1913 My Little Town

GLOCCA MORRA PA -- If you want to live in the sticks, go right ahead.  I do. It’s not bad. Pleasant scenery, friendly people for the most part. The usual bell curve of smarties and dummies, crazies and sanes.  Kind of like a couple of blocks of Queens only with some low lying mountainettes, cleanish air and “high rise” means eight to 12 floors, tops.

But the boonies also are the cradle of corruption.  They’re a training bike for future members of congress, judges, prosecutors, personal injury lawyers, corporate executives and anyone else who wants to go-big eventually. Not necessarily this town.  But there’s enough boonie to go around.

It’s where country lawyers -- mostly young -- start political careers that eventually can take them on the road to the state capital or the real big time, Washington.  Here’s where they hone their skills. They learn how to take undiscoverable bribes, they learn how to speak in bromides, cliches and jargon.  They learn how to speak convincingly and simultaneously out of both sides of their mouth in “Living Stereo!”

And it’s where they learn the Manly/Womanly art of Plausible Deniability.   

Then they carry these things to big places and start turning them into little places.

Our esteemed president is an exception.  He is the living, breathing motherlode of sleaze and paper empire building.  The fountainhead. He needed no teacher, though daddy helped a bit.  It all came naturally. And he did it in ...Queens of all places, where a high rise really is a high rise, but with no mountains and imperfect.

They are turning the national government into Boise and Boise into Bell, California a gorgeous small chunk of land covering over a sewer of public thievery so grotesque and bizarre that they had to actually fix it.

The ones that get caught commit what’s called in some circles “the Nixon error.” That is… their actions are so brazen and blatant and easy to spot someone had to do something.  In some places, this is called the Madoff error.

So, you may ask, doesn’t this happen in cities too?  Of course. But it’s easier to see out here. The air is clearer.

SHRAPNEL:

--Hooray for Hollywood.  The cheer is because Oscar madness is over for the year. The bad news: the runup to 2019 has already started.

--Finally figured out why those California award shows always run overtime. It’s only 8 or 9 o’clock out there so there are fewer sleepyheads than in the east where it’s between 11 and midnight. Oscar, take a hint from Emmy … start the nonsense in the early morning hours.

--The Dolby Theater (nee Kodak) is a nice clean 3-thousand capacity hall and a good place to hold the Academy Awards.  It’s in a shopping center, adjacent to historic Grauman’s Chinese Theater in a dump of a neighborhood near the Ripley Museum and the world’s worst iHop. Talk about an appropriate locale.

TODAY’S QUOTE:

“He keeps his hands where you can see them. Never says a rude word… and has no penis.”  -- MC Jimmy Kimmel on why the Oscar statue is good for Hollywood in the 21st century.

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

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

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© WJR 2018

1912 A Schism in the Church

Uh oh, problems in the Church of Guns.  At long last.  And a good sign.  When you cut a worm in two, both halves live.  When an amoeba self replicates, both cells live.  When you cut an organization in half, it’s the beginning of the end.

The Free Enterprise division, now a full and self declared denomination has broken away from the Governmentalists.  There’s trouble in Semiautomatic World.

Dick’s Sporting Goods announced this week it would no longer sell long guns of mass destruction. Their motive sounded public spirited, but in the long gun long run, it’s going to be good for business, according to advocates of corporate responsibility.

Wal-mart, much bigger than Dick’s, has taken a baby step. But at least it’s a step. Its raised the age of consent to buy a gun to 21 from 18.  That won’t do much to change the spread of the Faith, because teens will still hang out in doorways and parking lots. They’ll find adults to do their dirty work just as they do with alcohol.  But it’s something.

Then there are the Governmentalists, technically the Church of The Holy Second.  They’re outraged.  They feel betrayed.  And trump, a sect of his own, seems confused about where to go with this.  The other day he said “something” needs to be done about gun proliferation.  Stand by for the Huckabee briefing in which she says “here’s what he meant…”  And maybe trump will issue his own statement saying, essentially, “I never said that.”

NBC and the Washington Post will promptly locate the quote and the recording of it, play it 20 minutes after the denial and no followers will care. Just the Donald being the Donald.

The National Rifle Association has proposed a peace meeting. If real religions can hold associations of rivals, why not gun worshippers?  These groups are well intentioned, but eventually they start fighting about the shape of the table.

And the NRA has its own problems.  Corporate sponsors are fleeing in the same way they fled when Limbaugh linked medical assistance for birth control to prostitution and when Don Imus slurred up college women’s basketball players.

Both men survived, and the NRA will too. But both survived with diminished capacity.

And so will the guns & ammo makers’ mouthpiece.

