GOP Has-Beens

The subject of has-beens interests me. One day Rocky and Blaine are one of the biggest things in the NYC radio market, the next day they're frying chicken at some Popeye's off the Interstate. These days the GOP has-beens are Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, that pizza godfather guy and maybe, make that probably Newt who can already feel the powerful vortex of the has-been hole sucking him in. IMO the architect of 1994's "Contract with America" deserves more respect than he's getting but that's just me. Michele Bachmann, too many brain farts and maybe the last straw was her mistaking Elvis' birthday for his deathday. I know it's not a big thing but taken as a whole you don't want her trying to reset Russian relations or pondering ending the embargo against Cuba. I want to devote the bulk of this blog though to Sarah Palin. Now when her star was early rising in the political sky (it didn't hurt that most men would've done her) early conservative commentary focused on such things as a family that hunts together stays together but the Gander Mountain voting bloc is only so big. Many many people have a mild distaste for the sport of hunting not through some elaborate theory of critter rights but Sarah and her family having a fine bowl of Moose Nose Stew on a snowy winter's night doesn't exactly impress them. Those be all-American values, heartland stuff to be sure but maybe not to a Manhattanite. So what makes a has-been or who has has-been potential? Could simply be just the inexorable Passage of Time, I mean Danny Bonaduce had to beat up a tranny to get back on the radar screen but in Palin's case and this is a biggie it was her overall Lack of Knowledge especially on the foreign affairs scene. You don't want this chick going up against Bashar al-Assad or negotatating some Arab/Israeli peace deal. I think the final nail in the coffin though, no it wasn't Tina Fey but Back in the Day some 8' giant black man who played the hoops plowed her. Sure it was back in the day but it's still a shock to the evangelical mind, yeah I know she's for the smaller gov't and pro-life and all so we can forgive her her youthful dalliances, her sex'chal 'perimentation but we kinda can't forget it either. Thanks Joe McGuiness! Oh yes Herman Cain and that's the really painful part of being a has-been nobody talks about you anymore. You know gimme someone who quietly has staying power through the years. Um I hate to say this but you can kinda say that about Romney. I hope to never become a blogging has-been btw, please lemme know:)

Romney

I'm not gonna be spending a whole lot of time on this guy, hell I may not even vote. To all the Ron Paul critics out there and it's all good but tell me why I should vote for Romney. He probably has the nomination wrapped up by now but to me it's boring, hardly blogworthy on a daily basis anyway. It's been rather apparent for some time now that the conservative infrastructure in this country, pundits, commentators, talking heads, chuckleheads, opiners-at-large while not maybe passionately in love with Romney at first have tacitly nodded their assent and the question is why? I kind of pride myself on my astute political analysis but to me it's a mystery, all I can come up with is he's not scary. Saw him recently on The Charlie Rose Show and he's articulate and can talk and again maybe he makes mainstream conservatives comfortable in a coffee, cruller and blog sort of way, throw in a nice sweater and a cat on the couch. I honestly don't even think pro-choice Republicans are that threatened by him and even here I think his flipflopping may be the wrong term. He's gone from pro-life to pro-choice back to pro-life again and in physical terms, to put it in the jargon of science this is more like a vibrating strand of energy, a string (pro-life pro-choice pro-life pro-choice pro-life pro-choice pro-life pro-choice) and it's not to be taken seriously, it could be a mood. It's fluidity that's all like tipping that glass chemistry tube with the blue liquid inside, swishing it back and forth to study it and if he was pro-choice once he can be pro-choice again since he's able to see so many angles and sides. He ain't no static Santorum that wants to outlaw buggery or something and take away the coils and pills. Mormonism is an interesting subject and I've been meaning to google it, oh hell let's do it - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mormonism. It's just a touch Secret Circle-ish to me but that don't bother me none, hell if the guy's a Mormon the guy's a Mormon. I don't think though that ABO (Anybody But Obama) is the right way to look at it, the political calculus for modern conservatives to live by. On another note "I ain't no angry black woman." OK so go tell Oprah:)

