Yeah, and while we're at it, fellow Republicans, let's not ruin democracy by letting the majority rule

Now Republican crazies include the attorneys general of Alabama, Florida, Nebraska, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, South Carolina…list continues below

Reuters reports today that having lied and lost on the health care bill, Republicans are trying again.

This time, they’re trying to find that health care is “unconstitutional for, ah, uh…well for some reason or other. They’re a little fuzzy in their reasoning.

They seem to be saying that regulating commerce can’t include people who don’t have health insurance, because if they don’t have health insurance they’re not engaged in commerce.

That’s about as circular as reasoning—or a firing squad—can get.

They’re now going to go to court to stop Congress from passing laws. In addition to the states listed in the headline, add South Dakota, Texas (of course!), Utah and Washington.

Of course, they don’t just want to give their own states the power to opt out. If that happened, the hurried exodus of citizens and small businesses would sound like the last of a lot of soapy water going down the bathroom drain. They might as well each pull out a pistol and shoot their own toes off.

Instead, they want to get the law nullified for everybody. The truth is, it makes them crazy to think your healthcare insurance would work, even if you’re sick. And that for once you could afford to have it.

Remember who your Republican officials are. And next election, be sure to go to the voting booth and tell them to take a hike.

America already has death panels. They're called health insurance companies.

As we press closer to passing or destroying health care reform this week, there is news that special interests are pressuring members of congress to kill the bill.

Part of that pressure is the lie that health care reform will create "death panels" to "kill granny."

That's bull. First of all, Granny's covered under Medicare. Second of all, there are no Medicare "death panels" nor are there any proposals for death panels in the healthcare reform bill.

But make no mistake: we already do have death panels. In fact, as you read this, one of those death panels may be considering whether you should live or not. And if they haven't yet, they will—unless we get health care reform.

If an insurance company shuts you out for a pre-existing condition, that's a death sentence if you need ongoing medical care. Death panel.

If an insurance company declares you've maxed out your benefits so you're no longer covered, that's a death panel. No insurance? Too bad. You die.

If an insurance company rejects you for cancer treatment because you failed to mention in your application that you had acne at the age of 14, you die. Death panel.

If an insurance company raises its rates so sky-high that you can't afford to pay and have to drop out, and if you get sick, you die. Death panel.

Health insurance reform will stop insurance companies from doing those things. The only thing health insurance reform means death to is insurance company death panels.

That's why the insurance companies are plowing so much money into intimidating Congressman into voting no.

Tell your own Congressman and Senators to grow a spine and tell the insurance companies to go to hell.

Otherwise, that's exactly what the insurance companies will be telling you.

Thank the good Lord that Texas and its textbooks are helping to make all of us dumber

I see in the New York Times this morning that Texas educators are trying to get the textbooks changed. I mean, the dang things are written by teachers and they keep putting in stuff that no self-respecting Texas dentist would put up with. To quote the Times:

Conservatives argue that the proposed curriculum, written by a panel of teachers, emphasizes the accomplishments of liberal politicians — like the New Deal and the Great Society — and gives less importance to efforts by conservatives like President Ronald Reagan to limit the size of government.

“There is a bias,” said Don McLeroy, a dentist from College Station who heads up the board’s conservative faction. “I think the left has a real problem seeing their own bias.”

Yeah, they’re biased. The textbooks don’t say that this here is a Christian nation. Of course, a good many of the founding fathers were deists, not Christians, and a sprinkling of them were Quakers and even Jews.

That’s one reason the Declaration of Independence said that all men are “endowed by their Creator with certain unaliable rights.” Not by God. By their Creator, which may or may not have had divine properties, depending on your belief. It’s a perfect deist statement, inserted into the Declaration of Independence so that the many non-Christian American revolutionaries wouldn’t be offended.

Oh, and those “biased” schoolteachers—pardon me, teachurs—who wrote the textbooks also didn’t pay no mind to Ronald Reagan. Of course, if they also paid mind to how his policies enlarged the national debt and in the case of Iran Contra sold arms to the Iranians who are now building an atomic bomb to threaten us with, the Eddycational Dentists of Texas would be having still another cow.

All this matters because the wimp publishers who print the textbooks kowtow to Texas, a huge purchaser of textbooks. If Texas gets the changes it wants, the rest of the nation’s kids get the same changes. So if Texas gets dumber, so do your own kids.

Look, I firmly believe that all Texans have been endowed by their creator with an unalianable right to be as dumb as they want.

They can believe that Ronald Reagan made government smaller, even though he made it bigger.

They can believe all government deficits are bad, even though Reagan gave us a lollapalooza.

They can believe that lack of regulation isn’t what caused the bankers to good hog wild and nearly bankrupt nearly everybody else.

They can believe that dinosaurs walked the earth until 42 years ago and simply stayed out of sight of human beings. I’m sorry, hooman beans.

They can have their own spelling, their own math, their own history, their own religion and their own ignorance.

But first Texas ought to secede from the union. And this time we ought to let them.

Well, Hallelujah! The President finally fights back.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Sometimes I wonder if someone in the Whitehouse is actually reading The New York Crank.

It was only the last post, three days ago, that I crankily wrote:

President Obama needs to take a leaf from the Indiana Jones script. Enough already with the debating, the arguing, and worst of all the compromising with posturing Republicans (and a few Democrats) who refuse to compromise. That’s all bullwhip.

