Well, at least you won’t have to put it up on blocks when you work on the brakes.

Here’s a rare example of honesty in autobile advertising from the Sept. 28 issue of the Yellow Springs (Ohio) News [http://www.ysnews.com/classifieds/index.html ]:

"1985 VOLVO 240 WAGON. Body worn and rusty. Brakes need work. A/C doesn’t work. But otherwise in rather good condition! Great tires and engine. $500 or best offer. 767-1778."

Sloppy urinal thinking: How the world is getting destroyed by clever idiots

I am grateful to TheReynoldsRant.blogspot.com for having posted this photograph of a urinal in a Burger King restaurant somewhere in Asia.

Look closely and you’ll discover a tiny TV screen atop the urinal. According to The Reynolds Rant, “It's ... advertising Burger King's flame-broiled Whoppers. And I'm still impressed with automatic paper-towel dispensers!”

Yes, the technology is weirdly impressive. However, the choice of what to advertise is stupidly suicidal.

But let’s take a step back from the urinal, so to speak, and look at the big picture.

IT’S YOUR FAULT, DUDE!

Advertisers are in deep – dare I say doo-doo in the context of this story? Their problem is people like you. Yes, you!

Instead of sitting like a good little couch potato in front of a TV screen, the way most of the western world did for about 50 years, you’re sitting like a bad little couch potato in front of a computer screen, right now, not watching commercials.

You are just like millions of people who are forsaking their TVs for their computers, or watching TV but employing one technology or another to zap and zip right past the advertising. While advertising costs go up, the audiences that marketers can reach by traditional means are going down. This is leading to – believe me, I know some of these folks – wild panic on Madison Avenue.

Frantic advertising agencies and their clients are hunting desperately for places to put selling messages that you will see and pay attention.

They spend small fortunes to have a shot of this actor or that actor sipping a particular brand of soft drink – or driving a particular automobile – in a feature film. It’s called “product placement.” As if that will get you to levitate out of your movie theater chair and run to your car dealer.

But as TV advertising used to say back when anybody was watching, “Wait! There’s more!”

“QUICK! GET ME 50 THIRSTY HOOKERS!”

In the name of “viral advertising,” marketers now pay good-looking people (or is it hookers?) to go into bars and loudly order a drink made with the vodka or other booze of the moment. What kind of virus will potential customers catch from this “noisy hooker” effort?

Instead of making advertising that informs and delights you, agencies tell their clients to open stores that helps to “brand” the parent company. Walk around New York and you’ll find a Hershey’s store, a Disney store and an NBC store, among others. There’s even an NBA store.

Is Hershey really going to sell significantly more Hershey bars around the nation because they have one store in Times Square? Are you going to watch more NBC programming because you have a coffee mug that says “NBC” on it? Will they sell more basketballs in Zanesville, Ohio, because there’s an NBA store on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan? Gimme a break!

AD AGENCIES TO THEIR CLIENTS:
“WOW, ARE WE SUPER-SMART!”

Despite the minimal mass impact of some of these “viral” ploys, ad people regularly congratulate themselves in front of their clients for being so clever.

I guess, the ultimate in this cleverness is putting a TV screen running a looped commercial for Burger King on top of urinals in Burger King restaurants.

Except for one small problem:

DO YOU REALLY WANT TO
ASSOCIATE YOUR FOOD WITH URINE?

I wish I knew who said, “Nothing is idiot proof. The idiots are all too clever.”

While urinal tops might be a great place to advertise medicines like Avodart (“Having trouble going right now? Ask your doctor…”) you have to be a total idiot to get your customers thinking “urine” every time they think about your hamburgers.

But advertising isn’t the only field infested with clever idiots. Consider Washington.

CLEVER IDIOCY BY THE POTOMAC

The Pentagon invaded Iraq with about a tenth as many troops as they needed to hold the country, maintain the peace, protect property from looters, and keep insurgents from infiltrating from abroad. See, by invading on the cheap we could save a lot of money.

That clever Don Rumsfeld figured out that we’d only need a tiny number of troops and a bunch of bombs to blow Saddam Hussein out of power. So that’s what the Pentagon did, failing to think two minutes ahead.

The result is a war that has lasted longer than WWII and cost American taxpayers in excess of $371 billion as of this writing. [http://nationalpriorities.org/index.php?option=com_wrapper&Itemid=182]

It has also resulted in a body count of needlessly wasted American soldiers that is rapidly approaching the number of lives lost on 9/11, [http://icasualties.org/oif/] and perhaps 40,000 or more Iraqis killed. [http://www.iraqbodycount.org/] No wonder so many of them are beginning to hate us.

"NEGOTIATE? NUKE YOU, PAL!"

Nuclear issues? “We don’t negotiate with terrorists,” say the clever idiots. So instead of finding a way to defuse Iran, Clever Condi is helping to drive them into a nuclear frenzy. Ditto Korea. Ditto God-only-knows-where-next.

The clever idiocy marches on, whether you’re discussing the Bush administration’s fiscal policy, social policies, or immigration policy.

They’ve been clever, all right. Clever enough to be driving American lives and American jobs and the American standard of living right into the toilet.

Somebody ought to take out an ad on a urinal.

Revealed! The Crank's secret plan to end the American automobile industry crisis – with an assist from the CIA

Look at the headlines, man. It’s disgusting.

At the height of the spring selling season, GM sales declined sharply.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13687071/

Not to mention Ford. When Ford effectively fires a member of the Ford family from the CEO spot, as they recently did to Bill Ford, (He said he resigned, but hey, do you really suppose he did it voluntarily?) you gotta know the outhouse is overflowing.

Chrysler’s sales are also in horrid shape and its use of its Chairman, Dr. Dieter Zetsche (“Dr. Z” to you) are an advertising industry joke.
http://www.stevensilvers.com/2006/08/chryslers_ad_ca.html

Meanwhile, Toyota, Honda and other Asian and European competitors in the automobile market are eating the America's lunch – such as there is of lunch these days.

So what’s a poor American automaker to do? I’m so glad you asked.

NO, THIS IS DEFINITELY NOT A LECTURE ON
FUEL EFFICIENCY AND CONSERVATION

I’ve discovered a huge, hungry market for American automobiles. It’s a market where former buyers of American cars have purchased nearly no automobiles at all for the past 47 or so years. That’s what I said. No automobiles. None, nada, zero. You guessed it.

I’m talking about Cuba.

Car ownership there is frozen at its 1958 level. Well, not exactly frozen. It has actually gone down a tiny bit over the past 48 years or so, from 24 to 23 automobiles per 1,000 inhabitants. That’s right. Twenty-three humans per car.
http://www.netforcuba.org/InfoCuba-EN/Economy/Consumption.htm

Meanwhile, the existing automotive rolling stock in Cuba looks like a cross between an antique car rally and the junkyard behind Rent-A-Wreck. If you don’t believe me, check this out:
http://cuba-automobiles.com/

It’s not that the Cubans aren’t trying. They’ve restored, and re-restored, and re-re-re-re-restored every American car on the Island. As one Cuban down there said recently, “It’s like living in a museum.”

