What's the frequency, Kenneth?

Three of my favorite blogophiles stopped by today, the women from Guacamole Gulch and sisters Barbara and Nancy graced my doorstep this afternoon. With my existence now normally confined to cyberspace, meetings on the physical plain seems so neat and well, retro.

They are all very nice, intelligent and creative people and it always a pleasure to both see and read  them.

Helen told me about a dream she had the other night. She was in my home, only it was a very large house. She entered our bedroom and my wife Leslie was in some sort of resplendent outfit propped up on the bed. I was at my desk, banging away feverishly on an old Smith - Corona, hunting and pecking my way through some tale or other. Not exactly kissing my ring, but I did apparently grant her an audience, at least on this somnambulant visit. She said that she looked around and there were hundreds of people waiting for their own audience with yours truly.

All I can say is that I am flattered by my participation in her somnolent exercise and I hope that everyone in line was happy with my keen reasoning and dashing wit. Over here in the world which we operate I'm just another schmo but in dreamland I'll have you know I am just blowing up.

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Grumpy has, unfortunately, got a bit ticked off with me and is taking his leave again. I love his enthusiasm but I have tried to tell him that maybe the only thing worse than my monologue is a continual online dialogue. I was putting his multiple comments up anonymously and I think that he felt slighted, understandably. I just felt that certain comments were unduly reactive and unnecessary. If I hit a serve down the court, I like an ace now and then without a return. I think that he will be back. We do this now and then.

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I read somewhere that the greatest rock band in the world, REM, was breaking up. In what universe? Give me a break. Are they still together? Where in the hell have they been for the last 15 or 20 years. Stipe kind of lost me when he opined that they were a better band then the Beatles. Bye Bye REM, take U-2 with you on the way out the door.

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You probably won't hear about it on Al Jazeera or any of your left wing networks but the first female political prisoner was found murdered in Syria today, mutilated and decapitated. The 18 year old girl was said to have "died in detention."

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A friend and client from Chile was in the other day and we had a very interesting conversation about the country of his birth. I wanted to know how he had reacted to my article about the alleged Chilean torture ship Esmeralda. He was forthright and gave me his views about the whole Allende (pronounce a-jen-day) coup and CIA complicity.

My friend said that Latin America has traditionally had a pretty rigid class hierarchy of both the very wealthy and the very poor. He mentioned that during the reign of Allende, inflation went up and that in his traditionally resource rich country one could not even find a loaf of bread to eat.

Allende started to nationalize businesses, much like Hugo Chavez has done and similar to what has happened in Zimbabwe under Mugabe. Workers would enter businesses, some owned and run by the same family for two hundred years and simply announce that they were taking over. And of course, they all went to shit.

We discussed the between 3500 and 20,000 political prisoners said to be murdered by our proxy, the bad general. Teachers, union leaders, people with concern for the poor, clergy. He thought it unfortunate but said that in the Chile he remembers at the time, all of these strange communists in battle fatigues from places like Russia and Cuba started showing up. The country pre Pinochet was getting run into the ground. A weak and fairly moderate Allende was caught in a crucible between left and right and Kissinger finished the job.

My Chilean friend regrets the way the coup took place and the misery that occurred. Perhaps if we had let the people of Chile decide that things were so bad that they maybe start their own real revolution and not give in to a junta that threw people out of airplanes.

The reality is that with populism, and I will confine my comments to Latin America for now, the have nots and those living at the marginal status quo will accept about any political system that shits on their rich neighbor and puts food in their own mouths.

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Rick Santorum thinks that there is no call for a person to announce their sexual orientation in the military and we should go back to DADT. My question is why then should it be permissible to exhibit blatantly heterosexual conduct and let people know that you are straight?

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Manny sent this interesting tidbit over.

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I keep thinking of Casablanca. Pakistan is shocked, shocked that the ISI is collaborating with the Haqqani network to attack western targets. (Your winnings, sir.) The double game of all double games, they speak out of the side of their mouths, still smarting over the arrest of Bin Laden right next to their wheelhouse. 3.5 billion american dollars a year, for the biggest criminal backstabbers in the whole region.