You see this is the reason the people don't like celebrities

The Most Important Birth Since Christ

There was no room at the inn but they had Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan. They took over a whole wing, some folks weren't happy, you know the 99%. Beyonce's mahogany suite with the bulletproof glass which one can expect some minimal anti-paparazzi measures but C'mon! and some guy couldn't even see his twin preemies in the ICU. The NYS Health Dept. investigation into the Matter went the way of the Natalie Wood reprobe, actually that one lasted longer. One hopes the Blessed Child develops some gender-identity issues later on in life and embarrasses the proud parents, a little Chaz Bono action (Sonny hit a tree skiing and couldn't live to share in the Joy) or else becomes a porn star like Laurence Fishburne's daughter but Jay-Z does seem to be really in love with her, it ain't no sham - a Kardashian marriage not. A nursing note: why so many C-Sections?

(lite agitating fare - about 230 calories)

Conservatives miss the point about Tim Tebow

It seems that everything has to interconnect these days, Politics and Sports in this case and some conservative commentators are making it out like liberals making fun of NFL quarterback Tim Tebow's religiosity is a war on Christianity itself. He blesses himself and prays before the game or something and thanks God at press conferences. Not the first athlete to do this nor the last, you'd think it was never done before. Yeah liberals never miss a chance at a cheap shot but the Larger Point missed as usual is that

God doesn't care about a damn football game:)

It's not so much the Republican candidates I hate...

...it's the conservative political commentators. These movie critics of the political scene who have to overinterpret every daily up-to-the-minute pollette or subpoll and who dismiss various surges as the flavor of the week (as a group they heavily tend to lean towards Romney for some reason), these union commentators who tell you how to vote, who tell you Ron Paul is a system-hater when maybe all he wants to do is return to the Original System, these self-important chuckleheads who tweet and blog and pontificate and opine which leads me to a very important political maxim here you would do well to heed:

By all means know a candidate's political positions, study his or her belief system, judge their sincerity for yourself and how they'll impact on your life personally but you're perfectly capable of doing that already aren't you average American that you are. DO NOT however read the political commentary, do not allow it as a critical mass to influence the way you vote or think. If Newt tweaked another woman's nipple not his wife's, well you already knew that didn't you? You don't need me or some other pundicrat to tell you that's baggage, you don't need to read George Will's petulant commentary on Newt's view of the judges in this country just 'cause his wife is advising the Rick Perry campaign (look Will has a frenulum too). John Podhoretz, Michael Goodwin, David Brooks, Jonah Goldberg, Peggy Noonan, Carlmax Newsmax or whatever the hell it's called and so on down the list, just don't read 'em. I'd rather read soap's take on the ethanol subsidies situation anyway:)

Why we're not an intelligent country

Trending right now at least when I first signed in around 10:30 this morning are:

(1) Gaga boyfriend
(2) Kim Kardashian
(3) Katy Perry and Rus......
---
(5) Rachel Uchitel

I never got this, you go to the library let's say or are at home and have a very valuable chunk of Time and you're looking this stuff up? So what was I trending just now? Old black news anchor Bill McCreary who once hosted a show in NYC called Black News in the '70s on Channel 5 and oh yes I found for Saty a fully employee-owned company at http://www.scottscornermarket.com/ and just the other day I was googling different detox teas and that whole subject and well I'm eclectic but not stupid. Did you know there's such a thing as Radio Frequency Hearing which often gets misdiagnosed as tinnitus? I mean I follow the Gaga stuff just a touch, tangentially like I know she's 25 and doesn't have a boyfriend (Patrick get in there!) but millions of Americans googling these same stupid subjects day in and day out across the fruited plain? amateur experts on pop ephemera and we VOTE!!! Kelly Clarkson just endorsed Ron Paul btw (http://www.gossipcop.com/kelly-clarkson-ron-paul-endorsement-support-president-2012-republican-twitter/). So I'm gonna be gone a little bit and go check out that food market again:)