So what’s with this ridiculous embargo on sending automobiles to Cuba – an embargo that we’ve had in force for nearly half a century? It hasn’t unseated Castro. It hasn’t made Cuba any more, or less Democratic. It hasn't done squat. Except for one thing.

The embargo’s only achievement will be to make 23 out of every 1,000 Cubans pretty well off if they ever get to sell their antique clunkers on the U.S. classic car market.

THANK YOU CIA FOR THIS NEXT
NUGGET OF USEFUL INTELLIGENCE

According to the CIA Factbook, -- Listen, I know the CIA is a bunch of dunderheads when it comes to intelligence on terrorists, but presumably they know how to crib census figures from the Cuban government – there are 11,346,670 Cubans living in Cuba.

If we simply sold a replacement Ford, Chevy or Dodge to every car-owning Cuban, and if my arithmetic is correct, America’s automakers could sell 206,973 cars – close to a quarter of a million of them! – to the Cubans next year.

THINK OF IT! WE CAN SAVE
DR. Z’S PATHETIC BUTT

And if we shut down the embargo completely, allowing Cubans to make as much money as, say, the Argentinians who own 129 cars per 1,000 inhabitants, US automakers could sell over 1, 463,720 cars to Cuba next year.

That would save thousands of Detroit jobs, provide a huge shot in the arm for automobile company stockholders, and rescue the sorry butts of future Bill Fords and wannabe actors like “Dr. Z” at Chrysler-Daimler.

CLASSIC CAR DEALERS WILL PROFIT, TOO.

How will Cubans be able to afford American cars with sticker prices of, say, $20,000 and up? Simply by trading in their old wrecks, which may fetch $100,000 or more each on the classic car market in the USA.

It’ll be a bonanza for the folks who restore cars. And for classic car dealers. And for American automobile workers. And for stockholders in Ford, GM and Daimler-Chrystler. And for the whole stock market.

So write to your Congressman. Tell that lazy hack that you want to lift the embargo against Cuba. If you're the cautious type, go halfway. Tell your Congressperson you don't want to lift the whole embargo. Just the embargo on automobile trade. If you don't want to explain the whole thing, just copy and paste this article into an e-mail to your Congressional representative and Senators.

Remember, there are strong odds that your free trade-boosting Congresssloth is only in favor of free trade when it’s free trade he happens to like. Make him put his vote where his big slobbering mouth is.

Cuba libre? Maybe not yet. But let’s at least save American auto makers and liberate the trade in automobiles.

The man who came to dinner – screwing up traffic, causing infuriating delays, and further metastasizing the unconscionable mess he’s making everywhere

So I was on the Madison Avenue bus on my way home last night and nothing, nothing, nothing whatsoever was moving faster than two miles an hour. Despite noise ordinances, it was Honk-Yer - #@!!**! - Horn-City. There was a traffic jam ahead as far as the eye could see.

After a while I looked out of the window. Ah hah!

There were vastly too many brand new, black SUV’s parked in no-parking zones. And lots of big guys, in dark suits, with identical funny lapel pins, were standing around, shifting from foot to foot, trying to look inconspicuous. If they were carrying huge Dayglo signs saying “Cop” it couldn’t have been more obvious.

George Bush was in town.

Part of the reason for the President coming to New York was to visit the UN, a legitimate Presidential function. Another part was to lay a wreath on the 9/11 site, which was either a legitimate show of concern, or a crass political act by a politician in deep political doo-doo, depending on your degree of cynicism.

But streets were blocked off into the low East 70’s, while the UN is in the East 40s and Ground Zero is so far downtown that the streets there aren’t even numbered. So what was going on?

Turns out, some rich contributor had invited George to dinner on the Upper East Side. When a rich contributor not only forks over bundles of cash but also feeds the president, you can bet he wants some special dispensation that you and I couldn’t even afford to think about.

But why should the people of New York, who were stiffed after 9/11 and continue to get stiffed by George Bush, have to pay for his security when he visits New York to raise money for himself and his political cronies? Why don't we tell him to provide his own security at his own expense, and not to block traffic or we'll ticket every Secret Service vehicle in town?

I’ve already had a few things to say about this. See "Security detail? We don't got no stinking security detail" at
http://thenewyorkcrank.blogspot.com/2006_06_01_
thenewyorkcrank_archive.html

I wonder if Michael Bloomberg, who’s reportedly is toying with the idea of a Presidential run on the Republican ticket, enjoys shafting the citizens who voted for him by delaying us from getting home so Bush can raise money to use against our interests?

Is this Bloomberg’s way of sucking up to George? Was Bloomberg perhaps a co-host of this toadying dinner? I have no idea. Full and frank disclosure is not part of the MO of either of these politicians, so your guess is as good as mine. But I welcome your guess anyway, if it's printable.

What did the 14 year old boy say after he was “abused” by Debra LaFave? “Thank you, God!”

Somebody, PLEASE explain how the kid was abused by enjoying his teacher's sexual favors. This wasn’t abuse. This was every 14 year-old-boy’s dream.

Little wonder there’s a “Free Debra” website at http://debra-lafave.tjp.hu/

Or take a hike with your browser over to http://gcruse.typepad.com/the_owners_manual/2004/11/debra_lafave_su.html and take a look at all the other blonde-haired, mostly hot-looking, boy-abusing women. Where the hell were they all when I was a 14 year old boy?

BLAME POLITICAL CORRECTNESS

There’s a big difference between an adult male seducing or raping a 14 year old girl, and an adult woman with a boy.

Boys like having sex with gorgeous women. Boys dream about having sex with gorgeous women. Boys talk constantly about having sex with gorgeous women. Sometimes they lie and say they did just to win the admiration of their peers.

For sure, any 14 year old boy who actually manages to sleep with a hot-looking teacher like LaFave will win the undying envy of all his friends.

Maybe some politically correct fools don’t get it. Too bad. Nobody’s demanding that adult women sleep with 14 year old boys. Thanks to physiology, It’s a matter of choice -- especially for the boys.

FOR PROSECUTORS IT’S PROBABLY
BETTER THAN THEIR OWN SEX LIVES

Prosecutors seem to love exploiting cases like this. Why not? The good looking babe is a guarantee of hordes of press photographers and TV cameras and tons of the publicity that prosecutors seem to crave.

Okay, okay, so let’s be fair and try to find an opposing point of view. Here’s one:

THE OTHER SIDE OF THE STORY

A psychiatrist I know quite well insists – if I understand her drift ¬¬– that because a teacher is an authority figure, the teacher is also a parent figure, and that therefore an adult woman having sex with a 14 year old boy is psychologically tantamount to incest.

But c'mon! Does LaFave look like your mom? All I can say in response is that my psychiatrist friend – herself a spectacular beauty – was never a 14 year old boy, thank goodeness. Neither, in my opinion, was Freud. He simply morphed, fully-bearded, out of a chaise lounge in Vienna one morning.