SHRAPNEL:

--Republican legislators in Georgia have denied a big tax break promised to Delta Airlines for severing its ties with the NRA. Gee.  Government getting involved in the business decisions of private companies… who knew?

--It didn’t take the NFL long to replace Papa John’s which had severed ties over the way the league handled kneeling players. Pro football’s new BFF is Pizza Hut.  Gee… they could have picked Ray’s Famous or Ray’s Original Famous or Famous Ray’s Original or 100 other joints where the pies are actually real pizza instead of replicas.

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

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

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© WJR 2018

1911 Details!

At the restaurant, a buffet joint at dinner time, there's a show card on the table. It tells you about the breakfast buffet. It has pictures of all the stuff they offer. And it has a list of all the stuff they offer. And it has the hours the meal is served. And it has the price. Got that? Pictures, list, hours, cost. Pretty clear. Then, in the fine print (there's always fine print, it's a national compulsion invented by lawyers,) it says "ask your server for details. (I hate the word "server," it's so.... servile sounding. What's the matter with "waiter" for men and "waiter" or, perish forbid the political incorrectness of it, "waitress"?)

Anyway, I ask my "server," who is a young college woman obviously majoring in Cheerful, "what details can you give me about the breakfast buffet?"

"Oh," she says, "happy to!" Every sentence she speaks ends in an exclamation point. That act gets old in a hurry.

"We have...." and then she goes on to recite the list of stuff that's on the show card that's sitting on the table, plus the hours and the cost.

"Great, thanks. Why does it say "see your server for details? Is there some detail they've left off the card, some secret little thing that I can only find out by asking you? The nutrition content of each item, for example, or the maximum number of trips to the buffet table we can make and still get the stated price?"

She looks confused, which is hard to do when you're smiling, and says "oh, no sir, none of that! The nutrition content is posted on the wall menu near the register, and there's no limit of trips!"

Okay, no details for which to see my server.

"Would you like to speak with a manager? I can get him for you!"

"No thank you, I was just wondering, since the show card says ask you for details and the presentation seemed pretty detailed to begin with, that you might know something a customer'd consider important when evaluating such things as whether to have the scrambled eggs or the oat meal or both."

She walks away, a smiling exclamation point. I'm sitting there wondering.

Everything has details, and every piece of printed stuff that invites you to buy or try something mentions that they exist but doesn't tell you what they are.

Telephone service has details. Oh, boy does it have details. There, you don't have to ask. They give them to you in writing. And to understand them, you must be well educated in federal law, state law, economics, electronics and maybe clinical psychology. So, no one reads these details.

How many times have you seen or heard "see store for details..." in the last day or two or five?

Probably none. That's not because it hasn't been written at you or spoken at you. It's because you hear it so often, you don't hear it at all anymore.

But it isn't as meaningless as it seems.

It means "Not everything we're telling you about the car or phone or computer we want you to buy or the contest we want you to enter or the membership we want you to apply for, is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth." It means "there's at least a potential, if not an actual weasel deal going on here and if you don't ask about it we won't tell you. And then when you finally find out about it, we can say 'we asked you to ask for the details and you didn't.'"

I'm Wes Richards. (See store for details, member FDIC, an equal housing lender. No one under 17 admitted without parent or guardian. Title and taxes extra. Wessays is an equal opportunity employer. Union Made. Not Kosher for Passover. Contains peanuts. Take only as directed. While supplies last.)

My opinions are my own, but you're welcome to them.®

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

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©2018 WJR!

1910 Ms. Gimbel’s Carry Bag

Swattin’ Tommy who is not a coward and isn’t afraid to enter a school with only a LadySmith pistol to face a crazed kid firing non stop with a gun that belongs in the 64th St. Armory not in the hands of a civilian. You know, maybe like the guy in Parkland, Florida.

And at first, S.T. as he’s known to his fellow cops, thought trump had a grand idea when he said teachers should be armed.  But when he thought about it for awhile, he realized there was a flaw and changed his mind.

Here is the flaw he found.  You’re a cop. There’s a maniac on the loose and he has one of those guns that holds 4,000 rounds and when you hold the trigger it keeps firing until the barrel melts and the stock catches fire.  Okay.  You can spot one those pretty fast.  He’s the young looking one with a twisted smirk and big vacant eyes. And he has that gun and is firing it.

But if the teachers were armed and shooting back -- and by mistake shooting at each other, how would S.T. know who was who?  He could shoot a young looking teacher thinking that was the invading kid.

Over at Hunter College on Lexington Avenue they have a history of preparing people to teach school. Once they admitted only girls. Once they did not charge tuition. It’s where a lot of teachers who have since retired got their first glimpses of the real world in the profession of teaching. No one at Hunter College of the City University of New York would respond to the question “are you adding firing range time to your required courses?”  Probably they haven’t. Probably they won’t.

