tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-77889752024-03-13T08:23:23.589-04:00Brilliant at BreakfastFactinista and brainiac on the nerd patrol.Jillhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03865082576641051315noreply@blogger.comBlogger10239125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7788975.post-33216155973422978722018-05-10T23:22:00.000-04:002018-05-10T23:22:06.991-04:00There's nothing new under the sunEverything else is being rebooted, I'm just joining the zeitgeist. Come see us at <a href="http://bbrebooted.blogspot.com/">the new place</a>.Jillhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03865082576641051315noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7788975.post-59811669913114746842016-01-02T18:15:00.001-05:002016-01-02T19:23:50.039-05:00Au revoir, y'all....I see that my good friend jurassicpork has already spilled the beans, so what I'm about to write is not exactly news.<br />
<br />
I've been toying with the idea of retiring B@B for over a year now, and now that I am starting to settle into my new life as a middle-aged widow in Durham, NC, it seems like a good time to pull the plug.<br />
<br />
My life seems to be divided into neat and tidy thirds. The first third was getting through my childhood and young adulthood, coming to fruition the day that the Handsome Devil Later To Be Known as Mr. Brilliant came into my life and started thirty years of joint weirdness. The second third was our years together. And since I have ridiculously good genetics, this last third is going to be starting to live a more meaningful life at a slower pace here in North Carolina.<br />
<br />
I remember when I realized that writing movie reviews was no longer satisfying. It was after I'd seen Jet Li's Fearless, and it was like pulling teeth to find something to say. It was hard to say goodbye to that, just as it's hard to say goodbye to B@B. But the truth is that I haven't written anything here in about a year, and what little ranting I have done has been on Facebook. <br />
<br />
It was easy to rant during the Parade of Horrors that was the Bush Years. It was less easy to rant during the last eight years, partly because it was our own team selling us out. As we start 2016, the possibility of an even worse parade of horrors lies in front of us, and its magnitude defies the energy I have to devote to it.<br />
<br />
The last three years have been all about loss. First there was my mother in December 2012. Then Mr. B's cancer diagnosis in March 2013. Then we had to let Miss Jenny go in July 2013 due to either a brain tumor or stroke -- an event that in utterly horrifying prescience, caused Mr. B. to say, "I wish someone could do for me what we were just able to do for Jenny." <br />
<br />
Then on October 5, 2015, two weeks after Valley Hospital allowed Mr. B's brain to seize for thirty-six hours straight while they dickered with meds instead of sedating/intubating him (which is standard of care for status epilepticus), and a week and a half after we had him transferred out of there, I actually DID have to do for him what we did for Jenny, allowing withdrawal of the breathing tube and palliative sedation. He was gone 20 minutes later.<br />
<br />
In December 2013, my beloved Maggie-cat took sick and I had to say goodbye to her on January 28, 2014. <br />
<br />
Then in November this year, my father passed away from recurrent aggressive diffuse B-cell lymphoma at age 90 only 53 days after it came back for the third time. He'd beaten it back twice.<br />
<br />
I had already closed on my new house, I was purging 19 yearsof stuff and packing to move, largely alone. And now dealing with yet another loss. I would call my sister and say, "Please tell me you're not sick."<br />
<br />
Everyone tells me they don't know how I'm still standing. I'd love to believe that I'm stronger than most people, but the truth is that I'm no different from anyone else. When life keeps hitting you, you bounce back because you don't have a choice. If you don't think you could, it's because you haven't been hit hard enough yet.<br />
<br />
I'm lucky. I've been able to keep my job and work remotely. A year ago I received a promotion and transfer to a new group where my manager is in Germany, where they don't believe in working 80 hour weeks. So my work/life balance has been somewhat better, and now will be even better because I won't be sitting in northern NJ traffic every day. My two little boy kitties, Eli and Sam, were great in the car and have adjusted beautifully to their new home. My sister has welcomed me into her circle and I am signing up for Meetup groups. It is the fresh start that just could not have happened in New Jersey, in a house too full of memories, too many of them about sadness and depression. Mr. B is now free of the emotional burdens that plagued him here and it is time for a young family to move into that house, now dressed up all pretty with a new kitchen, a nice deck, and a completely remodeled upstairs, and make better memories there.<br />
<br />
My weekdays will be spent in my home office that gets the morning sun through the trees in my front yard. When the weather gets nice, I can sit and drink iced tea on my screened porch, or take my laptop outside onto the patio. I am about 20 minutes or less from anything I might want to do. My neighbors are friendly, and I have no doubts that I'll be happy here.<br />
<br />
It's different here from New Jersey, in just the ways I wanted it to be. New Jersey has become the "You got a problem with that?" state. There seems to be a giant chip on everyone's shoulder there. There is a reason that state elected Chris Christie. Now I'm not under any illusions about what is going on in Raleigh. It's a product of Democrats deciding to stay home in 2010, and it now has one of the most retrograde statehouses in the country. Maybe I can help with efforts to change that.<br />
<br />
I am 60 years old now, and while I'll still be fighting the good fight, I've become more contemplative. I'll be starting up a new blog soon -- a chronicle of this new life. Yes, there'll be politics. There will also be the occasional TV or movie review, recipe, anecdote, or anything else that inspires me. I hope you'll join me there and occasionally find something that moves you to participate. Watch this space for the link, it will be posted here.<br />
<br />
Thanks to you all for your support during these last few years and indeed, for the last decade.<br />
<br />
See y'all on the flip.Jillhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03865082576641051315noreply@blogger.com18tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7788975.post-72129197075737272452016-01-02T13:03:00.001-05:002016-01-02T13:03:08.180-05:00So Long and Thanks for All the Gefilte Fish<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-a3U_A-6zCX4/VogIhup9mDI/AAAAAAAAbDE/vV_IfUmuifA/s1600/airplane_sunset.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="288" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-a3U_A-6zCX4/VogIhup9mDI/AAAAAAAAbDE/vV_IfUmuifA/s400/airplane_sunset.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
When you get right down to it, bloggers are really just glorified
bleacher bums. Some of us have louder voices than most, others ruder and
more profane and some even have megaphones. Jill at Brilliant at
Breakfast was once described as "the best bleacher bum since Pete
Axthelm." Those are some pretty big shoes to fill since the late <i>New York Herald Times</i> sportswriter was pretty much the best at his game.<br />
I just got an email from Jill, our server at <a href="http://brilliantatbreakfast.blogspot.com/">Brilliant at Breakfast</a>, and while I won't quote the letter in full, I can certainly paraphrase the abstracts:<br />
Jill's shutting down B@B and two weeks ago had moved from her native
New Jersey for warmer, palmier climes. If you were a fan of Jill's blog,
you'll remember that she'd suffered some catastrophic losses over the
last couple of years, starting with the death of a beloved feline then
the even greater loss of her husband. She dove into work, frequently
putting in 80 hours a week for her company and pretty much put B@B in
mothballs.<br />
As with many other blogs, she had invited others
to contribute, including yours truly. But they were erstwhile, at best,
and with the death of Bob Rixon, the likely gradually morphed into the
inevitable. Even I could not crosspost much over the last year due to my
various fiction projects and other matters to attend to, although I'd
recently tried to make a game effort to freshen the place up once I'd
put my latest title to bed with my publisher.<br />
Jill could
kvetch with the best of us and on many occasions, as good writers are
wont to make other writers do, I'd find myself muttering, "Damn, I wish <i>I'd</i>
thought of that!" As with Pottersville, B@B was a catch-as-catch-can
type of blog and when you surfed in during its heyday, you never knew
what you'd get or how you'd get it. The title of the blog was a quote
from Oscar Wilde, who'd once written, "Only dull people are brilliant at
breakfast."<br />
Yet, despite the self-deprecating title, Jill
was never Oliver Wendell Holmes' "The autocrat of the breakfast table".