Instead, the President needs to pull out the Presidential equivalent of his pistol—the public accusatory confrontation—and start plugging Republicans right between the eyes.

And I'll be hornswaggled if that isn't pretty much what President Obama did in his stemwinding speech to Congress today. I especially liked this passage:

But know this: I will not waste time with those who have made the calculation that it's better politics to kill this plan than to improve it. (Applause.) I won't stand by while the special interests use the same old tactics to keep things exactly the way they are. If you misrepresent what's in this plan, we will call you out. (Applause.) And I will not -- and I will not accept the status quo as a solution. Not this time. Not now.

If you missed it, take 55 minutes to click on the video at the top of this post and watch it.

Take particular note of Republicans like Congressmen John Boehner and Eric Cantor wriggling uncomfortably and hanging their heads like bad bullies caught beating up the kindergarten girls.

Now, if Mr. Obama keeps it up, history could actually end up listing him among our greatest presidents.. And we could get a reasonably good healthare bill. And, in time, a much stronger economy.

Go Barack go!

What President Obama needs to do—right now!

Okay, so we’re a nation of idiots. So Americans need to understand Washington in terms an imbecile could grasp. So maybe I need to explain in comic book and fantasy action movie terms what it is President Obama needs to do.

Remember “Raiders of the Lost Ark?” Remember Indiana Jones, his whip always at the ready, vanquishing foe after foe with his bullwhip—knocking them down, knocking the weapons out of their hands, yadda yadda until it all becomes a bit tiresome?

And then suddenly Indy gets approached by a another posturing thug, a turbaned bozo who not only waves a sword, but does sword tricks with it. But our hero has had enough of this posturing horsecrap. He shrugs, whips out his pistol, and plugs the posturing jerk right between the eyes. In the theater where I watched this, the audience stood up and cheered!

President Obama needs to take a leaf from the Indiana Jones script. Enough already with the debating, the arguing, and worst of all the compromising with posturing Republicans (and a few Democrats) who refuse to compromise. That’s all bullwhip.

Instead, the President needs to pull out the Presidential equivalent of his pistol—the public accusatory confrontation—and start plugging Republicans right between the eyes.

For example, there’s a Republican Senator named Jim Bunning, who has forced the furlough of Federal transportation workers—putting a stop to construction projects that are desperately needed to keep our infrastructure maintained and Americans working. He’s also strangling desperate Americans by choking off their unemployment benefits.

It’s time for President Obama to call a televised press conference and declare:

“If a terrorist tried to starve millions of Americans, render them homeless, and bomb the US economy, we’d have every right to declare him a war criminal, arrest him, and try him for war crimes.

“Senator Jim Bunning, you are the moral equivalent of a war criminal. You are sabotaging the business of the people of the United States. By putting a chokehold on the extension of unemployment benefits and other critical expenditures you are causing hunger. You are causing people to lose their homes. You are exacerbating a severe economic situation, damaging every American, every citizen, every taxpayer. I’m calling you out, Senator Bunning, as the the closest thing there is to a traitor who deserves to be turned out of office and run out of town on a rail.

“Now let me talk about another moral equivalent of treason—the actions of that smug, smirking Senator Mitch McConnell, who is creating Tokyo Rose-type propaganda to demoralize and mislead Americans who simply want affordable healthcare….”

There’s ample precedent for the President to publicly call out the troublemakers. Franklin Delano Roosevelt did it—and achieved the New Deal—by sneering at a trio of bloviating enemies of America, the infamous “Martin, Barton and Fish.”

Would there be howls of dismay from the right? You betcha! There were howls of dismay and worse under Roosevelt.

Would the obstreperous senators who’ve currently afflicted the Congress and the American people with legislative sclerosis tremble in their shoes, even as they pretend to outraged? Sure they would. But in short order they’d also buckle, particularly if the next step is public torchlight demonstrations in front of their homes, angry throngs calling for their heads in Washington and demands for investigations of their financing and their intentions.

So enough with the bullwhip, Mr. President. Pull out the pistol that was installed in your bully pulpit by virtue of the overwhelming majority of people who voted for change and now want to see you either change things or at the very least make an all out effort that will leave the obstreperous Republicans with something a bit messier than egg on their faces.

Parse THIS. Or, what is Michael Calderone smoking?

Michael Calderone's space on the Politico blog claims his job is "reporting and analysis of political media."

Fair enough. But Calderone—that's him on the right—appears to have stepped in it today when he took on lifestyle reporting in the Washington Post. I think he was trying to explain why Sally Quinn had been relieved of her column. But then I found my eyes crossing over this paragraph:

In the column, Quinn wrote about her "dysfunctional family" while addressing a report of "dueling weddings." Quinn wrote not only about the nuptials of her son with former Post editor Ben Bradlee, but also the daughter of Ben Bradlee Jr. -- his son from a previous marriage -- and ex-wife Martha Raddatz, an ABC News correspondent.

If you go really, really slowly, you can make out that Quinn had a son with Ben Bradlee and Quinn wrote about her son's wedding. And also that Bradlee had a daughter via a previous marriage to Martha Raddatz...no, that must be a son from a previous marriage who was married to Martha Raddatz. No...

Oh, just pass me that funny cigarette, Michael, and let's be done with it.

Yoicks! It’s not only you and me getting shafted by our banks. J.P.Morgan to its corporate customers: "Bleep you and your trade secrets."

