BACK IN THE TREES

Genre Books, Big Books, and Denial

2011-02-20T20:30:00.000-08:00

I've been intrigued lately by the idea of writing a 'big book'. Can't say why, precisely. Back when I was self-published, I thought I wanted to be traditionally published because I thought it might lend me an air of respectability. Now that I'm traditionally published as a 'genre' author (small town police procedurals at the moment), I feel a tug toward writing something of lasting literary value.

Sometimes I think I'm just too future-focused for my own good.

Genre fiction--mostly private eye and thriller works--has been good to me. After three Shamus nominations and two Derringer wins, I feel like I've acquired a certain amount of street cred. I haven't made a lot of money, but since I don't care much about money to begin with this hasn't been a problem.

I am also aware that, as hard as it is to be published in commercial genre fiction, it's practically impossible to get a literary 'big' book into print. Literary fiction contains most of the same characteristics of crime fiction, including tension, conflict, characterization, realistic dialogue, and even the occasional murder. Somehow, though, there is a perceived difference between literary fiction and genre fiction.

I know a lot of authors who have ventured outside of their genre-based comfort zones, with varying degrees of success. I tend to think, for instance, that S.J. Rozan's Absent Friends was a kick-ass title that signalled her transition from a highly successful mystery writer to a first-tier literary author. Her followup title, In This Rain, broke my heart with its portrayal of the impact of big-city backroom politics on the 'little people' who don't have the pull or cash to influence the march of big business juggernauts. There is a sense of pathos, desperation, and even occasional futility in her characters' lives that makes her writing something so special.

What's S.J. writing now? Why, she's back to Bill Smith and Lydia Chin PI novels. Great novels, to be certain, but genre fiction. There's money in genre work, and S.J. makes her living as a writer.

So, why spend a year of my life researching a literary 'big' novel? I tend to think that I already wrote one almost fifteen years ago, a book entitled Bobby J. Remember it? Really? I'm not surprised. It's been in print for over ten years, and I've sold something like a hundred copies during that time. Most people tell me the first chapter is so raw that they have a hard time getting past it. Which is a shame, since the damn thing runs about 140k words, and most of it is heartbreaking. My good friend Alan says that it is one of the "most relentlessly depressing novels" he has ever read. Believe it or not, I find great comfort in that. It means that I achieved my goal when I wrote it. You should read it someday. Just stash the razor blades and take the bullets out of your pistol first.

Bobby J. was a fine book, and I'm still very proud of it. Unlike real 'big' novels, however, it was not painted on a grand canvas. It dealt with the machinations and personal conflicts brought on in a small city by a single senseless and brutal crime committed by a fifteen-year-old boy. The title character isn't even the central character of the book, but rather a catalyst.

I want to write a book that examines the impact of global events on three or four intertwining lives. I think I've found my canvas--the futility and horror of World War I. I also think I've figured out what my story is going to be. I see a book that will run up to 150,000 words, or about six hundred pages. Not quite War And Peace, but maybe its kid brother.

Now for the big question--am I enough of an author to take on this challenge? Time will tell. I have lived most of my life by two mottoes:

1) When a door opens, walk through.

2)Nothing can stop the man who doesn't know he can't.

I've taken on tons of projects in my life that--had I really considered the odds--would have seemed impossible. Because I either didn't know, or denied, that the task was futile, I went ahead and did it, and in many cases succeeded.

I have time. I have two books to write before I can take on my 'big' book project seriously. That will give me time to do adequate research and outline the fabric of this book, which will include complex patterns of woven lives, as should be the case in 'big' books.

I'll keep you posted as the process continues. I see this as a three-year project, though it could take longer. Stay tuned. This should be interesting.

It's RetCon Time

2011-02-05T20:10:00.000-08:00

It's hard to believe that it's been two and a half years since my last blog entry.

I have no excuse. I've been posting on Facebook like crazy, writing books faster than ever before, and keeping up--almost obsessively--with my email.

So, what happened to the blog?

Nothing, really. It was simply neglected long enough that I fell out of the habit of updating it.

So, it's back.

My goal is to post at least five times a week, on almost any subject that strikes my fancy--the vagaries of the new book publishing models, new hot topics in forensic psychology or psychology in general, musings on the creative process, and even what the Tenth Doctor meant when he said, "I don't want to go," just before regenerating.

In short, I'm retconning the Back In The Trees blog.

Settle back. Strap in. It could be a bumpy ride...

THE BOOKS ON YOUR BUCKET LIST

2008-07-03T13:11:00.000-07:00

A recent article on America Online listed the “Ten Books You Must Read Before You Die”. The come-on implied that a life in which one had not digested these might tomes might just have well been unlived.

So, what books were listed?

In order, they were: Gone With The Wind; Tolkein’s Lord Of The Rings trilogy; all seven books in the Harry Potter series; Stephen King’s The Stand; two of Dan Brown’s books – The DaVinci Code and Angels and Demons; Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird; Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand; Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye; and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams (all three books, and presumably that weird Zaphod Beeblebrox short story that’s packaged in with them now).

Huh?

First, and most obvious quibble – this is actually twenty books, not ten.

And, before you start labeling me a pointy-headed Eastern liberal (my head is actually more roundish than pointed), I can ride with Harper Lee, J.D. Salinger, and Ayn Rand.

But, where is Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea? Where is Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath (in my estimation the one true great American novel)? Whither William Faulkner? What about Frank Norris’s epic tale of greed and western warfare The Octopus? Stephen Crane’s The Red Badge of Courage? Nowhere on this list.

We’re missing John Updike, John O’Hara, and Thomas Pynchon.

Have we completely forgotten Thomas Wolfe’s The Web and the Rock, You Can’t Go Home Again, and Look Homeward Angel?

Upton Sinclair was totally ignored, as were Leo Tolstoy, Fyodr Dostoyevsky, and Pushkin. One might imagine from this list that Nathaniel Hawthorne, James Fenimore Cooper, and Owen Wister never even existed.

In the mystery genre, you could easily include duMaurier’s Rebecca; Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon; Chandler’s The Big Sleep; Doyle’s The Hound of the Baskervilles, and any of a number of works by Agatha Christie, however redundant many of them might be.

How can you include two books by Dan Brown, and not even one by Michael Chabon? For that matter, why would you include any books by Dan Brown?

Then, I took a closer look at the article, and realized that it was actually nothing but a huge advertisement for – you guessed it – Barnes and Noble! This wasn’t a true examination of groundbreaking literature. It was an attempt to sell a bunch of books, and make (at least) Dan Brown and J.K. Rowling even richer (as if they needed it). Sure, they tossed in a few ringers, but very few truly pivotal pieces of fiction.

How sad. It’s possible that Rowling’s work will endure, much the way that Madeline L’Engle’s has, but I have a hard time envisioning a world in which The DaVinci Code will be widely read twenty years from now.

The Stand is a fine book – I’ve read it at least twice, and parts of it more, but is it really better than The Shining? I mean, to the point that you absolutely must read it or face eternity with regrets? Tolkein, Rand, and Salinger have weathered the test of time, but no more perhaps than many of the authors I suggested above.

Want my "Ten Novels You Must Read Before You Die" list? Okay, here goes, in no particular order:

The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck
The Fountainhead, by Ayn Rand
The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair
Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger
Look Homeward, Angel, by Thomas Wolfe
To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee
The Red Badge of Courage, by Stephen Crane
The Old Man and the Sea, by Ernest Hemingway
The Last of the Mohicans, by James Fenimore Cooper
The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald

And (since Barns of Novels got to actually use twenty titles) honorable mention goes to:

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime, by Mark Haddon
The Road, by Cormac McCarthy
The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, by Michael Chabon
The Virginian, by Owen Wister
The Call of the Wild, by Jack London
The Octopus, by Frank Norris
Appointment in Samarra, by John O’Hara
The Pillars of the Earth, by Ken Follett
The Razor’s Edge, by W. Somerset Maugham
Dune, by Frank Herbert

I probably could have put many more on the list, but I didn’t make the rules.

So, how about you? Which novels would be on your list for Mandatory Life Reading?

Gotta go. Things to do…
R

HOW MUCH FOR THAT (MANGY, DYSPEPTIC, FLEA-BITTEN, ONE-EYED, INCONTINENT) DOGGIE IN THE WINDOW?

2008-06-03T13:22:00.000-07:00

The whole prexy election thing is a tough call this year.

I know that McCain is a douche and that electing him would leave us with nothing more than four years of geriatric Bush redux.

On the other hand, I fear that letting Obama into the Oval Office would be roughly the equivalent of Willie Wonka handing the keys to the Chocolate Factory over to a Charlie who wears a helmet and rides the short bus to school.

McCain is scary.

Obama is woefully inexperienced and naïve.

That leaves Hillary Clinton. Need I say more? Would someone please give us a reasonable alternative? (No, Barr, I don’t mean you.)

I am, despite my increasing motivation to move to Canada, enjoying the high political drama posed by the never-ending battle between Obama and Clinton for the Democratic nomination. Not that it really matters, since whoever the Donkey Party nominates this year will win in November. They could put a beaver and ’59 Edsel on the ticket, and still win against McCain. That’s just how frightened the country is of the GOP (a leisure service of PNAC and The Carlyle Group).

This past weekend, we had the opportunity to watch the DNC dither over how to handle its own iatrogenic problems of Michigan and Florida. To listen to the delegates, you might come to believe that the disenfranchised voters of Florida and Michigan were to blame for their own lack of representation. In fact, the true culprits were the DNC themselves.

The DNC stated several times during the debate this past weekend that the true intent of their ‘punishment’ of Florida and Michigan – despite their contention that they didn’t want these two states to ‘pre-load’ the primaries – was actually to preserve the traditional role of New Hampshire and Iowa in pre-loading the primaries. This, even AFTER they allowed New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Iowa to move their own primaries almost back into December of ought-seven!

In other words, they don’t give a rat’s ass that the primaries might be pre-loaded, they just want to make damned certain that this pre-loading is done by the states they designate.

How childish.

And, despite the fact that the DNC created its own quagmire over a year ago in stripping delegates from Florida and Michigan, they don’t seem to believe that they’ve done anything wrong.

As recently as March, a Democrat close to Howard Dean stated, "Everyone seems to be asking what the DNC will do. But the question is: what will the state parties do?"

Want to know how the DNC blew it? Three items:

First and most obvious was the disenfranchising of Florida and Michigan. Florida’s Democrats were royally screwed by their own Republican-dominated legislature and governor, and could no more control when their primary was held than could Santa Claus. Yet, the DNC seemed totally content to punish the victims.

In Michigan, the Democratic Party had to decide between complying with the DNC’s obvious bias toward New Hampshire and Iowa, and breaking Michigan state law which set the statewide primary date at January 29. The only option they had would have been to revert to a clumsy, very un-Democratic caucus system to choose delegates.

Second, the DNC established a system of Superdelegates, out of a fear that the ‘voters might get out of hand’. Very, very un-Democratic, guys.

Finally, I would love to get my hands on the throat of the guy who came up with proportional representation for Convention delegates. This system was tailor-made for a close, undecided race and back-room wrangling. If ever there was a recipe for a brokered convention, the DNC came up with a Betty Crocker Cookoff-winning humdinger this cycle.

