Pitch and Poles not Slo-Mo buff umm… jiggling. Got the stupid uniform suit thing right, full timers have 3, a good one, one on requisition so you can start using your good one, and the rags you actually work in. Rinse thoroughly and hope they dry enough in your locker so you don’t have to put them on sticky damp tomorrow.

Takin’ It To The Streets – The Doobie Brothers 1982

I certainly don’t want you to think Syracuse is some kind of scary urban hellhole. I lived in a converted Victorian a block from a big Park, King Bedroom, Full Bath, Galley, Nook, and a seriously large living room. My next door neighbor, Lacerta, kept Snakes, Spiders, and Lizards as pets. It had more diversity than I was used to but I found the people generally friendlier and nicer than they were in Stars Hollow.

One particularly friendly and nice person I had previously known in Stars Hollow. I’ll call her Joan because she’s a big deal Lawyer now.

It is a source of constant amazement that anyone tolerates me at all. Joan apparently liked me well enough even though our primary social circles touched but tangentally. We shared an American History Class marked by unabashed drooling dozing in the hot window seats, hands perma-raised, correct answers burbling tag team from our lips.

In 1930, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, in an effort to alleviate the effects of the… Anyone? Anyone? …the Great Depression, passed the… Anyone? Anyone? The tariff bill? The Hawley-Smoot Tariff Act? Which, anyone? Raised or lowered? …raised tariffs, in an effort to collect more revenue for the federal government. Did it work? Anyone? Anyone know the effects? It did not work, and the United States sank deeper into the Great Depression. Today we have a similar debate over this. Anyone know what this is? Class? Anyone? Anyone? Anyone seen this before? The Laffer Curve. Anyone know what this says? It says that at this point on the revenue curve, you will get exactly the same amount of revenue as at this point. This is very controversial. Does anyone know what Vice President Bush called this in 1980? Anyone? Something-d-o-o economics. ‘Voodoo’ economics.

I imagine everyone else in class just hated us. We obviously didn’t care at all and broke every curve. At the time Joan was sporting her Goth/Biker Rebel look while I was full on Sartre Existential Crisis. Ran the Library (oh, did I mention I was a volunteer Librarian? One period a week and all the keys.) dead out of Camus and was despairingly deep into Kierkegaard whom I understand better now.

Anyway Joan was “cool” and I wasn’t (noticably to me at the time) anything much. In retrospect I realize that many people envied my nigh untouchable immunity that was merely an accident of undiscovered crime and mischaracterization. I was the perfect guy to hide your stash if you needed it because I was not tempted and I’m not a snitch. Never had to, but I would and people knew it because even then I was a fairly militant Civil Libertarian.

Joan was also in my WSLI Class and while others were a tad reluctant to partner up with 93 pounds of cunning and gristle I simply asked she not hurt me, too much, and she didn’t, too much. I think she lied. She was never 93 pounds, it was simply the minimum.

After parting ways with the University of Connecticut because of disagreement about my education (I have many, many more slanderous things to say, but I’ll save them for another day) she heard I was between Institutions and unsolicited renewed her invitation (she thought given my career goals my list of Ivies and Fallbacks a poor fit) to grab a space at Big Orange and she’d help me find a cot and a gig.

Slept on her floor for a month before I got my place which I’ve told you about. The gig was with Parks and Rec as an Instructor/Life Guard full time, with benefits.

Look, I told you she was cunning and a big deal.

For my test I had to pass a written and for the practical you had to swim 450m and demonstrate a Takedown.

A Takedown is when someone jumps in the water and flails about pretending they’re drowning. Forbidden from using any of the common sense approaches like tossing them a float or a line, or hooking them with a stick, you’re supposed to dive in and hand wrestle them to the side of the Pool.

That is a monumentally stupid idea and I recommend with all my professional expertise against it. If not trained do not even attempt otherwise we’ll be fishing out 2 dead bodies on hooks.

Of course they gave me the 6’3″ 230# Steroid Abusing Christian Metal Pothead (I later worked for him at Nottingham, he wasn’t so bad). Fortunately I had a fool proof plan and an airtight alibi. The best way to gain control of people in a drowning situation is to ambush them from below.

You see, on some level they expect you to be fair, to come into range so they can climb on you. Turtles all the way down Bucky. You dive out of reach and drag them under by the ankle. You crawl up their back, zap them in a Full Nelson and kick for the surface.

