Flashback to this day in 1975....

Saigon was falling to the communists, and "boat people", "killing fields" and "re-education camps" were to follow. Noam Chumpsky, Howard Zinn, and associated commie minions were high-fiving each other.

But what obsessed Time, Newsweek, and US News And World Report at the time?

Global cooling!

A fine short history of warming and cooling scares has recently been produced. It is available here.

If we had the media then that we do now...

Scores Killed, Hundreds Injured as Para-Military Extremists Riot in Boston Area

BOSTON , April 20, 1775 (AP)

National guard units seeking to confiscate a cache of recently banned weapons were ambushed on April 19th by elements of a paramilitary extremist faction. Military and law enforcement sources estimate that 72 were killed and more than 200 injured before government forces were compelled to withdraw.

Speaking after the clash Massachusetts Governor Thomas Gage declared that the extremist faction, which was made up of local citizens, has links to the radical right-wing tax protest movement. Gage blamed the extremists for recent incidents of vandalism directed against internal revenue offices. The governor, who described the group's organizers as "tea baggers," and “white separatists”, has issued an executive order authorizing the summary arrest of any individual who has interfered with the government's efforts to secure law and order.

The military raid on the extremist arsenal followed widespread refusal by the local citizenry to turn over recently outlawed weapons. Gage issued a ban on military-style assault weapons and ammunition earlier in the week. This decision followed a meeting earlier between government officials and magistrates at which the governor authorized the forcible confiscation of illegal arms. One government official, speaking on condition of anonymity, pointed out "none of these people would have been killed had the extremists obeyed the law and turned over their weapons voluntarily."

Government troops initially succeeded in confiscating a large supply of outlawed weapons and ammunition. However, troops attempting to seize arms and ammunition in Lexington met with resistance from heavily armed extremists who had been tipped off regarding the government's plans. During a tense standoff in Lexington 's town common, National Guard Colonel Francis Smith, commander of the government operation, ordered the armed group to surrender and return to their homes. The impasse was broken by a single shot, which was reportedly fired by one of the right-wing extremists.

Eight civilians were killed in the ensuing exchange. Ironically, the local citizenry blamed government forces rather than the extremists for the civilian deaths. Before order could be restored, armed citizens from surrounding areas had descended upon the guard units. Colonel Smith, finding his forces over-matched by the armed mob, ordered a retreat.

Governor Gage has called upon citizens to support the state/royal joint task force in its effort to restore law and order. The governor has also demanded the surrender of those responsible for planning and leading the attack against the government troops. Samuel Adams, Paul Revere, and John Hancock, who have been identified as ringleaders of the extremist faction, remain at large.

The Tea Parties and The Liberal Media

On April 15, 2009, something happened that has not happened before in the memory of living Americans. For the first time, Middle America took part in a mass national protest. Millions of people actually got off their butts and took a public "right wing" stand about something.

In the recent past, the national stage was filled with white-hating Black protests like the "Million Man March" (sic), illegal alien sedition and treason protests, man-hating so called "feminist" protests, gay and lesbian protests, etc. -- all of them smaller than the Tea Parties, all of them with much more top-down organization than the Tea Parties, and all of them "progressive" or "Politically Correct" (barf). The liberal mainstream media reported on these ad nauseum, and quite sympathetically.

This time, however, something happened that scared and enraged the largely liberal and often anti-American national media. Middle America (the ones deemed stupid and racist by the national lamestream media) actually stood up in a mass protest of our government's irresponsible use of tax dollars.

As newsworthy as this is, however, most of the national media ignored the mass protests or had their reporters dismiss them as racist-driven media events. The New York Times and other major newspapers buried reports of the Tea Parties in the back pages. Where there was coverage, it was hostile. A CNN reporter, Susan Roesgen, asked a protester a question, interrupted his answer, and started barraging him with Politically Correct questions and a semi-lecture. Was she fired? No. Why would they fire her? She was doing what she was sent out to do.

