1355 Joan Rivers

1355 Joan Rivers

What’s not to love. She’s raw.  She’s funny.  She’s crazy like a fox.  She makes people laugh.  But there are limits… and what you’re about to read has nothing directly to do with her.

To bring you up to speed if you’ve been so focused on the World Cup that you aren’t aware of Rivers’ interview on CNN.

She’s flogging her new book.  She goes on with Fredricka Whitfield who asks a lot of vapid questions, evidently thinking that she’ll get a rise out of the old star and it will be funny.

Instead, Rivers gets insulted… sits still for another few questions… then takes out her earpiece and walks off the set.

The tabloids say it was a publicity stunt.

A few days later, Joan’s on Letterman and he asks her about the interview.  As she’s trying to answer, he rises from the anchor chair… takes off his coat… drops it on the desk and walks off the set.

Sends the audience into a laughter attack.  She continues interviewing herself and then breaks for commercial.

If this wasn’t pre-planned, these two are funnier than you first thought.

Well, those of us who don’t stay up for late night TV missed it.  But thanks to facebook, it was there for all to see.

And see… and see and see.

There were 50 different postings of the two minute clip.  Fifty.  An actual count.  So much so that it squeezed all the regular friends so far down the page they disappeared.

Once would have been enough.  Two maybe.

Does Facebook give you a way to blank out unwanted posts?  Usually, yes. But not in this case.

The only way to get rid of the 49 duplicates was to block her.  Unfair to her.  Unfair to those of us who would have done with once or twice.

Guess the “service” is too busy changing its format, gathering information about you and forcing unwanted megaposts on its users that it didn’t have time to put that “hide” button on posts two through 50.

How to turn something fun into something useless, annoying and obnoxious.  They could write a book.  Or fifty.

If you like Rivers, Youtube has a million different clips.  You can watch for hours and without commercials. Or you can tune into her two TV shows.  Or watch her hawking her namesake clothing on QVC.

Even that’s funny.  And it doesn’t crowd you unless you want it to.

Shrapnel:

--Note to HLN:  do news, even though that would mean canning your big three evening “stars.” Nancy Grace is wrong even when she’s right.  She and Jane and Drew need to be put on a boat or plane headed for the alternative universes in which they apparently live.

--Congress shut down and no one noticed.  This time, it supposedly wasn’t a Republican plot, it was an asbestos emergency in the wee small hours of the morning. Or maybe they learned how to make a time bomb that spews asbestos.

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

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2014

1354 Bubbles in the Air

Private business and the government each work in their own bubble.

The motto on the government bubble: "We Are The GOVERNMENT and we don’t care."

The motto on the business bubble:  "We Are Capital.  We can exist without you, but you can't exist without us."

Often, it's when the interests of each coincide that we here in the economy class seats get the turbulence.  We're easier targets and we have no legitimate voice... and those who pretend to speak for us are full of banana oil.

But often these two supposed enemies work closely together.

The battle between the defense dept and the big contractors is like Wrestlemania.  Anyone can make any noise or moves as long as the match ends according to script.

Meantime, Apple and a flock of other corporate patriots become offshore companies who pay little or no US taxes.  And since the government can't go offshore, it finds ways to get even.

Usually, that means a slap on the wrist for an Enron-level crook or the “sudden” discovery, prosecution and jailing of a Bernie Madoff.  But they don’t touch Apple or the others who are too big to prosecute.

Yes, the government tends to look forward and the business looks to profit and protect itself.  This is tribal.

And we tend to think of both the government and private industry as competing monoliths.  But they aren't.

To those of us in the cheap seats, Siva Rangarajan who runs the Exxon station down the block IS Exxon.  And there's no difference between the Secretary of Labor and the social worker who removes kids from a bad home and into a bad foster home.

And we're wrong.  

The people who think the federal government should run like a household think the same as the people who think the government should run everything.

And they’re both wrong.