Quite the contrary. The sub masthead was also a not so sly dig at
Arianna Huffington's plantation at the <i>HuffPo</i>: "Where noone
cashes in on unpaid writers." Indeed, Mrs. JP and I had benefited
countless times from Jill's largesse over the years, often handing over
whatever meager income B@B had accrued in the way of ad revenue.<br />
And, like a true liberal blogger, Jill has a quasi socialist
sensibility and special affection for the B, C and even good Z list
blogger that was famously championed by the late Jon Swift. During a
time in which many of the A listers also left for palmier climes through
MSM and book deals, Jill stayed true to her roots and those who shared
that root network, often with an eloquence and passion of which the
likes of the late Steve Gilliard would be proud. I don't know if she
will take down the blog or merely restrict access to the other
contributors. I hope it will only be the latter.<br />
So this
is your server's New Year's resolution: To seek happiness in the hideous
rictus of devastating loss and heartbreak, which, after all, is what
distinguishes us as a species: That stubborn insistence of putting one
foot before the other regardless of how arduous and adversity-riddled
the journey.<br />
Godspeed, Jill, or Whoever and whatever puts
wings on your heels. I will keep the campfires burning as long as I can
from here and will keep a candle in the window for you, old friend.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7788975.post-25972625591131664092015-12-29T20:31:00.002-05:002015-12-29T20:31:51.819-05:00Like White on Rice<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-CO5fVDNdI_E/VoLzUocvVmI/AAAAAAAAbBU/V_Z4-xh6HiI/s1600/couch-rice.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="392" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-CO5fVDNdI_E/VoLzUocvVmI/AAAAAAAAbBU/V_Z4-xh6HiI/s400/couch-rice.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
(By <a href="http://www.amazon.com/American-Zen-Robert-Crawford-ebook/dp/B00AHXZ7Q2"><i>American Zen</i></a>'s Mike Flannigan, on loan from Ari)</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><b>J</b></span>ust
over 24 hours ago, as the grand jury in the Tamir Rice shooting was
approaching its long-delayed but inevitable non-verdict that removed
Officer <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/29/us/tamir-rice-police-shootiing-cleveland.html">Timothy Loehmann</a> from the sphere of exaction, the US Marshall's Service was gingerly approaching escaped fugitive <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2015/12/29/us/affluenza-teen-ethan-couch-detained-in-mexico/">Ethan Couch in Mexico</a>.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
These two stories were perhaps fated by the News Gods to break within
24 hours of each other as they seem to readily offer themselves up for
comparison. The comparison, of course, is how we treat rich white
criminals and innocent African American youth.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Couch, I'm sure you remember, was the Texas 16 year-old who'd gotten
high and intoxicated, stole his father's car and killed four innocent
people on a joyride. The Couch family attorney then infamously called to
the stand a psychologist who claimed young Ethan should not be treated
too harshly because of "Affluenza". This meant his ability to
distinguish right from wrong was impaired because of his parents'
coddling and refusal to set boundaries.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
In Cleveland, Rice, a 12 year-old child, was gunned down last year
literally less than two seconds after Loehmann and another officer
arrived after a scared old white man called 911. He thought he saw a
scary black man with a gun (which he qualified by saying "it's probably
fake").</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Essentially,
it took over a year for the Cuyahoga County prosecutor's office to
explain away how and why a black child was gunned down with no chance of
preventing his shooting and with impunity. Couch, and his mother,
decided two years of probation that had hardly impinged on his life or
freedom was more than enough of a price to pay.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Just to play Devil's Advocate for a moment, it's a crowning irony that
one of the two people harmlessly blamed for impairing young Ethan's
ability to tell right from wrong led him on this merry escapade to the
Mexican resort town (of course) of Porto Vallarta.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Here's the catch: Couch is no longer a wayward, badly-disciplined lad
of 16 but a young man of 18. If you don't know right from wrong by that
age, then you're officially a sociopath and deserve to have the book
thrown at you.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>Justice For All But the Book is Lighter For Some Than Others</b></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Here's the second catch: Despite his age, Couch's original conviction
is still technically in the juvenile criminal justice system. Not only
does this mean his juvenile records will be sealed should he commit more
offenses as a legal adult (And he will. Just think of Couch as George
Zimmerman with lots of unearned money), he might very well get off
relatively lightly... again. Because, according to Texas state law, "The
maximum sentence that a juvenile judge can dish out for a violation
of his juvenile probation is imprisonment in a juvenile facility until
Couch turns 19, which is April 11, 2016."</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
And if a rich white kid can get four months in jail for skipping
not just the state but the country because reporting to a PO for a few
minutes a week is too onerous an inconvenience, he could conceivably get
out even earlier than that with good behavior (That is, considering
this shark-eyed little psycho is even capable of good behavior).</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Tamir Rice had no high-priced lawyer to blame his parents for raising
him so waywardly he was playing with a toy gun at a playground. That is
because Tamir Rice was mercilessly gunned down after a stupendously
flawed and hasty threat assessment and was killed before he even had the
chance to explain why he was holding a toy gun. If he actually reached
into his waistband on their arrival as the Cuyahoga County Prosecutor
kept insisting, perhaps the boy was merely attempting to show them it
was indeed a toy gun.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
It's unclear whether or not this secretive grand jury even knew that Loehmann was so mentally unbalanced he was <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2014/dec/03/officer-who-fatally-shot-tamir-rice-had-been-judged-unfit?CMP=share_btn_tw">pressured out of his last department</a>
after having an emotional meltdown on a gun range in the wake of his
girlfriend leaving him. Or that the Cleveland Police Department hired
this emotionally unstable man without even vetting him.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
As a nice icing on the cake, it has been reported that Couch had been
given a nice little going away party before being rescued by Mommy.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
I'm pretty sure Tamir Rice never had a going away party before he was
viciously gunned down by Timothy Loehmann any more than Couch's four
victims had time to assess their lives were in danger.</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7788975.post-44049087869517116812015-12-29T20:30:00.001-05:002015-12-29T20:30:33.535-05:00Why Did Hillary Clinton Hire a Monsanto Lobbyist to be Her Campaign Director?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-S3UWR5BeadQ/VoGlpOYaKkI/AAAAAAAAbAo/e-EzaTZc2og/s1600/crawford-hillary.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="295" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-S3UWR5BeadQ/VoGlpOYaKkI/AAAAAAAAbAo/e-EzaTZc2og/s400/crawford-hillary.jpeg" width="400" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Good question, if you know nothing about Hillary's cerulean canine
roots. But one fact that remains glaringly obvious to those of us paying
attention to these things and those Hillary supporters who are just as
strenuously ignoring those pesky facts is <a href="http://www.nationofchange.org/2015/04/26/hillary-clinton-hires-former-monsanto-lobbyist-to-run-her-campaign/">Hillary officially hired</a> Monsanto fuck stick Jerry Crawford to manage her presidential campaign.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Of course, the so-called liberals who back Hillary can be excused for
not knowing their facts about their girl since the MSM is largely
worthless in bringing up those inconvenient facts, as evidenced in <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/hillary-clintons-iowa-horse-whisperer-jerry-crawford-aims-for-caucus-kentucky-derby/2015/03/02/9c93b638-be23-11e4-bdfa-b8e8f594e6ee_story.html">this breezy puff piece</a>
in the WaPo's Style section. Yeah, I know Style pieces in any paper are
supposed to be ultimately worthless, breezy eye candy. Yet, since it
contained hard political data (such as Crawford failing to deliver even a
place much less a win for Hillary in Iowa in 2008), you'd think
Monsanto's good name would've merited at least a fleeting mention.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
And to anyone who pays even a scintilla of attention to anything
Clinton says, it's screamingly obvious this woman has been pimping for
Monsanto to the point of practically gargling Roundup after sucking
various cock at the Biotech Industry Conference in San Diego last year.
How anyone, especially a self-styled Democrat, can publicly and
frequently advocate for Genetically Modified Organisms is beyond me
except when one considers benefits of such a whoring for an evil empire
such as Monsanto (even when her campaign manager no longer works for
them).</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Let's take
Crawford's track record: He's long been considered a kingmaker for
Democrats in his native Iowa, especially those who are friendly to
Monsanto (which alone ought to show you of the alarming number of supine
so-called Democrats that Crawford's helped over the years). But even
when it meant costing a "fellow" Democrat a job, <a href="http://www.inquisitr.com/2466208/hillary-clinton-hires-a-former-monsanto-lobbyist-and-political-fixer-to-run-her-ready-for-hillary-2016-campaign/">Crawford supported the Republican</a> running against him and, well, just keep reading.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Jerry Crawford also played a big hand in
the 2010 Agriculture Secretary election, which was an election that
showed Monsanto does not care about a person’s party allegiance as long
as said person doesn’t oppose them. The reason why is because the
election’s Democratic nominee Francis Thicke was a critic of Monsanto.
Ergo, Monsanto showed major support for the Republican nominee Bill
Northey. Crawford would then endorse Northey, touting his backing as
evidence of “strong bipartisan support.” Crawford even said he was a
“veteran Democratic political insider” to help push Northey. As a
result, Northey won the election with a landslide 67 percent of the
vote.</blockquote>
</div>
<div class="copy-paste-block" style="text-align: justify;">
That kind of Tonya Harding-style kneecapping verges on Karl Rove
territory yet the WaPo would have us believe Jerry boy's a simple ole
Midwestern lawyer with a love for fast horses and slow candidates.</div>
<div class="copy-paste-block" style="text-align: justify;">
I had Hillary pegged eight years ago when she ran a campaign that was,
predictably, more rotten with lobbyists than even John McCain's (which
is saying something). But you'd have to be a complete fucking idiot on a
par with a Trump supporter to be duped by Hillary's easy populism about
taking on the 1% of which she's a part and from whom she's vacuuming up
enormous amounts of bribe money to spout their lines.<br />
Yeah,
tell me again about how Bernie's not electable, at how he's not viable.
But one fact remains clear: When Bernie veers into populist rhetoric,
his populism is merely incidental because he means what he says.<br />
Oh, by voting for Bernie in the primary I'd be "splitting the
party?" Perhaps. If that's what I'd be doing, then that's because this
Crawford learned that trick from another Crawford.</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7788975.post-79465997536658473402015-11-16T12:29:00.000-05:002015-11-16T12:28:59.943-05:00Virtual Book Sale<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Ki2QjYkOq4I/VkJALu152GI/AAAAAAAAar8/Hm_H8dsJhFE/s1600/Tatterfrontcover2-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Ki2QjYkOq4I/VkJALu152GI/AAAAAAAAar8/Hm_H8dsJhFE/s400/Tatterfrontcover2-1.jpg" width="276" /></a></div>
At the risk of this sounding like whining, there's nothing more disspiriting than spending upwards of two and a half years on a single book then seeing it sell less than two dozen copies, hardly any of them to strangers, over a period of six months despite my ruthlessly pimping it on social media. Add to that a troll who constantly chimes in with one star reviews on Amazon and skewing the rating because it can't seem to attract more than four legitimate reviews. Then add to that it being ignored and disrespected by virtually every single fiction-repping literary agency in the English-speaking world.<br />
And <i>Tatterdemalion</i>, despite those dismal numbers and facts, is a success story even if only by dint of conspicuous relief. My previous four titles have sold in single digits even when I discounted the prices for the Kindle titles to as little as .99¢. And writers being the way they are on social media, they scream past each other and refuse to publicize anyone else's book while only paying services pimp their own.<br />
It's a sad situation, that democratic self-publication also entails we become Fuller Brush salesmen and that the constant push for sales for apathetic twats who'd literally rather die than actually click on the retweet button leaves us little time for actually interacting with our disinterested followers.<br />
But it is what it is. "The only true failure is giving up," say industry professionals <i>sotto voc</i>e as they count what should be our money, considering <u><b><i>we're</i></b></u> the ones who make a publishing industry possible. So, in illustration of Einstein's definition of insanity, I'm plugging away on another pair of novels and hope they get me an agent and/or a publishing contract.<br />
However, money's getting scarce and we're going to be losing our only income as of this April. And I'm getting tired of begging money of random strangers and online friends sick and tired of our constant financial problems. So I'm having an online book sale to try to get some revenue in this house the old fashioned way- by earning it.<br />
And I think it would be a good idea to remind you of the previous titles I've self-published over the years and to put out the links from years past.<br />
<hr />
<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-RVELFsoXIhA/VkJEjRmfRTI/AAAAAAAAasI/6vRHd1Aql00/s1600/American-Zen%2Bguitar.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-RVELFsoXIhA/VkJEjRmfRTI/AAAAAAAAasI/6vRHd1Aql00/s320/American-Zen%2Bguitar.jpeg" width="213" /></a></div>
In the nearly three years since it's been out, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/American-Zen-Robert-Crawford-ebook/dp/B00AHXZ7Q2"><i>American Zen</i></a> (Kindle title), written by my alter ago Mike Flannigan, has attracted just five reviews and a handful of sales. But the average rating is five stars. It remains, IMHO, as my best sustained effort and is a must-read novel for anyone that enjoys politically-oriented fiction by a liberal with a wicked sense of humor. Here's a sample paragraph from the prologue:<br />
<blockquote>
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tragedy and loss seek the path of least resistance. And it’s perhaps no
coincidence that the words “trailer” and “failure” are almost perfect rhymes.
