The Smoking Jacket

HOSING AMERICANS – OPEN LETTER TO IRVING OIL

2012-01-21T18:52:00.002-05:00

Irving Oil HQ
New Brunswick, Canada

Hi Karen,

I've been keeping running notes of this morning's calamity. I intend to send it to every paper in the state, my twitter tweeps & my 300 + email addresses.

Narrative: I called Irving at 6:50 this morning when I realized we had no oil. It's 6 degrees and snowing, and I was told that we had been scheduled for Sat 1.20 but didn't know why they didn't come. He said that drivers come in at 7 and someone would call me to let me know when the delivery would be here.

No one called so I called at 7:22 talked to Karen who said driver was on his way from Effingham & would be here within the hour. I told her that Eff wasn't that far away. She said he might have other stops. I protested vigorously that this is Irving's fault & we are sitting in a freezing cold house. She didn't know why we didn't get our "automatic" deliv on Sat.

Driver arrived at 8:20 & I asked him what time he starts: "6:00", said he. How many delivs this am, "one, in Ossipee.". Have you been to Effingham? "No".
He then filled the tank but didn't have the right size wrench to start the BRAND NEW Irving funace that we had purchased in the spring of '11. I loaned him a crescent wrench. The nut was on too tight and he had to call for a technician. The driver said he spoke to someone in the office who had talked to me earlier. He left an invoice for nearly $900.

He left at 8:45. The temp is too cold to register on our inside thermostat/thermometer, which mean below 50.

Update: It is now 9:25 I am dressed just as I was to go skiing yesterday in 20 deg weather. My nose is dripping. My wife is supposed to go to a family function today. Looks like no shower for her but probably warm where she is going. No one from Irving has called so we don't dare even go out for breakfast where they would likely have heat. We don't want to miss the tech.

I think: What would I do if I had 3 little kids wanting to know why they are so cold, and, when is the man gonna come to fix it.
Also too, what would I have done if, as happened one year ago, I was just 3 weeks into recovering from open heart surgery.

Dispatcher said that Karen is in New Brunswick Canada and is the weekend service person for this area. But when I called after an hr & 10 minutes I was put through to Lisa in "Eastern Canada". She didn't know who Karen was but said she would "try" to find out where the technician is that is supposed to re-start our furnace. That took 12 minutes of me holding & listening to the same crappy hold-music that Irving had the last time this happened. Lisa just came on to say the tech guy will be here in 5 minutes. Right.

I'm thinking that even though we are on "automatic" delivery, Irving tries to bundle their deliveries so they don't waste fuel driving all over hell and back even though they promised their customers they will not run out of heat. (Damn, my fingers are cold. Back into my parka pockets they go.)

After 20 minutes the Tech guy called from our old address of EIGHT YEARS ago! He said he got instrux from dispatcher in Canada. Wait. They already filled my tank this am. How could they not know where I live? Hosers!

FORTY minutes after they said FIVE, & more than FOUR hours since I woke up, the tech guy comes . Nice local guy I’ve met before. He didn't know why the original driver couldn't have loosened the nut even with a pair of pliers. We now have HEAT!!

This is the 3rd time this has happened with Irving. I encourage everyone reading this to find a local dealer with a local telephone number so if something goes wrong you can deal with a real person. You'll also not be sending your money out of the country.

One percent solution

2011-08-03T11:02:00.001-04:00

I may have finally figured out how to send a mass emailing so that I can get TSJ fired up again. When I got my new computer the Outlook program wouldn’t let me send to the old list and, long story short, I tried a bunch of shit and it didn’t work so my genius fren Jenn figured out how to do it through Gmail, and Bob’s your uncle.

I have worked around government for a lot of my life off and on. The army, Lib of Cong, small town administrator, reporter covering all the local crap, selectmen, school, county stuff, local boards and cetera. I have also been an ersatz small business type where you learn to spend carefully and husband your resources or you’ll go out of business even faster than I did.

Why then is our jag-off government so over spent? And why is their solution to financial responsibility to almost always cut big bird? Connie Mack, R-Flah, says all we have to do is cut 1 percent from the budget to get back on track. Say he’s right. Every office anywhere can cut that much. Recycle printing paper. Don’t order shit you don’t need. Turn lights off. Trim back on mileage allowance. Keep heat and A/C a little lower. And at budget time, sharpen the pencil. In government they round off to the nearest five or ten percent. In the tiniest towns they don’t pull out records to see what they spent on office supplies last year before putting down a number. The selectman, and this is verbatim, sort of look at each other and say, “Whaddya think? 5 percent? Ten”? The other two doofus’s just say “sure” so they can get a little raise for their project. And the reason they are so laisse faire with your money is because they, every last one of the thieving bastids, are “under paid”. Everyone in government is under paid, according to themselves.

I substitute “taught’ at the high school. They had a course called JAG. I asked several people there what it stood for when I got my assignment but they didn’t know and a couple of them never heard of it. Jobs After Graduation one of my four students told me. The teacher who left me notes said that I should help them fill out job application forms from two of the local ski areas. I only had NINETY freakin’ minutes to get this down their resentful little throats. They had been "studying" this for the whole semester. They were in there because it was a gut course for which they could get full credit. A full time teacher (who couldn’t be there because like so many teachers at the end of the year, he had to use up his “personal time” or lose it) is required for this bullshit course. He probably makes less than $40k but his bennies are close to half that. Really? Our kids need this course that bad?

So his salary with bennies is almost a half of a percent of the $13, 000,000 school budget. I can’t help but thinking there are some other ways to save but I’m not going to waste my fingerprints making suggestions because we all know that nobody is ever even going to bend over to pick up a paper clip when they’ve got a squad of unionized janitors to clean up after them.

John Boehner’s salary jumped to a quarter of a million dollars when he became speaker. You should see his office. His staff has their own offices. Of course he has a car and driver, free haircuts, gym, mess hall, and the ubiquitous franking privileges also know as free campaign funding.

It isn’t just frustratingly crazy. It’s damned expensive and it is my firm belief that it will never ever change. Too bad.

Too Many Questions

2011-05-04T13:45:00.000-04:00

O my ridiculous frig! What can possibly be attained by releasing OLB’s SEAL team mug-shot? Who, besides me, wants to see this guys former façade in its new guise. I’m just a curious thrill seeker with a sneaker for the ghoulish. The idea that my whim should be satisfied at the risk of really pissing off some peasant with an RPG and little to lose, seems on the face of it, nuts.

I’m more interested in seeing the Donald’s tax returns and his “fantastic” grades when he was at Penn. I’m much more interested in seeing some actual footage of Michelle Bachman answering a question, any question, with a straight answer. We don’t really need to see Osama’s former face or even the “dignified burial at sea” clip that while fascinating for some, would prove little to me. After all, I read the Pat Tillman Story and will never believe my government again (without verifying) and most especially any thing coming out of DoD.

It’s as riveting a story that Krakauer has ever told. And having served in a combat outfit in peacetime Germany, I can vouch for how inefficient, self serving and stupid the army can be. Almost nobody wants to take responsibility and the ones that do, shouldn’t. The army thrives on routine by the numbers. What attracts seemingly capable young men to become lifers is the predictability of every day. You know exactly what you are going to wear each day, when you need to show up to be fed and what time to go to bed.

Corporal Tillman’s squad was divided up after a vehicle became disabled even though this was against standing orders. Some Captain over rode a wiser Lieutenant because he didn’t want to catch hell for leaving a vehicle behind. The two half squads became confused in a fire fight with the enemy and Tillman became a KIA from three shots in the head, which isn’t too hard to do with a BAR 240, which only Americans carry.

It was easy enough to figure out what happened but nobody wanted to except blame and instead of a friendly-fire report to head quarters, the famous football star who signed up with his brother after 9/11, was put in for a silver star, a really big deal.

Brigadier General (one star) Stanley Mc Chrystal was told to make up a story and write a report that would justify the award and make Tillman’s family feel better. This would require that the chain of command have absolute discipline to keep the story straight. Big prob. Pat’s brother was on the same patrol and knew what happened. Eventually the whole misguided plan was exposed and Tillman’s mother and brother testified in front of Congress. Apologies were made. None were excepted. Mrs. Tillman went back home with one less son. Mc Chrystal got three more stars before finally getting drummed out of service for doing something else stupid.
At this writing we are being told that one of OBL’s wives, a brave lass, charged at a NAVY SEAL! And he had to shoot her. He didn’t kill her because there was no need. Why he couldn’t have butt stroked her sorry ass, as even I was taught, doesn’t quite compute. “They” wanted us to believe that Osama “resisted”. Resisted what, being shot? Is that any reason to shoot a guy? How did he “resist” without a freakin’ weapon?

The guy needed to die and he did. Good riddance. Why all the balderdash? We can take it. He killed thousands. Three thousand just on 9/11. There’s abso-fkn-lutely no reason to claim self defense. The shooter had a kill order and now his target is with his seventy two new girlfriends. Who cares?

The DoD does. They never saw a story they couldn’t try to spin. So who in the name of allah would ever believe whatever image the military’s press department trotted out to show that he is dead. One Taliban chief reportedly said today that Osama’s been dead for a year and a half. Ya gotta picture Mac?

PS: O dear. After all that, the WH has just announced that no pics will be released. Just as well.

The Doofus

2011-04-27T11:32:00.000-04:00

Is it not too funny that this behemoth gasconade has a hide one can read through? Bobby Deniro wisely declined to name the object of his scorn but Brian Williams did get him to admit to a description of the TV personality and self important silly-man known mostly for his jerk-off hair styling. The D-man fired back, attacking the intelligence of one of the most important and accomplished actors for almost anyone reading this.

Rove is a no-nothing political hack. Stuart and Colbert are nowt but comedians. Jonathan Alter, who just called him a “fool”on MSNBC, will soon be under attack for a lack of credentials (and probably hair) even as the POTUS’s attendance at fancy schools seems to be fair game for the least of all likely candidates for that office.
Trump went to a military academy. Now I ask you: Who gets sent to that kind of school? If my parents could have afforded it, me. A wisenheimer who could use a good ass kicking. Even “W” got into Andover. None of the Kennedy kids had to get their ears batted by some retired army major with boozy breath and a penchant for picking on kids. I will bet not too many military schools send kids to the Ivies and though I haven’t checked I shouldn’t be at all surprised if there isn’t a wing at Penn with the Trump logo that Trump pere thought might ease the skids for his pretentious pompadoured pup.

Is there a point Pete, you might inerroneously ask. This man, who inexpertly referred to a substantially important group in this country as “the blacks”, has now doubled down on that statement. Cool. Kiss them good bye. But my problem is that in questioning how, what he has termed , “a not very bright guy” got into, not one, but two Ivy League schools. He doesn’t mention that the Prez also went to the most prestigious prep school in Hawaii or that he got into Occidental College before transferring to Columbia. He likely never heard of it though it is first rate and very difficult to get into. The only take that I can see on this is, sadly, a racist one. Questioning Obama’s ability to get into a school like the one he went to, can only suggest that there he is concerned about an “equal opportunity” provided for people of color or three ears or not enough toes.

Apparently the man who would be king thinks that the snazzy school syndrome is only for realtor royalty and their spawn. I feel certain that we are going to leave this sht 4 brains media whore off the hook because some think that racism is passé and that the President and his retinue would never touch it themselves. He’s a joke to them. He’s too unimportant.
You likely don’t waste your time keeping up with all this malarkey. So I’ll tell you. The subliminal message from this sublimely superficial cipher, is that he believes that there is an underlying racism in this country and there are more of them than there are decent people and he will get their votes.

He must be forgetting that Obama is already President. That he got over half of the people who could vote to vote for him. The Donald’s is passing. Young people in the work force don’t fret about race or gender issues. They care about their Droids and BMers; getting their kids into the Country Day just above their station; and braces. Just, as in my day, our parents didn’t quite acknowledge certain European ancestry and we couldn’t care less, the same is true of our kids only with different categories. Their kids will probably march for equal rights for Martians.

I shouldn’t, but I really hate the Donald and all the Donalds of the world. The only thing this schlubby garish gonnef has going for him is his ostentation. And that’s pathetic because so many of us are paying attention. And I just saw that Trump is taking credit for the airing of HBO’s actual birth certificate. Ai yi freakin’ yi!

He who must be obeyed: The Trump bump

2011-04-19T11:13:00.002-04:00

I’ve been having the devil’s own time trying to get a program that will send out a mass email to alert TSJ fans of a new post. My guru Sue thinks she has found a program that will do it and it is shockingly complicated compared to the old “create a group” click that even I could figure out. The restriction has made it difficult for others to do unwanted mass mailings. And I can dig that. Let’s give it a try.

I am truly fascinated with The Doofus, that is, the astronomical attention he has garnered from the press by continuing his assaholic schtick into a presidential campaign. I too think it’s fascinating that such a well known figure would think that he is presidential material because he knows how to make a real estate deal. The fact that he has a hit “reality” show does nothing for me. Billy Ray Cyrus created a hit show. But that the press is stringing him along at the expense of real news is in a way alarming. It’s like picking on the fat kid or the new kid on the playground. I feel like they are taunting him into some huge meltdown that will show to all who have been watching what a vainglorious victim of the ratings system he will prove to have been.

The second time Henry Kissmyass threatened to quit the Nixon regime if he didn’t get his way, John Chancelor said he was reminded of the guy about whom it was said, “the louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted the spoons”. I know that I watch too much of this stuff, but it gives me the advantage of getting the joke of how many times Mr. Chump has touted how smart he is and where he went to school to get his fantastic grades. That his daughter is so great that he would date her if not for a somewhat sticky consanguinity issue. That the only reason the Chinese are beating our brains in economically is because he of the tornadic top is not doing the negotiating. This bit of foolishness was followed by the fatuous suggestion that he would simply make China pay a 25 percent tax on all goods shipped into our country. His implication being that La Chinoise would cave immediately rather than punishing the zillions of American businesses with facilities in China.

The whole birther bidneth is glossed over, over and over again. It was with pHuckabee, on tape saying that POTUS 44 was born in Kenya and got his “anti-colonial” ideas from his radical Dad whom he met but once after his father left the family to go get a PhD from Harvard. The Rev. back-tracked of course. But the benefit was established with all the racists put in radio land that cannot believe that a negro is their commander-in-chief. There is not one part of me that thinks this ploy is anything other. And this real estate mogul with his eighth-grade grasp of world events is using such a fear tactic to incite enough voters to propel him into the race. A race he seemed unsure of in an interview this morning of where his kids and wife stand in terms of him running.

I truly believe that the press is holding back on its real evaluation of the possible Trump candidacy because it’s kind of a free story. Have any of them gone down to Hawaii to find the supposed Trump “investigators” who were supposed to report back to him right about now. No. It’ll be dropped because they don’t want to piss off the freebie that keeps on giving. To hear some of the worthies of pundrity pull their punches on this egregious ejet, makes you believe that they are all in on it and that we are the chumps for taking seriously. It is very like the way they treated Sister Sarah. They never wanted her to go away but now that they’ve have Ol’ The Donald, we are pressed to find her anywhere except at the bottom of the Puffington Host and Politico.

Don’t think for a New York minute that I want him to go away. These sitcomish shenanigans confirm my extreme distaste for the electorate at large and aide my pissing and moaning on the printed page.

A heart felt note

2011-01-15T08:33:00.001-05:00

It's eleven 11 all even. I don't know what you kids did on your c'mas vacation but I had an amb'lance ride, an EKG, stuff shoved in my veins, a star wars view of interior and anterior chambers belonging to my achy broken heart and then, "O yeah. It’s the big One. I'm coming to you Elizabeth" moment. It would have been some serious shit except I already knew that I was gonna die one day. I'm almost as old as when my father bought the farm. It seemed in the normal realm of things. Before I headed down into that endless tunnel where they do the actual cuttin' but you know nuttin', I turned to my wife and daughter and son and repeated the words of Richard Holbrooke who said at this very point, supposedly: "Tell Hilary to get out of Afghanistan."

Ambassador Holbrooke would love to trade places with me. I had two friends who also died on the table. One can't help thinking about that prior to saying goodbye. But, I woke up c'mas eve with stitches all over my chest (they come out Monday) and a couple of tubes sticking out just below the severed sternum. They came out right then. "Hi my name is RV." I tried to be friendly. I was in an assembly line of post op patients at Maine Meds celebrated 1st floor where all they do is hearts. "Yeah, I'm just gonna yank these suckers and you'll head up to ICU." Well, that sounds positive I thought. And while he was yanking what felt like foot long pieces of garden hose from my midsection, I told myself: I am airborne. What must it be like for the poor schnooks who have never tested themselves in an endurance kind of way. That too did pass.
Disgusting hospital food never tasted so good. Ice water; even better. The nurses were fabulous and I was double timing around their station and down the hall with in 24 hours. I knew what I had to do to get out early and I did it.
I’m likely able to write this drivel because, uncharacteristically I called 911 in a timely fashion. My peops, if this happens to you, and you want to live, call immediately. Turns out as soon as they slapped the Oxygen to me in the truck out in my driveway, the heart attack stopped. Very little damage to the organ itself. Problem was tons of cholesterol blocking the blood flow. A no no that is now fixed.
Three weeks later I’m walking almost a mile a day. But other than that I don’t have to do squat. So I’m doing it.

Hiatus to Haiti

2010-01-15T09:51:00.001-05:00

I can’t tell you how many queries I’ve had about the SJ hiatus (two, maybe even three) and I have to say that I’m flattered having assumed that nobody reads it or if they did, resented that they were unable to wrap fish with it when they were through. And I assume that because the flood of snail-mail with checks that I expected never happened, and I’ve never been in the black enough to set up Pay Pal, that people were not willing to sustain my Hennessey habit, but people, these things don’t write themselves.

A dalliance with sobriety makes me realize that I have a lot more energy than I thought I had even without a six pack of Red Bull for breakfast. Rather than use it all up screaming at the news I have decided to put the nimble fingers back to the task of doing whatever it is that the SJ does. But then, thinking about that, is what caused the pause. And I have concluded that it is not a waste of anybody’s time since you don’t gotta read it and, I don’t gotta go onan’on if I don’t feel like it. Wen does her Sudoku and I do this. Sharpens the brain. Maybe.

A big question in the Internet and airwave ether is whether “we” are better off than “we” were a year ago and I can answer with an unqualified, Yes! Wen gave herself a raise and I had my arthritic shoulder fixed. We have a new grandson and we are going out to Chicago to see him in a couple of weeks. I also look forward to hopefully meeting “the Almighty Hawk who, comes sreamin’ down on ya like a giant razor blade, Jack.” And also, too, when the January thaw sets in, the heat here in northern NH is unbearable, but a little early for screens.

Others, by which I mean the 300 million plus inhabitants of the country that are not us, may feel similarly. “President Barack,” as Jesse Jackson recently called him, took office a year ago and immediately stanched the hemorrhaging of jobs to a mere trickle of tens of thousands (who can count that high anywaze?). Of course it’s still bad but you can’t make shit for people who can’t afford shit and employers can’t pay people to do nuttin’. It’ll come back but let’s hope more slowly. Can we please forego the bubbles. We all know that for every action there is an opposite and equal reaction. And that is what happens to the economy, gambling, heroin taking and bungee jumping.

I’m reading about the 14th century which Barbara Tuchman calls one of the worst of all twenty. The unmitigated greed at the top and most famously and astonishing is the clergy which, in Europe, was all Roman Catholic, you know, “the one true and Holy Roman apostolic church of Christ.” This was before Henry the Ape and Martin Luther Sr. These crooks spelled their god with an L in it. They had estates that equaled that of the really higher up “nobles.” They charged the rich knights for “indulgences” as in: “That mistress will cost you 10K florin old son, if you don’t want to go to hell.” Friendly old fat friar Tuck, that mischievous putz, used to charge the poor to hear confession. But, in France, they had free hospitals. And now, 659 years on, we are getting close to covering most citizens with a kind of slap-dash form of health care. Chalk one up for Pres. Barack, if he makes it.

A year ago the POTUS said we would close Gitmo. Do you really care? I know I don’t one way or the other. He also said he would wind Iraq down and I don’t know if that has happened because it’s rarely mentioned during the three or four hours of news that I watch each weekday. I know there are roadside bombings every once in a while and that has to be better news than, all the freakin’ time. He pledged to carry on the “good war” over in Hamid Karzaistan. Well, you can hardly call “a surge” of 30,000 soldiers, CIA personnel and an unspecified bunch of private contractors a drop in the bucket.

Our (yours and mine) image in the world is way up from the Bush years even as Pres. Barack’s numbers are off by a third from a year ago. I’d still vote for him over the guy who picked the foxy Fox pundit to be a heartbeat away and who called his own wife and meal-ticket the C word in front of reporters. Oh Johnny, you’re still tortured.

The crisis in Haiti will prove to all to be the measure of the man with whom the buck stops. Even his biggest detractors out there (and you know who you are Red and Fred) have got to believe that this situation will be handled better than Katrina, which still needs work that should have already been done.

I sent my whole allowance to Yele.com which is a boots-on-the-ground organization that has been trying to help the hapless Haitians for many years now. I hope no one out there is really worried about giving to brandname orgs because they are worried about how many cents on the dollar are spent on admin. If George Bush and Clinton (Bill) can work together on this, Smoking Jacketeers surely can.

Gates-gate

2009-07-28T06:35:00.002-04:00

Unlike the president I have waited till I have at least 70 percent of the information (see the Colie Powell doctrine for when to act) before I go running my pen off about the imbroglio twixt the Harvard Professor and the Cantabridgian cop.

If you saw Jim Crowley’s interview on the tube, you saw a very in control, articulate and I would say thoughtful guy who explained the situation to my satisfaction. It sounded very much like he did his job the way it was supposed to be done and that the ballyhooed brouhaha had nothing to do with race between the white officer and the black teacher. Until, “Skip,” tired from a long journey, and cranky for any number of reasons that are none of our business, decided to do what we think he has not done before, threw a nutty because he thinks a person of his stature should not have to deal with uniformed police unless he really needs them, as we all surely will at some point.

There were too many witnesses for Crowley to have said anything that should have made Gates respond with, “Why, because I am a black man in my own (ugly-yellow) house?” And there is no report of Crowley saying anything stronger that, “Please step out onto the porch, sir.” Crowley says that he did give his name and badge number when asked but claims the Harvard Professor was so noisy that he never heard it or didn’t really care. There was no reason whatsoever to arrest the guy once the pertinent facts to the 911 call had been satisfied.

So what happened? I know something about having that big blue light show up in your rear view mirror like it was a super-bowl plasma TV on LSD. Very sobering. I see a cop and I stand up a little straighter, start searching my pockets for gum. I could be going the other way and see the blue lights of an extra duty black & white just sitting behind a utility truck but I slow RTF down. So I ask myself, why would Skippy be so imprudent as to mouth off to the point where he is lead away from his own house in cuffs when we already know what went down? He done messed up.

And now none of the clever commentators have the sand to tell it like it most likely is. Instead of saying the guy screwed up, they are trying to hide behind the “larger conversation that Americans needs to have about race relations.” Being so old school, I believe that we cannot have that conversation enough, but what we are talking about here is Skip’s fragile ego or even more likely, his handling this whole thing so stupidly. I think he should man up and apologize to the nation for trying to use race in the most inappropriate way that only someone of his stature could pull off in the first place.

I look at Skip and I don’t see color (except that hideous house hue). I see a Yalie, Oxford, Harvardy, Cambridge, Martha’s Vineyard, the President-calls-me-Skip, kind of elitist, who having a little jet lag and possibly the teeniest bit hung-over from free drinks in first class, doing what any of us might do and tried to pull rank on the man in blue responding to a nuttin’ burger call. This is so not about race in the typical sense. It is about this pint sized-putz of a prof having a bad day. Basta.

Now, can we please get back to serious stuff like Sarah Palin’s nail polish color?

Some of you may have noticed that the Smoking Jacket has been off line for a well deserved vacation. Honest, I was not in jail. If any of you actually missed TSJ, it is my sincere wish that you get a life.

The Healthy Stimulus

2009-05-13T06:34:00.002-04:00

I was raising a jar with a traveling salesman in a pub in St. Boswell, Scotland. The guy was a Brit who had had as much to drink as I and he was going off on the National/”Socialist” Health System in his country and how shitty it was and how high taxes were to pay for it. His dudgeon too was high. After a while I thought to ask if his taxes were more than the pound equivalent of five or six thousand dollars a year for one person’s health insurance in the US. He was appalled. “You have to buy your own insurance?” he queried incredulously. “Oh no,” says I, “It’s a free country. You don’t HAVE to buy anything. You can just go without, as many millions do who could never ever afford it. For some though, their employers pay a good portion of it though the individual has to chip in a co-pay each month and is of course responsible for the deductible which can be crippling indeed,” I explained. “Good Lord!” he exploded.

We are possibly about to enter earnest arguments at the highest level of government which will address the kind of national health care that Canada and most of Europe have had for decades. It seems to me that the timing of this push couldn’t be more advantageous for the pros. My chief thought here is that reducing health care costs for all Americans will act as a stimulus package of a kind in that it will mean extra money for folks to put food on their families, get new tires for the tired old beach wagon, allow parents to let little Susie go on the class trip to the Bridgeport Zoo with the rich kids. And if you believe that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure you will want to pay particular attention to the argument that the most neglected and important segment of prospective beneficiaries of this program will be the zero to three year olds.

Even if you don’t feel like throwing tax money at the problems of the people who contribute least to society, from a practical point of view, it is better to get the little buggers a fresh start with proper nutrition and medical attention than wait until they are older with myriad more problems and attendant higher costs. And you will pay. You are now. Why not manage those costs? If the cost of managing is more, the cost of paying for inattention is worse. If the cost of getting a kid off on the right foot improves their chances of making a go of it in the real world seems high to you now, think about likely paying for his or her being in prison at $22 grand a year for minimum security and $60 K for maximum security. For every dollar spent on higher education, New Hampshire spent 73 cents on corrections. O yeah, we got crack babies in one of the prettiest places in the world and they got daddies and mommies in jail which we pay for even as we do for the life long medical bills and foster care of the babies. National Health can’t cure all that and maybe it is only an OUNCE of prevention but the consequences of not dealing with it up front, are, and will remain fruminous.

One of the less than sincere arguments is that you won’t be able to pick the kind of health care you want. What, you think insurance companies are gonna take this sitting down? Of course there will be red carpet service for people who want it and can afford it and the doctors that provide it will thrive. Just ask our veterinarian who you have to wait a month to see even though you’ve spent thousands with him just in the last year. And what if you do have to wait a little? It’s free (sort of). I use the VA system and they tell me who to see, when to see them, what meds they will pay for. When I had to have an operation I went where I was told and I had a couple of guys in the business from Dartmouth-Hitchcock bending over me who would have, in their private practice, charged 30 to 40 times what I paid. The VA system will be likely be the model for the ineluctable system that this nation will go towards. It has already been tried and tested. The wrinkles are being worked out. I have zero complaints. And did I mention the price?

This is the time to do this thing. Just yesterday, doctors, hospitals, drug makers and insurance companies voluntarily offered $2 trillion in cost reductions over 10 years by taking a one and a half percent cut in something. Dude! Why not save THREE percent and solve the whole economic crisis. No wait, SIX percent!

Heroic heroism in a real hero

2009-04-17T09:31:00.004-04:00

Okay, up front, I know Richard Phillips well enough to punch him in the arm. Not that I will be able to get close enough to him in the next year to effect that sign of affection in the mano a mano sense. He is now TODAY show fodder. He’s frigged. He will be hounded by all the wrong people till he wishes he was back on that life boat having only to deal with bloody pirates.

As the world is about to find out, Richard is one funny dude. There is already talk about a movie and it is keen speculation as to who will play him with his great grin and Bawston aaccent. My brother T-Bone shot a video this past Christmas where Richard and his wife Andrea, also a hoot, are clowning around with friends from a Burlington bar. Take a not so exclusive look.

This is a great story. The hero places himself in the front of hostile forces with instructions to the crew of what to do. The crew itself has already acted bravely by grabbing and stabbing with an ice pick one of the pirates down in the 130 degree engine room. The stabee is then swapped for the Captain who has been, shall we say, “detained,” by the ruffians with AKs.

It is not clear at this writing as to what took place except that Richard was put aboard a 30 foot covered life boat with four of the Somalis and tried once to make a swim for it. Wisely considering that the bullets being fired at him might find their mark, he returned to the life boat and was held there four days while an anxious world looked on in dread. Perhaps not as anxious as Richard who had been seen with an AcK in his back during this time. I’m certain that would spoil my appetite even though I once faced down a BB gun when I was 12.

Richard is to the USA what Susan Boyle is to Scotland right now. The press will plump up and then pillory and then be conciliatory and finally fade away having put, as they almost always do, these and any other celebrities through the wringer. I actually saw an article trying to make Sully Sullenberg look like a jerk because the writer claimed he had safer choices than ditching his plane in the Hudson.

Though I’ve hung with Richard only sporadically over the last 20 years, and mostly at raucous occasions where alcohol was involved, I have the sense that he and Andrea will pull this off and come out smelling like a rose. She is an ER nurse with lots of personality and it is unlikely that she will be flabbergasted by all the hoopla and pushing and pulling. Just being married to her will afford him the fortitude he will likely need for the coming ordeal.

