Heads need to roll on this one: “It’s shameful that an insurance company is stealing money from the families of our fallen servicemen."

There are SOBs. There are greedy SOBs. There are greedy, lying, conniving, evil SOBs. And then there are insurance companies.

David Evans of Bloomberg news reveals how the families of fallen American soldiers are getting misled and essentially ripped off for part of their life insurance benefits by Prudential and Met Life (as well as other life insurance beneficiaries getting ripped off by other insurance companies), with the complicity of some state insurance regulators and the Federal Veterans Affairs Office.

Read it, gnash your teeth, and then write your Congressional representative and Senator telling them you want these evil insurance people behind bars, where they belong, as well as the insurance regulators who bent over for them.

(Thanks to Underbelly-Buce for alerting me to this.)

The mosque, Ground Zero, and a bunch of U.S. Constitution-hating nincompoops, including Sarah Palin, Andrea Peyser, and Carl Paladino

Back in colonial times, a Quaker passing through the Massachusetts Bay Colony got whipped and had his ears sliced off by the good Puritan colonists for…being a Quaker.

In the name of the Inquisition, hundreds, if not thousands of non-Catholics were tortured, and burned at the stake. Their crime? Not being Catholic.

In France, Protestant Huguenots were enslaved for life on galley ships for being…Protestants.

The U.S. Constitution supposedly

put an end to intolerance

When America was founded, the founding fathers said they’d had enough of this hateful intolerance. The Bill of Rights, the very First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, in its very first sentence, even before it got down to Freedom of Speech and the Press, declared this:

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof”

It didn’t and still doesn't say, “except when a lot of people with money and the media equivalent of loud speakers say differently.”

In New York City, a group of Muslims wants to build a mosque. I have no particular brief for the Muslim religion, and I have a personal loathing for jihad and for the practice of Sharia law in the 21^st Century. But I do have respect for the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

An outpouring of hatred

So I’m horrified at the huge outpouring of hatred from monied and politically devious sources who are stirring up a hornet’s nest of hatred against the Muslim group because the mosque and community center they want to build is two blocks from ground zero.

The operative word is “two” because, of course, none of the people opposing are bigots. Oh no!

“I am not against a mosque. I am against a location of a mosque. I don’t want a mosque on the grave of my son and on the grave of everybody else who was murdered that day,” said one woman while the Fox News TV cameras rolled. Fox. Of course, Fox.

How far away is far enough?

But wait a second, m’am. Your son’s grave is two blocks away. And if that's too close, how far away is far enough? Would three blocks do it? How about four? A mile? Two miles? Or should mosques be allowed on the same island? What about the same coast of the United States, m’am?

But wait, you've got idiot friends seeking to be in powerful places who are backing you up, m’am. Sarah Palin, for example.

In a post to her Facebook page which mysteriously disappeared and then reappeared, Palin declared, and then undeclared, and then re-declared, “Many Americans, myself included, feel it would be an intolerable and tragic mistake to allow such a project sponsored by such an individual to go forward on such hallowed ground. This is nothing close to ‘religious intolerance,’ it’s just common decency.”

Right. Except that, as previously noted, the hallowed ground is two blocks away. (Who hallowed it, by the way? By what authority is land made holy under the First Amendment?) What Palin is doing with statements like this is stirring up religious intolerance, a just plain common indecent thing to do.

At Rupert Mudoch’s right wing New York Post, the mother of all witches, Andrea Peyser, plays fast and loose with the facts. She writes: “Plans to bring what one critic calls a 'monster mosque' to the site of the old Burlington Coat Factory building, at a cost expected to top $100 million, moved along for months

without a peep. All of a sudden, even members of the community board that stupidly green-lighted the mosque this month are tearing their hair out."

Community board had no real say

Witchy Andrea a few paragraphs later finally got around to mentioning that Community Boards in New York have no official say in such matters. So what it boils down to is that their “green light” was the equivalent of a whistling “Melancholy Baby” — a total irrelevance.

Now some upstate New York candidate for Governor who is so-far-right-it’s off-the-charts, a fellow named Carl Palladino claims he will “use the right of eminent domain” to stop the mosque. He

doesn’t spell out what that means, but if it means anything at all, it means that he’ll take a couple of hundred million worth of taxpayer money to buy up commercial property two blocks from ground zero so Muslim worshippers can’t have it.

Good luck to funding education, or highways, or law enforcement, or hospitals, or anything else a state ought to be doing with Palladino’s cut-taxes-and-spend-for-mosque-property philosophy of government.

Of course, the other looney Republican candidate for Governor, Rick The Loser Lazio, who proved what a jerk he is when he walked up to Hillary Clinton during a televised debate and aggressively shoved a pile of paper under her face, also favors repealing the First Amendment — whoops, I’m sorry, stopping the mosque.