In the American mind, the two are synonymous. That’s because we tend not to
look beyond end results and aftermaths. We see trailer parks, tent cities,
people living under bridges and think not “refugees” or “victims” but 'failure.' Assumptions are dangerous but those of us who are more fortunate can
live with that kind of danger."</span></blockquote>
The Createspace paperback edition <a href="https://www.createspace.com/4076183">can be found here</a> for $7.99, not a bad price for a 150,000 word epic taking place in the first days after Barack Obama was elected President.<br />
<hr />
<i> <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Toy-Cop-ebook/dp/B00APSB4SY">The Toy Cop</a> (Kindle)</i> is an odd bird in that it took me the longest to write. While solidly within my usual thriller/suspense genre, I'd begun it in November 1998 before social media was even a reality (requiring some fast updates to reflect this reality).<br />
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Next to <i>Tatterdemalion</i>, it's my longest novel at nearly 175,000 words. Here's the product description:<br />
<blockquote>
<span class="projectSummaryDescription" id="projectSummaryDescriptionContent"> Four
years ago 10 canisters of VX were stolen near the Dugway Proving
Grounds, leading to the most disastrous hostage scenario in FBI history.
Special Agent Michael Brodie, head of the elite FBI crisis negotiating
corps, had lost his chance to get IRA terrorist Seamus Hannigan, the man
who killed his FBI daughter, destroying Brodie ‘s credibility when he
blew up himself and three others. <br /> During a freak nor’easter
in Eastbridge, Massachusetts four years later, former Navy Seal Jack
Gallagher and three accomplices take a US Senator and 12 others hostage,
holing them up in an armory. The 13 were to witness the federal
execution of Edd Corn, the most notorious child killer in US history.
Three years ago, Corn nearly killed Gallagher’s daughter Deirdre.
Determined to mete out justice personally, he’s determined to end his
life to that end while his ex wife, rookie patrol officer Penny
Gallagher, helplessly watches outside. <br /> Seeing she’s out of her
depth, and remembering his slain FBI daughter Leighann, Brodie calls in
every favor to get involved in the negotiations while trying to avoid
the resistance put up by his skeptical superiors, Gallagher and Ray
Cardoza, the first FBI agent onscene and his one-time future son in
law.<br /> Then Brodie hears Hannigan’s voice from the grave. Is the
hostage scenario a mere coverup? Is Gallagher involved with the IRA plot
to appropriate and use ten canisters of VX? Or has Jack unwittingly
invited one of the world’s most lethal terrorists in his midst?</span></blockquote>
Since I'd begun reworking it earlier this year after finishing <i>Tatterdemalion</i>, the paperback's been pulled from the market. But the Kindle version is available for just $4.99.<br />
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<a href="https://www.createspace.com/4220601"><i>The Misanthrope's Manual</i></a> (paperback) may seem like a departure for me but it isn't. Along with poetry, satire is one of my literary roots. I'd begun writing this more liberal version of Ambrose Bierce's <i>Devil's Dictionary</i> all during the 90's while I was still in my 30's. The Kindle version can be <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Misanthropes-Manual-Robert-Joseph-Crawford/dp/1483954579">found here</a> for just .99¢. Here's a sample:<br />
<blockquote>
Doom, n- The infinitely patient beneficiary of all human endeavor. </blockquote>
<blockquote>
Success, n- Material gain without material witnesses. </blockquote>
<blockquote>
Harmless, adj- Dead.</blockquote>
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<i> </i><br />
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<i><a href="https://www.createspace.com/5609260">The Kid</a></i> (paperback edition), you may remember, is a short story followup to <i>Tatterdemalion</i>, with Scott Carson telling the tale of his first adventure in 1873 when he was but a lad of six and a half. It's more than just a short story. Originally a promotion I was giving away free earlier in the year to anyone who bought the larger Carson story, <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/B011ZJ0YM8">The Kid</a></i> (Kindle) also offers valuable context and background that goes a ways toward explaining Carson's character and one of the most important relationships in his life.<br />
As expected, it's only sold a handful of copies and has not inspired even one person to write a review. If you buy it, please consider doing so so it'll have something approximating a rating.<br />
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Finally, there's <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Tatterdemalion-Veracious-Account-Buffalo-Ripper-ebook/dp/B00WH7IFM4"><i>Tatterdemalion</i></a> (Kindle version), which, as previously stated, took me almost two and a half years to research, draft and revise. This has the distinction of having the best sales of my other titles (but only in a very relative sense) while being rejected and/or ignored by literally over 320 different literary agents. I have a major acquisitions editor at Penguin/Random House who'd requested the full ms a couple of months ago.<br />
Originally weighing in at over 250,000 words, at a much trimmer and tighter 193,000, it's still the largest novel I've ever written. It was inspired by Caleb Carr's <i>Alienist</i> duology and is the next best thing, I think, to a third <i>Alienist </i>book. In many ways, I'm proudest of this literary achievement because it's the culmination of my lifelong ambition to write a truly epic historical thriller. <i>Tatterdemalion </i>can also be bought here <a href="https://www.createspace.com/4633360">in paperback</a>. Don't let the $15.50 cover price scare you. Remember, it's nearly 200,000 words long and is a good, solid and, I think, very thrilling read.<br />
If you actually buy any of these titles, again, please be considerate enough to write a review. It takes but a few minutes and makes all the difference to a struggling, self published novelist.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7788975.post-82318614476533417922015-10-01T12:32:00.002-04:002015-10-01T12:32:24.693-04:00The Man Who Poisoned America<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-mE8lJQVg0N4/VgGtsMPOqaI/AAAAAAAAaNc/2nEfs3BFbHA/s1600/salmonella_recall.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-mE8lJQVg0N4/VgGtsMPOqaI/AAAAAAAAaNc/2nEfs3BFbHA/s320/salmonella_recall.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
The man who supposedly apologized to the relatives of some of the
nine victims of his tainted peanuts seemed at stark odds with the
executive who'd fired off an email to a manager alerting him to
salmonella contamination, "Just ship it."<br />
Unmoved, Federal Judge W. Louis Sands, a Clinton appointee, <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2015/09/21/peanut-executive-salmonella-sentencing/72549166/">sentenced Stewart Parnell</a>
to 28 years in prison for knowingly sending out tainted food products,
obstructing the investigation and falsifying evidence (conspiracy). In
other words, this sentencing, which was 775 fewer years than the judge
who'd found him guilty wanted, was nonetheless the toughest one ever
handed down to a major executive in a food borne illness and death case.<br />
Stewart's poison would kill at least nine people, sicken 714 others
(half of them children), which doesn't include how many pets were killed
or sickened, across 46 states. His peanut butter paste was sold by his
brother to Kellogg's, which used it in snack crackers and his product
even found its way on airplanes, meaning his salmonella could've been
exported to countless other countries, which could've theoretically
produced a pandemic. Indeed, when the Center for Disease Control in
Atlanta has to calculate the human carnage of your greed, you <i>know</i> you've taken a wrong turn around the bend.<br />
What's getting less press is his former QA manager, Mary Wilkerson, who
got a surprisingly light sentence of just five years for obstruction.<br />
Let's focus on that for a minute, shall we?<br />
As some of you may recall from my prior comments and posts from time to
time, just prior to and after 9/11 I used to be a QC inspector for an
automotive/aerospace/aeronautics firm. We made silicon rubber gaskets,
seals, hoses and all kinds of applications for silicon rubber. My job as
the only non-dedicated QC inspector in the lab was to do all the
day-to-day inspections that didn't require specialized and certified
expertise (such as GE's aircraft engine parts, which required DSQR
certification and a week's worth of classes).<br />
This required I
know the rudiments of good quality control, which is a whole 'nuther
animal from Quality Assurance (but more on that later). Part of a good
skill set from a QC inspector is knowing when to ignore executive
management when they pressure you to rubber stamp CoCs (Certificates of
Compliance). This usually comes toward the end of the month (the last
Friday). The sooner we ship something out, the sooner they can invoice
it. The sooner they invoice it, the sooner they can grab their
commissions and bonuses.<br />
Each CoC is supposed to be validated
by the inspector's name or initials as well as their inspector number.
Assuming the Peanut Corporation of America was ISO-certified, this
would've been mandated. No one likes to fall on their own sword but this
is nonetheless an unspoken rule in quality control/assurance.
Sometimes, when you're given an order by a President and CEO of a
corporation that's a leader in the field, you have to defy orders when
human lives are at stake.<br />
Now, I'm going to get a bit into
the difference between QA and QC. QC is the art of saying, "You didn't
do this right." QA is the art of saying, "You're not doing this right."
The difference is something called SPC, or Statistical Process Control.
I'm not going to bore you with the science and mathematics involved in
SPC but let's just say QA is a much safer and cost-effective way to
inspect your product because it requires you remove at least one person
in your lab and put them on the production line.<br />
From a
purely cost-effective standpoint, QA makes sense because if the
inspector, during a spot inspection, finds a grievous flaw in the
process, s/he has the power to stop the presses. Manpower hours and the
cost of raw materials is saved and the inspector doesn't sit on their
ass in the lab waiting for the entire order to be filled.<br />
And
with both QA and QC, at times scientific tests and lab results are
crucial to making a determination if a product is fit to be shipped.
What Mary Wilkerson did probably was either fudge, falsify, switch out
or outright bury a lab result that one of her subordinates would've
needed to make a wise and informed decision.<br />
There are
several possible reasons why she would've done this. She could've acted
to protect her boss or herself or both. Either way the last thing either
she or Parnell wanted was for the material to get RMA'd back then have
to explain at an executive MRB (Material Review Board) why the initials
and inspector number of one of her subordinates got sent out with her
blessings along with a ton of tainted food. The MRB is often months
after the fact and the fastest way to lose one's job when asked how this
could've happened is to point to the CEO and say, "Ask that asshole."<br />
See how long that CEO and the shareholders will let you stick around after that.<br />
Now, I could make a case as to how this got by Kellogg's and the other
food companies that had bought Parnell's poisoned product but that'll be
a post for another day. (I <i>will </i>say, however, that every
ISO-certified company is mandated to have incoming QC inspectors whose
job it is to test the standards and viability of any product that comes
through their shipping bay. Why this was never questioned is a mystery).<br />
Parnell made his standpoint clear when he sent that terse email to his
manager who'd voiced concerns about potential salmonella contamination.
When he said, "Just ship it," he'd encapsulated a universe of meaning
within those three little words and ten letters. "...or you're fired."