The DNC is looking around for someone to blame for their mess? All they have to do is check the closest mirror. While they don’t want to admit it, they screwed the pooch, and now all they can do is haggle over who gets to raise the puppies.

GIVE ME A CHOICE, GUYS!

2008-04-29T14:23:00.000-07:00

Despite the fact that I’ve been registered as an Independent since 1975, there was a time when it was a foregone conclusion when I walked into the voting booth that I was going to vote Democratic for most major offices

Seems a long time ago, now.

Not that I’m voting Republican, either. I still hold pretty steadfastly to the notion that the Republican Party stands primarily for evil, greed, gluttony, bigotry, chauvinism, and bad haircuts. Oh, and warmongering. We mustn’t forget warmongering. I wouldn’t push the button for a Republican in the voting booth with your finger.

The Republicans’ antics from Nixon to Reagan to Bushes 41 and 43 made it easy to vote Democratic. It just seemed like the only rational option.

No more.

I have become sick of both parties.

The Democrat victory in the midterm elections over a year and a half ago gave me great hope for this country. I saw an opportunity for a breath of fresh air in Washington, the kind of breeze that cleans the air and washes away the stench of avarice and jingoism. Instead, all I got was a majority of spineless, timid, bickering, directionless drones, afraid to face down and bitch-slap the dumbest president in American history.

The last straw has been the way the Democrats have run their primary. In what must be the most asinine system of jury-rigged rules ever devised in a political process, the Democrats virtually guaranteed a deadlocked race to the convention.

ITEM: Proportional Delegates. Who in Hell’s Half Acre came up with this imbecilic idea? Somewhere, I’m sure, in a meeting over pancakes and Ovaltine, some Democratic muckedy-muck said, “We need to be fair. Winner-take-all seems very unsporting, chaps, wouldn’t you say? Why don’t we split the delegates based on the percentage of votes each candidate gets?”
Idiotic. This is the same blatantly spineless thinking that led to ‘no winner’ schoolyard games in the 1970’s, and equitable distribution divorces. Close races under proportional delegate designations are a perfect design for brokered elections. You want a clearly defined candidate? Go with winner-take-all. Seems to have worked for McCain (though the competition there wasn’t quite as stiff).

ITEM: SuperDelegates. You know. Party fatcats, local ward chairs, attention-seekers, and general hangers-on who owe allegiance to nobody and are accountable to only themselves. Hey, if you aren't a duly-appointed delegate with a binding vote, keep your fat ass off the convention floor. And while we're at it, I think we've reached a point in our technological sophistication where we can divest ourselves of the Electoral College. Graduate their asses already and let's go with the popular vote.

ITEM: Michigan and Florida. Nothing much more to say about that. The Democratic National Committee just shot itself in the foot, and like a petulant, cranky child it refuses to budge for fear that it will look ‘weak’. Too late.

ITEM: Super Duper Tuesday. Hey, kids, here’s a great idea. Let’s hold almost a third of the nation’s primaries on ONE DAY, and let’s make it as early as is humanly possible in the electoral process, so that people are voting based on emotion rather than intellect! What could be more fun? So what if we get voters’ remorse two months later, when we wake up and realize that one of the Democratic candidates is an empty suit with no plans but a lot of personal charisma, and the other could have saved her husband’s presidency from impeachment if she’d just handed out a hummer once in a while, but that otherwise neither one has virtually anything to bring to the table. Meanwhile, the best candidates – you know, the ones who couldn’t raise barrels of money in time—were sent packing after Super Duper Tuesday, before we really got a decent chance to know them (I’m not talking about you Kucinich – everyone knows what you’re about. Give my regards to everyone in The Shire).

ITEM: Caucuses. Huh? WTF? Okay, instead of actually voting, let’s just herd people into school cafeterias, make them stand on one side or the other, and do a head count. Oh, and don’t forget, the winner is the candidate who can pack the most people onto a bus, even if those people haven’t seen the inside of a voting booth since the Eisenhower Administration, and wouldn’t get out of the house to go to a polling place if you whacked them with a cattle prod. Look, if you can’t do politicking inside a polling place, why should you be able to bully people in a caucus? Get rid of them and hold actual elections, pinheads!

ITEM: Early endorsements. Okay, technically this isn’t the Democratic Party’s fault. I signed up for Move On.org some time back for one reason or another – I think it had something to do with stopping Bush43 from pulling off some kind of foolishness or other – and I’ve actually signed a few petitions with them. However, when they endorsed Obama before the primaries even developed a head of steam, I wrote them off. Screw ‘em. When I’m made emperor, nobody will be able to endorse ANY political candidate until after the conventions. Endorsing candidates during the primaries leads to one of only two possible outcomes – crowing or eating crow. I don’t have time for either activity. What these early endorsements do accomplish, however, is to unfairly sway the election one way or the other, because you have to recall that fully half of the voting population can’t muster a triple-digit IQ, and they’ll do whatever they’re told to do.

Thankfully, most of that half of voters are Republicans. The principle still stands.

What it all comes down to is this. Elect Republicans and you get jack-booted thugs in expensive suits marching in lockstep to whatever tune the Carlyle Group and the PNAC conspiracy plays.

Elect Democrats, and it’s four years of the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party.

I would gladly align with a third party – even a losing one – if it made any sense, but the only ones out there look even lamer and dumber than the Democrats and Republicans.

Sometimes I just wish I could talk my wife into moving to Canada.

I think we’ve filled up the latrine in this country. Place don’t smell so good anymore…

OPRABAMA: ALL HAT, NO CATTLE

2008-03-05T11:00:00.000-08:00

The word began to circulate in Texas in the days preceding the primaries on March 4th, regarding Barack Obama.

All Hat, No Cattle.

In Texas, this is one of the worst accusations you can toss. Basically, it means that the object is an empty suit, a poseur, a person pretending to be something he really isn’t.

My kids, who have reached voting age (22 and 19, respectively), have repeatedly asked me which way I’m going to vote in the North Carolina primary in May. My first hope has been that – by that time – my vote will matter. After the results of the Texas/Ohio/Rhode Island/Vermont primaries, it now appears that we are headed for a brokered convention, in which case votes DO matter, indeed.

My second concern, and one that I’ve expressed freely to anyone who will listen, is that Obama is a lightweight, who can’t handle the job. Sure, he’s eloquent and young and easy to look at, but when it comes down to the nitty-gritty of running a government, he would be the equivalent of hiring a kid right out of business school to run General Motors.

To make matters worse, the press – which apparently has one major crush on the guy – has let him slide on some very important issues.

Since I’ve decided that - if the choice comes down to Obama, Hillary, or McCain - we’re screwed whatever happens, and because I have been skeptical about Obama in particular since – oh – his speech at the 2004 Democratic Convention, I’ve decided to turn up the heat a little.

Here are some very important facts that voters should know about this Golden Child.

First of all, he claims that if he had been in the Senate at the time Bush wanted to send troops into Iraq, he would have voted against it. Well, good for him. Hindsight is always so crisp and clear – that is, unless you’re Obama. The fact is that Obama wasn’t in the Senate at that time, but he WAS in the Illinois State Legislature. While serving in that body, he voted ‘Present’ OVER 130 TIMES. In the Illinois Legislature, ‘Aye’ votes carry measures, and ‘Nay’ votes defeat them. ‘Present’ votes don’t count.

And what were the bills that Obama sidestepped? They included measures that would have:

*Prohibited partial dilation and extraction abortions (what the right-wingers like to call ‘partial birth' abortions)

*Lowered the penalty for first offenses for carrying a concealed weapon from a felony to a misdemeanor

*Required mandatory adult prosecution for firing a gun near school grounds

*Protected the privacy of sexual abuse and sexual assault victims

*Prohibited strip clubs and other ‘adult’ businesses within 1000 feet of schools and churches

*Would have required parental notification for abortions (TWICE), and would have protected babies born following failed abortions (TWICE).

I’m not going to debate the worthiness – or lack thereof – of any of these measures. My issue is that Obama refused to man up and take a stand pro or con on them. If he really believed that they were bad bills, then he should have grabbed his balls and voted ‘Nay’. Voting ‘Present’ – OVER 130 TIMES – indicates a significant lack of character, and perhaps even an attempt to mollify politically sensitive groups. In other words, rather than ruffle feathers he chose to fly under the radar (pardon the mixed metaphor).

I really don’t think we need someone this spineless in the Oval Office. At least Hillary – and I do believe this was the WRONG decision – voted Aye on the authorization bill for Iraq. Her explanation is completely plausible – she was lied to, along with the rest of the Senate, by an unscrupulous president and his Neocon handlers, who had planned to invade Iraq come hell or high water since 1998. Many extremely honorable people voted to authorize this abortion of a war, most of them because they believed the constant string of lies coming from the White House and the Department of State.

Obama says he would have voted against the authorization? More likely, he would have voted ‘Present’, as he had on virtually every other controversial measure that came before him on the Illinois Legislature floor.

A message of some nebulous change is guaranteed to resonate with the people after almost eight long years of government by fascist proxy, with Halliburton and The Carlyle Group pulling Bush43’s string every time he opens his mouth. Obama’s problem, however, is that this is ALL he says. He hasn’t actually outlined any proposals regarding how he intends to achieve all this change, except to warrant that it will occur if only you will vote for him. This is Oprah Optimism at its very worst, with the fate of the world in the balance.

To paraphrase Edward Abbey, “change for the sake of change is the ideology of the cancer cell.” Sure, we need a few changes around Washington, but don’t make me guess about what they will be until after the election.

Nothing I’ve said here should indicate that I endorse either Hillary Clinton or John “Die Hard” McCain, however. I think – in presidential terms – they’re all minor leaguers. The difference is that Hillary and McCain, at least, have made it to the AAA division. Obama is still burning the bench in Class A.

WOLVES IN THE FOLD, PART FOUR

2008-02-07T08:58:00.000-08:00

In his farewell address to the nation in 1961, President Dwight D. Eisenhower – who, as the former Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in Europe in WWII, should have known – warned the United States about the pending threat from within. He said:

“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals so that security and liberty may prosper together.”

It was almost as if he foresaw the rise in power of The Carlyle Group and the Project for a New American Century (PNAC).

Named for the Carlyle Hotel, where it was organized, The Carlyle Group began in 1987 as a private equity investment corporation. A quick trip in the Wayback Machine reveals that 1987 was a period of rabid corporate takeovers and buyouts. Taft-Hartley had been eviscerated by the Reagan Administration, and whatever shreds of it remained were largely ignored. This was the era portrayed in the movie Wall Street, in which Gordon Gecko declared that “Greed is Good!”

In the beginning, the Carlyle Group, like many equity investment companies of the time, specialized in buying marginally-operating business and gutting them for their parts – selling off better performing divisions and liquidating the remaining assets. It was common practice at the time.

After George H. W. Bush (Bush41) left office in 1993, the direction of the Carlyle Group began to change. Many of the key players in the Reagan and Bush41 Administrations gravitated to the investment company, and its purpose began to transform.

Among the former government officials who defected to Carlyle were:
James Baker III, former Secretary of State
Frank Carlucci, former Secretary of Defense
Richard Darman, former Director of the Office of Management and Budget
Donald Rumsfeld, former Secretary of Defense
And, eventually, George H.W. Bush himself.
In fact, the Carlyle Group became something of a magnet for former heads of state after they left office, providing them with an opportunity to trade their political influence for some real bucks.

