June 30, 2021

Wow, am pausing to count the times these types of posts have been launched at mine:

Adding:
* Vindictive Alerts for OPINIONS
* Instigating/participating flame fests
* Preferring to target fellow members here instead of out-there wingnuts

Thanks for identifying, codifying something that really happens, is dared not to be spoken.

June 21, 2021

Stages of Stewart losing me:

First I took my fellow Dems' word he was one of us, liked the little I saw.

When he occasionally turned fire on Libs I accepted he was just a comedian calling it like he saw it.

Then he tore up CNN's Crossfire on their air about their dividing the country and it got cancelled.

Then Glenn BecKKK staged a phony "uniting America" crapfest and Stewart found it necessary to hold one supposedly from the Left that turned out to be a hippie dippie crapfest with soap bubbles and the Mythbusters. Afterwards MAHER said, "If you're going to have an event it needs to be ABOUT something."

Then he started kissing up to O'LOOFAH about getting along hosting and guesting with each other. Stewart was playing by himself.

**** So I quit him for good. Third way crapper or whatever his delusion is. I wish COLBERT would quit him.

June 15, 2021

Older Americans Month is over. Some whippersnappers can relax.

May was Older Americans Month, elders perhaps not getting so much acknowledgment as other groups or as in other cultures. We might think of them in other terms, such as parents and grandparents or veterans, first responders or teachers. But what about those who figured as a turning point in our personal development and working life?

Have we all known, or perhaps been, young people who thought they did it all themselves and saw predecessors as stepping stones or as being in the way of their ambitions or even obstacles by occupying coveted positions?

Perhaps those in charge now might think about those retired elders, the ones who took a chance to hire you, gave you their hard-won knowledge and experience with an open hand, who risked their own status to support or even defend you, the ones who played by old-fashioned rules of deference to elders instead of pushing in line, who waited their turn, who showed some grace with silence, who taught by example, who stepped aside to make room for you, and who didn’t ask for thanks.

May 29, 2021

O.M.Z. - he's gone over the edge with his glory hound self-delusion! He equates himself with the

*COUNTRY*! And whoever wrote the link to the blurb (him?) calls his life an odyssey and makes him out to have been a journalist of *magnitude*!

He. was. a. *FLUNKY* at the most! We Dem junkies were thrilled when he came on the scene in '88 with Hardball the book, thinking we had a tough DEMOCRATIC operative to lay low the opposition. HAH - I can count on one pinkie nail the times he praised CARTER, while he slathered all over RAYGUN, Nancy, and Shrub non-stop.

As for his surfacing to "peddle jams and jellies" (credit Carol CHANNING) and somebody posting they hope nobody on MSNBC gives him air, compare to how DONAHUE hosted him for one of his AmCiv101 books and soon was gone from MSNBC (below).

I monitored him closely for five or more years and had him pegged long before his crash proved it out, to wit:

***** Etymology of "Tweety". During Campaign 2000 the media noise machine was swooning over the nicknames Shrub was giving some of them. Media Whores Online ran a contest to nickname Chris MATTHEWS. In the first three or so weeks, there was no clear, catchy front runner, with "The Screamer" sort of leading. Then one of MATTHEWS's own Hardball staff leaked to MWO that they themselves called him "Tweety" because of the Clairol shade of hair coloring he favored. This was immediately declared the winner. But in some quarters, it wasn't entirely satisfactory. For one thing, by the time the name was declared, the shade had changed to platinum, leading to a suggestion he be called "Carole LOMBARD".

   Plus, "Tweety" sounded too affectionate. 