But also note Muslim-American

tone deafness

The wannabe builders of this Muslim facility aren’t without blame either. They suffer from a severe case of tone deafness in standing by their proposal.

Nevertheless, last I heard, tone deafness wasn’t against the law and the U.S. Constitution still hasn’t been repealed.

Go ahead. Murder a cyclist. In New York and New Jersey, cops and judges think it’s cool. Serves the green-minded bastards right!

Watch the You Tube video above as it shows, a cop running out to body slam a cyclist who was taking part in a legal demonstration.

The former police officer, Patrick Pogan, was found guilty in a jury trial of lying on an official police report about what happened. Fortunately, the videotape clearly contradicted Pogon’s coverup.

Unfortunately, Judge Maxwell Riley imposed no punishment — none whatsoever — on Pogan. Pogan’s lawyer had asked for a ridiculously light sentence of community service. Not light enough, said Judge Riley, who evidently thinks that negative publicity is punishment enough for attempting to inflict bodily harm on a peaceable citizen, falsely arresting the citizen, and lying on a police report.

If cyclists in the New York metropolitan area are outraged, this isn’t the first time. Advertising copywriter and journalist Richard Rosenthal, who specializes in bicycle related subjects, recently catalogued on the website of the New York Cycle Club a list of outrages by cops and judges.

In one post on a lengthy bicycle club
bulletin board thread Rosenthal wrote:

Wylie joins Alpine Judge Robert L. Ritter (who has a Hackensack law practice) in those in law who can't bring themselves to rise to the responsibility of their position. Ritter found Wha S. Kim not guity of even a modest driving infraction when she came up from behind and killed Camille Savoy as he was, according to an accident reconstructionist and a police expert, biking on the shoulder of 9W.



Wylie joins the NYPD and prosecutors on Staten Island who couldn't bring themselves to so much as issue a ticket to Anthony Tasso, Jr., the 23 year old driver-killer of upper-50s bank examiner Jerome Allen, as Tasso drove his uncle's Lexus SUV with a suspended license.



Wylie joins the Queens NYPD and prosecutors who couldn't bring themselves to so much as issue a ticket to 23 year old Jose Vicens as he came up from behind and killed 14 year old Andre Anderson as he was riding his bike.



The list goes on and on: A spectacularly caring and humane physician, Dr. Carl Nacht. Killed while cycling. Driver not ticketed.



Dr. Rachel Fruchter, 57, a graduate of Oxford with a Ph.D. from Rockefeller, a biochemist and professor of obstetrics. Killed while cycling in Prospect Park. Driver, who was not supposed to be in the park as he was, was ticketed. For equipment failure.

..

Must we supinely hope for injury or death while cycling of those loved by those in authority before they can bestir themselves to exercise their authority in a just, even-handed way...



For starters, I'd say demand answers of those whose failure to act in accord with the law and their responsibility to enforce, prosecute, and adjudicate it.

I am. I've written Justice Wylie to explain his thinking...

Great reporting, Richard! And if you ever hear from Judge Wylie (or if, after a reasonable time you don't) please let us know.

Republican Senatorial Candidate Linda McMahon’s plan to “create jobs” is actually a plan to enrich the rich at your expense. And to cost your job.

As a neighboring New Yorker, I’ve been bombarded with so-called “businesswoman” Linda McMahon’s televised promises to create “jobs jobs jobs” if she gets elected as Senator from Connecticut.

The commercials are nonstop, day and night, night and day.

So I went to her website, just as she encouraged me to do, and checked out her so-called jobs program.

The “program” is contained in a 20-page brochure, and it’s pretty self-evident that McMahon wants to bore you out of reading before you get down to the details — what little there is of them.

Instead, the first six pages lull you with cheap knocks at “career politicians,” paragraph after paragraph of generalities and nonsequiturs, and the valuable economic program news that “Linda and Vince McMahon are celebrating over 43 years of marriage…” a bulletin that ends with her grandchildren count.

Then, little by little, she begins to give away what she really intends to do if she can trick enough voters into voting for her. And if you read carefully enough, it gets mighty scary, mighty quick.

Four McMahon “initiatives” that can bring

the U.S. economy to its knees

McMahon favors four initiatives that she admits having lifted from the Reagan administration.

The first is to “reduce tax rates across the board.” Fine, but you’d better believe that the Wall Street billionaires and multi-millionaires who are socking it away will get a better break than you, fellow taxpayer. Want to bet it’ll work like this: You get $200. The billionaire gets $200,000 million. And then guess what happens to services, highways and other infrastructure? Or to your unemployment benefits, your Social Security or your Medicare? Or to Federal subsidies to schools? Or consequently, guess what happens to your school taxes? Or to the education your kids will get? The list goes on, but I think you get my drift. She'll reduce taxes mostly on the rich by reducing programs for the middle class and poor.