A United States Federal judge has accused J.P. Morgan—the investment side of J.P. Morgan/Chase bank—of acting “in bad faith,” essentially giving away two clients' corporate secrets to one of their competitors.

When a bank does it, it’s merely “bad faith.” If you and I tried the same thing, it would be a felony—theft of trade secrets.

Side issue: The New York Times so far isn’t covering this scandal, because Morgan’s alleged dirty dealings were on behalf of a major Times stockholder.

To see why banks of all kinds need to be regulated up the whazoo—and one example of how outrageous concentrations of wealth inevitably lead to outrageous abuses of power, check out the story in The Big Money.

How to try Kahlid Shaikh Mohammed in New York City, without disrupting lower Manhattan or spending a fortune

Al Quaida mastermind Kahlid Shaikh Mohammed is charged with having committed the mother of all felonies against the citizens of New York—planning the destruction of the World Trade Center.

We New Yorkers deserve a chance to hear the case against him in our own local federal court, and, if he is guilty, to have the distinct pleasure of seeing him sentenced to death by our fellow New Yorkers.

But suddenly, all our former friends who immediately after 9/11 declared “We are all New Yorkers now,” are against letting us have our satisfaction. As are some local big names.

Michael Bloomberg, who used to be for the trial is now against it. It’ll cost a billion dollars for security, he whines. God knows how he calculates that. He seems to be getting his numbers from that world-famous math whiz, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly, who can’t seem, to count how many of his cops have been involved in brutality cases or he’d resign.

The Mayor at one point suggested moving the trial to Governor's Island, a former military fortress in New York harbor. He seems to have backed off that one after Sheldon Silver, the speaker of the New York State Assembly called it stupid. Nah, Silver's rejection of the idea is stupid.

For the sake of argument, let’s say Mayor Bloomberg right about the costs of a trial in Manhattan—and has not simply joined the chorus of “No” Republicans from Rudy Giuliani to Congressman Peter King, a sudden pal of lower Manhattan's welfare from Podunk, Long Island.

The only folks with a real dog in this fight are those residents of lower Manhattan who live within a few blocks of the Federal courthouse. They’d most certainly be inconvenienced for quite some time by traffic barriers, demands to produce identification on their way home from work or shopping, and other royal pains in the butt.

So New York Crank officially endorses one of Mayor Bloomberg's better ideas, even if the mayor has walked away from it.

Hold the trial on Governor’s Island

A trial on Governor's Island would still keep the proceedings within sight of where the Twin Towers used to be—in other words, where the trial belongs. At the same time, the mayor wouldn’t have to put up a nickel of city money for security.

Take a look at the map of lower Manhattan. That island at the lower right is Governor’s Island. Until recently, it was a U.S. military installation, closed to the general public. You couldn't pry your way in there with a diesel-powered can opener. The U.S. Government tried to dump it for years, but there was a problem finding a taker for it.

Well, now it’s New York State's, via some quasi-public corporation. The island is used for a bunch of feeble concerts and exhibitions during the summer, and not for much else. For one thing, it’s accessible only by ferry. For another, hardly anybody wants to go there.

Perfect.

How to maintain Governor’s Island
security during the trial

One of the Island’s former purposes was to house the U.S. Coast Guard. Great. Bring ‘em back. Have one Coast Guard cutter constantly circling the island clockwise, another counter-clockwise. That should be enough to stave off an Al Queda invasion by anything short of a flotilla of Al Queda battleships and destroyers, which don’t exist

You’d also need two dozen or so U.S. Marshals on the island at any given time to guard the prisoner and patrol the place. Or if you insist on something more impressive, a company of U.S. Marines ought to be able to secure the island And you’d need a half dozen or so marshals stationed at the Manhattan end of the ferry station.

Governor’s Island has been a fort since the 19th Century. I’m sure that somewhere on the island there’s a prison cell good to go. Just lock in the Shaikh between courtroom sessions and post a marshal outside is cell door to make sure the Shaikh doesn't commit suicide and to make him feel uncomfortable knowing he's watched every time he has to go to the potty.

No way in hell does all this cost a billion, or a half a billion, or even a quarter of a billion bucks a year. And not a nickel of it has to come out of multi-billionaire Michael Bloomberg's pocket. Nor out of his city's coffers.

Visitors to the island could be strictly controlled by the marshals at the ferry station on the Manhattan side. Jurists could commute by ferry, a ride of roughly 15 minutes, from lower Manhattan. If they need to be sequestered—although I don’t see why—there are plenty of former barracks and officers quarters on Governor's Island where you could put them up. Or give them a real treat and let them live in Class A comfort on the island’s Colonel’s Row.

Tell the president and your representatives
to support a trial on Governor’s Island

The only people inconvenienced by this plan would be a bunch of second-string promoters of concerts and other cultural events. And I’m sure they could find other venues in all five boroughs.

Let’s get behind this plan. We can show the world we can hold a fair civilian trial, make Kahlid Shaikh Mohammed face the people he attempted to destroy, and save a bundle of money.

This is only a question but...do you suppose this is how Sarah Palin passed her college exams?

Signs of bad economic news all over the place: a cranky analysis of indicators you may have missed

Let the economists look at inflation and consumer price indices. Let the Fed look at interest rates. Let market researchers look at focus groups and consumer confidence measurements.

Me, when I want to see how the economy is really doing, I look in my SPAM box. Currently, it reeks of economic desperation. For example...

