PCIntern
PCIntern's JournalDavid Stern: The Luckiest Man in America...
During the Gulf War all those years ago, do you happen to remember the truck driving off the bridge at the exact instant that an American Bomb/Missile destroys said bridge? General Schwarzkopf remarked during the briefing that the driver was the "luckiest man in Iraq". This comment was met with some fair amount of laughter, both in the room, and at home, where live-action war was reduced to video-game status.
Well, I would think that former NBA Commissioner and Lord High Executioner David Stern must be counting his blessings about now. His truck left the Arena, just in time.
As an aside, what troubles me beyond belief is not that a guy like this says this stuff: it is who stays silent in the aftermath.
You would not believe what is suddenly going on in Philadelphia, PA:
after months of no real local news worth commenting upon, we are now indundated with all kinds of "excitement":
1. Cops may have shot a pizza delivery guy in the head by 'mistake'
2. Main Line Preppy drug ring invvolving multiple high schools
3. Lawyer commits suicide after he is exposed as running a fake slip and fall scam
4. Main Line (again) doctor and daughter accused of pot growing in home
...and lots more...
philly.com for your perusal!!!!!1 It is huhg! Hueg! Huje!...whatever!!!!!1
To demonstrate how things have changed...
I just took myself to lunch at a restaurant here in Center City Philadelphia. I as an individual have been a customer there since 1975 and my family attended the present owner's GRANDfather's seafood house from the 1930's through the late 1960's until it was sold/demolished to make room for the skyline which now proudly and esthetically dominates here.
It is a well-known seafood establishment which used to cater to the older, conventional folk who inhabited the residences on Rittenhouse Square and Kennedy Boulevard, but those people are nearly all "gone" and so it has become trendy, now owned by the grandson of the founder, having taken the helm from his father's capable hands.
Since it is lunch hour, I chose to sit at the Oyster Bar because there's no point taking up a deuce when they're in such demand. That's the kind of guy I am. Anyway, the point I'm trying to make...
The male server, as they're now called, comes up to me and stands, oh, maybe eight inches from my eyes and asks me the routine questions - meanwhile I'm leaning backwards since he's not my son or anything else for that matter. He seems disappointed in my order of Manhattan Clam Chowder ($7) and a dozen Cherrystone Clams ($16) and Coffee ($2.5) and asks me if I am going to be having anything else. I debated whether I should say to him, "If I wanted anything else, then I would have asked for it, would I not have?" but did not out of courtesy and the fact that he has a shot at my food. Anyway, the food comes, is delicious as usual, and the instant I put down my fork, he attends me and asks if "that will be all". I replied that normally I would ask for a second cup of coffee, but today, no thank you. That is a hint that he should have asked me but he was absolutely oblivious. the check appeared out of nowhere and here is the best part...
I placed two Twenties on a $27.50 check and he asks me if he should bring me the change. Very softly I asked him if he considered that twelve dollars and fifty cents tip on a twenty-seven dollar check might be a bit high...? Without a word, he took the check and brought me my change. I left him a five dollar tip, normally I would have left seven here since I have known some of the middle-aged (like me) waitresses, pardon me, servers, since they were in high school working there.
Had I seen the father of the owner, who eats lunch there occasionally, I would have said something to him in a "fun" manner, with some humor attached. I knew that if I spoke to his son, he would have an "answer" for me, as he has for everyone else who works or eats there, and I would get mad.
As a P.S., please allow me to say that I do this maybe twice a year. Good Friday I give my staff off (with pay) and come in, take emergencies before the Easter Holiday, and do paperwork. I buy myself a treat for being so magnanimous to everyone else.
As a sixty-year-old with three degrees in "science", research work with papers published,
and an avid reader of scientific publications I think I have some qualifications to make this statement.
The "error" which the powers-that-be committed following the Sputnik launching was to subsidize University education without limiting it to the physical and biological sciences. They created a "monster" of edumacated (sic and sick) individuals who could actually base conclusions upon a foundation of science and, quite frankly, higher-order truth, rather than upon superstition, proverbs, cliches, and misinterpretation of writings which date back to a time when Mankind was struggling just to survive.
