579 The Obama Game

Not to be confused with the Broadway musical "The Pajama Game."

The pajama game was about clothing. The Obama Game is about anticipating what the right wingnuts will say about the President of the United States now and in the future. Let's start with the latest news: Obama, the professor Gates and the cop Crowley met in the Rose Garden. They talked, it would seem, about racial profiling, prejudice and probably the race results or the baseball results.

Now, let's play The Obama Game, which is a way of looking at how the right wingnuts see the administration and anticipating what they will say and do about what.

First, the latest. The latest is the beer summit with professor Gates and Sgt. Crowley. Three guys meeting in the Rose Garden to talk about race in America. Beer? They're having beer!

Well, there's our first right wingnut prediction: The President of the United States is drinking on the job. No need to verify that one. The White House says it's so.

The President of these United States was drinking on the job. Beer. With the professor and the cop. Now, everything's Jake, except Obama was drinking on the job. (Bush wouldn't do that, would he?)

How can you trust a president who drinks on the job. Not only beer, mind you, but drunk with power!

Then there's health care. There will be an agreement among warring factions, eventually. And the Prez will call it a personal victory, no matter the result. Any Prez would. But what will the wingnuts say? "He tried to turn us into Sweden, and he failed!"

Righties will have a little more trouble spinning the war in Afghanistan, because it's their war, too. But they'll find something to say: "We shouldda bombed them back to the stone age." Sorry, but they never left the stone age.

And maybe, under this administration, they'll capture Osama. The right will celebrate, but will also say it's because Obama is a Muslim and it takes one to catch one.

Anyone have any ideas about how to score this game? What do you say 10 points for each correct answer, five for a more or less right answer, zero for a wrong answer. The game goes on until someone gets 100 points.

Shrapnel:

--New York's Ultimate Solution to the Homeless Problem is at last out in the open. Free one way tickets to somewhere else. Better, one would suppose than gas chambers, but could that be next?

--What's more troubling than kicking the homeless out of the city? The idea will catch on and other places will start doing the same. Soon, we'll have homeless trading among municipalities.

--Here in Mount Tantamount, PA., the homeless have learned to "pass." For those unfamiliar with the term, it means they comport and dress themselves so as to be taken for "regular" people. Either that, or they're all Anne Frank, living in attics or basements.

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

©WJR 2009

578 Saucery II, Obama, Palin

When last we met, the idea on the table was that flying saucers came to earth because they got lost on their way somewhere else. Now, we find, this is not the whole story. One of those saucers, one that landed in 1961, was carrying the future President of the United States, Barrack Obama.

Yes, the "birthers" are right. The Prez wasn't born in the United States. He was born on the planet Zatog and then dropped in Honolulu as an infant. All this talk about born in Africa? Ridiculous. Obama is from outer space. Everyone who voted for Palin knows it. And so does she. You think she resigned because of those ethics scandals? Nah. You think she resigned to go on the book tour? Nah. You think she resigned for general cuckooness? Not a chance. She resigned so she'll never be questioned about her secret knowledge of Obama's planet of birth. She doesn't want to be the one to bring this presidency down, the patriotic wondergirl.

So, what have we learned from this datum? Well, first off, maybe the little green men aren't green.

And of course, we have to ask ourselves why did the saucerians leave only one infant? Or DID they leave only one infant? Maybe it was several. Maybe it was many. Maybe not all of them were infants. This is so confusing.

But who else but the little not-green men could leave a perfectly forged Hawaiian birth certificate, as these guys obviously did? And who else could have planted that fake birth announcement in the Honolulu newspaper? No forger on earth has that degree of skill and stealth. So it had to be someone unearthly, and again, the finger points right at the little not-green men.

This leaves us with more questions than answers. Who else is out there, just waiting to be discovered?

Hey, wait! Maybe they left Palin, too.

Anyone seen HER birth certificate? For that matter, could anything like Sarah come from a human womb? But it would explain why she never said anything about this during the campaign.

Shrapnel:

--Former NYC mayor Ed Koch is out of the hospital where he stayed for more than a month gaining a heart valve and losing a gallbladder. Ed's a friend, mentor and former colleague, a good man, and raring to get back to work. His full time job is being Ed Koch, and that's a lot of work!

--RIP friend and former colleague Bob Walker of ABC News when that place meant something. Right wing, opera-loving, basketball loving big man with a big heart and enormous skill of phrase turning. And bounced out of bounds with the youth fad fully overtook ABC Radio.