His Misogyny.  Then M-TV held its 20th or 25th or whatever anniversary, and all the cable echo chambers were doing segments of Britney shedding her duds down to almost nothing. Not to be left behind, Tweety followed suit, with a guest "culture" commentator from Time Mag, the young humor columnist, Joel STEIN. The staff kept re-running the Britney clip, and Tweety was clearly DROOLING disgustingly. STEIN said, "You're beginning to creep me out." Tweety responded, "Yeah, well, wait till YOU're 50." This led to the suggestion that "Tweety" be modified to "Tweezer" to retain the hair reference while canceling out the affection factor and also adding the (dirty old) "geezer" angle.
Back when, misogyny was a wink-wink/smirk-smirk thing among the old style flunkies like him, there were many examples of his, with HRC being his prime target for years until she was becoming a real contender, when he yearned to host her, but the bridges had been burned. 

But here's a vignette from back in the day, regarding his wife Kathleen. He deigned to host her or let her co-host a segment or so, this time with him and another recycled miscreant Mike BARNICLE. She was standing like at the front of a class and they two were sitting like the smirking, spit-balling, Catholic schoolboy-jerks that they really are. She trudged through her presentation, taking her subject seriously while the two of them smirked, giggled, and mocked all the way. But regarding Kathleen, he exemplifies one signature characteristic of misogynists: Despite the obviously hostile behaviors, they claim to adore, honor, put-on-a-pedestal women. And Tweety frequently does that over-compensating, protests-too-much thing by referring to her as, "MY QUEEN." 
*************So flash forward decades to the TWITLER atrocious era, specifically calling Senator WARREN “Pocahontas.” Tweety hosted her soon after a TWITLER episode of it, besides a manic outburst of his sputtering interrupting, almost giggling every time he said that name, catching himself each time then protesting that it was a horrible thing, like Beavis/Butthead giggling at a dirty word. So WARREN kept to the high road and that TWITLER was not going to silence her. So then he struck, like when he lashed out at DONAHUE. He was in bursting giggle mode and said, "So, for you 'Pocahontas' will be like a clarion call for you to come charging out!1" and he busted his gut. WARREN looked sucker punched. 

Darrell HAMMOND "Doing" Tweety on SNL. Tweety's ego was massively stroked after the debut of HAMMOND's impersonation of him, either in 2001 or 2002. He said, "I am now an ICON: I have been 'done' on Saturday Night Live'." The funniest line in the debut was HAMMOND as Tweety, cracking himself up with, "For the ... FIFTY ... people who watch this show...” (Hardball, not SNL). In the first few times HAMMOND featured him, the target was Tweety himself -- manically interrupting, spitting, and drooling. However, the characterization evolved, not true to the original, where Tweety became the "rational" character surrounded by oddball, extremist "guests", with HAMMOND-Tweety shaking his head in disbelief at their partisan spin.   

"Turning" from Being a Democrat. He (like G.E.RUSSERT and Pat CADDELL) still trades on having been a Democrat in the CARTER/O'NEILL era. In the hothouse of big time political flunkydom, STATUS and POWER come from the SUCCESS of your boss. RAYGUN kicked Tweety's bosses' rears, and Tweety gravitated to admiring that "success". When he started up his media career he was mentored by G.E. RUSSERT, who had himself already started "turning" by "reaching out" to LIMBOsevic and expending his formerly-Lib-bleeding-heart on those poor wingnuts who had been maligned and marginalized by the Liberal Elite, lo those many years. Tweety started doing video valentines to RAYGUN, promenading arm in arm with Nancy. He might have tapped into the frenzy of the FAKE impeachment, but "hatred of the CLINTONs" isn't what made him turn. The last time he was identifiably a Democrat was sometime around 1988 when Hardball (the book) was published.  Throughout the year of Campaign 2000 he savaged the Dem candidate daily and went on to years of bromance over Shrub, renouncing any Democratic heritage.  He said his parents were “cloth coat" (Rethugs), and that basically what first drew him to the Dem side was Irish-Catholic pride over JFK.  Not ideology, not idealism.  He said the reason he joined the Peace Corps was specifically to avoid going to Vietnam. 