(UPDATE 7/16/09: I was wrong, CNN has let her go! I have to give them credit for that.
More from Ace Of Spades here)

Actress and "Air America" (sic) bitch Janeane Garafalo opined that the whole Tea Party phenomenon was planned and attended by people who don't want to support our "Black"president. In other words, the Tea Parties are racist. That is ridiculous, but typical of the Commiecrat Left.

However, there IS a racial aspect to the Tea Parties, but not the aspect that the dishonest bitch will ever admit. Decent Middle Americans are tired of paying for the race-based "Affirmative Action" welfare plantations that leftist politicians and people like Garafolo have used and continue to use for political power. For years, decent and honest people who pointed this out were smeared by Garafolo and her media allies. But perhaps the times are changing. Perhaps a significant number of decent Americans are no longer willing to be afraid to speak out for fear of being called racist. Perhaps they are beginning to see that they are actually the victims of reverse racism more often than not. Perhaps they are tired of being identified as American villains and as the world's villains.

Middle America has had to bear the brunt of the racial and economic problems that the Left has foisted upon America for the last two decades (in other words, ever since the Left's idealized Sandinistas and Soviets fell apart and they changed tactics and focused upon the Achilles Heel of race relations). It is just possible that Middle America is starting to wake up. And this despite most television networks either ignoring the protests or dealing with them in a dishonest and condescending manner. Having been denigrated, robbed of their rights, and indoctrinated in "multicultural" (multicommunist) guilt, Middle America has for two decades been on the retreat. Perhaps that is changing.

So what finally got these people concerned? No, Janeane Garafolo, it wasn't anxiety about "people of color", you lying bitch. In fact, the Asian American and Mexican and other Hispanic American people in my area who run businesses were there in droves too. No, what got these people concerned was and still is the ways their tax dollars are being used. They are tired of their money being stolen by the government for things of which they disapprove. Of course, the liberal Demunists and RINO Republicans in the government have always used taxpayers' dollars to support their own political and social agendas. But now we are in an economic crisis, and the great masses appear to be paying attention.

For example, anyone with half a brain understands that the threat of Affirmative Action legal shakedowns (the stick), combined with indulgent underwriting by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (the carrot), led banks to grant loans to too many people who could not pay them back. In addition, politically rigged unions and poor management have led some of our leading industries into near bankruptcy. George Bush responded to these two crises with an allegedly one-time bailout for failing financial institutions and for the struggling automobile industry. However, Barack Obama took this many steps further, and by spending more money at one time than had been spent in total by all other presidential administrations in our history, guaranteed that generations to come will be strapped by a monstrous, insurmountable debt. Why? In order to bolster our economy on a short-term basis. In addition to wild spending of an unprecedented nature, Obama also fired the CEO of an auto company and essentially gave control of the company to the U.S. government. Since then, the U.S. government has enacted policies that require banks to go under government control.

According to polls, the American people disapproved of bailouts, discovering in the process that what the American people want is irrelevant to America's national politicians. Nobody comes to bail out Middle America, do they? In truth, no government in history, American or otherwise, has ever been able to spend itself out of debt and out of deflation without paying for it a short time later with massive inflation. Since nobody seemed to be listening, a sizable number of people who understand this fact took to the streets.

Finally, many Americans are beginning to see that the government's policy is not about wise stewardship of their tax dollars but about ushering in more government control. So middle class Americans are finally protesting. They don't seem any longer willing to put up with their tax dollars being used to lower prosperous and hard-working middle class citizens into the level of poverty. The American middle class is tired of subsidizing both the failed rich and the criminal poor. They are also tired of their tax dollars being used to support a welfare system for illegal aliens and trashy people of all colors that threaten to take over American institutions and culture by virtue of higher birth rates. More power to these awakening Americans.

Of course, the American people often respond to governmental actions the way the liberal media leads them to respond. But it didn't work in the case of the scamnesty bill pushed by George Bush and Congress, and it wouldn't have worked in the case of bailout bills and liberal pet project funding pushed by Barack Obama and Congress if the people had a greater knowledge of economics.

