Fascists like to project the image of a rugged individual who can, in existentialist (don't the Republicans hate the poor people of Paris?) style, single handedly take on the bad guys and emerge victorious. The greedheads would have voters believe that only members of the Communist Party spout the clichà � that "We can negotiate together; or beg alone."
In San Francisco, renters in low income housing are becoming alarmed that they will be evicted despite laws designed to prevent such ruthless possibilities. Recently the Berkeley Tenants Union handed out fliers that assert: "Policy Change Will Lead to Evictions." The Berkeley City Council is considering making changes to the Demolition Ordinance. The flier states: "The Sierra Club, NAACP, Neighborhoods Council, Berkeley Architectural Heritage Assn., and East Bay Law Center are also speaking out against these new drafts" of changes for the Demolition Ordinance. (For those who want to fact check this item do a Google News search for "San Francisco evictions" and/or read up on the topic at berkeleytenants.org.)
Some (partisan?) online sources assert that in order to be able to make the claim that evictions are down, if all the tenants in one building are tossed out en masse, that adds just one to the total number of evictions.
If a renter had survived having his home foreclosed and then got evicted from a rental unit, would that person feel like one of the handful of survivors of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima who went to stay with friends or relatives in Nagasaki?
The conspiracy theory folks, no doubt, would have folks believe that the austerity budget cuts that were made at mainstream media news outlets are making it easier for unpopular changes in the laws to be made because people (such as the citizens of Berkeley) are less well informed than they used to be when there was a local daily newspaper and the world famous Berkeley Barb underground weekly newspaper informing readers about all the latest efforts of "the Establishment" to exploit the people who were supposed to be well informed voters.
Ross Thomas wrote a mystery titled "The Fools in Town Are on Our Side" and we think of that title every time the boobs recite the talking point that Fox and Rush Limbaugh are the mainstays of the Free Press in America.
The folks at the Amalgamated Conspiracy Theory Factory are anxious to get in on the ACA criticism trend, but they can't decide if they will assert that the website troubles are due to hacking activity by the Chi-Com, the Ruskies, or some unscrupulous Republicans.
Wasn't "The Man of La Mancha" a famous communist documentary film about workers being exploited right before the Spanish Civil War started?
While wandering around Berkeley, last weekend, we encountered the folks from Story Geeks. We didn't have the necessary time to expand that into a full length column but we thought they were worth a mention at Halloween time.
Could the vampire lore explain how a person, who claims to be a wild impulsive 28 years old journalist, could remember selling his first news photo more than 50 years ago?
[Note from the Photo Editor: A Halloween Season photo of a tree's root that resembles a Gila monster will illustrate our contention that a vivid imagination is needed to believe in ghosts, vampires and werewolves but it is a patriotic duty to believe official assertion that all conspiracy theories are the product of creative fictionalizing.]
Nietzsche wrote: "A sedentary life is the real sin against the Holy Ghost."
Now the disk jockey will play Sheb Wooley's "Flying purple people eater," Buchanan and Goodman's "The Flying Saucer," and the Byrd' "Mr. Spaceman." We have to go check out the rumor that, thanks to a prototype experiment for the witness protection program, Enesto "Che" Guevara was given an identity that, ultimately, provided him with a chance to be a member of the city council at a small University town, in California and that he died peacefully there in his sleep, long after the Sixties were over. Have a "bump in the night" type week.
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