Restaurants hungrier than you are

“Winter Restaurant Week Extended,” says an e-mail from Capsuto Freres, an upscale French restaurant down in the TriBeCa section of Manhattan that’s pretty good, but that has evidently run into a shortage of well-heeled customers.

Well, New York’s Restaurant Week was designed to let the hoi palloi sample the blessing of haute cuisine and sure enough, a check at the New York boosting website nycgo.com indicates that desperate upscale restaurants are more starved than their customers.

Capsuto Freres goes further. Four days before Valentine’s Day, they still had tables available according to their e-mail. Oh, and although restaurants make the lion’s share of their profits from the bar, Capsuto is encouraging you to BYOB of wine on Tuesday nights. “No corkage fee.” Sheesh!

Marketing strategists in

strategic and financial disarray

I also find interesting economic barometers in obscure trade newspapers. I know you never heard of it, but trust me, the SuperComm telecommunications trade show used to be big. Now, according to BtoB, “The Magazine For Marketing Strategists,” "Supercom has been called off."

Among the reasons were “dwindling attendance and poor financial projections,” says the report. On top of that, the show's organizers began acting like Republicans, “plagued by competing strategic visions and branding.” Well, come to think of it, that’s also like Democrats these days. There’s a lesson in there for politicians and voters.

As the post office goes, so goes the nation

I’m sad to report that the same issue of BtoB bemoans another loud sucking sound coming from the USPS. Neither snow nor rain nor anything else can stop those poor bastards from losing money. Despite rising postal rates, BtoB says they "posted operating revenue of $18.4 billion for their first fiscal quarter ended December 31, down from $19.1 billion in the year-earlier period.

"The USPS continues to struggle with the slumping economy and falling mail volume, as individuals and businesses shift to electronic forms of communication," BtoB adds.

Well of course. As postal rates grow more and more outrageous, even while service shrivels away, distances between mailboxes grow more distant, and mail delivery more infrequent, people look for something cheaper, faster and more convenient. Voila, e-mail!

So to make up the losses, the USPS will raise prices more, reduce service more, and drive more business away. Eventually we’ll have no USPS at all.

But I don’t entirely blame the post office. When the United States was founded, the Post Office Department was a fully-subsidized branch of government, like the State Department. Then some free enterprise idiots (guess which party, mostly?) decided having a free enterprise post office is more important than being able to mail a letter. Very few nations have barely functioning or no post offices, but if you’re looking for some you might start with Zimbabwe, Tanzania, and some areas of Afghanistan. Oh yes, and coming next, that newest of Third World countries, The United States.

You too can be a college grad

earning sub-minimum wages

“Need Writers at $1 per 400 words!” announces a bold headline on freelance-projects.net. That comes to a 1/4th of a penny a word. (During the Great Depression, starving writers were grinding out stories for pulp magazines at two cents a word.)

Not only that, but your stuff had better be plagiarism-free (because they check your copy on copyscape.) And also, it had better have “no grammer errors,” says the spelling-challenged advertiser. You can try out for the job by writing, for free, 100-150 words on "Benefits of Weight Loss Over 40".

After you send it in, run for the bread line. I have a funny feeling it’s getting longer.

Help keep the buzz in Buzzflash.com. Order great merchandise so they'll stay afloat.

Unlike my own cranky blog, which I get to when I get to it, Buzzflash.com is an ongoing, always-in-operation supersite of news and ideas of interest to progressives. It aggregates news. It provides bales of its analysis and commentary. It sometimes has a great sense of humor.

I turn to it every day, which is also why I link to it. Now I'm urging you to click that link, and get your eyeballs over to Buzzflash not only for what you'll learn, but also for the great books, CDs, DVDs and politically-oriented chotchkes you can buy there.

These guys are a full-time operation. They need your support. Buy some great stuff from them (the examples above are just a few of many) and keep a great chorus of progressive voices buzzing.

Reason number 10,289 to despise conservatives: New York Times house conservative David Brooks kicks and punches out little old ladies

If you need yet another reason to retch at the mere thought of political conservatives running things, take a gander at David Brooks, the New York Times’ resident conservative and his column of February 2, 2009.

His piece starts off in a mild enough tone, blathering more or less innocuously about Shakespeare, Walt Whitman, unnamed “developmental psychologists” and the claim that “people report being happier as they grow older.”

This last thought seems to bother him.

Suddenly, he leaps off the page — clawing, scratching, roaring, biting and foaming at the mouth like a rabid hyena. He all but spits at the elderly. “Geezers” is the ageist term used on the headline of his piece.

“Far from serving the young, the old are now taking from them,” howls Brooks. “First, they are taking money.”

Specifically, he complains that, “According to Julia Isaacs of the Brookings Institution, the federal government now spends $7 on the elderly for each $1 it spends on children.” As if it weren't the conservatives in both houses of Congress who are choking off funds to education.

What Brooks appears to be complaining about are the Social Security checks that the elderly receive and Medicare’s reimbursements to their doctors and hospitals.

He goes on to complain that the money the elderly are “taking” (At gunpoint?) means that they are also “taking freedom,” and “taking opportunity.”

Wait a second, Brooks,

you smug right wing nincompoop

First of all, a good part of that money is equivalent to the money that today's elderly paid into Social Security and Medicare for many decades so that they could have a retirement free from hunger and fear.

Brooks whines: “In 2009, for the first time in American history, every single penny of federal tax revenue went to pay for mandatory spending programs, according to Eugene Steuerle of the Urban Institute. As more money goes to pay off promises made mostly to the old, the young have less control.”