It's the kind of unambiguous directive from on high that every QC person
understands and dreads, especially when their name and number goes on
the bottom of that cert.<br />
And the fact that PCA had a QA setup
makes the sanitary conditions of the plants especially unforgivable. A
good QA manager or inspector should be almost preternaturally aware of
their work environment, especially in plants where food is produced
and/or processed and cleanliness is paramount. Inspectors found evidence
of vermin, roaches, bird droppings, mold and a leaky ceiling. In other
words, Parnell's plants were the perfect breeding ground for the
vigorous cultivation of salmonella.<br />
That's another fact I'd
like to address: From having worked in manufacturing plants much of my
life, those of you who also have know that regulatory agencies such as
OSHA, FDA, Board of Health etc always, for some perverse reason,
announce their inspections ahead of time. It always struck me like
telling a batter what pitch you're about to throw him and how fast it'll
be. But in advance of such visits, nervous managers always hand out the
goggles and any other form of PPE, appropriate and mandatory signage
and anything else that'll make the inspector happy.<br />
We're
getting no indication of that. Even if only to pass a health inspection,
you'd think PCA would've cleaned the place but they didn't think that
was important. Maybe Parnell had thought hiring a roofer for a day or
two to fix a leaky roof or devoting a person to do janitor duty (I get
the impression they didn't have a janitor, since they were a company
employing just 90 people) was a drain on the bottom line.<br />
In
the end, Mary Wilkerson set herself the impossible task of trying to
shield herself and/or her boss from scrutiny and prosecution. The
product was tainted with salmonella. At that point, when your lab
results confirm that, the QA game gets real simple, much simpler than
mine ever was. Whereas we had the option of scrapping or reworking a
certain defective product or arriving at some sort of other corrective
action, their choices were simpler: Throw out the batch and clean the
shit up off the floor that had caused it. But she did not think to do
this. If she had fallen on her sword or at least made some attempt to
report Parnell to the proper agencies, nine people wouldn't be rotting
in their coffins right now.<br />
But corporate profits will always win out over human lives.<br />
We need to fund the programs that are geared toward strengthening food
regulatory agencies. We need to invest the FDA and the USDA with recall
powers instead of making recalls a purely voluntary function.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7788975.post-73521088944165710192015-06-26T20:57:00.001-04:002015-06-26T21:11:20.818-04:00We are privileged to be alive today<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="color: #141823; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.3199996948242px;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In our all-too-short lives, we are lucky if we have the privilege to be present for a moment in our history that shows us at our best. There aren't many of them, but today is one. Oh, there is ugliness, to be sure, and there will be more in the coming days. But today we get to enjoy an America where for hopefully more than one brief and shining moment, love is truly in the air.</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #141823; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.3199996948242px;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I was too young to remember the signing of the Civil Rights Act. Most of the Momentous Moments during my lifespan have been tragedies: The Kennedy assassinations. The murder of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Various indelible photographs from the Vietnam War. The resignation of Richard M. Nixon. 9/11. I can only recall three Momentous Moments in our nation during my life when I really felt, to quote Michelle Obama, proud of my country. And Barack Hussein Obama was part of all three of them. They are the day he was nominated by his party for the presidency, the day I woke up and this country had actually elected a black guy named Barack Hussein Obama, and today.</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #141823; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.3199996948242px;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In fairness, there's another guy who was part of all three of them, and as tweeted by his wife, was running around today, just a few weeks after burying his son, wearing a rainbow flag like a cape and high-fiving everyone:</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #141823; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.3199996948242px;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I mention Joe Biden because back in 2012, he threw down the gauntlet about gay marriage, which <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/10/us-usa-campaign-obama-evolution-idUSBRE84900B20120510">hastened Obama's own "evolution" on the subject</a>, thus laying the groundwork for a united White House advocacy of civil rights for ALL Americans. I'm not mentioning Biden to try to get a white guy into this, but let's give credit where it's due.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #141823; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.3199996948242px;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">For six years, Barack Obama has been the Cautious president -- too willing to try to "reach across the aisle", to compromise with people who loathe his very existence, old Confederates and Christofascists for whom the idea of a black man living in the White House whips them into a rage. And I'm just talking about Congress, never mind people like Dylann Roof, who apparently <a href="http://www.theroot.com/articles/news/2015/06/dylann_roof_s_cousin_says_dylann_went_over_the_edge_when_his_girl_crush.html">decided that a girl he liked deciding to date a black man meant he should start a race war</a>, going into a church and killing nine people in cold blood who were guilty of nothing more than inviting him to pray with them.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #141823; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.3199996948242px;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In the last few weeks, we've seen the President Badass that many of us wished for for the last six years finally come out. He's spoken eloquently about the human right to affordable health care, with which six members of the Supreme Court agreed yesterday. He's spoken eloquently about the right to marry, with which five members of the Court agreed today. And he capped off this incredible week with a eulogy for State Senator and Reverend Clementa Pinckney that was loving, admiring, respectful, but yes, also angry -- angry at a country that <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/06/21/s-c-killer-dylan-roof-s-segregation-inspiration-the-council-for-conservative-citizens-and-the-politicians-who-pander-to-them.html">has people -- and politicians in a major party -- in it who still believe that people should be eliminated because of the color of their skin</a>. Angry at a country in which 150 years after the Civil War ended, vast swaths of the south (and <a href="https://www.facebook.com/IHeardMyCountryCalling/posts/368319080024684">some people who should know better</a>) still don't see the Confederate flag as the symbol of bigotry and racism that is is. Some still believe in the secessonist dream, of a world in which black people can be owned by white people and treated as chattel (or worse). He couched this anger in terms of grace -- the grace that brought black and white together today in Charleston, South Carolina to mourn the loss of nine people who just wanted to worship together in praise of their deity by a young man who spent his adolescence awash in the wingnut noise machine that legitimized the hate that glowed inside him until it erupted because he thought he had the right to "own" a girl he liked because of white privilege.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #141823; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.3199996948242px;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">We've known for years that Obama does some damn fine speechifyin'. We've also know that his eloquence is often followed by disappointment, as he continues to try mightily to straddle the two worlds in which he has spent his life, as parts of this nation underwent a kind of collective emotional breakdown around him as a result of his election. But not today.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #141823; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.3199996948242px;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">It's been quite a week in this country -- one which began in mourning and ended in celebration. It began in mourning for the nine people who followed in the footprints of the four young girls who died in September 1963 simply because they were black -- casualties of bigotry and small-mindedness. It ended with an affirmation that the best part of us is the part that loves; that loves so deeply that we simply cannot imagine our lives without the other person who joins with us to form a unit called "us" that lives in conjunction with the units called "me" and "you". It ended with an affirmation -- and a shot across the bow to the bigots and the closet cases who hide from themselves behind a cloak of religion -- that they no longer run things; that their days are numbered. This is OUR time -- time for those of us who strive to embrace our better selves, not our worst. </span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #141823; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.3199996948242px;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I join with my LGBT brothers and sisters today -- with Gabriel and Dennis and Jay and "S." and Billy and Maggie and Margot and Bob and Dominick and so many others -- to celebrate and to say "Mazel Tov!"</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #141823; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.3199996948242px;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">And to say thanks to America for electing Barack Hussein Obama, who appointed Justices named Kagan and Sotomayor to join with Ruth Bader Ginsberg and Stephen Breyer to confirm what should always have been obvious to everyone. And to Justice Anthony Kennedy, who somehow managed to find his own better nature.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #141823; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.3199996948242px;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">It is truly a wondrous day. Some might call what we experienced today "<a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/06/26/remarks-president-eulogy-honorable-reverend-clementa-pinckney">grace</a>."</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">We do not know whether the killer of Reverend Pinckney and eight others knew all of this history. But he surely sensed the meaning of his violent act. It was an act that drew on a long history of bombs and arson and shots fired at churches, not random, but as a means of control, a way to terrorize and oppress. (Applause.) An act that he imagined would incite fear and recrimination; violence and suspicion. An act that he presumed would deepen divisions that trace back to our nation’s original sin.<br style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /> <br style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />Oh, but God works in mysterious ways. (Applause.) God has different ideas. (Applause.) </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">He didn’t know he was being used by God. (Applause.) Blinded by hatred, the alleged killer could not see the grace surrounding Reverend Pinckney and that Bible study group -- the light of love that shone as they opened the church doors and invited a stranger to join in their prayer circle. The alleged killer could have never anticipated the way the families of the fallen would respond when they saw him in court -- in the midst of unspeakable grief, with words of forgiveness. He couldn’t imagine that. (Applause.) </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The alleged killer could not imagine how the city of Charleston, under the good and wise leadership of Mayor Riley -- (applause) -- how the state of South Carolina, how the United States of America would respond -- not merely with revulsion at his evil act, but with big-hearted generosity and, more importantly, with a thoughtful introspection and self-examination that we so rarely see in public life.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Blinded by hatred, he failed to comprehend what Reverend Pinckney so well understood -- the power of God’s grace. (Applause.) </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">This whole week, I’ve been reflecting on this idea of grace. (Applause.) The grace of the families who lost loved ones. The grace that Reverend Pinckney would preach about in his sermons. The grace described in one of my favorite hymnals -- the one we all know: Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. (Applause.) I once was lost, but now I’m found; was blind but now I see. (Applause.) </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">According to the Christian tradition, grace is not earned. Grace is not merited. It’s not something we deserve. Rather, grace is the free and benevolent favor of God -- (applause) -- as manifested in the salvation of sinners and the bestowal of blessings. Grace. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">As a nation, out of this terrible tragedy, God has visited grace upon us, for he has allowed us to see where we’ve been blind. (Applause.) He has given us the chance, where we’ve been lost, to find our best selves. (Applause.) We may not have earned it, this grace, with our rancor and complacency, and short-sightedness and fear of each other -- but we got it all the same. He gave it to us anyway. He’s once more given us grace. But it is up to us now to make the most of it, to receive it with gratitude, and to prove ourselves worthy of this gift.</span></div>
</blockquote>
<span style="color: #141823; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.3199996948242px;"><br /></span>Jillhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03865082576641051315noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7788975.post-49891344223222868012015-06-13T19:58:00.001-04:002015-06-13T19:58:22.353-04:00The Prodigal Blogger Stops ByHello, Seekers!