At one point, the Carlyle Group was considered to be something of an Ex-Presidents’ Club. Besides Bush41, the group included:
Peter Loughreed, former Premier of Alberta
John Major, former Prime Minister of Great Britain
Anand Panyarachund, former Prime Minister of Thailand
Thaksin Shinawatra, yet another former Prime Minister of Thailand
Fidel Ramos, former President of the Phillipines
Along with a smattering of former ambassadors, a former Chairman of the Chinese Securities and Exchange Commission, and at least one future POTUS, a brash lad named George W. Bush (Bush43), who was hired in 1990 to run CaterAir, an airline foodservice corporation owned by Carlyle – a company which, like every other endeavor he’s headed, including the United States, he quickly flew into the ground.

With such a collection of high-powered board members and advisory personnel, the Carlyle Group quickly morphed from your everyday corporate raider into something considerably more threatening. It was the place where public servants with clout went to cash in. And, it seems, the Carlyle Group discovered the opportunity to realize Ike’s worst fears, by becoming the preeminent military-industrial complex of our age.

Remember, campers, this entire string of articles is about the close relationship between the Bush family and the Saudi Royal Family. Here is where we start to pull the threads together.
After most of Bush41’s political cronies joined the Carlyle Group in 1993 – following the inauguration of Bill Clinton – they steered the company toward acquisition of BDM, a huge defense contractor. BDM had contracts worth many millions of dollars to help train the Saudi National Guard, and the Saudi Air Force.

In 1998, at the point where Bush41 became the Senior Advisor on the Carlyle Group Board, Carlyle sold controlling interest in BDM to the TRW Corporation. TRW Board Members included former CIA director Robert M. Gates (recall that Bush41 had himself been the Director of the CIA under President Ford) and Michael H. Armacost, Undersecretary of State during Reagan’s Administration, and Bush41’s Ambassador to Japan.

The Carlyle Group has long been the recipient of heavy investments from Saudi Arabia. In fact, the bin Laden family began investing in the Carlyle Group in 1994. Bush41’s role at Carlyle was as Senior Advisor to the Carlyle Asia Advisory Board, which was more or less a fancy name for his real role as the Saudi bag man. His primary duties consisted of getting the Saudis, with whom he had developed a relationship over his years in the oil business, as Director of the CIA, in the US Senate, and finally as POTUS, to part with large sums of money which would infuse Carlyle with working capital.

And, boy, did the Saudis invest. In 2002, The Washington Post reported that: ‘Saudis close to Prince Sultan, the Saudi defense minister ... were encouraged to put money into Carlyle as a favor to the elder Bush.’

These investments may have totaled $80 million or more, not including services contracted by the Saudi Royal Family through BDM prior to its sale to TRW.

And what did the Carlyle Group do with this money?

They invested in war.

Among their many defense-related holdings is United Defense Industries, maker of Crusader artillery and the Bradley Fighting Vehicle; LTV Corporation’s missile and aircraft units; Harsco Corporation, primarily for its BMY Combat Systems Division. According to Harsco’s own website: “In 1989 the U.S. Army chose to purchase the M88A1E1 made by BMY-Combat Systems. The vehicle is a 139,000-pound updated version of the company's M88 recovery vehicle that aids disabled tanks on the battlefield. With new tanks weighing 70 tons, a strong recovery vehicle is needed to tow the tanks to safety, when they are rendered inoperable in the midst of battle. In 1990 BMY-Combat Systems was awarded a contract to supply howitzers to South Korea. The Persian Gulf War of 1990 also helped to spur sales for "Big Foot," a five-ton truck whose tires partially deflate for sand travel.”

More recently, the Foster-Miller Company, a division of Carlyle-owned QinetiQ Corporation, announced its intention to develop a robot fighter named SWORDS (Special Weapons Operations Reconnaissance Detection Systems). This little doo-dah, a three-foot high track-driven war machine, can be fitted with standard-issue M249 or M240 rifle, has four cameras, night-vision and zoom lenses, and can travel over rocks and barbed wire. Controlled by radio from a distance using forward-looking cameras and a joystick, the tactical mission for these babies is reported to be “to wage war against insurgents in Iraq.”

You can have your very own SWORDS Robot for a little under a quarter of a million dollars, but you might want to wait, because the company is working to replace the clunky 1990’s technology joystick with “a Gameboy-style controller and virtual-reality goggles.” This, of course, will jack up the price to the U.S. military per unit, perhaps by as much as another hundred grand, but what price can you really put on turning real war into ‘World of Warcraft’.

(“Hey, Toby, that raghead blowed up real good! Let’s lob a grenade over there just to make sure he don’t spread no Radical Islamic terrorism in these parts again! While you’re up, can you get me some Cheetohs?”)

Here’s an idea – why not deploy a few thousand of these robots in Iraq, and sell time on them to the American public? They could control the robots through Internet connections, and get a feel for what Bush43’s illegal war in Iraq is really like! We can let EVERYONE get in on the fun in Fallujah. It could be a bigger blast than Wolfenstein 3D!

But I digress.

As if the connection between the Carlyle Group and the Saudi Royal Family wasn’t suspicious enough, consider the almost incestuous relationship – in the commercial sense only, of course – between the Bushes, pater et fils.

We have already established the relationship between Bush43 – then the owner of the fledgling oil company Arbusto – and the Saudis. It seems that any time a Bush needs money, he places an Iridium call to Riyadh for a top-off and a quick reach-around.

In one case, however, that call wasn’t necessary. In 2000, while Bush43 was Governor of Texas, and also while he was running for president, the Texas Teachers’ Retirement Fund voted to invest over $100 million with – you guessed it – the Carlyle Group, where the governor had been on the Board of Directors only six years earlier.

The connection?

Every member of the Texas Teachers’ Retirement Fund Board of Directors was appointed by George W. Bush. They owed their livelihood to the governor.

Bush’s payoff? Hey, his daddy was still on the Board at that point, and stood to profit generously from all investments – both coming in and going out. Bush41, like all men, has to go to that Great Counting House in the Sky someday, and when he does who do you think will inherit his rapidly accumulating wealth?

Now, consider that, among the very first people appointed to the Bush43 Cabinet, Carlyle Group member Donald Rumsfeld became Bush43’s Secretary of Defense. Who pushed most strongly for the illegal war in Iraq, and later became its most ardent defender? Why, it was Carlyle Group member Donald Rumsfeld.

According to some estimates, The Carlyle Group received approximately $2.1 billion in defense contracts in 2003. It’s difficult to find more recent estimates, but with the circular relationship between the Bush43 White House and the King of the Military-Industrial Complexes, you can bet it’s a pretty penny.

And, considering how much Bush43 will almost certainly earn when he eventually rejoins the Carlyle Group Board in 2009, after leaving the White House, one has to wonder how much of his saber-rattling during the last eight misbegotten years has actually been intended to line his own nest before he moves in.

Next Time: The Bush43 Presidency, a leisure service of PNAC, The Project For A New American Century

OH GOD!!! NOT NUMBERS!!!

2008-02-06T10:39:00.000-08:00

Sometimes I have to laugh at the Republican Presidential candidates, crawling all over each other, each claiming that he is the 'true conservative'. The funniest was at the recent debate at the Reagan Library, where the hallowed name of Ronald Reagan was invoked more times that that of God.

I really hate to toss numbers at you but, in order to understand exactly what these bozos want to do, you have to recognize the horrific impact that the NeoCons' economic policies have had on this once-great nation.

When Ronald Reagan moved into the White House in 1981, the country was in the midst of a recession that predated even Jimmy Carter. For those with short memories, the long lines at American gas pumps had been only six years earlier, after OPEC stuffed a rag in the pipelines coming out of the Middle East in an attempt to manipulate the price of their black gold dramatically upward.

They succeeded, of course, and the increase in petroleum prices led to the increase in prices of - well, just about everything. This caused President Nixon to invoke his wage and price freeze of 1973, which temporarily staved off the flood. Then Jerry Ford tried to beat inflation with lapel pins, and wasn't that a great success? (Answer: No).

The response by the Fed whenever inflation raises its ugly head is to raise interest rates, in an attempt to slow down buying. Less demand, so the theory goes, leads to lower prices.

The Fed tried this strategy a number of times through the course of the 1970s, until home mortgage rates topped 19%.

Everyone claims that Carter was a lousy president, mostly because of interest rates, but in fact he inherited an unholy mess in 1977 when he was inaugurated. Because of general increases in the costs of just about everything, it shouldn't surprise you to discover that the Federal Budget Deficit had increased from the single-digit billions during the Nixon and Ford Administrations to double-digit billions by the time Reagan took office. Even so, the National Debt - that magic number that indicates the aggregate of what each and every one of us owes - was still a largely manageable amount.

Okay, here is where we get into numbers. I don't want your eyes to glaze over, so I will summarize for the attention-impaired. Budget deficits went up continuously through the Reagan and George H.W. Bush Administrations. They stabilized and began to come down (eventually leading to a budget surplus!) in the Clinton42 Administration (see, I'm already thinking positively), and then skyrocketed during the disastrous administration of NeoCon puppet George W. Bush.

But read on, because the stuff between the numbers is important.

National Debt: 1980 - $914 billion
National Debt: 1988 - $2.6 trillion!

Increased by 287%

Deficits in years 1980-1988:
1980: $60 billion
1981: $79 billion
1982: $128 billion
1983: $208 billion
1984: $185 billion
1985: $212 billion
1986: $221 billion
1987: $150 billion
1988: $155 billion

Total budget deficits 1980-1988: $1.4 trillion dollars.

Reaganomics?

George H.W. Bush got it right when he called it –in 1980 – Voodoo Economics. To some extent, that might have been an insult – to voodoo.

What Reagan did was increase government spending to kick-start a moribund economy still reeling from the oil-crisis of the early 1970s. He also cut taxes, primarily to the rich and to large corporations, hoping to trigger a “trickle-down” economy. Even his own budget analyst, David Stockman, said in 1982 that the plan was doomed to failure.

While standards of living did increase somewhat during Reagan’s administration, it came at a tremendous cost, and launched China’s and Japan’s active engagement in propping up the American economy.

If Ronald Reagan proved anything, it’s that it’s easy to live like a king on an unlimited credit card – especially if you know that you, personally, will never have to pay the bill.

On the other hand, George H.W. didn’t do such a good job himself. As entrenched in the NeoCon movement as Reagan (Bush41 later became one of its linchpins with his membership in the military-industrial complex Carlyle Group), he continued the downward budget spiral spurred by his president.

National Debt in 1988 - $2.6 trillion dollars
National Debt in 1992 - $4 trillion dollars

Increased by 154%

Deficits in years 1989-1992
1989: $153 billion
1990: $221 billion
1991: $269 billion
1992: $290 billion

Total deficits in the Bush41 Administration: $933 billion dollars.

So, over the course of twelve short years, Reagan and Bush41 managed to take a $914 billion debt, and QUADRUPLE it, to over $4 trillion. This is the sort of economic dynamic that the NeoCons of the Republican party try to adopt. McCain, Romney, and Huckabee all claim to the mantle of Ronald Reagan and his NeoCon spawn – meaning that they endorse the very Voodoo Economics that George H.W. Bush decried in 1980, and adopted in 1989.