Never mind that this analysis fails to account for the million bucks a day it's costing for each soldier in Iraq and Afghanistan — not to mention the salaries of every member of Congress (right wing whacko or not) and the pensions of George W. Bush and his Vice, to name just a few other things tax dollars go for.

Brooks more importantly fails to mention that America used to face tax brackets that went well into 40 percent for the richest Americans. He neglects to mention that the generation that’s now collecting from the government also paid in, by the shovel load — levels of taxation his own generation has never paid. Nevertheless, we had a happier, richer, more extensively enjoyed economy than we have today.

Brooks also neglects to mention that most the kind of compensation CEOs suck out of the economy and income tax revenues today would have caused street riots 30 and 40 years ago.

That CEO greed money used to go back into profits (taxed), into dividends (taxed), into pension funds (taxed when used) and into economic growth. Result? Prosperity for nearly all in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. Now the money just goes into some CEO or derivative trader's pocket. Result? Hard times for the young that Brooks also wants to stick to the old and weak.

Brooks self-righteously snivels about loss of control because some “geezer” is collecting Social Security and under Medicare can afford to go to the hospital for cancer treatments.

But Brooks neglects to point out that conservatives have so upset the tax, corporate and legal structure in America that a handful of people hijack not millions but multiple billions of dollars from the U.S. economy.

This money that could support freedom and opportunity and give a huge swath of the young more control over their lives.

“Die, you worthless geezer!”

Not a word in Brooks’ article about the financial rape of America by Big Business, big lobbyists and outrageous compensation for the filthy rich few that goes virtually untaxed.

Instead Brooks blames old people for being alive. He brings to mind a book that horrified people in the 1970s, "The Mountain People" by Colin Turnbull. The author, an anthropologist, described how a once-civilized society, a tribe called the Ik, had so degenerated that people gorged themselves on food rather than share any of it with their starving elders, and literally snatched food out of the mouths of their parents.

That's what Brooks is implying we ought to do. He’s no different from the Ik—or from muggers who beat up a little old ladies at their mailboxes, trying to get their Social Security money. In fact, in moral equivalency terms, he’s exactly the same.

Shame on the Times for giving this guy space to spew and spread hatred of the old, the fragile and often the helpless in our socieety. The least the Times could do is hide Brooks behind a pay wall.

America needs a greed tax

I hear that President Obama is expected tonight to ask for a special tax on banks. It's to help insure us against the kinds of disasters bankers create when we protect them against failure while they're permitted to screw their customers, their stockholders and the American taxpayers

No no no, a bank tax is the wrong way to go.

Progressive income taxes are the right way to go. With progressive income taxes, America could easily control the greed. There's no point in pissing off your stockholders by taking a $20 million bonus on top of an outrageously high salary if $19.5 million of it will be taxed away anyway.

This thing needs to be positioned as a "greed tax" — which in a substantial majority of cases it would be. (Income averaging, a device that used to be in the tax code years ago, would protect the occasional athlete, inventor or entrepeneur who makes a big hit only once or twice in his or her life.)

The greed tax would be graduated. Tax brackets stay the same as now for up to $250,000 a year. So if your income is under a quarter of a million bucks a year, there's be no impact at all on you. Everything above that gets taxed at a 38 percent tax rate—not a huge boost. Everything above $2 million would get taxed at a 50% tax rate. And so on, up to 90% for the multi-million dollar bonuses ripped from the accounts of bank customers and the earnings that ought to go to bank stockholders.

A significant fringe benefit: The greed tax would go a long, long way toward reducing the national budget deficit, without snipping here and there at little pieces of important Federal programs.

So why are we screwing around just with bank taxes? Or would President Obama even think about a graduated income greed tax? Probably not.

Obama's real problem from a progressive prospective is that he won't really go for the throats of people who are going for his.

Your lips are sealed? Your tongue is tied? Your quote is not for attribution? What’s YOUR excuse, buddy?

My friend Underbelly-Buce has some fun with the excuses we read in newspapers of record, or of near-record, for people avoiding attribution of things they’ve said.

For example, Buce offers us this:

...who did not want to be named because
he enjoys sticking the shiv in between his goodbuddy's shoulderblades.

This could be the beginning of a wonderful game. How many reasons can you think of for refusing attribution of a quote?

…a librarian who did not want to be named because
she was in bed getting schtupped by the reporter at the time and she didn’t want her husband to know

…a CIA analyst and double agent who did not want to be named because
his acts of espionage could be viewed as a capital crime, even in the United States

…a drug detail saleswoman who did not want to be named because
her boss thought she was out with her suitcase full of samples making sales calls to doctors, not boozing it up in an Eighth Avenue bar just down the block from the New York Times

…another serial killer who did not want to be named because
he was afraid that his neighbors might find him offensive if they knew his hobby his skinning human beings alive

…a "vig" collector who did not want to be named because
several mafia capos might decide to have him whacked

Why would somebody that you know might not want to be named?

Most of my readers are brain dead, but if you’re actually alive and awake out there while you’re reading this (one way or another, 67,500 of you have stumbled into this blog and sniffed around so far) feel free to make contributions of your own. Provided of course that they're printable. Or at least borderline printable.

Elaine Stritch: believing the words

Ordinarily, The New York Crank doesn’t review nightclub acts, but I’m making an exception for Elaine Stritch. If you don’t like this change of pace from the political, you can buzz off. So far as I’m concerned, the lady’s a piece of work and I’m taking notice.