“Reduce regulations and mandates on business” is her second iconic Reagan Administration “achievement.” And what did that result in? Well, an unregulated Wall Street led to the economic meltdown we’re suffering from now, for example. And to the lack of safety enforcement that led to the BP blowout in the Gulf of Mexico.

The truth is, we need more regulations, sternly enforced if we want to save jobs. Those include jobs in small business that once were financed by banks. Unregulated banks have ceased financing small businesses because with no regulation they're free to gamble with depositors' money instead, enriching nobody except bankers. More regulation would also restore jobs lost in the Gulf region — jobs that range from fishing, to travel, to even oil drilling.

“Sound government finances. Don’t spend more than you can pay for,” is her third Reagan policy icon. Fine. If we had that rule during WWII, we would have lost WWII. And where was Linda McMahon when George W. Bush and his cronies were racking up the largest debt in American history? Gee, I didn’t hear from her then. The truth is, the government should control and pay back its debt. But there are times when only borrowing can help an individual—or the United States economy—survive. This is one of them.

“Sound money. Keep inflation low; keep the dollar strong,” is her last Reganomics mantra. Small problem. Inflation has never been lower. We’re teetering on the brink of deflation, not inflation. The dollar has recently gained impressive strength against the Euro. Give that wonderful news to all those unemployed people, Linda.

And she proposes more horrors:

Linda McMahon opposes tax increases and surcharges on the rich, who already are letting what’s the shrinking middle class do the heavy financial lifting while they buy yachts, McMansions, and multiple homes — and walk then away from mortgages at a faster rate than anyone else.

Linda McMahon would give rich investors a better tax break if they lose their investment money, not to you if you lose your job. She would “help [rich] people recover from the devastating losses in real estate and stock markets during the financial crises.” She doesn’t say a word about helping you survive a devastating job loss.

If you have a job, she’d export it to China. She says it in code by declaring she would “Resist protectionist policies that hamper global trade and investment.” She claims the Columbia, Panama and Korea Tree Trade agreements “would increase exports by more than 1%.” Small problems: Exports of what? Mostly of jobs that are already here, that’s what.

Incidentally, there’s a scandal brewing about Linda McMahon and steroids in professional wrestling.

But then, why is a “family values” person like McMahon promoting the violence of wrestling in the first place?

Evil Step Mother, 21st Century Version

Excerpted from a blog post by Lauren Heaton in the Yellow Springs, Ohio, NEWS (and you should read the rest and retch):

I'm not a mom, but I am a step-mom. I’m a step-mom who likes to cook all manner of new and surprising dishes and try them out on my captive consumers. Well, actually they wouldn’t eat it any other way.

The first dinner I ever made for “the kids” occurred shortly after we met. None of us knew anything about step-relationships, let alone how our individual personalities would mesh. If I was going to be part of the crew they were going to have to turn the kitchen pretty much entirely over to me, and I didn’t want to create false hopes that they would be seeing Kraft Mac ‘n Cheese and boiled peas every night. So I made the kids, ages 4, 7, 10 and 12, vegan shabu shabu, a Japanese hot pot with nappa cabbage, tofu and cellophane noodles in a citrus-soy fish broth.

Look, I'm as much a fan of quirky Yellow Springs as anyone else, but enough is enough! Have a heart, lady! Give the kids a cheeseburger!

"Police State USA?" Well thanks to its mayor, New York is working hard to earn that title.

You’re walking down the street. Say, on your way to the supermarket. A cop stops you and demands you lie down on the ground, face down. Then he frisks you.

Poof! You're forever a criminal suspect.

You haven’t done anything illegal. It doesn’t matter. The cop finds your driver’s license in your wallet and calls it in. That action puts your name in a database for suspicious people. Along with your picture. Now, whenever there’s a criminal investigation, people will be asked if they recognize you, if they know your name.

Chechnya? Moscow? Peking?

Nope. New York.

As New York Times columnist Bob Herbert recently pointed out, it happens with regularity to African-Americans and Hispanics in New York.

This is racist behavior. It’s police state behavior. And it’s disgraceful.

Why won't Napoleon Bonaparte Bloomberg
stop this disgraceful behavior?

It would stop in a second if Mayor Michael Bloomberg told his police commissioner, Ray Kelley, “Cut it out or you’re fired.”

Fat chance! Since Michael Bloomberg overthrew New York’s election laws and did the equivalent of what another pipsqueak tyrant, Napoleon Bonaparte did when he crowned himself emperor, New York is only for people Mayor Bloomberg thinks ought to be living here.

The Mayor effectively threw out term limit laws by making a devil’s compact with the City Council. It said, in effect, “Let’s all override the public referendum that imposed term limits.” Job-greedy City Councilmen went along.

Drowning out legitimate opposition

Then, with $60 million or so of campaign spending, Bloomberg drowned out the protests of anyone who’d dare run against him.