Now you can horse them to the side that way or go to a single or double breast carry, but I like the Hair Pull (at the Hair Line, ruffle from the back and coil the pull fingers to lock them) which puts both the subject at a nice safe arm’s length and encourages co-operation due to pain compliance (squeeze please) and the threat of permanent cervical injury (hey, you just tried to kill me you bastard, drive around in a Dr. Xavier chair for the rest of your life).

Anyway, I passed and actually looked like I knew what I was doing, Pam Andersen style (Hasselhoff was an airhead Pec Pretty Boy) having survived the rigors of the Stars Hollow Death Trap. Pools? Abusing defenseless little people? I am sooo down with that. Took 30 seconds in my first live jive class for my Supervisor to catch me turning my back on a kid. First of all I didn’t really have any practical as an Instructor and secondly it’s not best form but on a scale of 1 – 10 about a 3, maybe a 2. It’s not like I tossed them off the end of the Springboard and cackled as they sank to the bottom, my 2’10” waif dutifully wall kicking in 3′ of water on my right so I could hear them was out of sight when I turned to address other class members on my left.

My bad. I had to go back and re-read the chapter on Class Management.

The mainstream Primary School students were basic and conventional. We also made a specialty of training the severely Learning Disabled and you haven’t lived until you’ve shut down the pool to let the filters do their thing while you fish the floating turds out with nets or pried a 21-year-old with lots of hormones and little self control off your waist. The guy I ruined the life of I coaxed and pressured from a fetal position by the wall to face wetting and blowing bubbles. Only took 2 years and the 3rd he opted for something else because I was such a hard ass.

But don’t get me wrong, Life Guarding, even full time with Instruction is not such a terrible job. We had a crew of 5 or 6 plus a Supervisor. You got wet about 4 times a day and in between we played Pitch (also known as ‘Setback’ you Hartford suckers) with damp cards at the picnic table on the deck (Office wasn’t big enough) FOR MONEY!

The Onondaga LaCrosse Player and I pretty much cleaned up, everyone else not so much.

Winters (long and early) we’d get our season night passes to Greek Peak in Tully and at least 3 times a week we’d drag in our boards (which rot something terrible at the edges in the atmosphere) and after work we’d bop down and bash moguls to powder.

Valley Pool is a totally real place I really worked at-

Not quite as dingy as I remember.

Summers, because of my dutiful scut work (I didn’t mind, others considered it a hardship), I was posted to the premier Pool in the City- Nottingham High School. Capable of hosting an Olympics the 10m Platform feet and head was a rite of passage but we didn’t have to police it. 1m Springboards only and 90% of the time we were configured for Water Polo so no diving at all.

But we were staffed for it and during your 1 – 9 shift you could expect about 4 or 5 deck rotations. Not hard, you got out soon enough to hit the parties and slept late enough so you didn’t feel compelled to leave early.

I also subbed Winters during School Breaks and one memorable day hiked the 2 miles or so from my Apartment in weather so cold my car wouldn’t start. Still, full time, with benefits. Including Vacation and Sick Days most of which I blew on being actually sick and visiting Stars Hollow on the Holidays.

At the time I was too naive to understand how captive I was to City and State politics and policies but they made a reasonable Bohemian existence possible if you didn’t mind the snow. I might have persisted but other opportunities presented themselves closer to Stars Hollow, so I returned.

It was the end of my Life Guarding Career, not that there’s much of a path from Instructor to Head Honcho, Parks and Rec, in the Org Chart.

True Faith (1987) – New Order

Enola Gay – Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark

Fade To Grey (1981) – Visage

Hong Kong extradition bill: Large-scale march under way

Thousands of people are marching on government buildings in Hong Kong over a controversial extradition bill, despite a government climb-down.

The bill, which would have allowed extradition to mainland China, prompted hundreds of thousands to demonstrate in the past week.

Hong Kong’s Chief Executive Carrie Lam said on Saturday that the plans had been “suspended” for the time being.

Protest leaders, however, are demanding it be permanently scrapped.

Some have urged Ms Lam to resign over the unrest.

By early Sunday afternoon, large crowds had gathered in the city’s Victoria Square, many wearing black or carrying white flowers.

Saudi crown prince tells Iran: ‘We won’t hesitate to deal with any threat’

Mohammed bin Salman speaks publicly for first time about latest tanker attacks amid fears of regional conflict

Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman has spoken publicly for the first time since a second attack on oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman, blaming arch-rival Iran and vowing that the kingdom “won’t hesitate to deal with any threat” to its interests.

According to an interview for pan-Arab daily Asharq al-Awsat, published on Sunday, the crown prince said: “We do not want a war in the region … But we won’t hesitate to deal with any threat to our people, our sovereignty, our territorial integrity and our vital interests.

