Libya Back In The News

Irene was a mess but now is history. CNN has rediscovered Libya  and found it is still making history.  Libya is still the mess CNN left it in a few days ago. It is such a mess that the Obama administration is on the verge of receiving accolades for not  becoming too embroiled in Libya's rage. It appears to me that the rebels may have driven out the Qaddafi forces but there will be no new Libya. No new Libya, unless the Islamists prevail. For some time Libya probably will once again be a nation of tribes. By the way Rick Perry envisions this for the United States, as he advocates the demise of central government and the rise of tribal states.

 I hope our national debt does not take another hit in an attempt to build a nation. I don't like Ron Paul and his libertarian views but I have to agree with him on one point - get the hell out of the Mideast!

Irene Disappoints CNN

Watched a little of CNN's coverage of hurricane Irene this morning. Had to turn it off when it became obvious, at least to me, that the anchors and reporters were somewhat disappointed that Irene thus far was falling short of the monster storm they had predicted. A lot of time was spent, in an apologetic manner, explaining that really out in mid-ocean it was a category 3 storm. I feel sorry for CNN - not really- but grateful  that Irene shot her wad in mid-ocean before toying with NYC.

 By the way CNN,  what's going on in Libya?

Evacuation And Ejaculations

As Hurricane Irene approached the east coast, the governors of the affected states rose to the occasion. One after another declared a state of emergency. Some went so far as to order mandatory evacuations. In the confusion surrounding the emergency, there was bound to be some misinterpretation of the well intentioned directives. At Joe The Bartenders place on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, cheers broke out as Joe informed his patrons that the Governor had ordered mandatory ejaculations until Irene diminished in strength. At last reports, Irene was holding her own as the semen flowed freely.

Not to be outdone , the witty Tea Party citizens of South Carolina misinterpreted evacuation by a mile. All the rest rooms in Myrtle Beach were busier than Macy's at Christmas time.

In NYC unprecedented evacuations have caused the sewer system to be overwhelmed!

A more lethal misinterpretation of evacuation orders occurred in Texas. Although Texas was not in the path of the storm, its brilliant governor decided that he should act also. In lieu of evacuations he ordered mandatory executions. At last reports, Texas had the lowest prison population in the country.

WELCOME HOME, JIM THOME

Jim Thome is a Cleveland Indian again! A class guy is home. Thank you Minnesota Twins. Thank you Chris Antonetti and a special thanks to the Dolans.

'Taint Fair!

Pitcher leaves game after 8/1/3 innings with the score 4-3 in his team’s favor and two men on base. Closer comes in and allows the two men to score. Bottom of the 9^TH with the score 4-5, player hits walk off 3 run home run. Home team wins! Closer gets the win. The starting pitcher gets condolences. ‘Taint fair!

A Lack of Credibility

I was surprised to find that the phrase “blow smoke up one’s ass” actually originated with a procedure used to resuscitate drowning victims. A tobacco enema was used to infuse tobacco smoke into a patient’s rectum in an attempt to resuscitate him.  Not surprisingly, it was not effective and lost credibility. Politicians have never signed off on the lack of credibility of such a procedure and to this day insist on blowing smoke up our asses.

It's A Jungle Out There!

A man was shot in the parking lot after a San Francisco 49’ers pre-season game last night. He apparently evoked someone’s anger by wearing a T-shirt which displayed some derogatory words about the 49’ers. It would appear the gun wielder was exercising his Second Amendment rights. If one carries a gun, it follows that he has a right to use it. I’m not quite sure what the authorities will do with him. Any fool knows it was self-defense and God knows we are fools for allowing a liberal interpretation of Second Amendment rights. Consider this. How dare anyone take advantage of the First Amendment by exercising his right to free speech in a manner that could anger a gun toting proponent of the rights guaranteed by the Second Amendment? What a dilemma! There is a problem here, and it will best be solved by everyone going through their inventory of T-shirts and discarding all but the ones proclaiming the right to bear arms. Better yet, do not wear T-shirts with any message whatsoever. It’s a jungle out there - watch your ass! I hope no one takes offense to this post. If so, please delete it, not me! The high primal still needs me.

It Worked For Abe

As Campaign 2012 begins to take form, the rhetoric heats up. Rick Perry calling Bernanke's actions almost treasonous is a good example, not to mention the gay bashing by Michele Bachmann. Political candidates would be well served if they heeded the words of Buddha, "Words have the power to both destroy and heal. When words are both true and kind, they can change our world".  Anyone who actually  heeded these words would probably be considered a crummy politician in this day and age. Notwithstanding, he or she might make a great president. It worked for Abe.

Shedding Some Light On Republican Candidates

- Pawlenty was light as a feather and blew away.

- Rick Perry’s lights are on but there is nobody home.