Now corporations have the same right to drown out the free speech of others, thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court. I’ve already made a case for why justices Roberts and Alito ought to be impeached. Now you know why Bloomberg out to be sent to the woodshed, too.

Not that it’ll ever happen. Unless you start to make a lot of noise.

Fair is fair. I earn 50 times as much income as you. So you should pay a much higher percentage of your income in taxes than me.

If that sounds like a whack-o theory to you, if it sounds like unfair taxation, it’s because you don’t earn over $10 million a year and have a team of lobbyists at your beck and call.

But a recent article in the New York Times serves as an infuriating reminder that incomes have been massively redistributed — out of the pockets of the poor and middle class, into the pockets of the filthy rich.

The Times article in question had to do with the news that New York State, desperate for income to run schools and maintain police and other public services, is trying to enact a law that would make hedge fund managers pay more tax on some of the money they earn.

Why rich hedge fund managers pay

at lower tax rates than you and me

Seems that hedge fund managers get 20 percent of any profits they produce for their customers. This can come to million, tens of millions, even hundreds of millions of dollars a year.

But the money is only taxed as a capital gain, which has a maximum tax rate of 15 percent.

Now a special rate on capital gains has its useful purposes. It encourages people to risk money to invest in businesses that may eventually produce growth for our economy.

Heads they win, tails you lose,

either way you're screwed

Problem is, the hedge fund managers aren’t risking their own money. They’re risking their clients’ money. Heads they win, tails their clients lose.

So let’s see. Let’s say I’m a hedge fund manager and I make $50 million in commissions. I pay 15 percent of that in taxes. Meanwhile, you’re a small plumbing contractor. In 2009 you earned $68,000. Your maximum tax rate on a good chunk of that money is 25 percent.

See, we’ve got to redistribute your earnings to hedge fund millionaires and billionaires. Who says so? The lobbyist who bought your Congressman and Senator say so. As do the tea bag heads and Republicans who are still talking about cutting taxes. It’s not your taxes they’re planning to cut, pal. It’s the taxes on billionaires.

We seem to get more prosperity

when tax rates on the rich are higher

Ironically, during the post WWII boom years, we had tax rates as high as 88 percent on the top income earners. Yet that was the age of prosperity that any of us old enough to remember look back on nostalgically—when almost anyone with a middle class job could afford to send a couple of kids to college entirely out of his own pocket, buy a house, earn a nice car, and still put a few bucks away for a rainy day.

Then the Reagan administration came. They gave us a recession, along with a drop in the maximum tax rate to 50 percent. Now we’re down to 35 percent and the economy’s in the toilet.

Conclusions, anyone?

BP to cleanup workers: "We don't care if you die of leukemia or brain damage. Wear a respirator and you're fired!"

The headline on Racewire is chilling. "BP Threatens to Fire Cleanup Workers Who Wear Their Own Safety Gear."

But at the same time, BP is not supplying respirators and other safety equipment to its cleanup crews.

Already the symptoms of illness are spreading. They include nausea, dizziness and breathing problems.

The article points out that both the oil and disperants getting sprayed on it are "highly toxic" and contain compounds that include benzene, tolulene and xylene. In the long run these can cause leukemia and brain damage.

So why is BP refusing to let its workers wear respirators? Your guess is as good as mine, and what I'm guessing is that BP doesn't want any "negative looking" photographs of people wearing respirators or hazmat suits — even though the workers are clearly dealing with hazardous materials. That kind of photograph in the media would intensify the well-deserved rage against BP.

So for the sake of nicer-looking publicity photographs, BP is willing to kill off some of the workers.

Surefire bet: If the lives of the cleanup workers aren't worth crap to BP, neither is yours.

The Louisiana Environmental Protection Network has since begun getting hazmat clothing and respirators to some of the work crews.

Will BP pay for this? Are they willing to accept a few bad photo ops if it saves workers' lives? Who knows? But you can put your name on a petition to make them pay here.

It's time to call a Brit a Brit. Got that, Brits?

We've got Brits calling Americans "anti-British" because somebody over here referred to BP by its old name, British Petroleum.

Never mind that, multi-national or not, BP it is British. Never mind that it was founded in Britain. Never mind that a substantial chunk of its stock is held in Britain. Never mind that the entire British pension system is shaky because it has so much invested in BP. Never mind that under British Common Law, if you own a company that creates damage, you as owner are liable for the damage.

No, we Americans are "anti-British" for wanting the owners of BP to pay for the damage.

Do I feel sorry for British pensioners who now will have less to live on, at least for a while? Sure. But I feel sorrier for the entire gulf coast of the United States, which is drowning under British Pet...oh, sorry, BP's mess.

Meanwhile, we've got President Obama sounding more and more like a Professor of Mediation Practice at the Graduate School of Social Work, and less and less like a President who can seize this opportunity, wring money out of a recalcitrant Congress, and apply it to an energy project that would resemble the Manhattan Project of WWII, or the space program of the 1960s.