“The Iranian regime did not respect the presence of the Japanese prime minister as a guest in Tehran and responded to his [diplomatic] efforts by attacking two tankers, one of which was Japanese.”

The Voice of BeijingChina’s Expanding Media Dominance in Africa

Chinese state television is gaining influence in Africa. But while the media outlets involved officially claim their journalism is independent, those who work for the companies tell a different story.

By Bartholomäus Grill

An interview? Or perhaps just a discussion on background? “We have no interest in speaking with you,” Liao Liang writes in an email. And, thank you for understanding, but a visit to his television broadcaster in Nairobi isn’t possible either, he writes. Indeed, the rejection is so complete, it’s as though he is protecting a state secret.

Yet Liao Liang’s mission in the Kenyan capital is hardly confidential: As a senior editor of the China Global Television Network (CGTN), a subsidiary of Chinese state television, his task is that of shining a positive light on his country’s ambitious activities — particularly those in Africa, where China’s reputation has suffered as its footprint has grown.

The $450 million question: Where is Leonardo da Vinci’s ‘Salvator Mundi’?

Summer in the City – Lovin’ Spoonful

Atrios reminds me that Lifeguarding and Water Safety Instruction (you can go and get a dive certificate, but the American Red Cross has no more to teach you) is something I did professionally from the time I was 16 into my mid-Twenties.

I started in Stars Hollow and before you say “But ek, you told me Richard and Emily live in Hartford,” nobody actually lives in Hartford, it’s too urban. They live in Farmington or Glastonbury, if you can’t afford those there’s Rocky Hill but they say the schools aren’t all that.

Stars Hollow is farther away, and in a different direction, but close enough. I have siblings and didn’t go to Chilton Academy (could have, but Stars Hollow is pretty good) and didn’t get pregnant and drop out to run away and work at an Inn.

With 4 years of 10 mile-a-day Swim Team and my newly minted WSLI I marched in, filled out some forms, and bang, I was a Life Guard. At the most miserable and dangerous puddle in town. It was a stream dam that pooled into a 20 yard wide spot between the Beach and a Retaining Wall and tapered into a 10 yard wide ford about 40 yards upstream that only came half way up your calves, people would wade across to the picnic grounds rather than take the bridges at either end. In the Spring it was the site of a popular Fishing Derby and the deeper parts (it got to around 20′ right before the dam) were littered with snagged hooks.

There were 2 “diving boards” which were basically wooden planks with a canvas cover nailed to them, strapped to 2 concrete piers. The “shallow” board pointed at water a mere 3′ deep. Parents loved it because they could stand and catch their kids. The “deep” board pointed at water that was 8′ deep.

THIS IS NOT DEEP ENOUGH! You need 10′ and then feet and not head first. Real Pools are at least 12′ for a 1 Meter Springboard. Hope you had a good time, I always had a panic attack and opened my Manual to Cervical Injuries and made sure our Back Board didn’t have any crap in front of it.

The water was so dark that if you got ankle deep you couldn’t see your toes and if you knew anything about how the stream ran you’d realize it was about a mile from being fresh off the Town Dump.

I knew because I had to test every day.

But it never tested positive and indeed of all the imagined and real hazards I never had to deal with a single one, mostly because it was very, very slow and few people, even kids, got wet above their knees.

Though I spent most days banging a tennis ball against the back of the Guard Shack because I was so bloody bored, I established this reputation as some kind of Super Life Guard, probably because my occasional substitutes perceived my Area (correctly) as the horror show of liability and torts that it was and I had a perfect record.

They only ran it from Memorial Day to Labor Day but because I did scut work all Summer and was eventually one of their most experienced Life Guards (lots of turnover), they’d call me in early and late to work the “normal” pools so I was pretty much employed May – October.

Then I got an opportunity to go to Syracuse University, home of the Newhouse School of Journalism, and moved into the second phase of my career as a Professional Life Guard.

Call You Mine – The Chainsmokers with Bebe Rexha

A Little Respect – Erasure

Opportunities – Pet Shop Boys

Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:00am (ET) (or whenever we get around to it) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.

England’s King John signs the Magna Carta; A deadly steamboat fire in New York City; Jordan’s King Hussein weds American Lisa Halaby; Arlington National Cemetery created; Singer Ella Fitzgerald dies.

In the Halls of Justice the only justice is in the halls.

Lenny Bruce

Continue reading

Hong Kong extradition protests: Government suspends bill

The Hong Kong government has suspended its highly controversial plan to allow extraditions to mainland China, Chief Executive Carrie Lam has announced.

