1796 Gorsuch and the Burp Monster

Photo: Moote Pointe NY Police Dept.

Dramatis Personae:

F.M. -- an otherwise unidentified 13 year old 7th grader from New Mexico.

The Teacher -- a gym teacher in FM’s school.

Arthur Acosta -- a sworn local police officer assigned to the school.

Neil Gorsuch -- an appeals judge when this story takes place and now an Associate Justice of the US Supreme Court which might hear the case.

The story begins in 2011 when FM disrupts his gym class by making fake burping sounds and refuses to stop.  The gym teacher calls the school office which dispatches officer Acosta to the gym.

According to press reports at the time, Acosta escorted FM to the school office, cuffed him and arrested him on charges he violated the state law that prohibits “disrupting the educational process.”

FM was convicted and the parents sued the cop.  The case went to an appeals court which upheld the arrest by a vote of 2-1. Gorsuch sat on that court, disagreed with the decision and wrote the dissent.

He said the decision ignored the intent of the law by failing to distinguish between class clowns and serious disrupters.  So if FM had, say, staged a bomb scare or set off a firecracker, that would have violated the law. But in Gorsuch’s view sound effects alone did not.

Lawyers for the mother, Annette Montaro, are asking the Supreme Court to hear the case.

If it does, Gorsuch probably will recuse himself because that’s what Associate Justices who’ve heard a case previously tend to do.

We’d be back to that 4-4 liberal/conservative breakdown that hobbled the court for all those months.  So are burping sound effects pro liberal or are they pro conservative?

The Supremes have regularly declined to hear cases of school discipline problems and likely it won’t agree to hear this one.  Expect that yes/no decision soon. Maybe today.

Speaking on behalf of class clowns everywhere, this space says Free F.M.  Sure his record will be sealed if the conviction stands.  But still.  C’mon, people.  

The one time class clown who is telling you this story knows what it’s like to be sent to the office.  There were endless meetings with the assistant principal of ❚❚❚❚❚❚❚❚❚❚❚❚❚❚❚❚ High School.

F.M. was a kid in 2011. Now, he’s an adult.  He’s probably sorry he disrupted the class. He probably didn’t do it again.  A couple of sessions of detention would have stopped the whole thing.

Are we so litigious that we cuff a kid for burping in a class that almost no one likes in the first place?  In the real world, the other kids in class would have surrounded FM after school, and dragged him off to the soda shop down the street, put him in a booth or on a stool and bought him the biggest ice cream sundae he’d ever seen.   And then they’d demand that he teach them how to make those fake belches.

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

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

All sponsored content on this page is parody

© WJR 2017

1795 The G Man Goeth

FBI’s Least Wanted Photo                           Hoover would have known what to do.

In his race to devalue everything American, so-called President Trump has fired the head of the FBI, Jim Comey who had it coming back before the election, but not since.

This dismissal makes all the sense as the scorpion that kills the frog in the middle of the river causing both to die.

Comey won the election for Trump by quacking in public about Hillary Clinton’s e-mails mere hours before the election, assuring a Clinton loss and a Trump win.  (Okay, sort of win on a technicality, but  he’s been inaugurated so it doesn’t matter.  Yet.)

Two reports about all this are chilling to say the least: The first from the New York Times says Sessions and Trump met about the firing a day or two before it happened.  The other, originally from McClatchy’s Washington Bureau, said Comey had asked for extra funds to investigate any possible connection between Trump and Russia.

Sessions had to know that when he “recommended” the firing.  Recall that he’d said he would recuse himself from any such investigation.  This is not that, except Sessions is a marionette and wouldn’t have “recommended” the firing if the right string in his head had been pulled.

In any event, bipartisan pressure is building for a congressional investigation.  Either house can start one on its own.  If one does, the other will too so as not to be one-upped.

So, how was the dismissal handled in the following day’s news conference?  Deputy Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders wants you to know that none of this has anything to do with Russia.  Wessays™ running commentary posted elsewhere at the time went thus:

 If this woman is not an imbecile, she certainly knows how to play one on TV. What is she talking about? This came from the top.