Ms. Gimbel the math teacher may think otherwise.  She carries that giant carry bag.  Surely some weapon of some weight could fit in it without making a public show.  Oh, but then she’d have to leave the thing out in the open where some kid could grab it while she was writing an equation on the chalkboard. In mid-height heels, Ms. Gimbel stands 4’11.5” above ground level.  She admits to weighing 102 pounds.  Not a good match for Moose and Hunk, the 3rd period twins who each weigh twice what she does and stand a head and a half taller.

Ms. Gimbel will not, therefore, put a gun in her carry bag. Taking care of --aiming at -- Moose and Hunk.  That’s Swatin’ Tommy’s job.

SPONSORED CONTENT:

Today’s post is sponsored in part by Arm-a-teach.com.  

Attention all teachers!  Hey, Teach! With trump’s bonus in the works take advantage of our special academic discounts.  Arm-a-teach has the lowest prices on the net.  Whether you need something simple like the George Jones model (“Hotter than a two dollar pistol,”) something a little larger like the Elmer Fudd Duckhunter blunderbuss or some real heavy artillery like the very same AK-15 used by Russian Army peacekeepers in Ukraine, Belarus and Crimea, we can fill your firearm and ammo needs.

And here at Arma, we’re celebrating with a trump Days sale.  Deep discounts for licensed teachers, plus a bonus 5% for private school, charter school and home school teachers.

Check out our website at Arm-a-teach.com or call us toll free at 1844 BUY GUNZ. Easy financing available. We accept all major credit cards.  Your trump bonus will help you buy, and the prices are tax deductible as an item “necessary for work.”

Be the Good Guy with a Gun when the next puppy- beheading, turtle stomping, bird wing breaking retard takes aim at your kids.

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 site is parody.

© WJR 2018

1909 Bring Back the Blue Pencil

1909 Bring Back the Blue Pencil

See that thing?  That’s a blue pencil, the major trade tool for most news editors from the start of mass production in the 1600s until the dawn of the all computer newsroom. They were and are cheap, plentiful and neutral in color.

And we need to start using them again.  

A common complaint among journalists of almost every medium these days is the death of copy editing.  When they say this they mean editor positions are going unfilled or people have to self edit or upper level management has taken over what little copy editing is done.

But part of the problem is not the human, it’s the machine.

Spell check usually takes care of spelling errors.  Computer grammar checkers are getting almost as persnickety as Miss Edholm, your tenth grade English teacher.  Errors are easier to fix on computers. And faster.

Much faster.

Too much faster.

Ted with the green eyeshade would grab the blue pencil and turn on the light with the green lamp shade and slog through copy at what seemed a snail’s pace, fixing punctuation, questioning word usage, questioning facts he was reading.

His handwriting was no work of art.  Same with most of his ilk. But the next person down the line … a teletype operator or a typesetter or a teleprompter set up technician or a newscaster could read the “work product” of the blue pencil.

No one in a busy newsroom has that kind of time today.  The machinery doesn’t lend itself to contemplation. The corrections column or department or segment has ballooned -- or should have. And the problem can be solved with 14 cents worth of wood and graphite.

SHRAPNEL:

--The real “crisis actors” going from town to town are the legislative puppets who collect fame, glory and money from the gun lobby, not a bunch of teenieboppers going from town to town on George Soros’ dime and stirring up trouble.  But the conspiracy theorists who espouse that baloney are right when they say new laws may not solve America’s gun problem. And in doing so, at last, they admit there is a crisis.

--Is it over yet?  The Olympics. Sunday is the last day if we last that long.

--America could easily interfere with the elections in the Neo Soviet Empire, but it would be useless because the final results have already been decided and the news stories prepared for delivery. The real figures don’t matter. The results and 108% voter turnout figures already are set in stone.

TODAY’S QUOTE:

“It seems that the only way to get attention today is to organize a march.” --Billy Graham on why his organization had grown so big.

GRAPESHOT:

-Paul Krugman’s column today ties gun woes into more general problems in today’s America and is worthy of your attention.

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 site is parody

© WJR 2018

1908 Band-Aids* Won't Do

Look at those kids.  They’re taking a movement away from the timid and into the streets.  There has been a coup among the leaders of the anti-gun violence effort.  And it was nonviolent, but it was not silent.

Teenagers with signs like “Am I Next?” and “Slaughtered in School” take to their feet and sometimes in buses and try to drive the message home, often with far more insight and intelligence than their parents -- us.

This is how the anti-war movement started and it is how it succeeded. Loud and blunt. In your face.  On your TV set; your computer screen. It was the young who won the right for 18-year-olds to vote. It was the young who made the early progress in the early years of the civil rights campaign and it was the young who stopped the Vietnam war, not Walter Cronkite and Paul Harvey, though they helped.  Certainly not Richard Nixon.  It was the tidal wave of fresh faces and loud voices.