<br />
<br />
It's been quite a long time since Your Humble Hostess has written on this here blog. If the truth be told, I have had little inclination to write about the things I used to. Grief is exhausting, and leaves little room in the soul for ranting about politics. It's not that I don't care anymore, it's that I ranted into the wilderness for the better part of a decade, and where did it get us?<br />
<br />
Those of you who are my Facebook friends know that I haven't been silent. But between the Job That Ate My Life, a bad case of Widow Brain that has left me virtually unable to concentrate on the impossible project I've been handed at my job, and the emotional struggle of feeling neither here nor there as I prepare to take a leap of faith, ditch it all, buy health insurance on whatever is left of the health care exchanges after the GOP and Supreme Court get through with them, sell my house, pack up the cats and head south to North Carolina, where frankly, they need my vote desperately.<br />
<br />
Shortly after Mr. Brilliant died, I had set up a new blog called Don't Call Me a Widow. Oh, I was fine, yes indeedy I was. None of that grief stuff that my mother had done for twelve years for me, nosirree. I had dinner with friends at restaurants that Mr. B. didn't like. I cooked things he would never eat. To be honest, it was a relief for a short time to have it all over with and to not have to be the recipient of someone's frustrated rage at being ill and disappointed.<br />
<br />
That lasted about six months. <br />
<br />
Two weeks after Mr. B's death, I joined a Meetup for widows and widowers. I met several very cool women, and professed my I'm-just-fineness. The woman who runs the group, who lost her husband at 42 from lung cancer, patted me on the back and said, "Oh, honey, you're still numb. It hasn't hit you yet."<br />
<br />
But at about six months, it did. <br />
<br />
For lo these twenty months now, I've been going nonstop. Until recently, when my job role changed and I began reporting to someone in Germany, where they have a workers council and take their 40 hour weeks very seriously, I continued to work 50, 60, 70 hours a week. I went out. I had a lot of remodeling done in the house. I went to Italy with friends. This spring I went to Prague for work. I got rid of a ton of stuff, donating and freecycling as much as I could. Now I'm prepping the house to sell so I can head south. If I've been given this blank slate on which to write a new start, it can't be in a place where a mere trip to the dentist is full of "We used to buy crumb cake here" and "Remember when we lived here and had parties?" and "Remember how good the chow fun was here?" and just too damn many memories. I moved to Bergen County, NJ to be with Mr. Brilliant and even though I've been here 32 years, it just doesn't feel like I belong here anymore.<br />
<br />
It's not that life is so bad. It's not even that I'm lonely. I've always been able to enjoy my own company. It's just that I've become an impostor in my own life.<br />
<br />
I don't know what the future holds. I'm toying with the idea of writing a book about this whole experience. I might start a blog about being a Tarheel transplant. I might finish my Great Sweeping Novel. Or something else.<br />
<br />
I don't know if anyone even still reads this blog, which is kind of sad after all these years. But things change. Life changes. And then we're gone. The question for me now, not to get all Gandalf on you, is to decide what to do with the time that has been given to me.Jillhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03865082576641051315noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7788975.post-84890025527425690442015-03-14T12:38:00.000-04:002015-03-14T12:38:55.870-04:00Good Times at Pottersville, 3/14/15<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7788975.post-22942981425086554152015-02-03T14:39:00.001-05:002015-02-03T14:39:28.109-05:00To Resurrect a Mockingbird<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-WZGAMEfEEqs/VNEFyzBu6aI/AAAAAAAAZUQ/A-kQVrB6NM0/s1600/peck_lee.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-WZGAMEfEEqs/VNEFyzBu6aI/AAAAAAAAZUQ/A-kQVrB6NM0/s1600/peck_lee.jpg" height="253" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
(By <a href="http://www.amazon.com/American-Zen-ebook/dp/B00AHXZ7Q2"><i>American Zen</i></a>'s Mike Flannigan. on loan from Ari.)</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
After a 55 year-long silence, Harper Lee is <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/feb/03/harper-lee-new-novel-to-kill-a-mockingbird">publishing a sequel</a> to her classic <i>To Kill a Mockingbird</i>.
From just a purely literary viewpoint, this is huge news. Imagine a new
J.D. Salinger novel coming to light about Holden Caulfield 20 years
later. That's essentially the premise for Lee's "new" novel, <i>Go Set a Watchman</i>. I say "new" in quotes because, according to Miss Lee's account, <i>Watchman </i>was
written first and the flashback chapters about Scout Finch's childhood
so captivated Lee's editor that he asked her to expand upon it. So,
while <i>Watchman </i>was written first, she and her publisher decided to go with <i>Mockingbird</i>, which was actually a prequel.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
As with Agatha Christie's "final" novel, <i>Curtain</i>,
which was written during the London blitz when she was still at the
height of her powers (In case she was killed during the Nazi shelling,
leaving Hercule Poirot's legacy unfinished), Lee's manuscript then got
misplaced and she thought it was lost until her attorney found it last
year in a "secure location." (Lesson to authors: Always back up your
manuscripts.) Ergo, the long-awaited second Lee novel will come out on
July 14th and Harper's publisher (also Harper) will come out with an
initial print run of 2,000,000 copies.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
So, this is all good news for book lovers, especially fans of Miss Lee,
and is the biggest news in the book business to come out in years. But
how relevant will a second Scout/Atticus Finch novel be in 21st century
America, especially decades after the undeclared death of what used to
be the Civil Rights movement? Indeed, <i>should </i>we care about a new Scout Finch novel or what happens in Maycomb, Alabama 20 years later
in the mid 50's when Scout, now a mature woman, returns from New York
like a prodigal daughter? Why should a sequel be relevant to a
"post-racial" America now boasting an African American president, no
need for a Civil Rights movement or Affirmative Action and with a gutted Voting Rights Act of 1965? Why should we greet <i>Go Set a Watchman</i> with anything other than literary curiosity?</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Would it be any more relevant than, say, a sequel to <i>Uncle Tom's Cabin</i>
were one to come to light? A new Harriet Beecher Stowe novel
continuing the saga would be a literary curiosity but hardly relevant in
a nation that abolished slavery 150 years ago with the ratification of
the 13th amendment. So, how relevant is Harper Lee and the Finches
considering both books were written years before the Civil Rights and
Voting Rights Acts?</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
All too much.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Considering it's one of the most famous stories in modern American
fiction, one hardly needs me or anyone to relate the abstracts of a book
that's been taught in schools for over half a century. But for the sake
of context, I'll give you the throughline: </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
A classic <i>Bildungsroman </i>work of fiction, <i>To Kill a Mockingbird</i>
features widowed attorney Atticus Finch, father of the protagonist
Scout. A black man, Tom Robinson, is accused of raping a young white
woman named Mayella Ewell and Finch agrees to defend him. Generally
viewed as a model of legal integrity, Finch fights tooth and nail for
his client and, despite essentially proving Robinson's lack of guilt,
the jury convicts him, anyway. Robinson is then shot and killed as he
tries to escape from prison.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
There is <i>some </i>justice in <i>To Kill a Mockingbird</i>
(Tom Ewell, father of the raped woman, seeks revenge despite the
conviction and "fell on his own knife" as the Sheriff tells Finch) but
not much. The epitome of the Southern Gothic novel, one reminiscent of
Tennessee Williams and Faulkner, Lee's book offers an unflinching look
into the "Just Us" system of the Deep South and the unjust persecution
and prosecution of innocent African Americans we still see in the
present day.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Bewildered by her
father's moral code that made him risk both their lives during those
three years in the Great Depression in his defense of an innocent man,
Scout returns from the Big Apple and, according to Harper Collins, then tries to understand her father Atticus better. It is important to remember that Miss Lee had written <i>Watchman </i>in
the mid 1950s, even before I was born. It was not intended to be a
period novel or a snapshot into a bygone age yet that is the prism with
which we necessarily need to view it.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Yet, while Lee's masterpiece is a brutally honest
scrutiny of her small Alabama hometown (many of the characters are based
on her relatives and neighbors), the United States, particularly the
Deep South, has, if anything, gotten even uglier. Black males, most famously the Scottsboro Boys and 14 year-old Emmett Till (who was murdered the same year <i>Watchman </i>was
drafted), were commonly charged, convicted or outright lynched over
alleged crimes to white women. Jurors tended to be all white and
prosecutors racists if not secretly Klansmen.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
But the persistent racism we're seeing rearing its pointy head since
the election of Barack Obama in 2008 goes several steps further than
even Lee's pitiless probity ever envisioned or anticipated. With the
street executions of Michael Brown, Oscar Grant, Amadou Diallo, Eric
Garner, Trayvon Martin and all too many others, juries and grand juries
refuse to indict policemen or police groupies like George Zimmerman. And
instead of being charged with crimes they didn't commit, more and more
innocent black males are being charged with crimes and even bad behavior
when they weren't even the defendants (usually because they were dead).</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Instead of ropes, we're now using strings of binary on Twitter,
Facebook and blogs to lynch black males (and, in some cases, even black
women) long after they've been laid in their graves or sent to prison.
Meanwhile, we're also treated to the news of white privileged males
getting off scot free after killing four people in a stolen vehicle
while under the influence with the bottomlessly absurd defense of "<a href="http://www.cnn.com/2014/02/05/us/texas-affluenza-teen/">Affluenza</a>."</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Scout Finch may return to her southern roots mystified by her heroic
father's motives for risking everything to save a man he never knew in
the real world as well as by the twisted ugliness of those roots. But
she'd be even more mystified by a 21st century United States that's
actually come full circle and, in some ways, has gotten even more racist
and vicious than the Alabama of the Great Depression. So, yes, <i>Go Set a Watchman</i> may yet teach us some lessons in racial harmony, however unheeded, six decades after Lee had written it.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
You go, old girl.</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7788975.post-11835293093185570102015-01-31T06:00:00.000-05:002015-01-31T06:00:02.277-05:00Good Times at Pottersville, 1/31/15<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span id="goog_689805589"></span><span id="goog_689805590"></span><span id="goog_2001366371"></span><span id="goog_2001366372"></span><br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7788975.post-67708299408266703392015-01-30T13:39:00.001-05:002015-01-30T14:14:29.996-05:00Top 10 Reasons Why Mitt Romney Won't Run for President in 2016<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Perennial Republican contender Mitt Romney has recently decided that he <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/mitt-romney/11380311/Mitt-Romney-will-not-run-for-president-in-2016.html">will not seek the presidency</a> for a third time in 2016. His reason, as he told potential <s>investors</s> supporters in a conference call was, <span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; color: #282828; display: inline !important; float: none; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 20.7199993133545px; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;">"I’ve decided it is best to give other leaders in the [Republican] Party the opportunity to become our next nominee." </span>Romney's departure from the field frees up a lot of cash and delegates while at the same time not supporting the heir apparent to the Republican nomination, Jeb Bush. But Mr. Romney told his supporters there were other reasons for withdrawing his name from consideration. What were they?