But a bit of background first.

Years ago, I made my entire living telling fibs. Not outright lies. Just essentially harmless fibs, the kind that got people to buy dishwashing liquid in a white bottle instead of a green bottle, or to charge things with a green credit card instead of a blue credit card. In other words, I was in the advertising business.

And then one day, the business actually taught me something valuable—the kind of thing that offers a fresh insight into how stuff works.

I was talking to the director of a TV spot, who was casting for a voice. I don’t remember what the line was that the voice would say. Probably some tame version of this incongruous thought, “Makes love to your hands while it beats the crap out of grease.”

“There are so many announcers with great voices out there,” I said to him. “So how come you’re auditioning only people from Broadway?”

“It’s simple,” the director replied. And then he said, with dramatic emphasis and pregnant pauses between each word, “Actors…believe…the…words.”

Which brings me back to Elaine Stritch.

Stritch is currently appearing at the Café Carlyle, a nightclub in a chichi New York hotel. It's the kind of hotel where movie stars, politicians, investment bank bigshots and diplomats routinely share the elevator.

Ostensibly she’s singing Stephen Sondheim’s songs. I say ostensibly because the lady’s been around the block a few times (her stage debut was in 1944), she’s had a few episodes with booze, and her voice bears the scars. While she miraculously brings off Sondheim's often murder-to-sing ballads, she generally seems to be croaking in tune rather than singing in tune.

But no matter. Stritch may or may not be a singer but she is one hell of an actress and anyone who believes Sondheim’s words can put on a powerful performance just by speaking them. That is essentially what she did. In fact, she spoke one number, entirely without music.

Stritch's delivery toyed with her audience’s emotions. She played it for humor when she sang “I feel pretty/oh so pretty” as if she was letting the audience in on her own ironic joke. She brought some to tears, when she delivered the lyrics to, Every Day a Little Death. And the thought, “damn right about that,” went through my head when she sang Ladies Who Lunch.

There’s another reason to go to the Café Carlyle and hear Stritch (she’s only there until January 30th, so hurry) assuming you’re willing to part with a horrendously thick wad of cash. It’s one of those rare performance venues where the entertainers must be sorely tempted to entertain themselves by watching the audience. And where the audience might be tempted to keep a close eye on one another.

I was sitting with my beautiful girlfriend next to a couple of evidently connected guys (Bonanno family I warrant, judging from some names dropped during their overheard conversation). One of them was accompanied by a much younger woman whose face was a figment of some plastic surgeon’s wildest flight of, umm, creativity—augmented by an equally fanciful makeup job. I won’t even try to describe it. You had to be there.

We had a celebrity in the audience too, the actress Kathleen Turner, who of course was raptly listening to the words. Plus the usual assortment of stock characters from central casting playing out their personal vignettes: The two older gay guys holding hands. The two younger gay guys holding hands. Two middle-aged lesbians who stood up to applaud, whoop and cheer after each number and who nearly swallowed Stritch alive during the performance. The clueless out-of-towner staying at the hotel who came down in his sneakers, jeans and sweatshirt and had to be brought a jacket by the maitre d’.
An incongruous priest in full clerical uniform. By now you probably get the scene.

The bill for the performance and a modest dinner for two—two salads, two plates of salmon, one martini, one glass of wine, one cup of coffee—cost more than my first term of private college tuition, back when Stritch was starring in the Goodyear Television Playhouse. Or to put it another way, I could have flown to Europe and back—this year. Well, money is toilet paper these days.

But Stritch is hard to beat, most especially if you’re one of those people who understands what it means to believe the words.

Florida Power & Light company plays dirty and ends up getting a financial shock

Good for you, Public Service Commission of Florida!

In an era when people expect the lobbyists to win at the expense of the public, the Public Service Commission has withstood an onslaught of pressures, temptations, misleading claims and other low moves by Florida Power & Light.

I commend the full story to you in the Miami Herald. But the short version is, the public actually wins! Or at least they win so far.

Their bill s will be smaller on average for their electricity, contrary to FPL’s demands for a rate increase that would have soaked Florida residents and businesses for an extra $1.3 billion.

To the power company, that extra billion-and-a-third bucks bulging out of their pockets was worth a $6 million full court press lobbying campaign. In the end, they’ll end up essentially soaking their own stockholders for the $6 million. Maybe the stockholders ought to think about dumping their execs.

FPL’s executives’ may feel a certain emptiness in their personal pockets as well. Bonuses and raises were denied for the power company execs, who assailed the Public Service Commission with high powered Washington lobbying, sleazy attempts to win favor by inviting commission employees home for parties, and a small slew of specious and whiny claims.

After the commission's ruling, the power company’s chief exec, Armando Olivera, whined that the decision creates a “chilling effect on anyone who wants to invest in this state.” He evidently didn’t explain how regulation of a government-regulated utility (and power costs that are under control) could have a chilling effect on a manufacturer, hotel builder, or cake baker who might want to start up a business or relocate to Florida. That’s probably because yet another of his outlandish statements is unexplainable.

Chalk one up for the good guys!

Shame on you, Rupert Murdoch! Your New York Post seems to be offering advice to terrorists. How many dead Americans is it worth to sell papers?

There’s a fine line between exposing a weakness in airline security and helping terrorists to exploit that same weakness.