I gotta tell you, if a gorgeous blonde seduced me when I was 14, I might have a lot fewer problems with authority than I have today.

Why is it so infuriatingly hard these days to have an original idea that knocks this guy?

I woke up at three in the morning with what I thought was a new idea.

“I’m a genius!” I congratulated myself. “I’m brilliant! Why didn’t I think of this before?”

“This” was the notion of comparing George Bush to “The Boy Who Cried Wolf.” You know – the Aesop‘s fable about a lying shepherd boy who keeps announcing that a wolf is attacking his flock so often that when a real wolf finally comes, nobody will help the little snot and the wolf eats up his flock.

Perfect metaphor for the worst American president in history and his “war against WMD” in Iraq, right? Especially now that we have some wolves developing nukes in North Korea and Iran.

Right. In fact, I was so right that it turns out the same thought also occurred to, oh, maybe twenty billion or so other bloggers. For example, here:

http://www.hoolinet.com/IraqandtheMisuseoftheWaronTerror/
TheBoyWhoCriedWolf/tabid/98/Default.aspx

And here:

http://www.alternet.org/story/32752/

And here:

www.bloggerheads.com/archives/ 2005/07/the_boy_who_cri.asp - 18k –

And…oh, enough already. The only thing I want to know is when George's nose will start growing. But I suppose that's another story.

Leggo (not leg) of Lamb? Foam THIS in your bouche and amuse it!

The upmarket chefs of this planet are getting out of hand. It’s time to round all of them up and take them away for the good of culinary civilization. Lock them up in a re-education camp where they can learn that beyond basic nutrition, the primary reason people like to eat is because food is supposed to taste good.

But perhaps I ought to go way back to the very beginning: 1959. I was then a 19 year old kid set loose in Europe for a year, and when I got to Paris for the first time, I discovered that food actually could be delicious.

THIS WAS A HUGE, HUGE, HUGE DISCOVERY

I grew up in a household where my mother broiled the life out of flounder and served it to us, dry and brittle and fishy-smelling. So I grew up thinking, “Fish – ugh!”

She did the same cruel thing to calves’ liver. Yecch! She could burn a steak beyond recognition. Phtooey! Her knowledge of salad began and ended with Iceberg lettuce, served without salad dressing. Blagh!

Then suddenly I found myself in Paris on $5 a day, way back when when French food was really food, a buck was a buck, and five bucks a day could still get you not only a clean-ish room but also a meal that featured a pate de fois gras, canard a l’orange, pommes en huile, bread unlike any other bread in the world, and Camembert cheese for dessert. Heaven, I was in heaven!

BUT SOMETHING WENT HAYWIRE

Chefs have gone from being craftsmen of flavor to pretentious wannabe visual artists and architects. They don't cook food, they construct it. Unfortunately, most of these constructions have nothing to do with tasting delicious.

It started in the 1970s, with something called “nouvelle cuisine,” meant to replace all the heavy, buttery, sauce-y, beautiful-tasting stuff I loved so much in 1959. Nouvelle was described, not entirely tongue-in-cheek, as “four Q-tips artfully placed around a lettuce leaf, accompanied by a drop of cranberry juice.”

It’s only gotten worse since then. Now the objective seems to be creating something you can hang on the wall and visit in a museum.

TASTE? DON’T BE RIDICULOUS. WHO NEEDS TASTE?

In August, I ate at Nougatine, New York celebrity chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten’s "informal" appendage to his flagship Restaurant Jean-Georges at Columbus Circle.

Early on, something arrived at the table. Nature’s kindness protects me from recalling the full details with total nauseating accuracy, for the same reason that people who’ve been gutted by a bayonet are sometimes protected from their pain by an endorphin rush. All I can tell you is that it was – foamed.

AYIEEE! FOAMED!

I think it was the dressing on the salad. Or maybe not. Doesn’t matter. The point us, unless it’s either beer, or whipped cream, or steamed milk on top of cappuccino, foam is not fun to eat. It is not delicious. It doesn’t belong on a plate, most especially not in a high priced restaurant.

Did whatever it was at least have a taste? None that I can recall with any pleasure. There was also an “amuse bouche” served in what my memory tells me was either a shot glass or an espresso cup. I wish I could remember this better (Could it have been “Pea Soup Jean-Georges?”) but I was focused on getting to the airport. I was heading for France.

The next day I was in the homeland of great cuisine. Alas, the homeland has turned into Foamland. I found myself drowning in a sea of unordered foamed soups and sauces, served compliments of the chef in teensy-weensy glasses or microscopic eye cups to amuse my bouche.

WHERE IS THE OUTRAGED PEASANTRY
NOW THAT WE NEED THEM?

My first night in France, staying in an ancient chateau in Normandy, I had hoped for simple local Norman peasant food -- fresh shell fish from the nearby sea, the local apple and pear crops of Calvados country and the great local cheeses like Pont l’Eveque.

Fat chance!

Instead, the chateau was serving something that looked as if it had been created in the studio of Piet Mondrian out of acrylic paint.

What I thought I had ordered translated as “lamb cooked for a long time.” What I actually got was stewed-to-shreds lamb molded into something that looked like a giant Leggo, accompanied by a shot glass containing several tiny balls of roasted potato. Both were counterbalanced, like a Frank Lloyd Wright residential building, on something that resembled a long glass ashtray. It was roughly three inches wide by twelve inches long.

Of course they also served a foamed something-or-other. Plus another amuse bouche – this one might even have been enjoyable if it were served in something bigger than a sawed-off shot glass – featured as a cold soup. It seemed to be a mixture of tomato juice and liquefied basil.

More meals, more amuse bouches, more foaming nightmares. By my fifth meal (by this time I was at a different Norman chateau) I made it known very explicitly that if I found so much as a fleck of foam on my plate, I might go postal.

The concerned waitstaff tried to calm me down with another complimentary amuse bouche made out of tomato and -- I dunno, maybe it was foamed frog.

THE MORE FOAM YOU SEE
THE MORE DINNER COSTS

The New York Crank’s rule of haute cuisine now states that the more foam you see, the more dinner costs. Ditto architectural constructions pretending to be food that are perched on ashtrays or oddly-shaped plates. Most of these meals in Norman chateau country set me back 35 to 60 Euros per person, not necessarily including a glass of wine and a bottle of mineral water.

I won’t even discuss the foamed presentation chez Vongerichten in New York, except to point out that his website boasts of wines with a top price of – hold your breath -- $12,500. You read that right. Twelve thousand, five hundred dollars, which ought to be enough to help you forget you’re also paying outrageous prices to swallow foam. Somehow all this brings to mind the mid-Eighteenth Century French nobility, vying to strut around in the highest heels, the most elaborately brocaded jackets, the silliest powdered wigs. Chefs (and their supporters) take warning: Before the end of that century the nobility had shed not only their heels, brocaded jackets and high heels but also their heads.