T-bone and I were speculating on who will play whom in the movie. Only Scarlett Johansson will do for madame, and we thought Billy Connelly, the profanely funny as hell Glaswegian, would be a good choice for Richard, except for the Scottish accent and a dozen years difference in age. (YouTube Connelly if you’re nae squeamish.) We had no thoughts on who might play the pirates and of course not much is known about their personalities as it would be hard to interview them now with there heads missing and all.

I think in this country we go on a bit too much with the hero business. The TV loves to use the word so they throw it around like so much rice at a wedding. But a hero is more than being in the right place at the right time, and yet you don’t have to be some muscley mythical god who led armies to conquer evil in the field of battle. A real hero chooses the right thing to do regardless of the costs to him or her self. They have the wit to assess a given situation and act in a manner that would produce the best possible outcome. That kind of action comes from within who we are. It would be hard to teach. If what we heard is true, that Richard made a command decision to put himself at risk to assure the safety of 19 others, he is a true hero and a rara avis. This is better than “the Captain goes down with his ship.” It feels good to know that kind of heroism is real.

A hero, in some cultures, is also a sandwich.

Just say no

2009-03-27T08:33:00.003-04:00

I know Judd Greg well enough to have punched him in the arm. “Good t’ see ya’ Judd,” I sarcastically sneered. I don’t much care for the fellow primarily because he’s a nerd but secondarily because he beat the draft during the Vietnam War because he had acne. ACNE! I knew guys in the army who had acne. Did they have to get special permission to be drafted because of a non contagious skin disease? I don’t think so. Was Judd a wuss who was too precious to go or does… and I know this is a stretch, it make any sense that his father was the governor and maybe helped his Exeter and Ivy League scion to keep from having to fulfill his duty. Judd said no to his country then and no to the country now.

Anygate, he’s a dickwad and is now decrying the administration’s plan to try to turn the world economy around. He said in so many words, even if the economy recovers in four or five years we will be stuck with a tremendous debt. And he agrees with the others who have absolutely no plan on what to do, that this administration is “just kicking the can down the road.” They might even, sometimes, allow that the previous prez was FUBAR in regards to his spending this country half unto death. But the hackneyed acneed Senator who almost joined the opposition until he figured out that it would be hard work (like serving in Vietnam) decided to defer that honor too. I am so glad he did because we really don’t need gutless phlegmatic do-nothings right now.

We need brains and leadership. Nobody really knows what the right answer is to solving this fiasco. What we do know (or think we do) is that doing nothing is not an option. I think that if someone had predicted the mess we find ourselves in a year ago, we would have thought that they were nuts. Now we can’t imagine what would happen if the world banking system should collapse. I know it is not going to happen because I just got an increase on my credit without even asking for it. They have to know something we don’t. The goofy grumbling about the Wall Street goons has almost already died down. There is a glimmer of action in new housing and there are indicators that are now turning up a little instead of free falling. The middle may well hold and if it does than we have to give the credit to the people who came up with a plan, got congress to pass it, and thank them for freaking doing something. If Mitch McConnell had it his way the Dems would fail and we all would suffer. Now you are starting to see all of these scalawags trying to get ahead of the action, almost like they know it’s going to work, to say “Yeah, but. Look at how much it cost! Damn those tax and spend socialists.”

If there really was fairness or karma in the world, the Obama team should be able to accomplish what they have set out to do with the most positive results just like W had eight years to do what he wanted largely unfettered. But I don’t really believe in that stuff and I know that too many people would rather see him flame out than have to admit that they were wrong. And it will kill me to have to listen to the geniuses who had absolutely no plan but will be telling us they told us so and now we have this monumental debt and it’s all Big Ears’ fault.

It’s all a gamble. Not a reckless one and not a wreck-less one. It requires that good thinking gets concentrated and strategies are devised and gone over. That computer models are worked and re-worked till you have at least 70 percent of the information (the Powell Doctrine) you need to make a decision. Then you implement and tweak with your fingers crossed and your breath held.

The risible response of the Republican innumeratti, whose “budget plan” had no numbers other than those to count the pages, will hardly do anything to advance their cause, which is... Well, I guess I am not sure what the heck it is. It’s kind of ethereal like a budget without numbers or the logic of protesting going to war because you have a skin problem. If you can believe that kind of thinking, the thought of a President Palin should gladden your heart.

Let me count the ways

2009-03-18T08:06:00.001-04:00

I have been having way too much fun writing stuff I actually know something about lately. But it’s time to get back to the serious situations that confront this nation. However, rather than dredge up the Cramer v Stewart dust up I want you to know that I am all over the latest confrontation which pits the lovely cross-in-her-cleavage Laura Ingraham against the “curvy” Meghan McCain, the twenty-something daughter of the seventy-something Senator with the same name.

Just kiddin’.

I would be quite happy to never hear the word “transparency” again and most especially in connection with the behemoth, mind-boggling boondoggle that is our economic nightmare right now. It’s the numbers. The media throws them around the way weather channel chicks talk about temperatures across the country. La di dah, $50 bazillion here. Ho hum $700 billion for this. $Who cares, 168 B for them. What gets my goat about that last number which is what the chatterers are saying that AIG has already paid out in bonuses with at least seven execs getting over 3 million each for “performing”* so well, is: they freakin’ lost $41 billion! How cool is that by the way. Your bonus is tied to how much you lose. To my point, MoveOn has an email circulating that says the bonus amount for AIG is $450 million. O well.

Of course we know that AIG is scheduled to get about 1,000 times the 168 number in bailout relief. No less a reliable source than Chuck Todd thought that amount is 1 percent rather than the .001 percent it is. People in that biz just don’t care and then they try to come off as caring so much by saying “BBBBillion” with an omigod look on their face like they can hardly believe it. Then on Monday morning BarackO spoke to small-business types in the White House and iterated Secretary Geithner’s sucking-up statement about how wonderful small businesses are and that they are the backbone of the economy and held out an injection of $386 million to facilitate loans to them. Whoopdy freakin’ do. That means they will get a little more than half of what the AIG crooks are getting. One third of a Billion dollars. We spill that amount in Iraq every month. It gives me an eye ache.

In his most excellent book, “Inside the Emerald City”, Rajiv Sandrasekaran details what a disaster the Viceroyalty of Jerry Bremmer was in the Green Zone of Baghdad during the early years of this hideously unpopular war. The pompous and dictatorial Bremmer replaced career professionals with party loyalists and flunkies in the same way that he was picked. The amount of money that was wasted, lost and pilfered is measured in the tens of billions and in one instance palates of 100 dollar bills wound up “missing” and of course was never found. But the point is that nobody knows what the numbers are. Iraq costs “between 10 and 12 B per month.” Wouldn’t you think that the pentagon with all their resources could figure out where every dollar goes and not have to guess with in a couple of billion what the monthly tab is? I would think after 6 years of this war they would have it down. I can’t get over how comparatively paltry that number for helping small businesses is, and yet very specific. Perhaps the Admirals and Generals could sharpen their pencils and help us with this one.

And what was the real amount that Bernie Madoff made off with, $50 B or $65 B? It’s no big deal unless you’re a small business guy and you look at the difference between the first number and the second and realize that it’s FORTY-FIVE times the size of the help being offered for honest loans for SBA loans. Wifey Ruth’s independently earned fortune has gone from 68 to 100 million according to the sneering punditry who justify the new tally by throwing in a couple yachts, a $39,000 rug (big deal) and some “fine silverware” (amount not disclosed). She had the sand to say that she earned that money as the bookkeeper for the family ponzi business and salted it away. Doing the math it actually does make sense that the bookkeeper would only make a hundred mill for a company raking in 50 to 65 billion.

In a society where high school kids don’t count their change, can’t add simple fractions or do common multiplications tasks, it shouldn’t surprise any of us that the general public doesn’t seem to care about numbers. They may be thinking, let the liars lie. There’s nothing I can do about it.

*AIG says the money is a “retention bonus,” to keep these good people on the job to “wind down” (ever what the hell that means) various units and that these people are under non-negotiable contracts. We now know 53 of them left anyway and got bonuses anyway. This is definitely a pants-on-fire moment.

LXV

2009-03-04T09:46:00.001-05:00

O woe is me. I’m not 23. I’m not even 25. I’m almost older than dirt and yet lucky to be whinnying amongst you all. As I reflect on my three score and five I wonder at how fate didn’t take me out long before this. How did I last longer than me own sainted mither? The answer has to be: clean living and a fortunate gene pool. If you throw in a downhill paper route and a Kevlar liver it begins to tie together the unfair inequities of life.

I bet luck is what it’s all about. I have done all the things that I taught my children not to, and yet I don’t have a limp and the only prosthetic device are my bifocals. I’ve got most of my own teeth and hair that’s unfair. The family thing, without boring details, is fabulous. I’ve been from here to there and lots of places in between and one of my only regrets is that there are so many places left to see but not nearly enough time.

It is interesting to ponder just how much time there is. We of course don’t know and only our own individual minds can attempt the calculus of how long our progenitors lived and in what kind of shape. Did I quit smoking soon enough? Will that old skiing injury take its toll as the arthritis gallops in to take control of my body? Is it a good thing that my older sibs are hanging in valiantly and that we will die off in order, or will I become the sacrificial goat?

I always tended to do things that should have done me in. I had a Harley down in Texas that I spent as much time under as on top. I bought my single lunger BMer 250 when I was still in a full length cast from a skiing mishap. I used to strap my crutches on the back with a bungee cord when I was down at State U. I’ve skied from the top of Mt. Washington and the top of Pike’s Peak, which it turns out, isn’t any easier when you’re straight.

There’s a lot more that now embarrasses and makes me wonder what possessed me, for surely the dibble himself must have been behind some of the idiocy and daring do. I like to think that I developed some skill along the way which may have helped. After crashing or rolling a half dozen cars before I got out of my twenties, I’ve been accident free these many but fleeting years. I’ve even survived Woods Hole (more luck than skill) but I plan to go back and that just can’t be very smart. Not so much a death wish as a Russian roulette kind of thrill. Sailing into hurricanes is a thing of the past.

What I worry about is an humiliating end. The dragged out disease that ends me up in the long-term care center of the VA hours from here. Or discovering and trying to cope with Alzheimer’s before it sucks me into the vortex from where no wise cracks will be heard from these lips again. I think I beat the chances of a stroke when I had my cheese choked carotids rotor-rootered, but you never know. An aneurysm suggests itself if only because the delicious irony of not being able to speak again would give so many of y’all a chuckle.

But the surer bet is that I’ll probably still be teaching the first time skiers from the local grammar school how to make turns on the slopes when I do hit my biblically touted 70. And, god knows I hope not, but there really shouldn’t be any reason not to be still flipping burgers at Phil’s if the building outlasts us. By that time Owen will be riding a bike and JP will be driving. Of course I want to see if he really does get into Yale and if Josephine can kick his butt in Karate by then, so I better start cleaning up my act. More exercise, fewer carbs, cut back on cocktails. Look both ways when crossing the street. No more grand standing hand stands for grand children. Take deep breaths when watching the news. Keep emailing friends and obey the speed limit.

If this sounds a little grim to some. It ain’t. It’s just the reflections of someone who is almost two thirds through an interesting life.

By any other name

2009-02-24T06:12:00.002-05:00

If you believe Juliet when she said “Take yer name and stick it where the sun don’t shine because I’m not getting screwed out of a good screwing on accounta your father thinks my father is a Veronese dickwad” (or words to that effect that also mentions “a rose” severally and sequentially), a name is just a name.

There’s a new name in my life: Owen North Case, born on Feb. 18, a strapping chap with lungs to suit his bulk. Almost ten pounds, this little bucko looks to have all the makings of the kind of son any one would want, if they did want. And this guy was so wanted. By mum and dad most certainly, and then unsurprisingly by some grandparents who had yet to experience the continuation of the race on such a personal note.

A grace note really. Though he’s but a few days old I have actually met the 12th generation Case to be born on this soil. It gave me pause to think that it has taken almost 400 years for Owen to get here. Every 33 years, or so, one of his ancestors was born (I am just twice as old as my 32 year old son). Those grand-cestors went about the serious business of staying alive through all the wars and plagues that could have winnowed the line with consequences so dire as there might never have been a Smoking Jacket. But the name lives, and the lad’s incipient blog, The Burping Cloth, is already as old as he is. It is most fortunate that we share the same great editor.

There was no agenbite of inwit that made my heart leap when I laid my eyes on his big blurry blue ones over this past weekend. Having been the father of brand new babies I knew that the digital count and a pronounced in-and-out motion of the chest was the main concern. When Sonny Jim came out, in an upscale University hospital, I believed the Doc when he brushed off the gargantuan dents in the skull as “temporary, and typical” when a baby is yanked out with forceps the size of Harley handlebars. “A fine little football player” was the first thing I heard. And when it registered, I remember thinking that it was an odd thing for the young female anesthetist to say in the ‘70s. But rather than rendering gender, she was thinking that his head looked like it already had a helmet on.

Now that was a trip. Though I have treated myself to a generous helping of the recreational pleasures of that long ago Learycal day, I could never quite describe the feeling that I did or didn’t experience when I saw that brand new life form tautly drawn from its mother. Holey Moley! eh Heth? It was almost like a death. It is so hard to fathom what you just saw with your own eyes and at the same time absorb the ineluctable consequences. For days it would come back to me in a flash (as they say) going about my normal routine. The fact that I owned a little baby startled me.

It wasn’t like when Jess was born and I was 23 and took it in stride as my due. We brought her home in a pink card board box from the hospital that had “Baby Case” written on it, even though she was the only kid born that week in North Cornflake. I suppose that’s better than “Jess-icka.”

But, when Sonny was born ten years later, I was in a totally different mind set. We had tried for a long time, and though I love “trying” we started to think maybe we had to seriously consider what we would do if no baby wanted us. After an anguishing year we got the thumbs up and so I had the rest of the nine months to worry myself foolish about the plausible what-ifs. Though never religious after I gave up the cloth (I was a Latin spouting alter boy till I was 16 – don’t even go there!), I started trying to brown-nose god by asking to be made strong if the toe-count was off, or any other limiting thing might happen that would make our baby less perfect than he actually turned out to be.

The delivery was a soulless hell for his mother on account of the extra hat size for all those brains and she had to stay in the lying-in till the stitches came out. I think I did most of the right things in a sincere effort to show that I understood and cared. But there is no freaking way any man can fathom what women go through. You can only try by imagining what it would feel like for you to pass a flaming porcupine.

Now the torch has been passed and I know that little O is in the best possible hands. In April he will move to Chicago. After pre-school he might think about becoming a community organizer. And perhaps he could go into teaching at some future date, say at the famous eponymous University out there. After that he might even just want to … I’m just sayin’, run for office.

Lighten up. It could happen.

A NH winter morning

2009-02-10T10:20:00.002-05:00

It’s not bad enough that we’ve got snow UTYA and the temperature has been 50 degrees below freezing most of the days of official winter and above 32 only once in recent memory. In fact it’s three above zero right now and it’s about to get a little cooler in here.

Rising before dawn, I turned up the heat and put on the coffee. Then I came in here to check the news and get my feet warm where the oil burner blows right on ‘em. Only not today. I noticed with a white knuckled dread that the familiar thrum of fossil fuel being turned into bone warming BTUs was absent.

Still dark, I grabbed a flashlight and slipped on Bean boots because I have to go outside to enter the cellar through the bulkhead. I had kept it shoveled all winter for such an emergency but some of the frozen stuff had calved off the roof and now needed to be broken up before it could even be shoveled. I got a shovel from the garage and came back to the task. When I finally snapped the door open it flipped a quart of snow into the boot of my sockless left foot. I think I cursed.

In the cellar I pressed the little red reset button and went back into the house to enjoy my cold coffee. The furnace stayed on only long enough for me to get boots off and my foot dry. Back on with boots, jacket and gloves and I reentered Dante’s refer and mashed the stupid little goddam red button. This time I waited. It went off and I mashed and it went off and I mashed and then, hateful silence.

I have on a sweater, long johns and slipper socks. I don’t even want to know what the inside temp is.

Twice this year I have been up on the roof to shovel the couple of feet of snow that accumulated. You have to get at this stuff while it’s fluff or it’ll turn to cement in the rain and only a teenage back is up to the task. Of course the little pirates get $50 an hour so it is good to get it done by one’s self. Now I can’t even push it off the roof anymore because the snow is stacked up to the eaves. The guy who plows the drive came back with his front loader and back hoe so that he could redistribute the Andes that have closed in our driveway so that even the Cooper can’t turn around. He doesn’t get quite as much as the teen hijackers but it ain’t cheap and according to the Farmer’s Almanac I expect he will be back before the croci crack through the last piles at the end of April.

Okay, now I’m getting those nose icicles you see on little kids and if I wasn’t heading to Phil’s later I would be tempted to pour a schnick into the last cup of coffee. We both have jackets on as we wait for the oil man who was scheduled to come today anyway. Florida sounds awfully damn good. Umbrella drinks at Ocean Alley on the boardwalk watching the ocean liners go by and that woman with the Harley bod who skates backwards with a monkey on her shoulder and very little else between her skin and the sun’s rays. Or Isla Mujeres, though I’ve never been there. I just know it’s hot and always five o’clock. Round trip for under three hundred bucks or six hours of roof shoveling. My fingers are numbing. I still don’t want to know how cold it is in here. This is what happens when typing with gloves on. Not bad, eh? My Christmas scarf dhelps too. It’s two and a half hours since I called the oil company. Nopt dmuch you c an do. It’s just one of the things you almost l;earn to live wioth, like the roof shovelers. I just lookef and the temp is 48, INSIDE!!

Oh ho! Do my wondering eyes deceive? No, it is the big yellow truck that I called for three and a half hours ago. No explanation why we weren’t on auto delivery as we had contracted for. Very nice man. Very apologetic. I had to put the baseball bat away. “I’m just the driver. You’ll have to call headquarters in Montreal to find out how they missed it.” Right. All is forgiven. Sweetness and light prevails.

Reporting on the reporters

2009-02-04T10:00:00.001-05:00

Watching BBC news is a good idea every now and then if for no other reason than to understand it’s not all about us. There are the usual hot spots in the mid East but I only found out this a.m. that our only American airbase in the region (Kyrgyzstan) that supplies our troops in Afghanistan has just been sold to the Russkies for a couple of billion dollars. BBC made it sound like the US wouldn’t pony up the paltry sum, so the head of that country went for the best deal. Now we have to send our stuff through the Khyber pass, a no-fun zone to be sure.

Mind, the Iraqi war still costs ten to twelve billions a month but we’re supposedly winding that down. We know fewer people are dying and we have to assume that the Dexter Filkins-like patrols are not still going on so that our troops are measurably safer and there are cost savings in that. Couldn’t we have spared some money from there to keep that Kyrgy base for ourselves plus blocking Putin from getting it (I know there’s a real president, Medvedev, but he don’t count)? Plus, there is talk of putting in 20 to 30 thousand troops (government types have a tendency to round out numbers in the most obfuscating way) in Afghanaland who will surely be needing supplies.

This is apparently a bigger deal to me than it is to the ‘Merican media who can talk about Tom Daschle’s dilemma and parse the “I screwed up” statement until the cows come home. What crap! Iranians are now orbiting the earth, North Koreans are moving missiles to newly constructed launch sites, The Levant is totally screwed and Maureen Dowd is predicting that disgraced Daschle’s eye-glasses will become a new fashion fad.

It makes sense that with many major newspapers around the world having to trim their budgets it’s a lot cheaper to get stories by just calling or texting contacts to find how what Michelle O’bama wore to the second grade story-time with her husband. It’s a no brainer to just read what others have written and then disagree. And I do wonder how many ways one can disagree. It’s a bit like buying short in the market and hoping things turn out for the worst so your story will have a tinge of truth in it. Ooooh, the Prince of Peace said he was going to change Washington, but ... is he really?

Don’t these latest missteps in the first fourteen days of his administration prove that The One has been under the spell of Rev. Wrong all this time and has a secret cabal to destroy all that is good and holy in the land of the free? Rush doesn’t even want him to succeed. But at least I can understand that. If BHO does well, then the bilious bloviater is in a pinch to explain that to his adoring acolytes.
I shouldn’t be talking about Rush though. Not when I see that J. T. Plumber is back in the news (truly) as a consultant to the Republican party. This guy gives me an eye ache as big as the one I get when I just see an image of Milorad Blago. Letterman killed him last night and he smiles right on through. He’s been kicked out and condemned. He smiles more. He is traduced by all that he sucks up to and he’s all hair and teeth. What a worthy subject for the news.

I happen to think that the media is in cahoots with Congress. In this latest House version of the stimulus bill, we are supposed to believe (again) that the need is crushing. To stall is to guarantee certain economic failure for us and the world. Yet the dumb Ds stick junk into the bill that predictably sets the Rs spinning dizzily in front of Capital Hill mics and the back and forthing is what gets reported. It is more fun to reduce a provision for family planning (a known cure for reigning in house hold expenses) to, “hundreds of millions for rubbers,” than it is to have an honest debate with historical facts and professorial prognostication to determine which really is better: two thirds stimulus to a third tax cuts, or the opposite. I listened to three guys discussing this yesterday on the way to work and they were fairly yelling at each other. Nothing was resolved after an hour of this poisonous prating.

One wonders if anything will ever be resolved. And then there’s poor Latvia.

The stimulus package

2009-01-27T10:04:00.002-05:00

I don’t see a “package” which I consider to be some things wrapped up tidily inside so they can’t spill out and perhaps a ribbon with a bow to make a pleasing appearance. What I see instead is a personification of cats being herded by a three year old cranked on Ritalin.

I tried hard to believe Hank Paulson’s idea for a $700 billion bail out was exactly what was needed to stanch the hemorrhaging of financial sector jobs and by extension the failure of the institutions that we all rely on even if we’re not exactly sure why. Two words come to mind: credit-cards and mortgages (Is that three?). Most people who follow current events are likely to have direct experiences with both of these. So it does matter to us what decisions are being made. I personally know people who have been affected by jobs that were cut back. I meet people in my real job, who don’t build houses, are not heading to their retail jobs every day and complain that numbers are down in their restaurant or at the ski area where they work.

What in the name of all that is holy did the bogus bailout do for them? And we have seen a dozen stories of avaricious excess by the principals whose banks (mostly) have received TARP monies. The $87,000 rug, the $50 million new corporate jet. It gives me the feeling that, like the baddies at Enron, these dicks are laughing at the big fat fatuity that is our government trying to steer the right course in the midst of this calamity.

I would have voted against the Paulson plan for the simple reason that Hanky Pank had written into the rules: If I let you let me have this money for my secretive project with little if any oversight, then you have to agree that I can never be held responsible for its (probable) failure. This is a conservative Wall Street banking guy.

Now we are expected to believe that the people in charge of our money like the new tax-cheat in chief know what they are doing. Let me ask: If it is so important to figure out this mess, why is the Republican leadership (if they can be said to have any) with that Devo-looking John Boehner, in front of the mics to announce that he will vote against the $850 Billion (that’s eight five zero, zero zero zero, zero zero zero, zero zero zero point zero zero). His reason as he says with a straight face, “they” want a couple hundred million dollars for rubbers.

Paul Krugman says throw all the money you can at this. Paul’s got a Nobel in this very subject. Does he know how to spend all that money in a way that will solve the problem that it’s aimed at right now? He has only nodded toward somewhat vague concepts of what is needed in terms of the catch all phrase “infrastructure.” But we are hearing ridiculous wild guesses as to how long it will take to put that kind of money into the economy to supposedly stimulate us out of our ever expanding economic hole so that we can someday begin to pay it all back.

I truly believe that we can spend that money all across this country on projects that have been put in the pipeline a decade ago. One does not just build a road to cash in on “free” money. Departments of Highway have teams of engineers and stategists to predict what the needs of an expanding and more mobile population will require to get places, like school. These people figure out how many people will be in the immediate area years from now so they can buy up property at current rates to place a new school where it will do the most good. In some cases new roads will have to be put in place to handle the increased traffic. That kind of thinking has to be ongoing so that we are not starting from scratch when the need is immediate.

Bridge inspectors have a twenty year backlog of disasters waiting to happen in the hopes that money will some how become available to mend or replace ageing and dangerous structures that were built eons ago to accommodate a more modest amount of traffic.

And assuming that the Crooked Construction Company is already lining up to bid on these babies, you can assume from jump street that the costs of these projects will over-run on the kind of formula that made the Big Dig such a taxpayer treat. That little puppy (a 3.5 mile tunnel with off shoots to the airport and such) was estimated to cost $2.8 Billion back in 1985 when it was conceived and that included an underground rail system to go back and forth between the North and South train stations. That didn’t happen.

The eventual cost with adjustment for inflation became $14 plus Billion. O wait! Did I mention that you need to tack on the $7 Billion in interest that makes the grand total enough to run the Iraq war for a couple of months. You see, it’s all relative.
If that little project (3.5 mi.) sextupled, at least, we need to divide the 850 by six to see what we really get for our next trillion of debt which people who are losing their jobs by the millions are expected to pay for.

Have a nice day.

Swan song for the ugly duckling

2009-01-20T18:43:00.003-05:00

What is there to be said on the last night that Dubya spends in the White House that hasn’t already been said, thought, blogged, opined, repined or joked about? The little dude is gonna sneak off into the sunset with not even a whimper. No speech is planned. No party. No send off. And certainly no press. If we are keen to see his ass hurrying though the door of Marine One, it is nothing compared to what he must be feeling.

We’re not talking just a sigh of relief as he plunks down in his gleaming ride heading for Andrews. O no. He will have an uneraseable shit-eatin’ grin that will stop only long enough to take his first swig of a big ol’ bourbon and branch as he nestles into that cream colored leather chair they have on Air Force One for Ex-POTUSes to take the suckers walk, as it were. Two more like the first one and he’ll be calling Cheney to tell him what he/Dick told Pat Leahy on the floor of the senate.

Then, before he passes out, he’ll get ”The Architect” on the line: “Yo, Boy Genius!” he’ll slur at the top of his lungs. And then, “Thanks a lot futher mucker, you son-of-a-bitchin’ bald-headed, beer-bellied bullying bastard. Thanks for fuckin’ nothin’. Why the hell did I let you ride my old man’s coat tails? You said it was gonna be so easy. Alls I hadda do was play the part. Like I did when I wuzza frickin’ governor. ‘It’ll be easy’ you said, ‘just like ownin’ a baseball team only the owner’s box has 135 rooms. ‘We’ll do all the heavy liftin’ you said, told me to just go and rest my sorry-ass brain, an’ you would take care of every thing. HOW’D THAT WORK OUT YOU FAT SUMBITCH?

“Lemme tell you sumfin teletubby. You and your big-shot plans weren’t shit. No, no, no. I mean thas azackly what they were, a big pile a shit. You wannid me to start that dumb-ass war so I could get re-elected as a war time prez. Well frig you man. Thas the stupidest thing I ever did. Now all those people dead. All those kids in the hospital I went to see, that once. I know, I know. I kep sayin’ that I was visitin’ the sojers and stuff over at Reed. But I cootin take it man. I hated that shit. I didn’t wanna start that asshole war anyway. Now all them dead. Four thousand? Can you believe we killed 4,000 of our own people because somebody else killed 3,000 of arn? What the hell sense does that make, and you wannid it. Well, how d’ya feel about 100 K Iraqi civilians blowed away and the millions of homeless? Karl, I think we fucked up big time. I never dreamed it would be like this. And Katrina…Jeezus man, what were you thinkin’?

“Hey man, didja hear me the other night talkin’ to Charlie Gibson or one a them assholes, sayin’ I thought my biggest mistake about New Orleans was not landin’ the plane there. Aw shit, Karl. Man, I would love to take that one back but I just ditn’ know what to say. I mean all those people wallerin’ around in that stinkin’ water with no food, no water, no nothin’ man. That was the worst. I shoulda said somethin’ better ‘an that. But I just cooten. How could I tell the ‘Merican people that I trusted all that shit to some friggin’ “political operative” and his “neo-cons” – ever what the shit that is. In fact I trusted all you bastards and you all sucked. You sucked at war, you sucked at disaster, you sucked at the economy, you sucked at torture an’ shit. Everything! You sucked at got damn everything!

Karl, I gotta go man. I think I’m gonna be sick, man. O god…. where’s the toilet? O, there it is. Thank you god. RAAAAALLLLLLPH!

One eighth of my life

2009-01-14T09:49:00.005-05:00

In NH we get to cover the primaries and I got to meet “W” a couple of times back in the 2000 primary. The first time was when he came striding buoyantly across Schouler Park in North Conway surrounded by a dozen Texas Rangers and totally in his element. That big cheerleader grin and the Sarah Palin wave. The crowd was giddy and I remember one very Republican looking woman (Lord & Taylor with pearls) telling her friend, “He looked right at me. I feel like I know him.” Alrighty then.