"Jeff, get someone to write a bill of particulars about Comey so we can ax him."

"Yes sir, Mr. President.

Hey, you, the old guy... send a memo that details Comey's 'atrocities' ... like Hillary and other stuff. Make it as long as you can."

"Yes Sir Mr. Atty Gen."

So Old Guy Who's Been in the Justice Dept for more than 30 years follows orders which is how you get to work in the Justice Department for more than 30 years. Sessions says "OMG, Y'all. This Comey's gotta go!" He writes to Trump.

Trump says OMG youse guys, this guy's got to go. Sends Comey a letter and the deed's done. And they didn't have the decency to tell him, but he heard about it on KNX Radio.  Before he got the letter.

Then, a funny thing happened at the meeting yesterday of the Senate Intelligence committee.  The acting director was testifying and there’s no doubt it makes the White House squirm.

Andrew McCabe told the senators that the investigation into the Trump/Russia connection would continue apace.  And he disagreed with a White House assessment that the agents on the ground had lost confidence in Comey.  

In any event, J. Edgar would not have asked the White House for money to investigate the White House.  He'd find water in his budget he could squeeze from other programs, conduct the investigation and then get warrants and then indictments. Comey is a sensitive man of the 21st century and asks permission where none is required.

Note to the President: This is not “The Apprentice,” You can’t fire them all.

TODAY’S QUOTE:

“This is Nixonian.” -- United States Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA) likening Comey’s firing to Nixon’s “Saturday Night Massacre” in which special prosecutor Archibald Cox, investigating the Watergate coverup was fired in October, 1973.

SHRAPNEL:

--In “My Big Fat Greek Wedding,” the grandfather character is forever demonstrating how everything important goes back to the ancient Greeks. In Soviet Russia, they claimed everything from the Polaroid camera to cupcakes was invented in the USSR. Now there’s Trump “inventing” priming the pump, to the amazement of everyone who has used the phrase for decades, everyone who knew that Lincoln was a Republican and everyone who knew health insurance was complicated.

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

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

All sponsored content on this page is parody.

© WJR 2017

1794 The Great Museum Robbery

The Metropolitan Museum of Art wants to force non-residents to pay admission now technically free, but they shame you into paying anyway. Photo by Francis Xavier “Frankie” Lopez taken between customers at his pretzel wagon on 5th avenue.

This is unacceptable.  The Metropolitan Museum of Art wants to charge admission to out of staters.  It’s like voter i.d. And Broadway show prices in one mighty ball of crazy.

You can almost hear it:

“You, you over there.  Yeah, you, lady with the Big Hair.  You must be from New Jersey.  Pay up or go somewhere else.  Same with you, Patel! You’re not fooling anyone. No REAL New York man would dress in a dress.”

Some background:  The Metropolitan Museum, one of the top educational tourist traps in all of America wants to charge admission to “foreigners,” i.e. anyone who can’t prove he lives in New York.

A law establishing the museum in the 1800s says admission must be free to all.  Museum policy is to “recommend” $25 a head admission. It’s right there on the elegant little floor sign.  Right under the part that says “but you can pay what you want” or not at all.

Now, with Old Man Deficit nipping at their Manolo Blancos and Magnanni heels, the airborne noses want to mandate fees.

You can almost hear it:

“You, yeah, you, kid, wearing the ten dollar special from Pay-Less:  go back where you belong.”

They already shame you or fool you into believing you must fork over something.  Rembrandt isn’t for everyone, you know. Money for Monet. Vigorish for Van Gogh.

All those geniuses who run the place or sit on the Board of Snobs can’t figure out how to raise some money?

You can almost hear it:

“I know.  We’ll get the guys from Ohio and Beijing to make up our losses.  Those rubes are too dumb to know what we’re up to.  Besides, they just want to come here to tell the home folks they came here. And they can still do that if they hang out in the lobby.”

Now, there’s a real problem about who can get in.  If you’re from Tonawanda you pass. Or from Syracuse or Buffalo or the Bronx.

