism and racial bigotry opening his campaign in 1980 in Philadelphia, Mississippi.  His goal, which he achieved, was a tax burden shift from the rich to the poor.  So he eliminated tax deductions for credit card dept for the poor, but allowed rich people to be paid on stock options so they would only be taxed at fifteen percent and then only if they sold their stocks.  Trump can’t complain his is the biggest tax cut this country has ever known.  That honor went to George Bush.  I was half in favor of that tax cut because it helped the poor with rebate checks even.  There was a news feature on TV that told of all the savings for the average American that would “go away” if we ever went back to Clinton tax rates.  But you must remember the Clinton economic surge was brought about after hiking taxes on a broad front.  It looks like Thom Hartman may be right.  Tax hikes are good for the economy.  They certainly keep salaries for the very rich within reasonable bounds.  Thom suggested a twenty to one ratio is about right between the richest executive and the poorest paper pusher or cleaner of toilets.  But you know conservatism is more than just about having a war on the poor, though that’s a big part of it.  I doubt whether Buckley in the fifties and sixties would have summed up his version of conservatism as “a declared war on the poor”.   But we know there is the gingoism and militarism that does with it.  They want to go to war as long as they don’t have to fight it.  To them war coverage is just another entertainment show for them.  And then there is the paranoia and hatred of minorities such as Mexicans and Moslems.  There is an extreme religious intolerance among these people.  Only in one area does the right make a little sense, or maybe two.  These are in the areas of homosexual marriage and abortion.  And I am solidly behind the conservatives in these two areas because they are “traditional American values”.   The trouble is today most who say they want to go back to the fifties don’t have the vaguest idea of what President Eisenhower was all about or what the news papers generally published in those days.  Here is one more area of conservatism that is anything but.  These people are statists.  They want restricted freedom of the press and they want to take away our rights to privacy and freedom of molestation from the federal government.  They seem to want to throw civil liberties out the window.  They are hypocrites.  They want to throw people who smoke one joint in jail but are all in favor of the big drug companies peddling god knows what unsafe and untried products on us all, and their team full of doctors saying that you too have to be placed on a staten drug even though they are dangerous in a whole lot of areas.  They favor GMO foods and don’t even think we have the right to know what’s in our food.  These people want a hand in glove relation between congress and business but also want government to be secretive.  I would say as it pertains to big government that “Government should be a big as it needs to be to get the job down”.  We shouldn’t ideally be afraid of our government after all we voted for it.  There is something decidedly undemocratic among today’s conservatives.  In this they are very opposite to the Goldwater conservatives.  This is where I first heard the term “grass roots movement” watching accounts of Goldwater’s campaign.  These people are not Goldwater.  

I turned on Norman Goldman a few minutes late.  Michael Flynn has all of the legal liabilities as does Manifort but he wasn’t charged as KNX news said he would be.   Norman repeated my charge that “It’s not what you do but who it is that’s doing it that matters”.  Norman was just using a different version of it.  Norm defines terrorism is “violence” directed to gain a political aim.  I would disagree only to say that the sort of terrorism does just disgusts and horrifies you.  It isn’t to achieve any political end. 

On Days of our Lives you had two people resurrected from the dead.  One was Eve Larson, who got married to Damos before he was murdered.  She tells a very convincing story.  The only question is why she kept the relationship secret.  Then there were those tracking down Will Horton who ran into Elvis who lived in Memphis and used Dr Ralph’s services to resurrect himself from the dead. 

DECADES OF ROCK -released November 1, 2017

Rock With Me Henry (as played on KPFK)

Feel So Good (Shirley and Lee)

Pretty Little Woman Come A Knock, Knock, Knocking (artist)

Loui Loui (Richard Berry)

Witchcraft  (original 1955 version)

Sexy Ways (Hank Ballard)

Big John (Jimmy Dean)
The Jerk (The Larks)  

Searching For My Baby (Percy Sledge)

Saturday’s Child (Monkees)
Space Cowboy (Steve Miller)

I Want To Take You Higher (Ike & Tina Turner)

Spanish Boots (Jeff Beck)  

My Love Is Alive (Gary Wright)  

Speed of Life (David Bowie)

In Circles (George Harrison)

Temporary Secretary (Paul Mc Cartney)

Heart Breaker (Pat Benetar)

Run Like Hell (Pink Floyd)

I know what you’re thinking.  This album would have “worked” better thirty-five years ago.  The cover is of three empty big binder notebooks that are different colors and each has a span of years on it.  The first is 1953 -1962 and then 1963 - 1972 and the third is 1073 - 1982.   There is a double space typed document or papers that have red corrections of circles and word substitutions and insertions.  On the back besides the track listings are a showing of the front album covers of every album the Federation has released going back to "Honky Tonk No 9" almost a year ago.  It covers songs that either “slipped through the cracks” or else were not in my focus back in 2006 when most of these compilations were being posted to blogs.  “In Circles” dates to the Beatle years and was written when the Beatles were off in India.  “Henry” is not the usual version you hear but an earlier version with a few more offensive expressions in it.   Chronology is approximately in order.  This is November 4th and we are expanding the number of tracks to nineteen because we can get away with it.  Even if the average length of song was four minutes, which it isn't,  we could still get them on one CD.  These are two songs that fell through the cracks. "The Jerk" and "Space Cowboy".  Today's quiz question is "What was the original song for several hours posted before we added "Loui Loui?"  On Gary and Shannon they had a lot of trivia questions about the LA and Brooklyn Dodgers.  This is the day for it.