How Tweety "Executed" DONAHUE on MSNBC. Tweety was on his book tour for another one of his "books" (large type, wide spaces between lines, blank half-pages). It was in the jingoistic hysteria in the run-up to the illegal Iraq attack. The book was about supposed "Americanism" -- an American Civ 101 ripoff about books and movies and cultural stuff that are essentially American (think, "The Great Gatsby" ). So Phil welcomed him as a colleague and peer on Phil's MSNBC show for the full hour to plug the book. From the moment he appeared, there was a strange, deadly snake look in Tweety's snake eyes. Phil was walking around the audience, apparently not sensing anything, while Tweety was motionless, following him only with his eyes. Phil brought up something or other questioning blind, kneejerk jingoism, and Tweety STRUCK! He started out with venom dripping, "You see, THIS is EXACTLY what's wrong with YOU Liberals: You are NEGATIVE about this country, you find NOTHING good about it," and on and on. It took awhile before Phil figured out what was happening. Later, Phil, devastated and spent, was sitting at the table with Tweety and, weaker and weaker, did some of his trademark shoulder shrugging and arm waving. Tweety delivered the coup de grace, "What's THIS (mimicking the movements)??!! What's with the --APE-- movements???!" Days or a week or two later, Phil's cancellation was announced and took effect. 

How Tweety "Triggered" a Gun Incident (re: Kathleen WILLEY). At the height of the FAKE impeachment, Ms WILLEY claimed that a mystery jogger had threatened her or her cat or somebody, with the insinuation that there was a CLINTON connection. Several months later, there was gossip that the jogger had been identified. Tweety hosted her and it appeared they had discussed the identity off camera. He tried mightily to get her to say the name on the air, which she wouldn't do. Finally, he himself blurted it out, "Was it (Name/Surname)?" She wouldn’t confirm it. Within days there was a bizarre incident, with the mentally disabled brother of Pat and Bay BUCHANAN going with a gun to the house of the supposed jogger named by Tweety, where there were only some foreign exchange students present. Later it was determined that the person Tweety named on the air had NOTHING to do with the supposed jogger incident. 

"Heroes" Tweety and Tom DeLAY. In the aftermath of the 07-24-98 shooting of two Capitol police officers when the slain officers were duly eulogized and called heroes, Tweety latched on to this, the way we have seen him attempt to glorify himself in other instances: Like saying he was assigned to Africa in the Peace Corps and "WALKED THE SAME GROUND" THAT CHURCHILL had passed through. Or when he said, "I am an ICON! I have been 'done' by SNL!". So now that the Capitol policemen were being called heroes, Tweety came forward to say that HE had been a Capitol policemen, TOO, JUST LIKE THEM, when he was starting out. It turns out that he had worked a (temporary?) job for three months as that. In all the years before the officers were shot and eulogized, he probably NEVER referred to that job, most likely thinking of it as a rent-a-cop turn, until he could see in retrospect the glory that he had been DESTINED to from the beginning.  

But he is not the only glory hog. When that incident was happening, the news of the moment reported that Tom DELAY had hopped a plane out of town and immediately turned around in Houston when the incident was over. This show of courage is why he has been dubbed, "Tom-DePLANE!-DePLANE!-DELAY".  But searches of countless news reports of that time show no mention of the hopping-the-plane. Only this is left: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm /... "...House members, many rushing out of town, did not have to remain behind. DeLay slipped out the main door of the Capitol less than 15 minutes after the shooting. He looked stricken. Asked if he'd seen anything, he said, "Did I ever. I don't want to talk about it." Aides rushed him into his waiting car. ...."------------

April 25, 2021

SNL getting hosted by Elon MUSK in 2 weeks. NOTE to him and other whack billionaires:

The Romans had their share of humongous egos, but at least they took a stab, so to speak, at humility by having somebody saying, "Remember, you are human/mortal" next to the maniac having a glory day.