Oh, wait. No one from the Bronx has visited the Met since 1948.  And the only New York City types who ever go there mistakenly believe their on line for tickets to the Planetarium.

Legislation for this stickup is winding its way through the rats nests, mazes and halls of funhouse mirrors that run New York City’s courts, councils, community boards and borough halls. Eventually it will land on the Mayor’s desk.

But isn’t the museum private?  No. The collections are private.  The building belongs to the city.

TODAY’S QUOTE:

-“Last time I payed $25 to see a picture at an exhibition, the FBI came and took my computer. Now I have to hire a lawyer.  Where is Boris Gudunov when you need him?” -- Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky.

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

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

All sponsored content on this page is parody.

© WJR 2017

1793 Neither Rain nor Snow

Oh, if only we could jump into the time machine and re-live the 2016 election.  No, this is not an anti-Trump diatribe.  It’s about why a seeing eye dog drives the post office truck that occasionally delivers mail to the Wessays™ Secret Mountainside Laboratory.

And the dog has a license, a dog license,  So it’s a perfect match.

Pitbull Graphix photo/S.Marshall

You should see these guys together.  They work like a well oiled machine.  Sometimes, though, things foul up and here come three examples. You’ll see why the time machine would be helpful.

Last September the request went in to the Board of Elections.  A request for an absentee ballot for the November 8th election.  When there was no response by the week of the 20th of October, it was time to call.

“Oh,” said the lady on the phone “we sent that to you on the 18th.  You should have it any day now.”

Nope.

A week later, a panicked voter called again.

“It went out on the 18th. It’ll be there in time.”

Nope.

Even if it had been, the deadline was at the end of the month and there would be no time to return the filled out ballot by then.

Third call: “I’ve cancelled my trip, can I still vote in person?”

Yep.

So, down to the polling place on election day and before they’d allow a vote, they had to go through a big stack of returned ballots to make sure I wasn’t voting twice.

I wasn’t.

I didn’t.

On the afternoon of Tuesday, April 25th, 2017, there it was in the mailbox. The ballot had arrived.  Do the math.  Wait. Never mind, here’s the math.  That’s 189 days after it was postmarked.

You’d figure that something that had been floating around in the postal system all that time or had fallen onto the floor at a sorting center somewhere would be tattered and torn.

Nope.  It was pristine.  Clean as new.  Gallery Quality. An eBay listing to sell it could call it “mint.”

Call the post office and complain?  Again, Nope. No one would believe me and anyway, how could I prove it?

But it’s true.

Example 2: Around the time the ballot arrived, so did a letter from Blue Cross.  “Hey, guy, you missed your April 1st payment. If we don’t get it post haste, you’ll lose your health insurance.”  

That check went out the same day as the spouse’s. Same mailbox. Same time.  Her’s was cashed.

April 15th and Blue Cross got the check.

Example 3:  The condo fee is due on the first of the month.  That check got mailed a few days late. By the end of April it hadn’t been cashed.  So I called.

“Oh, I just got that the other day” says the realty management lady.  Took almost three weeks to get the four miles between condo and realty management office.

I hand delivered the May check.

Saved a stamp.  But the cost of gasoline and five minutes at a downtown parking meter zeroed out the the gain.

TODAY’S QUOTE:

“Nobody dies from not having health care.” -- Misrepresentative Raul Labrador (R-ID.)

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

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com Snail mail them at your own risk.

All sponsored content on this page is parody.

© WJR 2017

1792 We Are Venezuela or Maybe Turkey

1792 We Are Venezuela or Maybe Turkey

There are some things even Chavez couldn’t screw up.

Or almost.  What are Venezuela and Turkey?  Small beautiful countries run by lunatic dictators racing down highways that end in unguarded cliffs.   It’s a long way down, and there’s no net.

Now wait, you say.  Venezuela and Turkey are tiny countries with limited resources and little impact on the rest of the world.  And we are the Great and Powerful Oz.

Right. And that makes it all the worse.

Turkey has two assets. It’s the gateway to Syria, the current darling of warriors of all stripe.  And it’s America’s supposed “ally” in the region.