It was quite an introduction to the North Country and even the cynical lefties of the press (me and Marvel) couldn’t get over how he charmed us all. When he came toward the microphone on his way in he passed within feet of me and I said, “Buenos dias, Gubernator.” I was leery of his professed fluency in Mexican but he came right back with, “Buenos dias...Pedro” for it only took him a couple of seconds to check the name on my press pass. I asked Captain Marvel what he thought and he replied, patting his back pocket where he keeps his reporter pad, “I’ve already written the story. I just need to fill in the times.” But he did agree with me that “W” accomplished that mission and with a putative $200K bankroll it was going to be hard to beat him.

Novemberish, I was sent up to Gorham to hear the candidate give a speech to a room full of polite if phlegmatic Republicans. Arriving early I took and looked at the campaign crap on the table in the lobby. While His Hon. spoke I was suddenly taken with his tin ear. He almost always seemed to punch the wrong word in the sentence. His cadence was so awkward I wondered seriously how his campaign thought he could ever get past the wider press who would surely be gleeful at the opportunity to rag on him, though curiously, they hadn’t yet. I listened very carefully because I knew this was the story I would write. After he spoke I watched him work the room which to this day I don’t think anyone does better. If he stunk at stumping he was a star as he went table to table back-clapping, winking, chortling and having his picture taken with the smitten smilers.

Later, the press, about eight locals — the road to Gorham is a bit long for the national scribblers — were invited to sit at a round table with His Cockiness who could not help making un-funny cutesy jokes as when he sarcastically put down one of the Berlin (NH) reporters for thinking that $40 million was a large sum of money. And when he pretended to be impressed when somebody mentioned a Brooks Brothers outlet and then sneaked in his smirk. I was pissed. I thought then as now, the arrogant little shit has done nothing to prove himself. He has ridden his father’s good name all his life and now he has to be a dick to people who are going to write about him? Clearly a fool who would get his ass handed to him by the big-time media.

I asked him how he had lowered taxes 30 percent in Texas while at the same time giving every single Texas teacher a 30 percent raise during the time he was the Gov. “Where’d you get those figures?” he snapped sensing a gotcha. I handed him some talking points of his campaign that I had picked up in the lobby. He took it without looking at me and barked, “Billy. Go git Karen.” I looked over to see my 3 term Congressman who is 10 years Bush's senior jump out of his chair and leave the room and return in minutes with Karen Hughes whose name I had never heard at that point. She gave me a bullshit answer that didn’t explain anything other than the information they were handing out was bogus and she was at a loss to explain it. I actually felt sorry for her and didn’t want to embarrass her so I let it drop and then wrote a “silver foot in mouth” story for the Daily.

For me that set the tone of his campaign and his presidency. Yesterday I watched his final press conference and got quite a surprise. He was gracious to the press and took all manner of questions for 45 minutes or so in an easy give and take session even chuckling at himself (those shoulders) as he finally remembered to call Suzanne Malveaux “Sue-ZAHN”. There was little smirking and he only poked fun at himself asking the White House press not to “misunderestimate me.” No one laughed.

As he talked about "countries contingent to" Gaza, and bemoaned the "writers and OH-piners," I realized that would be the only thing I will miss about the Dub. I recalled fondly, "Put food on your families," "I know the human being and fish can coexist peacefully." "...internets." Or when he told a single mother of three that he thought it was "fantastic" that she worked three jobs to keep her head above water. Then there was the semi-adorable, "Rarely is the questioned asked: Is our children learning?" and the all time fave, "There's an old saying in Tennessee — I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again."

I believe in my heart he was an unwitting dupe for the Rove machine. But the sumnabitch oughta had knowed better. That being POTUS ain’t bean bag and that he was no more qualified to lead the free world than Milorad Blagojevich. He’ll be gone in a couple of days and I wish his wife and children a speedy recovery. I truly hope "W" lives long enough to finally learn what the world thought of his disastrous reign.

Post-dictions for 2008

2009-01-06T09:28:00.004-05:00

These were a few of my favorite things:
· Sarah Palin
· “The economy is basically sound”
· Winning Iowa
· Winning NH (it kept things lively as in: I never wanted it to end)
· HRC ducking for cover
· WJC trash talkin’ Jesse because he won in South Carolina
· The Fuckabees
· The terrorist fist jab & the NYer cover
· Sarah Palin
· Finding out my buddy Marianne Pernold-Young was the one who made HRC a little verklempt (or as the media had it: bawled her freakin’ eyes out.)
· Rudy’s Florida, Florida, Florida strategy
· Johnny Mc calling his wife that word that men must never mutter when she gently chided him about being “a little thin on top” (You think his top is thin? How ‘bout his skin?)
· D. Kucinich, D-OH admitting he believes in space aliens
· D. Kucinich’s wife
· Mike Gravel getting me a cup of coffee when I was the only one who showed up for his “rally” at the Met in North Conway. Not the only press, the only person.
· HRC reserving the Kennett High gym for a long weekend when she knew she would be elsewhere so that she could block Barack
· Lipstick on a Pig (in my heart I believe he was gleeful over the double entendre)
· Sinking the three pointer for the troops
· The Johnny & Barry white-tie comedy act
· The John Edwards $400 haircuts and subsequent YouTube clip
· John Edwards knocking up his own over-paid videoist
· Fred Thompson’s out of the chute start on an un-plugged mechanical bull
· Ron Paul’s incredible indelible following
· Sarah Palin
· Mitt Romney’s secret Mormon undies
· BHO lifting words from Deval Patrick who had boosted them from MLK Jr. & others
· The mass media criticizing the mass media for being the mass media
· Chris Mathews getting a thrill running up his leg over BHO
· Former NSA Sec. Zbig Brzinsk calling Morning Joe Scarboring’s understanding of foreign policy “stunningly superficial” while ignoring the fact that his daughter (Meekly Buttinski) who co-hosts for Joe, is herself nothing less than stunningly superficial (she had the sand to pick on Caroline Kennedy for interjecting too many “ya knows” into unscripted answers when she herself can seldom finish a sentence. Pot, Kettle, Black)
· Milorad Blag'oy'ovitch finally getting us all to know how to pronounce his name and dousing the possibility of having that other crook Jesse Jr. for an Ill. Sen.
· And who don’t love Pat Fitzgerald?
· Jesse Sr. for offering his surgical skills in order to make the next President (who has effectively made him irrelevant) a soprano
· HRC for bravely ducking sniper fire (again). YGBSM!
· Her husband for not having one single affair revealed during the seemingly endless campaign
· Michelle O correctly wearing a GAP dress on TV just prior to Sarah Palin’s wardrobe debacle
· Bristol Palin not marrying that flaming shit-heel Levi
· Todd not coming down with another DUI or STD
· Trig staying out of mean spirited jokes (for the most part)
· Katie Couric’s miraculous comeback (thank you Governor Palin)
· Charlie Gibson’s piss poor performance which goes a long way to seeing evening network news take a digger (I miss it already)
· Whoever the dub was (Wolf?) asking candidates seeking the freaking presidency of the United States to answer a killer question by raising their hands
· Rudy & entourage going to a Portsmouth restaurant newly named “Rudy’s” and ruining our night
· McCain’s gracious concession (Johnny, we hardly knew ye)
· Getting a mention for my paper by Tim on Meet the Press only to find out my publisher doesn’t watch
· Getting canned twice in the first half of the year (a personal best) by said publisher
· Marge the Barge quitting
· Dave Peterson reinstituting the Horsefeather’s C’mas party
· Heather getting preggers
· Wendy up with putting
· The Brothers Karamazov
· A week at Ocean Alley
· Cheap cognac

And O, did I mention Sarah Palin who gave us this:

Q: One of the things you talked about last night was the flexibility the vice president has —
PALIN: Yeah.
Q: — Uh. What did you mean by that?
PALIN: Uh. That thankfully our founders were wise enough to say we have this position and it's constitutional — vice president will be able to be not only the position flexible, but it's gonna be those other duties as assigned by the president. A simple thing.

Bless her heart.

May you be made Madoff rich in the New Year without getting caught.

Yee-had!

2008-12-30T14:20:00.002-05:00

Boy! Them Israelis know how to ring out the old with a bang. Talk about taking an elephant gun to rouse up some grouse. If I may paraphrase, it’s sort of like when you are sitting there reading of a summer’s day and a fly keeps buzzing around you but you just shrug it off because flies don’t bite. Then it gets your goat and you put down your book only to lose your page and now you are mightily cheesed off. The fly must die, you cry. Find the freakin’ swatter and come back to the hunt. No fly. You wait. You hear it. Poised, you stand upon the shaky ottoman and survey your empire. There on the ceiling. SPLAT! It was a largish fly and now its mass is spread, red and black, all over your recently painted ceiling. You know there will be a hew and a cry if you leave the drying carnage and you know that any argument defending your actions will not be appreciated.

So, instead of going back to your book you get a paper towel and some 409 and soon enough you are going back to what you were so innocently doing twenty minutes before, reading. Then you hear the fly’s brother coming for revenge and you contemplate an early cocktail. But instead you move to where there are no flies and grumble a little that a fly got you so worked up. You know there are flies and you think maybe you should have just held the swatter and idly wave it in case he comes around again. But you didn’t. You took decisive action believing, almost, that the other flies would know not to mess with you. That they would meet the same fate if they dared. But the new fly is filled with hatred over his lost brother and doesn’t care if he meets the same fate if he can just get some revenge. And he goes in search of you hoping to find you in the brief time on earth allowed flies. He also knows there will be other flies to come after him and that you have what they want.

In Gaza, where the Palestinians are crammed in like flies at a dumpster (it has the same land mass as two Washington DCs for 1.4 million inhabitants), the people have been fighting since they began to walk erect and could use their opposable thumb to swing a club. Palestinian Arabs claim Gaza as their homeland and while they have been there a long time, with mixed results, no one else quite sees it that way. They have been run over and run by the Egyptians, the British and Israelis and that’s just the last century. They never really had it all together but most certainly not in living memory.

Remember Ringo’s separated-at-birth-brother Yasser Arafat? The guy was all that for a while but soon realized that the cause would never be won and so cashed in depriving “his people” of the basic necessities while he banked billions. He turned down an Israeli deal that promised more self-rule and a real chance to have their own state and there has been little peace since. Good call.

But the new guys suck, too. The Hamas charter states: "There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad.” While Jihad means “struggle” in the Q’uran, mostly it has come to mean “wipe the sons a bitches off the face of the earth.” Hamas seems keen to do this where Israel is concerned even as other Muslim groups would like to see all of us Crusaders take a hike. In the most recent elections in Gaza, Hamas won big time taking 76 of the 132 seats to defeat the more moderate Fatah party. Now all of Gaza suffers the horrendous response to Hamas’ harassment of the all powerful Israel.

My man Zbigniew Brzezinski said this morning that the killing of (he said 400) Palestinians and wounding 1,400 more was too harsh. After all, with all of the homemade rocket attacks on Israel, not one person was killed. Morning Joe got indignant, as he is wont to do, and fired back with his typical bellicose bravado that a strong response is all these people understand. Joe’s a pretty macho guy. He’s a real toughy. Zbiggy came back with, “You have a stunningly superficial understanding of foreign policy in the Middle East.” I gave him a standing O, and Joe went ballistic.

There are always two sides to a story and this one has even more. Who knows what will happen, but I doubt I will live long enough to see the kind of peace in the Valley that most of us hope for in that land of endless jihad. It was interesting when I was bouncing around in Wiki-land that some wit had hacked in and when I clicked on the link for “Hamas” I came to this page. I reprint it in its entirety:

Fuck Hamas

Christmas tree hunting

2008-12-16T14:12:00.003-05:00

I was moved by my sister’s piece in this coming Vermont Observer remembering very sweetly that our cranky old artist father had created wood-cut home-made C’mas cards that we painted in the colors with our own individual water color sets. One year he created an x-massy scene on the living-room wall with pastels. But the tradition that I remember now that had escaped me for years because it was just the way things were done at our house, was setting out the silver martini set for Senor Claus with my father’s favorite cheese (Liederekranz) and crackers. That it was gone in the morning goes without saying. Licked clean.

In the happy days of the fifties (not counting Korea, the cold war and polio), C’mas still held much of its charm. Though, I can never remember it being “magical” or that any part of it mattered as much as the loot under the tree, I herewith acknowledge that I loved the C’mas music that seemed to encourage the anticipation of the big day. And the outdoor decorations kind of confirmed that the great event was at hand. Mistletoe, however, appealed to the seamier side, the prurient and pimpled teenager say, who wanted something you don’t put on Santy’s list: sex.

I spent a couple of December 25ths in the army overseas. Germans were way into Sinter Klaus (or any holiday) and can’t nobody party like they do. But the barracks were devoid of the trimmings and there was never a tree for presents.

When I became a father, the spirit of the event came back and it was fun to get the kids worked up. In tiny little Freedom, not far from here, we had a big old farm house and we could cut our tree in the dense woods behind our field. I once made a tree-top star out of alu foil and I still have it, as I do some of the tree clingers Sonny Boy Jim made in grammar school. One year I traded Lance Cloutier a case of mustard (I was a mustard magnate during the ‘80s) to fashion a wrought iron hoop (see TSJ adverts) so that we could make our own barn wreath every year.

Going after the tree became a writable event when we all had kids of or around the age of believing, sort of. We had a tradition of going up to Jackson and meeting at the Lodi’s who had god knows how many kids at that point. Paul had one of the ur four door pick up trucks and we would load it up with giddy kids and groggy grown ups; saws and an ax; and of course a shot gun. We were in fact Christmas tree hunting.

In those days you were allowed to drive with open containers of eggnog as long as you were having fun and stayed off the main roads. Paul had the key to the National Forest. (Anybody who doesn’t know Lodi might ask, “How the hell did he get that key?” All of us who know him say, “How the hell did he get that key?”). The truck had four wheel drive and we would go up the unplowed trail till we couldn’t. Some of us had flasks in case the nog gave out. And there was always a whiff of spliff, if you were tall enough.

The main difference between a National Forest and a tree farm is the height of the trees. There aren’t a lot of short ones up in Carter Notch so we would cut down taller ones and make them smaller. The shotgun came in handy for knocking the tops off the real beauties standing tall against the sky. These usually turned out to be skimpy upon closer inspection and were discarded. Once, full of bravado (manufactured by Hennessy) I climbed up inside the branches of a spruce (I think it was blue), with my trusty buck-saw, because Flower (we were hippie to the core) wanted a particular top for her living room. I ascended slowly and painfully but committed. I descended rapidly and painfully and should have been committed. Down feathers from my new parka fell like, down feathers. But I got what I wanted, a mittened applause and some unsympathetic laughter. I don’t even remember if I got the top of tree. And our lovely Flower is no longer here to remind me.

C’mas trees are an obstreperous bit of biology. Their DNA is wired to fall over with the least bit of physics being involved. Once, I tethered a fully dressed one so that it could not possibly fall over only to wake up those still sleeping, with my obscenities, when I discovered early one morning on the way out the door for work, that what I know about securing a tree’s verticality could be written on a piece of tinsel.

Two things I miss still are the free eggnog at Carroll Reed’s on C’mas eve. One of my high school honies worked there and would spike ours, back when it was okay to do so, but only on that special eve. The other was that Horsefeather’s would special order oysters for us and we would pile in with our gin-cherried noses and make an afternoon of it before going off to the five and dime next door for cheapo stocking stuffers, because Ben and Brian had absorbed all our shopping funds.

Much about C’mas has changed, the main thing being me. I can’t fit a tree in my fuel efficient car and putting up the thing is now almost the chore it is to take it down. No matter how clever I think I am at putting things away the year before, they don’t seem to be where I thought. Going to parties requires too much planning, and driving after one is now forbidden. Nobody wants to hear my rendition of A Child’s Christmas in Wales any more, and I’m not all that keen on listening to little whosit scrape out an ear piercing version of Good King What’s His Face on his violin.

But still, I made the punch for the library party again, there’s snow on the ground and we’ve candles in the windows. There are half gallons of the good stuff for when T & D come up from Fla. and there’ll be three nights of dinner parties right here, with all kinds of cheery souls who will "help" cook and break dishes. No need to be a grumpy grandpigge. I can do this. And for all the sneering cynicism you read in The Jacket, I’m almost sure that the fat man, “Knows if you’ve been naughty or nice/ so be good for goodness’ sake.”

Christmas drear

2008-12-09T11:05:00.005-05:00

O Gawd how I miss the campaign. We’re now down to yakking about puppy picks, what Michelle will wear to the balls, and whether the Smoker-in-Chief is mincing words about whether he does or doesn’t. Athens is in its third day of riots, the world economy is in a handbasket headed for Hades, we are fighting two wars, and we keep piling on the debt at home with a ho hum.

There is, of course, the Detroit debacle to perk us up. I hesitate to say “bailout” because I don’t believe that’s going to happen. I know bupkes about macro economics, except that “macro” means big, but when you look at the rate that Detroit is hemorrhaging dollars and the fact that new car demand is down from 17 mill a year to ten, anybody who can add and subtract would bet that there is no way that those companies can pay back these or any loans. They’ll take the money, reimburse their stock ops and let the chips fall where they may. Right now, Barney and Nancy want to give them a veto-proof $15 Billion dollars. Chump change in the world according to TARP. And they will have til March to get their asses out of its current sling and come back for more. What a plan! What a great country! What an eye-ache!

Some hotshot who works for Rick Wagoner, the top-kick at GM, actually tried to tell the booboisie this morning that Rick’s $16 mil. in bonuses, were really only a fraction of that when you figure the value of the stock. If you believe that then you will probably fall for his prognosis of GM’s overseas sales as solid. If there was any good news from Mo Town, why would it be an asterisk from this flack instead of a headline as big as The New York Post had for OJ’s recent change of address: "NOW ROT."

The big question for me is: Would we bail out American workers in Marysville, Ohio, making Hondas or BMW builders in South Carolina? I don’t think so. I think we tell them foreign fkrs to take a flying leap at a freakin' doughnut. But the argument, which we haven’t even heard a hint of from them, would be: We are American workers who pay taxes and all the subsidiary dependents of our industry would be screwed just as much as up in Detroit. If anyone is suggesting that GM's apron is more important because it’s bigger, than I want to know where the cut off is. What’s too big to fail, and, too small to care about?

But see, they are not asking for a bailout. American cars have one in the top ten car sales according to Consumer Reports. Why aren’t people buying American? I’ve had four Jeeps. I thought that was a good statement of how ‘mericun I am, although I now question why the dealer didn’t give me an Old Glory lapel pin so I could double down on my patriotism rush. Then, I found out that my ‘90 Wrangler was actually assembled in Comminist Chiner. What the hotel? YGBSM!

So, what is a patriot to do? Back up these billionaires on their boneheaded plan just so we can someday apologize to our children and their children for the extra gift they keep giving the gummint with every paycheck? Or tune into the post-season playoffs with a vengeance? Go Pats! (If they can squeak in past the New Jersey 'Jits.)

On another somewhat less sanguine note, I learned this morning from Dave Walker who was the head of the GAO (the nation's top accountant) that we’re broke, screwed and tattooed. By 2030 the entire budget will be spent on Soc. Sec., Medicaid and Care and interest on the national debt. That’s if things keep on keeping on. There will be ZERO money for defense (now 54% of our annual budget), twice as much for VA, about the same for education, right next to nada for infrastructure and scientific research. Even Ted Stevens couldn’t squeeze a nickel out of that budget.
Walker says that beginning next year and 20 years after, 78 million people will become pensioners and medical dependents of the US taxpayer.

If you haven’t seen this guy click here then pour a bracer and have a look. This interview is over a year old but I watched him say the same things today. Medicare, he says, is 5 times worse than SS. Now he is working for Pete Peterson’s new foundation so that he can do in the private sector what he could not in government. He said, “My new position will provide me with the ability and resources to more aggressively address a range of current and emerging challenges facing our country, including advocating specific policy solutions and courses of action.” Sweet.

Pete Peterson said, “The entitlement monster is unfunded. We are dangerously dependent on foreign capital. Our health care costs per capita are twice the level of the developed world. The goal is to integrate public policy and charitable giving and to answer this question: How do you educate a public that has become largely inert?”

Blog, Baby, Blog.

Would you like to be “vetted”?

2008-12-02T15:39:00.003-05:00

The other day at the unveiling of the top cabinet nominees, some reporter asked President Elect Obama (PEO) If the campaign hyperbole wasn’t now biting him in the ass. BHO grinned that grin and said, “I know you’re having fun but…" and then he went on to say that “outside of the heat of the campaign” we have had good solid discussions and we are very much on the same page vis a vis the big issues that we are now concerned with. Which seems to The Jacket a tacit admission of the bullshit that goes on inside the holy hell of a campaign that absolutely requires the precision parsing of the opponents words to turn them on themselves only to be revealed later as “just kiddin’.” This isn’t news as in “new” but it is in the news that Hilary said this or that about the Senator before he was PEO and before he whupped her ass. And you may remember for his part he had reduced her touted “diplomatic missions” to “having attended some tea parties” in various world capitals.

Now AG Elect Eric Holder, who hopes to head Justice is being held to a different standard than he was when he was number two there and helped to pardon Marc Rich – but do we care? They’re all a bunch of scoundrels and probably the worst thing we can presently say about PEO is that he “palled around with terrorists” and he failed to leave church when he disagreed with his pastor’s theatrics. One could argue that he shouldn’t have been in the church in the first place. But that argument holds no water in that this is a nation of christian convenience, meaning that most of the voters are some sort of adherent to that religious philosophy if only because it looks good on their resume. So, go to church the candidate must.

PEO, when he was just plain BHO, played the hand that was dealt when he horned in on the game. He attended a popular black church so he could be seen with the people with whom he wished to rub elbows. And it works until you try to explain the Rev. Wright clips to the huge swath of guns & religion clingers. It isn’t up to those voters to fathom how the intricacies of politics works. They are supposed to take you at your word when they see you on TV. Or not.

Nobody is now holding McCain responsible for some of the dumb or desperate things he said back in September and October. Of course it doesn’t really matter now, at all. And his confessional concession speech that showed the best side of old McNasty is what most people will remember about him. It’s just the way it seems to work.

Holder was doubtlessly doing the Presidential bidding of the boss. Marc “Filthy” Rich was a fugitive of justice for twenty years making himself even richer by investing, illegally of course, in Iranian contracts and eventually enriching the Clinton Library with his ill-gotten lucre. Part of that joke is that Rich fled the US because he was convicted for not paying taxes. He couldn’t pay his taxes but he could contribute to the First Bank of Clinton Library. And the reason he gave for not paying is because (he says) he was innocent. That the over zealous prosecutor, one Rudolph Giuliani (Rudy? Overzealous?), tried him criminally when, Rich says, “it should have been treated as a civil matter.” Memo to Mark: Pay the damn taxes!

Anygate, AG Elect Holder, who had nothing to gain, except the ire of the Commander in Thief, did as he was bid. Conversations he was supposed to have had about the matter in the two years prior to the hurried pardoning process seem innocent if you’re not looking for trouble, and the opposite if you are.

Here’s my understanding of the “vetting process”: If I want to buy a horse, I take him to a veterinarian to look in his mouth and ears, test his feet and legs and stick fingers in every orifice to make sure there is nothing wrong with the horse before the sale. That is probably less painful and embarrassing than a political vetting at the cabinet level.

Christopher Hitchen’s assessment of Hilary Clinton not withstanding she will be confirmed easily as it is almost too embarrassing for colleagues to ask: “If you could lie about being shot at in Bosnia, telling the same story three times, how do we know you wouldn’t lie to us when reporting on matters of State?”

Politics is a gas but it often gives us gas. I have seen at the Selectmen level in tiny NH towns the cheating, lying and even stealing that goes on. It starts there and works its way up. However cynical we think we are, the general public is way too trusting. That’s why our Sheriff got away with charging new suits to the taxpayer and why Bill Clinton got away with getting a beanie in the oval office. If he could be whinnying amonst us, I’m sure Kurt Vonnegut would want to say, “And so it goes.”

The First Thanksgiving

2008-11-25T17:10:00.001-05:00

The first Thanksgiving was at our house, 7 Maple St. in a shoreline town in Connecticut. Even without presents it was our favorite holiday. The right time of year with one last football contest between the two rivals. Cider from Ziggy York’s fruit farm and the thrill-seeking joy of zinging horse chestnuts at cars from behind a tree. The big deal though was the cousins coming down from Hartford which made for a houseful. Lots of cooking which my mother was up to. Great food. Great fun.

My mother died before I went in the army and my father a year after I got out. We had moved to North Conway before that and it is where I wanted to be. Still do. But there was a tug to the old sod and especially around turkey day. My older sister and her husband who still lived in Milford had become sort of surrogate parents in that we younger Cases could always crash at their house, sponge their booze and get laundry done. They had four kids and invited some of the orphans to join them for some turkey. I had a not yet one year old and my high school brother. Wife-one thought we should bring him up after the pere passed. My sister Mary was preggers and she and Brian came down with us. I borrowed Tommy Mulkern’s Plymmie station wagon for the six hour trip.

The only rule I remember was you could only spark up a new one when we hit a new highway. I made it all the way to Dover, maybe sixty miles, before I got popped for speeding with this comical gaggle of hippies at a time when the pigs were not cool with that scene. I had to go to the police station to sort things out. Quelle trip.
Some of the wine brought for the big day managed to survive the trip but we were a little bit giddy when we got to the house. I hatched a plan to surprise our hosts and when my sister opened the front door there was Taffy, Brian and I wearing only the ties we had brought to wear at dinner. As hoped for Giggy freaked out and I remember her saying she hadn’t seen me or Taff naked since she changed our diapers.
That set the tone for the next twenty five years. The group got bigger and included cousins, more and more spouses and once in a while some outside guests. I remember before we headed off to the Milford–Stratford hundred year old football contest, hearing my baby brother pop a cork on a bottle of Wild Turkey with his teeth. He spit it across the drive way and said casually, “I guess I won’t be needing that any more.” He was wearing roller skates.

We seldom sat less than 25 to dinner. My brother-in-law was a genius at turning the living room into a banquet hall with tables he had cadged from the private school where he taught. The neighbors were also into the bacchanalia that decended on them every fourth Wednesday in November. Thanksgiving eve, my young nepot Pete, who now owns all the music in NYC, would lead revelers around the neighborhood singing turkey carols which consisted largely of “gobble gobble gobble” to the tune of jingle bells. With his back up group (BUG) of twenty or so he would lead us in a song of his own creation. PETE: “I saw your hiney. BUG: boomp boomp boomp boomp. PETE: it’s white and shiny. REPEAT CHORUS. PETE: You’d better hide it. CHORUS and PETE again: before I bite it.” Well-wishers in the door ways of the neighborhood would raise an appreciative glass and wipe the tears from their eyes.

One year while we were making our bibulous rounds, a brightly painted papier mache turkey with a yellow bathing cap, a red rubber glove for a wattle, and wearing green tights, came out of the bushes doing more of a chicken walk than a turkey strut while holding up a sign that read EAT ME! He said he had stayed up the whole night before (wink, wink) fabricating this fabulous Melleagris Gallipolis and some how managed to pull the bit off without anyone knowing ahead of time. It topped the top. He also brought an album, one of those big round black plastic thingys that when properly spun will play music. None of us had yet heard of Bruce Springsteen. That has now changed. Thanks, Paulie.

On the twentieth anniversary we decided to do a black tie dinner. I came up from DC, folks came down from VT and NH. Doc flew in from AZ and Mike from AK. One year Taffy came in from Paris but I don’t think that was the year. Anygate, the grown-ups towed the line in traditional garb. The college girls thought it was a hookers ho down or something and showed up looking like Miss Kitty or Madeleine Kahn in Blazing Saddles. I’m looking at the group photo right now (back when only Gig was gray) and I’m almost sure that some where Federico Fellini is smiling.

The kids grew up and got married and had to start sharing their Thanksgiving with complete strangers. Bob and Gig retired to VT and we tried to keep up the Hunter Thompson pace over there but it fizzled. Yet the tradition lives on in each of our own homes. We will be having twenty this year including two of us who were at the first Thanksgiving ever.

Let me try this again

2008-11-21T09:53:00.003-05:00

If everybody in this fair land got health care, which would be run on the excellent model that the Veterans Administration uses, that could be the stimulus package the country needs right now. People wouldn’t have to pay for premiums and small business and large wouldn’t. That is cash in the pocket and that goes into the economy and investment for growth. Congress, teachers, state employees, unions, veterans, people over 65 all get some kind of insurance most of them paid for with tax dollars.

Preventive medicine saves money for the country. The poor use the ER for their primary care. Taxpayers pick up the tab. These same people tend to consider something “free” as having no value. They never consider preventive measures for whatever reasons, but that is not for us to speculate here.

My friend Dr. Malvesta (mal means sick in French) says it won’t work. But I would offer this explanation from the group, Physicians for a National Health Program:

“The U.S. spends twice as much as other industrialized nations on health care, $7,129 per capita. Yet our system performs poorly in comparison and still leaves 47 million without health coverage and millions more inadequately covered.
This is because private insurance bureaucracy and paperwork consume one-third (31 percent) of every health care dollar. Streamlining payment through a single nonprofit payer would save more than $350 billion per year, enough to provide comprehensive, high-quality coverage for all Americans."