We've just gotten past one supposed billionaire thinking he deserved anything he wanted, yes even pocketing "honors" and knickknacks like hosting SNL. Well, MUSK, Mark CUBAN, et al., your vast material success and even the accomplishments that got it for you are their own thing, NOT transferrable to other endeavors or marks of honor and glory - or *SERVICE*.

If you're not naturally lovable, gracious, or humane your accomplishments and material success can't buy or appropriate them for you - not even stupendous charitable donations.

You can afford to hire somebody to do nothing else except to stand next to you and whisper in your ear, "Remember, you are human/mortal," until you get fed up and have them executed.

There was this dude in line to pay for a set of golf clubs and he was playing to the gallery about making sure everybody knew it and how he had cash to burn, and said to the minimum wage cashier, "The difference between a boy and a man is the price of their toys." She and everybody ignored him.

A Roman emperor played at being in the theater, another at being a gladiator, and we had one of your ilk try to own our government. It's been done, MUSK. Just play your games and play with your toys and leave the rest of us alone.

*******QUOTE******

https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/24/business/elon-musk-snl-host-may-8/index.html

.... Miley Cyrus will be joining Musk as musical guest on May 8. ....

That said, the show has selected business moguls before, including former New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner and, of course, former President Donald Trump (before he was president.) ....

As for Musk, the businessman will be able to show off his comedic chops. How exactly that plays remains to be seen, but this certainly is one of the buzzier choices SNL has made lately. It will likely get people to tune in who may not normally watch the show. ....

Musk is no stranger to being in front of the camera. He's popped up in Marvel's "Iron Man 2," in a 2015 episode of "The Simpsons" and in several episode of "South Park."

********UNQUOTE******

April 17, 2021

Hear, hear! -Bravissimo! - sincerely (NO sarcasm) !

ON EDIT: Actually, am saving your perfect post for my future use in the same, all too frequent circumstances:

March 27, 2021

Of course, & he thinks they actually like him b/c nobody else hangs out with him!

https://twitter.com/tedcruz/status/1344019586757386240

https://twitter.com/tedcruz/status/1335072391869984769

March 27, 2021

Two signs that it's that time of life (stage)

Sign 1: Still able to mow my grass, but for now because there's been none to cut since the end of last summer. There was a small sample to do last week and lasted half an hour followed by flat out nap time. Soon it will be blazing hot with voracious growth and lots of scheming about doing it in early evening with mosquitos or early morning if no dew. And spread over 2 or 3 days with three hours flat out after each session. The change in stage of life is coming, meaning contracting it out.

Sign 2: The easy parts have been in the can for years - managing the disposition of material effects, cremation with all arrangements and Will. Getting rid of *things* is easy. The harder part is the PAPERS. Probably everybody knows what "THAT BOX" means - or boxES, of crap residue of the lifetime. Probably nobody would miss any of it and will never study it - we want them to or DO we?!1 Yet, it's a pang to trash it - the scribblings and relationships. Yet all that PAPER, so proximate to *trash* in material worth. But all those biographies and autobiographies of Great People, where every dang detail and scrap was hoarded and precious. And us English majors fantasize about having our psyches dissected - by an UNDERSTANDING, COMPASSIONATE interpreter - down to the cell level and beyond to whatever smaller unit comes.

So then the option rationalized into transferring all the paper onto DISCs and shredding the paper - brilliant! This became a mania of *months* - sorting, chronologizing, scanning all Landscapes into Portraits. Not unexpected but worse was the *RE-LIVING* of every scrap of life.

Turned out into two large sections. So it's all done. Two discs. Binders and hundreds of page protectors donated to Habitat. Special carrying case for the discs, and don't DARE scribble anything else. And who knows what to do with the discs.