They asked for the impossible and it became possible.  Now, they’re asking again and in ways that more resemble those early successful demonstrations because beside from energy they have a secret weapon.  Well, not so secret.

It’s called universality.

A bullet doesn’t care whether you’re black or white, gay or straight, transgender, liberal, conservative, atheist, Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Shinto or Hindu.  A bullet doesn’t care if you’re tall or short, fat or thin, disabled or a cancer patient.  Whether you had a rough childhood or an easy one.

It doesn’t care whether you’re rich or poor.

Truly an object of equal opportunity.

So, Tuesday of this week, some of the garden slugs and nappers who make up our government began to stir on gun control.

Even trump signaled possible opposition to “bump stocks,” an easy on/easy off gizmo that makes a fast firearm fire even faster.  

It’s a Band-aid*.  And a Band-aid won’t do.

The various federal and state officials with the power to act are either living in fear of the gun lobby or on its largesse. The occasional billionaire will emerge from his own slumber to announce he’s writing no more checks to people who support unrestricted or minimally restrictive gun laws. Then for the most part he (or she) will take a nap.

Another Band-aid.

The New York Times ran a story that said, in effect, the financial institutions can limit gun sales by refusing to allow their payment systems to be used to buy firearms or ammunition.  Also a Band-aid.

You know what the answer is.  

The NRA wasn’t always a tool of the guns-and-ammo industry.  And it didn’t need the kind of help it does today to keep itself afloat.  At some point in the not too distant past, it was a group that advocated training, safety and following the rules.  It still can claim some cred in that department.  But it now is simply the trade representative to the US Council of Arms Makers and Merchants.

So we have all these Band-aids.  And they cannot change much even when piled willy-nilly atop one another as they have been.

It takes a well organized militia of middle and high school kids.  They have the energy and the will, the motive and opportunity.  Now all they need is for the rest of us to get out of the way.

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.
*Band-aid is a registered trademark of Johnson&Johnson.

© WJR 2018

1907 Send Me No Roses

The survivors of the Parkland, Florida school shooting have a message they’d like delivered.  It is simple: Stop yacking and DO something.

Here’s how one student put it on CNN: “Thoughts and prayers… we need more than that. We need action. We are children. YOU guys are the adults.” That’s from David Hogg, student at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School where 17 died last week.

President trump offered prayers. Speaker Ryan offered prayers. Senator Rubio offered prayers.

Fat load of good that’s done.

There are articles all over the map saying that. Vicenews headline: “I don’t want your condolences.” Or how about USA Today: “Prayers are not enough.” And on and on.  Except for the firing pinheads.  Here’s what The Federalist asks: “What kind of society condemns prayers at a time like this?”

The answer is none that we know of.  What it condemns is inaction.  What it condemns is stubborn misrepresentation by the highest court in the land of the second amendment that grants militia members to bear arms but doesn’t specify firearms.

It condemns the legislators who’ve been bought and paid for by the gun makers, the ammo makers and the NRA.  

You want to pray?  Go ahead if it makes you feel better. It won’t hurt anyone.  But if that’s all you do, it makes you inadequate.  Chew on that for awhile.

What ever happened to “God helps those who help themselves.”

Everything else is God as Santa Claus. And most of us know there IS no Santa Claus and if there is a God, his prayer-line iPad is on overload.

But maybe, just maybe the tide is turning.

Maybe there are more out there like one guy, overheard in a convenience store.  He’s the kind of man you wouldn’t give a second look.  Baseball hat and beard with a little gray. Pot belly. Jeans.  The kind of guy who probably owns some guns and probably has taken his kids hunting since they could walk.

No, you wouldn’t give him a second look, but hearing him, you might give him a second listen.  “We have to do something about the number and kinds of guns that are out there.  We have to protect our children from these people. And if the only way to do it is to restrict guns and gun use, then let’s do it.”

This does not hold up as anything more than an anecdote.  When “regular people” start talking like this, maybe other regular people will listen.

But like prayer, hope doesn’t do much by itself either.  So as young Mr. Hogg said “...you are the adults” and another student tweeted to trump’s call for prayers “I don’t want your condolences… my classmates are dead… prayers won’t fix this…”

SHRAPNEL:

--As if we needed a report… the Long Island Railroad says its on-time performance fell to a ten year low in January, to 89.3 per cent, which is grade inflation because rail “on time” is defined as reaching its destination within six minutes of schedule.  The LIRR carries 89 million fares a year, the largest volume of any commuter railroad in the country. Maybe things would change if they understood that “fares” and “people” are not the same thing.

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 site is parody

© WJR 2018