--The Senate Judiciary Committee has done the right thing and approved Sotomayor. Now it's on to the senate. (And, yes, we've seen her birth certificate, and there's no otherworldly aspect to it.

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

©WJR 2009

577 Saucer=y

577 Saucer-y

You have to wonder if all those space invaders came here in their flying saucers because they took a wrong turn somewhere en route. Mapquest, Yahoo and Google maps are not perfect. The AAA doesn't cover the area and besides, the space lane signs are all in English (and Spanish, Japanese, Chinese, Korean and Gaelic, but not Galactic.) The little green men in the flying saucers may just have had bad directions. Or ran into some indecipherable detour. Lost in space? Not unquestionable.

Or maybe their Metrocards expired and they were just trying to work their way around the toll booths.

We're always filming stories about people screaming and running from the invaders. Granted, most of them are pictured as ugly and dangerous looking. But maybe all they want is directions.

"Earthling, can you tell us how to get to Little Rock?"

"Don't know about no little rock, but there's a mighty big one down in the creek."

"Earthling, you sure are stupid."

"Yep, but we ain't lost."

(apologies to Pete Seeger, who probably didn't write that dialog, either.)

Maybe they're not lost. Maybe they just ran out of... out of... whatever fuel it is the saucers use. Again, the AAA doesn't cover the terrain. Or the fuel.

Or could be they're just seeking a rest stop. If so, we hope that whatever they expel during such "rests" does not dissolve porcelain.

In the age of political correctness and sensitivity to the needs and feelings of others, we have some nerve assuming these saucerians are hostile. Smacks of intolerance at best and racism at worst.

We need to establish a relationship with our space neighbors, a basis for discussion. Surely what we have in common is greater than what we might have in conflict.

Meantime, rather than letting them sit out there in the baking desert, we should get them a room at Motel 6 or maybe even a Holiday Inn Express. After all, we want to be seen as neighborly, don't we?

Shrapnel:

--Sen Schumer (D-NY) wants to curb high speed institutional stock trade because the "little guy" doesn't have the same access. Wake up, Chuck. The little guy has no access worth bragging about no matter the speed of the trade or its technical workings. And if this is news to you, it's time to audit come market classes at CCNY.

--A friend, Thelma, continues to drive, despite getting on in years. Her daughter, Carla thinks mom shouldn't be. Attention, Carla: You are correct, but Thelma didn't get to be an octogenarian by listening to you, and she's not going to start now.

--A religious cult called "the Family" numbers some high profile public officials and calls itself the "Christian Mafia." Hearing laughter, boys? That's from the graves of Gotti and Luciano, Gambino and even the fictional Vito Corleone, who know what you guys don't: There is no Mafia, and if there were, they wouldn't be Protestants, wouldn't be public officials and wouldn't talk about it where anyone else could hear.

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

©WJR 2009

576 Modem Down

576 Modem Down

Or mow them down. It looks like the tech team at Verizon has finally figured out how they were screwing up the DSL line and (knock wood) fixed the problem. Shows you how dependent we can get on our internet connections. We use them for work, for play, for calendars and heaven knows what-all else. And we, most of us, have come to expect always-on, always-ready connections.

Years ago, with some wireless router troubles, the phone company sent us a spare modem, which was never installed. Since then it had been sitting in the closet while the old one continued to chug along. Finally, it seems, Old Man Modem died.

The instructions say "most connectivity problems can be solved shutting the modem down and powering it up again." This works for awhile. Fifteen minutes on, fifteen minutes of rebooting. Okay, this is Alexander Graham Bell's little way of telling us it's time to get out and set up the spare.

Wow! Talk about high speed. Marvelous. Plus the New Guy is a prettier color than Old Man Modem, and these days, everything computer-related has to have a fancy color (optional, at extra cost in most cases.) Okay, New Guy is on the job and everything is perfect. For about an hour. Then, the same thing. No signal.

The last thing you want to do when you have a problem is call customer service. But now, it's unavoidable. Not speaking either Tagalog or Hindi, a smart computer cookie waits until late morning and connects with (miracle, miracle,) the Verizon tech center in Canada, where the lovely Gina does remote control line tests and says there's something wrong. Duh! She can't fix it from there, but she'll "put in a trouble ticket." For anyone who has worked at Bloomberg, "trouble ticket" is like telling you that you have an inoperable disease. We get into a discussion of life in London, Ontario and the contrast between Tim Horton's London coffee and its inferior New York coffee.

