#449 McCainery

#449 McCainery

Others are saying things about McCain and his presidential quest far better than I.

Some of them are some pretty heavily credentialed critics.

Alan Greenspan told Bloomberg's Al Hunt that McCain's tax cut proposals ought not be financed by public debt. Trillions. Greenspan doesn't like a tax cut?

Greenspan's predecessor at the Fed, Paul Volcker has endorsed Obama.

John W. Gibson of State College, PA, seized upon my passing reference that McCain isn't qualified to be president by suggesting that (a) I should support my statement and (b) supplied some good reasons, repeated thus:

"... I see four reasons ...: (1) he's too old; (2) he's a reactionary; (3) he's too phony; (4) he disqualified himself by choosing an unqualified person to be first in line of succession; and maybe (5) he was born outside the United States, which the Supreme Court may decide makes him ineligible (though it's a bit hard to see them overriding the will of the public that way if the winner is a conservative)."

Let's look at some of those reasons. Numbers 2 and 3 never have stopped us before. Reagan comes to mind. Number one: the actuaries have it down pretty well. A 72 year old guy with three bouts of skin cancer? Not a big chance he'll live until 78. That means (4)Palin gets to be President. Betty Boop, cheerleader. We've had a cheerleader for eight years. We don't need another.

Palin is so far removed from the reality of the way things work that she might as well be from another planet.

Over the weekend, some columnists took this ticket to task.

Leonard Pitts of the Miami Herald mentions that Conservatives used to have principles but have become, in effect, a band of political muggers (my term, not his.)

And Garrison Keillor, writing for the Tribune Syndicate, says the bums all scooted out the back door of the house, came around to the front door and started yelling "throw the bums out."

Then, there's the Panama thing. McCain was born in the Canal Zone. To the best of any one's knowledge (except the five guys who elected Bush in the first place,) Panama -- Canal Zone or otherwise -- is not in the United States.

Given a choice between the Austrian-born Arnold and the Panama-born Jack, I'd take Schwarzenegger. But there's an actual born-in-the-USA candidate. You can choose him. And if you have any sense, you will.



Shrapnel:

--What's wrong with this picture? Teenbopper Spears gets pregnant and says she'll have the baby and marry the father and every one's in a twist because her parents didn't raise her right and she's nothing but a slut. Teenbopper Palin gets pregnant and says she'll have the baby and marry the father and everyone salutes her parents for bringing her up right?

--What's wrong with this picture? Schwarzenegger was born in Austria, not the United States and is constitutionally barred from becoming President. McCain was born in Panama, not the United States and is not so-barred.

--What's wrong with this picture? The Bush administration wants government off your back and out of your wallet. And then it spends trillions on a war and billions bailing out its friends on Wall Street.

I'm Wes Richards. My opinions are my own, but you're welcome to them.(R)
(C)WJR 2008

#448 The Polidiots

#448 The Polidiots

The polidiots of the far right now have done exactly one correct thing in this Presidential election season. They've decided to keep their hands off the Presidential Candidates (and there really is only one,) in this election for exactly one consecutive day. Even they know that trying to turn 9/11 into a political slime event is something for which the American people won't stand.

So Panama's Exxon John and his plastic playmate of the month or running mate, the lovely Ms. Boop, figured they could get away with being statesman-like for an entire 24 hours and pretty well succeeded, although that didn't stop Mister Panama from visiting ground zero (or the Candidate, Mr. Obama.)

Cheap. Exploitive. None of your business.

Listen up guys: if you weren't within 50 miles of the Trade Center or the Pentagon on the morning of 9/11/01, you have nothing to say to those of us who were. You or anyone else.

You have no clue. So stow it. Keep it to yourself or your friends or your family. But leave those of us who went through it to continue trying to make life normal.

You want to emote in public? Find something else. This ain't yours, its ours.

Meantime, please consider this: if you can keep from bashing each other for a whole, entire, complete, full 24 hour day, how about two days? Or two weeks? Or two months? Whaddaya think?

How tough is it to focus on isssues instead of Palin's inexperience and generally centerfoldesque persona? Or Obama's church or McCain's graftingthief buddies from the S&L scandal?

You got a beef with Obama's proposals? Get your facts straight.

You think McCain's qualified to be president (he isn't) get your facts straight. Get your sense of reason working again, because you have fallen off the wagon of what makes humans human: the ability to think in concepts and to reason.

This election should be about issues. Issues like the companies that are gouging you at the gas pump and the grocery store, the appliance shop, the clothing store and (if you still have one) the hardware store. To be fair, it's mostly the middlemen. The right wing whackos want the "government off your back." All well and good. But what about the corporate greedheads and middlemen who share your back space (a wide back, you have there!)