"Policies that work means that everyone must be included, and that risk must be distributed in an equitable manner, based on ability to pay," says a group member. Or as Karl Marx might have it, “From each according to their ability, to each according to his need.” Yes, it’s redistribution of wealth (like all taxes) and yes, using the term Marxism isn’t that popular with anybody. Get Over It! It’s just a tag on an economic theory which in the proper environment works. And is working right here in the good ol’ US of A. If you make more money in this country, then you get noodged into a higher tax bracket. While you may not like it, you accept it. Your higher taxes go to helping crack babies get a better shot at life, educating any and everyone, and bailing out fat cats who have been scamming the system since they got their MBAs. It’s just the way it works.

To quote one of my favorite philosophers, “Let me make myself crystal clear” (that would be Nixon, Henney): We invest speculative dollars in a proven system to save big time on government handouts. We also improve the quality of health in the nation which means we spend less on life’s losers. Also too, and this is the point right now, people on national health care and businesses of all sizes will have more resources for the things they need. And businesses in particular can be more competitive on a world scale because they won’t have the onerous “benefit packages” that include in large part health bennies.

Postscriptum: Even if the (formerly Big) Three get the $25 B, they have already stated that it will not be for investment in 100 mpg vehicles. It will go for “on-going costs.” This is chump change to them. Last quarter, GM alone lost $39 B. You’d think that would be a record. Nope. The record belongs to AOL Time Warner back in 2002, $45 B. They didn’t get a bailout and now they are trading at about eight bucks a share. GM is at $2.88 Time to buy, I’d say.

An idea for the bailout bucks

2008-11-19T10:21:00.001-05:00

Let’s do a little ranting. There’s nothing else to be done because no one seems to have a real idea what can be done about the bailout. Yesterday, Hank Paulson who couldn’t explain a bus schedule, tried to convince Barney Frank the Commerce Chair, that it didn’t matter what Congress had legislated for rules in the $700 billion dollar handout to the finance sector because, “that was not our original intent.”

Frank cut him off three times as Hank tried to obfuscate the point by wandering way off from the reason he was there. Barney was actually waving the printed words of the stipulation at the insincere secretary which clearly states how the money could be spent, but Paulson was having none of it. He continued to bluster his way to the end of Frank’s time who finally threw up his hands in disgust. Hank had done his job. He had no intention of addressing the actual question or responding to the people’s representatives, and he didn’t. The frustration and arrogance in the room made for squeamish watching.

And it brings up the question that I had from the beginning of bandying about the $700B number. Who will be spending the money, and on what, and where does it all come from?

Our federal budget is $2.65 trillion as in - 000,000,000,000.00 - and $700 B may not sound like that much to Hank Paulson but here’s what the gummint was able to fund for this year with only 789 billion:

• Health/Human Services
• Soc. Sec. Administration
• Education Dept.
• Food/Nutrition programs
• Housing & Urban Dev.
• Labor Dept.
• other human resources

Next year the budget will be at three trill. Fourteen percent of that, or $420 billion will go for Medicare payments. That’s only for people over 65. How about taking the bailout billions (wherever that comes from) and finance a national health program like every other modern country has so that all citizens are covered the way federal and state employees, veterans, congress people and anyone else on the government teat is. That way the big three auto industries wouldn’t have that huge number for health benefits while the workers are working and even after they are retired.

That supposedly is the reason that the big three can’t compete with their foreign-owned competitors who, of course, build their cars in the U.S. Same kind of workers, same pay, but with no legacy funds eating up the profits. I guess that we are supposed to ignore the fact that America has been building the wrong kinds of cars and paying lobbyists obscene amounts of money to get away with it. Cars with lousy mileage fueling needless horsepower. Why do we build V-8s that go twice the top speed limit? Only in the last couple of years Jeep (Chrysler) came up with a competing model for the Hummer. We need more Hummer’s? Now these dubs come crawling to Capitol Hill wringing their hands while holding out their collective hat.

Mitt Romney, whose dad used to run American Motors and brought it out of a crisis similar to what we are seeing today, says in today’s NYT, screw ‘em. Well, not exactly those words, but he did say let them go into chapter 11 which is a vehicle (groan) for allowing these companies to hold off paying their creditors till they can get back on their feet, simply put. Not so simple will be restructuring the very complex labor agreements, specifically what the unions have perpetuated since there have been unions. Mitt says get rid of the old management. Bring in new truly creative people from unlike industries to get at real innovation. Set up for the future with an eye towards energy independence. I like it. Let him run it if he’s so sure it can happen.

The main thing going on here is business as usual. The greed heads are tripping over themselves trying to get their schemes through so they can get a taste of the $700,000,000,000 pie. There was even a bunch of plumbing contractors who formed a group asking for a chunk so they could rehab houses to get them back on the market. You can just imagine how the Treasury is being inundated with scams of all sizes. I don’t trust Paulson to do the right thing and if brash Barney can’t get him to answer a straightforward question, how is he or anyone else going to get a strict accounting of who is going to get some of this money? And oh, you flat-ass know they will be back for more.

The greedy will always be with us

2008-11-14T09:50:00.004-05:00

“You must remember this/stable economies are such bliss.” You can play that again Sam. If we know, and I know that you all do, economies ebb and flow almost as predictably as the tides, what is it in the whacky human psyche that does not understand that to ignore history is to repeat the disasters that it offers up on a regular and predictable wave pattern?

We had a doozy of a recession with depression statistics at the end of the Carter and beginning of the Reagan administrations. I pulled the following from Wikipedia: “The unemployment rate in the U.S. reached 10.8% in December 1982—higher than at any time in post-war era. Job cutbacks were particularly severe in housing, steel and automobiles. By September 1982, the jobless rate reached 10.8%. Twelve million people were unemployed, an increase of 4.2 million people since July 1981.

“The recession came at a particularly bad time for banks due to a recent wave of deregulation. The Depository Institutions Deregulation and Monetary Control Act of 1980 (DIDMCA) had phased out a number of restrictions on banks' financial practices, broadened their lending powers, and raised the deposit insurance limit from $40,000 to $100,000 (raising the problem of moral hazard). Banks rushed into real estate lending, speculative lending, and other ventures just as the economy soured.

“The FSLIC pushed mergers as a way to avoid insolvency. From 1980 to 1982, there were 493 voluntary mergers and 259 forced mergers of savings and loans overseen by the agency. Despite these failures and mergers, there were still 415 S&Ls at the end of 1982 that were insolvent.

“Pressured to counteract the increased deficit caused by the recession, Reagan agreed to a corporate tax increase in 1982. [He did WHAT??] However, he refused to raise income taxes or cut defense spending. The Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act of 1982 instituted a three-year, $100 billion tax hike—the largest tax increase since World War II.”

Mind you, this was twenty-five years ago when a new Volvo wagon was $7,000, the average price of a home in Greenwich, CT was $151,000 and KKR bought RJR/Nabisco for almost the same amount we just so casually gave to the auto industry to kind of help them through a rough patch so they could stay afloat till the real bailout bucks come in.

Reagan lowered interest rates rates from around 20 percent and by the time he was up for reelection the jobless number was down to 7.2 percent or just a little higher than it is now. Things turned around. That was then, but in between now was the 1991 recession. What, we didn’t learn our lesson? Hell no! People were greedy and we all saw lots of it everywhere. Why then the surprise when (Gee shock!) the housing bubble burst? Why the reprise of surprise when it happened again in ‘2001? And how could we be in this mess now?

BarackO said so many times on the campaign trail: “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome.” When the stock market dropped 23 percent on October 19, 1987 new regs were put in to make sure that trading would stop at a certain point if that were to happen again. Taking preventative measures seemed like a good idea to me. So if we know now what we know about housing bubbles and their predictable burstings, shouldn’t we be working on a solution to that?

But, nooooooo. The government and both houses decided that some un-named economic benefit derived to the country in the notion that the more people that live in their own homes the better it is for everyone. Really? How about all those taxes they don’t pay on the interest portion of their mortgage? Consider also too that most people move every seven years. I feel another eye ache coming on.

Consider this factoid when the Reagan recession started to recede: “Some of the most dramatic improvements came in industries hardest hit by the recession, such as paper and forest products, rubber, airlines, and the auto industry.” (italics mine.) I am inclined to say, no more bailouts and put a hold on handing out money to banks that only want to buy up more banks. It’s more greed no matter the spin they put on it. If money of this magnitude is up for grabs, the grabby will get it. The Russians are probably lobbying like a bastid for a piece and Curtis Sliwa is salivating for a couple of bills to bail out the Guardian Angels. I bet Ted Stevens is kicking his own butt that he can’t be in on the mother of all handouts, owing to the delicateness of his situation.

Democracy is such a pain in the ass. It’s nothing short of mind boggling that it actually works.

To: Robert Lyon Treat, ex-PFC, SFTG and 82nd Airborne (ret.)

2008-11-11T16:18:00.003-05:00

Abn Bobby,

Does one wish one a “happy” Veterans Day? Mais non, maybe. It’s kind of a solemn occasion and instead of thinking about getting drunk on jug wine strung up with IV tubing in our BAMC barracks, I will concentrate on the real heroes like my Dad who rode a horse in parades down in Hartford during the first Great War. Also, too, I think very much of Captain Doc who lost his eye to Charlie and has never found it or the reason he was there. Here’s to good old Great Gran’pa (Charles Humphrey) Case who lost his health to dysentery while interred in Andersonville, a nasty residence that did not kill his enthusiasm for his country or fond feeling for fellow veterans. And there’s Captain Daniel Case who fucked over the Indians in a land grab that went horribly wrong for the wrong side. Then his son went after the Brits so we could have lower taxes, and white land owners could vote.

This morning I left a message for Jonesy on his ans. mac. He is most assuredly off to some parade with his beret verde ancien. He actually gave it to me one C’mas eve, long after he’d gotten sober. He and Maisly were in Rye with Jame and me. I sneaked it back to Maise so she could give it back to her father someday. I never got to wear one, since back in that day, the year Mustang came out with that frabjous convertible, one had to earn the hat. “Get your three” before you don the green beanie. Anyway, as you know, I went to Deutschland to help mop up the Marshall plan and check out the frauleins, but that’s for another time.

I remember that you went down to the Dom Rep for a little sun and some hot action. Even got to see some shooting and sew some sorry suckers back up. Good job being a medic, well for me anyway. Wearing whites every day as I walked (not friggin’ marched) to the ER for my 9 to 5 with occasional weekend CQ. Johnny Jones didn’t have it like that y’ know. Well actually, I didn’t know either till about ten years ago when he started to show me some pics and tell some stories about working with the ‘Yards’ and running a small hospital in the mountains somewhere. Let it suffice to say he buried way too many people for the experience not to own his soul from then till now.

Remember how whacked he was when we got back to State U.? I always thought he was a little outré but he shocked even me. He was like a little Che Gueverra riding around campus on his ten speed. I had no idea what he had seen and even if he had told me there is no way that anyone can recreate the horror of combat and indiscriminate death so that we could feel what they felt. Thank Cryce. He told me of one particular incident that gave me the heebies, and later I wondered (I still kind of do) why he didn’t break down at the memory. I also wonder if he has told anyone else about this stuff. How much good can it be to keep it in? How awful to have to relive it in the telling.

I don’t know what his dreams are like but I do know that the problems that plague him now are the same as everybody who has to pay bills, worry about children and be nagged forever about what might have been if he hadn’t witness the insidiousness of man’s ultimate struggle with man.

I think of Johnny, and my brother, and their buds on this day. I think of the guys we knew who did not come back and the one’s who came back like Bob Kerrey and Max Cleland. I think of that big black “V” in the ground at the mall. I can never look at that fucker Kissinger without thinking of his secret pact with Le Duc Tho to hold off on a peace agreement so that Stinkin’ Dick Nixon could get elected only to draw out the war for another five years with a death total of 5 to 6,000,000 Southeast Asians and 58,159 Americans. Thanks, you Dick!

I watched Wes Clark (it’s okay, he calls me Pete) on TV this morning and he said that he was happy that Veteran’s are now allowed to salute the flag instead of having to do the hand over the heart thing like civvies. It was a simple statement, but really emotionally charged for me. Then I laughed a little because I’ve always done that. One thing even my thousand and seventy-seven days in the Army couldn’t ruin for me is my own heart felt sense of small “p” patriotism.

oBAM!a

2008-11-07T09:52:00.003-05:00

“Our long national nightmare is over,” Jerry Ford famously said when the Trickster flew off to sunny San Clemente for a well deserved rest. Those are the words that came to me election night and then again in the morning. Some TV talker said this that George Bush’s approval rating is the lowest since they started keeping track. My friends, let there be no mistake, the fundamentals of democracy are sound. We will turn this turkey around and do what needs to be done to some day fix the ills that beleaguer us so badly. Your President-elect is already asking for “a new spirit of service and sacrifice.” I hope he is right. We need this change. These two words no longer seem like just a lexiconical leitmotif to be implanted on the back of the eyeballs of the witless electorate.

But! The first thing we need to do is shove this victory down the throats of the defeated. Really grind it in. Make sure they know there is a new sheriff in town. Have ten times more inaugural balls than the Bushies did. All the staff at the WH will be lily whites. Draw mustaches on W’s portrait. Because, you know the “O”s are coming off the White House keyboards and the silverware is already on a truck to Crawford. Rahm Emanuel needs to strap on his jack boots and boot around some booty.

O wait a minute. That’s not what got this guy elected. This is the man, they said up here in the White Mountains a year ago, that is “too cool for school.” I don’t know how many times I have heard the likes of Pat Buchannan and Joe Scarboring say, “Barack needs to punch back. This isn’t the way politics works. Politics is a blood sport.” What say you now Joe Blowhard? Playing tough works for you because you’re a bleedin’ bully. You think maybe it’s time to turn that page? You're old hat at 45. There’s a new breeze blowing and it is going to change the way people get elected and the sliming will only be for slime balls and ye shall know them by that name.

I even saw Michelle Bachman (the bad Michelle) who called for a “media investigation” of whether BarackO and some others of his ilk were patriotic enough. I assume she means her standard of good enough. Chris Mathews jumped all over her ass and did himself a huge favor in the process, gee shock. Now, Bachman, who has the political courage of Joe Lieberman, is saying what a great day this is and that she is so proud of this nation because, as she somewhat ineptly put it, "In my district, I don't sense racism [she’s in Minnesota], and that's why I'm thankful that hopefully this will send a national signal across our country that America is not a nation made up of racists... On the same hand, I hope that the national media will not confuse disagreement with Obama's policy positions with being consumed [by] racism." In the seventh grade I was pretty good at diagraming sentences. But I couldn’t parse that one with a gun to my head. My dream ticket for 2012, Palin-Bachman, “We’re right because we are waaay right.” I would add, and out of touch with the new reality.

Speaking of pickin’ on Palin (which, Dear Reader, you know I am loathe to do), what up with what we are guessing is the highest echelons of the McCain camp trashin’ the Gov.? I mean, that ain’t right dawg. They plucked her out of obscurity. They told her what to say, how to dress, where to be. And now they are blaming her for being a “maverick” and goin’ all rogue on 'em?

Let’s pick on Johnny Boy instead. Raise your hand if you thought the guy who “has been fighting for his country since [he] was seventeen” ran a really good campaign. Keep in mind that a president has to be a good manager. My man Mac was a spoiled little shit all the way up, his nightmare at the HH, not included or to be trifled with. When you look at all his advantages he should have been a shoo in. I won’t retrash the guy, at this particular moment, but I do want to point out the way his “people” are behaving about their/his loss.

Most people agree with me (about this one thing anyway) that Almost Admiral McCain gave his best performance of his shitty campaign in his concession speech. Sort of like Teddy K when he lost to (OMG!) Jimmy Carter in ’80. Well, if that was Mac being Mac, how could Steve Schmidt not have known that is what people wanted to see and hear? No, Bullet Head wanted to tightly script the “maverick” candidate to hit all the talking points as he has done in all the other campaigns he has run, in the past.
Schmidt surely had to be scratching his shiny pate when he saw Mr. Too Cool for School gliding past the Clinton machine with everybody talking about the tenor of the Obama message and the smooth operation of their own machine. But he was out of gas. He had reached the full height of his own incompetence (which to be fair, we all do at some point). But he did it at the beginning of his tenure as head of the campaign.

There’s a new day dawnin’ my peoples. Don’t forget to sign up to serve and sacrifice.

Been wrong so long it looks like up to me

2008-11-04T10:44:00.001-05:00

The first time I voted it was against Dick Nixon but then I got to do it again and the taste was sour. The first time was in my apartment in North Conway in 1968. A gaggle of us watched the tube and comically commentated while sucking down suds and spliffs. One of my old high school buddies was the only one pulling for the Trickster. He’s now a Federal Appellate Judge in D.C. who mentions Bush in his Christmas letter. The counting dragged out late into the night and I passed out thinking the old Happy Warrior (Hubert Horatio Humprhrey, for any of you not old enough) had won.

Four years later I remember fairly running along the streets of Georgetown after work heading to an election eve party no less tame than the one just mentioned. I had been working for McGovern in Maryland and California and was a volunteer for the DNC at the Watergate during the time it was robbed. My friends had bought a Nixon candle which had a wick on the top and was alit when I arrived. Cathy Medd said, “There calling it a landslide with 6 percent of the vote in.” I was crushed.

I voted for Carter but without enthusiasm. I voted against the Gipper cheerfully, twice, but I went for his veep against the Duke. Clinton was a no brainer. But then I got my ass handed to me when Antonin Scalia elected poor George Bush. Four years later I went to bed thinking John Kerry would be reporting for duty at 1600 PA Ave. I woke up at one in the morning being told by the scary visage of James Carville that there would be four more years of the nincompoop-in-chief.

A year ago I would have bet anybody that I would be voting for a pant-suit presidency on this very day. That did not happen. Although I had said that I wouldn’t have to hold my nose to vote for Hil, I wanted the skinny kid. I liked his easy grace and obvious intelligence. I thought, “Hell, I’d vote for him even if he was white.” And today I did just that.

My friend Billy Richards couldn’t even get a hair cut in the same leafy town in Connecticut where we lived when we were in High School. Nor was he going to be asked to join the Yacht Club. I wonder how he felt today when he filled in that teeny little oval that will choose an African-American to be the next president of the United States.

Beware the Jabberwock

2008-10-29T09:34:00.004-04:00

I find the following, from Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There, an excellent metaphor for the current campaign, or anything else for that matter. I've always held an especial esteem for the Fruminous Bandersnatch and feel to this day that he has gotten short shrift from the liberal media elites.

`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!"

He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought --
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.

And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.

"And, has thou slain the Jabberwock?"
'Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!'
He chortled in his joy.

`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

I hope that this makes as much sense to you as the American political scene makes to me.

Off with her clothes.

2008-10-24T09:39:00.003-04:00

The big deal (if it is a big deal) about Sister Sarah’s clothing scandal is how it looks to the little people from her “real America” who are already getting whacked by the pending doom that is our economy. I am not worried that a campaign would spend their donors' hard earned on making the candidate as appealing as possible. Or that they spend their money recklessly. Remember when Hillary had a $95,000 pizza bill back in Iowa? This is just the way they do things. But how does it get out? You don’t hear about overspending and mismanagement with the other side.

I purloined this from the HuffPo’s Sam Stein:
“Democrats (in this scenario) are not prone to forgiveness. After all, it was during this same campaign cycle that Republicans belittled the $400 haircut that former Sen. John Edwards had paid for with his own campaign money (the funds were later reimbursed). And yet, the comparison to that once-dominant news story is hardly close: if Edwards had gotten one of his legendary haircuts every singe week, it would still take him 7.2 years to spend what Palin has spent. Palin has received the equivalent of $2,500 in clothes per day from places such as Saks Fifth Avenue (where RNC expenditures totaled nearly $50,000) and Neiman Marcus (where the governor had a $75,000 spree)."

Palin received more valuable clothes in one month than the average American household spends on clothes in 80 years. A Democrat put it in even blunter terms: "Her clothes were the cost of health care for 15 or so people.” However, Stein leaves out that Edwards paid out $114,000 of campaign money for four two and a half minute videos of himself to someone he was boinking at the time.

The McPalin team was quick to point out that the clothes will be given to charity after November 5th. But I think I have a better idea. She should eBay the clothes after she loses. Just the silky stuff could pay back the $150 K and I’m sure a lot guys would like to get hold of one of those red leather Michael Jackson jackets that has become her sartorial signature. Of course that means that Baby Trig will have to give up his designer Dr. Dentons and the First Dude will have to trade in his suits and go back to oil skins and snowmobile outfits.

The tenor of the campaign loves this kind of mud to throw and, even if it is not a big deal, it becomes a red flag for other shenanigans. Because, there’s also too, the business of flying her kids on commercial airlines with her to more than a dozen events to the tune of $22 K at taxpayer expense. Surely the Gov. is entitled to fly first class. This includes a $700 a night flop at the Essex House on Central Park for her and Bristol who was not even invited to the event. You have to say, she’s a good mom. But a pricey Governor. She naturally wants to be with her kids so instead of working out of the capitol in Juneau where the law makers and department heads are, she stays at home. This part doesn’t seem right. She charges the state a per diem for each night spent in her own house. Three hundred and twelve of them! The legality of this move is now under review, by the GOVERNOR’S OFFICE. YGBSHM!

The likeable and smart Lawrence O’Donnel, an MSNBC mouth, who knows a thing or two about campaigns, is certain that all the hoopla “doesn’t matter.” He’s probably right. Even SNL only gave it one line this week. He told his fellow hecklers, “She doesn’t pick out the clothes.” The campaign (in its omniscience) picks out her clothing for the “look” they want to see, just as they put the words in her mouth that they want to us to hear. They seem to have gotten the wardrobe better.

In retrospect, Schmidt and company are going to wish they had let her speak more of her own words. The few times I’ve seen her speak on her own she was a different sounding, much more likable person. I was impressed with her interview when she said she would run things differently [from the campaign] in terms of how she presents herself and that she did not like the current content of the robo calls. It isn’t easy to for someone to have to change their personality on a dime to suit someone else’s idea of what they want you to sound like. She got where she is by Sarah being Sarah. The girl is all personality with an 80 percent favorable rating in her current job. She stands out like a tomato-red leather jacket. And then the campaign says, yeah but let’s tweak it. Let’s have a committee decide what should come out of her mouth. Of course that didn’t work so hot with Katie. Forced to read talking points off her lap she looked foolish. You might say it backfired. But they keep pushing her out there to shout “socialist” and “elite” to people who don’t even know what the words mean.

One other thought. Michelle O went on a TV program called The View in a $148 dress from the GAP and that’s what all the chatterers talked about for a whole news cycle.

McPain in my ass

2008-10-21T12:00:00.001-04:00

McWrinkly Dude has just now and finally pushed me over the edge of a teetering purchase of respectability I had for the old Navy pilot now turned political whore. He is now on the stump saying over and over, “I’ve been fighting for this country since I was 17 years old.” Does he really think that? His 23 sorties dropping bombs from some reasonably safe height amounts to similar number of hours in the air “fighting” for our country. Someone figured out that he got a medal and a half per hour of “combat”— which is the way his deck has been stacked all his life.

His father’s considerable pull got Johnny into the Naval Academy (at age 17) and while he did manage to finish in the allotted time he did so without having applied himself in any way. He was in freakin’ college! Does that mean that everyone who went to college, even William Ayers, was also fighting for their country during those years? “McNasty,” as he was known in his putatively prestigious prep school, although I never heard of it when I was in DC six years, was almost thrown out of Annapolis twice (his Mom got him a reprieve) and spent most of his four years on probation. Then, with almost the worst grades in his class, he got into flight school, a prestigious and highly coveted slot. I have to believe that the Admiral had some-say so for the fair haired scion and future flier.

He distinguished himself as a flier by crashing three planes and getting one shot out from underneath him. One of the planes that he made an unscheduled landing in went short of the mark. He was used to commandeering navy craft to see his soon-to-be-wife up in Philly. After attending an Army-Navy game there and a raucous night of partying, he (again) stalled his plane and had to eject. Fortunately the crash killed no one. Is that part of fighting for one’s country?

A few months before his final flight he was in his plane waiting for take-off on the aircraft carrier USS Forrestal. His A4 Skyhawk was hit accidentally by a rocket from another plane. Not his fault of course, but would you want to fly with this guy? After the Forrestal incident where he hardly aquitted himself with valor, he told Johnny Apple from The Times, his new buddy, that he wasn’t so sure he “felt too good about dropping napalm on civilians.” Talk about valor; no wonder they gave him 28 medals.

Nobody can say what they would do while being tortured in any situation but according to declassified government documents McCain did receive special treatment at some points during his hideous captivity because Hanoi was anxious to trade in on his famous father who was ordering air strikes on the north. McCain III turned down early release which he could see would be a disastrous public relations ploy and a morale buster for the troops. Excellent judgment, but even he would agree now that an interview he gave to a Cuban psychologist, arranged by his captors, was not a good choice. In it he did not limit himself to name, rank and serial number.

Only the Swiftboaters of the last campaign would try to drag this guy through the mud and I am not doing that here. But there is a record and it is not one of “fighting since I was seventeen” and that’s what he said today at a rally. He was passed over for Admiral with every break on his side except a gift for hard work. He was a notorious philanderer and playboy which buried his chances. An excellent article in the latest Rolling Stone goes into greater detail if you can stomach it.

I think that Johnny’s chances to fly in Air Force One are sinking like so many of his aircraft. And when people are talking about his experience you would think that the guy who has been on the political scene all these years, “fighting” away, would have the clear advantage. But there is no experience that simulates the kind of decision making that takes place in the oval office.

Obama defenders tout his “first class intellect” as the principal qualification they would like to see from the next president. Or any president, really. We don’t get a lot of that in the White House. We do get some pretty smart ones. Some thought the Trickster was a brilliant operative, if just a little too evil. The Slickster wasn’t smart enough to stay out of trouble but his record speaks for itself. What we need is first class intellect and experience. But I suppose, if wishes were fishes we’d lunch on lox.

I’ll tell you what I like for experience: A scrappy, fatherless kid with a funny name that worked hard enough to scholarship into the most prestigious prep school in Hawaii, then get into Occidental, Columbia and Harvard, made president of the law review, made it to the Senate on his first shot and put together an organization and bankroll that beat the Clinton machine and now looks to calmly dispatch with Sen. McSpoiled for the most powerful job in the world and come away from it with people saying he did it with aplomb and his dignity intact. That’s what I’m talking about.

What you gotta ask yourself is: If the experience of hanging in the halls of power is so great, would you vote to keep W in, who’s been “at the helm” for the last eight years?

Plumber's crack

2008-10-17T09:52:00.003-04:00

The whole country is talking about this guy but there seems to be a little gap between the image of Joe the friggin plumber, the center of the candidates debate on Wednesday, and the actual guy out in OH who doesn’t have a plumber’s license, whose real first name is Samuel and from what I can tell, he’s not even really bald! I think he shaves his head and then uses bees wax to get that reflective sheen.

"I'm getting ready to buy a company that makes $250,000 to $280,000 a year," he told Obama in an exchange that showed up on YouTube. "Your new tax plan is going to tax me more, isn't it?" Keep in mind, he has not yet bought the three man operation.

Here’s the point that seems to be missing from the argument that simply stated is: If Joe buys the plumbing company will he pay higher taxes? No. The company may have sales of up to $280 K but Joe him self is not going to take a salary of $200 thou, which is what would be his “higher taxes” threshold as an individual. The $250K number is for a household. Joe is on crack if he thinks he can pull $199,000 out of his fledgling firm for owner’s compensation, but if he did, he would remain in the 36% bracket as opposed to the egregious, small-business busting 39%.

But Joe’s potential business has two helpers, at least one vehicle, an office, inventory, insurances, an accountant and an occasional lawyer all of whom/which will want to be paid before Joe gets to keep any of the total revenues for himself. Oh, and also too, he’s buying the business which means he will have debt, which is a good thing, because if things don’t work out then he can go chapter 13 and get a Bush bailout.

That is, if he can get a loan at all. Has he not heard that the banks that have received a piece of the $700 B “rescue plan” are still loath to lend? They are said to be hoarding the money because of the riskiness of investing in our country’s solvency. But even as I click and clack, the leader of the free world is saying to the US Chamber of Commerce, and me, that because of the actions of his administration, we are on the road to a better brighter future. In fact his plan sounds damn good. But it is also factual that he is full of shit and none of his big promises have panned out. We haven’t found bin Laden, the war is not nearly over and of course Brownie was a total loser and three years later New Orleanians still struggle for promised relief. So Joe, don’t hold your breath.

I thought BHO was a little snarky in a clip from the campaign trail when he quipped something along the lines of “How many plumbers do you know that are making $250, 000 a year?” But the point is well made. Although that kind of cash is not inconceivable for owners of plumbing companies, it isn’t bloody likely that a guy with his own truck and his wife doing the bookkeeping is pulling down that kind of long green. Certainly not around here.

And yet dissecting the veracities of Joe’s narrative now trumps the most important story in this country since the twin towers vanished. The carnival barkers would rather talk about how many times “Joe the plumber” was mentioned during the candidates debate than they would try to parse the candidates economic proposals for their audiences. SNL should be a hoot this week.

Joe’s fifteen minutes of fame won’t hurt him. It may even help him to get a loan. He certainly won’t have any trouble developing a customer list especially if he has already registered “Joe the Plumber” as a trade name. No, it looks like the worst problem Joe is going to have is making the painful three-point hike into the 39% tax bracket. I would love to share his pain.

