He coudn't slow up the aging process

January 5, 2007 Rants
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1. On January 18, 2007 I will be 71 years old. For years I have followed your example and have done everything I can to slow up the aging process. Like you, I do not drink I do not smoke and I do not unnecessarily expose my skin to the sun. You want to see what sun does to the skin, look at the wrinkles on a 60 year old woman who spent her youth getting what they call “a healthy looking tan.” Healthy looking tan today --- wrinkled like a prune tomorrow.

This morning, before the sun was up, I put on my snowmobile suit and wooly hat and mittens and rode my bicycle for 40 minutes. I do that every morning it isn’t storming. And you have heard me say that three times a week I also go to exercise class where I wave my arms and lift my legs in time to music. You have heard me say that for over two years I have not eaten a bite of ice cream. For over 2 years I have not had a cookie or a donut or anything that tastes good. For all practical purposes, I might as well be a hippie.

But --- in spite of the fact that I have skinny bird legs and skinny scrawny arms and no pot belly, I’m still 163 pounds. I couldn’t understand it until I asked my wife Marsha, The Almost Perfect Woman, where I could be keeping all that weight. And Marsha gave me a warm, intimate smile and said, “Extra chins.”

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You can hear humorist Robert Skoglund's radio program on his web site. Garner, Django, Basie and humorous social commentary.

http://www.thehumblefarmer.com/ThisWeek.html

Fascism in Italy in the 1920s

While reading in my Encyclopedia Britannica about Salvatore Quasimodo, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1959, I also learned that Fascism is a radical totalitarian political philosophy that combines elements of corporatism, extreme nationalism, anti-liberalism, militarism and authoritarianism. Unfortunately, Fascism is much like streptococcus bacilli: most of us don’t even know it when we see it and even specialists in the field might quibble over a comprehensive definition.

Because I have recently not only been forced to take off my shoes before boarding a plane but have been patted down to strip me of my toothpaste and bag balm --- arguably meaningless symbolic gestures implemented to acclimate a population to mindless obedience --- I read further, hoping to learn to identify Fascism and thereby determine if it could be gaining a foothold in this land of the free and the home of the brave. This is what I read.

Around 1921 an Italian Prime Minister named Giolitti permitted the usual government influence on elections by corruption. This gave Mussolini and his fledgling fascists a slight edge and they immediately attacked Giolitti for his support of the League of Nations (a world government organization) and for his belief in the methods of parliamentary democracy. Gradually building up a nationwide party organization containing extreme undesirables, the fascists nearly always had more money than their opponents and moved with greater ruthlessness, although, at every step, Mussolini claimed to be the defender of law and order.

The industrialists were naturally in sympathy with a movement that stood for lower wages and fat, padded contracts. Although the economy had improved it was to their advantage to create the impression that without Fascism, economic breakdown was right around the corner, caused by Socialist incompetence.

The uneducated were naturally receptive to Fascist propaganda and disorderly elements on every level of society welcomed the violence and its attendant opportunity to plunder. Even then, it was not the strength of the Fascists that assured their success but the disorganization and silence of their opponents in the intellectual community. Italians discovered only much later that handing over power to people who claimed to be protecting their country with murder and openly proclaimed their contempt of parliamentary institutions would cost their country dear.

For years there was no overt establishment of dictatorship. Only gradually were old ways and old institutions changed and nothing was done abruptly that might alarm people or make them realize that a revolution had taken place. The wealthy were courted by cutting their taxes. For permission to become rich and corrupt the gerarchi supported their leader’s irresponsible decisions. The inefficiency and graft of his department heads were accepted as inevitable.

When an Italian was killed by bandits in the Balkans, Mussolini and other indignant, patriotic profit-seeking Italians had their long-hoped-for excuse to go to war. To his credit, until they strung him up by the heels, Mussolini’s self confidence never waned and he continued to have a pathetic trust in his own powers of intuition, even after plunging his country into that disastrous war for which he was obviously so unprepared.