There is however, one problem with the Tea Parties. There are plans to have the next ones on July 4? If this is not done early enough, it will conflict with privately scheduled parties with friends and family in a way that April 15 did not. As a result, they will be noticeably smaller, and the liberal media will write the Tea Parties off as just a one-day exercise of energy by people who have been beaten down so long by the media that they expended all they had on April 15.

What killed Kurt Cobain? Multicultural Commie Brainwashing

Fifteen years ago today, Kurt Cobain chose to end his life. Obviously, drugs, chiefly heroin, had much to do with it. To say nothing of a rather horrible family background.

But reading through Kurt Cobain's Journals and the biography Heavier Than Heaven by Charles Cross, I can't help but notice that Kurt really absorbed the "multicultural" leftist self-hating indoctrination, and I can't help but think that it was another factor that led to his suicide.

Although one suspects the monitoring of Courtney Love over both Cross' biography and all of the Journals contents (and I wonder how many pages of his Journals where he wrote less than flattering words about her were torn out and didn't get published), Journals is still fascinating and sadly revealing.

(That said, I have really had enough of the utterly unjust accusations of Courtney Love having anything to do with her husband's alleged "murder". There is no credible evidence to support any of that. Let's not forget he was the father of her child. Let's also not forget that she revived him from overdoses at least several documented times, most notably an overdose that was also a suicide attempt on March 3, 1994, a little more than one month before his ultimate successful suicide. One would think if she wanted Kurt gone, she could have just not revived him. One can argue that Courtney Love was (1) a bitch, (2) self-destructive in her own way, (3) no help to Kurt and (4) someone who even made matters worse for him, but that's it.)

It can be said that Kurt Cobain, in spite of not finishing high school, was quite witty. He had an undeveloped knack for word play. In his writings he refers to the MTV network as "Empty TV", loathing its hype while realizing that it was important to getting his music out. In another passage, he observes his fast rising stardom and writes:

I hope I die before I turn into Pete Townshend.

But to find these gems in the Journals, one must go through lots and lots of ignorant leftist hatred, ignorant leftist posing, and perhaps most revealing, self-hatred. In a list of what Kurt liked that included "vinyl" (records), "to swim" and "girls with weird eyes", suddenly there is this:

I like to feel guilty for being a white, American male.

And this sort of leftist indoctrination is abundant throughout the Journals. Before meeting Courtney Love, he wrote this to ex-girlfriend Tobi Vail:

...all Isms feed off one another, but at the top of the food chain is still the white corporate, macho strong ox male....I mean, class ism is determined by sexism because the male decides whether all other isms exists.

"Corporate" and "macho strong ox" are contradictions in terms, but sadly that doesn't dawn on Cobain at all. Given his lack of a complete education with language combined with the Leftist indoctrination in the Olympia, Washington area, perhaps I shouldn't be surprised when he concludes in the same letter that:

Words suck.

This need to fit in with the leftist Olympia crowd was apparently strong. He had left his hometown of Aberdeen, Washington to try to make a go of it as a musician in Olympia. In his biography, Charles Cross observed that:

(Kurt) wanted nothing more than to be thought of as an Olympia sophisticate, not an Aberdeen hick. Class-ism would be a fight he would struggle with his entire life, because no matter how far away he got from Grays Harbor, he felt branded as a hillbilly. Most of the Greeners (Olympia college students) were from big cities--like many privileged college kids, their prejudice toward people from rural communities was in marked contrast to the liberalism they professed toward different races.

Typical phony liberals--not surprising.

And the desire to fit in with the "politically correct" (politically communist) crowd began to bear on Kurt as well. About his time in the Olympia, Washington punk rock scene and his dating Tobi Vail, he wrote:

Everything I do is an overly conscious and neurotic attempt at trying to prove to others that I am at least more intelligent or cool than they think.

And indeed, Kurt began to fabricate much of his past. In an interview with the gay magazine The Advocate, Kurt claimed to have been friends with a gay student at his high school, suffering bullying at the hands of homophobic students. However, his good friends Jesse Reed and Chris "Krist" Novoselic deny any such person ever existed.