- Newt Gingrich looks like a deer in headlights.

- Romney would like to punch Perry’s lights out.

- Sarah Palin is having a tough time hogging the limelight.

- Will Michele Bachmann see the light and crawl back into her hole.

- Is it lights out for Herman Cain?

- Ron Paul sees light at the end of the tunnel.

- Huntsman is a lightweight.

- Rick Santorum hasn't seen the light of day and has been out to lunch for some time.

Congratulations Jim Thome

He will always be an Indian to me!

Jim Thome hit home run #600 on 8/15/11. Whoever said that nice guys finish last. Cooperstown next. Congratulation also to the Twins for giving a 40 year old with a bad back a chance for baseball immortality.

Funny Pages

Some Funny Pages Favorites

While watching an old or more accurately a vintage movie, one of the characters made reference to “the funny pages”. Instantly I had a flashback to the days when comic strips ruled the Sunday edition of a newspaper and we couldn't wait to get to the funny pages of The Utica Observer Dispatch. The funny pages consisted of an entire section of the paper and the comics were actually funny unlike many of today’s comic strips which are more like soap operas.

I remember “Betty Boop”, my first love. Betty Boop was the darling of the Depression days and was one hot babe with her short dresses, high heels, a garter belt and a cleavage which would not quit. She would put our modern day floozies to shame. She was about as X-rated as we were exposed to in those days. Most of all she was funny.

And then there was ‘Bringing up Father” which featured the comic adventures of Jiggs. This comic strip told the story of Irish-American Jiggs, a former bricklayer, and his wife Maggie, an ex-laundress, who achieved sudden wealth, supposedly by means of a lucky ticket in the Irish Sweepstakes. While the snobbish Maggie and beautiful daughter Nora would constantly try to "bring up" Father to his new social position (much like the TV show “Moving On Up” of later years), Jiggs could think of nothing finer than sitting down at Dinty Moore's restaurant to finish off several dishes of corned beef and cabbage, followed by a night out with the boys from the old neighborhood. The strip featured flying rolling-pins, smashed crockery, and broken vases, all aimed at Jiggs's skull. Ha, ha ha!

Rivaling Jiggs as a ne'er-do-well was Major Hoople of “Our Boarding House”. “Our Boarding House” was a long-running comic strip set in a boarding house run by the sensible Mrs. Hoople. It chronicled the humorous interactions of her grandiose, tall-tale-telling husband, Major Hoople, with the rooming-house denizens and his various friends and cronies. The Major featured what looked like a Turkish fez on his head but probably was what distinguished gents wore atop their heads while relaxing in the evening.

For pure he-haws, Lil Abner took the prize. Lil Abner and his Pappy and Mama were hillbillies who lived in Dogpatch. I guess if I carried the hillbilly stigma I wouldn’t have found the strip so funny. Speaking of strip, Daisy Mae as a sex-pot almost rivaled Betty Boop. Of all the characters in this comic strip, joe btfsplk was my favorite. There was a black cloud over his head wherever he went. If anything was going to happen it happened to joe. I imagine Barack Obama might have a special attachment for joe btfsplk.

Characters you could find in the neighborhood were very popular in the funny pages. Mutt and Jeff were comic-strip characters that the Laurel and Hardy series could very well have been based on. They were two working-class men -- drinking, gambling, and getting in hot water with their wives. Mutt was a tall, lanky man with a penchant for the ponies, while Jeff looked like the Monopoly man after a rough weekend.

As youngsters we could fantasize with “Freckles and His Friends” Freckles was a junior in high school. His exploits with the Shadyside High football team were followed closely. Much to my surprise I discovered that a Shadyside High School does exist in Ohio.

Of course there were other entertaining comic strips. Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers and Blondie all provided good entertainment for a Sunday morning.

The stripped down newspaper of today has little room for comic strips. Our local paper, The Plain Dealer, calls it comic pages DIVERSIONS. Probably because most of the strips are not funny. As I indicated earlier, it appears that more and more strips are devoted to personal and social issues. Blondie and Dagwood have survived and for that I’m grateful. Actually there are a lot of funny things in today’s paper. Not the comics, but the national news. Political news and maneuverings provide for a number of funny pages.

Reminiscing about funny pages also reminded of something else that was important to my upbringing. I got to enjoy the funny pages because no matter how austere the times were, my father made sure we had a newspaper in the house even though he didn‘t have a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out of. My parents were immigrants without the benefit of much formal education. Pop got to learn and read English through night school and a tour in the Army during World War I. My mother learned by reading the paper. How she managed this has always been a mystery to me. She learned to read a newspaper in the English language without the benefit of any schooling! Her favorite section? The obituaries.

