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Life Arts    H4'ed 6/12/13

The case of the electronic eavesdropping

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Bob Patterson
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So what?
So what?
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So what? by Bob Patterson

Cut social programs; spend billions in Afghanistan

In 1940, on June 14th, the German Army rolled into Paris and a photograph of the Nazi soldiers marching down the Champs Elise would be an appropriate metaphor for illustrating how many rank and file members of the Democrat Party felt this week as they watched the President and some important D-Senators put a retroactive stamp of approval on George W. Bush's Patriot Act.   Obama has done what Dubya could not.   Obama has gotten the Democrats to go along with the Bush war policies.  

In the book "Paris in the Third Reich," by David Pryce-Jones there is one particular photo that shows a very somber and sullen group of people listening to music in a park in the fall of 1940.   You could take a similar picture at the local Democrats club this weekend, eh?  

Due to a commitment to act as tour guide of San Francisco for a fellow high school classmate and his wife, we decided to post our week in review Friday column a bit early this week and as we prepared to do so we thought about how it might have been a tad premature to retire "write for Combat Newspaper" off our bucketlist.   Perhaps we will get a chance to (someday) cross-post our columns on a digital Combat 2.0 version of that history making newspaper.   On the other hand perhaps we will (someday) be offered a lucrative chance to become a columnist for the Paris Zeitung.   ("Bevus, did he just say "Huffington Post"?) 

While doing the fact checking for our custom tailored tour of San Francisco, we have been desperately trying to revive the mental set we held when we first arrived in the area and so we have been reviewing the music from that era.   Head shops, hippie paraphernalia, and psychedelic posters were just as ubiquitous back then, as was the song "Age of Aquarius."

At the beginning of this century, we often heard the kids at UCLA say:   "If you can remember the Sixties . . . you weren't really there." 

How the heck can we possibly resurrect the vibes that made San Francisco in the late Sixties so special?   Can a retired school teacher from New Jersey possibly understand what it was like to be in the vortex of the pop culture scene?  

We never did look up the guy from our college who had been a fellow worker on the college newspaper and yearbook.   We heard he was working in San Francisco and had devised a thing called the "A-Z pub craw."   Later we learned that he had been working on a small local magazine devoted to (mostly) Rock'n'Roll music.  

Our fellow alumni had a wide assortment of duties for that publication and (allegedly) one of them was to act as "handler" for that magazine's most illustrious writer who described the unique experience that was San Francisco in the late Sixties in a book that was about beer and loafing in Las Vegas.

How can we possibly help our guests to recall the crazy time when it was unpatriotic to question America's involvement in a war half a world away?   Now, of course, America and the politicians know that only a matter such as taking a side in the Sunni vs. Shiite religious question is worth the investment of time, money, and military resources. 

A member of Berkeley's art community (ironically?) recently gave some tour guide advice to the World's Laziest Journalist which made the assertion:   "Don't take visitors directly to the City Lights Bookstore."   Of course not!   First we'll take them to the Golden Gate Bridge . . . then we'll head directly to the North Beach area.

Unfortunately we must gently warn our pal, Jersey Bill, that one of his strongest tourist requests will have to be eliminated from the agenda.   Due to the unbelievable work load daunting the staff at the Amalgamated Conspiracy Theory Factory (located at a secret location in the Berkeley Hills area) campus, we won't be able to provide a stealth visit to the legendary underground facility. 

A conspiracy theory bubble is being experienced during 2013.   It is a bull market for conspiracy theories.   Not only is the staff busy with commemorative work during the fiftieth anniversary of the Magic Bullet, they are being overwhelmed by work focusing on recent current events.  

A radical element of the Amalgamated Conspiracy Theory Factory staff is (respectfully) suggesting that the fellow called "Edward Snowden" is actually a fictional creation designed to serve in the capacity of a Judas Goat to Legitimatize the Democratic Party's implementation of the Bush Administration war policies.   What if Snowden is a combination Trojan Horse, false flag, clandestine operation all rolled into one that will soon do the Cheshire Cat disappearing act and never becomes available to answer such perplexing questions as why the hell didn't the bloke just get filthy rich by writing a self help book for people who in the Golden Age of Austerity Budgets desperately want to parlay a high school dropout life into a 17 grand a month cushy gig? 

Even the top rated members of the Amalgamated Conspiracy Theory Factory Research and Development Department are baffled by the question:   "What the hell can a dropout do that's worth that much austerity budget era salary?"

Are Americans expected to believe that the guy was a very highly paid example of a digital rent-a-cop who just sits at a desk and waits for an alarm notice to appear on his computer screen?   At which time, like a second baseman in a double play, he will notify his boss that the megadata has hit the fan? 

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BP graduated from college in the mid sixties (at the bottom of the class?) He told his draft board that Vietnam could be won without his participation. He is still appologizing for that mistake. He received his fist photo lesson from a future (more...)
 

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