First amendment.

2008-10-15T09:53:00.004-04:00

My old pal and favorite skipper Christo Buckley got whacked from his job writing a column at the magazine his father founded. He had written in the new, and quite good, Tina Brown blog, The Daily Beast, that he was endorsing Barack Obama. This of course was a great get for Tina since Chris’ pop was famous for being one of the loudest architects of the revival of conservatism in the last century. He, WFB, also founded the bible of that movement, The National Review.

Until 24 hours ago young Buckley (younger than me anygate) had a column in his Dad’s old rag. Nice touch with the père no longer whinnying amongst us. But the backlash from people who had no business sticking their nose into a Brown blog was so overwhelming that when he playfully told Publisher Rich Lowery that he would send a letter of resignation, it was accepted before the ink was dry.

I’ve tried to read the NR a couple of times because they have some pretty good writers. But it so smacked of one-sidedness that I realized they weren’t trying to reach my ilk but more interested in pandering to the base, which is to say bowing and scraping to the one-eyed shrew, the buck almighty. Buckley said that the magazine was deluged with hate mail and the repeated cries to “cancel my subscription.” He notes that had happened even when WFB was in charge and he would retort, “Cancel your own goddamn subscription.”

Why is the idea of free speech so loath to the lapel-pin patriots who certainly must know that the first amendment is FIRST because it is the most important. When Sarah Palin nailed what she thought were hecklers at a rally, she made sure to remind them that people are dying in battle to protect your right to say whatever you want (which in this case was, “Could you speak up?”). We all have the right to say whatever we want, legally. You might get punched in the nose for expressing your opinion but basically we agree that it is a “right” and it is immutable. BTW, if there is a fire in a crowded theater, it’s okay to alert the patrons.

Here in the North Country, which is right now pimped-out in the panoply of autumnal awesomeness, we have a local rag that people love to rag on. They call it all manner of names that they think cute and pretend to barf when ever someone asks, “Did you read that article on whatever in the Sun?” Not the sports certainly, but the other stuff. The paper is such a hot topic that I was told the reason I didn’t get hired (years ago) at the Granite State News was because I had defended the Sun. Now there is somebody making their living on the first amendment actually telling me that there are certain things you shouldn’t say, even if you are asked?

I sympathize with Buckley having been fired from the Carroll County Independent at the beginning of the summer for writing a letter to the editor in the Sun. The publisher dropped me within hours of the letter's appearance. Dig it: A newspaper man fired one of his writers for writing in another paper! I still can’t believe it. But having been fired a good deal in my longish life I took it with equanimity because I knew that I couldn’t stay if they wanted me to back off of certain subjects or even just warned me to not write in other publications. It was of course very flattering to think that what I wrote had such impact. Not.

The Sun actually does its job of informing the people. They go beyond their mission of “printing the truth,” mostly, and provide just a shipload of entertainment mostly in the free form ravings of the letter-to-editor writers. This first amendment avenue, for those not fortunate enough to have their own blog, is a gift to the people. While many of us make fools of ourselves on those pages there are abundant laughs and even some information that can be filed under “useful.” It’s a great way to get stuff off your chest and for many a chance to see their name in print and wonder if they should have gone to J school, the better to change the world.

I feel like Thomas Paine in a way. He too worked for free. There endeth that tie except that he was pretty passionate about his pamphleteering. The free press is a really good thing and I worry that we take it for granted. Buckley’s firing is a symbol of those who would curtail that right and practice, that makes America a place of envy to many.

All to say, Buckley’s got nothin’ on the Pigge when it comes to getting canned.

“That One” takes a knee

2008-10-10T10:19:00.002-04:00

I think that Johnny Nutjob truly meant to say “The One,” as Obama was dutifully dubbed after the Berlin rally. McCain meant it as an homage to his nemesis who even he sees as having attained the magicalist of all numbers, forty-four.

It is curious and comical to watch and read the “experts” who preface most questions about the race with, “I’m not in the fortune telling business but…” But what? Kiss my butt Jack. You all slip it into the conversation constantly: “He’s on a glide path as long as things stay static…” yet you would never sully your patinaed halo of sanctity as a down the middle professional news-whore by actually saying, “Here’s what I think.”

Well, here’s what I think (and I have my network’s permission to say so). B. Hussein Obama takes VA, PA, OH, CO and Florida, Florida, Florida. And he does it with style and grace and come January 20th, 2010 when he gives his first of eight State of the Union addresses we will look back and wonder what all the fuss was about? Why were we worried when he took the oath of office on Mao’s little red book that he had borrowed from Billy Ayers? (That’s the only part I’m kidding about.)

Hell, Bullet Head Schmidt, bring it on! O yes, you can claim that he is from Africa (ain’t we all?) and you can say he is an elitist and try to say he is out of touch with the common voter, and you can say that he palls around with commies and still sneaks cigs, but your guy is a dud. His campaign has flatlined. Except for the perky veep pick.

Very interesting to read this morning that Christopher Buckley, with profuse apologies to his absent pere, is endorsing Obama which is the first time he has ever voted D. He says sadly that McC is not that man he used to be but has become a sputtering, spitting-mad man promising the most unattainable goals to try to woo the uninformed voters who may not have made up their minds yet. McCain’s pledge to balance the budget has about as much possibility of happening as did the eighteen cents a gallon gas rebate that he promised before last summer. I don’t care that blondie promised the same thing; she lost too.

There is so much to read and listen to while trying to sort out what is really going on that it becomes somewhat mind numbing and like the state of the economy it feels whelming. Thursday’s stock market close has the Dow off 38 percent for the year. The crash of ’29 marked the same indicator off 47 percent.

The Crash signaled the beginning of the world wide depression which, in this country lasted about ten years. Setting up for World War II helped to bring us out of it. Strong measures, my friends, and especially for a military as strapped as ours is now. Then there is the human cost. Seventy million people lost their lives in that one, almost a tenth of them in the Holocaust. I don’t think this is a very good option for ending a depression should that eventuality obtain.

What is going to happen? What will the next president (That One) do when he begins to grapple with the myriad other messes that W has left for him? To me it is almost inconceivable that anyone would want this job no matter the perks and prestige. Surely the world is in a better place to recover now from this economic maelstrom than it was 70 years ago. But what I think about is the new position of the players. Iceland is borrowing money from Russia? That can’t be good. China is solvent and we’re into them for a Trillion? Yikes! The Japanese are shoring up the prestigious Morgan Stanley? Is this a time warp?

Buckley’s argument, though hardly original, has it that Obama does have the temperament, judgment and brains to lead this nation. I would add that his superlative organizing skills has to give him a commanding lead over the guy who didn’t acquit himself adequately at Annapolis. McCain gets too much credit for surviving, in life and on this campaign. His desperate veep choice and the all or nothing style he is employing this very day, says absolutely nothing that recommends him to take on the behemoth problems that face this government for another decade, at least.

Now picture this. It turns out that BHO, at eight years old, helped Billy Ayers plan the bombings. McC becomes POTUS 44 and shortly into his administration, his cancer comes back, he develops a staph infection in the hospital and shortly Sister Sarah is number 45. Do you think she will be able to handle all that is to come? You betcha!

Debate night

2008-10-07T16:54:00.003-04:00

What do Mc and Billy Ayers have in common? Neither went to jail for wrong doing.

Professor Ayers and his equally famous wife Bernadette Dohrn turned themselves in to the authorities and then skated on charges up the ying yang (which has nothing to do with “yin” or “yang”) of blowing up people and things, because of “prosecutorial misconduct.” Say what? These assholes never had to do a day? That is mystifying indeed.

But the McPalin ticket is trying like hell to connect Barry with Billy’s crimes. At the same time they are claiming that McWrinkly Dude was “exonerated” by his fellow Senators and so the Keating smear doesn’t stick, in their minds. But he wasn’t.
Part of the problem is that campaign people can’t tell the truth and think they are not being dishonest when they dish some distortion, but rather, being clever. Somebody says, “My opponent is not telling you the whole truth when he/she says blah blah blah,” and the other person says, “He called me a liar.”

Censure is a warning to a member of Congress if they broke a law or committed a crime. "Censure is a procedure for publicly reprimanding a public official for inappropriate behavior… It derives from the formal condemnation of either congressional body of their own members. The word “exonerate” is not attached to this finding, as it usually is to most comments from Mc III’s protectors. It certainly would have been if it had been deemed that he had NO record of inappropriate dealings with the sleaze-bag S&L snake, Chas. Keating.

Billy didn’t even get a censure. He went on to lead a productive life, still married to the same gal, the rakehell bomb-throwing Bernadette, and they have raised their two kids to adulthood. He has met Obama who talked with him and probably figured that he was an okay guy with some wild stories about his past. But then he is also a friend of Mayor Daly and sits on and ed. board and a charity with Barry, or has at sometime. What is a little curious is that they live three houses from each other and even though Billy has contributed to the Obama campaign back when BHO was representing their district, no invite for a drink or something?

Nobody’s sticking up for terrorists of any stripe. This has more to do with the low sunken point of the campaign and how desperate it looks for Johnny Mc. How could he think that sending Sarahcudda after BHO would improve his image as a take charge guy? It makes me wonder if they aren’t just using her for bait. Let her dangle the Rev. Wright out there so that David Axelrod has to return fire on the Kenyan Witch Doctor incident and poke fun at the speaking in tongues that supposedly goes on at the Wassila Assembly of God Church. I guess there’s no footage of that or it would be more popular than a Tina Fey send up.

Even a died-in-the-wool serial cynic like The Smoking Jacket feels an eeriness about the seriousness of this global financial meltdown. If you watch CNBC for a half an hour you find they have lost their bonhommie and sense of humor. It’s no time to joke. The Today Show had Jim Cramer on again this morning because yesterday he advised TV land to “sell your stocks if you will be having a foreseeable needs for liquidity over the next five years.” He didn’t do his screaming thing but he was pretty forceful and Breathless Curry could only repeat, “really, REALLY?”

Today he calmy repeated it even when Meredith tried to make the connection to “yelling fire in a theater.” The Today Show does not like to upset their viewers. Cramer, to his credit stuck to his guns and said, “What if there is a fire?”

This is topic numero uno. This is what we should be hearing about tonight at 9 p.m. We don’t need no stinking mud slinging and gargantuan whoppers that debase all sides. Let Sarah do the one thing she’s good at because that’s why they hired her. It’s why LA lets Manny be Manny. It’s all she’s got. But the candidates should not pull this crap. I truly hope that Sen. McCain is working his ass off right this minute preparing to make this a debate about where this country is going in terms of financial security and what role we will play in the global financial community. What will he do about it should the fates treat him kindly (?) and put him in charge of this mess?

He’s got to prove that he is a better leader than a pilot. He doesn’t have to out do Obama so much as he has to let his supporters see that he really does have a plan that people can get behind and at the same time make them think that he can steer it though without dumping it in the drink, or clipping some low wires, and especially not getting shot down.

Bad Ass ets

2008-10-02T10:12:00.001-04:00

The Senate has now passed the bill from hell and we don’t yet know what Congress will do. They surprised us last time. More importantly, I don’t know what I’d do if I had to vote right now and I’ve heard the arguments for both sides. I still feel so strongly that there will be obscene amounts of money stolen out of the bill from the money monsters who will game this piece of business to a fare thee well.

Already the senate version has tax breaks for Puerto Rican rum producers and some “wooden arrows for kids” company in Oregon. I kid you not. It was for $7 mill. If Ted Stevens wasn’t in court yesterday, for supposedly taking bribes, you can be sure he would have grabbed a taste. The purpose of these sweeteners is to sway the votes of the left or right side of the aisle. If these schmucks won’t stand up now for the right thing to do for their country without being bribed, when will they? It is almost impossible to comprehend the selfish and stupid thinking that makes these people tick. They seem to be proudest of their contributions to political gamesmanship and what they can get away with, but are absolutely spineless when it comes to their duty to make the best decision.

One interesting point is that the voters “seem” to be overwhelmingly against it though I heard a pollster yesterday that said that it was more like 45% that want the “rescue plan.” (“Bailout” being too strong a term for voters who will be easily tricked by this nuance.) And some congress members have claimed that they are voting with their constituents in mind. That should be good. But someone else has pointed out that individual members are sent to congress to do what we cannot do and that is to access and assess the information and do what’s best for the country. They know the little tricks of wording in the bill. They know what the pitfalls down the pike will be. They know the people to ask when they don’t know.

The Monday vote being so close in a 435 person chamber does nothing to clarify which is the way to go. I am instinctively opposed to giving the government this much rope. I do not trust the administration to do the right thing. I am fearful of Jim Cramer’s assessment of Bernanke and Paulson as being the wrong people for the job. But I am equally fearful that if the liquidity markets fail, it becomes a world wide problem.

McCain says he would “fix the system.” But he voted for the Senate versions with the goofball earmarks. He claims “this bill will prevent financial disaster” but cautions that “it is just a tourniquet.” That makes me wonder how much the actual operation will cost. Obama voted for it. And the coin canny Warren Buffet has said that he will buy $3 billion of the bad-ass assets. But even there, you know he’s just skimming the cream and leaving the taxpayers with the toxic wasteland that is the worst of the worst.

What would you do?

Be very afraid

2008-09-26T10:14:00.001-04:00

“Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.” If the bill passes with this in it, Xiao Bushie will still have 3 months to dip his mitts into the bail out money. It is the Bush way to suspend the very underpinning of what makes Democracy work as well as it does. No pins is not good for the highly touted “transparency” which in large measure helps to keep the gummint honest.

This is so scary. Why would the Executive branch, within which the awesome responsibility will reside, need to insist on no judicial review. Isn’t that what criminals do when they turn states evidence so they won’t have to go to jail for things they haven’t yet been charged with? The 32 word sentence should be the deal breaker. Chris Dodd’s attempts to make provisions that would disallow such unfettered mastery over the financial lives of the citizenry have already been quashed. The Paulson polemic mimics what the bloody “Bush Doctrine,” preemption before you get caught, really means. They lied about the war then lied about blowing it. Called “quaint” the Geneva Convention rules. Brownie doing a heck of a job (think what New Orleans would look like with even a lick of that $700 B). Managed the budget and deficit into a staggering shag-up that some people’s grand-children will be paying for ad infi their lives.

McCain’s little trick, make that a BIG trick, to supposedly suspend his campaign to go roaring into the White House to solve what could be one of the biggest issues of this country in modern history, is about the only transparency in his campaign. If you can’t see through this gimmick, you ain’t been paying attention. It is as desperate a move as picking Palin. But it should show to most voters that he is relying on hoodwinking us which means he thinks that our level of nincompoopery knows no bounds. I can see Steve “the Bullet” Schmidt glowing over the plan and thinking, it’s like shooting fish in a barrel. At least that’s what I think he’s thinking.

Will McCain show up tonight? The Smoking Jacket has learned that nobody actually knows. The multi-millionaires in the punditocracy who get paid to prognosticate, begin their answer to that question: “Well Pete, nobody knows for sure what the Senator will do, but… Then while they are getting paid more per word that some of us make a month on Social Security, they blab on. If I knew what the “it’s time to fish or cut bait” statement of definitiveness meant, I would tentatively hazard a speculation that if you held a gun to my head I might guess that a no-show would be a major blow to the campaign. What ever people think of Obamaian wisdom and judgement, you must know (or can learn here), the dude has a crack team of advisers that any campaign would love to claim and they are all over this. They are working around the clock so that whatever eventuality happens they will have the best possible response. “There is no advantage too small to take” and certainly that is true in this universe altering game of the White House race. But you knew that.
Click on Sue Bru’s column on the right (of this page) for a catch-up course on what’s taking place till now.

Supposedly, 100 million people will watch the debate. That is the number of voters in the country. Picture an up-market bar in Manhattan, DC, SF, or St. Looey say, with all eyes turned to the tube to see if McCain shows. Rehearsal dinners from sea to shining sea will halt in the middle of toasts to watch the white haired wrinkly dude greet the nation with that insane rictus. Voter age college kids will cancel their frat party to pay sober attention to this terribly important first debate that will pretty much control the polls on Saturday morning. If I had a tivo, I’d watch Larry King and Jamie Lynn Spears with pictures of her first breast feeding.

In Webster World there was only one big development. While she refuses to make eye contact, I can tell that she knows I know something or know somebody who does know, who in this case will remain OTR. A second secondary (or even flimsier) rumor has popped up and has confirmed (for me) that Margie may be looking at charges. This would make my heart soar like an eagle (thank you John Ashcroft) because I am a petty and vindictive little shit who will have revenge no matter the cost.

They don’t really know, do they?

2008-09-23T08:07:00.004-04:00

Where are the wanker wonks of economic policy on this crisis? We haven’t really heard from BarackO on this and he has Paul Volcker, Bob Rubin and Larry Summers on his team. He even has William Donaldson and Paul O’Neil, two republicans working with him. We’ve heard quite enough from that genius Phil Gramm, McCain’s guru who told us to “quit whining” because it was a “mental recession.” Gramm’s wife helped the Enron people figure out their mess. That’s just what we need. Actually, it looks like what we’re going to get.

Hank Paulson, who is said to be a very smart guy and respected on all sides, has asked us for $700 billion of our tax dollars to buy up the devalued mortgage bundles now risibly called “securities,” a misnomer if ever there was one. The idea being that eventually, when the next real estate boom gets rolling, they will be worth more than they are now and can be sold in an up market that will pay back the money into the treasury.

But they are not telling the public the whole truth. Just like AIG went from needing $40 B to $75 B and then got $85 B, all in the space of three days, we are now looking at the 700 number with no explanation how it got to be that high. Part of it, I read this morning, is that other bad debts, like credit cards and car loans, will also get paid off. But they will likely be written off. We really don’t think the government is going to buy those bundles and then a few years from now try to collect on them, do we? Hell no. The money will go to the schmucks who made the bad deals. This is supposed to shore up our economy and the people with bad credit will only have to wait a few years before their mail box is stuffed with card company offers of 0%.

Paulson sounds almost believable but what is he saying? We cannot trust just one guy to be making these decisions, but wait TSJ reader! Since the likely scenario will be that this Secretary of the Treasury and the next will in fact be making these decisions with the concurrence of their boss, you now gotta ask yourself, who you really want to be the one person who will say yea or nay to the next Treas. Sec.

McSame has been anything but lately. He says the economy is “fundamentally sound” one day but something else the next. He’s now conveniently for regulation, and suggests that maybe a commission can straighten this whole thing. Let’s wait till the next administration to get to work on that, is his thinking. His pandering is just more playing to us dopes who, he thinks, don’t know noffink. He wants to believe that should he possibly get into the WH, others will do his thinking for him, sort of like the guy who is in there now.

This is an argument that needs to take place because I believe that people who are undecided, if asked, will pick the Harvard hotshot over the bottom feeding legacy guy who barely made it through the Naval Academy. He may be a great pilot, but…never mind. I believe that the Obama skeptics (and you know who you are, you blue collar catlicks clinging to your guns) are going to have to take a very close look at the quality of leadership that is required for this situation because only the President will be able to say “no” to the Treas. Sec. Nobody really knows what’s going to happen. It could get very ugly. Does anyone think that a guy who admits to being out of touch with how the national economy is run would be the best one making decisions on recommendations from just one man? If Phil Gramm is that man, the mackerel snappers amongst us can kiss it all off. He will invariably do what’s best…for the richest five % of the country. It would be like letting Paul Wolfowitz into the DoD with no rules.

Bush is now asking Congress to rush the $700 B through. So you know it MUST be wrong. Xiao Bushie, whose only true business experience is trading on his family name, and I must say he has done this brilliantly, is the last guy we want trying to figure out a fiasco of this proportion. This hurry up mode suggests to some skeptics that there can only be something in it for him down the line. “Congress wants strict oversight with an equity stake. The administration wants flexibility.” If I want to borrow a bunch of money from you but I insist on “flexibility” on how it will be repaid or what it will be spent on, you are more than likely going to say no. What does Bush want with this money? What has he not already bought that this now gives him the means?

I like what Senator Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, the senior Republican on the banking committee, said. “It would be foolish to waste massive sums of taxpayer funds testing an idea that has been hastily crafted.” O yes it would. This morning Paulson and Bernanke go in front of the banking committee to make their case. It should be veddy interesting. As Incurious George says, “The whole world is watching.”

And here it is, your moment of Zen. At the end of a longish article in today’s NYT, that never mentioned specific downsides to the bailout, came this: “Officials said that the administration was also prepared to adopt conflict-of-interest rules for any private firms that are hired to help the Treasury manage the bailout program. Some lawmakers were worried that such firms might also own assets that could grow in value depending on how the rescue plan was run.” The crooks will be in charge, gah fo’bid.

The gift that keeps on giving

2008-09-19T10:05:00.003-04:00

The feisty frequent traveler (picture a hungover Madeleine Albright on steroids) has told somebody that she is canceling her plans to move to Michigan where her “boyfriend” lives (she’s older than I am). What we think is happening based on the flimsiest of rumors and snarky speculation is that she got dumped. The wildest buzz, from the impeccably secure source of my dentist’s wife, is that she may have to stick around to answer some sticky questions about her performance when she was at the Tri County Cap, another government sinecure that she managed to snooker for twenty or so years.

We do know that she said she didn’t get fired from that place that her bullying helped to build, earning it the sobriquet “Marge Mahal,” but some higher authority (like there could be?) tried to split up her job and give her first choice, for less pay. But in the murk of the latest whisperings winding around the old court house in Ossipee, some of us are very curious to see if Marge is giving up on her Michigan beaux who she has been meeting, we suspect, at the semi-annual conferences. She has after all given up her cozy if contentious slot as a commissioner which pays about ten grand (?) a year for a once a week gig. Some cynics will wonder if she will give up going on these ridiculous conference trips all over the country if there is no boyfriend waiting at the other end of the flight. Maybe the commissioners should send him a bonus for saving the county money.

I know of at least one person who thinks that Margie will try for a job in some sort of supervisory capacity when the new nursing home is getting built. I would think that she should not benefit from such a position after lobbying so heavily for the new building. It would be such an obvious conflict of interest, not that I think that would stop her from trying. But I do know others who will try to stop her.

In other news: The re-count on the Carroll County sheriff’s race has concluded that there was a one vote discrepancy and that Frannie Lord lost by 17 votes instead of 18. I can’t help but wonder if that letter that Michael Callous wrote to the Daily talking about the potential sheriff “swaggering” along side his foxy blond wife in “six inch heals” (sic) was the death knell for Lord who most thought would win handily. Not trying to stir things up here, much. I’m just sayin’…

I have a question for Hank Paulson: Say a person sells their house because they are moving to a new job. Is it possible they won’t be able to buy a house where they are moving to because they didn’t get enough for the old house and the credit is now so tight because of all the loser loans that got us into this trillion dollar mess? Who bails their sorry ass out?

I forget how many years ago it was when ballsy Lee Iacocca went to congress to get a bail out for Chrysler. Bodacious audacity, it was thought at the time. 1.5 billion freakin’ dollars to help keep a company afloat that employed tens of thousands in the heartland, never mind all the derivative companies through out the land who depended on the vast car manufacturer. Well, they did it and got paid back. But even in today’s dollars, does 1.5 BILLION compute to 1.1 TRILLION? And aren’t we mostly bailing out egregiously greedy Wall Street hot shots who would sell anybody anything for an ounce of Colombian to do with their friends on their 60 foot Cape Hatteras in Long Island Sound? The old argument that Wall Street “doesn’t make anything” is a good one in this case.

And what is really bugging me is that over the last weekend AIG was looking for another 20 billion from a private source to make it 40 billion in order to survive. It didn’t happen. By Monday they were asking the government for a little help to the tune of 75 billion. Paulson and the CNBC barkers (not Erin Burnette though) were saying no way. The next day, the newspaper of record had headlines in rather large font saying the gummint (emphasis on the last four letters) will loan AIG 85 billion. Ten more than they were asking for. I just want to know if any lobbyist made money on that transaction and I bet one of our polymath commenters will tell me.
All in all it’s been a good week, for Wall Street. And me, for getting to pick on the Barge some more.

It's the stupid economy

2008-09-16T16:01:00.003-04:00

“The fundamentals of the economy are strong (my friends) because the American worker is strong,” said the economic numbnut who is running for the highest office in the world. McCain couldn’t find his economic fundament with both hands. His understanding of what’s happening on Wall Street is that there need be no panic because the Americans have strong backs; just not enough jobs. And of course if they do have a job and hurt their back, they probably don't have adequate healthcare.

What is fundamental to the downer that is our economy right now is the housing crisis which through “greed and stupidity” has allowed the subprime mortgage fiasco to fester into a world wide crisis because the holders of the loans and collateral have no way to collect what is owed to them and can’t figure out some way to keep the payments coming in. TSJ has said before that some of this problem could be resolved by not upping the rates on ARMs at the consumer level. Think: half a loaf is better than none. If the lender started out thinking they were going to make money when the initial low rate period expired, too bad. Now you have to eat it. Work with Mr. Risky. Why foreclose and then have to play realtor in one of the worst housing slumps in modern memory?

And who in the Senate Commerce committee allowed the sleaze bag mortgage companies like the one I worked for to give loans to the riskiest possible candidates? That doesn’t make sense to anyone. Only the mafia makes loans to risky borrowers, but then they have ways of convincing people to pay them back.

How is it that McCain can go on the morning shows and not have a more complete answer to the direct question of what to do? I think you have to identify the problem, analyze its provenance and then offer up ideas for resolution. Mc saying that the “alphabet soup of oversight agencies needs to be consolidated” is much like closing the barn door after the horse is already gone. Why, when he was a sitting Commerce Committee member and chair (I think) did he not see the potential for the greed-heads to bend the rules and the resulting long term effects?

On Bloomberg Television this weekend, House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank noted that, as a leader in the Senate Republican caucus, McCain did nothing for years to deliver reform in the face an impending credit crisis:
So here’s the record – 12 years of Republicans, including John McCain being a committee chairman for much of that period. Zero – zero enactment of any reform.

Well, nobody expects Barney to be singing McCain’s praises and it is most unlikely that McCain would put him on his bi-partisan admin but if Sen. Mc had done anything in the last twelve years, this morning would have been a good time to point it out instead of the clunky ingenuous sounding, “Look, the American people are the soundness of this economy.” More pandering to the dopes (he thinks) are going to vote for his ticket because they will believe any bullshit he tries to shove up their fundament.

And yet, I can understand why, even if he did know anything, he would be very unwilling to address the economic evils of the land. The US has an anual budget of almost ten trillion dollars. It has a debt of nearly ten trillion dollars. This administration took over with a budget surplus of $200B and now it’s in the red $400B. Who cuts taxes when you have war to run? And who offers to extend tax cuts when the economy sucks? You need to go to this page—www.federalbudget.com—to see how your taxes get spent. And remember a billion dollars may not seem like that much anymore but you can still buy 1,000 million dollar homes with a single billion dollar bill.

It is very interesting to look at this page to see the undulations of the fed def. Truman had a war going on while he was doubtlessly still paying for the one he helped to finish, so his was pretty high. Then it went down even under the tax and spend dems. In fact during Carter’s admin it was the lowest it’s been in the last sixty years. Reagan pushed it back up and the Slickster, with Bob Rubin’s help, brought it back down. W has added more than $400 billion to it after blowing the Clinton gain, and it’s climbing. He just offered Texas to pay 100 percent of the clean up down on the Gulf coast. The little dude can’t spend it fast enough.

If the economy is the main issue in this presidential race, I’m gonna go with the guy who has Bob Rubin on his team.

BTW/WTF W/ AIG? Here’s what they need to do before getting a taxpayer bailout: Go chapter 11, which is a “reorganization” with a judges permission and finite rules. Fix it, get better, pay people back. AIG isn’t just gonna collapse and go away. They are all over the world. Someone will pick up their slack if they fail. And just when did the thieving slime ball insurance companies of the world stop making money?

In what respect, Charlie?

2008-09-12T09:12:00.001-04:00

You gotta hand it to the Moose hunter in chief, she’s got pluck. With everybody but me watching her interview with Charlie Gibson, the little lady leaned on her chair arm, looked him straight in the eye and said (under her breath) “Bush has a doctrine? You gotta be shittin’ me?” Then, she said to the question: “In what respect Charlie?”

Pretty slick, but… It showed that she had the hubris that she told Charlie she had in order to be the next veep and if necessary (Gah fo’bid) the 45th POTUS. And yet who without hubris would even consider running for the lowliest office? Her no nonsense style is really nonsensical. She’s kinda like: "I’m just gonna stick to my guns and back down all these dubbers until I have proven the Peter principal beyond the shadow of a doubt that my highest level of expertise is to be governor of a state with less people than there are cows in Vermont. I’ll make them see that I am no more prepared for this position than Mike Huckabee. In fact I’ll take a page from his book, and separation of church and state be damned, I’ll ask for god’s help to do it."