Then, of course, came Bill Clinton. His battle cry in the 1988 election was simple – “It’s the economy, stupid!”

And he walked the talk.

National Debt in 1993: $4.4 trillion dollars
National Debt in 2000: $5.7 trillion dollars

Total increase during the Clinton Administration: 129%.

This was the lowest increase in the National Debt, percentage wise, since the Eisenhower Administration.

During the last two years of the Clinton presidency, the United States actually paid down the National Debt by approximately $355 billion dollars. As a result, when Clinton left office in 2001, the debt was $2.4 trillion lower than had been predicted when he took office.

How did Clinton manage this? To understand, you have to look at the history of deficit spending in the Clinton Administration, compared to the two which preceded it.

Deficits in Years 1993-2000
1993: $255 billion
1994: $203 billion
1995: $164 billion
1996: $107 billion
1997: $22 billion
1998: $69 billion SURPLUS
1999: $126 billion SURPLUS
2000: $236 billion SURPLUS

Total Deficit In the Clinton Administration: $250 billion

When Bill Clinton left office, the United States enjoyed a surplus of almost a quarter of a trillion dollars. Over the course of his eight years in office, Clinton had increased revenue by a whopping $526 billion.

Then, he handed the Oval Office over to Bush43 and his band of loyalists to the Project for a New American Century, and the military-industrial complex Carlyle Group. NeoCons all, they still – for reasons that defy, well, reason – believed that you could deficit-spend yourself into prosperity. Slaves to the discredited “trickle-down” theory of economics (or, perhaps, simply the greedy tools of a psychopathic corporate desire for untold wealth at any cost), the Bush43 Juggernaut ignored the tremendous improvements in the Budget Deficit and the National Debt under Clinton, and instead embarked on an orgy of spending and revenue-reduction.

The first act of the Bush43 administration was to push through a tax-reduction act that served primarily the very rich and the corporations to whom Bush43 owed his presidency. Claiming that surpluses rightfully belonged to the people, Bush43 gave everyone in America $300, which he called a ‘rebate’. Of course, if you hadn’t paid taxes the previous year, you didn’t get squat. Meanwhile, corporations and the very rich received billions of dollars in tax reductions.

The too-obviously-predictable result?

National Debt in 2001: $5.75 trillion
National Debt in 2008: $9 trillion

Total Increase during the Bush43 Administration: 156% ($3.25 trillion)

Also predictable, despite Bush43’s irrational claims that you could reduce taxes and raise revenues (and reduce the National Debt), was the effect on deficit spending. Recall that, during the last year of the Clinton Administration, the United States enjoyed a budget SURPLUS of $236 billion.

Budget Deficits in Years 2001-2008:
2001: $128 billion SURPLUS (keep in mind that 2001 revenues reflected
earnings in 2000, and predated the Bush43 tax cuts).
2002: $158 billion (the first year after the Bush43 tax cuts)
2003: $378 billion
2004: $413 billion
2005: $318 billion
2006: $260 billion
2007: $162 billion
2008: $410 billion (projected)

Total Deficit in the George W. Bush Administration: $1.97 trillion.

Ladies and gents, no matter how you slice it, the Bush43 Administration has racked up deficits almost EIGHT TIMES LARGER than those accrued during the entire Clinton Administration.

He has almost doubled the National Debt, most of which is held by China and other foreign countries.

This is the type of Conservative Fiscal Policy that McCain, Romney, and Huckabee claim is “Reagan-like”, and desirable. Like Bush43, Bush41, and Ronald Reagan before them, these clowns all seem to believe that “trickle-down” voodoo economics actually works!

Well, it does – IF you are extremely wealthy, or are a military-industrialist like the Carlyle Group or Halliburton or Blackwater. Otherwise, all it does is rack up higher budget deficits and greater National Debt.

They get the steak, and all we get is the sizzle.

It is true, campers – you can live like a king on an unlimited credit card, and the knowledge that the bill will never come due at YOUR door only makes the spending that much easier.

The downside, though, is this: Someday the sheriff is going to nail an eviction notice on the White House's front door, telling us we have until noon to clear out, because the new owners have foreclosed on our staggering debt.

If that’s the future you want for your kids, then vote for any of these Republican NeoCon imbeciles in November.

If you want out of this mess, you know what to do.

By the way, in an interesting side note, the “trickle-down” theory espoused by Reagan and his minions was based in part on the theory of supply-side economics. This particular theory owed a great deal to another concept called the Laffer Curve, a complex statistical hypothesis that said there was an optimal tax rate which would produce the most revenue, and it fell somewhere between 0%, at which point no revenue would be collected, and 100%, at which point either it became a disincentive to work, or a motivation to cheat the tax collector.

The NeoCons bought wholeheartedly into the concept of supply-side economics, and pointed to the Laffer Curve as a primary dogma of their religion. Not surprisingly, they always maintain that the optimal tax rate is something lower than it is at the given moment. I tend to believe that Bill Clinton proved otherwise, but what are you gonna do with these NeoCon/PNAC/Carlyle Group types, right?

In any case, we probably never would have heard of supply-side economics, except for a meeting in 1974. At that meeting, Arthur Laffer (who derived the curve from work by Islamic theorist Ibn Khaldun and the more modern John Maynard Keynes) described his theoretical curve to an enthralled audience that included Wall Street Journal writer Jude Wanniski; Nixon White House Deputy Press Secretary Grace-Marie Arnett; and – wait for it, here’s the payoff – Dick Cheney.

This meeting is generally pointed to as the conceptual moment of supply-side economic theory, which has brought the United States to the very brink of bankruptcy, while engorging the offshore bank accounts of war criminals and corporate barons worldwide.

You know, what they say might be true.

The best trick the devil ever pulled was to convince the world he didn’t exist.

But the old boy sure does seem to get around, doesn’t he?

WORK FOR HIRE!

2008-01-17T14:47:00.000-08:00

A recent post on one of MWA’s proprietary email lists decried a new practice by some of the major publishers of reissuing titles, originally published in mass market paperback, as POD trade paper editions. The publishers’ goals are obvious. Since trade paper PODs essentially never go out of print, the publishers can retain the rights to those works indefinitely.

I discussed one author’s works in particular, and used it as an example of how even the major houses are learning that – in order to survive in the POD world – it’s necessary to either refuse bookseller returns, or jack the price through the ceiling. In this author’s case, they have released her titles with a cover price of $19.00.

Between 2001 and 2006, I released trade paper editions of my books through my own imprint, Back Alley Books. In order to attempt to keep these titles marginally competitive with the trade paper titles being released by the big boys, I capped cover prices at $15.95.

Now, Dell (among others) is releasing similarly sized books for three dollars more!

I expect that all POD-based small presses will follow suit, shortly, and re-price their own editions. I expect that it won’t be long before the Bigs switch their entire trade paper operation over to a POD model. The day of the $21.95 trade paperback as a relatively standard industry model isn’t far off. I recall the days when we paid that much for hardcover editions.

But that’s not my beef today.

What really got to me in the whole discussion was that the author in question was somehow incensed that her title was going to remain in print ad infinitum! Of course, this would mean that she would continue to receive royalties on those titles, and readers would continue to be able to keep reading her work. Somehow, however, she was upset because this meant that the rights to these titles would never revert to her.

And this is what bugged me.

As authors, we have become a bunch of spoiled, pantywaist drones. The assumptions under which we work apply to almost no other endeavor (save, perhaps, music).

If I, as a visual artist, paint a picture, and a consumer then pays me for it, I am not renting it to him. I should not expect to receive monthly payments from that consumer in return for allowing the picture to hang on his living room walls. When he buys my painting, it becomes his, and he has the right to do whatever he damn well wants to do with it, FOREVER!

I build acoustic guitars – as creative an endeavor as writing a book. If I sell a musician my guitar, do I expect him to remit 15% of his take at every gig he plays as long as he owns the instrument I built? No! Of course not – it’s his guitar; he can damn well smash it against a tree if he wants, and I have no right to tell him he can’t.

Building an acoustic guitar takes approximately 100 hours, and requires perhaps two hundred dollars worth of materials if you mill the wood yourself, or four hundred if you buy it prepared to work. I figure my time working on a guitar is worth more or less twenty dollars an hour. So, when I price the guitar to sell, I charge about $2500, which is more or less the lower end of the going rate for a hand-made instrument.

If I want more money, I make another guitar.

That musician, however, can turn around and write a song with my guitar, sell the song to a music publisher, and THEN will expect to be paid AGAIN every single time that song is played on the radio, forever and forever and forever.

Some people need more time, some less, but on average it takes about 100 hours to write a book. Under the current model for publishing, an author (for whatever reason) expects to be paid OVER AND OVER AND OVER for that 100 hours of work. We sell our books to a publisher, but the copyrights remain under our names. We expect that when the publisher is finished with our books they will be returned to us, free of charge, so that we can sell them again. Not only that, but after the publisher buys our books, we expect him to continue paying us royalties to keep the books!

We don’t sell books to publishers – we freakin’ lease them!

I would like to suggest that this system is seriously broken, and one clear example that it’s broken is the response this author I mentioned above had when she discovered that her book was going to remain in print indefinitely - meaning, of course, that it would continue to be available for READING. Despite this, she had a beef that her book would not somehow become her property again at some point in the future, even after she had already sold it to someone else.

“But what about intellectual property?” I hear most of you screaming.

There is no such thing. The term ‘intellectual property’ is a term drummed up by entertainment lawyers so that they can sue people to make a lot of money.

I do a lot of thinking when I build a guitar. I use my knowledge of wood species and their tonal properties, and how different types of wood sound together. I use my knowledge of resonance and engineering, and my understanding of the physical process of shaping my materials from their raw state into a synergistic system that produces a pleasant (I hope) auditory effect. Is this not an intellectual property?

No! It’s a damn guitar, and a book is just a damned book, and a song is just a damned song. If I produce it, and then I sell it to someone else, then it becomes THEIRS! If I want more money, I need to go create another guitar, or another book, or another song.

Here is a radical suggestion for revamping the publishing world, so that it will make a little more sense. Submitted for your approval (yeah, right!) is a world in which all works of literature – short stories, novels, poems – yea, even song lyrics – are considered ‘works for hire’. We write them, we sell them for money that we use to live, and then we write some more if we want more money.

Back in the early part of the twentieth century, there was a gentleman named Edward Stratemeyer. You may know him better as Franklin W. Dixon, or Victor Applegate, or Carolyn Keene, or Laura Lee Hope. Stratemeyer operated The Stratemeyer Syndicate. He generated ideas for his many series (The Hardy Boys, Tom Swift, Nancy Drew, The Bobbsey Twins, Bomba The Jungle Boy, etc), and handed them off to hired authors with clearly defined instructions regarding book structure, chapter length, organization, etc. The authors wrote the books, Stratemeyer paid them for the books, and that was the end of the transaction. Period.

Nobody talked to Edward Stratemeyer about ‘intellectual property’ – not if he/she wanted to write another book for the syndicate. The authors were fairly compensated for their time and effort, and if they wanted to make more money from the syndicate they could write another book.