Several days pass, and it appears Verizon takes its "tickets" more seriously than does Bloomberg, and on the morning this is being written, a day before its scheduled posting, everything appears to be working "top notch" as Gina the Canadian said it would.

But it's early yet. There's a whole day of potential down-powering that awaits. And just as the last words were being written, in came an automated "courtesy call" from Verizon, saying "We're still working on your problem." Hey, guys -- not "my" problem, yours.

Shrapnel:

--There appears to be a plot against Al Roker. Not only does he do three of the four hour daily hours on the "Today Show" marathon, but he's got a slot on the Weather Channel, which NBC recently bought. They are trying to work the guy to death.

--Ford turned a quarterly profit, surprising pretty much everyone. Note to the President: You bought us the wrong auto companies. Ask for our money back.

--Talking about Michael Vick with Shawn at the gas station, and he says we Americans have an obsession with dogs. No kidding. Have you seen the obituaries for Gidget the Chihuahua that fronted the Taco Bell ads?

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

©WJR 2009

575 Liz Taylor

575 Liz Taylor

No, not, THAT Liz Taylor. Liz Taylor the retail analyst for one of the remaining financial houses that still does that stuff. She calls herself Betsy, because she's tired of being asked whether she's related to the "real" Elizabeth Taylor, which she is not. She's also tired of being asked why so many analysts get their analyses wrong so often and still keep their jobs. So that's what this is about.

"I can walk into Lord and Taylor (also no relation) and tell you how the store is doing, in a very general range" she says. To demonstrate she walks into the world's smallest Macy's. There's practically no one in the joint. She noses around, picks up some stuff, examines it, puts it down, walks out and says "They're doing okay." She's asked "how do you know that? You can bowl in the store without hitting a customer." She says it's because of the newness of the price tags, the dust on the shelves and the loudness of the music on the public address system.

The tags tell her the merchandise is newly displayed. The dust on the shelves means there isn't time to remove it or business is so good no manager is paying attention. The loudness is enough so that when the store is full, the music and the paging can still be heard, which assumes the store is at least sometimes crowded.

Very sharp. So why do they get so much wrong? She says some do and some don't, but that outfits like Thompson Reuters and Bloomberg go for a consensus of analysts' expectations on a specific figure, and even if half those questioned hit it right -- which doesn't happen much -- the consensus still gets it wrong.

Oh. So it's Bloomberg's fault? "No," she says, "it's just the way it's done. But boosting or trashing a stock is part of the game and everyone gets trashed and everyone gets boosted in a fairly even-handed way.

Betsy has her eye on a handbag. But she's not buying. Instead, she's going to her hotel room, booting up her laptop and playing the analysts' guessing game about Macy's, which will bring either joy or sorrow to the folks in the home offices -- hers and Macy's. She's writing a post which eventually will find its way into the news.

Shrapnel:

--Let's hear it for Twitter. It forces us windbags to compress our bleats... uh tweets... into 140 characters or fewer. Very democratic, since Obama doesn't get any more space than the guy sleeping in the Westinghouse box.

--So the doc says "I want to see you back in six months." Then the appointment scheduler says "The computer won't let me do that. Call me in two months." Two months later, the doc is completely booked up at the time you're supposed to be seen.

--Direct deposit is a boon to most of us, but direct withdrawal is anything but. When your checking account is down to fumes, what happens when the phone, gas and electric companies are busily chasing the same bucks in the same account and there isn't enough to go around? Everyone gets paid and the bank gets overdraft fees.

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

©WJR 2009

574 Walter & Sligo

574 Walter And Sligo

CBS treated us to a Cronkite tribute last evening, and it probably was the best piece of journalism out of that shop since Walter left the Evening News anchor desk in 1981, though a bit heavy on the Robin Williams and Brian Williams and Katie Couric interviews. Yeah, Walter was the greatest since Murrow. Yeah, he was the most trusted man in America. Yeah, we'll miss him, even though most of us have not seen much of him these last few decades. Yeah, he brought the Kennedy assassination and the King assassination and the Vietnam war and the moon landing into our living rooms. And for this we'll be forever grateful. It's the kind of reporting no one does any more.

But Walter the Anchorman wasn't alone. We get that impression from looking at pictures and movies of all the stiffs around him while he prepared and then delivered his nightly broadcast.

But this isn't about Walter, this is about Satellite Sligo (which rhymes with Eye-Go.")