You can bet that any time the government wants to deregulate or privatize anything there are dollar signs in their eyes.

Same with private industry.  Those who want to rent the highways or the lottery system or the penal system.

No one has yet advanced privatizing the district attorney or attorney general’s offices.  But can the day be far when that happens?

Sometimes the business bubble and the government bubble collide.  But there’s usually no damage.  They are, after all, bubbles.

Sometimes, though, there are spikes attached to one bubble and not the other.  And that’s when the real trouble starts.

Shrapnel:

--So this big bulky guy falls asleep at a major league baseball game and his gut is hanging out and his posture is that of a dead man and the camera’s all focus on him and the sportscasters make fun of him.  Now, he’s filed suit against MLB, claiming his reputation is ruined.  Reputation for what… alertness at a game that put practically everyone to sleep?

--Because the game was at Yankee stadium, the suit was filed in the courts of the New York City borough of the Bronx.  So don’t hold your breath for a decision or a settlement.  Everyone knows the Bronx court system is where cases go to die.

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

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2014

1353 Speaking Ill of the Dead

Richard Mellon Scaife wasn’t all bad.  It just seemed that way.

First, let’s get the billionaire thing out of the way. It’s not like this guy was hurting for money.  The Forbes 400 list puts his fortune at $1.4 billion.

By no means is that chump change.  But to put the number in perspective, he was tied with nine other men for slot #371. Still on the list, but close to bringing up the rear with Gates and Buffett and the Waltons and Kochs at or near the front and at or close to the pole position.

Scaife is universally described as the “heir to the Mellon banking and steel fortune.”  And that he was when he died the other day, a day after turning 82 years old.

He also was the owner and publisher of the Tribune Review newspaper of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.  And Scaife’s right wing politics notwithstanding, it is a decent sheet, especially by today’s standards.

And he was the chief benefactor of the Pepperdine University School of Public Policy, which is where the story gets interesting.

The head shyster at the Pepperdine law school is a fellow named Kenneth Starr.  If you are older than your early 20s, that name means something to you.

Starr was the chief overprosecutor in the Clinton scandals.  A pit bull of a guy who tried to twist everything Bill Clinton did, was alleged to have done, and didn’t do into misplaced moral outrage.

Scaife was hard on Starr’s side until one day he accused the lawyer of being a Democratic Party plant.  Huh?  So it’s pretty safe to assume that Scaife could have kept Starr out of Pepperdine, but didn’t.

He obviously hated Hillary who called him a ringleader of the “vast right wing conspiracy,” which he was.  But days before the ‘08 presidential primary, the Tribune-Review endorsed her bid against Barack Obama.  And the Tribune-Review did no such thing without the consent of its owner.

So, when as first lady, Mrs. Clinton invited him to a black tie shindig at the White House and treated him warmly, he was quoted in the New York Post as saying he was honored and “Lord knows it’s more than I got from George (HW) Bush.”

Scaife was the heart, soul and bankroll of the extreme right wing in this country well before the Kochs arrived on the scene.  But he also was a major donor to abortion rights and public broadcasting.

Since he identified “libertarian,” the abortion rights thing passes muster.  So does his favoring same sex marriage.  But PBS?  The government owned broadcasting monolith?

Goldwater was his boy.  Nixon.  All the old pre-tea party right wingnuts.  Note, that they weren’t nearly as foolish, stubborn, impractical as today’s versions.  And not nearly as nuts.

Scaife wielded a good pen or typewriter or computer terminal if the stuff he published in the Tribune under his name was “all his own work” as your middle school history teacher liked to say.

So we say goodbye to this pioneer of the trouble he helped get us into today and note that while in his time, much of the country thought he was all bad. They were wrong.  Just mostly.

(Notes:  The quote attributed to the NY Post was attributed first to the Washington Times and reprinted by Wikipedia.  The other billionaires said to be worth 1.4 billion each on the Forbes List:

David Einhorn, Chase Coleman III and Lou Bacon -- hedge funders.