Venezuela has one asset, oil.  And no one’s buying oil. Previous lunatic dictator Hugo Chavez put all his energy into oil a crapshoot with no limits. He manufactured instant temporary prosperity which now has lost almost all its value.

People are waiting on line for toothpaste.  It’s like the food lines in postwar Russia.  And tempers are growing short. Violence appears on the upswing. And president Nicolas Maduro is busily rewriting the constitution to the satisfaction of no one except  himself.

In Turkey, they staged a fake coup which was designed to fail and did, allowing their Boss of All Bosses to take over everything.

I can hear you chuckling about these comparisons.  “We don’t have just one  basic industry,” you’ll say. We have dozens.

No, we don’t.  We have three.  Cars, retail and banking. All the rest of it depends on these.

And now we have our own lunatic dictator, he just hasn’t reached full steam yet.  Wait awhile.

But, but, but… we have tradition. We have checks and balances. We have freedom. We have that can-do spirit.

Notice how there’s less of each each passing day.  Congress is trying to assert its independence from the White House but in a way that completely defangs itself.

The Supreme Court is the tool of our industrial troika, the enablers of erosion.

And the president of the United States, elected on a technicality has no grasp of anything more complex than whatever notion his Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder flits through his walnut-size brain and is filtered by his toxic narcissism.

The cleanup after Hurricane Hugo will be a long time in finishing -- if the damage can be undone at all.  The cleanup after Hurricane Erdogan will turn Turkey into Saudi Arabia with better weather and less money.

And us?  The forecast is for heavy rain and high wind. The computer forecasting models haven’t yet converged on top wind speeds, rainfall or landfall.  But they will.

SHRAPNEL:

--The house approved “health care” bill is a boon for two categories of people: the rich who get a tax break and the funeral industry.  There’s no telling how much each of these will do.  But “well” is likely unless the Senate turns it down.

--Democrats should not celebrate future election wins just yet.  There’s no limit to the number of Americans who will vote against their own interests.  That’s why we have the congress and president we have.

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

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

All sponsored content on this page is fake.

© WJR 2017

1791 Tabloid TV King Walks Plank

1791 TABLOID TV KING WALKS PLANK

Bill Shine on the Unemployment Line.

No, we don’t really expect the poor beleaguered former Fox chief, Bill Shine, to actually drown at the hands of his pirate overlords.  But we also don’t buy that he “sadly” resigned as Tabloidist-in-Chief Rupert Murdoch put it in a memo that “somehow” leaked. If there’s anyone who knows how to bend a story it’s Murdoch and here’s how he put it in the memo:

“Sadly, Bill Shine resigned today. I know Bill was respected and liked by everybody at Fox news. We will all miss him...”

No one since Vito Corleone can administer the kiss of death with greater grace and sincerity than Rupert Murdoch.

What he’s really sorry about is that his TV money factory is running out of ink and needs an overhaul.

First Roger Frogman Ailes, the news division chairman was “allowed” to “resign.”  Why?  Because he was a sexual predator (sound of cash register ringing at gunpoint.)

Then their star attraction, Bill O’Reilly, “decided” not to return from a “long scheduled vacation.” (Sound of coins exiting a slot machine.)

The deflating of the on air windbags probably will continue and among them is likely to be another Prince Charming, Sean Hannity, who was not but probably should have been paid as honorary chairman of the Trump presidential campaign.

Megyn Kelly hightailed it down the street to NBC, where her bloated paycheck at penny- pinching Con-Cast looks to be costing some other reporters their jobs.

Others have left Fox with less publicity.  People in personnel, in the business office.  People whose faces you never saw and whose names you never heard.

It’s hard to believe Rupert was moved to tears.  It’s easy to believe he greased the skids and that Shine left with enough money to avoid applying for food stamps at least for the time being.

So the merry pirate Murdoch and his sons still are shuffling the deck.  Maybe it’s more like shuffling people off the deck, and making them walk the plank.