New Year's Resolutions

I've none, I already lost the weight. They say most folks gain a few pounds over the holidays. Well for me the way I combat this is I took a long walk the day before and on Christmas Day itself I ate very well of the main course offered and then some traditional desserts and no I didn't hold anything back but I didn't eat anything before this or after this for the rest of the day but it lasted me the whole day and into the night. Scotch, now there's a tricky potion. Got some Dalmore as a gift and later on that night with nothing on the TV I got bored, depressed and a tad irritable all at the same time thinking about work the next day. So I was all set on my day off this fine Tuesday to go to Balducci's the Food Lover's Market in the lovely and very Bronxville-esque town of Ridgefield CT and was doing some online research just now about getting there from the scenic Merritt Parkway when lo and behold they closed down! another victim of the bad economy and most of the stores and places I've become accustomed to shop over the years have likewise closed down. Rewatched Easy Rider few days back and the classic scene where the two bikers go to New Orleans and hitch up with two gals one played by Toni Basil and later drop acid and are wandering through some cemetery on some pretty bad trips. There's something weirdly hilarious about the scene and just heard on the news that moviegoing this year is down about $500 million from last year and all sorts of reasons were given but how 'bout most movies suck these days, they don't make 'em like they used to. I don't know what to do with myself today but might hit some Asian store later, the Ridgefield arc of my day is lost. Back to the regular sucky non-holiday music on the radio, don't remember a time in my life when music sucked so much and this is bad for long trips which I am wont to do. Happy Holidays vs. Merry Christmas, I've no problem just don't make me feel guilty if I go with Merry Christmas. So where are Jay-Z and Fitty's special holiday albums? (suggested song titles: Silent Night Deadly Night, Frosty the Blowman). This is what happens when you pigeonhole yourself in the bad, folks will laugh if you do something nice for a change and I read somewhere Fitty dropped a whole boatload of pounds going on some liquid diet so he could play some cancer survivor in a movie, might be interesting. Happy Whatever:)

WORK

Most people seem to accept IT and it's the reason why I've not been online that much of late. WORK - it's not that I'm for it or against it but as Beth once said a long time ago she doubts if when we're on our deathbeds and we look back we'll be happy with all those hours we put in. This social commentator handyman who used to come in, one day he says to me "ever wish you were fired?" and I go "yeah, maybe then you can finish that book you always wanted to read." Unless you're in business for yourself or doing your own entrepreneurial thing you're really not in control of your own life, the master of your own ship like today I have to go in late and some days you can't go for that long walk you planned or go up the line to Walmart. I'd like to hear libertarians who are all for Maximum Freedom explain this. Libertarianism is a pipe dream in so many ways and the fact that most folks have to get up at some ungodly hour and go in with their lunchpails means others are in control of us, we're working on their terms and again it's not a good or a bad thing, it is what it is but Maximum Freedom it ain't. WHO invented Work and why can't we change or shift the paradigm a little so as to have more leisure time to cultivate, oh I don't know Family Values which conservatives are so big on? My brother doesn't complain that much about work, his philosophy is work is supposed to suck that's why they call it work and if you want to get all theological about it you can blame Adam and Eve our first parents. I'm in a work frame of mind today, it's an old old topic around here so why not let it riff?

Cap'n Obama will get us through this

The economic weather of which he has no control over, at least that's my gist of what he told Steve Kroft of 60 Minutes. It's a kind of interesting analysis this fatalistic version, wonder if the public will buy it. It'd be like if Jimmy Carter had said the same thing that despite long gas lines and inflation I'ma gonna be the guy to steer us into better waters and nicer climes. All Obama has to do is push the right policies that will make a difference in people's lives like make them buy health insurance, can't help it if Fate's a racist. Obama the Orator vs. Newt the Debater, should be a good one:)

Disorganized Religion

If you're Catholic you've probably heard, starting tomorrow there'll be some changes in the service. I don't know about you but when I go to church I want to rest my weary head, I don't want to work, have to figure things out. Going to Mass should not be like going to school. I got a flavoring of some of the new church songs or singing parts I guess you could call them and I like the old music better. I don't really know what gave impetus to all this but my guess is that after all the clergy sex-abuse scandals they want to rejazz the Church and get folks interested again. Again for me it's an effort and I go by the old adage if it ain't broke don't fix it. For the past few weeks now our pastor who has a passing resemblance to Newt Gingrich btw has been explaining the new translation as they call it and I just tune out. The Church is more like a corporation than a religious institution these days and every so often they feel they have to rejigger it or reset it or something. Some of the ushers look like game show hosts in their suits, all that's missing is the big Gene Rayburn mike. When I went to grade school they made us go to Mass some mornings and before the service there was a rosary group and the woman leading the group did it so fast it sounded more like an auction or a horse race. 'Member they made us go to Confession too and once word got out the strict priest was in the right booth and the good one was in the left all of a sudden the line switched all the way over, I mean you could have killed someone and he'd just go say Three Hail Mary's, maybe an Our Father too. Oh God I got alot more of this stuff like abusive nuns straight out of some Gothic novel but I'll just save it for the Comments Section:)

Happy Black Friday!