Gary Burrell -- navigation equipment. John Clark -- Netscape. Chris Cline -- coal. William Ford Sr. -- cars. Patrick Ryan -- insurance and Richard Yuengling, Jr. -- Beer.)

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

Petty disagreements and other comments welcome at wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2014

1352 July 4, 2014

So the United States marks our 238th birthday today.  And it’s been a remarkable 238 years.  Think about it.  A small band of men and women in limited geography grows to be the most powerful economy, the most powerful military and the most powerful influence on earth.  And into an industrial nation unprecedented in history.

We’ve expanded and never contracted.  We’ve won wars and lost them, but never lost an inch of territory to an invader.

This country was built in the spirit of compromise, a spirit we seem lately to have forgotten.

We take an awful lot for granted.  And the farther we wander from our founding, the greater the amount of history we invent.

So, go view the fireworks or sit at home and watch the celebration on television.  That’s probably a better view than you’ll find at any venue with a sky show, unless you left two days ago, secured your space and have camping equipment.

And while you’re busy setting up your tent and your Coleman Stove, think about where we are as a country and where we might be in the future.

Let’s remember a few things.  The first is that early geography.  Thirteen colonies.  Two and a half million people, mostly homogenous Europeans.  

Two-point-five million. That’s fewer than live in Chicago today when the national population is more than 300-million and diverse as anyplace on earth.

No one alive today can remember the privation and trouble of even a century ago.  Yes… there are people who are over one hundred.  But there aren’t first hand memories.  

Our requirements have changed.  Our face has changed.  And yet, there are those who would force us back into a mold that barely worked with a Chicago-  sized population and geography that fits into our present map three times or more.

There are people who believe that the pioneer spirit that worked to build present day America from near nothing is all we need.

Certainly, we do need a pioneer spirit in some areas.  But not ALL areas.

Sure we need aristocrats or captains of industry, but remember that diversity.  White aristocrats, have to accept they’re not only not alone anymore but edging from dominance.

And we built a middle class with workers of all description, most of them unionized but only because those aristocrats were so… aristocratic.

Unions form when conditions are so bad that even those pioneer spirited realize they have power only in organizing and mutual work toward mutual goals.

Some want to take us back to a time when we were less than at any time since.  

Regulars in this space have heard this before. But it’s worth repeating:

We didn’t get to be the way we are by being the way we are.

A good birthday to us all.

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

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2014

1352 A Tale of Two Caliphates

A bunch of low rent, sun-crazed fascists on the border between Iraq and Syria declares the new Middle East Caliphate.  This is supposed to supplant and succeed everything that came after Muhammad who hasn’t been around since the year 632, 1382 years ago.

Meantime, in Washington, DC, a quintet of low rent power crazed fascists has been creating a Caliphate here.  Maybe call it an Evangelistiphate.  The Supreme Court takes Hobby Lobby off the hook for birth control.  

This has two immediate effects.   First, it moves toward defining life as beginning at conception, something that is based on a biological fiction and second, it’s another slice in the death by thousands of cuts inflicted on reproductive rights.

We’ll look at this in a little more depth in a moment. But first, let’s brush off the latest Middle East nonsense.  

Remember when Iraq and Iran were mortal and warring enemies.  Apparently, those days are gone.  The two countries are united in their opposition to the terrorist inspired fake country and seat of the new empire their “westernized” Muslim brothers claim to have created.

And the Ayatollahs will take care of this little problem, with the help of fighter jets shipped in prontisimo by that great advocate of world peace and freedom, Vladimir Putin.

And this, too has repercussions.  Iraq, Iran and what’s left of Syria will dispose of the sun dried nuts.  But they’ll be in Vlad’s debt for a long time, and not just financial debt… MORAL debt.

Still, they’ll solve this little challenge among themselves and probably pretty quickly. The Middle East doesn’t have a great track record for building fake new countries.