Kurt also claimed to have spray painted pro-gay slogans like "GOD IS GAY" and "HOMO SEX RULES" around his hometown of Aberdeen, Washington. However, those who knew him and his one police arrest in the Aberdeen / Montesano area indicate that his vandalism was *nothing* like this, and actually consisted of silly statements like "Ain't got no how watchamacallit".

(In) fact, most of what he wrote was nonsensical. He enraged a neighbor with a boat by painting "Boat Ack" in red letters on the ship's hull; on the other side he lettered "Boat people go home."

Not exactly politically correct. Then again, given the lack of Vietnamese Americans in the area, I think young Kurt was just being a goof.

Hip poser gay-friendliness was matched by hip poser leftist anti-Americanism. After the smashing victory of the first Iraq War, he wrote a letter to Eugene Kelly of the Vaselines, a band he admired, where he complained about the sidewalk sale of:

Desert Storm trading cards, flags, bumper stickers....When I walk down the street, I feel like I'm at a Nuremburg rally.

Given that Saddam attacked Israel, dreamed of another holocaust, and was feeding his dissidents through wood chippers and putting women into "rape rooms", this statement is especially appalling. But such is the indoctrination of the Left.

Kurt's Journals also reveal an obsession with abortion. In his suicide note, he regretted "the self-destructive death rocker" he had become, and his journals show that he had been cultivating a personal culture of death for several years. Beginning in his Olympia years, he would often copy down in his journals and elsewhere (reportedly as graffiti) the slogans "Abort Christ" and "Mandatory Breeding Laws Now". Between dropping his first girlfriend/muse Tracy Marander (with whom, in retrospect, he should have stayed) and meeting Courtney Love, Kurt dated and bedded his share of leftist "riot grrls", Tobi Vail among them, and perhaps these leftist and pro-abortion platitudes were just a way to please and hop into bed with the ladies.

However, from reading his journals, I get the impression that Kurt thought that the "Politically Incorrect" people didn't deserve to live. Only one day it must have dawned upon him that *he* was one of those people who didn't deserve to live as well.

And yet, for all his leftist posing, there was something very Conservative at the heart of Kurt Cobain's music, something that was an angry reaction to the Leftist hippies of the late 1960's. He wrote frequently about how betrayed he felt when his parents divorced, and how he longed for a traditional mom and dad situation. The song "Territorial Pissings", with its opening mockery of the hippie era, was a big signal.

Steven Capozzola, "San Francisco Herald" e-zine columnist, explains in "A Brief Reflection on Kurt Cobain...":

I once had the chance to talk with one of the major figures of the Sixties, one of the main characters profiled in Tom Wolfe's ‘Electric Kool Aid Acid Test.' This fellow had been intimately associated with psychedelia, rock ‘n roll, and the Counterculture. We happened to talk about rock music and began to discuss Kurt Cobain. This famed Sixties fellow sneered at Cobain, calling him “insipid" and “an idiot." I told him how strongly I disagreed, at which point he commented that Cobain's music was “garbage."

What I found most interesting, though, was that the guy didn't have the slightest idea why Cobain had succeeded. This Sixties figure had his money and his house and his Generation X children, but he had no awareness of single-parent homes, mass divorce, children of alcoholics, stabbings in schools, shootings in school, all the things that his Sixties generation had wrought. For me, one glance at Cobain, one listen to him speaking to a reporter, and I felt a kinship. I knew he'd been through the same grief as the rest of us. He was pissed-off. That anger is what scared the hell out of the Sixties fellow.

Moreover, in 1991, when Grateful Dead nostalgia was still sacrosanct, anyone who told interviewers, even in jest, the following:

I want a tie-dyed shirt made with the blood of Jerry Garcia.

is a Conservative Republican at heart, even if he does not know it. Today, some of us would like a tie-dyed shirt made with the blood of Senator Patrick Leahy.

And in spite of his leftist indoctrination and his obvious self-destruction, I must admit the guy did in large part speak for Generation X. I was born just a few months after Kurt, and he summed up how we all felt about life at the time.