Press reports say Shine was Roger Ailes’ enabler. Ailes was fired for sexual misconduct… or attempted sexual misconduct.  And those reports say the handsome and dashing Shine was the stalking horse working for the Buddha shaped Ailes. Not all that much of a stretch.

Progress among the cavemen?  Probably not as much as trying to meet British regulators and their “fit and proper test” which Fox must pass to take full possession of England’s Sky News TV service.

TODAY’S QUOTE:

-“Great President. Most people don’t even know he was a Republican, right? Does anyone know? Lot of people don’t know that.” --D. Trump talking about Abraham Lincoln at a Congressional Republican fundraiser.

SHRAPNEL:

--Now that the shallow end of the Supreme Court pool has been fully restocked let’s remember that what it won’t hear often is as important as what it does. In turning away a recent case, the court effectively told General Motors it does have to pay victims of defective ignition switches it installed before bankruptcy.  The Supremes declined to hear arguments, thus upholding a lower court ruling.

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

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

All sponsored content on this page is parody.

© WJR 2017

1790 Voices from Outer Space

1790 Voices from Outer Space

(Flents Earplugs Photo.)

Okay, quickly now, what’s the first thing that comes to mind when you hear the word “Voice?”  Chances are it’s NBC’s mock-worthy farce of a talent contest reality show “the Voice” where underage people stand on stage and compete for the attention of four celebrity judges in rotating chairs by screaming for 90 seconds in imitation of singing.

But now there’s a new contender for the world of “what’s the first thing…” It’s a hotline to report crimes by illegal aliens, 1-855-48-VOICE.

VOICE is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Homeland Security Department and stands for Victims of Immigrant Crime Engagement. The hotline is designed to answer your questions about the subject.  Or to rat out your neighbors whom you suspect are illegal aliens and suspect are committing crimes like murder, rape, robbery and picking grapes for a dollar an hour.

But “aliens” has more than one definition.

(NBC Universal.)

And protesters are flocking to the hotline to report they’re being held by a battalion of little green men on a flying saucer in geosynchronous orbit above Nogales, Arizona or Area 51.  Some report ET has moved in next door.  There goes the neighborhood.

Flocking and flooding.

As of this writing Homeland Security hasn’t answered our call for a comment. But you can be sure they’re not happy.

Neither are the callers.

Talk about outside agitators!  You think this a joke? These little greenolas from Planet Zatog say they "come in peace.” But what they do is come to steal American jobs!

They’re everywhere, from behind the wheel of the recycling truck to the Lancome counter at Bonwit  Teller.  They work for next to nothing.

You see them each morning in shape-ups outside Home Depot, Staples and the 7-11. Milling around. Using their x-ray vision to look through the clothing of American women and sometimes even pinching their earlobes. (Zatogans’ organs of reproduction are in their earlobes.)

And the pittance they earn is being wired to the families they left behind on Zatog eight light years ago.

It’s a good thing patriotic (real) Americans are calling these illegals what they are and reporting them to the VOICE hotline.

And some of the cities where these creatures gather have declared themselves sanctuaries and won’t cooperate with the Department of Homeland Security’s efforts to rid us of these pests.

Here are just a few examples:  Neptune and Atlantic City NJ, Amityville NY, Advance MO, Austin TX, Greenwood DE, Plattsburgh NY, Phoenix AZ, Lake Buena Vista CA to name just a few.

What do these locations have in common? Abandoned airports!  Yes, the very cities that are welcoming illegal aliens are the same as cities that welcomed the Zatogans in the first place.

People, we’re going to have to put a stop to this. Next thing you know, they’ll be marrying our children and moving into our public housing.

Call the hotline! 1-855-48-VOICE. Do it today!

Notes to readers:  (1) Thanks to the otherwise sane Jim Stagnitto for first alerting us about the Planet Zatog in 1982.  (2) Don’t expect Blake Shelton to answer the VOICE hotline. He was a paid endorser in the public service announcement video.  But you might catch Cee Lo Green on the phone since, mercifully, he’s not done much else to brag about since leaving The Voice.  And the courtroom.

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

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

All sponsored content on this page is parody.

© WJR 2017