Instead we get some Republican idiot in Congress, a Republican dunderhead from Texas named Joe Barton, apologizing to BP because we're pressuring it to pay up, and then apologizing for apologizing. And no doubt he'll eventually apologize for apologizing for apologizing.

I could probably go look up the links and put them in here, but I'm too down on current events. I've been down on it for weeks, which is why I'm posting so little lately.

Oh bother! And blah! Everything sucks. I'm going home.

Justices Roberts and Alito can be impeached and removed from office for the felony of perjury. It’s time to begin dumping these guys.

In his Senate confirmation hearings, John Roberts committed what clearly appears to be perjury. He stated he would abide by the principles of Stare Decicis, letting precedent rule.

For example during questioning by Senator Arlen Specter:

Sen Specter: In our initial conversation, you talked about the stability and humility in the law.

Would you agree with those articulations of the principles of stare decisis, as you had contemplated them, as you said you looked for stability in the law?

Roberts: Yes, Mr. Chairman, I would. I would point out that the principle goes back even farther than Cardozo and Frankfurter. Hamilton, in Federalist No. 78, said that, To avoid an arbitrary discretion in the judges, they need to be bound down by rules and precedents.

So, even that far back, the founders appreciated the role of precedent in promoting evenhandedness, predictability, stability, adherence of integrity in the judicial process.

Justice Samuel Alito testified similarly. You can read the pack of apparent lies he fed his Senatorial questioners about stare decicis here, but just for openers there’s this on Roe vs. Wade:

The things that I said in the 1985 memo were a true expression of my views at the time from my vantage point as an attorney in the Solicitor General's office. But that was 20 years ago and a great deal has happened in the case law since then. Thornburg was decided and Webster and then Casey and a number of other decisions. So the stare decisis analysis would have to take account of that entire line of case law.

Sounds like he, too, swore under oath that stare decicis would be a guiding principle for him, right?

But once seated on the bench, the unspoken The Star-Ledger in New Jersey reported,

"With a stroke of the pen, five justices wiped out a century of American history devoted to preventing corporate corruption of our democracy," declared Fred Wertheimer, president of the Washington-based government-watchdog group Democracy 21.

Two of those five were Roberts and Alito, who under oath testified they would respect stare decicis.

And the bad news created by these liars keeps happening. This morning the New York Times suggested in in an editorial concerning a case in which moneyed interest won a case objecting to their political opponents obtaining matching funds that there is more to come:

It seems likely that the Roberts court will use this case to continue its destruction of the laws and systems set up in recent decades to reduce the influence of big money in politics. By the time it is finished, millionaires and corporations will have regained an enormous voice in American politics, at the expense of candidates who have to raise money the old-fashioned way and, ultimately, at the expense of voters.

It’s time to throw the perjurers out of the court for these and similar high crimes and misdemeanors. If Congress (and then the Senate) fail to act, most of their members will not be in office come the next election. With a precious few exceptions, there is always somebody out there with more money to spend than you have.

So will you speak up Mr. or Ms. Congressional Represenative? And you, Senator?

I’m waiting.

L’Atelier Joel Robuchon vs. Le Grand Véfour—a meditation on why the hell anybody would pay $150 or so for lunch in Paris

Top: Robuchon. Below: Véfour.

I can't believe—well, of course I do believe it, but not really—that I'm writing a blog piece comparing two of the most expensive restaurants in Paris.

I mean, there was a time when simply reading the prices on the menus would have given me a severe case of the vapors. Those were the days, half a century ago, when my bible for European travel was called Europe on $5 a Day, and five bucks really was my outer limit.

Well, a buck in the year 2010 isn’t what it used to be, but you really could get by, and comfortably at that, on $5 a head before 1961, provided there were two of you sharing a hotel room.

Of course, at the time Joel Robuchon was a pre-adolescent, not a restaurateur. Le Grand Véfour on the other hand had been around since they were decapitating royalty at Place de la Concorde. But it was the two buck meals on the Boulevard St. Michele, (with some scuzzy wine) and not haute cuisine that was on my radar back in my threadbare youth.

Cash, conflict and Paris: leftist or rightist it’s always nice to have money

Okay, so now it’s different. Conflicted leftist that I am, I arrived in Paris last week with the Crank’s beautiful girlfriend and a wallet stuffed with credit cards and Euros, still firmly possessed of the belief that Congress and Obama ought to tax the rich until they bleed green ink. But you wouldn’t have known it to watch me. The Boulevard St. Germain branch of Sonia Rykiel was all but flying banners out front that said, “Welcome Back, Crank’s Beautiful Girlfriend. Oh, and you, too, Crank.”

A day and several thousand bucks worth of frocks later—frocks that will make the Crank’s beautiful girlfriend look even more spectacularly beautiful—we were seated in Robuchon’s workshop.