I like this model. It’s clean. It’s simple. And, in the long run, it could result in a lot more books being published legitimately, rather than by POD vanity printers posing as ‘publishers’.

Let’s go back to our original issue. An author was concerned that her book, which she had sold to a major publisher, was being reissued as a POD trade paperback.

In my publishing world, where all rights convey to the buyer of a work, she would already have been fairly compensated for this book, and that would be the end of it.

By ‘fairly compensated’ I mean that – understanding that she would never again own the work she had created (just like selling a painting or a sculpture or – well, a guitar) she and the publisher would negotiate a fair price for the work. Upon payment, the ownership of the work would pass to the publisher, who could continue to sell the work as long as he wants. If the work becomes a huge success – well, both the author and the publisher benefit from this. The publisher benefits because he made a shrewd investment. The author benefits because now he/she can command a much higher price for his/her next work!

And, because in this model all trade paperback novels are now produced and distributed using the POD model, publishers are free to take more chances with lesser-known authors, because the initial cost (after the cost of buying the book from the author) of placing the book in front of the reading public is extremely low – potentially much less than a thousand dollars, depending on the extent of the cover art.

A radical idea? Only if you have completely bought into the fallacy that just because you create something you should also own it forever.

DELAYED MISSING IT

2008-01-11T05:51:00.000-08:00

Visitors to my website (http://www.richardhelms.net/) may have stumbled on the pages devoted to the last decade of my 28-year career as an amateur racing driver. Included on those pages is one documenting my last race, in June 1999, at Charlotte (now Lowes) Motor Speedway.

To recap - I was driving in the Formula Ford class in the Sports Car Club of America. Between 1971 and 1999, I had driven in all sorts of racing cars, from go-karts to Late Model Sportsman stock cars. I even drove a NASCAR Winston Cup (now Sprint Cup) car in practice at Bristol way back in the 1970s. The list included modified midgets, three-quarter midgets, sprint karts, enduro karts, hobby stocks, semi-modified dirt stockers, limited sportsman asphalt stockers, and one very disappointing run with a late model sportsman car.

I quit in 1999 for a variety of reasons. I was 44 at the time - an age when many drivers begin to consider hanging up the helmet. Drivers generally start to lose in earnest in their middle forties, as their reflexes slow and younger, braver, bolder (often dumber) drivers come along for their turn on the podium. I found, in 1999, that my attention had begun to wander. There were other things I wanted to do - writing and publishing novels, for instance. Woodworking. Traveling without towing a race car trailer.

My father had died suddenly in April, just one week after I towed to Savannah on a Friday while he was in the hospital, and towed back to Charlotte less than twenty-four hours later after blowing a rear main seal in my engine. I had visited him in his hospital room just before making the Savannah trip. We sat and watched a Braves game on TBS, and talked about all sorts of things. He had congestive heart failure, and they were trying a new sort of treatment on him which involved snaking a catheter through his arteries and hooking it up to a medicine pump he would have to carry in a fanny pack for the rest of his life. They had told him that if he had the procedure, he might get two or three more years. If he didn't - well, he wouldn't. It was sort of a no-brainer.

That was the last conversation I had face-to-face with my Dad until the day he died. After he died, I became the oldest male in the family except for my father-in-law. Things like that make you think. I realized that I wasn't a kid anymore, and that maybe I needed to reconsider some of the stuff I was doing.

Like racing, for instance.

And, while it wasn't a primary reason for quitting, my son was in a private school, and the tuition was due in August for the next year.

The final straw was an incident on-track at Charlotte. I was cruising down the backstretch at a leisurely 145 miles per hour, just boppin' around the track in practice. It was miserably hot that day, and the humidity was stifling. I was encased in two layers of nomex and fireproof longjohns. In most cases, that would seem overdressed for the climate, but it's just part of the sport. I started thinking about how I'd rather be someplace else. I thought about that place for so long that I totally missed my turn-in point for turn three, and nearly drove right into the concrete wall.

It occurred to me, after I returned to the garage area, that if I was thinking about being someplace else while I was on the track, maybe I ought to go there instead. Later that day, on the first lap of the race, a water hose detached from the engine and spewed me with water. Two or three laps later, the water would have been superheated, and I would have been in line for skin grafts.

The racing fates were trying to tell me something. I parked the car, thought for a long time, and then went home to tell my lovely spouse Elaine that I was hanging it up. She was very happy.

Okay, for the first several years I told anyone who asked that I didn't miss it. I was involved in other stuff. My books were doing nicely. I was nominated for a few awards. The reviews were good, and I had developed a whole new group of friends on the mystery conference circuit. I built a few guitars, and had turned my former race car shop into a first-class woodworking shop.

I thought I had put the racing thing behind me.

Now, in all those years of racing, there was one thing I wanted to do - well, two, actually - that I didn't get the chance to do. I have always loved the USAC open wheel cars. Since I was a kid, I've loved sprint cars and midgets and Silver Crown cars. I love the way they slide through the turns on dirt tracks, tossing up roostertails of clay. I love the ground-pounding horsepower they cram into a half-ton car, and the big, foot-and-a-half wide tires. I love watching the drivers saw at the wheels, trying to keep the front-end planted, as they sweep through the corners. I love the way they twitch on asphalt, as the drivers try to keep all that horsepower traveling in one direction.

For all my racing career, I believed that real racing drivers drove sprints and midgets. Early in my career, I had driven something called a micro-midget, which was a very tiny race car powered by a 250cc motorcycle engine. I'd also done a couple of races in three-quarter midgets back in the late 1970s. They were fun but, compared to the real USAC midgets and sprint cars, they were toys.

Why didn't I drive these cars, if I loved them so much?

No opportunity.

I live in the south. This is the land of stock cars. USAC hardly ever ventures into the warmer climes. Sprints and midgets, for the entirety of my racing career, were mostly found in the midwest, in states like Indiana and Ohio and Iowa. There were a few tracks in the northeast, and some in California, but none down here in Dixie. I never really understood it. Stock cars are fun, sure, but a decently set up sprint car will cut five or six seconds off the lap time of the fastest late model on just about any short track in the country. Why the south became fixated on race cars with roofs and fenders is beyond me. Maybe it has something to do with that whole moonshine thing.

After I retired from racing almost nine years ago, things began to change. A group called ASCS started racing winged sprint cars on dirt and asphalt in the Carolinas and Georgia. They put on a great show, and the cars are reasonably affordable.

Then, a couple of years ago, USAC came upon a grand idea. They partnered with Ford and a company in North Carolina, and came up with the Ford Focus Midget Series. The cars are the same ones that run in the USAC National Championship series; open-wheeled wonders with brand names like Stealth and Spike and Beast. The engines are sealed, which means you can't fiddle with them, and they cost a LOT less than those used on the USAC National Championship cars.

And these little monsters fly! For less than the price of a used Camry, you can put a complete car on the track. The motors are good for thirty races before they need to be refreshed, and USAC is paying a guaranteed purse!

Man, did I miss the boat...

Yeah, that's right. After saying for years that I didn't miss racing, now I'm beginning to miss it.

A lot.

Now, here's the problem. I was a racing driver when I met my lovely (and did I mention incredibly patient?) wife Elaine. When we married, she knew I liked to do dangerous things in unpredictable vehicles, and she - perhaps reluctantly - accepted that as part of the package. She told me, long before I decided to retire from racing, that she would never ask me to quit.

On the other hand, she also said that if I ever did decide to give it up, she would acquire immediate and irrevocable veto power over any attempts I might make to get back in.

So, I've mentioned the possibility of picking up a cheap used midget a couple of times. As it happens, there's one for sale in the next county. It's a Beast. One of the best midget brands available.

Elaine wants to know whether it comes with a divorce lawyer.

I think she's kidding.

I'm not sure I want to test that theory.

Tomorrow night is the Chili Bowl Nationals for USAC midgets, in Tulsa. It's one of the biggest events of the year. Especially in Tulsa. HBO is offering it for viewing on Pay-Per-View.

I think I'm going to buy it.

Maybe, at 53, it's kind of foolish to yearn for another turn at the wheel. Doesn't mean I can't have some vicarious thrills.

Right?

BUSH44?

2008-01-04T07:43:00.001-08:00

If you've been reading my ongoing blog 'Wolves in the Fold', you've seen me lay the groundwork for my ultimate thesis - that the administration of George W. Bush is nothing but a leisure service of a vast multinational company called The Carlyle Group, and the neocon flagbearing group Project for a New American Century.

This should scare the living shit out of you. Really. I'm not kidding. When you understand the true goals of both Carlyle and PNAC, you begin to see a fascist network forming that would make the Third Reich look like a freshman PolySci project.

So, why should we be concerned, if Bush43 will be out of office in only twelve months?

It appears that at least three of the GOP frontrunners for his office are already in the back pockets of the Carlyle/PNAC cabal. In other words, should any of them win the presidency, the disastrous last eight years will continue as business as usual.

Just to recap, here are the major accomplishments of Bush43's Carlyle Group/PNAC-driven presidency: (thanks and a tip of the hat to the contributors at www.democrats.com

- Over 3000 American soldiers dead
- More than 18,250 soldiers wounded and maimed
- Over 100,000 innocent Iraqi civilians killed
- Over 350 billion dollars spent on an war of lies
- Two deeply divided countries; The U.S. and Iraq
- NSA warrantless, illegal spying on U.S. citizens
- Massive data mining of phone and bank records of U.S. citizens
- Congressional corruption at an unprecedented level (see Tom Delay, et al.)
- Despicable torture of detainee suspects
- A president firmly entrenched above the law (See Bush's end-around on the FISA law)
- Emasculation of Congress as a co-equal branch of government (see Bush's 750 signing statements)
- Suppression of civil liberties, invasion of privacy & free speech
- Two stolen elections and massive voter fraud
- The Katrina response debacle
-Ignoring overwhelming evidence from the scientific community that global warming is occurring and it’s not a natural phenomenon.
-Suppression of science and flow of information in order to fit a narrow brand of arcane Christian canon.
-Infiltration of the religious right’s dogmatic agenda into our secular government.
-Refusal to fund and acknowledge the benefits of stem cell research.
-An 8.1 trillion dollar debt, mostly to the Chinese.
-Medicare’s Plan D Prescription drug program that masquerades as a massive windfall for pharmaceutical companies.
-A President who claimed ‘God told him’ to invade Iraq and attack (that wasn't God, it was PNAC!).
- Finally, the re-birth of fascism, American style!

We won't even mention that the United States is now a worldwide pariah, hated or simply an object of disgust from Beijing to British Columbia.

As I mentioned, it appears that at least three GOP candidates to replace Bush43 have very strong Carlyle or PNAC connections.

John McCain, of course, was the president of the New Citizenship Project, which was the parent organization of PNAC. He has been the most vocal supporter of Bush43's Iraq policies among the GOP front-runners, and those policies were - after all - just the political realization of PNAC's goals.