Let's face it, it's not so much Happy Thanksgiving as you can't wait to go out to Kohl's or Walmart. It's no longer even 4AM on Friday morning but in many cases 10PM after you've just made your turkey sandwich from the day's leftovers. Oh God I am so not a herd mentaliter, did the bulk of my Xmas shopping at a more leisurely and enjoyable pace starting in early November, just a couple more people on the list. Never got the atheists this time of year, even porn shops celebrate Christmas. Ah the joyless crowd. Never forgot the story my mother told and this was many a moon ago when she didn't even know what Black Friday was. My Dad and Mom decided to go to the Danbury Mall, a quite nice ride from the big YO and she figured it's the day after Thanksgiving, folks will be relaxing the day ater recovering from their meals and maybe even a hangover or two so her first reaction was who the hell are these people and the rest is history. SUCKERS!!! all I gotta do is my wrapping and it's done. I hope nobody gets stampeded to death this year but even then it'll probably wind up on some sick website like that poor guy who got pummeled by some teen thugs on the subway with nobody coming to help. Sat seems to feel I'm devoting too much time to Natalie Wood, it's distracting fluff from all the Real Problems and Issues our country and society faces but I say this. Even if we got rid of all the distractions, forgot about the Bieber and K-Dash, say suspended X Factor for a time so we could as a nation give these critical issues our undivided attention wanna know something? They ain't getting solved, there's too much corruption in high places. Just look at the Super Committee and speaking of X Factor Astro somehow feels he's obliged to win otherwise it's just some cosmic conspiracy against young black rappers from Brooklyn. Lakoda Rayne looked cute last night, oh I forgot that's a Distraction. Sorry, gotta go home now and do my recycling:)

Can you be a conservative and still believe in climate change?

I say Yes, it's not agreement or disagreement with the Theory that determines whether or not you're a true conservative but what do you do about it? In a word Nothing:)

The Rise of Newt

Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich had a very respectable showing at the last debate moderated by CBS News Scott Pelley and really shone on foreign policy and is even getting traction in the polls. By now it is conventional wisdom however that Newt is unelectable so why is that? It is because the Powers that be say so and this is reinforced by the echo chamber of the conservative punditocracy (e.g. the New York Post's John Podhoretz) and trickles down into the psyche of the voting public. I know soapie will disagree with my analysis here especially since Newt has gone all green on us but whenever I read that he is unelectable I never really hear the reasons why. Is it because he once dumped his breast-cancer stricken wife in the hospital? is it because he's so yesterday, some retro-90s fit? is it something else? We say so so it shall be so, he has no place in the Matrix of Politics. Then again he's not Ron Paul:)

Jaded Politics

This past Tuesday (Election Day) I chose not to vote. People act like you have a duty to vote even if all the candidates suck, never got this. Anyway Democrat Mike Spano won the mayoralty of Yonkers, wasn't even that close so because she brought it up first this Italian woman at work asked if I voted and I said no so then I asked her who she voted for just to make lite conversation. She said Spano of course and so I then engaged her in a series of questions all the time being the epitome of Civility because HELP ME TO UNDERSTAND!!! I'm just curious I said why so many voted for the guy, what was the attraction? Did he say he'd lower taxes and she said he talked about Education (oh) and she added children are our future (I've never heard this before) and so I said but they all say that and she conceded the point. I said Obama talked about education among other things and she even helped me finish my sentence - "but look what we got." The Yonkers election was personal for me, all those red-light cams in the big YO were put up under the Republican and pro-life administration of Mayor Phil Amicone so my philosophy is what difference does it make, nobody really represents ME and my interests and values and me, my brother and my friend too always somehow vote for the losing candidate. The power of your vote is definitely overrated, it's a kind of Quantum Mechanics, chaos theory applied to Politics (see I have been watching The Fabric of the Cosmos over on PBS) but getting back to the woman at work it's as if pols have some sort of Svengali-like influence over people. We hate their guts and make fun during normal times but when it comes time to vote and they open up their mouth we buy into it. Help me to understand. So basically but I didn't put it in these terms exactly I said to my co-worker but we know they're basically full of Shit and we vote for them anyway. All it takes is a charming facade......Now I hate Hitler analogies as much as the next responsible blogger but around Yonkers someone painted in a Hitler mustache on Spano's face on a bunch of signs of his and the motto underneath put there by the Spano campaign themselves simply says A NEW APPROACH. Get it? you have to laugh at this stuff. Funny thing is the cops didn't even take the signs down yet, maybe it's the first crack in political correctness after all. It's all good:)