She had previously refused to scrap the bill despite mass protests from Hong Kong residents.

“I feel deep sorrow and regret that deficiencies in our work – and various other factors – have stirred up substantial controversies,” she said.

Protesters expressed concern at increased Chinese influence.

Ms Lam said she had heard the calls for her government to “pause and think”.

She also admitted that the “explanation and communication” of the bill had not been adequate.

Corbyn: no ‘credible evidence’ of Iran role in tanker attacks

Labour leader urges UK to ease tensions in Gulf after Foreign Office links blasts to Tehran

Jeremy Corbyn has called for the government to abstain from escalating tensions with Iran without “credible evidence” that Tehran was responsible for attacks on two oil tankers.

The Labour leader said Britain risked increasing the threat of war after the Foreign Office (FCO) said it was “almost certain” in its assessment that “a branch of the Iranian military … attacked the two tankers on 13 June”.

The FCO said: “No other state or non-state actor could plausibly have been responsible,” and pointed to a “recent precedent for attacks by Iran against oil tankers”.

Climate change: Arctic permafrost now melting at levels not expected until 2090

Series of ‘anomalously warm summers’ caused ground to thaw, researchers say

Alessio Perrone

Permafrost has begun thawing in the Canadian Arctic more than 70 years early because of climate change, according to new research.

A “series of anomalously warm summers” has dramatically accelerated melting rates at three sites despite average annual ground temperatures remaining low. Ponds and hillocks have formed as a result.

It had been thought that the permafrost – ground that remains frozen for at least two years – would remain until at least 2090.

Sudanese opposition leader calls for international investigation into protest crackdown

Sudan’s veteran opposition leader Sadiq al-Mahdi called on Friday for an “objective” international investigation into last week’s deadly crackdown on protesters, after the ruling military council rejected such a probe.

Faced with protests, Putin blinks — but don’t expect a Moscow Spring

Analysis by Nathan Hodge, CNN

Updated 0443 GMT (1243 HKT) June 15, 2019

MEXICO MADE REFUGEE CONCESSIONS MONTHS BEFORE TRUMP TARIFF THREATS, DHS DOCUMENTS SAY

June 15 2019

BIT BY BIT, President Donald Trump’s story of winning concessions on immigration enforcement from Mexico is falling apart. Last weekend, Trump announced that the U.S. and Mexico “reached a signed agreement” to stem the flow of mostly Central American migrants entering the U.S. through its southern border — the fruits, the administration suggested, of his threats to impose tariffs against the U.S.’s southern neighbor.

That version of events was called into question by the New York Times, which reported that Mexico was already carrying out or had been planning to carry out the actions that the administration claimed were part of a deal. Trump responded by insisting that there were “secret” provisions. On Wednesday, he waved a purported secret deal with Mexico in front of reporters. One photojournalist captured a partially legible backlit image, revealing that the paper described “a regional approach to burden-sharing in relation to the processing of refugee status claims to migrants.”

Chair Ellen L. Weintraub, Federal Election Commission
June 13, 2019

Let me make something 100% clear to the American public and anyone running for public office. It is illegal for any person to solicit, accept, or receive anything of value from a foreign national in connection with a U.S. election. This is not a novel concept. Electoral intervention from foreign governments has been considered unacceptable since the beginnings of our nation. Out Founding Fathers sounded the alarm about “foreign Interference, Intrigue, and Influence.” They knew that when foreign governments seek to influence American politics, it is always to advance their own interests, not America’s. Anyone who solicits or accepts foreign assistance risks being on the wrong end of a federal investigation. Any political campaign that receives an offer of a prohibited donation should report that offer to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

I am a registered Democrat, have been since I first voted which I did as soon as I was eligible and continue to in every election including Local, State, and Primaries but the one where I wrecked my car on the way to the Polls. I mostly vote straight ticket Democratic too, unless there are compelling arguments otherwise (think there aren’t? Weicker/Lieberman 1988), though more recently I take the time to record my vote as Working Family Party when there is a cross-endorsement.

But while I am a “democrat” I’m not a “Democrat”. I am an Anarcho-Sydicalist which means my political beliefs are Worker Control and Local Democracy. The Democratic Party of the United States is not nearly “Left” enough for me.

Bernie Sanders likewise does not identify “Democratic” and instead “Democratic Socialist”. This is a point of contention for some Democrats.