Workshop—the dictionary definition of the French word atelier—is exactly what the place is. Most of the customers sit lunch counter style around various kitchen stations, their dishes in front of them on place mats, watching Robuchon’s kitchen elves do their magic.

I say most because if you have the temerity to reserve less than a month in advance you may find yourself in Robuchonian Siberia, seated at a shelf up against a plate glass window, as if you were sipping coffee from a paper cup in Starbucks. Instead of watching kitchen elves, you will find yourself staring out on Rue Montelambert, where not much seems to be going on for a street in Paris.

“Don’t talk. Shut up and observe how damn clever I am.”

This is not the kind of place where you would simultaneously bring your spouse, your boss, your boss’s spouse and a couple of clients to dinner. Conversation, save with the two persons at your elbows, is virtually impossible. The focus is on the food and even more so on its preparation, unless of course you are at the shelf in Siberia. observing taxis slowing down to check for potential passengers at the hotel next door.

There is something supremely egotistical about the place. Yes, the food is very good. (I had a high cholesterol triple-header: a cold country paté, followed by a sautéed duck liver with a crusted exterior, followed by a kind of steak au poivre and a glass of I-forget-what wine.) Yes, the service is unobtrusive and flawless.

But somehow, it’s all about Joel and his behind-the-counter acolytes. One is left with a lingering impression that the food and staff are there simply there to help you appreciate the brilliance of Joel Robuchon, who tends to build his creations vertically, like a clever child cantilevering pieces from his lego set. (See the top photograph)

A restaurant to enjoy, with company

Le Grand Véfour, on the other hand, believes in starched white tablecloths, attentive waiters who clearly specialize in some aspect of the meal (sommelier, cheese waiter, captain, and so on) and who seemed to have a passion for their specialty.

They design plates too, but the design sensibility is different. Imagine a zen master working hand-in-glove with Pablo Picasso. (See the lower photograph.) And good conversation here is expected to be part of the meal, rather than hushed awe. Pleasant chats were going on at all the tables around us. (For the record, Guy Martin is the brilliant chef, but I had to go hunting on the Internet to find his name.)

We chose the 80-something Euro prix fix e menu which declared that there would be four courses. Whatever else you do in life, for the love of God do not teach those folks at Le Grand Vefour how to count.

First there was an amuse bouche, a cool and creamy soup. Then a paté so rich and tasty that I am still daydreaming about it, almost a week later. It arrived on a plate with a typically zen-like arrangement of complimentary vegetable elements, which I gather is designed to put one’s mind and stomach at peace, before devouring every last morsel.

Next I had cod as I had never tasted (or seen) cod before. The Crank’s Beautiful Girlfriend had a chicken breast that was not like any chicken breast she had ever eaten before. Then a cheese plate arrived with a choice of wonderfully exotic cheeses, from the firm and intensely pungent to the impressively runny and wildly stinky. I chose three and then stopped myself, but the cheese waiter seemed perfectly willing to keep going if I wanted to. Nor were the portions—pardon the pun that comes to mind—cheesy, in the nouvelle cuisine manner. These were good-size hunks, not miniscule slivers.

After that came dessert (which was really two different desserts on one plate.) And finally, a long thin dish for each of us, with another zen-like arrangement, this one of different shaped bonbons.

As at Robuchon, we ordered wine by the glass, but in this case a sommelier with a powerful sense of the gravity of his calling stood by to offer his recommendations.

We sat down for lunch at 1 PM and left after 3, deliriously happy and convinced we would not need to eat again for the next 72 hours (although we did).

And here’s the point of it all

Why would anyone in his right mind pay (after wine and currency translation) about $150 per head for lunch? I might as well ask you why you might pay $150 per ticket to see people dancing around and singing songs on a stage on Broadway when you can see the same thing free right outside the door in the looney bin that’s Times Square.

It’s a memory. It’s a pleasurable experience. It’s a postcard home. It’s a conversation for the next day and perhaps for days afterward. It’s a blog piece. It’s something to remember with all the fondness you might also have for a $20 elevator ride to the top of the empire state building so you could look out with the rest of the crowd up there and enjoy the view for a few minutes—after standing in line for an hour.

There’s one big difference, of course. Gastro tourism comes with seductive aromas, and textures and flavors and arrangements and—yes—calories.

How many times will you go back to the top of the Empire State Building after you’ve been there once? For me the answer is, not again if I can help it. Once was a memorable and positive experience, but it gave me as much of a memory as I need. I might say the same about Joel Robuchon’s ego-marinated atelier in Paris.

But le Grand Véfour? If I can remember where I buried those gold ingots, I’ll definitely sell a few and go again.

Oh no, not again! Yes, again! The Crank temporarily closes his blog and goes back to Paris for a week.

What can I say? The Crank's beautiful girlfriend is a Paris junky. So back to the 6ieme, (or is it the 7ieme?) we go, to figure out something new to do in the same place as usual.