Rudy Giuliani hired Norman Podhoretz as his senior foreign policy advisor. Podhoretz is a signatory to the original PNAC manifesto, and Elliot Abrams' father-in-law. Elliot Abrams is also heavily involved in PNAC's activities, and is Bush43's deputy national security advisor. Is this getting just a little too incestuous, or what? Podhoretz was appointed to his position with Giuliani's campaign in July. In September, he was reported to have met secretly with Bush43 and Karl Rove, during which he reportedly encouraged them to bomb Iran. Considered one of the most ardent of the neocons, his involvement with Giuliani almost guarantees that a Giuliani presidency would keep the Oval Office in the hands of PNAC and the Carlyle Group.

Mitt Romney hired Vin Weber as his Campaign Policy Chairman. Vin Weber, a former congressman from Minnesota, is the managing partner of Clark and Weinstock's Washington DC office. Clark and Weinstock, as I will mention in 'Wolves in the Fold' is the lobbying firm for The Carlyle Group. In addition, Vin Weber was one of the original signatories to the PNAC manifesto, and signed the letter sent to President Clinton in 1998 urging him to invade Iraq. Clearly, Mitt Romney enjoys the close, warm embrace of both PNAC and The Carlyle Group and, that being the case, a Romney presidency would simply continue the disastrous policies implemented by Bush43.

Fred Thompson's link to PNAC is - admittedly - tenuous at best. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations (as is McCain and, for that matter, former Democratic candidate Christopher Dodd, and President Clinton). The CFR has been linked by conspiracy buffs for some time with PNAC due to some shared members. In addition, there are individuals who share involvement with the CFR and the Carlyle Group (billionaire George Soros, for instance). At this point, however, it is probably a safe bet that neither Carlyle or PNAC have their claws in Thompson, primarily because neither of them is very interested in backing someone that slow and error-prone. Besides that, his wife is generally regarded by his campaign workers as a harpy.

Likewise, Ron Paul is definitely NOT likely to be PNAC/Carlyle bait. In fact, because of his strident position against the Iraq invasion, he is the anti-PNAC candidate. He is also about as likely to be elected as Elmer Fudd.

Not that I'm into endorsing Republican candidates (believe me, I'm really not!), but it appears that the only legitimate GOP frontrunner not infected with the PNAC/Carlyle virus is former Arkansas governor and Iowa Caucus Winner Mike Huckabee. While I find his position on civil liberties, abortion, and separation of church and state absolutely deplorable - I do believe that he would endorse a theocracy if given the opportunity - he at least doesn't appear to be a puppet of the neocons. Sadly, his campaign is scheduled to hit the wall and burn to a crisp in New Hampshire and after MegaSuperDuper Tuesday.

All of which means that the Republican candidate for president in 2008 will almost certainly be a PNAC/Carlyle Group crony. That makes it imperative to get behind whatever lame-assed, pantywaist Democrat that makes it through the mud and mire of the primaries, and back him or her all the way to the White House.

The alternative is unthinkable. Another four years of PNAC/Carlyle Group disasters will grind this country right down to the spokes.

WOLVES IN THE FOLD, PART 3

2008-01-04T06:49:00.000-08:00

After graduating from Yale in 1948, George Herbert Walker Bush – the son of Prescott Bush and the namesake of Harriman president George Herbert Walker – went to work for Dresser Industries. Dresser Industries, a company deeply involved in oil and gas piplines, had begun to branch into the Middle East.

George H.W. Bush met Henry Neil Mallon, then president of Dresser Industries. Mallon offered him a job in the International Derrick and Equipment Company – a subsidiary of Dresser – in Odessa, Texas. Mallon, of course, had originally been given his job at Dresser by Prescott Bush’s father-in-law, George Herman Walker, back in 1928, so it would appear that he owed the Walker-Bush family a favor. That was just the way things were done back then, I guess. Probably still are. To be fair, George H.W. Bush later returned the favor, by naming his son Neil after Mallon. That’s right, the Neil Bush who single-handedly reamed the American people for over one billion dollars in the Silverado Savings and Loan scandal. From the grave, Henry Neil Mallon is probably giving Bush41 the finger.

In 1953, using money loaned by Brown Brothers Harriman – of which his father, now Senator Prescott Bush, remained managing partner – George H.W. Bush joined forces with three other wildcatters to form Zapata Petroleum Corporation. One of these partners, Hugh Liedtke, later became the chairman at Pennzoil.

The involvement with Zapata Petroleum – and, later, its offshoot Zapata Offshore, Incorporated – made George H.W. Bush’s fortune. By the age of 31, he was a millionaire, at least on paper. After drilling a reported 127 wells with no dry holes, the Zapata stock had risen from an initial price of just seven cents, to $23 a share.

The company itself, however, showed enormous losses for most of its first six years of existence, and continued to lose money until some time after Bush split from the Liedtke brothers and formed the offshoot company Zapata Offshore, Inc. Unlike his earlier wildcat days, Bush realized that the real money was in service provision. Again drawing on his family connections with Brown Brothers Harriman, and his father’s influence in the U.S. Senate, Bush put together an oil drilling service company. Zapata Offshore leased its drilling services to other speculators. Whether the wells hit or missed, Zapata made money.

His fortune increased incrementally through the 1950s. In the early 1960s, he decided to follow his father’s path into politics, and entered a Texas Congressional race against Ralph Yarborough. Yarborough spanked him in the general election, after branding him as a product of eastern elite kingmakers which, for all intents and purposes, he was. Bush came back again several years later to win the seat in the competitive 7th Texas Congressional District.

This launched Bush’s political career, which eventually led to his appointment as the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency in 1976, by President Gerald Ford. During his tenure at the CIA, Bush oversaw the training of the Royal Guard serving the Saudi Royal Family. He also hired a young entrepreneur and pilot named Jim Bath, who was a close friend of George W. Bush (they had met while serving in the Air National Guard in 1968), to assist in the privatization of many of the CIA’s proprietary operations (what we now refer to as ‘front organizations’).

Bath, as it turned out, became the Bush family’s most important link with the Saudi Royal Family. Shortly after Jim Bath was ‘hired’ by the elder Bush, Salem bin Laden (the elder brother of Osama bin Laden) formed a business association with Bath. Bath’s role, according to CBS News reports, was to be the bin Laden front man in America, and to invest bin Laden money in various US businesses. This became the first documented link in a long and close relationship between the bin Laden family, who are associated with the Saudi Royal Family, and the Bushes. Later, Jim Bath would openly state that, even when he acted as the bin Ladens’ American representative, he was actually employed by the CIA under the direction of the man who would eventually become Bush41.

While ostensibly still in the employ of the CIA, Bath’s association with the Saudis grew to include Khalid bin Mahfouz, a member of Saudi Arabia's most powerful banking family, the owners of the National Commercial Bank, the principal bank of the Saudi Royal Family.

Just two years later, in 1978, George W. Bush would embark on his first major business venture – an oil research company called Arbusto (‘arbusto’ is Spanish for ‘bush’). Jim Bath invested heavily in this fledgling – and ultimately disastrous – misadventure.

The money? Why, it came from Salem bin Laden and Khalid bin Mahfouz, of course.

By the late 1990’s Mahfouz was no longer associated with National Commercial bank. Some news outlets reported that, following an audit that raised strong suspicions that bin Mahfouz had diverted money from the bank to support Al Qaeda, bin Mahfouz had been shown the door.

Following his ouster, Khalid bin Mahfouz was a fundamental contributor to the organization of a charity organization called the Muwafaq (‘blessed relief’)Foundation. After plowing $30 million into the charity, bin Mahfouz reportedly put his eldest son, Abdulrahman, on the board of directors.

In October of 2001, the U.S. Treasury Department named the Muwafaq Foundation as an Al Qaeda front organization.

Like his grandfather, who had maintained strong Nazi ties long after the attack on Pearl Harbor, George W. Bush had been in bed with the people who funded Al Quaeda for over twenty years before the attacks of 9/11.

Next: The Carlyle Group/PNAC connection

LCC? I'll Take A Pass...

2007-11-15T14:44:00.000-08:00

I'm a Mystery Writers of America Active Member, have been for over six years, and have three Shamus Award nominations, but as long as Left Coast Crime continues its policy of excluding authors from panels based on their MWA membership status, their publishers, or awards histories, I will be boycotting the conference.

I also encourage other authors to do the same.

I hope they have a great time in Denver, but I'd rather not participate in a conference that's been redlined.

Nothing personal.

I've just decided that LCC doesn't meet my criteria for being a legitimate conference.

The Hell With The Kids!

2007-10-18T11:11:00.000-07:00

The U.S. Congress failed on Thursday to override President Doofus's veto of the SCHIP Bill (HR976), by a margin of only fourteen votes.

Prior to the vote, Rep. Pete Stark launched into a recriminating indictment of the Presidential Puppet, in which he claimed that Bush couldn't approve $35 million for American children's health care, but was completely happy to demand $200 million for the Iraq invasion. Stark, breaking the House tradition of moderating remarks and watering them down to near-impotence, grew a set of balls, stepped forward, and openly stated that U.S. troops in Iraq are getting their heads "blown off for the president's amusement". Here's a healthy tip of the Helms chapeau for the first Congressman I've seen this year who has the guts to tell it like it is.

Following is a list of the United States Representatives who went on record today as not giving a good goddamn about your children:

Aderholt; Akin; Alexander; Bachmann; Bachus; Baker; Barrett (SC); Bartlett (MD); Barton (TX); Biggert; Bilbray; Bilirakis; Bishop(UT); Blackburn; Blunt; Boehner; Bonner; Boozman; Boustany; Brady (TX); Broun (GA); Brown (SC); Brown-Waite, Ginny; Burgess; Burton (IN); Buyer; Calvert; Camp (MI); Campbell (CA); Cannon; Cantor; Carter; Chabot; Coble; Cole (OK); Conaway; Crenshaw; Cubin; Culberson; Davis (KY); Davis, David; Deal (GA); Diaz-Balart, L.; Diaz-Balart, M.; Doolittle; Drake; Dreier; Duncan; Everett; Fallin; Feeney; Flake; Forbes; Fortenberry; Foxx; Franks (AZ); Frelinghuysen; Gallegly; Garrett (NJ); Gingrey; Gohmert; Goode; Goodlatte; Granger; Graves; Hall (TX); Hastert; Hastings (WA); Hayes; Heller; Hensarling; Herger; Hoekstra; Hulshof; Hunter; Inglis (SC); Issa; Johnson (IL); Johnson, Sam; Jones (NC); Jordan; Keller; King (IA); Kingston; Kline (MN); Knollenberg; Kuhl (NY); Lamborn; Lewis (CA); Lewis (KY); Linder; Lucas; Lungren, Daniel, E.; Mack; Manzullo; Marchant; Marshall; McCarthy (CA); McCaul (TX); McCotter; McCrery; McHenry; McKeon; Mica; Miller (FL); Miller, Gary; Musgrave; Myrick; Neugebauer; Nunes; Paul; Pearce; Pence; Peterson (PA); Pickering; Pitts; Poe; Price (GA); Putnam; Radanovich; Reynolds; Rogers (AL); Rogers (KY); Rogers (MI); Rohrabacher; Ros-Lehtinen; Roskam; Royce; Ryan (WI); Sali; Saxton; Schmidt; Sensenbrenner; Sessions; Shadegg; Shimkus; Shuster; Smith (NE); Smith (TX); Souder; Stearns; Sullivan; Tancredo; Taylor; Terry; Thornberry; Tiahrt; Walberg; Walden (OR); Wamp; Weldon (FL); Weller; Westmoreland; Whitfield; Wicker; Wilson (SC)

Members of the U.S. House of Representatives have a habit of ignoring email from people who live outside their districts. Therefore, writing nastygrams to these rightwing nutjobs would be a waste of time unless they represent you. If you see your representative listed above, please do us all a favor and turn his/her email inbox cherry red. We put neglectful parents in jail. What should we do with a neglectful Congress?