To correct this path, the notions of having an informed population, or more exactly, electorate, had to be negated. What better manner of execution of this than the use of religious writings, which, taken out of context, seem to negate much of what had been taught in schools and in higher educational facilities. The vast majority of the politicians who are promulgating this no more believe in its truth than Ronnie Reagan believed in the sanctity of the lives of the unborn. This is a given.
By re-introducing so-called creationism ( I shall not capitalize that word and lend it credence) they posit that no scientific principle is truly valid, it is merely an appearance and a generalization; a fossil record, for example, appears to be millions of years of age, but it is perceived to be God's testing of us or some other rationalization for having to face a fact which is inconsistent with their ultimate "Truth". It is intellectually and rationally repulsive to attempt to engender this way of thinking in a society to achieve the ends of Power and Money. But since people historically wish to believe that bad things are "God's Will" or "God's Plan" of that "Everything happens for a Reason", it is effective in its implementation.
The effect of this technique of manipulation is that it maintains subservience and fosters ignorance which is of course, anti-Democratic and anti-intellectual. Without referencing the entity which causes many to precipitously and unwarrantedly reject a sound argument in toto, please allow me to state that all of this is just a variance of The Big Lie. It is an attack upon the Progress of Civilization and unfortunately, it is working to a fair extent. They are well aware that more efforts need to be expended, but they are willing to fight the long war, and accept setbacks with their usual aggression, anger, and hatred doubled and redoubled.
The problem for all of us, including for them, is that occasionally there is an event of a Cosmic scale which demonstrates that their willful repression of Nature's principles is dangerous for the Many. I am not referring to horrors such as the Newtown, CT shooting, or the grotesque lying which submerged us in Afghanistan and then Iraq: I am talking about the laissez faire attitudes which will someday cause massive destruction of property and lives irretrievably. We are not talking about Sandy or Katrina, which have already been papered over: we are talking about, say, the inundation of the entire South of New Jersey, Eastern Maryland, and Delaware by rising ocean levels which will be unstoppable; the loss of fresh drinking water and potable water for agriculture in great areas of the country due to pollution caused by fracking and spillage of toxic waste. Those of us who lived through Three Mile Island here in Pennsylvania might recall the fact that millions of acres of dairyland were threatened and exposed to radiation which was never acknowledged, but occurred without question, despite the utiities' and Governments' insistence that it had not. The final results will never be known but many clinicians ascribe certain pathologies and incidences thereof to the Event. These are formally denied...with a wink.
It doesn't matter what any of us believe or do not believe if society does not slow its pace to a different version of Armageddon. The Truth, the higher order Truth will someday prevail, despite what someone such as Senator Sessions claims he believes.
So this is the BEST...
or at least the BEST for today...
A couple who have been very long-term patients comes into my waiting room and sit down. They had been on insurance until recently, when the expiration date passed for retirees from this particular union. The lady of the house shows me an insurance card and asks if we take it. My reply was yes we do, as it is a rider on a medical policy and with a company for whose "customers" we take assignment as our "patients". So she sits down and begins to tell me how horrible this new Obamacare is because it was so very very difficult to sort through the options. Blah Blah Blah - you've heard it all before.
I allowed her to finish and then simply asked, "Would you have had this option earlier, before the ACA was passed and implemented, with this company?" She replied that she would not have. I just nodded.
I think she got the point before she left.
Today's quote: "I'm not happy until he's unhappy."
Heard this from one of my ladies here today referring to her husband...
I don't think she was kidding.
My all-time favorite has yet to be beaten: a lady was telling me about her friend, aged about 70 who had just lost her husband of 46 years, "she was a widow before she would have preferred to have been."
Oh yes...and the men are WORSE. They say stuff that makes me cringe. One guy couldn't for the life of him figure out why his wife held a grudge for his extramarital "misbehavior" which had occurred "some time ago". I asked him how long it had been. His reply, "A couple of months."
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Gender: MaleHometown: Philly
Home country: USA!USA!USA!
Current location: Jersey Shore
Member since: Sun Feb 22, 2004, 09:01 AM
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