I saw her ask, in front of a huge churchy audience, for god’s help to build a natural gas pipeline. That’s some whacky stuff. Combined with her dogmatic refusal to deal with abortion and birth control by just saying no leads me to think that her simplistic black and white approach to policy is a from-the-gut decision making process that anyone can make. She is ready to write a blank check to Israel which does not help with Middle East tensions, and which she did not address for reasons best left to the people who prepared her for the debate. But her answer already speaks for a possible McCain administration and that cannot be encouraging for the people in that very region we are trying to foster better relations with.

Clearly the same debate coaches had not read The Smoking Jacket on the question of who threw the first rock in Georgia. And even though it is now widely known that Saaskasvili tempted the fate he got, the Gov just spouted the McCain line showing what? Loyalty or ignorance. Likely both. I believe the average Joe or JoJo on the street, in this pastoral rurality in which I live, would be able to answer Charlie’s questions as well as she did without any coaching. I’m sure many of them also think that Iraq had something to do with 9/11. I have a hard time thinking she knows what the initials in NATO stand for never mind why we should tout the admission of two Russian antagonists by pushing for their acceptance in it.

Chuck Todd, who is seldom fallible in things political, sees her best quality as “being the campaigner in chief.” I don’t think you have to be Chuckie T to figure that out but what’s not being said by any of the Morning Joe carnival barkers (which is where I get most of my opinionatedness) is the feeling I have that she will stumble just at the right time and fa’ down; go boom. John Heileman summed up the essence of her ABC prime time debut (which I have only seen in clips) that she was “very unimpressive but said nothing disqualifying.” The best news is that newsies are still talking about her and they will continue to do so because, I think, it’s no longer just about two old boring white guys. And that’s a step up.

In local news: What is up over at Ossipee Lake Marina where they tried to secure a special permission to violate a standing ordinance to have access that they are not supposed to have? They wanted to know: If we can’t have the necessary permission, how much will the fine be?

These guys have been flouting the law over in Freedom for years. The first time I saw Kevin Price the owner, he was so obviously lying to the Ossipee Planning Board about cleaning up his off site boat storage on route 16 that I had to chuckle. They had given him five years to fix the place or shut down and back then they reminded him he only had one year left. Gee shock! Times up.

But a bigger question than why the special treatment for a guy from away is why the Selectmen (actually they are not all men, one is the wife of the marina’s manager) have, time and again, allowed the shenanigans. What’s in it for them? They have made arbitrary decisions that have cost the Freedom citizenry unnecessary legal funds climbing into the tens of thousands. It’s a boondoggle that appears to have to do with some personal animosity between the Town Fathers (and one Mother) and the Ossipee Lake Alliance who has fought the shifty daring-do Derry man from the first violation.

Sliming Sarah

2008-09-09T17:28:00.003-04:00

It is almost too much. The blogosphere is abuzz with the made up mystery of the true parentage of baby Trig. In a goofy spoof in Vanity Fair, after reviewing the putative “evidence,” 15,000 of their readers, or just random blog hounds, voted 70 percent that Trig is Bristol’s baby even though the time line shows that she would have had to have had the baby while already pregnant with the one she admits to.

People just want to believe what they already believe and no amount of evidence that Obama is not a Muslim will convince them other wise. I remember a friend’s grand father up in Maine who was asked, “Well grandpa, what do you think of them landing on the moon?” And he replied, “They say they did.”

People believe in creationism to the extent that they refuse to acknowledge that the world is older than 7,000 years. A hundred years ago, the President of South Africa refused to let it be said in his country that the world was anything but flat, even though he cheerfully entertained Joshua Slocum, the first man to sail around it by himself. Many bright people say they believe in Adam and Eve and are serving in the congress and courts making life and death decisions. Our president believes, he says, that every life is precious, but has signed the official death warrant of many of his fellow Texans when he was their governor. He also started a war that has killed over a million “precious” lives.

Many Catholics say they believe the Pope is infallible. He may have impeccable taste, because the first thing he did after getting sworn in was to design his own Pope hat and then order up a new Mercedes Pope mobile made to his demanding specs. Obviously John Paul II’s taste was not good enough for him, making the former Holy See seem just the teeniest bit fallible. Maybe they just mean living Popes.

The thing about conspiratheorists is that they really have no interest in being proven wrong. They want to think that Sarah Palin is an early grandmother for whatever odd ball reason. They care not what it does to the hapless Bristol who has quite enough shit to deal with that is actually true. We news-nerds want the worst to come out almost whether it’s true or not. But keeping an eye out the way I do, I am not finding the kind of wrongdoing here that has risen to the level of John Edwards’ new baby. Now there is a clear case, if a grainy photo, of someone who looked awfully like Pretty Boy, visiting the hotel that we are pretty sure Reille Hunter lives in, so it must be so.

I’m not terribly turned off by Sarah’s political politics. I would expect the Republican nominee to pick some one with solid conservative credentials. But her ethical politics give me an eye ache. If she has a hand in the next Supreme Court nominee, I am going to have one upset wife and I feel more than a little queasy my damn self thinking of that happening. With all the Bush backward steps of the past eight years, I think that any more blows to the more sane of personal beliefs would be the tipping point in how America is perceived in terms of its once flaunted fairness. We are walking such a thin line.

My oldest brother, who is almost pope-like in his perspicacity, opines that Sarah is a very popular governor. He’s been up there since Nixon was in office and was mayor of a small Alaskan town too. He believes that she did a creditable job in Wasilla. But what we read and hear is the niggling of the nabobs of negativity, nitpicking how big the population of her town is or even that of the State. In fact, she has unprecedented approval ratings of 80 percent and higher. As Mike says, whatever her faults she’s a lot better than her predecessor. I wonder if people thought that Batista made Castro look good?

In bloggo-land we like to try to get the jump on any story. Palin’s popularity right now will have to answer to the premise that what goes up must come down, and, my guess is, the Peter principle. This may be her best show. A consummate performer on the campaign trail. But what happens in the debates with Biden, and how well will she respond to red meat questions the press is salivating to throw at her. She looks tough but she’s in for a tough slog and the self description of a “pit-bull with lipstick” may just come around to bite her in the ass.

Two Joes?

2008-08-29T10:22:00.001-04:00

It’s nine o’clock on Friday morning and I think Joe Scarborough is about to confirm what the Smoking Jacket has pretended to know all along, Joe Liebermouse, or “Poor Loserman” as Joe likes to call him, will be McSame’s first choice for number two. And while I would like to have the luxury of waiting till eleven this morning to hear it from the candidate his own dang self before I start crowing in print, I can’t because we’ll be gone for ten days.

The Smoking Jacket is taking the show on the road. Maine for Joodster’s birthday bash, then down to Maryland for Hannah Medd’s fantasmagorical wedding and then heading up to Susannah Foo’s in Philly for some long sought after cuisine d’ Chinoise. Back via east Manhattan for the perfect bagle with Vic and Robin, before heading up to No Stamfo to scare the grandchildren.

Last night’s speech by that O’bama feller who thinks he would like to be the next commander in chief got glowing reviews from even Republican pundits like the estimable Mike Murphy. Peggy Noonan, who must write her own intros when she graces the news sets with her presence, thought it was flat and no one will remember anything but the pretentious set and that he didn’t soar. I have never liked this woman so I was thrilled when Andrea Mitchell, who was sitting next to Peggy, said in her demur way, that she disagreed thoroughly and thought it hit the mark. Egg on Peg’s puss is just as much fun for me as watching the guessing game galumph on toward eleven o’clock. This famous former speech writer for Reagan couldn’t even bring herself to pronounce “Barack” the way he does. She says BARE-uck, like the building soldiers sleep in. I wonder if she says CHEE-nee unlike the rest of the world, save the world class mispronouncer, Chris Mathews, and me.

New Prediction. The rascally Gustav is going to make it all the way to St. Paul next week where he will huff and puff and blow the stadium roof off the way Lieberman would have done with his own soaring rhetoric if they didn’t have to cancel.

Catch you on the flip side of Labor Day.

Hitch slap

2008-08-26T11:57:00.002-04:00

Never mind every thing else, over 1 million deaths have been attributed to the war in Iraq so far. And the best that can be said is that we got rid of an awful unlawful dictator. There is no argument to the contrary that anyone can make that would convince me that that as Americans we must also bear some of this shame.

Christopher Hitchens has written eloquently (and when does he not?) about the solid reasons for taking out the Butcher of Baghdad, the man famous for gassing his own people, conducting a losing eight year war with Iran, torturing, murdering and every other thing that he has been rightly accused of.

There are over a million reasons why we should not have invaded, unprovoked, a sovereign nation no matter the desire to right wrongs and vanquish evil. If we are to stick by America even when it makes bad decisions we have to be careful to not blithely dismiss the consequences with alternative logic that wipes out the rule of, in this case, international law.

And if you buy the argument that some good has come out of our nation building, can you agree to the price paid thus far, over 4,100 dead Americans? More than 16,000 severely wounded, including those who will never recover from traumatic brain injury or grow back missing limbs or see again. It would be unseemly to talk about the financial cost when we consider this tragedy but there is a sobering clock on www.zFacts.com.

There are no figures for the Iraqi wounded but one can extrapolate and wonder how many of them went into the dead column for lack of adequate hospitals, electricity, clean water or even ambulances to get them to an emergency facility.

Hitch is pleased with the success of the “surge” and how it has in part helped to reduce violence and make some neighborhoods somewhat safer. But it has taken seven years and the bloody toll above just to reach this fragile state. In his self serving sado-cynicism he does not write about the costs of war although he did write about one moving memory of going out to visit the family of some young lieutenant who was killed and had mentioned the author in emails to them.

We all agree that Sadam was insane psycopath but not all of us felt he had to go. After all it was none of our business unless it turned out that we had proof positive, before invading, that the foul son-of-a-bitch had WMD. But we were told by world experts who had been vetted and trusted before, that there was no evidence to conclude what the Cheney-Bush axis wanted so much to believe so that W could take revenge on “the guy who tried to kill my dad.”

Oh my dad! How in the name of all the Allahs everywhere could we have been led into this behemoth blunder by such an ignorant little shit? It was up to him. The president cannot be superseded when he says “no.” They could have come to the very brink with tanks and troops locked and loaded and at the very last minute he could have said “wait.”

Was it possible that he thought maybe only a couple hundred Americans would have to get killed so that he could show his dad how tough he is? Having never gotten too close to military combat he likely didn’t calculate the number of wounded and the devastation to all the families. Maybe he thought that paltry loss was absorbable. Maybe he just didn’t do all the thinking that needed to be done before he said, “getter done!”

It will stay with me all my days that this country elected a known bozo, unqualified to lead a brownie troop, because he seemed like “a guy you could have a beer with” (not withstanding that he is what is known in AA as a “dry drunk”). Soon he will scoot out the back door, leaving all his messes, and the only thing I can hope for is that he lives to a 113 with a viciously vivid memory that will remind him every day of the unhealable suffering he has caused to so many innocent people. Hitch can go on living as long as he wants. It’s still a thoughtful provocative read.

Midst the midden

2008-08-21T08:54:00.000-04:00

In the dung heap of choices for the vice presidency the most obvious choice is none of the above. I like Joe Biden’s chances and except for his mouth, he is eminently qualified. Forget about the fact that he has emphatically declared, “I’ve been on the Hill since I was 29 years old. I don’t think I want to start working for somebody else now.” His glib jib and prominently displayed hauteur often gets him in trouble but I like that especially as entertainment over the next eight years. His foreign relations chops are worthy and at 62 he still cleans up pretty good for funeral duty.

Evan Bayh is too wimpy. Tim Kaine is better for the party where he is and too white bread to get people excited. Richardson would be excellent but I think the clingers to religion and guns, you know, the “hard working, blue collar Catholics” who love Hillary, will be slightly to moderately uneasy with two “persons of color” at the top of the ticket. Never mind that they both have white American born mothers, “I know what I see with mah own damn eyes.”

Which brings us to Hillary who we love to pillory. Too bad, she would ordinarily be the best choice but for all the baggage she brings. Most notably, the Slickster, who couldn’t keep his bulbous proboscis in line with the best interest of her campaign. That race was so close that you could say that this or that tilted to the big O, but what really stands out as I look back to almost a year ago, was the eponymously named Willy jumping in where he was not needed thinking that people didn’t remember him for his lack of a strong connection to the truth. In my view, she seals the deal for the Obambians but when you include the whole family package (whaddup with Chelsea introducing her mom and WJC getting a speaking spot too?) then, it will just be too much for people. They probably would win but a lot of people at the top of the campaign would have every right to be pissed after all they have put into the effort. It’s a tough call but I think I’d take her, with some very strict rules for her laddie, up front and in writing.

Liebermouse for Vice President, again? There’s a reason that Joe has been seen in so many scenes with McCain. It’s a kind of subtle polling to see how people react to them. There doesn’t seem to be any republican outcry and it wouldn’t surprise me to see him get picked. The idea, of course, is to reach across partisanship and bring in somebody who jumped from his own party because he lost his primary battle in his home state for the Senate. He was too pro war and held other conservative views so they voted the bum out. Bolting Joe knows better and not taking no for an answer he became an “independent” who has voted reliably with the other side since getting reelected.

Charlie Christ should be right up there in McCain’s choices. Hell, the guy got married to improve his chances and maybe to squash rumors that he was too much of a man’s man. Tim Pawlenty is said to be very “attractive” as a possible but if you’re not sure who he is, than you are with the majority of voters. It doesn’t make any difference who he is or how good he might be, ya gotta have more name recognition than this guy has. Tom Ridge might get past the pro abortion/anti life tag but how many of us know him as the first and fleetest head of the failed home land security tax soaker upper. He might bring Pennsylvania but he might bring a shit storm of criticism for yet another gargantuan failure of the Bush administration. He jumped ship on that, so they wanted to bring in Bernard Kerick. Oy vey!

The thing I don’t quite get is why Lindsay Graham is not at the top of the short list. There’s a soldier with like mindedness of the candidate who is willing to say whatever the day’s talking points are and with a straight face. A frequent guest on the Sunday morning shows, he can come across as thoughtful and believable. As a Light Col. in the air force he is said to be a good call for the national security issue. But that is Mc’s strength, so maybe he get’s sacrificed for someone who can bring a needed state, or a youthful look, or economic strength, even though he might be the best guy to serve with die alte.
I’m going with Liebermouse.

Pong Yang ping pongers

2008-08-20T08:11:00.002-04:00

The South Korean Ryu Seung Min kicked the ass of Austria’s Chen Weixing in a brutal(ly) boring battle for king of pong. I’m trying to decide if this is more entertaining that watching a 20 year old Belarusian put 444 pounds above his head without, literally, busting a gut. Yee hah! SK just won, bronze. This is so not the table tennis that we used to while away many teenage hours with. It looks like they serve with their cheek. The table is the size of a pop tart and now, unbelievably, they are playing doubles.

The whole Olympics hype has pretty much ruined the spectacle for me. It’s become too political and the gamesmanship is more about cheating that being the fastest. Not that many have been kicked out but one of them who did was someone who shoots at targets. Why does he need to get cranked up on steroids? Well, of course, he doesn’t. He needs to crank down so he takes something for that but he won’t be taking home the medal he won.

And whaddup with the Chinese sending in kindergarteners and pretending they are sixteen but there doesn’t seem to be a big whup about it because the hosts are a little huffy over any hint of impropriety on their watch? Though I haven’t watched that much besides really cool stuff like sailing and Siamese beach volley ball, I have caught a lot of highlights on the news and so I actually know who Michael Phelps is and the other swimmer, Lezak (sp?) who saved Phelps from only a tie with Mark Spitz.

With the medal count 79 for the US and 77 for China you would think that would spell second place but the Chinoise have more gold, 18 more. What is not known in this equation is how to weight the value of the individual sport. Surely, tiddly winks does not have the heft of putting a record smashing 569 pounds over your own head. And Shawn Johnson’s gold can’t compare to ladies archery or dancing in a swimming pool. So if the Sino set says “but we have more points because our golds are worth more than your collective silvers and bronzes,” we can counter by pulling our troops out of Iraq and lining them up on the Siberian border. Let the games end!

One creepy crap shoot

2008-08-13T09:27:00.002-04:00

What the hell was President Saakakashvili thinking to go poking the Bear with such a sharp stick? Strong leadership is important and the ideal of democracy is a good thing but why push it when you are pretty sure that the consequences will be tragic.

Russians are notorious for their bullying and land grabbing. Think of the wholly unsuccessful attempt to protect the commie population in Afghanistan against the mujahedeen. Hard to pick a favorite in that one but I think most of us wanted to see the 3CP get the short end. War-crossed Chechnya is a federal subject of Russia that has been fighting them since the USSR broke up in 1991. This murderous and wasteful conflict actually goes back 80 plus years. They’re still fighting.

Those of us of a certain age remember the early TV footage of war when Khrushchev sent tanks into Hungary to put down that revolution. The tanks reappeared in 1968 when Alexander Dubcek had to get slapped around by the Kremlin for trying a similar stunt in what is now the Czech Republic. The heinous aftermath of these “conflicts” has resulted in tens of thousands of deaths, even more wounded, orphans and homelessness. It’s insane.

It boggles to think that Saakashvili thought he could pull this off and it makes it a little unbelievable that he would think that the west and particularly the US would come to his aid. It would be a bad idea even if we weren’t stretched so thin militarily. We shouldn’t go to war just because we can. There are strategic interests but that is true else where and many of us think that phrase is just code for “blood for oil.” When I read in the Times that neo-cons think that “promoting democracy is the paramount goal” I think of how hideously wrong they were on invading Iraq. In the same article I read McCain saying good things about his “friends” the Georgians (he nominated President Saakashvili for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2005 – good call) even though it seems that they have pushed Putin to what most observers would conclude was an obvious and avoidable outcome. And I do mean Putin. Nobody thinks Medvedev thinks for the country.

It isn’t clear who fired the first shot when “fighting broke out in South Ossetia” but Tom Ordeman Jr. of Spero News has this analysis:

“Fighting broke out earlier this week between the Georgian military and South Ossetia's rebel forces. Despite an initial ceasefire agreement, fighting flared back up, eventually resulting in Georgian forces shooting down two Russian aircraft. (Guardian, Times). The Russian military responded by sending tanks into South Ossetia and bombing Georgian air bases. The Russian incursion has allegedly escalated to air attacks on Russian cities outside South Ossetia. How this incident will end, and what its impact will be, is anyone's guess.”

But by the time the Migs got shot down, they had already taken out an Israeli made (un-manned) drone belonging to the peace loving Georgians.

I guess, since no one got killed, I wouldn’t have shot down the Russian Migs even for that. On the other hand, nice shooting! You’d think the Russkies would have planes that a little country like Georgia couldn’t blow out of the sky. O well, more boys being boys with big toys. What fun is it to have all this cool stuff to shoot if you don’t get to squeeze the trigger?

Now they have called a truce after Russia has decimated the Georgians' military, killed a couple of thousand citizens and soldiers, and ruined ancient architecture and modern infrastructure. BarackO said yesterday, “there is no possible justification for these attacks.” He’s wrong. The justification is to send a clear message from Moscow not to mess with us. It does remind one of the adage, “If he takes a knife to a fight, you take a gun.”

The Russians are not going to take any guff from US or our allies and they feel provoked by the Bush policy of cozying up to one of its neighbors, who just happen to have a lot of oil being pumped across its borders. McCain’s bluster about kicking the Rooshians out of the G8 makes about as much sense as a “gas holiday.” I wish he would take a holiday from gassing on about how he “knows” that every American is a Georgian. That’s more than a little over the top. It has a Howard Dean in Iowa eeriness to it.

This thing will blow over because it’s stupid and we need Russian oil and, thankfully, civilians don’t give two shits about all this macho posturing. But look at the mess that is left behind. Two thousand dead “bred of an airy word … A plague a’ both your houses.”

Ken Doll gets screwed by Lisa Druck, returning the favor

2008-08-12T08:49:00.002-04:00

Ya gotta love MoDo. In her Sunday column she eviscerates the one term senator, no term vice president, and no term president with the same kind of fervor she used to favor Bubba with. I believe this story has legs. Bony, hairy ones with scabs on the knees. I just caught part of Edwards' interview with Bob Woodruff that was at the end of a news clip with him saying something along the lines of, “…you can be 99% good but it’s that other part that will get you.”

Was part of the 99% where he was so sold on himself that he had to put his family through the cruel strains of a national campaign—again—because he really had more to offer than some of the more serious and tested candidates? Riding a bus through Iowa and New Hampshire in the winter, three towns in a day, and then jumping on a plane to get to the next venue is the kind of torture that these guys (and one gal) put themselves and their “loved ones” through on purpose and I got to say, it doesn’t seem like a good thing to do.

The truth for me is that I never liked him, even before I knew that he paid $400 for a hair cut and you gotta see this to understand why.

When he admits that he was/is full of himself you know that he’s telling the truth for a change. All that stuff about how he was going to eradicate poverty starting “right now,” as he stated in some snake water neighborhood in New Orleans with a bunch of bought-off kids for props behind him. They probably would have demanded more if they knew how long it would take him to pimp his ‘do’ before the video began to roll.

I remember covering him last fall in Conway when he suddenly changed the meeting place to the Salyards building which only held 200 because that kind of a piddly crowd would make him look like the loser that he is if they carried on with plans to use the cavernous new High School gym. They hadn’t got the fire department permits they needed and didn’t make the necessary accommodations for possible emergency evacuation and so when I left, as soon as I could, there were about fifty people standing outside in the rain waiting for others to leave so they could get in. For what?

I wonder if the water these ego maniacs drink is also laced with Viagra. Probably only Mike Gravel has no sexual scandal attached to him in this last go around. Even the diminutive alien look a like Kucinich is on his third wife (not that there’s anything wrong with that). Perhaps the whole business of running is just a ploy for getting laid. We used to have a NH congressman who was telling my buddy Jim that he had to go up to tiny little Orford that night to give a speech. “Hard to get laid up in Orford, Jimbo,” says he with a wink, “but not impossible.” Chuckle chuckle.

The lure of the opposite sex is fun. It’s what keeps the human race going and some people are not blessed with the kind of self-discipline that would be helpful when temptation knocks. But this guy was running for POTUS for the love of jaypers. Did he think no one would find out? Had he never heard about FDR and Lucy, Ike and Kay, Jack and his whole pack, the Trickster and Checkers and of course the audacious one from Hope who liked to talk to his friends on the phone in the oval office while not having sexual relations with that 21 year old in the blue dress.

The bigger part of the story is the lying. Not to reporters and us but to his family. Why does he have to go on TV to drag the ugliness right up to their noses? He told them already what happened and had it out of the way, so we are led to believe, he was thinking of them? It is not remotely possible that Edwards went out to LA just a month ago to straighten out some details of an understanding that he had with Druck/Hunter.

And who believes that Andrew Young guy, who supposedly says he is the father, is at all reliable when he takes money that we are asked to believe comes from a private donor to resettle, just like Lisa/Reille did. Young too has a wife and kids. I bet the money is somehow being funneled from campaign treasury funds which could lead to criminal charges. Keep it up, boys.

Why should we care? We don’t. It’s just fun.

Busting Cokie's chops

2008-08-11T08:19:00.003-04:00

BarackO, the skinny guy, a lightweight? McWrinkly Guy wants to have his own wife enter a topless beauty pageant in front of 50 thousand bikers because she was such a successful cheer leader in high school. But BHO supposedly lacks substance or gravitas of the political kind even though he definitively beat the crack Clinton machine in the primary. Does this feat not demonstrate good organizational skills, discipline, a solid business plan, tenacity and chutzpah? Did anyone put money, back then, on the unknown black guy with the funny name and a grandmother living in Kenya to beat Bubba’s wife, the former two term first lady and 2nd term Senator from New York with a formidable fund raising machine and a world wide face? I think not.

What, anygate, was Barack thinking back then? Maybe to get on the ticket if he finished well enough ahead of Kucinich and Mike Gravel. It’s hard to think now who might have really had a chance in that whole field and yet some in that field are being considered for the skinny guy’s veep. After Iowa, none of the other boys in the race could touch the lad.

So where do the punditocracy get off saying he doesn’t have what it takes and not enough heft. PJ Buchannan keeps saying “he can’t close the deal,” but he broke a bunch of barriers like not giving out “walking around money” in Philly and still winning despite Boo Cannon saying that the young man has a lot to learn if he thinks he’s going up against the old school pols. BarackO has also kept the campaign pretty clean by not initiating negative attack ads but, rather cleverly parrying the funny, if fatuous, kind of ads that Steve “the Bullet” Schmidt keeps lobbing into the cable news types so they won’t have to talk about the economy. And BTW, who you callin’ “stupid”?

The malarkey spewed by both sides that these ads keep the candidate from talking about “the issues” is exactly what they want. The minute either one opens their mouth on any serious subject the other side is researching everything they have said, or anyone else has said, and new ads come out about “flip-flopping,” although that shop worn phrase seems to have lost some of its zing of late.

I can’t help thinking that the “white haired dude” is going to be thinking fondly of his former interrogators as he approaches the first debate. And BHO is probably spending his matutinal hour and a half in the gym sharpening his foot work and pounding the light and heavy bags instead of “dunking three shotters,” as the otherwise capable Jonathan Capeheart of the Post would have it. (Even spell-check just asked: how black is Capeheart that he doesn’t know common basket ball terms?)

And now the big O has the audacity to hope he can get away with going to visit his grandmother in Hawaii which he will combine with a family vacay. Cokie Roberts said yesterday, “I know it’s a state and not some exotic foreign place, but…” But what? She thinks he should probably have gone to a more quotidian shore, like “Myrtle Beach in NC.” Cokie, usually pretty astute and thoughtful, wants our boy to try to pull the wool over his future voters eyes by staying in a motel a couple of blocks from the beach (lotta presuming here) and sending out to Dominoes in order to parry the opinion that he is elitist. I say, go back and see some of your old school mates and the grandmother who has to be pretty danged old since he’s 47. It could be the last time.

“See you in Denver, Bitches”

2008-08-07T09:32:00.003-04:00

Bill Clinton can’t bring himself to give a one word answer that would effectively give his support to BarackO as the candidate because he incapable of the short retort or he can’t miss the opportunity to lecture or he wants to keep Kate Snow around long enough to tell her how much he admires her hair.

The smartest man in politics (during his presidency) will always be the guy, for me, who wagged his finger in my face and said, “I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky.” I always wondered how many times he rehearsed that line before going on TV. How big was the focus group that he tried out the many versions till he got it just wrong.

Bubba the dubba for ever after and now he has proved himself to be just that through his shabby performance in Peoria when he was supposedly stumping for his wife but really just trying to find out how many different American towns he could get laid in, in a row.

What ever the Slickster is up to this time doesn’t really matter. The Clintons will do their thing at the Denver debacle for the putative purpose of advancing the Mrs. to her next step in the great power grab. Many of us old cynics think that she could even be hoping for a BarackO loss so that she will only be 64 when the next presidential bid comes her way.

Could that be why Bill had to defer to the letter of the Constitution to define who is qualified to be president of these United States? Some pundit reminded him that the Constitution is very clear about those qualifications, which are: you need to be at least 35 years of age and born in the US. And even that last can be tricky as we know that Admiral McCain’s son, Johnny, was born in Panama which we don’t even have a lease on any more.

More on the non-buy ad wars—Paris’s ad attacking McCain was pretty cute, “I’ll see you in Denver, Bitches.” But the real good that came out of it was her mentioning Rihanna for her possible veep choice which sent me to YouTube and I wouldn’t blame anyone for doing the same.

Alas, the Olympics are here and my Morning Joe won’t be the same although this morning I did get to see the US defeat the Japanese yet again, with a one-nil victory in soccer.

It's an ad ad world

2008-08-05T10:37:00.002-04:00

All week long the blatherers, who I spend many happy hours with each day, have examined with their proctoscopes the television ads mostly of the McCain stripe. Only one of them pointed out that no money is being spent on airing these ads. There is no need when the carnival barkers are doing all that can be done to keep this the story. They are even asking each other: What does BarackO have to do to get the conversation back to the issues? They can’t. BHO gave a speech in Lansing that I saw some of and the crowd seemed to love. Only one person this morning referred to it but he too said it was very good. The Today show had not a peep, presumably because they spent so much time covering the heavy rains in Texas that might happen later on today.

Harold Ford Jr. doesn’t think that the McCain ads rise to the level of the smut leveled at him. But I think that anyone familiar with both ads will gratuitously make the connection back to the very successful “Harold, call me” ads because of a black candidate and white chicks. The ad itself doesn’t suggest sexual tension unless you’re Bob Herbert at the Times who saw phallic symbols in the form of the Washington monument and Berlin’s Victory tower which he misidentified as the tower of Pisa even though it was not leaning.

When you realize that no space is wasted on these very expensive productions you would have to be pretty naïve to think that the window pane/white cross behind almost President Huckabee last C’mas wasn’t intentional.

Ford, a popular Congressman even as his father had been, was ahead in his Senatorial bid when the ad struck and made national attention because it was playing on the fears of black men and white women cavorting. He lost. The effect of the ad is unquantifiable but the sniggering class all believe that it was dirty pool and that it speaks to a belief in the lowness of the common voter by the McCain camp. It also speaks to the fact that they know they’ve got nothin’ and this is the only way they have to make sure they don’t get stuck trying to defend their positions on “the issues.”