The bulk of them will pitch the disastrous Neo Liberal Economic and Social Policy that picked them as the vanity elite and has 40 solid years of unmitigated failure to recommend the process (looking right at you Joe Carson). Some of the more ‘Left’ say “I have a Plan for that.” True enough. Want to see how strong the ‘Left’ is? Add Sanders and Warren together. Bernie will never run out of money, Warren might- I’m very happy for her Polling rise as it will make fundraising easier.

Still, there is a fundamental difference in philosophy that I think is what Bernie was trying to get to with yesterday’s speech-

Warren represents a Teddy Roosevelt “Trust Busting” instinct which accepts that the goal of a Political Economy is Return on Capital Investment. Capitalism.

Labor is another form of Capital Investment- Wages, Healthcare, Housing, Education. A Capitalist expects a return on Investments in Labor Capital just as they would for a machine or a manufacturing plant or a marketing department.

Markets need to be tightly regulated to ensure “fairness”. Monopolies, when free to create, exercise disproportionate and negative effects on the ability to exchange goods and services across markets.

Sanders on the other hand is a ‘Socialist’. What is fundamentally wrong with the system, what will require a revolution, is changing the goal from Return on Capital Investment to Improvement of the Public Good.

Adopting this philosophy might lead you to radical acts like supporting Nuclear Power as a short term palliative measure in the live jive Global Warming Crisis (I don’t talk about it much because I have lain on the Holy Sacred Grave of Elvis at Graceland and contemplated Death and it’s not a pretty sight, a peanut butter, banana, bacon sandwich on a toilet), but do not be deceived. Solar is the real deal and it’s ready to rock and roll today.

No dead Eagles.

So anyway Socialism is an actual redirection of Returns (you can call it Profit if you like) to a Democratic Community’s priorities. You educate kids because you want them to be smart, not to fill some drone cubical spot in a MegaCorp hive. You subsidize artists because people like to see, hear, and read pretty things, at least by buying their stuff (and the Merch, I’m the Andy Warhol of Merch).

We’re All ‘Socialists’ Now
By Eric Levitz, New York
June 13, 2019

In a speech at George Washington University on Wednesday afternoon, the Vermont senator made several arguments for his political philosophy. Many of these aimed to dispel the misconception that the self-avowed socialist and his “political revolution” are trying to do anything “particularly radical.” Rather, Sanders suggested that what he calls “democratic socialism” is akin to 21st-century New Deal liberalism. Seventy-five years ago, the United States had a president who insisted that “true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence” and proposed the establishment of a “Second Bill of Rights” — one that would guarantee all Americans health care, housing, and “a useful and remunerative job.” In a sense, Sanders’s modest ambition is to revive and update the conventional wisdom of the Democratic Establishment circa 1944.

This is a sound rebuttal to the claim that Sanders’s vision is extreme or un-American. Though, for that reason, it does little to clarify why the senator insists on branding his ideology with a term that much of the American electorate still associates with Soviet communism.

Nevertheless, by coopting the right’s expansive definition of “socialism” — which holds that any major government intervention in the economy (that conservatives don’t like) is a fulfillment of Marx’s vision — Sanders was able to recast the terms of America’s economic debate.

“In 2008, after their greed, recklessness, and illegal behavior created the worst financial disaster since the Great Depression, with millions of Americans losing their jobs, their homes and their life savings, Wall Street’s religious adherence to unfettered capitalism suddenly came to an end,” Sanders said Wednesday. “Overnight, Wall Street became big-government socialists and begged for the largest federal bailout in American history — over $1 trillion from the Treasury and even more from the Federal Reserve. But it’s not just Wall Street that loves socialism — when it works for them. It is the norm across the entire corporate world.”
…
Americans already live in a country where unelected bureaucrats pick economic winners and losers, where public policy exerts a massive influence over the distribution of income, where some indolent Americans live off the hard labor of others, and where the state directs investment toward official, conscious ends. If these are the defining features of socialism, then the United States lost the Cold War before it began, and the real debate between left and right in the U.S. isn’t over whether “big government” should intervene in markets, or even how much it should, but rather who should have a say over how it intervenes — and whose interests such “socialism” should serve.
…
If some natural economic process dictates that wage growth must be tepid while corporations sit on cash, or that urban workers must be rent burdened while landlords live high off their labor, or that major financial institutions must be insulated from risk while underwater homeowners are left to drown, then one can plausibly argue that government action to alter such outcomes would be hubristic and self-defeating. Who is man to challenge the wisdom of the market gods? By contrast, if the electorate were to recognize that these outcomes are largely determined by public policy, then apologists for the existing order would have a much harder time rationalizing acquiescence.