At any rate, by the time I got to Paris, I was foam-o-phobic. I avoided the haute cuisine restaurants and started hitting the little neighborhood bistros and brasseries where they still serve food. I stayed as far as I could from any restaurant that looked as if it might try to amuse my bouche or dare to foam something.

The steak in Paris is still wonderful in a way that’s different from American steak, thanks to the sauces. The pate is still wonderful. The duck is still wonderful. The salad, in a simple vinaigrette dressing, is still a delight. The bread is still wonderful. The cheese is heavenly. I began making up for the meals of foam by eating truly delicious food. I ate, and ate, and ate, and ate.

In five days I gained five pounds.

I plan to will those pounds to a celebrity chef. When I die, he can have a butcher liposuction them from my body and foam them.

Bon apetit!

Why hasn’t Ohio Gubernatorial candidate Blackwell been arrested for election fraud, along with the CEO of Diebold?

Trust local people to stay on top of local stories that are also of national interest –– stories that the “big” news organizations pretty much forget about, gloss over or bury after a while.

One such local person is Lieb Lurie, a resident of Troy, Ohio, a blogger, and columnist for the Troy Daily News. He posts this commentary. It ought to curl your hair:

www.llurie.blogspot.com

Nevermind the bugs. It happens to GUYS all the time.

Sometimes all you have to do is grab too much of the blanket in your sleep. So why is the New York Times science section making such a big deal of it? I'm talking about this choice piece of news:

"Across the eastern United States, a gruesome ritual is in full swing. The praying mantis and its relative, the Chinese mantis, are in their courtship season. A male mantis approaches a female, flapping his wings and swaying his abdomen. Leaping on her back, he begins to mate. And quite often, she tears off his head."

C'mon! Hasn't something pretty darn close to this happened to you, guys?

Full details (about the bugs, not the guys) here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/05/science/05cann.html?_r=1&ref=science&oref=slogin

Why we'd all be safer in airplanes if they made dynamite sticks small enough to stick up your nose.

I just got back from a vacation in Europe. I ate like a pig.

More about that in a future post. For now, I want to talk about airline security. I mean, I’m as much in favor of pat-downs, taking off your shoes and posing for nude x-rays as the next guy. It’s the truly weird stuff that has me wondering.

I flew home to Newark Airport via Frankfurt. The security folks in Frankfurt Airport were super touchy that day. Some security guard straight out of Central Casting for Ilse Koch, Sexy Blonde Sadist of the SS, opened my carryon bag, felt up my dirty underwear, and then triumphantly lifted out a plastic Ziploc bag in which I packed my prescription meds. Jawhol!

I mean, I’m an old fart. Most of my meds are for blood pressure and an enlarged prostate. But nevermind that. She made an even more triumphant find – a tiny spray bottle of Nasacort, an Rx nasal steroid my doctor gave me to control congestion from allergies.

"Zis cannot go with you," she said.

I explained that it was prescription medicine. I showed her the prescription pasted on the side of the bottle. (The bottle contains maybe an ounce of fluid, if that.)

"Zen squirt zis in your nose," she demanded.

I told her I'm only supposed to use it once a day and didn't relish the idea of overdosing.

"You vill squirt zis in your nose," she ordered.

Well whaddya do in a high tension situation when you’re trying to get on an airplane and some busty blonde security sadist is telling you to stick it up your nose or go to Buchenwald?

You stick it up your nose, that’s what you do.

Following the instructions on the side of the prescription bottle, I started to shake well. Suddenly, she jumped back, as if the balding, overweight, klutzy 66 year old guy with a suitcase full of dirty underwear and old fart's meds was a suicide bomber and the tiny shaking bottle of Nasacort was going to explode in my hand and take out the Frankfurt airport.

Fortunately, before she blew any whistles I squirted the stuff up one nostril. She looked relieved. I started to squirt the other nostril.

"No no, you vill only squirt one nostril," she ordered. So now we've got German airport security guards revising doctors’ instructions for taking prescription medications.

Well anyway, one nostril she wanted, one nostril she got. The rest of the flight was uneventful. When I arrived at Newark Airport nobody had any interest in checking my bags, or my customs declaration. The story ought to end there, but like all weird stories, it doesn’t.

A couple of hours later, the news on the radio was all about a guy they caught at Newark who had just arrived in the U.S. with a stick of dynamite in his carryon bag. (True story.) His excuse was that he “found it” on a construction site and decided to pack it as a souvenir.

I want to know why they don’t trust a guy to fly with a teensy bottle of nasal spray unless he squirts it up his nose – but walking on board an airplane with a stick of dynamite in your bag is perfectly cool.

I guess the theory is, if you can't stick it up your nose, it can't bring down a plane. Which is why we’d all be safer if there were a law limiting the size of dynamite sticks to what could comfortably fit in the average man’s left nostril.

Chew this over until Labor Day: The New York Crank’s secret plan to end the war in Iraq.

I haven’t wanted to reveal this. I’ve been waiting for some candidate for President to call me in as a consultant and pay me a zillion dollars a day to explain this idea, but it doesn’t look as if that’s going to happen. Besides, I’m about to go on vacation until Labor Day, so the hell with it. I’m donating my peace plan to the world. Free.

I simply have to. I mean, George Bush is essentially saying, “I don’t know how to clean up the mess I made, let the next guy do it.” Hillary is talking out of both sides of her mouth – she’s for the war but against the war, fine-tuning her strategy to the latest polls. Flippity-flop, flippity-flop. Forget her. John McCain? Pro war. Maybe that lump on the side of his face went to his brain.

Joe Lieberman is for the war. Go figure, because he’s a Democrat. Also, his stance is about to get him unelected, or de-elected, or whatever you call a U.S. Senator who’s about to walk face-first into an electoral weed whacker at the polling booths. Serves him right for wanting to send young Americans off to get killed and maimed in a stupid and useless war. You can keep perusing the list of possible presidential candidates on either side and all you get are people hopelessly impossible end-the-war plans, hopelessly impossible candidates, or nut job declarations to stay the course.

Most of the Get Out Of The War plans are based on one of three things:

1. We set a date and leave by it. That would get us out – and turn Iraq over to religious zealots who saw off heads and would blow up the U.S. in a blink of an ICBM. No thanks.

2. We “stay the course.” Yeah, that’ll get us out. At the end of eternity.

3. We partition Iraq into three parts: The Sunni Part, the Shiite Part and the Kurdish Part. That might work in Iraq. Unfortunately that also would raise hell for our good friend and NATO ally, Turkey. The Turkish Kurds would probably want to secede from Turkey and join Kurdistan. Boom! Another Middle East explosion, this time endangering the Turks.

SO WHAT SHOULD WE DO? HERE’S WHAT:

The only human being in the last 65 years who was able to slam the lid down on Iraq and sit on it so hard that no enraged dissident could get out was Saddam Hussein. He was a brutal thug of a ruthless dictator (the redundant characterization of Saddam is called for).That was exactly what the feuding, insurgency-breeding, civil war fighting, bomb throwing Iraqis have demonstrated they deserve.