Harold Ford said he didn’t think these ads were as nasty as they could be and he thinks that’s because McCain himself (not the guy who says “I approve this ad”) really would rather they not have to go there. They all know it betrays a meanness and lack of a higher purpose, but they all know it works.

I agree with Ford that all this will be water over the dam when we witness the first debate. It is worth remembering that Reagan was behind till the first debate and then never looked back.

Margie and the new toilet

2008-08-04T11:15:00.001-04:00

County Commissioners met without Marge Webster who was absent due to an eye ache which is exactly what she gives me. This spurious biz of her taking every available trip to any conference that she remotely qualifies for is no closer to being resolved than it was when it first came up almost a year ago.

Here’s what she has in common with the new $2,500 stainless steel toilet that has to be replaced in the County lock-up. They both have cheaper alternatives. The shiny toilets are of a one piece welded design that come in (and I shit you not) lefty or righty models. Please allow 8 – 12 weeks for delivery. Marge, who is more likely to spew crap than flush it, is also too damned expensive.

On her most recent trip she is reported to have received a “prestigious award.” For what, no one seems to know. My guess is that she was so honored because she managed to bilk this cash-strapped County for every nickel she could scrounge from it. She once snapped at me during the time we were all ranking on the Sheriff for spending $2,300 of the tax payer’s money on civilian suits and ties, “It’s his money. He can do what he wants with it.” I reported that and referred to her as a “barmy budgeteeer” who felt the taxes that you pay becomes her personal travel fund. A few more unkind cuts and she got to my boss who told me to back off and when I didn’t I got canned. So yeah, the sight of her makes me pretend to barf but the real reason that we all need to stay on this subject is because she will continue to spend like the proverbial drunken sailor on leave.

The Daily reported her saying “On the next trip I will leave the county credit card at home.” THE NEXT TRIP? She only has four more months in office. What the darn heck could she possibly learn on yet another one of these ginned up junkets? I read in the Independent – Marge had sent in a press release – that the award she got was for “excellence.” Dudn’t get any simpler than that.

Marge is a bully and appears to be no more competent than the other two but just smart enough and with enough brass to make them knuckle under and even lie to the public about what actually goes on. She’s got the Chairman “approving” her trip after she came back and since Olkkola voted against, it was only Marge’s approving her own trip that made it pass. Sorenson keeps saying he doesn’t know how all this works and it's confusing which is malarkey. There was a rule. She broke it. The other two did nothing. It’s that simple. What is to stop her from doing it again?

The Daily reported that the weekly meeting after she got back was a brouhaha and all the attendees I talked to agreed. Nate was able to get a couple of stories about it but the Independent stuffed Ashely’s well-told retelling of the event on page 11. Having seen a colleague get the axe for failing to defer to Margie, it was probably the safe place for it. The publisher of that paper has shown his willingness to do Marge’s bidding before; why take a chance?

And the blundering nincompoopery never fails to be the central theme of these meetings where nothing seems to get resolved. Yet they are always using the pretext of trying to save the county money by squabbling over the cost of toilets or the price to charge for hay bales. They seem not to have any sort of long range plan. Each Wednesday, after the 15 minute public session, they come in and interview department heads, ask a few questions to imitate paying attention and then move on.

Lately there have been more people showing up to these meetings because some of them are running for the two available commissioners spots. We will surely be rid of the Barge come ’09 and I hope the thoughtful and diligent Henry Spencer will get to take her place, but the other two running would be little improvement on what we have now.

It is worth mentioning that having covered for years these kinds of meetings it is a wonder that anyone volunteers for the position. And yet people pay out of their pocket to get elected and when they do, they find it is difficult to form a consensus with people until you have worked with them for a while and by that time there is rampant cronyism, back room bargaining, unethical behavior, manipulation of the rules, temper tantrums and the usual kind of behavior that one can expect from pubescent sixth graders. Olkkie, last week, yelled at one of the regulars, “Don’t squint at me.” Jesus H. Christ! Even if you are genuinely upset, is it too much to ask to remember that you are an elected official at a public meeting and there are reporters in the room? And so it goes, as Kurt Vonnegut used to say.

The blankety blank traffic

2008-07-29T05:55:00.001-04:00

The Valley got a little meaner this week when the local daily decided to take a swipe at Selectmen (and former State Senator, School Board member and now coach) Mark Hounsell on the by-pass issue. Hounsell took the bait and responded with a clever rhyme (people said) in which he obliquely accused the paper of not caring about Berlin and Gorham, oddly enough. Who does care about Berlin and Gorham? Nobody, clearly, but that is a topic for another day.

I think the Daily has it right. $60 million is enough to buy half the homes on Conway Lake (the west side anygate) but it doesn’t buy a whole lot of highway. Last summer I timed the crawling pace from Beep Beep Deli to the Conway light and it was ten minutes every time even when we had to wait for the Seybold Express to blow through. That doesn’t seem awfully long. Not like trying to get into town/North Conway on a rainy summer night. I’ve seen traffic backed up to the Albany church. But that’s only once in a while and if you’ve been up here long enough, you know how to get around if you’re not smart enough to stay away or arrange your schedule so you don’t end up in that snarl.

Come to think of it, I do feel badly for the poor guys in trucks and busses that come down from the Grand bois du Nord. But is that worth the money? When they get to their teeming destination they have to put up with the same thing.

The “study” that has been going on for more than three decades is a farce. They have been talking about it, and having meetings up the ying yang and have even bought up land for it and now it isn’t going to happen. Why isn’t it going to happen? Because it’s not worth it. Then what the Sam Hill was the “study” for? It certainly wasn’t free. Are their reports to be had by the public that can tell us why they made all those people move out of their houses when they didn’t really have to? Some of them were in there for generations. I know they spent tens of millions on the “study”. Who is responsible for this “study” to no where? The whole bloody thing gives me an eyeache.

Some of us feel strongly that the reason everything is so crowded up here and tarted up like route 1 in Saugus is because we keep widening the roads so more people can come faster and then have to wait in line when they get here. I suppose that makes sense to people other than Billy Marvel and me, but its foolishness. The views to the mountains are scarred with McMansions and condos. The strip looks likes one outside of Cleveland or Phoenix and even the Catholic cemetery has lost the hedge between the stream of cars and those trying to rest in peace. My peeps are in that place and it fairly pisses me off.

Then I remember: Carroll Reed built an empire from a little ski shop in Jackson and sold out to a huge conglomerate. He set the tone in North Conway Village and it’s still pretty good. He also set the pace for making it big off the tourists. There’s nothing we can do to stop all these people coming up, I suppose. But do we have to make it easier?

Notes on a blog

2008-07-28T15:52:00.002-04:00

I am beginning to catch on how to blog (that nouveau verb that I thought I detested till I started doing it) even as the SJ is beginning to catch on. Recently we added a RSS feed which is at the bottom of the very first post (as in: Ctrl end) and there you can follow the easiest possible instructions on how to have the SJ come onto your screen with the least amount of effort on your part if you know what you’re doing. All suggestions for improvements are and will be appreciated. Thanks AJ, Master Cylinder and Victoid. Your service and devotedness to this weensy slice of the sphere is … bewildering.

Also, I’ve had some comments about the email that I send every time I post a new blog. Over a hundred of them go out Bcc. If you think that I just send one to you, well that’s alright too. Thank you, Margo; may you always have fair winds on your luxurious yacht, or I guess, uxorious yacht when you are ala barre.

And to all who knew me when I was penning my pompous prose for papers that paid: Thank you for reading and voting and mostly for commenting. To my advertisers: Pay up!

A word about the purpose of the blog, which is: To report on the Mount Washington Valley goings on and the media that covers it as well as weigh in on the world wide news randomly.

Frannie and Freddie, just two crazy kids

2008-07-23T09:56:00.001-04:00

Just before the housing collapse I started selling mortgages. The prime was around four and if you had “excellent” credit and a job you could get the best rate. The office was like a setting in a John Steinbeck story. It was seedy in that it was so undernourished. The only computer was on the “boss’” desk which when he finally strolled in, mid-morning, he would spend rest of the time till lunch greedily gawking porn sites. If we wanted to check someone’s credit rating, we waited till he was off. I’m pretty sure he was in the witness protection program because he did very little in the way of sales and his piece of what we did would barely keep his Harley in gas.

I was encouraged to bring in whatever business was out there and when ever I did latch on to something I was told “we don’t do that, yet.” One of them was a reverse mortgage for a friend of mine which even though it finally went through, the jagoff company never paid me for it. Then I went to work for the subsidiary of IndyMac that was pushing these things. IndyMac, 10th largest bank in CA, just shut their doors.

The concept is basic biz: if you can afford it you can have it. But as Jon Stewart said last night to some twit who had written a book about it, “So if I can’t afford it, you’ll still give it to me but just charge me more.” Laughs from the audience, a look of bewilderment from the expert.

What is unclear to me is why the mortgage bankers would loan money to losers. Not just the guy who wants to put a trailer he has been given on wetlands that his father-in-law sold him for $25K, but our little company in general. I remember Billy who had been in car sales talking on the phone to customer while emitting an occasional glorp of goo from his mouth into a coffee cup. Paul wanted me to help him sell modular homes but the only mortgage he sold while I was there was to his father. John had the most sales because he had seniority and would cherry pick the lists to cold call so that the rest of us would be calling people who had just refinanced, sometimes not even six months before.

If this company could get qualified to sell mortgages, it is absolutely no wonder that the system was and is chock a block with avaricious arseholes who’d figured a way to scam whoever came along. And then the guys just above us were in it so that they could bundle these sales and pass them on until Japan ends up with them.

So what happens when Schmucko goes away to the county lock up for a few months leaving his pregnant bride with the kids, and no car to get to a job? He defaults. Now my old company does not say “Schmuckey, we might have over extended you a tad and rates are still low, how about you give us a little less for the next few years till this thing blows over.” They don’t say that because they can’t. They’re not holding. And who is holding is who gets stuck when the payments stop coming in. Screw them. But apparently not. The government finds some way to help out the big shots at Fannie and Freddie, but the Schmuckster loses his house and any credit he might have had. Why not have the bailout for the little guy who can then keep making his payments and the money continues to go up the food chain? I’m just sayin’.

It’s about Iraq, Jack

2008-07-17T08:19:00.001-04:00

Annoying twit, that Nouri al Maliki. We create a safe haven for his like and then he bites us in the ass by asking us to leave. Leave? I don’t think so. We didn’t go into this thing for any other reason than to establish a beach head on the Tigris so we would own policy and process in the Centcom/Arab states into the next millennium and beyond. We aren’t building the billion dollar Baghdad bomb shelter/embassy because we can’t figure out other ways to waste money we don’t have. Oh nooooo. The cost of this 21 building, 104 acre behemoth is more than the GNP of half of the African countries. When McCain says he doesn’t care if we’re there for a hundred years, he knows of what he speaks. The Iraqi government sold us/US the land in ’04. We own 104 acres of their country!

Now Maliki’s making noises, most probably for his homies, about achieving a viable, livable surge-induced calm that presages a path to what could pass as a normal life for what’s left of the population there. We and they claim that democracy of sorts was the goal and it has been met. So they no longer need us and it’s time for the troops to go home. But we all know that “Blood for oil” is not just some lame lefty slogan. Every action that the present administration takes toward the oil industry is only what you would expect from these greedy psychopaths.

Most disturbing right now is what might happen in Iran. If we don’t have the troops to finish up in Iraq and Afghanistan, how do we contemplate a confrontation with the 18th largest country in the world? They’ve got 70 million people and military might that Saddam Insane could only have dreamed of. There are ¾ of a million Iranians in uniform. One of the oldest and sophisticated civilizations, they have stuff that dates back to 4000 BC. These guys helped start the UN. In fact, the only two countries they don’t have relations with are Israel, because they don’t exist, and the US, because we’re friends with the country that doesn’t exist. And, O maybe a little left over bitterness from the time we wrecked their democracy and put in our own guy. He had quite a military too and he got whupped by mullahs with sticks and stones. I remember Henry Kissmyass had to sneak him into this country to get treatment for his terminal cancer. He terminated anyway.

So how do we fight these buggers? (The ‘why’ is because Cheney wants to). The only possible way given how stretched we are in that area, is by air. Bomb the snot out of ‘em. Wipe out civilians and ancient culture, make even more enemies and just watch what will happen in Iraq. There will be no reason for the Iranians not to come streaming across the borders for revenge and no one to stop them. What are we going to do, have another surge? How many of them do we have to kill from the air before the world cries out for the madness to cease?

Seymour Hirsch thinks there is going to be war and he certainly knows a lot about it. The next president won’t do it so it will have to be the Dubber and I don’t think the shameless cipher has it in him. If you look closely you can see him getting slightly cyanotic from holding his breath waiting for the nightmare of his presidency to be over.

A little housekeeping

2008-07-16T09:59:00.002-04:00

Fair and balanced

Too bad about Tony Snow. He seemed a genuine good guy who has done the press sec. job better than anyone in recent memory. And when you think about all the people in the present administration that would not be missed, the irony borders on the macabre.

A nice cuppa

To the lady who has made such a splash in the Sun trying to get a warning named after her son ala the “Amber Alert”, great job! You’ve given the letter writers new reason to live and the rest of us a good chuckle. Now it’s time to go to Mickey D’s drive-thru and get yourself a nice hot cup of “shut the fuck up”.

It’s grip time. Get one.

And to the other poor soul trying to get Donnie Grow elected to Sheriff of Ossipee, a couple of things: a) he didn’t sign up, and b) the Sheriff is in charge of all Carroll County which has 19 towns including Hale’s Golf Course. (Disclaimer: I have signed on to be the campaign manager for Tamworth C of P, Dan Poirier who is running for Sheriff for real as an independent and safery nose tackle. If Franny Lord wins the Republican Primary, we are going to clean his clock in the general and I certainly do not have the candidate’s permission to say so, so I may be gone by the fall anyway, sort of like Phil Gramm and Samantha Power.

NIMBY but, how about yours?

I am waiting to hear back from Senatorial candidate and six time Rep rep Dave Babson who is against the idea of having licensed methadone clinics in this state despite the growing use of drug addiction and what that entails for the community. I thought maybe he would be willing to give up some portion of his version of the King Ranch down in Ossipee so he could make a few bucks and Conway wouldn’t have to have the unsightly mess of smack freaks hanging around the town. Don Grow could run it when he doesn’t get elected to Sheriff.

Getting your Baracks off on the NYer

2008-07-15T11:02:00.000-04:00

I read and I watched the barkers trading opinions on whether the cover should have run and how it rated on the tasteless meter. It’s split. But when I see Carville defending it down the line to Bill Bennett who pretty much says what I did, I have to give pause. I remember that I chuckled verbatim in the way that Barry Blitt wanted me to when he cartooned a cover with Achmed Dannyjob sitting in the loo with his pants around his ankles and tapping some (likely) senator’s foot in the next stall. If I liked the present President of Persia (we’ve never met) I might have thought it was unfair treatment of a guy who is doing his best to make his country get along with the rest of the world. But then I remember his foolish comments about no gays in Iran and the drawing fit like a glove.

Cartoonist are supposed to be funny as part of their message. But not just funny, because they are usually trying to make a point and draw us in through humor. Not every one laughs at the same kind of stuff and though we might “get” a joke it may not rate so much as a smirk.

The spate of late night jokes about McCain’s age are curious. The only other place you see these jokes really are when they are re-run in the main stream media. Most are lame and make me squirm in a way that the cover did. I suppose it is his fault that he is old and we usually applaud that. But do you see any goofy guffawing at his mother’s age? The only one I’ve heard, he told, about her trying to rent a car in France. The agency said they wouldn’t let a 95 year old have a car, so she bought one.

Caricaturizing Levantines with XXL schnozzes is common as dirt and just as funny, unless, you are predisposed to having those people made fun of because you think they deserve it. People who were interviewed for TV yesterday, peeps on the street, thought the Os were Muslim (not that there’s anything wrong with that). So instead of the cover trashing the 527 type lies and disinformation that is out there in pretty good numbers, a lot of people will have their fears or prejudices reinforced. Of course the mag can print anything they want, but “brilliant” as NY Mag’s John Heileman called it, and similar praise from Joan Walsh of Salon, is a little self serving. I notice that most of the paid commentators are coming down firmly on one side or the other while CYAers are in the “I don’t know, whadda you think?” school. For me, the joke needed to be funnier.

Obama's trauma

2008-07-14T13:41:00.004-04:00

If you have already seen the newest New Yorker cover you know what the flap is about. BarackO taking it on the chin because the ace wits at the celebrated mag thought they would poke some fun at the non New Yorker types who actually think that the presidential candidate was raised in a Madrassa by Taliban war lords and that he is a five prayer a day guy right now. The cover has O’s wife looking like Angela Davis wearing cammies, combat boots, and an AK47 slung over her shoulder. Of course they are fist bumping, or doing “the terrorist fist jab,” as Fox would have it.

The O's are not happy and don’t want to extend the life of this nightmare with any comment. McCain’s camp came out immediately decrying the poor taste. Rick Hertzberg who edits and writes for the NYer came on TV this morning to lamely defend the decision and David Remnick, who is largely credited for doing a great job while he has been at the helm, felt the need to submit something to the news stations. It will be interesting to see what the Danes have to say about it all.

I think they shouldn’t have done it in that it can hurt him by reinforcing to some that these stereo types may have some traction. But I’m against censoring anything because of how it might be perceived. In the end, if I was calling the shots, I would not have run it. Vote at the right for what you think. BTW, the NYer website did not have an image of the cover when I last looked.

Who said what.

2008-07-04T08:32:00.001-04:00

John McCain isn’t my favorite. I sat with him in the Daily’s office eight years ago and then again a month or so before this year’s NH primary. If he wasn’t "John McCain — The Personality" he would have put every one to sleep. The same old answers robotically delivered and seldom addressing the actual question. The only surprise was how many times he managed to bring up how “green” he is which I found interesting and it gave me something to write about. My somewhat conservative paper would not be happy with what I would have liked to write.

What happened last Sunday morning is the kind of stupid gotcha politics that makes all the players look like jerk-off kids pointing and laughing at someone who has just farted. Bob Schieffer broke in on what Wes Clark was saying to ask with a tone of incredulity, “Are you saying riding around in planes and getting shot down” isn’t a big deal? And Clark responded with Schieffer’s own words, “No. ‘I’m saying riding around in planes and getting shot down’ doesn’t qualify him to be president.” I think most of us would agree. George McGovern flew 35 missions in B24s during WWII and received the Distinguished Flying Cross but he didn’t even come close to giving Lt. Nixon, a poker playing supply officer, a run for his money. Today the chicken hawk Rs revile him as a namby pamby lefty.

Clark gets dumped on by the carnival barkers because they leave out what Schieffer said and it makes the story: War hero General Clark dumps on war hero Candidate McCain. Clark stated over and over again that John McCain’s military experience won’t be an asset should he ever get to be pres. McCain meanwhile is learning to live with the fact that he foolishly said he doesn’t care if we have troops in Iraq for 100 years. Neither do I, if it’s less than a dozen soldiers and they are inside the Green Zone drinking beers with all the civilians. But that isn’t what is being barked at. News that I watch wants to portray his numb-nut gaffe as wanting to fight the war for 100 years. Obama mentions it when ever he gets a chance, just like the Rs play the Rev Wright tape over and over.

In (my) perfect world the candidates would be touting their plans to address what Presidents can actually do to make the country better. But that would bore the hoi polloi to pieces. If you want to know what the country wants to know, turn on the Today show at 7 am some morning. They make a ton of money giving people what they want. You will doubtlessly be shocked at how much time they spend talking about “pain at the pump” and stranded air line travelers, even as the administration fails us on every front and affronts us unassailably.

Uniting in Unity

2008-07-01T12:34:00.001-04:00

The day after my regular class reunion I hooked up with Tommy Decourcy who had come down to Milford for the all class reunion. This event drew about 2000 former graduates from all the classes up until the school closed in ’83. Tom had been to a reunion the night before too, down the road from his house in Unity, NH.

We grew up on the same street but both of our families moved to NH before we had a chance to graduate MHS. Tom’s been living in Hawaii for years but bought his parent’s great old farm house and now spends summers up here. Because part of the main event on Friday night in Unity was a fellow Hawaiian remembered there as “Barry” Obama, Tom went down to see what all the fuss was about.

It was quite a hoot. The school’s maintenance man is the unelected Mayor of Unity and was chosen to make the introductions. He said he thought it was a bit odd for him to be doing so since he was a McCain man and he made an excellent point when he noted that the 214 votes in the primary were split right down the middle. Where’s the unity in that?

Tom was close enough in the rope line to share a “shucka” with Obama. It is a Hawaiian hand signal that indicates a friendly greeting. If you know the ‘hook’em Horns’ gesture using the thumb and pinky to indicate a pair of steers horns you have the idea. Only the thumb points up and the pinky goes down while a quick shake completes the greeting. Obama responded and came over to Tom and Ada with his winning grin and asked if they were Hawaiian. Tom explained they were from Molokai.

In seconds after Obama moved on, the Secret Service were in Tom’s face. “What does that mean?” they wanted to know. Tom told them and they too moved on.

It’s kind of a small world, but I wouldn’t want to have to paint it.

Our reunion

2008-07-01T11:15:00.001-04:00

Back in the fifties down in Milford on the Connecticut shore, we rode fat tired Schwinns, marched in scout uniforms in the Memorial Day parade, skated on the Town Hall pond and rocked out to Buddy Holly and the Crickets. The “fifties” came to signify a time of prosperity and ease and when I polled a bunch of experts at my recent 46th Milford High reunion, they gushingly agreed. It would be hard to encapsulate in a sound bite any decade where you go from 7 to 17. Ours was a period that began shortly after WWII. It ushered in the Korean “conflict,” sputnik, and had a lot of history and a certain magic that was oddly iconicised by enormous tail fins, d.a.s and turned-up collars.

1950 was only five years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the first and only nuclear attacks. The first part of that decade is synonymous with bomb shelters, hiding under your desk, “pinkos” and McCarthyism. Those who already owned a TV, got to see the new Queen (Lilybet Windsor) get her crown. Polio was a plague that left kids crippled and struck fear in every parent. Though the vaccine was discovered in ’52 our schools hallways bore the messengers of this dreaded virus. You don’t see this stuff on Happy Days and it is usually left out of sight and mind in our convenient memories. The rest of the decade was pretty much Elvis movies, the Mickey Mouse Club and the Dodgers and Giants fleeing for the left coast.

At the end of the decate Castro came to power, John Kennedy ran for president and I made it through my freshman year. It was surprising this past weekend to see so many people at our shindig that I remember from that time. And it is somewhat of a shock to the sensibilities to be amongst all these old people. It shouldn’t be as I go every five years to catch up with them and I find pretty much the same group. This year we had 92, more than a third of the class. Twenty-five were in the “In Memoriam” book which was a bit creepy as I looked at their year book pictures trying to imagine them older than 18.

When I first met my final wife I told her that I would never invite her to my reunions. I wanted to flit around the room, the perennial social butterfly, remembering the trouble that we got into or the cute girl in home room who moved by Halloween. In past meetings I had seen spouses who didn’t get the whole experience or were jealous of ancient relationships, and they came between us and the good time it was meant to be. But this time I brought wifey so she could put a face to the people of my past who remained a part of my present if only every five years. She got a kick out of hearing stories of back in the day and finally meeting the gray haired old lady who I had always remembered in a cheerleader outfit.

Richie and I remembered that we always won the window painting contest at Halloween when every store in town was decorated with paintings of goblins and ghoulies. Wayne brought up falling through the ice while seeing who could skate closest to the open water and Jonpy told her about me getting seasick while sailboat racing in the sound which we did every summer weekend. But this time my favorite story was my friend Jean telling my wife, “I had a real crush on him even though I was a head taller. Of course, that was before I knew I was gay.”

As always the management had to keep blinking the lights to get rid of us. Even the ones who still live in Milford and get to see each other all the time were lingering for a last air kiss and a drunken promise to keep in touch. I did manage to collect some business cards and said that I would send the blog. I’ve already emailed Paul who is a hot-glass blower in Seattle and I have been on line to check out Jonny Dio’s swing band based in Paris that plays weddings all over the continent.

One last great story. I knew George since we were in the fourth grade He lived on the block behind us. I always remember his birthday and as we were walking into the joint I wished him a happy sixteenth. He laughed that someone as old as I had such recall. His new wife told me they had a “Sweet Sixteen” party on Feb 29 and his son had said, “Dad you bought me a car for my sixteenth birthday and now I’ve bought you one for yours.” It was a new Jag.

I don’t think most reunions are as meaningful as I find mine, but I wish they were.

Erratum

2008-06-25T10:57:00.002-04:00

While picking on Marge in my penultimate post, I mistyped when I said she had already gone to Kansas City (like you care) which I thought because she had been missing at the last two meetings (like we care). She plans to go to KC to a conference this summer. The staff at TSJ wishes to thank Senator Babson who always knows what Marge is up to and brought it to our attention. I kinda don't think Commissioner Webster reads this blog, but my apologies. Anygate, we're more gossip than gospel at the SJ.

Methadone to the madness

2008-06-25T10:52:00.001-04:00

The words of Mark Sisti, the State’s celebrated drug lawyer, were chilling and telling, “you have tons of heroin, tons of methadone, tons of crystal meth…your area has gone cosmopolitan,” he told a Sun reporter who was covering a drug related story this week. And this a mere month or so after the Conway Selectmen made it clear they were not interested in addressing this potentially devastating problem for the Conway area by considering a methadone clinic in our midst. They simply didn’t want to hear it. But do they really think it will go away?

In an afternoon of googling methadone maintenance treatment (MMT) in an effort to discover the effectiveness of clinics, I found no information that proved or disproved that existing clinics contribute to crime in the communities they serve. But the statistics that have been gathered and recorded across the nation over the last decade prove that the clinics work.
What is certain is that heroin and other opiate addictions can be and are controlled by substituting methadone and because the substitute is taken orally, proliferation of diseases commonly transmitted by multiple user needle use, is significantly contained. So too is the transmittal of sex related diseases and HIV/AIDS.

The main difference between heroin use and methadone treatment is that the heroin “user” suffers from “uncontrolled, compulsive, and disruptive behavior,” then of course they “crash” which involves physical pain and sickness that is so wrenching to the physical system and psyche that only a hair of the dog treatment will soothe the effects of withdrawal. It’s sort of like staying drunk to avoid getting a hangover.

Methadone relieves the user of the heroin hangover as well as eliminating the euphoric rush and subsequent high that produces the bizarre and often illegal behavior associated with addiction. It has the additional benefits of being legal and cheap which reduces the need to commit crimes in order to afford the next round. This last becomes important to the taxpayer when their home is not broken into and robbed, police are not put at risk, courts and jails are not jammed with these somewhat problematical characters that are most likely going to go through withdrawal while at the Crowbar Motel.

But let us not sugar coat this semi-solution. The reasons Robert Potter wanted to build one of his clinics here will make most people not want it in their back yard. The closest other clinic is in Rochester. That would make Conway a sort of Vegas for “biscuit” or “dollie” seekers. (I forsee a Sun headline: Valley of the Dollies.) Since the treatment (there is no actual “cure”) requires daily communion because you never really get off the stuff, people will be moving closer to the area. And just because these new neighbors are not necessarily a threat to the community, in terms of crime, studies show that the employment rate amongst those in treatment does not improve after addiction has abated. In all likelihood a certain collegiality will develop and they could start hanging out with each other. It also makes sense that since the rate of recidivism is one out of five, there will be some bad apples looking for mischief requiring more police.

But, mark Mark Sisti’s words, there is, right now, “tons” of the stuff around. And because there is no clinic, no one is getting help. They are out there looking for ways to finance the next fix and if you have never gone through withdrawal or not read Trainspotting, you have no idea what these people will risk to get their mitts on the appropriately named “junk.”

The Daily is replete with mayhem and misdemeanors that are drug related. Not long ago we read that seven quite young local people were arrested for beating almost to death a former compatriot who finked on a pot deal. It was reported that a 20 year old girl who was involved had urged the others to kill the guy. Anybody who doesn’t think that Sisti’s words are haunting and prescient has their heads buried deep in the sand.

I talked to Dennis Robinson who runs the County Jail and he said that he was as freaked out as I was that “kids” that age could be involved in crime of that magnitude. “But it is on the rise and it is coming this way,” and he know of what he speaks. It is his job to book them through the jail and report the statistics while the press is writing it all down.

He could also tell you that $13 a day for methadone seems like a bargain versus the cost of incarceration. For starters an inmate must be provided with three meals a day at $3.15 each. That’s $9.45. If the inmate is on meds, the County has to cough up. If he or she has to be transported they get to eat at Mickey Ds on your dime. The citizenry pays for their laundry, the guard’s salaries and benefits, the debt on the building and on and on and on. Then, they are let out so they can do it all over again. About one in five of everyone sitting down at the Hotel Robinson couldn’t get enough of the place the first time around. It’s clean, they’ve got TV, you don’t have to work, free clothes and it’s just so darn easy to get used to. Which is good for them, bad for you, because they are going to spend a lot of their life in there, or some place like it, and it’s your treat.