The war. It's not just us aging Beatniks and Hippies who oppose it. But you have to speak up. All that money going to Haliburton and Blackwater could be going to your health care.

So far, the election is about sentiment. The country was not designed by Ronald Reagan, Hallmark and the Saturday Evening Post cover artist squad. Get real.

Shrapnel:

--Jury selection continues in the O.J. Simpson trial. Meantime, O.J. not sitting idly by, but is keeping busy. He's searching for the real breaker-inner.

--He'll probably get another book deal out of this trial. "If I Did It, the Sequel." Or maybe "Son of If I Did It."

--The Anti-Defamation League is all in a twist about Evangelicals in Europe trying to convert Jews. They shouldn't worry. The guys who say "yes" are just infiltrating -- or they like ham and cheese sandwiches.

I'm Wes Richards. My opinions are my own, but you're welcome to them.(R)
(C)WJR 2008

#447 Was Pogo Right?

#447 Was Pogo Right?

There's a flurry of 9/11 stuff this week, which you can expect, since the anniversary is upon us.

It didn't take long for the exploiters of events to capitalize on all this, but to our credit as a country, there aren't a lot of "I Visited Ground Zero" baseball hats and T-shirts. Yet. Maybe by the tenth anniversary.

We've learned a little since then. We've learned to take our shoes off at the airports. We've learned to have our phones tapped. We've learned we may be on a "watch list" or two.

We have learned how to turn a national tragedy into a needless war. We have learned how to wreck an economy, using the destruction of two major office buildings, part of the Defense Department's headquarters and the intentional crashing of a White House-bound airliner as excuses.

Political careers have been made (Giuliani couldn't have gotten elected dogcatcher on 9/10/01, now he's "America's Mayor!")

What's worrisome is that we're getting too much like our enemy, which often foreshadows renewed or further fighting.

When the Bin Ladin gang flew those hijacked planes into the Trade Center Towers, the object was more than killing a lot of Americans. The object was to destroy the country by destroying the symbols. That kind of thing plays better in places like Saudi Arabia and Syria than it does in New York. The logic is thus: break the symbols, thereby breaking the spirit, thereby breaking the country.

What the gangsters didn't understand is that America doesn't regard its symbols in that way. Or at least most of us don't.

Or didn't.

The symbols were destroyed. The lives were destroyed. The country didn't disintegrate, it united, at least for a short time.

We are dangerously close to accepting the Bin Ladin gang take on symbols.

You don't wear a flag pin? You are the enemy.

You don't rise from your seat or cover your heart for the Pledge of Allegiance? You are the enemy.

To question your lack of symbol is becoming a symbol itself -- one that asks "how can you be a real American without these decorations?"

And then, how are we different from the aforementioned gang? How are we different from the people who want to destroy us?

"We have met the enemy and he is us(?)" The cartoon character Pogo said that decades ago.

Be careful if you see a walking, talking possum wearing a ground zero T-shirt.


Shrapnel:

--Even the right wing dominated Supreme Court understood the difference between flag and country. It ruled that you can burn the flag as a protest. Stinks, but legal.

--If I steal your Lexus and leave you a Yugo will that change your view of yourself? Probably not. So why get all fussed about someone who doesn't stand up when the Pledge is recited?

--As for 9/11 itself, the closer you were to one of the destructions, the more deeply and permanently you were affected. That's why many people who were there don't say much about it. Kind of like 'Nam and the Holocaust.

I'm Wes Richards. My opinions are my own, but you're welcome to them.(R)
(C)2008 WJR

#446 Hammered

#446 Hammered

Can you identify the author of this quotation?

“I’m saddened and offended by the idea that companies exist to enrich their owners.

That is the very least of their roles..."

What do you think? Karl Marx? Barak Obama? Some nutty professor indoctrinating his students into the nether world of left wing wacko-ness? A leading cleric?

Here's a hint: it was published in the last paragraph of an obituary in the New York Times on Friday September 5, 2008.

Before you know who said it, let's consider what it says.

Current Wall Street wisdom is this: Corporations exist to satisfy the stockholders and to increase their value. It's considered an axiom, if not a law of nature.

Here's another hint, the rest of the quote, the part after the "..."

"they are far more worthy, more honorable, and more important than that. Without the vital creative force of business, our world would be impoverished beyond reckoning.”

Ready? Okay. It's from Management Guru Michael Hammer, co-author of "Reengineering The Corporation, which was first published in 1993, and caused such a wave of positive lip service that it stayed on the top of the best seller list for nearly a year, got the author named one of Time Magazine's most influential Americans and caused companies large and small to do... nothing.