Here in the US, we have real trouble. Hobby Lobby, a chain of home project  stores that sell “inspirational” books, Ball jars, ribbons, white glue, sewing thread, stuffed puppies and “World’s Greatest Grandma” coffee mugs, along with junk stones and other things for people with no life for which they substitute costume jewelry making.

The people who run the place, the Green family, have decided that because they go to church a lot and hear voices that tell them birth control is abortion and abortion is murder, they have the right to violate the Affordable Care Act, which requires birth control be made available to women who request it.

Jimmy down the block says “Hey, I don’t like abortion any better than the next guy, and I may LOOK pregnant, but I’m not.  You don’t want an abortion?  Don’t have one.  Simple.”

A visitor asks “Jimmy, are you a good Christian?” “Yes,” he says, “good enough so I don’t believe in shoving it up your…” (expletive deleted.)

So, now we know: corporations are people.  And people have a right to opt out of Obamacare.

One of the less-crazy Supreme Court Justices mentioned in a kind of off hand way that this ruling will affect far more than a chain of 500 strip mall rent payers and its 16-thousand employees.

There had been a long history of not exempting corporations from laws they don’t like based on religion or anything else.  This ruling overturns that idea and opens up the floodgates.

This ruling is not the beginning of something, nor is it the end.  You can count on the spreading of this disease.

We have an air force, too.  But unlike Vlad and the Ayatollahs, we’re not likely to use it.

------

Said by Other:  Here is part of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s dissent as quoted by Mother Jones Magazine.

• "Would the exemption…extend to employers with religiously grounded objections to blood transfusions (Jehovah's Witnesses); antidepressants (Scientologists); medications derived from pigs, including anesthesia, intravenous fluids, and pills coated with gelatin (certain Muslims, Jews, and Hindus); and vaccinations[?]…
• "Approving some religious claims while deeming others unworthy of accommodation could be 'perceived as favoring one religion over another,' the very 'risk the [Constitution's] Establishment Clause was designed to preclude."
• "The court, I fear, has ventured into a minefield."

Ka-Boom!

Thanks, Ruth.  We may not have laws anymore.  But at least we have a warning.I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2014

1351 Listener Fees

We’ve been hearing a lot about politicians and their speaking fees.  Ridiculous amounts of money paid to office holders and former office holders for bending the ear of this, that or the other trade association.

And when we attend a speech, we’re forced to listen, periodically nodding off until jolted fully awake from the thunderous applause, a show of gratitude that at last the talk ended.

Let’s get even.

Let’s charge a listener fee.

Say you’re a member of the Moote Pointe Auto Technicians Association.  The annual dinner is coming.  You pay for reservations. Congressman Lowbungle (R-Seaford) is going to talk to you about, say, wheat prices in Calcutta.  What wheat prices or Calcutta have to do with defective airbags is a mystery.  But you plan to go.

When you send in your check and reservation form you include a modest bill for your time and attention.

The MPATA will, of course, ignore the bill, even though it’s for a fairly modest amount.

You then call the papers and the cable TV news channel to tell them what you’ve done and what the association has done in return.

The paper will send a guy in a t- shirt to your door.  He’ll have a little digital sound recorder and a notepad, probably not a pen, which you will lend him. He’ll sit on your couch and ask you pointed questions about your act of daring.

The TV channel will send a breathless, attractive, excited and exciting woman with a short skirt and a tank top to your door.  Don’t be tempted.  She may be hot.  But look at all the gear she has to carry around with her.  Probably can bench press a loaded minivan and has a left hook that’s the envy of her kickboxing class.

Seeing either story, local lawyer Whiplash Willie, will send you a letter announcing a class action suit against your trade group for failing to pay its vendors. And you are a vendor and were from the moment you put that invitation, check and invoice into the mailbox.