The New York Post, one of the mass circulation junk newspapers in Rupert Murdoch’s harem of journalistic harlotry, seems to have slithered across that line, without giving a tinker’s damn for the lives of the millions of Americans who fly.

The article appeared in print on Thursday, January 2^nd. You can see it here.

The article tells the exploits of Lorena Mongelli, a Post reporter who managed to get through a metal detector at JFK with a titanium necklace in her jeans pocket. A serious threat to airline security? Possibly. Or possibly not.

But unlike the web article, the full-page “exposé” in the print edition of the Post also contained a sidebar, listing three different weapons that an actual terrorist can use to get past security.

That’s it, above. Just take it to your friendly neighborhood weapons store and proceeed after that directly to the airport with your weapon. (I’ve retouched out the names and model numbers of those weapons to discourage terrorist wannabes.)

The article also provided a suggestion about a “homemade” weapon—useful help for terrorists who’ve shown that they’ll follow up on any recommendation, from shoe bombs to jockstrap bombs.

No doubt, the Post thinks this kind of stuff will help them sell extra papers. The evidence is pretty clear. Editor Col Allen was quoted as saying, "I'll get fired not because Rupert doesn't like the stories I put in the paper. I'll get fired because we don't sell newspapers."

Well, I have no doubt this how-to-smuggle-a-weapon-onto-a-plane story will help them sell extra papers to terrorists, and that it will rate reproduction in The Terrorist Cookbook.

Shame on you Lorena Mongelli, who shares a byline for this subversive horror of a story with Tom Namako. I’m guessing Tom’s a rewrite man. Since this was not breaking news that had to be phoned in on the quick, I have to assume Namako got assigned to the story too because Lorena can’t write her way out of a paper bag.

Shame also on you, Col Allen. And please, the fact that you may have yet another booze-induced hangover is no excuse.

And of course, shame on Rupert Murdoch.

Rupe and Col are foreigners and ought to be deported and banned forever from entering the country for giving material aid and comfort to the enemy.

Lorena and Tom just ought to have their faces slapped, and then get deported to Podunk, where they might be able to cover meetings of the local school board and sewer district without endangering the lives of their fellow citizens.

Here’s my evidence for believing Delta Airlines thinks your money is toilet paper—and that their passengers are toilet paper, too

I used to love to fly. I took my first commercial airline flight alone when I was 16. I may recently have taken my last. Or at least my last on Delta.

Plenty of bad things have already been said about Delta by irate people who’ve dealt with them. For samples go here, where you’ll find, among other things, a passenger saying that Delta hacked her e-mail for advocating on behalf of Delta passengers.

Or go here for a story about people whose heads were about to explode over the “screw you” treatment they got when Delta lost their luggage.

Or here, for a tale of their inconsistency in matters related to security rules and regs.

45,601 enraged Delta haters can't all be wrong

Or just google “Delta Sucks” and you’ll get (at least as of this writing) 45,600 posts relating to irate former Delta passengers. Well, make that 45,601. I’ve got my own blood-boiling story.

On Sunday, December 27^th, I boarded Delta Flight 481, with a listed flight time of 5 hours and 49 minutes from JFK in New York to Mexico City International Airport. As soon as I was in the air, I learned that Delta doesn’t serve meals on this flight. At least not in Tourist.

Well, okay, I understand. Times are tough. Delta’s trying to survive. And anyway, they were selling food for the flight. I didn’t mind buying it. What did they have?

Care for some junk food with your junk airline?

Umm, cookies. Cookies is a meal? Well, uh, potato chips? I repeat the question. Trail mix, then. Sorry, so far as I’m concerned that’s still junk food.

Well, they did have one “meal” for sale aboard the flight. A cheese plate. Oh goody! I love good cheese. I ordered it.

“That’ll be seven dollars,” said the flight attendant.

The little plastic box seemed mighty small for a “cheese plate” worth $7. I can get a whole wheel of imported French Camembert for that price. When I opened the itsy-teensy plastic box, I found one small slice of Swiss-like cheese, one equally small slice of what I think was supposed to be cheddar cheese, and one slice of mystery cheese. There were also four—four!—grapes and four crackers.

But what the hell. I reached for my wallet to pay the flight attendant. I yanked out a $5 bill and a couple of singles.

“Sorry, this is a cashless airline,” said the flight attendant.

Well, I had suspected for some time that Delta is going broke, but totally cashless?

“You’ll have to pay by credit card,” explained the flight attendant. “We don’t accept cash.”'

Now wait one effing second!

Who is Delta to flout U.S. law?

It says right on all the dollar bills in my wallet—and all the five, ten, twenty and fifty dollar bills, too—that “This note is legal tender for all debts, public and private.” In other words, United States law says you can use cash to pay for anything.

So I guess Delta thinks the laws of the United States don’t apply to Delta. And if the laws about money don’t apply to Delta, maybe they think the laws and regs about airline security, flight safety, the treatment of passengers and human resources don’t apply to them, either.

I might have considered that statement an exaggeration.

Until the flight back.

We had been vacationing in Oaxaca, Mexico. It’s a one-hour flight from Mexico City. On the return trip we flew Aeromexico back to Mexico City where we caught Delta Flight 484 to New York City. Well, that makes it all sound rather streamlined. It wasn't.

Chaos at the Delta gate

I don't know who's to blame for what here—whether it was Mexican security inefficiency, TSA inefficiency, or Delta inefficiency. I don't even know who all the people who stood between us (The New York Crank was traveling with his beautiful girlfriend) and the boarding gate were. But here's what happened.

