By DAN VALENTI

PLANET VALENTI News and Commentary

Am I Blue? No Way!

(FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE, FRIDAY, AUG. 5, 2011) — Today, a well-meaning friend passed along the following e-mail:

Many Americans, like you, me and all our friends, simply want to recognize that the vast majority of   America supports our troops. Our idea of showing solidarity and support for our troops with dignity and respect starts this Friday — and continues each and every Friday until the troops all come home, sending a deafening message that every red-blooded American who supports our men and women afar, will wear something blue. By word of mouth, press, TV — let’s make the   United States on every Friday a sea of blue much like a homecoming football game in the bleachers. If every one of us who loves this country will share this with acquaintances, coworkers, friends, and family, it will not be long before the   USA is covered in BLUE and it will let our troops know the once ‘silent’ majority is on their side more than ever, certainly more than the media lets on. The first thing a soldier says when asked ‘What can we do to make things better for you?’ is .’We need your support and your prayers.’ Let’s get the word out and lead with class and dignity, by example, and wear something blue every Friday

This is how THE PLANET replied:

Thank you for including me in this, but I will not participate. I do not support the military adventurism of America’s foreign policy.

Of course, everyone supports the troops, as persons. That goes without saying. But the wording of this is too much like a “loyalty oath,” as in “Are you a GENUINE American”? That I cannot abide and won’t.

This comes as we are in the middle of a new biography of Tail Gunner Joe, Sen. Joseph McCarthy (The Rise and Fall of Senator Joe McCarthy by James Cross Giblin), fomenter of fear, the phony Red Scare, and the divisor of patriotism.

“Blue Friday”? This sort of black-and-white, narrow-minded thinking has given us the America of red and blue states, the America of “you are a this” and “I am a that, which is superior.” It has presented the America of 24/7 cable TV “news” and the ridiculous “screaming heads” whose pose reveals the counterfeiters of debate.

The “Blue Friday” type of solution to our problems results in a crassness and close-mindedness that foments fear, achieves altercation, and directs disintegration. This America, the Reality TV America, is not a country I know or wish to know.

To THIS American, the “Blue Friday” gimmick is not America. America is “You can make me do nothing but die” — Richard Wright in Native Son.

————————————————————

Con Job and Snow Job

Speaking of America, last month, according to the Department of Labor, the economy created 18,000 new jobs.

Before you want to go clicking your heels down the street with Mr. Bluebird on your shoulder, keep in mind that when you factor in population growth, our economy must generate 125,000 each month just to maintain zero growth. The official unemployment rate of 9.2 percent doesn’t include the underemployed or those who have been out of work so long that they have given up trying to find a job. It does include summer help, temporary positions, and other less-than-stable positions. If a person waits tables in the morning, cleans houses in the afternoon, and tends bar at night, that counts as three jobs.

You get the picture — actual unemployment far exceeds the 9.2 officials figure.  It’s interesting to note that of the 14 million officially jobless, nearly half of them have been out of work for six months of longer.

Both sides were quick with the blame game. House Speaker John Boehner fingers President Barack Obama, saying O’Bama’s “stimulus spending binge” and new federal regs were torpedoing the economy. The President blamed the grim jobs picture on Congress. He said the reps could create jobs “right now” by passing measures that he has introduced. Among these, the President cited patent reform and creation of a new “infrastructure bank.”

THE PLANET knows what most free-thinking Americans know: BOTH sides are equally at fault. BOTH sides simply play different roles in a much larger game that has dangerously injected partisan politics into every aspect of American life, starting with the economy. The Grand Irony, of course, is that the two major parties bow to the same masters: an oligarchy made up of the super-rich, the super-powerful, and the corporate behemoths, to whom politicians are forever beholding. The Masters support both parties with cash, hedging the bets. It doesn’t matter WHO gets in, as long as it’s not a “trouble maker” “reformer.”

In the city election, jobs will be cited by Bianchi, Marchetti, Nichols, and the rest. They will speak in platitudes. THE PLANET wonders: Which candidate will dare to deal real on the local economy, which is of such a flat-lined state as to make the grim nationwide jobs scene look positively euphoric.

Want to blame the true culprit, nationally?

Follow the money, Babe. Follow the money.

——————————————————-

Pak Man Is Stan, or Something Like That

Consider this about our “ally” Pakistan:

* It has expelled U.S. Special Forces personnel and arrested Pakistanis instrumental in the preparations on the attack that led to the death of Osama Bin Laden.

* Pakistan’s military is the home of man known Taliban collaborators.

* President Hamid Karzai refuses to purge the army of the Taliban.

* President Karzai has refused to cooperate in operations against Afghan rebels in North Waziristan, greatly undermining U.S. operations in Afghanistan.

* U.S. generals claim the Pakistani government allows the use of torture against political enemies. Generals also say that when a Pakistani reporter revealed Pakistan’s support for the Taliban in the country’s tribal regions, the government had the reporter (Syed Shahzad) executed.

* The Pakistani public hates American for U.S. drone attacks on their home soil, which results in indiscriminate killing of military targets and civilians.

All of this, AND YET, America sends the Korrupt Karzai $2 billion each year in military assistance. … Until now. Credit President Obama for at least making a dent. The administration announced it would withhold $800 million of the money, or 40 percent of the haul. The full 100 percent, complete withdrawal, would be better, but at least Obama’s action conveys the nonsense of U.S. taxpayers giving even a penny to that incestuous country.

—————————————————

Wives, Be Submissive to Your Husbands, or Bachmann Turned Off Overdrive

Finally, THE PLANET must note in passing presidential candidate Michele Bachmann’s vow to be “submissive” to her husband, as the Good Book supposedly intends.

Bachmann makes a point of telling everyone she lives by the words in the Bible. She wears her face on her dye job. In a speech at a superchurch in Minneapolis, Bachmann, a U.S. congresswoman, said her husband ordered her to become a tax lawyer and then to run for Congress.

Bachmann said she didn’t want to do either one, but she then quoted the New Testament: “Wives, you are to be submissive to your husbands.”

Wifely submission. What a concept! It leads to the honest question: Should Bible Bachmann somehow become President of the United States, will her husband be the one making the decisions? You betcha.

Her stance reminds me of something Mark Twain once said about Christianity: “If Christ were to come back today, the last thing he’d want to be is a Christian.”

————————————————-

Briefly, on a lighter note, we remind you that the Pittsfield Colonials will begin a long home stand tonight at Beloved Wahconah Park. The C’s face off against the New Jersey Jackals at 7 p.m. at BWP. The team will be at home each night beginning tonight and ending on Aug. 14. Enjoy great baseball, great food, and great fun at BWP.

————————————————-

WE LEAVE YOU WITH THESE THINGS TO PONDER, AND MEANWHILE …

“OPEN THE WINDOW, AUNT MILLIE.”

LOVE TO ALL.