Newspapers in our house served other need besides providing information. Wrapping garbage in newspapers was routine. The crummiest garbage was reserved for any stories about Republicans. Newspapers also followed me to school. They were excellent for wrapping my delicious pepper and egg sandwiches (much to the consternation of my sister). That’s right, sandwiches not sandwich.

In spite of computers, smart phones, tablets and whatever else in the Apple labs, I hope newspapers will continue to have an important place in our lives. They have certainly made my life better.

It's on the tip of my tongue

I have the solution for the debt reduction crisis. I'd submit it to the so called Super Committee but there is one little problem. I can't get it out from the tip of my tongue. It's there - I can feel it struggling to get out into the open but the road signs are so confusing, it can't get past the tip of my tongue. I hope this little problem is not the tip of the iceberg. Dare I mention the "A" word? What the "A" word is escapes me at the moment. It's on the tip of my tongue. Now where was I? It's on the tip of my tongue and had something to do with the debt crisis.  Actually I don't give a Tinker's dam about the debt crisis.  Hold the presses! I remember, I remember! Get the hell out of the Mideast!

Updating A Messy Poem For Messy Times

In January '09 I messed around with a poem thinking that the best way to deal with one's depression over the recession before it developed into agression was to relax and wax poetically about the economic mess. One mess deserves another.

Raised in the Great Depression
Retired before the crash of eighty seven
Lived to see the Great Recession

It is now two thousand eleven

 The economy an  abortion

 Hope there's not an Armageddon

 I'll settle for regression

Whoever said this would be heaven

Let's hope the economy turns around soon. I wouldn't want my poetry to get any messier. If it does, S&P will most certainly downgrade me. Next time I'll try Paxil.

Irish Twins

What do you write about when when everything in the nation and world appears to be one big fat mess? Irish twins of course

While sitting in my dentist's reception room recently, I could not help overhearing a conversation a lady was having with the receptionist. Before accusing me of being nosey, I must add that the reception room is very small and the only way to ignore conversations is to wear ear plugs. In fact this particular room may well be in violation of patient privacy regulations. So while trying to ignore the conversation that was going on I overheard, " did you know that she has Irish twins?" What in hell could she be talking about. Did her friend adopt twins from Ireland? Why tag her friend's twin as Irish? Judging from the put down tone of her question , I surmised that there was more to "Irish twins" than a reference to twins. I couldn't wait to get home to research " Irish twins". My research took all of two minutes thanks to Google.

"Irish twins" is used to describe two children  born to the same mother within twelve months of each other. What a disappointment! Why the Irish tag, it could happen to anyone. Just a bit more research revealed that that in the 1800's in the land of freedom and religious tolerance, the children of our forefathers concluded that such births could only only occur as a result of uneducated, poor Irish Catholic families' lack of birth control as well as as self control.

I still wonder about the Irish tag since there are many uneducated, poor Americans who have no self-control when it comes to sex. Make that Americans of all economic means who have no self-control. Obviously the term was originally meant as an insult which Americans of all economic means too frequently apply to fellow Americans who they deem as different.

In modern use, the term Irish twins is not intended as an insult, but rather a description of siblings born close to together. How nice! It still sounds like an insult. Was the Planned Parenthood Society formed to reduce the frequency of Irish twins?

Now that I have succeeded in taking my mind off everything that is really important for a few minutes, let me not be a coward. Time to get ahold of that self-control thing, turn on the TV set and watch the roller coaster ride called the economy. Better yet that old movie on TCM, "Cheaper By The Dozen", looks a hell of a lot better.
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Obama To Throw His Support to Bachmann

The following link to a satirical article which appeared in The Onion is almost too close to the truth but still worthy of a laugh midst the comedy that played out in Washington this week.

Obama: Debt Ceiling Deal Required Tough Concessions By Both Democrats And Democrats Alike: http://tinyurl.com/3hushrr

Obama had better start rooting for Michelle Bachmann to get the Republican/Tea Party presidential candidate nomination. It’s his best chance for another term.

Hope Springs Eternal For Obama

It looks like I'll have a Social Security check on August 3 if I am to believe that The United States has averted default on its obligations. I don't completely understand the compromise reached by the White House and Congress or was it the White House and The Tea Party. If I were to attempt to put on paper what is being reported it would look like a camel and an extraordinarily ugly one at that. Not even Rembrandt could paint an appealing  landscape of the deal reached. Sadly the Democrats at this point look like the Napoleonic armies retreating from Russia. Which makes me wonder, will this debt ceiling debacle turn out to be Barack Obama's Waterloo or better yet Vietnam? Will he pull a Lyndon Johnson and not run for another term? I do hope he runs. I hope he somehow pulls a rabbit out of a hat and makes a silk purse out of a sow's ear. As they say, hope springs eternal. The real Obama has not yet surfaced in Washington. Or has he.