We'll be back after the Memorial Day weekend. Crank you then.

The Broomstick Principle—how Americans are getting ripped off by powerful interests, a few coins or dollars at a time

A story first: years ago I met a well-to-do man who told me how his struggling immigrant family put him through college.

“Mom and Dad owned little New York corner deli. Mom hung a kitchen broom next to the cash register. As each customer checked her stuff out, Mom would add in the price of the broom.

"If a customer balked, Mom would say, ‘Oh, I’m sorry, I thought that was your broom,’ and she’d give the money back, but customers didn’t catch her often. Well let me tell you something, that broom sent me and my brothers to college.”

It’s easier to get away with stealing nickels and dimes and a few dollars over a long time than it is to steal millions at one time. People don’t notice it, or figure it’s not worth the hassle to put up an argument over a few dimes, or these days a few dollars, filched from their pockets. Let's call that The Broomstick Principle.

Major bank thefts—only
you're the bank and the bank
is the thief

The Broomstick Principle is the same system that banks are using to shake the loose change out of your pockets.

You want to carry last night's restaurant bill for a month? No problem, it’ll cost you a mere nine bucks. Nevermind that the nine bucks represents 28 percent interest a month on your debt, while the banks are borrowing the money they lend you from the taxpayers for next to zero percent.

The Mafia never had it so good

In the days when America had usury laws, even the local Mafia loan shark didn’t earn those kinds of profit margins. And unlike the corner mafioso, the banks are stealing from millions of Americans every day.

Keeping the greedy banks from feeling free to pick your pockets a few bucks at a time is why the consumer protection law now before Congress is so important, and why the majority of Republicans as well as some Democrats deserved to be slammed for watering it down.

Now The Broomstick Principle
returns to the supermarket line

While I’m doing the slamming, I feel I ought to mention the “good works” of the D’Agostino supermarket chain in New York. It’s virtually impossible to go through their checkout lines without having the checkout clerk demand that you contribute money to one of D’Agostino’s favorite charities.

“Would you like to contribute your change to…?” Or simply, “Do you want to contribute to…?” on the checkout line forces the customer to say, in effect, either no I won’t, or no I don't want to, or no I can’t afford to, or no I’m a grouch. Rather than put up with that kind of hassle, many customers open their wallets.

It can be only a buck or two, or a few nickels and dimes at a time, but it adds up. Suppose I want to contribute to my own favorite charity, not to one of the charities the D’Agostinos want to give money to? Do I have to plead my case on the checkout line? No wonder those lines are so slow.

Yes, the charities are all good causes, so far as I know. And besides how much could it cost each customer?

It might be a money grab
in the multi-million dollar class

Well, cumulatively, it might run into the hundreds of thousands, or millions, pressured from our pockets, one checkout customer at a time for the sake of D’Agostino causes.

One also wonders if these contributions aren’t another form of “I thought it was your broom.” Is one hundred percent of what’s collected forwarded to the charities? Is D’Agostino taking a tax deduction that belongs to its customers? Is there even an honest auditor who is tracking and publishing the record?

I don’t have the answers. I do know that because we only get relieved of a little bit of their money at a time, Americans aren’t mad enough about it, whether it happens in the supermarket, at the bank, or online. Not nearly mad enough.

"Drill baby, drill!" Eh Senator McCain?

It's hard to calculate all the damage done by the latest oil rig disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. But at the very least:

•50,000 gallons a day of raw petroleum are gushing, so far unstoppably, not into America's energy stream but into the Gulf of Mexico where the toxic goo is...

• Killing fish and birds

• Destroying the fishing industry

• Threatening the economy of Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas and the Texas Gulf Coast.

• Creating a future public health disaster.The odds are that 20 to 40 years from now there will be an epidemic of cancer among those who deliberately or by chance eat the carcinogen-laden products of the gulf. Like shrimp? Forget about it now, pal.

Shame on you, Senator McCain. Shame on you Sarah Palin. Shame on you every Republican who either chanted "Drill baby drill," or sympathized with those who did, or took campaign contributions from the petroleum industry.

Nature is a hanging judge. And she is hanging the future of the American Gulf Coast states. You're doing a helluva job, Senator.

Now, watch the video:

And now an important contribution to American culture and youthful aspirations from Diesel Jeans

I don't know about you, but the first time I saw this I wanted to vomit. In the past Diesel's advertising has gone bottom feeding for attention with near-pornographic images that included S&M scenes, complete with topless female dominatrixes holding bullwhips.

But this isn't merely pornographic. This is sociopathic. It discourages exactly what America needs, and encourages what we don't need. And it's serious stuff. What'll they be telling kids next? "It's cool to be a fool, so drop out of school?"