Hammer wanted companies to explore the pieces of their work and maybe reassemble them in a way that would help the country's economy, the individual net worth of the workers (and executives) and to apply rational self interest rather than outright greed to their policies. Lots of big name outfits leaped to his bandwagon. Well, no. They didn't. But they SAID they did. Nothing changed.

If a management guy like Hammer can't get anywhere with these guys, what is to become of American business such as there is left of it?

What's it going to take, a complete collapse? Increasing inflation, enormous debt, speculative commodities trading, internationalization of assets, energy, diversion of education into mindless fields galore, a weak dollar, greed. These factors are converging. The corporate types for whom everything is not enough will end up with nothing. And so will we.

Is all hopeless? No, of course not. There's always the probability (fantastic as it may now seem) that the world will come to its senses. Or that the dogs that survive the burning of the "Shining City on the Hill" will sit around the campfire one night and come up with better ideas than the rest of us have so far.

Shrapnel:

--How does the anti-government administration in Washington justify the hands-on takeover of Fannie and Freddy? Easy. It's election time.

--I was wrong about Hillary winning the Democratic presidential nomination. But this election is about sentiment, not ideas or even the war or the economy. So let's hope I'm AS wrong in predicting a McCain win in the general election.

--Appointments are getting more precisely timed. You get times now like 11:50 or 9:15. But people don't keep the precisely timed ones any better than the loosely timed ones they used to make - and break.

I'm Wes Richards. My opinions are my own, but you're welcome to them. (R)

(C) 2008 WJR

#445 More Conventioneering

#445 More Conventioneering

The Republican National Convention is looking kinda like the White Citizens' Council. Or maybe it's the Liberal Media TV Directors' Council showing only the white faces in the grandstand. Actually, those Citizens' Council meetings tended to be more animated than this crowd, many of whom appear to be the work of taxidermists.

Sara Palin was hard to like before she opened her mouth. Now, it's impossible. It's not what she said in her acceptance speech, it's what she sounds like. She needs a little more Fred Thompson and a lot less Betty Boop in her speechifying to be convincing to anyone who doesn't fully accept her hard right ideology. About Palin, we have to ask of John McCain, "is this the best you can find?" It's the same question we asked of Walter Mondale about his vice presidential running mate and about George H.W. Bush of his choice of Clarence Thomas for Supreme Court Justice.

Makes you long for Elizabeth Dole.

If McCain wanted a woman on the ticket, he should have asked Sandra Day O'Connor.

Like the violin, the clarinet is a marvelous instrument in the hands of a master and a horror in the hands of an amateur.

Palin sounds like a first week student clarinetist. What we need is Benny Goodman.

She's also telling lies about her accomplishments. That gas pipeline that she "built" hasn't been built. At least according to the Anchorage Daily News newspaper. The paper also reports she tried to fire a librarian who refused to pull "objectionable" books off the shelves.

A clarinet out of tune, the reed broken.

Mommy

The absolute highlight of the McCain speech evening was Mommy. Ninety six years old and obviously spry and able. She diverted attention from the empty seats in the stands. She diverted attention from the candidate's age. She diverted attention from the idea that he is too old to be President.

The Speech

As for the speech itself: There was absolutely nothing in it and absolutely nothing to it. And the candidate spent as much time talking about his wife (but not her $300,000 outfit, and I'm not making this up, just ask Vanity Fair Magazine which knows about this stuff!) as he did about the substance of the election.

Shrapnel:

--On today's shopping list: a small box of Purina Cat Chow, even though I no longer have cats. I've just arrived in the Medicare "donut hole" for pharmaceuticals which means I pay retail until the end of the year. So this is a nutrition test.

--Here's a book to miss. Louis Freeh's autobiography. It's called "My FBI," which is all you need to know about it.

--Update: The Purina Cat Chow is delicious. I may have it for breakfast even BEFORE I am forced to use it.



I'm Wes Richards. My opinions are my own, but you're welcome to them. (R)
(C)WJR 2008

#444 Celebrating Mediocrity

#444 Celebrating Mediocrity

To paraphrase that raging liberal, Ayn Rand: you want to kill greatness? Then enshrine the mediocre. It'll crowd out real greatness the same way cancer cells crowd out healthy ones. Turn people like Sarah Palin into a saint -- which is what the U.S. Baath Party is doing, and no real saint will remain visible.

The Republican candidate for Vice President of the United States? We don't have to enumerate her shortcomings here. These are well known and word of them is otherwise wide-spread. So let's focus on the people who've nominated her for sainthood.