Thoughts on the Michael Jackson verdict

An LA jury finally gets one right, certainly there was no other choice on the technical merits than guilty of involuntary manslaughter and Dr. Conrad Murray will serve his four years in a county jail rather than the state prison or word on the legal street is he'll probably even get some form of house arrest and YET,

in another sense MICHAEL JACKSON is really the guilty party here and all his enablers down through the years, friends and family, everyone. People who suck you into their madness......Michael Jackson became a whining, cloying and needy creature ("give me my milk") and on balance Dr. Murray probably would not have gone with the powerful anesthetic propofol had not Michael Jackson insisted and become a baby about it Here's what I don 't get, MJ by then had already gone down as a legend in music history, he made his billions and yet these celebs have to stay in the limelight it seems, it's an obsession of theirs and so if he was just content with his monumental and phenomenal success up 'til that point so what if he couldn't sleep? What of it? he didn't have a 9-5 job or even a 7-3 like the average slob so in his life his chronic insomnia was really quite irrelevant to making ends meet so if need be screw the need to tour or whatever, your health's more important anyway. In a way Michael Jackson ruined Dr. Conrad Murray's whole life and career and as someone said to me yesterday maybe he's in his own type of hell right now. The perpetual Michael Jackson fan club is missing the Bigger Picture but they always do. I say this, if you wanna be weird be weird on your own time, don't involve the medical profession:)

A Herman Cain/Kim Kardashian blog

Herman Cain, shades of Clarence Thomas/Anita Hill. Look this is what happens when you're a conservative uppity nigger who thinks for yourself.

Things went downhill ever since Kris Humphries had to sit on that plane next to Ray J, he of the original Kardashian sex tape. Kim comes across as nominally more intelligent than Paris Hilton and somewhat less annoying than J-Lo who loves herself and she even has a line of something at Sears or Macy's. Andrea Peyser of the New York Post calls her a fame whore. I don't get all that worked up about it, for me it's just to pass the time while reading the morning paper. Word on the street is Justin Bieber may have gotten a girl pregnant. He's dipping and Kardashian is back on the market, hey ya never know. You know what gets me about Montel Williams who tokes the medical cannibus on a daily basis is he doesn't look or act like he has MS, bopping around on that infomercial with the juicer and he did do that talk show all those years, didn't look the worse for wear. Despite years and decades of steady medical and scientific advancements you mean to tell me the only thing that can manage your pain is pot? c'mon! I think he's fronting or as they say in England fron-Ting. A word to the Madoffs, next time try jumping:)

What is the role of government?