Sligo didn't work for CBS, he worked for NBC. And he didn't work all that much during the Cronkite era at CBS, only later. Sligo was in charge of the morning satellite feeds coming into and going out. And one day during the company's seemingly endless rounds of staff reductions, Sligo got fired.

This was proof that the people at NBC who did the hiring and firing didn't know what Sligo did or how he did it. Turns out, neither did anyone else. Sligo had a lot of stuff in his head. So when they fired him, he went home to Queens and sat around waiting for the phone call from World Headquarters. This was on a Wednesday. By Friday, the call came. "We made a mistake firing you, Sligo, please come back to work."

Translation: Satellite Sligo knew a lot of stuff no one else either knew or could figure out. So Sligo told his caller "Sure... I'll come back. How about two weeks from Monday. As a consultant. At a rate nearly twice what they were paying him when the fired him.

No hesitation on the part of the caller. "Can you come back, like next Monday? Please? Pretty please?"

"Two weeks from Monday."

This is an NBC story, but it well could have happened anywhere else and in any other line of work.

All of which goes to show you how complicated TV can be.

NBC's morning satellite feeds looked like an explosion in a spinach factory for two weeks. Then Sligo came back to work and most everything went right. Well, maybe not entirely right. But righter than when he wasn't there.

Cronkite had his own Sligos. Writers, producers, editors, film guys, tape guys, satellite guys, researchers, script carriers, lighting people, stage hands, directors, technical directors, unit managers, desk assistants, receptionists, coaches, pitchmen, lunch wagon pilots, camera and audio operators, makeup artists, stage managers, hangers on and the like. And sure he was the best (or maybe the second best after St. Murrow,) in the business.

But he wasn't alone. And we should remember that.

Shrapnel:

--It was my great privilege to work, briefly, with John Chancellor, NBC's attempt to dethrone CBS's Cronkite, something that never happened. John was every bit as good as Walter, but the then-recently MIA Huntley and Brinkley were a miserably hard act to follow. Walter won in the ratings and in our hearts, leaving John in the most un-enviable position ever in TV news.

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

©WJR 2009

573 The New Illegals

573 The New Illegals

So SCUBA Dude is in the Pacific around San Diego and comes upon a sea monster. Well, maybe that's the wrong way to put it. Instead, let's say the sea monster comes upon him. This is the first sign that something's not kosher. The monster then wraps a tentacle around his diving mask and tries to rip it off. The second sign. Deep sea muggings are fairly common in Somalia, but not so much in California. Besides, the Somalis are people not.... sea monsters.

The monster in question is a squid, five feet long and 100 pounds, called by some calamari that eats you, razor beaked and toothy of tentacle. SCUBA Dude is scared out of his California deep sea wits, more so when he and his diving buddies see not just the lead squid, but a whole armada of them.

Marine biologists are reluctant to go out and look, so some of the beasts, apparently accommodating and with an academic bent, wash ashore and die, saving the scientists' trouble. They determine that these are Humbolt squid which mostly stay in the deep waters off Mexico.

Ahah! Mexican illegals, unwilling or unable to scale fences or border walls or tunnel beneath them have turned into underwater invaders. It won't be long before the right wing wackos tell us they've seen the Humbolts lining up for work outside a San Diego Home Depot. It won't be long before the DEA swoops down on the southern California beaches and slits the dead ones open looking for drugs. It won't be long before the Department of Homeland Security declares "condition red" and buys 620 billion dollars worth of patrol boats.

Thing is, these might be United States citizen squids. There's word the Humbolts have taken up residence about 600 feet down in the ocean... over OUR borders! Or under them. Now, we are going to have to check passports. The Obama administration has suggested we simply open our borders to these guys. After all, someone has to swim in those waters and Americans won't.

Watch the Sacramento legislature pass a law requiring the hiring of bi lingual teachers who speak squid.

Shrapnel:

--How to make someone stop smoking? Charge him 23 quadrillion dollars for a pack. That's what happened to a guy named Josh in New Hampshire and eventually the credit card outfit rescinded the charge -- but it took some doing... big, long, scary doing.

--The New Hampshire guy's card was issued by Bank of America. BOA apparently figured out a way to pay back its TARP funds in a big hurry. It didn't work.

--The Republicans have finished torturing Sonia Sotomayor and look terribly foolish for having done so. Now, they're trying to get witnesses to say she's unqualified, which she isn't. What is this, revenge for Clarence Thomas or Robert Bork, who full well deserve what they got from the Senate... or is it just plain bad behavior?

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

©WJR 2009