ooooh. man-crush!

We met at night at his family’s ornate adobe-walled palace in Ouja, north of Riyadh. M.B.S. [Mohammed bin Salman] spoke in English, while his brother, Prince Khalid, the new Saudi ambassador to the U.S., and several senior ministers shared different lamb dishes and spiced the conversation. After nearly four hours together, I surrendered at 1:15 a.m. to M.B.S.’s youth, pointing out that I was exactly twice his age. It’s been a long, long time, though, since any Arab leader wore me out with a fire hose of new ideas about transforming his country.
-- Thomas L. Friedman, the Moustache of Understanding

Saudi Arabia is the most fanatical, retrograde theocracy in the world today.  It’s no wonder that a bloodthirsty autocrat like Salman would rule such a kingdom. But how does Friedman fit in with all this? Why would he want to put his reputation on the line for such a dodgy miscreant as Salman?  He knows the Saudis are funding extremist madrassas around the world. He knows they’re arming and training jihadists to fight in Syria, and prosecuting a genocidal war of annihilation in Yemen. He also knows that 15 of the 19 hijackers on 9-11 came from Saudi Arabia, the petri-dish from whence all Salafist terrorism emerges. He knows all of this, and yet, he still provides cover for the man by writing a lengthy Homage to a Saudi Dictator in his weekly article at the Times. Why?

friedman's-paean-to-a-saudi-tyrant

mustache of understanding

That's clear. 'We' are the Law

“The law is clear: Director Mulvaney is the acting director of the CFPB,” 
-- Sarah Huckabee Sanders, White House press secretary 

White House budget director Mick Mulvaney was confronted with outraged protests on Monday as he arrived at CFPB headquarters for his first day as "acting director" of the agency—a title also claimed by Leandra English, the CFPB's deputy director.

CFPB-agency-power-struggle-begins

coming soon GEEZER*RADIO

Imagine its 1971, you are somewhere in Tampa, Florida, and you are stoned out of your mind......



as heard on WUSF Underground Railroad, 1971
:the lyrics in their entirety
http://www.rkdn.org/titanic%20lyrics.htm

Sex Panic!

the boundary between cultural tolerance/intolerance blurs and shifts with each passing revelation, as the litany of sins, ancient or recent, cardinal or venial, snowballs into an avalanche of aggrieved, undifferentiated accusation—a stampeding herd of “Me-Tooists.” Successive waves of long-forgotten gropes and slurps now overwhelm the news channel chyrons, leaving us with the sense that no greater crime against humanity is possible than an unsolicited horndog lunge of the hand or tongue, some of them from twenty or thirty years past but divulged only in the past few weeks.

the-great-american-sex-panic-of-2017

Black Friday

Stay tuned for an important GeezerNation public service announcement:

Congratulations consumers citizens for your glorious achievement on this historic day of maximum patriotism. As we head home from the malls and super-stores that sustain us and our way of life, we can rest assured that we have performed our most profound and meaningful duty for the Homeland.

Spanksgiving Day Poem

I’ve got my daughter on the Thanksgiving trip
Down from the Catskill Mountains,
Where the holy days are every day
In the mountains of the shroud heights.
Where at the season’s end we gave thanks
To trees and salamanders and red efts,
And the last frogs before the birches and beeches turned,
And the oaks and the maples,
The wild orchards of the last berries, and bluestone walls
Built for property’s tomb
Falling into streams where the rain runs free,
Speaking in language which to others is babble.

To her and I, raise a glass: with redbark wine we drink,
And with whitebark wine and yellow-wine-talking leaves.
It is the nature of a grand speech to say, Thanks to you
Who have no big talk or tradition
Of one day only to give thanks
But give love and make love and spread love
In every romance of morning and every sun setting
And every season going and coming.

Such is Thanksgiving.  The rest is an old rug
Walked on with annual precision
At the sound of a dying clock.
So I say to her, let’s laugh and call it Spanksgiving.
Which is what it is, this punishment of travel and shop.
In the cars they’re all mad, beating themselves to get
Somewhere going to families ignored for the year long,
Smacking heads that look like asses against walls
Of airlines, roads, red lights, green lights, colors
That have nothing to tell except stop and go, but mostly stop.

We shall give a sweet spanking
To all who we love, with whom we laugh and sing.
Not a hard hit, just a slap with bright
Twinkling eyes, a love slap.
There’s no way forward for such a holiday
Except to mock and laugh.
For it is mad to say thanks in the tradition
that locks history at bay.
And there it is, howling, contorted, unrecognizable:
A feathered fearing tortured creature in a cage,
And a fearing people laid with tethers,
Running for life at the Year Zero
Of the first Thanksgiving, when the mad dash
Called history across this continent started.

-- Christopher Ketcham

why don't you go eat some tofu or something...

live from a rusted out garage