So let’s speed up Saddam Hussein’s trial, sentence him to death, cut out the appeals process, put a rope around his neck and stand him on a stool. Then, just as we’re about to kick the stool out from under him, say this:

“Okay, Saddam, we’ll cut you a deal. We’ll take the rope off your neck if you take back your country and run it for us.”

It’s a brutal approach, but giving Saddam the choice of taking back Iraq or dying at the end of a rope is probably the only way we could make him run the country again.

As a sweetener we could even toss him some foreign aid to put his Swiss bank account.


That’s all for a while, folks. I'll be back around Labor Day. Be sure to check here then. For now, pass this article along to your friends by clicking on the envelope icon below. Comments are also welcome, either below or by e-mailing me at etoainshrd@aol.com. But remember that I won’t be around to post them until I get home. I’m off to Europe on a – What is it those junketing Republicans call it? – oh yeah, a “fact finding mission.”
c) 2006

Mike Bloomberg for President on the Democrat ticket? Gimme a break! The guy’s civil rights record could make you vomit

According to the New York Times, New York’s Mayor Michael Bloomberg is considering a run for President. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/04/nyregion/04mayor.html

It’s not yet clear whether he’s planning to run as an independent, which would make him a perfect spoiler splitting the Democrat vote in support of the next George Bush clone; or as a far right Republican, which he most certainly is despite his image; or as a Democrat. But if it’s a last of those three choices, Democrats around the country had better be warned.

Bloomberg’s record on civil rights would do a 1960s Mississippi sheriff proud. Take it from a New Yorker who’s been watching him for a while.

No, I’m not talking about racism (although his sexist attitudes toward women at Bloomberg News were notorious prior to his election.) I’m talking about First Amendment stuff like the right to assemble to seek redress.

It all begins with the last Republican presidential convention, which was held here in New York, and an arguably unruly (and often unkempt-looking) group called Times Up, which demonstrates with noisy mass bicycle rides, sometimes deliberately blocking traffic with a sea of rolling protestors as it rides through intersections.

COPS BUST CYCLISTS, AND THEIR BICYCLES

When the scruffy Times-Uppers tried to demonstrate during the Republican Conventionm there was a a major scuffle and a considerable number of police busts. Even bicycles got busted – uh, confiscated – by the New York Police Department.

This led to some courtroom confrontations, during which the city attorney got his nose rubbed in the First Amendment. http://www.times-up.org/legal_newswire.php

You’d think enough would be enough, sort of like a mass duel in which everybody fires his blunderbuss in the air and then goes home grumpily claiming satisfaction. But no.

The Mayor’s anti-civil rights proxy, Deputy Police Commissioner Bruce Smolka, has begun coming down on virtually anybody on a bicycle (except for messengers and delivery boys who routinely ride the wrong way on one way streets, or tear along sidewalks nearly mowing down passsers-by.)

“YOU’RE UNDER ARREST – FOR GOING FOR A WALK!”

So that Bloomberg won’t appear discriminatory against cyclists, the Mayor’s little minions have been pressing for a law that would prohibit any group of three or more people to “parade” without a permit. "Paraders," for example, might include a group of friends going for a bike ride. Or even for a walk.

Technically, walkers or riders in groups of three or more can be busted and hauled into a city jail holding cell overnight and then into court – where no doubt, after they post bail and go to considerable legal expense, the case will get thrown out.

Besides, since when to American citizens need the permission of their government to protest against the government?

Well, the sotto voce word getting whispered by political operatives around town is that this law would only be applied against you-know-who – those political demonstrators the mayor doesn’t like.

Folks, that’s how communist and fascist dictators work. They pass a law that lets them arrest anybody, and then arrest only the people they don’t like. Siberia’s economy was built on laws like that. Students got mowed down by tanks in Peking for that.

MAYOR DOES A WIMPY HIDING ACT

So far, Mayor Bloomberg has been letting the cops take the heat, while he hides under Bruce Smolka’s skirts. But Smoka reports to New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly, who serves at the Mayor’s pleasure.

So if Bloomberg wanted the totalitarianism to stop, it would stop in ten seconds. But don't hold your breath.

Pass it on. E-mail this story to your friends. Get the word out. Other blogs: feel free to copy or link.

Public what? You’re on my private cell phone, you jerk. And furthermore you’re an obnoxious little snot.

So I’m sitting on the bus on the way home from my office last night, staring out the window at all the well kept women walking by on Madison Avenue, when my cell phone rang.

I didn’t recognize the number that was calling. Maybe it was business. Maybe a long lost friend. So I clicked on – and there on the other end was some guy whose voice instantly told you he was obnoxious, self-satisfied, young and a creep.

He was from the Public Theater in lower Manhattan, he told me, and he just wanted to inform me of of all the exciting new…

A sales call?

I interrupted him. “Listen sonny boy, you’re calling my cell phone,” I told him. “This phone is on a do-not-call-list and it’s costing me money to listen to your sales pitch so...”

“Well, I’m sorry,” he huffed, not so apologetically, “but this is the number YOU gave us.” Click! And he was gone.

Yeah, I gave them my number. I was ordering tickets for something, and as part of the transaction, I was asked for a phone number. I assumed it was to verify the transaction, not to make me a victim of junk phone calls.

But I couldn’t tell him that, because by the time I opened my mouth, he was annoying somebody else by telephone.

Catch me ever buying tickets for anything – I mean ANY damn thing – ever playing at the Public Theater again. Or if I do order anything from anybody, the only number I’ll give them is (212) 487-4270.

That’s the New York City Department of Consumer Affairs.

Tip YOU, buddy – and the tall, half-skim, no-foam mocha latte you rode in on!

I’ve managed to use the same shoe repair shoe for three years without an altercation. But this morning, the peaceful relationship fell apart.

While dropping off a pair of shoes, I noticed an oatmeal box on the counter with a slot cut into the cap and the words “TIPS FOR SHOEMAKER” pasted across what should have been a smiling Quaker’s face.

He wants a tip for what? Repairing shoes? Isn’t that what he’s charging for in the first place?

I swear, I’m not making this up! (For you New Yorkers who want to check it out, it’s the shoe repair place on 77th and Lexington, Northeast corner, next to the subway entrance. Maybe they're under new and lousy management.)

I thought the shoe repair price list is supposed to mean something. But maybe not.

So anyway, I left the shoe shop (without leaving a tip) and a block or two away discovered one of those fruit carts you see all around town. You know, the kind that pays no rent, competes with rent-paying small grocers, and sells fruit and vegetables of questionable quality, sometimes at a slightly reduced price and sometimes not.

And guess what? There was a plastic tray on the wagon with a sign next to it that said, “Tips Greatly Appreciated.”
Tips for what? For making an overhead-free and possibly tax-free profit by selling me a banana and not reporting the cash sale?