It was late 1991 and I had just turned 24 when "Nevermind" hit the airwaves. I had just graduated from the University of California at Berkeley the previous spring, and I was feeling a whole lot of malaise. While I was a full-time student, I felt the same malaise, but I thought that it was just temporary, that I was just serving time, that things were going to be great once I graduated and left the "politically correct" crap. I thought I would work a good job in a glass box in the Financial District, and while I knew I would have to kowtow to some boss or another, and he or she might even be really nasty, I figured at least I would get paid enough for a nice little condo or townhome in the East Bay or Peninsula burbs. And once I had "the career thing" in order, I might even achieve "the relationship thing".

But that didn't happen. Opportunities dried up or were otherwise non-existent for new grads in the recession of 1990-1994, and I found myself interviewing for what few jobs there were along side laid off older fellows with years of experience already. Worse still, in those job interviews, I discovered that the "politically correct" crap had burst out of campus and infiltrated into the workplace! Nor were even the crummiest of rentals all that affordable. Eventually, I gave up, came home to Ma and Pa, and became an office temp for a host of Silicon Valley electronics firms. I was stuck in that rut for the next several years, while studying to obtain various professional licenses.

The despair I felt in the 1980's, days of high school and university, was due to not being able to get to the party fast enough. The despair I felt in 1992 was of knowing that:
--The party was over, and that there probably never would be another party like it.
--All those hopes and dreams I had in college were unrealistic and weren't going to come true.
--My education was in large measure a ripoff.
--Life was a LOT more complicated than I thought it was.
--I could trust hardly anything or hardly anybody.

During that malaise period, Kurt and Nirvana wrote songs about angst, alienation, and depression that really hit home for me (plus they had a great beat and you could rock out to them). And for a time, it seemed to an ignorant observer like me that Cobain had triumphed, had turned his inner demons into money, had found a kindred soul in Courtney Love and had a baby. And despite diminished career prospects, perhaps Generation X could have a happy ending after all.

Cobain's success probably allowed other pop-punk bands of his generation to achieve commercial success as well. I remember when those punk kids in Green Day were just high school kids happy to get a gig at The Gilman Street Project in Berkeley and play before 30 people. By 1993, they were appearing on Saturday Night Live. For a time, it seemed anything was possible for Generation X.

And then, 4 days after he did it, while I was in the middle of studying for the upcoming Certified Public Accountant exams, I heard the news that Kurt Cobain -- the media's official Generation X spokesperson, the man who had put our disappointments and frustrations to music, good music that we could rock out to and escape our disappointments, if only for three minutes, the man who seemingly had achieved wild success from humble origins -- had blown his brains out.

To paraphrase that Edwin Arlington Robinson "Richard Cory" poem:

"And on I worked, and went to school by night, and couldn't get any pussy, and cursed my lack of bread, and Kurt Cobain, one rainy spring night, went home and put a shotgun to his head."

Meanwhile, Spencer Elden, the naked baby on the cover of Nevermind, is now 17 going on 18:

And Tracy Marander, Kurt's first love (and the woman he should have stayed with if he had had any sense), is now 44 years old, married, and a mother of two:

After having lived with Cobain for three years in Olympia, Wash., Marander still has artwork potentially worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. Her collection consists of four paintings and an oil pastel, all made when Cobain was in his early 20s, before the world knew the word "grunge." One painting depicts a white skeletal figure with knees upraised--a self-portrait with a touch of tortured German expressionism. "Kurt always thought he was too skinny," she says. Other subjects include fetuses, a homeless man and even Charles Manson. "He didn't paint happy-looking flowery stuff."

A married stay-at-home mom....Marander says she'd consider unloading one or two pieces to put a down payment on a house or send her two children to college. The rest she'd like to save for their inheritance. "Some guy harassed me for two weeks to sell him something," she says.

Here are four photos of her, two from when she was with Kurt 20 odd years ago, and two recent ones:

Life goes on, and those of us who don't kill ourselves get older.