Diesel's outrageous pandering in search of attention is nauseating. And it doesn't just stop with this headline. More copy from the campaign: "Smart may have the brains but stupid has the balls." If you get deep enough into the advertising, you'll eventually discover that it purports to be encouraging out-of-the-box thinking. But hardly anybody, most especially kids, is going to go digging for Diesel's own textual analysis.

Sounds to me like an invitation to hold up a convenience store and gun down everybody who happens to be there.

If Diesel has nothing better to say, it has nothing America wants. Don't buy Diesel Jeans.

Gun “rights” advocate tells point-blank lies to panic his constituents. The loser? United States security. Is this subversive?

The gun lobbies really ought to be more careful whom they put on their mailing lists. It would lessen the likelihood that responsible citizens like me would call them out.

Case in point: I very recently received an e-mail from Dudley Brown, Executive Director of the National Association for Gun Rights. That's his picture at right.

Gun-crazy organzation unwittingly

sends the crank an e-letter

“Dear NAGR supporter,” Dudley Brown’s e-letter began.

Me an NAGR supporter? If he believed that, he had to be smoking something highly illegal. But I read on.

“Please forgive my bluntness, but the United States Government thinks you’re a terrorist,” he informed me.

Well, now I knew he was pulling my chain. But I figured I’d read along with the gag.

Dudley’s next statement was, “And now they’re trying to pass a bill allowing gun-grabbing Attorney General Eric Holder to revoke all your Second Amendment rights at will if he has ‘a reasonable belief’ you could pose a threat.’”

Personally, I think that if the AG really did had a reasonable belief that I’m a threat, he ought to make sure I don’t have a gun. Hey, you wouldn’t want me to shoot up a subway car full of innocent commuters, or blow away anybody’s kids at some high school. So what’s Dudley complaining about?

Goons, gun owners and

“little old church ladies”

Dudley goes on to tell me that the “goons” at the Department of Homeland Security has targeted “gun owners, honorably discharged veterans and little old church ladies as threats to the security and stability of the United States of America.”

Really? Well, not only that, says Dudley, but…

“Even a gesture as simple as placing a pro-gun bumper sticker on your car, or supporting a pro-gun candidate makes you a potential “domestic terrorist” in the eyes of the thugs running our government.”

Holy cow! Wow! Yeow! That really does sound scary. It’s even scarier than that when Dudley declares, “and to add insult to injury, Barack Obama’s Surveillance Czar Janet Napolitano sees no difference between law-abiding gun owners like you and violent racists who murder and vandalize.”

What in the world is

Dudley talking about?

That’s absolutely nightmare-making—all those loaded words like “murder” and “violent racists” until you find out what the hell it is that Dudley is talking about:

“I’m talking about H.R. 2159,the shockingly misnamed ’Denying Firearms and Explosives to Dangerous Terrorists Act of 2009.’” Dudley’s walk on the wild side of the Big Lie even applies to Republicans like Peter King who generally supports a pretty wide open interpretation of the Second Amendment.

“These anti-gun Republicans-in-Name-Only want to disarm you because they fear your pro-liberty views,” says Dudley, and in addition…

“In fact, your love of freedom frightens them so much that they’re now going to great lengths to label you a domestic terrorist.”

Boy, that had me so scared that I went and looked up the actual bill, “The Denying Firearms and Explosives to Dangerous Terrorists Act of 2009.”

The truth about HR 2159

And guess what?

Not a word in the bill about bumper stickers, little old ladies, or honorably discharged veterans. It’s all about people who are “known (or appropriately suspected) to be or have been engaged in conduct constituting, in preparation for, in aid of, or related to terrorism, or providing material support thereof, and the Attorney General has a reasonable belief that the prospective transferee may use a firearm in connection with terrorism.”

It also applies to people who “may use explosives in connection with terrorism.”

Nowhere does the bill single out you, me, the little old lady next door or war vets—unless you happen to be planning to blow up an airplane full of innocent passengers, or a government building full of American citizens, or you happen to be planning to shoot up a U.S. Army base. Acts of terrorism or treason, all.

Telling lies for fun

(and your money)

So either Dudley is lying through his teeth to freak out people who simply happen to own guns so they’ll send him money, or he has a constituency of traitors and enemy agents—which of course would imply his National Association for Gun Rights is a subversive organization.

Problem is, if Dudley and the National Association for Gun Rights get their way, it’ll be all that much easier for a terrorist to launch the next 9/11 or Oklahoma City. Or simply to walk into a crowded room full of innocent people somewhere and open fire with his personal AK47, bought and paid for at some gun show somewhere.

Can any patriotic citizen seriously be for that?

When the going gets tough, the mavericks turn into jackasses

Looks like maverick John McCain is about to become ex-maverick John McCain in an effort to keep on being Senator John McCain.

Turning his back on some of the key things he stood for only a year or so ago, he's now bending with the wind on, for starters, immigration reform.

This is the guy who once put up with abuse as a POW? His spine seems to have turned to jelly.