CREEPING TIP-ISM

It used to be that only waiters got tips, usually 15%, for good service. Lousy service got them stiffed.

Of course, that was before the honorable job of bringing food to tables while it’s still hot (and making sure that the guy who orders rare gets rare) was degraded by talentless actors with attitude.

Now you’re likely to get something thrown at you if you don’t leave at least 15 percent. Actually, most of them are looking for 20 percent. You hear the apology, “Well, tips are part of a waiter’s income” – the implication being that tips have nothing to do with service. You walk in the restaurant, you owe the waiter. Take it or shove it.

Taxi drivers expect 15% or more, too – an incentive to get you trapped in traffic while the meter keeps ticking, or to take the long way around to your destination. It’s also an incentive to raise fares, not service. But that’s old news, too.

What’s new is, little by little, the entire planet is coming to expect a tip.

THE GUILTY PARTY IDENTIFIED

Who started this trend? Why, Starbucks, of course, which puts out a tip box on the counter so you can leave a tip for not getting served at a table. Instead, you have to stand on not one line, but two – the first to place your order and pay, the second to eventually receive what you paid for.

Even lawmakers expect to get tipped. In the old days, they called this kind of tip a “bribe.” These days, it’s a “campaign contribution,” but we all know what it really is.

If this keeps on going, you’ll have to “tip” the clerk at the drivers’ license bureau and the IRS man who comes to audit you.

You think I’m kidding? Once upon a time, deposed nobles had to tip the executioner to chop their heads off with one smooth blow instead of hacking them to pieces.

OUTRAGEOUS BILLIONS

What’s most outrageous about all this is that employers like Starbucks are using the tip-for-no-service box to get you to pay employee salaries.

Starbucks “partners” can’t make it on the pathetic wage paid by the corporation that employs them. Especially not in an expensive town like New York. Meanwhile, the company raked in a$5 billions – that’s billions, bub – for the first five months of this year. A billion bucks a month!

So I guess we have to help subsidize the poor schlemiels behind the counter at Starbucks who get a meaningless title (real "partners" share the wealth, own the business, and don’t have to beg for tips) instead of a living wage.

I’ll tell you who else isn’t going to share the wealth. His name is Orin Smith. He’s the Chief Executive Officer and President of Starbucks. His annual paycheck, according to figures released by Business Week Magazine, comes to $3.7 million dollars. (Got that, you pathetic “partner?”)

And that $3.7 million doesn’t even include Orin's $89.4 million in stock options.

Hey Orin, why don’t you throw in 15 or 20 percent? I mean of your options and salary. That would help your "partner" wage slaves a lot more than a tip box. And you'd still have over $3 million a year to live on.


HERE’S WHAT YOU CAN DO ABOUT IT

Before the Starbucks tip system spreads more and helps to continue making America as corrupt as a souk in Syria, here’s what you can do:

1. If you’re a consumer: Let the entrepreneur and shopkeeper who’s suddenly demanding tips know that if he wants more money, he can raise his prices instead of putting out an oat meal box. Mention that tip income is reportable to the IRS and ask if he has filed a tip income form. Let him know you'll be happy to obtain one for him next time you phone the IRS.

2. If you’re in Starbucks: Slip something that folds into the tip box – a note that says, “The best tip I can give you is, join a union.”

3. If you’re a an independent coffee shop trying to survive against the onslaught of the Starbucks Godzilla, hang a note over the counter that says:

“THANKS, BUT NO TIPS.
They pays us a lot better than
those poor suckers at Starbucks.”

The U.S. Senate passes a child rapist and incest protection act. And Incest-Protectionist-In-Chief Bush says he’ll sign it. God save abused girls!

Good old U.S. Senate! In the name of “parental rights” they’re making it easier for incestuous child abusers and others to get away with raping little girls.

They’re calling it the “Child Custody Protection Act.” It ought to be called “The Rapists’ and Incestuous Relatives Protection Act.”

The new law would make it a crime to help under-age girls cross state lines to escape parental notification laws.

So if you’re say, a 14 year-old who was raped and sodomized by her father and now you’re pregnant, you’ll have to go to the bastard and get his permission to get an abortion. Know what you’re likely to get for that?

Threats is what. A blackened eye from your old man, maybe. And for sure raped and sodomized again.

What about your mom? Well, she stood by and somehow overlooked what dear old dad was doing. Maybe because she’s terrified of him, too. So don’t expect much help there.

Until now, if you lived in a state that prohibits an abortion without parental consent, you might be able to go to a sympathetic and helpful grandparents for the money to cross state lines to abort this product of child rape.

But now if Grandma helps, Grandma’s going to the pokey.

President Bush said, “transporting minors across state lines to bypass parental consent laws regarding abortion undermines state law and jeopardizes the lives of young women.”

Oh yeah? How is her life jeopardized by an abortion without parental consent compared to an abortion with parental consent?

It’s all political baloney created to appeal to the Lunatic Right. 51 Republicans threw responsible morality to the wind to vote for this law. So to my disgust did 14 morally-challenged Democrats. It’s enough to make you puke.

For more details on this repugnant law-in-the-making, go here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/26/washington/26abort.html?ref=washington

And if you want to comment on this abortion of justice, I welcome your thoughts. Either directly on this blog, or by writing a letter to the editor at: etoainshrd@aol.com

Report from Israel. And maybe why Martin Fletcher should be demoted to police beat in Podunk.

While there's plenty of press coming out of the Hezbollah situation and Israel's response, it sometimes pays to read what the people who live there have to say.

In this case, the information includes allegations of what at best is sloppy reporting by two of the "name" news reporters who are broadcasting about Israel -- one of whom can't even seem to find out where the seat of government is located. They misreport. You decide. Alas.

Below, a report from Joseph Hochstein, a resident of Tel Aviv.

1) The family in Tel Aviv and I are fine. There's plenty of worry and
confusion about personal safety, but so far the Hezbollah has refrained
from missile attacks on Tel Aviv. More about Tel Aviv below, but first a
few words about the war.

2) I won't try to write about the unfolding events. They move too fast
for that, and news media are covering them.

3) I do want to write the following caveat. Anyone who wants to know
what is going on here should bear in mind that hyperbole, emotion, lack
of information, and a huge amount of spin accompany the reporting of
this war. It's not only politicians and ideologues who are trying to
play with your head. Some reporters and news organizations came to this
story with points-of-view which they now need to promote or defend,
whether or not they realize they are doing it. Nor are many foreign
reporters familiar with the background that brought us to where we are.

4) Examples, in general. Very little hard information is available, so
reporters have to work with other material. A story that purports to
tell you which side is suffering more should be suspect. Ditto for
stories that profess to reveal a sinister secret Israeli plan of one
kind or another. They may contain the words "agenda" and "pretext."
Other terms that can betray bias or spin include the words "homemade,"
"crude" and "rudimentary" to characterize Hamas rockets, or
"inaccurate" to describe Hezbollah missiles, or "disproportionate" to
describe Israel's response (unless the writer can tell the reader what a
proportionate response is). A backgrounder on Hezbollah that does not
account for the roles of Syria and Iran looks like a result of ignorance
or possibly spin-by-omission. So does an analysis of Hamas policy that
neglects to mention that the movement's charter envisions a general
slaughter of the Jews on Judgment Day.