They are the nuts and bolts "thinkers" of a party that has gradually evolved from a political party to a denomination. They are the nuts and bolts operatives of what was once a reasonably respectable vehicle for political action into a cult. And like any cult, they need a leader. This cult goes one better: it's leader, Ronald Reagan is dead. Right now, the disciples are busy trying to convince you of his holiness and freeze the unoriginal ideas that lofted him to power into a form of fundamentalism that makes guys like Jimmy Swaggert or Pat Robertson look like the cheap rack at Marshall's.

You pick a Sarah Palin as a candidate and you add to that cheap rack anyone who's ever worked his or her way up through any system -- political, corporate, academic, military, philosophical or scientific. You label Palin's "accomplishments" as foreshadows of greatness and you take every great work of politics, business, scholarship, diplomacy, art or science and demean it.

You take a Sarah Palin seriously and you demean and cheapen everyone and anyone who's spent a lifetime building anything.

Forget that she's barely legal, that she advocates the teaching of creationism, that she regards abstinence as the only kind of permissible sex education, that with all this holier-than-thou-ness that she's the mother of an underage girl who's pregnant (some teacher!) Forget all that and what do you have? A right wing ideologue without a track record. You have a Harriet Miers, an Alberto Gonzales, a Clarence Thomas, a Dan Quayle, a Bernard Kerik. No one. And a potentially dangerous no one.

On this, you can bet the ranch: when the saints go marchin' in, Sarah Palin won't be among them. But her handlers and boosters may be.

Shrapnel:

--The notebook computer has seen better days. But every time I go to one of those electronics or office supply places to look at what's available I get confused by the sheer volume. So, I buy nothing.

--Finding a new car is much the same. So many brands, so many choices, so many options. Who can make a decision, even after checking out Consumer Reports, Edmunds.com, the better business bureau, the SEC and a bunch of neighbors who are already driving some of the candidates?

--Opening an account a new bank, the manager wants to make sure I'm not a terrorist. It's his bent, and it's the law. But how can he tell from looking at a driver's license and taking the customer's word on the Social Security number?

I'm Wes Richards. My opinions are my own, but you're welcome to them.(R)
(C)WJR 2008

#443 McConvention

#443 McConvention

My old buddy John McCain called the other afternoon. Really was a really good conversation. I hadn't heard from John since... since... well, I guess I'd never heard from him before. But it was still thoughtful of him to call, what with all that campaigning and the Republican Convention just about to get underway.

He told me he was making this call to his fellow veterans and would be honored to have my support and would I please watch the convention on television if I weren't going to be there in person.

Well, no John, I won't be able to make it to St. Paul in person. And, yes, I'll watch as much of it as time permits. And thanks for asking. And for the absentee ballot, even though I fully expect to be at my polling place (it's in a church, which it shouldn't be, but that's another story for another day) so I won't be needing that absentee ballot. But a thoughtful gesture, nonetheless.

Um, Senator? I'm not a "fellow veteran." But I AM a fellow geezer. And geezer-to-geezer, would you mind if I gave you some advice? I know you didn't have time during our phone date. But, really...

First off, the terrible hurricane in the gulf gave your convention reasons to do some "tweaking" as we call it in the TV business.

The best tweak of all is having to play host to Bush and Cheney, who apparently will be spending the week in the bunker or making high-altitude inspection of the damage -- after there IS damage. Leaving these guys out of the lineup is probably the best thing that's happened to a political convention since the form was invented.

So, now about that advice, or really a question -- about what's her name Palin. WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?

A gun moll who opposes freedom of choice, wants to creationism taught in the public schools and has no experience in anything but popping out babies? a bear hunter who married her high school sweetheart who, in turn, married the oil business?

John, wake up. This woman does not know Thing One about anything a potential President has to.

Are you trying to woo the Conservatives? Ain't gonna work. Are you trying to hook the disaffected Hillary voters? Most of them voted for Hillary -- not for some generic woman.

The war? The economy? Who've you got on board besides Phil Gram and his ilk? You think these guys can fix what's broken? The only thing they can fix is a basketball game.

This is cheap politics. Cheap and cynical.

Any way, guy, thanks for the phone call. I'll be watching for that absentee ballot you promised. Might vote ahead of time, relax on election day. Call any time.

Shrapnel:

--There are no greeters in China's Wal-Marts. Maybe that's because "greeters" are really anti theft devices. And we all know no one in China steals.

--China's Wal-Mart employees have health insurance. Which shows great progress. Maybe some day, the US division will catch up with those Asian primitives.

--Some guys never learn. That said, note that friend of many decades and frequent colleague Mitch Lebe has just observed his 50th anniversary in radio. No bigger talent and no finer fella has ever graced an air-wave or a newsroom.


I'm Wes Richards. My opinions are my own, but you're welcome to them.(R)
(C)WJR 2008