Remember - we have an opportunity in 2008 to run every NeoCon in Washington out of town, and turn this government back over to the people. They can't roll over you if you're standing on your own two feet.

Thou Shalt Not Steal

2007-10-12T06:07:00.000-07:00

And don't look now, George, but that sound behind you is History preparing to give you a first-class asskicking...

My Recent DotL Post

2007-10-05T13:24:00.000-07:00

In a recent post on the DorothyL mystery email list, Rob Walker asked, "So here's a poll question: Why do you write? What keeps ya going, 'cause it sure ain't the "steady" income?"

As it happens, I've wrestled with this issue for some time now, and - as in many areas of my life - I've managed to find a comfortably rationalized position. So, I did something I very rarely do - I posted to DorothyL. The following, after a couple of discreet edits, is the text of my post.

Like many authors, I started writing because a teacher saw something in my writing that she felt worth nurturing, and took me under her wing.

After she passed away (check my website for the whole story), I felt that I owed it to her to continue working to become the best writer I could, as sort of a legacy to her.

I wrote novels for almost twenty years before one of them was published in anything other than serial form in a magazine. I now have nine novels in print, three Shamus Award nominations, four completed books in some sort of pipeline, and I can say with absolute confidence that my total earnings - after promotional costs, travel, conference fees, yadayadayada - is in the lower four figures.

Okay, the really low four figures.

So, in my case, it ain't about the bucks.

I've railed elsewhere about my impressions that big corporate money has killed the publishing field, so I won't go into that here. There are two definite camps in that argument, and they are so well-entrenched that I don't see anyone being swayed to defect by my feeble arguments.

I have decided that I receive the greatest pleasure from:

A) hearing from a reader who truly enjoyed one of my stories, such as the woman who came up to me at a conference and said, "I love your books! You're so politically incorrect!", or the reader I'd never met who emailed me out of the blue to thank me for entertaining him for a few hours;

B) receiving recognition from author peers I admire and respect, in the form of social acceptance, encouragement, award nominations, and requests for advice;

C) going to conferences, presenting workshops, signing books, hanging in the bar, and for a couple of days getting to pretend that I'm Robert B. Parker, and

D) my personal sense of accomplishment and a 'job well done'.

The thing I have discovered that I like least about writing is trying to anticipate market trends and 'write to the market'.

After riding that merry-go-round for a couple of years, I'm seriously considering going back to writing whatever I damn well please and to hell with the major publishers.

Many years ago, I was trying to decide whether to become a professional racing driver. I was working for a NASCAR team, had been racing at local tracks, and had reached a point where I had the opportunity to move up to a level that was the springboard to the Big Leagues.

I went to the NASCAR driver for whom I worked, Rick Newsom (sadly, now deceased), and asked his advice. He asked me if I was having fun. I told him that I was. He told me that I should keep doing that, because if I started doing it for a living it would become work.

He told me that it's one thing to do something for the love of it, but when your success or failure determines whether there are groceries in the house - or whether there is a house at all - then it really just becomes a job.

I have a great job, working for a local college. I enjoy it. I make more money than I ever expected, and for that matter all I really need. I don't need to make a living from writing. My life is arranged in such a way that- when motivated - I can easily knock out two books a year. Where they go is anybody's guess, but they all seem to find their way into print one way or another, which allows me to continue enjoying all the 'fun' factors I've listed above.

I suppose that makes me a 'gentleman author'. Maybe that makes writing books, for me, a hobby. Unless you believe in the philosophy that the only things worth doing are worth doing for money - in which case it's useless to try to convince you otherwise - that's not such a bad place to be.

We're only around for a few years, and then we're dead forever. We should enjoy the pursuits we take on while we're here.

And, I guess, that's why I write...

Gotta go.

Stuff to do.

Wolves in the Fold, Part II

2007-10-05T12:31:00.000-07:00

Last week, I began a series exploring how the Bush Administration has actively worked to divert attention away from the true events leading up to 9/11 by creating a series of straw men to vilify and hold responsible for all the ills in the world. First it was Saddam Hussein, who had been rendered almost entirely impotent by the UN embargo, and who was mostly responsible - over the last fifteen years, of just being a really bad guy who happened to be running a country with a lot of oil. Now that the Iraqis have stretched Hussein's neck, the Administration has had to find someone new to pick on, and they have selected Iranian PM Ahmed Ahmadinejad - a man who actually holds almost no real power in Iran.

Now, just in case one of the mullahs in Teheran decides that Ahmadinejad has overstayed his welcome and parks an ounce of lead between his eyes, the Administration is finally warming up Burmese PM Than Shwe in the bullpen. Meanwhile Osama Bin Laden, the only one of these people who has ACTUALLY attacked the United States, lounges in Afghanistan (or perhaps it's Pakistan this week - sometimes it's hard to tell), comfortably hooked to his dialysis machine and writing anti-American diatribes.

President Bush seems to have gotten this finger-pointing thing down. On the other hand, he's been well-trained in the art of diversion, as we will see in this installment of Wolves in the Fold.

Prescott Bush – Yalie, Skull and Bonesman, and the former president of the Yale Glee Club, went to work after graduation from college for a simple hardware company. Six years later, in 1924, he was vice president of Harriman and Company, a major investment and banking firm. He achieved this amazing and meteoric ascent courtesy of his father-in-law, George Herbert Walker. Prescott had met his wife, Dorothy Walker, though fellow Bonesman and Harriman heir, Roland Harriman, and they had married three years before he joined Harriman and Company.

He only lasted one year at Harriman, before departing for the U.S. Rubber Company. He returned triumphant, though, in 1931 as a founding member of Brown Brothers Harriman, formed by the merger of his father-in-law’s company Harriman with the
Philadelphia firm Brown Brothers & Co.

Brown Brothers Harriman was the Wall Street connection for numerous German firms that helped to fund Germany’s rebuilding after WWI, and eventually funded the Nazi Party under Hitler. On December 14, 1941, six days after Pearl Harbor, Franklin Roosevelt signed the Trading with the Enemy Act, which enabled federal authorities to seize the assets of US companies who profited from German, Japanese, and Italian customers.

Prescott Bush's assets were seized. Among them were his holdings as a Director at the Hamburg-Amerika shipping lines, which was a front for the American spying operations conducted by the I.G. Farben Company in Germany. In all, Bush's holdings as a Director in no less than five companies were taken by the government, and each and every one of them were in one way or another a Nazi front corporation (Union Banking, The Holland-American Trading Association, The Silesian-American Corporation, the aforementioned Hamburg-Amerika Lines, and the Seamless Steel Equipment Corporation). In fact, when all was said and done, it appeared that Prescott Bush owed almost all of his accumulated wealth to collaboration with the Nazi Party.

It was a natural combination. Prescott Bush's involvement in munitions and other war-works industry fit like a finely machined sleeve with the emerging fascist movement in Western Europe. In fact, it was the types of business engaged in by Bush and his fellows at BBH that typified the military-industrial complex that President Eisenhower would warn us about in his farewell speech in 1960. By then, of course, it was way to late to stop the juggernaut, but in 1941 the US actually took steps to interdict active collaboration with the Nazis, and siezed all of the Bush holdings.

Besides his already existing staunch Republican leanings, this event appears to have cemented Prescott Bush's disregard for FDR, and may have spurred his eventual political career.

Prescott Bush's antipathy toward the President was not new. Bush had so loathed FDR, in fact, that he appears to have cooperated in a seditious attempt in 1933 to overthrow the Democratic president.

Retired Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler had appeared before the McCormack-Dickstein Committee in Congress in 1934, and had testified that he had been approached by a group of wealthy businessmen the year before. According to Butler, this group had attempted to recruit him to participate in a military coup intended to depose Roosevelt. The Committee eventually decided that such a plot had indeed taken place, but - strangely - nobody was ever prosecuted. The attempted putsch, according to the BBC, was funded largely by the American Liberty League, of which Prescott Bush was a major member.

In any case, by 1941 Bush’s assets had been seized, and he had to begin assembling a new fortune. He turned to the emerging energy business and, through Brown Brothers Harriman’s involvement, was on the Board of Dresser Industries for over twenty-two years.

Dresser Industries, founded in the latter part of the 19th century, had been involved in oil and natural gas exploration and production for almost fifty years by the time Bush was placed on its board. In 1950, Dresser moved its base of operations to Dallas in order to take advantage of the burgeoning Texas oil industry, but its involvement with oil and natural gas spread to points all over the world, including the Middle East.

Harriman’s involvement with Middle East oil concerns can be traced back to the 1920’s, when Prescott Bush’s father-in-law, George Herbert Walker, assisted in the post-WWI rebuilding of the Baku oil fields. It was through Brown Brothers Harriman’s involvement with Dresser Industries, and Prescott Bush’s Board membership there, that BBH became a major player in the oil industry.

In 1948, after returning from WWII and completing school at Yale (where he, like his father, was a Skull and Bonesman), George Herbert Walker Bush went to work for Dresser Industries as a treasurer. It is roughly at this point that the intersection of the Bush family and Big Oil begins in earnest, an intersection which, almost forty years later, led to a more than passing relationship with the Saudi Royal Family – a story that we will pick up on in the next installment of Wolves in the Fold.

One other note of interest. Years after Bush41 left Dresser Industries, it was bought out by another company.

That company’s name?

Halliburton.

Wolves in the Fold, Part 1

2007-09-27T08:19:00.000-07:00

Okay, everyone repeat after me: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a bad man.

Do we all feel better?

That is certainly the hope of the Bush Administration. By vilifying the president of Iran, they continue to divert our attention from the real issues.

Yes, Iran does have a history of Islamic terrorist activities and supporting same.

However, when it comes to the crystallizing moment that drew an asleep-at-the-wheel USA into the real world - 9/11 - Iran wasn't a player. Neither was Iraq.

In fact, the true players were supposedly our friends. Since September 2001, the Bush Misadministration has managed to effectively cloud the truth with lies and accusatory diversions, primarily in an attempt to protect its allies and butt buddies in the Big Oil business.

Over the next several entries, I will outline the true conspirators behind 9/11, and how the President and his cronies protected them following the attack on the World Trade Center.

The conclusion, however, I can state now. With the exception of a few feel-good superficial security measures that had no real impact on public safety, 9/11 changed absolutely nothing. We are probably at an even greater risk of attack now than at any other time in our history.

Check back later, campers. It's a ride that will make Space Mountain look like a riding mower.

A Tiger By The Long Tail

2007-09-25T12:09:00.000-07:00

In 1952, Jason Epstein, then the Editorial Director at Doubleday Books in New York, established Anchor Books, an imprint that specialized in trade paperbacks.

You know about trade paperbacks - they are the full-sized paperbacks, as opposed to those pulp paper pocket books you buy in the drugstore. Most trade paperback novels are printed on acid-free #50 or #60 pound bond paper, and are perfect bound with a laminated card stock cover. They're the happy medium between the outrageously priced hardcover novel and the relatively flimsy mass market drugstore paperback.