5) An example, in specific. On "Meet the Press" (July 16) the veteran
NBC correspondent Martin Fletcher said he thought Israel was looking for
a chance to eradicate the Hezbollah. He commented, "they'll never say
that publicly." This became a basis for anti-Israel spin by Danny
Schechter, an award-winning television producer who is executive editor
of the foundation-supported MediaChannel.org, Schechter treated the NBC
correspondent's remarks as "a bombshell" revealing "a pre-meditated
Israeli war plan just waiting for a pretext to implement." Actually, the
NBC correspondent had revealed nothing. Mainly, he reviewed publicly
known highlights of the Israel-Hezbollah conflict since Israel withdrew
from Lebanon in 2000. His hint that he was telling his viewers something
which Israelis wouldn't say in public may have been a touch of tv hype,
or maybe he hadn't been watching Israeli television lately or reading
the Hebrew press. Neither Meet the Press nor critic Schechter mentioned
that Israel supports United Nations Security Council Resolution 1559,
which in effect would destroy the Hezbollah as an armed force.
Schechter, by the way, refers to the Jerusalem-based Israel government
as "Tel Aviv," a pretty good clue to where he stands.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13839698/
http://www.newsdissector.org/blog/2006/07/17/beat-the-press-and-search-f
or-truth/

6) Back to Tel Aviv. Not long after the rockets started hitting Israel,
our army confirmed that Tel Aviv is in Hezbollah range. Among the more
than 12,000 rockets which the Hezbollah announced it had acquired are
longer-range Iranian weapons that are said to be able to hit not only
Tel Aviv but Beersheva in the south. The existence of these weapons in
the Hezbollah arsenal had been reported for some time, but the army's
confirmation in wartime gave the information immediacy which isn't
necessarily felt at other times.

7) Shortly after a Hezbollah rocket killed eight people in Haifa on July
16, the army's Homefront Command issued a warning to Israelis all the
way south to Tel Aviv. The army instructed us to be alert. It is
unlikely that anyone outside the Homefront Command knew what the army
meant by "alert." For the next day or so, representatives of the
Homefront Command had to spend a lot of time answering questions from
the public about the meaning of "alert."

8) Basically, being alert means figuring out the safest place to take
cover when you are at home or at work, or whenever you move to a new
location. You should pick a place as far as possible away from windows
and exterior walls. You should avoid northern walls, because the
missiles come down from the north. A rocket will penetrate a roof, so
you should seek cover on lower floors or in stairwells. If an incoming
missile catches you outdoors, you should lie flat on the ground, to
avoid shrapnel. The Hezbollah rocket that killed eight people in a Haifa
railroad shed on Sunday contained little metal balls. A radio
broadcaster referred to them as "Syrian balls," indicating the weapon's
origin.

9) Homefront Command representatives explained Monday that sirens will
sound in the event of a missile attack, giving us one minute to take
cover. This was a relief, as the tension comes mainly from not knowing
when an attack may be on the way. A day or two later we learned that we
won't necessarily get the warning. Sometimes the sirens sound after the
rockets have hit.

10) I checked our neighborhood shelter. It takes more than a minute to
get there, so it is not useful under the current assumptions. The last
time it served as a shelter was 1991 when the scud missiles from Iraq
were hitting Israel. Then, the warning was five minutes. Anyway, the
shelter is locked.

11) I was curious about the shelter because on July 13, less than 24
hours after the Hezbollah attack began, I noticed a shelter-maintenance
truck parked alongside. This was the first sign of activity I have
noticed at the shelter in years. The padlocks on the shelter look new
and shiny. The place will stay padlocked unless the Homefront Command
orders Tel Aviv residents to enter shelters. Such an order is not
likely.

12) I have scouted my surroundings for cover. As my apartment is on the
top floor, it does not meet the army's guidelines for adequate cover. I
have picked out a nook in the building's stairwell, two floors down from
where I live. If a siren sounds, I will run downstairs to my spot.

13) We have discussed these considerations among the immediate family,
and everyone has an idea of where to seek cover in a hurry.

14) As I was typing this, a news bulletin interrupted the radio
broadcast that is playing in the background. Four rockets had landed in
Haifa, and people were injured. While the bulletin was still in
progress, I got a telephone call from Haifa. The caller was a friend who
said a rocket had just exploded less than 10 yards from him. This friend
is a Muslim Arab from the Galilee, and I point this out by way of noting
that the Party of God has been hitting places where it is likely to kill
not only Jews but fellow Arabs.

15) Life in Tel Aviv seems to go on as usual --- traffic jams, lots of
people in coffee houses and restaurants, stores and sidewalks full of
activity, swimmers at the beach, business almost as usual. The other
night I went out to a park where members of the folk and blues community
were making music. About 100 performers took the stage during four hours
and the war seemed almost forgotten. Toward the end a visitor from the
Carmiel folk club announced that they would be having their regular
performances the next night, and if anyone wanted to come up to Carmiel
to perform there were some open spots on the program. Laughter. Carmiel
is in the Galilee, and some rockets have hit there.

16) The other morning I walked down to Banana Beach, where a poster
advertises a concert by Ziggy Marley, son of the great Bob Marley.
Originally, the concert was scheduled for the Banana Beach branch up
north in Achziv, and we had been talking about celebrating a family
birthday at the concert and staying over in Achziv. When this war
started, it became clear that they could not hold a concert at Achziv,
which is close to the border and not far from Nahariya, which has been
hard hit by rockets. I wanted to find out if they had set an alternate
location for the concert.

17) At Banana Beach, I found a man who seemed to be in charge. I asked
if he knew what was happening about the Ziggy Marley concert. I told him
I understood that the Achziv performance has been cancelled. In the span
of a few seconds, he proceeded to demonstrate Three Qualities That Keep
Israel Going.

18) They wouldn't cancel the concert, he told me. I told him I had heard
that the concert had been cancelled. He repeated that they wouldn't
cancel a concert. This is Quality #1: Denial.

19) Continuing, he said we are not a people who give in to threats. We
are a strong people. We will not give in. This is Quality #2: Pride in
the People.

20) I told him I was nonetheless pretty sure that there would not be a
concert in Achziv on July 28. He told me not to worry. Maybe the crisis
will be over in time for the concert, he said. Quality #3: Hope That
Things Will Be All Right Anyway

21) Summing up Three Qualities That Keep Israel Going:
--- Denial
--- Pride in the People
--- Hope

22) At this writing (Friday, July 21) there have been many reports that
the fighting will have to stop in the middle of next week, because
that's what outside parties including the United States have decided.
Who knows? Anyway, it could change.