<br />
<hr />
<br />
<li><b> 10)</b> Slowly dawning realization that being unemployed isn't so tough, after all.</li>
<li><b> 9) </b>Losing $10,000 bet that he was more unpopular than HIV in the Castro.</li>
<li><b> 8)</b> Skull session with Jeb Bush in Salt Lake City earlier this month ended with Karl Rove slipping a length of piano wire in his luggage. </li>
<li><b> 7)</b> Unwillingness to stand more of Ann's constant notes in his lunches such as, "Every day you don't kill a 43 percenter is like a day without sunshine."</li>
<li><b> 6)</b> Last Christmas Eve was haunted by three ghosts of Seamus, <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/mitt-romneys-prep-school-classmates-recall-pranks-but-also-troubling-incidents/2012/05/10/gIQA3WOKFU_story.html">John Lauber</a> and the IRS Commissioner. </li>
<li><b> 5)</b> Presidential campaign would've conflicted with preplanned barbeque with Joseph Smith in the Kolob star system.</li>
<li><b> 4)</b> Became suspicious when his most ardent backers turned out to be Hillary Clinton voters.</li>
<li><b> 3)</b> Discovered Sarah Palin wanted to be his running mate.</li>
<li><b> 2)</b> Josh's announcement he couldn't get a good price on all the Diebold voting machines necessary to ensure a Romney victory, which would've been virtually all of them.</li>
<li><b> 1)</b> Apparently, the other 53% of the electorate only make up 1%.</li>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7788975.post-46342280696027671242015-01-21T13:09:00.001-05:002015-01-21T13:09:15.497-05:00Chris Kyle: An Inhuman Interest Story<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-liDvWgRdSJ8/VL_aVCf08xI/AAAAAAAAZPw/1bzjAob9VGA/s1600/American-Sniper.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-liDvWgRdSJ8/VL_aVCf08xI/AAAAAAAAZPw/1bzjAob9VGA/s1600/American-Sniper.jpg" height="240" width="400" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
(By <a href="http://www.amazon.com/American-Zen-ebook/dp/B00AHXZ7Q2"><i>American Zen</i></a>'s Mike Flannigan. on loan from Ari.)</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
In all fairness, you have to give Clint Eastwood credit. For a man who lives a relatively quiet and private personal life, he always finds a way to get in the public eye. And it's a testament to his endurance and relevance, legitimate or otherwise, that he remains a political lightning rod for those on both sides of the Great Ideological Divide. After all, you show me one other 84 year-old director who's still directing movies let alone ones at the top of the box office that make people talk about them at the water cooler.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
And it's a crowning irony that Eastwood's newest effort, <i>American Sniper</i>, was directed by a man who'd once admitted in an interview decades ago that he hated guns. Yes, Dirty Harry and the Man With No Name who'd killed more fictional people than you can shake a .44 Magnum at, hated guns. Therefore, the old man who made a laughingstock of himself at the Republican National Convention almost two and a half years ago by yelling at an empty stool now finds himself in the spotlight yet again.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Eastwood's box office-busting film should not be taken as a referendum on the legitimacy of the Iraq War
(Eastwood, in fact, has publicly stated he hates war in all forms) but
the manufactured controversy surrounding his film ought to be taken as a
referendum on the enduring, virulent hatred and racism that has taken this country by storm ever since we elected a black man to run it in 2008.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
It's hard to understand why Eastwood chose Chris Kyle, the Navy SEAL sniper who'd bragged about killing 255 men, for his next opus. If he'd insisted on making a movie about a sniper, he could've chosen Marine gunnery sergeant Carl Hathcock, who'd had a horrendously high body count during Vietnam and was the template for Stephen Hunter's bestselling Bob Lee/Earl Swagger series of action novels. Vietnam, after all, while still controversial to some aging deadenders, recedes much further into American history and the Department of Defense and its predecessors had produced many other notable snipers going back to the Revolutionary War.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Ergo, it's difficult to fathom why Eastwood chose Kyle, who was murdered at a Texas gun range in early 2013 by another military man suffering from PTSD. Nicknamed "The Devil of Ramadi", Kyle was awarded two Silver Stars, five Bronze Stars, a Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medal and two Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medals and was once credited with shooting a target from 2100 yards.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
But this isn't a book report and no man's life can be adequately summed up in one. Or a two hour-long movie, for that matter. Rather than a dry recitation of one person's achievements and capriciously awarded medals, what matters is how that person's life affected and continues to affect those who didn't even personally know him. And it's that willful ignorance that's produced the disturbing backlash aimed at Michael Moore over a clumsily-worded tweet and anyone who criticizes Kyle for his conduct in Iraq and elsewhere. Typically, many of the rape and death threats comes from right wing nut jobs and armchair snipers who have turned Eastwood's movie into a referendum on the justness of the Iraq War and the low value of brown-skinned human beings.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
And the fact is, <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jan/06/real-american-sniper-hate-filled-killer-why-patriots-calling-hero-chris-kyle">Chris Kyle</a> wasn't just the personification of "mission creep", he was what one could <i>call </i>...</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>The Mission Creep</b></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Kyle wasn't shy about making his thoughts known about Iraqis. He once infamously wrote in his own memoir, "I hate the Goddamned savages. I couldn't give a flying fuck about the Iraqis." He also said he "loved" to kill and that it was "fun." Such a misanthropic and psychopathic attitude should alone have disqualified this man from being held up as an American hero and having his life glorified in a movie that seems bound for Oscar consideration. All things considered, it's a miracle this man even got a literary agent let alone a publisher to trowel out such filth.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Such hateful statements alone should've invalidated the fetish that people of virtually all political persuasions harbor for those who wear military uniforms, regardless of where they'd served, not served or what they did or didn't do. Most disturbingly, even nearly 12 years after the most wrong-headed invasion and occupation in perhaps all American history, Iraq has never been tainted with nearly as much controversy as Vietnam. Therefore, the hatred and sociopathic bigotry of human monsters such as Chris Kyle, not to mention his murderous deeds, will similarly be shielded from any substantial and lasting criticism. And his needless and senseless murder on a Texas gun range only made him a martyr, thereby making him, at least for the moment, invulnerable to such comeuppance to the point where no one of any consequence even had the nerve to say, "Live by the sword..." </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
And it isn't much of a stretch to say that Eastwood's and Kyle's fans happen to be the same ones that criticized African Americans this past summer, fall and winter for protesting having members of their own gunned down by so many mini Chris Kyles such as Darren Wilson and George Zimmerman. That would be the same libertarians who decry police abuse and overreach until they start killing dark-skinned people who "had it coming to them." Kyle himself bragged about, without substantiating it, killing looters (read: black people who "had it coming to them") in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Yes, Kyle was an equal opportunity misanthrope. He also hated his own people.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Killing in war is unfortunately an inevitable consequence. At most, it should not be glorified and ought to be looked at as a grim duty. Good men ought to be troubled by the taking of human life regardless of how justified it was (and only a simple-minded misanthrope such as Kyle would even posit in polite company that every single one of his 160 confirmed or 255 alleged kills were absolutely justified). If war is an incurable condition of Mankind placed there by God, then it's horrible for a reason, The death, decay, destruction, plague and poverty that comes in its wake serves as an ongoing, albeit unlearned, object lesson that these ought to be deterrents to doing this to our fellow human beings.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
But even more despicable than monsters such as Kyle who use a wrongheaded and corporately-driven military action such as Iraq as an excuse to release his own racist demons to kill the very people the Bush administration piously swore for six years to be protecting are the people who are jumping on the Kyle bandwagon. The people who are misinterpreting Michael Moore's original tweet as him calling snipers "cowardly" are themselves resorting to hateful insults and death threats from the safe anonymity of their Twitter and Disqus accounts. </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Despite the fruit salad he may have worn on his Navy uniform, Chris Kyle was the very definition of an idol with feet of clay. And those who are threatening his critics with rape and murder only further dishonor a man who already has a blood-spattered legacy as well as the innocent Iraqis that Kyle glorified in victimizing. As with Sarah Palin and so many other right wing idols with feet of clay, in Kyle they've found someone who mirrors and validates their own irrational, misguided and ignorant hatred and racism.</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7788975.post-90714007614004804992015-01-16T16:11:00.000-05:002015-01-16T16:11:42.226-05:00Good Times at Pottersville, January 16, 2015<div style="text-align: center;">
(A Brilliant at Breakfast exclusive.)
</div>
<br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7788975.post-9575587466705946692014-12-11T15:46:00.001-05:002014-12-12T19:36:33.271-05:00Congressional Cassandras<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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This shouldn't have come as any surprise to anyone who knows anything about the GOP.<br />
The nanosecond the "party of personal responsibility" found out they
were going to dominate the entire legislative branch, the racism, insane
demands and draconian legislation proposals began streaming out as raw
sewage from a busted sewer line.<br />
The Republicans have shown
they have about as much respect for democracy as the Nazis did the
Weimar Republic that got them elected to power in 1933.<br />
No
sooner than the votes were tallied in all their gerrymandered districts,
we began hearing the President wouldn't be invited to the House chamber
to deliver the State of the Union, a presidential tradition since 1790.
We began hearing other rumors the GOP would then forbid President Obama
from using Air Force One. And if they get their way, before poor Mr.
Obama's public service career ends the Republicans will have him running
the fucking country out of a broom closet in the Naval Observatory.<br />
But it can't be said the Democrats have been any great shakes, either. <a href="http://ourfuture.org/20141211/this-is-not-a-drill-why-we-must-stop-the-disastrous-budget-deal">The looming budget bill</a>,
called a "chromnibus" by my senior Senator Elizabeth Warren, is not
only a naked giveaway and massive Christmas present to Wall Street, it's
being negotiated by so-called Democrats working in collusion with
Republican lawmakers. It reads as if it was crafted by a multiply-cloned
Max Baucus come back from the weeds with a vengeance.<br />
To
give you just a few bullet points regarding this steaming pile of shit
charitably referred to as a "spending bill", the bill in its present
state would consist of this:<br />
Essentially a repeal of much of
Dodd-Frank, a tepid, watered down replacement for Glass-Steagall at
best, that would allow Wall Street banks to continue in risky and
pre-doomed derivative speculation that Glass Steagall had forbade. It
would also put the American taxpayer on the hook for the inevitable
bailout. The 2008 and 2009 TARP bailout has already been estimated by
the <a href="https://dallasfed.org/assets/documents/research/staff/staff1301.pdf">Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas</a>
(pdf) to have cost the American taxpayer between six and 14 trillion
dollars, which could come out to $120,000 per household. To put it in
its simplest terms, it would once again reward Wall Street for criminal behavior.<br />
It would ramp up Citizen's United to the point where it would allow oligarchs to spend <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/11/us/trillion-dollar-spending-pact-angers-campaign-finance-watchdogs.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=first-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0">$777,000 or more </a>on political campaigns and PACs.<br />
Oh and it would raid the pension funds of up to 1.5 million retirees. It would also, according to the <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/congressional-leaders-hammer-out-deal-to-allow-pension-plans-to-cut-retiree-benefits/2014/12/09/4650d420-7ef6-11e4-9f38-95a187e4c1f7_story.html"><i>WaPo</i></a>,
slash the budget for the IRS, always a favorite target of Republicans,
to the point where they wouldn't be able to go after their tax-dodging
billionaire bosses (not that the IRS is much invested in doing so, to
begin with). That's right. This so-called "spending bill" would do
exactly the opposite where the IRS and other perennial right wing
targets are concerned.<br />
In other words, bloated and flushed with their
newfound majority, Republicans plan on presenting the bottom 99% with a
giant stocking filled with coal and not even the mythical clean-burning
coal, at that. And all with the help of Democrats who are more concerned
with submissively showing their belly to the Republicans than actually
doing what's right.<br />
This can be viewed as a microcosm of
what's wrong with today's Democrats in general, a telling synecdoche of
why more of us don't turn out for elections and especially midterms.