1. When we got off the plane from Oaxaca, our hand luggage got x-rayed, we got magnetically scanned, and I got patted down. What's up with that? They don't want terrorists getting off airplanes and blowing up their own underpants in the souvenir shop?

2. When we entered the Delta departure area, our hand luggage got x-rayed again, we got magnetically scanned again, and I got patted down. Moreover, my solid crystal deodorant (not a liquid, not a gel) got confiscated. That same crystal deodorant has flown in my hand baggage with me—twice to Paris, once to San Francisco, all the way to Oaxaca and then part of the way home before somebody decided it was contraband. Or are the Delta people just making it up as they go along? I can tell you this: nowhere before boarding any flight in Mexico did anyone ask us to take off our shoes. I guess shoe bombers only blow up their shoes when they board in U.S. territory. Meanwhile, the guy behind me took a one-liter bottle of water that had just purchased in the terminal aboard with him. Or at least he said he bought it in the terminal. I mean, is that security, or what?

3. Our baggage got x-rayed, and we got scanned and patted down again just before boarding the plane. Furthermore, the Delta employees (I assume they're Delta employees) at the gate took our airline tickets with our luggage receipts attached and told us to move on. We had to stand there and insist they give us the tickets back. They resisted a bit before they gave in.

Good thing, too.

Our luggage stays in Mexico

There was no luggage waiting for us at the baggage carousel at JFK in New York. We waited. And waited. And waited—along with other passengers who had boarded Delta in Mexico City via connecting flights from other cities. We all had the same problem. No luggage.

Finally, we went to Delta's lost luggage office. The Crank's beautiful girlfriend handed our two luggage tags to the clerk there and explained the problem. He glared up at her suspiciously.

"Why are these two luggage tags stapled together?" he asked. What did he think he had just discovered? A terrorist plot to staple receipts?

The Crank's beautiful girlfriend explained that this was what the security people at the Mexico City airport did to the tags before they handed them back to us.

"Oh," was all the clerk replied. He filled out a big red ticket and handed it to us. "You'll have your bags within 24 hours he said.

24 hours on an extremely slow clock

We let 24 hours go by. No bags, and we were ready for bed, so we let it go until the next day. Next morning, still no bags. Finally, 48 hours later, the Crank's beautiful girlfriend started calling Delta.

I won't bore you with the details of trying to get a live person at Delta to give you a straight answer about the luggage that never got off the plane. Suffice it to say that some hours after she began calling, the beautiful girlfriend finally reached a woman who said rather casually, "Oh yes, your baggage got to the airport yesterday afternoon. We'll send it tomorrow."

It arrived in the wee hours of the next morning. But wait, there's more!

Opened, searched, scuffed and stolen

I opened my bag, to find all the zippered closures that I had closed were opened. Somebody had been rummaging through my stuff. There was only dirty laundry in there, and somebody had decided it wasn't worth stealing. But just to show that you can't keep a good thief down, that somebody had unstrapped the Tumi luggage tag from the outside handle of my bag and kept it.

And then, just for good measure, he or they took some kind of sharp or rough object and gouged a huge scratch across the bottom of my bag.

The beautiful girlfriend had bigger problems. Someone had taken about $500 worth of her jewelry, plus her camera.

Is this Delta's fault? It could have happened while the bags were in the possession of AeroMexico. But JFK and other US airports are notorious for theft of baggage contents, too. And the baggage sat around at JFK for at least 12 hours before Delta brought it home to us.

A bureaucratic form from hell

At any rate, Delta's legally responsible for processing a claim about all this. The beautiful girlfriend called Delta (more waiting on the phone) and was told to go download a lost baggage claim form from Delta and fill it out.

Trust me, it was the form from hell. Actually, don't trust me. You can see it for yourself here. There are over 70 boxes to fill in information Delta demands, including completely irrelevant stuff such as what you do for a living, whether you've ever filed a claim for lost baggage before, and the weight of your bag. Do you know what your own bag weighs?

Plus they want your receipt for your lost luggage (it's not enough that you've already presented it at the lost baggage counter when you got off the airplane) the number of your ticket (did you remember to save your ticket after you got off the plane?) and the original receipt for each item valued over $250. Do you have a receipt for that camera Aunt Martha gave you for Christmas?

Why this story matters to every potential Delta passenger

Obviously, Delta's management doesn't give a damn. Lose luggage? They'll do anything but promptly answer your call, find your luggage and get it to you.

Put in a claim? They'll stonewall you with bureaucratic forms and ridiculous demands.

Get hungry on the airplane? They'll charge you—which I suppose they have a right to do—but then they still ought to sell real meals on flights longer than three hours, and give fair value for the money they're charging.

But Delta doesn't seem to give a damn for their passengers. Which leads me to suspect they also don't give more than a minimal damn for the people who pilot and maintain their planes, or for air safety. Searching passengers three times and then losing their luggage is not a sign of vigilance. Or of meticulousness. Or of anything save chaotic management, greed and desperation.

Delta's acting like an airline that's going down the chute. I don't know what that says for their airplanes, but I don't ever want to be aboard one again if I can help it.

Update: On January 12, Delta announced that the airline was upping its baggage charge. From now on, they'll charge you $23 for your first bag, and $32 for the second. Continental Airlines followed suit. There was no word on whether passengers could charge Delta for lost luggage, but don't count on any.