Back to Jason Epstein - by founding Anchor Books, he became known as the Father of the Paperback Novel. He won the National Book Award for Distinguished Service to American Letters, The Curtis Benjamin Award of the Association of American Publishers, and a Life Achievement Award from the National Book Critics' Circle.

This week, only fifty-five years later, The New York Times has finally broken its Bestsellers list into hardcover and trade paperback novels. The books heading up the NYT Bestsellers List for Trade Paperbacks are the ones you'd probably expect - authors like Sara Gruen, Khaled Hosseini, and Nicholas Sparks. Some things seldom change.

The upside here is that trade paperbacks are finally getting the recognition they deserve.

I won't go into my usual rant about Bestsellers Lists, except to remind thee, gentle reader, that they represent bookstore orders, not end user (reader) sales, and that if you have a 'name', bookstores are going to order your new title as if had an expiration date. So-called Bestsellers are as prone to returns and remaindering as any other books - they just sell more at the outset.

On the other hand, major publishers have only recently begun to exploit the potential of the trade paperback. S. J. Rozan had a recent novel (Absent Friends) released in trade paper rather than going to mass market paperback after the hardcover edition was exhausted.

Have you noticed all those new-sized paperbacks in the racks at your local MegaloMart? The ones that measure roughly 4.5" by 8"? You know, the ones that are priced at $10.99 instead of the usual $7.99 for a pocket book? Is it a coincidence that the smallest size a trade paperback is traditionally printed in is 5" by 8"?

As the price point of mass market paperbacks and trade paperbacks have begun to collapse toward one another, major publishers are beginning to see the benefit of moving toward a size that can be produced on two levels - a few thousand printed on web-fed presses to satisfy the initial sales bump, and then moving the title to a print-on-demand format to satisfy backlist demand down the line.

This is called The Long Tail - the ability of a former high profile title to continue selling virtually ad infinitum in small numbers.

Back when I worked as a psychologist, I spent five years working part-time in a private practice to make some extra bucks. The owner of the practice, in order to avoid mounds of paperwork, refused to take health insurance payments (an increasingly popular practice, by the way). Instead, he allowed clients to spread payments out, as long as they didn't fall more than five sessions behind. He used to say "I've made a lot of money ten bucks at a time."

Likewise, the Long Tail, as described by Chris Anderson in the October 2004 issue of Wired, may be one of the major publishing houses' dirtiest little secrets over the next decade. Since contracts usually stipulate that the houses will control a title as long as it remains in print, and since print-on-demand books NEVER go out of print, publishing houses may be able to control a title literally forever. And, since print-on-demand titles can't be produced (at least yet) in pocket book sized editions on pulp paper, it is important for the publishers to establish a market for the larger, higher-priced trade paperbacks.

Eternal control of a title may prove to be a major cash cow for major publishers currently experiencing financial crunches. As Anderson reported in Wired, "“…What's really amazing about the Long Tail is the sheer size of it. Combine enough nonhits on the Long Tail and you've got a market bigger than the hits. Take books: The average Barnes & Noble carries 130,000 titles. Yet more than half of Amazon's book sales come from outside its top 130,000 titles. Consider the implication: If the Amazon statistics are any guide, the market for books that are not even sold in the average bookstore is larger than the market for those that are. In other words, the potential book market may be twice as big as it appears to be, if only we can get over the economics of scarcity. Venture capitalist and former music industry consultant Kevin Laws puts it this way: "The biggest money is in the smallest sales….”

Now, why might the NY Times have decided to start tracking sales of trade paperbacks? Perhaps it is designed to mold the readers' mindset to accept the slightly higher-priced, larger, eventually printed-on-demand paperbacks as an alternative to both the exhorbitantly priced hardcovers AND the easy-to-return-by-simply-stripping-covers mass market paperbacks.

Of course, nobody would ever consider accusing the major publishing houses, 80% of which are controlled by non-USA based multinational corporations, of engaging in anything that might be considered shady or conspiratorial.

That would be cynical.

McCain Pimps Jesus

2007-09-20T07:37:00.000-07:00

So, John 'Die Hard' McCain was campaigning in South Carolina a few days ago, and claimed while on one stump or another that he was a Baptist.

This came as something of a surprise to his fellow worshipers at his Episcopalian Church in Arizona.

This is state of affairs in the rapidly disintegrating McCain camp. He is so desperate to emulate his successes in the early primaries of the 2004 campaign that he is actually willing to prevaricate about his religious affiliation to court those South Carolina voters who are too ignorant to recognize his lies.

He is specifically targeting those people who would vote for a toaster if it was a pro-life Southern Baptist.

Even more sadly, this has proven in the past to be a relatively successful strategy in South Carolina, which ranks 50th in the nation in SAT scores, but right near the top in religious bigotry.

So, John McCain might be a hypocrite and a liar, but it appears that he isn't stupid.

He should fit in quite nicely with his fellow Republicans.

Don't Tase Me Bra!

2007-09-19T06:43:00.000-07:00

(Dissociated Press, Sept. 19) A University of Florida student was tasered by Campus Brownshirts last evening while she participated in a campus-wide debate for Student Body President.

Jennifer Trachtenberg, a candidate for the position, was answering a question about overnight visitation in the athletic dorms. When she ignored the red light signaling that she had exceeded her time limit of one minute, the sponsor of the debate, Harvey "The Stopwatch" Klinger ordered Campus Police to take charge of the situation.

The officers at that point wrestled Ms. Trachtenberg to the ground. Ms. Trachtenberg, a ninety pound co-ed from St. Augustine, began to yell, "What did I do? What did I do?".

After she was cuffed, stuffed, rebuffed, and unnecessarily roughed, officers produced their recently issued tasers and saw an opportunity to try them out.

"Don't tase me bra!" Ms. Trachtenberg, a native of New Zealand, is reported to have pleaded, just before three Kampus Kops electrocuted her.

After disposing of the body, Campus Police Chief Claude "Bull" Shannon was asked whether the action against the candidate might have constituted an undue restriction of her First Amendment Rights under the United States Constitution.

He reportedly responded, "Huh?"

University of Florida President Bernie Machen responded to reporters' questions following the incident, with this statement.

"This was an unfortunate event. Nobody likes to restrict the free and open expression of ideas, but let's face it, guys, she went over her allotted time. I mean, how much are we supposed to tolerate? Virginia Tech changed everything. You let some of these students talk too long in a debate, and the next thing you know they'll be roaming the halls with an AK-47. You just never know with these crazy kids. Sometimes it's like herding cats, y'know?"

Ms. Trachtenberg's survivors are reportedly in negotiation for a book deal with former O.J. Simpson publisher (If I Did It) Judith Regan.

The preceding is a work of cultural parody.
We think.

Silly Wabbit, Lits is for Chicks!

2007-09-17T08:04:00.000-07:00

My lovely bride sent me a copy of an article from The Wall Street Journal, by Jeffrey Trachtenberg (Sept. 14), detailing how Viking took a little-known paperback original entitles Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert and turned it into a blockbuster.

One paragraph jumped out at me:

"...Reading tastes, too, have changed. Virtually all of the hottest recent paperbacks have flourished largely because they appeal to women -- buyers who account for 60% to 70% of U.S. book sales..."

Well, fudge.

Now, I would be the last person on Earth to begrudge the major publishers their profits. They have to eat, too. On the other hand, for guys like me who write books targeted at men (but some women like them too!), this is a sad portent. If the majors perceive their primary audience to be women, and they make their editorial decisions based on that perception, I foresee a future laden with Oprah books and touchy-feely memoirs.

Authors who don't fit the mold won't be considered. Midlist authors already under contract whose demographics don't clearly include a female readership will probably find themselves under the gun, and eventually out in the cold.

There is one positive note. I have maintained for some time that the major publishing system is sagging under its own weight. Book publishing was never intended to be a multinational corporate rainmaker. In time - and, I hope, a very short time - the majors will be forced to spin off unprofitable imprints. Some of these will reconstitute themselves as small presses - leaner, meaner, faster on their feet.

I said it every chance I had at Bouchercon last year, and I've repeated it perhaps a thousand times since then. We are within spitting distance of the Second Golden Age of the Small Press. There will be a place there for people who write fiction aimed at a masculine audience. Shoot, judging by the success of Bleak House, HardCase Crime, and others like it, we're already there.

And He Thought It Was Gone Forever

2007-09-17T08:00:00.000-07:00

Okay, this is a little late, but sometimes news has to percolate, you know?

Around the end of June, doctors did a colonoscopy on G.W. Bush. They did a few clips and snips, and retrieved some materials for examination.

Dick Cheney is reportedly happy to have his class ring back.

The $20,000 Shakedown

2007-09-17T07:50:00.000-07:00

The Bush Administration has repeatedly stated that, when it comes to the Iraq police action (remember, Congress never authorized a 'war', no matter what the news drones and The War President call it), we "will stand down when the Iraqi troops stand up."

Well, we've been training the Iraqi troops for four years, and they apparently still aren't able to stand on their own.

On the other hand, the US is offering prospective cannon fodder a $20,000 signing bonus if they will:
A) Leave for basic training immediately, for a period of three months, and
B) Agree to be sent, directly following that basic training, to Iraq for God knows how long, with a very strong probability of having their asses blown off sometime during their TDY.

So, let me see if I understand this. After four years, the Iraqis aren't ready to defend their own country, but we can send the most needy and compromised American kids over to be slaughtered after only three months of basic and presume that they ARE ready?

What's wrong with this picture?

North To Alaska

2007-09-14T08:00:00.000-07:00

I'm not going to Bouchercon this year. Nothing against the organizers, who have struggled mightily to build up a membership. Let's face it, though - IT'S IN FREAKIN' ALASKA!

I guess the Yellowknife Hilton was booked that weekend.

I checked the Bouchercon 2007 website yesterday, and counted 419 non-author attendees, and 181 authors registered for the party next month. That comes to 600 total attendees for The World Mystery Convention. I think the average is about 2500 'members'. My count might be inaccurate already, however, because word has arrived that Ken Bruen has bowed out due to undoubtedly legitimate health issues.

You kind of have to wonder how many other people are going to develop 'health issues', though, before the end of September.

By all accounts, Ruth Jordan and Judy Bobalik are enjoying somewhat more success with their promotion of the '08 show in Baltimore. Not too surprising, considering the very strong contingent of east coast writers and fans. It's a lot easier to get to Baltimore than Anchorage.

For those of you heading for the Thunda on the Tundra in a few weeks, a tip of the hat. You are rugged individualists, all, and I applaud you. Have a great party.

Third Time's A Charm, He Hoped

2007-09-14T06:34:00.000-07:00

Okay, so this is my third blog attempt. You can still check out my first attempt over at JournalScape (am I allowed to mention them here?), which was more a collection of personal and political essays than a public stream-of-consciousness. The second is/was available through my web host, but will probably disappear.
Here are my ground rules this time.
First, I'm primarily interested in talking about the writing and publishing business, but I will occasionally allow my borderline radical political leanings to surface.
Second, I hope to keep things short.
So, in the interest of brevity, check back next time...