They are weak and fractured at best even when they have the majority in
one or both houses of Congress. They are constantly infested with Blue
Dogs who all but caucus with Republicans. At worst, they are seditious
and collusive, showing their complete lack of a spinal column when the
GOP gets the upper hand in one chamber or the other.<br />
And I
don't want to hear any shit from people who cherry pick tiny nuggets of
so-called progressivism and say, "I don't want to hear any shit about
there being no difference between the parties."<br />
Because they
all work for the same Wall Street banks and Fortune 500 companies.
Freelance journalist Michael Collins calls both sides of the aisle "The
Money Party." This is why I don't always vote Democrat and refuse to
even listen to those who rail about my doing so making me a Fifth
Columnist that empowers the Republicans.<br />
They don't need my help because the current crop of DINO douchebags is already doing that.<br />
Elizabeth Warren (except regards her troubling support for Israel)
usually finds herself on the right side of an argument. And when she
comes out swinging in favor of Joe Lunchpail, one can tell it's not
merely the empty, populist soaring rhetoric we hear from time to time
from the asshole in the Oval Office. And until we begin electing <i>real </i>Democrats like Elizabeth Warren and fewer glassy-eyed lunatics such as Joni Ernst and corporate meat puppets like David Perdue, registered Democrats and progressive Independents will continue avoiding
the polls in droves on Election Day. Until that day comes, Senators
such as Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren will continue to be
Congressional Cassandras, doomed to be ignored in spite of the truth of their words.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7788975.post-54444139679492382072014-12-02T11:32:00.001-05:002014-12-02T11:32:44.299-05:00Good Times at Pottersville, 12/2/14<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7788975.post-85007055546832196112014-11-23T06:00:00.000-05:002014-11-23T06:00:00.175-05:00Good Times at Pottersville #28<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7788975.post-51390292577910440172014-11-17T13:12:00.000-05:002014-11-17T13:12:00.582-05:00Good Times at Pottersville, 11/17/14<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7788975.post-26988103764833224642014-11-14T17:02:00.001-05:002014-11-15T09:51:20.163-05:00We Were Had<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en">
That awkward moment when... <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Gruber?src=hash">#Gruber</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Grubergate?src=hash">#Grubergate</a> <a href="http://t.co/mI8TIp94uI">pic.twitter.com/mI8TIp94uI</a><br />
— Robert Crawford (@jurassicpork59) <a href="https://twitter.com/jurassicpork59/status/533325765581234176">November 14, 2014</a></blockquote>
<div style="text-align: center;">
(By <a href="http://www.amazon.com/American-Zen-ebook/dp/B00AHXZ7Q2"><i>American Zen</i></a>'s Mike Flannigan, on loan from Ari.) </div>
ObamaCare, to put it simply, is a snake venom that nonetheless somewhat
succeeds in counteracting an even more pernicious malady. It's the
red-hot piece of metal that cauterizes a bleeding wound.<br />
It was never, <i>ever</i> intended to be anything more than that.<br />
It is a position, often a lonely and adversarial one, that had been
consistently taken by yours truly in this very byline since the
mislabeled Affordable Care Act was first being debated by no less than
five Congressional committees starting in the spring of 2009. Yet,
conservatives and truly enlightened liberals such as me cannot and
should not succumb to the siren lure of schadenfreude in light of the
strangely delayed revelations regarding Jonathan Gruber.<br />
Beginning in March of 2010, a week before Congress finally ratified the
ACA and put it on Mr. Obama's desk to sign into law, Gruber had openly,
brazenly and, seemingly without impunity until now, <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2014/11/14/politics/gruber-update-friday-white-house-obamacare/index.html">was crowing about</a>
how "lack of transparency and the stupidity of the American voter,
whatever" was responsible for the bill's success. Yesterday brought a
fifth video (and, no doubt, counting) of a now-infamous testy and
condescending exchange between Gruber and a Vermont voter concerned
about the ACA's ramifications.<br />
Predictably, wingnuts on
Twitchy, Hot Air, Breitbart and other right wing convection ovens have
been crowing about ObamaCare's inherent dishonesty, of which most us
were already aware. But now they have in Gruber their smoking gun. Five,
in fact. And among their talking points is how liberal elitists lied to
the American public about the health care bill. But liberals had
absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the bill's crafting, creation
or ratification.<br />
ObamaCare was passed in first the House,
then the Senate then put on the president's desk to be signed into law
as with countless other bills. It was not put on a national referendum
and not one American voted for it. None of us little people had any say
as to what it would contain or not.<br />
And now, "leaders" such as Nancy Pelosi are playing the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Gb_XddTnvk">predictably scummy, craven political game</a>
of distancing herself from someone she'd quoted and mentioned countless
times five years ago who has now been exposed as the Most Hated Man in
America. Democrats are running from Gruber as if he has Ebola, Obama and
everyone associated with the bill who's still on the Hill are in full
spin mode and right wingers who were told to hate the ACA by the Koch
Brothers and Dick Armey's Freedomwerx now have their health care Willie
Horton.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>The Triple Whammy</b></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-FHgIY0knwfw/VGZn7ijeYZI/AAAAAAAAZAc/9HSMArdCQqQ/s1600/gruber2.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-FHgIY0knwfw/VGZn7ijeYZI/AAAAAAAAZAc/9HSMArdCQqQ/s1600/gruber2.jpg" height="225" width="400" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
They say celebrities die in threes and regarding the Affordable Care
Act, this is the third whammy that may have finally sunk ObamaCare.
First was the clusterfuck of a rollout. The government literally had
several years to set up a workable website with adequate server space.
State-run partners, through their own exchanges, had the same amount of
time. But ObamaCare's website immediately crashed like a soggy house of
cards because the Obama administration, hardly to the surprise of yours
truly, decided to outsource its set-up and implementation to a private
corporation.<br />
Secondly, there was Obama's palpable lie of, "If
you like your present health care plan, you can keep it," which proved
to be as honest and prescient as closing Guantanamo Bay.<br />
Thirdly, there's Gruber's arrogant, condescending and, frankly, out of
touch comments about the American people and his pride in the lack of
transparency of the government that had paid him so handsomely to
mislead the American public <br />
And while conservatives
jeered, liberals struggled to put on a happy face and bombed Twitter and
Facebook with memes about how Bush killed hundreds of thousands (a
place they seriously do not want to go) while Obama had a slow website.
Now it's almost entertaining watching these liberals who think that
everything Obama does is in some way miraculous on a Biblical level
struggling even more mightily to keep on their O faces after ample
evidence has been avalancheing down at warp speed 10 out of the past
that its architect called them "stupid."<br />
It's impossible to
estimate the embarrassment this has visited on the Obama administration,
which paid this man over $400,000 to craft a bill that was mislabeled
as almost all about health care (hence the inevitably sarcastic name of
the bill). It ought to be embarrassing to the mainstream media
(especially ABC, which is still ignoring it) for letting these explosive
revelations languish for better than four and a half years. And it
should be embarrassing to any Democrat still in Congress who'd voted for
such a steaming pile of horse shit.<br />
Most of all, it should be embarrassing to so-called liberals such as <i>Esquire</i>'s
Charles Pierce (who seemed to love it simply because it helped his
ailing wife) who thought the tepid reforms and it being just a giant
gateway to the free market was the greatest thing since Medicare (which
in 1965 LBJ signed into law without him or Congress having to mislead
the American public). In short, anyone who hated the bill or opposed it
with such virulence should be stripped of their voting rights and
undergo a mandatory psychological evaluation since it seems no one save
for Gruber, the President and several people on the five committees that
had refined and crafted it knew exactly what it was all about.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>The Three Blind Chinese Men and the Republican Mascot</b></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-KR3eHOSEDPI/VGZq3scIWqI/AAAAAAAAZAk/41bZMDXMofY/s1600/blindmenandelephant.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-KR3eHOSEDPI/VGZq3scIWqI/AAAAAAAAZAk/41bZMDXMofY/s1600/blindmenandelephant.jpg" height="278" width="400" /></a></div>
I'm sure we all know the story of the three blind Chinese men and the
elephant. One blind man felt the tail and thought it was a rope. Another
at the other end felt the trunk and thought it was a snake. The third
in the middle thought the stomach was a wall. The parable only shows
that, without the proper context, individual parties can be completely
wrong about what they think they perceive.<br />
This perfectly
describes the second-hand experience of the American voter who had no
say in the bill's crafting and had foisted off on them like a pile of
flaming dog shit on Cabbage Night. It was a testament, albeit a sad one,
of the persistent cheerfulness and glass-half-full optimism of your
typical Obama voter.<br />
But the fact remains that out of all the
bills signed into law by the nearly six year-old Obama administration.
the ACA is easily the most misunderstood one of all. And that's not
completely their fault. The administration's and Democratic Congress's
explanations of it were largely incoherent, almost as much as the
Teabaggers' screaming oppositions to it during Town Halls in the summer
of 2009. And Gruber <i>did</i>, after all, lie to not just us but the
nonpartisan CBO over how the ACA should be packaged and sold (90% cost
control and 10% mandatory health care instead of the opposite). Yet it wasn't as if there was a complete media blackout of the bill's contents.<br />
However, liberals chose to ignore the back room deal struck by Rahm
Immanuel (whose very name ought to be, if it already isn't, synonymous
with arrogant, Democratic elitism) and Big Pharma to cap drug
reimbursements at $80,000,000,000. La de la de dah, dig hole in sand,
insert head. Repeat as necessary.<br />
Liberals also stuck their fingers in their ears when Max Baucus, then chairman of the Senate Finance
Committee, refused to hear testimony from universal single-payer
advocates and even made a joke about arrested protesters to Republican
Chuck Grassley about running out of cops. Liberals were also nonplussed that the ACA was never, <i>ever </i>intended
(despite Obama's immediately-broken campaign promises) to be anything
more or less than a gateway to the very same health insurance companies
that have been bilking the American taxpayer, and government, for
decades, turning our health care system into the rest of the world's
punchline.<br />
And Gruber's abominable and infuriating comments
about the "stupidity" of the American people that he nonetheless
willfully mislead and even lied to show just how much of an out-of-touch
elitist he truly is. His comments back on March 10, 2010, when the bill
was still being hashed out, that Americans care much more about health
care costs and far less about insuring the uninsured are so wrongheaded
and ignorant it's beyond laughter.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>One Shade of Grayson</b> </div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-3nfWonr43r0/VGZzh1ElNqI/AAAAAAAAZA0/oisDNt2vsGM/s1600/grayson.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-3nfWonr43r0/VGZzh1ElNqI/AAAAAAAAZA0/oisDNt2vsGM/s1600/grayson.jpg" height="266" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
I guess he forgot all about Alan Grayson constantly hammering home the
fact on the floor of the House that 48,000,000 Americans were uninsured
and that 45,000 Americans die each year because of lack of health
coverage. I suppose Gruber also forgot about liberals (the <i>real </i>ones)
screaming about universal single payer and not allowing red states to
opt out of Medicare expansion out of a misguided and futile attempt to
respect "states' rights" (a sop thrown to the GOP that got exactly two
Republican votes in the Senate and has not done a thing to keep Republicans from voting no less than 52 consecutive times to repeal ObamaCare).<br />
Limousine liberals and the Obama administration (as I'd said here
several times) made the colossal mistake of investing so much political
capital on one piece of domestic legislation so early in its history.