The story grows.  ABC sends 20/20 to your door.  Elizabeth Vargas doesn’t carry her own camera.  But don’t hit on her anyway. Dateline sends Keith Morrison to your door.  Bringing up the rear… Morley Safer of 60 Minutes.

Soon, the whole country knows about the listener fee, and copycats abound.

In Kalamazoo, Michigan, the Kzoo Club decides you are right and starts taking listener fees out of the money it pays Hillary Clinton to talk about maple tree harvesting.

Now look what you’ve done!  You’ve destroyed an entire industry that needs destruction and created a whole new one.

Shrapnel:

--The hack Epaulette or whatever his name is finally had the grace to concede the election, keeping Charlie Rangel in congress for another two years.  This better be it, sir.  You didn’t win, Espiallat lost it because he is aimless and dull.

--Obama didn’t endorse Rangel.  Another of the President’s headless chicken dance moves.  This leads us to ask what do Bill Clinton, Charles Schumer, Kirsten Gillibrand, and every pedestrian on 125th Street know that Obama doesn’t?

I’m Wes Richards.  My opinion is my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com.

© WJR 2014

1350 What's on YOUR Cellphone

Cop pulls you over, asks for your license, registration, insurance card and cellphone.

Cell phone?  Yes.

Why?  Because you might be the head of a drug cartel and surely you keep your spreadsheets in Google Drive, your client list in your contacts file, your medical records in Evernote, half a dozen kiddy porn sites on your browser and the numbers of your bank accounts in the Cayman Islands, Costa Rica and Switzerland in a cloud file marked “shopping list.”

So let’s have that iPhone pal.

Well, not anymore.

The US Supreme Court ruled that cops need a warrant to look at a mobile phone.

Eight of the nine agreed completely.  The ninth, Alito, said “yes-but.”  The but: courts shouldn’t decide this kind of thing, legislatures should, says he.

That’s not an encouraging sign.  Too many rat traps and rats’ nests in state capitals.  This is a national situation and the law must be consistent from Portland east to Portland west and Tallahassee to Juneau.

In the United States Dictatorship of the Corprotariat™ we can’t wait for the boneheads in each state to figure out what privacy within their phony borders means.

Alioops is wrong.  Nothing rare about that. What’s rare is the rest of the bunch agrees on what’s right.

Media are calling the decision unanimous.  More accurately, it’s 8.5-0.5.

It’s the middle of the night and you blow a traffic light in Valdosta, Georgia or Deerlodge, Montana.  Before the cop walks over to ask for your license and such turn off your ringer and put the phone in the glove box.

But, you say, it’s illegal for the cop to look at it.

That doesn’t mean they won’t try.  But if they can’t see it, maybe they won’t think about it.  Especially if your name isn’t Clarence Thomas and the potential charge isn’t driving while black or John Roberts and driving while faint.  

For all you fans of elegant English. Here is the full decision in all its incomprehensible majesty.

It’s truly amazing that these zanies can agree on anything, let alone something really important like every detail about your life. Let alone unanimously.  

Savor it while you can.  This could be a once in a lifetime experience.  And these days, many of us live pretty long.

Shrapnel:

--Not all the rulings were so glorious as the supes continue to erode abortion rights by striking down the 35 foot no- protest zone at a Boston clinic.  Infringes on the rights of the protesters, rules the court (9-0.) What about the rights of the women?

--The President is planning a five billion dollar anti-terrorism operation in the middle east, with half a billion going to what the administration calls “appropriately vetted” Syrian rebels.  Any idea how many units of public housing or how many medical insurance policies could be supplied for that kind of money.  We should apply for foreign aid for ourselves.

Grapeshot:

-This post has the first findable reference to the phrase Dictatorship of the Corprotariat.”

-Because this is Wessay #1350, we salute radio station WWWL, 1350, New Orleans which although mostly syndicated sports does a local cooking show weekdays from noon until 3, which takes guts, not to mention recipes.

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

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2014