March 27, 2021

Will answer to "Leonardo," per favore: My engineering of a cane-seat

Remember Election 2020, the fervor to vote and expectations of hours in line. Well, I was possessed to find a "cane seat" since I'm a portly (then age 73, now 74). First, the odyssey of googling, shopping by internet or finding a local outlet, extensive comparison of seat sizes and sturdiness (230 lbs). It turned out that two big box sporting good stores had them, apparently used by golfers. Happily, Dick's, the one on the correct side of non-guns, had the better one. Then my big day of early voting came, and the thing stayed in the trunk because there was no line at all. Fine.

Then the covid vaccine lines came along, and too late, already in a 3 hours' line, I remembered the cane seat for the second jab, but it turned out that the 2nd jab was a faster thing, so it stayed in the trunk.

But a further use turned out, since I'm a wimp about trimming my dog's nails, or rather both he and I are about my doing it, and after a couple of years of bouncing around for small business groomers to do it, we ended up at a chain place that - get this - had no seating. So the first time the cane seat hit the spot!1 But then the next time, the three legged thing would *not* stay standing, would sway over to one or another side with me scarcely escaping being splattered on the deck.

The problem was obvious: That the spread of the three legs was too narrow, or close together. My pondering (mental work) went on for weeks, with my first thought being to BEND the aluminum legs apart, perhaps a double bend with outward slantings near the joint and downward slantings to the ground. My mental wheels kept turning, settling on replacing the screw with a longer one, perhaps also including some bending.

More weeks passed before getting around to gathering the bolt and nut, finding only the eye-bolt, 1/4 inch thick and 4 inches long. Thinking some more about the steps, having to hack saw tightly the light weight bolt, then probably having to drill the holes wider for the eye bolt, both tasks likely to be troublesome.

So today, all other tasks abating for the moment, took it up. I decided to experiment first with just the bolt length without any bending of the legs. And the two steps were unexpectedly easier and the eye bolt and nut worked as projected. But then, surprise surprise, the legs were just as unstable as before, swaying over to one or the other side. After a couple of attempted seatings and adjusting the spacing of the legs, the problem became clear: The eye bolt had *BENT* from my weight?!1 ------I was astounded, since I assumed a 1/4 inch thick bolt could take me like a feather!1

So instead of the big box place that was limited in its bolts, went to a specialized local bolts-and-steel place. Nope, the humorless dude said his bolts were all bendable, not iron. There were other places, and found one. This dude had the right stuff and it was the strongest composition, and 54 cents. I had the bent eye bolt with me and left him laughing about what bent it.

Back at the engineering studio, the iron or steel bolt introduced into the aluminum holes well, with only a few turns of a vice plier. And apparently the spread was fine with the length of the bolt. The seating feels sturdy and stable. First serious use will be at the next appointment for dog nails clipping.

March 6, 2021

Separating a Party personality from our Party agenda (B.Clinton, Cuomo). Date of post March 6.

Many/most of us Dems here went to the mat defending Bill against the (what I called *FAKE* ) impeachment. Even back then I blamed both him and her for their selfishness but knew that my defense was grounded on Party loyalty, seeing the attack as purely partisan.

When the dust settled much reflection and digestion ensured, and I reached the clarification that my Democratic allegiance is based on the Party’s *AGENDA* (civil rights, civil liberties, social justice, stewardship of the planet). *NOT* on any single leader/personality.

I realized for myself that, its being *SO* difficult and precious to win our time in power, it is a WASTE of our precious time in Power to spend all of our energy defending one person ------ instead of being able to use it on working on our agenda. A waste and a distraction.

If it were happening today I would not defend Bill. I would want him to resign and let Al take over. Never again any one personality.

I love it when we find a leader with charisma who WINS and therefore will be more effective in moving our agenda forward even if in the tiniest steps. But being a Dem is not a Gold Card for anything goes. If a Dem has bundles of illicit cash in the freezer or whatever the flaw, the Dem label is forfeited.

So, Andrew is just too much déjà vu. Even without the investigation so far, it’s just too much ugly distraction and parsing and weeping. My little, one-person support or lack thereof is negligible, but for the record it’s bye time.