With the Iraq War, Afghanistan, terrorism, Gitmo, immigration,
environmental issues, gay rights and too many others to name, the Obama
administration should've dispersed its political capital more evenly
instead of putting all its eggs in one basket.<br />
And so-called
liberals, happily following that disastrous meme, acted as if the
success of the rest of the Obama administration rested with ratification
of the ACA, a bloated and more unwieldy version of the equally
disastrous RomneyCare here in Massachusetts.<br />
Liberals had it
only half right as were spittle-flecked teabaggers who didn't, couldn't
or wouldn't understand it any better than we: ObamaCare has undoubtedly
saved lives and over 10,000 fewer Americans are dying every year through
lack of coverage. It has driven down premiums, deductibles and co-pays
as well as abolishing the prejudice against those with preexisting conditions. And your child can remain on your health care plan until they're 26.<br />
But it was, at best, a vastly flawed work in progress and in desperate
need of improvement. Liberals made the mistake of seeing it, hairy warts
and all, with the peculiar beer goggles with which lonely horny men see
the last barfly at last call. If it was to be so popular, then why
enforce "compliance" through two bylaws in the federal tax code?
Conservatives hoarsely screamed as they were told to that it was a
Commie takeover of 1/6 of our national economy while Sarah Palin
sneeringly claimed to see death panels from her house.<br />
It was
neither. It was a single, staggering step in the right direction, with
muddy bootprints. But with Gruber's astoundingly stupid confessions
these past four to five years, this may be the monkey wrench the
newly-empowered Republicans have been looking for to finally repeal the ACA and put us right back to the Dark Ages we were in prior to the bill's passage.
Liberals and conservatives ought to stop pointing the finger at each
other and at elitist assholes such as Gruber and Obama. We were all had.<br />
<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7788975.post-82771002638058053822014-11-14T12:01:00.001-05:002014-11-14T12:01:01.241-05:00Good Times at Pottersville, 11/14/14<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7788975.post-19899954042506942882014-11-10T06:00:00.000-05:002014-11-10T06:00:11.759-05:00Good Times at Pottersville, 11/10/14<div style="text-align: center;">
(A Brilliant at Breakfast exclusive)</div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7788975.post-35845151697754487852014-11-09T12:53:00.001-05:002014-11-09T12:53:44.108-05:00Good Times at Pottersville #26<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-zNIYvVn9izQ/VF-Whj5zE7I/AAAAAAAAY8Y/ArqiRB24RV0/s1600/pville26.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-zNIYvVn9izQ/VF-Whj5zE7I/AAAAAAAAY8Y/ArqiRB24RV0/s1600/pville26.jpg" height="251" width="400" /></a></div>
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7788975.post-61156348908390679102014-11-05T15:49:00.000-05:002014-11-05T15:49:05.296-05:00Good Times at Pottersville, 11/5/14 <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7788975.post-24489408875712602922014-11-03T16:50:00.003-05:002014-11-03T16:50:45.558-05:00When Joni Met Chachi Charlie<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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(By <a href="http://www.amazon.com/American-Zen-ebook/dp/B00AHXZ7Q2"><i>American Zen</i></a>'s Mike Flannigan, on loan from Ari.) </div>
Or <i>Sleepless 700 Miles From Dallas.</i><br />
To quote my fellow Bay State scribe <a href="http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/Mornings_With_Joni">Charlie Pierce</a>, "Well, this didn't end well."<br />
Specifically, this is what happens when the proverbial Irresistible
Force of facts meets the Immovable Object of paranoid teabagger
Ignorance and Stupidity.<br />
In Ankeny, a little burg in the
middle of Iowa, Joni Ernst decided to diversify her appeal to
30-something Klan members still holding out hope the Black Guy Who Shall
Not Be Named will make one move toward their guns by trying to appeal
to old, white people at a bagel shop. She made the mistake of trying to
convince the old folks nodding off in their cream cheese and prune juice
that Obama wasn't doing enough about Ebola. As if, you know, he's the
one holding up the naming of a Surgeon General over the last 13 months.<br />
What she didn't realize was that <i>Esquire</i>'s Charlie Pierce was in attendance.
In fact, she never even recognized him, for which Ernst von Bloviate
can't be blamed since she's been acting as if anyone with a press pass
has, I don't know, <i>Ebola</i> or something.<br />
So Mr. Pierce,
contrary to the hagiographers and stenographers that make up the bulk of
today's <s>mainstream media</s> 24/7 Infotainment
Extravaganza of Aphoristic Soundbites and Cialis/Viagra/Levitra
Commercials, decided to present Ms. Ernst with a fact.<br />
He
confronted her with the painfully inescapable, incontrovertible,
ineluctable, unassailable fact that only one person in the United States
has a confirmed case of Ebola.<br />
Now, let's backtrack for a
minute to clarify that. That is an ascertained, easily verifiable fact,
especially for a Senate candidate who currently employs people whose job
it is to vet media stories so their candidate is well-informed on the
issues. Oh, wait, silly me. That's who <i>Democrats </i>hire. Teabagger
rodeo clown fear mongers like Joni Ernst hire partisan stooges who are
less like media professionals and more like James O'Keefe knockoffs
minus the Superfly Halloween costume.<br />
At any rate, this was
an easily verifiable fact: There's only one person in our great,
urine-soaked nation who has Ebola. So what was Ms. Ernst's response?<br />
"Well, you're the press. That's your opinion."<br />
Squealing tires. Scratched record. Woman screaming.<br />
Wha-what?!<br />
"But that's not an opinion," Mr. Pierce intrepidly ventured. "That's a fact. Only one person in America has Ebola."<br />
"But he's not a leeeaaader," she retorted, referring to Obama.<br />
Now, there are several things about this exchange we must take away, even though it's like, I dunno, about as appealing as a fresh pile of Ebola-infected vomit.<br />
First, John Adams and his "stubborn facts" be damned, to Teabagger fear
meisters and peddlars such as Joni Ernst, if you're a member of the
media, you're automatically a liar, that anyone who pushes facts instead
of the GOP agenda unspooled from the fax machine of Karl Rove or the
NRA, then you're merely an opinion journalist, someone to be avoided at
all costs.<br />
At which Joni Ernst has proven, Lo, these past
several weeks, to be very adroit. And the Iowa press has responded to
this snubbing with as much dedication and zeal as they would the weekly
crop dusting schedule.<br />
So, if there was a God of Politics
governing democratic elections in our red, white and blue (and yellow.
We cannot forget the piss yellow running down our Levis that Ernst and
Fox News ensures runs down our legs) nation, Joni Ernst's candidacy
would've imploded faster and neater than three World Center Towers, in
its footprint and at freefall speed. And Chuckie Pierce would be given
the credit for the downfall of another delusional sociopath. Ernst's
iron-coiffed head would be mounted on his den wall. <br />
But there is no such God. Because for decades now, it seems any psychopath with a passable wardrobe and who is remotely telegenic in a red state or district actually stands a good chance of getting elected to one of the most powerful offices in the land.<br />
And her campaign hardly felt a shudder as she quickly turned from my
colleague to peddle more lies to someone whose Medicare and Social
Security she could endanger while making them feel they really matter.<br />
Facts don't matter anymore, especially if you're running under a
Republican Party banner. And whether you're cynically trying to get
others to pile on the Ebola bandwagon or are a true believer with the
yellow stripe down your pants leg to prove it, facts don't matter to
you, the press or the voters any more than global warming and climate
change means a shit to oil cartel meat puppets like James Inhofe.<br />
Yes, this exchange should've been the end of Joni Ernst's campaign just
as George Allen's last Senate campaign imploded about four and a half
nanoseconds after his infamous "Macaca" comment.<br />
But it
didn't. And outgoing Senator Tom Harkin's recent comments comparing
Ernst to Taylor Swift (which is like comparing Ann Coulter to Jennifer
Lopez or anyone else who actually has a pair of functional X
chromosomes) didn't help the cause because Ernst is just smart enough
politically to seize on gender bias even if it doesn't exist.<br />
Because in politics especially, perception is reality. Who cares if
this especially applies to a nation of people who still think the world
began 6000 years ago when it was created by a Sky Wizard who said,
"Thou Shalt Not Kill!" then made human survival dependent on just that?
This is America, Land of the Sorta Free Within Limits and With Prior
Police Approval and Home of the Blustering Through Yellow-Tinged Sears
Sans-a-Belt Slacks.<br />
This one exchange that took but seconds to transpire should've been the end of what should've been the most laughable and possibly hostile campaign in the entire 2014 midterm election cycle.<br />
Just by coincidence, two years ago almost to the day, when she was in
the final days of her 2012 bid for the US Senate, Elizabeth Warren
appeared in a local bagel shop in Hudson, Massachusetts. I got to speak
with her after her (one must admit, boilerplate speech that must've been
delivered a dozen times that day) and got the sense that she was a
warm, genuine human being. Charlie Pierce walked away from the other
bagel shop in Ankeny feeling much the same way, marveling at the woman's
ability to work a room.<br />
But Charlie Pierce missed the big
picture and his trademark snark was even considerably dimmed in that
article. The Big Picture is that it's one thing to work a room. It's
another thing entirely to work up a room with palpable lies about Ebola
and to cynically run on such a platform and telling old, white
Republican voters the black guy's no good for you and his apathy is
going to kill you because that's not what reeeeaaaalll leeeaaadeeeerssss
do.<br />
Joni Ernst, I've met a real-life Senator in my life, at a
bagel shop not unlike the one in which you tried to stoke fear where
there shouldn't be any. I met Elizabeth Warren. I spoke with Elizabeth
Warren. I listened to Elizabeth Warren. And you, Ms. Ernst, are no
Elizabeth Warren.<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0