As you know, the Encyclopedia Britannica is a fat volume, there is much more in there about the rise of Fascism in Italy, but a continuation and refining of my studies would be no more than an unproductive, academic exercise. Because --- in reading the few paragraphs above, you can see that nothing that I have copied there could suggest a parallel between the rise of fascism in Italy in the 1920s and what is happening in our country today.

You may sleep well tonight. It simply couldn’t happen here.

Robert Karl Skoglund -- August 21, 2006

Jon Stewart, Bill Moyers -- The radical right wing of the Republican party has been trying to undermine public broadcasting for 25 years.

Thursday, June 30, 2005

Synopsis: The radical right wing of the Republican party has been trying to undermine public broadcasting for 25 years.

Until now, in the 35 year history of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting which is divided, given the administration, between Republicans and Democrats, no one in a position of authority has attempted to work from the inside to undo public broadcasting.

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Jon Stewart: Is it in your mind that the government, truly has a plan to dismantle Public Television as it exists now. Or is this a feeling of we will- put it under new management and change the way it does business.

Bill Moyers: The radical right wing of the Republican party has been trying to undermine public brodcasting for 25 years. They failed when Richard Nixon tried it because there were still moderate Republicans who leapt to the defense of public broadcasting, believing in things public. Newt Gingrich tried it in 1994 when he became the speaker of the house... at that time there was a Democrat in the white house and he didnt have the means to do it. This time, they've got the senate, they've got the house, they've got the executive branch and they are very close to seriously crippling the effectiveness of our local stations to do their job right

...............Snip......................

Stewart: Is there any legitimacy to the idea that public broadcasting does live in the domain of liberals, or is it in your mind not a liberal conservative Democrat Republican organization, its one of natural muckraking and natural uh... looking to the disinfranchised?

Moyers: I wish there were more of that in public broadcasting. I wish there were more of that in all of journalism. But serious journalism, real journalism, Jon scares the hell out of these guys. They just don't want you out reporting. You know what really got the chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting upset? He said this to the Washington Post, was when I did a report, a segment about working people in a small town in Pennsylvania who were losing their jobs, losing the quality of their schools, losing their way of life. And we just did, what I would call a straight forward report. He told the Washington Post he was sitting at home watching that and it was more than he could take. He called it that old mantra of the right wing, liberal advocacy journalism. He confused liberalism with journalism. And they're always doing that because they do not want reporting that defies the party line.

Stewart: But don't all administrations, Democrat or Republican, not want reporting that defies the party line?

Moyers: Absolutely. Absolutely.

Stewart: But the others are less agressive in trying to combat it?

Moyers: Until now, in the 35 year history of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting which is divided, given the administration, between Republicans and Democrats, no one in a position of authority has attempted to work from the inside to undo public broadcasting. Thats the difference. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting is supposed to be a firewall between the journalist and the government. This is the first time in my history, I've been with it 35 years since I was President at its creation, from inside the Corporation for Public Broadcasting they have tried to dismantle that firewall.

Stewart: Now do you think-- the interesting thing to me strikes me as, its a new strategy. In Nixon's day, the strategy with the press seemed to be "lets seal the well, lets not let any leaks out". This administration seems to feel like "You know what? Leaks are going to get out there, lets poison the well". You know what I mean? Lets discredit-- Its almost like they're saying- "Lets not just put a cap on the news, lets discredit the whole business".

Moyers: And what doesn't have credibility today is the truth. I mean, they don't mind if the truth is out in one sense, because they've got a counter to it, the right wing media. 90% of talk radio is right wing. They've got there own- They've got their own Fox News Channel. Uh so they can just ignore the truth or they can batter it down until it is just dying.

Great Web Page. Everything you want to know about any year.

I stumbled on this web page while looking up events for the year 1916. It gives you an outline of most anything you'd want to know about any year.

http://www.answers.com/topic/2004#science

Sample for 1811, the year my house was built:

population

Napoleon decrees that foundling hospitals in France shall be provided with turntable devices (tours) so that parents can leave unwanted infants without being recognized or questioned. Millions of infants have been drowned, smothered, or abandoned, depriving the French armies of potential recruits.

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Think about it.