Potter was going to pay for the proposed clinic and the methadonee would have to buy their own daily dosage. If such a facility attracts the “wrong kind” it would have to be dealt with. But we already have the “wrong kind” and if you believe Sisti, who makes a fortune knowing the ins and outs, it’s going to cost us a fortune in the future.

I suppose it’s a good thing in some ways to have our heads in the sand; all the easier to pick our wallets.

Splitting hairs? No. Picking on Marge? Absolutely!

2008-06-20T12:37:00.003-04:00

I asked the first question of the Commissioners, two of them anyway, on Wednesday morning: If someone is appointed to take Sheriff Scott Carr’s place from now until January (when the newly elected Sheriff will take over), who does the appointing, you guys (the one gal was late to the meeting but at least she showed up this time) or the Delegation? I was told “the Delegation.”

The Delegation is a compilation of all the County’s State Representatives whose Chair is Betsey Patten and the Vice is KHS golfer Gene Chandler. Their function is to oversee what the Commissioners do. Unlike the Commissioners, they take no heat from the prying press. There are 14 (I think) Dels. I asked the question because I had heard the rumor that Carr was going to resign and at that time, I queried the Comms, “Who would he submit his resignation to?” “The Delegates,” said Chairman Sorenson after silently polling the other two by checking left and right. It left me with the feeling he wasn’t sure.

During the meeting this week I was told that the Commissioner’s only have say so over the Sheriff’s budget. It is not clear whether they have oversight with authority when it comes to spending that budget but Dave Babson, who is mentoring me in the ways of State and County gov and is running for the State Senate for the Republicans says, “They have no such authority. He (the Sheriff) is an elected official and the only way to control what he does is to un-elect him.”

Back to my Q: Cap’t Jon Hebert, a Bartlett lad and KHS grad who has retired and come back as a part-timer, was at Wednesday’s meeting to explain how the department of 45 employees is being run with the Sheriff gone in person for the last few weeks and gone officially in ten days.

Hebert who is an articulate speaker, well in command of the facts laid out for anyone to understand what needs to take place during the next six months, and quoted the RSA (104:14) that gives the Delegation the authority to appoint an interim Sheriff. He said that he is not and will not be running for the County’s top cop job but is willing to stay until January if needed. He explained that as the Operations Chief (I think) his job is at the behest of the Sheriff and the next Sheriff will want to name his own number two. Hebert said he was “looking out for my family’s financial welfare beyond life at the Sheriff’s Department.”

I’ve know Hebert well enough to say hello to for many years. Listening to him I got the impression that it is too bad he’s not running. All that experience and stage presence, he’s just the kind of guy that could sweep the scandals of the department out the door and order a new broom. Either he figures to make a lot more than the Sheriff’s $60K salary or he is chary of the kind of exposure that his boss got.

On that. I’ve talked to other law enforcement folks who think that what Carr did to get so much attention from the press was stupid and insensitive but not illegal. Tamworth’s Chief, Dan Poirier who is a candidate for Sheriff, said, “I wouldn’t have done it. It just doesn’t look right. But I don’t think he broke any laws.”

I want to ask Scott, who has always been chummy with me, would you do it again knowing that you would get such scrutiny?

Scott blames the press for having his “good name” dragged through the ink but as one reporter said to me, “What would we write about if a guy [like Hebert] was running the show?”

Commissioner Marge, who has time to get one particular constituent fired for “harassing” her, but couldn’t make it to the public input part of the meeting on time, came breezing in (“A sail, a sail” – Mercutio) just before Chairman Sorenson ended the session exactly on time. Not one more question. It’s slightly possible that it was coincidental timing but I know that I and some others wanted to know if Marge learned a whole lot on her latest junket, this time to Kansas City. I thought it ironic that on the way in I heard on NHPR that the Governor had asked lawmakers to approve a “continuation of the ban on unnecessary out of state travel.” Naturally, I was deeply interested in her opinion on such a statement from the States highest officer and, if she felt an obligation to help him trim the budget. Her defiance of the other two Commissioners efforts to clip her wings is the only answer anyone needs, but Marge’s cranky quips are always reportable. As Vern Albright used to say, “That’s my little Margie.”

Anygate, after the meeting Commissioners met below stairs in their offices (without posting such a meeting) and summoned Captain Hebert in to anoint him the interim Sheriff. According to an inside source who was kicked out of the office when he started nosing around, though they would like to kick him out just on g.p., Hebert wisely asked that the request be put in writing which they did. Alrighty then. The Comms can appoint him to do this without the Delegation being consulted after telling me in answer to a direct question, that will appear in the minutes, that the Delegation are the ones who appoint and we are not supposed to think that “something stinks in Denmark” (not Mercutio).

We don’t really know if it “stinks” but there is a whiff of incompetence mixed with ignorance of their legal duty/rules of operation, and certainly overtones of nincompoopery.

The Commissioners meet every Wednesday and begin promptly at 8:15. Try to catch it.

Farewell fairness?

2008-06-17T09:46:00.002-04:00

I was struck by the constant commentators use of the phrase “fair but hard” when referring to what they considered to be the chief qualities of the late lamented Timothy John Russert Jr. whose soul is just a little way above our heads (as my man Mercutio would have it).
“Be against everything he’s for and for every thing he’s against,” Tim’s first MTP boss instructed him on the kind of show he hoped to see. “Not only that”, he might have added, “you will have a staff and a week to prepare while the poor schlub across from you will have to squeeze his or her prep time from an already crowded schedule.” Does that seem fair? Well, I’m not being exactly fair because Tim did have a full time job at NBC running the political end of things, no small feat in that competitive collesium. But all the carnival barkers used the same phrase over and over until it had lost all meaning, which they usually do. As they have with the constant airing of the poignant pic of Luke Russert touching his Dad’s chair in the MPR studio on Sunday. How long before it’s used in an ad for an airlines? “When you have to say farewell, fly with us.”
The most striking thing about Tim, to me, was his everyman-ness. His total insider take on the Beltway baloney. Today he will be waked at St. Albans School which is next to the magnificent National Cathedral. He could have done it there. But he will be on view at his son’s high school alma mater and Luke’s class mates have been chosen to be the pall bearers. How cool is that? I smirk at the thought of how many publicists and assistants to the muckety mucks of the political world will lose their heads over the failure to get on the list of possible contenders for such a career move as being a pall bearer to someone famous. It would be interesting to see how all the mourners in waiting are lining up and trying to elbow their way to the head of that line in the hope of being chosen to speak at the Kennedy Center tomorrow or at least get a seat that the TV cameras will pan. My guess is that no ex-Presidents need apply.
It will be hard to replace the guy on Sunday morning’s because you can’t teach people how to be smart, decent, caring, clever and hard working. You can’t just say, “be like Tim” any more than you can say to a young ball player, “hit like Ted.”

104th Bloomsday

2008-06-16T15:27:00.001-04:00

“Stately plump Buck Mulligan…” is the way it all starts in Martello tower one fine June 16th in 1904 that changed the literary world forever. The first time I read Ulysses I read the Odyssey prior to so that I would have an idea of the analogy. I might have read all of Shakespeare and memorized Hamlet too if I really thought I was going to be able to figure out what old nimble Jimbo had in mind when he decided to do a day in the life of Dirty Old Dublin. It helped a little that I had been a Latin spouting alter boy.
I’ve written on the inside of the book cover when I read and reread the book and where I was at the time. No lectures about writing in books please. I paid $2.50 for my raggedy-ass copy at a second hand joint in Cambridge forty years ago and now it’s margins are full of my scribbles from the successive reads. I figure I must have read the thing one entire time half lit for all the times that I would have a jar while curled up with this curious tale that still has me intrigued after all these years. I’d read till the pages got blurry and then the next time I’d have to reread all that had happened while I was enjoying that last drink. Over the years, it’s got to amount to one whole read.
Once I sent in a dollar for the “One Minute Ulysses” to a clever fellow named David Lasky down in VA who nailed the story in an 8 page comic book style. I have wondered for a long time how he decided what to leave out and it reminds me of the sculptor who explained how he worked, “If I’m carving an elephant, I just take away everything that doesn’t look like it’s part of an elephant.”
Here’s my synopsis for those of you who have only read the end.
The story of two Dubliners wandering around the town for 24 hours is supposed to run parallel with Odysseus coming back the war in Troy which takes him ten years. It takes two people to tell this story and so we have the young and brilliant Stephen Dedalus who resembles the author in many ways and is some one we know of from Portrait of the Artist as a young man. Poor old Paddy Dignam has bought the farm and we meet a lot of his friends at the funeral. Leopold Bloom is there too (as he is the other half) but he is not exactly in with the crowd and we easily come to believe that it has to do with his Jewishness which he doesn’t practice and seems to resent, somewhat. After the funeral the mourners take up residence in Davey Byrne’s where much airing of the world’s worries is done at the bar. Bloom orders a glass of burgundy and a gorgonzola sandwich which has become the official meal of this day for U fans the world over.
Stephen has quit his teaching job that morning and taken what little money he is owed to town to attend Paddy’s send off. His father Simon, “a noisy man, full of his son,” holds forth at Davey’s and soon Stephen moves on with friends of his own. Bloom shoves off by himself and contemplates the letter he has from a mysterious Martha who occupies much of his thoughts, but then he has a lot of thoughts and we listen in while he goes to buy Martha soap and then heads to the baths and later the Strand where he espies poor Gerty MacDowel, a comely lass with a limp. He has impure thoughts about her but only tips his bowler as he passes. He seems to think that his amourous imaginations are justified because he’s more or less certain that his wife Molly not only shares the stage with Blazes Boylan, the famous tenor, but also his bed.
Stephen hits the bars and a bawdy house which he gets thrown out of sort of and Bloom takes him to Night Town. Nobody get’s laid but Stephen gets stewed and Bloom takes him for coffee before inviting him home. They talk and Stephen decides to pass on spending what little night is left at 7 Eccles, Blooms abode.
Bloom makes enough noise below stairs to wake Molly whose famous soliloquy while lying in bed takes up the last 40 pages employing the stream of consciousness style that has come to define Joyce. It ends “…how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again and then he said would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes”

Letters to the Editor: Dear Eddie,

2008-06-05T15:54:00.001-04:00

The latest salvo of silly incivilities in the Sun’s letters section hit a little close to home. Having foisted some of my own personal problems on the public via that medium, I wondered (my adoring fans not withstanding) if my own public beeves are perceived as some of the other rabid rantings are. I have backed off in the past because one soon realizes that it is not about the message after awhile but about wounded egos, gotchas and the perception that one is really quite clever on the printed page and that soon the New Yorker or the New York Post will come calling to have us take over the editorial section.
It also occurred to me that while at the Ear, we never received the kind of frothing that people like to vent in the Sun’s pages. It was always yes, please and thank you, and the ever so infrequent, “nice job”, which you will also be hard pressed to see in the Daily. I have personally told Nate when I think he has nailed a story, but I have never seen a letter that praises his prose or his Mickey Spillane like keenness for detail on the Maureen MacDonald murder case or taking to task the County Commissioner known as the “Minister of Tourism” for her outsized spending habits.
I’m sure I’ve never seen a letter praising Lloyd for his sports reportage, although several tele-talkers did mention him for canonization by having a Kennett High sports facility named after him. No, most of the letters, much like my own, tend to be self serving and have a certain quality of “can dish it out but can’t take it.”
Once I talked to Rob Figuly about doing a “personality piece” in another publication. He demurred, and said he would get back to me but I knew he never would. That kind of paranoia does not take kindly to the light of day, even though I assured him it was a fluff piece. If he had seen the other ones I did, he might have been tempted by the possibility of a little flattery. But his antennae were up and it is the Valley’s loss, I suppose.
There aren’t a lot of letter writers like Ron (the collective sigh out there is almost audible) but over the years there have been some pretty persistent pens that have embellished those same pages with their bombast. One thinks of the Susan Bruce fans who claim that she is a know nothing feminazi whose politics are to the left of Manny Ramirez (not his politics, his position). Don’t these guys love to jump all over her, so to speak. They rant, they rave, they accuse her of giving away the government. But it can’t be lost on anyone that they read her. What works better for a writer than knowing you have a loyal following that read every letter you type?
In a way, it is surprising how well most of the letters are written. Almost always with passion but also well organized (I said most) and grammatically appropriate, if not up to Catholic School or AP standards. I especially enjoy when students write in and we all muse that the kid’s mother wrote it. Naw, I’ve seen lots of stuff from High Schoolers that would put most adults to shame. I was recently at Williams College, on the top of almost anybody’s get into list, and three Kennett kids are matriculated there and bolstering up the school’s ski teams.
I don’t always have time to read all the letters nor do I want to take from my precious store of unused time to try to fathom what Laura Slitt will be going on (and on) about this time. Pavlov tells me that it’s going to be something about how people should not eat meat because it hurts the cows feelings, nor should they raise rats to help cure cancer. How ever much validity her point may have, I wonder how many readers she has convinced to come to her side over the years of beating that same drum.
Today’s batch of bashing concerning Ken Martin’s dust up with the Couture Construction Co., Children Un-Ltd, Carol Hounsell and Dawn James is classic. Imagine all the players are under five feet tall and at recess with no teacher around. One of them is suggesting that the footwear of one of the other’s mother came from the military, while the next one is challenging, “O yeah, you wanna bet?” and still another is injecting the heart piercing and ego crushing, “nanny nanny boo boo.” Yet, however unbecoming for adults, it is pretty good theater and where I work, it was the talk of the town for about four and a half minutes.

Where is the outrage?

2008-06-03T10:04:00.001-04:00

I watch and read way too much news but I mostly watch the shows that I know and that reflect what I think, maybe, just possibly, might be as close to the truth of any on-going story that I’m following. That’s code for, almost never Fox. Fox is about as “balanced” as Ron Figuly and as “fair” as I am being to him right now.
What is truly surprising is the lack of outrage over the Texas decision to swoop in and pick up 450-odd kids because of what appears to be a phony phone call claiming that the underage caller was at risk. There was far more of a hue and cry when the Branch Davidians got bush whacked down in Waco almost fifteen years ago. But in the normal media all you get is a casual update on the status of these kids and their moms. Dads are back on the ranch doing whatever it is they do without the young’ns around, and we don’t even want to go there.
It does seem like the state of Texas messed this one up pretty bad. Can you think of any other community where it would be alright to bus a bunch of kids away from their parents and homes for eight weeks now, because of a perceived misdeed that has yet to yield anything like the much touted “shred” of evidence?
I wonder what would happen if our own Sheriff’s Department perpetrated a similar stunt on the Tin Mine Conservation summer camp. Just came in with guns drawn, a few borrowed tanks, extra deputies hauled in from their road details, several buses borrowed from the Community School in Tamworth and maybe the Gibson Center; charge them with not wearing flag lapels or something and then haul ‘em off to the hoosegow where the DOC would have to figure out how to make sure no siblings got to stay together and then find foster homes for them all over the county. Maybe have to ship some to other counties if homes couldn’t be found.
I know some folks who are parents and strong believers in the second amendment who would have a thing to say to whoever tried to take their kids away from them with or without a just cause. It is unthinkable that this indefensible action could stand without a ruckus resulting in bloodshed. Of courseI know that you know that our own Sheriff would never countenance such perversions of the law in this county but the goofball scenario only needs a few changes to simulate just what in tarnation is going on down in the Lone Star State.
The kids have done nothing wrong. No parent has been charged because as far as the public knows, no laws have been broken. And yet the children have been wrenched, as it were, from their Mom’s Mormony clad bosom to some strangely non-cultist environment for two freakin’ months! It is nothing less than outrageous and the mainstream media treats it like an ongoing story of a young family missing for a day after getting lost on the way to Dianna’s Bath.
Whaddup with that? I think it’s because “those people” are different and people in general, us “hard working white Americans”, and even some “elitists”, really only look out for our own. If those crazily coifed moms in their prairie couture and secret underwear weren’t so obviously autre, wouldn’t there be a stronger story here? One in which we all stood against the illegal nuttiness whether we’re from Texas or Tamworth? Whether they’re Mormon or Mainers shouldn’t matter. People all over the world are sticking up for the Burmese and Chinese, sending them money, and sticking up for our government spending all it can to get aid to the disaster struck. But these poor people, right on our own soil are getting it stuck to them in a way that seems dreadfully unfair at the very least.
And it doesn’t take much imagination to calculate the cost to the average Texan like Danny Del Rossi who probably didn’t even have anything to do with it. This will not be over when it’s over. Oh no! Their little patch of polygamy is going to have the finest lawyers in the land descending on them from all angles with promises of wealth beyond what is stored in the hidden bowels of the Salt Lake Tabernacle. Law suits will abound like plagues of locusts and the average Texan taxpayer will get the tab. The poor shlub who couldn’t tell a Mormon from a Doorman is going to have his wallet handed to him because somebody, and we don’t yet know who, supposedly received a call from some one, who we also don’t yet know, that may have said something could have happened to someone who may not exist, but if it did it could likely be illegal and now 500 lawyers are all over it.
Where is the outrage? It’s aimed at Hillary for staying in. At Barack for having a pastor that’s a quack. At tornadoes and earthquakes and high unemployment and higher gas prices. Meanwhile, the height of stupidity gets a pass.

My Little Margie

2008-05-30T09:13:00.001-04:00

Here’s an idea: Why don’t a half dozen of you try to make it down to the County Commissioner’s meeting this Wednesday and watch how the sausage is made. Not pretty at all but very interesting. I ran into the perennial candidate Michael Callis (R – Eaton) the other day who sees nothing wrong with the Sheriff’s new clothes, the trips that my little Margie takes or the lack of oversight in general on County finances. Yeah, I want Mike in Congress keeping an eye out for me. When did the Republican’s “conservatism” stop meaning fiscal prudence?
The reason we have a Commission is so that we can say some one is in charge, otherwise we would have departments making up their own budget that would be handed to them to spend any way they want which opens up the possibility of abuse. One of the biggest problems in government is not keeping track of the revenue streaming out.
A story in the news this week says the pentagon has lost track of 158 billion* in military contracts because the budgets have grown so fast that the infrastructure to keep track of them has not kept pace with the exponential growth/waste of tax payers dollars. You just know there is another infrastructure out there that is keeping pace with that kind of opportunity and they are siphoning it off to projects that never get built but get overbilled for cost over-runs. It’s kind of a whacky world where greed is the driving force. And so it is in the County.
When My Little Margie thinks it is her due to spend every cent in her travel budget and then some, and says to me out loud so other people in the hallway we were walking could hear: “It’s in his budget. He can spend it any way he wants,” speaking of Carr’s fancy pants, you have to believe that she has lost the plot. She no longer gets the idea of what the government role is. She’s not there to mind your tax dollars and see that the institutions run smoothly, she’s there to bilk the system. And you really need to look out now that the Commissioners won’t be getting a $500 raise that they had put in for. That was money that she felt was owed to her and you can bet she is going to find someway to make it up.
When I was down t’ Ossipee the last couple of times I noticed that the taxpayers must have decided that the Commissioners should have a coffee buffet in the meeting room. This is provided by the head of the kitchen at the nursing home. It probably takes him at least an hour to set up and half that to break it down. He probably makes $60K a year which is $30 an hour so it is safe to assume with the coffee and muffins it is costing you $50 every Wednesday so that the Commissioners don’t have to stop on the way in and grab their own cuppa. In ten weeks that would pay for Marge’s raise. Ten more weeks for Sorenson’s and ten for Olkkola.
But, them thieving bastids, the press and public, made so bold as to help themselves and there weren’t enough muffins left for the Comish’. Margie, who taunts the attendees with her inaudible murmurings and whispers her comments when she is conducting public business now belts out, “What happened to all the muffins?”
So come on down, It starts early and if you’re not there by exactly 8:15 the punctilious Chair will commence public comment without you and you’d be missing the fun part. You can help yourself to a coffee and muffin, if you hurry, and if you dare.
*$158 BILLION is almost the total amount that the $1200 per agent orange victim got (see Moving Wall above) for a one time payment to settle their suit in the ‘80s. Bush can only run the Iraq War for three more days on that kind of money and, y’ know, that’s not a bad idea. Then we can use the next three days worth to start funding the real cost of the war, broken bodies and dreams of the men and women who will never recover from the insanity.

Yes, Virginia, we used to have real Memorial Days

2008-05-23T11:11:00.003-04:00

Remembering Why We Have Memorial Day

I remember being with my son on a school vacay down in DC where he was born eight years earlier. I wanted to show him all the sights that I was so taken with when I lived down there for a half dozen years.

I decided to start at the top so we rode up the 555 feet and 5 inches of the Washington Monument from which you can see just about anything worth seeing in the whole of the District of Colombia. I had seen most of it, shepherding visitors to all the most sought after sites when they came. But I had not seen “The Wall.” It lived up to every description I had heard of it since the 24 year old Asian American, Maya Lin, had won a contest to design it while she was still studying architecture at Yale.

It gave me the chills. It gives all veterans the chills as well as anyone who has any connection with that hateful war. Looking at it from that height I began to wonder what old army buddies names might be on it. How would I find them? I took some solace that my brother’s name would not be there. He only lost an eye.

We walked down the million or so steps to the base of the monument. I couldn’t get my mind off the meaningfulness of “The Wall.” As we approached, I felt that my legs were getting rubbery and I knew it wasn’t from all those stairs. About half way across I started to slow down as I felt an awkward moisture blurring my vision. I knew in a trice what was happening. It happens to everyone I know that has been there but more intensely for any GI and most especially for the men and women who were in Vietnam and knew somebody whose name is one of the 58,000 plus on those 148 panels.

I was an airborne medic in Germany when the hideous Gulf of Tonkin scandal broke and propelled us toward a full commitment in Southeast Asia in 1965. By 1966 I said goodbye to spit-shine and white-wall haircuts forever. I vowed never to do another push up or wear khaki or OD. The news of Nam came in steady drips. Some one I knew in school had died. A guy from our medic unit down in Ft. Sam had been brutally executed. A friend of mine, still in college, was trying tearfully to cope with his best friend’s death that happened only a few months after he got his lieutenancy.

I joined other Vets down in DC in the late sixties in the hopeless effort to get Tricky Dick to come to his Quaker senses and end the senselessness. Then as now I ask what those people died for. Name one thing that was accomplished that we can say even one of those lives was worth. People went to war for their country because of a sense of duty, sure, but many went against their wishes because it was the law. Both types ended up on “The Wall.”

My brother came back convinced that he had not lost his eye in vain and resented the hell out of my anti war attitude. My younger brother became a conscientious objector. My father rolled over in his grave. It was a time of division in this country whose likes have not even been hinted at since. A time when long hair could get you beat up, where hippies and straights were like the Jets and Sharks.

At UNH I hung out mostly with ex-service types. We never talked about the military to anyone else. It was a disgrace. People called anyone in uniform “baby killer” and used to give soldiers in uniform the finger sometimes when they were hitch hiking home on leave. Brother against brother, Father against son, citizen against country. It was awful.

And then it stopped. GIs came home one by one. No parade as had happened when our fathers came home. No pat on the back or attaboys. They slunk home and walked in the door to the only people who gave a crap about them. They came back haunted with nightmares of Nam that would never go away. They learned to live with the specter of “Nam Vet,” code for whacko or even dangerous.

But the Vets pulled together and formed groups and counseling centers and lobbied Congress. Insult to injury came when agent orange was recognized as an agent of cancer and genetic defects. In 1984 most affected veterans received a one time payment of $1200 for their pains. Most are not expected to live past 65. Thanks for your service guys. Dow and Monsanto still thrive.

When the first Gulf War broke out there was an outpouring of support for the troops and even the war itself. The country pulled together and it began to dawn on all how shabby we had treated our Viet Vets. People openly expressed their regret and promised to make it up. Soon, the cry was, “What about our guys who came back from Nam?” Things got better and, better late then never.

It was a treat to watch the volunteers putting The Moving Wall up on Thursday morning. Old guys (my age) hanging around in remnants of uniforms of all descriptions with T shirts that said Army or Marines. Dave Dube of Lazy Susan’s restaurant down on the Eff/Oss line has been working for veterans for years. On Thursday morning the ex-Marine took another hit for the cause. While riding in a cherry ’55 Chevy convertible to lead an antique car procession down to Constitution Park not far from his restaurant, he and two buddies were rear ended. The car was totaled and Dave and two others were ambulanced to Huggins. When I found him at the Moving Wall, he had 15 stitches in his head and some in his back and neck but he was right there with the others admiring the handiwork of Mike Gaudette’s crew who were putting the finishing touches on the project. It was heart warming to see a dozen or more Kingswood High Schoolers polishing the 148 panels and it was eerily reminiscent of the real deal down in DC.

The Moving Wall will be here through the end of Memorial Day with taps and a final ceremony at 6 p.m. It is a beautifully done replica that has constantly been touring the country since the mid eighties. Dave couldn’t believe his luck when they told him he could have it for Memorial Day. Going to see it is a great way to be counted for the ones we so counted on back then. Just go up, or down, Route 16 and then East on Route 25 for a couple of miles.

Pink slip for Pigge

2008-05-20T13:12:00.004-04:00

Sent to The Sun today:

To the Editor,

By three o’clock last Friday—the same day my hot note about the county commissioners appeared in the Sun—I was told that Salmon Press (publishers of The Mountain Ear) no longer needed my services. Of course the people who wanted me gone didn’t do the deed in person; they left it up to one of my oldest friends in the Valley who already had the unenviable task of being my editor.

There are no hard feelings. Politics and punditry go together like cops and robbers. One without the other is unthinkable. Merriam-Webster likens pundits to “authoritative critics” and while pundits are usually from the press, not all reporters are, or want to be one.

Insightful journalism is not “he said, she said.” It’s about reading up on the subject and in between the lines, getting to the bottom of the truth and exposing wrong doers and lie tellers. It is also being willing to get your nose bloodied when someone else’s nose gets out of joint. That’s what makes a good journalist.

If a public official thinks that reading the news is below him or her, then don’t bother, but approximately one third of the entire County (your employers) reads the Sun every day. And I bet that they care that Commissioner Webster gets junkets to Hawaii while they can’t afford gas to get to work. I bet they are interested to know if the Chief of Police is stealing from D.A.R.E. And I bet they want to know what other people in their community think.

So, if you are interested in what’s really going on and you’d like to read some news and opinion that even the Sun might not print, come to my new blog, “The Smoking Jacket.” We’ll torment, and comment on, the pols and the press and whatever else makes news in the Valley of the Crammed. Go to: http://piggesblog.blogspot.com/ to get started.

It’ll be wicked fun.

Peter Case
Tamworth

This blog is so new that I'll need some help getting the word out. Pretend it's like one of those chain dealies, only nothing will happen to you if you don't send the http on. But it would be damned nice of you.

The Letter

2008-05-18T10:55:00.005-04:00

Here's the letter to the editor sent to the Sun that caused the stir and presumably led to my termination at the Mountain Ear:

Open letter to two Commissioners:

Dear Marge and Dave,

I left today’s meeting disgusted that elected officials of a certain age could have lived so long without understanding that anyone who chooses to work for the public needs to have oversight by their employers.

You work for us. You are paid by us. The only way we will know if you are doing your job is if we attend the meetings or listen to what others who have been to the meetings have to say.

You both look at the media as the enemy who get you in trouble. How you know this when you supposedly “don’t read the papers” is another stretch for any observer to swallow.

Today when I announced that my paper has asked me to back off complaining about the nincompoopery (my word) that goes on at your meetings, you both said “good” in loud and approving tones. Then Dave asked what paper I worked for? Duh! You don’t read it but you automatically assume that everything I write is bad.

If Nate and I didn’t write what we did about the public’s right to know, you’d still be having your meetings in private as often as you can. Ignorant of the law, or just plain un-lawful, you feel it is best that the public not know how their business is being conducted.

But one could conjecture that you are afraid that if the public does know how you do business they won’t approve. What else can we think? That’s why we have to have an RSA that assures the public’s right to know.

Marge said that she “never reads that paper. I hate it.” Five or ten minutes later she borrowed my copy and found the exact paragraph that she hated and read it allowed in the meeting to make her point about some Nate article. She repeatedly cautioned, “Not that I give much credence to what they say.” Doh!

Last week, Dave pointedly asked Dennis Robinson, DOC (runs the jail) if he shouldn’t use more than 15 minutes to interview prospective employees. Dennis explained, to my satisfaction, the other paper’s satisfaction and to any one else there why he thought “15 minutes is enough”. This week, without consultation (that would be illegal) Dave pressed him again. The DOC gave more detailed reasons, including recalling that Dave had sat in on one of the “15 minute interviews” of this type in the past.

I would have thought that was the end of it. But no. Now Commissioner Olkkola, who did not volunteer, has been assigned to monitor the next set of interviews. Sounds like you don’t trust the Director who has been doing this kind of work for 36 years. What is it in your interviewing background that makes you think you know more than he does?

I bet most people would rather you spend your time worrying about the credit card fiasco, the needless $800 in finance charges because of lax attention to detail, the total lack of follow through on the purchase order system in which only two of the 100 examined had a (required) signature, and of course, travelgate. It’s important to note that the public wouldn’t even know about this stuff if the Commission could still go into non-public at the drop of a hat.

Peter Case
Tamworth on Swift

PS: I would have sent this to the Commissioners instead of the Sun, but when I asked Dave for his email, he responded: “I don’t want any of your junk.”