23) For now, a good overview of the Israel side of the situation is this
article from today's Haaretz by Yoel Marcus, "A race against the clock."
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/741139.html

24) One doesn't hear much discussion yet about what happens after the
war is over. A friend here told me he thinks Israel should offer to help
rebuild Lebanon after the war. He is not a bleeding-heart lefty like
some of us, and in fact he probably would place himself more than a tad
to the right of center, and that is his idea. It is a sensible idea,
which is one or two strikes against it.

25) Why the Hezbollah hasn't attacked Tel Aviv is anyone's guess among
Israelis. One theory is that this won't happen until a later stage. Some
people think it could happen as an act of desperation if the Hezbollah
sees it is losing. Or, it could happen as part of a strategy to weaken
the Israeli homefront later in the war. A friend says the war will come
to Tel Aviv, no matter what. If not by rockets, then by human bombers,
she says. But no one can be sure of this, either.

Take cover! Here come those damn kids scattering rose petals again.

Just in case you had the idea that George W. Bush & Company is learning anything from its excellent adventure in Iraq, go get yourself another idea.

The Associated Press reports that, “In Washington's scenario, presented this week by a presidential commission, a democratic Cuba will endorse multiparty elections and free markets and become a new ally to be rebuilt with American assistance after nearly five decades of communism.”

And how are we going to make sure that happens? By spending $80 or so million over the next couple of years “encouraging” the change. The Presidential commission also suggests that Cubans could “appeal” to us for food, water and other aid, says the AP report.

Umm, is it possible that food shortages might be caused by, oh, maybe, umm, that blockade we’ve had going against Cuba since the Bay of Pigs era? So what are we going to do, tighten the screws? And how will we do that?

Maybe we could plan to go in there and blow up some warehouses and water supply lines and bomb Havana. Maybe we could “encourage” change by landing a few battalions of troops on leave from their third tour of duty in Iraq. You can practically hear the gears whirring in the White House.

These are the same Bush & Company geniuses who promised us that the Iraqis would be throwing rose petals in our path when we invaded Iraq. Or was it whole roses? Never mind. The only things they throw at us today explode.

It it just me who thinks these guys on Pennsylvania Avenue couldn’t learn a history lesson if it were hammered into their heads with spikes? No, it is not. Wayne Smith, who was the senior US diplomat to Cuba from 1979 to 1982 calls the whole scenario “pie in the sky.”

Smith also said, according to the AP, “We need a reality check here. Anyone who knows Cuba knows the Cuban people aren't going to rise up against a successor regime."

Sorry pal. In the Bush White House, we don’t do no reality checks.


For the full AP story, copy and paste the IRL below into your web browser.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060716/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/cuba_after_castro;_ylt=AlVMNzOxXJvyVPngssqW5mdvaA8F;_ylu=X3oDMTA0cDJlYmhvBHNlYwM-

FCC-you! Bush appointees comb sports event crowd noises for obscene or profane utterances – a new horsefeathers witch hunt.

You can’t make this stuff up. In a never-ending effort to protect your delicate ears from uncouth expletives, the FCC has “requested” from networks (read that as “hand it over or else,”) the tapes of live sporting events broadcasts.

FCC commissioners are particularly interested, according to a story on the Reuters newswire (URL below) in football games and NASCAR races where someone in the crowd (or a participant in the game) lets loose with an expletive. If it’s broadcast live, even if by accident, the FCC can fine the network $325,000 per expletive.

Ever been to a sports event? One game broadcast under those rules could repay the entire national debt.

Since we all know you can’t go to a ball game or a NASCAR race without hearing some pretty strong language in tense moments, there has to be an ulterior motive. So what’s going on here?

The plan I perceive, in case you don't immediately see through the fog of pseudo-piety that pretends to be protecting your delicate ears, is to have an axe to hold over networks reporting news that the administration doesn’t like.

In other words, “Report bad news about, say, Iraq or the economy, and we’ll go through your broadcasts, listening very carefully for someone in the crowd or an angry coach saying, “shit” and then we’ll bankrupt you.”

The only solution would seem to be broadcasting sporting events with the sound off from now on. But I have another idea.

Let’s round up every coach, every referee, every NASCAR driver, every player and most of all every fan and send them to an FCC “re-education camp” down at Guantanamo. There they will be brainwashed to shed their uncouth language in favor of the kind of frou-frou euphemisms that characterized Victorian-era speech.

I’m talking about about the days when people avoided obscene thoughts by putting skirts around table legs and calling them “limbs.”

For example, a baseball coach and umpire might be forced to sit in painful positions for hours and to sleep in puddles of icy waters until they memorize this conversation:

COACH: Golly-geewillikers sir, I wish to protest your having called my runner “out” on first.

UMPIRE: Return to your dugout, you scalawag. I make the gol-dang decisions here.

COACH: But heck sir, the first basement did not come within a country mile of tagging my player.

UMPIRE: That is a load of pure, unmitigated horsefeathers! I plainly saw his glove touch your runner’s limb.

COACH: Oh, go insert your horsefeathers in your gosh-darn pipe and smoke it.

Of course, even with the ban on expletives, there’s still a word you can use on TV that describes the FCC commissioners and their obedient senior staff perfectly.

Imbeciles.

You'll find the full details here:
http://today.reuters.com/news/newsarticle.aspx?type=entertainmentNews&storyid=2006-07-12T143218Z_01_N12208196_RTRUKOC_0_US-MEDIA-INDECENCY.xml&src=rss&rpc=22

Liar Liar, yer pants on fire, (continued)

How do you convince people the economy is doing great when in fact you’re getting your fellow citizens deeper, and deeper, and deeper into a national debt that our grandchildren will be paying off – assuming there’s a nation left?

Why, just predict an even higher deficit. Then, when the deficit figures for the year turn out to be merely outrageous, as opposed to, umm, unbearably humongous, declare, “See, my tax cuts are working! The deficit is $100 million lower than expected!”

You’ll find the horrible (and horrid) details here: http://www.cjrdaily.org/politics/wag_that_tail_fido_its_july.php

Name a kid after a drug? Why, a university dean even wanted to name her law school after Enron. (But the U of Houston nixed it.)

Dang! It’s getting tougher to have an original idea.

I suggest naming people after pills for money (see an earlier post). The next thing you know, I hear that at the University of Houston law school, a former dean tried to get the school named after Enron for money.

This, I assume, was before Ken Lay and friends sank thir own ship and still had megabucks to toss around. But the Ex U-Hou (“Yoo-Hoo?”) law dean was rebuffed anyway. I guess some of those folks in the university ivory tower could see deeper into Enron than ordinary slobs like you and me. Or – I duno - maybe they overheard something at the country club.

Anyway, the former law dean, Nancy B. Rapoport, not only confirmed the story but also says she tried to convince the high poobahs at Yoo-Hoo to buy the Enron building out of bankruptcy, “which would have gotten us a heckuva deal at the credit-bid price of $51mm.”

Evidently, that didn’t happen either. (Real estate speculators in Houston take note.)