This is the essence of ALL of our blogging when you get right down to it, a distillation of our political POVs. Soapie likes local states but not the federal government, Dave sees a clear role for the feds. Beth is a charitable person but wants this to be her own decision. Saty says time and again we don't understand what socialism is, we need to do our homework but I beg to differ, we have enough of an idea. Throw this out there, would YOU eat at Soapie's Libertarian Meat Market and Deli? (this is of course a utopian place, a figment of our imaginations where the USDA rules don't apply to him). I was struck my Mal's rather agnostic position on abortion as stated in the previous blog, basically take abortion as an issue off the political table, scrape that dried crap off the plate and into the garbage bin which is interesting since pro-choicers then would no longer have any say in party platforms either. While we're at it get RACE off the table too, don't wanna offend the guests. Herman Cain, the current GOP frontrunner is pro-life among other great things. I say this, his 9-9-9 is at least better than the 666 Plan but should we not vote for him because he doesn't subscribe to Mal's wisdom which also happens to be Pam's? OK so you go into soapie's place and ask for a roast beef wedge with all the trimmings and a big pickle and a side of potato salad only his deli clerk ain't wearing any gloves, maybe you just caught him scratching his nuts as you walked in but as my instructor in a food-safety course once said latex or vinyl gloves are overrated, people somehow get a false sense of security with gloves since they get dirty too especially if you're not constantly changing 'em and then you gotta order extra gloves which runs you into some money. If I may put words into soapie's mouth since I kinda got the gist by now and I know he's on a coffee break at his law firm and is reading this and will respond shortly -- better that one person get diarrhea so his staff can learn than have the feds come in and say how it's gotta be. So the free-market has some dribbles, that's the beauty of it. I would hazard a guess Dave ain't eating there either:)

The libertarian conundrum

If a child cannot be born (because of abortion) how can it enjoy Liberty? WE have a great libertarian package for you IF you manage to be born.

The death of Khadafy which begs the question......

why all the instantaneous graphic imagery but not with bin Laden? We were even treated to a bullet hole in the head shot but we STILL have nothing on any bin Laden death photos, in a vault somewhere. Shaw has recently taken some of us to task because we conservatives don't want to give Obama credit for taking out bin Laden. Speaking for myself it's not that I don't want to honey it's just that OBL's death was never independently verified by objective sources other than the government. Oh yeah another difference, the Libyans still have Khadafy's body whereas bin Laden if it was him was thrown overboard practically 12 hours later. Yeah we're all happy about the latest developments but on the flipside Bibi has just released about 1,000 Palestinian terrorists in exchange for one young Israeli soldier held by Hamas for five years. A word about NATO, ostensibly when the Libyan rebels began to gather steam in the latest chapter of the Arab Spring NATO was simply supposed to enforce something called a No Fly Zone, that's it, now they're kinda in the assassination racket sort of. Osama bin Laden, Anwar al-Awlaki, Khadafy all on Obama's watch and I heard the faintest stirrings in the msm this morning that he's somehow being credited with the death of the mad Colonel as well. Ah well Happy You Tubing!!!

McDonaldizing the gangster

It's soon to be in production but John Travolta is gonna star in a new biopic about the late John Gotti. I'm kind of past this stage in my life, for me the genre of the mobster peaked with The Godfather trilogy. I'm so into other stuff and on a really slow Friday nite (showing my age since I'm not clubbing) I'll dig Sam and Dean on Supernatural even though I have no idea what the hell is going on. Heh, Simon showing his human side on The X Factor last night by apologizing to a contestant he just booted and bringing her back into the fold. He's losing his edge, he's been McDonaldized too. Flicks glamorize a life of crime, Burger King could have soda cups with Gotti et al on 'em and Moms would buy 'em for their kids. We've lost our moral compass. Few months back there was a major and I mean major federal roundup of some major mobsters and folks were writing letters to the New York Post all angry at the feds, leave the guys alone! I really don't do gangster blogs since, who knows a gangster might be reading this right now but it's how I feel. Been rereading parts of Maury Terry's Ultimate Evil since updated and some weird shit went down in Yonkers in the '70s and '80s. Seems some Satanic cult had regular meetings in Untermyer Park on North Broadway and killed some German Sheperds and left 'em on the Aqueduct, Berkowitz may have been involved. Personally know of stories of hospital workers at St. John's seeing the torches and hearing the chanting on some evenings, 'magine you're a patient who just had some major work done and you're recuperating and you lurch towards the window by the River and see some stuff. Been kinda sporadically blogging of late more like a hobby, the old work schedule again. Went to the biggest bookstore I've ever been in my life yesterday, the two-decker job with escalators Barnes & Noble in Poughkeepsie on Rte. 9, didn't buy anything but it was an experience. Is it just my imagination but are stores getting bigger? maybe I can do my walk there. Going home now to enjoy some fine African Rooibos Red Tea, good for the allergies:)